#“It's all fake‚ he can see the stagehands. but even then‚ why does it feel so real?”

[fandomsilhouette]

they’ve got a bad reputation (they’ll get a standing ovation)

The spotlight clicks on, floods the stage until the shadows are sent scampering away, every flaw and every fear in sharp contrast for the audience to feast upon; but what horrors lurk where the darkness prowls, trapped at the edges of the script like handcuffs around the actor? May life mirror art at the best of times, the worst of times. 

Happy @felinettenovember, y’all! We’re back to terrible o’clock writing times with @musicfren, who is collaborating with me on this fic-turned-mechanism-through-which-to-preach-on-the-spot-Hamlet-analysis. He’ll be posting the second part on his account tomorrow, during which the bulk of my meta nonsense is going to come through. Are you following him yet? @emzurl spoiled this whole story with their art and @dumpsdoods simply spoils me with theirs. 

Part 1 below. Part 2 upcoming.

“Alright, take ten, my dudes! We’ll go from Act III, Scene 1 after you get some snacks and chill.” 

Marinette lets out an amused laugh as she thumbs through her copy of the script, ignoring the throng of hungry students pushing past her, desperate for this grueling 5 hour rehearsal to end. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but certainly not of this play. Nino makes a good director, she thinkst: loud, relentlessly positive, able to carry the sagging energy of an entire unwilling highschool production on his shoulders.

But alas, poor Nino is fighting a losing battle. Everyone knows that the point of this play is the obligatory report they will all have to write for their literature class at the end of the week. Almost no one here can act, and Marinette’s arms are beginning to grow tired from carrying up the entire play. With scarcely a week left it looks like most people are planning to coast the rest of the way to a clean C+. The part of Hamlet still has not been cast.

Akuma attacks have pushed back the discussions they were meant to have on the play, and Bustier couldn’t cancel the major assignment for the unit; instead, she had told them to analyze the play through the role of their choice after embodying it for the few weeks it took to rehearse and perform the production. Their in-class discussions have been condensed into a take-home paper on top of the already obligatory theatre performance and pretty much everyone knows that Bustier would be lenient on them just for that. And Nino knows they know, and Marinette is starting to suspect that he is itching to “chill” like he keeps telling them to. 

Marinette chews on the corner of her pencil, running a finger over the veritable bloodbath of neat pink notes she’s crammed into the margins of every page. She’s on in the next scene, and she wants to make sure she’s got all the nuances of the character, her character, exactly as she plans to bring her to life. Looking over the script, Marinette starts to regret not typing the notes to begin with: her entire essay is definitely already fully composed. Maybe Max will consider building her an application that can scan the document and transpose it to a word processor as editable text… 

“Give me your hand, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.” 

Marinette looks up to see Felix quoting Shakespeare, trying very hard to look inconspicuous in his black stage-hand clothes, wheeling a stand of fake swords almost as tall as he was. She watches with some amusement as he struggles to set it upright, and makes absolutely no move to help him. 

“I wasn’t expecting to see you on stage any time this week,” she says, sticking her tongue out and being far cuter than it had any right to be. Felix, sweating, scrambles for a riposte. 

“I hadn’t expected you out of the home ec room at all. Shouldn’t you be half-drowned in fabric or something?” 

She sends him a quizzical look. He wonders if the akuma attacks have scrambled her memory. “Because...you’ve got costumes to work on? As the play’s costume designer?” 

“Oh, I’m not doing costumes this year, actually.” Marinette laughs awkwardly. “I’m not even sure what I would write about if I were.” 

Felix stares at her. The sword he was carrying slid out of his grasp with a dull clang.

“...what are you writing about as a stagehand?” 

Felix decides to pretend the last few moments were a fever dream and focus on answering this one very reasonable question. “I’m looking at the blocking and the prop placement and the lighting and how it impacts the effect of the character portrayal on the audience and what information manages to get conveyed to the audience.” 

Marinette offers a suitably impressed ooh at this. “How far have you gotten with it?” 

“Darling, we don’t even have a Hamlet. The titular character. I’ve done nothing.” Felix offers the most deadpan look he can muster and startles at her giggle. “What, how far have you gotten?!”

Marinette flashes her script at him, more notes than dialogue at this point. 

“You are possibly the only person in the class thinking anything even remotely deep about this play. What is all that for?!” 

“Hopefully for a handwritten notes to editable text conversion app.” 

Felix only narrowly avoids gaping. What?! “...is that what’s scrawled on every corner of that script you’re clutching?” He grins crookedly at her, and her traitorous heart skips a beat. 

“...oh! no, um, those are my notes. For… my essay? I’ve written out the character analyses into where the text supports my arguments and… um… yeah.” She flushes with the realization that 1) that was completely out of context for him because 2) he cannot, in fact, read her mind. 

“...Marinette, for what do you possibly need notes?” 

“...to play my character?” 

“Oh, wow, are you playing a guy? Impressive, tiny girl.” He rakes his gaze down her body and Marinette is flushed for a whole new reason now. She pushes to her feet and doesn’t bother to care about the swords she knocks over. 

“I’m not, actually.” 

“Why?! Who is there to play among the female characters? Marinette, I took you as someone who plays characters of worth.”

She looks up at him, eyes wide with dangerous innocence “Are female characters not valuable?” 

“I-- no, that’s not what I meant and you know it! Shakespeare is historical, and male-centric, and writes women who do little more than parrot the views of the men around them if they get any dialogue at all. There’s no substance there! Who are you possibly going to play, Gertrude? Ophelia?!?” Felix’s tone makes it very clear what he thinks of the only two options she has available to her. 

Marinette sweeps past him coolly, her hair whipping against his cheek. “I am playing Ophelia, actually.”

Stumbling, Felix turns and gives her a wry grin. “Oh darn, I’m sorry for your loss.” He makes a valiant effort at replicating her stuck out tongue, not that Marinette is looking. It’s for the best: it’s not nearly as cute on him. 

“Excuse you?” Marinette halts in her tracks, shadowed amongst the heavy curtains of stageside. Her voice echoes hauntingly around the empty theatre. 

“...c’mon. Ophelia does less than Gertrude. She even has fewer lines!”

With great restraint, Marinette manages to do nothing more than turn to face Felix, trembling with repressed rage. “Does less? Ophelia is the only person in this play who does anything at all that isn’t driven by a madman’s plot! Ophelia is the only person in this play who can pull Hamlet out of insanity, even if for little more than a moment.” 

Frustrated, Felix tosses the nearest item at her and growls when she catches it neatly. It’s a victory when she stalks off across the stage to the opposite wing, gathering her notes and settling herself neatly in a prim fury. She’s wrong, she’s wrong, she’s wrong. He whirls around and starts rearranging everything she knocked over, grumbling under his breath. 

“Ophelia is the only character in that play who makes zero choices of her own. Even her death was a result of her tripping into a lake.”

There’s a crashing sound, and Felix spins back around to see Marinette bolt upright, tempestuous in her temper. Felix may have gotten a bit too loud with that last statement.

“How can you say that? That’s the most significant choice she makes in the whole play!”

Felix can feel the irritation rising, hot and ugly in his chest. Why is she being so stubborn? Marinette makes a gesture at him, quick and angry from the other side of the room. Felix squints and tilts his head, struggling to what she was doing from across the stage. Then all at once it hits him.

“Do… do you bite your thumb at me?!” He splutters in indignant incoherency, his grip tightening on whatever he’s holding until the plastic grooves bite into his skin. 

“I do bite my thumb at thee, sir.” 

Felix steps onto stage, glaring. Marinette matches him step for step, glare for angry glare. Nino gasps, cowers, and then grabs his camera.

The class, milling around aimlessly as their ten minutes ticked to an end, comes to a collective halt. Nino sheppards them out of the way of the camera’s shot. They flock without protest to the edges of the theatre, terrified to watch this trainwreck unfold, terrified they’ll miss even a second of it. The die has been cast. Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?

Nino can only hope that the set backgrounds manage to come out of this intact.

#Notte Writes #Notte Collabs #Fanfiction #Miraculous Ladybug Fanfiction #ML #Miraculous Ladybug #Miraculous: Adventures Of Ladybug And Chat Noir #Felix #PV Felix #Felix Agreste #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Felix/Marinette #Felinette #Theatre Consistent Dramatics #Grievous Insults (To A Nerd) #Meta Parallels To Hamlet #Fluff #Felinette Month 2020 Day 14 #Felinette Month 2020

[satyr-syd]

 “The stitching on that hemline is impeccable!”

 When Kai was kicked off the acting team, he never thought he’d be so...okay with it.

 “The silk was an excellent choice. It really shimmers under the spotlight!”

 Turns out that being a stagehand is kind of fun. Kai likes how hands-on it is, and how he always has something to show for himself at the end. Acting is ephemeral, but costumes can last a long, long time.

 “I love this dresser, I’m so glad you were able to find it under all those other props!”

 Of course, it helps that he likes the stage crew members. Legosi’s a weird guy, but he’s pretty chill when he’s not doing something completely insane. Fudge always knows the latest gossip. Riz is quiet and polite. Kibi is a bit of a wimp, but he’s funny.

 And then there’s Dom.

read on ao3

 “You’re such a fast learner, Kai, I’m so glad you’re on our team.”

 From the very beginning, Dom has made Kai feel welcome. He showers him in compliments, goes out of his way to include him, and spends extra time teaching him the ins and outs of stage management.

 It’s...nice. In fact it’s almost too nice. Why is this bird being so nice to a mongoose? Kai knows that the Drama Club is renowned for their close interspecies relationships, but he always thought those were just casual friendships. That’s how it was on the acting team. At least, that’s how it was for him.

 Well, that’s how it’s supposed to be, but apparently Dom didn’t get the memo, because everything Dom does makes Kai want to be closer to him. Kai can’t help it when Dom’s the one to lean over him and guide his hands along the sewing machine, to stay late to help him finish painting a set, to retrieve the box of light bulbs from the shelf that’s too high for Kai to reach. Doesn’t Dom know that his scent drives Kai crazy? Doesn’t he know better to be left alone in a room with a carnivore? Maybe that’s why Kai’s so attracted to - uh,      fond     of the peacock. Because he trusts Kai not to eat him.

 Kai doesn’t know if it’s the smell of bird meat or the smell of Dom that’s driving him crazy, but whatever it is, Kai needs to sort it out.

 The best way to sort it out is just asking. Probably.

 The stage crew is reorganizing the Drama Club’s storage house in order to make room for the new dinosaur statue from this year’s Meteor Festival. It turns out the room is messy as hell, and if they want to be able to find anything for future productions, they need to clean it out.

 Kai tosses a dozen threadbare, dusty costumes to the ground. “The actors couldn’t be bothered to help, huh?” He kicks them into the steadily growing pile of unusable costumes that were still taking up space here for some reason. “Not like it’s all their shit we’re cleaning up after.”

 “If the actors were here, they wouldn’t know how to handle the equipment and they’d break all our stuff,” Fudge says.

 Kai cocks his head. “Good point, actually.”

 The crew continues organizing for an hour until the setting sun’s orange rays permeate through the windows. Dom dismisses everyone and thanks them for their hard work (Except Legosi, because he didn’t even show up in the first place. Punk.)

 “Kai.” Kai’s ears perk up at the sound of that voice saying his name. Dom smiles at him as he asks, “Could you help me with one more thing?”

 Kai nods. “Of course!”

 “Thank you. The rest of you, have a good night.”

 His heart starts to thump louder as the crew files out. Shit. Should he ask now? Now’s the perfect time, isn’t it? When it’s just the two of them?

 Dom has him untangle a fake barbwire fence that got caught in some cords. By untangle he means use his teeth and claws to tear through it, because they don’t need the cord anyway and it takes a lot less time than trying to actually untangle it.

 “Why did you ask me?” Kai tugs at another knot. It snaps in half. “Riz and Fudge have claws too.” Not to mention Riz’s claws and teeth are much more powerful than his.

 Dom sits on top of a wooden table next to him, working his way through a big plastic box of every hat in every size you could ever imagine. He places a bowler hat twice the size of Kai’s head beside him in the ‘keep’ pile. He isn’t wearing his blazer - his white collared shirt is pulled tight across his chest, like he’s wearing a size too small. Kai feels the strange urge to buy him a shirt that fits him better. He’d be more comfortable that way. Or his buttons would be, at least.  

 “You’re a hard worker,” Dom says. “I like that about you.”

 “Is that the only thing you like about me?”

 “Of course not,” Dom says. Kai waits for him to elaborate, but the peacock doesn’t look up from his hats.

 Kai snaps another cord in half. “Then why…?”

 Dom shrugs. “I like to spend time with you.”

 Kai gulps. He must know how that sounds, right? Like a deathwish. “Even when it’s just us?” Kai asks. “Even though...you and I...and I’m a - and you’re a - you know…”

 Dom hops off the table and walks over to him in large strides. Kai resists the urge to step backwards as Dom stops right in front of him.

 Kai’s painfully aware of how      tall     Dom is. The top of Kai’s head barely reaches Dom’s shoulders. His neck seems a mile high. Maybe because he’s always dwarfed by Legosi and Riz and the other larger carnivores in width, but Kai never thought of him as big. Yet, right now, when it’s just them, Dom standing mere inches away, looking down on him with sharp, glossy eyes, Kai feels like prey.

 It’s absolutely thrilling.

 “Kai,” Dom says in that gentle, not-quite-but-almost condescending tone. “I don’t know if you know this, but peacocks aren’t herbivores.”

 “Uh...what?”

 Dom drops his head down to Kai’s level. They’re nearly nose-to-beak. “If I wanted to... ” sunlight glares off the tip of his beak. His sharp, sharp beak. Kai never noticed how sharp it was before, “...I could eat meat.”

 Kai gulps.

 Dom straightens and takes a step back, smiling innocently like he hadn’t just      completely flipped the narrative of their species    . “Not that I’d ever choose to, of course~!”

 “Oh of - of course,” Kai says, mirroring that innocent smile as well as he can, pretending he wasn’t just staring at his friend’s mouth. A mouth that, apparently, was made to tear through flesh just like his.

 He waits until Dom returns to sorting the hats before he allows himself to breath. Keeping an eye on Dom, he reaches behind him and runs his hand over the wall. Fingertips fall into deep divots, punctures formed by his own claws. He’d dug them into the wall to keep himself from lashing out.

 This wasn’t like that time with Louis. After hearing Tem’s position wouldn’t be his, Kai had lost himself to anger, a blind rage that had stripped him down to only his base instincts. This time, he’s lost himself to something else. Oh, it was definitely hunger - just not the kind he expected.

     What the hell is wrong with me?  

 He’s embarrassed for not realizing sooner that peafowls aren’t strictly herbivores. Not that Kai would have any reason to know a peafowl’s diet...Dom’s the only peafowl Kai’s ever known.

 Honestly, though, he’s relieved. It’s crazy enough to be attracted to another species, let alone another whole      class     of animals - Dom’s not even a mammal! If, on top of all that, Kai was attracted to a herbivore...he’d probably think he’d gone crazy. Or that he was just hungry.

 That night Kai scrolls through his phone, reading as many articles about peafowls as he has the patience to.

Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Galliformes Family: Phasianidae Genus: Pavo Species: Pavo cristatus

 The females of that species look much different than Dom. Kai doesn’t think he’s seen a single female peafowl at their school - not that Dom would be interested in them. Thank the dinosaurs for that.

 Peafowls’ original diets consist of plants, insects, snakes, and small mammals. Small mammals. Was Kai a small mammal in Dom’s eyes? He’s much larger than mice and other rodents, but not nearly as big as Dom...Kai shivers thinking about it.

 Honestly though, their diets aren’t too different. Mongeese can eat insects, snakes and small mammals, too. And birds. In another lifetime, a millennia ago, maybe, they might have tried to eat each other.

 There’s one thing that stands out to him, though, more than anything else. It’s the first thing he runs into when searching for characteristics of peacocks: big, colorful, beautiful feathers.

 Of course Kai has seen peacock feathers before. Everyone knows what they look like: they’re so distinctive, a marker of the species. Beginning at the small of their backs, the feathers form a long, tail-like covering called a train. It looks like one half of a woman’s poofy skirt, cascading from their waists down to their toes.  

 It’s only then that he realizes he’s never seen Dom’s train before.

 Today, Dom doesn’t have to ask Kai to stay behind. All the other stagehands have excuses to leave early - Kibi is studying for a math test, Fudge has a date, and Riz has to refill his prescription. Legosi, once again, left early to do whatever it is he does when he ditches them.  

 Most of the older costumes and broken props have been moved and reorganized, so today they’re dusting. They use faux feather dusters with a long reach, Kai sweeping underneath cabinets and tables, Dom reaching the nooks and crannies at the top. They make a good team, Kai thinks.

 Kai’s never been one to be afraid of confrontation - nor could the adjective “patient” be used to describe him. He can’t help himself from bringing up what’s on his mind the minute after everyone leaves. “Hey, Dom.”

 “Yes?” Dom pauses his dusting to look down at him.

 “Do you...uh…” Kai touches his lip, figuring out the nicest way to word it. “Do you have, like, a train?”

 Dom’s eyebrows shoot up, and he immediately swivels his neck around and continues dusting along the shoe shelf. “Yes, I do.”

 Kai looks at Dom’s backside, as if confirmation that he indeed had a train would suddenly make feathers appear out of nowhere. All he sees is Dom’s familiar backside - shirt and pants, nothing out of the ordinary. “So where is it?”

 Dom’s neck straightens as stiff as a pencil. “Well, that’s a rather personal question.”

     Crap.    “Sorry, I didn’t -

 “But if you must know, I keep it tucked away, under my shirt.”

 Kai slides a little closer, just a little, and scrutinizes the back of Dom’s shirt. Sure enough, he can see faint bumps and lines pulling the fabric taut, and spots, nearly invisible, spread under the white cotton threads. His hand wants to leap out and touch it, run his fingers down Dom’s back, but he forces his hands to stay at his sides. They curl into fists in frustration.

 He remembers from his Zoozling that peacock trains are long - nearly twice the height of their heads, usually. “How does it all fit under there?”

 “I clip it short.”

 “Why?”

 Dom glares at him a moment before he returns to dusting. “Someone’s full of questions.”

 “Sorry.”

 Dom sighs. “If I don’t clip them, they get in the way, and I - well, I don’t want to appear too ostentatious.”

 “Why not?” Kai says. “Your feathers are beautiful.”

 Dom stiffens for a moment. His shoulders drop. “It��d be like a carnivore baring their fangs. It’s uncouth.”

 Again, Kai wants to ask why. Why hide such beautiful feathers? But he thinks he understands why. There are creatures in this world that want animals they deem threatening to hide what they are. His hyena parents made sure to teach him that; they knew firsthand how important it was to their well-being to hold make their cackles. Society views the display of abnormal traits as a creature’s act of pride, when really, they’re just existing. A lion with a well-groomed mane isn’t boasting his feral instincts; he’s just caring for the body he was born in.

 “Can I see them?”

 Dom glares at him. The glare says      Didn’t you hear what I just said, moron?  

 Kai jumps in to make his case. “Carnivores show each other their fangs all the time. And you said showing your feathers is like carnivores baring their fangs, so it’s basically the same thing, right?”

 Dom raises an eyebrow. The eyebrow asks      Are you serious?    

