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freddiesaysalright · 5 years

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Catching Up Part IV

A Joe Mazzello x Reader Story

Summary: Reader is a writer for an entertainment news network and after Joe comes in to do an interview, they reconnect.

Word Count: 2.6K

Tag List: @crazylittlethingcalledobsession, @jennyggggrrr, @somethinginthewayiam, @grandaddy-roger-trash, @rogerloveshiscar, @hopefully-aesthetically-pleasing, @danamaleksworld If you’d like to be added let me know!

Part I Part II Part III

Part IV here we go!!!

Monday rolled around and you dreaded going back to work. Although, you knew Joe was coming in to re-do the Bohemian Rhapsody interview, so you had that to look forward to. The past few days with him had been bliss. Cute dates and great sex. You couldn’t have been happier. The only damper was that Joe was leaving New York a week after the interview at your station. He’d be back the next month, but going so long without seeing him was going to be the wait of a lifetime.

You walked into the newsroom, humming to yourself. You stopped in your tracks when you saw Don sitting at your desk, smiling eerily at you. You shot him a questioning glance as you slowly approached.

“‘Sup?” he said when you reached him.

“Good morning,” you returned. “Is something wrong?”

“Come on, let’s go in my office and talk,” he said.

You set your purse in your seat when he stood up. You shook your jacket off your shoulders and followed him. He closed the door behind you. You worried for a moment he was going to ask you to do the interview again, even though Emily was already at her desk. You took a hesitant seat across from him.

“What’s going on, Don?” you asked.

“Are you seriously going out with Joe Mazzello?” he replied.

Your gaped at him. “I - I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“It is my business,” he said. “When our own magazine Tweets pictures they caught of you two together this weekend.”

Your heart sunk. You thought you’d been so careful.

“Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is for us?” he said, raising his voice slightly. “One of our own writers is sleeping with a source!”

“Hey!” you cried. “He’s just doing a promotional interview. This isn’t an ongoing story. Even if it was, I’m not the reporter on it, so it doesn’t violate any ethical rules!”

“So you are sleeping together?” he wondered.

“You know I’m not going to answer that,” you returned levelly. You were impressed with your own composure. Anger was boiling in the pit of your stomach.

“You can’t see him anymore.”

“You can’t ask that of me.”

You glowered at each other over his desk for a moment. He sighed, rubbing his temples.

“I just don’t get it,” he said almost under his breath, but you still heard.

“There’s nothing to get,” you replied. “Joe and I are two adults having a relationship. It’s no one’s business but ours. If those are your only concerns, I’ll be going now.”

You stood up, turning on your heel and going for the door. He leapt to his feet and grabbed your arm to stop you, turning you to face him. Then, before you could ask what he wanted, he kissed you. You scrunched up your face and shoved him hard away from you.

“What the hell, Don?” you demanded. “Is all this because you’re jealous?! You don’t even like me!”

He looked down, clearly embarrassed. “It’s - uh - well, it’s a weird self preservation thing. When I like someone, I’m ruder to them.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” you returned. “I’m going to say something to you that is insubordinate and grounds for termination, but you need to hear it. If you are attracted to a woman, man up and ask her out. You’re an adult, so quit pulling pigtails.”

You stood there, waiting for him to tell you to pack up your desk, but he just looked at you, shocked.

“Well?” you said. “Are you going to fire me or do I have to tell you how to do that too?”

He rolled his eyes, his usual self returning at last. “You’re not fired. Just...don’t mention this to anyone. I’m sorry.”

“Fine,” you said coldly, and you swept out of the room.

You walked over to your desk. You looked up and saw, once again, the four stars of Bohemian Rhapsody coming into the newsroom for their interview. This time, when you caught Joe’s eye, you smiled. He winked and you waved at him. His presence made your anger melt away. Don didn’t matter.

Putting off your work, you made your way to the green room to say hello.

“Welcome back, guys,” you said warmly.

They all said their thanks as you went to Joe and wrapped your arms around his waist and rested your head on his chest. He kissed the top of your head and you hummed with satisfaction.

“What’s up, babe?” he asked.

“I just like holding you,” you said.

“Well, then by all means, carry on,” he said lightly.

You considered for a moment telling him about what happened between you and Don, but decided against it. He was about to do an interview Don was producing, and you didn’t want any tension there. Especially on Joe’s end since he would be on camera.

Emily came into the room shortly afterward. She was definitely made for daytime television. She had think, beautiful blonde hair. Round, brown doe eyes, and a wide, sparkly smile. She was so pretty, but it was hard to be jealous of her because she was also so kind.

“Hey!” she greeted, her thick Georgia accent coming through already. She took in you and Joe. “Aw, y’all are cute! Good for you, Y/N!”

You and Joe looked at each other and smiled in a way you were sure was disgusting to the onlookers in the room.

“Well, I’m Emily,” she said, shaking hands with all of them. “I just wanted to come by and introduce myself before we got started. And apologize for last week. I heard Don was pretty rude.”

“Well, to Y/N, yeah,” said Joe. “But not to us.”

“Still, it was unprofessional,” she said. “He’s still producing the segment, though.”

“Really, it’s alright,” said Gwilym.

As if summoned by the mention of him, Don poked his head in the door. You refused to meet his gaze, burying your face in Joe’s chest and closing your eyes.

“Emily, gentlemen,” he said, nodding to them. “We’re gonna get started in just a few minutes. Y/N, if you could get back to your desk and do some actual work, please.”

You rolled your eyes. To be extra snarky, you kissed Joe long and passionately before you left. But when you got to your desk, you ignored your work further. You jumped on Twitter - which wasn’t abnormal since you often wrote for the social media accounts associated with the network - and found the magazine’s page. The first thing up under the pinned Tweet was the picture of you and Joe. It was a nice picture. You were grinning at each other.

The Tweet just said your name, under your byline, and that you and Joe were the “new flame.” It had pretty good traffic too. There were about two hundred comments, eight hundred retweets, and one thousand likes. You clicked on it to read the replies, hoping that no one recognized you. You had not posted a picture of yourself online since the ones your ex leaked, for fear that someone would reverse search and match your face to the one in the nudes.

The replies were mostly shocked emojis, people congratulating you and Joe, or something nasty about your appearance. You read every single one of them, looking for any chance that someone had linked your image. You breathed a sigh of relief when you read the last one and it hadn’t happened. You kept the page open to keep an eye on it in case that changed. But for now, you could breathe a sigh of relief.

When the interview was over, Joe took you to lunch. You chose a casual place and got burgers. You laughed and talked together. At one point you were tossing French fries at each other, trying to catch them in your mouths, much to the amusement of a baby at the next table over, who giggled, high pitched and adorable.

“Oh, hey, bud,” Joe cooed. “Didn’t see you there.”

The baby gurgled some nonsense back and Joe nodded thoughtfully. “You make a very good point, there. I agree.”

A smile parted your lips as you looked on at Joe having a full, made-up conversation with this little baby boy. It was the sweetest thing you’d ever seen.

“What’s that?” Joe said, leaning closer as the boy said something that sounded like “a-goo.” Joe looked between you and the boy. “Well, you can tell her that yourself.” A beat passed and then the boy went “ga!” loudly and pumped his tiny fists in the air. “Alright, I’ll tell her if you’re really that shy about it.” He looked at you. “He says you look very beautiful today.”

You brought your hand to your chest and gasped dramatically. “My, my! What a kind compliment from such a handsome boy!” You looked at the baby and wiggled a finger at him.

Finally, the mother, who had been in deep conversation with her girlfriends, noticed you and Joe entertaining her son. She smiled.

“Wow, I didn’t realize Russell was over here making some new friends,” she said kindly.

“He’s quite the chatterbox,” said Joe, offering his hand to shake. “I’m Joe, this is my girlfriend, Y/N.”

“Nancy,” she replied. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for keeping him busy.”

“No problem,” you assured her.

“He is a great conversationalist,” Joe continued. “And a bit of a flirt.”

She chuckled. “Would you like to hold him?”

“Heck yeah!” he replied.

Smiling still, she took Russell from his carrier. He shrieked with excitement as she put him in Joe’s arms. He twisted his face up to earn laughter from Russell. They babbled back and forth to each other and you thought your heart might explode from how adorable it all was.

“Honey, you need to keep him,” Nancy said to you under her breath. “He’s gonna be an incredible dad one day.”

“We’re just starting out,” you told her. “But it’s something to keep in mind for sure.”

Russell and Nancy left shortly after, but you looked at Joe like he hung the moon.

“You really like kids, huh?” you observed.

“Oh, yeah,” he returned. “My nephews are like, the lights of my life.”

“That’s so sweet,” you said. “Are you going to see them while you’re in town?”

He nodded. “Yeah, actually. This afternoon. But I’m free the rest of the week if you want to spend some time before we leave.”

“Absolutely,” you returned. “I already took the time off work.”

“Aw, you didn’t have to do that,” he said.

“I want to be with you, Joe,” you said. “Work just isn’t as important.”

He smiled and leaned over the table for a kiss. You thought of how your day started compared to what you were feeling now. Don didn’t matter. Twitter pictures didn’t matter. All you needed was Joe to take you out of your fear and and anxiety.

The week passed far too quickly. You took Joe to the airport, parked, and walked him inside. You hated that you couldn’t go all the way to the gate with him, but he had a little bit of time before he absolutely had to be there. After he checked his bag, he came back to you. Hot tears filled your eyes and you tried to wipe them away before he saw. He still saw.

“Aw, baby, don’t cry,” he said, pulling you into his arms. “I’ll call you every night. And, if you’re comfortable with it, we can face time.”

You looked up at him, color draining from your face. “I don’t know about that.”

“That’s okay,” he said, rubbing your arms. “Like I said, only if you’re comfortable.”

You rested your forehead on his chest, relishing each moment you had him here in your arms. Where you could really feel him there with you. You etched the details into your memory to hold you through the next eight weeks until he returned. The rhythm of his heartbeat. The soft warmth of his skin. The way he drummed his impatient fingers against you.

He leaned in and kissed you, and you gave the kiss similar treatment. Although, with the way he kissed you it was hard to concentrate. It was passionate and yet soft. Romantic. A kiss to remember on nights you missed him most.

“I’m not saying this to freak you out, okay?” he said. “But Y/N, I really think I’m falling in love with you.”

Neither of you had used the word “love” before. It felt soon, but it also didn’t. It didn’t scare you to hear that from Joe. In fact, it excited you. You beamed through your tears.

“I’m falling in love with you too,” you said.

He sighed, relieved, and kissed you again. He checked his watch.

“I’ve got to get through security,” he said.

“I’m gonna miss you,” you told him.

“I’m gonna miss you too,” he returned.

With one last kiss and squeeze of your hand, he let go. You watched him until he disappeared through the line. It felt like your whole heart was going with him.

The weeks without Joe passed in a haze. You were exhausted all the time and becoming oddly emotional about him. Each time you hung up with him at night, you cried to yourself a little, missing him so much. You were an emotional person, but you’d never felt so weepy before. It concerned you, but you knew you’d also never felt this strongly about someone before.

After a month of Joe being gone, you were finishing up your feature article on up and coming female directors. The deadline was the following day, and you were making the final edits before submitting it to your editor to look over.

A sudden wave of nausea hit you. You felt your stomach churn uncomfortably, and you pressed your hand to it, frowning. You’d had a normal breakfast so you couldn’t imagine what was causing this. Your body heaved, and you jumped up to run to the bathroom. You just barely made it into a stall - not even having time to lock it behind you - and you vomited into the toilet. It took a few minutes before you were done and sat back on the floor.

“Rough night?” came the voice of Don from the door.

You jumped and squeaked with fright. “God, Don! I know this is a unisex, but don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Are you sick? Do you need to go home?”

“I don’t know,” you replied.

“Well, whatever this is, I don’t want it spread around the office,” he said. “Go ahead and take the day off.”

Tears sprang to your eyes. “Don…that’s so nice.”

“Holy shit, it’s not that nice,” he said, eyes widening. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Everything makes me cry recently, so I’m sorry for the waterworks,” you said with a sniffle. “But I probably should go home.”

“Please do,” he said. “I’m...so uncomfortable.”

You thanked him again before leaving the office and heading home. When you entered your apartment, Christy was there, reading on the couch. She worked in an upscale restaurant that was only open in the evening, so she was home all day.

“You’re home early,” she said.

“Yeah,” you said, wiping tears from your face.

“Everything okay?” she wondered, setting the book down.

“I don’t know,” you told her.

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m so tired, I’m emotional as hell, and I just threw up at work. In front of Don.”

“Jesus,” she muttered. “I hope you’re not pregnant.”

You stared at her, wide eyed. She sighed.

“Let’s go to the store.”

You went together and picked up a couple tests. When you came home and took them, the result was always the same. Pregnant. You still had two weeks before Joe returned to New York. How on Earth were you going to tell him?

#joe mazzello #joe mazzello x reader #joe mazzello x you #joe mazzello imagine #bohemian rhapsody #borhap #borhap boys #borhap imagine #borhap cast #queen #queen imagine #john deacon #john deacon x reader #john deacon imagine #john deacon x you #gwilym lee #rami malek #ben hardy

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angrylizardjacket · 5 years

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my baby’s a public menace {Ben Hardy/Reader/Roger Taylor}

Four Iconic Moments The Press Had A Fucking Field Day With

A/N: 2670 words. So this time we’ve got Modern Times with 70s!Roger pulled forwards in time. Don’t think too hard about how it works it just does.

1. It Becomes Official

The moment they call Ben’s name at the BAFTAs, to receive the award for Lead Actor in a Television Series, you feel like the whole world is coming to a stand still, and Ben’s rising, disbelief written all over his face.

“That’s me.” He says, quietly, as the applause has already begun, and then Roger’s on his feet, beaming, and he wraps his arms around Ben, pashing him directly in front of the camera that was catching every moment, and Ben kisses him back easily, before turning to you, eyes bright, and he pulls you to your feet, giving you a kiss as well.

“Congratulations, babe.” You murmur, and he’s so fucking ecstatic when he pulls back, and heads into the aisle, heading towards the stage. You slide into his seat with ease, lacing your fingers with Roger’s where he’s bouncing with energy and beaming with pride.

“He fuckin’ won.” Roger laughs with a little disbelief, and you turn to each other, both absolutely radiating with pride and adoration.

“Our boy did it.” You giggle, and Roger’s gaze dips to your lips for a moment before he looks back up, a new spark in his eyes that you knew all too well.

“I can’t wait ‘til we all get home.” He dropped his voice low, and you could feel yourself growing a little flustered at the suggestion.

“Keep it in your pants, dear,” you nudged him, and he barked out a laugh, giving you a wink before he turned to where Ben was finally walking across the stage. You, however, felt your heart stop in your chest, “he kissed us on camera.”

“Well, I kissed him,” Roger mused, his thumb rubbing against the side of your hand, “couldn’t help myself.” He admitted, still beaming as Ben was handed his award, expression bright and a little disbelieving as he leaned into the microphone.

“I think I just won a BAFTA and outed myself in the same minute, so that’s going to be hard to beat next year.” Is the opening line of his speech, and the audience titters with polite laughter, while you and Roger are hiding your snorts. “I actually had to email the organisational committee to ask them to let me bring more than one plus one, I’m glad to see that it wasn’t in vain.” He laughs; he goes on to thank the crew of the show he worked on, the other cast members, his family, and he looks for you and Roger in the audience, pointing the award at you. “And for Rog and Y/N, of course; the weirdest and best thing to happen to me in a long time.”

“Do you think he knows how much we wanna suck his dick?” You lean over to Roger, whispering under your breath, amused smile on your lips at you look up at your boyfriend grinning on stage.

“Of course he does, look at that smile.” Roger responds with a low chuckle as Ben leaves stage, heading back towards you. When he gets back to his seat, you move back to your own seat, resting your head on his shoulder when he sits down.

“We’re so proud of you, baby.” You tell him softly as they’re beginning the next segment on stage, and Ben reaches out with his free hand to rest it on your thigh, giving you a squeeze.

“I know, love.”

2. Roger Throws Half A Chicken At A Paparazzi

“Do you think we should go inside?” You ask, voice low as you catch sight of a man in a baseball cap and dark glasses covertly trying to take photos of you three. It was a nice evening, you, Roger, and Ben had been enjoying a meal outside at an upscale restaurant, the three of you draped on a two person outdoor lounge, your entrees having just been cleared up. Both you and Ben are on your phones, and Roger’s between the two of you, nose buried in the paper.

“Why?” Ben asks, not looking up from his phone, and you shift a little uncomfortably, giving the man trying to look like he’s not taking photos.

“Hey, dude, can you just leave us alone? We just wanna get dinner.” You call to the man, and he stands, a little flustered.

“So it’s true, you’re really dating both of them?” He calls back, stashing his phone in his pocket, pulling out a little recording device; the asshole came prepared.

“No, we’re just really good friends who make out at the BAFTAs.” Roger rolls his eyes, folding up the paper, and throwing the paper onto the table in front of him.

“No need to get snarky, mate, I just think it’s weird that somebody like her would get on so well with-” He’s cut off just as a kind and beleagured waitress puts down what looks like half a roast chicken surrounded by salad onto the table.

“Fuck off, alright?” Ben snaps at the man, clearly irritated, sitting up straighter, giving the waitress an apologetic smile as she leaves in a hurry.

“The hell do you mean ‘someone like her’?!” Roger growls, and you actually have to put a hand on his chest where he’s leaning forward, as if getting ready to throw himself at the reporter.

“I- do you wanna address the rumours then, Y/N about-” The man starts, but Roger cuts him off with a snarl.

“If this bastard brings up those fuckin’ gold digger accusations, I’m gonna start throwing things.” He warns, and not a moment later, the man brings up the very words Roger had told him not to. You’re just heaving a heavy sigh, used to being hounded by the gossip magazines, though you try not to pay them any mind.

“I could shout how much I love you from the rooftops and these assholes would still think this is some sort of weird, sugar daddy situation.” Ben turns to you, his voice low as he gives you a long suffering smile. You lean in across the empty space that Roger had just vacated to give him a kiss, before turning to where Roger was wielding his roast chicken like a grenade, lobbing it at the reporter, yelling about how he’s ‘sick and tired of hearing people talk shit about his girlfriend; she’s got more kindness and talent in one tit than the paparazzi has in his whole body’.

“We should probably get him before he does any real damage.” Ben muses, to which you agree. The two of you move to collect your rogue boyfriend as he continues to yell and squirm.

“Baby, baby please calm down; you’ve made a scene, you’ve thrown a chicken, you’ve mentioned my tits, we can have dinner at home.” You try to placate him, your arm tucked in his as Ben’s got an arm around his shoulders, the two of you guiding him from the restaurant.

“Just makes me so bloody mad.” Roger growls his hands on your hips where you’ve got your arms around his waist as Ben pays for your half finished meals. “It’s twenty eighteen, you’d think dickheads would learn to grow up.” He huffed.

“I know, baby.” You muse, bringing him in for a kiss to distract him, hoping to let his anger simmer down a little as you two stand in the parking lot.

“I just love you is all, people like that make me so pissed-” He whispers, more to himself than anything, but then you’re kissing him again, humming affirmations, your hands in his hair.

“I love you too, I love you too.” You murmur against his lips.

Later that night you’ll see Ben’s instagram story from just before he joins the two of you again. You and Roger, arms around each other, lit by a single streetlight, you’re leaning in to him, lips inches from his, and he’s smiling gently back at you; the whole image is surprisingly intimate, especially for Roger. It’s captioned ‘I’m allowed to take candids ‘cos they love me’.

3. Someone Gives Ben Tequila

Ben’s not usually the type to get drunk and reckless. Or well, he’s the type to get drunk on occasion, but not reckless, not like Roger, who can be incredibly reckless even while sober, nor like you, since you could go either way. Ben was meant to be the grounded one. Except sometimes he has tequila. It’s an afterparty for a movie he’d gotten a supporting role in, it’d been fun, but he was looking forward to being able to spend time with you and Roger again. Speaking of the two of you, you’d disappeared almost half an hour ago, Roger had gone to the bathroom and you’d gone to get more drinks.

When he finds you, you’re trapped in an uncomfortable conversation with one of the editors assistants’, a weedy kid who couldn’t seem to figure out that you didn’t want to talk to him.

“Hi, baby!” You call out to Ben the moment you think he’ll be able to hear you over the music, and he makes a beeline for you, his heart singing when he sees your face light up.

“Hello, love, I was wondering where you’d gotten to.” He says, barely acknowledging the guy you’d been talking to, who’s own expression fell as Ben pressed a kiss to your lips. The two of you head off in search of Roger, who you find by the bathroom, talking with someone who’s clearly quite enamoured with him. From his easy stance and casual smile, you could tell he was at least enjoying the woman’s company. Neither you nor Ben were usually the jealous type, but after a few drinks, you couldn’t be blamed for just wanting to stake your claim.

“Hey, babe, who’s this?” Ben asks, slipping an arm around Roger’s shoulders as you stepped around to loop your arm through his on his other side. Roger, with a sly, knowing smile, looks between the two of you, before smiling brightly at the woman who’d been talking to him.

“Like I was saying, this is my boyfriend and girlfriend; you’ll have to excuse them, they get jealous easily.” He smirked, and the woman looked a little shocked, a little flustered, as she stuttered her way through an apology. “It’s no worry, I’m sure they can entertain themselves for a while,” and with that, he winked at you. Taking the hint, you moved, taking Ben’s hand and leading him away.

“He’s just being a social butterfly, you know how he is.” You mused gently, the two of you flopping onto a sofa. Ben hums thoughtfully, sitting beside you, your hand in his. He presses a kiss to your shoulder, trailing kisses up your neck to your jaw.

