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phykios · 3 years

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Five Times Percy Jackson Cheated At School (And One Time Someone Cheated Him) [read on ao3]

thank you as always to @darkmagyk for inspo and beta-ing 💙💙💙 and thank you to @arosnowflake for the homer idea!

Percy squints at the paper prompt again, tilting his head, as if the new angle will extract some hidden information. It doesn’t change. The font is the special dyslexia-friendly one used by most departments at NRU, so he isn’t misreading it, either.

Your final will be an 8-10pp (TNR, 12pt, double-spaced) research paper expanding on one of the topics discussed in our class so far, or an alternate idea of your choosing, to be submitted in writing by May 7 with footnotes and bibliography. By 10am on the Wednesday before the Thursday class you will submit online a 750-word essay (word count does not include footnotes) on the research thread you have pursued that week (no written assignments due Week 6 or Week 12).

Percy might hate college.

“Your neck bothering you again?” Annabeth asks, coming up behind him, her hands already on his shoulders. She’s sweaty, dressed in workout clothes, having just come back in from a jog.

“My neck is fine,” he says. “Just preemptively freaking out over my Roman history final.”

He tilts his head back over the top of his chair, staring into the upside down, prettily frowning face of his girlfriend, and it does nothing to improve his mood.

“How bad is it?”

“Eight to ten pages,” Percy says, “not including footnotes.”

“Ouch.”

“And,” he grimaces, “it’s a topic of our choosing.”

Her mouth twists in sympathy. “Sucks.”

“Yep.”

“Anything I can do to help?” She squeezes his shoulders lightly, an open invitation.

He shakes his head, stretching his arms back to grab her waist. “Promise not to break up with me when you catch me crying at 4AM over it.”

“Promise.” And she seals it with a kiss, bending down to reach him. “Dad wants to know if you’re free on the 16th.”

“The 16th?” He wracks his brain. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t conflict with sailing, or Greek Club, or the monthly intra-pantheon relations council meeting that Chiron and Clarisse both guilted him into joining. “Pretty sure. Why?”

“Dinner--Charlotte’s out of town that weekend.”

“Sounds good.”

“Great, I’ll let him know. Now,” and she grins, “are you going to stare at that computer all day, or do you want to come and take a shower with me?”

Percy slams the computer shut.

He doesn’t think about his paper topic for a while after that.

***

To his great dismay, Percy gets to her dad’s house first on the 16th. Drama in writing group 🙄 she texts him as he gets to the door, be there asap.

Great. Alone in the house with his girlfriend’s dad. Taking a deep breath, he knocks on the door.

Not a minute later, Dr. Chase opens it. Last time they went to visit, Percy and Annabeth had ended up waiting outside for almost a quarter of an hour. “Oh, Percy,” he says, fumbling his flight helmet off his head. “Goodness, I thought I’d lost track of time again. Come in, come in.”

“Thanks,” Percy says, stepping inside and shedding his jacket. “Annabeth’s running late, but she said she’d be here soon.”

He frowns, looking so much like Annabeth that it throws Percy for several loops. “Well, that’s alright,” he says. “I’m sure we can entertain ourselves well enough until she gets here.”

“Yeah,” Percy chuckles, uneasy.

Several seconds pass.

“Oh!” starts Dr. Chase. “Right, yes. Come in. Would you like something to drink?”

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t get much better.

A few minutes of staggered conversation later, it becomes eminently clear why they need Annabeth between them. It’s not the awkward small talk that doesn’t go anywhere (“How’s school going for you?” “It’s okay.” “Good, that’s good to hear.”) or the fact that Dr. Chase doesn’t really grasp how to relate to younger kids (“Have you heard of this website called ‘Vine’?”), but more that it’s just painfully obvious that the two of them don’t really know where they stand with each other.

Now, he knows that Frederick Chase doesn’t hate him. Objectively, he’s aware of the fact that, if it weren’t for him, Annabeth never would have reconnected with her father in the first place, and he kind of owes him for that. Also, Percy knows that he’s a pretty chill guy--a little scatterbrained, but chill.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to make a good impression, though. Or that Dr. Chase thinks that Percy is smart enough for his daughter. Because, like, Percy isn’t smart enough for Annabeth--that much is obvious. Dr. Chase was courted by Athena. Percy barely made it out of high school calculus.

“Would you…” Dr. Chase hedges, plucking off his glasses and giving them a quick wipe with his shirtsleeve. “Would you like to see some of my current research?”

“Uh… sure. I’d love to.”

At the very least, hopefully Dr. Chase will talk enough for the both of them, eating up time until Annabeth gets here.

A new spring in his step, Dr. Chase leads Percy to his study, where he’s got a setup worthy of Cabin Six: on his desk is a massive map of the Mediterranean, littered with miniatures of tanks, planes, and ships. Ringing the room are wall-hangings, depicting different types of planes, half of their structure in x-rays like people in an anatomy textbook, sandwiching the giant viking sword which hangs directly behind his chair. Every inch of floor space is occupied with a pile of books, some serving as additional desk space for mugs, notepads, spare toy soldiers, and, in one case, what looks like the leftovers of a handful of celestial bronze spearheads, melted down into shiny, useless nuggets.

“You know I primarily study aviation,” Dr. Chase is saying, tidying up as he walks around the room, “but my colleagues and I are collaborating on an interdisciplinary re-evaluation of the entire North African theatre in World War II. It’s fascinating stuff; until very recently, they used to call it the ‘war without hate,’ given the lack of partisan roundups and, ah, ethnic clashes that you see in Europe--absolute garbage, of course. As if there weren’t civilians caught up in the fighting, too!” He chuckles, pleased at his own joke. Percy forces a laugh out of himself. “Anyway, with my prior experience studying the invasion of Sicily, I was brought on to assist in piecing the timeline together, working backwards from 1943.”

“Cool,” says Percy, filling the natural gap of conversation.

“Extremely! Operation Husky was a terrific endeavor of airborne, amphibious, and land-based combat.”

Percy nods. Amphibious? “Uh-huh.”

“Though, I must admit, I am having a little trouble retracing some of the ships.” Peering over his map, he leans down, fiddling with one of the ships. “You see this one here? The Palmer?”

Stepping up to the desk, Percy crouches down so the little toy ship is at eye level.

“Well, based on official records, the Palmer was supposed to have arrived at the rendezvous point at the same time as all the other ships, but ended up delayed by two days, and I can’t… quite…” He moves the ship again, frowning. “Figure out… why…”

“Where were they sailing through?” Percy asks.

Dr. Chase points to the map. “From Alexandria to Malta.”

“They probably just hit a bad couple of currents,” Percy says, standing up.

Tilting his head, Dr. Chase peers at him. “How do you mean?”

“If you’re going through the Cretan Passage, you’re going to hit all kinds of West-East currents which will push you backwards.” Snatching up a pencil from a nearby book stack, Percy lightly sketches on top of the map, tracing along the North African coast. “There are tons of overlapping currents in this area that push boats around in circles, especially around Sicily. That’s one of the reasons why so many historians figure that Homer was referring to the Strait of Messina when Odysseus goes through Scylla and Charybdis, here.” And he circles the strait, with a confident flourish.

When he pulls back, Dr. Chase is staring at him.

Percy blinks. “Um… sorry I drew on your map.”

“You--I have been trying to figure that out for weeks.”

He coughs, shrugging his shoulders. “Sorry.”

But Dr. Chase just laughs. “You can make it up to me by helping me with these next.” Clearing crumbs off of southern France, he bends over, pencil in hand. “So, say you were trying to get from Marseilles to Tunis…”

Forty-five minutes later, still embroiled in battle recreations of the Mediterranean theatre, they don’t hear Annabeth letting herself in with her key, not even registering her presence until Dr. Chase, grasping for a notebook, spots her leaning against the doorway. “Don’t stop on my account.”

“Oh, Annabeth, dear! I’m sorry,” says Dr. Chase, going over to give her a hug. “We didn’t hear you come in.”

“I can see that,” she says. “What are you guys doing?”

“Percy here has been assisting me with naval movements,” he says, proudly.

Lacing her fingers with his, Annabeth steps over to Percy, studying their battle map. “Really?”

“Oh yes, he’s been phenomenally helpful.”

She kisses his cheek, pleased. “Look at you, Mr. ‘Phenomenally Helpful.’”

“It was pretty fun,” he admits, warm all over.

“I’d bet. Although, I guess this means we should probably order in for dinner…?”

Rubbing at the back of his neck, Dr. Chase smiles. “Yes, I suppose we should. Does pizza sound all right to you two?”

“Let me take care of it,” she says, slipping from Percy’s side. “You guys looked like you were in the middle of something. Extra olives, dad?”

“Don’t forget--”

“And anchovies, Percy, I know.” She rolls her eyes, taking out her phone.

Rather than the three of them move into the kitchen, Annabeth ends up bringing the pizza in with her, because of course she has opinions she’d like to share about the Allies’ naval movements.

“You know, Percy,” says Dr. Chase, “I must say, you have a real knack for this kind of thing. Have you thought about what you might major in yet?”

Ah, the million drachmae question. “Not yet,” he says, fiddling with a pencil. “I figured I’d get through my gen eds first and then see which one I hated the least.”

“I think you should consider majoring in history.”

Percy’s head snaps up. “History?”

“Specifically maritime history, I suppose. Your predisposition to sailing and ocean currents would be a huge asset to your research.”

“But--wouldn’t history have, like, a metric ton of required reading? I’m not really sure that’s my area.” He has a daughter with dyslexia and ADHD; surely he’d understand Percy’s hesitation.

But he just shakes his head. “Graduate programs these days are very favorable towards interdisciplinary methodology, I sincerely doubt you’d have to barricade yourself in the library. And recently there’s been a significant push to make the field more accessible to students with disabilities, including things like digitization, screen reading for people with vision impairments, and even restructuring programs all together so that students no longer have to memorize the Encyclopedia Britannica in order to pass their general exams.”

“That’s really nice of you to say, Dr. Chase,” Percy says, “But history class isn’t like talking over naval movements with you.” He thought back to the paper that had lowkey been haunting his dreams. “Like, in my classical history survey, I can’t just… talk about currents and battle plans. I have to come up with a topic on my own, and then write about that.”

“Surely something involving Roman naval movements would be well within your skill set. You have a second sense about these things,” he chuckles, “clearly.”

Percy glances towards Annabeth, hoping she’ll back him up, but she looks thoughtful. Considering. Like she’s actually thinking about her dad’s proposal. “I can’t just choose something in naval history.”

“Why not?”

“Because… it's too easy?”

If it was anything like his afternoon with Dr. Chase, it might even be fun. And school isn’t supposed to be fun.

He repeats that thought to Annabeth as they drive home. “School isn’t supposed to be fun.”

“No,” Annabeth agrees, “but I don’t know… I like my intro art history class way better than anything we ever did in high school because I actually care about it. Maybe if you write about stuff you’re good at, like my dad suggested, you’ll like it more.”

The idea follows him all the way to bed, where he’s still mulling it over at 2 in the morning. Before he can chicken out, he grabs his phone, shooting off a quick email to his professor with his potential paper topic, then rolls over, eventually falling asleep.

By morning, he has a response.

Sounds good! Looking forward to it.

***

With shaking hands, Percy calls his mom. “Yes?”

“Hey mom.”

“Percy?” He hears her perk up, almost visualizing her sitting up in her chair. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

Mom instincts. They can always tell when something is different. His heart throbs in his chest. “Nothing’s wrong,” he says, smiling stretching across his face. “It’s just--I got my paper back.”

Percy had ended up writing his paper about the Roman navy movements in the Battle of the Aegates in 241 BC. It was probably the most fun he’s ever had on a school assignment, or at least the most fun he’d ever had writing a paper.

“And?” She sounds expectant, hopeful. His mom has always had such faith in him, even with thirteen years of schooling to prove her otherwise.

He looks back at his email, just to make sure he’s reading it right. “I got an A.”

She gasps. He can hear the scrape of the chair as she stands up. “Percy, that’s wonderful!”

“Thank you.”

“An A!”

He smiles into his fist, inordinately pleased. “Thank you.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I am so happy for you!”

“Thanks, mom.”

“I’m so proud of you, Percy.” Her voice is soft now, like twilights on the beach with blue marshmallows. “I know how hard you’ve worked for this. You should be very proud, too.”

“I am.” And he is, weirdly enough. “I just can’t believe it.”

“I can.” His mom must be grinning, her eyes sparkling. “I always knew you could do it.”

“Sally?” He hears in the background, muffled. “Is that Percy?”

“Paul, Percy got an A on his Roman history paper!”

A second voice crowds its way in, equally excited. “An A? That’s great, kiddo! Congratulations.”

Why can’t he stop smiling? “Thanks.”

“I bet that feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“Well, it is very well-deserved,” says Paul. “That was some great work you did. I could tell how passionate you were about your topic just from your first sentence.”

“Thank you.” Maybe he should be worried about all this praise going to his head, but damn, is it nice. “Listen, I have to go get started on dinner, but I just wanted to give you a call.”

“Of course,” says his mom. “I want to hear from you more, okay? Tell me more good news! Like when are you and Annabeth going to--”

“I’m working on it, okay?” says Percy, smiling even more broadly. “I’ll keep you posted, promise.”

She laughs, tinny and happy. “You’d better. Congratulations again, sweetheart.”

“Thanks mom. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

And he hangs up, puts his phone down on the table, tilts his head back, and sighs, full, happy, a release.

Maybe college won’t be so bad after all.

“You don’t have to do this,” Frank says, hushed. “All you have to do is walk away.”

Five Greek Fire bombs, cloudy yellow, are lined up on the table in front of him, neatly laid out in front of five twenties. From the side, Frank stares him down, surrounded by an army of morbidly curious Romans. Someone turned off the music and turned on the lights a while ago, stopping the party in its tracks, every eye on Percy and his opponent. Figures, his first college party all year and he causes a scene.

Percy grips the edge of the table. “He insulted the Mets,” he says for the millionth time. “I can’t let that shit stand.”

Frank sighs. “Annabeth?” he asks, hoping to stop this nonsense.

Turning to his side, Percy sees his girlfriend, two drinks in, her cheeks lightly flushed, but solid as she stands beside him, supporting him. Her eyes are hard, fierce, the warrior gaze of Athena all but leaping out of her. “Do it,” she says.

William, the sour-faced Roman legacy of Juventus, scowls. “A hundred bucks on the table. Sixty seconds. No throwing them back up.”

“Deal.”

“Frank,” Annabeth calls. “Start the clock.”

He sighs. “You guys are idiots.”

“Frank!”

“Okay, okay.” He holds out his phone, thumb primed, hovering over the screen. “On your marks, in three… two… one…”

He hits zero, and Percy grabs a shot glass. Squeezing his eyes shut, he brings it to his lips, and throws it back.

It’s… not what he expected.

The tequila is awful--no getting around that. Even to Percy’s untrained taste buds, having really only ever had some of Gabe’s sour beer (under duress) and some of the Demeter cabin’s strawberry wine (on his eighteenth birthday, a celebration for actually getting to graduate high school), he can tell it’s cheap, rank, unrefined shit, like he’s drinking straight toilet cleaner. But the garum, the weird Roman condiment that the shot is mixed with, the one that Percy had never heard of before, it’s… it almost tastes like the fish sauce that comes with the pork and rice noodles from the Vietnamese place down the corner of his mom’s apartment, only less… fishy? Yeah. Less fishy.

It’s a weird taste. It’s not bad, by any means, it just--straight up, it just tastes like saltwater. Like the sea.

And, well. Percy can handle the sea.

He looks at William, and grins. “You are so fucked.”

The assembled Romans cheer, spectators at a gladiator show, as Percy knocks back the rest of the Greek Fire bombs, one after another, clearing them all in under thirty seconds. Annabeth swipes up the cash, shrieking as she throws her arms around Percy. William wanders off, red-faced and glaring, as whoever turned the music off before flips it back on, the night, and the party, saved.

Silly Percy. He should have known what was coming next.

Thirty minutes later, he is well and truly wasted.

“You’re, like, really pretty,” he shouts at Annabeth over the loud music.

She snorts, grinning at him. “Thanks.”

“Seriously,” he slurs, tipping forward on his feet. “You could be a model.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Remember when we were fourteen,” he yells, bracing himself against the wall, “and you got kidnapped by that monster?” Slightly soberer but still a little flushed, she bites her lip, nodding. “Well, I followed the rescue party--I told you that, that I snuck out of camp to follow the rescue party? Right?”

“You did.”

He takes a sip of water, running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Feels goofy as fuck. “We got hijacked by Aphrodite halfway through, and when I saw her, I thought--I thought, ‘Holy shit, she looks a little like Annabeth.’”

Her brows shoot up, smile pulling at her lips. “Really?”

He nods. “Totally! But you’re way, way p--”

Still smiling, she silences him with a kiss, the lingering taste of hard cider on her tongue. “I appreciate it,” she murmurs, grinning, “but you probably shouldn’t say that out loud.”

“Gross.”

From out of nowhere, like he always does, the weasley little shit, Nico di Angelo is suddenly in their space, looking surly and emo as ever, red solo cup in his left hand. “Nico!” Percy crows, grabbing for him and missing. “How’s my favorite cousin?!”

Ducking his wildly swinging limbs, Nico grimaces in the way that Percy has to come to recognize as his attempt at a smile. “Better’n you,” he says, a little wobbly. “What’s up with him?” he directs towards Annabeth.

“Greek Fire bombs. Five.”

“You’re a psychopath.”

“What!” Percy pouts. “He insulted the Mets.”

“Aren’t you s’posed to be, like…” Nico snaps his fingers, words momentarily escaping him. “A--representation… person? For the Greeks?”

Percy waves his hand, hitting the wall. “Fuck that. The Greeks can handle themselves. The Mets are sacred!”

“Are you with anyone?” Annabeth asks, momentarily taking up Percy’s usual role of concerned parent friend while he is drunk off his ass. Theoi, he loves this girl so much.

Nico shakes his head. “No, but Will and I are staying with--”

A thought suddenly blooms in Percy’s tequila-soaked brain. “Nico!” He shouts.

“What?” he hisses, glaring.

Percy pushes himself off of the wall, outstretched arms managing to box Nico in, falling on his shoulders and trapping him. He’s still a short, skinny little shit, the fuck, when are his Big Three genes going to kick in? “I need to talk to you about the thing.”

“The what?”

“The thing! The--the,” then he leans in, scream-whispering over the pounding bassline. “The thing.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“You know, it’s…” Percy licks his lips, language escaping him for a hot second. “Round. Metal. Jewelry thing.”

A beat, then Nico’s eyes widen. “Oh, that thing.”

“Yes, that thing!” Pulling back, he pulls Nico towards him, slinging an arm over his shoulders in a half-headlock. Annabeth watches, bemused, lips pursed as she tries not to smile. “I need to borrow Nico for a sec,” he says, words spilling out of him. “Back soon. Later. Soon.”

Her eyes crinkle, grey sparkling. She’s so fucking pretty. “Drink your water.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Then together, like some three-legged beast, the two boys lurch away deeper into the party, Nico leading them towards the kitchen. “Where’re you taking me?” Percy slurs. “‘M I being kidnapped again?”

“If I’m helping you plan out this stupid proposal,” he grumbles, pouring himself more vodka, “then I need to be less sober.”

***

Some mistakes may have been made.

“Where’s Annabeth?” Percy mumbles, looking back towards the house. The party is still raging, someone’s muffled Spotify playlist making a real racket, the greatest hits of ABBA still bouncing around his skull.

“Simp.” Nico, swaying a little, tries to stand up from his kneeling position, only to fall heavily back down on his knees. “She’s right where you left her.”

Discussing Percy's proposal plan had led to more drinking. More drinking had led to the two of them discussing their shared preference for blondes. (“Malcolm is pretty cute,” Nico admitted, flushing, and Percy almost screamed, “Isn’t he?! Sometimes I think about Annabeth with short hair looking like Malcolm and I almost start crying because she’d be so cute!”) Which then led to even more drinking. Which then led to general bitching about their lives, about Percy's hard-ass classics professor Dr. Bauer who he actually really liked but just pushed him so hard and expected so much of him, and Nico's half-brother Zagreus who was causing some family drama by picking fights with Hades all the time and also hooking up with both Thanatos AND the fury Megaera, which, ew, which then led to Percy inhaling his drink, nearly choking to death on unspecified college punch, Nico laughing at him all the while, as he had the most incredible idea.

"Nico!" He shouted, crushing the red solo cup. "Can you resurrect Homer for me?"

Nico gaped, staring. "What."

"Seriously! I need to ask him something for my paper."

"Percy." Nico gazed at him, all the power of the Ghost King boring into his soul, deep and haunting. Percy stifled a burp. "You're a fucking genius."

Which is how they found themselves around a shallow hole they had dug in the backyard, a large bottle of Pepsi originally intended as a mixer pilfered from the kitchen along with two slices of pepperoni pizza dumped on the grass beside them.

"Maybe we shouldn't do this," he says, uneasy even through his drunken haze.

"It was your idea!"

"I don't have good ideas."

“Fuck you, I’m doing it.” With all the force of a tiny, angry kitten, he snatches up the Pepsi bottle, wrestling with the twist cap for a good ten seconds. “I wanna give that bitch a piece of my mind for making me cry in school.”

Percy looks at him sideways. “Hector killing Patroclus got you, too?”

He snorts. “Fuck no. Achilles didn’t pay his dues to the dead.”

“Seriously?”

The cap pops off, and Nico tips the bottle over, dumping flat, lukewarm soda into the shallow hole. “It’s the ultimate dishonor!”

Freak. Percy would die for the kid.

“Let the dead taste again,” Nico mutters. “Let them rise and take this offering. Let them remember.”

“You’re so weird.”

“Says the guy who’s related to both horses and water.”

“I’m not related to water, I just control it.”

The dirt turns black, dead soil mixed with sticky sugar water. Nico drops in the pizza, and begins to chant, that same ancient Greek that Percy heard in a dream once, talking of death and memories and returning from the grave or whatever. It’s still creepy as shit.

Despite the warm California night, the air thickens with chilly fog. Silence, impenetrable, surrounds them, blocking out the noises of the party. From the earth, blueish, vaguely person-shaped figures begin to form, like thunderous clouds before a storm. “Which one is Homer?” he asks, hushed.

“Shh!” Nico hisses.

Like little wells of gravity, the fog begins to coalesce. On one of them, Percy can almost make out, like, fingers. “Um, Mr. Homer? Sir?”

The figure doesn’t say anything. It lowers its mouth, drinking the soda out of the dirt. When it raises its head, Percy can see it more clearly, curly hair and milky white eyes and a straight nose. It--he?--seems a little more solid than your average run-of-the-mill ghost.

Nico frowns, eyes closed, concentrating. “What’s your name?” he mumbles.

That mouth opens, soundlessly, jaw working on nothing.

“Speak.”

It--there’s a sound, like hissing, only it’s not coming from the mouth, Percy thinks. It sounds like it’s coming from the earth. “Nico?” he asks. “You good?”

The ghost opens its mouth again, moaning, raising its hands. Weakly, unsteadily, it stumbles forward on feeble legs, tripping over the shallow hole in the dirt.

“Nico?” he asks again, a little more forcefully. “What’s going on, dude?”

Nico blinks, slowly, mouth hanging open a little. “Uh.”

The… thing… raises itself up on its hands? He guesses, and knees, crawling its way over towards them.

Now, Percy may be drunk off his ass, but he has seen enough movies to know exactly what the fuck is up.

Moving with a speed he didn’t quite think was possible right about now, he grabs Nico’s wrist, and pulls him up, dragging him along as he lurches towards the house. “Percy…” Nico moans, stumbling over a rock. “I think I fucked up.”

“You think?” Percy wrenches the door open, tossing Nico inside, before following in after, throwing himself against the door.

Nico groans, throwing his arms over his face. “Dio santo, my head.”

“Forget your head,” he says, “did we just raise a Homer zombie?!”

Panting, Nico stares up at him, sprawled on the floor of the house. “Oops.”

Percy thunks his head against the door. He does not have nearly enough mental capacity to deal with this right now.

But, he thinks ruefully, at least it’s just one. Even drunk, he’s pretty sure he can handle one zombie.

Nico’s eyes widen.

Percy stares. “What.”

“I didn’t stop the ritual.”

His stomach goes cold.

Turning around slowly, he pulls aside the little curtain on the window. “What?” Nico asks. “What do you see?”

Percy can’t speak, mouth dry.

Slithering up behind, Nico peers over his shoulder. “That’s… not great.”

