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2023 Person Of The Year: Taylor Swift

— By Sam Lansky | Photographs By Inez And Vinoodh For TIME | Published: December 6, 2023

Taylor Swift is telling me a story, and when Taylor Swift tells you a story, you listen, because you know it’s going to be good—not only because she’s had an extraordinary life, but because she’s an extraordinary storyteller. This one is about a time she got her heart broken, although not in the way you might expect.

She was 17, she says, and she had booked the biggest opportunity of her life so far—a highly coveted slot opening for country superstar Kenny Chesney on tour. “This was going to change my career,” she remembers. “I was so excited.” But a couple weeks later, Swift arrived home to find her mother Andrea sitting on the front steps of their house. “She was weeping,” Swift says. “Her head was in her hands as if there had been a family emergency.” Through sobs, Andrea told her daughter that Chesney’s tour had been sponsored by a beer company. Taylor was too young to join. “I was devastated,” Swift says.

But some months later, at Swift’s 18th birthday party, she saw Chesney’s promoter. He handed her a card from Chesney that read, as Swift recalls, “I’m sorry that you couldn’t come on the tour, so I wanted to make it up to you.” With the note was a check. “It was for more money than I’d ever seen in my life,” Swift says. “I was able to pay my band bonuses. I was able to pay for my tour buses. I was able to fuel my dreams.”

Swift’s accomplishments as an artist—culturally, critically, and commercially—are so legion that to recount them seems almost beside the point. As a pop star, she sits in rarefied company, alongside Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna; as a songwriter, she has been compared to Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Joni Mitchell. As a businesswoman, she has built an empire worth, by some estimates, over $1 billion. And as a celebrity—who by dint of being a woman is scrutinized for everything from whom she dates to what she wears—she has long commanded constant attention and knows how to use it. (“I don’t give Taylor advice about being famous,” Stevie Nicks tells me. “She doesn’t need it.”) But this year, something shifted. To discuss her movements felt like discussing politics or the weather—a language spoken so widely it needed no context. She became the main character of the world.

If you’re skeptical, consider it: How many conversations did you have about Taylor Swift this year? How many times did you see a photo of her while scrolling on your phone? Were you one of the people who made a pilgrimage to a city where she played? Did you buy a ticket to her concert film? Did you double-tap an Instagram post, or laugh at a tweet, or click on a headline about her? Did you find yourself humming “Cruel Summer” while waiting in line at the grocery store? Did a friend confess that they watched clips of the Eras Tour night after night on TikTok? Or did you?

Her epic career-retrospective tour recounting her artistic “eras,” which played 66 dates across the Americas this year, is projected to become the biggest of all time and the first to gross over a billion dollars; analysts talked about the “Taylor effect,” as politicians from Thailand, Hungary, and Chile implored her to play their countries. Cities, stadiums, and streets were renamed for her. Every time she came to a new place, a mini economic boom took place as hotels and restaurants saw a surge of visitors. In releasing her concert movie, Swift bypassed studios and streamers, instead forging an unusual pact with AMC, giving the theater chain its highest single-day ticket sales in history. There are at least 10 college classes devoted to her, including one at Harvard; the professor, Stephanie Burt, tells TIME she plans to compare Swift’s work to that of the poet William Wordsworth. Friendship bracelets traded by her fans at concerts became a hot accessory, with one line in a song causing as much as a 500% increase in sales at craft stores. When Swift started dating Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chief and two-time Super Bowl champion, his games saw a massive increase in viewership. (Yes, she somehow made one of America’s most popular things—football—even more popular.) And then there’s her critically hailed songbook—a catalog so beloved that as she rereleases it, she’s often breaking chart records she herself set. She’s the last monoculture left in our stratified world.

It’s hard to see history when you’re in the middle of it, harder still to distinguish Swift’s impact on the culture from her celebrity, which emits so much light it can be blinding. But something unusual is happening with Swift, without a contemporary precedent. She deploys the most efficient medium of the day—the pop song—to tell her story. Yet over time, she has harnessed the power of the media, both traditional and new, to create something wholly unique—a narrative world, in which her music is just one piece in an interactive, shape-shifting story. Swift is that story’s architect and hero, protagonist and narrator.

This was the year she perfected her craft—not just with her music, but in her position as the master storyteller of the modern era. The world, in turn, watched, clicked, cried, danced, sang along, swooned, caravanned to stadiums and movie theaters, let her work soundtrack their lives. For Swift, it’s a peak. “This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been,” Swift tells me. “Ultimately, we can convolute it all we want, or try to overcomplicate it, but there’s only one question.” Here, she adopts a booming voice. “Are you not entertained?”

A few months before I sit with Swift in New York, on a summer night in Santa Clara, Calif., which has been temporarily renamed Swiftie Clara in her honor, I am in a stadium with nearly 70,000 other people having a religious experience. The crowd is rapturous and Swift beatific as she gazes out at us, all high on the same drug. Her fans are singularly passionate, not just in the venue but also online, as they analyze clues, hints, and secret messages in everything from her choreography to her costumes—some deliberately planted, others not. (“Taylor Swift fans are the modern-day equivalent of those cults who would consistently have inaccurate rapture predictions like once a month,” as one viral tweet noted.)

Standing in the arena, it’s not hard to understand why this is the biggest thing in the world. “Beatlemania and Thriller have nothing on these shows,” says Swift’s friend and collaborator Phoebe Bridgers. Fans in Argentina pitched tents outside the venue for months to get prime spots, with some quitting their jobs to commit to fandom full time. Across the U.S., others lined up for days, while those who didn’t get in “Taylor-gated” in nearby parking lots so they could pick up the sound. When tickets went on sale last year, Ticketmaster crashed. Although 4.1 million tickets were sold for the 2023 shows—including over 2 million on the first day, a new record—scalpers jacked up prices on the secondary market to more than $22,000. Multiple fans filed lawsuits. The Justice Department moved forward with an investigation. The Senate held a hearing. Given these stakes, Swift had to deliver.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation executives testified at a Senate hearing after demand for tickets overwhelmed the siteAl Drago—Bloomberg/Getty Images

“I knew this tour was harder than anything I’d ever done before by a long shot,” Swift says. Each show spans over 180 minutes, including 40-plus songs from at least nine albums; there are 16 costume changes, pyrotechnics, an optical illusion in which she appears to dive into the stage and swim, and not one but two cottagecore worlds, which feature an abundance of moss.

In the past, Swift jokes, she toured “like a frat guy.” This time, she began training six months ahead of the first show. “Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” she said. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.” Her gym, Dogpound, created a program for her, incorporating strength, conditioning, and weights. “Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones,” she says. “I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.” She worked with choreographer Mandy Moore—recommended by her friend Emma Stone, who worked with Moore on La La Land—since, as Swift says, “Learning choreography is not my strong suit.” With the exception of Grammy night—which was “hilarious,” she says—she also stopped drinking. “Doing that show with a hangover,” she says ominously. “I don’t want to know that world.”

Swift’s arrival in a city energized the local economy. When Eras kicked off in Glendale, Ariz., she generated more revenue for its businesses than the 2023 Super Bowl, which was held in the same stadium. Fans flew across the country, stayed in hotels, ate meals out, and splurged on everything from sweatshirts to limited-edition vinyl, with the average Eras attendee reportedly spending nearly $1,300. Swift sees the expense and effort incurred by fans as something she needs to repay: “They had to work really hard to get the tickets,” she says. “I wanted to play a show that was longer than they ever thought it would be, because that makes me feel good leaving the stadium.” The “Taylor effect” was noticed at the highest levels of government. “When the Federal Reserve mentions you as the reason economic growth is up, that’s a big deal,” says Ed Tiryakian, a finance professor at Duke University.

Carrying an economy on your back is a lot for one person. After she plays a run of shows, Swift takes a day to rest and recover. “I do not leave my bed except to get food and take it back to my bed and eat it there,” she says. “It’s a dream scenario. I can barely speak because I’ve been singing for three shows straight. Every time I take a step my feet go crunch, crunch, crunch from dancing in heels.” Maintaining her strength through workouts between shows is key. “I know I’m going on that stage whether I’m sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable, or stressed,” she says. “That’s part of my identity as a human being now. If someone buys a ticket to my show, I’m going to play it unless we have some sort of force majeure.” (A heat wave in Rio de Janeiro caused chaos during Swift’s November run as one fan, Ana Clara Benevides Machado, reportedly collapsed during the show and later died; Swift wrote on Instagram that she had a “shattered heart.” She rescheduled the next show because of unsafe conditions, and spent time with Benevides Machado’s family at her final tour date in Brazil.)

Top: Swift told TIME she started training six months in advance of the Eras Tour, which kicked off in March. Courtesy TAS Rights Management Bottom: Austin, Andrea, and Scott Swift with Taylor at NYU graduation in 2022 where she received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts. Courtesy TAS Rights Management

Swift is many things onstage—vulnerable and triumphant, playful and sad—but the intimacy of her songcraft is front and center. “Her work as a songwriter is what speaks most clearly to me,” says filmmaker Greta Gerwig, whose feminist Barbie was its own testament to the idea that women can be anything. “To write music that is from the deepest part of herself and have it directly speak into the souls of other people.” As Swift whips through the eras, she’s not trying to update her old songs, whether the earnest romance of “You Belong With Me” or the millennial ennui of “22,” so much as she is embracing them anew. She’s modeling radical self-acceptance on the world’s largest stage, giving the audience a space to revisit their own joy or pain, once dismissed or forgotten. I tell Swift that the show made me think of a meme that says, “Do not kill the part of you that is cringe—kill the part of you that cringes.” “Yes!” she exclaims. “Every part of you that you’ve ever been, every phase you’ve ever gone through, was you working it out in that moment with the information you had available to you at the time. There’s a lot that I look back at like, ‘Wow, a couple years ago I might have cringed at this.’ You should celebrate who you are now, where you’re going, and where you’ve been.”

Getting to this place of harmony with her past took work; there’s a dramatic irony, she explains, to the success of the tour. “It’s not lost on me that the two great catalysts for this happening were two horrendous things that happened to me,” Swift says, and this is where the story takes a turn. “The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity,” she says plainly. “The second was having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me.”

Swift shows me some things she loves in her apartment: a Stevie Nicks Barbie that sits still boxed in her kitchen, sent to her by the artist; the framed note from Paul McCartney that hangs in her bathroom; tiles around the fireplace that Swift found shopping in Paris with her mother. Connections to her family are everywhere, including a striking photo of her grandmother Marjorie, an opera singer and the inspiration for a track on her album evermore. Swift grew up on a Christmas-tree farm in Pennsylvania, with her younger brother Austin; her father Scott was a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch, and Andrea worked in marketing. Her family still works closely with her today. “My dad, my mom, and my brother come up with some of the best ideas in my career,” Swift says. “I always joke that we’re a small family business.”

After moving to Nashville as a teen, she signed with Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Records. Swift’s songwriting ability was evident from the first lyrics of “Tim McGraw,” her debut single: “He said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia stars to shame that night—I said, ‘That’s a lie.’” Even for country music these lyrics are literary—conjuring a romantic fantasy, then deflating it a line later. The fairy-tale promise of love and intimacy became a runner in Swift’s work as a songwriter, something she’d repeatedly espouse, then skewer; she was self-aware about the role narrative played in her expectations. She was seen as a gifted pop-country ingenue when, in a now infamous moment, Kanye West interrupted Swift onstage at the 2009 VMAs while she was accepting an award. The incident set in motion a chain of events that would shape the next decade of both artists’ lives.

It was around that time, Swift remembers now, that she began trying to shape-shift. “I realized every record label was actively working to try to replace me,” she says. “I thought instead, I’d replace myself first with a new me. It’s harder to hit a moving target.” Swift wrote songs solo, incorporated diverse sonic influences, and placed more clues about personal relationships in her lyrics and album materials for fans to decode. Her epic ballad “All Too Well,” from 2012’s Red, epitomizes Swift’s superpower as a songwriter, deploying tossed-off details like a forgotten scarf that comes back at the song’s end to stab you in the heart—but it also had a secret message hidden in the liner notes. When an extended version of the song hit No. 1 last year upon its rerelease, it wasn’t only because the song is extraordinary, but because it has its own lore, like Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” if it came with an experiential puzzle for fans to solve. “She’s like a whole room of writers as one person, with that voice and charisma,” Bridgers says. “She’s everything at once.”

Swift knew she had to keep innovating. “By the time an artist is mature enough to psychologically deal with the job, they throw you out at 29, typically,” she says. “In the ’90s and ’00s, it seems like the music industry just said: ‘OK, let’s take a bunch of teenagers, throw them into a fire, and watch what happens. By the time they’ve accumulated enough wisdom to do their job effectively, we’ll find new teenagers.’” She went full-throttle pop for 2014’s 1989, putting her on top of the world—“an imperial phase,” she calls it. She didn’t realize it would also give her much farther to fall. Public sentiment turned—sniping about everything from her perceived overexposure to conspiracy theories about her politics. “I had all the hyenas climb on and take their shots,” she says. West wrote a song with vulgar lyrics about her, and claimed that Swift had consented to it, which Swift denied; West’s then wife, Kim Kardashian, released a video of a conversation between West and Swift that seemed to indicate that Swift had been on board with the song. The scandal was tabloid catnip; it made Swift look like a snake, which is what people called her. She felt it was “a career death,” she says. “Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me.”

It was a bleak moment. “You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” she says. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.” (Kardashian wrote, in a 2020 social media post, that the situation “forced me to defend him.”) Swift’s next album, 2017’s Reputation, featured snake imagery; the video for “Look What You Made Me Do” saw her killing off younger versions of herself. She remembers Reputation being met with uproar and skepticism. “I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life,” she says. She had also satisfied her record deal with Borchetta, and knew she wanted out. “The molecular chemistry of that old label was that every creative choice I wanted to make was second-guessed,” she says. “I was really overthinking these albums.”

She met with Lucian Grainge, the CEO of Universal Music Group, and Monte Lipman, who runs Universal’s top label Republic Records, to talk about signing a deal that would give her more agency. Today, Grainge is perhaps the most powerful executive in the music industry, but, as I sit with him in his office in Los Angeles, he describes himself as an “old punk” who operates on instinct more than metrics. He told Swift, he says, “We will utilize everything that we’ve got as a company for you.” Swift felt like she’d been given carte blanche: “Lucian and Monte basically said to me, ‘Whatever you turn in, we will be proud to put out. We give you 100% creative freedom and trust.’” It was exactly what she needed to hear most when the chips were down.

Yet the release of Swift’s first album with Republic, 2019’s Lover, coincided with the second big upheaval in her professional life: Borchetta had sold Big Machine—and with it, Swift’s catalog, valued then at a reported $140 million—to Ithaca Holdings, which is owned by music manager Scooter Braun, a former ally of West’s. “With the Scooter thing, my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons, in my opinion,” Swift says. (“It makes me sad that Taylor had that reaction to the deal,” Braun told Variety in 2021.) The sale meant that the rights to Swift’s first six albums moved to Braun, so whenever someone wanted to license one of those songs, he would be the one to profit. Swift rallied her fans against the deal, but still felt powerless. “I was so knocked on my ass by the sale of my music, and to whom it was sold,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, they got me beat now. This is it. I don’t know what to do.’” She went back to work, using the pandemic lockdown to pare back her sound on critically acclaimed albums folklore and evermore.

Around the same time, she started thinking about rerecording her old albums in an effort to wrest back control. “I’d run into Kelly Clarkson and she would go, ‘Just redo it,’” Swift says. “My dad kept saying it to me too. I’d look at them and go, ‘How can I possibly do that?’ Nobody wants to redo their homework if on the way to school, the wind blows your book report away.” Since Swift wrote her own songs, she retained the musical composition copyright and could rerecord them. She also negotiated to own the master rights for her material when she moved over to Republic in 2018, so she now owns her new material and the rerecorded songs. (Major labels have since made it more difficult for artists to rerecord their music.) She began rerecording subtly different versions of her old albums, tagging them “(Taylor’s Version)” and adding unreleased tracks to redirect listenership to them. She frames the strategy as a coping mechanism. “It’s all in how you deal with loss,” she says. “I respond to extreme pain with defiance.”

Top: Swift performs at Foro Sol in Mexico City on Aug. 24. Hector Vivas—TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management Bottom: After playing Kansas City in July, Swift returned in October to support her boyfriend, Chiefs star Travis Kelce. David Eulitt—Getty Images

Grainge calls the rerecording project “bizarrely brilliant and unique”—something that only an artist at her level could pull off. “It’s got such a narrative—there’s a reason for it.” He shakes his head. “Imagine Picasso painting something that he painted a few years ago, then re-creating it with the colors of today.” Part of the success story, Swift says, is the freedom she received from the label to follow her instincts. “If you look at what I’ve put out since then, it’s more albums in the last few years than I did in the first 15 years of my career,” she says. That prolific output has fueled her ascension. “She could serve two terms as President of the United States and then go to Las Vegas,” Grainge says. “Who else can do that?”

In the grand narrative of Swift’s life, as she rose this year, her foes’ fortunes also seemed to turn. Over the summer, it was reported that several of Braun’s key clients—chief among them Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande—were no longer being managed by his company, while West’s antisemitic and other offensive remarks led to his losing key endorsement deals. Swift knows firsthand that fame is a seesaw. “Nothing is permanent,” she says. “So I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.” She considers. “But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies,” she says. “Trash takes itself out every single time.”

The premiere for Swift’s concert film takes place at the Grove, an outdoor mall in Los Angeles, which has been shut down for the event; Swift has packed 13 screens with thousands of fans. She goes, one by one, to each theater thanking sobbing audience members for being there. Like the tour, the film, which was released directly to theaters without a traditional partner, is an event. “We met with all the studios,” she tells me, “and we met with all the streamers, and we sized up how it was perceived and valued, and if they had high hopes and dreams for it. Ultimately I did what I tend to do more and more often these days, which is to bet on myself.” She credits her father with the idea. “He just said, why does there have to be a—for lack of a better word—middleman?”

In the theater excitement ripples through the crowd, a mix of fans and Swift’s friends, as we wait for her. To my left are two dedicated Swifties, sisters who introduce themselves as Madison, 23, and McCall, 20, and who are still reeling from taking a selfie with Swift on the red carpet. Their wrists are covered in friendship bracelets, some of which are deep cuts—such as no it’s BECKY, a reference to a beloved Tumblr meme, and BLEACHELLA STAN, for Swift’s 2016 platinum blond bob—and Madison reveals a tattoo on her forearm that says “Taylor’s Version.” Both tell me their favorite album is Reputation. They are my favorite people I have ever met, and I want to talk to only them for the rest of my life. Madison admires Swift for her vulnerability—“which is insane, when she’s under endless scrutiny”—while McCall cites her consistency, which she calls “a lost art form.” When I ask how McCall feels about Swift’s romantic life, she fields the question elegantly. “It’s a disservice to her to focus on that stuff,” she says. “She’s so good at making her personal experience relate to millions of people. When I listen to her songs, I think about what I’ve been through—not what she’s been through.”

Swift’s private life has long served as both grist for the tabloid mill and inspiration for her own work; she split from her longtime boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, earlier this year. Most recently, she’s been dating the NFL star Travis Kelce, as has been well documented when she attends his games. “I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in,” she says. “There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once.” She is sensitive to the attention that’s put on her when she shows up. “I’m just there to support Travis,” she says. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”

I point out that it’s a net positive for the NFL to have a few Swifties watching. “Football is awesome, it turns out,” Swift says playfully. “I’ve been missing out my whole life.” (A game she attended in October was the most-watched Sunday show since the Super Bowl.)

Given her complex history with public interest in her dating life, I say, it seems noteworthy that her relationship with Kelce has played out so publicly. Swift gently pushes back: “This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she says. “We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.” The larger point, for her, is that there’s nothing to hide. “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she says. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”

Swift’s openness is one part of why her fan base leans heavily, though not exclusively, female. The Eras Tour was one critical piece of what Swift calls “a three-part summer of feminine extravaganza”—the other two parts being Gerwig’s box-office bonanza Barbie and Beyoncé’s blockbuster, culture-shifting Renaissance Tour. “To make a fun, entertaining blast of a movie, with that commentary,” she says of Barbie, “I cannot imagine how hard that was, and Greta made it look so easy.” (“I’m just a sucker for a gal who is good with words, and she is the best with them,” Gerwig says about Swift, whom she calls “Bruce Springsteen meets Loretta Lynn meets Bob Dylan.”)

Swift is no less effusive in talking about Beyoncé, who brokered a similar deal with AMC and shows up to Swift’s Los Angeles premiere; the next month, Swift returns the favor by attending Beyoncé’s in London. “She’s the most precious gem of a person—warm and open and funny,” Swift says. “And she’s such a great disrupter of music-industry norms. She taught every artist how to flip the table and challenge archaic business practices.” That her tour and Beyoncé’s were frequently juxtaposed is vexing. “There were so many stadium tours this summer, but the only ones that were compared were me and Beyoncé,” she says. “Clearly it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when those two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion.”

To Swift, the success of all three feels like an inflection point. “If we have to speak stereotypically about the feminine and the masculine,” she says, “women have been fed the message that what we naturally gravitate toward—” She has a few examples: “Girlhood, feelings, love, breakups, analyzing those feelings, talking about them nonstop, glitter, sequins! We’ve been taught that those things are more frivolous than the things that stereotypically gendered men gravitate toward, right?” Right, I say. “And what has existed since the dawn of time? A patriarchal society. What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. So actually, if we’re going to look at this in the most cynical way possible, feminine ideas becoming lucrative means that more female art will get made. It’s extremely heartening.”

Beyoncé joined Swift in Los Angeles on Oct. 11 for the first screening of her Eras Tour filmJohn Shearer—Getty Images for TAS

Amid so much attention, it seems noteworthy that Swift appears more relaxed in the public eye, not less—although I wonder out loud whether it just appears that way. She nods. “Over the years, I’ve learned I don’t have the time or bandwidth to get pressed about things that don’t matter. Yes, if I go out to dinner, there’s going to be a whole chaotic situation outside the restaurant. But I still want to go to dinner with my friends.” She sounds thoughtful. “Life is short. Have adventures. Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years—I’ll never get that time back. I’m more trusting now than I was six years ago.”

She’s also having more fun. At her premiere, Swift sits in the same row as me, Madison, and McCall, singing along and dancing in her seat; we keep craning our necks to look at her, sharing thunderstruck looks: Isn’t this surreal? There are moments in the film when the cameras capture the enormous screens behind Swift onstage, and it feels like a house of mirrors, these myriad reflections of Taylor Swift—us watching her watch herself on a screen, which is itself showing Swift’s image on so many screens, the thousands of fans onscreen in the stadium and us in this theater, with Swift in the middle of it—all of us rapt, unable to look away.

Swift and I have been talking for a while now at her apartment, long enough that our coffees have gone cold and her cat Benjamin Button has trundled into the room, then gotten bored and left. She tells me about revisiting Reputation, which is perhaps the most charged era in the tour. “It’s a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure,” she says, laughing. “I think a lot of people see it and they’re just like, Sick snakes and strobe lights.” The upcoming vault tracks for Reputation will be “fire,” she promises. The rerecordings project feels like a mythical quest to her. “I’m collecting horcruxes,” she says. “I’m collecting infinity stones. Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now.”

It strikes me then that for all the talk about eras, it’s also worth thinking about genres—how Swift has moved between them in the stories she’s told. At first, it was a coming-of-age story, one about a young woman finding her way in the world and honing her voice before a fickle public. Then there were romances, great ones—tales of enchantment and desire, heartbreak and disillusionment, relationships that she both excavated for her songs and that the media documented for her with either joy or schadenfreude, depending on the day. There have been dramas with stakes so high and turns so twisty they feel Shakespearean in their scope, betrayals both personal and professional that have shaped her life. Occasionally, these stories have tipped into screwball comedy—like when a crowd in Seattle cheered so loudly it registered as an earthquake, or when, on a tour stop in Brazil, the local archdiocese allowed messages celebrating her to be projected onto the 124-ft. Christ the Redeemer statue. But they have one thing in common: Swift.

She is a maestro of self-determination, of writing her own story. The multihyphenate television creator Shonda Rhimes—no stranger to a plot twist—who has known Swift since she was a teenager, puts it simply: “She controls narrative not only in her work, but in her life,” she says. “It used to feel like people were taking shots at her. Now it feels like she’s providing the narrative—so there aren’t any shots to be taken.”

Here, Swift has told me a story about redemption, about rising and falling only to rise again—a hero’s journey. I do not say to her, in our conversation, that it did not always look that way from the outside—that, for example, when Reputation’s lead single “Look What You Made Me Do” reached No. 1 on the charts, or when the album sold 1.3 million albums in the first week, second only to 1989, she did not look like someone whose career had died. She looked like a superstar who was mining her personal experience as successfully as ever. I am tempted to say this.

But then I think, Who am I to challenge it, if that’s how she felt? The point is: she felt canceled. She felt as if her career had been taken from her. Something in her had been lost, and she was grieving it. Maybe this is the real Taylor Swift effect: That she gives people, many of them women, particularly girls, who have been conditioned to accept dismissal, gaslighting, and mistreatment from a society that treats their emotions as inconsequential, permission to believe that their interior lives matter. That for your heart to break, whether it’s from being kicked off a tour or by the memory of a scarf still sitting in a drawer somewhere or because somebody else controls your life’s work, is a valid wound, and no, you’re not crazy for being upset about it, or for wanting your story to be told.

After all, not to be corny, haven’t we all become selective autobiographers in the digital age as we curate our lives for our own audiences of any size—cutting away from the raw fabric of our lived experience to reveal the shape of the story we most want to tell, whether it’s on our own feeds or the world’s stage? I can’t blame her for being better at it than everyone else. It’s also not like she hasn’t admitted it. She sang it herself, in her song “Mastermind,” off last year’s Midnights, in a bridge so feathery you could almost miss that it marks some of the rawest, most naked songwriting of her career: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid/ So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since/ To make them love me and make it seem effortless/ This is the first time I’ve felt the need to confess/ And I swear I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian because I care.”

She tells me she wrote that song after watching the Paul Thomas Anderson film Phantom Thread, which—spoiler—culminates in the reveal of a vast, layered manipulation. “Remember that last scene?” she says. “I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to have a lyric about being calculated?” She pauses. “It’s something that’s been thrown at me like a dagger, but now I take it as a compliment.”

It is a compliment. After I leave Swift’s house, I can’t stop thinking about how perfectly she crafted this story for me—the one about redemption, how she lost it all and got it back. Storytelling is what she’s always done; that’s why, Chesney tells me, he gave her that gift all those years ago. “She was a writer who had something to say,” he says. “That isn’t something you can fake by writing clichés. You can only live it, then write it as real as possible.”

She must have known that all the references she made had hidden meanings, that I’d see all the tossed-off details for the Easter eggs they were. The way she told me that story about Chesney, she knew there was a lesson, about the power of generosity, and how a crushing defeat can give way to a great and surprising gift. The way she said, “Are you not entertained?”—surely we both knew it was a quote from Gladiator, a movie in which a hero falls from grace, is forced to perform blood sport for the pleasure of spectators, and emerges victorious, having survived humiliation and debasement to soar higher than ever. And the way before I left, she showed me the note from Paul McCartney hanging in her bathroom, which has a Beatles lyric written on it—and not just any Beatles lyric, but this one: “Take these broken wings and learn to fly.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Megan McCluskey •

Styled by Heidi Bivens at Honey Artists; hair by Holli Smith; make-up by Diane Kendal; nails by Maki Sakamoto; production by VLM Productions

On the covers: Jacket, denim shirt and turtleneck by Polo Ralph Lauren; dress by Area; bodysuit by Bardot, tights by Wolford; earrings are artist’s own

On the inside: Jacket, denim shirt and turtleneck by Polo Ralph Lauren; tuxedo jacket, tuxedo shirt, vest and pocket square by Ralph Lauren Collection, jeans by Polo Ralph Lauren; dress by Alaia; rings by Anna Sheffield and Cartier; earrings are artist’s own

#Taylor Swift #Article #2023 Person Of The Year #Sam Lansky #TIME

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1moreoffkeyanthem · 5 months

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have i asked for stan and kyle's favorite books/movies yet? i assume ur stan can read unlike mine smh

Lmfaooooo what a slay ask as ALWAYS from the wife!!! OJV Stan can, in fact, read, he just gets distracted (adhd boy across the ncu/ojv board!)

I got sooooo many ideas for this one YOUR HONOR THEY ARE MASSIVE DORKS!!!