“‘m not jealous.” He said, lips at the corner of yours, pressing another kiss there before he brings his hand up to cup your cheek, moving so you’re smiling over your shoulder at him, “it’s just nice to say you guys are mine.” And his voice is low, almost a growl, and you feel a shiver run down your spine.

“I like the sound of that.” You tell him, kissing him hard, letting his hands wander and pull you close to him.

“Mine?” He asks, and his hand is on your thigh, moving your legs so you’re sitting over him rather than next to him.

“Yours.” You agree, kissing him again, messy and passionate, you can taste the alcohol on his lips and his tongue but you don’t care when he’s leaning you back to lie on the sofa. “And Roger’s.” You add quietly, and there’s a gleam in Ben’s eyes where he’s looking down at you, his arm around you, one hand on your waist.

“You’re ours, love, there’s no doubt about it.” He assures, and he leans in to kiss you again.

“I can’t take you two anywhere!” Roger’s grinning when he finds the two of you, and Ben presses his laughter into your collar as you look up at Roger and make an insistent, grabby hand for him. “If you insist.” He chuckles, sinking to his knees to join you at your level, kissing you where you’re splayed out on the sofa, with Ben all but on top of you. “You know there’s a perfectly good bathroom not too far from here.”

Not ten minutes later, one of the other cast members sends to the cast group chat, in all capitals ‘BEN’S BANGING IN THE BATHROOM’ which was met with either ‘at least they’ve freed up the sofa’ or ‘lmao called it’. You’re not surprised, nor are you ashamed, when some gossip rag has your face on it (or more accurately, Ben’s face) the next morning, and a riveting account of what happened with no actual details, and a photo someone took on their phone of you and Ben on the sofa. It wasn’t the first time, it probably wouldn’t be the last.

4. Roger Gets Instagram

Roger takes surprisingly well to instagram, which is both hilarious and terrifying. He posts a lot of selfies; he takes to being an instagram fuckboi like a duck takes to water. At first it’s mostly blurry shots, of sunlight, sometimes it’s you and Ben out of focus, laughing, or he gets one of you two to take a photo of him, shirtless.

When he gets a waterproof phone, the first thing he does is take a photo of you and he kissing underwater at the beach, and then three separate, all individually hilarious videos of Ben trying and failing to do a majestic hair flip coming out of the water; in the last one, both boys get hit by a huge wave, and the video ends with you laughing, fishing the phone out of the surf.

The three of you go on holidays to somewhere sunny, and at the end of the week, he posts the highlights; you lying on your stomach beneath a palm tree on the beach, topless; a selfie of the three of you smiling at the camera against a backdrop of a starlit sky, golden in the light of a bonfire; Ben in a coconut bra, a little blurry with the movement of laughter, grinning at you just out of shot; you, in bed, making a truly terrible face where he’s just woken you up and the sun’s in your eyes. His favourite, however, is the one from him at the end of the holiday, shirtless and tanned, shot from the waist up, biting his lip as he’s turned to look off to the left, showing off how he’s covered in hickies.

The shots that get the most media attention are his more risque ones, like the shot on his story that you’d taken where you could see the bottom half of his face all the way down to his hips, with a sheet covering his modesty, but a lipstick kiss mark along his V-line and his tongue out. (There’s a followup photo on your instagram story, of your lipstick smeared, grin wide, and your hair messy, with the caption, ‘sometimes you just gotta be a messy bitch’, and people put two and two together, and conservatives lost it.)

The most infamous actual post of his is the shot of you and Ben together in bed, he’s leaning against the headboard, still mostly laying down, and you’re draped over him, chin resting on his chest where the two of you are grinning about something. The sheet covers most of your ass, and comes up to Ben’s hips, and you’re giving the camera some pretty glorious side boob, and the photo’s framed to show room for one more person beside you in the bed, a sliver of sunlight shining through the curtains, across Ben’s chest and your back, and it’s just captioned ‘what a sight’. He’d asked you both before posting it, and you’d both agreed; it didn’t violate any guidelines, but social media still had a field day with the sweet, clearly post-coital photo.

#ben hardy #ben hardy imagine #roger taylor #roger taylor imagine #roger taylor x reader #ben hardy x reader #ben hardy x reader x roger taylor #ben x reader x roger #bohemian rhapsody #borhap #bo rhap #borhap imagine #borhap cast #borhap cast imagine #queen #queen imagines #queen imagine #the angry lizard writes

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insane-control-room · 5 years

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The Sketch

Chapter Two, Segment One

Full chapter on Ao3 here

The death threats were surprising, at least a little bit at first. But then they became more and more frequent, and he no longer cared.

And they were rather childish, too.

Cut from newspaper shreds and pasted sloppily onto a piece of salty scrap paper sloppily, it did not matter much to Johan.

He felt safe, even though much of his knowledge had been temporarily… relocated.

Johan laughed it off when he met with Henry at the park, though the other man seemed perturbed by the little paper.

“It’s a bad sign, Johan,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t like it.”

“Oh, please, who on earth would assume that Joey Drew lives in his g-gosh diddly darn studio?” Johan chuckled, rolling his eyes. “I’m perfectly s-safe, sweetheart.”

“Joey, what if they do find out?” Henry pressured. “Who knows who this is, and you have no way of protecting yourself.”

“Yes I do,” Joey lied, avoiding meeting his eyes. “I-I have my sh-shotgun.”

“Which you told me that you returned to your brother when you visited Night Vale.”

“Oh… I told you that?”

“No, I guessed, actually.”

“You sneaky animator….”

“You gullible artist.”

Johan sighed, crumpling the death threat in a fist, tossing it into a trash bin a few meters away.

“Joey, I really don’t trust this stuff,” Henry stirred, restarting the conversation. Johan’s ears flicked back in minor annoyance, releasing a huff. “Seriously, as your doctor, I dictate this as bad for your health.”

“You’re not a doctor yet, Stein,” Joey retorted in a warning tone. “You still haven’t gotten that f-fancy schmancy degree of yours yet.”

“Oh, you be quiet,” Henry grumbled, running a hand through his curls. Joey chuckled at his insulted expression. “Don’t remind me. We still need to study for my next exam.”

“What’s it on again? Muscles?” Johan tilted his head, bright eyes glinting as he looked at the rather short future doctor. “Or is it on joints?”

“Muscles, I’m pretty sure,” Henry replied, stretching, his hand coming to rest on Joey’s shoulder. “Joints is the next exam.”

“Mhm.” Joey yawned, sharp white teeth glinting slightly in the afternoon sun’s shine. “What d-do you think, Henry? About… about D-Disney and Fleischer? Should I really-ly, truly be worried about a little bit of c-competition? I think it’s good for the industry.”

“What you think and what they think are entirely different things, Joey,” Henry informed him with a measure of tiredness. “We don’t know what they’d be willing to do. They threatened to kill you, Joey… like, damn, that’s a step too far, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “They also didn’t explicitly say they’d kill me, they just said that ‘I should stop making toons or else’. There’s a lot of things th-that can f-fall into ‘else’, you know.”

“I know,” Henry answered, leaning his head against Johan’s heart. “I’m just… just worried about you. I don’t want you to get hurt, especially not because of this, because of drawing and doing what you love….”

“Henry, it’s f-fine,” Joey tried to reassure him. “I’m fine. It’s okay. We can do this, together.”

“I sure hope so,” Henry murmured, shaking his head slowly, eyes closed. “I really do.”

They soon parted, Joey having to return to the studio and Henry to school, though they walked together for as much as they could, chatting quietly about the world and their worlds together alone, the cartoon universes that they flourished together. Joey giggled at one of Henry’s quips, and made an easy pun as a reply, so normal and casual for them both that they could ignore the fact that none of the time they had together was permanent. Johan was afraid. But also, excited. They were making the world anew, a fresh start, a second wind.

Johan’s hair fluttered in the air, the breeze ruffling his wisps. Henry was illuminated by the sun, a halo of mist around him, like an ethereal faery, and yet they stalked together, a shadow and a beam, so entwined it was impossible to tell who was which. Henry’s large and smooth palms reached for Joey’s long and calloused fingers, wrapping around them like a babe might for comfort, a gesture soon returned with a quick squeeze by Joey. As they neared the point where they would have to split, their shared grip grew tighter, ever more reluctant to part. They stood in silence at the street corner, each looking it the direction that the other would need to go, and simultaneously looking at the other. Bright sky blue eyes caught rose red ones, fastening them together even more.

“Well,” Joey cleared his throat, smiling weakly and waveringly. “Don’t be late to class, darling.”

“And you,” Henry patted Joey’s hand, cocooning it for a few moments, “Don’t get killed on the way back home, okay? It would be a mighty big shame and a huge loss for the world.”

“I won’t,” Johan promised with a nearly blinding grin, eyes crinkling slightly. “It’s not as easy as you might think to get rid of me, you know.”

“Yeah,” Henry’s smile faded slightly, and he reached up to touch Johan’s cheek. “I know. I love you, Joey. You know that, right?”

“Of-f course I know that, I-I breathe it, it gives me life, and makes me feel, o-oh, so weightless,” Johan reveried to him, shoulders falling, smile growing, and brows knitting with genteelness. “My love to you in return is s-so very, very boundless. I could s-spend all eternity f-fêting you.”

“Cut the prose and poetry, Jo,” Henry chuckled, clearly not meaning it in the slightest, standing on tiptoe and pulling Johan down to kiss his chin, missing his cheek. “I keep forgetting that you’re trying to grow out your beard… hm… you’re going to have to lean down more often.”

Joey giggled, blushing, touching where Henry kissed him with two fingers, and he bowed to kiss Henry’s brow.

“For luck, sweetheart,” he told him, turning around to return home to bury his face in a pillow and explode with joy. Every moment was a blessing.

“Bye, Joey,” Henry called. “Love.”

There was a small crowd conglomerated around the door of the studio, murmuring and whispering uncomfortably.

Johan sighed and ducked around a corner, pulling his mask out of his pocket, a pocket that clearly should not have been able to contain the Bendy face, additionally slipping on a pair of white gloves to complete the façade. He tapped the shoulder of the person closest to him of the crowd, and they turned around, and looked up, eyes widening, and then stepped aside for their boss with a nod. The coterie split, a red sea for a chosen personage.

Similar to the red sea, there was a desert before him at the end.

There was a knife stabbed into the door of Joey Drew Studios.

Not a bird chirped, not a dog barked, not a single one of Joey’s hundreds of bees bumbled, complete silence reigned over the expanse before the empty studio.

“Why is no one going inside?” Joey asked Ms. Lampbert, who stood beside him. She shifted. “Well? Is there a specific reason that we’re avoiding making the best damn cartoons around?”

A murmur swept through the mass, everyone looking up at the gentle giant that lead them with complete and total penchant. Joey’s mask smiled as he did, enchanted to copy his expressions. The uneasy plethora of people relaxed and smiled back. They could feel that they were in good hands, they all knew that Joey loved them all, and cared for each of them to the depths of his tremendous beating heart.

“We are a studio,” Joey spoke, head held high, slender fingers plucking the knife out of the door, pulling away the note stabbed into it and crumpling it, tossing it to the ground. “We are artists, creators, magicians of the screen!”

“And of the heart!” Jack Fain chimed in, grinning. “And who knows what black magic and tricks you’ve got up your sleeve, Mr. Drew.”

“Absolutely!” Johan beamed back, laughing for a few moments, plucking a yellow rose out of his pocket and tossing it to the bear of a man. Some of the junior animators giggled with delight as he bowed toward them. “We are prodgedies! We are the face of the new animation industry! Youthful, yet with our elders to guide us, a huge thank you to Mr. Polk, Mr. Cohen, Mx. Benton, and of course, my dear Uncle Bertie!”

Applause ripped through the motley crew, enthusiastic and energized.

“We’ve had a lovely late start today, a nice after weekend gift from all of us for our hard work,” Joey gestated, beginning to walk through the assembled workers. “Are we going to let this flimsy piece of metal stop us from working hard, working happy, and spreading smiles all around?”

“No!” was the resounding call back. Joey lifted the knife and stabbed it into an Alder tree.

“So let’s go in, and make some toons, eh?” Joey grinned at everyone, stalking through the group, opening the door for everyone. He nodded, and that was the end of that. A small hand grabbed his sleeve as the studio all filed in and punched in. Joey looked down to see Linda gripping his sleeve, looking up at him with big hazel eyes. He patted her head. “What are you up to, my darling little Linda?”

“Nothin’ much,” she replied, smiling at him sweetly. “Are you gonna be making the toy store yet, Uncle Joey?”

He reached under his mask to run his fingers over his beard, looking up to the ceiling as he slowly walked with the young girl. “I’m working on it, but I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get it up and running… I haven’t found the right worker for the zone. I’m still waiting for the correct candidates, you know.”

“Can I help?” Linda asked, skipping ahead to walk backwards in front of him. “I’m a good people person, right?”

“That you are,” Joey chuckled at her lively antics. “What’s your favorite up and coming toy idea?”

“I like the little robot Alice!” she excitedly replied, referring to the miniature model of the animatronic in Johan’s workstation. Joey blinked, storing that information away. “I think that it’s really cool to be able to talk to your toys and hear them reply!”

“Sounds good,” Joey nodded, the cogs of his mind churning a vast multitude of ideas and concepts to approach and tackle. He hummed as she and he walked together through the corridors, greeting the employees they passed, Linda receiving many hugs and slipped a lot of candies. Joey chuckled as Linda devoured another chocolate. “Henry’s gonna kill me for this.”

“So?” she asked, her mouth covered with the sugary cream. “I’m only five!”

“He’s going to accuse me of corrupting his prodigy,” Joey solemnly countered, but he grinned and winked, the mask still copying his expressions. “So… keep it hush hush.”

“Got it,” Linda smirked. “I’ll make sure he never learns of this.”

“That sounds vaguely threatening,” Joey remarked.

Linda’s smirk only turned to a wide toothy grin.

Eventually, Joey passed the duty of watching over Linda to Lacie and Bertrum, as the two of them never worked manually at the same time, as to enable them to be at their maximum efficiency.

And Joey went down, down, down, all the way down to his office.

He frowned at the mess on his desk.

Papers, papers, bills, documents, copyrights… there was so much to do.

He grabbed his computer.

when; (AtDesk), (papers); SORT: (PRIORITY1, PRIORITY-1)

To his dismay, another crudely written death threat was on the top of the now arranged stacks of paperwork. His shoulders slumped, and Gracehopper landed on the threat. Joey frowned. If even she was saying that it was urgent, it seemed to certainly be so.

He sighed and picked it up, smoothing it out and adjusting his glasses under his mask.

If you don’t go public with who you are, there will be a reconing. Disney and Fleischer

Johan burst out laughing.

Not even checking their spelling! How bloody absurd!

Shaking his head and chuckling to himself, he threw it away.

Gracehopper returned it to his desk.

He frowned at the moth.

“Come now, it’s just a paper,” Joey rolled his eyes, his mask quite comically mimicking the action. “There’s nothing they can do to me.”

Gracehopper fluttered at him angrily.

“Fine, fine, I’ll read it again,” he grumbled, feeling chastised. He scanned over it. Nothing changed. What was he supposed to be looking for? He turned over the paper. What was that in the corner? He squinted at it, trying to make out the faded writing. His expression vanished. He blinked, rereading the small lettering. “What…?”

Flynn Brothers Syndicated.

A lump grew in Joey’s throat.

No, Disney and Fleischer would not resort to that, right? They would not, would they…?

But it was written, clear as day, on the backside bottom corner, tucked away innocuously.

Johan trembled in his chair, staring at the lettering.

His hands shook, and his mouth dropped open in shock.

What was he going to do?

He quickly stood up, feeling a rush of dizziness, and he berated himself for not eating. His legs shot up a spike of pain, and he wobbled uneasily.

Still, he rushed out of his office, running down to Bertrum’s work area.

“Uncle Bertie,” he huffed, out of breath. “I… I… um….”

The Bendy Land workers stared at him and Bertrum. Joey blushed, hoping that it would not show up on his mask.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else to discuss this….” Joey mumbled, feeling eyes on him. Bertrum studied his posture, and he nodded, briskly leading Johan to his office. Joey shuttered the blinds when they got in. “It’s about the threats.”

“I thought you said that they were of no concern?” Bertrum interrogated, lifting an eyebrow. Johan wordlessly passed him the note, pointing at the concerning bit hiding in the corner. Bertrum’s brows rose, and he frowned. “Well, this is serious….”

“I’m… I’m f-frightened,” Johan told him, his natural stutter slipping into his voice. “Th-they’re really doing this, are, are they?”

“It appears so,” Bertrum scowled, tossing the paper on his desk. “But… I think the safest place is the studio. It’s unsuspecting.”

“Okay, o-okay, it’s fine,” Johan tried to assure Bertrum, but seemed to be assuring himself even more. “I’ll be fine… r-right?”

“I… I don’t know,” Bertrum confessed. “I don’t know the ‘future’ anymore, Johan. Not since you broke the loops.”

“Henry and I,” Joey corrected, raising a finger. Bertrum huffed a small laugh, leaning against the wall. “What, it’s t-true!”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Bertrum nodded, smiling at him softly. Joey relaxed. “Still… I don’t want you attracting any extra attention. Pretend to leave to go ‘home’, and then go back late at night.”

“Sounds… sounds good,” Joey shakily replied. Bertrum clapped him on the shoulder and smiled at him waveringly.

Joey mustered one back.

#johan ramirez #joey drew #control art #control writes #bertrum piedmont #henry stein #joey drew x henry stein #soft #the big picture #pathogenink #the sketch #gracehopper #linda stein #disney #fleisher #miss lampbert #queue pasa?#death threats

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ghostmartyr · 6 years

Text

Fic: A Terrible Idea [9/?]

Fandom: Attack on Titan Title: A Terrible Idea Author: Immi Rating: PG-13 Summary: Ymir’s pursuit of the hot cheerleader was meant to stay strictly lustful. But it’s a high school AU with a ship tag, so you know, fuck that. Notes: This fic has a thing about three in the morning.

Segment summary: Kenny imparts life advice.

I II III IV V VI VII VIII

Maybe an actual parent would have wanted more details about what kind of party his bereft, innocent teenager was absconding away to instead of bonding with her friends and siblings in a night of passably sober revelry.

With Kenny, the conversation went something like this:

“Can I ditch homecoming to feel up a hot babe?”

“As long as no one ends up back in the house while I’m making out with my boyfriend, I physically could not care less.”

He didn’t mention the boyfriend in words during the actual conversation. He didn’t have to. The man might as well have been whistling all week long, asking them how many hours they thought they’d stay out come dance night. He’d conned Levi into being their chauffeur and everything. He got a haircut. Sometimes there really was fucking whistling.

He gave Ymir the green light to go be surrounded by people whose neckties cost more than all of her organs on the black market without so much as a suspicious question. To the untrained eye, it was negligent bullshit that Ymir was happy to exploit.

Years of living under his roof said that he already knew every single person at the Reiss party and had personally threatened at least five of them with murder. Creepy, but if it meant he wasn’t badgering her about her life choices, swell.

Too bad a certain other person couldn’t follow the example.

There was one side effect of dealing with a parental unit on this that wasn’t so great. Cowboy Dad believed, so very dearly, in cleaning up good so the rest of everyone would fuck off. He liked to call this having manners. As someone who’d had to sign paperwork to take on a more active role in not caring what teenagers did, he also thought it was his solemn duty to impart some of these manners to the spawn he could happily disown at will.

Predicted side effects of that included small talk about not pissing off the people who had invited her into their home. Since Historia had been the only one at all interested in her presence there, that wasn’t the worst promise she could think about keeping, so fine, whatever, can I go now and so on.

Unfair fucking blindsides included the suggestion (suggestion, like every other thing Kenny suggested didn’t carry promises of life getting very unpleasant if the suggestion didn’t see some follow-through) to go out and fetch some flowers to present to Historia’s parents when she showed up at the party.

“She doesn’t like her parents,” Ymir had said. That was a large part of the point.

Kenny had looked at her, unimpressed in the face of logic. “Sunshine,” he’d said, “where in the hell do you get the thought in your head that manners are for people you like?”

An hour later Ymir was hanging out in a flower shop, stretching the boundaries of her artistic sensibilities to figure out just how ugly a bouquet they were capable of. Kenny had stopped just short of making her pay for the damn things, so she had room to work, but there was only so much she could do. The worst combinations she had so far said, “Your daughter has let someone with zero taste into your house, but the good news is they’re desperate for you to think they’re trying.”

When what she wanted was closer to, “Fuck you for thinking I care about your approval before fucking your daughter, also fuck you in general,” preferably in freshly-picked pastels.

Ymir had never been a flower connoisseur, and turning the notch on her style of aggression back to passive definitely wasn’t her speed, but she knew passive aggressive went best with pastels. From what she knew of the Reiss family, their entire mansion would be covered with the things. Kenny would approve of her commitment to speaking her hosts’ language, but she’d have to work extra hard to keep from complementing their color theme.

Her only entertainment for the day was watching Porco freak over how to handle being at a dance in Pieck’s proximity. She had time.

She was also an efficient multitasker.

Porco’s sneakers tapped loudly against the linoleum floor. “She liked the roses last year,” he said, nowhere near the rose section. He was looking at peonies.

“She’ll like whatever you get her, and they’ll be dead in a few days. Stop angsting and pick something,” Ymir said, even less interested in his problems than usual. Pieck had sent an innocuous text earlier to remind her that she liked tulips. Hint hint. Somehow they were all still pretending that it wouldn’t melt her overly devious, mushy heart to be getting flowers from Pock at all.

