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on-maars · 3 years

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Parenthood

Finally took the time to write a lil something for buddie again. Hope you’ll like this 🥰

Just Bobby acting like a dad to Eddie and them having a quick chat about his (obvious) feelings for Buck.

Read it on AO3.

Bobby doesn’t usually ask Eddie to help in the kitchen. Not that he doesn’t want it, he just knows that cooking is not exactly Eddie's area of expertise. This is a widely accepted truth among the 118.

Still, when Eddie asks him if he needs a hand in the kitchen this morning, Bobby finds himself nodding and handing him the knife to chop the vegetables while he’s keeping an eye on the meat.

Bobby doesn’t need much time to realize that Eddie’s sudden burst of willingness to cook may have been brought about by ulterior motives; his hand gestures are way too hasty, too sharp and the vegetables start to suffer the consequences, looking more like some kind of puree rather than small squared pieces like he asked him to a few minutes ago.

Bobby doesn’t say anything at first, wondering if it’s his place or not, but he quickly realizes he doesn’t have to. Eddie takes that decision for him a few minutes later by abruptly letting go of the knife, a dull sound resonating inside the living-room. Both Hen and Chim look up at him, share a quick glance with each other and flee the scene without looking back.

“I think I’m gay.” Eddie suddenly says and Bobby raises his eyes at him, wondering why Eddie opened up to him of all people, surely someone like Hen or Michael would be more helpful in the matter. Still, he stays silent and offers him a small smile of encouragement. “Demisexual, too.”

“Okay.” Bobby only answers.

“It means that I-”

“I know what being demisexual means, Eddie.” Bobby cuts in.

“I- I didn’t.” Eddie says, lowering his voice. “I only just found out about it. About everything, in fact. And- there’s a lot of terms, Bobby. It’s- it's a lot.”

“It can be pretty overwhelming at first.” Bobby agrees. “I wouldn’t know half of that stuff if it wasn’t for May and Harry.” He adds.

“Yeah, May was- She was very helpful actually. She was the first person I- I told. She kept sending me these articles afterwards and after a bunch of sleepless nights, it finally started to make sense. Or I mean I- I think it does. I’m still- still trying to figure it out, really.” Eddie asks, letting out a bitter laugh. “I mean, look at me. Coming to terms with my sexuality at age 30, it’s- it’s pathetic. I’m pathetic.”

“You’re not.” Bobby says, his voice determined. “Eddie, there’s no right way to figure out your sexuality just like there’s no right age to come out. And yeah it might be easier for some people but if that’s how you feel today then that’s valid too, Eddie. And these terms… These terms you’re looking for online, they’re only here to help, you do know that right? If you don’t exactly fit in a box, that’s okay too.”

“Yeah, yeah I- I know.” Eddie says, the tone of his voice still uncertain. He picks the knife again and goes on chopping the vegetables, more slowly this time, with more patience, more precision. He doesn’t look at his Captain in his eye, though. Not after what he just said, not after this conversation. And Bobby doesn’t push. He never does. He brings back his attention on the meat instead, turning the steaks so that they cook evenly.

For a few minutes, neither of them say anything. They just sit there, enjoying the silence, enjoying the quiet.

Eddie’s the first one to break it.

“It’s just not something I’ve been exposed to before, you know.” Eddie says. “The way I was raised, the house I grew up in. It’s never been something- something I had the luxury to think about.”

“But this changed.” Bobby finishes for him, smiling softly at Eddie when this one darts his eyes towards him for just a few seconds, looking away just as fast. Bobby can see him put his fingers together into a fist, most likely trying to push through the conversation despite the fear of confiding in someone about something so personal, so intimate.

“How could it not change?” Eddie answers, and Bobby catches him looking softly at the sleeping figure of Buck on the couch.

“You know you should just tell him.”

As soon as these words leave Bobby’s mouth, Eddie looks down, his cheeks turning a deep shade of red as his right hand rubs the skin of the back of his neck. “Tell him what?” He asks and Bobby rolls his eyes at him.

“Tell him how you feel.” Bobby clarifies. “You know he’s only waiting for you to get there.”

Bobby follows his gaze and his own eyes fall on Buck. Buck who’s sleeping on the couch, his mouth slightly agape, a book in his hands.

Bobby knows the kid enough to say with absolute certainty that the book he’s holding most likely focus on whatever topic Christopher is studying at school. It’s not rare for Bobby to find Buck deeply involved in a research spree on the internet, just to be able to talk about it and exchange some interesting facts with Christopher at the end of the day.

“How can you be so sure?” Eddie asks.

“It’s Buck.” Bobby answers so simply, like it’s reason enough. “He’s my kid.”

“How- how long have you known?” He says, his expression quizzical.

“That you two love each other?” Bobby starts, his eyebrows raised. “We all had our doubts. You’ve always been joined at the hip, Eddie. Sure, Buck was more vocal about it than you... You’ve always been quieter, more cautious.” He goes on but quickly adds when Eddie looks up at him with an alarmed expression on his face. “Which is not a bad thing. It’s just the way you are.”

“How could- how could you guys have known for so long?” Eddie asks with a sigh, his eyes still focused on the sleeping form of Buck. “I’ve been… I’ve been so clueless.”

“It’s not a competition, Eddie.” Bobby reminds him. “There’s a very thin line between friendship and relationship. And it doesn’t matter how long it took you to get there, Eddie. Because when you think about it, nothing of what you guys shared and continue to share today is going to change. It’s still gonna be there. You’re still gonna be best-friends before anything else.”

“I guess.” Eddie says, still unsure.

“Nobody’s asking you to tell him now, you know?” Bobby asks. “You can take your time. Let it sink in.”

“No I’m-” Eddie starts, shaking his head. “I’m ready.” He says, his voice determined. “Turns out getting shot really put things into perspective.” He adds, letting out a nervous laugh.

As if electrocuted by Eddie’s words, Buck wakes up with a start, his entire face contorted with what Bobby guesses is fear. He looks around in alarm for a few seconds, his eyes shining with tears, until they both fall on Eddie and his face suddenly softens. The gaze is so soft, so intimate, Bobby almost wants to look away.

Buck approaches the kitchen counter quietly and sits on the chair, running his now shaking hands through his face. His eyes find Eddie again and the older man simply nods and places his left hand on the table, and Bobby realizes that’s simply another one of their non-verbal conversations.

No one in that firehouse had mastered the art of speaking without actually exchanging words more than these two.

Bobby observes Buck as he slowly encircles his best-friend's wrist with his finger, his index and his third finger resting between Eddie’s wrist bone and tendon, no doubt checking his pulse. His hand shakes for a few more seconds but a soft smile eventually stretches up his lips when Eddie intertwines their fingers together.

“You’re okay?” Eddie asks.

“I am, now.” Buck answers, lowering his eyes towards their intertwined fingers. Bobby turns around to take the plates out and give them some privacy. But he can still hear the next few words coming out of Eddie's mouth.

“What was it this time?” He asks.

“The- the shooting. You were dying before I had the chance to drive you to the hospital.”

“Well I’m here now.” Eddie says and Bobby can picture the smile on his face. “We’re okay.”

The conversation flows smoothly after that, Buck helping Bobby and taking over Eddie’s cooking, stating that “no one should have to face food poisoning that early in the day.” Eddie nudges him playfully and takes a seat, checking in with Carla to make sure Christopher is okay at home.

“Did you know that there are more than 120 pyramids in Egypt? Give or take.” He says excitedly and Bobby rolls his eyes at him, not missing the way Eddie’s face softens at his words.

“I did not know that.”

“Crazy, right? And some of their stones weigh more than an Elephant, Bobby! And you know Ancient Egyptians were very big on astronomy and researchers said that they might have used the stars to align their pyramids. Although, I guess we’ll never know for sure cause the alignment of stars is constantly changing, you know, but that’s pretty cool, right?”

“Is Ancient Egypt Christopher’s new passion or Buck’s?” Bobby asks in Eddie’s direction.

“Both, apparently.” Eddie smiles.

“By the way Eds, there’s this Egyptian Museum in San Jose, they say it holds the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts, I thought we could check it out. It’s a five hours car drive, it's a bit long but we could make it work during a week-end maybe. Chris would be thrilled.”

“Sounds like a plan, Evan.” Eddie answers and Bobby frowns, surprised to see that the Evan privileges now seem to have extended and included Eddie. For a few seconds, he wonders whether he’s been slow on the uptake about that sudden advancement in their relationship but then he can see Buck’s face light up and turn a bit redder than usual and Bobby just knows that it’s just another one of these things he will need to get used to.

“Awesome, I’ll look into it, then. I’ll text you the details, alright?” Buck asks and he’s about to reach for his phone in his back-pocket when Eddie finally says those three words.

“I love you.”

Bobby stops stirring the soup and raises his eyes towards Eddie, who seems to have lost all composure.

“I’ll… I’ll let you two talk.” Bobby says. “Buck, you mind keeping an eye on the soup?”

“Uh I- yeah I’ll- I’ll take care of it, Bobby.”

Bobby leaves the kitchen, squeezing Eddie’s shoulder as he goes past him. He locks himself in his office and tries to focus on the most boring part of the job: the paperwork. It only lasts a few minutes, though, his curiosity eventually gets the best of him. From where he’s seated, he can still see Buck, his back facing him. And Bobby is not big on gossip but he’s had to watch these two dance around each other for so long it’s only fair he gets to witness the outcome of three years of unresolved tension, right?

Buck is standing in the kitchen, and from what Bobby can tell, this one hasn’t moved for the past ten minutes, probably focused on what Eddie’s saying or too shocked to say anything. It all changes after a few seconds, though. Buck’s body straightens up but he lowers his head to the ground, and Bobby doesn’t need to be standing next to him to picture the sheepish smile stretching up his lips.

He knows he’s right when Buck raises his eyes again, changing his position in such a way Bobby can now see his face. His eyes are warm, his expression soft and the captain of the 118 finally decides to look away when Eddie appears in his field of vision, cupping Buck’s cheeks with his hands and pressing their lips together.

A small smile breaks in on his face and he opens the first top left drawer of his desk, his right hand grasping the document that’s been gathering dust for soon to be three years:

Personal relationship disclosure form

#my writing #buddie #buddie fic #9-1-1 #911 #buck x eddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #bobby nash

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azucanela · 3 years

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chapter iv

pairing: bakugou katsuki x fem!reader

summary: the internet is enamored with the idea of y/n l/n and bakugou katsuki, two renowned pro heroes, dating. the first issue? the pair rarely interacts. the second issue? apparently, they hate each other, not that anyone knows about that bit. of course, after one night of many mistakes, the whole world knows.

warnings: mentions of blood. violence. injuries. cursing.

word count: 2k

[series masterlist] [wattpad] [ao3]

THIS HAS TO BE A DREAM. Y/N really doesn’t want to be dealing with this right now, this is literally the last thing she wants to be dealing with right now. She has half the mind to just disappear into the shadows using Telen’s quirk, seeing as she hadn’t returned it yet.

‘Returned’ probably isn’t the best way to put it, after all he can still use his quirk but… she’s never really had a different way to explain it. But, Y/N is capable of using his quirk until she’s returned it to him, meaning his pain is hers and so is his quirk for the time being. Not that it matters right now, because she’s currently staring down Bakugou, who looks just as shocked as she does.

“What are you doing here?” She finally asks, scowling.

In response, Bakugou is rolling his eyes, allowing the door to shut behind him. “You don’t own this café,” he grumbles out.

That was actually incorrect, Y/N had bought the set of buildings on this street to make sure that the café wouldn’t go out of business, she was sentimental in that manner Meaning she technically had authorization to kick him out, something Bakugou seems to catch onto as his eyes narrow at her, “of course you do.”

Y/N scoffs, looking away from him, “only legally. I have too much respect for Rosalyn to tell her what to do with her business.” She waves him off, “they’re getting something from the back, you’ll have to wait.” Y/N finds that she’s wishing she had a little bit less respect for Rosalyn, because maybe then she would have the guts to kick Bakugou out.

Bakugou says nothing, simply eyeing Y/N as he moves to grab a bag of chips from the stand, awkwardly standing by the cash register he waited for them to return. Of course, Y/N had a feeling they wouldn’t be returning anytime soon at this point. She wouldn’t be shocked if Lily had done something to make this happen, all to torture Y/N.

Although Lorelai might consider this the perfect time to apologize, Y/N finds it her personal hell. And she’s fairly sure Bakugou has the same sentiments as she begins to tap her foot rhythmically against the floor. The space is silent aside from that, and Y/N almost wishes a stranger would come in and end her misery.

A sudden pain courses through her, and Y/N’s brows furrow as her mouth gapes open slightly, hand coming to her stomach, though her thoughts are interrupted as Bakugou snaps, “could you quit tapping your damn foot?”

And Y/N does stop, but not because he asked, instead to say, “you can always leave.” There’s a sarcastic smile on her face as she glances at him, preparing to continue tapping her foot despite the throbbing that had appeared in her leg as well.

If Y/N had to guess, something had happened to Telen. But that wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary in hero work, and given how high profile Hawks’ agency was, they had a healer on call. She had no doubt that whatever injury he’d somehow sustained, he would be fine. And yet, Y/N can’t help the frown that washes over her, a certain fear and anxiety that definitely doesn’t belong to her suddenly drowning her senses.

Y/N is about to make a phone call when she hears Bakugou, “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

She’s about to make some sort of witty comment in response, only to see that he’s looking outside, where the presence of paparazzi has become apparent. Though they hadn’t started their mobs yet, any trained Pro Hero was well aware when they were being followed. Despite attempts to hide, Y/N could easily see that there were several people hidden throughout the area, trying to catch pictures of the famed Y/N L/N and Bakugou Katsuki together.

They were probably hoping the pair would start arguing, maybe even get into a physical fight knowing Bakugou. Though, if that did happen, Y/N was fairly sure Lorelai would have her head.

That and the fact that the shippers on Twitter were going to love this. But Y/N certainly wasn’t, scoffing as she came to a stand, “did they follow you here?” Her tone is accusatory, she knows that. But if Y/N is honest, she has no shame being upfront about her emotions with Bakugou, not anymore.

He glares at her once more in response, placing his order down more roughly than necessary, “obviously not. If anything it was you they followed here.”

Y/N comes to a stand, inhaling deeply as she reminds herself that she and Bakugou are currently the stars of the show that is the media. Everyone who's anyone, and anybody that’s a nobody wants to bear witness to their interactions if it means advancing their career. And Y/N has no intent of further damaging her reputation, or giving the media the easy way out.

Though she wouldn’t mind putting an additional dent in Bakugou’s already horrid reputation, there were bigger things than that. And at the end of the day, they were stuck together for the time being, until things died down that is.

So, Y/N finds herself heading over to the counter with her items in hand– discarding them behind the register to make sure that Lily would hold onto them for her— before looking to Bakugou, “we need to leave, now.”

Bakugou is frowning, eyes falling on his order, but he simply nods as he returns his gaze to Y/N, “and how do you suppose we do that?”

While she’s grateful he elected not to argue— probably because he’s well-aware of his own dwindling reputation and wants to salvage whatever he can, like the selfish bastard he is— Y/N finds herself narrowing her eyes at him, simply turning around and gesturing for him to follow her, “come with me.”

“What, we can’t just go out the front door?”

She’s not shocked by his proposition, though Y/N is also aware that Bakugou isn’t a fool. He may be impulsive at times, and extremely confrontational to a fault, but he was not an idiot. Even if he seemed to be just some annoying brute.

Y/N glances back at Bakugou, looking to him incredulously, “the moment we step outside, we will be bombarded with questions.” A bitter laugh escapes her, “and we both know how you’ll probably respond to that.”

“Oh so this is my fault?” He asks, taking a few steps closer.

Bringing a hand to her temple, Y/N looks up to him, “we don’t have time for this.” Comes her response, “either you come with me, or I leave without you.”

With that, Y/N turns on her heel, hand shoved into her pocket as she pulls out a set of keys and begins to flip through them in search of the right one. She can feel Bakugou’s eyes on her as she finally finds the right key, the one that leads to the hallway behind the second staff door. Most people don't have access because if you take a wrong turn you’ll end up in the studio apartment of the owners. But, if you continue down the hallway, there’s an exit into the alleyway that Y/N intended to take.

Finally, she pushes the door open. Y/N doesn’t bother to look back as she steps inside the hallway, dimly lit, in fact some of the lights are even flickering. But she can see the bright red ‘EXIT’ sign not too far away.

Y/N doesn’t hear the door click shut, and with a sigh she turns back to see Bakugou had planted his foot in the door, kicking it open while his hands remained shoved into his pockets. Wordlessly, he stepped inside, and Y/N simply returned her gaze to the exit.

Until another spike of pain coursed through her. Her steps falter, though Y/N manages to catch herself on the wall, hand planted firmly there as she inhales deeply.

To be fair, the average person would’ve passed out from the pain by now, and Y/N didn’t have her hero suit to help cushion the blows of pain nor was she necessarily prepared for sudden pain— she wasn’t in battle. Though her pain tolerance is high enough that it's manageable.

Bakugou seems to notice, no— he definitely notices. Looking to her pensively as he pauses behind her, Y/N doesn’t want to meet his eyes as she huffs, pushing off the wall. “Let’s go.”

He says nothing, and Y/N is grateful as they continue down the hall.

It’s a short walk to the actual exit, but Y/N’s head is pounding so she doesn’t really notice anything out of the ordinary until Bakugou’s arm comes to stop her. She bumps into it, frowning as she looks up to him ready to speak in protest, to yell at him for touching her— though there's no skin to skin contact so she doesn’t really have much to worry about yet.

Until she realizes blood is coming from under the door. Evidently, she had a lot to worry about.

Y/N looks up to Bakugou, offering him a nod that he returns. A silent communication between the pair which brings Bakugou to press his separate hand against the door, brows drawing together before he rapidly pushes the door open and the pair steps out into the alley.

And there lies the body of Pro Hero Telen. Y/N recognizes him instantly, and it makes sense given how badly her body is throbbing with pain.

Her mouth gapes open, but Y/N is no fool as her back meets Bakugou’s, each of them surveying the area for the hero’s attacker.