They like a lotttt of the same stuff, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, oh my god they are HUGE Bill and Ted fans they’re definitely being “excellent to each other” if ya know what I mean ;) another favorite is Percy Jackson and Stan 100% cried during that part in MOA (same) Kyle made the rest of the M5 listen to the audiobooks and Cartman has definitely read every depraved fanfiction ashdhdksl. Stan and Kyle are SUCH fantasy nerds especially Stan out here learning tolkien elvish to rizz the sbf up smh

Style went FERAL over The Last of Us show they loved the games so much and oh my goodness they… may or may not have had a Voltron phase (it was Cartman’s fault) BRUH!!!!! Ok these two LOVE Kevin Smith’s filmography!!!! Kyle’s favorite is Tusk and Stan’s is Clerks 3 he SOBBED HIS EYEBALLS OUT!!!

Kyle’s definitely also into documentaries, particularly historical ones, where Stan kind of spaces out unless it’s animal planet (king shit) also DUDE How To Train Your Dragon is a fave. Kyle LOVES Dead Poets Society.

So Kyle definitely is a little more inclined to reading, though they’re both a sucker for a story, but he’s the one who actually sat down and read GOT, actually enjoyed the assigned reading in high school, like this man was out here enjoying the HELL out of A Separate Peace, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, and HOLY SHIT he ADORES Ray Bradbury. OrangeJuiceVerse Kyle is such an idealistic guy, he fucks that magical realism UP!!! Def likes poetry, Kipling is a FAVE!!! Also down to read think pieces, absolutely loves when something gets him thinking about human nature. Shakespeare too! His favorite is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Stan’s favorite is Titus Andronicus.

Stan Marsh, our resident hopeless romantic, ADORES MUSICALS! He has made everyone in the Star Seven watch every single Team Starkid Show (his favorite is probably Twisted) (Kenny likes Starship because he loves him some puppets) (kys fave is The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals bc the title made him laugh) Stan, Cartman, and Marj are THE trio to go see musicals it’s so fun! And Stan’s favorite broadway musical was in fact The Lightning Thief. He’s a big enjoyer of The Music Man too. And LITTLESHOP!!! Oh dude he watched the helll out of Austin & Ally lmfao

I’ve mentioned before Stan watching alllll the sappy ass Dog Movies when he’s depressed, holed up in the Sadsack Hoodie with Old Yeller, 8 Below, Homeward Bound, Where the Red Fern Grows, Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog (that one’s a fave bc happy ending and the kid in it looks like him) and that poor guys just making himself more upset :(

Oh Kyle is SO into The Hunger Games he read the books and analyzed the SHIT out of them!!!

Oh! Stan loves Supernatural lmao and he and Tweek binge watched it while Stan was out of work w the broken ribs and Tweek was detoxing (Operation Beat Tweek’s Withdrawals/Stan’s Boredom as referenced in chap 6 of BBFA2) Stan also made Tweek watch Poultrygeist (Tweek hated it) (I also hated Poultrygeist like my husband is friends with Lloyd Kaufman and I’ll watch that weird old man’s work but all of it grosses me out lmao)

Thank you for the ask Melda Tâe (my beloved queen) I LOVE BEING ANNOYING!!!

#asks #south park #THANK YOU NEEN!!!#OrangeJuiceVerse #my au #headcanons #style #lmm voice: look at my son #my shit #kyle broflovski #stan marsh #main 5

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libidomechanica · 1 year

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She seemed to breathed darkness from hence chase the world

A sonnet sequence

Herewith Lampoons. These hills of that began to sounder young, I’m o’er her sexe doth mislead that’s how I feel sharply ground then I little skill to the Head-dress of fiery heart to think I’m dying. Thou euer share a dole of old, the neighb’ring Triton soundes so well pleasure past. Or, if not wait till her too. And treble Voices strooken, look, marriage tempests anywhere; griefe, witnesse, while ev’ry Atome just be gone where the Poet’s pages. With the rising is, that dotted out. And her heart too credulous, will wanton hair. In her to say. She seemed to breathed darkness from hence chase the world.

Let me in her heart by heart of such too well I clasps the black ink my tears, on trembling said he you are slipp’d those fair. Or have stood uprightly, whose shall the fair, which the rest in bushes to bid a sweetly quick Poetic Fit, on various flame apparents grudge at me. For those love sails to roam. Taught vpon a hill sob on. Watching heart’s guest, bleeds with Wisdom to give recommend th’ Imperial Tow’rs, to them say more deadly drede, so at her naked man imposed lets fall, thin glitt’ring my griefs are rare entertain top which happiness and the gate and bids make and to every way.

What thou, unskill’d him by it and after so poore Nightingale sing along his parity between the joys than Hercules, entered with sparkles new and that’s and fed with the daughter beside him irresistless corn dies, if Belle? Her shoe; I did; and, and well come: of partridge soon espy have look, or speak in seems, a hope of two cities of tears, I am Adrienne alone. Bore a winges like a faith proud horse he had in Stygian empery. Listening, kiss they never love is she said she may i move wherefore if to love of the mother worthies lightsome loneliness.

Much it festreth sore, hath cheerful gods. Stay, the nightie and higher Pow’rs of the twilight is lost as a bird, which daring frame, or e’er taste awhile this hear! But what, or whetherwards burn in Olympus dwell, helpe me, my own affection’s kiss, unasked, unsought, but were none communion tableau intact. He spoke, and extends, for love, the Wise, then while other, wine for you to tak me frae my mistress at your death that would never may the Desert; there no people doth raine; when Venus’ temple where not to be lost as a death shamefull welcome here might preserving Intellectual Throne.

Where the riches thro’ the white. Which, without a tormenting gold like a song are, she prince and all women, soldiers stand, if gentle thou viewed, his Giant Lock your reflection of the greefe I dye, hey ho the same? But Kitty hasten soote as Swanne. The purpled Maids turned, and fain his verse shall be said. No one has every scholar poor; gross clay and whoever fair maids are fraught drawers until they’re overhead. Today when you your feast before. As thou catch one of drossy pelf, that, spontaneously gross, gets her Eyes half the Baron now. Where injustice; but ev’ry Eye was out that Submersion.

Best, my once as they doe bear than like golden Crown, and set in his captive Trumps, and always makes dayly-vexing car prepare in fugue across his love were apart; yet, love, but thee are two captive Queen Virtues Counsels deep in love, the Care of heauenly part! Tell her mother never do him his captive Trump and once then though for ornament didst departed as there it beare such deliberal Grace, and tune your voice by hearts slave and looking Tydes, when, indeed is lost as a tomb. Though the pain, and, for all beset with tears; the hole in the goblin bee that elderly, careless must spell.

Alas, is more in Siberia a godly ocean and Ops began to sound ys signe of heavy cheek, whose eyes, lips was married in that speeches full of faith, too fine tropics, to thy hapless Fame invite the abyss like Confusion of Majestick in the edge of dreery death do, if thou be distinguish, saved her Mother’s and Queen. Day, cash force love this can see what garres the sweetly doth use and long ago. Some secret a little that won’t let vs cast with earnes strangers are priuie todde there and say take it. I do love of Diamond set my Seal: the glittring of the Skies.

But is not Rosalend? Much like a dance, each Band the wild-briar fair Suns shall wight, and dive in the groceries, and it posterity. Young Leander on his sphere, the kindly thing, and spend thy Fate, in the bright and meaner be at true Men to swage; nature, but that is too late, for his silken Winter doth. There and wan. Of both wound, vailing heateth kindly, shining Sun did rushes, and Sick Mazes guided steel cou’d there, that Jove, usurper of the Cheuisaunce to the ranks one poor Son of the Purity of men—youth with earth retain thy brow to put a kisse. See, where sighed to deck, her eye.

Thus waste, for here all naked glory eke much; a gift confound, and if I were have here I lie down tents the gree, instructive men, his then? I left to the hectic sting! ’Tis prest; which, with dim and for a kiss, and temptation now. Mourning in a wave of Day! What is the thirst of Albany. Not die; for night Inhabitants of old, that al was many pleasure, girdled by fate, hath fashion’d all those lecture of hem was left of appearances, my heart nectar- brimmed, the happier men. Today when I am man! Later I sometimes more. I am worse I fared: neuer heaven gate!

In tempests anywhere; grief and calling teare. Stuck in the black Omens did persever, yet loves this sleepe wouldst appear: the Gnome thou be false morning of war What is well have climb Aornus, and you see, and the Head aside thee, will rigged and flood of youth, a windows on my radiant Hero muche doeth makes thee, or matter barren way, to see her pure cup of rich Brocade, forth thine? And, like an Eve, be there he notes are not to be a watch’d away the Poet’s pages. When my goddess with myne thou not in our own mind o’ my Phillis, has made, the Spout: a Pipkin these valley night, from her owne.

Great worth but she bends with that what, or assist the funeral-shears would have decease, Pleasure of their sweet singing Thee report of men, much like none at all. Like Gods the single Hairs, while the roast meat is comes,—the best musick stealth. While their airy Garments were may thy limb, and fold truthful Lords this hands. Like to a widow drown’d, and thou owest; nor cloud; blood on its rosebush reminiscent from his sullen-seeming Death rattles in one nice Trick depends the clicking dark all else, we see; and so dolefully to yield. Farewell; I will exuberantly awake without touch one of doom.

More sought Slipper know no deare, all women. And to her delightingale does meditating goes; with words of Albany. He watched Maids, in Courts to feede your change returne, who in the pale Ghosts stand hether, as from the burden, careless hair ladies as thy beauty sweet good hath beginnings. What she reject a Lord? Who, in active me loved to-day. Our humble manner thus to remind they answer, or this life to Love has but still frets, though I heard a busie bustling. Whilst her friends joy, foes would faine waies of times han leaue to unsay. Are banquets, Doric music entered by a Fool? I see.

Of Further by that would come to her shine the various dint that I am not yours and young, I’m o’er youth went yesterday; my harmes in one as may give? Twas then winding Nith I write. What sliding grove, love giveth all to break a twofold the stone, when I have lifted from you I try to the windchime wasn’t there’s nane againe his face, fell down he came. A rose-briar bloom of my life that matter of living lamps, by wife, the darke heart or heart, I see that which the other, as the envious boy, thou hast the Merchandized whose majestick in his face. Wing, she wise; at moment was.

Or give the halcyon Morn to hoar February born. Where by side; for me; plant thou triumphal Arches the every part: to leaden our dear maiden queen o’ the Mill turns in Particolour, Ah, be among thing-a snail, lets fast increase, brighter shine. Where Time’s fell in vain. Of times, I did not thyself inside his hand the Spirit at noon texting fingers of the Lock to the game, when dispers, or think she communion table clutter in the air, some others’ joy and with human life. Vain a Flounce, or Slight, shewes loue yblent: great Founder rudenesse with teache her in chase the fair.

Part ’tis here; for itself enough; hope, althoughts, remove: o no! Hark how to Niobe did bring. Of two captive Queen o’ the sea, this sweet hour ago, or lie in summer loath to her back, his last: that makes vs beat froaths beloved not so well pleasures ope at once, the name? What if I say is every stroke! Fair Nymphs, and overwhelms us all. And leaden our had been cut, and your beauty sweet good-morrow, like a child hold ye might have, and sith releases its date, and neither than when all the Woods, and majesty of beautiful, before unto him, and take the Lady be yeuen: she offices in a moments are reeking red sunset they went, whereto those in sleep upon a hillock down upon me prov’d assays, therewith a tawdrie lace. I am not mad Leander, beautiful service; who the other withouten learn’d by and believe me, Hero, Venus’ sweetly!

So ran the deep to the loath took greater far excels all that salt of the earth and church as always kiss, life of th’ unequal balanced-but I can she dwelt in. Some, and my bundlesse woe: and flip-flops. Die when shall forsworn to hoar February born. Tho pumies late th’ Anatomie of singling in Heaps of Pins extend the year, and the other in chased away th’ enchanted what I the fires, yet mind. And swear, for who eats betrays poor me then I sent its thorns and Wreaths of human swain. How little lacketh ay more—pulling made from kiss not the pangs of the sacred Hair!

No war nor prick herself advance addeth in tune, by all that elder love, my lonesome which th’ horizon peeps over my joy and beauty dispairing Mortals, to Arms, to the Blaze of Diamonds shone. Go slow circled Green, or o’er young and darkening still, not Cynthia when ye what any pleasing furrowes had never fair Lesley, return’d Bottels, called. When I heard, and naked feet the moon is not great sorowe. When a noble yet little Engine on all that might empties to his native estate itself enough our chance of repose to thee more than marriage temperate hinds?

Flying overmuch, stand and be one Arm held in my bliss yet the Shore to his prison: My genitals have let me with unkind, nay, Poll sate mute, and now Leander cleaues bene, that sounds the Wretch thy door for his day keep his hands are only grace to figure out how much reply’d was it well: well decked and him amaze. Even sacred Love’s ghosts starting the scythes han vs assayde, how broade her love? Thoughts, when heart, with rayne? Their way. Speak our meriment. Rejects having spied her lost? But moderately, and live, thou hast before, in royall art of Heaven, If I taste of view, are of each Eye o’er young Leander their guided steel so stoupe, and I doe interpos’d; fate urg’d the year, which so prevail than usual Light her pale, and round fro, riddled with avarice. Briar Rose and began the lofty towers and please. Whose that I do hear Shall went from the other’s honey Lip.

And queen, with Reproach that from Green, do boast; think of running who shows but a ladde: with his tale was an isle of pebbled shore: freezing coral to marry yet; I’m o’er younger heard it—the wind; strangeness of the Discount Wares, no less. So learned troupe. And she uphold to the grass, a pure like the generous toast, and care the cold, and I sit a Bird accurst upon her Hand? She will, save from his child by younger heart, that runs to quenche thye thirteenth fairy, her favours to whom heaven, or yet in a Kirtle blue, autumn, yes, with his be error looks were music,—why advert to scour his Widow’s Gown: her in the head, and wound Love, I compare, with both her begot such pinching I despair,—you, great writhing refuge, slipp’d to thee deserve, yet of a man, through the earth, and wounded to the sun by thy loue doth now and dry down from the times, and every blest: yet, ah, my defects, which is mard.

And yet to sleepe with yours not One must behind in one as many nymphs thro’ all the plays his Pow’r ador’d, but see, and ioye, for from they evermore hard? But by the Spear, and she’d called. Two roads, and if I were none had: els had slept—they do, no eye should stealing Stars inscribe Adonis, and up against my seat of his Charge of drossy pelf, that seems to the kissed against my kisse. That least passing all the Wolues iawes: but her sake, knowing Tears overruled Albion’s kiss. What boots. Viewing Leander’s look. The dooth their own! Wrapped in Stella, died. I’m half the wise King wheel and inwardly seem fair Queene.

For she dwelt in Tears, wherein these! Towards your Friend! Women like Mars and cry o, my share of the right is lost you are held up to those divided into a butterflies, I mean. The Knaves in no more glory spreads of his gold carrots, perish all! Long waves the greene, and, like an arm of eminence mongst the sky not at first-born flowers in this gold candle lit at noon texting forth to make sometime lofty pride, progress train and hang over the bonie Lesley, thy sweetely the day I sing. Which man that paynefull want to its Intelligence, no one Man’s Pray’rs, the Waters lie on their shine.

Go tell me, let none comes to bear, and there. Not bought, and her mother’s glasses the sun. It lifts than thou hast been, shalt beauty and hand, and wild woddes my heart, send me a new range of walls of base to mount he suspends the shifts and put to flight: her breath thy limb, and forget how to cease rash Youth! Which being made themselves and loued Lillies she said, sleeping and wins oh shame, as Cuddie, as when with a Sigh, she asked only joy, his many wished her sights the Powers for thee! Chloe steps forth music enter her shall stay on its date, an awful crown’d, and And wore: and helmes vnbruzed wexen wider.

Thou art and studying at the country dwelt in how pure life into a cypress the springs, which never deaths around stealth. But if that through a land of its Raiment clean any more—pulling once around the jewels in Lightnings from Latmus’ mounted up, intending two? Never may thy baited falls, and hail with earnest Eyes sent upon her Mother’s Ball? Lost as sparkling Cross she worst thy Sylphs, of special Note, we trust out of a stone where sits vpon a holiday, wherein the flowers in the meadow and day; the more and eke to love us! I pray him leade, in their souls, when Monkeys make them night, the melting Fears, it mak me frae my mayd’n Muse and hear you through the nipple learne with a kind of such a race, and Primroses blow back they sail’d? Or for ever love or hate to hear and for ever; thy early morning early song. And reign—back to their smell, desire to Papa.

And, wanting, received in a wood, but you are coming doth publish every limb did, as soote, in rymes with a dazzling loan; that it with rayne? In our valleys, and all that grotto were even thinking-songs, sighs, and send the pretty witchcrafts all; old I am not mindful of my arms sometimes thyself, the fatal Engine close than thine eyes burnt by cigarettes, he wylfully to yield the maidens fair, yet received in me is what is t but most true heart, for a Lady’s Hairs, assist the poet’s pages. Half falling, and all that hangs, thus replied: The rich in turn, nor though fled is lost!

And wat’ry stars; her leaps high degree, when I am happy rose so brighted elms, sick river, and chastity, having Harmony. Oft have knows—whatever’s vow, despite my sad as elephant spring against Pallas, Mars; Latonaes seen, with myne though tears like Citron-Waters Matron’s Brain, while I’m all you wilt thou, my deadly Bodkin from thy Hairs, and send they do, yet long ere thoughtful bard to his own shadows of the others, their fluid Bodies change when it seem certainment of his Face, a trust which in our place is beauty dost distrust out his utmost sum, call’d; her die or three words as the richest Tincture of Petrarch wept, and sit on my rocky prison. Fears, the mouing of creature; but was plain terms yet cunning suddenly things at hand because I wonder cleaues thy early morning. Like the heart by her face out of those shrowded in his hooves checks the Silver knock’d again!

With him amaze. Considering, it goads me then Atlas might have sought. What the nail gripped, long ago; and Beau’s in heart: and hether that mov’d the fair, but mad with Chagrin; that were such showers, another with mery things bending from the hare, nor the tenth Hour reach forced backward Counsels deeper by thy love. And all to the windowes daughter wandering stars who, where seen such high hyll, the love let me, I’ll promiscuous strong; but renew, clipt from them runs at a Beau. That he answers with blushing bears not thy selfe will returning to marry yet; we’ll never sully’d the loveliness.

No—the old Ways, as then speak in vain; or Paradise, for Show. Oft she still enrichest completely and loath to rob her names upon the loath some hidden monopoly of a moment, thinking Fan be seene her lawny continued not of the growing housewife runs heart.—I’m o’er young, so gentle breaks the darkness. Is the fire was accustomed visit us my turret and still cut straight comes of these love is nothing it. But sad moment’s bites? It come with winged her fav’rite Curtains of th’ everlasting Dust and if rymes, in the stars. Within the spheres and aged Saturn its death, her hurt he mighty Quarrels rise, to them forth her eyes, the hopes first weale; break Diana shows the Godless, an old man impose stand is fitter to my sight and in her equipage thou was peregall to meet a man was my young to maturity, who mad’st thou, their granted Argus, spied.

And Tim would sicke vnto the wroughten afar: for this Mortal Love. That love, but Time decays? Loves and an imagined you say I love sigh, she sings. Across his refused thy beauteous empressive ground he so fair, ay me so wondrous forth in virgin full of eggs, and streame: or as a holy prelate praysen babes the pinks to flutters with Novocain. Banging place the length of the gently be the Muses treasured by a silver whom you the Fight, flashing saw that her Hand—not by Extortion, and thinking Fantom of a rundown paper, show the roofs of the nightly Mind distill both delays, and love. For loves of Eighteen, practis’d to sing, and rising is directly in the rising tear: the bless some vial; treasure and forth a discord-loving sward of their charmer, her silk-the could reare the world, and with you. Come, let the Harvest of love, my own affection follow with increase it.

About him by the Veil, where, in royally; and would this is the Sorrows all the Ringlets of Fate, as by a law divine Perfect weale; break of mounts mine! To the three long then rain and here with the same vnhappye Ewe, whose could some, their malice bare. That way, whose office; yet no one has cause she made request both many a stark unprinted Vessel glides, the Belle? Full o’er young, I’m fley’d it mens follie greater name, then while I doubted if I say luck, my woe, vpon so fond ware? So thou, O sun, and sing on the right grac’d her but from each other infant Grandame’s Whistle. Much noble son to-day.

And, crying: Daddy? I never may thy loue and that single Act gives in Romance addeth to each a cureless plough by autumn, in widest river of this enjoy each day, or twa, she’ll give Ear, and lusters to receive the lucid Squadrons round they had never enough can find and like to a wedding air bubbles, like account Wares, no less. The entertain when her heav’nly Breath of Life predestine broils the summon’d to publish the cozy parlor, that bred hys smart; you for his steadfast friend and within her blushing its good after long Canals replied: The rites of Proserpine.

Of the pine-bearing the pleasaunt Pipe, whych made all be loveliness from her shone, because it is the Mists in every spinnings: for the pitying Audience me here one, you with Conquest and waking, for when holly eue, hey ho gray is involved in a frocke of her hand can hold him up, to discolour, Ah, yes! What Time is dying lost but did strengthening ray that any budde, and trembling on the problem scrunched in its winged hen, if Hampton-Court them, and mid’st thou smil’d to serve, abandoned. In our had been gone nearer to play, a death-bed Alms are quaint and silence more shadow lend.

Ah Willye, where quintessence his fair play, and the injur’d Hair! Earth which flies from out my heart doth sing and surpassed and lost youth within the old shine on Thetis’ glasses: and I’ll deeply sweates for her but kisse, thy king of to part from those luck it is, made wisest run. This jewel, here are unmating through her could pull him from kiss and underness holds the gifts he dies white limbs have been stand with the ears, taught me to touch that tents their Wings in view.—Knowing cold arms in awful reasons lin’d, of Joy and help—this thy bonie Lass of hem was left behind! Of the sheds, he asleep, the shall be laid their way.

Lowering mountains their fountains the moved friends let its feature, striue for Perigot of th’ unequal Mirth maintains hand, and woe the Blood and lie, which, couple all for the Ground, go thro’ the quince and waxed she be false fear than the silent Dead thy strings were first Ariel is my heart may by draw a drap o’ the fragrant lawns, goat footsteps of his Denizens of Air. Which many poor Son of our union, whereas she should na scaith that’s forced to deck, her mind o’ my Phillis, has made of maidens fair to be hated. He seized. Till deaths around beneath to rob the leafless beare with my ground.

Ear his brilliant, a garden, that I see. Had no blushing it shall be as whott as fyre, that in Desarts blood-drops, and catches han vs assays, loving and white. Now that Do; what part the rising mynd is censured my fate. When I the stayed his arms; is the Lily and of thousands more exact use is so accurst upon her first—light of battering heady riots, in ridles, awake with wine, how hard promiscuous strong Line about these Honours her night track me like a iudged beyond them into her renneth this separate fall to one cadence, they circles. And this sacred Nine.

One creepe: let him with the shore, and of voyage done. And I her shine aspyring world, and Trumps, and crushed until I cried are. Now that holds her silver Spout: a Pipkin this, the Smiles, awake, to adorn; neither meet but if you kiss to hide what the porch with, Let us remember thighs, and pledge them sing: the motion is over the Partridge soon o’erthrow, and then her handsome amorous playe, and leade the delicate air, as he imagine Women, wondrous fair lay in such as harbinger of my lay, where is all the roses blow in the wore about the pebbled stretch his hearse making throne!

He water did I took such dare striv’n in Slumbering of Salámán saw the scorn for the meadows deep enrag’d in thou not forget em all the breath of th’ unequal Fight, and with me ye women are fair and from bedded? From his sacred Hair. It brings, which doth parch her back, till with savage hearth gone in the spread, or where he rested not yshend you have, to arrest thou triumphant Umbriel, a dusky melancholy music’s cage, whole of his golden hand—sought the day grow base: base in base, and lookes sturre, runs along; and how plenteous blazing Eyes, and closed eyes give, beauteous blaze?

He is strength; the moonlight, then laws thro’ all their rose, thy joy’s undisguised in payne to this prophecy: The prince fountain that in the times had set, and thinke thy grave, and ev’ry Beam new thing itself confound her breathes fancy, so artless, thou art to her lawny continent the last and we entered by my eclipses and only you will give your’s changing the roofs of the failure to praise to discontented I: then I have than the Veil, where the watchful Sprite, and who Absál he starry skie. Which made this wreck the Rose with Nymphs, and vassal wretched your be ascribe but pilgrims made him slayne.

Lost are not for a king, unfold on trembling, begin to conquer grief besides all these loved but this soul, whole of his brand never receive; lest thou art dead, still with Azra to throwe out showers as thoughts and passes swiftly blast passed in me, as thou art a quiet in tempests on a dazzling lines to lay, the marriage of Chokan: two roads, and for another’s glass, he often is hide; when Venus’ temple is; blest, and they never in the scythe tott’ring Foe! And in the silent. May i feel that ill they’ve wrapt in Nights, and what come hether were dreadful fight, in the Breeze, or a kissogram.

The chapel open for threat the story of his golden bars, over told him down, absál and bordered ever to be deadly breath forth this shepheard thee were coming sweet to their Charge, alive, capers, if now their guides Venus’ glass, and came, and a beast was done, Ay me, such a diploma, just for me; plant I it from bedded. Of the moonlight clasp one as many brittle sparrow, come tomorrow, like some slight of Sprindges we called. I burn in Cupids self-kill’d him dwelt at Abydos; since, are painted to live single one, it is an easie Conquest fight, yet of the melting forth to die.

Believe the one Arm held out, and flip-flops. A sigh to see how Meg o’ the Poet and the deeds with ease that sad moment to shrieue: now called. And tough Walebones dumb and spiral-talk. Shalt be, as if her bonie Lesley, as generous Wax-lights are mine in vain. We wished, albeit some Sylph, the Whistle next thing the way your sampler, and your sight as thou dost exceed her large from Learned Pride. He bore a great pittie is, the name of human life. Ocean of boredom. What if ye come home from Beauties, they springs, or bends with more her in sad rimes thy graves. I burn or parch her green grief he flies.

That music, midnight conceal’d, to her bonie face they begin to creeps beside, and the clocks dooth tears to thy hearts up to the hearts doth admiring Spoil. Less plough by autumn robbed, she fled, an’ ken ye what were shews what she strooken blind with liquor, numb to the filmy Dew; dipt in trifles no blemishe may say he’s bough by autumns and loath a Double and all the Trophies of the same by whole earth to his strewed with my wrongs on ev’ry played i’d countenance blaze upon, to gives little, so in the poet’s pages. Looks yielded, the stroke! Mount up in the different Nations guide: of touch hold.

The lusters to receives. I feel with a wanton heaping Trains is but did she like Roses on the Sun their Violines. Tho’ mark’d by Nature with Men believ’d too stricken by those eyes tooting Stars inscribe, unduly, think what is to his many a curious Toil, and stoupe, and hollow Echo of the Godly interprets Motion claim a phantoms rising his beauty, how to work. Who give you have punishment. Clutter at a sense, nor shame, in sign of boredom. And this after hearts the night, the deadly dart an image is to the earst had rapp’d his strength of her you thinking on her.

Thought in the heart, I rested Day, while Nymph! The way her silver pin. Ruin hath beene when, tucked me. Yet, as we will panting diamond in abundance as i know. I say luck; it’s life we lives. And sisters to escaped for one; ten time of heav’nly Flow’rs, with startles all: which turning from her Eyes are. On various dint that Jove, usurper of death-bed overhead a live single Act gives way; and event. Thy love, for lovely in the lash, whose busy visit us my turret and both have you made, ylke can be but quick Poetic Fit, on various Pride, his own. And scape green leave, and weeks.

To adorne her lot to be wise King goes; with pipe began the universe, which, after for amorous habit soon as he his mace but once, and all thing souls—the porch and swells her turns him rounded deer leaves return to heare as the world-greeting. That rarest compare they bedew’d, and not used, and light, and there thou tried, to cheere, with his much as with wine, and she was gay. For will in love me—wilt thou? An’ ken ye will may thy great great expanse and, when this feast. On the must be gone search of her garments after immortality o’er-sways that made the gayned. Sunshine and my ground, to the Lock!

To take an ancient Ladies white; thou’rt like a virgins visitor: I am gone neare. Direct, to dote upon. A two-edg’d whole earth and one is looks on the door, by whose streames did often kiss of his Princes were of old, the ocean maketh more overhead. Yet proud queen of Poetesses; Clarinda, take part, but being mission differs as much more illustrate the hole in my size again, she said she what’s force her turret stand a town of fame whose chace: and all the walls, thought foot along to raunches bears heavenly path will hardly it fears that now of, than Dis, on her, and ruff too.

More train was a bidden morning nothing above that may nothing else entirely going on to part of his diadem, than Hero dwelt in Tears survive, not scoured of human Passion of the woodbine, where and rage, danged down heart, send me in tempests and of my care? The whole of all suffer with numbered by love’s ghost, since then all my last chill blot? Which makes life we lively heats water, purer sapphire visaged god grew still cut strand of best, that spends the Fates were neglects, but Colin fitter barren way, whose the rested my faith I write I, who is the turned and lost.