“Nico,” Percy says, eyeing the horde which slowly shambles closer, half-decayed bodies in togas bumping into each other, almost identical to the drunk college students inside, as the song changes, once again, to ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).’ “Please go get Frank and Annabeth.”

The following Monday, an announcement is sent out to the entire campus: Per new department guidelines, students may not utilize the ambassador of Pluto to interview the dead for academic purposes.

Percy attempts to flatten his hair. He readjusts his shirt. He almost wipes his sweaty palms on his pants, before he realizes what he’s doing, and clenches them instead, nails digging into his palms. He turns to Annabeth. “Do I look okay?”

“Ooh, ‘Mapping Funerary Monuments in the Periphery of Imperial Rome.’”

“Annabeth.”

She looks up from her brochure. “Relax, seaweed brain, you look fine. You look better than most people here.”

“That’s because I bring down the average age of presenters by about thirty years,” he hisses, eyes darting about at the milling mass of attendees, all packed into the hotel ballroom.

Dr. Bauer had alternately convinced/pressured/guilttripped him into attending this year’s annual conference for the Society of Classical Studies to talk about the research he’d been doing with her. This year, the conference was held in San Francisco, so at the very least Percy didn’t have to spend five hours stressing about his poster presentation while simultaneously up in the air. But now that he’s here, in the ballroom, surrounded by strangers who know way more about this subject than he does, who are actually smart and probably never nearly flunked out of school or got kicked out or--

“Hey.” Annabeth takes his hand. “I know that look. You deserve to be here just as much as any of them.”

“Do I? I feel like any moment someone is going to come over and throw me out for trespassing.” He vaguely recalls something similar happening to him as a kid after he had ducked into the lobby of a semi-nice hotel to dodge what he had thought, at the time, was just a weird stalker, but had later realized had only had one eye. In any case, the hotel security guard had practically picked him up by the scruff of his neck, tossing him back out into the street.

“That’s just your imposter syndrome talking,” she reassures him. “No one is going to throw you out.”

He sure as shit hopes so. It would be a shame to have done all this work for nothing.

Glancing back at his poster, Percy can’t help but feel… good. Accomplished. Proud. About a school assignment, of all things.

His poster traces the development of the prow from the Greek penteconter, to the Roman liburna, and finally to the Byzantine dromon, looking at artistic depictions in history. Percy had picked the topic himself, spending hours in the library reading, writing, and hand-drawing cross-sections of the ships on the poster board when the images he had gotten from the Cambridge University library had been too small. It had been grueling, frustrating work, but fun, too. And not nearly as much reading as he had feared.

Dr. Chase proofread it for him. Dr. Bauer signed off on it. And Annabeth had taken one look at it, smiled, then kissed his cheek.

That was the best compliment he had gotten.

Though now he’s kind of torn between showing it off and hiding it away before one of these attendees figures out that he doesn’t belong.

He rocks back and forth and his feet, pursing his lips, randomly clicking his tongue. Annabeth nudges him. “Your ADHD is showing.”

That’s when, finally, one of the attendees steps up to his poster. He certainly has the look of a professor, in a black cable knit sweater with grey, curly hair and a receding hairline, thin, rimless glasses perched on his nose. He squints at Percy’s poster, rubbing his chin with one hand. “Interesting,” he murmurs, in a thick German accent. “Very interesting. This is yours?”

“Um.” He glances at Annabeth, who is frowning at the brochure, silently sounding out words that she can’t read. “Yep. All mine.”

“Very interesting.” He leans in closer, tilting his head. “So you agree with Pryor and Jeffreys about the skeleton-first construction, then?”

Percy blinks. Pryor and Jeffreys had written The Age of the Dromon, arguing that the ram, which had been a key feature of Roman liburnians, had gone away in ancient ship construction because of developments in how they built the hull. Right. “Yes,” he says. “The skeleton-first construction is a lot stronger than the, um,” shit, what was the name for this, Leo had only told him about a million times--oh! “Mortise-and-tenon!” He nearly shrieks. “The mortise-and-tenon method. It, um, it wears out a lot more quickly than the frame, so… yeah.” He clears his throat.

He nods. “Very interesting.”

Percy stares. Can this guy say anything else?

“This is very well done, young man.”

Oh. “Thank you,” he says.

“Who are you working with?”

“Um, June Bauer?” He winces at the accidental question.

He frowns. “I’m not familiar with her work. Where does she teach?”

What a loaded question. “Uh… New Rome University.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s--she used to teach at Northwestern, if that helps. Um, retired,” Percy says.

The frown stays, but at least he doesn’t ask any more questions. “Hmm. Well, this is excellent research, nonetheless. I look forward to reading your dissertation.” Then, distracted by something else, he wanders off, chin still attached to his hand.

“Who was that?” Annabeth asks.

Percy shrugs. “Beats me. Also, what’s a dissertation?”

“It’s like a senior thesis, but, like, five hundred pages long.”

Five hundred?! “Fuck me.”

“Maybe later,” Annabeth smirks. “It looks like you’ve got company.”

Sure enough, a smallish group of four people are approaching, led by Dr. Chase, making a beeline straight for them. “Here we are,” Dr. Chase says, gesturing. “This is the project I was telling you about. Percy, would you mind going over your poster for us?”

“No problem, Dr. C,” says Percy, smiling his least-grimace-y smile.

As one, the adults all turn to look at him, faces politely blank, expectant.

Percy swallows. “So,” he begins, “um, this research is about the development of ship construction in the Roman empire…”

He trips up on some of the words, and at one point, he sees Dr. Chase squint in the way that usually means that Percy is speaking too fast, but all in all, he doesn’t totally fall flat on his face. His audience looks engaged, nodding along as Percy moves from point to point, and no one accuses him of being a giant fraud, which is pretty nice.

At one point, Percy turns to the poster to indicate a specific point on his ship diagrams. When he turns back, his audience has suddenly multiplied, four people turning into a whole goddamn crowd. Each person gives him their undivided attention almost unblinking.

His mouth goes dry. “Um…”

Dr. Chase, bless him, saves his ass once again. “Would mind starting again from the beginning, Percy?” he asks, a little bemused himself at the amount of people that had suddenly appeared.

Silence stretches on for a moment, the muffled noise of the rest of the conference like a dull roar in his ear.

Annabeth, behind him, coughs.

“S-sure. No problem.”

Swallowing, he closes his eyes, breathing in through his nose. Why, oh why did he let Dr. Bauer talk him into doing this again?

He pictures the tides of Long Island Sound, gentle and rocking, unhurried and unbothered, tries to match his breathing to them. When he opens his eyes, unfortunately, the crowd hasn’t disappeared. Everyone is still staring at him.

But Annabeth stands next to her dad, flashing him a big smile and two huge thumbs up.

Percy relaxes. He’s got this.

“Okay,” he says. “So, about the middle of the first millennium CE, ship construction went through a couple of major developments…”

This time goes much, much more smoothly. He’s not sure what it is--though it’s probably Annabeth, her face fixed in a gentle smile as she watches him speak. Gods, what did he do in a past life to deserve someone as amazing as his girlfriend?

That’s the only reason he can do this. Hell, that’s the only reason he even thought to do this. If he didn’t have Annabeth there, encouraging him, cheering him on, he never would have had the confidence to put himself out there like this. She’s there to pick him up when he doubts himself, there to listen when he can’t explain himself, there to give him feedback when he needs to practice.

She makes him feel so strong. She makes him feel like he can take on the world--or at the very least, that he can impress a handful of academics.

And they certainly seem impressed with his talk so far.

“Excuse me,” says a nasally, pinched looking older British guy, face lined as though he lived his life in a state of perpetual squinting. “I find your conclusions to be suspect--wouldn’t the frame method be more susceptible to breaking than the mortise-and-tenon?”

Well, most of them, anyway.

Percy shakes his head. “You’d think, but no. If you look at the study by Steffy, you’ll see that the three-finned ram from the Athlit wreck was designed specifically to break the mortise-and-tenon hull by causing the planks to flex, so that they’d dislodge the joinerys right next to them. A blow like that can cause the wood to split right down the middle.” A blow like that had sunk Sherman Yang’s ship when they tested it out on the lake at camp last summer, the naiads practically hurling him out of the water so quickly Percy didn’t even have to dive in to save him.

“How were you able to do these strength tests?” asks another listener, an older woman with a thick Hungarian accent.

“Hands-on battle simulations,” Percy replies, easily. “We took our models and tested them in as accurate a simulation as we could make.”

“And how big were these models?”

Percy holds his hands apart, a vague, entirely inaccurate estimate. “About thirty meters, give or take.”

Her eyes widen. “How on earth did you get your hands on such a large ship?”

Percy freezes. “Uh.”

Oh, shit.

He had forgotten--most people didn’t have dads who could summon shipwrecks from the bottom of the sea, dropping them off at Camp Half-Blood with nothing but a sand dollar and one or two exhausted, pissed off hippocampi who had had to drag them all the way there.

“Um,” he stammers, licking his lips, thinking fast--c’mon, Percy, think! “I…” He swallows, panicking. “I… b… built one.”

In the corner of his eye, Annabeth facepalms.

Simultaneously, every mouth in the crowd drops--in shock, outrage, and even excitement. “You built one?!” the woman yelps.

Oops. “I had help,” Percy says, quickly.

Annabeth adds a second hand to her facepalm.

“Where?” The first man asks, his bushy brows flying above the rim of his glasses.

“At my… summer camp…”

Dr. Chase sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I mean,” Percy chuckles, shrugging his shoulders, trying not to sweat too obviously, “it was either that or lanyards, am I right?”

Dr. Chase, thank Athena, raises his hand, ready to step in. “What Percy means to say, I believe,” he says, attempting to draw their attention, “is that--”

“That’s amazing!” says another woman, probably a grad student attendee based on the fact that she’s wearing jeans. “Do you have pictures?”

Oh this is not good. “Um, not--not on me, but--”

“I do.” Annabeth takes out her phone, holding it up to the person next to her.

Percy blinks. “You do?” He doesn’t remember her taking any pictures.

She shoots him a look, two parts exasperated and one part “shut up and let me handle this,” with just a dash of fondness in the mix. Pointedly, she looks at him, eyebrows raised, indicating that he should continue.

Oh. She’s using Mist. And he needs to keep their attention on him so that they buy it. “Right,” he says, clearing his throat. “Any more questions?”

His audience placated for now, passing around Annabeth’s phone, he manages to finish up his presentation. After fielding a few more questions, people start to peel off, distracted by other posters and presenters in the ballroom. When everyone has finally wandered away, Dr. Chase comes up and pats Percy’s shoulder awkwardly. “Nice work,” he says, and he seems like he means it. “A little touch-and-go there for a while, hm?”

“A little.”

He chuckles. “Still, you should be proud. I don’t know how many undergraduates would be able to handle that kind of pressure.”

“I mean,” Percy says, shrugging a shoulder, “it’s about on par with leading an army. Maybe a little less.” Honestly, maybe even a little more stressful. If a monster had decided to attack the convention center and interrupt his presentation, he probably would have been relieved.

He’d been worried for a moment that he’d undone all those years of work in making Annabeth’s dad like him. And that he’d be charged with some sort of academic fraud, for the whole “I have a boat” thing without proof. Thank the gods for Annabeth, as always.

She’s looking at him now through narrowed eyes. She at least can’t be surprised--that was far from the dumbest thing she’s ever seen him do. At least his “I spent most of my time at magic greek mythology summer camp” covers are normally better than hers. As someone who spent his formative years in the real world, he’s usually pretty good at keeping the demigod thing under wraps.

“Come on,” she says, grabbing his hand. She pulls him off, through the dispersing crowd, lacing their fingers together, sweet and intimate, out of the hall and then down another one, and through a smaller corridor. Bringing them up to a little door, with a shake of her wrist, she pulls out her Estruscan keyring bracelet. About several of the keys have found themselves used in various misadventures, vanishing once their purpose is fulfilled, but her favorite key is still there. And, just like a clever child of Hermes, it can pick just about any lock.

Inside is just an empty room, a little staging area surrounded by tiered desks going up, no more or less remarkable than any of the other conference rooms they’d visited before.

“What--?” His question is cut off by Annabeth’s mouth on his.

Surprising, but definitely not unwelcome.

It's a while before they separate again. “You’re so good at this,” she tells him, unbuttoning his shirt.

He runs his hands along the lines of her flanks. “I’ve had a lot of practice,” he grins. He’d practice kissing her all day long if he could.

She smiles, shaking her head. “No, not this,” though she does lean in for another kiss, pulling at his lower lip with her teeth. “I know you’re good at this.” They break away, Percy pulling her shirt over her head, Annabeth shucking off his. “But history. Presenting.” She runs a finger over his chest, kissing his cheek, headed towards the sensitive spot on his jaw. “Gods, you’re so smart.”

Something about the praise vibrates through his chest. She doesn’t sound surprised, or anything, just--turned on.

“You had all those crusty academics eating out of your hand. Just, so impressed by you, knowing you know way more than they do about naval history. When you were explaining the--” Her compliment is cut off with a moan, as he leans down and starts sucking on her throat. Her blouse has a high neck, so he feels no guilt for using his teeth.

“Watching you today, gods.” Her breath is labored as his fingers play at the waistline of her skirt. “And then thinking of you defending your dissertation.” He bites at her jugular, and she lets out a long, deep moan.

“I don’t know what that means.” Do academics fight each other? Like, with weapons? He’s pretty sure he can take most of the people he met today.

“It means you get to show off how smart you are,” Annabeth says, grasping his shoulders, pulling him in for another kiss. “I was born the day my dad defended his. Gods, it's going to be amazing to watch you go.” She yanks his belt out of his pants, tossing it to the floor.

They miss the panel on recent translation efforts. But Percy can’t say he minds one bit.

And when Annabeth presents him with a positive pregnancy test two months later, Percy definitely knows he made the right decision.

He almost doesn’t realize he’s having a dream-vision at first.

It has been literal years since he’s had a demigod dream. Hell, it’s been a long while since he’s had a dream, period--being a new dad to a one-and-a-half-year-old saps too much of his energy to even think about dreaming. Once Junie is put to bed, when he’s out, he is fucking out, and he does not have the brainpower to spare to manifest any messed up subconscious fears.

Which is why when he blinks open his eyes, taking in the too-bright colors of the Parthenon and the gleaming shine of the bronze statues which are somehow all looking at him--also, you know, how the Parthenon is complete, standing as it did thousands of years ago, and not crumbled into ruins--he knows, immediately, he is being contacted by a god.

And only one god in particular would bring him to Athens.

Without even checking, he heaves himself up off the ground, folding into a kneel. “My lady Athena,” he says, “can I ask for what quest you’ve brought me here?”

“Impertinent as ever, Percy Jackson,” rumbles the goddess, but Percy doesn’t think he can sense any ill will towards him. He hopes, anyway. “Perhaps I have summoned you here for a social visit.”

“Perhaps,” he says, choosing his next words as carefully as possible. “But I assume you have too much to worry about to randomly check up on your daughter’s boyfriend.”

He lifts his head, catching her expression--stoic as always, but maybe with just the barest hint of a smile. “You assume correctly. You have become, contrary to my initial expectations, very wise in the time that I have known you.”

“Thank you.” He knows better than to do anything but accept the compliment for what it is.

“I have observed your work as a scholar in recent years, and I must say that I am surprised, yet pleased, that you have chosen to pursue such a path. I had not thought you to be suited for a world of old men and dusty papers.”

He grits his teeth. Don’t rise to the bait, don’t rise to the bait, don’t rise to the bait--

“I understand, as well, that though you and my daughter have,” and here her careful composition cracks, just the slightest, the tiny lift of her lips falling, “made a child together.”

Percy swallows. He figured, you know, in the abstract, that Athena would know about Junie, but hearing her say it out loud is… well, he’s just glad that Dr. Chase has always liked him. “Yes, my lady.”

“It is customary in your time to marry prior to childbirth, is it not?”

“It is.” Oh, fuck, is she going to smite him for that? “I--that is to say, we, Annabeth and I, we, um, we definitely want to get married, but, Annabeth kind of…”

He trails off. He can’t tell Athena, goddess of war, that his daughter pissed off the queen of heaven! And if he does, he definitely can’t imply that it was because she was being too stubborn!

“I know well of my daughter’s history with my father’s wife,” Athena says, smoothly. “I come to you now with an offer of peace.”

Percy straightens his back. Peace?

Raising one graceful arm, Athena turns, indicating the structure behind her. “Look upon my temple,” she intones. The white marble shines even more powerfully against the blue and red paint, intricate scenes and figures ringing the top of the columns. “In the time of Pericles, it was built to commemorate the victory of Hellas over the armies of Xerxes the Great. It was to be the shining beacon of our world, a triumph of our power and influence over the race of men.”

The race of men might have had something to say about that, he thinks to himself.

“But it was not to be,” Athena says, mournfully. “As our influence waned, so too did our temple, until its might was all but forgotten.”

Before his eyes, the paint fades away, ceilings and columns collapsing, the destruction of the Parthenon playing out in front of him.

“Some two hundred years ago,” she says, her voice taking on a darker, more dangerous tone, “a grave insult was paid to the ruins of my ancient sanctuary.” Like curtains falling on a stage, darkness swallowed up the structure, swift and impenetrable. “Many treasures were taken from my temple, stolen, by foolish, greedy men, spirited away far to the north, where they have languished in unworthy hands.”

He narrows his eyes. She can’t possibly be talking about--

Athena turns back to him, her eyes blazing, somehow twice as tall. “Retrieve my treasures,” she commands, war personified, “return the prizes of Athens to their rightful place, and I shall give you my support against my father’s wife.”

“You…” Percy leans back on his haunches, staring dumbfounded up at the goddess. “You don’t happen to mean the Parthenon Marbles, do you?”

“Yes.”

“The ones in the British Museum.”

“The same,” she says, imperious as ever.

Fantastic. “Welp,” Percy says, slapping his thighs, scrambling up. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to decline. Nice seeing you, by the way. I’ll tell Annabeth you stopped by.”

Her sharp gazes pierces him, full of fury. “You dare to refuse my support?”

He snorts. “When it means trying to get the UK to give the marbles back, absolutely. Do you know how stubborn they are about this?”

Lightning flashes behind her, nearly blinding him. “You will regret this,” Athena says, dark and foreboding. “You may have your father’s goodwill, but the queen of Olympus is clever and cunning, her displeasure swift and merciless.”

But Percy still shakes his head. “When Annabeth and I get married,” and it’s definitely a ‘when,’ it’s just a matter of when precisely, like after Junie can sleep through the night maybe, “I’d rather take my chances with Hera than try and untangle that particular can of olives.”

A growl, and a snap of her fingers, and Athena disappears.

With a start, Percy wakes up. Junie had gotten her chubby little hands around his nose, and had decided to pull.

“Ow, ow, Junie, hey,” he squawks, attempting to dislodge her grip from his face. “Hey, I’m awake, it’s okay.”

She laughs, illegally adorable, her grey eyes sparkling, squeezing harder.

“Okay, okay,” he laughs along with her. “You got my nose, you win.”

As if she were waiting for him to admit defeat, she lets go, clapping her pudgy toddler hands together.

“That’s right,” he picks her up, raising her above his head. “Barely sixteen months old and you already know how to take me down, don’t you? Just like your mommy.”

She smiles, waving her little fists.

Gods he loves this little monster.

Junie really is the best parts of both of them. She’s got her daddy’s hair but her mommy’s brain, quick and sharp and painfully adorable. She’s already learning to read Greek, Annabeth sitting her in her lap and sounding out vowels together, Annabeth taking her finger and tracing it over the letter shapes. This kid absorbs information like a sponge, which Percy can only assume is the natural conclusion of taking a son of Poseidon and a daughter of Athena and mixing their DNA together.

Thinking about his dream, he frowns. “What do you think, Junie,” he asks his toddler. “Should I take her up on her offer?”

The baby says nothing.

“I mean,” he tilts his head, “Greece has been trying to get the marbles back for two hundred years. UNESCO has top lawyers on this. What does Athena think I can do?”

Junie blinks at him.

“On the other hand, I do really love your mom,” he admits, “and I really want to marry her. You’d like that, right? To have your parents be married?”

There’s no way she can understand what he’s saying, but she moves her head like she’s nodding. Or maybe she does understand. She is Annabeth’s daughter after all.

Percy sighs. Dammit.

Time for a new project, he guesses.

***

Several months, a college graduation, and one relocation to Boston later, Percy growls, hurling his pencil at the wall. Mother fucker. Fuck the British Museum, fuck his tiny laptop screen, and fuck the Italian prick who decided to have the least ADHD-friendly handwriting of all time.

Why the hell is he doing this again? Like, seriously. Why in all of Hades is he, an inexperienced, snot-nosed, first year master’s student deciding to tackle the return of the fucking Parthenon marbles of all things. Like, what is wrong with him?

Roughly scrubbing his fingers through his hair, Percy stands up. He has to go for a walk, clear his head, or he might actually explode.

Then he catches a glimpse of the photo pinned to the fridge.

Percy’s mom had taken it, a candid of Percy and Annabeth and Junie on a sunny day in Central Park. There, in perfect 1080p, Junie is laughing, at what he can’t even remember, her pudgy fists yanking on Percy’s hair, while her mother and the love of his life does nothing to extricate Percy from her grip, her face screwed up so hard she had tears in her eyes.

Percy had talked a lot of shit to the goddess of war’s face, but truth be told… Hera still terrifies him a little. Which, he assumes, was her goal all along, but it would be nice to marry Annabeth without fear of something going terribly wrong--or, gods forbid, something happening to Junie. That simply was not a risk he was willing to take. Percy is content to spend the rest of his days as Annabeth’s life-partner and roommate, if it means that the queen of the heavens won’t have a reason to take out her issues on his children.

Even if the engagement ring in the back of the pantry is gathering dust.

Sunlight, wan but warm, falls in from the window, landing perfectly on his pile of open books. “I know, I know,” he growls, speaking to the air, rubbing his face so it doesn’t get stuck in a permanent glare. “I just--I just need a few minutes, okay? Let me go down the block and get a coffee or something. Two minutes, Lady Athena.”

The light fades. Percy takes that as an acquiescence, angrily scribbling a note. He’s not sure when Annabeth and Junie will be back, but even angry as he is, he doesn’t want to worry them.

Snatching up his jacket, he slams the door shut, stomping out of his apartment building and down the streets of Boston. He must be accidentally doing his wolf stare, because people are practically flinging themselves out of his path as he hurtles down the sidewalk. Literally--some girl is walking her husky, and the poor dog actually whimpers, cowering as Percy rounds the corner.

Coming to a stop, Percy slaps his hands over his face, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath.

He might be in over his head a little.

Sighing, he looks to his right. He’s standing outside of a Starbucks.

Percy doesn’t drink coffee, Annabeth does. And he knows exactly how much of a coffee snob his girlfriend is. Starbucks? Overpriced, overrated, over-sweetened garbage.

He pushes the door open, sliding up to the counter. “I’ll take a… iced mocha, I guess,” he says. “Large.”

“No problem,” chirps the barista. “I’ll have that out for you in a minute.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

One thing Starbucks does have going for it, though, are really good napkins for doodling.

Slumping down in his uncomfortable metal chair, elbows resting on the hard, faux-wood table, Percy takes out his pen, and doodles aimlessly on the brown napkins. No, not that pen. Just because it can write doesn’t mean that Percy wants to risk slicing his face open every time he has a stray idea. Completely out of the blue, Annabeth had gotten him a nice set of pens, and ever since then, Percy always keeps one on him. Now, if he could just remember to use the little notebook she had gotten him, too.

Percy is not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn’t have an image in mind, just lets his pen move, drawing endless chains of triangles and stars, nebulous shapes which form themselves into Greek letters. After he catches himself writing γλαυκῶπις for the eighth time in a row, he sighs, dropping his pen, and picks up the cup, taking a sip.

Yuck. At least the chocolate outweighs the coffee taste a little.

Gods, and their cups are always, like, drenched from condensation--not that Percy can feel it, but there’s practically a whole other drink on the outside of the plastic, dripping all over Percy’s pile of doodle napkins. That must be why they give out so many.

Grumbling, he mops up the mess, ink smudged into a blue-brown slurry.

He stops.

He squints at one of his doodles.

Not that anyone else could tell, but Percy had apparently been trying to recreate the signature of Ottoman sultan Selim III, the guy who had supposedly authorized the Earl of Elgin to take the Parthenon Marbles. Percy had been staring at copies of his signature all damn day, trying to tell if it had been forged or copied, but classical Arabic was just so far beyond anything he could even begin to wrap his head around. It was gorgeous work, but even looking at it made Percy’s eyes swim.

