#(the chapter that I THOUGHT was about Lydia was actually about Paul)

[sourwolf-sterek32]

Alpha’s First Daughter

Summary: You had been on your own for years after escaping the Whisperers. Until you run into a hunter in the woods who's searching for his brother.

OR

The Walking Dead rewrite from Season 9 to Season 11 with you, Y/N, as Daryl Dixon's eventual love interest.

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Fem!Reader

Word Count: 3.8k

Warnings: language,

Chapter 25-

Arriving back home to Alexandria was depressing.

Sure, you had food and supplies for everyone which was fantastic, but so many had died to get those supplies and watching everyone reunite with their loved ones made you realise just how alone you actually were.

Negan was gone too. Maggie said that he had left and that was it. He didn't even say goodbye to you, nothing.

Daryl hadn't said a word to you since you and Maggie killed the Reapers... minus Leah who he let walk away. Daryl was pissed at you which was fine because you were still upset with him about the whole Leah thing anyway.

While everyone was hugging their family and friends, you slipped away and found a quiet spot behind the nearest building and collapsed to the ground beside it. The stab wound on your stomach was still hurting as you rested your hand over the stitches and let out a heavy sigh, leaning your head back against the wall.

You were alone.

The only person you had left was angry at you... you literally had no one. No Negan, no Lydia, no Ace, no one.

Tears started to burn in the back of your eyes, but you refused to let them fall. Why were you crying? It wasn't like you weren't used to being alone. You've been alone for most your life, it was fine. You were fine, you kept telling yourself. You had to be.

You buried your face into your hands and just sat there, listening to everyone laugh and chat in the background before a voice you thought you'd never hear again filled the air.

"No welcome back hug?"

Your head shot up so fast that you nearly gave yourself whiplash before your eyes landed on Paul Rovia standing a few metres away with a bright smile.

He was alive. Holy shit, he was alive.

You sat there and stared at him with wide eyes before tears started to blur your vision. You wanted to get up and hug him, you wanted to ask him how he was alive, but you couldn't get yourself to even move as you sat there in utter shock.

"Hey, hey, hey, it's okay. Y/N, don't cry. it's okay." Jesus hurriedly reassured, rushing over and dropping to his knees beside you.

That just made you cry even harder as you buried your face with your hands again and sobbed. All your pent-up emotion now flooding through, and you couldn't stop it.

"It's been rough for her." You heard Aaron say softly in the background as a way of an explanation before Jesus suddenly wrapped his arms around your shoulders and pulled you into his chest.

"It's okay. I got you. It's okay." He said, holding you tightly before he glanced up at Aaron and whispered, "where's Daryl?"

"They, uh, they aren't on the best of terms right now."

"Shit." Jesus swore softly under his breath, his hand rubbing soothing circles over your back as he held you. "It's okay, you're okay. Everything is okay."

You weren't sure how long you were crying for, but by the time you pulled away from him, his shirt was wet from your tears and Aaron had now disappeared, leaving just the two of you sitting against the building.

"I'm sorry." You whispered, wiping the tears from your eyes as you looked over at your best friend, still unable to believe that he was real. "How-how are you here?"

"Don't ever apologise for something like this, okay?" He replied, looking at you seriously. "And Connie and I managed to escape. It's a long story and I am way too sober to tell it."

You snorted softly despite the tears in your eyes as Jesus looked down at your blood-stained shirt. "What happened to you though?"

"Also, too sober to talk about that."

Jesus chuckled, but nodded in understanding, "how about you and I take a trip to the infirmary. We get your wound properly looked at and then I think Aaron has some moonshine laying around somewhere and we can swap stories, how does that sound?"

"I'd like that."

Jesus smiled before standing up and holding his hand out to you like a gentleman which you happily took as he helped you to your feet before the two of you made your way across Alexandria.

"Hey! Got something coming!" Jerry's voice urgently shouted from the watch platform.

You and Jesus stopped in your tracks as you looked over towards the gate in confusion. Maggie and Daryl quickly climbed the ladder up to the platform where Jerry was standing and instantly raised their weapons at whoever was on the other side.

Shit, this wasn't good.

"Get ready!" Daryl shouted over his shoulder.

You pulled your handgun from your holster, Jesus doing the same with his sword and you smiled softly realising that Aaron had given it back to him. The two of you made your way towards the gate with the others, your weapons up and ready.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait. We're all friends. We're all friends. They're here to help." Eugene's voice said from the other side of the gate.

You glanced over at Jesus who met your gaze with equal amounts of confusion.

-

Eugene, Ezekiel and Yumiko had managed to find this new community, The Commonwealth, and they were here to help.

All of Alexandria sat while Eugene explained everything. The Commonwealths soldiers stood off to the side wearing white and black armour and wielding some serious fire power. These people clearly had resources and Eugene seemed to trust them enough to bring them to Alexandria.

Lance Hornsby, the diplomatic representative of The Commonwealth spoke to you all. Offering food and supplies to help you guys rebuild before suggesting another offer which was to join him and The Commonwealth.

That simple offer.... that had changed everything.

Over half of Hilltop and Alexandria left to join the Commonwealth, including Daryl Dixon.

Maggie on the other hand had refused to leave Hilltop while Jesus had moved to Alexandria to be with Aaron and Gracie. You didn't stay in one place for long enough to call home though, you mainly travelled between the communities, spending a few weeks at a time at each settlement before moving onto the next.

It was nice travelling between the two communities, plus Oceanside on occasion too. It gave you something to do and made it feel like you weren't stuck behind the walls of either community.

It didn't take long before Aaron and Jesus accepted The Commonwealths offer. You didn't blame them, things were getting bad, food becoming scarce. They had to do what was right for their people. Jesus had tried to convince you to go with them, but you refused.

Instead, you went back to Hilltop after saying your goodbyes and helped Maggie keep her community alive. It was struggling, you both knew it, but neither of you wanted to join The Commonwealth.

The Hilltop was just going through a rough patch at the moment. It would get better. You just had to keep pushing until you reached the better part.

You thought back to the day that Daryl left. The last time you had seen him.

"I don't want to go to The Commonwealth without ya." Daryl had said while he was packing Judith’s and RJ's bags.

"I know." You sighed, sitting down on the edge of Judith's bed.

The kids were all outside playing in Alexandria one last time, you could hear them laughing and having fun together while Daryl finished packing the last of their things.

"Then come with us. I know we... I know... I know ya still hate me because of Leah ‘n I will never stop trying to make up for that, but please, Y/N, I can't lose ya. Just come with us ‘n we will work everythin’ out."

"Daryl, I can't."

"Why?" He asked, putting one of RJ's toys down and looking at you properly.

"I didn't survive this far into the apocalypse just to go back to having to work for a living and to pay rent like the old days. I'm done with that shit. At least with Hilltop I'm not confined just behind these walls and I don't have to pay stupid rent... I just wish things would go back to how it used to be. Like when we were living in the woods together. Life was just..." You trailed off and looked down at the ground.

"Easier? Simpler?" Daryl supplied and you looked back over at him and nodded. "I'd give anythin’ to go back to that. But we can't... I got Judith 'n RJ to think 'bout now. I gotta do what's best for ‘em."

You smiled sadly, "I know and that's okay."

"Y/N..."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm still mad at you for the whole Leah thing, but I'm not mad at you for going with The Commonwealth. I get it. You gotta look after your kids, so go." You responded, looking over at him with sad eyes.

"What ‘bout you?" Daryl asked worriedly.

"I'll get by. I always do." You said with a shrug before standing up from the bed and walking over to him. "I'll always love you, Daryl."

You wrapped your arms around him catching him by surprise. His entire body turning tense in shock, but he soon melted into your hold and hugged you back.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart." He whispered, hugging you tightly.

"I know."

You get snapped away from your thoughts when your walkie talkie starts to go off.

"Y/N?"

"Y/N, do you copy?"

"We have a code red. Y/N do you copy?" Maggie's voice called over the radio.

You rushed over to your backpack and yanked the walkie free before bringing it to your mouth.

"I copy. What's wrong?" You asked, panic starting to rise.

In the last six months, you had never received a code red from Maggie. Never.

"How far are you from Hilltop?"

"Uh, like 20 minutes. What's going on?"

"The Commonwealth. I'll explain when you get here, stay off the main roads. They aren't what we thought they were." Maggie's voice responded through the radio.

"Roger that, I'll be there soon." You said, tucking the walkie back into your bag and slinging it over your shoulders.

You grabbed your bicycle, wishing now more than ever that you still had Daryl's old motorcycle, but a push bike was better than nothing, so you pedalled like mad back to Hilltop.

A million different scenarios were running through your mind about The Commonwealth, each as terrifying as the next. Eventually, you finally reached the gates of Hilltop and Elijah quickly opened them as you rode inside to find Maggie already waiting for you.

"What happened?" You asked, dismounting the bike.

"The Commonwealth aren't what we thought they were."

"Yeah, I gathered that much. What happened?"

Maggie then went into full detail explaining how a group of Commonwealth soldiers tried to wipeout a small community. Lance had apparently sent them because he believed that the group had stolen a bunch of Commonwealths supplies and weapons.

"Wait, wait, wait. How do you know that this other group was innocent? Maybe they did actually steal from The Commonwealth." You pointed out, but Maggie shook her head.

"Negan is part of that group and he says that they didn't steal the weapons. And as much as it pains me to say it, I believe Negan."

Holy shit, what? Negan was with this group? After he had just disappeared and didn't even say goodbye to you, he just joined another community? Really?

"The Commonwealth killed over half their group before we showed up and with Aaron, Jesus and Gabriel's help, we handled it." Maggie continued to explain.

"And by handled it, you mean...?"

"They're dead."

You nodded, "good. So are Jesus, Aaron and Gabriel on the run from The Commonwealth for switching sides?"

"No. They're going to lie to Lance and say that they were the only survivors and that the 'bad guys' escaped. They gave us an hour head start before they were going to radio it in which means The Commonwealth will be coming here soon." Maggie further explained.

Wait, why would The Commonwealth be coming here? If those guys lied, then Hilltop would have no connection to what happened. Why would Lance come here?

"Lance probably won't believe their lie and since Hilltop is closest, he'll think we helped." Maggie said as if she somehow knew what you were thinking.

"Okay, so you need to convince Lance that you weren't involved, is that why you wanted me here?" You asked in confusion.

Maggie shook her head, "things might go south very fast when they show up. I need you to help us fight if it gets to that."

Yeah, okay, that made more sense.

"Will you help us?" She asked.

"Of course."

The Commonwealth rolled up to the gate within the hour.

You stood beside Maggie on the watch platform, your hand resting over your gun holster as the group of soldiers marched up the gate with Lance leading them. You noticed Jesus, Aaron and Gabriel were walking behind them. Their clothes bloodied and dirty, but they seemed to be okay.

"Afternoon, Maggie. And, oh, Y/N, is it? Good to see you again, you weren't here last time I came by." Lance called out once they reached the gate.

Yeah, there was a reason for that.

Last time Lance and his Commonwealth people showed up, Jesus had given you the heads up about it and you made yourself scarce. You didn't want to see Daryl. You knew Daryl was angry with you for trying to kill Leah. If you were being honest, you were still angry at him for keeping Leah a secret from you and for seeing her when the two of you had first gotten together all those years ago.

However, despite everything that had happened, you still loved Daryl Dixon. You wanted to hate him and a small part of you did, but you still loved him, and you knew that would never change.

"What do you want?" Maggie questioned bluntly, looking down at Lance.

"There are some killers on the loose. We lost a lot of men. So, I'm hunting them down and the property they stole, the Commonwealth's property."

"We don't know anything about that."

"Well, of course not. So, you wouldn't mind if we just do a quick look around, right? Rule you all out. For the paperwork."

"She gave you her answer." You said, speaking up for the first time.

Lance's eyes flashed over to you, his expression hardening before he turned and started to talk with some of his soldiers in hushed voices before one of the soldiers suddenly stepped forward and looked up at the two of you through their mask.

"Open up." He said, his voice muffled by the mask.

"It doesn't have to be this way." Maggie responded.

The soldier sighed before reaching for his helmet and pulling it off. He kept his head down and shook it, letting his long hair fall over his face before he looked up at the two of you and your stomach dropped.

It was Daryl.

Daryl was one of their soldiers.

Those piercing blue eyes locked with yours and you let out a shaky breath as you stared right back at him before he glanced over at Maggie beside you.

"Yeah, it does. Ain't nobody leavin' until they look around. It'll be quick, I promise."

"You expect us to trust him?" You asked, nodding towards Lance.

"I ain't asking ya to trust him. I'm asking you to trust me."

"It's a little too late for that." You responded, trying to ignore the hurt look that washed over Daryl's face at your words.

Maggie grabbed your shoulder, drawing your focus away from Daryl as you looked over at her.

"Did you know he was one of their soldiers?" You whispered in shock.

She nodded, "last time he was here, he told me."

"Shit." You sighed, rubbing your face with your hands.

"Look, I don't know exactly what happened between you and Daryl. I know it has something to do with Leah and it is none of my business, but I need your head in this. I can't afford you getting emotional and doing something stupid, okay?"

You took a deep breath and nodded. "I'm good. I'm good, I swear."

Maggie eyed you cautiously, not entirely sure whether to believe you or not before she nodded at Elijah who opened the front gates.

Lance and his soldiers marched straight inside, and Maggie climbed down from the watch platform to follow wherever Lance went, but you remained up on the platform and watched from a distance.

Daryl kept glancing your way, but to your relief, he didn't try and talk to you. Instead, he stripped off his soldier armour and followed Maggie and Lance around the community.

"Guessing you and Daryl still haven't made up?" Jesus' voice suddenly asked, and you turned around to find him climbing up the ladder to the watch platform.

"Made up? As in me apologising for trying to shoot the girl that he cheated on me with? The same girl who drugged me and then tried to kill us? Or for Daryl to apologise for seeing Leah when him and I were together? Or maybe for him to apologise for just packing up and joining the Commonwealth six months ago? Which part?" You asked, folding your arms across your chest in annoyance.

Jesus stepped up onto the platform and raised his hands apologetically, "yeah, sorry. That was a stupid question."

You smiled sadly before pulling him into a tight hug, "my love life is far from what's important right now. Are you okay? Maggie told me what happened."

"I'm okay." He answered, hugging you back. "We managed to speak with Daryl, he knows what happened. He knows the truth."

You nodded as you pulled away, "okay. Good. That's good. What do we do?"

"I honestly have no idea. We're just playing along with everything at the moment, but the Commonwealth... they're not what we thought they were."

"I know."

Neither of you said anything for a few minutes as you leant against the railing of the platform and watched the soldiers carefully.

Maggie seemed pretty certain that they weren't going to find anything that would link Hilltop to what happened, but you were still worried and by the way Jesus was nervously picking at his fingernails beside you, he was worried too.

"Life was so much easier when I was on the run from my mother." You said, breaking the silence.

Jesus made a shocked choking sound and looked over at you with wide eyes.

"You mean the time when I found you bleeding out in the woods with a cut throat? Back then?"

You chuckled softly, "not that exact day. Maybe a couple days after that. When I was with you and Ezekiel... life was just... it was simpler."

"It was simpler because you were stuck in a hospital bed then." Jesus responded causing you to roll your eyes.

"You know what I mean."

You opened your mouth to respond before you spotted Lance now standing down the side of the mansion with Hershel. Lance was alone with Maggie's kid.

Nope. You didn't like that. Not at all.

"I'll be back." You said, already making your way down the ladder.

You rushed across the yard watching as Lance knelt down in front of Hershel and continued to talk.

"But I can't keep people safe if they keep secrets. So, I want you to think really hard here. Is there anything you want to tell me?"

"I should probably go get my mum." Hershel answered.

Smart kid.

"Hey, hold on a second." Lance said, quickly stepping in front of Hershel and blocking his path. "You're a good kid... brave. And the thing about good kids is... they deserve presents."

You watched as Lance pulled out a familiar looking baseball cap.

"It's funny. I found this hat all the way back where the bad things happened. Be a shame for a nice hat like this to go to waste." Lance continued to say before he placed the hat on Hershel's head. "Huh! I'll be damned. Perfect fit. What are the odds?"

Lance leant down and grabbed the kids' shoulder, but you quickly rushed forward and grabbed Lance by the back of his shirt. You yanked him away from the boy before pinning him up against the brick wall with your knife to his throat.

"You enjoy interrogating little kids?" You hissed, pushing him harder against the wall.

"Y/N?" Elijah's voice called out hesitantly from somewhere behind you.

"Get Hershel away from here." You ordered, not taking your eyes off Lance.

"This won't end well for you." Was all Lance said before the familiar sound of guns cocking reached your ears and you glanced over your shoulder to find a bunch of his soldiers now surrounding you with their guns raised.

"Release him or we will shoot."

"Put him down."

"Now."

You ignored the soldiers' orders and glared at Lance in front of you who just smirked back, finding this whole thing rather amusing.

"You touch that kid again and it will be the last thing you ever do." You threatened which seemed to sink in because his smirk instantly faded.

Maggie and Daryl suddenly ran around the corner noticing all the commotion, their eyes widening when they saw you holding Lance up against the wall.

"He put his hands on Hershel."

As if on cue, the kid ran out of Elijah's hold and straight to his mother, "he said something bad was gonna happen." Hershel whispered.

"Whoa! I can explain." Lance quickly said defensively.

You pressed the blade of the knife harder against his throat until it started to pierce his skin, droplets of blood trickling down his neck causing him to wince in pain. Daryl suddenly raised his rifle and pointed it at the other soldiers while Maggie drew her sidearm and aimed it at Lance.

"Back up! Now!" Daryl shouted at the new group of soldiers that seemed to appear out of nowhere hearing their boss in pain.

"You know, I'm a nice guy, Maggie. I'll even let you back down so no one gets hurt." Lance tried to reason.

"Plenty of others have made the mistake of threatening my family. Most of them are dead now."

Maggie didn't say anything else, her gun still raised. You kept the knife against his throat just waiting for her to give you the order to end it before Daryl suddenly spun around and appeared beside you.

"You turned this place upside down 'n you found nothin'. So unless you want to die for nothin', tell 'em to drop the guns before something really fucking bad happens." He ordered, his rifle now pointed at Lance's head.

Neither of you moved or said anything else as you glared at Lance and waited before he eventually nodded.

"Everyone lower your weapons. That's an order."

The second he said 'order' all the soldiers lowered their guns in sync before Daryl and Maggie slowly lowered theirs too. You kept the knife to his throat for a moment before you released him and took a step back.

"Back up. We're leaving." He announced to his men before he walked past Maggie and said, "sorry if there was any miscommunication. Shame we couldn't be friends."

You watched Lance and his soldiers walk off before you glanced over at Daryl to find him already looking at you with an unreadable expression.

"Y/N...." He began to say.

"Just watch your back with them, Dixon." You warned.

Daryl bit his lip like he wanted to say something, but instead simply nodded before he began to follow the Commonwealth towards the gate.

Jesus had climbed down from the watch platform and was now standing with Aaron and Gabriel again, but he was looking across the yard towards you with a questioning look. You tried to give him a reassuring nod and he nodded back before the three of them walked out of Hilltop with Lance and his men, the front gates closing behind them.