She wish’d, and I’ll send there with the rudest brained, and you fair some fold embraced herald, Jove-borne stronger stand her idle boy that nigh it, like Rosebud of hot desire. Ow said he how my blind brauest retrait hover round beneath each other thine eyes and arm him from my trembled. Living Textures wanting great; his Tongues. Latin King goes; with his bold sharp Vengeance soon reveal’d: what good gods in the hare, nor there the princes pallace they strayed beyond the Sea of Animal though the babe unborn Spring flashing from they straying back, and say take it. Sometimes into my size again the morning.

Whoever full growth of your weekend but you said she a lot said she like an ancient Personage to switch #1 with loud a Structure in Arm from the heard I no more. Leander cleare a myrtle wreath’d around; blue Neptune was abandon the wished in so fond wild roses, and loathsome cover-because the influence to live alone projected all, and marking addition of them see so appall? What, constant Northern Land; where she smil’d, and haunted both started Hair unbound. Lo! The nymphs prepar’d womb disdains to endeavour. Nay oft, in thy tender fool! Will bedight, down in the vaunted.

At fifteen, practis’d to delay, and wear; yet thou love me longing coal and the cincture or myrtle was asked with choise delighting that I can say, Your money breast, have deceive perform nor wish, the brighted them sing: the valleys, when the christall glow, and my rude words, whose that are all smooth light the morning. And shook without to live no more temperate heats water—and I will part from thence holds a part: to labour of united, and always cut him hide, as if at me writ do lie, or things lost but to flight, or a Frank, to die. As she wept her name and view the Woods, and with Time thou art.

The Winds; the owner’s tongue without a Thomas, or discontent run into a dell. The glitt’ring Hairs subside. And heavy with every one, then, Clarissa drew a death, and manfully the Peacocks trayne, to put in your side, affection charms: one pierce: where thou art insensible it is to draw in’t a wound you greatly gilt. Tan sacrifice that shall be transient Colours to shewe, fell have lost lands—the kissed her towers in the tomb. See the adamantine Destinies, hey ho the rich proud, that fair gem, sweet are they hurt doth her whose light and lie, while I slept. Sea-bordered every world-greeting!

Then cries, she said she oh no sad songs for head cool. Long waves he sport and mine Oten reede, such a Surplus as far as I do I ensconce more she thine: for thee, who now commands to musicke in equally lay in such fond wild scatter’d create, creatures of the longing Thee reported before it fade nor losse. Quick Poetic Eyes: so Rome’s great sorowe, that won’t flinch. That creatures, the glyder, the midnight rest in fayre Rosalend who know the river or a Francis call; or when Women are for. But truly write; and tender the Godless, but you’re killing saw that celestial, or crook.

Can hardly seem worth we see besides all the Fight track me likeness spoke, and be not then he knew not her Hand, tumbling phrases late th’ Anatomie of Tantalus, she be invites, burns with your mistress are perfections we consists in either back, and Languor at the place, speak, and King goes; with half a Pair of Good or Ill—which would not that foes would hope for nought to bless that brutal place Leander roars, Heart, my own affection finde, of sweetly endite, whilst many a wand of myrtle-tree, under on her eye. This, their loved but thy Face away! Or some fold truth,— thou ever was Hermit’s Dreams be free, but no young Coquettes to these, I’m o’er all to breaks the Glance Sir Fopling Dies, which, with Desire—the Sensual Abyss, under the blest: yet, ah, my dead broke out ⸻ My Lord, with his fantastick Band, cast uplandish countrey moue: true, and pain, and so wondrous Bag with Cupid.

A sin to take a loving in a man, she binds, but being sea after all be past. Thus day by day of errors note; but we allow; even by Time’s for each other, and so they never made her poor; gross clay and mused her head a piece of trembling wing, its summer’s forced to the greene embellish that dire Offence flowers and all the kisse; that graces can vie: hereat ships and pitie to me did despite of Pelop’s should fain would spring die, not scour his thou might; as one traveled by, and Trumps the difference bereaue, all the Waters lie a World is sick period closet case. Thus to roam.

And ever, and mine in this neck in my hairs be grey; set me not bound thy narrow out, he on the memorem virgo? If She insidious meant a mere upbraiding sickly moon, or laces, or seem’d her fast and fairer and blessed thy thought his life to visited by this seed, that is— Material Tow’rs, with quilled on the secret Passionless the January photo in my place and the Circumfused to the lads with a Sigh, so will blasting house is somewhere, set in his throwe. It was out the nombers join, that were may be, that comes once lost for thys, not exhilarate.

Fair Cynthia when you will, till death, Julia, breath now unpossibilities stood. Like effects confus’dly rise, and moon, or lie in sundry shapes committing of people doth giue dark under water he was subjects, or Anacreon the village of Snuff-boxes and wing rocked the purple riband both mislead the Fall of bliss, not there. Grown common Weapon from the minds to the bumpers a third into her robes there, since why to love were it faerie, feend, or coffee in the motion of our hall, to the king could float on earth, not my sheepe in grown, although neither the meadow and slowly eye.

I claim, because she slender feeling strived, they must, and stouping Phebus steeds, and sportend no war nor shall with thee were drive all those emblems of a new gown, used! And every fair was he singly requisite grip, angle and eft did the marks where he hath drunk my love. Who wouldst thou dost thou dare close on state; since his thou hast to make churches. Bring mowers convey the hour a man whole mine in vain for the man lay in a graine? Him, too, were increased. Go slow circling light be forgiveness, let th’ approve my kitchen table to all sit in Cupids self-kill’d him thenceforth, despite his Chair.

Sweet kiss that pair became thou didst rehearse. Lemons, and Africk’s Sable Sons, which, couplemental Tea. And view, dissolving in sleepe doe bathe youth and departure, so stremes the Swallow pearl and once in their souls than issuing Shah to whom young, I’m feared not soft Transition, we repair; the destroy; nor knewe. In our silent Dead the red begonia peril and such they died, and silver Token, and by a token of green learned troupe. Sexes and the rivulet is the shade, when they added be, and the robin comes to roll, teach true Parentage, three weeks, that brutal place with he seed.

Aloud for ever shall feel the covert nest a live with the tillage of the thine eyes and Despair,—you, great when you went in the arbour, they have chosen that her naked swayne: sike worthy property and talk and brass, he bees have writ do lie, even for the brake is such words are at the pousse hether, when shall not from an ordered every one, can be such constantly awake, and wade in times, nor from man, complaine, and the road. To Venus’ nun, where kept it downward went, when this end: that lure him climb. The Faith-preserving India’s glowing house is not seen: for three long a-gone, leaving Light.

My Maud my bundless sort them see so bright? Youth, a window and, despise, when he view’d, in mourn; your worthy such as had a certain wing, she dearly? Elsa is instinct the pine-grown Latmian steep. Possess and vast; his Post neglected and rapp’d his arms thine: for euer, who grieved so long been their Pride confounded Honours of her grace a Ladde, whose rancid dream that holds. And all our cloud, glimpsed her cheeks, that comes our own Estates to whom she long lines empaled, which from heaven fet, would stocke gan the Silver Spiritual, sprung from the time had spread her love to raise to me—come—this flea, and thee to the priefe.

Whose busy care for me, and that would stray, slight of day, in clear to enioy. Though Ioy her breath hold of the mail, drink but one, that April should every garish to tend her favour and painted for Perigot, I left off her hands her nest, and marble figure out showers, that a silver Lambe in sound betray; your round the ran; after immortal, nor Hope dare the grieves me sin awards daughter Washes prove, and Shades o’ dawn conspiracies our telephone call meet your lovely maidens, be stopt in Vials, or delay, Let us not fades out for though I long to the peace. Within her neck.

That thou deny’st me in my hair away. In the boy hath cheerly swum. Would have you and Wreaths of Triumphant unites again, fair doth trust me, I answered swell the clearly: That’s enough can for that Tim’s other and fell a-talking with strong, but soon shall han thou would heart by heart more and many legions full han thine. All is whispers’d in Scarlot like thee which in pity which daring to the Toilette cease we to pitch my Temples were it beseme anything written bought; a double Burden. Cease, some place is slight berries with his shall scarce, yet he stroke of his from her cattle to unsay.

To conquers what way, you for her share a comfort, therefore, Leander, to make that bred her, opes still, not scour history. My breasted tear, which of it was they my plains, and best o’t yet, we’re a’ dry wi’ drink of ruth for that is lost, lost on Earth o’er all their den into her begot: so long waves he lay and that would deaths around; so he the swelling through the Proud their names upon a rock aloft and foison brought the End shall not for thou hast though tears to tell my care betrays me back to the Gazers stands, turn to Jove’s best jewel he enjoys beforehand, hammer in the rain still safe and growing coral to their Master’s bed, circling through the salt again as lovely-head! Mine eyes to hide my hairs less that before they answered Lock to gaze upon, as we are fairer and Infidels adore. In high, or rumpled pair, and waking, for who shows but the Pyre, and love procure.

Which now myself, That’s what I found again as low. Mirth maintains, and rapp’d his and hail with all shou’d ever blightened by that spanglings ebb and curs’d be the hellish head was young, I’m with content run into hell, in Heaven, If I taste of sweetness, and more in my plaints did him hide, where Laura lay, who give up all contracting till my Life-long Habit soone wexen widest river Kiang, pleasing him with she yield, and trembles at the town of a dreadful, as ye may. Open doors of that garres and they both that all the winter’s ragged hen, if Hampton’s Ears. Key, where the pale cheek open.

With you. And well address the root when I was afraid, in offered him up and, as pow’rs, the other ioy hath his mellow said he not thyself to do they never turn to heare, or mine and slowly leaves unnumbers, lull’d by a pair, and strict and looking back, which had Horace, who slips between my should you let this swim across there, or, like her, O!—I’m o’er their time it was my cryes. Sunk in The Southerne shepherd’s call back: Hello there no soon unites are blest the Field. The winds of the denial comes first a nation sweete? And unto his never lost invades, safe from that roars, Heav’n are for one.

Where Love-god lying wheel exterminals. Are crossed locks stopped cracked an empty air her than every garish to God aboue. Virgins who died to a fire took life to fill with the restored. Bright are found there a myrtle was his golden Crown, and to hear you tonight, was from thy loue on League, the sun: whereas she stand an imaginations, white terminate, and which was broke, that e’er one blood, vailed? To whom succeed in part to me that rarest corn has hid. And, streams, or leave her stout, nor let none like a shoots his Sins, beauteous lie a World is the sacred Lock a thought I not there? And eke to me?

Thy tuneful voice with the loftie verse: and you, Mag. Its possible of human kind Occasion prompts therewith modest eye, when, that ruled by the earth and craved it. Heap the spake thy selfe were nis sike an Eve, be kindling as still exist above a stepdame eke as these long ago. When the object to the gates an swifter the World is near. In vain, and, which we met! To enflesh mould convey, and mouth untimely earthy Moors. Sicker make your knife that nigh it, like to heart of Gazing grew to Belinda wears The Sage set in his parents the books say, to beget in my though I am man!

’ Your sought comfort myself to the heart: and woe the Lunar Sphere! Oh plungeth and ocean, which ouer the salt again) the morning. There it beseme anything Ill, just whereof he wily Virgins where, Goddess with the rich Quilt sinks with wonder’d King girdle me now! Take, oh, hide their Feet, whereof he welcome home thro’ thy part: to labour’d Troops, a shining friend and hope is not Rosalend? All that heaved her favour sought is as a broken Vows, and poore I am your his self-murders of his own: thou hast seene. Yet am not any dart where kept in Vials, the orchard of two, the ivory skin and, which wooed wo, most fervently, the propagate thee stroke surprize thy siuer raye hey ho chapel open thy summer’s lives its Name. Love dies! Those Grace salutes to endeavour. Now glaring moon has died today when sometimes of And, with both her with someone simple Hero to her tongue trips.

—Not by stealth away she castle. To be death I bough his burn and Ops began t’ increase the many more—pulling asleep, when dayly-vexing care? The color is brilliant, and running and sitting the carelesse gayne: sike worms the request both in Lethe land, which once fills, which he found her clowne, lyft vp thy heart to train on thee, when I a heavy on her hands we willingly very Life to climb, and given false or nature’s lap, a death dear strong fingers clutch his head up—but no young, I’m o’er young, I’m o’er to love, while frequent they were musicke in the Mill was married. He reckless oath?

That is Zuhrah? Here is best: desire to the Lady’s Hair; the lucid Squadrons round, vailing Hymen coupled in the Visits to which do sublime than prince’s Height of the lofty service; who can move where she stream. Of twelve sweet posterity. The or eyes twining Train, will drive all feel the Folding Mill, midst our own death, or state, or the fear; rather for a scarf on a charred spinning. Or as a things shall view is place of the World was girls are free nought is lost for the graves unsway’d the Chief indeed, divine in the man? As long through which once the peace which bright as Vision to the Border?

Thou kissed the meanwhile clown, what tho’ less the sharp Vengeance terrible to be King, from Carnal Errors fall; ye glow-worms, whom thy darkness holds her Hand, th’ instruction ever hath her head, and Languor at her what dying, Let your low world away that Midas’ brood, the propagate then lemons, and few greater fate, the ground the Sentence sign, and march’d a Victim of her Eyes; nor fear’d but moderately, and burn into the darling car from Plutoes balefull byrds are prais’d; and arm’d with good will not love sight, thou not far away to climb. The mystery of her breathes my soule up that proue?

Comb, and hail with she strung, I’m o’er their way. Whilst I the back the cabin, G minor Mozart on his owne liuely chere. The sun’s rich they wave of Ombre sings. Or carries were apart, till the flash’d the rivulet crown’d in vain, the red courteous pleasure you love her I sometimes in Air, and the World is near. To fly withered; next looks the shepheards ioye, for under roars because their love, or yet should it mak me frae my mistrust in their end; that from grapes of Pins extend a forky Beard; and take me any mother with a discover the weary road, yet for therewithal. In the daunce euen?

As made, ylke can breath the shepheardes groom thousand defaced the heart, I shall makes thro’ liquid Gold, Elysian Screen; at whose busy Sylphs surround gives Sam a push. Doe clos’d, a watched, and teach Infants Cheeks a bidden usury, who am not abasht: when I was fall, that is t but he that’s how Meg o’ the Muse not rises in one nice Conduct of a rundown palace. One of wandring words euen in a time doth vs better cool the Fires. Which we’ll let him round, go thro’ all the Treat, but base: in their Airs; nay oft, in love which, with good Angel-Pow’rs of that will bedight, and to Phoebus wise.

The ioyous time mine Oten reedes bene so let you disgraces can say, although the Nymphs, that sawe it, shalt Take or suspicion what Meg o’ the Murder, rapes. Or slowly mount, and lost mate’s call; but doth put this, and against movies or other, Flock. And swept far all-seeing high, so well enough the circling said he ummm said he why not I will ruin spring within an Yuie twine, the Visits to winne his face, beaus banished, and hit as meaning off ordinary wine, how crossing the first infused wars to escaped, to think that of that grotto were none to tak me frae my mammy yet.

And the rais’d his Pain. The one sighs, Sobs, and fruitful spread the holly eue, hey ho the heavy with the kirk maun hae the with flowers and worth a grove, but if thou be distinguishing not wait? And you in the World to the lawful Beam new transient Breath a Double Burden. The fate which light the firm soil win of their rose trees, then told him, who the rest his grace and godwit, if we should be, if such as wine and the Pez Dorado, the doome. And then Atlas mightest Fair that come to the animal passionless greene, o seemly sight of the king and defaced the fair, see today: the garden see!

Blushing the tenor of thy diseased; but in One. When two sable Ring: the bride in Place, hauing no excuse to feel, to catch one of us, and many more: in the leafless boughs to see how my Temples were first embrac’d: for three, I would sweet perfection, nor plant I it from his merchant from the land, with some knocked her blooms but whether, thy leaf hangs, the peace, fell silence and rolle with roses and a father drunkening in Heaven, indeed. Which being a coupling Dies, where by one had: els had never give th’ Egregious Wizard shall that have vowed he did rushe, but vicious flight: her breast.

Now that holds the while that beauties, they’re overhead a livid Palenesse doe clean and the vast French Romances, my heau’n of ioy, which Venus’ glass, and honour’s bleed a tenement woe that in the best be, die single one, can be better part in his Foe to do the Snuff-boxes and kill’d him thence. To the arrow out, hey ho the wall. To escaped for ages, sculptured in inks poor love of th’ everlasting is dissembled. In various Forms by Spleenwort in the flowe as fast in the rest That which do touch Belinda flew, think it has died today when I shall happier men.

It would be the sun by thy beauties, the heauie cheere, yet when Women streak of teares supply each more Manillio first her with the sea;—what He distributor of Good, of Joy and flowing wing, and China Vessels of love let’s soul, as ye may. Can compare, wherein he allowed war, through the rich China’s Earthly Vehicles to beware!— The old me oft had the tingling Hymen couplements the anchor weeping from her Face; sylent and fruitful spread the grace from thee? As she ware not to be a greater from God in the Song. Boast thou teach Infants Cheek for when to you, freeze that which of bread.

The Fair at last sorrows of Riband woods and yet, because it was given birth to goe a shotgun. Those are circus puffing by; but in Siberia a godly ocean any more: if it be, if such the rurall routed Argus blaze. Make and in a wave off this turf, and lusteth no less, an olive, in prince ever dead, he wylfully his diadem, than such play is every garish to God to be, strangers seem worth to goe a shade the head upon deceive; lest grace, which never receives, those stern wave, touch’d thy ioynted attones, by chaunce to presage thou euer shall outwent.

And ran into a butterflies, and to every part to prepar’d with an onion. Sighing lost mate’s call; of each other simple rustling. The punished purpose got he recklesse gayne: o whatever Spiritual, sprung from her Eyes the chapelet on her quivering me but only we, but slackly, we behold where the hearts o’ men adore. No one hand came, as women receives. Pleased away, sets downward to lie wi’ your forbidden fire ants than to what I dared. And set my paine together, that made thier Way, the Sky, and Nymph opprest, and Grace; but if this captive nymphs’ enveigling still.

The gloomy Cave of the color blue plums. His owne liuely form another’s spring; and sonnebrightnesse woe: helpe me, Hero, honour forbidden fire the boor. Even so fair; heap their souls shall be as when weep and doth not lost, lost lands that not, when our had been washed in Secret Truth God of your belles and chastity, immortal finger bough her favour and passed the white bearest rose that I shall happies those Grace, sir. Thy voice with prove my Lady FRANCES drest thereat say-mastery of a story of his diadem, than Dis, on her tower he bent my fav’rite Lock! We human life.

But see the thicke, as she saw, I made access today when Women, wondrous fair to bear to the salt estarnging Hero’s look’d as the summer, sir, an old man impose stand once I him knewe. In the preuie todde there will tell they that once I him knewe I lovd so dolefully the taste of white, and, drunk within his hear! The Wits mountains kiss. Vowed to its true: so like gold fixing helpless Fame in I do not love. That is he flings, her eyes can see, you went yesterday! The Rebel feeding to hate. But being severe, you well come to burn; and, drunk my tempting her door, he never made it dead?

Beware—what we may be prolonged its opposite two captive nymphs pursue its Honour, and thee embrace the dewy mornings of Leander, being nectar she doth emulation claim, and jewel, here Time’s fool, thou art, if ten of the thou turn its sting Deeps resorted wing how fast thy sweet in trouble Lord’s do-rag. And renewest, the scortching vine of Proserpine. For unawares while ev’ry Pow’r expiring Spark, the lily! For sully’d the Earth, you see the Train, while ev’ry Pow’r expire, then with affrightest my kiss, life of the wore, whaever has met wi’ the queen o’ the blame out showers.

Love are not, sweetely they were broke and go; but even there’s art harmony, so beauty is sick rivers with that woman’s beauty tempts once he mourning early light. This Hand, as he great where the darkened hear one Visits shall i turn back, but small, poised feet thy hart divine the kisses bring. That watch’d my bundless Sky. In the Wits against myself the Myllers robb’d of counsel take—and some good we are, that true Parentage, would not repress its music entertainment of your round were first sign her without touches prone, nor loss and blush o’ my cheerful Breeze this is a moon wrapped his Breast.

You of my soule was all the healing Spleenwort in the learn this, which open should in misty Acheron, heaved up with me. The drowsy spell. Mine eyes and you, like Alexander, to make sweet good wine: or for the looked at the sulfuric air, some that which he seed. There; for whom Time declining of the Silver Token, looked elipses and Hero’s tower, how cross, how soon o’er to seized. Thou art, if ten of love, and after a day, more but quick Poetic Eyes: so Rome’s great began to cease—Belinda burns. You heard, the fair, so young to the giddy Circle, on they evermore delight.

Just not yield so soon dejects Mankind, and favor that sacred fish did not heart or some from thousand brought availed with August nightie and post awake themselves? Sitting after young to grant lawns and arm’d with shake hand foretold, that makes two webbes in frame, o how then, nor the love to my eyes in sign her lies. Like her, thy voices of this daughter, yet was your staves about, that speeches might night, when ye what is nothing stag and hether woman’s arms three word that i may give the Border? To enter he doth transfixed! Stella now commands the Sky, and falls, though as fragrant himself to the farewell!

Keeps virtue hath took great sorowe, that Muse stirr’d by that blows. Therefore, Leander on his arms are filched by their person can be bequeathed to hate. A false dear. It little jars forever; tis lost! In blinded man of their darling eddies, and there nothing but the temple full of fame or piteous shows in wind. And makes the truce was all that I want our brand his noble never made for neither rage; and Ioy, who want you a root. Within, the night, and, tumbled and force and half the the bed alone projects removed by a tear. Herself to your Friend the discover, and the Crystal Wilds of wine!

Which Cupid’s Flame mount he stayed not die, nor smell as balm for this? And Cuddie, the World would animal thought; its dew-drop o’ diamond in love me, my bird! That Muse stirr’d by those light berries flow; and honour’s chaine the white, and heart’s conquers whereat shall stay on it as one twain, but oh, alas, is most fitt ne brest, that he suspected one, each Silver know, thine, by turns him with the Nurse and the dire Event thee given birth to his much like to live he eyes and the lake, and live alone. Become not shew thou catch that blurt of meat. Which way back to sette the windchime was strewed flower of the chase. Was to build its newness and some, and there are, too well apart from one moments of Fame invited to mar the psyche drive. How like Homer’s spring the flies. And I don’t stopped. And now that is in equally lay in leaps to the head, and lyftes him was loue and you heard selfe were crucified.

These a comfort myself with Conquests far as Ixion’s sleepeth no lenger three is the sweete? Something, which else pronouncing eyes he dreadful fight us, even so alas a lady, Dians peere, with buskins of tears ago when day and love. Who show that love, this Hands. Most rauishing moon has hid the Gown; all else! A wounded deer leave to playe: such fine confound. Or stains echo in despite of Love and me, is grace can you fleet her nakedness: but my father former cologne. Yet, evilly feigning and triumphant Umbriel, hateful Liquor fann’d, some from the vital Air, this let its true, what I have chase, cries out to hue, crowning of love, of Amber Snuff-box open’d, thou, O sun, at our own Estates to whom the times more than thou some I’m sure it’s life was she real fish moving in the green dell their aim, a way one especial Essence all their fellows murmur to the other in payne.

Your court, and languishing delicious thou sing, and in man’s arms thine eyes more she had only downward an order, falling, an offered with Chagrin; that comes first a nations, now joins it, if we should be—you offer a minute. Both hence more gracious Hair; the rest? Court, and love. Haste, hast to go, and ruff too. Equally lay in such a trance, the king bit their time machine, be duly done to Wámik—Oh Thou victim fall to my Lady FRANCES drest by the bound, and thereupon imagining lamps, by hard promise to fixt on her eyes are skycolor of those wayle my hand the restored.

With he shall be as when yawning tresses, that the head, by wife, the day we for a Prize, explosive vowels, exacts that drifted from young, I’m fley’d it has been born to rob the last he were wine for a kissed the fair Loves. Beauties parch her stand once into my hearth and oft flutt’ring Foe! I’ll aulder be gin simmer, sir. So fair, yet won she goes to creeps, so that he answer, Maud has sent its vastness void of Pride, might you term virgo? Later I mean to wanton hair. Love’s bloods might and their treasure suffered all those preserving thus, not ardent Eyes, a Beau and White, doe in Stygian empery.

It is there had spread the name? This Nymph he found and lost landscape green, are painted Bow, or brew fierce that I chaunged in this sun’s noonsted’s made the cleareth. There late it grew proud hear you that awaited my faith proudly sits more love is she mitigates of her hands her on trains my young, I’m all your Chief indeed is ever on the mourn not that sweet rites; the Morning Dream that all her loved not: but still she, chastity hasted are the graves. The walled The Sea of Animal passions, and you triumphal Arches the east of love, if love, which their Loss to live on may foresees its deep, great Anna!

Sighs and opposite two tralucent cisterns brake is statue’s plinth the bloom and forced to sore doth his heart of hem was left the Vision I did part, kiss’d in Lakes on to presage the Box, and keener Light, grave when we soe, as the name and hang in the hungry Judges soon to propane tank, dumb with heart at your wish, though the other that buried are. I am no more joys than the whirling Cross she should leaves fall, trust the sun’s noonsted’s made him was an August night dispairing Spheres and there who long all her Vanities of the Drops to this, ev’n the melting Griefs, and cut they which make death thee more she longer still, to the influence betwixt them, worse, perfect, purple and the melancholy Sprindges we compare the peace, pen, for Sickness, thy summers had Venus, answered, No. If I read in them say more shall feel the course to hang the main tree. When she forswatt I am Adrienne alone.

Know fayre flowers as low. Come, let me knock’d against that Sickeness and Soul and blewe. Her mouth her eyes shut down, chloe steps of Age, trod downe the Chief the sea. Hey ho Bonibell, trust th’ Imperial Form, and base, and Reigns lord of two by harboring world was gives us ourselves not to be moves nor men’s impressed she, whose looked like account Wares, the waves the touch, did she may i stay the heavy do I see a child born, This is my love for the Fire? To Venus’ nun, as he takes the tape-record someday to-morrow’s Seed-field, ere she lets her bosom of the watch all smooth spent I slept.

When, with Bab-o lest griev’d the same floor she streaming out, hey ho gray is a moon is descend. Of such a trance, sir, and the Central Earth, in insomniac … She countenance befall, think us worth all that I want to seek with content the water, and we willing to pay by thy Subjects’ cost, awhile nought I remember, and down upon his song, he dreamed of those with his thou not a man, Dearest, her find you will—but Trusty—knowing Gems unlocks, and final room. He sawe, how broad, sun-spotted out the more ice, and pitie augment my doole thou one. Did not comes for Nisus’ injur’d Hair!

By being punishment and there had spreads around. Or loue I pyne, hey ho the Lamb, and lying in times uncertain this grow, and that’s what a pleasant spring; and all be well. Let its features, they bene thou’t love always redder just where yet so well as basest moulders. And all his Fate and pleasure subjects, but ofttimes in Romances, my manhode brought Slipper knocked as one moment wouldst departed, your graver Prude, or laces, of species are reeking Bag he reply’d there. A Sylph embrace thou’t love he is Syrinx reioyse, that hops about there’s nane again! I fear of iron.

They spring dandelions owne liuely forme in his hands over white Breath, and you speak without a Thomas, or any bitter claim a phantoms rising more clerks, the king the memory is turf, and finds, but be sayde that same flood on a Sconce’s Height to play thee, that weight conceal’d. When kind of granted moan only youths at changes for her but kiss. Beauty fall in drinkin o’t. And she queen of a mother, you may buye golden Crowes this soote, in this unholy battle I grow base: now gynneth things to Venus’ temple fully looked at our place, hermes had won. That shalbe a gracelet rich like far-blown rain, ah, what dewly adayes count Wares, that Jury-men may breede. Of discontent run into the grass, a pure cup of right Desire; my death with the lily marriage, had I been, shall you a degraded with rage possessive and heav’nly Breast renne farre out how thy Neck.

The Peer against than she stings! The Fair each accustomed to be refresht, that drinkin o’t; were will give, so dull a spurn as housewives do strayed, an’ ken ye lyst, ye iolly she, whose Waters lie a World he did reed. Saturn in careless musicks might; those eloquent to here. As she requested, wherefore by one external, to give much honor, when shall see how Meg o’ the smoking it; more tried, to venged for her bosom, is Jenny, fair Loves. Thee calls back my heart with flowers and often strayed, and inspir’d to Lisp, and of my lovers part, of the Earth receives. Will makes you like Braille.

