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abarbaricyalp · 2 months

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Give Me Toothaches Just From Kissing Me

"But March 10th was two weeks ago!" Time doesn't exist. Happy Birthday to Bucky Barnes

The first time Sam had gotten Bucky a birthday cake, it was a joke. It was 2016, just a few scant months before their whole operation went to hell in a handbasket, and Sam had texted Bucky without expectation of a reply. Just a picture of the view from his fancy hotel balcony in Monaco or something, with a fancy chocolate cake on the wide balcony ledge. He was in town for a military tech conference, so his morning jogging schedule had been interrupted. Eating a whole cake on his own over four days would totally be in the realm of possibility.

An hour later, when Sam was more than half a bottle of wine down and two albums in on a 'crooners' playlist, a shadow peeled itself off of the wall and greeted him with a, "Hey, birdbrain."

Sam, perhaps, did not do any work towards proving that nickname stupid by flailing dramatically and knocking the cake with his forearm. With twin movements, they watched the cake sail to the ground seven stories below and explode into a shower of sugar and cream. Then they turned to look at each other. There were three beats of shocked silence and then they both burst into laughter together.

"That was a really good cake," Sam whined in between the laughter as he leaned into Bucky's space and Bucky wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

"Yeah, I could tell. You already had half."

"I didn't figure you were gonna actually show up," Sam pointed out.

"Why wouldn't I show up? You called."

"That hasn't stopped you before," Sam pointed out. He spent a few extra seconds staring at the mangled cake on the ground before he sat back on the balcony furniture. Bucky followed him down. He kept his arm around Sam until it was unfeasible, and then he let his hand fall to Sam's, fingers tangling together. Sam allowed it because it was his birthday, even though it was vastly out of the range of usual activities for them.

"Well, this time I was promised cake," he added after a few seconds of amiable quiet.

Sam looked over at him to discern if he was serious or not. The grin pulling at his usually severe mouth said all Sam needed to know. They burst into quiet giggles again.

“Good thing I got all the sweetness I need right here,” Bucky eventually conceded. He tucked a knuckle under Sam’s jaw and leaned in to kiss him beneath the moon and the lights and everything but a cake.

. . .

The second time Sam tried to give Bucky cake, it was a year later. It felt almost impossible that the world had slowed down around them long enough to justify an impromptu visit to Wakanda to check in on Bucky.

When their jet had touched down, Bucky was waiting for them with a wide smile that Sam had never really seen before. "Now, I know I told T'Challa not to do anything for my birthday, but he went a step further and got me everything I didn't want," he joked as he and Steve collided in a fierce hug, the kind of thing that always made Sam want to look away.

Then Bucky was extricating himself from Steve's hold so he could crowd around Sam instead, ducking his face down to Sam's neck as he squeezed his waist. If it was supposed to be a hug, it was like no hug Sam had ever had. He could get used to it though. After a few heartbeats shared between them, Sam pinched Bucky's hip and stepped back.

"Hey, old man," he greeted. Bucky grinned at him, boyish and a little smitten. It was a look Sam was more familiar with. "Happy birthday."

"Is that what this is about? You stop paying attention after 90," Bucky joked. For a split second, his fingers lingered over Sam's but he didn't take his hand--Sam didn't take Bucky's either--and he turned back to Steve to amble along together as they instantly fell into a conversation like they hadn't just been apart for the better part of half a year.

By the time they got around to dinner and a small party, Sam felt silly for bringing a dozen store bought cupcakes--hidden away in his room upstairs. The dinner had been more of a feast, despite Bucky's protestations, and the dessert spread that followed was unlike anything Sam had ever seen. No expensive wedding or VA event or Stark fundraiser held a candle to the cakes and cookies and sweet bars that were available. Sam ate more Wakandan desserts than he could name American desserts and each one was better than the last. Bucky, for all his talk of not wanting anything, had at least sampled every chocolate food on the table and gone back for full servings of most of them.

By the time they managed to crawl into Bucky's room--which branched off into Steve and Sam's rooms and connected bathrooms--all of them were groaning about stomach aches and sugar comas. Bucky crawled under his blankets, becoming nothing more than a groaning lump, and Steve settled along the bench at the end of the bed, laying back on it and resting a hand over his stomach, while burping and then apologizing every few minutes.

Sam ducked into his room while the others settled and grabbed the two bags from him and Steve, as well as the plastic carton of cupcakes. It was absolutely not going back with him at this point. His stomach hurt just looking at it.

Back in Bucky's room, he passed off the bounty. Bucky set aside the gift bags, but his eyes gleamed at the sight of more sweets.

"Come on, open the gifts," Sam jostled, sitting on the bed nearest where Bucky was sprawled.

"Nah, I'll look at them later," he said as he peeled the safety seal sticker away from the cupcakes.

"Oh, come on," Steve laughed. "You're still shy?"

"I'm not shy," Bucky snapped. "I'm civilized. Not everyone has to tear into their gifts as soon as they're within reach."

Sam snorted and tried to hide it from Steve.

"I do not do that," Steve objected, but not with much conviction. Actually, he wasn't that bad, Sam had to admit. But clearly Bucky had better stories than Sam.

“What are these?” Bucky asked instead of fighting a battle he knew he’d already won. He took the cupcakes and deftly opened the package without making a cacophonous sound, which meant he knew perfectly well what they were and clearly had had his share of them.

“I know they’re not anything special after that whole show,” Sam acknowledged, waving his hand in the general direction of the kitchens. “But these are packed so full of preservatives, you’ll be able to keep ‘em until his birthday,” he joked with a gesture towards Steve.

“Way to sell ‘em, Wilson,” Bucky chuckled. He was already halfway through one of the cupcakes and he held a blue one out to Steve. It was the middle of march, so most of the predesigned things were spring flavored. This set, blues and greens swirled around, was about as festive as Sam could find. “I love the frosting on these things,” he added around a mouthful of cupcake.

Steve shot Sam a knowing, slightly gloating look. He’d been the one to insist Bucky would enjoy these, no matter what else was going on with the day. Then he shoved the entire cupcake in his mouth just like Bucky because apparently manners hadn’t been invented yet back in the ‘40s. Sam shook his head at their antics, both of them trying to one up the other until almost the whole carton was gone.

Bucky reached over to snag a smear of frosting off of Steve’s cheek and sucked his knuckle into his mouth while Steve cried foul about uneven division of frosting.

“You two are gross,” Sam laughed and made sure his own face was devoid of any frosting before their turned their attention on him.

It didn’t work. By the time Bucky had turned his playful, teasing expression on Sam, his eyes had darkened just a little and one eyebrow rose in a challenge.

“No,” Sam warned, holding up the half of a cupcake still in his hand. “Whatever it is, no.”

But Bucky didn’t listen. He reached out to and shoved the cupcake against Sam’s cheek, frosting first, then pinned him back against the headboard with a broad hand across Sam’s shoulder and collarbone. Sam swallowed thickly, couldn’t help the way he went lax beneath Bucky’s weight as the other man settled across his thighs and leaned forward to lick a stipe of the icing off of Sam’s cheek.

“Stevie, you might wanna think about gettin’ to your own room,” Bucky warned without taking his dark, hungry stare off of Sam.

“Ah, come on. You two are gross,” Steve complained, but he did hustle out of the room pretty quickly. Took a cupcake for the road.

Sam tried to put some structure back in his bones, tried to posture up under Bucky’s hold. He reached up for the frosting, wiped most of it off of himself, and then smeared it across Bucky’s cheek, down to his mouth.

That mouth split into a grin before it was against Sam’s, lips parted, tongue hungry as he licked over Sam’s lips, chasing after the frosting he was depositing.

Sam had to admit: this may be better than the desserts downstairs.

. . .

The next time he actually got to sit still for Bucky’s birthday, it was a few lifetimes later. He had every intention of sleeping in just a little bit, skipping his run to get up before everyone else and make a cake, wake up the house to the smell of chocolate and buttercream, the way his mama used to always.

Instead, he slept in a lot a bit and woke up to the sound of nothing short of chaos in the kitchen. Sarah was out already, he surmised when he finally dragged himself upright and grabbed his phone from where it had fallen the night before to check the time. He and Bucky had gotten in late the night before, stuck in New York doing paperwork after some giant worm appeared out of a sinkhole in New Jersey. He had no idea how Bucky had the energy to get up, much less start making noise in the kitchen.

Groggily, maybe a little grumpily, he pulled on a hoodie and a pair of shorts that wouldn’t aggravate all of the scrapes he was covered in and went out to see what was happening.

Bucky did make it a point to clean up the kitchen any time he was near it. Especially after himself, but even when Sarah cooked. He insisted that she did the cooking, so he should do the cleaning. And somehow this reflected badly on Sam, as far as Sarah was concerned, which seemed unfair. Sam cleaned plenty.

The cleaning never seemed to justify the mess beforehand.

“What in the world is going on here?” Sam asked, leaning on the wide doorjamb that led into the kitchen.

Cass whirled around first, clutching a too large mixing bowl to his chest. “Nothing!” he exclaimed.

AJ, less practiced in the ways of subterfuge, said, “We’re making cupcakes! For Bucky,” he clarified

Bucky, who was remarkably clean for the amount of flour and egg otherwise splashed across the kitchen, grinned at Sam. “I didn’t ask, by the way. They brought it up. I dunno how you and Sarah say no to these little faces.”

AJ preened and gave another spin with the spatula, sent more frosting over the edge of his too-small bowl.

“You guys are working at a disadvantage, trynna listen to Bucky,” Sam said, coming into the kitchen. “I know you know how to use paper towels. Why does the kitchen look like this?”

Cass let out a little noise of guilt, but Bucky saved him from having to answer by producing a roll of paper towel from behind himself. “It’s probably supposed to be my job, but I’m a better taste tester.”

“Uncle Sam, is it true he can’t get salmonella ‘cause of the super soldier serum?” Cass asked.

“Can I have some?” AJ added.

Sam shot Bucky an unimpressed look, but he was nothing but cheeky smiles and not a shred of embarrassment. “I guess we’re gonna find out if it’s true or not,” he said. He snagged the paper towels from Bucky to begin wiping up at least the bits of cracked egg that lined every countertop. “Lucky it’s me in here and not your mama.”

Cass made the same kind of noise again as he searched for a place to put down his mixing bowl. It must be an oldest sibling gene, because Sam remembered Gideon making the exact same kind of sounds. Usually when Sam was about to do something like jump off the stair bannister.

“Mom’s out at the restaurant,” AJ said, unbothered. He was usually unbothered.

“Come here,” Sam said, gesturing more for AJ to make space than for him to actually move closer. “Bucky let you pick the wrong bowl, so you’ve gotta be careful,” he said, holding AJ’s hand as he held onto the spatula. “Go slow, like this.”

He looked up as AJ failed to do that, more frosting going flying, and caught Bucky’s eye. Bucky grinned again, soft and lovely in the mid-morning light coming through the kitchen window.

“A guy could get used to this view,” he said with a warm honey tone.

“A guy will not,” Sam said. “Get to actually cleaning.”

Bucky gave him the laziest of salutes and took the paper towels back.

By the time Sarah came home, with balloons and, hilariously, an ice cream cake, the kitchen was clean and they’d managed to make the best cupcakes Sam had ever had.

. . .

It took finding their own place, saving the world a few hundred times, a lot of missed events, and one perfect spring day for Sam to finally have a cake on the table on Bucky’s birthday. Handmade, from the same recipe he always got for his birthdays as a kid.

“Happy birthday, old man,” he said, kissing Bucky’s temple.

Bucky caught Sam’s hand against his shoulder, tugged him down to sprawl across Bucky’s lap. “Is that what all this is about?” Bucky teased, like he did almost every time Sam tried to do anything for his birthday, no matter how delayed the celebration was.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam laughed. He dragged the cake closer and lit the handful of candles–he was not putting a hundred candles on a cake–before sitting back a little. “Make a wish before you keel over.”

Bucky laughed, bright and loud, and his arms tightened around Sam. “I haven’t had to wish for anything for a long time, Sammy.” And he kissed Sam without even trying to blow out the candles.

#sambucky #sam wilson #bucky barnes #captain america #sambucky fanfic #the falcon and the winter soldier #writing

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nerdzzone · 1 year

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Worlds Apart

Chapter One

Summary: Single mom, Bridget Clark, thought that she was fine by herself. Moving her son to a new town and out of the hustle and bustle of Boston, she thought that life would be quieter and simpler, but a chance encounter with a certain Hollywood actor only a week after their big move had her questioning everything. Bridget was faced with the ultimate decision of head vs heart, but would letting her guard down prove to be worth the risk?

Series Masterlist

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February 2016

It all happened so fast.

One minute Bridget Clark was searching through the pile of hard avocados for one that was perfectly ripe and the next she was frantically searching through the aisles of the unfamiliar grocery store for her son.

She fought to keep her breath steady - she’d only looked away for thirty seconds, maybe a minute, he couldn’t have gotten far - but as her feet hit the ground with increasing urgency, she could feel the panic tightening her chest with every empty aisle she passed. By the time she made it to the other end of the store with no sign of her son anywhere, her heart was pounding. She knew he was smart enough not to leave the store without her - at least not by himself and his flair for the dramatics had her doubting that anyone would have been able to take him without him causing a scene - but the store wasn’t particularly big and she was sure she should have seen him if he was still there. In a last ditch attempt to find him, she raced back to where she’d started her search to make sure he hadn’t doubled back, but she prepared herself to start screaming for help if he wasn’t there.

To her overwhelming relief, he was standing beside the avocados with worry all over his face as he held the hand of an almost equally worried looking man.

“Landon!” She called out, getting his attention as she hurried over to him. “Oh my gosh, buddy. You scared me.”

She dropped to her knees without hesitation and pulled him into a hug as desperate apologies fell from his lips. Once she had held him long enough for her brain to feel reassured that he was there and that he was safe, she leaned back and flashed him a stern look.

“You know not to walk away when we’re in a store like this,” she reminded him, hoping she’d managed to muster a firm tone despite the relief still coursing through her. “It’s not safe to wander off by yourself.”

“I know, Mommy,” Landon nodded, a sheepish look on his face. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to get some chocolate.”

“I know and that was going to be our next stop,” Bridget sighed. “Did you find some?”

Landon shook his head as Bridget rose back up to her feet and the stranger waiting patiently beside them finally chimed in.

“I found him wandering around by the cookies,” he explained. “He seemed a little lost so I offered to help him find you.”

She’d almost forgotten that he’d been standing next to them, but as his voice drew her gaze over to him, she was immediately struck by how handsome he was. His face was kind and the smile he was flashing her was very disarming and she could see why Landon had felt comfortable trusting him. There was something familiar about him, but considering they’d only been living in the area for barely a week, Bridget couldn’t figure out why and she matched his smile as she racked her brain to place him.

“Thank you, I really appreciate that. I swear, I only looked away for a minute and then he was just…gone.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he assured her, disregarding her explanation with a wave of his hand. “I have a niece and two nephews, I know how quick these things can happen.”

“Too quick,” Bridget agreed, exasperatedly running a hand through her hair. “He’s usually pretty good about staying close, but we just moved to town about a week ago so everything around here’s still new and exciting for him, I guess.”

That information intrigued him as his eyebrows raised with curiosity.

“Oh? Where are you guys from?”

“Boston,” she informed him. “Not far away, but it’s nice to be out of the city.”

“Yeah, and this is a great town,” he assured her. “But, welcome! I’m Chris.”

“Thanks, I’m Bridget,” she introduced herself with a warm smile. “And this is Landon.”

Landon offered a shy wave with his hand that wasn’t firmly locked onto the cart beside his mother as if he was determined to prove he wouldn’t be leaving her side again.

“It’s nice to meet you both.”

“You too,” Bridget nodded. “Anyway, I should probably get this guy to the chocolate aisle before he gets antsy again, but thanks again for helping him.”

Once again, the kind stranger - Chris - assured her that no thanks was necessary and took a moment to say goodbye to a bashful Landon before they parted ways.

Thankfully, the rest of their shopping trip was rather uneventful, but it wasn’t until they got home that the realization finally hit Bridget that her son had been saved by Captain America.

Two Weeks Later

Bridget had been worried about moving away from Boston.

It was the only place that Landon had ever lived and she worried that the distance it put between him and his father - while certainly not insurmountable - would ruffle feathers, but after having a month to settle in, she was feeling very happy with her decision.