 Kai folds his arms and stands his ground.

 Dom sighs. “If you really want to see them that bad.”

 Dom sets down the duster and starts unbuttoning his shirt. Immediately Kai feels warmth spreading below his gut.      No, no no no, it’s not like that!    he tells himself. But his body doesn’t listen. He just gets warmer and warmer; with each button Dom undoes, Kai swears the temperature of the room increases another degree.

 Dom shrugs his suspenders off his shoulders, and then the rest of his shirt with it. The peacock’s bright blue plumage flows all the way down his torso, right to the waistline, where it begins to darken.

 Then he turns around.

 Long feathers fall straight down, no longer bound to his torso by the confines of his shirt.  They’re everything and nothing like Kai imagined. Extraordinary blues and greens and purples and golds and teals, whose radiant iridescence couldn’t be captured in the images he saw on his phone, flow from the base of Dom’s waist in a river. A river cut short - the train stops just below the back of his knees, cut off in a razor straight line. Just looking at it makes Kai wince. He imagines what it might feel like if his hands were declawed, or his canines ripped out.

 He can’t stop himself from reaching out. “They’re beautiful…” he says, stroking his hand along a single feather the size of his palm.

     Whoosh.    The feathers fly out of his hand, nearly smacking him in the face.

 They spread around Dom in an arc, shielding him behind the most beautiful fan in the world.

 “Oh my goodness,” Dom whips back around, backside toward the wall, trying to push his feathers down. Outlined in the colors of his species, cobalt blue spots like eyes stare holes into Kai. Even with his train clipped short, Dom looks like a god.

 “Wow.”

 Dom tries to press his feathers down, to no avail. “I’m so sorry - this, this doesn’t normally happen - ”

 Kai steps toward him. He takes Dom’s hands and holds them behind their chests, stilling his frantic motions.

 Dom shivers, causing his feathers to quiver. Or shimmer, more like it, in a rainbow of bright colors. Fairy-like. Magical.

 And Kai is 100% under their spell.

 “You’re beautiful.”

 Dom said he didn’t want to appear too ostentatious. Kai has a feeling he means it as more than a species thing. Everyone already knows Dom is gay, even though Dom himself never talks about it, or does anything that might draw attention to that fact. Maybe he feels that his feathers, with their large display of unavoidably bright colors, would draw that unwanted attention. It makes Kai angry that Dom feels this way, and it makes him feel that much more special that Dom has shown him this part of himself.

 “Before, I thought I wanted to be around you more so I could eat you, but now I think I just wanted to see this,” Kai says. He licks his lips. “I wanted to see you.”

 “Oh.” Dom smirks. “Are you sure you don’t still want to eat me?”

 “Can’t say I have an appetite for bird,” Kai says. “Plus I think you’d kill me with that beak of yours before I had the chance.”

 Dom chuckles. “You’re right about that~”

 Their hands are still clasped. Kai’s hands are starting to sweat, but he doesn’t want to let go. He wants to make this moment last - just him, and Dom, in this moment, where they can be themselves, without any reservations or niceties or bullshit. “Thank you,” Kai says. “For showing me your feathers.”

 Dom smiles. “I’m glad I could show this part of myself to you.” Then he lowers his head next to Kai’s ear and whispers, “I’d love to show you more parts of myself...if you would have me.”

 Kai nods. He nods so quickly he thinks he sprains his neck. “That would - yes - I would like that very much.”

 “Then you better make sure the door is locked, Kai-chan.”

#beastars #kai beastars #beastars kai #dom beastars #beastars dom #their ship doesnt have a name bc they appeared in two scenes but YOU KNOW WHAT #that shouldnt stop you cowards #smh gotta do everything myself around here #kaidom #my writing

[amixiifish]

Heat- Chapter 53: A Future

The full moon shines down on the alpha and beta pair on the balcony.

Aang finally sighs, breaking the silence. “Katara, did you really mean what you said in there?”

Katara frowns. “In where? What are you talking about?”

Aang looks away. “On stage, when you said I was just like a… brother to you, and you didn't have feelings for me.”

Katara purses her lips. “I didn't say that. An actor said that.”

Aang looks at her with sorrow in his eyes. “But it's true, isn't it? We kissed at the invasion, and I thought we were gonna be together. But we're not.”

Katara averts her eyes, “Aang, I don't know.”

Aang presses on. “Why don't you know?”

“Because we're in the middle of a war and we have other things to worry about. This isn't the right time,” Katara reasons.

Aang doesn’t let up with his questions. “Well, when is the right time?”

“Aang, I'm sorry, but right now I'm just a little confused,” Katara says, blue eyes heavy.

Aang leans in and tries to kiss Katara.

Katara backs away. “I just said I was confused! I'm going inside.”

Katara leaves and Aang puts his head down on the balcony. 

Aang groans. “Ugh, I'm such an idiot! 

Aang comes back inside and sits next to Sokka and Jet.

Zuko was now squished between Suki and Katara, Toph sitting right besides them.

Sokka leans in and whispers, “Here's what you missed….we went to the Fire Nation, and you got better, somehow Jet comes back to life, and Katara was the Painted Lady, and I got a sword, Jet dies again, and I think Combustion Man died. Oh, look, the invasion's about to start! Huh. Looks like Jet came back to life. Shhh!”

Aang frowns. “Why does Jet keep dying?”

Jet glares at the stage. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Am I dead or alive? Even I don’t know at this point.”

Aang feels a smile appear on his face as he turns back to the stage.

Actresses Katara and Aang standing on one of the submarines on the stage.

Actress Katara grabs Actress Aang’s hands in her own. “I just wanted to let you know, Aang, that I'll always love you. Like a brother.”

Actress Aang punches the air to show her joy. “I wouldn't want it any other way!”

The two hug, beaming.

Actress Aang opens his miniature glider and flies up via a rope. 

Actress Katara waves. 

Aang curls up and uses his hat to cover his face.

Zuko gives him a strange look but doesn’t comment.

Aang is thankful.

Actress Katara, Actor Toph and Actor Sokka stand, looking around on top of the submarine.

Actor Sokka waggles his eyebrows at Actor Toph. “Hey Toph, would you say you and Aang have a ‘rocky relationship’?” 

Sokka laughs and points to the stage. “I told him to say that!”

“Trust me, we know,” Zuko mutters.

Toph snickers.

“I hope everyone's ready for the invasion! Slap-a-pow!” Actor Sokka says grinning at the audience. 

The audience laughs while Suki and Katara pray for Sokka’s sanity.

The curtain rises, two stagehands clad in black finish pushing the Royal Palace prop and run off stage. 

Actress Katara and Actors Toph and Sokka enter from the sides of the stage, while Actress Aang is dropped in from above the stage.

Actress Aang theatrically looks around. “We finally made it to the Royal Palace, but no one's home!”

Actor Zuko enters the stage with Actor Jet, causing Sokka to raise his boomerang and Actress Aang to raise her tiny glider.

“Actually, I'm home, and I want to join you!” Actor Zuko says, dramatically.

Zuko scowls. “I joined you way before that.”

Actor Sokka lowers his boomerang. “I guess we have no choice. Come on!”

They all exit the stage.

Zuko stares incredulously at the stage. 

“Where the actual fucking hell was I during the entire rest of the damn show?” Zuko exclaims, wring his arms around.

Jet leans forward, confused. “Wait, am I alive again?”

Toph throws her hands in the air. “I give up. Jet’s dead to me.”

Jet shrugs, leaning back. “He’s dead to me too.”

Toph and Jet high-five while Katara tries not to laugh while comforting a bewildered Zuko.

Sokka stands up and stretches. “I guess that's it. The play's caught up to the present now.”

Suki pulls him back down by his collar, causing him to also fall down from the top row into the front. ”Wait, the play's not over!”

Sokka sits down, frowning. “But it is over, unless….this is the future!”

Sokka looks around, almost as though he was expecting someone to pop out of the shadows any given moment.

Zuko rolls his eyes.

But then he squints at the stage.

“Is that….Ozai?” Zuko asks, shocked.

Actor Ozai on stage. 

He was standing on the Royal Palace prop. An orange lantern held by a small cable with paper flames slowly moves across the stage.

Actor Ozai raises his clenched fists to the air. “With the energy harnessed from that comet, no one will be able to stop the Fire Nation!”

“We’ll see about that, bitch,” Katara hisses, clenching her fists.

“Preach,” Suki mutters as the two fist bump.

Actress Azula enters the stage.

Actress Azula dramatically reaches one hand to the Fire Lord. “Father, Zuko and the Avatar are at the Palace. They're trying to stop you!”

“You take care of Zuko. I shall face the Avatar myself!” Actor Ozai says in a booming voice, exiting the stage behind a smoke screen.

“Motherfucker’s a drama queen on stage too,” Jet quietly says,shaking his head.

Actor Zuko jumps on stage and a rope lowers Actress Aang on stage as she holds her miniature glider prop.

Actor Zuko turns to face Actress Aang. “Aang, you find the Fire Lord, I'll hold her off!”

The cable lifts Actress Aang off stage.

Actress Azula points one finger at Actor Zuko. “You are no longer my brother. You are an enemy!”

“No! I am the rightful heir to the throne!” Actor Zuko proudly exclaims.

Actress Azula sneers. “We'll see!”

“Yes, we will,” Zuko says.

“You can’t possibly plan to take her alone,” Toph said incredulously.

Zuko purses his lips but doesn’t answer.

Actress Azula pulls out her blue streamer and snaps it at Actor Zuko who ducks out of the way. 

Actor Zuko holds two red streamers and jumps to the other side of Actress Azula.

He throws his two red streamers at her and Actress Azula jumps over him. 

Actress Azula raises the hand not holding the blue streamer. 

Five red paper resembling flames shot from the ground starting at Actress Azula, the last one covering Actor Zuko so that only his silhouette can be seen.

Actor Zuko wails in fake pain. “Honor!”

He falls off the stage through a trapdoor behind the flames.

Actress Azula bows as the audience cheers. 

Zuko feels the breath leave his body as he bites his lip in concern. 

The rest of team Avatar look at the omega in silent worry.

A small paper flame is in the center stage as Actress Aang approaches Actor Ozai.

Actor Ozai leers down at Actress Aang. “So, you have mastered all four elements?”

Actress Aang points her staff prop at him. “Yeah, and now you're going down!”

Actor Ozai suddenly stands up. “No! It is you who are going down! You see, you are too late! The comet is already here, and I'm unstoppable!”

Actress Aang feigns distress as she looks out at the audience.

Actor Ozai wields two red streamers. 

He attacks Actress Aang, who jumps out of the way. 

Actress Aang opens her glider, which now has two small blue banners pop out. She twirls the weapon. 

Actor Ozai circles his streamers while Actress Aang jumps over him with the help of a rope. 

She tries to get close to Actor Ozai, but Actor Ozai makes her back away using his red streamers. 

Actress Aang jumps over Actor Ozai, who fires a constant stream of red streamers at her. 

When Actress Aang lands, Actor Ozai sends a large red sheet painted as fire at her.

 A black clad stagehand lets go of the prop and runs away.

Actress Aang closes her eyes as the fire blanket wraps her up. “Noooo….”

She falls off the stage in the sheet.

Actress Azula comes over and proudly exclaims, “It is over, Father. We've done it!”

Actor Ozai raises his hands as the platform raises and large painted sheets of fire rise behind him. 

The Fire Nation flag unfolds behind him, taking up the entire backstage. 

“Yes! We have done it! The dreams of my father and my father's father, have now been realized! The world….is….mine!”

The audience cheers loudly and gives a standing ovation. 

Toph is uncharacteristically silent.

Katara feels indignation rise in her chest at the ending.

Suki bares her teeth at the stage, wanting to tear the director apart piece by piece.

Sokka fell back in his seat as Jet looked on with disgust at the ending.

Zuko and Aang share a look.

Perhaps they had underestimated themselves and they truly couldn’t do it.

***

The group walks away from the theatre silent.

“I told you we shouldn’t have watched the play,” Zuko finally says, breaking the silence.

Jet wraps his arms around his shoulder. “We needed a break.”

Zuko just sighs. “That….wasn't a good play.”

Aang scoffs. “I'll say.”

“No kidding,” Katara mutters.

“Horrible,” Suki says with disdain clear in her voice.

“Terrible,” Jet agrees

Toph grunts. “You said it.”

Sokka shrugs. “But the effects were decent!”

Before they can go any further, a guard stops Jet and Sokka.

“Please go home soon. We do not advise alphas in rut to be outside for extended periods of time.”

Rut?

Sokka and Jet look at each other and feel the tell tale heat of an oncoming rut curl of heat in their stomach.

Their ruts had just started.

And they didn’t have suppressants.

#jetokko #jetko #zukka #zuko #jet #sokka #katara #aang #atla #suki #toph #omegaverse #our fic #heat (amixiifish)

[niphre124]

Roses.

Written for Raoulstine Week. 

What if Raoul had been older then Christine?

First Meeting.

In this world, it's Gustave Daae that Raoul de Chagny is friends with, as Raoul is 40 years of age, and 10-years-old Christine sees him as an uncle. Still, he is the first to dive into the waves to fetch her scarf, and she rewards him with a kiss on the cheek.

Hannibal.

<p>When Christine sees Raoul again after ten years, she is a beautiful flower of a girl, and he is thirty years older then her. This time, when Meg asks her if she knows the new patron, Christine does not say they were childhood sweethearts. Instead, she says, ''He was like an uncle to me.'' and Meg remarks how handsome he still is at his age. His smile-there is something in his smile that pulls at her heart.

Think of Me.

When Christine sings, Raoul recognizes her instantly, and heads out to buy her a bouquet of flowers-lilies, and pink roses. He smiles, and goes along with the managers to her dressing-room, and leaves when they are not looking. She sits there, clad still in her fairytale princess-like dress of white satin overlaid in star-studded tulle,holding a rose in her hands that seems very likely from an admirer.

''Hello.'' he begins, and she turns to look.

''Is it- oh, it's good to see you!'' she exclaims and runs to embrace him.''Uncle.'' she teasingly calls him.

''There's no need for that anymore.'' he says, and presents the flowers to her. ''Oh, they're beautiful!'' she sniffs them, smiles at him. She walks over and places them in a vase, arranging them nicely. Then she turns and waits, hands clasped in front of her.

He smiles.'' You sang beautifully tonight. I think the angels would have wept to hear you.''

Christine smiles. ''Is that all?'' She looks as if she expects him to ask her out to dinner, and indeed, if he were a younger man, he would have done so. But he is not young anymore. He knows what could happen to her reputation if he does. So he merely bids her good-night, and Christine must take comfort in the nearness of her Angel.

Il Muto.

As Raoul heads to confront the managers about the letter he received, he is stopped by a masked figure. While he cannot see the face, he wonders who the man is to talk to him.

''Who are you, sir?'' he questions.

''No one at the moment.'' the man replies, his voice low. ''What business do you have with Miss Daae?''

''Her father was my friend.'' Raoul answers.

''She's grown, hasn't she?''

Raoul nods, and feels confused. This conversation is going nowhere. ''She's very lovely.'' he says after a while.

''You care for her.'' the man remarks.

''Yes, as an uncle. Nothing more than that.'' With that, the conversation is over, and Raoul heads towards the stairs.

Rooftop.

When the stagehand is hanged, Raoul runs to find Christine, to make sure she is alright. Why? Because- no, he cannot think such a thing of her. She finds him, and pulls him towards the stairs. ''Hurry!'' she urges. ''He cannot find us!''

Who? Raoul wants to ask, but does not. When Christine wants to, she will tell him.

Once they reach the rooftop, Raoul must stop and take a breath, as he is a little tired from running up all those stairs. Then he walks over to Christine. ''Do not be afraid. I'm here.'' She steps closer. He holds out his arms, and she throws her own around him.

It is the sort of thing a uncle would do, he is sure, and he desperately tries to ignore the beating of his own heart.

She pulls away, and he kisses her forehead.

''Take me away from here?'' she asks, and he cannot refuse.

''Of course.''

She tilts her head, looks at him. ''Can I say something?''

''Anything.'' he affirms. He is not prepared for what she does say.

''I love you.'' she says, fingering the edges of his evening jacket. ''I suppose I have always loved you, ever since you rescued my scarf from the sea. I did not think to harbor such feelings for so long, yet it was only when I saw you again at the Hannibal rehearsal that they began again. Please, I don't care what people think, but I believe that a marriage ought to be based on love. Couldn't you-'' she looks at him with those eyes, brown and large like a doe's, ''Couldn't you love me, too?''

Raoul stares at her in shock. ''Christine, for God's sake, do not say such things to me. Please! I could not bear it.'' he steps back from her, and she stares at him. ''I'm much older than you.''

''Aristocratic girls marry men much older than themselves. There's no difference.'' Christine pleads. ''If you cannot love me now, could you try to love me?'’

He cannot refuse her any longer. ''Very well, then. We'll have a pretend engagement.''

 Masquerade.

Christine must accept the idea of a fake engagement, even though it makes her heart ache.

Still, she laughs with Meg, and they gossip about what the wedding will be like, even though she knows there will be no marriage. Every time she sees him- she thinks of running away, to avoid the heartbreak of it all.

But she does not, and time passes.

There are times when they stand next to each other, and his arm brushes hers or his side touches her own, and he stiffens. She thinks that he might feel something, but the next minute, he is gone.

Her dress for the masquerade is pink silk satin, with a tulle overlay and tiny rosebuds at the neck and sleeve overlay. She is a princess, and Raoul comes as a soldier. It is like the stories, where the knight swears to guard the princess.

Everything is happy, everything is joyful, until the Phantom shows up and Raoul runs off to get his sword, hoping to finish the monster off. But Christine dashes off after him, holding her skirts. 

''Raoul, you shouldn't!'''

''Why?'' he questions, almost furiously. ''You care for him?''

She shakes her head. ''No! I care for you.'' Still so stubborn in that one respect. Still so stubborn. She takes his sword away from him, places it carefully on the floor. ''I don't want to see you get hurt.'' she tells him, stands on her tiptoes, and presses her mouth to his. He stands there in shock, and his mind says to pull away, this is wrong-but his heart tells him to kiss her back, to give her what she wants. Give Christine what she wants is what he does, his mouth meeting her own in a gentle need-and it's not enough for a girl who has experienced her first kiss from the man she loves.

Raoul cups his hand to the back of her head, deepens the kiss and his other arm winds around her waist, pulls her closer.

One of her hands presses against the satin of his costume, and she can feel his heart, that beats as fiercely as her own. 

He stops-this is not right, not at all! He pulls away, picks up his sword quickly, even though his hands shake. 

''That will not happen again.'' he says firmly.

Graveyard.

It is very early in the morning when Christine wakes up, and for a moment she smiles, remembering his mouth on hers, the way he'd kissed her, as if he could not help himself. ''Oh my darling.'' she whispers. ''Oh my dear heart's darling.''

She starts to go back to sleep, but then she hears her Angel's voice again. Not now.she thinks.Not after what happened.Still, she gets out of bed, and she is halfway down the stairs, passing a sleeping Raoul, when he mutters something in his sleep, and she turns. 

He cannot have said that. 

He says it again.

''Christine, I love you.''

She steps towards his sleeping frame, brushes a few strands of hair out of his face. ''I love you.'' she whispers, and he starts, jerking his head away from the wood. 