But there’s no one to be found.

Y/N looks back to Bakugou, who simply nods, prompting Y/N to drop to her knees despite the blood that begins to seep through her clothes. Eyes falling on Telen as a hand comes to his chest. Nobody has ever died while Y/N was using their power, and if Y/N had to guess, Telen was still alive. There was no need for her to check for a pulse, simple as that.

“He’s alive. Call for backup.”

When Bakugou doesn’t reply, Y/N turns, and she can see the explosions sparking in his palms but there are no enemies nearby. But Y/N recognizes the look on his face, the frustration, the anger. But he’s not angry with anyone other than himself right now.

“Bakugou.” She repeats, an attempt to pull him out of his thoughts. They don’t have time to be distracted right now. While the attacker clearly isn’t around right now, there was a possibility he’d return. Not that Y/N was too worried, if they had any sense of bloodlust, she’d notice them.

He inhales sharply, simply nodding stiffly once more before pulling out his phone. But all Bakugou can think about is the fact that the Stain Copycat was here, and they’d targeted a member of Hawks’ Agency. The Number 2 Hero. Which meant whoever it was, they were getting bolder, and even worse, two of the best upcoming Pro Heroes were just next door and they hadn’t even noticed.

Even if the new Hero Killer had failed to finish the job, it didn’t matter. This would be a sign to all. A bad one. A message even. It felt as though this copycat was mocking him with every move.

The only thing that Y/N can think about, is how dark this alley is, how easy it should’ve been for Telen to escape from his attacker. Which can only mean one of two things, the perpetrator had done something to prevent Telen from escaping into the shadows. Or, it was someone he trusted enough that he hadn’t felt the need to. Not until it was too late, that is.

This was a problem. A big problem.

note: short but eventful chapter? and look at me go, updating on an actual schedule thats a first!

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sineala · 3 years

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The gay Invaders

Hi, internet! Today I'd like to talk about one of the chronologically-first canonically-gay couples in Marvel Comics history: Brian Falsworth (the second Union Jack) and Roger Aubrey (The Destroyer). (I mean "chronological" in terms of in-universe timeline rather than RL publication date; I'm pretty sure Northstar is still the first to publication as far as unambiguously-gay Marvel heroes go.)

If you are a fan of reading or writing about Captain America being queer, you should care about Brian and Roger, because they were two of Steve's fellow Invaders in the 1940s, meaning that they are two of the people on the list of Steve's Old Gay Friends And Teammates, because, yeah, Steve sure had a lot of canonically gay friends during the war. Probably more than you'd think he would have had in the forties! (The other two are Percival Pinkerton, who's part of Nick Fury's Howling Commandos, and of course Steve's childhood friend Arnie Roth. Pinky is gay by word of Stan Lee, IIRC; Arnie was as canonically gay as DeMatteis could make him in the early 1980s, so they didn't say the word "gay" but it's really, really not subtle. Steve compares what Arnie feels for his "roommate" Michael to what Steve feels for his girlfriend Bernie. Yeah.)

I previously made a Tumblr post about Brian and Roger, rounding up some of the canonical evidence of their relationship, but that post is six years old now, and in the intervening years, Marvel has thoughtfully put the rest of the 70s Invaders run on Unlimited as well as the two Citizen V miniseries that star Roger and retcon his relationship with Brian as romantic. So I've read them now, and I've got panels.

Okay. I should probably begin by saying that Brian and Roger are not canonically gay in their first significant appearance together, which is in Invaders vol 1 #19 and #20, published in 1977. Roy Thomas does not seem to have intended them to be a couple, and they aren't canonically one in any of the original Invaders run. However, if you enjoy gay subtext, it's very nice.

This whole arc is the one that introduces Roger in modern canon. He's been brainwashed by the Nazis and the Invaders rescue him and get him back to his normal self. But in #19 we get his backstory in flashback, as related by Montgomery, Lord Falsworth (Brian's father; yes, MCU fans, the name should look familiar) and it turns out that Roger and Brian were basically best friends since childhood:

They were the dearest of friends!

Anyway, they both ended up captured by Nazis, they presumably changed their minds about appeasement as a policy, Brian got out and joined the Invaders, then they had to rescue the brainwashed Roger, and it's a fair amount of fun in a two-issue arc.

The subtext is even more prominent in Invaders #34, in which they find out that someone going by the Destroyer (which is Roger's codename) has been doing villainous deeds, and the Invaders worry that Roger's gotten himself brainwashed again. Brian immediately insists that it can't really be Roger because he knows Roger and Roger Would Never:

Unsurprisingly, Brian is right. It's not really Roger; Master Man is impersonating the Destroyer, and the villains have taken Roger captive, and the Invaders break him out and there is an extremely significant moment where it just so happens that Roger has to catch Brian, saving his life for a change, and they stare deeply into each other's eyes and Brian seems to be having difficulty finishing his sentences:

Some people who read this therefore concluded that Brian and Roger were extremely gay for each other. While ordinarily this sort of shipping is mostly confined to fandom, in this particular instance, one of the people who started shipping Brian/Roger was Fabian Nicieza, and Fabian Nicieza, as you probably know, writes comics for Marvel. I think you see where this is going.

However, first I must inform you that, sadly, Brian has been canonically dead for years. Captain America vol 1 #253-254 -- the two-parter about Baron Blood in the Stern/Byrne Cap run in the 80s -- establishes that Brian died in a car accident in 1953. (This is also the run where Joseph Chapman -- a friend of Jacqueline Falsworth's son Kenneth -- becomes the third (and current) Union Jack.)

(Roger then appears in a bunch of T-Bolts issues; I assume there's nothing interesting there on the gay front because I feel like someone would have told me. I should probably read more than three T-Bolts issues someday.)

So, anyway, in 2001, Fabian Nicieza wrote a miniseries called Citizen V and the V-Battalion. Roger, who is still superheroing as the Destroyer despite being pretty old by this point, is part of the titular V-Battalion, and he has a very prominent role in this miniseries. And in #1, we have the usual splash page of character backstory, and there's a very, um, interesting line there:

Regarding Brian and Roger's relationship, the narration informs us: "It sounds much gayer than it probably was."

This is interesting, obviously for a couple of reasons. One is that, up to this point in canon, as far as I can tell, literally nobody thought any of this sounded the slightest bit gay at all. (Other than, I guess, Fabian Nicieza.) The other reason is that, as we soon find out, it actually was as gay as it sounds. Thanks, Fabian!

In 2002, Nicieza wrote a second miniseries, Citizen V and the V-Battalion: The Everlasting. Issue #1 opens with a flashback set in 1953; specifically, we see Brian's funeral:

Roger is extremely sad, and when Lord Falsworth expresses his sympathy about the death of Roger's "friend" and saying that he knows how much this hurts him, Roger mutters under his breath that he doesn't have the slightest clue:

All is revealed on the next page, when one of the other characters tries to ask Roger about superhero business and Roger snaps at him because, as he says, "I just watched my friend die in my arms."

Except "friend" isn't the word he starts to say:

Yep. That would be "lover." So Roger nearly outs himself. So, yes, now it's absolutely canon. Hooray.

Later on in the issue, which is set in the present day, we have a couple pages of Roger staring at pictures of the two of them and continuing to be sad:

Yeah. They were a couple.

So the question you -- being a Captain America fan -- might ask yourself is, okay, did/does Steve know about any of this? (The reason I started looking all this up was because I wanted to know if Steve knew.) I don't know if we have a panel of Roger specifically admitting any of this to Steve (and if we do, I would like to know about it), but I would be comfortable saying that Steve probably knew back then -- because, well, he seems like the kind of guy who would actually have been fine with it in the 40s, what with all his gay friends -- and also that I can't think of a reason why he wouldn't know now. Because he's definitely worked with Roger again in fairly recent comics, and also Roger is very much out, these days.

In fact, New Invaders #4 (2004) opens with Roger attending Pride:

So, yeah, he's out.

(Then he has to fight, as far as I can tell, homophobic Nazi vampires. They're yelling slurs in German. Great.)

In All-New Invaders #10, which is from 2014 (and which is not the same series as New Invaders), Roger shows up to help out the Invaders, and in passing, he just happens to mention to another character (Joseph Chapman, the current Union Jack), that he is in fact gay:

He and Joseph don't really like each other much; as far as I can tell, their acquaintance in New Invaders consists of Joseph being vaguely homophobic and Roger being bitter about him being Union Jack because he actually wanted to be Union Jack himself to honor Brian's memory -- you know, that thing superheroes sometimes like to do to honor their dead superhero significant others, viz. Hank when Jan was dead after Secret Invasion -- and now Union Jack is this annoying kid and not, y'know, the love of his life. This exchange from New Invaders #4 seems pretty representative of their relationship:

Anyway, yeah, he's pretty obviously out.

Steve isn't actually present for this conversation in All-New Invaders, but he mentions in a later issue of this run that he knows what Roger and his pals have been up to, plot-wise, so I feel comfortable assuming that he's talked to Roger at some point in the previous ten years or so, and therefore, since Roger is completely out at this point in canon, there's no reason Steve shouldn't know now.

On an unrelated note, it's also a fun issue if you're a Steve/Tony fan because this is clearly running in parallel with Hickman's Avengers run, which means that he spends half a page telling Namor that he's mad at him and the rest of the Illuminati (but mostly mad at Tony because... he's just obsessed with Tony in this run, I guess?) about the mindwipe:

This is the sum total of my knowledge about Brian and Roger. No, wait, I know one more thing, which is that Brian was a character in the late, lamented mobile game Avengers Academy, in which he was also actually gay; Roger does not seem to have been there. There's a CBR article that you can read about the whole thing, which mentions some of these details from the comics in passing. (I have no idea why it says that their relationship was alluded to in the Stern/Byrne run; unless I missed something big, the only thing those issues do is establish Brian's death. As far as I can tell, no one is gay in them.)

So, yeah, that's Brian Falsworth and Roger Aubrey, the two gay Invaders. Steve sure has a lot of gay friends.

#posts i actually wrote

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mustardyellowsunshine · 2 years

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Been thinking about storytelling and life and why I'm so picky about the kind of angst I'm willing to read. Rambling thought dump ahoy!

I do actually enjoy reading darker, angsty stories, but I think too many dark/angst stories fall headlong into the trap of indulging cynicism and despair. And I'm not talking about simply portraying characters who feel cynicism or despair—that's a part of human experience and thus a part of storytelling. I am talking about stories with that sort of narrative posture of cynicism/nihilism, the ones that seem to elevate and indulge despair to the preclusion of other parts of the human experience, like hope and joy.

I think that "narrative posture" I'm talking about has been aptly dubbed "grimdark" by the internet, so I'll run with that term for now.

One of the reasons I've lost all patience with “grimdark” stories is that they truly feel like lazy writing. And lazy thinking, to be blunt. It's an impoverished portrayal of the human response to suffering. Because the fact is: shit happens to everyone, sometimes deeply traumatic shit, and yet time and time again—throughout the history of the world—people endure and cope and find meaning. So many people live through suffering with grace and forbearance. The people in my life who have seen the very worst of the world are also the people who daily reach for joy, who appreciate life in ways I can only try to replicate. (One of my favorite writers, Brian Doyle, described this as "grace under duress.")

The human response to suffering and trauma is not limited to rage, despair, self-indulgence, disillusionment/loss of innocence… I’m not saying people don’t feel those things in the face of suffering (or that those feelings aren't a natural or even appropriate response, for a time), but I’m saying it’s so much more interesting—and more true to life, imo—to see how people work through all that. I’m not interested in watching characters spiral into misery and rage (and remain there), because that’s easy. It’s easy to despair; it’s much harder to stare into the world’s teeth and see life beyond despair.

Recently, I was reading through passages in my old journals (which is probably what prompted my thinking on this), and found an entry that maybe sheds light on what I’m getting at here:

“I think that joy—more long-lasting than happiness and thus more elusive—doesn’t just fall into our laps. We don’t just happen upon it one day, we don’t luck into it, it isn’t acquired. We learn joy, we cultivate our minds to be open to the possibility of joy, we teach ourselves to see it and know it. This is a hard thing to do. Hard, to cultivate your mind to lean towards joy when you’ve suffered, are suffering, when your circumstances are dark and wearying. And so joy is hard — but also the only real balm to suffering. I guess what I’m saying is that we choose joy, every day, we choose to open ourselves to its possibilities, we choose to seek it in the midst of wreckage, we choose to value it over the cynicism, bitterness, anger, sadness that naturally results from living in a hard world. We choose to make joy a priority.

I don’t think this means that we always feel joyful. That’s impossible. But I think it is possible to be open to joy—on the lookout for it, seeking it in hope—even when we feel bitter, hurt, resentful, sorrowful. Joy does not preclude those feelings, but I think it’s greater than they. It holds them. It’s big enough to allow for them, and to ultimately take away their power over us. Because joy itself is more than a temporary, fleeting feeling. It’s a practiced way of being in the world.”

(In that particular entry I used "joy," but I think words like "hope" and "courage" could be easily substituted and express the same idea.)

And so to me, the interesting characters, the interesting stories—the ones that have most impacted me—are the ones that portray this struggle for joy (and it is a struggle, no mistake). People who suffer and choose to live through it, people who are wounded but find a way to live in hope of healing, people who don’t give into the impulse to adopt despair as a way of life… that’s real struggle. That’s what interests me, and that’s precisely what “grimdark” stories fail to deliver.

Yes, give me stories that portray suffering and pain and loss: those are parts of life and shouldn't be ignored in our stories. Give me characters who have been marked or changed by what they've endured, yes. But I'm not interested in stories that simply wound characters and then leave them to wallow in their pain; I'm not interested in stories that suggest that pain is somehow more real or present than its opposite. The human response to suffering is, generally, much more dynamic and interesting than cynical despair, and good storytelling shows that.

#she rambles #oh boy does she ramble #writing #storytelling #meta

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rarebritney · 2 years

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hey you mentioned something the other day about being a former hater girl or something along those lines can you explain that more? I don’t remember your exact words but you were responding to a judgemental anon. i’m struggling with feeling insecure and being jealous of and angry at other girls atm i’m not going out of my way to hurt anyone but my text posts have been really negative and bitchy and i guess i’m just angry at myself and where i’m at in life and am taking it out on girls who are doing better than me or who i think are prettier than me. at least i’m self aware lol but how i do snap out of it it’s like i can feel how bitter i am but i can’t stop.

Yeah I mean, I was never the kind of person to be outwardly mean to people I was jealous of, but up until I was like 23 I always felt deeply inadequate compared to pretty much any other girl my age. And btw I wouldn't respond that way to an anon who was purely judgemental, like judging my behavior/critiquing me, this was someone who was obsessively sending me hateful messages about how I was ugly/how I looked like I was born with birth defects (obviously there's nothing wrong with being born that way, I think it's absolutely disgusting to use that as an insult). I feel confident that anyone that goes out of their way to do this kind of thing is doing so because they feel threatened by someone, so that's what I was speaking to. When I felt deeply insecure in this way, I would invent flaws in the people I was jealous of and fixate on them to make myself feel better about how threatened I was by them. This is a very silly behavior and one I'm really happy to have grown out of. It's like, if I really thought someone was ugly I would keep it to myself and feel no need to tell them- if I felt threatened by them I may delude myself into thinking they have these flaws... Though I still personally would never go as far as to send a mean message/tell them about the flaws I perceive, it seems that's where the impulse would come from. Does that make sense? For me these were always people I knew in real life, never on the internet... Im sorry you're feeling this way, please know it's normal and common and something I'm certain will pass. I think the best antidote is just to really focus on yourself, make some new goals, and try as hard as you can to never compare yourself to others! Literally everyone feels insecure some times, even the people you admire.

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cruecifymesixx · 3 years

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Love and Leather /Part Eighty Sixx/

Word Count: 5.9k

A/N: Enjoy! sorry the updates aren’t as often like they were before. I’ll try to do better

Warnings: angst, drugs, language, drug induced paranoia

Taglist: @miserablecunt , @dangerous-like-a-loaded-pistol, @a-simple-salmon, @hi-my-name-is-riley, @extremesadnerding, @thatbandchick39, @awkwrdcait, @countrygirlswonderland, @awesomealmostdopestudent, , @tashy-bear, @krazykatkay456, @terror-triplet, @shouttatthedevill @beachystars, @rodriguez025, @kickstart-myheart-sixx, @s-outhie, @anxious-diabetic, @awkwardblackgirls, @vintagebox @shamelessobsessions, @jerseytaint, , @criminalyetminimal, @motley-queen, @trapt-in-a-dream, @broke-n-bitchy, @lovesick-heart0, @keepcalm-and-beyou, @miriampraez, @teenwolflover28, @lilyhw1, @herbertweeest, @random-internet-user-4471, @falcon-arrows, @talranocchia2001, @waywardprincess666, @iluvmesomemarvelndc, @zoenicoles, @vamprlestat, @supersoldierballerina, @electradestiny, @marshbev, @n0-sh0rtage-0f-faults, @cruebaby, @ggorehorror, @valentines-in-london, @nassauartist @cmft-jr-winchester, @bokkie92, @notworthyofyou1120 @xrosegoldwolfx, @mgkobsessed, @chaoticvybe, @kellysimagines @thoughtsoftheantagonist , @sleepyjunhong @meetthesixxter @sparxx27 @gingerspicetalks @kaitieskidmore1 @unknownoblivion @nevergoodenuffbutokaaayyy @sublimeprincesswasteland @kylieinwonderland @haileynicoleseavey17 @lavendersoundbarrier @xxisxxisxxis, @dogmom2014, @cruesixxlover1991, @xpoisonousrosesx, @m0rnlngstar, @love-struck-aries, @youretheonlyonewhomakesme, @i-want-to-shoot-myself, @arianareirg, @fentitrbl, @patheticgay69 @rocknroll--baby @redlipscrystalskies14, @samanthadegaro @jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels @thechangingme, @idkmanhereisshitilike, @makaelahdelvalle

Nikki held my hand tightly as we walked through a crowd of photographers. Quickly, he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer to him, my hand darting up to his chest, fingers intertwining with the layered rosaries and the same padlock necklace I had gotten for him years prior.