-

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[ohblackdiamond]

little t&a (paul/gene, nc-17) (part 11 of 29)

part 1   part 2   part 3   part 4   part 5   part 6   part 7   part 8   part 9   part 10   part 11   part 12   part 13   part 14   part 15   part 16   part 17   part 18   part 19   part 20   part 21  part 22   part 23   part 24    part 25   part 26   part 27   part 28   part 29

Four weeks before KISS gets back on tour, Gene discovers that Paul’s been cursed by a groupie. For the sake of KISS’ finances, Paul’s comfort levels, and Gene’s libido, this crisis must be resolved. Sexswap fic. In this chapter: Paul and Gene confess the truth to Ace and Peter.

            There were a few things Gene hadn’t exactly thought he’d live to see. One was the fall of Communism. One was decent oil prices. One was Paul Stanley attempting to shove Ace Frehley bodily into the doorframe.

            At least, that was what it looked like Paul was trying to do. Gene hadn’t gotten out of the car nearly fast enough to catch it all, hampered by the car lock he’d thoughtlessly left on and the milkshake he’d been in the middle of (they’d picked up Dairy Queen on the way back from the boutique). By the time Gene got to the front yard, Paul had Ace by the shoulders and was screaming obscenities.

            By the time Gene got to the front porch, Peter had yanked Paul away from Ace and had one of his arms locked behind his back. Paul was trying to trip Peter, one foot twisting behind Peter’s ankle as he leaned back against him. Ace stepped forward, trying to pull them both apart, only Paul’s fist flung out and nearly connected with his jaw. Peter, meanwhile, was still screaming.

            “You crazy bitch! This isn’t your house! This is his house!”

            “It’s my goddamn house!”

            “You got some nerve! You think ’cause you fucked the guy you’ve got a right to his place?!”

            “Pete, let go of the girl! C’mon and calm down! Both of you!” Ace yelled out.

            “Ace, you lousy son of a bitch!”

            “Hey, hey, we barely know each other—”

            “Stop it!”

            Gene wrenched away Peter’s grip on Paul’s arm, relying more on weight and suddenness than strength. Peter immediately went for Gene instead—Peter was a much smaller guy, but meaner and still more savvy, for all that it had been years since he’d been in a fight—but Gene grabbed him before he could. Paul just barreled over to Ace as soon as he was free, pinning him against the door, standing on his foot to keep him in place. Ace looked like he was torn between being bewildered and bursting into laughter.

            Peter didn’t fight off the grip much, which surprised Gene. Maybe even he realized that a skull fracture on the cement front porch would be like setting fire to KISS’ ticket sales. Gene held him there, barking at Paul as he did.

            “Leave Ace alone!”

            “Leave Ace alone? His credit card’s in my fucking door!”

            “Let him alone! Let him alone right now.”

            “Gene!”

            Paul hesitated, then backed off from Ace. As soon as he was halfway sure Paul wouldn’t jump back on him, Gene let go of Peter, who whirled on both of them.

            “We’re not trying to steal Paul’s shit! We just wanna know what the fuck is going on here!”

            “We—” Gene started, only to be interrupted by Ace.

            “Where’s Paul at?” he said quietly. Gene’s head snapped towards Paul, praying he’d read the look in his eyes. Praying he’d realize he couldn’t blow it. Peter already hadn’t believed him once. There was no way—there was no sense in trying again.

            But that wasn’t all of it. Even if somehow Ace and Peter believed Paul, what good could they do, anyway? The two of them would just screw everything up worse. It wasn’t a thought borne out of practicality; it was self-righteous, maybe even selfish. Part of Gene wanted to keep being the only one who knew.

            It turned out that it didn’t matter what Gene wanted. Paul just glared back, snapping out his answer before Gene could even try to stop him.

            “I’m right here, you idiot!”

            Ace stiffened up, eyes widening slightly.

            “What?”

            “I’m right here! I’m Paul!” Paul waved his hands in the air in front of him, up and down from his head to his chest.

            “Don’t—”

            “Shut up, Gene! I can handle this!”

            “You—you’re crazy,” Peter snapped. “That’s the stupidest bullshit I’ve ever heard.”

            In contrast, Ace looked almost nervous. It was an out of place expression on his face. He glanced around, from Gene to Paul to Peter, before finally settling back on Paul, studying his face hard enough that Paul broke eye contact. Ace exhaled.

            “You kind of look like him, yeah, but Paul’s not a girl.”

            “No shit, Sherlock,” Paul rattled out. “Gene, are you gonna vouch for me or what?”

            “This is a—”

            “Why the hell should we believe you on this, Gene?” Peter again. “You must think we’re fucking idiots! Running around with this chick, making up all sorts of fucking stories—who’s to say Paul ain’t lying dead in the fucking bathroom right now?!”

            “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Paul had reached for Peter again, like he somehow thought contact would clarify everything. Peter stepped back, brushing away his hand. “I’m right here! I never went anywhere! I-I can prove it to both of you!”

            “You got at least two really good proofs you ain’t him, and they’re hanging right off your chest right now, you—”

            “Pete.” Gene’s voice surprised even him. “He’s telling the truth.”

            “Would you—”

            “Peter!” Ace, much louder than normal, before quieting down, almost as if in apology. “We got this far.”

            “They’re both lying!”

            “Give it a minute, yeah? Give it a minute.”

            Peter rolled his eyes, crossing his arms in front of his chest. Ace continued, giving Gene a cautious glance before turning his focus back to Paul.

            “There’s something bad wrong with you, I can tell that much,” he said. “Course, there’s something bad wrong with Paulie, too, but—"

            “You’re one to talk, Ace,” Paul snapped. Ace didn’t look perturbed in the slightest.

            “I mean, he’s a Capricorn and real neurotic and shit.” Paul let out a disgruntled sound at the comment, one Ace ignored as he continued. “Could you do something for me?”

            “You tried to break into my goddamn house and now you’re—”

            “Walk around.” Ace held up his hands. “’M not gonna do anything. I just wanna see.”

            Paul made a face but walked to the opposite end of the porch and back, hands straight at his sides. Gene watched. He thought he knew what Ace was getting at—he hoped he did, at least. Paul’s stiff, straight-backed gait wasn’t much different than it had been before this mess had started. Gene hadn’t really noticed prior, consciously. It was just another peculiarity. The same actions and characteristics transposed onto the wrong body, giving him away—if you knew where to look.

            Ace, apparently, did. That off-putting insight was finally going towards something worthwhile. Gene shifted, oddly uncomfortable.

            “You walk more like a guy. And you didn’t try to kick us in the nuts.” Ace pursed his lips in contemplation. The rest of his expression was unreadable. “Doesn’t mean anything by itself, but…”

            Paul was starting to look a little hopeful. A little eager. He stepped in closer to where Peter and Ace were standing, as if he were about to reach out for them.

            “Ace, I can prove I’m Paul! Ask me something. Ask me anything. Go on!”

            Ace shrugged amicably, turning his head.

            “Pete, you got anything to ask her?”

            Pete looked irritated that Ace was turning Paul’s demand on him. He took a second to consider, looking at Paul warily. Gene waited, wondering what question Pete would pull out.

          “What’s my cat’s name?”

            “Mateus. You didn’t even name him. Lydia did.”

            Paul had answered almost in an instant. Peter blinked, but shook his head.

            “You could’ve gotten that just from reading the magazines.”

            Paul let out a curse.

            “Then ask me something else. Ask me about—Jesus, I don’t know—"

          “The dick-measuring contest.” Ace’s voice was soft and absolutely devoid of humor.

            “What?”

            “Who won the dick-measuring contest?”

            “Jesus, Ace, I…” Paul’s face went red. Gene bit back a wince, not sure if it was on his own behalf or Paul’s. “That’s… that’s so fucking embarrassing, don’t—”

            “And tell me who got second and third and fourth.”

            “Ace!” Oh, God. Paul was actually squeaking. It would have been endearing in any other situation. Gene searched Ace’s expression, as bland and out of it as usual, for even a twinge of pity or amusement or anything, but there was nothing. He wasn’t going to let him out of this. A little uncertainty rose from somewhere in Gene’s stomach as Paul finally admitted, “Okay, okay! Peter won!”

            Ace’s eyes got huge again, mouth forming a tight oval Gene had seen maybe four hundred times onstage. Paul had probably seen it more than that. Actually, Paul and Peter both in all those idiotic threesomes. Why that was still sticking in his craw, Gene didn’t know. Beside him, Peter’s mouth was wide open. Ace looked like he was trying to answer back, but Paul started rambling into a response before he could.

            “Well, we all knew he was going to win! The only one we hadn’t seen before was Gene’s!”

            “You—”

            “You want the placements? You were second! I was in third, and Gene was in fourth, and then I said it wasn’t fair since no one was hard, and you two had the fucking Loch Ness monster for dicks anyway and—”

            “Holy fucking shit.”

            Ace and Peter both looked scared as all hell for a few seconds. Peter reached out, almost cautiously, touching Paul’s shoulder like he was afraid it was going to dissolve into ash if he dared grasp it. Gene thought at first Peter was just trying to make sure Paul was still solid, until Peter tugged at his collar. Gene stiffened on weird automatic, but Paul seemed to realize what he wanted, undoing the bow and pulling down the sleeve, exposing a droopy bra strap and his tattoo again. Peter stared at that bright red rose like it held all the secrets to a number-one single, tracing up and down it with his finger before pulling back.

            “That’s why you were trying to show me,” he said softly. “That’s what you were trying…”

            “That’s it, all right.” Ace was peering in, too. “It isn’t like Paul’s, it is Paul’s. I ought to know. We got our tattoos the same day.”

            “Paul,” Peter said, staring as Paul tugged up his sleeve and retied the bow. “Paul, I… fuck, I’m so sorry.”

            “Pete—”

            Peter hesitated visibly. Then he wrapped his arms around Paul in a tight hug.

            “I thought—I thought Gene had stole your girl!”

            “I know—”

            “I thought you’d lost it! Run off and had a nervous breakdown! I… I had no idea you were right… Paulie…”

            Paul hugged him back after a few seconds, clearly overwhelmed. Relief looked like it was flooding his face. It made Gene’s guilt feel all the heavier, there, clotted somewhere beyond the back of his throat. He felt slimy, somehow. Slimy for not considering Paul’s family, for not considering Paul’s relief at being believed by his bandmates. Slimy for the part of him that had liked being the only one who knew. That felt like it was for the best. What did he know about what was best for Paul? Paul looked happier now than he’d seen him this entire time.

            Peter let go after awhile. Paul’s arms hung in the air for a second before Ace realized they were out for him. Their hug was relatively brief, Ace looking weirded-out by the entire prospect.

            “Shit, how many inches did you drop there?”

            “Three or four.”

            “You’re shorter than Peter now! Not by a lot, but…”

            “What the hell happened? Did you wanna be a chick?” Peter blurted it out of nowhere, expected and inevitable.

            “No!” Paul nearly yelled it out. “I got cursed, okay? The girl that did this, she—she’s supposed to come to Studio 54 every night. I’m trying to find her. Get her to take this off of me.”

            “Who? Who did it?”

            “Some girl. Not—not a celebrity, just some girl.”

            “Paulie… why didn’t you tell us?”

            “I tried to! Yesterday! You just blew me off!”

            “You were yanking down your clothes! What was I supposed to think?”

            “I tried—”

            “Why didn’t you tell us when it happened? We could’ve helped you! We all could’ve helped you.” Peter got quieter then. “You didn’t have to just stick it all on Gene.”

            “I didn’t,” Paul mumbled. “He figured it out on his own.”

            “How?”

            “The tattoo,” Gene said. Paul shot him a relieved look. Ace looked askance, chewing on his lip.

            “Do you wanna tell Bill now?”

            “God, no. Bill’s got enough problems.”

            “He’d keep it quiet. Y’know how he is, that guy could’ve stopped Watergate.”

            “We’re hoping to get it resolved before we’ve got to tell anyone else,” Gene said. “If Bill knew, he’d postpone the tour at minimum.”

            “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” Ace exhaled. “Okay, Paulie.”

            “Okay?”

            “There’s more to it than what you just said. We’d all better sit down for this shit. You gonna let us in?”

            “Your card’s still in my door.”

            “Oh. Yeah, it is.” Instead of pulling it out, Ace pushed it in further between the jamb and the door, jiggling the knob as he did so. The door fell open. “You gotta get better locks sometime. C’mon, girlie.”

#kiss the band #kiss fanfiction #paul stanley #gene simmons #gene simmons x paul stanley #ace frehley #peter criss

[harryandmolly]

When the World Stops Turning - Chapter 1

Summary: A love story in two voices - cowritten with @achinglyshawn

Warnings: Language

Word count: 10k

Lydia frowns in the mirror. Her hair just ain’t bouncin’ and behavin’ tonight.

She lifts the curling iron again then puts it down. She picks it up again, swirling a thick red chunk around the wand and holding it for a few seconds. She lets it drop. The curl falls weak against her neck. She sighs and unplugs the iron, deciding to stop stalling and just do it.

She hasn’t been looking forward to this dinner party. Her week has been long – 30 hours babysitting and a full class schedule do not make for the kind of weekend that Lydia wants to be spending out schmoozing. But it’s Allison and Kristin’s third anniversary and she missed Allison’s birthday last month AND bailed on drinks with Kristin last week, both due to her schedule, so she really can’t ditch this, as badly as she wants to.

So she shows up. She’s in a short midnight blue dress and heels because of course Allison and Kristin insisted on cocktail attire now that they’ve moved into their new apartment and it’s bougie as fuck. There are even place cards at the table.

She greets the hostesses and gets herself a glass of red, wandering over to her end of the table, wishing she brought a date.

The thought runs cold in her head when she sees the man sitting in the seat next to hers. At first, all she sees is bone structure, curls and broad shoulders. Her fingers tighten on her glass. And then she sees his eyes.

He feels like a proper adult, being at a dinner party in his married friends’ brand new apartment. He brought them a bottle of champagne to christen the place with, because his mum always told him it’s the polite thing to do, bringing a gift, even if they don’t ask.

He doesn’t expect it all to be so formal, considering the parties he goes too are usually, like, drunken dance parties at clubs or friends’ condos (or his own), or hotel and festival parties on tour. He doesn’t ever think he’s seen his name on a place card that wasn’t for an award show before.

He also hates that he’s the only single person here, apparently. He didn’t think to ask about bringing someone when he first got the invite. It’s not like he has anyone to bring. Finding a date last minute isn’t exactly easy when you’re busy all day doing tour promo.

He makes his way to the dining room, and slides into his assigned seat next to his friends Margo and Chris, who are wrapped around each other because the apartment has ‘such romantic ambiance’. Shawn wants to gag, just a little.

He’s pouring himself a glass of white wine from the bottle he found on his way to the table, when he feels movement next to him, sees it out of the corner of his eye. He slides the bottle of wine away and sips at his glass.

He doesn’t want to look over just yet, partly because Chris is saying something about the guitar he’s refurbishing for Shawn, and partly because he’s worried it’s another couple he’s gonna have to pretend he’s not agitated by.

But Margo cuts Chris off when she leans towards whoever just sat next to Shawn, her eyes bright. “Lydia! Hi!”

Lydia. Not ‘hey you two!’ Or ‘Lydia and Steve!’ Just Lydia. Shawn looks over.

Lydia manages to sit next to this tall drink of water without rolling an ankle or kicking him under the table, so she considers it a success.

She beams across the table at Margo who is practically sitting in Chris’s lap. She hopes the look on her face is more smile than grimace.

“Hi, guys,” she says brightly, wiggling her fingers in a little wave. She turns to the man sitting next to her and gets a proper look.

He really is gorgeous in an almost ethereal kind of way. His hair is dark and curly and falling over his forehead just so and she can appreciate a man who can style his hair properly. He wears a suit jacket like no one she’s ever seen, including Paul, her incredibly well-dressed gay brother-in-law who could’ve been the sixth Queer Eye guy. She clears her throat, feeling like she recognizes him somehow. Maybe it’ll come to her if she keeps staring at him like she’s planning to do all night.

“Lydia Hamilton,” she murmurs, grinning at him, offering him her hand to shake, “Nice to meet you.”

He’s not staring. He’s not, really. He’s looking, observing. He’s— fucking breathless. Really. He thinks he’s been holding his breath since he caught sight of her bright red hair. Her face doesn’t help. And then she smiles and he actively has to remind himself that he needs to exhale.

He decides he loves the sound of her voice when she says hi to Chris and Margo. He was jealous of them for having each other before, but now he’s jealous of them for knowing her.

He’s about to turn his attention back to Chris so this Lydia doesn’t catch him staring, but he has a hard time looking away. He gets caught.

She turns and looks at him and just smiles brightly, the same way she did for Chris and Margo, and then she introduces herself by offering her hand. He forces himself not to be a moron.

“Shawn,” he replies, curling his large palm around her small hand and shaking gently. Then, “Ah, Mendes. Shawn Mendes. Nice to meet you, too.”

He’s not used to needing to tell people his last name, but Lydia said hers and she’s looking at him like she’s not sure who he is. And that’s different. It’s a little refreshing, actually. His smile comes a little easier.

Shawn Mendes. That’s who he is.

When her brain pinged her that she recognized his face, her assumption wasn’t celebrity. It wouldn’t be, anyway, with this crowd.

But there he is. She knows his name, he’s a musician. He’s a pop star, she’s pretty sure. He’s definitely a little younger than she is, but you wouldn’t know it looking at him. And god, is she looking at him. She tries not to bat her eyelashes like a cougar.

Lydia laces her fingers together and looks over at Margo who is observing them with interest. She looks back at Shawn.

“So how do you know Kristin and Allison?”

He doesn’t mean to eye the full curve of her lower lip, to stare at her mouth so blatantly, to study the freckles dusting her face, but he’s already doing it by the time he realizes it’s happening. It’s like forgetting to breathe when he’s nervous. He can’t help it.

Her words snap him out of it, and he really hopes she didn’t notice. He doesn’t want to creep her out, like a fucking idiot, just because he wants to learn the lines of her face. It’s a nice face. It’s not his fault.

He forces himself to look her in the eye, but that doesn’t really help with the whole remembering how to breathe thing.

“Oh, yeah— well, Kristin helped me customize my studio a couple years back. We’ve been friends ever since. What about you?”

Lydia doesn’t hear any ‘asshole rockstar’ in the way he explains his customized studio so she lets her guard down a little further.

“Oh, uhm, Allison’s in my Ph.D. child psychology program at the university,” she explains, sipping her glass so her hands have something to do other than reaching out and grabbing his. He has such big, beautiful hands.

She hopes the Ph.D. thing doesn’t make her sound like an academic asshole. She figures if she doesn’t say it with her nose in the air like her mother does when she tells people about Lydia’s career path, then she’s usually safe.

Ph.D. Well shit. He might be a little out of his depth, talking to her. She’s beautiful, obviously older, and apparently super smart. What the fuck was Kristin thinking, sitting him next to her?

“So you’re like, really smart, then?” He blurts before he can stop himself, because apparently he’s the Pinky to her Brain.