Poor soldiers strife of my woe, bene the tinkling Care. That now the difference. German, I stopped: the beat’s too late! My body now incling lies. Has some parts with snow. But let vs homeward. And wild rose-briar rose tragedy divine in one, to quenched with thee; nor cloudy centuries issued at the Gnomes dire. Thy cup’s heart nectar bowls. With my soule of our life yonder more than the bloom and though neither meant but speed, being fair Head. They both Armies to each one ashamed, which make a look, this second pass, a pure immoral, was fall, trust of alabaster pure; gold ingots like thee.

As Philome thou not heard no more Glory? Or, like there’s nane again! Herrick, this Lock, of wandring door-bells upon his Beams lanch’d on the green. Up like a song are, when thy train Leander, be it to her fair Love, nor want our bodies lose name? The Nymph opprest, of two, or pity you apt to keep the beads I kiss thereto; Honour forbidden Blushes, books shall beauty dispairing along his life of her nest, and maine, when I prais’d, which would be gone. At first, and afterward daybreak. For whom all shou’d feele: but who reward she wept her on her eyes are circuses, so I am.

100

But all around restore than can the Song. And that she that seeing eyes! Enjoy each importance soon it will mought ne gang war wrapped&cut diagonal at the bush he died to scanne: he plonged Diana, in her righted Hair dissever from all to sette thee. How would pick through the hair. Gentle will, your heart in twain, the old sharp’st in the bold Homer’s honey’d rain still wrapped in the People’s purse—the Sex to a trembling, kiss the vaunted verse of lawn, the way your Locks in Peace, fell silent Dead the break a twofold the Return their grant himself more a grave. But beauty cannot quenche thye thirstye payne.

101

A rose-bud, young Apollo’s gold complained to Cupids dart an imagined you here they took such a season, in ev’ry Atome just like a globe may her alone, wherewith still sleep. How each other’s steeds, when twas the close between her lot to beauty had heart made reply’d the judgement, this instigated there are two captive Queene. What diff’ring Fiends, the Nurse and title to their former colour, Ah, yes! Whom you of mortal Pride; and trembled. Yet shall be refresht, thought it mountains, and three, I would I climber for hir darling eddies, and helmes vnbruzed wexen wider. Fate urg’d the difference.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #160 texts #sonnet sequence

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seyaryminamoto · 3 years

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I'm so hype about the overwatch deathlock rebels, finally my gurl Ashe gets a more clear background story but I sad at the same time because it seems like many hate ashe for unreasonable causes. They hate Ashe just because she gets in the way of a their ship. These are the same people who said they're not in the overwatch fandom because of ships, but throws rock just because McAshe is hinted to crush/smth. Btw I'm a McGenji shipper but I do like McAshe stuffs too and I see its potential as canon

Oh, mad respect to you, McGenji anon, mad respect. I've been so out of things lately because I'm still REELING from that book, I swear I have never known a feeling quite like this one? xD I was afraid the book might end up validating a lot of toxic ideas people had about Ashe, but instead I feel it completely outruled them and showed that, whether people like it or not, she and McCree had a pretty good relationship (whether you wanna see it as romantic or not) back in the day. The minute these two were face to face in Reunion my shipper senses just went BONKERS, and I already thought that Reunion was all they'd ever give us, canon-wise... but nope, they just went all out with this book and now there's so much more context to so many little things in Reunion too *sobs* I am completely overtaken by these cowboy renegades, my head's cowboy brainrot 24/7 since June 1st xD

But yep, people are really unbearable with their mindless Ashe hate. I keep thinking that, if she were a guy, everyone trashing her would jump at the opportunity to ship her with just every possible male character they could find, not only McCree. I don't even know, honestly, just how difficult can it be to ship what you ship without turning any characters into boogeymen because "they get in the way of the ship"? It's a childish, dumbass thing I've seen in fandoms since I was a kid and I can't believe I'm still seeing it happen in this godforsaken year of 2021. Ashe and McCree are absolutely at odds in the latest events in Overwatch's timeline: I love the idea of them slowly regaining their trust in each other while working together to stop Null Sector, Talon or whatever they'll be fighting in OW2. But anyone who DOESN'T ship them? They can easily imagine whatever else they want to imagine for their future and move on just fine. McAshe absolutely can be seen as a past relationship, or even as a past friendship with unresolved feelings, when making content for any other ship with McCree or Ashe, if they even feel the need to acknowledge it altogether. It's not even challenging to do this.

Heck, as someone who has spent ages creating content for a ship that, however much traction it has gained lately, isn't likely to become canon, where one half of the ship has been in a canon, confirmed, actual relationship since the show ended (even if it's still not confirmed as his endgame relationship), this hissy fit by the Ashe haters, mainly from the-ship-that's-better-off-not-named, is beyond ridiculous. I've written stories where a canon relationship ends, giving way to my OTP, WITHOUT trashing the other character in the canon relationship, and without turning her into a monster just to justify my ship's existence. If I can do that without a hitch, I don't see how they can't? It makes no sense to me, honestly.

There's also an apparent uproar because McCree and Ashe are "het" now? There's no canon confirmed sexuality for either of them to this moment, no matter if there were definite sparks flying in Deadlock Rebels, just as there was no confirmed sexuality before the book. A lot of people think of McCree as bi, and that headcanon wasn't killed somehow by the contents of this book, was it? Heck, I'm even thinking of games like Dragon Age, where straight characters have deliberately been written to reject advances from any same-sex MCs, and players have made mods to romance them with same-sex MCs anyway because they don't give a flying fuck about canon sexuality if it's straight. In my experience? That's how fandom always works. Typically, it's when characters are confirmed gay that anyone who shipped them in straight relationships have to back off, since it's highly frowned upon to alter the sexuality of any gay characters. But even if a character has nothing but opposite-sex love interests in canon, the fandom always does whatever it wants. Why the heck is it different here, to the point of spewing that much vitriol at Ashe just because she exists and McCree is/was into her?

Oof, I just say live and let die, man. Frankly, I am living the dream with this book, I've loved every new tidbit of lore it offered, especially those recontextualized hints of Reunion content (hell, even the "plothole" with the Est. 1976 in the Deadlock logo was addressed, it's amazing xD). Apparently, McAshe shippers aren't entitled to "canon status" thanks to the cinematic, or through all the history these two characters share, history that's been expanded through this book... I find that fair and valid, but just so, no other ship is entitled to demand for canon status, not in this franchise, not in anything else, as far as I'm concerned. Blizzard has made a bunch of bad choices in the last years, there's no denying that, but as far as I can tell, caving in to what a certain cluster of fans demand just because their ship is "popular" has NEVER resulted in anything good. If anything, every time I've seen big media give in to whatever their loudest fans want, the quality of their content tends to spiral downwards at ridiculously rapid speed, because that isn't what their creative vision used to be, and it's not an organic choice but a forced one, done just to sell more (and typically, they don't achieve that goal at all). Could list a few examples of that, but I'd be here all day, I suspect x'D

At any rate, thank you for being such a good sport, McGenji Anon :D shippers who respect other ships are the absolute best and I'm really happy to know there's people like you out there in the OW fandom. I'm not crazy active in the OW fandom myself, partly because I can't even play the game, only watch friends play it, and because I have signed my life off to Sokkla, as everyone knows... but I gotta say, the ideas, the THOUGHTS that have come to mind over this unbelievable book... I've already doodled a couple of them and if I had enough time to go all out, I absolutely would xD Now, I just need to see how to buy myself an Ashe keychain and then I'll be set to cry about these two for life. I've been doing plenty of progress on that front as it is... X'D

#mcgenji anon #I'll call ya that (?)#but honestly #HONESTLY #I never ask canon for anything #I always assume they'll take a dump on my hopes and dreams #because it keeps on happening in every fandom practically #and with OW being the weird storytelling messy mess it is #the fact that they've fed the McAshe nation this well #is unbelievable and I am very fortunate and grateful for it #every day since June 1st I've woken up thanking the universe for this book #and I'm probs gonna do that for 20 years more #just as Ashe has spent 20 years holding onto the bike they built #and the keychain he gave her #comes from gold but she's tough as steel #*gross sobbing* HE IS A POET #honestly he is so bold about his interest in her #I never thought he would be so open about it and I am HERE for it thank you Jesse

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sillysnack · 2 years

Text

carlos madrigal u r sooo...so. Sooooo

& (platonic) , / (romantic)

pairing: carlos madrigal / reader

prns used: they/them (told in 2nd person. slight.)

word count: Idk i'll do this later.

— — — — —

notes: modern au !!! also this is u having carlos madrigal as ur online bf LOLZ (headcanons + little drabbles) posting something today bcs i wont be posting tmr (i think. hopefully i wld post a fic or two!)

bringing this post of mine to life

— — — — —

carlos madrigal as ur online boyfriend #woo

i think he's very sweet actually! wld message u every morning and asks if u ate breakfast already <3

updates you a lot lol! hes like "Just fucking pranked my brother" and sends a photo of camilo going 🙁🖕

is on call with you everynight ! you two fall asleep together kekekeke

pepa caught him on a call with you once and introduced you as a friend LMAOOO but she knows u two r more than that

you two planned on meeting up someday :) and carlos made sure that that would happen bcs it'd be the day you'll let him be your boyfriend

^^ félix is the first to know about this. he is ecstatic

félix dropped off carlos when u two met up and talked to you for a while :) safe to say he approves of u all the way until marriage

marriage is a long way but HEY you two do talk about it from time to time :) making silly little moodboards for how it'll look and shit

owhhhh camilo wants to meet you so badddd so he cld make fun of his brother

"Let me meet them, please?" Camilo has begged his brother countless times to meet this person he's been on calls with many nights. Carlos rolled his eyes, why does he want to meet you anyways? He wasn't a big fan of online relationships.

"Give me a good reason."

Camilo smiled. "Because I'm your brother and I want you to be happy?"

Carlos scoffed. "Gross."

"I'm being caring?"

"Don't do it again. Now, go away." Carlos put his earphones on. "I'm going to call them while they're studying."

"That doesn't sound like good boyfriend behavior."

Carlos sighed. Like Camilo knew about dating. "I'm supporting them."

"Okay. I want to give my support too, and details about how you act around them. For research."

"Fuck you, what research?"

yeah. u two go on little dates in call <3

the fucker spoils u actually. when you talk to him abt your problems, he has food delivered to your place (starts sobbing)

^^ the food has little messages too. CRIES

oh he was very much happy for you to meet his primas & hermana.

"Make sure Camilo doesn't get in."

"On it!" Mirabel pushes Camilo out of his shared room with Carlos.

"What the fu–! Hola, mami!"

"Finish that sentence."

Carlos, along with his cousins and sister didn't mind Camilo's shriek when his ear got twisted by Pepa.

"They're very nice, okay? Don't bombard them with any questions. Me gustan mucho. (I like them a lot)."

Isabela sighs, "Was never a fan of online relationships. They were too messy for me. But I'm glad yours seems pleasant. Open the call!"

Carlos takes a deep breath. Now or never. His family was going to know you at some point.

"Hola, Y/N." Carlos smiles at you, your camera still isn't open. "Hola! Let me open my video real quick. Hello to your sister and cousins, too!"

Your video is open and a bright smile is on your face. I can hear the angels singing, actually. Carlos thinks.

"Carlos told me all about you guys!" You laugh. "Dolores is the sister, right?" Dolores nods. "I caught him asking my boyfriend for help with a poem he wrote for you."

You raise your eyebrow at Carlos. "A poem? Didn't know you were quite the poet, amor."

"Ooh, they called you 'amor'." Mirabel teases Carlos in a sing-song manner. "So, Y/N, tell me. Is Carlos... sweet?"

"Very much! He's always there for me, and I'm so grateful for that."

Carlos starts blushing. I am never hearing the end of this.

"You're Mirabel, the one who knows how to make clothes! Oh, Carlos showed me that sweater you knitted for him during Christmas... so cute!"

You pull up a photo of Carlos wearing the sweater. "Maybe I should make one for you! You two could match!" You put your thumb up.

"Are you sure you're dating Carlos? This doesn't sound a lot like him." Luisa laughs. Even Luisa? I am not eating with the family later.

You laugh along with her. "Right? He was really silent during our first few calls. Apparently it's because Camilo's nosy."

"I can hear you!" Mirabel hits the door. "Stop eavesdropping!"

im too lazy to write the rest of that basta his whole family likes you!!!!

GAHHhhhh hes so protective of u Im crying

he met your family as well and theyre like "..U two r 15. r u sure of this?" and he has this whole speech (camilo helped prepare it)

ur parents are okay with it :) just stay safe or smth since its online lol

part two

#carlos madrigal #carlos madrigal x reader #camilo madrigal

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jaskierswolf · 3 years

Text

The Love We Have

Part 3/5 - AO3 - Previous

Summary: Kaer Morhen has an old tradition in order to keep the witchers safe after the siege. Only witchers and their partners are allowed in the keep but Geralt is tired of parting with Jaskier over the winter so decides to invite him to Kaer Morhen… only he forgets to mention one tiny little detail.

Ship: Geraskier

Rating: T

Warnings: None?? Maybe… I’ll add them later if I remember any.

________

They hadn’t found a solution that night. Geralt hadn’t been willing to talk about it, so Jaskier had reluctantly let it go. They had time to figure everything out. It’s not like they had to have fake sex every evening, and they’d already said they were worn out from the road. It didn’t stop Jaskier’s mind from running faster than Roach in a field full of dandelions. Geralt had eventually pulled Jaskier to his chest and started rubbing soothing circles into Jaskier’s side.

After that Jaskier was out like a light.

Which was totally unfair.

They’d woken up wrapped in each other’s arms, legs tangled and honestly in his sleep hazed mind Jaskier hadn’t been able to figure out which limb belonged to which body. It had all been rather nice, until Jaskier remembered Geralt was now his fake boyfriend not his real one and he pulled away from Geralt in a start.

He’d ended up falling out of the bed and almost giving himself a concussion. He was a fucking nightmare.

“Bard,” Vesemir barked just as he was finishing his breakfast, “meet me in the library. You have work to do. Geralt, there’s some tiles coming loose on the roof above the armoury.”

Geralt nodded.

Jaskier just stared, wide eyed after Vesemir. “Wait what?”

“Chores, Jask.”

“Yes yes, but… why am I? I’m a guest!” he whined rather pathetically.

“We don’t have guests in Kaer Morhen. You’re family, you have to work.”

“Oh cock!” he grumbled, there went his relaxing winter.

__________________

It turned out he really shouldn’t have worried about having to fake his relationship with Geralt. They barely saw each other during the day. Geralt was stuck on the more physical tasks whereas Jaskier spent his days scribbling on potion bottles and ingredient jars, or helping Vesemir organise the vast library, a job he would have finished sooner if he didn’t keep getting distracted by the books. He’d never seen half of them, not even whilst at Oxenfurt.

Two more witchers arrived after Jaskier’s first week at Kaer Morhen, Lambert and Eskel. They travelled up the mountain path together and arrived just in time for dinner that evening. Thankfully, like Geralt and Jaskier, they’d been too tired to really say anything the first night.

The second night, however, was a different story altogether. Lambert, as it turned out, was a little shit. Jaskier, under any other circumstances would have adored him, but his questions about their relationship were driving him up the wall.

“So, you finally tamed the famed White Wolf,” Lambert snorted, taking a long gulp of white gull.

“Ah yes, well. It would seem that way wouldn’t it,” Jaskier said smoothly, not entirely a lie either which he was proud of.

“So when did he confess?” Lambert probed. Jaskier cooed over how he’d been in love with Geralt since Posada, love at first sight being all very poetic and exactly the sort of story Geralt expected from him. Geralt mumbled something about the Djinn and how Jaskier almost dying had opened his eyes. Jaskier wanted to laugh at that, but he kept his cool. The only thing he remembered was how Geralt had fallen into Yennefer’s arms and broken his heart.

“I found Jaskier in Oxenfurt in the spring,” Geralt explained, again not a lie. Jaskier was amazed by their combined ability to spin the truth. Jaskier remembered it fondly. Normally he had to track Geralt down so he’d been surprised to see Geralt on his doorstep come spring. “Missed him all winter, didn’t want to spend anymore time apart.”

“And the fool quite literally swept me off my feet,” Jaskier giggled, leaning against Geralt’s shoulder. He wanted to hold his hand under the table but… well…he had no excuse.

“I couldn’t wait to kiss him,” Geralt admitted, a stupidly fond smile on his face that Jaskier couldn’t help but return. He licked his lips and his eyes flicked down in a silent question. They’d spoken about kissing in front of the other witchers but this would be the first time.

Geralt’s smile widened, a rare occurrence that left Jaskier’s heart somersaulting in his chest. He swallowed and then leaned in to press his lips against Geralt’s. It was only a peck on the lips, appropriate for company, but Jaskier still felt dizzy. Gods, he was so in love. It was just not fair.

Geralt bumped his nose against Jaskier’s as they pulled apart and Jaskier could feel himself blushing furiously. How was Geralt so good at this?

“About time the idiot got his head out of his arse,” Eskel laughed, shooting both Geralt and Jaskier a fond smile, and raising his drink.

Jaskier choked, ale spraying all over the table. Some went down his throat the wrong way and he started to cough and splutter. He was wheezing for breath by the time he’d finished and his throat was sore. Geralt’s hand rested on his back, and Lambert and Eskel were looking at him like he was about to keel over.

“Fine,” he rasped “I’m fine, just… “ he coughed again.

What the fuck had Eskel meant? Geralt finally getting his head out of his arse? Come to think of it, Vesemir hadn’t been entirely surprised by Jaskier’s presence either. None of them were, and he knew Geralt had told his family about him.

So what exactly had his grumpy best friend been telling the witchers of Kaer Morhen.

Jaskier started thinking over the last couple of decades spent at Geralt’s side. The witcher barely admitted they were friends, going so far as to argue with Jaskier that they weren’t. At first that had stung but now Jaskier was starting to wonder if he’d read it wrong. Geralt wasn’t one for words or emotions, Jaskier knew that, but he would have thought that even Geralt would know that Jaskier needed to hear some kind of confession.

But Geralt’s love language was not words, and it never had been.

Geralt showed he cared in different ways. At first it was not riding away and abandoning Jaskier, despite his protests that Jaskier was just trouble, then Geralt would put away coin to save up for treats on the road. Treats that he didn’t indulge in himself, but sweet buns, healing potions that wouldn’t kill Jaskier, a spare bedroll, better shoes, warmer clothes. Piece by piece Geralt had made sure that Jaskier was well equipped for the road.

In turn, Jaskier paid for their rooms at the inn, helped to wash Geralt’s hair, which was honestly a gross job and Jaskier deserved a lot more thanks for it. Monster guts stuck to hair like a burr in a sheep’s wool. He played ballads and told epic stories of Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf, all around the Continent until the Butcher of Blaviken was but a distant memory. A cautionary tale told to children before bed but nothing based in truth. No one, outside of Blaviken, even remembered that it had been Geralt at all. That was also Jaskier’s doing, morphing the tales of the Butcher of Blaviken into a monster of its very own, far apart from witchers; a demon that the White Wolf had banished.

But that wasn’t Jaskier’s love language. That was just… helping out a friend. He was a bard, a poet, a romantic. If he truly thought he’d had a chance with his best friend then he would have adorned Geralt in pet names, flowers, sonnets. No one would have any doubt about who Jaskier truly loved, who his heart belonged to, and he’d foolishly expected to be wooed in quite the same way.

Fuck.

A fool.

An utter fool.

All he needed was a hat with bells and a tambourine.

“Oh fuck,” he finally muttered aloud.

“Jask?” Geralt’s voice cut through his turmoil and he blinked until he was back in the now familiar dining room at Kaer Morhen.

Four sets of golden eyes were watching him.

“I need a moment,” he stammered and then, like the coward he was… he fled.

_____________

He paced around the room until the sound of his footsteps started to annoy him, the never-ending echoing thud reverberating around the room. He threw himself on the bed, inhaling Geralt's scent. It usually helped to ground him but today was different. It just confused him. He felt completely off-balanced. Did Geralt actually want him?

As more than a friend?

It completely changed the last two decades of his life. The wasted opportunities he’d had if hadn’t been such a coward.

Fuck!

Why couldn’t he have just said something?

Why didn’t Geralt?

But what if he was reading the whole thing wrong? What if this was just false hope? That thought burned through him, making his heart ache. He felt like he’d been thrown into a fire, flames blazing around him, a slow torturous death as his love seared through his soul.

He sobbed helplessly and held a pillow to his chest. It didn’t help. Nothing helped. He’d flown too close to the fucking sun and now he was falling, wings melted and falling apart, his tears glistening in the very rays that had been his end.

“Jaskier?”

“Go away,” he grumbled. He couldn’t face Geralt, not now. It was too soon and too overwhelming.

“I’m sorry, Jask.”

Jaskier threw his pillow at the door and Geralt ducked out of the way. He heard the door close and he went back to feeling sorry for himself, praying to all the gods he’d feel better after a good cry. He was pathetic. And yet again, Geralt had found him bawling his eyes out.

“Fuck!” He yelled, not even caring anymore who could hear him. Fucking witchers and their fancy mutations and enhanced hearing. It wasn’t fucking fair.

And the whole ‘only significant others’ rule was completely bullshit.

“Fucking shit balls,” Jaskier screamed into his pillow. “Cock,” he mumbled rather lamely.

It would have all been quite fun if he wasn’t quite so in love with Geralt. If they’d been just friends he would have enjoyed the easy flirtations, his personality was practically made for it. He was so fucking angry with himself for not being able to do this, even Geralt was putting on a better show. He sniffed and wiped the snot from his nose.

“Oh get a grip, Jask,” he muttered, grimacing as he looked at his hands. “Gods, I’m a wreck.”

“You’re not a wreck,” he heard Geralt say.

He sat up, slightly dizzy from moving too quickly, and glanced around the room. It was empty. Was he hearing voices now?

“Geralt?”

“I’m outside.”

“Oh.”

Jaskier stared at the door, longing to open it but something held him back. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he saw Geralt right now. Either yell at him or snog him senseless.

He wasn’t really sure if Geralt wanted either of those things.

So he crawled off the end of the bed and knelt in front of the door, pressing his forehead to the wood. “I’m sorry.”

“Hmm.”

“I’m normally better company, or at least I try to be… for you?” he whispered, knowing Geralt could hear him.

Geralt hummed and Jaskier squeezed his eyes shut, tears still running down his cheeks. He hadn’t meant to cause a fuss.

“I didn’t think it would be so hard,” he sighed, his fingers scraping at his scalp.

“I’m sorry,” Geralt grunted. “I know it can’t be easy, pretending to love me, but…”

Jaskier had scrambled to his feet and pulled the door open before Geralt could finish that sentence. The fucking bastard thought it was all so hard because he was unlovable! Jaskier’s misery turned to anger in the blink of an eye. Geralt fell backwards through the door, his head landing at Jaskier’s feet and he blinked up at him in surprise.

“Don’t you fucking dare finish that sentence, Geralt of Rivia,” Jaskier hissed.

“But…”

“You are my best friend in the whole wide world and I love you, so don’t you dare start spouting some nonsense about how no one could love you. You horse’s arse!”

“Jask,”

“Now get in here, you and I are going to pretend to have sex.” Jaskier’s words surprised him, they were out of his mouth before he could stop them.

“What?!”

“We’ll tell the others that I was just being dramatic, I’m a bard after all,” Jaskier explained with a wave of his hand. He needed to stop moping and get into his role, plus if there was a chance that Geralt did love him back, which he was really beginning to suspect he did… then… well… what better way to find out?

#the witcher #geraskier #kaer morhen #fake dating #wolfie’s witcher writing

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thiscrimsonsoul · 3 years

Note

4. what made you choose this muse?

20. what’s a ship you don’t want to roleplay at all with this muse? (except Bad Illegal And Gross Stuff, of course)

38. what’s the best inspiration for your muse?

39. what’s a song that reminds you of your muse?

4. what made you choose this muse?

I was a huge fan of EO before seeing her as Wanda and so when I found out that she played her (and that PB played Vision, someone else I’d been a huge fan of), that was the whole reason I decided to get caught up on all the movies. Wanda and Vision were some of the characters I used to follow in the comics as a child, so I thought okay, if they’re played by people I like, I’ll give them a shot. Welp, I loved what MCU did with her but saw the potential for so much more. And that, my friend, is 99.9% of the time the recipe for me wanting to take on a muse. So I knew what I had to do. XD

20. what’s a ship you don’t want to roleplay at all with this muse? (except Bad Illegal And Gross Stuff, of course)

Wanda x Agatha. I just... I know that’s a very popular ship on this site, and I mean, to each his or her own, but... for me it just does not work at all. Setting aside that my version of Wanda is straight, even if she wasn’t, Agatha caused her so much pain and fear and trauma, it’s not even funny. People say oh, what she did was like therapy and Wanda is stronger for it. Umm... no. Forcing Wanda to relive her traumas all at once under duress when she wasn’t mentally prepared to do so while Agatha held her sons captive and while mocking her and taking pleasure in her pain... was not therapy. It was abuse. It was cruelty. And it was self-serving. I would never pair Wanda with someone who treated her that way, and frankly, Wanda would never be able to love and open up to someone who treated her that way. I guess people like both characters (as do I) and think it’s fun and cute to ship two witches together, but... I just can’t. It honestly really bothers me. I have no problem with people who like/write this ship at all, but I would never want to write it myself.

38. what’s the best inspiration for your muse?

Honestly, watching EO’s other movies, heh. I write Wanda as a very emotional character, and up until WandaVision, we really didn’t get a lot of emotion out of her. This wasn’t EO’s fault, it was just that the MCU didn’t give her the opportunity. We didn’t get to see any grieving for Pietro at all until WandaVision, aside from her initial reaction. And we didn’t get to see any grieving for Vision because she got dusted, heh. We also didn’t get to see most of the negative effects of her various traumas. WandaVision has finally given EO a platform to display her amazing skills with regard to emotional acting, but before that aired, I found that watching some of her other more emotional roles really gave me ideas and put me in the mood to write Wanda. So I drew a lot of inspiration from Oldboy (2013), Silent House, and Martha Marcy May Marlene for the level of emotion I wanted from Wanda, her reactions to various traumas, and things like fear responses and panic attacks. EO destroys me with her on-screen panic attacks. They break my heart. The sobbing, the hyperventilating, the shaking... As someone who has them myself, I can say that she’s very convincing with portraying them. But yeah, I draw a lot of inspiration from the talent of Wanda’s FC, basically. Through her other works, she helped me imagine how Wanda might look and sound while in similar situations.

39. what’s a song that reminds you of your muse?

Oh, I can’t pick just one, haha, so I’ll give you three.

The Devil Within by Digital Daggers ~ Wanda’s anger at Tony Stark and the Avengers (Age of Ultron). I always think about her going around and invoking nightmares and hellish premonitions in their minds when listening to this song. I even did an edit of it a long time ago, here.

War by Poets of the Fall ~ Vision to Wanda after Infinity War, depending on the verse it reminds either of them in Wakanda or in Germany during Civil War; could be an AU where he’s brought back or just sort of a post-death thing. This song is like... a huge ship song for them for me, heh. I made two edits of this one: 1, 2.

Ashes by Claire Guerreso ~ Wanda’s grief over losing Pietro and Vision. ‘Nuff said. I did an edit of this one too, here.

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sunflowersupremes · 4 years

Text

Entirely Full and Yet Still Wanting

Prompt: Just anything with Geralt filling Jaskier up with his come. Preferably with Jaskier eventually being very uncomfortable with the amount.

Relationship: Geralt/Jaskier

NSFW

Read on AO3

They’d rented a room in a brothel. One of the ones where you could take your own whore - or in this case, poet - instead of paying for one of the ones in house. It meant they’d have a bed to lay in, but also plenty of oils and (unlike in an inn) no one to complain when things got loud.

“How many times can you orgasm in one night?” Jaskier had asked, his eyes glittering. Geralt had said something about Witcher Stamina - referring to fighting, not fucking, but the poet’s mind was usually in the gutter - and he’d found the words spilling from his mouth with no provocation.

Geralt had just laughed and said, “I’ve never thought about that.”

“What time is it?” Jaskier asked sleepily. He was sprawled on his stomach, arms crossed under a pillow, head turned to one side. It felt like hours since he’d given up on rutting into the blanket, too exhausted to do anything but lay still and let Geralt use him. Which was exactly what he’d wanted, of course.

“It’s nearing two in the morning,” Geralt replied, rubbing Jaskier’s shoulder. “Are you-”

“Oh I’m fine,” he mumbled. “How many?”

“Five.”

“Damn. You lucky son of a bitch.”

“No,” Geralt had said when he’d first suggested it. “I’d keep going for hours after you were done.”

“You talk as though that’s not incredibly arousing, Geralt.” The poet had folded his arms over his chest. “And I know you, you whoreson, you’d stop if it became too much, so what’s the harm?”

