#she walks like the christmas tree in the school pageant | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

liiilyevans · 10 months

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No cameras catch my pageant smile I counted days, I counted miles To see you there, to see you there It's been a long time coming, but

Or, Draco has a desire to learn more about Astoria when he sees her again.

Note: I really struggled with this song! I started this fic in Astoria's POV and scrapped the whole thing about half way through and started writing from Draco's POV, which I find quite funny at certain points in this fic. Anyways, I chose to focus on a few lines from the song such as, 'no cameras catch my pageant smile,' 'you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes,' 'no cameras catch my muffled cries,' 'and I don't want you to (go), I don't really wanna (fight),' and of course, the title lyric 'voted most likely to run away with you.' I hope you enjoy! Thank you to the @cruelsummer-ficfest mods for the challenge of this one!

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His parents were upset. Since he was a baby, he’d spent every Christmas with them. The only one he’d missed was in fourth year when he went to the Yule Ball. Now, he was abandoning them to globe trot with his friends for five days. At least, that was what his mother said. Her glare had been so icy when he’d walked out the front door that he thought shards would be embedded into his jacket. Theo met him at the gate of Malfoy Manor and then they were Apparating to the Portkey site.

When Theo had asked Draco to come to Athens, he’d been surprised then suspicious. Pansy and Blaise were the ones who invited him to social events. Theo was quiet and kept to himself, but he and Draco had a pleasant enough relationship over the years. When they were in school, Theo had been the only roommate who Draco could stand. Crabbe and Goyle were both loud sleepers and dead to the world once they were asleep. Blaise had been entitled and pushy. Theo was quiet and took up little space. Most times, Draco barely noticed he was there. Besides, Athens would be a good way to get his mind off of Astoria Greengrass dancing all over his heart on the Zabini’s dancefloor.

Since the Zabini wedding at the beginning of summer, Draco had been steadily avoiding her, only giving her clipped responses when she approached him at any pureblood soirées and more often than not, making excuses not to talk to her altogether. By the end of the summer, Astoria seemed to finally take the hint. She hadn’t spoken to him since.

Which was for the best. Someone as clean as Astoria Greengrass didn’t deserve to be tainted by his reputation.

Or him with his tainted hands and battered soul.

When they arrived at the suite, Theo pushed the door open. Draco stepped into what looked like a sitting room levitating his luggage behind him. It was pristine with a white couch and two armchairs gathered around a table. The kitchen was right next to it, marble countertops gleaming from the light over the sink. There were four doors, two on each wall, leading to what Draco assumed were bedrooms and a beautiful balcony overlooking the city.

Daphne was seated on the couch, her legs tucked underneath her, and her blonde hair pulled into a high ponytail. Across from her sat Marcus Flint, which shocked Draco to the core. He was still as broad as ever, dwarfing Daphne. He was clean shaven and was eying Draco with a look of surprise and confusion. Theo hadn’t told Daphne that he was coming then.

Draco nodded to the older man. “Flint.”

“Malfoy,” he said pleasantly enough. Off the pitch, Flint wasn’t so bad to be around, a bit rough around the edges though.

Daphne’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t realize you were bringing company, Theo.”

Theo shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I don’t,” she said. “Draco, you knew Marcus was my cousin, didn’t you?”

Draco shook his head. He’d never really paid attention to the Greengrass family tree.

“Well, now you do,” she said. “He’ll be vacationing with us.”

Draco didn’t know why she felt the need to state the obvious.

“In here,” Theo said, nodding to one of the rooms.

Rolling his eyes, he stepped into the room Theo was staying in and let his luggage drop to the floor. He hadn’t expected the twin beds, and Theo was steadily avoiding eye contact with him.

“Why are we sharing a room?” Draco said lowly.

“What? You don’t fancy bonding with me?” Theo said with a quirk of his eyebrow.

“I had enough bonding with you when we shared a dorm at Hogwarts,” he said. Merlin, that had been an adjustment. Until that point, Draco was used to being an only child and that meant having a whole manor to himself, dozens and dozens of dust covered rooms to explore. Having to share a room with six different boys had been a nightmare.

Turning on his heel, Draco marched back into the sitting room to demand that someone switch rooms with him only to be met with the rich brown eyes of Astoria Greengrass. The Greengrasses were clearly in the middle of a reunion, Astoria still in Flint’s arms and Daphne grinning broadly at both of them. There was shock in her eyes as she watched him, and Draco felt the urge to turn back around and spend the rest of this vacation locked in that bedroom with Theo, as unpleasant as that would be.

He wasn’t afforded that opportunity though.

“We should all go out to celebrate,” Daphne said, clapping her hands. “We haven’t seen Marcus in ages, and I know where we can get the best wine in the city.”

As it turned out, Daphne didn’t end up getting any kind of wine. Instead, she downed four margaritas in such a quick succession that she was ten times more talkative than usual. Lucky for Draco, she sat next to Theo. His evening was filled with watching Theo squirm as Daphne prattled on, only barely letting him get two words in edge wise. Draco thought it served Theo right for tricking him into coming on this trip.

If there was one word that summed up Theodore Nott, it was observant. He was sure to have noticed that Draco had avoided Astoria after the Zabini wedding. For some morbid reason, he seemed to find Draco’s discomfort amusing. Little did anyone know, he’d been ready to bare his soul to Astoria when she’d stranded him on that dance floor. It was truly a blessing that she left when she did. It saved him the trouble of picking up the pieces of his shattered heart later on when he was more invested in . . . whatever it was they had been dancing around.

Draco rolled over for the fourth time. This bed was small and terribly uncomfortable — much too firm compared to what he was used to. As he glanced over at his roommate, Theo seemed quite content. He was facing the opposite wall, his breathing even. Rolling his eyes, Draco climbed out of bed and grabbed his wand — a habit Aunt Bella had instilled in him. Fresh air would clear his head and hopefully zap some of the energy out of him.

Gently, he opened his bedroom door and slipped into the sitting room. The moonlight was streaming in from the balcony, casting a soft glow on the room. The door to the balcony was cracked. Palming his wand, Draco slowly slipped over to the edge of the door, careful to keep himself out of sight. When he glanced outside, he saw Astoria and Flint sitting in the lounge chairs, their backs toward him. Astoria’s hair was loose and curling around her shoulders. It reminded him of the night she’d let it down on the dock before Pansy’s wedding. She had looked beautiful with those brown eyes high from the joint they’d been smoking. He had no doubt that she looked just as beautiful now, though he couldn’t see her face. However, he did spot another cigarette hanging between her fingertips.

“I didn’t realize you were on a first name basis with Malfoy,” he heard Flint say.

Astoria didn’t say anything for a moment. “What gave you that impression?”

“Earlier when I asked if you knew that he and Nott were going to be here, you said, ‘Daphne only told me Theo was coming, not Draco.’”

“We’ve talked before,” Astoria admitted, and Draco felt a spark of outrage. If she dared to say one thing about the time they’d spent together — dared to tell Flint that she’d touched his Mark — he would burst onto that balcony now and obliviate them both. He didn’t care if it was illegal.

“He’d be bad for you.” Flint’s voice pulled Draco from his anger. “He’s entitled and selfish. He only looks out for himself. You could do better.”

Flint was right. Astoria could do much better than him with her witty remarks and her stunning smile. Merlin, even Potter talked to her if the rumors from the Ministry were anything to go by. And Draco was bitterly jealous because all he could think of was that night on the dock when she’d touched his Mark. It felt like someone had really seen him for the first time in a very long time. And just as he’d been ready to share his darkest moments with her, she’d left him on that dancefloor.

Astoria scoffed. “I didn’t see you complaining about his entitlement when you got a Nimbus 2001 out of it.”

“This isn’t Quidditch, Astoria,” Flint said, and Draco could hear his eye roll. Flint didn’t say anything else for a moment. Just as Draco thought their conversation was over, Flint spoke again. “How much of that do you take now?”

From where he was standing, Draco could see Flint nod to the joint between his cousin’s fingers. Astoria simply lifted the cigarette to her mouth and took a long drag. Draco had never wanted to be an inanimate object more.

“Enough,” she said. “Why are you so concerned?”

“I’m always concerned about you, Astoria.” It was the first time Draco had heard Flint sound honestly sincere. Even though he couldn’t see the older man’s face, Draco could tell that he was staring at Astoria intently. Almost as intently as she was avoiding his gaze.

“Well, stop worrying about me,” she said finally. “It’s bad for your blood pressure.”

There was an undertone to their words. Though they seemed like simple questions, Draco got the feeling that they were talking in some kind of code. Flint wasn’t talking about her drug intake, at least not entirely. Draco leaned toward the glass door unconsciously. He was beginning to realize this is what Astoria did to him — made him want to learn more about her and store each golden nugget of information away for later use. His knee loudly knocked the table in front of him, and he quickly grabbed it to keep it from toppling over. Angry footsteps sounded on the balcony. He was going to die.

Quickly, Draco cast a disillusionment charm and pressed his back against the wall.

Flint yanked the glass door all the way open, and Draco flinched at the rage that covered his face. He scanned the room slowly, his eyes narrowed. Glancing down, Draco noticed his wand was in his left hand and his sleeves were rolled up, his Dark Mark on full display. When Draco’s gaze returned to the older man’s face, he was looking directly at Draco, squinting slightly. Fear slithered up his stomach and into his throat. Flint was going to hex him, possibly kill him.

“Quit being paranoid, Marcus,” Astoria called. She hadn’t even bothered to turn around from what Draco could see. “It was probably just the wind.”

Marcus glanced around the room once more before firmly shutting the glass door.

Draco let out the breath he’d been holding. After waiting a few moments and sneaking a few glances out of the glass door to make sure Astoria and Flint weren’t suspicious, Draco hurried back to his room and promptly closed the door.

Theo was still sleeping. The bastard.

The only good thing about shopping in Athens was that he couldn’t go wrong with whatever he decided to buy his mother. The mink stoles were just to her taste, the feather hats just the right mix of delicate and sophisticated, the pearl bracelets just expensive enough without being gaudy. Draco knew he couldn’t come back empty handed if he wanted to spend the next few months without her silent glares of judgement. His father was the tricky one. While his mother liked expensive things, his father liked rare things — things that he could drag out once a year to show his friends. Draco would find nothing like that here.

“That has to be the ugliest hat I’ve ever seen.”

Draco’s head snapped to the right as Astoria came to stand beside him. She was as stunning as usual in her dark red lipstick, long sleeved green dress, and green beret. It should have been ridiculous — especially since they were in Athens, not Paris — but Astoria pulled it off beautifully. Draco thought she could pull off a potato sack. She fixed her dark brown eyes on him, a smile starting to curve at the corners of her mouth.

“I don’t think you could pull it off,” she said, nodding to the red and black monstrosity he’d been examining.

Draco sputtered. “It’s not for me.”

“Oh.” She turned back to the hat. “Well, that’s good because it wouldn’t suit your complexion at all.”

Rolling his eyes, Draco turned back to the display of hats. If he ignored her, she would get bored and leave, or Flint would pull her attention away from him. Then he could go on about his day trying to forget that she smelled like jasmine or the soft feel of her back against his fingertips or the gentle way she’d run her fingertips over his Mark. Yes, it was best to forget all about those things before she made him do something that was likely to get him hexed by Flint.

“You really shouldn’t eavesdrop on people, you know,” she said casually. “Your mother would find it obscene.”

Draco froze, the silk brim of a hat still between his fingers. With his heart beating rapidly, he tried to think of a moment during the previous night that Astoria might have caught a glimpse of him. However, she’d had her back turned to the glass door the whole time. There was no way she would have seen him.

“I didn’t-” Before he could even finish his lie, Astoria roughly pinched his bicep.

Draco yelped and stepped away from her.

“You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes,” she said, never taking her eyes off the display in front of her. Anger surged up inside him like a tidal wave. Who did she think she was? Stomping all over his newfound hope one minute and physically abusing him in public the next? Draco would not stand for this.

“You have no idea-”

“You could just talk to me, you know,” she said, turning to him suddenly and stepping forward. As she invaded Draco’s personal space, his mouth went dry and any harsh words he was going to say before were now drifting from his mind like a soft breeze. Astoria’s eyes were beautiful, especially when he could make out the different shades of brown in them — the light caramel, the deep umber, the rich coffee. They held sincerity and an earnestness that Draco wanted to believe in so bad. Yet he couldn’t forget the last time he’d let himself believe that anyone might be willing to look past the picture that was painted of him after the war — couldn’t forget the way his heart had shattered when she’d turned and practically run away from him.

“I have nothing to say to you,” he whispered lowly. He couldn’t even manage a decent glare, only a slight narrowing of his eyes.

“Right,” she muttered, looking down. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

Draco swore that he wasn’t going to go out on the balcony that night. Even if Theo was as silent as the dead in his bed, Draco was positive he could hear him breathing. That was the reason he was climbing out of bed, not because he hoped to see a certain brunette in the moonlight again. It was more than any sane person could be expected to bear. His father would never have stood for it. As Draco softly closed his bedroom door, he glanced toward the balcony. He wasn’t going out there. He was just going to sit on the couch; maybe sleep there since he knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep in that room with Theo. Without even realizing it, he was already standing in front of the cracked sliding door.

Astoria was just as beautiful as she had been the night before, the moonlight casting an ethereal glow on her. Her hair was pulled back into a slick ponytail this time, and Draco could make out the sides of her face — her delicate nose that she shared with her sister, the dark lipstick she hadn’t taken off yet, the high arch of her eyebrow. There was weariness there, too — in her pale skin, the faint dark circles under her eyes, the slight droop of her shoulders. She was never so vulnerable in the day with those pageant smiles and barbed words that she wore like armor. Yet here in the dark, she seemed to have shed them like a snakeskin.

Draco silently pushed the door open.

When he took a seat next to her, she didn’t seem surprised, didn’t even bother to spare him a second glance. Nerves settled in the bottom of Draco’s stomach. Perhaps, he should have stayed in the sitting room. The couch was far more comfortable than this chair anyway. But curiosity overtook him.

“How’d you know it was me last night?”

When she finally looked over at him, Astoria was grinning. “Because Daphne would have come outside, and Theo wouldn’t have gotten caught.”

Draco sputtered as his cheeks bloomed red. This was obviously a horrible idea. After all, Astoria only ever insulted him or used him to cure her morbid fascination with the Dark Lord and his followers. But she started to laugh at the look on his face, and Draco flopped back in his chair pouting. How was he ever supposed to leave her be when her laugh sounded that lovely?

“Do you enjoy inadvertently insulting people?” he asked, crossing his arms.

“Only you,” she crooned, and Draco thought he could live with that.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her reach into a small plastic bag and begin to roll a joint. So, she rolled them herself. Fascinating. When she had finished, she pressed the cigarette between her lips and lit it with her wand. After she took a drag, she offered it to Draco. Silently, he snatched the cigarette from her fingers and inhaled.

“Where do you get this?” he demanded when he handed the joint back to her. “It doesn’t feel like back-alley shit.”

She laughed. “Do you think I’d buy back-alley shit?”

He shrugged. “Who’s your dealer?”