At four and a half, Landon was pretty unaware of the change in scenery, but Bridget could see the benefits already. They had a backyard - something their previous condo and even his dad’s townhouse couldn't offer him- and the streets were quiet and peaceful, their neighbours were friendly and greeted them every time they saw them, and it just felt safer and more free than life in the big city. Of course, there were times when she missed the convenience of city life and the drive to drop Landon off at the daycare he went to three days a week in the city was slightly more of a trek than it used to be, but so far she was feeling confident that the move was going to be worth it.

However, as the cold wind whipped around her at a park in the middle of winter, she was somewhat regretful of her choice to hype up all the potential for outdoor fun they could have in their new town. They’d driven past the playground several times since they’d arrived and every time Landon excitedly asked when they’d be able to go. Considering it was February and barely thirty-five degrees, Bridget had put him off the idea for as long as she could, but when they’d woken up that morning to a bright, sunny day with clear blue skies, it had been his first request. It didn’t matter to him that it was freezing cold and due to snow again any minute, the sun was out and he was ready to explore his new town.

His enthusiasm was hard to ignore and that was how Bridget found herself sitting on the top of a picnic table - bundled up as well as she could possibly be despite the shivers that still ran through her body - as she watched Landon bound around the playground. The sight of the joy on his face eased her suffering slightly as a small group of kids had quickly taken him under their wing. With his daycare being in the city, Bridget was eager for him to make some friends in their new town as well, but she knew that he’d inherited her slight nervousness around new people. He was usually great with adults, but when it came to kids his own age, he was more hesitant and shy about joining in. The kids that he’d buddied up with that day seemed very open and friendly and Bridget was happy to see that they’d barely given him time to be apprehensive before inviting him to play with them - even though she had a feeling that the dog they had with them and were currently chasing around was probably Landon’s biggest motivation for letting his guard down.

A smile slid onto her face as the dog in question jumped up to lick Landon’s cheek and she could hear his wild giggles floating across the field towards her, but the hood of her puffy coat was pulled so tightly around her face that she didn’t even notice the man approaching her until she felt the table creak and heard his voice.

“You look frozen…”

Her current lack of peripheral vision forced her to turn her entire head to see who had joined her on her little perch, but she was happy to see a familiar face when she realized it was the same stranger she’d met at the grocery store a couple of weeks earlier.

“I am frozen,” Bridget admitted. “It was sunny when we got here, but now that dark cloud has rolled in and blocked the warm patch of sun that I was sitting in.”

“Yeah, apparently the forecast has changed now,” Chris informed her. “We’re supposed to get snow tonight.”

“Gross,” Bridget wrinkled her nose. “I’m ready for spring. Landon barely seems to notice the cold, but I’m much more of a warm weather person.”

“I got that impression,” Chris smirked, gesturing to her heavy duty winter gear that she did have to admit was probably more suited to a ski hill than a playground. “But I would have to agree. I think kids just move too fast, they don’t stop long enough to feel the cold.”

“That’s probably true. I can’t feel my toes enough to run around right now, but maybe I’ll test your theory the next time I get dragged out into arctic temperatures.” Her dramatic words and the shiver of dread that ran through her earned a chuckle that had a smile sneaking onto her face, but as she glanced around the fairly empty playground she posed a question. “Are you here with your kids?”

It was odd knowing that she knew more about the relative stranger sitting beside her than he did about her and she felt almost guilty for having the upper hand, but from her brief research after their last encounter, Bridget was fairly certain that he didn’t have any children. However, asking why a single, childless man was hanging around a playground alone seemed like a ruder question.

“Nah, I don’t have any kids of my own,” he answered, confirming her suspicions. “I’m here with my niece and nephews.”

“Oh, right, I remember you mentioning them,” Bridget nodded, thinking back to their conversation at the store. “Do you spend a lot of time with them?”

“As much as I can,” Chris smiled. “I…travel a lot for work, but whenever I’m home I like to hangout with them.”

His hesitation had opened the door - given Bridget an opportunity to explain that she knew who he was and there was no need to beat around the bush - but if he was choosing not to be forthcoming with that information then she was happy to ignore it.

“That’s sweet, I bet they like having you around.”

“I think so, and they’re great kids so it’s nice for me too.” There was a proud edge to his voice, but a sheepish look slid onto his face as he glanced over to where Landon was playing with his new friends. “They’re actually playing with your son right now, the dog’s mine though.”

A wave of realization washed over Bridget as it did make sense considering the only other people crazy enough to be at the park on a day that cold were a couple of older kids playing on the playground.

“Landon loves dogs so I think that was a big draw,” Bridget smiled. “But they seem really nice. Landon sometimes takes a while to come out of his shell, but he warmed up to them really quick. I was worried about him making friends around here so I’m happy to see him joining in.”

“They seem to be getting along great,” Chris agreed. “But, hey, if you wanna give me your number then I can pass it on to my sister for you? They don’t live too far away and I know she’s always setting them up on playdates and looking for more friends too.”

His suggestion briefly caught Bridget off guard as a request for her number was the last thing she expected to come out of his mouth, but as he slipped his phone out of his pocket and opened a new contact - ready for Bridget to share her information - her brain reined in her imagination and she realized that his reasoning was actually really sweet. They were basically strangers and if anything, she owed him a favour for helping Landon the first time they met, yet he’d taken the time to approach her again and was willing to go out on a limb for her in an effort to help her and Landon adjust to their new home. Flashing him a smile, Bridget rattled off her number before voicing her appreciation.

“Thank you for that, but if you do pass it on then please tell her that there’s no pressure. I know how busy life can be with one kid, she might not have time to take in any strays while she’s trying to raise three.”

“I’ll let her know, but Carly likes to keep busy so I’m sure she’ll find the time,” Chris assured her, chuckling at her request. “But anyway, how are you guys settling in? How long have you been here now?”

“About a month,” she informed him. “And we’re settling in very nicely. It took a little time to adjust, but it’s been great to be out of the city.”

“It’s a lot quieter, that’s for sure,” Chris nodded in agreement. “But of all the towns around here, what made you pick this one? If you don’t mind me asking…”

“Work, mostly,” she admitted. “I knew I wanted to raise Landon outside of the city so I applied for jobs in a few different places and out of all the ones that were offered to me, the one here seemed like the best fit.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a librarian.”

“Really?” The surprise was written all over his face. “Aren’t you a little…”

He trailed off as he was clearly trying to find a delicate way to finish his question and Bridget smiled as she took pity on him.

“Ugly?” She supplied. “Ordinary? Frumpy?”

The surprise on his face shifted quickly into shock as he shook his head.

“No, the opposite actually,” he insisted. “I was gonna say young and attractive, but clearly I’ve been going to the wrong places if you’re considered ‘ugly’ in the library world.”

“Oh…” Bridget felt her cheeks heat up at his complimentary words and rushed to explain her unintended self-deprecation. “Most people joke about the whole ‘sexy librarian’ stereotype so I always feel like I don’t represent very well.”

“Well, to be honest, most of the librarians that I’ve met have been pushing retirement so I’d say you’re doing pretty well.”

“Compared to women in their sixties?” Bridget smirked. “I think that was almost a compliment, but I’m not entirely sure.”

“It was meant to be,” he assured her, flashing her a wink that she was embarrassed to admit pulled a giggle from her lips. “That sounds like an interesting job though, how’d you get into it?”

“By being a dork,” Bridget joked. “I really love reading and I spent a lot of time at the library when I was a kid so it’s just always something that I wanted to be a part of.”

The full explanation was more layered. There were reasons she’d spent so much time at the library as a child - reasons why it had been such a meaningful safe haven for her - but that was too much to share in polite conversation with someone she’d just met so she settled for the abridged version and was relieved when Chris accepted her answer with a smile.

“I’d say libraries are definitely underrated,” he mused. “I know I definitely don’t make as much time for reading as I probably should.”

“Most adults don’t,” Bridget nodded. “Myself included, if I’m being honest. I run the children’s section so I’m in charge of all the programs and events for kids which means I have to keep up to date on all the latest kid’s books, but it doesn’t leave a lot of time for books targeted at my own age group. It’s fun though, I think reading is important and it’s nice to help kids see how much fun it can be.”

“It is important,” Chris agreed. “And it’s always rewarding when you can turn something you’re passionate about into your career.”

Bridget nodded again, but hesitated as the truth to his words provided her with the perfect segue. It was another good opportunity to broach the subject of his career and let it slip that she knew who he was and what he did for a living, but just as she opened her mouth to ask him about his own career, Landon’s voice pulled her attention away.

“Mommy! Mommy!” He called as he raced over towards the table they were sitting on. “Look! It’s snowing!”

“Is it?” Bridget had been so wrapped up in her conversation that she hadn’t even noticed, but as she tipped her head back to check, a snowflake landed on her cheek as it seemed like the snow was suddenly coming down quite fast. “Oh, wow, it is! We should probably get going before it starts to stick on the roads.”

That suggestion wiped the smile completely off of Landon’s face as he frantically shook his head.

“No, I don’t wanna go,” he insisted. “I wanna stay and play in the snow with my friends!”

His use of the word ‘friends’ almost tugged on Bridget’s heartstrings enough to convince her to let him stay, but the threat of having to drive home on roads she wasn’t entirely familiar with yet in the middle of a snow storm had her staying firm.

“I know, buddy, but we don’t want to get stuck in the snow,” she sighed. “How about we go home and have some dinner and then maybe there’ll be enough snow by then to play a little before bed.”

Landon paused as he considered her offer, but after a moment of thought he decided that it was enticing enough to agree.

“Okay,” he nodded. “But can I say goodbye?”

“Of course, but be quick, okay?” Bridget watched as Landon hurried back towards the new friends he’d just made before turning back to Chris and explaining, “I hate driving in the snow. I know it seems dramatic, but I’d rather leave now than wait for it to get worse.”

“That’s understandable,” he assured her. “It can get bad really fast sometimes, we’ll probably be leaving soon too.”

“Okay, Mommy!” Landon’s voice drifted across the field as he ran towards their car. “I’m ready!”

“I’ll be right there!” Bridget shouted back as she pushed herself up from the table and hopped off the bench, turning back to flash Chris a smile. “Well, it was nice to see you again!”

“You too,” Chris matched her smile. “Get home safe.”

Bridget returned the sentiment before offering him a somewhat reluctant wave and jogging over to where Landon was waiting on the edge of the parking lot. It was strange, she thought, how disappointed she was to have to part ways with the handsome stranger who she seemed unable to avoid, but she chalked it up to the lack of adult social interaction she’d had since their recent move and pushed the feelings out of her mind.

Two More Weeks Later

Bridget was having one of those days.

It started with a series of small annoyances - like realizing they were out of coffee just as she went to make it, burning the toast that Landon wanted to have for breakfast and dropping her phone as she hurried to get him in the car, cracking the screen in the process - but the harder Bridget tried to turn things around, the worse it seemed to get.

And Landon hadn’t made it any easier.

It was hard to tell if his attitude was due to his own bad mood or if he was just feeding off of Bridget’s frustrated energy, but to say he was grumpy would have been an understatement.

He’d spent his entire life going back and forth between his parents’ houses. Despite the slightly larger distance between them since they’d moved out of the city, it was a situation that he was very used to and never questioned. However, he chose that day to decide not to cooperate. He whined the entire drive into Boston - which, of course, had possibly record breaking levels of traffic and took more than twice as long as it should have - and put on quite a performance when Bridget dropped him off. He screamed, he cried, he begged for her not to leave and even though he’d completely calmed down by the time she managed to slip away, the whole process had been emotionally exhausting.

As she headed out of Boston towards the comfort of home, she was desperate to curl up on the couch wrapped up in a blanket with a mug of her favourite tea and spend the rest of the afternoon with one of her favourite books that might help her shake off her bad mood.

However, it seemed the universe wasn’t quite done ruining her day as she was only about ten minutes away from her driveway when smoke started coming out from under the hood of her car. She let out a groan as she pulled over and turned off the engine, but after waiting for at least fifteen minutes and trying it again, she was disappointed to see that the temperature gauge hadn’t dropped down to a reasonable level again as it had the last time. Resigning herself to the fact that she had a bigger problem on her hands than she thought, she reluctantly climbed out of the car to take a look under the hood. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for as cars were absolutely not her forte and as she stared blankly at the complicated engine, the drizzling rain shifting into something that could only be described as torrential had another groan of frustration leaving her lips as tears pricked at her eyes.

She knew she needed to hold it together - just for a little bit longer - because she couldn’t sit in her car on the side of the road all day, but the stress of her horrible morning had her emotions quickly getting on top of her. She wanted to cry and scream like Landon had when she’d tried to leave him at his dad’s, but just as she was debating whether or not to give into that urge, a car pulled over on the other side of the road and a voice that was becoming very familiar called to her through the storm.

“Hey!” Chris shouted, pulling his hood up over his head as he jogged across the road. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Bridget called back, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of the heavy rain coming down around them. “My car overheated.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The smoke that was coming out of the engine,” she informed him. “It happened last week too, but it fixed itself when I let it sit for a few minutes. This time the temperature gauge won’t come back down.”

“Oh,” Chris frowned. “I know a little bit about cars, but I think that’s beyond my level of expertise. Have you called a tow truck?”

“Not yet,” she sighed. “I cracked my phone screen pretty badly this morning and the bottom half of it won’t work anymore. Makes it hard to dial.”

“Shit,” Chris flashed her a sympathetic smile. “You’re having a tough day.”

“Tell me about it…”

The words fell from her mouth as a scoff that she wasn’t even sure Chris would hear over the pouring rain as she reflected on how truly awful her day had been, but it seemed like it was about to turn around as Chris came to her rescue again.

“You can use my phone,” he offered. “And you can sit in my car while you wait for the tow truck.”

It was an enticing suggestion and not one that Bridget could really afford to refuse, but she hesitated as it seemed like a lot to ask from someone she barely knew.

“Are you sure? I’m all wet, I don’t wanna ruin your car…”

“I’m wet too,” Chris shrugged. “C’mon, let’s go before it gets worse!”

He turned to head back to his car and Bridget followed even though she wasn’t entirely sure that the rain could get worse. She was soaked through to her skin and she was grateful that Chris turned on his car to run the heating system as she settled into the passenger seat. She waited patiently for him to pull up the number of a local towing company before handing her the phone. They answered quickly, but the news was a bit disappointing as they warned her that the wait was longer than she had hoped it would be. With no other real option, she accepted that timeframe and told them where her car was currently sitting before hanging up and handing the phone back to Chris.

“It’s gonna be a while,” she informed him. “I can just wait in my car, but I appreciate you helping me out again.”

“How long did they say?”

“About an hour…”

“You’ll freeze if you sit in your car in wet clothes for that long with no heat,” Chris shook his head. “I’ll stay with you, I don’t mind.”

His tone was firm and left little room for argument - not that Bridget was particularly eager to fight him on the issue - and a sigh of relief slipped from her lips.

“Thank you,” she smiled before flashing him a sheepish look. “So, did they cast you as Captain America because you’re such a good samaritan or did you pick up the habit from him?”

Considering they were going to be trapped in the car together for an extended period of time, Bridget was eager to get the elephant in the room out in the open, but she questioned her tact slightly as his eyes widened in surprise. However, it didn’t take long for his shock to morph into a smile as a chuckle slipped from his lips.

“Ah, so you do know. I thought maybe you didn’t recognize me.”

“I didn’t realize right away, the beard is a pretty good disguise.”

“It definitely helps,” Chris agreed. “But I blend in more easily than people expect, I don’t get noticed as much as people think.”

“Even around here?”

“Well, I grew up around here so a lot of people know me,” he admitted. “But it’s different. People are pretty respectful and tend to just leave me alone.”

“I guess that’s another perk of life away from the big city,” Bridget mused before biting back a smirk. “And if they see you all the time then it’s probably not very exciting anymore. I mean, this is the third time we’ve met and it already feels less special.”

“Oh, wow,” Chris scoffed out a laugh. “I see how it is…”

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Bridget smiled. “Please don’t kick me out of your car and abandon me in the rain.”

“I’ll let it slide this time,” Chris shot her a playful glare. “But it’ll be a long and cold wait if you’re not careful.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

A silence settled between them as Bridget struggled to calm her racing mind after her chaotic day. She’d been feeling almost completely overwhelmed by all the hurdles she’d face that day, but if it was all leading to another chance encounter with the man currently sitting beside her then she was starting to think that maybe some of the struggle was worth it. However unintentional, their regular unexpected meetings had Bridget feeling grateful to have a familiar face in their new town and she was cautiously optimistic that it could turn into some kind of friendship.