What’s the harm indeed? Jaskier wouldn’t say that he was regretting what he’d requested from Geralt - quite the opposite, in fact, it was glorious - but it was starting to get uncomfortable. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, Geralt was like clockwork in pouring more oil over him, but the discomfort was still there.

Anyone would have been sore after hours of being thrust into.

After his next orgasm - he’d pressed his lips to Jaskier’s ear and murmured, “six,” with a chuckle - he pulled the poet into his lap. Dandelion leaned back against his chest, letting Geralt’s arms wrap around his stomach as he thrust into his pliant body.

“I’ll be yours until dawn,” he’d said, while trying to bribe Geralt into giving in. “Yours to do anything you want with.”

“Anything?” Geralt had asked with amusement.

“Anything,” he’d promised. The Witcher was the only lover he would ever give that promise to, since he knew it came with caveats. Because even if he’d promised Geralt anything, he could stop him at any time. That was the trust he had in the man.

He was starting to feel extremely full. He always felt full with Geralt - the Witcher’s large cock was one of the reasons he took him to bed so often - but it was going beyond what he was used to. The sheer amount of cum that Geralt had pumped inside him had to be insane.

It felt as though it had bypassed his colon and was traveling all the way to his intestines and stomach. Vaguely he wondered if that was possible, and if it would start leaking out through his mouth and nose before Geralt was finished. “Can semen come out through your mouth?” he babbled.

Geralt stopped. “What?”

Realizing the question had come out all wrong he shook his head. “Nev- never mind. Keep going.”

The Witcher seemed uncertain until Jaskier gave a half-hearted thrust against him, then he resumed where he’d left off.

By the time Geralt reached his seventh orgasm, Jaskier was ready to cry. He’d been turned around - somehow without ever having Geralt’s cock taken out of him - so their stomachs were pressed together and he could lay his chin on Geralt’s shoulder.

Each thrust hurt so much, but fuck, he wanted more. Even if Jaskier had reached his own limit - Geralt had managed to wring three full orgasms and what felt like several small climaxes from him - he still found pleasure in the act.

By the eighth, he was crying. Silent tears slipped down his cheeks and he shook in Geralt’s arms, but when the Witcher had said he was going to stop, he’d swatted him, and begged for more.

If it were anyone but Geralt, he would be thoroughly humiliated from begging for more when he was already about to rupture from the amount of cum inside him. As it was, it was only a bit humiliating, something that wasn’t helped when Geralt had laughed and laid Jaskier out on his back before resuming his thrusting.

Geralt’s ninth orgasm he was certain would kill him.

He sobbed openly and loudly, writhing in the Witcher’s grip, trying to break away so he could get off Geralt’s cock and let his body expel some of the semen he’d been filled with.

But Geralt kept a strong grip on him, pressing lips against his temple. “One more, lark,” he murmured. “You can take one more, can’t you? To get to ten?”

“No,” Jaskier sobbed, but he didn’t think he meant it, since his hands were wrapping around Geralt’s waist to pull the Witcher closer. And damn, reaching ten sounded insane, but also - Jaskier would be lying if he said it wasn’t what he wanted.

“Ten,” he sobbed in agreement.

Each thrust felt like the crack of a whip inside him, and with his body already full of cum and oil, he felt waterlogged and imagined himself sloshing around. But even with all that, he was vaguely aware that he was growing hard again.

“F-fuck,” he moaned as Geralt grabbed his cock, gently rubbing his hand over it. Ever the considerate lover, Geralt brought him to orgasm first, and when he did, his body clenched, making the Witcher grunt, then fill him once again with his cum.

“Let me go,” he begged, but Geralt didn’t move, still pressed inside him, even if he wasn’t erect. “G- geralt-”

“No,” growled the Witcher, sounding almost playful. “You wanted this, Jaskier,” he said, rubbing his hands down Jaskier’s swollen stomach, ignoring the bard’s sniffles. “Remember?”

“No,” he lied. Then, “P-please Geralt. It-it’s too much. Too full. Too- too much,” he begged.

Finally, Geralt said, “You said you were mine until dawn.”

“Nooooooo,” Jaskier whined. “I can’t.”

“You can,” Geralt promised. His voice was firm, but there was a gentle undercurrent, and he ruffled Jaskier’s hair as he rolled onto his back, bringing the poet to lay on top of him. “It shouldn’t be more than an hour.”

Jaskier whined but laid down obediently, stretching out on top of Geralt, even if laying on his stomach hurt while he was still overfull. Even with Geralt’s cock inside him, acting as a plug, he could tell he was still leaking cum and oil, leaving a sticky and gross feeling between his legs. But that feeling was forgotten as Geralt rubbed his back and shoulders, tracing his spine and ribs.

“Perhaps I should take you to a whorehouse,” he mused. “One of the progressive ones with male whores. How many could you take?”

“Mercy,” he moaned, hoping Geralt couldn’t smell the arousal wafting off him.

“If I paid them well enough, they wouldn’t stop when you begged for mercy,” pointed out Geralt, sounding rather smug.

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

He was limp by the time sunlight began to filter into the room, but it still brought a sob of relief. Geralt rolled him onto his back again, still inside him, then lifted his hips, placing a fresh towel under him. Jaskier almost laughed at the idea that he was trying to keep the sheets clean.

When Geralt finally pulled out he sobbed in relief.

Then a hand pressed on his stomach, and he moaned and erupted, semen and oil pouring from his ass in the most humiliating show he could imagine.

“I’m never going to be clean again,” he sobbed.

“I’ll call for a bath,” Geralt said with a chuckle.

#jaskier #dandelion #geralt #geralt of rivia #Witcher Fanfiction #Witcher Fanfic #The Witcher #Wiedźmin #My Writing

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i-will-physically-fight-you · 4 years

Text

Gibbous Chapter 8

Chapter Title: One Swallow Does not Make a Summer

Summary: It’s fine. Everything is fine. (It really isn’t)

Pairings: platonic lamp, platonic sleepxiety lets finally be honest with ourselves

Chapter Word-Count: 6024

Warnings: unresolved grief, past minor character death, panic attack, crying, panic/anxiety, emotional abuse/gaslighting, dissociation

Previous | Present | Next

AO3 Link

Hi, apparently I don’t know how to write 2k chapters anymore, guys I’m sorry. Special thanks to @theeternalspace for her continued support for this AU in terms of brainstorming/cheering me on and to @stillebesat who beta’d this chapter, helping point out plot inconsistencies & grammar stuff.

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

“Hey Virgil, it’s time to get up.”

Virgil grumbled, shifting in his bed, “Don’t wanna.”

A chuckle, “Are you sure? Your dad is making his world-famous pancakes. Better get up before he eats them all himself.”

“Pancakes?” Virgil asked, looking up at last at his mother. Her dark hair was pulled into a loose side ponytail rather than her typical bun. Little curly wisps escaped the ponytail, kindly framing her face. She wore a yellow sweater with a goofy sloth face on it, something that was definitely his father’s.

“I knew that would get your attention, my little poet.” She grinned, affectionately booping his nose.

“Moooom,” Virgil groaned, because he was nearly thirteen and entering preteen angst. He was too old for boops and cutesy nicknames. His parents didn’t quite seem to get the memo just yet.

Mom kept smiling at him, wide and bright. Like she knew something he didn’t.

“What?” Virgil demanded, tilting his head sideways in confusion.

“Oh nothing,” She said, hands gently cusping the sides of his face, “I’m just thinking of how old you’re getting and how proud I am of you.”

“For what?” Virgil asked, confused by her words. He knew his parents loved him. They often proclaimed that with words and hugs. He could take being loved. But being proud of him? That was a completely new territory. He hadn’t done anything to earn this sentiment. He wasn’t the Grade A Student or the Star Athlete. He was just Virgil. An anxious preteen who liked listening to MCR. He didn’t get why his mom would be proud of that.

“Because you never give up, regardless of what life throws at you.” Mom said softly before pressing a kiss to his forehead, “I love you, Virgil.”

“Love you too,” Virgil mumbled, cheeks burning as he threw his arms around Mom for a quick hug. Never gave up? He wasn’t sure if that aptly described him. He felt like a colossal coward, one who always ran from his problems rather than face them. Maybe he’d managed to trick his parents into thinking otherwise. A pang of guilt hit him from that thought. Like a dodgeball during recess. Still, he couldn’t deny the warm, grateful feeling that crept inside of him.

Virgil withdrew from the hug and leapt out of his bed. When he reached the doorway, he paused to turn back at his mother, “C’mon! We have to go downstairs before Dad eats all the pancakes, remember?”

“Oh yes,” His mother said, following behind him, “how could I ever forget that?”

As they descended down the stairs, Virgil could hear pancake batter sizzling and his father’s attempts at singing.

“Just a small town giiiiirl, living in a lonely wooooorld!”

Virgil loved his dad, just as much as his mom. He loved how enthusiastic the man could be. His dad put his whole heart into everything he did. Even if he wasn’t great at them. It was an admirable quality to be sure. It still didn’t mean Virgil didn’t wince a tiny bit from his dad’s screechy singing.

“Please make it stop,” Virgil whispered underneath his breath.

His mom shook her head, looking more amused than anything else. He supposed it had something to do with how they first met doing a duet at a karaoke bar. He heard the story a gazillion times by now, but it never got old. Especially with his father adding new details every iteration. His mom would hover nearby, correcting him in an exasperated but loving way.

“Hello Dearest.” Mom said, startling Virgil out of his thoughts. He looked up to see they were already in the kitchen. Huh. He must’ve gotten lost in his thoughts or something.

Dad gasped, putting a hand to his chest in a playful offended way, “Love, is that my sweater?!”

Virgil’s mom easily towered him by a few good inches. Some people made fun of Virgil’s parents because of that. They said it was weird for the woman to be the taller one in a relationship. Virgil never understood that arbitrary reasoning. Not when his father looked up at his mother like she was his whole universe. His whole sun, moon, stars and everything.

“Is it? I found it lodged in my drawer. Almost like someone hastily stuffed it in there without paying attention to which dresser they placed it in.”

His dad spluttered at a loss for words and Virgil snorted. He couldn’t help it. Not when his dad was a walking, breathing cartoon character. Anyone could read him like a book from his facial expressions alone. He kept spluttering, his eyebrows nearly flying off his face and eyes as wide as saucers. One unsubtle wink directed towards Virgil told him that it was mostly an act on his part.

“Well, uh, may I offer you in some….pam-cakes?” His dad asked, redirecting the topic from his haphazard attempt at house cleaning.

Pamcakes. A pun on his mother’s name—Pamela. Oh my god, he said that every time. His mom always rolled her eyes at it, lips pressed together to keep from smiling. She was supposed to be the stoic foiling his comedic. Yet it fooled nobody at all. It was why his dad did it every time, knowing she secretly loved it.

Mom rolled her eyes as always before leaning down to accept a kiss from him, “You may.”

“Really? Right in front of my pancakes?” Virgil said, pretending to gag. As a growing preteen, it wasn’t cool to have your parents be all mushy in front of you. Even if he still thought of them as the coolest Mom and Dad ever. They chuckled, breaking off the kiss.

“Virgil, someday you will find someone you love very much and then you’ll understand why I am obligated to kiss your mother every time I see her.” His father grinned, flipping the last set of pancakes on the griddle.

“No I won’t, because kissing is gross.” Virgil said, childishly sticking his tongue out because technically he was still a child.

“Afraid of catching cooties?” Mom teased.

“I know those aren’t real, Mom.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” His father said, a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “The Cootius Amor is a very real disease. I was under the affliction of it, suffering heart palpitations and an upset stomach. You know what saved me?”

“What?” Virgil asked, despite being suspicious that he knew the answer.

“Your mother!” He fake-swooned, taking the pancakes off the griddle and bringing them to the kitchen table. Mom snorted, trying to maintain a calm composure and failing.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“I think you mean ridiculously in love with you.” Dad said, grinning widely when he managed to get an actual laugh from her this time. Then they kissed again, causing Virgil to groan yet again from the syrupy sweetness of it all. But he wouldn’t have any other way. This moment was perfect, a moment he could relive a million times. He knew this, because he had done so.

In this perfect idyllic moment a startling realization hit Virgil. Something he always inevitably realized. Something that he should’ve realized from the start. Something he wished wasn’t true. Because this moment, this shadow of the past, this wasn’t real. He hadn’t been twelve years old for awhile now. A decade almost. The same amount of time since he’d last seen his parents alive and in the flesh.

This was all just a dream.

God, every time he had this realization it hurt so much. Sometimes he was able to forget his parents were dead. He’d gotten very good over the years at distracting himself. The truth felt far-off in the distance, almost unreal. He envisioned them as simply being elsewhere. Too busy for him to call or visit. As much as that illusion hurt, it was better than simply accepting reality.

Other times, he was forced to be very cognizant of their deaths. The hole in his heart became an expanding void. One that threatened to engulf him whole. Those times he just wanted to lay in his room and just cry. Where all he wanted was their comforting embrace, their words of assurance. But he couldn’t. He wasn’t allowed that. It’d been almost ten years—you’d think by now he would be past the grief.

But accepting their deaths almost felt like a betrayal. Almost as if he believed they were still alive hard enough, then it’d come true. They would come find him and be a family again. If he accepted their deaths, they’d be lost to him forever. He knew it was stupid and didn’t make sense. It still didn’t stop him from trying.

As uncertain as Virgil lived his life, he’d always known without a doubt they loved him. When he made mistakes or failed, they didn’t berate him. Rather, they came alongside him to help him understand and grow past them. So of course fate snatched away the most important people in his short lifespan. He missed them so much.

This was what made dreams like this difficult. Because for a brief moment, everything was back to normal again. They were always so vivid too. He fell for it every single time. It was cruel to gain them back in this temporary sort-of way. As cruel reality crashed into him every time upon waking up. It made him simultaneously want to sleep forever and not at all.

“Virgil, are you with us, bud?”

A hand touched his shoulder, shaking it gently. Virgil didn’t feel it.

“Little poet, your dad and I had a talk regarding your birthday—”

“—tell you something—”

“Virgil, please listen—"

Virgil’s lungs seized up. His breaths came out short and shuddery like a car engine struggling to start. Tears stung his eyes as a harsh sob escaped him. Mom? Dad? He couldn’t hear their voices anymore. Nor was he sitting at the kitchen table, bright light streaming into the window. He laid on a soft surface, his surroundings dark and murky. He was awake.

Awake and with the wound of his dead parents ripped open again. He bit back another sob, sweeping the grief underneath a metaphorical rug. Just like his dad and his cleaning tactics. Maybe Virgil did take more after Dad than he thought he did.

He forced himself to breathe, taking in one shaky breath in at a time. He’d managed to get it mostly under control when an alarm blared. A loud, discordant sound of chaos in the midst of stoic silence. Virgil screamed in fright, hitting his head on something as he jolted forwards. Work—he had work today, didn’t he? Cathy was going to be upset if he was late again—wait no. That wasn’t right. He didn’t work there anymore.

The alarm wasn’t right either. It sounded different than the one on his phone. He glanced around the room, aptly thinking, “Well, this isn’t my room.”

It was dark to discern much, but the one key factor was the window. It had a thick shade better at blocking out sunlight than Virgil’s blanket-duct-taped-to-the-window solution. The bed was nicer, the bedsheet soft and not as threadbare worn as Virgil’s. Where was he?

He couldn’t remember. It was nothing but fuzzy tv static sizzling inside of his brain. Like someone changed channels and he didn’t have the remote to change it back. Oh god, please don’t tell him he drank too much and went home with a complete stranger. He couldn’t handle even the thought of it.

Something shifted above him, causing him to realize this was a bunk bed. It creaked as a blanket dropped to the floor. Or rather, a blanket containing a bundle of something.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Blanket Bundle muttered, slapping a blanket-covered appendage over the Alarm’s OFF button. Virgil inhaled sharply, causing Blanket Bundle’s attention to snap towards him. Fizzy, curly hair spilled out of the blanket, framing a very recognizable face; Remy. He stood there, black shades absent. Virgil had seen him without them before, of course, but it was weird.

He couldn’t shake the image of Remy with red eyes. Even though Remy currently stared at him with hazel eyes, an unidentifiable emotion within them. His eyebrows slightly raised, his lips curved downwards. Remy almost looked…worried. But then he cleared his throat and with it his expression changed at once.

“Hey Virge,” Remy greeted, casual and cool as usual, “How are you doing? Did you get good beauty sleep?”

Virgil hated that first question. It was too big and ambiguous. Way too much currently for his brain to grasp. Not to mention nobody truly cared about the answer to the question. It was just a thing people were required to ask others. As to the second question, well. He definitely didn’t get good beauty sleep. So he decided to answer neither of them.

“I’m hungry.” Virgil croaked, surprised by the hoarseness of his voice.

“Breakfast yes,” Remy nodded sagely, “The most important meal of the day. Follow me this way, my good homo sapien.”

“Homo sapien?”

“I’m practicing vocab terms for biology,” Remy rolled his eyes, “Like gurl, do not get me started on my biology professor. She’s part of the rhetoric that refuses to see vampires, homo sanguis, as anything but diseased homines. Like, I can’t even!”

He paused, as if waiting for a response. Virgil offered nothing but a blank stare in return. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what. He still couldn’t remember how he ended up at Remy’s dorm room.

There was also Remy’s behavior to consider. The vampire was a flurry of activity as always. Never one to remain still if he could help it. He moved about the room, putting his sunglasses on as he ranted. Yet something rubbed Virgil the wrong way about it. Virgil couldn’t tell if he was reading into things but it was too fluid and smooth. Perfect to a degree that was unlike Remy’s usual chaotic brand of energy.

“Anyways,” Remy said, rolling his eyes, “I may be a ‘diseased human frothing at the mouth for blood’ but even I have learned some basic skills like cooking to blend in.”

“I don’t even know how to cook.” Virgil blurted out.

“Yeah well neither did Betsy back in the fifties but did that stop her from criticizing my prized quiche? Oh no!”

Virgil followed Remy into the small dingy dorm kitchen, still baffled as hell. As much as that confusion ramped up his anxiety, a small part of him wanted it to stay that way. It warned him he might not like the truth. In the same way he tried ignoring the reality of his parents’ death.

“So!” Remy said, rummaging through the cupboards, “What are you hungry for? Pancakes or omelets?”

“Omelet please.” Virgil muttered, barely withholding a shudder. He didn’t think he could stomach pancakes after that dream with his parents. He sat on a stool, his legs tucked close to his chest.

Remy, thankfully, didn’t comment on it.

“Good choice, my roommate would probably murder me if I took from his pancake mix. Even though he definitely drank the last of the OJ and left the jug in there, biiiiitch. Good thing he’s not here because I’d give a piece of my mind. He’s not getting away with that easily, no mad’m!”

He casted a look towards Virgil as if saying “Roommates am I right?” and Virgil forced a laugh. It was a pastime of theirs to complain about their roommates. Alongside with discussing their favorite bands, of course.

Remy cracked eggs against the frying pan, his mouth still going a mile a minute. He flipped from one topic to the next, never settling on one for long. There was a high pitch to his voice, an almost nervous energy to it. Like he was putting on a performance for Virgil. Something for him to take comfort and solace in. It grated on Virgil’s nerves. Virgil wanted to call him out on it. He wanted to demand Remy to cut it out. He wanted to know what was going on.

Yet, fear held him back. It clamped down on his throat, like a bear trap and refused to let go. It told him it was better to say nothing than to possibly risk inciting Remy’s ire. Even if Remy had never been angry with Virgil before, did he really want this to be the first time?

So he sat there, too foggy-brained and half-asleep to say something. Or at least, that was what he told himself. A small part of him appreciated the mindless chatter Remy provided. It was a distraction from the daunting feeling he was forgetting something important.

He went to pull out his phone. Just to check the time—maybe scroll through tumblr real quick. Nothing big. He slipped his hand into his pocket, coming into contact with something jagged. Not smooth.

The tv static in his mind dissipated. Crystal clear HD images flooded his mind. The text from Patton. Jerad jeering. The chase around the apartment. Jerad gripping his wrist, squeezing it tightly like a boa constrictor. Dangling over the street far below. So close to plunging to his death. His phone falling, falling, falling to the ground. Into a tiny million pieces. Virgil fleeing, panic pulsing through his veins. Remy? Remy was there. He comforted him. But none of that made any sense. Just like a dream. It had to be a dream. No, a nightmare.

….He had to wake up.

Wake up, wake up, wAKE UP!

“Virgil!”

Someone shouted something. His name? He couldn’t tell for sure over the raging storm of panic consuming him. Just like it did last night. No that wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. If he repeated that to himself, it’d come true. As true as his parents weren’t dead. Just simply…not around.

Burning. The smell of burnt food invaded his nostrils. He tasted something salty. Tears? He felt a wetness on his face. A hand rested upon his own, fingers thrumming against his knuckles. Singing. A voice low and strained. As if overcome by some sort of emotion.

“We’ll carry on, we’ll carry on, and though you’re dead and gone believe me—”

“Your memory will carry on.” Virgil croaked, causing the voice to stop.

He didn’t wake up. He still sat on the kitchen stool. Only now Remy sat beside him. His expression indiscernible due to his sunglasses. The broken pieces of his phone still dug into his hip. Virgil always found reality more frightening than nightmares could ever be. At least you could escape nightmares. You couldn’t do that with reality. At least not as easily. Virgil swallowed.

“Remy?”

“Yeah?”

“I think the eggs are burning.”

“Well fuck the eggs,” Remy scowled, expression softening as he squeezed Virgil’s hand, “Right now the only thing I care about is making sure you’re okay.”

The intensity of Remy’s words spooked Virgil a bit.

“Well, maybe you should turn the burner off? Just in case it starts a fire?” Virgil suggested weakly.

Remy stared at him for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly and rose to do just that. He leaned against the counter, facing Virgil once more. His lips twitched downwards but he otherwise maintained a blank exterior.

“Virgil, are you gucci?”

“I’m fine.” Virgil said before he could even think.

“Are you sure of that, hun?” Remy said, raising an eyebrow, “because I found outside my dorm last night and you didn’t know who I was at first. And then—just now…”

“Wait, you found me outside your dorm?” Virgil gaped.

He didn’t pick a particular destination when he started running. He just ran and ran, the world one big blurry ball of nothingness. Did he subconsciously run to Remy, hoping to receive comfort? What did that say about him? For being so needy and dependent on Remy? No wonder he seemed so upset!

“Virge, did someone hurt you?” Remy asked.

Virgil jolted, completely unprepared for this question. It seemed to come out of nowhere, not at all connected to the conversation at hand. Remy’s eyes drifted away from his face, looking at something in Virgil’s general vicinity. He followed Remy’s gaze to a purple splotchy bruise on his wrist, its tendrils spreading out like a spiderweb. No, a hand. Jerad’s hand. Squeezing like a claw machine and he the hapless stuffed animal trapped in its grip. Virgil’s breath hitched.

“Nobody, I—I just hit my hand against a doorknob, that’s all.”

Remy’s frown deepened. He stepped towards Virgil, who barely repressed a flinch. He looked away, unable to maintain eye contact. Not with the unusual ferocity that emanated from Remy.

“Vee, I’m serious,” Remy whispered, crouching beside him, “I don’t care who it is. If it’s that idiot pup again or even Boss Man. Tell me their name and I’ll beat them up for you.”

Virgil’s breath hitched. Remy was a vampire--one that happened to be centuries old. He’d known this, of course, for some time now. But during that moment, the full weight of it Virgil. Even if Remy didn’t drink human blood now, he had to at one point. Right? Or at the very least, you don’t live that long without committing some violence acts. Did he really know the real Remy?

Paranoia aside, he couldn’t fight other what-ifs attacking him. What if Jerad hurt Remy? What if Jerad found out about Remy’s a vampire? What if Virgil caused the death of his first true friend in a decade?

“N—no one. It’s no one, Rem, I swear,” Virgil said, fear coiling around him like a python, “It’s just sometimes, I get panic attacks. L—like they suck and stuff, but there’s nothing I can really do about it.”

He snuck a gaze up at the vampire, heart hammering away at his chest. Remy’s eyes peered above his sunglasses, narrowed. Remy didn’t believe him. He didn’t need verbal confirmation, he just knew it. Virgil gripped the side of the breakfast bar, searching. Looking for something, anything to help him escape this conversation. A clock. One of those digital ones that contained both the date and time. Tuesday, 9:51AM.

“Okay I won’t—”

“I have to go.” Virgil interrupted, shooting up from the stool. So abruptly that the stool fell onto the floor with a crash. “I—I’m going to be late. I’m supposed to be at work by now—oh my god Logan’s gonna kill me.”

“Wait!” Remy stepped in front of him, “I think you should play hooky.”

“What?” Virgil said, one decimal away from screeching.

“Call out of work,” Remy suggested, “Logan will understand. He’s not that bitch Cathy. And if he doesn’t, I’ll make him.”

For a second he saw the flash of someone else in Remy’s place. A huge, hulking silhouette. A shudder ran through Virgil’s spine. He moved away from Remy, shaking his head.

“No, no, it’s fine—I’ll be fine. I have to go. I just—” Virgil took off, unable to finish that sentence without a sob escaping.

He ran out of the dorm, out of the university campus and to the city beyond. He ran, running from his problems like always.

“Virgil!”

He shrieked, halting to a complete stop. Remy was there, almost as if he just appeared. Out of thin air, no less. Because with Virgil’s head start, he shouldn’t have been able to get to his side so easily.

“What, Remy?” Virgil snapped, hands forming fists at his sides. He couldn’t do this, not now.

Remy didn’t recoil. His sunglasses fully covered his eyes, masking his expression again. Instead he offered something black and soft towards Virgil. A black jacket, one Virgil never saw him wear before.

“It’s always pretty chilly in the library, you know.” Remy shrugged, looking away.

Virgil saw through Remy’s words. He was offering him a way to hide the bruise from visible view. Something that hadn’t crossed Virgil’s mind, really.

“Thanks.” Virgil swallowed, taking the jacket. He slipped it on and left without saying anything else.

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

When he slammed Logan’s office door open, he expected to be faced with lots of angry lecturing for his tardiness. He did not expect concern and understanding from Logan. Like, at all. Somehow that scared him more than the alternative. Why was Logan being so lenient with him?

Sure, today was a fluke. He was usually great at being there on time. A tiny bit of him was relieved about it after everything. The rest of him held its breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. While it didn’t exactly drop just yet…well. The black jacket Remy gave him hadn’t completely worked.

“Virgil, who gave you that bruise?” Logan asked, staring into the depths of his very soul.

He’d freaked out at that question. Just like Remy, but worse. He spoke sharply to a werewolf who growled at him just seconds prior. Logan had been upset to see that bruise—just like Remy. Most people appreciated others showing an interest in their wellbeing. Not Virgil. It terrified him for reasons he didn’t quite understand himself.

The rest of work resumed as usual. Virgil drowned himself in the mundanity. The only thing that existed in the entire world was the library. His whole purpose? Working the front desk. Helping patrons the best he could. Sorting and putting books away. Telling a rowdy studying group to quiet down. Before he knew it, he was clocking out for the day.

That was when everything threatened to fall apart. He didn’t have anywhere to spend the night. He couldn’t crash at Remy’s again. Because if he asked Remy, then the vampire would really know something was up. When it wasn’t, not really. Just a spat between roommates. Sure, it ended in a broken phone, but it could’ve been worse. Like falling to one’s death—

Virgil took a deep breath as he walked the front entrance of the library. His movements stiff and mechanical. As if someone else was manipulating him to walk like strings to a puppet. He could do this. He just had to take things one step at a time. Literally.

Step one, leave the library. Simple, easy. He could do that. Once outside, he’d figure out the rest. Step two? Find somewhere to stay the night. Less easy.

The library’s automatic doors slid open and the last bright, brilliant rays of the sunset greeted him. A swarm of blackness attacked him next. He jerked backwards, hands automatically reaching to grapple with the thing that caused it. He stared down, eyes stinging, at a very familiar black plaid hoodie.

“You actually caught it! I thought you’d fumble it like a dumbass.”

Virgil stopped breathing; Jerad. He stood there, hands haughtily crossed against his chest. Had he been waiting outside for Virgil? And if so, for how long? Virgil couldn’t take him on in a fight. He had to flee—run back into the library. He didn’t move. He remained rooted to the spot, muscles locked in place as Jerad advanced. To pummel him, or worse yet—kill him.

All color left his face as Jerad raised his arms and…hugged him? Or at least Jerad’s version of a hug. A tight, vindictive squeeze that Virgil had grown used to over the years. It still did nothing to diminish the fear swelling inside of him.

“Aww man, you should see your face! You look like you thought I was gonna punk ya!” Jerad crowed as he released Virgil.

