#been wanting to write about trevor properly for a while

[milkywaydrabbles]

Can you please write a noncon fic (number 18) with Alucard where he turns a female reader into a vampire against her will.

A/N: ask and you shall receive nonnie. Had to keep the kink in kinktober so I hope this is okay! Enjoy, mwuaahh

Noncon x Alucard

“Alucard, please, this isn’t you.” 

“Of course it is, darling, don’t you want to be with me forever?”

You’d been seeing Alucard for quite some time now, opening up to him more and more. You found his presence calming, and although he didn’t speak much, he always showed you he adored you in many ways.

But that was the problem.

He adored you. So much. He couldn’t even bear the thought of losing you, no matter what. It’d been 300 years after Sypha and Trevor, after Greta, after everyone from his first lifetime. And time and time again people came into his life, and died, the way humans naturally did. And yet he was still around, still amongst the land of the living. He couldn’t live like this anymore. Alucard was ready to turn to a life of solitude. Ready to scare any mortal that came his way. 

And then he met you.

Small, doe eyed, knocking on his door so freely. He was sure you’d be frightened the moment you saw him. And you were he could tell, but you stayed put anyways. ‘It’s raining, and my journey is still so long’ you’d say, ‘Can I...can I stay here? Just for the night?’ He wanted to laugh in your face, show you his fangs and have you running for the woods. Instead, he let you come inside, like a scared kicked puppy. He let you stay for the night, and then a few more nights (It was still raining, after all) and then even more nights. And then, you simply never left. You told him you were moving away from your old village. All family dead, no one there anymore for you. Poor thing. He knew your life, he’s lived his hundred of times already. You asked of his life, why he’s living all alone. Alucard would spare you stories, only shrugging and saying he wanted to. 

You stayed, still.

You made a home in his castle, and his heart. He had fallen in love with you, rather quickly. Alucard gave you whatever you wanted, would give you the world if you asked for it. You always smiled at him so sweetly, telling him that you quite liked him. That night you became his lover, that night you learned the truth about him. A vampire. He no longer explained his half human background. It was silly, he should have died hundreds of years ago, as a human. Instead, it was his vampirism keeping him alive, and so he’d live like one. He could smell the fear in your veins once you saw his fangs. He hated it. He couldn’t have his sweet girl scared. He promised nothing bad would come your way. He whispered it against your skin as his cock plowed into you over and over again that night, your sweet pussy milking him for all he was worth. He whispered shaky ‘I love you’s into your skin, dragging his sharpened fangs across your pulse, quickening under his touch. 

You believed him.

And now you were under him, begging for your mortal life as his overwhelming power took control over you. Your eyes fluttered, trying to stay afloat as his cock lined up against your slit, popping the head in an inch just to take it out again. You whimpered beneath him, too scared to breathe properly. “Alucard, please, w-we can talk about it, just let me think--ah, fuck!” You cried, feeling his cock plow into you. His thrusts were sloppy, only trying to keep you dizzy with lust while he poked and prodded at the juncture of your neck and shoulders, never breaking skin, not yet. “We could live like this forever, darling.” He hissed, covering your body with his own, kissing at your throat, feeling you swallow heavily. “Can make you feel this good every day, sweet girl. Forever.” 

You tried to reason with him, really, you did, “You already do, Alucard, haah, please, mm!’ He angled his cock, pushing upwards to the gooey part of your cunt that made you see stars. Tears formed in the corners of your eyes out of pure bliss, and partial fear, of what he threatened to do with you. “My forever, sweet girl. Don’t be silly.” he fucked you stupid, waiting until you were drooling over yourself and tightening around his cock. He waited, until you were pliable beneath him, hands pushing at his chest turning weaker, waited until the perfect moment right before you were going to cum on his cock. 

Sharp teeth dug into your skin, and you screamed, unable to stop your oncoming climax as you cried, weeping pussy drooling on his dick. You spasmed, finding yourself growing weaker as he drank you of your life.

But not fully.

His eyes were wide, hungrily looking down at you once he latched himself off, fucking into you still. “Needed to taste you once, my love, I hope you understand.” A sharpened claw dug into his wrist, slitting a wound enough to have his blood dribble into your still open mouth--out of pain or pleasure, neither of you were sure. He let you drink, slowing his pace as your eyes adjusted to the renewed vision, senses heightened as you gasped for more. Alucard quickened his pace again, fucking you harder than before as you grabbed onto his wrist and drank, moaning around his flesh as your eyes rolled back and your pussy clenched around him. He couldn’t help but shoot his sticky load deep into your pussy, not after seeing your wild eyes looking at him, pleading and begging for more of him, licking at the wound and asking for more of him, more of his blood. He cooed, spreading your legs and pulling out, only to see his cum trickle out of your hole.

 “See darling? Can make you feel this good, every day. Forever.”

#milk writes #adrian tepes #castlevania #alucard #alucard x reader #adrian tepes x reader #alucard tepes x reader #castlevania (2017) #castlevania alucard #castlevania nocturne #milk kinktober

[flutterbyoz]

More Hetty/Trevor musings

This post is a little long and I probably shouldn't be looking so deep into this but it's something that's been on my mind for a while and though I'm not great at explaining or deciphering scenes, I needed to write it down. Other people may interpret the scene differently but this is my take on it.

One of my favourite H-Money scenes is in 'Alberta's Descendent' when Hetty finds out that Trevor has given up his room to Nigel. Whether the writers meant this scene to be anything significant or to mean something or not, I think it is quite an important moment for both Trevor and Hetty.

For Trevor, it's a selfless act, he knows he won't gain much, if anything, from it, especially as at that point he's already called things off with Hetty. He's also made it pretty clear that sleeping in the library isn't something he want's to do but he does it, for her.

While it could be argued that maybe he does it to try and get back with her, I don't see it that way as he was the one who broke it off in the first place and he asks her to leave rather than trying to get her to stay. For me, what the scene is showing is that Trevor is a good guy, he cares about Hetty and puts her wishes above his own. Even though he doesn't really care who finds out about them he wants to prevent her from having to experience the embarassment of their secret getting out.

The other reason this scene gets to me is Hetty's reaction, it's almost as if she's realising that some of the assumptions she had of him previously were wrong. I don't think she expected him to do what he did after calling off their affair as I highly doubt Elias ever did anything like that for her in life so to have a man do something so selfless for her, especially with their liaisons, at that point, being over, is likely not what she's used to. Her expression when she turns to leave is, to me, not only showing some realisation that maybe he isn't the kind of man she thought he was but there might be some regret there too. She doesn't want this thing with him to end but I don't think she a, knows how to tell him, or b, is really sure she knows what it is she does want.

Everytime I watch it, which is quite often, I just can't help but think that IF, and that's a very big IF, they did turn this into something more than friends with benefits then this scene could potentially be a small part of explaining why. I think what happened in that episode made them both think about things a little differently than maybe they had before and Hetty opting to out them on her own was a big thing for her to do. And though as we see a little later, their attempts at a public relationship don't exactly go well, it doesn't stop them wanting to be together despite it being an ideal time for the writers to break them up properly if they wanted to. It makes me think they have something planned for Hetty and Trevor, what that is I've no idea and I could be completely off with all of this but it's fun to speculate.

Afterall, they are so interesting and so ridiculous that they keep me glued to everything they do, they are taking up the majority of my brain space at the moment. I just need season 3 to hurry up and get here so that I can not only see what else they get up to but also have more scenes to forensically analyse and obsess over!

#cbs ghosts #hetty x trevor #h money #tretty #trevor x hetty #h-money #hetty woodstone #trevor lefkowitz

[hockybish]

Christmas Plans

l West Winds au l dad!trevor l masterlist l part 1 l next l

"So are we getting him a cat or dog?" Trevor mused scrolling through his phone one evening. He was looking at animals online from a local shelter, trying to find the right one for Zephyr.

"Neither. I'm not taking care of a kid and an animal while you're not here and I'm trying to graduate" Bean typed away on the computer in her lap. "I'm almost done with school, one more semester, we can think about it then."

"Well then what about giving Zeph a sister or brother?" he tossed his phone to the side, it seemed pointless once Bean said no to the animal. He started placing kisses all over her neck and shoulder.

"Trev, what did I just say?" Bean pushed her beau away. She loved the affection he was giving her, but not when she was trying to writing an important paper for a class.

"You said not to a pet. You said nothing about having another baby."

"No more kids until after graduation. Plus we don't even know what we are. And there are a million other things we need to think about, like where would we live? Because it's already difficult with our two homes as it is." she rambled “and not to mention your family hasn’t even met Zeph yet.”

"Tallulah Bean?" Trevor waited a second so he could have her full attention before continuing. "I love you more than anything, will you be my girlfriend?"

"You know what? Yes." She kissed him this time. Trevor deepened the kiss wanting something more from this happy moment, Bean could tell as much. "No more kids yet though."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean we can't at least start trying now." He closed her laptop, placing it off to the side. She wouldn't be needing it for the rest of the night.

"I think we should tell them." Bean ran her fingers through Trevor's hair, they were snuggling in bed after having some adult fun times.

"Who are we telling and why should we tell them this thing?" he leaned into her touch while his eyes remained closed.

"I just think it's time we tell our families about us and more importantly yours about Zeph" she moved on to braiding the longer bit of his hair that had grown out since he last had gotten it cut.

"He knows my family. I think it's time that he knows his other grandma and grandpa and auntie and uncle."

"That, is a great idea, because my mom's only been begging me to bring Zeph around for the better half of a year now."

"Excuse me she's been what now?" Bean was a bit shocked at his confession, but at the same time not surprised he told his mom.

"Yeah, I may or may not have sent her a picture of Zeph like a month after he was born and I guess she figured it out from that." Trevor told her about what he did. "And Ellen's been sending her pictures too."

He explained how it had really only been this past summer, when they had been in Connecticut and so close to his family, that she had been asking to meet her grandson, but he had told her that it was something he would have to discuss with Bean. And with all the contract stuff going on and them trying to mend the what he had broken, it just slipped his mind.

"It's settled then, we're going to New York for Christmas."

"It's gonna be a short trip. I have a game on the 23rd and another on the 27th. That's not a lot of time for him to get to know everyone properly."

"We'll make it work, we always do"

#west winds au #trevor x bean #trevor zegras

[beevean]

Really enjoy reading your analyses of Netflixvania. Makes me feel like I'm not crazy for disliking the series, since it seems most people really like it. I'm not a huge Castlevania fan (I wasn't even aware of any Castlevania manga until I read your posts), but the fight with Dracula at the end of season 2 just felt really off to me. Like every single character came out of it ten times worse than when they started. So I'm curious, what do you think of how Dracula was defeated?

I'm glad you liked it! <3 And I completely understand. The show gets praised to high heavens from everyone, and while I can dismiss the occasional "god i want to smother myself in alucard's tiddies" post, the long articles gushing about the stellar animation and carefully woven characters leave me more at loss... And like I said, it's not even a matter of being a fan of the games, the writing itself is seriously flawed.

Anyway, the Dracula sequence has me conflicted.

Pros:

Dracula is appropriately shown to be an absolute beast in combat. Three against one can barely scratch the guy. And Godbrand says in an earlier episode that Dracula hasn't been feeding regularly, meaning he's also in a weakened state. It is, in theory, viscerally satisfying to see.

The animation finally reaches the standards that the general praise attributes to it. That is to say, it's really fucking cool. I appreciated the focus given to his giant Hellfire attack, since it's his most iconic one (although I don't think it should be touched with anything, but eh)

The "my boy" sequence is the most heartwrenching scene in the show, both because it's simply well written, because I like the poetry that a monster like Dracula can only be put down by his own human emotions, and because Graham McTavish's back must have hurt so bad, carrying the show like that. Seriously, he's leagues above every other voice actor.

Cons:

Dracula being an absolute beast only makes me angrier in retrospect because the rest of S2 painted him as a Depressed Old Man™ slumping in his chair and being too Tired to properly supervise the war he started. "Carmilla has made her move" no shit you absolute dumbass, you and your lackey Isaac allowed her to do so! You were aware that she was dangerous and you didn't care!! Where were you all this time!!!

(and don't give me "well drac doesn't lift his own ass until the very last possible moment in the games either, it's lore accurate". that is a sign of arrogance and power. like drac doesn't need to lift a finger to stop intruders in their tracks, his legions of hell can do all the work. only if you actually, physically reach him, then he starts to fight. In the show he was so apathetic, that I almost lowkey agree with Carmilla's frustrations... and that's the point. It was artificial conflict for the sake of propping this OC.)

Dracula no-selling every attack paints the heroes as weak. Especially Trevor, who after making such a scene of the Morning Star in a previous episode can only piss him off with it.

Trevor punching Dracula, and him recognizing him as a Belmont because of that. The sheer lack of respect towards Trevor as a character and the source material cannot be contained :^)

(and this is minor, but I don't like how Sypha is the one getting scarred by the encounter. Alucard also got scarred by his father way back at the beginning, as he loves to flaunt. Meaning, Trevor is the only one who wasn't impacted by him, which boggles my mind - the scars that game Trevor has on his face and chest aren't there for show! They mark him as the Legendary Belmont who first survived against the Dark Lord! Why do y'all hate this guy so much?)

Alucard steals the entire glory. In a vacuum, it makes sense because they have the closest, most interesting relationship. Lore wise, this should have been Trevor's moment and once again he gets deprived of it. The Belmonts just don't have a legacy in the show.

Overall, For Love is a very well written emotional payoff to a huge waste of time. I don't care that Alucard is setting to kill his father because we barely know how he feels about that. I don't care that Trevor is finally about to fulfill his own legacy because the show kept spitting on it. Sypha is just there to be OP I guess. Their entire "arc" in S2 was them getting cooped up in the Belmont Hold, and Alucard and Sypha having fun being the biggest dicks to Trevor. They didn't even train! The most they did was to conveniently find that the castle uses an engine to move.

dracula doesn't even turn into anything :< where's my giant goat/bat monster form :<

... so I have more negatives than positives lmao. I agree with your general assertion that everyone looks worse than they should. However, there are genuine aspects to praise. I guess the scene is beautiful if you're a fan of Dracula and Alucard, and really disappointing if you're a fan of Trevor :P

#anti netflixvania #also yay i'm very happy that you learned about the existence of the cod mangas <3

[dizzyduck44]

Yes British lads are really like that

So I saw an ask that @landhole-norris had and it reminded me of a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while.

Lots of people seem to perceive either Lando or George as arrogant and bratty, or worse, jealous of the other. However I think if you see past your initial hate for either of them, there is a logical explanation, in fact they have told you it themselves.

George effectively inherited Lando as a friend from Lando’s older brother and they never really raced each other till F2. They have a similar path to F1, both having driven for Trevor Carlin at some point. However I think it was F2 when they really started getting to know each other properly. Not only were they fighting each other for the championship, but Mercedes and McLaren were sending them off to places for tyre tests and media commitments at the same time.