Lydia tilts her gaze down to her name card when Shawn asks if she’s smart. He does it in that cute boyish way that surprises her because he doesn’t seem entirely comfortable to be chatting with her. It’s sweet and unexpected. She would be expecting more of an arrogant Justin Bieber vibe from him and instead she’s getting boy next door. It’s refreshing.

She leans in a little closer as the noise in the room picks up. Everyone’s sitting down now and the caterers are bringing salads. Kristin and Allison really did go all out.

“I’m smart, but I’m not a freaky brainiac,” she assures him, wanting to make him comfortable around her. Some people assume her graduate education means she has a stick up her ass, but she doesn’t.

“You’re a musician,” she says dumbly, blinking at him for a moment. She readjusts when Margo giggles into Chris’s neck.

“I mean, I’ve heard your music. Margo, we’ve heard his music, right?” She raises her eyebrows across the table at her friend who looks way too amused. And who clearly knew this guy was coming and didn’t warn Lydia about sitting next to a fucking Adonis at dinner. It’s so Margo it hurts.

His ears go pink when she figures out who he is, says she’s heard his music. He chokes out a chuckle, looks down at his name card and moves his wine glass in a few small circles on the tablecloth as Lydia asks Margo about him.

“I mean, I get some radio play, so. Maybe you have.”

They’re distracted from their introductory small talk when they tune in to Margo telling a story about a time Chris drunk dialed her in college. Lydia’s giggling and feeling the wine go to her head already. She hasn’t been drinking much lately, too busy with her head in a book. Maybe she does have a stick up her ass.

She stops paying attention to him as people crowd into the room and Margo starts telling a story.

He’s disappointed, to say the least. So he doesn’t pay attention to the story, instead watches Lydia listen and focuses on the way her cheeks flush as she drinks wine and laughs. It’s a pretty laugh. The prettiest he’s heard, probably.

He barely picks at his salad as he pretends to listen to the couple next to him, more concerned with sneaking glances at the woman next to him. He feels kind of like a creep, but he’s not exactly used to flirting with 20-something Ph.D. students with red hair that reminds him of The Little Mermaid.

He has a hard time thinking of something charming to say. It’s easier with fans, anyway. They already love him. He doesn’t have to work very hard.

As people crowd around the table, she feels squished into Shawn’s side but she’s not complaining. He’s warm and he smells like expensive cologne but not too much. She kind of wants to bury her face in his shoulder.

She pushes her wine glass away for a minute.

He’s worried he’s crowding her too much, but he doesn’t have much room to move, what with 18 people at dining table meant for 16.

His elbow accidentally knocks hers as she’s pushing her wine glass away from her. It wobbles.

“Oh shit-“ he murmurs, reaching forward to steady the glass. He lets out a sigh, then glances at Lydia with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I just—“ he laughs, “I’m worried Kristen might send me to the kid’s table if I get wine on her tablecloth.”

Lydia reaches for her tipping wine glass but Shawn grabs it and swears under his breath. She grins watching his long fingers wrap around her glass and push it to where she was going to leave it.

She busts into a girlish giggle when he cracks a joke. She worries it sounds a little overdone like she’s trying to flirt with him. She isn’t -- he’s just really fucking cute.

“Good reflexes. Did you play sports?”

He makes her laugh. He didn’t even think it was that funny, but she laughs and he feels like it’s his greatest accomplishment yet.

He blushes a little and shrugs, “Some soccer, but I spent most of my time trying to get my hands on instruments. Which, you know, requires its own sort of quick reflexes, I think.”

She tries not to think too hard about him playing soccer because he’s tall and looks to be all lean muscle and she has a thing for soccer players as it is.

“What about you? Are you all school, all the time?”

She hums and goes to answer him when Margo pipes up.

“Yes!”

Lydia looks playfully offended. “What are you talking about? I’m so fun! I went to Paint Night at that bar with you guys like… two weeks ago!”

Margo fixes her with a look. “Lyd, that was two months ago.”

Lydia sulks. “Fine. I used to be fun. I’m just busy I guess. I bet you are too.”

He figures getting a Ph.D. is like a full time job, so it makes sense that that’s all she has time for. He feels kind of bad for asking, now, just because he didn’t mean to put Lydia on the spot.

He chuckles, nodding. “Yeah, I’m pretty familiar with a full schedule. And with jerks like Margo thinking I’m lame for it.”

He ignores Margo’s little “Hey!” from beside him, preferring to keep his focus on Lydia.

He keeps cracking jokes and she keeps giggling like she’s in high school and talking to the cute quarterback. She finds herself noticing little things he does that fascinate her and she figures it’s her psychology background picking up on his body language.

She licks her lower lip and reaches for her wine again. “So are you working on music right now or?”

He tries not to let himself stare at her pink tongue when it darts out to wet her lip before she sips her wine. He’s not sure he’s successful, even though he’s trying to focus on her nose instead.

For some reason her question makes him blush. It’s not the question, really, but the person who’s asking it. He finishes chewing a bite of salad as he nods.

“Yeah, I mean I just finished my next album. So right now I’m mostly deciding on singles and doing tour promo. It’s the more boring part than like, actually writing music, but also a really exciting part.”

He can’t help but babble. Finishing an album is the best feeling in the world.

If he won’t stop blushing, she’s going to keep staring at him. And she doesn’t mind that so much especially with the way he’s looking at her all wide-eyed and hopeful. No one’s looked at her that way in a while.

She doesn’t really know anything about music production or what he means when he says it’s boring and exciting at the same time but he’s getting animated and she likes it.

“So does that mean you’re going on tour soon?”

“Beginning of June, yeah. I guess that’s pretty soon,” he says with a breath. “Shit, yeah, sooner than I remember.”

He likes that she seems genuinely interested, and not just interested because he’s famous. It’s like his celebrity status isn’t of much consequence to her, and he likes it. Usually the only girls who flirt with him are ones who want bragging rights or a photo op.

“But that’s— I mean, let’s talk about you, instead. If that’s okay.”

Lydia is a little thrown when he asks to talk about her. She’s trying to remember the last time someone, a male someone, said that to her. She’s drawing a blank.

The entrees arrive and Lydia is grateful for something to fiddle with as she pokes around with her fork, taking tiny ladylike bites like she learned at cotillion before her debutante ball. She remembers her posture and straightens her shoulders.

“Ok. Other than Ph.D. student and favorite of Margo’s to mock, what do you want to know about me?” she hums, leaning into him a little, experimentally. She lets her arm rest against his at the tightly-packed dining table.

He feels a lump form in his chest when she leans into him, her arm sliding against the length of his as they sit almost as closely as the actual couples at this table with them.

Shawn laughs. “Well, I think I’m actually Margo’s favorite person to mock, but we can argue about that later.”

He doesn’t even pretend to pick at his entree, just watches Lydia eat instead. “Are you from Toronto?”

It’s a boring question, but it’s better than asking, ‘What do you look like when you come?’ Or ‘Do you like breakfast in bed?’

She feels very well attended to. He’s not even eating he’s so interested in what she’s saying. She loves feeling so terribly fascinating. It makes her feel sexy and sophisticated, two things she’s not all too familiar with feeling.

She smiles warmly. “I’m from Baltimore, actually,” she tucks some hair behind her ear and shrugs, “My parents are still there and I have a brother in Boston. Most of my family is in New England. They’re all very ashamed of the fact that I’m a diehard Orioles fan.”

American. He doesn’t know why, but he thinks that’s sexy. But maybe he just thinks anything about her is sexy, because he’s pretty sure Baltimore isn’t a particularly sexy place.

He laughs a little and shrugs, finally lifting his fork to stab at a piece of chicken. “Well, I know next to nothing about baseball, so I’m okay with the Orioles thing, if that makes you feel any better.”

Lydia is feeling great. She bites her lower lip as she brings her glass back up to sip at it. She decides to turn it up a little.

“Well, good, because we’re definitely the only single people at this table, so I’d hate to get off on the wrong foot over something like baseball.” Her voice is light and teasing and just a little sexy if she played it right.

Her voice wraps around him like silk, and he feels his heart stuttering in his chest. Everything she says sends shivers down his spine. He watches her lips press against her wine glass and he wishes they were pressing against his lips, instead.

Christ, he’s fucking pathetic. He barely knows her. He’s sure she’s definitely not thinking about kissing him.

“Ok. Ask me something else,” she murmurs, tilting her head at him.

He has to take a sip of his own wine to wet his drying tongue.

“Okay. Why child psychology?”

He asks her her favorite question. She tries not to watch him swallow but he has a really nice neck. She sweeps a wave of curls off her own neck to show off her warm expanse of white skin above her off-the-shoulder dress.

“Because kids are the closest thing we have to magic. So if I can help them, understand them, maybe protect them, then I find that fulfilling.”

He doesn’t get what she means and he feels stupid for wanting her to explain it. But it’s also her profession of choice, so she probably doesn’t mind talking about it. He just hopes he doesn’t come off ignorant, or like a kid himself.

“I thought, like, chemistry or something was the closest we have to magic,” he says with a crooked smile. “And personally, I think it’s music.”

Shawn argues her point gently and not in that horrible mansplain-y way some guys do. He has a differing opinion and he doesn’t mind sharing it. It’s very sexy.

“Music is great. Music is amazing. But kids are the world’s whole future. Their imaginations are as vivid as they’ll ever be. Kids haven’t had the chance to fuck up yet. They haven’t hurt anyone. Kids are magic.”

She finishes the last bite of her food and tries not to look at him like he’s dessert.

He thinks, maybe, he’s in love with her. She’s articulate in a way he hopes to be, tries to be, but she’s effortless with it. Plus, she’s passionate. He still thinks music is the most magical thing they have as mere mortals, but he’s extremely close to conceding, and not just for the sake of flirting.

“Well shit,” he murmurs with a gentle laugh, then takes another sip of wine. He wets his lips after he swallows and chances a glance at her. “Maybe you have a point there.”

She’s looking at him already when he looks over at her. She almost gets distracted by him licking his lips. She smiles, satisfied.

“Oh good, my ‘kids are magic’ routine has another convert,” she jokes, uncrossing and re-crossing her legs toward him. She looks around the table and sees the couples deep in conversation. She’s quiet for a minute, observing. She reaches up to fiddle with her necklace.

He tries to busy himself with food when there’s a lull in the conversation, but then he feels her shift next to him, sees her angling herself more towards him and he’s done for. He reaches for wine instead.

“I can’t believe I’m at an age where I’m getting invited to dinner parties instead of keg parties. It’s a little disheartening, actually.”

He laughs a little when she speaks again. Something brave inside of him makes him mirror her actions, and he shifts in his seat until he’s facing her a bit more.

“I mean,” he begins as he sets his wine down, “I know about a couple of messy ragers going on tonight, if that’s really the scene you prefer.”

Lydia grins for a second when he turns closer to her. It’s like their unofficial, unspoken signal that they’re not interested in the rest of the party. They’ve found who they want to spend their evening with and they’re going to stick together.

Lydia subtly glances down at herself as plates of tiramisu are passed around. She adjusts the dipping strap of her dress and giggles. “Not in this dress, pal.”

He loves tiramisu, and he hasn’t had much of an appetite for anything else, so he decides to tackle a bit of the dessert.

He’s chewing when Lydia reaches down to tug at her dress, and he lets himself scan her body, just for a moment.

“What do you mean?” He asks when he swallows, smirking a bit before continuing, “I think you look great. I’m sure you’d be very popular.”

‘Great’ is possibly the biggest understatement of the century, but Shawn’s trying to play it cool. He doesn’t need her knowing how pathetic he is by waxing poetic about the way her dress clings to her in all the right places.

Lydia lifts and lowers her shoulders, fluffing out her hair again. She eyes him.

“I happen to agree, I really like this dress, so I won’t be wearing it to a messy rager. My messy rager uniform in college was ripped skinny jeans and a ratty band t-shirt, I don’t know if that’s what the kids are wearing these days.”

She laughs it off but she feels a little weird, having said it. She doesn’t really want to point out to Shawn that her rager days are largely behind her, even if she’s the one who brought it up.

He feels his throat go tight because yeah. Tight, ripped jeans and tattered shirt probably looks really good on her. He tries not to choke on his dessert.

“I’m sure you look just as gorgeous in jeans and a shirt, so. I don’t think it matters what everyone else is wearing.”

He hopes he sounded as cool and casual as he was going for, because the way his heart thumps in his chest feels anything but cool or casual.

His compliment burns in her cheeks. She swallows the last bite of her little cake and grins at him through the sugar rush. “Thank you,” she hums.

He’s definitely flirting with her and she doesn’t really care, for the moment, that he’s a legitimate celebrity with millions of Instagram followers. She’s totally developing a little crush. Lydia hasn’t had a crush in forever. She’s not letting go of this feeling.

“But who needs a rager when you have tiramisu?” she almost moans through a bite of cake.

He watches her lips wrap around the tines of the fork as she eats her dessert. He almost moans, like a disgusting pervert. He takes a sip of wine to cool down.

“Tiramisu and some good company,” he murmurs, glancing at her as the corner of his lips tug up into a gentle smile.

They stay at the table longer than most of the other guests, talking and drinking. He makes her laugh a few more times and he decides he never wants to stop hearing the sound.

The party starts to wrap up and she’s sorry it does. She wants to see him again. With a little wine courage in her blood, as he helps her slide into her jacket by the front door, two of the last guests to leave, she flips her hair outside the coat and steadies her gaze on his.

“So, Shawn, can I get your number?”

As they walk to the door, he’s trying to come up with a cool, charming way to maybe get her number when she beats him to it. He flushes, because he didn’t ever think she’d ask.

“You— Yeah! I mean, yeah, no problem. Can I see your phone?”

Lydia loves the little stammer in his voice when he asks for her phone. She hands it over, complete with glittery pink case and a picture of Camden Yards as her lock screen.

Lydia likes being the one to get a number rather than give hers. She’s in control that way. She doesn’t get to be in control of much, usually, but she likes being the one someone’s waiting on.

Not that she imagines she’ll make him wait long. At all.

He types in his number quickly, then presses the home button and notices the baseball diamond on her lock screen. He smirks as he hands the phone.

“You really weren’t kidding about the baseball thing,” he says after they wave goodbye to Kristin and Allison and disappear through the front door together.

“But I guess that’s how I am with hockey.”

Lydia takes the phone back and shoves it in her pocket, wishing she had something else to do with her hands. She wiggles into her leather gloves and perks up when he mentions hockey.

“Hockey? I love hockey. I really like sports in general, honestly. I didn’t really play them growing up but I love watching them.”

They chat a bit more until she’s stopped in front of her old Rav-4 and shivering a little. She leans in to kiss his cheek and decides she’s going to have to distract herself from texting him tonight.

+

He’s been thinking about her all day. The kiss she’d pressed to his cheek seemed to sear his skin. He catches himself brushing his fingers over the spot again and again.

Lydia’s fidgeting on the couch, trying to study. The stereo is playing Shawn’s album like it has been on repeat all day because, ok, she’s curious and she doesn’t really know many of his songs now that she’s had the chance to look him up.

He hates not having her number. He wants to text her so badly. She asked for his number, so the logical part of him knows she must be intending to text. He just doesn’t know when. The irrational, insecure part of him thinks that maybe she was just being polite, or maybe she’s just looking for a friend, or that she deleted his number the minute they parted ways.

It’s been a few minutes under 24 hours since they met at the party. She had decided she was going to text him tonight anyway but hadn’t set a time for herself. She grabs at her phone and curls her knees in, smiling like an idiot as she crafts a text.

‘Hi! It’s Lydia. How was your day?’

His phone buzzes next to him before he gives himself too much time to spiral downwards into negativity.

‘Oh, hey! Actually not too busy for once, what about you?’

‘Pretty good, a little boring with homework all day so I’m coming to you for entertainment. Can you make me laugh?’

‘Two cookies are in an oven. One cookie says, “Boy it’s hot in here,” so the other cookie says, “Ah!! A talking cookie!!”’

‘Oh my god, I’m a little ashamed at how hard that made me laugh. Is that your go to?’

‘Lol, that’s from like, middle school. I’ve been telling that for years and most people just think it’s stupid.’

‘I’m glad you liked it, though.’

‘I did. I think I’m going a little stir crazy in here. The kids I babysit are on spring break and usually they take up all my energy. I kinda miss them’

‘Isn’t it nice to kind of have a break though?’

'Yeah, it is. And I'll be wishing they were gone when they come back. Do you have siblings?'

‘How old are they?’

‘Oh and yeah, I have a little sister.’

‘Pain in my damn ass, but I love her.’

'Quinn is 4 and Ellie is 6. It's weird being with them sometimes. Everyone always thinks they're my kids.'

'Lucky! I always wanted a little sister. I have a big brother who's married now and I really like his husband so I sort of have 2 brothers.'

‘No way you’re old enough to have kids. I mean. Technically, sure. But you know what I mean!’

‘Little sisters are the best kind of annoying, to be honest.’

'I know! I get all these dirty looks walking around with these kids like people think I got knocked up at 18.'

'And I would trade you Nick for your sister any day. I used to actually put a little sister on my Christmas list for Santa until I was like, 10.'

‘Mom and dad didn’t wanna indulge in that for you?’

‘I guess after two kids, most moms are tapped out.’

'Actually, I was an accident :)'

‘Oh.’

‘Fuck, omg’

‘Well, I think Liyah might’ve been too, so you guys can commiserate.’

'Ha! Is she much younger than you?'

‘She’s 17. Thinks I’m just so lame and embarrassing.’

'Well, to be fair, if she's 17 then you probably are. Plus I bet all her friends have huge crushes on you which doesn't help.'

‘I mean, who wouldn’t have a huge crush on me?’

‘Well. Besides Liyah. Gross.’

'And so humble and charming. Makes the girls swoon.'

‘Even you?’

‘I’m getting there. Would you like that?’

‘I mean’

‘I definitely wouldn’t complain’

‘Good. Maybe if you’re around I’ll see you again soon.’

‘That seems cryptic.’

‘You sure you want to leave it up to chance?’

‘It always works in rom coms. Have you seen Serendipity?’

‘Is that the one with John Cusack?’

‘Also I usually don’t trust life to be much like a romcom’

‘Yes it is the one with John Cusack. And I guess my experience hasn’t been very rom com like either, you have a point.’

‘I guess if I put it out into the universe that I’m usually at the coffee shop on 11th Ave on Wednesdays after my 4pm lecture gets out at 6 then maybe that’ll work.’

'Hm. Yeah, that might help the universe work its shit out a bit better.'

'Have you ever tried the Himalayan place on Yonge?'

‘I have not. Is it good?’

'Oh, it's the best. Staff is super nice and they have the best chocolate croissants in the world.'

‘Oh man you’re speaking my language. I love chocolate croissants!’

‘Yeah? They’re my favorite’

'I bet they're a great study food.'

‘I can’t say I know for sure yet. Should we find out?’

'I'd recommend it. They're great fuel for writing, so I don't see why studying would be any different.'

‘Hmmm. You free this Wednesday?’

'I'm always free for coffee and croissants.'

‘Well, tea.’

‘Perfect! Meet me there at 6:15?’

‘Yeah, totally’

+

Lydia has a crush. She’d be lying to herself if she says didn’t realize it at the dinner party where she met him. Having coffee with him, however brief, solidified it.

