#is this just me thirsting after diego hours. yes.

[bruciemilf]

"Squad name?"

"We just prefer 'war criminals' ."

#is this just me thirsting after diego hours. yes. #tommy riley #cod #call of duty ocs #aesthetic #moodboard #oc tag #cod x ocs #dont know how to tag this the hyperfixation is hypering

[singtotheskiies]

to the rescue // teen! ben hargreeves x reader

summary: when it’s your turn to be parenting experiment of the week, ben decides to take matters into his own hands—or, rather, tentacles.

request (by a lovely lovely anon💕): Hi I adore your writing❤️. Can you do a Ben Hargreeves x reader where the reader is restrained in a cell by Reginald and Ben comes and saves the day. Thx

words: 1893

warnings: emotional manipulation (it’s prick of the year reginald hargreeves, what do we expect), imprisonment

a/n: i feel like this one is right shit bc i wasn’t in a really good groove while writing it but ANYWAY please enjoy our bb boy:))))) (also!! empath!reader)

✖️✖️✖️

Dad stands in your doorway, intimidating as always, light glinting off his ever-present monocle. “Number Eight,” he says—crisp, harsh, and clear. “Come with me. Today we have a different form of training for you.”

“Where are we going?” you ask him. He’s not leading you towards the usual training room, and you’re without a partner—something you’ve never trained without due to your empathic abilities.

“Never you mind,” he says bluntly. You sigh, looking down at your feet. Trying to get information out of Dad is unnecessarily difficult sometimes—and you can’t read him as easily as you can your siblings. He’s scarily good at hiding his emotions.

He leads you down a few corridors before pausing and taking a blindfold out of his coat pocket. “Turn around.”

“Why? Where are we going?” You’re a bit worried now. “Turn around, Number Eight,” he repeats, harsher this time. “I do not have time for your questions.” You’ve got no choice, so you do as he says. The blindfold is tight—a bit too much so, but you know it’s pointless to bring it up. The two of you walk in silence for several minutes—you don’t think you’ve left the house, but your steps haven’t followed a route you’re familiar with. The Academy is big, though—maybe you’ve misjudged and you’re really just being led in circles to confuse you. Dad’s voice cuts through your thoughts, telling you to watch your step. You carefully move into some sort of space, confused as to why you’ve stopped. His hands come up to the nape of your neck, untying the blindfold from around your eyes. The fabric drops away to reveal a dark, metallic room with no furnishings. You’ve never seen it before or heard Dad talk about it—it almost looks like some sort of prison, and anxiety begins to push up into your chest. “Uh, Dad? Where are we?” you ask, fear making its way into your voice. You silently curse yourself for it—Dad hates any display of weakness. He doesn’t answer, instead busying himself with a huge hydraulic lock on the outside of the door. This does nothing to help your growing panic. “Dad?” you ask a few more times, voice rising with each repetition. “Dad!” “You will stay here until I let you out.” He finally answers, still not looking at you. “Goodbye, Number Eight.” He steps out of the chamber, locks hissing as the door seals itself behind him. Your brain enters full-blown panic, and you bang on the door, screaming for him to come back. You no longer care about showing weakness—tears spill over your cheeks as Dad’s back fades away and your banging grows weaker and weaker. When your voice gets too hoarse to yell and you’re convinced no one can hear you, you sink to the ground in a miserable heap. After a few minutes of crying, you sit up weakly and attempt to clear your head. You’ve never seen this chamber or the hallway it’s situated in before, but it logically has to be within the Academy somewhere. Maybe it’s underground or in a wing you’ve never been allowed access to? You instinctively close your eyes, reaching out to see if you can pick up on anyone’s emotions. Usually, you can sense your siblings from across the house, but the impenetrable walls of your cell and your admittedly less-than-functional mental state don’t help your case. You give up after a few minutes of mental searching and rest your forehead against the cold metal of one of the walls. And, since you have literally nothing else to do, you think. Clearly, this is one of Dad’s experiments—probably not too far off from when he’d lock Klaus in the mausoleum or when he’d throw dangerous weapons at Diego to see if he could save himself. They historically haven’t gone so well, as both siblings have ended up scarred—Klaus emotionally and Diego physically. You’re a bit worried as to what he has in store for you, but you’re not about to let yourself get hurt if you can help it. It’s likely that Dad’s locked you up to see how your abilities react to not being around people and their constantly-changing emotions. Maybe he thinks you’ll wither away. Perhaps it’s the opposite, and he’s examining the possibility of you tapping into your own feelings. Whatever the case may be, you resolve to try and remain as positive as you can about the situation, so you push down your fear and focus on happier things. Inevitably, almost embarrassingly, your thoughts roam to Ben. He’s the quietest of your siblings, always nose-deep in a book or sitting in silent contemplation. Despite his antisocial nature, the two of you have formed a close bond over the years. You find the contrast of his visceral power with his shy nature interesting, and he’s been perfectly content to sit and listen to you babble away about everything and nothing.

There’s also the fact that the two of you usually get paired together for training, since you can’t read him as easily as you can your other siblings. Dad says it’s likely because of the alien presence underneath his skin—the tendrils block his human presence somehow. And so, to create the biggest challenge for you, Dad’s made you spend hours on end with Ben, studying what feelings you can discern in order to strengthen your abilities. While some would become frustrated by the lack of ease you’ve experienced, it only eggs you on. You find Ben absolutely fascinating—a feeling that’s deepened over the years until you’ve come to accept the fact that you’re crushing on him, hard. Despite wearing your heart on your sleeve at all times, you’ve desperately tried to keep your feelings hidden—you can’t have any way of knowing if he returns those feelings, and your embarrassment would be supreme if he found out and didn’t feel the same.

Your cheeks heat up as your mind drifts to his jet-black hair, fine features, and adorably shy nature. There’s nothing better to do, so you let your mind spin scenarios of the two of you together—holding hands, going on small dates, cuddling on the couch. The thoughts stir a fluttering warmth in your chest that makes your present circumstances slightly more bearable. You hardly notice your breaths evening out and your eyelids blinking slower and slower as you daydream away.

You start awake an indeterminate amount of time later. You can’t remember falling asleep, and you have absolutely no way of knowing how much time has passed since Dad locked you up. Your crooked perception of time pales, however, to your all-consuming thirst. There’s no compartments or nooks anywhere that could be hiding a water supply—just smooth metal walls. Sinking back against the door, you try your hardest not to think about the dryness in your throat crying out to be lessened.

You judge it to be a few hours later when you see movement out of the corner of your eye. Instantly, you sit up, hoping it’s Dad come to let you free—but what you see instead is a million times better.

Ben’s sprinting down the hallway leading to your cell, face overtaken with concern. When he gets close enough to see you, he visibly softens. He tries to say something, but the thick hydraulic door blurs his words together. You shrug, pointing to your ears and shaking your head. He tries again, pointing to you with questioning eyes. You okay?

You nod, secretly thinking yes, now that you’re here. His brows are still knit together with worry, so you smile to reassure him that you really are okay. His eyes roam over your face for a few moments before he blinks and takes a step back, motioning for you to do the same. You’re not sure what he’s going to do, but you trust him completely.

He doubles down on himself before flailing his limbs out and arching his back. His tentacles erupt out of his stomach, lashing out and latching onto the huge handle of your cell door. The metal and glass shriek at the new pressure before slowly but surely bending from the force of Ben’s attack. When they’re broken enough to satisfy him, his tentacles retract and he scrambles forward to open the door separating the two of you.

As soon as you can slip through the door, you rush into his arms, wrapping him in a fierce hug. He hesitates for the briefest moment before returning the embrace. After being by yourself for so long, his arms feel so good around you, and your heart leaps in your chest as you catch a whiff of his smell—comforting and exciting all at once. Even though you could stay right here in his arms forever, you pull away slightly after several moments.

“How’d you know I was here?” you ask, grinning at the look of relief on Ben’s face.

“I thought it was weird when Dad didn’t schedule me to train with you like we usually would. No one knew where you went, so after a few hours, I decided to try and find you. Earlier I saw Dad coming out of a doorway I’d never seen anyone use before, so I used that as my starting place and, well—he’s got a bunch of charts monitoring how you’re doing. I knew I was in the right place. I’m just glad you’re okay,” he says, voice getting quieter. “I was really worried.”

“We’ve been through worse,” you laugh, but his eyes don’t brighten at your joke.

“This is different, though,” he answers, voice rising again in anger. “He literally locked you up, I mean—that’s actually insane. No father should ever do that to their child.”

“I’m sure he means well,” you say weakly, but you both know it’s not true. Dad really only cares about himself. There’s a beat, then Ben speaks again.

“You sure you’re all right?” His eyes are sad and searching as they look into yours.

Summoning your courage, you say, “I am now that you’re here.” Ben’s eyes widen immediately, scanning your face almost hopefully. The corners of his mouth tilt up slowly, almost hesitantly—as if he’s afraid to let himself go completely.

“Good, ‘cause I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t,” he breathes, and you notice that the distance between the two of you is narrowing. Just a few more inches and your foreheads would be touching—and so you take it upon yourself to both reassure and thank Ben in one motion. You tilt your head forward and gently press your lips to his.

His breath hitches at the contact, body freezing for the briefest of moments before his hands come up to cup your jaw. You smile and whisper a thank you against his lips before drawing back a fraction. Ben’s eyes are slow to open, and his cheeks are flushed when they finally do, gazing at you with so much half-lidded admiration your heart swells. You press a soft kiss to his cheek, and you don’t need your powers to tell you that somehow, Ben is just as smitten with you as you are with him.

And when the two of you are given an inevitable harsh scolding in Dad’s office, you can’t bring yourself to care much—you’re too focused on how Ben’s fingers are laced gently around yours.

#ben hargreeves x reader #ben hargreeves imagine #ben hargreeves #tua #tua x reader #tua imagine #the umbrella academy #umbrella academy x reader #umbrella academy imagine #justin h min #justin h min x reader #justin h min imagine #fanfic #x reader #reader insert

[greengrayeyeswrites]

shit-faced in love (chapter one)

Title: shit-faced in love

Pairing: Corpse Husband x OC (fem!youtuber!reader)

Word Count: 1,630

Warnings: Mental Health/Mental Illnesses are a big topic in this story. Mentions of depression, bpd and other mental illnesses. Angst, Fluff.

Note: This may be a Corpse x OC story but feel free to insert yourself into the main girls role. If Corpse ever announces that he doesn't like fanfics about him, I'll delete this.

Prologue — Chapter 1 — Chapter 2

— — —

„You did what?!“ Baylee screeched into the phone and Imogen sighed. She was standing in Ballinlough Community Park and watched Buddy run around in circles, greeting the other dogs. 

„Baylee, please don’t yell… This is stupid enough even without you screaming in my ear.“ Imogen rubbed the bridge of her nose and Baylee sighed. „I just can’t believe you pinky-promised on taking Pole Dancing classes when reaching two mil… Imogen, you know you’re depressed and suffer from BPD, right?“ Imogen chuckled. 

„I know, Bay. I was diagnosed often enough“ she quickly rolled her eyes and watched Buddy stumble over his feet. „To my defense, I was shit-faced hammered when we made that plan.“

Remembering the drunk game of Proximity Among Us a few months prior, where Imogen had a playful banter with the deep-voiced Youtuber Corpse Husband, send a shiver down her spine.

She was already tipsy. Tipsy and the imposter and running around like a maniac, killing everyone who came across her, when Disguised Toast asked her, what she wanted to do once reaching two million subscriber.

Her drunk laugh had ringed in everyones ears as she promised to document herself taking Pole Dancing classes like Seán and Mark had once done. 

„Do it in San Diego“ Corpse had chuckled and Imogen had pursed her lips. „You want me to fly all the way to the states to take Pole Dancing classes?“ She had asked before killing off his little astronaut.

Once back in the lobby Corpse, whom she was getting to know at that time, started talking about the weird and drunk induced idea.  „You wanted to visit your best friend in Houston anyway, right?“ The man spoke and Imogen had nodded—even if no one except her chat could see it.

„Then come to San Diego. I bet there are good schools here.“ And after taking another sip from her Vodka Imogen grinned. „Sure, why not!“

But Imogen had low-key forgot about this situation and when Corpse tweeted her this morning, her whole face flushed and she remembered everything about the drunk Among Us session.

„But are you doing it?“ Baylee’s voice brought Imogen back to the reality. „Are you really coming to the states?“ Imogen bit the inside of her lip. „I’m meeting my therapist later today. I will definitely talk about this with him and see what he has to say.“

Imogen heard Baylee hum in the background. „I would be happy if you’d come and visit me“ she started and Imogen pouted. „Me too!“ She watched Buddy run towards her, with a stick in his mouth.

She knew she had pinky-promised Corpse that she would fly over to San Diego and document her Pole Dance classes. But was she brave enough to actually do it?

— — —

Two months later, it was a hot and sticky day in June and Imogen was looking at the suitcase in front of her. She still couldn’t believe what she was about to do.

With a one-way ticket to Houston and Buddy’s pet passport in her hands, nothing was in her way to travel over the pond. She got tested negatively for Covid and was ready to embark on this new journey.

She had a good talk with her psychiatrist about the upcoming journey and he told her that she was currently stable enough to travel. He stacked up her medication and told her that she could always call him, when she felt like the mood swings were too much to handle.

It took Imogen two months to prepare Buddy for the upcoming trip, and a lot of meetings with his vet to check if the fluffy dog would be okay in two eight hour flights. 

Imogen had her phone at her ear and was currently talking with non other than her internet friend Sykkuno. „Do you think Buddy is going to be okay?“ Imogen asked, fumbling with the hem of her pajama top. „You’ve prepared him well! You checked his health with the vet and talked with airline. You also got a letter from your psychiatrist, that Bud needs to be with you at all times!“ Sykkuno spoke and Imogen sighed.