“So,” Chris started, breaking Bridget out of her thoughts. “Where’s your son today?”

“Landon? He’s with his dad,” she informed him, but something pushed her to quickly add, “But we’re not together. So we share custody, alternate weeks.”

She wasn’t entirely sure why she felt that was important information for him to have and she worried briefly that she’d overshared until a look that appeared to be intrigue crossed Chris’ face.

“That must be hard to navigate.”

“It’s not too bad most of the time,” Bridget shrugged. “There’s still a lot of love between us so we can usually work together pretty well.”

“Sometimes people just work better as friends,” Chris nodded understandingly. "Not every relationship is meant to be romantic.”

“Especially because he’s gay,” she blurted out. “He was in the closet while we were together - or maybe in denial, I’m not really sure - but when he found out I was pregnant, something changed. I guess he didn’t want to live a lie anymore.”

“Wow…” The shock on Chris’ face was a look she’d seen many times over the years whenever she explained the way her previous relationship had imploded. “That must have been a big surprise, especially with a baby on the way.”

“It was, but I can’t really blame him for his sexuality.”

“No, but I’m guessing it’s pretty rattling to find that out about someone you’re trying to build a life with.”

“Yeah…” Bridget hesitated for a moment unsure how much of the story Chris really wanted to hear, but there was something about the torrential stream of rain washing down the window and blocking out the view of the outside world that made it feel like a safe haven - a good place to share. “And, I mean, I can blame him for spending the last three months of our relationship dating someone else - a man - in an attempt to figure out what he really wanted.”

“Yeah, I’d say you can definitely blame him for that,” Chris scoffed. “It’s one thing to be confused, it’s another to work out that confusion with someone else while you’re still in a relationship.”

“I thought so,” Bridget agreed, flashing him a sad smile. “But they are still together now, so who am I to get in the way of true love?”

“I guess…”

The skepitcal look on his face and the suspicious tone in his voice told Bridget that he wasn’t entirely convinced, but she was grateful that he didn’t push the issue any further. It had hurt and it had been a very emotionally confusing time, but it was in the past and she found it was much easier to focus on Landon and just let everything else go. Whatever happened between them, he was a good dad and so was the man who was now his husband and that was what was most important.

Eager not to let any awkwardness creep in, Bridget was quick to change the subject and break the silence that was settling around them again.

“I try not to dwell on it all too much,” she admitted. “It’s better just to focus on the future like settling in here and making some friends. Which, by the way, I will hopefully be doing soon when I meet your sister.”

“Yeah?” Chris raised a questioning eyebrow as a hopeful smile slid onto his face. “I gave Carly your number, did she reach out?”

“She did,” Bridget nodded. “We’re meeting up sometime next week, I think. We were supposed to last week, but then you dragged her off to L.A. for the Oscars and she was too busy catching up on work when she got home.”

“Dragged? Was that her word?” He chuckled with a playful roll of her eyes. “As if she didn’t beg me to take her.”

“I’m just saying what I was told,” Bridget giggled as she shrugged. “But it’s nice of you to take your siblings to events like that, instead of whatever hot model you’re dating this month.”

She was fishing for information - purely out of curiosity, to get to know the man she seemed unable to avoid and not for any ulterior motives, she told herself - but if Chris knew what she was doing, he took the bait anyway.

“Oh, is that what you think of me? A new girl every month?”

“Well, you’re a pretty okay looking guy,” she teased. “I imagine you have a pretty constant stream of women throwing themselves at you.”

Her assumption pulled a bark of laughter from Chris and the sound had Bridget biting back a grin as it sent a flush of warmth through her body.

“It’s not constant, but I do okay,” he admitted, but while the smirk on his face was cocky, there was a playful element to it that Bridget found reassuring. “There’s no one at the moment though, I’ve been single for a while now.”

“Sometimes it’s good to take some time and just focus on yourself.”

“It is,” Chris agreed, shooting her a sly look that didn’t go unnoticed. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah,” Chris smirked. “Are you focusing on yourself right now?”

“I guess so,” Bridget shrugged. “Even though I’d probably say I’m more focused on Landon considering he takes up most of my time and emotional energy and that doesn’t leave much time to focus on anything romantically.”

She left out the fact that she hadn’t focused on anything romantic since her relationship with Landon’s father had fallen apart. Being completely single for about five years wasn’t really something she was particularly proud of, but Landon had really been her main priority since he came into the world and she was proud of her determination to put him first. It wasn’t until recent months - now that Landon was older and less needing of her undivided attention - that she was starting to realize how much she missed the comfort and excitement of a meaningful adult relationship, but taking the leap after being single for so long was an intimidating step and she was thankful when Chris didn’t press her with any follow up questions.

“That’s understandable,” he nodded. “I know how hard it can be to balance dating with a busy schedule and I’d bet that being a mom doesn’t leave you with a lot of free time.”

“It definitely doesn’t. I mean, I do have a little more time when he’s with his dad, but I usually end up just catching up on work or doing the other five hundred things that I don’t have time to do when he’s with me.” Bridget smiled as he chuckled, but she quickly turned the conversation back onto him. “It must be hard for you too though. Even when you have a bit more free time, your notoriety must make dating a little more complicated than it is for most people.”

“It can,” Chris admitted. “I have to be a little extra cautious, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of character so - as I said - I do okay.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Bridget informed him, fighting to keep a straight face. “I was worried that such a handsome face was being wasted on a life of loneliness.”

“Yeah?” Chris raised an eyebrow, clearly amused by her faux concern as she nodded. “Well, you can rest easy, I do just fine.”

“You mentioned that once or twice,” Bridget reminded him. “But, what’s that saying? ‘Thou dost protest too much’? Sounds like that might be you right now…”

“That’s a fair point,” Chris chuckled. “I guess I better keep my mouth shut before I give you the wrong impression.”

“I think so,” Bridget giggled. “That would probably be wise…”

Chris dramatically mimed zipping his lip and throwing away the key, but his promise to stay silent was rather short lived. They spent the next half an hour chatting and joking and by the time the tow truck appeared Bridget was incredibly grateful that he’d chosen to stay and keep her company.

“Thank you for this,” she told him as she opened the door and braced herself to venture out into the pouring rain. “You can just add it to the list of things I owe you for.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Chris assured her. “I’m happy to help.”

“Well, I really appreciate it,” Bridget smiled. “So, thanks again.”

She hopped out of the car and flashed him a little wave before lifting up the hood of her coat and hurrying back across the road. It wasn’t until she’d explained the situation to the driver and he’d almost finished winching her car up onto his truck that she realized Chris had never left and was walking through the rain across the road towards them.

“Everything okay?”

Chris got the question out before Bridget could ask why he was still there, but she nodded her head.

“As okay as it can be for now,” she shrugged. “He’s gonna take it to the repair shop for me, but no one will be there until the morning so there’s not much else that can be done for now.”

“Okay, do you need a ride home?”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Bridget assured him, feeling the guilt of his kindness weighing on her already. “The driver said I can ride with him into town and then I can get a cab home from there.”

“That’s crazy. I’m already right here, I may as well just drive you.”

“I can’t ask you to do that, Chris. You’ve already done so much for me.”

“It’s really not a problem,” he insisted. “Going all the way into town would be a waste of time.”

Bridget hesitated. She didn’t want to take up anymore of his day, but she had to admit that it would save her a lot of time and considering she didn’t know how much the repairs would cost, she knew it was probably wise to save the money she would have to spend on a cab. So, after a moment of thought, she reluctantly agreed.

“Are you sure?” She asked, giving him one last chance to take back his offer, but she wasn’t at all surprised when he nodded his head. “Okay, then thank you. That would be really helpful.”

They waited until her car was all ready to go and Bridget took the information from the driver that she’d need to follow up with the repair shop in the morning before they headed back to Chris’ car.

The drive back to her house was full of the same easy conversation they’d had while they waited for the tow truck and by the time Bridget was waving to Chris as she walked in her front door, she realized that her earlier bad mood had disappeared. It was refreshing to meet someone new who she seemed to have connected with so effortlessly and since her adult socialization had been limited since leaving Boston it was nice to have conversations that weren’t about Paw Patrol or Hot Wheels cars. There was something about Chris in particular that Bridget found very intriguing and exciting and she felt a flicker of hope that their current trend would continue and they’d run into each other again soon.

#chris evans #chris evans fanfic #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans fan fic #chris evans fan fiction #chris evans fic #worlds apart

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moirtre · 3 months

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‎ ⋆⠀⠀ʬ.ʬ.⠀⠀٬⠀⠀ THE LOVE MAP OF LETALIS.

trigger/content warnings : shitty behavior & questionable choices.

NAIRA⠀⠀┉⠀⠀*⠀nawanthorn somwan & carter kim.

‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2009 - present. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › on & off. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › general fandom knowledge.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: naira's tragic relationships can all be traced back the the number nawanthorn, nicknamed true but anything but, did on her back in the 10th grade. the two came from relatively familiar families and although naira tries to deny it, she knows deep down that she's going to end up marrying him because it's what their parents want. constantly on and off, naira and true always come back to each other, no matter how much they attempt to drift away.

‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2019 - 2021. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › no contact. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › deep fandom knowledge.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: toxic, lowkey obsessive on naira's end. started out as a fun rebound after she dumped true for the 2nd time, turned into a weird dynamic where she gave him the world and he couldn't be bothered to be honest about anything. finally ended when she overheard hwaseong calling her a loser for sleeping with him and realized how weird the whole thing was.

MELANIE⠀⠀┉⠀⠀*⠀hudson taneti.

‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2011 - 2013, 2016 - present. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › long term relationship. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › public knowledge.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: scoring the hot guy in the year above her was melanie's crowning achievement her junior year of high school. the two met at a house party in 2011 and dove head first into an intense and often publicly problematic relationship. aside from their screaming matches in the school parking lots after his matches, the two genuinely fell head over heels for each other. with hudson leaving college to play rubgy professionally and melanie moving from brisbane to seoul, their breakup gave them the space and time to grow up apart from each other. reuniting, fittingly, at a championship afterparty, they easily picked up where they left off. a frequent presence in melanie's circle, the girls have their own unfavorable opinions about hudson; considering his role in the fallout between melanie and heri. but, none would ever dare mentioning them to melanie.

JUNIPER⠀⠀┉⠀⠀*⠀choi dahae & margaretta young.

‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2016. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › cordial. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › fandom rumor.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: juniper's first everything. dahae was the first person juniper came out to and their relationship quickly spiraled from there. a lot of sunshine and rainbows and puppy love. the relationship taught juniper a lot about what she likes and doesn't like. but the stress of being completely secret eventually got to dahae who was fed up with juniper's reluctance to come out to her friends.

‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2019 - present. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › long term relationship. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › worst kept secret.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: it's been said that pearl annoyed juniper into a relationship and it's not too far off from the truth. juniper's fatal flaw is that she doesn't care much about anything. pearl, deciding she would be the one to fix that, stepped up to wiggle her away into juniper's frigid exterior. they're been going steady for a while now as an open secret between their shared fandoms.

EMMY⠀⠀┉⠀⠀*⠀cara chapman-oliver & quinton ong.

‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2011 - 2012. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › friends. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › unknown.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: cara and emmy were yearmates attending the same finishing school in bristol, england. neither of them took the relationship to be a big deal considering they hadn't ever discussed their sexualities. the relationship was slow though the lines between their friendship and the relationship were often a mess of tangled feelings. nothing much ever happened between the two beyond a long kiss or a short cuddle and by the time emmy had decided to leave england for korea they had already been more friends than girlfriends.

‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2015 - present. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › long term relationship. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › fully public.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: fans often joke that emmy got the y/n treatment when she started dating quinton and it's all very true. around the time that quinton's band, chaos theory, started performing small gigs in korea, emmy made it her mission to go to as many shows as possible. after her attending three consecutive shows, she was noticed by the drummer and invited backstage after the show. despite the half-assed disguise she'd throw on, quinton was quick to realize she was a member of a blossoming letalis. after emmy was famously accused of being a groupie, apricus would confirm their relationship to the public just a year after they met. the couple is unabashed in their interactions and posts with each other, being one of the most beloved couples within the company.

NARYUN⠀⠀┉⠀⠀*⠀park hyunki & trenton won.

‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › ? - 2018. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › no contact. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › highly scandalous.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: it's not publicly known how or when naryun and hyunki started dating. the official story apricus gave was that he was the son of her longtime ballet mentor and they began dating in 2014, after naryun's 19th birthday. most fans don't buy the story after naryun accidentally let it slip that she had been dating hyunki for six years in 2017. while it is true that hyunki was the son of naryun's mentor, it's well known that she started dating him in 2011 when she was 16. hyunki, who was seven years her senior, quietly led her on for years. naryun's realization that hyunki had only promised her empty words came in the form of a daintily packaged invitation to the baby shower of his pregnant fiancee in 2018. needless to say, naryun and hyunki do not speak anymore.

‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2021 - present. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › long term relationship. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › fully public.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: naryun and trenton have known each for over a decade. beginning with his work on the group's debut album, trenton is a staple to the letalis sound. famously, trenton developed an unrequited crush on naryun who was deeply entrenched in her relationship with hyunki. after witnessing the mess hyunki left naryun in, trenton jumped at the first opportunity to be naryun's rebound. although it took two years of sneaking around, trenton finally found the courage to present naryun with an ultimatum. giving in, the couple posted a joint announcement asking fans for privacy and understanding as they made their relationship public knowledge in 2023.

JISEO⠀⠀┉⠀⠀*⠀niels holtz-park & samuel myung.

ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2017. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › friends. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › heavily rumored.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: there really wasn't much to jiseo and niels. they had met in passing a couple of times, he got her number from corey, they dated for like two months, and broke up by the time rumors started circulating about them. they've been pretty good friends since then and niels has contributed to some of jiseo's solo work as recently as last year.

ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2019 - present. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › long term relationship. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › open fandom secret.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: jiseo and sungjoon have known each other since chaos theory started playing shows in korea in 2015. frequently accompanying emmy to their gigs, jiseo and sungjoon quickly established a solid friendship. as jiseo became further integrated into sungjoon's friend group consisting of corey and ian, jiseo found herself in the whirlwind of their wild habits and notorious parties. bonding over their introversion, jiseo and sungjoon would become each other's closest confidante. unfortunately, the very parties that brought the two close would end up dividing them after a particularly dangerous night left sungjoon spiraling. though it would nearly take a miracle, the two were reconciled in 2019, deciding to take the relationship they had avoided seriously.

HERI⠀⠀┉⠀⠀*⠀carter kim.

‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀DURATION › 2021. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀CURRENT STATUS › complicated. ‎ ꨄ⠀⠀&.⠀⠀LEVEL OF PUBLICITY › deep fandom knowledge.

‎ ‎ ┉ * ﹙ㅤʬ . OVERVIEW: a lot can be learned from carter and heri's relationship, if it can even be called one. don't sleep with your groupmate's ex-fuck buddy, don't help each other pick up girls, and most importantly karma often comes in the least expected person. it's been said that carter truly did fall in love with heri who couldn't be bothered to return the feeling. it's also been said that heri's entanglement with carter drove naira mad with envy. interestingly, carter hasn't dated since then, and melanie finds the whole situation hilarious.

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earlgreytea68 · 11 months

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EGT's FAQ About A Fall Out Boy Cover of the Billy Joel Song "We Didn't Start the Fire" Covering Newsworthy Items from 1989-2023

Why isn’t it in chronological order?!

Was the original in chronological order? Yes, roughly speaking (it wasn’t in exact chronological order, either, for instance, the Brooklyn Dodgers won their first World Series after Disneyland opened but the Dodgers are mentioned before Disneyland, but I get it, it is roughly chronological and definitely more so than the Fall Out Boy cover).

The original, however, was also about a different time period in history: It happened to cover the Cold War. It makes sense that it would go in chronological order because there was a very definitive narrative arc to that portion of history: The Cold War started, all these things happened during it, the Cold War ended.

The era since the Cold War ended arguably lacks this narrative arc. So it makes sense that if you were doing a “We Didn’t Start the Fire” for the modern era, you wouldn’t go in chronological order. That would imply a “beginning” and an “end” that our era doesn’t deserve. Arguably, what mostly characterizes the post-Cold War era (and especially the twenty-first-century portion of it) is the jumbled chaos of time-meaninglessness. We say it all the time on the internet: What is time anymore? It means nothing? We have no sense of it. Things that happened yesterday turned out to be from 2003. There are a ton of other memes about this. You can’t believe the pandemic was over three years ago now. You can’t believe it’s been seven years since the 2016 election cycle. You can't believe that Friends is as far away from us as The Andy Griffith Show was from Billy Joel. Our histories, both personal and on a grander scale, feel like a jumble we can’t untangle, and so does this cover of the song.