''What was that?'' She pulls her hand away, and hurries to the stables to fetch a horse, when he catches up to her. It is most improper, as she is still in her nightgown with a shawl wrapped round her, and he only in a loose shirt and pants, but still, they ought to talk.

'Where are you going?'' he asks, voice still thick with sleep.

''To the cemetery to visit my father's grave.''

''I'll come with you. Get dressed.'' She hurries back inside and pulls on a black velvet dress and tucks a black scarf into the neck, for it is cold outside. 

She returns, he helps her onto the horse, and they head to the graveyard. She finds her father's grave, whispers a prayer, and places a bouquet of roses on the stone.

A phantom's plans have been thwarted, and he will not stand for it.

#raoulstine #raoulstine week #au

[spooky-ghostwriter]

Dressed to Kill - Chapter Eleven

<– Previous Chapter

Next Chapter –>

“Hey, you're not using this, right?”

The stagehand, a short bald man with muscles more than making up for his stature, looked to the source of the voice. He had to stifle a laugh.

What stood before him looked like a pile of food, but in truth, it was an architectural marvel. An enormous tub of popcorn formed the base. These mere kernels worked together to support the handles of a cotton candy, corn dog and caramel apple. Interspersed, the man counted two hotdogs, a smoothie, and several empty wrappers representing food that hadn't made it this far.

The carrier of the mobile buffet had her entire torso and head hidden behind her feast. Still, the man recognized her white gloves, coattails shaped like bat wings and, most of all, her infamous appetite.

“No, Tsukiko,” said the stagehand. “That's an old, broken wheel. You can use it as a table if you need to.”

With the dexterity that could only be practiced from years in her art, Tsukiko placed her foodstuffs onto the six-foot wooden circle. To the stagehand's surprise, she'd been holding a second candy apple in her teeth. She took a seat on the wheel beside her bounty, let her legs dangle playfully off the side and continued devouring the apple.

“How did you speak so clearly with that in your mouth?” The stagehand asked.

Tsukiko grinned.

“Wait, no," said the stagehand. “Dumb question. A magician – “

“Never reveals her secrets,” Tsukiko finished for the man, pointing in his direction with the now-empty candy apple stick. “I love it when people give me the chance to say that.”

She spied a garbage can a few feet away and tossed the stick. It bounced neatly off the rim and onto the grass below it. Tsukiko drowned her failure with a handful of popcorn.

“Why are you back here, anyway?” The stagehand wondered. "And in full costume...?”

Tsukiko raised the index finger of her left hand – the one of her two hands not cramming cotton candy into her mouth. They listened to the performers speak.

“Introducing my special guest,” said one of them. “The Alesia Circus' very own stage magician, Tsukiko.”

“That's why,” Tsukiko said, swallowing half of her smoothie. She hopped off her table. “Make sure no one touches my food.”

“There's barely any left to touch!”

“Brilliant scheme, isn't it?” Tsukiko clapped food detritus off her gloves. Hearing applause, she ran up onto the stage.

The stage's lights shone brightly; Tsukiko could almost have believed they were aimed directly into her eyes. She held a hand up for shade, then remembered her place and turned it into a wave.

With her on stage right stood Stiletto. Though she had welcomed Tsukiko onto the stage, it was clear that the show belonged to her. On paper, Tsukiko and Stiletto were around the same height, but Stiletto had changed that. Her stance, footwear and sheer presence made Tsukiko feel positively tiny.

Far on stage left, was a large, wooden crate. Oddly, for a prop owned by Stiletto, it had no weapons sticking out of it.

Stiletto addressed the crowd. “Before we begin the show proper, I want to clear up a rumour that I heard recently. I've heard that there are some people out there who believe knife throwing is simply an act.”

Tsukiko stood silently, respecting Stiletto's speech.

“There are two ways to perform knife throwing," Stiletto continued. “The first I'd like to show you is the stage magician's way.”

The belt tied around Stiletto's leg, visible via a long slit in her dress, held countless decorative daggers. She withdrew one, spun it around her fingers, and pointed the handle to Tsukiko.

“I'm no stage magician," Stiletto said. “So Tsukiko will be the one demonstrating this method.”

“Gladly.” Tsukiko took the knife. “I'm throwing it at the crate, right?”

“Correct.”

Tsukiko took aim at the wooden box. She raised the knife. Swung her arm down. Her weapon vanished in a blur. With a loud thunk, a dagger embedded itself in the crate.

The crowd applauded again, and Tsukiko took an over-exaggerated bow.

“That,” said Stiletto, “Is the stage magician's method.”

She strode over to the box. Stiletto tried to retrieve the knife, but it remained stuck in place. Even with one hand on the crate, the other on the knife's handle and her entire weight against it, the knife didn't budge.

“You see, audience, I can't pull the knife out of this crate. And that's because this isn't the knife Tsukiko threw.”

Stiletto tapped the top face. A man backed his way out of the right side; a face of the cube that the audience had merely assumed was there.

“This is Galen,” Stiletto introduced.

“Hi.” Galen waved to the crowd.

“Inside this crate are a few spring-loaded fake knife handles,” said Stiletto. She reached an arm inside the box. In an instant, a thunk signalled another knife embedded into the left face. Two more followed suit, with no one on stage even pretending to throw a dagger.

“Now you may be thinking, what happened to the knife Tsukiko threw?” Stiletto asked. She gestured to the magician.

Tsukiko pulled the dagger out of her sleeve.

“A bit of sleight of hand, a bit of misdirection, and a fairly expensive set of spring-loaded knife handles,” Stiletto concluded. "A lot of knife throwing relies on this sort of trick. A lovely assistant tied to a wheel makes a perfect distraction, and with a pin on the handle, you can have the knives pop balloons that are dangerously close to your assistant.”

As she spoke, two stagehands emerged from stage left carrying a simple wooden bullseye, standing about six feet in diameter just like the older prop Tsukiko had used as a table. The workers took the crate with them as they departed.

“I don't have sleeves, ladies and gentlemen,” Stiletto said. She walked back to Tsukiko and brandished a dagger. “And that target can't possibly have anyone hiding behind it. But most of all, I will prove my knives fly through the air.”

Galen took a piece of paper out of his pocket, rolled up like a scroll. He walked between Stiletto and her target, holding the paper. The instant his walk was complete, a flash of silver whipped through his scroll. The dagger stuck into the dead center of the bullseye; the top half of Galen's paper fluttered to the floor.

“Voila," said Stiletto. “But just in case you still think there's some trickery involved, have a quick look at Tsukiko."

With a hundred pairs of eyes looking in her direction, Tsukiko suddenly realized what Stiletto meant. Her hands were clenched, her eyes wide, and her mouth showed a grimace of terror. Tsukiko carefully returned to a normal stance, but her heart still beat a few times faster than she preferred it to.

“That... that was really close to Galen's hand,” Tsukiko stammered.

“You are not wrong,” Stiletto agreed. “Now that I hope we've settled these silly rumours, Galen, would you like to stand against the target?”

“Like to?” Galen repeated. “Well – ”

“Save the backtalk for Tsukiko's show. The faster you stand there, the more knives I get to throw before the show ends.”

Galen walked over to the target, but made sure to give the audience a glance that said more than he could have done in words.

He pressed his back against the target and spread his arms, grabbing two metal handles equidistant from his head. He noted Tsukiko, still behind Stiletto, giving him an anxious expression and a violent shaking of her head. Galen would have laughed, but he didn't have time. A flash of silver flew past his peripheral vision; a knife sank into the wood beside his ear.

“Number one,” said Stiletto. She flourished a dagger in each hand, then threw them simultaneously. They contacted the target; each an inch from one side of Galen's ribcage. “Two and three.”

Tsukiko looked on in increasing, undisguised terror as knives four through eight proved to be near misses as well.

“Say, Tsukiko,” said Stiletto. “Would you be so kind as to bring me the red box on the table just off-stage?”

“Does it have more knives?” Tsukiko squeaked.

“Not at all. I'm completely out of knives.”

Relieved, Tsukiko left the stage. The stagehand she'd left guarding her snacks passed her a box of red wood. It was about the height of her hand and several times wider. She brought it back to the stage and presented it to Stiletto.

“Ah, yes, perfect. Thank you,” said Stiletto. With the box still in Tsukiko's hands, Stiletto unlatched the clasps. The lid blocked Tsukiko's vision of the inside of the box, but it quickly occurred to her that she should have checked what was inside.

Stiletto withdrew ten six-pointed metal stars.

“Shuriken aren't knives,” Stiletto said.

Tsukiko made a sort of whimpering noise.

“Now which one of these was off-balance...?” Stiletto asked herself. “I think I put it first.”

She flung it into the target. Tsukiko was sure that Galen lost a hair or two.

“Nope, it wasn't that one,” Stiletto thought aloud. “Oh well, I'll find it.”

“Are you serious?” Tsukiko hissed. “This is crazy!”

Stiletto nodded. “You're right, Tsukiko. I've forgotten something tremendously important. It's inexcusable of me to continue this show without – ”

Tsukiko breathed a sigh of relief.

“Spinning the wheel!” Stiletto concluded. The audience roared with excitement.

“No!”

Galen hooked his toes underneath two more handles. The wheel began to spin. It picked up speed fairly quickly, reaching a pace of about half a rotation per second.

In lieu of biting her nails, Tsukiko held the finger tips of her gloves in her teeth.

“If you're nervous about me hitting your friend, I'm sure we can find another option,” Stiletto said devilishly, flinging a shuriken.

“We can? Please!”

“How about you get on the wheel yourself?” Stiletto asked, reading another star.

“I – ”

“Come on, I don't miss.”

Her third star struck the wood by Galen's neck.

“But – ”

“Well, how about this?” Stiletto asked. She threw another star into the wheel, then turned to the crowd. “My dear audience... our stage magician doesn't want me risking her favourite assistant. And she doesn't want to get up on the wheel herself.”

As she spoke, the wheel's spin slowed to a halt, letting Galen step off. He dashed behind Stiletto to stand with Tsukiko.

“It's okay, Tsuki,” Galen said quietly. “I'm fine.”

“You shouldn't have to take this kind of risk!” Tsukiko protested.

“So, audience,” Stiletto continued. “Might I ask for a volunteer? All you need to do is hold the handles and stay still.”

As the audience members raised their hands, Tsukiko's heart skipped a beat. Stiletto looked back to Tsukiko and smiled.

Tsukiko's fists clenched. Her mind flew back to the Halloween show. The razor-sharp fangs of the pumpkin monsters gleamed so clearly in her memory. The moment that the first pumpkin had leapt at the boy in the audience, it felt like time had stopped. Now, seeing the six points of the shuriken in Stiletto's fingertips, that feeling starting to return.

It was as though Stiletto held a whole bandoleer's worth of fangs.

“Fine!” Tsukiko cried. “I'll – ”

“Let's stop wasting time!” Galen interjected. “Let me back on that wheel already.”

To Tsukiko alone, he added, “You're too jumpy. It's safer if you can stay still – and I've already practiced this with Stiletto.” He clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Don't worry!”

With that, he hopped back onto the wheel, to the disappointed groans of the audience.

“About time,” Stiletto muttered. “I'll make this show go a little late to compensate for the...” She rolled her eyes back towards Tsukiko. “Interruption.”

Tsukiko grated her teeth.

When the show was finally complete, Tsukiko found herself pacing angrily around a field. The guests had mostly departed by this time of night. The stagehands were focusing entirely on their tasks. This left Tsukiko with only other performers to hear her venting, and she chose the only one who she knew wouldn't say anything to make her more upset.

“It's bullshit!” Tsukiko yelled, making Henry the Combat Mime flinch. “The circus is supposed to be the safe part of working here!”

Henry raised an index finger as if to say something, but did not.

“We fight plant monsters day in and day out. We risk getting injured, we risk dying, and then what does Stiletto do when we're back safe and sound? She throws knives at Galen!”

Henry caught Tsukiko's attention with a wave of his hand, then tapped his shoes.

“I know I have the High Heals,” Tsukiko said. “But what do we really know about these Religalia? What if they can only work a certain number of times? I shouldn't have to waste one of those uses just because Stiletto missed.”

Henry cut Tsukiko off by holding his hand in front of her face. He pretended to throw something off into the distance. Then he put his hands in front of his mouth and widened his eyes. Tsukiko took this as Henry missing a target.

Next, Henry held one of his hands on his head in a fist, the exact size and shape of Stiletto's hair bun. He used his other hand to imitate the ever-dangling curl of hair above her nose. Finally, he shook his head emphatically from side to side.

“It's not that Stiletto never misses!” Tsukiko argued. “She's just never missed yet.”

Henry turned Tsukiko's attention once more to himself. He shook his head, acted out throwing a knife, then made one last emphatic gesture – holding up a single index finger.

“You're saying...” Tsukiko processed the man's actions. “She's missed once before?”

Henry nodded, wearing a solemn look that did not suit the expressive features painted on his face.

“That's it,” said Tsukiko. “I'm getting Galen out of her shows.”

Henry stepped around Tsukiko. He held up his palms. Tsukiko tapped on the glass he outlined, and she felt the wall's pressure, despite all logic.

“I'm not going to mess with the show going on right now,” Tsukiko said in exasperation. “I just want to talk to Vercy. Is that so wrong?”

Henry crossed his arms and looked pensive. He stroked his chin in an exaggerate motion, looking up and to a side. Finally, he shrugged and made the motions of lifting the wall he'd placed above his head.

“Thank you,” Tsukiko snapped, storming off.

After interrogating the first stagehand she could find, Tsukiko made her way towards Vercingetorix. He stood leaning against a fence, muttering something in a walkie-talkie. Tsukiko approached, inhaling sharply, but Vercingetorix held up a hand and continued speaking in his device. After a few minutes of further exchange, he put the walkie-talkie back on his belt.

“I'm in the middle of something, Tsukiko,” He said. “Is this a matter of life and death?”

The reasonable part of Tsukiko's mind knew that Vercingetorix was probably dealing with some sort of dryad-related business. It was likely to be very important and, realistically, her concern was that Galen would be in danger eventually, not within minutes.

The less reasonable part of Tsukiko's mind told her that Vercingetorix should have chosen different wording.

“Yes,” She said. “It is.”

“I see.” Vercingetorix nodded. “Go on.”

“I want Galen taken out of Stiletto's shows.”

Tsukiko expected some exasperation, but thought Vercingetorix would stop short of rolling his eyes. She was wrong, and he punctuated the action with a sharp exhale. Still, Tsukiko stood her ground, waiting for Vercingetorix's reply.

“Galen is in no more danger during Stiletto's shows than he is during your shows,” He said. “Let alone the danger you're in during your shows.”

“That's a load of crap and you know it.”

“What I know,” Vercingetorix said, his voice no longer able to hide his irritation, “is that the two of you both do everything you can to make something that could be dangerous look as dangerous as possible, yet be as safe as possible.”

He held up his walkie-talkie again.

“Now. We've learned there's a dryad in the area. If there's nothing else to discuss – ”

“Tell me about the time Stiletto missed.”

Tsukiko crossed her arms. Vercingetorix fell silent. In a different situation, she may have had a victorious smile on her face, but here she wore only a scowl.

“Miss Isle, stand by,” Vercingetorix said into the walkie-talkie.

“Who told you about that?” He asked Tsukiko.

“Henry.”

“Ah. That man has annoyingly loose lips,” Vercingetorix muttered. “Strange, all things considered.”

“Don't change the subject.”

“Yes, yes,” Vercingetorix pinched the bridge of his nose. “It was several years ago. It was a bit more extravagant of a performance than perhaps she should have done, but I thought Stiletto was capable of it. However, something went wrong – just by enough to make a difference. Perhaps a dagger had enough of a dent in it to throw off Stiletto's aim. Perhaps the target fidgeted. Perhaps – ”

“Perhaps Stiletto screwed up.”

“I refuse to believe that,” Vercingetorix said. “Stiletto has had tens of thousands chances to hit someone, and has only once.”

“Once is enough!” Tsukiko cried. “What's wrong with you?! How can you let her do her act after it killed someone?”

“What? Stiletto never killed anyone!” Vercingetorix took on a more upbeat tone, as though all of Tsukiko's seriousness would fade away in an instant.

“So then what happened to the guy? Or girl?”

“Minor cut,” Vercingetorix held his thumb and index finger up, the two barely apart. “A little bit of bleeding.”

He clapped Tsukiko on the shoulder.

“I'm sure you understand that there's nothing to be afraid of,” He said. “I assure you, Galen will be just fine.”

Tsukiko knocked his arm off her.

“A minor cut and a little bit of bleeding...” Tsukiko repeated. “Not sure I want to trust the guy who thinks kidnapping is a job offering on what a 'minor cut' is.”

“In all fairness, you did take the job I offered.”

Before Tsukiko could argue – or admit he had a point – Vercingetorix's walkie-talkie crackled once again.

“What is it, Miss Isle?”

Vercingetorix paused.

“Faster than you expected?!” He demanded. “How close is it?”

Vercingetorix clenched his empty hand into a fist. His grip on the walkie-talkie tightened.

“Tsukiko,” He said. “Find Stiletto. We have an apple tree coming our way.”

#dressed to kill #original fiction #tsukiko

[shadow-light19]

The Wolf of Lilac Lake: Dr. Redwood and Mr. Hyde Act 2

Summary: David unleashes Hyde and soon realizes the mistake he has made.

Notes: There is one last part to this story. It became longer than I thought so I downsized it to compensate. Also, have some more Preston and David interaction as well as more dadvid! Just in case, David is capable of partial transformation. He elongates his nails and teeth as Daniel but the audience just thinks its special effects.

Previous Chapter: https://shadow-light19.tumblr.com/post/174324549652/the-wolf-of-lilac-lake-dr-redwood-and-mr-hyde

 Songs used in this act

Better Than You from Camp Camp (Daniel’s part only)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb1Ai9-r8FA

 Confrontation from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oECK1dNbuho

 Act 2

“-ntermission! We will begin again in 10 minutes. If you have yet to visit the concession stand, please do so. All proceeds go to funding the camp. Thank you!”

Preston ducked back under the curtains. He walked past the stagehands setting up the next scene and sought out David and the trio.

“Beautiful, David! Absolutely stunning! I can just feel the disgust and distress from you.”

Max rolled his eyes.

“That’s because he is disgusted and distressed.”

He gestured to David who was sobbing and being comforted by Nikki. Preston frowned and walked over. Neil looked up at him and gestured for him to fix this.

“David? Why are you upset? You were amazing!”

David looked up from where he was sitting.

“A-All of those p-poor children! I know it’s fake but it hurts to imagine any of that happening to you kids.”

Max, Nikki, and Neil looked away. Preston patted David on the shoulder.

“Come on, David. I know it makes you sad but that’s because you have so much heart. It’s amazing to see because half of your acting is the real you! That’s why the audience loves it! Now, come on. I need you to get mean. What would you do if you ever encountered such abuse and neglect in real-life?”

David wiped his eyes. He looked at the ground before looking back up with a determined expression.

“I would make sure the kids are away from such an environment and I would give my last breath trying!”

Max, Nikki, and Neil looked at him in surprise.

“That’s right! What would you do to anyone who tried to stop you, to people who condone it?”

