#the show did endear me to andre more than i ever cared for it to | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

boneheadduluc · 3 years

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I'm in need of some Andrea smut every time I read something about him there is no sex because this was in the 30's and it would be inappropriate to do it before marriage. So...let's get inappropriate (?

no mommy kink please, i can't cope with that

Actually this was going to happen v/ soon in my fic of Andrea BUT I'll write a quick drabble/one shot for you bc same! we need that in our lives :) I'll be doing gender neutral reader for dis ;) Warnings!! 18+ , loss of virginity, perhaps slight edging? oral on reader (female presenting) and NO mommy kink per request :)

Rules were rules. Marry a nice man, then lose your virginity. You had been following those rules. Even now, you lived alone in a small cottage on a hill. And you still haven't lost it. You never felt inclined too really...and you were fine with that. It's just everyone in the village usually was a kid or a senior. No one was around your age, so you preferred a secluded kind of life.

Even if that meant following rules you didn't want to follow. You hated that you didn't have a choice. You hated how your parent's voice replayed in your head over and over. Telling you “wait! get married first!” You were sick of it, you were desperate sure, not desperate enough to lose it to whoever you met, but then...

a new boy showed up, you learned his story since you were a bit close with Janet and Ursula, the old sisters who were housing the young man. So you met him, and god... he was just your type.

Plus they invited you over so he could play for you? meaning the violin. At first, you felt a little out of place... until he started playing. Needless to say, he was more than talented than you expected. You’d never heard anything like it, afterward, he wanted to talk to you surprisingly.

“What is you name?” he tried his best to speak, you were told his English wasn't the best so you found it more endearing than anything and applauded his effort since he’d only been here for a few weeks. So you looked to him, sitting beside you with wide eyes and rosy cheeks. His hair was a bit shaggy as he shook the hair out of his eyes.

“Oh, my name is (y/n).” You gave a warm smile, shifting in your seat to face him more. “And you are Andrea, yes?” and he nodded before he repeated your name warmly, and honestly you loved the way it sounded in his mouth.

------------------

Weeks passed, you visiting, Andrea playing for you, afterward, you would talk to Andrea, his English noticeably getting better. And sometimes he would even be a bit of a flirt. So one day you just asked the sisters if they would allow you to take him into town. You did your best to sound as friendly as possible and it seemingly worked.

You showed him a few of your favorite places, took him dancing to the pub. Though he wasn't a very good dancer, you had to kind of show him. Guiding his hands to land on your hips and pull you close, telling him to watch your feet as he got red because honestly he couldn't help but stare at your face.

Then finally he asked to see your home. And you couldn't help be nervous, he had been making eyes at you all day, smirking like a cat with cunning eyes. Like he had so much more in that head of his, thoughts that he wasn't sharing. Plus he was already holding hands with you, keeping you close to him as he kept calling you ‘Liebling.’ And of course you didn't refuse him, not at all. So by the time, you were halfway up the path on the mountain and he slowly stopped walking, staring at you with a sweet smile.

“Something the matter Andrea?” you questioned- confused as to why he had stopped. He moved slowly, stepping closer to you, leaning in, quickly pressing a kiss to your cheek. Then backing away, checking your eyes for permission. You nodded and Andrea knitted his brows together, exhaling through his nose as he slowly moved to press a kiss to your other cheek. Gently. Wonderfully. Then your forehead. The tip of your nose, then finally his mouth hovered over your own. Breath shaking with feverish anticipation.

You ached to lean in and finish what he started, but you wanted to see if Andrea would do it himself, and after about 5 nervous seconds you felt him roughly slot his lips against your own.

You were lost, blindly lost to pleasure and yearning. You barely realized the way you pulled him up the hill, mouths slotted together as you rushed backward, your back soon up against your door, your hands at his waistband, he moaned against your mouth.

And soon enough you were turned around and inside and he was walking backward as you led him to your bed. Pushing against his chest as he sat and you climbed his lap. Kissing him so harshly you felt your teeth clink against his own, embarrassed you pulled back, your hand coming to your lips.

“I apologize, Andrea-” You were breathless, with shy eyes and flushed cheeks.

He looked the same, though less embarrassed. More lustful than anything.

“No, no-” He started softly. “You are wonderful.” He spoke slowly, catching your eyes as he brushed your hair out of your face with his thumbs. Putting a strand of hair behind your ear lovingly.

“But...I need-” He started up again, and he groaned out, almost a whimper really, like he was in pain and that's when you felt something poke against your inner thigh, and then you understood. You ground forward and watched as his mouth fell open. Andreas eyebrows furrowing, his face growing red, a moan caught in his throat.

“Oh, you wonderful creature.” You mused. Almost amazed at the power you held over him. So you did it again and again until he was begging for you to let him cum.

“Please...Please (y/n)-” He buried his face into your neck, his large hands on your waist, fingers digging in deeply, his shoulders going tense at your dry humping.

A part of you was nervous honestly. You didn't know if Andrea was also a virgin, but judging by his closeness already ...you were gonna bet on the fact he was, but then again you didn't know what you were doing anyway.

So instead, you simply stopped. And he stopped breathing. He was frozen actually, and you wondered why, a part of you wanted to laugh, he was curled up into you, unmoving, holding you.

“Andrea?” you questioned and finally he moved, looking up at you,

“I do something wrong?” he slowly drawled out, voice tiny and nervous and you shook your head. “No, of course not I just...have you ever done this before?” It was your turn to be tiny and nervous now, especially self-conscious.

He gulped, Andrea understood. And he slowly shook his head ‘no’

“I'm sorry,” he whispered and it almost broke your heart.

“Oh my love, no! You have nothing to be sorry for. I have never...done this... either. So it's okay Andrea. And...and honestly, we don't have to do anything if you don't want to.” You cupped his face, giving him a warm smile and he returned one. Slowly pressing a kiss to your lips.

“I want you.” He whispered after breaking the kiss barely.

And that was all you needed to push him back on the bed so he was laying down. You climbed atop him, undoing his pants slowly. He raised himself on his elbows, watching you, breathing heavy, eyes flickering back and forth between you and your hands.

And suddenly he took your hand, putting it away from him. Softly and gently and lovingly. “first you. Let me...help.” He muttered, looking to you for permission and so you switched roles and he was helping you undress from your light dress.

And you were naked and self-conscious and nervous in front of him.

But he was smiling, eyes running over your perfect form. You were perfect to him, everything about you, even the things you considered a flaw, he would reach out, brushing his fingertips lightly over them. He muttered how you were beautiful before reaching with both hands to your thighs. Parting them slowly, gently as all his movements were.

He slowly moved off the bed, to his knees as he pulled you to the edge of the bed, your legs over his shoulder, his eyes on yours, looking up to you the entire time. Your hands gripped the blankets harshly and nervously. But you nodded at him and he leaned forward, delving his tongue over your entrance. And you moaned, the feeling making you throw your head back.

And he did it again, though opening his mouth even wider, taking you into his mouth, his tongue lapping up your wetness. Moving up to run over your clit. And you shivered, sensitive all over.

He realized that was the spot, so he did it once more and got the same reaction, actually an even bigger one. Your back was beginning to arch. Toes curling.

And he kept eating you out- tongue sometimes delving into you, into your warmth and he would moan against your wetness and heat. Eyelashes fluttering and closing as you would spread your legs further, pushing your cunt against his mouth- thighs shaking and quivering as you felt a knot of heat in your lower stomach slowly coming closer and growing bigger. And finally you were gripping his hair, pulling as he whimpered against you.

“Oh Andrea- Andrea Im so- Im going to-” You could barely get a full comprehensible sentence out before your thighs were convulsing around his head and your back arching and a loud moan was drawn out from deep within you moaning- screaming his name as a intense orgasm slapped you right across the face, and god- you were exhausted in all honesty. You even fell back on the bed, his tongue still on you though as if he couldn't get enough, nose sometimes even nudging up against your clit as he hungrily and greedily tasted everything in you.

And as much as it was amazing soon you were becoming over sensitive and with each lick and moan of his against your pussy you were being shocked, body twitching and you pulled back, breathless, a mess for a lack of a better term.

And you began to chuckle as well as he rose up now, smirking at you, his lips and chin, all slick with your wetness and his own spit. And you grinned right back at him, and pulled him down to meet your mouth as you kissed him, without a care in the world. It was almost satisfying to taste yourself on Andreas tongue.

But finally you broke the kiss, cupping his face as you knew what came next. “Your turn my love.” You muttered. Sitting up now as you went for his belt, undoing it slowly, hoping he wouldn't stop you again. Though it was worth it last time. But he allowed you to- Andrea even began unbuttoning his shirt. Throwing it to the floor along with your dress, as you followed up with taking off his belt and pulling the pants away- his cock finally free and hard. Fully upright, beads of pre-cum forming at his reddened tip. He was so desperate, it was clear in his expression. Mouth slightly agape as he watched you.

You thought for a moment, wondering on what you should do now. On what position and honestly how all of this was gonna go. A part of you was scared as you shuffled back on the bed, and patted the space beside you, signaling him to come be by you, but first he began shuffling out of his shoes, then along with his pants until he was fully naked. The look on his face signaling he didn't want you to feel self conscious with him being half clothed, so he decided he too would be fully undressed for this. He moved beside you now, huffing out a short breath, nervous. It was clear so you pulled him close, kissing his jawline softly. “Lets go slow, yes?” You mumbled to him softly. He looked up at you, shoulders tense as he nodded. “Yes mien Liebling.” he whispered back, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he furrowed his brows again for you were laying back now, resting your head on the pillow as you slightly spread your legs for him to fit in between. So he moved to lean over you, head of his cock teasing against your lower belly softly, it made him whimper as you couldn't help but giggle as you looked up to him, he looked beautiful this way. “Should I- uhm..” he stuttered, cheeks burning red as he lowered himself slightly, trying to align himself with your entrance. “Yes Andrea- go ahead.” You bit at your lower lip, eyes gazing as he closed his eyes, throbbing tip budding at your opening, he pushed his hips forward, his tip sliding in before it slipped upwards, you really were that tight- though you felt bad, for if you were more relaxed it would've gone in easier. ��I apologize-” you mutter, exhaling shakily but he shakes his head. “No- not your fault.” Andrea shares a calming smile, his eyes shining as he looks deeply into your eyes. “I try again.” he reassured and positioned his cock to your entrance once more, this time sliding it in your slickness and heat easily. You held your breath, feeling him stretch you wide, Andrea on the other hand groaned out, whimpered as his head fell into the crook of your neck. You couldn't imagine how sensitive he must be at the moment. He kept sliding in until he couldn't anymore, and he filled you to the brim, you felt so full and couldn't help but moan softly, your hands going to the back of his nape, playing with his hair, twirling it around your fingers, admiring the feeling of his warm body atop of yours, holding you. he stayed still, immediately understanding you would need some time to adjust. So you two stayed still, breathing and trying to figure this all out, he lifted his head, and you just stared at him until the two of you broke into small laughter. Warm chuckles filling the air around you, and you caught his lips softly, he laughed into your mouth even- so shy and nervous, Andrea couldn't help it. But after a minute of kissing and nervously giggling you finally felt ready. You broke the warm kiss. And caught his eyes. “Andrea I think I'm ready...move...please?” You muttered shyly- you didn't want to sound demanding but were soon relived when he just smiled at you. Giving you a look as to say “of course.” And he pulled out halfway, inhaling deeply as he then slid back in setting up a pace, not to fast not to slow, just right honestly. And that's when you felt the pleasure slowly beginning to take over the slight discomfort. When he soon began pumping into you like a animal in heat. You moaned his name over and over, arching your back as you watched his face turn desperate. He would mutter in polish and German. whispering into your ear and you couldn't help but scratch at his back. He changed his angle slightly, cock hitting your g-spot.

“Oh! Oh Andrea you- oh fuck.” You cursed, closing your eyes. “Yes harder please.” you moaned out, feverishly. Everything felt so hot, you were even sweating across your forehead slightly. And he did as you commanded, pushing harder, fucking into you, moaning brokenly each time he pushed in. The squeeze of your pussy around him making him lightheaded even. He dropped his head to your chest eventually. Tongue finding its way to your nipple. Opening wide and sucking on your breast. And you felt so sensitive, everything overwhelming you but in the best way possible.

“Oh yes, yes-” you chanted, breathless and suddenly wrapped your thighs around him, flipping the two of you over so you were on top, he gasped- eyes wide as he looked to you, his face becoming flushed once more- the sight of him was enough to push you to the edge as you began to bounce on his cock, suddenly reaching you climax, steadying yourself by putting your hands to Andreas chest- your back arching as you clenched around his cock, falling forward now- pushing your lips together.

He kept thrusting into you though- desperate to cum inside, “Please- please.” He begged for release, closing his eyes as you groaned softly, your insides sensitive as you sat back up, and it only took 2 bounces on his cock for Andrea to be moaning out your name- as he gripped your thighs and soon you felt his warm seed fill you up, he whimpered and fucked into you harshly now- sitting up and pulling you close, fitting his mouth over your tit to muffle the shameful sounds spilling out of him.

As he fucked through his climax he soon began to slow down, exhausted as you moaned- feeling him suck your nipples softly now, closing his eyes as his breathing calmed.

You ran your fingers through his hair softly. Kissing the top of his head- satisfied now and he now popped off your tit, lips a bright color that matched his cheeks. He smiled at you and you grinned back, pressing a kiss to his nose. You raised yourself off of him, and you felt his warm seed inside of you, you adored the feeling as you rolled off and laid down- he lowered himself to be by you.

“You were amazing Andrea- absolutely wonderful.” You sighed softly as his hand reached your stomach, drawing invisible lines with his fingers over the soft skin. Andrea shyly smiled now. “Danke.” he whispered in German, you knew what it meant and chuckled softly.

“Im sleepy.” you whispered, and it was true- your eyes were heavy and Andrea nodded. “Sleep.” he kissed your cheek warmly. And so you did, you fell asleep to him cuddled beside you, humming a tune that was familiar to you.

#Daniel Bruhl #daniel brühl #Ladies in Lavender #Andrea Marowski #andrea marowski x reader #loss of virginity #first time on tumblr #this is so soft pls #hope you enjoy this oneshot guys #sorry it took so fckin long

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dailyrov · 3 years

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Well, life’s been stressful, et cetera and so on. Welcome to 2021, which will hopefully be better than 2020, but boy-oh-boy is the bar low.