In the 90s, people used to talk about being at “the end of history,” and they meant this in a good way. Like, there was this belief that “western democracies” had won and now all we had to do was keeping going up. Obviously that fell apart quickly, but I am Pete Wentz’s age, and I remember very much being given that message when I was in high school and college. In the way that the country boomed after winning World War II, it was assumed we would also boom for a long, even more extended period of time because our victory was even more complete. And then September 11 happened and it felt like it accelerated everything falling apart much more quickly. But that fever dream quality of growing up “post-history,” so to speak, is I think captured really well in the non-chronological lyrics, in a way that I think following a chronology would have done a disservice to. Our lives are this weird mish-mash of constant horrors mixed with the numbing agents of pop culture, and so is this song.

The song ends on September 11, and there have been 22 years of history since September 11, and I get why it’s upsetting to people for the song to end on an event from 2001, and at the same time I think it’s the most effective part of the song, because it does not feel like that was 22 years ago, it definitely feels like it was yesterday, and it also feels like sometimes it’s the only thing that happened in the past thirty-plus years, because of how much it dwarfed everything that came before and how much it colored everything that came afterward.

Also, Fall Out Boy did make a deliberate choice to change the way the chorus goes. Billy Joel sings, "We tried to fight it," and Fall Out Boy sings, "We're trying to fight it." That, to me, adds to the impression that this isn't a narrative with a beginning and an end, it is all over the place and we're still in the middle of it all. So the song ends in the middle, basically.

I am speaking, of course, from the bias of a privileged American born in 1980 who graduated high school in 1997. But, speaking from that bias, I personally get why it’s not chronological, and I don’t think it’s a fatal flaw of the cover. To me, after a moment of being surprised the first time I listened, I felt like I got it and it captured the era better, and it was a feature not a bug. Obviously not everyone will agree, but anyway, I just wanted to say it.

There’s no way they did that on purpose, though.

I’ve got news for you about literary analysis, which I can confidently state as a writer myself: I’m sure there are some writers deliberately doing stuff on purpose but I bet a lot of it is the stuff you don’t even notice. The stuff you do notice and make much of, I’m always like, “…well. Gotta pretend I knew I was doing that all along…” I used to feel guilty about that, but I don’t anymore, because I’ve decided that the things I do instinctively, because they feel right to me, count just as much. When it turns out later that I was doing something because of x, y, z, only I couldn’t articulate it, I think that’s okay. And I also think it’s better than okay when people read what I write with their own experiences making it mean something to them that I would never have thought about.

Which is to say, I’m not particularly bothered by whether Pete Wentz said to Patrick, Joe, and Andy, “Let’s not do it chronologically in order to capture the chaos of this era.” He probably didn’t. But he did make a choice not to do it chronologically, and that’s good enough for me. (He actually starts with a very early reference, so it’s like he’s faking all of us out, like, You thought this would be a nice chronology, but it’s not, it’s an absolute mess.)

Didn’t Pete Wentz basically say it was just too hard to do it chronologically?

Never believe what Pete Wentz says about his own lyrics. He says Thnks fr th Mmrs is about Coachella.

Okay, but you’re surely giving him too much credit.

I’ve been analyzing the man’s lyrics for a long time now. He’s so much smarter than anyone gives him credit for, tbh. Believe me, I also used to think it was just coincidence that he kept tripping over these really elegant, multi-layered, evocative phrases. After twenty years, I don’t think it’s coincidence anymore. I think he just knows how to write.

But also, We Didn't Start the Fire gets held up as a Cold War epic, and it wasn't actually about the Cold War either, Billy Joel just lucked out that the Cold War ended the year it came out.

Fine, but anyone can just rhyme a bunch of proper nouns together.

Yes! You are correct! Anyone can do that! Go for it!

Yeah, but why is everyone paying so much attention to Fall Out Boy’s?

Honestly, I don’t know. They put out a really stellar album that most major media outlets and casual social media managed to ignore, and they’re in the middle of a super-ambitious tour where on any given night Patrick Stump might cover Queen or they’ll just pull out something old or maybe something brand new and I haven’t seen anyone talking about any of that, either. So I’m not entirely sure why suddenly everyone’s so fixated on what Fall Out Boy is doing, but Idk, if you’re curious, the new album is excellent and doesn’t have a single cover song on it, it's all original and it's got ton more Pete Wentz lyrics to pore over.

The lyrics are very sports-heavy, though. Was that necessary?

The lyrics are extremely Pete Wentz. I know everyone else in the band helped him, too, but these are the things Pete Wentz cares about: Chicago sports, Marvel stuff, Tiger King, other emo bands. Lots of other stuff, too, but the fact that he includes the Cubs and not the Red Sox is entirely a function of Who Pete Wentz Is. It’s actually an extremely personal listing of the last thirty years, and I kind of like that about it, too. Everyone’s version of this song is different, and that’s cool!

But it doesn’t even mention COVID!

I, too, was surprised by that, but it mentions Tiger King, and I think that’s better, it made me laugh and also very vividly evoked that particular time to me better than just saying, like, "COVID-19 quarantine" would have.

There are other huge events it leaves out!

Yes. There are.

I can’t help it, I just really hate the song.

That’s cool. There are songs I really hate, too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(the funniest thing to me is that many people make fun of Patrick's lack of enunciation making lyrics unintelligible, but he's worked so hard on his singing that people can understand these lyrics, oops)

#long post #fall out boy #fob #bandom

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siriusly-sapphic · 10 months

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Alright these two are my absolute darlings, my destructive sweethearts who love each other more than they can handle, and I’ve loved them for years and there’s not that much fic for them and I’m personally kinda picky about their dynamic in fic but I am also trying very hard to spread the word of this ship so I wanted to make a rec list of my fifteen favourite fics for Sirius Black/Narcissa Black Malfoy!

All of these fics center around siricissa, so there’s the obvious warning for cousin incest in every fic. Other warnings have been included, but please do read the tags and all before reading bc I just included the most obvious warnings.

They’re sorted by year they were published, starting in 2010 with the very first fic I ever read for them (I only read it in like 2016 or so, but still) and ending in 2023!

Also for one of these fics, this gorgeous piece of art was created that I’m still stunned by each time I see it, so I wanted to bring some special attention to it. It was created by @dragonanddirewolf for the fic The Black Rose.

The list:

Nothing Like the Real Thing by beren (@berenwrites) Explicit | 2900 words | Includes Lily/Narcissa Warnings: Polyjuice potion to have sex, and they're at Hogwarts so potentially underage?

Summary: This is actually the first fic I ever read for them and I still really like it! Lily and Narcissa have an arrangement where one takes polyjuice to look like someone of the other person’s choosing before they fuck. Narcissa chooses Sirius, and she gets closer to the real deal than she’d anticipated.

2. Once Upon a Dream by Elfflame (@elfflame) Explicit | 5280 words | Background Lucius/Narcissa Warnings: Infidelity

Summary: Narcissa hosts a masquerade ball at Malfoy Manor. Sirius sneaks in, in costume, and dances and flirts with her anonymously. They both have an idea of who the other is, but it’s better not to say that out loud until the night’s over.

3. Sleeping in the Devil’s Bed by A_Factorygirl_69 (2012) Explicit | 7819 words | Background Lucius/Narcissa Warnings: Infidelity

Summary: They meet during the first war in the Leaky Cauldron and Sirius is as crass as he could possibly be. Narcissa hates it, she tells him so, and then she spends 8000 words taking him up on his crude offers.

4. A thousand silhouettes by elle_blessing Teen | 3094 words | Includes a playlist

Summary: Their lives, sneaking around at Hogwarts and watching their family fall apart. Short fragments throughout the first war, in which Sirius is one year older than Narcissa instead of her being older.

5. Making darkness in the day by slashmarks (@slashmarks) Explicit | 2589 words | Sirius lives AU

Summary: During the second war, Narcissa goes into hiding in Grimmauld Place and marries Sirius for the magical protection it offers. This is their wedding night.

6. Sirius Black’s Highland Fling by MarshmallowMcGonagall (@marshmallowmcgonagall) Explicit | 6309 words | Sirius lives AU

Summary: After the second war, Sirius is set to attend a muggle party in Harry’s stead and can think of no better person to accompany him than Narcissa. He takes her shopping, then dancing, and what’s a night out without a healthy dose of semi-public sex?

7. Black and Gold by MarshmallowMcGonagall (@marshmallowmcgonagall) Explicit | 2080 words | Background Lucius/Narcissa

Summary: Sirius has been cursed with the curse of Echo, leaving him unable to speak beyond copying others’ words until the person he loves kisses him. Naturally, he heads to Narcissa for help. Naturally, she makes him wait for it.

8. Weight of Silence by hazellepotter (@wandlores) Teen | 2100 words | Canon Compliant (ends with Sirius going to the ministry in OOTP)

Summary: Sirius during OOTP tells Buckbeak about how in love with Narcissa he once was, and why it didn’t work out. Includes a few flashbacks to sweeter moments between them, before everything fell apart and it's just very bittersweet.

9. Black Bones by devianthouseofblack Explicit | 5059 words | Background wolfstar and lucissa Warning: Underage (I believe Sirius is 16, Narcissa is older)

Summary: Sirius has run away from his family, Narcissa is engaged to Lucius Malfoy. She sees her family falling apart around her, and is determined to get Sirius back to their side. When other attempts at convincing him fail, she figures out a different way of showing him that his pleasure is his to take.

10. Silver Shackles and Rose Thorns by JustaDeadDove Explicit | 2936 words | Background Lucius/Narcissa Warning: Infidelity

Summary: Narcissa is engaged, so no one pays her any attention anymore now that she’s done the right thing. At a family gathering, she steals a few private moments for herself and Sirius is quick to take advantage of them by paying her all the attention she deserves.

11. Helpless by Thistlecat (@thistlecatfics) Explicit | 1970 words | Background Lucius/Narcissa

Summary: Sirius is cursed at a party and is immobilised. Narcissa finds him and does eventually help him, but first they take this as a great opportunity to have their way with each other. Healthy dose of mocking and bratting, too.

12. They Leave Us by Doshu (@vdoshu) Explicit | 5239 words

Summary: Angst and betrayal during the first war. Sirius is caught when he goes on an undercover mission because he's figured out who the spy is and of course Narcissa catches him. Lucky for him, because some beautiful hate sex ensues.

13. Your Cigarette Smell by Lumosatnight (@lumosatnight) Explicit | 9680 words | Background Lucius/Narcissa Warning: Canon-compliant MCD

Summary: Non-linear story spanning their relationship from when it starts durings the first war up until his death during the second. Beautiful, painful, hot, everything they’re supposed to be. Their push and pull ‘not being able to stay away from each other even when they want to’ dynamic really comes through here.

14. The Black Rose by DracoIgnis (@dracoignisworld) Explicit | 36,134 words | Background Lucius/Narcissa Warning: Implied? Canon-compliant MCD? But maybe not?

Summary: This is the fic the art work linked above is for! I will never not be a sucker for canon-compliant stories for these two, and this again spans the first and second wars and is just beautiful. It starts when they’re young, and ends with Narcissa finding out he’s been killed at the ministry, with some moments during both wars and in the time between him escaping prison and the second war starting!

15. The stars don’t shine, they burn by Mymblehowl (@st-clements-steps) Explicit | 6108 words | Background Lucius/Narcissa

Summary: This is a modern AU in which Narcissa is a lawyer, married to Lucius, and Sirius is trying to get custody of Harry instead of the Dursleys. Narcissa represents the Dursleys, and also Sirius has an OnlyFans account which she insists she only watches because it might be relevant to the case. She doesn’t quite stick to just watching his videos.

These are my recs for now! Obviously there are a lot more fics in the AO3 tag, but I’m a picky bitch with a bad memory and these are my absolute favourites so for now this is it. I hope you enjoy reading them!

#sirius black #narcissa malfoy #siricissa #blackcest #sirius x narcissa #narcissa black #harry potter #rec list #fic recs #hp recs #marauders era #my rec list

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chibrary · 6 months

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title: charles leclerc talks about his "red passion" author: roberto croci photographer: joseph degbadjo source: l'officiel series: f1, 2022

Formula 1 driver Charles Leclerc talks about his beginnings, his myths - including Ayrton Senna and how he prepares for his races. And what he likes to do in his free time with his lifelong friends.

L'OFFICIEL ITALIA: Who chose to call you Perceval? CHARLES LECLERC: My father, perhaps he imagined his children as the legendary Knights of the Round Table. I have two brothers, the younger Arthur - who has speed in his blood - and Lorenzo, older than me, who always accompanies him to all the races..

LOI: Maybe one day together with Ferrari? CL: It would be a dream, but for now I want him to grow independently, to discover his path, the circuit is a difficult world, so much so that he knows that if he ever needs me I will always be by his side.

LOI: When did you discover your passion for this profession? CL : I was four years old and one day I told my father Hervé that I didn't feel well and I didn't want to go to kindergarten. I don't know why, he believed it and took me with him to the go-kart track of his best friend, Philippe Bianchi. (Father of the pilot Jules Bianchi, who died in 2015 on the Suzuka track, the first pilot to die after Ayrton Senna, nda). When I saw other children running on the track, I asked my father if I could try. For my first car I chose the color red, and after three laps I fell in love with this sport, I couldn't understand the concept of braking. On those tracks I started dreaming of becoming a pilot, then growing up I realized that I could make my dream come true and turn it into a job opportunity.

LOI: Do you ever feel fear? CL: Honestly… I felt scared in 2017 when I thought I could not succeed in becoming a Formula 1 driver. (Leclerc won the GP3 series championship in 2016; FIA Formula 2 in 2017 to debut in F.1 with the Alfa Romeo Sauber the following year, in 2018). Never afraid of speed, the day I'm afraid, I'll stop running immediately, because living in fear is half living.

LOI: Do you remember the first Grand Prix you saw?

CL: I was still a child, I had a friend whose apartment had a balcony overlooking the Monte Carlo circuit. Of course, I always supported red cars, which have always been a special color for me, even though I didn't know Ferrari existed yet. I repeat, I am living my childhood dream.

LOI: Your favorite driver? CL : My idol has always been Ayrton Senna, from what I have been able to see from documentaries and talking to people who knew him, I discovered that he was a special person, not only behind the wheel, perhaps the best in history, but also as a human being. He will always be a legend, and not just for me.

LOI: Give me a list of your favorite team and circuits. CL: Senna for sure, Prost, Niki Lauda, James Hunt, Michael Schumacher and... Hamilton would be fine too. Monaco and Singapore the circuits, precisely because if you make a mistake you pay for it immediately.

LOI: There's been a lot of talk about mental health in sports lately. How do you keep your focus? CL : Even if I run at 300km per hour I'm a human being, I alternate between beautiful moments and difficult moments, I'm not a superhero. To maximize my concentration, even though I've always been good at handling tense moments, I've been doing breathing exercises since I was a boy. They help me stay calm, they're part of the job of achieving a level of focus that helps me maximize my potential. Preparing for the race is 90% of the work, you have to think about everything from strategies to teamwork.

LOI: Since you spend most of your time in a pilot suit, how do you like to dress in your spare time? CL: Even if it doesn't seem like it, I really like fashion, it's a way to express myself without speaking. I have two types of styles, one very streetwear, causal, relaxed but refined, and then the more classic one, complete with jacket and elegant trousers. I'm not very fond of ties and I use them little. I often wear garments from the new Ferrari line, they are aerodynamic and the fabrics are technical but with an air of couture. Plus they have my favorite color, you should know what it is by now.

LOI: When you're not running, what do you do? CL: I'm a normal guy, I spend time with friends. They are Ricardo, Alex, Thomas, Guillaume, Nico, Hugo, and Joris. I'm the hard core of my youth. We go to the beach, to the restaurant, we play soccer, we play sports together because we are all sportsmen, even if it is difficult for me to find free time to spend with them. I do normal things, even if my life remains different because while they study, I live my passion. I love racing, I love Ferrari, I'm lucky.

LOI: Do you play Formula 1 video games? CL: I play with my brothers, it's a lot of fun because normally we never talk about racing together, but we do when we play. During the lockdown, with other riders, we organized challenges on Twitch, because we wanted to entertain our fans who couldn't come and see us racing. It was a tough time for everyone, at the same time I had the opportunity to stop for a moment and live a more normal life with my family.