„I know, Sykk… But I’m a little anxious that he’s going to get sick throughout the flight.“ She looked at Buddy, who was still sleeping on his cushion. „I just read so many horror stories about pets dying during flights.“ - „I feel you, Imogen. I would be super scared if something would happen to Bimbus.“ 

Imogen sat down on her bed. She still had a few hours before she had to head to the airport. She was happy Sykkuno had picked up the phone, otherwise she would’ve freaked out.

„I’m seriously happy that there are no size requirements for emotional-support-dogs… I already booked business class seats so Bud and I can have more space.“ She sighed and Sykkuno chuckled. „Just imagine the faces of all these business men wondering why there’s a full grown Siberian Husky in business class“ his laugh rang in her ears and her heart jumped.

„Not gonna lie, Sykkuno, but I can’t wait to finally meet you in person!“ She grinned and looked at all the documents, that were sprawled out on her bed. 

There was the letter from her psychiatrist, stating that Imogen needed the animal for psychological reasons; a prescription of why Imogen needed said animal and all the other veterinary documentations.

Imogen could hear the one year older male laugh. „Me too, Imogen!“, his voice was as soft as usual. „I can’t wait for Bimbus and Buddy to meet!“ He chuckled and Imogen nodded.

She had contacted almost all of her closest Youtube friends and had asked them if they wanted to meet, once she and Buddy set foot in America. 

Sykkuno was one of the first to tell her, that he wanted to meet her and Buddy. Then came Rae, that invited her to do a collab or something for their channels. Poki also contacted Imogen, asking if she wanted to hang out with her.

But the one, Imogen hadn’t believe would approach her, was Corpse Husband. Corpse had called her—it had been one in the morning in Ireland—and told her that he wanted to meet her, once she was in San Diego for her Pole Dance class.

„You want to meet me?“ Imogen asked him. „You never show your face and yet you want to meet me… in person?“ His deep laugh rang in her ears. „Yeah… is that weird? We’ve been texting everyday and I really want to meet Buddy!“ Imogen rolled her eyes.

„You want to meet the dog, not me?“ He laughed even louder and Imogen was worried for a second. His breath hitched. „Are you okay?“ - „Yeah, you just sounded as if you were jealous of your dog.“ Imogen rolled her eyes and bit her fingernails.

„You know he’s not just my dog, but my companion, right?“ - „Yet you’re jealous of me wanting to meet him.“ Imogen knew that it was no use talking to him and sighed. „You know what? Let’s meet and see if you really only want to meet Buddy.“

Imogen shook her head as she remembered the late-night calls and texts from the faceless YouTuber. And she could only fathom how stressful it must be for him to actually invite Imogen over.

„When’s your flight?“ Sykkuno asked and Imogen sat down on her gaming chair, overlooking her room and sleeping Buddy on the floor. „It’s in few hours. I still need to dress properly, I’m still in my pajama. And I still need to head up to Dublin.“ Imogen laughed. „Your layover is in Washington right?“ - „Yes, I wanted to stop in Washington because Buddy can only hold in his pee for about nine hours.“ A chuckle left the black haired girls mouth and Sykkuno laughed. 

„It’s his usual sleep duration“ Imogen looked at her wristwatch. „Dang, Sykk… I’m sorry but I really need to hang up. I definitely need to get ready. Sorry Bub!“ The YouTuber on the other line laughed. „It’s okay, Imogen. Get ready. Text me once you’re boarded and in case you need anything!“ 

Imogen grinned. „Thank you Sykkuno. Really, thank you!“ She said her goodbyes and hung up. Looking at the watch one more time, she took a deep breath. 

Imogen stood up and put her phone on her desk before rushing to the pile of clothes she decided to wear for the journey. She decided on a simple black skinny jean and an oversized black print tee. 

It was one of her go-to outfits and one she felt the most comfortable with. Even if people on the internet were sometimes thirsting over her posts and pictures; she still didn’t give them thirst traps by choice.

 She would’ve never imagined people nutting over her posting a picture of her legs covered in cuts and bruises. 

Imogen never thought people would find her scars hot. And she always exclaimed in her videos, that it wasn’t pretty, that she wasn’t romanticizing her illness. She wanted to spread awareness that it was be ugly. That’s why she posted pictures of her legs. 

She wanted to show, that it wasn’t pretty, having legs covered in self-inflicted cuts and bruises. But people still thought it was hot and edgy because she dressed like that. 

Imogen straightened her hair and checked herself in the mirror. Her eyeliner had the perfect wing and her usually dark eyebags weren’t as prominent as usually. 

She took a deep breath. „Americas… here I come…“ she looked at her dog, before taking her phone and posting one more tweet, before getting ready to head up to Dublin for her first flight of the day.

to be continued...

Taglist: @wineandionysus

#corpse husband #corpse husband fandom #corpse fandom #corpse fanfiction #fanfiction #imagine #corpse x reader #corpse x oc #corpse x you #corpse husband x reader #corpse husband x oc #corpse husband x you #corpse x yn #corpse husband x yn

[beananacake]

hiii I'm the anon that was being curious! well I am a newer fans of Richard if I could be honest with you!

I remember saw him at the marvel san diego comic con panel 2019 during the whole marvel cast being photographed together. do you remember when he walked to the stage? oh when I saw him I freaked out. I even texted my friend saying, "oh this richard madden guy is not so bad himself 👀" as weird as this may sound but I love the way stand. I can not pint point what is it but my eyes glued to him.

look I have watched Cinderella (2015) couple years ago but the only memory that I had from watching it is I couldn't bear seeing the treatment that Cinderella got from her step family despite the whole happy ending. I am not the type to watch movies twice either. although have heard the Cinderella story countless of time since childhood, I just remember being so angry and couldn't care less about the romance lol I think my anger indicated how good the acting was being done by the cast, right?

anyway, I am just like you girl! I was a much bigger fans of henry cavill first. so I merely thought richard was just a good looking fella. oh boy was I wrong!

I decided to watch the bodyguard and I was astounded by his performance! I rarely binge watch tv show/movies but yet I spent 6 hours watching bodyguard non-stop! (oh I was so smitten let me tell you)

after that I did watch his interview, read article about him. I was so disappointed of myself how I just realised what a gentleman and a sweetheart he is! his dedication to his role also wowed me. he is far more than just a good looking actor.

I watched bodyguard just the night before I watched the Eternals. I went to the theatre with my friend, my friend teased me by saying I didn't even blink when I saw Ikaris was on the screen lol. I experienced a lot of my "🎶wildest dream🎶" at that time hahaha and a lot of "goodness me his accent!"

my friend and I was being so noisy about Ikaris that my other friends had to scold us and told us to keep it down hahaha!

and the night after I watched Eternals he appeared on my dream that doesn't help with my new obsession hahah. and here I am now! reading fanfiction about him

oops sorry that was a long one. sorry I got carried away! thank you for reading all the way through <3 (before I end this, he always look so shy when people compliment him ahhh he is the best. and oh boy didn't he handle the thirst tweet well 👀)

Look, there's something so irresistible about brown-haired, blue-eyed guys so I totally get ya! Lucky you for seeing Richard at SDCC! I haven't been on any comic cons yet and if there were some here in Canada, they costs so much and you don't get the big celebrities like Richard :((

Honestly, Richard is so underrated! He acts his heart out and he doesn't get much recognition for it. I was so happy he got a Golden Globes award for his role in Bodyguard and that had paved the way for bigger roles for him! And yes, while I love his work, Bodyguard is my favorite! He just embodies his roles perfectly. The first few minutes of episode 1, I had to pause it because it was so stressful even to me. He brought David Budd to life.

They should remake his thirst tweets! I love how he read them!!

#i am a richard madden stan and i am not afraid to admit it #that man is one fine scot #anon asks #richard madden #ask answered

[ghostie-luther]

Umbrella academy headcanons #1 - sexuality

Takes place in my "I won't hesitate bitch" texting universe on ao3, which you can read, here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24146260

In my universe the hargreeves siblings are 13 years old! !

Luther

-luther is pansexual, like Klaus!

-so ik in the series and stuff he loses his v card to rave girl (which was technically r*pe btw....he was drunk out of his mind) but come onnnn Luther with a boyfriend? CUTE

-he probably knew from an early age tbh, told reggie and Reggie was like "haha think again bitch" and basically told him he couldn't afford to be gay as number 1

-which is, by the way, bullshit

-and although Luther is very comfortable in his gender as a cis male, he gotta admit, he loves a good skirt

-like the pink pleated aesthetic ones?? The pastel ones?? Ohmyfuckinggod he drooled

-so Grace made him one!!

-like cmon let the boy wear what he wants. He looks adorable in it >:(

-he and Klaus are very similar in the way that they both like feminine clothing and have both been caught wearing makeup and painted nails

-yes Luther thirsts over luke Evans get with the times

Diego

-Diego is straight!

-he attracts alot of female attention while out on missions and interviews and he LOVES it

-hes very confident when he comes to the ladies, despite never having a girlfriend

-although he knows how to paint nails like a BOSS for his siblings. He doesn't even care. He OWNS it

-like he will sit and listen to tea while doing their nails for hours and hours

-lmao he tried to do that "sexy growl" thing men do during an interview and spat everywhere

-girls took the absolute piss out of him for MONTHS

-recently he's had his eye on this girl named Eudora who walks past the mansion on her way to school.....but it'll never happen

-right?

Allison

-Allison is also straight!

-her and Diego and five are the only "straight" ones tbh

-Vanya says it's a shame because lots of girls would have FLOCKED to Allison give them the chance

-one of her favourite things to do is let Klaus do her makeup after Reggie has gone to bed

- like Diego, she a sucker for gossip

-sometimes her and Diego pick fun at the others but it's all harmless teasing that they're all perfectly fine with

-Luther: imagine drawing your eyebrows on everyday

Allison: imagine hiding in the bathroom for an hour because you were wearing a skirt and dad was looking for you

Luther:

Allison: couldn't be me

-she's such a diva! She likes to strut around in feather boas with Klaus and talk about boys and read magazines

-its her favourite time of day

Klaus

-Klaus is pansexual like Luther!

-Klaus, while also is very confident in his gender, STEALS ALLISONS AND GRACES CLOTHES-

-honestly you'd go into his room and he'd be sat there in an prom dress and a boa

-nobody even HAD a prom dress

-he Ben and Luther like to have sleepovers alot to catch up and thirst over men (and women) they like

-Klaus loves to wear makeup!

- not as subtle as Luther though. Where Luther would have maybe some blush, red or pink eyeshadow and lilgloss Klaus would POP OFF

-vibrant eyeshadow, eyeliner, lipstick, eyebrows drawn on highlighter ETC

-i mean...hes not amazing at it but he finds it SO FUN

- he keeps getting Luther to try the eyeliner but he won't, and Klaus gets really mad because IT WOULD SUIT HIM SO WELL

-both he and luther have to do the makeup when there's NO chance at getting caught tho because reggie would go off the RAILS

five

-straight as a lamppost

-but he's in the community because he is asexual!

-nothing to do with adult stuff appeals to him AT ALL

-at least before he dissapeared oop

-now nobody knows

-HAD THE BIGGEST CRUSH ON SELENA GOMEZ

-"compared to me she's as smart as a newborn baby but GODAMN she cute-"

Ben

-TIS A GAY CHILD

- this babey is fully, 100% gay

-but you wouldn't really be able to tell because he keeps it pretty quiet and doesn't really show anything off??

-OH OF COURSE you get the sass and the gay jokes but he doesn't really join in with the whole "omg look at this man" type thing

-maybe he's just shy

-hes shy but will paint his nails black any day of the week

-i think he would rather cry in the library than admit he liked someone tbh

-hes so awkward it's adorable

-sometimes the rest forget he's gay because he acts...well...straight or doesn't mention it for AGES and then he'll come out with "-oh PLEASE when me and my husband get married-" or something and everyone fucking JOLTS

Vanya

-AGAIN, STRAIGHT AS A WOBBLY CIRCLE

- this child is so gay omg she can't contain it

-every joke she makes about herself points to herself being gay (which i mean...same)

- she has posters of famous female singers in her room because:

- "dad these women inspire me to play the violin and are the reason I strive to be better."

-like no sis tf???

- you just like to stare at them

- she deadass outlined Angelina jolies face in a lipstick heart like this was an early 2000s movie

- she gets really frustrated sometimes because Allison likes boys and vanyas all "I like...hnnng girls...women...BOOBS...girls, women are nice ygm?" And Allison's like "..no?💀"

-has exactly 12 flannel shirts in her wardrobe

- sis you WEAR UNIFORM EVERYDAY-

#luther hargreeves #allison hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #diego hargreeves #five hargreeves #the umbrella academy #headcanon #everyone is gay

[theperksofbeingbarbie]

Like a Normal Person

Summary: As a reporter with a thirst for a good story, your path crosses with a certain man with a hero complex quite a bit. 

Warnings: Language

Word Count: 1,298

Pairing: Diego x Female!Reader

Part Two

A/N: This has been in my drafts for a while because I didn’t know how to finish it so… Here it is lol. Hope you guys like it!

ʕ♡˙ᴥ˙♡ʔ

“Masked vigilante strikes again, saving the day before the police arrive,” you said in your best imitation of an early 20th century newscaster. “Would you like to like to provide a statement, Mr. Kraken, sir?” 

You could easily see Diego glaring at you past the mask as he finished jumping over the fence. “You stalking me, [L/N]?” he asked, making sure he kept an eye on the camera you had hanging from your neck, not willing to let you get a picture of him again. 