I was minding my own business today when some kind person dropped a comment on one of my ‘fics (If It Takes a Lifetime). I replied to them and then read through my other replies, relived the story a bit...you know, Something Fanfic Authors Do. I was reminded of something I wanted to post here for a while, but struggled to put into concise wording: my relationship to the series.

My first foray into The Rose of Versailles was in 2008, all thanks to a certain @kippielovesyou who baited me into watching the anime because she claimed the main couple had some things in common with a pairing I was super into at the time. I got hooked. I marathoned the anime and went to work after episode 39 without having gotten any sleep at all. Shift start was at 6:30am. The assembly line started moving. One of my coworkers nudged me. “Hey,” they said. “Did something bad happen? You look miserable.”

I wasn’t miserable so much as emotionally drained. “Just tired,” I said, and focused on my work for the next 8.5 hours. I wasn’t about to tell them that my favorite characters in a television show just died.

I went home and watched the 40th episode. I felt weird afterward. Still drained. Almost...empty.

Not angry. Not betrayed. Just...this really strange sort of blankness that I had rarely felt upon reaching the ending of anything. I recalled a similar feeling at the end of the 1989 film Glory, but no other piece of media could come close to touching it. I would almost call it peace, though the unsettling kind. I’m not supposed to feel peaceful about a tragic ending, right?

But I was hooked.

I downloaded the entire series on a torrent, something I hadn’t done before OR SINCE. I burned it to discs and mailed them to Wisconsin so that my oldest internet friend (now husband) could watch it. He cried at the end. I forced my sister to sit down with me to watch the whole thing. She cried, too. I wrote fanfiction. I drew fanart (it was bad, don’t @ me). I screamed about it to countless friends on Livejournal. I recommended the series to everyone I knew and a lot of those people joined me in writing fanfiction.

What a time to be in fandom!! We flooded the fandom with regular English fanfic for the first time ever. The fandom was hopping. I met two amazing women (Kasia and Loulou) who spoiled me rotten for fanfiction reviews for the rest of my life. I bought the French manga and read the entire thing. I fell in love with one specific page (you get one guess as to which that is lol). I distinctly remember crying twice while reading the manga in a language I could only stumble through: first when Andre tried to count the stairs in the house, miscounted, and tripped, and secondly when Oscar threw herself onto her mother’s lap crying that she was a human being with feelings.

I still get emotional thinking about these scenes, particularly the latter one. The Rose of Versailles got me through so much. I honestly don’t know where I would be, or who I would be, without it. There is no way Kippie could have known that I would need RoV. For her, it was as simple as, “I enjoyed it, and I think you would, too. Because shipping.” And yeah, I’m a shipper who did enjoy it for that, but it became SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT TO ME.

I don’t want to spit the whole long tale out here, but shortly after I obsessed over RoV, I had my own identity crisis. It was a tough time for me, but it also cemented my future as an essayist who focuses primarily on the literary device known as Identity. When I went to college in 2012 that was my focus in literature, and nearly every essay I wrote I chose to explore it in some fashion. Identity. What makes a character, what shapes them, what changes or moves or motivates them. RoV motivated that love for Identity and my essays motivated the English Department chair to give me a selective scholarship (that they chose, it was never applied for). The reasoning they cited to me was that I had shown a rare passion for literature and the characters within. For the first time in my life I felt validated in my obsession with Identity.

I was in my early 20s when I first saw The Rose of Versailles, and something about the character of Oscar spoke to me, but I couldn’t quite name it. I felt that I understood her, and not just for being a woman working in a man’s field. There was something else. But what? I couldn’t figure it out.

A few years later I started seeing an uptick in romantic and sexual identities online. Demisexual. Asexual. Aromantic. Greyace. Something clicked—for me, personally, as well as my understanding of the characters. And years later, Tumblr flooded with information about ADHD presenting in women, and autism in ladies. And my brain went, OH!!!! OH!!! OH I SEE!!

I know a lot of people love Oscar for their own reason, and I think that’s probably one of my favorite things about the series: that the main character is almost universally loved by everyone, and that she receives this love no matter how the individual fans choose to view her.

Something specifically that bothered me many years ago was a certain persistent disdain for Oscar not returning André’s feelings earlier. She was blind, she was stupid, she was mean, and the worst of all: she was Bad for these reasons.

My God, when I tell you now that the scene of Oscar falling onto her mother’s lap in tears over being treated like a doll made me cry, I know why. I spent years of my life wondering why I was born the way I was. I agonized over it. I didn’t want to be “normal.” I was happy being me. But nobody else was. My sister once accused me of not having feelings. I think of that moment every time I see Oscar struggling in RoV. She’s a private person who struggles privately, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t feel things. And there Oscar was in the manga, having lived her life the best way she knew how, only to have her father pull the rug out from under her without deigning to even explain himself to her. Suddenly, she was not allowed to have an identity of her own. Suddenly, she was not good enough as she was.

Do you know what marriage would do to someone like Oscar, particularly at that point in her life? It would kill her. How terrifying a fate to face, no control over her own life, or feelings, or even her own body.

There’s an important scene in the manga and anime where André considers that Oscar appears “as cold as ice” to others, but personally recognizes the fire of her passionate heart and finds that endearing about her... I always felt that he liked that about her because it was a side of her only he understood, only he recognized for what it was. Like she trusted that part of her in his presence and knowing this helped that love grow. I still think that’s true.

But beyond that, I think André is on the ace spectrum himself, and understands better than anyone how Oscar’s feelings work. (There’s so much more to it than that, but I’ll leave it there for now...)

The part of the fandom that felt Oscar was selfish or uncaring for not loving André back sooner...miss the point, I think, of her character, and of the romance of the series. It’s not that Oscar is unfeeling. It’s not that she can’t love André. It’s not even that she’s choosing not to love him. In my opinion, it’s that she’s ace and the way she shows her love and care is not only different than a person might expect it to be, but also difficult to express—though whether this is due to her upbringing or her romantic identity (or both!) is up to interpretation.

More importantly, she does not owe him herself.

(And, I think beyond all this, usually people who feel this way really adore André, and while that’s great, I think they’re ignoring a key component of his character, which is: he loves Oscar and never even once so much as suggests that she owes him anything.)

Anyway, that was a long post to say: I view Oscar as ace and ADHD and I wish I could go back to 2008 me and tell myself about both of these things, because it would have saved me a lot of worry and heartache all those years ago. But it’s okay, anyway, because I still felt that connection to Oscar, even without the specific words, and I knew André loved Oscar anyway, even though he knew she was different.

If you’re reading this now, in 2021 or later, I hope you’ve been able to find a similar connection to one or several of the RoV characters. It’s not often we get to see slices of ourselves in the media, written in a sympathetic and loving way. Having that made all the difference to me when I needed it the most. ♥ And I hope it’s had a positive impact on your life, too.

#The Rose of Versailles #rov #essays from versailles #Oscar Francois de Jarjayes #tl;dr: oscar is such a good character

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third-generation-female-warrior · 3 years

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Goodbye Winter

I got this idea after seeing a dialog prompt and an intense need to write something again. So, if you like dancing and banter, you might like this. It gets pretty sappy, pretty fluffy, and at one point, I threw my hands up in frustration because of that. If you like romance, this is romance. Can be considered a sequel to The Path we Walk, but it can stand alone, take it as you will. Talbott Winger x Alexus Johnson (HPHM MC) Takes place at a school dance as Talbott contemplates his relationship with Alexus. 3,000+ words.

A general conscientious of Talbott Winger’s life can be summed up in six words: “I would rather be anywhere else.”

Ever since he begrudgingly befriended one Miss Alexus Johnson, the Ravenclaw prefect in his year, he found himself getting dragged to more and more social events around the school.

She was very convincing. Every time some event was coming up, she would interrupt his quiet meals to convince him to attend the event. Dances, festivals, any large amount of the student body gathering together, she would manage to successfully make him promise to attend. It had nothing to do with the massive mutual crush that they both had on each other, but he will admit to the fact that their dating one another did have a major factor on his attendance each time. They were showing up together at these events, and it would be dead rude to not attend when she invited him as her date.

Yes, Talbott Winger and Alexus Johnson were dating. The loner and the elusive curse-breaker.

This came as a shock to absolute no one because everyone knew that their constant witty banter was in fact, flirting. Well, everyone except Talbott and Alexus themselves.

Either way, despite the fact that Talbott hated being in social events, just being by Alexus’s side made it all worth it.

At least, that’s what he was telling himself right now.

Talbott stood stiffly to the side of the dance floor in the Great Hall, watching the other students in his year socializing amongst each other. As a treat (or probably an apology for the latest dark wizard to be let onto the campus), Dumbledore had let every year vote on an individual event to be put together by an elected committee in that year, and the sixth years chose a dance. Naturally, Penny Haywood was head of that committee, Alexus her right hand, However, students like Merula Snyde, Andre Egwu, and Deigo Caplan were also on that committee, and Alexus complained about one of them specifically, in extensive detail, to Talbott when they were eating lunch in solitude together.

The theme the committee had some up with was “Hello Spring” or “Goodbye Winter” or some rubbish like that, as they were now in the middle of March. Something to give them a pick-me-up before the finals that loomed above them. It was formal, much like the Celestial Ball, not that Talbott had attended, he was not so willing to socialize at that time.

He was alone right now because she was either busy with last-minute curse breaking things or dance details, he wasn’t sure anymore, but she agreed to meet him soon.

He dressed nicely, he thought. Charcoal button-up shirt and slacks, complimented by a deep blue jacket, his necklace tucked safely under his clothes. It was more “winter” or whatever than the other students, but he didn’t care. Alexus had given him an off-handed comment on how deep blues looked nice on him, so that’s what he was going with.

He really did like her, he had for a long time, and he really only did this so that he could be with her, even if it meant being around people. Not that he would tell her that, he had a reputation to maintain after all.

So, waiting for Alexus, surrounded by his peers, he stood, keeping to himself. He fidgeted with the collar of his shirt, not because he was uncomfortable being dressed up, but he was bored. Standing to the side was rather dull, even for him. He didn’t mind being alone, but being alone when everyone else was not made him feel like he was sticking out like a sore thumb, which he did hate.

Granted, sticking out was one of the few downsides to dating Alexus. She was always in the thick of things, especially attention or the spotlight. Dating her brought him into some sort of school gossip, and occasional whispers followed him around the halls as he walked from class to class.

The notion of him being the target of talk at the moment made him rather relieved when two of his classmates, Ben Copper and Diego Caplan, walked over to him.

Talbott wouldn’t call them “friends,” but he didn’t hate their company for a majority of the time. He knew they were good friends to Alexus and they were all in the Circle together.

“Looking sharp, there, Winger!” Diego complimented before delivering a heavy clap on his back

Talbott smoothed out his jacket, muttering a thank you as he looked at the two.

Ben was staring, the usual stoic stare that rivaled Talbott’s own neutral expression of general displeasure. It was a surprise the Gryffindor was there, he had almost a better penchant for avoiding social gatherings like Talbott. Diego was beaming as usual, like the idiot he was. Well, maybe not an idiot, but he was more energetic than what Talbott was used to. There was almost nothing in common with Caplan and Copper except for their dueling skills, which is probably the only reason they were together at the moment. Maybe Diego was trying to show Ben that smiling wasn’t fatal.

Either way, Diego was certainly checking Talbott up and down, smiling, making him rather self-conscious.

“You’re definitely sharp enough for the girl that’s going to be in your arms tonight!” he complimented.

“Save your enthusiasm for the dance floor, Diego, or else Winger might die of embarrassment before he even sees her,” Ben remarked curtly, coldly, not too many hint of emotion in his voice, despite the fact that Talbott’s face was turning a proper red at this moment before he continued. “Personally, dancing, school formals, all of it is a waste of time. There’s so much more that Alexus and I could be doing to avenge Rowan, but she was rather insistent that I get my mind off of that.”

Talbott was now regretting the two having come over to talk to them, and he had to wonder why they did. He was terrible company.

“A favor to her, then?” he gandered.

“Something of that calibre, yes” Ben agreed, “She’s very persuasive, you know.”

“Oh, believe me, I do.”

“Persuasive, and… different. Ever since Valentine’s Day. Have you noticed?” Ben continued.

Talbott raised an eyebrow, now gaining a better understanding of their motivations. Ben Copper fancied himself something of Alexus’s bodyguard at times, her most trusted protector, their friendship one of the longest she’s had. He was taller than her (everyone was taller than her), just a few months older than her. Diego Caplan adored Alexus and it was no secret they did have a bond over their shared Spanish heritage, him even affectionately calling her “hermosa” and other terms of endearment of the familial type.

He stared at them, contemplating his answer.

“No. I haven’t noticed…” he began, “But, something I am aware of, is that Alexus already has an older brother, and, correct me if I’m wrong, but that isn’t either one of you two, is it?”

Ben’s expression did not change.

“As we’re fully aware, however, even if Jacob wasn’t indisposed at the moment, I imagine we’ve been good substitutes. Someone has had to watch out for her, and we have, quite well.”

“She’s more than capable of handling herself, you know.” Talbott side-eyed Diego, who’s charming smile had long since faded from his face. He was not looking at Talbott with confrontation, but rather, some seriousness that he had not seen in him before.

“We know,” was all Ben said.

“It’s really about what Ben has definitely failed to mention,” Diego quickly stepped in. “Yes, she’s changed, but for the better.”

Talbott frowned, looking down at the Hufflepuff, but before he could say anything, Diego continued.

“She’s happier, having someone to lean on since Rowan… Someone like you, who reminds her that she’s human. Still a girl, still a student, like us. Reminds her that knowledge and missing brothers aren’t the only facets in life worth pursuing. You help take away some of that burden.”

Talbott did not know what to say. He looked towards the other students on the dance floor, pursing his lips, thinking. He didn’t understand, he was just one person. She was one person. No, that’s not true. She was a thunderstorm in the body of a 16-year-old girl. Quiet, brewing dangerously under the otherwise composed surface. When she strikes, she did it in a flash and left the world quaking after it. The world was going to behold her power one day, a small part of her world beheld her now, as someone dangerous, dark, mysterious, and beautiful.

He looked back at Ben and Diego. The latter’s signature smile had returned, dazzling as ever like nothing had happened, while Ben’s usual hard-set stoicness had softened into a blank expression that was almost trust.