Not only is there a lovely interview with them in F2 when they have to grade each other’s season, (and they are so complimentary of each other), they also did a lot of press together when it was announced they were joining F1.

Hence why George has cracked gags about Lando talking to multiple girls, traveling with as much luggage as a girl and let’s not forget the sticky magazine comment. They spent a lot of time together pre-F1. They weren’t in school with other friends, they were at some track somewhere together.

Now Lando is a sarcastic shit. George only cracked these jokes because he knew Lando could take it and give it back.

At the same time, when Lando had zero self confidence in himself, George was always quick to say how well he was doing.

George has never been shy about the fact he was never sure F1 was a possibility for him. Lando went the opposite way, always believed he’d make it F1, got there and felt so out of his depth. Ironically they have always believed in each other.

Remember Sakhir. Lando told anyone who would ask, George can stick it on pole. George could win this race. Not a flicker of doubt in his mind. After the race George went to Lando, as he would let him vent and rage and break down if he needed to, BUT would also give him a reality check of you just drove Lewis Hamilton’s car and smashed it!

Or how about Spa 2021. Lando saying he watched George’s epic quali lap in the ambulance on the way to hospital. These are not the actions of bitter rivals.

George wanted that Mercedes seat so bad. Last year Lando was killing it, podiums, collecting points like Pokemon. Whilst it was great to see them together when Lando got his first pole, it must have eaten George a little. Give me the car and I’ll do that to.

This year Lando called out George for being “no fun anymore” which George seemed a bit snappy about. In his defence he has said some things in the last couple of weeks that might explain things.

Firstly last week he admitted he was overthinking and over complicating things this year. He’d basically done a 2019 Lando. So when Lando called him out on not being fun anymore, he knew something was up with his friend, but obviously George wasn’t saying what.

Then today, George’s throwaway comment of “first time in 4 years I’ve beaten Lando in the championship”. On some level that has been eating away at George. Not in an I hate Lando way but frustration of never being able to show what he could do. He knew he’d beaten Lando before and was never going to do it in a Williams.

Last week you saw the smiles on their faces. Lando does not resent George for winning a race before him. It will hurt, but he knows how much he wanted it. George’s immediate reaction, “you next”.

Then today they stood there unprompted and congratulated each other on the season they have just had. The fact Lando has out performed his car this season has not been lost on George (and probably Lewis and Mercedes) and he wanted to say that.

They have shown us over and over again who they are. Yes they bicker a bit like brothers, yes they are competitive, but woe-betide the person who tries to chat shit about the other in front of them.

No they are not going to be going on holidays together, barely share an interest off the track, but they know they have each other’s back. Yes that means they will throw a bitchy comment at each other now and again, how people perceive that is their issue. These two will walk side by side through their F1 careers (same number of starts), celebrate the highs, commiserate the lows and end up doing donuts side by side in Abu Dhabi some day. And one will probably drag the other for being shit at that as well.

#lando norris #george russell #long read

[a-m-w-harris]

Ghosts in Encanto AU

Ok, so a little while back I came across a post about the BBC ghosts being in the Encanto universe. I really liked the idea and wanted to expand upon it.

I included both the BBC ghosts and the CBS Ghosts because I like both versions a lot. Some of the minor ghosts don't have powers yet because they are kinda hard to write for. We don't really know much about them.

First off, instead of Casita and being set in Columbia, these folks are given their miracle by The Valley of Ages, located in the countryside of England. The Encanto and the Madrigals still do exist, and it is possible that there is a connection between the miracle of the Encanto and the miracle of the Valley.

The Valley of Ages is an ancient valley that is sentient and has deep ties to nature. It has the power to call out to those it deems worthy in order to become Guardians. Eventually, it created Button House, after creating several cottages and such for several people. Button House was made at the request of Lady Button in order to house all of the Guardians in the Valley. 

All who become Guardians gain a unique gift and immortality. Some possess gifts meant to educate or help the valley flourish. Others have gifts intended to ward off threats to the valley. The main thing about their immortality is that it only works while they are in the Valley, something they found out the hard way, unfortunately.

The Guardians of the Valley (in order of arrival)

Robin 

Has powerful electrokinetic abilities

The first to be called by the Valley, having been alone there for millions of years. He was a Cromagnin caveman who worshiped the moon. He was called to the Valley to be its first protector. 

Thorfinn

He can bring about powerful storms. 

Was a Viking who was struck by lightning while in the Valley. Was nursed back to health by Robin. 

Sasappis

Can project images and illusions via storytelling. 

Was a member of the Lenape Tribe who fled his lands in embarrassment after being unable to go to his first storytelling session. Was called by the Valley and sailed across the sea to ancient Europe. 

Jemima

She can cause a magical fear in others when she sings.

Plague Victim escaping certain death. She was twelve years old when she arrived at the valley.

Mick

Has the ability to teleport great distances. 

Plague Victim escaping certain death

The Other Plague Victims (No clue what their gifts would be)

Nicholas, Jeff, John, Walter, Molly, & Lucy

Mary

Has pyrokinetic abilities but cannot control them properly.

Was accused of witchcraft and had to flee. 

Annie

Possessed the ability to produce a powerful scream many times louder than any natural sound. 

Was drawn to the Valley shortly after Mary. during an excursion to gather supplies from outside the Valley; Annie, Mary, and Thorfinn were attacked by a group of bandits. Annie prepared to unleash her gift on them but was stabbed. She was killed instantly despite the Valley sending Mick to bring them back. 

Sir Humphry Bone

 Has the ability to displace his head and limbs. 

After assisting his wife in her escape, he escaped and was drawn to the valley. 

Thomas Thorne

 Has the ability to breathe underwater. 

Was a poet who after being spurned by his cousin who sabotaged his chances at his love, left to travel the countryside. The valley embraced him. He is the one who found Trevor in the lake. 

Kitty

Can communicate with animals

Was poisoned in an attempt on her life by her sister. The valley sensed it and had Mick teleport to her so she could be nursed back to health in Button House. 

Fanny Button

Has the ability to phase through solid objects. 

Was called to the Valley after leaving her husband after the discovery of his true proclivities. Requested the building of Button House of the valley, so that all of the guardians of the Valley would have a single roof to be under. 

Nigel Chassum

 Can sense when others lie

Escaped the revolutionary war with his two companions and lover Isaac. All four heard the call. 

Baxter

 Possesses the ability to cause small earthquakes on command. 

Escaped the revolutionary war with Nigel, Isaac, and Jenkins. All four heard the call. 

Jenkins

Can cause plant life to grow by playing his flute.

Escaped the revolutionary war with Nigel, Isaac, and Baxter. All four heard the call. 

Isaac Higgintoot

 Has the ability to create a noxious gas that can put others to sleep or make them sick. 

Escaped the revolutionary war with his two companions and lover Nigel. All four heard the call.

The cholera Victims (Again, I don't know what their abilities would be. Sorry.)

Stuart, Dirk, Cody, Nick, Catherine, & Nancy

Hetty Woodstone

Has prophetic visions and will often get visions directly from the valley itself on future residents. 

Heard the call after her abusive husband’s disappearance. Placed all of her money in a savings account which she still has access to. 

Captain

Gained the abilities of a ‘super soldier’. This includes enhanced speed, strength, and endurance. 

Retired to Button House after the war. Has not quite come to terms with being gay. 

Alberta Haynes

 Can heal illnesses and even remedies poisons with her songs.

A jazz singer escaping a racist lynching. Heard the call after being poisoned. Was brought to the valley by Mick similar to Kitty. 

Flower

Can place others in a calming trance

A hippie from the 60s who had a change of heart after a bank robbery. 

Pete Martino

 Has the ability to survive absolutely anywhere. (Can sense North, can always start a fire, is a perfect hunter, etc.)

Was a boy scout troupe leader in Maine when he heard the call. His wife’s cheating was revealed to him and he decided to leave. 

Patrick ‘Pat’ Butcher

 Has the ability to heal any injury given enough time. 

Was a boy scout troupe leader in England when he heard the call. After learning that his wife was in love with his best friend, he simply decided to leave and enter the Valley. 

Stephanie

Can dream walk but generally sleeps for all but a few weeks a year. 

She was sixteen when she was called to the valley. Mick was sent to rescue her from a psychopath who murdered her boyfriend. 

Julian Fawcett

Has a limited form of telekinesis

Drawn to the mansion after having an epiphany about needing to change his life. 

Crash

Has limited technopathic abilities and a mental connection to his bike. 

Was a biker touring the countryside of Europe when the valley called to him. 

Trevor Lefkowitz

Possesses a form of Empathy

Was almost killed by his ‘friends’ after having a drug overdose and being dumped in the lake in the valley. The valley aided him and the others nursed him back to health. 

Alison Cooper

Her gift is unknown.

Was called at the same time as the Arondekars. She and Samantha are said to be the most powerful protectors of the Valley to date. However, they have not discovered their gifts as of yet.

Mike Cooper

His gift is unknown.

Was called at the same time as the Arondekars. He has not discovered his gift yet but thinks it might have something to do with the physical.

Samantha Arondekar

 Her gift is unknown.

Was called at the same time as the Coopers. She and Alison are said to be the most powerful protectors of the Valley to date. However, they have not discovered their gifts as of yet.

Jay Arondekar

Can sense exactly what food would bring comfort to someone and eating his food can soothe anxieties. 

Was called at the same time as the Coopers. He is an accomplished cook and is very invested in renewing Button House. 

Ok! I think that's all of them. Let me know what you think!

#ghosts bbc #ghosts cbs #lgbt fiction #spooky #haunted house #halloween #encanto #encanto au #fanfic #fandom #long post

[booksandwords]

Comeuppance Served Cold by Marion Deeds

Read time: 1 Day Rating: 5/5 Stars

The Quote: "I saw your name in the Star-Invocation this morning. Violet Solomon." "Mr Earnshaw's latest opinion piece." Violet said. "He must have been in a good mood. He only called me a 'dissolute temptress'. Last time it was 'vicious negress of dubious intelligence', although he didn't use my name that time." "He's quite the admirer." "Oh, yes." — Dolly White and Violet Solomon

Warnings: The author herself provides a list of warnings be aware in an author's note. "This book contains instances of patriarchal, racist, and ableist violence, both verbal and physical." It is a broad disclaimer but all relevant, for those who need it stated explicitly there is an attempted sexual assault.

Comeuppance Served Cold is an engaging and well-written heist story, starting at the end and it jumps through time following two women until it reaches the end again. This is a female lead story, the women call the shots, use their power and own their situations. There are two male characters aiding the women both are minorities, both are gay, one, Philippe is coloured (his words) and the other, Gabriel is blind. The antagonists are both male and as complex as they can be, everything is a matter of perspective. It is only a short book but it is divided up into three parts, Orphan (pp. 12-82), Grifter (pp. 84-134) and Changeling (pp. 132-187). There are of course meanings to these names, meanings that become apparent as you read and I won't spoil them here. But everything comes back to the prologue.

The two lead characters, the two who share the narration are Dolly White and Violet Solomon, a thief lady's companion and the owner of a speakeasy. Dolly is a woman of mystery, she shows herself as she feels she needs to for the moment. She is working an angle and knows how to get what she wants, what buttons to push, and how to present herself properly in a situation (I present to you Trevor the male escort). She has a repeated line... "Does that bother you?" "Few things bother me, and that's not one of them." (Gabriel and Dolly, p.113) Dolly is also a very accepting woman, though she does have lines. Violet is a savvy woman who wants nothing more than the head of the man who killed her husband, Pedro Avila y Lopez. That he tried to kill her brother and his love is secondary. That he nearly killed her is barely a blip on her radar. Knowing who killed Pedro is one thing, proving it is a whole other thing, let alone getting revenge. one way she has gone about getting some revenge is opening her speakeasy.

Other characters that should be noted. Philippe Solomon, is Violet's older brother and a shape-shifter. His animal is a swamp puma/ cougar. I appreciate the shifter lore, we see Philippe in his animal form and he is so much more animal than human when he is in that form. So few could get through to him, one of these is his love (and mate) blind tattooist Gabriel. Gabriel is handled with grace, I really like his character design and the lore around his tattoos. Gabe's eyesight loss comes with a story, it was a price paid in a magical deal with an infamous tool, his tattoo needles. Fiona is a smart enough creation. Her love story and complicity in all around her are endearing, it empowers her. I do kinda feel bad for Tony, Fiona's fiancee. It may have been hard for women but it must have been harder for queer men of status.

The plot is an unravelling of how Dolly got where she did. It is actually a fairly simple plot, if it was told in a linear manner it would be almost boring. But the way Deeds has chosen to wind details and players in makes it readable and engaging. The characters are used well and are diverse. The racism subplot doesn't feel out of place. What it is necessary to remember while reading is the time that the book is set in, 1929. Judge it in its time frame for bootlegging, racism and social structures. The writing is perfect for this time. It is all just so pretty and powerful. Not for everyone but I think those to whom the blurb appeals or who have an interest in the heist genre would probably appreciate it.

Finishing with my usual dump of quotes • "Miss White, I must warn you off my brother." "Fiona!" Francis straightened up. Honestly! Miss White may be poor. That's no reason to treat her like a gold digger!" "My warning is for her," — (Fiona and Francis, p.22) Francis is a creep. And his ability to veil himself in shadows makes it so, so worse. nuf said. Daddy dearest's enabling, saying he is just playing is patriarchal bull***t. • "We're going nowhere. Once you're out of here, they'll leave us alone." Pedro lowered his gaze "You can't count on that. They aren't like us, these northern gangsters, they have no honor." "Honor, you? You won't even marry my girl!" Mama pointed at him. "You, Pedro Avila y Lopez, I curse you, your child" "Mama, no!" Violet said. — (Camille, Pedro and Violet, pp.42-43) I wanted to mention Camille Soloman, Philippe and Violet's mother. There is a story here but I love the one scene we see of her. There is nothing as intimidating as a pissed-off mother of colour. Their Aunt Lily is just as brilliant with the line. "Don't you 'Tia Lily' me, you hooligan! What have you brought down on us?" (Lily, p.42). • Every society wife knew about this shop or one like it. Sometimes even wealthy families fell on hard times, and sometimes last year's clothes were not given to servants but taken and sold to someone whose watchword was discretion. Sometimes the family fortune was intact but a society wife or daughter had a bootlegger to pay off, an important medical potion to procure, or a special friend to keep in jeweled cuff links and fine shoes. — (Dolly, p.85) There is something timeless and feministic about this. The recognition that women take lovers as well and will, of course, make sacrifices for them and abortions would be necessary. • "I... Fiona is like a daughter to me. If you harm her..." "Yes, I know how much your set values its daughters. Fiona will be unharmed." — (Mr. Lester and Dolly, p.108) I know it's not how it was meant to be read but I read this with such disdain. Dolly honestly doesn't intend on hurting Fiona. But the high social set in this canon does not respect their daughters as anything other than political pawns. • The bartender stared in her direction as she walked back to the bar, but he wasn't watching her, he was watching Gabe. Whatever the tattooist felt for him, it was reciprocated. Dancing on the edge of a volcano, those two. — (Dolly, p.113) I love this mostly for the last line, dancing on the edge of a volcano. It is such a brilliant way to describe blinding, undeniable chemistry.