I heard Nikki mutter a curse word when photographers screamed for pictures and a quick word. Nikki declined but allowed them to take pictures of us. We were at the album release party and there was already a buzz about the music. Mainly because they wanted to see if Mötley could do it without Vince.

We walked inside hand in hand before he quickly let go and put distance between us. I frowned a bit but quickly perked up when Alan Kovac came up to him, "Nikki! Congratulations man." He gives him a quick hug "All the hard work has paid off. C'mon let's celebrate." He's quickly pulled in another direction, I see him glance back at me before he starts talking to Alan and the other suits. The record label, the marketers...those people.

I sigh deeply as I walk over to the open bar. At least I had an excuse to go shopping and get a new dress. I order a vodka soda with lime as I sip and people watch. I didn't know half of these people and I'm sure Nikki felt the same way. I should have just stayed home with Arianna however I wanted to make an effort in supporting him like a good girlfriend should do, or whatever I am to him.

Ever since my date a few weeks ago, Nikki has been extremely distant. I know he wants to talk about it, and I do too but we both don't know how to bring it up. So the best thing we know how to do is ignore it and act like it didn't happen. Therapy was a bust the other day too, we sat in silence for forty five minutes. How much longer can we keep doing this?

I get tired of sipping through the plastic straw and toss it to the side, chugging the rest of it before putting the glass down and ordering another one. The bartender tries to make small talk, I brush him off and leave before walking over to the VIP area where the band is. Cigarette smoke from John and Mick hit my face, I would usually say Tommy too, but he's trying to quit before the baby gets here.

I sit down in the red velvet chair besides Clementine, "That's a pretty dress. Where'd you get it?" I smile at her.

She leans closer to my ear, "I got it at Target."

God bless Clementine for not being like the other wives and girlfriends.

"It's probably the last cute dress I can fit in for the next six months. I've already been gaining weight."

"I think it's just you stress eating and not pregnancy weight." I smirk as she flips me off and playfully hits my shoulder, "What are you drinking?" I point at the red liquid in a martini glass.

"A virgin cosmopolitan." She points at mine, "Vodka soda?"

I nod, "Double the vodka." I glance seeing Nikki come over, he eyes the spot next to me before changing his mind and opts for sitting by Corabi instead. I look at him a moment before looking back at Clementine. Her eyebrows raise in question as I take another long sip.

"Let me just take a guess, he's bitter over your date with Jon?" Clementine questions as I roll my eyes, "He needs to get over it. This was the deal, you both date someone else and decide if it's what you want. It's not that hard to comprehend."

I chuckle at her words, "You would think right? The only time we talk is at the dining table with Arianna and who's doing pick up duty. Other than that, there's no interaction. I even walked around the house in my underwear and one of his shirts and he still wouldn't talk to me."

"Have you tried being the bigger person?"

Well, obviously that would be too easy.

"I don't know why I have to be the bigger person. He's the one that's all cranky about it. I stopped giving him shit for Donna after their second date. He just doesn't like when I play his game better than him, he never has." I express to her as she chuckles.

"God, you two are a match made in hell." Clementine laughs, "Forget about all of that tonight and just have some fun. You're kid free and it's an open bar. What more could you want?" I glance at Nikki as she follows my gaze, "That's beside the point!"

I smile a bit, "I'm fine Clementine. I'm here and I'm having fun."

"You're always just fine, Van."

I glance, "Because I'm fine. I'm good." I look over when Nikki gets up, holding his cell phone to his ear before he disappears into the crowd, "I'm gonna go use the restroom. Maybe get another drink and some food. You hungry?"

Clementine chuckles "Do I even have to answer that?"

I nod, using her knee as a crutch to get up. I squeeze past people before I get to the restrooms, seeing the line and groaning. I eye the men's bathroom for a second, not seeing a single line or a dude walk through the doors. I clear my throat walking past dirty glares and eye rolls as I walk into the bathroom.

"Oh fuck.." I turn around seeing Corabi taking a piss, "I'm sorry John."

He laughs a bit, I hear the noise of his zipper before the flush of the urinal, "It's okay. There's nobody in the stalls." I nod quickly, walking into it. God, men are fucking disgusting. I squat over the toilet doing my business as I hear him wash his hands before repeated sniffing. I hear him mutter a "shit" before more sniffing. I flush the toilet and step out seeing him using his car key to take a bump.

"You want some?"

My mouth runs dry and the angel and devil are arguing on my shoulder, "I didn't know you used." I step over paper towels on the floor and go to wash my hands hearing him sniff again before pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Just socially. Helps with my anxiety." He responds monotone as he looks at me through the mirror. I see his eyes wander down the backside of me as I reach to dry my hands.

"Does Nikki know?"

"Why? You gonna tell him?" I shake my head and he smiles, "Good girl." He offers the bump to me as I stare at it.

C'mon. Just go ahead. Look out how little that bump is. It won't do anything to you.

I shake my head, "I'm okay John. Thank you though." I step to the door but he steps back and leans against it, "I should get back to-"

"Nikki?" He laughs, "Arent you two fighting right now? He's bitched about you for weeks now."

"John, you don't know what you're talking about. We're just having a disagreement." I stare at him, watching him sniff the white powder again.

Go ahead. Just say yes. You know you want too. C'mon, what's the big worry?

John laughs at me as he shoves his curly strands out of his face, "I guess dating other people is a pretty big disagreement."

"It's what he wanted." I raised my voice, becoming stern as he smiled at me.

"Hey sweetheart. It ain't any of my business." John snorts one last key bump before closing the vial and puts it back in his pocket. He grabs the door and holds it open, "Ladies first..."

My feet stay planted as I stare at him, he raises an eyebrow before closing the bathroom door, "One bump and that's it." Johns lips tug upwards as he pulls out the vial, "And you don't say shit. It stays here in the bathroom or I swear to god I will ruin your fucking life."

He doesn't say anything in return just a simple chortle as he dips the silver key into the vial. I hold a nostril close as I snort it up quickly. The whiz going straight to my head. I feel my heart beat throughout my body and the goosebumps rising on my skin cause me to shiver. I try to rub away the irritation, sneezing repeatedly right after, "Thanks.." I see that he holds out another one I sigh and snort it in the other nostril.

John chuckles as I wipe my face. He opens the door and follows behind me.

I feel Corabi's hand rest on my lower back as he gets us back over to the bands section. I stop walking seeing Donna sitting next to Nikki, her tan legs draped over his knee as she clutches a fruity drink with an umbrella. She's whispering in his ear and he laughs at whatever she said. His hand is placed over her knee, rubbing up and down her bare thigh, fingers pulling on the bottom hem of her skirt.

I glare at them, feeling my wrist being pulled on as my name is being shouted over the music, "What did you say?" I look at Clementine, eyes low and hazy as she stares at me.

"I said...what took you so long!?" She shouts a bit, dragging me over to the booth as I can't take my eyes off of them. Donna leans over and kisses his cheek and jaw as he as the biggest smile plastered on his lips. I feel my chest heaving up and down as I try to find a solid breath of air to suck in. Clementine touched my cheek to bring me back to her and away from the looming panic that was slowly rising.

"Sorry, the bathroom...the-the uh line was really long." I stare confused again as I now hear Donnas high pitched laugh over all the other noise. Why? Why was she here when I'm here? When he held my hand and held me close when we got here?

"And no food?" Clementine laughs. How could she be laughing? Does nobody see what's going on? My eyes widen when Nikki gently grips her throat, his thumb running over her skin back and forth as he kisses her. His eyes stay opened and locked on mine.

"Why's he doing that?!" I shout, startling her as she turns to look at what I'm yelling at.

"Who? Whose doing what?" She asks confused, staring at me concerned, "Vanity? Hey! Look at me!"

I can't rip my eyes away, Nikki smiles at me when she kisses his neck and touches his exposed chest, "Don't you fucking see her kissing him?!?"

"Whose kissing who Vanity?! Jesus Christ are you drunk already?!" She pulls me to the side but I try to fight her, "Vanity! Stop!"

"Nikki!! He-he's just!!-" I try to get it out, but my words are a jumbled, slurred mess.

"....is getting his picture taken with the band?" Clementine says in my ear as she points over to them. Huge smiles on their faces as they hang off of one another laughing and yelling as flashes from cameras go off.

I blink a few times, staring. Nikki sees me and waves at me. I look over to the couch, no one was there, "What?" I say quietly as Clementine grips my arm and drags me out the back doors. I feel relief wash over me as the cold air hits my skin.

"What did you do?" She shoves my shoulders, "What did you do Vanity?!" She shoves me again until I'm leaning against the concrete wall. I feel the world spinning around me, Clem is a distorted mess as she yells "What did you fucking take?!"

"I-I didnt..." I can barely focus on the three of them that were standing in front of me "Oh god..." I mutter as I run my hands through my hair.

"Don't you dare lie to me!" She shouts, "You look sicker than a fucking dog and your eyes won't stay still!"

I rest my hand at the base of my throat, I felt like I was choking on nothing as I try my hardest to focus, "B-blow! I had some blow in the bathroom! A-and I-I think I'm h-having a bad reaction!" I stutter over my words, trying to keep my tears in.

"Yeah?! You fucking think?! God Damnit." Clementine groans as she paces around before grabbing my hand "C'mon-" she tries to pull me back inside.

"No! I can't go inside! Not while he's with her!!"

"What?!" Clementine stares at me, eyes narrowing, "What are you talking about? He's not with anyone-"

"Yes he is!! I saw them!" I flinched, breathing rapidly when Clementine cupped my cheeks, "I-I saw them. And they were kissing and he was looking at me to make sure I was watching!! Why would he do that?!"

"Van-Vanity hey! Hey! Listen to me-" I shook my head as she forced me to look at her, "Nikki is not with anyone. You're just seeing things and none of it is real. It's just your mind making you hallucinate. None of it is real-" She repeated, "Let's go inside and try to relax, alright? We'll get some water and some food."

"None of it is real..." Clementine nodded as I shook under her hands, "Okay..."

*Clementine’s POV*

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!!!!

I held onto Vanity's arm, feeling her tremble as we walked back inside. Her jaw muscle was clenching and unclenching repeatedly. I looked down at the crease of her elbow hoping to find a prick mark from a needle but there was none. I guided her back over to our section as she plopped down on the couch, hunched over with her head between her knees.

"Okay. C'mon, you gotta sit up or someone's gonna ask questions." I told her as she leaned back against the cushion, pupils blown with greens and golds lit up around them, "I'll be right back, okay? I'm just gonna get us some water." Van looked panicked but she quickly nodded.

I glanced at her one last time before walking away, seeing the guys at the bar. Tommy smiled, running up to me and giving me a kiss, "There you are!" He cheered, wrapping his arm around my shoulder.

"Hi baby." I leaned up to kiss his cheek "I'm just getting some water for me and Van.." I tell him, he yells at the bartender to get one water and one Jack and coke, "Tommy..."

"It's too early for her to be drinking water." He whistles loudly and yells for Vanity as loud as he can, "Go bring her over here! She needs to celebrate too instead of moping around." He laughs a bit, "Vanity!!" He shouts, cupping his hands around his mouth.

I glance seeing her watching, she slowly gets up...well stumbling up as she comes over, "Jesus, maybe she does need a water..."

"Tommy...she fucked up.." I say in his ear as he looks at me.

"Well yeah! I'm sure she is a little fucked up by the way she's walking." He laughs loudly again and I grow frustrated with him.

I grab his arm and pull him closer to my height, "No Tommy. She fucked up. She snorted some blow and now she's having a bad reaction or trip or whatever the hell it is. She's hallucinating." I tell him over the music as he stares at me for a moment before glancing behind me. I turn around seeing Nikki sitting in a chair laughing.

Tommy walks away from me as he goes over to Vanity, wrapping his arm around her waist and helps her walk straight. He brings her over, blocking Nikki's view as he helps her up onto the barstool. He reaches over the bar and grabs a bottle of water and forces it into her hand "Drink it now or I dump it on you." He tells her sternly, I see the gleam of fight in her eyes, but she does what she's asked to do anyways.

Tommy turns back to me, "We need to tell Nikki." I suggest as he stares, before laughing.

"Baby have you gone nuts?! That's gonna be world war three! Just let her relax. She's just having some coke induced paranoia, she'll come down from it in a little bit." I move past him when I see Vanity struggling to keep her head up. I place my hand at the base of her neck and glare at him, "She could be overdosing Tommy."

"She's not foaming out the mouth and she isn't seizing. She's fine. I've seen her snort two eight balls in one night and obviously she lived. She's clean and sober and it's probably a shock to the system." Tommy laughs a bit, taking a sip of his beer as he looks at me, "What?"

"Is that suppose to make me feel better?!"

"Please don't fight over me. I'm sorry..." Vanity slurs as she looks at us, "I just wanted something to make me feel better."

"It's okay, Van. Just try to relax." Tommy sweet talks her as I slap his chest.

"It is not okay! Just sit there and be quiet. And pray to god Nikki doesn't feel like making things up with you."

*Nikki's POV*

My eyes wandered a few seats over seeing Tommy and Clementine laughing with Vanity. An empty pit formed in my gut as i watched them for a moment. I was only avoiding the situation because she was avoiding it too. I rubbed my face before ordering a Jack and coke and a vodka cranberry for Van to break the ice. I pop a piece of gum into my mouth before grabbing the drinks.

I strutted over, seeing Tommy and Clementine bickering about something before they turn to me, staring intently "What?" I glance at them before sitting in the chair next to Van, placing the glass in front of her and resting my forearm against the back of her chair.

"Vans actually done drinking." Clementine announced, "I told her not to eat that shrimp cocktail."

I glanced at her before Van "Are you okay?" I spoke against her ear as she nodded quickly.

"I'm okay. I feel better now. Just got a little woozy is all." I catch a bit of her slurring as I watch her reach for the glass and take a sip, the ice cubes shaking and clinking as she holds the cocktail. I glance down at my watch, we had barely been here for 2 hours.

"Do you wanna go home?" I ask softly, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, "I've talked to enough people and don't mind being home with you." I touch her shoulder and feel her tense up.

She shakes her head, looking at the counter of the bar and not me, "No, it's okay. I promise I'm fine. I guess I just drank too much to fast. I'm good Sixx."

I nod, leaving it at that but I still look at her worried. I notice her hands shaking still as she grips the edge of the bar, "Van, look at me a moment." She quickly glances at me before looking past me, "Please look at me. Just me." My eyes wander behind her seeing Tommy and Clementine looking at me, Clementine nervously chewing on her thumb nail as Tommy had a look of worrisome.

Golden eyes find mine, pupils blown but I don't react as I can see tears in her eyes. She knows that I know and that's enough for me. I put my hand on the side of her cheek, she was flushed and burning up, "Keep it together." I spoke sternly as she quickly nodded at my words.

"I-I I'm sorry.." she stumbled over her words, "I'm so sorry Nikki." My thumb catches the tear that rolls down.

"Just keep it together, okay? Only for a little while longer."

Vanity takes a deep breath in and exhales through her nose, "Okay...I can do that. Then we can go home?"

My lips curl in a smile, fighting back every derogative word I wanted to scream in her face "Yes doll, then we can go home. You sit tight, get some water and relax." I tell the bartender to give her a another water bottle before I glare looking at Clem and Tommy.

I leave Vans side, motioning for the two to come over to me, "What is she on? Is it coke? If that's the case, it's the calmest I've ever seen her than."

"W-what do you mean? She's on something? I had no clue.." Tommy stammers as I give him a look.

"Cut the shit. Is she using again?" I look at Clementine, begging for answers as she shrugged.

"I don't know Nikki. And I don't know what she's on. She wasn't making any sense and she started crying then she was hallucinating. She needs to go home Nikki."

I laughed "Have you fucking lost it? Arianna will still be up. If she's hallucinating here she'll be hallucinating at home." I look over at Van seeing her reaching out for something that's not even there, "Fuck. Just keep her distracted or something. I don't want her ruining anything tonight." I sighed in frustration running my hand over my face as I let out a muttered fuck, "I gotta step outside for a minute. Just keep an eye on her, please."

~Next Morning~

I jolt awake, gasping for a breath as I push and kick my comforter off of me. I wipe the sweat from my forehead before holding my stomach, god I felt like I was gonna hurl. My bedroom door is thrown open, the handle hitting the wall as Arianna and Anarchy come running in.

"Mommy!! I'm going with auntie and uncle Tommy today!" She announces pulling herself onto my bed and sitting on her knees in front of me, "Daddy said she's on her way to get me."

I rub my eyes and smile looking at the bun Nikki put her hair in "Is your backpack ready? And your shoes picked out?"

She nodded feverishly, "Yes! Daddy did it and told me to come wake you up to say bye." I run my hands through my hair before getting up. I notice my rooms in disarray as I pull up a pair of sweats. I help Arianna jump off the bed and she's clinging to my leg as we walk down the hallway and to the stairs. She lets go of me as she sits, sliding down the stairs and laughs up a storm as Anarchy chases her down.

"You ready for the whole day with your favorite person besides me?" Nikki smiles handing over her sneakers. I say good morning to him as I walk to the kitchen but he ignores me.

"The whole day? Does that mean I can bring my toys over?!" I hear Nikki chuckle, "No sweetie. I think you still have plenty of toys over there."

I pour myself a cup of coffee and let Anarchy out at the back door before going to the living room and sitting down, "Daddys right baby. You still have a lot over there."

She pouts a bit, "But they aren't new toys like the ones I have here.."

"Just ask Uncle Tommy for new toys." I shrug and smile at her as her eyes light up.

"Van." Nikki scoffs and rolls his eyes, "Arianna, you're fine with the toys you have there and the toys you have here. You aren't getting anything new."

Arianna huffs before she stands in front of the tv watching cartoons, "You hungry V? I can cook you something. She already ate."

I nod, looking at him "I'm starving. Can you make French toast? What are we doing today since she's going over to Clems?"

I stare when he narrows his eyes at me, "I'm staying home and so are you." He says sternly as my eyebrows pull together, "Don't need you in public till the news and frenzy dies down about your behavior."

I tilt my head to the side, "My behavior?" I say confused as I hear a car horn.