He was taking up a good deal of her attention when she wasn’t either studying or babysitting so she found she didn’t have time, or want to make time, for much else. She’d rather be texting him anyway.

So when she got the invite from Kristin and Allison for sushi and karaoke one Saturday night, she weighed it against cuddling under a blanket with her phone talking to him about nothing and everything. She turned down the invite.

When Margo casually mentioned that he was going, Lydia changed her plans. She walked into that karaoke bar in a clingy black t-shirt dress and her favorite black leather booties.

She might take him home tonight.

He gets to the karaoke bar early because he's so nervous. He figured Lydia would be studying or babysitting this Saturday night, but he'd braved a text to her anyway, asking if she was going. Just in case.

He holds his phone with slightly shaking fingers when she texts back twenty minutes later that, yes, she'll be there. He spends the next hour debating what outfit to wear, even though Saturday is still three days away. He even texts pictures to his stylist for her opinion. She always knows how to make him look his best.

So he's sitting at their booth in the corner, right next to the karaoke stage, nervously chewing on some Edamame when he sees her walk in. He almost chokes. She's always making him almost choke. He needs to just... stop consuming things around her.

He wants to wave her over, but he also doesn't want to look desperate, so instead he pretends he doesn't see her and leans in for another soybean. It almost slips out of his fingers, but his musician's reflexes save his dignity.

He’s fumbling with edamame when she spots him. She tries not to grin too hard at the flush in his cheeks. But he’s so fucking cute and it’s been almost a week since coffee. She find herself feeling a little flustered too, actually.

He sees her approach their group and pass out hugs from the corner of his eye, but he keeps his focus on the food and the sake martini he's nursing. God, he wishes he were cooler. He's supposed to be really cool. He's a fucking rockstar. With fans. Who throw bras at him on stage sometimes. None of that translates, though, when he's in front of her.

She strides over and hugs everyone at the table, saving him for last so she can sit with him. She leans in and whispers “hi” into his ear, leaving a little smudge from her maroon lipstick on his cheek. She swipes it off with her thumb.

“Woops. My bad.”

Then he feels her small hand on his shoulder and her lips on his cheek and his heart stutters in his chest. She whispers in his ear and it's all he can do not to groan like a total idiot. He knows his cheeks are pink but he hopes it's too dark for her to notice.

He laughs a little when she has to wipe some lipstick from his face and finally turns to look at her. She settles next to him and he wonders if it's on purpose or out of convenience. "Hey," he says, "You made it!"

She settles in next to him and orders a cocktail because this place has a bunch of funny, crazy drinks. Hers is fluorescent blue and sporting about 30 paper umbrellas. She sips at it for courage.

The drink she orders is like, bright neon blue and he can't help but laugh at her a little while she struggles to sip around all the umbrellas. "You know, I think a sake bomb would bit lot easier to handle for the same pay off."

She angles her chin around an umbrella to reach her straw. “I know, but I hate sake and I like tiny umbrellas. So Thunderpunch is the drink for me.” She winks at him and bites her straw.

“So, who’s up first to sing?” She angles a glance at him.

She looks at him like she's expecting him to hop up on stage, and he rolls his eyes a bit.

"Don't look at me. Maybe I'm tired of performing, for once," he teases as he quirks an expecting brow and smirks.

The table debates who should sing first. Shawn turns it down which she thinks is cute. She’s not sure if he’s being humble or if he’s just not drunk enough yet. He looks at her expectantly and her eyes bug a little.

“Dude, I just got here, I need, like... 3 more of these before I get on that stage.”

Finally, it’s decided Margo will kick them off because she’s already lit and does a surprisingly good job with “Crazy in Love.”

As she sings, Lydia leans over and swipes a tuna roll off Shawn’s plate with her chopsticks. When he looks up at her, she pops it in her mouth and smirks as she chews.

Lydia gives him this teasing look that makes him feel a little like they’re on a date, and not at a group hang. He rolls his eyes at her and pretends to protect his plate, clicking his tongue at her.

He quirks a brow, says, “That’ll cost ya, you know.”

He reaches over towards her plate with his chopsticks and steals one of her pan fried gyoza. He shoves the whole thing in his mouth then grins at her with a bulging cheek.

Shawn swipes a dumpling and she has to fight the urge to plant a kiss on his cheek as he chews. The Thunderpunch must be hitting her faster than she meant it to.

He swallows the dumpling and wipes the corner of his mouth with his napkin before turning slightly, angling himself towards Lydia. “So, should we get you another Thunderpunch so you’ll get up and put on a show for me?”

She raises her eyebrows. “A show for you? It’s tempting, I’ll admit. But I should warn you I really can’t sing. And yes, I will need another Thunderpunch before I pretend to try.”

She waves down the waiter with a big, flirty smile to get what she wants. The second Thunderpunch arrives within minutes and Chris complains that Lydia’s orders always arrive first.

Lydia shrugs a shoulder and eyes Shawn, “It’s all in the art of the flirt, bro.”

She looks at him like they have a secret to share and Shawn feels his face heat up, just a bit. He wants to scoot closer to her, but he also doesn’t want to seem weird or pushy.

He smirks at her instead, tilts his head and says, “Yeah, and I’m sure the fact that you’re beautiful doesn’t hurt, either,” he glances at the waiter, “Dude’s probably hoping for a phone number.”

He doesn’t mean to like, suggest she should give the waiter her number. It’s just probably true. Like, who wouldn’t want Lydia’s number?

Shawn compliments Lydia like he’s stating a very obvious fact. I mean, she knew by the way he treats her that he’s attracted to her, but hearing him say it so simply has her a little giggly. So does the second Thunderpunch.

“He can hope. I don’t see it happening, though.” She’s looking over at the waiter until she finishes speaking, then she moves her glance meaningfully to Shawn. She sucks down the last of her Thunderpunch and hums happily.

He tries not to read into the look Lydia gives him when she says the waiter won’t be getting her number. He doesn’t want to think on it too hard, doesn’t want to let himself believe that maybe she’s not looking to hand out her number because she’s starting to like him the way he likes her.

He orders a beer when the waiter comes back and realizes he had a good deal of drinking to do to catch up with everyone else.

She’s relieved to see Shawn joining in eagerly on the heavy drinking. She can’t wait to hear him sing. She wonders what song he’ll pick.

But now that she’s heavily and thoroughly Thunderpunched, her friends are looking at her expectantly and it’s time to do the damn thing.

Lydia finishes her bright blue drink and pops up like she’s determined to kick karaoke’s ass and Shawn can’t do anything but grin and watch as she makes her way to the stage. He sits back, relaxing against the back of the booth and sipping from him beer as he waits for her song.

She tries not to think about the fact that there’s a gorgeous popstar with actual singing talent sitting at the table watching her as she ascends the stage. The opening notes to “Stronger” by Britney Spears come on and Lydia grins, starting her performance.

“Stronger” starts playing and that’s so fucking awesome, Shawn has to put down his beer so he can applaud. He whistles as she takes the mic.

It’s more of Lydia shout singing and laughing than actually trying to do Britney any justice, but Shawn loves it. He loves watching her have fun. He loves watching her smile and flush and dance around like she doesn’t give a shit who’s watching.

He really hopes she’s starting to like him the way he so totally and completely already likes her.

She’s not going to be on Broadway any time soon but if it’s a show he wanted, it’s a show he got.

She’s still panting and giggling when she returns from the table, high fiving all her friends as they cheer her on. She saves his reaction for last.

She tilts her head at him and wiggles her eyebrows. She squishes into the booth next to him and orders another Thunderpunch from the very attentive waiter who looks annoyed at how close she’s sitting to Shawn.

He’s laughing and clapping when Lydia comes back to the table, high-fiving their friends along the way. She reaches him last and he feels his heart rattle his ribcage as he smiles up at her, his cheeks aching at this point.

She squeezes in next to him and it’s the alcohol coursing through his veins and the adrenaline from watching her dance around that has him casually draping his arm across the back of the booth close to her shoulders. Nearly touching. One little shift and they’d be touching.

“Ok, Mr. Mendes, were you satisfied with your show?”

He nods eagerly at her question. The bar is loud again as another person gives it a go with an *NSYNC song, so Shawn has to lean into her as he nearly shouts, “Better than Britney, herself, Hamilton!”

She laughs heartily, buoyed by his warm arm so close to her buzzing body. She leans back a little into it.

“That’s very generous. And total bullshit.”

She thanks the waiter when he brings her drink. She crosses her legs toward Shawn and claps for the poor sap who tried to do *NSYNC.

He grins when she calls his crap, but then he shakes his head and wets his lips. He looks at her seriously as he says, “Art is subjective, Lydia. They didn’t teach you that at Brown?”

He winks at her as he sits back a little and sips his beer, realizing mid-sip that now his arm is actually resting against her back. Suddenly, he feels way too hot.

God, he’s winking and joking and teasing her and her whole body is bubbling with it. She wants to kiss him right there in front of everyone, put her hands all over his body. She’s definitely drunk now but she’d still be lusting after him if she were sober, she knows.

“Ok,” Lydia prompts, nudging him with her elbow, “You’re up, cowboy.”

He’s setting his beer down when Lydia nudges him. He shakes his head a little at first.

“I’m not much of a singer,” he says facetiously, giving her a teasing glance.

“But, you know, if you insist,” he forces himself to stand, even though he’s drunk and definitely nervous. And not because of performing, but who he’s performing for.

‘Valerie’ by Amy Winehouse begins to play as Shawn takes his place at the mic. He tries not to stare at her while he sings, and instead plays to the crowd. His heart hammers the whole time.

Lydia scooches out of his way so he can take the stage. It’s a little comical how clearly he belongs there. He doesn’t have a guitar or 30,000 screaming women but he has that fucking voice that has Lydia wet in her panties. She crosses her legs tighter each time he catches her eyes while he sings, closing his eyes when he gets into it, caressing the microphone.

She has to stifle a moan. Margo elbows her in the ribs. Lydia giggles until he sits back down to thunderous applause, not just from their table, but from the whole bar.

She claps for him, smiles wide when he ambles back over to the table as the crowd cheers for him. He squishes himself beside her once more, even though there’s another, wider spot at the other side of the table he could settle into.

“Ok, you threw down the gauntlet,” Lydia laughs, shaking her head at him.

“I mean, you were taunting me,” he says with a smirk, turning towards her and not bothering to pretend he’s not leaning into her on purpose. His arm settles confidently across the back of the booth, pressing gently into her shoulders, and it’s definitely thanks to the alcohol.

Lydia licks her lips and narrows her eyes, tucking some wilting red curls behind her ear. “Honey, if you think that was taunting, wait until you get me started.”

She flutters her eyelashes at him playfully over her glass as she sucks down the last of her third Thunderpunch.

“So are you gonna answer?” He leans in so close his nose nearly brushes her cheek. He pulls back, only slightly, so he can look her in her pretty green eyes. His stomach flips and he suddenly feels like he can’t breathe. She’s so fucking beautiful.

He’s talking so close to her ear, baiting her. She wants to turn and nip at his lower lip to teach him a lesson. Instead, she stares into those delightfully bleary honey brown eyes for a few seconds too long before she turns to the table.

“Who wants to see my party trick?” she calls. Chris’s eyes widen as the rest of the table cheers.

Lydia stands, grinning again, giving Shawn one last lingering look before she heads back to the stage.

Margo nudges Shawn’s arm, shaking her head, and laughs, “You’re gonna love this.”

The whole table cheers for Lydia, and all he can do is smile like the drunk idiot he is and stare at her as she makes her way up onto the stage. He has no fucking clue what her party trick could be.

In college, Lydia was known at parties for two things: 1. She could never remember that she hated gin until she drank it and almost spit it up 2. She could rap Eminem’s “Without Me” flawlessly from start to finish.

He nearly spits out his beer when she starts rapping. She’s not even looking at the screen. She’s playing to the crowd and looking at him and he feels his cheeks go fire red as he cheers her on. She’s doing more than justice to the song, and Shawn swears he’s never had a bigger crush on anyone in his entire life.

The liquor helped her put a flourish on it for him. She has the whole joint singing with her. She leaves the stage to raucous cheers and returns to the table. Standing in front of Shawn, she drops her nonexistent mic.

He laughs at her as she drops an imaginary mic in front of him, and it’s not even a competition anymore. He shakes his head and claps for her as she squeezes back into the seat beside him.

She felt like a rockstar coming back to the table. Is this what he feels like coming off stage every night? This is awesome.

He drapes his arm once more across the booth and her shoulders, leaning in as he shouts over the crowd, “I didn’t know you were secretly a gangster!”

He must be drunker than he thought because his free hand finds her bare knee as he speaks, and he doesn’t even realize it until his thumb’s already busy rubbing circles against her soft skin.

“I did it at parties in college. Made me very popular at frats,” she tells him, almost hissing when his hand meets her knee. He doesn’t even seem to notice he’s done it.

She’s looking between the curls falling on his forehead and his slightly parted wet lips. She swallows.

“HEY!” Margo yells at them like she’s been trying to get their attention for a minute.

Lydia looks over, annoyed. Margo smirks. “We’re doing ‘Island in the Sun.’ But by all means, you two stay here.”

Margo marches off to the stage before Lydia can react. She looks back at Shawn and strokes a hand over his wrist while he continues rubbing her leg.

He hears Margo shout at him but he can’t bring himself to look away from Lydia’s flushed cheeks and full lips. Her eyes shift to their friend, but Shawn keeps watching her. He smiles a little when she gives him her attention again and places her small hand over his wrist. He presses his thumb a little harder on her skin and tugs his lower lip into his mouth with his teeth.

Lydia’s confident smile drops a little when she watches from a close distance as he bites down on his lower lip while he’s staring at her. Like she’s the most delicious thing he’s ever seen.

“Hi,” she murmurs even though the bar has only gotten louder.

He laughs a little, but he nods his head and says hi back. He feels some of his hair fall against his forehead, that one obnoxious curl that always falls down when he’s been bopping a little too hard.

He glances down at her lips for just a moment, then finds her eyes once again. He wants to kiss her. He needs to. His throat is tight and his skin feels too hot wrapped around his muscles, but he manages to find his voice, anyway.

His brows furrow slightly, his head tilting as he asks, “Can I kiss you? Please?”

If she were sober, she’d have noticed that she actually whimpers at the way he looks at her lips. Instinctively, she licks them, getting ready. Before he even asks his question, her free hand is creeping up his shoulder to hold her steady.

Her chest shudders. She grins, feeling confident again when his unflinching politeness strikes again. She brushes her nose over his and nods, choosing not to trust her voice for this.

Her body language almost begs him to kiss her, but he still feels a sense of relief wash over him when she nods her approval, her nose brushing against his in a way that has his heart clenching. He groans a gentle sigh and nudges his face forward.

He seems to sigh in relief when she gives him permission and it may just be the most adorable thing he does all night.

His lips slide against hers and he’s pretty sure he’s forgotten how to breathe. She tastes like soy sauce and alcohol and he has to pull his hand from her knee so he can cup her jaw, steadying himself against her.

He sips at her lips while the bar raves around them, but he can’t hear it. He can only hear the way his lips move against hers and the way his heart thumps loudly against his ribcage. It makes a pretty melody, he thinks.

The kiss isn’t adorable. The kiss is fucking incredible. Maybe they’re both kinda drunk and full of karaoke adrenaline, but it’s quite a kiss. She’s definitely not ready for it to end when he starts to pull away.

So she doesn’t. She loops a hand around his neck and drags him back under, tracing the seam of his perfect lips with her tongue because she needs more, she needs to get closer.

She pulls him back in with a small yet firm hand on the back of his neck. This time he lets himself groan properly as her tongue teases his lips. He opens his mouth for her, let’s her lick at him before he sucks gentle at her wandering tongue.

When he groans into her mouth, she scratches a manicured thumbnail gently across the back of his neck.

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t initially have concerns that he might not be any good at this. At kissing or at anything else. He’s young and even though he’s hot and famous, he might not have had time to get good with a woman’s body yet. And, hell, being hot and famous gives him more of an excuse not to have to try.

But Shawn has put the work in. She can tell. He’s got a big hand in her hair and she suddenly feels very safe with him, like he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

It takes all of his willpower not to wrap her up in his arms and pull her onto his lap. He grounds himself by pushing his hand into her hair and grazing his fingers over her scalp. He hums into her mouth, leaning forward into the kiss so she has to lean back against the booth to accommodate him.

He presses into her and she’s pinned, not aggressively, between him and the peeling fake leather booth and there’s nowhere she’d rather be.

He only breaks the kiss to pant for air. He keeps close to her though, keeps his hand in her hair and his nose pressed to hers as his eyes flutter open and his check heaves.

“So are you good at everything? Or are school, rapping, and kissing your specialities?”

She almost chases him again when he parts from her to talk but she manages to keep her cool. She takes the hand still resting on his wrist to place it on his cheek. It might be too affectionate so soon but she doesn’t care right now.

She stops herself from making a comment about definitely being good at everything, wink wink, if ya know what I mean. Instead she grins and brushes their noses together again.

“I also skateboard pretty well. Or I used to. I haven’t tried in a bit.”

She doesn’t want to get distracted by more small talk so she pulls him back in as their friends’ song ends.

She kisses him again and he takes it easily, sighing against her lip. His head buzzes but he’s not sure it’s from the alcohol anymore. People keep singing, the bar keeps cheering, and they kiss right through it. They’re in the back, basically in the corner, so it’s not out in the open enough for Shawn to be worried.

Eventually Margo makes her way back to the table and Shawn can feel her squishing into the seat next to him while she hollers at them. He pulls away from Lydia’s lips with a blush on his face and drops his forehead to her shoulder. He hides from Margo while she cackles and tells them they should get a room.

“This is a room,” he shouts over the music from his spot on Lydia’s shoulder.

He feels Margo’s elbow dig into his back as she huffs, “You know what I mean!”  All he can do is laugh and keep hiding because now he is thinking about a room, alone, with Lydia, and all the things he could do to her. Or that she could do to him. Whatever she wants, really.

Lydia definitely doesn’t notice when their booth fills back up with their friends who have now caught them and fuck, they’re never gonna live this down. Lydia jumps a little when Margo runs up and starts wailing at them about PDA. She feels his forehead meet her shoulder and she can’t help but cradle the back of his head.

He stays there against her arm for a while like a shy child. Lydia plays with the collar of his shirt while half-watching another group sing We Are Family. She’s barely able to make it through the song without looking over and grinning at him like an idiot.

Lydia lets him keep his face pressed to the junction of her shoulder for the next few minutes while their friends chat, holler, and cheer for the group on stage. He likes it, being tangled up in her while her delicate fingers play with the collar of his shirt. His heart clenches.

Finally, the song ends and Lydia can’t take it anymore. She wriggles away from him and stands, addressing the table.

“It’s been fun, guys, but it’s past my bedtime. Margo, thank you for organizing. Uhm, so, bye.”

Before he can get too comfortable, however, Lydia extracts herself from him, slipping out of the booth as she stands up. He frowns, just for the briefest of moments, as he sits himself up and looks at her while she bids the group goodbye. It’s awkward and sudden and for a second he wonders what he did wrong.