Except for Porco. He really was that clueless, so cue the hours of fretting over which collection of stems would brighten Pieck’s desk best before their inevitable deaths. Accompanied by Ymir for reasons beyond a good laugh and pity, all thanks to their weird non-parent’s sense of propriety. Bringing a girl’s parents flowers wasn’t good manners, it was something out of Victorian era courtship advice bulletins. Near the end, after the two weeks of knowing each other had passed and it was time to ask the patriarch for his daughter’s hand.

Ymir thought she had a good idea of how that proposal would go. Awed by her acute flower arranging skills and misled by her tailored garb, she’d receive the father’s blessing and it would be rendered immediately moot because Historia would never forgive her for involving him in their love life.

“It doesn’t bother you that she’s using you to piss off her parents?” Porco had asked oh, maybe seven times when Ymir broke the news about how she was spending her Saturday night.

“Not anywhere near as much as it seems to bother you,” was the only answer to that, and it still took three more tries before he gave up in disgust and stopped blocking the middle of the hallway so she could go to bed.

Porco had weird ideas about family. Namely, that they were supposed to like each other. His blood parents were dead, automatically promoting them and everyone remotely like them to sainthood. His brother was so fervently adored that any first year psych student would gleefully attach a complex to it. He seemed to find it personally offensive that Historia couldn’t stand the people who hired her a personal driver.

Ymir would have loved not to care. She’d spent most of the previous night happily not caring. She’d spent most of their friendly afternoon jaunt to the neighborhood flower shop not caring. Pock had responded by making it his life mission to do enough caring for both of them. If he didn’t have the stress of not asking Pieck to dance to look forward to, he’d still be ranting her ears off.

“You don’t even want to date her!”

Way to state the obvious. That hadn’t been worth any response at all.

Ymir looked around at the colorful displays surrounding them. All perfectly designed to suit Porco’s purposes of failing to ask a girl out, none of them meant to check off a politeness box that had been summoned out of thin air to make her life more difficult.

Garish wasn’t going to play. No matter how badly the bright colors clashed, all the flowers were too healthy and friendly to get away with being used as a fuck you collage. She needed something with contrast to bring out that deliberate eye-gouging quality. Some of the lighter carnations could work. Classy and decorative in a clump, but put them next to something with some flair…

“Ymir?”

Ymir tilted her head Porco’s way and walked over to a selection of painfully sunny sunflowers. “What now?”

The follow-up didn’t follow through. His shoes squeaked and his jacket rustled while Ymir carefully mapped out her success of floral offense. Signs pointed to a talk happening.

“I—never mind,” Porco muttered.

One of those talks, then. Ymir rolled her eyes and searched out the heliotropes. Past experience dictated no gathering of custom bouquets herself, because the cashier would cry, and that would hold them up, but the second she said she was done and they fetched Pieck her tulips, Porco would be back to questioning everyone else’s life choices instead of his own.

“It’s too late to be her real date,” Ymir said, stopping to smell the roses. “You should have said something earlier if that’s what you wanted.”

Porco crossed his arms and scowled at the hydrangeas. Somehow they failed to burst into flames. Maybe because he looked closer to bursting into tears.

Ymir took magnanimous pity on her baby brother. “Just do what you always do: Wait for her to ask you to dance, and instead of mumbling and letting her drag you away, tell her you don’t want it to be a friend dance. She smiles, your heart melts, you live happily ever after, and I owe Marcel ten bucks.”

“Marcel wouldn’t bet on this,” Porco said, showing off the kind of deep misunderstanding only idolatry could foster. “He likes me.”

“That’s why he bet on you growing a pair,” Ymir said. “Don’t go letting your big brother down, now.”

Porco sulked. He had a way of doing it audibly.

They were through the purchase of Ymir’s custom monstrosity and Pieck’s much lovelier tulips before he brought it up again. A true sign of growth; last year he’d started the conversation once and then sworn her to absolute secrecy.

“You think she’d want to? If I asked?”

A flash of Historia’s wide eyes under the snack shack lights came to mind. A glimmer of a smile that matched the glitter on her cheek, all of her face lit up by Ymir.

“Sure,” Ymir said distantly, “girls like it when you show some initiative.”

----

“You keep tugging at your sleeves and I’m gonna feel insulted.”

Ymir dropped her hand from her suit jacket. “Dressing up three times a year isn’t enough to get used to formalwear. Perfect fit or not.”

Kenny didn’t bother dignifying her with a look. He was driving, and whatever Parenting 101 class he had crashed oh so many years ago had drilled not taking his eyes off the road with children present into his head better than a construction crew. He simply took the next turn, and drawled, “Funny, and here I thought it had something to do with your nerves making a fuss over this girl.”

Did no one ever stop to consider that if she wanted their thoughts about this, she’d ask for it? “Could also be that your shortcut landed us in the middle of nowhere and there’s nothing else to do but pluck threads.”

“Ymir, if you’d caught a single thread out of place, you’d be crowing about it ‘till the end of next month.” He took another turn. Second-to-last one, if Ymir was counting. “Find a better excuse or rub two brain cells together and work out how to stop lying.”

Ymir rolled her eyes and continued looking out the window. The winding road they were heading down was pure black-and-white movie horror. All they needed was some lightning. If the Reisses hadn’t already splurged on it, they ought to invest in a drawbridge and a moat. Great for parties.

Cowboy Dad had volunteered to drive her, and keeping up with his creepy way of knowing too much about everything, had told her they were taking a shortcut he knew before she had a chance to hand over the address. She’d told him she needed to be dropped off at the guest house, which was a fucking thing, so maybe his idea of how to get there could use some help, and got a shrug.

With the look he’d given her bouquet when she presented it, she’d call it a punishment, but passive wasn’t his brand of aggression either. Punishments were delivered with a highlighted anvil.

She pulled at her tie. Kenny sighed loudly.

One last turn, and they came back to civilization. Or some over-glammed approximation of it. A large stretch of road away, a gate shrouded in floodgates heralded their destination, and if it had a giant R in the middle of it, Ymir would have a great start to her bingo card for the night’s festivities. Historia had written the security code for it down on her hand the night before.

The car slowed halfway down the street, going at the speed society could agree belonged to stalkers or people who didn’t know how to read maps.

“You got everything?” Kenny asked for the third time that hour.

‘Everything’ in this case meant Ymir, the invited one, her phone, the toy she’d brought along for another tally in her win column with Historia, and the gate crashing flowers. “Yeah,” Ymir said.

Heading up the slight hill to the cliché gate, Kenny dotted in the code smoothly, and open the spiked monstrosity went. Step one of the night accomplished. Historia hadn’t explicitly said that she wanted Ymir to avoid talking to anyone on the property until they laid eyes or other parts on each other, but Ymir could read between the lines. Her invite said to show up an hour early and head over to where the staff wasn’t preparing for the party. Until the curtain rose, Ymir was invisible and waiting in the wings.

They drove by the house, also known as an affront to taste so brightly lit that Ymir had to blink several times to confirm that it hadn’t been decked in four stories of cheap Christmas lights, and hit the side road that would lead to the guest house.

Ymir had never had much money, but she had trouble imagining a world where she’d look at her grand mansion with its sixty bathrooms and forty bedrooms, and decide that what it really needed was a smaller house next to it. Just to remind the first house how much better it was than everything around it.

Kenny rolled the car to a stop in front of the whipping house, and in a move that said she wasn’t the only one feeling the horror vibes tonight, killed the engine. He turned to her with his parent face on.

“A few ground rules before you go in there,” he said.

“Was there some reason you couldn’t do this at home, or—”

“No drinking.”

Ymir unbuckled her seatbelt to slouch more effectively in her seat. “Kuchel was just giving Marcel and Pock this lecture,” she said. “If you wanted me to hear it, we could have left five minutes later.”

“Sunshine,” Kenny said, “you’ve never partied with rich people before. All you know about these folks is that a girl you like can’t stand them, and each one’ll have a lawyer on speed dial so they don’t catch consequences when they show off for their fancy friends. That’s not company you want to lose your wits around. No drinking.”

“Great. Next up?”

“No having sex with this girl until you see a clean lab report.”

Ymir was too fucking young and too removed from the blood pressure problems Porco had to worry about a heart attack at her age, but for a second her cardiovascular system, built up by all the recent running, submitted to blind horror and slammed her chest with a sledgehammer.

“What.”

Parent of the Year, showing his usual concern for his offspring, propped his elbow against the steering wheel. Not a sign of remorse or pity in his eyes, he said, “You want to go about devirgining yourself, you do it safely. No letting your hormones go so wild you need a medical consult.”

Ymir took a second to pave over her new mental scars. “Right, I’ll just send her off for one instead,” she said. That’s what all the appealing sexual partners did these days. ‘I really want to jump your bones, won’t you pee in this cup for me?’ With a dash of ‘my dad wants confirmation that you are as much of a touch-starved virgin as everything you do says you are.’ The absolute pinnacle of game.

Kenny was the sort of guy who had probably met sympathy once in a bar and shot it. “You want your bits to fall off, or you want a fun time?”

The bad answer to that was that Ymir just wanted Historia. In a lot of ways and positions, all perfectly lewd. Only when the thought popped up, all she could think of was the marker against her cheek.

“Asking her for clerical proof of how diseased she is sounds like a real riot,” Ymir said instead.

“You can’t work your way around that, you’re too young to be having sex,” Kenny said. “Falling head over heels down a flight of stairs is how you get concussions, and I have enough of that to worry about with your brother.”

This conversation was a better case for not skipping the homecoming dance than anything the school had ever come up with, and it was unfair to the nth degree that she’d still rather be sitting outside the reject house. Unquestionably, which meant, put together with Kenny’s magic sleuthing powers, Ymir was now promised one more fun conversation with Historia in her future, putting to graphic verbal life all the things she thought about doing to her and couldn’t, because they didn’t have the right paperwork. Historia would definitely be on board with that. Things to look fucking forward to in the middle of looking forward to fucking.

Cowboy Dad was committed to his parenting course. He could write his dissertation on this feat of manipulation and emotional trauma. Jackass.

“Fine, great, anything else you want to ruin?”

Kenny unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his side of the car. “Your tie needs sorting. Out you get.”

Ymir rolled her eyes and stepped out into the night under the shadow of the guest house. Since it wasn’t drowned in lights, it was actually capable of casting a shadow. Kenny rounded the car and began his deliberately pointed adjustment of her suit, undoing all of the casual muss Ymir had fidgeted her way into. He saved the tie for last, securing it much tighter than her style called for.

“Anything goes wrong, or you need pickup early, you call. Got that?” he asked.

“Are you trying to make up for not knowing me when I was five?”

His large hands held her head. “Got it, kid?”

Way, way too committed to the parenting thing. Ymir made a show of sighing, and saluted him with the ugly bouquet of flowers he’d coerced her into buying. “Got it, cowboy.”

He pecked the top of her head. “Then you’re all set. Have fun, keep the stupid to the minimum, and don’t be afraid to use a fake name if someone’s too interested.” He set her free and clapped her on the back. “Knock ‘em dead.”

Umbilical cord officially cut for the evening, Ymir sauntered off to the doorstep, respectfully resolving to fix her tie once she was inside.

With Historia.

So much better than homecoming.

#yumikuri #yumihisu #shingeki no fanfic #fic #mine

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reignmyworld · 6 years

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Where are my lines? Drabble - Roman Reigns x Reader

Summary: You and Roman are cutting a promo together, facing Seth and Dean after you both had turned heel on them. Roman happens to forget his lines, so you are jumping to his rescue.

Warnings: none

Pairing: Roman Reigns x Reader

You tried to hide your laughter although you felt absolutely sorry for him as you were standing in the middle of the ring, cutting a promo, surrounded by loud boos and cheers quite alike. They had spilt up the Shield - again and contrary to last time, it was Roman turning heel on Seth and Dean, with a little bit of help, your help to be more precise. You were set to team up with Roman for the next matches and months to come, having to feud with your former Shield comrades.

Cutting promos was something you didn’t like, but if there was a person that disliked it even more it was your boyfriend, primarily because he would turn nervous and was close to messing up ever since. He just hated speaking in front of big crowds and the thing that made it even worse, were those god awful scripts the creative team would give him. He would have been great on the mic if they just let him be himself a little bit more like he had proven on different occassions in the past, but with the stuff the writers were feeding him with... well... you had to admit that you would have botched any promo willingly because sometimes it absolutely sucked and made no sense whatsoever.

As you were standing here now next to Roman, facing Seth and Dean, you realized that he had obviously forgotten his lines, trying hard to reminisce them just as Seth said: “If you want to be the Big Dog, you’re gonna have to learn how to do it, so go ahead.”. He lowered the mic, looking at you and mouthing “I can’t believe I forgot them” as the audience was getting more and more agitated and started to boo him even more. You felt really sorry for him, knowing how discomforting a situation like that was for Roman, but at the same time you had to admit to yourself that it was kind of cute when he was going blank in front of the audience, trying to figure out a way to somehow save the situation.

You glanced over to Seth and Dean as they were waiting for their former companion to continue but you knew quite well that he was stuck and wouldn’t make it out of there on his own. That’s why you moved closer to him, placing your arm around his waist, before you took your own mic, shooting a glare at Dean and Seth, saying: “How about you two dickheads shut your mouth and listen instead. What we want you to know is that we will whoop your asses from here right to Mexico once we are done with the both of you. And neither your Dirty Deeds nor your Kingslayer can prevent you from going down. And you won’t go down in a blaze of glory, you can believe that.”

The audience was cheering for you and you took that moment to tiptoe in order to whisper his next lines into Roman’s ear before placing a little kiss on his cheek, while he was pulling you closer, his hand resting on your butt while doing so. “Thanks baby girl”, he mumbled, giving you a short smile before he focused back on Seth and Dean. You knew that Seth was especially good at improvising so it didn’t surprise you one bit when he suddenly said: “How about you focus on your lines rather than squeezing Y/R/N’s butt, big dog?”

You could hear the audience errupting in laughter as you smiled to yourself, noticing that Roman had trouble holding back his own laughter. He was winking down at you before he addressed Seth, saying: “You know what Seth? I’m pretty sure that Y/R/N is old enough to not only decide on her own whether she likes a hand on her butt but also whose hand she likes to have there. And as you can see it is mine. Am I right baby girl?” It was an open secret that the two of you were dating, so you took your mic and respondend: “100% right.” The next thing you remembered was that he was kissing you with the audience errupting with positive chants.

After that, Roman was able to cut his promo smoothly and without any further interruptions, all while holding you close to his chest. You could see the amusement in Dean’s and Seth’s eyes, so you winked at them before focusing on your own lines that closed the segment, making you and Roman leave the ring before Seth and Dean had the chance to do so. Once you were in the backstage area, Roman leaned down to you to give you a longing kiss before he whispered: “Thank you for saving my butt out there babe. I couldn’t remember those damn lines for the sake of my own life.”

“Anytime”, you smiled up at him and before you could add another thing, Dean and Seth came busting in, jokingly punching Roman on his back before Seth said: “Man you should really put Y/R/N on a pedestal. I don’t even want to imagine the boos you would have received, if she wouldn’t have jumped in to save your butt.” Roman had to smirk as he replied: “Don’t worry, I’m putting her on a pedestal every single day for various reasons.” With that he winked at his friends before grabbing your hand and leading you to the locker room to show you how much he apperciated your help.

#roman reigns imagine #roman reigns x reader #roman reigns drabble #roman reigns #roman reigns fanfiction #roman reigns fanfic

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chrisabraham · 3 years

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Transcript of Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People podcast with the podfather, Adam Curry:

Guy Kawasaki:

I’m Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. This episode’s remarkable guest is Adam Curry. Adam was one of the VJ’s, video jockeys of MTV, back in the 1980s. In this position, he interviewed some of the most popular musicians of the time. This includes Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney.

Adam is an early adopter and pioneer. He embraced the web and podcasting long before other people. In fact, he helped make podcasting a thing by collaborating with Dave Winer on podcasting technology. He also created one of the very first podcast, The Daily Source Code. In 2005, Steve Jobs previewed Apple’s podcasting efforts by playing The Daily Source Code on stage at D, the most exclusive tech conference. It was a huge deal when Steve used a product like this.

Adam also started companies along the way that offered services such as web designing, video sharing, incubating, and podcasting. He currently co-hosts the No Agenda Podcast with John Dvorak.

I’m Guy Kawasaki, this is Remarkable People, and now, here’s the remarkable Adam Curry: podcaster, VJ, and pioneer.

Adam Curry:

August 1st, 1981 is when MTV kicked off. I didn’t come in until ’87, as they’d gone through the first wave and they were doing an expansion, and that expansion meant that they were going on primetime cable, basic cable, which was forty channels, and that meant that that would be available everywhere.

And back in the day, only people who are old enough to remember this, but cable was a joke. It was, “Yeah, that’s not real TV, no one’s going to advertise on it, no one cares about it.” They had the ACE Awards, and then they laid out the CableACE Awards, and each of these cable systems was just like their own little fiefdom that the owner would be a typical guy with a Cadillac with horns on the front, like, “Yeah, it’s my wife. Hello, MTV man.”

So we’d also have to tour the affiliates to make sure that they kept us on their stations, on their cable networks. So it was real Mickey Mouse. And I was living in the Netherlands, and they recruited me from there. I was doing television over there. And I came from a state broadcaster and we had fourteen cameras, five makeup rooms. It was all gunmetal gray. None of it was spiffy or anything, but we had a proper camera operator and a cable puller, all the stuff you’d want, and MTV was basically a studio. We shared the studio at the time with, I think the Sally Jessy Raphael show, this was on the Unitel Video on 57th Street in Manhattan.

And there was a couple lights. The lighting director would come in once a week and he’d say, “Okay, stand in your spot,” and he tapped the light, “Okay, this is good. I’ll see you in a week or two.” We had no makeup, no wardrobe, we did all that ourselves. It was really, really guerrilla television, very low rent, and it was kind of being run by radio people like a radio station at the time.

So I fit right in, I felt great, although I never really connected well with the management. I think they thought I had too many aspirations. I had all kinds of things written in my contract they didn’t like, like I could do radio, and they just thought that was ridiculous. “Are you going to be a VJ or a DJ? What do you want to be?” I said, “Why can’t it be so both?”

There were other things, like I was in the music meeting as the only on-air talent where they decided what they would accept to play on the channel, and some producer things I’d negotiate because they came to me so that gave me an upper hand. But it was not the drug-fueled bosom babes rolling around the studio-type vibe that you might think it was, it was quite sedentary, quite tedious. In fact, we’d record, not in real-time, but just the segments. So we never actually saw the videos while we were taping it.

Guy Kawasaki:

What?

Adam Curry:

We’d seen them before. Yeah. Go on YouTube, you see me, I’d be like I’m looking off camera, I’m literally looking at like a floor manager or a production assistant like, “All right, that’s great to see Bon Jovi up there.” And they talk about the next video and then here comes, I look off to the side, I’m just looking into darkness, and then they would literally… This is so pre-internet.

They would take these big tapes, these pneumatic tapes, which is like a big Betamax kind of would look like, and they put them in a car service, drive it to Long Island to the network operation center, where we had guys all day long who would insert like Adam Curry, 12:00 PM segment A, and he’d play it and then he’d click the other machine and play the video, and then he’d fast forward, queue up the next segment, Adam Curry, 12:00 PM segment B, and he’d play that. So it was kind of a playout system like a radio station with cart machines. And it was really, really, really low rent.

And I was on the Internet at the time and they had a Wang computer. I’m like, “Whoa, these guys are ancient.” It was crazy. They were doing the Word processing on the Wang and sending it down from the studio. Whoa, it was great.

Guy Kawasaki:

You’re bursting my bubble here, Adam. So you’re telling me that you didn’t just watch the video and then react to it?

Adam Curry:

It’s all acting, Guy.

Guy Kawasaki:

All that was fake?

Adam Curry:

All of it was fake, man, all of it, every single bit of it. Yeah. And this is why I rarely do mainstream things anymore. I know how it works. I’m always disappointed.

I remember when Michael Jackson died and I got all these calls like CBS Evening News, “I want to talk to you.” I’m like, “Okay, that’s fine.” I was doing other stuff at the time, I wasn’t on MTV anymore. And I spent three hours interview, some walking shots, and then you watch at night, it’s literally fifteen seconds of me going like, “He’ll be missed.” All the other stuff I said was… I’m like, “I’m not going to do that anymore.”

I’m so spoiled by podcasting and the freedom that we have. There’s a lot of disillusionment there, but man, does it work. Does the mainstream trickery just work beautifully. Everything is a great product that I see, it really is. It’s not truthful but it’s a great product.

Guy Kawasaki:

Back then, did the experts scoff at the idea that there would be only music videos? Did they say, “American public doesn’t want this, they want movies, they want Disney specials, just to have two minute videos over and over again is not going to cut it”?

Adam Curry:

Interesting. Again, it was really radio people who drove this, and they said, “Oh, we can run this like a radio station, add VJ’s, and they’ll do shifts.” And basically, as a VJ, you’re one step lower on the rung from curable lepers, incurable lepers, then down there is VJ.

So they really want just interchangeable talent that you can just pull in and rotate out and have them look pretty and do their thing, don’t bump into the furniture, and we’ll play the songs. But something else happened, and the revolution really came from creatives.

So the first thing was these videos. Directors were making videos and they were doing them on really small budgets, and this became an industry. And so the first thing that had to happen was, we had to legitimize what was going on.