LOI: Your favorite moment before a race? CL: When I put my helmet on and everyone comes out of the pit lane, at that point I'm alone with my car and it feels good. It's like a nest, I don't feel any sensation, zero tension, I'm completely relaxed waiting for the ride.

#series:f1 #format:interview #year:2022

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thewoundedmind · 14 days

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War will never end. That's my life.

I know, there maybe after few years or decades the war will be ended. But it will never stops for me - cause I lost so many years, that I can't get back and I'll need to cope with that. I will never get home, actual home that will be my property, cause, well, you know what life is exactly we living now.

I couldn't get a degree - there was depression in my head and even if I did everything to get it, back there, at home, there, in free lands in Ukraine it'll be not legitimate.

I was in a cell of some idea. "Russian world" huh. True picture of their world indeed.

War will never end. I know a woman, who's cannot move on, cannot start a new life here without thinking that someday it all stops and she will need money for reconstruction of her apartments or else. She cannot believe that It'll continue any longer. She believes, there is an end.

I can understand her - I heard in 2016 that war will end in a couple months, maybe bit later, in 2017… There was then… 2018… 2019…

You know, I'll stopped believe in any end. I just hoped that I can run away, somewhere where is no fucking war, no fucking slavic people, somewhere where I'll be free and happy. Without war.

Sometimes I believe, World is teaching me a lessons. I hated cooking - so he throw me into a Shelter's Kitchen and I understood cooking. I believed, I'm a weak person, than I stuck on a hardworking, traumatizing my hands and still proceed to work. I was thinking I'm actually not a queer person but a person just confused, than World introduced me to local LGBTQIA+ community, that accepted me as a person who I am and I felt… So much happy. Loved. World teaches me a lesson everytime when I thinking I can't do something.

The World never let me go in Russia, and when I choose to escape in Ukraine, It let that happen immediately. Without troubles. No one cared. But It doesn't let me go forward, from Ukraine - I stuck here, and this taught me a lesson - to understand the truth, to learn a history, to fell in love with something, that my parents taught me to hate. I fell in love with my culture, with my land, with Ukraine.

But what it tries to teach me, when I can't find anything, to live a normal life? Can't find a job, can't stop getting myself in a heavier depts? What it tries to teach me, getting myself sick and preventing me to get a job or continue working.

And what World is trying to teach us all, letting this war continue for more years?

War will never end, until we all learn something.

#war in ukraine #wm bloh #some thoughts #ukraine #anger

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littlest-bugz · 1 month

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Resolution ; A Sigh Of Relief

a [polyfrag] DID system's experience with resolution (functional multiplicity)

please do not bring syscourse to this post. this post is about our own personal healing journey and is not intended as advice or professional info

TWs: Isolation [heavy], abuse [heavy but not in depth], self harm mention [brief], suicidality mention [brief], unsure of other triggers

In Mid June of 2022, I was diagnosed with DID for the first of two times. Flashback to 2021. I had been in and out of therapy, in my teen years, but after researching my symptoms to try and find a proper care plan for my mental health, I ended up self diagnosing myself with BPD. The view I have always had on therapy and self diagnosis is that it doesn't take a real diagnosis to get the help you need, just use the resources that help you regardless, so I wasn't really hesitant to self diagnose myself [after research obvs]. After i self dx, I decided I would find a trauma informed DBT therapist, since I saw DBT mentioned often as treatment for people with BPD. After a while of researching, I found exactly that in my first therapist as a young adult. She was an amazing mental health professional tbh. She taught me skills that still have use today, and helped me grow, so so much. However, a year into therapy, she asked me to consider the possibility of having DID, and she asked me to reach out to my [potential] alters just to see what would happen. Ofc, I did exactly that. I made a dinky little journal for anyone to write in, as long as they used a sign off or different colored pen. That was when the flood gates opened, alters expressing themselves in the journal, and system awareness was achieved for the second time in our system's history.

Yes, you heard me, for the second time.

The first time system discovery starts for us actually starts sometime in October of 2016 [when I was 12-13]. It was the peak of my abuse, and because of that, I attempted to create an imaginary friend to have someone who knew me, just,,, period tbh. I wanted someone to know me down to my own memories because I was afraid of being alone, and I was tired of having my trauma further ignored and disregarded, even encouraged, by the adults in my life.

I was a deeply, deeply isolated kid, and had no one in my life i could trust or depend on until I was into my late teen years. I didn't have any real friends [and was, instead, abused by my peers], didn't have a family that actively cared about me, the church i was going to had and was abusing me profoundly, and the partner I had treated me like less than human. It was abuse coming from all angles, all facets, of my life. I could not escape the abuse no matter where I turned, so I turned inwards. I wanted someone, anyone who could understand me and listen, especially someone who knew what was happening to me for a fact and wouldn't gaslight every experience I had.

That's when I ''created'' 💙, but mind you, I didn't actually create him. He was, actually, his own whole dude before I ''created'' him, and he was NOT someone who would comfort me gently like I had wanted him to be. He was, instead, a sarcastic, blunt guy who only comforted me when things got actively tough. At that time, he had even fronted more than once to prevent stupid decisions I did, and it actually marked the first period of concerning black out amnesia. HOWEVER, through ''creating'' 💙, I got in contact with more of our system members [specifically 🎸,🧣,🌵 and 💤, who all are active members to this day, still fronting from time to time]. Our communication flourished back then, and everything was well documented, down to journal entries I had written about 💙's ''creation''. We had drawings and journals, which were all thrown away or deleted in 2019.

Speaking of, our communication with the system fell apart in 2019, shortly after the body's birthday [which is usually very traumatic for our system]. It was a complete host change brought on by the CEO of our system that ruined communication. It left that new host, 🐛. Confused, and without any memory of our life before then, 🐛 forgot everything about the system. Literally down to the name of 💙. All communication was cut, and all prior knowledge of our system was disposed of because our journals and drawings were thrown out by an alter who was heavily influenced by the CEO. CEO did not want us to know we were a system, and he had been dormant for years at that point. At least until he [somehow] got triggered and saw what was going on. 🐛 was the alter that later got in contact with everyone in 2021 and got us diagnosed the first time. Thankfully, the supposed creation of 💙 was what made communication pick up again smoothly, and we were, once again, a tightknit group of alters sharing a body. We're still like that, for the most part.

Our upbringing heavily impacted how we go about our recovery process, and how we will continue to recover. So when we entered therapy with a DID specialist, we had already radically accepted our systemhood after being diagnosed once. We have a very much 'your opinion of me doesn't matter to me' type of thinking, at least in regards to anyone other than a medical professional. Ofc, DID specialist was like 'yeah, I can tell lol' and diagnosed me shortly thereafter. After being diagnosed with DID a second time by the specialist, we were asked what path in recovery we wanted, and to think and talk about amongst ourselves. The big question every recovering system faces. Did we want to pursue final fusion or not?

Overwhelmingly for our system, we wanted to aim for resolution [aka functional multiplicity]. HOWEVER, there is nothing wrong with final fusion. A lot of people actually fear monger about it amongst the CDD community. So let me say that again: Final Fusion is NOT a bad thing and is a valid way to recover. Just because it is not our path doesn't mean it isn't someone else's. Here are two posts that give some decent info on Final Fusion: [post one] [post two]. I can find more if need be, but that isn't what this post is about. This is simply to reaffirm that final fusion is nothing to be scared of, and a 110% valid path of recovery. Our experience doesn't align with final fusion, but since I mentioned it briefly, I thought I would talk about it for a second.

Fusion moment aside, We have, since mid 2022 for sure, felt like we don't have a solid host, and we have always felt that way because of the cycle of hosts. The body holds a good number of us, that's for sure, and because of how many of us there are, we have no solid one host. There are frequent fronters, sure, but nobody is a host in the traditional, typically talked about sense. For this reason, we feel that we have no core alter [which we don't, unsurprisingly], and we found it unfair to each other that we take away our freedom to express ourselves as alters. Like yeah, we are parts of a whole, but there was never a 'core' individual. There was never an 'original'. We were pretty much destined to form DID. It is what it is, but because of that, we feel we don't have an alter from which all the others split from. I'm just a collective of parts that never even had the chance to connect to each other. Most of us feel so individual from each other because we were a highly partitionary system with no memory sharing or knowledge of each other. I honestly think if what happened in 2016 didn't happen, I would've only known my system through the 2021 diagnosis, and it would not have been as easy to pick communication back up. Things are wildly different now in regards to amnesiac barriers, but when we did find each other, we were our own people expressing ourselves through different [covert] means.

Due to feeling so separated and individualistic, Resolution was, ultimately, the best decision for our system, and since having made this decision and began recovery, our life has actually become something worth living, if that makes sense. I mean Internally and mentally. We function together as a team, and it's a great thing to witness tbh. It's taken a lot of hard work with a lot of disagreements in system, but for a life time ahead of me, it's worth it. I'm finally starting to love all of me, all of us. It's been hard, so incredibly hard, and we still don't always get along. There are still disagreements, votes that spark heated discussions, but that's just what happens when you're sharing a body with so many folks.

Of course, u see me use I/Me pronouns because we all acknowledge the body and the role it has in our collective life. When I say I, when I say me, it is the acknowledgement of the body's role in our life. The Body is the part of us that makes us whole, what we live through, and what makes us a team and family [in-sys family members at least because as a whole we don't see each other as family]. We are so incredibly grateful for the body and the collective Identity we live through. It is a sigh of relief to finally have come this far into our healing where things are finally getting better for us. I'm healing all parts of me, and I am authentically myself by being a system. We love the life we live finally. Even if we're still living with abusers, we know that once we're out of here, it's the final step to our trauma recovery and what will make us free to be ourselves.

Trauma is bound to happen again in my lifetime, re-traumatization will happen too. I'm young [for an adult at least], and, like I mentioned briefly, I'm still in an abusive situation. For this reason, we are learning to cope with day to day stress, as well as preparing our coping tool box for future traumas. At this stage in our healing, we have attained near entire co-consciousness, and have learned to share daily and important memories or notes from alter to alter, subsystem to subsystem. Sometimes its just one fronter and the CEO or the whole Crew and Co., yet CEO makes sure things get to everyone. No longer do we live our day to day confused on what's happened, what our past is and who we are, if we've eaten, taken our meds, showered, if we have an appointment ect. Now when switches happen, things are not confusing, and smooth with no sort of amnesiac barrier. Afterall, a good 97% of us are co-con in some capacity, and even then, we're able to memory share day to day memories. It's like whoever is best equipped to deal with a situation fronts.

Some of us don't want to share our trauma memories with each other entirely due to it's intensity, so we instead talk about it amongst ourselves and make peace with our trauma that way [with the help of our therapist]. It's like group therapy lol. Most of us are just content with the knowledge of not fully knowing everything, and having worked in trauma recovery for years now, our past traumas affects our day to day a lot less [any disruptions now are from the collective disorders we have and our living situation]. The peace that comes from being okay with not knowing is relieving, and the alters who hold the bulk of the trauma have started to work through their traumas.

Sharing trauma memories in our system can cause body and other kinds of flashbacks, panic and extreme distress, and can even trigger self harm and suicidality in some of our alters. Almost always, with trauma memories, its more than one alter getting triggered. I like to think of it like sculk sensors from Minecraft [minecraft moment]. When one is triggered, nearby alters in front and co-con get triggered like a wave effect, but it has a lot to due with similar types of traumas or being fragments of the same trauma. It doesn't stop it from happening. What we've done is worked on helping trauma holders cope and making them 'unstuck' in the trauma. Memory Sharing with trauma was once, and still is to an extent, dangerous for us, but the memory sharing via talking with each other, rather than give up the memories themselves, has caused us to even out and begin to work through the actual trauma, work through everything we have been through. It may sound flawed, but it works for us.

After having achieved a grasp on resolution, we've taken notice to our collective disorders and experiences, like our psychosis symptoms [from an unknown origin] and OCD. A lot of what we thought were persecutors ended up being our OCD, so things got quieter in that way. This helped us to work on those mental health problems and cultivate a further sense of peace. We also were able to start to work on other therapy methods that cater to our flavor of personality disorder. Achieving Resolution to even the degree we have has been phenomenal, and it only gets better from here once we reach full resolution.

None of this is to say resolution will or should be your path in healing, so please take what I say with a grain of salt. This is our experience with our healing journey, and nothing is the same from CDD system to CDD system. I just wanted to post and ramble about my progress because I am proud of myself and our progress!!! Obviously, I am not a representative for anyone other than myself. It's just so nice to be able to actually see my progress, see our progress. I also feel like I don't see many people talk about late stage DID recovery in any way, resolution or final fusion. Honestly, its even nice to just label our progress as being in late stage recovery. I'm glad to be me, as a system, while also dancing my way down the path of healing [lol].

Not sure if anyone is curious, but I'm always open to answering questions about my experiences with resolution as a polyfrag DID system. nothing intrusive about trauma, but I'm down to talk about the aspects of resolution and stuff. Just know I'm not a psychiatrist or other professional, and I don't speak for any other system but my own.

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necnnights · 4 months

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In the years of their careers, NEON NIGHTS has built up a repository of unreleased songs, unarchived performances, and other lost media. The following are a few of the most popular examples.

PRE-ZENITH ENTERTAINMENT MUSIC VIDEOS (2016-2017). It is a well-known fact that the band had a past with a few songs released prior to Zenith Entertainment, namely their debut song YOU and follow-up single ASPHALT. While the songs are still available on streaming services, their music videos have been wiped from all official channels. It is rumored that Hwajung and her brother, former member Sungjae, both have their own copies of all of their early work. Neither of them have ever confirmed or denied the rumors.

INCHEON PENTAPORT ROCK FESTIVAL PERFORMANCE (2018). The performance that started it all, given that it led directly to their signing with Zenith Entertainment. Their set list was short and consisted mostly of pop punk covers, though they did manage to slide their own two songs in. As they were unpopular at the time, the recordings of their performance have been lost to time.

PRE-DEBUT VARIETY SHOW (2019). Prior to their debut in Japan, the band filmed a variety show focused on the production of their album. A teaser for the show was released officially on their social media, but the rest of the show never followed. It was instead edited down into a half-hour documentary released with the deluxe version of the album. Qiuyun has been the most forward when asked about it, saying it “didn’t turn out as planned” and it’s “really regretful that it had to be that way.”

DEMOS, DEMOS, AND MORE DEMOS (2020). Their second Japanese EP, ALIGHT, released in three editions: a typical CD and booklet only offering, a deluxe edition with further behind-the-scenes content, and a collector’s edition with an extra CD full of demo versions of most of their discography thus far. The collector’s edition sold horribly, as it was for sale only in Japan for a short period of time. None of the demos were ever released digitally, and are generally known only the most dedicated of fans.

POP ROCK ALBUM (2021). Before Neon Nights’ official Korean debut, they performed at many small clubs and bars around Seoul. In addition to covering a number of other popular rock songs—fan favorites include Paramore’s “Misery Business,” Scandal’s “Shunkan Sentimental,” and Halestorm’s “Love Bites (So Do I)”—they also teased their own music. The most notable of these is the song “BAD GIRLFRIEND,” which was officially teased as a single on their Instagram before being quickly deleted. A studio version of the song was leaked shortly after their debut. It is highly suspected that the song and album were both of Eunbyul’s creation, but forgone in favor of Hwajung’s EP that aligned more closely with their Japanese discography.

SECOND HALF OF DEBUT PROMOTIONS (2021). Their debut title track, “FLY AWAY,” was meant to be promoted for four weeks. They had the shows booked. They had the schedules posted on their fancafe. In the first two weeks, everything went well. In the second two weeks, everything fell apart and nothing that was planned was ever released. It is presumed that they took the time to record everything, and the lack of official releases came from factors outside of their control. The band is surprisingly mum about the issue. They simply disappeared after their debut and reappeared months later.

LIVE-STREAMED PRACTICES (2020-2022). In attempt to market the band to young, always online kpop fans or create some sort of viral moment, Neon Nights live-streamed at least one band practice a week. This did not achieve of either of their goals, but rather provided the fuel for Twitter speculation along the lines of “why do hwajung and yumi always look at eden like she killed their dog 😭😭” and YouTube compilations of “eunbyul playing qiuyun’s parts for fifteen minutes straight.” The practice lived and died with Vlive, and the majority of the recordings in their entirety have been lost.

