#never did a man look so good in guyliner either

[tomorrowsdrama]

2020: A Year in Thirst

In 1985, Gabriel Garcia Marquez gave the world Love in the Time of Cholera.  In 2020 (er, I guess it’s now 2021), I give to you, Thirst in the Time of Covid-19 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Thirst, a brief recap of all the dramas I watched in 2020 and whether such dramas made yours truly parched..  

The list contains dramas that premiered in 2020, but also dramas from previous years.  If I watched it or attempted to watch it in 2020, it’s on the list.  

EDIT: Ok, I’m going to have to do this in multiple parts because apparently I watched more dramas in 2020 than I remembered and talking about them all in one post would just be too long.

This also serves as a sort of greeting to all the people who recently followed me.  I don’t know how or why, but thank you for being interested in my thirst, and also so sorry for everything you have/will witness here!  I started this side blog last December 2019 as a place to dump all my fangirl feels and thirst with unbridled abandon and let’s just say, the thirst REALLY ramped up in 2020 during quarantine and all the political chaos/uncertainty.  The state of the world may be uncertain, but my thirst will always be a comforting constant!  LOL. If you want to thirst or fangirl/boy together, I’m all ears.

Anyway, let’s start with the drama that was partially the inspiration for this list. 

1. The Wolf

Brief Summary: Sweet hot boy raised in the wilderness/by wolves meets sweet beautiful girl and they fall in love.  Shitty evil people do shitty evil things to them to cause a misunderstanding and they are separated for years.  Sweet hot boy is given the “Sexy Bloody Tormented Killer Makeover” TM and turns into a VERY VERY BAD HOT Wolf Man after being tortured/brainwashed by an evil asshole king who “adopted” him.  Bad Hot Wolf Man reunites with sweet beautiful girl but because of third party machinations in the past, he thinks that she betrayed him so he is suuuuuuch an ass to her (while still maintaining hotness).  But even beneath the asshattery (and sexy jerky smirks), he can’t help his love for her and it’s just *chefs kiss*. The angst, the pining, the mutual sacrifice for each other, the torment of wanting to be together but not being able to be together because of external forces/circustances, oh I am getting in a tizzy just thinking about it.  I won’t reveal anymore so as not to spoil the drama, but just know the ending may destroy you.

Is she thirsty? Am I thirsty? AM I THIRSTY?  Oh honey, if you don’t know the answer to that, then you must either be new here or you haven’t been paying attention to any of my posts in the past few weeks.  Look, from the first moment the camera panned to Darren Wang’s very well-defined and tan chest and windswept hair, all semblance of shame and dignity I ever tried to feign on this tumblr was immediately thrown out the window.  The feelings that he inspired within me were purely primal.  My cavewoman ancestor from millennia ago stopped gathering food in the harsh wilderness for a brief second to transmigrate into my body and go “me want big strong man!”

I mean, below is literally our introduction to Wolf Boy.  Am I supposed to just witness this and not feel anything?  The director knew what he/she was doing.  Anybody who worked on the drama who says they didn’t intend to exploit Darren Wang’s assets is a BOLD FACED LIAR. And this isn’t even Wolf boy in his hottest form.

That would be this:

Damn, your girl needs a moment here.  When Wolf Boy turns into Bad Hot Wolf Man, wheeeeewww.  The things that came out of my mouth and the thoughts that popped up into my head.

Examples of shameless fangirl drooling can be found here: https://tomorrowsdrama.tumblr.com/post/636986055498792960/dangermousie-this-should-be-illegal-i-mean Here: https://tomorrowsdrama.tumblr.com/post/637238885944033280/dangermousie-i-am-fucking-dead-the-end-this Here: https://tomorrowsdrama.tumblr.com/post/637793196830769152/dangermousie-wolfie-acquired-a-kid-omg Here: https://tomorrowsdrama.tumblr.com/post/635272988321775616/dangermousie-i-dont-know-about-you-guys-but and here: https://tomorrowsdrama.tumblr.com/post/637621638524977152/dangermousie-hnnnnnnnngh-i-am-beginning-to-forget

Honestly, just check out The Wolf tag on @dangermousie​ tumblr and you won’t be disappointed.  Prepare to become obsessed, horny, and heartbroken.

Would I watch it minus the thirst traps? Have you ever thirsted so much that you couldn’t separate what reaction was hormonal and what was objective?  Like the guy is so hot to you that when your friends ask you what do you like about him, the first 10 things you can think of are “he’s hot!” and then you try to remind yourself that you’re not a shallow person who actually cares about things other than looks but at the same time you can’t for the life of you think of a non-hot based trait that you like about the guy  Yeah, that’s what happened here so sorry, I can’t give you an objective opinion.  It’s not that there’s nothing objectively good about The Wolf, it’s just that my judgment is too clouded by Darren Wang’s abs and big hands.  But from what I can tell by other people’s posts, even if you didn’t thirst for Darren Wang (Are you made of stone?  But also, can you please teach me your magic so I can go back to being a semi-functional working woman?), The Wolf is still a very enjoyable drama with its own non-Darren Wang related merits.

2. My Beautiful Bride

Brief Summary: A drama about a strait-laced banker who wears a dorky backpack and rides a bicycle everywhere while wearing the dorkiest looking helmet ever and his beautiful bride-to-be whom he is hopelessly devoted to.  This being a kdrama, and an OCN drama at that, things aren’t all what they appear to be.  Yes, you read that right, an OCN. ROMANCE. DRAMA.  Turns out the beautiful bride-to-be has a dangerous past that soon comes back to haunt her and she mysteriously disappears one day from strait-laced banker’s life in the typical kdrama way to protect him.  Part of the reason she leaves him is also because she doesn’t want him to know about her past because she doesn’t think she’s good enough for him.  Little does she know, he knows everything about her past and accepts it all.  The only reason why he doesn’t bring it up is because he knows she doesn’t want him to know about that part of herself and he loves her so much he’s willing to do anything to make her happy.  But also, another thing she doesn’t know is that underneath that boring but perfectly ironed suit, is a finely chiseled, super efficient fighting machine who did his mandatory military service in the special forces.  He is like the terminator meets Liam Neeson’s character in Taken.  He has a very particular set of skills and will stop at nothing to get his bride back.

Is she thirsty?  Please just watch this video and you will have your answer: https://youtu.be/Ut9MhxWadHM

Prior to The Wolf, My Beautiful Bride was probably the most thirst-inducing drama I watched in 2020.

I mean, just look

at this

at all of this

I don’t’ know how Joo Young saw that body and never questioned whether he really was just a banker.  The writers of the drama must be super heterosexual men who are blind because so many of the characters in the drama question why someone as beautiful as Joo Young would ever want to be with someone like the banker. Um..Um...aside from the fact that he is financially well off, treats her well, is loving and respectful of her, and prioritizes her over everything else, JUST LOOK AT HIM.  I was so thirsty for Kim Mu Yeol in this role that I would accidentally tag this drama as My Beautiful Banker sometimes.  The banker was on a relentless one-man mission to take back his bride and turn me on in the process and ooooooh boy was he successful on both fronts.  He is seriously sex on legs every time he beats up a baddie in his quest to find answers about Joo Young’s whereabouts.

Would I watch it minus the thirst traps?  I binged the first six episodes of this drama in one afternoon partly because of my thirst, but also partly because it’s a very well made crime-action-gangster drama.  This is an OCN drama so you can expect a competently made production with well choreographed/bloody action scenes and a solid script.

3. Scarlet Heart Ryeo / Moon Lovers

Brief Summary: IU plays Hae Soo, a modern woman who is somehow transported back in time to the Goryeo period.  There, she gets entangled with a group of royal princes.  Her two main love interests are Wang So (played by Lee Jun Ki) and Wang Wook (played by Kang Ha Neul).  The princes vie for the throne and some of them for Hae Soo’s affection.  Lee Jun Ki does what he does best, which is play a sexy tortured deadly man who looks way too good with blood splattered on his face.  Kang Ha Neul is the seemingly kind prince/daddy long legs character who turns out to be not so kind or daddy long leggy.  Hae Soo is...well IU did the best she could with what she was given (which was a hot inconsistent mess).

Is she thirsty? Scarlet Heart Ryeo is like the honeypot of thirst traps.  It’s essentially a reverse harem set up with a prince for everyone.

Like them young and cute?  Then try the 10th prince, Wang Eun.

Want them big, tall, and kinda dumb?  Here’s the 14th prince Wang Jung for ya.

Want an evil bastard with an affinity for guyliner?  Try out 3rd prince Wang Yo.

Tall, slender, and scholarly? 13th prince Baek-ah will fill your needs.

Is a kind/gentle man who will ultimately disappoint you because he doesn’t show up when you need him most more your speed?  Well, let me introduce you to 8th prince, Wang Wook.

Kinda scary but oh so hot and with a ton of baggage?  We’re talking, I overpacked and brought 10 overstuffed large suitcases levels of baggage. 4th prince Wang So is the guy for you.

And if you prefer someone with no personality, presence, or memorable traits, I got a two-for-one deal for you in the crown prince Wang Mu and 9th prince Wang Won.

Would I watch it minus the thirst traps?  There is political intrigue, scheming, romance, fluffy hijinks (my least favorite parts of the drama), angst, beautiful costumes, and pretty decent fight scenes.  Scarlet Heart Ryeo is a pretty solid fusion/fantasy sageuk mostly thanks to Lee Jun Ki.  The only person who has ever carried a larger load on his back is Atlas.  I’m not saying all the other actors are horrendous. It’s just very clear that the one elevating the material beyond the inconsistencies/messiness/elementary politics of the script is Lee Jun Ki.  Your enjoyment level of the drama will likely increase if you are a fan of any of the main actors.  

#the wolf #darren wang #my beautiful bride #kim mu yeol #scarlet heart ryeo #moon lovers: scarlet heart ryeo #lee jun ki #kang ha neul #ji soo #cdrama #kdrama

[diabloindigo]

Are you the person to open a box of cereal just to get the toy inside? As a kid yes. Right now, I don’t buy cereals with prizes anymore. Do they even stuff toys in cereal these days? 

Do you get scared easy? If it’s in the anxiety induced variety, yes. 

What was one of the stupidest things you cried over when you were little? Not sure, it could have been anything from not wanting to wear a fancy dress or dress shoes to a party or a broken toy. 

Have you ever drank milk from the carton? Despite having a working dishwasher and plenty of glasses, I “waterfall” milk and juice from the containers. 

Juice or milk? I go both ways, leaning more towards juice. Apple or orange. 

Do you ever turn off your computer properly? Once in a while. 

Do you wish you were a fish? Not really, though I kinda envy the blue Dory (Doctor Fish?) in the tank at my gynecologist’s waiting room. It likes to swim to the bottom of the tank and ride up to the top on a bubble jet. That damn fish has probably had more fun than I have in the past several months. 

Who’s your favorite super hero? Invincible (Amazon Prime). Along with Spider-Man (2002) and the Big Hero 6 movie, that character/series is a rare superhero show that makes me feel strong and vulnerable at the same time. 

Who’s your favorite super villain? Slade Wilson/ Deathstroke as seen in “Teen Titans: The Judas Contract” animated movie and the 2003-2006 “Teen Titans” cartoon series. 

Spiderman or X-men? Spider-Man. Tobey Maguire and Peter B. Parker from Into the Spiderverse. 

Movie theatre or stay at home movie night? Theaters. Alamo Drafthouse. I love ordering boozy milkshakes and finger foods.

Do you have a Blue Ray? I have one of those external drives for my Mac though I never use it. 

How about HD television? Yeah

Do you think HD television is kind of a waste of money? No. 

Do you get why people get so frickin’ freaked out during football season? I do not, and living in a state with a hard-on for (American) football makes it weird when I tell people that I do not have a favorite football team/player. 

Do you ever sneak scraps to the dog even though you’re not suppose to? I don’t sneak him food. If I cook or order too much to eat, then I scrape a couple of cup’s worth of leftovers in his bowl. He’s probably got only a year to live so let him live it up a little. 

Are you reading a book right now? If so what? A friend gave me a copy of “The Only Good Indians” but I can't get into it so I’m reading “Full Throttle” by Joe Hill. 

What was the last book you were required to read for school? It’s been so long I can’t remember. 

O donuts or jelly filled? Whipped cream filled. I love Krispy Kreme’s whipped cream filled donuts with raspberry filled donuts as a close second. 

If I’m feeling bland then I do like crullers. 

Do you like your ice-cream in a bowl or cone? Bowl unless it’s a tasty cone. 

Marshmallows in your hot chocolate or no? I could go either way unless it’s a tiny cup of chocolate. 

Do you like cherry coke? Hell yes. I love going to Sonic for a cherry-vanilla-lime Coke or this greasy little 1950s type burger joint for their cherry cokes since they load the cups with several cherries. 

Do you really think diet Dr. Pepper is the equivalent of a cupcake? No, it tastes artificial. Like a bastard child of a soft drink that wants to pass for cherry soda. 

Do you snore in your sleep? Drool? Talk? Snore and talk (I’m pretty stressed out).

Have you ever sleep walked? no

Are you a morning person? I am now. 

How do you wake up in the mornings? by alarm during the work week, naturally at 6-7 on vacation days. 

Do you think guyliner is hot? What is that? 

Is variety the spice of life? yeah

Do you think strawberry milk is disgusting? I like it. 

Have you ever drank after anyone? Like sharing a cup/bottle? Yeah, loads of times.  

Have you ever drank after anyone you don’t know very well? No. 

Do you have any limits on who you drink/eat after?

If we’re talking about sharing, then I will share food/drink with family and friends. If someone offers me bite-size pieces that are individually wrapped or can be torn off the main portion, I’ll eat it, but only from co-workers or acquaintances. 

Would you eat a sucker if someone already ate some of it? No. 

Would you chew somebody else's gum? Hell no. 

Do you know anyone who’s going to die of mono because of that? No. 

Do you enjoy school? My English and psychology classes. 

Are you a teacher’s pet? no

Do you have a job? Yes. 

How did you get to and from school? Parents drove me or I walked for elementary through high school. I drove when I went to college. 

Do you have a bedtime? And if so what is it? I’m in bed between 11-12 a.m.

What time do you get up? 6 am so I can walk/exercise before the sun boils the earth in full force. 

Have you ever pulled an all-nighter? Yeah in college. 

What’s more important? Beauty or brains? brains

Do you believe in yourself? Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t. 

Did you ever want to be an astronaut when you were little? No. Being a veterinarian or scientist were my highest ambitions as a small kid. 

How about the president? Never. 

What did you want to be when you were little? Veterinarian, scientist, cartoon character. 

Did you ever want to be a super model? no

Do you believe you’re attractive enough to be a super model? No.

Have you ever had an X-ray? Several in the past few months for pre-surgery and dental work.

What’s your favorite guy’s name? What’s your favorite girl’s name? Guys’: Shane, Mark, Tadashi, Austin, Cade, Trip.

Girls’: Quince, Sienna, Amy, Kit, Lizzie (Elizabeth), Raven.

Who’s your second cousin’s, grandparent’s, sister? The fuck...

Do you laugh to yourself whenever the ketchup bottle farts? No, in fact, I get annoyed when other people hear it and ask me if I farted. 

Do you have any real guns in your house? I have several. 

Do you know how to use nunchucks? No, I bought a pair at one of those Asian imports emporiums, but I donated them since I never learned to use them. They were these crappy foam padded ones with dragons printed on the handles. 

Do you know anyone who can use nunchucks? No. 

What do you want to be next Halloween? In better health and not shitting bricks about using up my paid time off to go to doctors’ appointments. 

Did you ever consider getting a job as a mall Santa? No. I’d rather be one of his elves or a reindeer. 

Are you the one responsible for taking out the garbage? Yes. Grosses me the fuck out sometimes with smelly discarded poultry trays or rotten food, but somebody’s gotta do it. 

Do you recycle? My city has the blue recycling bins, but I heard that since we’re an ass-backward community, “recyclables” and trash all go to the same place. I just place recyclables in the blue bin to help clear up space in the trash bin. Maybe I’m wrong and this city does recycle? Can’t hurt. 

When I was 11, I’d collect empty soda cans to take to the recycling guy since back in the day, they’d pay for aluminum cans. That’s how I scraped up funds for dollar movies and hot dogs. 

Are you a pyro? Yeah. I carry/collect Zippo lighters but mostly because the “click-click” is satisfying to hear since I flip the lids open and closed to relieve stress. And I burn a lot of old bills and letters with sensitive info on them. 

What was the last word/thing you wrote down? I was researching high fiber foods that are also low in carbs to make a grocery and dinner meal plan. 

Sleeping or eating? After my surgery, sleeping. 

Are you overall a positive person? I try to be realistically positive, if such a thing exists. The world will never be all sunshine and My Little Ponies, but I try to find some comfort and positivity when my world is a shit-show. Filling this survey out kinda helps. 

Do you hate hypocrites? Yeah, especially the “do as I say, not as I do” types. 

For instance, a certain family member is pushing good diet and health habits, but it aggravates the hell out of me if I see him drinking high sugar iced tea or eating ice cream. Or Door-Dashing Burger King, even if it is a Beyond Whopper with a diet Coke. 

Do you like to prank people? Yes, but I do benign pranks like leaving dirty riddles and meme drawings on their front doors. 

What was the worst prank you’ve ever done on anyone? I tried fucking with a telesolicitor but I could not stop laughing. 

Have you ever jumped on a trampoline in the ice? I don’t own a trampoline. 

Have you ever ice skated? No. I tried once after a local minor league hockey game. I got the skates on, but my ankles were bending/bowing out so I changed my mind.

Ever water skiid? No. 

Is vacuum spelled funny? Yes. 

Democrat or republican? I don’t associate formally with either party, but I hitch my pony a little to the left. 

Who’s the biggest asshole you know? My former boss circa 2013. Very unprofessional and a veritable loudmouth and a poor (shit) showman wannabe. 

Pen or pencil? Gel-ink pens. 

Should all paper have holes? nope

Speaking of holes. Swiss cheese, what’s the point of that? Fewer calories? Spinning slices in my hand like a TV cowboy spinning his revolver in the trigger guard with his finger? 

Have you ever been in a helicopter before? No. 

Own any airbrushed tshirts? Nope, not even in the nineties. 

Have you ever been suspended? No. 

Have you ever been in a fist fight? A few playground fights as a kid. 

Ever said something to someone that you didn’t mean to say? Yes. 

Do you forgive too easily? I don’t think so. 

What are you listening to right now? The AC running. 

Have you ever seen any of MCR’s music videos? Nope. 

Are you tan? No. 

Have you ever been in a tanning bed? No. I have no desire to look like a Cheeto or woo skin cancer. 

Have you ever played water volley? Once at my uncle’s neighborhood swimming pool. 

Ever had a sunburn? Yes, from neglecting sunscreen re-applications or underestimating the sun. 

How about wind burn? It hurts….. Nah, I don't live in a cold enough climate for that. 

What was the first word you learned how to say? I think it was “mama.”

#random monkey shit #survey #ask #bored #Q and A #long post

[earlgreytea68]

A Review of the Fall Out Boy Biography Inevitably Colored by Shippiness Oops But Really Mainly By My Love for Pete Wentz

I don’t even know who the audience is for this monstrosity of a review, nor do I know the audience for this biography, though, so, like, it’s fitting lololol: 

I am a new Fall Out Boy fan. I say that because, if anybody was in need of a Fall Out Boy biography, you would think it would be a new fan. AND YET. I’m not entirely sure who the market for this book is, because it isn’t really Fall Out Boy fans of any duration, because not only can everything in the book be easily located with the simplest of Google searches but also there’s so much he leaves out. And what he leaves out is just…so incredibly telling. It’s like, the facts he chooses to highlight are often pointless and random (although thanks for telling me that Pete Wentz’s jeans were so tight he had to perform without underwear, I’m going to think about that a lot now), whereas the facts he leaves out are the ones that lend both complexity and context. Like, this whole book could be Exhibit A in how malleable facts can be. Given the same set of facts, this man and I would tell two very different stories.

At least partly this is because he’s a music critic (I glean from the book) and I’m a creative writer. I believe he is a music critic because he takes care to dedicate a paragraph of musical analysis to every song on their earliest CDs (he loses interest in them over the hiatus, and more on that later). I appreciated this, because I know nothing about music, and I learned a lot about how talented Patrick Stump really is, like, not as a vocalist, because I knew that, or as a musician, because I also knew that, but as a smart, clever songwriter. I don’t know how to critique music, and I was happy this guy was full of praise for what Patrick does. He also pointed out musical hallmarks of theirs – like their tendency to drop the music suddenly for Patrick to sing an a cappella line – and that was the first time I’d ever really thought about them.

He was full of much less praise for Pete’s lyrics, though, and I think that’s because he’s a music person, not a word person. Not that he thought Pete’s lyrics were ever bad but he tended to stay very conventional about them: emo, confessional, dramatic, and ingeniously juxtaposed with Patrick’s clear-as-a-bell voice. He’s kind of obsessed with the contrast between Patrick’s voice and the lyrics he’s singing, whereas I’m much more obsessed with the contrast between Patrick himself in sweater-paws and glasses snarling, “I am your worst nightmare,” like, sweetheart, I doubt it. AND YET HE PULLS IT OFF. Like, that’s so interesting to me, how much Patrick can make himself embody Pete, that act of alchemy where he sings on his behalf, but this book talks less about that than I think it might, mostly because I don’t think this guy really wants to think too hard about how incredibly good Pete’s lyrics actually are. The thing about Pete’s lyrics – he does this, and it’s so clever, it’s killer clever – is you can read them so easily on one very obvious and expected layer, and then there’s always one or two additional meanings tucked underneath them, and you might never stop to think about them, especially if you’ve already written him off, but his lyrics reward careful study and a lot of thought, he specializes in triple entendres, a turn of phrase that spins out into so many meanings, that’s so hard to do and he makes it look so easy that it’s such a simple mistake to dismiss it, to not even see how dense his poetry is. The conventional story on Pete Wentz is he’s good at marketing – marketing the band, marketing himself – and so he spun in circles to keep the spotlight on him and away from Patrick, and that’s definitely one take, and another take would be to point out that the same whirligig sex-symbol tabloid-fodder act also had the side effect of undercutting any tendency to take Pete seriously from a literary point of view, like, so much easier to just say that, in keeping with his goth guyliner, he wept into his inkwell and scrawled messily over parchment. So anyway: criticism #1 of this book is that they should have complemented the music-critic-ness with an English major.

Criticism #2 is that I feel like people always get wrong what appeals to girls, to speak in the massive generalizations of this topic. Like, someone somewhere was like, “Hey, girls like this Fall Out Boy band, it must be because Pete Wentz is hot.” And they’re not wrong about that, exactly, but they always seem to miss how many entangled layers often come with attraction. Like, yeah, sometimes it’s just he’s got nice abs but often there’s a million other things happening there, and one thing I cannot forgive this guy for is not just his failure to engage with Pete’s lyrics on any real level, but how little he also truly examines Pete Wentz’s genuine marketing genius. He’s a music guy: His interest is clearly in Patrick, and also in Joe and Andy, because they’re musicians, and he can wax poetic about them. Pete gets his standard paragraphs: Oh, he chose the right management, the right record label, the right deal. He can pick out a good band, like Panic! or Gym Class Heroes. All of that is true, but none of it really grasps exactly how smart Pete really is. Like, the book hardly mentions at all how much Pete realized immediately the value of internet fandom. When I first fell for Pete Wentz – that first weekend I spent Googling him – what really was the death knell for me was stumbling upon the old FOB Q&As he used to run in the earliest days. And it wasn’t actually his constant leaning into the Peterick shipping with such dead-on unerring understanding of fandom that did it for me (although that was pretty charming, ngl). It was how often teenagers messaged Pete Wentz with their problems, and how patiently he took the time to respond. My boyfriend broke up with me. My grandma just died. I don’t feel like I fit in anywhere. Again and again and again, Pete Wentz took these messages and wrote out detailed, laborious responses. And I know he was a guy angling hard to be famous but not all guys angling hard to be famous realized how important something like this is, this very personal connection, like, above and beyond the bantering and the smirks, and even if you’re doing it entirely for ulterior motives, that’s a ton of emotional labor he was performing. I finished reading those Q&As and thought, God, Pete Wentz must have been exhausted.

And I’m not sure that’s something the bio ever really wrestled with, because it never really talked about that aspect of him. I don’t actually think the bio read anything Pete Wentz has ever posted online, like, not even those basic Q&As that are the easiest thing in the universe to Google, never mind the secret blogs he still has scattered all over the internet with nuggets of lyricism buried in there for Patrick to mine. It’s just so easy to buy into the Peter-Pan, devil-may-care Pete Wentz picture, and for all I know that’s the truest of the pictures, but it’s also undeniable fact that the other side to that was either really cunning and savvy or just a nice guy, and either way it’s another layer to Pete Wentz that gets short shrift in the bio. Which isn’t surprising because although the author clearly appreciates Fall Out Boy the band, the author clearly isn’t fannish at all, whereas it’s pretty abundantly clear Pete Wentz is fannish. He’s unapologetically fannish. He speaks fan language with a fluency that is hard to fake. And he’s astonishingly well-versed in tropes. He’s instinctively good at creating a good story, not just in his lyrics (although he, like Taylor Swift, is adept at tropey lyrics, so it’s no surprise they have a mutual admiration society), but in his life. In addition to the Q&As, that first weekend was full of me being like, …How is this the tropiest thing I’ve ever read??? It’s unsurprising that the bio doesn’t point out all the tropes in the Pete Wentz / Patrick Stump / Fall Out Boy story, because the author isn’t versed in tropes, but Pete Wentz definitely is. He knows how to use words, well. And you wouldn’t necessarily know it to listen to him – he babbles and uses tons of filler phrases and never, ever ask him what his lyrics are about, it’s like trying to have a conversation in Wonderland – but that’s all part of the aw-shucks-sometimes-I-scribble-some-stuff-down-Patrick’s-the-real-genius brand.