Astoria took a drag. “That’s none of your business.”

Draco didn’t bother to dignify that with a response. If she wanted to be evasive, let her. He could be evasive, too.

“So, are we going to talk about Venice?” she asked.

She was looking directly at him now, but Draco avoided her gaze. They’d done enough talking in Venice, and he was not about to open himself up to her again. So, silence would do. Besides, he was too intoxicated by the scent of jasmine to form a coherent thought anyway.

Astoria swung her legs over the lounge chair to face him. “Let’s play a game.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “What kind of game?”

“A questions game,” she said. “I ask you a question and you have to answer honestly. Then you ask me a question. And so on.” Draco glared at her. He was not born yesterday, and he was not playing that game. “You can go first.”

It was tempting. Learning about Astoria was like trying to break into a vault at Gringotts. All Draco really knew about her was that she was Daphne’s sister, she stood strongly against the Dark Lord, and she currently worked in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She’d never shared anything deeply personal with him, but now she was offering.

“Who’s your dealer?”

“Pass,” she said. When Draco tried to protest, she shook her head. “We both get one pass. Ask something else.”

“Why is Flint so protective of you?”

A soft smile fell over Astoria’s face. “Marcus has always been that way. He’s like my older brother.” He’d never seen her this soft before. Her eyes weren’t as guarded, instead open; her body wasn’t tense, just relaxed. Draco wondered if that was due to the marijuana. “When we were kids, he’d get us out of trouble or cover up for us. For me really, because I was the one who dragged Daphne into trouble.” Draco snorted, which earned him a smile. “And if he’s harsh, it’s because the world has been incredibly unkind to him.”

Draco rather thought that it was the other way around. Marcus Flint had a reputation among the Death Eaters. He was ruthless. Whenever the Dark Lord had needed someone to disappear or needed information out of someone, there were a select few Death Eaters that were called on. Flint had been one of them. None of those on trial had mentioned his name because they were terrified of what he would do to them. According to rumors, he had a long reach, possibly even from inside Azkaban since the Ministry did away with the Dementors. His reputation contrasted starkly with the man who was currently on vacation with them.

“Who were you looking at that hat for?” she asked.

“My mother,” Draco said. That was easy enough.

Astoria raised her eyebrows. “Your mother?”

“Yes, my mother. She was upset when she found out I wouldn’t be spending the holidays with her and Father.”

“Why aren’t you spending the holiday with them?”

“It’s not your turn,” Draco said. Astoria rolled her eyes as if the rules were stupid, and she hadn’t come up with them herself. “When did you start disagreeing with what our society says about Mud- erm, Muggleborns?”

That hard look was back in Astoria’s eyes. She leaned back on her hands before she answered him. “I’ve never agreed with it. My father taught me to use my brain and to think critically before making any kind of decision. The idea of ‘pure blood’ always seemed ludicrous to me. It makes absolutely no sense. But if you’re asking when it solidified for me, it was my first year.” Astoria bit her lip, and Draco was transfixed. “The first person I met after the sorting was a boy named Lucas. We were really good friends, just one of those instant connections. He was a Slytherin and a Muggleborn. So, his life wasn’t easy. I couldn’t do much. Snape wasn’t much help. I was eleven, but I told Daphne to make sure he was safe and left alone, and I always stood up for him when I saw the older kids bully him. But that wasn’t enough. I don’t know who did it, but someone went into his dorm and painted the word ‘Mudblood’ over his bed, left his sheets in ribbons, and tore through his truck. He cried about it for weeks, which only made everyone tease him more. None of the Slytherins wanted anything to do with him and the other houses were wary of him because of the colors he wore. I’m sure it was a living hell. I found him trying to sleep on the couch in the common room one night, and I stayed with him. I’m pretty sure he cried himself to sleep. His parents pulled him out of Hogwarts two weeks later.”

Astoria was looking away from him, and Draco felt sorry for his school actions for the first time. While he hadn’t been the one who painted that boy’s bed, he was sure he could have easily figured out who did it. He’d never really thought of his actions’ effect on other people, only the immediate high he’d get after he said something mildly clever, and his friends laughed. In his mind, the people he bullied never had feelings, and there were never any lasting effects to his hateful remarks. He was beginning to realize how wrong he was.

“I didn’t . . . I didn’t know about that,” he muttered.

“Probably because you were too busy milking that hippogriff injury and trying to get Hagrid fired,” she said bluntly.

Draco winced. Perhaps not his finest moment.

Astoria stood then, stretching her arms above her head. Draco followed the movement, up her legs, past the strip of skin showing where her shirt had ridden up, onto the arch of her back and her breasts, until he reached her dark eyes. They were cloudy again, hiding the world’s secrets for all he knew. Suddenly, she seemed wiser than him. And closed off, he realized, because she was done revealing things about herself. A chill ran through him.

“As fun as this has been, my sister has a full itinerary planned for tomorrow, so I need some sleep.”

Draco stood quickly as she started to step past him and grabbed her upper arm. Her name slipped from his lips without his permission, and horror suddenly flooded him. He had absolutely no words for her, but she was looking up at him expectantly.

He cleared his throat. “Will you . . . will you be here tomorrow night?”

She smiled brilliantly. “I may be persuaded. Good night, Draco.”

“What do you think?” Daphne asked, holding up two tops that looked exactly the same, but in two different colors. How they’d ended up alone in the shop was a mystery to Draco, but Daphne had insisted she needed a second opinion, and since Astoria had disappeared with Flint and Theo, Draco would have to step in.

He’d never been particularly close with Daphne during their time at Hogwarts. She had flirted with Blaise all through their sixth year and started to date him in their seventh. At the time, Blaise had gotten on his nerves, too entitled and removed from the war for Draco to find him anything other than annoying and childish. There was also Pansy. Draco never found out what was between them, but Pansy was always passive aggressive with Daphne, like she posed some kind of secret threat. Because he hadn’t wanted to deal with one of Pansy’s tantrums, he had left Daphne alone and only spoke to her when necessary.

“I think the gold is more flashy, but the silver goes better with your undertones.” Something he would not have known if he hadn’t been dragged on shopping spree after shopping spree with his mother and forced to listen to her and her seamstress talk about undertones and matching jewelry and clothes together.

Daphne held the gold up to herself in the mirror then the silver. “Fuck, you’re right.”

Draco rolled his eyes.

“Your mother’s influence, I assume,” she said as she spun around to examine several skirts on the rack.

“Well, it certainly wasn’t my father’s.”

“No? He seems the type to know his undertone.”

Draco snorted, and Daphne flashed him a brilliant smile.

She was funny, he was realizing. There was a brightness to her that the world should have dimmed with its cruelness, but Daphne seemed determined to outshine that cruelty. Over the last hour, he’d heard about how Daphne’s grandmother and her father didn’t get along and how she didn’t know if she wanted to go to Rio in the New Year or Costa Rica. Daphne was an open book.

The difference between her and Astoria was like dawn and dusk. Daphne was always bright and chatty, while Astoria was standoffish. While Daphne seemed to care what others thought of her, Astoria couldn’t give a flying hippogriff what anyone said. Despite their differences, they seemed to get along splendidly from what Draco had seen, giggling together at lunch and teasing each other easily. It made Draco wonder what having a sibling would be like — what the ease and camaraderie would feel like.

“So, you’re avoiding my sister.”

Draco’s head snapped toward Daphne, but she was still examining the rack of skirts.

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“You wouldn’t? You seem determined to ignore her at the past few social events, and you’ve barely spoken to her on this trip.” Daphne glanced at him over her shoulder, blonde hair falling around her face. There was no judgement in her eyes, just curiosity. Yet another marked difference between her and her sister.

“Your sister is perplexing,” Draco said instead of answering her question.

And that was the truth of it. Astoria had so many layers to her that Draco never thought he’d make it to the center of who she truly was. Then there was Venice. Even after their conversation last night and the promise of another conversation tonight, Draco still couldn’t make himself let go of what had happened. He wasn’t a forgiving person by nature, and this was no exception.

Daphne hummed. “She is . . . special. Too good for this world.” Too good for him, he thought she meant. “I would not want to see her hurt.”

“I don’t think your sister would give anyone the power to hurt her.”

Daphne only laughed in response.

That night, Draco and Astoria established their routine. He would go to bed, toss and turn until he couldn’t stand Theo’s unnatural stillness, and then make his way out to the balcony where he would find Astoria, with a cigarette in hand. They ended up sitting on the edges of their seats facing each other with their knees brushing. Draco could smell the Mary Jane every time she exhaled above them.

“Why’d you start smoking?” he asked. They continued the game. Though Draco had been reluctant to answer her questions, he was curious about her, trying to get to the center of what made her tick. And she never asked anything that made him pass on a question; always things about him, like where he liked to vacation most, what his favorite dessert was, why he’d been such an asshole in school. That last one had been tongue in cheek.

But there were barbs in his words. Pansy and Blaise’s wedding had been brought up at dinner earlier. Very innocent really. Flint had asked about the wedding, and Daphne had started talking about it in minute detail with several sarcastic remarks from Astoria. During the whole conversation, Astoria’s eyes had kept sliding towards him, like she was trying to figure out what was going through his mind. Draco had left a bored expression on his face. If living with Death Eaters had taught him anything, it was how to wear a mask.

Astoria took a long drag before answering. “I was in . . . a very bad place after the war. It was hard for me to function sometimes. So, I got weed. It helped a little. At least I could function and if I needed a boost.” She put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled. “That’s all there was to it.”

Draco nodded.

“Why’d you take the Mark?”

Draco thought about passing, about brushing off the brutalness of the question and trying for something lighthearted. Astoria might let him, judging by her kind eyes and the gentle turn of her lips.

“I wanted to,” he said simply. “I wanted to make my father proud. My aunt as well. It was everything I’d grown up with.” Everything that he’d always been taught would bring him greatness. “I thought if my father was in Azkaban and my family’s reputation was in shambles then taking the Mark would be the first step to fixing it. I thought . . . I thought I could show the Dark Lord how valuable I was.” Instead, he’d been left with a shattered heart and a manor full of ghosts.

Astoria glanced away from him, her lip caught between her teeth. This was the part where she told him he should have known better, should have been smarter, should have seen that it was all a set up from the beginning. He braced himself for it, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge of his lounge chair.

“I’m sorry,” she said. It was the same thing she’d said when they had talked at the Goyle ball eons ago. No one had ever apologized for what he’d gone through; most people thought he brought it on himself.

Draco relaxed his grip slightly. If she was going to ask hard hitting questions like that, then he would do the same. Fair was fair, after all.

“Why’d you leave the Zabini wedding early?”

He could see her stiffen instantly. It was like he found her Pandora’s box, the one thing he wanted to desperately open, but she kept under lock and key. They’d been at the game for an hour or so, and she hadn’t used a pass yet. Draco thought she might use it now.

Then, “I was sick. Dizzy. Lightheaded. That’s all.”

It seemed too simple an answer, too calculated.

“Dizzy?” he said. “That seems a bit anticlimactic for how quickly you ran away.”

She returned her gaze to him then, outrage clearly painted on her face. “Well, I’m sorry my bout of dizziness wasn’t climatic enough for you. Next time, I’ll let myself faint in your arms, would that make you happy?” Her eyes were blazing now as she swung her legs over the edge of the lounge chair. “Then you can be the charming gentleman who caused the delicate lady to swoon?”

Anger eddied through him, causing his grip on the chair to tighten again. She was being condescending, and perhaps with good reason. However, she had started this game, and she had chosen to answer the question. If she didn’t like being pressed, then she should never have answered the question.

“No,” he snapped. “I would like to know why you left me after I offered you a goldmine of information on the Dark Lord to feed your morbid fascination with him.”

Hurt shot across her face before it was quickly washed away.

“I was never fascinated with him,” she said. Then her question hit him like a hex. “Why don’t you say his name? Are you still that scared of him?”

Draco leaned away from her like she stung him. She spoke as if it were easy, forgetting all the terror that the Dark Lord had instilled in his followers. Even his most loyal Death Eaters were not safe. He’d seen Aunt Bella come home with her eyes dull and bruises forming on her pale skin after a rough night. While the Dark Lord might be gone, the scars he left remained.

“I can’t just . . . say his name,” Draco said, his gaze on the sky suddenly as Astoria siphoned the truth out of him. She was brave and clever; she would think less of him for his reasoning. “He was . . . more brutal than you could imagine. I’d prefer to forget he even existed.”

“But you can’t let him have that power over you,” Astoria said fiercely. As she leaned toward him, jasmine filled his senses, and Draco dropped his eyes back to hers. “If you refuse to say his name out of fear or anger, you give him power, even from the grave. Voldemort is gone, and he is not coming back.”

Draco flinched when she said his name. There was nothing else for it. In time, he might be able to hear it and not bat an eyelash, but he didn’t think he’d ever be able to say it. Instead of answering, Draco turned his face toward the stars. He could spot Orion’s Belt and Cassiopeia. The stars seemed so far removed from all their worries, like they were too busy shining brightly to really have any problems. If Draco were a star, he imagined his problems would be miniscule as well.

Astoria sighed loudly, pulling Draco’s attention back to her. “I can’t figure you out.”

Draco laughed bitterly. “Well, I can’t figure you out either.”

She smiled at him and leaned forward like she might tell him a secret. “Perhaps we are both far more complicated than either of us imagined.”

“Perhaps.”

Astoria’s eyes were glittering with mischief now, casting a youthful glow over her face. Even the dark circles couldn’t take away from that. It was that mischief that had Draco leaning forward and pressing his lips to hers. They were soft and full against his own, and she tasted like weed. A high set into Draco’s veins, almost like the effects of the weed were transferred from her to him. Only Draco realized she wasn’t kissing him back.

His whole body went cold. Quickly, he pushed himself away from her, an apology already forming on his lips along with a cutting insult. Astoria caught the collar of his shirt, holding him within an inch of herself. Her breath danced across his lips, a teasing reminder of the kiss he had just given her. When their eyes meant, Draco was tempted to press his lips back to hers, just so he could have one last taste of her.

“I-”

“Don’t,” she interrupted. Then she softly kissed him. It wasn’t rushed or forceful like his had been. It was simple, honest. When she pulled away from him, she let his collar go and stood up. Draco was too stunned to stop her. “I’ll see you in the morning, Draco.”

Then she was gone, disappearing through the sliding door.

When Draco and his family came to Athens, they always stopped by Antoni’s, a fabulous restaurant with some of the best cuisine and wine in town. After mentioning it to Daphne, she had insisted that they stop there for supper. It was as phenomenal as always. Theo was delighted to see that they had moussaka with lamb, and Astoria insisted on trying the loukoumades, fried dough topped with honey and nuts. The group topped off their meal with a red blend from Crete that had notes of cinnamon and allspice.

Draco was listening to Daphne and Theo discuss who would be the next in their group to get married when he felt something brush against his calf. It felt like a foot. Astoria was sitting across from him, wine glass in hand, talking with Flint about Quidditch. When she noticed him examining her, her lips quirked upwards, and she took a sip of her wine.