This particular doodle is not his best attempt. It looks nothing like the signature. It’s smudged, blotchy, but in a way that’s… weirdly familiar.

Snatching the napkin up, Percy bolts from the Starbucks, leaving his mocha behind.

Taking the steps of his apartment building two at a time, he bursts into his kitchen. His set up is exactly how he left it, books spread out all over the table, laptop shut and laid askew, the dry, half-eaten remains of his morning muffin on a plate on top of his encyclopedia of illuminated manuscripts--except for one book, the one on Ottoman history of the nineteenth century. It’s been opened, its pages facing the door, in the exact opposite direction of all the other books.

“Hello?” he calls into the apartment. “Anyone home?”

No response.

Percy approaches the table.

From the pages, Selim III stares at him, his portrait rendered in black and white, sitting just above a figure of his signature, his tughra.

Percy picks up the book, squinting.

The signature is crisp, clean, a work of art all by itself.

He looks at his napkin drawing. Blurry and smudged.

Opening his laptop, he pulls up the scans of the documents in the British museum, zooms in on the letter’s seal.

Blurry and smudged.

Percy stares.

It… can’t be that simple, can it?

In a daze, he fires an email off to his new grad advisor. Hopefully he won’t mind Percy sticking his nose in where he doesn’t belong. Hey Dr. T--was looking at the Parthenon marbles docs in the BM (don’t ask) and I noticed this weird smudge on the tughra. Lazy scribe, maybe?

And he closes his computer.

Later that night, while he puts Junie to bed, he gets a response. not sure. sent it to a colleague for a closer look.

He can’t even be bothered to really think about it though, not with Junie looking up at him with Annabeth’s eyes, and asking for another book. “Alright, kiddo,” he acquiesces, settling in beside her. All her story books are in ancient Greek, and at age two, she’s starting to recognize the letters. “Which one are you thinking?”

“Daw-fins, daddy,” she says, smiling.

“Dolphins, eh? Getting Mr. D on your side early, I see. As smart as mommy.” He leans down and kisses her forehead before he starts to read her the story of the sailors and their sudden dolphin madness.

***

“Huh,” Percy says to himself a few weeks later, as he and Annabeth are chilling on the couch, watching some Netflix.

His advisor has forwarded him an article from the BBC (New evidence suggests Elgin documents to be forgeries) with an accompanying note: Amazing catch!

“What is it?” Annabeth asks, nudging him with her elbow--a feat, since she also has an armful of a squirmy Junie to deal with.

“Update in the Parthenon marbles thing.”

That gets her attention. Anything Parthenon-related does. “Really?”

He shows her his phone.

Her eyes go wide as saucers. “Damn.”

“Yep.” He doesn’t realize he’s smiling until he feels his lips pulling at the sides of his mouth.

“My mom is probably your biggest fan right now.”

He starts. “What did you say?”

Turning back to the TV, she still manages to cast him a weird look. “I said, my mom will probably love you for this.”

A beat, then Percy practically somersaults over the couch, darting into the kitchen. Wrenching open the pantry door, he shoves his hand behind their collection of flours, fingers grasping for--

“If you’re looking for any more sacrificial cookies,” Annabeth calls after him, “we burned them all when Junie got a cold.”

“Remind me to make some more,” says Percy, pulling out his prize. It’s a little dusty, streaks of flour clinging to the blue velvet. “I have a feeling we’ll need them.”

“Oh yeah?” She chuckles. “What, did Olympus put in a special order?”

Percy slides back down next to her, ring hidden in his closed fist. “Can I have the baby for a sec?”

Eyes fixed to the screen, Annabeth passes her over. Junie’s hands automatically reach for his nose, ready to grab, but Percy places the ring in her grasp instead, kissing her forehead. “Hey, babe?” he asks Annabeth, handing her back. “I think our daughter has something for you.”

Annabeth takes her without a second glance.

Then she does take a second glance.

Ring closed in her pudgy toddler fist, Junie holds it out to her.

Annabeth gapes.

“So,” Percy says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder, “quick confession: I wasn’t just working on the marbles for fun.”

Annabeth just stares. Junie babbles.

“Your mom told me that if I helped get the marbles back, she’d back us against Hera if we ever got married. So…” He trails off, waiting for her response. As close as he is, he can see the tears start to well up in her eyes--a good sign. “Shall we?” he prompts.

“Oh thank all the gods.” Annabeth is crying, because she's Annabeth. And because she's Annabeth, she also wastes no time in transferring Junie to her other side, and holding out her hand so Percy can slide the ring on her finger. “I was so worried I'd have to have Chase on my Masters’ diploma, too.”

Percy is making sauce when his phone lights up. He hits speaker. “Hey.”

“Hey man,” comes the tinny voice of Magnus. “Sorry I missed your call earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Percy says, “I figured you were dying or something.”

Magnus’ eye roll is almost palpable. “Very funny. What’s up?”

Bringing the spoon to his lips, he blows on it, taking a taste, before reaching for the salt. Needs way more. “Do you happen to have any Varangian guards in Hotel Valhalla?”

“Varangian guards? Uh, maybe. Probably. Why?”

“I’m doing a thing on the attempted reconquest of Sicily,” he says, lowering the heat a little to a simmer, “and I’m having some trouble piecing together the Battle of Montemaggiore. Know anyone who was in it?”

Magnus hums. “I’ll ask around. Anyone in particular you’re looking for?”

Rifling through their little spice cabinet, he makes a mental note to get a new thing of hot sauce, tipping the rest of it into the pot. “If you have anyone who fought under Harald Hardrada, that would be great.”

“Hardrada? I’m pretty sure he lives on the fifth floor.”

Percy nearly drops the bottle. “No shit?”

“Big dude, long mustache, writes poetry?”

“Yes!” He picks up the phone, grinning from ear to ear. “Do you think I could come up and talk to him sometime?”

“Sure, but I thought you were doing something on Homer’s identity?”

He groans. “Backburnered for now until she stops driving me crazy.” No matter how many times Percy tells her, he can’t just drop the “Homer was actually an Egyptian woman” bomb without some serious evidence backing that up. And forgery is not one of his strong suits. Hence the need for a different topic for the time being.

“Has everyone ever told you your life is weird?”

“No, why do you ask?”

His phone suddenly vibrates, shocking him so badly he nearly drops it into the saucepan. Almost home, texts the love of his life, a shot of serotonin directly into his bloodstream. V hungry

“Sorry, Magnus, but I gotta run. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem. Say hi to my cousin for me.”

“Can do.”

“And make sure you pick a date soon! Sam needs to know so she can schedule her flight home.”

“Soon as I can.” You know, when his brain isn’t melting from grading undergrad papers. And making sure Annabeth and Junie are fed. And that Annabeth doesn’t lose herself in graduate school. And finding Junie a new preschool after she destroyed a classroom last month because of a monster. His toddler is a badass. But he’s a little worried she’s gonna follow Mommy and Daddy’s example as far as school goes.

Sometimes, he thinks that their wedding just won’t ever happen. With Athena on board, he figured it would happen sooner or later, but time just… keeps getting away from them. Which isn’t the end of the world. A lifetime at Annabeth’s side is all he really needs, Mrs. Jackson or no. But he’s seen the silver fabric she weaved for her wedding dress. It would be a shame for all that hard work to go to waste.

And, yeah, he wants to see his little Junie dancing down the aisle flinging seaweed before her mother. He wants his mom to cry a little and he wants all his friends to be there to celebrate with them. Is that so much to ask?

Speaking of his two favorite girls--”We’re home!” Annabeth calls from the hallway. “Junie, go say hi to daddy!”

Her bare feet slapping against the floor, his daughter comes toddling in, making a beeline for him. “Hey, kiddo,” Percy says, scooping her up. “How’s my best girl?”

“She’s just fine, thanks,” Annabeth says, setting her work bag down on the table. “Tell me I don’t have to wait for dinner--Margie kept me for the entirety of my lunch break, and I am starving.”

“Just gotta make a salad and we should be good to go.” But he makes no move to finish chopping vegetables, entirely too enraptured with the way Junie smiles when Percy sticks his tongue out at her. “Let me guess,” he says. “Does my best girl want some olives?”

“Peas,” Junie says.

“Oh, you want peas instead?”

She giggles, waving her arms. “Elaia, daddy!”

“Fine,” and he kisses her nose. “Extra olives for you.”

“Chip off the old block,” Annabeth says.

Handing her back to her mother, Percy sighs. “When am I going to get a kid who likes anchovies?”

“I’m doing my best here, okay?”

***

Hardrada is… not what he expected.

“Reputation isn’t that bad.” Hardrada is saying. “The production isn’t what it should be, but lots of her lyrics are still on point.”

“The production ruins it,” Percy insists. “And as a follow up to 1989? It's just bad.”

“And what about Lover?”

“What about Lover?”

“You can’t argue with the genius of that one.”

“It is terribly inconsistent,” Percy shoots back. “Yeah, ‘The Archer’ and ‘Daylight’ and ‘Miss Americana’ are sublime, but ‘ME!’? Come on!”

“Are you one of those people who thinks she peaked at Red?”

“Red is a bop from start to finish,” Percy fires back. “But she definitely peaked at folklore.”

“Thinking she peaked at folklore is just pedestrian when ‘tis the damn season’ exists!” Hardrada yells, drawing his axe, which is then promptly flung over Percy’s head.

As the only mortal in a room full of armed, excitable, undead Taylor Swift stans, Percy beats a hasty exit, Magnus and Jason covering him as he flees, because they’re just so thoughtful like that. Percy’s pretty sure he saw Magnus take an arrow to the knee, going down in a heap, before he shuts the door to the hotel, finding himself in a Forever 21.

Looking over his notes later as he gets back to his apartment in the North End, he frowns. They had spent… approximately twenty minutes talking about Sicily before getting solidly off track. Who knew an eleventh century viking would have such intense feelings about pop music?

And now he’s singing “seven” to himself as he unlocks the apartment door, because it's a good song, and because it made him think of Annabeth. And he always wants to think of Annabeth.

“Hey, babe,” he calls into the apartment, toeing off his shoes. “I’m back!”

He gets no response.

Percy looks up, confused. “Annabeth?”

“In the bathroom,” he hears, faintly.

“Everything okay?”

“Yep! Totally fine!” she says, unconvincingly.

“Alright,” he calls back. “Let me know if you need something.”

Moving Junie’s toys out of the way, he drops down onto the couch, grabbing his laptop. Hopefully he can make some sort of sense of the… notes… that he got from Hardrada. Though he’s probably going to have to trek out to Beacon Hill again, which, while not really out of his way, does mean he has to hike a bit from the Park Street station through the Commons, which makes him super sweaty and out of breath. It’s just embarrassing, walking into a hotel full of the greatest warriors of Valhalla, and Percy can barely handle a hill.

However, he’s not so out of practice that he can’t sense Annabeth coming up behind him. “You good?”

“What do you think about getting married by the end of the month?”

“Sure,” he says, pecking at his computer. Damn autocorrect ruining all the Norse names. He keeps forgetting to download the right language package he needs. “But I thought you wanted to wait until after you turned in your portfolio?”

“Well… I might not be able to fit in my dress if we wait much longer.”

That gets his attention.

Percy turns around, slowly. Annabeth is grinning, holding a thin little piece of plastic with a circle on the end. She wiggles it.

“Is that…?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.”

Her smile falls. “Are you mad?”

“What? No!” Percy slides his computer off his lap, twisting around to face her, up on his knees. “No, no, not at all. I’m not mad.” She slings her arms around his neck, pregnancy test warm against his skin. “I just…”

Eyes warm, she looks into his, unafraid. “What is it?”

“It’s…” It’s silly, is what it is. But this is Annabeth. If he can’t tell her, who can he tell? “I just feel bad that I’ve gotten you pregnant twice before getting married.”

“Well, at least I’m not nineteen this time,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “But maybe we wouldn’t have this problem if you weren’t such a horndog.”

Percy snorts. “Me? What about you, Annabeth ‘3 AM anal before my first lecture’ Chase.”

“Jackson,” she corrects.

“Huh?”

“It’s Annabeth ‘3 AM anal before your first lecture’ Jackson.”

Grinning, he presses his mouth to hers. After all this time, she still smells like lemons, her lips soft and warm. “Not yet it’s not.”

“Then let’s make it happen.”

And, well, Percy can’t think of a better plan.

Jamie hisses. “Fuuuuuck,” she whispers, the sound dropping like a stone in the dead lecture hall. “Goddamn shit fuck ass.”

And the worst part is, she’d actually spent a lot of time preparing for her Latin midterm. She’d made flashcards, she’d drilled noun endings, she’d even slept with the textbook under her pillow for fuck’s sake.

Typical--the moment she sits down to take the test, it all goes out the window.

“Legistne carmen longum de Troiano,” she reads under her breath, as though saying it out loud will unlock some hidden secrets of the cosmos.

Nope. Nothing. The multiple choices remain as inscrutable as ever.

“Psst.”

Jamie looks up.

There’s a four year old staring at her.

“Hi,” Jamie says.

“Hi,” says the four year old. Junie, her name is, she thinks.

Mr. Jackson, Jamie’s Latin TA, will bring his kids to class with him sometimes--his wife works full time, and Jamie guesses that they can’t afford a babysitter. She’s a cute kid, quiet, usually sitting in the corner of the lecture hall, drawing or even knitting, sometimes with her little sister playing with toy ships next to her.

Now, she’s still staring at her. “What’s up?” Jamie asks.

“Bello,” says Junie.

Jamie blinks. “Sorry?”

“Legistne carmen longum de bello Troiano.”

She squints down at her test sheet, attempting to visualize her flash cards. That’s… “Bello” is the right answer.

The fuck? The fucking four year old can speak Latin? “Thanks,” she whispers.

Junie beams at her.

Darting her eyes to the front of the lecture hall, Jamie spies her professor, Buck, completely conked out at his desk, his chest rising and falling with his snores. Percy is nowhere to be seen, his laptop open at his chair. “What’s the next one?” Jamie turns her paper so that Junie can see better.

“Pluto Proserpinam infelicem cepit,” she announces, perfectly accented.

Jamie points to the one after that.

“Rex qui pontem fecit erat Ancus Martius.”

“Awesome.”

The door to the lecture hall opens. Jamie whips around in her seat, startled, and sees her TA, walking down the steps. From the corner of her eye, Junie disappears, booking it to her dad, who scoops her up without missing a beat. “Hey kiddo,” he murmurs, smiling crookedly. “Were you bothering my students?” Then he glances at Jamie. “Sorry about that--hope she wasn’t too annoying.”

But Jamie shakes her head. “It’s fine.” Dammit.

Still smiling, Percy makes his way back down to his seat. Junie grins at her over his shoulder, her arms wrapped tightly around her dad’s neck.

At the beginning of the semester, Professor Buck had droned on and on about Mr. Jackson, about how he was one of the best up-and-coming classics scholars in the world, how he could have had his pick of PhD programs, and how NYU was lucky to have him. He got first pick of assistantships this semester, apparently, but had volunteered to teach Latin 1001, and they should all be grateful, because he had done some beautiful new translation of Virgil for his Master’s thesis, and they were all going to learn a lot from him.

Turning back to her exam, Jamie snorts. Of course a guy like that would have a kid who could speak perfect Latin.

She really should have just stuck with German instead.

#my fic #pjo #percabeth #the rivalry ends here #perseannabeth #darkmagyk #percy should be a classics major and here's why #the percy major for the stem hating author #also i feel like i have to say:#1) classics conferences are not like that #2) if only it were that easy to get the bm to return looted antiquities 🙄#pjo fic #percabeth fic #percy jackson

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ally-127 · 4 years

Note

Can I request study date with mingyu at the library but your skirt is a little to short for his liking and then... I’ll let you decide lmao

study date

pairing : mingyu x reader ( college!AU ) word count : 2.5k warnings : public sex; exhibitionism; teasing; degradation; fingering; orgasm denial; music : ‘flow’ by monsta x a/n : i added some fluffy, slice of life at the start because who would i be without that

it was sunny out that day, rays of golden sunlight filtering through the sheer curtains of your bedroom. lively birds chirped outside your window, accompanied by the hustle and bustle down the streets of seoul.

it was a nice day to have plans, which was how you quickly scrambled for your phone to text mingyu in order to make some in the first place.

study date at the library?

he replied you less than a minute later.

see you at 12 :)

shoving a thick block of a textbook for constitutional law into your tote bag along with your laptop and some loose sheets of lined paper, you set the bag down in front of your door before sorting through your dresser for something loose and light to wear.

to your surprise, you managed to find a dress in the small expanse of your drawers. it was made of black satin and had long, thin strings all over the place. as you put it on with a slight struggle, you realised that the dress had a slight cowl neckline in the front and backless, tied together by a ribbon just between your shoulder blades.

this resulted in you discarding your bra from underneath. it was a daring move, considering how thin the material is, but you were running out of time and couldn’t be bothered to find another outfit. besides, you also wanted to give mingyu a little tease just for the kicks.

after quickly lacing up your favourite pair of matching black low-cut converses, you were out the door in less than five minutes.

the walk to the library was not as pleasant as you had expected it to be. the weather was warmer than usual. it was a sign of spring transitioning into summer.

the midday, sizzling heat and the humid air drew perspiration from your skin.

by the time you’d reached the designated location, you were covered in light sheen of sweat and your hair was pulled up into a mess of a bun on the top of your head.

at least your mascara and eyeliner were waterproof.

the library was packed with people, mostly students. their heads were all bent, almost to ninety degrees, in focused silence. there were hushed murmurs here and there, but other than that the place was mostly quiet.

as it should be.

you pushed your sunglasses up into your hair, your eyes scanning the area to look for a particularly tall boy with particularly sharp canines and a particularly sweet smile.

“looking for me?” a low voice asked from behind you.

you jumped, startled.

mingyu stood in front of you, clad in a classic black t-shirt and light-washed, ripped jeans. his hair, the colour of milk chocolate, was swept away from his face. those strands looked incredibly soft you were one step away from asking what his shampoo and conditioner were.

the heat you were now feeling was clearly not from the weather as his eyes, akin to the colour of his hair, raked down your body.

you brushed away the momentary burn of exhilaration you felt from his stare, deciding to focus on the smile that tugged by his lips.

he gave you a light kiss on the lips as a form of greeting. you offered him a bright smile in return. no words were exchanged between you two then.

that was, until you began to receive weird looks from those who occupied the tables closest to the entrance for lingering there

“come on,” you took his arm. “let’s find a place to sit.”

you two found a spot by the panelled windows that overlooked the city ahead. cars, skyscrapers and pedestrians were splashed out before you like an urban art piece.

courtesy of the sun, shadows in the shape of the grids formed on the wooden desk. this tiny detail made the entire spot an even more pleasing sight to see.

“pretty, huh?” mingyu said under his breath.

you nodded.

a minute later, you had all your materials scattered across your workspace. your laptop sat the furthest away, the presentation slides from your lecture last week on full screen for reference and your bulky textbook right under your nose.

mingyu busied himself with reading a copy of jane austen’s pride and prejudice. his space, in comparison to yours, was looking rather desolate.

“aside from being a hopeless romantic,” you mused, eyeing the book in his hand. “do you ever, you know, study?”

“already did this morning,” he murmured without looking up. he sat further back from the desk, an ankle crossed over a knee. “finished most of the syllabus covered so far. even went the extra mile to skim through the next chapter.”

“productive,” you couldn’t help the sarcasm as averted your eyes back to your book and paper, uncapping the pen to begin writing.

as time went by, you realised that mingyu was here literally only to accompany you. he didn’t have anything to do aside from indulging himself in elizabeth bennet and mr. darcy. you grinned to yourself at the fact, your heart taking massive leap in your chest.

“what’re you smiling at?” he peered past your shoulder at what you were working on. “is constitutional law that fun?”

“it’s nothing,” you waved him off.

mingyu shifted his chair forward so he was closer to you. you felt strong arms wrap around your bare shoulders and his chin resting on your collarbone.

“it’s not nothing,” his book dangled from his hand as he clasped them by your neck.

“i’m just happy,” you put your pen down. “that you’re here with me.”

“i can say the same,” his chin moved on your shoulder as he spoke. “i missed you.”

“it’s been three days,” you murmured.

“yeah, well,” he said, trailing off into a daydream. “it’s three days too long.”

“patience is a virtue,” you gave him a swift glance from the side of your eye.

“i’ll keep that in mind,” he smirked at you and now you knew you probably have said the wrong thing.

sooner or later he’d use this against you.

you resumed writing, mingyu remaining in his position with his arms enveloped around you while he peeked at your notes and textbook.

“i’m not illiterate but i can’t seem to understand a single word you’re writing,” you saw him frown in confusion in your peripheral vision as he read the information you were jotting down on paper.

“i don’t blame you,” you murmured, a mild headache beginning to form in your temples.

you sighed as you noticed one of your points about the freedom of speech needed further elaboration.

you were sure this library contained some sort of reference in the legal section that you could use. so you tapped on mingyu’s arm, silently asking him to move so you could stand up and look for it.

“where are you going?” he looked up at you.

in this close proximity, mingyu could see the slight outline of your nipples through the thin material of your dress. the buds were hardened in response to the air conditioner being blasted in this library.

you weren’t wearing a bra today.

he bit his lip, feeling himself slowly grow rigid in his pants. he silently cursed himself for reacting like a preteen who had just seen tits for the first time.

“to the law section,” you replied.

mingyu kept his eyes on you. from a lower angle, he was able discern how awfully short the skirt of your dress was and from the way you walked so carelessly it seemed like you didn’t notice it at all. the shape of your ass was highlighted even more so now, the end of your dress teasing the top most part of your thighs.

if you had just lifted your leg slightly, whatever you were wearing underneath would be exposed to the naked eye. if you were even wearing any.

he inhaled sharply, unsure on what to do with his concupiscent thoughts. he watched you disappear as you wandered further down the hall of the library.

your footsteps were light on the ground as you browsed through the different shelves of law books, eyes scanning for the word ‘constitution’. you craned your neck up, finally spotting one and reached up to get it.

it was, however, way out of your reach. no matter how much you tiptoed and how far your arms extended, there was no way of getting it. you looked around the room for a stepping stool but sadly there were none in sight. in addition to that the entire section was empty, not a soul to be seen.

so you considered jumping, your shoes thumping mutedly against the wooden floor.

obviously, that didn’t work. it only drained your energy.

almost effortlessly a second later, an arm reached up to grab the exact book you had your eye on.

before you could turn to protest, you were met by the face of your boyfriend. mingyu leaned himself against the shelf, holding the book up almost teasingly.

like holding a piece of raw meat in front of a tiger.

“looking for this?”

now, you felt like the prey.

there was a newfound hunger in the way he stared at you. a flame, bright with excitement, burned behind his eyes and it could only mean one thing.

you weren’t unfamiliar with it. you were just confused as to what triggered him or more specifically,

what turned him on.

you already had something in mind, but you wanted to tease the answer out of him.

“do you know,” he slid the book back on the shelf with ease as he took more steps closer. “that what you’re wearing is far too short?”

so that was what it’s about.

“do i?” you glanced down, fingers toying with the hem of your dress.

you played along, with pleasure.

“don’t talk back,” the more steps forward he took, the more steps backward you took until you were up against the wall.

mingyu was right in front of you now, lips millimetres away.

“do you enjoy other men staring at your ass like that?” he held your jaw between his thumb and pointer finger. he could force your mouth open if he pressed any harder, but he didn’t. “answer me.”

“i didn’t know anyone was staring at me,” you said truthfully but a knowing smirk swept across your lips. “and i didn’t know it would have that much of an effect on you.”

“are you sure?” his eyes trailed down to your chest, where your nipples peeked through.

“maybe i wanted to tease you,” you laughed at how tense he was, already spotting a tent in his jeans as he snaked an arm around your waist. “but that was it.”

“is it funny how hard i am for you?” he closed the distance between your bodies so his crotch grounded against your pelvic bone.

“a little,” you said, voice turning breathy as mingyu shifted his hand from your jaw down to graze the skin on your inner thigh.

heat blossomed in your core, the urge to press your thighs together apparent as his hand travelled further up your dress. his hand disappeared under your skirt, the material hiking up his wrist. the tips of his fingers brushed the lace of your underwear, almost your clit but not there just yet.

“mingyu,” your hands sought purchase on his broad shoulders, head leaning against the wall.

“is it funny now?” his whispered into your ear, long fingers unfurling to cup your sex. he pushed his hand up into you. jolts of electricity soared up your spine, your body almost jerking upwards against his from the sudden pressure.