Preston continued to rile him up. David stood and smacked his fist into his palm.

“I would like to see anyone try to stop me! You can’t mess with me when I get hard!”

Preston raised an eyebrow at him. Max smacked his face with his hand and Nikki and Neil started snickering.

“Oh-kay… I can work with that! Now get ready, David, because I want you to funnel that emotion into the next act!”

David marched to the stage.

“Don’t forget to partially transform when you become Hyde!”

Preston called out before turning to the trio.

“You guys did astoundingly as well! You all are great singers but Max, I am especially impressed with you. The father-son dynamic you and David have going is so natural.”

Max raised a brow at Preston.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Preston smiled and held a hand to his heart.

“There’s something about the way you two interact that can’t be faked. I don’t know what it is but if I didn’t know you two, I would’ve assumed you were family.”

Max glared at Preston.

“That has to be the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard. Get away from me before I choke you with the cords for the stage lights for even suggesting that David and I could along like that.”

Preston shrugged his shoulders and went back to the stage to announce the next act.

“EVERYONE! Get to your places! We are beginning the next act!”

He walked back to the side of the stage.  David looked at him and he gave a thumbs up. Preston returned it before signaling for Nurf to dim the lights.

 *Evening in the laboratory

David looked at his notebook that contained another set of observations on Cassandra. She had come in with a broken wrist. The bruises on it looked like a hand. He could see that she was uncomfortable around her Aunt, who had brought her in today. David figured she was responsible but he needed more proof. The kids were hanging out in the living room, already fed and relaxing before bedtime. David had gone down to the lab to test the serum.

“Hey, little guy.” He grabbed the cage that had the mouse he had saved.

He tested the serum on it. David slipped a picture of a cat into the cage. The mouse ignored it.

Perfect. Next up.

He took a second serum and gave that to the mouse as well. When he slipped in another picture of a cat, it fled to the corner of the cage.

I think it works. Seems safe at least.

He grabbed the two serums and pocketed them. Then he walked out into the town.

*Night outside the Midler Residence

David pulled out the first serum as he approached the house.

If God, can’t stop them, I will.

He drank the serum. His convulsed as his hair turned bleach blond, his clothes turned white, his teeth sharpened into long canines, his fingernails became sharp claws, and his green eyes became icy blue.

“Well, well, well.” He looked at himself under the moonlight.

“This worked better than I hoped. Now, let's go find Alison’s father. I’d say he’s escaped justice for far too long.”

Daniel picked the lock. He silently pushed the door open and looked around.

 *Inside the Midler’s residence

He found the master bedroom and walked inside. Midler and his wife were asleep. Daniel unsheathed his knife, a long-crooked thing, and approached the man. The man shifted and woke up to the sound of footsteps. He screeched but Daniel muffled him with the blanket. The wife quickly woke up and huddled in the corner of the room.

“Good evening Mr. Midler. How does it feel to feel the same fear that your daughter, Alison, felt before you killed her?”

Midler sputtered and shoved Daniel’s hands off of him.

“Now listen you, I don’t know what’s going on but that was a freak accident! The stupid brat injured herself. Now get out of my house before I call the police!”

Daniel cut the cord to the phone that was by the bedside table.

“Oh-ho, sir. I must say I don’t take kindly to liars. All that negative emotion your releasing is poisoning the good people around us. It poisoned you, it poisoned your wife, and it poisoned your daughter.”

Midler backed up until he fell off the bed, then continued backing up until he was against the wall. He looked down at the knife in Daniel’s hand then back to the madly-grinning man.

“What are you going to do to me?”

Daniel spun the knife in his hand and cracked his head almost completely horizontally.

“I’m going to rid this world of your poisonous filth. You’ll never taint the purity of others around you EVER again.”

Midler shivered at his drawl.

“It wasn’t my fault! She made me do it! That piece of shit disobeyed me!”

Daniel tsked at him.

“You really are a monster. What a shame I couldn’t save that poor child.”

Midler bristled.

“You’re the monster! Breaking into my house, threatening me, torturing me like this!”

Daniel whipped the knife up the Midler’s neck. He pressed firmly enough to draw blood but not enough to kill.

“Sure, I am a monster by your standards but I’m just doing Zemoog’s work. Who’s the better man? The man who killed his daughter or the man who killed a murderer?”

Midler spat in Daniel’s face. Daniel let out a snarl of disgust before breathing deeply to calm himself down.

“You won’t get away with it, freak!”

Daniel let the pressure of his knife slacken. His chuckled slightly before it morphed into a loud cackle.

“Oh, you filthy, pathetic cretin.”

He caressed Midler’s cheek.

“You seem impressed by all your lies,

But I don’t find them that compelling.

You left her to her own demise,

And well, I think that’s pretty telling.”

Midler shoved Daniel away and lunged to attack him but Daniel side-stepped and tripped him. Midler landed heavily on the floor.

“And while we’re on the subject of,

How it all went from push to shove,

You, ought to know your you’ll pay your due.”

He pulled the man to his knees by his collar and got in his face.

“I know that might be hard to swallow.

This won’t take long and then I’ll leave.

You’re gonna die and soon this town will know what,

Child abusers will receive.”

He threw the man against the wall. He hit it forcefully. The man groaned and raised a hand to his head.

“You’ve been outdone,

Now you see who really won,

But it was fun.

Your end’s begun, and

Soon they’ll know I’m better than you!”

Daniel grabbed his collar and slammed him to the ground. He slashed his throat and stabbed the man multiple times, smiling as blood sprayed everywhere and the man gurgled a scream.

“And I’ll prove it to them too!

I’ll cut you up so gruesomely,

And then they’ll know that it was me.

You’ll rot in hell where you belong,

And join the screaming, writhing, throng,

Of sinners where justice is done.”

The man stopped struggling. His eyes stared sightlessly off ahead, wide in fear. Daniel cleaned the knife on the man’s shirt and sheathed it.

“They’ll know I’m better than you.”

The wife sobbed in the corner. Daniel turned his attention to her. She flinched.

“Now dear, don’t be afraid.” Daniel crouched in front of her.

“I know you had nothing to do with her death. This had to be done.”

The woman stopped sobbing but didn’t stop shaking.

“Did you know that you can be purified? Cleansed of your sins and the taint of negative emotions that surround you? What if I told you the world didn’t have to be so cruel and unforgiving?”

 *Afternoon at the clinic

David was preparing a room for his next patient with the radio on.

“The latest on the news is the recently discovered death of Joshua Midler, the principle of Sleepy Peak Elementary. The man was discovered brutally murdered this morning in his own home. Police on the scene could not find any information on this assailant. Barbara Midler was found huddled in the corner, dressed completely in white, while smiling and mumbling about purity and negative emotions. At the moment the police do not consider her to be a suspect. She has been released from police custody and allowed to return home to aid in her recovery from this traumatic event. Her daughter Alison Midler died two days ago from an accident. Barbara Midler is the last surviving member of her family.”

David turned the radio off.

It looks like my serum worked a little too well. I hope Barbara is alright. It sounds like she was traumatized.

David heard the bell ring for the clinic door and turned to see his newest patient, Harrison.

“Good afternoon, Harrison, Mr. Sanders.”

He saw Marshall enter with his hand on his son’s shoulder.

“Good morning, Dr. Redwood! How are you today?”

David smiled.

“Please, call me David! I’m doing well thank you. If you will step right this way, I’ll give you a checkup. Do you want your father to come in with you, Harrison?”

Harrison nodded.

“Okay, right this way then.”

David led them to the room he prepared and sat Harrison down on the chair. He gave him a quick check-up, noted down the healing bruises and cuts on his arms and back, and used his stethoscope to listen to his breathing.

“You’re breathing seems a little irregular, Harrison. Does it hurt to breathe deeply?”

Harrison tried to breathe deeper but he winced. David wrote that down as well.

“I got punched by a bully at school yesterday,” Harrison admitted shyly.

David went and grabbed a bottle of children’s Tylenol.

“I want you to take this if it becomes too painful, alright? Follow the directions I’ve written here for you. Other than that you’re good to go.”

They thanked him and left. David looked over his notes.

Too many cuts to be clumsy. I’d say some were intentionally made. Some bruises were varied in shape as though hit by different objects. I’d say maybe something blunt since there were rarely any cuts on the bruises. Maybe it really is a bully? I’ll ask Max when he gets home.

David sighed and locked up the clinic.

 *Evening in the house

David set his keys by the door and started on dinner. Neil was spending the night at his mother’s house today so he set the table for three.

“Hey, Dad! We’re home!”

David knelt down with his arms out. Nikki and Max ran up to him and hugged him. He guided them into the kitchen and brought them a snack.

“How was your guys’ day?” David asked.

Nikki started rambling about something funny that happened in math class. David listened as she talked and laughed when the story was over.

“And you, son?”

Max started working on his homework.

“Nothing really special happened today. Harrison left class early though.”

David nodded.

“He had an appointment with me today. That reminds me, does Harrison get bullied?”

Max looked surprised but nodded.

“Yeah but Nurf hasn’t been at school this week. He caught the flu.”

David frowned.

Okay, so Harrison lied to me. But why? Maybe there is more truth to the abuse case than I thought.

David helped the kids with their homework and once it was night time again, headed down into the lab. He pulled out a binder with the file on Cassandra in it and added his file on Harrison to it.

Two kids who are likely being abused. I’ll take care of Harrison’s father tonight since I have proof.

David grabbed another pair of serums and left the laboratory.

 *Afternoon of the next day in the house

David didn’t have many patients today and welcomed the relief of finishing work early. He wanted to hear the news to know what happened last night.

“There is belief that we have a serial killer in Sleepy Peak. Police are on high alert for a blond man that was seen leaving the Hayes’ residence last night. When police arrived, the aunt was brutally murdered and the daughter Cassandra Hayes was dead. It seemed she died by drinking juice containing rat poison. Cassandra did show signs of child abuse and the parents exhibited similar symptoms to Barbara Midler. Both we dressed completely in white and going on about negative emotions and purifying the innocent so that they may be saved. The man also visited the Sanders’ residence last night. Harrison Sanders was found dead by the same method as Cassandra and his father was brutally murdered. Harrison also showed signs of abuse.

In other news, there is a new religion rising in the town-”

David covered his mouth with his hand.

That isn’t what I wanted! Why are the kids dying?! Why did I visit Cassandra’s house too?!

“Because they needed to be saved!”

David froze.

Why did I just say that?

The strange feeling came over him again.

“If I didn’t save them, they would’ve continued to bathe in a negative rich environment all their lives until they died as tainted as the people who hurt them.”

David was paralyzed in terror. He ran into his bedroom where he saw his appearance on his full-body mirror. He was conscious this time as Daniel took over the body and David saw his other form fully in the mirror. He changed back to David.

“This is insane! What’s going on? I’m not supposed to be able to change without the serum!”

“Oh, my poor David. You really don’t realize? I’m getting stronger. Soon, I will control you and continue my God’s work!”

David snarled.

“You murdered children! I only wanted to kill those who were absolutely guilty but escaped justice!”

He tugged his hair with his hands.

“I never wanted this!”

“Yes, you did. Face it! What better way to save children, than to make sure they can never be hurt again? Zemoog will protect them. They have been saved from the negative emotions that clog this wretched world. We are down here suffering and clawing our way through the darkness of life. This is no life for innocent children! That’s why some people hurt them. They know how clean and pure children are and want that respite for themselves.” David clenched his hands into fists.

“What madness are you talking about, you monster! None of what you say makes any sense to me!”

Daniel smiled and cracked his neck.

“What a mean thing to say to yourself, David. After all, you are the one who created me remember? Daniel Hyde is your disguise! You wanted to murder those people, I just went through with your desires.”

David ran down to the lab and drank the second serum. He was terrified and panting harshly. He created and drank the second serum one more time to make sure it counteracted the effects of the one that created Daniel.

Never again will I take the serum. I do not like what I have become.

He dumped the serums together and then poured them down the drain. He took the recipe he created for the first serum and burned it.

Let this be the end.

 *Next night at the Laboratory

David finally calmed down. All day he worried about Daniel somehow getting out but nothing ever happened. David sighed and bent over his desk, hands in his hair. He was thankful this whole mess was over. Max, Nikki, and Neil were suspicious that something had been upsetting him and had done their best to cheer him up. He smiled as he thought of his precious kids. However, he didn’t want them to ever find out how low he had fallen.

All I heard on the news today was the continued investigation into Daniel’s murders and about some new religion that seems to parallel the beliefs that Daniel spouted.

David sighed and looks at the newspaper front lining the murders.

I never wanted those poor kids to die. My twisted sense of justice has caused so much pain and suffering… but now…

”It’s over now I know inside,

No one will ever know,

The sorry tale of Daniel Hyde,

And those who died…

No one must ever know.”

He closed the notebook and left it on the desk. He made his way over to the mouse in the cage. The little creature ran up to him and nuzzled his hand.

“They only see the tragedy.

They’d not see my intent.

The shadow of his evil,

Would forever kill,

The good that I had meant.”

He turned to his desk and picked up a photo of him and Max.

“Am I a good man?

Am I a madman?”

He hugged the photo close.

“It’s such a fine line

Between a good man and a…”

“Do you really think?

That I would ever let you go?”

David jumped.

No, but I-!

“Do you really think I’d ever set you free?”

David whirled around and ran to a bookshelf by the stairs. He tossed items aside as he looked through a drawer for a mirror.

“If you do I’m sad to say,

It simply isn’t so.

You will never get away from me!”

David gave up and slammed it shut.

He turned to his left and stomped to the center of the room.

“All that you are is a face in the mirror!

I close my eyes and you’ll disappear!”

He felt the change take over and suddenly his body was facing the right.

“I’m what you face when you face in the mirror!

Long as you live I will still be here!

David grasped control again and rushed to his desk. He started writing own ways to get rid of Daniel.

“All that you are is the end of a nightmare!

All that you are is a dying scream!

After tonight, I shall end this demon’s dream!”

Daniel resumed control and picked the book off the desk.

“This is not a dream my friend, and it will never end.

This one is the nightmare that goes on!”

He ripped the page out and shredded it.

“I am here to stay no matter what you may pretend,

And I’ll flourish long after you’re gone!”

David snarled and snatched control back. He plopped the book down and started writing on a new page.

“Soon you will die and my memory will hide you! You cannot choose but to lose control!”

“You can’t control me I live deep inside you!

Each day you’ll feel me devour your soul.”

David started grabbing chemicals and pouring them in beakers.

“I don’t need you to survive as you need me!

I’ll become whole as you dance with death!

And I’ll rejoice as you breathe your final breath!”

He felt Daniel hurl his consciousness from control.

“I’ll live inside you forever!”

“No!”

David tried to gain control again.

“With Zemoog himself by my side!”

“Nooo!”

David could feel his strength fading. He tried with all his might to grasp control.

“And I know that now and forever,

They’ll never be able to separate Redwood from Hyde!”

David felt relief as he took over his body once again.

“Can’t you see it’s over now!

It’s time to die!”

He added the last ingredient to the solution. He backed away from the desk and gripped his head as Daniel forced his control again.

“No, not I! Only you!”

David felt a strong rush of fear. He didn’t have the mental strength to regain his body.

“If I die, you’ll die too!”

“You’ll die in me, I’ll BE you!”

If David could cry, he would.

“Damn, you Hyde! Leave me be!”

“Can’t you see? You are me!”

“No deep inside-“

“I am you! You are Hyde!”

“No, never!”

“Yes, forever!”

Daniel walked out of the lab.

“God damn you, Hyde! When I get my chance, I will end you!”

He threw the front door open and stalked out into the town.

“You will never break through. Ha-ha-ha… Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

#camp camp #cc david #cc daniel #cc max #cc nikki #cc neil #cc preston #cc harrison #camp camp fanfiction #werewolf david au #dadvid

[makbaes-archives]

Sugar and Spice - Jackson (M)

Pairing: Jackson Wang x Reader (female) Word Count: 3,920 Genre: Soulmate AU, Fluff, Smut Rating: (M) - NSFW - sex, language Summary: A trip to your local fair is a tradition amongst your friends. This year, your love of competition and all things spicy leads you to compete in the Pepper Eating Contest. And while you don’t even come close to winning, meeting your soulmate proves to be the ultimate prize.

↳ Oneshot as part of The Inevitability of You with @kpop-wetdreams and @yehet-me-up <3

“Come on, guys! We’re going to miss it!” You yell back to your friends who are just barely keeping up with your running pace. You weave through the crowds of people, bumping shoulders with strangers as you force your way to the stage at the front of the crowd.

The pepper eating contest is a favorite at your local fair, always drawing large crowds of onlookers as they watch a group of people suffer through various types of peppers, each getting hotter and hotter as they go. As an avid spice lover, you’ve always wanted to join, but nerves and timing always got in the way.

Not this year.

This year you secure a spot amongst the group of 15 contestants, and whether you win or not, you’re just excited to finally be doing it. The challenge itself is more than worth it; the prize money is just an added bonus, should you win.

You find the host, and he signs you in, handing you a badge with a number on it and take your place at the far end of the table. You’re one of the last to arrive, and soon after you sit, the MC is beginning the show.

He explains the rules as several stagehands fill up the cups in front of each contestant with milk. It’s simple, really. The heat index of the pepper will go up with each round. Those that throw up or drink their milk are disqualified. The final person standing wins the money.

Steeling yourself, you grin at the loud cheering of your friends in the crowd. It’s a silly thing, you know, but you’re excited, veins pumping with adrenaline, and the fact that your friends are here with you makes it even better.

“Alright contestants, up first… the Padron!”

The pepper goes down easy, the heat lingering on your tongue just enough. No one taps out, and they move onto the next one: the Dutch Green chili pepper.

Again, no one taps out. Not until round 4, then again at 5, 6 and 7. Your mouth is on fire. The milk in front of you is so tempting, and your hand twitches on the table. Face red and tears already drying on your cheeks, you hold your resolve.

The Scotch Bonnet does you in.

You gag once before tossing the remaining bit of the pepper into the trash bag and grabbing for your cup of milk, downing it quickly in hopes of killing the raging fire that is your mouth. The MC announces your withdrawal, as well as another contestant. You take your walk of shame gladly and meet up with your friends, but as soon as you reach them, your stomach takes a dive.

Sighing in defeat, you hand one of them your cup. “Alright, well, I’m gonna go puke now. I’ll see you in a bit.”

They look after you, mildly horrified at how calm you are. You had expected this. Maybe not the puking, but an upset stomach, of course. This was a lot of heat all at once, and as much as you loved all things spicy, your stomach couldn’t handle this much.

10 minutes later, you’re feeling much better, albeit your mouth is still on fire. After wiping the running mascara from your cheeks, you head back to the stage, where your friend greets you with an ice cream cone. While the flavor does nothing for you - thanks to your missing sweet taste receptors - the dairy in it provides much-needed relief to your tongue.

You idly lick at the creamy substance while your friends' chatter, when a sudden burst of applause catches your attention.

“Give it up to this year’s champion, Jackson Wang!” The MC announces excitedly to the roaring crowd.

Brows shoot up at the unfamiliar name. He wasn’t last years winner or even a runner-up. Quickly, you rush to the front of the stage where he’s making his way down the stairs to join some friends, big, fake check in his hand, looking completely unphased - as if he hadn’t just ingested 15 of the world’s hottest peppers.