They hadn’t discussed the kiss from the previous night, and Draco didn’t want it to ruin their last night together. That kiss stayed with him all through the night and today, though. He was unable to forget how warm she had been against him. It had been a fluke, he had reminded himself to keep from going insane. When she’d kissed him again, Astoria was merely being nice because she was a kind person. After this trip, he would go back to being miserable in Malfoy Manor, and she would continue to rise in the Ministry. There was no place in her life for someone like Draco.

“Astoria, come help me with a touchup?” Daphne asked as she stood up. Astoria quickly followed her.

“I’m going to run to the loo as well,” Theo said.

Then it was just Flint, Draco, and awkward silence. Wonderful. The only time Flint had been cordial with Draco was in his second year when he was handing him a Nimbus 2001. During practice, Flint was brutal, pushing his team to do their worst in order to win the Quidditch Cup. He’d been standoffish outside the pitch, much like he had been this whole vacation. Coldly friendly. Draco wished he’d gone to the bathroom with Theo; anything to be away from Flint’s stormy eyes.

“You need to stay away from Astoria,” he finally said.

Draco was so shocked his head snapped toward the older man. “Excuse me?”

“Stay away from her,” Flint repeated. “You can’t handle being with someone like her.”

He wasn’t surprised, especially after what he heard on the balcony, but it peeved him that Flint would discuss this topic so openly. They were in a restaurant, for fuck’s sake. Theo or the girls could easily walk back to the table and overhear their conversation.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Draco demanded.

“Just what I said,” he replied. “You couldn’t handle it. Besides, Astoria wants a career in politics, and she can’t have dead weight like you dragging her down.”

Draco’s temper flared. “And you aren’t dead weight?”

Flint smirked. “I’m only her cousin, and quite out of the public eye except for my Quidditch coaching career. And no one pays attention to the coaches. People pay attention to romantic entanglements though.”

Romantic entanglements. Draco had never thought of them in that context. At least not until last night.

“I don’t need you meddling in my business, Flint,” he snapped.

“And I don’t need you fucking around my baby cousin’s feelings.”

“Marcus, we just saw the most delicious looking baklava being served to another table,” Daphne said as she returned to the table. “We have to try it.”

“It’s just food, Daph,” Astoria laughed. “Calm down.”

Draco’s temper was flaring in his chest, but instead of offering a snide remark, he grabbed his glass of wine and downed it. Only Flint noticed, his eyes fixed on Draco the whole time.

That night Draco made it out to the balcony before Astoria. It was only slightly chilly out, and he threw on an old button down and black trousers, not bothering to wait until Theo was soundly asleep. Draco had been subjected to enough of his sleep habits to last a lifetime. As he heard the glass door slide open, he looked over his shoulder to see Astoria closing it. She was wearing a pair of dark sleep pants and a tank top, both of which were silk. When she spun around, Draco caught a glimpse of her face. He noticed her eyes first. They were focused on him and slightly narrowed, determination shining there. Her mouth was slightly pinched into a frown. That frown sent a chill down his spine.

As Draco opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong, she strode toward him quickly. Her warm hands found his shoulders, and she used them to steady herself as she positioned her knees on either side of his thighs. Shock rippled through him. Astoria was going to sit in his lap, he realized. Automatically, his hands found her waist, her skin solid under the soft fabric of her shirt.

“What are you doing?” he hissed.

“I want to ask you something, and I thought you’d be more honest this way,” she said as she shimmied around to get comfortable. Draco sincerely hoped that she didn’t brush against anything unseemly. “How many people have you kissed?”

It was an odd question, which Draco might not have answered if her lips were not within inches from his own. She smelled sweet and spicy and everything about her was intoxicating. He had the urge to freeze this moment so he could feel her warmth against him, know what it was like to have her breath fanning against his face, memorize the curiosity painted in her irises.

“Enough,” he answered roughly, his voice dropping an octave.

“Good,” she said.

Then her lips were pressing against his own, more insistent than the night before. Though he knew it was coming, surprise still snaked through him, his hands blindly clinging to her shirt. Astoria was fine wine, rich and tart and revealing more flavors to him the more he tasted of her. Unsure of what she would allow him to do, he put all his energy into pressing his mouth against her own. Her lips were soft but urgent, and he tried his best to keep up, but he felt like he was drowning in her. Astoria was consuming him with her pretty gasps, her sweet smell, and her soft lips.

She asked him how many people he’d kissed, and now Draco was wondering how many people she’d kissed. It was clear she’d done this before by the way she was pressing herself against him in all the right ways. Draco had only kissed a handful of girls — Pansy, Tracey Davis, and some other Slytherins. He’d been intimate with even fewer of them.

She detached her lips from his mouth and started a trail of sucking kisses down his neck.

Draco had to force himself not to let out the most obscene moan.

“Why haven’t we been doing this the whole trip?” Astoria asked breathlessly.

Draco groaned and tugged her closer to him. He could have had four nights of this endless bliss. Instead of responding, he pressed his lips against her neck, delighted at the feel of delicate skin. Dropping her head back, Astoria gasped and clutched at his shoulders. This was the only way he could stop her smart mouth apparently, and he was not in the least bit upset about that.

Sliding his hand between her shoulder blades, Draco held her firmly while his lips continued downward. Gently, he swept his lips down to her collarbone, found the skin between her collarbone and shoulder, and bit down lightly. The smooth tips of her hair brushed against his hands, and Draco had to fight the urge to tangle his fingers in it. His other kisses had never felt like this. He had been attracted to the other girls, of course, but it was always physical. It was more about what he wanted and what those girls could offer him. With Astoria, it was more intense, more emotional. He wanted to please her, not just himself.

Astoria dunked her head and caught his lips again. This time, Draco was unable to hold back his moan, his hands grasping the nape of her neck. She turned gentle slowly, pressing her swollen lips tenderly against his own until they settled into a languid rhythm. Finally, she rested her forehead against his own, sharing the same breath as him.

This was what peace felt like, he realized. Quiet, Astoria’s fingers desperately clutching the collar of his shirt, his fingers brushing the edges of her jawline. Even before the war, he had never felt like this – had never been so content to sit in silence, sharing the same breath as another human being, and soaking in the glow of their presence. Draco thought he might like to live in this moment forever.

“Are you going to spend the New Year with your parents?” she asked finally.

Draco meant her eyes and saw calm there for the first time. He thought maybe this was his favorite version of her.

“Yes,” he said.

“I see.” Astoria tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “Shame we won’t be doing more of this.”

“We won’t?” Disappointment colored his question.

She traced her fingertip over the top button of his shirt. “I don’t think so. You’ll go back to your manor and your self-imposed exile, and I’ll return to work and people who highly dislike you.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

“Harry strongly warned me against coming on this trip if you were going to be here,” Astoria said with a grin. “He said you can’t be trusted.”

Draco scuffed. “Potter is a shithead with no taste. You shouldn’t listen to him.”

She laughed then. “That still leaves your self-imposed exile from society.”

Draco looked up at the sky, highly annoyed that she was right. Though he ventured into Diagon occasionally, he stayed on the manor grounds for the most part. It was far easier to come to foreign countries where very few people knew him and his reputation. Then he could be just another member of wizarding society and not a former Death Eater.

“You go back to work after the New Year?”

Astoria hummed.

“That’s a week away.”

“I know.”

“The French Alps are beautiful this time of year.”

“Are they? Daphne chose Athens. It’s more of a summer vacation spot. She’s terrible at planning vacations.” There was a pause. “I think I’d like to see the French Alps.”

“As would I.”

Quick as a flash, Astoria was climbing out of his lap, and Draco was following her into the flat. Gently, he closed the door behind him and slipped into his shared room. Theo was sleeping, his back facing the door. Draco rolled his eyes. If he had to share a room again, he would sleep on the floor in the living room. A quick spell had all his clothes flying into his luggage. After he tugged on a black coat, he reached for the door to his room.

“Where are you going?”

Draco spun around to see Theo staring at him, his elbows pressed into the bed. The bastard chose now to wake up?

“My mother-”

“Don’t lie, Draco,” Theo said, and he had never wanted to strangle a person more.

“To the French Alps,” he ground out.

Theo nodded before rolling back over. “Tell Astoria not to break her neck if she goes skiing.”

Draco ground his teeth and cursed his bad luck. Then he stepped out into the living room. Astoria was closing the door to her room, her own suitcase floating behind her. She’d changed out of the sleep clothes she had on previously. Now she was wearing a pair of high-waisted black trousers and a fuzzy green jumper. Her hands were wrapped in black gloves, sporting little gold buttons on the ends. Her hair was still slightly messy from earlier, but her eyes were bright with excitement.

“The French Alps?”

Draco nodded. “Yes, I know a place.”

He slid his hand into hers and then they were gone.

#draco malfoy #astoria greengrass #drastoria #daphne greengrass #cruel summer series #hp #my writing

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written-musings · 1 year

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I would love a snippet of how you envision a modern AU. Maybe something christmasy with a Love Actually vibe?

Maybe Single Parents Obi and Padpad being managed by their kids and at the end realizing that they do like esch other?

Or just domestic Obidala decorating their flat and drinking hot chocolate?