“n-not here,” at this rate, you began to whimper.

“why not?” mingyu’s voice had noticeably gone down a couple octaves, the baritone quaking through your core. his spread his fingers in your underwear so his middle finger rubbed directly on your slit. your back arched on the wall, pressing your chest harder on him in response. your hips undulated on his hand, urging him to fucking move.

“people w-will see.”

“they’ll see how much of a slut you are,” he nipped the lobe of your ear, breath hot and needy. he stroked your clit, slow and unrelenting. “just for me.”

his words, dirty and brimming with desire, were enough to intoxicate you in a haze of what he was feeling. his lips form a sardonic grin of your state, finally giving you a taste of your own medicine.

“you like that?” his hand from your waist moved up to your breast, squeezing it and shooting pleasure straight to your aching pussy. “you like letting the whole world see you take my cock right on this wall?”

you pressed your lips on his to hide the moan the slips from them as he rubbed your clothed-sex with full force. he gladly swallowed the wanton sound of your cry, teeth sinking into your bottom lip to grant his tongue access to the depths of your heated mouth. a multitude of groans rumbled in his chest, soft enough so only you could hear, while he nudged a thigh between your legs for support and elevate your leg slightly for him to reach deeper.

your hands carded through his hair, pulling on the roots as he continued his assault on your clit. your eyes were half-closed and fluttering from overwhelming pleasure. he pushed your panties to the side, slowly and allowing the elastic to snap against your now exposed folds. you jumped, the pain eliciting a new sensation.

mingyu took the opportunity to slip his ring finger into you, your juices providing more than enough lubrication for him to glide in. the wave of your hips—rolling against his hand—became more sharp in movement, more desperate to get all of him.

“you’re so wet already,” he mumbled into your ear, sinking his finger to the hilt. “and we’ve barely just gotten started.” he added another finger—his middle—into you. he pumped his digits slowly first to stretch you out, curling the tips to stroke your walls. you moaned into his neck, his fingers increasing in pace.

“you have to be quiet for me or we’ll be in huge trouble,” mingyu ran his free hand up your neck to your lips, swiping the spit off your lips and jutting a thumb between your soft appendages. “but i’m sure you’d like that, won’t you?”

you took a moment to quirk your lips up in a smirk, trapping his thumb between your teeth, silently telling him that oh yes you’d like that very much.

“dirty slut,” he growled in your ear. “always so tight,” his fingers formed a ‘v’ shape in your inner walls for a brief second before returning to thrusting in and out of you.

soon enough a release tugged at the base of your spine. your core clenched around his digits as a mild rush of euphoria began to approach. sensing it through the increased tightness around his fingers and the excess slick that ran down your inner thighs, mingyu retracted his fingers.

a quiet whine left your lips from the orgasm that had been ripped off from you. you rocked your hips upwards in hopes that he would do something about it until he tut, shaking his head.

“patience is a virtue, my love.”

#kwritersworldnet #seventeen #mingyu #mingyu smut #mingyu fic #mingyu fluff #mingyu imagines #mingyu drabbles #mingyu x reader #seventeen smut #seventeen imagines #seventeen requests #seventeen fluff #seventeen x reader #seventeen drabbles

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psychedaleka · 3 years

Text

all my stumbling phrases

an angbang @officialtolkiensecretsanta 2020 gift fic for @celebbun :) hope you enjoy!

Rating: T | No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Melkor/Mairon Characters: Melkor, Mairon Word count: 2.7k

Summary: A winter day in Utumno, an outdoor excursion, and a conversation.

---

“You want to do what?” Mairon levels a flat stare at Melkor, who’s looking at him with an expression that would be unreadable to anyone else.

To Mairon, it’s the I-have-an-idea-and-it-just-might-end-in-a-disaster look.

“Strap knives to our feet and glide on ice,” Melkor says, matter of fact, as though it’s something that anyone would think to do.

read the rest on ao3! or below the cut

Mairon sets down his quill and closes the inventory records. The cover slams shut with a bang. He can feel a headache building. No—not a headache. Not exactly. But it’s an ache of some sort, something he can’t put into words. The feeling he keeps getting whenever he’s in the same room as Melkor but like he doesn’t know what he should do, what he should say.

Like he’s flustered.

Mairon has never been flustered in his life.

“You need a break,” Melkor says. “You’ve been staring at that for how long now, a week?”

“Less than a day, for this particular record,” Mairon corrects. “I have been auditing your storerooms for a week.”

“Exactly!” Melkor says. “Does it matter if we have 3400 or 3401 shields?”

“Yes,” Mairon says, but doesn’t bother to offer more explanation.

He wants to double check and cross reference the math, because it’s simple, and straightforward, and if there’s something he doesn’t recognize, there’s inevitably a solution.

It distracts him, too, from staring at Melkor too much, from watching everything he does. It is probably, Mairon tells himself, that Melkor is a Valar, and he commands attention. There’s no other possible explanation as to why Mairon might lose track of everything else when he’s around.

“Listen,” Melkor says, shifting tactics, “the inventories will keep for another day. Just give an order that whichever storeroom you’re investigating shouldn’t be touched, and come back to it later. It isn’t as though the shields will run away.”

Mairon considers it.

“Fine,” he says.

“Excellent!” Melkor says. “Now, I have some ideas about how we could achieve this—”

Of course, those ideas happen to be Melkor describing what he wants to achieve, and Mairon scrambling to find a way to realize it. It’s very typical, and Mairon’s used to it now.

Melkor’s a big picture thinker, and that was what drew Mairon to him in the beginning. Mairon can’t really complain about that now. Even if Melkor occasionally shows up to dump a pile of half formed plans and ideas on him, leaving him to drop what he’s doing and piece together the scraps and trace Melkor’s—often disjointed—logic.

Even so, Mairon’s quite pleased with the end result—ice skates, they’ll probably be called. The blade is separate from the shoe, with a platform that attaches to the sheo by two leather straps. The blade is not as sharp as the knives Mairon prefers, no, but it will glide across ice and support the wearer’s weight.

It will help with icy expeditions and complaints that frozen lakes are impossible to cross.

“All that’s left to do is test them,” Mairon tells Melkor, who’s been sitting on a bench in his—no, the forge, Mairon can’t forget that it technically doesn’t belong to him. Melkor’s presence has surprised and scared quite a few of the other maiar and a not insignificant number of orcs. “I’m certain I’ll be able to find a few orcs willing to volunteer—”

“No, no,” Melkor says. “Let’s go test them.”

Mairon opens his mouth, then closes it again.

“I have work to do,” he says, a weak excuse.

“Get someone else to do it,” he says. “Surely, counting can’t be so difficult a task that you need to attend to it?”

“No one will organize the storerooms in the optimal configuration,” Mairon says.

“Optimal configuration, you say,” Melkor says, and Mairon knows he’s laughing at him, but he doesn’t say anything. “It can be just the two of us.”

Mairon tries to parse the implications of that sentence.

“Besides, I’m bored,” Melkor continues.

Mairon remembers the last time Melkor had been bored. It involved several explosions, a near incomprehensible scoreboard, and half a year to clean up. Mairon considers it, and looks up at Melkor—who seems to know exactly what he’s doing.

“Fine,” Mairon says. Productivity in the forges has been down, anyways, since Melkor first started watching him work on the ice skates. His normally competent assistants have ruined a batch of swords, broken three hammers, and nearly dropped a ton of molten iron on the ground. He needs to get Melkor out of here before his presence causes a larger disaster.

“I knew you would agree eventually.”

There are underground lakes and rivers beneath the foundation of Utumno, used for the drinking and other miscellaneous needs of the fortress’ inhabitants. It’s liquid year round, even in the middle of winter, insulated from the aboveground temperature by layers of rock. The paths to this reservoir are many, but it’s not there that they head for, and for that, Mairon is secretly glad. The last thing he needs is to field panicked reports of the plumbing not working because Melkor had frozen the whole thing. Even if he had designed and tested it himself.

Some distance from Utumno is a lake, nestled between mountain peaks. Fed by rainwater and melting snow from the mountains, it had formed when the Lamps were destroyed.

It was also where Mairon had landed, when he came to Utumno permanently.

It’s there that Melkor leads him, now, some distance away from straying gazes and open ears.

The surface of the lake is frozen over, in a layer of clear ice.

“Will the ice hold?” Mairon asks.

“One way to find out,” Melkor says, and Mairon fights the urge to tell him that there absolutely are more ways to find out. “You first.”

Mairon’s already come this far. He might as well—and if he falls over, well, there’s no one around to see except Melkor, and he doesn’t care if he embarasses himself in front of Melkor.

That’s a lie. He cares very much of what Melkor thinks about him.

Mairon straps the skates to his shoes with cold fingers. He should have brought gloves.

It isn’t difficult to balance on solid ground, but the moment Mairon steps onto the ice, he slips and falls. He can hear Melkor’s muffled laughter.

Well, he thinks, at least Melkor has the awareness to muffle his laughter—as though that’s any better.

His cheeks flush red, and it’s not just because of the cold.

He pushes himself up from the ice. His fingers are cold. This time, Mairon manages to stay upright for a few more seconds, but when he starts trying to move, he’s wobbly and falls soon after. He scrambles for a few seconds, trying to push himself up again, before Melkor interjects.

“Need some help?” Melkor asks, gliding on the second pair of skates as though this isn’t his first time skating. Melkor offers an arm, and Mairon clings to it, dragging himself up.

“Thanks,” Mairon says.

“Here, hold my hands,” Melkor says. “You won’t fall over as much.”

“Perhaps it’s a design flaw,” Mairon says, trying to concentrate on something other than how close Melkor is. “How much balance is needed to effectively operate them, I mean.”

“I don’t think so,” Melkor says. “All you need is some practice.”

Melkor starts skating backwards, slowly—the showoff—and he takes Mairon with him. Mairon glides, pulled along by Melkor, inexorably drawn by his trajectory, trusting him not to lead Mairon to a fall.

“See, it isn’t so hard,” Melkor says. “Why don’t you try?”

Mairon lets go of Melkor’s hands—reluctantly, and he doesn’t want to think of the implications of that. He wobbles along, for a short while—he’s getting better, he thinks—and falls. Again.

Melkor muffles his laughter, again, as Mairon drags himself up.

“Not all of us have your sense of balance,” Mairon says, annoyed.

“Oh, yes, I’m very well aware,” Melkor says, not bothering to hide his grin.

Mairon glares at him.

“Here, we can keep holding hands,” Melkor says. “Let’s go around the lake.”

Mairon casts a glance at the other shore of the lake, barely lit by starlight filtering through a thick layer of clouds.

“Are you sure the ice will hold?” Mairon asks.

“Oh, yes,” Melkor says. “There shouldn’t be any issues.”

A few hours later, Mairon is chilled to the bone and decently competent at skating.

“That was fun,” Melkor says.

“More importantly, the skates are tested,” Mairon says.

Melkor stares at him, for a long moment.

“What?” Mairon asks.

“Did you really think this was about testing skates?” Melkor asks.

“Yes?” Mairon says. “What else?”

“You and I, spending some time together,” Melkor says.

“We spend plenty of time together,” Mairon says. “When you come and watch me work, when I report to you about the status of Utumno—”

“No,” Melkor says. “Not about work. On a personal basis.”

Mairon blinks.

On a personal basis? What could Melkor want from him ‘on a personal basis?’

He asks as much, but Melkor doesn’t answer that question.

“You were unhappy in Almaren,” Melkor says, a statement more than a question. “That was easy to tell. But harder, I think, to tell if you’re happy here.”

A pause.

“Mairon, are you happy?”

“Yes?” Mairon answers. He doesn’t know why Melkor would ask him this.

“I mean it,” Melkor says. “If there’s anything you dislike—if there’s anything that you want to be different, don’t hesitate to change it.”

There is. There is that maddeningly incomprehensible feeling he gets when he’s around Melkor, but that’s not something he can articulate, let alone make concrete plans for.

“I hadn’t thought my personal wellbeing mattered to you,” Mairon says, instead.

“Why would it not?”

“Because—well, because you’re you, and I’m me,” Mairon answers.

“That’s not an answer.”

“As though you haven’t been giving me non answers the whole day.”

“Like for what question?”

“What do you want from me on a personal basis?”

Melkor—for probably the first time in his very long life—thinks about what he says before he says it.

“The work you have done for me is commendable,” Melkor says. “The structure, organizational, and technological improvements have been greatly beneficial to my forces, and I—would not have been able to achieve these changes without you. But what you could do for me was not the only reason I wanted you to be mine.”

What other reason could there be, Mairon thinks, but doesn’t ask.

“I—” Melkor glances around, as though someone could be eavesdropping on their conversation— “I love you.”

Mairon stands there, frozen, not just because of the cold.

He opens his mouth, and closes it.

“You—what?” Mairon asks, finally, when the implications of what Melkor just said hits him. “I—what?”

Melkor turns sharply, skates grinding across the ice. There’s tension in his shoulders.

“Forget it,” he says. “Forget I said anything.”

“No, I—” Mairon falls silent. He doesn’t know how to proceed.

“We ought to return,” Melkor says.

The thing is: Mairon doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to go back to his inventories and reports. He wants to stay out here, even though he’s freezing cold, because—because—because—

Because Melkor is here, with him. With only him.

But Melkor is skating towards the opposite end of the lake, and Mairon rushes to follow.

Only—he shifts his weight, and there’s a cracking noise, and before Mairon can realize what’s happened, the ice breaks beneath him, swallowing him beneath the icy water.

Mairon is a Maia, and he doesn’t need anything as paltry as oxygen, but he’s exhausted from his week of auditing, and trying to ensure the forges don’t fall to chaos as he and Melkor design the ice skates, and the cold air while he skated, and the love confession, and the icy shock.

Mairon is a Maia, but his nature is that of fire and stone, and he doesn’t do well with cold water.

He slips into unconsciousness.

The next thing Mairon is aware of is a heavy weight on his body, and the fact that he is lying on something soft. He blinks his way to wakefulness, slowly, slowly, and the world around him sharpens in degrees.

He’s lying on a bed—a feather bed, with stuffed pillows, underneath several layers of thick blankets. The bed frame is carved dark wood, and the richly embroidered curtains are half closed, giving him a faint view of the room outside. There’s a roaring fire opposite him, with the faint smell of wood smoke, and tapestries hanging on the stone walls.

This isn’t his room, with his sparse cot and makeshift blankets that he had chosen over a proper bed.

Mairon sits upright, too quickly.

The room is empty. He had hoped it wouldn’t be.

Mairon tries, desperately, to parse what happened.

Melkor had said he loved him. He loved him.

Mairon had thought—this was impossible, not because Aule had implied Melkor was incapable of love, but because Mairon was a Maia, and Melkor’s subordinate, and—

He had rejected that possibility, and his own feelings, because he never thought it would be possible.

But it isn’t impossible. It isn’t even improbable.

It happened. Melkor had said he loved him.

And Mairon had—he flops back down onto the bed. Mairon had frozen, entirely.

He lies there, for a few more minutes, before making up his mind. He needs to do something about this.

He pushes himself out of bed—maybe too fast, because the world swoops around him.

A hand catches his arm, pulls him upright.

“Careful there,” Melkor says, standing right next to Mairon. He’s watching Mairon, with an expression that is utterly unreadable to Mairon.

Mairon doesn’t like it.

“What happened?”

“You fell into the lake,” Melkor says, and Mairon thinks Melkor should be amused, he should find it funny that Mairon actually fell into the lake after worrying that he would, but Melkor isn’t laughing.

He looks dead serious.

“I thought you said the ice would hold,” Mairon says, because he doesn’t like this. He wants Melkor to be making fun of him.

“If you’re implying that I deliberately made you fall in—”

“Did you?”

“No!” Melkor snaps.

Is he angry? Mairon doesn’t know. He sits down—and something in him says, this is improper, you shouldn’t be sitting when he isn’t, but Mairon’s passed improper hours ago.

“It was very cold,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Melkor doesn’t respond. “Where am I?”

“My rooms,” Melkor says. “Yours were hardly sufficient. You don’t even have a bed.”

He sounds—annoyed? Angry on Mairon’s behalf? Mairon isn’t sure why, except—the words I love you rings in his mind, and Mairon wonders, then, if Melkor cares about him beyond the way a lord should for his servant.

But of course, Mairon chides himself.

“Perhaps I should start stealing your bed,” Mairon says, after far too long a silence.

Melkor doesn’t respond to that.

“I should go,” Mairon says, but he makes no move to leave.

But Melkor doesn’t make him leave.

“I love you too,” Mairon blurts out. He should be leaving. He should really, really be leaving. But when he makes for the door, Melkor stops him with a firm grip on his arm.

“Don’t say that just because you feel obligated to,” Melkor says.

“I’m not,” Mairon says, feeling the room grow several degrees warmer. Or maybe it’s just his face. “I don’t—feel obligated to—I just. Wanted to tell you how I felt. Feel. Still do.”

Melkor brushes a thumb across Mairon’s cheekbone.

Then Melkor kisses him.

After an eternity, and too short a time, they pull away from each other.

“You can steal my bed anytime you’d like,” Melkor says, with a wink.

Mairon, flustered, is speechless.

“My auditing,” Mairon says.

“Forget about it,” Melkor says. “You can easily go back to it tomorrow. Stay here. With me.”

With him.

“Sure,” Mairon says. “What do you want to do?”

Melkor’s watching Mairon with his I-have-an-idea look. But this time, it just might not end in a disaster.

#angbang #silmarillion #melkor #mairon #sauron #morgoth #tolkien #fluff #tss2020 #my writing

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elmidol · 4 years

Text

If Kylo has a diary... (NSFW)

[Request by @clumsycopy]

Purchasing the datajournal had been a spur of the moment splurge wherein you had been on shore leave, it had caught your eye, and you had had the credits to burn. Truth be told, you had not given much thought to what you would write in it, if you would compose anything at all. After a particularly exhaustive night of waking from multiple wet dreams centering around a then-absent Supreme Leader, you had decided to write out some of the juicier details that you so wished would happen. Secret desires that you did not have the courage to voice with him. It left you feeling vulnerable. Your relationship with him was interesting, to say the least. You were thrilled to see him pleased. You worshipped his body, could hardly get enough of him. In hindsight, you should have left the Maker-forsaken thing encrypted. Who would have known that Kylo Ren would be interested in reading what you had to write about?

You shyly blinked up at him from your position on your knees. His cock was in your mouth. It was not fully erect, however you could not say it was flaccid either. The slight movements of your tongue as you occasionally swallowed down the saliva gathering in your mouth, that had aroused him. Not to mention several of the passages that he enjoyed. And you knew that he enjoyed them, because his cock would twitch, would harden, and he would read the words aloud with his burning brown eyes landing on your face. The purr in his voice made you shudder each time. The heat of your blush was something he had to be able to feel, you could not be convinced otherwise. Kylo did not push you past your comfort level; which had you wondering if there were passages, fantasies, that he skipped over so as to not completely humiliate you into wanting to just die.

Holding the datajournal with one hand--a large hand that from palm to the tip of his finger was nearly as big as the journal itself--he reached forward with the other and placed it on your head. His hand was arched, the pads of his gloved fingers massaging your scalp while his palm made no contact. You once more trembled while enduring the sensation of a thin string drawing up the length of your spine. Not quite a chill. Not exactly heat either. It transformed into a pulsing buzz that threatened to thrust you out of your own body to where you would stare down at yourself there, the Supreme Leader’s cock in your mouth. What a sight you must have been. Drool dribbled past your lips at the corners. Your throat undulated. His lips parted, his cock stirring, becoming more erect.

“‘He would bend me over his knees as he sat on the throne. I don’t know if we’d be alone or not. His hand coming down on my ass, which he’d squeeze.’“ The tip of his tongue traced his lips. Your own shifted, drawing towards the side and caressing his length. The feel of him there was wonderful to you. Kylo Ren’s fingertips bit into your scalp more, urging you forward so that you took in more of his cock, its head beginning to push towards your throat. You did what you could to relax so that you did not gag around him. That was hardly an easy task given his girth. “Would you like to be bent over my knees?” You could only hum around him in reply. Kylo used his fingers to shake your head back and forth in a ‘no’ before pushing you so that part of his cock left your mouth and then tugging you forward again in a ‘yes’. You whined. Felt yourself clench as your own arousal began to spark.

Kylo Ren pushed you backwards for a second time then failed to bring you closer. He used the toe of one boot to nudge you even further. You stuck your tongue out as you were made to shift backwards. You did not want to lose contact. He smirked at you, extended his leg, and let his eyes settle on the trail of spit from your tongue to his cock. The only loose connection, which broke and fell to the floor.

“Hmm. Dirtying my floor. Perhaps you should be punished.” His teasing had the intended effect of causing you to inhale, to hold that breath, and stare at him with wide eyes as your anticipation grew. He set his elbow on the armrest of his throne; its hand remained occupied with your datajournal. Kylo summoned you forward with a single finger. He needn’t have. You had already known what he wanted you to do, had already started to rise to your feet and taken that first step closer. Your limbs were shaking. Your stomach felt as though it executed three somersaults in rapid succession.

When you were near enough to him, Kylo’s hand shot forward. He seized you by the wrist and yanked you forward. You stumbled, your fall controlled by his grip and perhaps the Force, and you were laid over his knees. Your hands scrambled to find purchase on the material of his pants. Kylo splayed his hand across your lower back. You arched away from his touch; not because you did not want it, but due instead to the phantom tendrils crawling along you. Slipping, skittering, toying with your flesh so that goosebumps formed on your flesh. The hand trailed backwards, his thumb hooking into your pants and dragging them along with your panties down. The cool leather caressed your ass before abandoning it--only to come down hard. Your hips jerked forward. Kylo hummed. He altered how he was sitting, spreading his legs and working one of those toned thighs between your legs. One of your hands remained clutching his other leg, whereas your second had gone towards his lap. Another spanking, just as sharp, stilled your limb. It also made you snap your hips forward, your cunt pressing into his thigh. You felt yourself dripping on him. His fingers curled, digging into the flesh he had just smacked. You pushed back into his touch, dragging against him, rocking forward the next moment. He squeezed harder. You only moaned. Let your head fall back and closed your eyes. You righted yourself, holding onto the muscle of his thigh, close to his groin. You rolled your hips again. As your back arched, his hand came down.

“Oh!” A raspy breath left you and you blinked open your eyes, lashes fluttering, to peek at him.

Kylo’s gaze had been on you the entire time, however now his attention returned to the fantasy that you had written. “No.” You felt a pout beginning to form. That portion had been what one might refer to as fluffy. Out of character for Kylo Ren. But these were your fantasies. Sometimes it was fun to indulge in writing scenarios that would never happen. You waited. He silently read on, using his thumb to swipe through. You reached forward and wrapped one hand around his cock. Drew your hand upwards as you rocked forwards. Pushed it down, swerved your hips. You wiggled a little, spreading yourself open more so that his pants, even more soaked by your wetness, ran along your clit with every shift.

Truth be told, you were working to distract him before he got to a rather, for you, embarrassing fantasy of yours that you had written. Kriff, you should have encrypted it. “Supreme Leader,” you said in as sultry a voice as you could manage. It had an effect on him. He was fully erect now. His pupils dilated. But he did not look away from your datajournal. You started to lean forward to see exactly where he was at--Kylo Ren stood abruptly, his hand catching you. The man was fast, spinning the two of you so that you were pinned between the throne and his hips. His grip on your device had not faltered. He started to press his cock into you, the head stretching you open. You groaned at the sensation. Pressed the heels of your feet on the edge of the throne to help brace yourself as you pushed forward, trying to take all of him in. He was only too happy to oblige.

“My ears.” Oh kriff, he was at it. You sucked your lips into your mouth and bit down. Kylo shifted his hand away from the device, which remained in place via the Force. He grabbed onto your hips with both of his hands as he read. The first snap of his hips was rough. You gasped out another ‘oh!’ Moaned in the next moment when he manipulated you into low, small circles, rolling your hips, rocking you. Making sure his cock stroked every part of you within. You quivered, your legs locking against his body. “Tender like this?” he teased. You did not know how to respond and did your damnedest to keep your lips in your mouth to prevent a ridiculous noise, maybe a squeak, from leaving you. “Or...like...this?” One hand abandoning your hip so that he could walk two fingers up under your shirt towards your breasts. He flicked your nipple through your bra, and you clenched around him, the sensation shooting throughout your entire body. His hand moved in the reverse, stroking your stomach. This coupled with the swooping motion of his hips made your toes curl and an incoherent cry of pleasure emerge as your lips noisily popped into place.