So every MTV Video, you would see the director, and the director would get a credit at the beginning and the end of the video. And that was not only an interesting negotiation that we went through with certain guilds, but it also really gave legitimacy to the product. And then you got celebrity kind of directors who would jump into the game, and there was people directing for each other. So that really became quite a thing. Then with John Landis and the Thriller video, all of these things really built up into this is an actual product that stands by itself, which ultimately also became MTV’s demise as we know it, when music videos were so commoditized that they found themselves competing with other networks for premieres.

So the next Michael Jackson video was going to BET. And so Viacom, MTV Networks, they said, “What? Let’s just buy BET, because we can’t have these guys cutting into our business here.” So they did that.

And then the commoditization just continued, particularly as online started coming to play, and they saw that they could get a 0.3 rating for music videos, maybe a 1.0 in primetime with some special programming like Dial MTV, or what later became TRL Live. But you did a long form programming like MTV Beach House, or MTV Real World, or Sporting Fool, or Remote Control, the game show, now you’re talking a three rating. And that was it. That was the smartest decision they could have made.

Sad for what it was, but the music video was no longer a viable business, and so they just went straight into, “We’re targeting this audience and we’re going to go after them 100 percent,” which a lot of it is low hanging fruit, teen moms. It’s crazy, it’s a lot of reality shows.

So the joke, the meme that goes around at the fortieth anniversary is, “Happy birthday, MTV, forty years and fourteen years of music,” all the rest was different kinds of programming. But it’s nice because it’s something that our generation, and that really is older millennials, I would say, up until… or maybe it’s just the older millennials and some boomers in there as well, that was something we shared.

It’s like the rotary phones on the wall. You can show it to people, they’ll be like, “That was like our thing. You stand here waiting for it, and you grab the cord and go around the door into the basement, really?”

So it’s that, that it’s hard to understand, but I’m so happy that I was a part of it, and I was there for seven and a half years. And to this day, I’ll be in just the most odd circumstances, maybe a CEO and then they figure it out like, “Wait a minute, aren’t you the guy from…?” And then the shirt opens up, Metallica T-shirt’s on underneath it. So it’s kind of a cultish thing at this point, but I’m very, very happy that I was a part of it.

Guy Kawasaki:

Wow. And tell me, how did MTV go from this scrappy startup held together by duct tape, into really defining the culture?

Adam Curry:

First, I will say Tom Freston was really important in that. I feel that he led MTV in his own Tom Freston way. He was a very, very interesting guy, very, very rock and roll, but complete suit, you wouldn’t know it. But you look into his background, he was into import export with Afghanistan. It’s like, “Okay. I know enough about Tom. This guy, he’s rock and roll.” And he had a good connection with the music industry. He understood what they wanted, because MTV is just a part of the system, and it became that very, very quickly, with all the negotiations and what goes on, “And who do we put in on special rotation to hook up someone else?” All the favors are all there.

And it was top forty radio sliding towards hip hop, the artists, and the video artists who put it all together, they made the words come alive. The videos, at a certain point was just the budgets were crazy, and record companies would still put them up and put up those kinds of budgets, and that started to change over time. So more creativity came in, the technology changed.

Final Cut Pro, that was instrumental for MTV Music videos in the latter part of I’d say the ’90s. It was like, “What? Nonlinear video editing and I can do this at home?” I remember going to CBS Sony records in 2005 or something, I was going to see I… ’04 maybe… see if I could do anything with the music business with podcasting. And I’m in the lobby there, and in Manhattan there’s a second floor lobby, and that’s where everyone waits until you’re called up to God to go meet with whoever you’re going to meet with. And I couldn’t believe what I saw.

It was just like 100 hip hop groups, and they’re all filming stuff, and they got soundtracks running, so I guess they’re doing a part of the videos that they’re going to get their record contract, and Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran is sitting there waiting next to me, and we’re looking at all this, and all of a sudden the lady comes on the speaker, “Mr. Simon Le Bon, Mr. Simon Le Bon, you can go up now, Mr. Simon Le Bon.” This is Simon Le Bon, we know who he is, and the whole thing was just mayhem, Guy.

I was like, “I don’t recognize this industry. I don’t know who’s making the money where it’s going.” And of course, the music business in general has really been stripped to its bare bones with Spotify and streaming and all the types of deals that were done to keep the broadcasters rich and musicians starving. The same story as always.

Guy Kawasaki:

Nothing’s changed.

Adam Curry:

No, not really, not really.

Guy Kawasaki:

And were you part of the, “I want my MTV promotion group”?

Adam Curry:

No, no.

Guy Kawasaki:

No? Not at all?

Adam Curry:

That was before me. That was the very first, when they just started off and they needed to get cable stations to carry the signal, that was the thing. Just like radio, you had to clear the stations and you had to talk to all these guys. I should know who came up with this. But the “I want my MTV” was an easy one.

You got all, especially the British guys to say, Bowie, The Stones, you got Madonna, you got Billy Idol, it was all the icons of the moment, and they loved it too. They were part of it. It was very, very community type thing, and it was heartfelt, even though there was money behind it and the intent was to create a four billion dollar brand, which it is, or at least annual revenues. So it behooved everybody. It was fun to watch. But the early days, no that was not me. I was not a part of that.

I was a part of Spring Break. This is a good one. So Spring Break became famous, MTV Spring Break coverage, but MTV didn’t want to just go to Florida and watch kids belly flop. That was never the idea. The idea was, “How do we get Budweiser to advertise on the channel?” And I was a part of this pitch. So we went to Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch, and we said, “Look, your beer is down there in Florida and all these other places for spring break. We’ll do wall to wall coverage like big inflatable bottles of Bud everywhere,” and they went for it. Then of course, it wound up with me on the Bud Light boat with Spuds MacKenzie. Okay. But we did whatever we had to do, and that was purely to get them on the station, and it turned into kind of an unforgettable programming that they repeated over and over again.

Guy Kawasaki:

Man, you’re bursting so many of my bubbles, Adam.

Adam Curry:

No, but this is good. It was really fun to do. It was real. The realest thing I think was the Video Music Award. Those were live, they went out live, the early ones.

Later on, it became a little too contrived. And it was so good in fact that the VJ’s were not actually invited. If it was in Los Angeles, you had to fly yourself out, you had to buy your own ticket. They were horrible to us. It was like, “No, no, no, this is special programming. This is not for you.”

But like the people watch this all day long. So you get to do one little segment or something like outside. I’m standing outside here, all the stars are inside, I’m the schmuck VJ on the outside.

Guy Kawasaki:

So as a VJ, you basically watch these videos and then you had to just make it up on the fly? You weren’t meeting with them, you weren’t interviewing? How did this work?

Adam Curry:

Oh, no, no, no. There was plenty of interviews and stuff that would then get chopped up. I had several shows throughout the years that would include, would basically be six segments in an hour, of which three could be two minutes and just typical, it was like typical television because you got to sell more Skittles.

So we do that, and those things were great, and I loved doing that, many, many interviews, but it was never really like a live show, except for a Mardi Gras was live, we would cut live to Mardi Gras, which was really fun, back before you got killed in the streets. Spring Break was live, and the afternoons were live for a while with the Dial MTV where people would call in and request their favorite video.

So no, it was actually a lot of fun, and they were, in general, highly scripted. So every VJ was highly scripted, there was a teleprompter. And I just said, “Just leave it empty because I’ll just make it up. I know what’s going on.” Because I was researching. I had found the internet in ’87, ’88, and I was on Gopher. I was poking around, I was looking at news groups.

Guy Kawasaki:

You were on Gopher?

Adam Curry:

Yeah, I’m on. I got a SLIP account through Panix in New York City, and I figured out how to set up that SLIP connection, and you got your PPP stack and all that stuff, and then you fire up the terminal. “Oh, okay, there it is.” And then you log into the Gopher server and check around. But I really had more fun with the newsgroups and email.

Email was phenomenal because my audience was college students who, A, didn’t count in the ratings at all, so they didn’t even know how many were watching. They were watching but they had very different ideas about what videos they liked. So I’d get feedback from them and that’s how I ultimately set up my own Gopher server and registered mtv.com to run it, and I would pitch that on the air from time to time, so people had put little stories up.

And so I typically had new stories a day before MTV News itself because I was getting it from the people out there in the country who were emailing me these stories. And then it was I think around ’90, and I got an email from a guy in University in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and he says, “Yeah, Adam, I’ve got this thing, and I wanted to try it out.”

Guy Kawasaki:

Let me guess. A?

Adam Curry:

Yeah. Marc Andreessen. He says, “Adam, check this HTTPD server out?” I think it had like 1.4 or something. And I set it up and like…browse. I’m like, “Oh, wait a minute.” And that blew my mind. And I wound up leaving MTV maybe a year later to start my own company because I was like, “This is it. This is the real future, what’s going on here. I’m just mucking around on this cable news business or cable business.” And so yeah, that’s really how I got sucked in very, very deep, and I saw that I could be much faster, much nimbler, do more fun stuff, less restrictions online. And it was truly the Wild West.

AOL wouldn’t let you on the internet, if you recall, and people were like, “Come on, man, give us a browser, give us a browser.” And like, “Okay.” And you got that browser, and had to just click all those warnings like it’s dangerous out here, anything could happen, which is exactly what you wanted. And after that, AOL became a dial up company. Everything got sucked into the internet. It was beautiful. It was really an exciting time.

Guy Kawasaki:

Okay. Only one more question back in MTV days because we got to make the transition to the web here. Were you there when Michael Jackson required that everybody call him the King of Pop?

Adam Curry:

Yes. This is one of my favorite stories. So there were many deals that were made, and they typically revolved around the Video Music Awards. So if you wanted to have an artist of stature appear, then you maybe would have to play some other video by the same label, or some other favors were made, deals we’re done. And Michael Jackson, he was going to perform, and we had a whole Michael Jackson weekend planned around the premiere of his latest video, I don’t remember what that was, and of course teasing that he would be on the Video Music Awards.

And the way it worked on MTV is you tape on Thursday; you tape for Friday and Saturday… Wait. On Thursday, you tape for Friday, Friday, you tape Saturday, Sunday, something like that. Somehow we threw in a Monday somewhere. But we wouldn’t work on the weekend, but it was the weekend.

So we all did our bits, forty-eight hours’ worth of programming. And then I got a call Friday night like, “Y’all got to come in tomorrow because someone messed up.” The deal was every single time you say Michael Jackson, it had to go Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. I don’t even know if Michael Jackson cared, but we reshot the whole weekend just to make sure we didn’t screw anything up with that deal. That’s how political it was when it came to the deals. But it was all for the good. We wanted Michael Jackson to be on the show, I guess, but there was some grumbling.

Guy Kawasaki:

I can just imagine. Let’s get out of MTV days. We already touched on this a little bit, but tell us about this getting on the web. What a concept, right? How did that happen? How are you this early adopter, this pioneer of the web?

Adam Curry:

Well, I’ve always been a tinkerer. So my love of radio started when I was thirteen. I got a… and I still have it… Radio Shack 101 projects, and it’s a breadboard and it has components; you connect them with different length wires and stuff. And so that’s how I built my first transmitter, my FM transmitter, and that’s how I kind of fell into radio because I needed something to play on my transmitter, and before I knew it, I was building a mixer and understanding how to mix in a microphone, etc.

So my dad actually, we were living in Europe, and he was into all kinds of PR stuff, but it was online, and the first thing he brought home was a Minitel terminal from France. And France was very, very sophisticated early on. Every household had this little terminal and it was meant for hotel reservations or restaurant reservations and some news, etc. Turns out it was being used by sex workers a lot, so they had to scuttle the project at some point because there was a message board thing.

So my dad had all these weird computers and the one that I really grabbed hold of was the Sinclair ZX80, which was basically this plastic keyboard with a module on the back, which was the RF modulator that hooked into the TV and you could write and load programs through a cassette. But I worked part time at a computer store on weekends, and a buddy of mine who I think he might have had the Commodore VIC-20 at that point, but we built our own modems, our own acoustic modems.

So we ripped apart old phones and we put them in little boxes, so you could put the phone cradle right on top, and it worked, I want to say like three baud a minute or a second, whatever, but it worked. And so that was kind of my introduction, then bulletin boards and that kind of thing that followed. And then I put everything aside as my radio and television career started when I was nineteen in the Netherlands. And then when I got to the States in ’87, the first thing I did is I went to 47th Street Photo…

Guy Kawasaki:

Oh, my God.

Adam Curry:

…and I bought a Mac Plus with a scuzzy external hard drive, twenty megabytes, with that big scuzzy cable, remember to terminate. You could plug an RV into that thing. It was so much power. And the 1,200 baud modem, and I was using it for CompuServe, because I discovered CompuServe by then, I thought that was phenomenal. Prodigy was coming around, around that time, I think, that was a Sears deal. But all of this stuff was nothing because I kept hearing people say, “The internet, man, the internet. It’s impossible to get on but all the cool kids are there.”

And so I just fooled around night after night until I finally got a dial up account with Panix New York, figured out how to get the TCP/IP stack running, and I was off to the races. And from there, as I said, it just progressed into the web.

A guy from Sun Microsystems, Karl Jacob, who later… I think he’s still an advisor… He might have been on the Facebook board at some point. But he was at Sun and he said, “Check this out, Adam.” And at this time, I had a 56K frame relay in my house, “Look out, I’m cooking with gas now.” And so he streams a sound file from San Francisco to my computer in New Jersey. I’m like, “That’s it, man. Why am I mucking around on this cable business? This is where I got to be.”

And so literally, I finished the number one video on the Top Twenty Countdown, and I said, “That’s it. I’m leaving MTV. I’m going to start my own company. I’m going to do something on the internet. I don’t know what it is, but that’s where the future is, and I’m done and I’m out.” And I left and I never looked back.

Went right to my radio syndicators and started a company called OnRamp, and the first thing we did was this Fifty-sixth Annual Grammy Awards, we did what we call the cyber cast, with two sponsors, VISA and Casio. Casio was sponsoring because they’d just come out with digital cameras that you could connect via a serial cable to your computer so you could then upload the photos. And we were using CU-SeeMe video, hello, one frame a second, and it was a tremendous success.

Guy Kawasaki:

Oh my God.

Adam Curry:

And we even brought a T1 line into the Shrine Auditorium, and it was cowboy stuff. It was really crazy. But it was all East Coast, right? It wasn’t until I met the West Coast guys that I really understood how nuts the world was. And that’s where I met such luminaries as Marc Canter, and Dave Winer, and John C. Dvorak, John Perry Barlow, and I really didn’t know that much about the culture of Silicon Valley and computers other than the thing I held in my hands. So these are like profits, man. I was like, “Wow, there’s a whole another thing going on out here.”

In fact, I was still at MTV I think, and Halsey Minor gets in touch with me, he said, “We’ve got this thing which is a pilot called CNET. Come on out.” I’m like, “Okay.” So I go, and they had an idea, they brought in Kevin Wendell, a top… He helped build the Fox Network, not Fox News, but the Fox television station network, and they were going to do like a cable channel or something called CNET, and they had a whole bunch of people in just shooting all weekend long.

I said, “This should be an internet thing, really.” He says, “Oh, yeah, good idea. What should we do?” I said, “Well, do you have cnet.com?” “No.” “All right. Hold on a second.” I register cnet.com. I ran their email for at least a year, IMAP or POP3 email boxes for them. They never had an idea that it was going to be seen at the computer network the way it turned out to be.

So there were all these things I was just coming across, but that really enamored me with… If you sit down with Marc Canter and he’s smoking some weed, man, you can listen to that guy for hours like, “Wow, these guys are nuts.” And so that’s how I kind of started to learn about, again, the tinkering side, RSS. This is what I learned from Dave Winer. He was building microblogging, really, he was building RSS and the aggregator, and Marc had his multimedia stuff, and all of these different things happening.

Meanwhile, I moved to Amsterdam at the end of ’99, to go back. I had a Dutch wife and she wanted to be near her parents, and they had cable modems. Now, this was cool because cable modems was not fast or anything, but it was always on. You didn’t have to dial up, you didn’t have to tie up a phone line. Napster was just happening, so people were like, “Holy crap. I’m sharing all this stuff and I’m literally poking inside someone’s hard drive and pulling mp3 files out, and it’s all kind of working, but it was also slow.”

And that’s when I came up… I wrote a blog post called The Last Yard, and I had this idea that since the computer was always on, why couldn’t we just have the video file that you absolutely want to see instead of the experience of the day, which was click, wait, wait, download, click open up with another program, the real player starts to jerk open, all this stuff that was a crap. I said, “Well, wouldn’t it be great if there’s some program that would run in the background, something I wanted to see was ready, would download it, but then would tell me later,” because once it’s downloaded, then it’s just one click, it plays. So what I don’t know won’t hurt me. That was my whole concept.

And somehow, when Dave… and I was very involved, because I loved his product, Radio UserLand, I said, “Well, this is a two-way system. You create an RSS feed on the blog, and I aggregate it, and I can read it on my end. Why don’t we do like a file attachment?” But it wasn’t that simple. I had to go fly to New York and I had to explain to him what I was talking about, and I think he probably thought I was a schmuck.

Like, “What’s this Hollywood guy doing here telling me what to do?” But he saw it, he saw the light. And I think by the time I was back in Europe, he had kind of coded it in. And for two years we were testing this functionality, just going back and forth and like, “Oh, cool. There’s another 100 megabyte file that Dave uploaded last night in San Francisco, and I don’t have to download it. I click, it plays right away.” It was all kind of fun, for me at least.

Dave was working with Chris Lydon. I know that they had done some stuff for his radio program, but when I saw the iPod, yeah, that’s when it all came together. I’m like, “Ah.” Because I looked at the iPod, and that was not a digital Walkman or whatever people were saying, I looked at it and I said, “That is almost exactly like the Sony transistor radio my grandmother gave me when I was seven years old that I have under the pillow, it was the same size.” I said, “This is a radio, it’s a radio receiver.” And now we can have the radio shows… subscribe was the word of the time… you subscribe, and then this little program is going to look for the new episodes or whatever. We were calling it episodes, I think. And it’ll download it and put it on your iPod and Bob’s your uncle. And that’s where we started. Literally, that’s where we started.

And I’d started doing The Daily Source Code, which was a daily podcast. We didn’t even know what it was called at the time, and the whole point of The Daily Source Code was, I was talking about what the developers were building because they were building more radios. Ii was like, “Oh, the iPod Rex, and iPod Lemon and all these.” We didn’t have apps, we didn’t have phones or anything. My God, the tools we have now is so unbelievable compared to then. So yeah, and so that just took off real fast. I mean, people grabbed hold. I say that to Tony Kahn from WGBH, he was quite instrumental, unsung hero because he really pulled NPR into the game early, early on, and he was pushing them very hard. And that really gave it legitimacy, and yeah, it grew so fast. It was only a number of years.

Guy Kawasaki: I've

So people have applied the moniker “podfather” to you. Is that accurate? Are you the father of podcasting? Well, then what’s Dave Winer? Is he the mother?

(Ran out of Tumblr space, visit this site)

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monsteramongmen-tamer · 6 years

Text

#36: “I’m so in love with you.” & #39: “I wish we could stay like this forever.” -Elias.

Thank you to the lovely @racheo91 for this request!

Tagging: @kaitlynwwefan, @panic-angel3314, @shieldgirl95, @earl-01, @nickie-amore, @blondekel77, @reigns420, @littleprincess1621, @m-a-t-91, @luckygillblog, @finnbalorsbabygirl, @unabashedwwesmut, @blackwidow2721, @wrestlingimaginesposts, @wweburnitdown, @thirstiswet, @princesstoniii, @birthday-prinxess, @princess3733, @princesses-reign-daily, @lip-sync, @laziestgirlintheworld, @lclb13, @tinyelfperson, @justkelsey15

Warnings: Fluffy af.

A/N: If you’d like added to my tag list, let me know!

You were apart of the camera crew for RAW and you absolutely loved your job. You got to interact with the superstars and get in on all the action. You worked your ass of to get to where you are today. You deserved it.

Tonight, you were filming a segment with Dean Ambrose. He was talking about who he was going to be facing in the next PPV.

During his segment, you suddenly heard a guitar playing out of nowhere. You were so confused, as were the rest of the people around you. Including Dean. All you could hear was the beautiful strumming of a lovely tune. Then out of nowhere, a man came out and walked in front of the camera, playing the guitar.

Who was this man? And why did he feel the need to play a song in the middle of a segment, not saying a word?

You were intrigued though. He was beautiful. He wore a cutoff t-shirt and tight jeans. He had long hair that was in a bun. And his eyes...you were captivated by them. But you knew nothing about him.

He took you so off guard, you forgot that you were working. That you were in the middle of a shot. Everyone refocused and finished Dean’s segment.

This went on for weeks. This man playing his guitar, interrupting camera shots, ruining segments, distracting everyone. If this was part of a storyline, surely someone would have told you about it.

You figured you would have to confront this man about disrupting your shots. Figure out what his problem is.

So, for the sake of your job, you were going to take one for the team. The next time he did it, you were going to say something.

The next week, sure enough, during one of Braun Strowman’s segments, he did his thing again, but this time, he looked right at you. It almost looked like he was looking into the camera, but nope. Right at you. It felt like your heart skipped a beat. You couldn’t let that distract you though.

After the segment was done, you were on a man hunt. You were going to find out just what this guy’s intentions were.

You saw him sitting on a giant tote and you walked up to him, feeling mostly confident.

He looked up at you and smiled.

“Hi, I’m Y/N and I am part of the camera crew and am just wondering why you have been butting into the shots every single week.”

Still smiling, “Y/N, that’s a beautiful name. I might need to put that into a song. One that would be just as beautiful as your face.” He said.

You felt yourself blushing, “Please, don’t change the subject. Is it part of a storyline or something?”