Let me know if this should be a multiple part saga ;) Happy Holidays!

~~~

Padmé walked through endless white, footsteps of chilled yet anxious parents adorned in warm scarves and coats as they waited for their children to exit the school building. Stepping outside the gate, she shoved her hands in her black puffy parka and wrapped her neck and face into her caramel wool scarf.

The sun set early, once again... The sky was a gradient of soft pink and orange hues as the last traces of short-lived winter sunlight peaked through the cotton candy clouds. Wind lightly whirled through the streets surrounded with powdered white, picking up flurries that danced in the air and brushed on her face, nestling into her wild, chocolate curls.

Obi-Wan walked the opposite direction, his amber hair brushed from the almost-winter wind as it contrasted his black wool peacoat, wondering why in the blazers he did not bring a scarf to shield him from the relentless Boston wind.

They stood in a crowd of parents and caretakers waiting for a bell that finally rang, the last day of school before the holidays.

Padmé's 10-year-old daughter raced down the steps and into her mother's arms, adorned in a paper poinsettia crown from crafts, a bag of candy canes and treats in her arms. "Look what I made today, mom!" The girl smiled as she pointed to her crown.

The mother smiled down at the giddy girl, crouching to her level. "You look like a Christmas queen," she bowed down to her as she laughed, "The extra glitter glue gives it a lovely touch."

Tears filled Padmé's eyes as she looked into her daughter's eyes, the only living reminder of her deceased husband - their first Christmas without him.

As they walked away, an 11-year-old boy with amber hair gallivanted down the snowy steps, wearing a paper crown with glued rhinestones, a lollypop hanging out of his mouth from the class parties.

"A crown fit for a Christmas king!" The father exclaimed loud enough for his son to hear over the shroud of children's voices.

He looked at his father and the empty spot next to him. "She is not picking me up today, isn't she?"

Obi-Wan sighed, wondering where things went wrong, "I'm afraid not, Liam." The divorcee placed his hand on his son's shoulder. "Mum, is still in London." The boy looked down at his feet, as he stomped with a crunch in the snow.

"I know..." The boy released a sigh identical to that of his father's.

The father wrapped an arm around his son's shoulder, "We have the Christmas pageant with your class tomorrow, that is something to look forward to, right? We can decorate a tree, watch movies, go sledding in Boston Common..." He trailed off as they began to walk home.

This was their first Christmas without her, not that she was ever around any way.

The pavement was slick as parents carefully paraded their kids home. Padmé being the busy single-mom and professor was in a hurry to return home and start festivities in time to get grading done after her daughter Leia went to bed. It was getting dark now, the homes in the neighborhood had turned on their Christmas lights.

Crossing the street, she followed the signal, only that a public transit bus was bustling full speed astern as it slid uncontrollably on the street. It happened so fast as the mother caught her daughter and pushed her out of the way just in time. In a flash she closed her eyes bracing for the inevitable...

But a pair of warm and strong arms grasped her amid the slipping chaos with momentum causing them to spin around and land in freshly plowed snow on the side of the road as the honking bus continued on down the avenue.

An anxious, newly divorced dad trying his best holding a widowed mother barely holding it together, her back to the ground has his arms held her to him, his breath raspy as their chests rose and fell into each other, to the point where his breath fogged up his glasses.

She stared at him in shock as their children ran to them, screaming "Dad!" and "Mom!"

The man's glasses slid down his nose, revealing the clear icy blue under them. With the catch of his breath he smiled, revealing his teeth, the warmth of wool in the snow.

"Hello there." His foggy breath nestled her face, the warmth tickling her cold nose, reddened from the snow.

My god, she’s gorgeous. He thought.

My god, he saved me? His accent…

The mother sat in shock, smelling old books, coffee, and evergreen before instinctively thinking about her daughter. “Leia!” She called to her as Obi-Wan quickly got to his feet and helped the woman up.

There she stood, being helped up by a boy with amber hair, wearing the paper crown. “She is okay!” The boy shouted as he dusted the snow from Leia’s coat, “Leia is just shocked, that is all.”

“Mom!” The girl ran to her mother and hugged her.

Tears filled the mother’s eyes as she held her daughter. She could not lose anyone else.

“Thank you, Liam.” Her daughter said through her mother’s embrace.

Letting her go, Padmé’s gaze shifted from the boy and his father.

“You saved us, both of you…” She said as a crowd of concerned onlookers checked to see if they were okay.

The man scratched his head awkwardly, as he glanced at her again, doing a double take to wonder if she is real. “Are you okay?” He asked.

She raised her eyebrows, “I should be asking you the same question…”

Liam and Leia glanced at each other, and then their parents who were entranced in each other’s eyes, as if their world stopped - two adults completely dumbfounded, but they did not know if it was because a bus almost fatally hit her or the fact that they couldn’t take their eyes off each other.

It’s not like any of them would admit it.

He shrugged nonchalantly, as if his life saving tactics were no trouble, “Just another day dealing with Boston public transit… My name is Obi-Wan, but people call me Ben.”

The woman laughed anxiously in response, her heart still racing from the near-death experience, only that it was prolonged for another reason she did not want to even consider. The man reached his hand out to shake hers, “My name is Padmé. I owe you my life, Obi-Wan. Thank you…” Her heart, her chest… she started feeling something.

She wasn’t ready, not again. She did not want to hurt again.

He smiled politely, not knowing what to say. It was too early to try dating again, he knew it.

“Not a problem,” he responded, wanting to find a way out of the situation, “We should probably get going…”

The children looked at each other and then at their parents…

“Dad, where do we have to go?”

The man nervously ran his fingers through his amber locks as he finally broke eye contact with her, “We have… errands.”

Immediately looking down, she placed her palm on daughter’s shoulder, dusted with snow, “We should get going, too…”

“Going where? I thought we were making hot chocolate and watching a movie!” Leia responded in a perplexed tone as she turned to her mother, her eyebrow raised.

“I absolutely love hot chocolate!” Liam exclaimed with excitement, meeting eyes with the girl with a subtle smirk.

“Mom,” the girl tugged at her mother’s sleeve ever so slightly, her eyes widened when she would ask for something, “we should thank them with hot chocolate!”

“We would love to join! Right, dad?” The son looked up to his father, knowing that his mother had failed him and that he did not want to do the same to him.

All Liam and Leia wanted was for their parents to be happy, which, in turn, would make them happy.

Padmé and Ben met eyes again, and it was like their breaths were taken away when the bus almost took her away for good, but they didn’t want it.

Their children’s happiness, however, was something they could not refuse.

With a hesitation, they simultaneously breathed, “Okay.”

#obidala #obidala drabbles #my drabbles #obi wan/padme #obi wan and padme #obi wan x padme #padme x obiwan #fan fiction

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bartfargo · 5 months

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War-on-Christmas Movies

The right wing's second-favorite war (after any war that actually involves sending other people's children to die) has got to be the "war on Christmas." This totally made-up war dominates right-wing media every year. And why not? What could be easier than telling gullible schmucks that there's a sinister plot to take away a major holiday (and throwing in as many antisemitic dog whistles as you can carry)? In fact, so successful has this formula been that they've actually gotten four movies made about it - which means that people have driven past dozens of Nativity displays, on their way to see movies that claim that there's an evil plot to put an end to Christmas.

Presented in chronological order, since I don't know how to rank crap:

Christmas with a Capital C (2010)

Ted McGinley is the mayor of a small town in Alaska, who takes umbrage when a judge tells him that he will have to allow townspeople who aren't Christian to put up displays next to his Nativity scene if he wants to put the thing up on town property. Brad Stine is the mayor's brother (no known other occupation), who has a Three Mile Island-level meltdown when a barista wishes him Happy Holidays. Daniel Baldwin is a local boy who became a big-city lawyer, who runs for mayor on the platform of respecting all faiths. It's a PureFlix movie, so the first two are treated like heroes even though they aren't, and the last one is treated like the villain even though he isn't doing anything wrong.

All these movies have parts where they say the quiet part out loud: Here, one such part occurs in the aforementioned coffee shop rant, where the designated hero kicks things off by saying "There's only one holiday that makes me happy." Later, when the other designated hero sees a local business put up a Happy Holidays sign, and the owner says "It's better for everybody," he replies, "It's not better for me." At the end of the day, these guys worship themselves.

Last Ounce of Courage (2012)

This film follows small-town mayor/pharmacist Bob Revere (because fuck subtlety) and his visiting grandson, Christian (because fuck subtlety with a garden hose), as they hatch a two-pronged scheme to bring Christmas back to the community. Bob's end involves putting up a Christmas tree in the town square (because who does that anymore, amirite?) and a cross back on a mission (because yeah, that totally happens). Christian's strategy involves taking over the school's Holiday Pageant, changing its plot of aliens coming to pay tribute to a newborn king back to the Biblical story (because, if they just used a secular story like A Christmas Carol, and Christian got butthurt over them not mentioning Jesus enough for his liking, he'd look like the asshole he is). Along the way, they run up against some guy who's supposed to be intimidating for some reason, and Christian decides to cap off the pageant with a snuff film (I'm not making that up).

Saying the quiet part out loud: When Christian greets Bob with a handshake straight out of Flip Wilson, Bob asks, "That's not an LA gang handshake, is it?" (And the movie shows Bob patching up a white biker gang member who had a gunshot wound, so it's not the possibility of him being mixed up in a crime that concerns him.) Later, he gives his best friend a death glare for busting out a rap version of "We Three Kings." Clearly, when the Reveres sing "I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas," they're not talking about the weather. Also, a female news anchor walks off the job, so she can spend Christmas with her family.

Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas (2014)

Kirk Cameron plays himself (an uninformed, egotistical twit), and director Darren Doane plays his brother-in-law, Christian White (I'll take What Kirk Cameron Thinks Everyone Should Be for $600). Christian worries that the real meaning of Christmas has been lost, and Captain Crocoduck throws him a line of bullshit to reassure him that it's all really still about Jesus (for example, Jesus had a material body, so it's right to celebrate with material things).

Saying the quiet part out loud: Cameron takes the apocryphal story of St. Nicholas slapping a cleric for doubting the divinity of Christ, and ramps it up, turning it into a story where St. Nick beats the man to death. This, he tells us, is "the defender of the faith you want to be."

A Madea Christmas (2015)

Madea and her niece go to the small town (yes, another one) of Buck Tussle, Alabama (or something like that), to visit the niece's estranged daughter. Along the way, they meet her secret husband (a white man), the in-laws (Kathy Najimy and Larry The Cable Guy), Madea abuses a child, and assorted other shenanigans. So, what makes this a War-on-Christmas movie? It seems that Poop Weasel has been suffering since a nebulous business built a dam, cutting off water to the town, and jeopardizing the town's Christmas Jubilee. The daughter's ex (who accompanied Madea and her niece) offers to fund the Jubilee, and the mayor readily agrees. Later, after signing the agreement, he reads it, and discovers that 1) the ex is the CEO of the company that built the dam, and 2) as a condition of the agreement, the celebration is to be called the Holiday Jubilee, with no mention of Christmas or Jesus allowed.

Saying the quiet part out loud: En route to Dingle Berry, Madea has to stop and use a restroom. Asking at a gas station, she is directed to a nearby building. She walks in, and finds a Ku Klux Klan meeting in progress. She hightails it out of there, and a Klansman looks after her like he isn't sure what's going on. Later, after learning that the daughter is married to a white man, the niece flies off the handle, telling her a story she's apparently heard many times, of the niece's husband being killed by a white man. This time, however, Madea interrupts, saying that the niece's husband isn't dead, but simply left her for a white woman, and she knows it. You tell me what it means when a filmmaker depicts the KKK better than a black woman.

So that's it; that's how many War-on-Christmas movies there are, and what they are like. They stopped making movies like this. Of course, instead, they now make Hallmark/Lifetime Christmas movies, where either the heroine gives up her career for life with some guy back home, or the hero decides to dump the woman he's been seeing for years for someone he just met, because the woman he's known for years thinks of home and family as something she can have along with a career, when that's his job.

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kyunisixx · 3 years

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champagne problems (part i)

a/n: back with another fic inspired by champagne problems by Taylor Swift. went circles with this one but it may possibly have a part 2.

themes: angst, heartbreak, and absolute heartbreak.

pairing: jimmy page x fem!reader

Bustling crowds or silent sleepers

You're not sure which is worse

She wasn't sure what drove her to act like she did tonight. Of course she was very much in love and head over heels. She can never fathom the idea of being with someone for the rest of her life other than him. The champagne she was sipping on earlier this evening left a lingering, bitter taste in her mouth, a pungent regret, and a sour truth.

Her ears are ringing and her chest felt like it was being compressed by a large boulder. Every breath she struggles to inhale seems to burn her throat, her eyes are clouded with tears. An experience she never thought she'd go through again, and this time, no comfort of Jimmy's embrace would calm her down. She then slumped back into a brick wall and slid down into the cold ground.

As her breathing slowed down into a calmer pattern, she realized what she was feeling wasn't even a quarter close to what he must have been feeling at this moment.

Jimmy, her darling Jimmy. That little boy who she met under a sycamore tree beside an old building during lunch hours. He stood up from the other side and dusted his perfectly ironed uniform and came over with his lunchbox in hand. He stopped in front of her and stretched his arm down to show the box into her view.

"Take it. I don't like peanut butter. I'm not allergic, it's just disgusting"

He had said in a clipped voice, but it didn't stop her mouth from morphing into a wide smile which exposed her missing tooth. "Hello, I'm new here. It's nice to meet you and I'm Y/N. How about you, what's your name?"

The stoic little boy ended up sitting beside her and she listened as he endlessly expressed his undying hate for peanut butter and how he pretends he does. His love for music and his dreams to study biological research.

He took her to a lake just a few minutes walk away from his home for the first time that weekend. "It's my safe place. I'd go here whenever I feel like I need an escape", he had said.

In his shoulder, was a bag carrying a large guitar. She watched him meander his bony but elegant fingers across the strings creating a beautiful sound which could almost lull her to sleep but his out-of-tune voice kept her laughter bubbling out. They had stayed seated on a blanket until dusk came around.

Her fingers wipe the lone tear which fell on a picture in her wallet. It was a faded photograph of them during their high school prom. Both older and he, a lot taller. What once was a little girl with a missing front tooth, now a young woman smiling at the lense of the camera. And what once was a shy and mysterious little boy, now shares the same smile and possesses the same glint of adoration in his eyes for the woman in front of him. Flowy and white was the dress she wore and a large suit with a funny-looking tie for his lanky form. She could vividly remember her hands shaking as he took her hand in his after she had asked him to leave early and avoid prom pageant schemes. He whisked her away under the same old sycamore tree and rested their expensively-clothed backs on the moist grass in silence. A few minutes, he sat up straight and with a stuttering voice, he confessed his love right there, reciting a long message in which she interrupted with a longing kiss.

He was there to watch her audition and rejected a few times for the football team until she was finally able to get in. She was amongst the crowd of people to watch him at his gigs and push him to work towards his passion and to create music.

His family loved her and her family adored him. As Emily Bronte said; whatever their souls are made of, his and hers are the same.

So when he had her over to his parent's house for Christmas eve, she knew something was up. Everyone had a giddy smile as they seemed to knowingly stare at either her or Jimmy. And he, especially, appeared to be distracted and uneasy. Never in her years of knowing him had she seen him act like he does as he always was well-put together.

After dinner was served, glasses of champagne were being distributed as family members turned to each other to form in small groups of their own as they all waited for countdown.

"What do you want to get for Christmas?", Jimmy's sister cheekily asked, Y/N being unaware of its doubled meaning. She smiled fondly.

"I'm happy right where I am"

"I'd be damned if you weren't", his sister laughed heartily.

They had chatted and shared half-drunken giggles for a few minutes until his sister broke free from the conversation when someone called her over. It was when the room got unmistakably quiet. She turned around to see Jimmy, standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room. Some eyes were focused on him and others were seeking her reaction.