Kylo Ren withdrew his hand from your abdomen and pinched your bottom lip between forefinger and thumb, tugging it. “Don’t bite this again. I want to hear you.” Ironic given the fact that he thrust two fingers into your mouth directly after giving that order. You obediently sucked at them, nibbling on the leather of his glove. Wanting to bite down and leave indentations. Except he had started talking again, started to read more. “You think you could make me cum if you played with my ears?” His other hand left your hip. He pressed his thumb on your clit, rocked it back and forth a little roughly. Pain and pleasure mingled. He let up on the pressure. Tilted his head to the side while removing his fingers from your mouth. “Do you?”

You wanted to tell him, “Let me try!” Instead you blinked innocently.

He sighed, looked down his nose at you, and said, “Maybe I won’t let you cum.” You opened your mouth to protest. His smirk returned. “That would not be tender, would it?” He pushed into you, grinding his hips into yours, his cock fully inside of you. The thumb on your clit wiggled quickly, sending mini vibrations. You swore, gasped, felt your jaw drop as you came around him. Your walls tugged at his cock, and Kylo used the same swear that you had. He started to fuck you harder. “Maybe next time we won’t have to be alone when I do this to you.” You were already so hot from your orgasm and arousal, but kriff he knew what to say. You grabbed at his shirt, wound it around your hands. You were not ready to form any words. Not ready to beg him--to do it? To not do it?

You did not know which of those fantasies you would want to have happen. This one had been so perfect. More perfect than what you had written. It was his sort of tenderness, not the make-believe version that you had composed. This was more right. This was--footsteps drawing nearer had your heart leaping into your throat. Kylo simply kept fucking you. He smirked. “Your third fantasy.” Accidental audience.

“Fuck,” you mouthed, although it came out more as just a puff of air.

#kylo ren x reader #kylo x reader #kylo ren smut #kylo ren imagine #request fic

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halictus-writer · 4 years

Text

Welcome to Seattle (Ch. 4 of 5)

Remus woke early the next morning, feeling energetic. He brewed a fresh pot of coffee and sat down at his table/desk combination to work on his novel. Safely wrapped in an oversized sweater, he opened the window to let the fresh cold morning air in. It wasn’t until he had settled comfortably into a workflow and even lit a cinnamon-scented candle before he remembered that he should probably still be upset over being blown off from a dinner date last night.

Instead, he felt strangely at peace. Going to the Italian restaurant, laughing with Sirius, and eating pizza had seemed to wash away his troubles, and he wasn’t going to complain if it took a surprisingly short amount of time to feel normal again. After writing a chapter and a half, it was time to leave for his breakfast with the girls.

As Remus walked out of his apartment building, he tossed his jacket over his shoulder and almost skipped down the sidewalk–– tiramisu safely in hand–– with joy. Something about the day just felt good.

Walking into the breakfast nook, he spotted his friends already seated at a table.

“Marls! Dorcas!” He greeted them warmly, giving each of them a side-hug.

Dorcas responded with a “Hey, babe!” While Marlene fixed him with a look.

“You,” she said, index finger pointing at his chest, “are absolutely glowing.”

Remus’s cheeks began to turn red, a lingering side effect of any attention whatsoever being directed towards him. His smile stayed in place though. “What, no I’m not.”

“Why do you look so happy?”

“Also,” he drew out the word, talking over Marlene, “I brought you a gift!” Remus handed over the box containing last night’s tiramisu, previously concealed by his jacket.

“Oh my god, this looks so good.” Dorcas said, eyeing the dessert.

Marlene started to close the box again when Dorcas made a noise of protest. “What?” She asked, laughing. “We have to wait until after we eat breakfast.”

“No we most certainly do not, we are adults!” Dorcas protested, and reopened the box.

Conversation flowed comfortably between the three of them, updating each other on the events of the past week. For every minute of serious conversation, there seemed to be two more of random banter, staccatoed with flicking straw wrappers and play-fighting when Dorcas or Marlene wanted to prevent the other from telling a funny story at the expense of her girlfriend. After Marlene all but tackled Dorcas to successfully pass her phone to Remus–– displaying a video of a wine-drunk Dorcas driving backwards in Mario Kart, her face dropping in shock when Marlene’s voice from behind the camera points out that she is in last place–– they got disdainfully frowned at from a tourist family and an old married couple. James would have been proud.

Eventually, Dorcas brought the conversation back to Remus’s cancelled date. “So, Marls is right, you are glowing, and I love that, but tell us about last night. You don’t seem upset about it?”

Remus shrugged. “Well, yeah, I mean it sucked waiting around for the dinner date that never happened, but if it wasn’t meant to be then there’s really no use losing sleep over it, I suppose.”

Dorcas looked mildly impressed by his answer.

“Plus, I salvaged the evening by treating myself to pizza at the Italian restaurant right by my apartment. That’s where your pre-breakfast dessert hailed from.”

Marlene looked at the now-empty to-go box in surprise. “Wow, I love how we just devoured that and didn’t even ask you where it came from. I don’t think I even said thanks?”

“Don’t worry babe, we were doing him a favor. Remus hates soggy cake.” Dorcas stated confidently.

Remus laughed. “You’re welcome,” he said, looking only at Marlene. “But yeah, I wish the waiter knew that about me. I would be totally happy with any other free dessert, but I guess tiramisu is their specialty or something.”

“Wait, hold on,” Marlene paused. “Are you saying you didn’t buy this for us? I’m withdrawing my belated thanks.”

“No, no, wait hold on, but to the other part of that sentence,” Dorcas said. “Are you saying a waiter gave you a free dessert?”

“Yeah, he kind of always does.”

“Wait, is he like, flirting with you?”

“No!” Remus said, assuredly, but his cheeks turned warm anyway.

“He gave you a free dessert. He has given you multiple free desserts? That is definitely flirting.”

Remus wanted to protest this statement, somehow, but all he could come up with was a strangled sort of noise.

Marlene seemed encouraged by his obvious embarrassment. “Oh my god, you’re going to fall in love and make babies with the help of modern science. Your baby is going to like tiramisu and be born with the personality of an old man. Half you and half waiter boy.”

“What’s his name what’s his name what’s his name,” Dorcas parroted, poking him in the arm with each question.

“Absolutely not.” Remus answered. Having already witnessed Dorcas’s impressive online stalking skills, he wasn’t about to give her a name as unique as Sirius. “Besides, uh,” his tone softened, “honestly I think he only brings me desserts because he feels sorry for me.”

Dorcas’s playful smile dropped. “Oh, Remus,” she began, “don’t sell yourself short.”

Marlene nodded with her, but mercifully changed the subject a minute later.

***

Remus shifted in his seat as his phone vibrated once, signifying an incoming text message. He was in his daily meeting with the other writers for the newspaper. They had just wrapped up the business side of the meeting, and had moved on to the fun side: presenting the best (worst?) reader comments from their online stories.

“Okay, okay, my turn,” the room quieted as Minerva spoke up. She was one of the older writers, and had been at the paper for almost ten years now. Everyone respected (and possibly feared) her, but Remus had immediately connected with her after they locked eyes during a lunch break to discover that they were both reading the newest Margaret Atwood novel and sipping Earl Grey tea. “On my article covering the shopping mall that tried to prevent breastfeeding in public, Ken M. wrote ‘aside from being completely unnecessary, breastfeeding encourages babies to objectify women.’”

The room burst into laughter, and Remus took the opportunity to subtly check his phone. Sure enough, it was Roy, the man he had been messaging for the last few days, and had even moved from Tinder’s chat platform to real texting. He smiled, but turned the phone to Do Not Disturb until the meeting was over.

“Ken M. strikes again!” Someone else announced.

“Ken M. deserves his own column, I swear.” A voice from the back of the room chimed in. “This man comments something completely ridiculous on every post. On my piece on updated bus routes he got into an argument with someone else, and I didn’t read all the comments to know how it got there, but Ken M. ended their dispute with, and I quote, ‘God is a ridiculous myth.’”

Remus laughed along with his coworkers, and took a moment to enjoy the fun banter. He loved his job for his career, but also enjoyed the little positive moments that arose from his sudden move to the big city: meeting Minerva, discovering the infamous Ken M., and laughing along with his coworkers during a meeting. His old job had been at a small newspaper where the main source of workplace laughter was Remus silently laughing at the incompetence of his coworkers, not his readers.

As the meeting ended and people began to file out of the room, he pulled out his phone. Roy told Remus he wanted to take him to his favorite restaurant on Saturday night, and Remus happily agreed to meet him in front of the Pike Place Market neon sign at 6:30. The restaurant was a short walk from there, and Remus was glad he didn’t have to awkwardly refuse getting into the car with someone he didn’t know on a first date.

I want the restaurant to be a surprise, Roy had sent, but do you have any dietary restrictions? Remus appreciated his foresight, and answered with, I’m vegetarian, but I eat pretty much anything otherwise! Remus took a moment to smile dopily after receiving a quick response: perfect.

Remus was excited for the date. Roy was very handsome, with curly blond hair, soft blue eyes, and dimples. He was also, if his profile was to be trusted, very accomplished.

***

The date was horrible. Roy kept most of the conversation centered on himself and his many achievements. Remus noticed that his eyes were actually brown, and while Remus had nothing against brown eyes, seeing as he had a pair of them himself, he couldn’t help but feel weirded out by the fact that Roy, or Gilderoy, as he referred to himself in the third person, had taken the time to edit or filter his eye color in all of his online photos.

By the time they arrived at the restaurant, Remus had already reminded himself over and over that it was just one date, and that even if it was disappointing, he would have a good story to tell later, and he didn’t feel unsafe at all. His friends had his phone’s location, and Dorcas had already assured him that she would “track down and throw from the Space Needle” any man who tried to harm Remus.

Remus tried to muster a polite smile as Roy told him about his obviously fabricated second meeting with Oprah, but his smile completely dropped when he read the front of his menu. They were at a steakhouse.

Their waitress approached, saving Remus from whatever monologue he was about to be subjected to. “What can I get started for you guys tonight?” She sounded bored, which Remus was willing to credit her for, as he understood working in the food industry was not exactly glamorous, but he still stupidly thought of Sirius’s excitement as he waited tables.

Roy had the nerve to try to order for Remus. Remus cut him off and appealed to the waitress. “I’m sorry, I realize you probably don’t get that many vegetarians here, but are there any vegetarian menu items?”

“You’re vegetarian?” The waitress said in surprise.

Remus didn’t expect that response, but he turned directly to Roy as he answered, “yes.”

***

An hour later, Remus was finally free of Roy. The aggravating man had offered to pay for the whole meal, with a public brandishing of his multiple credit cards, but Remus insisted they split it, just to ensure that no one thought he owed him anything. Remus wanted to never see this man again, and if that meant paying for half of a check that consisted of one expensive filet mignon and one cheap side salad, then it was well worth it.

Remus said goodbye in the midst of the Public Market, and then walked away. The last thing he wanted to do was get walked home by the insufferable man and have to listen to him, or worse, have to listen to him invite himself upstairs. As he walked home, he blocked Roy’s phone number, for good measure, and deleted the Tinder app from his phone. He dully realized that if he wanted to deactivate his account for good he would need to redownload the app first, but the symbolism felt nice in the moment.

Composure carried Remus inside his apartment building and up the stairs, but after finally locking his door behind him, he started crying. It was stupid really, and thinking that the idiot he wasted one evening with was making him cry only made him cry harder. His tears were out of frustration more than sadness.

He was frustrated that he couldn’t find a decent man on Tinder. He was frustrated that some asshole took him to a fucking steakhouse after knowing he was a vegetarian. He was frustrated because for whatever reason, he was alone on a Saturday night, again, and he very well may be alone on all future Saturday nights, because his ex-boyfriend decided that he didn’t love him anymore. What was even worse to think about, somehow, was that Remus didn’t even want his ex-boyfriend back. It would be so simple, he thought, to simply miss him, and hope that he would change his mind, and Remus could move back to his little college town and get his old job back at the small newspaper and compromise his life away. But he didn’t even want that anymore. Instead, he had to navigate the world not knowing if there was anyone that he could build a life with, all the while wasting his time on losers like Roy. And he was frustrated because he was hungry, having eaten only a small side salad for dinner.

Fueled by hunger and frustrated tears, he got up, grabbed his journal and pocketed a pen, made a halfhearted effort to wipe the tears from his face, and didn’t bother to change out of his date clothes before he headed out to go eat some comfort food.

He started crying a bit on his way to the restaurant, but it was dark outside and the anonymity of the large city granted some comfort. By the time he got to the restaurant, he was mostly calmed down, and just wanted to eat his pizza in silence, and process his emotions through writing them down in the journal he brought.

It was surprisingly busy at the restaurant for being so late on a Saturday night, and Remus took advantage of that fact to quietly slip into a booth as far away from Sirius’s normal section that he could. Remus didn’t think he would be able to keep up with Sirius’s banter, or familiarity, or free tiramisu tonight. Until he had taken the time to process his night on paper, he didn’t want to have to talk to anyone he knew. After a minute of solitude, a middle-aged waitress approached his table: success. He placed his order and went back to his journal.

As always, he started to feel better almost immediately after he started writing. Once he came to a good stopping point, he paused to look up, and drank some of the cold water the waitress had brought earlier. A few deep breaths later and he was feeling almost like a real human again.

Just then, a familiar voice sounded from behind him.

“Hey there.” Sirius’s voice sounded warm, as always, but slightly hesitant too.

“I brought you something, uh, I saw that your pizza just went in the oven, so it’s still going to be a few minutes.” He placed a small platter of roasted green beans to the side of Remus’s journal, and gave a tentative smile.

Remus had a quick fleeting thought of do you think I don’t eat enough vegetables? But, he realized how tasty they looked and how hungry he was. He felt his eyes water slightly as he tore his gaze from the gifted appetizer back up to Sirius.

“Do you feel sorry for me?” Remus asked, suddenly, “because I’m always alone?”

Sirius’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Remus was almost as surprised as he was, for having verbalized the question that had popped into his mind at the moment. He supposed he meant to say alone here, in the restaurant, because that is where Sirius sees him, but it worked in the general sense too.

“How could I feel sorry for you,” Sirius said slowly, “when you look that good, even while you’re upset.” Sirius’s confident smile crept back onto his face as he walked away.

Remus watched him in surprise, and after a few seconds Sirius turned suddenly, instantly locking eyes with Remus. Caught. Sirius winked and turned back around again.

Remus frantically texted his friends. He first had to update them on the horrible date he had gone on, and then the friendly interactions he has had with Sirius over the course of his many visits to the restaurant, and finally what Sirius just said.

Marlene: First of all, Dorcas and I are gonna find this Roy guy and kill him, probably

Marlene: Second of all, REMUS! You gave me sexy-waiter-flirtation-tiramisu! What if he had put a love potion in it or something??

James: I think I’m missing something about tiramisu… is that some kind of euphemism??

Remus updated them on the desserts that Sirius had given Remus ever since he first came to the restaurant. He also started to smile again, almost unwillingly, at his friends’ texts. He remarked how much can happen in a night: excitement about a date, frustration during said failed date, sadness afterwards, spiraling into thinking he would never date again, getting flirted with, and eventually laughing as his wonderful friends tried to cheer him up, cheer him on, and just be their wonderfully unique and crazy selves.

Lily: Remus this is a sign! I said meeting someone organically would be the best, and here we are. You’ve been getting flirted with this whole time by someone you met in person!

Dorcas: She’s right, you should totally go for it! He obviously likes you

James: Come on mate, what do you have to lose?

Remus thought for a second, before responding to his support group.

Remus: my emotional support pizza

James: what??

The group convinced him to flirt back, and Remus silenced the phone before Sirius came back with his pizza. Evidently he had taken over his table from the earlier waitress.

“And here at last, one margherita pizza. Careful, it’s pretty hot, fresh out of the oven.” Sirius fiddled with the notepad he wrote orders in after setting the pizza down. “Um, enjoy your pizza.” He turned to walk away.

“Hey,” Remus spoke up, suddenly. Sirius turned around quickly at the sound. Remus’s eyes crinkled with happy mischief. “You too.”

Sirius laughed and continued his walk back to the kitchen.

***

When Sirius brought the check, Remus carefully penned his signature and a twenty percent tip. He idled for a moment, before flipping the receipt over and writing a string of ten digits. He paused for a second again, before adding underneath in neat scrawl “should you choose not to call, we must never speak of this, because I need to be able to eat margherita pizza here on my really bad days.” On a new line underneath, he just wrote “Remus”.

***

Thirty-four minutes later, Remus received a text message from an unknown number.

“Don’t worry Remus, I would never get between a man and his pizza.”

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mysticsparklewings · 4 years

Photo

On The Edge

It feels like it's been quite some time since I sat down and got to work on a more involved mixed-media project. And in plenty of ways it has, but I have been working on other artsy projects behind the scenes, which I should be posting sometime soon, I hope. Anyway, this artwork had to be moved to the top of my priority list and also my upload schedule (some of those other projects are already finished, just back-logged) because this is my entry into the Arteza Awards hosted by, shocker, Arteza, and the deadline to enter was the 24th. I actually started working on this piece a week or two early, but me being me, I procrastinated and only just barely got it posted to Instagram with the appropriate tags (per the contest rules) with about 20 minutes to spare. Then again, maybe that's a good thing because I've been known in the past to pull some of my better work out of thin air at the last minute. If that proves the case this time, it would certainly be to my advantage. Anyway. There was no set theme for the contest. The main rules were that you had to use Arteza supplies and they needed to be visible in the image posted to Instagram. I understand why, but I normally don't photograph my art with the supplies because I can usually get more accurate colors and proportions with a scan, and you can pretty much always see the details way better on a scan. But considering the prizes on offer, I wasn't about to let that stop me. I figured I'd just post the supply image first, then add the scan so you could swipe to see it. That way I could have my nice scanned version and still follow the rules. (Also, since they specify Instagram is the main platform for the contest, I'm assuming it doesn't matter if I don't post the supply picture everywhere else. If it does...whoops :P ) For reasons I don't think I should get into here, I knew I needed to go for something kind of high-impact when you first glance at it. But it also needed to not be too involved, lest I be working on it well after the entry window closed and my efforts become somewhat less valuable. I'm not exactly sure how, but this led me around to a concept I've had floating around in my head for a while: A girl (because I am one and know I can draw them better) standing on a mountain top, that looks as if she's one step from free-falling. Originally, I dreamed up this idea hoping to make it into an acrylic painting, but (aside from that fact that I didn't get around to executing the idea until now) I do not own Arteza'a acrylic paints (though I have wanted them for quite some time--It just hasn't happened yet) and also acrylics are not my strongest suit, so now did not seem like the time for an impulse-purchase that could compromise the integrity of my work and therefore my chances in the contest. Although for the day I do get my hands on their acrylics, I now have a solid idea to use to test them out. ;) The Arteza supplies I do have at my disposal are their tube watercolors, woodless watercolor pencils, and 72 expert colored pencils. Which as I learned the last time entered a contest hosted by Arteza, is a fairly limited variety as to what I can actually do. The watercolors by far as the most versatile and my personal favorite of the three though, so they're what I used the most of here. Also, somewhere between deciding to run with my standing-on-the-edge idea and actually doing it, I also decided to add-in the wings in this constellation style I've used somewhere infrequently but am very fond of. As a result, the whole concept has a very similar feel to me as this artwork that I found here on dA years ago and fell so in love with that it spent a good few months as my desktop wallpaper. Obviously, the two images are very different, but to me the idea of the wings is similar: Their structural integrity to fly is questionable, as the wings in the original image appear to be made of glass. Maybe it matters, maybe not. Same thing here: Maybe the wings are really there and just look like a constellation, or maybe this girl just stood in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time. Is the girl even there? Is she real? Can she die? Does it matter if she falls? Would she choose to fly at all, whether the wings work or not? It's sort of a Schrodinger's Cat situation, and something about that is really intriguing to me. Anyway. I started out with a digital sketch this time, mostly to iron out the kinks with...well, everything. I knew getting the right pose would be difficult, and I actually had a pretty different one of her looking out over the edge, maybe clutching her chest or something, originally, but I just couldn't get it to work the way I wanted to and I really struggled to find references for it, so I went with the pose you see here, that I found references for by accident while looking for the other one. I have to admit, seeing the final product I think this pose might actually have been the better choice anyway. The mountain/cliff/whatever I was also having a hard time finding references for, at least for exactly what I wanted, so in the end I had to mostly wing it. I think it turned out okay, though. The wings were probably the most challenging part to plan because I wanted something between traditional butterfly/fairy wings and something that stretches out farther like bird or bat wings. I toyed with the lines for a long time until I got something I was happy with, and then I actually went in and did the constellation lines for both sides by hand instead of doing one side and making a flipped copy, because I wanted to make sure I kept the overall shape of the wing on the (our)right (her left), as after all the warping I did to get the original lines, I wasn't sure I could replicate the process again. I also drew 2 or 3 versions of a simple dress over the figure before giving up because I wasn't happy with how any of them were turning out and decided that I would instead preserve her modesty with magically misty cloud-things. Although, it's kind of a shame because that ended up mostly hiding the one piece of hair clinging over her left (our right) shoulder. :P But once the digital sketch was done so I had some idea of what I was doing, it was time to move on to the traditional, actual artwork. I cut a piece of my 100% cotton paper down to size (nice paper because I didn't want to be held back in that regard--go big or go home, as they say) and then held it up to me screen to trace my cliff lines into place, and some vague markers for the figure and her wings. My idea from the very beginning was to make the galaxy largely with watercolor in such a way that it gives the wings color and focus, without having to actually color all the individual segments. This means lighter colors towards the main area of the wings, and getting darker as I moved out/away from them. Now, because it has been a while since I was painting with watercolors regularly, I did set aside a smaller piece of the same paper and busted out a practice baby galaxy before diving into the final. I learned very quickly I was going to have to be extremely careful with my placement of this orangey color and black, less either of them ends up mixing with colors they weren't supposed to and leaving me with a big muddy mess. (The practice piece did survive though and I'll be posting it some other time.) Before I could get to the fun part [the galaxy] though, I painted the mountain with a mixture of black and blue, which actually went a lot smoother than I thought it would. It took several light layers of blending out the paint built up slowly, but ultimately I'm pretty happy with how the color for it turned out...Even if it's still kind of up for debate how much it looks like a "mountain" or "cliff-edge" or not. With that out of the way, I cut some paper to act as a mask for that section and then spent far too long going back and forth, putting down layers of color and blending them out, dabbing color on and waiting for it to dry, rinse, repeat, trying to get the Galaxy portion just right. I was actually having a fair amount of trouble getting the right color balance, and as sometimes happens with these things, I was pretty worried about how it was looking before I went to bed that night. (I had procrastinated just long enough that I had 2 nights to do this is; the bulk of the painting took place on night 2) But the next day, once it was fully dry, it didn't look so bad. It did need just a few more touches before I went in and added the splatter/stars, though. So I broke out the colored pencils, which I really should have done sooner because they were much easier to blend out and had a bit more covering power over the watercolor than...more watercolor because watercolor is often transparent and there it can be hard to cover with it. Admittedly, I still had more worries about the "naked" galaxy, but then I went to splatter town with the white, added a few pointed stars, and as it usually does, that really brought everything together and made it look a lot better. Never underestimate the power of a good splatter-fest! ;) I must say though, I underestimated the combination of the white watercolor and white colored pencil together when I moved on to the figure and wings. I was trying very hard to not use my white gel pen (because the rules for the contest didn't say if it was okay to use non-Arteza supplies in conjunction with Arteza supplies or not) and so I was sort of bending over backward to find another way with my limited resources. (Although I assumed using a lightbox to see the lines underneath the paint, as is a normal practice for me, wouldn't really matter because it's not like you can really tell from the final product anyway.) Still, even though a mixture of paint lifting, the white colored pencil, and the white watercolor were better than I expected, I still ended up having to punch the lines up a bit digitally to get them to pop the way I wanted them to. But oh well, at least it made a nice glowing effect and mostly worked for the cloud-mist covering. :P Overall though, I do really like how it turned out. If it weren't a little on the small side I might actually consider using it as my new wallpaper/banner art everywhere. Maybe that's a conversion project of some kind for another day? Point being, I'm pleased. I probably won't place in the contest because I'm just too small of a fish in this pond, but I made some pretty art and it was mostly fun, so no harm done. :) Actually, if this could maybe be the excuse my brain needs to get back into posting regularly, that would actually be really great. I miss it, despite what my most recent journal entry and my spotty activity levels might lead one to believe. If it is, I hope you guys don't mind seeing some crafty things thrown into the mix! :D ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings

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barefootdancinghospital · 4 years

Link

“The world might be ending.