Just to be safe, because he seems too sweet to catch her drift without her really throwing it at him, she fixes him with a look and even a little head jerk toward the door before she strides off.

But then she’s looking at him and jerking her head a little. It’s like, the kind of jerking nod that you give when you want someone to follow you. He kind of thinks he’s imagining it. She stalks away from them and disappears through the doors of the restaurant, leaving him to wonder if she really meant for him to follow or if he’s just desperate (re: drunk) enough to have hallucinated it.

He waits maybe 15 seconds before deciding to follow her, hallucination or not. He says a pathetically quick goodbye and practically runs out of the restaurant, scanning the sidewalk when he emerges outside.

Lydia doesn’t have to wait long for him but it is one of the longest minutes of her life. Because if he didn’t get it, she’s going to have to go in after him. Because she really, really wants to take him home.

But, thank god, he scrambles out the door looking for her. Her face bursts into an overeager smile and she gives him a little wave with one hand, Lyft app open on her phone in the other.

“Subtlety is not our strong suit, Mendes,” she teases, glancing around the sidewalk. No ones around because it’s late but she’s suspicious of camera phones anyway. She doesn’t really care but she figures he’d prefer a low profile going home with someone.

Because she’s taking him home. God, she can’t wait.

The Lyft arrives. She opens the door and climbs in, leaving it open. “Shall we?”

Taglist: @softboyshawn @marlahey @smallerinfinities @crapri @the-claire-bitch-project @stillinskislydia @abigfatmess @sippingchai @lostinshawnslight

#shawn mendes #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes rpf #shawn mendes roleplay #shawn mendes imagine

[pplydm]

ePUB #51

Title: Pretty Girls Author: Karin Slaughter

I believe I started this December 3rd and when December 8th came, I was still reading. I found here various combination of genres: inspirational family drama, mystery, suspense, and violent themed actions. Readers are introduced with the Carroll family, namely Sam, Helen, Julia, Claire and Lydia and their pursuit of availing justice. Their family was a victim of a serial rapist who performed countless teenage abductions, rape acts and murders. Apparently, the killer groomed his son to be like him which means the crimes don't stop. SPOILER ALERT. Plot twist: Claire fell in love and married the wealthy, nerdy, delicate and eligible son of the alleged suspect. There were inclusions of Sam’s journals regarding the duration of his, I assume, eldest daughter, Julia's grim disappearance that I enjoyed reading. Claire with her vulnerability and gullible personality brought her foolish decisions and took a while in rescuing her sister Lydia from Paul's devious schemes. I wasn't supportive with Claire's manner of solving and coping with Lydia's kidnapping, all by herself. That is because it appears that as Lydia is tortured and beaten, Claire had to make up her emotions and stabilize her mind every now and then. Well, maybe it is grueling to accept that your flawless long-time husband turns out to actually be a psychopath murdering rapist. Or Claire could just be head over heels romantically attached to her husband regardless of the present circumstances. Also, what's worse than realizing that you can't ask for anybody's assistance especially the public officials the nation taught you to depend on? It was enraging when Claire refused to confide in Rick then spoke lies instead. She even deferred the realization that she's constantly tracked through Lydia's mobile phone. That's just utter ignorance at that point. Fortunately, the latter book chapters presented Claire’s rise to intellect and desperation although she was barred by the fact that she was slightly contending with supposedly trusted and esteemed people that was in reality exceedingly were disappointments.

 This book is about family reconciliation, forgiveness and moving forward despite the inevitable hardships and deaths. Through this, parents’ tenderness and incomparable love is represented. In spite of this seemingly endless and enduring book, this doesn't deserve to be deemed dull since there were gripping and vile incidents. There's about an incredible degree of family affection in this entire read but divided by chapters showing gruesome and horrific happenings. I was just hooked into finishing it! Vengeance may be an option in soothing the pain intentionally caused by others. Nevertheless, in this read, one would learn to promote chances and reconsider if the judgment against the convicts is ours. As for this book's writing, I consider the author straightforward with the narrative without the usage of such emotive paragraphs and I'm grateful for that. Ms. Slaughter only includes the essential. This book proved to be a praise-worthy novel indeed.

"Suddenly, quite miraculously, you are a grown-up beautiful woman. You look so much like your mother, but you are still uniquely you. You have thoughts I will never know. Desires I will never understand. Friends I will never meet. Passions I will never share. You have a life."

#goodreads #karin slaughter #pretty girls #currently reading #suspense #mystery #family drama #action #electronicpublication #literature #essay #comments #book review

[paul-tudor-owen]

Review: The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen: ‘incredibly original, passionate and powerful’

A really glowing review of my novel The Weighing of the Heart from Lynne aka The Book-Reviewing Mum:

Well this is definitely not like something I have ever read before! A story which is based around Egyptian Mythology and Art, it really took me to different places where normal books wouldn’t!

I have never read a novel based on Egyptian Mythology before and actually before I read this book I googled the title ‘The Weighing Of the Heart’ and it told me all about this Ancient Egyptian history! I only have a basic knowledge on Ancient Egypt and I actually ended up learning something which I loved!

You can really feel the passion the author has for art in this book as well, with a number of famous paintings and artists being mentioned and a lot of the story also being based around art, it was talked about a lot which I also thoroughly enjoyed! It was refreshing to read something that’s based around such different subjects than I am used to!

We follow the main character Nick through the book from moving to a new place in New York due to a breakup, to him falling in love and basically losing his mind a little!

He moves in with the Peacock Sisters who are very wealthy and have an amazing apartment in a more lavish part of New York! Their apartment is filled with expensive and beautiful artwork which include lots of originals!

While living here Nick meets Lydia who lives across the hall and also rents from the Peacock sisters! They get to talking and both realise they share the same passions which not only include art but also art that is based on Egyptian Mythology and history and this draws them together!

They embark on a romantic love affair, but Nick is always slightly paranoid shall we say, he ends up seeing things that others possibly don’t, becomes quite jealous which drives him up the wall.

One day they commit an impromptu crime which was hardly planned and this is when things start to change for the 2 of them!

They deal with the guilt and their own thoughts differently and this is where the cracks begin to appear and they start to learn things about each other that they previously did not know…

…and well you will have to read the book to find out where this takes them!

I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline, I loved how it touched on so many genres, from romance, crime, thriller and I would class it as slightly magical with some of the mythology and how can you go wrong with a book that includes so much!

I loved how in different chapters it would take you back to Nick’s past and Lydia’s past so we could learn more about each character! It really helped build an understanding as to who they are, and why they act the way they do!

This book is a really easy read and super easy to follow! The romance, crime and mythology really kept me engaged and I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen in the end!

I’d like to give this book 4 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ for being so incredibly original, educational, passionate, and powerful!

An Awesome Read!

Another positive review of The Weighing of the Heart, this one from Bex aka That Bookish Fangirl, who calls the novel "beautifully written".

So this book is definitely not my usual type but an art heist and Egyptian mythology? Sign me up. For his debut novel Paul does a fantastic job in fully immersing the reader into the story line and New York. Personally I didn’t connect with the main characters and would have loved to read more about the Peacock sisters but that didn’t mean I could put the book down. It’s beautifully written and you can really tell that Paul has a passion or at least did a lot of research onto Art and Artists which was great to read. Also who doesn’t love a twist at the end of a book?

It’s unsurprising that this book has been shortlisted for the People's Book Prize 2020.

And here's another very positive review of The Weighing of the Heart, this one from the.b00kreader, who was "captivated by the writing style and the plot".

This was quite an intriguing read.

After his breakup, Nick moves in with the Peacocks. In the adjoining apartment lives a young woman, Lydia, who has recently been divorced. As they both get into a crime... things don't exactly work like you'd expect.

Throughout this book, I was captivated by the writing style and the plot. I do feel as though Nick was way too overprotective of Lydia. The ending was not what I had expected, I was expecting a completely different outcome. But there ain't no complaints!

**TRIGGER WARNING** This book contains details of stolen items and I feel, some manipulation. Please be aware of this before purchasing / reading.

Another great review, this one from Kirsti aka Mrs Feg Fiction:

I was very excited to read this one because I love to support independent publishers and authors where I can. The blurb of this book is also very interesting, an Englishman in New York who is fascinated by Egyptian mythology and art. A guy down on his luck who happens to find himself living in a lavish Upper East Side apartment which he rents from the exuberant and slightly eccentric Peacock sisters.

Enter Lydia their other lodger, who happens to be Portuguese, beautiful and also interested in ancient Egypt and boom you've got a love interest that quite quickly develops into an unorchestrated heist... You're interested now right?! 😉

@paultowen writes really well and despite this being his debut book, I didn't struggle with the writing style at all. I fell into the storyline quickly and the energy moved along at a good pace.

The main character, Nick is not hugely likeable because it's clear early on that he has some demons and there's something sinister about his past. Lydia is more likeable, she's a bit of a wimp, but she's smart and relatable. The Peacock sisters are hilarious, in a good way.

There are lots of parts to this story, it is by no means all about the crime. I particularly enjoyed learning about the Egyptian Mythology and it's clear the author has a keen interest in this. There is a great deal of depth to each character and you do need to do a fair amount of reading between the lines for parts of the story.

I felt the ending was a little rushed and I had more unanswered questions than I would have liked, but I think that might be kind of the point.

Overall a solid debut.

Here's another great review of The Weighing of the Heart, this one from Soph aka Book, Blog & Candle:

In The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen, our main character is Nick Braeburn. An Englishman in New York who has recently lost his girlfriend, his job and his apartment. Luckily, he is taken in by the eccentric Peacock sisters. However, trouble starts when he and his beautiful neighbour take advantage of their kindness and commit a despicable crime. 

Nick is a polite, unassuming and perfectly nice character but it's not quite enough to cover all of the skeletons in his closet. He quickly falls for Lydia, the classic next door, both connected by their love for Egyptian art based on Egyptian mythology. However, there is a thin line between love and obsession which is a definitely theme throughout the book! As we all know, obsession feeds into paranoia and Nick's true colours are soon revealed. 

There was amazing imagery and fantastic writing all throughout this book. I loved how Ancient Egyptian mythology was woven seamlessly alongside the storytelling. I knew it was going to be my kind of book when I read the blurb, so it's no surprise that I read it in one sitting and loved it! 

The Weighing of the Heart is a great mystery and perfect for fans of The Goldfinch! 

Buy The Weighing of the Heart for 99p here or 99c here, and read its numerous 5-star reviews!

And you can vote for The Weighing of the Heart for the People’s Book Prize 2020 here.

#paul tudor owen #weighing of the heart #the weighing of the heart #nyc #ancient egypt #new york #egyptology #books #review #book review #novel

[swipestream]

Cinema (The Right Geek): What I’m trying to say here is that I’m the audience for a female superhero like Captain Marvel. And yet – and yet! – I have no interest in seeing her new movie because her marketing campaign has been a trash fire of epic proportions. First of all, there’s the deeply stupid year-zero mentality.

  Writers (DMR Books): I first encountered Shea by way of the Cthulhu Mythos. I’d heard he was a good writer–this being in reference to his classic, Nifft the Lean–but I stumbled onto his Mythos novel, The Color Out of Time, first. The cover blurb made it sound cool, I was always in the market for good Mythos fiction, so I bought it.

  Fiction (Swords Sorcery Blogspot): For five blood-soaked chapters of C.S.Forester’s debut Horatio Hornblower novel, The Happy Return (1935) (Beat to Quarters in the US) the British frigate Lydia battles the Natividad, an old Spanish ship-of-the-line crewed by Nicaraguan rebels. For all of author Forester’s tremendous success at recreating the wooden world of King George’s navy during the Napoleonic Wars, it’s that battle, as presided over by the brooding Hornblower, that got me.

Fiction (Pulp Archivist): During a discussion of science fiction by C. S. Lewis, Kingsley Amis, and Brian Aldiss, published as “Unreal Estate”, attempts to define the genre. While I lean towards the German view of science fiction, that of any adventure of the future, I have to admit the Lewis has a point. There is something to the English and American traditions that demands something more, despite how popular futurist adventures can be.

  Writers (The Mixed DM): In addition to old-school roleplaying games, I enjoy reading fantasy and science fiction stories. Unfortunately, there is a lot of garbage out there, so finding the good stuff can be hard.

Luckily, there are some authors out there writing great fantasy and science fiction. One of the authors bringing us good fiction is Kit Sun Cheah.

When I saw that he was doing a Kickstarter for a trilogy of novels that had an OSR influence, I asked him for an interview about the novels. Without further ado, here is the interview.

  Fiction (Track of Words): For this instalment I spoke to veteran Black Library author James Swallow about The Buried Dagger, his latest Horus Heresy novel – the 54th and final book in the main-range series! As befits the book that closes off the Horus Heresy this is a somewhat longer interview than usual, so settle down with a mug of recaff and enjoy!

  Cinema (Akratic Wizardy): As noted at this blog previously, Amazon Prime is coming out with a television series set in Middle-earth. Rotten Tomatoes has posted an article that goes over everything that is known publicly about the series at this time (and also engages in a fair bit of fun speculation).

  Gaming (Rleyh Reviews): Although the publication of Behind Enemy Lines by FASA in 1982 was the first roleplaying set during World War II, it would not be until the year 2001, the sixtieth anniversary of the United States of America’s entry into that conflict, that the hobby industry really became interested in the period with Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Inc.’s Weird War II: Blood on the Rhineand Godlike: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936-1946 from Arc Dream Publishing. Both though added an extra genre to World War II, horror and superheroes respectively, whereas Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS World War II line kept it purely historical for the most part…

  Gaming (OSR News): There’s another, different OSR sale at DTRPG right now. I picked up a bunch of random stuff.

Official GW3 Cleansing War of Garik Blackhand –  Gamma World module about his fight vs the cult of Mr. Clean. $4.99 and 38 pages, also available in print.

Polyhedron 26 and 27 – 99 cents each. Actually has something interesting, what’s happening in Gamma World on Mars (both issues).

  Anime (Rawly Nyanzi): I’ve heard so much about the films of Hayao Miyazaki, but I had only seen Spirited Away prior to this one (and that was a long time ago.) Out of curiosity, I decided to watch his 1997 movie Princess Mononoke, which I remember the media speaking highly of when I was a kid. At the end of it, I came away quite impressed. Before reading anyone else’s thoughts on the movie, I decided to get my own thoughts down.

    Fiction Review (Catholic Reads): Ready for the end of the world, battle mechs, and body swaps? This collection of short stories has it all.

Strange Matter is a collection of short stories from one of my favorite contemporary authors. Niemeier has a range of talent, covering various genres in this volume including sci-fi and horror. It ranges from the whimsical to the terrifying, to the thought provoking.

  Fiction (Western Genre Musings): This 1893 work of historical theorizing offered as “The Frontier Hypothesis” has been influential on many historians, authors, and those with a libertarian bent.

I wager those with an attraction to the Western genre will find much food for thought in Turner’s essay.

I am struck by much of significance within it that I offer several lengthy examples below.

    Weapons (Paul Bishop): TV Westerns also had a passion for celebrity guns. Like celebrity horses, these gimmick guns were given to TV’s Western heroes in another attempt to make each show stand out from the competition. Many of the hybrid six-guns and rifles used to establish law and order on Hollywood’s backlots and sound stages were made by Ed Stembridge’s Gun Room at Paramount Studios.

  T.V. (Red Shirts Always Die): Cosmic horror, which is also known as Lovecraftian Horror, exists at a gloomy intersection of science fiction and horror.  Based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, a storyteller who himself is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Gene Roddenberry in some respects, cosmic horror depicts people facing abysmal existential dread.  The strange happenings and encounters with mysterious and horrific beings serve only to remind the characters that they are merely insignificant humans.

    published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[ohblackdiamond]

little t&a (paul/gene, nc-17) (part 5 of 29)

part 1   part 2   part 3   part 4   part 5   part 6   part 7   part 8   part 9   part 10   part 11   part 12   part 13   part 14   part 15   part 16   part 17   part 18   part 19   part 20   part 21  part 22   part 23   part 24    part 25   part 26   part 27   part 28   part 29 Four weeks before KISS gets back on tour, Gene discovers that Paul’s been cursed by a groupie. For the sake of KISS’ finances, Paul’s comfort levels, and Gene’s libido, this crisis must be resolved. Sexswap fic. In this chapter: Gene tries to reason out some deep-seated denial, and Peter defends Paul.

           Normally, Paul could spend hours in clothing stores. Tight jeans, platform boots, designer blouses and ascots. Feathery jackets and animal print coats. He’d dressed as wildly as possible from the time he was twelve or thirteen on, saving up every dime to buy new clothes, always hoping they’d be the ticket to feeling—oh, like they did. Like other people must. Confident and swaggering. Gene had been like that from the very start, even though, when he’d met Gene, Gene had been easily forty pounds overweight and was wearing overalls that only emphasized his gut.

           That had been a pretty rude awakening for Paul. He’d realized it wasn’t in looking the part. Confidence was something inherent. Offstage, he couldn’t ever seem to purchase more than small slivers of it. And he didn’t think he could purchase it now (well, on Gene’s dime), in a mid-tier boutique, self-consciously shoving his way through racks of bras. Gene hadn’t told him to pick one up, but he hadn’t had to, either. He’d known he needed one from the start; it kind of hurt to run up stairs without any support, and the nightclub would be fucking awful without a bra, but he’d just kept putting it off. As if this female body would go away if he refused to acknowledge it, like a groupie left to linger in the Coop until morning.

           Speaking of groupies, he was still wondering about the one who’d cursed him. He could sort of remember her face as Suzie had described her, but it was puzzling. The S&M bit had been relatively light, no whips or toys, and she hadn’t come across like a nut. She’d said he’d had her before. That didn’t mean much, either. Especially in certain areas, he’d end up with some of the same groupies again. Sweet Connie, for one—the only girl Paul knew for a fact had fucked every single member of the band, and half its roadies—and there were plenty others. It was almost a wrestling circuit; the girls all knew each other, even if he didn’t know them.

           But what could he really have done to make that girl that mad? He couldn’t remember promising a chick much of anything in several years. Sometimes he’d get a bit sloppy with it, toss the girl some cab fare as he asked her to leave (she’d think he meant it as a tip, and throw it back at him), but he didn’t get off on humiliating them like some guys did. They came with the room, that was all. Stress relief. God knew he’d heard of plenty of rockstars and movie stars who’d Quaalude the hell out of whatever girl (or guy) they wanted. But he’d never done something like that. Fuck, his chicks were actually sober.

It really didn’t add up. Gene was triple the cad than he was, and he still had his dick. Peter and Ace cheated constantly on their wives, but Lydia and Jeanette hadn’t joined forces and sent a sex-changing demon after them. Whatever. He exhaled, taking four bras of slightly different sizes back to the dressing room and trying on each in turn, wishing he’d let the shopgirl help. The clasps were annoying enough that he ended up having to fasten the bras in the front, squashing his chest in the process, then turn the whole thing around just to put it on. The third bra out of the stack seemed to fit the best, a cream-colored underwire one that wasn’t too padded or too heavy on the lace and flowers. It looked okay reflected in the dressing room mirror, if a little stupid, paired with the boxers he was still stubbornly clinging to.