"You were the first one to listen to my hateful rant about peanut butter sandwiches, the first one to believe in what I can do and urged me to do what I desire. I cannot possibly express in any word the fondness I have felt the moment I have laid my eyes on you and your smile many years ago. An outcast like me, you were. But so unaware of the shine you possess and how you have everyone in every room in the palms of your tiny hands…"

It took her a few seconds to discern what was happening. As words spilled from his shaking lips, her ears weren't so responding anymore. So many thoughts were running all over her brain. He was about to propose marriage. She looked around to see looks of expectancy and hope in every family members and friends' eyes, the nervousness in Jimmy's voice and the distinct elephant in the room.

Jimmy and her were only young adults, her being 18 and him only a year older. Her heart pounded at the thought of being a burden and possibly hold Jimmy back from pursuing his dreams. Add the fact that she had goals of her own and even though the idea of growing old with Jimmy was all she wanted, she knew it was too soon. But her idea to explain her reason was impossible when there were so many people around, all expecting her to give one answer; Yes. The pressure was building up from her very core which pushed moist in her eyes and her knuckles to turn white from balling them into fists. Never in her lifetime did she think hurting Jimmy was the only resort to protect him.

"...I am irrevocably in love with every fibre of your being and I want to spend my last, withering days with you, Y/N. Will you marry me?"

There was an impenetrable silence fogging the room. Her heart was pummeling against her ribcage as her breaths came in short puffs. Her mouth opened and closed again as she searched Jimmy's eyes for signs of hoax. His were desperately seeking hers for answers as his fingers gripped the emerald ring from where he was kneeling down on one knee.

"Jimmy… I", her voice croaked out dryly and swallowed. She locked her eyes on his green irises, ones she adored so much. Her lower lip trembled as she searched his face one more time. She was so desperate to say yes, but she knew she would regret it and would only end up hurting him more. Her hands reached down to cup his cheek, smiled sadly and in a small voice, she uttered, "I'm sorry, I can't".

Then she ran outside, leaving Jimmy, her Jimmy, to watch her leave and wallow in tears.

One for the money, two for the show

I never was ready, so I watch you go

Sometimes you just don't know the answer

'Til someone's on their knees and asks you

fogs on windshield glass (part ii)

⭐writings list⭐

taglist: @jonesyjonesyjonesy , @princesspagey (if you want to added in, let a sis know)

#jimmy page x reader #jimmy page #led zeppelin #fanfic #taylor swift #evermore #champagne problems #robert plant #john paul jones #john bonham #classic rock

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birdieklein · 4 years

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hello, official introduction time. my name is, i’m twenty-two, and i’m currently wasting a lot of time playing animal crossing. don’t ask me how much. it’s a lot of time. a lot.

anywho, this, my dear friends, is beatrice rose galloway-klein. her mama is the only one who uses her full name because most people just call her birdie ( much to her mama’s chagrin ), and some call her gallo, but only if they’re feeling frisky. she’s aiming to be the president of the united states one day, and honestly ? she could get there. but for now, she’s only twenty. she’s escaped from southern belle hell but the accent and taste for pecan pie hasn’t left her. she has a drawl thicker than fog in the spring, and she could charm the birds out of trees. currently, she’s a part of house machiavelli, and she’s studying political science and political theory. honestly, she’s just a delight, and i’m peachy keen to start plotting with everyone !

below the cut is a full bio & ideas for plotting.

Blurb:

A firecracker. A fur coat draped over her shoulders as she lounges on the couch. She’s smarter than she seems, watching and waiting, thirsting for secrets. She drinks pink wine from a bottle, and she’s waiting for a chance to wear a crown on her head.

Backstory:

You are a beauty queen failure much to your mama’s chagrin but her words can’t hurt you because you are untouchable. Bold and brazen, nothing can bring you down. It’s funny. You should have been soft and demure, but you are anything but. You walk into a room and eyes are on you. That’s how it’s meant to be. One day, eyes will be on you, and everyone will listen. You can imagine it all too well. You are going to be something and damn anyone who thinks they can get in your way.

History:

Birdie Klein is born in the high heat of summer in southern Alabama to a beauty queen and the state governor. She is a fussy thing, yelling and never settling down. Her parents adore her, though, for completely different reasons. Her mama sees good cheekbones and pageants in her future, while her daddy sees her as something to love and adore. It is clear who her favorite parent would be from the beginning.

The house she grows up in --- the manor --- is too big for a child. The walls are tall and the windows go from the floor to the ceiling. she gets lost in the curtains between masses of fabric. there is art on the wall, photographs and paintings. she is told from the beginning: look, don’t touch. That's her whole childhood, mottos like that. sit, stay still. walk, don’t run. it is stifling. She is tied up in ribbons and taffeta and she hates it. she stares out the window, longingly towards the trees in the yard. The respite in her life is trips to her grandmother’s. Birdie runs free through the orchard, skinning her knees and scraping her palms. It's a little bit of normalcy. but she always has to return to that too-big house. it’s filled with more people who aren’t family than those who are. there are chefs and maids and butlers and nannies and tutors. Birdie knows them all by name. They take care of her more than her parents. they deal with the tantrums and fits.

She is eight when she steps into her first private school. She does well enough in classes ( her reports home constantly say that she would do better if she only applied herself ) and she thrives surrounded by her peers. she does what’s expected of her, but really nothing more. she has her passions and throws herself into them, of course. feminism. women’s studies. suffrage. Little else really stimulates her. She does well on debate team --- she can talk and argue like no one else --- and she plays field hockey for the school team.

She realizes just how much money her family has one day when she is talking to a ( gasp ) scholarship student at her school. She talks about flights on her daddy’s jet and vacations in majorca. She mentions her nanny and tutor and how they were replaced when she said she didn’t like them. She talks about christmas and how her wardrobe is completely replaced. She doesn’t realize when the other student falls silent, feeling awkward and out of place. Finally, she is hit with the knowledge that not everyone has what she does. She carefully tries not to flaunt her wealth after that, but sometimes it’s hard. She wears clothes that are worth more than some people’s entire. The names of brands that fall from her lips come easy. she knows her wealth can be … overwhelming … but she isn’t mad about it. She likes the life she has.

Birdie is fifteen when she realizes she wants to be just like her daddy. He is in politics, she wants to do the same. They definitely do not have the same ideas. She’s liberal as can be, he’s more moderate. She wants change. He tells her it takes time. she wants it now. During her high school summers, she goes to D.C. and works as an intern in a congresswoman’s office. She doesn’t do much more than make copies, send faxes, and get coffee, but she’s in the room where it happens. She is seeing how the world works and how real change gets made. she tells herself one day she’ll work in one of these offices still. Of course, when that happens, her name will be on the door. It will be her office. It will be her changes that are being made.

She gets into Astor with no trouble. It’s her dream school. She’s going to become something there, surely. How could she not ?

Connection Ideas

and they were roommates ( oh my god, they were roommates ): listen give me a machiavelli for her to share a room with. if they’re on good terms, think of it as a long sleepover. birdie loves to gossip. she paints her toes cherry red, and she’ll paint her roommates’, too, if they’re nice. she’ll chit chat and charm their way into their heart quick as a whip. OF COURSE, they could find birdie annoying. if that’s the case, consider this: birdie’ll try to kill ‘em with kindness and a ton of ‘ bless your heart ‘s. /// OPEN

for the love of appearances : consider this: birdie, proud, in heels that would make her mama’s heart stop, you by her side, looking just as good. a relationship for the image, nothing more. maybe behind closed doors, they bicker like hell and they hate each other. maybe they’re friends. who’s to say .we can definitely play around. there are a lot of options and variables. /// OPEN

hook up hell : listen, birdie loves her appearance. hook ups ? don’t look good for a politician. but they’re fun as hell, and who’s to say a girl can’t enjoy herself every once in a while ? i imagine birdie has joked about making her hook ups sign a non-disclosure agreement before. she was also probably only half kidding. also we can decide if there are real feelings ????? if there’s angst ??????????? love angst here. /// OPEN

friends : okay so birdie is a firecracker, super sociable, super fun ( with limits tho let’s be real -- a politician can have nO SKELETONS IN HER CLOSET ). she’s got a cherry red convertible, a credit card with no limit ---- she likes impressing her friends. i’m not saying she buys her friends, but if the shoe fits ..... /// OPEN

rich bitch friends : birdie’s something of a socialite slash heiress slash really doesn’t ever need to work if she didn’t want to sort of person ?? i imagine she grew up around a lot of people in similar positions ???? so like childhood friends ????? not close, but forced together by obligation ?????? we can EXPLORE /// OPEN

idk my bff jill : listen, birdie needs at least one real friend, someone who sees her beyond the red lipstick and cat-eye mascara. they take away the charm and the southern drawl and they see someone who’s scared of not reaching their goals, who’s scared of losing their mama entirely, someone who just wants to be liked. /// CLOSED to ESTELLA

enemies : c’mon someone must have to not like birdie, i’m sorry, it’s true. there are so many possibilities. maybe birdie’s ambition rubs them the wrong way. maybe birdie is just .... too much. maybe they don’t like her wealth. a loooooot of options. /// OPEN

#astortalks #&. ╱ pretty girls don’t know the things that i know ▎ ‹ about › )#astorooc

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counttotwenty · 4 years

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TWW Fantasy Season 8:17 Like Being Pecked to Death by a Duck (Teaser)

Title: TWW Fantasy Eight-18 Episodes of a JD-centric season Episode: 8.17-Like Being Pecked To Death By A Duck Author: Shelley Rating: Young Adult Disclaimer: TWW is owned by WB. Lucky them. Author's Notes. Thanks to all of you who have been reading this season and letting me/us know what you think. You guys are the best!! This has been a really fun ride. I'm especially grateful for your patience when real life got in the way of fic life deadlines. Thanks to all the other Fantasy Eight authors for their help and encouragement. Special thanks to Liza for the fantastic beta job on this ep and her generosity all season long in sharing storyline ideas. All her suggestions made this ep better and any problems still remaining are all mine. And now, without further ado... Like Being Pecked to Death by a Duck Teaser Interior-Chief of Staff's Office Wednesday afternoon 2PM

As if she had some special sense of exactly when she was needed, or perhaps because she'd been eavesdropping at the door, Margaret appeared, steno pad in hand, before Josh had a chance to bellow for her. "How do you do that," he asked incredulously as he loosened his tie and tossed two folders onto the pile of things on the corner of his desk that Margaret needed to file. "It's a gift." "It's creepy." "I wouldn't need to do it if you'd learn to use the intercom." "Yeah," Josh tilted his head to the side, "but we both know that's not likely." "I live in hope," Margaret deadpanned as she picked up the files and tucked them under her arm. "Could you please tell Sam I need to see him right away and ask Ronna to let me know as soon as the President gets back from Miranda's Christmas pageant." "Consider it done. Anything else?" "Yeah." Josh tapped his pencil on the desk as he thought. "I need to know if the Russian and Chinese Ambassadors are in town and I need Arnold Vinick on the phone as soon as possible. He's speaking at a dinner in London. Don't pull him out, just make sure he checks in with me immediately after." "Anything else?" "That should do it. Thanks." Margaret turned to leave, still making notes on her pad as she walked, and stumbled directly into Sam who was entering from her office. "Whoa there," he said with a bemused smile as he grabbed her elbows to steady her. "I was just going to call you," Margaret said as she collected herself. "Josh needs to see you." She looked over her shoulder at her boss. "I guess Sam has a gift too." "Don't you have things to do," Josh asked with mock annoyance. Margaret smirked at him and made her way to her desk. "What do you need?" Sam asked. Josh removed his jacket, tossing it haphazardly across the room in the direction of the sofa, and pushed up his sleeves looking for all the world like a man whose relatively quiet day was taking a turn for the worse. "I just got a call from Watkins at State. There was an explosion in an elections office in Kazakhstan." "What kind of explosion?" Sam was immediately concerned. "We don't know yet. We've got people on the way to the site." "Any chance it was just an accident," Sam asked hopefully. "There's always a chance." "But if it's a thing..." "It'll be a big one," Josh sighed. "The new elections are set for January. We can't afford a setback this late in the game. Start working every contact we have. Find out if there have been any threats floating around we may have missed. Check out all the usual suspects who might have an interest in the peace process failing. If this whole thing is gonna start to unravel I don't wanna be blindsided." "I'll get right on it," Sam said. "It's 1am there. We're probably not gonna know anything definite till we get a chance to look at hings in the daylight but let's be as prepared as we can be." "Could be a late night," Sam pointed out. "Looks that way. Is that a problem?" "Not for me." "No plans?" Josh asked. He knew Sam was still hurting from the breakup with Lauren. He and Donna had had Sam over for dinner a couple of times but Josh had no idea what his deputy was doing with the rest of his free time. Josh hoped he wasn't burying himself in work as an escape. "Not really. You?" "Well...actually..." Josh fiddled nervously with his paperweight, his eyes falling a picture of him and Donna at the McBain's clambake. "What?" Sam asked, intrigued by Josh's reaction. "If I get out of here at a decent time tonight I think I'm gonna...I mean I think I might... "What?!" Josh looked up at Sam and his face broke into a full dimpled smile. "Ask Donna to marry me." "Are you serious?!" Sam asked excitedly, his face lighting up like a Christmas tree. "Congratulations, buddy!" "I have to do it soon, Sam," Josh said earnestly. "The ring is burning a hole in my pocket." "That's great!" Sam was truly happy for both of them. "Where are you taking her?" "Taking her?" The look on Josh's face changed to mild panic. "I wasn't planning on taking her anywhere. I thought I'd do it at our place." "On a random Wednesday?" Sam crinkled his nose. "Is that bad?" "Well, not bad necessarily bad," Sam tried to find the right words. "Just kind of...ordinary." "And ordinary is bad." It was more of a statement than a question. "You only get one chance to do this right, you want to make it special." Sam hesitated. "Well, YOU only get one chance, I'm taking a few practice swings." "I'm sorry, Sam. I know this is probably the last thing you want to talk about right now." "No, it's fine. Really. I'm just saying....doesn't Donna deserve something really special?" "She's getting me," Josh smirked. Sam rolled his eyes. "I mean proposal-wise." "I guess so," Josh was trying to figure out how the plan which seemed so good this morning in the shower had managed to fall apart so fast. "I mean definitely. Yes. Absolutely." "You know what you need? The great outdoors. The magic and wonder of nature." Sam's face brightened as inspiration struck. "I know. You need to wait till the cherry blossoms are in bloom." "Sa-am," Josh whined, "that'll be months. I don't want to wait months." "Wait months for what?" Matt Santos asked as he entered through the door connecting to the Oval.