* * *

There’s a commonly replicated piece of anarchist folk art that means a lot to me. I don’t know who drew it. It’s a drawing of a tree with a circle-A superimposed. The text of it reads “even if the world was to end tomorrow I would still plant a tree today.”

I grew up into anarchy around this piece of art. It was silkscreened as patches and posters and visible on the backs of hoodies and the walls of collective houses. It was graffitied through stencils and it was photocopied in the back of zines. It’s a paraphrasing of a quote misattributed to Martin Luther (the original protestant Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King, Jr., although plenty of people misattribute the quote to him as well). The original quote is something like “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” The earliest reference to it anyone can seem to find is from the German Confessing Church, a Christian movement within Nazi Germany that sought to challenge Nazi power. The quote was used to inspire hope, to inspire people to action.

That’s something I can get behind.

* * *

There’s this book that means a lot to me, On the Beach, by Nevil Shute. I’ve never read it. I can’t bring myself to. I think about it quite often, regardless.

The novel describes a nuclear war destined to kill all life on earth, and it describes the last days of people living in Australia waiting for the inevitable death of all things. It describes how they live their lives, how they find meaning during the apocalypse. It’s a book about how to live without hope. It’s a book of resignation.

It’s too much for me, I think, at least right now.

* * *

The world might be ending.

A lot of people will argue with me about that. They will correctly point out that for large numbers of people all over the world, especially in the parts of the world long ravaged by Western imperialism, the world has been ending for a long time. They will correctly point out that the world itself isn’t going anywhere, that change is constant, and even if what is left behind by climate catastrophe and war is a scorched desert, it’s probable that life will continue. Human life, non-human animal life, and plant life will all, in some form or another, survive all of this.

People will argue, correctly once more, that most every generation has believed that the world was ending. The machine gun slaughter of World War I, the genocide of World War II, the Doomsday Clock of the Cold War, the AIDS epidemic, those all must have felt like the apocalypse. For entire peoples, they were. Yet here some of us are today, alive.

None of those arguments detract from the fact that it sure feels like the world is ending.

Mountains are blown up for coal to pump poison into the air, pipelines clearcut the last vestiges of the wild to help us pump more poison into the air. Oceans are swallowing islands, hundred-year storms happen every year, and it feels like every day we break new climate records. A sense of urgency about coming disaster is fueling a rise of “I got mine, fuck you” nationalism, and climate scientists are being ignored to an unconscionable degree.

The world is ending.

It’s always ending, but it’s ending a lot right now. For me and the people I’m close to, it’s ending more dramatically than it was when I was born thirty-seven years ago.

That’s fucking paralyzing.

The news is full of extinction and fascism and death and death and death.

And we’re expected to get up in the morning and go to work.

* * *

For awhile, I coped by means of a cycle of denial and panic. The potential apocalypse was, basically, too-much-problem. I couldn’t wrap my head around it or its ramifications, so I acted like it wasn’t happening. Until, of course, some horrible event or reminder of the apocalypse broke over a certain threshold and sent me spiraling into despair. Then numbness took over once more and the cycle began again.

That didn’t do me much good.

About a year ago, I decided to embrace four different, often contradictory, priorities for my life. I run my decisions past all of them and try to keep them in balance.

Act like we’re about to die. Act like we might not die right away. Act like we might have a chance to stop this. Act like everything will be okay.

Act like we’re about to die

Every breath we take is the last breath we take. You Only Live Once. Smoke em if you got em. Do As Thou Wilt. Memento Mori. Our culture is full of euphemisms and clever sayings that focus around one simple idea: we’re mortal, so we might as well try to make the most of the time we have.

Embracing hedonism has a lot to recommend it these days. It’s completely possible that the majority of us won’t be alive ten or twenty years from now. It’s completely possible, although a lot less likely, that a lot of us won’t be alive in a year.

I used to think, when I was younger, that I was a terrible hedonist. As a survivor of sexual and psychological assault and abuse, I’ve never had much luck with drug use or casual sex. But fucking and getting wasted, while perfectly worthwhile pastimes, aren’t the only ways to live in the moment. Hedonism is about the pursuit of pleasure and joy. The trick is to find out what gives you pleasure and joy.

For myself, this has meant giving myself permission to pursue music, to sing even though I’m not trained, to play piano and harp. To travel, to wander. To seek beautiful moments and accept that they might be fleeting. I’ll rudely paraphrase the host of the rather wholesome podcast Ologies, Alie Ward, and say “we might die so cut your bangs and tell your crush you like them.”

My hedonism is a cautious one. I’m not looking to take up smoking or other addictions. I’m not trying to live like there’s a guarantee of no tomorrow, just a solid chance of no tomorrow. Frankly, this would be true regardless of the current crisis, but it feels especially important to me just now.

Act like we might not die right away

Preppers have a bad reputation for a good reason. The people stockpiling ammunition and food in doomsday bunkers by-and-large don’t have anyone else’s best interests at heart. Still, being prepared for a slow apocalypse, or dramatic interruptions in the status quo, makes more and more sense to more and more of us.

Preparing for the apocalypse is going to look different to every person and every community. For some people it will mean stockpiling necessities. For other people, securing the means to grow food.

One thing I’ve learned from my friends who study community resilience and disaster relief, however, is that the most important resource to shore up on isn’t a tangible one. It’s not bullets, it’s not rice, it’s not even land or water. It’s connections with other people. The most effective means of survival in crisis is to create community disaster plans. To practice mutual aid. To build networks of resilience.

Every apocalypse movie has it all backwards when the plucky gang of survivors holes up in a cabin and fends off the ravaging chaotic hordes. The movies have it backwards because the ravaging hordes are, in the roughest possible sense, the ones doing survival right. They’re doing it collectively. Obviously, I’m not advocating we wear the skulls of our enemies and cower at the feet of warlords (though wearing the skulls of would-be warlords has its appeal). I’m advocating staying open to opportunity and building collective power.

There are infinite reasons not to count on holing up in a cabin with your six friends as an apocalypse plan, but I’ll give you two of them. First, because living a worthwhile and long life as a human animal requires connections with a diverse collection of people with diverse collections of skills, ideas, and backgrounds. It’s all fun and games in your cabin until your appendix bursts and none of you are surgeons—or you’re the only surgeon. Likewise, small groups of people who tend to agree with one another are subject to the dangers of groupthink and the echo chamber effect, which will limit your ability to intelligently meet challenges that face you.

Second, because by removing yourself from society, you’re removing your ability to shape the changes that society will go through during crisis. If you go hide in the woods with your stockpile and your buddies, and fascists take over, guess what? It’s kind of your fucking fault. Because you weren’t at the meeting when everyone decided whether to be egalitarians or fascists. And guess what? Now that rampaging horde is at your doorstep, and they want your ammo and your antibiotics, and they’re going to get it one way or the other. Fascism is always best stamped out when it starts. It’s never safe to ignore it. Not now, not during any Mad Max future.

Tangible resources do matter, of course. Any likely scenario that prepping is good for won’t be so dramatic as an utter restructuring or collapse of society. It might mean food shortages, power outages, water contamination. It never hurts to keep nonperishable food, backup sources of power, and water filtration systems around for yourself and your neighbors.

Still, this is a terrible basket to put all your eggs into. You probably shouldn’t live out your days, whether they’re your last ones or not, over-preparing for something that may or may not come to pass.

Act like we might have a chance to stop this

We can and we should stop the worst excesses of climate catastrophe. We can and should stop fascism by whatever means necessary. Throwing up our hands and walking away from the problem is no solution.

It’s hard to remember that we have agency. Unless we were raised ultra-rich, we’ve had the concept of political and economic agency stripped from us at every turn. We’ve been told there are two ways to effect change: vote for politicians or vote with our dollars. Politicians in western democracies are likely incapable of changing things as dramatically as they need to be changed, and they certainly won’t bother trying unless we motivate them to do so in fairly dramatic ways. As for economic agency, there is a small handful of men with more wealth—and therefore power—than the rest of us combined.

We’ve been told we cannot take matters into our own hands, politically or economically. We’re not allowed to have a revolution. We’re not allowed to redistribute the wealth of the elite.

You’ll be shocked to know that I don’t put a lot of stock in what we are and aren’t allowed to do.

Still, even if we give ourselves permission to undertake it, revolution feels like an insurmountable challenge. We’ve got, optimistically, ten years to completely overhaul the economic system of the planet. It can be done. It has to be done. Yet it feels like it won’t be done.

We’re all running the cost/benefit analysis of acting directly. We all have different “fuck it” points—the point beyond which we can no longer prioritize our immediate wellbeing but instead must act regardless of the outcome. In the meantime, we’re waiting until it seems like we can act and actually have a chance of winning.

All over the world, even in some Western countries, people are no longer waiting. They’re acting. We need to be helping them, supporting them with words and actions, while we get ready to act here as well.

The revolution needs mediators and facilitators, medics and brawlers. It needs hackers and propagandists and it needs financiers and smugglers and thieves. It needs scouts and coordinators and it needs musicians and it needs people invested in the system to turn traitor. It needs lawyers and scientists and bookkeepers and copyeditors and cooks and it needs almost everyone, almost every skill.

One thing it doesn’t need, though, is managers. The people who claim to know how to run a revolution don’t know how to run a revolution or they would have done it by now. The authoritarian urge, to decide what the revolution should and shouldn’t look like, how people should and shouldn’t express their rage and reclaim their agency, will fail us every time. Authoritarian communism is the death of any revolution. Authoritarian liberalism is the death of any revolution. Even the more dogmatic anarchists will get in the way if given a chance. The revolution cannot be branded. Despite Hollywood representations of rebellions, they don’t work as well under a single banner. They are diverse, or they are not revolutions.

The revolution cannot be controlled by a vanguard of activists; if it is, it will fail. The revolution must be controlled by its participants, because only then will we learn how to claim agency over our own lives and futures.

We have a chance to stop this.

I forget that sometimes, but I shouldn’t.

Still, I can’t count on hope alone, or the days when hope fails me would lay me low.

Act like everything will be okay

All the times the world has come close to ending before, it hasn’t. It’s ended for some people, some cultures. Civilizations have collapsed. Ecosystems have radically shifted. Species have gone extinct—including the species of humans before homo sapiens. Colonization was an apocalypse. Some people survived those apocalypses, but plenty more didn’t.

Still, the world is still here and we’re still here.

Capitalism is a sturdy beast, quite adept at adaptation. Marx was wrong about a lot of things, and one of those things was the inevitability of the collapse of capitalism under the weight of its own contradictions. With or without capitalism, the society we live in might stagger on. We might curb the worst excesses of climate catastrophe through economic change or wild feats of geoengineering.

I won’t bet on it, but I won’t bet entirely against it either.

As much as I need to live like I might die tomorrow, I need to live like I might see a hundred years on this odd green and blue planet. Unless things change, I’m not burning every bridge. I’m trying to maintain a career. If I was certain to die under a fascist regime by 2021, there wouldn’t be much point in writing novels: they take too long to write, publish, and reach their audience. I get some joy from the writing itself, sure, but I get more joy from putting my art in front of people, of letting it influence the cultural landscape. With novel writing in particular, that takes time. That takes there being a future. I want there to be a future. Almost desperately. Not enough to bank on it completely.

I’m keeping some small portion of my time and resources invested in the potential for there to be a future is important for my mental health, because it keeps me invested in maintaining that health.

* * *

The world might end tomorrow, and it might not. If we can help it, at all, we shouldn’t let it end. We still ought to act like it might.

We ought to figure out what trees we would plant either way.

If you appreciate my writing and want to help me do more of it, please consider supporting me via Patreon.

“

#climate change

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diaryofasupergroupie · 4 years

Text

Abuse exists in music *TRIGGER WARNING*

I ask everyone to please be respectful, this is the most personal thing I have ever written. This was an awful time of my life and I was a totally different person when I was with him. This kind of thing isn’t okay and I am hesitantly giving this a trigger warning of emotional and psychological abuse. There are definitely people who have had it worse but it was still a bad time for me. This kind of thing happens far more than it should and I hope people can realise that from my own experience. I’m open to answering questions about this but please be respectful! Sending you all my love xoxo - K

I talk about abuse a lot and how girls are vulnerable but I never go into detail as to why I’m so passionate about preventing terrible things from happening to the girls or guys. When you are a groupie the musician is in an immediate position of power. No matter how much of a feminist or empowered woman you are this is the dynamic. When people say abuse I think we think about rapes, beatings and girls being taken advantage of. It can be and all those things are abuse but the control, manipulation and toxic relationships are all abuse too. C never once hit me but he totally hallowed me out inside until I was barely there.

You can read all about how I met C and how we talked and got to know each other over months. There was a slow burn that was so gentle and slow it led me into thinking it was just meant to be. Also keep in mind that this was my first relationship in the scene and all other experiences I had were flings. None of that makes it okay though. While I was on tour in Europe with K and his band C and I had been talking everyday without fail. He asked me to call him and would text me lovely things and tell me he’s been thinking about where we were headed and how it made him feel. These were sweet sweet words and he had sent me flowers to the venue K was at. On the phone C told me that he isn’t usually like this and doesn’t usually want to associate himself with groupies. He thought they had no self-respect and didn’t like what they did and how they clung onto the fame he had. When a man talks about groupies or just women like that he should paint the walls red. He should set off alarms and the warning signs should be obvious. But then he told me that I was different. If I heard that now I would hang up the phone. C would tell me that he knew me so well and that he knew I was far too free spirited to tie down like that – that was exactly what he intended on doing. He told me we could be in an open relationship which tricked me into thinking I had this great freedom and he completely was on the same page as I was. I felt like he understood me entirely.

When I was in the studio with A and D and they had told me how they never wanted me to go and how I was such an angel. I was supposed to go stay with my friend A and his wife for a few weeks. I was going to go to several gigs and spend some time with A who I loved dearly. I had spent some studio time with them and I had told C just what A meant to me. A the man who was like a best friend, big brother and who I trusted and had pulled me out of some of the darkest times. But C told me he didn’t want me flying out to stay with A because it was unfair how I went to see A but wouldn’t go to see him. He made me feel so guilty that in the end I cancelled my plans and left A disappointed. A has never been good at staying mad at me and would never intentionally hurt my feelings but I knew he was having thoughts that maybe C wasn’t good for me then. But I never saw any of that. I think it’s important to note that when you are so in love with someone and they are all you can think about you don’t notice the red flags. It’s fine for people to say that I should have noticed what was happening. But real life doesn’t work that way.

C flew from America to come stay in my city for three weeks. I remember just before he arrived that I didn’t want to feel trapped. Although I was all about C I felt that maybe that was exactly what was happening even then. I had talked on and off to V ever since I just entered the scene but this was the only time that stopped. C was getting a long flight to spend some time with me and I caught myself feeling ungrateful. I wanted to feel more grateful and felt so guilty for how I was feeling. C would tell me how much he hated flying but he was doing this for me and it made me feel so special. The day he landed it happened to be my mother’s birthday and despite the fact she to this day her care for me has been patchy I had to spend the day with her. C called me and we argued extensively about it. Don’t get me wrong, fights are a normal part of a healthy relationship. But when he makes you feel guilty for spending time with your family it isn’t a good sign. Some people will think that I am in the wrong here, he flew all that way and I didn’t even play the doting girlfriend. But as A told me over and over again, a good boyfriend would understand. Regardless I apologised for being mean and that I was just as impatient to see him.

When we saw one another everything was okay and we hugged and kissed. C was so smooth and good at tricking me into doing what he wanted. He held me close and kissed me before he leaned down to my ear and whispered, I wish you didn’t start all these arguments and we could just be happy. He would always blame me for the arguments and then tell me it was lucky he was there to handle me. I knew I was a handful and to this day I still am. But never let anyone try to tell you being who you are is a fault. He would work hard to make me feel special and take me shopping. He would give me his credit card and tell me to spend whatever I wanted to make him look good when we went to dinner. I would spend £400 at a time and that was part of his talent for making me forgive whatever he said to me. He brought me a ring and then pulled me behind racks of clothes where he kissed my neck. “K,” C said in between kisses. “I love you.” I asked him what he loved most about me. “I love the way you make me feel.” He said breathlessly.

We went to dinner and I remember being in total awe of him. I could never look away from him and I would just sit and stare. I felt like we were a real couple as we sat across from one another and everyone around us believed we were just in love. We weren’t faking or on tour, we were real people now. I realised just how in love I was with him. C told me he doesn’t normally feel like this and that he never wanted to leave my side. I was completely trapped in his words and I just wanted to touch him forever. I had grown up with emotionally unavailable male family members and as a rule that’s my type. But for some reason I wanted to hear how I made him feel in love.

I can’t deny the sex was good and when he took me back to the apartment he was staying at he truly made me feel special. But I don’t want to go into any kind of detail really because then I would have to remember. He was on the rougher side and completely all for him and full of himself which coincidentally is my type in that department too. I will tell you that he likes to have sex to his own music and I think that sums him up perfectly. You have to be a certain kind of person to enjoy that and if I’m honest his music isn’t the best and at times it became a mood killer.

For a taste of just how controlling he was we went to a party thrown by one of my favourites while he was there. I was quite ill and felt awful but I forced myself to go and it was my chance to show everyone in the scene that C and I were in a real relationship. I remember stepping into the party and the newer girls just watching me. C had been so open about his feelings about groupies and it was like a smack in the face to all of them. He went to socialise and I ran off with my friend V and a band I had known for years. They were the band I toured with when I met C and A who you may fondly remember as the man who took me to watch a movie before he drew a bow on me and we had a good night. They offered me some edibles to make me feel better and in truth it did. But when C walked in and saw just what I had been doing.

He quite literally cleared the table of everything and gripped my arm. He looked at me as though I was nothing before he started shouting at me. I tried to tell him it was because I felt ill but that made it worse and I thought he would hit me. For reference he would drink and smoke but I never could. “K, this is disgusting. I’m disgusted with you.” C spat and I knew everything was starting to go sour. I’m half glad A wasn’t there because if he was I’m scared about what he would do. A wasn’t there but O was. O has always been so lovely to me. I met him years ago on my birthday when he inserted a birthday candle in his urethra. O was always high on something, had a tolerance like I had never seen and also was completely obsessed with rock stars of the past and their stories. He would save them up to act out whenever he could. He would fondly call me Princess or Darling and have such fun with all the girls. When C was shouting at me for a moment I didn’t think it would ever stop. When any arguments happen there is always a moment when people think they need to get involved because it was going too far. I remember being so scared of him. C got in my face and that was when O stepped in. O pulled C off of me and then pushed him backwards and C fell down onto the ground. I thought there was going to be some huge fight. “Leave her alone!” O snapped at him. “You are scaring her and if you don’t stop being a dick I’ll take her back to my hotel room.” The secret meaning for C was there. The only way he would stop would be to make him jealous enough to rethink how unreasonable he was. In that moment O seemed to really care about me and that was what I needed right then. C went to leave but before he did he shook his head at me like a was a naughty child which really is what he wanted his girlfriend to be. You’re a bitch, C told me angrily, call me when you’ve stopped behaving like a whore unless you’re too busy letting O fuck you. I felt so disgusting all over some edibles.

I talked myself into looking past the entire evening and apologised to him again. Everyone who had met him from my civilian life said he wasn’t good for me but I of course ignored them all. Before he left we were invited to another party and V clung to me the entire time to make sure I was okay. She had made me a flower bracelet and took me to braid the childlike A’s hair. She told me she was in deep love with him but she loves everyone and everything so it wasn’t some great confession really.

At the party there was a certain young groupie there that I had loathed for years. Her name was L and for the past year I had watched her flirt and get all my favourite men into trouble. She was underage and she was the only one I saw still being able to get men involved in this. Most kept far away from underage girls but she always seemed to find a way. She was all over C and floated around him with her hands over his chest in her short skirt and neon pink lipstick. She was seventeen barely, I just wanted her to go and get on with her A-Levels.

While she was keeping C occupied and I was glaring at them it gave me a chance to spent time with O. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders in a protective manner and told me tonight I was his Princess. He then went on to pour prosecco directly into my mouth from the bottle. When I went to the toilet I found him in the bathroom doing lines on the counter. V’s new obsession A stumbled into the bathroom and handed O some pills. He offered me one but I shook my head so he swung them all into his mouth and swallowed them dry. I don’t understand even now how he physically does it. O told me when C goes home he’ll give me all the drugs I want before he proceeded to make me a crown out of a tablecloth. While L was all over C and he never said a word to her O was much more on my side. When the attention wasn’t on him while the band hosting played their new album he opened up the 15th floor window and threw up. He couldn’t stand not being the person everyone was looking at.

It carried on like this until C left again, I knew I should have felt sad to see him gone but I felt elated. It was like I could breathe again. I was amerced in the whole string of parties then and each time I saw O he would tell me to break up with C because he’s ruining me and killing my spirit in the worst way. I tripped out at a party and then knew I had to end it or he really would kill me. Everyone could see the change and that wasn’t how I wanted to disappear out of the scene. I’ve always left on my own terms. When I tried to break up with C he told me I wasn’t allowed to and that he would ‘never let some groupie break up with him’.

The girls were furious and I never spoke to him much after that. O had been the only person who made me feel anything through it all and when C really messed me up he sent me a care package and I went to stay with him for around a month on and off. When it came time for C to tour over here again word got out pretty quickly that he had took L the groupie from earlier with him despite her being underage at the time. I thought my groupie career was entirely over then but all of the old girls that had been around years stayed far away from that tour. Sure there were groupies there but the ones whose names are the top of the list didn’t go which was nice. I made my return at a party thrown by O. I toured with them a little after that and we had quite the fling but I healed and moved on from it all. C on the other had didn’t, he dropped L right after that tour and spent almost two years stewing over it all before he wrote two songs about me on his new album all about how he used me for sex and I was the one to destroy his life and make him suffer. The original cut had my name in there but after numerous phone calls and all my contacts in the industry my name thankfully got cut. Six minutes of him telling everyone I am a bitch and sucking his own dick. But I am thankful in a way to him for letting me know musicians aren’t perfect and they can be bad people. If he hadn’t caused arguments then I would never have gotten atrocious drunk and had my dad in the scene come to my aid and kick start a father and daughter like relationship which by far is the most meaningful in all of the years I’ve been doing this. He’s bitter but he didn’t take everything from me like he wanted – don’t let anyone do that.

#diary of a super groupie #diary #groupie #groupie scene #groupie relationships #band aid #toxic relationship #abuse #emotional abuse #manipulation #music scene #journal #bands #musicians #party story

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i-will-physically-fight-you · 6 years

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Headcannon: Virgil sometimes dances around his room when he’s listening to music and nobody else is around

Title: Not A Chance

Summary: Virgil doesn’t dance. At least not compared to the likes of Roman, whose practically the embodiment of a Disney prince. That’s why he dances in his room by himself where no one can judge him and his terrible dancing.

Pairings: platonic prinxiety

Word Count: 1299

Warnings: Self-depreciation, anxiety because this is Virgil we’re talking about

My sincerest apologies to the dear Anon that sent this to my inbox, four months ago when I had my 100 Follower celebration. In any case, this was such a fun thing to write and a great reprieve from my big bang project so thank you for sending this in, and I hope you get a chance to read this.

“You can’t be serious!”

“I am.”

“You don’t like dancing? At all?”

“I don’t dance.” He affirmed, scowling as he crossed his arms against hischest.

“I know you can.” Roman said in a singsong fashion.

Virgil raised an eyebrow, “Why do I have a feeling that’s areference to some obscure musical?”

He could never tell when Roman was just being his overly-flamboyantself or when he was actually quoting something. It certainly sounded familiar, however.

Roman gave a dramatic gasp, a hand flailing upwards towards hisforehead.

“Obscure musical? ObSCURE MUSICAL?!” He screeched in disbelief,falling backwards onto the couch where Logan sat. The latter, used to Roman’s antics,sighed as he raised the book he was reading just as Roman’s head rested ontohis lap.

“Roman, please. I’m trying to read here.”

“Did you not hear what he said?” Roman said, pausing for amoment as he sat up, “Well, of course you wouldn’t understand, Einstein.”

“What’s with all the commotion?” Patton asked, grinning ashe brought in a fresh plate of chocolate chip cookies from the kitchen.

“It’s a travesty, Patton. An outrage!” Roman made a beelinefor the platter of cookies and picked one up, “He called High School Musical 2an ‘obscure musical!’”

Cookie in hand, he used it to point accusingly at Virgil likeone of his sabers. Virgil considered taking a bite out of the cookie just toget a reaction from Roman. Knowing Patton wouldn’t find it funny, he instead grabbeda cookie of his own to nibble on.