"Wait till she's out of the house, yeah?" Nikki rolls his eyes at me and I frown at his attitude. He helps Arianna with her jacket and hands over her backpack, "See you later bug." He bends down and kisses her forehead before he leaves to the kitchen.

"Is daddy mad?" Arianna questions curiously as we walk to the front door.

"What? No, no, daddy's not mad. You know he's just grumpy in the mornings." I bend down to fix her laces, "I'll see you later okay? Be good and we can go to blockbuster tonight." She leans forward and gives me a kiss on the cheek and a tight hug. I open the car door for her and help her get up and wait till she buckled. I feel Clementine looking at me and I glance, "Good morning."

"Morning.." she grumbles but cheers up when she says the same thing to Arianna.

"Thanks for taking her. I don't remember us talking about it though?"

"Yeah, you didn't. Nikki asked me."

Why was everyone being so damn short with me?

"Okay...well have fun. Bye Ari." I wave to her as Clem rolls the window up and starts heading down the driveway.

I walk back in the house, leaning against the front door as I smell cinnamon and vanilla coming from the kitchen. I feel jittery as I walk through the house, Nikki has the portable radio on to the rock station in the kitchen. He's moving his head a bit and has his back towards me, I pull myself on the barstool and keep to myself.

"That was Bulls on Parade by Rage Against The Machine and you're listening to KLAZT LA's best rock station. Up next, we're taken it back with a littl Home Sweet Home by Mötley Crüe. Speaking of the Crüe, did anyone else see the article in entertainment today about the antics of Vanity Blackwood last night at their album release party. Chick seems like a real keeper...Not!"

I gasp before Nikki tosses the magazine down on the counter, "You fucking embarssed me last night Vanity."

I stare at the magazine cover. I look fucking plastered as Nikki is trying to keep me standing and the headline reads: The princess takes a tumble as Mötley Crüe heads in the direction of their old antics.

My eyes widen at the shots of me on my knees outside of a limo with both Tommy and Nikki trying to pull me up. I pull up my sweats seeing cuts and bruises on my kneecaps and shins.

"God, Nikki..I-I'm so sorry. I don't even know what to say. I-I don't remember any of this."

Mötley Crüe was suppose to be celebrating their album release with new lead singer John Corabi, however they ended up babysitting. Vanity Blackwood (Nikki Sixx's ex and baby mama) had one too many fruity drinks and ended up having to be escorted out (see above). Our office reached out to the bands rep but they had no comment.

Nikki slammed his hand down on the counter, covering the picture of me in the limo with a bright yellow star reading 'censored' between my spread legs, "You're really going to look me in the eye, lie, and tell me you don't remember any of this shit? You humiliated yourself, me, and the band. So who gave you the fucking blow?"

Everything came rushing back, the blow in the bathroom with Corabi, the hallucinations, the vomit outside in the rose bushes when we got home, "I-I went to the bathroom then I needed some air and clem came with me and I started hyperventilating and that's all I remember."

"Vanity." Nikki took a deep breath, "Just tell me what happened. I won't get mad, I just want to know. I was fucking worried sick about you last night, almost took you to the damn hospital."

I pushed the magazine away from me, "I went to the bathroom, then I went outside. I remember I was seeing crap that wasn't there. And I felt sick to my stomach. But I didn't snort anything I swear. I haven't touched anything since New York."

"Vanity! You weren't acting drugged! Or like someone spiked your drink! You were a incoherent mess, you were pale as a ghost and your pupils were as big as the eye of a needle."

The yelling made my head throb as I rubbed my temples to relieve it, "I don't know, Nikki. The last thing I remember is sitting at the bar."

He rolled his eyes, "So I don't know when you're high on coke? You were a babbling mess. Kept saying shit over and over. You're jaw was clenched so god damn tight I thought I was going to have to take you to a dentist! Fuck! Van! You were saying I was with Donna and wouldn't shut the fuck up about it! She wasn't around! Wasn't even fucking invited!" He stepped away from me to go flip the French toast angrily and toss the spatula down after.

"I don't know Nikki..." I spoke in a soft whisper, "I didn't snort, smoke, or shoot anything. Why can't you believe me?" I was already this far down the rabbit hole, why should I stop now?

"Because Van, I know you. Did John give you something because he was acting fucking weird too."

I shook my head looking at him, his eyes were drilling holes in an attempt to get it out of me, "No....I barely talked to him. I congratulated him and that was it."

"Fine." He glares for a moment before looking away, "We'll have to wait a few days before coming out with a statement to clear things up."

"Can't we just wait for it to blow over like everyone else does?"

He scoffed, "Seriously?! You dragged my bands name through the fucking mud!" Nikki shouts before stomping over to the tv and turning it to MTV, "They've been talking about your god damn interview all morning."

"Any thoughts on the album Vanity?"

I rubbed my face as I saw myself almost fall over nothing before grabbing onto the interviewer for stability, "Well, in my honest opinion, the album could be better." I slurred every word, "It's-its not Mötley and it sucks without Vince. Corabi sucks, and the album sucks. It sounds like every band now a days. It's too...too heavy. And! And you know what else!" I pointed my finger at the camera and grabbed ahold of the microphone, "Vince wasn't even fired like Nikki said. I was there that day. Nikki was just bitching like he always does and-"

I felt sick to my stomach when Nikki turned off the tv and threw the remote down, "That's why we need a god damn statement. We'll go with your lie about the spiked drink and call it a day. Got it?"

"It's not a lie.."

"Just don't. Just fucking don't, okay? I know when you are lying and when you're telling the truth. I'm done fucking talking about it."

I stared down at my nails, seeing dried blood around my knuckles. Just say it. Just tell the truth. Just say Corabi gave you the drugs and risk the chance of Nikki kicking him out of the band. I heard Nikki groan when the house phone started ringing.

"What?!" He answers it before rolling his eyes, "It's for you." Nikki glares and hands it to me.

I get up and go with down on the couch, "Hello?"

"Bad time to call huh? It's Jon..." I smiled a bit and peaked over the back of the couch to see Nikki in the kitchen cooking, "I just uh...I saw MTV and-"

"Please, please don't watch it. I was really drunk last night and was acting like a total idiot. That's not how I am and I didn't mean anything I said." I explain, running my hand through my hair, grimacing when I feel it sticking together.

"I figured...they're making you seem like a bad person and I just wanted to make sure you're okay sweetheart." I hear his smile from the other side.

"I'm okay....just dealing with the repercussions. But thank you for checking in. It's really sweet of you."

"You're welcome. But hey..since I have you on the phone. I was hoping maybe we could get together soon? I had a lot of fun last time and I've been thinking about you quite some bit."

I blushed a bit, "Really? Um...yeah, I'd love to see you again. I'm free next weekend."

"That sounds good. Can I pick you up around four?"

My eyes widened, "You wanna pick me up? I can just drive to wherever."

Jon chuckles a bit, "Sixx gonna shoot me or something? Look, I'll take my chances just for you. You'll love what I have planned."

"Okay...yeah you can pick me up. My address is 7904 Palo Verde Court and the code to the gate is 666.."

I smile when Jon laughs, "How clever of him. I'll see you next Saturday Van. Don't listen to the media, it will eat you alive."

I thank him again and say my goodbyes as I put the phone back on the receiver. I go over to the plate Nikki put down as he's already eating, "Will seeing my tits make you feel better?"

"Shut up. Seeing you naked and bent over isn't going to make anything better. I'm pissed Van."

I sigh, "I know. And I'm sorry, okay? I really am. I didn't mean anything I said about the album. I like the album, it's not my favorite but I like it. You know I support everything you create."

"It didn't feel like it." I hear and see the frown and I gently reach over and touch his hand.

"I mean it Nikki. That wasn't me last night and I'm sorry I had you worried." Nikki gave my hand a squeeze before letting go.

"Let's just move past it okay? It already happened and there is no reason for us to argue about it. You said your piece and I said mine. We have time without the kid so let's just relax today." He leaned over and kissed the side of my head, "Love you..”

“I love you too.”

To whom it may concern,

My behavior and antics a few nights ago at the album release party were completely and utterly unacceptable. In no way, shape or form is that how I truly am. I was heavily under the influence and after a trip to the hospital, my blood work had an ungodly amount of Rohypnol in it. So in other words, my drink was ‘roofied’. We are working with the LAPD and the club owners to narrow down the assailant. To the boys, the band, Mötley Crüe, I have never once had any ill feelings towards anything that has been created. I have loved and cherished each album that has been put out by the band. I am extremely apologetic for anyone's feelings in and out of the band I have affected in a negative manor

Best Regards,

Vanity Blackwood

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cloveroctobers · 3 years

Text

•ALLEGRA BIANCHI•

IG info/bio: @/theeallegrabianchi | 303k followers| Entrepreneur | bad bitches go to therapy thxz 🦭👄

(24) 26 years old

From Swansea, Wales

Ofc she knows who Catherine Zeta-Jones is...her mother literally resembles her and remembers people coming up to her mom countless times asking for a pic growing up, and Allegra hated taking pics for these imbeciles...mainly because the attention wasn’t on her

has a dysfunctional family...

her mother is critical of almost everything she does but at least she paying attention?

and feels her father is neglectful and only seems to be heard when she’s in his face

all they know how to do is scream at each other instead of talking calmly to one another

her mother is of Venezuelan heritage

And Her father is of Italian heritage

her father’s side of the family resides in calabria italy

he named her after his high school gf that passed away due to his irresponsible drunk driving on their senior prom night

Her parents do not have the healthiest of relationships due to her father constantly cheating on her mother in the past...leading to verbal and physical fights

also has a kid or two outside of their marriage because of his unfaithfulness and allegra learned to hate them because of the hurt her mother showcased

In the beginning she was only around them because her father enforced it, that she needed to know her family “blood is all you got in the end.” He would always say but that was bs

Would take her, her half sibs, and her full sibs on day trips/weekend trips in his suburban

Has three full older brothers and one full younger sister

Because of this, Allegra did not have a clear view of what love was supposed to be and felt that anger in a relationship is supposed to be somewhat of the norm?

Many times she wished at night in her bed with a pillow over her head that her parents would just file for a divorce already when their fights would get bad to the point things would get broken and her mother would h*t her father (once with a metal bat) and throw him out of the house

Has had the cops called on their household before and cps definitely has/had a file on them

Has been in family therapy before and is currently in therapy mainly for herself because of the trauma & how it’s messed with her spirit as a person

Loves? Cares for her parents from afar but will never understand their relationship and why they’re still together to this day

Can go months without speaking to any of her family members and be completely fine with that

Had her younger sis, Nerina put her PRIVATE shit on blast via internet after love island aired and completely cut her off since she is “a clout chaser and money hungry bitch who can’t take care of own her child cause she opened her legs to a meth head who loves prison” OOP

she only has a decent relationship with one of her brothers who’s two years older than her, Vito. They seem to be the closest out of the sibs and he’s the only one she bothers to speak to from time to time

She’s a “cocktail entrepreneur” so I’m guessing she has her own business where she specializes in her own cocktail drinks? Working in some upscale rooftop/penthouse bar where she successfully makes profits from her signature drinks or has a brand that focuses mainly on cocktails

It took years for her business to take off and hasn’t been easy, not one bit. At times it felt like everyone wanted to see her fail and she has openly spoken about her struggles as not only a entrepreneur but as a woman in this business where no one wanted to take a chance on her

That just lit the fire that’s already inside of her

Aries sun + Leo moon + Scorpio rising? (Personality vs how you react to things emotionally vs you’re outside shell for those who don’t follow this too much. I’m not too in depth about it but I do find it interesting!)

Or should she be reversed as a Leo sun with a Aries moon? Aries are direct, fiery, one step ahead of others, impulsive, and know how to take charge. Leo’s are dramatic, loves attention, passionate, loyal, warm, and have a need to express their passions, and scorpios are intense, secretive, mysterious, and work strategically

anyways, I feel like she’s definitely improved as a person over the span of two years? Or at least I hope she has cause everyone goes thru changes

And she was frustrating in s1 so I just know she had some deeper issues going on so I really think therapy is helping her ass I wish it would help me lmao

Being cheated on honestly made her feel like her mother, weak in her mind she was with this dude for awhile—3 years and he just up and thought it was okay to cheat on her? With his personal trainer?! Yet he didn’t gain any muscle mass?! The ultimate disrespect!!! but one thing she knew? She wasn’t going to stick around like her mom did

But she was bitter about it foresure. She ultimately wanted to corner the girl for messing with HER man but part of her knew she wasn’t the only one to blame. However that didn’t stop her for cussing her out via voicemail a couple of times while intoxicated

Allegra always strived for love cause she’s never really seen it before or felt it

Sure she’s had many boyfriends before?And their names didn’t matter not only because she didn’t remember them? But she never felt the spark with them in the first place?

Maybe she wasn’t meant for love so she kinda put on this bitchy front and always been that way with some shitty friends she had around her until she recently cut them off a year ago

has gotten herself into trouble as a kid: trespassing, and destroying public property, smoking in the girls bathroom, physical altercations, cutting class, being assigned community service, etc... all with these friends she’s had for years!

Before she met her problematic friends in secondary, when she was in her pre-teen stage she was involved in the handbell team and in the Color guard but hates to admit it even tho her parents have pics all over the flat

went away to uni for a semester and wanted to join a sorority but the hazing was extreme to the point she was sent to the hospital then accepted? Which led to more trauma in her life so she dropped out

A few years later she decided on online courses and moved out of her parents flat as soon as she could with the $ she saved up and did not leave in the house since it was not safe to smh

Therapy was really helping sis, she felt a lot better and was working on her deep rooted issues mainly the anger and hurt and never really realized how it revolves around her life. She was super thankful for her therapist and reshaping herself

Many didn’t buy it but she knew she couldn’t give that much of a fuck? She couldn’t. In order to grow you got to learn that you have to involve for yourself and not others

She didn’t like the person she saw watching the show back but when she came back to the reunion a part of her hoped people saw some sort of change in her—even if it’s only been a few months since the show then

Sometimes she’ll slip back into old habits, wanting and doing so by snapping on people and blacking out by getting intoxicated and knowing that healing is a process and valuing yourself is the exact same

has a toy poodle that she loves deeply

doesn’t have many outside friends after cutting off the ones that were toxic

is pro-ab*rtion and had one herself which was aired out by her sister online

has a cozy flat that has a lot of brick exposure inside, a navy sofa which is her favorite piece in her house, and a view to die for!! which erases the fact that her apartment is “cozy” which she uses to replace the fact that it’s much smaller than what she originally wanted. She dreams big ya know!!!

currently has a crush on her art teacher who resembles Adam Rodriguez

but also feels like liking your teacher/instructor is a bit weird? Even tho they’re both grown

yes she is taking art classes now outside of work to find something that’ll bring her peace and these pass months they have until COVID hit where classes had to be cancelled yet she was contacted to continue online but she felt her art was truly shit but he says art is subjective

She feels like there’s a connection there? But at the same time isn’t looking for another relationship until she fully works on herself first! That took awhile for her to accept after she fell into some relations with a few ppl after the show

from there she realized that she might like girls too? And got a little annoyed that it took her this long to figure out especially with the way she felt around MC and cherry

doesn’t like to admit this but her fav holiday is Christmas? Even tho the theme is majorly corny to her but it actually makes her happy?

Feels like that was the only time her family showed love towards each other, and even tho they didn’t come from much, they always followed thru with their traditions

and she misses them a little bit around this time and might be the first one to call them even if the calls are short lived and kinda awkward at first

Loves making gingerbread houses and cookies

i feel like she now embraces her forearm hair but still gets everything else lasered

Miss Allegra has inches okay?! But I definitely feel like now in 2020 she’s chopping that shit off into a pixie cut and when she posts on the gram her hair is usually always damp when she shows it off

some comments — jake: lovely! Jen: babe, ur beautiful! Erikah: 😍 Tim: how hot! You’ve got the whole resident evil thing goin for yous

“Did he just call me a virus?”

And she might get a like from mason that’ll make her feel some type of way

We all have to go thru some growth you know so do you girl!

You can’t tell me she doesn’t play stabscotch!

Used to be obsessed with social media way before going on love island but lately doesn’t mind disappearing for months at a time? You have to cleanse yourself from that shit

idk i see her being mostly cool with jen or erikah and will hang out with them from time to time? Maybe they experienced some growth too, shit I sure hope so

still feels something for mason??? But at the same time maybe it was mainly superficial since mason wasn’t fucking with her like that, not 100% but at the same time gets frustrated that he still doesn’t see where she’s coming from and it’s been 2 years???

She loves hard if given the chance and then feels like shit when it doesn’t work out cause it feels like she wasted a fuck load of time

she no longer follows him because she feels like it’s better for her spirit or whatever and she doesn’t need to see him with someone else

the only guy that she really interacts with is Tim, yet tim is cool with everybody!

Otherwise there’s no real connection with her and anybody else? She wants to keep love island separate from herself now because she’s not exactly the same as she was two years ago? And hopes someday people will get that

Probably watches those auction shows on the telly late at night when she can’t sleep, hoping and can afford some of those things one days

I feel like she has chronic migraines too?

Once had a significant other buy her Allegra-D in all seriousness for her birthday because it reminded them of her & thought it would help her headaches 🤨

Loves the snow, but hates cleaning it off her car! S/O to those HOA fees, bless it cause leggy’s deff bussed her ass once before breaking her collarbone and sued like a mf!!!