As you gaze at him in wonder, he turns and catches your gaze, and there’s a sudden shift. You pause your action, tongue mid-lick, and pull a face. Looking down at the cone, you wonder if the milk’s gone sour. Though, it doesn’t taste sour… With wide eyes, you look up, only to find the contest winner - Jackson - gripping his friend’s arm, nearly doubling over as his face turns red.

You’re shocked, to say the least. This isn’t anything you thought finding your soulmate would be like. And boy, had you thought up some scenarios. None of them included your soulmate vomiting at your feet.

Shoving the cone in your friend’s hand, you walk over to him, ignoring his friends’ confused and worried stares.

“You’re my soulmate.” You state to him, and he coughs, whining. You cannot believe this. “You couldn’t taste the spice.”

“Yeah, he’s never had this kind of-”

“You cheated.” Interrupting Jackson’s friend, you glare down at him, arms crossed.

Jackson looks up from his hunched over position and shakes his head wildly, bringing a finger to his lips. He coughs again, hand clutching his stomach, and his friend tries to stand him up straight.

“I think I’m dying,” he groans, voice gravelly from the irritation. “Oh, god. I’m gonna die.”

“Well, maybe that’s the consequence of using your soulmate impairment to cheat!”

“Shhh, don’t say that too lo-” And he groans again, whimpering into his friend's shoulder. “Is this how it feels for everyone? Why do people eat spicy things?”

Jackson’s friend chuckles and shakes his head. “You ate like, a shit ton of peppers, dude. Of course, you feel like you’re dying. Well, I mean, now you do, thanks to…”

You’re almost too busy judging the ever-loving crap out of your supposed soulmate that you don’t realize he’s talking to you. Brows raise in confusion briefly, before you get it.

“Y/N.” You give a shy smile to his friend, a quick quirk of your lips, before flicking your gaze back to Jackson. Humming, you grab your ice cream back and offer it to Jackson, who’s brows bunch together in confusion. “You eat it.”

He glares at you before grabbing it and giving it a tentative lick. You roll your eyes.

“I’m not sick or anything.”

A few more licks seem to help his burning mouth, and he lightens up a bit, but his stomach is still angry with him, and he pouts like a child. You can’t help but find it a little cute. Just a little, though.

“You should probably go home,” his friend suggests, and you nod in agreement. “Want me to get you an uber?”

“What? No, I can take him home,” you say, and you surprise yourself at your sudden willingness to help out this total stranger - soulmate or not.

“You don’t have to,” Jackson tells you, but you shake your head.

“It’s okay. I don’t feel all that great either. We can suffer together. That’s what all this soulmate stuff is about anyway, right?” You ask with a grin.

Jackson’s face softens from the pout, and he grins back, agreeing to go with you.

The two of you say goodbye to your friends, who either seem happy to be able to stay behind and enjoy the fair or happy to pair you off alone together; you can’t decide which it is more, though. The car ride to his place is mostly silent as he leans against your passenger side window, aside from the directions he gives you. This gives you time to really assess what’s going on.

You’ve found your soulmate.

You’ve found him, and his name is Jackson Wang, and he cheats at pepper eating contests. Well, he used to, that is.

There isn’t a whole lot out there, science-wise, about soulmates. It’s all so new - the research, that is - so there are new discoveries being made all the time. For instance, you had thought proximity was the key to unlocking one’s inability, however, it seemed to happen to you and Jackson the moment you locked eyes.

Sneaking a glance over at him, you see his eyes are closed. You take a moment to admire his profile. He’s actually quite gorgeous, you finally take note, as your eyes flit between him and the road. There’s a blossoming tightness in your chest, nothing like anything you’ve ever felt, and you wonder if it’s because of him. If this is what the soulmate bond does to you. You want nothing more than to know everything about him, every part of him. You want a closeness with him you’ve never wanted before, and it scares you, how much you’re suddenly willing to rush into… something, everything with him.

When you pull up to his apartment, you help him up and inside. Behind closed doors, the pull to him is so much, it’s almost impossible to breathe. You wonder if he’s feeling the same way, or if his discomfort is in the way.

“Do you have any Pepto Bismol? It’ll help your stomach,” you say almost distractedly as your eyes scan his apartment.

Jackson shakes a bottle of tablets, pulling your attention to him as he grins. “Way ahead of you.”

You breathe out a laugh and shake your head. There’s a silence between you both, but it’s not awkward. Jackson looks at you like he’s got a million questions, and he’s ready to ask them, opening his mouth, but he promptly shuts it and groans.

Poor thing.

“I should… let you get some rest.”

You hold back a laugh, watching him run into the other room. This should be embarrassing. You should feel awkward and weird and grossed out, but you don’t. Shaking your head, you bite your lip and turn to leave, before remembering something. Finding a pen on the kitchen counter, you scribble your number on one of the bills sitting there. He’s bound to see it.

As your leaving, your stomach gurgles, and you wince. You should regret having eaten as many peppers as you did, but as you glance back at his apartment door, you think it’s totally worth the trouble.

One week.

One whole week since you last saw Jackson, last spoke to him, first met him.

He didn’t call you like you had hoped. Did he not feel what you did? Did he not feel the attraction, the immediate pull to you that you felt towards him? Did he not like your personality, or maybe something you said?

Maybe he was embarrassed? That’s completely understandable, given the way you both met, but even then, how could he live with the gut-wrenching feeling you currently were? It only got worse as the days passed, and you wondered if this was what the rest of your life would be like, should you never see him again.

You had googled as much as you could, trying to find others who felt the same. There were several blogs of people who lost their soulmates, ranging from death to simply never finding them after having been exposed to them in some way. The feelings they had were similar to those you were currently experiencing. Honestly, it was the worst feeling imaginable. You felt as if a part of you was missing. And it was.

Sweets became dull and bland once again. But it wasn’t the flavor you missed - no, it turns out sweetness is a taste you could live without, the overt sweetness too much for your liking - it was the boy that brought that distaste to life.

It wasn’t long before your sadness turned to anger. Before the anxiety in your chest became a permanent thing, squeezing the very breath out of you. This was torture, and it was all because of Jackson Wang, your supposed soulmate.

Soulmate, my ass, you think as you stab into the chunk of meat.

Lifting the fork to your lips, you place it in your mouth, immediately glaring at the flavorful spicy heat that engulfs your tongue. Well, this was your favorite dish. Now, though, you can’t seem to take another bite. It only serves as a reminder. It only makes you think of him.

You toss the meal away in the garbage with a huff, deciding that you hate Jackson Wang.

One week and one day after you meet your soulmate, you meet him again.

You’re still shocked this time around, albeit, much less so. Your eyes go wide when you spot him walking into the coffee shop, and when you lock eyes, his face lights up. Hastily, you look away, but it’s too late. He’s bounding over to you like a puppy, and you hate that your heart is beating too fast and your stomach is doing flips. There’s no one in line behind you, so Jackson sidles up to you, and you hear him let out an excited huff of air.

“I didn’t think I’d ever find you again,” he tells you, and you roll your eyes, scanning the menu behind the counter.

It’s sad, really, that you can feel Jackson’s pout without even looking at him. It’s like you know so much about him already, and yet there’s a lifetime of things to learn still.

...No.

“I feel so stupid and embarrassed about last week. That’s definitely not… how I pictured our meeting, but-”

“I’d like a french vanilla soy latte with no foam, please.”

The barista smiles and takes your money, and without letting Jackson finish, you move to the other end of the counter to wait for your coffee. It’s always been your favorite, despite not tasting the flavor. Whatever flavor it actually tasted like didn’t matter, really, but it wasn’t bitter, and that’s all you needed.

The barista turns to Jackson, who is currently looking longingly over at you while you do your best to ignore him. It’s hard, though, with him so close. He’s 5 feet away, but you swear you can smell his cologne. Your fingers itch to reach out and touch him, brush your thumb across his lips, press yourself against his body as you find his most vulnerable spots.

Jaw clenching, you give a tight-lipped smile to the barista who hands you your coffee cup, and you thank her, turning to walk away.

“Y/N! Wait, where are you-”

“Why didn’t you call me?” You swing around to face him, so abruptly that he skids to a stop less than a foot away from you. He’s too close now, you think, as you look up at him. You can see the beginnings of stumble across his chin, and the dark chocolate of his eyes. It was all you could do not to lean closer.

Jackson looks put off by this question. He narrows his eyes in confusion, head tilting to the side, and it’s hard to remember you hate him when he’s so cute.

“I didn’t have your number,” Jackson says softly, and now it’s your turn to narrow your eyes.

“I wrote it on one of your bills on the counter. It was pretty out in the open.”

Jackson’s brows raise before he bites his lip. “I may have thrown those out.” And as if he’s expecting you to be angry, he quickly adds, “I do everything online! I’m sorry! I knew they had been taken care of, so I tossed them.” A hand comes to rub the back of his neck, and he looks down shyly. “God, I’m so stupid.”

Eyes still narrowed at him, you bring the coffee cup to your lips and take a sip. Immediately, the overwhelming sweetness hits you, and you groan. Jackson looks up and quirks a brow.

Muttering, you glare down at the coffee you once loved so much, then up at Jackson. Handing the cup to him, you fold your arms and sigh. “Yeah, you are stupid.”

Jackson’s eyes move from you to the cup and back, and he nods, waiting for you to continue.

“But I guess we really are soulmates because that’s way too sweet for me. What do you say you make it up to me with another coffee and we try this whole thing again?”

The smile Jackson gives you is radiant and infectious as he nods excitedly and takes your hand, walking you both back to the register. You grin back at him, watching him as he orders something, and when he brings it to you, you find that it’s a perfect balance of sweet and bitter, and your heart flutters just a bit more.

Biological soulmates are a very weird and confusing concept, and even weirder and more confusing when it’s more than that. When it’s real life, and you have to discuss things like “do we start dating right away?”, “is it weird to start getting too comfortable so soon?”, “should we wait to have sex, or…?”.

While it feels a little bit awkward at first, ultimately, you and Jackson just let things happen naturally. And in the following weeks of you both getting to know each other, you notice how easy everything is. How easy it is to talk about everything and anything, how easy it is to feel comfortable around each other, how easy it is to flirt and tease.

When you aren’t together, you’re either texting or Facetiming. You start spending time at each other’s houses, just movie nights and dinners at first, which turns into staying over and waking up in each other’s arms. You kiss lightly, tentatively, for the first few weeks, before it’s too much. The burning desire building within you threatens to boil over and take control, and you honestly don’t know how you’ve managed to hold back for this long.

Jackson seems to feel the same way.

It’s a typical evening for you both. You’re lounging on your couch, reading on your phone, while he finishes cleaning up in the kitchen. You’re so engrossed in the article you’re reading that you don’t hear him coming. He flops next to you on the couch and lays his head in your lap, and your hand automatically goes to play with him. You hear his contented sigh, and you smile softly.

“What’re you reading?” He asks, looking up at you with large doe eyes.

“Mark Tuan’s newest research article. You know, that super young biologist that’s research biological soulmates?”

Jackson hums with interest. “Neat. What’s it about?”

“Well, he’s found his soulmate, so he’s been able to add a lot of personal experiences into the research. It’s just so… fascinating.”

“Oh, yeah?” He sits up, your hand falling into your lap, and presses against your side. Instinctively, you lean into him, letting him cuddle against you. But as soon as you feel his lips on your skin, all interest in the article vanishes.

“You’re fascinating,” he mumbles against your skin. Suddenly, it feels a hundred degrees hotter in the room.

His lips are soft against your neck, pressing lightly from below your jaw down to your collarbone. His teeth graze over your skin there, and you sigh, setting your phone down on the couch beside you. One of your hands moves to rest on his thigh as he continues his mild assault, each press of his lips becoming more haste, more heated. He bites and suckles at the tender flesh, and you know there will be marks in the morning, but you can’t seem to care right now.

Turning, you capture his lips in a quick change of control. For weeks you’ve been holding back, trying to push down the absolute need to feel him flush against you. Jackson seems taken aback momentarily until he catches up and kisses back with just as much force. This kiss is different from others. You can feel the surrender in both of your actions, the complete abandonment of any morals or promises you had as he cups your chin and brings you closer to him.

Sitting up on your knees, you swing one leg over his thighs and straddle his waist, and Jackson takes no time in grabbing your hips to pull you towards his, grinding into your pelvis with a low groan. He’s already half-hard, and you have a feeling it won’t take much longer. For either of you. You can feel how drenched you are, and it shouldn’t shock you the quick reaction your body has for him. You are soulmates, after all. Made for each other.

And it certainly feels that way when he has you pinned to your mattress, thrusting into you at a near-violent pace - and it feels like nothing you’ve felt before. Sex has never been this good, this perfect, this mind-blowingly incredible.

He has you cumming within minutes, and it’s not typical of you to cum without clitoral stimulation, but Jackson manages to do it. And not once, but twice before he even worries about himself.

“Jackson,” you whine after your second orgasm, tugging at his hair to bring his lips to yours, and you take his lower lip between your teeth. You take the opportunity to flip him onto his back, grinding yourself against his dick. Jackson groans, bucking against you, and you smile coyly at him.

“Come for me, baby,” you command him, continuing to grind your sensitive core against him, already slick with your cum. Jackson grips your hips, fingers digging into your skin, nails leaving crescent moons as he thrusts against you once, twice, a third time before he releases onto his stomach.

You slow your movement as he shudders against you, and double over, careful of the mess, lazily kissing his neck, his jaw, and then his lips. His arms wrap behind your back to pull you flush against him, and you grimace, while he laughs against your mouth.

There’s a comfortable silence as you both catch your breaths, basking in the afterglow of the most amazing sex you’ve ever had. And it isn’t even about the sex, you realize, staring into his eyes. It’s about the bond between soulmates. It’s about the magnetic pull you have towards one another, in every way imaginable. It’s about the way he shows you he loves you, even in the first moments of getting to know you.

It isn’t long before it gets uncomfortably sticky, and you peel yourself away from him, standing beside the bed, your hand held out for him. Jackson smiles and takes it, getting out of bed and following you to the shower.

He shows you his love for you again and again. In the shower, in the way he dries your hair when you’re done, in the way he cuddles against you, rubbing soft circles into your back, in the way he cooks you breakfast in the morning.

Jackson shows his love for you in every way he can, and you return it without hesitance. You’ve never done something effortlessly in your life, and you never question for a moment if he’s absolutely the one.

After a year of dating, you receive a letter in the mail. Your eyes light up when you see the familiar logo of the soulmate DNA testing center, and you begin reading, heart pounding against your chest.

It’s real. It’s so real. It’s biologically meant to be.

“Jackson-!” As you turn to tell him the good news, you find him on one knee, a small box in his hand holding a bright ring, almost as bright as your future together.

Author’s Note: Thank you so much for reading! I’m so sorry about the wait. Life kept getting in the way, but it’s here! Be sure to check out the entire series! <3 Scan credit: @jr_ram_n94922

xoxo,Tyler

#kpoptrashtag #jackson wang #got7 #jackson smut #got7 smut #jackson wang x reader #got7 au #collab: TIOY

[shirtlesssammy]

Hollywood Babylon: 2x18 Recap

On a dark and unstormy night, at a cabin in the woods, a porch swing creaks ominously. With flashlight in hand, a woman walks around yelling for her friends. Nerves increasingly frayed, she hears a rustling from the woods. “Hello? Hello?!” Suddenly a hand grabs her from behind. She screams and turns to find her friend, Brody.

Panicked, he screams that Ashley and Todd are dead! The woman, Wendy, tells Brody to pull it together. They have to leave! Brody takes off. Wendy hears more rustling and the camera suddenly chases up behind her. She turns and garbles out a pitiful scream.

CUT!

Whew, it’s all just a movie, guys! The director comes out to talk to Wendy/Tara. Tara’s having a hard time finding her fright acting opposite a tennis ball. During the ten minute break Tara overhears one of the stagehands talking about strange things happening on the set-- it’s haunted! Later, Tara heads to a quiet corner of the stage to practice her scream. She hears a noise, walks a bit to some scaffolding, and finds the bloodied corpse of the stagehand! Cue REAL SCREAM!

The Winchester Boys are on vacation! They’re taking a tour of the Warner Brother’s backlot, and Dean couldn’t be happier. (It’s cool, Dean. I remember touring Universal and nerding out as well.)

During the tour they see the set of Gilmore Girls. (They might even see one of the stars, if they’re lucky! --did not get that the first time I watched it. Jared’s scared face is gold.)

Sam insists they bail on the tour so they take off and start wandering the backlot alone. Dean sees Matt Damon! (what a bean) It seems that Sam has a case but Dean just wants to enjoy a vacation. He also wants to help Sam take his mind off of Madison (whaa, that just happened in the previous episode. Sammy!) A Winchester is a Winchester though, and he wants to work to take his mind off of things.

Sam tells Dean about the possibly haunted set and dead crew member. Dean wonders if it’s like Poltergeist --and is severely offended when Sam doesn’t get that reference. Dean wonders about the victim, aside from his name -Frank Jaffey- Sam doesn’t have much. He does know that the actress, Tara Benchley, who found him, saw a vanishing figure. Dean is now 100% on board --he’s fan of her work (much like Dr. Sexy and Suzy, right Dean?)

They sneak on set to find one of the studio execs giving helpful tips to the director.

Bill Lumbergh Brad Redding calls Dean over, mistaking him for a PA. Dean’s confused at first and Sam covers for him. Dean catches on and is soon checking out the set while handing out smoothies from craft. Filming starts while he checks out the scaffolding for any EMF. He gets no readings. Sam and him reconvene next to craft services and while Dean has nothing to report on the case, he can’t stop waxing poetic about the plethora of food (it’s so funny, but then I’m reminded of the kid that often went without food so his little brother could eat --not the time, Boris!) Sam discovered that four people have died on the set over the years. Dean discovers an unoccupied Tara Benchley. He’s his awkward self at first but quickly turns on the confident charm. He asks her about the victim, she tells him about what happened, and then shows him a photo of the man. “Son of a bitch.” Dean recognizes the man!

Yep, Frank Jaffey isn’t real, and the man, hired for the day to stir up the fright levels on set, is a character actor that Dean knew from another film. They track him down. He spills everything.

Back to filming on set, one of the crew hears feedback with the sound. Brad continues to give his unsolicited advice about the film. “If the ghosts are in hell, how do they hear the chanting? I mean, what do they have, super-hearing?” he scoffs. He’s distracted with a call though and wanders off to take it. Once alone, he’s greeted by a woman that’s all black and white --with severe neck wounds. He doesn’t think they’ll read on camera though. She undresses -why?- and climbs the scaffolding --he follows. And ends up on the wrong end of a rope.

They keep filming! In their defense, they did have a moment of silence for him at breakfast. Dean has also fully embraced his new job, mic headset and all. Tara’s having a hard time accepting the premise of the movie. As the crew bickers about the absurdity of what ghosts would be afraid of, one of the crew, Walter, storms off in a huff. Sam checks in and gets PA!Dean, not hunter!Dean. Dean feels like part of the team (crying noise, crying noise). Sam converses with Dean while Dean converses with someone on his headset -GOLD. Dean has something to show Sam.