“I stalk good stories. You’re not the only one with a police scanner,” you shot back with a playful smirk. “C’mon, give me something. You really going to leave your favorite reporter out there to fight with the plebeians for the same statements?” 

Deigo chuckled, shaking his head. “You better get back across the street before the rest of the news crews get there.” 

You rolled your eyes, climbing back over the fence like you had done so you could wait for him. Despite being in dress clothes, you still managed not to mess up. You positioned your camera between the holes in the chain link as he started to run off. “Diego!” you called, taking the picture when he turned around. “Thanks!” You quickly started to run to get to the crime scene, mostly to avoid Deigo taking your camera. 

Your relationship with Diego was an interesting one. You had seen him around town a few times, but you never put much thought into his presence. He was just a guy who had friends that were cops and frequented coffee shops around the precinct. 

It wasn’t until you were driving past a robbery in progress did his… Professional life intersect with yours. After calling the police you hid behind your car to write down whatever you could see; what you saw was a man in all black and covered in knives, blood still dripping off some of the ones attached to his wrist. You were ready to report him to the police when you remembered that mask. It was old, something you never expected to recall, but you still managed to remember the boy who could curve anything he throws: mostly knives. 

You decided to follow him into the back yards of the quiet residential street, closing your eyes when you heard something whizz by your head before getting stuck in a tree. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t threaten me, Mr. Hargreeves,” you stated firmly into the darkness, smirking when he slipped out of the shadows. “[Y/N L/N], reporter.” You held your hand out for him to shake but he just pulled the knife out of the tree silently. 

It had been over a year since Diego threw that first knife at your head. It wouldn’t be last, that was for certain, but he did eventually slow down the frequency in which he showcased his talents. 

You hummed as you unlocked the door to your apartment, happy to be home after such a long day. 

“You really need to get better locking windows. I’m more than happy to take you to the hardware store and make sure you get a good set,” a familiar voice said from your living room. 

Screaming, you grabbed the baseball bat you kept by your door. In your fear, it took you a moment to realize who the man was. “What the fuck, Diego?!”

“Oh, damn, she’s got a bat.” Diego smirked, not making any attempt at getting up. “I’m serious about the windows, though. It was ridiculously easy for me to break in.” 

“Why the fuck are you breaking into my apartment in the first place?!” You made no movement to drop the bat, still willing to beat the shit out of Diego if he came close. 

“Stop screaming before your neighbors call the police,” Diego reasoned, though his tone was still full of amusement. “I brought food but you weren’t home.” 

Slowly, the tension in your shoulders started to ease, but it was mostly replaced with confusion. “I’m sorry…” You dropped your bag from your shoulder, followed by the bat. “Let me get this straight…” You shook your head, deciding to go to the kitchen for a glass of wine. Diego cautiously followed you, leaning against the counter. “You brought food over and because I wasn’t home you… Broke into my apartment?” 

Diego seemed to consider that for a moment before nodding. “Yup, that’s it.” 

“Why? What do you want?” you spat after downing the first glass of wine. 

“I-I wanted to spend time with you.” 

You stared at him in disbelief, looking for any sign of ulterior motive. You had become pretty good at picking out liars over the years, and Diego was being honest. “You couldn’t have just asked like a normal person? I would’ve said yes.” 

Diego seemed surprised by that. “You would?” 

“Yes.” You ran a hand through your hair, shaking your head. “What’d you bring?”

Diego smirked, moving to start pulling the containers out of the bag. 

————————

Diego never stopped breaking into your apartment. It became a weekly Friday tradition: break in, watch TV until you got home, complain about how you won’t get new windows, eat. You slowly got used to his presence, no longer screaming and threatening him with a bat. 

But this week, you wanted to mix it up. It wasn’t that hard to get the scoop on Diego, one of your favorite cops telling you quite a bit about her ex boyfriend over a cup of coffee. 

So on Thursday after stopping at his favorite Thai place, you made your way to the gym he worked at. Luckily it was busy, a lot of people there for a workout after they got out of work. You smiled when you noticed Diego coaching a teenager, admiring how kind he looked. You urged yourself to keep going as to not get caught, making your way to the boiler room. 

————————

It was about an hour before you heard a knife whiz past your ear, burying itself in the dresser you were sat beside. “If you fucked up my hair, I’m killing you,” you said easily, not looking up from the book you were reading as you pulled the knife out of the wood. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Diego asked, plucking the knife from your hand as he walked by. 

You glanced up, suddenly realizing he was shirtless, just out of the shower. “You take knives to the shower with you?” you blurted, blushing as he laughed. 

“You brought food?” Diego asked, making no motion to pull on a shirt. You were in his home after all. 

You cleared your throat, pulling your eyes from his body to the food on the small table. “Yeah, I wanted to get you back for all the times you broke into my place.” You stood, tossing your book on top of your bag as you walked over. “And I just… Wanted to see you,” you admitted shyly. 

Diego smiled at your admission, focusing on the containers instead of you. “You know how you said I could just… Ask like a normal person?” he began, pulling out the containers. You nodded, watching him closely. “I was wondering if you… Wanted to go on a date?” Diego added a satisfied nod on the end of the question, the only hint that he had actually practiced it so he wouldn’t stutter. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.” You grinned when you saw how happy that made him. “What was your plan if I didn’t say you could ask me things like a normal person?” you teased. “Kidnap me but take me to a restaurant?” 

Diego rolled his eyes, playfully pushing you. “Maybe I still will if you keep it up.” 

#the umbrella academy #the umbrella academy imagine #the umbrella academy imagines #umbrella academy #umbrella academy imagines #umbrella academy imagine #tua #tua imagines #tua imagine #ua #ua imagine #ua imagines #diego hargreeves #diego hargreeves imagines #diego hargreeves imagine #diego hargreeves x reader #reader x diego hargreeves #you x diego hargreeves #diego hargreeves x you #the kraken #00.02 #the kraken imagine #the kraken imagines

[aboysbestfriendishismum]

Chapter 51 - Elvis, the beard and Schroedinger’s kisses (Part Two)

In the previous chapter: Eddie wouldn't want to leave San Diego and his house, but he must go and follow his band for the tour. He calls Meg to see if she's got news from Angie and when he finds out that the girl has called her friend, but not him, he takes it kind of bad but doesn't think anything else of it. Matt and Meg have a clarifying conversation where he apologises for his behaviour and reveals he's got a new girlfriend. Meg's not exactly happy about the news. Angie's finally back in Seattle, learns that Eddie has called but doesn't call him back and tries not to think about what happened and about the kiss, which she doesn't mention to Meg. Once she's back to work at Roxy's, Angie gets an unexpected visit by Kurt and Dave, who asks her out again.

**

“Anyway your hair is great. Is it something permanent or...?” Dave is at the counter, saying goodbye before leaving, his lovely friend a few steps behind.

“It's just a coloring shampoo with highlights, it'll go away by washing it...”

“Well they look amazing on you!”

“Suuuure and they have this very... psychobilly vibe in this context.” Kurt shares his mind, points his index finger up and turns it around, as to point at the diner's style “No need to say, the psycho part suits you the most”

“Ha-ha”

“Ok, back to the important stuff: what's your decision?” Dave inquires and it's like he was jumping in place, but keeping his feet well grounded on the floor.

“How can I say no to you?”

“Well, like you did when you dumped him, for example?” Cobain answers my rethorical question and acts confused when both his friend and I give him an annoyed look “What? I said it was an example!”

“You're coming then! Great!” Dave shrugs Kurt's comment off in a second and flashes me another big smile of his. One that makes me think that maybe it would all be much easier if I hadn't dumped him. Or maybe not?

“Yes, but I don't wanna stay out late, ok?”

“Don't worry, you just have to stay for the concert... and a little after the concert, can you?”

“All these fine feelings... you'd like to know my ears are bleeding”

“No, Kurt, we're not interested really. See you at the Off Ramp at 8 then” first I address the singer, who's dramatically wrapping his scarf around his head, then Dave.

“I can come and get you if you want”

“Don't worry, we can meet there”

**

The time at the diner goes unusually fast. Maybe because it was one of the few times I wished it wouldn't pass. The longer I say out of home, the easiest it is to avoid certain phone calls... I finally get back home and as I enter the apartment and see it's all dark inside I think I got away with it for tonight, at least until the door of my roommate's bedroom opens wide right when I'm walking in front of it.

“Hey Meg, still awake?”

“Mmm” she mumbles as she trots through the hallway into the kitchen.

A coincidence? I don't think so. I remain puzzled in the middle of the hallway, until I can hear her turning on the tap. Simple thirst. I shrug and go straight into my room.

“Good night” I whisper as I hear her barefoot steps coming closer again and her reply consists into getting into my bedroom and grab me by the arm as I'm taking my pyjiama from under the pillow. Needless to say, I'm about to have a stroke.

“FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!”

“Angie, you can't act like this”

“Sure I can! You scared me to death!”

“I mean with Eddie. Here” Meg lets me go only after she's put the phone in my hand.

“What the hell does it mean?”

“I get you're disappointed after San Diego, but you can't avoid him forever”

“Meg what the... look, you're making a fuss for nothing” I try to keep calm as I stare at the phone as if she'd just given me an ignited bomb. Did he call again?

“Shut up and call Eddie” she orders but doesn't look so threatening given her half shut eyes and sleepy voice.

“But... I called him already” I blatantly lie and I'm usually very good at it. It shoud be easier with her senses blurred by sleep.

“When?”

“Tonight” I try and give her the phone back but she doesn't move an inch.

“When?”

“Tonight! During my cigarette break”

“From work?”

“Yeah, I left him a message so he won't worry” I give her the phone and this time she reluctantly takes it.

“Uhm... good”

“Ok, good night Meg” I take my pyjiama and quickly walk into the bathroom.

I don't like lying to Meg. No, that's not true. I like it. Well, it's not that I like it but I'm doing it... gladly? I mean, I'm not glad but... I just do it and don't feel guilty for not telling her about the kiss. The kiss. Did it ever happen anyway? Maybe I dreamt about it, like seller, Eddie drowning, Depeche Mode and all the rest. It could have been just a creation of my twisted mind, from the Sonic Youth awakening to the curious lady on the bus. What if I'm still dreaming? Maybe going to bed and sleeping it off is the best way to... wake up! If I still want to.

He won't call anymore anyway.

I get out of the bathroom and check the way. I go to bed and rest my head on the pillow, falling instantly asleep. When I open my eyes I can't say if it's been five minutes or five days but I know for sure that it's not night anymore since the sunlight is coming through the window blinds. And after a few seconds I understand it must not be so late because I can hear Meg's voice and this means she hasn't left yet. A spiderweb in the corner next to the door catches my attention and I'm about to make the equation spiderweb=spider, when a bigger upcoming danger shows up as my friend's voice becomes clearer.

“But didn't she call yesterday?”

Shit.

“Oh. I must have misunderstood then. Huh? No, it's not like she told me she did... it's just me that... I mean, I saw her going to her room with the phone in her hand so I put two and two together and thought she'd call you. Surely she wanted to do it, she must have fallen asleep before hehe. What? No, I'm on the other phone” Meg stutters and I can almost see her as she halts and goes back towards the entrance, where the small table with the main phone is. He can't see you, Meg! But trust me, he doesn't need to see you to see your bullshit. She can't lie but I appreciate the fact she wants to help me despite finding out I told her a lie.

“Wait, I'm gonna call her. Oh no, don't worry, she has to wake up anyway. Ok, just wait, let me get her for you, just one sec!” I move the duvet out of the way not so delicately, basically throwing it on the floor, and after two seconds I'm standing right in front of the door, with Patti Smith looking straight at me with a judgemental look from the poster. I know, I know, I'm ridiculous and childish, can't we discuss this later, auntie?

“Hey Angie, are you awa-” Meg slowly gets in and I cover her mouth with one hand, make sure she's left the phone in the other room and drag her inside, shutting the door behind her.

“I'm not here, ok?” I tell her.

“Mm?” she can just mumble with surprised eyes.

“Please, help me” I beg her as she tries to get free and answer.

“Wh..?”

“I'm gonna explain later, please...” Meg looks up and nods yes. At that signal I can't help letting her go.

“What the fuck” she mouths a moment before disappearing again through the hallway.

I discretely follow her steps... she could still change her mind and pass me the phone. In the meantime I try and put all things together in my mind to prepare myself for the big explanation I'm expected to give soon after. 'Cause I'll have to tell her everything now and she'll think I'm stupid because nothing of this makes sense. I mean, it's perfectly logical to me but it automatically becomes absurd the moment I try to mentally translate it into words to communicate to another human being.

“Yeah, she must have left early, I didn't hear her...” I really hope I'll never commit a crime but if I do I hope I won't have Meg as my only alibi because she's so little credible that she'd have an innocent person condemned.

“Ok, tell me everything. No, wait, the pen doesn't work, I'm gonna take another. I'll be back in a second huh!” Meg gets out of the kitchen and walks me by shaking her head then getting into her room, then she comes out a moment later with a blue pen between her fingers.

“Here I am. Huh-uh... Until tomorrow morning? Ok, I'll tell her. No, not at all! You know how she is, it's just she works stupid shifts and maybe she thinks she'd bother you. Ok, I'll ter her this too. Look, I'm writing it! Angie never bothers. Ok? Hehe bye Eddie have a nice day. Yes, don't worry! Bye”

I take a deep breath and walk towards my destiny. I enter the kitchen with my hands already raised.

“What the fuck happened, can you tell me?” Meg is already waiting for me, sitting on the table with her arms folded.

“It's... it's complicated”

“Did he hurt you?” she asks seriously and I basically laugh at her face, then crawl on a chair.