#lgbtq #book review #marion deeds #paranormal #tw attempted sa #tw violence #tw ableism #tw racism #novella #ktreviews #read 2022 #comeuppance served cold

[redfire-blackash-whitegold]

FAHC au where Trevor starts out as the mugger who keeps mugging Gavin. He does it so many times successfully, and he keeps getting away with it so efficiently, that the crew is impressed. One day he makes the mistake of mugging Gavin when he was prepared for it and ends up taking a taser to the neck. The rest of the crew convince Gavin not to kill him, and Geoff offers Trevor a job.

#fahc #fake ah crew #fahc trevor #fahc gavin #silver liars #yes this is me looking into that last shot of the musical far too much #i just love trevor okay? #actually funnily enough i realize now #this was basically one of gavin's old origin stories #except pickpocketing geoff instead of mugging #might write about this more later actually #been wanting to write about trevor properly for a while

[missmitchieg]

Hey, Don't Die

It started out as a joke.

It was always supposed to be a joke.

The boys weren't supposed to die on him. But he forgot to say it. It wasn't his fault! He got distracted by the pretty girl in front of him and their favorite little inside joke just slipped his mind. So he didn't say it, and now the boys were gone.

Or maybe it was his fault they were gone. Sure, maybe it was a coincidence that every time he did say it, they didn't die on him and the one time he didn't say it, they went and died. Or maybe it was some weird fortune or good luck charm.

Whatever it was, Bobby didn't think he would ever be able to escape that positively heart wrenching, soul crushing guilt of how he should have said it, or how he should have been there to run and call for an ambulance.

The first time he said it was to Luke. It was a joke. It was funny. Luke made a comment at the end of the day that he was going to his parents' house to sleep because his bed didn't give him that neck crick that his couch did.

With a laugh, Bobby patted Luke's shoulder and gave a little squeeze. "Alright. Don't die out there, though."

Luke cackled at that and shook his head, giving him a half hug. "I'll try, buddy. Love you."

"I love you, too."

They kept that joke going for a couple of weeks.

The next one he made the joke to was Alex. It was still a joke. It was still funny. Alex was just going to make a quick pizza run and come back.

"Be quick. Don't die." Bobby told him.

Alex smiled and ruffled Bobby's hair the way he knew he hated, waving as he walked out. "I won't, bro."

"You better not. Love you."

"Love you."

Then came Reggie. It was still a joke. It was still funny. They were on a 'friend date', as Reggie called it, to the aquarium. Bobby, Luke and Alex all wanted to watch the great whites in the shark tunnel, but Reggie wanted to go look at the jellyfish in the opposite direction of the sharks.

"Alright. We'll meet back up by the clown fish, then. Don't die alone in there." Bobby smiled and patted Reggie's cheek.

"I won't, Bobins." Reggie chuckled and ran a hand through his hair, giving his best friend a sweet smile. "Love you."

"I love you, too."

It had sort of become their thing after a while. One or two or all of them would go off somewhere without 'their Bobble' and Bobby would always, always tell them, whether it was with a smile or a faux serious look on his face. "Don't die."

Then came that day. July twenty second, nineteen ninety five. Bobby had been distracted by a very pretty girl with curly hair and sparkly eyes and had just forgotten to tell his boys his usual comment of "Hey. Don't die out there. I love you.", so he hadn't said it. And then he got a call. A call to tell him that his band, his best friends, his boys, were gone forever.

He was horrified when he realized what had happened.

What he didn't say.

What he didn't do.

He had broken down about it to his parents, who promptly suggested that he go to therapy about it. Something about how it wasn't healthy to think this way and he did nothing wrong and he couldn't have known what would happen and he needed to talk to someone about it. So he did. He went and he talked about the boys and how it hurt that they were gone and they were never coming back. But he never told his therapist about their thing, about what he would say to them when they left his sight.

He had also managed to become a rock star by means of some sleazy contract he hadn't been given the chance to read properly giving ownership of Luke's music to some company and Bobby had been forced to record the songs and pass them off as his own and keep the true writer a secret.

It was fine. Luke was gone. He wasn't ever going to find out what the contract had roped Bobby into. So he did it. Just not without a few breakdowns in between song recordings and e-mails to his therapist about emergency sessions. But it was fine.

So he went on like that, taking his boys' music and recording it in between breakdowns and therapy sessions and becoming a mega famous rock star, just like he had managed to convince himself his boys would want him to.

He grew up and had a kid. A little girl named Carrie, who was his absolute little pride and joy. A little girl who was never going to live in a garage, or eat out of the back of a beat up car, or get food poisoning, or anything that could harm her. She was going to have only the best health care and knowledge he could buy and teach her and she wasn't going to die.

The first time he had told her the thing, she was a little toddler, going to day care for the first time. She had been excited to go to day care and meet new friends to play with and he had been a wreck thinking of all the things that could happen if he didn't remember to tell her. So he made a mental note to not forget before he walked out the door to go to work.

He had walked inside with a little curly haired toddler on his hip and, with a smile, said to his little girl: "Carrie, love, daddy's gonna go to work now. You're gonna stay here a while and I'll pick you up when I'm done working. I love you. Don't die here."

Carrie had giggled at that and wrapped her tiny arms around his neck, giving him a peck on the cheek. "Love you, daddy!" She said before he let her down and she ran off to bang on a brightly colored toy drum.

Bobby winced as he felt his heart clench in his chest at the sight of his little girl playing a drum, just like his old best friend. He bit his lip as he clenched and unclenched his fists and walked out to the car to go to the studio, where he would try and write a song as good as Luke's old music again.

No matter how hard he tried to channel the guitarist, he just couldn't. He couldn't write like Luke, because he wasn't Luke. And Luke wasn't there to help him. Wasn't there to chuckle and suggest a clever slant rhyme, or a metaphor that would work, or a cool melody that sounded like something Luke would write, but also that Bobby, no, that Trevor could play in his sleep.

He groaned in frustration as he and his team of four other writers just couldn't come to an agreement about which rhyme scheme to use for this song, and kept glancing at the clock until it was the time to go and pick up his baby from day care.

He walked inside and looked around for Carrie, hoping, praying that saying the thing worked, that he hadn't lost his little girl like he lost his boys. "Care-bear? Baby?"

"Daddy!" Carrie giggled and got up from where she was sitting on the floor watching a little curly haired girl slam her fingers against toy piano keys, running up to him. "Hi, daddy!"

Oh, thank God. "Carrie, there you are! My little girl! Oh!" He cooed as he scooped her up into his arms and hugged her tightly to his chest, pressing kisses to the top of her tiny, giggling head.

"Aww!"

"That's so sweet."

"Oh, what a good daddy!"

Trevor looked up and chuckled, shaking his head. "I just love my little girl so much. Come on, baby. Let's go home. We're having that yummy pasta you like for dinner."

"Yay!"

After that, saying the thing became his and Carrie's thing, just like it was his and his boys' thing. He would drop Carrie off somewhere or Carrie would be on her way to the bus stop to go to school, and Trevor would send her off with an "I love you. Don't die.", and his daughter would smile and salute.

"Daddy, I'm going to my friend, Julie's!"

"Ok! Have fun and don't die! Love you!"

"Dad, I'm going to school!"

"Don't die at school! Love you!"

"Dad, can I go to Flynn and Julie's sleepover on Saturday?"

"Sure, just don't die."

And they went on like that for years.

Carrie always thought it was 'just one of dad's funny quirks'. An 'overprotective dad' thing. Sort of like Marlin from that cute kids movie, Finding Nemo. Carrie would go somewhere without him for a period of time, and Trevor would worry endlessly until she came back, completely unharmed. Then came the hugs and kisses and comments of "There's my favorite girl!" from him.

Little did she know just how much her father was suffering. Little did she know just how worried he was when she would leave, how relieved he was when it sank in that she was fine, that it had worked again, just like it always did.

So sure, maybe it wasn't necessarily 'normal' to say that every time his daughter was out of his sight for any amount of time. Maybe he was still a little traumatized. Maybe he should bring it up to his therapist. But he was fine. He was fine, as long as she was fine.

He ended up admitting it to his therapist mid-session. "So I do this thing with my daughter." He started. "Whenever she goes somewhere without me, I always tell her, 'don't die, I love you'. It's-" He coughed and cleared his throat taking a sip of water to will the sudden lump in his throat away. "It's... Something I used to say to my friends before they died."

Dr. Born nodded and wrote something down quickly, gesturing for him to go on.

"I always tell her. I never forget to. Because the one time I did forget... Well." Trevor made a kind of 'you know, I just told you' gesture and shifted, pushing his hair out of his eyes like his Reggie used to.

"I see."

"I guess I think... If I don't tell her, something will happen. Something will hurt her, a-and she'll disappear like my boys did."

"That sounds quite stressful." Dr. Born had said, in his non judgemental, caring therapist voice.

"It is." Trevor admitted, a familiar anxiety bubbling up in his chest. "Because what if I forget one day? What if I forget one day-"

"Trevor." Dr. Born said, sensing an unhelpful anxiety spiral coming on.

"-and Carrie gets hurt? What if I forget to say it to her just one time and-"

"Trevor."

"that's the last time I ever see my little girl, just because I forgot to tell her not to die-"

"Trevor!"

Trevor winced at that and stopped fidgeting with the toy Dr. Born had advised him to buy for his anxiety years ago now, looking up at him. "Sorry."

"Clearly, you were very affected by the death of your dear friends." Dr. Born noted. "But, why didn't you mention saying that to your friends or your daughter before?"

Trevor frowned at the question and looked down, wringing his hands. "I... Don't know. I guess that part hurt too much to talk about, or think about." He said with a tilt of his head.

Dr. Horn hummed at that and nodded his understanding, taking another note.

"My parents told me to go to therapy to talk about losing the boys, and how much that was affecting me." Trevor started. "I didn't have the capacity, I guess, to talk about that, so I stuck to the boys."

Dr. Horn nodded again, still giving him the most understanding, non judgemental look.

"And I-I guess I just convinced myself telling Carrie that was normal. That worrying if I didn't tell her that, I would end up losing her like my boys, was normal." Trevor continued. "That saying it or not saying it was sort of like a telling of what was to come. Because until now, it has been." He explained. "Because every time I said it, the boys lived. The one time I didn't, they ended up in an ambulance. Every time I say it to Carrie, she comes home safe. What if it happens again?"

Dr. Horn nodded again and hummed, looking for the best way to reply to Trevor. "I won't lie and say that's a normal train of thought, or necessarily true."

Trevor sighed but nodded. "Fair enough."

"But I also know it would negatively affect you to just stop saying it cold turkey."

Trevor nodded again.

"I think, whenever you decide you're ready, and you don't have to be ready the exact next time that Carrie goes somewhere, you should try texting it to her when she's already out the door. And eventually stop saying it altogether."

Trevor considered the thought and nodded slowly, wringing the toy in his hands. "I- Should I tell my daughter what I'm doing? It might be weird for her to be so used to hearing that every time she leaves to suddenly not hearing it."

"Oh, good thinking. I think you should tell her. Though, I'll warn you, she might ask about why you're suddenly cutting out a tradition between the two of you."

Trevor nodded, scratching his neck. "What will she think of me when I tell her about it?"

"You'll never know until you tell her."

So he did. Six months after the fact. He sat Carrie down and explained to her that their 'fun dad joke' was going to change a little soon. He explained why he would always say it and about the boys. He explained that it was going to stop.

Carrie sat and listened intently as she processed what her father was telling her, giving him the tightest hug she ever had after he had finished, both of them in tears. She couldn't believe that her father had just been living with that pain for years, and mentally preparing himself for it to stop for months. Knowing all of this, Carrie Wilson was the most confident she had ever been that her father was the strongest man she ever knew.

So she walked out one day, just to get some fro-yo with the girls, and waited for a text from her father when she didn't hear their thing said out loud. It came when she was two steps out the door.

The next time came just the next day, when Carrie was on her way to school. Carrie didn't hear it out loud, so she waited for a text. It came five steps out the door.

The next time came when Carrie had a performance that Trevor couldn't be at. It was in the same direction as the studio, so he drove her to the venue, and Carrie felt a sad smile stretch onto her face as she heard him say, "I love you. Don't die."

Two weeks later, Carrie was going to a sleepover at Julie's for the first time in a long time. She smiled as this time, she made it all the way to the car before she got a text saying their thing.

Almost a month later, Carrie grinned as she walked out to go to school and didn't hear it, and never got a text. She came home that day, no feeling of sickness coming on or bruise in sight. She was fine.

And he was fine, too.

#julie and the phantoms #bobby trevor wilson #luke patterson #alex molina #reggie molina #carrie wilson #jatp fanfic #someone asked for a read more thing

[dreamylyfe-x]

Your trevor meta is making me realize how weird it is that the writers and cast were so insistent that mickey wasn't coming back, because I don't think theyve ever really known what to do with ian's story without him. They put him in these lukewarm relationships and tell us they're so much better and healthier, but then have ian straight up admit that he still loves mickey and nobody else has made him feel the same way. How do they set that up and then have him go back to trevor? They set up ian moving on with "I'm not that person anymore" and follow up with season 8. It's like okay...who he is now is gay Jesus? Lmao. He's always been the shows forgotten middle child and after they wrote mickey off "for good" they could have taken him in a million directions but they chose one so shitty it basically made cam leave lmao. Sometimes it feels like fan insistence kind of forced mickey back but in actuality, the seasons where he's gone just hammer home that he was always the inevitable end to ian's story. So bizarre how little the showrunners understand their own story sometimes.

Ok. I’m going to be a little more Doylist here than I usually am, because we’re talking about what the writers are thinking. And I’m also going to take this opportunity to share this fascinating article from the AV Club in 2016: When Fan Engagement Goes Wrong. Everyone beware, it contains significant spoilers for The 100. But it’s also largely about Gallavich, the fact that online promotion of Shameless leaned hard into the popularity of the couple, and were up against it when Noel left. I’ll quote: 

“[Supervising Producer Shelia] Callaghan’s choice to be honest and straightforward when engaging with fans is admirable, and yet also on some level futile. She can’t tell them exactly why Fisher chose to leave, she is (logically) unwilling to spoil future storylines outright, and she can only speak her own mind as part of a collaborative process over which she holds only some influence. So while many fans respect her effort to maintain the connection to this now marginalized community, others attack, reinforcing that attempting to manage these situations is a full-time job that no one has been properly trained for.” 

This article links some tweets and the one I find the most interesting is this one:

“But the actor left.  So...what to do? Have them just break up?? Felt way less true to me than a forced separation!” 

That tweet is from Krista Vernoff, who wanted to convey that they tried really hard to come up with what they do with Ian now that he’d lost Mickey. And I’m sure they did try really hard. And.... People hated it. Mostly. 