Now I am not qualified to write a Fall Out Boy biography and also I don’t know these people and also everything I do know comes from Google but that said, I feel like I do know for a fact some primary source materials that the writer just chose to leave out that really does display how malleable stories can be depending on what you highlight or not. Like, if he didn’t want to draw psychological conclusions based on the facts that’s fair enough. But he also pared back the narrative so drastically that it left off the true meat of it, like, if you read this book you would not necessarily think there was much interesting about these people, whereas if you really dig into everything they’ve got out there, well, you could start to think they’re super-interesting people. But I am a creative writer and this biographer was a music critic. He settles happily into the song analysis but I’m busy connecting dots into a narrative, and life is complicated, it is not a simple narrative, but that impulse underlies most biography, the idea that we can assemble the facts into something that has something to say about a human life. But that act really exists in how you assemble the facts.

 ~~~~~~~~TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE DISCUSSION~~~~~~~~~~~

A really good example of this is the way the biography deals with the Best Buy incident. Here are the bare facts: Pete Wentz, in a Best Buy parking lot listening to Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah,” took too many Ativan. In a phone call, his manager noticed he was slurring, called his parents, they rushed him to the hospital, he lived. These are the facts that the book gives you, and these are true facts.

If you want to expand slightly upon these bare facts, Pete has given many, many interviews about this incident because he is very open about mental health issues and his bipolar disorder and depressive episodes and anxiety. Pete has said that he’s not sure he was trying to kill himself so much as just make his head quiet for a little while. Pete has said he felt like he was too busy being Pete Wentz for everyone else and he just wanted to rest. These are also facts, although ones I don’t think the biographer truly believes. He does dutifully quote them but he also clearly has his own belief about how much Pete’s telling the truth. Because this is inevitable in any telling of the facts.  

If you want to expand slightly upon these facts, you could point out that Pete’s lyrics reflect how noisy his head is (“when this city goes silent, the ringing in my ears gets violent”), which might color how you understand him when he says he just wanted some peace and quiet. You might also point out that, as the bio has already said, Pete was the driving force behind the band’s strategy and it was about to culminate. You might remind the reader that Pete walked away from other possibly very successful careers to do this band (there is much made in the book of the theoretical ease with which Pete could have achieved a soccer career, which made me raise my eyebrows a bit but, you know, Patrick does say Pete’s really, really good at soccer). You might recall that Pete has these kids relying on him whose parents he literally had to persuade to trust him. You might say that so far everything had gone exactly as he planned and he just needed to stick the landing. You might mention the fact that they kept rewriting songs and rewriting songs and rewriting songs; that Pete was in such utter meltdown mode that he was sliding lyrics under Patrick’s door and then retreating, so that the rest of the band never even saw him; that they had scrapped half the album and were furiously writing new music right up until the deadline – all of which are facts not even mentioned. You might say all of those things, because they are indeed all true facts.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is appropriate at this point to note that many of these things were simply not germane to the story this biographer was telling, which was a music-critic-focused story. But these things are all incredibly germane to the story *I* would tell, about these four people who found each other, lost each other, and found each other again, and the two people at the center whose creative alchemy was by turns either too dazzling or too explosive and in both incarnations needed to find a way to balance to keep the band afloat. This is the story I would tell, but, to be totally honest, Pete and Patrick’s creative partnership doesn’t really seem to interest the writer of this book. He mentions it vaguely, in passing, once or twice, fairly standard surface proclamations about Pete handling lyrics and Patrick handling music, and Pete drawing the spotlight away from Patrick who didn’t want it. Or he’ll say that the true secret to the band’s success is Patrick’s voice and Pete’s lyrics, like Patrick could be any pretty-enough voice, which I think just isn’t true, there’s so much more to the way they clicked together. I read this great New Yorker article once about how, through history, genius exists in pairs, that often two people need to find each other to push each other to be better than they would ever be apart.

It’s fine to not want to get into that too intensely, it’s just that that means that half the story of Folie goes away, if you’re not focused on how the band was creating. Like, there’s so much about the lead-up to Folie to talk about: Patrick’s control over the music to the exclusion of everyone else, Pete’s worsening prescription pill thing, and the way that their creative partnership seemed to disintegrate while simultaneously leaving no room for Joe or Andy in the band. The book mentions really none of this – nothing about the fact that at one point they had descended into physical altercations over chord progressions; nothing about the story the producer tells that Patrick would get so frustrated after phone calls with Pete that he’d throw things around the studio; nothing about the story that Patrick once told Pete, “I don’t care, I’m going to write a song and call it ‘I Don’t Care,’” such a telling little tale when later Patrick comes to hate the song “I Don’t Care” – so the hiatus feels like it descends out of nowhere, with a paragraph about the fans not liking the album. Which, again, is a true fact, but without the other true facts of the way the entire creative process was crumbling around them, around all of them, it sounds less compelling. The bio does get into Joe wanting to flex his creative muscles more but doesn’t connect it back to the Folie era of being shut-out. The hiatus becomes entirely about Patrick not liking being booed.

Even worse to me is the book devotes a lot of time to each of their music videos, which is awesome, because their videos are important and great, but it devotes exactly zero time to the video for “What a Catch, Donnie.” And I’m so bewildered by that, you can have a field day with the symbolism in that video, even if you want to just make a true factual statement about its plot: Patrick collects all of the detritus of Fall Out Boy and all of their friends come and party with him, while Pete goes down with a sinking ship all alone, to a medley of the words he’s leaving behind. Like. That is literally what happens in this video. And then the hiatus starts. To me this is one of the most ridiculously angsty things ever, that they would go out to their own triumphs echoing back at them and the literal death of captain!Pete Wentz. To the story I would tell, this is the most germane. It merits not a single mention in the bio (other than praising the song itself for being one of the strongest on the album, and talking about the Elvis Costello cameo).

Because he’s much more interested in them musically than as people or relationships, he seems to lose interest in them post-hiatus. He details each of their hiatus-era projects with his typical attention to the music criticism side. And then he spends, like, eight pages talking about the guy who wrote the article that triggered Patrick’s “We Liked You Better When You Were Fat” blog post. I’m not even exaggerating. It’s an entire chapter dedicated to the article and the guy who wrote it. Patrick’s response is described and quoted and even praised, but not in nearly as much as detail as the original article, and Pete’s reaction to Patrick’s blog post gets literally zero attention. Which is fascinating since, in some tellings of the story, that’s the entire reason the hiatus ended. Pete has said on multiple occasions that he read the blog post and was upset Patrick was so upset and called him up and asked him to try writing with him again. But if you’re not actually interested in that creative relationship as a relationship, then you don’t see a reason to explain the motivation behind trying again.

You also don’t really see a reason to tackle why they initially struggled to get back into it. Like, truly grappling with the Pete/Patrick relationship leads to more depth than the surface “Patrick doesn’t like the spotlight, so Pete takes it for him.” That’s too simplistic a formulation, as Pete himself has said. It also discounts Patrick’s obvious dedication to Pete, his complete willingness to step in and publicly defend him on many occasions, like, Patrick’s no shy, retiring wallflower when it comes to Pete, Patrick can let loose viciously on behalf of Pete. Their protectiveness is mutual, although the public narrative often glosses over that. (In one of those “why leave that out” details, the biographer notes that Hemingway was Pete and Ashlee’s ring bearer but not that Patrick was Pete’s best man, Idk.) At any rate, I point that out because the struggle they had to find their groove writing together after the hiatus mirrored their initial struggles, to find their way into trusting each other’s strengths, but the book is just kind of like, “The first session wasn’t successful but the next session was. They were out of practice.” They weren’t out of practice with songwriting, not really, especially not Patrick – they were out of practice with each other. And that wasn’t just a hiatus-era souvenir, that went back to Folie, but we didn’t get that part of Folie.  

The biographer also, annoyingly in my view, loses all interest in them at this point. He devotes almost no time to the post-hiatus era, which is fascinating to me, since their ability to launch a comeback as successfully and relevantly as they did is striking, and to do it not by relying on nostalgia but by generating genuinely new hits with a genuinely new audience, and he’s not interested in that at all. Even worse than not being interested in this is the fact that he fails to close the Folie loop, like, he devotes lots of time to Patrick coming to hate Folie because of how much the fans hated it. Then he makes a little note, like, “Maybe someday Patrick will come to love Folie again,” or something, and the thing is, I know the book was written a few years ago now, but there was definitely stuff available about how much Folie had become a fan favorite in the hiatus years. Patrick gave an interview somewhere where he talked about the reunion show and how he read fan reviews of it and the fans were like, “They should have played more songs from Folie!” I always think at that point And then Patrick looked into the camera like he’s on The Office. But, at any rate, Patrick got to see Folie become beloved and that loop could have been closed better and he just leaves it dangling. (I’m almost like, Did he really write most of this book while they were on hiatus and then when they came back he was like, …Goddamn it?)

He doesn’t at all get into the shock of the immediate level of success of their comeback, like, that’s another thing that’s documented, that they were unsure anyone would care and they were so startled by the response that they had to actually add larger venues onto their tour because they’d thought no one would want to come to their shows. He could have talked about how people waited hours outside in the Chicago cold to get into the comeback show, how they started the show with “Thriller” and Patrick says the response was electric and it must have been amazing and he’s just not really interested in it, you can tell that he’s bored. He doesn’t talk about how Patrick hadn’t really thought about having to perform the new songs live because he didn’t think anyone would really care about the new album, so they had to really think about how they were going to make it work, and how he almost permanently damaged his voice having to sing “Alone Together” live and that’s what finally finally drove him to pursue actual voice lessons, like, he mentions none of this, he’s just like, “They wrote Save Rock & Roll, and then they wrote American Beauty / American Pyscho.” He’s just clearly, at that point, bored. Whereas in the story I would tell, that is the most satisfying part, the happy ending beyond their wildest dreams.

Okay, omg, this is SO LONG, but here are some other random thoughts:

·       He never – not once – goes back to source Pete’s lyrics to their original blog entries, which can be very interesting. This is because he’s not interested in the lyrics really, but it’s very frustrating to me because, like, SOMEBODY TAKE THESE LYRICS SERIOUSLY, PLEASE, THEY’RE SO GOOD. It also means that he misses things like “Miss Missing You” and the way it echoes Pete’s poem with the line “I miss you missing me,” like, that’s just a fact ::shrug:: He also says “Hum Hallelujah” is about teenage romance, and that is the most straightforward, surface-level reading, like, “Oh, it says ‘teenage vow in a parking lot,’ that’s what it’s about.” This pains me only because “Hum Hallelujah” might be the most perfect lyrically constructed song Fall Out Boy has, every line is golden and stuffed with meaning and emotion, and he’s just like, “teenage romance,” so dismissively, and I wince, like, “I could write it better than you ever felt it” is a line that deserves more than that. Not to mention “I love you in the same way there’s a chapel in a hospital,” god, or “One day we’ll get nostalgic for disaster,” ugh, do not read this book for lyrical analysis. He also terms the best lyrical line on Cork Tree as “To the ‘love’ I left my conscience pressed / Between the pages of the Bible in the drawer” and, while there’s nothing wrong with that line, I don’t even think that’s the best line in XO (I mean, leaving off the follow-up of “What did it ever do for me? I say” undercuts those lines immediately, imo). (He does at least point out that “Keep quiet, nothing comes as easy as you / Can I lay in your bed all day?” is a devastatingly sexy couplet.)

·       Can I just say, the entire debacle with Hey Chris gets precious little time in this book, which in a way is fine but in a way is like, just by Googling I got way more information on what went down and the weird, weird words that were being flung back and forth (at one point the term “heterolifemates” is used which makes zero sense at all in this context), but this book does spend a lot of time with Chris and Pete pre-Patrick (fascinating, right???) and there’s this weird part where Chris says he hated Pete before he met him and is like, “He should wear pants that fit,” which is just…such an interesting reason to hate Pete Wentz, like, Idk, Chris, coupled with your heterolifemates thing and weird thing about “whose name do you say every night???” which is also weirdly sexual phrasing and also being like “no one knows how to break a heart like he does,” like, everything about this entire situation has so much queer subtext but the book doesn’t touch any of that, ever, in any circumstance, with a ten-foot pole.

·       EVERYONE, THE BORDERS WHERE JOE AND PATRICK MEET IS LOCATED IN EDEN PLAZA AND I AM SO UPSET I DIDN’T KNOW THAT WHEN I WROTE THE DEVIL FIC.

·       I did not know that the producer wanted them to change the “We’re falling apart to halftime” line in Dance, Dance because he thought it was too incomprehensible and I’m just like, That’s the lyric where you thought you were going to lose people??

·       From the bio, describing the Live in Phoenix performance: a strange moment where Wentz inexplicably gets changed onstage. A strange moment? Inexplicably? Okay, like, germane to my telling of the story is how much those dick pics affected Pete Wentz’s public persona, how much he knew exactly what he was there to sell and he sold it with gusto, and how much of a spiral that ultimately sent him on. Instead, this biographer finds it inexplicable that Pete Wentz would take his shirt off onstage, and his analysis of the music video for “This Ain’t a Scene” gives the dick pic storyline only an offhand reference, calling it “making light” of the scandal, instead of really digging into the obvious pain there, like, that’s not a joyful lark there. (Later, much later, years later, Brendon Urie will manage to actually make light of the dick pic saga, both in the Drunk History and also in the joke of the dick pic being the photo that comes up when Pete calls him, as seen in the promos for the tour they did together, and that feels much more genuine. But that bit in “Arms Race” is kind of heartbreaking.)

·       Pete says of their failed attempt to get the Guinness record of the first band to perform on all seven continents that it was the worst feeling he’d ever felt in Fall Out Boy, and the biographer is like, “Really, Pete? Really?” and I kind of want to shake him because Pete Wentz is obviously a dramatic person and he feels disappointments keenly and he made that statement literally just as they were finding out they wouldn’t be able to do it, like, of course it’s just hyperbole! The biographer is weird through that whole section of the book because he never once mentions that, as a consolation to Pete, Patrick stayed up all night with him so they could get the record of most interviews by a duo in a twenty-four-hour period, like, that’s what I would have said about that story instead of trying to get way more out of Pete’s off-the-cuff self-pity (which is just so Pete Wentz, it’s like this writer hasn’t just spend a hundred pages writing about him…).

·       Whenever I read about how many songs Patrick shows up with when it’s time to record an album, I always feel this little twinge of solidarity with him, like, sometimes that’s just how it is in your chosen creative medium, you’re just always endlessly writing.

·       I had never thought before about the fact that Pete says all the time that he was too selfish pre-hiatus, all the time, a lot, that’s how he describes his problem – and the fact that there’s an entire song on Truant Wave called “Love, Selfish Love” with the line “God bless the sad and selfish” and I’m just going to…sit here and think about who in Patrick’s life could be described as sad and selfish.

·       From the bio re: Soul Punk: It’s disarming to hear this garrulous boy-next-door sing so candidly about sex. Yeah, I don’t think you were paying attention to the way Patrick smirks at the camera in the music videos, buddy.

·       Detail I knew but had never really thought about before: that Pete got Patrick to really click into songwriting with him again by giving him a puzzle. Patrick says that sometimes Pete gives him homework assignments, “I want a song that sounds like x, y, and z,” and Patrick will be like, “That’s impossible,” but also so intrigued that he ends up sitting and writing the thing. The fact that Pete knew, after a few mediocre songs neither of them liked, like, “You know how I snag him? This way,” is adorable. Also, the fact that it was Pete who adored the song to come out of it, “Where Did the Party Go?,” and that it was his excitement over the song that made Patrick think, Okay, maybe we can do this, like, it was Pete’s joy that drove Patrick’s optimism, they’re so creatively linked, these two.

·       He does include the detail that Pete was worried he’d fallen behind during the hiatus because he didn’t spend much time playing music and so he committed himself to practicing and improving with metronome work, like, Pete Wentz ugh <3. In a very recent interview that I cannot blame the bio for not including, Pete said that Patrick helps him with the bass because he’s so musically talented and everything about that offhand statement just kills me.

·       I did not know that one of the leaks of their reunion was on a blog that wrote “You can stop refreshing for a journal update,” and I’m in love with that, sorry.  

·       Ugh, can I just say, the fact that Patrick sang all of his vocals for Pax AM Days live with the band is just so unbelievable, he kills me.

·       From the bio: “We were fireworks that went off too soon / And I miss you in the June gloom, too,” Stump sings here, and you can’t help but wonder if the words refer to his public but brief marriage. …I have indeed helped the wondering of that because I have never once thought that about this song lolololol

#long post #peterick #pete wentz #fall out boy #fob #bandom

[crashdevlin]

Crashing 2- Sensitive Compartmentalized

Crashing Masterlist

Author’s Note: Originally posted to ao3 (This is an edited and improved version) Part Four of the Red Queen Chronicles!

Summary: Everyone wants to throw blame around about Cassie’s new personality, but does the blame really matter when she’s taken her birthright as head of Hydra?

Word Count: 4070

Pairing(s): Clint Barton x OFC, past Loki x OFC, past Bucky Barnes x OFC, past Steve Rogers x OFC

Chapter Warnings: mentions of brainwashing, mentions of murder, violence and anger

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cassie kicked in the door to the bar and looked around the dusty room. “Tell me there’s a SCIF in this dump.”

A short man with short salt and pepper hair approached her. “A what?”

She rolled her eyes. “A SCIF. Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility?” She groaned, adjusting the sheet of metal over her thigh. “A room with radiant foil in the walls that shuts out transmissions and WiFi and hackables.”

“Who the hell-” the man snapped as he started to grab her, but she grabbed the back of his head and bounced it against the bar.

“Heil Hydra,” she said, turning to the others. She pointed to one toward the back. “You. You dress like SHIELD. Were you?”

“Yes...uh, ma’am?”

“John Garrett, Grant Ward; these names ringing your bells?” she asked, wincing as she adjusted her grip.

“Yes, ma’am. Garrett recruited me to Hydra.”

“Were you with them when they took the Fridge?” she asked, smiling when he nodded. “They spent an hour, probably closer to forty minutes, looking for someone. You ever get a description of who?”

“Short, blond, green eyes...oh, my God, you’re her!”

“Awesome, no introduction necessary. SCIF?” she requested again. The young man nodded and rushed for a door labeled ‘Storage’. Cassie followed him into the room and leaned against the table in the SCIF. “Okay, what’s your name, man?”

“Derek Shipton,” he answered.

“I’m Cassie, Derek. Now, I need you to get me some needle-nosed pliers and some liquor. I have to cut a tracker out of this thigh, so I need you to get me a foil-lined metal box to put it in.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said before rushing out. He came back almost immediately with her supplies.

“Thank you. Oh, and Derek? I need you to look up my file and give it to the guy who used to be in charge. He kinda needs to know why he’s not in charge anymore. Projekt Kind is the file. Once I deactivate the SCIF, bring in the guy I just demoted, okay? Thanks, Derek.” Cassie smiled as the man rushed out and she locked the SCIF down.

Cassie stripped her jeans down her legs and grabbed the knife she stole from Clint. The wound had already begun to heal itself, the flesh making its efforts to grow closed over the foreign object. She took a deep breath, grinding her teeth as she dug the knife deep into each side of the wound to reopen it and grabbed the pliers. The tracker had a little blue light that blinked a slow, consistent blink. She dropped it into the box Derek brought her and slammed the lid. As she pulled up her jeans over the already-clotting wound, she unlocked the door to the SCIF, prompting Derek to run in with a tall blond man with a beard following him.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” the blond man snapped.

She sighed and looked up at him. “Derek didn’t show you my file?” she asked, boredly.

“He wouldn’t even look at it, ma’am.”

“Hm, shame,” Cassie said, standing on a chair to give her the height to wrap her hand around the bearded man’s throat and lift him up off the floor. “I was hoping to do this without much blood. I mean, I know that death and destruction, that’s the Hydra way, but I wanted to keep as much of our ranks intact as possible. We’ve been dwindling a bit. SHIELD, Captain America, the Avengers, even Ultron took out some of our high-level heads and there just aren’t two for every one anymore. I want as many of you to stick around as possible...but that doesn’t mean I’m against killing you for disrespecting me.”

She dropped the man to his feet but kept her hand wrapped firmly around his throat. “If you’d bothered to open that file, you’d know why Herr Whitehall wanted me. You’d see that I am the second daughter of Johann Schmidt.” The man’s eyes widened slightly. “You’d see that I was bred to lead and taught to kill at an early, early age. You’d see my trained proficiency with all manner of weapons and my specifically engineered IQ. Now, the only thing you wouldn’t see is the genetic fiddling that happened a few years ago that made me just...like...Daddy.”

She chuckled. “Minus the complexion issues, of course.” She licked her lips. “You will follow me...or you will die. I will tear you to pieces, just as an example and don’t...not for one second, think you can get the better of me. Do you understand?” The man was silent, looking at her in fear. “Verstehst du?”

“Yes. Yes, I understand,” he whispered.

She smiled and jumped down off the chair, letting go of his neck. “Great! I’m Cassie Campbell. You are?”

“Karl...Kraus,” he whispered, his hand going to rub at his throat.

“Awesome. Now, full disclosure, just in case it comes up...I was hanging with the Avengers for a while. I was confused, there were some identity issues...trying to be a good guy but I got over that. I’m ready to do what needs to be done now, in order to usher in the next great age and I hope you’re with me on that.”

Karl looked from Cassie to Derek, who just stared at his feet. “You’re...you’re the Red Queen. From the Battle in Sokovia.”

“Yeah. It’s not important. I’m done with them. The Avengers are the past. Hydra is the future. What do you say, Karl Kraus? You wanna help me?”

“Do I actually have a choice?” Karl asked.

“Well, you were very dismissive when I first got here, Karl, but I will still give you a bit of a choice.” She pulled open the door and walked out of the SCIF. “You can choose to stick around and support me, or you could choose death.”

Derek followed close behind her and Kraus sighed loudly as he stayed behind. “Not much of a choice.”

Cassie walked over to the bar and grabbed the first bottle that caught her attention, twisting the cap off and gulping down what turned out to be dark rum before turning to the Hydra agents. “My name is Cassie Campbell. I am the daughter of Johann Schmidt and I am going to be your new...leader. Your new queen,” she said with a smile. “I doubt any of you have met my sister Sinthea. I mean, I haven’t either, but you’ve heard the stories about her and our father but you don’t have to worry because I’m not like her.” 

She sighed and shook her head. “But I have no time for questions or bitching. You will follow orders or you’ll get cut loose. You do what you’re told, I won’t kill you. It’s that simple. I will, of course, need files on everyone. Your names, numbers, ranks, blah blah blah. Shipton and Kraus will be in charge of that. When I’ve found a place to bunk down, I’ll be back. If you don’t support me, then leave quietly while I’m gone. There’ll be no retaliation for the lack of faith.” She nodded at Derek before walking out, bottle in hand, as the Hydra agents in the bar started to whisper amongst themselves.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What do you mean, you were too late? Romanoff couldn’t stall her?” Fury’s voice could be heard throughout the farmhouse dining room, even though Coulson’s phone wasn’t on speaker. The house was full of sad, silent, seething people who couldn’t decide who they were angry at.