           After another ten minutes or so, he’d also picked out a few pairs of underwear and a pair of fishnet stockings. Another half an hour and he had a fake leather jacket, graphic tee, cut-off jean shorts, and a pair of boots. He didn’t really dig the ensemble in the mirror. More that he didn’t dig the unhappy girl in the mirror any more than he dug the unhappy guy he usually saw there. But maybe he’d look punk enough for CBGB. Would he need more clothes than that, though? On the chance that she didn’t show, or, worse, didn’t reverse the curse? Paul’s stomach churned at the thought. He got another dress, two blouses, heels, and a pair of jeans, deciding he’d write Gene a check for everything once this was all over.

           By the time he headed to check out, Gene was already waiting for him with his own bag of already-paid-for clothes. Paul tried to get a peek—he didn’t think Gene could go believably punk without intense help—but Gene held his two bags closed, pulling out a credit card to cover Paul’s purchases.

           “Hey, that’s not fair. I could use the laugh, show me what you bought.” Aggravating enough to have Gene watch the clerk ring up the bra and underwear.

           “Later.” Gene looked positively amused. Paul grabbed his own bags of clothes as soon as they were paid for, oblivious to the raised eyebrow the clerk threw Gene’s way for not carrying the bags for him.

           “If you won’t show me, don’t expect me to drive you anywhere for lunch.”

           The clerk perked up.

“Your girl’s driving? She’s got you by the balls.”

           “You have no idea,” Gene said.

--

           They ended up going through the McDonald’s drive-thru for lunch without Gene having to divulge any of his purchases. Paul had dug up enough change from the middle console to pay for it, and he was chatting up a storm about CBGB’s semi-resident bands—Blondie, apparently, was a pretty good act—between handfuls of French fries.

           “It doesn’t hold a ton of people, either, so if the groupie’s there, we’ll know pretty quickly. It’s not wall-to-wall like at Studio 54.” Paul shook his head. “Have you gone over there yet, Gene?”

           “Not yet.” He’d meant to. The disco had just opened when they’d gotten off tour. The big stars had already marked it as their territory, people like Mick and Bianca Jagger, Diana Ross, and Liza Minnelli. The prospect of being in their league was its own intoxicant. “Have you?”

           “Yeah, once. Y’know, I saw Andy Warhol there. He said he wanted to paint me.” Even through the food, Paul sounded pleased. “I kinda blew him off, I think he was just trying to come on to me, but hell, it might be fun.”

           “Getting with Warhol?”

           “Getting painted by Warhol. Jesus, Gene.” He paused. “He’s not my type.”

          “You’re not his type, right now.”

          Paul looked a little stung, but didn’t retort for a second or two.

          “What do you care, anyway?”

           Gene stuffed about a third of the burger in his mouth and shrugged.

          “I don’t.”

          “Remember when he did the Marilyn Monroe screen prints? Everyone in my class was trying to make their own versions, and our teacher…”

          Paul kept trailing off about his art magnet high school. Gene was only half-paying attention. Something strange and almost possessive had curdled in the back of his throat. He took a swig of his cup of Coke, but the feeling persisted. Maybe it was the dissonance. Girls worth talking to didn’t dismiss fucking so casually. Paul wasn’t really a girl, sure—well, he was, but—

          “You’re not listening.”

          “I don’t know anything about art, Paul.”

          “You do. You draw. You used to show me your comics. Everybody knows something about art. Everybody knows what they like about it.” Paul exhaled. “Look, you’ve gotta be getting tired of my place. I’ll take you home, meet you at the club tonight?”

          “You really want to do that?”

          “Yeah, of course I wanna go to the club. I’m not losing my whole life because of one groupie.”

          “You’d be okay getting there by yourself?”

          “I—yeah, I’d be okay.”

          “Just take us back to your place.”

          “I’d be fine, really—”

          “No, take us both back.”

          “What, you think I can’t drive over there by myself?”

          “Maybe I like your company, Paul.”

          Paul reached for his soda cup. The edge of his mouth was starting to twitch up.

          “Yeah? Maybe I like yours.”

--

           By the time Paul pulled into the driveway, Gene was feeling a little sluggish. Two Big Macs, French fries, Coke, and most of Paul’s Sprite sat heavy on his stomach. He figured he’d take a nap on Paul’s couch or in his guest bedroom. Maybe play some records after, if that didn’t tear at Paul too much. Maybe get a quick dinner at a restaurant before heading to that nightclub—he almost thought he could talk Paul into it now.

           Paul seemed to have about the same idea. He kicked off the tissue-stuffed heels and headed to his bedroom, leaving the door open. Gene watched him hang up all his purchases before doubling back to the door.

           “I’m gonna sleep for a bit,” Paul called out. “You can turn the T.V. on if you wanna, I don’t care.”

           Gene nodded, and Paul shut the door, leaving him alone with his thoughts. He shucked off his own shoes and stretched out on the orange velour couch in the living room, feeling weirdly nostalgic. The last time he’d really been at Paul’s place for more than an afternoon, Paul’s place had been his parents’ place. They’d be at the kitchen table, talking about records, bumming their way through Beatles songs on their acoustic guitars, while Paul’s baby niece squalled in the background. He’d never admit it, but he envied the noise in that apartment. The coiled-up tension Paul assured him lay just beneath the surface was something he never saw.

           Paul had rarely gotten past the door of Gene’s house when his mother was around. His mother thought Paul was the Lampwick to his Pinocchio, eagerly leading Gene into a world of sin he’d already partaken in and a world of drugs he’d never touched. Paul’s ego had been sufficiently bruised by the assumption that he never tried to convince her otherwise. But Gene was sort of wondering now. If Paul had been a chick instead of a guy when they met, some mousey, bitchy friend-of-a-friend that played a little guitar and wanted to start a band, would his mother have liked him any better? Would Paul being a Jewish girl, if nothing else, have been enough to save him, her, whatever? Probably not.

           Would he have gone after Paul then?

           Probably.

           Anyway, it didn’t matter. He didn’t plan on going after Paul now. They’d get this reversed soon enough, and once the tour started back again, he’d be up to his neck in Playboy Playmates and groupies, all way easier on the eyes and the wallet and the brain than a girl with a gap tooth and a terminal case of nerves. Yeah. Yeah.

           He watched the cuckoo clock on the wall for a while, the one that Paul had gotten during their last Europe tour, waiting for the bird to pop out from the little hatch. But it, like everything else, seemed to be taking its time. Gene sighed, getting up from the couch and heading for the T.V.—what was on this time of day, anyway? Gunsmoke reruns? The only thing that stopped him from finding out was a knock on the door.

           He opened it without thinking, figuring it was the mailman delivering another of Paul’s occult books. Instead, he was met with Peter, wearing his version of casual—jeans, a vest, a pinstripe shirt, and a handful of necklaces—and a bewildered look.

           “You’re still over here?”

           “How’d you know I was over here?”

           “Ace told me. Where’s Paul?”

           Shit.

           “He’s not in right now.”

           Peter looked him up and down suspiciously.

           “Then are you gonna let me in?”

           Despite himself, Gene’s glance went to the bedroom door almost on automatic. If he could get rid of Peter fast enough, Paul wouldn’t wake up.

           “C’mon,” he said finally. Peter stalked in without hesitation. Gene had half-expected him to take a seat, but he didn’t, looming in the living room like he was certain he was being let out of the loop, without being told.

           “Look, maybe Ace can write off all sorts of shit, but I can’t.”

           “What do you mean?”

           “He won’t see anybody, he won’t talk to anybody. He gets into fucking voodoo. He has you call up Ace for his psychic. Says you’ll make sure Paul calls me back and he doesn’t. But everything’s cool, everything’s great—”

           “Pete—”

           “Something’s the matter. Paul ain’t that kind of a nut! Now, either he lost his mind or you’re pulling one on him, but either way, something’s screwed-up here. I’m not leaving until I talk to him.”

           “You’ll be waiting awhile.”

           “I’ve got time.”

           “Pete, really, he’s gonna be out until pretty late, don’t you think—”

           “No, I don’t. I’m staying. You want me out, call the fucking cops. Get a real nice headline going—"

           The bedroom door creaked open. Peter turned around immediately, Gene following suit. Paul was standing in the doorway, still in that floral dress from earlier that afternoon. Gene bit his lip.

           “It’s you again!” Paul seemed to cave in on himself with every word out of Peter’s mouth, stepping back. “You—I see how this is!”

           “Peter,” Gene started again, “Peter, listen, it isn’t—”

           “You fucking asshole!” Peter grabbed Gene’s arms, oblivious to or maybe just not caring about the weight and height Gene had on him. “How the fuck could you do that to him?!”

           “You’ve got it wrong, I’m not—listen, Pete, I—”

           “You’re fucking his girlfriend! Your best friend! Paulie’s fucking losing it and what do you do, you move in on his girl! Move in on his house! You motherfucking pig!” Pete advanced, or tried to. Gene twisted away his grip, grasping his wrists. Pete yanked himself free easily, stalking forward, forcing Gene back, closer and closer to the wall.

           “Pete, calm down.”

           “I won’t! This ain’t stupid band shit, Gene! This ain’t fucking solos! You got no right to do this!”

           “Stop it.” It was Paul. Gene stared, stunned, as Paul stepped out of the doorway and into the living room, face pale. Peter was watching, too, looking disgusted. “He wouldn’t do that to me.”

           “He wouldn’t?” Peter started to laugh. “Baby, he’s done it to every chick that got within three feet of him.”

           “Pete, please.” Paul was biting his lip, breaths hard. “Pete, I’ve gotta tell you, listen—”

           “Don’t,” Gene cut in, but Paul didn’t listen. God only knew why. Gene could tell Paul was scared as hell, even as he stepped between them, taking Peter’s arms. Even Peter had about an inch on him now. Surprisingly, he didn’t pull back. “Don’t do it, you don’t need to.”

           “I’ve got to. Peter, I—” He let go of one of Peter’s arms, pulling down the right shoulder of his dress to expose his tattoo. “I’m... damn it, Peter, you know who I am.”

           Peter’s face contorted.

           “What the hell are you doing? What’s that supposed to prove?”

           “You and me, w-we went on vacation together last year. To Hawaii.”

           “Bullshit, I went with Lydia! I’ve never gone anywhere with you in my life!”

           Paul was staring at Peter like he’d just been slapped, but he kept his grip on Peter’s arm like a lifeline. Gene didn’t know how to help him. Part of him wanted to just go straight between the two of them and scream at Peter to get out of there, never mind the fallout on both sides after. But he didn’t. Instead he just watched as Peter tossed away Paul’s hold like it was nothing at all, shoving him back, hard enough Paul stumbled backwards, hitting his leg on the coffee table. Peter turned to Gene.

           “You think you can do anybody any fucking way, don’t you? Fuck Paul, right? Fuck him and his crazy broad. That’s the way you are. Loyalty don’t even matter to you.”

           “Peter—”

           “Forget it. I’m out of here.”  Peter stalked to the door, shouting as he yanked it open. “Don’t think I won’t tell him what you’ve done! I don’t give a shit if it splits us up!”

#kiss the band #kiss fanfiction #gene simmons x paul stanley #paul stanley #gene simmons #peter criss

[ohblackdiamond]

little t&a (paul/gene, nc-17) (part 7 of 29)

part 1   part 2   part 3   part 4   part 5   part 6   part 7   part 8   part 9   part 10   part 11   part 12   part 13   part 14   part 15   part 16   part 17   part 18   part 19   part 20   part 21  part 22   part 23   part 24    part 25   part 26   part 27   part 28   part 29 

Four weeks before KISS gets back on tour, Gene discovers that Paul’s been cursed by a groupie. For the sake of KISS’ finances, Paul’s comfort levels, and Gene’s libido, this crisis must be resolved. Sexswap fic. In this chapter: Gene and Paul make some inquiries and find an apartment.

           They didn’t waste time. Well, they didn’t waste much time. As expected, Gene was starting to get flocked again, even though they were trying to head straight to the bar. Gene didn’t really like to push past people, if he could help it—Big John was usually there to do it for him—and Paul, to his credit, wasn’t stomping on his foot now that they were in the club. He just kept shooting Gene pissed-off looks as the fans stammered at him and gave him napkins to sign.

           It was hard to hear any real talk outside of the blare of the band. Gene was just scribbling on napkins, barely offering a nod to whatever the person in front of him was telling him. It wasn’t until they made it to one dingy corner that he could actually understand the conversation around him.

           “Who’s he got with him?”

           “She’s kinda pretty. I don’t recognize her.”

           “Maybe she’s another singer? You think he’s trying to promote her?”

           “Promote her? That’s so cute…”

           He’d gotten used to people talking about him while he was in earshot, but not quite like this. He’d had starlets hanging off his arm before, dated some of them, even. The gossip was just to sell magazines; it hadn’t ever bothered him. But it was strange, being the only one who knew full well who was actually standing next to him. It was really strange.

           He turned to tell Paul that, but Paul spoke before he could.

           “God, I had no idea.”

           “No idea about what?”

           “About how much it has to suck dating any of us.” Paul let go of Gene’s waist, finally, going for his hand instead. His fingers curved around Gene’s with an odd abruptness, as if Paul was afraid Gene would pull his hand away if he lingered too long.  “Never mind marrying. Lydia deserves a fucking medal. Jeanette, too.”

           “You don’t get very public with dating.”

           “Yeah, but… anything out and about. Banquets. Gala shit where you’ve gotta bring somebody. We end up shaking hands and taking photos and talking about business, and they’re… what’re the girls doing? Nothing. They have to just sit through it.”

           Gene was distracted out of an immediate answer. Distracted by something even less comfortable than Paul’s legs in the fishnets or the tightness of his cotton tee. Distracted by the hand in his. Paul’s hand wasn’t really that soft or terribly small, but it fit well enough in his. How long had it been since he’d genuinely held hands with a girl? High school, or maybe sophomore year of college. By the time Wicked Lester rolled around, he’d long since stopped being that sentimental. And by the time KISS started, it was all carnal. It hadn’t felt empty, either; he hadn’t felt like he was really missing anything by jumping straight to the best part—

He could have sworn Paul gave his palm a brief squeeze, lifting him back into reality. Paul definitely was throwing him a raised eyebrow, corner of his mouth lifting up quizzically.

“Gene?”

“Oh. Are you having that bad a time?”

           “Not when I think about how they’ve missed out on half the autographs.” Paul laughed dryly. “Come on. You’ve put me through enough tonight. You owe me.”

           “What do I owe you?”

           Paul started to smile.

           “A drink.”

           “Paul, that’s a terrible idea.”

           “I’ve got to look like I’m at the bar for a reason, right?” Paul shrugged. “C’mon. I only want one.”

           They settled in front of the bar, Paul gingerly leaning up with his elbows against the counter, looking for the bartender. Gene wished he’d thought to take notes during the visit to the psychic. What had she said again? Brown hair, freckles—no, that was the girl—what did the girl’s brother look like? He frowned, trying to remember. Paul nudged him.

           “Would you hang back some? I wanna do this myself. I think it’ll turn out better if he doesn’t think I’m with you.”

           “This whole club knows you’re with me.”

Half of him hoped Paul would at least look embarrassed at the intimation, but he didn’t. He just shrugged.

“Exclusively. Oh, there we go. That’s got to be him, there’s the combover.” Paul pointed at one of the guys behind the counter just briefly enough for Gene to see, before clearing his throat. “Hi, there! Could I get a Tom Collins?”

           He hadn’t stopped to consider there might be more than one balding guy working there. The bartender blinked at him, but nodded, and started to mix the drink. Gene sighed and pulled out his wallet.

           “Just one.”

           “Please. There’s barely any alcohol in these.”

           “I’m serious.”

           “I’m serious, too. Let me do something for myself here, would you? Trust me.”

           Gene nearly argued him down. Paul getting drunk would be an absolute disaster. But looking at him, that frustrated tilt to the corners of his mouth, the consternation, he realized that wasn’t what Paul meant. For all that Paul had driven them everywhere, it had basically been on Gene’s insistence. He’d taken over the last couple of days. Not maliciously, but maybe that didn’t matter.

           “Here you go, sweetheart,” the bartender said, pushing the drink towards Paul. Gene shoved a bill at him in return.

           “Thanks.” Paul didn’t even taste it immediately. “Hey, doesn’t your sister come here?”

           The bartender cocked his head.

           “Who’s asking?”

           “Paul Stanley’s asking.”

           The bartender started to laugh. Something about the way his eyes crinkled up in amusement made Gene think of aluminum foil. Just the thinness of the skin, he supposed.

           “No kidding? Carol really got him this time?”

           “A couple times. Is she here tonight?” Paul took a sip of the cocktail, then slid a finger around the rim of the glass, almost absently. Gene thought he was laying it on too thick. Probably extra revenge for the scene outside the club, and the mobbing afterwards. Whatever. Maybe the saddest thing about it was that it wasn’t even a new gesture out of him. Any second now and he’d be putting that finger in his mouth. “He wants to talk to her.”

           “Wants to talk to her, my ass.” He snorted. “How do you know her?”

           Paul gestured vaguely at Gene. Gene ignored them both.

           “Gotcha.” Whatever the bartender thought about rockstars and groupies and girlfriends, Gene didn’t care, and he didn’t divulge. “She stopped coming a few weeks ago. She’s been trying a bunch of clubs out.”

           “Yeah? Like where?”

           “She went to Hurrah for awhile, and the Ice Palace. I can’t keep up.”

           Paul took another swallow of his cocktail. Licked his lips. Gene was trying not to make the attention he was paying too obvious—no matter how weirdly irritating the whole deal was, he didn’t want to screw this up, make the guy antsy—but he wasn’t sure how long Paul could go without sounding desperate, either.

           “Do you have her number?”

           The bartender snorted.

           “She doesn’t stay in one place long enough for that.”

           “Then where could I—”

           “Ask Mary-Anne over there. The redhead in the jumpsuit. They run around together.”

           “Thanks.”

           “Sure thing, sweetheart.” He winked. “You got a name?”

           “Uh—”

           “Julia, c’mon,” Gene rattled out, taking his hand again and tugging him away from the bar. Paul’s offended expression could have cut diamonds.

--

           “You can’t call me by my sister’s name.”

           “Well, I can’t call you Paul.”

          “You can still call me Paulie, idiot.”

          “Not when you say that’s who’s looking for her.”

           “Then just don’t call me anything.” Paul shook his head and sipped at his cocktail again. “Julia, Jesus Christ…”

           “Julia’s cute.”

          “Julia is out of her mind.”

          “It got you to react, that’s what’s important.” He never had nicknamed Paul anyway. It would’ve felt weird on his tongue. Four letters, one syllable, was still all that suited him. “You think we got the right bartender?”

           “Almost positive.” Paul exhaled. “I was looking at him pretty hard.”

          “I noticed.” Gene snorted.

          “Not like—I still can’t remember the girl too great, but there’s sorta a family resemblance. Same complexions, I think. He had freckles, too, did you notice?”

          “Not really. You told me to hang back.”