Here’s what I think, based on what I’ve read and the interviews I’ve seen, on deleted tweets and Tumblr rumours and YouTube clips: The show didn’t want Mickey to leave the canvas. At all. Noel wanted more money. The show could not come up with both that money and the money they needed for everyone else. The show let him go. And hoped they could solve the creative problem their budgetary problem had dumped in their lap. 

I actually think Ian’s story in season six is decent. I miss Mickey, of course. I find the last scene with him really painful -- but it’s not painful because the show is trying to diminish him. They write and then cut together a scene where Mickey is DEMONSTRATIVELY still deeply in love with Ian. He’s carved his name in his chest. He is looking at Ian like he’s the most beautiful creature ever given breath. And Ian can barely meet his gaze. They tell us Mickey is being sent away for 16 years but when we see the last of Mickey Milkovich in season six I think “God, this is so sad. They love each other so much and this is so fucked up.” 

I do NOT think “We are NEVER EVER EVER getting back together.” 

The show always knew what it had with Ian and Mickey. They leaned into it promotionally. They gave meaty storylines to the characters, particularly given that Ian was the fourth lead on a family dramedy built around six children. John Wells replaced Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing. He knows how hard it is to follow a phenomenon. 

The more I think about it, honestly? I don’t think they tried. I think they knew that they couldn’t bring in Mickey Milkovich, the sequel in season six, so they brought in Caleb. And maybe they meant for him to be a LITTLE more viable than he was... but I think there’s a pretty good chance they were just throwing something at the wall to see if it stuck, while being fully aware that the important storyline in season six was getting Ian from despair to a fulfilling career. Caleb was just there as a catalyst. 

Season seven if more interesting, because Trevor is brought on and it’s very much... “Hey, let’s do something new. Let’s bring on a transmasc character and put him into a relationship with Ian and explore those complications.” 

“Great! Put it up on the board!” 

“Also. Let’s call Noel Fisher’s people and see what we can work out because we can do better with Mickey’s send off and people are yelling at me on the street about it.” 

Quite honestly, these are not equal tasks for his writer’s room. You have one story -- Create a whole ass new character. The only thing we know is that he’s trans. Figure out the romance from there. You have six episodes to get them together as an established couple. 

Then: Bring back the well-established and beloved character for an epic romantic two-episode arc where he reunites with his true love and they run away together and then ultimately realize it cannot be, and say goodbye and it all feels like I Will Always Love You should be playing in the background. They actors worked together for five years. They have a great professional partnership. They like working together. They have a ton of history so there’s lots of juicy subtext. The longing and sexual tension comes pre-established. See what you can do. 

HOW do you make both those things work out so that they are equal? You need lightening to strike. And that already happened on How I Met Your Mother. They squandered their good luck and now there is none left for Shameless. I do not disparage Elliot Fletcher at all when I say that for Trevor and Ian to really work he’d have had to have come with scorching chemistry with Cam, rich material that really gave them a good opportunity to build rapport between the characters, and A wizard standing by to cast spells in the wings. They had SIX episodes, a pretty average connection between the actors, and the “these are the LGBTQ+ people in your neighbourhood” scene. 

I just can’t believe that someone with as many years of TV writing under his belt as John Wells has expected that to work. He hoped the Trevor story might be good, and was certainly going to break some ground in terms of telling trans stories. And the Mickey story was going to be the highlight, because he knew people wanted it and he also knew that they’d had something pretty special to start with. Which is why people were yelling at him at Comic-Con. I DO think he hoped it might placate fans a bit. But... he wasn’t going to completely close the door on Mickey this time, either. 

So... I don’t really think the show every intended to write Mickey off “for good”. I think they wrote him off “for now, and we’ll see what happens...” -- and they did that with Karen, Shelia, Jody, Steve and Fiona, too. They only brought a few of those people back... They brought Mickey back three times. They ended Gallavich FOUR times. Noel is in ever season except eight. I don’t think they wanted Mickey gone -- but I KNOW the fans also made it pretty hard for them not to know his value, so absolutely I think that played a role. But when you create something people love and you get that lightening in a bottle like they did with this story, I think writers are always going to be excited to get that back. They like praise! They like people to be excited about their show. And Gallavich was always one of the things that got people excited about Shameless. 

I think they also wanted Gay Jesus to be a great story. But that’s why the lightening in the bottle is so valuable. You can’t just get it anywhere. 

#asks #I hope this answered the question #I am honestly so interested in the behind-the-scenes efforts to make season 7 work #and I do think they wanted Gay Jesus to be a great story #and instead... Cam quit #because no #writing is hard #shameless season 7 #shameless season 6 #shameless season 8 #shameless without mickey #thanks for asking! #God I hope that was an answer #Gallavich meta

[blush-and-books]

The End of Julie and the Phantoms - A [very long] Theory

The core of this theory was inspired by many posts that I have seen saying that Julie’s “everything was a dream” shirt may have insinuated that nothing happening on the show is actually reality. I brought my series finale pitch to my dear friend @willexx who then helped me develop this headcanon into something I cried about during lunch. 

It starts out pretty heavy, but there are some little light things here and there because it’s what the himbos would have wanted.

We start here:

In the last episode, the boys are ready too cross over. It’s an emotional moment for everyone, they’re crying, Julie is sobbing, and we as an audience have definitely seen better days. With one last “we love you, Julie,” a flash of light overtakes the garage space, blinding our screens. 

The scene flashes to Julie lying in bed, waking up from her ringing alarm. 

She is visibly confused, clearly wondering how she got to bed when the last thing that she remembers is the boys’ painful departure. When she reaches for her phone to turn off her alarm -- it’s a school day -- she quickly notices the date:

It’s the same day in 2020 that she met the boys, that she was going to clean out her mom’s garage, and that she had to perform to keep her spot in the music program. 

So, none of it was real?

Not exactly. 

The experience was a sort of dream-like saga that was designed for her to be able to grieve on her own, and rediscover her voice in her own way. But just as the panic sets in that it was a complete figment of her imagination, the feeling of cold metal on her left hand becomes too hard to ignore: One of Luke’s rings. 

Reggie’s leather jacket is hanging in her closet.

Alex’s fanny pack is slung across the back of a chair. 

But when she runs downstairs, clad in her dinosaur slippers, rushing to the garage to see if the guys were there -- they aren’t. They have crossed over. 

As she moves through the day, she’s a new Julie, but everything else is the same. Instead of a baseball cap and low ponytail, Julie throws on her black jeans and Reggie’s leather and lets her hair run wild. She’s displaying a confidence that Flynn hasn’t seen in a long time, that seemed to have hit Julie overnight. 

Julie sings Wake Up in music, and keeps her spot in the program. She doesn’t oogle Nick in the halls and she tells Carrie off when there’s an attempt at an insult made. 

Real or not, the boys helped her. They did their job. 

When she gets home, and Ray irks her about cleaning the garage or selling the house, she is quick to insist that she doesn’t want to move and that if he needs her for the rest of the night, she’ll be in her mother’s studio.

There aren’t any instruments except for the piano, and the space has the original layer of dust that it had before her and the guys started using the space again. Julie feels empty. But she reminds herself that the ring on her finger is real, extremely real, so she retraces her steps that she had taken in the first episode and tracks down the Sunset Curve demo CD, puts it in the stereo, and plays it. 

Nothing happens. Or, at least -- nothing that she could see.

The camera pans up as Julie is hard at work to organize the garage, and we see the boys in the chairs on the ceiling, watching over her fondly. 

~This is where @willexx started to throw in some epic ideas~

The boys are real, and they have crossed over, which renders Julie unable to see them. However, in her reset reality without them, no one remembers Julie and the Phantoms or the fact that the boys existed in the first place. The boys, while she can’t see them, visit her and try to make contact with her as much as they can, even though their times with her are limited since they are supposed to be on the other side.

She’ll feel a ghost of a touch on her hand or her hair, and know that Luke is there. When she’s in the car and the radio is on a country station, she knows that it’s Reggie. In a journal for school, a small “okay” will be written in the corner of a page, and it is Alex. These little notes keep her going, and she’ll just sigh and say “my boys,” and leave everyone around her confused. 

Sometimes, when she wakes up in the morning, the demo tape can be heard playing in the garage. Somehow she’ll get filled with hope that if she runs into the garage, the boys will be there rocking out without her like she used to scold them for left and right -- but no one is there. Ray comments that the stereo is broken and Julie has no choice but to nod along. 

One day she finds Luke’s songbook that had been buried in the plastic garbage bags of the boys’ belongings. She still brings Unsaid Emily to his parents, and she cries herself to sleep that night. 

When Julie blows up as a solo artist, she actually records Unsaid Emily, and she records Bright, and all of the other songs that her and Luke wrote together. Luke Patterson is in the writing credits for many of the songs, where Trevor never bothered to list him, and a part of Luke is at piece. 

On the two year anniversary of Rose’s passing, Julie finds Luke’s “angst flannel.” Ray asks where she got it; she tells him a thrift store. But it feels warm, like all of the guys are there, hugging her. 

Another morning, she could swear that Luke and Reggie are strumming out Flying Solo on level one volume, and once again finds herself darting to the garage with no good excuse except to keep her hopes up. They, unsurprisingly, aren’t there -- but a note is, that says “you’re a star, Jules. We love you.”

The handwriting is messy. She knows it’s from Luke, who probably fought the boys to even write the note because he just wanted to talk to her even though they need to move on and his handwriting is awful. The note gets tucked into the pocket of the flannel, and when she needs to be reminded that she’ll be okay, she pulls it out of the pocket and holds it tight. 

Before every show, she reads the note, and mumbles a little prayer to them wherever they are -- even if no one else believes they are real. 

When Luke’s flannel starts to lose it’s original sweet scent of Emily and Mitch’s house, Julie spends an hour crying on the floor of her bathroom. A faded orange beanie appears in her room the next day. 

Little notes from Luke appear here and there, but never from any of the guys. In the shadows where she can’t see them, Alex tells Luke that in order for both themselves and Julie to move on, Luke needs to stop leaving her notes -- so most of the ones that Julie finds are even more messy than usual, like Luke was trying to write them without the guys noticing. 

During one of their forbidden conversations, Julie says to Luke: “hey, I never told you this before... But I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t know what I would do without knowing that you guys were still around. I think I would have lost my mind, and would have been convinced that I went crazy.”

Luke could have ran to Alex, repeated Julie’s tearful words, and given the drummer a fat “I told you so.” But he doesn’t. Julie’s validation is the only validation that he needs. 

Whenever her and Carlos and Ray make an extra seat at their dinner table for Rose, Julie imagines, deep in her mind, that it is for Reggie too. Reggie deserved a seat at their table; deserved to be a part of their family. A family that would have loved him.  And when a fork falls off of the table, Julie knows he’s there. One day, Julie asks Ray how he would have felt about having another son. He responds confused, and Julie gets tears in her eyes, and neither of them bring it up again.

When Julie and Flynn go to Pride together, Julie wears Alex’s fanny pack even though she hadn’t gotten any signs from him since they had all moved on. He still doesn’t reach out afterwards, too overwhelmed by her gesture to think of a way to properly extend his gratitude and love for the girl who is keeping his spirit alive -- but Luke lets her know that he was grateful. 

Luke still visits Julie like he visits Emily and Mitch. And on Luke’s birthday every year, Julie goes to a little bakery after school and buys herself a cupcake; sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to light a candle and sing happy birthday. When she lights the candle, the candle gets blown out. Every year after that first year, she gets candles that you have to turn on and off so that Luke can’t ruin the moment. 

(He ends up throwing the fake candle on the ground out of retaliation.)

Julie is so emotionally stable for the most part that the complete change is a shock to Ray. He tries to ask her what happened, but she always acts like nothing happened and then hides in her room for hours. Sometimes, she makes random little comments out of the blew and Ray has many conversations with Victoria on whether or not he should have Julie seeing Dr. Turner again. 

At her first solo concert, Julie walks into the dressing room to find “Stand Tall” written three times, in three different handwriting styles, in red, pink, and blue. The message in blue is the messiest by far, and is followed up with a heart. 

The name of Julie’s first album is Phantoms. 

#julie and the phantoms #julie and the himbos #jatp #jatp theory #jatp headcanons #julie molina #luke patterson

[magnetarmadda]

Mad. Mad. Mad. WIP game. I want them all. But pls. When you have a moment. Tell me about Martin following Jon to America and please share something about cat sweaters. I think cat sweaters came from one of the servers but I hunger for jontent

Cat sweaters IS from the server! I no longer remember if it started in the a tma-general channel or a bunnies channel, but either way, my outline includes lots of ideas from other people lol. It doesn't have much more than an outline atm because I'm just not sure what kind of tone I'm looking for yet, but we'll get there

Jon knits the sweaters for cats (Elian), takes photos of the cats in the sweaters (me), writes blurbs about their personalities and likes/dislikes (Elian), and spends one-on-one time with them (me) to help them get adopted

Tim is the volunteer and outreach manager

Sasha is the adoption manager and becomes the in-house tech support

Elias somehow works above Jon, as like a "regional manager" of the south of England's humane societies or something, idk yet i haven't looked into the structure of animal shelters in the UK yet

Rosie gets promoted to be Elias's assistant, so they hire a new receptionist and adoption coordinator

cue Martin (his first day goes v badly)

Gerry is a freelance photographer they hire to do photoshoots for the shelter (Dathen), and he does it v cheap because we stan jon&gerry in my house

Georgie and Melanie sometimes do voice acting for shelter commercials bc Georgie adopted The Admiral from the shelter around the time Jon started working there, and they become friends again that way

Gertrude used to run the shelter and the back office is a mess bc she never filed the paperwork properly, but damn did cats get adopted when she was there

Trying to figure out who the in-house vet/animal tech(s) should be, and then someone to be the vet on contract with the shelter (in the us at least, it's rare for a shelter to have their own in-house vet)

Eric Delano, Veterinarian (thanks be to Elian)

For no reason I can discern, my brain keeps going to Michael Shelley as the groomer they have on contract lol

Martin: "aren't cats just like, dogs you can't train and don't listen to you?" everyone slowly turns to stare (Jack)

and then there's a DOG in the CAT SHELTER

Okay SO the Martin follows Jon to American bunny is from last September in the writers' server where like, I dunno, a dozen? or so of us all started talking about this idea and I really don't know how many people all started WIPs, but there were so many different directions floating around. Mine is mostly going to be like comedic timing and shit and follows this idea:

Julia: you and your Little boyfriend need to get in the car right now

Jon (while Martin sputters): hey! He’s taller than me!

Martin: …

Julia: …

Jon: …

Martin: …

Julia: …

Jon: OH!

Basically, Julia and Trevor kidnap them, but while they're in the car, they're having a heart-to-heart and Julia is like "what the FUCK can't this WAIT" and Jon's like "NO THIS IS THE THIRD TIME I'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED IT ABSOLUTELY CANNOT WAIT"

Here have a snippet lol

Martin hadn't initially intended to join Jon on his American adventure, but when he got the phone call from Jon after he landed admitting he needed more statements, Martin positively bullied Elias into paying for Martin to take them himself.