Since her hours are hardly consistent since she’s mainly her own boss, she’ll have late nights/early mornings when she returns home and has to shift days where she cleans the flat but when she cleans??? It’s best everyone stays tf out of her way

And don’t try to help her cause you’re doing it wrong 10/10 of the time, she loves cleaning and has dropped mad money on those super expensive vacuums

Only knows how to make what’s relative to her culture: arepas, penne alla vodka, and cawl but otherwise than that? She’d rather clean then spend hours in a kitchen cooking unless she’s making cocktails ofc!

also loves shopping for clothes but shoes are her fav things to shop for

Deff has a steamer over a iron for her clothes

Keeps eucalyptus and lavender oil in her purse at all times

posts mainly on her stories and made a deal with her supporters that she’ll go live once a month since she feels like she owes them that? Since she’s not as active anymore but she really doesn’t owe anybody shit but out of the newfound kindness of her heart...she does

Believes she got Covid before they all decided to do a shut down/lockdown of restaurants, bars, etc.. and her suspicions were proven correct after she decided to get tested

her anthem? Kali Uchis — Dead to me (acoustic version)

#litg #litg allegra #litg headcanons #litg headcanon #litg moodboard #litg mason #litg Tim #litg jake #litg jen #litg erikah #litg mc #litg oc #had to make to drama filled since s1 did us right along with s2 #I do feel like Allegra bettered? herself after the show and stand by that #I still laugh when I see her character in my head and the fact that someone said she looks like the bride of chucky #anyways I like giving people the benefit of the doubt and I think ppl like her better than Lucy? lmao so this is for y’all allegra stans #decided to give s3 a break and play s1 again hope that’s cool lol #also no longer doing celeb crush/music choices anymore cause I’ve run out? lol alright bye!

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a-hundred-jewels · 3 years

Text

cruel summer ch 12: i have these lucid dreams

Ao3 Wattpad

Summary: sabrina starr, pegasuses, and oh no! the fourth wall broke! do we have a carpenter in the audience?

Word Count: 9000 ish

Tags: Rachel Elizabeth Dare/Jane Penderwick, Rosalind Penderwick/Tommy Geiger, Nico di Angelo/Will Solace, Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Jane Penderwick, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, Rosalind Penderwick, Skye Penderwick, Chiron (Percy Jackson), Martin Penderwick, Elizabeth "Batty" Penderwick, Elizabeth Penderwick (senior), Iantha Aaronson-Penderwick, Ben Aaronson-Penderwick, Nico di Angelo, Will Solace, Annabeth Chase, Jeffrey Tifton-McGrath, Percy Jackson, Demeter (Percy Jackson), Apollo (Percy Jackson), Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Camp Half-Blood AU, Demigods, demeter!elizabeth penderwick, demeter!rosalind (second generation), demeter!batty (second generation), apollo!alec mcgrath, apollo!jeffrey (second generation), demeter!jane (second generation), demeter!skye (second generation), all of that's in no particular order, main focus is on jane because i love her and she's so so fun to write, tomsalind is there (and stuff will happen - i can't really say what, it will really be eventful though), yes of course there's solangelo, takes place right before Penderwicks In Spring, After Trials of Apollo, more tags to come??, Minor Swearing

Notes and Full Chapter below cut:

Hello everyone and welcome back! I'll admit, this is a little later today than I'd been planning to post (was hoping to get an early start), but hey! If the Puppet History season 4 finale can be late, then so can I!

First off, a massive massive thank you to waterbottle_stickers for being the best beta reader ever. This chapter would be a mess without you. Also, if you haven't already, please check out their enola holmes fic wherever you stray, i follow it's truly wonderful.

If you've been following me on tumblr, then you'll know that, in addition to reblogging an alarming quantity of good omens fanart, I've been making some plans for fics this month. The original plan from back in august was to post every day of the month, but... ahhh.... I just don't work that fast lmao. I'll have to be content with just posting a fair amount this month. Happy october! Anyway, stay tuned.

On this fine day, we've got two lovely QUEER fanfic recommendations that I'm very excited to share. Up first is one from the tumblr blog izzielizzie (which you should all absolutely check out! especially if you're into the one of us is lying fandom!). it centers around the skye/melissa pairing and their senior prom, which Skye is said to have only gone to last minute, and also wearing a lab coat, in a passage of the penderwicks at last. featuring some oblivious lesbians and also jane. once again a massive thanks to izzielizzie, as this fic is one of my favourites!. click here to take a look! (also keep an eye on her blog in general bc her penderwicks fics are awesome!)

The second fanfic is also one I'm very fond of, as it focuses on the siblinghood of skye and jane, which is one of my favourite topics on earth. check out rolling down the ancient high street by hanchewie/ramblemadlyon (tumblr and ao3 respectively) for the sibling antics of aroace skye and bisexual jane when the latter visits the former at her college in california! and, if you like it, ramblemadlyon has two other penderwicks fics from the past couple days that look fantastic as well, and that I look forward to reading.

This chapter is dedicated to my therapist, since I've decided this will be the month of oddly specific dedications. thank you for telling me to stop referring to cruel summer as my "trash baby" and help me recognize the true worth that it holds in my life.

Disclaimer: not my characters, you know the drill. Jeanne Birdsall and Rick Riordan are lucky ducks indeed. chapter title is (obviously) from "lucid dreams" by Juice WRLD.

FROM THE POV OF JANE PENDERWICK

The woods loomed around me, seeming as tall as buildings as they invited me in further. I took another step, the sharp pain of a pinecone digging into my foot barely registered in my mind. I kept walking. A crack sounded throughout the air, and, behind me, a tree splintered round its base and fell down, only inches away from crushing me dead, and completely blocking the path out.

Frightened, I began to run, looking for a way out of the forest. But no matter which way I went, there were only trees in front of me. Where was the path? Where was the grassy hill I had walked down to get in here in the first place. Had I even walked down that hill to begin with? Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I remembered coming here. I wasn’t sure I remembered waking up this morning, or going to bed last night, or anything besides existing in the forest. Who was I? What was I doing here? How could I get out?

Panicking, I stood in the middle of a clearing, looking frantically at the trees around me, trying to find something familiar. Nothing. I was exhausted. How long had I been here? An hour? A day? A lifetime? I collapsed at the base of a tree, sobbing as I tried to remember. Something. Anything.

Then, a voice echoed around me. “Welcome,” it said, and my mind went black.

I bolt upright in bed, a scream halfway out of my throat. I clamp it back, not wanting to wake my cabinmates. Thin light whimpers through the window--enough for me to see my white-knuckle grip on the sheets, but not enough to pass as daylight.

What time is it?

Our cell phones don’t really work here--that was one of the first things Miranda told us when we arrived, and Batty’s been gleefully lording it over us that her Mp3 player will still play music and, like, function, while our smart phones recline sadly in our duffel bags. That being said, I don’t feel quite brave enough to get out of my bed just yet and tiptoe over to the big analog clock that Rio bought at a pawn shop in Colorado. Maybe my phone will at least show the time.

I reach under my bed and fumble for my duffel, hooking my pinky through the zipper loop and yanking it out onto my floor. My phone’s in the front pocket, buried under two pairs of headphones, several gum wrappers, and some strawberry leaves (?????). A piece of gum peels off the screen as I disentangle my phone, and I mentally chide my past self for being so messy.

My phone does not turn on. Big clock it is.

I tiptoe across the cold tile and peer around the tree.

5:45 .

Jesus Pagan Christ.

It’s too early to wake anyone up (as I think this, Batty lets out a snore to rival any crabby Tyrannosaurus Rex), so I wrap a blanket around myself like a criminally attractive burrito, and creep out onto the porch, with my notebook and pen tucked into my shirt.

As long as I live, I will never get tired of summer mornings. There’s something deeply lovely about the soft light of the still-sleepy, pink lemonade sun, the quiet anticipation of the cool air, damp from dew and preparing for the upcoming heat. At home in Cameron, Skye’s woken me up many an early morning to go for a run or do soccer drills or for a grueling “Seven Minute Workout Except You Don’t Follow The Rules And Torture Your Sister by Making It Actually A Forty-Nine Minute Workout.” (But it’s okay, I’m not bitter). But, as delightful as those experiences have all been, I don’t think Skye really gets it. The beauty of the summer morning is not what it can do for your workout schedule, but rather in its gentle softening of an otherwise boiling day. It is to be appreciated in the way that I am now, sitting curled up on this frighteningly creaky porch (I mean, seriously, who built this?) and calling up the Sabrina Starr section of my brain to try and write away the residual panic from my nightmare.

Sabrina sighed as the plane took off. She wasn’t sure if she should have followed the voice in her head telling her to come here. Saying it out loud--even just thinking it--made it sound ridiculous. A dream, a voice in her mind. Barely more than a whim.

Worse than that, Sabrina wasn’t even sure where this whim was taking her. On a napkin in her pocket, she’d scrawled everything she remembered about the dream from the night before. The dark sky, lit only with spiderwebs of lightning, the shadowy figure huddled on a beach and soaked through with rain. The voice crying for help.

And a name. Aeaea.

After she’d woken up, Sabrina had looked up Aeaea, too tired to fully connect why the name felt familiar. Her heart had sunk further after reading the Wikipedia entry, and a breath of hopelessness had left her lips. According to the internet, Aeaea was not a real place. It had been the island prison of Circe. Fiction wasn’t new to Sabrina, and neither was mythology (she recalled an adventure spent with a ghost called Rainbow from a few years back).

Fictional places, though, were another matter. How could she get somewhere if she didn’t know where she was going? Was she trusting her gut with too much this time?

Sabrina folded up the napkin and put it back in her pocket. There was no point in worrying about that now. She’d looked at enough maps to make a guess at where Aeaea might be if it was real. When she got there, she could get more information. Sabrina Starr had survived this long in her career of rescues and whims. She could survive one more adventure. Worst case scenario, she said to herself, I spend a few days running around for nothing and have to brush up on my Greek.

She repeated it to herself like a promise. Worst case scenario, worst case scenario… Eventually, tired out from all her anxieties, and from trying desperately not to worry about what would come next, Sabrina fell asleep.

FROM THE POV OF RACHEL ELIZABETH DARE

“Okay, I give up. Tell me what’s wrong.” Annabeth’s voice startles me away from my plate of eggs, which I had been pushing around with a fork. Anxiety bubbles in my throat, just as it had been since I woke up, and food just doesn’t sound like a good idea.

“I--what?”

Annabeth waves her hand impatiently. “Don’t play dumb. I’ve been talking to you for five minutes and I don’t think you’ve looked up once. Also you’re always hungry in the mornings, so unless you, like, ate an entire cow before I got here, this ,” she gestures to my uneaten eggs, “is unusual behaviour.”

I give her a look. Sometimes, I get the feeling that Annabeth exists as a part of multiple different dimensions at once, like she’s having four other conversations that I can’t hear, and is still ten steps ahead of me in the one I’m actually a part of.

Or maybe I’m just easy to read.

“Nothing’s wrong.” I don’t want to talk about it. “I’m fine.” I’m terrified.

Annabeth sighs. “Is this about the prophecy?”

“No,” I spear another piece of egg, and don’t eat it. “Maybe. Yes.” I feel like going back to my cave and staying there for the rest of my life. Waiting with a book and some paints for the prophecy to get bored and go away. Maybe I’d take Jane with me, or Nico, for some company. That sounds nice.

My plate is pulled away from me as I aim my fork again. “I can’t pay attention when you do that,” Annabeth huffs. I think I wouldn’t invite her to stay in my cave. She’s too on the nose when I want to mope. Then again, she says the same about me.

“Fine,” I turn and face her. “Let’s talk feelings.” Connor Stoll, who had been making his way towards our table, abruptly turns around and walks the other way. I should get Chiron to hire a therapist. Gods know we need it.

Further proving my point, Annabeth’s eyes widen a little, before she remembers it is I who will be spilling. (I make a point to corner her later. It’s a routine we have). “Wow. You broke fast.”

I nod. “I’m tired and you’re annoying.” (False. We both know it. Another routine). “Like you said, I’m nervous about the prophecy.”

Annabeth nods. “And?”

I frown. “What do you mean, and ? There’s no and.”

Annabeth frowns back at me. A mirror, a mime, an annoyance. The nerve to look disappointed in me. “I thought you were spilling, Red.”

I roll my head back and study the roof of the pavilion, which Annabeth designed, and slowly lean my head down to stare at the table. I really don’t want to have this conversation. I go along anyways. “I’m worried about Jane.”

Annabeth leans back, triumphant. “Ah, yes. Your girlfriend.”

Maybe if I try reeeeeeeally hard, I can activate the Oracle of Delphi and freak Annabeth out enough to make her go away. “ Not my girlfriend. You know that.”

“You called Percy my boyfriend for weeks before we actually officially decided.”

I wave my hand dissmissively. “That’s different, you guys were dancing around each other for like three years. You needed a bit of a push. Jane and I kissed once! Over a week ago! And nothing came of it.” We actually haven’t really talked about it. We’re in this sort of in-between zone where we spend a ton of time together, but don’t have a label for it. Honestly, it’s been nice.

Annabeth grins, apparently reading my thoughts. “You’ve been eating lunch with the Demeter cabin, like, every other day. I saw you doing archery together yesterday. Both of you were awful at it, but you stayed there for hours. I’ve never seen you focus on something that long outside of your paintings.”

I stare at the ceiling again. Maybe Annabeth designed it so that a single square foot of rock might fall down onto my head and relieve me from this conversation. “Yes, fine, we spend a lot of time together. But that doesn’t make us a couple, and has nothing to do with what I’m actually worried about!” I can see in her face that Annabeth is more serious now, and is about to fully listen to me, when Percy and Malcolm show up, sliding into the seats across from us, and clanging several plates of pancakes down onto the table in front of them.

“Made them ourselves! Wanna share?” Percy gives Annabeth heart eyes and a kiss on the cheek when she folds a large blue pancake into thirds and bites it like a burrito. I roll my eyes at them because they are a horrifying and disgusting couple and also I kind of want to be them when I grow up. Malcolm ignores them, instead turning to me. “Were you talking about Jane?” he asks, pushing wire rimmed glasses up his nose.

I frown. “Sort of. Why?”

He shrugs, sheepish. “You know. Just, uh, just wondering.”

I narrow my eyes at him, then Percy, who tears himself away from looking at Annabeth to sigh dramatically. “Malcolm wants to ask out Jane’s sister. You know, the blond one.”

I snort. “ Skye? Seriously?”

Malcolm looks vaguely offended. “What’s so weird about that?”

“Sorry, it’s not weird.” I reach over the table to pat him on the shoulder with my fork. “Perfectly normal teenage hormones.” He glares at me and I smile sweetly back. “I just can’t imagine Skye going out with anyone, that’s all.”

Malcolm stares down at his pancake, disappointed. “Oh. You sure?”

I nod, feeling a little more normal with my friends and less doom-related breakfast conversation. My eggs are past the threshold of “warm and appetizing” but I take a bite anyway. “Pretty sure. Jane told me that she’s aroace and, based on past occurrences, there’s a seventy percent chance she’ll punch anyone who asks her out. Anyway, why the interest? I didn’t know you guys talked.”

Malcolm shrugs. “We don’t, really. She just seems cool.”

Percy pipes in, “He’s been practically obsessed with her since she won that soccer game against the Nike kids and made them cry.”

I nod approvingly. “Well, Malcolm, at least we know you have good taste.”

Annabeth pats him on the head, ignoring his complaints that her hand is covered in blue maple syrup. “Better luck next time, brother of mine.”

Piper and Leo join us next, contributing an alarming volume of grapes and a single hardboiled egg to the breakfast display. Leo grabs a pancake and wraps it around some grapes, before taking a big bite. “I hear you’re discussing Malcolm’s romantic failures,” he says around the world’s worst breakfast burrito. Piper gasps in mock offense, then swallows the unpeeled hardboiled egg whole, like a snake. (This is a regular morning routine. She’s trying to work up to being a sword swallower, since her dad did it in a movie once and she thought it looked like fun). “ Malcolm, why didn’t you come to me? I could have given you a verdict within five minutes!”

“I wanted advice on whether I should ask out that Heaphestus boy two weeks ago and you told me to fuck off.”

Piper pouts at him. “That’s on you, you caught me at a bad time.”

Annabeth holds up a pancake with the air of a respected royal and we turn to her. “As delightful as this is, Rachel and I were initially talking about her romantic prospects and also her worries and fears, and I feel that we should get back to that before she slinks off and avoids the rest of the conversation.”

I glare at her. “Why would you bring this away from the very nice conversation we were having about everyone else’s problems? Do you hate me?” Annabeth rolls her eyes. “No, dumbass, I’m just not letting you walk away from a potential breakthrough. Now, where were we? You were saying that you’re worried about Jane but it has nothing whatsoever to do with your relationship, or lack thereof.”

I give a long suffering sigh, and try to communicate telepathically with Piper that she needs to Save Me Now, but she’s looking at me in interest with her chin resting in her hands, her long fingers adorned with rings sent to her from her Mortal girlfriend, Shel, who bought them at a vintage punk store. The traitor. Defeated, I turn back to Annabeth.

“It’s just that, whatever ends up happening with this prophecy, I don’t want it to fuck her up, in the way the quests have sometimes done to us. Like, we’re used to this by now, but it hasn’t been a smooth road. I don’t exactly like going on quests, and at first I was really worried at the prospect of being included in a prophecy, since that’s fairly abnormal, but Jane was only made aware of her heritage a couple months ago! What if this turns out like Silena or Beckendorf or-or Jason, and the prophecy destroys her, and it’s all my fault because I’m the one who pulled her into all this?”

Everyone tenses up at the mention of Jason, but they continue to look at me with a mixture of concern and love that makes something soften inside of me. For the hundredth time, I think of how lucky I am to have these people who love me unconditionally. Even if they really, really need therapy.

“I know that I didn’t plan any of this, but we’re both tied in now, especially since both Chiron and I had the prophetic dream and I actually gave the prophecy that day in the woods, and, well, this isn’t her world yet. She’s only got a little bit of ichor in her, and she grew up knowing nothing of any of this. In a way, I did too, and I have no ichor, but I had clear sight. For me, it was ineffable, but she could technically leave any time, if it weren’t for the prophecy. She can leave, and I feel like it’s up to me to make sure that doesn’t change.”

“Oh, Rachel.” Annabeth reaches her arms out to me and I let myself be pulled into an embrace. “Jane’s going to be okay. We’ll make sure of it.”

Sabrina stood in line at the boat rental hut, her arms crossed and a frown plastered on her face. It had not been a successful afternoon. For hours, she’d been searching the coastal towns near where her plane landed, looking for some trace of Aeaea, or anything else she’d seen in her dream. She was used to working with dregs. It was normal for her to have to squint a little at the evidence, have to shuffle things together around big holes of “Maybe,” like she was working a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.

But this was something else.