“An arrow to the leg couldn’t stall her, Nick,” Steve said, arms crossed over his chest as he stared at his feet. “She was determined not to have her memories wiped again.”

“Put me on goddamn speaker.” Phil fiddled with the buttons on his phone. “She what?” Fury snapped.

“She knew you were going to wipe her memories so she ran to avoid going through that again. Hydra wiped her several times and then SHIELD did, too,” Bucky spoke up. He pushed his hair out of his face with the new prosthetic Cassie provided him when she woke him up. He looked around the room at the others. “Knowing that there are pieces of your memories, pieces of you, missing that you can’t even identify...that’s so much worse than knowing what Hydra made us into.”

Clint growled deep in his chest, finally deciding who he was angry with. “This is your fault!” he shouted, glaring at Bucky.

“Excuse me?” Bucky asked. “I wasn’t even here when-”

“Barton, calm down,” Steve said, stepping protectively in front of his best friend as Clint jumped to his feet.

“No! We were fine!” Clint fought the urge to clench his left fist as his right hand went to the empty holster for his knife. “We were happy and we were gonna be married until you came in with your ‘kindred spirits’ hunky emo guyliner bullshit! She would be in this mess if you hadn’t convinced her to freeze herself so that Loki could grab her. She hadn’t had any issues with him in months! He was leaving her alone but you served her up on a silver fuckin’ platter and how could he resist?!”

“He never stopped watching her. He was trying to endear himself to her by helping her, but you wouldn’t know that, would you?” Bucky asked, standing. He pushed Steve a bit as he leaned closer to the archer. “You’re just her ex-fiance and that’s because you were such a self-absorbed crumb that you couldn’t even tell when her insomnia got to her. You couldn’t tell when her nightmares took over.”

“I knew she was remembering, Barnes! You think I’m an idiot?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Bucky responded, calmly. “I think you’re worse than that. I think you act like an idiot to disguise the fact that you’re an asshole. I didn’t convince her to go into cryo, you did...because she knew that you would treat her different if you knew she was a killer. Something about you looking at me like I’m a rabid dog and her not being able to deal with you looking at her the same way. She just knew you wouldn’t love her if you knew she was a monster. So it’s not my fault, Barton, it’s yours.”

Clint’s eyes went wide. “She’d already sent you to kill Steve! She was beyon-”

“Shut the hell up!” Fury yelled, pulling the men’s attention from their fight. “This is not Sergeant Barnes’ fault and it’s not Barton’s either. This is my fault. I should have grabbed her when she was in Africa, wiped her before she ever made it to the Wakandan Border.”

Bucky’s jaw tensed. “Wiping her is what caused this whole-”

“I appreciate your input, Sergeant, but wiping her would have ended this just as much as it started it,” Fury interrupted.

“She would have known that something was wrong. She’s known something was wrong the whole time,” Steve spat toward the phone.

“A temporary solution is still a damn solution, Rogers.”

“Whatever. What are we going to do about her now?” Natasha asked, moving from standing next to Clint to be closer to Coulson’s phone. “She’s decided she’s Hydra. We can’t wipe her without getting rid of everything that made her Red Queen.”

“We could add new memories...similar memories,” Phil responded.

Steve looked around the room at everyone. “So, what, we’re just going to find her and erase her again?”

“Is that not better than letting her try to kill everyone she cares about?” Wanda finally spoke up.

“Maybe she’ll leave everybody alone if we leave her alone. Let her live her homicidal dreams with the Nazis.” No one could really tell if Barney was joking.

“Was that your brother, Barton?” Fury asked.

“Yeah. I live here,” Barney defended.

“He kinda lives here,” Clint corrected. “He’s the one that shot her, since…I am not gonna be shooting anything any time soon.” He looked down at his hand.

“You could always pick up a gun again and shoot righty,” Nat suggested.

“I don’t want to pick up a gun! Not if we’re going after her.”

“Okay, I’m gonna have to be the one to say it,” Sam said, looking upset to be in that position as ‘the one to say it’. “She was more than willing to kill all of us. She sent Barnes to attack Steve. He’d be dead if I hadn’t pulled distraction.” He gestured at Clint. “She was gonna do a lot worse than a broken hand to Clint. She’s taken up with her father’s Nazi friends and I, for one, can’t back rehabilitation for a Nazi. She’s not our Red Queen anymore. She’s gone so far darkside that even Loki thought it was a good idea to give her some space. The school-approved solution for evil is not wiping memories. School-approved solution’s exactly what Steve did to her dad.”

“We can’t kill her!” Clint and Steve exclaimed at the same time.

“Then capture and incarcerate,” Natasha suggested. “Put the Raft to the use it was actually made for.”

“Has anyone called Stark?” Steve asked, suddenly. “He’s going to need to know. Rhodes, Vision, they’re all in danger.”

“I already made that call. It wasn’t pleasant,” Fury answered. “Of course, now I need to update him that she escaped. I am not happy to be making that call either.”

“Let us know what Stark says,” Steve demanded before walking out of the farmhouse. Bucky followed close behind. “This is our fault, Buck. We should have had Nick Fury come get her after she killed that warlord in Africa.”

“That’s not our fault. She didn’t want to go with him. You know that. She wanted to be with us.”

“Did she?” Steve snapped. “Or did we just want her with us? What if we just wanted her and she remembered, got taken by Loki and remember all this horrible stuff, because we wanted her?”

Bucky shook his head. “She got out of the Raft and she could’ve gone home but she didn’t. She took Loki’s help to come find us in Egypt. She wanted to be with us and we did the right thing taking her to Wakanda. She shouldn’t have gone on ice, but when we did it, it seemed like the best option. We didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

Steve scoffed. “And now she wants to kill us and take over the world. She was such a good woman when she went in.”

“She still is,” Bucky argued.

“After what she’s done, you can’t say that.”

“I can. I believe she still is. I mean, look at me,” Bucky said.

Steve sighed. “It’s different. You were brainwashed. She’s not. She’s the opposite of that. She’s had all her brainwashing taken away. She’s who she was supposed to be now.”

“No. Who she’s supposed to be is the same woman who dropped everything to come help us in Germany and who trekked through Africa with us. That’s who she’s supposed to be, and she can be again.”

“I hope you’re right, Buck.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tony walked into his penthouse of Stark Tower and headed for the bar. “Lights.” He looked perplexed as he stayed in the dark. “Friday, lights.”

“Hope you don’t mind, boss,” a voice from the closest sofa made him turn, instantly alert. “Thought we might be better off just the two of us so I told Friday to take a nap.”

The sight of the blond woman sitting with her back to him, a drink in her hand, shouldn’t have made him so nervous, but it did. “My suit?” he asked. He had ways to call the suit, even without Friday, but it would be more than a little difficult. 

“These bracelets look so much better on me, don’t you think?” She raised the hand that wasn’t holding a good crystal tumbler of his best scotch to show off the remote to summon his suit. “Come have a seat, Stark,” she commanded.

“You don’t need my suit to kill me, Cassie,” Tony said, not budging from his spot behind her.

“I’m not here to kill you, boss. I came to you because you’re the only one I knew would actually talk to me...without any of the bullshit about trying to send me to Fury. Come have a seat, please.” Her tone was desperate but not angry, so Tony walked down and sat on the sofa across from her.

“You look like crap,” Tony said, candidly, as he looked over her. She was paler than normal, her eyes ringed with dark circles.

She let out a scoffing chuckle. “I feel...like I’ve been put through a blender. All of this...got so out of hand. I remember now. Those words they put in my head, they were just to make me remember.” She leaned forward slightly. “See, Strucker wiped me when SHIELD showed up so I’d be able to deny everything if SHIELD asked. I’d be able to pretend to be normal because I wouldn’t know that I wasn’t. I guess Wolfgang forgot the part where he comes and gets me back from Fury...or maybe I was supposed to stay at the Fridge until they revealed themselves and killed SHIELD, I don’t know.”

“Remembering your shitty childhood made you evil? Pretty sure every Avenger on the roster has that box checked and Vision never had a childhood.”

“I didn’t want this,” she whispered, looking away and taking a drink. “I didn’t send Bucky to kill Steve. He’ll remember that once someone actually asks him what his mission was. I just needed Bucky out of stasis because Loki has the red book and I couldn’t risk Loki using Bucky against us. I sent him to the new base because I knew Steve wouldn’t let anything happen to Bucky and he’d be safe with the one man who would move Heaven and Earth to keep him that way.” 

She ran her hand across her mouth and leaned forward more. “I was going to try to ease into telling Clint the truth...what I remembered I did in the past, the changes that happened when I remembered, but...I said one word, one thing that wasn’t what Clint thought his woman should say, and he attacked me.” She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before shaking her head. “I had to make a split-second decision: grovel at his feet, apologize for the woman I am now, the woman I was always supposed to be...beg him to love me and tell him how much I want to change and be the woman he fell for…” She shrugged and leaned back into the back of the sofa.

“Or be the woman he decided I was in the moment before he hit me. I couldn’t bring myself to go the weak route, not after so many years doing just that, so I had to commit to the Hydra angle and for me to do that, you all have to either leave me the hell alone or die.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot up. “You aren’t even gonna give the rest of us a chance to get to know the new you?”

“If Clint, who swears he loves me, can’t deal with the new me then why should I expect the rest of you to be okay with me?”

“Cass...people change. We can get to know the person you are now if you let us,” he offered.

“The man supposedly blinded by love couldn’t deal, Tony,” she exclaimed softly. “I’m too different. I’m colder, angrier, more prone to violence. I like violence, and the smell of gunpowder the-the snap of broken bones. I am so not the Cassie you know.”

“Okay, so there’s a little more Red Skull in your Red Queen,” Tony said, leaning forward to grab a tablet from the table between them. “But you don’t wanna kill us, Skipper.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Of course I don’t. You’re the only family I have.” She licked her lips and shook her head in exasperation. “But if it comes down to a question of me killing all of you or me being sent back to Fury for him to wipe me clean and become the person he and Clint think I should be...I will shed a tear for each of you and then I will move the fuck on with my life.”

“I know you, Cassie. You’re one of the few people in this world that I’ve taken the time to actually, you know, know. Just because you’re a little angrier than you used to be doesn’t mean you need to go Dark Side. You can be Anakin without being Vader.”

Cassie smiled and looked into his eyes. “You think any of them will wanna talk to me now? With the woman I am now? I broke Clint’s hand and I enjoyed it. I sent Winter Soldier after Steve. I am the embodiment of everything Hydra wanted of me.”

“Not true,” he disputed. “You aren’t a Nazi. You’re just a little different. You could come back, be an Avenger. It’s really just me, Rhodey, and Vision right now, the Spider kid is a ‘sometimes’. We can get used to you.”

She looked conflicted as she took another drink. “I’ve already taken over Hydra, Tony. I’m fine to go all the way on this. I can even turn Hydra into a respectable organization, maybe even better than SHIELD. No secrets in my organization.”

“No, you can’t. Even the Avengers aren’t better than SHIELD,” Tony said, tapping on the tablet. “We’ve all got our secrets. We’ve all got our issues. Don’t write us off. Write off Barton, I don’t give a fuck, but don’t write me off. I don’t care if you have a rage issue. I mean, look how close I was with Banner.”

She sighed and leaned forward to set the glass on the table. “You really don’t care? You don’t care that Strucker had me brutally murder two SHIELD agents before my age was even in the double digits, or that I crushed an African warlord’s hyoid bone? You don’t care that I broke Barton’s hand and I relished the sound of his bones crushing under my foot?”

“I can get behind that, all of it. As long as you’re crushing the bones of the bad guys. I mean, you signed the Accords. You belong to the UN. As long as you’re breaking the bones of the guys they send us after, I don’t mind it. Look, this might not be you anymore…” Tony held up the tablet to show a picture of Cassie smiling with all of the lab techs in the Olympia lab. “...but I think you could still be this.” He swiped the screen to show a screen capture of footage from the battle of Sokovia. She was beating an Ultron into the ground next to the core, her fists through it’s metal face. “Red Queen was a little more violent than Cassie Campbell, but you always seemed more free when you were in the field. I liked that. Com’on, Red. You don’t have to be Hydra to be yourself.”

Cassie stared at the picture for a long few moments before she stood. “I’ll think about it...if you can guarantee me that I will not be erased again. Hydra wiped me, SHIELD wiped me. I just wanna be me. If you want me to trust you, Stark...and I desperately want to be able to trust you...I need assurances that I will not be wiped by the people who are supposed to be my friends.”

He stood as well, putting down the table and picking up what was left of the glass of scotch. “I won’t let anyone change you, Red. Never again.”

The corner of her mouth lifted in a slight smile. “Should’ve come to you first. I was just really hoping Clint would give me the time.”

“That’s what you get for letting your heart guide you,” he chastised.

“Oh? And what exactly is guiding you to be so supportive of me, boss?”

“Ah, that’s all in my beautiful brain, Lab Rat.” Tony swallowed down the last bit of liquor as Cassie walked toward the elevator. “You’ll let me know what you decide?”

“I’ve got your number.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Kitchen Sink - @emoryhemsworth​ @flamencodiva​ @wasabiwitteks​ @rainbowkisses31​ @rissbennett @mariekoukie6661​ @officiallyunofficialperson​ @dolphincliffs​ @mrs-meghan-winchester​ @gayspacenerd​ @foxyjwls007​ @ilovefanfic86​ @marvelfansworld​ @f-yeahfandoms​ @wonderlandfandomkingdom​ @hhiggs​ @sev3nruby​  @hobby27​ @paintballkid711​ @divadinag​ @thewhiterabbit42​ @fantasymyth-1 @queenoftheunderdark​ @cosicas-cuquis​ @superfanficnatural​ @letsby​ @supernatural-bellawinchester​ @onethirstyunicorn​ @swinchester27​ @chalicia​ @sunnyroadtrips​ @screechingartisancashbailiff​ @death-unbecomes-you​ @dayasvalkyrie​ Hero Tags - @atc74​ @winchesterxfamilybusiness​ @holylulusworld​

#cassie writes stuff #marvel fanfiction #red queen chronicles #OFC #brainwashing

[syahaz]

Camp TV Short Story - Guyliner Interest I

Notes: This short story has the majority of the Camp TV casts. So if this AU ever gets adapted into a chronological timeline, some of the characters (except Trenton, Heather, Lindsay and Tyler) may be absent due to elimination as the main possible reason. It also has an alternate plot that is very long. I usually don’t address it as the previous one is very short compared to this story you’re about to read. As I stated earlier, since many characters are present, the main event will be dragged for so long to give space for said casts to have their own moment before the actual event starts. 

Cut confessional/scene means confessional or scene that has never been released to the public because of Chris moderation and the editing crew work. Doesn’t mean it is purely protected from possibility of loss and leakage though.

I don’t know if I want to add Cody when writing this as I’m not sure what kind of personality I want to write him with for this AU.

I usually try my best to do less ‘tell’ than ‘show’ but for some very complicated scenes, I just had to do it because I find it puzzling when I read it myself. Sorry for that. Maybe I could try it for shorter fics in the future if applicable.

---

The ending of this first route of this story is rough, at least for me. If you want a more mellow ending, go read the second route of this story. You can skip reading where the altered ending starts (indicated with “///”).

---

It’s a fine lovely morning with the birds chirping and the ocean beating the beach sand. Several campers gathered around Lindsay because she made invitations the day before.

“Okay everyone, gather up! We’re going to do something exciting today!” Lindsay announced. “Well as you can see, I first thought this show was gonna be a talent contest. So I brought a lot of makeup leftover. You know what that means?” She added, holding a dazzling makeup pouch. “Makeover!” Katie & Sadie excitedly scream. “Yeah… No.” Lindsay opposes. They aww in disappointment. “Okay technically you’re both right because we all girls are going to make-up the boys here!” She backs up. Katie & Sadie back to their cheerful selves. “Whoa! Is that why we’re all guys here bra? I already bring myself for the groove.” Geoffrey dances a little despite being surprised as he expects a morning party will be going on. “Not all guys, I’m outta here.” Dunc leaves without wasting any second. “Can’t believe I waste precious time for sleep or planning pranks.” He mumbles as he walks away. “Duh, what else is the reason to bring you boys here?

Okay, so now I’m going to assign the pairs for our makeup session.” Lindsay replies. “But wait. Where’s Eva? Owen, and Zeke?” Bridgette interferes. “Eva is on her routine jogging with Zeke. You know, to let him get around the outdoor world. Not sure about Owen though.” Lindsay shrugs. “Alright, let’s begin! Ahem, ahem. Lewshana, you’re with Harold.” she continues. “Yesss. A makeover by a beautiful woman. What a lucky day!” Harold makes a yes hand gesture with a happy grin and glimpses at Lewshana. She naturally rolls her eyes, hands on hips and shakes her head. 

“Katie, Justin.” Lindsay assigns the next pair. Sadie gasps. “But I wanna make up Justin too!” “Too bad that I just got lucky to give him the best makeup ever.” Katie sneers. “How dare you!” Sadie was irritated. “Ladies please, calm down. I don’t like to see you two best friends fighting over someone handsome like me.” Justin puts both his hands on Katie and Sadie then pulls them closer to him. “You see, I have two faces, and by that I mean the right side and the left side. Sadie can do my right and Katie can do my left side. What do you say?” He makes peace between the girls. “Deal.” They both agreed satisfiedly.

Lindsay shakes her head and rolls her eyes seeing the girls’ instant tension. “Beth, you and DJ.” She points at both Beth and DJ. “Nice. We’re so going to have so much fun!” Beth utters and high-five DJ, he smiles. “ … Bridgette, hm… you’re with…” She taps her right index finger on her chin while she tries to pick either Geoffrey or Trenton, the boys left for options. Geoffrey is a bit panicked because he wishes to be paired with a particular girl. Meanwhile Trenton is just static as he’s not seeing what’s befalling him, same as Bridgette. Heather contrarily bites her lips. Nervous about the possibility of Lindsay’s choice. “Geoffrey.” Lindsay finally picks her choice. “YESSS!” Geoffrey shouts excitedly and jumps to the air as high as he could. Bridgette raises her eyebrows at him. Totally confused with his reaction. Heather gawking at Lindsay’s selection.

“Wait, so that leaves me with-” Trenton speaks under his breath. “Heatherrr!~ You go with Trenton.” Lindsay says. “WHAT? NO!!” Trenton objects. Heather hugs herself and takes a few steps away from him. “Aww, come on. If you go then who’s Heather gonna put makeup on?” Lindsay insists. “Well uhh, Tyler’s there.” Trenton points at Tyler who stands beside Lindsay from the start. “Sorry man. I just can’t do that.” Tyler declines. “What the? Then why are you here then?” Trenton perplexes. “I’m Lindsay's assistant for today. Never heard of makeup assistants?” Tyler states. “Well, to be fair, nope. I don’t.” Trenton replies. “You’re one poor guy. That’s why you need a makeover. C’mon, light up your face! The world would looove to see it.” Lindsay persuades with a sweet smile on her face. “Really?” Trenton feels a little delighted. Lindsay and Tyler smile and nod in sync. “Ahahaha, alrighty then.” Trenton complies. “Everyone! All of you can choose your spot around this area. Call me and Tyler whenever you’re done alright.” Lindsay says to all campers. After the grouping segment, all the participating campers took their spot facing each other. The girls get assorted makeup tools that they can trade with others or Lindsay later on.

“Sadie no, not there. Here. Katie, you dab a little lighter there.” Justin half-complains to make sure the makeup won’t ruin his looks while Katie and Sadie happily put blush and eyeliner on him with glittery eyes.

Lewshana suddenly stops from working as something is ticking her off. “What’s wrong, Lewshana? Are you alright?” Harold asks worriedly. “Oh yes I am until you keep smiling at me non-stop! It’s creeping me out.” She tells him what’s bothering her for minutes. “Ah sorry… It’s hard to resist when seeing such a magnificent woman like you this close.” He apologizes, rubs hands in guilt. She smiles pleasingly with raised eyebrows seeing him like that. “Just... keep still until I say I’m done. Okay, dreamy guy?” She tries to compromise with his silly behaviour. “Anything for you~” He willingly agrees.

“It’s been quite long since I put makeup on others. So I’m not sure which blush colour suits you hmm.” Beth being indecisive determining the suitability of DJ’s skin tone with the several colours available on the blush palette. “This one.” He casually points at one of the colours available on the blush palette with a friendly smile. “Wow, how did you know right away? Oh oh. Teach me! Teach me!” She was amazed by his confidence. “Of course. I can makeup you too if you want.” He gladly replies. “Yes please!” She gleefully accepts his offer.

“So Bridgette right? How long have you been surfing?” Geoffrey tries his best to spark some chatting time with Bridgette in an attempt to get to know her more. “I’ve been surfing since I was a little girl. My parents are such advocates for appreciating nature, saving wildlife and enjoying the breeze of the ocean. For short, it’s in my blood.” She proudly answers. “That’s awesome bra! Maybe we could surf the next day or whatever.” Geoffrey invites her by chance. “Sure, why not?” She’s being the same mind as him. “Cool.” He  says shortly.

Trenton slouches on his seat while Heather fakes her excitement getting him as her partner with a split-second insincere smile. They both groan as soon as they meet eye to eye. “What an unfortunate day.” She throws her head back. “I was about to say the same.” He acknowledges her frustration. She calmly breathes. “Let’s… get this over alright?” “Okay.” He replies shortly with no enthusiasm.

While the others are busy with their makeup business, Owen comes to the scene with brownies smeared on his mouth. “Owen!~ Where have you been? I thought you wouldn't come.” Lindsay welcomes Owen. “Hello guys! Sorry for coming late hahaha. I've just finished my mission just now.” He claims. “You mean stealing brownies from Chef's kitchen?” Tyler notices the thing on Owen’s mouth. “Oops!” Owen wiped his mouth. “Hehehe, please don’t tell him. Or he’s gonna kill me! I mean, who could resist those delicious brownies?! The chocolate, the chunks, the yumminess!” He then starts to weep in fear. “Alright alright, we promise. Now that you’re here, why don’t you join the rest doing makeup?” Lindsay pats his back gently. “Did you say makeup? Ohh, I love makeup!” He claps lively. “Lindsay! We’re donee!~” Katie and Sadie finish their task. "Nice. Show me your work girls!” Lindsay encourages. “We presenting you, ... JUSTIN!!!” They proudly reveal Justin with makeup on. Lindsay & Owen ogle Justin’s beauty. Their view filled with imaginary hearts and sparkles on Justin. Tyler gasps. “Wonderheart!” He was annoyed with Lindsay’s reaction. Lindsay snapped out of her dreamy world. “Oops, sorry. But that’s what makeup does, Tyling. Maybe you could have some makeover on you?~” She teases her lover. He pushes both his palms towards her. “Uh, maybe save that for later, or never.” He anxiously rejects her offer. “Guys, I don't want to cut the scene but uhh can I see my face now?” Justin slips in. “Whoops! Sorry Justin.” Katie & Sadie give him a mirror. “Hmm, not bad. Could do a little more work here and there but this will do.” Justin comments. “Yayyy!” They gleefully cheer. Katie, Sadie and Justin go their own way after Lindsay takes a picture of them three. “Hey Owen, you can join us here. DJ is reaaally good at makeup. Look at me!” Beth invites Owen. “Wow! You look gorgeous, Beth! Maybe Justin will notice me more with cool makeup on me. I’m on your way guys!” He dashes to Beth and DJ.

“Geoffrey…” Bridgette sighs deeply. “What is it?” He concernedly asks. “I’m sorry... Like very sorry.” She apologizes all of a sudden. “What’s wrong?” He put hands on her shoulders. “I’m just… Not good at this makeup thing.” She shamely covers her face. He gently holds her hands trying to calm her down. “Aww Bridge, I’m sure people gonna like it.” He notices Lindsay and Tyler that are sauntering while checking on pairs that are still working on their makeup. “Hey look! It’s them. C’mon, show them your makeup skill.” He convinces her. “Are you sure? B-but you don’t even look at your face yet.” She opposes him. “I don’t need to look at it to know that you're very talented bra.” He assures her with a bold grin. She smiles sweetly.

--- Confessional ---

“Wow, this is the first time someone who barely knows me praises me for something other than surfing. It’s like-” Bridgette says joyfully then takes a quick breath. “-a fresh breath of air!” She continues.

---

“Lindsay! Tyler! We’re hereee!” Geoffrey waves with both arms up high.* Lindsay and Tyler walk together to them. They hold their laugh halfway when they get a close look at Geoffrey. “What’s so funny dude?” Geoffrey asks. Truly curious of their reaction. “Your face my man. Very funny.” Tyler replies and takes a pic without Geoffrey and Bridgette ready. “This is a gold comedy.” He adds. “Funny? Don’t you mean beautiful?” Geoffrey tries to be as positive as he can. “Perhaps you have to take a look for yourself.” Lindsay lends Geoffrey a mirror. Geoffrey quickly becomes wordless but screams terrifyingly as he terrorizes with what he sees. He then glances at Bridgette. She slumps her shoulders. Looking down with frown seeing his reception on her makeup work. “Bridge. … I-” He tries to console her but she collects tears in her eyes in flash.  After that, she covers her face then runs away in embarrassment. “Bridgette? Bridgette! Argh, I messed up!” He regrets his actions. Possibly mad at himself as well.