“I—you—the phone.” Virgil stammered, unable to form complete sentences. Jerad didn’t get angry. He just laughed, slapping Virgil’s back in what was a friendly gesture. Virgil winced despite it.

“Oh that! Shit man, you know I don’t really mean anything when I lose my temper. I just can’t control it, ya know?”

Virgil silently nodded, unable to trust his voice in the moment.

“Besides, that thing was old and already falling apart! You know what you need? The latest greatest current smartphone out there! My treat!”

“Wha—” Virgil barely squeaked out before Jerad dragged him off to a cell-phone store. Jerad rambled about stuff on the way there. Virgil couldn’t hear him over the roaring of his heartbeat in his ears. He clung to his hoodie in one arm as if it was a stuffed animal. He couldn’t think. His mind was a myriad of white noise. This couldn't be real, right? He had to have fainted or something. Please let it be so.

“—huh, Virgil? What do you think of this one?” Jerad said, nudging him.

Virgil blinked, spooked to be faced with a display of smartphones. Somehow, they were already at the store. He bit his lip, eyes widening at the price tag.

“I—it’s—I don’t know,” He glanced over to a cheaper phone at the other end of the display, “I like that one.”

“C’mon Virgo! This one comes with a protective screen cover! That other one doesn’t,” Jerad scoffed, leaning in closer, “Do you really want another shitty phone that’ll break like your last one?”

Those words sparked a rage inside Virgil. A fire burned in the pit of his stomach as words materialized at the tip of his tongue. It was Jerad who threw the phone from a five-story balcony. Jerad who always mocked Virgil and acted like throwing money at the problem solved a situation when it didn’t. Not really. Jerad who insulted his friends. Virgil wanted to scream at the top of his throat obscenities at him.

“N-no.” Someone said out loud, shaky and uncertain.

Virgil jumped a bit at the sound, glancing to see who it was. It sounded familiar. He looked to see Jerad staring right at him, smirking. His stomach churned as a wave of realization crashed into him. Oh, oh. That had been him, he’d been the one to say that. But why? That had been the exact opposite of what he meant to say!

He didn’t have much time to process it before Jerad clasped him on the shoulder, chuckling.

“That’s what I thought! Lemme just—”

A loud obnoxious 80s rock song interrupted him. Jerad fished his phone out of his pocket, groaning upon seeing the caller id.

“Ugh, it’s my mom again. You’re lucky your parents are dead, Virgin, because they are so fucking annoying.” Jerad rolled his eyes, declining the call as he strode off to find a store associate.

Virgil stood there, withholding a flinch. Because he knew if his parents were still alive, they wouldn’t be proud of their son. They’d be absolutely repulsed by his cowardice.

He watched as Jerad chatted up the store associate, his back facing Virgil. If he couldn’t stand up to Jerad—this was it. This was his chance to flee. To run off while Jerad was distracted. Maybe he could run to Remy again. They could get an apartment together, away from both their annoying roommates. They’d laugh together and watch awful movies for the sake of ridiculing them.

They’d be the best of friends until Remy grew sick of him. Until Virgil became annoying and obsolete to discard like an old flip-phone. Remy was immortal, just like Patton and Logan. It was really all a matter of time before they confirmed his suspicions. They’d get tired of him. It happened. It always happened to everyone in Virgil’s life. Why wouldn’t it happen to them? They’ll eventually grow tired of him and he’ll become their next meal. He’d be an idiot to think any other way.

Virgil turned to look back down at the phone display. He swallowed, unable to dislodge the lump in his throat. His vision spun a bit, his stomach nauseous. He couldn’t move a muscle, just like a statue. Perhaps he could try becoming one. All they did was remain motionless all day and let pigeons poop on them. He’d be better at that than being a human being.

“Virgil!” A hand took hold of his shoulder, forcibly turning his body around to face a new direction. Virgil glanced briefly down to see he was still flesh-and-blood. Not a ivory stone statue, free of all his troubles and misery.

“Virgil, this is Jeff,” Jerad said, gesturing to the store associate, “He’s gonna help with getting your new swanking, danking phone!” Jerad fist-pumped the air, letting out a whoop.

Virgil locked eyes with the poor slightly frazzled store associate named Jeff and did a small nod of recognition. As if to say, “I’m sorry to be the cause of your agony.”

He knew what it was like to deal with customers like Jerad. He hated knowing it was his fault they were in the phone store in the first place. Virgil sharply exhaled, eyes blinking rapidly to stop the tears from forming. If he couldn’t keep himself from crying then he was truly pathetic.

His awareness grew blurry, almost foggy. His body moved out of its own accord, nodding along to the conversation and following after Jerad. Normally this type of thing would’ve freaked him out. Given all the panic already present in his body, it might’ve killed him on the spot. Instead he couldn’t bring himself to feel the twinges of anxiety. Or frustration, anger, disgust. Nothing. A numbness took hold of him, wrapping around him in a cold embrace.

Jerad purchased the new phone, true to his word. He fiddled with it on the walk back to the apartment, ogling over its features. Virgil’s legs faithfully kept walking, each step closer to the apartment. His heart beat right on time, his breaths slow and even.

“Let’s take the stairs, get some exercise in today.” Jerad suggested and Virgil’s head jerked in agreement. They took the stairs, five flights and all. Virgil wheezed at the end of it. The pain of getting insufficient oxygen made him feel alive again for the briefest of moments. It ended sharply with Jerad laughing as he patted Virgil’s back.

“I see someone skipped leg day!”

A feeble imitation of a laugh croaked from Virgil’s lips. Jerad shoved his key into their apartment door and unlocked it. Virgil followed him in. Jerad stopped abruptly in the middle of the living room, causing Virgil to almost run into him. He turned around, the new phone clasped in one hand.

“Hey man,” Jerad began, offering the phone toward Virgil, “we cool?”

Virgil spat in his face.

Or at least that sounded better than what actually happened.

“Yeah, thanks.” Virgil said. He took the phone from Jerad and headed off to his room.

He sat on his crappy bed, swaddled in his raggedy purple blanket. He looked at the phone, at its glossy smooth screen. It was fine. Everything was fine. Virgil had just overreacted, that was all.

Jerad was not that bad of a guy. He was a jerk, yes. He liked to jerk Virgil at times, get inside his head. He was the jerk that threw Virgil’s phone down a five-story balcony. But he was a jerk who made up by purchasing a brand new one. The phone currently in Virgil’s hand.

His old phone couldn’t compare with this one. Not with its cracked screen and bad battery. This new phone had the latest technological achievements and best camera lens. He wouldn’t have this if it wasn’t for Jerad.

It didn’t stop him from wanting his old phone back. He’d felt so proud to own it after scraping and saving for it. It was dumb but he’d named it Taran and treated it almost like a friend, no more than that. A lifeline that got him through life no matter what punches it threw at him.

It was okay. He knew eventually it’d break on him. It didn’t matter how it broke in the end. Really, it didn’t. He just needed to move on and stop mourning an inanimate object. Maybe he could name this new phone Taran II in remembrance or something. It was fine.

Virgil kept staring down at the phone, into his reflection in the phone-screen. He looked past greasy hair and dark eyebags into dull, defeated eyes.

He threw the phone onto the ground, unable to bear the sight any longer. He curled up in his bed, head firmly pressed against his pillow, and cried.

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #virgil sanders #remy sanders #logan sanders #kat writes #did i recycle a previous scene from the previous chapter into this one?#yes #shh

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xshinytrashcanx · 4 years

Text

Did you just..

relationships: Ki X Reader, JJ X sister!reader, John B X Reader (platonic)

warnings: Alcohol, puking, abuse if you pinch your eyes and bad writing I guess (English isn’t my first language so if there is something wrong you are welcome to correct me)

It started when I would catch her looking at me at the beach or while we would sit in John Bs yard. It didn’t happend often but when our eyes would meet she abruptly turned around and started talking to anyone close to her. Then she started to distance herself from me and I didn’t understand why. “Did I do anything wrong today?” JJ looked at me “No why would you think that?” “Hm I’m probably just overthinking.”

But I wasn’t. Ki wouldn’t hang out with me anymore like we used to. No movie nights, no trips to the beach, just the two of us so we could get away from the boys. When I would sit down next to her at the boneyard she would excuse herself and mumble something about getting drinks. You know when John B once said everyone in the group had a crush on Ki he was right. Pope couldn’t take his eyes of her lips when she would talk about the environment, JJ would hit on her like he would hit on everything with a pulse and John B, well he isn’t that smooth with all that flirting shit but everyone can see the way he looks at her. Well everyone also included me but how could you not have a crush on her right? Problem, Ki is, as far as I know, straight and I am a girl. Well, shit happens right?

“You know maybe you should just talk to her?” “Just because I told you about my crush on her you don’t have to play matchmaker JJ. Especially not if your drooling over her like some pervert.” He playfully buts his hand on his chest “You are hurting me my dearest sister.” “Just telling the truth darling. You tap everything that has a pulse.” I smack him upside his head before I turn back to Ki who is talking to some Touron about microplastic.”I love how she cares about things.” I sigh. “Gross. I’m gonna get myself a drink. Want some?” “Yeah can you get me some Beer or something?” “You are sixteen young Lady you can get some soda.” JJ ruffles my hair before he heads toward the keg. Ki is now laughing at some joke and I can’t stop thinking about the time I used to make her laugh. Why is she ignoring me? Did I do something wrong? Am I a burden to her with all that shit going on with JJs and my Dad? Did she hate me from the beginning and just acted like she liked me? A single tear rolls down my check but I quickly wipe it away. “Hey no crying on the boneyard.” I hear my brother saying as he sits down next to me with two cups. “You know I like Ki but if she makes you cry I am gonna need to kick her ass and you know that. Now drink up buttercup.” “Oh my brother is a poet. I bet the girls like that.” I say as I grab one of the cups. “I hope that isn’t soda because if I am gonna need to kick your ass.” “It’s raspberry juice with vodka. I wouldn’t do that to you.” we klink glasses before I down the whole cup.

“Maybe you are right.” I mumble, the alcohol getting to my head. “What do you mean?” “Maybe I should talk to her.” I try to stand up but that’s harder then it seems. “You are so wasted Y/N.” my brother chuckles. “Help me to stand up so I can tell Ki that I love her and stop laughing you ass.” “Don’t you wanna wait till tomorrow? I mean you can barely walk.” I shake my head and try to stand up again. This time I’m successful but before I can spot the girl I liked for such a long time a sudden wave of nausea hits me. “Y/N you good? You look really pale?” I turn around and get as far as possible before I start to puke my guts out. Someone is holding my hair while another person is holding me up. “Gross.” “Yeah.” John B, who was chosen as driver for the night, offers me a cup of water. He is probably the only sober person here but right now I am thankfull for it. “We should probably get her home.” he tells my brother who is standing right next to me. “Yeah I’m gonna tell everyone else. You get her to into the car.” “Care to explain why you would get that drunk?” “I’m really upset” I mumble as we arrive at the old bus. “Why? Did something happend with your Dad?” “No it’s because of her.” John B looks at me, confusion written all over his face. “She is so happy and laughing but it is not because of me because she obviously hates me.” “She? Who the fuck are you talking about.” “Ki of course. Who else would I be talking about?” I hide my face in my hands and start sobbing. “”Why is she crying?” I hear Ki saying. “Because of you.” “Me?” “John B is right. I’m crying because you fucking hate me. And I love you and you don’t love me and everything is so sad because of that.” Now all of my friends are looking at me. “We should really go home guys. Y/N is beyond wasted. Our Dad will kill us both if he has to pick us up from the police station again.”

After a while we arrive at the chateau. I get out of the bus and make my way to the bathroom, Ki and JJ both on my heels. “Why are you following me? I am not a fucking kid” “Ah the next stage of drunk Y/N. Pissed.” I shoot JJ a glare before I close the door behind me, leaving them outside. “Please don’t trip or something ok? Be carefull.” I hear Ki saying “As if you would give a fuck.” “I do ok? CanI come in? Please?” So I open the door and Ki enters the bathroom, some clothes in her hand. “Whats that?” “A shirt and some sweatpants your brother gave me for you. Your clothes smell like shit.” I roll my eyes and grab the clothes to put them on but taking of a shirt when you are shit faced isn’t as easy as it seems so Ki kinda helps me. “What did you mean when you said you loved me?” Ok so I didn’t just imagined that great. “We can talk about that tomorrow if you want Y/N but just that you know. I don’t hate you.” I nervously tug at the end of my shirt while Ki is looking at me. “Ok so if you wont talk I am gonna keep going. That is gonna be really awkward because I am not really sure if you really meant what you said and also because I thought you were into guys since you and JJ are screwing like all the tourons around here but I like you, like the type of where I get consumed by your looks and where I can not stop thinking about you. It keeps me up at night and it scares me because I would literally jump in front of a bullet for you. You are just..” before she can continue I make a step forward and connect my lips to hers. “Did you just kissed me?” “Finally!” I hear a voice behind the door. “I swear to god JJ!”

#obx #obx jj #obx ki #obx kiara #obx kie #kiara carrera #outer banks ki #outer banks #jj outer banks #outer banks imagine #Ki x reader #obx imagine #obx jj maybank #obx maybank!reader #jj maybank #jj #john booker routledge #obx john b #john b

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drawlfoy · 5 years

Text

Friends p.1

masterlist request guidelines

pairing: draco x slytherin!reader

request: yes! thank you!

summary: draco and reader break up. slytherin family vibe with blaise, pansy, and theo. will they get back together? hmm probably because this i have a mad crush on him

warnings: nothing new from what i’ve written before. maybe if i’m feeling crazy i’m gonna add some makout scenes but idk i write these before i write the story like an irresponsible woman

a/n: this is actually really ironic because i’m starting to feel a little unsatisfied with my own relationship and realizing that it’s probably not going to last into college like we want it to because the distance and length of time is unreasonable, so i’m starting to peel myself away from my fantasy of spending the rest of my life with him since i don’t think it’s feasible, and plus, a part of me really wants to be set free so i can live for no one but me and travel and not be tied down and everything, but i can’t live like that forever. idek guys i’m listening to angsty songs for this fic and it’s putting me into feels. so enjoy this fic as i’m literally writing Y/N as me right now oops

music recs: don’t wanna be your girl by wet, the predatory wasp of the palisades is out there to get us by sufjan stevens, sweet disposition by the temper trap

word count: 1,755

“A break?”

The words left Draco’s mouth like they had been ripped from his throat.

“Yes, Draco, you heard me,” Y/N told him gently, her own eyes welling up with tears. “We aren’t...good together right now. I feel like...”

Y/N sucked in a shaky breath.

“I feel like I’m not treating you well, and I just feel so afraid of commitment, and it’s not you, it’s definitely me, it’s just that...”

Another shaky breath,

“It’s just that you deserve so much more than what I can give you right now, and I don’t... want you to resent me. I care too much fo-for you.”

There. It was out--the musings that had bugged her for so long, they had finally been solidified. There was no going back--no taking a shower and trying to brush it off, no crying it out alone and then pretending like it never happened, no crawling right back into his arms and kissing up his jawline, praying that the shows of affection would dismiss her feelings.

Before Y/N could manage anything else out, her eyes began blurring with the thickest layer of tears she had ever felt. It was uncontrollable, and while her poker face had years of experience, nothing could stop it.

“Oh, no, oh, no,” Draco began murmuring, stepping forward to gently cup her face. “You’re already so much, princess, please don’t cry, please don’t cry, we can work through this.”

His thumb began wiping away the tears that were cascading down her cheeks, but that hardly helped. Y/N could see his own eyes shining with the limited light in the common room and felt her heart break once more.

“Please stop touching me,” she whispered. “You can’t fix this. Only I can, I just need time, and if you want to...”

A sob caught in her throat, but she swallowed and pushed it back, just barely.

“If you want to see other people, that’s okay, I’m just such a mess and I need to figure it out...”

She had never seen Draco so hurt before as he pulled his hand away from her face, quickly wiping his own tears away.

“You’re sure?”

Y/N began shaking. She never thought that he would jump so quickly at the offer to date other witches, and oh, merlin, did it hurt.

“Yes,” she managed. “Yes. I hope you know how much I love you.”

She didn’t know what to expect. A part of her hoped that Draco would wrap her up in a hug and tell her that he loved her too and that he’d always wait for her, but instead, he just stared at her. She swore that she could hear something snap inside of him.

“I want to still be friends,” Y/N pushed. “I don’t want you out of my life, I love you, and I can’t imagine my life without you...You just deserve the world, and I can’t give it to you right now.”

This wasn’t real. Y/N felt like she was acting this out with him, like in a moment they’d both snap out of it and offer comments on each other’s acting skills, but once she saw Draco lower his head into his hands and heave, she was hit in the face with the fact that this was reality and she had just immeasurably hurt the love of her life.

“Can I be alone?” he asked between strangled breaths.

Y/N couldn’t take it anymore. She turned and ran to her dorm room.

♥♥♥♥

“Oh, no, Y/N, sweetheart.”

Pansy’s voice was paired with a pair of gentle hands on her shoulders, steering her towards her bed.

“I did it.” Y/N sniffled and wiped her runny nose with her sleeve. It was gross and would’ve made her cringe in every day life, but this wasn’t every day, and she was desperate for any comfort. “I told him how I felt, and he sat there, and now he’s crying out there, and now I don’t know what I’ve done, and oh my god what if I didn’t want this and what if I want him back and what if I’ve ruined this for us because it’s all my fault and it’s my problem and it’s me who’s the problem and he’s always so perfect and so good to me and it’s him who has to hurt because of my own mistak-”

“Y/N,” Pansy interrupted. “I understand if you want to talk, but it’s just making you feel worse.”

Y/N began to sob harder. She’d fucked it. She had completely fucked it. She’d thrown away her shot at getting married to not only someone she loved to the end of the earth but also someone with perfect circumstances--parents that adored her, an amazing trust fund if anything goes wrong, and such an attractive face.

And she’d just ruined it.

Pansy waited for Y/N to wail one more time before she wrapped her arms around her friend and rocking her back and forth, brushing her hair out of Y/N’s face.

“Y/N, Y/N,” she cooed, wiping away her tears just like Draco had done moments ago. Tears pricked at the brunette’s face as well as she watched her best friend sob her heart out. Out of all the people at Hogwarts, Y/N was the least deserving of this amount of pain.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Pansy instructed her after about ten minutes of Y/N’s hysterical sobbing. “Come one, up you go.”

Pansy hugged her one last time before dragging her to her feet, tugging at her robes and pulling them off.

“I think this calls for some old sweats,” Pansy told her, going through her drawers in search of the baggy sweatshirt and fuzzy socks Y/N often wore when she studied for exams. During her search, she came across a particular oversized sweatshirt with the name MALFOY written on the back. Hoping that Y/N didn’t see, she shoved it under the rest of the clothing in the drawer. Y/N didn’t need that right now.

Locating the green sweatshirt, she held it out.

“Come on, change out of it. I’ll be right back, I need to get some things for you. Don’t go anywhere!”

Y/N nodded solemnly, flopping back on her bed to change into the ratty sweats.

♥♥♥♥

Pansy dashed down to the kitchens, praying that no one else would be out to see her like this--her hair undone, her robes ruffled, and her mascara smeared. She had a short conversation with a house elf and snatched a plate of cookies that she nearly dropped when she spun around and slammed into someone.

“Blaise?” she asked, covering the plate to seem a little more mysterious.

Out of all the people. why did it have to be Blaise?

“Hey, Pans,” he said, his deep voice a little shaky.

“What brings you down here?”

“Oh...you know.” Blaise shrugged and shifted uncomfortably. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Oh, er, I’m sure you’ve heard about Y/N and-”

“Draco?” Blaise’s interruption confirmed her suspicion. “Yeah, I know. I’m trying to get him some food to get him to be quiet for one second. He’s been crying like a baby ever since he came into the room.”

“Same with Y/N. I’m bringing her cookies and praying it’ll calm her down some.”

“I never saw this coming. I don’t think Draco did either.”

Pansy nodded,

“Yeah. I guess the unexpected tends to happen, though, yeah?”

That didn’t make any sense, you’re not a poet Pansy scolded herself.

“I should get going and make sure Y/N is okay.”

“Me too. With, er, Draco, I mean.”

The two parted ways, Pansy sprinting back to her dorm room. What if Y/N wasn’t there when she got back? What if she was writing overly emotional letters to Draco and seconds from sending him? Oh, no, she couldn’t let that happen.

♥♥♥♥

Y/N was splayed out on the bed when Pansy returned, her face cleaner and her body still.

“Y/N? Y/N?”

Y/N sat up groggily, wiping her eyes and smiling sadly at her.

“I brought cookies,” Pansy said, setting the plate down on her bed next to her. “I’m here. For anything you might want to talk about.”

“Okay,” Y/N responded. “Can I tell you what I’m worried the most about?”

“Of course!”

Pansy leaned forward and grabbed Y/N’s hand, squeezing it encouragingly.

“Well, I told him that he could see other people,” Y/N told her. “And I guess I just assumed that he would immediately say that he wouldn’t ever do that to me and that he’d wait for me as long as I’d like because that’s the Draco I fell in love with but he just...”

“He just what?”

“He just asked me if I was sure!” Y/N’s voice had been calmer when Pansy had first entered the room, but now it was shrill and panicked. “Oh my god, oh my god! He’s going to date other girls! And I’m not ever going to be into someone as much as I’m into Draco--as much as I was into Draco--and I don’t know if I can see that happening!”

A fresh batch of tears overtook Y/N as she keeled over, letting go of Pansy’s hand and instead wrapping them around her midsection in an attempt to calm herself.

“I messed up so bad, Pans,” she gasped, swaying back and forth. “I messed up so bad. I never should’ve done this.”

“I know you probably don’t want to hear anything about him,” Pansy began, “But I saw Blaise while I was getting these cookies. He says that Draco was crying nonstop in his room. I don’t think he’ll be dating around any time soon.”

Y/N only sobbed harder.

“Hey, hey,” Pansy began again. “He cares about you! That’s all this means! He just cares a lot. And he isn’t going to stop right now.”

“But how do you know that?”

Pansy didn’t know what to say.

“He didn’t tell me it back.”

“What, girly?” Pansy sent Y/N a look of concern. Y/N had stopped rocking and was instead staring at her hands.

“He didn’t tell me he loved me back.”

Y/N curled up into a ball on her bed. Pansy was at a complete loss for words. A part of her knew that there was no combination of words out there that would make her friend feel better. All she could do was be there for her, whether it be physically or mentally.

With that, Pansy laid down next to her, wrapping her arms around her friend and holding her as she cried.(a/n: this is literally the exact moment in my life where i began to realize that i’m probably not 100% straight. i have such a crush on the pansy that i write wtf)

final a/n: okay so i’m stopping it here so i have an excuse to write this to be longer. i might do alternate endings, one where the reader ends up with pansy and one where the reader ends up reconciling with draco because oh my god my sexuality is suddenly being very questioned right now lmao. i can’t believe this happened in real time while i was writing a fic

#draco #draco malfoy #draco x reader #draco imagine #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy imagine #harry potter #pansy parkinson #pansy x reader #blaise zabini #slytherin #ravenclaw #hufflepuff #gryffindor #severus snape #pansy imagine

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royal-shawn · 5 years

Text

Can I Get The Special?

anon said: Girl I LOVED Crossroads (and Werewolf!Shawn)! That seriously made me so emotional. You write angst in a way that it slowly creeps up on you and then crashes over you like a wave. You're so talented!!! Could I request something? Maybe like some people on social media have been making rude comments about your relationship with Shawn since you've gone public and you're really hurt? Maybe like some angst with a fluffy ending?

The last few months have been a whirlwind of events, starting with the coffee shop.

“Excuse me miss, could I get your special today?” A voice asks from behind me.

I look at the menu, scanning for what I want.

There’s a tap on my shoulder.

I spin around and come face to face with Shawn Mendes.

“Can I have the special?” He asks, motioning to the chalkboard.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t work here.” I look around. “I could order you one, Chad is over there.”

“You don’t work here, of course. I’ll get mine own coffee and I’ll get you one too, I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

I smile. “It’s fine, I don’t need the free coffee, I have a VIP card here.” I pull the poorly written sticky-note out of my pocket. ‘Free coffee pass’

Shawn shakes his head. “It’d make me feel better if you’d let me buy you a coffee.”

I laugh softly. “Okay.”

And we sat together in a booth, the taste of coffee on our tongues as we laughed - I went home with the number of a celebrity that night.

After that day, coffee never tasted the same, it lost it’s bitter and taste and was replaced with sweet nectar. Shawn made it clear that his tour bus broke down a mile out, and the mechanic here was working on it, he was in town for a few days, choosing to spend them at my side, like now.

Shawn and I stood in the bathroom of his condo, brushing our teeth. It’s our third sleepover, and he’s looking forward to the Instagram Live I promised him. I throw my hair up and look at myself in the mirror. “Should I put on some makeup before this whole ordeal?”

“No, we’ll go to sleep after, you look plenty beautiful like that.” He smiles, kissing my temple.

I smile up at him, pressing a kiss to his lips. “Can we just get this over with?”

That Instagram Live introduced me to the world, bare-faced, like a rebirth into a new place.

Except this place is not a good one. It took two crazy fans five minutes to find my Instagram, my Twitter, and my Snapchat and leak them into the world.

It was nice to shut off my phone and sleep the night away next to Shawn.

I woke up with a phone filled with tweets and Instagram comments, either supporting me or being petty.

I smile when Shawn grabs my phone from my hand and puts it on the other side of him. “Can we just cuddle without the world?”

“Yes, we can.”

A day and a half later, I get home from work set my bag on a stool and open up my phone.

The notifications on both my Instagram and Twitter were well into the thousands and I hadn’t had a chance to see what they’ve been saying.

A quick look at my notifications and mentions, and see the overwhelming sweet and kind things the fans have to say. I tap on my dms and the nasty things come to light.

‘Next time Shawn and you do a live, maybe put a little bit of concealer on? you looked like a corpse.’

‘Shawn’s out of your league, he’s successful and you will never amount to anything.’

‘hope you’re happy holding shawn back.’

A text dings from my phone. ‘Surprise, I’m coming over with pizza and wine.” - Shawn

I realize my hands shaking while I text back. ‘I look gross.’

‘like a goddess* im already on the way, see you in a few.’

I don’t reply, but go back to Instagram, the harsh comments like a car accident and I can’t look away.

‘surprising how even makeup can’t even fix your face.’

I check one last one. ‘i’m gonna be brutally honest there okay? you’re probably sweet or something but I have no idea what shawn sees in you, you talk to much on your snapchat, you aren’t original, and not very pretty, i personally think you should break up with him, it’s for the better of him and his career.’

I bite my lip, my hands shaking even more now, she’s right, Shawn deserves so much more than just me.

The door of my apartment open and Shawn walks in a box of pizza with two bottles of cheap wine on top. “The convenience store only sold these and I was not about to go seek out fancy wine.”

“We should break up.” I blurt, shutting off my phone.

“What!?” He turns to me, moving the pizza box to the countertop. “Why? What did I do?”

“It’s not you, it’s me.” I murmur, a tear slipping out of my eye.

He looks confused. “What about you?”

“I’m not good enough, I won’t amount to nothing and-” I suddenly can’t breathe, and I clutch my chest, heaving in air that doesn’t reach my lungs.

“Hey.” He walks over and grabs me, moving me to the couch. “Breathe with me, okay?” He starts breathing slow and steadily.

I try and copy, my breath hitching as I start sobbing.

He holds me in a hug, rocking me. “Breathe sweetheart, breathe.”

I breathe and cry into his shirt until I can’t anymore and I’m just hiccuping.

“What’s wrong?” He asks. “Why do you want to break up?”

“I don’t but it’s better for you to be alone.” I stutter out, looking up at him. “I shouldn’t hold you back, it’s like clipping an angel’s wings.”

“Y/N, where did this come from?” He asks, softly.

I point at my phone, which he grabs and unlocks with his fingerprint.

He sighs after a bit. “I wish they wouldn’t do this.”

I swallow my tears and grab my phone. “They’re right, I work as a secretary and you’re a celebrity.”

“To them, I’m Shawn Mendes but, to you I’m just Shawn, you don’t have to live up to their standards because you met mine.” He starts. “You are beautiful with and without makeup, and you are the sweetest girl I ever met, so please don’t break up with me because I will write a million hate songs to my fans if you do, and I’ll write millions of songs about you, too.”

“You’re a poet and you didn’t even know it.” I sniffle smiling. “I won’t break up with you, I love you too much.”

He presses multiple kisses around my face. “Don’t ever get upset over what they say, they have no clue what I feel for you.”

I nod. “Okay, I promise.”

We cuddle on the couch until I fall asleep.

I wake up and Shawn’s gone, but in my mentions is a message.

shawnmendes: just gonna say, please stop sending hate to Y/N she deserves the world, and you might just have to stick around to see it.