Before Talbott could say anything, a nicely familiar face appeared at his left arm.

“Are these two giving you any trouble?”

Talbott felt a warmth in his chest as Alexus slid both her arms around one of his own, lacing her hands into his.

“Oh yes, quite troublesome, in fact. You know Copper, ready to duel on the dance floor,” he said, lightly, casually, smiling down at her.

Alexus gave a soft laugh before looking at Ben and Diego.

Diego gave her a gracious smile as she extended her hand. He took it and stooped down to kiss her knuckles, platonically, like a proper gentleman.

“You look as radiant as ever, Alexus!” he complimented.

“Oh, careful, Caplan, as we said, we don’t want a duel on the dance floor,” she warned him not so seriously before wrapping her arms back around Talbott’s.

Diego just winked before he and Ben took off, Diego leading the way.

Talbott looked down as Alexus moved in front of him. He mentally remarked to himself how beautiful she looked. Whereas Talbott’s ensemble was darkened blues and cooler tones like the cold winter, she was spring. Her cotton dress was a much softer blue. It had an intricate white-lace trim and was cinched at the waist before it flowed delicately to her knees. Her hair was plaited back into a long braid, a golden hair pin in the shape of a laurel tucked in.

He felt a light thudding pick up in his chest as she looked up at him.

“You look… amazing,” he said, quietly.

“You look quite amazing yourself, Winger,” she returned, smoothing down the lapels of his jacket before standing on her toes to peck his cheek. “Thank you for coming, I know this isn’t your thing.”

“It’s all fine. You and the committee did amazing, it feels like an afternoon brunch in a garden. Very spring,” he remarked, nodding around.

Truly, the decorations were spectacular. The Great Hall was light, a perfect day with sunlight flooding in from the large windows, the ceiling above was a pristine blue with wispy clouds slowly trailing along the sky. There were small trees lining the edges of the room, potted, no more than seven feet tall each, uniformly hedged. The tables all had white cloth lining them, delicate tea cups and lace doilies surrounding simplistic white daisy and yellow gerberas centerpieces.

“I feel like we’ve done and decorated for a wedding, how intricate everything got,” Alexus muttered. “Penny’s a brilliant mind for this, though, if potioneering doesn’t work out. Merula didn’t make it easy, fighting her at almost every step.” She took his arm and he began leading her away from his wallflower spot, moving towards the dance floor.

“Oh? I bet you were quite the lieutenant. Or were you playing peace-keeper?”

“Lieutenant. Penny’s brilliant ideas deserved to be executed, and executed well. Don’t get me wrong, Merula had some winners, like the floral arrangements, surprisingly, but I can’t tell you how heated two people can get over white daisies and irises, or white daisies and dahlias.”

She stepped in front of him as they ended up in the middle of the dance floor, the song ending.

“But you didn’t go with irises or dahlias,” he remarked as she curtsied to him.

“No, Andre suggested the gerberas,” Alexus informed him as he bowed before they took the start position for the waltz. Extending one of their arms to link them at the fingers, he put his right hand on her back, just under her shoulder blade, she rested her left hand on his arm. “Penny and Merula almost killed him because of how good his suggestion was.”

Talbott laughed, actually audibly laughed as the music started. He stepped back, she followed, stepping forward, following his lead as easily as a breath. Truthfully, this was not the first time they had waltzed together, but it was the first time they had waltzed in front of other people.

Once the bitter chill of February had subsided, chased by the warming of march, they used their animagus forms to sneak out more frequently after hours than they should, both of them flying to the Clocktower Courtyard to dance under the stars to the music of the night. That had started on a bet. Alexus could not believe that Talbott had a musical bone in his body, and Talbott insisted that Alexus definitely had two left feet. She challenged him to dance with her, and that was how they accidentally discovered that the other could dance. Really well, in fact.

Talbott revealed that, as a young child, he first learned how to step on his mother’s toes, and after her death, he was determined to learn how to properly dance to honor her.

Alexus informed him that her mother enrolled her in classes for “proper young girls” and one of the things they learned was various ballroom dances. Well, that was one of the few things Alexus learned before she was kicked out for “consistent disobeying of the rules.” That was kindly putting it, when, in reality, she threw a frog at another little girl (the head-mistress’s daughter) after she tore the pages out of the book young Alexus was reading at the time.

Because of their frequent rendezvous, they had grown comfortable dancing with each other, and it showed now, surrounded by their peers.

In other circumstances, Talbott would have been nervous, possibly stepping on her toes, conscious of every pair of eyes that would be on him. But with Alexus, it felt like the whole world had disappeared, and it was just them in the cloak of night, no cares, no curses. Nothing to bother them as long as they danced and danced together.

When that song ended, they didn’t leave the dance floor, they just waited as the music changed and adjusted accordingly. And again for the next song, and the next, and the one after that until they were almost exhausted from dancing with the zeal and enthusiasm of every song being treated like their first.

“Wanna step off the floor?” Talbott offered, seeing her face flushed from the effort, he himself trying to catch his breath. She just laughed in response, resting her head on his chest for a second before she pulled him to the side where the tables were. As ever, her laugh was the sweetest music he had heard all day, and he wished he knew how to say that out loud. He couldn’t figure out how to articulate this to her, so he just let himself be led, flustered with euphoria.

She pulled him to a nearby table, and they all but collapsed into the chairs next to each other.

“We should not do that again,” Talbott muttered.

“No, we shouldn’t, my shoes can’t handle it,” she agreed, leaning back.

“Refreshments are over there, yeah?” Talbott pointed to an elongated table off to the side, “I can get us something, if you want.”

“That would be nice, thank you.”

He nodded, and stood up, making his way over, Alexus watching him leave until Penny Haywood and Barnaby Lee took a seat at her table.

“That was smashing to watch, Alexus! Where’d you learn to dance like that?” the Slytherin boy asked, eagerly leaning on his seat, facing her.

“My mother enrolled me in etiquette classes for proper young ladies. Ballroom dancing was good and nice, but being a proper young lady wasn’t much my forte.”

Penny laughed lightly. “You and Talbott are good together, you know? Like a proper romantic story waiting to happen.”

“I’ve never been one for romantic stories, the damsel is always in distress,” Alexus said, none-so-dismissively, but she did shrug off the comparison.

“Is that so? I would have thought you loved something with a dashing hero, such as yourself.”

“Does that make Talbott the damsel?” Barnaby asked, quite seriously, which made Penny and Alexus laugh.

“Yes, I imagine he is in this epic tale. Lord knows I put him in enough distress with my strategic gallivanting,” Alexus said, jokingly.

“Oh, is that what you would call it?”

They looked up as Talbott came back, a glass of water in one hand, a small plate of various fruits in the other. He set the glass down in front of Alexus before setting the bowl between them. She took a napkin and put it in her lap before grabbing one of the forks that was already on the table.

“Whatever do you mean?” she asked with fake innocence before stabbing her fork into a grape.

“You think your searchings for the Cursed Vaults is in anyway strategic. That’s a rich joke if I ever heard one,” he replied, just as politely.

She laughed before thoughtfully chewing on her grape as he continued.

“But you’re not wrong, you do cause me a good amount of distress when you do dangerous things.”

Alexus smiled at him. “It’s nice to hear you care.”

“I always care when you do dangerous things too, Alexus. You’re like a sister to me,” Barnaby interjected between them.

Alexus flushed a bit. “Oh,” she said, collecting herself. “That’s incredibly sweet of you, Barnaby.”

“We all get concerned when you fight curses, Alexus,” Penny said assuringly. “We might not all have the same romantically vested interest in you as Talbott, but we all care about you.”

Alexus looked down at the table, really, unable to look at any of them. Talbott knew she always got flustered with emotions, or anyone showing care about her. He knew she wasn’t used to it. She was used to missing brothers, fathers she never talked about, mothers who tried to send her off to boarding schools and etiquette classes. Talbott understood that better than anyone.

“Chin up, Alexus, it’s the truth,” he said softly.

She looked up, right at him, and there was a glistening in her eyes. It was something Talbott hadn’t seen in her since that day when he read poetry to her in the Hospital Wing, promising to walk the hard road with her anywhere she went. She had never been so vulnerable since then.

Alexus blinked once, composed herself in seconds before standing up. “I’m going to see what desserts are at the table. I’ll be back in a second,” she quickly excused herself before briskly walking away.

Talbott watched her retreating back until he could feel the stares of the other two at the table. He turned to them, seeing them examine him with close eyes. Or, at least, Penny was watching him with something knowing, while Barnaby watched Alexus before he, too, stood up and followed her, citing a desire for pastries.

“What?” Talbott asked Penny, perhaps more curtly than he intended.

“Careful, Talbott.”

He frowned. “Excuse me?”

“Be careful, Talbott.”

“Why?”

“Your smile.”

“What about my smile?” He was smiling? He didn’t even realize it, but as it faded from his lips, he understood. He was smiling at Alexus as she left. Just a soft one, not full beaming, but an adoring smile on his lips as he saw Alexus more clearly than he had for a long time.

“Your smile,” Penny repeated. “You look like you're about to fall in love.”

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ceruleanwhore · 4 years

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MLB rant

At this point, I am genuinely pissed at Miraculous. Among other things, Thomas has wrecked the quality of the show over shipping bullshit with episodes like weredad and, in the process, fucked everything over so that now, no matter what happens or who ends up with who, it’s going to be shit. In a lot of ways, he’s done to Miraculous what Bryke did to Avatar in the comics- ruined established characters and the overall story by trying and failing to take care of the relationships/shipping. At this point, Marinette’s character is so awful in relation to this that I truly can’t fathom how Adrien and Luka can still tolerate her, never mind actually like her. Where she should have been steadily improving this whole time, she is instead getting much worse. This, of course, is because the show is constructed such that there is only the few main plot aspects everything revolves around (Hawkmoth and the love square) but, even though Astruc is clearly trying to drag the show out, he isn’t adding any other layers to the show to make up for how flat it is, so in the process of keeping those main plot points static, he has ended up fucking over his own show and dragging Marinette’s character down. At the start of the series, Marinette was clumsy and socially awkward but in a somewhat endearing way. Now, a school year or so later, she hasn’t improved at all and, in spite of now being Ladybug which would be the perfect catalyst for her character development, she’s genuinely getting worse to the point where, as we see in Desperada, she now acts like she has brain damage or something.

The degradation of Marinette’s character is a direct result of Atruc trying to shut down side ships, including some within the love square, in spite of how completely unnecessary it was. He shouldn’t have been doing stuff like that at all, honestly, but things like that should have only been done if and when he was going into the endgame and setting up to finally put them into canon relationships. There are a few ways he could have done this more successfully:

1. In season 2, after Ladybug flat out rejects him, have that be enough to initiate the process of Adrien moving on and have him be completely over her by the end of the season but leave him single. Meanwhile, from the beginning of the show, it should be shown how the way Adrien constantly says that Marinette is “just a friend” wears on her over time, plus Luka showing up adds another element that would shake things up and leave her feelings for Adrien unsteady. Eventually, maybe later season 2, Adrien would make another comment like that again and that would be the last straw at which point she’d be done. Shortly after that, she’d get together with Luka.

2.Kinda like what I just described but after Adrien gets over Ladybug and Marinette gets over him, they could get together as Marichat in some rich dramatic irony.

So then there is the matter of character development. I’ve already lamented Marinette, but I’d argue that basically none of the characters have any significant character development. Chloe had the opportunity that got royally fucked over, which was probably also for the sake of maintaining stasis, but other than a couple people here and there, there isn’t much to be found. I think this is because there isn’t actually much content, when it comes to this show. About half of each episode is taken up by the akuma and what’s left tends to be more concerned with cute things like Marinette facetiming Alya about Adrien or bringing some macrons somewhere or whatever and, like I said earlier, there are no subplots that would provide more depth to the show and help promote character growth. I think it would work better if a) there were subplots and b) there wasn’t an akuma every episode, maybe just every couple. It gets really boring and repetitive to have half of every episode be basically the same and take up so much space so that there isn’t room to put in real shit and character growth around it.

Regarding Chloe, if they were going to give her a fucking miraculous, they should’ve been planning on using that to kickstart her redemption arc. It makes absolutely no sense to trust her with it and then have her proceed to not change at all. All it does is create a shitty situation where this bitch is now a superhero but she’s still a mega bitch so then when she no longer gets to be a superhero, that adds to her being a miserable bitch. Honestly, it doesn’t even remotely make sense why Marinette gave it to her in the first place and when I look back on it I think it’s literally nothing more than pure pandering in response to what people were posting on Tumblr. It would’ve made a lot more sense for her to have had some level of preliminary character development first before Marinette presented her with the miraculous. Also, maybe it could be after she’d made a bitchy comment about Chloe that then got a response that showed Marinette how she was wrong and made her feel bad and this is her way of making it up to her but, more importantly, showing how she’s getting over her prejudice and now choosing to put faith in Chloe and support the progress she and those around her have witnessed. Then, the miraculous and the responsibilities that go with it (plus Marinette’s inevitable end of episode apology) would catalyze Chloe’s continued growth and development but like the amount of growth she’d have already would be enough for her to act more maturely and keep her identity a secret, which would be A Thingᵗᵐ.

However, along that same vein, I think it’s absurdly stupid how they really went with the “everyone gets a miraculous (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ *:･ﾟ ” thing. It makes sense to bring in one more but not this bullshit where everybody gets one but only sometimes. Bring on one more, permanently, maybe even add another later on (MUCH later on) if necessary but don’t just have this bullshit where Marinette just picks the flavor of the day. Also, her now being the guardian is the genuine worst decision, period. If it’s really that important to boot Wu and bring in a new guardian, have it be someone else like Alya, idk or, even better, a new character entirely. Wu said he had to be trained so I’d like to propose to have it so that he’s been training one for a while but we just don’t see them because since their training is incomplete, Wu can’t trust them with Ladybug and Chat Noir’s secret identities yet. But jesus fuck, Marinette should not be that person. She’s already quite Mary Sue already, she really doesn’t need that and the episode where she’s able to weild all the miraculouses to just throw in more shit about how she’s so good and so powerful and all that stuff.