Lewshana brushed a few last strokes on his face. “Mmm mmm! I think the cooking is ready now!” She speaks satisfiedly. “You can cook while doing makeup? Wow, what a superwoman you are!” Harold was amazed by her supposed abilities. “That means I’m done with the makeup, Funky Guy.” She corrects his statement. “Oh, so my face is like food? If it is, is it delicious?” He says in pure enthusiasm. She facepalms as he takes her words too seriously. “Hey you two over there! I’m all done with this dreamy white boy. So what do we do now hmm?” She calls out Lindsay and Tyler that happen to arrive nearby. “Wow, Lewshana! Your makeup is so... fantasy-like I’d say. In a good way of course.” Lindsay comments and Tyler nods along. “Is that true? Let me see my face first for confirmation. Even though I will say it’s perfect anyway.” Harold was eager to see the makeup. Lindsay passes him the mirror in her makeup pouch. “Woooowwww. I look…. like… a beautiful princess!” Harold is so amazed that he subconsciously enters his fantasy world while imagining himself in a beautiful dress and Lewshana in knight suit. He then kneels down and holds both her hands with pleading eyes. “Oh Lewshana, would you be my knight in shining armour, protect me from those mad dragons?” He points at Lindsay and Tyler. “HEY!” Lindsay and Tyler exclaim but less serious as they know he is just goofing around. Lewshana laughs amusingly at Harold's unscripted skit. “Your imagination is truly something sugar.” She pinches his cheek playfully. “Cut cut! Acting's over hehehe.” Lindsay claps an imaginary clapper meanwhile Tyler is ready with the camera. “Camera will be rolling for the next pic. Pose and say cheese in 3,2,1!” She counts with her fingers. Lewshana and Harold pose and smile accordingly, arm on each other’s shoulders. Harold has a big grin of proudness in the shot particularly.

Bridgette stumbles upon Geoffrey while trying to collect herself at the beach. “Sorry. Oh, umm. What are you doing here?” Geoffrey apologizes for the incident between them earlier and asks in concern. “You know, just umm, getting some time to cool off a little?” She replies. “Cool. Can I join?” He says. “Sure.” She says shortly. They sit down together on the sandy beach. Trying to dim their tension. “Sorry about that. ... You know?” He starts after a couple seconds of silence. She shakes her head. “I know I’m kinda being dramatic and because of that, I owe you an apology. So, I am sorry. I knew you did that just to be nice and stuff, but that's not an excuse to not improve myself. Next time, try to be honest with yourself, alright?” She nudges him. “A-are you sure about that?” He stutters. Unsure he hears things right. “Of course. We all humans have flaws. The difference is some people are more open about it, some people are not. Others might lie, and the rest never notice it. Well... maybe until someone else points it out.” She lectures humbly. “Whoa. That’s a lot of word bra! Might take me awhile to understand it.” He massages his forehead. She giggled and pats his shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m sure you’ll get it eventually.” “If you say so.” He chuckles. They next exchange slow eye blink and charming smiles.

DJ, Beth and Owen are happily sharing moments together with the makeup time. “Y’all seems so alive here. What’s the buzz all about?” Lindsay asks sportively. “Of course hahaha. Look at me! I’m beautiful!.” Owen answers. “Wow! DJ, you’re soooo going to be my makeup assistant!” She shrieks excitedly.

--- Confessional ---

“I secretly played with my Mama’s makeup one time. One day, I got caught. Thought I was gonna get punished but I ended up getting a makeup lesson from her.” DJ puts some blush on his cheeks with a proud smile.

---

Tyler gasps. “Wonderheart!” He was a little jealous. “Aww, of course you’ll always be my first and forever, Tyling. *Lindsay gently strokes his chin. “Hehehehe okay~ Alright, everyone. Get in your place and ready for a shot.” He gives in and sets up the camera for another shot. DJ, Beth and Owen all make peace signs and delightful grins as a trio unity. Tyler flashes the camera. “There, all done. I think we can call it a day now. Great job everyone!” He gives a thumbs up. The trio makes the same gestures back as a reply. “Is it though? I feel like we forgot someone. … Or sometwo?” Lindsay tries to track back their list of the makeup event participants. “Who could it be? Hmm…” Beth slips in. “Well, I saw Justin, Katie, Sadie, Geoff- Ah huh! Now remember. Did you?” Lindsay then turns to Tyler. “… Oh…” He pauses for a couple seconds and nods. “But before that can we take a break under the tree there? All the walking makes me a bit tired.” He says. “Aww, of course Tyling. Bye you three. See ya later!~” Lindsay and Tyler hold hands and casually leave the trio after they finish and return her stuff.

“What took you so long, porcupine?! I already can feel like we’re definitely the last one to finish.” Trenton whines. “Excuse me but this is a work of ART, greasy hair. Of course it’s going to be long to finish. Just shut your mouth and eyes so that my job will be done in a minute. Sheesh!” Heather replies sharply. “Urgh, fine!” He rolls and closes his eyes and mouth. “Phew!” After a couple minutes, Heather wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. “Your face is one big wall but this will be worth it.” She was satisfied with her work. “Whatever, can I see my face already? He asks dryly. “Sure thing!” *Passes him a mirror while holding her laugh.

/// ENDING 1 ///

“Wha-WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY FACE!???” Trenton screams hysterically, seeing his face resembling what he was terrified of as a kid. “Give a makeover that you deserve!” Heather burst out a laugh as soon he was horrified by his so-called new look. “You kidding me!? I look like a mime!!!” He shouts ragingly. “Okay, what about it hmm?” She replies with a sassy voice. “Do you know how much I hate mime?!” He furiously asks. “Judging from your face, I just so happen to know it now.” She boldly faces him. “You give me bad makeup, I give you bad makeup!” He angrily snatches eyeliner from her hand while threatening her. She gasps and fastly snarls. “Oh no you don’t!!!”

Somewhere nearby Trenton and Heather, Zeke was huffed slowly stopping from running. “Who told you to stop pipsqueak?! I’m not slowing down all day just to see you being lazy!” Eva runs and shouts far behind him. “But my legs are starting to cramp! Ah!!!!” He tiredly sits and massages his legs. “That’s because you don’t warm up correctly! I already warned you but you don’t listen!” She reprimands of his carelessness. He suddenly hears some commotion. “Did you hear something?” She eventually stops from her running. “Now that you’re mentioning it, yes I do. I wonder where it came from?” She wonders, scanning her left and right. “I think it’s coming from over here.” He directs her to the sound source. Zeke and Eva instinctively hide behind a huge growing tree. They’re seeing Trenton and Heather fighting tooth and nail. “Great. Now the angry pants are making a show.” Eva puts hands on her hips and rolls eyes. “But I’m enjoying it.” She adds with snickers. “Uhh aren’t we gonna check them if they’re just playing around? They look serious, like that one couple who fight to death on the TV.” Zeke anxiously persuades her to check the fighting duo. “Nah, I’m sure they’re good.” She brushes him off confidently. This makes him stare at her in concern and worry.

Trenton hardly grips her shirt and pulls her closer to him with his other hand ready with eyeliner, held in a way to attempt stabbing it to her eyes. Heather grabs his arm with the eyeliner and hardly pushes it far enough for her jaw to open and presses his arm with her teeth solidly. He is only barely able to scratch her face with the eyeliner and throws it aside as his plan fails. In no time he pulls his bitten arm away to let it free from her jaws grip. After that he used the other arm to try snatching a bottle of white foundation that rolled nearby to continue his messing-up-her-face mission. Out of rage adrenaline, she swings her leg high and near his head with her front leg (read: high roundhouse kick). He hastily grasps her motionful leg, causing a huge pushing impact on his side face and losing body balance in split-second.

“Wait a minute, that’s illegal! Zeke, I think you’re right. We need to do something.” Eva is fancy watching Trenton and Heather like they're amateur wrestlers for a couple seconds until she realizes they did some illegal moves in wrestling. “Oh now you’re agreeing.” He crosses arms and sulks. “We have no time to waste, pipsqueak. Go get help and FAST!” She raises her voice up. “Then what you’ll be doing?” He asks, dissatisfied of her sudden direction. “I stay here because I’m your instructor. Now go go go!” She commands sternly. Having no much choice siding him, he sighs then runs in order to find someone nearby for the emergency. “HELP! HELP! SOMEBODY HELP!!!” He screams. “Who’s that?” Lindsay heard Zeke but unsure whose voice it was. “Sounds like Zeke. Looks like he’s in trouble.” Tyler dashed towards Zeke as Zeke is soon seen by him from far away and Lindsay tags along. “Hey dude, you look hurried. Is there anything we can help?” Tyler asks worriedly. “They. Fight. Real. Argh, I have no time to explain, just follow me!” Zeke rushes back to where he and Eva saw Trenton and Heather while the couple tail him from behind. They’re very shocked to see a huge altercation between Trenton and Heather. Without a question, Tyler impulsively joins Eva giving an extra hand to drag raging Trenton away from Heather. Meanwhile Lindsay and Zeke lock Heather’s arms and abdomen to avoid more injuries than they already had.

“YOU! What are you so mad about?! Did you know you could kill her in any second?” Eva scolded him. “What if that’s what I wanna do...” Trenton growls, glaring both Eva and Tyler intensely. They’re bulging their eyes of terror as they don’t get to see much of his face while the two are fighting because his hair covers most of it. “I was about to ask that too. Ahahahahahaha… haha… ha...” Tyler tries to break the silence with awkward laughter.

--- Confessional ---

“I swear, if Eva and I lose our grip for one second, Heather would definitely be a dead beaten meat in no time with Trenton in that much anger!” Tyler shudders remembering the incident.

---

Heather collapsed as soon as Trenton was far away from her. “A-are you okay, Heather?” Lindsay gets Heather up sitting on the ground and patting her back. “Other than my face smeared with bonus makeup, I’m alright… I think…” Heather says, seeing her injuries inflicted by Trenton’s massive rage. Some part of her was satisfied but other part felt it was wrong of her for causing him to do so. “Don’t guys are not supposed to wear makeup?” Zeke slips in. “No, you get that wrong, Zeke. Trust me, once you see DJ’s makeup work, you’ll change your mind.” Lindsay puts a hand on his shoulder and the other hand wipes the air. He nods in trying to understand Lindsay’s statement. “So if what you’re saying is true, that means YOU’RE the one who gives the wrong kind of makeup to him.” He points to Heather. Heather gasps in shock. “What? No! It’s a work of art. He’s the one who can’t appreciate it. You too!” She crosses her arms, looking away. “Then why would he be so mad?” He sighs as he gets tired because he had too much information to digest in one go. Something that is still new to him due to him being homeschooled where he was taught things slowly one by one. “You know what, suit yourself. I’m outta here. Geez…” He’s so done for the day and walks away. Lindsay shakes her head seeing them two.

--- Confessional ---

“I can’t believe that even the homeschool boy said my makeup sucked! Why am I surrounded with uncultured people? Arghhhh!” Heather rants in dissatisfaction with “everyone” trying to burn her down.

---

--- Cut Confessional ---

“Yes, correct and A+. I know the fight is gonna happen. Too bad I don’t get to take some shots of them. Actually, I do plan to mess up with other Gophers beforehand but putting Trenton and Heather together is easy instant drama. Stab the surface then ambush the interior! Ahhahahahahah! But to be fair, Heather is the one who gave him the makeup. She digs her own grave. Not me.” Lindsay disclosed the essence of the incident.

---

Later in the evening, Trenton knocks the girls’ cabin door. Coincidentally, Lindsay is the one who opens the door. “Oh.” She says half-surprised. “Lindsay hey! Good that you’re here. Well, umm I want to say that err I’m very sorry about this morning. I don’t mean to ruin your makeup tools.” With his back slightly down, a hand brushing his nape and eyes on the floor, he politely apologized. “Aren't you supposed to say sorry to Heather?” She low-key tries to stir his mind but actually curious with his reaction as well. “Maybe for the later time. Besides, she left me all these marks and bruises.” He gently brushes his bandaged arm. “Man, that girl is something grr! I don’t think I even want to talk to her for a couple days unless I reaaally have no other choice.” He complains. “Understandable. I would be mad too if I get horrible makeup done on my face… She nods in understanding his difficulty. He then bitterly smiles. “So what do you say?” “Alright alright, forgive you. Besides, my stuff's all fine. Don’t sweat it. I worry more about your injuries here. It looks ... so serious.” She inspects his covered wounds half-worried knowing that she’s part of the cause. “Yeah… Umm, can I ask you something?” He tries to change the topic. Not wanting to keep dwelling about it. “Sure what is it?” She goes along. He scans his surroundings and beckons after that to whisper his request to her. She simply nods to what he's whispering about.

Skipped to the next day. Almost all campers except for one are already gathered around Chris. At this point they’re hoping for the last camper to join them as soon as possible or the challenge will not be started. Impatience started to get into Eva. “What took him so long??! Urgh! I swear if he doesn’t turn up in the next second, I’ll-” “Sorry for making you wait awhile, Miss Eva, and everyone.” Trenton interrupts while catwalks towards them. “Oh, you again... No wonder.” Eva sighs gladly that she doesn’t have to wait any longer. “Yeah… Hey, thanks for yesterday, and you three too. I owe you guys a lot.” Trenton thanks Zeke, Lindsay and Tyler with smiles and keeps walking. All other campers stare at him with assorted reactions. “Whatever”, weirded out, curious, wonder, and even impressed, all jumbled in.

“Well, well, well. What we have here hmm?” Chris asks. So puzzled with Trenton’s new style. “I just got a new routine. That’s all.”  Trenton shrugs. “Yeah yeah. I can see that. Make sure to beat the clock next time dude, the clock is still ticking when you’re not walking.” Chris taps his watch that is hugging his left wrist. “Heheh alright.” Trenton replies shortly. “Man, you’re looking like you have an attitude with that face, and the bandages too.” Duncan sportively taunts. “Oh Dunc! I already had that actually. But only for a PARTICULAR person. You know who.” Trenton smashes Dunc’s words including a smirk. “Haha, Nice one.” Dunc was thrilled with Trenton’s wit. Trenton then seeks for remaining seats. He feels disappointed as no other seat other than next to Heather. Eventually, he reluctantly sits beside her.

“Well, well, well…” Heather tries to needle him but he quickly snarls in front of her. “Okay, okay. I-I’ll give you some space.” She pushes palms towards him and slides herself slightly away from him. “… I’m sorry alright…” She looks down and brushes her arm with guilt. He only blows steam through his nose and rolls eyes. Not in the mood to respond to anything from her.

--- Confessional ---

“Yesterday's event was very harsh with all these hurties, but it inspires me to start having a new look. You know, trying something new hahaha. All thanks to Lindsay.” Trenton pulls out an eyeliner, presumably given by Lindsay from his trouser pocket. “... Okay maybe porcupine as well urgh!” He finally admits begrudgingly.

---

#total drama #camp tv #camp tv trenton #camp tv heather #td trent #td gwen #td gwent #trent x gwen #trenton x heather #heathton #camp tv short story #camp tv island #camp tv otherway #syahazart #wacom intuos art #clip studio paint #the cursive L at Lindsay's mirror is a total LUCK #like one stroke of perfection like WHAT #also I now I realized why the mime at Island has bluish tone for his white makeup ahahahhahaha

[puroresu-musings]

NJPW DOMINION in Osaka-Jo Hall Review (July 12th 2020)

Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma & Gabriel Kidd vs. Satoshi Kojima, Yuji Nagata & Ryusuke Taguchi  **3/4

Tomohiro Ishii, Toru Yano & Yota Tsuji vs. SANADA, Hiromu Takahashi & BUSHI  ***1/4

Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Master Wato & Yuya Uemura vs. El Desperado, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & DOUKI  **3/4

Kazuchika Okada & Hirooki Goto vs. Yujiro Takahashi & Taiji Ishimori  **

NEVER Openweight Championship Match - Shingo Takagi (c) vs. SHO  ****1/2

IWGP Tag Team Championship Match - Hiroshi Tanahashi & Kota Ibushi (c) vs. Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr.  ***3/4+

IWGP Heavyweight & Intercontinental Double Championship Match - Tetsuya Naito (c) vs. EVIL  **1/2

Photos.

So in front of a 1/3 capacity Osaka-Jo Hall, New Japan produced their annual Dominion show, and it was an... interesting show to say the least. The undercard was your standard NJPW show; Yuji Nagata submitted Gabriel Kidd with Nagata Lock II at 9:25 of a fun six man opener. Hiromu lead the charge in the next match, looking better than anyone else bar Ishii. His exchanges with Tsuji were really good too, before he submitted the Young Lion with a Boston Crab to end an entertaining 10 minuter. El Desperado pinned Yuya Uemura with Pinche Loco to end another decent six man next. The post match saw Kanemaru put the boots to Master Wato, so that seems to be The Grandmaster’s next feud. They certain don’t have many aspirations for him at this point. Saying that, I suppose every promotion needs their dependable mid-carders. Speaking of which, the inexplicable Yujiro push continued in the next match, as he pinned Goto to end a painfully average match. Okada came out with his neck taped, and I don’t know if he’s selling or what, but he looked really off here. As Goto hit Ushigoroshi on Takahashi, Gedo came out and attacked Okada’s ribs with a wrench outside, taking him out of the match. Goto went for GTR on Yujiro, but Ishimori broke it up with a Lungblower, followed by Bloody Cross, allowing Yujiro to score the pin at 9:42 with Pimp Juice. He then laid Okada out with it in the post match. I understand pickings are slim in this time of pandemic, and they always have decent outings together, but I really do not need to see a Yujiro/Okada programme in 2020. This year has been rough enough.

Things really picked up after intermission as Shingo defended the NEVER Title against long-time rival SHO. This, as expected, was an excellent 20 minute war, with both guys looking great. There were no surprises here; both guys slammed into each other like bulls with hard Lariats, forearms, chops and suplexes. SHO worked over Shingo’s Lariat arm with hard kicks and Jujigatame attempts, but the champion would power out. After a back and forth exchange of Lariats, SHO hits a headkick on Takagi for the double down. A sliding Lariat and Noshigami scores a near fall for Shingo. SHO hits the powerbomb on the knees, and a huge Lariat, but Takagi kicks at one, then SHO scores another great near fall with the deadlift German. A flurry of elbows from the Rampage Dragon leaves SHO open to Made In Japan, which gets a near fall, then the challenger kicks at one from a Pumping Bomber. SHO scores another near fall with a cross arm piledriver, then Takagi turns another Jujigatame into a Death Valley Bomb, hits the draping GTR, then successfully defends the title after hitting Last Of The Dragon at 20:07. This was by far the best thing on the show, and whilst great stuff indeed, the finish was never really in any doubt, as SHO got the win in the NJC, so had to return the favour here because New Japan loves the 50/50 booking. As Shingo celebrated his win, El Desperado attacked and posed with the title. That interesting, at first glance that match doesn’t seem too awe inspiring, but I’m sure they’ll actually have a great match.

The Tag Title match that followed was a really good match, but at 28:43, it was much too long (little did I know). It must also be said, it feels like these teams have been feuding for years, as it started in February, which might as well have been half a decade ago at this point. The champions came out aggressive, attacking the challengers before the bell and hitting duelling pescados, but after the hot start, this tapered off a bit for my liking, as Taichi heeled it up in slo-mo fashion, and began choking Tana with a tag rope or something, as my eyelids grew heavy. This picked up again as Ibushi got a hot tag, flying in with a springboard dropkick, but he was ground to a halt as ZSJ caught him in a knee bar. Ibushi and Taichi exchange hard kicks, culminating in Taichi hitting the Kawada Dangerous High Kick. Ibushi avoids an Axe Bomber, but gets caught in a Stretch Plumb, which Tanahashi breaks up with a Dragon Sleeper. The champions hit their new Golden Blade move to both challengers. As they battled on, Tana tried a Sling Blade on Taichi, but he counters into the Dangerous Backdrop, but Tanahashi reverses it into a Sling Blade. The Ace takes Zack out with Sling Blade, then goes up for the HFF, but Sabre gets the knees up. Taichi takes Ibushi out with the dreaded Iron Fingers From Hell(!!!), but Tana ducks, only to run straight into a Daaaaangerous Backdrop. From there, the challengers destroy Tanahashi’s already destroyed knees, as Taichi holds him and Zack hits numerous Dragon Screws. Tana’s selling here was sublime and the move itself looks tremendous. ZSJ hoists Tanahashi up into the Zack Driver, with Taichi giving a superkick assist, resulting in Zack getting the three count, and new champions are crowned.

Then the main event. There’s an old saying: “Go big or go home”, and Gedo certainly did that here. Look, as much as I don’t really have a problem with the outcome; they need new stars in this time and they aren’t especially spoilt for choice, but this match had some pretty major problems. Not the least that it went on FOREVER and relied entirely on absolute fuckery. At 38 minutes, this was insanely long, and it really didn’t need to be. When Naito won the titles at Wrestle Kingdom, part of me had dreaded his reign, as he just physically isn’t really up to it at this point, and to mask this, I figured his matches would have all kinds of smoke and mirrors. However, both this and the KENTA defence from February had a preposterous amount of interference, to the point it really just takes you out of these matches. Now, EVIL getting the super-push makes sense; he’s a home grown star, and heavyweight to boot, and the LIJ guys are so beloved they really need a believable aggressor for them, but I’m not too sure about how they went about all of this. 

EVIL came out with new music and new gear. He’s dropped the guyliner, but is decked out in a leather grass skirt gimmick that I believe should be cast into a dumpster. EVIL lived up to his name by destroying Milano Collection AT’s old EVIL scythe toy gimmick, which caused the commentary megastar to jump the rail, only to be immediately thrown into it. EVIL attacked Naito’s surgically repaired knee (he’s using Naito’s biggest weakness against him, as he knows all about it having been his friend for years), then brought a table into play, which he ultimately gave Naito a knee breaker through off the apron, which looked absolutely no fun whatsoever to take. Then the nonsense started; Jado strolled out with all the urgency of an underwater deep sea diver, as too did Ishimori, who takes Naito out with a springboard. Hiromu sprints out, getting rid of Jado, then hitting the overhead suplex into the corner on Ishimori, then drags both guys to the back. EVIL smashes a chair over the double champs head, then tries the STO, but Naito escapes and hits a swinging reverse Destino for a near fall. Naito then hits Valentia (which really should be his finish, if you ask me), then tries Destino, but EVIL grabs Red Shoes and hits a mule kick lowblow on Naito. At this point, “BUSHI” comes out, cheering Naito on, but then once his back is turned, starts garrotting him with a gimmick, choking him out. EVIL hits the stomp to the balls, then lifts Naito up and hits Everything Is Evil to win both Championships, unceremoniously ending Naito’s double reign, in a major upset to say the least. The Osaka-Jo Hall crowd were stunned at this outcome and I could almost hear wrestling Twitter break. 

Hey say what you want about Gedo’s booking, but when he straps the rocket to someone, he doesn’t mess around. In the post match, “BUSHI” unmasked to reveal himself to be veteran Dick Togo(!!!). Hiromu ran them off and cut a fiery promo on EVIL, setting himself up as his first challenger, presumably on the 27th in Nagoya, but who knows? I mean, a lot happened here, and not all of it good. The shenanigans in these matches is starting to get old school TNA level, and although New Japan are in a difficult position, they’re setting up quite a few programmes, though I can’t say all of them are looking especially good to me. There remains a lot to be seen with regards to EVIL on top too. Usually, a young champions first reign isn’t especially long, so I don’t imagine this to be either, and he’ll likely just drop both belts back to Naito at some point. Time will tell on all of this.

NDT

#dominion in osaka jo hall #review #njdominion #tetsuya naito #evil #zack sabre jr #taichi #hiroshi tanahashi #kota ibushi #shingo takagi #sho #new japan pro wrestling #puroresu #wrestling review #njpw

[flightandsurvival]

Do you ever find yourself worrying about things that probably won’t happen? Why yes, hello, I have an anxiety disorder and this is my literal life. 

Has your imagination ever made it hard for you to sleep? Yes, but I would again attribute that “imagination” to anxiety. Have you ever had a weird dream and obsessed over what it might mean? I don’t typical obsess over meaning, I don’t think that there is any... but I do have really vivid dreams I am constantly giving all the weird details to my friends.  Or do you usually forget about your dreams? I forget sometimes. 

Do you know your heritage?  I am 50% Chinese, my grandfather and grandmother immigrated from China in their early 20s. My mom’s side if a lot more ambiguous. 

If not, would you ever try one of those DNA kits? I would, I think it would be interesting to see exactly what DNA be running through my veins. Which languages can you speak? English. That’s it. I’m uncultured.  Which language do you speak the most and why? English because that’s what I know. Which languages do you wish you were fluent in? Either Mandarin or Spanish. With films in languages you do not speak, do you prefer a dub or subtitles? Subtitles but I’ll do a dub too.  Which cuisine do you like the least? German. Too much meat.  Are there any foods you dislike because of the texture? Why yes, of course.  Which type of chocolate do you like best? I don’t love chocolate... I’ll eat it if it’s infused with THC though.  Do you have a favorite kind of dog? All of them.  Do you let your pets sleep in your bed? Absolutely.  Do any of your favorite musicians ever write music for/with other artists? Yes.  What is your favorite collaboration between two different musicians? Hmm. Not sure.  Who are your favorite songwriters? I’m not sure.  Do you like any of those oldies groups (like the Four Seasons)? Sure.  Do you know who Bernie Taupin is? I don’t know who that is.  What are your favorite one-hit wonders? Take On Me–A-ha