Sabrina had read about places where mythology shaped the culture. Places where the tourist draws were events that had supposedly happened thousands of years ago, or creatures that only existed in grainy photographs and people’s imaginations. Hell, she’d met the Loch Ness monster. Was it insane for her to have assumed she’d be able to find the same kind of thing here? All her training and years of experience had told her that, if you sniff around long enough, you’ll find a conspiracy theorist or a slightly off-the-rails guidebook.

So far, though, Sabrina had found nothing. Absolutely nothing. She hunted around, searching up library catalogs, checking every store on the street. “Aeaea,” “Circe,” even “the Odyssey.”

Nothing.

The line edged along slowly, and Sabrina ran her hands up and down her arms. The air was chilly from its proximity to the cold sea water. There were three people in front of her now. She just had to wait a little longer, then she would have a boat and be able to explore these waters herself.

Something was wrong with this place. Something was wrong with all of these places. And Sabrina was going to figure out what.

Later, Jane and I are taking our time walking to the pegasus stables to watch the riding lesson that Rosalind has reluctantly agreed to let Batty take (provided that Percy, who’s teaching today, doesn’t let her fly high enough that she’ll die if she falls off, and that Batty wears all of the necessary protective gear). Jane looks lovely, wearing a sunshine-y yellow bandana that sets off her dark curls and warm sepia skin. She has on her Camp Half-Blood shirt again, and a short green skirt, and all of it should clash horribly, but it doesn’t.

We’ve decided to cut through the strawberry fields, and I swallow a sun-warmed strawberry while Jane tells me about the dream she had last night. I think back to my conversation with Annabeth this morning when she tells me of the dark woods and the feeling of drowning, the memory warping and the echoing voice. At some point we sit down in a patch of grass, a simple circle amidst strawberry plants with a couple logs where the campers and satyrs take their breaks when they work here. Jane finishes her story and we sit in comfortable silence for a few moments, only broken by the grunts of annoyance Jane makes while trying to get her plant powers to activate again. She’s been doing that a lot.

“Well that sucks,” I say finally. “Have you been having other dreams like it?”

Jane shrugs, the neon orange fabric of her shirt wrinkling on her shoulders. “One or two, I think. Last night’s was the first one I really remembered. ” She smiles out of the corner of her mouth. “I hardly ever remember my dreams. It used to upset me. I thought I was losing potential writing material.”

I laugh. It’s such a Jane thing to think, that I can’t help it. She goes quiet, like she’s reminiscing, and I picture a tiny version of Jane, sitting crossed-legged on her summer quilt, writing. I look at her now, scrunched up nose and big brown eyes. Oh gods, she must have been an adorable child.

“My mother used to say that my imagination was the eighth wonder of the world,” Jane says. She’s looking down the hill at the cabins, plant powers temporarily forgotten, and I remember her telling me about her mother, the first Elizabeth Penderwick, who came here and was a daughter of Demeter and loved opera. The Penderwick siblings’ beloved mother who died so young.

I move closer to Jane on the log. “I can understand why she’d say that.”

Jane smiles again, a little sad this time, a little absent, but full to the brim with love.

“Bet you she’s in Elysium,” I say softly. I explained the Underworld to Jane a couple weeks ago, and she’d gotten this same absent look on her face, that I now know means she’s thinking about her mother. Jane nods, now, then turns to me. “Could we talk about something else?” Her voice is quiet, her eyes a little shiny.

“Course,” I say. “Shall I regale you with tales of dimwittery at this camp in the years past?” I told her last week about the time some Hermes kids tried to order pizza to the camp, accidently causing Chiron to think we were under attack. Jane had nearly fallen off the bench laughing.

She grins now, but shakes her head. “Tell me what it’s like being an Oracle.” I give her a look. She’s asked me before and I never really know what to say. When I give prophecies, it’s like I black out. I’m taken over by another entity who shares my body. (“Like that lady in Suicide Squad ,” Leo had said when I tried to explain it to him once, but I’d refused to be compared to such a gods-fucking-awful movie). So, in a way, I don’t know what it’s like to be the Oracle.

As if reading my thoughts, Jane shakes her head. “Not that part. I’ve seen you all green and smokey, and I know you can’t feel it. I mean the other stuff. How did you know it was you? What did you have to do to become the Oracle? That kind of thing.” I relax a little. Jane’s asked me all sorts of weird questions about Greek mythology and the gods recently. She calls it “research for her book,” but sometimes I think she’s just nosy. It’s cute.

Jane shrugs and looks off into the distance. If you tilt your head a little you can kind of see the stables from here. We have fifteen more minutes to get there, according to my watch. I decide to take it easy. “Delphi is this weird ethereal spirit,” Jane continues, “but there’s also just everyday, Oracle you, who likes paint and denim and bagels.” At that, I laugh. “I actually don’t like bagels that much. I’m just late to breakfast so often that they’re usually the only things available.”

Jane pouts at me and plays with the bracelet tied around my wrist--the one she gave me. “You know what I mean! You know all this weird shit about me because my siblings don’t shut up at lunch, and I know stuff about you, like the denim thing, which I still think is funny by the way. But you’re also the freaking Oracle! Your dormant self lies waiting!” I laugh at her, and she rolls her eyes, but I see the corner of her mouth tilting up. “Rachel, that’s very cool!”

I give in. “Honestly, there’s not much to say, that’s why I don’t talk about it.” I pause. “Well no, it’s that a lot of the stuff beyond the obvious is actually sort of creepy and weird, and not in a good way. There’s stuff I try not to think about, is what I mean.”

The edge of her yellow bandana sticks up as Jane tilts her head at me. “That makes sense. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

I shake my head. “No, it feels okay right now.” I mean it. Now that I’ve gotten into the swing of it, I do want to talk about it. Still, a small sigh escapes me. “I like being the Oracle, because that’s what brought me to a place where I feel like I belong and I have people who love me. It’s nice to know that I’m fulfilling my purpose in life.”

Jane pulls her knees up to her chest. “But?”

“But I also get lonely.” It comes out in a rush. “There are other oracles, but I didn’t know about any of them until the Apollo thing happened, and even then, they’re all supernatural beings--I know, I know, but not in the way I am. It’s not the same. Also, there are all these weird rules. Like I have to stay an unmarried virgin my whole life.”

“That’s fucked,” Jane says softly.

“I know! Chiron won’t even tell me why, just that it’s ‘the rules’” I let out an annoyed huff. “And, like, it’s not even that the idea itself bothers me. That’s pretty much what I was planning to do with my life anyway.”

“Same.”

“But it’s the principle of the thing!” I flick a strand of hair out of my face, offhandedly noticing that the tip of my pinky finger is slightly green. I ignore it. It’s not important. “Just because I don’t want to have sex or get married doesn’t mean it’s a fair rule to impose on me! Besides, why is it always the women in these things whose identities are tied up in who they do or don’t fuck? Last I checked, Grover didn’t have to sign an ‘I shalt not fornicate’ contract when he became Lord of the Wild!”

“Exactly!” Jane raises her hands and shouts up to the sky. “Don’t you fuckers realize we’re more than that?”

“The Hunters of Artemis, too!” I’m a jack-in-the-box, and something’s winding me up. “Thalia and Reyna send me letters all the time, and they seem really happy! Which is great!” I pause to emphasize the greatness of their happiness. My pinky is completely green, now. “But, they also had to make a stupid ‘ode of chastity,’ like I did!”

“Are you kidding me?” Jane’s hair flips as she turns to me. “I thought Artemis was one of the good ones!”

My voice lowers to a husky rumble, and I stare into the distance towards you, the reader. “In a broken system, there are no good ones. Abolish the police.” I clear my throat and my voice turns back to normal. “Sorry, zoned out for a second.” My green pinky has begun to vibrate.

“Happens to the best of us,” Jane’s voice is light and nonchalant. “And yeah, I know. Pretty much all of the gods have skeletons sitting on their shoulders, but it just seems out of character for her. I thought all of Artemis’s groups were supposed to be safe havens, not oppressive structures in their own right.”

I frown. “Yeah you’re right, that is weird. I’d never thought of it much beyond the gods having weird rules, but I wonder if something bigger is at play. The gods might be fucked up in the way that regular people are, and are undoubtedly responsible for all sorts of crap. But then there's more personal things, like the ‘chastity vows’ the Hunters and I had to take, and the fact that Nico was initially outed by Eros, and the weird unexplained eye condition that Piper had during some of her quests that made her eyes a bunch of bright, Eurocentric colors, rather than their natural brown. All sorts of other stuff, too.”

“Wow!” Jane says, sitting up straight on the grass. Her hand moves from where it was resting in her lap to cover her heart. “It’s almost like a bunch of genuinely good and inspiring material, such as including prominent queer people and characters of color in fun children’s fantasy, as well as having an immortal group of warrior women who support each other and are free from the gaze of men, was taken into the hands of a cis white man armed with unchecked misogyny and a fair amount of white Twitter feminism, both of which really showed when he tried to create an inclusive and empowering book series for children! Like yeah, it had its moments, and definitely some good characters, but overall, a lack of meaningful research in certain areas really made it fall flat!” Once again, I stare through the bindings of URLs and internet coding, now joined by Jane as we lock eyes with you, the reader. This time, we hold eye contact for nearly a minute, giving you time to read and process the long tangent spat out by this fanfic’s author, who, if we’re being honest, has gone just a tad off the rails right now. Finally, Jane and I look away from you, and resume our roles as fictional characters, still shaking off that strange cloud that comes with staring into the soul of those who give you life.

“Ugh, what’s going on with me today?” Jane groans at the same time I mutter, “What’s Twitter?” We turn to each other, blinking in the sunlight, then grin. This is normal. We’re fine. Jane looks up at the sky again. “I wonder if the gods are watching us. Maybe we should make them think we suck so they’ll leave you alone.”

I laugh as she sticks her tongue out, grinning wickedly at a nearby cloud. “Better yet, make them think we’re too powerful to be messed with,” I say. Jane sees me watching her and opens her mouth, sucking the cloud in between her teeth. The sky seems bluer in the space where it had been, and Jane’s eyes glitter with mirth as she swallows. “Mmm, tastes like sugar.” I giggle, feeling a small shiver on the top of my head. When I peer up, I see another cloud has floated over to me. I open my own mouth, and take it in, just as Jane did hers. “Sugar, yes. But there’s a touch of blood, too,” I say. Jane nods sagely. “What were we talking about?”

“The inherent misogyny in much of Greek mythology and the world of Camp Half-Blood in general.”

Jane nods again. “Right. A very important topic. It makes it weird when I’m writing sometimes. You know, cause I want to bring in Circe and Zeus and Apollo and all these fascinating characters, but there’s just so much bad stuff tied up with them that comes up when I research.” She looks down at our feet, which are standing in the midst of a strawberry patch. We seem to have been walking, crushing sweet summer strawberries as we go, which is odd because I don’t remember getting up. “You know Rachel, I’m feeling a bit strange.”

I look at her, and see an odd blankness in her warm brown eyes. “Now that you mention it, Jane, so am I.”

“My thoughts and words are my own,” Jane says, “But there’s something up with my body. I can’t really feel it.”

“I agree, I’ve honestly gone a bit numb.” I try to glance down at my fingers, wondering idly if they’ve gotten any more green, but find that my neck won’t bend.

Jane’s eyebrows furrow. “Yet, at the same time, I feel as though I could do anything. Grow another grass blade. Grow a flower. Grow a tree. Bend the world to my will if I wanted to.”

“Or is it the world bending me to its will.” I grin at my own philosophical point, but find that the smile won’t go away. Pretty fucking inconvenient, since the next thing I was going to bring up was part of the whole serious misogyny conversation. I decide to go for it anyway. “And I’m not the only one with weird rules!” Jane nods, as if this is a perfectly normal segway, and the only extraneous thought that floats through my mind as we find ourselves walking down a hill is how unfair it is that she still has control over her neck and I don’t. “Remember when I told you about the Hunters of Artemis?”

“Oh yeah! Your friends Reyna and Thalia, right?”

“Yeah, them! They send me letters sometimes, and seem really happy, which is great.” I pause, meaning to add emphasis, when I’m hit with a great sensation of deja-vu. “Wait a second, we already talked about this, didn’t we?” I try to remember, but something in my mind is rapidly melting. I cannot find it. I cannot find anything.

“Jane?” My voice quivers, and I squeeze my eyes shut. Oh gods, please let this be a dream. For a moment, I try to convince myself that it’s the Oracle of Delphi taking over, just like she did the other day and generally does a couple times a year. But I know that I’m lying. This is not what that feels like. “Jane, where are you?” I can barely move my mouth to say the words. I can feel nothing but the frozen fear of paralysis, of lost control. When I open my eyes, this other thing in my body has brought me to the edge of the forest. “Jane? Jane?” She could be right beside me, unable to speak, and I wouldn’t know because I can’t turn my head, can’t move my eyes, can barely even hear right now.

It’s okay, something says.

“Jane?” It’s not her voice. It’s no one’s voice.

It’s okay. You’re home.

With every cut the wooden oars made through the choppy ocean water, Sabrina knew she was getting closer. She could feel it in her bones, in her brain, a little voice that whispered in her ear. It had been three hours. Her body was worn down, energy levels dipping dangerously low, when she felt something scrape the bottom of her boat.

A rock.

Frantically, she peered through the fog that had begun to surround her boat a mile ago. The island. Had she finally made it?

As if answering her call, a peel of thunder rang out, and Sabrina’s boat began to fill with rain that pounded down from the sky. The storm from her dream. She rowed even faster, then, fear sparking a renewed strength in her tired muscles.

Just as Sabrina was about to reach the shore, a massive wave crashed over her, and her boat capsized. She came back up, sputtering, holding her sopping wet bag above her head. Another wave swept against Sabrina’s face, and she found herself spitting out a mouthful of saltwater. Finally, she washed up on the shore, heaving breaths raking through her lungs.

Sabrina blinked, pushing herself up onto her elbows. It was real. She was here.

She had made it.

FROM THE POV OF ROSALIND PENDERWICK

It’s been a pleasant day so far. Breakfast with my siblings and some of the Demeter cabin (though Jane did seem a bit absent-minded). Miranda, Florien, and Rio convinced me to practice some plant magic with them for a couple hours and I built up to growing a small sunflower. Lunch (again with Jane seeming distracted, though Rachel ate with us this time, which appeared to help). Then, Skye and Jeffrey disappeared with some of the older campers (supposedly for a regular game of soccer, but the unsettling gleam in their eyes had me doubting that was all there was too it), Jane and Rachel went to take a walk in the strawberry fields, and Batty and I were left to prepare for a pegasus riding lesson. If it had been up to Batty, the latter could have easily taken up the entire afternoon, but changing into durable pants and finding a bandana can only take so long.

After a somewhat restless hour, during which I grew three peonies and Batty rhapsodized about the stable of unicorns that another demigod camp apparently has, Batty and I arrive at the stable. We’re ten minutes early, and she’s been talking a mile a minute the whole time, not stopping from before. I swear I now know as much about pegasuses as she does. According to Rachel, the teacher today is Percy, her friend, who’s very responsible “when he puts his mind to it.” I wasn’t sure how to tell her that’s actually not very comforting, but Batty looked so excited and I figured there will be plenty of other people there, so. Why not. She’s been spending so much time there anyway.

Needless to say, I very much regret my decision now.

The stables are modest, made of wood and painted green, and I’ve been there several times by now. There’s a long line of stalls visible when we first walk in, but Batty skips straight to the far end, where a massive pegasus the color of a carrot pokes its head over the door and nuzzles Batty’s hair. She looks up at me with a smile that could melt anyone’s heart, and pats the horse on the nose. “Rosy, this is Queen Lotus Flower. Percy said we have a impenetrable bond.”

I look at the two of them with a questioning gaze. How can they both have the exact same puppy-dog eyes? I swear to god. The gods. All of them. “Batty, sweetheart. That horse is like ten feet tall.”

She nods enthusiastically. “I know, she’s so much taller than any other horse I’ve seen. Percy says she has the biggest wingspan of any horse at camp.”

I nod, slowly, wondering why my sister picked the biggest pegasus to fall in love with. At that moment, Percy pushes the door open. “Hey Batty! Ready for your lesson?” Batty leaves her post by Queen Lotus Flower to wrap her arms around my waist and nod. I look Percy over. He’s a few inches taller than me, with brown skin and curly hair. A beaded camp necklace, orange tshirt, and jeans. Weird arm tattoo aside, he’s one of the most normal-looking people at camp. I’ve only met him a couple times before, but, my nerves over Batty flying around on massive horses aside, I do trust him. Rachel seems to have a good taste in friends. Also, Batty likes him, and she’s still shy around a good number of Skye and Jane’s friends back in Cameron.

For the next few minutes, I watch as Percy instructs Batty on buckling Queen Lotus Flower’s giant saddle and looping the bridle over her nose. Not wavering a bit from the “lesson” aspect of all this, he steps back to let her show what she’s already learned from hanging around the stables so often, only stooping in to guide her when she gets confused. As the minutes tick by, more people show up for the lesson: three other students, and a good sized crowd of people who just like watching the pegasuses. By then, I’m seated on the grass outside the stables, soaking in the blistering sun and watching as Percy (seated atop a wiry black pegasus who Batty pointed out as Blackjack) darts around the large dusty enclosure, making final preparations for the lesson.

Skye and Jeffrey show up then, and sit on either side of me. I want to ask them where Jane and Rachel are, but they’re talking non-stop about a game they just played in the woods with some of the other campers, only switching the subject when Percy and Blackjack return and they begin discussing whether or not it should be scientifically possible for a horse to fly.

Just as Batty and Queen Lotus Flower begin a gentle trot around the enclosure, I feel a tap on my shoulder, and hear the familiar sound of Tommy’s chuckle. “She’s got a weird knack for that,” he says. I nod, grinning.

It’s been good with us. We’ve had breakfast together a few times, even played a game of basketball one afternoon. Our conversations aren’t the same as they used to be, and there’s a sense of newness that feels cold and strange every so often. But it’s good. It feels right. At least for now, this feels like where we’re supposed to be.