So, then, there are inconsistencies in the writing, mainly in regards to their secret identities and shipping. In one of the episodes in season three, Master Wu told them they would have to give up their miraculouses if they ever learned each other’s identities, which is incredibly fucking stupid since he then just hands her all the miraculouses and makes her the new guardian. So she’s just supposed to hold that boundary because he told her to when she’s now the one who’d be enforcing it and taking the miraculouses if that ever came to be? So if (when) they learn their identities, she’s supposed to, as the guardian, take Adrien’s and give up her own miraculous but then keep on being the guardian? I think the line from Master Wu was supposed to add drama and suspence but that only works if you don’t go and negate it three seconds later. The other inconsistency that, to me, was glaringly obvious and just as annoying was when Marinette, Adrien, and Kagami went to Andre’s. Back when this guy was first introduced, the way it all worked was that when someone came up, he’d make them an individualized ice cream cone based on the person they love. In season three, all of a sudden, for no reason whatsoever, the fact that it’s three people coming up to get ice cream changes the entire system to some other bullshit all so we can get some over done, in-your-face adrienette vs adrigami tension in which Marinette is a Good Girlᵗᵐ.

Then, lastly, I find it extremely odd how there are practically no background characters and that the few there are tend to be recurring. If there are going to be 77+ episodes of “oh no that dude got akumatized”, it would be prudent to have more throwaway background characters to use for the akumas and then only use the main/recurring ones for that intermittently and only when it adds something to the episode and/or the plot as a whole. The classroom kids shouldn’t be the default, they should be used sparingly and with care. Not to mention how it also would be good to have more background characters just so stuff like scenes where they’re in the hallways in between classes don’t look so awkward because there’s just this one class of kids in this entire school (plus Marco) and literally nobody else. It’s a thing in every film or show that has ever been made but in this one, for no reason, there just are no extras and it feels so awkward at times.

The way that every single episode is set up the same and how there is that lack of background characters to akumatize so there ends up being a bunch of reakumatizations, plus the way that nothing much actually happens, in terms of plot progression, after season one all make it so that the show as a whole after the end of season one feels really stagnant. It’s like Astruc is trying to hold out and wait to drop actual resolution to any of the main plot points until later on but he hasn’t sufficiently constructed other layers to the story, like subplots, to have it still be engaging. In my opinion, MLB could’ve actually been completely tied up with the whole Hawkmoth business back in the season one finale, based on the content of the show, because there’s just not that much there. It makes me mad because the show has a great concept and I love the characters, but it’s just been shit and it’s not getting better.

#miraculous #miraculous ladybug #miraculous adventures of ladybug and chat noir #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #chloe bourgeois #luka couffaine #kagami tsurugi #hawkmoth #gabriel agreste #thomas astruc #anti mlb #anti miraculous #ml critical #mlb critical

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Best TV Comedies of 2020

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Have we ever been in more need of a laugh than in 2020? Amidst a historic global pandemic, a tumultuous American political election, civil unrest, wildfires, MURDER HORNE… alright, you get the picture. 2020 has been the pits, man. Thankfully, this year from hell featured some bright spots on television, even if rays of sunshine were sorely lacking in reality.

If the shows on our list weren’t making us laugh, we would have been ugly-crying since March. While we were all locked in our homes, we got reacclimated with the Warner Brothers (and sister), said goodbye to BoJack Horseman, and met regular human bartender Jackie Daytona, making quarantine a bit more bearable, if only in 30 minute increments. From brand new series like How To with John Wilson, to swan songs for Den of Geek favorites like Schitt’s Creek, TV comedies in 2020 kept us cackling through the chaos.

To determine the best TV comedy of 2020 in a particularly stacked, diverse year, we polled 12 Den of Geek staffers and contributors. Below, you’ll find our honorable mentions and our list of the series most likely to raise your mood in the darkest year of our adventures.

Honorable Mentions

The following shows received votes but just missed out on the top 20:

Ramy, Never Have I Ever, Feel Good, The Great, Avenue 5, The Duchess, Staged, Famalam, Inside No. 9, Ghosts, The Shivering Truth, Bob’s Burgers, Katy Keene

DEN OF GEEK TOP 20 COMEDIES OF 2020

20 – Big Mouth (Netflix)

How long can a show about puberty, a very specific time in the life cycle, remain viable? Well based on the fourth season of Netflix’s animated comedy Big Mouth, just about as long as it wants to. Big Mouth season 4 succeeds by finding new avenues to delve into the psyches of its young characters going through chaaaaanges. In the process it also finds ways to expand its storytelling capabilities, delving into issues of trans youth, code switching, and anxiety. Through it all it remains as hilarious, and disturbingly vivid, as ever. – Alec Bojalad

19 – The Eric Andre Show (Adult Swim)

It’s not like Eric Andre reinvented the wheel or anything with the fifth season of his anarchic, absurdist talk show. If you were never a fan of anti-comedy that centers heavily around duping random people on the street, gross-out gags, and the torture of unsuspecting guests, then you’re not going to start liking it now.

However, for those of us already onboard The Eric Andre Show train, it’s no small feat that, five seasons in, this is still one of the funniest shows on TV. You’d think by now Eric would’ve run out of guests who have no idea what they’re in for, but, no, there’s an all-new batch of naive celebrities whose lives are effortlessly worsened by Eric, his crew, and his new house band. You’d assume he couldn’t prank people on the streets of New York City and Newark, New Jersey anymore because he’d be recognized by now, but, no, he pisses off a lot of people and breaks a lot of other people’s brains with ever-inventive, bizarre, obnoxious pranks.

Finally, you might think the series would suffer irrevocably from the departure of co-host Hannibal Buress only two episodes into the season, but Eric demonstrates he’s more than capable of spreading chaos all on his own (though he’s sometimes assisted, alternatingly, by a Hannibal clone named Blannibal, comedian Felipe Esparza, and Screen Actors Guild Awards nominee Lakeith Stanfield). Season five is the same The Eric Andre Show as it ever was, but that still makes me laugh harder than anything else on television right now. I’d be happy for Eric to keep making this show forever. – Joe Matar

18 – Saved by the Bell (Peacock)

A Saved by the Bell reboot shouldn’t have worked. But as Peacock’s recent series showcased, with the right creative team and angle, you really can successfully reimagine an outdated but beloved ’90s teen comedy for 2020. Working as both a soft reboot and sequel, this is meta-comedy at its best. Saved by the Bell is fully aware of what made the original special and why they don’t still make shows like it now. Juxtaposing those two competing views through the lens of the privileged and perfect Bayside kids and the new normal students makes this an accessible and seriously funny series with a biting humor rarely seen in teen comedy. – Rosie Knight

17 – Everything’s Gonna Be Okay (Freeform)

Australian comedian Josh Thomas brings his off-kilter sensibility to a loving and sharply funny portrait of a modern family in Everything’s Gonna Be Okay. In the pilot, Thomas’s character Nicholas, a gay twentysomething from Australia, visits his father in the US and learns that his physically and emotionally distant dad is dying. Things really pick up as Nicholas steps up to care for his two teenage half-sisters, Matilda (Kayla Cromer) and Genevieve (Maeva Press), while also trying to date, and manage his melodramatic mother from the other side of the planet.

Matilda especially comes into her own as she hopes to go to college away from home next year— something others doubt since she’s autistic. Her autism is a reality that becomes part of the fabric of the show, a setup rather than a punchline. Few shows would include a teenage threesome that manages to be funny, heartfelt, and matter-of-fact, but in Matilda’s world, sex (and exploring her sexuality) are often all three. Everything’s Gonna Be Okay is a family show that acknowledges the realities of family: death, disabilities, teenage girls with sex drives, and laughter at funerals. – Delia Harrington

16 – Star Trek: Lower Decks (CBS All Access)

Created by one of the writer/producers of Rick and Morty, it’s no surprise that the first episode of Lower Decks involved some pretty broad humor and wildly out of control situations. The producers of the 1970s Star Trek: The Animated Series understood the creative potential of animation when they replaced Ensign Chekov with a giant cat, and Lower Decks follows suit, the pilot giving us blood, guts, gore, zombies and a giant spider, all in Rick and Morty’s madcap tone.

As the show has developed over its first ten episodes, though, it’s become something more than that. The knowing humor is a delight—the focus on things like “second contact” (the less glamorous setting up of diplomatic relations after first contact), ascensions to a higher plane of existence gone wrong, and re-visiting half-forgotten alien races like the Pakleds shows the same sort of gently teasing love of the franchise that Galaxy Quest did. But the characters have also developed into real, complex people to the point that a character death is genuinely moving, and the audience are really able to care about what happens to these essential cogs in Starfleet’s machine next. – Juliette Harrison

15 – Solar Opposites (Hulu)

A big part of what makes Rick and Morty so great is that, in addition to all the sci-fi hijinks, there’s meaningful development of the show’s characters and world. Unfortunately, as the series has progressed, this is also what’s dragged it down. As Rick’s nihilism has increasingly alienated the people around him, a lot of the fun has been lost. The show still puts out the occasional brilliant episode (for example, the season four finale), but it almost feels like all the characters on Rick and Morty straight-up hate each other and watching it can be kind of a drag sometimes.

It’s such a treat then, to see all that fun sci-fi silliness rebirthed in the form of Solar Opposites, co-created by Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty co-creator and writer/producer, respectively). Making good use of all the storytelling lessons they learned from their other sci-fi cartoon show, the two have released a confident and consistently funny debut season. Though it feels awfully similar to Rick and Morty at first blush, it has more in common with classic sitcoms, with its focus on goofy, self-contained plots about the alien family at the show’s center. However, the series shakes the sitcom formula up a lot with a surprising dedication to callbacks and continuity, most notably exemplified by the continuing, dramatic tribulations of a community of people who have been shrunken down and forced to live in the aliens’ multilevel terrarium. The combination of madcap sci-fi alien plots contrasted with the trials of the melodramatic dystopian shrunken-people world makes Solar Opposites one of the most inventive comedies of the season, and I’m excited to find out where it’s going next. – Joe Matar

14 – Dave (FX)

There are countless hip-hop artists whose backstories would make for compelling television. So why did FX choose to spotlight a goofball white rapper from the suburbs with a mediocre penis joke for a stage name? It takes only one episode to realize any preconceived notions about Dave, based on the life and rap career of Dave Burd, aka Lil Dickey, should be spit from your silly mouth faster than Lil Dickey spits bars on a freestyle.

A telling sign that Dave was going to be a sleeper hit was the involvement of co-creator Jeff Schaffer, a longtime EP and writer on Curb Your Enthusiasm and the creator of FX’s The League. Together Schaffer and Burd mapped out a first season that sees Dave navigate the early stages of his music career with a level of narcissism he believes is needed to be taken seriously in the rap game. But the series also shows another side of Dave, self-deprecating in a surprisingly endearing way, rarely swayed by what others think, and frustratingly true to himself and the path he sees for his life. This is FX’s star vehicle for Burd, but the show manages to make him the center of the universe while still developing key players in his life as the season progresses, giving each character an affecting spotlight episode. The standouts include episodes about Dave’s real-life friend and hype man GaTa and his struggles with bipolar disorder, the evolving managerial relationship with his roommate (Andrew Santino), and how sudden fame begins to erode a once promising relationship with his girlfriend, Ali (Taylor Misiak).

Already renewed for season 2 and a ratings hit with FX/Hulu reporting high streaming numbers, Dave is no longer an underdog and will carry a new set of expectations as the titular character’s career ascends. If you’re still a skeptic, you need to adhere to television’s golden rule when it comes to Dave: Don’t judge it until you binge it. – Chris Longo

13 – Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox)

At only 13 episodes, Season 7 was the shortest season yet of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but it packed a lot into those 13 half-hours. With Melissa Fumero pregnant in real life, the writers used this to cover six months in series by following Jake and Amy’s attempts to conceive a baby, helping those limited episodes to feel like they were filling out more time. The show has also struggled to work in its annual Halloween Heist episodes since moving to NBC and being put into a winter start slot, but in 2020 Rosa managed to triple her victory by engineering Heists on not just Halloween, but Valentine’s Day and Easter as well.

Season 7 aired too early to deal with the Black Lives Matter protests that dominated the summer of 2020, but the writers have already pulled all their planned scripts for Season 8 and re-written them in light of those events, so that is yet to come. 2020 had a little bit of everything that makes B99 great—a dose of Pimento, Jake and his daddy issues, Holt’s adorable corgi Cheddar, and one final appearance from his nemesis Madeline Wuntch. For once, the season didn’t end with Holt somehow being removed from his job as Captain of the 99, but there’s still plenty to look forward to in Season 8—maybe 2021 will be the year that Charles Boyle finally wins the Halloween/Valentine’s Day/Easter/Cinco de Mayo Heist? – Juliette Harrison

12 – Animaniacs (Hulu)

Rampant remakes and sequel reboots have turned into the norm, but streaming services have especially embraced this idea as a way to anchor a library of programming. These endeavors are extremely hit or miss, but Hulu’s revival of Animaniacs is one of the few exceptions that feel justified for a return. Animaniacs always functioned as a radical cocktail of perversions of pop culture and classic comedy and 2020’s Animaniacs actively thrives with decades’ worth of new material to lampoon. The series has stripped itself back to its basics and temporarily removed most of the old supporting players, except for Pinky and the Brain, but this allows Animaniacs to build itself back up and establish new recurring characters and segments.

There’s such clear joy present in Animaniacs, whether it’s from the voice actors, the creative staff, or the animation team. Segments like an unauthorized Russian version of the Animaniacs or catchy songs about Shakespeare and the different First Ladies of America prove that the classic series’ sense of humor has successfully been maintained. If anything, the cartoon is even more fearless. It’s the perfect burst of ‘90s Saturday Morning nostalgia that’s also exceptionally funny and thought provoking. – Daniel Kurland

11 – Rick and Morty (Adult Swim)

Rick and Morty is a colossal behemoth of storytelling that’s developed a fascinating and often antagonistic relationship with its audience. 2020’s Rick and Morty content only includes five episodes from the second half of the show’s fourth season, but they’re some of the series’ wildest installments when it comes to storytelling, perpetual jokes, and the show’s ability to deconstruct itself and its fandom. The series Emmy-winning “Vat of Acid Episode” explores the emotional highs and lows of “save states” while “Never Ricking Morty,” the show’s “Story Train” episode, is perhaps the most structure-obsessed piece of television that’s ever been written.