"Ronna said you needed to see me." Josh scrambled to his feet but Matt waved him off. "How was Miranda's pageant, Sir," Sam asked. "It was absolutely beautiful. Miranda was by far the best angel, or elf, or whatever it is she was supposed to be. Though keep in mind I may be biased." "I wish I'd been there," Sam said, secure in the knowledge he'd already dodged that particular bullet. "Well then it's lucky for you Helen had one of her staffers record the whole thing. You just may get to see it after all. It'll be like movie night only with home videos instead." Matt's eyes twinkled. He was realistic enough to know Sam was only being polite with his comments and really had no desire to see an elementary school pageant. He just couldn't help playing with his staffers a little from time to time. "Can't wait, Sir," Sam said with a half smile. "So...Ronna said you needed to see me?" "There was an explosion at an elections office in Aktobe," Josh said. "We don't have any details yet. We have people on the way but it's the middle of the night there so we may not have anything concrete till the sun comes up." "I don't like the sound of that," Matt replied uneasily. "We're too close to have this all fall apart now. Any reaction from Russia or China yet?" "Not so far. We're getting a location on their Ambassadors so we can pull them in if needed. I think maybe you should make a few pre-emptive phone calls just to try to keep everyone calm till we find out exactly what's going on." "Good idea." "I'm gonna get Secretary Vinick working the phones too," Josh added. "As soon as he gets off the dais in London." "How did that go," Matt asked. "I know he wasn't looking forward to two days of meetings with Humphries capped off by a rubber chicken dinner." "We haven't heard anything yet but I'll ask him when he calls in." "Good. I'll get Ronna to place those calls." Matt took a few steps back towards the Oval then turned to face Josh again. "You never answered my question. What don't you want to wait months for?" "To propose to Donna," Sam offered helpfully. "He's thinking about doing it tonight. Over dinner. At home. Their home." Sam shook his head in disbelief. "Really?" Matt asked incredulously. "You don't think you need a little...more?" "Like what?" Josh's asked almost desperately. "I've been trying to figure this out for weeks and it's starting to make me crazy." "Women like grand gestures," Matt said assuredly. "They like pomp and circumstance." "Really? Because Sam thinks they like cherry blossoms." "Turn on the TV!" Lou demanded as she barreled into Josh's office with Lester right behind her. It took her a few seconds to register that the President was standing there as well. "I'm sorry, Sir." "Don't worry about it," Matt smiled at her somewhat frazzled demeanor. "What's up," Josh asked as he grabbed the remote and flipped to CNN. He turned the sound up and heard the anchor talking about Arnold Vinick's London speech. "What was wrong with the speech?" Matt asked, eyes suddenly glued to the TV. "Nothing," Lou huffed. "It was what he said afterward, when he forgot his mic was hot." "What did he say?" Sam asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. "Listen for yourself," Lou said as the piece of tape she had seen just minutes earlier in her office began to run yet again. "Humphries wouldn't know an original idea if it bit him on the nose, the crotchety old coot." Arnold's voice rang out, every syllable enunciated with perfect clarity. "He called the British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State....??" Matt could barely conceal his smile. "A crotchety old coot. Yes." Lou said. "We need to get him on the phone." "He's calling in as soon as he gets off the dais," Josh said as he watched the words play again right in front of his eyes. "How did this get on the air so fast?" "One of the military channels was carrying it live," Lester shrugged. "How do you want me to handle this at the 3pm briefing?" "Tell them the President has no comment till he talks to Secretary Vinick," Josh said. "Besides, we have bigger things to worry about. Get with Sam about an explosion at an elections office in Kazakhstan. We don't have many details and we don't want anyone panicking before we do." "Got it," Lester said. "Hey, Lou, you're a girl," the President said, his mind snapping back to what they had been discussing when Lou and Lester arrived. Lou arched an eyebrow. "Yes, I am." "If you were getting proposed to, would you want a little nature or some good old fashioned pomp and circumstance?" "Is this still about Josh?" Lou snorted then turned to smirk at the Chief of Staff. "You haven't managed to pop the question yet? Haven't you had the ring for like...months?" "It's been three weeks," Josh said defensively. "You've waited this long. You might as well wait another few days and do a Christmas Eve proposal," Lou shrugged. "Isn't that a little cliché-d?" Sam asked skeptically. "Definitely." The President nodded in agreement. "Why did you ask me if you didn't want to hear my opinion?" Lou huffed. "A little champagne, some chocolate covered strawberries..." "Donna's allergic to strawberries," Margaret said as she breezed into the now crowded office. "Ron Butterfield is here to see you." "We'll all clear out..." Sam started. "Actually it's probably better if you all stay." Ron said from the doorway. "You'll all need to hear this. Mr. President, an unidentified white powder was discovered twenty minutes ago at the post office sub-station that handles White House mail. We've locked the building down and we're testing the powder now. Preliminary results are negative for anthrax but it'll take several hours to get a handle on what the substance actually is. We need to confiscate all unopened mail, as well as any opened mail received within the last 48 hours, for testing." "Do you think.." Matt began worriedly. "Just a precaution," Ron replied calmly. "We'll bring in some air monitors and run some swab tests. We have no reason to believe the White House has been contaminated but we have to follow procedure." Just as Lester was about to ask if the press had the 'suspicious white powder' story yet the Breaking News logo appeared on the screen. "We have another piece of breaking news coming in to the CNN newsroom. A suspicious white powder...." "I think that's my cue to get back to work," Matt said as he headed for the Oval. "I haven't looked at the mail Ronna left on my desk this morning yet, Ron, so if you'd like to start with that..." "Yes, Sir," Ron said as he followed Matt into the Oval, closing the door behind him. "Lester," Josh said, "tell them we'll get them information as fast as we can. Everybody else.....back to work. Except Lou. I need you to stay for a minute." "If this is another proposal question so help me..." "It's not," Josh said, as the others filtered out. "What's the status on the State of the Union speech?" "Otto and I are working on it. It's a little slow going right now but we should have something on paper for you to look at by the end of the week." "Great. And can you help Lester out, make sure has everything he needs for the afternoon briefing? They're gonna be relentless with three things breaking at once." "I'm on it." "If we're lucky, we won't have anything else go wrong today." Just as the sentence was out of his moth the unmistakable sound of electrical equipment powering down filled the air. Josh's TV and computer went black as his desk lamp extinguished. "MARGARET!!" Smash Cut to Titles

#josh/donna #tww #Fantasy season 8

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ginnyzero · 4 years

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My Fashion Connection

I’ve been trying to pin down lately why I love fashion and fashion design. Because I don’t love clothes and designing clothes and the choosing of fabrics because of the glitz and glam of high end runway shows and the glossy pages of Vogue magazine and adulation of famous design houses. Most of that I didn’t even know about until I went to school. I didn’t choose fashion because of any of those things. I really wanted to go into Computer Game Design because of games like Myst.

Growing up in a very small town in the middle of the southern tier of New York, fashion wasn’t anything that anyone in our town was interested in except the town pageant queen who had a ‘reputation.’ It’s dairy country. My town was and is much more interested in dirt bikes, hunting and fishing and kegger beer parties. There were a couple of families that were more well to do and worked at Cornell or IBM and thus wore nicer clothes but out of a town of say 50 to 100 people, there were more cows and farmers and retirees. It’s the type of town when two of the young people marry each other, the entire town becomes related.

My mother is a home sewer. I hate the term sewer in professional capacity because it has the connotations of a house wife sitting at home making amateur garments. My mother made a lot of my sister’s clothes growing up and when she started sending me to Christian schools with dress codes, she also made clothes for me. (Mostly jumpers.) Eventually she either got tired of sewing or felt that we needed to buy things to keep up appearances and she stopped. (This ended up with us shopping in budget discount overrun boutique shops. Yes. A thing. Family Dollar and Dollar General didn’t exist yet! And mother hadn’t discovered the “joys” of the Salvation Army and second hand or they simply weren’t close enough to shop at.)

In a tiny town, you have to drive almost an hour in every direction to get to anything that remotely resembles a fabric shop. Except, between our tiny town and the city of Ithaca we got lucky, because out in a nowhere more nowhere than our nowhere was a tiny fabric shop run by a petite old woman named Leona.

To get to Leona’s shop, you took this very twisty road over and through the hills and turned right when you finally hit another ‘major’ road. And then off to the left less than a mile was a huge stand of pine trees and in the middle of these pines was a dirt drive. You’d drive up the hill between these tall pines the rocks in the dirt crunching under your tires that opened onto a clearing on top of a hill that held a farm. Leona ran her shop out of her home, a one story mixture of a red roofed, white trailer with an add on to make it an L shape. The barn hadn’t been kept up and the red stain was fading and the barn was falling apart. You parked on the edge of the drive, hoped it hadn’t rained lately and it wasn’t pure mud so you could get back out. (If you got stuck, there was always the local farmer with a tractor and chains to pull you out.) You had to park on the edge because despite the fact the farm wasn’t an active farm, she rented out the land and your cars needed to be out of the way for the tractors to get through.

She had the shop in the add on built on the back of the trailer. Firewood piled up next to the screen door and cats lounged everywhere. Leona liked hoarding things so the walkway had gnomes, garden statues and benches and wheelbarrows and yes, there was a tiny garden windmill in the middle of the circular drive. If it was winter, salt crunched under your boots and you had to walk carefully across the ice covered mud slush. If it was spring or summer, there were flowers peeping up among the grass.

And once you crossed the threshold, warmth, Leona smiling with her curly short white hair and the measuring tape around her neck behind the measuring counter. Bolts and bolts of colorful and textured fabrics lined the walls and the blank spaces of walls over tables were old fashioned wall paper in dark red with ducks or cream and pink rose prints and warm golden colored wood panels. Painted sawblades provided decoration. The clock might have been a novelty item, a cow or a cat or even something with shears for the hands. I can’t remember. (There might have been all three.) It smelled mostly of sawdust, dust and in the winter, the sharp smell of a burning fire from the potbelly stoves. Leona’s help were also middle aged or older ladies like her and they weren’t quite as friendly, but they were helpful.

Leona stocked her shop by going down to NYC and buying overruns from the warehouses. (Overruns are fabrics that designers don't end up using and fabrics manufacturers make too much of because they predict more sales than they make. Most fabric retail stores are stocked by overruns.) She mostly had colorful cotton prints and upholstery fabric. There was a little fashion fabric and by the time I hit high school, she had things like stretch velvet. She mostly sold to quilters and people like my mother. Cornell doesn’t have a fashion design program, only a science textiles program, but she’d occasionally get students. Her hours were irregular. I don’t know if she ever turned a profit. She encouraged touching the fabric. (Though she didn’t like children taking bolts out of the shelves for good reason.) She didn’t mind that I wandered about away from my mother. She always remembered me no matter how much time had passed.

But every time I go into a fabric shop, there is still that bit of magic from going to Leona’s. When I returned from college, I wanted to go and show Leona some of my projects. She died before I got the chance and I still regret that.

Professional shops like Mood, Britex, B&J’s and to an extent the discount fabric warehouse that I used during college in San Francisco make me shake my head because the workers don’t always feel helpful. They don’t make you feel like every customer is important. They aren’t like Leona, as frail as she was, with her sunny smiles and slightly raspy voice, glasses, and cheerful attitude and love of textiles.

I also had Barbie. I’ve talked about Barbie and my love of Barbie. I would play with Barbie rather than with baby dolls. (My baby dolls took lots of naps according to my mother.) And I loved the clothing packs. I loved dressing and undressing her and trying new outfits out of the outfits I had. Barbie was a safe present to buy for me when I was growing up, because a) that meant my group of Barbie’s got new clothes and b) if this Barbie had different color hair or skin then I got more variety in my Barbies. (My favorite was the long red headed mermaid with the teal outfit. This was back when the tail was a “Skirt” you could take on and off.) I had maybe one Ken and I inherited a lot of clothes from my older sister who grew out of Barbie about the time I started getting interested. Some of them were homemade but I couldn’t get my mother to make more and she wouldn’t teach me how to sew to make them myself. (In fact, she said it was too hard and downright discouraged it. Guess who doesn’t really like sewing? Me.)

Today, I love Monster High and Ever After High, but if they’d existed when I was a child, I wouldn’t have gotten them because of my parents’ extreme dislike of anything related to monsters, ghosts or Halloween. (I am a November child people. This is ridiculous. Come on, I share a birthday with Bram Stoker. OKAY.)

And somewhere in that time, (1992 apparently, man, I was younger than I thought) when I was getting a pittance of an allowance and had saved money from Christmas, I had enough money to buy a new Barbie or a Crayola Fashion Design stencil/tracing kit. This was before Project Runway. This was before the idea that these Fashion Drawing kits were thought to be remotely popular. No one thought that little girls might like drawing clothes! (Go figure.) The Easy Bake Oven was still the biggest and most innovative thing for a girl’s toy. But Crayola came out with a stencil kit with a bunch of papers that had design outlines, and pattern rubbing plates and a light box. Everything in the kit was meant to fit in the light box. The light box was plastic, pink and ran on D batteries (not included bummer.) And I had just enough money to buy it or a new Barbie. (I think my only other difficult choice that compares to this was the Star Craft Battle Chest and something else and I chose the Battle Chest.)

(I can't believe I found a picture of that, someone is selling one on ebay.) Because, I mean, a new Barbie would only give me one set of new clothes, with this fashion design kit I could draw clothes, lots and lots and lots of clothes. I had always been an artistic child. I liked drawing. This had never really been encouraged except in the “here, have another set of colored pencils, pastels, watercolors, no lessons included.” So, here was Barbie in paper form! I didn’t have to take the clothes on and off. I could just trace what they had on the sheets or try to come up with stuff myself.

Pages of my Fashion Design Kit Now

I’m not going to say I was very good at it. The point was, I had fun, this was something to do that didn’t involve playing a game on the computer or reading a book or practicing my piano and I hadn’t gotten into writing at this age. So, from using this stencil, I started with encouragement of one of my friends, to try and make it more real life proportion and draw the figures myself (once again without any sort of drawing classes. The art classes at my school were a joke.) I bought sketchbooks and took them to school with me. I started writing because of this same friend.

It was frankly an escape. My allowance never grew bigger. So, it went towards buying new books to read, sketchbooks and replenishing my Crayola colored pencils. (Though Imperial ones were better but I only got those out of the colored pencil color by number kits.) I didn’t buy fashion magazines. The idea of fashion as a career wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t have a career on my radar. College was one of those, “I’ll think about it later,” things.

The girls at my school who were cheerleaders and liked fashion weren’t precisely my friends and felt like complete foreigners and strangers to me. I didn’t ‘get’ them. We had our groups and we stuck to them. Having arrived to this school after the groups were formed, I fit nowhere and living so far away from everyone else, there was no way that I could feasibly see to hang out with them after school in order to get to know them well enough to fit into one of the groups at all.

Magazines were a luxury in our house. Vogue never made it into the house ever. It took until after 7th grade and a major fight that we even got the newspaper. So by the time I hit eleventh and twelfth grade and college was ‘mandatory’ and I had a list of requirements for what college I could go to, I had to look through what the colleges offered versus what I was interested in and thought I could be good at. (Let me say that writing wasn’t considered because my mother was very anxious about me being able to have a ‘real job.’) And the practice test for the ACT in 10th grade came with this odd employment aptitude test thing to help you find the job that would be the right fit. (Goodness knows if it was remotely accurate.) Fashion design was in my “right fit” category. And between all the majors, there was a tiny college in Ohio that happened to have a Fashion Design degree under their Health and Human Services Major. And since the only computer graphics and gaming major I could find was at a Calvinist college in Michigan, I thought the Mennonite College in Ohio was probably a better idea.

I didn’t read fashion magazines. I didn’t know really how to sew. (Sewing lessons with my mother were a complete disaster.) I couldn’t make a pattern. I had absolutely no portfolio. There were three things I liked, writing, computer games and drawing clothes. And let’s be clear, I wasn’t that great at drawing clothes and my designs at the time probably weren’t that innovative. I had to make a choice and what very little information I could glean from the Ithaca Public Library (seriously, you’d think having Ithaca College and Cornell, the library would be better,) fashion seemed the way to go. It was a massive industry. It had to have work available after I attained my degree.

Oh to be that young and naïve again. Probably sheltered is the better term.

I was over a year and a half into my fashion degree at this tiny college when someone finally thought to clue me in that “to get a design degree you have to have an art minor.” Realizing that this was utterly ridiculous and that making patterns in ¼ of the size wasn’t really going to get me anywhere after trying to talk with one of the other students about whether or not we could really get work after going to this school, (I’m sorry, sweetie, I hope you realized I was trying to convince myself as well as you,) I transferred out and into the Academy of Art. (And this took another large fight.)

Where, I had a lot of credits but I essentially had to start from the beginning. So, having those credits wasn’t actually to my advantage because the numbers of credit hours earned made it appear that I had more experience than I did. This got me more scrutiny and really a worse college experience.

Let’s understand something, I grew up in New York. The Fashion Institute of Technology is part of the SUNY system of colleges. I was a New York resident. It would have been fairly cheap for me to go to FIT. My parents didn’t want me in NYC or at a secular school. Parsons was always out of the question because it’s as costly as Cornell and I understood that. FIT would have been an extremely LOGICAL CHOICE.

Oh well, I loved San Francisco. I loved the big city/small town feel of it and the ability to walk most places and the public transit. If it wasn’t so expensive to live there, I might still be there.

So, schooling wore away at me, but it didn’t dim my love of creating clothes. My love of creating clothes was never founded or predicated upon the idea that success was a runway show and a big fancy store and my name in lights. I didn’t want to be the next Coco Chanel. I didn’t know who she was and at the time I started drawing clothes, I frankly didn’t care. My going into fashion was me going “here is something I love and enjoy doing, can I make a job out of it? Yes. Yes. I can.”

No one can take that from me. I might get bored or tired, but you can’t take the love of creating away from me.