NEW ISLAND OF UTOPIA DELETED TRACKS (2022). The band’s first full-length Korean album, NEW ISLAND OF UTOPIA, contains nine tracks. According to an Instagram live hosted by Hwajung, the album was originally supposed to have twelve tracks. She even went as far as to play bits and pieces of the deleted tracks. The one that drew the most attention was "ILLUSION," though the general consensus is that it was better to keep that one in the drafts.

ACOUSTIC REPACKAGE (2022). Hwajung and Eunbyul made no secret of the fact that they and their management wanted to milk New Island of Utopia for all its worth. This meant that in addition to the album’s promotions and its four versions, they were also planning on releasing a repackage with acoustic versions of a few of their songs. While the songs have all been performed live and unofficially released in YouTube videos, there appears to be no official studio recordings of any of the songs.

I KNOW I LOVE YOU — NEON NIGHTS VER (2023). The controversial title track of their most recent Korean release features Fable’s Andrew and Mingeun, an arrangement none of them seem to be very happy with. Eden, most notably, has voiced her disapproval of her lack of lines. She also revealed that a version of the song without the features does exist, but will probably never be officially released, for the simple and succinct reason that “Taein-nim said no.”

#╰ maestro maestro i’m a pretty psycho ⸻ misc.#ficnetfairy #fictional idol community #idol oc #fake kpop group #kpop oc #drafts live on this blog for like 6 months not even exaggerating

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steddiejudas · 6 months

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It’s rare that Eddie has a day off from the shop. Let alone one that lines up with Steve’s. And it just happens to be their anniversary too. Maybe Steve had requested the day off, and maybe Eddie did too, and maybe neither of them let on to that fact to the other, so sue them, but call it a happy coincidence. They wake up slowly, early in the afternoon, basking in each other’s warmth. Well, Steve’s warmth that is. Eddie tends to run cold, while Steve is like a human furnace, heating the bed plenty for the both of them. Yet another way Eddie will sometimes quote that they’re perfect for each other, and despite it being a silly little thing, Steve always, albeit silently, agrees.

Steve rolls over, tugging Eddie’s freezing frame into him, cooling himself down while warming the love of his life up. And that thought doesn’t scare him like it used to. He imagines Erica’s voice in his head saying ‘just the facts’. The sky is blue, squids have three hearts, and Eddie Munson is the love of Steve Harrington’s life. Simple. True. And even more so, Steve believes that he will be with Eddie for the rest of his life. Evidenced by the little black velvet box he keeps in the vegetable drawer of the fridge (okay, it’s a weird spot, but he knows for a fact it’s the only spot Eddie will never find it).

“Mmm you’re warm,” Eddie mumbles, still half asleep. He pulls Steve’s arms from his waist to interlace their fingers over his heart. Steve can feel the gentle, rhythmic thumping in his chest, Eddie’s personal metronome keeping time throughout his life. Steve wonders if it’s why he has such an affinity for music.

Eddie rolls over, keeping their hands squeezed tightly between them, smiling blearily at Steve’s sleep rustled hair, the gentleness of his features like this. He leans in, just resting his forehead against Steve’s, eyes closed and breathing in the scent of sleep before nudging their noses together and finally leaning in for a kiss. It’s slow, sleepy, no expectations of turning into more, just raw emotion poured into their lips and tongues as they lazily dance together.

“Happy anniversary,” Steve mumbles against Eddie’s lips when they pull apart.

“Oh is that today?” Eddie quips.

Steve shoves his shoulder playfully, never letting the smile fall from his face. “You jackass. I know you didn’t really forget.”

“Of course I didn’t, sweetheart. What do you want to do today?”

“Hmm, ice cream date?”

Eddie smiles so hard his skin crinkles around the eyes. He knows Steve will always say ice cream date on their anniversary, it’s how they met, how they fell in love, after all. Eddie will never forget Steve in that little sailor uniform from the short-lived revival of that 80’s ice cream chain. He was drawn in by those little shorts, the moles and leg hair peeking out from under the hem, the silly little tie and goofy hat. He couldn’t resist going in despite his lactose intolerance. The roiling in his stomach was simply a byproduct of the dairy and butterflies after their brief interaction. He had invested in Lactaid pills for the first time in his life so he could go every day after that, trying every flavor on the menu, but his favorite flavor of all was Steve. A month later, when he’d gotten through everything on the menu, Steve had told him the shop was decidedly not as popular as it had been 30 years ago, and they were closing down. Eddie tried not to let the disappointment show on his face, but Steve was quick to reach out a tentative hand, cupping Eddie’s cheek and gently assuaging his fears that this would be the last time they got to see each other. Eddie kissed him and waited there until the end of Steve’s shift to lock up the doors together for the last time. In the two years since that night they always went back to the Baskin Robins that replaced Scoops Ahoy on November 14th. This year will make number three.

Eddie hums in affirmation. His hands curl around Steve’s back, drawing him impossibly closer, as if they could fuse into one being, one heart, one soul for all of eternity. “Of course, my love. As long as you never order mint chip again.”

“When will you learn Edward? Mint chip is a gift from the gods.”

“Your gods maybe. My gods look upon you with scorn every time you put chocolate toothpaste anywhere near your mouth.”

“Shut up,” Steve giggles, holding Eddie tighter in kind. “Breakfast?”

“I think it’s lunch time, baby.”

“What can I say, I love letting you sleep in. It’s the only time you’re not a total smart ass.”

“You love my smart ass.”

Steve groans and rolls them over, willing himself to pull away from Eddie plastered to his chest. His stomach gives a growl of betrayal. Steve gives Eddie a kiss on the forehead and rolls out of bed to brush his teeth. He pops his head back in on the way to the kitchen to see Eddie smiling to himself, splayed out on the bed like a starfish.

“I do, by the way,” Steve says. “Love you, I mean.”

“And I love yours. Your ass, I mean.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but makes an extra show of jutting his hips so Eddie gets a face full of his boxer clad ass as he walks away.

Eddie joins him in the kitchen a couple minutes later. He’s still shirtless, the swirling black ink of his tattoos on full display. He turns Steve around from his place at the stove and plasters himself to Steve’s chest, his face tucked into the crook of his neck, mumbling something that Steve can’t really hear as his voice is still laced with sleep.

“What was that?” Steve asks.

Eddie leans back to look, perhaps sheepishly, though that is a bit out of character for Eddie. “I said I have something for you.”

“Anniversary presents already?”

“Mm-maybe. It’s kind of a present for me, honestly.”

That piques Steve’s interest. His eyebrow raises in question and, oh there it is, that mischievous look that usually comes along with one of Eddie’s gifts. Without another word, he slinks back to the bedroom. Steve hears muffled rustling, a few curses as Eddie searches, seemingly having forgotten where he left whatever it is. There’s a triumphant ‘aha!’ and then he’s rushing out of the bedroom, gift bag in hand, his unbrushed, sleep mussed hair whipping around his face, and something about it is so wholeheartedly Eddie , that Steve melts into his touch when he puts himself right back where he was as if he never left.

Steve takes the gift bag and, just a tad awkwardly, opens it behind Eddie’s back. Inside is a package that is most definitely from their more frequented sex shop. Steve gets a delighted chill that runs through him at the prospect, but what’s inside he can’t really make heads or tails of. It’s a pink silicone device that looks like it goes around his dick. He’s not unfamiliar with that part of it, but it curves at a 90 degree angle at the bottom.

“What exactly am I looking at here, Eds?”

“That, my dear, is a vibrator,” Eddie says, turning around in Steve’s embrace so they can both look at it. He removes it from the packaging so Steve can get a better look.

“Yeah, I got that, but how do I?” Steve trails off, unsure of the question he’s really trying to ask.

“Well this part,” Eddie says, gesturing to the adjustable ring, “goes around your gorgeous cock.”

Steve’s almost certain that despite not facing each other anymore, Eddie can feel the way he heats up at the compliment. He graciously ignores it in favor of continuing his explanation.

“And this part,” He says, running a finger over the wide, flat extension, “goes right against your perineum.”

Steve gapes, unsure how he’ll be able to survive even five minutes with this thing on. He imagines the feeling of the vibrations stimulating that sweet spot until he can’t stand it anymore, until he’s seconds away from coming.

“Oh!” Eddie interjects his inner monologue and tips his head back on Steve’s shoulder to whisper in his ear. “And you have to be hard before we put it on.”

Steve shivers. That extra tidbit of information sets his nerves on edge. Sure it didn’t look like a normal cock ring, but Steve was sure it must work the same. But no, of course Eddie would pick the one toy that’s sure to drive him crazy, send him scrambling, crawling up the walls. And dear god, is he ready for it.

“When can I put it on?” Steve huffs, a little (well, okay, a lot) breathless.

Eddie grinds his hips back against Steve, already half hard. “From the looks of things we can get it on as soon as you want, sweetheart.”

Steve cranes his neck to the side as Eddie starts to mouth along the scattering of moles there. It drives him wild, the way Eddie can map out the placement of each one like constellations with his eyes closed. That and the now steady roll of his hips are going to send Steve to an early grave, way before he even gets his pants down. Eddie stops suddenly, clicking off the heat of the stove and grabbing Steve by the wrist to pull him to the bedroom.

Steve stumbleds his way through pulling his boxers down, his cock hard and ready to be fooled into thinking it’ll get the one thing it wants. Eddie pushes him down on the mattress with a heavy thud, but rather than follow him, rather than getting the toy out of the bag to put it on him, he walks away to rifle through the closet.

“What are you doing?” Steve asks, frustration evident in the way he huffs.

“Finding you something to wear. You can’t walk around the mall naked.”

“Th- the mall? Eddie, I thought we were going to play first,” He whines.

“Didn’t I say this was a gift for me? Be good and it’ll be a gift for you too.”

Eddie pops up out of the closet with a pair of loose fitting joggers that Steve keeps packed away in the recesses because, despite their comfort, they aren’t really his style. He throws them on the bed next to Steve, settles between his thighs, and finally pulls out the toy and his phone. He opens up an app Steve doesn’t recognize and looks at it contemplatively for a minute before setting it down and picking the toy back up. He’s suspiciously silent as he grabs Steve’s cock. He’s hard, like a horny teenager, two-pump chump who rarely gets laid. In a way, he kind of is. Eddie gives him one last conspiratorial glance and dips down, taking the head into his mouth with a smirk, not daring to take anymore than that into the plush warmth of his tongue and hollowed cheeks. He pumps his fist once, twice, three times and then, all at once, the sensation stops. Eddie replaces his lips with the flexible silicone of the toy, sliding it all the way down to the base, and nestling the flat edge against his perineum. It’s only then that Steve notices the bumps and ridges resting against the flat skin of his taint. Eddie opens the app back up and presses a button, filling Steve’s entire being with the sensation of intense vibrating. He can feel it everywhere, the base of his cock, into his balls, and the way those bumps wiggle feels like they’re pressed right against his prostate, if only a light sensation in comparison to Eddie stuffing him full and rubbing right against it. It’s still a lot, almost too much, but he can’t fathom stopping it now.

Until it does.

The sensation stops and suddenly his body feels cold, heavy, an unrelinquishing ache that makes his limbs feel like led. Eddie stands up with an excited look in his eye and finds Steve’s boxers somewhere out in the hallway, pulls them up and over his hard cock with the toy still pressing against him in all the right places. Even off there’s a weird thrill, a distinct pleasure from just wearing it, and suddenly it clicks. Why Eddie found the loosest pants Steve owns, the brand new toy first thing in the morning, a gift for himself. Eddie’s going to parade him around the mall with a vibrator he’s in full control of. Steve is starting to rethink his plan to bring the ring along on their date.

“I know this is something you wanted to try, but if it’s too much we can do this here for as long as you want and then go get ice cream and catch a movie. We can do whatever you want, Stevie.” Eddie soothes his hands up and down Steve’s thighs, his face is nothing but sincere, laced with concern and all Steve can do is kiss him about it.

“I want to.” Steve pulls back from the kiss, breathless and dizzy with want. “I want you to kill me with this thing.”

“Oh, Stevie. I can’t kill you today, my plans are too big.”

Steve blinks curiously. “What is it?”

“It’s a secret,” Eddie says, leaning into Steve’s space like he did across the counter of Scoops the first day they met. He leaves a little peck on Steve’s nose, making them both giggle like school girls. “Now go eat. If you only eat ice cream you’re going to get sick.”

Steve snorts, muttering under his breath. “Says you.”

“Ha ha you’re very funny. I have the pills in my pocket. Now go.”

Eddie casually pats Steve on the ass as he turns to walk away. A tremor passes through the lower half of his body. Even a light tap jostles the device against him, like Eddie’s touch reaches everywhere all at once.

Steve sucks in a harsh breath to the tune of Eddie’s cruel laughter.

“This is going to be so much fun.”

***

Eddie forgets to take his pill.

He’s too distracted.

Because Steve is an absolute wreck.

They share a sundae, just like every year, combining their two favorite flavors. Wild ‘n Reckless Sherbet for Eddie and, ugh, that ungodly mint chip for Steve. It’s a weird combination, where the fruit and mint mix together, but it’s kind of like them.

Steve’s half goes largely untouched, he’s too busy shuddering, trying to keep himself mostly normal in the overcrowded shop. Eddie is taking extreme delight in the little whimpers he’s trying, and failing, to suppress.

One couple notices, looking over with tense expressions on their faces. Eddie shoots a look back, a scowl that says ‘mind your fucking business,’ and their wide eyes go back to each other, hiding a snicker behind their spoons full of ice cream.

Eddie unlocks his phone and turns the vibe off. Returning his eyes to Steve to see him panting, white knuckling his little pink spoon and the edge of the table.

“You okay?” He whispers under the chatter of couples, rowdy teenagers, and parents desperately trying to calm their unruly children.

“G-good. I’m good. Just got a little close there.”

Eddie is absolutely delighted to hear it. This was, after all, the plan. Get Steve hard and locked up in a toy that he has total control over, drive him to the edge over and over until he’s begging Eddie to let him nut, because honestly, this month is ruining him too.

Don’t get him wrong, the last two weeks have been all kinds of fun, but fuck if he doesn’t miss slamming home and making Steve scream. Misses the warmth of his hole, the tight clench around his cock, the rhythmic slapping of their hips. At this point he’s not sure why he even started this whole horrible competition. He’s well aware of Steve’s competitive streak, as well as his own. Even though he can still cum, there’s a magic in the way Steve convulses and cries, begging Eddie to keep working him through it even when he’s completely spent, desperately wants Eddie’s hands still on him, despite the sensitivity.

But Eddie will not be the one to break first, not on this.

The ring box in his pocket begs to differ.

“Can we… Eddie?” Steve’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts of proposing, imagining the excitement in his face, the tears that will fall when he says yes, because he knows. Eddie knows Steve, knows their love, knows that he’ll say yes.

“Huh? Sorry, baby. Just lost in thought. You want to hit the movie?”

Steve nods, smiling like he’s lost in thought exactly the same as Eddie. Well, maybe not exactly the same, Steve tends to get a little lost and floaty when he’s on the edge, and this was only the second of many more to come.

Eddie throws away the half eaten mint monstrosity and wraps an arm around Steve’s waist, lets him take as much support as he needs on the short walk over to the theater at the end of the hall.

He buys them tickets to Fast X. In part, he knows the combination of Jason Momoa and Michelle Rodriguez will drive Steve crazy, himself too, maybe, but the two and a half hour run time is definitely a bonus.

They find seats in the back of the theater. The mall is busy today, sure, but the theater tends to run the AC a little high, and it’s a chilly November day, so aside from the few stragglers who find seats in the middle row so they can put their feet up on the bars, they’re in the clear.

They get through the trailers with light touches. Steve grabs Eddie’s arm and leans his head over on his shoulder. They share a bucket of popcorn between them, which Eddie dumps an overpriced box of Reeses Pieces into because he knows they’re Steve’s favorite. His hands are in it as soon as the candy is mixed in thoroughly, and Eddie reaches his own hand out to pet Steve’s hair while he hums to himself in contentment at his salty sweet mixture. Eddie doesn’t have any, his stomach is a wreck, churning with his own desire to touch Steve more .

Their little slice of tranquility is interrupted by the loud roar of engines, the speakers right in their ears. Eddie’s hands reach for his phone immediately. He starts it out on a light vibration, and by the way Steve is settling into his seat, trying to get the vibrator closer, harder, more, he knows Steve is trying to move it, to milk every drop of pleasure out of the low setting. He squeaks in pleasure as he seems to have wiggled it into just the right spot.

Eddie leans close to whisper in his ear. “Let go, princess. No one can hear you. But, you know, if they did, happy anniversary to them, right?”