“Who? Eddie? Of course not, are you kiddin?”

“Was he an asshole to you? Did he get back with his ex?”

“No, at least, I don't think so, not as long as I was there...”

“But something must have happened, right?”

“Well, yeah...”

“Did you have a fight?”

“No”

“Did you tell him about your feelings and-”

“Haha what feelings?”

“Shut up. Did you tell him and he rejected you?”

“I didn't tell him shit!”

“Did he bring up the thing?”

“We didn't talk about... the thing”

“What did you talk about then?”

“We didn't talk”

“Did he let you know without telling? Look, Eddie cares for you, it's evident. Maybe he's got second thoughts because of the age gap and I can understand it, I mean, it's a positive thing. It shows he's a mature and responsible guy”

“There was no talk and no rejection, Meg”

“Did he tell you I love you and then took it back, like Jerry?”

“No!”

“Angie, would you please tell me what the fuck happened or I'll have to try and guess for another couple of hours?”

“He... well...”

“Told you he's gay?”

“No!”

“So what the hell did he do to you?!!”

“He kissed me”

“WHAT?!” Meg jumps off the table so fast that she almost flips it over together with my chair.

“He gave me a kiss. Well, more than one actually, multiple kisses but all together, in the same occasion, so I think we can call it a kiss, I think they count as a single act”

“EDDIE KISSED YOU! And you tell me just like this?”

“How should I tell you?”

“Most of all, you only tell me now?!”

“I'm not even sure it happened for real...”

“ANGIE, I'M GONNA KILL YOU, I SWEAR TO GOD”

“It was a weird moment”

“Did he kiss you, yes or no?”

“I think he did”

“YOU THINK?”

“Yeah, I mean, at this point, after thinking and rethinking all things through, I think I can affirm he 90% actually kissed me”

“What the fuck does it mean, I mean, were you stoned? Were you blindfolded and ignore who put his tongue into your mouth?”

“I didn't mention tongues”

“Did he kiss you without tongue?”

“Well, no, I mean, both with and without”

“OHMYGOD”

“Why? I didn't think it was such an important detail”

“The detail is not important you asshole! I mean, he kissed you. You and Eddie really kissed”

“Yeah”

“And when? What happened? How did it go? Come on, tell me!”

“Didn't you say details are not important?”

“Don't be your usual pain in the ass self and tell me everything”

I spill the beans, also because there's nothing else I can do. I start from the beginning, that is from my arrival in San Diego.

“Did he kiss you on the beach right in front of Jerry Cantrell? Tell me yes”

“No”

I tell her about our touristic tour of the city.

“Did he kiss you at Subway's? On the bench at the park?”

“No”

I add details about the night at the disco I hadn't told her before.

“Did he kiss you while you were doing The Hustle?”

“Noo!”

I try to cut the too long story short by quickly recapping the day with Dina, the show and the after show beach party.

“Did he kiss you backstage? On the beach under the moonlight while the others were skinny dipping in the ocean?”

“No”

“Goodnight kiss when you got back home then?”

“No, Meg”

“Angie, I'm losing my patience, when the fuck did he kiss you?”

“I'm getting there!”

“Just tell me, please”

“Umph... at the bus station before I left”

“You mean... he had two whole days and he kissed you a minute before saying goodbye?”

“Yes...”

“What a dickhead”

“Well, he felt like doing that there and then!”

“Yeah but he's a dick, he had you suffer until the last second”

“That's not true”

“Yes, it is”

“I didn't suffer, they were two fantastic days! I mean, good, two very good days, nice”

“And the kiss? What was it like?”

“Well..”

“Fantastic? Or good? Or just another nice kiss?” she teases me quoting an old conversation of ours about a totally different kiss with someone else.

“It wasn't nice, it was... it was... I don't know, I wouldn't even know how to describe it, it's like I lost my senses for a few minutes”

“Oh Angie”

“I mean, not all senses, not like anesthesia, because I felt everything extremely well”

“Hahaha I can imagine”

“It was... it was electricity, heat, confusion, wind...”

“Wind?” Meg asks and I almost laugh at the coincidence...

“Yeah, much like when the wind makes you lose control while you're walking and blows so heavily against your face that takes your breath away for a second and you almost feel it in your stomach... Like when you dive down on a rollercoaster”

“You took a nice ride on Eddie The Rollercoaster then”

“But that's different because you're already expecting it. This instead... it was more like when you're going down the stairs and take a false step and without realising you tumble and find yourself with your ass on the ground. But I never got to the ground. Eddie was kissing me and I kept falling and falling and that's it”

“And what about Tom?”

“Tom?”

“Jones? Did you hear him?”

“No”

“Hahaha thank god, I'd be seriously worried then!”

“I heard Dave?”

“Dave? Your ex?”

“Gahan, from Depeche Mode. I even saw him dancing actually...”

“Did you and Vedder exchange psychedelics together with saliva?”

“I was present and absent at the same time, I was there, but in a different form, a different state. Like evaporated water or melted ice. More the first, because I felt light. I was evaporating. Well, maybe sublimating would be more correct...”

“And you still have the guts to claim you've got no feelings for Eddie?” Meg interrupts my nonsense pondering with something that makes even less sense.

“I... I have feelings but, well, it's just... I don't really know what they are yet”

“You don't really know?”

“I'm... trying to figure out!”

“I think you can see it from fucking space what the fuck you're feeling for him, Angie”

“Well, I'm the limited one then because I don't get it”

“You know exactly what those feelings are, you just don't want to admit it”

“It's all a big mess”

“Why? Are you afraid? Is that why you're avoiding him?”

“I'm not avoiding him...”

“You literally asked me to tell him you were not here, how do you call it?”

“I'm just postponing a conversation none of us wants to have right now”

Sure, he called you ten times 'cause he doesn't want to talk to you at all, it seems logic”

“He doesn't want to but he feels he has to, 'cause he's a nice guy”

“Nice guy? Excuse me, what do you think he wants to tell you?”

“What do you think? That it was all a mistake and we should forget it”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”

“Why are you laughing?”

“Hahaha call me silly, but I think he wants to tell you he can't wait to take another ride on your rollercoaster” Meg mimes a rollercoaster with her hand, which lands straight against my right hip.

“Stop it!”

“Or on your windmills” she goes on and pretends to kiss me, then blows against my face.

“You're not funny”

“Well you're making me laugh a lot, you know”

“Eddie and I... it can't be! It's impossible” I get up and walk towards the hallway, my roommate tagging along as she really can't understand.

“Why?”

“Because that's the way it is”

“That's not an answer”

“Because... because we've got nothing to do with each other”

“Oh Jesus...” Meg sighs, walking past me right on the doorway of my room and diving face down on my bed.

“I'm not telling he's better than me. Let's forget for a moment the fact that he is. I'm not saying it's because I am... I don't know, a dusky-capped flycatcher and he's an Atlantic yellow-nosed albatross. It's because we're actually two very different things, like... like... a bollard and a poem by Robert Frost”

“What?” Meg looks up from my duvet and gives me a puzzled look.

“An obliterated bus ticket and... the rings of Saturn”

“Is it a bad sign that in both statements I can easily say who is what for you?”

“You're getting into my logic”

“Please, let me out! You've already given me headache” Meg stretches her arms towards me as I'm still standing in the center of the room, trying to convince my audience that consists in one single person.

“What would Eddie do with me?”

“I don't know, maybe writing a poem by Robert Frost on a bollard with a permanent marker?”

“Using my terrible metaphors against me won't change my mind”

“Eddie knows exactly what he wants to do with you and he already gave you a preview from what I heard”

“Eddie confused friendship with something else, that's all”

“No, it's you who are mistaking a guy in love for a confused person”

“In love?! Hahahahah please!”

“It's your brain that evaporated first, Angie, let me tell you”

“I bet Eddie thinks he's made a stupid mistake” I suggest trying to shake her hand but she shooed mine away.

“Of course he is! You're avoiding him. If I kissed a guy and he ignored me for days, I'd think that too”

“I say he thought of it in spite of my following actions”

“I say you just keep repeating this story to try and convince yourself, whereas you know exactly there's another possibility”

“Of course I know” Meg managed to make me shut up, it takes me a while to reply.

“Ha! See?”

“The two possibilities coexist”

“Exactly”

“And will keep coexisting and being both valid, at least until I don't... observe the system”

“What system?”

“This portion of universe”

“The fuck are you talking about, Angie?”

“Quantum physics. Do you know Schroedinger's cat paradox?” I ask her as I sit beside her on my bed.

“The cat that's dead or alive in the box?”

“Actually, it's both dead and alive until you don't open the box”

“So are you the cat? Or Eddie?”

“Eddie kissed me, then I left and haven't seen or heard of him ever since. It's like I closed him in the box, right? And now we're in a quantum superposition situation, that is two possibilities overlapping”

“Remorseful Eddie and Eddie in love?”

“Yeah... well, more or less”

“The cat is both alive or dead until you check inside the box, so in the same way...”

“Eddie's both remorseful and, ehm, infatuated until I talk to him”

“That's obvious”

“So you must have understood why I wanna talk to him as late as possible”

“Actually... no”

“Oh shit, Meg, follow me! It's Schroedinger's kiss, right? In this scenario, the kiss is both something with a meaning and a mistake that doesn't mean anything”

“Ok...”

“And if I don't talk to Eddie, it'll go on being like that, right?”

“Right”

“And maybe half an alternative is all I've got left, isn't it? What if it's the best I can expect? I'd better hold it, don't you think?”

“You mean you're not calling him because you want to postpone your disappointment?”

“Bingo!”

“And couldn't you just say it like that instead of giving me a headache with this quantum stuff?” she jokes shoving me.

“You forgot someone here has difficulties in admitting things in a linear way...”

“If you're afraid of being disappointed... it means you've got hope!”

“Of course I've got hope! It'd be much easier if I hadn't! But no, there's always a small bitchy part of me who hopes for all these absurdities to become true, that's my problem”

“Once you become Eddie's girlfriend, you'll laugh about all this, Angie” Meg shakes her head and gets up from my bed, walks up to the photocollage Eddie made for me and points right at him in one of the pictures, which captures my whole attention for a good couple of minutes.

“Trying to raise my hopes won't help me”

“So what? Is it better to wallow yourself in a 50% possibility?”

“Still better than 100% certainty”

“Depends on what's the certainty”

“The only logical one”

“And Eddie? Don't you think about him?”

“What do you believe I've been thinking for two days? And who are we talking about?”

“I mean, quantum shit aside, and leaving out the eventual sentimental consequences, you two are friends and friends deserve sincerity and respect”

“Yeah, I know...”

“A friend has been looking for you, for days, and you avoid him with lies, do you think it's a correct behaviour?”

“No, I didn't mean to justify myself, I was only explaining the way I think”

“You think with your ass. Whatever is the reason he wants to talk to you, you're disrespecting him”

“It's hard...”

“Doing the right thing is never easy.” Meg gets out of my room again, then comes back a minute later “Now take the phone, dial the number of the hotel in Santa Rosa Eddie gave to me and open this fucking box” Meg physically puts the phone in my hands once again, together with the notepad he scribbled on while she was talking to Ed.

“Now?”

“Now”

“Now I have to go and get dressed, and go to class”

“Call him while you're getting dressed, it's a chordless phone, no chord, the word says it, you can take it anywhere with you, even in the bathroom”

“Listen, I promise I'll call him later”

“Bullshit, I don't believe you”

“Really, I'll call him by the end of the day, for real, you convinced me”

“You'll call him tonight in front of Grace and I. On speakerphone. Fuck, Grace will literally lose her mind once she'll know you and Eddie kissed haha. Perfect timing for our girls night!”

“Oh err, by the way, I wanted to tell you I won't be here tonight unfortunately”

“What do you mean you won't be here?! What's with this bullshit?”

“I'm busy”

“I was joking about speakerphone! Listen, I've just thought what we can do: Grace calls Stone to have a chat, then you and I chime in and ask where the others are and turn it into a group call like the other night. So technically you'll speak with Eddie, but not alone”

“I'm going out with Dave”

“So you can break the ice and the deadlock you're in. And the kiss, you can talk about it another time, maybe in person... Sorry, I didn't understand who you're going out with”

“Dave”

“Gahan?”

“Haha no, Grohl! We're going to a concert”

“You mean you're afraid the cat is dead so you just go and take another?”

“Hahaha but no!”

“Resurrecting a cat you had already buried? Really?”

“It's not what you think”

“Uh so you're not going out with your ex, while the guy who kissed you pines for you?”

“No, because it's not a date! And no one is pining...”

“At this point, why don't you call Jerry too? You could have dinner together tomorrow”

“Ok listen, I'm gonna have a shower now, if you wanna know the truth just wait for me and I'll tell you, if you don't well just keep on making fun of me, as you wish”

“Uhmm both things are tempting, I think I'll just stop talking to you to have them coexist so I can enjoy them both in my fucking quantum system” she jokes as I leave the room and flips her the bird.

“Fuck you, Meg”

****************************************************************************************************************************

It must be cool I think. Having your workplace right outside your home. It'd be my dream. Or maybe not. On one hand it'd be more practical, I'd never be late, well, almost never; but on the othe r hand I'd have the impression I'd never had a real break, my head would be on work even when I'm not working. You look outside your window or get out of home in the afternoon and there is the minimart sign, watching you, and you start thinking about the upcoming deliveries, the new displays to assemble and the technician to call for the fridge. God no! In this case the proximity turns out as something positive, since I simply cross the road and I'm already pressing my finger on the buzzer of the McDonald-Pacifico residence. My finger basically starts to atrophy on the fucking button because after a quarter of an hour nobody has answered yet. It was today, wasn't it? Maybe Meg left for a while. The lights are on though...