He sighed, “Come with me.”

He grabbed your wrist and took you into the nearest dressing room.

“First off, I should introduce myself. I am Elias.”

“Hi, Elias.” You said.

“You asked why I have been butting into segments each week with my music? Well, I’m not supposed to mention it to anyone quite yet, but since you asked so nicely,” He said in a sarcastic tone, “I guess I can tell you. Yes, it’s part of a storyline. I will be coming to the main roster soon.”

“Okay. I was only wondering because they never told us about it. And when we don’t know about things and unexpected things happen, it can be frustrating, ya know? So, thank you for telling me. I will leave you be now.” You said, starting to walk away.

He grabbed your wrist again, “Wait. I might be totally out of place here, but can I take you out for a drink sometime?”

Your eyes widened at his question. The beautiful man in front of you wanted to take YOU out for a drink?!

“I don’t see why not.” You said, smiling.

“Perfect. How about tonight after the show?” He asked.

“I’ll have to check my schedule, but I think that will work.” You said, smirking.

You then left the dressing room. Was this really happening? Guess so. You were going on a date. Tonight.

The rest of the show went by quickly and next thing you knew, you were sitting at a restaurant with Elias. He was such a gentleman and so easy to talk to. You surprisingly had a lot in common. He bought your dinner and asked if you wanted to go out for drinks. You were hesitant, because you knew how you were when you’re drunk, but you agreed to go.

It started out slow. Couple of shots here and there. Couple of dances on the dance floor. Few more drinks.

Next thing you knew, you were waking up the next morning in a hotel room, naked. And you weren’t alone. Elias was passed out next to you. Clothes were scattered all over the room.

You weren’t sure if you should stay or if you should go. But as soon as you moved to get up, Elias woke up.

“Good morning my love.” He said.

“Hi...” You said.

“How are you feeling this morning? After everything?” He asked.

“...what exactly is everything?” You hesitated to ask.

“Well, we were at the bar, you drank pretty heavily. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t too. We had a few dances and you drug me to the bathroom and we had sex in there. But, we weren’t able to finish, because we got caught. So, they kicked us out and we came here and finished what we started. And...here we are now.” He said, gesturing to the room.

You put your head in your hands, “Oh my god.”

He sat up and kissed your shoulder blade, “No need to be embarrassed. I’d do it all over again if I had the chance.”

You liked this guy. But you normally wait until at least the second date to sleep with them. What’s going to happen now?

After awhile, “Well, I hate to do this, but I have a plane to catch.” You said.

“Let me drive you.” Elias said.

You both got dressed and he took you to the airport. He kissed you before you got out of the car. That was unexpected.

That whole week took forever. You couldn’t wait to see Elias again. He was all you could think about.

Work was about the same. Elias interrupted segments and by the third week, he finally told people who he was and began wrestling. And after every show, you’d go out to dinner, but not get drunk like the first time. Have endless conversation. And you would go back to his hotel room and you would make love like you never had before.

One morning you were being lazy, before having to fly home. You were laying on Elias’s chest, messing with his fingers.

“Can I admit something to you?” He asked.

“Of course.” You said, now playing with the hair on his chest.

“I’m so in love with you.” He said.

You sat up. That got your attention.

“Really?” You asked.

“I think so. These last few weeks have been amazing. And I hate to admit it, because guys don’t usually admit this stuff, but I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.” He said.

“Would it be crazy if I felt the same way?” You asked.

He smiled and leaned over and kissed you. “Not crazy at all.”

Just then, your alarm went off, meaning it was time to get ready to fly home.

“Ugh,” You said, covering your head with the comforter, “I don’t want to get up. I wish we could stay like this forever.”

Elias pulled the comforter off you, “I know babe, I do too, but we can’t miss our flights.”

“I know.” You said, whining.

You got up and got ready, even though you didn’t want to. You carpooled to the airport and stood in the middle of where your gates were.

“Until next time, my love.” He said, kissing you.

“It’s going to be a long few days.” You said.

He nodded and agreed.

The people in the airport probably thought you were disgusting, but you didn’t care. You were in love and didn’t care who knew it.

#elias #elias samson #elias drabble #elias one shot #elias imagine #wwe #wwe fanfiction #wwe fanfic #wwe fic

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chmergess4ever · 6 years

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The Chmerkovskiy’s (Part 14)

Hey Guys!!! Here is the next chapter!! I really loved writing this one so I hope you enjoy reading it. I’m thinking two or three more chapters to wrap it up!! Thanks for all the support! You guys are the greatest!

After the wedding everyone, all normal guest went back to their rooms as they had two hours before the reception. All the bridesmaids and groomsmen gathered for picture time as they had decided that the pictures should be taken after the ceremony. The girls posed first, doing every position that the photographer suggested, and the guys followed. They then came together to take photos as one big group. Afterwards, they all watched as the photographer took photos of Sharna and Val alone in different poses. All together it took about an hour. The photographer showed a few of them to Sharna and Val to make sure they were happy. “Is there anyway, Me, You and Val can take one more?”

“Sure? You have an idea?”

“Sort of involves taking a trip somewhere.”

“We have time.”

Val smiled, knowing exactly what his wife was thinking.

The three of them got in the car and drove to the hospital. Everyone was looking at them as they walked through the hall whispering congratulations, smiling and waving. Sharna knocked on Peta’s door and they both peaked their heads in, “Surprise.”

Peta gasped, “Oh my god. Oh my God. You’re married!!” They each bent down and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“What are you doing here? What about the party?”

“We had some time. I couldn’t not get a picture with my maid of honor on my wedding day.”

“Shar, I look awful.”

“You look beautiful.”

“Except, she knew you would say that. So she made me bring this.” Val handed her a palate of makeup. Peta laughed, “Thank you.”

“Where’s the little munchkin? Can i see him?”

“You can!!” Peta turned to the nurse, “Can you go get Sam?”

The nurse nodded and left. Peta put on light makeup while the nurse was gone but when she returned, she gave Peta the baby in her arms. Sharna sat on one side of the bed, as Val sat on the other. All three of them were look down at the baby, admiring him.

“Wait. Stay there.” The photographer changed her lens and snapped a few shots. “That’s the perfect picture.”

Peta turned to Sharna, “I’m so so sorry. I don’t know how I’m ever going to make this up to you.”

“Godmother?” Sharna threw her head back and laughed, “I’m kidding. This day couldn’t be anymore perfect. You’re not there, but you’re in here.” Sharna pointed to her heart. “Nothing changes that.”

Peta gave Sharna a one armed hug as she held the baby with the other. “I love you, babe.”

“That makes two of us.” Val crossed his arms. “We should go.”

Sharna nodded, “We’ll see you on facetime soon.” She have Peta a kiss on the cheek.

They got back in their limo, Val took her hand as they sat in the backseat together, “You ok?” He stroked her hand with his thumb.

Sharna nodded. “I’m the happiest I have ever been.” She leaned in to kiss him and rested her free hand on his cheek. “You’re my husband.”

The party started soon after that. Everyone was mingling at the cocktail hour as the wedding party prepared to make their entrance. Nicole fluffed out Sharna’s dress so it was perfect for the entrance. She then straightened Val’s bowtie. She put her hand on his chest and then brushed his cheek, “I can’t believe you’re married.”

Sharna laughed as she watched Nicole’s interaction with him.

“Thank you for everything, Nicole. You really made this day so special for the both of us.” Sharna put her hand on her arm.

“It’s my pleasure. You guys are kind of my family.” Nicole said sarcastically as she laughed. “Let’s go make an entrance.”

The DJ started by welcoming everyone to the reception and then began calling the names of people in the wedding party. Maks once again, entered alone but this time he was carrying an ipad with him which had Peta on facetime. Everyone then silenced and waiting for the next words, “And now. It is my pleasure. To announce, for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Valentin Chmerkovskiy.” They walked out and everyone stood up and cheered. They walked to the center of the floor, and their first danced music began to play. Val pulled her into him as they started dancing in slow circles. He mouthed the words that they knew all too well. She looked up at him and whispered, “Do you remember what happened that last time we slow danced together at a wedding?”

“I do.” He leaned over and kissed her just as he did that night during Maks and Peta’s party. Thank goodness we have some pretty pesty friends that wouldn’t let us get away with it, right?”

“Yea, I’d say we’re pretty lucky.” She rested her head on his shoulder and they continued dancing. The other couples in the room joined them on the outer edge of the dancefloor and they all danced to the beautiful song the couple had picked.

“Everything but you.” Val whispered as he kissed the top of her head when the song ended.

Everyone clapped as the song had ended and Val kissed his bride one more time. They moved to sit at their table wit the wedding party as everyone took their respective seats at their assigned tables. They were served the appetizer first, followed by a salad and then the main meal. There was a large segment of dancing but when everyone settled back down for dessert Maks got on stage and clinged hus glass. Emma was standing next to him but back a little bit so he was slightly in front of her.

Everyone went quiet and listened to him speak. “So, as many of you know Val and Sharna selected Me and my beautiful wife as Best Man and Maid of Honor. We graciously expected but our second child had plans of its own and decided to arrive two weeks early last night, so my wife is currently in the hospital recovering. Emma will be reading Peta’s speech on her behalf and Peta is right over there on the ipad watching. Maks waved at the ipad that Alan was holding. I’ll go first though. So, when Val first asked me to be his best man, I said to myself “Oh shit. How am I going to top the speech he gave me at my wedding. Because the truth is, he summed up our relationship perfectly. Val is my best friend and will be my best friend for the rest of our lives. When I was 7 years old, my parents told me that I was going to have a little brother. I never in my life imagined what that little brother would mean to me. I’ve watched him grow up, make something huge out of nothing, follow in my footsteps and become a badass ballroom dancer, and even make his mistakes. And believe me he’s made plenty of them.” Everyone laughed as Maks continued, “But that’s ok, because we learn from mistakes. He finally learned that Sharna, my sister in law, was the one for him, and he finally learned what he deserves in life. Someone who loves him for him, someone who lets him be himself. He found someone who is practically the feminine version of him. And thank God they found each other because I think all of us might have blown a fit if the two of them didn’t figure out what was right in front of them every day of their lives. Val, Sharna, I’m so happy you guys have come together and love each other immensely. A love, like the two of you have, nothing can break. I love you guys with all my heart. Emma?”

Emma stepped forward, “Oh wow. This just became real.” Emma looked up from the paper, “That’s not me saying that. Peta literally has it written down that she was going to say that. But anyway, back to the paper.” Everyone laughed. Sharna shook her head giggling as Val threw his head back smiling. Emma continued once they had settled down, “I’ve never had the opportunity to do this before, and I can say without a shadow of the doubt that I wouldn’t rather do it for anybody else. Sharna you have been my best friend for years I can’t even count and I am so lucky that Dancing with the Stars brought us together. Although I haven’t know you for as long as Maks has known Val-unless we’re long lost sisters which is totally possible-I feel like I’ve known forever. You are my best friend and have seen me at my worst and my best. And I think I can say the same for you. See, the job of a best friend is to help a friend when their upset, but I haven’t really been able to fulfill that duty because Val makes you happy all the damn the time. Sorry for my french, but ya know it’s true. And I couldn’t be happier. To watch you go from being that single girl at my wedding, to a taken girl, to an engaged girl, to now a married girl as been such a joy. To see your relationship with my brother in law, flourish has been amazing. The love you two have each other can’t be replicated by anything and I now know that it will never have to. You know, I said to you on my wedding day, that there is a possibility you already met your guy, and boy was I right!!” Everyone clapped and laughed, “Not only had you met him, but you practically saw him every day. I’m so happy he makes you so happy because you deserve everything and more. I love you, S. Burgatroyd Forever. She’s mine, Val. Don’t ever forget that.” Emma paused and then looked back up to take in everyone enjoying the speech and then saw a few more sentences scribbled at the bottom, “Well it was supposed to end there but now I have to add this. My baby decided to come two weeks early. Misbehavin from the start, and I’m so sorry I couldn’t share your special day with you. But, know that we have plenty of says to share now, cause not only are we now sister-in-laws, We’re all The Chmerkovskiy’s.”

#chmergess #Chmergessfanfic #chmergessfanfiction #chmergatroyd #chmergatroydfanfic #chmergatroydfanfiction #sharnanandval #valandsharna

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beautyisyours · 4 years

Text

GNAWING AT THE BONES

After my breakup with Betty Boop, I was pretty down in the dumps for a while. I went on dates with a few girls, but nothing serious. That is, until the day of “The List.”

In case you didn’t already pick up on it, I’m a little OCD. So I really like lists. I list the times, places, and locations I need to be every single day. Before the show, I list segments that we are going to do in order of how good I think they will be. After the show, I change that list and list them in order of how well they went on air. I list my favorite soaps. I list my favorite teas. So of course I had a list of pretty girls I wanted to come on my radio show.

Rachel Reinert, one part of the three-member hit country band Gloriana, was definitely on The List. In fact, she might have been at the top of it. When we did a bit on air where we picked the ten most beautiful women in country (given the classy title “The Bones’ Babes”), I put Rachel at number one. (People magazine had just come out with their “Most Beautiful” issue and didn’t pick anyone from the country world, which I found annoying. But the real inspiration behind the segment was my newly single status. As I said on air, “I’m putting a bunch of girls who I would want to date on this list.”)

I didn’t think it would actually work, of course! But shockingly, it did, because the day after we aired this list, with Rachel on top, her people called up the show and asked if I wanted the singer-songwriter to come to the studio the following day. No way! I thought to myself. How embarrassing. But my rule is, the more embarrassing something is for me, the more the listeners will probably enjoy it. And of course I thought it would be funny to strike out on the air with a beautiful girl who I knew wouldn’t want to date me. So I agreed. I even made the whole experience even more embarrassing by writing

her a song, which I imaginatively called “Rachel,” that I played for her in the studio. It could have won the Grammy for Song of the Year. Here, let me show you:

Rachel, I think you are so pretty

When I see you, you make my heart all giddy. Rachel, I got you that trophy

Do you like guys like me that are dopey?

She smiled and laughed uncomfortably as I performed the whole thing for her, as if I were a creepy stalker. As you can see, my song stylings have met with varying responses when it comes to the ladies. Luckily, the tunes I cowrite for my band the Raging Idiots get a better reception. But at the end of her visit I got her cell number. Well . . . I had a friend tweet her friend to get me her cell number. I’m a total ladies’ man, you know. Anyway, Rachel and I started seeing each other fairly soon after. That’s right! She agreed to go out with me. It was very casual at first, as she was on the road a lot and I woke up at 3 A.M. But it turned into a strong relationship.

Rachel was fun to be around. I was just coming off my four-year relationship with Betty, probably the best human I had ever met, and she was a tough act to follow. But going out with Rachel was not only different, but equally good. Betty, who worked in sales, helped me find balance. She was great at that work-life thing, with a successful career and a strong circle of friends and close family.

Rachel, who had signed her first publishing deal in her teens and moved to Nashville soon after, was a lot like me—i.e., a workaholic. You have to be if you want to make it in the music business. She was always on the road with Gloriana, which had toured with Taylor Swift and won the Academy of Country Music’s award for Top New Vocal Group and a Teen Choice award for Choice Country Group. I would have given her an award, too (oh wait, I did: the Bones’ Babes #1 Hottest Country Singer Award). She was one of the greatest singers I’ve ever heard face-to-face. I would just ask her to play stuff around the house so I could hear her sing. Unfortunately, she never asked me to just tell jokes.

Her talent as a performer was only one aspect of Rachel’s appeal. She was also very open-minded in a climate that, in my opinion, can be too judgmental.

Rachel was just cool, but there was never any kind of country music “power couple” thing between us. First of all, I don’t go to many industry events because I’m a freaky, antisocial dude who feels like everyone at those parties either wants to use me or doesn’t like me. (I know, fun.) I didn’t perceive myself as half of any “celebrity relationship,” as some gossip sites called us. I also never really thought of Rachel as famous. She was super talented and driven, and I was attracted to that. Yet I also saw the grind of her job from the inside: the long bus rides, the program directors you have to drive all over the country to talk to in order to get your song on the radio, the many, many struggles of being a recording artist.

Struggling, which we all do, whether you’re a truck driver or a country music star, is what brought a common humanity not just to Rachel but to all the good and talented folks I’ve met in Nashville. Recognizing that beneath the makeup, four-hundred-dollar distressed jeans, and perfect hair (or steamed baseball cap—seriously, I’ve seen some country music dudes get that done to their hats before they go onstage), we’re all just the same. Knowing this to be true is what’s helped me most with my on-air interviewing of celebrities.

Most people, even those in the media, get intimidated by famous folks. Often interviewers are so worried about making celebrities uncomfortable or unhappy in any way that they ask the same questions as every other journalist, which means the famous person gives the same answer over and over until it becomes muscle memory. I think having to say the same thing again and again is the most annoying thing ever for anyone, famous or anonymous. I’m not in the business of making musicians uncomfortable or annoyed (at least, I don’t think I am). So if I can break the verbal rut they’re in, there’s no telling where I can go. Awful or awesome, either way is great.

The way I do this is by humanizing people who don’t seem human to others because of their larger-than-life status. “What did you eat for breakfast?” “Did you have a dog, growing up?” “What kind of underwear do you wear?” I ask about simple stuff that celebrities don’t usually get asked.

I do interviews constantly, in a medium where the conventional wisdom is that they’re not good for ratings. But I’ve always felt that listeners tune out when they hear interviews because most people on the radio or television aren’t doing interesting interviews. We once were given research that compared The Bobby Bones Show to other morning national shows, and what they found was that while other hosts gushed over their guests just for

showing up, my interviews were more of a back-and-forth between peers.

I was happy the research bore out what I hope comes through on my show. Not only do I feel the peer-to-peer quality of my questions makes for more interesting radio, but I do believe it also puts the artist at ease. When Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert split up, I was the first one who got him to talk in any real way about his divorce, because I talked to him in, well, a real way. Instead of asking him a fawning nonquestion, like “It must be so hard for you,” or making an accusation, like “Was there someone else?” I went at the angle, “You’re famous, and she’s famous. And you guys kept it secret until it was finalized. Now, all personal things aside, how did you do that?” With that Blake was able to separate himself a bit, talk about the law, and then he kind of just went, “Our whole thing was, we are going to be cool about this. It is what it is . . . we’re buddies.” That might not seem like big news to you (and it wasn’t to me), but that interview was picked up by every media outlet from the Today show to CNN to the Christian Post.

Even celebrity listeners, like Tim McGraw, liked what we were doing on the show. Although now we’ve done a few specials together for TV and radio, the first time he was on our show was when he called in to our request line! The country superstar said he was just a fan of the show and that he listened every day as he drove his kids to school. It was so crazy that honestly we didn’t believe it was him, and so we asked him a lot of trivia questions to see if it was really him. (Obviously, he passed with flying colors.) When I moved to Nashville, I had been told, “Tim is really quiet and doesn’t warm up quickly to people.” But that’s not what I found at all. When he found out that I’d never owned or worn a cowboy hat, he gave me the black one he’d worn throughout his whole Las Vegas run. Tim even sent me a murse (man purse) that he had bought but was too embarrassed to wear.

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ackackh · 7 years

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HBO War YouTuber Headcanons

(SO MUCH MORE under the cut)

BAND OF BROTHERS

George Luz George has a review channel He sits at his computer at his desk where his camera is set up A lot of the time, you can see his (big ass) mic in the shot. He doesn’t care. He’s almost always wearing headphones. Either apple-type earbuds with the cord under his shirt, or giant headphones, one covering an ear, one tucked behind his other ear. He’s really onto hi-fi audio tech, it’s where most of his spending money goes. He reviews music, tv shows, movies, books, video games. Anything popular and anything he likes.

The reviews are always fair and he tends to review things he likes anyway so there aren’t a lot of negative vibes on his channel. He also does some reaction videos. When he’s feeling up to it, he’ll make fun of Trump (and when he does it’s hilarious) but the boy has his limits. He wants his channel to be a reprieve for himself and for others. He has a lot of followers and they all just fawn over him because George has such an animated face and he gets so excited about things he likes. It’s adorable. Too pure. He also produces some original music! It’s mostly beats and he has a SoundCloud and a Patreon. He uses Snapchat and Vine a lot, in tandem with his channel. What’s on his snapchat/vine you ask? Every. Impression. Ever. And George is really good at them! They’re funny and accurate and his viewers really like them! He also has a million videos of him bugging his friends (mostly on vine). His favorite stunt is to see how long he can film Joe without him noticing. Spoiler: it’s not very long. Most of his vines end with him running away from an irritated Joe or with Joe smacking the phone out of his hand. The phone falls to the ground and you can hear George whine “What’d you hafta do that for?” He loves to do Special Guest Episodes! Sometimes the guest is Perco, sometimes it’s Skip, or Don, or even Carwood. He’s a good friend and if they have a channel he’ll plug for them. BUT he gets the most requests for Special Guest Episodes with Joe Toye! Joe will pull up his own desk chair beside Luz and reviews things with him (George will pick things Joe is actually interested in for the video). Joe has a harder time remembering that there's a camera and a mic to perform towards, and he’s quieter than Luz, but he gives his honest opinions which are always well thought out. Plus the viewers dig his voice. People will comment or email Luz, saying how much they love their banter, their chemistry. How they love how earnest Joe is (he’s a naturally charming guy!) Sometimes they get carried away with the “light” flirting, always smiling and always completely focused on what the other has to say. Joe doesn’t always stay for the whole video because he has shit to do, ya know? So he’ll get up and kiss George’s head or squeeze his shoulder and say “later, Georgie” And George will look at the camera and and yell to him “I LOVE YOU, JOE” and you can faintly hear Joe somewhere else in the house say, “love you, too, idiot!” And George giggles and gives the camera a wink.

