#I don’t know how he did it but Joe took what I briefly wrote and ran so well and so far with it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mercuryonparklane · 3 years

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I seriously debated keeping this one in the drafts...

Okay, I felt compelled to analyze the timeline of all of Taylor’s rumored/alleged boyfriends (barring any that she supposedly dated pre-fame) and why I believe they could have been fake/pr setups...

Disclaimer: this is all speculative and is just my opinion. No one has to agree... we don’t all have to agree because really the only people who know the truth are Taylor and those she has shared it with. I do have a very skeptical view of the entertainment industry and pr, so that is a bias I will own up to. I especially think Taylor, for a very long time, was willing to play along with the pr side of things, but eventually reached a breaking point (as any normal human under that amount of pressure and scrutiny likely would). Whether that means she has faked all of her public relationships or some of them or just aspects of them... I can’t really, truly know that. So, just keep in mind that this is one little, insignificant person’s view of Taylor’s public relationships and that I do not personally know any of the people involved...

Don’t take this too seriously, peeps... I’ll even tag it as crack theory...

Joe J.: June/July-September/October 2008

If nothing else this feels like a typical pr setup of two young stars. He had Camp Rock, a Jonas Bros’ album and a tour and concert film to promote. Camp Rock came out on 6/20/2008. The Jonas Bros’ third album, A Little Bit Longer, was released on 8/12/2008. In August, Taylor joined the band on stage during the filming for a concert movie that would be released in February 2009.

Taylor had an album that was released just weeks after their alleged breakup. An album which contained a few songs that would be attributed to Joe J. due to the publicity surrounding their relationship. Hmm... what a great way to drum up interest in an album that includes quite a few heartbreak songs. Not saying I know that is the case, but they both had a lot to promote between June and November 2008.

Lucas T.: March-April/May 2009

He was in the Hannah Montana movie, which was released 4/10/2009. Taylor had a cameo in that movie and also wrote a song for the soundtrack. Lucas also played Taylor’s love interest in the mv for YBWM, which premiered 5/2/2009 on CMT. He was in one of her Myspace vlogs in April 2009. IMO, this was a setup to promote the Hannah Montana movie and the YBWM mv, but it didn’t really take off. Lucas later said they dated briefly, but he realized that he just saw her as a friend...

Taylor L.: August-December 2009

They played a couple in Valentine’s Day. In September, just days after the VMAs where KW interrupted Taylor on stage as Taylor L. stood a few feet away, Taylor went to an Owl City concert at the Bowery Ballroom where she met the man who would supposedly inspire “Enchanted”. Umm... “please don’t be in love with someone else”... even though I am currently dating Taylor L. and he is my forever crush, but like, I am totally crushing on you actually. I have no clue if any Swifties have ever picked up on that discrepancy.

Oh, and Taylor L. also “dated” Selena in early 2009 and I doubt Taylor would go there, even if they ended on good terms. I mean, it’s possible, but idk it seems unlikely to me.

John M.: December 2009-February 2010

I think Taylor admired him as a musician (this seems to have been mutual with John praising her talent multiple times) and she may have seen him as a mentor at first. I do not believe that anything happened between them beyond that. I think he was so thrown off by “Dear John” because of that. He was already tweeting in the spring of 2009, hinting at wanting to collaborate with Taylor. The album their duet was on came out in November 2009, right before they started “dating”. Although it wasn’t released as a single until June 2010.

Besides, Liz (friend or otherwise) has remained a fan of John and even went to his concert a few years back. So, either she didn’t care that he screwed one of her supposed good friends over or it didn’t go down how people were led to believe it did.

Jake G.: October 2010-December/January 2011

Unless this relationship started much earlier than everyone has been led to believe, it is very unlikely that ATW is about him. It certainly seems to have been written prior to the maple latte/scarf/sister’s house articles that were abundant after that pap walk. Either Taylor used him as a scapegoat for a song that wasn’t about him or he was a willing participant in a pr scheme to make sure people thought the song was about him.

He couldn’t have been setup with his costar, Anne H., because she was already in a long term, committed relationship. At the time Taylor was still good pr since she was still known as a kind of girl next door, all American type with genuine talent.

I’m not saying I know for a fact it was fake. I’m saying there are plenty of reasons why I think it was. Everyone has different perspectives... mine is that this was purely a pr setup.

Will A.: sometime in 2010 and/or mid or fall 2011-January 2012 or May (?) 2012

They were likely just friends, but people did think they were dating back then. The songs that people think he wrote about Taylor (”White Dress” and “Kiss Me Slowly”) were recorded in 2010. So, if she started dating him in September 2011, which people think because the dress she wore to his May 2012 birthday party was the one she is wearing on the “Begin Again” cover art, then those songs aren’t about her. About the party dress... Sarah B., who took the picture, was also friends with the Parchute guys, so maybe the photoshoot that the picture on that cover art came from happened earlier that day.

He was friends with Liz’s ex Jason and one of his best friends is still to this day very close friends with Liz, so that’s probably how he met Taylor. I think Taylor hung out with that crew a bit back then. AND those times Will and Taylor were seen hanging out in late fall/early winter 2011, Jason and/or the other friend were there. Yes, I am saying that Taylor was hanging out with Jason in November/December 2011, just a few months after he and Liz supposedly broke up. She was also still hanging out with Liz a lot at that time and after, though, so I think it was all good.

Conor K.: July 2012-September/October 2012

This was Taylor’s worst pr. If it was a real relationship... it is borderline predatory. If it is fake... still a big yikes... I don’t have much to say about this one. I think it was fake and an attempt at making him the muse for “Starlight” (how cute, this song she wrote about his grandparents sort of became about them), “Begin Again” (nevermind that the copyright record say the song was written in 2011), and EHC (nevermind that the song was written in May 2012). It would have been great pr, though, if he was a couple years older. Taylor should have fired Paula after this one... (because the public should have never known about it, real or fake).

Harry S.: November 2012-January 2013

Similar to all the others before (and after), there were “random” sightings, including a birthday trip to “the lakes” and blatant pr (go on and wear that fox sweater and paper airplane necklace, Taylor...). That NYE kiss, though...

Calvin: February 2015-May/June 2016

Taylor finally dropped her old publicist and brought on Tree. First step, was to erase the “boy crazy”/“man eater” label (and possibly the “professional beard” label) and become an independent woman who just wants to have fun with her gal pals. It got a bit gayer than expected (whether Kaylor was really a thing to some degree or not is irrelevant to the point). The gay rumors were actually catching on even faster and people were like “oh, that’s why she couldn’t keep a man” (sexist/homophobic as all of this is/was, ofc).

Enter Calvin... a playboy DJ who some might deem “tall and handsome as hell” (peeps, I am not really the best judge of a man’s attractiveness, so this is just how I think people see him). He seems sooo straight. I don’t know how else to say it. All of her other supposed boyfriends had gay rumors, whether or not those rumors were just people gossiping or had some basis in reality... I think he is the only one that doesn’t have them, that I know of anyway.

I know a lot of people think they were really together, but I think this was an attempt to have her in a more serious, long term relationship to counteract both the gay rumors (not necessarily as a cover for a woman because I don’t think all of the guys have been or need to have been covers for a secret relationship with a woman, it’s about appearing straight) and the “can’t keep a man” narrative that had followed her around. Even if they were in some sort of situationship (not what I think, just theorizing here), it wouldn’t have been a steady thing and they seemed to not like each other very much when all was said and done.

I still laugh that he said Taylor was the opposite of his type (and specified that he likes brunettes) in November 2014 and then he allegedly dated her for almost a year and a half, starting literally a few months after he made that comment. If that was a real relationship, he was either playing it cool when he said that or he misjudged her or Taylor was determined to date him because it was a challenge.

Either way, it seems like her team controlled the public narrative and maybe Calvin was okay with that at first, but over time it seemed like he wasn’t a big fan of that. Maybe that visit to the strip mall massage parlor was a bit of a rebellion...

At least they both got some royalties out of it...

Joe A.: September 2016-Present

Taylor’s team absolutely has control of the public narrative and he seems okay with that. He is a literal mirrorball. He is whatever Taylor supposedly says he is in her songs/whatever Swifties want him to be.

He likes to drop fun facts like how his family jumps into a freezing pond at Christmas or that he worked at a yogurt shop as a teenager. Whether they are real or not... he seems to be playing into the pr. Dropping little bits of information that will tie him to her songs... it is very “maple latte”/“paper airplane necklace”/dark jeans and Nikes... OR Taylor is just taking the few facts people know about him and using it to pin songs on him.

If he is a beard (which imo he likely is), I think he gets along with Taylor and doesn’t mind the minimal pr of it all.

I don’t think he is WB, either way...

Again this is just my view of things. This has no bearing on which women Taylor may have dated. I could do a separate post on what I think that timeline might look like.

One point I will reiterate is that I do not think that a beard would always be a cover for a secret relationship with a woman. I think it sometimes is, but it can be more of a general cover for someone who is gay. So many people think Taylor is the straightest person who has ever lived simply because of her public dating record. I mean, heteronormativity and homophobia also play a big part in that...

Edit: I completely skipped Tom lol. I just don’t buy that one either. Maybe he thought it would be good publicity or maybe he was led on to think it was more real than it was or maybe he was just having fun. Idk. All kinds of articles written about them at the time included some caveat about how they seemed fake or were maybe filming something...

#gaylor crack theory

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backtothestart02 · 3 years

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Hazy - 12/? | westallen fanfiction

A/N: Enjoy!

Commissioned by Patricia H.

...

Chapter 12 -

Joe was awake, stable, and in his own room by the time Barry and Linda returned to the hospital. He also had a couple of police in his room interrogating him when they arrived as well. Barry hated it. No matter how many times the nurse at the station told him they were just taking his statement, he didn’t like it. Anything that looked like an interrogation was one in Barry’s eyes. Especially since Eddie was also a cop and could turn things in his favor if need be.

“Hey,” Linda said, standing beside him as they waited in the hall. “It’s gonna be okay.”

She ran her hand down his arm briefly, and he knew it was supposed to be comforting, but it just irritated him. He didn’t want any more explanations. He just wanted to see Joe, to see with his own eyes that he was okay, and to get some guidance on what they should do next. Whether he’d grown up in his house or not, they still clearly had a connection. Barry needed to use that to figure out just exactly what this timeline entailed, and how he could fix things, if he could fix them at all.

His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and Linda stopped touching him. He wished he could feel bad for pushing her away, but she had to understand. Right?

The two cops emerged from Joe’s room moments later, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“You can go in now, son,” one of the two officers said.

Barry let Linda be the one who smiled politely and said her thanks. He dashed in immediately and sped-walk over to Joe, hugging him gently.

“Oh, my God, I’m so glad you’re alright.”

Joe chuckled and patted Barry’s back lightly.

“Of course I am. I can’t be taken down that easily.”

Barry sighed, kneeling beside the bed.

“It should’ve been me.”

“Bear, no. I won’t hear you talking like that. You were already in the hospital due to Eddie beating the living daylights out of you. The last thing you needed was to get shot. None of us deserved any of this. Eddie is just…out of control. A jealous maniac. Not that it came out of thin air, of course. But he could’ve tempered his feelings in a way other than kidnapping and attempted murder.”

Barry swallowed.

“Have you heard anything?” he asked gently. “About Iris?”

He shook his head sadly.

“Nothing. I was somewhere else, trying to find another way to…fix all this.”

Joe’s brows furrowed in confusion.

“Where were you at, son?”

Barry hesitated.

“STAR Labs,” he finally said.

“The museum?” Joe asked, thoroughly confused now. “Don’t they close kind of early today?”

Barry winced. “Yeah…”

“What are you not telling me?”

Barry sighed and sank back onto his haunches.

“I don’t…think you’d believe me even if I told you.”

Joe was about to pursue his questions further when he saw movement in the doorway.

“Linda? Honey, is that you?”

She popped in.

“Yeah, it’s me. I was just giving…giving you two some privacy. I know you don’t really know me. I’ve just…been here for Barry, in case he needs me. Which he often does, without realizing it.”

Joe managed to chuckle. Barry actually appeared annoyed.

“Well, I appreciate that you’ve been taken care of him, dear.”

“Of course.” She smiled, her hands folded together in front of her. “Can I…get you anything, Mr. West?”

“Joe, please. And um, a cup of water would be great. Thank you.”

“Of course.”

She turned and scurried out the door, likely headed for the nurse’s station down the hall.

Barry fixed Joe with a confused look.

“Why’d you do that?”

“I wanted to make sure we were alone for a few minutes.”

Barry tilted his head in curiosity.

“Does that girl like you?”

“What…do you mean? Like, as friends? Because we were barely acquaintances three days ago.”

“That’s…not what I meant.”

It took a few more seconds for Barry to connect the dots. When he did, his eyes bulged.

“Whoa. Like like, like…like-like as more than friends like?”

Joe waited.

Barry burst out laughing.

“No way! She likes Scott. She spent the entire gala drunk-flirting with him. She used me to try and get him jealous.”

“Maybe things have changed.”

“How?”

Barry was in disbelief. He couldn’t believe he was hearing this. Sure, Linda had been really clingy today, but she was just being a good friend. Right? That was it… Right?

“You don’t want me to…ask her, do you?”

Joe shook his head, smiling.

“Just be on the look-out for signs, son. Okay? And be careful how you respond to her, so she doesn’t get the wrong idea.”

Doubt still wrote itself straight across Barry’s forehead.

“Yeah, sure, okay.”

“Water is here!” Linda announced, coming through the doorway.

The two men looked and saw she’d brought a tray of 6 cups full of water. Barry blanched and met Joe’s amused gaze.

“Thank you, Linda,” Joe said as she set each cup on his mobile tray. “That’s very kind of you.”

“Should keep you hydrated for a while.” She fixed her gaze to Barry. “Don’t you think?”

“Well, yeah. Mhmm.”

He didn’t look at Joe, who he had a feeling was smiling smugly. Instead he got to his feet and crowded Linda off to the side.

“Linda, uh, do you think…you might want to go home? I mean, you really don’t have to stay here. I’m probably going to stay until he gets let out and then maybe go home with him.”

“Oh. Uh…but what about your pain meds? Are you feeling pain right now? Do you want to sit down?”

A smile tugged at Joe’s lips over on the bed. He couldn’t help but overhear.

“No, no, I’m good,” Barry assured her.

Linda’s shoulders slumped.

“I was kind of looking forward to taking care of you this week,” she admitted, and he swallowed.

“It could just be the adrenaline from running all over the place. You could drop off the meds at Joe’s house tomorrow. I could give you the address.”

“Oh. Right. That…that sounds good. Probably the uh…best course of action.”

Barry forced a smile.

“Great. Thanks. I appreciate everything you’ve done, Linda. And when this all blows over and Iris is back, if you need to make Scott jealous again…within reason, I’ll be right there for ya.”

“Right. Scott. I…kind of forgot about him with everything that’s been going on.”

Joe stifled a snort, but it came out as a couch, and Barry knew the man was laughing at him behind his stoic face.

“If you need anything, you’ll call me?” she asked hopefully.

His lips had thinned, but he nodded to assure her.

“I promise. Thank you. Again.”

She nodded and took a step back, looking over at Joe who seemed to have recovered from his coughing fit.

“I hope you get better soon…Joe.”

“Thank you, Linda,” Joe said. “We’ll keep you in touch about Iris…and Barry,” he added after a beat.

Barry shared a wide-eyed stare with Joe, but Linda was oblivious. She took a few steps back and then went out the doorway and out of the hospital, presumably to call a cab home.

“Well? Do you believe me now?” Joe asked.

Barry shook his head in awe.

“How did you know?”

“I’m a detective, Barry. How else do you think I picked up that you were in love with my daughter at such a young age?”

Barry wandered back over to his bedside and pulled a chair over to sit on.

“I can’t even imagine how tough it was to move in with us having that crush.”

And there it was. Barry tried not to look too relieved. At least that piece to the puzzle was the same. But what about his dad then? If he wasn’t the Flash… That meant no Zoom, and no Zoom meant he might still be alive. But no evil Wells making a confession, that might mean he was still in jail. It might also mean Joe still 100% believed he was guilty of Nora Allen’s death.

Barry licked his lips. His heart was pounding away at the thought of seeing his dad again. His real dad.

“Barry?”

He looked up into Joe’s searching eyes.

“Hmm?”

“What’s going on in that head of yours?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “I’m just…thinking about Iris and this whole, messy situation.”

“Ah. Yeah, I don’t know how to save her, Bear. Especially when…when I’m like this.”

“You’ll be out by tomorrow,” Barry said. “I’m sure of it.”

“And then?” He looked up at him hopefully.

If he was the Flash, he would tell him everything would be all right. He would speed through the city until he found Iris and Eddie and put the latter in custody. Everything would be put right then. He could even go back in time to fix this whole mess and set things right.

As soon as he knew what had been changed to begin with.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Joe said, when he saw Barry frowning without an answer.

Barry met his eyes.

“Yeah. Me too.”

…

It was just after midnight when the call came. Joe was fast asleep in his hospital bad, but Barry, strung across three armless chairs in an attempt to get some shut-eye was more than half-awake when his phone started to buzz.

Still, he had to blink more than a few times to read the name correctly that was blaring across his screen.

“Iris?” he whispered into the void.

Falling off the chairs in the process of trying to sit up, he answered the call as quickly as he could.

“Iris? Is that you? Where are you? Are you okay? How are y-?”

“It’d be nice if it was that easy, wouldn’t it?” a snarling voice cut him off.

A chill ran down Barry’s spine.

“Eddie.” Anger flooded his body. “Where is she?”

“She’s safe,” he answered. “With me. At a hotel. We’ve decided to start fresh. Give this marriage another shot.”

Barry scoffed. “Somehow I find that hard to believe when you shot her dad.”

There was a pause.

“He shouldn’t have stepped in front of-”

“Iris?!” He was standing now. “The woman you’re now claiming wants to start fresh with you? I don’t buy it.”

Barry could practically hear Eddie grinding his teeth on the other end.

“It’s not your job to buy it,” he finally said. “It’s your job to not come looking.”

“Over my dead body.”

“I would’ve taken that,” Eddie spat back. “But you’re too damn resistant.”

Barry’s eyes narrowed.

“You want to know Iris is alright?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll send you a video of her an hour ago, but then I’m throwing out this phone, so don’t bother trying to track it. You’ll never find us. You’ll never have her. She’s mine.”

“E-”

Eddie cut the call before Barry could finish saying his name. Seconds later the video came through. Barry watched it immediately.

It showed Iris, looking a little worse for wear but she wasn’t bound or crying. When he squinted though, he could make out what looked to be duct tape marks across her face over her mouth. It had clearly been ripped off right before filming the video.

“Go,” Eddie said in the background of the video.

“Hi, Barry,” she said, managing the tiniest of hopeful smile. “Dad…I hope.” She sniffled.

“Don’t cry,” Eddie snarled.

She looked down to regain her image, then started up again.

“I hope both of you are fine. I want you to know I’m okay. I’m fine. And…”

“Say it,” Eddie muttered under his breath. “Say it,” he said again, louder when she didn’t say anything.

“I’m fine,” she said through a strangled breath. She swallowed hard. “Don’t come looking for me. I’m happy with Eddie. We’re going to start over somewhere else. I’m…happy.”

The video froze on her tear-streaked face.

End of video.

Barry scoffed as his hand clenched hard around the phone.

She was not happy.

She was terrified for her life.

And he had to act quickly before they left wherever they were at. Iris’ life depended on it.

#westallen #fanfiction #westallen fanfiction #backtothestart02 fanfiction #hazy #chapter 12 #fic commission #for patricia h

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1962dude420-blog · 3 years

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Today we remember the passing of Joey Ramone who Died: April 15, 2001 in Manhattan, New York

Jeffrey Ross Hyman, known professionally as Joey Ramone, was an American musician, singer, composer, and lead vocalist of the punk rock band the Ramones. Joey Ramone's image, voice, and tenure as frontman of the Ramones made him a countercultural icon.

Jeffrey Ross Hyman was born on May 19, 1951, in Queens, New York City, New York to a Jewish family. His parents were Charlotte (née Mandell) and Noel Hyman. He was born with a parasitic twin growing out of his back, which was incompletely formed and surgically removed. The family resided in Forest Hills, Queens, where Hyman and his future Ramones bandmates attended Forest Hills High School. He grew up with his brother Mickey Leigh. Though happy, Hyman was something of an outcast, diagnosed at 18 with obsessive–compulsive disorder alongside being diagnosed with schizophrenia. His mother, Charlotte Lesher, divorced her first husband, Noel Hyman. She married a second time but was widowed by a car accident while she was on vacation.

Hyman was a fan of the Beatles, the Who, David Bowie, and the Stooges among other bands, particularly oldies and the Phil Spector-produced "girl groups". His idol was Pete Townshend of the Who, with whom he shared a birthday. Hyman took up the drums at 13, and played them throughout his teen years before picking up an acoustic guitar at age 17.

In 1974, Jeffrey Hyman co-founded the punk rock band the Ramones with friends John Cummings and Douglas Colvin. Colvin was already using the pseudonym "Dee Dee Ramone" and the others also adopted stage names using "Ramone" as their surname: Cummings became Johnny Ramone and Hyman became Joey Ramone. The name "Ramone" stems from Paul McCartney: he briefly used the stage name "Paul Ramon" during 1960/1961, when the Beatles, still an unknown five-piece band called the Silver Beetles, did a tour of Scotland and all took up pseudonyms; and again on the 1969 Steve Miller album Brave New World, where he played the drums on one song using that name.

Joey initially served as the group's drummer while Dee Dee Ramone was the original vocalist. However, when Dee Dee's vocal cords proved unable to sustain the demands of consistent live performances, Ramones manager Thomas Erdelyi suggested Joey switch to vocals. Mickey Leigh: "I was shocked when the band came out. Joey was the lead singer and I couldn't believe how good he was. Because he'd been sitting in my house with my acoustic guitar, writing these songs like 'I Don't Care', fucking up my guitar, and suddenly he's this guy on stage who you can't take your eyes off of." After a series of unsuccessful auditions in search of a new drummer, Erdelyi took over on drums, assuming the name Tommy Ramone.