Steve swats his arm, shoots him a look of pure fury, but Eddie knows it’s not at the prospect of someone catching them. He knows Steve’s mind like his own, knows the streak that’s obsessed with being caught, watched, drooled over.

No, this look is one of silent pleading, with a touch of that untamable bitchiness that Eddie loves. It makes the blood rush from his head all the way down, down, down. He’s sporting a half chub when he kicks it up to the highest setting for just a moment, before dropping it down to halfway. But the shock is just enough to make Steve jolt, sending popcorn and candy raining down around them. If there was any blood left anywhere but his dick, Eddie’s sure Steve would be red from head to toe.

For a while they keep doing that, Eddie teasing a hint of that strong vibration that makes Steve’s toes curl, swiftly dropping it back down to halfway or even lower, just to drive him wild. That is until Letty comes on screen and he can almost hear the way Steve’s breath catches. Steve knows nothing about these movies (well, neither does Eddie but that’s not the point), doesn’t even know the celebrity crush he developed on the pilot in Avatar would be making an appearance while his dick is being abused, but Eddie does his research.

He kicks up the vibrations to full intensity and just leaves it there. He watches Steve squirm, his legs restless like he’s acting out Eddie in the throes of DMing a heated battle. He’s whimpering, seconds away from crying out.

Eddie turns it off.

Full stop.

Nothing but the silicone pressing between his perineum and the seat.

Eddie feels something stir in his guts. What he assumed was butterflies, excitement and a rush of blood, is most definitely not.

He forgot to take his pill.

Eddie fumbles with his phone, tossing it to Steve with a quick, “I’ll be back. Don’t cream your jeans while I’m away.”

Steve, breathless and confused, blinks up at him. He shakes his head, and Eddie can tell he’s trying to clear the fog in his brain. He feels terrible about leaving him like this, but honestly the promise of Letty and Dante is better than watching Eddie ralph in the theater bathroom. Still, he leaves a kiss to the top of Steve’s head and tries to put the best apology he can muster into his eyes before honest to god sprinting out of there.

He barely makes it, throwing himself through the doors and hunching over the toilet to spill his guts. It’s a multi-stalled bathroom, but even still, when he hears the door open behind him he fiercely growls out: “Occupied.”

“Eddie?”

Oh thank fuck, Steve.

As much as he wanted to deal with this alone and let his boy float and drool over hot movie stars, he’s honestly struggling. All he wants is his Steve.

“In here,” he whimpers pathetically.

Steve pushes the stall door open gently, kneeling next to Eddie. “You forgot your pill, didn’t you?”

Eddie nods, a pout on his face. Steve doesn’t hesitate for a second, running his hands under cold water and coming back to press them against Eddie’s overheated cheeks.

“Come on, let’s get you home. We can rent the movie at home, or I can put on game of thrones so you can nitpick all the inconsistencies again.”

“But I… Stevie, I had a plan.”

“Baby, plans can be rearranged, but you can’t walk around like this.”

Eddie stares up at Steve, all the love, affection, warmth, awe he can muster pouring out of him, his heart swelling beyond the capacity of his ribcage. He wants to envelop Steve in the beating muscle, protect him, love him forever, wrap him up in his entire being for as long as Steve will let him.

“Are you sure?” He croaks out.

“Of course, Eddie. Come on, let’s go.” Steve puts a hand on his upper arm, the other under his armpit and hefts him up. Even after being edged for over an hour, he’s still so strong, so steady, level-headed in the face of someone who needs him.

Perfect.

And, well, Steve is no stranger to bathroom confessions. One of Eddie’s favorite stories is how he and Robin became best friends. So, he thinks, why not make a tradition out of it?

Eddie starts to lower himself down to one knee, fighting against Steve’s hold to get to where he wants to be. Steve lets him go, seeming to sense his determination.

He pulls the ring out of his pocket.

Steve takes a sharp inhale.

Eddie opens his mouth to ask the question that burns him up inside like acid tearing away at every fiber of tissue, begging to be let out.

“Eddie? What are you doing?”

“Hear me out, just… I need to say something.”

“No. Eddie. What are you doing ?”

“I’m proposing dumbass.” He says, incredulous. It should be obvious at this point right? Right?

“No you’re not. Holy shit, you are not. Eddie, get up. Tell me you’re joking.”

Wait. What?

What the hell?

Eddie was so sure. He– he knew . It was so sure in his mind, already a done deal. Fact. Eddie Munson is going to marry Steve Harrington.

Right?

“I’m not? Steve, I’m not joking. I thought… We’ve talked about it, I just thought… Is that a no?”

“No.” Steve says it and it’s like a knife in his heart. Like his very purpose, his reason, his existence is being stomped on.

“No,” he exhales, barely above a whisper.

“No! I mean it’s not a no, I just…” Steve lowers himself down on one knee, digging around in the pocket of his joggers, perfectly mirroring Eddie’s position.

“Wait. What are you doing?”

“I’m proposing, dumbass,” Steve repeats right back to Eddie, a hopeful smile on his face.

Eddie is seconds away from sobbing.

He barely manages to tamp it down.

“On three?” He says.

“On three.”

They do it together, just like in life, supporting and challenging each other to do better. To be better.

“1”

“2”

“3”

Their voices overlap, perfectly in tandem.

“Steve Harrington…”

“Eddie Munson…”

“Will you marry me?”

Tears fill both their eyes, emotions running rampant as they both exclaim.

“Yes!”

Steve stands, hoisting Eddie up with him to pull him into a hug. They stay like that for a while, holding each other, crying, swaying in the bathroom stall, standing in front of Eddie’s vomit. It’s weird, unconditional, maybe a little gross, but they wouldn’t have it any other way.

They pull away only slightly to kiss. Mouths closed, of course, until they can get Eddie home and some mouthwash in the poor guy. Eddie needs this regardless, he needs the closeness, needs to feel Steve’s body pressed against him, lips on lips, even chaste as it may be.

He just needs Steve.

From now until forever.

@steddievember

#steddie #stranger things #eddie munson #steve harrington #18+ minors dni #this is a sweet one y'all #still smutty tho

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offender42085 · 11 months

Text

Post 991

It was an “Unintentional crime.” -- Inmate

Kendal Scheid, Ohio inmate A703637, born 1994, incarceration intake in 2017 at age 23, sentenced to 3 years, released after 10 months and balance converted to probation.

Involuntary Manslaughter

“Unintentional crime.” That’s the phrase a University of Akron student used in a letter to the court to describe an alcohol-fueled incident between two other University of Akron students in which one fatally stabbed the other.

“When deciding on the correct sentence, I hope you remember that Kendal did not act maliciously,” Tim Griffiths wrote, referring to Kendal Scheid, who pleaded guilty in the stabbing death of his roommate, Duncan Unternaher.

Judge Mary Margaret Rowlands read Griffiths’ letter, as well as two others from people who were friends with both Scheid and Unternaher, toward the end of Scheid’s long and emotional sentencing in December 2017. Prosecutors pushed for Scheid to be sentenced to eight years in prison, while Scheid’s attorney argued for probation. Rowlands landed in the middle, sentencing Scheid to three years in prison, but saying she likely will grant him an early release after six months.

“You introduced a knife into the situation,” Rowlands told Scheid. “It is that act that I am sure in all of the things that happened — when you say you wish you could go back and change everything — that is the one that would have made the difference.”

Scheid, 23, of Norwalk, pleaded guilty under an agreement with prosecutors two months before in Summit County Common Pleas Court to a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter, a first-degree felony that carries up to 11 years in prison. He was originally charged with murder.

Police say Scheid stabbed Unternaher on Dec. 3, 2016, after a drunken argument over fast food at the off-campus apartment they shared on Grant Street. While Scheid attempted to put pressure on the wound, Unternaher fell unconscious. A third roommate called 911.

Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Brian LoPrinzi said the main question is what punishment Scheid deserved for taking a life. He said the investigation found that Scheid told Unternaher, “If you take my food, I’m going to stab you.” After Scheid followed through with the threat, LoPrinzi said he told Unternaher, “That’s what you get for being drunk.”

LoPrinzi said a sentence of eight years would be just.

Don Malarcik, Scheid’s attorney, however, pointed to other cases in Summit County and elsewhere in which defendants pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received probation or a short prison sentence followed by an early release. He argued that Rowlands should consider this path in light of Scheid’s lack of a prior criminal record, his acceptance of responsibility and his remorse.

“What we have here is two individuals who are obviously intoxicated,” Malarcik said. “No one standing here is saying Kendal intentionally tried to kill.”

During Scheid’s brief remarks, he apologized to Unternaher’s loved ones.

“I’m sorry about taking your son, brother and friend away from you,” he said. “I regret everything I’ve done.”

Rowlands told Scheid that she couldn’t give him probation because he took out the knife that killed Unternaher. She said she will grant him an early release in six months as long as he doesn’t get into trouble in prison. She told Unternaher’s family that they will be free to argue that he remain in prison.

#inmate

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the-blackholeus · 2 years

Note

Hello can i request yandere 2016 shredder when he breaks out of jail and surprise is s/o but reader runs away cause reader been trying get rid of him for years

When you heard that Shredder went to jail, you were ecstatic.

His imprisonment was your freedom. Finally you were released from his tight clutches, no longer in his grasp, no longer in his possession. You moved away as quickly as you could, changing everything in your life, your address, your phone number, even your name, disappearing from the Foot Clan's radar completely and beginning a new, better life.

Everything went well after you managed to stabilize your situation. You got a new job, new friends and even found a love interest that had the potential to become your future girl/boyfriend. You earned well, able to finance a nice apartment with a wonderful view of the city which’s life you had been denied taking part in for so long, and even hired bodyguards that would protect you from suspicious people that may or may not serve the man you once called your lover.

You were trying your best to do everything to forget the pain and humiliation you suffered from in the last few years. With the help of a therapist, you hoped to manage the trauma Shredder inflicted upon you in your relationship, and move on from the terrible experiences you had with him. And for a while, it was working well.

You were fine. Absolutely and completely fine. By now, your past seemed more like a fever dream than anything else, not influencing your future in the slightest. You found yourself on the street more often than ever before in your entire life, interacting with people more openly and lowering your guard a little, acting like a person much rather than a terrified animal that knows it’s being watched by a hungry predator that only waited for his meal.

You were you again. Still a little cautious, but not that tiny mouse that didn’t even dare to set a foot too close to the entrance of your former home because you feared that you would be being punished severely for it. You found your will to live again, tearing yourself from the worst man on earth to finally make your own decisions, continuing your life how it should have been in the first place, embracing the all the possibilities that now presented themselves, only waiting to be grasped by your now unshackled hands.

A loud sigh escaped your throat as you fell back against the couch, finally having returned to your apartment after a long day at work, having sent your bodyguards home as well. You let your fingers run through your hair, feeling your locks between them as you reached for the remote, finally able to watch the new episode of your favorite movie.

Turning it so its tip would point towards the TV, you turned the device on and leaned back, holding a glass of your favorite drink in your hand as you searched for (Favorite Movie Name), taking a sip now and then. After a while, you found it, and you couldn't help but smile with excitement as you pressed the play button.

But only after a few seconds in, the doorbell suddenly rang, startling you. A gasp tore from your throat, and you almost spilled your drink, the delicious liquid barely staying in its fragile container as you set the glass down, angrily grumbling to yourself. You rose to your feet and walked to the door, asking yourself quite frustrated who the hell would visit you at this late hour.

You grabbed the key and began to unlock it, ready to face whoever had the nerve to disturb you at this hour...but as soon as you opened the door your heart stopped, and the expression on your face changed into pure shock. Your eyes widened and your mouth was gaping.

Because standing in front of you was none other than Oroku Saki, Shredder himself.

He was almost unrecognizable. Instead of wearing his armor, he was dressed in jeans and a black hoody, his face almost completely covered. His eyes, as dark as always, almost seemed to glow with a predatory glint, his normally downward turned lips twitching to form a small smile.

"Hello, s/o. It's been too long."

His deep, accented voice purred through the air as he spoke, sneaking its way into your ear, and finally awakening you from your stupor. Shocked, you took a step back, your heart racing so fast it physically hurt.

"S-Saki!", you gasped, barely able to find your voice, feeling yourself beginning to tremble, backing up as soon as the tall man let himself in. "H-how did you...I-I thought you were...in prison!"

The Japanese chuckled lowly, kicking the door close behind him once he had walked past its frame, not taking any risks in being caught again. He pulled the hood off his head, revealing his ink-black locks, which seemed to have had a growing spurt since you last seen them.

"Oh, my dearest...", he spoke with a sly voice, reaching out to take your face into his scarred, ice-cold hands, his thumb tracing your soft flesh. "I was in prison. Locked up like an animal, forced to live the life of a convict. But I missed you, my dear. I yearned for your touch, your voice, all of you."

Oh, how sweet he sounded. It reminded you of the time before he became the monster that made your life pure hell, when he was still that sweet, considering man that would fulfil all your wishes without a second thought. But you knew better than to fall for it, you knew that this was only a façade that would quickly break if you provoked him. You swallowed thickly as he leaned over you, his lips only inches away from yours, his breath hitting your face. "But now, I'm out. I'm finally free, prepared to take over the world once again."

"H-how did you find me?!", you spit, your new fire finally coming to life, pushing him back, trying to put as much distance between you and him as possible.

"Oh, my sweetheart.", he purred, still unbothered by your negative reaction, simply leaning against the wall while letting his hands run through his hair. "You underestimate me horribly sometimes. Do you really think that changing your name and address was enough to hide from me and the Foot Clan? I admit, it was quite difficult to find you at first but not impossible for a man like me who has many sources of information."

Fuck. Just fuck. You swallowed thickly as you reached for a vase that stood on the counter, ready to use it as a weapon should the other try anything. You clutched it tightly against your chest, casting a quick look over your shoulder, staring at the balcony door. Maybe...

"I made a deal with a very unusual partner, a man that could give us anything!", you heard him continue, and he began to walk towards you, licking his lips like a starving animal. "I will rise to power once more, and the world will be brought to their knees. I will rule as its King, and you...you could be my loved one, standing by my side, reigning alongside me and my new partner."

'No, no, no, no!', you mind practically roared, panic setting in. Your chest heaved as an anxiety attack wrecked through you, making you unable to breathe or think rationally. Without a second thought, you flung your pathetic weapon at him, catching him by surprise as it shattered against his chest, causing him to grunt in pain. Using the brief moment of distraction as advantage, you bolted, running to the balcony, and jumping over the edge of the right, grabbing the fire ladder that led downwards.

You began to climb, hoping, begging, praying that Shredder wouldn't follow you, risking your life with small jumps that speed you up. But of course, luck was not on your side, While you didn't hurt yourself when you reached the bottom, the Japanese took the short way downstairs, and simply hopped down, elegantly landing on his feet. You felt your heart stop for a second, but as soon as you caught yourself you began to run like a maniac, hurrying away from him as quickly as you could.

You dashed through the darkness of the alleyways, using whatever possible to throw before the man's feet as you desperately tried to escape him, hoping that he would maybe slip and break his leg...or maybe even his neck. But of course, you weren't so lucky.

Shredder was a ninjutsu master. He had perfected the art of fighting and there was barely anything that could stop him. He simply jumped over the obstacles, gaining speed every time he set a foot on the floor, catching your wrist, pulling you back, and forcing you to the floor, using his weight to hold you down. His grip was tight, but not painful, just making it impossible for you to escape as he held you in place, his lips hovering over yours once more.

"Oh, my sweetheart. What were you trying to do?", he asked, his voice not even remotely strained from the physical activity that had previously taken place. He didn't even breathe slightly heavier. You, however, were gasping for air, desperate to get oxygen into your lungs. God, you had forgotten how fit he was.

"Were you trying to run from me? Why would you do something like that? Have I not treated you well all this time?", he asked with a low purr, leaning in even closer, your lips now almost, but not quite, touching, going in for a kiss. As you tried to resist, your hands were simply bound by his, forced over your head, making you unable to move them. Your head was stabled as well, so you could not pull away.

"My sweetest treasure, I don't understand why you would want to leave me.", he whispered, his eyes glinting with numerous emotions. Oh, that asshole knew why, and the fact that he acted to innocently set a fit of rage through you. You wanted to spit into his face, to catch him off guard and use the moment of distraction to get to the busy road to get help, but you couldn't. You physically couldn't. Your mouth was as dry as a desert. "You are my heart, my soul, I couldn't live without you. And as much as you try to convince yourself otherwise, you can't live without me either."