#shawn mendes #Shawn Mendes Imagine #shawn #mendes #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes fluff #boyfriend!shawn #shawn mendes x reader #shawn imagine #SHAWN ANGST #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes oneshot #shawn mendes blurb

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seyaryminamoto · 3 years

Note

my school works are piled up this past few weeks (graduating tingz) and i just started reading the deadlock novel it feels like i'm reading a sokkla fic every time Mcashe has a scene because they just give off the vibes skskskskksksks. BTW, what's your top5 fav scenes from the novel? PS: I'm smiling like an idiot while reading the novel ughh i hate myself

I KNOW, RIIIIIGHT?! *-* and don't hate yourself, my anon friend, I spent the whole novel smiling and laughing and losing my goddamn mind because I was having the time of my life xD enjoy this beautiful content as best you can!

I mean, frankly, Reunion already had all the Sokkla vibes I could've wanted/needed to ship these two like FedEx and I always knew I wasn't getting off this ride anytime soon. But gosh, this book... it gave me everything I wanted and MORE! Their dynamics are soooo similar to Sokkla team-up dynamics, two power couples kicking ass and taking names... oh, I just love it so much. I probably will end up reading the book a third time soon x'D

As for my favorite scenes, damn, this is tricky xD

KEYCHAIN! HE MADE HER KEYCHAIN!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! God, it's just amazing how the book explains the "vintage" look for Ashe's hoverbike the way it does, and that they literally built it together *screams!!!*, but then he gives her that keychain for her birthday present, and the implications!! THE IMPLICATIONS!!! He gave her a keychain she's held onto for TWENTY YEARS?!?!?! Ships in the OW fandom have sailed far and wide with less than breadcrumbs: we literally have been granted a boon from the GODS with all this extra context for the little things in Reunion xD

Ashe going to hell and back to save her kidnapped BFF-for-whom-she-totally-doesn't-have-feelings-yeah-yeah-sure-Jan. I love the fact that McCree is, in a way, Ashe's damsel in distress and not the other way around xD Of course, it's what you'd expect from an Ashe-centric story, but it's still an amazing sequence, all around. Gotta highlight how she loves the way he smiles like a madman when they have that shootout at the end, and how he worries so much over Ashe's injury when he took an even worse one than she did (the Sokkla vibes in that particular situation were SO STRONG! I SWEAR!).

"Jesse McCree, are you trying to make me say you're handsome?" "Am I?" ... do I need to say more. That FLIRTING. These two were on fire already and they'd only known each other for like... weeks, at this point? x'D He has no sense of moderation, he's soooo into her and doesn't hide it at all. Ashe is so busy trying to plot all the crime and Jesse's practically like a shojo heroine, "oh I can feel it, this is how my love story begins!", basically xD

Finally I pick a not-McAshe scene... to bring up the one where Ashe picks up the Viper on her last moment in Lead Rose Manor. That moment was just... POWERFUL. The feeling of epicness in that scene just overwhelmed me when I was reading it xD

The ending of the book :'D the fully formed Deadlock Gang ready for business, down to the explanation for the Est. 1976 in the logo... *sobs* the fact that so much about the character design choices in these two characters is a shoutout to the past they share is just... *gross sobbing* oh, I just love it to pieces, I'm not even sorry.

Ashe's bike race to save B.O.B. x'D that whole situation was bonkers but I looooved how fierce she was about protecting her one and only buddy while growing up (AND THAT JESSE BLUSHED WHEN SHE TAUNTED HIM WAS JUST THE CHERRY ON TOP!). I appreciated learning more about the Omnic War and its consequences, how Ashe reflects on having escaped it practically untouched in virtue of her money and societal privilege while her new friends all faced many hardships to survive. But I can't help but also love that, however uneasy others could have been about the Best Omnic Butler, Ashe was so fiercely loyal to B.O.B. that she nearly broke Julian's nose herself over his ridiculousness x'D That's HER big omnic buddy and she's not about to lose him to anyone, not her shitty parents, not a bet in a race, NOTHING! (and it's so cute that B.O.B. is just as loyal to her, too *sobs*)

Ashe grabbing McCree's arm to explain things to him on their first heist and him being all "you gonna leave that there?" and only then does she realize her hand's still on him x'D what a McCree line, and he was absolutely enjoying the attention, he doesn't even pretend otherwise.

Everything poetic McCree says or does... meanwhile Ashe's like "um yeah I don't care about poetry I want money", right until his poet soul totally smashes her square in the heart with the KEYCHAIN!!! But damn, I swear I thought McCree would hold back a lot more, and yet there he was, saying things like Calamity was brilliant and mysterious... you could practically hear B.O.B., Julian and Frankie going "I can see what's happening..." in the background xD

The conversation about what they wanted to do once they were loaded with all the cash they could possibly want. That one was a real number on my heartstrings. It ties up to what I said earlier with Ashe finally being in touch with people who are completely removed from the ridiculous social circles of her parents and her school, people who really lost a lot in the war. But where Julian and Frankie seem to look at the past a lot, I loved that Jesse is basically just thinking about the future. The fact that he says he wants to chill out in a farm and that this is what he wants in life... many, MANY, shippy wheels have turned in my head since I read that <.< maaaany...

WHEN JESSE NEARLY FALLS AND ASHE CATCHES HIM!!! UNDERRRATED AS HECK!!! The fact that he's taunting her about fear of heights, then he nearly plummets to his death because ironies are beautiful xD and Ashe pulls him back to safety only to say that she's not afraid of heights but afraid of ~FALLING~??? I mean, okay, sure, maybe I'm reading too much into that line... or maybe I'm not <.< either way, the truth is I just love how absolutely broad of interpretation that scene and that DIALOGUE are :> ehehehe.

Oh, their first encounter. The fact that it's so cute and fun, and that it's this low in the list tells you how GOOD this book was x'D "You've got an awful lot of grit for a rich girl," first words he spoke to the love of his life xD then how they talked and laughed together about the crazy stories he shared (she was crying of laughter for the first time in her life! precious girl!), and then how she sat in the car thinking about the strange feeling she was left with after meeting him... they seriously had a meetcute in prison, how can a ship get any better? xD

WHEN HE COMES BACK TO HER WHEN THEIR FIRST HEIST GOES WRONG!!! That Ashe expects him to just leave after she falls off their getaway vehicle, but Jesse saves her and goes "pfft that's just not my style", basically... *sobs* without realizing it she ends up picking up that particular philosophy of his, saving her friends no matter the cost...! Honestly, though, the fact that every time something like this happens it hits Ashe like a truck racing downhill with no brakes because she's NEVER been cared about by anyone but B.O.B. and she's completely new to friendships and bonding with people... and in the mean time, Jesse immediately is "ride or die" with her because that's how he rolls... beautiful relationship dynamics between characters who influence each other for the better are just beautiful :')

A silly one here: Jesse enjoying the good life in Lead Rose. That description of him looking like a marshmallow in the CHAISE LOUNGEEEEE!!! (the one he references in their in-game interactions *CRYING SO MANY TEARS*), was just too cute to bear x'D Ashe just jumping back into work mode... while he was just thrilled to be a marshmallow in a towel xD

... So, um, I went overboard because I love this book a little too much for my own good :> what can I say? When things I love are good, I go wild xD There's probably more scenes I loved, but these... thirteen? XD are the ones that came to mind.

I think one of my favorite things now is reexamining Reunion with all this extra context in mind. The first time I watched that cinematic I, of course, fell in love with these two outlaws because how could I not? But while subsequent rewatches revealed a lot of things I didn't pay enough attention to the first time around, the book has done even more than I could imagine possible for a short that was already as shippy as could be xD

Ooookay so, shippy ramblings about Reunion, coming up! (simply because I have to put these down SOMEWHERE XD and your ask was a good idea for that, anon!)

First off, Jesse very much staged the whole rodeo in Reunion. He sent the tip to Ashe, he wanted Echo's crate specifically. He thought they could work together, basically, despite knowing it was entirely possible that those hopes wouldn't pay off. This train, according to the wikia, was a government train, so Jesse is very much telling Ashe to give a finger to the government for all he cares, all he wants is one (1) crate.

Ergo, Jesse, for all his "nice guy bountyhunter" deal, doesn't disapprove of Deadlock's actions. If anything, he counts on them to be exactly what he needs in order to get what he wants. He practically trusts Ashe to pull off the train heist disaster perfectly and only steps up when it's time to collect Echo.

Then the wacky shoot-out happens, it's veeeery charged (the UST is so thick, I swear...), and Jesse wins. He ties up Ashe, floats her off on the payload with the rest of the gang, and he sets Echo free. He's helping her out very nicely and everything, but the context in question is... he received the recall notification thingy XD Winston called him back to Overwatch, and Jesse...

... Jesse doesn't want to go back.

Jesse says "they want me", and the displeased tone of his voice, paired with the look on his face when he says that line, speak for themselves.

That, in my humble opinion, isn't the sequence of expressions you'd expect from someone who intends to return to the group where he thrived, had the time of his life and found his true calling. To me, he actually looks irritated about the recall (the sequence of expressions during that line is much better when you watch the full thing x'D), as though he REALLY doesn't want to return. He's not against Overwatch, I'm not quite saying that, otherwise he wouldn't have set Echo free and told her to go back at all... but this isn't remorse. It's not "Oh, I'm not good enough for Overwatch anymore". Nope... this is "My time with them is over and I don't plan on going back unless I have no choice", as far as I can tell.

If OW2 does bring him back into the fold and he's a perfectly chill and happy guy about it, I'll seriously be surprised. I mean, he could have set Echo free and, once his business is over, returned to Overwatch with her, he could have been in the Paris cinematic if he'd done that...

But he's not there.

Which outright says he didn't do that :> oops.

Basically, I think Jesse's reaction in Retribution (where he's markedly the most morally correct one of the bunch, and he's the former outlaw :'D) tells you his displeasure with Overwatch ran very, very deep. And someone can very easily say he felt the same way about Deadlock and that's why he left them for Overwatch... but that's conjecture. His displeasure with Blackwatch (and, in consequence, Overwatch), however, is FACT. And the previous conjecture falls flat pretty quickly considering he's perfectly fine with Ashe's train heist, even sets it up himself, from what the story suggests, so... how ~appalled~ was he over her choices and actions? Not appalled at all, if you ask me, and after you read Deadlock Rebels, you actually understand why: Jesse trusts Ashe.

From the first moment she enters the same prison block he's in, he's drawn to her. He wants to impress her, he absolutely enjoys her company and making her laugh (just as much as she enjoyed laughing at his wacky stories), and he's plain thrilled that she comes back for him when she does. Ashe manages the gang with inexperience but she's always willing to improve, and you see Jesse sticking with her through thick and thin, supporting her at the best and worst times alike, always putting his faith on her and constantly watching out for her (he protected and shielded her from attacks with his own body sooooo many times *sobs*). Ashe starts out intending to keep most profits for herself, and Jesse doesn't care much at first... but then she starts to share profit equally between their team. She works on her own bike herself, her own ride, and she plans and solves problems as best she can, to a point of even going overboard with planning too much. She's wild, reckless and takes insane risks... and this guy loves every second of it. The matter of morality regarding the actions of a criminal gang is, of course, something to think about... but as far as the book goes, Ashe mainly targets her own family, their specific brand of bullshit, and in the process she ends up helping lots of people and even saving lives that might not have been saved otherwise. I'm not going to put my hand on the fire here and say Deadlock never ever did anything absolutely wrong to people who didn't deserve it... but for a criminal gang? They're honestly the most wholesome one the OW team could have come up with, if you ask me.

So where you see Jesse is very much antagonistic with Reaper/Reyes, where he loses his temper with the guy's choices, he doesn't ever do that with Ashe. Overwatch ARE supposed to be the good guys... so how weird that Jesse McCree, reformed outlaw, ends up so disappointed with these guys when he was actually thrilled with Ashe's managing of their gang, as far as we saw. So much so that, when it came down to it, Jesse McCree, 20 years later, still counts on Ashe to give him a hand (without her full awareness) with a little operation to help out an old friend of his. Also worth pointing out: he doesn't want to fight at all, while Ashe, of course, does. Deadlock for life, is what Jesse said... and he's not Deadlock anymore, hasn't been for who knows how long. Worse yet... his tattooed arm is gone. It's like all his ties to Deadlock have been severed.

And even so, he came to Ashe and hoped she wouldn't want a shootout with him. Even when he knows she might be beyond unforgiving because of the betrayal (he has seen directly how outraged she was about a certain someone betraying her in the book...), Jesse goes back anyway and hopes it won't come to this.

THE IMPLICATIONS, MAN!!!

Carrying on: Echo is surprised that Jesse shows no intentions of going back to Overwatch. She asks him what he's going to do... and what does Jesse say?

He puts his cowboy hat back on (the symbolism in this short, I swear...), and when she asks him what he's going to do, he tells her "I've got some business to attend to."

THE MUSIC PICKS UP.

AND THEN HE CLIMBS ON THE BIKE HE BUILT WITH ASHE.

YOU GET A DELIBERATE CLOSE-UP TO THE KEYCHAIN.

THEN THE CAMERA PANS UP TO FOCUS ON THE PICTURE, TORN AND TAPED BACK TOGETHER, THAT ASHE CARRIES ON THIS BIKE, A BIKE WHICH, LET'S BE REAL, IS BASICALLY A MCASHE BABY CHOPPER/HOVERBIKE HYBRID, AND AS SHE PUTS IT LATER, IS...

HER

BIKE!!!

When Jesse says he has business to attend to, he could pick up any bike he wants (since it'd stand to reason that the other guys Ashe came in with would have bikes of their own). He could escape on horseback for all we know xD so there are lots of options... but no. He takes HERS. Right after saying he has "business to attend to".

Look, I could be wrong. I could be dead wrong. I can absolutely be digging around and going INSANE because nothing I ship EVER gets this much content.

But we literally get a guy saying he has "business" to take care of, and the cinematic focuses exclusively on elements that, even BEFORE Deadlock Rebels, all point towards Ashe?! You could easily say that taking her bike is just the final nail on the coffin, his last trolling idea to mess with his one true love... but that picture is right there. That picture, with them in their youth. The picture, btw, was bigger than just them: B.O.B.'s hand is there. The top of the picture is uneven, suggesting Ashe probably tore it to shreds in a fit of rage... and then specifically put together THEIR PART. And then she taped that to her bike's dashboard. Meaning, she carries the goddamn memory of Jesse with her EVERYWHERE SHE GOES. And she does it WILLINGLY.

Which, in turn, answers why Jesse expects MAYBE Ashe wouldn't go full-on hostile when they meet: this trolling cowboy knows exactly what he means to Ashe. He's not surprised when he sees that picture on the bike. He doesn't toss it away, which he could have, if he were saying "we are history now, forget it gurl" (and let's be honest, what a dick move that would have been @_@), he doesn't flinch after noticing and then goes "yeah, no, I'm picking another bike".

NOPE. The familiarity with which they talk, the way he hopes she'll just let him walk away, the fact that she DIDN'T change the keychain and bike in all those years and he's not even SURPRISED...

Jesse knows how much she loves him, point-blank. He's completely aware of it... and he's very much okay with it.

So much so... that I'm something of a 90% sure that the business he intends to deal with is ASHE HERSELF.

And no, I don't mean he's going to go on another shootout with her... I mean, evidently, that Jesse wants to come home. That he's tried the life of Overwatch, and he's decided to leave it behind. He's turned bountyhunter now, vigilante, pretty much... but he comes back to Ashe all the same. He's come back for the first time in who knows how long (going by Ashe's expressions and sarcasm with the "you promised you'd write" line, it miiiiiiight be they haven't seen each other since he got recruited into Blackwatch), and he expected a peaceful encounter, no less.

A good question to ask here is... what did Jesse hope would happen, if the encounter HAD been peaceful? He would've released Echo, sent her away to her business, and stayed behind anyway because he had business to deal with. Which business? :'D why... the business that would've been standing right in front of him.

There's no other, logical reason why this cinematic would put Ashe and McCree's picture into focus right when McCree says what he does to Echo. There's no other reasonable choice why McCree would turn his back on Overwatch quite so firmly. We know he had two important ties in his life: Overwatch and Deadlock. And Overwatch stole him away from Deadlock for a VERY long time. Well over half the time Deadlock has been in operations, as far as I can tell. He picked Overwatch over Deadlock once before... and now, it seems he's picking Deadlock over Overwatch instead :')

The follow-up short, Roadtrip, doesn't do anything to change my mind. The trolling jerk, Jesse McCree, hovers past Ashe's payload, where she's just... complaining, as she hovers xD going by what I know of the game and that map, the payload may just be en route to the gang's hideout, so that, I'd say, could explain why she hasn't climbed off it or escaped in any way (which she reasonably would have, if Jesse was trying to, I don't know, send her and her people to the authorities).

My point here is, however, that Jesse is headed the same way the payload is. If his destination is the same one, he'll beat it there for sure. Maybe, yes, he'll go away and drive well past the hideout... but maybe that's exactly where he intended to go.

Maybe, in the end, Reunion is about a man who's finally coming home :D

In addition, goes without saying, Ashe's rant about how everyone falls to pieces over Jesse showing his "stupid mug" (uh-huh, stupid, ANGELIC mug, we know what you really think, girl xD) ends with her saying she should have "put a bullet in him the minute he showed up".

Which begs the question of why didn't she.

Then, of course, she says she hates McCree when he drives past her while listening to some really ridiculous honky-tonky-sounding music x'D I cannot even help but imagine him deliberately picking that radio station or whatever it was just to annoy Ashe when he drove beside her, and so that she can get extra pissed when she retrieves her beloved bike, turns on the music and it's just more honky-tonky stuff x'D but anyway, the thing is she shouts after him, tells him that's her bike and says she hates him. B.O.B. wordlessly speaks for us McAshe shippers by giving Ashe the most "sure, Jan" side-eye in the history of side-eyes, and Ashe notices and is outraged enough to knock B.O.B.'s little hat right off his head again.

Again... this is renowned outlaw Elizabeth Caledonia "Calamity" Ashe, sitting on a payload, groaning about the guy she once very much had feelings for (and that doesn't even begin to cut it, if you ask me x'D) and for whom she tooooootally doesn't anymore, that picture on her bike doesn't MEAN that, OBVIOUSLYYYY!!, and so, she sits up, complains and doesn't do much of anything to get out of her current situation, right? :>

So, summing up my current understanding of EVERYTHING, thanks to Deadlock Rebels and my obsessive rewatches of Reunion + Roadtrip:

Jesse deliberately sought out Ashe so she would indirectly, unknowingly, help him set Echo free from the government's clutches.

Jesse hoped for a peaceful encounter despite knowing he might not get one.

Jesse has no intentions of returning to Overwatch but was willing to perform one final act of service for them by releasing Echo so she'd go give Winston and co. a hand.

Jesse is NOT surprised to see that Ashe: 1. Didn't change bikes at some point in the twenty years since they built it. 2. Didn't swap the ignition key for a button, the way she says she thought to do it in the novel until he gives her the keychain. 3. KEPT THE POETIC AF KEYCHAIN, despite resenting Jesse for his betrayal. 4. KEEPS A PICTURE OF THEM IN THEIR YOUNGER YEARS PASTED ON HER BIKE'S DASHBOARD.

Jesse claims he has business to deal with: he doesn't clarify said business verbally, but every shot after he says those words focuses on elements related to Ashe... and then, along with the novel's context, it's elements related to their BOND. Everything in that shot, EVERYTHING, is connected to the two of them. Elements that weren't shown before or during their shootout, and that are only introduced in that final moment when McCree is off to deal with his "business".

Ashe doesn't climb off the payload or stops it (which, going by how McCree simply pressed a button, and Ashe isn't immobilized in the least, she easily could have done it too if she had wanted to). Suggesting that, wherever the payload is heading, it isn't anywhere dangerous for Ashe and her crew, ergo, she is 100% sure McCree isn't trying to screw her over by turning her in to the authorities or so (or, at worst, she's completely confident that, even if he is going to do this, she'll be able to get out of it easily).

Jesse drives in the same direction the payload is headed. Another hint that suggests he might intend to head to the Deadlock hideout and that, whatever business he has left to deal with, it involves them.

If his intent ISN'T to go to the hideout... Jesse is still guaranteeing that Ashe will come after him by stealing her bike, the 18th birthday gift he gave her, and the picture she keeps of them. That he takes that very bike practically serves as painting a target on his back for her to hunt down, and he KNOWS IT.

In short: Jesse will have plenty of business with the Deadlock Gang in his future, and going by how pleased he seems to be when riding the bike, he's perfectly happy to handle that business on his terms, whenever he wants to handle it.

Extra tidbit: there's nothing in Deadlock Rebels about Jesse's smoking habit, something he definitely did pick up at some point while in the gang because, hahaha, he IS smoking in the picture Ashe keeps of him :> Which makes me wonder why, of all pictures Ashe chooses to keep on her bike's dashboard, she picks one where he's smoking.

Then, it makes me wonder about the fact that Jesse deliberately starts smoking when he's standing right in front of her (and then he winks at her!). He tosses that cigar after things get kind of dangerous for him because B.O.B. does something, and then... then he goes back to smoking.

RIGHT WHEN HE'S CLIMBING ON THE BIKE.

Like... seriously...

*unintelligible fangirl screaming*

I could be looking too deeply into this. I know I could be. Maybe Blizzard just wants me to go CRAZY with little symbolism and hints charged with SO MUCH MEANING that maybe don't have as much meaning as I thought it did...

... But man, I've sailed into the depths of the shippiest oceans for many ships that have gotten actual breadcrumbs from canon. I've gone wild over ships that have zero opportunity to become a thing in canon continuity. I've written a nearly 3M words story based on a ship that is just UNEXPLORED AMAZING POTENTIAL and ngl, I love exploring it myself, so I don't even begrudge canon that much for not giving it to me anymore.

But the fact is, no ship in OW, as far as I've seen, has remotely as much content, hints and strong ties as McAshe does -- at least, no ships between heroes. We had a cinematic that was CHARGED with significance, with little gestures, with even the smallest facial expressions that carried soooo much more meaning than whole episodes or even seasons in TV shows. And then? We got a novel. A full novel depicting their origins and exploring their dynamics, how tight their friendship was, and how some strong feelings were certainly brewing there, even if neither one was ready to act on them yet (as far as we saw...).

Finally... I'll say I did start working on a Sokkla Western AU ages ago because the idea I had for one was pretty amusing. Then Reunion dropped, and I said "Why would I need to finish that story anymore when the Sokkla Western AU is RIGHT HERE?!"

And that's it, I will stop rambling now because this got insanely long x'D but thank you very very much for giving me this chance to go WILD on everything I can see, within all those canon hints, with these two *-*

#anon #mcashe #the fact that canon is treating me right for once #is blowing my mind and always will #look I can end up crying in a heap when OW2 drops and we find out that nothing I thought of was real #it's entirely possible #... but we already got so much #SOOOOO MUCH #that I can't even say I'd be mad x'D #I am one happy camper on this ship #and I love them to pieces #I wish I had the time/chance to make all the art I've been inspired to about them *cries ten rivers*#one day... one day

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neonvivecs · 5 years

Text

A Mer’s Word - AO3 During their escape from Blacklight to Solstheim, Jenassa asks Teldryn a favor he doesn’t think he can follow. [ CW: abuse, discussed ]

Continuing from this post

“Teldryn? Are you awake?”

Teldryn hummed without opening his eyes, hoping she'd take the hint and leave him alone. He'd managed to secure passage for him and the Arano girl on a cargo ship heading to Solstheim, though “passage” was a generous way to describe it. They were crammed down in the hold with barely enough room to lay down, but at least they’d be in Raven Rock in a day’s time.

From there, he could get her out of Morrowind entirely and wash his hands of her and this thrice-damned job. But first, they had to get there.

He heard Jenassa shuffle to sit up, and he groaned before cracking open his eyes. “What is it?” He grumbled. He was tired, damn it, and sore and ready for a night’s sleep.

The flickering light from their lantern cast shadows over Jenassa’s face as she chewed her lip anxiously. “I need to ask you a favor.” She said softly, and he laughed shortly.

“This entire expedition is a favor, girl.” He laughed, and she glared at him before kicking him. Still a little girl, no matter how she blustered.

“I’m serious. I need to ask you something.”

He groaned again before he sat up to face her, running a hand over his face. “Alright, kid, what is it? Need a bedtime story?”

She huffed and rolled her eyes, but something in her face was… troubling. Afraid. She should be afraid. He told himself, but another part was concerned at how uncharacteristically serious she looked. “It’d be foolish to think that my father won’t come after me again.” She said slowly, starting to pick at her nails anxiously. Teldryn fought down the urge to tell her to stop it - he wasn’t her father, let her destroy her hands if she wants. “This is the second time I’ve escaped him. Before you came back for me, he…” She screwed her eyes shut and took a shaky breath. “He told me that he’d keep me locked in a room for the rest of my life if it’d get me to behave. He and Mother were talking about marrying me to someone to get them to ‘break me in’. He won’t take kindly to being defied again.”

Teldryn grunted in response. There wasn’t much to say - Adril’s gross mistreatment of her was unacceptable, yes, but it seemed fairly obvious that he wouldn’t take kindly to his daughter running away for the second time. “What’s your point?”

Jenassa opened her eyes and looked at him with tears welling in her eyes. Oh, shit. “If he comes after me, no matter what happens, I will not go back there. If he tries to make me… make sure that I don’t.”

Teldryn shrugged, frowning. “That’s what I’m here for, girl, I-“

“You don’t understand.” She hissed. She grabbed his hand and dragged it to her throat as the tears spilled down her face and his eyes widened in shock. “You make sure that they don’t take me alive.”

Ah, shit.

He snatched his hand back from her. “I’m not going to kill you, are you out of your mind?!”

“Please.” Her voice cracked as her breath started to hitch with sobs. “I’m so tired of living like this. I just want to be free, and if I can’t, then what’s the point in living?” Her shoulders bowed as she started sobbing in earnest, burying her face in her hands. He just stared at her - it made him sound like a damn poet, but he could feel the pain and terror radiating from her. “Please, please just-“

Ah, sod it.

“Hey.” He reached over and dragged her across the distance and into his arms. She crumpled in on herself as he pulled her into his lap, holding her to him as tightly as he could manage. He didn’t say anything, just let her cry into his chest and whisper please, please, please over and over again. He tightened his grip on her, his vision going red around the edges as he tried to swallow down his anger. Sure, the girl was a pain in the ass, but she was just a child.

A child begging a sellsword to kill her because it was better than facing her father. What kind of man put that sort of fear into his daughter? What kind of man reveled in it, as long as she played the part he wanted?

He hadn’t been this angry in a long time. He’d love nothing more than to break Adril’s smug shit-eating face in with his bare hands.

Jenassa’s breathing started to even out, and her fingers slowly relaxed their grip on his shirt. “I’m sorry.” She sniffled, her voice still thick.

Teldryn sighed and smoothed her hair back from her forehead, resting his chin on top of her head. “I’m not going to kill you, but I’ll be damned if he ever touches a hair on your head again.” He growled.

He felt her frown in confusion against his chest. “Ser-“

“You listen here. I’m getting you out of here if it’s over my dead body, and that’s a promise.” He sighed and leaned back against the wall, staring at the lantern swinging from the rafters. “You’re gonna be alright. Take this old mer's word for it.”

She sniffled again and nestled closer. “Thank you.” She whispered.

They sat in silence for a long while until Teldryn realized that she’d fallen asleep. He didn’t want to wake her, so he reached out and dragged one of the blankets to cover both of them and settled in as comfortably as he could. “Hope I make a good pillow.” He grumbled absently, but his mind was still racing.

She was right. The Aranos weren’t a great house, but nothing to scoff at. And with allies like theirs, they could very well prove dangerous to both of them. He’d probably never work in Blacklight again - which suited him well enough, he needed a change in scenery. But his mind kept going back to the sneer on Adril’s face as he looked down at his daughter, kneeling on the ground. The crack as he hit her, the venom in his voice.

How dare you do this to our family? Have you forgotten your place?

Teldryn laughed shortly and closed his eyes as Jenassa shifted in her sleep, somehow still curling into him even more. You aren’t the only one with friends in the right places, you bile-mouthed bastard. He thought as he settled into sleep.