The Ramones were a major influence on the punk rock movement in the United States, though they achieved only minor commercial success. Their only record with enough U.S. sales to be certified gold in Joey's lifetime was the compilation album Ramones Mania. Recognition of the band's importance built over the years, and they are now regularly represented in many assessments of all-time great rock music, such as the Rolling Stone lists of the 50 Greatest Artists of All Time and 25 Greatest Live Albums of All Time, VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock, and Mojo's 100 Greatest Albums. In 2002, the Ramones were voted the second greatest rock and roll band ever in Spin, behind the Beatles.

In 1996, after a tour with the Lollapalooza music festival, the band played their final show and then disbanded.

Ramone's signature cracks, hiccups, snarls, crooning, and youthful voice made him one of punk rock's most recognizable voices. Allmusic.com wrote that "Joey Ramone's signature bleat was the voice of punk rock in America." As his vocals matured and deepened through his career, so did the Ramones' songwriting, leaving a notable difference from his initial melodic and callow style—two notable tracks serving as examples are "Somebody Put Something in My Drink" and "Mama's Boy". Dee Dee Ramone was quoted as saying "All the other singers in New York were copying David Johansen (New York Dolls), who was copying Mick Jagger... But Joey was unique, totally unique."

In 1985, Ramone joined Steven Van Zandt's music industry activist group Artists United Against Apartheid, which campaigned against the Sun City resort in South Africa. Ramone and 49 other recording artists – including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards, Lou Reed and Run DMC — collaborated on the song "Sun City", in which they pledged they would never perform at the resort.

In 1994, Ramone appeared on the Helen Love album Love and Glitter, Hot Days and Music, singing the track "Punk Boy". Helen Love returned the favor, singing on Ramone's song "Mr. Punchy".

In October 1996, Ramone headlined the "Rock the Reservation" alternative rock festival in Tuba City, Arizona. 'Joey Ramone & the Resistance' debuted Ramone's interpretation of Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World' live, as well as Ramone's choice of Ramones classics and some of his other favorite songs; The Dave Clark Five's "Any Way You Want It", The Who's "The Kids are Alright" and The Stooges' "No Fun."

Ramone co-wrote and recorded the song "Meatball Sandwich" with Youth Gone Mad. For a short time before his death, he took the role of manager and producer for the punk rock band the Independents.

His last recording as a vocalist was backup vocals on the CD One Nation Under by the Dine Navajo rock group Blackfire. He appeared on two tracks, "What Do You See" and "Lying to Myself". The 2002 CD won "Best Pop/Rock Album of the Year" at the 2002 Native American Music Awards.

Ramone produced the Ronnie Spector album She Talks to Rainbows in 1999. It was critically acclaimed but was not very commercially successful. The title track was previously on the Ramones' final studio album, ¡Adios Amigos!.

Joey Ramone died at the age of 49 following a seven-year battle with lymphoma at New York-Presbyterian Hospital on April 15, 2001, a month before he would have turned 50. He was reportedly listening to the song "In a Little While" by U2 when he died. In an interview in 2014 for Radio 538, U2 lead singer Bono confirmed that Joey Ramone's family told him that Ramone listened to the song before he died, which Andy Shernoff (The Dictators) also confirmed.

His solo album Don't Worry About Me was released posthumously in 2002, and features the single "What a Wonderful World", a cover of the Louis Armstrong standard. MTV News claimed: "With his trademark rose-colored shades, black leather jacket, shoulder-length hair, ripped jeans and alternately snarling and crooning vocals, Joey was the iconic godfather of punk."

On November 30, 2003, a block of East 2nd Street in New York City was officially renamed Joey Ramone Place. It is the block where Hyman once lived with bandmate Dee Dee Ramone and is near the former site of the music club CBGB, where the Ramones began their career. Hyman's birthday is celebrated annually by rock 'n' roll nightclubs, hosted in New York City by his brother and, until 2007, his mother, Charlotte. Joey Ramone is interred at Hillside Cemetery in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.

The Ramones were named as inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2002.

Several songs have been written in tribute to Joey Ramone. Tommy, CJ and Marky Ramone and Daniel Rey came together in 2002 to record Jed Davis' Joey Ramone tribute album, The Bowery Electric. Other tributes include "Hello Joe" by Blondie from the album The Curse of Blondie, "Drunken Angel" by Lucinda Williams, "You Can't Kill Joey Ramone" by Sloppy Seconds, Joey by Raimundos, "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" by Sleater-Kinney, "Red and White Stripes" by Moler and "Joey" by the Corin Tucker Band, "I Heard Ramona Sing" by Frank Black, Amy Rigby's "Dancin' With Joey Ramone" and "The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)" by U2.

In September 2010, the Associated Press reported that "Joey Ramone Place," a sign at the corner of Bowery and East Second Street, was New York City's most stolen sign. Later, the sign was moved to 20 ft (6.1 m) above ground level. Drummer Marky Ramone thought Joey would appreciate that his sign would be the most stolen, adding "Now you have to be an NBA player to see it."

After several years in development, Ramone's second posthumous album was released on May 22, 2012. Titled ...Ya Know?, it was preceded on Record Store Day by a 7" single re-release of "Blitzkrieg Bop"/"Havana Affair"

#april 15 #2001 #r.i.p.#joey ramone #the ramones

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i-dont-want-your-hysteria · 4 years

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Curiosity Cursed the Leppard

(This is a stupid little idea I wrote 2 years ago- one of my first Leppard fics that I actually executed. Normally I try to be as historically accurate as humanly possible, but I’m a teeny bit lazy with this one. I didn’t edit much when it came to proofreading this. I posted this on ao3 and rockfic 2 years ago once it was done, so if you recognize it, thanks for reading it so long ago!)

Words: 3,406 Characters: Phil, Steve, Rick, Sav, Joe, Peter Mensch Setting: March 1983, beginning of the Billy Squier tour Summary: The baby Pyro Leppards are sick of sitting back and doing what they’re told. To spite their dearest band manager, they need to- as Steve once put it- “break up the monotony”. Unfortunately, their curiosity comes with some minor consequences...

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March 1983, somewhere in Europe

“Look at this over here!” Phil called back into the hotel room from the balcony, “Swimming pool!”

Steve trotted out to the balcony and joined his Terror Twin at the railing. Down in the small yard of the hotel was an in-ground pool with a few lawn chairs and a diving board. It was nothing extravagant, but it was a pleasant sight no less.

“That’d be really nice, if it were a bit hotter out,” Steve leaned on the railing of the balcony. When he spoke, the fog of his breath was visible.

The Leppards were about to begin their tour as the opening act for Billy Squier. They had about a week before any of the shows actually started, though. With all this extra time and no plans, there really seemed to be no telling what they could get themselves into before they had a show. Since it was the first day of their down time, curiosity seemed inevitable.

“It’s still early in the morning, it’ll get warmer,” Phil encouraged, “Don’t know about you, but I’d take the chance!”

Steve hung his head, looking directly down from where they stood, “I think you’ve forgotten what season it is, mate.”

“It won’t make a difference if it’s winter or summer,” Rick appeared in the doorway, joining in on the conversation, “I heard the pool’s heated, anyways. They haven’t turned it on for the day yet.”

Phil’s head popped up and he cooed, “Ooh, even better; we can pop in for a hot swim after our runnin’ around today.”

“Don’t even think about it!” Peter Mensch echoed from the inside, “Heated pool or not, it’s only 34 Fahrenheit outside right now, and you boys can’t risk getting sick! Besides, you probably won’t even have time to swim after all that we’ve gotta do today.”

Sav appeared next to Peter, holding a few of his luggage bags, “Oh, it’s not that much to do; it’s mostly just the dinner with Bill!”

Peter had to object, “Maybe it mostly is the dinner with Bill, but it can still take forever. All I’m saying is, don’t take the chance; we’ve got stuff to do.”

And with that, he exited the one large hotel room the Leppards all had to share.

“All this ‘stuff’ he’s claiming we have to do is just the same old story,” Joe muttered to Sav, also carrying luggage, “He says its ‘super important’ and we’ve ‘got to be there’, but we just end up taggin along with him for the ride and he does all the work.”

“It’s like we’re his pets or something,” Rick flew past the two of them and jumped face-first onto one of the beds.

“Or his children,” Sav commented, “Either way, he thinks he needs leashes on us.”

Phil suddenly called back into the room over his shoulder, “I say we spite him.”

Steve yelled back in the same manner, even though he was answering to Phil right next to him, “Ditto.”

“But how?” Joe inquired to the men on the balcony, putting luggage on the bed right next to Rick, “You two are the experts of spite.”

Phil simply motioned his arm out towards the yard of their hotel with a formal demeanor, “Let’s go for a quick swim; it’s the perfect opportunity!"

Steve nodded in approval of Phil’s proposal, and silence fell between the band for a sudden and brief moment.

“Count me in,” Rick muttered into a pillow, which made it sound more like gibberish. He sat himself up and stared at Joe and Sav, awaiting a response to support the future actions of the rest of the band, “What about you two?”

Sav and Joe looked at each other and shrugged.

“I’m alright with it, ‘long as we do it later,” Joe expressed his agreement as he looked out to the Terror Twins on the balcony, smirking, “Can’t spite him too early in the day.”

“Yeah, I say we do it later when it’s not freezing outside,” Sav suggested, “Spitin’ him doesn’t mean we have to freeze our arses off.”

***

When leaving for their day activities about an hour later, the five band members gazed in awe at the steam coming off of the pool water. As they walked on by, a woman with long dark hair and pale skin was in the pool.

“Ooh, can’t wait for that later,” Phil cooed.

“Can’t wait for what?” Steve asked him while they both stared outside, “The pool, or the girl?”

Phil casually joked, “Ah, I’ll flip a coin.”

“Okay,” Joe whispered to the rest of the band as they fell behind Peter a little more, “After we get back, we hide out in our room and wait until he’s gone.”

Sav added onto their plan, “And hiding time is prep time. We get changed, we check to see if anyone’s around the pool, all that jazz.”

“Sounds like the most exciting thing we’re gonna do all day,” Rick commented as they strode along into their “busy” day, “Don’t know how long I’ll be able to last through all of this useless shit we’ve gotta do.”

“It’ll all be worth it,” Phil assured them, “We’ve just gotta wait... and Lord knows for how long.”

***

They ended up waiting until about 7pm that night before they got back to the hotel. It was strange, because once they did get back, Peter said that he was going to simply leave them for the night. At the time they found out, the Leppards reacted normally, talking about being cooped up with the telly for the night or getting a good drink or two in. They all knew Peter had to run back out and do other manager-type things, but they didn’t know when he was leaving.

While they were waiting for him to leave, they all hastily got changed into swim trunks and fished out towels from the bathroom and kept peeking around to see whether the man of the hour still remained close by.

“I can’t take this anymore,” Phil said at one point, “We’ve been waiting 11 bloody minutes!”

“So?” Steve walked out of the bathroom in swim trunks, “It’s just 11 minutes. We weren’t expecting him to leave right away.”

Phil put on a pair of jeans over his own trunks, threw on a shirt, and made his way to the door of their room, “Well I’m impatient, and it’d be nice to know where this little plan of ours stands at the moment. We gotta look to see if he’s gone yet.”

“Be careful out there, solider,” Joe joked, strolling into the room with a bath towel.

***

Phil slipped out of the room and into the empty hallway silently. He walked towards the end that had Peter’s room, when Peter himself suddenly turned the corner in front of him, making him jump.

“Oh- Peter!” he awkwardly greeted him, “Hello, there!”

“Long time no see,” Peter greeted him back, not taking a second to stop walking. Phil, however, needed that stolen second.

He turned around to look at Peter and tried not to sound rushed when he asked, “Hey- uh, where are you headin’ off to right now?”

“Just to the arena where next week’s first show is,” he began, “Then I’m off to another meeting with Bill’s managers, then I’ve got to meet up with Mutt for a phone call to-”

“Oof,” Phil interrupted hastily as if it were bad news to him, and kept walking along, “That’s a lot, that’s tough. Hope you get it all done, bye!”

He suddenly turned and walked in the opposite direction, waving farewell. It prompted Peter to wave back (confusedly). Once their paths had crossed for good, and Phil turned a corner, he slowly peeked back around the corner to see if his target had completely gone. Once he saw the man in question enter the lift, the guitarist made his way back to the band’s room with a smug grin on his face.

It was go time.

***

“He’s been gone longer than I thought he’d be,” Steve commented as he gazed through the peep-hole of their door after only about three minutes of Phil’s absence. The other three were close by him, awaiting any news from their foot solider.

Joe pitched in, “Maybe he had to hide?”

Rick suggested, “Maybe he got in trouble?”

Sav countered, “And what would he get in trouble for so quickly?”

“Oh, he’s coming!” Steve whispered excitedly as the four of them back away from the door, leaving room for Phil to open it. When he did, he came in quickly, shut it behind him and exchanged a pleased look with the rest of the band.

They all waited in anticipation for a quick moment before Phil announced, “Our plan is a go, lads! He’s gone!”

The other four clapped and cheered briefly before each heading in a different direction to get their towels and shoes.

“What took you so long?” Steve asked him with a laugh, “I thought you were just snoopin’ around, weren’t you?”

“Well,” Phil shrugged, walking over to a bed where his towel lay, “I had to hide for a bit to watch him leave because I accidentally ran into him, and I also asked that lovely girl we saw in the pool earlier to join us...”

The older guitarist exchanged a smirk with the rest of his band, and they all suddenly looked excited. Whenever they hung out with girls, it tended to get wild (and almost certainly meant that one of them would get lucky).

“And?” Rick anxiously inquired, speaking for the whole band.

The smirk left Phil’s face instantly, and his voice dropped to a tone of disappointment, “She said she had to go meet up with friends.”

A collective chorus of “aww”s and “dammit”s subtly filled the room, but they all headed out the door and down to the pool no less. They passed the front desk along the way when-

“Excuse me, gentlemen?” the fairly young American man at the desk called out to them as they walked on by. They stopped in their tracks and faced him, trying to cover up their bare chests with their towels. Their turning around was a good enough answer to the man's question.

“I’m sorry, but we’ve just gotten a report that the heater in the pool has stopped working. We’ll have maintenance around in the morning to fix it,” he informed them. The band all sighed and moaned in defeat. Their one rebellious act on this boring day was cancelled.

“Can’t we still go in?” Steve asked him, resulting in a slap on the arm from Sav.

“It’s freezing out, and you wanna go swimming in an unheated pool?”

Steve shrugged, trying to prove a point, “Well if it hasn’t been broken long, the pool’s probably still heated a bit, right?”

“If you all wanna go in, you’re more than welcome,” the man at the desk offered, “But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Right, thank you, sir,” Phil smiled, turning with the rest of the band towards the exit to the outdoor patio where the pool was. They didn't care about temperature at this point; they had a goal. Right about now Joe would normally be the one to turn them onto the right path, but he knew that they all had their minds set on the same path. He knew they weren’t just gonna stop.

“We’re all mad, we really are,” he mused excitedly to them, “Old man Peter’s gonna have our heads if he finds us right now.”

Rick tied his towel around his neck like a cape and laughed, “If he finds us, but we know he won’t!”

They all giggled like children as they walked outside to patio where the illuminated in ground pool resided, their breaths now visible. The freezing air of the evening enveloped them immediately, causing them to pull their towels around them tighter. After a moment, though, they all tossed their towels onto the chairs nearby, embracing the brisk temperature.

“Little chilly,” Sav stated as they kept walking towards the pool. When they got there, Steve kicked off his shoes and dipped his toes in right away.

“Little heated,” Steve said back as he felt the water with his foot.

“Little jump!” Phil threw his towel behind him and suddenly jumped into the pool, splashing the others in the process. They all gasped and started laughing at the guitarist’s perfect entry.

Rick pointed at the water where Phil was, “Okay, he’s mad!”

Phil came back up, wiped his eyes and told them, “It’s actually quite nice! Just come right in!”

“Well someone’s gotta go first!” Joe proclaimed, “And it’s not gonna be me!”

A quick pause between the remaining four ensued. It was broken when Sav suddenly yelled for a split second and fell forward into the pool. Joe, Phil, and Rick all turned and looked at Steve, who had just been standing behind Sav (and was now giggling).

“Oops,” he sarcastically snickered before jumping in after Sav and swimming as far away from the bassist as possible. Rick and Joe both broke down in laughs and wheezes, along with Phil in the pool.

Sav resurfaced with a curtain of wet hair over his eyes and called out to no one in particular, “Where the fuck is he?! Steve!”

“Over here!” Steve playfully called out from the middle of the pool, far away from where Sav currently was. Sav scooped his hair out of his face, located Steve a few yards away, and dove after him.

"Okay, okay, who's next? Me or you?" Joe said to the drummer.

"Actually," Rick proposed immediately after the inquiry, "I've got an idea for both of us."

***

“Okay, ready?” Rick asked Joe, who was standing on the side of the pool opposite himself.

“Ready,” came the response.

“One...” Rick counted.

“Two...” Joe continued.

“Three!” they both shouted as they began to run. Once they both reached the edge of the pool, they jumped simultaneously and just as clumsily as one another. For the second that they were both in the air, they managed to high five each other perfectly with a quick scream before plummeting into the slightly heated water. The three other band members that were already in the water applauded them at their success with enthusiastic claps and laughs. When Rick and Joe resurfaced, they were immensely pleased with their accomplishment, celebrating it with a proper high five. And thus, the private (but still forbidden) pool party had begun.

The next two hours housed a wide variety of spontaneous activities. These happenings ranged from cannonball competitions, to genuine conversation, and to reenactments of live shows (but played underwater, of course). The band’s wading in the water went unnoticed by the hotel staff the whole time it commenced, just as the cold temperature outside went unnoticed by the band themselves. Once the pre-provided heat had worn off into nothing but steam, the band's energy began to wind down slowly as well.

"Man," Phil remarked at one point when they were all still swimming, "Who knew that swimmin' for a bit could make your throat hurt."

"We've all been yelling too much, you know what that does to your voice," Joe told him knowingly (after all, he was the singer), “You know what happens when your energy gets up.”

“I feel like we’ve just played a show,” the drummer pulled himself up onto the edge of the pool and stretched both of him arms, feeling how sore they now were.

Sav, on the other hand, kept his shoulders underwater in order to provide some protection from the bite in the air. His hair was also acting like a scarf to the back of his neck to retain some of his body heat.

His jaw chattered when he spoke, “Is-sn’t anyone g-gonna mention how cold it is n-now?”

“He’s r-right,” Steve supported Sav, floating right next to him in the exact same manner, “It’s gotten a l-lot colder...”

“Guess it’s time we all called it a night, then,” Joe pulled himself out of the pool and quickly wrapped himself in a towel, now visibly shivering as well. The four other men followed his lead as the water on the ends of their hair slowly began to chill to a freezing temperature. In a few minutes, they were all heading back to their room, smushed together in the hopes of heating up even a little bit.

"Can't wait to get me some nice, hot tea," Rick rubbed his towel back and forth around him, "Now my throat's killin' me."

“Blimey, can you believe how cold it is in here?” Phil asked his friends once they were back inside the hotel (even though the heaters were most certainly running). They all nodded and murmured in collective agreement at the remark.

The man at the front desk had heard this interaction, and sighed as he continued to fan himself with a folder, sweating in the excessive heat of the hotel.

***

“You guys are all idiots, you know,” Peter stated bluntly to the band members the next morning.

They were all grumpily moaning in front of him on the beds and couch, far from being ready for any sort of activity. They were also all as sick as dogs; each of them running a fever, each of them huddled up under several blankets, and each of their noses acting all kinds of crazy.

“I can’t believe you guys would go swimming in an unheated pool when it’s 39 fucking degrees outside, and think that you wouldn’t get sick- especially when you know we’re at the beginning of a tour!”

“Hey now, Peter,“ Joe croaked sassily from under the covers, his beloved voice now destroyed, “We’ve still got a whole week before any shows.”

“Besides,” Phil added nasily, “Aren’t you happy we’re learning our lesson?”

“You got me there,” the manager pointed at him, “I shouldn’t be surprised; I don’t know why I am, but lucky for you dumbasses, you just got yourselves out of today’s activities.”

Soft sighs of “yes” swept over the hotel room as Peter covered his eyes with his hand in disappointment.

“No, not yes!” he couldn’t help but chuckle with a hint of anger, “You're still very sick! Now you boys have to get better, and fast! The fact that you’re sick doesn’t take away the fact that we’re on tour!”

“We’ll try to get better soon, we promise,” Sav whined before sneezing loudly, then holding his head in discomfort, "Ughh... I hope so..."

“We’re real sorry, Peter,” Steve pouted and made a fake but sleepy apology, “But we’re actually gonna need you to get some medicine for us, if it’s not too much trouble.”

The manager sighed at the innocent request and gave in, “Yeah, yeah, I can do that. Maybe it’s actually a good thing you’re all sick; now you don’t wanna run off into trouble.”

Sav mumbled to Joe next to him, “Told you he wants to put us on leashes.”

Peter spoke up, “What was that?”

“Nothing!”

“And for god’s sake, guys,” the oldest man in the room began to make his way over to the heater, “Would it kill you turn down the heat in here?”

“Yes, it would kill us!!” came five disgruntled objections, making the manager freeze in his current action and back away from the heater with both of his hands up in surrender.

“Alright, alright, I guess I’ll see you guys in a few. Is there anything else you want me to get?”

“Tea,” was all Rick needed to say.

“Gotcha,” Peter confirmed with the young drummer before quitting the Leppards’ room. A bit of quietness took place right afterwards, just to make sure that Old Man Peter didn’t come running back in to see if they were faking the band-wide illness.

“So what do you think?” Joe asked his four other friends, “Worth it?”

There was another brief silence before Phil answered, “Yeah. Definitely worth it.”

“Same here.”

“Agreed.”

“It was delightful.”

Low, evil, chuckles made their way around the room and faded away. The band members then laid in silence and stared up at the ceiling, now uncertain of what to do next in their unexpected down time.

“So...” Phil proposed to them, “First one to break their fever wins?”

Steve immediately turned his head to answer for the entire band, "You’re on.”

The end

#def leppard #def leppard fanfic #phil collen #steve clark #rick allen #peter mensch #rick savage #joe elliott #i was inspired to write this after nightswimming with a bunch of friends #I think this is the only leppard fic i've ever written that wasn't an x reader good god #original content #and no this isn't my take on how they all got the flu in belgium on the pyro tour

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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Stefanie Gray explains why, as a teenager, she was so anxious to leave her home state of Florida to go to college.