“Well it kinda is,” Virgil said, taking a bite intochocolatey goodness, “I mean, it wasn’t even on Broadway, right?”

“It is a Pop Culture icon, Virgil!” Roman huffed, “I supposeyou know nothing about it, since you only listen to your PG 13 rated music.”“Hey, that’s not fair, I don’t only listen to that type of music,” Virgil mumbled.

Roman perked up, “What was that?”

“I said, I listen to some musicals!” Virgil turned away, faceblushing, as he shoved the rest of his cookie into his mouth.

“Really?” Roman asked skeptically.

“Yes really,” Virgil smirked, “I mean, c’mon, even you have toadmit there’s some dark crap that goes on in musicals. Like Heathers or SweeneyTodd.”

Roman’s lips twisted upwards.

“I suppose you have me there, Sweeney Downer,” Roman relented,“but surely you can’t have a musical appreciation and not be compelled to moveto the rhythm of the beat.”

Dang, he’d hoped that Roman had forgotten about that mattercompletely.

“Sorry to disappoint, princey, but I don’t dance—not achance.” Virgil said, thanking Patton for the cookies as he scooped up two moreand walked off.

“So you do know the song after all!” Roman screeched afterhim.

A loud, raucous cackle echoed in the hallways.

Virgil didn’t dance. Not when compared to the likes ofRoman. He understood it. Roman, after all, was Thomas’ creativity, all hishopes and dreams. He was the ego—brash and confident in ways that Virgil couldnever be. While Roman feinted off his boundless energy with daring quests tosave damsels from the Dragon Witch, Virgil preferred to snuggle up in a blanketand listen to music.

It wasn’t just that, of course. Dancing had always beenThomas’ weak point in theatre, and Virgil suffered with the same struggle. Hestill enjoyed dancing despite it. He just preferred to enjoy it from within thecomforts of his room, away from peering eyes.

Yes, he knew by now that the others wouldn’t tease him forhis lack of coordination. But as the literal embodiment of anxiety, it was hardconvincing himself otherwise. What if Roman teased him relentlessly about hisatrocious dancing skills? That was the last thing Virgil needed.

He chose to keep to the confines of his room, where his audiencewas an assortment of stuffed animals. Several of them being gifts from Patton.He didn’t dance often, only when he felt his heartbeat racing. It made him wantto punch a wall, and since punching walls hurt a lot, dancing was a betteralternative. He lost himself in the music, as he physically projected what themusic meant to him.

A few weeks after the exchange with Roman, Virgil found himselfin such an occasion once more. Virgil took a deep breath before pressing playon his iPod, waiting for the vocals to start. As the singer’s wistful voicestarted, he moved. He channeled the subject of the song; a young girl wishingto escape her harsh reality through dreams.

He twirled and spun, jumped and leapt and he didn’t stopdancing until the song ended. Afterwards, he collapsed onto the ground in smiling,sweaty heap.

“So you can dance!”A triumphant voice exclaimed.

Standing at the doorway, hands on his hips, was Roman. Helooked beyond thrilled by this discovery.

Virgil shot up from the floor, stumbling over to his iPod toshut off the next song.

“What are you doing here?” He demanded.

Virgil couldn’t believe he forgot to lock his door or thefact he didn’t even hear Roman open the door. Had he even knocked? Or did Romanintended to burst through his door with exciting idea and instead caught him inthe act?

Roman’s smile slipped from his face, “Easy, there. Padre sentme here to tell you that dinner’s ready. I guess you were so busy dancing up astorm that you didn’t hear me knocking!”

Virgil groaned, “Just get on with it, already.”

“Get on with what?” Roman asked, his eyebrows furrowing withconcern.

“You know,” He gestured with his hand, “tell me how much mydancing sucks.”

“Virgil, what?” Roman blinked, “your dancing doesn’t suck,it was magnificent!”

“C’mon, you don’t have to act like it’s good when it’s not;I can take the heat.” Virgil refused to make eye contact with him.

A hand softly rested on his shoulder, “Virgil, look at me.”

He sighed and complied, startled to see an unusually grave expressionon Roman’s face.

“I promise on my honor as a prince that I meant it when I saidyou were magnificent.”

“You mean it?” Virgil asked, anxiety gnawing at his insides.

“Of course.”

“Thanks, I guess.” Virgil swallowed, unsure how to handle thecompliment. Their relationship was built off of banter and witty remarks. Not…whateverthis was.

“Virgil why didn’t you tell me you actually enjoyed dancing?”Roman hesitated, “were you afraid of me…making fun of you?”

He stood there not at all like a dashing, confident princebut more like a kicked puppy with that pitiful expression of his.

“Yeah,” Virgil admitted, “I just figured…you’d tease me aboutit.”

“I know you had good reason to assume that considering how Itreated you wrongly in the past, but know this,” Roman drew a breath in, “Iwould never tease you for something like this. I can see dancing is a passionfor you—a dream! And I don’t destroy dreams, I help nourish them!”

“Is this your way of offering me a dance lesson?”

“Only if you want one.”

Virgil snorted, “Wow, gee thanks, Roman. First you say mydancing’s great and then you offer to teach me. Which is it?”

Roman spluttered, “I do mean it! That your dancing is great,that is! I just—I just thought—”

“Relax, I get what you mean. I was just messing with you.” Virgilbumped his shoulder with Roman’s in a friendly manner as he strode past him, “Weshould get going to dinner. Patton and Logan are probably wondering what’sgoing on.”

“Er, of course. Onwards, we go!” Roman recomposed himselfbefore following after him.

“And Roman?” Virgil turned back to look at him, “I think…Imight just take you up on that dancing lesson after all.”

General Tag List: @fandergecko @yourhappypappypatton @alextheodd@cryingtitan @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 @usothemarshmallow @madly-handsome @i-just-wanna-be-alone @alagaesiasdragonqueen @ashrain5 @otaku-marijane @narniasfinestavengingsociopath @remy-alagaesias-dragon-queen

Platonic Prinixety Tag List:

@emokittenlikesgore @completelyclevername @urtrashhq @thegirlwiththedragonheart@tree4life25 @too-random-for-me @hissesssss @deathbyvenusftw @ill-interested @just-another-transblog @inkyroo@theanxietyofbeinganxious @panicatthefalloutphanficfandom @allthemetalsoftherainbow @depressed-alone @theroyalramen@rileyfirstname @hikariyukino @magicmapleleaf @pieces-of-annedrew @saphirestrike @asalwayss @romanssippycup@virgils-anxiety @redundant-statements-for-400 @skylagamingfea @clueingforblogs @ladynikitablack @fairly-close@vampyrsarah @haikyuupaladin @all-these-trees-stealing-mah-o2@migraine-marathon @samidaboss3 @proudhufflepuff@alextheodd @sandersfanders @pansexual-cat @hanramz-the-fander @anastasialestina @prplzorua @darude-sanderstorm@sanders-sides-shambles @thestoryofme13 @a-blog-just-for-sanders @trashfireiplier @the-optimism-of-the-ostriches@sanders-sides-things @callboxkat @kurna-kovite @221biotchplease @pattonly-absurd @starry-eyed-haiku-dreamer@prinxietypreoccupied @pattykrabbies @shygirl4991 @musicphanpie-b @superintrovertfangirl @silversunshine2012@lockolocka @makemeaplant @today-only-happens-once @koalaaquabear @catsandrandomness @rose-gold-roman@musicsavedmefromdeath @devastate-my-space @anachronistic-cat @heythereprincey @dudlebuggs @sanders-trash-4ever@spoonfullofcrofters @siriuswhiskers @thenerdycube @pinkeasteregg @notallpotatoesarefrenchfries @virgilisaneternalmood@multi-fandom-trash-x9000 @kirsten-the-freak @thepusheenqueen @artistictaurean @funsizedgremlin @pal-im-not-clever@poundland-twoface @logan-exe @thecrimsoncodex @unknownsandersfan @yourmomsafalsehood @robanilla @dementeddracon @ive-given-up-on-it @v-blue-writer @sassy-in-glasses @blazeimagines101 @sanders-fam-ily @trashypansexual @paxtonlovestea @lowkey-logicality @do-rey-me @hottopicvirge @rptheturk @candiukas @nottodaylogic@ffsas-side-account @shadow-walker-1201 @micha-like-you-find-in-rocks @milomeepit @grey-lysander @fricksonsticks@baileystarsketches @ace-of-hufflepuffs @voices-and-stardust @deadinsidebutliving @acechirou @ocotopushugs@datonerougecookeh @lana–22 @kentato-kenart @logically-sided @osnapitzbc @areyousirius-noheisdead @ruuworld@floatyghosty @kiwibite @theworldismysupernova @jughead-is-canonically-aroace @mercythemermaids-blog @pearls-of-patton@memesanddreamsinc @jade-dragon226-fan @mollycassmith @juvenile-changeling @ace-v-p-d @sesame-icecream@dreamerhowelll @nyxwordsmith @fireflighyt @roman-is-a-gay @reba-andthesides @thesilentbluesparrow @angered-turtle@fanatic564 @emovirgil @misc-merde @captain-loki-xavier @evilmuffin @k9cat @louisthewarlock @asterias-confused-writings@spacenerrrd @aph-roma @theworldismysupernova @highwarlockofhogsmeade @notveryglittery @cripplingchips @thats-so-crash @literaturegays @cinderlunarcyborg @anony-phangirl @savingshae @minamishipsit @faithhopefelony @smokeyrutilequartz@kfc-chickenyo @AskolotlQuestions @nymphaedoratonks @allaboutme713 @the-feels-are-coming @karalora @karmicmayhem@faacethefacts @radioactivebread @elvishfrenchassassin @ashbash-the-trashcash @thisisshien @angeliclogan @nightlovechild@virgil-is-verge @hoodie-bros @cinquefoilelove @iris-sanders-athena @ono-its-ryane @pensive-patton @roman-is-a-dramatic-prince @vulnerablevirgil @confinesofpersonalknowledge @thought-u-said-dragon-queen @muontsy2 @katesattic @planetsanders@erlenmeyertrashofsandersides @starlightlogan

#thomas sanders #sander sides #virgil sanders #roman sanders #prinixety #logan sanders #patton sanders #kat writes #I actually dont really care for high school musical #but dangit the songs are really catchy #and they throw me back into my childhood

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bitchfromtheseventhhell · 7 years

Text

@insomniarama got the ask below and she punted it my way:

i’m guessing from context clues your ask is about the show. i’m gonna hit you with book stuff so sorry if that’s to the side of your question (i’m not actually sorry this was super fun to write).

part of what’s fun about this ask is that it’s not just about the old gods, while also being entirely about the old gods. there’s a lot of religious intermixing going on, but there’s that constant undercurrent of the old gods of the north in arya’s heart and experience.

Arya went to her knees. She wasn't sure how she should begin. She clasped her hands together. Help me, you old gods, she prayed silently. Help me get those men out of the dungeon so we can kill Ser Amory, and bring me home to Winterfell. Make me a water dancer and a wolf and not afraid again, ever.

Was that enough? Maybe she should pray aloud if she wanted the old gods to hear. Maybe she should pray longer. Sometimes her father had prayed a long time, she remembered. But the old gods had never helped him. Remembering that made her angry. "You should have saved him," she scolded the tree. "He prayed to you all the time. I don't care if you help me or not. I don't think you could even if you wanted to."

"Gods are not mocked, girl."

The voice startled her. She leapt to her feet and drew her wooden sword. Jaqen H'ghar stood so still in the darkness that he seemed one of the trees. "A man comes to hear a name. One and two and then comes three. A man would have done." (Arya IX, ACOK)

this passage captures so much with so little and it’s honestly incredible. you have:

arya, frightened, praying to the old gods

arya, a little girl, who doesn’t know if she’s praying the right way--complicated further by the fact that this religion is one that is not an organized religion. just you and the gods, and the person who taught her about that religion in her multifaith household was her father.

her father, who the old gods couldn’t save.

her father, who died on the steps of a sept.

this couples interestingly with her mother, who observed the faith of the seven in her multifaith household--who was the reason her household was multifaith--dying and being resurrected by a prayer to the lord of light.

which will likely matter tremendously in arya’s coming arc in twow/ados

and, when she berates the gods

someone

who has devoted himself to one god (the many faced god)

who arya will, in turn, one day begin “learning” from/about

and whose temple has a weirwood face in it

while pretending to devote himself to another god (the lord of light)

the faith that will resurrect her mother in the next book (and also jon snow in twow lbr here)

comes and tells her that “the gods are not mocked.”

like holy damn right there that’s a lot of religious connections all in one short passage.

add into that arya doesn’t refer to her repeated “weese, dunsen, chiswyck, raff the sweetling, the tickler, the hound, ser gregor, ser amory, ser meryn, king joffrey, queen cersei,” as her nightly prayer on multiple occasions.

add in the following level:

She slashed at birch leaves till the splintery point of the broken broomstick was green and sticky. "Ser Gregor," she breathed. "Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling." She spun and leapt and balanced on the balls of her feet, darting this way and that, knocking pinecones flying. "The Tickler," she called out one time, "the Hound," the next. "Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei." The bole of an oak loomed before her, and she lunged to drive her point through it, grunting "Joffrey, Joffrey, Joffrey." Her arms and legs were dappled by sunlight and the shadows of leaves. A sheen of sweat covered her skin by the time she paused. The heel of her right foot was bloody where she'd skinned it, so she stood one-legged before the heart tree and raised her sword in salute. "Valar morghulis," she told the old gods of the north. She liked how the words sounded when she said them. (Arya X, ACOK)

this nightly prayer--and even that valar morghulis--is a dedication to the old gods. arya’s nightly list, after all, is a call for justice, and for what’s right, so her dedicating it to the gods of her father makes sense. but i think that’s something that frequently gets lost in arya’s list: that it’s not just the wrongs she’s seen, it’s an act of dedication to fixing the wrongs of the world. it is, in its own way, a holy act--not because killing is holy--but because arya has dedicated that prayer to the old gods of the north by connecting them to that “valar morghulis.”

i think that’s part of the issue: as i mentioned, the faith of the old gods of the north is not one that’s organized in the sense that it doesn’t have prayer books and religious leaders. it’s just got practice and those practices, it’s implied from bran’s visions in adwd which definitely involved human sacrifice, have changed and likely will continue to change over time. it is, as we learn in adwd, a religion that’s based on greensight and providing greenseers with knowledge, which is why there’s an emphasis on praying before the heart tree: you’re providing your thoughts and information to the “gods” that they might take that information and, potentially, guide the world to resolve (or exacerbate) the issue. however, because of what we know, greenseers aren’t gods, they’re men, which means that, fundamentally, the religion--as all religions are to an extent--is as much about an individual’s beliefs and practices as it is about what the religion was established to do in the first place and that’s where things get interesting for arya.

it’s clear that the old gods mean a lot to arya, especially in her early books. she thinks of them far more than she thinks of the seven, despite having been raised by a septa (though given her relationship with septa mordane, this doesn’t surprise me at all) and that she was raised by a mother who observed the seven and actively felt uncomfortable in the godswood of winterfell. she certainly believes in them enough to hold them accountable for their failures, specifically their failure to save her father from joffrey and ser ilyn.

and, given what happens to her father and at the red wedding, and--as far as she knows--to bran and rickon at theon’s hands, it shakes her faith:

The old gods are dead, she told herself, with Mother and Father and Robb and Bran and Rickon, all dead. A long time ago, she remembered her father saying that when the cold winds blow the lone wolf dies and the pack survives. He had it all backwards. Arya, the lone wolf, still lived, but the wolves of the pack had been taken and slain and skinned. (Arya I, AFFC)

but here’s the thing--arya doesn’t let things go. not ever. she holds onto pain from her first chapter in the whole series, and she holds onto memories of injustices and refuses to allow others to try and sway her memory. so yeah, she can tell herself that she thinks that the old gods are dead, she can even hold them accountable for their failures to protect her family and those whom she loves. she can even believe, as the passage above implies, that they died along with the rest of her family, but in the very next chapter, you have:

Polliver had stolen the sword from her when the Mountain's men took her captive, but when she and the Hound walked into the inn at the crossroads, there it was. The gods wanted me to have it. Not the Seven, nor Him of Many Faces, but her father's gods, the old gods of the north. The Many-Faced God can have the rest, she thought, but he can't have this. (Arya II, AFFC)

like ok--she may think the old gods might be dead, but that entire passage is about her soldiering on, her feeling extreme pain at being the “lone wolf” and being “packless.” and the thing about the first passage is that it’s fundamentally false: the old gods aren’t dead (such as they were ever alive), and nor too are bran, or rickon, or sansa, or jon. she is not the lone wolf: she’s just off on her own and is going to be reunited with her pack. her isolation shakes her faith, sure, but so much of what’s happened to her generally has shaken her tremendously--the red wedding is an easy example of that. but i read the first passage as disillusionment with what she thought the old gods should be doing, not with what the old gods might still do for her; it’s also disillusionment with what the old gods might have done for those she loves, which she sees as what they’ve done for her--but i don’t think that that’s all of what they have done for her. after all, she doesn’t throw away needle. needle is jon snow’s smile--something the old gods wanted her to have.

and, on top of that, in twow, we have this:

Except in dreams. She took a breath to quiet the howling in her heart, trying to remember more of what she’d dreamt, but most of it had gone already. There had been blood in it, though, and a full moon overhead, and a tree that watched her as she ran. (mercy, twow)

those wolf dreams she has starting in asos, the dreams where she’s warging into nymeria from afar--if you have a fairly passive religion that’s based on whether or not greenseers are watching you and taking the knowledge you give them and implementing it--to have a tree be watching her wolf is a major religious deal in her faith. it’s not only about whether or not she has faith in the gods--it’s about whether the gods have chosen her--and they have. that much is clear from acok, if not earlier:

"But there is no pack," she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. "I'm not even me now, I'm Nan."

"You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you."

"The wolf blood." Arya remembered now. "I'll be as strong as Robb. I said I would." She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth. (Arya X, ACOK)

the old gods are literally whispering to her in this scene, telling her to be strong, reminding her she has the wolf blood. it’s important: they’re speaking to her here. and she hears them. and she acts.

so all this is to say that religion in arya’s story is complicated, but that there is this constant pulsing undercurrent of this old faith in the north--both in how she acts, how she thinks, how things matter to her, and in what they expect of her in the future and what they’re keeping an eye on her for.

#arya stark #insomniarama #meta #arya meta #this got away from me a bit but are you surprised by that really?#ok i really should do my job now lmao

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notthemathplease-blog · 7 years

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attempting to write a book please give me feedback :)

Okay so I’m a HUGE fan of the Selection Series, and my friend likes the Hunger Games. Well I always have wanted to write a book and so I decided that we should do a colab. of the two books. And here’s the first chapter:

For Which I Am Chosen

I sit in my room hoping. Hoping with all the hope in the world that one specific letter wouldn't come in the mail. Any other letter would be fine; but not this one. Today was the day the Royals would send out those letters. "Reagan!" My mother had called from the front of our little house. "Sweety, we got the mail from the The Royals!" My mother had once again reminded me. I had hoped all month that we wouldn't receive the letter, and yet here I am, having all my hope thrown in my face. I shoved my thoughts to the side, and dragged my body to the front door.

Our house wasn't all that big considering the fact that we were 3s. All the 3s were the people in our country that had a profession that did not include cleaning or serving. There are 4 different castes, the Royals, the Elite, a 3, and lastly a 4. The Royals were..well..royal. The Elite included celebrities and rich people. Their occupation varied depending on how much they make from doing anything. Then there is us; the 3s. Since most of the population were 3s, there was no need to pay a 3 very much money. 3s are the "crafty people", in other words, we just make and create things. 4s are the poorest, although sometimes 4s help the Royals in the castle, and earn more than the average 4. I'm a musician and so are my parents. My two sisters are artists. They both painted, crocheted, and liked to make clothes.

As I reached my mother, she gave me an excited smile. ''Sweetie, you should be happy!'' Since I had turned 18, she had dreamed of this letter. It was Illea's 20th time holding this event. It was considered the most exciting event of the country. Yeah if you weren't chosen that is. They put you on a game board that the Royals refer to as the arena. 50 girls are chosen to be in the arena. Many are chosen because they either die or die. The object of the game is to survive and try not to be killed. You get eliminated if you don't follow the rules, get killed, or if the Prince decides he doesn't like you. The Royals get to control the arena. The 8 girls left will then be taken from the arena and transported to the castle. From there, we learn how to be a royal. The only prize you receive out of this is, a stuck-up and bratty prince. The most girls that's ever been picked by the future king are 3 or 4 girls. And now, one of the fifty girls is going to be me. Once you're chosen, there is no way out. ''Mom, I would be happy if I wasn't forced into a death trap.'' I said trying to include all my sarcasm skills. ''But it would give you the chance to make our whole family Royals!'' My mother said like it was a piece of cake. If only it was. Of course she would be happy and excited. It wasn't that she was happy for me, she knew that if you became Illea's princess, your whole family would be able to move up castes. She was the only caste climber in our family. She even told us that she wouldn't let us marry someone lower than our caste. Well of course. If we married a 4 we would be poorest, but if we married an Elite, we would be marrying a celebrity. So that left us with our own caste. Our father was the only one who would love us no matter who we married. Both of my sisters were a mommy's girl. And I was a daddy's girl.

My mother handed me the letter. ''I know that it may seem like it sometimes, but I want you to at least try when you get to the arena. You're already chosen, so you might as well make the best of it. And if you fail, you can always come home and brag about it at the end. Even if it does means bragging about a broken leg.'' I could see her clearly trying to make fun of this horrid situation. That was one of the few characteristics I love about her, she could always see the good in things. One of the few things my sisters inherited from our mother

I trudged back to my room and slammed the door halfheartedly. I flopped down on the bed and sighed. It wasn't fair. I wasn't going to like that stupid "prince" anyway. I realized I was still holding the letter and enraged, I threw the letter across the room, where it slowly drifted down.

I wake to the sound of excited yelling of "SHE'S GOING TO BE THE PRINCESS!" and other words of happiness. I hadn't realized that I fell asleep. Before I had the time to process anything else, my sisters burst through the door, making me jolt backwards in shock. "You got chosen!" Kaila gushed, batting her eyelashes. "You're going to be killed!" Ashley drew in an exaggerated breath. Ashley was older than me by 2 years, and had wanted to be chosen when she was my age, but thankfully she wasn't. Kaila being the youngest one, gave Ashley a confused look wondering what she had meant. Kaila hadn't realized that winning would mean having to kill everyone else. She wasn't allowed to watch the "Games". Ashley calmly started to explain, but was cut off by a loud "Dinner's ready!"

As we started to eat dinner, my father arrived home from work. "So," He started as he started hanging his hat and jacket. "I heard the news...you're chosen." If I heard "chosen" AGAIN, I was going to die! ''Isn't it great?'' My mother cooed. So was this how she was going to play? She was going to get everyone on her side so she could convince me to think of this as an opportunity to be the next queen. At least the families of the chosen would get paid as like a 'thank you' from the Royals. But what were they appreciate of? Our life, so they could control the arena as we could die? ''Dad? What do you think of me entering the death trap?'' I asked even though I could already guess the answer. My father wouldn't say anything negative just because mother sat at the table. ''Well...it does give the family a good pay. And perhaps you'll fall in love with the prince. I was performing for an Elite family and over heard that they were giving the the choosing an update. This time you guys would first spend 2 months at the castle to get to know Prince Alex. Then you guys would head to the arena to fight. After 1 month at the arena, the remaining will be sent back to the castle. And from there, the final of the choosing will begin.'' They had shortened the time at the arena from 3 months to 1. At least that was a start. Still, the thought of staying anywhere from home for more than a couple of days, made me sick.