Dean and Sam head to a trailer to watch dailies (which he got from Cindy who has this on and off thing going on with Drew and oh my god Dean is adorable in this episode). They watch the video of the studio executive's death and Sam notices the ghost standing on the side of the room. “It’s like Three Men and a Baby all over again,” mutters Dean. He then has to fill Sam in on the whole urban legend he’s referencing. Sam mostly ignores Dean’s discussion of spirit photography in favor of squinting at the ghost on the screen. He’s seen her before.

The Winchesters resettle on set. Sam tries to drop his latest factoid about the latest ghost but keeps getting interrupted by happy PA Dean, the most adorable PA in all the land. The ghost was ‘30’s starlet Elise Drummond who got screwed over by studio brass and hung herself. Time to salt and burn, baby! The production wraps for the day so Sam and Dean head out in the misty graveyard. Dean bought a $5 map of famous graves and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT.

They dig up her grave to a montage. As always they are utter sticklers for digging perfectly rectangular graves. Salt. Lighter fluid. Book of matches. PHWOOMPH.

At the studio the producer chats on his cell phone when all the lights go out. He wanders through the fake woods of the set when he spots a creepy dude in the trees. The guy turns and his head is completely chopped up and bloody. A huge fan turns on and the producer is drawn inexorably into it. This can only end in one way: the blood cannon.

With the unfortunate producer a pile of chopped liver and spattered blood, we cut to a preview teaser for the movie, Hell Hazers II: the reckoning.

“From the producers of Cornfield Massacre, Monster Truck, and the director of Charlie’s Angels, Charlie’s Angels Full Throttle, and Hell Hazers…” “We must have brought them back. Back from Hell. Again.”

Sam ties the death-by-fan to the death of an electrician in the sixties. “These things don’t usually tag team,” Dean says.

“Maybe the spirits are trying to shut down the movie ‘cause they think it sucks,” Sam ponders later while lounging on a couch in one of the trailers watching dailies. In the film the actress begins to recite the summoning ritual from the book and Sam sits up and listens to the words. She’s reading a real necronomicon-level summoning ritual!

The Winchesters head to Marty’s office. They tell him that they read the script and they are just HUGE fans of it. They gush over the summoning rituals and authentic Enochian… “What, you mean that latin crap?” Ugh, Marty had nothing to do with that. It was Walter-the-PA who wrote all of that (who is, in fact, just the original writer who is contractually allowed to hang around set). Walter’s screenplay was all “wackadoo exposition” with no love interest so Marty had to hack it apart to get it to a usable state for the movie.

Cut to Dean and Sam reading Walter’s original script. It’s good, reports our dear, devoted reader Dean! “And it reads like a how-to manual on conjuration,” Sam says. It shows “motive and means” for Walter to be the one in control of the recent infestation of killer ghosts.

Walter meets up with Marty in the creepy woods of the set. Walter complains about the loss of his original script. “It was real,” he said. (You know. Truth. TRUTH.)

“We’re talking about ghosts, Walter. There’s no such thing.” Marty returns. Walter holds up a mysterious amulet and begins to chant. Choppy fan ghost shows up and begins to drag Marty towards the fan. Suddenly a shotgun roars out and fan ghost disappears.

“You are one hell of a PA,” Walter says.

Sam tells Walter that the jig is up. Bringing ghosts into the world to wreak bloody vengeance can backfire. Walter summons another ghost anyway, though. The room goes all Ghostbusters: Revenge of the Ghosts and they’re suddenly faced with three ghosts approaching menacingly. Sam, Dean, and Marty barricade themselves in the cabin.

“I can’t believe that ghosts are real,” Marty says breathlessly.

“What makes you say that?” Dean asks while loading his shotgun. Lol, Dean. Sam figures out that the talisman is controlling the ghosts and heads off to confront Walter. Dean and Marty hunker in the cabin, Marty holding up a phone to track for ghosts while Dean takes them out like targets at a carnival booth.

Sam confronts Walter, who dashes the talisman to the floor, breaking it. Sam warns him that he just freed the ghosts and they are gonna be pissed off at Walter! Walter is entirely unconcerned until he’s ripped down to the floor and torn into bloody shreds.

Back with the movie production, they’re hunting ghosts. With a shotgun. And a cell phone. Narrative exposition has been added to the movie to explain things like, why can you see ghosts in a phone? (Me: cry laughs this is the best.) Sam looks upon the production with disgust and heads off the set into the lot where Tara’s trailer is, uh, a-rockin’. Dean leaves Tara’s trailer with a satisfied grin.

“You’re one hell of a P.A.,” she says as she bids him farewell, wrapped only in a robe. Yeah, he is.

Boris: This episode is special to me because it was the first one that I remember thinking that this special little show isn’t just an X-Files redux. (Wow, it took me awhile to get into this show!) Dean was on vacation --and it shows. He is so (pre-hell) cocky and joyous about being on a film set. I feel like, when we discuss performing!Dean and how he has had to bury his true self for so long, it amazes me how close to the surface his true self is.

In Hollywood, Quotes Come True:

Now to the right here is Stars Hollow. It’s the setting for the television series Gilmore Girls. And if we’re lucky we might even catch one of the show’s stars.

Does this seem like swimming pool weather to you, Dean? I mean, it’s practically Canadian.

Who says horror has to be dark?

“What’s a PA?” “I think they’re kinda like slaves.”

What was it like working with Richard Moll?

If the ghosts are in hell, how do they hear the chanting? I mean, what do they have, super-hearing?

Why would a ghost be afraid of salt?

We all know what Jay and Brad wanted more than anything. And that was to see Hell Hazers II The Reckoning on screen in theaters all across America.

Dude, are you serious? ‘Cause I’m serious.

There’s an afterlife, alright. But mostly it’s a pain in the ass.

#spn recap #spn rewatch #hollywood babylon #spn 2x18 #dean winchester #sam winchester #supernatural season 2

[stitching-in-time]

The other day I went to see A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, so here’s a reaction post:

The national tour of Gentleman’s Guide came to town, and I wasn’t going to go at first because it didn’t especially impress me when I heard the cast album, and I didn’t want to shell out money for something that isn’t a favorite show. But the promos for it were all over the place, and I know people who love it, and I always wondered if maybe it’s one of those shows you have to see to really get it, and it was surely my only chance to see the original production live.... So I broke down and went on it’s closing night in town. And I definitely like it better after actually seeing it live, versus just hearing the cast recording. A good deal of the comedy is visual, and it’s very stylized and intentionally cheesy, which I think helps get past the distatefulness of having to sympathize with a lead character who’s literally just murdering people for his own gain. Of course that’s the whole joke, and the D’Ysquith family is meant to be absolutely horrible, but I could never find Bryce Pinkham’s slightly swaggering and crazy eyed Monty endearing enough to overlook the fact that he’s a murderer and root for him. This production’s Monty, Blake Price, on the other hand, has a much more boyish, nerdy quality, which worked in his favor when it comes to making a social climbing murderer into a genuinely likable character, which he did. The fact of him looking like just about the least likely person ever to be a serial murderer was an irony that added to the comedy, and he never lost his adorableness even while dispatching relative after relative- and I wanted him to get away with it all. (Spoilers: he does! It’s a comedy, after all.)

James Taylor Odom had the gargantuan task of playing all eight of Monty’s victims, but did it with such energy and gusto that he made it look effortless, despite the numerous quick changes which must have been chaos backstage. I was sitting in one of the front boxes and could see into the wings on one side of the stage, and seeing stagehands and cast scrambling to set things up, and then the moment of transformation when the actors stepped on stage and turned ‘on’ as the crew slipped away in relief, was a familiar sight to me, but a reminder of how hard musical theatre magic is to make, and that, no matter how big the show, it’s just another bunch of theatre nerds working their butts off because they love this stuff as much as we do. And that’s what makes experiencing live theatre so different from just seeing it filmed: that excitement and passion fills a whole auditorium and everyone can feel it. As the only person in any of the front boxes at that performance, I got directly looked at by Monty, Sibella, and shot at by Adalbert D’Ysquith- and let me tell you, no matter how old you get or how many shows you see, having one of the characters in the show you’re watching suddenly make eye contact or interact with you, is always, always a huge thrill. For a moment, you’re part of the magic, and if anyone says that filming theatre will replace that, they’re wrong.

But back to the show: I liked the set very much. Having the scenes set in a little box mimicking a Victorian theatre was very ingenious and helped sell some of the more corny low-tech conceits like actors miming skating behind cardboard trees or climbing imaginary staircases. Hi-tech modern stagecraft wasn’t abandoned totally however, since many of the backdrops were created with moving pictures projected on the back wall of the little theatre box (or it might have been an LED screen- I couldn’t quite tell- but a projector would seem more practical/likely for a touring production).

Getting to see the whole story also helped me appreciate the score properly at last. On listening to the cast recording I’d thought it was solid, but un-inspiring. But now I really do think a lot of it is quite superb: the clever counterpoints in ‘Poison in my Pocket’, the gorgeousness and sensuality of the old-fashioned ballad ‘Sibella’, the precise, deadpan humor in ‘Why Are All the D’Ysquiths Dying?’, the surprisingly soaring, uplifting melody of ‘The Last One You’d Expect’... this is some of the better musical comedy music written in the last few decades. 

However, the show isn’t quite the ‘non-stop laughs!’ and ‘rolling in the aisles!’ comedy that it’s made out to be. It does have some very funny moments, and the tone is very zany in general, and the cast was playing it to the hilt, but there are definitely spots where it drags. Monty’s attempts to dispatch Aunt Hyacinth contained no less than two reprises of her song about wanting to civilize ‘savages’ in the far-flung British Empire, and while the attitudes of the D’Ysquiths are meant for us to laugh at for being so objectionable, it begins to cross over into the territory of actually objectionable, not to mention repetitive, to keep hearing the more and more insults about non-white cultures. The parts where it veered into the territory of sexual humor were also the most unfunny parts, the jokes being both incredibly stale and juvenile at the same time. One got the sense that the part with angry tenants confronting Henry D’Ysquith for mistreating them was possibly a last minute addition to make him into a terrible person worthy of being bumped off, since all his song tells us about him is that he’s gay, which would be an unbelievably insensitive thing to suggest he’s worthy of being hated/killed for. (His bee-sting death was absolutely hilarious though, I have to say- in addition to the bee swarm projection and sound effects, Odom came out wearing a bee-keeper helmet with little fake bees attached to it by wires, and he was hamming it up so fantastically, and the little fake bees shook when he screamed and flailed, it was so funny!)

As for the other principals, Colleen McLaughlin was also surprisingly likable as Monty’s sweetheart-to-secret lover Sibella, who, while self-absorbed and seemingly shallow, underneath it all genuinely cares for Monty as much as he does for her. They have a genuine rapport together, and their messed-up romance rings true in spite of, or perhaps because of, it’s lack of fairy-tale illusions. But even the usual fairy-tale princess type girl doesn’t stick to the usual narrative here: the sweet and refined Phoebe D’Ysquith, played by Erin McIntyre, boldly proposes to Monty herself, and overcomes her initial shock over his relationship with Sibella to help get him out of prison. In fact, the two of them deciding that their love of Monty is stronger than their jealousy of each other, and joining forces to save him, provides an absolutely delightful and somewhat subversive ending, wherein Monty lives happily ever after with both his wife and mistress, and both ladies very pleased with the arrangement. It’s an ending that redeems the show from it’s some of it’s more old-fashioned attitudes and it’s a nice feel-good happily ever after that neither sacrifices it’s naughtiness nor gives into cynicism completely. (And I’m not sure if the curtain-call antics with Monty giving his would-be assassin the belladonna flower was scripted or not, but it was brilliant and very funny!)

All in all, I’m glad I went. And considering that I sat way up in the balconies where I was in the throes of terrible vertigo the entire time (boo I hate economizing!), that’s saying a lot more in this shows favor than you might imagine!

#musical theatre #long post

[thewidowstanton]

Heidi Niemi, actor, Lumo Company

Heidi Niemi is a Finnish actor, based in London. She trained at the Finnish Theatre Institute, The Commedia School in Denmark, École Philippe Gaulier in France and at East 15 Acting School. Since moving to London in 2014 she has performed with John Hannah – “The highlight of my career. What a lovely bloke!” – and in The Titanic Orchestra at Pleasance Edinburgh. She then appeared in Dirty Bird, a new adaptation of The Seagull, at the Courtyard Theatre in London, and devised and performed Kick the Tin for the Sprint 16 Festival at Camden People’s Theatre.

Heidi is half of circus and physical theatre group, Lumo Company, with previous Widow interviewee Hanna Moisala. They recently toured UpsideDown, a contemporary circus show for schools in Finland that dealt with combatting bullying. Lumo Company is currently creating a new show, Lola, which earlier this year had a triumphant 20-minute work-in-progress outing at London's The Place, and was full of thrilling potential. Heidi's new show, MacBETTI, a funny one-woman take on Shakespeare's Macbeth, opens at London’s Camden People’s Theatre in May. Heidi chats to Adrian Arratoon. The Widow Stanton: Which part of Finland are you from? Heidi Niemi: I'm from Kuurika, a small town about 70km south west of Vaasa. And I lived in Tampere for almost 10 years. Were your parents performers? My dad is a singer. He sings in a band that plays a sort of tango and waltz. It's like a cross between pop and tango. Oh yes, tango is huge in Finland! There's a tango festival every year where they choose a tango queen and king, and that's really near my home town. When I was a kid my dad was away every weekend and maybe once a week, but he had his other job as well, as a salesman for farming equipment [laughs]. My sister, Anu, is an actor; she's been in a TV series for seven years; she's 10 years older than me and she's been acting for 20-25 years. She's going to come and direct MacBETTI. And my brother is a musician, in a band.

Can you remember the first time you appeared on stage in front of an audience? Let me think… it must have been when I was eight or nine. Every year in our school we did a Christmas play that we wrote ourselves and acted in. Normally it was called something like The Presents That Somebody Stole. One time, it was a very good part. I played a fake Santa who tried to take over Christmas; it was an evil role [laughs]. I specialise in these evil characters. I think that was my first, the fake Santa [laughs]! But I must say when I was a kid I liked acting and that sort of thing but I never went to acting club or anything. That wasn't my dream. I didn't know what I wanted to do. My sister always wanted to be an actor and I felt, ‘OK, that's my sister's thing’. She was on the stage from when she was two. I wanted to be a teacher, then I had a gap year and went to a drama school for what was supposed to be one year, just for fun. I realised how much fun it was and that's how I ended up acting.

Haven't you always done circus as well as acting? Not really always. My ex-husband was a circus person; he's a juggler, in traditional circus. I went to physical theatre school in Denmark, so in 2009 we started a company together and we toured around here and there. I was always faking that I could do circus, juggling and that sort of thing but I'm more like a clown. My ex was the only one who could catch my throws. With him I could juggle with nine rings and all sorts of things but I can't do it any more! It's been on and off, the circus stuff, but I'm definitely more like an actor. You're really funny on stage. How did you develop your funny bones? [Laughs] I think it's just something that you have naturally. Before I was a performer I always made people laugh without trying. I remember when I was 16 people called me Ally McBeal, after the character in the TV series, and I always fell over or slipped or did something stupid accidentally like her. But I went to a traditional drama school in Finland for two years, then I went to the physical theatre school; you learn Commedia and timing and clowning. Actually, at first it's difficult trying to be funny without knowing the techniques.

Then I went to Philippe Gaulier and there I realised that, yes, you have to have the technique but you have to combine it with your natural instincts. But it's sometimes difficult because in MacBETTI, when it was a work in progress, in the bit where Lady Macbeth is about to kill herself, I wanted people to cry, I wanted to do it very seriously… and people were just laughing [laughs]. But I can do straight drama too; I'm able to make people cry if I want them to. Most comedy stuff is being open and reacting. The most horrible thing is to go on a clown course. I absolutely hate it. It's a pain in the arse. It's awful. Why? I mean, I agree it is my idea of hell… Because you have to make people laugh. As soon as you take the pressure away from yourself and you fail that's fine. In everything that's the main thing; if you are prepared to fail you will learn things. And very often in clown courses it's so technical, but if you just have fun it's better.

Why did you come to London? Basically because we got divorced. I was living in Denmark. When that was over I thought, ‘OK, I'm 30, what should I do? I dunno; oh no…’, but my friend lived here and I just came here for three months in 2014, in the winter, and was having fun, getting my shit together. My friend was doing an MA course at East 15. I never thought I was going to do a school again but then I thought, ‘Yeah, why not?’. I was a drama teacher in Finland for many years and needed a place where people would teach things to me, so I applied to East 15. I thought I'd like to stay in London and going there was a good way to connect with people.

How did you meet Hanna? We met at some circus festival ages ago, maybe eight years ago. I knew her but not super-well before I came here. Because she was Finnish and she was here in London we started to hang out. Then she asked if I wanted to put a company together with her. And I said, ‘OK, why not?’. She pushes me and teaches me things I can't really do [laughs]. We're hoping to premiere Lola next year. We have timing issues so we're looking to see if I'll be in the show or if it'll be somebody else.

How was your tour of schools in Finland? The kids really liked us. They were from six to 17, and it was really funny because they asked our ages – I'm 32 and I think Hanna is 35, heh heh heh, [evil cackle] and when we told them they couldn't believe it. They were saying: "No way! What do you do for a living?" and we were replying, ‘Yeah, this is our job’. Even adults were asking if we were students; they couldn't understand that this is our job.

The subject of the show was about standing up to bullying and being yourself and believing in your dreams, so it was a nice thing for the students to see that here are two performers who are doing what they want. Being an adult doesn't mean that you have to do a job from 8am-5pm at the store or something. You can still do crazy stuff. Even if you're an adult you can still play and have fun; and I think you should still do that anyway.

I think that's why I ended up in this industry because my parents always played with me. With my dad, even now, we're still playing. But it was quite heartbreaking to see how much pressure the kids have nowadays with social media where looks are really, really important for them. The pressures they have now I didn't have at their age. It's a totally different world. It's sad but it's good to do this type of show telling them it's good to be yourself. In Lola there was a marvellous bit where Hanna stapled some paper to your leg, and the audience gasped in horror! How much does that hurt? It does hurt but in the show it doesn't because you have adrenaline going round your body. Of course, you can feel it, but when we first tried it it was horrible; I was in panic mode. Then when Hanna did it, it was really scary! It was actually my idea but I wasn't planning that it was going to be me who was going to be stapled!

Did you study Macbeth at school? We did it at East 15 in a Shakespeare model, and I also studied it when I was in Denmark. But it was basically because I like the story; there are witches, mystery, war, killing, there's blood and there are the big women characters like Lady Macbeth. I wanted to do a solo show and I was out of ideas. I had this solo show for kids, Red Riding Hood, that I've been doing for many years, where I play multiple roles. It was just a half joke that I was going to do a one-woman Macbeth.