“I went to garbage schools and I’m from a garbage low-income suburb where everyone sucks Oxycontin all day,” she says. “I needed to get out.”

She got into Hunter College in New York, but both her parents had died and she had nowhere near enough to pay tuition, so she borrowed. “I just had nothing and was poor as hell, so I took out loans,” she says.

This being 2006, just a year after the infamous Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 was passed, she believed news stories about student loans being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. She believed they would be with her for life, or until they were paid off.

“My understanding was, it’s better to purchase 55 big-screen TVs on a credit card, and discharge that in a court of law, then be a student who’s getting an education,” she says.

Still, she asked for financial aid: “I was like, ‘My parents are dead, I'm a literal fucking orphan, I have no siblings. I'm just taking out this money to put my ass through school.”

Instead of a denial, she got plenty of credit, including a slice of what were called “direct-to-consumer” loans, that came with a whopping 14% interest rate. One of her loans also came from a company called MyRichUncle that, before going bankrupt in 2009, would briefly become famous for running an ad disclosing a kickback system that existed between student lenders and college financial aid offices.

Gray was not the cliché undergrad, majoring in intersectional basket-weaving with no plan to repay her loans. She took geographical mapping, with the specific aim of getting a paying job quickly. But she graduated in the middle of the post-2008 crash, when “53% of people 18 to 29 were unemployed or underemployed.”

“I couldn't even get a job scrubbing toilets at a local motel,” she recalls. “They told me straight up that I was over-educated. I was like, “Literally, I'll do your housekeeping. I don't give a shit, just let me make money and not get evicted and end up homeless.”

The lender Sallie Mae at the time had an amusingly loathsome policy of charging a repeating $150 fee every three months just for the privilege of applying for forbearance. Gray was so pissed about having to pay $50 a month just to say she was broke that she started a change.org petition that ended up gathering 170,000 signatures.

She personally delivered those to the Washington offices of Sallie Mae and ended up extracting a compromise out of the firm: they’d still charge the fee, but she could at least apply it to her balance, as opposed to just sticking it in the company’s pocket as an extra. This meager “partial” victory over a student lender was so rare, the New York Times wrote about it.

“I definitely poked the bear,” she says.

Gray still owed a ton of student debt — it had ballooned from $36,000 to $77,000, in fact — and collectors were calling her nonstop, perhaps with a little edge thanks to who she was. “They were telling me I should hit up people I know for money, which was one thing,” she recalls. “But when they started talking about giving blood, or selling plasma… I don’t know.”

Sallie Mae ultimately sued Gray four times. In doing so, they made a strange error. It might have slipped by, but for luck. “By the grace of God,” Gray said, she met a man in the lobby of a courthouse, a future state Senator named Kevin Thomas, who took a look at her case. “Huh, I’ve got some ideas,” he said, eventually pointing to a problem right at the top of her lawsuit.

Sallie Mae did not represent itself in court as Sallie Mae. The listed plaintiff was “SLM Private Credit Student Loan Trust VL Funding LLC.” As was increasingly the case with mortgages and other forms of debt, student loans by then were typically gathered, pooled, and chopped into slices called tranches, to be marketed to investors. Gray, essentially, was being sued by a tranche of student loan debt, a little like being sued by the coach section of an airline flight.

When Thomas advised her to look up the plaintiff’s name, she discovered it wasn’t registered to do business in the State of New York, which prompted the judge to rule that the entity lacked standing to sue. He fined Sallie Mae $10,000 for “nonsense” and gave Gray another rare victory over a student lender, which she ended up writing about herself this time, in The Guardian.

Corporate creditors often play probabilities and mass-sue even if they don’t always have great cases, knowing a huge percentage of borrowers either won’t show up in court (as with credit card holders) or will agree to anything to avoid judgments, the usual scenario with student borrowers.

“What usually happens in pretty much 99% of these cases is you beg and plead and say, ‘Please don't put a judgment against me, I'll do anything… because a judgment against you means you're not going to be able to buy a home, you’re not going to be able to do basically anything involving credit for the next 20 years.”

…

The passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was a classic demonstration of how America works, or doesn’t, depending on your point of view. While we focus on differences between Republicans and Democrats, it’s their uncanny habit of having just a sliver of enough agreement to pass crucial industry-friendly bills that really defines the parties.

Whether it’s NAFTA, the Iraq War authorization, or the Obama stimulus, there are always just enough aisle-crossers to get the job done, and the tally usually tracks with industry money with humorous accuracy. In this law signed by George Bush, sponsored by Republican Chuck Grassley, and greased by millions in donations from entities like Sallie Mae, the crucial votes were cast by a handful of aisle-crossing Democrats, including especially the Delawareans Joe Biden and Tom Carper. Hillary Clinton, who took $140,000 from bank interests in her Senate run, had voted for an earlier version.

Party intrigue is only part of the magic of American politics. Public relations matter, too, and the Bankruptcy Bill turned out to be the poster child for another cherished national phenomenon: the double-lie.

…

Years later, pundits still debate whether there really ever was an epidemic of debt-fleeing deadbeats, or whether legislators in 2005 who just a few years later gave “fresh starts” to bankrupt Wall Street banks ever cared about “moral hazard,” or if it’s fair to cut off a single Mom in a trailer when Donald Trump got to brag about “brilliantly” filing four commercial bankruptcies, and so on.

In other words, we argue the why of the bill, but not the what. What did that law say, exactly? For years, it was believed that it absolutely closed the door on bankruptcy for whole classes of borrowers, and one in particular: students. Nearly fifteen years after the bill’s passage, journalists were still using language like, “The bill made it completely impossible to discharge student loan debt.”

…

The phrase “Just asking questions” today often carries a negative connotation. It’s the language of the conspiracy theorist, we’re told. But sometimes in America we’re just not told the whole story, and when the press can’t or won’t do it, it’s left to individual people to fill in the blanks. In a few rare cases, they find out something they weren’t supposed to, and in rarer cases still, they learn enough to beat the system. This is one of those stories.

…

Smith’s explanation of the history of the student loan exemption and where it all went wrong is biting and psychologically astute. In his telling, the courts’ historically sneering attitude toward student borrowers has its roots in an ages-old generational debate.

“This started out as an an argument between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers,” Smith notes. “A lot of the law was created by people railing against draft-dodging deadbeat hippies.”

He points to a 1980 ruling by a judge named Richard Merrick, who in denying relief to a former student, wrote the following:

The arrogance of former students who had received so much from society, frequently including draft deferment, and who had given back so little in return, accompanied by their vehemence in asserting their constitutional and statutory rights, frequently were not well received by legislators and jurists, senior to them, who had lived through the Depression, had worked their ways through college and graduate school, had served in World War II, and had been paying the taxes which made possible the student loans.

Smith laughs about this I didn’t climb the hills at Normandy with a knife in my teeth just to eat the debt on your useless-ass liberal arts degree perspective, noting that “when those guys who did all that complaining went to school, only rich prep school kids went to college, and by the way, tuition was like ten bucks.” Still, he wasn’t completely unsympathetic to the conservative position.

…

This concern about “deadbeats” gaming the system — kids taking out fat loans to go to school and bailing on them before the end of the graduation party — led that 1985 court to take a hardcore position against students who made “virtually no attempt to repay.” They established a three-pronged standard that came to be known as the “Brunner test” for determining if a student faced enough “undue hardship” to be granted relief from student debt.

Among other things, the court ruled that a newly graduated student had to do more than demonstrate a temporary inability to handle bills. Instead, a “total incapacity now and in the future to pay” had to be present for a court to grant relief. Over the course of the next decades, it became axiomatic that basically no sentient being could pass the Brunner test.

…

In 2015, he was practicing law at the Texas litigation firm Bickel and Brewer when he came across a case involving a former Pace University student named Lesley Campbell, who was seeking to discharge a $15,000 loan she took out while studying for a bar exam. Smith believed a loan given out to a woman who’d already completed her studies, and who used the money to pay for rent and groceries, was not covering an “educational benefit” as required by law. A judge named Carla Craig agreed and canceled Campbell’s loan, and Campbell v. Citibank became one of the earlier dents in the public perception that there were no exceptions to the prohibition on discharging student debts.

“I thought, ‘Wait, what? This might be important,’” says Smith.

By law, Smith believed, lenders needed to be wary of three major exceptions to the non-dischargeability rule:

— If a loan was not made to a student attending a Title IV accredited school, he thought it was probably not a “qualified educational loan.”

— If the student was not a full-time student — in practice, this meant taking less than six credits — the loan was probably dischargeable.

— And if the loan was made in an amount over and above the actual cost of attending an accredited school, the excess might not be “eligible” money, and potentially dischargeable.

Practically speaking, this means if you got a loan for an unaccredited school, were not a full-time student, or borrowed for something other than school expenses, you might be eligible for relief in court.

Smith found companies had been working around these restrictions in the blunt predatory spirit of a giant-sized Columbia Record Club. Companies lent hundreds of thousands to teenagers over and above the cost of tuition, or to people who’d already graduated, or to attendees of dubious unaccredited institutions, or to a dozen other inappropriate destinations. Then they called these glorified credit card balances non-dischargeable educational debts — Gray got one of these “direct-to-consumer” specials — and either sold them into the financial system as investments, borrowed against them as positive assets, or both.

…

Smith thought these practices were nuts, and tried to convince his bosses to start suing financial companies.

“They were like, ‘You do know what we do around here, right?’ We defend banks,” he recalls, laughing. “I said, ‘Not these particular banks.’ They said it didn’t matter, it was a question of optics, and besides, who was going to pay off in the end? A bunch of penniless students?”

Furious, Smith stormed off, deciding to hang his own shingle and fight the system on his own. “My sister kept saying to me, ‘You have to stop trying to live in a John Grisham novel,’” he recalls, laughing. “There were parts of it where I was probably super melodramatic, saying things like, ‘I'm going to go find justice.’”

Slowly however, Smith did find clients, and began filing and winning cases. With each suit, he learned more and more about student lenders. In one critical moment, he discovered that the same companies who were representing in court that their loans were absolutely non-dischargeable were telling investors something entirely different. In one prospectus for a trust packed full of loans managed by Sallie Mae, investors were told that the process for creating the aforementioned “direct-to-consumer” loans:

Does not involve school certification as an additional control and, therefore, may be subject to some additional risk that the loans are not used for qualified education expenses… You will bear any risk of loss resulting from the discharge.

Sallie Mae was warning investors that the loans might be discharged in bankruptcy. Why the honesty? Because the parties who’d be packaging and selling these student loan-backed instruments included Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank.

“It’s one thing to lie to a bunch of broke students. They don’t matter,” Smith says. “It’s another to lie to JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. You screw those people, they’ll fight back.”

…

In June of 2018, a case involving a Navy veteran named Kevin Rosenberg went through the courts. Rosenberg owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and tried to keep current on his loans, but after his hiking and camping store folded in 2017, he found himself busted and unable to pay. His case was essentially the opposite of Brunner: he clearly hadn’t tried to game the system, he made a good faith effort to pay, and he demonstrated a long-term inability to make good. All of this was taken into consideration by a judge named Cecilia Morris, who ruled that Rosenberg qualified for “undue hardship.”

“Most people… believe it impossible to discharge student loans,” Morris wrote. “This Court will not participate in perpetuating these myths.” The ruling essentially blew up the legend of the unbeatable Brunner standard.

Given a fresh start, Rosenberg moved to Norway to become an Arctic tour guide. “I want people to know that this is a viable option,” he said at the time. The ruling attracted a small flurry of news attention, including a feature in the Wall Street Journal, as the case sent a tremor through the student lending world. More and more people were now testing their luck in bankruptcy, suing their lenders, and asking more and more uncomfortable questions about the nature of the education business.

In the summer of 2012, a former bond trader named Michael Grabis sat in the waiting room of a Manhattan financial company, biding time before a job interview. In the eighties, Grabis’s father was a successful bond trader who worked in a swank office atop the World Trade Center, but after the 1987 crash, the family fell out of the smart set overnight. His father lost his job and spiraled, his mother had to look for a job, and “we just became working class people.”

Michael tried to rewrite the family story, going to school and going into the bond business himself, first with the Bank of New York, and eventually for Schwab. But he, too, lost his job in a crash, in 2008, and now was trying to break the pattern of bubble economy misery. However, he’d exited Pennsylvania’s Lafayette College in the nineties carrying tens of thousands in student loans. That number had since been compounded by fees and penalties, and the usual letters, notices, and phone calls from debt collectors came nonstop.

Now, awaiting a job interview, his phone rang again. It was a collection call for Sallie Mae, and it wasn’t just one voice on the line.

“They had two women call at once,” Grabis recalls. “They told me I’d made bad life choices, that I lived in too expensive a city, that I had to move to a cheaper place, so I could afford to pay them,” Grabis explains. “I tried to tell them I was literally at that moment trying to get a job to help pay my bills, but these people are trained to just hound you without listening. I was shaking when I got off the phone, and ended up having a bad interview.”

Two years later, more out of desperation and anger than any real expectation of relief, Grabis went to federal court in the Southern District of New York and filed for bankruptcy. At the time, he, too, believed student loans could not be eliminated. But the more he read about the way student loans were constructed and sold — he’d had experience in doing shovel-work constructing mortgage-backed securities, so he understood the Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities (SLABS) market — he started to develop a theory. Everyone dealing with the finances of higher education in America knew the system was rotten, he thought. But what if someone could prove it?

The 2005 Bankruptcy Act says former students can’t discharge loans for “qualified educational expenses,” i.e. loans given to students so that they might attend tax-exempt non-profit educational institutions. Historically, that exemption covered almost all higher education loans.

What if America’s universities no longer deserve their non-profit status? What if they’re no longer schools, and are instead first and foremost crude profit-making ventures, leveraging federal bankruptcy law and the I.R.S. code into a single, ongoing predatory lending scheme?

This is essentially what Grabis argued, in a motion filed last January. He named Navient, Lafayette College, the U.S. Department of Education, Joe Biden, his own exasperated judge, and a host of other “unknown co-perpetrators” as part of a scheme against him, claiming the entirety of America’s higher education business had become an illegal moneymaking scam.

“They created a fraud,” he says flatly.

…

Grabis doesn’t have a lawyer, his case has been going on for the better part of six years, and at first blush, his argument sounds like a Hail Mary from a desperate debtor. The only catch is, he might be right.

By any metric, something unnatural is going on in the education business. While other industries in America suffered declines thanks to financial crises, increased exposure to foreign competition, and other factors, higher education has grown suspiciously fat in the last half-century. Tuition costs are up 100% at universities over and above inflation since 2000, despite the 2008 crash, with some schools jacking up prices at three, four times the rate of inflation dating back to the seventies.

Bloat at the administrative level makes the average university look like a parody of an NFL team, where every brain-dead cousin to the owner gets on the payroll. According to Education Week, “fundraisers, financial aid advisers, global recruitment staff, and many others grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009,” which is ten times the rate of growth for tenured faculty positions.

…

Hovering over all this is a fact not generally known to the public: many American universities, even ones claiming to be broke, are sitting atop mountains of reserve cash. In 2013, after the University of Wisconsin blamed post-crash troubles for raising tuition 5.5%, UW system president Kevin Reilly in 2013 admitted that the school actually held $638 million in reserve, separate and distinct from the school endowment. Moreover, Reilly said, other big schools were doing the same thing. UW’s reserve was 25% of its operating budget, for instance, but the University of Minnesota’s was 29%, while Illinois maintained a whopping 34% buffer.

When Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice looked into it, he found many other schools were sitting atop mass reserves even as they pleaded poverty to raise tuition rates. “They’re all doing it,” he said.

In the mortgage bubble that led to the 2008 crash, financiers siphoned fortunes off home loans that were unlikely to be repaid. Student loans are the same game, but worse. All the key players get richer as that $1.7 trillion pile of debt expands, and the fact that everyone knows huge percentages of student borrowers will never pay is immaterial. More campus palaces get built, more administrators get added to payrolls, and perhaps most importantly, the list of assets grows for financial companies, whether or not the loans perform.

…

“As long as it’s collateralized at Navient, they can borrow against that,” Smith says. “They say, ‘Look, we've got $3 billion in assets, which are just consumer loans in negative amortization that are not being repaid, but are being artificially kept out of default so Navient can borrow against that from other banks.

“When I realized that, I was like, ‘Oh, my god. They’re happy that the loans are growing instead of being repaid, because it gives them more collateral to borrow against.’” Smith’s comments echo complaints made by virtually every student borrower in trouble I’ve ever interviewed: lenders are not motivated to reduce the size of balances by actually getting paid. Instead, the game is about keeping loans alive and endlessly growing the balance, through new fees, penalties, etc.

There are two ways of approaching reform of the system. One is the Bernie Sanders route, which would involve debt forgiveness and free higher education. A market-based approach meanwhile dreams of reintroducing discipline into student lending; if students could default, schools couldn’t endlessly raise costs on the back of unlimited government-backed credit.

Which idea is more correct can be debated, but the one thing we know for sure is that the current system is the worst of both worlds, enriching all the most undeserving actors, and hitting that increasingly prevalent policy sweet spot of privatized profit and socialized risk. Whether it gets blown up in bankruptcy courts or simply collapses eventually under its own financial weight — there’s an argument that the market will be massively disrupted if and when the administration ends the Covid-19 deferment of student loan payments — the lie can’t go on much longer.

“It’s just obvious that this has become a printing money operation,” says Grabis. “The colleges charge whatever they want, then they go to the government and continuously increase the size of the loans.” If you’re on the inside, that’s a beautiful thing. What about for everyone else?

#matt taibbi #substack #long #read the whole thing #student loans #student loan debt

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prompt-master · 4 years

Text

It's Snooping Time

Makoto had the nosiest little sister. He had to shoo her out of his room all the time to keep her from getting her grubby little hands all over his things. He couldn't even begin to count the amount of manga Komaru just straight up stole from him. Not to mention that she even went so far as to snoop through his mail and open his Hope's Peak Acceptance letter while he was out.

He'd made sure to rid his room of anything he didn't want her taking before he left for Hope's Peak. It was the only precaution he could make with even a chance of working. It was such a strange feeling moving into his dorm and not having to worry about Komaru checking every nook and cranny when he turned his back. It was relaxing, honestly. He did miss his sister, and he loved her dearly! But he didn't love some of the crap she pulled.

But that's alright, because now Makoto had a chance to catch up and remind himself of all the things he loved and hated about Komaru. After the Ultimate Pharmacist accidentally caused a risky chemical spill that managed to leak to the dorms through the vents, everyone had been given a week off campus!

He'd been having the time of his life attending as an Ultimate. All his new friends were so lively and made him excited to face each day. He treasured every bond he'd made over the course of the year. It was a bit overwhelming at times being surrounded by the most talented eccentric individuals Hope's Peak's scouters could find, and walking into his quaint little home only reminded him of how average he really was compared to everyone else in the school. He somehow managed to be more average than other raffle winners.

"I'm home-"

"Makoto!"

His mother pulled him into a quick unexpected hug.

"Ack- mom-!"

"Aw, Makoto we missed you! I've never been away from you from so long, you're growing up!" Her arms curled around his back, pulling him in tighter and tighter. One hand ruffled his hair from the back, the other lay on his shoulder.

"I missed you too mom" Makoto laughed, embarrassed as his mom planted a kiss on his head, "but can you please let go? You're crushing me."

"Makoto!" Another voice cried out and Makoto held his chest, recovering from the previous hug.

"Hi Komar- oof!"

She gave him a heavy slap on the back before another hearty hug, giving him a mouthful of hair. He could feel her usual energetic excitement, she pulled off of him quickly, hands on his shoulders and starry eyes wide, "How was it?! Are the students as weird as the internet says?! Do you have any hot upperclassmen?! You go to school with your stupid idol crush now don't you?!"

Just about a year ago all this energy would have left Makoto dizzy and tired, now he considered it low energy compared to the intensity of everyday life around the Ultimates.

Makoto laughed, a soft sweet sound. Home sweet home, after all. He did have much he wanted to tell his sister. She was going to freak out when she found out Yamada Hifumi, the author of her favorite doujin, was in his class. "Calm down Komaru, I just got home."

"Geez," she said, tone light and teasing, "you go to an elite school and come back like you went on a life changing journey! Where's my brother who gets annoyed at all my questions, huh?"

"Give your brother a break, Komaru." Their dad joined the scene, clapping a hand onto Makoto's shoulder. "You'll have plenty of time over the week to hear about all his adventures."

"You just want to hear about it too, dad."

"Guilty as charged." their dad put up his hands in admission, chuckling softly.

"You should get settled in," when his mother smiled, she had little crinkles around her eyes. It was such a small detail but he missed seeing such a genuine joy on someone's face, "we won't have as much to tell you as you will us though."

"That's ok mom!"

Makoto found himself relaxing. Even though he'd been away from home for so long he fit right back in like he always belonged here. After an awkward wave he left down the hall to get into his room. On his way there, an unfamiliar glint of light from the living room wall caught his eye, causing him to look up. There was a new frame up on the wall. More of Komaru's art, maybe?

He came closer to the simple black frame, seated in a spot that was rather obvious. Like his parents wanted all visitors to see this particular frame. From a distance it looked mostly white and blank. He got close enough to make out the little black text that simply and quickly announced Makoto's acceptance into the school of a lifetime.

Makoto smiled. They framed his acceptance letter. He was really happy to be home. He felt loved before he left, but now he felt adored.

As he pushed open the door to his room and dropped his bags to the floor he briefly wondered how different things would be after starting out a new path in his life. But once he sat down on his bed he felt like he'd never really left. He was excited to have dinner with his family again, but he also has text messages from his new friends to look forward to!

The problem was Makoto got too relaxed. He was used to sleeping in a cozy locked dorm where everyone only bothered to knock in order to ask him to hang out elsewhere. So when Makoto went to dinner he left his backpack free for the picking on the floor of his bedroom.

And of course, Komaru wasted no time poking her head into said room. How could she not?! Her brother is getting a once in a lifetime opportunity! No, not even that, most lives don't get to experience even a taste of what Makoto gets to indulge in. How could she not want to know more?! A quick inspection of the bags he brought over showed pretty much only clothes and a teddy bear wearing the Hope's Peak emblem on its shirt.