Rick and Morty continues to expand its universe in exciting ways and allow its characters to realistically mature. These episodes provide fascinating insight on both Rick’s relationship with Morty as well as his bond with Beth. Even Jerry and Summer get their moments to shine and Rick and Morty feels more like an ensemble than ever before as it prepares to shake things up even more in season five. – Daniel Kurland

10 – Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun (Netflix)

In 2019, Netflix gave us I Think You Should Leave, the sketch comedy series from Tim Robinson that birthed memes that somehow only get more relevant (and funnier) as time goes on. In 2020, Netflix, likely mindful they needed to hold us over until Robinson finishes filming season 2, gave us a gift from down under called Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun. If you liked Robinson’s sketch series, imagine that on crack, dialed up to 100, and featuring the three silliest Australian dudes to ever walk on that continent. The series stars Mark Bonanno, Broden Kelly, and Zachary Ruane, a group of friends who formed a comedy group called Aunty Donna and gained a large following on YouTube with their absurdist humor that features simple premises that often descend into frenetic madness. See: them explaining how a board game works or doing roll call at school.

In Big Ol’ House of Fun, the series opens with a musical number that will have you wondering whether everything’s a drum. Episode 2 will change the way you think about your morning coffee. Friendly faces like Scott Aukerman and Ed Helms (or is it “Egg” Helms?) even stop by just to play ball. Through its infectious and (mostly) good-natured absurdist energy, the series lives up to its name with endlessly quotable and memable sketches. And much like I Think You Should Leave, Aunty Donna material only gets better when you rewatch it. Here’s to hoping Netflix will let us come back and visit this Big Ol’ House again for season 2. – Chris Longo

9 – Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet (Apple TV+)

Created by Rob McElhenney, David Hornsby, and Megan Ganz of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fame, Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet is a new Apple TV+ comedy that easily justifies a subscription to the streaming service. Set within a video game studio for a popular MMORPG, Mythic Quest leans into certain workplace comedy tropes, but never feels derivative of the genre or that it’s just Always Sunny with a fresh coat of paint. The comedy effectively explores and skewers gaming culture, but a knowledge of the industry is not at all necessary to enjoy the program.

Smart and creative scripts are punctuated by the show’s phenomenal cast, which features the likes of McElhenney, Hornsby, and Danny Pudi. However, Charlotte Nicdao’s work as Poppy Li, the studio’s neurotic perfectionist lead engineer, is a revelation. Mythic Quest works so well because of how it grounds its quick comedy in powerful character dynamics. The series’ “standalone” flashback episode, “A Dark Quiet Death,” received a ton of acclaim, but there are few episodes of television from 2020 that contain more heart and honesty than the series’ quarantine-centric installment. – Daniel Kurland

8- Search Party (HBO Max)

HBO Max’s first bingeable, bonafide hit was outsourced from TBS. After languishing on basic cable with critical praise but low viewership, Search Party made the move to the new Warner streaming service for Season 3 and proved that the series was the perfect “watch it all in one afternoon” comedy. What began as a comedic mystery series about a group of prototypical Brooklyn millenials on a quest to find their missing former classmate shifted in its third season to become a satire on celebrity trials and how tabloid spotlight can turn unassuming people into sociopathic narcissists.

Search Party’s strength is in its ensemble. Alia Shawkat brings an interesting vulnerability to disaffected Dory, but her other “searchers” are the real bright spots. John Reynolds is perfectly cast as the de facto worthless millennial “beta male,” and John Early and Meredith Hagner are consistently laugh out loud funny as self-obsessed, attention seeking airheads. Search Party has a twisty, interesting plot, but it’s also a scathing indictment on an entire generation obsessed with celebrity, self-analyzation, and searching for “meaning.” If you have not yet watched one of the year’s funniest shows, get caught up before Season 4 debuts in January 2021. – Nick Harley

7- How To with John Wilson (HBO)

Life is strange. If you take a moment to actually watch and analyze many of the seemingly ordinary, day-to-day things you witness while walking down the street in a major U.S. city, you’ll be shocked at how alien it can all appear. In New York City in particular, every imaginable human behavior is on display somewhere, and documentarian John Wilson is out there capturing it all on camera. How To With John Wilson may seem like a series designed to teach you useful everyday skills like how to split a check or how to improve your memory, but in reality, it’s a love letter to New York, in all of its beautiful, ugly, life-affirming, and soul-crushing splendor.

It’s also insanely hilarious. Wilson’s deadpan, stammering narration on top of quick cut, slice of life footage is an endlessly watchable setup-punchline joke machine. Wilson also is wise to go down the rabbit hole and follow weird digressions wherever they lead him, like a Mandela Effect conference or the home of an anti-circumcision activist. Further, the series finale is the first piece of television to fully capture the reality of post-pandemic city life, putting to shame all of those half-assed Zoom created depictions of life in 2020. Few shows can effortlessly glide between cringe comedy and poignant moments like this. How To with John Wilson is unlike any other show on television, an absurdist masterpiece that makes the mundane feel surreal and vice versa. – Nick Harley

6- High Fidelity (Hulu)

In a time full of reboots and remakes, High Fidelity earned its existence and then some. To its many admirers, it warranted a second season for more eclectic music choices, guest stars, and beautiful lingering shots over the credits. Sadly, that is not meant to be. Hulu’s High Fidelity is so much more than just a gender-swapped adaptation, though Zoe Kravitz leads the endeavor in the lead role of Rob, the idiosyncratic record store owner counting off Top 5s, especially her Top 5 heartbreaks.

Rob’s rich world is full of characters we’d love to spend more time with, like snarky Cherise, she of the eclectic taste who keeps putting off her musical dreams for “someday.” Or Simon, Rob’s ex and current best friend, who narrates an episode that completely changes how the audience views Rob. Zoe Kravitz carries this beautiful mood piece, sharing chemistry with just about everyone. While it seems relaxed and fun on arrival, High Fidelity eventually reveals itself to have plenty to say about being accountable for our actions and allowing oneself to be happy, before wrapping Rob in a warm summer night and sending her on her way. – Delia Harrington

5- Pen15 (Hulu)

The debut season of Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle’s brilliant series in which they, two adult women, play middle-schoolers surrounded by actual kid actors playing their classmates, was, in my opinion, the funniest show last year, but, as I didn’t actually get around to watching it until this year, I didn’t know that at the time. Rectifying my past mistake, this year—despite the fact it’s only aired half a season so far due to production being halted by COVID—it’s not just my favorite comedy, it’s my favorite show, period.

Though it still has its fair share of laugh-out-loud moments, the comedy in the second season has, admittedly, been scaled back a bit, but it makes perfect sense for where Pen15 is right now. From the start, what the series has done painfully well is zero in on the utter nightmare of living through our stressful and confusing pubescent years. As the series deepens its exploration of these characters’ experiences with friendship, romance, sexuality, the internet, and the impact of divorce, the stress and confusion should and absolutely do ratchet up. This season is also doing a great job of further developing the show’s side characters, with a standout arc for Dylan Gage as Gabe, who is grappling with the discovery that he may be gay. Though it’s still a hilarious series in places, Pen15 most wins me over most for how uncomfortable and tragic it can be with its stunningly well-observed depiction of surviving junior high. The secondhand shame and embarrassment you’ll feel makes it one of the toughest, but most worthwhile, watches of the year. – Joe Matar

4 – Ted Lasso (Apple TV+)

Jason Sudeikis’s Ted Lasso first originated as a character back in 2013, when NBC Sports commissioned a commercial for its upcoming coverage of the English Premier League. “An American Coach in London” introduced the concept of an American football coach deciding to try his hand coaching “the other football” with top flight club Tottenham Hotspur. It was a hilarious five minute clip that seemingly exploited the “fish out of water” concept to its natural conclusion.

The character seemed destined to be a one-off goof. But then Sudeikis and producer Bill Lawrence decided to try their hand at the overmatched coach one more time with a series for Apple TV+. The end result was one of the most essential new comedies of the 2020 TV season. Ted Lasso works because its’ funny, first and foremost. The show proves that this fish still had plenty of more time to spend out of water after all. More important, however, is how aggressively wholesome and optimistic it is. In a year that saw ugly Americans all over over TV screens, Ted Lasso represented the stars and bars the only way he knew how: by believing in the best of people from aging football star Roy Kent, to selfish young buck Jamie Tart, to even the woman who got him this job in the first place as an elaborate revenge plot. – Alec Bojalad

3 – Schitt’s Creek (Pop)

If Schitt’s Creek were a fairy tale (and in all the best ways, it is), it’d be about a group of puppets brought to life by a magic spell. When the Roses lose their fortune, they’re forced to swap wealth and glamour for unfashionable small-town living. They start out wooden, obnoxious and alone. Then, over six seasons, we watch them transform into a flesh and blood family who figure out how to love each other in a community that’s as weird as they are, and that ends up loving them back.

If that sounds schmaltzy, then I’m saying it wrong. Schitt’s Creek doesn’t do schmaltz. It does smart and absurd and naughty. It does jokes and brightness and kindness. Or it did, because now it’s gone. 2020 waved Johnny, Moira, David and Alexis off with a final season packed with treats: Patrick’s spray tan, David’s bed-wetting, the world premiere of “The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening”, Moira officiating a wedding dressed in a Rapunzel wig and pearlised bishop’s mitre…

However painful it was to say goodbye, the alternative – another six seasons with diminishing returns – would have been much worse. Dan and Eugene Levy’s sitcom went out on a high, with a finale that left fans in joyful tears. Not least for moments like the one in which a usually armoured-by-sarcasm David tells his sister, “For what it’s worth, I am continuously impressed by you.” The feeling’s mutual, Roses. – Louisa Mellor

2- BoJack Horseman (Netflix)

Though BoJack Horseman premiered only the back half of its final season in 2020, those eight episodes were some of the best dramatic and comedic storytelling on television this year. This final season operated as almost a microcosm of the series’ entire run. Just like the show’s beginning, season 6B begins with BoJack in a place of relative stability. He has just finished rehab and is prepared to embark on a career as an acting professor at Wesleyan. Of course, something from his past has to pop up to shatter his fragile equilibrium, just like it always does. In this case, it’s a pair of journalists working on a story of what really happened the night Sarah Lynn died back in season 3. What follows is as sadly predictable as it is tragic… also there are jokes!

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BoJack Horseman has been a frequently occurring item on many of our year-end best-of lists since the show first premiered in 2014. And each time, it’s hard not to continually expound upon what a bizarre, touching, and incisive drama Rapahel Bob-Waksberg’s animated creation is. That temptation remains for this final season, which is as devastating as they come. But this year, for the show’s final appearance on any of our best-of lists, let’s not lose sight of how funny this all is.

Yes, this is an exploration of the human condition and how the only way to repair our damage is to acknowledge it and then put in the work to get better. It’s also the show where Mr. Peanutbutter, his fiancée Pickles Aplenty, and international pop superstar Joey Pogo open up a Lazy Susan/small plate restaurant called “Elifino.” The animation remains just as bright in this final season, the dialogue just as witty and convoluted, and the background jokes just as rewarding. BoJack Horseman season 6 shoulders a grand narrative burden of closing out the story of the world’s most miserable Horseman. That it is able to do so is remarkable. That it’s able to do so while maintaining its sharp sense of humor is even better. – Alec Bojalad

1- What We Do in the Shadows (FX)

Adapting a beloved indie comedy film to the small screen seems a near impossible task. But when Taika Waititi convinced Jemaine Clement they should do exactly that, it was a stroke of genius. With Waititi busy on his Marvel movies, Clement was left to write and produce the FX series alongside Stefani Robinson and Paul Simms. What We Do in the Shadows began with a solidly silly first season but came into its own during a stellar second season which leaned into the absurdity innate to the idea of ancient vampire roommates. The series has also given us a new action hero for the ages in Harvey Guillén’s Guillermo de la Cruz.

What makes season two so excellent is the writing and performances that play on the fish out of water setup the show has so much fun with. In “The Curse,” Nandor checks his email and discovers a chain email from Bloody Mary. Most of the hilarious runtime focuses on the crew trying to uncurse themselves. It sounds simple but it is honestly one of the funniest episodes of TV you’ll watch all year. “The Curse” is only topped by “On the Run,” which allows Matt Berry to go full Matt Berry as Laszlo leaves the nest and becomes a bartender, Jackie Daytona, who loves girls volleyball in smalltown America. It’s a pitch perfect riff on feel good sports movies while also being hysterically funny. It’s still a complete crime that Robinson didn’t win the Emmy for this one.

But the real power of What We Do in the Shadows is its heart. Even within the broad comedy, genre parodies, and often gross out humor, this is a show about love, family, and friendship. Guillermo’s arc feels radical and boundary-pushing. It’s so well built in from the very first season that it’s also incredibly satisfying. This is the kind of comedy we need more of: inclusive, intelligent, and most importantly just really, really, f**king funny. – Rosie Knight

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benbarnesescape · 7 years

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The Wager - Part 4

Warnings: Sweet, awkward Logan

A/N: You guys Ben is killing me portraying Billy Russo (as seen above). I am debating updating Blood, Sex and Whiskey because I just feel bloody Punisher is going to drop this Friday and then I’ll be wrong about everything so until then the Wager Part 4 until I can figure out my ovaries and mental sanity

Need to Catch up. Check out the Previous Part Here

He was different. You had come out to model each outfit, like he had asked, and each time you had been awarded with his half hooded eyes, his body molded into the soft cushions of the creme couch that housed him. He had stopped responding after the third outfit, a faint smile tugging at his lips as he watched you carefully. The girl’s who helped you dressed had shifted their mood along with his – now they watched you dangerously. Apparently, all of them had been with Logan at one point or another. Apparently, they had all tried to get him to pursue more than a quick romp in the sack. Apparently, he had declined them all, not paying them any attention to them afterwards.

But then there was you.

They didn’t know what to make of the woman who had become Logan’s friend. The woman who had garnered his attention and was now having him drool over her while he bought her nice clothing.

They definitely didn’t believe you were both just friends.

By the time you had finished trying on the wardrobe of new outfits, Rachel had joined Logan on the couch, talking easily to him as she propped her head on her hand, elbow propped on the couch. He was relaxed now, his easy smile returning on his face as he chuckled lowly, his eyes flashing to you the moment you left the dressing room.

You had returned to your original outfit, the mishmash of a fall non brand look that you were sure cost a total of $50. Didn’t matter to Logan, however. His eyes still drank you eagerly as you walked to him slowly, that same dark look flashing across his face despite present company.

You weren’t sure what to make of this changed behavior.