Elias had relented eventually, but Martin thinks it's more likely because he'd gotten Melanie to agree not to try to kill Elias while he was out of the country. Martin owes her big for this.

Because, as much as he's trying not to freak out at this exact moment, being able to be with Jon after the Usher Foundation turned out to be a dead end and the exhaustion had hit on the ride to Chicago was worth whatever Melanie wanted in exchange.

Martin's crush has gotten a little out of hand by now. He can admit that. It's less a casual-if-awkward crush on his attractive-but-prickly boss and now a solid infatuation with a mess of a man who sometimes remembers he's supposed to give Martin work instructions. Between the kidnappings and the injuries and the deaths.

Christ, what has his life become?

But being with Jon through this has made Martin feel actually useful, capable of doing something instead of just waiting around and reading old, mostly useless statements. Making Jon eat and sleep and stop working for five goddamn minutes sometimes, Christ Jon, might not be actively stopping the Unknowing, but it is at least directly assisting the person in the best position to stop it.

Also, it means Martin gets to see Jon soften and something akin to relax. His gay heart can't always take it, but he files away every moment to pine over when he's back home in his post-Prentiss flat.

This moment, though? Yeah, he's going to do his level best to forget it.

Martin had thought he'd spotted someone following them about a day ago, and he and Jon have been taking turns checking every half hour or so. They've finally stopped to eat at a diner—a real American diner, does this appeal to your retro aesthetics, Martin?, Jon had teased when they walked in—but their meal is interrupted very abruptly.

#my writing #my fic #the magnus archives #jonmartin #wip game #tag game

[real-fanta-sea]

Prompt for the kiss no. 71

Prompt: "Not to be cringe or anything, but I really like the idea of the kiss 71 (height difference kisses where one person has to bend down, and the other is on their tippy-toes)...where Trevor is his true height. i.e. Ogg's height and Michael has to stand on his tiptoes to snog him."

I'm sorry, anon, but I saved the post as a draft and it just vanished into thin connection. So, I have to answer this way.

This work is more of a spur of the moment thing, but I kinda like the way it turned out, being it just my emotions spilt onto paper. If you'd like, you can read it on AO3 here, or under read more. I hope you'll like it as much as I enjoyed writing it! :)

tw: kissing, child abuse memories

It's been three weeks already.

An unhealthy greenish glow of flickering light tubes and the icy breath of an industrial refrigerator made him shiver as Michael, gliding on the orbit touching stars in his mind, put yet another box of ready-made microwave hamburgers into his shopping cart. If he were not a regular in this particular shop, he would have got lost. It resembled an anthill with seemingly infinite shelves and aisles, bursting with the merchandise, even though the depressed lights covered everything in the same shade of decay green. The same life outlook was shared with most of the shadows roaming around whose name tags qualified them as proud employees of Flormart.

It's been three weeks, and he still stuck around, hanging on his every word.

Michael pushed his cart further from frozen goods, and the pictures swirling and smearing all around transitioned from photoshopped vegetables to flashy fireworks of chips and other guilty pleasures he planned on indulging in later on. Some people would find the height of the shelves menacing, but to Michael, it was just a memory that pulled him from the orbit back to earth and placed him in the middle of a football pitch. The smell of sweat building up underneath his helmet. The crunch of the crisp lawn under his feet. The spotlight following him whenever he scored. Cheering faceless crowds in time with busty faceless girls' pompoms. But most of all, he felt happy again - needed, cherished, innocent, and with a bright future awaiting his embrace. But then, just as he crossed from the snacks aisle to the alcohol quarter, the football stadium lights flickered and turned bright red. All the faceless girls turned around, their mouths gaping as if someone dislocated their jaws, and the cheering turned into a hellish cry of pain. Where their eyes were supposed to be, he saw a flair, screwing itself deeper into their skull, and a stream of scarlet goo drip down on their immaculate white dresses.

It's been three weeks, and somehow, his puppy-like behaviour didn't irk him yet. Quite the opposite if he were honest with himself - he felt strangely peaceful in his company.

Michael gulped in a desperate attempt to wash down the horror that invited itself under cover of a happy memory. Shaking his head only did so much and dispersed the spectators and cheerleaders alike, in the same way shaking a snowy paperweight would. Michael's chest constricted as he felt unable to breathe in properly, people splatting and exploding upon impact all around him in his mind. Suddenly, he felt a pull under both of his shoulders and found himself flying towards the pitch-black sky, where instead of one moon, two shone down on him. As he flew closer, they shrunk into two amber irises - and Michael immediately knew who pulled him out of the memory. As he crashed into a mass of pink candy cotton clouds, his vision blurred just to clear up when he felt a solid surface under his feet and someones hot hands in his. Somehow, he found himself looking at the tips of abused old pair of sneakers he was wearing, the same pair Michael knew he wore that faithful day at the airstrip. A moment later, a couple of dark blue, equally run-down ones stepped into his field of vision. He slowly let his sight slide up on crumpled jeans, the hem of a military jacket, a pair of dog tags hanging around a slender neck, a sharp jaw, a pair of full dark lips and finally, to the pair of amber eyes, eyes that radiated worry, care and, at the same time, something he could only read as love and utmost devotion.

It's been three weeks since the incident, and anytime he woke up from a nightmare that played in his mind over and over again, he was there to soothe him; he was there waiting for Michael's tears to dampen his naked shoulder. He didn't bitch about it and didn't tell a soul in the morning.

Michael let out a shaky breath. Stopping his feet from casually continuing in their stroll proved harder than he thought, and he leaned on the shopping cart handle, running fingers through his hair. He couldn't decide what mortified him more - the creativity his brain proved to possess when playing out the horrible things he has witnessed in just a few years of his fresh adulthood, or the way it put his acquaintance on some fucking pedestal and presented him as the alpha and omega of his thoughts and desires.

"Hey Michael, are you ok?"

Speaking of the devil... "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I just.." Michael breathed in again and turned towards the source of the voice, trying to display a small smile by twitching his tired lips "I need a smoke, that's all."

It's been three weeks, and he got that tingling feeling in his guts already. He could barely tolerate touch or prolonged eye contact without getting goosebumps and that ticklish feeling solidifying and slicing right into his groin. Michael wanted to believe it was just his weird head showing gratitude for saving his ass, but anytime he found himself in the company of that amber-eyed twink, the longing grew worse.

"Hey, how about a bottle of something to wash the cig down?" said the guy and his oversized jeans jacket hanging from his shoulders cringed into weird shapes as he took one of his hands out of his pocket and pointed his thumb towards the shelves. He looked so adorably dishevelled in all jeans, and with his silky hair framing his hopeful face, Michael couldn't have said no to anything he would suggest. Instead of mustering the strength to say no, Michael threw another smile towards his companion and turned his back to him to choose the dream crusher he wanted to numb them with before they went to bed.

To someone who grew up in a functional family, all the labels and bottle shapes would seem the same. To Michael, however, to choose the right brand and size meant the same as selecting the bananas or avocados of the proper ripeness would for them. It was a work of art; he learned so much in the ten years of living with his stepfather. While scrutinizing the shelves, index finger and thumb scrubbing on the sides of his chin absent-mindedly, he remembered how they would come to the similar shop together, he and his mother's second husband, and how he slipped behind the shelves. At the same time, Frank chatted with the clerk, and he stuffed his lunch box with a large flat bottle of Chief's Heritage Fire Water whiskey. He had to carefully close it to avoid disturbing the aluminium foil that served as a guard from the primitive electronic protection device they had to pass through on their way out. Michael would then tuck his stepfather's sleeve, babble some cute nonsense to get candy from the unsuspicious clerk, and after they paid for the two packs of cigarettes and a beer, they would leave. Frank would let him chug on whiskey then, and if he were in an exceptionally good mood, he would let him sleep through the night without beating the shit out of him.

Finally, spotting the whiskey he knew so well on one of the top shelves, Michael attempted to grasp it but only managed to graze his fingertips against the bottom of one of the bottles that rocked gently upon touch but otherwise didn't move an inch. "Fuck", he uttered under his breath, cracked his neck and stretched onto the tips of his toes, steadying himself by holding onto one of the lower shelves. But, again, he could only touch the bottle but not get a good hold of it. He even contemplated climbing the shelves to get it, as if the shame of his disappointing height haven't already painted his cheeks bright red and didn't make him want to leave the shop right away. Just as he braced himself for the climb, eyes fixed on that damn bottle, a gentle touch of someone's hand squeezing his shoulder made him turn around. It was Trevor's hand, and even though Michael still had to look up to meet his eyes, the small sympathetic smile put him in ease in a blink of an eye.

"Chief's, huh? Good choice, Mike!" the praise in his voice made Michael shiver, and he desperately tried to ignore the warmth he was receiving through the palm still steady on his shoulder and which upset his heart into beating twice as fast as ever before. "My old man used to drink this. It tastes like cat piss but knocks you out good for the buck." Trevor's grin felt like a warm touch sunrise after countless years of freezing darkness. Michael couldn't help but soak in the warmth, allowing himself to lose himself in the feeling completely. "Let me get it for you, eh?" he heard Trevor say from somewhere near, and before he could object, most of the light was obstructed by a jeans-clad chest.

It was then when Michael closed his eyes and tried to get hold of the situation. Trevor, the guy he only knew for three weeks, pushing Michael's back onto the shelves as he leaned for the bottle but also pushing his chest almost to Michael's. If it weren't for a couple of inches of hot air and fabric between them, their bodies would brush against each other. Michael could only gulp when he opened his eyes again, and his mind provided him with the maddening picture of Trevor's naked lean chest, peppered with dark brown hair as if puberty marked its way down towards his groin with it. Michael's head was spinning when he looked up to see Trevor still busy fetching the bottle. Michael's racing imagination saw him grabbing the guy's head, crashing lips with his and dissolving into what he thought would be the best kiss he would ever receive. Michael gulped again. He had to have him.

He was anxious about the way it was too easy to raise both his hands and grab fists full of other man's jacket as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Michael didn't fight it when he felt his muscles pull on the fabric and only turned his gaze up to where he expected Trevor's eyes to look once he would feel the movement of his clothes. Michael didn't have to wait for it at all, actually; the puzzled expression was already waiting for him to drink it up. However, he couldn't maintain the contact for too long as his eyes focused on something completely different; the dark lips, deliciously parted in the unspoken question. The distance between his own and them unnerved him, and in the sparking silence, Michael again propped himself onto the tips of his toes, pressed harder on the fabric to steady himself and, closing eyes, pressed his lips to Trevor's.

For a delicious moment, the world fell apart as if some invisible force made the dimensions crash down. The trembling soft firmness against his lips sent shivers down his spine with each cautious move. Whenever Michael recalled the moment years later, he could always sense the faint smell of cigarettes, petrol and sun mixing between their bodies and the way the ground shook and cried under his feet when he felt Trevor's palms slide down his sides and pull him closer, effectively sweeping him off his feet.

Trevor seemed to be relishing at the moment as much as Michael was, but when he felt solid ground under his feet again, and the pair of arms letting go of him, Michael reluctantly broke the kiss with a coquettish wet pop and tried to catch his lost breath. Then, leaning against the shelves again, he only dared to peek up when his cheeks stopped burning from what felt like a mixture of acid and a marathon run. Trevor's face might as well have been a mirror, for he looked down on Michael with eyes wide, face red and lips wet and trembling as if he didn't get a grasp of reality yet. Michael couldn't help but let the anxiety scream right to his face in the voice of his stepfather - and there were thousands of things he might have ruined then and there, just because he didn't fight his stupid queer side, because he let himself kiss another man, because by the twisted chain of mistakes he fell from what could have been a good life to longing after a rabid smuggler in the middle of a liquor aisle.

Just as he was about to duck under Trevor's arm and run away from the voice and feelings of shame it brought about, he was stopped by a gentle, almost shy touch of a hot palm on his cheek. The slender fingers brushed against his face in such a delicate way Michael's heart skipped a beat, and closing his eyes, he leaned into the touch, seeking the soothing silence it brought with the warmth. The hand fit his cheek like a glove, Michael mused as he relaxed into slow movements of fingertips on his temples. Right there, at that moment, everything felt so right, so natural. Why has he deprived himself of the delicious heat for three weeks when somewhere deep inside, where the beating of his heart always gave away the truth, he knew he needed it from the start - well, Michael didn't know. Instead, he slid his arms around Trevor's waist and buried his face into his chest.

"Michael?"

The vibrating echo of his name, spoken in such a husky yet caring way, made Michael squeeze his arms around Trevor even tighter. He sought the last bits and pieces of it before he dared to speak up himself, afraid of spoiling the delicious contentment of the moment.

"Let's get out of here."

A gentle kiss on top of his head and long arms lacing his shoulders later, Michael found himself too far from Trevor for comfort. But even with the newly gained distance between them, a quick glance sideways has provided him with a sight of a beaming smile and a fire deep inside Trevor's eyes that made his own lips twitch into a happy upwards bow. As they rolled into the checkout, Michael has noticed the world has changed as well. The depressing shade of green has somehow transitioned into a welcoming warm white; the shadows that they passed by on their way in suddenly bloomed into happy faces. The various packings of goods exploded in all the colours of the rainbow. As Michael and Trevor emerged into the darkness of the parking lot, ready to relive their revelation in thousands of ways, Michael has felt at peace with himself for the first time in forever. The days of the inner night were over.

#michael de santa #trevor philips #trikey #kissing prompts #gta v fic #real_fanta_sea.txt

[gifted-burnout-archive]

The Games We Play

1. Good News, Ruined.

Word Count: 7.8K+

Author’s Note: I had a flood of inbox requests surrounding Luke Patterson x Reader, enemies to lovers/fake dating/all the good stuff, and decided it was too good not to make something bigger. this chapter was sooo fun to write, and obviously with the whole thing being in an AU universe, I get to change a bunch of shit without consequence... So thank you for reading, I hope you love it, this is my nonsense.

Warning: none.

masterlist | taglist

--

Parents tend to assume things of their children, the practise usually implemented by those who believe ignorance is bliss, especially when it’s easier to assume your kid is studying, or asleep in bed, or catching up on their reading list. Why worry about what your kids are up to after hours when you could share a bottle of wine and fall asleep on the living room sofa watching some shitty Hallmark movie? Enjoying the perfect ideal, even if it isn’t, in fact, real.

It was this sort of behaviour from the likes of Luke Patterson’s parents that led to him sneaking out pretty much every night of summer.

This was, of course, on top of lies about study groups and volunteering work and classical guitar lessons with his school teacher during the day, and it had been going on a lot longer than just the summer. But could anyone really blame the boy when he once again climbed out his bedroom window that last night of the summer, armed with his guitar on his back as he grabbed his bike and started off in the warm August air?