And then she turned her attention towards his backpack. Maybe she'd find some embarrassing doodles in his notebooks, Makoto did have a tendency to scribble when lectures bored him. She zipped open the bag, bouncing up and down in anticipation as to what she might discover.

Ugh, boring. Why did Makoto only have a bunch of school supplies in his backp- oh. Well actually, that did make sense. Even though Makoto was accepted into the school unconditionally it seemed he still wanted to prove himself.

Well, average grades. It's certainly not exceptional but...he is trying.

Feeling a bit dejected at the lack of juicy information, she opened the front pocket of his backpack with much less vigor than prior. Then she paused.

Oh my, oh my, oh my. What do we have here?

Within the pocket were several small envelopes each sealed with a well placed red heart sticker.

Confession Letters.

Naegi Makoto had confession letters.

There was NO WAY anything in this world could keep Komaru from digging further. She quickly took one of the letters into her hand and inspected it.

"Maizono Sayaka"

She gasped, it was the idol crush! That was definitely Makoto's handwriting, it was always a bit distinctly messy. No doubt in her mind that her brother wrote these.

She looked back into the bag, where so many envelopes lay in waiting for the day someone would open them. She felt herself building up an uncontained excitement. Was Makoto so enamored with Miss Maizono Sayaka that he had to write several drafts of his confession? She could totally imagine Makoto about to hand over his letter before going red in the face and sprinting away in panic.

She wondered if she could open up some of these without getting caught, she desperately wanted to read the embarrassing contents. She picked another letter from the back of the pouch and turned it over.

"Kirigiri Kyoko"

Her amusement grew three sizes. She was trying hard not to laugh, her brother was crushing on two girls who were most certainly out of his league? What did he think he was, an anime protagonist?

She picked up another, buzzing with excitement.

"Togami Byakuya"

Her eyes almost popped out of her head at that one. Togami Byakuya? Wait… Togami? Like THAT Togami? Togami Corporation? Wait- a BOY?

No way. No fucking way. She totally called it. But to think that Makoto wasn't just crushing on a TOGAMI but was writing letters hoping to confess. The image of her average joe brother handing, not just a random someone but a TOGAMI, a handwritten letter made her giggle.

She continued to pick through the letters. He certainly had a thing for Kyoko and Byakuya as there were SEVERAL versions of those letters. There were a few more for Sayaka, and a few singles for others such as someone named Asahina Aoi, and someone named Ikusaba Mukuro.

Was Makoto just falling in love with anyone who so much as looked at him?

She needed so desperately to know more. She was trying hard not to sputter with laughter at the assortment of letters now in her lap. Makoto didn't just think he was an anime protagonist he seemed like he thought he was a harem protagonist.

The door opened up, leaving Komaru without even a single moment to put everything back.

"Komaru, you know I don't like you in my-..." Makoto's slightly annoyed tone cut off as he processed the sight in front of him.

Komaru. His sister. With all his very personal letters in her grasp.

Makoto quickly sprung into action. "Ack! No! No stop that! Why are you going through my bag!?" He dropped to his knees, sliding on the wooden floor and scrambling to rip all the letters away from her.

She held on tight to one of them, it was one of Byakuya's letters. Her face was smug, knowing all too well she was about to bring the motherfucking gavel down on him.

"Komaru let go!" Makoto whined trying to snag Komaru’s prize for snooping.

"I- ppftt - I can't believe you wanted to date like half your class!" Komaru disregarded her brother's pitiful plee and kept the letter just out of his reach. Her brother's face was beet red as he glared at her.

"H-hey it's not HALF!" Komaru continued to laugh at him, unable to even get a sentence out between her wheezes. Makoto picked up a pillow from his bed and threw it at her face.

She rolled back with the impact, hopping up onto her feet and balancing on her heels. She held the letter high above her head.

"I never thought you'd be the type to write CONFESSION LETTERS!"

Makoto felt panic rushing through his very veins, "its not…!" He couldn't even do much but stay on the ground desperately trying to think of a way out of this situation "They aren't confession letters!! I dont have crushes on all of them now give it back!"

His face, all the way to his ears, had gone so bright red you could make a paint swatch out of it.

Komaru's amusement somehow grew worse at his words. She stood tall over him, her smile reminiscent of a cruel villain from an shounen anime. "All of them?" She said.

Her face hurt from being unable to stop smiling, "All of them?! You have crushes on all of them at the same time?!"

"No…!"

"Oh my GOD I thought you just kept switching crushes because you're sensitive! Not piled them up!"

"I didn’t-!"

"What was the plan here Makoto?!"

"I don't know! There is none!"

"Oh my God I have to read one."

"No!"

That got Makoto back into action, jumping up to once again try to tear the letter by force out of his sister's hands. She retaliated by licking his hand when it came near her face.

"Gross! Komaru!"

"Makoto please you need to tell me. You're seriously going after a TOGAMI?"

She was pretty sure if Makoto blushed anymore he'd pass out from a head rush.

"Tell me what you like about him" she said "or I'll tear this bad boy open!"

"Honestly, I'm not too sure either…" Makoto had far more memories of Byakuya insulting him for being an 'optimistic commoner idiot' than he did memories of him being nice.

Komaru flopped back, throwing herself down onto Makoto's bed hard enough that she got a bit of airtime. "You go to an elite school and now you think all these Ultimates are in your league!" She propped herself up on one arm "I mean, I expected this for Maizono, but I always thought you were more modest than this Makoto. You should know the harem comes to YOU, not the other way around!"

Makoto's voice reached a pitch that she thought should be impossible, "I don't want a harem!"

Completely sitting up on his bed now, waving the letter in her hand mockingly, she said "No? Trying to pick one lucky fella then?"

"How am I supposed to choose?!"

"No way you actually are. Pffftt…! You're in some deep shit Makoto!"

"It's not my fault..! I mean...they're all so amazing! Maizono-san and I became good friends right away...and when she told me she remembered me from middle school I was a goner…!

And then Kirigiri-san trusts me - ME Komaru! - to help her on investigations. And- and sometimes she gets this adorable pout when I spend time with other friends for too long. And when she smiles at me...it's so rare but she has the prettiest smile...anyone would be lucky to have her!

And oh no, Togami-kun. He seems almost like he hates hanging out with me, but then he gets upset when I seem disinterested. He tells me all these personal details about his life as if he wants me to be closer to him. How can I not look into that!

All these people are messing with my head!"

"Woah woah lover boy calm down!"

Makoto panted, having to catch his breath after blurting out such a very personal speech about his feelings. Realizing just how embarrassing that entire thing was, he zippered his hood up all the way so that Komaru had no chance of seeing his embarrassment. He dropped himself back down so that he was sitting on the floor, reflecting on all the actions and words he picked to get him in this situation. Maybe if he just sat quietly he would actually disappear.

"Aren't you the older one here?"

"Shut up…"

"You always did have a soft heart, you fell for Maizono-san just from talking to her once! And now you've got all these guys to worry about"

"I don't know what to do…" Makoto mumbled, "I'm lucky enough to be friends with them."

"You really like all of them, huh?"

Makoto nodded, unzipping his hoodie just a smidge, enough so that his eye peeked out, "every chance I get to spend time with them feels really special"

Komaru, still sitting down on Makoto's bed, leaned her head back against the back wall. A much softer smile graced her face, it was a small little thing but Makoto understood the meaning. Komaru thumbled the envelope in her hands, then placed it by her side.

"You're just...you're kinda amazing, Makoto."

"Huh?" Makoto didn't understand that at all, he wasn't anything special at all! He only got lucky, otherwise he was the most average guy in Japan. He unzipped his hoodie all the way, embarrassment forgotten in his confusion.

"I mean look at you!" She lifted her head back up, gesturing wildly to all of Makoto, "you're out there, making friends with the most amazing people in the world just by being yourself! I mean...what is up with that?!"

Makoto smiled, "They are the most amazing people, huh?"

"You've always been pretty good at making friends-"

"So are you though!"

"-but I never thought you'd be this good! You're going places! You're making connections!" Her excitement and gestures began to slowly lose steam as she spoke. Her movements more sluggish and heavy, her smile going away.

"And I'm still gonna be here. Just a normal girl."

Well...that made sense. Makoto felt exactly the same. He and his sister may be rather different, but they were also incredibly similar. They were both optimistic, friendly, they both saw the good in a lot of people, but they also both felt like they were painfully average. Makoto lifted himself off the ground and joined Komaru on the bed, sitting next to her. He knew that just telling her she was special wouldn't help much, he'd experienced people telling him that over and over and he still felt like he cheated his way into being "special".

After a pause, Makoto said, "you know...I know a few Ultimates I think you'd make good friends with…"

Komaru looked up at that, "Wait, really?"

"Yeah! You'd get along great with Maizono-san, Enoshima-san-"

Komaru gasped, "Enoshima? Like Enoshima Junko?"

"Uh, yeah!"

"She's a total BABE Makoto where's her letter!"

Makoto laughed, she sure cheered up fast, "Maybe you can write it after you talk to her for a bit."

"You really think she'd talk to me? I'm not an Ultimate."

"Sure! If she can talk to me, she'll get along just fine with you! Ah but...careful...she can be kind of intense on pranks…"

"She sounds great!"

"And that's not all! There's also people you already know! You've read Yamada-san's fan books and one of Fukawa-san's novels!"

"You know them?!"

"You don't need to be in Hope's Peak and you don't need to be special to go places, I think you're fine as you are!"

Komaru's shoulders lifted and she curled in on herself, a genuine grateful look on her face, "thanks Makoto...you're a good brother"

"Any time, Komaru." He smiled sweetly, "now give me my letter back."

#danganronpa #dr #dr:thh #makoto naegi #komaru naegi #naegiri #naegami #fanfic #glad to see i can still give my fanfics the dumbest titles ever #the read more is way lower than i put it but i guess f u c k me right tumblr #this is not junko/komaru #it's snooping time

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sinner-as-saint · 5 years

Text

Call An Avenger

requested! I couldn’t tell if anon wanted fluff or smut so I wrote a bit of both.

Run-through: Y/N is a new member of the Avengers cast. And while doing a fun, playful interview promoting the new movie, things get saucy.

Themes: language, fluff, slight smut

“Alright Y/n, you’ve been set with Sebastian and Chris for the next one, starting in 10 minutes. They need to set up your mike so, hurry up a little bit would you, darling?” Linda said, typing furiously on the screen of her phone.

Linda was your assistant, and also one of your best friends.

You were currently the most talked about person in Hollywood. You were a successful singer, who also acted in some hit movies. And soon, another one would be added to your list because you were the newest addition to the Marvel family, quite a significant one actually.

Your recent movie was an Avengers one, and acting alongside some of the biggest actors in the industry, caused a lot of pressure but you were somewhat handling it like a pro.

You and the Avengers cast were travelling around the world, attending conventions, meet and greets, doing interviews and talk shows – promoting the movie. And so far you were having fun, and you actually grew close to quite a lot of them.

The closest friends you had so far were Scarlett, RDJ himself, Tom and Chadwick. However, you couldn’t help but feel a sort of tension whenever you were around Sebastian or Chris Evans. Of course, you were fan of them way before you guys did a movie together but there was definitely something wonderful in the air whenever one of them was around.

One of the traits of your character in the movie is that, she can be quite flirty and seductive to get to her enemies or to lure them into her traps, so you had to be physically close to both the actors during shooting and you couldn’t help but feel certain sparks in certain places whenever one of them touched you, or looked you in the eyes.

The feeling was weird to you, you had never been one to imagine yourself with more than one partner. Yet here you were, dreaming and crushing on two very good looking guys who were good friends to each other and to you, and who were way out of your league.

“Y/N! Seriously honey, hurry up!” Linda yelled, pushing you into in front of the camera, into a chair. Right in between probably two of the most gorgeous beings you had ever seen.

“Hello guys!” you chirped, setting down so one of the people working could set up you mike at the back of your dress.

“Hey y/n!” Sebastian said, giving you a slight wave, a gorgeous smile and a mini heart attack.

“Oh hey there y/n!” Chris said, giving you a warm smile, and another mini heart attack.

As you sat down, you realized that the chairs were placed really close to each other, to a point where when you sat down, your arms were each touching a muscular bicep of each men.

And there is was again, the sparks, the wonderful feeling in the air along with their addicting cologne mixed together.

A couple of minutes later of you guys just catching up and having a casual conversation, your interviewer walked in, smiling at all of you.

You thought he was rather cute, a little bit nervous but cute nonetheless.

“Hi guys! My name’s Joe. Okay, I know we don’t have much time because of your crazy busy schedule, but I have just a few questions and a fun game for you guys. So, you ready?” he asked, a very charming smile on his face.

“Yeah! Let’s go!” said Chris, sipping his coffee.

“Sure, bud!” Sebastian said, adjusting himself in his seat.

“Yeah, let’s do it!” you cheered.

“Okay, first question goes to the lovely Y/N who is making my heart race by how gorgeous she looks right now, right so, being so young and a new member of the Marvel family, how excited were you when you found out that RDJ himself wanted you to play this character?” Joe asked.

You smiled at him before answering.

“I mean, being a hardcore Marvel fan for so long now, I have to say I thought I was losing my mind when RDJ’s people called my team to talk about it. I was absolutely thrilled and nervous at the same time. I mean, I had just wrapped up a world tour and instead of taking a break and working on new music, I had to shoot for a least five months which was no joke, but I got to meet the people I had idolized for so long now, plus, I made some great friends so, yeah I wouldn’t change it for the world,” you smiled, trying your best at answering carefully.

“Well, I’m sure all the fangirls and fanboys will absolutely love you in this! Now, Chris, it is said that you, Sebastian and Y/N are quite the pranksters on set. What would you say was your best prank till now, as a trio?” Joe asked, and while Chris answered the question, you and Sebastian just looked at each other and absolutely died laughing as you remembered clearly which one it was.

“Oh my god! So, once Ruffalo mentioned that he has this weird phobia of someone chasing him with poo on a stick, right? And we all thought it was all bluff so, we decided to test it out…” he trailed off laughing out loud, slapping his left boob. Classic Chris.

“And he legitimately freaked out! We all thought he was acting but turns out, Ruffalo really does have a phobia of people chasing him with shit on a stick!” Sebastian told the remaining story, laughing as well while Chris recovered from his laughter fit.

“Plus, it wasn’t poo at all, it was, I believe something we stole from one of the makeup trailers, oh Mark,” you added, shaking your head at the memory.

Joe asked a couple of more questions before moving on to the game he had planned.

“Alright, so this is an easy, fun game called “Call an Avenger”, and I’m gonna give you guys certain everyday life scenarios and you have to tell me which Avenger you’ll call to help you out in that situation, okay?” Joe explained, and the three of you nodded.

“Right, you’re stuck on a deserted island,” he asked.

“Iron Man,” the lot of you answered, at the same time and then looked at each other and smiled.

“That’s true, Tony Stark would get you the hell out of there, safe and sound. He might even adopt you later to be honest,” you added and the two men agreed.

“Okay, what if you’re trapped in an elevator,” Joe said.

“Oh,” you all said and went into deep thought.

“I mean, I’ll go with Iron Man again, he’ll definitely know what to do,” Chris said, sipping his coffee again.

“Uh, think I’ll go with Ant Man, I mean, he could shrink down and do his thing, right? I’ll say Ant Man,” Sebastian replied.

“Oh I’ll go with Winter Soldier, Bucky it is for me. I mean, c’mon, that metal arm and those muscles could get me out of there rather quickly,” you answered and Sebastian looked at you with a shine in his eyes and a big smile on his face. And if you didn’t have a crush on the man, you wouldn’t notice how he slowly, but certainly, inched closer to you.

“That’s fair, okay next, you need to make an ex jealous,” Joe wiggled his eyebrows, smirking.

“Y/C/N,” the two men said, simultaneously.

“Chris, I mean, Cap,” you corrected yourself quickly, then you realized that they both had chosen your character.

“Ooh, drama!” Joe added, as the three of you started playfully bickering.

“Wait, what? Why not me?” Sebastian complained.

“Wow! I mean I can’t say that I didn’t like that, and why Seb can’t say Black Widow or something, man c’mon, why can’t I have Y/C/N all to myself?” Chris said, laughing. A warm feeling took over you when he said the last part and you tried your best not to show it.

“And I can’t say I’m not offended! What, now Bucky isn’t good enough for you babygirl?” Sebastian teased, smiling. But his smile soon faded as he slowly realized what he had just said. And you tried your best not to smile like a crazy person while he tried his best to cover up.

You noticed Joe’s head shot up as soon as Sebastian referred to you as ‘babygirl’.

“He is Seb, it’s just that, I believe Cap is more cut out for that job,” you explained, placing a hand on his knee gently and smiling up at him.

Your team would most definitely review the interview before it airs so you were sure that Linda would force them to cut that part out or else she’d have their heads.

“Okay okay, don’t argue Avengers, we still need you. Alright next, you badly need a date for an event,” Joe asked again.

“Thor,” you replied, with a smirk.

“Wow, that was quick,” Chris pointed out.

“Yeah, like you didn’t even give us a second thought,” Seb argued further.

You laughed.

“I mean, I had to go with my favorite Chris so, yeah,” you replied, sarcasm dripping from your words.

Chris dramatically placed a hand on his heart, faking that he was actually hurt by your words while Sebastian said something along the lines of ‘at least there’s no other Sebastian in the cast’.

“Ooh, shots fired, I mean you’re out here breaking hearts y/n!” Joe said, laughing along with you.

“Yeah, I thought I was your favorite Chris, what the hell?” Chris placed a hand on your shoulder and shook his head in disbelief.

“And I thought you loved me! We kiss in the trailer Y/N! What about that?” Sebastian added.

It was true. You did share a kiss, briefly, in the trailer. And your fans went crazy. There was all these ship names going around, edits and fan accounts based on people who hoped that you and him end up together. Then there were those you preferred you and Chris together after a video of you both goofing around on set got out.

“Oh my God, Joe! What have you started?” you pleaded.

After a few more rounds, Joe said goodbye and the three of you walked away.

“Y/N c’mon, you need to change for the next one,” Linda yelled from across the room and you rushed into the changing room, leaving behind the two men. Or so you thought.

The changing room was quite spacious, with full length mirrors, a set of clothes hanging on the side, a dresser table with a bunch of makeup laid in front of it.

You closed the door and wasted no time in getting out of the navy blue bodycon dress you initially wore, leaving you in just your lacy, black matching set of underwear. Leaving your dress on the floor, you walked over to the clothes that were hanging, and tried selecting one to wear for your next interview. But that was until you noticed something in the mirror. Two people standing behind you, unmoving.

Your eyes widened as you turned around, your hands trying to hide as much of your body as they could, but the two men smirked at the sight of you.

“Aww c’mon now, nothing we haven’t seen, doll. We’ve worked out together before, haven’t we?” Chris cooed, walking towards you slowly.

“What the hell? If anyone finds us here, we w-,”

“They won’t, doll. We made sure of that, now where were we?” Sebastian answered, walking towards you as well.

By then, you were blushing. Hard. And your heart was pounding inside your chest.

They moved towards you to the point where your back hit the wall and they stood right in front of you. Through the wall, you could hear Linda barking orders at other people.

“Seriously, is this because of something I said earlier, and do you always do this? Together?” you asked, surprised at your own question.

They smirked.

“No, but it’s worth a try though isn’t it? I mean, we feel the sparks too,” Chris said, leaning closer to you, “but you’ll have to be quiet, yeah, baby?” his hands reached around you and worked on unhooking your bra, his lips leaving light kisses along your jaw and his beard tickling your skin.

Meanwhile, Sebastian knelt down and managed to get you out of your underwear, his lips kissing your inner thighs as you tried your best to hold back a loud moan just by looking at him in between your legs.

“Remember babygirl, be quiet. We don’t wanna get caught now, do we?” Seb said as his mouth left deep red marks up along your inner thighs.

Well, you thought, this was a one-time thing right? So, it was totally worth the try.

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chiefnooniensingh · 4 years

Text

it’s in our blood, in our veins (a The Old Guard one-shot)

Rating: G Pairings: JoexNicky and Joe&Booker Characters: Joe, Booker, Nicky, Nile Summary: Over the shared worry for one of their own, Booker and Joe hash it out, a year after the Merrick debacle. A/n: I need this family back together so I fucking wrote it. Also on: ao3

This had never happened before, to any of them. The team was huddled in a hospital waiting room, looking around nervously, aware of the cameras that were hung up everywhere, but they’d be damned if they were leaving. Nile was the only one who looked remotely put together, her immortality still so new that she hasn’t forgotten what it was like to be wounded, in need of professional care.

Nicky was handling it the worst of them all. He was pacing through the waiting room, continually running his hands through his hair as he muttered about what if’s and we should have’s. For once, Joe was unable to get him to calm down. Because Andy was in the hospital, gravely injured and fighting for her increasingly shortening life, and there was nothing any of them could do.

Joe knew his love and Andy had an incredibly special relationship, not unlike brother and sister. She and Nicky were the most attuned to each other of all, barring Joe himself. In battle, Andy and Nicky were the level-headed strategists (until it became time to bring hellfire), while Joe and Booker had always been the rash, impulsive ones. Andy and Nicky shared a love for baklava unparalleled even by Joe’s own. When Joe and Booker would split off to watch a game, Andy and Nicky would sit together, pouring over books, laughing over tv shows they would watch together, or sparring.

Joe was worried as hell but seeing his love so distraught brought him even more pain than his worry did. He felt absolutely useless, unable to soothe his Nicky and unable to heal Andy. Joe kept flexing his hands, which were itching to do something, anything. “Nicky, please,” he tried once again. “Nicolò, amore mio…”

“It’s Andy,” Nicky croaked, sounding for all the world as if it had been him who got shot in the chest.

Joe stood up and halted Nicky’s frantic pacing by taking hold of his arms. “I know, my heart, I know,” he said, then hugged him close to his chest. “But, sweetheart, you are driving me absolutely insane with your pacing.” He kept his tone just shy of teasing, knowing that Nicky would pick up on the lack of heat behind his words.

Nicky sighed and wrapped his arms around Joe’s frame, burying his nose in his shoulder. “Scusi,” he said softly, “I’m just so worried.”

“So am I, Nicky, so am I,” Joe muttered, then pulled back to kiss his Nicky’s forehead. “It’ll be okay.”