“Y/N you simply have to come back and model for me. Do you know how many women bought outfits that you’re getting just because of how you looked in them? You’re a walking advertisement.” Rachel’s voice cuts through your thoughts and you laugh, shaking your head as you shale your hair out of the ponytail it was in.

“I don’t know about that,” you manage, ruffling your tendrils. “But it was fun to model in your clothing. Didn’t realize all the cheap shit I was buying until just now. I mean, I’ll still wear the cheap stuff but I have a new found appreciation for cashmere.”

Rachel laughs, standing up and placing her hand softly on your right shoulder.

“Well the clothes are on me. I made double my sale quota and I have a feeling you’re the reason for it.”

“Rachel I can’t possibly-“

She holds up her hand, shaking her head.

“Don’t you dare deny me this. Consider it a gift, if not from me than from Logan. And besides, you got him to stay completely silent for an hour without taking your clothes off in front him. I think that might be a record - it’s the quietest I’ve ever seen him in front of a beautiful woman.”

You both glance at Logan, who had been watching the interaction in curiosity and was now trying to cover the bright blush gracing his face. He chuckles, placing his hands on his knees and standing up slowly.

“I think we’ve outlived our welcome here, Rachel. I’ll let Juliet know that you said hi.”

He places his hand on the small of your back, drawing you closer to him.

“We got plans for this evening so if you don’t mind, I’m going to steal my dear friend back.”

There it was again. That specific term used to define your relationship. You knew that Logan cared about you – you just didn’t realize how much. He had never let on.

Rachel catches the small endearment too and quirks an eyebrow before replying,

“Didn’t realize that she was such a dear friend. Makes me feel like I’m just chopped liver.”

Logan rolls his eyes, though a smile still plays against his lips as he begins to usher you out of the store.

“You’re basically like another sister Rachel so take that for what it is.” He throws over his shoulders and your left with her laugh before you’re entering the cool autumn air of New York. His town car is parked patiently in front of the store as pedestrians bustle past you and Logan. He’s looking down at his phone, his fingers quickly texting something before he glances up at you, a devious smile on his lips.

“So you have two options at this point.”

You raise an eyebrow as he finishes.

“With the bet. You have two options. We can try to make this four o’clock showing of A Tinder Affair,” you snort at the way he strains through the title, “Or you could choose any older rom com movie of your choice and we can watch it at my place. Note that if you watch it at my place there’d be dinner, all the booze you can drink and if you get too tipsy a guest bed you can sleep in.”

He watches your carefully as you raise your eyebrows, debating between the two options.

“….this isn’t a ploy to get into my pants?” you finally ask curtly and he laughs, stuffing his hands back into his pockets as he shakes his head.

“God no. I told you – this day was all about you. Besides,” he inches closer to you, bending down so he’s closer to your face. “If I wanted to get in your pants didn’t matter what we did next or where we were at. Surely Rachel’s little helpers let you know that.”

He wiggles his eyebrows and you give a light laugh, but half of you is hurt. Why was it that he’d make moves on young, naïve idiots but he couldn’t gather the courage to even kiss you? Were you reading all of his singles incorrectly and projecting your own desires onto the situation?

Perhaps this was just a wager and he wanted to stay friends? You know you need to respond some way by the unsure way he’s looking at you so you finally mutter out,

“Okay, okay. Then let’s do dinner and a movie at your place.”

He gives you a knowing smile, before he throws his arm over your shoulder and begins shuffling you toward the town car.

“Perfect. Andres will take you back to your loft in Brooklyn. I’m gonna take a cab home – need to stop off someplace first. See you at, let’s call it 7?”

“You’re dumping me?” you respond and he chuckles, placing a soft kiss on your forehead.

“Just need to make some last minute arrangements. I promise you, it’ll be worth it.”

His lips linger on your forehead and you can’t help but wrap your arms around him, inhaling his scent. There was something about being wrapped in him that made you feel safe. Made you feel like you had a home.

It was a feeling you hadn’t felt in a while and it always came up when you were around him.

The gesture takes him off guard and he stiffens, causing you to instantly pull away afraid that you’ve over crossed your bounds.

“Sorry, I just wanted to thank you for such a great time today…I’ll head off…” you turn on your heels, mumbling your apology, trying to cover the embarrassment sweeping over your body.

He doesn’t let you.

His hand shoots out to grab your arm, snagging your attention as your eyes shoot back to his. His chocolate irises are watching you, that same intensity from earlier in the kitchen flashing against something else. Then someone bumps into him and you’re both drawn back to the present as he clears his throat.

“You never have to apologize for hugging me Y/N. You can have me however you like…” he frowns, shaking his head before releasing your arm and taking a step back.

“I have to go – text me when you’re on the way.”

Then he turns on his heels, losing himself in the crowd.

“What the fuck is going on…” you mumble to yourself, before shaking your head and getting into the car.

The bowl falling snaps him from his thoughts. He mutters to himself, picking up the round metal before placing it back on the counter. He had been intent on finishing the meal before you showed up, though thanks to a lot of delays he knew that wasn’t going to happen. The lady at the deli took too long to give him his rack of lamb, he had to return the two wine bottles he ordered because they were the wrong year and the cab driver he had taken home had intentionally kept him in traffic for a better fare.

This paired with showering and clearing up the area, making sure that your favorite flowers were delivered had him incredibly behind.

Now he was scrambling around his kitchen, his dark burgundy button up pulled up to his sleeves as he tried to prepare the elaborate dish that earlier had made so much sense in his head.

Perhaps it was a bit too much. The leg of lamb, the poached potatoes, the rich souffle. But he wanted you to have the best.

You deserved the best.

He knew he was in trouble after watching you model outfit after outfit, the same happy smile dancing on your lips as you twirled in each outfit. Knew he was in trouble when you wrapped your arms around him outside Rachel’s shop, the smell of your shampoo and perfume intermingling – intoxicating him. Knew he was in trouble when you tried to pull away and he wanted nothing more than to bring you back to him and kiss you until you were weak in the knees.

Rachel had been right.

“You could tell her how you feel.” She said while the both of them waited for you to change. He had leaned back in the cushions, his head thrown back as he kept his eyes trained on the ceiling.

“I’m broken Rachel.” He finally says moments later and Rachel places her hand on his shoulder, shaking her head.

“We’re all broken Logan. We’re all broken until someone finds us and shows us that for all of our brokenness we’re worth it. I see the way you both look at each other. It’s that special spark. She see’s past all those walls that you’ve built up and sees you,” she pokes at his chest and he huffs, rolling his head to her. “You have to believe that if she see’s something in you, maybe it’s not to be ignored.”

“I already told you. I’m not good enough for her.”

Rachel rolls her eyes.

“You’re right. You’re not. But sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes the universe is kind to you and places someone right in front of you whether you deserve it or not. It’s up to you on whether or not you should make a move.”

Logan nods, before shaking his head.

“I just don’t want to ever disappoint her.”

Rachel gives a soft smile.

“And because of that you never will.”

It had been rolling in the back of his mind since he had left Rachel, wondering if she had been right. Should he risk your friendship for something more? Or should he do what he had always chosen to do and play it safe?

All of his instincts said the latter because he always fucked up things when it came to his emotions. But another small part of him, the part that so desperately wanted to make you happy and to be the reason for that happiness, believed otherwise.

The rhythmic knock on the door that could only distinctly be you broke him of his thoughts as he finished checking the meat and he sighed, untying his apron and pulling it over his head. He checked himself in the mirror one more time, wiping sweaty palms on his jeans before taking one last breath and opening the door.

You were looking down on your phone, smiling to yourself wearing the sundress he had requested you wear, left on your bed after you had tried it on earlier that day. You had pulled your hair back, wisps of hair coming astray in light curls and he felt his chest implode with something.

Not lust. Something else more tender. Something else he refused to acknowledge.

“I see that you got my gift.” He smiles at you and your head snaps up, that smile still planted on it.

“My, my, don’t you clean up nice.” You smile and despite his best effort, he can’t help but blush. He covers it up by rubbing the back of his neck, shaking his head and standing aside.

“Come in. Please.”

You nod, moving past him and he catches the faint linger of perfume, soft vanilla and tries to bite back the internal groan. He wants to get lost in you.

“Logan…” you breathe out taking in the setting. He had set the lighting low, candles strewn about. The dinner table set with the most lighting, your favorite flowers adorning the full set table. A chilled bottle of wine sat aside, the faint music of Sabrina Claudio drifting in the air.

He had asked his sister Juliet how he should impress you and though she giggled and teased she didn’t prod as she talked her older brother through a romantic evening. She was curious but figured it would come up in time. This whole day had turned him into someone even he didn’t recognize and he didn’t know what to make of it.

“Would you like a glass of wine? Its you’re favorite, a rich Malbec from Argentina.” he asks, watching your reaction with intention and you give a soft nod as he brushes past you, grabbing the bottle and starts to twist it open. The cork smoothly slides out of the glass container with a single pop and he pours two bottles of glasses with finesse. He catches the way you watch him with awe before you finally let out,

“Logan this is the most beautiful thing anyone has ever done for me.”

He chuckles, handing you the glass before raising it.

“That’s because no one has treated you like the woman you deserve princess.”

You raise an eyebrow but don’t challenge him as you clink your glass against his before you both take a sip. When you finish your drink you ask,

“So now I’m your princess? Graduated from your dear friend to this?”

He walks toward you, brushing a strand of your hair from your eyes before his hand lingers on your face.

“You’ve always been my princess Y/N.” he whispers, his calloused fingers rubbing against your cheek and your face falls into his touch, your eyelids fluttering close.

“God you’re so beautiful.”

The admission takes you both off guard as your eyes snap open, looking back at him. Your lips part open, your breathing hitched and all he can think about is bending down to taste your lips, to get his hands lost in your hair as he draws you closer to him.

Instead, the oven alarm goes off and you’re both taken off guard as the light chime feels the apartment air.

“I should get that.” He mumbles, hesitantly pulling away before striding to the oven. He takes a large swig of his wine, shaking his head.

He had to figure his shit out or he wasn’t going to make it through this evening alive.

#ben barnes #logan westworld x reader #logan westworld #the wager #benbarnesescape

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flcwerstudies · 6 years

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cute tag!

pretty long post coming up!! Thanks to @cafedetude for tagging me!! im tagging: @hermiionegrcnger @studying-frenzy @belledoe @tiny-notes @theteadesk !! You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to ofc and if u want to do it and i haven’t tagged you go ahead!!

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk? there must always be more milk than cereal, but that amount must not exceed a certain amount do you get me? when i scoop my cereal there has to be proportionate amounts of milk in each scoop, consistently, until i have finished my bowl. my mind is a strange and lonely place.

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day? yes! its so refreshing and i feel like all your lethargy just evaporates... i love taking walks in the winter around my neighborhood in the evenings.

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books? spoons, lipsticks, i once used another book to bookmark a book, hair elastic, my contact lenses case, compact mirror....im a mess, i know

4: how do you take your coffee/tea? tea: scalding hot with lots of sugar and some milk. coffee: lots of milk, so much sugar

5: are you self-conscious of your smile? no? i just want my braces off!!

6: do you keep plants? yess

7: do you name your plants? yes! i am currently growing two wild roses and I’ve named them Calliope and Polymnia.

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings? journaling, writing, reenacting musicals and dramatic renditions of songs?

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself? yeah ofccc it keeps me sane

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach? back and side

11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends? CAROL THE LESBIAN LIBRARIAN // mary walks by // too many to list here tbh

12: what’s your favorite planet? mars! and also venus

13: what’s something that made you smile today? my friends

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like? a hurricane flew thru the entire place, empty wine bottles on the ground, beanbag chairs, stacks of books and movies, maybe a cat and a dog lazing around on the couch

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is! there’s a gigantic cloud of alcohol wayyyyy out in outer space that could produce over 450 trillion pints of beer

16: what’s your favorite pasta dish? give me all the pasta. i love all pastas.

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair? im ok with my hair color now

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up. GETTING A CAPUCHIN MONKEY AS MY PATRONUS ON POTTERMORE

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it? yes! i rant a lot and i sort of write down reflections? on my day and things. its really emo and angsty lmao im 16 pls

20: what’s your favorite eye color? brown eyes. so gentle. so sharp. so kind but so cruel. so ambiguous!

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that’s been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces. my tote bag from myanmar! the straps are falling off but i love it so much

22: are you a morning person? depends on if i slept early enough

23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations? sleep, watch a movie, watch youtube, read

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets? absolutely not. it always pisses me off when people are like ohhh you can tell me anything??? no i can’t????

25: what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever broken into? my friend’s house lmao

26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit? my peach converse! they’re so pastel and they seem weird but converse generally go well with a lot of things

27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor? i don’t like gum tbh

28: sunrise or sunset? both

29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing? sticks his tongue out when he’s concentrating and its so cute i die everytime

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared? yes but i will never ever go into detail with anyone about this lmao

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks. i love socks, i like wearing weird socks except for toe socks, people who sleep with socks on are Immune to Heat and Not Afraid Of Dying?? no white socks get nasty real quick and they’re so bland, i love socks i have this grey pair with french bulldog faces allllll over it and i wear them all the time and even though people can’t see them i still get happy and tell people about my dog socks.

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends. HA LMAO we had just watched a scary movie so obviously we turned on my little pony and watched that for two hours

33: what’s your fave pastry? cupcakes! anything tbh i have an enormous sweet tooth

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it? my dad used to go on a lot of business trips and he came back once with a huge stuffed bear from switzerland and its so fuzzy its still on my bed. it’s name is Fred and it wears overalls and it has brown fur!

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often? yes to all!!

36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now? paul anka lmao he’s not a band but ya know

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean? clean

38: tell us about your pet peeves! wHEN UR JAMMING OUT TO MUSIC AND THEN SPOTIFY JUST STOPS WORKING?? people asking me if im mad when im just being quiet and then making me mad by continually questionning me, people who will ask dumb questions (yes, there are always dumb questions. google is free and im not going to tell u the homework, it’s written on the board quite clearly u moron), racist/homophobic/ableist/ generally offensive and disrespectful people

39: what color do you wear the most? grey and navy

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what’s it’s story? does it have any meaning to you? I have mismatching earrings that my grandmother got me for my birthday!

41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving? Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis!

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it! the starbucks on center street it’s very Starbucks, exactly what you would expect, but I always sit in the corner spot near the windows

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with? My family!