“No point ringing Grace, it's broken” I'm so focused on the fourth floor's windows that I don't notice Angie showing up on the doorway.

“Hey, welcome back... ex friend who ditches on us at the very last moment!” I mess her hair up and give her a quick hug.

“Thanks. Did Meg tell you?”

“Yeah, she anticipated you'd have ditched us tonight”

“Did she also tell you it's for a good cause?”

“Sure, unless I wouldn't even talk to you right now!”

“Did she tell you only this?” she asks, suddenly lowering her voice, who knows why.

Right in that moment a car horn honks twice behind our backs and we turned around simultaneously.

“I see, your date has arrived”

“That is, my companion in misfortune. Gotta go. Have a good time and easy with Meg's puryfying masks!” Angie rolls her eyes and smiles at me before walking away to the car, waiting for her on the opposite side of the road.

I enter from the glass door left open by Angie and take the elevator. I'm sorry she won't be with us tonight but I feel a lot of curious anectodes will come out and we'll still discuss them in the future with her too. In today's menu, Meg promised juicy updates about Angie and her but she didn't tell me anything in advance. We'll see! By the way, she asked me news about Stone and I but there's not that much to say. She keeps asking but, I mean, doesn't she realize we're not even in the same state right now? The flame is neither on or off, it's just on stand-by. I get out of the elevator and walk through the long hallway, kind of creepy because of a flickering lightbulb. I turn around the corner and basically find myself face to face to Meg, who's leaving the apartment with her purse in her hand.

“Don't tell me you're ditching me too and the evening is cancelled because in that case I won't talk to you and your heartbreaker roommate anymore”

“Hahaha no, I'm just going outside to wait for the pizza guy, because now the buzzer's broken too in this shitty building”

“Yeah, I met Angie who opened the door for me or I'd still be out in the cold”

“Come on, get in, he should be here in a minute, I'll be back soon. And prepare yourself psychologically cause I've got a lot of absurd stuff to tell you!”

“I can say we won't watch the movie” I smile as I enter the apartment, whereas Meg walks away, buttoning up her jacket.

“We won't need the movie, trust me!”

Salt lick by Tad is the first record of the evening I decide to put on, although the evening hasn't started yet, considering Meg's still outside waiting for the pizza guy. I look outside the window to see if someone's coming, but nothing for now. I sit on the couch and start playing with the beer cans that are on the coffee table, I line them up, first in rows of two, then of three until one is left out and I open it for me. I get up again and walk around the house to waste some time. Actually I don't just look around, I go straight to one point, the fridge in the kitchen, and start checking it for something new, which I immediately find. A magnet with a panda, an orca and a smiling sun with a hat, surrounded by palms and the writing SAN DIEGO. The magnet itself holds a retro-style postcard, showing a beach at sunset, a line of parked old cars, each one with a surfboard over the roof, and four silhouettes of surfers, two guys and two girls. I knew she'd have addes something to her collection. I'm examining the long shadows of the surfers on the postcard when I'm startled by the sudden ring of the phone. I wait a little before answering, after an inner debate, I'm not at my place after all... But what if it's important? What if it's the pizza place calling to say they're late?

“Hello?”

“Oh thank god! I thought I had to sit through a whole conversation with Meg and Angie about shit before I could finally talk to you” the voice on the other hand only makes me regret I didn't answer at the first ring.

“Hey Stone”

“Hi, love. What's up? Are you still sober? Do you already have nail polish on your feet?”

Great.

Couldn't he just be sarcastic? Why does he have to add things? Two sentences, two uncomfortable things. I'm already changing my mind, I'd have better not answer.

“Hehe no. I mean, yes, I'm sober and no, my toenails are... are just like before, everything's the same”

“Are you ok? You sound weird... Is Meg threatening you with eyebrow tweezers? If you can't speak don't risk it, tell me something in a secret code, something that would sound absolutely natural in a conversation with your boyfriend like They shot Tommy in the face so his mother couldn't give him an open coffin at the funeral...”

“Hehe no, it's alright, I'm just a little lost. Meg's not here anyway, she's outside waiting for the pizza delivery guy. Broken buzzer”

“Yeah, I guess this sounds even more natural. I'll call 911”

“What about you? Aren't you playing tonight?”

“Yeah, actually we're in the dressing room, that is also some kind of extension of the toilet”

“Or vice versa” I can barely hear it but the voice is unmistakable.

“Or vice versa, like Eddie says, we still didn't understand”

“Look! Here's Mike Patton's phone number!” Jeffrey chimes in too in this messy phone conversation.

“Sorry babe, I gotta hang up and call him immediately. It surely is his number, after all there's no more reliable source than a writing on the toilet wall in a club in Sacramento”

“Wasn't it the dressing room?” I chuckle and for a moment I think about asking him for that number too. Would he take it bad?

“I told you, we still haven't understood!”

“Faith No More played there, it can't be a bad place”

“Mr Bungle I think. Jokes aside, it's not bad, I think it's one of the coolest places we've been so far, although it's as big as your apartment”

“And it's packed!” Jeff shouts, probably swallowing the receiver.

“I have to agree with what the caveman said. It's full of people... who are here for Alice in Chains of course”

“How do you know? Don't put yourself down like that” I try and console him, although I know he doesn't need it.

“I'm not putting myself down, it's the truth. 99% they don't know us, we have to conquer them”

“So go and conquer them!” I encourage him and only after a while a realize that it might sound like I want to end the call now. But I don't want to. Really! I'm perfectly at ease in this conversation, when he doesn't remind me once every five minutes that he's my boyfriend.

“We'll do that, dear. What about pizza? Not arrived yet? And alcohol? Are you still sober?”

“Haha your friends will think I'm some kind of alcoholic! Anyway, no pizza. And now that I think about it, I'm so hungry!”

“Come on, resist. I couldn't eat anything right now, my stomach's in knots, you know it's always like that for me before I get on a stage”

“Hehe yeah, you told me. Don't be nervous”

“I'm not nervous, I'm realistic. I do my job but there are other four variables for the success of the show, you know what I mean”

“Hehe four variables in flesh and bones, who disturb you while you're calling me?”

“Exactly. But they left me alone now, they must have gone searching for the other guitarist since we're on in like half an hour”

“Talking about sobriety...”

“You get it. Anyway would it sound too sappy and inappropriate if I told you that I miss you and wish you were here with me?”

“Yes, totally inappropriate, Stone” I have the feeling I held my breath before answering. What if my silence was too long? Would he believe it was just a dramatic pause?

“Ok, I won't tell you then. Oops, one variable is coming back. Eddie's here, we must stop with our extreme phone sex for now, sorry babe”

“Fuck... Stone!” I hear Vedder mumble something that sounds like embarrassment, whereas Stone giggles in the receiver.

“I was clearly joking, do you think that if I had hardcore sex on the phone with my girlfriend I'd tell you?”

My girlfriend, yeah, let's say it again, maybe the people in the back didn't know already.

“Leave Eddie alone, don't make him uncomfortable!”

“What? Now?” Stone's speaking but clearly not to me “What do you have to tell her? Uh ok, wait! Sorry Grace, Eddie wants to talk to you a sec, I'll put him on”

“He wants to talk... to me?” I don't think I'm the object of his interest, but it's probably the absent girl of the night. As far as Meg told me, neither Angie's surprise visit or her change in style were enough to wake the handsome surfer up. And she's kinda avoiding him now. And I totally understand her, I mean, I know her and she'll surely act as if it's nothing because 'what, I don't like Eddie' and 'I went to San Diego to see the band' and shit like that. She was surely expecting something from this but he didn't do anything. She must be so sad. What if his ex girlfriend got in the way? That would be a heavy blow, even for the always (apparently) indifferent Angie.

“If he tries hardcore phone sex with you, tell me, ok?”

“Hahaha shut up and let me talk to him!”

“Have a good time, love”

“You too and... break a leg!” why does he always have to add something in the end?!

“Ehm hi Grace” Eddie's deep voice sounds a little higher than normal, it must be that he's uncomfortable. Or impatient? Surely he wants to know about Angie. And for like the 18th time he'll be told she's not here. And it serves him right! I mean, it's ok if you're shy and your head's full of doubts but here it's about keep a girl hanging, a girl who clearly has a crush on him. Because I wanna believe it's just doubts and he's not leading her on on purpose just to be a dick, because in that case he'd be a real piece of shit.

“Hi Eddie, how's it going? What's up?” now I'm gonna keep him on the phone for an hour asking him random questions, I wanna see how long it takes before he asks me about Angie.

“Oh, everything's fine, except for stage fright, but that's normal for me” aw no, it wouldn't be fair, turture him like that.

“Don't worry, you'll do great. I guess you wanna talk to Angie, right?” also because I've just had the greatest idea. The perfect system to punish him.

“Uhm well, yeah, actually... it looks like she's pretty impossible to find lately”

“And you keep on not finding her, she's not here tonight”

“Oh really? Great, hehe, I was expecting that...” he nervously answers and I'm almost sorry to do what I'm about to do. Almost.

“You're a little unlucky, Eddie”

“Yeah, I noticed that. Well, I'll try and call her at the diner. I didn't want to disturb her at work, but it looks like it's the only way to actually speak to her so...”

“Oh but she's not at Roxy's”

“Working the nightshift at Westlake's? On a Saturday?” Eddie sounds honestly confused and I feel like I'm playing like a cat and mouse.

“Hehe no, Eddie, she's not working. No justification for ditching us, that little bitch!”

“Oh! I see, and... ehm, where-”

“And ditching us for a guy!”

“What?” I think I caught the exact moment the jealousy switch snapped.

“You don't ever ditch friends, for any guy, don't you think?”

“What guy?”

“Uhm yeah, you know him! Her ex, sort of, the one who plays the drums...”

“Dave?” the sound of his voice as he pronounces that name scaries me: red alert!

“Yeah, from what I know, there're going to a concert”

“I see. Thank you, I'll get Stone for you, ok? Bye”

“Ok, by-... bye Ed?” as I reply a loud thud blows out my eardrum. I dope he didn't throw the receiver on Stone's head. Anyway, now we'll see. If this doesn't rock the boat then I don't know what to do with that guy!

“Excuse me, babe, what did you tell my singer exactly? He just stormed out like a fury...” he doesn't sound like someone who's just been hit by a phone, so I relax.

“Nothing, he wanted to talk to Angie but...”

“Let me guess: she's not there”

“Exactly”

“Ok, I couldn't care less but please, let him talk to her. I like it when he's aggressive on stage but he's starting to be intractable off stage too...”

“It's not our fault if they never find each other...” I innocently reply. I don't feel like sharing my evil intrigues with Stone, although I think he'd appreciate them.

“Whatever, who cares. Let's go back to us. You wanted to know what I'm wearing, right?”

“Haha no. And by the way, Meg's just arrived with pizza, I gotta go” my friend finally gets back home with two steamy hot pizza boxes and puts them on the coffee table, right in front of me.

“HI STONE!” she yells in my direction “Did I interrupt something?” she adds in a low voice.

After some more small talk the phone call ends, I hang up and silently look at Meg as she takes off her jacket and throws herself on the couch right next to me, opens the boxes and a beer can.

“What's up? Why do you have that smile plastered on your face? Does Stone have this effect on you?” she winks.

“Haha no, my friend. Stone's got nothing to do with it this time. I'm the one who had a certain effect. And not on him. On someone else”

“On who?”

“I think I set a good mechanism in motion, this time I have to compliment myself” I add patting myself on my shoulder.

“How many did you have already?” she asks suspiciously pointing at the beer I'm holding with my right hand.

“This is the first and only one! Anyway, let me explain to you why I'm a genius...”

**************************************************************************************************************************

“There she is! She's arrived!” Grace finally moves away from the windowsill and closes the window shut.

“It was about time, at least you'll stop letting the cold in. It's already freezing here...” I mumble as I rearrange the blanket over my shoulders.

“Technically, it's not the cold getting in but the heat going out, anyway...”

“You don't need to act like the Angie of the day, the original's here” I joke as I get up from the couch.

“Thank god, the waiting's killing me. I can't wait to solve this mess” Grace has been pacing the living room back and forth for a few hours, basically with no interruptions.

“Ok, come on, it's not your fault. I mean, not only. I could have been more specific and told you what happened between Eddie and Angie”

“What does it even mean? You didn't have to tell me anything, after all it's all Angie's business. It's me, I shouldn't have intruded. What have I done?”

“You had good intentions and did it for a good cause”

“Sure, making Eddie jealous to make him come clean about his feeling once and for all... Unfortunately he already did in San Diego and what did I do? I told him his girl was out with another guy!”

“And not just an average guy!” I know, I'm twisting a knife in her too, but I can't help making fun of Grace. She's so sweet in her feeling like shit.

“Her fucking ex! How long does it take to her to come upstairs?” the girl looks at the watch, as if she was timing our friend.

“You know she never takes the elevator, it depends on how much breath she's got left after the concert”

“And what if Eddie fucked another chick for revenge? What if he goes back to his ex?” Grace goes on desperately, while the noise of the key in the lock is the signal of Angie's arrival.

“Here she is, thank god. So we can just solve this thing and you can relax, I can't stand you anymore” I can barely end the sentence when Grace has already launched herself towards the doorway.

“ANGIE, I FUCKED UP!”

“Hello to you too, Grace... what did you do? Did Meg go too far with waxing?” Angie gives a more than perplexed look at the girl, who's basically cornered her and pushed her against the closed door.

“Haha no, none of that”

“I WISH, ANGIE, I WISH IT WAS SOMETHING LIKE THAT!” Grace yells at her face.