          “Sorry.” Paul’s slowly-mounting excitement wasn’t as infectious as Gene had expected it to be. His smile was wider than it had been since he’d met him on the porch. Gene could almost see the little gears just under Paul’s bangs trying to pursue a conclusion. “Trying Hurrah wouldn’t be too bad as long as you kept my sunglasses on. Nobody I know is there. But I’m asking her friend first. Gene, if we can get a number, or if we can get the chick to take us to Carol… we’ve got it. We’ve got it.”

          Gene wasn’t convinced. But Paul looked so damn hopeful that it was hard to want to ruin it for him. Finding particular girls was easier, paradoxically, at a concert, with plenty of roadies and bodyguards more than eager to help, just to snag a bit on the side. Doing all the legwork themselves, at clubs…

          “C’mon, Gene. Let’s talk to her.”

          Mary-Anne’s jumpsuit was denim and almost painfully unflattering. Paired with her cropped hair, she looked more like she belonged at a factory than at CBGB. Definitely didn’t come off as a groupie. Gene preferred his girls softer-looking than that.

          Desperation, optimism, and half a cocktail were pushing Paul into more action than he’d readily got out of him this whole time. For how long, Gene didn’t know. Paul clasped his free hand in Gene’s again and they both headed for her. She was perched by the wall, nursing a drink of her own, talking aimlessly to a couple of guys.

           “Mary-Anne, right?” Paul interrupted gracelessly, flashing a grin. “Nice to meet you.”

           Mary-Anne offered up a perturbed look in response, one that faded when her eyes went from Paul to Gene.

           “Hi.”

           “You know Carol, yeah?”

           God. Gene wasn’t any better at schmoozing than Paul was, but going right to it, with only Gene’s celebrity to even out the abruptness of the question… he just shook his head.

           “Carol Jensen? Yeah. Do you want her?” Mary-Anne wasn’t looking at Paul when she said it. She was looking at Gene. “Don’t make her ask for you.”

           “I’m not—” Paul bristled, but Gene cut him off.

           “I don’t want her. It’s Paul Stanley that does.”

           Gene’s concern that they’d gotten the wrong bartender, and the wrong friend, dissolved at the look on Mary-Anne’s face. It was amused in a way that made him uneasy.

           “Did it work?”

           “Did what work?”

           “She hates that guy’s guts.” Mary-Anne took a long gulp of her drink, and shook her head. “I dunno why. I always thought you were supposed to be the worst one, what with all the pictures. But every time a KISS song comes on…” Mary-Anne clicked her tongue. “That’s it, baby.”

           “Where’s she at now? He really wants to see her.”

           “I don’t know. Last I heard, she was getting into Studio 54 almost every night.”

           “Seriously?” Paul blurted. “How is she—”

           “You know how.”

           Paul faltered. Gene’s mind was in overdrive. Unconsciously, his hand tightened around Paul’s.

          “Do you see her often? Can you… do you have her number? Or her address?” he asked suddenly. “Give me yours, too, while you’re at it. I’ll have all our albums sent signed.”

          “Don’t bother with that.” Mary-Anne waved her hand. “Rockstars stopped owing me a long time ago. I’ll give you her address for free. You got a pen?”

          Gene had lifted one on accident from an autograph-seeker earlier. He handed it over. She squinted in the club lights to scribble it down on a napkin. She was talking as she wrote.

          “I used to really be in the scene a couple years back. Carol still thinks she’s gonna be the next Bebe or Pamela des Barres. I told her she’d be better off just being Carol.” She gave Gene the napkin. He passed it to Paul on automatic. “She can’t keep an apartment. I can’t promise you’ll get her.”

          “I’ll take the chance. You’ve been very helpful.”

          Mary-Anne shrugged.

         “Sure, sure.” Another gulp of her drink. “You be good to her, okay?”

          “To Carol?”

          “No.” She looked at Paul hard, then shook her head. “You’re too sweet for all this bullshit. Don’t let him screw that up for you.”

--

           They left the club about an hour after that. Paul wanted to head off immediately, but Gene didn’t trust Paul with that half a cocktail in him, especially now that he was down several dozen pounds and a handful of inches. Couldn’t metabolize the alcohol as well. So they listened to the band—the Ramones, or so someone said—and Gene signed more autographs for an audience that was getting drunker by the minute.

          “They’re from Queens,” Paul called out over the din at one point. God help him, he had actually started jumping around a bit once they’d gotten more than midway through their setlist. Every excitable hop sent his t-shirt gradually riding up, breasts still bouncing slightly with the movement, despite the bra. Unaware as hell. Gene had to resist the urge to tug down the hem for him.

          “Who?”

          “The band, they’re from Queens.”

          “They’ve been on the same note for three songs straight!”

          Paul started laughing.

          “That’s punk.”

          “That’s shit, Paul.”

          “They love it, though. Can’t you tell they love it?”

          Gene had to admit he could. He thought he knew what Paul meant now, about the bands at CBGB. How they had that exuberance about them that KISS was missing. That rawness. KISS used to be terrifying, in-your-face, but now… shit, they had just-add-water tattoos and foldout paper pistols included in their albums like they were Cracker Jack prizes. Looking at the Ramones ramming through another toneless song, he realized, a little morosely, that what they had would dissolve as soon as they hit it big, too. If they ever did.

          “We better go before they finish up the set. I bet they’ll wanna talk to you.” Paul cocked his head. “You don’t wanna get mobbed on the way out. There’s another exit, I’ll show you.”

           Gene checked his watch before nodding. Paul took his hand again and led him out of the club and back into the watery late evening. They got back to the parking lot without incident, and soon, Paul was headed straight to Carol’s apartment.

           “I don’t think we’ll get her tonight, honestly,” Paul said. “Studio 54 doesn’t exactly turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”

           “None of the discos do.”

           “But we’ve still got a location. Her address is everything we need, really. If we can leave her a note, or… I bet she’s got roommates; if we can tell them, we can get in contact. We won’t have to hunt around in Studio 54 tomorrow. We can just go for it.”

           “Have you thought about what you’re going to say to her?”

           Paul shrugged.

           “I’ll offer to pay her. I don’t know what else she could want.” Paul turned off on a corner. “I still don’t know what I did to her.”

           “You fucked her.”

           “Yeah, but… I wasn’t mean about it. I don’t even remember us getting together the first time. You think I got her pregnant?”

           “Maybe. The psychic and Mary-Anne both said that she hated you.”

           “But if I did, then, shit, couldn’t she have filed a paternity lawsuit? KISS would’ve just settled out of court, given her some hush money… she didn’t have to curse me over it.”

           “Maybe you gave her VD.”

           “But all you need for VD is antibiotics! How would she know it was me, anyway? Groupies’ll do anybody.”

           “I don’t know, Paul.” The area was getting crummier with every block, the apartment complexes seeming almost despondent. More of New York City looked like that than he’d allowed himself to see in years. The filth, the wretchedness was squared away like an unruly child. It made Gene feel almost ashamed, as Paul pulled into a crammed parking lot about a block from the complex. Most of the other car models there were a decade old or more. Paul’s stood out painfully against them. “Are you really sure you want to go in?”

           “I’m not scared.”

           “Let me be scared for you. Mary-Anne was.”

           “Mary-Anne thinks I’m some starry-eyed idiot that thinks you just wanna play patty-cake.” Paul snorted. “I’ll pass.”

           “I’m coming with you.”

           Paul pursed his lips but nodded.

           The rain had slowed to a drizzle. Gene had Paul by the arm instead of the hand now as they walked down the block. It wasn’t deserted, if you knew where to look. Every bit of it derelict and abandoned. Gene was worried they’d get mugged—fuck, wouldn’t that be something for the papers, exactly the unmasking he didn’t need—all the way up until they entered the building, and even then, he wasn’t reassured. The floor was covered in trash and cigarette butts. The out-of-order sign on the elevator didn’t make him any happier.

           “What floor was it again?”

           Paul glanced at the napkin.

           “Seventh.”

           “Great.”

           They took the stairs, Paul following behind Gene. Some of the handrails were nonexistent; all of them had gum stuck beneath them. Gene could smell marijuana smoke leaking from one of the apartments. Maybe more.

          “This is a real crappy place, Gene,” Paul said after two or three flights. He wasn’t even panting yet.

           “No kidding.”

           “I mean… I never thought about it. Before. I never thought about what the girls go home to.” Paul swallowed. “It sounds so fucking naïve, right, but I really—I really assumed they were all… y’know, college girls, or something, not…”

           He trailed off to nothing by the time they made it to her floor. Gene watched him check the napkin again, and then they headed to her door. 714.

           “You sure you want to try?” Gene’s throat felt odd. “It’s almost two. If she’s here, you’ll just piss her off.”

           “I should’ve waited until tomorrow,” Paul mumbled. “We’re already here. I might as well.”

           He knocked on the door. Waited a couple seconds. One more knock. There was a rustling sound, then a few thumps. Footsteps. The door opened, just a bit, the door chain on top more visible in the fluorescent light than the face of the woman answering.

           “The fuck are you doing? Jesus.”

           “Hey, I—I’m sorry, I was looking for Carol, Carol Jensen, I thought that—” Paul glanced at Gene, but the woman cut him off before Gene could add anything more.

           “Carol got out of here two weeks ago.”

           “Do you know where she might’ve—”

           Her eyes narrowed.

           “No, and I don’t care. That little bitch stiffed us out of her share of the rent. Find her yourself.”

#kiss the band #kiss fanfiction #paul stanley #gene simmons #gene simmons x paul stanley

[ohblackdiamond]

little t&a (paul/gene, nc-17) (part 9 of 29)

part 1   part 2   part 3   part 4   part 5   part 6   part 7   part 8   part 9   part 10   part 11   part 12   part 13   part 14   part 15   part 16   part 17   part 18   part 19   part 20   part 21  part 22   part 23   part 24    part 25   part 26   part 27   part 28   part 29

Four weeks before KISS gets back on tour, Gene discovers that Paul’s been cursed by a groupie. For the sake of KISS’ finances, Paul’s comfort levels, and Gene’s libido, this crisis must be resolved. Sexswap fic. In this chapter: Gene and Paul have doughnuts in the morning after, and Paul finally checks his answering machine.

            Gene woke up late the next morning to Paul’s head resting against his chest. Paul’s right hand was dipped underneath his boxers again in his sleep—Gene bit back a rueful grin at that, getting up out of bed as carefully as possible, trying not to wake him up. He got dressed—on top of the CBGB attire, he’d bought a regular pair of jeans and a collared shirt at the boutique, among a few other things—and left the room, digging around the main area of Paul’s house until he found the phone book. From there, he dialed a bakery. They didn’t deliver, of course—but they would for Gene Simmons.

            Less than half an hour later, he returned to Paul’s bedroom with a white paper box and a glass of milk.

            “Morning, Paul.”

            Paul grunted a bit, kicking off the covers.

            “Morning.”

            “Don’t get up. I got you breakfast in bed.”

           “You—” Paul started, then shook his head, reaching over the bed for his wallet on the nightstand. His shirt hiked up with the movement, exposing one bare hip and a few small moles. The boxers, as always, were barely hanging on. Might’ve held up a little better if the drawstrings weren’t untied. “Lemme pay you back. You’ve been buying all my meals lately.”

            “Don’t say that until you open the box.”

            Paul did. There were only four regular glazed doughnuts left. Sprinkles and scrapes of chocolate against the corners and bottom of the box were the only intimations of the rest.

            “Gene! Did you—were there twelve in—”

            “Were is past tense.”

            “Gene!”

            “It’ll be fine. We’ll be back on tour in a few weeks. I’ll lose all that weight jumping around onstage.”

            “If you don’t gain even more,” Paul grumbled, eying Gene up and down, shaking his head. He hadn’t gotten out of bed, as requested. He reached for the box and set it on his lap, taking a doughnut and carefully leaning over the open box as he ate it, to keep any bits of sugar off the covers. Gene climbed into bed beside him. “You… you really think we’ll be back?”

            “We’ll be back.”

            “But what about that groupie?”

            Gene reached over for a ninth doughnut. Paul swatted his hand away irritably.

            “Easy. We’ll call up Studio 54 beforehand. Have the owner tell all the doormen to be on the lookout for her, give them her name and description. We tell them to get her straight to the VIP lounge as soon as they see her, because Paul Stanley wants her.”

            “That makes me sound like a creep.” Paul dragged a finger down the inside edge of the box, gathering up the chocolate on his finger. He licked it off absentmindedly. “And then the doorman tries to take her directly to me, only he can’t find me because he’s not looking for—"

            “Okay, how about this, we say you and I want her, but you’re too shy, so if they’ll just take her to me instead, that’ll be perfect.”

            “Too shy, my ass,” Paul snorted. “Gene, you’re the one that won’t do threesomes.”

            “You all act like it’s a badge of shame.”

            “It kind of is.” Paul took the last bite of his doughnut, and reached for another. “You take six or seven up to your room and you only make it with one of them at a time.”

            “Who told you that?”

            “Peter.”

            “How would he know?”

            Paul shrugged.

            “He said you invited him up once. He thought you were trying to, y’know, offer up an orgy, and—”

            Gene could feel his face start to flush.

            “He’s making shit up. I was just trying to hide him from Lydia. He grabbed a girl and spent the whole time in the bathroom’s Jacuzzi.”

            “Uh-huh.” Paul’s eyes were gleaming a little. “Why don’t you, though?”

            “Why don’t I what?”

            “Have orgies. Or threesomes. Whatever.”

            “It’s too impersonal.”

            “Too impersonal? I thought you were just too square.”

            “I’m not square, it’s just a preference,” Gene protested, but Paul didn’t seem like he’d let it go, not unless he turned it on him. “Well, why do you do it?”

            “I don’t. I’ve never done an orgy.”

            “Really?” Gene tilted his head. That jarred feeling was back, the same one he’d gotten when they’d been in the car and Paul had casually thrown out Warhol’s name. The same one he’d gotten when Paul had tried to come on to that bartender. There was just… just such a disturbing disconnect between the sight and sound of the chick sitting next to him on the bed, and the knowledge of who she actually was. A girl that didn’t act or talk much like a girl at all, one on one—well, why the hell should he? Paul’d said it last night; he wasn’t actually a chick. Not in any way but physical. It was like sticking a Mr. Goodbar in a Hershey’s wrapper, except… no, no, that… that wasn’t quite it, either.

            Gene wasn’t really getting rattled. Not over Paul. Not even if he had gotten Paul off the night before. Actually felt him clench up against his hand, felt his whole body just tighten up those seconds before release. Paul’s legs writhing and shifting against the mattress with every movement of his hand, those sharp, high sounds and rambling curses as he got closer and closer—someone, maybe Sweet Connie, maybe Peter, had told him one that Paul screamed through sex like he thought it was a private concert, and he’d never quite believed it, not until he’d heard him.

            Last night shouldn’t have been as good as it was. He hadn’t seen a damn thing in the dark. He hadn’t even gotten off. It ought to have felt like a wasted night, or at the very least, like he’d only done Paul a favor. But—it didn’t. It didn’t feel like that at all. Paul had seemed to fit against him, soft and warm. There was something vulnerable to him, something that had been there as long as Gene had known him and probably longer. Something he’d never been close enough to touch before.

            He'd touched plenty last night, he thought dryly. He didn’t need to kid himself into feeling like he needed more. Paul was still looking at him, dark moppetish eyes fixed on his face. What had Paul even been talking about? Orgies. He’d been sitting on the bed, eating doughnuts, and talking about fucking orgies.

            “I thought you’d like having a bigger audience.”

            “God, no. Orgies are too much pressure, unless you’re high off your ass.” Paul pushed back his hair with his free hand. He was making steadier progress on the doughnuts than Gene had really expected out of him. The second was more than halfway gone already. “But threesomes… threesomes are nice.”

            Gene rolled his eyes. Paul didn’t seem to notice, poking another bite of the doughnut into his mouth, chewing and swallowing before he continued. There were bits of icing sugar smeared on his face.

            “Back when me and Peter’d share a room, early on… we’d be lucky to bring one girl back after the show. If we had a threesome, we wouldn’t fight over her.” Paul laughed. “And she’d think she was getting the real rockstar experience. It sounds stupid, but it worked. I kind of think that…”

            “What?”

            “It gets you to let your guard down, I dunno. Or it used to. You never let me talk about it before.”

            “You didn’t have tits before.”

            “Is that it?”

            Instead of answering, Gene tried again for another doughnut. Paul batted his hand back in response, but this time, Gene touched his wrist. Paul didn’t pull his hand away, just looked at him, almost expectantly.

            “Gene?”

            “You’ve got icing on your face.”

            “Oh.” Paul wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. “Did I get it?”

            “No.”

            “Now?”

            Gene shook his head and leaned in, just to see what he’d do. Paul, less oblivious than Gene had hoped, just stuck the remainder of the doughnut in Gene’s open mouth.

--

            Paul spent some time later that morning playing his answering machine messages. He’d exhausted the tape over the last week of not picking up the phone, apparently. He didn’t ask Gene to leave when he played the messages, which surprised him, just let the tape keep running while Gene finished off the milk. The box of doughnuts ended up on top of the dresser as Paul made up the bed. Gene watched him do it, leaning up against the wall.

            His own messages. Bill’s. Sean’s. A couple from Peter, one from Ace, a couple from various promoters. One from Paul’s therapist. Paul didn’t really react with anything but resignation to the whole slew, not until a little girl’s voice piped in from the machine.

            “Hi, Paul! This is Ericka!”

            Paul’s head jerked up, and he stopped making up the bed, hand frozen on the sheet. The message continued.

            “I got the souvenirs you sent! And the letter! Honey says you’re supposed to come visit before you go on tour!”

            “Honey?” Gene asked, but Paul didn’t respond. He was staring at the answering machine.

            “I wish you could visit more. I tell everybody at school you’re my brother, but they always say I’m lying. We should take pictures! Could you take pictures with me and the makeup? Then… then I’d have proof!” A pause. “I have to eat dinner now. I love you! Call me back!”

            Paul stopped the machine after the click of the receiver.

            “Honey’s my dad,” he said finally. “It’s what my mom calls him, so I guess it stuck.”

            “Ericka thinks you’re her brother?”

            “Yeah. She doesn’t know about Julia.” Paul’s tongue was peeking out from beneath his pursed lips. His jaw was tensed and tight. “Some of the assholes doing our publicity wanna let that story out. Use a seven-year-old kid to make me out to be some big hero of an uncle. All I do is pay her private school tuition and visit three times a year.”

            “Paul—”

            “I don’t want that for her. I don’t want her finding out like that.” He straightened the sheet and started on the comforter on top of it next, pulling it back into place. “Julia just… well, you remember. She dumped Ericka on my parents like… like she didn’t give a fuck.”

            Gene did remember, vaguely. He remembered Paul rambling about the baby, rambling about how his dad was on the warpath with him, threatening to throw him out of the house if he dared knock a girl up. He remembered telling Paul not to get worked up over it. Paul had said something acrid (“please, your mom wouldn’t kick you out if you assassinated Nixon”) and that had been the end of it.

            He hadn’t really thought about Paul’s family over the last three days. He’d thought about KISS and, of course, he’d thought about Paul, but he hadn’t considered much past that. A little shame was tugging in from somewhere in his gut. Paul would lose out on a lot more than his money if he stayed like this. He’d lose out on his relationship with his niece.