What celebrities, if any, have you seen naked? I’m not sure... probably plenty since there is tons of nudity on TV and in movies.  Have you ever seen anybody naked by accident? Yes. Have you ever wondered what somebody looks like naked? Of course.  Have you ever had a sexual fantasy about a celebrity? Yes.  Have you ever changed your clothes in the car? Yes. About how quickly does your hair grow? Relatively quick.  Do you have to/choose to shave anything unusual? I choose to shave my arms.  Do you groom (wax, pluck, or thread) your eyebrows? I pluck them when warranted.  Most unusual thing you have worn in public? I don’t know.  If you wear makeup, what are your preferred brands? Tarte, Colourpop, Urban Decay, IT Cosmetics. Do you use flavored lip balm? No.  What about tinted lip balm? Rarely. What is your favorite swear word? Fuck.  Are you afraid of fireworks or other loud noises? No. Do you make your own iced tea, or buy it in jugs/bottles? I don’t typically drink ice tea.  Have you ever made sun tea? Never even heard of it.  Do you use sugar or honey to sweeten your tea? Occasionally honey.  Do you ever put milk in your tea? Only milk-tea/boba. Do you prefer powdered or liquid coffee creamer? Neither, I drink my coffee black.  Did your school have somewhere for girls to get emergency pads/tampons? Health care center.  Did you have to wear a uniform for gym class? No.  Did you have to take showers after gym before going to your next class? Nope.  Were you in any extracurricular activities or clubs in high school? German club, volleyball, tennis, chorus.  Have you ever picked up and kept a rock because it caught your eye? Yes.  Have you attended any rock (literal rocks, not music, lol) shows? No.... ? Have you ever laughed at a scene (TV/film) that wasn’t meant to be funny? Most likely.  Do you think they should make a movie about Hatshepsut? Not sure what that is.  Do you think books are better adapted as movies or TV series? It depends.  Any great books you would recommend? The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn Saks.  Any great movies or TV series you would recommend? Wentworth, Jane the Virgin, The Good Place.  Were you disappointed with Fox’s version of the Rocky Horror Show? I didn’t watch it. Have you ever seen the original Kinky Boots movie? No.  What about the musical? Nope. Have you seen any Hannibal movies other than The Silence of the Lambs? Nope. Have you read any of the Hannibal novels? No. Do you like any Indie movies? Usually. Have there been any movies you had fond memories of, but upon a rewatch didn’t like as well? Most likely.  Do you like to go to the movies alone? No. When you watch movies/TV with people, do you find yourself making sarcastic remarks to each other? Depends who I’m with and where we are watching. Movie Theater? No. In my living room? Yes.  Have you ever dried down any flowers to keep them? Yes.  What is your favorite thing that you have made by yourself? Not sure. I’m not super crafty.  Do you like your natural accent (everybody has one)? Sure.  What accents do you find most pleasant? Southern drawls, Aussie, Spanish.  Does it bother you when an actor in a musician biopic lip-syncs to a recording of the original artist, or is it better that way? I don’t care. Have you ever read about Dennis Nilsen? No. Do you ever go on murderpedia.org to read about murderers? Yes. Have you ever read about the Black Dahlia? Yes.  Any other unsolved crimes you find fascinating? SO many. I love true crime, I love dissecting the fucked up details of murder.  Do you care what color your socks are? No. What about your underwear? No. What part of a man’s body do you find most attractive? Smile, eyes, mouth, arms.  Do you think guys look good in makeup? I used to die over guyliner. Do you like using clay and/or peel-off masks for skincare? I prefer sheet masks. Have you ever had an asymmetrical haircut? Yes.  Have you ever made your own pillow or blanket? Yes.  Have you ever made a pillow out of an old T-shirt? No. Have you ever tried lucid dreaming? (Where you can control your dreams) No, in my more vivid dreams I actually have some significant control over my dreams. Would you ever want to try? Eh. It happens sometimes without trying.  If you want to be cremated, do you want your ashes scattered anywhere? It will be somewhere woods-y.  Would you ever have a deceased pet stuffed? No fucking way.  Would you ever have a pet cremated? I would. What is your favorite sci-fi series, if any? Dark Matter,  Do you believe in the existence of parallel universes? I would consider it.  If you could run your own business, what kind of business would it be? A private practice for child therapy specifying in trauma. 

#survey #me #about me #personal #questionnaire

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S2 Ep 47: How Exactly Can Any of This Get Resolved In 2 Episodes?

Ah, it’s 4AM, and these people decided it was finally time to pass out after a day of getting tied to bandsaws, getting tied to anchors, getting abducted, getting possessed, getting tied to various types of chairs, building box forts to escape your abductors, falling off of the box forts you built, beating up like 8 people, falling madly in love with Serenity, throwing lots of dice at people, falling out of love with Serenity, learning to see for the first time after a very major operation, having a fistfight on the roof of a 4000 ft in the air blimp, eating a mountain of tacos at a buffet, falling into the ocean, driving a helicopter into a shipping crane, drowning, telling your school bully that you are a reincarnated Pharaoh, learning that your favorite playing card is your one true love who died 5000 years ago, getting dangled off of a 20ft rope tied to a flying helicopter, deciding that your favorite playing card is in fact NOT your one true love who died 5000 years ago, telling a bunch of strangers about that one time your baby brother killed your Dad after seeing a single motorcycle, and getting trapped in the Shadow Realm in a giant hourglass.

They’re pooped. And, we get a nice montage of all of Kaiba’s itty bitty luxury beds that were really only built for Yugi and Mokuba and have been just super inconvenient for everyone else.

And Joey is not dreaming about donuts, instead he’s having guilt dreams.

and then, yes, she in fact did chain herself up to a wall and he watched her drift away.

CONGRATS, GIRL!

Man, by Yugioh standards she just got engaged, right? Good thing everyone else thinks Bakura’s in a plot coma because that is going to be the most unexpected walk of shame.

Also in this montage, Kaiba is not sleeping, and is instead staying up on his computer researching dragons. Yeah. Sounds about right. I honestly can’t picture Seto asleep. I don’t think he does that. I think occasionally Seto kind of pauses wherever he’s sitting like a fish, does a quick Rem cycle, and then he’s back to furiously typing on whatever computer he’s sitting at 10 minutes later.

(read more under the cut)

Meanwhile, these two are duking it out on the roof. I reallllllly wish they were actually punching each other like Tristan and Duke showed us a few episodes back but, nah, it’s cards.

Again, no matter who wins this fight, it will be a very good outcome for our protagonists, so it’s really a fight between which of the evil dudes do you like more? Do you like the Local Nasty Boy Next Door who cannot go to card prom with you because he’s too busy stabbing himself in the arm and murdering? Or, do you prefer the New Cargo Pants obsessed boy in town who seems completely unaware of which century it is, what a blimp is, and what clothes are supposed to be worn with what clothes. Or, is your fave Oldstyle Cargo Pants, who committed atrocious acts of blasphemy, violence and murder just so he could drive a motorcycle around at a moderate speed while wearing a sensible helmet and senseless pink crop hoodie?

All of them really want to destroy/rule the world, all of them really want to kill god (well, Yami, so basically the laziest godform I’ve ever seen in an anime) and all of them probably smell like super bad. Make your bets, they’re all three gonna have a card fight.

And to make this duel somewhat more confusing, Marik likes to sort of take over Bakura’s body and shout at himself. It’s...there’s a lot of psychological stuff going on right now. Anyways, this is when we find out officially that Odion decided not to tell Marik that he killed his own Dad, and instead blamed it on Shadi.

So I guess that’s why Shadi’s been hiding this whole tourney? I mean, Shadi...just kind of peaced out...and like other than being an exposition dump I’m not sure why he ever bothered to come here today?

But because Marik was in Tea’s brain without me knowing, he overheard the true story for the first time, and he was like “ah yeah I’ve killed a loooot of people, this makes sense.”

Bakura has taken almost an entire season, but he’s decided that now he’s playing cards anyway, he wants the good kind. Bear in mind, Bakura was passed out during the other duels where we found out that God Cards are ass.

And I will say that like, in caps there’s some things I can’t really show you since they’re meant to move--but Bakura and Marik turning into pieces as they duel was visually a pretty fun idea. It felt like the animation team was really enjoying it. Like this was their duel to cap the season and so they made it as much a ridiculous spectacle as you can a paper card game. (and the animators probably welcomed a change of place, they’re running out of weird ways to place cards down on a very large watch)

And then we revisit a familiar locale.

So like...this place is different.

First off, my favorite giant green bowling pin is just...gone...and then second off, either Yugi is just getting older, or Yami is just taking up that much more space. But this room definitely wasn’t brick lined before, which is...that kind of says a lot about what Yugi’s been sacrificing to have this puzzle installed into his brain.

Also, apparently Yugi drew a fish once and he was so proud of it, that it got immortalized in here.

The red tomagachi is exactly like the one I had in Middle School. I killed it so many times. I also like how they dodged Nintendo copyright but still gave us a little nod that yes, Yugi is a Nintendo nerd but legally cannot say so. I actually went and looked up handheld systems, and this one looks a lot like the Gameboy Advance. I cannot imagine the spooky stories that happened involving this particular Gameboy Advance, and if maybe that’s why Yugi no longer plays the thing.

Like I’ve been catching up on some GDQ and with Yugi’s curse, do you think he CAN just casually play a video game? Or, do you think he’s just always speedrunning and breaking games whenever he sits down to them? Like he’s just naturally doing TAS runs every time he picks up a controller, glitching through walls and going to the final boss when he’s only at like level 2? Like when he picks up Pokemon he probably almost never has encounters, and then when he finally does it’s just MissingNo and he’s like “Man, I have like 20 of these, and they all look like ass! I just want a freakin rattata.”

Anyways, Yugi was feeling kind of bored here so he went across the hall to visit his friendly neighborhood parasite.

And so, much like how Marik has decided to have a heart to heart with himself on a very tall ledge, so has Yugi and Pharaoh. Except, they’re not having a chat about who killed their own Dad, because we have never seen that guy and he may as well not exist, it would make no difference on the show.

Unless there’s a twist coming up that Yugi killed his own Dad, which, even with this show, I think we can safely assume he has not.

I’m pretty sure.

Just angsting out in my mind labrynth with my 5000 year old emo ghost, wearing lots of guyliner and belts around both our necks. Staring into the abyss made of the convoluted maze of unused stairs and unopened doorways of my unraveling mind. Don’t mind me.

I can’t believe they brought up Shadi only to completely change the subject because even these two are like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Bro brings up that between the two of them, Pharaoh is a lot more hesitant about looking into his past. Something about people being stored underground for 5000 years and the murdering and all that extra stuff makes him maybe consider that maybe this power ain’t so great. So he’s just...decided not to open doors anymore. Yugi’s going to do it anyway, and Pharaoh will support him in that search, but Pharaoh alone is just fine not knowing if he was an evil asshole 5000 years ago. He doesn’t want to know or really see the point in finding out if it’s fact or not. There’s enough evidence already there. Ignorance is bliss and all that.

But it seems like if one is doubting the other has to not doubt just out of necessity. I don’t know what happens to this brain if both Yami and Yugi become depressed.

I mean like...

...

It was on the wall in the museum, right?

And like, Ishizu is down the hall and you could just ask her, right?

Shadi is around, he probably knows, or at least can go invisible and check.

The short term memory on all the children on this show, I swear. It’s almost as bad as real life children.

Anyway, the very last episode of the season is next and like...we made no steps towards resolving any of these plot strings so next episode is either going to be 4 hours long or it will just be a title card at the end of the episode that says “And then they all died! The end!” just like my very first stop motion animation feature when I was a wee tot, which honestly would probably make more sense than how they will probably end up tying all these lose ends. If they...ever do it.

Not holding out.

Anyway, if you just got here, this is a link to read all these recaps in chrono order from S1 Ep1, knock yourself out http://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

#yugioh #yugioh recap #photo recap #S2 Ep47 #Yugi muto #marik ishtar #Bakura #tea gardner #tristan taylor #joey wheeler #return of Toy Chamber #tbh nothing really happened this episode

[echelonlab-blog]

Echelon Author Interview: fortify-undeny

Your URL:https://fortify-undeny.tumblr.com/

Your name:Rochelle

Link to your Masterlist:I mean This. Forever and Landslide-https://fortify-undeny.tumblr.com/imeanthisforever

Oneshots-https://fortify-undeny.tumblr.com/onshots

Heroes-https://fortify-undeny.tumblr.com/Heroes

I Fell for You- https://fortify-undeny.tumblr.com/ifellforyou

  What was your first experience with 30 Seconds to Mars?

When I was 16, my little sister (10) wanted to go to this concert to see Kill Hannah, and Thirty seconds to mars. They were on tour with Envy on the Coast, Hourcast. I had never heard of any of these band except for Kill Hannah. I wasn’t happy about going but it was my sister’s first show and she really wanted to go. So being the wonderful big sister I am, I bitched about it but went with her.

We stood in the middle of the crowd with my friends making a circle around her so she wouldn’t get trampled. All the bands played, and it came time for Mars to come on. Their intro was moody and over dramatic. My 16 year old self thought it was the dumbest shit ever. Once they started playing, and their moody ass front man started screaming (and fuck was he made of what every emo waf fueled by: guyliner and tight pants.) it was like lightning hit me. The anger and angst they threw at us connected with my soul.

  Your Favorite Mars song?

Battle of One.

This song fuels my spirit and the fight that lives inside of me.

  Has anything ever happened to you solely because of being a 30STM fan?

I’ve met a lot of amazing people.

  What is your favorite thing about the fandom? Your least favorite?

My favorite is the sense on community. My least favorite are the people that think or analyze everything the guys do too critically. Their fucking humans, what do you want from them. Really?

  Is there any advice you would give to someone who is new to the fandom?

It’s a shit show, but it’s our shit show and we love it.

  How long have you been writing?

I started with Ferards when I was 13. (Dirty shit happened.)

  Why did you start writing? (Either in general or for Mars specifically)

I stumbled up on some Good Charlotte fanfics on mySpace. It opened a whole new artistic option for me. I was more suxually mature then most at 12 because of things that had happened to me. This was a way for me to explore the thoughts in my head.

  Do you write for other fandoms? If so, which ones?

I have in the My Chemical Romance fandom.

  Do you share everything you write? If not, is there a reason why?

No. I have a lot of half written stories that dead end or I lose interest in.

  Have you written things that aren’t fanfic? If so, could you tell us about those works?

Poetry. It’s underrated.

  Of all your works, which is your favorite and why?

My favorite one is one I wrote in highschool about Gerard Way. I wrote it for an english assignment. The objective was to use five objects in our story. It was very dark and my teacher sent me to the counselor for it.

  Is there one that was particularly difficult to write? Why?

The ones that I get an amazing idea for, but go nowhere.

  What type of fanfic are you most comfortable writing (drama, fluff, angst, drabbles, series, etc.)

Drama

  What is your favorite fanfic trope?

I’m not sure about favorite, but my least favorite is meeting in a fucking club. I’m over it. It’s over done.

  Is there any trope or subject that you won’t write?

See previous.

  Do you write your story in order or do you jump around and then string it together at the end?

Mostly in order unless there’s a scene I can’t get out of my head.

  Do you outline, or do a great deal of prep work or do you ‘fly by the seat of your pants’?

I’ve got a destination, who, what, why, and I just let the rest happen.

  Do you have ideas on the drawing board or in progress currently that you haven’t shared yet?

Yes, so many.

  If you have an unpublished work in progress, please pick two to three sentences and share them without context.

I can’t bring myself to finish this one

“Do you want to help me live my dreams and fulfill my fantasies?”

“Yes, Sir. You know I would do anything for you.”

“Good girl,” he purred, “then you’re going to let me and my brother use your body tonight. How’s that sound to you?” Cyleste looked over her shoulder at Shannon who was casually sitting on the couch.

  Do you like requests? Would you like more or less of them?

YAAASSS!!

  What piece of advice would you give to someone just starting to write fanfic?

Don’t give a fuck about what people think, and read! Read and examine the overall structure of the story. Don’t necessarily follow the tale they're telling but how they tell it.

  Three (stories, series, scenes, etc) written by others that you really like or that inspire you?

Spillinginkwithlove’s story Save Me, Anything by leatherch0ked, And Chaos Reigns by Mindless-self-indulgence

Do you have a 'day job’? If so, what?

Going to school to work with Neurologist in autism research.

  Do you consider yourself a reader outside of fanfic?

Yes.

  Your favorite book?

Dracula by Bram Stoker

  Your favorite things to do when you’re not writing?

Sleep

  The strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?

BBQ flavored mealworm.

  Two truths and a lie?

I’ve been through the Panama Canal.

My house is always clean.

I enjoy making flower arrangements.

  Five albums you’d want if stranded on a desert island?

A Beautiful Lie-Mars

Physical Graffiti- Led Zeppelin

The Fame Monster-Lady Gaga

Rumors- Fleetwood Mac

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge- My Chem

Blankets Tucked or Untucked?

Sheet tucked, duvet no.

Do you have any pets? Would you like to tell us about them?

Yes! Oliver! He’s my boy. He’s a beagle and his idea of cuddling is laying on the other end of the couch(he likes his space).

Tell us a joke.

A priest and a rabbi walk into a bar.

The rabbi looks at the priest and says, “We should have ducked!”

[andryushas]

Great Comet Things

I got to see Great Comet on Sunday and it was absolutely amazing. The whole cast was amazing and the show is so artistic and surreal. Below is a bunch of things I noticed that were either very cool, unexpected or both. Warning, it’s very very long:

ACT I

The show doesn't actually start with Pierre singing. He comes out with his accordion then you hear Natasha yelp a really sad "No!" then run on stage with Andrei at her heals. They have a moment, and she looks really sad and he looks Very in Love and takes a necklace off his neck and puts it on her. She grasps at it and he runs out the door behind Pierre, representing the war

Prologue is actually really funny. Like it's sort of funny on the recording but the way people move and act w their faces makes it very comic. 

Marya is a little terrifying. She plays "strict yet Kind" out to the audience like, "yes, I'm KiNd!!! Believe me, That's an order!!"

Anatole is actually really funny. I had totally been imagining him as this impossibly smooth figure and He Isn't. Like yes, he's very smooth at times but he is also totally used for comedy sometimes and is severely melodramatic. 

Oak's Pierre is really dimensional. He's very subdued and gentle but there's also a roughness to his voice when he gets really disgusted in himself or in the world and he moves really smoothly and naturally between Pierre's gruffer, darker side, and the cute awkward warmness which he also does wonderfully.

Denée's Natasha reads really well as this young girl who has always been loved and appreciated and is now really struggling for the first time with her happiness and she's really bold and a little self absorbed and this really brings out the changes which I will get back to later

Courtney Bassett was wonderful as Mary!! She's plays her really sweet and shy but also clashes really well w Natasha. 

Private and Intimate is really intense but can also get very funny. Nicholas Belton is hilarious but his Bolkonsky has a lot to him I guess? He moves really slowly and he does the fragile thing really well for a dude who is like Bolting down the aisles as Andrei. I'm very scared of old prince Bolkonsky. 

The Lighting in No One Else  oh my go d. The song is so beautiful but the visuals. The falling snow. It's heartrending. Ahhhh.

Marya Dmitrievna is the best ever. I love her. 

The Opera is Funky as hell. Paul Pinto is a firecracker. What a cool dude.

I didn't expect Anatole to actually get that excited about Natasha. I sort of read it as pure manipulation (it's still manipulative don't get me wrong) but he really does adore her. He really cares about whether or not she likes him and he fawns over her.

The Duel is intense as fuck. Amber Gray walked passed me at some point (i can't remember if it was during the duel or not but) she is a goddess, damn it. I love her.

Nick Choksi plays the sociopathic Dolokhov you get in the book better in person than I would've guessed 

Pierre does this thing when he gets shot where he ducks and stays ducking for a long time bc he thinks he's a dead man and there's a long silence.  And then he looks up like “oh!” and Oak made the cutest face ever when he realized he won the duel.

Ok I didn't like dust and ashes when I heard it on the soundtrack and saw it at the Tony's but the way Oak does it is an absolute show stopper. It blew me away. I love it. It's now one of my favorite songs in the show. Pierre is sitting in his Hole or whatever. The sad hole. And he just. Opens himself up and it's great. There was at least a full minute of applause for him. 

SUUUUUNDAY MORNING TIME FOR CHURCH

I love sunday morning but i do miss Sonya’s part from the off broadway soundtrack

When Helene comes in during Charming, Natasha is dressed in nothing but her corset  and a tiny little underskirt and it makes her so vulnerable and frightened its an interesting dynamic. Amber Gray is a powerhouse of an actress and a singer and I love her. She has the coolest cloak too.

There’s this thing in Charming where Helene rips Natasha’s necklace from Andrei off and Natasha looks so guilty and upset about it. It really breaks the excitement from the yay, dresses part. She tosses it into Pierre’s depression hole and it landed in his book. Pierre picked it up and looked hilariously confused.

The ball is at least 80% same sex couples which was pretty cool. The ending is beautiful but it gets really chilling as the act draws to a close.

ACT II

Letters was bomb af. I’m gonna note again that I love Okieriete Onaodowan. After saying that he wrote the letter, Dolokhov crouches really malevolently watching what he orchestrated unfolds.

When they pass the love letter to Natasha, the audience has to pass it across the aisle but the girl didn’t know what to do when it got to the end, so Denee leaned really desperately with her arm reached out waving sweetly and asking for the letter until she got it

INGRID MICHAELSON IS A REALLY AMAZING ACTRESS AND SHE WRECKED ME

Preparations is a bop. Nick Choksi is a gift.

There’s a bit at the beginning where Anatole is carrying a big ol bag and he looks like he plans to walk up the stairs with it but then WHOOPS ANDREI IS SITTING ON SAID STAIRS. Anatole does absolutely nothing in acknowledging this- he simply sees he’ll need to take the other stairs and walk away.

I LOVE PAUL PINTO OK

There’s that one post about struggling to keep your sleeves rolled being gay culture and...Lucas Steele took a really long time to get his sleeves rolled up. I snorted.

I have very few words to describe the next few songs so i’ll sorta skip forward a little and just...trust me when I say they’re amazing

Seeing Pierre kick Anatole’s bitch ass is a ton of fun but its much less fun the way its staged because thats when natasha poisons herself and its painful

Natasha Very Ill was so tense and painful

One of the nice things Natasha sings about Andrei in act one becomes a letter to him which we see him open and read. He looks kind of lovestruck and then scared and he tucks the letter away, running off with the ribbon still in his hand. He comes on with this ribbon in his hand a bunch of times, and once, when he looks really beat up and scared, he has the ribbon tied around his gun. The last time he brings this ribbon on stage is in Pierre and Andrey, where its been returned around the parcel of Natasha’s letters.

GOD I love Nicholas Belton’ Andrei. There’s so much pain he’s trying to hide and it’s just being pressed down and hardening into rage. He’s really rough and a bit frightening but its so clearly from a place of sadness. His “No, I am well,” is almost pitifully unconvincing. The scene is so heavy. I could go on about this song forever. He does something on “never speak of that again” where he lashes out and sort of throws his hand out at Pierre’s chest and Pierre looks genuinely frightened by him. He’s really sympathetic even though he’s so cold. In three minutes he captures SO much of Andrei Bolkonsky

In Pierre and Natasha, Denee is completely transformed. She holds the railing and sways likes hse’s falling and walks like each step is over broken glass. Seeing her liveliness shatter is so utterly tragic. She’s brilliant.

Oak’s Pierre is so kind and good hearted. He was really crying during Pierre and Natasha, and it was so full of love. When he did the confession, he worked up so much courage to say it, and he was still sniffling from crying and there was such love in his voice that it richened and softened beautifully. It was so tender and beautiful.

THE ENSEMBLE SINGING IN THE FINALE. Their voices weave a whole sky of stars. Pierre coming to an understanding is illuminated by their soft moonlit voices. The whole moment is as clear as crystal and it is a perfectly executed awakening. It felt deeper and realer than I’d ever imagined.

I was crying a lot

Bonus: Stagedoor

Josh Canfield and Nicholas Belton came out first. I was very awkward but they were both Darlings. Josh photobombed my picture with nicholas belton and nicholas belton was like “oh looks like you’ve got a photobomber” and somehow I didn’t notice until like an hour later

A bunch of really cool ensemble members came out

Nick Choksi came over and he was still wearing his very heavy eyeliner. Someone said “you’re rocking the guyliner” and he looked quite pleased. I told him preparations is like the best song and he was like “hell yeah”

My friend (@levizoe​) told Paul Pinto that his performance was really moving. He thought this was a reference to the show as a whole but I knew. I knew this was about him, Balaga, specifically

Everyone lost it when Oak came out. He had a Harry Potter t-shirt on and was carrying a skateboard. What a cool dude. He’s huge but not as tall as I anticipated. so many muscles. I gave him some are and he was like “Oh this is pretty cool.” then he looked at it and called it kind of amazing and I died. Then he went inside to put it away and all the people who he didn’t get to yet were giving me some serious side eye i felt bad (he came back tho ofc)