“Stone would liked that for sure” I joke as I come close to them.

“MEG, PLEASE, THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT MOMENT”

“May one ask what the hell's going on here? What did you smoke? And most of all, why didn't you wait for me?”

“Come here, Angie, I'm gonna tell you everything, Grace's not exactly sane and lucid right now” I put my arm around Angie's shoulders and automatically drag them both to the living room and to the couch.

“I fucked up and it's all my fault. But it can't go like this, I promise that if something bad happens I'll go talk to him” Grace takes Angie's hand and my roommate eyes her more and more suspiciously.

“Him... who?”

“Eddie, who else?” she reveals and Angie removes instantly her hand.

“Why? What happened with Eddie?”

“What happened is that-” I try and start a clear explanation but anxiety in person interrupts me.

“We'll tell you ok? But you need to keep calm. Whatever happens, we'll deal with it together, ok?”

“Ok... can I take off my coat first or...?”

“Oh yeah, sure! Sure, take it off, make yourself comfortable”

“Sure, Angie! Make yourself at home hehe” I can't help myself, I specifically try to release the tension.

“Meg, don't make fun of me, please, I'm already feeling like shit like this” Grace puts and Angie warily takes off her coat and her boots.

“Why do you feel like shit? Can you please tell me, what did you do? And what's Eddie got to do with it?”

“If you both keep calm and quiet for a minute, I'm gonna tell you”

“Is that all?” Angie shrugs after listening to the whole story.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN IS THAT ALL? CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND? HE THINKS YOU WENT OUT WITH DAVE!” Grace is surprised by Angie's indifference. Of course she had to act like she doesn't care.

“Well, that's the truth, isn't it?”

“But you didn't... go out in the true sense of the word” Grace retorts.

“Don't play dumb, Angie. He must have thought it was a date” I scold her.

“A real date” Grace adds.

“A full blown date”

“It's not that he must have thought... it's that I told him. Well, I suggested it, but I basically told him”

“So what?” Angie's shrugs are almost more irritating than Grace's guilty conscience.

“So what?? He must be angry!” I blurt out trying to have a reaction from her.

“You should have heard him, it seemed like he turned into ice all of a sudden. He scared me” Grace nods, whereas Angie shakes her head no.

“Please, like he cares...”

“Angie, you don't need to act, I told her about the kiss” I explain as I point at Grace, who keeps nodding yes with no reason.

“I supposed so. Anyway, as I already said, I don't think it's gonna upset him that much” Angie gets up with the coat in her hand, grabs the boots with her other hand and leaves the living room just like that.

“Suuure... he just looked like someone who's ready to kill the first human being passing by!” Grace temporarily borrows Stone's sarcasm uniform to react to Angie's fake indifference “What is she doing now? Is she leaving?” she later asks me.

“Let her put her pjs on, than we'll tease her some more”

When Angie shows up again later, walking through the living room to go to the kitchen, she finds us here, exactly where she left us: I'm on one couch and Grace on the other one, staring at her in disbelief.

“What's wrong?” she asks annoyed, with a glass of water in her hand, ready to put it on her nightstand for the night.

“You gotta call Eddie” Grace says before me.

“Why?”

“Because you have to tell him the truth” I speak first this time.

“You already did, didn't you? I mean, you spared me a long story, thank you Grace” Angie mimics a toast towards our friend.

“Shut up! You can't make me feel guilty forever for this, now you call him and tell him the truth” I kinda like Grace's aggressive passivity (or passive aggressiveness?).

“And you tell him the rest too” I add, just to make things clear.

“The rest? Which rest?”

“Well, for example, you could tell him what you feel for him and what did you feel when he kissed, using the same word you told me”

“You're crazy”

“Uh! I wanna hear the words too!” Grace gives up her desperate persona for a second and gets into gossip mode.

“Ok, just tell him what's going on with Dave and that the kiss was great, but you're in a difficult moment now and don't know what you want and you have to think about it”

“I don't have to think about shit”

“Just tell him you miss him!” Grace suggests again.

“I don't miss him”

“Angie, for fuck's sake!” I get up yelling so loud that I almost scare myself “I don't give a shit about what you'll tell him, tell him anything you want, but call him. Just call him so you can put an end to this mess”

“Ok... ok... I'll call him now! You don't need to all emotional...” Angie finally gives in, puts the glass on the coffee table and takes the phone right next to it.

“Oh finally!” Grace claps and winks at me.

“And put it on speakerphone”

“I don't need speakerphone if I leave him a message” Angie retorts as she quickly dials the number by heart.

“Hahaha yeaaaaaah, sure!” I steal the phone from my very clever roommate.

“What's wrong?”

“On the phone table at the entrance you can find Eddie's hotel phone number, you gotta call him there, so you can actively talk to him” I explain better, since she's playing dumb.

“And put it on speakerphone!” Grace can't wait for the call to happen and is sitting on the edge of the couch.

“They had a show tonight, do you think he's in his hotel room at this time?” she asks looking at us alternatively as if we were stupid.

“Sure” I calmly reply.

“Alone in his room, suffering for you” Grace adds.

“Punching the wall”

“And he hung a picture of Dave on said wall”

“And getting drunk to forget you”

“Alone and drunk with sore knuckles”

“Ok ok, I got the idea!” Angie flails her arms and walks towards the hallway, then comes back with the infamous notepad.

“Come on, call him!” Grace tells her.

“In a minute... but without speakerphone”

“But with speakerphone!” I'm sorry, it's a deal-breaker, babe.

“Umph...” Angie puffs loudly and dials the number, staring at the phone longer than she should before pressing the dial button “I guess he's not in his room anywa-... Ehm ehm, hello? Eddie? Yeah, hi, it's me” Angie's eyes are purely terrified, Grace's ones are heartshaped. Mine, instead, are fixed on the phone resting against Angie's ear and spot the speakerphone button, so that I can promptly press it as she speaks.

**********************************************************************************************************************************************

Didn't she say no fucking musicians anymore? Well, I'm a musician too, but that's different! And there must be some kind of justice, if it's no to me it's no to him too, what the fuck. Anyway she said they were just friends to behave, what to tell me. But it was much simpler than that. She just didn't care. But, you know, it's ok. Feelings are not necessarily reciprocated. I mean, somebody, a writer, I can't remember the name, used to say that the only true love is the unrequited one. Bummer. By the way, I can accept being ignored and dumped, but you can't kiss me and then don't give a fuck about me and go out with another guy without telling me. I mean, you can, you know, you can do whatever you want, you don't owe me anything, you never promised me anything and, even if you did, you'd have the right to change your mind and tell me to go fuck myself as you want. You can, but I can't help feeling disappointed. Bullshit. I'm fucking mad and if I had my hands on Dave right now I'd fucking punch him. I mean, I'd fucking punch anyone. That's why I decided to take a cab back to the hotel right after the concert. The show wasn't bad, anger's always a good stage fuel. We were great and the more or less thirty people who actually gave a shit about our set too, enjoyed a show they won't easily forget. How easily will I forget her? And her lips? And the delicious way she kisses? And the small twitches of her closed eyelids I spyed on while we were kissing? And how she held me tight? God, can't you hear yourself?! Wake up! She didn't call you back and went out with someone else, isn't it enough to understand you have to take your mind off her?

The croaky phone ring startles me. It must be Jeff who wants to know if I got here safe. I sit on the bed and pick up the receiver.

“Hello”

“Hello?” she says after nervously clearing her throat.

She.

Damn.

“Angie, it's you”

“Eddie? Yeah, it's me” I know it's you, it wasn't a fucking question.

“I can't believe it, you do exist then? I was starting to think you were an abstact entity”

“Hehe yeah, sorry, it's just I was kinda busy, with work and the rest”

“Yeah, I've been told about your schedule” I coldly reply, I mean, I try and seem cold, but I most likely just seem enbittered.

“You know, whenever I could call you I thought it wasn't the right moment and whenever the right moment came, I never had the time or was too tired. I'm inexcusable”

“Never mind” are you calling me now only to tell me you have a new boyfriend? Yeah, that must be the reason. Grace must have told her about our conversation and now she felt like she had to explain . But there's nothing to explain, everything seems pretty clear to me.

“I'm sorry”

“I said never mind!” I repeat, maybe too vehemently, since Angie keeps silent for long seconds.

“Grace told me you had called tonight too and I thought what the hell and just went for it and called you, I mean it's now or never at this point. I tried and I didn't think I'd find you in your hotel room by now”

“And you're busy now too, I see”

“W-why?”

“The speakerphone...”

“Ah! No, it's just... I'm tidying up my room and getting ready for bed. How... how arre things going? How did the concert go?” in a different situation, the image of her in a bed would have had a totally different effect on me.

“Good”

“Good as in you're good or the show was good?”

“Both” I'm feeling great.

“Good!”

“Good, yeah”

More silence.

“Is it... is it maybe a bad moment?”

“No, why?” it's a wonderful moment, best moment of my life.

“I don't know... you don't talk much”

“Did you just find out? Looks like you've been kinda distracted lately” and why should you have paid attention anyway if you're not interested in me?

“No, I wasn't. Anyway it's not the number of spoken words but more the way you speak them” ok, she really wants to hear me say that I'm jealous and she broke my heart. Can't we just ignore it, like she's been doing for almost three days?

“Why? Which way is it?”

“I don't know... weird... maybe you're tired”

“Yeah, it can be, concerts can be exhausting, once the adrenaline drops you kinda collapse too” but my adrenaline is still at the highest, I could go literally walk back to Sacramento and then get back here and I'd still be pumped up. I could walk up to Seattle and kick him in the ass.

“Hehe you're right. And it's not that different from watching a show from the audience. I was at a concert tonight and I'm basically dead” ok, she's starting to shift the conversation to slowly get to the point.

“Uh you've been to a concert?” I decide to play along, I mean, let's just rip the band-aid right off, right? The sooner she tells me what she wants to say, the sooner this stupid phone call will end. I missed her voice though...

“Yeah, I had such a good time but I'll keep it in mind next time someone suggests moshing” and it's not her fault if she doesn't like me anyway. But I can't help getting angry if I think about her in the mosh pit together with that jerk.

“What band did you see?” better focus on something else.

“A whole female band, they're great! And they're from San Diego, sure you know them. They're called L7”

“Sure I do know them, they're old friends! My old band opened for them more than once too” I am in California and they're in Seattle, ironic.

“I know, the bass player told me”

“Did you meet Jennifer? Wait, you getting to know a band? You must have been in a very good mood tonight” talking about old friends doesn't make me forget she's with another man now.

“Well, I can tell you I was basically forced to do that, that was the reason why I went”

“Forced?”

“Yeah, Dave came to the diner to beg me on his knees” and you tell me? As if that silly serenade scene I witnessed wasn't enough...

“And you couldn't say no to him, I guess...”

“He trapped me! Actually, he and Jennifer are basically dating, although not officially, I mean, they went out together a few times. She's busy with her band and isn't calling him and he doesn't want to push, but at the same time wants to see her more. When he learned they'd have played at the Off Ramp he thought he had to go but didn't want to go alone and look creepy or pushy, at least that's what he thought. And he couldn't stand the idea of being ignored, he had no idea what she was thinking and she might as well not give a shit about it the whole night. So, in the end he asked a few people to go with him not to draw attention” Angie talks non-stop and I'm not understanding shit, oh well, I understood what I needed to, but I'm almost afraid to ask for further explanation.

“Dave and Jennifer?”

“Yeah, they're seeing each other. And I think they're a cute couple”

“And he went to see the show with a few people and you were one of these...”

“Well, actually Kurt ditched him 'cause he had to meet with a girl. No idea what kind of girl can stand such an unbearable guy, but... whatever. Krist is out of town. You know, Dave doesn't know many people here yet, he only had his roommate and I left. I took Brian from the diner with me too. If only I had known the asshole gets into the mosh pit keeping his elbows high, I wouldn't have invited him!”

“You were not alone then?”

“No, luckily Brian went to elbow the wrong guy and learned a lesson”

“No, I mean you and Dave... I thought... fuck, I feel like an idiot, I'm sorry” because I am, I'm an idiot, an asshole.

“Dave and I?”

“I thought you were going out with him. I thought you were with him. Again” I find myself standing beside the bed.

“Hahaha what? No!”

“But Grace said that-”

“Grace drew the wrong conclusion. Or maybe you misunderstood”

“Yeah, it was me, I misunderstood, I didn't understand shit. I never understand shit, especially when it's about you, Angie” am I still angry? Am I happy? Am I confused? I don't even know.

“What... what do you mean?”

“I mean... you know, you didn't call me after... and then Grace tells me you went out with... that... I thought you didn't want to know about it”

“About what?”

“About me” who else?

“Hahaha and why?” why is it so difficult to talk to this girl?

“I don't know... maybe because of what happened that morning, before you left...”

“Eddie... don't worry. Nothing happened, ok?”

Nothing? Why nothing? The fuck are you talking about? I'd better sit back down on the bed.

“Well, I wouldn't call it nothing...”

“Ok, let's pretend it never happened then”

Are you fucking kidding me?

“It doesn't seem doable to me, Angie”

“Well, it did happen then, but can't we just forget it?” she goes on nervously but trying to sound determined.

“Can you forget it? I can't think about anything else since you left” I confess and I hear a strange noise from the receiver right after that, like a moan, a choked meow.

“I don't... I don't know, Eddie”

“I know I made a mistake, I'll never forgive myself for that”

“That's not bad, you're making it worse and bigger than it actually is! As I said, nothing happened to me”

“The other morning, at the bus station, I shouldn't have kissed you”

“Exactly”

“I should have kissed you way before”

“Eddie, don't... what?”