As Percy starts demonstrating how to take flight, I look around again. Jane and Rachel still aren’t here. They promised to come. (“For moral support!” Jane had said. “Wouldn’t miss it,” Rachel had added with a smile). I try to push it out of my head. This lesson is a big deal. Batty’s going to be flying.

She leans forward on Queen Lotus Flower’s neck.

They begin to run, moving together like a single being.

Just as they burst into the air, Batty’s euphoric smile lighting up the sky, Katie grabs my shoulders from behind. I shush her so I can lean forward and watch Batty silhouetted against the pegasus’s wide orange wings.

“Rosalind. Rosalind, guys. ” Something about the panic in Katie’s voice makes me turn around. Her usually tied back hair is loose and her clothes rumpled, giving the impression that she was dragged out of bed for this. (Some part of my brain distantly remembers her saying she was going to take a nap). Skye and Jeffrey turn around, too.

“What, what’s happening?” I reach out my hands, trying to calm her as she collapses into a squat, breathing heavily.

“Billie… found me in the cabin… had been looking for you guys… been running all over the camp… lucky I remembered about the riding lesson…”

Jeffrey leans over and puts his hands on her shoulders. She stares down at the dirt while her breathing levels.

“Katie, what are you saying? Why were you and Billie looking for us?”

She looks up, and I see that her forehead is drawn into well-worn creases of worry. “Jane and Rachel have gone into the woods.”

Something was wrong. Sabrina crouched on the wet sand, straining to see through the heavy rain. In her dream there had definitely been someone else on the island. She remembered the hunched figure, the sound of sobs leaking through the rain.

But she’d circled the shore at least twice by now, and there was nobody to be found. “Am I late or something?” she wondered aloud. Somehow, she’d gotten that dream It felt like it had been sent to her. Why did it show a person when there was no one?

Sabrina sighed and began to traipse inland, tucking a knife in her pocket. It wasn’t a big island, and she might as well find some shelter aside from her boat, which was now overturned somewhere on the beach. Circe lived here, didn’t she? There must be some sort of roof, especially if this kind of weather was standard.

Or maybe this was just a random island and there was no Aeaea and Sabrina’s dream had just been the unhinged work of her unconscious mind.

There was a small grassy hill set aside from the sand, which Sabrina crawled up with the determination of a dying warrior. Something was pushing her back. An invisible force, a last crumb of survival instinct, plain old fatigue, she wasn’t sure. But something wanted her out of here, and it pushed back harder and harder as she climbed.

She let out a cry of frustration, clawing at the ground, at the air, at whatever this goddamn thing was, and found a renewed burst of strength that pulled her to the top of the hill. Once there, the force that pushed back ebbed a little, like it was giving up. Sabrina let herself relax, and simply took in the view for a moment.

The hill she lay on top of gave way to a deep valley, sprawling and green. In one corner, there was a cluster of trees that looked healthy and comfortable, despite being on a random Greek island in the middle of the ocean. A modest garden lay next to it, somehow appearing unaffected by the rain, and a narrow river wound around the whole scene.

There was also a house.

Sabrina wasn’t sure what she might have expected from the lair of an infamous Greek enchantress, but it wasn’t this.

She hauled herself up on the hill and started down, rushing through the rain onto a wide wooden porch. There was a large stone vat of something dark and crumbly, with a heavy looking staff of sorts leaning against it. The door to the house was short, and Sabrina heard it scrape on the floor when she pushed it open.

The scene awaiting her was surprisingly cozy when she stepped inside. There was a fire in the hearth and rows upon rows of little viles arranged on a set of shelves beside it. A broom leaned against the wall. Sabrina looked around, noting the way that the rain didn’t make any sound as it thrashed against the roof and window, and the almost drug-like stupor that threatened to take over her brain, whispering that everything was fine, she was safe, nothing bad could happen to her.

Sabrina had encountered hypnosis before, and it only ever made her more jittery.

There was an open hatch in the floor with stairs that lead into darkness. She followed them down, feeling the air grow cooler with every step. Sabrina was quiet, taking tiny steps on her toes, and wincing when one of the stairs creaked. She didn’t know what was down there, and she didn’t want to find out the hard way. But there were no arrows flying up from the space below, no sounds of footsteps or slashes of swords.

Sabrina stepped onto a dirt floor and let herself exhale, shuffling along until her toe hit something hard. Only seasoned reflexes made her reach for the knife in her pocket instead of crying out in fear. She knelt down and squinted in the darkness, trying to see what she’d hit.

A leg.

She frowned, shaking it until she heard a low growl. “Stop that.” She stopped.

“Who are you?” Sabrina leaned closer. If they hadn’t killed her yet she was probably safe.

Instead of answering, they reached out a hand. Sabrina could see a gold ring on the thumb that glinted in a little sliver of light that had crept down from the room above. “Pull me up,” the figure said. “I’ve been paralyzed by the witch.”

Helping the stranger sit turned out to be no simple feat. They were tall and muscular, wearing a cape and a heavy metal chest plate. “The witch?” she questioned, propping them up against one of the cellar’s dirt walls. Her eyes were beginning to adust to the dark, and she could just make out their sharp chin sticking out as their head lolled back.

The figure made a noise. “The witch, the sorceress, the woman. Whatever you want to call her. I figure she sent you down too?” They snorted. “Good luck. I told Zeus not to sent mortals, but does he ever listen? You’re gonna die.”

Sabrina tried to piece together what she could from all this. The witch must be Circe, unless she’d wound up on an entirely different island. And if Circe was going around paralyzing people, then something must be going on. She must be hiding something. As for the person in front of her, Sabrina wasn’t sure who they were. By the way they talked about Zeus, and casually said “mortals,” she’d guess some sort of god? As if that narrowed it down. She’d have to be careful.

“Why did she paralyze you?”

Another weird gutteral noise. “She didn’t like my offer. It’s not the first time this has happened.”

She was growing impatient. Why’d he have to be so vague? “What?”

“Yeah, I don’t know why he always sends me. I don’t think he trusts me. He’d rather me stay her paralysed in the basement of a witch than come back home.”

Sabrina let out an exasperated sigh. This wasn’t working and she needed answers. A whole coast of people with mythology-shaped holes in their memories awaited her. “You’re going to need to be a little more specific. I don’t think we’re on the same page.”

The figure sounded confused. “What do you mean? Don’t you know who I am?”

She leaned forward and inspected them in the darkness. “No. No I don’t.”

They slid their eyes down to her face. “I am the god Apollo. I came here for Circe and she did this to me.”

“What? Why?”

The stairs creaked behind Sabrina and she felt a long nail drag up her back. “I just want to be left alone,” said a voice as deep and powerful as the smell of red wine. “You don’t mind, do you?” Before Sabrina could grab her knife and turn around, before she could even scream, strong arms had surrounded her shoulders and a hand was clamping a damp cloth over her nose and mouth. Shock made her breath in, sharply, and she smelled the sweetness of sleeping drugs.

A heartbeat, a brief struggle, and Sabrina Starr was gone.

#cruel summer fic #cameron writes #the penderwicks #penderwicks #camp half blood #camp half-blood #rachel elizabeth dare #jane penderwick #rosalind penderwick

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mythvoiced · 3 years

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MORE QUESTIONS FOR HYUN BECAUSE WE CAN'T GET ENOUGH: Does he have a favorite dish or type of food? Does he prefer colorful drinks or goes for those with neutral hues? Does he have a favorite flavor? How does he feel about fancy/elegant anything? What type of jewelry does he enjoy the most? And finally, how would he react if Boram sneaked behind him and suddenly kissed his cheek? 👀 HAVE A NICE DAY, LOVE YOU LOTS ♥️♥️♥️

-. @theimpalpable | I’M READYING THE PACKAGE FOR MY EXPRESS DELIVERY OF MYSELF AS I’M WRITING THIS

---

-. Does he have a favorite dish or type of food? Even though he spends a lot of time trying new dishes, usually from all over the world, going as far as spending hours on extensive research just to make sure he finds authentic recipes from people of the culinary culture he’s dabbling into, his palate isn’t as varied. Not that he’s a picky eater, au contraire, he’s most likely to cook something different every day than stick to any sort of ‘type’ for prolonged periods of time, but there is a difference for him between food he cooks for the practice and then eats, and food he just cooks specifically for eating. And the food he cooks specifically for eating is usually Korean and taken from a ‘Grandma’s original recipe’ website. He likes ‘traditional’ food, if you will, recipes he might have already been eating before the internet existed, usually the opposite of ‘gourmet’ and preparable with stuff any Korean grocery store has available. He’s no stranger to fast food, and unlike some avid cooks, he doesn’t feel superior to them, even though he does prefer healthy meals (and unhealthy snacks, kind of balances it out, really). And... he likes meat. And sweet berries, to eat while he’s watching something. Raspberries. Blueberries. He loves magnolia berries and feels somehow connected to them... spiritually, almost. I don’t know what that means, this is Hyun’s blog, I just write in it.

-. Does he prefer colourful drinks or goes for those with neutral hues? He’s genuinely not too fond of coffee, or chocolate, two common dark-toned beverages so that already makes him more likely to opt for more colourful choices, that and the fact that he likes fruity things (because he likes fruits in general, to be honest). Often times he’ll order colourful drinks purely because of how colourful they are: he’ll land in a place with pictures in its menu and won’t even read the drink’s name, if it’s got a spunky colour of which he can’t guess the taste/ingredient with certainty, he’s ordering. It’s all about curiosity.

-. Does he have a favorite flavor? To be honest, not really. He’s really just too fond of too many combinations or dishes or drinks for him to really stick to one thing he likes above everything else. He loves spicy food and he loves sweet drinks and he loves sour candy and he loves salty snacks. He has a least favourite flavour, though, and that’s bitter. Just doesn’t do it for him. He also likes the listed flavours the most when they’re in the contexts used to mention them.

-. How does he feel about fancy/elegant anything? Frankly? Bit of a bore. He understands when circumstances kind of ask for something fancy/elegant, but he’s not particularly into it. He is deeply impressed by elegant interiors... in museums, or offices or... well, honestly, if you asked him directly, he’d most likely voice his confusion in regards to those who live in elegant ‘modern’ interior designs or wear fancy clothing on the regular as casual wear, as to why they would willingly surround themselves with things commonly associated with work or public events where you usually have to pretend, lie through your teeth, or speak to people you don’t even know (all the while also making sure you don’t incriminate yourself). He mostly associates fancy/elegant things with... contexts in which they’re frequently found, which are, not so coincidentally, contexts you most likely won’t find him in... as long as he can avoid them.

-. What type of jewelry does he enjoy the most? Earrings and rings. He likes dangly earrings, long ones, silver chains, one end in his lobe, the other on the tip of his ear. He likes how the light bounces off of them if he turns his head just right and he likes to wear multiple ones at the same time. Hoops are fantastic too, small and silver, slightly larger and black, never big enough to become those hoops, but never solely piercing-size either. Studs, with white crystals, fake gems on them, anything that looks to be made of glass, but that kind of adds to the charm of them, sparkling on each of his ears. And rings, usually with similar things to showcase. He likes them monochromatic and if there are coloured gems, then pastel, lilac, pink, or light blue.

-. And finally, how would he react if Boram sneaked behind him and suddenly kissed his cheek? 👀 Ah, yes... Now we shall talk about the circumstances leading up to Ji Hyun’s death- NOT KIDDING, I think he’d just shut down. The ‘sneaking up’ part, depending on how good at it Boram’s being, would either end with momentarily startling Hyun, or him standing there and listening to Boram approach, trying so hecking hard not to have his big, lovey-dovey smile split his face in half. And no matter how sneaky sneaky Boram is being, the kiss to his cheek will lead to the same result: you’ll have Hyun having a regular day with some tiny, innocent heart palpitations, to then witnessing Hyun’s face gradually turn the shade of one of those magnolia berries he likes so much, while his heart is trying to beat at the speed of light, and he loses all thinking capabilities and any and all functions possible related to that. He’ll most definitely try to play his reaction of if they aren’t anywhere in their relationship where it’s clear to Hyun that Boram is reciprocating his heart palpitations (although, lowkey, if he doesn’t start considering it after this, we have a new dense simp on board). Will probably lightly smack Boram’s chest (and by lightly, I mean he’ll just... brush his shirt, or something, he’s got Dokis-) and call him silly or anything like that, insinuate he ‘shouldn’t fool around’ (Hyun, you’re breaking my heart here buddy), absolutely laugh (but it will sound kind of wobbly as if he’s trying not to die on the spot or say the big L word right then and there). If this happens at any point in time in which, well, mayhaps, maybe, forse, perhaps, vielleicht, possibly, there’s something going on already, Hyun’d just... grow slightly pink instead, grab Boram’s face and drop a kISS SMACK DAB ONTO HIS LIP-

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heretherebedork · 3 years

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Hiya there! One of my all-time favorite tropes are the “enemies to fake rivals/friends to lovers” trope so I obviously had to come up with some sort of premise. I guess I have a thing for couples having to constantly walk on eggshells or else their whole secret relationship gets ruined? Not sure but it’s entertaining either way.

Premise: Street setting with our ML and a fake rival who became best friends. This ‘rivalry’ happened when their 2 wealthy families fought over a piece of land, forcing them to dislike each other. Coincidentally, both live quite close and always manage to sneak out at night to go on late trips to empty streets and grocery stores in their casual little hoodies.

I get to try to write Bad Buddy? I mean, I know the delays are rough but still! lol, I'll give it a try but I've started this three times and have yet to get anywhere. I'm determined to do it this time but we'll see how it turns out. Also this one grew OUT OF CONTROL so uh it's a long one.

Okay! So there's ML and there's Rival. ML is a super studious kind of kid, very deeply invested in his grades. Rival is a jock. That's actually what ends up changing their rivalry. They start out just as deeply in that rivalry but it turns out that helping each other is better than fighting each other and by the time university comes around, they're best friends in secret and rivals in public.

When they were younger, they always communicated in notebooks and other secret methods of communication. They even had a series of knocks that worked for simple messages.

It's a lot harder for ML. He's always helping Rival with school work, helping him keep his grades up and then getting protected-fought with by Rival on the field to cover up his mediocre abilities at sports.

But their friendship is his greatest solace. They meet up whenever they can, typically at odd hours and in odd places. But they understand each other in a way no one else does. That pressure to be the best, to be rivals, to never be good enough unless he's better than someone else... Rival gets that.

And university is even better. They're farther away from their families most of the day and have many more chances to just hang out. But ML is struggling with unfamiliar feelings towards Rival. He wants to be with him all the time. He finds himself drawn like a moth to flame.

But he quickly finds himself frustrated because Rival is constantly flirting with other people. Constantly. Like, every moment of every day, Rival is flirting with someone else. And ML watches. ML watches and yearns and pines over his former rival turned friend and now absolute love interest.

It makes it a lot harder to help Rival with school work as well. They're both engineering majors because their parents insisted (They've already been told that they're all getting business degrees for their masters, so you know... not much choice). But now ML is trying to help him study and trying even harder to ignore him flirting with the other students.

One day, he can't ignore it. But instead of communicating... ML explodes. Declares their rivalry back in action and stalks away from a very, very confused and hurt Rival.

ML goes to one of their favorite old hang outs and just cries. He's been struggling in university, both with the crush and the work, and to suddenly just giving up on everything.

So he goes home. And he resumes a life he's never really known... one where he actively tries to dislike Rival, just like his parents want.

He hates it. ML hates it beyond all measure. But it's still a little better than nurturing his crush. And somehow, it's a bit better to see that Rival is suffering as well. ML's definitely taking a bit of perverse pleasure in that suffering. At least they're both suffering.

But Rival is still flirting and ML is withdrawing more and more. Even his other friends are starting to notice and question him. Which just makes it harder. Especially when Rival approaches him with one of their notebooks, pushing it at him.

ML can't turn it away. As much as he wants to, he has to accept the notebook. And realizes that Rival has written a very long note. It's not just one note, it's just piles of notes from the last week they've been apart.

And the notes go from confusion to hurt to loneliness to what turns out to be a very long love letter from Rival to ML that details all the ways he misses him and all the things he misses about him and all the things he regrets... and then a good-bye.

Rival can see how miserable ML is, assumes it's because of him, and managed to convince his parents to move him to another university, far away. He's leaving the next day and this is just his last good-bye to someone who started hating him and he has no idea why.

... It's a good thing Rival lives across the street from ML.

ML climbs in his window in the middle of the night. Rival is still awake, packing his bags. ML knocks on the glass and startles the fuck out of poor Rival.

He's let in and for the first time in several weeks, they're face to face and ML opens his mouth only for Rival to interrupt. He's done with this, he promises he's really leaving, he doesn't need any more insults.

ML shakes his head and steps closer, grabbing Rival's hands to get him to stop. It doesn't help because Rival is finally venting weeks of pain and he can't stop, not until ML gathers him into his arms and holds him tight. Then he buries his face in his shoulder and weeps.

The guilt is overwhelming as ML holds him. He never really considered that Rival would be so hurt by his absence, he never thought about how Rival might have acted like it was all easy but was working just as hard as he was.

When Rival finally sinks quietly into the embrace, ML apologizes. He explains, hesitantly at first and then more easily, what happened. The pain of watching Rival flirt with everyone. The way the school work was harder, the way he was struggling, his own fear of relying too much on Rival when Rival went and got his own girlfriend.

The first kiss is salty and full of both their tears but not bitter. Just pained and sad and so, so late. Because Rival can't stop the transfer now. He has to spend at least one semester in the new school. There's just no way to stop it without his parents getting suspicious.

So ML agrees to some long-distance, to try... but he also points out that this can't be a secret forever. That their parents will never let them do this. That this is impossible.

Rival doesn't care. He'll do anything to keep ML with him. They can run away, they can flee, they can do anything as long as they're together. But ML can't abandon his family. They're just as important to him.

So Rival flies out and they keep up a secret, long-distance relationship and the worst part is how much ML loves it. He hates it, hates the very idea, but he loves it so, so much. To greet ML on the phone with love? The smile at him across screens? To fall asleep with his laptop open next to him and Rival on there, falling asleep at the same time?

That's how his parents find out. They barge into his room one morning to see the video on the laptop.