Ingrid Michaelson has very pretty eyes and is very nice. She looked so tired tho i felt bad.

IN CONCLUSION I AM DEAD. Sorry for the length of this post. Its such an amazing show. I love them all so much.

#natasha pierre and the great comet of 1812 #mine #long post

[gleefuldarrencrissfan]

Chapters: 18/? Fandom: Glee Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel Characters: Kurt Hummel, Blaine Anderson, Rachel Berry, Finn Hudson, Noah Puckerman, Santana Lopez, Sue Sylvester, Brittany S. Pierce, Artie Abrams, Carmen Tibideaux, Jesse St. James, Quinn Fabray, Sam Evans, Mercedes Jones, Kitty Wilde, Sebastian Smythe, Jake Puckerman, Marley Rose, Ryder Lynn, Will Schuester, Emma Pillsbury, Coach Beiste Additional Tags: Competition, Reality TV, Alternate Universe, Eventual Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel, Blaine Anderson & Sam Evans Friendship, Kurt Hummel & Rachel Berry friendship, Duet, Slow Burn Summary:

"Chapter 18:  Reunited 

Chapter 18:  Reunited  

“Blaine!  Blaine, Please!  Talk to me!”  Kurt pleaded, as they stood in the hallway.

“About what, because it seems to me that you’re the one that should have come and talked to me.  I thought that you and I got along well.  I loved the way you talked to me, but it seems to me that you were just telling me what I wanted to hear!” Blaine shouted.

“But, Blaine, you don’t underst--”

“I don’t want to hear it, Kurt.  I thought we were friends, but then you go out, get drunk, and throw yourself at some guy in leather and guyliner, so whatever, fine...Why don’t you go talk to him!”

“Blaine,” Kurt cried out.  “Wait!”  But Blaine had stormed off.  Kurt slumped to the ground, frustrated that Blaine didn’t even give him a chance to explain what really happened.  

“Kurt?”  It was a kind, familiar voice.

“Hey,” Kurt said quietly.  

“Are you ok?”

Kurt shook his head no.  “I screwed up.  Elliott kissed me, and I allowed it to happen.  Dare I say that I even liked it a little, but…”

“But you love Blaine,” Rachel answered slowly, closing in the gap and hugging Kurt tightly.  

He nodded.   “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  I had one boyfriend, and it was never serious.  I mean, hell, all we ever did was kiss, and even then, it was obvious that something wasn’t right. But with Blaine…” his voice drifted off.

“It just feels right, like you’re drawn to him.  Like every touch, even brush of the fingertips sets your skin ablaze.  It’s like you were alive before you met him, but a part of you was missing,” she finished.

“Damn, Rachel.  Either you’ve developed ESP, or you’ve felt it yourself,” Kurt surmised.  “And it’s the latter, isn't it?” he squealed clapping his hands.  “Who?”

“Well, we aren’t seeing each other, but he flirts a lot.  He’s so handsome.”

“Finn?” Kurt asked, smiling.

“Um, no actually, although he’s gorgeous.  He’s out of my league.   I guess this other guy is too.  Ugh!  The Wedding Singer was right.  Love stinks!”

Kurt giggled.  “I missed your insanity, you know that?” he asked, hugging the short girl tightly.   “So, how do I fix this?”

Sam excused himself after he finished his tweets, using a headache as his excuse, but really he had something else entirely on his brain, finding Blaine.   However, he had a pretty good idea  where he would be.  He ran upstairs to their room and grabbed his guitar.  He headed for the door, but then he walked over to his dresser and pulled something from his sock drawer.  He walked down the steps and headed into the kitchen, stopping at the fridge.  

He poured himself a glass of juice and sat at the table for a moment to contemplate what to say to Blaine.  He had seen the photo, and he understood why it upset Blaine.  Sam drank the last drop from his glass and stood up from the table when Kurt barged down the stairs.  

Kurt was visibly upset. “Sam, have you seen Blaine?” he asked frantically.

“No, I haven’t.  Are you ok?”  Sam asked, sitting back down.  

Kurt shook his head.  “No, I hurt him.  I was going to tell him about the kiss as soon as the show was over, I swear, but he saw that damn photo.  I don’t want to hurt him, Sam.”

Sam nodded.  “”It’s alright.  Calm down.  Everything will be ok,”  Sam assured him.  “I think he just needs some time to think.  Just give him some time and space to clear his head. He’ll find you when he’s ready, and then you two need to talk.”

Kurt’s face relaxed a little.  “If you see him, please tell him I’m…”

Sam patted Kurt’s shoulder.  “No, you need to tell him, but let him come to you.  I’ve seen Blaine angry before, and he does what I do.  He needs to clear his head.  Just give it a little while,” Sam suggested.  There was a small passage of time where both men just seemed frozen in place, as they both seemed to contemplate the moment.  “Man, I wish I had something sweet to snack on,” Sam said coyly.  “Something with chocolate.”

Kurt smiled.  “That’s what I can do!  I can make him some cookies,” Kurt smiled.

“And you can also share those cookies with the guy that gave you the inspiration,” Sam hinted, smiling.

“Maybe,” Kurt grinned.  “But only if the cookie thing works.”

Sam stood up from his seat.  “Well, I don’t know anything about cooking, so I’ll let you do your thing.  I’m gonna head to the studio and play for awhile.  Can you ask the others not to go in there?  It messes up the recording if anyone goes inside.”

“Sure, I can do that,” Kurt nodded..  

When he arrived downstairs, Blaine was strumming his guitar.  Sam barged into the studio, causing Blaine to lose his place on the song ‘Misery.’

“Hey, I was recording,” Blaine huffed.  “Now I have to start over.”

Sam’s shoulder’s slumped.  “Sorry man, but I needed to find you.  You worried me, running out of the room like that.”

Blaine propped his guitar against a stool.  “I’m sorry.  I just thought... I thought he liked me, but that kiss in the photo….it wasn’t just a peck.  I mean, are they dating now?” Blaine asked, shrugging his shoulders.

“I don’t know, and you won’t either, unless you talk to him,” Sam said softly.

“Why should I?” He’s seeing Glitter Rock Vampire.  He could’ve told me.” Blaine huffed angrily.

“Could he?  Didn’t he ask to talk to you earlier, privately?” Sam asked.

Blaine’s head dropped.  “Yeah, he did.  I guess he and I don’t really get to be around each other much.  Maybe that’s what he was going to tell me.  That he’s dating Elliott,” Blaine sighed.  

“You’re assuming he’s dating Elliott, but you guys haven’t even talked yet,” Sam reasoned.    “Who knows?  A kiss doesn’t mean they are in love.  Actually, sometimes a kiss reveals the opposite, that there is no real connection, you know.   That's what I found out after making out with Quinn.   You just need to talk to him.  

Blaine crossed his arms defensively.  “Stop defending him.  You saw the picture.”

“Yes, I saw the picture, but you didn’t see this.”

“What is that?” Blaine asked, eyeing the piece of paper suspiciously that Sam held up.

“Kurt’s letter to me when he resigned.  I got Rachel to help me read it.  And I think you need to too.  Do you seriously not know how he feels about you?   That boy really cares about you.”

Blaine held the paper tightly, his fingers trembling slightly with nerves.  “I probably shouldn’t read this,” Blaine stated guiltily.

“He asked me not to show it to you, but you need to get your head out of your ass,” Sam said.  “Then, you need to go and apologize.”

Blaine opened the letter, and his whole face immediately softened.  

Dear Sam,

I’m glad that I got a chance to meet you, however brief my time on the show might have been.  You were always so kind to me, even though I was different.  Thank you.

I have a request.  Look out for Blaine.  He’s a great guy, and I just don’t trust Sebastian now that I’m not there.  I really wish I didn’t have to go.  I have made some great friends, yourself included, but it physically hurts leaving Blaine.  You teased me about him, but I really do care about him, probably more than I should.  More than I thought I ever could for anyone.  So please, encourage him to keep doing his best, and do what you can to keep Weasel Face from trying to get to him.   Please.  I know that you will because I’m a good judge of character, and I know that you will watch out for him.  Good luck.  You know that I am secretly hoping for Blaine and Rachel to win the whole show, but I wish you go far.  Maybe this will be your big break.  

Best Wishes,

Kurt Hummel

P.S.  Be a pal and don’t squeal about us sharing a bed last night.  It’s not what it looks like.  ;-P

Blaine reluctantly held open the letter, as a tear slipped down his face.   “I’m an idiot.,” he sighed.  “Do you really think he feels this way about me?” Blaine asked the blonde boy.

“You aren’t an idiot,” Sam said, placing his hand on Blaine’s shoulder.  “And yes, I really think he feels that way about you.  Kurt doesn’t lie.  He’s honest to a fault.  And his face doesn’t lie either.  Go apologize.”  Sam suggested.  

Blaine sighed.   “I really care about him, but seeing that picture.  It…”

“Made you feel jealous as hell, right?  Sam asked.

Blaine nodded.  

“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

Blaine nodded again.  “I think so.  I mean, I’ve never been in love before.  Not really, but he’s all I think about.  And being without him was miserable,” Blaine closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.  “But what if he doesn’t feel the same way back?  What if he is seeing Elliott?”  

“Seriously Blaine, it’s obvious that you are both crazy about each other.  Talk to him.  I don’t think he’s seeing Elliott.”

“And if he is?”  Blaine asks nervously.

“If he is, then respect that.  But I don’t think they’re meant for each other, not after seeing the way you and Kurt look at each other, hold each other.  The night before he resigned, you should have seen you two.  If he gave even the slightest whimper, you tightened your grip and pulled him closer, and he would immediately relax.  It was like he felt safe in your arms.   And when he came back, you collapsed in his arms as well, like it was the only place you wanted to be.”

“He just got back in the competition.  If I go in there and blurt out all of my feelings, and he does feel the same, I don’t think I can hold back.  I don’t want to mess things up by getting him or both of us eliminated.” Blaine sighed.

“I’m not telling you to kiss him in the middle of the stage and propose.  Just apologize, and talk it out.  I think there’s so much more to this story.  Let him tell it.” Sam smiled warmly.  

“Thanks Sam.   Wait, you made out with Quinn?”  Blaine smiled slyly.

“Uh yeah, but don't you have someone else you need to talk to right now?” Sam asked, trying to duck from that conversation.

“Ok, but I spilled my guts, so you’re going to spill yours later.”

“Deal,” Sam nodded.

When they shut down the computers  for the night, Jake was relieved.  He was fine until some people tweeted comments about the cute mohawk guy, and how they wished he had made the show.  Jake stepped out of the living room, and opened the back door onto the deck.   The only reason he even signed up to do this competition in the first place was because his brother had wanted him too.  He told him that it was something that they could do together.  Puck had finally won him over  by saying that they would get more chicks if they were celebrities.  And now, he was gone because of his own stupidity.  And Jake was abandoned, again.

It was unintentional.  It always was.  His dad was incapable of staying anywhere for long periods of time, and his mother worked three jobs just to make ends meet, so Jake had gotten used to being by himself. He used to just bury his resentment inside, but when he started highschool, he was sick of feeling cast off. Actually, he was pissed  about being completely forgotten and treated like he didn’t matter.  After the second fight in the same quarter, he just knew that he was on his way to Juvie.  He had stepped into the office expecting to see his mom, the principal, and some police officers, but instead he was introduced to the brother he never knew existed.  

Their relationship grew from there.  It didn’t matter when or where, whether it was the middle of nowhere at 2AM, Puck came anytime Jake called.  And the third time Jake was dragged to the office, Puck convinced his mother and the principal that day that he could help straighten him out.  He  related his own experience in Juvie and how it made him see the light.  He promised that he could help him.  He had stories about how he was enrolled in college, and he had plans to start his own business one day.  His mother, at the end of her rope, agreed, and gave guardianship over to Puck when Jake was a junior in high school.  

After Jake graduated, Puck convinced him to follow him to LA, and they had actually been really successful.  Jake knew that Puck had saved him from himself, from being isolated and alone.  But now, here he was back to square one. He sighed and did what he always did when he needed to just get away from everything and everyone that had let him down.  He closed the basement door behind him and headed down the steps into his haven, the dance studio.  

Jake grabbed his Ipod from his pocket and plugged it into the speakers.  He scrolled through his ITunes and found the song that he was looking for.  Then, he cranked up the speakers and just let himself get lost in the rhythm.  He was so entranced that he never saw the thin brunette at the mirror, stretching on the ground.

Marley watched as Jake twirled and spun effortlessly, with so much grace that it seemed as if he was floating on the air around him.  She sat still on the floor and just watched as passion radiated from his body.  It was breathtaking.  And private.  He thought he was alone, and here she was trespassing.  Maybe she could sneak out.

She stood slowly, tiptoeing lightly toward the door, turning her head slightly towards Jake to make sure that he didn’t see her.  Which was why she didn’t notice the speaker cord that was now wrapped around her foot and she was on the ground.

“Marley, are you alright!” Jake called, rushing to her quickly, quickly unwrapping the cord that had entangled her ankle.  

“Yeah, shoot!  I was trying to leave quietly so that I didn’t disrupt you.  You’re amazing, you know that?” she smiled timidly.

“Thank you,” he said softly, returning her smile.  His hand brushed lightly against her cheek as he pushed a stray hair out of her face.  

“I meant your d-dancing.  It’s beautiful,” she stammered.

“So are you,” he answered, his chocolate eyes gazing into her soft blue ones.  They stared at each other for a moment, but Marley dropped her gaze to the floor as a pink blush began to spread across her cheeks.  

“Thank you,” she almost whispered.

“I don’t think you sprained it or anything,” he said running his fingers lightly over the pale skin right above her foot and up her shin.

The brunette giggled lightly, pulling her leg away from the man’s hand.  “That tickles.”

“I’m sorry.  I was just checking to see if it was ok.  If you were ok.  So are you?  Are you ok?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing?”

“Me?  Why?”

You seemed really upset in there, quiet.  Is it Puck?”

Jake nodded.  “He’s an ass sometimes, but he’s my brother.  A lot of people think he’s a jerk, but he’s a great guy, and he always has my back, ya know.  I didn’t expect him to have to go so soon,” he admitted.  

Marley smiled.  “You two are close, aren’t you?”

“We are now.  We didn’t even know each other existed until a few years ago.  But we’re kinda all each other has.  Since we moved out here, we don’t really see anyone else.  And my mom, I just feel like I’ve just let her down.  And my dad,” his voice drifted off.

“I remember what Puck said in group.  I get it.  My dad left too.  For years, I blamed myself.   My mom tried to tell me that it wasn’t my fault, but in my eyes, he left us both.”  Her bright blue eyes were starting to glisten over with tears.

“Marley,” Jake whispered.  “I’m sorry, for the other day, when we, when I, you know, when I kissed you.  I was out of…”

Marley leaned in, pressing her lips lightly to Jake’s, ever so slightly, and then hesitated, pulling back.

Jake smiled softly.  “Apology accepted then?” he chuckled.  

She nodded, blushing profusely, as he placed his hand on her soft cheek, their lips meeting together once more.  Marley meant to pull back, but Jake’s mouth opened, his tongue lightly teasing her lips, and her mouth opened, allowing the kiss to deepen as Jake’s wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing his body closely  against her.  Jake’s hand wandered under her shirt, and Marley gave in to the amazing sensation of his fingertips as he lifted her shirt over her head.  His lips instantly moved to her neck, and began moving down the now exposed skin.

Marley felt herself tremble, as his hands and lips explored each inch  of her upper body.  She was nervous, but she shut her mind off, giving in to the feel of the boy against her on the floor in the studio. She felt her inhibitions leave as his lips continued to pepper kisses  down her body.

The heavenly smell wafting down the stairwell into the basement could only mean one thing.  Someone was baking.  And there was only one person that Blaine knew in the house that could bake something that smelled so amazing.

He bounded up the stairs, two at a time, taking the aroma in as he reached the top step.  He opened the door, and stopped immediately to see Kurt bending over to pull a large cookie sheet out of the oven.  Oh, that gorgeous, perfect ass.   He stood frozen, as images from the photos raced through his mind.   Blaine, he may be taken , he reminded himself as he took in the other sites around the kitchen.  There were several cookie sheets, filled with every cookie imaginable, covering every inch of counter space in the kitchen.  

“I knew that was you in here before I even got up the stairs,” Blaine smiled timidly.  “Kurt, I…”

“I’m not seeing Elliott,” Kurt blurted, rushing into Blaine’s arms.  “I swear.  The kiss, it was a way to get this guy to leave me alone.  Karofsky.”

“The bully you were telling me about before?”

“Yeah.  He was there when Elliott and I went out.  It wasn’t a date.  Sugar and Unique were there too.  We were celebrating the makeovers, you know.  Elliott and I sang together, and afterwards, Karofsky grabbed me and tried to dance with me.  Elliott pretended to be my boyfriend to get him to leave me alone.  He didn’t know who it was.”

“I’m sorry.  You don’t really have to explain to me, although you can talk to me about anything, anytime.  Elliott is your friend, and I’m glad he was there to help you the other night.  I overreacted.  I got jealous.”

“Jealous?  Why?”

“He’s a good guy, and he’s a good friend to you, and I guess, I just thought, maybe that he, that you and him, were maybe becoming more than just friends.  I mean, the way he flirts with you, I guess I just thought that…”

“Blaine, he flirts with everybody, including you, even Sebastian.”

“Not as much as he does with you, and yeah, I just thought that maybe he was going to replace me.”

Kurt cocked his head to the side curiously.  “How do you mean?”

Blaine paused, choosing his words carefully.   He couldn't mess this up.   “As friends, I guess.  I mean, I don’t get to see you much at all anymore, and I miss you, ok.  Your friendship is special to me, and I just don’t want to lose you,” Blaine admitted.  

“Hey, you could never lose me,” Kurt promised, enveloping him in a hug. “I’ll always be your friend, Blaine.  It’s like you and Sam.  He’s a great guy too, and I’m glad that he was here for you when I left.  It put my mind at ease,” Kurt smiled.   “Blaine, thank you.”

“For what?” Blaine asked, a look of pure confusion spreading across his face.

“For your friendship.  I missed you,” Kurt admitted, biting his bottom lip a little.

“I missed you too.” Blaine said, still holding tightly to the boy that he realized he was falling for more and more each moment they were together.   He finally pulled away, closing his eyes and taking in the heavenly aroma.  “Kurt, those smell fantastic!  But are baking for the entire crew?” he chuckled.  “I mean, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen this many cookies at once, except when my mother organizes a bake sale.  Why so many?”

“I’m a stress baker, but I have to admit that I wanted to make your favorite.  It occurred to me that you never told me what it was, so I had to guess.”  

“Honestly, I usually don’t really eat a lot of sweets. But, I’ll try them, a little bit of each one, you know just for the sake of knowing what my favorite is,” he smiled.

“Well, ok.  I guess I can let you have a little piece of each one, then,” the brunette flirted. “These are my turtle cookies.  They are my favorite, of the ones with chocolate anyway,” Kurt said, holding one up to Blaine.  

Blaine graciously took the cookie, immediately bringing it to his lips and taking a bite.  “Oh my gosh, Kurt.  These are exquisite!  You said these are all for me, right?”

“Blaine!  I’ve already been told twice that if I don’t share this cookies after making them smell them for three hours straight, I would be the next thing popped into the oven or cut with a meat cleaver, and that was coming from Santana and Mercedes.  I don’t think either of them were joking,” laughed Kurt, rolling his eyes playfully. “I guess I’ll allow you to have them if you share one with me.”

Suddenly, Blaine felt Kurt’s finger swipe right below his bottom lip.  “Saving it for later, Blaine,” he giggled.  Blaine motioned for Kurt to take one for himself, but he held out one toward Blaine.   Blaine responded by grabbing the cookie in his teeth, smiling playfully at Kurt.  

They were ok, or at least they would be, but now Blaine was even more confused.  As he looking directly into Kurt's beautiful eyes, Blaine’s mind rushed back to the words in the letter.  Kurt really did care about him, more than he should, he said. “I really am sorry,” Blaine apologized, moving in closer, extending his arms toward the brunette.

“I know.  Me too,” Kurt answered, allowed his body to fully collapse into Blaine’s arms, laying his head upon the shorter boy’s shoulder.  So he was jealous.   Feeling the other boy’s arms so tightly around him made him feel safe, even loved, until he pondered Blaine’s exact words.  He was jealous of their friendship. That’s all they were were.  Close friends.  Even after Blaine reacted the way he had, Kurt thought maybe it was because he thought he and Elliott were dating, and Blaine realized that he had romantic feelings for him.  

Kurt let out a sigh.  Of course he didn't.   But at least, the boy holding him cared about him.  Even if it was only friendship, Blaine cared about him, and that would have to be enough.  Besides, a relationship would just complicate things.  It was only through someone else’s indiscretions that allowed him to be back in the competition at all.  He was lucky.  He pulled back.

He perched himself on his tiptoes and placed a small kiss to the top of the other boy’s forehead and hoped he didn't see the tear sliding down his face.  

Jeff pouted, as he entered the cab.  “I could have paid for that.”

“How about you pay for the drinks at Boulevard?”  Nick suggested.  “Technically, this is a gig, so I can’t drink until we’re done, but I’ll get something afterwards,” He said, bumping shoulders with the blonde.

Jeff smiled.  “Alright.  So what kind of music do you play?

“Mostly covers.  You know, the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, but this is a gay bar, so we’re going to throw in quite a few dance numbers,” Nick answered.  

“Boulevard’s a gay club?  Will that make the band nervous?” Jeff asked.

“They’re all gay too,” Elliot admitted.  “It’s made up of several of the members of the band and back-up singers from the show.” Nick commented.

“The show let’s you play in other venues?” Jeff asked, grinning slightly, as the boys walked shoulder to shoulder.      

“I don’t think they really care as long as we show up for rehearsal and we don’t suck,” Nick chuckled.

“I’m sure you guys will be great,” Jeff grinned.  “Do you sing too?”

“Mostly back-up, but we switch, um vocals, you know,” Nick smiled tentatively.  Nick opened the door of the club and motioned for Jeff to go through.  “You first.”

“Thank you,” Jeff blushed again.  “Break a leg,”

Nick reached his hand out to the blonde.  “Wait, come with me.  I want you to meet the band.  I know you may recognize some of the faces, but I didn’t know if you knew them.”  The blonde grinned and took the other boy’s hand in his, interlacing their fingers together.  

Nick led them into the small room backstage.  “This is Dani.  She sings and plays guitar.  Spenser  is our drummer, and his partner, Allistar, plays the bass.”  Jeff politely shook hands with the band mates.    “And this is our lead singer and pianist, Elliot.” Nick said, introducing the two boys.  Jeff extended his hand, which Elliott shook politely.    “Jeff, would you mind to hang out here for a minute with the band?.  I need to make sure the stage is set up with enough mics and stuff and get my music ready.  Can I order you a drink?”

Jeff nodded.  “A rum and coke, please,” Jeff answered, as Nick smiled and let the room.  

“Hey, you work on Duets , right?” Elliott asked, recognizing Jeff.  

“Yeah, I’m a dance instructor.  Jeff,” he said, extending his hand.  “You’re a stylist?  I heard what happened to Sebastian’s hair.  That was you, right?” the blonde chuckled.

“Yeah, I guess I was a part of the conspiracy, although I wasn’t the mastermind.  So, you and Nick?” Elliott asked, winking.

“Well, we just met, but I think he seems sweet.   We had a great time at dinner,” Jeff gushed.  “This is our first date, I think.”

“You think?”

“Well, he said it was, but he seems really nervous.”

“I think he just likes you a lot.  He couldn’t quit mentioning you at rehearsal the other day.”

“Really?” Jeff blushed.

“Yeah, he kept wanting to rehearse dance numbers so he could get his hot date out there to shake his ‘sexy ass’ for him.   We might have worked something out, you know, just to humor him,” Elliott chuckled.  

Jeff turned several shades of red, covering his face with his hands.  He cleared his throat and changed the subject.  “So, what about you?  Do you have a guy in the audience?” Jeff questioned.

“Nope, although there’s a guy I have my eye on?” Elliott smiled.

“It’s not Nick, is it?” Jeff looked a little worried.  “Because I don’t know if I can compete with you?”

“Uh no, Nick’s not really my type, and he’s really into you.  I respect that.  I don’t hit on another guy’s man, although you’re a cutie.” he smiled.

“So, does he work on Duets ?  There’s several guys there to choose from, I think.” Jeff commented.  “There are several gay men on the show.  I’m kinda surprised by that.”

“Well, it’s an artsy kind of show.  I think you find quite a few gay artists.  Singers, dancers, performers,” Elliott responded.  

“So, which one captured your attention?” Jeff questioned.  

“It doesn’t matter.  He’s off limits,” Elliott answered.

“Oh, so it’s a contestant?” Jeff chuckled.  “Man, I think people on the show hate that ‘no dating contestants’ rule.

“Yeah, I have to say I’m kinda jealous that you and Nick can go on a date,” He smiled.    “It’s fine, though.  I don’t really know him that well.  He’s got his eye on another guy anyway.”  

Nick strolled back in the room and handed Jeff his drink.  “Hey, we’re going to go on in a few minutes.  I got a table for you out front.”

“Thank you,” Jeff commented.  “Well, break a leg, guys.”

Jeff was really impressed.  They were really good.  He alternated between dancing, singing along, and listening attentively as the band played through their set.  On the final number, Nick stepped up to the mic.  “We’ve got one more song for you.  We wanted to leave you with something you could dance to.  

Nick:

Oooh

His eyes, his eyes make the stars look like they’re not shining

His hair, his hair falls perfectly without him trying

He’s so beautiful and I tell him everyday