“In three days, I could have kissed you a thousand time and I didn't because I'm a wimp. And even before that, I had like a million occasions to do that. I should have kissed you on the Space Needle, with that badass view. Or on Pike Place's roof terrace. Or while you were trying on that red hat at the mirror and weren't looking at me and you were so beautiful. Or on Cam's porch at new year's eve, while you were telling me about Schopenhauer, hedgehogs and Woodstock and you smelled like oranges and I'd have listened to you for hours”

“Also because you were high” she remarks and if she really thinks she can lighten the mood and break my speech she's fucking wrong.

“No, at that point, not yet. Anyway I could as well give you a kiss together with chocolate the night you came to the minimart in your pjs to buy pads and you were ashamed. Or when you found me alone at the gallery and you brought me food, whereas I'd have loved for you to feed me with kisses. Not to mention when I crashed at your place and slept with you and woke up in your fucking arms and instead of waking you up with a kiss, as you do with a princess, I grabbed your shoulder and shook it a little. What a jerk!”

“Eddie I... maybe we shouldn't discuss this on the phone, I mean...”

“I know, I know, that's why I'm saying I made a mistake. Because if I had kissed you before, we'd have had time to talk about it. Yet now we have to wait until I'm back in Seattle and I can't because I'd do it now. I'd want you here, now. Even without talking”

“I... I don't know what to say, Eddie”

“Don't say anything, I told you it's ok even without talking, right?”

“Hehe what do we do? We just shut up on the phone?”

“Yes. You know I'm a man of few words”

“I  know that well”

And that I want to shut up on the phone only with you and no one else? Do you know that too?

#finally #pearl jam fanfiction #grunge fanfiction #stone gossard #eddie vedder #pearl jam #chapters

[ciathyzareposts]

Game 320: Xoru (1989)

Character selection occurs right on the main title screen.

         Xoru

United States

Castle Technologies (developer and publisher)

Several versions released between 1987 and 1989 for DOS

Date Started: 13 June 2018

Date Ended: 5 March 2019

Total Hours: 7

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

         Xoru has taken me on a hell of a ride over the last 9 months. Last June, I played it for a few hours, got stuck, and decided I had enough grounds to reject it as an RPG. Then, in December, I got a long, impassioned letter from a fan who begged me to reconsider. I fired it up again and got stuck in roughly the same place. This time, I put out a call for help and commenters Zenic Reverie (“The RPG Consoler“) and D.P. got involved. They helped a bit but got stuck with the same puzzles that I did. Then I tracked down the author, Brian Sanders, and we exchanged several e-mails. Brian didn’t remember enough to help with my specific problem at first, but I must have put a bug in his ear, because a few weeks later wrote back with a map and hint guide that he’d “commissioned,” which suggests to me that I annoyed him so much that he paid someone to solve the game so I’d go away. On the same day he sent the hint guide, Zenic won it on his own and sent me his solution. In the end, I still don’t feel like it’s much of an RPG, but I’ll be damned if I’m not going to write about it after all that.             

My Trizbort map of the dungeon.

         Written by San Diego-based developer Brian Sanders and released as shareware, Xoru is a text adventure-RPG hybrid that invites comparison with Beyond Zork (1987) in its mechanics, if not its attitude. The game went through several versions in the late 1980s and eventually acquired an “Advanced” tag (i.e., most sites have it as Advanced Xoru), but the main title didn’t change. There’s sort-of a subtitle–Descent into the Depths of the Ebon Titan–that appears far enough away from the main title that I’ve chosen to regard it more as flavor text than a true subtitle.

The backstory casts the character as a denizen of the modern world, abruptly wrenched by a cabal of wizards from a busy airport terminal, through a portal, and into a “pseudo-medieval fantasy world” in which he must explore a sprawling, multi-leveled dungeon for various reasons. In this, the game almost immediately clashes with its extremely brief character creation system in which you choose from among an unusual list of classes: paladin, necromancer, barbarian, zen-druid priest, and shadowy tracker. The implication is that each class will call upon special abilities and strengths to solve the game’s obstacles, in the manner Quest for Glory, but in practice it mostly means that some classes have an easier time in combat than others.

Gameplay for everyone begins in an “edifice ruin” at the top of the dungeon, each character finding items there appropriate to his class. The text window is accompanied by a mini-map that shows the directions the character can move, a clear Beyond Zork influence.         

The game begins. A little map tells you which ways you can go.

         The dungeon under the ruin consists of about 75 rooms arranged in three sections, logically-constructed and well-described. Xoru lacks most of Zork’s humor (which got a little too thick in Beyond, I thought) but it has the same attention to economical, vivid descriptions of rooms and events, at the best of times eliciting the sense of exploring a dangerous place with a good dungeon master. There isn’t much of a core “theme” to the dungeon, and like Zork the pseudo-medieval world has modern concepts like plumbing and elevators. Some examples of the experience:            

A trap door is on a high ceiling. You have to drag a bench from another room and stand on it to open the door. It takes you to an alchemist’s lab where you receive a couple of important items.

A hobbit sits in a room with nine cards, kind of like a Deck of Many Things. He invites you to draw as many cards as you would like, one of which will free him. But for each draw, he will take a random item from your inventory. This can result in a “walking dead” situation if he takes an important item, so you have to prepare by dropping anything vital and loading up on miscellaneous treasure and extra weapons. The cards have various positive and negative effects. One of them does free the hobbit, for which he gives you a necessary gold key, and another gives you an important clue to another room.

         The memorable hobbit encounter.

           The clue mentioned above is: “Make music with the giraffe, camel, elephant, and a pair of ferrets.” When you find a room with an organ, you therefore have to play GCEFF. The game has virtually no sound, but it does represent these tones faithfully. Playing the right sequence opens a secret door to an area with a vital key.

An area has enormous tanks full of water. You have to go to a pumping station and turn the controls to empty the tanks, at which point you can enter each tank, each of which holds a different puzzle piece. Putting them together gives you a sapphire cube that you need for the penultimate area.

             Was there a similar puzzle in one of the Zork games?

           There are a fair number of “red herrings” in the game, not just as objects but also areas that feel like they ought to serve a larger purpose because of the detail in which they’re described (e.g., the torture chamber) or how much trouble it took to get there. For instance, there’s a puzzle involving an elevator that leads you to something called an “Ant-E-Room” where you have to kill a giant ant. But despite a vivid description of the room, there’s nothing to accomplish there. There’s an entire sub-section full of one-way chutes and passages that seems to have no purpose except to challenge your ability to get out if you’re unlucky enough to blunder in.

Monsters pop up occasionally–ogres, gnolls, ghouls, bugbears, basilisks, and maybe one or two others I didn’t write down. Fighting them is generally a matter of typing KILL [MONSTER] WITH [WEAPON] and letting the action play out. Spellcasters are supposed to find scrolls that they can use in combat by typing CAST and the name of the scroll. I never found any spell scrolls beyond the one that the game starts you with, which seems to do nothing. The game tracks an strength statistic and a health statistic that deplete as you take hits. The fighting classes seem to have a easier time than the others, but nobody has a terribly hard time. There are potions and generic scrolls scattered around the dungeon that increase strength and restore health and armor protects you from harm.

              Trading blows with a basilisk.

           I spent a lot of time annotating the presence of monsters and items on my original map, only to discover on a replay that these locations are heavily randomized for each new game. Sometimes you meet monsters in practically every room; other times, you can make it through the entire game without fighting once. Sometimes, I had half a dozen weapons to choose between; other times, I never let go of my starting scimitar. Most of the time, I never found any armor. Playing a couple of times helps you determine which items are necessary, as they’re always found in the same locations for every game. There are a lot of unnecessary items (except perhaps as fodder for the hobbit’s card game), including lots of gems and valuables, but also things that sound like they ought to do something, like ropes and 10-foot poles.

The interpreter is adequate. It follows most of Infocom’s standards; for instance, the player can switch between VERBOSE, BRIEF, and SUPERBRIEF descriptions of places he’s already been, and hitting G is a shortcut for “again,” or repeat the previous action. Z passes time. Yes, it’s derivative, but on the other hand it’s nice for players not to have to learn a new set of conventions. Unfortunately, the interpreter tends to fail when given complex commands or compound sentences with propositions. The manual says that it supports actions like TAKE THE APPLE AND EAT IT, but I found that most of the time it would do the first part of the sentence and ignore the second part. I’ve never seen the advantage to using such complex sentences anyway, so it mostly didn’t bother me. A little more annoying was the tendency of the interpreter to confuse objects; for instance, if you have both the sapphire and the sapphire cube, trying to drop the sapphire will actually cause you to drop the cube.

           The parser gets a bit confused from compound sentences.

           There are a ton of commands I never found any use for, including TALK, JUMP, KNOCK, PULL, PUSH, and LISTEN. These plus the extra items and poor use of the classes suggests to me that Sanders meant to keep expanding the game, or perhaps offer additional modules with the engine.

The game has a time limit of 360 moves, but that’s pretty generous, especially considering that a lot of moves don’t count, such as waiting. Also, for some reason, drinking water in a particular room (you have to solve an inventory puzzle involving a well bucket crank first) increases the number of available moves while also (nonsensically) increasing your score every time you drink. But if you do wait out all the turns, you suffer an instant death as water comes bursting through a couple of previously-unopenable doors and floods the dungeon. There’s also a hunger and thirst system, but food and water are both plentiful, and anyway you could easily win the game before even noticing that you’re hungry or thirsty.

         Instant death when you run out the timer.

       When I got stuck, was about 80% of the way through the game, and in retrospect, I wasn’t really stuck. I was overthinking a solution to a particular puzzle that involved replacing a cracked jug on a statue with a new one. I didn’t realize from the room description that the room is basically in two halves, and that to approach the statue, you need to walk through an energy barrier, which you can only do if you have a sapphire cube in your possession. There were times I had the cube, but I never tried walking through the room with the cube in my possession, I guess.

          The room where I spent way too much time trying to throw things at the jug, and poke it with poles, and lasso it with a rope . .

          Once you solve this puzzle, you get a ruby prism, which reflects some laser beams coming out of the eyes of a couple of lion statues, allowing you to pass to the “Chamber of the Lake,” where you climb a statue and pry an emerald sphere out of one of its eyes. With sphere, cube, and prims in possession, you visit a room called the “Mirrored Room” and insert them in three appropriately-shaped holes. The floor drops out and you’re dumped into the final area, to confront the Ebon Titan.

           Reaching the endgame.

         This final area gives you an odd puzzle, a bit unsatisfying to me because I didn’t really figure it out. You find yourself on a grid of blue, green, red, and black (or “void”) squares, the colors shifting as you plot your moves. You’re represented as an asterisk, and the Ebon Titan is represented as an exclamation point. The only goal is to make it to the Titan’s square, but each of the colored squares (at least most of the time) has some kind of trap.

Earlier in the game, at a random location, a jester comes prancing through one of the rooms and gives you a clue about this area–just before he’s incinerated by a lightning bolt. The problem is that his clue (at least, to me) doesn’t really help because it indicates that any of the colored squares could have a trap.

         The jester tries to help but doesn’t tell me about any “safe” squares.

          It took me a couple of reloads, but I made it through by luck. I’d be really curious how I was supposed to deduce the right path here. Even the author of the hint file that Sanders commissioned wrote, “Look, I honestly don’t know where the traps are or what the colors mean. That is why you save.”

             Trying to make it through the final area.

           Once you reach the Titan’s square, he just dies with a pathetic “Nooooooooo . . .” The game congratulates you on having defeated “The Great Enslaver.” A sword that was embedded in the floor in front of the Titan–now named the Sword of Life–“quivers to life, leaping from the stone into the palm of your hand.” You’re teleported outside the dungeon, where the edifice collapses to reveal a gleaming diamond palace, and a wizard appears and congratulates you on becoming king. Not bad for a guy who was suffering from a flight delay just half an hour ago.

           Vanquishing the Ebon Titan.

          The game gives you a final score at the end which makes little sense. When I died, it said I had accomplished 100% of my goal, but when I beat the game having done all the same things, it said I was at 79%. Much like other text adventures, including Beyond Zork, once you know what you’re doing, a winning game is trivially short. You could win this one in 10 or 15 minutes.

           At 100%, I could have been a GOD.

          I’ll leave judgement as to its text adventure qualities to The Adventure Gamer, if they ever get to it. As an RPG, it barely qualifies. There is extremely minimal character development in the form of strength increases, and combat, simple as it is, does technically rely on attributes as well as equipment. In a GIMLET, I give it:

2 points for the game world. It’s not terribly thematic and could use a more compelling backstory. It would be nice to have heard something about the Ebon Titan and his status as an “enslaver” before actually meeting him.

1 point for character creation and development. There really is no point to the classes, particularly the thief-oriented “shadowy tracker.” It would have been cool if there had been class-oriented puzzles, for instance a door that a thief could pick, a barbarian could bash, and a magic user could open with a spell. Puzzles like the trap door could have easily been class-aspected rather than having everyone drag over a bench.

         Checking my inventory and stats.

        1 point for NPC interaction, and that’s very limited, consisting of basically the hobbit and a couple of optional encounters in random places with a jester and a hunter.

3 points for encounters and foes. The foes are unimaginative, and the puzzles are mostly simple inventory puzzles.

         At first, I thought there might be something more interesting to do with the hourglass, but no, the solution was to just BREAK it.

        1 point for magic and combat with no real options. I think maybe you can throw holy water at a ghoul, but otherwise your only “tactics” are KILL MONSTER WITH WEAPON.

2 points for equipment. There isn’t much in the traditional RPG style, and a lot of red herrings on the adventure side.