And by the way, I still don’t read Vogue. It’s out of date before it’s printed and 75% advertisements. I also still don’t care about a runway show or seeing my name in lights as a “name” of a brand. That’s not the fashion price point I do or understand. And that’s okay, despite the push by fashion schools to design for that price point and that should be your goal, there is a lot more to fashion than ready to wear. Maybe that gives me an advantage, maybe it doesn't. That's not my connection to fashion. Magical fabric shops, Barbie, Crayola, the joy of creating, those are my fashion connections. And those are a lot more tangible than a runway or a name in lights by my account.

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plumandfinch · 6 years

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Just Enough the Same

Wishing a Very Merry Steggy-mas to my Steggy Secret Santa, @evilythedwarf - hope the holiday season is treating you well!

In an instant, the room falls silent.

“Margaret, I will tell you for the last time, girls may not play the Wise Men. You and Helen will go and collect your -” this was punctuated with a disdainful snort, “- angel wings from Mrs. Taylor or you may go home and not return.”

Terrible Marjorie Johnson, cast inexplicably as the Head Angel, titters into her sleeve as Peggy’s hands clench and the heat rises into her cheeks.

“But Mrs. Davies, we’ve already found Helen a robe that fits her and I brought my own crown-”

And that was how Peggy found herself standing slightly sorrowfully between her mother and father, catching every so often Helen’s quiet sniffles from several pews away. She didn’t mind it, if she was being honest with herself. It was much better to be sneaked peppermints by Dad then to spend the night being bossed about by Marjorie Johnson. And out here, when everyone’s hymnals creaked open, she was surrounded by sound. Mum’s light but passable soprano, Dad’s plodding baritone, Mr. Pargetter in the row right behind them gallantly and enthusiastically barking out the bass line.

During the pageant itself Michael winks boldly at her from his place among the other shepherds (“Even I didn’t get to be a Wise Man, Peg.” he says later to further mollify her) and Marjorie trips over her own robe, blushing furiously. Peggy’s sure it isn’t Christian to sigh so loudly and happily but she wonders if perhaps the Good Lord wouldn’t mind so much if He remembered what Marjorie Johnson was really and truly like.

They get passed the small, white candles for the final hymn and the church goes dark but for the flickering points of flame. This is usually her favorite part of standing in the front as part of the angels, looking out into all that light. But hearing the voices around her is comforting in a way she cannot yet name. As the congregation wends its way through the verses, they get quieter and some voices drop away. She’s surprised to see a tear rolling down Dad’s face and to feel Mr Pargetter shaking the back of their pew. She had overheard Mum and Dad whisper once about Mr. Pargetter’s time during the War. “Ypres”, Dad had said, “he was there for the Christmas truce,” and she had dragged the almanac from the bookshelf to find out where that was. She hadn’t asked any questions after that.

“Are you sure, Ma? It’s really cold tonight and your cough…”

It’s something that they do not discuss. And it turns out tonight is no exception. Ma raises her eyebrow and winds her biggest scarf around her neck.

“Well, if it’s so cold then we best bundle up. And let’s get a move on. Father O’Leary won’t appreciate if we’re late. It’s Christmas Eve, young man, and on Christmas Eve, we go to church.”

The street is awash with lights, sounds, and running children even though the hour is late. The Schneiders in the next building are lighting five candles in their window as the Rogerses walk by. When they reach the church it is warm and full and they slide into seats in the pew with the Barnes clan.

“It’s James’ first Christmas Eve Mass as an acolyte,” Winifred whispers to Ma as they get settled.

“I’ll say some extra prayers.”

Bucky nudges him as he processes by, accompanied by a bawdy wink, which makes the candle in his processional candle holder wobble. Winifred hisses and he can feel Ma’s shoulder’s shake. She leans down to whisper in his ear. “You could be an acolyte next year.”

“Nah, I like being out here with you.”

There is a beat as the congregation swings into the first verse of the processional. Steve sings along quietly. Ma doesn’t sing anymore but she wraps her arm around his shoulders and taps the beat lightly against his sweater.

There is a gasp from further down the pew and he looks up just in time to watch Father Doyle, the more spry of their two priests, extinguish a small fire near the high altar and very near a bashful looking Bucky. He can really feel Ma laugh now and he laughs too. Even Mrs. Barnes starts to laugh, once the air of urgency has died down and that’s all it takes for the whole pew to giggle silently almost the entire service.

It’s after midnight when Bucky gets cuffed on the back of the head by his father as they scramble into coats, scarves, and hats and and after a flurry of hugs and handshakes, step out into the night.

She thinks it is the most brusque tone she has ever heard Dugan use.

“I said shut it off.”

A private rushes to switch off the small transistor radio that had been quietly playing in the corner of the command tent.

Peggy catches his eye and raises a well-manicured eyebrow.

“Everything alright, Dugan?”

“Just fine, Carter, I’m fine. We’re out here in this freezing muck and the damn Germans keep shootin’ at us. And I sure as hell don’t need to be hearing that crooner, Crosby, while we’re out here in this wasteland. Also, it’s too damn loud, Private,” he all but growls.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, as long as everything’s fine.”

Dugan runs his hands over his face, wearily. “I didn’t sign up for this to have a good time. It’s just been a long war, Peg.”

“Why don’t you go grab a cup of coffee and we’ll continue this later.”

The tent now silent, Peggy rubs her numb hands together. It is indeed freezing and damp and Dugan is not the only one who is miserable. Their mission was supposed to be a quick one, before they were back to London to begin work on the next big offensive. She sighs, quite loudly in the quiet, and closes her eyes for a moment. Phillips had trusted her with this mission but absolutely not one piece of it was going to plan. They would be lucky if they got back to England by the spring thaw.

And it was almost Christmas, she admits very quietly to herself, as the distant rumble of mortar fire starts up again, and Steve was back in London. That may have been the worst bit of all.

Hearing Dugan’s voice along with Monty and Bucky’s coming nearer the tent, she squares her shoulders and reaches into her knapsack for her field notebook. As she pulls it out a piece of paper flutters out onto the tabletop. She’s still staring at the finely detailed drawing of the team sitting around a campfire, her own face the centerpoint of the picture, each of them seeming to glow in the light, when the boys tromp back into the tent. Bucky catches her eye with a lopsided smile as he nods knowingly toward the paper in her hands and she feels her cheeks color.

She looks back at the drawing before tucking it away and feels a little warmer then, smiling at the memory of hiding a small surprise for Steve in his compass before they left for France.

In the end, they choose the Presbyterians. The huge wreaths on the stately red front doors and the Sunday School kids who made Peggy laugh long and loudly when they went to choose the scraggly Christmas tree from the fundraising sale that now stands, tottering, in their living room seals the deal.

It’s cold and it snowed a week ago. The ancient radiators in their apartment knock and hiss and Peggy grumbles that she has dried out. Steve makes a note to add hand cream to her stocking.

On the night they have to call four diners before they find one that’s still open and have breakfast and strong coffee before they climb back into the car and drive to the church with red doors, cheery wreaths, and kind young people.

They had agreed one night laying on the couch wrapped around each other that this, this second chance, was more than they could have ever asked for but that there were moments when it was too much, too overwhelming. It would happen suddenly, to one or the other, and at the end of November, Steve had found Peggy standing in the Christmas section, nothing in her basket but with a wide-eyed, blank stare that he recognized. He steered her back home and made tea and it was then they agreed they would keep it simple, their first Christmas together again.

So they go to the Presbyterians and it is just enough the same and just enough different to match this new future that they are in together. The candles get passed around for the last hymn that gets quieter as each verse goes by and when Peggy stops singing, he loops his arm around her and they let the music be around them.

It is snowing again when the congregation spills out onto the sidewalk and they walk back to the car in silence, hand-in-hand, listening to the calls of “Merry Christmas” ringing through the night.

#steggysecretsanta #steggy #allied forces #peggy carter #steve rogers

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quintessentiallygifted · 6 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Gifted (TV 2017) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Clarice Fong/John Proudstar Characters: Clarice Fong, John Proudstar Additional Tags: Snow Fight Series: Part 8 of 12 days of X-mas oneshots; Underground Edition Summary:

Clarice wishes she didn’t look so different so she can see the Christmas parade but John wouldn’t change anything about her.

Clarice twirled slowly, snow falling around her. It was so damn cold and the snow under her feet was all kinds of sludgy but it didn’t matter. It was snow. The wonderful white stuff she’s seen in movies but had never actually felt before.

She slowly spun again, avoiding going back inside. They weren’t here for recreation, not for the snow or for the Christmas parade she could hear a few streets down. It was strictly a information gathering trip to locate other sectors of the unofficial underground, and offer them help.

She looked up, watching the snow fall as the cold flakes hit her cheeks, her nose. The cheers from the pageant echoing in the quiet streets. If she closed her eyes she could almost see the floats decked out with decorations, hear the carols and feel the excitement as everyone cheers for the procession.

She doesn’t hear John, startles slightly as he speaks. “We have a job to do you know” he chides softly from where he’s standing in the doorway.

She looks at him, refusing to let her joy fade. In this moment she’s just a girl standing in the snow, with nothing to do ‪until tomorrow‬. “Isn’t this magical?”

He smirks as he scuffs his feet in the sludge by the door “This wet stuff? You have an interesting idea of magic.”

"Don’t be like that” Clarice chides holding her hand out to him, and he strides towards her like she knew he would.

He wraps his arms around her, and she turns in his arms so she can lean against his body, her head laying lightly on his chest.

“Christmas time is always magical, everything about it is magical. The snow, the food, the way it brings out the best in people.” Clarice sighs closing her eyes and holding his arms where they are wrapped around her. Clarice snuggles further into his chest.

“During Christmas, when I was a kid, I used to wish that Santa Claus would make me normal” she confesses in the safety of his embrace. Clarice feels John’s grip on her tighten almost imperceptibly, she knows her words bothered him but he lets her continue. “I wished that I could play with the other kids and partake in the holiday festivities. The schools in the area would put on a Christmas pageant and have a parade through the town with floats made by the high schoolers. Carl and Denise never let us go to watch, they though it was too dangerous. My siblings and I, we just wanted to be normal kids, so we could have regular childhood experiences.”

Clarice looks up as John’s hands move from her waist to her shoulders and gently guide her to face him. Johns face is pinched at her declaration. “Even if I could, there’s nothing I would change about you. Not one thing. If seeing the parade is so important for you, I will find us a spot to watch it from.”

Clarice smiles up at him, thankful that he cares enough about her to try to fulfil her wants.

“It’s not, I’m not a nine year old girl anymore. I have infinitely more important things to do than watch a parade.” John looks at her dubiously. “I’m serious, it was a child’s dream. I am a grown ass woman, I don’t dream about watching parades.”

“It doesn’t mean you don’t long to see one.” He responds wisely.

“How about we watch the parade when we win?” She bargains.

“It’s a date.” John agrees, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

They stand there, enjoying their infinity in this moment and Clarice watches the snow fall around them. She ducks her head to hide the cheeky grin as a thought occurs to her.

“Are you ready to go back in?” She asks innocently, putting some space betweeen them.

“If you want. Are you sure you don’t want me to find a way to see the parade?” He replies, brow furrowed.

“Nah, it’s okay.“ Clarice responds, a sliver of guilt tugging her her mind though not enough to derail her plan.

Clarice nudges him, letting him know that he can go back inside. As soon as his back is turned, she reaches down quickly trying to sculpt the sludgy stuff into a snowball like they do in the movies. It’s rough but it’s acceptable so she quickly throws it. John’s heightened senses enable him to dodge the oncoming projectile without looking. He turns around perturbed and looks from her to her wet hands to the disturbed snow and frowns at her.

"Why did you do that?” He asks mock seriously.

“No reason,” she shrugs.

“You don’t want to start something you can’t finish” John remarks eyes narrowing. Clarice grins in reply and falls to her knees grabbing a handful of snow to form into a ball. She squeals as a snowball explodes against her left ear. Glancing up to glare accusatorially at John to find him nowhere in sight.

She hears the whistle of the ball narrowly flying past head and spins around, just barely seeing John duck behind a tree. Grinning Clarice throws her snowball in the air and opens a portal for it to fall through. The exit opening directly above John’s head, making him shout in surprise.

He jumps out from behind his hiding spot and tackles her into the slushy, muddy snow. She’s laughing as he pins her and grabs a handful from the ground next to her and slams it in his face.

John grins down at her, tainted water dripping from his face, and tickles her. Clarice thrashes against him and the ground screaming with laughter, all thoughts of stealth thrown out the window.

"I yield!” She cries out between peals of laughter. “Uncle!” John pulls back and stops his fiendish tickle assault, a smug grin fixed on his face.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish.” He repeats his earlier warning. Clarice sticks out her tongue in reply. John pulls back standing up and offers her his hand. She looks at it then rolls over and stands on her own. He, unsuccessfully, tries not to roll his eyes at her childish antics. John envelops her hand in his, for the few precious seconds of non-responsibility that they have left, as they walk back towards their safe house; their allies, war, and reality.

#the gifted #john proudstar #clarice fong #thunderblink #thunderblink fic #thunderbird #John x Clarice #12 days of xmas oneshots; underground edition

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thedaveandkimmershow · 5 years

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(Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash)

Last week we celebrated Kimmer’s birthday. We also celebrated it over the weekend with my folks at one of Kimmer’s favorite restaurants. Then tomorrow it’s Linzy’s birthday.

21, I’m told.

For our family, Kimmer’s birthday is the official start of the holiday season because, in general, every week thereafter holds some kind of holiday moment or event.

Now I said tomorrow’s Linzy’s birthday and you may be thinking to yourself wait a minute... tomorrow’s THANKSGIVING. And you wouldn’t not be right. Thanksgiving’s the fourth Thursday of November. Linzy’s birthday sometimes falls on the fourth Thursday of November.

And on those occasions, we treat those days as Linzy’s birthday. And only Linzy’s birthday. Which, yes, is challenging what with most birthday-ish things being closed for Thanksgiving and, most importantly, with most friends celebrating the holiday with family.

Makes it kinda hard to ditch.

Anyway.

We schedule Thanksgiving for some other convenient but later date the following week. Plus, before the month is out we’re gonna try to watch a few... a couple... okay maybe one legitimately Thanksgiving movie from the following list:

Funny People The Blind Side You’ve Got Mail Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Addams Family Values Pieces of April Home For The Holidays

Shortly after that, it’s December. And the 2nd will most likely find us, schedule permitting, down at St. Mark’s Cathedral for their Advent celebration. We might even return on the 18th for their Pageant of the Nativity.

Of course once we’re into December... we’ve both got a mental list of Christmas movies like “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown” and movies during the course of which Christmas occurs like “While You Were Sleeping” that we’ve gotta watch. It’s actually a pretty long list... so the challenge become seeing the essentials of that list before the year’s out.

Our Christmas shopping’ll be spread out over the weekends as we hop from Value Villages to Goodwills ‘n back from Bellingham to Seattle down both sides of Lake Washington with (hopefully) a return visit to Gyros 2 Go in Redmond.

Kimmer just redecorated our tree for fall... so I’m thinking dressing our home for Christmastime won’t happen first thing in December. Maybe the second week. Ish.

So there’s that.

Each year, in the days leading up to Christmas, I’m also looking for an opportunity to place poinsettias on the grave of my old neighborhood bible school teacher, Mrs. West. She used to walk to my childhood home in Magnolia, on my birthday, to give me gifts for my birthday and Christmas. And I guess that’s something I never forgot... and always felt the need to honor even to this day.

After the 18th and its Nativity, next stop’s my birthday on the 23rd. Then the 24th is Christmas Eve. Then Christmas on the 25th.

And then who knows what the last week of the year’ll look like. In the past we’ve done Christmas and New Years parties... but we’re empty nesting now so yeah.

We’ll see what happens when we get there.

In the meantime, our challenge will be to, once again, not drive ourselves bat crap crazy trying to celebrate these holidays when, in fact, we should be living out their spirit.

Every day.

Wish us luck!

:-)

#Thanksgiving #Christmas #Christmastime #holidays #holiday spirit #meaning #love #compassion #empathy #giving #gratitude #living the season #happiness #joy #friendship #family

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southerneveryday-blog · 6 years

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Christmas Pageants