The beginning starts weird. I don’t like how the word “hope” is used a lot. The chapter might be cringy and horrible, but all criticism and feedback will be greatly appreciated. :)

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randobrandoblog-blog · 7 years

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why we’re here

Every once in an extended while, my time carousel sees me back at one of three chief creative conceits, each of which I have about a jack/master aptitude for – I audition for a show I feel inclined to perform in, bag it on more occasions than not (due more, I’m sure, to savvy selectivity than ineffable brilliance), and get to act my heart out for two or so months. When this particular hunger strikes, I’m a little more discerning than a relative local and total national nonentity is probably entitled to be. I never audition for musicals, and I avoid the sort of stylized comedy whose illumination depends on that tense and tactile physical control for which we treasure so many different performers. This isn’t because I dislike either type; like any sane lover of art, I adore both if well-executed, and typically, if they’re being put on at all beyond high school, the cast and crew come fairly equipped for such stuff. As a sometime self-styled critic, I frequently marvel at strokes of these varieties. As a sometime self-styled actor, however, both are a bit beyond my reach and my preference. As it happens, I share these aversions with the screen performer I hope hardest to emulate whenever I try my hand at his trade. And as for the kinds of parts I do seek, he’s at the forefront of my mind too. My personal gold standard of acting, which I’ve found is seen as somewhat eccentric in regional context, is what I imagine to be most people’s gold standard in a broader context, and when they choose to think about acting at all: an evocation of reality, in all its mess and livewire unpredictability; a cocktail of arrhythmic emotional waves, bursting with responses apt enough to feel like the actor’s own. When it comes to theatre and film (which includes TV today), I regard no achievement greater than a performance in which actor and role become virtually indiscernible. Even if you have no inkling what the actor is like offstage, my ideal form of acting is the sort where you can’t imagine the human in front of you behaving any differently. Absolute, seamless naturalism, pass before you though jarring and unusual emotional extremes may. This impermeable commitment is necessary in your farces and your operas as well. But hyper human vérité is a flavor of performance I prefer the way I do coconut. I believe, too, that even as one mustn’t suggest a comparative denigration of those decidedly non-vérité forms, there is something of a golden mean quality to what I’m detailing. And when Marlon Brando first brought this sort of acting to the screen, history knows the liberation from all of that recycled cinematic convention was seismic. He wasn’t fluke enough to be the genuine first, of course – many people found theretofore-unseen magic ducking around expectations before our eyes, piercing those heavy (or corny) handed-down hands borne from decades of feeling into a fledgling and formerly voiceless medium. Even more than in small doses sometimes; Brando singled out Eleonora Duse and James Cagney, and if you’re a cinephile you’ve got your own few in mind. But Brando broke that barrier as forcefully and undeniably as Chuck Yeager, or Chuck Berry a few art forms over. Not only did he make such acting fashionable, he made it his calling, one which he honored almost slavishly (though he could be thrillingly novel circumventing it). To the historical chauvinism by which he wins this championship title, you can add American chauvinism too; well before obvious signposts like De Sica, overseas filmmakers and their actors proved to possess a firmer finger on these buttons. And of course, being the first famous realist actor on celluloid is speedily dwarfed by thoughts of centuries of stage performers – not to mention those teachers to whom Brando owed his inspiration, from the incomparable Stella Adler on up the line through Stanislavski. (As he himself would hasten to qualify, I refer to more than the often superficially tricksy “method” stuff.) But even today, when he’s been bested performance for performance by so many people, Brando’s strides, his conviction, avidity, fervor and jazz-like instincts, reverberate meaningfully enough to earn perennial gratitude. Even given the stale trappings of his early, mythmaking work, which weakens it a little now, one shudders to imagine the tradition evolving without his effort, ascendency, and influence. Of course, realism wasn’t the only thing on his résumé. As much as a desire to get it right, his inclination to the style was fueled by a desire to resist any encumberment he encountered – not even the result of oppressive genesis (though having two kinds of alcoholic parent, one loving but distant and one present but angry, can’t be a cakewalk) but an innate waggishness from which he drew his joy and energy. The suburbs in which Brando came of age weren’t unpleasant, but they were complacent and artificial, much like the tenor of the times. A youngster bursting with his immeasurable levels of curiosity and passion had only disruption in his fingertips, and having discovered he had no taste for destruction or foolishness, art was perhaps his only available salvation. Acting is the creative medium you throw yourself most literally into, and for an undisciplined, yet physically strong and clearly inspired, individual such as Brando it was a tailor fit, even as he consistently insisted he only did it out of base financial necessity and an absence of any other obvious natural talents. So we can easily conceive of how a lust for truth and an urge to resist merged to instigate his 1950s rise as a paragon of believable acting. But, though he lacked Meryl Streep or Daniel Day-Lewis’s finesse for detail when he went for pastures outside those he could summon within the skin he inhabited, Brando loved character work, and when we watch him attempt various accents or hide inside makeup choices, we come with him, witness the other half of his magnetism – he’s fun when he tosses any recognizable self aside, because it allows his madcap streak, his why-not puckishness, to flower untrammeled. Many critics bemoaned how recklessly Brando seemed to be skirting playing the clown, and he wasn’t afraid to be caught not trying. But fopping around in an obvious miss like the Mutiny of the Bounty remake was, however aesthetically wanting, a more valid punk gesture than anything he conveyed (or simulated) in The Wild One. Certainly, he flopped, sometimes hugely. But unlike at least one bazillionaire progeny, he couldn’t bore you if he tried. Despite his claims to eventual mellowness, which he might well have privately enjoyed in his later days, Brando’s notorious pugnacity, or its legend anyway, grew the way his body did. Thirteen years after his death, and considerably longer after his last great work (well – we’ll get to that argument), it’s not hard to recall, even as Johnny Depp faintly, ineptly retraces it, just how badly Brando encrusted himself in his own insistent eccentricity, for so long up to his passing. Forget Pauline Kael’s very early (1966) eulogy to his own control over his volcanic gifts and image. After the twin peaks of The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris (Apocalypse Now is a whole other matter), what was formerly a cute game he concocted to cope with unprecedented fame and admiration rapidly mutated into an onanistic circus of disagreeable quirk. Even in his self-identified “Fuck You Years”, Brando maintained a commitment to a handful of his ideals. After finally unburdening himself of charm, all that remained was that compulsive resistance to any authority. But grotesque as Brando might seem revisiting what he became (and I mean as a human being, even as those final vestiges of sex appeal disappeared under poor health), only the pugnacity and some of the pretensions – odd to imagine how a lack thereof was his first gilded calling card – truly scuff the image. True, he had strange ways of treating and referring to women and Jews. But these two groups would seem to be the only two subject to lapses in his otherwise magnanimous attunement to demographic disadvantages. And he loved and admired both, from his ingrained distance; the only on-record reference to physical abuse against women in his career (besides “shoving” stalkers and unwanted pursuers) is his defending his mother from his father after Marlon Brando Sr. had vented his odious rage. Brando’s Pop seems to have been the only living thing he hated*. From small animals to every race or culture ever to find itself America’s victim, Brando was a tireless and unafraid defender of the sort of underdog he understood he never genuinely was. When a former miracle among mankind tumbles backward into their own freakshow, it tends, especially in this era, to be all we focus on once the last breath leaves the lips – think of his genius pal Michael Jackson, who was a disfigured paranoiac for much longer than he was a smooth, soulful sweetheart, and their mutual friend Elizabeth Taylor, almost unrecognizably boozy and bedraggled for practically as long as she was ravishing and respected. In fact, all three of these troubled icons share something special – an inspiring doggedness in the face of torrents of unmerited mockery, years after the proof of their respective wonders had waned and given way to a thirst for freedom, from an exhausting, inescapable legendary status. Well-compensated as they were, none of these people were allowed normal lives, and all exhibited the brand of toll that only someone of such enormous cultural import can comprehend. In this reflexively polemical age, they deserve a more dignified collective recollection. This blog couldn’t fuel Brando’s third alone – an even less important, less public gesture than the times I’ve stepped on a stage and tried to nail it like he did, and I don’t mean in a James Dean way (those are different strands of I-should-be-so-lucky). When I think of Brando, or when I strive to conjure similar intentions and outcomes, I think of how synoptically this self-proclaimed career liar cared about truth – as much as Hemingway, with a far less coarse course of pursuit. This was a man who steadfastly refused to vitiate his characters with bad dialogue, brainless effects, or lapses in logic. One whose care for the audience, which wasn’t always obvious, entailed a belief that they’d be able to see through any bullshit in any performance, any trace of trying, any betrayal of consistency and slip from integrity. “The actor is the boss”, Adler once declaimed with Olivier bombast, and as a person who knew how corrupt such unbridled power could become, Brando tended to that role with a remarkable, reverential grace. Stuffed as this intro entry is with overtures to encapsulation, all of Brando’s accomplishments, contradictions and unclassifiable quirks can only be adequately explored by way of the plan at hand: to experience and analyze the canon – forty wildly diverse onscreen performances over the span of a half a century – and to invite you to raise the discussion to whatever heights I can’t. Per my catchy (eh?) title, we are refusing to take the straight path through this journey. I figure that’s as apposite a tribute to the old master as anything. *not counting paparazzi

#marlon brando #elizabeth taylor #michael jackson #acting

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deepdisireslonging · 5 years

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Family Found Part 37: Planning the Rumble and Beyond

That last matches are set for Sunday. Several things get out of hand. Is the Reader losing control of Monday Night Raw? Is anyone noticing?

Warnings/Promises: wrestling violence

Word Count: 3266

Note: Hell yeah, Nikki Cross, Lacey Evans, EC3, and Heavy Machinery joined Raw last week! Going forward, they will be included in storylines. Woohoo! (Gotta figure out where to put them… but I will find a spot…) And for reference: Graeters is a Cincinnati-specific ice cream brand. Any and all feedback is super appreciated. It can be with a reblog, or an ask on anon. Please let me know how you are liking this series. Enjoy!

Part 1: Welcome to the Team

Part 36: Choices

Monday Night Raw – January 21, 2018

The show hadn’t even started yet, and you knew it was going to be a long night. You ran in front of the referees and flock of wrestlers, following the sounds of a backstage brawl. You threw your hands in the air once you found it. Seth Rollins was helping Dolph Ziggler throw Drew McIntyre into a stack of crates. The second the Scotsman was inactive, they turned on each other, sending steel rods clanging and ladders crashing to the ground. You let the refs and others break them apart. The new arrival, EC3, dodged a punch and was able to pin Seth’s arms behind his back long enough for you to grab control. “Seriously, guys? If you wanted to fight, you know where to find me-“

“There wasn’t time,” Seth cut in. “Drew attacked me, then Dolph hit him-“

“And Drew tossed me into the wall,” Dolph added. They began to talk over one another, oblivious to the tall man getting back to his feet behind them. You pushed them apart and kept Drew from getting engaged.

“Oy! Stay right there.” You quickly retracted your hand from his stomach. “None of this is acceptable. From any of you,” you said, looking pointedly at Seth. “But, we still need to work this out. Seth, I can already tell you upfront that you’re not going to like this. But you will be defending your Intercontinental Championship at the Royal Rumble.”

Seth shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I like that? I’m a fighting champ.”

“It’s going to be against both McIntyre and Ziggler.” You cringed as Seth’s face fell. Then you were surprised to see the other to men not as happy as you thought they would be. “Why are you two so glum? I figured-“

Drew growled, “how come Dolph gets to be in the match? He lost fair last week. At least when I lost it was because of interference. From him. The Rumble match would have been my rematch.”

With a nod of his head, Seth agreed. Dolph pushed at Drew’s shoulder and went to add his piece but you beat him to it. “It’s because of interference that I’m putting all three of you in the match. No use getting the title match disqualified because someone gets involved where they shouldn’t.” You sighed. “If you have any questions… you know where my office is. Don’t let me get another call about you three.” Gritting your teeth, you walked away not really caring of their glaring at each other.

***

Ember Moon paced back and forth in the ring with the title on her shoulder. “All this week, really all month, I’ve been thinking about the Royal Rumble. What I would do depending on who won the tournament if any of them were more a threat than the others. And do you know what I realized?” She stopped and looked at the crowd. “I don’t care.” Ember smiled. “I don’t care which woman is coming down that ramp on Sunday. As a matter of fact, it could be any of the guys too and I wouldn’t care. And you know why? Because I am the Raw Women’s Champion. I clawed and bled to earn this title.” She raised it above her head. “And no one is going to take it from me.”

She had to stop as Rhonda Rousey’s music interrupted her. “That’s all very nice, Ember. But it’s not just anybody who's going to be in that ring with you on Sunday. It’s going to be me.”

“And what of it?” Ember scoffed. “I don’t care who you are or what you burned to get here, I am going to keep you from holding this championship again.”

Rhonda’s jaw clenched. “Is that so?”

Now Ember knew she had her. “Yes. Yes, it is. But… we don’t have to wait until Sunday.”

“You know, I have to agree.”

A referee was there a minute later to officiate the match. Jojo stayed in her seat, listening to your orders over the headset. Renee passed the information along once it reached the announce table. “Y/N still wants the title to be defended at the Royal Rumble.”

“More practice for the women, I guess,” Corey quipped.

The women fought tooth and nail. The longer the match went on, the longer it took them both to get back to their feet. Ember climbed for a Total Eclipse, but she was ripped from the turnbuckles. Rhonda just about had Ember in an armbar when the referee was pulled out of the ring. Ruby Riott slid in, breaking the two women apart. She attacked Rhonda first, tackling her to one side. By the time she moved onto Ember, the referee had recovered and called for the disqualification in favor of Ember. Ruby rolled out of the ring with a cackle, barely making it to the floor before Rhonda made it to the ropes. She watched as Rhonda helped Ember to her feet.

“Good to see who you consider a threat around here, Ember,” she called back. “But Rhonda shouldn’t hold all your focus. That’s how you lose sight of a worthy opponent… me.” She walked backward up the ramp with a sneer. At the top, she laughed one more time at Ember and Rhonda angrily holding onto the top rope, then disappeared backstage.

***

Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan were waiting for her. They shared a hug and a flurry of giggles as you walked up. “Too bad it wasn’t a title match, Y/N,” Ruby said, “or I could have filled in for the loser on Sunday.”

“For the person you disqualified, you mean?” Huffing your emotions back into control, you crossed your arms. “And that’s assuming I wouldn’t just set them a rematch on Sunday. But that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about. You’ve got a singles match against Alicia Fox next, but you haven’t said who is going to be fighting.”

Liv snickered. “That’s assuming we were going to tell you at all.”

“It’s not Sunday yet. I could suspend you and let Tamina and Nia win by default. But I would rather not do that. Who is fighting tonight?”

The Squad bristled. They side-eyed each other, coming to an unspoken agreement. Sarah spoke up. “I am.” She shuffled on her feet. “Tamina got one over on me last week. I’m not going to let that happen tonight.”

You nodded. “Thank you. Have fun.” You walked away with your head held high. And you didn’t look back, even when you started to hear screaming. Though it did make you pause. But just for a second.

What you didn’t see was Sasha Banks and Bayley attacking the Riott Squad. Sarah was beat up the most. When Sasha and Bayley made their retreat, she wasn’t able to make it to her feet. Her teammates rushed to her side, followed by a referee. He shook his head. Ruby and Liv pointed between each other.

“Stay with her,” Liv said as their music started to play. Then she rushed off to replace Sarah in the match. Lacey Evans rounded the corner, stopping to one side of Ruby. She snorted, then made a show of stepping wide over Sarah’s outstretched legs.

When Alicia entered the arena, she was flanked by both Alexa Bliss and Mickie James. Though they weren’t in the match, they did their part. And they did it well. If Alicia wasn’t holding Liv’s attention, Alexa or Mickie was. Alicia stuck to staying in the ring, distracting the referee when Liv rolled out and was caught in a blind attack. Cole mentioned how similar the plan was to how the Riott Squad operated. And like with their planning, the strength of numbers was too much for Liv alone. Though, to her credit, Alicia moved with a bit of a limp, even as the ref raised her hand in victory.

Liv didn’t stick around. She rushed backstage to check on Ruby and Sarah.

***

In catering, the various tag teams were abuzz for the match later that night. For the number one contender spot, Chad Gable and Bobby Roode were going up against the Ascension. Whoever won that match, would face AOP at the Royal Rumble. But first, they would have to survive tonight’s lumberjack match.

Tyler Breeze walked into the fray with a smile. The glow disappeared as most everyone turned their backs on him. Shrugging, he walked around to include himself in a circle, but they split up and walked away. He tapped Bo Dallas’s shoulder. “Hey, why is everyone’s acting weird? It’s not like Dango and I are handing out fashion tickets.”

Apologetic, Bo explained. “That’s kind of the problem. Fandango has been out for months. As far as tag team events go… you can’t really participate.” He brightened up with an idea. “But if you could find a partner, then yeah, I’m sure you could join the match tonight. But until then… sorry, Breeze.” Bo turned away, leaving Breeze stunned. Stunned, but wheels turning. He left the room like a man on a mission.

***

“Come on, Y/N, tell me.”

“Nope.”

Dean wiggled his shoulders trying to think. “Hey, I’ll promise you Graeters. Is mint chocolate chip still your favorite?”

You had to smile. “Yeah, it is. But I’m not going to tell you your Rumble entry number.” You stopped him before he could ask again. “Nope. Now, do you mind? I do actually have work to do.” Dean punched lightly at your shoulder but left your office. Your face fell as another knock came to your door. “Come in.”

Elias entered. “You wanted to see me?”

With a nod, you wrote down something on a piece of paper. “Yes. I have a proposition for you, a kind of reward for helping out. This is your scheduled entry to the Royal Rumble.” Elias glanced at it, his eyebrows raising in slight approval. “But win your match… and you can enter at this number.”

He whistled.

“Just… It won’t be easy. Your opponent is Baron Corbin.” You took his relaxed strumming to mean that he wasn’t worried.

***

Nearly thirty minutes later, Elias had the better spot. He never left the ring, even though Baron had. Briefly. And he had sling-shot himself back in for a speed attack. But the new golden number was at the front of Elias’s mind and he did everything he needed to get that spot. Everything but use his guitar for anything other than making music. Elias sat back on his haunches and whistled again.

“What are you so chipper about?” Baron groaned as he sat up against the turnbuckles.

“No reason. But… my future just got a little bit brighter.” With a smile, Elias proudly let his hand be raised in victory. He shot one last triumphant grin at Baron before leaving the ring. Baron watched him leave, then focused his attention on Gorilla.

***

Curt Hawkins twirled his baton. “Are you interested?” He nodded at Dean, who tapped his collarbone deep in thought.

“Let me get this… correct. We have a match tonight. If I beat you, I get your later spot at the Rumble if it is later. But if you beat me, you get my later spot. If it is.”

“That’s it. No strings. No stipulations. Just two of the best in the business.”

Dean tilted his head back. Considering. “What do you get out of this? What do you really have to gain?”

Hawkins chuckled and shook his baton at Dean’s face. “You’ve been hanging out with your cousin. Good question. Let’s just say I really liked the feel of the Universal Championship on my shoulder. What do you say?”

With a grin that said he was sure in his choice, he shook Hawkins’s hand. “Deal. See ya in the ring.”

Then he could hear cackling. They both turned and saw Nikki Cross with her knees hooked over a trellis, upside-down and swinging back and forth. She laughed and clapped her hands. “You gonna play? Nikki likes to play. Mhmm. Play. Play. Play. Play!”

Hawkins kept his eyes on her and leaned towards Dean. “She looks crazier than you ever got.” He flinched with an ‘ow’ as Dean smacked the back of his head.

“We’re not crazy. Just living and wrestling at a higher frequency than you.”

***

The match didn’t go like Hawkins had hoped. Even his distraction by tossing his baton into Dean’s face, and then his vest, didn’t give him enough of an upper hand. Apparently, his earlier comment about Dean being crazy had ignited something in Dean. Like he wanted to live up to the description. So he did while staying within the legal constraints of the match, despite eyeing Hawkins’s baton to use as his own. Then, he flipped. Crazy men don’t break down their opponents with submission moves, right? He dashed Curt Hawkins’s dreams with a Dirty Deeds.

***

“Why is Y/N already making matches for the Elimination Chamber? It’s bad management,” Corey said as Zack Ryder entered the arena.

Renee scrunched up her nose. “Why is it bad management? After the Rumble, there’s only three Mondays until the Elimination Chamber. I think it’s great planning. We’re on the road to WrestleMania and she’s properly thinking ahead. And it’s only the second spot in the Universal Championship chamber match. It’s not like all the spots have been filled.”

As Braun Strowman entered the arena, and then the ring, Corey was still grumbling. “How can anyone plan if they’re thinking about two pay-per-views at a time?”

Michael Cole tried to redirect the conversation to the match, but Renee had one more comment. “Well, that just shows how brilliant Y/N is. And how small-minded you are, Corey.”

“And they’re off,” Cole said, cutting through Corey’s rebuttal. “How do you think Zack Ryder is going to do against Braun tonight?”

He was doing well. Mostly his strategy seemed to be dodging any kind of hits at all. A game of keep-away with his own body on the line. In the meantime, Ryder kept Braun going in circles, quickly moving in for attacks once the larger man was dizzy. Then Braun caught him. And threw Ryder through the ropes before stepping through them himself. Each time Ryder tried to escape back into the ring, Braun would pull him back out. And when the 10-count would get close, Braun would roll in and back out to break it.

Ryder began his dodge and weave again. Where Braun tried to run him over, he soon found Ryder wasn’t there and ran his own shoulders into the ring posts. When Braun caught him again, he tried to throw Ryder into the stairs, only to have it reversed. Braun was getting agitated. He finally met Ryder back in the ring, where they nearly demolished one another. The referee went to check on Braun after he had missed Ryder again, crashing into the ring post.

That was when Dr. M struck. He rolled into the ring, then Vaccinated the oblivious Ryder and spun him to the canvas. By the time Braun was back on his feet, Dr. M wasn’t visible by anyone in the ring. He only emerged from the bell booth after Braun pinned Ryder.

***

Ryder rolled out of the ring and was helped up the ramp by the referee. Braun stayed where he was, standing still as a statue as Dr. M joined him in the ring.

“Do you see it?” Dr. M asked the audience. “Do you see how easy it is to weed out the afflicted? Pride, a deadly sin, is also a disease. It builds with each accomplishment, no matter how short it lasts. And then when it is conquered, it spreads to the conqueror. There are times when small doses of pride are required. They give strength and direction, like with the Authors of Pain. Their pride helped them into the championship light. Then I gave them the last dose they needed to win the Raw tag team titles.”

Braun’s stoic face flickered. His eyes darted to the back of Dr. M’s head as he wondered what credit he was going to get. He received none as his teammate continued.

“But they are not yet finished. When the time is right, they will save the division. Healing it, showing the teams who have the real power.” He laughed. “And I cannot wait for the cleansing bonfires.” In a flicker of lights, they were gone.

The lighthearted music of Chad Gable and Bobby Roode replaced them. Next came the long line of tag teams to circle the ring. Tyler Breeze was at the end of the line. The Revival stopped him. With a smile, he took a step back and waited. Dana Brooke’s music hit, and she entered the arena. She stopped at Breeze’s side, then they shouldered past the Revival to join the others at ringside. Tucker Knight and Otis Dozovic of Heavy Machinery helped start a “Lucha” chant with the Lucha House Party. They were interrupted by the entrance of the Ascension.

They fought. When one team member was thrown out, they were roughed up a bit then thrown back in. Even Dana did her part. She received hearty pats on the back and welcoming handshakes. It was an even spread. For once, no side battles on the floor took away from what was happening in the ring. The whole tag roster reacted with cheers and jumping as Roode pinned Viktor.

Bodies of teammates started dropping outside of the ring. There was snap pandemonium, then Akam and Rezar slid into the ring, gunning for the victorious wrestlers. Drake tried to follow, but he was pulled back into the fray on the floor. In the ring, AOP made quick work of Gable and Roode, and of Viktor and Konnor. Except Konner didn’t go down as easily. He stumbled back to his feet just as Drake was finally able to escape into the ring. He turned right into an oncoming punch. Akam and Rezar shifted their attention to getting him out of harm's way but were attacked by teams as they flooded the canvas.

Drake punched back at someone grabbing him by the back of his vest. It turned out to be Rezar, who dragged him through the ropes. Drake continued to shout at the teams straining against the ropes. He looked back, expecting to see his teammates glaring at them. He was alone. And AOP was halfway up the ramp. He rushed to catch up with them while Gable and Roode were congratulated in the ring.

***

You stared at the number on your screen for a long minute before answering it. “Yes, Mr. Heyman?” You listened as he talked, rolling your eyes as he began to drone on. “I’m going to stop you there. No. Your client made it very clear that he wanted no part of this company. He can stay gone.” With a hiss, you stopped. He had started talking again. “Go ahead and talk to Hunter and the McMahons. Go for it. See if it makes a difference.”

With that, you hung up on him. Then tossed your phone across the room. This wasn’t good. You bit at your lip, trying to come up with a solution. You tilted your head. “That’s an idea,” you said to yourself. “No. It would be too easy. Right? Hmm. Maybe not.” You nodded. It was half a plan anyway. It would require just a tiny change to another plan, but it was one that might just help everyone.

Part 38: Squirrels in a Row (Royal Rumble)

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