0 points for no economy. No, trading stuff to the hobbit doesn’t count.

2 points for the main quest.

2 points for graphics, sound, and interface. It gets most of this value for the quality of the text. The map images are mostly superfluous, the sound is extremely scant, and as we saw, the interpreter had some issues. I do like that you can move with the arrow keys instead of having to type NORTH and EAST all the time.

3 points for gameplay. I give it a little credit for some nonlinearity and replayability in the optional areas, although overall the dungeon is a bit too small and the puzzles (despite my getting stuck on one) are a bit too easy. It doesn’t drag, at least.

               That gives us a final score of 17, which is pretty low, but I’m not really rating it in its appropriate genre. Text adventure fans will probably enjoy it more than RPG fans.

Xoru was reviewed in the April 1993 issue of Red Herring, where the reviewer said that he could “highly recommend it,” although he’d only been exposed to the demo copy, which killed you after 80 moves. The 1997 issue of the British magazine SynTax provided a more thorough review, agreeing with me that the “text descriptions are very good: not flowery but straight to the point and informative,” but complaining about the simple puzzles. He also notes–and I would have to agree–that the $44.95 price tag was a bit steep for a game of such limited content.

The version I played was 5.94. From the release notes, the Version 5 series had one more dungeon area than earlier editions, and at least some previous versions didn’t even bring the game to an ending. While this was the last text version, it wasn’t the last version entirely: In 2014, Sanders–his company revived and re-christened Castlelore Studio–created a 3D graphical version of the game for the Mac. You can see it in action here and buy it here. The graphics are what you’d expect from an indie developer (it’s “really hard to do by yourself,” Sanders wrote me), but as the video played, I found myself easily recognizing the various rooms based on the text versions that I’d explored. Certainly, I got zapped by those lion-lasers plenty of times.

         The series of “gallery” rooms represented in the 3D engine.

           In e-mail correspondence with me, Brian Sanders said that he originally wrote the game while he was a junior in high school. His mother suggested the title, but after he found it listed once-too-often at the bottom of game lists and the ends of catalogs, he made “Advanced” part of the title. It was originally just a grid of rooms with randomized monsters and treasure–something like a text Wizard’s Castle–but grew from there. Sanders says he was inspired by the Infocom titles as well as Choose Your Own Adventure books.

I was an avid reader and I was enchanted and captivated by these computer programs which made stories exploratory and interactive. There was this exciting illusion that the games offered limitless possibilities for exploration–even if the world was clearly finite, you had no way of knowing how far it went, and you would have to use your own mind to get there.

That’s a good summary of the experience playing a lot of RPGs, but perhaps specifically adventure games. With most RPGs of this era, and their fixed grids of tiles, you generally get a sense of the dimensions of the maps and overall game world, and you know when your character is about to hit its edges. There isn’t quite the same sense of wonder as to what’s around the next bend. Adventure games mostly feature non-symmetrical layouts that can sprawl unannounced in any direction. Once you have the entirety of the game before you, it often seems simple and underwhelming, but when you’re playing live and you don’t know whether the locked door opens into a closet or an entire sub-dungeon, it can be exciting in ways that perhaps my GIMLET doesn’t capture. I’m sorry we won’t be seeing many more of these.

Thanks to Brian, Zenic, and D.P. for helping to clear this one, and to everyone for your patience in a slow week as I recovered from a lot of travel and work late in February. The rest of this month ought to be back-on-track and productive.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/game-320-xoru-1989/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

[singtotheskiies]

dream come true // five hargreeves x fem!reader (royal au)

masterlist

summary: prince five longs for a taste of the world outside the marble walls of the castle he’s always known—and when he meets you at the annual ball, he discovers that it’s even more beautiful than he could have imagined.

request (by my absolute favorite anon): I was wondering if you'd be up for writing an AU one shot? I can't get the idea of something similar to a Cinderella (or prince/princess royalty AU) out of my mind. At some point Reggie throws a Grand Ball for some reason and thats where Reader and Five meet and fall in love and well idk if there would be conflict regarding Reggie and his approval (not like Five would ask) but happy ending? Whether Reader is a princess or a commoner or something else I'll leave up to you.

words: 2000

warnings: none besides reggie’s shit parenting lolz

a/n: i,,,,,, am BLOWN AWAY by this request it is so cute!!! i feel like i really could have done more with this, but here’s a lil unedited smth for you all to enjoy!!! (i wouldn’t be 100% opposed to writing more for this au at some point either)

✖️✖️✖️

Five rolls his eyes to the back of his head for what seems like the thousandth time today. If he has to listen to Luther and Diego tear into each other for five more minutes, he thinks he’s actually going to go insane.

He can see Allison glare at him from the corner of his vision, and he raises his hand in a choice gesture without bothering to look at her directly. Reginald’s cane comes down hard on the floor, voice slicing through the room and silencing Luther and Diego’s bickering.

“Five, your behavior is absolutely un—“ “Spare me the lecture, father.” Five cracks a humorless smile. “I already know what you’re going to say—the future of the kingdom is in our hands, all of us must be prepared since we never know when our moment will come, and so on and so on. Well, I’m tired of this! So tired. All we ever do is sit here and listen to those two—“ he pins Luther and Diego with an angry stare— “argue on and on while you just sit there all self-righteous and above it all, never having the decency to tell us who’s going to inherit—“ “That is quite enough,” Reginald snaps, voice taut with rage. “Out.” Five’s eyes narrow. “Out!” And so he finds himself outside the throne room for the third time in as many weeks, head lolling back against the cool marble. I’m really not cut out for this, he thinks. If this is all royalty is—just endless arguing and politics day after day—then I don’t want it. The mid-morning sun breaks through the clouds, shining through the huge glass panes that line the hall. Gold trimmings catch the light, and a glimmer hits Five right in the eyes. He stands up with a sigh and makes his way to the window, looking out on the courtyard and the distant hills beyond. He’s spent hours looking outside at those hills, longing to run for them with all his might. Small homes dot the slopes like beads on a necklace, and Five wants to walk among them, feeling the ground against his feet and listening to all the villagers greet each other as they go about their days. He longs to be free of marble walls and false smiles and instead feel the freedom that he imagines comes from interacting with real people. An impossible dream, perhaps—but a lovely one all the same. And when Reginald calls Five back to the throne room for a talking-to, it certainly helps take his mind off things. Maybe someday, he thinks. ✖️✖️✖️ The sun beams down bright and warm, and you’re grateful for the shade of your stall in the market. It’s been a slow day for selling, and you can’t help but wish that the time would go faster so that you can be free to roam about as you wish. As much as you love selling your jewelry, there’s other prospects that spark more excitement in you—namely, the yearly Presentation Ball being held in just two days. A smile spreads across your face at the thought of it. It’s going to be beautiful, you imagine, full of normal people trying to be their best for one night. And, of course, the royals will be there. Now, you’re not one to gush over a family who’s never seen in public, but a tiny part of you has to admit that the allure of the elite is tempting. This is the first year you’ve ever been able to go, and you wonder if the stories you’ve heard of rulers more statue than person are true. You hope to get a glimpse of them—just to see if they are, in fact, human. The pads of your fingers brush over the necklace in your pocket you’re saving for the ball, and a smile stays on your face for the rest of the day. ✖️✖️✖️ “You had better redeem yourself tonight, boy!” Reginald says to Five, all rancid decorum and thinly-veiled contempt. “I think it unreasonable to expect that I will sit still like—like some puppet all night, Father,” Five shoots back. “Not when our people will be there—I fully expect to speak with some of them.” “What have I always told you and your siblings ever since you were young? Commoners—“ “—Are to be avoided at all costs. Yes, I know. And I am telling you that I believe we cannot be true rulers without knowing who we are reigning over,” Five speaks earnestly, face flushed. “You are a disgrace to this family,” Reginald shouts, all traces of civility gone. “Your siblings would never—“ “Well, I am not my siblings! And I am certainly not going to sit there next to them and feign pompousness,” Five spits. “I’ve had enough of doing things your way.” His turns his heel, moving to storm out of the room.

“Where are you going, boy? The opening introduction will start any minute!” Reginald shouts after him.

“Do it without me! I’m going to be where it really matters—with my people.” Five yells over his shoulder.

Defying Father feels better than he ever could have imagined—and so he takes a deep breath and enters the crowd with a growing smile.

✖️✖️✖️

It’s quite possibly the most exciting night of your life, and you’re completely, heartbreakingly late.

You curse under your breath as you run up the castle stairs, dress gathered up in your hands to keep from tripping. Guards stand on either side of the grand, gilded entrance, and you breathe a sigh of relief when you see a small knot of people entering just before you. You reach the doors and hold out your invitation, smiling at the guard as he nods in acceptance. “Enjoy,” he says, and you beam back.

“I will.”

The ballroom is just as stunningly beautiful as you’d imagined. Gold swirls along the white marble walls, accents of royal red adding to the decadence. The huge room is chock-full of people smiling and drinking and making eyes at each other. You breathe deeply in awe, eyes shining as your head moves side to side, hardly knowing where to look next.

After several moments of looking around, your eyes land on the grand throne at the very front of the room, furthest from you. King Reginald is seated in all his harsh glory on it, flanked on either side by two of the princes. They’re dressed in brilliant royal clothes, trying their best to look as commanding as their father. Four other beautiful royals sit next to them, but your eye is drawn most to the empty throne at the end of the row. If you remember correctly, there should be five princes and two princesses—but only four men are sitting with the king. You wonder where the other is—perhaps sick or off on royal business? The kingdom rarely sees the royals outside of the balls, so it’s impossible to tell which prince is missing.

You turn away from the thrones, curiosity overcome by your thirst. Maneuvering your way through the packs of people is a bit tricky, but you manage to reach the refreshments table without any major accidents. A servant pours you a drink, and you thank him with a smile. As you turn to leave, you nearly bump into a boy about your age.

“I’m so sorry!” you exclaim, before continuing on.

“Wait,” his voice comes after you. You stop and turn back around, pleasantly surprised. “I’m sorry too. What’s your name?”

You tell him, and he smiles.

“I’m F—“ he pauses. “Felix. It’s very nice to meet you.” He reaches for your hand and plants a soft kiss on your knuckles with surprising grace. He’s really quite handsome, you think—slender, searing green eyes, well-groomed, thick hair. Most endearing of all is a dimple in his cheek that deepens as he smiles at you.

“Very nice to meet you too, Felix,” you grin, still-tingling hand slowly coming back down to your side.

“That’s a beautiful necklace,” he says with admiration. “Where is it from?”

“I actually made it myself! I sell my own jewelry at the market on weekdays,” you beam. “The wire is made from metal mined right here in the kingdom. It’s purer here than in any surrounding region.”

“That’s amazing,” Felix says with another soft smile. “You must know all sorts of things about jewelry.”

“I guess I’ve learned my fair share,” you laugh quietly. “Jewelry is how I make a living—and it’s one of my passions, so I suppose you’re right.”

“Tell me about how you make pieces,” he asks as the two of you find a relatively quiet place to sit, voice genuine and curious.

And so you do.

✖️✖️✖️

You’re the most beautiful thing Five has ever seen—high praise from a boy who’s lived in splendor all his life. As he watches you talk about your craft, he can’t tear his eyes away from your animated face and hands. How had he lived this long without realizing how beautiful people were? He’d never known something as small as a wisp of hair falling over an eye could make his heart swell nearly to bursting.

“Felix? Felix!” Your voice cuts through his daze, and his eyes snap to yours, embarrassed.

“Sorry, just got, um—distracted.” Was Felix really the best he could come up with?

“Am I boring you?” you ask teasingly, the corners of your mouth tipping up. He looks into your eyes, sparkling with amusement, and finds that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, he’s so overtaken by his thoughts that he blurts them out loud.

“N-no. No! Absolutely not! I think you’re fascinating—and so beautiful.” He curses his voice for whispering those last words, and averts his eyes in shame.

“You’re too kind,” comes your voice, soft but somehow makes the pounding of his heart even louder. “If it makes you feel any better, I think you’re quite handsome yourself.”

Years of lessons in diplomacy and etiquette have done absolutely nothing to prepare Five for the feeling that washes over him when you say those last few words. He has absolutely no idea how to respond, and the best his mind can come up with is a “really?”

“Yes,” you giggle, and he’s suddenly aware of just how close you are to him. You smell so nice, and the skin of your wrist is brushing his forearm—and next thing he knows, his fingers are flickering over yours, filling up the spaces in your hand. The look you give him is so beautiful that he wishes he had met you years ago so that it would already be ingrained in his mind.

Your head is nearing his shoulder now, and he’s afraid to breathe in case he ruins your descent. The moment your hair brushes against his neck, he hears his name from behind him. He whirls around to see Klaus with an enormous grin on his face.

“I see you’re enjoying yourself, brother,” he quips. “Unfortunately, dear old father has just about reached his limit with you. If you’re not on your throne in the next few minutes, he’s going to send some guards to find you.”

Five’s eyes are wide as he meets yours. “I’m so sorry. I can explain—“

“No, I apologize, your highness,” you say. “I’ve no doubt broken some sort of royal rule tonight.”

“You were perfect—you are perfect,” he whispers, shaking his head vehemently. “I will find you later tonight—I promise.”

Your smile is more precious than any title he’s been given. “Then I will wait for you—Felix.”

He presses a lingering kiss to your soft hand, unwilling to tear his eyes away from you. And, when he still doesn’t feel satisfied, he moves his lips to the tips of your fingers, your palm, your wrist. He’s only drawn away by the sound of Klaus clearing his throat pointedly.

And for the rest of the night, Klaus’ endless teasing and Reginald’s equally endless scolding are mere echos in his ears—his head is filled with only you.

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