            “You care about her. Your parents care about her. That’s what matters.” Gene paused. “She’s wanted. She knows that.”

            “Yeah.” Paul looked away. “I’ll write her a letter.”

            “Don’t do that.”

            “Gene, I’m not gonna go quiet on her. That poor kid’s been waiting for months just to—”

            “You won’t have to go quiet on her.” Gene moved from his spot against the wall, reaching over and retrieving a pillow from the floor. Guilt was propelling him to do things he’d never bothered with in his life. Up to and including helping make up the bed. “Tonight’s the night we get you back to normal.”

            “That’s what we were hoping yesterday.”

            “This time yesterday, we only had a description. Right now we’ve got her name and the nightclub.”

            “Gene, there’s—there’s just no guarantee—I… I’ve gotta be realistic here.” Paul picked at his t-shirt. “Maybe we get her today, or tomorrow, or next week. Maybe we don’t. But I can’t keep setting myself up every day like… like some kid waiting on a package. It’s too much disappointment.”

            A thought occurred to Gene, out of nowhere. It was so stupid, so appallingly obvious, that he almost didn’t want to give it voice. He put the pillow on the bed, then reached over, tugging Paul’s sleeve. Paul turned around to face him, slowly.

            “Paul, listen. Why do you think Carol’s started to go to Studio 54?”

            “Because she’s a groupie. Because that’s where the biggest names are.”

            Gene stuck a finger against Paul’s mouth on weird impulse. His lips were dry and slightly chapped. Paul looked a little startled, but he didn't flush or back off.

            “Wrong. She’s there because she thinks you’ll be there.”

            Paul flicked Gene’s finger away.

            “That’s a gamble.”

            “It’s a damn good gamble. What do you bet she doesn’t even know if what she did worked? You’ve got to think—what does she know about you, really?”

            “She knows I had a seven-inch—”

            “She knows you like nightclubs and discotheques. Those are the only places outside of a concert she’d ever see you.”

            “Mary-Anne asked if it worked.” Paul said it slowly. Realization was dawning on his face, immediate as an onstage spotlight. “Remember? She knew Carol had done something to me. I don’t think she knew what, but—"

            “Exactly.”

            “Carol wants to see me.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Not half as much as I wanna see her.” Paul grabbed the phone, handing it to Gene, then scrambled around in the nightstand.

            “What are you looking for?”

            “My address book.”

            “Who am I calling here?”

            “Steve Rubell. The guy that owns Studio 54.” Paul was yanking everything from spare film canisters to pocket dictionaries to a couple tubes of K-Y jelly out of the nightstand in a bid for his address book. “Tell him I don’t care if she’s on Neil Diamond’s arm when she comes in. Tell him—just like you said earlier. Tell him you and me both want her in the VIP lounge tonight.”

#kiss the band #kiss fanfiction #paul stanley #gene simmons #gene simmons x paul stanley

[paul-tudor-owen]

The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen - New York book launch

Lyndsey Rodrigues interviews Paul Tudor Owen at the Clover Club

On 12 August 2019, I launched my novel The Weighing of the Heart in the US with a party at the Clover Club in Brooklyn. It was fantastic to see so many old friends from my time in New York. 

TV host and writer Lyndsey Rodrigues interviewed me. You can watch a video of the launch below, and I’ve also posted a rough transcript.

Full details on the book from Obliterati Press here - or buy a copy from:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Foyles 

Waterstones 

The Weighing of the Heart is set in New York - but the timeframe is before you moved here in 2015. How did you go about researching a New York that ‘pre-dates’ you, so to speak? The book starts in 2011, right? What made you decide to set the book in that timeframe?

So for those who don't know, The Weighing of the Heart is about a young British guy living in New York called Nick Braeburn, who moves in with a couple of rich older ladies as a lodger in their opulent apartment on the Upper East Side. He gets together with their other tenant, Lydia, who lives next door, and the two of them steal a priceless work of art from the study wall.

The work of art that Nick and Lydia take is an Ancient Egyptian scene, and as the stress of the theft starts to work on them, the imagery of Ancient Egypt, the imagery in the painting, starts to come to life around them, and it’s intended to be unclear whether this is something that is really happening or whether it’s all in Nick’s head.

And as most of you know my wife Eleanor and I have just come back from living in New York, where I was working for the Guardian newspaper.

But actually I started this book a long time before we moved here.

I’d had this longtime fantasy about living in New York, and in some ways the book was a way of living out that fantasy in fiction. I’d loved New York since I was a teenager reading The Great Gatsby and watching Mean Streets, and I’d first visited when I was 20 and studying at the University of Pittsburgh.

It just so happened that towards the end of writing the book I got the chance to move over here and life imitated art.

Suddenly I was walking the same streets my characters walked and especially in the first few weeks I did sometimes wonder if this was really happening. I don’t know if anyone remembers the 90s British sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf, but there’s one episode where the main character, Lister, gets hooked on this computer game called Better Than Life, it’s like a fully immersive VR game, almost like The Matrix, and in the game he thinks he is living in Bedford Falls, the town from It’s a Wonderful Life, and he is loving it, he doesn’t want to leave – it’s better than life.

And sometimes when I first got here I got a bit worried that I was in Better Than Life, that I’d wake up and I’d be still a teenager in Manchester reading The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby, fantasising about living in New York.

In terms of depicting the city before I got here, I visited New York many times after first coming here in 2000, but there were definitely things that I got wrong.

I think generally before I moved here to me New York was Manhattan. And the earlier drafts of the book don't really mention the other boroughs at all.

And one thing I realised straight away when I moved here was that the cultural centre of gravity had quite a while ago moved to Brooklyn.

So the main location in the book is on the Upper East Side, and I didn’t change that. I thought that was still right for an apartment owned by a couple of wealthy sisters.

But a lot of the other Manhattan locations – like people’s apartments, artists’ studios, art galleries – in a lot of cases I just realised that the characters in the book wouldn’t be able to afford those places, so I moved them further afield, often across the river to Brooklyn.

Another example was the Peacocks’ second home. In the book the Peacocks, the elderly ladies Nick moves in with, have another home on Long Island that they live in most of the week. For ages I had it that this place was in Montauk, but eventually we actually went to visit Montauk, and it just didn’t seem suitable… As we were driving in, I had this old guide book that was about 10 or 15 years old, and Eleanor was reading it as we drove in, and it said something like: ‘Montauk is a quiet, deserted spot that receives few visitors,’ and we were just driving past all these 40-storey hotels and golf resorts, and it just didn’t feel right at all. On top of all the tourism, it was just too weatherbeaten and remote for the Peacocks.

And then some friends of ours bought a place in Water Mill and I looked the town up and it just seemed like a great fit for the Peacocks, great location, perfect distance from Manhattan, so I moved them from Montauk to Water Mill, and they seemed much happier there immediately.

One of the first lines of the book is: ‘Sooner or later, everybody comes to New York...’ How important are the themes of reinvention and redemption to the book? Did reinvention play a part for you in your decision to move to NYC?

I like that first line of Nick’s narration because at first glance it sounds like he’s saying something reasonable and unremarkable but actually it sort of establishes his solipsism and self-obsession early on. Nick is obsessed with reinventing himself and using New York as a vehicle for that and he assumes everybody else feels the same way.

I’ve moved to the US twice – the first time was when I was 20 and I came over to study for a year at the University of Pittsburgh. Moving over then, at that age, I definitely felt like this was a place where I could reinvent myself. That was a big part of the attraction. And I met people who wanted to be writers and actors and musicians and I definitely felt that instead of those things seeming somewhat out of reach, as they had back home in the UK, these were actually real and achievable goals here, and I found that really inspiring. It had a big impact on me. And a lot of those people did go on to achieve those goals.

And when I moved back to the US in 2015 I definitely felt excited again about this prospect of reinventing myself. But I think there’s a real difference doing that at age 35 to doing it at age 20. At age 20 you’re still something of a blank slate. At 35, to a certain extent you’ve reached a point where you’re more confident about who you want to be and how you want other people to see you. And over a process of years you’ve reached a point where you know how to project that – to a certain extent anyway. And I think something I underestimated was that it’s quite a tough job to start from scratch with all new people in a new country and start to try to create that impression again.

With Nick, in the book, this is an example of me taking one of my own characteristics and really taking it to an extreme with Nick. Nick has a much more extreme attitude towards reinvention than me. He’s taken it to an unhealthy degree. He hasn’t just left England – he’s completely abandoned it and never goes back. He says at one point it’s hard to imagine England even still exists. He never speaks to his parents. And when he gets the chance to live in this opulent apartment on the Upper East Side and gets together with Lydia, he very quickly abandons his old life in Greenpoint, and the friends that he mentions in the first couple of chapters gradually drop out of the story. He takes it to a real extreme.

Let's talk about the Ancient Egyptian theme that runs through the book and particularly the actual ceremony of the weighing of the heart – what drew you to this as the perfect anchoring point of the book?

So, yeah, the other big theme of the book, as well as New York, is Ancient Egypt. The work of art that Nick and Lydia steal is an Ancient Egyptian scene, and this imagery comes to life around them.

But originally the artwork wasn’t an Ancient Egyptian scene at all; it was a 1960s pop art work. But not long after I had started the book I went to a fascinating exhibition at the British Museum called The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, which told the story of what the Ancient Egyptians believed happened to you when you die.

As I learnt from the exhibition, the Ancient Egyptians believed in a ceremony called ‘the weighing of the heart’, something in some ways similar to the Christian idea of St Peter standing at the gates of Heaven, deciding whether or not you have lived a worthy enough life to come in.

In the Ancient Egyptian version, Anubis, the god of embalming, presides over a set of weighing scales, with the heart of the dead person on one side and a feather on the other.

If the heart is in balance with the feather, you get to go to Heaven, which they called the Field of Reeds.

But if your heart is heavier than the feather, you get eaten by an appalling monster called the Devourer, who has the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion, and the back legs of a hippopotamus – three of the most dangerous creatures that Ancient Egyptians could encounter.

To the Ancient Egyptians, the heart, rather than the brain, was the home of a person’s mind and conscience and memory, which was why it was the heart they were weighing.

The Ancient Egyptian ceremony of the weighing of the heart

And, intriguingly, one thing they were afraid of was that the heart would actually try to rat you out during this ceremony – sometimes the heart would speak up and reveal your worst sins to Anubis at this crucial moment. You could prevent this from happening by keeping hold of a little ‘heart scarab’.

And I suddenly realised that the painting Nick and Lydia should steal should be an image of this ceremony, the weighing of the heart. It was so fitting, because the book is essentially about guilt and innocence; it’s about you weighing up as a reader how much you trust Nick as a narrator, and it’s about Nick himself and the people around him weighing up how much they trust him, what they think of him, what they know about him and his character. And without spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t read it, I hope that I found a way to knit all that imagery into the book effectively, especially towards the end.

Once I’d settled on this, there was another strange example of life imitating art.

At one point in The Weighing of the Heart Nick recalls a school trip to the British Museum, and it is suggested he might have stolen one of these heart scarabs that could protect you during the ceremony. I had written this scene but I wanted to get the details right, so I looked through the British Museum’s collection of scarabs on their website and identified the one that best fit the bill, and then I went down to the museum to take a look at it in person.

But when I got there and found the case where this scarab was supposed to be, the space for this scarab was empty. Instead of the object itself there was just a note on the wall that said: ‘Heart scarab (lost).’ It was gone.

Paul Tudor Owen reading from his novel The Weighing of the Heart

There is a reference in the book about 9/11 and that being what Nick can pinpoint as transition from a Brit to a New Yorker – what was that moment for you?

I think one of the things London and New York have in common is that you can become a Londoner and you can become a New Yorker. I’m from Manchester – I don’t think you can really become a Mancunian. My parents have lived there for over 40 years but neither of them were born there and I don’t think they would say they were Mancunians.

But I think London and New York, because they are these melting-pot cities that people come to from all over the world, and all over the country, I feel like you can become a Londoner and you can become a New Yorker.

When I moved to London in the early 2000s I immediately felt very much at home there and excited by it for some of the same reasons I love New York – this mix of ambitious, exciting creative people, the feeling that you are right at the heart of things. And I felt like I quickly became a Londoner as well as a Mancunian. I was both.

And I thought when we moved to New York that might happen here – that I might start to become a New Yorker. But it didn’t really happen. And I was thinking about that and about my obsession with New York and wanting to write about it and depict it. And maybe what I want from New York is really to be an observer of it, rather than to truly become part of it.  

I want to touch on a particular paragraph from the book that really spoke to me. Nick says: ‘If I carried on reaching out to this city, if I carried on giving so much, eventually it would give something back. But it never did.’ How much of your own feelings about NYC are reflected in these words?

I think I wrote that line before moving here, but it does ring true. I had an amazing few years here personally and professionally but I definitely felt like I didn’t break America, you know. You can count the number of people who do on one hand – it’s like the Beatles, One Direction and James Corden. Ed Sheeran.

I think moving to New York and living and working in New York for three years – from a British perspective that’s a very interesting thing to do. But from a New York perspective, it’s like: so what, who cares, big whoop. So you came to New York – who didn’t?

One of the first things that happened when I moved here was a building actually blew up on my block – it was completely levelled. I could see the fire burning from my fire escape. It was like: “Welcome to New York.”

There’s an artwork I really like by Raymond Pettibon that shows a silhouette of the New York skyline, and underneath it Pettibon has written: “Gotham City – the city that does not care.” There’s something in that. It’s a tough city. But that’s why we like it. It’s as hard as nails.

Tell us about the process of getting this book published. How many places did you pitch it to before Obliterati picked it up?

I had been writing fiction and trying to get published since my early 20s, when I managed to get an agent and finished a draft of a novel. He was very encouraging and sent it out to publishers, but none of them took it up.  

So I kept on writing and working on ideas, and eventually around 2011 I started what was going to eventually become The Weighing of the Heart.

I think once I’d written the first couple of chapters I quickly felt quite confident that what I was writing now was much better than anything that I’d written before. I was particularly pleased with the set-up, which I thought was quite gripping immediately.

So I went back to my agent with what I’d written, but by this time, because of the unenthusiastic previous responses, he had more or less lost interest.

So I was faced with a choice. You’re usually told as an author – especially when you’re starting out – that you will never get anywhere without an agent, and that if you have managed to get one you should do everything you can to keep them.

I’m sure there is a lot of truth in that. But I felt that if I stayed with this agent, that was not going to result in this book getting published.

So I amicably cut ties with him and set about trying to find someone new. And luckily that turned out to be a much easier process than it had been in my early 20s. In those days agents had all expected manuscripts to be delivered by post, and I remember every weekend printing out page after page of my chapters, stapling these bundles together, taking them to the post office... It was so time-consuming.

But by the time I came to find a new agent, email had vastly simplified the whole system. I finished work one day and went to a secluded spot in the office, and started working my way from A to Z through The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, which lists all the agents in the UK, sending out my first two chapters to as many agents as I could. I think that first night I got about half way through the alphabet, to about M, and by the next morning, or the morning after that, I was already getting some interest, which was really heartening.

And I eventually started working with a brilliant agent called Maggie Hanbury, who I’m still working with now, and I finished a workable draft of The Weighing of the Heart and we started sending it out.

But at that point I had a stroke of bad luck. Another book about art theft in New York – The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – had just come out, and it was a massive hit. It was everywhere. Again and again I heard from publishers: “We really like your book, but it’s just too similar to The Goldfinch.”

And shortly after that I moved to New York and started a new job and life had become extremely busy and complicated, and I don’t think I did any work on the novel or on trying to get it published for the next year or so.

When things started to settle down a bit, I went back to my agent, but she said she didn’t feel that she could send it out to anyone else because a number of publishers had turned it down already.

So again I was faced with a choice. I could just leave the manuscript in my metaphorical desk drawer and get on with something else. But I knew that it was a good book and it felt frustrating that it was sitting there, unread.

So I decided to send it out to small publishers myself. And again I went through The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook and the US equivalent, Writers’ Market, starting at A and sending out the first two chapters to as many publishers as I could.

And the response was very positive. The received wisdom in the literary world is that publishers will only talk to you if you’ve gone through an agent, and that may well be true for the big publishing houses. But many smaller presses seemed happy to consider my book without an agent being involved.

I had a really productive discussion with Obliterati Press, a small publishing house in the UK set up by two writers whose whole purpose is to get books out there that they feel enthusiastic about, which otherwise might not see the light of day. They agreed to publish it, and it was a great process working with them.

My publication date ended up roughly coinciding with our return to London from New York – and it felt very exciting to be coming back to the UK ready to achieve this ambition that I had been working towards for so long.

What is your process for overcoming the dreaded writers’ block?

I think because of my journalistic background I find that if I get stuck on a plot point or a bit of the writing I’m not sure about, I am usually able to just get on with it and get from A to B in a pretty straightforward, basic fashion, and then go back and return to it and finesse it at a later date. I think that comes from working to constant deadlines and strict deadlines in my day job. I can sort of get on with it.

My usual way of working is, I usually work at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a glass of squash… This isn’t a Charles Bukowski-type situation where I’m downing shots of whiskey and then furiously tapping out whatever drunken visions come to me.

But I am very easily distracted and it’s not always great trying to work at home. I’ll go and water the plants or tidy something up or sort my books out… There’s a cliché about writers’ homes, that they are very tidy because the writer who claims that they were spending the day writing has actually been pottering about tidying everything up. I’m sure Charles Bukowski had that problem too.

When we were in New York I couldn’t really work at home because we only had a small apartment, so I needed to find somewhere else to go.

The Guardian’s office was in a WeWork co-working space, so that meant I could book rooms in any WeWork around the city and I used to do that on a Saturday or a Sunday and go and write there.  

And I would go to a different WeWork each time, which was great because I really got to explore the city and work in lots of different places, and it was brilliant to feel immersed in New York and to be seeing the sights of the city out of the window as I was working. I would try to find WeWorks that were as high up as possible with the best views. There was one office in Midtown that I really liked with a great view right down into the forest of skyscrapers. At another one in Tribeca, I came downstairs once at about 5pm and the other WeWorkers were having a rave on the ground floor, all like scooting around on hoverboards or those one-wheel motorised unicycles – you know what they’re like. Drinking beer from red plastic cups. And like a couple of guys would be asleep on the sofas, snoring. Whenever you go to a WeWork there’s always some guy asleep. He’s paying like $400 a month for his membership and he’s fast asleep.

The view from one of the WeWorks where Paul would go to write 

What are you planning to write next?

I’ve just finished the first draft of my next book but it still needs a lot of work. It’s set in New York again but it’s going to be set in the 1970s when New York was a sort of crime-plagued hellhole. And I think that that was the kind of New York that I first fell in love with through films like Taxi Driver and Mean Streets.

To me that was a time when New York felt so exciting but also so gritty and I really wanted to sort of conjure up that New York in my writing. It’s about a failing newspaper journalist in New York who starts looking into conspiracy theories about the moon landings and he starts meeting these conspiracy theorists who believe the moon landings were faked and as he gets drawn into deeper into the world he sort of finds himself against his better judgment starting to believe some of their paranoia.

#book launch #paul tudor owen #weighing of the heart #ancient egypt #new york #brooklyn #nyc #new york city #novels #books #authors