But my boyfriend thought it was a good idea. And last summer, when I came up with the idea, he said Camden People's Theatre has a feminist theatre festival in August. So I applied without having any idea of what I was going to do. I got accepted then thought, ‘Oh no, now I have to do a show! [laughs]. But I work best with deadlines. Nobody would probably ever cast me as Macbeth and I want to play that role. And I'm doing all the other roles as well. How does it differ in Finnish and English? I'd been reading Macbeth in Finnish and I must say when I started to read it in English I couldn't understand it at all! I was never really a Shakespeare fan when I read it in Finnish because, for me, it just doesn't flow. I do speak a little bit of Finnish in this version as well. In MacBETTI there are two storylines; the one about Macbeth, the character who wants total power by killing the king, then there's the story of me as an actor, who wants total power by taking over all the roles. On the stage with me there's a performing stagehand who is a technician and prompter. He's the one on the receiving end of part of my craziness when I'm me as an actor, intoxicated with power. It's also about having fun but it's also about when you're a woman and you have to fight for your place in the industry. Are you superstitious about saying 'Macbeth'? You can say the name of the play but not in a theatre. What about in Finnish? Well, 'Macbetti’ is ‘Macbeth’ in Finnish. In my show, Banquo speaks in a thick Finnish accent and the name comes from how he pronounces the name, which is ‘Macbetti’. Heidi Niemi stars in Lumo Company’s MacBETTI at Camden People’s Theatre, London, from 16-20 May 2017, and at The Marlborough, as part of the Brighton Fringe, from 30-31 May.

Twitter: @niemi_heidi; @lumocompany

Follow @TheWidowStanton on Twitter

Read our interview with Heidi’s partner in Lumo Company, Hanna Moisala

#heidi niemi #clown #clowning #theatre #actor #actress #finnish #circus #macbeth #staples #hanna moisala #lumo company #finland

[chickpow]

Romeo and Juliet

Chickpow here: I found an old disc/floppy disc in my attic containing a lot of very old fanfiction from authors and websites that are either gone or taken down. I am not the author but I would like to share what I’ve found. if you find the author please let me know so I can credit them properly. Thank you and enjoy

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

Romeo and Juliet

Okay, lets get started. First and foremost, I don’t own anything and I am completely broke. But thanks to DBZ there is a story, and thanks to dear old Shakespeare, it is almost original. Now this story is rated NC-17. Get some lemonade, it’s hot. Yaoi, Goten/Trunks, and lots of fluff. Be warned.

 Romeo and Juliet

By: Melly-chan

 Junior Hopkins High School for boys. The dubbed, Hell on Earth. It is a nice campus, if one cared what a prison looked like. To the students, it is ultimately a joke. All the classes are ride through and even a jock can pass.

Why the school is announced as pristine is beyond me. It sucks. The teachers suck, the classes suck, hell even the students sucked. But who am I to say that, I am one of the students.

One good side that the school possesses, is that Gohan had not attended. It is all I need to spend another year in his shadow. Constantly being sold as the ‘let down’ of the family.

"Chichi is such a nice woman and Gohan is so intelligent. I wonder what went wrong with that youngest though. He is a strange one."

Okay so I never exactly heard anyone say that, but I know they thought it. How could they not? In all truth, I am the strange one. My mother, the kind loving soul who hit people with frying pans. My brother, the nerd who loved

books more than freedom. Goten, myself, the strange one.

I admit, I have done some things in my life that do not constitute my family. Scaling the side of skyscraper being one. Braking into people houses being another. But I didn’t steal anything, I only rearranged the furniture.

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if they had actually liked it better that way. . .

Mother had heard about the ‘great’ school and had signed me up.

"The curriculum will be hard. Maybe that will get you to study more. For one thing, it will keep you out of trouble."

Yeah right.

The only other good part about the lame ass school, is that Trunks shares in my boredom. Bulma had taken mom’s advice and had enrolled him. It they thought that would solve the problem, they forgot one thing, the only reason

we got in trouble in the first place was because we were together.

Solve it, right. Like enrolling us in some lame school is going to beat us into being their little puppets. Some children that they can shape to there will. Mom had been lucky with Gohan, but she would get no such satisfaction out of me. I am my own man.

So here I am, at school. Again. The sky is blue. The grass is green. What more description do you need?

Trig; snoozer. History; tu forte? French; Bonjour un sucer. Who cares.

Theater Arts. Now there’s a class. You could literally fall asleep and maintain that perfect A. The teacher didn’t care, so long as you participate when needed. That is why the class is last period. All the snoozers, like

me, would join just to goof off for the last period of the day before we goofed off at home, or wherever our fancy leads us.

The best part is that Trunks is in my class. We are the clowns you see, we upset the class, speak ‘shocking’ and always get away with it. Who didn’t love us. Plus, out teacher was about the only female on campus. And we are

the hottest guys. Get my connection?

It wasn’t like that really, but she did have some interesting thoughts in her head.

That’s for damn sure.

Today is like all other days. She talks we pretend to listen. And then she hits us, with the killer, the ultimate ki blast, the mother of all shockers.

"We," she meant this class, "are putting on a play. It will be Romeo and Juliet."

"Alright!" Some one yelled. "Your gonna bring in some babes for us to kiss!"

"Wrong. This is an all male school and so this will be an all male production."

"What?!"

I couldn’t have heard her right. She wanted us, a bunch of teenage boys, to perform in the most romantic, tear jerking, dramatic love story of all time, and she wasn’t going to grant us the knowledge of a female role? No! This

was not happening. Men do not kiss men. Men only kiss girls. Is she demented or something?

Why ask, she is.

The classes response ranges like my own.

"Why that one?"

"The school insists on Shakespeare."

"But why that one? Why not Hamlet?"

"They are not going to accept violence in the school. So no wars."

"But Ms. Keene, that is just sick!"

"I don’t want to hear another word. I have already decided. And knowing you, I have already selected the roles. They are posted in the back you can read them on the way out."

With that, the bell rings. I have no intention of checking that list. I do not what to be a part of this play. As far as I am concerned, I would prefer being a stagehand, or even a light person. There was no way they were going

to get me on stage, and in tights no less.

Several boys leer at me on their way out the door. Their expressions ones of amusement and humor. What crawled up their butts?

Trunks enters my line of sight, and I glance over to him. He is relaxed, waiting for the crowd to diminish before he attempts to read his part. He is calm and laid back. I don’t know whether that is because he is confident he

knows what part he is getting, or if it is just the way he feels today.

Only a few scragglier are left behind, and Trunks and I move forward. The list is long, given the size of the class and the number of parts. Near the bottom, I find Trunks’ name. Romeo. No surprise. Then I find my name.

"JULIET??????? You have got to be kidding me!!!!!! I am not going to play some girl! There is now way, you can’t make me!!!"

"Goten, calm down." Ms. Keene says. I pant furiously. How dare she cast ME as the girl. The one that has to kiss. . . . Gulp.

I’m going to to have to kiss Trunks.

The room suddenly starts spinning.

"Goten!" Trunks calls as he grabs my arm, attempting to steady me. I’m going to have to kiss him. . . .

"Goten, It’s not that bad. Your best friends right? Your friendship should be able to pull you through this. Come on, this is nothing."

Nothing she says. I am going to have to kiss my best friend. Several times. On stage. In front of everyone!

Hell no everything is not okay.

How do they expect me to take this? They are going to put me in a dress, stick me on stage and demand that I kiss Trunks. The world is ending. It must be. Since when did the schools come up with such perverted ideas. Making two boys kiss in public like that. What do they expect, a Grammy?

Hello no. Even Steven Spielberg wouldn’t go this far.

My life is hell.

Have I already said that? No? Well then here, I will say it again, my life is hell.

I look at Trunks’s unemotional face. One of his many features that he had inherited from his father. He revealed nothing. Even his eyes showed nothing but a dank emptiness. His reaction was a mystery. Well, he is on the

receiving end. He has to be feeling something. At least he doesn’t have to wear a dress.

"I suggest you boys sleep on it. You will be more comfortable with it in the morning."

Bloody hell, no.

The next day, I feel worse.

"And how is Juliet feeling today? Getting ready for that big smacker?"

"You say one more word to me, punk, and you wont have a smacker, or a life force for that matter."

"Oh, my sweet little kissy pooh." He obviously had heard the recent conversation. "Why not share a kiss? I’m sure ol’ Mr. Hefty would love to let you do a little number on his science desk."

This time, I do hit him. But not hard. Well, not by Saiyan standards.

He doesn’t speak again for a few more weeks.

Theater class is even harder. Ms. Keene hands out our scripts. "Now, I want you to be fully dedicated to these parts." She says. "I know it will be difficult for you, but the play is not that hard. You will get it. Trust me."

Trust her. Ya right, she cast me as the girl.

"Goten, I know this will be exceptionally hard for you, but just know that it is all acting. It is fake. And you have no way out of it."

Kissing noises come from behind me. Satisfaction would be to throw a large ki blast at them and see them wallow in their misery. The bastards.

"Rehearsals will start on Monday. Have a nice weekend."

Bitch. Nice weekend in deed. What weekend do I have to look forward to? Life is hell, this is my hell.

There is no way I am telling my family. Then they would want to come to the play and I’ll be damned if I let them see me in a dress. I was better off saying nothing. If I am lucky, they won’t say anything.

The weekends are always too short, and the week too long. But this time, it feels like it will never end, and for once, I am not happy about that.

Trunks decides to show up early Saturday morning. He’s dressed to spar, and I don’t need to ask. We know.

Mom on the other hand, does not.

"Oh, Trunks. It’s nice to see you. What will you be needing today?"

"I came over to spar with Goten."

"Is that all everyone ever does. Spar? You know, I am getting very tired of hearing that. All you men ever want to do is spar. Can’t you think of any better way to pass your time, like studying."

"I’m sorry Chichi, but we can’t help it. It’s in our blood."

"Oh, just get out of here, the both of you. And you better not come home all bloody again."

"Yes mom."

After living with a Saiyan, and two half Saiyans in her house for so many years, is she still yet to realize that it is our nature to fight. There is nothing we can do about it. It is an impulse.

We land in a clearing, deep inside the forest. We don’t come often to this particular spot, but is has been used several times. All one needs to tell that is to look around. The clearing is wider then it should be, trees that

were pulled up and tossed aside. A memory comes to me, one where Trunks had used a tree as a baseball bat, and my head as the ball.

Sure we could get vicious, but it was all in good fun. Nothing more.

Trunks lands in the center of the clearing, and removes his CC jacket. The coat is mindlessly tossed aside, and Trunks crouches into a fighting stance. I follow his example, and the battle is on.

We fight for hours, neither getting the best of the other. We are equally matched. Trunks lands a blow in my cheek, I feel the skin tear slightly, but I shake it off. He is rewarded with a jab in the stomach. You know, basic,

fun fighting. Nothing too bad.

Afterward, we are bruised and bloodied. So much for mom. I lay on my back and stare up at the trees. The day is slowly fading into night. The blue sky turns red and orange. The stars begin to sparkle.

"What are we going to do?" Trunks asks.

"I don’t know. Prissy Ms. Keene decided we would be perfect for the roles, and it looks like she has her fat heart stuck on it."

"It’s going to be so weird."

"Tell me about it."

"Promise me one thing."

"Ya?"

"It won’t. . . It won’t damage our friendship. You know, we’ll be cool with it."

"No prob."

On Monday, there was a problem.

"We will not be learning the play straight through, we will be learning it sections at a time, and I have already mapped out the schedule. Since we have four weeks to do this play, we will be practicing for an hour every day

after school. That will give us over an hour and a half every day. Now, there are five scenes in Romeo and Juliet. For your benefit, I shall label them. First, there is the party. And yes, this is the kissing scene. We will

be doing this scene the last week before production. Second, the balcony scene. Now I have checked, and it never mentions them kissing, so you get out of it. Unless you annoy me and I change that. Third, the battle and the

honeymoon. No comments there. Fourth, the fake death, and Five, the dramatic end. This week, we will start with the death and end. They are the shortest scenes and I want to get you in the mood. Then the balcony scene, the battle and then, yes, the kissing scene. We will meet on Saturday before opening night for a dress rehearsal. The play will run for a week. Got that cleared up? Good, now I’m tired of talking, start."

God, that woman could talk. She spent most of class period belting out that little monologue.

I am not thrilled about this at all. How the Hell am I suppose to act like a woman? I don’t want to! If things had turned out to my liking, I would be one of the lucky few who were placed in charge of the set. They didn’t have to memorize lines, they didn’t have to wear a dress, they didn’t have to kiss their best friend.

My life is hell.

For a week, I get to play dead. For a week, I get to memorize stupid lines for a role I don’t want. Not to mention that this friggin’ Juliet has about a million lines in these scenes. God, who cares. Do we really need to listen

to this chick talk to herself? Give me a break!

Unfortunately, life did one of its twists. They say that times goes by when you’re having fun. Ya right. Whoever said that needs to be drug into a dark alley and shot. I was most definitely not having fun, but time flew by. It

was like time had decided to get the easy stuff over with, and bring on the parts I could live without.

All too soon, it is week four.

The dreaded week.

The poisoned week.

Monday, was cool, we spent most of our time setting up the props on the stage. No prob. Tuesday, we memorized lines. Wednesday, walk through. Thursday, day off to get fitted. Oh, the agony, I look like a girl in that dress. They even bought a wig! Sure the wig was nice, it looked real, but it was going to be on me! And I was going to be in a dress! With makeup! My life is hell.

Friday, the last day. Tomorrow will be the dress rehearsal, and then, the play. Can I just curl up and die right now?

Today, she decides to act through the scene. Straight through, she says, no breaks.

The kissing is at the end of the scene.

I do well in spite of myself. Maybe acting is my thing, but then, that doesn’t mean I have to like the role.

Trunks is good. He maintains his unemotional façade, untouched by events. Some times, I wish I had that ability. To remain so cool, so calm, so calculated. To not have anything effect me, to be indifferent. You have to

admire that about Trunks. He could look like an emotionless bastard on the outside, but you just know that inside, he is screaming.

"Alright, here we go. The last section. Boys, and Goten, get prepared for the kissing scene."

She really is sick.

I stand in my spot, waiting. I do not want to do this. With everyone around, everyone watching. I do not want to kiss him in front of them. Not in private. . .

Whoa, Hello! Where did that thought come from? God, this stress is getting to me. I just implied kissing my best friend in private. What is wrong with me? Okay, shake it off, here we go.

"If I profane with my unworthiest hand,

This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss." Trunks acted.

"Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,

And palm to palm I holy palmers’ kiss."

"Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?"

"Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer."

"O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.

They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair."

"Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake."

"Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take."

Trunks move in closer. His lips right above mine, close.

I laugh. The mood is broken, I know, but I laugh. The boys with the sets had stopped to watch, the extras in the seats, they all laugh. I can not help myself. My face turns red. I bend over, holding my stomach. I laugh.

"ENOUGH!" Ms. Keene bellows. The laughing dies down. "I will not put up with this. You have one day, one day to get this right, and if you laugh again," she points to me, "You will get a drop F."

Talk about initiative, my mom would flip if I failed the class. I had to talk her into it in the first place, now I might lose my freedom of choice, forever. I can not fail the class.

I look over to Trunks, as always, a mask of indifference. He had not laughed.

The theater empties, soon only Trunks and I are left.

"I don’t want to fail." I say.

"I know, I don’t either." He looks at me, "We are going to have to get this right."

"What should we do?"

He sighs, "Practice, I guess."

Practice? He wants to practice kissing me? You have got to be kidding me! Wait, what about that thought I had had earlier, in private. What did that mean? Do I want to kiss him? Do I want him to kiss me? I furrow my eyebrows, thinking.

"Goten."

"Ya?"

"Let’s get out of here. It’s depressing."

I shrug.

We fly above the town. I follow Trunks. When we land we are at the edge of a cliff. The desert is spread out before us, we are alone. Trunks walks to the edge of the cliff and sits, dangling his feet over the edge. I follow.

We sit, silent. Nothing, but the sound of the air, the day.

"We are going to have to do this."

"I know." I say.

Neither of us move, and time stands still. I don’t want to make the first

move.

Trunks looks at me with his emotionless eyes. His jaw is set. He looks into my eyes, and I wander. I have never realized how very blue his eyes are. Dull, yes, emotionless, yes, but strikingly blue. Blue like the sky, when

the rain has cleared and the sun pours through. Blue like a waterfall, that cascades over a cliff and into the murky river. Blue.

How could I not have noticed? His eyes were always there. As far back as my memories go, he was there. I eyes, his hair, his lips.

His lips.

He moves closer, and I am silent. My breath is in my throat, and I wait. His lips touch mine, so slightly. Feather soft, hesitant. I close my eyes.

He kisses me. His lips pressed to mine, almost forcefully. His hand at my neck, pulling me closer.

My blood is rushing. My head is soaring. Electricity is shooting through my veins. I grab his shirt, my knuckles white.

The kiss goes on. His hand on my back, on my neck. His lips on mine.

His mouth opens, his tongue rubs my lips, pleading.

I open.

His tongue enters my mouth, hot and dominating. I melt. Our tongues dance, rubbing, tasting, demanding. So good.

Trunks.

Trunks!

My eyes shoot open and I pull back. I am breathing hard, and so is he. He looks at me, questioning.

His eyes, God, his eyes. The emotionless veil had been lifted, and in his eyes, I see everything. At the forefront, love.

I feel faint. He loves me? When did that happen?!?

"Trunks?"

"Goten. . . I, I wanted to tell you. I did. I know that you are not that way, but please, listen. I have loved you for as long as I can remember. I never dated because no girl ever compared to you. You are everything to me. Please, I know you don’t feel the same, but remember, you did kiss me back."

"We. . . we were practicing. . ."

He looks at me. I feel small. What am I to say? He is holding his heart out

in his hands and I, the blubbering idiot, can not think of what to say!

"Trunks. . ."

"This got weird didn’t it?"

I look up, "Huh?"

"We promised it wouldn’t get weird, it did. I’m sorry." His eyes were emotionless again. Trunks stands up, gives me one last look, and flies off. I can not make a sound.

I sit for long hours. Thinking. About the play, our promise, and Trunks. It had felt so good to kiss him. I could melt into a puddle of eternal bliss. I have never felt this way before. I have kissed girls, many. But this was

new. This was like a romance novel. You never think I could possibly be as good as they describe, but this, it is. In so many ways, if not better.

I can still taste him in my mouth. Still feel the aftermath of his kiss. If I try, I can feel his tongue touching mine. Savoring me.

When did I get these feeling? Just days ago, hell just hours ago, I refused to kiss him. I protested, loudly, but now, all I want is his lips on mine.

Romeo. Trunks.

The play. I open my eyes. I will show him tomorrow at rehearsal. A smile spreads across my face. Life is good.

I get there early. The early bird gets the worm, well the early Goten gets his man.

Trunks is late. Fifteen minutes, he is late.

I have already been stuffed and prodded into my dress and wig. Thankfully no makeup today. Where is that boy? If I must suffer through wearing a dress, the least he can do is show up to kiss me.

Half an hour.

"Where is Trunks?" Ms. Keene asks redundantly. Right, like I hadn’t noticed.

"He better get his scrawny ass here soon. . ."

Scrawny? No way Ms. Bitch, his ass is not scrawny.

Where is he?

The back doors fly open, and Trunks enters. Fashionably late.

I nearly faint. He is wearing form fitting black pants, a tight black tank,

and his favorite CC jacket. He looks hot, as usual.

"Well, Romeo finally decides to show up. An excuse maybe?"

Trunks flashes her a grin. "Nope."

His eyes scan the stage, they go right over me. A frown is on his beautiful face.

"Well lets get started." Ms. Keene says. Trunks disappears into the back to get dressed.

Rehearsal starts. It goes smoothly. No mistakes.