“Yes, it will,” Nile said, from her spot against the wall. She looked worried and anxious but had the most faith in Andy’s chances of survival. “She’s strong, guys. And this hospital is the best at what they do. She’ll pull through, I’m sure of it.” Nicky and Joe smiled at her, but while Joe took his seat again, Nicky still couldn’t stand still, and he went over to the coffee machine to get them more terrible hospital coffee.

Joe looked across from him and felt a surge of emotion as his eyes locked with the man who had brought them here. Booker. It had been nigh on a year since they’d last seen each other, since they’d banished him, but here he was, looking apprehensive and scared and worried. He’d been too late to warn them of the attack but had helped them fight their way out of it. The revelation that Quynh was not only alive and freed from the bottom of the ocean, but also hell-bent on destroying as much of Andy’s life as she possibly could, had shook the entire team. Andy had gotten a glimpse of her during the fight, and in that moment of distraction, had taken a bullet straight to the chest.

And now here they were. Joe and Booker in an intense stare-off while also worried out of their minds for their oldest friend.

A year was nothing to them. Like an hour to mortals. Joe was still pissed off as hell at the man whom he used to call his brother, the man who had betrayed them, had put Nicky in danger. If Joe hadn’t been strapped to a medical bed, he was sure he would’ve ended Booker’s life right there when he first learned of the betrayal. Their exhaustion, both physical and emotional, had prevented him from doing it after they’d reached a safe house. Joe now felt that urge to snap Booker’s goddamn neck again.

“Just say what you want to say, man,” Booker said, breaking Joe from his thoughts. Nile looked up from staring at her knees and Nicky turned sharply, his eyes on Joe. Joe read the warning in his eyes but knew he wouldn’t be able to heed it.

For a moment, Joe said nothing. Then the dam burst. “I am so angry at you, Booker,” he said in a low voice, and Nicky closed his eyes briefly. But Joe focused his attention on Booker instead, who looked miserable as hell. “Why?”

Booker shook his head. “I never meant for it to get so far, I just wanted…”

“You just wanted it to end!” Joe spit, jumping up, too charged to sit down any longer. Booker stayed in his chair and couldn’t meet his eyes. “So you sold us out to a sadistic maniac for the chance of relief, knowing full well how much pain you were going to put us through!”

“You don’t know what it’s like, Joe!” Booker said, and Joe could hear tears threatening in his voice. Joe would feel sorry, but he could still hear Nicky’s pained groans as that woman did her sick experiments on him. “You and Nicky, you always had each other, meanwhile I just had the memories of those who loved me, dead, while I continued to live!”

“But you had us, Booker! We were your family, too! We loved you, too! You threw us away like we were nothing!” Joe yelled.

Booker rose now, too. Apparently Joe had struck a chord. “And what would happen if Nicky were to die right now, huh? Would you stick around?”

It was a thought too horrible to process, and Joe shook his head to clear the image from his brain. The thought of Nicky dying without him… “I wouldn’t betray my family,” he said quietly. At that moment, he felt Nicky come up beside him, squeeze his hand for a second, then moved off to the side. Joe felt a rush of absolute love for this man, who knew Joe had been on the bring of absolutely falling apart and gave him the reassurance that they were both alive.

Booker shook his head, tears now visible in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” Booker said, and it startled Joe. This hadn’t been a conversation heading anywhere near an apology, yet the Frenchman was looking more miserable than ever. “I never meant for any of you to get hurt, I swear. I was so blinded by my grief and pain that I didn’t see…didn’t know…”

“What,” Joe said, almost astonished, “that we love you?”

Booker nodded, tears falling in earnest now, and he fell back in his seat, burying his head in his hands. Nile was about to get up, join him and comfort him, but Nicky put a hand on her shoulder. This was something Booker and Joe had to work through themselves. Joe stared at Booker, mouth agape as the weight of what Booker had just said crashed over him. He hadn’t known… Stumbling backwards, Joe’s back hit the wall and he slid down it, still trying to process. “How could I have been so blind…” Joe muttered, and Booker looked up, surprised to see all the anger having drained out of Joe. “All those times you made those self-depreciating jokes, jokes about ‘misery loves company’…I thought you were just joking, but it was real, wasn’t it?” He looked up at Book, his best friend, his brother, who he was now seeing in a completely different light. It was like the last 200 years were being rewritten in his mind. “Book, why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve been there for you…”

Booker shrugged, wiping furiously at his eyes, trying to stem the flow. “I didn’t want to come between you and Nicky, you two were always so happy…”

“So you let us believe you were fine, meanwhile you were just dying a little bit more inside every day?” Joe put his head in his hands and felt tears burning in his own eyes now as well. “How did I miss it, Book? What did I do wrong?”

“What?” Booker said, his head snapping up to look straight into Joe’s eyes. The Frenchman and the Egyptian stared at each other, seeing each other differently, but really seeing each other for the first time. “Joe, you couldn’t have done anything…”

Joe shook his head and jumped up, starting to pace, trying to understand the new host of emotions he was feeling. Anger was there, sure, but it wasn’t directed at Booker anymore. It was directed at himself. “Jesus, I’ve been so blind. I considered you my best friend, my brother, even. What Nicky and Andy have, that’s what I thought you and I had…but now I see that I have been the worst brother you could’ve had. I should’ve seen, I should’ve known!” Joe dropped to his knees in front of Booker, who looked like he was about to either laugh or cry uncontrollably. “Book, I am so sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”

Booker let out a watery laugh. “Me forgive you?”

“I called you my brother, considered myself yours, yet I completely ignored all the signs that you were in pain. I missed every part of it. And somehow I made you belief you couldn’t come to me, couldn’t confide in me, with your pain, your loneliness. I should’ve been the one to be there for you, but instead I was the one who made you think you were alone…that is a crime far worse than yours.” Joe felt the tears spilling over and could feel Nicky restraining himself from coming over and either hugging or punching the pair of them. Nile was staring at them, open-mouthed.

“Can you ever forgive me for betraying you?”

“It is already done,” Joe said, and simultaneously the two men stood up and wrapped each other in a bear hug. Joe felt his anger drain away as the bond the two of them had had, seemed to mend between them. Joe still felt the pang of anger, but he understood now. And pushing Booker away now would only result in more pain for both of them.

“Y’all need some therapy,” Nile said, which broke the silence as Nicky burst into laughter, and even Joe and Booker managed to laugh. “No, seriously, nobody noticing Booker was clinically depressed for 200 years is a problem.”

Joe laughed, but nodded his head as well, because he knew. He knew it was a problem, a problem they needed to fix very soon. Booker released Joe and went over to Nicky. Joe watched, intrigued, as his other half watched with open and kind eyes as Booker stood in front of him. “Nicky, I’ve apologized to Joe, and I feel like I also owe you an apology. What that woman did to you, and Joe…I never thought they would go that far. I am so sorry, and I’ll do whatever it takes to win back your trust.”

Nicky gave him a small smile. “It might take a while to win back all of my trust, but saving our asses today has brought you a lot closer. I just hope in the future you will tell us when you are in pain.”

Booker nodded. “I’ll try.”

“Then I forgive you,” Nicky said, and he wrapped Booker in one of his signature hugs that would solve all the world’s problems, Joe knew, if he could just hug everyone.

“Nile,” Booker continued, but Nile cut across him, “Nah, I don’t need your apology, I need your ass in therapy.” Then she hugged him, too, because she’d never been that angry at him to begin with. They all laughed, and soon they were wrapped in a group hug, Joe and Nicky holding hands on Booker’s back. Joe felt something in him heal that he hadn’t realized was broken. His family was back together.

“Family of Andy Smith?”

They all broke apart hastily as a doctor entered the waiting room, who looked slightly bemused at the touching scene in front of her. She had no idea the amount of pain and anger had been worked through in the past half hour, and Joe smirked slightly, revelling once again in the fact that there was so much information they all held, without anybody knowing it. It gave him a sense of power. “Yes,” Booker said quickly, stepping forward, “that’s us.”

“She’s out of surgery, awake, and asking for you.”

A feeling of absolute relief washed over them all, and they hugged again before following the doctor out of the waiting room. Before they left, Nicky grabbed Joe’s arm and held him back. Joe looked at his love questioningly, but Nicky just pressed his lips to Joe’s in a tender, loving kiss, into which Joe immediately melted. “I’m proud of you,” Nicky said softly, touching his forehead to Joe’s. Joe brushed his nose against Nicky’s and kissed him again, because one kiss was just never enough for him. “Let’s go see Andy.”

Joe nodded, linked his hand with Nicky’s and together they walked to Andy’s room.

#the old guard #immortal husbands #sebastien le livre #yusuf al-kaysani #old guard ff #my old guard ff #my fanfics

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wexhappyxfew · 4 years

Note

Soooooooo you said you could do a whole post on Hazel and Joe and I WANNA SEE THIS PLS SUNSHINE

YES MAAM!! hazel and joe’s friends to lover truly gives me SO MUCH LIFE!! i just wanted to finally write a friends to lover where they had set foundations, trust, loyalty, memories, inside jokes, all of it, to make it clear to the readers that they had history, i just wanted to show how they worked throughout the whole story, and the reason it took as long as it did was to truly show their devotion. i’m sorry if this post is LONG AS HELL but i adore these two :)

WARNING THIS IS SO UNHEALTHILY LONG LIKE WHAT AM I DOING BUT I LOVE THEM AND HAVE NO SHAME -> this is only for the soldier of stars, so if you fancy stuff from Ad Astra, i can do that as well LOL

Hazel Parker and Joe Liebgott - Friends to Lovers

Am I going to give a thorough in depth analysis of their friendship together? YES MA’AM! Honestly writing these two showed me, that even in dark times you can love someone for who they are, just so many things about how love continues to get through boundary after boundary and these two I feel showed me that, and it makes my heart warm :)) ANDDDD since this post is so ungodly long and just the first book LOL if you want me to do it for Ad Astra Per Aspera, i gladly can, but i didn’t want to continue to make it longer and longer HAHA <3

The First Meeting

I loved that when they first met, Hazel managed to shut up both George Luz and Joe Liebgott with one sentence. And I think it’s where we see that Hazel isn’t what many people suspect she is because she regards the fact that if it’s worth fighting for, you’ll fight for it, and to be honest that’s okay. To fight for what’s right for you. And for Joe, seeing someone, supposedly viewed as innocent, clearly then state afterwards that she would fight for what was right as well -> something maybe not suspected of her, it draws Joe in.

The First Stargaze

Stargazing as you know it, is one of the most important aspects in Hazel’s life and Joe coming out to stargaze with her, something that so is not Joe Liebgott, really signifies their friendship for me personally, just because Joe left the dance, to stargaze with Hazel, I mean if that isn’t the start of a friendship I’m not sure what is :)

Teasing - the softest and purest

Hazel had started offering Liebgott her notes, and soon enough they were sharing notes, huddled side by side, writing things down together, and sometimes Joe would bump her as she wrote just to mess her up or peeve her off the deep end. But it was all good fun in the end.

" You know, Joe, hitting my shoulder and messing up my notes, is messing up your notes as well." Hazel had told him one afternoon as Lieutenant Winters stood at the front of the group going over spits of information based on the ideology of the ground and its importance when doing practice runs or drills that were supposed to be of semblance to real combat.

" I don't entirely care, Parker, I'm just here to annoy ya." Joe mumbled back as Winters voice grew louder.

" Funny," muttered Hazel, as she kicked his foot under the table. She saw Joe smirk at her. He kicked her foot back and she glanced over towards him.

" What?" he asked, like he didn't just hit her foot.

" I'm a sniper, Joe," Hazel said softly, as she wrote another few words down in her book.

" And?"

" Well," Hazel said as Winters glanced towards the two, " my bullets came move 1,000 feet per second, Joe."

" Right," Joe said.

" And, I know the spots in the body where the most pain could be inflicted upon bullet entry." Hazel said with a nod looking up at the board again.

" Oh right I forgot." Joe said as Hazel let a giggle pass her lips.

Flowers - The Time Joe Brought Flowers

When she [Grace Burnett] opened the door she smiled wide and let out a jolly laugh.

" Well, she'll be happy to see you all." Grace said as Hazel looked over and watched as a bouquet of yellow flowers appeared with Joe Liebgott as the handler, with Shifty just behind him with Catherine and Lizzie bringing up the rear, with a laughing George Luz, which was no surprise.

" There she is!" Joe called noticing the girl on the couch, curled up into a blanket with sunken in eyes. Hazel smiled weakly.

" Hi." she croaked out.

" Aw, honey." Catherine said, as she frowned with sad eyes, hearing her lost voice. Joe was the first to reach her and pull her into a hug.

" I'm sick." Hazel said as Joe held her close, smelling of pine and cigarette smoke. Joe pulled back with a smirk, a few strands of hair in his face.

" I don't care about that, Parker." Joe said, before holding out the flowers as the rest of the guys filtered into the room, " These are for you." Hazel smiled at him with blushing cheeks.

" Aww, thanks guys." Hazel said, turning and coughing briefly.

" You can thank this guy right here," George said slapping Joe on the shoulders, to which Joe glared.

" Thanks Joe." Hazel said to him and he smiled at her with a nod.

Joe Talks About His Mom

" You sound like you have a nice family." Hazel said as she glanced at him. Joe glanced at her.

" Yeah, I'd say I do, but mama runs the house. You respect her or you get a slap." Joe said and Hazel smiled shyly, as Joe glanced at her.

" 'Course, you know me, I upset her a few times when I shouldn't have." Joe said. Hazel watched him.

" I got in fights a lot, bruised bloody knuckles, some skinny guy like me getting beat up in the bar down the street." Joe said, shrugging before looking at Hazel,

" Ever since I was a kid really." Hazel softly watched him, with concerned eyes.

" I'd get pushed down in the park?" Joe started, nodding his head as he picked at his fingers, annoyed, " I'd cry. And I'd go running home to my mom, where she'd give me hugs and kisses, and then some of that Hershey's chocolate."

" It's why you love it so much." Hazel said, shifting closer to Joe in the cold and looking at him gently. Joe felt a small smile on his face as he watched her.

" Yeah, you could say that." Joe said as Hazel grinned.

Joe loves his mom and I LIVE BY THAT. And chocolate being a comfort food because it reminds him of his mom, like yes, I’m going with that, and I just love that Hazel sits and listens to him, it makes me SOFT. Because mainly they both just love their mothers :)

Tricks and Pranks

She glanced towards Liebgott again thinking of her innocent little plan from this morning. She grinned to herself, before slowly bringing her socked feet over the edge to touch the ground. She slowly stood, with her outstretched hands in front of her, tip-toeing towards the sleeping man in his bed. She wanted to get him back after almost a year of the playful teasing she endured from him. And plus, they were friends, she had every right to wake him from a peaceful sleep. Hazel watched Joe shift a bit in his bed and then resume snoring again. Hazel smirked to herself.

Then she acted. She jumped lightly onto him, right next to his ear, and had to let out a laugh before saying a quick boo in his ear. Joe shot awake underneath her, and it seemed his first instinct was to latch onto her, shoving her to his side, down into the bed, his eyes wide, breathing heavy. But all he saw was Hazel, beside him, small giggles leaving her lips as she squeezed her eyes shut, laughing. Joe tried to be mad at the girl for waking him up, but he felt he couldn't be mad at her. She was too innocent to be remotely upset for waking him up.

" Well, good morning to you, too." Joe muttered out as Hazel managed to let out one final laugh, before looking at him.

" That's for those months of teasing me." Hazel said as she giggled again. Joe couldn't keep the smirk that crawled onto his face off, as Hazel laughed.

" You're gonna get it, Parker." Joe said as Hazel just laughed, turning to roll off the bed to her socked feet again, a smile on her face.

" Sure," Hazel said, as she turned to him, with innocent eyes, and then frowned, " but why would you do that to me?" Joe bit his lip.

" Those puppy dog eyes don't work on me anymore, Parker." Joe said as he sat up and rubbed his eyes, " Only when you were sick and that was it." Hazel giggled.

" Can you two shut up?" a voice groaned and the two looked towards Chuck who's body hadn't moved as the voice crept out from around the pillow.

" Yeah Hazel." Joe said childishly as Hazel scoffed.

" You shut up." Hazel said, swinging her foot out towards his bed like a kid.

" No you." Joe argued.

" How about you both shut your yaps!" Bill yelled as he lied on his side across the barrack, his voice annoyed. Hazel couldn't help but look away and let a giggle past her lips childishly as Joe smirked at her. They were just kids. Hazel and Joe together were a pair of childish kids basically.

PRANKS ARE SO FUN AND THESE TWO MAKE IT SO ADORABLE AND HILARIOUS AHHHH

Comfort + Respecting Privacy

Joe Liebgott was the one who sat down beside his best friend, wrapping his warm, comforting arm around her shoulder and letting her rest her head on his shoulder. Joe wasn't about to start asking Hazel what was wrong, he had learned from his sisters that sometimes they just liked to be held in hugs and not talked to. That being there and being held was enough. Hazel wasn't used to that sort of comfort but she was beginning to welcome it with open arms. Joe came to a realization that night; he didn't like seeing Hazel cry. When Joe finally got Hazel resting, or at least attempting rest, he saw the letter that she had dropped to the side. But Joe held himself and closed the letter up and placed it beside the girl's boots. It was for her eyes only and he respected that.

Joe respecting her privacy with the letter from her father, truly shows the amount of respect he holds for her and I truly find it so beautiful, that middle line in bold, like I just love their friendship so much.

D-Day Hug

" Oh, Easy Company!" the group heard. The group turned and faceswere filled with relief to see more members of Easy sitting on the edge with bright smiles on their faces. A smile blossomed on Hazel's face as she recognized Joe Liebgott immediately.

" Joe!" she said excitedly as he neared her. A smile lit up his features as he immediately came upon the girl and wrapped his arms around her. She immediately wrapped her arms around him and hugged him so tight, she wasn't sure if he was still breathing or not. She could've cried as he held her tightly in his arms, so protectively. She had never wanted to hug someone as much as she did now, just to have someone's arms around her, holding her and securing her. She never knew what security a hug could provide.

Physical touch is an important aspect for both of them, especially the meaning of a hug for the both of them. After this, Joe comforts her after her encounter with a German on D-Day, and it’s the first time Joe reassures her about a very real and impactful and painful, traumatizing situation. From her on we see where Hazel knows she can trust Joe with her emotions.

Talking About Their Faith

" Did you think you'd be here?" Joe asked her, " You know after you joined the WAC?" Hazel glanced at him and let out a tiny sigh before glancing at the sky again.

" I believe in God, Joe." Hazel said softly and then looked at him. Joe watched her softly.

" God believed that he could put me through something like this, and I believed I could to," Hazel said softly, eyes shining with stars in them, " so when the flyer came I signed up." Hazel looked at him with a sad shrug. He didn't know about her dad. But she didn't want to gain all his trust and then show him that she really feared trusting people so much. But the thing was, she trusted Joe, a lot. They were best friends.

This was just so important, for Joe, for Hazel, for both of them, to sit under the stars in the middle of Normandy and for Hazel to tell Joe about her faith in God, and think about her trust she held in Joe. I loved this moment.

Flowers 2.0

That's when there was a knock on the door.

" Blasted, who could that be at this time?" Harry said throwing his kitchen towel over his shoulder and heading up the step towards the door. Harry opened the door as the three women watched and saw Harry's face light up.

" I knew it was you!" Harry called, stepping out to hug the person on the other side, " C'mon in ya blood Yank, gave me half a scare." Hazel raised a brow watching as Lizzie sipped her tea softly. That's when it was non-other than Joe Liebgott who stepped through the door, a smirk upon his features, hair a bit fluffier than normal, and a bouquet of flowers in his grasp. She watched Lizzie smirk and lean over to Hazel and Grace.

" And supposedly he's just a best friend." Lizzie murmured. Hazel shoved Lizzie's shoulder as Lizzie chuckled. Grace smiled at the blush that bloomed on Hazel's face.

" There she is!" called Joe as he entered the kitchen and went over to Hazel first, grabbing her in a hug from behind.

" These are for you." Joe said as he handed her the flowers.

" Aw thank you, Joe," Hazel said, fighting down more of a blush than she ever had.

" Where'd you get them, Joe?" grace asked as Joe gave her a quick hug.

" Down at the market, they have the best flowers there." Joe said, before giving Lizzie a quick hug and resuming standing next to the little island a smile on his features as he watched Hazel gently sniff the flowers and smile at them.

" Thank you, Joe, really." Hazel said.

" What can I say? You're turning 20, I say yellow flowers are pretty important for that." Joe said and Hazel grinned.

Need I say more LOL

Having Each Other’s Backs

" Hey, man what's your issue?" one replacement snapped.

" My issue is, you're not treating her right, and I don't like that. Either grow up or go home. There's a reason you're here." Joe snapped. The replacements stared at him.

" Disrespecting her or any women, is never the reason." Joe snapped again, " you're here to fight a war. And that war's a scary thing, so open your damn eyes and get that through your brains." Joe then put the cigarette back on his lips, and turned away from them and walked back over to Hazel who stared with wide eyes at him. He just placed an arm over her shoulder and turned her around.

" I promise you right now that I'm fuming inside." Joe said to her through the cigarette on his lips. Hazel smiled softly. Joe always had her back, even when she felt she couldn't say anything.

“Best Friend Privileges”

" Let me show ya." Joe said as he pushed from the counter and walked to her side. She glanced at him.

" No." Hazel said, a small smirk on her face.

" Good luck Joe, she's rubbing off on you." Catherine said leaning back to watch. Hazel laughed.

" No?" Joe said a smirk on her face, " Come on, I wanna help you." Hazel pulled the dart back shaking her head. Joe stared at her, a smirk on his face.

" What? No best friend privileges?" he said. Best friend privileges; a cute little phrase that Hazel and Joe had started tagging onto the end of things, when they would play around and they couldn't get what either of them wanted, or just to annoy the other.

“ Best friend privileges”? ok you two LOL

Adoration

Joe watched Hazel's eyes, even if it were from the side. He didn't know what had gotten into him, but Hazel truly fascinated him. And it was a good fascination. A fascination in the sense of adoration. And Joe never thought he'd adore Hazel as much as he did, because he kept a tight circle usually. But Hazel....Hazel was Hazel. She wasn't fake, she wasn't someone who tried to be someone else, she was loyal and trustworthy and genuine and Joe just knew he could talk to her about anything.