Carwood Lipton Carwood keeps a video diary! He just films wherever he feels is right. Sometimes the family room, sometimes the office, sometimes the bedroom. The vibe is really chill, relaxed. You can almost think of Michael Aranda’s What I’m Doing Right Now He has a modest following, but he’s really interactive with the community: frequently answering questions, participating in conversations and debates. His vlog is multimedia! He uses twitter and snapchat a lot too, sometimes incorporating them into his videos. He loves to take candid videos and pictures of himself and his friends, with or without their immediate knowledge. (He always gets their permission before he posts anything) Viewers will often times find his video for that day is a mash up of videos of time spent with friends, Ron, Harry, Kitty, Dick, and Lew, on some small adventure. There’s some pleasant, energetic music playing, spliced with audio of the original video when someone says something particularly interesting or funny. His videos are for his followers, but he also keeps in mind that some of his family watches too, so everything is pretty PG. Ron isn’t super interested in YouTube, but he like’s to watch Carwood’s videos. He lives with the guy, and he always sees the bits and pieces as Carwood puts it together, so he likes to see the finished product. Sometimes he’ll come sit and be in a video, just for a little while if Carwood asks him. And of course they’re super in love, and Ron is so taken with Carwood, that the community comments like, “WE LOVE RON, GIVE US MORE RON PLS.” Ron will sometimes sit down with Carwood and answer questions. Either from the viewers or from a top googled list. It becomes a segment, titled something like Everyday Answers with Ron. And people love it because Ron can’t be anything but himself and he’s so oddly charming and adorable with how straightforward he is. he doesn’t quite understand why people like him so much. Carwood’s most viewed and most liked video is the one of the day Ron proposed. Harry, Kitty, and Nix were all in on it and got the whole thing on video and made sure they got footage of the celebrations afterward. He recorded in their bedroom that night, all sleepy and lovey with Ron, who kisses his cheek and thumbs over the band on Carwood’s finger.

Kitty Grogan Welsh Kitty’s channel is full of really fun things! Like stories, adventures in things like baking or hand crafts, personal make up tutorials. And, maybe most surprisingly, video games. So, she doesn’t do the average let’s plays. She’s not actually interested in showing people the game. Instead, she picks a topic, often sent in by fans, and shares her thoughts and ideas on this topic while she plays whatever games she likes. She plays games like, FIFA, Madden, Overwatch, and random platformers. These are her most watched videos. Maybe about once a month she has Husband Episodes where Harry sits and plays with her or watches her play while they discuss whatever topic they’ve decided on. He’s adorable and she spends a good amount of the time teasing him. Upon many, many requests, she has posted both a “My Husband Does My Makeup” video and an “I Do My Husband’s Makeup” video. I can’t reiterate enough how adorable Harry is here.

Joe Liebgott and David Webster Joe and Web don’t share a channel. Because that would be a disaster. But here’s how they know each other: That Prick YouTuber Whose Opinions Are Wrong Joe’s channel is mostly about music. He reviews artists, albums, and singles. AND he records original pieces and post the videos to his channel. He’s really. really. good. His emotions are so raw, he doesn’t even have to be singing for them to come out and it’s frankly… enchanting. A decent chunk of his viewers started watching because Joe is hot AF™ but they stayed because he’s talented and smart as a whip. While Joe does love The Clash and other punk groups, he one thing that speaks to his soul is an angry John Darnielle. That’s right kids: The Mountain Goats. They serve as a lot of inspiration for his original songs. So Joe plays and talks mostly about music, but he also talks about things like art, fashion, and COMIC BOOKS. Listen, he preorders that shit, he has whole videos just about how excited he is for some edition of some comic. So, Web stumbled upon one of his videos, this particular one about an artist, and ugh, everything about this guy just rubs him the wrong way. He falls down a rabbit hole of Joe’s review videos and he decides he basically can’t stand him or any of his very wrong opinions. Don’t ask him why he hit subscribe. Joe finds Web in his Suggested Videos Feed and listens for maybe two minutes to Web talk about his college classes and all the literature he’s reading and all the things he knows now and he’s like, fuck this guy. Joe just thinks he’s so pretentious. He likes The Catcher in the Rye. Like, come on, dude. Most of Web’s videos are about literature. Books and Poetry he’s read and likes/dislikes. He really enjoys the Transcendentalists. He loves the themes of man v nature and the natural imagery and how they talk about what makes up the human soul. Joe fucking hates Transcendentalism. As far as he’s concerned, they were a bunch of rich, white men who pretended to be one with nature or some bullshit but didn’t acknowledge the privilege of their status or even mention the fact that they could go back to their cushy homes whenever they liked! Eventually they bump heads and get into a few times through comments. They can’t stand one another, can’t see anything from the other’s point of view… UNTIL Until Web listens to one of Joe’s original songs. And it’s so raw and personal and the lyrics! He can’t believe how beautiful the lyrics are! They’re simple and effective and they hit him right in the chest. Until Joe listens to some of Web’s spoken word poetry. It’s not his usually style, it’s flow-y and flowery and romantic. But it’s fucking beautiful and it stirs emotions in Joe he’d forgotten about. Joe also listens to Web go on and on about his ideas for the books he wants to write. And he finds it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with Web like this, so animated and happy. Here’s what happens: they meet sometime in real life, maybe at Vidcon, and after arguing for forever, they decide to try and put there heads together and write a song. Joe on the music and Web on the words. And it’s great. Their ideas are different, but they feed off of each other well, and they find a good balance. They record a video of it, Joe performing with his guitar and Web watching him, taking notes, even. And when the music trails off and they fall into each other, the kiss doesn’t make it to the final cut of the video. Neither does the making out on Joe’s hotel bed.

Babe Heffron and John Julian Their videos are just fun and silly shenanigans. They play games (lots of Cards Against Humanity) and do every youtube challenge. ever. Chubby Bunny and the Cinnamon Challenge are two of their most viewed videos. So many stupid dares. So many ER visits, all filmed and all with an angry Guarno grumbling about how fucking stupid these “kids” are. Julian: I am not a kid! Bill: Come talk to me when your foot isn’t in a boot, alright? They have more than one video of them trying to do parkour. I mean, how do you think they ended up in the hospital? The channel is called Orange Julian and their icon/header image is the two of them, wearing only boxer-briefs, completely covered in orange body paint. They’re standing next to each other, purposefully looking a little awkward. Like, it’s almost album art worthy. All of this for a stupid Orange Julius pun that only like 1/3 of their viewers get.

Renee Lemaire Renee has a small channel about her life! It has lots of sweet things in it! Soft, gay vibes!!! Her dog. Her cat. Her good friends, Gene Roe and Ralph Spina. Delicious food and cooking! Crazy/hilarious/gross stories about working in the children’s ward of the hospital. Her experiences in America as a French woman. French history lessons! French language lessons in modern day/interesting/specific vocabulary! Gene and Spina often come on and they have culture clash videos about France and America at large. Sometimes Gene will talk about Cajun culture or stories or food. And Renee and Spina will sit there just bewildered by everything he says. Sometimes Renee and Gene will trail off in French conversations together, leaving Spina to either complain loudly OR look into the camera like he’s on The Office™ Renee can only upload like every other week or so because she’s so busy. But her viewers don’t mind! Her videos are like little presents!

GENERATION KILL

Rudy Reyes Rudy also keeps a diary! It’s called “Fruity Rudy” and the graphic has a cute lil peach on it. He always films in his living room during the day. The video and audio are both super high quality and he even has a nice front light. He looks fucking beautiful, as always. He just talks about his day, his friends and family, whatever subjects he’s been thinking about recently. And his house is always fucking perfect. 9 times out of 10 Pappy is in the kitchen cooking, slightly out of focus, while wearing an apron. He likes to listen to Rudy do his thing while he prepares dinner or w/e (cooking and baking is a big hobby of his). Every once in a while he’ll comment on something Rudy says or talks about, or he’ll poke fun at someone or tell a joke. Usually the mic picks up what he says, but it’s faint and Rudy adds in little subtitles in the bottom of the screen. And he either reacts with a fond smile of some kind of comment or comeback. The viewers love their banter because they’re HELLA MARRIED Like literally. And also figuratively. Like sometimes Rudy will call back to Pappy to ask him questions, sometimes looking for a real answer, sometimes because he knows the kind of sassy reaction he’ll get, and he’ll just roll his eyes at the camera. He gets like a million comments a day telling him that they adore Pappy. “omg u guys are so cute” “I wish pappy was in more videos!!” “is pappy his real name? if not, what is?” When Rudy hits 10,000 subscribers (“wow, that’s insane, thanks you guys!!!”) as a present, he makes this big reveal video of Pappy’s name. “Drum roll please… *drums on his thighs* it’s Larry.” *in the background* “RUDE, WHAT THE FUCK?” *uncontrollable giggles from Rudy* *the camera is lifted from it’s place by ~~someone~~ unseen and a blurry Rudy can be seen half-heartedly protesting before the footage cuts*

Ray Person Ray is basically iDubbbz/h3h3 He’ll get all of his friends to participate in stupid videos. Mostly it’s Walt, Christenson, or sometimes Q-tip or Gabe. But sometimes he’s by himself, it just depends. So we get lots of these types of gems. (x) (x) Brad hardcore pretends like he doesn’t want to be a part of it but look, he operates the camera for every video, he’s not fooling anyone. It’s hard to mistake his laughter when he’s right next to the mic. Sometimes Ray keeps in the little bits where Brad comments or calls him an idiot and you can see Ray look behind the camera, laughing and smiling or giving it right back. Ray’s channel is nuts!! but every once in a blue moon Ray will upload a video called “Serious Talk #1” (and so on) where he talks about something he really cares about or is really bugging him. And people are like, I knew you were smart, but oh jeez, this is scary.

Nate Fick The videos started out as study tools for his undergrad students but eventually gained a legit following. So, it’s basically an educational channel, but there’s no company or anything funding him. He tries to be as professional looking as possible, though. He talks about history! All types of history! And guess what, this boy is salty about the many, many important peoples and their accomplishments that are always left out of textbooks and shit. And he’s going to do his best to cover them properly. As in, entire episodes dedicated to shit (most) people don’t know. And he was in the military, so he has… lots of feelings about that as well. If he talks about military history or social issues he puts a disclaimer in the beginning of the video like “This is tainted by my feelings, I can’t help it, but this is my channel and I’m gonna say what I like.” He has some crash courses and some videos that go way too in depth. Like, maybe calm down, boy scout. Brad and Mike are his most frequent guests. He’ll do things like quiz them (on shit he knows they don’t know) or ask them for their opinions or direct the whole freaking lesson just to them. Brad and Mike really like picking on him, but he knows they love him. He invited Ray on the channel once. Once. It was… an experience. But Ray surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, has some really well educated and in depth thoughts on certain subjects. He gets lots of comments from girls/boys being like, “Hello, Professor Hottie.” (He gets the same reaction from many of his undergrads, so he’s used to it.) BUT most of his following watches because they’re interested in what he has to say, so don’t worry.

Poke Espera Poke has a channel with no schedule or organization. The video’s care shot from a cheap video camera and he doesn’t have a proper mic. And you know the Channel name is literally just his name. It’s literally all just videos of him from the chest up with titles like: “THOUGHTS ON ALL THE BULLSHIT” and “I’M GONNA KILL ME A WHITE BOY” and “PAUL RYAN CAN SUCK MY THICK LATIN DICK” They’re always in all caps. You knows the type. Yes, he does have a whole video dedicated to the story of the time he saw a dude get killed behind a Tastee-Freez. He has over 2 mil followers and all the boys are like …how? He just has good things to say, yo. People appreciate the cruel honesty.

Q-Tip and Christenson These cute boys have a let’s play channel! It’s pretty straight forward, they just play whatever games they like the best and sometimes play other games on request. It’s got Game Grumps vibes because it’s these two dudes who are BEST FRIENDS and they spend nearly every episode talking about whatever they want. And usually they want to talk about each other. Because they’re hardcore Bros. They get some of their friends to sit with them and play or just talk, depends. But their most requested repeat guest is Ray. Because Ray sure as hell doesn’t need a camera on his face to be animated as fuck. Also There’s lots of singing. Almost too much singing. At least they have excellent taste in music.

The Lady Marine (Whose Name We Unfortunately Don’t Know) She has a youtube channel that she really enjoys putting a lot of creativity into! Like, it’s great quality, for starters, and she also designs her own awesome graphics and animation!! She’s so talented!! Because everything is so damn quality, she only puts out a video every couple of weeks. But they’re pretty lengthy and always SUPER worth it. It’s about her (current) career in the military and focuses on a lot of social justice themes. Not only does she a) have a lot of interesting/enlightening things to say, but b) she also understands her privilege as a white woman and plugs for a lot of other women of color vloggers when she talks about something a little out of her depth or better said by someone who actually experiences it. She has a very complex view of the military and simultaneously knows how it manipulates/harms people and can’t help but love her job. She feels like she was born to do it, honestly. Idiot men come at her in the comments and she gets a lot of harassment. But let me tell you… She takes those motherfuckers out. You thought she was just talking shit? Bitch, she has 8 peer-reviewed scientific studies! She can cite her sources, all 2 dozen of them! She knows her shit, don’t test her. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, she’s always got her M16. One time she slams a dude so hard it goes viral over night and she gets hundreds of new followers, most of them young women looking for some source of empowerment and encouragement. She takes her new role very seriously. She will always, always listen and talk to young girls who are struggling or need an outlet or someone to talk to who won’t get upset with them for thinking X or Y. I love her, she’s my wife.

THE PACIFIC

Bob Leckie Leckie’s channel is called “Dear, Vera.” Each video is an adorable virtual letter to his wife, who he is just crazy smitten with. They started out as literal messages when Leckie was traveling for his first book tour (very proud of him). Like, he would literally just write out letters and then read them to the camera. Of course, Leckie is the most poetic idiot on the planet, and lots of people started following him because his words were honestly so beautiful. Even if he’s extra as heck. The following isn’t huge, but it’s substantial, and he still addresses each video to his wife. So he talks about whatever he likes. It was updates about his life when he was traveling, but when he’s home he likes to get creative about it. And not every episode is so serious. He invites dudes from Team Leckie to come hang all the time! And the boys are always like, “Hi, Vera!” and wave like she’s actually there. (She’s in the next room doing a Sudoku puzzle or something). Every video, he signs of with, “Yours, Robert.” AND AND AND when Vera tells him they’re going to be parents, Leckie gets extra extra. But it’s so cute, like, he makes a single video about it. He opens it with, “To my future child” And he basically goes on this whole teary-eyed kind of schpiel about how he’s so exited to meet them and how he and Vera are going to love them unconditionally and protect them and do their absolute best to keep them happy. He signs off with, “With love, your father.”

Hoosier Smith Hoosier is literally Cr1tiKal

Eugene Sledge Eugene’s channel is about ornithology, botany, and BEES! He loves bees! He uses the channel to geek out over biology things and it has so many cute graphics and jingles. Like, I mean, it’s hella gay. And he’s kind of awkward, but it’s so endearing. Most of his subscribers are girls and mlm and he’s just like, huh *shrug* He has little segments about current scientific events/findings. He has a birb of the week. It’s just… so nerdy. Like, chill out, dude. (Jk pls don’t ever chill out, follow your passions.) Snafu refuses to be in videos but he shouts at him from other rooms in the house, being a dick on purpose, calling him nerd, telling him to shut up. But Eugene is pretty good at coming back at him. He’s known Snafu too long for that kind of shit to actually bother him. And Eugene is like 70% sass, anyway.

Eddie Jones Eddie has a channel entirely dedicated to his original music!!! All his spending money goes to instruments and high quality recording equipment and audio editing software. He’s so good. Like. He’s got this warbling kind of sweet and broken voice. It’s very similar to jpitts, actually. And there’s so much heart in it. Not to mention the songs he writes are amazing and have clever lyrics. And guess what, boys and girls!!! Andy Haldane can sing. But he’s super shy about it. He and Eddie have had so many conversations that are like “Andy, come on, one video” “Nooo…” “Just one!” “Eddie, I caaaan’t” (Andy gets a little whiny when he’s nervous) So Andy won’t sing in a video BUT his soft voice can be heard harmonizing in some official recordings. Eddie loves listening to Andy sing. He’s not perfect or anything, but his voice is pretty and light and Eddie’s head over heels for him, so he can’t help but love it.

So, like I said. Way too long. But I had so much fun thinking up this stuff, so time well spent! I just did the boys (and girls) who came naturally to me when I tried to think of who would have a YouTube Channel. If anyone feels like adding to this monstrosity, go for it!

#hbo war #band of brothers #the pacific #generation kill #headcanon #my headcanons #youtube #yeah again #sorry this turned into an enormous monster #but i still love it #this isn't really edited so forgive me my mistakes #my writing

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doublehex · 7 years

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A Song for Dragons: Chapter 10 - Fire and Blood

Read on Chaos Inferred

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Preview segment below cut

THE DAUGHTER OF WINTERFELL

When they sailed into port, the burning tower of Tyrosh blazed against the night sky. “I have heard it said, My Lady, that the tower is one of the great wonders of the world.” Sansa thought that Ser Barristan had the right of it, because what else but a wonder could be lit by fire and not burn? When she first saw the fires, she had demanded it of Captain Groleo. He had let out a loud laugh, as loud as King Robert at the feats in Winterfell.

“Daughter of Westeros,” he said with a smile, “the city is not burning. That is the Burning Tower of Tyrosh! The largest watchtower in all the world. No ship needs fear sailing into the harbors of the city, for the tower is always lit, and guidance is always certain.”

That is the one thing that is certain. A week before the Captain announced that they had to make a stop in Tyrosh, for supplies and whores. “It will be a long journey going into Astapor, and the brandy and bedslaves will keep my sailors at ease. Tyrosh will be the last bit of civilization we will see for some time.”

“I’d rather we just sail straight ahead,” Ser Barristan had said.

“Trust me, knight. A month at sea, with nothing but the waters and the skies over your head, and you will miss Tyrosh as much as a babe misses his mother’s teat.”

The Captain had promised just three days, to fill their stocks and for his men to satisfy their wants of whores. That felt too long by Ser Barristan’s timing, and Sansa could not help but agree. “It is only three days, My Lady, but that feels too long to me by far,” he had said to her beneath the deck of the Saduleon. “Every minute that passes places your brother and Princess Daenerys in danger.”

“I know, but it is a long journey to Astapor. I’ve seen the maps – we will be crossing by the ruins of Valyria.” The knight had nodded at that, and Sansa saw a flicker of fear in his eyes. “Are all that I heard true?”

“That depends on what you have heard.” The sea had rocked the ship, and the Saduleon groaned. “Men of the sea say many things, Lady Stark, and most of them cannot be trusted.”

“Ghosts in the stone,” she began, “men of rock and flesh, demons that prowl the haunted lands.” They all sounded as foolish as the stories that Old Nan would say, but this was fallen Valyria. Everyone knew that a dark storm always stirred over the Smoking Sea. Even Maester Luwin had told her how none in Essos travelled into Valyria – and if not for demons that prowled those cursed shores, what else? Even the maesters would admit with reluctance that greyscale emerged from Vakyria.

“Valyria is just a place, Lady Sansa.” He was trying to assure her, but even Sansa could hear the tint of fear in his voice. “The seas of Valyria will be no more dangerous than the ones around Tyrosh or even Astapor.”

“The people,” she said, “are the true danger. Is that what you are trying to say, Ser?”

Barristan looked at her with his gray blue eyes. “We do not know what awaits us in Astapor. I do not mean to frighten you, Lady Starl-“

“Ser Barristan.” She looked back at him, with the bright blue of her eyes, and with as hard of a voice as she could summon. “Tell me, true.”

And for a moment, the Knight looked at her as if he did not know who she was. I am the daughter of Eddard Stark. I must be as sure as my Lord Father, and as brave as my Lady Mother. “Then I will not shield you from my doubts. The Captain’s men may very well turn on us, if they feel it is a death sentence.”

“I thought the Captain was a man we could trust.”

The ship let out another groan. “I want to say the same. But the Captain is Ilyrio Mopatis’ man first, Sansa.” That is the truth of it. We are sailing on the Saduleon only because the Magister gifted it to us. “And even is Groleo is true, what of his men? Even you must have heard the tales of sailors turning on their captain when all hope is lost.”

“Hope is not lost,” she said. “Not yet.”

“No,” said the knight. “I will hold true, until I am done and spent. But, My Lady, we must be careful. We must always be careful.”

When they docked into the harbors of Tyrosh, Captain Groleo insisted that he guide her and Ser Barristan into the city. “It is said that the city was made as a fortress for the Valyrian dragonlords. It’s streets are like a maze, Ser Barristan. I would not see you lost.”

We won’t get lost, but where would you take us?

From the top deck of the cog, the Captain pointed towards the city. “Look at those walls, as dark as night. Do you know what that is?”

“Dragonglass,” Sansa said quickly. She had never seen the material, but she heard enough about it. The darkest thing a man can hold in his arms, as shining as the most beautiful emeralds, none knew how to forge it. “The dragonlords of Valyria used them.”

“The lady is well read,” the Pentoshi said with a smile. The lady would only listen to stories. “Yes, beyond those dark walls is the inner heart of the city.”

“And will you guide us there?” Ser Barristan crossed his hands against his chest.

Groleo snorted. “Me? Nonsense. I am a captain of ships. I don’t have the right to enter that place. You need a certain amount of wealth and prosperity to share drinks with the magisters of the city.”