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything? sitting in the sand in shell key, florida. my feet are in the water and i am watching my family swimming. I am very sunburnt but my mind is completely blank in a good way

45: do you trust your instincts a lot? absolutely

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of. ofc they used a baby lion as their mascot. it’s simba-lic.

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe? there’s this food in korea that’s just stir fried rice with soybean sprouts and the sprouts..... aw god....they refuse to be bitten in half and it’s so gross i hate it sm

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today? darkness! and no it is different today!

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought? there are scarce places to buy CD’s now but the last one I bought was Micheal Jackson’s Bad

50: what’s an odd thing you collect? bottle caps and paperclips and also pens i pick off the ground

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them? my dad. any aretha franklin song

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far? the spongebob one and the gif of the white man who blinks a lot....u know the one

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them? i loved all of them and i want to be able to quote them in all of my speech but i dont think people have watched all of them

54: who’s the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face? i was working on homework last night and when i was turning on my laptop to work on my project i met my reflection in the screen

55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point? been incredibly bitchy like damn.....i surprise myself and i really hate it

56: what are some things you find endearing in people? when people use weird shit as bookmarks, when they laugh with their eyes shut, laugh lines near their eyes, dimples, kindness, when they aren’t afraid of making eye contact with me bc i have weirdly intense eyes

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics? it did not fit the mood of my day but yes i did reenact the lyrics

58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why? my friend diana is the wine mom but i am the vodka aunt. why?? she is infinitely more caring and kind and sophisticated and also wine gets u lowkey, calm drunk, while i, the vodka aunt, am caring, but i have a bit of a laissez faire attitude and go with the flow and ‘damn what the hell fuck it’ kinda vibe and vodka gets u sloppy shitfaced drunk with none of the sophistication that comes with wine.

59: what’s your favorite myth? icarus

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves? i dont LOVE poetry but i like haikus they’re like clever one liners ha

61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received? I gave my friend a notebook that i’d hastily made the night before and I have received a box of pads which in retrospect is not even a stupid present bc pads are expensive

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind? i drink oj when i can

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be? i organize them every month bc i am ridiculous and i can’t function if my bookshelf is weirdly organized

64: what color is the sky where you are right now? pale grey almost white.

65: is there anyone you haven’t seen in a long time who you’d love to hang out with? my oldest group of friends (TNT lmaoooo) OR YOU KNOW callixtus from volunteering holyyy. you know those people who u meet and u immediately click with?? he’s on of them magical people and he was hella funny too i miss that guy to all hell

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like? small roses! peach blossoms and cherry blossoms too. one huge ass hibiscus or lotus flower as a statement piece

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel? cozy and sheltered. valid excuse for not going out

68: what’s winter like where you live? terrible but i love it kinda

69: what are your favorite board games? monopoly

70: have you ever used a ouija board? NO WHAT

71: what’s your favorite kind of tea? barley, green or reallllyyyy black tea with loootss of sugar so that it makes your teeth ache

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you’ll forget it? yeah how’d you know

73: what are some of your worst habits? expecting everyone to be on the same page

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns. dedicated and brash, loud and hilarious, soft, amazing, i love them a lot

75: tell us about your pets! i dont have pets!! T-T

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t? studying BUT DONT CALL ME OUT LIKE THIS OK

77: pink or yellow lemonade? pink

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub? hateclub sorry

79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you? done my makeup for me while gossiping with me

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why? pale green and yeah i did. i chose it bc i love green! and the old color was boring and i didn’t like it

81: describe one of your friend’s eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of. no edges at all, soft bovine eyes , shaking leaves, crocodile tears

82: are/were you good in school? yes! it’s a source of a lot of pride for me!

83: what’s some of your favorite album art? amsterdam by nothing but thieves omg

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones? oohh nahh im not planning on getting tattoos im scared of needles

85: do you read comics? what are your faves? through the woods? i used to read a lot of them but you know i grew out of them

86: do you like concept albums? which ones? not especially no

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives? the drop, double indemnity, back to the future, idk there’s a lot

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy? the rennaissance! it was so extra and i loved it a lot

89: are you close to your parents? yeah

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities. TORONTO-soaring skyline from the highways at night near the lakeshore, the lights from the condos are like stars and its ridiculous but i also loooooveee dubrovnik in croatia and hanoi in vietnam and kaunas in lithuania and kyoto in japan.....in dubrovnik the wind blows in from the shore and at night when the lights are on in the walled city the stone glows amber. In Hanoi in the old quarter, motorbikes flash by and there’s yelling and the smell of pork skewers and there’s old buildings and new ones, huge stalks of bamboo leaning up against the walls. In Kaunas the wind is so cold and sharp and the buildings are so clean and there’s that old fortress and the tower! it’s so beautiful. and Kyoto is old and archaic but so modern it hurts and the streets are too uniform and the houses creep me out a bit bc they’re so quiet.

91: where do you plan on traveling this year? i dont think so

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch? i will bury my pasta in cheese just you watch

93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most? my hair is one style fits all bc its short

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday? my friend!

95: what are your plans for this weekend? study and work on projects and homework and stress and nap and have dinner with a guest

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot? no updates. we die like men.

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house? isfj-t, aries, ravenclaw

98: when’s the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it? sometime in september? it was nice!

99: list some songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them. put your head on my shoulder by paul anka....there’s a lot and im really lazy sorry

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why? 5 years in the future, just to see where I end up

#tagged #ask games #nice!#tagged games #tag games #about me

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nyeusigrube-haven · 4 years

Text

All Just Glass: excerpts

(originally posted in 2004)

Prologue I 1981

That idiot. If he appeared and disappeared one more time, she was going to strangle him.

As nonsensical as that idea seemed, since he didn’t need to breathe. But she was annoyed.

11:48. She should have been out of here by now, but this vampire was playing havoc with her self-control. Or the faint apparition of willpower she mistakenly liked to call "self-control."

Abruptly, a hand was resting on her right forearm, not tight enough to restrain yet, though the potential was there. The other half of the pair snaked around her to proffer a calla lily.

"A gift, for the most beautiful woman here," he offered.

She shook his grip off, turning, and finally the admirer who had been stalking her to- who had invited her to this bash, actually- stood before her.

"You’re late," she said. "You were supposed to-"

He hushed her, a finger over her lips, and she was shocked enough that she actually stopped talking. When he had invited her, he had promised to show up by ten; here it was almost the Devil’s Hour.

"I was here," he teased. "I never said I would introduce myself."

She glared. 11:50, the clock read. She really needed to get out of here; midnight was not a fond time for her at these parties.

"Would you care to dance?" the vampire offered.

"First I want to know your name." He had been following her around, playing merry hell with her hunting trips, and flirting for months now. From small gifts left in absurd places, to poetry called down from darkened rooftops as she stalked her prey, to odd moments where chocolate cake would appear beside her bed while she slept, he had attempted to court her.

Her! He was a vampire, infatuated with a hunter.

And finally he had invited her here.

And she had come. And she had been here for hours, mingling and playing nice, and hadn’t killed anything yet.

"Jerome," he answered. "Now would you like to dance?"

The music had surged into a slow song, ethereal and falsely peaceful.

They danced. Jerome was a fine dancer. More than fine.

11:57. His gaze followed hers to the clock. "How about a walk outside?" he suggested. A walk outside, while Devil’s Hour fell inside.

"Outside" included an Oriental garden, lush and beautiful. Jerome kept an arm around her shoulders as they walked, and she couldn’t tell if he was being friendly or trying to keep her from reaching the knife on the back of her neck.

"You know I have a fiancée," she said, wondering about this handsome vampire and how mad he truly was.

"The honorable Fredrick," he answered lightly. "He’s human, you know. No good for you at all."

She shook her head.

"You know what I am." She knew he did. But she needed to hear him say it.

"Of course." He sighed. Inside, a clock struck midnight.

"This is traditionally when you try to drink my blood, and I kill you," she said, wondering whether Jerome had plans to that effect. That was certainly what was going on inside- save for the second part. Most of the guests had no idea what their hosts were until the moment when the fangs were shown. Yet there was no screaming. There never was. She had seen enough vampires with their prey to know that the prey rarely fought. More often, it swooned.

"I don’t like tradition," Jerome answered. He stopped, facing her in the darkness. "How about we say this is the moment when I kiss you." He tilted her face up as he spoke. "And you kiss me back?"

They did. The clock had stopped striking when his lips met hers; she wrapped arms around his neck.

Jerome’s skin was warm as any human’s. She had never understood that.

His kiss trailed from her lips to her throat. She wrapped fingers around the handle of the knife on her left wrist, waiting for the bite.

He lifted his head, and she leaned against him, relaxing. "You are too tempting," he said, his voice shaky.

She could see through the window another couple, like Jerome and herself, the man’s lips at the woman’s throat. Only he had bitten. The woman’s fingers were twined in his hair, her body slack, supported by his embrace.

"What does it feel like?" She had never been in a position to know.

Jerome knew what she was asking. "If you don’t fight..." He shook his head. "It’s not something that can be described. It feels good. Really good." He took a breath, something that was completely unnecessary; it was one of those odd traits some vampires had, a habit left over from human time when emotions were expressed through breathing. "That’s why so many people are willing," he added. "And if the vamp can roll your mind, even better. You're a thousand miles away, floating in paradise in an instant."

She knew about those people, humans who willingly attended these bashes with the hope that some vampire would take their blood.

"Could you?" she asked, her voice uncharacteristically tentative.

Jerome looked surprised. "Only if you let me."

She had known that. He wasn’t the strongest of his kind, and the defenses in her mind were powerful.

It was tempting. When would she possibly get this opportunity again?

She tilted her head back, brushing silky blonde hair from her throat. Jerome met the invitation instantly, his lips hovering over the pulse for a moment. He whispered, "Sweetheart," an endearment that seemed out of place, breath cool on her skin, and then she felt the press of fangs. She consciously lowered the walls in her mind, and then...

As he had said, there were no words. A million caresses. A flow of warm water. A sweet lethargy like the warm fuzzy stage just before sleep.

However it was described, when he lifted his head again, she wanted more. She tried to pull him back down and he laughed.

"I think you would be very cross with me if I took too much," Jerome said.

She settled for the next best thing, rising on her toes to try to meet his lips, but again he pushed her back.

"Not unless you want to taste your own blood," he warned her.

Not like she had never tasted it before.

Prologue II

The sunlight formed millions of rainbows as it fell through the thick, carved glass window. Millions of glass facets, etched to resemble a forest of ice, decorated the eight panes.

"Sarah." The sharp sound of her older sister’s voice snapped Sarah back to what they were doing.

Adianna had looked up from the book she had been studying, and now brushed from her face fine, silver-blond hair that had only begun to darken to the deep honey color it would later become.

"Okay, I’m bored," sighed another girl at the table, also blond, named Gabriel. Gabriel Arun, one of the oldest of their group at eleven years, lifted eyes the color of lightening storms to glance at the clock. "Do I really have to do this?"

"Yep," answered Michael solemnly. He still had a bit of a French accent, which Sarah loved the sound of. The Andre family had only moved back to the US a year ago, to join Michael’s great aunt’s side of the family, which included Gabriel.

"Just read." That commandment came from Zachary Vida, Sarah’s first cousin. Zachary was Gabriel’s age, but had none of her impatience.

"I think if I stare at this book for another minute, I might have to break something," Sarah lamented.

"Sarah!"

She hunched over as she heard her mother’s stern voice behind her. Dominique had entered the kitchen.

"Sorry, Mother." Her mother did not approve of familiar greetings; Sarah could not imagine how Dominique would react to hear one of her daughters say the word "Mommy" or- "Has Father come home yet?" she asked hopefully, as her thoughts reminded her.

He had been gone for a week now, a long time. And if he was gone more than one night, he always called. He never went away for this long without calling to talk to Sarah.

"He hasn’t called," Dominique answered coolly. She did not sound worried about the man she had married.

"I’m worried about him," Sarah confided. "Can’t Monica or someone-"

The wrong person to confide to, unfortunately. Before Sarah could suggest that one of the other witches might be able to help track the human man down, Dominique interrupted, "It doesn’t matter. Study, Sarah."

She returned to her book, and studied. Dominique took Gabriel and Zachary into the next room, and the sound of Gabriel’s fierce kia’s soon filled the area as she practiced. Zachary was more quiet, though occasionally he would correct Gabriel or apologize to Dominique about a mistake.

They were allowed to fight. The older kids got to practice combat, and everyone else got to stay here, studying page after page of history and laws.

Michael put a hand over Sarah’s as she shut the book and leaned her head on the table.

"We’ll get a chance later," he whispered, careful not to let Dominique hear them talking. "Come on. We’ve only got another fifteen minutes, then we can take a break. Then I’ll fight you."

She smiled slightly. Michael and Gabriel were from the Arun line. That meant they did not need to memorize the pages of Vida laws, and they did not need to practice the iron control that Sarah, Adianna and Zachary were having drilled into them by Dominique.

They still needed to know the histories, though. Sarah had read these books so many times, she had come to know many of the creatures described within. She could recognize a lot of them on sight. Generations of genealogy were drilled into her.

That was the point of the books, the journals as Dominique called them. One contained the Vida ancestry, back until nearly five thousand years BC.Another contained the tedious lists of their prey, which Dominique had mostly gathered, based on sketches and descriptions written by witches long dead. All the creatures that the list named were vampires. With their sprawling, ever growing numbers, their black eyes and the bloodlust that drove them, they were slowly hunted by Sarah and her kin. Since long before the books were started, there had been Vida witches, defenders of humanity Sarah liked to think.

Michael’s line, the Arun line, was much younger. Its roots were a mystery; it was only known that they healed faster and were stronger than any other witch. And of course, the Arun line had fewer rules.

Adianna was studying those rules right now, poring over the faded, black script of Brina D'Bergitta Arun, who had lived in the late sixteen hundreds. She had recorded all the laws and some of the history of the lines of witches- ten pages of her tight handwriting covered the complex sets of Vida laws.

A sensation like ice down her spine caused Sarah to stand and look up towards the door, outside which she could sense... something. For a moment it had felt like vampire, but now that was gone. Michael was looking at her, puzzled, and Adianna was also watching the doorway.

"Sarah-"

"None of them would be stupid enough to attack one of us here," Sarah interrupted her sister, as her natural curiosity led her to investigate. The aura felt almost human, familiar, but still somewhat wrong.