The soft breeze rushed through Luke’s hair and sent his flannel overshirt billowing behind him as he rode down his street, destined for the other side of town, to the other reality he had created without his parents’ knowledge, the world glowing under the last traces of another beautiful sunset. The reds and oranges gave way to tinges of green and the endless expanse of midnight blue the later hours welcomed, street lamps slowly flickering to life as shadows grew and Luke took a hard turn left onto an underpass, pedalling as fast as he could.

He was already late, he was usually late, but that night his mom and dad had demanded a family meal before he began his senior year, something about tradition or memory-making he had been too preoccupied to listen to. His year wasn’t going to be great because of family albums over his dad’s famous chili, though it was very good chili: no, his year was going to be great because of the people waiting for him at the end of his bike ride, and the news that waited with them.

Luke’s summer hadn’t been spent studying like he told his parents, and it hadn’t been spent the way many of his classmates enjoyed their time off school. Luke’s summer, and the majority of his Junior year before, had been spent in a garage in the LA suburbs, one that belonged to the Molinas. He had spent every spare moment there writing, practising, rehearsing, because Luke’s end goal in life was nothing like his parents had planned for him:

Luke was going to be a Rockstar, and the way to that wasn’t school. It was Julie and the Phantoms.

As he pulled up to the familiar residence about fifteen minutes later, legs aching from the high-speed ride over, Luke couldn’t help but smile. Ray and Carlos were out on the porch playing a game of cards under string lights, and it looked like Mr Molina was losing quite spectacularly to his ten-year old son.

“Hi Mr Molina!” Luke called with a wave, distracting Ray for long enough that Carlos managed to sneak a peak at his dad’s hand and plan accordingly.

“Luke, it’s Ray. Please.” Ray corrected, for the one hundredth time, but Luke was a polite kid, and while he wasn’t one for following his own parents’ rules, he was too respectful to ever start his friend’s dad by his first name. “Everyone’s in the garage, they’re waiting for you before they check the website.” Ray called over, and Luke nodded with a bright smile, waving a hurried hello and goodbye to Carlos before rushing towards the garage at the far side of the house, pulling off the straps of his guitar case and bringing it to his front.

The front pocket was stuffed full of scraps of paper, possible lyrics for new band music, which was required since they had managed to get on the YouTube trending page a few months before, and had begun playing the LA music circuit with high levels of success. The band had only been formed, properly at least, for the last year, and their sudden success was calling for them to be scooped up by a record label any day now.

That’s what the team were congregating for that night, Luke entering the converted garage, their studio, to find his bandmates huddled on the couch with their closest friends. In the couch’s centre was Reggie, Julie and Alex: to the blonde’s right was his boyfriend Willie, to Reggie’s right was his girlfriend Kayla, and Flynn paced on the other side of the coffee table, only coming to a halt as six pairs of eyes came up to find Luke fixing his hair from its windswept state after biking across the city.

“Where the Hell have you been?!” Flynn exclaimed, wide eyed and all gestures. She was a Junior like Julie, and perhaps the band’s number one fan: it made sense, she was kind of their manager. “The site is going live any minute now, and we’ve been waiting almost an hour for you to show up!” She hollered, Luke coming forward and placing a hand on her shoulder, the younger girl scowling at him as he did, but she stopped talking, allowing the boy a word in.

“My parents wanted a family meal, I got here as soon as I could.” He explained to the anxious faces, his eyes travelling down to the laptop sat on the coffee table that they all seemed rather focused on. “Is this it?” He asked, and Julie quickly nodded, turning the laptop, displaying a countdown on a website, to face Luke.

48 seconds… He had arrived in the nick of time.

“Will you read it first?” Julie asked in a quiet voice, Flynn taking the girl’s space on the couch behind her, squishing herself between Reggie and Alex. “You take bad news best…” It wasn’t actually true, but it seemed like Luke had been nominated for the task of finding out whether they had hit the jackpot, and looking at his friends’ all tucked onto the three-seater couch, Luke couldn’t bring himself to refuse.

“Alright.” He said with a curt nod, taking a seat at the opposite side of the coffee table as Julie sat herself back down, now on Flynn’s lap as the two girls hugged onto one another in fear.

23 seconds…

“This could be it…” Reggie muttered; his hand interlocked with Kayla’s. She and Willie had come along as emotional support for their boyfriends, and it was a good call: Alex was as pale as a sheet, and Reggie looked like he might vomit. “Imagine… If we’re in this competition, if we qualify… Guys, we could be signing with Fall Down.” He continued, the seconds ticking away as a silence filled the air after the bassist’s words. He was right, sure, but it was too hopeful.

The competition was country-wide, and thousands of bands had sent in their entries. It was quite literally a one in a 100,000 chance they would make it, that they would be one of the twenty bands picked for the competition.

After all, the tagline was quick to remind that ‘only the best’ would get into the Fall Down Records’ Battle of the Bands.

“3… 2…” Luke counted down, and as countdown finally hit zero, Luke refreshed the page.

Instead of the list Luke and his friends had expected to appear, instead he was greeted by a video, and the boy quickly pressed play, turning up the volume to let it play around the room.

“A very big hello from Fall Down HQ in Los Angeles!” The laptop spoke, and Luke looked up at six confused faces, quickly adjusting the laptop and sitting himself on the table so he could watch along with his friends. “I’m Trevor Wilson, and I’ve been given the honour of sharing the Fall Down Records’ Battle of the Bands line-up with all of you, across the world. But first, a quick reminder of the rules.

“This competition looks for the very best young artists in the US, the twenty top finalists getting a chance to join in our televised six-week competition. Each week our contestants are given a new theme to perform for, and each week three bands are eliminated by judges’ and audience vote, until the Final Four Battle it out for glory.” The video explained, but this wasn’t new information to the seen friends watching with desperate hope. “And the grand prize? The victorious band will be leaving with not only a multi-album record deal with Fall Down Records, but their very own World Tour and $1 million for each band member! I cannot make this up, and I can’t stress more when I say that the band winning this competition are going to be changing the history of music, with Fall Down Records and me, Trevor Wilson, by their side.

“Now, enough of me talking. Let’s get to what you’re all here for, the big announcement. Thanks to everyone who submitted their auditions, don’t give up hope on just yet… But viewers, I give you your top 20.” The video disappeared, the website suddenly coming to life with the full list of finalists, and Luke jumped into action to begin scrolling down as everyone leaned forward, instinctively, Luke’s finger moving as fast as it could past other acts.

Finalists came from all across the country, from all music genres: they scrolled past Idols, a country trio from Nashville; Rallico, an R&B group from New York; Everest, the folk-pop band from Montana. Luke’s finger continued to scroll, through videos and bios on each of the bands, and he counted as he went through to himself. 11, 12, 13…

“STOP!” Kayla shrieked suddenly, Luke moving his hand from the mousepad in surprise, his eyes finally focusing on the screen, the haze of scrolling quickly subsiding. He had to blink once, then twice, just to be sure, glancing back at the shocked faces of his friends beside him, making sure they were all seeing the same thing.

NUMBER 15: JULIE AND THE PHANTOMS. FROM LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.

“Oh my God…” Alex breathed out, the first to speak as he clutched onto Willie’s hand, and one by one, the faces on the couch went from looks of worry to ones of ecstatic joy.

“Oh my God!” Julie yelped, jumping off of Flynn’s lap and flapping her hands, unsure what to do for a moment, but Reggie quickly stood up as well, and the pair embraced in a tight hug. It took a few moments for the rest of the room to process, but the moment everyone had…

Carlos and Ray heard the screaming from their cosy spot at the front of the house, whooping and yells of triumph echoing across the cul-de-sac as the kids celebrated their achievement.

The hugs and bouncing and complete inability to stay still probably lasted a solid seven minutes, and by the time Luke was coming down from the high of the news, Julie was disappearing round the corner to tell her dad and brother, Reggie was spinning Kayla in his arms, and Alex had found himself in a rather heated kiss with Willie. His eyes went back to the laptop, and he removed himself from a hug with Flynn to sit back on the couch, scrolling back up to the top of the finalist website page.

“What are you doing man?” Reggie asked, Kayla jumping off his back and taking the bassist’s hand as they walked over to Luke, the boy pressing play on the first of 19 videos, the audition tapes of the other competitors.

“We’re up against all these other groups, the competition starts in a few days… I want to see what we’re up against.” Luke explained, the words pulling Alex and Willie over to the laptop too. The five pressed play on the first video, Luke leaning over and turning the volume up as high as it would go as the first band’s music began to play. “Willie, can you go get Julie?” The raven-haired boy nodded, squeezing Alex’s hand one last time in celebration before rushing towards the Molina residence to collect Julie and Flynn.

“I can’t believe we actually managed this…” Alex scoffed in disbelief, running a hand through his hair and glancing over at his friends with the brightest of smiles. To think, the three had met at the age of 10, that all those days of mindless rehearsal led them to Julie, which led them to this?

“You guys deserve it.” Kayla commented with a smile, glancing down at her watch with a frown. “Shit, I forgot about curfew…” She muttered, pressing a kiss to Reggie’s cheek. “I need to get home; I’ll give Willie a lift too. See you tomorrow babe?” She asked Reggie, who nodded fast as Willie came back with Julie and Flynn. “Curfew, Skater Boy.” She reminded Willie; whose eyes widened before muttering a soft curse to himself.

“Right.” He sighed, waving a quick goodbye to his boyfriend and friends before slipping out the door with Kayla. Flynn watched them go, giving Julie and quick hug.

“This seems to be a band member meeting now, and I need a ride. See you tomorrow, alright?” Flynn asked, and Julie nodded, the pair sharing another hug before Flynn too disappeared through the garage doors, leaving the band to themselves.

There was a comfortable silence, as they all looked at one another, as they all came to terms with the sheer insanity of what was happening. Out of thousands upon thousands… Out of millions of applicants, Julie and her Phantoms had managed to snag a spot in the country’s biggest competition, managed to get themselves a chance at a record deal, at a world tour, at millions of dollars…

“So,” Julie said with a grin at her three best friends on the couch, the boys looking to her for their next move. “These other contestants…” She made her way over to the couch, sitting herself between Luke and Alex quite comfortably and taking charge of the laptop from Luke, who was happy to hand over control. “Why don’t we break this down?”

“Well,” Alex spoke up as he peered over Julie’s shoulder, the girl clicking on the second contestants’ audition tape, the sound of soft banjo filling the air. “If we want to win… We need to be looking for the biggest threat across the board, not just in one category.” He said, his friends looking over in slight surprise. It was undoubtable that of the guys, Alex was the smart one, but his smarts weren’t something he used very often to begin with. He coughed and ran a hand through his hair, sitting up a little straighter. “I just mean, the competition is a new theme every week, right? Well, we’re a band with a pretty wide range. I mean, Reggie with his banjo is just a start.” The blonde gestured across the couch, the compliment causing his friend to grin and wave. “If we’re optimistic here, planning the hypothetical that we make it past week one-”

“The band that’s going to be the hardest to beat is the one with range, like us.” Luke finished for his friend, clicking onto contestant number 3, the audition tapes only 90 seconds long, and gesturing to Reggie. “Get a pen and paper, we need to start writing notes.” He decided, and Reggie pouted.

“Why do I have to do it?” He asked, and Julie let out a laugh.

“Luke taking notes would be a waste of time, his handwriting is worse than a doctor’s, and Alex and I have thinking to do.” She explained simply, but it was enough for Reggie to grumble his way over to a dresser on the far side of the room they kept stocked with stationery in case inspiration struck, coming back over and sitting on the ground, getting into position to write.

“Back to contestant 1.” Julie instructed, the four beginning their first bout of research.

--

It was well after midnight when the band were only just reaching the end of their list. Alex was pacing as he listened to the audition tapes of their competitors over and over again, Luke and Julie both huddled over the laptop as Reggie jotted down notes.

They all should have gone to bed over an hour ago, what with their first day of school that morning, the last first day of school for the guys, but there was too much excitement, too much energy buzzing through them, and this research was the best way to channel it.

Where other subjects were not their strongest suit, everyone of the kids in that room excelled at music: not just playing it, but understanding it. This was a competition, and from what extensive knowledge they shared on Fall Down Records, this was not about looking for one-hit wonders or kids with untapped potential. It was about finding stars already in the making and pushing them forward.

This was good news for the four kids, and bad news for some of their opposition. It became clear in the first half of the tapes who was and who was not going to last long in the competition, a clear divide that didn’t seem like it would change any time soon. Alex was walking around the room that night trying to figure out just who would be going home in the weeks to come, and where Julie and the Phantoms would fall into the grand scheme of things.

“Final video.” Julie announced, the blonde looking over and deciding it would be best to sit himself down, at least for the watch through. Reggie too seemed intrigued as to who their last challenger would be. As Julie clicked her way onto the video, she was confused for a moment when presented with a black screen, wondering if she had accidentally turned her computer off.

Suddenly, a noise, unlike any Luke or Julie or the guys had heard in the last few hours of investigation. Accompanied by bongo drums and maracas, they were all expecting some sort of island breeze music, quite honestly, and Luke was about to pause and check the band’s name once more when the odd noise was suddenly replaced by a much more familiar one: an electric guitar coming in with the drums. An image finally flickered to screen, unlike the other videos of live performances across the country or awkward homemade recording sessions, this band had opted for an old, grainy video quality, a sepia coloured moving picture of hands beginning to play along on the guitar.

“All that I want is to wake up fine. Tell me that I’m alright, that I ain’t gonna die. And all that I want is a hole in the ground, you can tell me when it’s alright for me to come out.” The first few seconds were enough to leave jaws hanging, and though he would later deny it, Luke’s was on the floor.

The sound was so different, such a bizarre mix of percussion and pop and rock, with such a happy sound despite the bleak lyrics. It was impressive, to say the least, and suddenly the picture before them flashed away to reveal the band on a white stage, all dressed in block colours, and Luke scanned over the set up: they had a guy on drums who was dressed from head to toe in blue; a girl in all green on a beatmaker surrounded by the odd percussion they had heard at the song’s beginning, the funny noise revealed to be a marimba; the second guy was on guitar, though it wasn’t quite clear if he was lead or rhythm, and adorned in orange; and then finally…

“Hard Times.” The three other bands members sang, introducing the chorus for their front woman.

“Gonna make you wonder why you even try. Hard times, gonna take you down and laugh when you cry. These lives, and I still don’t know how I even survive. Hard Times, hard times.” She sang in a vision of block colour red, in a short tennis skirt and crop top beneath an oversized blazer, a pair of opaque red cat-eye sunglasses perched on the edge of her nose. The hands from the opening shots of the guitar playing had been her, the instrument a bright red that matched the outfit she wore, and Luke quickly realised that everybody’s instruments matched their clothing colour.

“Marimba…” Luke heard Reggie mutter under the music, only for them to be silenced by the chorus’ final line.

“And I gotta get to rock bottom!” The distortion on her voice as she half sang, half yelled the line was jarring and enchanting and Luke had to let out a bated breath as she continued, lifting the mic off its stand and walking to the boy in orange, passing the guitar duties over to him as she began to sing again, the camera focusing in on the girl in green’s ability on the beatmaker, her fingers dancing over the buttons as they brought in the bridge.