You sure could. The last year had proven that. You were perfectly happy on your own.

"But don't worry, my love.", he continued, brushing some strings of hair out of your face, giving you the slyest grin you had ever seen on a human being. "We won't be separated ever again. I will make sure of that, and if I have to die doing so."

And with those words, he leaned downwards, his lips covering yours in a hungry, demanding kiss.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

There you go! I hope that this story is to your satisfaction. I apologize if I did anything wrong, this is my first time writing yandere and I have to admit, it was quite difficult.

And also, if you find any grammatical mistakes, please forgive me. English is not my first language, and sometimes I just have a brainfart.

#shredder x reader #oroku saki x reader #tmnt 2016 #BrianTee!Shredder #tw yandere #yandere

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doll-elvis · 11 months

Note

I'm not being defensive so pls don't take it that way, but you said that Priscilla's story has been depicted many times in media. But I only remember the Elvis and Me tv movie?

hi and don’t worry, I don’t take any issue with this question, thank you for the ask!!

and I’m sorry I know there has been so much discourse about the upcoming movie and we are all tired of it but I thought I would answer this ask just to clarify my thoughts

and yes “Elvis and Me” is the only film based solely on her biography from 1985 but her general story has been depicted in the 1979 film “Elvis”, in the 1993 tv movie “Elvis and the Colonel”, in the 2005 mini series “Elvis” and briefly in the 2022 film “Elvis” (I only named these because they were the ones I have personally watched but I’m sure there have been more)

of course these films and series were mainly focused on Elvis and so Priscilla was a somewhat minor character but they all showed the significant moments of Elvis’ and Priscilla’s relationships: how they met, how they got married etc. etc.

And while this upcoming film is being marketed as being a “untold perspective” Priscilla actually sold the rights of her book to Coppola for the film, so from my understanding, Coppola is using scenes and dialogue from the book for the screenplay. So I just don’t see a scenario where this movie shows anything we don’t already know, which is why I don’t think this film needed to be made

And from what I have seen within the Elvis communities on Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram, the only people celebrating this film being made are the Priscilla “stans”, which is a community that has grown exponentially since the Elvis 2022 film and I think that has to do with how the film depicted her

I was briefly apart of the E community from 2016 to 2018 and from what I remember there were like 5 accounts at most that were dedicated to Priscilla (on Instagram) and now there are many new accounts who are solely Priscilla fans who are very passionate about defending her and making her out to be a saint and Elvis out to be the one to blame when in reality the situation was not that black and white. Priscilla isn’t a saint, Elvis wasn’t a saint, Priscilla isn’t the villain and Elvis wasn’t the villain, I don’t know why that is something that is so hard to grasp for some people

I don’t hate Priscilla and I don’t love her either, I try to be both neutral and sympathetic towards all of the people in his life, because I find it unfair to judge them for what they did, because like Elvis said, we have never walked in their shoes. But I find it so frustrating when some of the Priscilla stans will defend everything she does because “she was a fourteen year old girl that fell in love”. I just find it weird to infantilize a grown woman, because no one is calling her out for what she did when she was fourteen, I think people take more issue with some of the things she did post 1977 and even while Elvis was living. Like suing him after the divorce for more money when she knew his financial situation was dire and exposing Lisa Marie to Scientology at a young age which I believe ultimately put a rift in their relationship for sometime before they became close again

And so it seems most Elvis fans are either dreading this movie or not sure what to think yet. So just speaking from the point of view of someone who is solely an Elvis fan, I’m just not excited for this film like the way I was excited for the 2022 film and I’m tired of all these new projects being announced because they are trying to cash in on the hype that the Elvis film created. When I was a fan around 2016 we were living off bread crumbs, and the only thing to look forward to was Elvis week tbh, but now that there are so many things being announced I can’t even be excited about them because im far more worried about how Elvis will be depicted 🤧

#thank you for the ask #elvis presley #elvisaaronpresley #elvis #elvis and priscilla #priscilla presley #elvis movie #priscilla movie #priscilla 2023 #elvis asks

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scrapyardboyfriends · 7 months

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2015 was golden, 2016 was great and solid though it had its weak points, but we got the abuse storyline and soap week, 2017… was a lot of hooey but while I may not have liked a lot of what they did, the characters still felt relatively well-rounded even if everything went to shit, and we got to see Robert go off the rails, which was kinda fun, 2018 gave us the lead up to the reunion and the actual reunion, which were masterpieces, and then we got serial killer Lachlan, which did drag out a long time and we got all that weird and awful “Rebecca’s been kidnapped! Rebecca’s being held captive in the woods! Rebecca’s dead! No wait she’s being held captive by an evil nurse!” bs but we got some cute character moments before that and Robert in the conclusion was fun. I think that’s the last time I remember liking what they had going on

Kate Oats had her problems but overall her storytelling style was much tighter and better paced than anything that has come after it. She overused her favorites and had her insane Thursday doubles and Robert got a little too 2D villain sometimes but still, the show was solid in those days. 2015 represents that well.

2016 struggled in the middle due to Kate leaving and Iain coming in, while he got his ideas going. But the lead up to and the main event of ssw 2016 was amazing.

Now while I certainly think Iain's time was better than the terrible trio's, I do think he had a lot more faults. But at the very least you could always count on his spectacle stuff to be pretty good. It was his day to day storytelling that often got super repetitive because he really liked to drag his stories out until he could do his big climactic conclusion. It's just that those conclusions did a lot to make up for the slog before it.

The terrible trio wouldn't know a good climactic conclusion if it fell on them like a caravan.

But the show definitely suffered under Iain's time. 2017 was a bit of a mess overall and 2018 was a slog when it came to having the Bails story, the Grace story, Sarah's heart story and the Lachlan serial killer story all running concurrently.

From a Robron standpoint, 2015 is just a lot of insane fun. 2016 bookends with great stories with the first chill period in between during the producer transition. 2017 is messy as hell but I still like the Hell Plot overall from a Robron standpoint. Rebecca sucked but whether they lucked into it or not, Robron had a great arc that finished up in 2018. Robron definitely got lost in the middle portion of 2018 because all of those other stories were going on and they weren't the center of attention anymore...sadly. But at least the reunion and the wedding were lovely and perfect.

And then the terrible trio took over and everything fell apart. They don't know how to pace a story. They don't know how to craft a character arc. They're way too focused on the next headline and generating hype and buzz to actually care about the characters. It's why everything feels so random and out of the blue or gets dropped abruptly only to be suddenly picked up months later. It's just a disaster. I'm thrilled Jane is gone now but the other two need to go too. And they need to bring in a new person in general because this show is crying out for a new creative vision.

#emmerdale complaints corner

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because-she-goes · 1 year

Text

the garden

warnings: some swearing & angry nora. Enjoy!

Nora walked out of the grey, new york sky scraper and was immediately hit by the chill in the air, but blinded by the sun. A freezing cold March morning in Manhattan. However, Nora was acting like it was August. Positively beaming and walking down the busy sidewalk with a bounce in her step, she couldn’t wait to call Matty with the news. Nora, being the incredible woman she is, had just sold one of her more intricate pieces to a buyer from The Whitney Museum for just under $85,000. An absolutely ridiculous number for Nora to wrap her head around, but a minuscule number in comparison to the art world where her colleagues have sold pieces for $30 million before even having their morning coffee.

The Whitney being a place Nora has revered for years, making it a life-goal in college to have a piece in their modern art section one day. A true pinch me moment. The piece she had sold was quite bold and brash, which the buyer liked about it - needing something to stick out among their hundreds of dazzling works. She had painted it after Matty had told her about the band being invited to play SNL. She had been inspired by the longevity of the television program and the art it produced, New York and artists like Rothko, Pollack, Kline. Remembering her teachers using the term “Abstract Expressionism” to describe what she was going for. However, she remembered halfway through that abstract expressionism was more 50s-60s than the time period she was interested in. Leaning more into postmodernism (a word she taught Matty), she looked to the works of Baldessari where dots were placed on people’s face in photographs. She took the idea of the dots and ran with it, using her thickest brush and dipping it into contrasting colors, she placed huge dots in sections of the piece - covering some spots and leaving others blank or revealing the splatters underneath. An ode to the New York art scene with a dash of California. It had taken her weeks to figure everything out and research it all.

The work had been sitting in her studio, waiting to find a home for months. At this point, she was just waiting for the wire transfer to go through and be confirmed by her bank - then she’d celebrate and officially tell Matty the news, not wanting to get ahead of herself incase the deal fell through. Walking down W 15th and turning onto 10th, she makes her way to the Starbucks Reserve to get an 11am pick me up, she orders the hazelnut latte and gets Matty one of their specials, a whiskey-barrel aged coldbrew. Taking the two coffees to go and hailing a cab, she makes her way back uptown to her apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. One of the greatest financial decisions she has ever made was taking the money from her first sale and putting it towards buying a New York apartment back in 2016, before the price for everything sky rocketed. Not having to worry about rent anymore was a blessing in and of itself.

Swiping in to her building and saying hi to her doorman Bennie, she makes her way up to her home. Opening the door, she sees Matty at their kitchen table with his headphones blaring a demo George had sent him, she remembers that at this point its 6pm in London. Kissing the crown of his head and handing him the cold brew, she goes to check her bank account not expecting anything just yet. To her shock, there it is already. Talk about a new york minute! She excitedly runs out to Matty and rips the headphones off his head like a child wanting their parent’s attention immediately.

“Hey, I was working on something?-“

“And now you’re not! Guess what, baby!”

“What?” He asks almost begrudgingly.

“I sold that painting today! The SNL one I made way back in December is going to the Whitney, they just wired me the money!!” She is practically screaming at this point, not caring which of her neighbors hear her.

“Wait, baby you did? Oh my god thats fantastic, Muffin! I am so proud of you!” Exclaiming as he remembers when he first heard about her art from Adam at a party. He had shown up late to Carly’s birthday party after going out for drinks with Nora. Adam jokingly asked if he was on a date, Matty proudly said yes. Carly and Adam asked for her name and they nearly dropped dead when he said it. Adam had been a massive fan of Nora’s since way before she met Matty, astonished he was able to land someone like her - someone who may as well be his twin they were so alike.

“Thank You, Handsome! And guess what team is in town…”

“Oh brother, not the Knicks and Lakers again…”

“You are too good sometimes, ya know that?”

“Unfortunately.” He remarks blandly, he hates basketball. He never understood what was so interesting about guys running up and down a court putting a ball in a hoop, but he watched the Knicks since Nora loved them. She could rattle off any piece of their history without even hesitating. She had been to the garden more times than Matty could even count. Her father is a huge Knicks fan and when he found out he was having a daughter, he put a little pink Knicks ball in her nursery.

Quickly saving half her earnings and setting it aside before she forgot, she logged into her MSG account and got her usual. Floor seats, next to the home bench, in the corner. Best seats in the house. Matty still looking like someone had spilled hot soup on him, Nora decides to cheer him up a bit. She has a single connection at the garden and knows that Matty has always wanted to go in through the VIP entrance, not the performers one or the general admission lines. 5 hours until tip off, plenty of time to text Marco and see what strings he could pull.

“Baby, I’m gonna shower….” she says over her shoulder while walking to their en suite bathroom.

At that, Matty’s mood is totally turned around and the man is falling over himself to get to her before she shuts the door. “Right behind you, gorgeous!”

— 2 hours later —

In her Brunson jersey and a pair of Matty’s baggy jeans, she steps out of their bedroom. Taking a last look at her makeup, she applies a final coat of mascara and a swoosh of blush. Checking her teeth for lipstick and deciding she is ok, she waits for Matty.

In his Randle jersey she bought for him last year and sweatpants, he steps out. Fixing his hair and spraying on the cologne Nora loves. Lavender, mint and a little hint of smoke fills the air around him. She inhales and sighs, relaxing at just his scent.

“Ready to go, Handsome?” She asks, grabbing their house keys, her wallet and phone from the tray at the door.

“I guess, do you want me to drive?”

“Sure.” They walk down to the parking deck hand in hand, her body buzzing like a live wire with anticipation of tip off.

She gets a text from Marco, “All set, Boss. Just wave your ID when you get there and I’ll walk you guys in.” She sends back the little smile emoji.

New York was surprisingly pretty empty tonight, everyone must be home watching she thinks. Matty pulls up the artists entrance without issue.

“Keep going, we are going a different way.” She instructs, pointing towards the next entrance by the corner - more secluded and less opportunity for paparazzi to get their picture.

“What have you done now, Gorgeous?”

“Me? Oh nothing, just nothing at all!” She can’t even look him in the eye, he’d know whats going on right away.

He pulls into the private area and shows security his and Nora’s ID, both having to provide birth date confirmation.

“April the 8th, 1989”

“June 16th, 1992”

They get the okay to enter, see Marco and they’re escorted up to the floor seats. Matty looking like a child seeing Disney for the first time. This entrance has a full bar, private club and even a small portrait gallery of all the celebrities who have been to the garden over the decades.

Tip off and the first quarter happens before Matty can even process everything. Nora however is on her feet, yelling and berating the Knicks bench to get a move on and “pass the damn ball!” He laughs, how could someone so sweet and unassuming as her be the person in front of him - geminis man! He shakes his head lightly.

Half time is a blur and before they can even scarf down their hot dogs and fries, it is the 4th quarter. Knicks are up by 5 with 6 minutes left. Matty and Nora now both being the most obnoxious ridiculous sports fans in the building, yelling and high-fiving people around them whenever another point is scored. Nora can’t believe the sight before her, thee Matty Healy yelling at RJ Barrett to get his shit together while his mouth is full of concession stand food and cracker jack. She has never loved him more, she thinks.

4 minutes left, tie game. They are fuming. Nora is practically in a trance watching the game, refusing to acknowledge anyone around her. Matty not even paying attention to the score, just fully enjoying seeing her so worked up over a silly basketball game.

He then gets an idea….

“Hey Sunflower… I’m a little thirsty. Do you mind grabbing me a Fanta?” He yells in her direction, eyes still glued to the game.

“What? Now? Theres not even 5 minutes left, Handsome, this’ll be over any second!” She promises, trying to appease him and get him to just be patient.

“Yeah, I want one before they close - for the ride home ya know? My throat feels like razors from all the salty food you Americans eat!”

“Oh for fucks sake, Matty! Fine, I’ll go!” Running up the stairs as quick as she can and bolting to the concession stand closest to her spot.

“One Fanta, ASAP pronto hurry!” She rushes out to the poor teenager working. Eyes watching the monitor above him.

Randle hits a 3, the Knicks up again!

She rejoices, still waiting impatiently for the damn soda. I mean my god how long does it take to hold a squirt gun to a cup!!

“That’ll be $2.75 ma’am…” the teenager turns back around to her holding the precious soda. She throws a $5 at the kid and sprints back to Matty.

“Here you go, honey!” She shoves it towards him. He takes one sip, looks at her and says one of the most enraging things she has ever heard…

“It’s Diet! Who orders a diet Fanta, this is vile holy shit!” He proclaims.

Smoke comes out of her ears. She grabs the cup roughly and marches back to the kid.

“Fucking diet Fanta, you moron! Who would want a diet Fanta!!” The poor kid looks at her and shrugs, grabbing another cup and different squirt gun filling the vessel with soda at a snail’s pace.

Nora checks the monitor again. 1 minute left. Tied. Brunson steals, goes towards the basket and just as he scores, the kid hands her the new soda. Forgetting to pay she turns to the seats and out rushes the crowd hooting and hollering. Defeated, she her shoulders and head drop. She sees Matty emerge, hands him the soda and they go back to the car in complete, deafening silence.

Trying to get back into her good graces, he pulls out a stuffed Knicks bear from behind him. It is adorable, impossibly cute. Softening, Nora wipes a tear inching down her cheek at his thoughtfulness and wraps her arms around his neck. Holding him tightly to her and never wanting to let go.

“Congratulations on the sale again, baby. Tomorrow we celebrate for real… fancy dinner, shopping, art museum the whole nine yards. Pulling out all the stops for you, my little artiste!” He says into her ear, voice dripping in pride.

She kisses his cheek in agreement and thanks, settling back in her seat with a rosy flush to her cheeks. Holding onto the bear, she doesn’t imagine another place where she’d rather be than with Matty celebrating.

#drew’s writing :)#matty x nora #matty healy fluff #god i love nora #im sleep deprived so excuse any typos #the 1975 #matty healy #Spotify #babys first 2K!#longest one yet :)#really proud of how this turned out #the song screams NYC and nora to me #like idk something about it is just perfect #an encounter

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