Jeff smiled, and he remembered what Elliott said about wanting Jeff to get up and dance, so he did.  He danced to impress, moving his hips and shaking his ass, never taking his eyes off the handsome guitarist that was singing to him.  He tried to suppress the grin that was spreading across his face as the brunette sang to him.  More than once, he had to remind his  body to dance, but he was failing miserably.  He couldn't help but watch the brunette play and sing passionately to him as if he was the only person in the room.  

Nick (Elliot & Dani):

When I see your face (When I see your face)

There’s not a thing that I would change

‘Cause you’re amazing (You’re amazing)

Just the way you are

Yeaah.

“Thanks everybody.  You’ve been awesome,” Nick said to the crowd, but looking only at Jeff.  Nick started to help the band gather up their equipment, but Elliott told him to attend to his date.   Nick didn’t argue.  He rushed off the stage to join Jeff, who was still swaying on the dance floor, as a DJ played a dance track.  “Well, how did you like the band?”

“You guys were awesome.  Can we hang out awhile, or  do you need to go?  I know it's getting late?” Jeff asked, still swaying to the music.  

“Well, we can go if you need to, but I don’t mind to stay awhile.  I mean, if you want to,” Nick said shyly.

“I want to stay for a little while so my sexy date can join in on a dance,” Jeff flirted.

“Well, if you want me too, but I won’t look as good as you do out here.  Dancing next to you, I might look like an idiot,” Nick pouted.

“There’s no way you could look like an idiot.  You’re gorgeous,” Jeff said, dropping his head shyly, his cheeks turning a dark shade of pink. He cleared his throat in an attempt to calm his nerves.  “Besides, I’m a dance teacher.  I’m sure I could show you some moves.” “Are you saying something’s wrong with my moves?” Nick joked.  

“I don’t know.  I haven’t seen them yet, except the wild man sway you had going with the guitar,” Jeff joked.

“Oh trust me, blondie.  You aren’t the only guy with some serious moves.” Nick flirted back.  

“Yeah, and where are you hiding them, then,” Elliott chuckled.    “Although right now, you guys are both just kinda standing there while Gaga is playing, which is just  scandalous.  Come on, Nick.  Dance with this sexy man, or I just might have to,” he teased, moving beside Jeff, facing Jeff sideways, his hand on Jeff’s other hip.  

Nick started moving to the music, watching  Elliott move in closer to Jeff.  Nick in turn moved in closer as well, his hands finding Jeff’s hips and pressing his body closer to Jeff’s, the three boys now dancing together with the music.  Elliott shifted so that his body was now directly behind Jeff’s, his groin dangerously close to Jeff’s ass.  

“Hey, that’s my date,” Nick fussed, quickly moving in close to Jeff, face to face, and pressing his body closer to him. Nick’s face grew hot with jealousy mixed with a side of arousal, as he moved his left hand from Jeff’s hip to his ass, now creating a barrier between Elliott’s crotch and his date’s ass.

Elliott caught the look in Nick’s eye and he backed away, allowing the usually shy brunette to align his hips to the blonde’s as their bodies continued to dance to the music, one song fading into the next.’

“I love this song,” Nick shouted, pressing his body even closer into Jeff’s.  Jeff started to reply, but then a moan escaped his lips as Nick thrust his hips against Jeff’s groin, the friction making him aroused.  Nick responded immediately by leaning in and kissing Jeff on the lips, slowly at first, then opening his mouth.  Jeff happily slipped his tongue inside the slightly shorter boy’s mouth as they continued to move their hips together,

Elliott finished the song, dancing with a shorter, stocky man as he watched the other two boys get lost in the music and each other.  Afterwards,, he joined Dani at the table for a drink.  

“Damn, I saw that El,” Dani smiled.

“What?” Elliott pretended to be offended.

“I swear, you are the biggest flirt!” she accused jokingly.  

“Hey, you saw it.  Nick was never gonna make a move, and that boy has one sexy ass.”

“He does have a sexy ass.”  Dani agreed.    “Nick found him a hot one this time.  They look really good together.”

“They do,” Elliott said as he watched the two boys, their bodies moving fluidly together as Nick’s lips kissed Jeff’s neck.   “Jeff seems really nice.  Nick is really taken with him.  You saw the way he never took his eyes off of him while he was on stage.  I never heard him mess up on stage so much.”

“Well, can you blame him?  A hot sexy man was staring at him like he wanted to drag him off the stage and into a closet,” Dani laughed.  

Elliott and Dani watched the two men dance, their lean bodies fitting fluidly together as one song faded into the next.  The two bandmates finished their drinks and talked about their next gig, their eyes occasionally zoning in on the two boys again, who seemed to have forgotten that anyone else was in the room, or even on the same planet.

After gulping down the last of his drink, Elliott stood up.   “Well, I hope that Jeff sticks around.  They’re perfect for each other,” Elliott commented.

“Well, um, it’s a little late for that,” Dani commented.

“What, why?” Elliott asked, looking around for the two boys.

“Because it looks like they decided to take the show somewhere else,” Dani laughed as she pointed to Nick, who was leading Jeff quickly for the door.   Nick stopped suddenly, causing Jeff’s body to collide against his, and Jeff used the opportunity to crash his lips back into Nick’s, one arm snaking around Nick’s waist, and the other firmly in the brunette’s hair.  

“Nick, Nicky,” Jeff moaned.  “Hey, not here, babe.”

“My place isn't that far away.  You wanna come over?” Nick suggested, his other arm still wrapped around Jeff’s waist, pulling him in to kiss his neck once more.

The blonde’s lashes fluttered.  “Yes, I do,” Jeff blurted lustfully.  “Hey, but we probably shouldn’t,” he answered stepping out of the club and into the cool, crisp air,

“Yeah, you’re right,” Nick agreed, but his body betrayed him.  His arms were still wrapped around the other boy, and the bulge in his pants said that he didn’t want to say goodnight anytime soon.  “This is our first date, and I don’t want you to think this is how I usually behave on first dates,” he said, hailing a cab.  “How about we kiss goodnight here, and agree to go out again soon,” Nick suggested disappointedly.

Jeff’s bottom lip protruded out in a sad little pout.  “If we must,” he sighed.

“You need to tuck that lip back in there,” Nick laughed.

“Or what?” Jeff teased back.

Nick ran his tongue over the pouted lip, causing Jeff to eagerly slam his body against Nick’s as he opened his mouth,  granting entrance to the wet tongue begging for access.  Nick pushed his body against Jeff’s, kissing his lips hungrily as Jeff’s back pressed against the passenger door of a cab.   The cabbie honked his horn.  

“Hey, that was playing dirty!” Nick accused playfully.

“I haven’t begun to play dirty, yet,” Jeff winked.  Nick felt Jeff’s arousal as the blonde leaned in once again, stealing one more kiss before Nick pulled away.  “Seriously, you are making it hard to be a gentleman.”

“Actually, it just looks like I’m just making it hard for you in general,” Jeff smirked.  “And in that situation, I tend to like it when it isn’t so gentle.”

“Damn, Jeff, I’m trying to do the right thing here.  I really like you, and I don’t want you to think that I just want to sleep with you.  I’m not looking to just hook up, ok.”

Jeff smiled.  “I know, but I don’t want you to go yet.”

Nick chuckled.  “Hey, we work together,  I promise we will see each other soon.  I have another gig here tomorrow.   Same time as tonight.  And we could do dinner again, or something else if you prefer.”

“Yeah, ok.  I’d like that,”  Jeff commented, quickly kissing Nick’s cheek, only to have Nick turn toward him so their lips met once more.   “Tomorrow night soon enough for you, babe?” Jeff asked slyly as he slid into the taxi cab’s back seat.  

“No, but it will have to do.  Text me when you get home, beautiful,” Nick said, leaning down to kiss Jeff once more.

“I will.  See you tomorrow,” Jeff said sadly, raising his head up to place another small kiss to the other boy’s lips.

Nick glanced at his watch and grinned.  It was ten after midnight.  “It is tomorrow,” Nick chuckled, launching his arms around the blonde and knocking him on his back on the vinyl seat.  

“Bout time you got in the car.  I was about to leave your asses!” the cabbie snarked.  “Where to?” he asked.

“It’s up to him,” Nick said, pointing at the blonde.  He turned back to face Jeff.  “I will go anywhere you want if you don’t want to part yet, or I will ride with you to your place to say goodnight, or he can drop me off first.  You just tell me what you want,” he said, and then returned to peppering gentle kisses along Jeff’s neck.

“You said you live close?” Jeff gasped, as the brunette’s lips nibbled as far as his collared shirt would let him go.  “I don’t want to go home yet,” Jeff moaned as he fumbled with the top buttons of his shirt so that Nick could continue to explore his body with his lips.

“North Adams St. over by Glendale Community College,” the brunette answered quickly, reattaching his lips to the other boy’s neck, moving his lips down toward his collarbone now that he had access to the previously unexposed skin.  Nick repositioned himself so that he was pressed as tightly against the blonde as the seatbelt would allow.   His hands firmly cupped Jeff’s ass, as Jeff moved one hand into Nick’s hair, and the other was desperately untucking Nick’s shirt from his waist so that his hands could caress the skin underneath.      

“Hey, none of that, or you’ll be out on your asses,” the cabbie threatened.  “I just had this car cleaned.  It’s only 15 minutes away.”

Jeff pulled back, sighing deeply at the loss of Nick’s lips on his body.  “We need to cool down.  At least until we get to my place because that guy looks like he has no problem kicking us to the curb.”

Nick whined at the loss of contact with the gorgeous blonde.  “Fine.  Are you sure you want to do this.  Elliott’s my roommate, but I can text him to let him know that you are coming over.”

“I think he might already suspect something,” Jeff said swatting at the brunette’s thigh.  

“Hey, I meant it when I said we don’t have to do anything.   Just because we’re going to my place doesn’t mean I expect sex,” Nick said genuinely.

“Bummer,” Jeff said playfully.  “Because I’m not completely opposed to it being on the table,” the blonde said, pulling Nick in close to him by the collar, kissing on his neck.

“Sex on the table,” Nick groaned. “Damn, you are just too sexy for your own good.  But hey,” he said, pulling back.  “I mean it.  Tonight, you tell me what you want.  If you want to snuggle on the couch and eat popcorn and watch bad cable tv, I’m in.  If you want to jam out to music, I’m in.  If you want to lie in bed, cuddle,  and tell me more about you, that’s ok.  As long as I’m with you,” Nick said sweetly.

“And if I want to do all of that, and add a makeout session,” Jeff suggested.

“I’m in,” the brunette said, lunging in toward Jeff once more, crashing their lips together.

“What am I doing in here?” Santana asked.

“I was just watching some footage for the show, and I was reviewing the tapes.  There’s some pretty steamy stuff on here.” Sue smirked.  “Do you wanna see, Santana?”

“No, I really don’t,” Santana commented.

“Actually, I think you do, Sue said, turning the screen towards the Latina so that she could see what Sue was seeing, her and Brittany laying in bed together.  

“So what!  She had a nightmare, and I was comforting her?”

“Naked?” Sue asked.  “Wow!  Don’t ever comfort me if I have a nightmare.  Do you really think I’m that stupid?”

“Do you want me to answer that?” Santana asked sarcastically.

“Do you want me to unpause the video and prove to you that you are full of it, Jugs the Clown?”

“How the Hell did you even get a video.  This was our room, or it was before we had to change the room arrangement,” Santana said slowly.  “That was your doing, wasn’t it?”

“Why, I’m hurt!   Do you really think I care that you are hooking up with Tweedle Dumb?   I wish I wouldn’t have seen everything.  My retinas are still burning.  I mean, between you and Weasel Face, I know a lot more about gay sex than I ever wanted to know.”

“I knew it.  I knew that he had some kind of deal with you or something.  Why else would he still be here?  You’re using him,” Santana accused.

“Very insightful, Ms. Ho-pez.   The way I may have to use you.  To get information.”

“What makes you think I'd help you?”  Santana asked smugly.

“Oh Sandbags, I'm hurt that you wouldn't want to give me a hand.   Well, how about Brittany then.  Maybe you want to help her?”

“What about her?”

“You see, I got this call from MIT, and it seems their star student is missing.  They said one of our contestants is a spitting image, wouldn't you agree,” she asked, thrusting a flyer in her face.  “Poor professors miss their star pupil.   I feel I should do my civic duty and give them a call.”

“You can't do that.  Brittany is terrified of going back.”

“ I can and I will, unless…”

“Unless, what?”

“Unless you agree to help me.   I need eyes and ears to watch my eyes and ears, so they aren't double crossing me, especially Weasel face.  

“What? Who all is in on this?  You have Kitty too, I suspect.  Why else would she still be there?”

“Insightful, Sandbags,” Sue chuckled.  “Her and a few others.  And you, right?”

Santana sighed.  “Just leave Brittany out of this.  And I want our room back.”

“Done,” Sue smiled.  

[cutieodonoghue]

we just wanna figure out l-i-f-e

summary: rockstar au mixed with best friends get pregnant

word count: ~2500

a/n: I wrote this as a challenge to myself to write something because I’ve been having the hardest time lately, so weeee [posting only because @swans-and-pirates insists that I do :)]

“How are you?” he whispers into the phone, as if they’re lying side-by-side in this bed that’s far too cold.

Emma curls her legs up toward her chest. If she closes her eyes, it’s almost like he’s right here with her. So she keeps them closed and doesn’t dare open them.

“Busy,” Emma replies. “Kinda miss you, Jones.”

“Kind of?” he asks as if he’s completely scandalized. “Bloody hell, Swan, I miss you a hell of a lot more than kind of.”

Emma giggles into her hand and licks her lips. “Maybe a little more than that.”

Her heart aches as she takes a deep breath.

“Well, I’ll be there in two more sleeps,” Killian says softly.

“Two?”

“Mm,” Killian hums. He’s quiet. She listens to his breaths, soft and even.

Emma traces a circle into her bed with her toes. “You’re my best friend.”

“Aye,” he replies in a sleepy murmur. “I know.” She can hear his lopsided grin in the tone of his voice and it makes her heart skip a beat as her stomach flips. “You’re my best friend too.”

“Yeah,” Emma whispers, smiling softly. “I know.”

She doesn’t dare to open her eyes because she can see his face as clear as if he were here with her. She can almost feel his warmth.

“Liam says I’m overdramatic,” Killian says. “Thinks I should find a new best friend.”

Emma scoffs. “Why? Because I’m not good for you?”

“No, because you’re perfect for me, more like,” Killian says quickly.

It settles in the air between them like the unspoken feelings that come over them when they’re together- the lingering touches and glances, the words that always feel like they mean something more.

Emma burrows deeper into her bed and chills run down her arms.

“Killian?”

“Hm?”

She can tell he’s getting tired- it’s late where he is, much later than it is where she is now.

“I can’t wait to see you.”

He chuckles warmly. “I can’t wait to see you either.”

“Two sleeps.”

“Two sleeps.”

///

Killian: one more sleep

Emma: one more sleep

///

The moment she sees him, he’s coming down a hallway with a bunch of other travelers. He has a bag draped over his shoulder and he looks so much better than she could’ve remembered.

He has a beard now- man is she going to love teasing him about it- and he has a leather jacket on. It’s his M.O. She could spot him in a crowd of a thousand people- wearing that dumb leather jacket she had the audacity to buy him one year for Christmas before he ever became a platinum selling musician.

Emma grins when she sets her gaze on him. She’s standing with Mary Margaret, who is currently eight months pregnant, and when she spies her husband David walking alongside Killian, her smile is almost as wide as Emma’s.

“Go,” Mary Margaret insists on a laugh when Emma nervously meets her eyes.

Emma hesitates before she takes off running. She doesn’t think Killian sees her until she gets a few feet away from him. His smile splits his face in two and he laughs even before she collides with him.

Her legs go around his hips and she digs her fingers into his hair as she clings to him.

“Oh my God, you’re here,” Emma murmurs into his ear. “You’re here.”

Killian laughs as he squeezes her tight. “Bloody hell, Swan. Gods, I’ve missed you so much.”

Emma breathes him in and shuts her eyes before allowing her legs to fall back to the ground. She laughs softly and their foreheads touch as their eyes meet again.

“Don’t leave again,” she says, even though she knows it’s something that can’t be helped.

Killian stares at her like he never has had the opportunity before. “Come with me next time.”

Her heart skips a beat. She doesn’t have time to think about it, because Liam’s voice breaks them apart.

“Well, here you are, Emma,”

“Hey, Liam.” Emma smiles. She’s lingering by Killian’s side, her arm around his shoulders. “How was going international?”

“Bloody chaos,” Liam says. He smiles though and straightens out the hat on his head. He looks at his brother. “I’m sure you’ve got mad plans already for the week.”

“Including but not limited to at least twenty hours of lounging in front of my TV.” Emma says.

Killian and Liam both laugh happily.

“Well, I suppose it could be worse.” Liam tilts his head forward. “I’ll leave you two to it.”

As Liam walks away, Emma curls her fingers around Killian’s arm. Killian turns his head to kiss her forehead chastely.

“C’mon, we’ve got to get the luggage.”

Her heart races and she knows this thing between them is dangerous, but she holds onto his hand anyway as they walk forward.

Mary Margaret shoots her at least sixteen looks, but Emma keeps her attention on Killian as he’s explaining a story to her.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m glad I’m here too.”

///

The last night that Killian and the band are in town, they gather at a bar.

She’s tipsy before he is, but that’s not a surprise.

They don’t get drunk because Killian has a long day ahead of him and Emma has work in the morning, but they’re sufficiently giggly with alcohol buzzing in their veins.

What’s a surprise is the words that bubble out of his mouth into her ear as they’re sitting in the taxi on their way back to her place.

“I love you, Emma Swan.”

Emma stares at him and she almost laughs, but he’s her best friend. He’s her best friend and she’s not going to see him for another few months.

So instead of thinking, Emma does.

“I love you too.” Emma whispers into his ear.

Killian’s eyes brighten and he smiles. “Well, that’s good.”

They giggle into their first kiss. They sigh into their second. Groan into their third.

///

The sun isn’t out to blind her when she opens her eyes to Killian’s alarm. It’s four in the morning and they were definitely out too long for this.

They both groan.

Emma falls back asleep despite her interest in being awake to say goodbye.

///

“So…” Killian’s voice is thick with tiredness and stress as it comes through her phone speaker.

Emma closes her eyes. She’s wrapped in one of the shirts she found that he’d left behind and it’s almost like he’s here.

“We did some things,” Emma whispers.

Killian sighs. “We did some things.”

She licks her lips and her heart races. “I liked those things.”

Killian is quiet for a second. “I did too.”

She can practically see the red of his cheeks and ears as he smiles wryly. Emma giggles and curls her legs toward her chest.

“Emma, I’m sorry I didn’t try to stay and talk with you in the morning. That was awful of me. You must have-”

“No, it’s fine,” Emma promises. “You have this crazy tour schedule and I was exhausted. Obviously from a thoroughly exhausting activity.”

Killian snorts. “Emma.”

“Killian, I love that you want to be a gentleman, but you’re a part of a huge band and I’m just... here, waiting for you to come back.”

“Shouldn’t be like this,” Killian murmurs. She hears him toss onto his side. “I didn’t want it to happen like this.”

Emma furrows her brow. “What?”

“I’ve been in love with you for some time, Emma,” he whispers and it hits her like a brick. “And I didn’t intend to tell you as much and then- bloody hell, Emma, I didn’t want to be on a bus heading away from you-”

Emma laughs. She can’t help it. “Killian, it’s okay.” She pauses. “I miss you. That’s not going to get easier. But, when you come back we can pick up where we left off. In the meantime, we have our talks. Right?”

“Aye,” Killian sighs. “About that, Emma… now that we’re doing shows here-”

“You’re not going to be free until like two in the morning,” Emma finishes for him. Her belly lurches and her heart sinks.

“We can talk in the morning before you go to work.”

“I don’t want you to do that. You need rest too.”

Killian sighs heavily. “Well.”

“Well.”

///

Killian: miss you.

Emma: miss you.

///

She starts throwing up.

She buys a test.

It’s positive.

///

Killian: the show was wild tonight! I wish you were here! Miss you so much. Here’s a pic of Liam and I pre-show. We’ve got our guyliner on… know how much you love it.

///

Killian: you alright? It’s been a few days.

///

Killian: Tell me you’re not pissed with me. I’ve got no idea what I’ve done but I’m sorry for it.

///

“Emma, I just miss your voice,” he says. “Please call me. I don’t care if I’m asleep when you call or if I’m on stage in the middle of a song- just… I’ll answer. I just want to talk to you.”

Emma sighs heavily. She’s sitting on the edge of her bed listening to his call for the hundredth time. It’s three in the morning. She should be asleep. So should he.

But Emma’s awake, staring at the little black and white blob on a piece of paper with tears in her eyes.

She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but her finger hovers over his contact and she trembles as she presses the call button.

Emma brings her phone to her ear and wipes her wrist under her nose and wipes her eyes with her fingers as she breathes in deep.

It rings a few times.

“‘Ello?” his voice is slurred and it’s obvious she woke him up. “Emma?”

She sits there, listening to him with her heart racing fast. Her stomach flips and flops and she feels panic rise up in her.

She hangs up.

It’s her first mistake.

Her second is shutting off her phone when he calls the second time.

///

Mary Margaret is a good mom.

She invites Emma to come visit when little Leo is a few days old and Emma almost collapses into a puddle the second she lays eyes on the sweet newborn baby. She’s allowed to hold him and that’s when tears start to roll down her cheeks.

“Emma? Sweetie, what’s wrong?”

Emma looks at Mary Margaret and shrugs her shoulders pathetically.

“I slept with Killian,” she murmurs. “And I’m pregnant.”

Mary Margaret’s frown deepens and she wraps an arm around Emma. She presses a kiss to her temple. “It’s okay, Emma. It’s okay.”’

///

Killian: Happy birthday, Swan. I miss you. I’m endlessly sorry for whatever it is I’ve done.

///

It’s Emma’s birthday when she starts to show.

Emma hangs out with Leo and Mary Margaret and David a lot. They do almost everything together, so it’s where she goes on her birthday- to their little apartment.

Mary Margaret makes a cake. David sings and plays guitar. Leo even seems to be happy.

“Have you talked to Killian lately?” David wonders as they’re sitting in front of the television that night.

“No,” Emma sighs.

Her arms instinctively go around her middle as she turns to look at David. He frowns at her.

“Maybe you should.”

Emma shrugs. “I don’t know.”

David reaches down to take her hand. “I know he misses you. He asks about you all the time.”

///

@killianjones: Heading to LA for a show tomorrow night! Hope to see you there!

///

Emma takes a deep breath as she stands in front of room number 422. Her fingers tremble and she almost turns away, but she steadies herself instead and makes a fist to knock.

A bag is draped over her shoulder and she looks around as she waits for a reply.

When the door opens, she’s met with shock and awe. Killian stares at her as if he’s never seen her before and Emma smiles weakly.

“Hi,” she whispers. She searches his eyes and he surges forward to wrap his arms around her.

He’s so much warmer than she remembers. He sighs against her and she only holds on tighter.

“Emma, Emma, Emma,” he murmurs. “Gods, I’ve missed you- oh, God, I’ve missed you.”

When Killian pulls away, she takes a breath and reaches for his hand. “Come in. We’ve got so much to talk about- does Liam know you’re here?”

Emma doesn’t move. She shakes her head. “Killian, I…” She looks around and closes her eyes. “I’m pregnant.”

“What?” Killian asks, his face becoming serious.

Emma drags his hand over her middle, where the slight curve of her belly is. She meets his eyes after a moment of staring down at his hand against her.

“I’m pregnant,” she whispers brokenly. Emma manages a smile. “You’re gonna be a daddy.”

Killian’s breathing quickens and he surges forward to cup her face between his hands. He smiles and settles his forehead against hers as laughter comes from his belly.

“Bloody hell,” he laughs. “Emma, this is incredible.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

///

He kisses her stomach and presses his ear over her bellybutton while they lie on his hotel bed. Her fingers go into his hair and she can’t help but smile while she listens to him talk softly to her middle.

“We’re going to have to think of a name,” Killian says excitedly. He draws a line over her belly. “How far along are you? Have you had much morning sickness? Where are we going to live?”

Emma laughs and Killian draws himself up toward her. He kisses her long and sweet before bumping noses with her.

“Bloody hell, I love you.”

Emma laughs again softly. She presses her hand against his scruffy cheek. “I love you too.”

Killian settles down beside her but touches her belly as soon as he can. It makes her smile as she stares at him.

“I’m almost four months,” Emma tells him. “And I did have morning sickness, but not a lot lately.” She slides a leg between his. “And I think we’re going to have to talk about the topic of us before we decide that.”

“Hm,” Killian kisses her again. “I think I’d like to spend the rest of my days tangled up in blankets watching our television shows.”

Emma laughs. “What about the baby?”

“The baby can watch the television too, Swan.” Emma gives him a look and he laughs sweetly. “Kidding, darling.”

Emma stares at him and he stares right back for the longest time. A small smile fills his lips and he brushes her hair behind her ear lovingly.

“You’re my best friend,”

“Yeah,” Emma smiles softly. “I know.” She nuzzles his nose and settles her palm against his cheek, her thumb digging into his dimple. “You’re my best friend too.”

Killian takes a heavy breath and her eyes fall shut. “Marry me.”

Emma’s smile spreads to her eyes and she whispers, “Okay.” 

#cs ff #cs au #my writing #angst #idk this is kinda cute #asjfklasjfdsf #we just wanna figure out

[i-love-me-a-lotta-whump]

Once Upon a Time Fanfiction: “My What?!” (Part 1) {DSV}

- - Location: Granny’s - -

“Yet another victory for the lovely Swan.” Killian said. Everybody raised their glasses. “You did it, love.”

“You did, too.” Emma replied with a large grin on her face. “Now how about we drink so much rum, we don’t remember who we are?” She giggled and grabbed him around the waist. She brought her hands up his back with a tiny kiss on the tip of his nose.

“Sounds like a bloody good plan to me.” He said as he grabbed the bottle behind the counter. He’s memorized where it is. It’s his favorite to drink with Emma after defeating a villain. It’s a tradition, at this point.