“Tell my friends I’m coming down. We’ll kick it when I hit the ground.” Another drastic change to this soft head voice, paired with the instrumental making it feel like, for a moment, they had all been sucked into a dream. “Tell my friends I’m coming down. We’ll kick it when I hit the ground… When I hit the ground. When I hit the ground. When I hit the ground.” The final note hung for a moment in the air, everything else going silent to let it resonate as the singer hung onto the boy in orange by the shoulder, her hand rising up to pinch his cheek before the final chorus hit.

“Hard Times.”

“Gonna make you wonder why you even try. Hard times, gonna take you down and laugh when you cry. These lives, and I still don’t know how I even survive hard times. Hard times.” The whole band sang the final chorus, their front woman spinning across the stage and singing in harmony with the girl in green, red’s voice riffing on the last notes as the beatmaker brought the snippet of music brought to a close, the screen going black as the music continued to came to a halt. “And I gotta get to rock bottom!”

And there it was… Their main competition.

Luke couldn’t drag his eyes away from the black screen, still trying to get over what he had just heard: while he was more partial to the music he made with his own band, there was undeniable star power in just that song, and four talented musicians to accompany it… Not to mention their lead singer.

He didn’t think he’d go into the contest attracted to a rival band member.

“They used… A marimba?! A marimba…” Reggie exclaimed finally, the first to talk, or rather yell, the leather jacket-clad boy jumping from his seat with his arms stretched in front of him in exasperation. The majority of their night had provided information on bands that gave them a challenge for first place, but confidence they might just grab it. And now? Now they had more than competition, but a threat to the biggest break of their lives.

“Electra Heart…” Alex read the band name out loud, frowning a little as he said it, something about the words seeming familiar. “I feel like I’ve heard of these guys before.”

“Maybe because they’re from California as well?” Julie suggested, pointing to the end of their title card as Contestant 20, stating the band were from San Diego, just two hours away from where they all sat.

“Watch out.” Reggie muttered, turning to face his friends once more and waving a hand at Luke. “Patterson’s smitten.” He muttered, the words knocking a frown on Luke’s face as he straightened up and closed over the laptop, putting the voice of the mystery girl to the back of his mind.

“First off, I’m not. And second? This is a good thing!” Luke exclaimed, though it was clear to everyone he was changing the subject. “The contest starts in two weeks, and we have the upper hand. We submitted Bright as our audition song, and it’s great, but that wasn’t even our best performance of it! We literally ran out of time to submit something better!” He reminded them all, drawing their minds back to the start of the summer. They had done their very best to piece together the audition tape, but Julie had suddenly gotten sick and they lost a week or so of their schedule. They ended up submitting a draft version, and still got in. “That is probably their top tier, and we know we can match and beat that! Right now, they’ll think they have this in the bag, when they don’t.” He got to his feet, walking over and hooking an arm around Reggie’s neck. “We’re going into this prepared, and ready to blow the show’s socks off, yeah?”

“Yeah!” His bandmates chorused, Julie standing up and prompting Alex to do the same, the four congregating in the centre of the studio. She was the first to hold out her hand.

“Legends on three.” She called; smiles shared amongst the band.

“One.” Reggie went first.

“Two.” Alex next.

“Three.” Luke finished, four hands stacked atop each other, four teammates ready to try and take on the impossible.

--

Sleep didn’t come to Luke that night.

He opted to cycle home despite the late hour, and clambered into bed at around 3 am while Reggie opted to stay overnight in the studio, too lazy to take himself home, not that it was an uncommon occurrence. Since Alex has started living with the Molinas, Luke and Reggie found themselves crashing more and more often.

But Luke cycled home anyway, mainly because he wanted the chance to think in private, to be alone as he planned their success now the competition slot was confirmed. It was the opportunity of their lifetime: he wasn’t going to give it up without a fight. No matter how beautiful the lead singer of Electra Heart was.

She weighed on his mind from the moment he saw her well past sunrise, and as the light flooded in through Luke’s curtains with the boy getting no sleep, he opted for a shower before his parents got up for work, and hopefully getting to avoid talking with them as much as possible until Kayla came by to pick him up, always with Julie, Alex and Reggie in tow.

That was another thing: how would he be suddenly breaking the news of his rock band on global television to his parents, who have yet to find out how he really spends his free time?

As he stood under the hot water that morning, washing away the adrenaline and sweat from the night before, he couldn’t help but hum the girl’s song: why was it so catchy? He tried to rinse it away with his fatigue and the aches in his legs from the biking to and from Julie’s, but it wasn’t budging, and neither was her face. In an act of defeat, Luke clambered out the showered, and shoved his earbuds in as he dried himself off and got dressed for the day, drowning out her voice in his head with the loudest music his phone had available.

As Luke continued about his morning, shuffling around the house as he sorted his laundry for the week and got his bag ready for classes, it was only once his dad yanked on of the earphones out of his ear that Luke figured he might have had the music too loud.

“Lucas, you play that music any louder you’ll be deaf by year’s end.” His father muttered, gesturing for his son to take a seat at the table. Luke glanced at the clock: it would be another twenty minutes before Kayla showed up in the car, and he decided it wasn’t the morning to start an argument.

“What’s up?” He asked, reaching over and grabbing an apple as his father sighed across the table, cradling a cup of coffee in his hands. Luke took a bite, the flavour and scent filling his senses, only for that damned ear-worm to return.

“Luke, your mother and I are worried…” His dad began, and Luke frowned. It wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation, it wouldn’t be the last. His parents had been set on sending him to college, or some sort of naval academy by Christmas, and Luke had continued to adamantly refuse. His grades were still doing well, perhaps thanks to the amount he copied off of Alex, and with his plan being the band anyway, it’s not like he needed school that badly anyway. “We want you to explore your options, to at least give some thought to your future.” His dad continued, and Luke took another bite of his apple, the song rattling in his head.

“I’m just fine.” Luke assured with an insincere smile, getting up from the table and heading back towards his room to grab his school bag. Perhaps he would just walk further down the road, get picked up on the Main Street.

“Son, come on now.” His father was a quiet, stern man, so while the words alone would have been a plea, the tone twisted them to an order, and Luke stopped just before his bedroom. “There’s an open day in a few weeks, all we ask is you go to it. No commitment, just attendance.” He continued, and Luke glanced back, shrugging.

“If you’ll get off my back about it then yeah.” He conceded with a roll of his eyes, quickly opening his room door and slamming it shut behind him, ending the conversation before his father ventured into small talk.

He waited in there, picking at his apple as he hummed the song from the night before, until a horn sounded outside, Luke then scooping up his school bag and rushing out the house as fast as he could, shouting a quick ‘goodbye’ as he slipped round the front door and closed it firmly, letting out a heavy breath.

He took a moment to compose himself before starting a light jog down his front lawn’s pathway to the car waiting at the bottom of the drive, chock full of his friends. Reggie was driving, Kayla and Julie sat tucked together on the front bench of the old vintage, while the back seat of the convertible was occupied by Alex, Flynn and Nick, who waved Luke over to the space free beside him.

“You know Kayla, the more people we pack in this car, the more likely it is your dad takes his car back.” Luke commented as he jumped into his tight spot in the back, sharing a fist bump with Nick as Reggie sped off in the direction of school.

“My dad gave up rights to this car the moment I started filling the tank, Patterson.” Kayla called back, Luke smiling and letting his head loll back as they raced along the back streets towards school. He could say he never felt more at home than with his friends, in moments like this.

“Like, shit, I forgot to congratulate you.” Nick called over the chatter in the car, garnering his friend’s attention with a dimples smile and tousled hair from the wind. Despite only the year separating them, Luke thought of Nick as a little brother, and the comment made him grin and pat Nick’s shoulder.

“Congratulate me when we win Battle of the Bands.” Luke corrected, leaning closer to make sure the front seat didn’t hear his next words. “And I’ll congratulate you once you finally ask out Julie, alright?” He posed the offer, Nick’s cheeks turning bright red. Luke chuckled it away, sharing a glance with Apex from across the backseat.

When they all got thrown into the same music class three years ago, it was pretty clear to Alex and Luke that Nick likes Julie, and vice versa. They had been trying to set the pair up ever since, with minimal levels of success. But with the impossible seeming to occur everyday now, who knew what might happen?

Reggie sped through a stop sign and near drifted round the corner into the parking lot, sending everyone in the car but Kayla grabbing for stability, whether it were the dashboard of the door or the back of seats, but they didn’t hit anything, and Reggie pulled into the assigned parking space the car had kept for the last year or so, right in front of the school quad.

“I can’t believe it’s the first day of our last year…” Alex remarked as everyone gathered their things and clambered out the car. They had become a collective over the past few years, a friendship group not easily frayed or broken, and as they walked in almost a clump across the school lawn, with Julie in the lead, it was quite difficult to not notice the rest of the school’s eyes resting on them.

Word must have gotten out about their good luck.

“What are you guys going to do without us when we’re gone?” Reggie asked with a grin, his arm sling over his girlfriend’s shoulder as the pair sauntered in the group’s centre, and Flynn turned back from her place beside Julie.

“Maybe get some school work done for once.” She clapped back, earning a chorus of chuckles and tones of agreement from amongst the group.

Luke was hanging back in the rear, taking a moment just to observe his friends, a habit he had gotten into over the summer: this was the last year they would, theoretically, all be together, and Luke had no intention of wasting any of his time with them.

“Hey, uh, Luke!” A voice interrupted his thoughts, the brown-haired boy spinning on the spot to come face to face with one of his classmates. She wasn’t someone he knew very well, granted, but he still smiled and took a step towards her, laying down the infamous charm.

“What can I do you for?” He asked with a dopey grin, which later turned to a smirk when she blushed profusely at his words.

“I was just… uh… Congratulations! On the contest, everyone’s talking about it.��� She paused, rummaging in her bag and pulling out a slip of paper, Luke pulling a hand out of his pocket to accept the offering. “If you ever, I don’t know, if you’re ever free and wanna go out for a coffee or something…” She trailed off, and Luke examines the name and phone number.

“Well, Sara,” He read her name out, looking up at her as he spoke. “I’ll send you a text, maybe?” He suggested, taking a few steps back when he heard the sound of Julie shouting his name.

“Uh, yeah! Cool! See you around!” Sara beamed, waving him off as Luke turned to catch up with his friends, the interaction boosting his ego a little more as he went into day.

In fact, by the time lunch had come around, Luke’s day had been rather jammed packed with words of praise and offers of phone numbers, and it seems like his band mates had been experiencing the same thing. When Luke arrived at lunch after a gruelling lesson with Mr Norbert, glad that the rest of his day would consist solely of music, he found his friends at their preferred lunch table, each with a collection of notes falling from their pockets.

“Am… Do I need to act more gay? I thought people knew I was gay.” As Luke sat down, Alex asked the question to the table, Willie’s hand rubbing his boyfriend’s shoulders.

“What do you mean?” Luke asked as he set down his tray and took a bite of his sandwich.

“Four girls… Four girls have tried to ask me out today! And I mean, how am I supposed to respond to that? Did they not know I was gay in the first place?” He questioned again, head frantically searching for an answer as the boy’s anxiety began to build, only to be wheeled by Willie’s lip pressing to Alex’s cheek.

“Join the club, guys.” Carrie spoke up from the end of the table, a vision in pink as she and Julie shared notes from a previous class. “I’ve literally been receiving Instagram DMs for years, all the Dirty Candi girls have. The amount of guys that think they can ‘make you straight’.” The girl involuntarily shivered and let out a sigh. “This is just the beginning for you four. The amount of fan mail thanks to the competition will be huge.”

The Dirty Candi girls had been a group as long as Julie and the Phantoms has, but their music was so different there was no need for competition. They all just sort of became friends instead, and when it became clear the girls wouldn’t be allowed to audition for the Battle of the Bands because of Carrie’s dad’s position at Fall Down Records, there was a mixture of sadness and relief. No hard feelings were had, and no hard feelings would happen, because the last thing the friends wanted was to be compared with one another. They were all talented.

Plus, Dirty Candi performed on Ellen, so if anything they were currently the more well-known.

“In other news.” Flynn spoke up, pulling her eyes away from her phone to address the group. “There’s a new transfer student.” She announced, and glanced over at the clock on the far side of the cafeteria. “We should all be meeting them in about half an hour.” She said decidedly.

“How do you know?” Reggie asked with a mouth full of pasta. He had a semi-circle of clutter around him as he tried to eat and copy homework all at the same time, the boy quite aware of how lucky he was to have better-prepared friends than him.

“Mrs Harrison was our free period supervisor this morning. She got a call, disappeared from class and didn’t come back for twenty minutes.” Nick spoke up on Flynn’s behalf, the girl turned back to her phone to feverishly type away at the screen. “Mrs H has to welcome all the new music students.” He added quickly, glancing across the table as Julie nodded in agreement.

“They’re a senior, or we would have seen them in classes this morning.” The band’s lead singer stacked on top of the Juniors’ theory, and Carrie quickly got her attention back to point out a mistake she had made on the maths coursework.

“New students come in every year.” Luke remarked, brushing off the fascination with a wave of his hand. “Maybe we should talk a bit more about, oh you know, the fact that we’re going to be playing to millions of people on a televised game show in a fortnight!” Luke exclaimed, earning grins from around the table as they all got that hit of realisation again. It had felt like a dream the night before.

“Well, I don’t wanna spill secrets…” Carrie started, all eyes quickly on her. “But with dad hosting the show, there are some responsibilities the Wilson family are taking on… Like an acoustic jam session for the competing bands to meet each other.” She revealed with a squeak, taking a hold of Julie’s arm with excitement. “And don’t even get me started on the Halloween bash the Record Label will be holding…” She added, and Kayla hit Carrie’s arm playfully.

“You keep this up and you’ll rig the competition, C.” Kayla reminded with a meaningful smile, and the pink-themed girl rolled her eyes, but fell quiet nonetheless.

The conversation steered away from the competition for the rest of the lunch period, the friends slowly beginning the walk to music as eyes watched them pass. It wasn’t something any of them acknowledged, well, apart from Carrie on occasion, but they were the popular kids.

It was a mixture of charm, friendliness and musical success, but they had become the ‘it’ kids of Los Feliz High. None of them particularly disliked the role they had been prescribed either: the more people they knew, the more people would hear their music, the more people they could share their passion with. And it was nice, too, sitting at the top of the food chain. They had all been at the bottom at some point in time, and knowing their influence on their peers was a positive gave them all a little bit of pride.

“Quickly, quickly!” Mrs H called from the doorway down the hall, ushering the group to hurry toward the classroom, Julie and Luke in the lead as the nine kids shuffled through the door of the band room, Mrs H closing the door behind them. Their teacher quickly checked through the window to make sure no-one was on approach.

“Mrs H, is everything ok?” Julie asked, taking a step forward, and their teacher nodded quickly.