Then I enter. Trunks looks at me. Does a double take, and his eyes widen. I guess he didn’t recognize me.

I say my lines.

He speaks, like in a trance. His eyes never leave me. Everyone thinks he is

acting. Pretending to be love struck. But I see his eyes. He is.

He loves me.

I lean forward, and he kisses me. Line, kiss, line kiss. Three kisses. Each

as soul shattering as the last.

The boys chuckle off stage. The play continues.

I die and he holds me in his arms, sorrow in his voice. He cries over me and

for a moment, I fancy the truth. Would he cry over me, if I really died?

Yes.

The play ends, my head is on his chest, in death. He can not fake death, his breathing is fast and obvious.

The curtain closes and I stand up. Trunks follows. I look at his eyes and for a moment, I see a flash. Pain?

"Trunks. . ."

The curtain opens and the rest of the boys climb onto the stage.

"Good, that was actually good. Do it like that next week, and you will all get A’s. Dismissed."

I glance at Trunks before I head into the changing room. It feels good to get out of this ridiculous dress.

Trunks is waiting at the door when I exit. He turns, silent, and walks. I follow. We walk across the city, the long way to his house.

"Trunks."

He turns.

"I need to talk to you. About yesterday."

He flinches and turns away from me.

"I. . . I know I hurt you. I didn’t mean to, really. I didn’t know. I had no

clue. But now. . . now I can see it. I know you love me and. . . I love you

too."

"As a friend right?"

"No."

He turns back to me, his face full of hope.

"I love you Trunks. It took your kiss for me to figure it out. But I do love you, as a boyfriend, a lover, a husband. Whatever you want."

Trunks stairs at me. His breaths are slightly labored, and his lips are parted. I see doubt cross his eyes. I grab his hand and take off for a more secluded area. We end up in the park. Trees surround us. I pull him into my

arms, and kiss him with all my might.

His hands wrap around me and he takes over. His tongue delves into my mouth like it had before. The kiss is deep and intimate. The kiss of lovers. Two star-crossed lovers.

I smirk, maybe the play wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

 *****

Now, on opening night, I am dead nervous.

I feel like vomiting. My dress feels too tight, my head is dizzy, I am miserable. Trunks comes up behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders.

"Breath, just breath. Everything will be okay. Calm down."

I take his advice and breath. It does help. Trunks wouldn’t lie to me, everything will be okay.

"Hey guys!" Some kid says. "Everyone is here! The play is packed! Hey, Goten, I can even see your family."

WHAT!!!!!!!

I hadn’t told them anything about the play. They couldn’t have known. I stick my head slightly out the curtain and look into the audience. Sure enough, there they are. Mom, Gohan, Videl, Pan, and little Goku, the newest

addition to the family, sitting next to Trunks’s family in the middle of the auditorium.

I start to hyperventilate. I can’t breath. My family is here. They will see me in a dress, as a girl, on stage. Kissing Trunks. Okay, so I had planned to tell them some time, but not so soon! Even Vegita was out there!

"Whoa, Goten, are you okay?" Trunks says.

"Do, I look, okay?" I gasp.

"Well, no. You look like you are hyperventilating. What’s wrong?"

"My family is here!"

"You didn’t want them here?"

"NO!"

Trunks’s face turns red. "Um, well, I, um, well, that is. . ."

"What?"

"I kinda told them."

"YOU WHAT???"

"Shhhhhh." Numerous people call, finger to mouth.

"You invited my family to see me in a dress???"

"It wasn’t like that! The subject kinda came up one time and I mentioned that you had a lead role. They said they wanted to come."

"Did you tell them what the play was?"

"Well, no, I-"

I almost faint. My head swoons and I am on my way to the floor. Trunks catches me, of course, but how could he? He told my family to come, but didn’t mention I was playing the girl?

"Goten! Goten! Come on, come on, wake up. Your okay, everything is okay. Wake up."

I groan. "I’m gonna kill you Trunks." I slur.

"Okay, okay, you can kill me later, but right now you have to wake up. They

play is about to start."

I groan. I don’t want to do this anymore. My life is hell.

I sit in a chair, my head between my knees, trying to compose myself. I didn’t go on until the end of Act 1, but that was the important scene. The scene where I kiss Trunks.

I by time I get myself composed, it is time to go on. I pull my head up, and enter the stage.

I murmur goes up among the crowed. I hear some people commenting on what a pretty girl Juliet is. I hear my family gasp. I hear Vegita laughing.

I hear myself dying.

I deliver my lines perfectly, the way I am suppose to. Get your mind off the crowd and do your job, I tell myself. Easier said then done.

Trunks enters, wearing his tights and tunic. His legs are shown off perfectly and for a moment I feel jealous that all of these people get to see him like this, and not just me.

I hear Vegita laugh again.

The moment has come. The kiss. I can almost hear my mother holding her breath. She knows what is suppose to happen.

We kiss. Once, twice, three times. The kissing scene is over. We lived.

After that, I lost myself in the play. The words envelop me and I can see nothing but Trunks, and me, and the stage. Nothing else matters.

We lay dead at the end, the curtain falls.

Cheers rise up from the audience and I pull myself up off Trunks’ chest. We line up for our bows, and the curtain rises. Everyone is on their feet, cheering. Even my family, Trunks’ family, and Vegita. It was exhilarating,

to be up in front of so many people. To be cheered and loved for the performance. The experience is deafening. I feel alive and excited. All to soon, it is over.

I remove my costume quickly, making sure to get every dab of makeup off.

I exit the auditorium, and mine and Trunks’ family are waiting for us on the corner. Trunks is leaning against the wall, waiting. I give everyone a nervous smile.

"Goten, you did great." Gohan says.

"Ya, uncle Goten, you did real good as a girl, he he he."

"Pan, stop that." Gohan said to his young daughter.

A smirk is on Vegita’s face. But he remains silent.

I feel incredibly nervous. "I hadn’t meant for you to come."

"Why not honey?" Mom says.

"Um, well, I, didn’t really want you to see that."

"Oh, it’s okay honey, you were only acting."

That’s what she thinks. I meant every word.

Talk about your acquired situation. What are you suppose to say when your family has seen you perform as the opposite gender? Have a nice day? See you later? Austa Lavista?

I can not wait to get out of here.

 *****

By the end of the week, I finally felt better. With each performance, I felt more comfortable, and the pre-performance jitters disappear by closing night. The crowd response became even more exhilarating. It quickens my heart and swells my head. I did good, and they were open to show it. I didn’t mind so much that they though me a girl, but their response, wow. I feel alive with their praise. It would almost be as good to get the praise

from Trunks.

Or perhaps better.

As it is, the play is over. No more after school practices. No more stolen kisses in front of an audience, no more Ms. Keene getting kinky ideas.

I am going to miss it.

I roll onto my side, a Saturday morning. The sun creeps in through my window, pertaining to the wondrous day. I pull my arm up over my head, not wanting to wake up. My bed is warm, comforting. I can spend the day there.

My door bangs, loud enough to make the wood split and take my ears with it. I roll onto my stomach, not wanting to acknowledge it.

"Goten!" Mom calls. I put my pillow on my head.

"Goten! Get up, it’s a beautiful day, don’t spend it in bed!"

"Goten! Trunks is here to see you."

That got me. I leap out of bed and race to my dresser. Cloths fly, I search for clothes, good clothes, sexy clothes, anything! The banging has stopped. I hear a click behind me, the door opens.

"Mom, I’m-" I blush. It’s Trunks.

His eyes examine me, take me in. I am only wearing boxers. He licks his lips; my blush deepens. He shuts the door behind him, and walks toward me. His eyes flash.

He wraps his arms around me, muscular, strong. His lips reach mine and our eyes close.

I breathe him in. Musk and life. Our tongues touch, a mating dance of their own.

My door bangs again. We pull away from each other quickly, and face the door.

"Goten, get outside. The day is too beautiful to waste." Mom again. Do you think she suspects? Does she know?

Most definitely not, she would faint.

I turn back to my dresser. I still need clothes. I open the drawer and search through the neatly folded stacks. Trunks reaches around me and pulls out his own selection.

He presses himself against my back.

"Wear this." He whispers in my ear. Tingling. His hand is on my bare chest, his mouth at my ear. My pulse quickens, my breath harder.

His tongue is at my ear, kissing, caressing. I shudder and lean my head back. His tongue traces my ear, his mouth nibbles the lobe. My eyes are closed.

He pulls away. My eyes shoot open and I look at him.

"Get dressed."

I get dressed, I hop into my clothes as fast as possible, Trunks stands there, watching. A blush is on my cheeks.

I pull my shoes on and Trunks opens the door.

We fly. We fly out into the forest away from everything. Are we going to spar?

We land in the woods, not our typical fighting grounds. There is no clearing, just trees. Trees all around us, towering above us.

Trunks leaps. He catches me off guard and knocks me over. Only he falls with me. My eyes widen. He is on top of me, pinning me down. His legs are straddling my hips, his hands on my chest.

His eyes are clear, full of love. They burn with intense emotion.

He kisses me. Urgent, needy.

His warmth surrounds me, hot and pulsing. His hands move on me, tracing and touching. I moan into his mouth. He un-tucks my shirt from my pants and slips his hands inside, against my skin.

"Maybe you shouldn’t have dressed at all." His voice is thick and hot. Passionate.

He pulls my shirt up and off. His mouth is on me again, on my chin, my neck, my chest. I loose myself in his touch.

My hands are on his neck, encouraging. His mouth kisses me, his tongue leaves wet trails against my skin. His mouth covers my nipple and I scream out with pleasure, jutting my hips. He smirks, nips, hardening and

caressing. He moves to the other. My pleasure is intense, consuming.

His mouth moves lower, tracing my stomach, circling my navel. I shudder.

His hands are at my hips, at my waistband. My pants are opened and removed, my boxers follow.

I am left naked, and loving it. I am breathing hard, and so is he.

He licks me, I moan. His tongue surrounds me, lapping and consuming. My hands dig into his hair, my hips jerk. He takes me into his mouth and sucks. I cry out and thrust my hips.

His hands go to my hips, holding me down, his pulls back and his tongue is on me, creative and hot. The fire inside of me is building and it consumes me, growing, engulfing. I reef against the ground, consumed by the intensity of the presser growing in my groin. The fire grows, scorching my soul and spreading.

I lose myself.

I spill my seed into his mouth. I cry out.

He swallows as much of my seed as he can, then licks my skin.

I start to descend from my high, my sexual ecstasy. I look into his eyes. Love.

I pull myself up onto my elbows.

"Your still dressed." I smirk.

I pull him into me, kissing him. I can taste myself in his mouth. My hands travel along his back, and down to his tight ass. I squeeze. I break the kiss and move along his skin, his neck, his ear. I undo the top button of his shirt and my mouth moves to the revealed skin. Down, down.

He is on his back, breathing hard. His shirt is open and I pull it off. I kiss him once again. His hips press against mine and I feel his throbbing need. Time to take care of that.

I slip my hand inside his pants and caress his ass.

He moans, his eyes close and he tilts his head back. I open his pants and shove them down his hips. He wiggles, moving his pants lower down his legs. His manhood is pressed against his boxers, aching.

I press my lips against his stomach, just above the waistband, teasing. He groans, clutching my hair, encouraging me to continue. I play with the waistband, just to torture him, before I remove the remainder of his clothes.

He is laying naked before me, glowing in his sweat and need. He is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Perfect in every way.

I lower my mouth to his hardness, taking him deep into my throat. Trunks shakes under me, jerking his hips.

I suck for a few minutes before pulling away. He groans at the loss and looks up to me.

I smile softly and lower my mouth to his. We kiss deeply, lovingly.

"Goten, I-"

I cut him off by straddling his hips. His breath catches in his throat and

he looks up to me.

Words are lost, and he enters me. His length fills me, hurting for a moment, but then I am lost in my pleasure, my completion of being joined by my love. We move together, lost in our rhythm. Lost in our pants, cries, and growing exhilaration.

I feel myself building again, climbing the age-old ladder of ecstasy, the fire building inside of me, growing and spreading once more.

With a final thrust of his hips, I am sent over the edge, I cry out. Trunks looses it at the same time, he pushes deep inside of me and empties his seed, he screams.

We collapse, a jumbled heap of limbs, in the aftermath of our love. I feel whole.

*****

At school we are forced to act indifferent, separate, from each other. It is nearly too hard. To act like friends, and nothing more. To be distant and lost in my schoolwork. How am I to survive without screaming to the world

that Trunks belongs to me. Without threatening everyone who gets to close?

I can feel his presence in the school, and it nearly undoes me. To have my love so close and not be able to be near him. To listen to lame ass teachers lecture about history. I can’t wait until school ends, and then maybe Trunks

and I can go out, alone.

Lunch is the only reprieve I can get. We sit in a corner, separate from everyone.

"So what should we do about dad?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don’t know how my dad is going to react to this. At least your mom is predictable, Chichi will probably faint, but my dad, I don’t know. We are either going to be excepted or beaten."

"I don’t know what to tell you Trunks. He never mentioned his beliefs before."

"Ya, I guess we will just have to tell them, and see. But we can tell your family first."

"Mine? Why not tell your family first, they would probably take it better."

"Well, I want to see your mom’s reaction."

"You already know what will happen. What about your dad?"

"That can wait. Now your family, they are the ones that get emotional about stuff."

"Well your family are cold, ruthless bastards."

"We are also royal."

"Royal pain in the asses."

"You know you like it."

"You know you want it."

"You suck."

"Well, you swallow."

That got him. A blush set on his cheeks. He stands up and grabs my arm, pulling me from my seat. I stumble to get my footing.

He drags me out of the cafeteria and into the hallway. As I am pulled down

the hall, the warning bell rings and students begin to rush to class. But still, Trunks continues.

"Trunks, the bell, we are going to miss class."

No answer, save for a small grunt. We reach the end of the hall and the tardy bell rings. So much for classes.

Trunks pulls a door open and shoves me inside. It’s a janitor’s closet. It is almost large, but narrow. Surely bigger than what they are rumored to be.

He pulls the door closed behind him and locks it from the inside.

"Don’t say things like that unless it is an invite."

With that, he leaps at me, grabbing me around the waist and capturing my lips. His hands are busy at my clothes.

"Trunks. . . school. . ."

"Like I care."

With that, off come our clothes. My back is pressed against the wall and Trunks’ tongue is all over me, tasting, touching. My protests die away, I submit. His mouth covers my throbbing need and I stifle my moans.

His hands roam my skin; I melt. My hands reach his shoulders, pulling. He moves from me, making me gasp at the loss. I look into his eyes.

"We don’t have the time."

He kisses me, and lowers us to the floor. The coldness is against my back. His hand presses my thigh, pulling it up, I move my legs up and around him. Silent, he thrusts into me. I bite my lip.

He moves, faster and faster. I grit my teeth to keep from crying out. The moment is getting closer. I pull his head in for a kiss, we reach our climax. His scream is lost in my mouth.

"Trunks." I pant. Slowly, my head begins to clear.

The doorknob shifts. My head snaps up. A curse is heard through the door and footsteps, walking away. Trunks and I exchange a glance.

We jump to our feet and scramble to our discarded clothes. We pull them on frantically. Trunks finishes first, I hop to the door, pulling my shoe on.

Trunks peaks out the door, then pushes it open. I run past him and down the hall. He locks the door, from the inside, before he follows me.

Minutes later, the janitor arrives with a set of keys.

We decide to tell our families as soon as possible. Basically, that means in as many days as we can dare keep a secret from them.

We settle on Friday, the end of the week and a whole weekend to get use to it.

I can’t tell whether the day came too fast, or not fast enough. On one hand, I want to push the day away, dreading what would happen, people’s reactions. On the other hand, I want to get it over with so I can get back to being

with Trunks. I other words, I am miserable.

Trunks decides to go out on Thursday, just to get our minds off the inevitable. I knock on his door to pick him up, Vegita answers.

"What do you want, brat?"

"Trunks and I are going out."

Oops, bad choice of wording. Vegita doesn’t notice.

He scowls at me, and walks away from the door. I walk in behind him.

A few minutes later, Trunks comes down the stairs, beautiful as always.

We turn and head for the door.

"Trunks! Get over here brat!"

Trunks stops, grimacing, and turns to his father. Taking a deep breath, he walks over to Vegita. He is sitting in his favorite chair, apparently relaxed.

I follow Trunks to his father.

"Now brat, you should know better than to keep a secret from me. Don’t think you can fool me for one instant. But if you are going to do something like that, then don’t forget," he looks at us, "how to mark your mate."

I pale. He knows. How did he figure it out? How long has he known?

He turns away from us, closes his eyes, and begins his meditations. I turn to Trunks, the color is gone from his face and he is just as shocked as I am.

Wordlessly, we leave.

"How. . ."

"I don’t know. I didn’t think dad had figured it out."

"What did he mean, by ‘mark your mate’?"

"I don’t know."

Something in the back of my mind begins to bother me. Something I should now, should remember. But it is out of my reach.

Later that night, as I lay in Trunks’ arms in the moonlight, I remember.

"Gohan."

"What, is he coming?"

"No, I just remembered. After Gohan got married he came home with a mark on

his neck."

"What kind of mark?"

"A bite mark."

"Why would Videl bite him? I mean it is kinda kinky and all, but was is necessary?"

"Your dad mentioned marking your mate, Gohan came home with a bite on his neck. Do you think that could be what your dad meant?"

Trunks looks at me, searching my eyes. He tilts his head, reveling his neck.

I gulp and lower my head to the base of his neck and lick the offered skin.

I bite. My teeth delve into his skin, bringing blood. I shudder. Something inside of me fills, like it was filling the whole of my soul.

Trunks bites my neck as I lick at blood from his wound. We are now life mates.

Friday comes, as it usually does.

I bring my family to Trunks’ house. We decided to tell them together. They sit in their living room, chatting.

I take a deep breath, preparing for what is going to happen.

"Mom, I’m in love." I announce.

"Oh, honey, that’s nice, but is this the place to be telling me?"

"Yes," Trunks interrupts, "because he’s in love with me." He takes my hand, reassuringly.

The room is silent. Then the eruption.

"WHAT?!?!?!"

"But, what, Goten, this can’t be, you can’t be, no! I won’t allow this!" Mom says, she looks faint.

"On Vegitasei it was customary for members of the same genders to mate. And as you can see, it is too late." Vegita pulls Trunks’s collar away from his neck, reveling his bite.

Mom faints. Gohan catches her before she reaches the ground.

Overall, Everything has gone as planned.

Trunks and I leave the commotion of the house. We fly up to the roof and sit, gazing at the stars.

"Goten, I was thinking. By Saiyan tradition, we are life mates. But in human tradition, we are not excepted. But even so, I would like you to be my husband." He pulls two wedding rings out of his pocket and holds them out to

me.

I smile softly. "Trunks, I love you. Of course I will marry you."

"Then, by yonder blessed moon I vow, That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops-"

"O, swear not by the moon, the’ inconstant moon

That monthly changes in her circled orb.

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable."

"What shall I swear by?"

"Do not swear at all

Or, it thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,

Which is the god of my idolatry,

And I’ll believe thee."

"If my heart’s dear love-"

"I love you."

"I love you."

Fin

#Goten #Trunks #Yaoi #Lost Fanfiction