Joe had never admitted it to anyone, but he had always thought that even from the start that she had a beautiful soul. And even if it were cliche, he had never met someone who was like Hazel. And he was glad that the person he did meet was Hazel. Maybe it was the look in her eyes when she greeted everyone in the barracks as he stood cowering in the corner pissed off at Bill Guarnere for the fight that broke out between the two of them, and then the anger that resided with him the rest of the boat ride. Maybe it was the fairly firm handshake she had offered and the way her eyes were gentle enough to tell a different story compared to the rest of the company. Maybe it was because she didn't approach him, asking what the other girls would ask; a dance, a kiss. Maybe it was because she had accepted Joe for who he was and didn't seem to care that he was a real asshole or that he was someone who would fight people, until his hands dripped crimson red blood, down his knuckles and into his fingers.

Maybe it was what she had said to him, as she looked into her eyes, without fear, that sometimes people fought because they fought for what they believed in. Maybe because instead of doubting himself for launching at Bill, he actually believed it, for a probable cause. Joe didn't know what it was, why he was the way he was, but Hazel had accepted him for him - and she always seemed to do that with every person. Joe Liebgott felt there was no higher strength than that.

Soft Joe? YES MA’AM. Need I even say more about this scene.

The Two Beans Defending Each Other

Joe and Hazel, the two peas in a pod they were, were practically inseparable after the events of Nuenen and especially her ongoing sickness which fought her throat like a dragon in a cage. So there they were, passed out and exhausted as they snored silently side by side curled in balls like those cats you saw in the window shops on Main Street. But Joe, being the person he was, cared for his friends in any way he could. He agreed, he was an asshole, but he was asshole for specific reasons most of the time. But with his friends, that was different. Especially a friend, a best friend at that who was sick and was kept up at night by coughs or a fever or the chills.

Over the past few weeks, he had been staying closer to Hazel than before, making sure she ate and drank, making sure she slept and was warm and if there was medicine that Gene could provide that she could get some. And so sleeping next to her, was another way to make sure that if she started coughing, he was there, to make sure he patted her back, and got her water. But he'd always been that way whenever one of his family members were sick. He was cocky, and admittedly rude sometimes, and he had a crude sense of humor, but family and friends were important and when he cared, he cared; he didn't try to hide that. And many of the men knew that about Joe. When Joe cared about someone, he did everything in his power to make sure they were alright.

And in this case, it was Hazel. Catherine looked up from her cup of water towards Joe and Hazel who were curled up, sound asleep and smiled softly. Catherine truly admired their companionship. They were complete opposites, yet they were best friends who understood each other like the backs of their own hands. If Hazel was doing it, Joe probably was as well and where ever the one went, the other followed. And they acted like actual children, but knew when to get serious. And if you messed with either one of them, hell came for them.

I can’t preach enough about these two having each other’s back, it’s the cutest thing and it makes me so soft. But Joe being by her side as she is horribly sick, is one of the purest things ever, just to make sure she’s okay, I can’t even describe how important it is that he sticks around as she is so ungodly sick. (+Joe Liebgott punching Cobb out the week before for saying something about Hazel, but maybe that’ll be another post :))

Physical Touch > Comfort

Hazel watched Joe come up the dike, her eyes softly resting on him. Joe met her eyes from across the large area. Hazel bit her lip and then slowly approached Joe who stood, seemingly waiting to rip off someone's head. Joe didn't scare Hazel, whether he was happy, whether he was sad, whether he was upset. She never feared a friend. She never feared someone she trusted, but sometimes they broke your heart in the end. And that's where Hazel was careful. But Joe. Joe she trusted deeply. Hazel looked up at him, as he tried to contain himself, contain the anger that seemed to want to spill past every inch of him. Hazel slowly reached forward and gently pushed up the brim of his helmet from his eyes. Joe felt his eyes close at the soft touch. When he opened his eyes next, Hazel's soft eyes were watching his. Her eyes then went to his neck. She slowly reached to his wound and gently touched the skin on his neck. He flinched.

" Make sure you get that checked out, Joe." Hazel whispered softly. Joe looked at her and forcefully nodded. He was angry, so angry. Hazel knew that physical touch calmed Joe more than anything; it was something his mother had always done from what he had told her about Mrs. Liebgott. Liebgott had told Hazel that his mother would always try to hug him, brush her hands through his hair or scuff it up to annoy him, gently pat his shoulder, give him a rub on the back. So Hazel slowly reached forward and adjusted his collar and the part of his ODs which buttoned up on the front. Joe watched his friend, her gentle eyes remaining so focused even after the chaos of the battle they'd just gone through, the little bit of her tongue poking out from her lips as she remained focused on adjusting the front of his ODs, her freckles more prominent from the constant sun she had been getting, the way her blue eyes flitted about. Joe slowly reached up and wrapped his hands around Hazel's, causing her to look up towards him slowly. Joe let out a shaky breath, attempting to calm himself. Hazel always calmed him down, even if she didn't know it. Joe then didn't hesitate to slowly wrap his arms in a trembling hug around her neck and pull her into his arms. Hazel slowly hugged him back, pulling him close, holding him there. Sometimes the boys needed to be held, it was human nature.

Hazel comforting Joe, quite possibly is the purest thing I’ve ever written in my life and the fact she makes him calmer and more controlled makes me love them even more!! <3

Joe Returning From His Neck Wound

" Guess who?" a voice asked and Hazel's eyes widened.

" The life size Hershey bar?" Hazel asked quietly, a small smile starting to bloom on her face.

" I think better than that." the voice said and Hazel slowly turned her head.

" Joe!" Hazel cried, shooting up from her bed to wrap her arms around his neck. She heard Joe laugh in her ear as he wrapped his arms around her, bringing her close. She cuddled her head into his neck, a small smile on her face, as she squeezed her eyes shut. She had missed him more than she thought.

" I missed you Joe." Hazel said quietly so only he could hear. She felt his chest rumble, he chuckled. He smelled like pine, a good pine scent, the one you smelled in winter in the mountains, sorta like when you would get a Christmas tree, and there was that familiar hint of smoke. It was comforting.

" I missed you more, Parker." Joe said and Hazel grinned. Hazel just squeezed him tighter in the hug, he was back and he was here.

THE LIFESIZE HERHSEY BAR I SWEAR I LOVE THIS PART

PARIS

There’s too many good parts in the Paris chapters to even sight, so I’m just going to tell my own view on it, where we finally see Hazel trust Joe enough to tell him about her past, where Joe finally realizes he loves her after the French Aritst drew her and all we see is his interior monlogue of the entire thing of him just straight up ADMIRING her. And Hazel telling Joe about her past, trusting him enough to know, is something VERY important to her and to both of them because Hazel doesn’t tell many people so telling Joe is H U G E. And then of course the Effiel Tower and he helps her DANCE AGAIN because dancing centers around the bad memories of her father who left her and we see Joe really starting to fall in love. AH. It just makes me so so happy to see it and there’s too many adorable things to sight so here’s the chapters:

57 through 58: https://my.w.tt/v6dzKHBML8

Joe Tells George About His Feelings (+Their Underrated Friendship)

I really wanted to bring about the friendship of Joe Liebgott and George Luz, because I feel like they’d be a chaotic duo and writing them is always chaotic and it is HILARIOUS but also full of brotherly love and just Joe telling George about his realization of his feeling for Hazel. We start to see Joe, really starting to get these feelings, but also remembering there is a war on and getting attached could easily get any of them killed in the end, so it’s very much a tough mental battle.

Joe and Hazel Talking About Lieutenant Dike

Honestly these two gossiping about Dike gave me so MUCH LIFE.

" Sergeant Lipton, he told me you had to go on OP duty. Supposedly one's been dug out." he said.

" Sir, what OP, there's multiple." Hazel asked him quickly, confused.

" He said there's one around here." Dike said looking past her and Joe, " I'm not sure, he just told me to find you and that you and Powers I believe are on duty first."

" Yes, sir." Hazel said as Dike nodded and then walked right past them. Hazel and Joe watched side by side as Dike walked away, with the audacity to be whistling as he did so.

" We are in the middle of a fucking war, right?" Joe muttered. Hazel glanced at Joe.

" I don't think he cares." Hazel said. And that wasn't in any way going to be beneficial to the men and women of Easy Company.

" You sure you're staying warm?" Joe asked Hazel as they approached the foxhole where Shifty sat, cleaning his weapon.

" Yeah, of course I am." Hazel said.

" Well, you're tiny, Hazel, and tiny and cold don't exactly mesh if you think of it." Joe said as Hazel smirked. She watched Joe's eyes search hers softly. Joe wished he could do something more to make her warmer, but he could barely maintain 98.6 for himself. She looked like she was freezing.

Hazel Tells Joe About Life After The War For Her

" What's on your mind?" Joe asked her, watching as she glanced towards him and a small laugh escaped her.

" It's stupid, Joe." she said. Joe quirked a smirk her way.

" Really? Try me, Parker." Joe said and Hazel grinned, shrugging.

" I don't know, as a little girl you always think about life when you're older and stuff like that," Hazel said and Joe watched her softly, " I've just been thinking a lot about life, after the war." Joe dropped the smirk and a smile filled his features.

" Just the little things, what I might name my first daughter, or what pictures I might hang up in my living room, just little things like that." Hazel said, with a shrug, a small smile. Joe watched Hazel smile and then loop her fingers together, nodding softly.

" You got a name in mind?" Joe asked her and she glanced towards him, fighting down the tiny blush that was on her cheeks.

" I don't know," she said, a nervous giggle escaping her lips, she never had told anyone she thought about this often.

" Why you nervous, it's just me?" Joe said as she giggled softly again.

" Juliette." Hazel said quietly, with a small nod, before peaking up at Joe who watched her intently, " Not from Romeo and Juliet, but the French way. There was a girl in my elementary school who spelled her name that way and she was always so nice to me. I've always liked the name." Hazel smiled fondly, as if a memory were resurfacing in her brain.

" It's a pretty name." Joe said and Hazel looked up at Joe.

" Yeah," Hazel said," I don't know, it's a unique spelling, I like it." Joe smiled at her, and she smiled brightly back. Even in the cold, she found a way to smile and that warmed his heart because currently she was the only thing making him smile.

ACK MY HEART. but for me this scene I felt was important because even in the middle of the war, Hazel is still thinking about life afterwards and CHILDREN something so innocent, so gentle, so kind, so warm, something to vastly different from that of the horror of the cold and blistery Bastogne.

Hazel and Joe After the Solo Patrol

" How was it?" Joe asked her, and she glanced up at him. Hazel let out a sigh and shrugged.

" Just seeing his body there," Hazel said shaking her head, " it wasn't what I expected to see. You know, I was just thinking of what his parents are going to think when they get his dog tag." Joe looked at her.

" He was only a year younger than me," Hazel said, shaking her head.

" I know I'm not the most sentimental type, Hazel, but I know when something's bothering you. You know you can talk to me, I am your best friend. I hate to think you'll keep it on your chest," Joe said as he looked her way. Hazel's heart warmed. Hazel smiled at him, and Joe noticed her dimples show up. They always did when she smiled. She curled her knees up to her chest and let out a sigh.

" Thank you, Joe," she said quietly looking at him in the silence of the snow falling outside and hitting the top of the tarp. The two looked at each other, as Hazel's eyes seemed to shine in the night. Hazel gently took his hand in hers and began gently curling and uncurling his fingers. Joe watched her, his heart pounding faster and faster by the second and she didn't even know.

" You're still wearing this?" she said with a slight giggle, touching the bracelet she had given Joe, which lay on his wrist.

" Of course I am," Joe said, as he watched Hazel smile.

" You just have a little piece of me," she said, her fingers like ice on his skin, and Joe watched her smile. Then she looked up at him and her smile grew, like a child in a candy store.

THIS!! They can have a very REAL conversation about life, but then can easily make each other feel so much better with just a few words, even just a look, they just know how to make one another feel better, to keep humanity around, something the war deprives them of.

Chrismtas 1944 -> Singing

I wanted to make a scene on Christmas Day 1944, where we see the group have a bit of humanity, singing Christmas songs in the snow, a bit of that realness, that human like atmosphere or Christmas that they all miss still very real and very prevalent in most cases.

" Sleigh bells ring, are you listening..." George sang joyfully, wrapping his arm around Bill's shoulder, before poking Bill's ear. Bill swatted at his hand as George chuckled.

" In the lane snow is glistening, a beautiful sight we're happy tonight, walking in a winter wonderland..." Bill sang and George gave a whoop. Hazel laughed lightly before looking back at Joe.

" What?" she said softly, reaching forward to tilt his helmet up from his dark eyes.

" Happy looks good on you." he said with a small smile. Hazel blushed and thanked God for the darkness that night provided. Thank God for the darkness.

" Joe..." she whispered.

" I'm serious, you've been through a lot, and seeing you happy, it's a nice sight to see." he whispered softly to her. Hazel let out a tiny giggle, looking down at her hands, before looking back up at Joe. He was smiling.

IT JUST MAKES ME SOFT OKAY I NEEDED THIS AFTER ALL THAT ANGST :(((

Joe Comes Back From Being Winters’ Runner

This scene centers heavily on Joe coming back from being Winters’ Runner at Battalion for a few days, but eventually was sent back to the company because of the way he was with prisoners, but it is between him and Hazel. And normally Joe’s this soft sorta guy around her, but when he approaches her, he’s glum, and dealing with a lot of emotions of anger and hate. And Hazel doesn’t tell him “Joe, you have to be happier.” No, she tells him straight up, that it is okay to feel those things and in time you will get better, but those sad feelings are okay, and I feel that was important between them and for Joe to hear from Hazel, for her to tell him, it is okay to feel things, those sort of emotions. But by the end, we see him lighten up a bit, because I mean Joe with Hazel? He can’t help but soften up.

" It's okay to feel that, I feel it too," she said softly rubbing his arm," your emotions, they're important, it's okay to feel that way." God, Hazel made him so happy, even with just a sentence like that.

" I don't think I've told you thank you enough," Joe said glancing at her. She quirked an innocent brow.

" Just, you're always there for me and my bullshit," Joe said shrugging as she smiled.

" And you're there for mine." she said with a toothy smile from under the brim of her helmet. Joe's heart warmed.

Quiet Comfort

That night, at the dinner line, it was so quiet. Catherine didn't show up for dinner. Hazel and Lizzie were there, but they were so quiet and closed off, that they could barely talk with tear filled eyes, and red, blood-shot eyes. Joe Liebgott sat next to Hazel that night, on the log from earlier that afternoon, as she pushed the food around in the tin. Joe could see her holding back her trembling lip, as well as the tears that wanted to fall from her eyes. So Joe decided to sit beside her and eat quietly, and not say anything. Hazel needed him to know that she appreciated him just sitting there, without saying a word. She slowly reached forward, and grabbed his hand with her gloved one without even making eye contact. She interlaced their fingers, sucking in a shaking breath as she did so. Her hand was cold in his own warm one, but Joe knew it meant the world to Hazel. Joe knew that as thanks from her, especially right now.

To Hazel, Bill Guarnere and Joe Toye meant the world to her; they were like big brothers, always looking out for her, protecting her, defending her, comforting her, just there for her, so she’s hurt after they get wounded, and Joe knows that he just has to sit by her side and not say a word to let her know that he’s there.

Joe And Hazel Talk About The Stars and Sadness

THIS SCENE IT IS SO UNGODLY IMPORTANT FOR BOTH OF THEM - for Joe to come and see Hazel upset and ultimately comfort her and let her know that he’s there for her, it just ACK.

" I'm sorry your sad, Hazel," Joe whispered beside her and she looked at him, " I wish there was something I could do to take it away." Hazel watched his eyes search hers and smiled gently; she knew he was truthful in his words. Joe Liebgott was always truthful to her, no matter what, they were best friends.

" Can you just stay here with me?" she whispered softly, as her eyes welled with more tears.

" Yeah," Joe said immediately, a small smile on his face, " of course, what type of best friend would I be?" Hazel let out a slight giggle that settled Joe for the moment. Joe gently wrapped an arm around her shoulders and she rested her weary head against his shoulder, shutting her eyes. Joe brought her as close as he could, her tiny body, shaking in his grasp as she lay there so quietly.

" I'm glad we're friends you know? Best friends?" Joe said quietly, " Remember I told you how fascinating it was to see your love for the stars? Or how caring and kind you were to everyone and how strong you were?" Hazel gently looked up to meet his eyes with her own and she smiled softly at him.

" How'd I get so lucky to have a friend like you?" Joe said to her and Hazel felt more tears rush to her eyes as she watched him, his face turning blurry from the tears.

" Do you want to tell me about the stars?" he whispered softly, brushing a stray tear from her cheek that trailed down from her sad, blue eyes.

" Yes," she whispered softly watching him and she saw him smile.

" Alright, get comfy," Joe said as she giggled a bit cuddling into his side, and they looked up towards the gleaming stars.

" I'm excited," he whispered as if he were a kid about to watch a movie and Hazel giggled.

Okay so this scene is actually much longer but I wanted to show Joe’s comfort levels from letting her know she’s there, making her feel better, staying with her to comfort her, to hold her, just let her feel safe finally, that sort of thing, and letting her talk about whatever she wants and then ultimately being the most patient listener and it makes me S O F T AHHHHHH I swear these two ruin me.

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

I AM SORRY THIS IS AS LONG AS IT IS O M G i promise to control myself, but i was like screw it i love these two so much and they deserve this post :) i hope this works!! but i’ll be happy to do ad astra, as i’ve said, because i didn’t realize how long just the soldier of stars would be OMG LOL!! i had so much fun because i relived so many adorable moments that i forgot happened and i can’t thank you enoguh for this post on my little, innocent babies who deserve happiness and the world ;) thank you so so much, truly!! <3

#band of brothers #hazel parker and joe liebgott #the soldier of stars #friends to lovers #THIS IS SO LONG I AM SORRY #SO SO VERY LONG #LIKE L O N G #AHHHHH #but i love them with every fiber in my body so it was worth it :)#PLEASE YALL IM SORRY FOR HOW LONG IT IS

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 4 years

Text

Here is my new theory for who Kindred could be.

It's Gwen Stacy.

Not a clone of her. Not a duplicate. Not a clone or duplicate that previously existed or a newly formed one.

The bona fide article.

She is not only the only person who fits all the clues but she also makes way too much sense on a metatextual level.

1) Kindred has been heavily implied to be a pre-existing deceased character and of course Gwen is one of the two most famously deceased characters in Spider-Man

2) Spencer has reaffirmed that Mysterio did in fact die back in the 'Guardian Devil' arc of Daredevil and Kindred consequently brought him back to life.

Putting aside how Gwen as a fellow dead person could've been in a position to do that, this means that Kindred must've been working from behind the scenes since at least USM Annual #3 circa 2008. Thanks to Spider-Men we know retroactively that this was the first time Mysterio showed up alive and well in a Spider-Man comic book. In publication order this was ASM #618 from 2010; hmm Mysterio was confirmed as alive 10 years ago, isn't THAT interesting?

Either way his return occurred after Friendly Neighborhood #11-13 where he was already shown as an undead servant of Hell; which of course was pre-OMD.

Even if we argued Beck wasn't working for Kindred in the latter arc it still means that Kindred must be someone who was dead before 2008-2010. Gwen obviously fits this profile.

3) This is where some metatextual circumstantial evidence starts to come into play. Who ELSE died in 'Guardian Devil'? Karen Page ANOTHER blonde girlfriend created by Stan Lee in the 1960s. And she was the girlfriend to Daredevil no less, who traditionally has been associated with Spider-Man one way or another; they've shared villains, been street level characters and pre-Frank Miller Daredevil was treated as a low-rent Spidey.

If you know a little of the behind-the-scenes for 'Guardian Devil' as well as check out Daredevil #1/2 you can see that Karen's death occurred for sort of similar reasons as OMD happened, but also for sort of similar reasons for why Gwen was killed off in 1973.

4) And just who were the creators working on 'Guardian Devil', the guys who felt Karen should die?

Well one of them was Kevin Smith, the guy who also infamously wrote a mini-series involving one of Spencer's favourite characters (Black Cat, who Kindred has also been shown observing) that also reintroduced a new version of Mysterio, Francis Klum who appeared in FNSM #11-13.

The other was...Joe Quesada. Not only did 'Guardian Devil' involve Mephisto briefly but Quesada wanted to revive Gwen with One More Day until brevoort talked him out of it.

5) Kindred first appears in a courthouse. This is a very loose connection I will admit but the courthouse is part of the justice system and Gwen's father was a decorated police captain. After his death she also supported a hardline law and order [b][u]mayoral candidate[/u][/b].

6) In Spencer's second arc, Kindred directly interacts with the [b][u]current mayo[/u][/b]r of NYC and recurring character under Spencer's run: Wilson Fisk.

7) Gwen has reason to resent Kingpin and make him bow because in Stan's run (the Brand of the Brainwasher arc IIRC) he brainwashed her father and jeopardize his and her life.

8) In Spencer's third arc Kindred is angry that Peter has revealed his identity to Black Cat. Gwen never interacted with Felicia, but Kindred's reaction makes a lot of sense if it was Gwen behind the mask. Gwen would be mad that Peter was bringing yet another woman into the crossfire of his life, endangering her life just as Gwen's was. Equally she might be mad that Peter revealed the truth to Felicia but not to herself

9) In Hunted and ASM #826, Kindred expresses a desire to keep MJ out of the conflict and even arranges for her to be off in Hollywood. This would be a logical thing for Gwen to do if she bears a grudge against Peter. MJ was her friend so she wouldn't want her hurt in general, but more importantly she doesn't want MJ to be caught in the crossfire just as she was.

10) In Absolute Carnage we have Kindred talking to Norman, clearly holding disdain for him and enjoying his pathetic state. The connection speaks for itself but noticeably Kindred says that Norman is responsible for turning him/her into what they are now. This would make sense if you argue Gwen become undead and twisted was the result of her murder. Norman didn't administer the killing blow (it was Peter when he accidentally broke Gwen's neck) but Norman still put her in that position in the first place, he still abducted her and knocked her off the bridge.