“I have a favour to ask. We’ve got a new student joining. I didn’t want to ask with other kids listening in but.” Mrs H paused, and relief flossed the faces of her students. There wasn’t any danger, just a request they usually got. “Could you make her feel at home? I. She’s been admitted to the program without an audition, I have no clue of her ability. I just don’t want her being overwhelmed, turned away again.”

“Anything for you, Mrs Harrison.” Luke chipped in, their teacher smiling and letting out a breath.

“Thank you… Right, get yourselves seated, we can have a chat more about this competition during second period, I’ll go fetch her from the office.” Mrs H explained, rushing out the door as their classmates filed in, the room becoming a hub of activity rather quickly as kids picked up their instruments and began tuning.

“How does someone get into the music program without auditioning?” Reggie asked, though there was no malice, just naïve curiosity. Unfortunately, his friends didn’t know how to answer him. It was a question they all had on their minds as they got themselves comfy in the room’s far corner, Luke collecting his guitar and Reggie’s bass from one of the storage cupboards, the pair nodding Julie over to the piano to help them tune the guitars.

It was Julie sat herself down at the grand piano that the door suddenly swung open, Principal Brown coming into the room in a dazzling magenta pantsuit.

“Good afternoon students.” She greeted, receiving a chorus of ‘good afternoon Principal’ back. “As some of you already know, we have a new transfer student joining us for her senior year, and she will be studying alongside you all part-time at the school’s music program.” The principal prefaced, quickly gesturing outside the door for Mrs Harrison to enter along side their new classmate.

“Is that…” Julie whispered, receiving a nod from Reggie and Luke.

The girl from the video last night, the front woman for Electra Heart, stood in their music classroom’s doorway, dressed like a model off a runway, a cigarette perched behind one ear. She was wearing a pair of red plaid trousers, paired with black heels and a corset style crop top, an oversized jean jacket thrown on top, all matched to a pair of sunglasses perched on the end of her nose. Her hair was in a bun, showing off the cigarette behind her ear and a collection of piercing along the earlobe. Her nails were all painted the same colour of red as her trousers, which matched the colour on her lips, which matched the outer corners of her eyeshadow.

“Perhaps you can introduce yourself?” Principal Brown asked, she too noticing the cigarette and plucking it from the girl’s ear, throwing it in the nearby trash can. The girl seemed unfazed by her actions, eyes scanning over the room until they landed on the piano, and the band members stood around it.

Luke couldn’t help but stare back, trying his best to keep his jaw from going slack. How was she here? How did she look better in person? And why in the name of God was Luke overcome with a sense of nostalgia as they looked each other over. There was something other worldly about her, something that made Luke feel like he was younger again. It was the eyes, that raked over his body as she smirked, eyes Luke had known to be timid and frantic when they were kids…

It suddenly click in his head.

“Class.” Mrs Harrison decided to speak for the student. “The is Y/N Y/L/N.”

“No fucking way…” Alex muttered standing up from the back of the class, causing confusion amongst his and Luke’s friends. The rest of them seemed to be missing something important, but were yet to figure out what.

“Y/N, why don’t you find yourself a seat?” Mrs H suggested, Principal Brown taking her leave as Y/N sauntered towards the far corner of the classroom, not pausing for even a second as she sat herself on Luke’s chair, arms folding over her chest as Luke’s gaze on her turned from one of surprise to one of raw, unfiltered annoyance, something Julie would later describe as ‘the angriest she’s ever seen’ her friend.

The pair stared each other down for a moment, Y/N the first to move and reach out an arm, taking Alex’s nearby hand in hers as he stayed standing, shocked by the revelation.

“Seven years is a long time, isn’t it?” Her voice was smooth, trained, like molasses dripping down. It stuck in Luke’s head, the words taking hold over his brain just like her song had earlier that day. Alex pulled the girl to her feet suddenly, the pair embracing in a tight hug, staying like that for a moment as the class watched on, as their friends watched on.

When they finally pulled apart, the girl turned her attention to the frowning Luke, whose knuckles were clenched so firmly that the skin was as white as bone.

It couldn’t be. How was she here? It had to be some kind of joke.

But her eyes were the same, her smirk so familiar, and the deal was sealed when she sat herself back down and crossed one leg over another, in his chair, sending a wink his way that was anything but playful.

“Well, hello there, Skywalker.”

He had always hated that nickname...

--

TAGS: @siennanoelle01 @epikskool @eries45 @thesweetestsinner @fangirlangioma @moviesbooksandfandoms @ohyoureaqueenbutuncrowned @saroo-hawks @charliessunset @lana-moe-fandoms @bigdesi @avngrsinitiative @emotionalbruv @lolychu @lazydaisy19 @korydickson @futuremrsb-r-main @uglypeachh @reggieandthereggies @rogersangel @izzyhogue @writerinlearning @independentgirl @delicatelukepatterson​ @mybrainiswhack @uhmitstori​ @mon-charmante @writingforphantoms @musicconversedance @mjflower @heimdoodle​ @kcd15 @-episkey- @billiesburritoess @walkingonshunshine @obxmermaid​ @sunsetcurvenotsunsetswerve @kristencoontz @n0wornever @simp4madi @aliciameix​ @kinda-just-chillin-here @jatpfan @blueyed-one  @vicesvsvirtuesfanfic @ghostlyb1tch @leahstypewriter

#luke patterson #jatp au #luke patterson x reader #luke patterson x y/n #luke patterson jatp #jatp luke x reader #jatp luke #jatp #julie and the phantoms #willex #luke patterson imagine #fluffy smut #fluffy angsty smut #smut #fluff #angst #julie and the phantoms alternate universe #enemies to lovers

[fairyaali]

babe u better write a part three or something because we’re waiting-

ALSO IT’S BEEN SO GOOD WTF?? SO PROUD

sooo sorry for the long wait but here is PART THREE!  Thank you guys so much for the support, It makes me so happy that you like this mini series :’))) 

of course, here is Part one and Part Two ! <333

There he was, in the arms of another. There he was, his lips which should be on yours, on someone elses.

There you were, standing heartbroken at the scene before you.

You meet up with him the same night. A frown evident on your face the whole car ride until he stops the car in a parking lot and looks at you.

“You’ve been silent all night. Are you going to tell me what happened before we go to this party or are you going to be a moody little bitch?” His tone was stern and his words were like knives going through your heart.

“Where were you today?” You ask, still not looking at him.

He lets out a chuckle, “babe, I told you I had lacrosse practice.”

“I saw you at the mall with Delilah, Trevor.” You say, now looking at him, anger filling your body. “I saw you kiss her.”

He stares at you for a moment, you can see his face turn a slight red even in the dim light of his car. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Tears start to run down your face without you even realising. “I’m not fucking stupid Trevor! I-It was you, you kissed her a-and-“

“Hey baby please stop crying, who told you this? Your stupid friends? You’re kind of acting crazy right now.” He says cupping our face, a small, false, smile on his face while you try not to hyperventilate too much. “It doesn’t matter what you saw or what you didn’t. what matters is that I’m here and I love you okay? I’m with you right now because you’re the only one I want. Understand?”

You gulp and nod. Maybe it’s just one kiss, maybe your eyes were deceiving you. Maybe you were too infatuated by him to even function properly and get the fuck out of there. His heart is in the right place. That’s what you thought to yourself.

That’s what you thought to yourself even when you saw him make out with another girl at the party.

His heart is in the right place.

That’s what you told yourself while you sobbed in the bathroom.

His heart is in the right place.

That’s what you told your friends when they were concerned about what happened.

No. He cheated on you. He cheated on you and guess what you did? Held hands with him and pretended like everything was okay. You didn’t want to lose him. You didn’t want to leave.

You put a fake smile on every time you went out with him and when you got home you spent the rest of your night sobbing in bed.

You’re father asked you whats wrong. Why you weren’t eating. why you never smiled anymore at home. You’re the most precious thing in his life. His princess. He just had to know what was wrong and there you were, crying at the dinner table.

“But it’s okay daddy,” You sniffled. “I forgave him, he’ll change, he loves me.” You’re so naïve.

Your father was angry but didn’t say a word.

Two weeks later you were crying again but this time, at Trevors funeral.

You were so clueless. “It was just a car accident.”

“Drunk driving.”

“no I heard he took some real hardcore drugs before getting in his car.”

“Poor soul, so young.”

You heard people whisper at the ceremony.

No one could know that your father was the one who killed him.

Your father killed him. Your father killed him. Your father killed him.

“Wake up ma belle.” You heard a whisper.

You open your eyes and the night sky is above you, a few stars freckled here and there.

Your head aches but you manage to turn your head to the side, greeted by the sight of Chat Noir.

“What happened?” You ask, groggily.

You sit up and rub your head. Where did this cat take you? It seemed to be a rooftop of some kind but you had no idea where.

“You fainted.” He states and gives you a small smile. “But luckily I was there to help you.” He winks.

“wow my hero.” You say sarcastically and rolls your eyes but you end it with a small laugh. You stop laughing instantly when you realise what happened.

“My dad. Where is he?” You ask wide eyed.

Chat purses his lips together and looks away.

“Chat,” You say cautiously and gulp. “Tell me what happened to my father.”

“I’m sorry,” He says quietly and sighs. “He’s been arrested.”

You clasp your hand over your mouth and you can feel your heart sink in your chest. Tears well up in your eyes and they slowly fall while you quietly sobbed in your hand.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay.” You heard him say as he pulls you to him, his hand rubbing your shoulder to comfort you.

“what am I going to do, Chat?” You breathe out and look up at him. “I don’t know.” He whispers, concern filling his green eyes.

You could never allow yourself to be this vulnerable in front of anyone, let alone a complete stranger, but you trusted Chat for some odd reason. It could be the mask hiding who he really is or it could just be instinct but you knew he was a man with good intentions. He’s a hero after all and you felt comfort in that.

“I can take you home whenever you tell me okay?” He says and rests his head on top of yours.

You nod silently and nuzzle into his chest even further.

“Adrien…” You whisper. “Is-is he okay? Please I would never forgive myself if something happened to him?” You sniffle.

You could feel Chats’ smile growing. “He’s just fine m’lady, there’s nothing to worry about.”

You nod and start to give yourself time to think.

Both your parents were in jail. You were completely alone now.

You knew that the only guardian you had was your aunt back in New York. You knew that this could mean that the short lived happiness you found in Paris could end.

You were fucked. You couldn’t let that happen.

Your thoughts were interrupted by a sudden beeping noise.

“I’m sorry but I have to take you home before I transform back into my civilian form.”

You nod weakly and hold onto him. You feel him wrap his arms around you and suddenly you were leaping from building to building. If only you could feel the rush and excitement, but your mind was too occupied to even feel anything.

Before you knew it you were set on the balcony of your room. You slide the door open and see your curtains move with the wind. “Thank you Chat.” You say and look at him, trying your best to force a smile on your face.

“Please, it was my pleasure.” He says and kissed your hand, grinning at you.

You watch him almost about to leap off but you grab his tail. He looks at you, raising an eyebrow.

“Really, Thank you.” You say but this time you say it more firmly, looking straight into his eyes.

 He doesn’t break eye contact with you.

The feeling he made you feel was familiar, it made your insides flutter and warmth grow inside of you. It was comforting. A feeling you got when Adrien looked at you.

“I’m always here. Always will be.” He says and with that he jumps away.

You kept watching his silhouette leap off of the buildings until he disappeared into the darkness.

Be-friending a super hero could be another reason why you wanted to stay in Paris.

Your mind wondered off to Adrien. He was probably worried sick about you. You should text him to let him know that you’re okay. You knew you weren’t ready to leave your room for the next week probably. You couldn’t bring yourself to put on a fake smile and pretend that nothing is happening. You simply couldn't. 

You wondered if the masked superhero would come again.

Paris was your chance at a fresh start. Maybe that fresh start was short lived. or maybe this was just the beginning.

#mib #miraculous ladybug #chat noir #chat noir x reader #adrien agreste #adrien agreste x reader

[shu-bullshit]

Some 4am thoughts on Michael amd Trevor's characters ;-)

Saw a discussion about Michael's personality when I was going through tags and it got me excited, but I don't wanna disturb ppl by replying to an old post so I'm just gonna write down my thoughts here.

~

It does hurt to see that Trevor seems to have more tenderness and loyalty to Michael (ending A&B damn hurt me). And Michael does have said quite some terrible things behind Trevor.

However, Michael is the opposite of someone who can be understood simply based on what he says. He is a liar to other ppl, and even a bigger liar to himself. Actually, he uses too many excuses for what he did and said too many bad things about Trevor to convince me that he really believes he did the right thing. Cause if he really thinks so, he doesn't need to repeat again and again but just forget about it instead. In some coversations he had with Franklin before Trevor's part comes up (when u take him out), you can see that he feels guilty and regret about what he did in the past, for he really avoids to tell Franklin what exactly had he done and always claims that it was reasonable or there was nothing else he could do. All these just make me feel that he says these things to convince himself more than to convince other ppl.

He is a self-centered guy, but it doesn't mean he only cares about himself. We can see that he cares about his family (although often in stupid ways for he has probably never learnt how to do it right), and he is nice to Lester and Franklin, who he didn't know that long. By contrast, what he says about Trevor is often really cruel without enough reasons. So in my opinion, the reason why he is so mean to Trevor--who has been his best buddy for so many years--is his own sense of guilty. He is selfish in the sense that, he tries to get away from his guilt by denying it (like accusing Trevor as a time bomb) rather than face it, regret it, and make up to who he has hurt properly(this reminds me of his families as well--they blame Michael for commiting crime, but use money he got from crime anyway to maintain their decent life, they all want good life and moralty at the same time). Ironically, this selfishness is exactly why he is trapped in his self-loathing circles and can only sink deeper. And ending C would be his only way out.

Besides, though he uses his family as reason too many times that it feels more like an excuse, it is something to be considered indeed. Man with a family can not think the same way as man without. If he stayed loyal to Trevor and continued his crime life, then he would be a horrible father tp me. I mean, although apparently he didn't do so well educating and loving his childern after the change, it is still better to them than if he really died in a job or just kept being a criminal.

On the other hand, Trevor is never really some lovable kid whos just destroyed by horrible childhood. He partially is, but now he's mid-aged and has gone way further. Undeniable, Trevor seems more pure, more loyal and has a soft heart beneath, but evil things he does probably takes bigger part in the game. In my theory, Trevor kind of characters are usually more charming cause they are "in-video-games-only". His dramatic madness and unexpectable softness sets him apart from the real life--and who want things that they can get everyday? I am aware of what a terrible person he is as much as I enjoy it for it's pure fiction. We can tolerate Trevor's violence for he is too insane to be true, while Michael can totally exist in the real world, which can make ppl feel unfortable sometimes somehow.

In the end I just wanna say that they are both great characters and I love how they fit into each other so well despite all these differences. Gta 5's script is just sooo great.

#michael de santa #trevor philips #gta 5 #just some bullshit #lame wording from non-native speaker