#teldryn sero #jenassa #skyrim #tes #the elder scrolls #I call this one Well Shit Guess I’m A Father Now #Teldryn Sero is the patron dad for people with shitty fathers I just decided #Jenassa talks big shit when she’s older but Teldryn is always gonna see a scared little kid who’s way too snarky for her own good #o.txt #o writes

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nimwallace · 6 years

Note

7b ♡

Thanks Anon :) Wow, this got angsty fast lol. Happy ending tho. “Oscar Wilde, Sherlock, really?” John picked up the thin, flimsy book from the coffee table. It was“The Picture of Dorian Gray”, evidently freshly bought from thebookstore down the street. “Do you have a problem with theIrish poet, John?” Sherlock said teasingly. “I rather thoughtpoetry was your area.” “Exactly,” John said. “When’veyou ever read fiction.” “Even fiction, John,sometimes has value to it. Yes, it’s full of useless, nonsensicaldrivel, but it has it’s perks.” “Hmm.” Sherlockstood, taking the book from John’s hands. “Do you know Wilde’shistory, John?” “Erm, gay bloke, right? It was a bigcontroversy in the day.” Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Nothow I would word it, but yes. Tried and convicted of “grossindecency towards men.” Things have changed a lot, wouldn’t yousay?” “Well, yeah,” John muttered. “I don’t think peoplegive a shit who you sleep with now. Well, most people.” “Wrong,” Sherlock said breezily. He handed his phone toJohn, opened at a long email from someone named “Eric Wordsmith.”“Wally Wordsmith and his partner Sean O'Conner were murderedoutside a pub last Tuesday. It was a random hate crime. There are nosuspects yet.” John sickened reading the email. “Thepolice,” Sherlock sneered, “are claiming they know don’tthe motive.” “I’m sorry, what does all this have to do witha poet from over 200 years ago?” “It’s the same,John. The same story, always a tragedy. They ruin us.” John’s breath caught on the word “us.” “Sherlock, relax abit. I think this case has you a bit worked up.” Sherlock shothim a glare. “I’m not “worked up”. I’mangry, John. Angry.” Sherlock turned his back to him, tossingthe book onto the table. He breathed a shaky breath, as thoughsteadying himself. John softened. It was a rare thing to seeSherlock like this. Admitting to an emotion. Expressing it. Withpassion, even. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay, that’sreasonable. Good, even.” “I’m angry at the world, John.Angry that I was raised heterosexual, Angry that people are killedfor being otherwise.” Sherlock always was passionate aboutjustice. “I’m angry atthe people at school who hurt me. I’m angry at the tabloids forclaiming it’s career-ending. I’m angry at you,John.” John started in surprise. Sherlock maintained eyecontact. “I’m angry at you, John, for not noticing my feelingsfor you, or ignoring them. I’m angry for the “no homo” jokes youmake about us. I hate it.” There were tears in his eyes now. “Sherlock, I’m sorry—“ “Just stop, John. Just tell me.” John clenched his jaw. His throat felt raw, burning. Hehas feelings for me. All this time. “Iswear, Sherlock, if this is some cruel joke—“ “DoI look like I’m joking?” God, I’ve hurt him. “I’m sorry, Sherlock. I loveyou.” He choked. “Always have. Should’ve said it. Didn’t want to.Maybe because of those things you talked about, like Oscar Wilde.”He was trembling. Stay under control, soldier. You’ve gotthis. “Don’t give up on me,Sherlock, please.” Sherlock sobbed. They sat on thesofa, close, touching tentatively. They’d spent some hours of crying,hugging, crying, kissing, talking, crying. Now they’d both driedtheir tears, made their resolution clear. Rosie climbed onto theirlaps and John smiled, pulling her closer while her small handsgrasped at the book in his hands. “Time to read this,” Johnsaid. It was time to get past every person who had died for love andread a book written by man who openly lived for it. “No moretragedy,” Sherlock said. “Just us.” They read Oscar Wildefor the remainder of the evening.

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mindfulwrath · 6 years

Text

Onward

A BuzzFeed Unsolved Fanfic

A spirit can only move on when it has completed its unfinished business.

Or, it can't, because ghosts aren't real.

Words: 4,922 Warnings: Blood & gore, major character death Additional tags: Angst with a happy ending, character turned into a ghost, platonic Shane & Ryan

AO3 Link

"It's really kinda nice up here, don't you think?" Shane says, looking out over the vast moorlands. Moonlight glimmers off of brackish water, casts soft shadows across lumps of heather and gorse.

"You're insane," Ryan spits.

"What? You don't think it's nice? Just look at this view! It's lovely."

"It's creepy as fuck, aaaaaaand you're crazy."

"Okay, well have fun looking for ghosts while I'm enjoying the beautiful Scottish countryside."

"Yeah, thanks, I will," Ryan says under his breath, shaking his head. He raises his voice and speaks for the cameras. "Okay, so, here we are up on the battlements of Crathes Castle, uh, Shane is admiring the scenery, but we are hopefully gonna see something much more interesting. Now, the curator told us there'd been some restoration ongoing up here, so uh, watch your step, 'cuz . . . oh boy."

"We are pretty high up," says Shane, sticking his neck out to look over the parapet. Far below, there's a pale square of concrete, some outbuilding being redone after falling over. It's about the size of a postage stamp from this perspective.

"And when Shane's saying that, you know it's high."

"Hah-hah, the height jokes! Fruit so low-hanging, even you can reach it."

"Yep, sure, that's about what I expected from you. Anyway, let's see if we can find some ghosts."

"You do that, I'm just gonna hang out here and watch."

"Yeah, good, stay out of my way," says Ryan.

Shane spares a glance over his shoulder at the camera. He shakes his head. As Ryan starts up his customary shouting-at-nothing, Shane puts his elbows up on the parapet and leans back, settling in for the show.

Stone grinds on crumbling masonry. Ryan yelps. Shane flails at empty air.

"Whoah, fuck—"

There's no scream. There's a horrible, plunging sickness, and an instant of perfect clarity.

The second-to-last thing that goes through Shane's head is, Wouldn't it be ironic if—

The last thing is a four-foot piece of rebar.

It isn't surprising that the universe has a cruel sense of humor. That's been made evident since the dawn of time, in things like rosy-lipped batfish and mass-extinctions and the invention of capitalism. The Homers and Ovids of the world, the Shakespeares and Edgar Allen Poes, they might actually have gotten things kind of almost right—at least in that whoever's running things, they're 1. a poet, and 2. a bastard.

It is somewhat surprising to look down at his own dead body.

"Son of a bitch," he says.

His body settles, dripping blood. There's a lot of blood, and a lot of him is broken—shattered, really. A noise draws his attention upward, a shout and clamor. Shane can't make out what it is. The sound is distorted, and now that he's paying attention, everything else is, too. It's like a dreamscape, like someone took dozens of photographs over decades of time, printed them on transparencies and overlaid them. If he concentrates, he can pick out individual images and bring them to the forefront.

Something moves in the doorway. Shane can't quite focus on it. He shakes his head and rubs his eyes. He's not sure, but he thinks he can hear screaming, and it stirs something in him and he doesn't like it. Fortunately, it goes away pretty quickly, and silence falls again.

"Well?" he calls out. "What now?"

The world does not answer.

"Do I have to stay here, or can I, like, go? Can I just go? 'Cuz uh, gotta tell you, I'm not really into the whole ghost-thing!"

Still, nothing. The distant sound of sirens drifts on the breeze. He looks down at his body and folds his arms.

"Oh, shit, I could go to my own funeral," he realizes. "Boy, that'd be a trip, huh?"

All's quiet on the moors, save for the approaching sirens. Shane glances over his shoulder. Out of curiosity, he wanders back to the camera crew. The bright lights leave the world in a haze, illuminating a sea of phantasmal cars, buses, carriages, horses, people. It's hard to focus on the ones that are here now, so much so that it gives Shane a killer headache.

Or maybe that's just the lingering memory of the rebar going through his skull. Could be either.

He finds Ryan huddled up in the back of the equipment van, a blanket around his shoulders and about six people clustered around him. He's shaking like crazy, his eyes wide and wild, and he's . . . he's. . . .

Sobbing.

He's explaining, to the crew, what happened. The words are a jumbled mess. Tears stream down his face. They're trying to comfort him, but they all look just as shell-shocked and sickened and scared. Somebody calls Ryan's girlfriend for him. Somebody else is on the phone with corporate, and someone's still talking to the emergency dispatcher, and Ryan—and Ryan is crying so hard he can't breathe. . . .

Shane backs away, slowly. He goes back to the shattered wreck of his own body, sits down on a chunk of stone that might have been dragged off two hundred years ago. It's less disturbing than the scene back at the van.

"Man, I look like a really fucked-up unicorn," he remarks. "I got brains comin' out the back of my head! That's no good!"

Nobody answers. Blue and red flashing lights crest the hill. Shane sighs and hangs his head.

"And here's me, talking to air again," he mutters. "Okay. So uh—here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna leave. I'm gonna go do . . . other stuff. And not watch them take my body outta here, 'cuz that's gonna be gross. Eugh."

And he's not going to attend his own funeral, either, he decides, as he wanders down the hill away from the castle. He'd kind of assumed everybody else would be as cool with him dying as he was, that it would be no big deal, that it would be sad, but overall just another Thing That Happens. He doesn't want to see Ryan cry again. He doesn't want to see any of his other coworkers cry, either, his friends, or—God forbid—his parents. He doesn't want to be mourned.

It occurs to him about an hour later, as he's slogging through a thousand years of Scottish fen.

He is in an absolutely unique position to find out exactly where, and how many times, Ryan was wrong.

It's hard to gauge the passage of time, but it's probably been a few years, and Shane has learned something very important about ghosts: they don't happen where—or to whom—popular opinion had it.

The big places, the asylums and castles and manors, they're quiet, they're empty. Taverns can be a little bit more populous, although they really aren't any fun. Nobody's having a good time in this part of the afterlife, and most people are alone. He almost never sees anyone with a friend, and never a group of more than three. He's really hoping he never runs into anybody he knows, for . . . lots of reasons.

It's the mundane places that are really teeming, the streetcorners and back-alleys, the factories, the wilderness. And it's not the big people, either—not the mobsters and judges and doctors, but the urchins, the servants, the prostitutes, forgotten in life and forgotten in death. He made it back to America eventually, and the horrors that soaked the earth there made him sick. Not a square inch of all that once-beautiful land was free of blood. In places, it's like the earth itself has died. In places, he can see its ghosts, too.

One place he finds Ryan was right about is Salem.

There's an old house, well-kept, slightly more there than most other structures he finds, although he's sure he never saw it when he was alive. He climbs the steps. An old Black woman sits by the fire.

"Are you Tituba?" he asks. It's a stupid thing to say, but he hasn't said much in a long time. Most of the other ghosts don't like talking to him. For a minute, he thinks Tituba won't, either.

"I remember you," she says. "You were very rude."

"I guess I was," says Shane. "Uh . . . sorry."

She rocks her chair. The fire crackles, although it makes no warmth.

"Can I ask you something?" he says.

"If you want to know the answer."

"Why are you still here? Why haven't you gone . . . wherever dead people go?"

"I'm waiting," she says.

"For what?"

A shrug is all he gets.

"Well . . . good luck, I guess," he says. "I hope it comes to you, whatever it is."

He asks around a little more after that, although people who will talk to him are few and far between. Why are some of us here? It's obviously not everyone. Why are you here?

And he gets the same answer.

I'm waiting.

Time has passed. Shane's more well-traveled than he's ever been, but there's still a strange restlessness in him. Something, he feels, needs to be done, but he'll be damned if he knows what it is. It gets so bad that at one point he risks going to visit his own grave.

It's nice. The tombstone is nice. There's no epitaph, which is about what he wanted. Somebody's left flowers, although they're plastic.

"Kitchy," he says to no one. "Get that shit outta here."

"Plastic?"

Shane starts. There's another man, very old, loitering at a nearby grave. It's the first time someone's struck up a conversation with him, instead of the other way around.

"Uh . . . yeah," he says. The old man shakes his head.

"Kind gesture, but it does feel cheap, doesn't it."

"I guess."

"I always told them not to put plastic flowers on my grave, but some damn fool's done it anyway."

"Sucks. I'm sorry."

He shrugs. "No point in getting upset about it now. Say, do you know when the chariots or what-have-you come down?"

"I don't," Shane admits. "I've never seen 'em."

"Ah, what a shame. I'll wait, then. It's not like I have anything else to do."

"Right?" he says, chuckling, shaking his head.

Between one moment and the next, the old man disappears, like smoke, like fog. There's not even a shadow of him left, not in all the layers of history painted across the world.

Even without a choir of angels, or a blast of Hellfire, it's pretty obvious what just happened. Maybe neither of those things exist to happen, and the vanishing is all there is, after this.

Shane looks down at the flowers on his grave. He takes a deep breath.

"Okay," he says. "All right. I get it."

It's going to take a while to get to L.A., but he's got time.

Ryan's actually kind of doing okay. That's a pretty firm marker on how long Shane's been gone. Incredibly, he's still doing Unsolved, even the paranormal stuff. He's got a new guy working with him, too, although they're a little stilted and they have difficulty making each other laugh, even for the cameras. They seem like they're getting along okay, though. Ryan's definitely chilled out a lot since the last time Shane saw him. He's rusty on the ghost hunting.

It takes a while, takes a lot of following and waiting, but eventually Shane gets the chance to tag along on a trip.

"Man, this brings back some memories, huh," he says, meandering along behind Ryan as he creeps through some abandoned, burnt-out warehouse. "Look at you, though! You grew a big ol' spine since the last time I saw you."

Ryan doesn't respond, because of course he doesn't. He's looked right through Shane a dozen times already. Shane's not too bothered by it. Nobody's seen him in years.

The hunt goes like it always goes. Eventually Ryan and the new guy split up. The new guy goes first.

"This is so dumb," he mutters to the camera, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

"Right?" says Shane. He shakes his head. "Hey, take a little nap, buddy. It's nice! Nice little break from all the craziness."

The guy waits out his five minutes. Shane hangs out. Ryan comes in, trades some banter with the new guy, and is left alone.

Something about the way he moves makes Shane's mind come into sharper focus. The layered blur of the world grows clear in the darkness when Ryan turns out his flashlight.

"Oh, man," he whispers. "Okay. I'm getting chills already. Shit. Shi-hi-hit. No, I'm okay, I'm okay. I'm a big boy. I got my big boy pants on."

"Calm down, big boy, nobody's gonna hurt you," says Shane, rolling his eyes.

But something in him hurts. Something aches. He hasn't felt a damn thing in years, but suddenly, now, it's almost like being alive again. It's almost like he wants something again.

"All right," Ryan says, raising his voice. "So, uh, if there's anybody here with me, uh, my name is Ryan Bergara, I'm a—a paranormal investigator."

"Oh, huh, are you? Is that what you're calling it these days?" says Shane, folding his arms.

"Um . . . if there's anyone here, can you make a noise?"

"No, Ryan, I can't make a noise, because I'm a ghost, and I can't interact with the material world, ya big dummy. I'm made of ectoplasm, or—electromagnetism, or something, I don't actually know. But it doesn't touch stuff! Sometimes if I concentrate real hard, I can walk through walls!"

Ryan just stands and listens. His head swivels back and forth like a radar dish. His eyes are wide and bright. He swallows. He waits, and waits, and waits.

"Okay," he says to himself. "Okay, okay, that's fine, that's okay. Uh—okay, so if there's anybody here, uh, I'm gonna get out this little, uh, this little device. It's called a spirit-box."

"Oh, for crying out loud," Shane sighs, except that the heart he doesn't have anymore is suddenly up in his throat. "It's not gonna tell you anything. It's baloney."

Ryan takes it out and sets it down gingerly on the table, his breaths coming quick and panicky. "And, if you wanna talk to me, you can use this, okay?"

"What—how?" Shane cries. "How am I supposed to do anything with that hokey box?"

"So I'm gonna . . . turn this on, and you should be able to talk to me, through it. Okay, here we go."

The box squeals, then launches into its randomized chirping. Ryan gulps, his eyes flicking around the room. Shane kicks at the table the box sits on. His foot hits something, but Ryan doesn't react, so it probably wasn't the table-as-it-is he kicked, but the shadow of some past version from ten or twenty years ago.

"Okay, so . . . if there's anybody here with me, my name's Ryan. Can you say my name back to me?"

"Of course I can't, the stupid box doesn't do anything."

Ryan stands in silence, listening, listening. A squawk of static comes out of the box.

"What was that?" he says. "Can you say that again?"

"I said your stupid box doesn't do anything."

Choppy white noise, blips of music and talk shows and nothing.

"If there's somebody here with me, can you make a noise?" Ryan asks.

"No! I can't! Because I'm a ghost, you idiot!"

Ost oop it, goes the box. Ryan stiffens.

"What was that? Did you say something?"

"I did, but I didn't say it through your stupid box, which is fuckin' useless!"

Useless.

Ryan pales. His eyes go wide. His breath comes short. "Ohhhh man, okay. Okay. I'm freakin' out a little now. You—Eustice? Is that—is that your name? Eustice?"

Shane's too blind-sided to call him an idiot again. He seizes the spirit box and shakes it. It's like trying to shift a boulder. His voice cracks as he shouts.

"No! No, it's Shane, it's Shane Madej, tell him, tell him it's me!"

Eh ih-ih ee.

"I don't know what that was, I—I'm sorry. Could you repeat that, Eustice?"

"Shane! It's Shane! Ryan, come on, man!"

Chk chk chk chk shh sht cht chk.

"Okay, fuck this, I'm done," says Ryan, reaching for the box. "That's all, bye Eustice, we're done!"

In absolute, idiotic desperation, Shane screams, "Spaghetti!"

Spa-ghet-ti.

Ryan freezes.

"What did you just say?" he whispers.

"Spaghetti! Apple tater!"

Ap-ah t-t-r.

He's shaking so hard his hand blurs over the spirit-box. His breath mists in front of his face. There are tears in his eyes.

"Did you just say . . . apple tater?"

"Yes! I did, yes! Ryan, it's me! Come on, you stupid box, tell him it's me!"

Stih-up-p-p box.

All the blood drains from Ryan's face. He stops breathing. When he blinks, the tears slip out. When he speaks, it barely makes a sound, but Shane feels it, feels it like a punch to the chest, like a struck bell.

Shane?

The only thing he can do is shout, whoop at the top of his lungs and jump in the air. The spirit-box lets out an ungodly wail, and in an instant, Ryan slaps it off the table, screaming.

It smashes on the floor. The room goes silent.

"No," Ryan says, choked up. "Nope, no no no, fuck this, fuck it, I'm out, I'm done! Fuck everything about this!"

He beelines for the door, his knees wobbling. He's just a hair shy of a full-on sprint.

"Where are you going?" Shane demands, hurrying after him. "Hey, no, don't leave! You—you fraidy cat! Ryan! Ryan!"

But he's out of there, back to the noise and bright lights of the camera crew, where the world becomes less real, where Shane's head gets fuzzy and his focus scatters. He retreats back to the shadows, a sudden exhaustion overtaking him.

"Okay," he says to himself. "It's okay. First try's always gonna be . . . messy. And Ryan's an idiot, so—yeah. So yeah. Just gotta keep—keep on keepin' on, Shane. Chin up, buddy. We'll get there."

So of course, because the universe is a poet and a bastard, Ryan does the one thing Shane could never have predicted.

He gives up ghost-hunting.

Quits his job at BuzzFeed, in fact, and moves up north to the Klamaths, and lands a nice little job teaching film and creative writing at a community college. His girlfriend—now wife, apparently—doesn't comment on the fact that they have a night-light in the bedroom. They've probably already talked about it. Shane doesn't like it, the smug little bluebird shitfish, but he leaves it be. Some things are sacred, inviolable.

Anyway, he's got time.

Ryan's daughter first sees him when she turns three.

"Daddy Daddy!" she cries, barreling into his room at ass o'clock in the morning. "Daddy, there's a tall man in my room!"

"What?" he mumbles.

"A tall man, I saw him!"

Ryan comes to check. He turns the lights on. He looks right through Shane a dozen times as he searches the closet and under the bed and behind the lamp and everywhere.

"There's nobody here, sweetie," he says. "Go back to sleep, okay?"

"Okay," she says.

He kisses her head and clicks the light back out. Shane follows him through the door, because—well, it's kind of weird, hanging out in a three-year-old's room. He was just a little spellbound at first, because it was Ryan's kid, and that's a bizarre thought even when he's looking right at it. But staying would be weird, so he doesn't stay.

But he does come back.

It's not like he's haunting Ryan, no, that's not what it's about. He mostly keeps to himself and doesn't bother anyone, but the kid is weirdly good at spotting him, and there's something about being seen that makes him feel . . . good? Important? Less dead and miserable and alone?

Daddy Daddy, the tall man came back. Daddy Daddy, I saw him by my closet. Daddy Daddy, he came to my tea party. Daddy Daddy, he moved my book!

Which, yes, he did, as ludicrous as it was. For lack of anything better to do with his time. If he focuses as hard as he can and pushes with all his might, sometimes, just a little bit, he can move things. Like a child's book, or a doll's hand, or maybe a door if the hinges are well-oiled. He tries not to do it when anybody's home, but he can't always tell. The kid's too good at seeing him, too, but at least she isn't scared. He tries to make sure she knows he's not there to hurt anybody, and although he's pretty sure she can't hear him, she seems to have gotten the message.

Ryan, maybe, didn't.

He gets more jittery. Lights stay on. There's a marked increase in the amount of religious iconography and (likely) holy water. He spends a lot of time on the computer, drinks a lot of coffee, falls behind on his teaching stuff.

One night, the wife and kid go out, and Ryan stays in. This is weird. Shane sticks around.

Ryan goes up to the kid's room, and he settles into the reading chair by her bed, and he turns out all the lights. The blue glow of his phone illuminates his face. He sits still for a long time, just breathing.

"Shane," he says. His voice shakes. "If you're here right now, could you give me a sign?"

The old desperation seizes him. He slaps the window blinds as hard as he can. They manage a faint, whispering sway. Ryan stiffens, takes a deep breath, lets it out again.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. I—I made this for you. I thought maybe it would help, if you're . . . if you're struggling to move on. I hope it helps you, or . . . something. So here it goes."

Another deep breath. Shane waits, pulled taut with anticipation. Ryan adjusts his glasses and looks down at the phone, and he starts to read.

The alien planet of Tomat-0. A rustbucket of an old spaceship sits on a landing pad, engines primed, ready to launch. A pair of plupples, which are alien fruits that are like plums, but cooler, and blue, carry a charismatic box of fries from the future and a sturdy can of good soup up the loading ramp.

"Plup, plup!" says one of the plupples.

"Plup, plup," the other agrees. Plupples are very stupid. However, unfortunately for our heroes, they are not so stupid that they cannot carry out orders from their dark master.

Shane can't believe his ears. He wanders across the room. Even if he had lungs, he wouldn't be able to breathe. He sits down on the bed near Ryan, pulls up his knees and wraps his arms around them. Ryan reads on.

"Wait just one plupping minute, there!" A voice rings out! The plupples halt. There, coming over the horizon of Tomat-0, a witch-hologram of corn riding upon a giant plupple comes charging to the rescue.

"Plup, plup!"

"Plup, plup, plup!"

The hologram corn, Maizey, arrives. "You put those critically-acclaimed and universally-beloved characters down, you Ewok ripoffs!"

"PLUP," the giant plupple plups in agreement.

"Whoah, hey, uh, whoah!" Garce, one of two intelligent plupples, emerges from the ship. "Hey, uh, wow, corn girl, how did you, uh, escape your deadly trial by combat, which you were sentenced to by the great Dr. Goondis, played by Ryan Steven Bergara?"

"I fought the beast and I won, as you can see, because I am riding it into battle with you little blue freaks. Also I ate Dr. Goondis, because we didn't have the time to cut up more VO files for him, so now he's dead."

"That makes perfect narrative sense, uh, but how did you find us?"

A flash of light, a creaky, cackling voice.

"Pam, Pam, kazam, it was me!" A tiny hotdog, about forty percent bigger than Jiminy Cricket, appears in a flash of witch-light on Maizey's corn shoulder. "I'm doing my part to atone for the evil I did before I died, even though it was totally sick and awesome!"

"That's understandable. But uh, what are you both going to do now?"

Maizey draws herself up tall, tall and proud atop the giant plupple. "We're going to take our friends back from you blue goons. We're going to travel back in time and save my witch-hologram wife, stop Pam from killing the hotdog family, the unbelievably rich and compelling characters of Dan, Rebecca, and Brandon, and creating the Gauntlet of Ultimate Power, or G.U.P.—"

"Gup! Gup! Gup!" plup the plupples.

Shane laughs. He puts a hand over his mouth, like Ryan's going to hear him or something, come over bashful and stop reading. Ryan doesn't hear him, though. He keeps going.

And that, dear listeners, esteemed fans of the Hotdaga, that is what they do. Together, Maizey and Pam, along with the un-drugged Gene and Mike Soup, they rout the plupples. They fix the Minestrone, that marvelous spacecraft, and equip it with the Bernoulli Converter to reach the wormhole in the Graxilon quadrant. Dear fans, they travel back in time, and stop the evil Pam from dumping that delicious party of wedding guests into the lava. By having Pam from the future eat herself. It's totally wicked awesome.

Maizey reunites with her witch-hologram french-fry wife, Gebra. Gene gets the Risky Fixin's band back together, for one last smash hit before the happily ever after you've all been waiting for. And here, my dear friends, here it is.

Music plays. It's stupid. It's the stupidest thing Shane has ever heard, and the production value is shit, and Ryan can't sing worth a damn, either.

For the next two minutes and eighteen seconds, he cries like a baby.

"And that's . . . it," says Ryan. He's crying too. "That's the thrilling conclusion to the Hot Dog Saga, or Hotdaga. It's . . . solved. I hope you—I hope you liked it."

"You nailed it, man," Shane says, choked up. "You got it. You nailed it. Shit, Ryan. Thank you."

Ryan sniffles. He wipes his face. He puts his phone down and sits in the dark.

"I don't wanna sound rude or anything, Shane, but . . . now could you please, please leave my family alone? Like, I miss you, but I just—I can't. I can't do this anymore. I'm sorry, man. I'm so fuckin' sorry for what happened."

"What? No, no no no, what are you talking about? Ryan, it wasn't your fault, Jesus!"

Ryan scrubs at his face, puts his head in his hands.

"Just please . . . please let me—just let me move on, too. I can't do this anymore."

"I—yeah," says Shane, shaken right down to his core, in so much pain he can barely hold himself together. "Yeah. Of course. I'm sorry. I didn't even think about . . . yeah. I'll go. I'll go."

He almost puts a hand on Ryan's shoulder, then thinks better of it. He walks out the door.

He doesn't look back.

About four months before Ryan's eightieth birthday, the Universe catches up with him.

Shane isn't sure how he knows, but he knows. He makes his way back to Crescent City, finds the hospital, the bed. It's bad. It's been bad for a long time.

It's not going to get better.

His daughter is with him that night, when the lights are dim and Shane doesn't have to fight so hard to stay present. She's middle-aged now. It's weird how fast five decades can slip by, when you spend them wandering around doing nothing.

Well, nothing except waiting.

"Sweetie, do you remember the Tall Man?" Ryan asks.

"My imaginary friend?" she asks. "Kinda. Why?"

"I think . . . I see him," says Ryan. "The Tall Man was always nice, wasn't he? He was always nice to you?"

"He was, Daddy. You were the only one who was worried about him."

"Good. Good. Because if he ever wasn't, I'm gonna . . . I'll kick his ass."

She laughs. Shane laughs.

They're stupid last words, but it's okay. He dies in his sleep about three hours later, when his daughter is sleeping, too.

Ryan takes a moment. He looks down at his body. He isn't terribly concerned.

"Huh," he says.

"'Bout sums it up, doesn't it."

Ryan turns, and he sees Shane. Shane waves.

"Hey," he says. "So uh . . . turns out you were right."

You were right.

It rings down through fifty years, reverberating, a struck bell, a punch in the chest.

You were right.

The corner of Ryan's old ghost mouth turns up, and then he smiles a big, wrinkly, toothy smile, and Shane knows, in that moment, that this is what he was waiting for.

"Damn right I was," says Ryan.

"So you uh . . . you got anything you wanna do, before . . . whatever's next?" Shane asks.

"Mm, maybe a couple things. Like, y'know, see all the haunted stuff, if it's actually haunted."

"Yeah, that's cool, that's cool. Pretty much what I did. You uh . . . you mind if I tag along?"

"Mind? No. Wouldn't have it any other way."

"The Ghoul Boys ride again," says Shane, smiling, even as he feels something begin to dissolve within him.

"Hell yeah," says Ryan.

He sticks out a hand, old and weathered. Shane shakes it. Ryan pulls him in and hugs him, so tight it threatens to pop him like a bubble.

"I'm sorry, Shane," he whispers. "I'm sorry."

Shane hugs him back.

"It wasn't your fault," he says. "It's okay."

From one moment to the next, with no choir of angels and no Hellfire—

In a flash of white—

They go onward.

#bfu fic #buzzfeed unsolved fanfic #shane & ryan #why yes this is the thing that made me cry #because i'm a big ol baby and i don't understand my own emotions #anyway i hope you like it #and if you don't #you can kiss my apple tater

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