11) If Spencer was REALLY being brave this could work in the context of Sins Past too. Gwen might not only have become twisted by her death but also by having to deal with her pregnancy in total secrecy, by having to leave her children, by having them taken from her when she died and knowing Norman took them and corrupted them. If you argue Norman, even briefly on some level, felt any affection for Gwen, then seeing her become a twisted villain like himself might give him cause to feel proud of her as he was in ASM #832

12) Gwen appeared in the flashbacks in ASM #831-832, the ones harkening back to the Silver Age

13) Harry Osborn was so heavily hinted at in those issues it HAS to be a red herring

14) Kindred's outfit doesn't hint at his/her sex, but Kindred's 'framing' within the narrative has I'd argue been more masculine. I think the proof of this is that most people have been guessing various male characters. That could be deliberate to throw us off the scent

15) Even if you feel that Kindred's body build is too masculine to be Gwen, remember Kindred has insects, rats and other critters inside his/her bandages, meaning the body buildhe/she appears to have might not be the body build he/she actually has

16) Want some more meta evidence? Kindred is a hooded figure who can clearly crawl on walls? Reminiscent of Spider-Gwen isn't it?

17) Of all characters who would suspect Gwen Stacy? Everyone regards her as too much of a sacred cow to touch, making her surely the most shocking reveal ever!

18) In response to that last point you might be saying

[quote]Of course no one suspects that. We don't suspect that BECAUSE Marvel would absolutely NEVER turn Gwen Stacy into a demonic undead villain[/quote]

And 10 years ago I might've agreed with you.

But nowadays Gwen Stacy's profile is distinctly different.

Within the mind of the general public I'd argue that Gwen Stacy's status as 'Spider-Man's dead girlfriend' has been supplanted (or at the very least challenged) by her status as Spider-Gwen.

She has appeared in no end of merchandise and cosplays in that form and of course in two cartoons and a hit animated feature.

In fact I went to Marvel.com and searched for 'Gwen Stacy' in their character section. You can ONLY find Ghost-Spider/Spider-Gwen, not the 616 version of the character.

With Spider-Gwen around I'd argue that Marvel regards 616 Gwen as far less of a sacred cow than they used to.

To be clear, I'm not saying that I necessarily WANT this to be the payoff to Kindred. But I now heavily suspect it will be.

#Gwen Stacy #Kindred #one more day #Spider-Man #Nick Spencer #Mysterio #Quentin Beck #Peter Parker #Spider-Gwen #Ghost-Spider #amazing spider-man

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nkp1981 · 4 years

Text

Epilogue of a story with an angry cook named Joe and a quiet book nerd named Nicky

Part 5 can be read here: https://bit.ly/37J57Py

Part 1 can be read here: https://bit.ly/2TuJ5aQ

Even in his sleep Joe knew the way, and it was normally one of the first things he did in the morning. Making his way to Nicky’s tomb and sitting up against the tombstone for a bit no matter the weather. “So, I finally finished the last bit last night.” Joe said tired and looked at the paper, he was holding in his hands, while he thought back at the events that had unfolded the last couple of years.

Andy had been kind enough to let Joe stay with her after the funeral until he was ready to go back to the apartment again. Joe had just sat still in the corner most of the time holding on to the sweater, that still smelled like Nicky. “I think I'm ready.” Joe said on the tenth day and looked at Andy, who nodded. “Should I go with you?” She offered and even though Joe knew, she meant it well, he knew, that it was something, he needed to do alone. “I’ll call you.” Joe replied as the last thing, before he started to take one of the longest walks in his life.

It took Joe some time before he opened the front door, where the eerie silence hit him as the first thing, and it was with heavy steps that he made his way to the library. He looked around the room and sat down on the sofa, where he couldn’t hold back the tears again, but when he wanted to make an escape from the library, he knocked over one of the bookstacks, Nicky had made. “Sorry.” Joe said, but realized once again, that he was alone and started to pick up the books in the hope he could make the stack just like Nicky had done. When he picked up the last book a piece of paper and the picture of the house in Genova fell out from it, and when Joe picked it up, he sat down on the sofa once again with the paper over places Nicky wanted to see, that he had only read about in books, and the picture in his hands. After staring at it for a bit, Joe knew what he had to do. He looked at the clock, and since he didn’t want to wake Le Livre in the middle of the night, he went into the rooms with all the boxes, and started to sort out in them. He made two stacks: what he wanted to keep and what could be donated to charity. When he was finish, he called the nearest charity shop, so they could pick up the stuff, while he once again made his way back to the library and started to search for the five books on Nicky’s list:

'The Magic Mountain' by Thomas Mann, 'Death on the Nile' by Agatha Christie, 'The Black Book' by Orhan Pamuk, 'Midnight’s Children' by Salman Rushdie, 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' by Ernest Hemingway

When Joe had found the books, he put them in his backpack together with the sweater. Then he started to pack the entire library down in the empty boxes and wrote ‘Genova’ on them. The only time he got interrupted was when the people from the charity shop came to collect the stuff. “This is almost too much.” One of the women said, when they saw it. “I don’t need it, so if you can get something out of it, you can have it.” Joe replied and left them to clear the room, while he packed his own clothes in the backpack.

“Sorry for your loss.” Le Livre said, when Joe called him. “I need you to do something for me.” Joe replied and told Le Livre what he needed. “Are you sure you want to sell the apartment? I mean you can rent it out and earn some money on it until you're back again.” Le Livre said, but it didn’t interest Joe at all, because he knew that he wanted to live somewhere else. “Just get it done. That’s what I pay you for. And thanks.” Joe replied and ended the call. Then he picked up the backpack and looked around the apartment one last time to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. “I promise you, Nicky, that I will get it done for you.” Joe said as the last thing, before he closed the door to the library and left the apartment for good.

Joe had five things he needed to do before leaving New York for a time. The first two was to make sure, that those places, he had met and visit with Nicky wouldn’t be gone, when he returned in the future, so he bought the two diners, and gave the deeds to Nile and Gina with the only condition, that they should have talk together, and that they always could reach him through Le Livre if they needed anything. They both promised him it.

The third thing was to visit the spot Nicky had shown him, and stayed there until nightfall.

The fourth thing was to talk with Andy about his plans. “You’re welcome to join me.” Joe offered her. “No, that’s a trip you have to make alone, Joe.” Andy replied and gave him a hug. “I thought you would say that, so see this as the last gift from Nicky.” Joe said and handed her an envelope. “Nicky told me that you always wanted to become a Doctor, but because you didn’t have the money for it, you settled with becoming a nurse. This should get you through medical schools and if you need anything, you just call Le Livre or me.” Joe explained and Andy pulled him in for another hug. “Thanks to you both.” She muttered and looked at the papers for medical school. “Don’t mention it, but keep an eye on Nicky for me until I'm back next year.” Joe said and picked up his backpack. “I promise you.” Andy replied and watched as Joe got into a taxi through the window.

The fifth thing was to visit Nicky’s grave, where Joe placed a hand on the marble stone on the wall. “I promise to come back and get you home, but I need to make this trip first, and I got a plan, so you also are with me in every step I make. Andy will keep an eye on you as always.” Joe said and closed his eyes. “I love you!” He said as the last thing, before he walked towards the waiting taxi, but before he got into it, he looked back briefly and as the taxi drove off, he cried silently.

Joe spent the next year traveling to those five places that were described in those five books. He had decided to bury each of the books at a spot that overlooked the different cities, since Nicky had loved the skyline. It wasn’t an easy thing to do but with every new city, Joe felt a bit better, but he still missed Nicky terribly.

On his last night in Cairo Joe sat down in the chair at the balcony, while he absent mindedly played with their wedding rings, when Le Livre called him. “The house is ready for you. Sorry it took so long but they work at a different pace in Italy.” He complained. “And the permissions?” Joe wanted to know. “I got it in my hands, and I’ll email it tonight, so you won’t have any problems in the airports or else you call me if needed.” Le Livre replied sounding proud as always when he had done something for Joe. “Thanks for everything.” Joe said grateful. “Don’t mention it.” Le Livre replied and ended the call. When Joe was packing his backpack it was Andy, who called. “Are you still coming?” She wanted to know. “Yeah, and everything is ready, so we can take Nicky home.” Joe replied. “I hope that you will tell me more about your secret plans when you get here. I’ll text you the address.” Andy said as the last thing. She had been working somewhere north of New York the last couple of months.

Joe then took the sweater and sat down once again on the balcony. “We’re going home, love. And yes, I’ve thought about Andy.” Joe said out loud. He didn’t mind if people thought he were odd for having, what to them seemed like half conversations, but they meant everything to him, because he could still hear Nicky.

The first thing Joe did, when he landed in New York was to visit Nicky’s grave and placed a hand on the marble stone and closed his eyes. “As promised, I came back and I’m not leaving New York without you. Just gonna get Andy and we’ll be on our way.” Joe whispered and stood like that, while he thought back on the days in the library. Before driving north. Joe also made a stop at the spot to look at the skyline once again.

“Joe!” Andy said happy when she saw him and gave him a hug. “Hey, how are you doing?” Joe asked and leaned up against the car. “Better now that you’re here. Listen, I still got an hour left at work, so why don’t you take a walk around the park?” Andy asked and told Joe to just follow the path to his right and he would end up back at the car.

When Joe reached a meadow, he saw children playing and sat down on a bench for a moment to enjoy the sun. Suddenly he heard a noise behind him and thought first it was an animal, but when he heard a cry, he took a closer look and found a little boy in the thornbush, who was caught amongst the branches. “Someone is having a bad day.” Joe said with a smile and picked up the boy, who stopped crying the moment he sat on Joe’s arm and nuzzled into his shoulder, before Joe started to walk down towards the children in the hope of finding the boy’s mother. “Are you missing a child?” Joe asked the first woman, he saw. “Oh, thanks. That boy is always ending up in troubles.” She replied and shook her head, but when she wanted to take the boy, he held on to Joe, while turning his head away, but when she took him anyway, he started to cry. When Joe took his hand to comfort him, he saw that he had a bracelet on with a name, which made him smile, but before he could ask more about it the women had gone over to the group.

“I was starting to think that you were lost.” Andy joked. “Sorry, something caught my attention. Do you know anything about a group of children?” Joe wanted to know. “They’re from the orphanage, why?” Andy asked, but Joe didn’t give her an answer. “What do you say, we get something to eat, before we’re heading back?” Joe suggested. “Sounds like an idea, but only if you finally tell me about your secret plans.” Andy replied and Joe promised her it.

They found a diner in the town, but Joe, who hadn’t been really hungry, since Nicky had died ordered some fries, while Andy took the burger. They ate in silence, because Joe had drifted into his thoughts again, and Andy knew, he still was grieving in a different way, than she did, so she let him be, while she thought about, how to keep her promise to Nicky about never leaving Joe alone again. “Did it help? I mean with the traveling.” She wanted to know after she had eaten and placed a hand over his. “In a way yes but I need you to take the last part of the journey with me.” Joe replied and handed her a photo. “You bought the house. That’s what you meant about bringing Nicky home.” Andy said with a smile before handing Joe back the photo. “I’m bringing us all home, Andy. When you’re finished with the university, there will be a house waiting for you, because I’ve also bought every piece of land adjacent to the house Nicky loved. You find a spot you love, and I get it built. If it’s something, you want.” Joe replied not taking his eyes off the photo. “Thanks, I’ll make sure then, that you don’t turn into one of those strange hermits!” Andy joked and got a smile from Joe before they drove back to New York.

When they reached Genova, they buried Nicky’s urn in a spot that overlooked the town, before they sat down next to the grave. “Nicky would have loved you for doing this.” Andy said. “I hope so, Andy.” Joe replied. “What’s your plans now? I mean, I’ve still got some years left at the university before I can move out here.” Andy wanted to know. “I’ll show you, when I return to New York for the last time to get Nicky’s exam papers. The university has granted Nicky his bachelor’s in literature posthumous.” Joe replied and Andy knew that she wouldn’t get an answer out of Joe right now.

A noise from behind brought Joe back to reality. “Finally found it, daddy.” A little boy shouted with a big smile on his face. Joe had adopted the little boy, he had found in the thornbush back then, and he remembered the day he picked him up from the orphanage. The boy was sitting in the corner, where he was exploring the content of a potted plant by throwing soil out over it all. “Hey, remember me?” Joe asked and kneeled behind the boy, who first looked angry at Joe for leaving him behind, but after a couple of seconds the boy crawled over to Joe with a big smile and nuzzled into Joe’s shoulder once again, when he sat on Joe’s arm. “I’m never gonna leave you behind again.” Joe promised the boy. When Joe had taken the boy to visit Andy, she first thought that it was a joke, but then Joe handed her the bracelet with the boy’s name on it. “Incredible, you found another Nicky.” Andy said surprised and took the boy, who placed his chubby small hands on her face. “Actually, he found me.” Joe replied and told her about the boy in the thornbush.

“Are you sure it’s the right one this time?” Joe asked with a laughter in his voice. “I’m, look.” Nicky replied proud over, that he had finally found the right stone and gave Joe it, so he could take a closer look at it. “A mighty fine one. I think that he would love it.” Joe said and gave Nicky the stone back with a smile and watched as the boy placed the stone amongst the other stones he had found on the tomb. “I’m hungry.” Nicky said and tilted his head. “So am I and we better get a hurry on, so you won’t be late for school again.” Joe replied and watched as Nicky ran towards the house. “Be back soon, love.” Joe said as the last thing and placed a hand on the tombstone, before catching up with Nicky. “I want to fly.” Nicky said and Joe laughed. “Ok, but only two flights.” He suggested. “Three. It’s after all Friday.” Nicky begged and Joe gave in and threw him up in the air three times, before letting Nicky ride on his shoulders the rest of the way. “So, what do you want for breakfast?” Joe wanted to know. “Figs.” Nicky replied and looked down at Joe with a smile. “Seriously, you also got that yesterday and the day before that. What about eggs?” Joe asked and lifted him down on the porch. “No figs, daddy. Stop teasing me.” Nicky replied and ran towards the kitchen, where he crawled up on a chair. “Never gonna happen, but maybe Andy will help you to find a way to make me stop teasing you, when she gets here next week.” Joe said, while finding the figs and some honey. “Can’t wait. I do miss her.” Nicky replied and took the fig. “Me too, kiddo. Me too.” Joe said and found some cereal in the cupboard.

After getting Nicky to school on time for once, Joe returned to the tomb to sit there a bit, while he finished his drawings. “I already know, what you’re gonna say, when I tell you, that I got close to yelling at my drawing teacher yesterday.” Joe said with a smile, before he found some coal in the box.

my creation

#nicolo di genova #nicky #luca marinelli #yusuf al-kaysani #joe #yusuf x nicolo #marwan kenzari #joe x nicky #the old guard

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abundanceofsoph · 4 years

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SkyFire 1: Chapter 21

On the Road Again cont. & Rascal Flatts: August 2015

Word count: 3.3k

SkyFire 1 MASTERLIST

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As August began, the band found themselves back in New York. Following a show in Pittsburgh they arrived in the morning, the day before they were scheduled to appear on Good Morning America for the shows Summer Concert series and since it was scheduled to be filmed in Central Park, a mere stones throw away from Avengers Tower, it made sense for them to stay there instead of booking hotel suites for all of them.

Tony and Steve were glad to have Rori home, if only for two days, having missed her while she travelled with the band for the last 2 months and she’d missed them too, of course, happy to be home briefly before continuing on with the tour for another month. That evening they all crowded into the living room in the penthouse with Sam, Bucky and Thor joining the Stark-Rogers family and the band. They watched a movie, Aurora curled up against Tony, his arm wrapped around her shoulder. She fell asleep at some point, waking up when Louis started throwing popcorn at her, causing Niall to laugh hysterically. They didn’t stay up too late, aware of how early they would need to be up the following morning.

They sky was still dark when they woke the next morning and the sun was still hidden behind the city skyline, barely lighting the sky as they left the tower and walked across the road towards the southwest corner of Central Park. They were joined by the bands security team as they made their way up West Drive and across Sheep Meadow to reach the Summer Stage in Rumsey Playfield. Despite the pre-dawn hour, fans were already camped out across the park, having slept out overnight to ensure their spots for the concert and the five of them dashed towards the backstage tents behind the stage, avoiding drawing the attention of the fans in the soft morning light.

Finally, the sun rose into the sky, warming the summer morning and Aurora grinned with pride as they boys sat on the stage in front of all their fans, talking about the upcoming album, the rest of the tour and Louis’ exciting baby news. By the time the interview concluded, and the boys prepared for the first song, the morning was already warming up and Aurora removed her jacket, revealing her sundress and her most recent tattoo, a rose nestled between her shoulder blades, the stem tracing down her spine. She lifted her hands into the air, joining the fans surrounding her, cheering as the boys stepped back out on the stage and started the performance.

By the time the last song came to an end, Aurora made her way out of the crowd and towards the backstage tent, throwing her arms around Harry once he made his way of the stage.

xXx

After leaving New York, the tour stopped in Rutherford and Baltimore before taking 9 days off and while Niall, Liam and Louis used the time to fly home and see family briefly, Harry and Aurora headed for the coast to spend a few days on the beach.

Aurora barely wasted a moment to drop her bags inside the little beachfront cottage that they’d rented before she was out the door and heading down to the warm sand. Harry joined her a few moments later, wrapping his arms around her stomach as he came up behind where she was standing, her eyes closed and face turned towards the water, soaking up the afternoon sunlight, their toes digging into the sand below them.

They spent the next few days swimming in the ocean, reading or watching movies in the evenings and revelling in the opportunity to spend time alone together with nowhere to be or no one demanding their attention for one thing or another. On their last evening they were curled up on the porch swing, looking out over the moonlit waves, a blanket thrown over their laps to ward off the cool breeze blowing up off the ocean. Harry had a glass of wine in one hand, his other resting around Aurora’s shoulders as her head lay on his shoulder.

“So, there’s something I need to tell you before we get back to the tour,” Harry said, breaking the comfortable silence that had stretched around them in the summer night. “Something the boys and I have been talking about for a while now.”

“Should I be worried?” Rori asked, lifting her head up to look into his eyes.

“No,” Harry promised, “but we’ve decided to take a break. We’re going to go on a hiatus for a year or two.”

“What?” Aurora asked, surprised by the news, having had no idea that it was even an idea before now. “But things have been going so well. Why?”

“We’re all exhausted,” he explained. “None of us have gotten the chance to see our families or live our lives for more than a few weeks at a time in years. We’re in our early 20s and we’ve been working non-stop for the last 5 years. Zayn leaving just made us realise that this isn’t healthy for any of us and we decided we should take a year or two off now before any of us burn out. I don’t want any of them to leave like he did, I can’t do that again. If we all take a break now, we can make sure that doesn’t happen. I just hope the fans don’t hate us for it.”

“Oh Harry,” Rori sighed, wrapping her arms around her boyfriend and pulling him tightly against her. “They’ll be upset but they’ll support you guys no matter what happens. So will I.”

“I love you Rori,” he whispered. “Don’t know what I’d do without you in my life.”

“Good thing you’ll never have to find out,” she replied, smiling warmly up at the man she loved before kissing him. “When are you going to announce it?” she asked softly when they pulled apart.

“In a few weeks.”

xXx

Aurora and Harry flew into Columbus, Ohio the day before the band was scheduled to perform there, and while Harry headed for the stadium for rehearsals and interviews, Aurora took a cab to a local music studio.

She was nervous as she climbed out of the cab, adjusting the hem of her shirt as she made her way through the front doors and gave her name to the receptionist behind the front desk. She was buzzed through the doors to the right and instructed to take the first right and then the third door on the left. Aurora knocked as she opened the door and stepped into the control room, the large window in one wall looking into a spacious live room, instruments and microphones already set up and waiting. There were 3 men sitting in the control room, who all stood when she entered, stepping forward to introduce themselves. Gary, Jay and Joe were all lovely guys, and Aurora was a little star struck at first, having been fans of Rascal Flatts for years, but after spending most of the day chatting and getting to know each other she quickly got over that and was able to look forward to working alongside them for the 2 weeks without the overwhelming anxiety.

The following night Aurora watched the boys from the side of stage and once they left the stadium, she spent the evening wrapped up in Harry’s arms back at the hotel.

“So, Toronto, Chicago, Milwaukee and then you’re back with me,” Rori mumbled in the darkness.

“You’ll be so busy writing number 1 hits that you won’t have time to miss me,” Harry chuckled, trying to brighten his girlfriend’s mood.

“I know it’s silly,” she said. “It’s only 2 weeks but I’m so used to sleeping next to you every night.”

“It’s not silly, love,” Harry promised. “I feel the same, and I really wish we were gonna be together when the hiatus announcement drops.”

“You’ll have the boys with you. You’ll be ok. Just remember the fans love you guys so much. They could never hate you.”

“It’s gonna break their hearts though,” Harry mumbled. “Hate the thought of hurting them after they’ve given me my dreams.”

“And that’s why I love you.”

xXx

For the entirety of the two weeks Harry was gone, Aurora spent almost every moment she could in the studio with Gary, Joe and Jay, revelling in the opportunity to spend uninterrupted time writing and playing. She’d never set aside so much time to write music, usually spending an afternoon here or there, or scribbling lyrics in the back of notebooks while she studied, and she loved every minute of it.

“Ok I’ve got half of something,” Rori said one morning after they’d piled into the studio. “Just a half assed melody and a verse and chorus I came up with last night.”

“Alright well let’s hear it,” Joe said.

Aurora flipped open her notebook to the page she scribbled on the previous night and began to sing what she had, humming when she didn’t have the words to fill the gap.

I know we're running … usually two different ways But we need more than just a quick kiss and a wave goodbye I need you and only you by my side Why don't we turn off the phones, get somewhere alone? I'll trace that smile on your face, 'til the stars fade away Baby, cut off the lights, let our hands talk tonight There's things that need to be said, …. Got good love to be made, take as long as it takes One touch at a time, let our hands talk tonight

Joe picked up his guitar when she finished singing and started to put together the melody, asking her to re-sing certain sections, and then Jay was joining in with the bass line and Gary started piecing together another verse. They spent a few says working on the song until they’d finished Hands Talk and moved on to work on something else.

They played most of Yours If You Want It to Aurora towards the end of the first week and she made some suggestions to the unfinished song, writing a section to slip into the song about 2/3rds of the way through.