She opened the door, but could not immediately comprehend what her eyes saw. Two feet, in dark sneakers. Dark pants. A hand, with a simple white-gold wedding band on one finger. Fair hair.

Her knees collapsed from under her, and she found her left hand on the shoulder of the victim, in the blood. The blood...

So red it seemed to make all other color fade. Once she had recognized it, the rest of the picture became all too clear. Though blood had turned the surface crimson and burgundy, she could recognize him.

His skin was the color of chalk. The bones of his arms bent in strange locations, and cuts were visible on his wrists. The blood had spilt from shallow knife wounds, which marred his shoulders, face and stomach. The unbroken skin of his arms showed bloody lips.

She felt her breath coming faster, the beginning of a scream that might never end building in her throat. She sensed Dominique behind her, a cool and controlled presence, and finally her gaze snapped up. Without conscious intent, she met the eyes of the two vampires which had brought her father here. They were standing on the porch of a house across the street, licking bloody lips, one male and one female.

"Sarah-"

She only realized she had stood when Dominique grabbed her shoulder. She glanced back at her mother, then across the street again. Seeing the hunters move towards them, the villains had disappeared into the air.

"Sarah, come inside," Dominique said, her tone as gentle as Sarah had ever heard it. "Zachary, could you give me a hand?"

In shock perhaps, she backed into the house. With some help from Zachary, Dominique lifted her husband’s body and brought it inside. Adianna called one of the other witches to say what had happened.

Dead. The word finally made its way into Sarah’s conscious mind. Her father, dead. Her mother and her sister, both treating this as ordinary. Zachary, calmly helping Dominique place the body some place where the neighbors would not see it. Michael had turned away, and was leaning against a wall. Gabriel’s eyes lingered on the blood for a moment, then she snapped her gaze away and left the room.

All so quiet, so controlled.

"How can you be so calm?" Sarah asked Zachary, as Dominique spoke on the phone to Zachary's older sister. His mother and father had both been taken by these creatures. How could he stand there so calmly?

"How else should I be?" he asked, almost emotionless. Not with shock, but with control, with that damnable Vida control that Dominique preached.

Why the control? She ranted silently. Why can’t I scream and cry, when the man who I call father is dead?

Instinctively, she reached out to the first thing she could find, the water glass Zachary had been drinking from, and threw it with all her strength at his feet. The glass shattered, and Zachary’s eyes widened for a moment. "Sarah, calm down," he ordered softly. "There’s no reason to-"

"How can you say that?" This time she threw one of the ancient, precious books, nearly hitting Dominique in the back. "There’s no reason for me to be furious? How can you not be? They just..." Her breath caught, but she continued in a violent whisper. "They murdered my father. How can you not care? Adianna, how-"

"I care," Adianna answered, her voice tight. She put a hand on her sister’s shoulder, and took a breath to control herself. "I care, but crying isn’t going to help anything. This is why we hunt- to stop things like this."

"Then why isn’t it working?" At the blank looks she received from everyone else in the room, she demanded, "We’ve been hunting them for thousands of years, and every year there are more pages in the book. There are more people dead. There are more hunters dead. There are more..." She raised her bloodied left hand. "More of this. More blood spilt out of spite and hatred and-" She slammed that fist into the window she had been daydreaming about earlier. She was young, but she had been trained as a hunter, and she was not a human child. She had never been a child. The glass was thick, and as it shattered she felt it slice into her skin, but she welcomed the sensation.

Softly, she hissed, "See that? That’s what we make out of everything we do. It’s all illusion. There’s no rainbow there." Enjoying the destructive chaos, enjoying letting out the anger, she shattered a second pane. "It’s all-" A third one, obliterating the moon. "Just-" A fourth, wiping out the oak trees that had hung over the pond. Pain shot up her arm, but she ignored it, as any Vida child was taught to do.

Ignore the pain, continue. Let it cut, ignore the blood, continue.

Chapter 1

"Sarah. Sarah, wake up."

The frantic voice dragged her abruptly from the world of sleep, and she soon found herself clinging to whoever had woken her.

She had nearly forgotten. She had nearly made herself forget what had happened, where all the hatred stemmed from. Not the old, dusty books of Vida ancestors who had been wronged, but that one incident.

The vampires who had caught her father had broken his arms, then chained him to a wall by his wrists. It had taken him three days to die, with them bleeding him a little each day.

Her mother had been furious at Sarah’s actions, though Dominique would never admit to the emotion. She had chastised Sarah for her "irrational loss of control," then set the four bones Sarah had broken in her hand.

There had been no more outbursts since. Her control had grown as icy as her mothers’.

You never react. Just like you never shout out in pain, and never cry, even when you make enemies of your friends.

Nikolas had said that to her once. Nikolas, who had hunted her down for harming his family. Nikolas, who had finally taught her how to forgive.

Nikolas, she realized, to who she was clinging as if he was the last line to shore.

She pulled away, awkward. She had needed someone to hold her as the memories washed over her, so raw even ten years later, but she had not expected that someone to be Nikolas.

"Are you all right?" he asked, letting her slip away.

She nodded once, trying to drag around herself whatever part of her composure still existed. She stood, shivering not from cold but from scores of memories she would just as soon forget.

Like a black and white photograph, Nikolas had a beauty and- as she had only recently learned- an innocence that made him seem as if he might be an angel. His hair was pure, moonless black; usually he wore it back, which only served to accent eyes the same impossible jet, but now it fell around his shoulders. The black was set against his fair skin, so pale it seemed almost white by contrast. He knew no deceit, and as he had told her many times, he never lied. His world was as clearly defined as black and white.

She was too tired, and romanticizing. If Nikolas was angel, he had fallen long ago. Within that sense of black and white was a clear line between friend and foe, and she remembered what it had been like on the wrong side of that line.

"Just a nightmare... but thank you," she added reluctantly.

Nikolas shook his head softly, but did not argue with her. Instead, he explained, "Kristopher went to SingleEarth. He didn’t want to leave you, but we decided it would be best to let Caryn know what was going on. I would have gone..." Nikolas trailed off with a shrug. He would never be allowed within five hundred yards of SingleEarth.

Caryn Smoke was another witch, about Sarah’s age, from a line of healers. SingleEarth was a peaceful establishment for all creatures, human and non, witch and vampire, who wanted to learn to live together without fighting. Nikolas had been barred from the building long ago.

Sarah sighed heavily, wrapping her arms around herself as if cold. She wanted Kristopher to be home.

Kristopher was Nikolas’s twin brother, physically identical save for a scar on the left side of his chest, where a knife wielded by one of Sarah’s ancestors had nearly struck his heart more than a hundred years ago.

They were similar like moonlight and starshine. Both brothers were fiercely loyal to their friends and kin, and powerful enough to be effective protectors even in the world of the night. However, where Nikolas saw the world in black and white, Christopher could see a thousands shades of gray. Where Nikolas could give a straight answer of yes or no, Christopher could give a thousand reasons for either. Nikolas could be either angel or demon, while Christopher frequently seemed far more human.

Christopher had been the one to show Sarah how human vampires could be, after seventeen years when she had been taught that they were simply monsters who should be destroyed from the earth.

"When did he leave?" Sarah asked, trying to shake off the last remnants of her dreams. None of Dominique’s lectures or books had been able to teach her hatred more effectively than that scene had.

Nikolas glanced to a clock that hung on the wall, a piece of modern artwork that gave Sarah a headache whenever she tried to read it. "About five minutes ago." Looking back to Sarah, he asked gently, "What was the dream about?"

She shook her head, turning away. "Nothing."

He pressed, "Bad memories?" Her gaze whipped back to him, a sharp remark on the tip of her tongue, until Nikolas hastily explained, "I didn’t read your mind, Sarah. You know I wouldn’t do that. Our kind doesn’t create dreams- when we sleep, we can only remember. What kind of memory can leave the indomitable Sarah Vida shaken?"

If he wanted to know, she would tell him. She raised her eyes to meet his gaze, and bluntly described, "I was seven years old when my father died. He was killed by a pair of vampires, who trapped him and tortured him for three days before they killed him." She saw Nikolas flinch away from her tone, but he held her gaze. "I found the body, nearly fell over it."

For a moment she had to pause, then she pulled her anger back around her. "I was furious, and punched a window. I broke four of the bones in my left hand, hitting it, and sliced myself open." Her voice softened as she continued, as she remembered her mother’s reaction. She held up her hand, showing the tear-shaped scar that still remained. "This would have healed, but my mother bound my magic for a week, so I would feel every injury I had given myself. She didn’t care that her husband was dead, but she was furious that her daughter had lost control."

She flexed the hand against phantom pain as she remembered. "She had me practice fighting, even against the older kids. A Daughter of Vida needs to be able to continue, to fight on, even when she can hardly breathe past the pain. I was seven years old."

Nikolas looked pained, and she saw his hand close and open as he checked the impulse to reach out to her. Nikolas learned quickly; he knew she would only pull away.

Her voice soft, slow, she added softly, "They had cut into his arms, his shoulders and wrists, just to hurt him more. That’s where all the blood came from."

This time Nikolas leaned heavily back against the wall, closing his eyes with a whispered curse. His voice was pained, and she knew why.

The scars now on her arms had mostly been made by Nikolas, cut into her skin with a switchblade. They were his symbol- his and his brother’s. Most humans who wore them were proud of the marks, and those same marks were a silent warning to any vampire who might think of harming those humans.

Nikolas had marked Sarah when they had still been enemies. She had still been a vampire hunter, and had just before told Kristopher to leave her alone or she would kill him. Nikolas did not react well to people threatening his brother.

The tense moment was broken as someone knocked on the door. "Sarah?"

In the two seconds it took her to reach towards and open the door, Sarah had wiped the pained emotions from her expression. The action was natural, a habit- it was frequently more difficult to show emotion than to hide it.

"Kristopher."

He kissed her gently on the forehead, and then pulled her forward to catch her lips. "I’m sorry. I thought I would get back before you woke up."

She shrugged, not wanting to share the whole story. "I’m wasn’t human to begin with- I’m not as weak as I would have been."

She had been changed less than twenty-four hours ago, and most fledglings her age slept from sunrise to sunset, but according to the abstract black and white clock on the wall it was only one in the afternoon. Usually she slept later, and she could feel tiredness sucking her down even now, but she was grateful that Nikolas had woken her from that painful memory.

Nikolas did not tell his brother why she had woken, and Sarah was grateful for his discretion. If Kristopher asked, Nikolas would answer- he hid nothing from his brother- but Kristopher did not ask. He was intelligent enough to know that something had happened, because if Sarah had just woken naturally Nikolas would not have come to her, but he also understood that if she wanted him to know, she would tell him.

Kristopher nodded in the direction of a suitcase left in the hallway, just beyond the still open door. "Caryn packed that for you. She took them from your old room before your mother could destroy them, but hadn’t had a chance to get them to you."

The outfit she was wearing had been borrowed from one of many humans who lived half in and half out of the vampiric world, protected by Nikolas and Kristopher.

Sarah nodded again, grateful, as she slipped away from Kristopher. "Thanks."

"Sarah?" Kristopher caught her arm when she turned to fetch the bag Caryn had thoughtfully packed. "Have you decided yet what you’re going to do?"

She paused a moment, then answered truthfully, "I don’t know."

She had places to go if she wanted to. SingleEarth would take her, and even Dominique would hesitate to hunt her down in that establishment. Kristopher and Nikolas’s sister, Nissa, would take her in and teach her how to live without killing. Yet she was drawn to Kristopher’s offer of shelter, safety and companionship.

Except that she didn’t want to be protected- not by Kristopher, not by SingleEarth, not by Nissa. She was used to standing on her own.

So why was she still here? Kristopher had offered to her a place to sleep for the day, and she had accepted, exhausted and confused and needing to delay the decision for a while.

She just... didn’t know. She had been a hunter all her life; she had lived to kill vampires, and now found herself one of them.

She didn’t know where she could go from there.

Chapter 2

Adianna Vida was on the verge of breakdown. Complete emotional meltdown. She knew it; everyone knew it.

Not a scratch. She examined herself in the mirror. After that fight, she should have been hurt, but as always she was unscathed but for rumpled clothing and tangled hair.

She took a deep breath. Control. Control.

Dear goddess.

She pulled a brush through her hair as if to avenge a wrong committed against her.

She had seen him in SingleEarth. The vampire’s image was still clear in her mind. The image of his lips at Sarah’s throat would never fade. She had overheard enough of the conversation with Caryn to know that Sarah was "alive" still.

Not Sarah. Just one of them.

"What is wrong with you?" The voice was cool, full of disapproval.

Adianna turned to face her mother, forcing her expression to be calm. "I’m sorry, Dominique. I ran into some trouble on my way home from SingleEarth."

That much was true. The exact trouble had been a pair of vampires, determined to end her existence as a threat to them.

"What did SingleEarth have to say?" Dominique asked.

Dominique had sent Adianna to SingleEarth to ask about Sarah’s whereabouts. Luckily, Caryn had not known when Adianna had spoken to her where the witch-turned-vampire was, or even that she had been turned vampire.

Then the leech had shown up.

"They didn’t know anything about her."

Dominique knew that Sarah had disappeared one night. She knew that the vampires had tried to bloodbond her, an action that could kill any Vida. But Dominique did not accept "probably" for an answer. She wanted the body.

She wanted to make sure her youngest daughter was not exactly what she was.

"Track her down, Adianna," Dominique ordered. "I don’t care how long it takes."

Track her down.

She didn’t want to kill Sarah. "I will."

And she would, because she had received the order, and to defy it could get her disowned. Adianna and her cousin, Zachary, were the last pureblooded witches in their line; that line could not be allowed to die.

For a moment, Dominique looked tired. Her sapphire Vida-blue eyes looked much older than her not-quite forty years. And in that moment, Adia remembered that Dominique had married and had her first child when she was even younger than Adia was now.

So young. Sarah’s age.

Dominique never spoke about her childhood, not with her daughters anyway. To them she only spoke of duty and control. Had she ever been more open with her husband, before he had died? Had she ever been softer than the stone she was now?

"And if you find her, and she’s been turned into one of those... creatures," Dominique sighed, "put a knife in her heart."

Adianna swallowed thickly. "I will."

--- END ---

#nyeusigrube #tdos #the den of shadows #ajg #all just glass #sarah #sarah vida #nikolas #kristopher #adianna #dominique #clips/scenes

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