“There are magisters?” asked Sansa, “here in Tyrosh?”

“Lady Stark,” said the Captain, “there are magisters everywhere. In all of Essos, there are men who earned their place with their wealth. As well as with their treachery, if you know my meaning.”

More than you know, Captain Groleo. “And Illyrio Mopatis. How did he earn the title of magister?”

“That is a question I wish I knew. The entire of Pentos wish they knew, especially the other magisters. Illyrio Mopatis is an enigma. A true mystery, that one. He wed another magister’s sister, you know, and then he married a slave.”

Serra, the one with the hand of stone. “He had told us as such. Her name was Serra.”

The Captain’s eyes took on a somber look. “I have no doubt. Her death has raked his heart, but give him half a chance and he will say everything about that woman.” He scratched at his salt-and-pepper beard. “Well, everything except the fruit of their union. He’ll never speak of their son.”

No doubt. To lose both a wife and a son, in such a short time, it is a wonder he still had the will to live. How long was his baby boy? A year, two or three? He saw the light in his son’s eyes, only for it to be put out forever. “And now he fights for the Targaryens.”

“You heard the man,” said Ser Barristan. “He would become Master of Coin under Daenerys Targaryen.”

Is that the only thing to be gained for this magister in Pentos? The right to manage the coins of my home?

In the end, Ser Barristan accepted the Captain’s invitation, and Sansa accompanied them both. Groleo explained that the city was built like a spiral. “It all falls back to when Tyrosh was an island fortress for Valyria. The highest point, with those dragonstone walls, are where the dragonlords would reside. I heard there was a pit where they would chain their dragons, but gods know I have never seen them. The wealthier the street, the higher you are from the ground. Heed my advice, Lady Stark – should you ever marry a rich Tyroshi, get used to heights.”

“It’s a wonder any would war with the city,” Ser Barristan said. “Islands are difficult enough to besiege. Twice in my life I had to attempt the task, and after both I prayed I never would again.”

“Take it from someone who lived on the sea. You don’t take the island. You take the sea. Tyrosh relies on the Disputed Lands for food and resources. How many trees do you count?”

Sansa looked around. From the railing of the streets she could make our carts and ships on the horizon, the faint shape of gulls as they hovered over the coastline, and houses built with pink and yellow bricks. But no trees. “None,” she said. “I don’t see any.”

“No fruits grow here, save for in the yards of the richest magisters and priests. A funny thing, that you will find Tyroshi grown tomatoes and grapes beyond the black walls. Dragons plant no trees, and yet their walls protect them.”

“That is not true.” Ser Barristan became very still. “The Targaryens brought peace and prosperity to Westeros. They united all the kingdoms.”

“Forgive me Ser.” The Captain shifted the hat on his head. Sansa noticed that the leather was salt licked, and was just as much white as it was brown. “That was not what I meant.”

The knight sighed. “I know what you meant, Captain. Where are we going?”

At that he had smiled. “Surely, you both must tire of sleeping on the narrow bunks aboard the Saduleon?”

Indeed they had, and by the time Sansa saw the wooden sign of The Merman’s Wife, her heart was skipping. She would never fault Captain Groleo for skimping on accommodations. He had made her and Ser Barristan as comfortable as was in his power, but a ship was nothing compared to an estate. And a narrow bunk in a hold was a flimsy thing against a mattress filled with feathers.

A bed! With blankets woven from heavy wool! And pillows stuffed with feathers! And not a single groan from the ship!

As they made their way across the floor of the inn, taking in the hot aroma of the food that was served and the sweet music that was played on lyres and flutes, Sansa noticed that the Tyroshi dressed in every color imaginable. Blue and gold and purple were their garments, just as was their hair and their beards. The ladies had dashed on their lashes purple paints, and the men would coat the tips of their beards in yellow and crimson. She had heard that the Tyroshi were extravagant, but Sansa could only think that they looked utterly ridicules. A lady’s armor is in her smiles. But the more she smiled, the more out of place she surely looked. So she just kept her face flat and plain, and did her best to not giggle when she saw a boy with green whiskers waltz by.

Captain Groleo did not mince words with the innkeep, a poortly man with purple hair and blue whiskers that were curled. He insisted on three rooms, and only haggled with the man once. He must be as tired as the Ser and I. He gently laid the keys into her hand. “Were you listening to the Tyroshi, My Lady?”

“Up the stairs, third door on the left.”

“Then I bid you good night. I for one, am going to sleep through it all.”

Sansa said she would do the same, but she didn’t sleep through the night. She sank into her bed, allowed the warmth and softness of the comforters to overwhelm her, wrapped her toes in the blankets, smothered her arms, and slumbered through the night. The bed wasn’t as wide as the one she had in the Red Keep, and it wasn’t as familiar as the one in Winterfell. But it was a bed, a real bed, and for that moment Sansa thought there was no finer one in the entire world.

She was so submerged into her sleep that the light that filtered in through the windows would not wake her. It was the pounding by Ser Barristan on her door. When she opened the door, the knight let out a relieved sigh. “You did not answer,” he explained in haste, “and I had begun to suspect –“

“I slept too well, I think.” I could wish for a few hours more. Or a few days. Perhaps a year or two. Wasn’t there a song about a princess of the Reach that had to be awaken by a kiss? She wiped away at her eyes. “Ser, what is it?”

Barristan Selmy fidgeted. “Nothing,” he said as he folded his hands behind him. “I just felt weary of this place.”

“Ser,” she said, “it’s an inn. Not the Red Keep.” The Spider is not here. His little birds are nowhere in sight.

At that he narrowed his eyes. “That means nothing. Do not forget who brought us here, and whom he works for.” Ser Barristan turned his gaze as a man and woman stumbled out of their rooms, the pair drunken and lost as they giggled their way down the hall. She motioned for him to enter her room. “So long as we linger here, you should not be Sansa Stark.”

“Then whom shall I be, in Tyrosh?”

He considered that for a moment. “A name that is not Northern. A name that does not suggest who you are.”

“Manisa,” she said quickly. Ser Barristan looked at her. “If you truly fear for spies, how many would suspect me to take on the name of my grandmother? There aren’t any Manisas in the North.”

The Ser nodded in approval. “Shrewd action, My Lady.”

“And if we must be somebody else, then I shall be your daughter.”

He blinked at that. “My…what?”

“Ser, do you not find it suspicious for a young lady to be in the company of an older gentlemen? If I am your beautiful daughter, that is one less question to answer.”

Barristan Selmy hesitated. “That is true. But why would a Westerosi and his daughter be in Tyrosh?”

She considered that, but the idea quickly sprang to mind. “A little bit of the truth. You were a knight born in the Crownlands, and you were loyal to the Targaryens for all your life. With their fall, you could not accept the Usurper’s rule. So you fled with your family here.”

“A little truth in the lie?”

“More than a little, I suspect. Even as you watched my grandfather and uncle be murdered, you stayed true to the Targaryens.” Ser Barristan bristled. “When you saw Rhaegar on the Trident, did you ever ask him why he stole my aunt?”

“He did not,” Barristan Selmy said quickly. He took a few quick steps towards her. “I do not know what you have heard of him, but Rhaegar did not abduct Lyanna Stark. That was not him.”

“Ser,” she said, “the entire world knows what Rhaegar Targaryen did to my aunt.”

“The entire world does not know him.” Ser Barristan cletched his fingers into a fist. “Why now? Weeks and weeks you had to ask.”

“Because I do not know his sister.” Daenerys Targaryen is the Mad King’s daughter. The scion of the man that ordered Rickard Stark to be fed to the flames. The king that demanded for my father’s head. “None of us do. Except for Jon – he knows her, he loves her, they created life together.”

“Is that not enough? Do you not trust your brother?”

“Elia Martell trusted Rhaegar. Everyone has heard that story.” She crossed her arms across her chest. “He crowned Lyanna, and shamed Elia, and then all the smiles died.”

#ASoIaF #fanfic #jonerys

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worryinglyinnocent · 7 years

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Fic: The Perfect Year

[The first segment of this fic was originally posted back in 2014, I’m posting the whole thing now as a completed one-shot.]

Summary: A very belated sequel to Mistletoe and Wine. As Christmas comes to the quiet town of Storybrooke, school librarian Belle finds herself increasingly drawn to the reclusive Mr Gold. And what better time for Gold to make a new start than with a new year?

@woodelf68, sorry you had to wait two years for a conclusion to this fic...

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I don’t need a crowded ballroom, everything I need is here. If you’re with me, this year will be, The Perfect Year

Lyrics from ‘The Perfect Year’ from Sunset Boulevard.

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The Perfect Year

Christmas Eve. The most magical night of the year, when children up and down the country were shepherded off to bed by their frantic and frazzled parents, hoping to be able to catch a glimpse of Father Christmas in his sleigh overhead, like a shooting star silhouetted against the moon.

Christmas Eve, when carollers sang and continental Europe feasted and exchanged gifts. Soon the church in the little town of Storybrooke would open its doors for the crib service, where mulled wine flowed in force and festive spirit coated everything in a sense of warmth and togetherness.

Christmas Eve, the one night of the year that Gold hated above all others. He despised and loathed it more than he could describe, and yet, in his own grim way, he still celebrated it.

Dusk was falling, it was time to light the candles. The townsfolk often wondered at the lantern that hung outside his front door; only ever lit on one night of the year, but on that one night it was lit without fail, in all weathers. Tonight, the weather was simply cold. There was fresh snow on the ground from a brief flurry earlier in the afternoon, but it had since settled, leaving the air crisp, dry and frosty as he ventured onto the porch with matches in hand and took down the lantern from where it hung beside the front door.

“Mr Gold!”

He turned his head a little on hearing his name and saw Belle French standing at the bottom of the driveway beyond the gate, wearing a knitted bobble hat with rather floppy reindeer antlers sticking out of it. Their evening in the pub after she had come carol singing at his door seemed a very long time ago, even though it was only the previous week. On seeing that she had his attention, she waved. Gold did not return the gesture, turning back to his task at hand, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Belle tilt her head in something akin to confusion. His rejection had hurt her, and something inside him twisted at the thought. She was so young and lovely, she shouldn’t be wasting her time and friendship on an old beast like him, but she genuinely seemed to want to get to know him, and he felt a stab of guilt for pushing her away.

“Mr Gold?” she repeated.

The lantern lit, he hung it up again and retreated back inside, closing the door with a certain finality, a barrier against the world and against Belle. He leaned back against the wood and closed his eyes, thinking of Belle standing outside in the snow staring at the door he had effectively slammed in her face, throwing her offer of friendship back at her, unwanted. Never mind that he wanted it more than almost anything in the world.

He slid slowly down the door until he was sitting on the floor, head in his hands. An old monster, brooding in his lair, pushing away another person he cared for on Christmas Eve of all nights. History had such a horrible habit of repeating itself, and Belle deserved so much better. Far better for this to happen now, than for her to get too attached.

At least the lantern was lit to guide Bae home.

He was not quite sure how long he sat there behind the door, wallowing in self-pity. It was pathetic, he knew that, but since there was no-one around to deride it as such, there was no incentive to pick himself up, snap out of it and move on. Indeed, he only got up and moved through into the living room when the draft under the door became slightly too cold and his leg began to seize up.

The only light came from the Christmas tree, soft and sparkling. Bae had always loved the Christmas tree, ever since he was a babe, he would stare at it enraptured for hours on end. For a moment he could almost feel a three-year-old peering out from behind his legs, looking at the tree in wonderment, but then he shook off the sensation and settled himself in his chair to wait for Bae to come home. It was always the same, every year since he disappeared.

He never came, and if by some miracle he did come, then he would not be the same fourteen year old who had left ten years ago, but it never stopped Gold from hoping that maybe, this year would be the year, and it never stopped his fear that the one night the lantern was not lit, Bae would return but be unable to find the house and move on again, convinced that his father did not care for him.

The Christmas lantern had not been lit that night, the night he disappeared. They always lit it, every night of advent. It was a tradition that had sprung from who knew where, just after Milah left and Bae was facing his first Christmas without his mother. But that night, Gold had not lit it, and forever after, he would be convinced that the lack of light was the reason that Bae had not returned.

It had been such a stupid argument. Gold couldn’t even remember what they had been fighting about. He’d just had more surgery on his knee and he was in excruciating pain despite the drugs making him numb and fuzzy, but he knew that was no excuse. Bae had stormed out to go to a friend’s house, and Gold had let him, despite the waning light, and had proceeded to defy doctor’s orders and down a few double whiskies on top of his prescription.

By the time he woke up, it had gone midnight and Bae had still not returned. The friend he had been going to had not seen him all evening. Gold had not lit the lantern at sundown, and there had been no light to guide Bae home. The feeling of cold dread running down his spine was all too easy to remember, as was the freezing night and Christmas weekend he and many of the other villagers spent combing the surrounding area for any trace of his son. But as time had gone on and that crucial forty-eight hours had passed, so the searchers and police became more and more convinced that Bae was dead, and so suspicious eyes had begun to turn to Gold. It was no secret that he had a temper on him and no secret that he’d argued with Bae before he’d vanished, and no secret that he’d been drinking when he’d called the police.

Being arrested on suspicion of murdering his own son was possibly the worst experience of his life after losing his son in the first place, and Gold shuddered at the memory. He had been released without charge due to lack of evidence, but the suspicion always remained, and so the town had begun to shun him. Public opinion had swung so quickly from sympathy for a frantic single father whose son had gone missing to viewing him a pariah. Gold had let them think whatever they wanted to think. He knew that he had not killed Bae, but he would not deny responsibility for his leaving the house that night, never to return. He retreated away from the town, and whilst he left them alone, so they left him alone. Life was far easier that way.

Until Belle. Bright, beautiful Belle, who knew nothing of the shadows in his past and who had reached out to him, accepting him with her non-judgmental smile and merry eyes. And like the old fool he was, he had reached back, like a drowning man he had clung on for dear life. But it had been a bad idea. Sooner or later she would learn about him from her friends around the town, and when that time came she would be glad at his shutting her out. It did not do for a woman like her to be associated with a man like him. He’d had a taste of human kindness for the first time in ten years, and that would have to be enough.

The night wore on and Gold continued to sit in the dark, staring at the tree lights, lost in his memories. it was only once the day had dawned outside that he moved, switching off the lights and methodically beginning to pack everything away - the presents that had remained unopened for ten years, the Christmas decorations and the tree itself, all back down into the cellar to wait for next year. The lantern would continue to burn until the candle burnt itself out.

It was half past nine on Christmas morning when Gold finally dragged himself to bed.

Bae had not returned, and Christmas was over.

It was utterly typical, Belle thought. She’d gone out for a nice Boxing Day walk through the snowy countryside, and now she was caught in what was turning out to be a blizzard, because she’d been too caught up in her own thoughts to pay any attention to the worsening weather. She could make it home, she was fairly sure of that, but it wasn’t going to be a pleasant journey, and she hoped that she could find somewhere in which to wait out the worst of the snow. Of course, in again utterly typical fashion, Belle had forgotten that she no longer lived in a big, bustling city, and that none of the little village’s shops or tearooms were open on Boxing Day. She sighed, huddled further into her coat, and began the trudge along the deserted main street back towards her flat.

It wasn’t her fault that she’d been so lost in thought. She laid the blame for that firmly at Gold’s door. She had been thinking about his attitude on Christmas Eve and his cool dismissal of her then. If the stories about his son were to be believed, then he had every reason to be in a foul temper on that of all nights, and she wished that there was something she could do to ease his suffering.

A light in a shop window caught her eye, and Belle automatically turned towards it in search of warmth. It was probably just a shopkeeper having accidentally left their lights on over the Christmas holiday, but as she neared the door, she saw that the sign said it was open.

It was utterly typical that this, the only open shop in the village in the middle of this snowstorm, was Gold’s Haberdashery.

The bell above the door jangled as she opened it and closed it again behind her, and Belle took a look around the seemingly deserted shop. It was a beautiful place, shelves piled high with wools and threads and ribbons; bolts of fabric mounted on rollers behind the counter. It was almost like stepping into another world, the charming period splendour of a Dickens novel. She was greeted with the soft sound of the old radio sitting on top of one of the shelves, but there was no sign of Gold himself.

“And we’ll have more news on the Neverland Farm raid after the weather…”

“Hello?” Belle called. Surely Gold must be in here somewhere. “Is anyone there?”

The only other sound that had been pervading the shop, a soft, almost mechanical whirring, stopped, and Belle heard the dull tap of Gold’s cane against the wooden floor. A moment later the man himself appeared from out of the back room.

He smiled when he saw her, and Belle took that as a good sign. After Christmas Eve she was really not sure where she stood with him.

“I’m sorry, the weather outside’s awful and you’re the only place open and I…”

Gold held up a hand to stop her little babbling litany.

“I’m the one who should be apologising,” he said. “Do come on through, my dear, you must be freezing. I’ll make some tea.”

Belle followed him through to the backroom. If she thought that the front of the shop was a treasure trove, then the back was a veritable Aladdin’s cave. Belle stood for several moments, open-mouthed and gazing in wonder at the stacks of haberdashery materials piled all around the room, and the centrepiece, a full-size spinning wheel. That was evidently what had been whirring.

“It’s just… wow…” Belle said, finishing her statement rather feebly.

“It’s home,” Gold said with a shrug from the work bench where he was pouring water from the kettle into a teapot. “More of a home than my house, sometimes. Please, sit down and warm up.”

He indicated the chair behind the workbench, next to the storage heater, and Belle sat down in it, watching the snow on her coat and boots melt into a puddle on the floor as Gold brought the teapot over and poured two cups.

"I'm sorry for my brusqueness on Christmas Eve," he said. "I am not at my most sociable on that particular night, but that is still no excuse for rudeness."

Belle smiled and blew on her tea to cool it to a drinkable temperature. "It's all right. I know what happened, with your son. It's perfectly understandable that this is an... unpleasant time of year for you."

"You know what happened," Gold repeated. He was regarding her with some degree of scrutiny, as if he expected her to turn tail and run at the next available opportunity.

Belle nodded. "I'm sorry for your loss." She paused before continuing, because she felt it needed to be said, given his wariness and incredulity at her presence after everything. "I'm sorry for the way people have turned against you because of it."

There was silence for a long moment.

"Thank you," Gold said, and there was genuine gratitude in his eyes. At length he returned to the spinning wheel, and the gentle whirring noise began again as he deftly spun the carded wool into yarn. Belle watched him for a while. The motion was hypnotic almost, constantly turning round and round, all the cogs and wheels spinning and gelling together into a single function, something so complex creating something so simple.

"It's mesmerising," Belle said.

Gold chuckled. "I like to watch the wheel turn," he said. "It helps me forget, clears my head. I always know that whatever else happens in life, the wheel is a reliable constant. It will never let me down."

“It must be a great comfort to have something like that,” Belle said. “I don’t think I’ve got anything similar. I mean, I always have my books, but it’s not really the same.”

“I don’t know. Losing yourself in a favourite book must help you forget your troubles just as much as my spinning does. We all have different ways of coping with these kind of things.”

“I suppose.” Belle took a sip of her tea. “Where did you learn to spin?” she asked eventually. “It’s not a skill that you come across very often.”

“My aunts taught me,” Gold said, deftly taking another handful of roving and continuing to spin the wool without breaking the wheel’s motion. “They brought me up to follow in their footsteps, in their profession. They had been haberdashers and drapers, and so that was the path I was destined for as well.”

“Did you ever want to be anything else?” Belle asked. “I mean, I’m lucky, I’ve always wanted to be a librarian and that’s what I do.”

Gold leaned back, regarding the wheel with some degree of scrutiny.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “When I was a boy I wanted to be a knight, but that wasn’t exactly going to come about. I don’t think I would want to do anything else. Spinning, wool; they’ve been a part of my life for so long now that I can’t really imagine an existence without them.” He paused and gave her an amused smile. “Would you like to learn? I have some spare roving that I won’t be spinning to sell, you can practice on that.”

Belle jumped at the opportunity, setting down her teacup so fast that it knocked onto its side, taking a chip out of the rim.

“Oh no!” she exclaimed on seeing the damage. “I’m so sorry!”

Gold shrugged. “It’s just a cup.” He scooted up the spinning wheel bench and patted the smooth wood beside him. “Here, take a seat.”

It took Belle a few goes before she got the hang of it, and her strands of yarn were nowhere near as delicate as the fine, even wool that Gold had created, but he kept praising her efforts nonetheless, until the final wisps of roving were all used up in a somewhat lumpy ball of yarn.

“I’ll make a scarf out of it,” Belle announced, picking up the ball.

Gold raised one eyebrow. “It would have to be a scarf for a midget,” he pointed out. “Might fit a guinea pig, I suppose.”

Belle rolled her eyes. “I don’t care. I made this yarn and I’m going to knit something out of it.”

“Egg cosy,” Gold suggested. “I think you’ve got enough there for an egg cosy.”

“I’m being serious!”

“So am I!”

They fell about laughing at that point, and when Belle came back to herself, she realised that she had been leaning in without really noticing it, and evidently Gold had as well, for there were only a few inches between them. A small smile quirked the corner of Gold's mouth, and Belle's eyes flickered upwards.

"There's no mistletoe in here," Gold said softly.

"I think that's a terrible oversight on your part," Belle replied.

He kissed her then, a shy, tentative kiss, just the slightest press of his lips against hers, and Belle took the initiative, cupping his cheeks gently and increasing the pressure. Gold resisted the increased intimacy at first, stiffening a little, but then his hands were on her shoulders and he was kissing her back.

At length, Belle pulled back and smiled, and Gold just blinked before returning the expression.