Every dollar, every dime, every drop of rain Every single thing I could beg, steal, or borrow Every yesterday and tomorrow Well every grain of sand on the beach Every blade of grass under our feet Baby your name is written on it And it's yours if you want it

“I love it,” Gary said, singing it through a few times for smiling widely. “Inviting you down here was the best idea we’ve ever had.”

The second week of Aurora’s stay in Columbia, she and Gary put their heads together and wrote Are You Happy Now over the course of a few days and after Gary sang the song through with Joe and Jay accompanying him on the guitar and bass, and Aurora playing the piano, all four of them were grinning from ear to ear with excitement.

“This one’s good,” Jay said.

“Let’s go through once more I want to try something,” Aurora said, already starting to play the opening keys of the song. The guys laughed at her eagerness but joined in quickly and when they reached the bridge and the third chorus, Aurora joined in on the vocals with Gary.

“Now that I'm not around,” Gary sang with Aurora echoing the line. “Now that you've finally,” Gary began, Aurora joining him on the second half of the line, “lost what you thought that you needed, never would have treated your heart, like you did. What goes around comes back around.” “It's been that way forever,” Gary continued. “Baby, just look at you now,” they sang together, Gary dropping out to let Aurora finish the line alone, “barely holding it together.” they alternated the next four lines seamlessly, Gary singing first and then Aurora.

“We're so in love.”

“but you gave that up.”

“Just look around.” “Just look around.”

And then they sang the last chorus together, occasionally alternating lines, dipping in and out of the lyrics, watching each other to read which lines to take and which to leave for the other.

“Oh wow,” Jay said when they finished the song. “That was incredible.”

Aurora smiled, blushing as all three men gushed about how great hers and Gary’s voices had blended together.

“This going to have to be a duet,” Gary said, before sitting down with the lyrics and working out where to split the song between the two of them. In the end, Gary took the first verse and Aurora took the second, while they sang the chorus’s together, layering their voices together as the song built toward the final chorus, following the same arrangement they’d sang the first time round and then Aurora played out the final few notes on the piano. After practicing the arrangement a few times, they called it a day and agreed that when they came in the next day they would get in the technician to record the song in full since Aurora only had 2 more days left to work with the boys before she had to drive the 2 hours up to Cleveland to meet back up with Harry and the tour.

They spent every minute of those two days recording the track, Aurora not only laying down her vocals but also playing the piano on the track. An hour before she needed to be on the road, they were all crowded into the control room to listen to the finished song, no one making a sound as it played.

Aurora was grinning from ear to ear when the song faded out to silence, immensely proud of the song and all the work they’d put into it over the last week.

“Thank you so much for this opportunity guys,” she said, turning to look at each of them.

“We should be thanking you,” Joe laughed. “We’re the ones that have 3 incredible tracks for the next album thanks to you. I don’t think we’ve ever had such a productive two weeks in our lives.”

“Me either,” Rori agreed. “But honestly I just had so much fun, so thank you for inviting me down here.”

“You’re welcome, Rori,” Gary said. “There’s actually something we wanted to ask you before you leave. We usually perform at the CMAs in November and me and the boys were talking last night. We were wondering if you’d want to come down and debut Happy Now with us?”

“You want me to sing at the Country Music awards with you?” Aurora asked, shock clear on her face and in her voice causing all three men to chuckle.

“We do,” Jay replied. “The songs bloody great. You in?”

“Absolutely!” Aurora cheered, grinning broadly, all three men hugging her tightly before she said her goodbyes and climbed into the cab waiting for her outside.

xXx

Unlike the previous year when Harry had gone to New York with her at the end of her time on tour, this year she stood in the departures lounge of the Buffalo airport watching as Harry walked away from her to board a flight to Montreal. She tried to hold back the tears threatening to spill from her eyes, knowing that she would see him in November for the CMAs. She held it together right up until he turned around to wave goodbye one last time and the sad expression on his face pushed her over the edge, breaking the dam and sending the tears dripping over her cheeks. The moment Harry saw them, he dropped his bag and run back towards her, causing Niall to pause where he had been walking beside him.

Harry swept Aurora up in his arms, gripping her tightly as her breath stuttered. She tried desperately to pull herself together, knowing that her reaction would only hurt the man she loved, making it more difficult for him to get on the plane that would take him away from her.

“9 weeks,” Harry whispered. “9 weeks and I’ll be back.”

“I know,” Rori replied, her face still buried in his shoulder. “I love you.”

“I love you too. God, I don’t want to get on that plane,” Harry said. “I want to stay here with you and never leave again.”

“You’d be bored,” Rori joked, pulling back from the hug and pecking his lips one last time.

“Never. This hiatus can’t start soon enough,” he sighed.

“You have to go,” Rori urged, pushing him away gently, noticing Niall still waiting by the gate. “Call me when you land.”

Harry pulled her in for one last desperate kiss before turning and walking back to Niall. He didn’t turn back this time and Aurora held her breath until he disappeared from view. As soon as he was gone, she let the sobs break through her chest, slowly walking through the terminal towards her own gate. She waited in the private lounge until her flight was ready and then made her way on board, settling into her first class seat. She put on her headphones and shuffled Four, a soft smile ghosting over her lips as she listened to Harry’s voice, leaning her head back against the seat with her eyes shut as the plane began to taxi down the runway. She let herself wallow in her sadness, knowing that she would need to put it aside when she reached home in about 2 hours’ time. Leaving Harry was never easy, and she hated the months they spent apart but at the same time she had desperately missed her family and was anxious to see them again. She was also excited to start back at school the following week, eager to begin her final year of college, knowing that once she graduated she would be free to travel the world with Harry and very little would keep them apart now that the band was going on Hiatus for the next year and a half.

xXx

A few days after she returned home, Tony and Steve were scheduled to appear on the Late Show for the first night with the new host Stephen Colbert, and since she didn’t have any classes the day they were needed at the Ed Sullivan Theatre, Aurora decided to join them for the day. Having appeared on the Late Show a couple of times when it was hosted by Letterman, Aurora somewhat knew her way around the theatre, although it was interesting to see the subtle changes that had been made for the shows soft reboot with a new host. She’d watched Tony and Steve’s interview from the green room, smiling softly at Steve awkwardness and Tony’s absolute calm in front of the cameras and the audience. Colbert asked them about the team, about leading them together and of course he asked about their relationship. Tony took the lead with most of the answers but when they were asked what it was like having your husband next to you in a fire fight, it was Steve that answered first.

“It’s the best and worst part of the job,” he answered, his arm slung over Tony’s shoulder. “Fantastic because there’s no one I’d trust to have my back more than Tony, but it’s also completely terrifying because if he goes down, I know I’m out of the fight too because I’m going straight for him and getting him out of there.”

They answered more questions about Avenging before being asked about family life.

“Never planned on being a dad,” Tony said. “But Rori’s such an incredible woman and she’s made both of our lives so much better in the last 4 years. Can’t imagine not being a dad anymore.”

“And Steve,” Colbert asked, “what’s it like being a stepdad?”

“Like Tony said,” Steve replied, “Aurora’s so incredible and being her dad is probably the best thing I’ve ever done with my life. I’m very lucky to have her as my daughter. As our daughter.”

NEXT CHAPTER

OR CONTINUE READING ON AO3

#skyfire #skyfire fic #aurora stark #dad!tony #iron dad #step dad steve rogers #stony #stony fic #boyfriend harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #superfamily #harry styles #tony stark

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bards-witcher · 4 years

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Perdita - Chapter 10

So here we are at the final chapter/epilogue, thank you all for sticking with this story.

It’ll always have a special place in my heart cause it was the first proper BBS fic that I wrote and for a while, I’d given up on it, but just over a year after I first started it it’s finally finished.

Hopefully, you enjoy the last chapter and let me know what you think.

Previous ll

[Luke POV]

Time didn’t seem to exist after that day, he remembered bits and pieces of what happened, from them carrying Ryan’s body back to the base to faintly listening to Evans’ story about how he wrangled up everyone to come help, cause apparently when he’d done it he hadn’t sounded convincing enough.

Not that he cared now, his days were reduced to being spent in the hospital wing, waiting and hoping that everyone who had been hurt during his vendetta would pull through and damn if he didn’t stay there to make sure, even through Jon’s constant griping, that they were fine.

Despite the fact that both Brock and Nogla had told him that he had to stay for a few days more, he wouldn’t accept it, which only earned all three of them more whining.

This morning? Evening? He didn’t know anymore, not that anyone cared to criticize his bad habits given everything that had happened, but he simply got out of bed where he’d spent the last few hours trying to focus on anything but what was threatening to claw away at him and leave nothing but a husk.

Hell, he wouldn’t have left the hospital wing if not for Brock’s insistent pestering, not that he actually benefitted from it, but he wasted no time now as he quickly got changed into the first clothes he grabbed hold of before practically running back to the hospital wing where he saw a rather exasperated Nogla.

“I t’ought Brock told ye to stay away for a couple o’ days” He didn’t have to give much more than a look for the other man to huff a laugh, a faint smile tugging at his mouth “Surprised ye left at all to be fair”

Normally he’d be happy to talk to the other man, but he’d been gone away too long and it was starting to eat away at him, he’s sure the younger man can see the discomfort on him as Nogla interrupted whatever he was going to say.

“I won’t keep ya boss, just thought you should know we’re hopin’ he’ll wake up today” The words caused a sense of relief wash over him and he gave a genuine smile to the other man before giving him his thanks as he made his way into the small room.

When his eyes fell on Ryan’s still form he felt his breath catch in his throat.

Despite it having been a few days since they brought him back and it was confirmed that he was alive thanks to Evans’ gift, his mind couldn’t help but go back to the day in the warehouse with his knife in the other man’s chest as blood slowly pooled around him, and looking very much lifeless, just as he did now, if not for the constant beep of the heart rate monitor.

He slowly stalked his way closer to the other man and took his resident spot on the chair beside his bed, his eyes refusing to leave the other man as he grabbed a hold of his hand and gave it a small squeeze in a gesture of comfort.

He couldn’t tell how long he’d been sat there when he felt a twitch of movement on his hand and he looked down to see one of Ryans’ fingers move slightly, his eyes quickly darting up to look at the other man whilst his hand that was holding Ryan’s only got tighter.

Slowly he saw the other man start to come back to himself and he was frozen on the spot, sure he didn’t take a breath until he saw Ryans’ eyes begin to peek open, smiling at the other man as he saw him squint and grunt as he got accustomed to the light in the room.

He hated the way that he felt tears start to blur his vision but he doesn’t dare move to wipe them away, scared that this all may be a dream, instead he offered another squeeze to Ryans’ hand as if confirming to himself that the other man was actually here and genuinely alive.

Once again his breath caught in his throat when Ryan turned to face him, stunned by those hazel eyes he thought he’d never see again and yet it felt like neither of them could look away from each other, not that he wanted to anyway.

“Luke” Ryan’s raspy voice calling out to him is what caused the first tear to fall as he offered a smile to the other man, watching for a second longer before raising his hand to press a small kiss against his knuckles.

“Hey, Ry” He’s sure his heart missed a beat when he caught the faintest of smiles on Ryan’s face, which quickly turned to confusion as the other man scanned the room around him and made an effort to try and sit up.

He was quick to intervene, grabbing onto Ryan’s shoulders to prevent him from moving and made sure he settled back down onto the bed, so he didn’t hurt himself further “Try not to move okay, you’re still recoverin’ from that beat down I gave you”

The small huff of a laugh from Ryan had a familiar warmth settle in his chest, one he hadn’t felt in what felt like forever, but only lasted a moment longer before the other man winced a little from the effort “If I ‘member, I was kickin’ your ass”

It was his turn to laugh then, both of them simply staring at each other almost as if they hadn’t seen each other for months, and in a way they hadn’t.

It’s in the corner of his eye that he noticed Ryan try and lift his hand up off the bed, at first he thought the other man wanted some water but when he reached for the glass he was met with a raspy ‘no’, turning back to the other man who lifted his hand just enough to tell him what he wanted to do.

With a fond smile, he reached forward and grabbed hold of Ryan’s hand before bringing it up to cup at his face, closing his eyes for a moment at the gentle thumb stroking across his cheek “I beat you up pretty good didn’t I?”

He hadn’t looked in a mirror since they’d gotten back to the warehouse, he just knew that Brock had forced him to sit still long enough to give him stitches before he returned to his vigilance of Ryans’ bed, but he can imagine what the other man was seeing, and the guilt that he felt.

Without a thought, he turned his head so that he could press a small kiss to the palm of Ryans’ hand before giving him a determined gaze that told the other man there would be no argument over this.

“You had no control Ry, it ain’t your fault” He could see the disbelief on the other man’s face, so he quickly continued “I was the one who…”

He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, it had been a complete stab in the dark as to whether Ryan would survive and he had put his complete faith into Evans’ abilities, but he couldn’t deny the thoughts that gnawed at him of guilt and betrayal for stabbing the other man.

“Don’t you dare” He felt Ryan’s hand on his cheek force him to look up at the other man and he saw nothing but determination and love “You did what I asked you too, you saved me, don’t you ever feel guilty for that”

“I stabbed you Ry, I thought I killed you, there ain’t no gettin’ over that” He was surprised when instead of the expected heartfelt sentiment he simply heard a small chuckle from the other man.

“You didn’t do a good job then” He couldn’t help his own smile then, one which was mirrored on the other man’s face “How am I here, I thought I… I thought G would’ve-“

“I knew the guys were comin’, had comms in my ear, but it was Evan who saved you really” He then pulled away from Ryans’ hand briefly so that he could pull the bracelet off of his wrist and hand it to the other man who simply gave it a quick cursory glance.

“He gave it to me the night before the attack, supposed to slow down your heart rate so it looks like your dead and said I’d know when to use it” He watched the other man for a moment as if to gauge his reaction to the whole thing but there was none but mild curiosity “I used it on you after I- I stabbed-“

Even now with Ryan living and breathing in front of him he couldn’t finish that sentence, but it seemed Ryan didn’t want him to with the way the younger man’s hand reached out to grab a hold of his own again, and this time it was the other man’s turn to comfort him.

“Didn’t even know if it would work, but I had to try somethin’ I couldn’t jus’ leave you to die there, like that-“

“Shhh Luke, ‘s okay, I’m still here aren’t I” He looked up to see a small smile on the other man’s face showing no hatred or distrust at him for his actions, and he could once again feel hope fill him that maybe everything would be okay.

Silence then fell across the room, the two of them unsure of what they should say to each other and yet they also felt that nothing had to be said, simply knowing that the other was there and that they were okay was enough for them, at least until Ryan, his voice small and quiet as if afraid to speak broke the silence.

“Is it true what you said, about Jon, is he really-“

“He’s fine, been moanin’ all week to get out of his bed but I’m sure he’ll be here soon enough and good luck gettin’ rid of him then” They both chuckled then, a quiet calm settling over them that was only broken by Ryan trying to move again.

However, before he could protest he was stopped by a firm look from Ryan and after another minute the other man settled back down onto the bed.

Before he could question what the point of that was Ryan patted the bed next to him, offering him to join the other man up there and it didn’t take much more than that before he was climbing up beside him.

As carefully as he could he moved so that he could cuddle up against the other man’s side so as not to aggravate any of his injuries, but despite the odd wince from Ryan, he did so with relative ease.

“Luke” He simply hummed as an answer to tell Ryan he should continue “How am I me again? I thought I was gone, but…I don’t feel like I did when I- back at the warehouse-”

“You can thank Joe for that” he turned his head for a moment to gauge Ryan’s reaction, sure that the other man was thinking back to the time he had almost attacked the teen when he’d come back the first time “He told us there was an antidote and we found it, jus’ glad it worked”

He heard Ryan hum then as he slowly came to terms with everything that had happened, not that he blamed the other man, a lot had happened over the last few days and not even he was 100% on what was going on anymore, most of it having faded into a dull blur.

“I have one more question” There was a pause as if Ryan was waiting for his permission, at which he simply turned to look at the other man.

“You can ask whatever you want Ry, surprised you haven’t gone full interrogation mode yet” They both smiled then before he returned to nestle into the other man’s side as he waited for the question, already thinking he had an inkling to what it might be.

“I’m still trying to figure everything out, but there’s just one thing, G, what happened to him” He couldn’t help but stiffen at the name and he doesn’t think he’d ever be able to get over it after the hell that man had put them all through, but nevertheless he gave his answer.

“After the others made an overly dramatic entrance to help us, I beat the absolute shit out of him, thought I killed him for a minute, but the bastard got lucky” He felt Ryan freeze and he’s quick to comfort him as he’s sure the other man had jumped to the wrong conclusion.

“Don’t worry Ry, he’s in the basement, wanted to leave him for you and Joe, if you want, although I think Jon will appreciate a couple of kicks”

He’s grateful at the small laugh from Ryan and the way he quickly relaxed into the bed knowing that there wasn’t a threat to them now, that they could both rest easy.

Now that he was beside Ryan and in his arms, he felt the last few days catching up to him and it felt like a weight had settled over his eyes where he soon found himself begin to drift into sleep, but he was stopped by the faintest voice breaking the silence.

“Thanks for not giving up on me Luke”

“I could never give up on you, I love you too much” He could only mumble out the words, too tired for much else, but as he felt Ryan move to pull him just that little bit closer, he felt his heart swell at the fact.

“I love you too Luke”

“Glad you agree cause that could’ve been awkward” He felt Ryan give him a light slap and he can’t help but laugh a little before he leaned up to look at the other man, the both of them staring at each other for a moment before he leaned forward to separate the gap between them and gently press his lips to Ryan’s.

It’s nothing more than a peck on the lips and yet it felt so much more than that, it felt like their first kiss all over again, somehow conveying what they felt for each other and everything that had been said and unsaid between them.

The kiss left him breathless and more vulnerable than he cared to admit, but from the looks of it Ryan felt the same and he felt a sense of calm settle over them.

Ryan then leaned forward to kiss him again, and he’s sure he could hear his heart beat a mile a minute in his ears at the soft touch which left him craving more, and yet he only indulged the other man for another moment before he pulled away insisting that they both get some bed rest.

There was only a small protest from the other man, but it’s not long before they settled down and he felt sleep once again tug at him, and in Ryan’s warm hold, the other man’s heartbeat strong in his ear, he soon succumbed to it.

*********

Even somewhat in the shade, he could still feel the heat beating down on him, sure that he was as red as a lobster at this point and yet he couldn’t bring himself to move, at least until Ryan joined him.

The other man was persistent in his task of getting him to sit up, and as much as he tried to ignore the other man, he was always weak when it came to him, that and he knew the threat of cold seawater being poured onto him was a very real one.

It was with a sigh that he sat up, making space for Ryan to join him on the lounger, and yet he couldn’t keep the smile from his face as a bottle of water was shoved into his hands and the other man moved to sit behind him, a bottle of sun lotion in hand.

It had been a few weeks now since their ordeal was over, of course they both had to rest and recuperate first, not to mention the first few weeks had been trying at first, hell they both sometimes woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, a shout on the edge of their lips, but the other was always there to help.

It was agreed between both of them, not to mention the other guys as well, that a holiday would be good for them, and he had followed through with his promise to Ryan as right now they were in Greece and in a week they’d be going to Rome with no plans but to rest.

During his musings he felt Ryan massage sun cream into his back, only knowing he was done when he felt the other man’s arms loop around his neck and a chin rest on his shoulder, the both of them looking out on the calm sea before them.

Nothing was said between them for a moment, not that there needed to be, the both of them far too familiar with each other that there was no need for words.

At least until he felt Ryan grip the bullet he still kept on a chain around his neck, the exact same bullet Ryan had first aimed at him when under G’s control and he already knew the question before the other man said it.

“Why do you still keep this? All it does it remind me of how I tried- How I almost killed-“

“That’s not how I see it” He then gripped Ryan’s hand around the bullet and brought it up to his lips to place a gentle kiss “For me, this shows just how strong you are, how you’re a fighter till the very end, how you love with your whole being, and that when we work together we can overcome anything”

There was a beat of silence and for a moment he was sure Ryan was going to protest everything he’d just said, but instead he the other man simply cuddled closer to him, all the while calling him a sap.

The small teasing remark had him chuckle and he turned his head slightly to get a better look at Ryan, at the way the sun had brought out the freckles littered across his nose and the faint smile that seemed fixed on his lips.

He didn’t wait another second before bridging the gap between them and pressing their lips together, simply enjoying the feel of the other man in his arms that he could do nothing but let out a small groan when they parted.

Thankfully Ryan doesn’t go too far as they rest their foreheads together and close their eyes for a minute, feeling a sense of calm and peace settle between them.

They spend another moment in the bubble that is just them and this time it’s Ryan leaning forward to kiss him, and it’s just as good as the last time, but before either of them could think of deepening it a child’s scream has them separating abruptly, a small laugh coming from Ryan at the fact.

Given that the universe seemingly didn’t want the two of them to have a private moment he got up with a sigh, stretching for a moment to relieve the dull ache in his body before he turned back to Ryan “I’m goin’ to cool down, care to join me”

He could see the reluctance on the other man’s face and sure enough, Ryan was quick to roll out the excuses about why the land why so much better than the sea and why he should stay there, only he had stopped listening long ago, letting him carry on for a second longer before he leaned forward to pick Ryan up, earning a small cry from the other man.

Lucky for him carrying Ryan over his shoulder didn’t take too much effort, even with the other man fake struggling to get free, their antics earning some laughs from the other holiday goers, but it was only when he was up to his thighs in cool water that he unceremoniously dropped Ryan into it.

He can’t help but laugh as the other man got up from the water sputtering and cold, already having accepted his fate as Ryan launched at him and sure enough he’s quickly under the water as well, only he stands up a bit more gracefully than Ryan had which earned a small pout from the other man.

It was relatively easy to drag the other man out into deeper water with him, whatever ‘grudge’ Ryan had quickly faded as the other man wrapped his legs around his waist with his arms tight around his shoulders as they simply relished in each other company.

Every now and then he would dunk both of them under the water which earned a small protest from Ryan, but he was easily placated with small kisses every now and then, something he was more than happy to do.

Sure they had a long road ahead of them, but they had been to hell and back, which only left him sure in the knowledge that there was nothing and no one that could tear them apart, either that or they’d die trying.

#ohmtoonz #Perdita #cartoonz #ohmwrecker #hopefully you forgive me #told you all I don't do angst

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