Things get rough. ML is banned from every single electronic, from the internet, from leaving the house. He's basically locked in his room as his parents flip their lids and tell the other family what's going on. ML breaks down. He's locked in his room without any of his comfort. He is absolutely not okay.

Rival breaks into his room less than a day later, disheveled and out of breath and panicking as he rushes in the window to gather the exhausted and heartbroken ML into his arms.

Then the door slams open to reveal both their parents standing there, staring at them.

ML stares at them, stares at Rival and then just... collapses in tears. He sinks all the way to the ground and can't stop crying even when his parents try to speak, even when Rival gathers him back into his arms, even when the yelling dies down to uncomfortable whispers.

The pain in that, the tears that won't stop, the way Rival whispers and strokes and holds him finally sends their parents out of the room, together for once, glaring at each other but silent.

It takes hours to calm ML down until, finally, he falls asleep in Rival's arms and Rival falls asleep not long later, curled together in his bed.

The next morning is... tense. To say the least. But for the first time, all six people in these two families are in the same room. The parents on opposite sides of the room and Rival keeps ML at his side, tucked under his arm protectively.

They talk. It's awkward, there's shouting, no one's particularly happy. But ML's parents can see the writing on the wall and Rival is absolutely willing to disown his parents without a question and they can tell.

So there's a truce. It's awkward and it's hesitant and it's mostly held in place by Rival's glaring... but it's a truce.

And that night, ML sleeps in Rival's arms and everyone knows.

#premise anon #write my own bl #holy fuck this took me forever y'all #but i like it #it's not bad buddy #definitely #but i don't care #i can't write that anyway

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yourmandevine · 3 years

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Some stuff that made me happy in 2020, in no particular order

God send you no greater loss. It’s something my grandmother said a lot — a bit of highly Irish Catholic wisdom intended to remind you, warmly but sharply, that whatever you’re currently suffering through isn’t all that bad compared to what lots of other people are dealing with. That it probably isn’t too much to complain about, in the grand scheme of things. That you should, instead, be grateful for what you’ve got, big and small and everything in between.

God sent a great many people a great many unfathomable losses this year, and as hard as it felt at times, our family wasn’t among them; we’re lucky, in the big picture. In the past, people have recommended I try writing those reasons down, to give myself a list of stuff to be thankful for, for the times it’s tough to summon up the gratitude. I figured the end of the year was as good a time as any to make that list, to highlight the stuff that helped me get through this year — the reasons big, small, and in between.

So: here goes.

Peanut butter and jelly

I haven’t counted how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’ve eaten since March 11, which is good, because that would be an absurd thing to do, and a sure sign that I have succumbed to a very specific kind of madness. It’s also good, though, because I would undoubtedly be ashamed by the number; the figure would be titanic, like the unsinkable ship of same name, or the iceberg that sunk it.

Or, at least, I would be ashamed under normal circumstances. This fuckin’ year required whatever flotation device you could find, and you know what I found in the fridge and cupboard? A couple of slices of bread, some strawberry jam, and some goddamn Skippy.

Need a weird mid-morning “brunch” after not having breakfast because you went right from waking up to remote school with the 6-year-old? Crank up a PB&J with that third cup of coffee. Need to pack something in the diaper bag to feed everyone while you’re out at the playground for the afternoon? Stack ‘em up, son. Need a late snack after working the overnight shift filing weird bubble playoff columns? Three letters, one ampersand, one love.

I need to eat better in 2021. But I kind of needed to eat sort of like shit to get through 2020, and time and again, when your man needed it most, PB&J was there.

Sunday night Zoom sessions with college friends

I know that most of us started something like this back in March; I’m not sure how many have stuck with it. I hope the answer is “a lot,” because honestly, knowing that I’m going to end the week by seeing a few friends — some here in Brooklyn but mostly beyond our reach for safety’s sake, some who’ve moved away — has felt like a stabilizing agent on more than a few occasions. It’s important, and no small blessing, to have people in your life who really know you, weird messy ugly bits and all, and in front of whom you can let everything go.

That gallery view’s provided a place to vent, to seethe, to laugh, to cry, and to try to find some semblance of center before heading back into another week. I’m grateful for it, and for the people in those little boxes. Except for the time they reminded me that, when I was 18, I was pretty sure I was a Pacey, and they were all extremely confident I was a Dawson. They were right, but still: a bitter pill to swallow, then and now.

Olivia calling herself “Dr. Bloody”

She took out her little toy doctor kit and just turned into a cackling villain.

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A post shared by Dan Devine (@yourmandevine)

Deeply disconcerting, yes, but also adorable.

All Fantasy Everything

What got me in the door was the conceit: three very funny stand-up comedians (Ian Karmel, David Gborie, Sean Jordan), often with a very funny guest but sometimes without, pick some topic or another and engage in a fantasy draft of their favorite aspects or representations of that topic. (It is, crucially, a serpentine draft. Now what is that? That’s a great question.) Some favorite examples: Mikes; Words That You Think Make You Sound Smart, vols. 1 and 2; Things You Yell After You Dunk on Someone; Fictional Athletes; Crimes We’d Like to Commit. Yeah. It’s that kind of podcast.

What kept me around was the friendship. Listen to an episode and it becomes really clear really quickly just how much the three hosts love each other, how much fun they have being around each other and making one another laugh. The warmth radiates, just pours out of the speakers; in a year where I sorely needed some good vibes, I appreciated my regular check-ins with the Good Vibes Gang to just ... unclench for an hour and a half or so.

Drinking beer

OK, I’ll admit: This doesn’t sound great for me. It’s true, though. I really like beer. (We brewed one in our kitchen, which I realize is something of a “bearded guy in Brooklyn” cliche, but here we are. It was exciting to complete a project, and it tasted OK-ish.) At some points this year, it didn’t feel like there wasn’t much to look forward to, and sometimes drinking some High Lifes or Narragansett tall boys — with my wife in our living room, with friends on the computer, whatever — helped take the edge off a shitty day/week/month/year. I look forward to being able to do that outside with people again.

The Good Place

I am sure some very smart cultural critics and political thinkers and social revolutionaries have forwarded compelling arguments for why this show is Bad, Actually, because that seems to be more or less true about most things, whether because said thing is Actually Bad or because the economics of the attention economy on the internet functionally necessitate the composition and publication of pretty much every position on pretty much every issue, and especially ones that present a counterargument for why you shouldn’t like the thing you like, and might be kind of a piece of shit for liking it. But I liked this half-hour comedy about the way the universe might be put together, why we should try to take better care of each other, and how doing so might be a pretty great way to take better care of ourselves.

Andrew let me write about it a little bit for a big project we did before the series finale aired, which was really nice of him. I found myself thinking about this part a lot this year:

I also thought a lot about Peeps Chili, but that happens every year.

Taking pictures of my dog

Check out this flumpy goddamn champion:

“Lugar is a good boy” is the main takeaway here. They don’t all have to be complicated.

Schitt’s Creek

I know we’re not alone in this, but we inhaled this show this year. A half-hour comedy about people being laid low, learning how to deal with who they actually are, and finding some grace and community and opportunities for growth kind of hit the spot, I guess.

One of the most wholesale enjoyable ensemble comedy casts I can remember; Catherine O’Hara was already in Cooperstown, but what she made with Moira Rose only polishes her plaque. I’ll never be able to describe with any specificity the thing Chris Elliott does, but I know it has made me laugh since I was a child too young to understand the Letterman bits or see Cabin Boy in the theater, and it’s probably going to make me laugh until I am dead.

I love that people who, for years, never got to see themselves or people like them on screen got to see David Rose on screen and maybe recognize themselves a little bit. The idea that seeing the David/Patrick relationship might make them maybe feel a little more at home, a little safer and more whole, makes me happy. Sad, about the before, but happy, about the now and the what comes next.

Past that, I just love how what was ostensibly a family-and-friends production for a Canadian channel just got absolutely everything right—the tone, the look, the sound, the theme song, the cast, the jokes, my goodness, the jokes—and before long, the rest of the world just got it. Like catching a fastball square on the barrel. Something the show clearly knew a little bit about.

Finding new outdoor places it was safe to go

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the need to give the kids a place to be that wasn’t unnecessarily dangerous but also wasn’t inside our two-bedroom apartment led us to do more exploring than we had before. Shirley Chisholm State Park is great. Canarsie Pier was a fun place to spend a Sunday morning; so’s Canarsie Playground. If we got there early enough or made our peace with some rain, the beaches at Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden were pretty rad this summer. I lived in Staten Island from ages 8 through 18, and during breaks throughout college, and don’t think I ever hiked in High Rock Park — that’s dumb, because it was nice!

Even if all those little excursions did was kill a little time and reduce the overall stress level of the four humans stuck in our four walls, that’s not nothing. Some days this year, it was everything.

Cobra Kai

I know I’m late here; I didn’t rush to seek it out because I don’t consider myself a huge fan of The Karate Kid, or at least not a big enough fan to sign up for YouTube’s premium service. I checked it out when it came to Netflix, though, and I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this show. Give me “dumb, but with heart” every day of the week.

I believe in Miguel Diaz; I believe in Johnny Lawrence; I believe I will be firing up Season 3 next month, and perhaps drinking some Coors Banquets in its honor. (I cannot, however, believe how the “get him a body bag” thing came back around, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Closing unread tabs

I’m a serial hoarder of links, and I am bad at finishing all of them. I’ve tried to get into Pocket and Instapaper, but I’ve never been able to turn that sort of workflow — open link, save to third-party service, go back to third-party service later to read, then delete from there — into something that felt instinctual, natural, or habitual. So: lots of tabs. Like, lots of tabs.

This was a dicier proposition than usual in 2020, because cutting my work week in half to be able to more effectively coparent two kids who didn’t have school or day care for most of the year meant less time to read things.

I tried to do my best to keep up with the important stuff for work, and to read at least some stuff about how other parents were dealing with their anxiety/anger/depression/frustration at having to be on 24/7 and work, and to stay abreast of (at least some of) what was happening in the world. Sometimes, though, I would wake up and realize I’d been holding onto blog posts about Really Interesting Rotation Decisions on the 11th-Seeded Team in the East or whatever for literally nine months, and I would go against my nature and just hit the eject button on a 25-deep window, and something amazing would happen: I wouldn’t get fired for being shitty at my job. I would move on with my day, and I would feel about 10 pounds lighter.

I still keep too much stuff open. (As we speak, I’ve got three different Chrome windows open on two different laptops. I choose not to count the total tabs.) But I do so knowing that, if it gets too heavy, I can experience the momentary joy of surrendering to the inevitability that I can’t catch everything. In that moment, I feel OK with my decay.

Reading writers I wasn’t familiar with before

Two in particular stand out in my mind: Nekias Duncan, now of BasketballNews.com, who does excellent film breakdowns and statistical analysis, and Katie Heindl, who writes basketball stuff of all types all over the place, and strings sentences together in a way that scratches an itch inside my brain. I’m grateful I got more chances to read them this year, I look forward to bigger and better things for both of them, and I’m hopeful that, if things calm down and our schedules go back to something approximating normalcy, I’ll have more bandwidth to hunt out more new voices in the year ahead.

The time I ambushed my wife as she was trying to break down and put away the girls’ space tent

Pretty good.

Siobhan learning to ride a bicycle (with training wheels, but still)

The moment passed pretty quickly; Not Exactly A Mechanic over here can’t get the training wheels to reliably work right without either loosening them too much or tightening them so much that she can’t pedal it. In that first moment, though, and for as long as it lasted, it was really great to see her get excited about doing something new, big kid shit, for the first time.

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She was proud. I was proud of her. And then we went to a playground for a few hours. Pretty good day.

Tyler Tynes roasting me

Tyler did some incredible work this year — The Cam Chronicles is getting deserved praise as one of 2020′s best podcasts, and his reporting on the Movement for Black Lives was exemplary. It’s hard to top this, though:

You know what the messed up part is? I was excited to tell him what I was doing, just because I knew the reaction would be so violent. Like a body rejecting a transplant. So lucky to have such a dear, dear friend.

PUP

I’m late on everything, so I didn’t start listening to PUP until the spring of 2019, but I haven’t really stopped since. This year has been too sedentary too often; this band is too kinetic to allow me to stay there.

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“Bloody Mary Kate and Ashley Kate” is never more than about 20 minutes away from returning to the front of my mind. I would fucking love for it to be safe enough to watch these guys live at some point, and I am absolutely going to take Steve up on his offer.

Someone sending me a shirt based on a joke I tweeted

First:

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Then:

I’m not sure you should be rewarding my behavior, SnoCoPrintShop, but I appreciate it all the same.

Which reminds me:

Family dinner/family movie night

My wife works in Manhattan and commutes back on the train, and we've tried to prioritize getting the girls to bed early since they were little, so that doesn’t leave much of a window between when she gets home and they go in the tub for us all to connect; before everything shut down, we almost never really ate together. We’re still not great about it, but for a while now we’ve carved out Saturday as family dinner night, where we sit down to eat and talk about our “up” from the day — something that happened that made us feel good or happy, or something we’re looking forward to. (We used to talk about our “down,” too, but that kind of seemed like overkill. Why try to focus on more bad shit right now, you know?)

Then we settle in for a movie, with who gets to pick rotating each week. It’s mostly been Pixar, which has been great but also has its drawbacks; after she caught me crying during one of them (maybe the Bing-Bong scene in Inside Out? or Miguel singing to Grandma Coco?), Siobhan straight up told me, “You need to get yourself together, man.” We just watched My Neighbor Totoro, too, which they loved, so we’re probably going to try some more Miyazaki soon. It’s a really simple thing, but it’s one we rarely made time for before, and it’s been really nice to manufacture something positive that we can share and look forward to together.

Sometimes looking like a shiftless drifter

No shade to anyone who felt strongly about getting a lineup or whatever, but I haven’t really felt like going to the barbershop was worth the risk, and I continue to refuse to believe that my wife can actually pull off the fade she’s long wanted to give me. (It is also possible that she just means she’s intending to run my fade, and that I will before long wind up cold-cocked and slumped by my bride of nine years.) So I’ve just kind of been growing out my hair like it was when I was single, and sometimes been letting my beard get kind of out of control too, and, well, I sort of like looking a little bit like a Wildling, it turns out.

I have since trimmed things up a little. It didn’t go over well with my youngest. Oh, well. I’ll try to do better next time.

My wife and daughter singing the Pixies

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We don’t know all the words to too many lullabies, so we sing the ones we do know the words to. This will probably come back to bite us in the years ahead. For now, though: Pretty good.

Doughboys’ Tournament of Chompions: Munch Madness: Mac Attack

I can’t believe how invested I became in Nick Wiger and Mike Mitchell’s quest to determine the best menu item at McDonald’s in a 64-seed tournament that spawned hours and hours of delightfully funny audio featuring all-time home-run guests like Jon Gabrus and Nicole Byer, who gleefully feed into the often warm, sometimes antagonistic, always entertaining chemistry between the two hosts. I have also never found myself wanting to go to McDonald’s more in my entire life. I have hit the drive-thru a couple of times since, and the boys are right: The McDonald’s fountain Coke does just hit different.

Sound Only

I’ve lost track of whether or not a 38-year-old is considered a millennial, but I’m quite confident that I’m not exactly plugged into “the millennial lifestyle” as my teammates Justin Charity and Micah Peters discuss it on their podcast, which relaunched this summer. Doesn’t matter, though, because I love hearing Charity and Micah talk to each other even if I don’t know what they’re talking about.

Their conversation about Dave Chappelle was great. After listening to their Travis Scott episode, I felt like I kind of understood who he is and why he occupies the space he does in pop culture now. I had no idea how they were going to get me to give a shit about set photos from The Batman, but this they not only got me there, but wended their way toward blaming 50 Cent for needing to know who Groot is to have a conversation on the internet, which is something for which Abraham Lincoln did not die. The show is good, it's getting better, it’s fun to hear them talk their shit, and Charity’s regular bellowing of “I, TOO, AM AMERICA” has made me smile for four straight months.

Siobhan’s letters and notes

She’s in first grade now, and she’s taken to communicating her feelings through the written word. A lot.

I won’t pretend that I loved all of these in the moment. I can only get so upset, though, when she’s already writing with such a clear voice. (And trying to use proper punctuation. (And drawing little cartoons to drive the point home.)

Palm Springs

I’m having a hard time remembering too many specifics about it right now, which probably means it’d be a good thing to rewatch over the holidays. But, as I’m sure many people noted many months before we got around to watching it, a comedy about living the same day over and over again, and about trying to figure out how to make your life mean something when everything seems meaningless, scratched a pretty particular, and particularly important, itch this year. It could’ve been twice as long, and I would’ve eaten up every second of Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti together.

I’m pretty sure I cried, although this year, that doesn’t necessarily mean much. Also, put Conner O’Malley in more things.

Joining our union’s bargaining committee

I won’t say too much about this, but I will say that becoming an active participant in the process of a labor union negotiating its first contract with management has been an extremely educational experience. It’s pushed me to have conversations, sometimes difficult ones, about our priorities as a staff and a company. It's helped me get closer with the other past and present members of the BC, and has led me to start developing relationships with members of our staff that I otherwise might not have had much of an opportunity to get to know.

The organizing work takes time, effort, and energy, but trying to do what I can to help take better care of my colleagues has been well worth all of that. Here’s hoping that in 2021 we can reach a deal that helps make our workplace even better, stronger, and more equitable for all of us.

Publishing a story about Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup

I swear this is true: After I accepted my offer to work at The Ringer, but before I started, I told a friend that one thing I was excited about was that you had the chance to work on offbeat stuff here, in both the “kind of weird” and “not about the NBA” senses. That, I thought, might maybe open the door to me getting to write a story about a Saturday Night Live sketch I saw when I was a teenager about Stevie Nicks from Fleetwod Mac running a cheap Tex-Mex restaurant in Sedona, Arizona — a sketch that I wasn’t sure anyone else remembered, but that was stuck in my head forever.

That story ran on May 26.

A lot of people seemed to like it.

Accomplishing this goal was, as dumb as this might sound, a highlight of my year, and, honestly, a highlight of my career. I’d like to do some more stuff like this next year, time permitting; we’ll see. Whether or not I do, I got to do this. I’ll always have that.

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