December means so many things. Healthy food like fudge and sugar cookies, credit card balances rising in direct proportion to savings accounts declining, more too-much-to-get-done-than-time-allotted and endless lists to be marked off. But one thing jumps to the top of my list when I think about December. School Christmas Pageants!

My Grandchildren are all homeschooled. That means there are things that I don’t get to do had they been in a regular school. Attending the Christmas Pageant is one of them. That’s a sad thing for me. What Grandmother doesn’t like to see her little ones perform on a stage? (That’s also a good thing because I don’t have to sit through 90 minutes of 149 children I don’t know perform on stage.)

I remember the first Christmas Pageant I was in. My family had just moved from one end of town to the other (literally, from South Rome to North Rome). I was in the second grade at a new elementary school. I have no idea what the story was about. No one bothered to share that with us. We only knew the second graders were tree ornaments. I guess my teacher, Mrs. Darby, sent instructions home for how to make our costumes because I remember my mother getting red crepe paper that came in folded sheets and gathering it on both long ends, then tying one gathered part around my neck and the other around my waist. I was not to move as she puffed me out, transforming me into a round, red Christmas ball that would be symbolically hung on a tree in the school lunchroom. That was my first Christmas Pageant.

In the third grade our Pageant moved from the school lunchroom down the street to the Baptist church. Third graders were angels, dressed in white sheets that our mothers had cut holes out of for our heads. Again, no idea what the story was about but I remember one of my classmates played a doll. Her costume was by far better than my bed sheet.

In the fourth grade the Pageant moved to the high school auditorium on our side of town. I guess we were moving up in the world. I had a “part” that year. I was a Page….for what I don’t know. No one bothered to tell us what the story was about…again! I opened the Pageant by walking out on stage, opened a scroll and yelled (which is why I was chosen for this part, I’m sure. I could yell really well!) “Hear ye, Hear ye, Hear ye! By the proclamation of Santa Claus….” And I don’t remember the rest.

I had my first “boy friend” when I was in the fourth grader – an ‘older man’ in the fifth grade. He had a part, too. He played Jack Frost. I thought that was so cool, to have a boy friend with a part in the pageant! That is, until he showed up in his costume the night of the play. Jack Frost was dressed all in white. Of course! White shoe polish covered his face and hands, which was a shock but I understood. But he was dressed in white TIGHTS!!!! I had never seen a boy’s legs in tights and I didn’t know how to act! I took one look at him backstage before I walked out and immediately averted my eyes. Boy’s legs were supposed to be covered in blue jeans, not white tights! It’s a wonder I didn’t forget my lines.

I guess the sight of Jack Frost placed a psychological marker on my brain because I don’t remember a Christmas Pageant in the fifth grade. The only thing I remember about the fifth-grade is that the principal cut out the annual fifth-grade trip to the Etowah Indian Mounds to hunt for arrow heads that year. For all of us “little kids”, the trip to the Indian Mounds meant we had arrived as upper classmen at Northside Elementary School. It was our reward for surviving our first five years of school…and now my class wouldn’t be going. That was another psychological marker.

Sometimes I really miss not having the pleasure of attending school Christmas pageants. Sometimes.

Not to be denied the pleasure of seeing the kids perform and through the magic of live streaming, I was able to watch on my computer as my Tennessee Grandkids sang in the chorus of the Children’s Christmas Musical at their church Sunday night. The music began and I started searching for the three kids who would be in the chorus.

I spotted one Granddaughter right away. She was smack in the middle on the front row. It would be easy to watch her. I soon saw another Granddaughter on the left of the top row. It would be hard to miss her beautiful long hair. But finding my Grandson in a sea of little boys was not as easy.

Have you ever noticed how boys have a tendency to blend in with each other when grouped together in a mass? And when you are looking at a small computer screen, the task is twice as hard. But pretty soon we thought we recognized him. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, making it harder to make a positive identification (like he was in a line up). Was it our boy or not? Hard to tell. But the more we watched, the more certain we were the boy we were watching was our very own Grandson. He was the only boy on the top row with his hands in his jeans pockets, not singing a word, wearing an expression that clearly said, “I’m only up here because my Mother made me do it.”

I texted Leigh, “I’ve spotted him! I can tell he’s excited to be there.” Leigh wrote back, “That’s him!”

I love it when my Grandchildren stand out in a crowd just by being themselves! The ornament doesn’t fall far from the Christmas tree!

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gunboatbaylodge · 7 years

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Things to Do in Vancouver this Weekend: Dec. 22, 2016

Happy Holidays! Although the events slow down a bit this weekend, that’s not to say there’s nothing to do. There are many holiday light displays, shows, and markets for the whole family. And if the weather holds gorgeous, bundle up and head outside! Get some hot coffee to-go and a walk through one of the city’s many parks, or take a stroll through a neighborhood like Kitsilano, Commercial Drive, or the West End to see what shops and cafes are open to warm up in.

Friday | Ongoing

Friday December 23

The Original Ugly Sweater Christmas Party

The Original Ugly Sweater Christmas Party Where: The Commodore Ballroom What: A party to wear that festive sweater at. Dance, drink, and win prizes.

Ongoing

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Christmas Queen 3: Bachelorette Edition (ends this weekend) Where: The Improv Centre (Granville Island) What: This episode of The Christmas Queen saga sees HRM (Her Royal Meanness) as the star of her own reality show. She insists that the finale be filmed and aired live on Christmas Eve and her poor, brow-beaten director Bob Matchit can’t talk her out of it. Not only will his Christmas be ruined but her plan is to ruin the Christmas of all her suitors. Runs until: Friday December 23, 2016

The Day Before Christmas (ends this weekend) Where: Arts Club Theatre What: Alex is a perfectionist who is desperately holding fast to her Christmas traditions. While juggling family and work—and a movie star—she loses control of her holiday plans, and her home becomes a disaster zone. Can she save the turkey from the dog and salvage a broken-down tree? Find out in this infectious comedy. Runs until: Saturday December 24, 2016

Potted Potter (ends this weekend) Where: The Vogue What: Playing to sold out houses all over the world, this production takes on the ultimate challenge of condensing all seven Harry Potter books (and a real life game of Quidditch) into 70 hilarious minutes. This fantastically funny show features all your favorite characters, a special appearance from a fire-breathing dragon, endless costumes, brilliant songs, ridiculous props and a generous helping of Hogwarts magic. Runs until: Saturday December 24, 2016

Vancouver Christmas Market

Vancouver Christmas Market Where: Jack Poole Plaza What: A new location this year right on the harbor front. Get in there with a mix of traditional food and beverage, wood carvings and toys, knitted goods, nutcrackers, pottery and other crafty gifts. The kids (and maybe childish adults?) can make Christmas gifts and ride a Christmas carousel. Runs until: Saturday December 31, 2016

Enchant Christmas Light Maze

Enchant Christmas Light Maze Where: Olympic Village What: What may be the world’s largest Christmas light maze is made up of over 55,000 sq. ft. of illuminated sculptures arranged to create the an atmosphere of evening adventure. Along with the maze, Enchant features a market with over 40 local vendors, 12 food trucks and a licensed eating area where you can eat, drink, and get merry. Runs until: Saturday December 31, 2016

Heritage Holiday at Fort Langley

Heritage Holiday at Fort Langley Where: Fort Langley What: Taste chestnuts by the open fireplace, craft a handwritten letter with pen and ink for a loved one, then relax with coffee or lunch at lelem’ at the fort Café. Watch hourly barrel-making and blacksmithing demonstrations, and at 12 pm and 2 pm, laugh along with a holiday-themed fur trade wedding. Runs until: Saturday December 31, 2016

Avenue Q Where: Arts Club Theatre What: The musical story of Princeton, a bright-eyed college graduate who arrives in New York City looking for love, a job, and his purpose in life. The only neighbourhood he can afford is the multicultural Avenue Q, where Sesame Street-esque puppets rub shoulders with humans. Part felt, part flesh, Avenue Q contains full puppet nudity and other vulgarities that will induce laughter. Runs until: Saturday December 31, 2016

A Charlie Brown Christmas Where: Carousel Theatre What: Good grief! A lively musical adaption that also features a live jazz trio. Join Charlie Brown on his quirky journey as he tries to direct the school Christmas pageant. With some help from his friends and a ragged little tree, Charlie Brown discovers the true meaning of the season. Runs until: Saturday December 31, 2016

Holy Mo! A Christmas Show Where: Pacific Theatre What: Folly, Guff, and Buffoona are back! And this time, it’s Christmas. A reverently irreverent re-imagining of the Nativity told with gusto and a questionable commitment to accuracy by Pacific Theatre’s three favourite fools. Runs until: Saturday December 31, 2016

The Music Man Where: Gateway Theatre What: This beguiling and nostalgic family musical begins when fast-talking con man Harold Hill arrives in small town Iowa, singing empty promises about starting a glorious marching band to organize the local youth. Although all the townsfolk seem eager to follow his lead, the prim local librarian, Marian, threatens to reveal him as a fraud. Runs until: Saturday December 31, 2016

East Van Panto: Little Red Riding Hood

East Van Panto: Little Red Riding Hood Where: York Theatre What: Little Red Riding Hood is bombing down the Adanac bike trail to deliver a basket of goodies to her sweet little granny. Cheer Little Red along as she battles everything from bike thieves to distracted drivers to The Big Bad Wolf. Suitable for kids 5 and up. Runs until: Saturday December 31, 2016

Mary Poppins Where: Arts Club Theatre What: Watch Mary Poppins fly over the rooftops of London, and feel like a kid again! Remember, anything can happen if you let it. This family musical featuring the unforgettable songs from the popular Disney film—A Spoonful of Sugar, Chim Chim Cher-ee, and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious—is practically perfect in every way. Runs until: Sunday January 1, 2017

Untangled Figures by Guillaume Leblon

Untangled Figures by Guillaume Leblon Where: Contemporary Art Gallery What: Creating fictional landscapes or altering an existing space has long been Leblon’s favoured technique for fuelling uncertainty and doubt in order to undermine the stark purity and perfect finish of the museum. Runs until: Sunday January 1, 2016

Après over the Holidays Where: Sea to Sky Gondola What: Wrap up a day of snowshoeing, tubing, exploring the backcountry or a headlamp hike tour by gathering with friends and family at the top of Sea to Sky Gondola for cocoa or a wintery stew as you cozy up and drink in the views from our Summit Lodge. Runs until: Sunday January 1, 2017

Grouse Mountain Peak of Christmas

Peak of Christmas Where: Grouse Mountain What: It’s mountaintop holiday time. Bring your family to Santa’s workshop and meet reindeer, or take a sleigh-ride through a mystical alpine forest. You can also experience the tranquil beauty of skating on an 8,000 square foot mountaintop ice skating pond, surrounded by snow-topped trees or wander through an outdoor holiday lights display. Runs until: Monday January 2, 2016

Christmas at Flyover Where: Flyover Canada What: FlyOver Canada will transform into a magical winter wonderland this Christmas season. Guests will have fun helping Santa search for his missing elves during an exhilarating flight across Canada and onto the North Pole. Runs until: Monday January 2, 2016

Holiday Heights at the Bloedel Conservatory Where: The Bloedel Conservatory What: Experience a (warm) winter wonderland inside the Conservatory with lights, festive music, a holiday scavenger hunt, and more. Go to new heights with a holiday ferris wheel outside. Only $ 6.75 for adults, less for kids. Runs until: Monday January 2, 2017

Canyon Lights

Canyon Lights Where: Capilano Suspension Bridge Park What: The suspension bridge, Treetops Adventure, Cliffwalk, the rainforest and canyon are transformed into a world of festive lights in the trees, over bridges, and in the little village. See the world’s tallest living Christmas tree (153 feet) go on a Snowy Owl Prowl, decorate gingerbread cookies and make your own Christmas card. Runs until: Sunday January 8, 2016

All Together Now: Vancouver Collectors and Their Worlds

All Together Now: Vancouver Collectors and Their Worlds Where: The Museum of Vancouver What: 20 beautiful, rare, and unconventional collections, with something for everyone including corsets, prosthetics, pinball machines, taxidermy, toys, and much more. In this exhibition both collector and collected are objects of study, interaction, and delight. Runs until: Sunday January 8, 2016

White, Steel, Slice, Mask

White, Steel, Slice, Mask Where: Contemporary Art Gallery What: Working together for over a decade, the duo’s interdisciplinary practice typically instigates community-based models of participation in order to re-imagine a material record of the present. They investigate tactics of cultural representation while utilizing the methods of anthropology to examine various forms of collecting, interpretation and display. Runs until: Sunday January 8, 2016

STOMP Out Hunger Where: Red Truck Brewery What: Everyone who drops off a cash or non-perishable food donation at the Red Truck Brewery before January 13th will receive a coupon good for $ 5 off a ticket to see the touring production of STOMP during its January 13th-15th run at Queen Elizabeth Theatre. In addition, Red Truck Beer will donate $ 1 from each pint of its seasonal beers sold in the Truck Stop during the month of December to the Vancouver Food Bank. Runs until: January 13, 2016

Walker Evans: Depth of Field

Walker Evans: Depth of Field Where: Vancouver Art Gallery What: The American photographer Walker Evans (1903–1975) is among the most influential artists of the 20th century. Covering the full arc of his career, Walker Evans: Depth of Field presents the most comprehensive look at Evans’ work ever mounted in Canada. Runs until: January 22, 2017

Alexine McLeod

Alexine McLeod Where: Monte Clark Gallery What: The artist presents wall-mounted abstract compositions that combine everyday materials including plastic, fabric, found objects, and light. Runs until: January 30, 2016

In the Footprint of the Crocodile Man

In the Footprint of the Crocodile Man Where: UBC Museum of Anthropology What: The Sepik River of Papua New Guinea is one of the largest river systems in the world, extraordinarily beautiful, but seldom visited. It is here that the Iatmul people, who live along its banks, have created internationally renowned works of art primarily inspired by stories of the majestic crocodile as the primordial creator. This unique exhibition will showcase the most comprehensive collection of contemporary Sepik art in North America for the first time. In addition to highlighting the exquisite carvings of Papua New Guinea’s latmul people, the exhibition will delve into their economic, cultural, and spiritual connections to the river system, drawing urgent attention to the logging and mining operations that pose environmental threats to the region. Runs until: January 31, 2017

Juxtapoz x Superflat

Juxtapoz x Superflat Where: Vancouver Art Gallery What: A manifesto for new creative practices that can no longer be adequately described by the traditional categories of art and production. Presenting the work of more than 30 artists from Japan, China, Korea, Europe and the United States this remarkable exhibition offers a unique insight into contemporary art and its place in cultural life. Runs until: February 5, 2016

As Heavy as a Feather

As Heavy as a Feather Where: Centre A What: Indigenous Taiwanese artist Chang En Man is having her first exhibition in North America. Chang’s practice is characterized by a dynamic interplay between story, tradition, and the struggles of indigenous peoples in the face of ongoing experiences of colonization. Runs until: February 11, 2016

Robson Square Ice Rink

Robson Square Ice Rink Where: Robson Square What: Ice skate for free or rent a pair for $ 4 on this outdoor, covered public rink right downtown. Runs until: February 14, 2017

Judy Chartrand, What a Wonderful World Where: The Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art What: Her beautiful and provocative work presents her own personal history and insights into life in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, and commentary on racism and post–colonial relations between Indigenous and non–Indigenous cultures. Runs until: February 19, 2016

Layers of Influence

Layers of Influence Where: UBC Museum of Anthropology What: This stunning exhibition will explore clothing’s inherent evidence of human ingenuity, creativity and skill, drawing from MOA’s textile collection — the largest collection in Western Canada — to display a global range of materials, production techniques and adornments across different cultures and time frames. Runs until: April 9, 2017

Vancouver Special Where: Vancouver Art Gallery What: The first iteration of this series and it features works by 40 artists produced within the last five years—Vancouver’s post-Olympic period. The exhibition includes many emerging artists as well as those who are more established but whose ideas were prescient. Some are recent arrivals to Vancouver, while others are long-term residents who have already made significant contributions. Others are nomadic, less settled in one place and are working energetically between several locations. Runs until: April 17, 2016

Nat Bailey Stadium Winter Farmers Market

Nat Bailey Stadium Winter Farmers Market Where: Nat Bailey Stadium What: Don’t fret the summers Farmers markets packing up – winter is here, and you can still shop local for fresh produce, preserves, baked goods, and crafts. Runs until: April 22, 2017

Hastings Park Farmers Market

Hastings Park Farmers Market Where: Hastings Park (near the PNE) What: The Hastings Park Farmers Market features a great selection of local produce; nursery items, fish, meat & dairy; artisan prepared foods, baking and treats; local crafts, and of course, food trucks. Runs until: April 30, 2017

What are you up to this weekend? Tell me and the rest of Vancouver in the comments below or tweet me directly at @lextacular

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