***(about an hour passes and Captain Swan is hammered)

Emma and Killian were stumbling out of Granny’s. When they finally made it to their house after Belle managed to get them into her, little pink, Mini Cooper, they fell onto the floor, laughing. They started kissing so passionately, Belle decided it wasn’t worth sticking around. She closed the door and left.

The two gathered themselves a little bit and, by a miracle, made their way upstairs to the bed. Clothes were flying. Everything except Emma’s red leather jacket and Killian’s necklaces. The hook was gone, too.

The night was not wasted. The neighbors would have called to complain... but their neighbor is the sheriff!

***(it’s the next morning)

“I don’t believe I’ve had a hangover quite like this one, before.” Killian groaned.

“In two hundred years, you’re telling me this is the worst hangover you’ve had. Wow.” Emma laughed.

“Wow is correct, love.”

“Do you remember last night?”

“Aye. The best part. I was right.” He smiled. She rolled over and laid on top of him. Their skin was warm pressing against each other. Her hair swung around and laid on his left cheek.

“Right about what?”

“You really do like this stuff.” He looked towards the handcuffs on the right post on their headboard and then again to the left side of the headboard. She laughed as she remembered when he was hospitalized, he’d said something about that.

“I guess I do.” She rolled out of bed and went towards the bathroom.

“Where the bloody Hell do you think you’re going?”

“I have work to do. So do you. Belle told me how you’ve been helping out a lot at the library. That’s sweet, Killian.” She turned the shower on and proceeded to move the clothes into the laundry basket.

“Do you need some help with that, love?” He smiled.

“I’m already done.” She put the last piece of clothing in the hamper.

“I wasn’t talking about that.” He threw the sheets off of himself and ran into the bathroom with her. They stumbled into the shower and he pressed her against the wall, kissing her. All the while, the hot water was flowing down his flawless black hair and his exposed back.

“I may need a little bit of help.” She said in the middle of kisses.

***(Location: Police station)

“Thanks for helping me categorize this paperwork, Regina.” Emma said. She looked over to the chair in the corner of her office.

“It’s no problem. I have no mayoral stuff to do today, anyway...” She paused, realizing something. “You’ve had this sort of glow all morning.”

“I guess I have sort of a youthful glow.” She laughed.

“You sound like Captain Guyliner.” Regina’s eyes widened, then went back down. She exhaled. “Shower sex?” She asked in her monotone voice. Emma nodded yes. They continued to work with that awkward idea now hanging in the room.

There was a loud boom. Both of the women looked at each other.

“Great! We just stopped a bad guy! It literally hasn’t been a week!” Emma yelled.

They ran outside to see that Rumple’s “Mr. Gold” sign had fallen.

“The thing’s a little old.” He said. By then, Killian was running, full speed, towards Emma. 

“I’m fine, Hook.” She said before he reached her.

“Where were you, Guyliner?” Regina asked. “We could have used an extra hand in...”

“Hey.” Killian said, interrupting. “It’s still not funny.” Regina laughed and Emma did a little bit.

“He’s been helping Belle in the library.” Emma said. Regina nodded and went back inside. Killian gave his love a kiss and started walking back.

***(1 week has passed)

Another large boom. Regina and Emma looked to each other once more.

Everyone ran outside of their shops, looking around. Grumpy could be seen running down the street with Sneezy, Happy and Sleepy.

“We’re under attack!” Grumpy was screaming.

“That’s oddly familiar.” Emma groaned. No one saw anything.

“It wasn’t a false alarm.” Regina quipped.

“What?” Emma turned to her in question.

“I know what you were going to say. It was not a false alarm.”

“Fine.” Emma now sees Killian running towards her, again.

“Are you alright, love?” He asked.

“She’s fine. I’m fine, thanks for never asking.” Regina retorted.

They started scanning the town to find out where the noise came from. An old villain from the Enchanted Forest was running down the street with a gun. Emma drew hers and told him to stop. He did.

“Alright, who are you?” Emma asked.

“I am Hargrove. Lowell Hargrove.” He said. “Does that ring a bell, pretty lady?” Killian started to step forward but Emma held her arm out to prevent it. He clenched his jaw and his fist.

“Either of you know who that is?” Both Regina and Killian nodded no.

“How about you put the bloody gun down?” Killian asked not so politely.

“How about I just shoot you in the face?!” Lowell shouted.

“What’s your problem?” Emma asked.

“Remember the man that called you ‘One Handed Jones’?” He asked. Killian nodded yes, lifting his left eyebrow and chin. “The man you killed. He was my father.” Killian’s face changed to pure heartbreak.

“So you’re going to run around a town terrorizing innocent people because of what I did?” He angrily asked. He still felt bad for what he did. He just didn’t think revenge was right anymore.

“I thought it was about time you paid. This is how.” Lowell turned the gun towards Emma and shot but Regina pulled her out of the way before Killian could react.

Emma’s gun dropped to the ground with her and Regina. Killian quickly grabbed it and shot Lowell. He dropped it right after, as the shooter slowly fell.

“You okay?” Regina asked Hook. He quietly nodded, clenching his jaw.

“Aye.” He helped Emma up. She winced. “You’ve been injured.” 

“It’s just a scratch.” She insisted. “The bullet only grazed me. I’m fine; seriously.”

“Come with me to the hospital. We’ll have it seen to.” He pushed. She could see in his piercing blue eyes that he wasn’t going to let it go. So she gave in.

When they got to the hospital, her wound was sewn and bandaged. The nurse came back inside with the clipboard.

“Well, Miss Swan you are perfectly fine, aside from the bullet wound.” The nurse said. Emma looked to Killian with an I-told-you-so look on her face. She stuck her tongue out at him and he did the same back.

“See? Nothing to worry about. Purple said I’m fine.” Emma said.

“What do fairies know?” Killian asked, trying to be humorously difficult.

“I’m fine.” Emma said, not getting the joke.

“Absolutely. Now let’s do the ultrasound to make sure your baby is okay.” Nurse Purple said while she was about to walk out of the room.

“My what?” She asked. Her eyes widened.

“Her what?” Killian said at the same time Emma spoke. His eyes widened and he stood straight up.

“Your baby. You must be the father.” The nurse assumed.

“Can you give us a minute?” Emma asked, quickly speaking.

“You didn’t know? My apologies. Of course.” Nurse Purple said. She left the room. Killian walked around to be in front of Emma. He was looking at the floor. He was still a bit in shock.

“Are you okay with this?” She asked him. He smiled and looked up to her.

“Aye.” He said. “Are you, love?” She nodded yes as tears started to form in her eyes. They started to flow. Killian was now crying a river as well.

“You’re going to be a dad!” Emma shouted to him. He nodded and hugged her. She was standing now, with her nose in the crook of his neck.

Nurse Purple came back around and they did the ultrasound.

“Looks like the baby is going to be okay. You should start on names.” She said.

“If it’s a girl... maybe Laurel Eva Jones-Swan?” Emma asked. Killian nodded with a smile. He liked that name.

“If it’s a boy... August Robin Jones-Swan?” Killian asked. Emma held his hand and smiled. He assumed that was a yes. It was.

“We have to tell my parents and Henry first.” Emma said. Killian would have told one of the dwarves first if she’d asked for it. But he just couldn’t help but think... “I know.”

“What?” He asked. The nurse put her equipment up and left them to speak alone once more.

“You wish Liam could see this.” She said. He nodded as a single tear rolled down his cheek. She jumped up and hugged him.

“I love you so much.” Killian said, voice shaking.

“I love you, too.” She said with a shaky voice as well. Both started to cry, again, thinking about the pure, utter joy that the day has brought them.

---- Part 1 Concluded

I’m SUPER busy right now so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get part 2 out. But I appreciate patience. I promise part 2 will have some emotional and physical whump. I appreciate feedback.

#killian jones #daddy killian #worried killian #captain swan #emma swan #ouat #my fiction #my writing #my fic #my fanfic

[geekade]

Before Their Time, Gargoyles

One thousand years ago, superstition and the sword ruled. It was a time of darkness. It was a world of fear. It was the age of gargoyles. Stone by day, warriors by night. We were betrayed by the humans we had sworn to protect, frozen in stone by a magic spell for a thousand years. Now, here in Manhattan, the spell is broken, and we live again! We are defenders of the night. We are GARGOYLES!

So begins Gargoyles, some of the best animation on television in 1994. I loved this show so much that when it finally came out on DVD in 2013 I was afraid to revisit it. After all, I remembered loving She-Ra: Princess of Power, jumped at the chance to rewatch it on Hulu, and regretted it almost immediately. Childhood is treacherous that way. 

I’m happy to report that Gargoyles still merits a spot alongside Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men as a well-executed and rewatchable 90’s classic. In addition to complex characters and plot arcs, the series boasts terrific animation (including some killer fight sequences) and fabulous voice talent (an assortment of Star Trek alumni make appearances of varying duration). Gargoyles also represented my first encounter with a starring woman of color, more than one fully developed female character, and sympathetic villains. Of course, Disney cancelled it after only two seasons; ABC ran a third season called The Goliath Chronicles, but…let’s just say there’s a reason it’s not out on DVD.

The series premiered in 1994 as part of the Disney’s syndicated after-school cartoon block. It shared several writers and directors with Batman, including Michael Reaves, Brynne Chandler Reaves, and Frank Paur, and they brought a similarly brooding sensibility to Gargoyles. Like most of the short-lived shows I love, Gargoyles opened strong and just got better and better until its untimely demise. The pilot clocks in at five episodes, cutting between the gargoyles’ history in 994 AD and their reawakening in 1994. Considering it aired before DVR was even a glimmer in some startup’s eye, and that it couldn’t count on the character recognition of comics-based shows like Batman or X-Men, a five-episode pilot was pretty damn ambitious. As if that wasn’t daring (or dark) enough, Gargoyles opens with a genocide; before the show even gets going, its titular characters face a breach of trust that exterminates nearly their entire clan. The remaining gargoyles – Goliath (Keith David), Hudson (Ed Asner), Brooklyn (Jeff Bennett), Broadway (Bill Fagerbakke), and Lexington (Thom Adcox-Hernandez), along with watchdog Bronx (Frank Welker) awaken in a world ten centuries and an ocean removed from the one they knew. 

Although the surviving clan from Goliath all the way down to Bronx get rich characterizations, histories, and performances, I was always captivated by three of the supporting characters, two of them villains. My favorite character was Elisa Maza (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), the NYPD detective who discovers the gargoyles while investigating a disturbance at Xanatos’ skyscraper. She guides the clan through the new world and protects them from discovery. Perceptive, resourceful, and trained in hand-to-hand combat, Elisa was the first major animated character I ever saw who looked remotely like me and the first heroine who did the rescuing. 

The first person she saves our heroes from is David Xanatos. Jonathan Frakes voices him with an oily suavity that channels Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark but is more grounded, amoral, and dangerous than either of them. Xanatos understands that has earned a kind of medieval debt-loyalty for relocating and reawakening the gargoyles, and he wastes no time exploiting this for his own ends. When he can no longer use Goliath’s clan, he develops technology to replicate their abilities, forcing them to face off against a series of robots, cyborgs, and clones. His brand of villainy – elegant, elaborate, and nearly unbeatable – lends its name to the Xanatos Gambit. 

Like I said, Tony Stark minus the alcoholism and moral compass. Riker wishes he was this cool. Xanatos reunites the clan with another member they’d believed lost in the sack of their castle: Goliath’s lieutenant and mate, Demona (Marina Sirtis). Demona possesses a Machiavellian single-mindedness; she resorts to magic, treachery, and brute force in the pursuit of her goal to exterminate humanity. Much like Magneto, she’s convinced that humans will never coexist peacefully with gargoyles, and once you’ve witnessed the distrust and cruelty that precede the destruction of her brethren, this logic almost makes sense. She’s gotten this far on a series of Faustian bargains and a heady cocktail of rage, survivor’s guilt, cognitive dissonance, and loneliness, but her conviction masks a longing for everything that might have been – for her, for Goliath, and for their lost clan. An object lesson in the dangers of revenge, Demona is no less tragic for being irredeemable.

Goliath, Elisa, and the clan battle Demona, Xanatos, and a series of other adversaries (not all of them dispatched by Xanatos) in sequences that showcase thoughtful character design. I love good fight choreography, and the hand-to-hand in Gargoyles never ceases to amaze me. The airborne combat sequences are particularly mesmerizing, combining dogfighting and midair grappling, but the earthbound stuff is no slouch either. Most kids probably wouldn’t have noticed if the gargoyles fought like large humans, but the animators make good use of their talons, tails, and wings, especially all the ways these things change the gargoyles’ relationship to gravity. 

While the first season (13 episodes) follows the clan’s efforts to adjust to modern Manhattan, the second season (52 episodes) takes Goliath, Elisa, and Bronx on a “World Tour” which starts with a visit to the enchanted isle of Avalon. Referencing anything that happens after Avalon would be spoiling some neat surprises, but I can tell you that the series travels through a collection of places, times, and mythologies that would make Neil Gaiman blush. As you might have guessed from the introduction of Avalon, these episodes reference Arthurian legend and Shakespeare (mainly Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream) liberally, and I have to tip my hat to anybody who can make Oberon and Titania’s marriage make sense.  Gargoyles united many of the elements that made Batman and X-Men so compelling, especially the darkness of the former and the xenophobia of the latter. But the show grew to more than the sum of its parts, its heroes and villains alike the products of complex and often surprising histories. If you loved it then, know that you can revisit it now without fear of disappointment. And if you’ve just learned about it here, know that Gargoyles is rendered beautifully, visually and auditorily. I defy you not to be seduced.

HOW TO WATCH: Seasons 1 and 2 are available on DVD. Season 2 is divided into two parts. All 3 DVDs are available on Amazon.

MUST WATCH: “Reawakening,” the final episode of the first season, features Michael Dorn as a resurrected gargoyle inhabited by three different souls. “Bushido,” the Japan episode of the World Tour, is a touching reintroduction of the trust between humans and gargoyles.

FAVORITE LINES: “Lot to go through for a piece of lawn sculpture.” “What are you doing here?” “Making sure you weren’t being ambushed.” “Man, you guys are paranoid even for New York.” “Someone had to make sure those comic book rejects didn’t find you.” “And they say the Middle Ages were barbaric.” “Flabby as I am now, I probably wouldn’t last a second in a Central American war.”

PAIR WITH: Jalapeños

LISTEN FOR: Everyone, but especially for anyone who ever starred in a Star Trek show. You already know about Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, but Michael Dorn, Brent Spiner, Kate Mulgrew, Nichelle Nichols, Avery Brooks, LeVar Burton, and Colm Meaney all make appearances. Notable non-Star Trek voices include Clancy Brown, John Rhys-Davies, Sheena Easton, Tim Curry, Diedrich Bader, Tony Shalhoub, Charles Shaughnessy, and Roddy McDowall. Seriously, everybody was on this show.

ODDS & ENDS: The magic spells sprinkled throughout the show are actually quasi-functional Latin. They are collected and translated here. 

Gargoyles’ characters and plots mostly hold up today, but much of the first season’s storyline is only possible without cameraphones. Every time the gargoyles wind up in a populated area I find myself waiting for the cut to the YouTube footage. 

Every gargoyle has a battle cry, equal parts growl, roar, and avian scream, which is as awesome and terrifying as it sounds. 

It would have been more in character for Elisa to wear her hair short or tied back, but flowing Disney princess locks seem a small price to pay for being able to take somebody out even when you’re on crutches.

In closeup shots Xanatos appears to be rocking some serious guyliner; somehow this seems appropriate for a character voiced by Jonathan Frakes. 

AFTERWARDS: The Goliath Chronicles are not available on DVD, and I strongly advise you to accept this as a sign from the TV gods, because ABC took over the show with an entirely different writing and animation staff, and it shows. Disney did approve two comic book runs, one by Slave Labor Graphics (SLG) and the other by Marvel. Both are out of print and I can’t vouch for either, but I do know that Greg Weisman, one of the show’s creators, worked on the SLG run, and that lots of fans consider it the canonical third season. 

#TV #articles

[i-love-me-a-lotta-whump]

Once Upon a Time Fanfiction: (Part 3 of “My What?!”) “Captain Swan”  {L}

Short recap of the last 2 parts: Sex, gun, pregnancy, birth, proposal and overall, happiness.

Synopsis of this part... to put it crudely: It’s about damn time.

***(Location: Captain Swan household)

“Oh no. You’re not supposed to see the bride before the wedding starts. It’s a superstition that even I agree with.” Regina said to Killian. He was all dressed up in his pure black tux with the one pink flower, from Camelot, in his pocket. His tie was a really dark navy blue. His guyliner was perfect. Belle had done it earlier that morning.

“I forgot something. I’ll be in and out before you can say Jolly Roger.” Killian said.

“What is it? I’ll get it.” Regina crossed her arms.

“I need my handkerchief.” He was going to try to walk past her. He heard a poof. There it was. The dark green handkerchief that he needed. It was in his pocket, already, folded like the other groomsmen’s. It was so that it would look like the flower’s leaves.

“Now get out of here before you accidentally see her.” Regina grabbed him by the shoulders, gave him a turn and a slight push, then headed into the house.

“What was that?” Emma asked. Regina had been standing outside all day and had only come in to grab a drink. She looked Emma up and down and stopped in her tracks. “What?”

“I didn’t think that dress would work, but you look amazing.” Regina said as she looked her friend up and down. Her wedding dress was magnificent. It had a red leather bustier, with a ball gown-style bottom that was pure white. Her train was long but not too long. Her veil was an intricate and beautiful white lace. Her shoes were pure white heels with two light green leaf jewels on the back of each shoe with a single jeweled red rose in the middle. Her makeup had never looked that good in her life. It was nude with a crimson lip. She didn’t want too much makeup on, though, because she wanted it to symbolize being completely open to Killian. No “masks” on.

“Thank you.” Emma said. “But what was that outside?”

“Hook came over to get his handkerchief. He’s left, now, so you don’t have to worry about him seeing you.” Regina said. She sat down with the glass of green tea she had just gotten. Zelena’s been shoving it down her throat and she’s actually starting to like it.

“Alright. Everything’s ready to go.” Belle said, walking around Emma. Snow walked down the stairs, right after Belle finished her sentence, carrying Laurel and took one look at her daughter before the tears started to flow.

“You going to be okay, mom?” Emma asked. She tilted her head with the softest smile.

“Yeah. I think so.” Snow replied. Emma nodded and did her magical hand gesture and everyone was poofed from where they stood, to the inside of the boat shed. That was where the other bridesmaids were getting ready. It was decorated, though, to look like a salon.

***(Location: The Docks)(The Jolly Roger is there)

The altar was right in front of the best view of the horizon on the docks. It was two, twenty foot tall, artificial trees. Their plastic leaves looked almost overgrown, but they were still perfect. Both had small branches “growing” out in  the other’s direction, at 10 feet. A beautiful pearly satin was laid on top of both of the branches and flowed down all the way until it barely touched the ground. To the right was a newly cleaned and painted Jolly Roger, whose shadow was cast nearly onto the seating. Regina had cleared up the weather for the perfect day. It was sunny, but it wasn’t too bright. There were clouds placed just right. It was a cool, yet warm day. Every single thing was perfect. Magic can really do that for a wedding.

Killian and the groomsmen were already at the altar, rearing and ready to go. All except for David. He was the best man. The bromance was strong with those two. The groomsmen included; Henry, David, Hook’s kid brother, Liam, August and in spirit, Robin. Their tuxes were as black as Killian’s, with white button-up shirts and navy blue ties. They all had the same flower from Camelot and dark green handkerchiefs.

The bridesmaids were; Belle, Regina being the maid of honor, Mary Margaret, Granny who was holding Laurel, Ruby and Ariel. They all wore red heart line strapless dresses made of chiffon. The bustiers of their dresses were also red leather. Laurel was wrapped in a white blanket with red stitching on the outsides and her name sewn in, in black.

In the chairs, literally sat almost every single person that’s ever step foot in Storybrooke. Jefferson was even there. He and Emma had made amends after she admitted to him that magic was real and he apologized for drugging her and holding her and Snow hostage. His daughter was there, as well. All of the dwarves were there, from Grumpy to Doc to Dopey. Killian looked down the aisle. The music had started. It was the classic “Here Comes The Bride” played on the violin and harp.

Emma and David walked out to the head of the beautiful red carpet that was laid on the concrete. Killian’s eyes watered and began overflowing with tears. Thank God the guyliner Belle used was waterproof. He bent down and put his hand and hook on his knees, then stood up quickly and threw his head back. The tears were like the Mississippi River in high tide. He wiped them away with his hand and his hook and stood back upright and looked to his beautiful bride. Emma had a smile from ear to ear while her tears flowed, as well. Her eyeliner was also waterproof. She finally reached the altar, standing next to Archie and Killian. David stepped to the side, right behind Hook. She looked over her husband-to-be’s shoulder and saw her father crying. She couldn’t help but smile.

“Before this ceremony begins, Emma made it clear that she had something that she needed Killian to know before anything got started.” Archie said.

“What is it, love?” He was getting nervous but he kept as cool as he could.

“These people. They’re not just here for me. I want you to know that. Every single person is here for you, too.” Emma said. She smiled and they looked out into the crowd. Hook’s eyes started to water again.

“Yeah!” The wedding attendants yelled. “We love you, Killian!”

“Bloody Hell.” He said, voice shaking. This was the first time he truly saw it. He was loved. Not just by Emma. But everyone else that was there, that day. He finally had what Nemo had tried to give him all of those centuries ago. A family.

“Alright, let’s get this show on the road.” Emma laughed. Killian looked back to her and she wiped the tears from his face, gently.

“We gather here today to make two people, one. Emma Swan and Killian Jones. We celebrate the love of two heroes. A woman who’s saved the town a million times over, and a pirate who didn’t give up on pursuing the woman he loved. He’s also saved the town a bunch of times let’s not even pretend to forget that.” Archie began. There were smiles all around. Tears, too. “We shall begin the ceremony. Do either of you have anything to add before we do?” He looked to the beautiful bride and the groom.

“No.” Emma said, smiling. She looked back to Killian.

“Not that I know of.” He said. Everybody laughed. He did the puppy dog head tilt. He didn’t know why they were laughing but ultimately just accepted it. Archie nodded and began the beautiful bonding of the two.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony. I require and charge you both, as you will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts will be disclosed, that if anyone knows any impediment, why these two may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Everyone looked around. No one said a thing.

“Killian Jones, do you take Emma Swan, as your wedded wife? Will you love her, comfort her, honour her, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?” Archie continued.

“I do.” Killian said. His eyes started to water, again, but he managed to hold it in and blink them away.

“Emma Swan, do you take, Killian Jones, to be your wedded husband? Will you love him, comfort him, honour him, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”

“Aye.” Emma said. “I do.” Killian let out a small laugh. The rest of the crowd laughed through their tissues. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house! Or dock…

“Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” Archie asked. David stepped forward from his previous stance.

“I, Killian Jones, take thee, Emma Swan, as my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.” Killian said to Archie. David walked around and gave Killian the ring. It was silver with a round, 6.5 carat diamond. He had much larger diamonds but he knew it would be too bulky and uncomfortable. Regardless, everything he had was hers, in his eyes, already. This marriage was only going to make that official. Killian took Emma’s left hand and placed it onto her ring finger.

“Who gives this man to be married to this woman?” Archie asked. Killian’s kid brother, Liam, made his way to Emma with his big brother’s band. It was pure silver, as well, with an intricate pattern carved into it with a fleur de lis that would show from the top view of his hand.

“I Emma Swan, take thee, Killian Jones, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.” She looked back to Killian. She took his right hand and placed the ring on his ring finger. The two smiled at each other.

“By the authority invested in me by the town of Storybrooke, and the internet, I pronounce you, husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride.” Archie took a large step back, sensing something amazing was about to happen. He was right. Emma leaped into Killian’s arms, and he swung her around until she was bent over backwards, with their lips pressed together firmly. When they finished the kiss and were upright again, they ran down the aisle while everyone in the crowd was throwing pink rose petals everywhere. Everyone cheered for Captain Swan!

“She had better be in good hook!” David yelled. Everyone laughed. Even Killian.

And they lived happily...ever...after…

...fighting bad guys together. Like a real, badass couple does.

The. End.

(This was the final part to my CS fic and I’m proud. I hope you love it as much as I do, if not, more!)

#captain swan #killian jones #emma swan #ouat #my writing #my fiction #my fanfic #my fic