“I guess we don’t need mistletoe after all,” he said. He sounded a little dazed, as if he was having trouble believing that the past minute or so had really just happened. Belle couldn’t help but giggle. “What?” he asked. “I know I’m out of practice but surely I can’t be that bad?”

It wasn’t a joke, Belle realised; there was genuine fear in his eyes behind the flippant words.

“Hmm,” she said playfully. “You know, I think I’m going to need another go to make absolutely sure. And you know what they say. Practice makes perfect.”

She slipped her hands back under the curtain of his long, greying hair, and leaned in to capture his lips again. He was bolder this time, more assured of her affections, and he didn’t hold back. Belle smiled against his mouth. Her Christmas presents had been nothing to write home about, but Boxing Day had definitely yielded some wonderful surprises.

She wasn’t quite sure how long they stayed there in the back room, exchanging kisses and making small talk about favourite books and authors, but soon it was dark outside, and Gold was locking up the shop. The snow had died back to a light flurry, and Belle accepted Gold’s arm around her as she cuddled in close under his umbrella and they walked down the main street in the direction of her flat.

“Thank you for this afternoon,” she said once they reached her porch.

“Thank you for the company,” Gold replied. “I don’t often get such wonderful companionship.”

Belle grinned. “You’re very welcome. I guess… I’ll see you around?”

Gold nodded as he stepped away from the porch. “I’ll see you around, Belle.”

She watched him down to the end of the road before his black coat and black umbrella vanished into the night, and she went into the warmth once more, unable to stop giggling to herself at what had just transpired.

Belle had been at Astrid and Leroy’s New Year’s Eve party (well, Astrid’s New Year’s Eve party that Leroy was only attending under sufferance because it was being held in his own house) for all of twenty minutes when she realised just how bad an idea it had been to come. She barely knew anyone apart from her fellow school staff, and every single person there, apart from herself, was with a partner. It was not that Belle felt particularly jealous of the loved-up couples, or that she felt very left out of the conversation. But there was a notable absence amongst the townsfolk, and it was this absence that Belle felt as she looked around Astrid’s living room, still nursing her first glance of mulled wine which was going rapidly cold. She knew what Gold would do if he was here. He would palm off his wine and champagne onto someone else and find a bottle of whisky and a secluded corner where they could continue their conversation uninterrupted by well-wishers.

Belle sighed and wended her way towards the dining room, where Leroy had escaped to.

“You aren’t a party person then, Leroy?”

He shook his head and drained his tumbler. “At least I’ve got access to my own whisky here. Normally I have to take a hipflask when Astrid drags me out to these things. What about you, sister?” he asked. “What are you doing hiding out in here?”

Belle sighed, wondering how to explain her feelings.

“I get it.” Leroy gave a grin. “Somewhere else you’d rather be?”

“Not really,” Belle said. “Just someone else I’d rather be with.”

“Yeah. Doesn’t take three guesses who. Astrid saw you coming out of the haberdasher’s the other day.”

Belle groaned and buried her head in her hands. “Oh lord, does everyone know?”

“I’m sure the news is making the rounds as we speak,” Leroy said dryly. “But there’s no need to blush. It’s not unheard of for people to visit haberdashery shops.”

Belle sighed again. “What do you think I should do, Leroy?”

“Go for it.”

Belle blinked. That had not been the answer that she was expecting.

“Really?”

“Of course. So the guy’s got a reputation for something that happened a decade ago. So what? Who cares what the rest of the town think? So he’s grumpy and antisocial. So what? He obviously gets on well enough with you or you wouldn’t be wanting to spend time with him. If it’ll make you happier, then I say go for it.”

Belle smiled. “Thanks, Leroy. Say, can I buy a bottle of whisky off you?”

Belle had not realised how far it was to Gold’s house, nor how little snow on the ground had been cleared at his end of the village. Small wonder that people rarely saw him out and about in winter given the slippery conditions. She should really have gone home and got her heavy-duty footgear on, but by the time she was halfway to Gold’s house, it was a bit late to turn back, so she continued through the slush, gritting her teeth and ignoring the cold water that was seeping into her boots. To make matters worse, it was beginning to snow again, heavily, the fat white blobs soaking through her coat and making her even colder, and wetter. Finally she reached the pink house, and seeing the lights on in the upstairs windows, she gave a sigh of relief that her venture had not been in vain. She trudged up the path and knocked sharply on the door.

There was no response, and her teeth were starting to chatter in her head, so Belle knocked again, with slightly more urgency this time. This yielded a reaction from within the building, and Belle was startled by the vehemence with which Gold could be heard swearing beyond the door. She was beginning to think that she had made a terrible mistake in coming to his house, but she was too cold to turn around again now.

The door opened to reveal Gold wearing a dressing gown. And very little else, it seemed, as Belle cast an involuntary glance down at his bare calves and ankles.

“Belle?” His previous anger seemed completely forgotten the moment that he saw her, and Belle could tell that he had been rendered completely speechless.

“C-c-can I come in, please?” she asked, her teeth chattering.

“Of course, of course…” Gold stood back to let her into the house. “You do seem to make a habit of getting caught out in snowstorms, Miss French,” he said, bolting the door behind her again against the cold wind and taking her coat, shaking the snow onto the mat.

“I w-w-was at a p-p-party,” Belle managed to stammer. “The-the-then I realised I’d r-r-rather spend New Year’s with you instead.” She held out the bottle of whisky. “You didn’t strike me as a champagne p-p-person.”

Gold took the bottle from her and put it on the sideboard in the hall.

“Oh Belle…” He smiled and rubbed her arms through the thin sleeves of her dress. “There’s a hot bath just run. Go upstairs, get those wet clothes off and get in the tub before you freeze solid in my hallway.”

“Are you p-p-propositioning me, Mr Gold?” Belle asked, making her way towards the staircase and trying not to drip too much snow onto his pristine carpets.

“Aye, if you don’t take your clothes off, I’ll do it for you. Go on, I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

Belle nodded gratefully and hurried up the stairs, her skirt leaving a trail of drips as she went. It was easy to find the bathroom, tendrils of steam softly curling around the door, and she undressed quickly, leaving her wet clothes in a heap on the pristine white tiles. There were no bubbles in the bath, but there was evidently something in it as the water had an opaque sheen to it. Belle looked at the bottle on the edge of the tub – bath salts for easing bone and muscular pain. She felt a little guilty at turning Gold out of his bath, but the cold outweighed her other feelings and the gooseflesh breaking out all over her bare skin left no time for second-guessing. She sank down into the hot water, submerging up to her chin, and felt the warmth permeate through her body, right into her bone marrow almost.

There was a knock at the door. Belle cast a quick glance down at the water but its opacity had remained and her modesty was intact.

“Come in, there’s nothing to see.”

Gold entered with a cup of tea in his free hand, towels and clothes folded over his arm. He’d put pyjamas on under the dressing gown, and Belle wasn’t sure if she was glad or disappointed. A wild, impulsive part of herself considered asking him to join her. It was his bathtub after all, and he’d be monopolising it at this very moment had she not rung his doorbell. The rest of her sensibly decided against it. So far they’d shared one evening and one afternoon of - admittedly excellent - kissing. There was a way to go before sharing a bath was on the agenda. He took her pile of soggy clothing, saying something about putting in the drier, and Belle was left alone with her thoughts, thoughts that she was trying desperately to keep from veering into less than innocent territory.

Once she was sufficiently warmed through and her tea was drunk, Belle got out of the tub and dried off, pulling on the socks and pyjamas that Gold had left for her. She ventured downstairs carefully, not wanting to trip in the too-large socks, and she ran Gold to ground in the living room. The lights were dim but there was a roaring fire in the grate and the room was cosy, the TV on but the sound turned down low as the news played.

“Police continue to work with local authorities to reunite victims of the Neverland Farm cult with their families. The compound was raided on Christmas Eve after months of planning… The cult leader, Malcolm Spinner, alias Peter Pan, was killed by a police marksman during the raid after taking hostages… Some of the victims had been held prisoner at the farm for over ten years after being abducted as teenagers…”

“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” Belle said. Gold turned to see her standing in the doorway and she nodded towards the TV. “All those kids.”

“Well, it’s all over for them now,” Gold said firmly, and he turned the TV off, the images of the police raid winking out into blackness. “Come in and stay warm,” he added, patting the sofa beside him, and Belle came over, accepting the tumbler of whisky he’d poured for her and letting him tuck a blanket in around her frame.

“I look like a monk,” she protested, touching the soft brown wool.

“You look like a very beautiful monk,” Gold corrected, and to prove the point he kissed her. Belle knew that she was grinning like the Cheshire Cat when she finally pulled away, but looking around the room, her brow furrowed.

“Where’s your Christmas tree?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“When Henry and I were singing here the other week, I could see that you had a Christmas tree up in here.” She pointed over to the empty corner where the beautifully decorated tree had stood. “I was hoping I’d get a closer look at it, it was so pretty. Much nicer than my little miniature one on the bookcase.”

“Yes.” Gold wasn’t meeting her eyes, staring over at the corner, and Belle could see the sorrowful lines in his face. “I… I don’t keep the tree up past Christmas,” he said quietly. “I never have. Not since…”

Belle groaned inwardly and leaned her head back against the cushions, wondering if she could have put her foot in it any more spectacularly if she had been trying. Of course Christmas was going to be a sensitive subject for him.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to open any old wounds.”

Gold gave her a brief flicker of a wan smile, but he didn’t say anything else, continuing to stare at the empty space, almost as if he could see the tree there.

“Bae always loved the tree so much,” he said, more to himself than to her, Belle thought. “Without him… It felt like there was no reason to keep the tree up if he wasn’t going to be here to see it.”

They fell into silence, and even though Belle had never met Bae, she could feel the boy’s absence in the house acutely. Looking around the living room, she could see the photographs on the mantel tracking his growth. In a way, it seemed like Gold had just stopped once he lost his son, and the world had moved on without him. She wanted to say something to reassure him, and let him know that he wasn’t alone anymore. He had her, if he was willing to let her in, and she wanted to help him move again. Not necessarily move on; she didn’t think that he would ever move on from such a devastating loss and it was not her place to make him. But just to help him move forward, and believe that there was a future out there that could be lived in without losing sight of the past. She just didn’t know how to say it without it sounding cliched, or coming out wrong.

Actions spoke louder than words, she decided, and she flapped one hand free from the many folds of blankets, reaching across to take his fingers in hers.

After a moment, he turned back to her, returning the pressure of her hand.

“You don’t have to be alone, you know,” she said. “No-one deserves that, no matter how much they might think they do.”

Gold gave a weak smile. “You have no idea how much those words mean to me,” he mumbled.

“I mean them,” Belle said earnestly. “I’m sorry for what you’re going through, and what you’ve been going through for so many years, but you don’t have to go through it on your own any more.”

There were tears shining in Gold’s eyes when he looked up at her again.

“Thank you, Belle.”

Far away there was the sound of fireworks, and Belle saw the faintest flicker of their light exploding against the sky through the gap where the curtains did not quite meet. On cue, the grandfather clock in the hallway began to strike twelve.

“I think that’s the New Year,” she said.

Gold smiled. “I think you’re right.” He chinked his whisky tumbler against hers. “Happy New Year, Belle.”

“And a Happy New Year to you too, Mr Gold.” There was a long pause whilst the clock finishing its chiming.

“You know the tradition, of course,” Belle continued, inching a little closer.

“Kiss the person closest to you at midnight,” Gold finished for her, a little smirk curling at the corner of his mouth.

His hands were cold as he slipped them under her hair to cup her face and slant his mouth over hers, but Belle didn’t care. He tasted of whisky and chocolate, and he was soft and pliant against her lips, the tentative shyness from their first kiss in the backroom of the haberdasher’s completely forgotten.

"Happy New Year," Gold said again, once they finally broke apart.

"I'm going to make sure it is," Belle replied. "For both of us."

He smiled. "I'd like that a lot."

"Good. So would I."

The world had shut him out for too long, and in return, he had shunned it. Now was the time for him to come back into the world. Not immediately, of course. It would take time, as it would with all things. But it was time for him to begin letting people in again, and Belle could help with that. She leaned in to capture another kiss, one that Gold readily provided, and she felt his arms come around her back, fingers splaying and pulling her in closer. Belle hooked her arms around his neck, fully intending to ignore the rest of the world for a little while. Building bridges could wait a day or so.

The world, however, had other ideas, as a sharp, business-like knock came against the front door, and with a little reluctance, Gold broke away.

“Who in God’s name?” he muttered. “At this time of night?”

“Well, we’re still awake,” Belle pointed out. “You never know, it might be someone wanting to wish you a Happy New Year.”

Gold raised an incredulous eyebrow.

“I don’t think that even the town’s best drunkard on their meandering way home from a party could take a wrong turning and end up at my door,” he grumbled, getting up off the sofa and searching for his cane on the floor beside him. The knock came again, polite but still brisk, and Belle’s brow furrowed. It sounded like someone visiting in an official capacity, rather than a New Year well-wisher, and she followed Gold out of the living room cautiously as he made his way towards the front door. She could just about see the outline of their visitor through the stained glass. They didn’t appear to be swaying under the influence of alcohol.

“Hopefully it’ll be a dark-haired man,” Belle said. “They always say that the first person over the threshold in the New Year should be a dark-haired man, and that he’ll bring good luck for the year.”

It was Graham, the local policeman, standing in the doorway once Gold had opened the door, and Belle saw Gold’s posture immediately stiffen, bristling and defensive. She knew that he held no love for the police after his experiences when Bae had disappeared, and even though Graham hadn’t been in the town all that long, the fear and suspicion remained.

“Can I help you, officer?” Gold asked coolly.

“Actually, I’m hoping that I can help you,” Graham said. “I know it’s late but I’ve only just received the news, and I saw that your lights were on and I thought you’d appreciate knowing sooner rather than later.”

“Knowing what?” Gold asked through gritted teeth.

“You’ve heard about the Neverland Farm raid, I presume?” Graham continued, stepping into the house as Gold finally stood back to let him in. Belle’s breath caught in her throat. Graham was certainly a dark-haired man, and if his words were going in the direction that she thought they were, then he was going to be bringing them luck.

“It’s hard not to have done,” Gold pointed out, but the cynicism in his words was forced, outweighed by the tentative tone of hope.

“Mr Gold, we’ve found your son.”

#rumbelle fic #rumbelle #woodelf68 #Mistletoe and Wine

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grooveoflife · 5 years

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Mission: Every week I will visit a new café/coffee shop in Denver. The daunting part of this plan is that I intend to write, blog, at each one. My idea is to have 2 segments. The first part, “the fact,” of the blog will be my experience at the café, a review if you will, how I’m feeling, what I see, etc… The second part, “the fiction,” will consist of a fictional story that I come up with while at the café. I’ll be grabbing onto my surroundings, the vibes, and my feelings to inspire a short story.

the fact

The Santa Fe art district is looking fresh. Despite the dirty snow piled up on the side street parking spots, this Sunday morning is pretty, cold, and bright. Walking into the Joe Maxx Coffee Company I push onto the right side of the door, no budge. A quick sweat of panic sweeps over me as I think to myself, “dammit Emily, you didn’t check to make sure they are open today.” I pause for a moment then push onto the left side of the door and it sways open. I’m definitely one of those people who acknowledge my awkward moments, but alas, no one was around to hear my ramblings. It’s pretty empty in this coffee shop this morning, with the exception of a table of middle-aged women loudly talking amongst each other.

Before I grab a drink, I head to the back of the shop to have a look around. It’s small, and the windows are shaded from the bright morning. The walls and floors are dark brown, and there are old rugs under each table. I choose a spot in the back corner on a couch that you would find at your friend’s grandparent’s house. I take off my coat and oversized blanket of a scarf and place them onto the couch. I go up to the front and take a moment to look over the menu. There are specialty coffee items on the menu like a White and Dirty, Spiked Lemonade, and an Affogato which is a scoop of vanilla ice cream drowned with a fresh hot shot of espresso. So tempted to order this ice cream based drink, I decide it’s too early for dessert, so I order the Kolache Latte which is a hazelnut latte topped with honey, whipped cream, and pecans—perfectly on the brink of desert. I ask the barista if I said it right, to which another barista standing near him corrects my pronunciation. I also order a slice of pumpkin bread. When he hands it to me he says “this is a massive piece of pumpkin bread.”

“Oh, awesome.” I excitedly reply. And it was in fact, a massive piece of moist pumpkin deliciousness piled onto a small glass white plate. While the milk for my Kolache Latte is being warmed and foamed, I look around at some of the funky art hanging on the brick walls. Music is being played, I’m assuming, from the plugged-in iPod laying on an old turntable. The barista calls out my coffee drink, and I go back up to retrieve my gooey looking over whipped cream drink in a to-go cup. Hurriedly, I head back to my spot and place my drink and pumpkin bread on the coffee table in front of the couch. I marvel for a moment at the toppings on my hazelnut latte. I’m also definitely the kind of person that has to eat all of the whipped cream off my drinks before I do anything else. I think it’s ridiculous letting it pathetically melt into your hot beverage without enjoying the creaminess of its intended state.

So, here I am, slurping up the honey-topped whipped cream, which is making my lips gooey and messy, and I couldn’t be happier. I lick my lips of the thick honey, and resume scooping the rest of the whipped cream off the top with the fork I’m using for my pumpkin bread. When I finally finish off all the good stuff my drink is down to half full. I dive into my bread and eat about half of it while I look around the shop noticing how every corner is being utilized for something—decoration or purpose. The corner directly in front of me to the left has a small old wooden TV table with one of those old black and white TVs that have two knobs for changing channels and an antenna. “Cool,” I think as I shove a giant piece of bread into my mouth. I don’t even mind that the bathrooms are across from me. The “all gender restrooms” are hip with art, white bath tiles, and uneven brick walls. I even stand up and walk over into one of them to check it out. “Cool,” I say out loud this time. The one thing I always remember when I check out a new restaurant or business—the bathrooms, if they’re worthy. I’m all about cool bathrooms.

While I’m up I continue to walk around the small space of the back of the coffee shop. There’s an old piano with a bench covered in itchy looking fabric. Where sheets of music are meant to be, there are business cards placed along the ledge. I almost pick up one of a woman who connects to spirits, but then decide there are no spirits I need to reach out to, so I leave it for someone who really needs her services. I do, however, pick up a business card of a woman who claims to be able to “facilitate my self-healing” and also a card from the Colorado Ballet where their slogan on the bottom of the card is “Drink Beer, Dance, Conquer.” Smiling as I take my new finds back to my area, I sink down into the couch and pull out my laptop.

———————————-

the fiction

Billy laid his forearms on the sticky wood glazed bar of the dark dance hall. A Johnny Cash album played quietly from the turntable in the corner. Despite the warm bright morning, the hall was dark and cold. Before his first dance class, Billy liked to get to work early and have a bourbon at the bar. He’d been leading dance classes for 20 years, and just two years ago he bought this place from an old man whose wife had just passed. The old man was happy to hear Billy’s plans for the place. “Babe loved to dance. She would be happy to see this dump of a bar used for dancing.” Billy remembers the old man saying this, looking off into the distance for a good 30 seconds, and then handed Billy the keys saying, “Good luck, son.”

It took Billy three months to convert the old bar into a dance hall. He put in new wood flooring and painted the brick walls a deep red color. He put in a wall of mirrors across from the bar. He left the old bar there, he liked it. Even though he couldn’t sell booze, he kept a stash of nice bourbon under the counter and would often drink either by himself or with some of his regular patrons after the late classes.

This morning was no different from any other morning. Billy offered morning classes every weekday starting at 10 AM. The people who attended the morning classes were mostly of the older crowd, and his favorite. They would come in loud, always laughing about some conversation they all had while walking together to the hall. Someone would bring in pastries or biscuits, and Billy supplied them with coffee. They would all sit around the bar and have a cup of coffee before they would start. They never got to the actual dancing until 10:30. He would pour the first cup of coffee as they were stepping into the door promptly at 10, and set down a new full cup at each seat of the bar. Each of them greeting him with either a loud “Billy!,” or a nod and a “mornin, Bill.” There was a good mix of men and women, most of them single. All were friends, and all met at Billy’s Hall.

For the morning classes, Billy changed up the dance every week. These people came here for the social aspect of the hall rather than the actual dance, so they didn’t mind the inconsistency of the dances. They actually seemed to enjoy learning new dances, laughing together as they misstepped. Today Billy was teaching swing dance, one that he’d done many times with this morning group.

This morning’s topic of conversation was about the new neighborhood community garden being built a block over. They were all talking about the plots they had already bought, and what they planned on planting in them. As each of them talked about the vegetable or flower they were planning on growing, everyone chimed in with what they would do with the plant—going on tangents on each topic.

“Oh, my grandkids LOVE watermelon, I’m going to grow that too!”

“Ooo I’ll bring in some homemade tomatillo salsa every week. Who likes spicy?”

“My father used to make the best fried green tomatoes…”

Almost in an uproar of volume, the group would excitedly chime in with responses.

Billy sat at the end of the bar, sitting on his stool behind the bar sipping on his black coffee. Smiling, he listened to each person’s response and chimed in with his own comical spats. The sound of coffee cups hitting the heavy wood bar, the rusted stools swiveling, and the clammer of the group gave Billy’s Hall a character that he never expected but, now, oh so appreciated. Billy enjoyed what this group made this place out to be.

He looked down at his watch. “Alright, people, 10:30,” Billy spoke loudly over everyone. In almost a single sweep everyone was out of their chairs, coffee cups left on the bar.

Mission: Every week I will visit a new café/coffee shop in Denver. The daunting part of this plan is that I intend to write, blog, at each one.

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