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skania · 2 years

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Some Stranger Things Vol 2 Thoughts

Predictably enough, I’ve ended up with more thoughts than intended, so I figured I may as well write them here so I don’t forget them by the time S5 comes out.

I need to start by saying that I haven’t been impressed with the writing since S3. S3 was full of “misses” for me, and the “hits” were very few and far in-between. A few of those problems are still present in S4 - and they are entirely to blame for most of the stuff that didn’t land for me, but all in all I genuinely enjoyed S4 more than S3.

Spoilers for the entirety of S4 below the cut!

What I liked, in no particular order:

- Lucas & Max. I didn’t care about their budding relationship in S2, and I definitely didn’t care about them in S3 either since all we were told is that they argue a lot and then make up. However, S4 knocked it out of the park with them and I enjoyed every single scene they shared. They were SO good.

- Lucas. PLEASE I’ve been waiting for Lucas to go back to his S1 glory since forever, and he finally did. He was such a joy to watch. BLESS.

- Erica. She was a bit too much last season, but this season they struck the right balance and she stole the show. I love the kid.

- Eleven. I've always been kind of indifferent to her, but this season got me caring and they got me caring A LOT. This poor girl has been through SO much and she is always doing her best. If she sacrifices herself next season, I'll be really disappointed. She deserves better.

- Mike & Eleven. Another ship I've always been indifferent about, but I felt for them this season. I actually found Mike’s inner conflict believable and understandable. I’m also hoping he won’t sacrifice himself for Eleven in S5, because at this point these two kids have earned their happy ending.

- Hopper. Thank GOD Hopper is back to being himself. I'll just pretend S3 never happened.

- Jonathan & Will. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Jonathan is at his best whenever he has meaningful scenes with Will. He is an excellent brother and I loved every single minute Vol 2 spent showing it.

- Will & Eleven. They are SO sweet I wish we had gotten more of them.

- Robin & Vickie. I am confident they're going to get a happy ending and I'm 100% here for it. They're adorable. Although it kind of feels like Robin would be sort of dating herself, so hopefully they differentiate their personalities a bit more in S5 lol

- The single most surprising thing about this season for me is... I didn't mind Murray. I even found him funny. For once. I usually roll my eyes every time he's on the screen, but this time Yuri got that honor. BOY was Yuri unbearable lmao

Lastly and most importantly:

- Dustin. This kid still owns my heart, I can't possibly love him more than I do. Another perfect season for him. It’s funny because Mike is supposed to be “the heart”, but when you look at the series as a whole, for me the heart is clearly Dustin.

- Steve & Robin. Their friendship is everything. I wish they had been able to form a little unit with Eddie and Dustin, alas.

- Dustin & Eddie. HIS SECOND DAD. I LOVE THEM. It’s funny because while I was watching them in Vol 2, I got the feeling that Dustin is going to grow up to become exactly what Eddie was to him. He will be the figure that, by being unapologetically himself, will feel other outcasts feel welcome, seen and accepted. They were SO funny, together, too.

- EDDIE. Best character addition since Bob to be honest, so of course I was expecting him to meet the same fate. He would have been so, so ridiculously good with Steve, Dustin and Robin in Season 5. I knew they would take him away, but I still hate that it happened.

- EDDIE & CHRISSY. WE GOT ROBBED.

Now, the stuff that I didn’t quite like:

- Eddie's fate. Literally Bob all over again. A pointless death that was just there for shock value and to make us cry. I can’t believe that Eddie would decide to stop running right when he SHOULD have ran. It felt so hollow, too, because despite the show continuously making Eddie repeat that he sees himself as a coward, he never felt that way to me. His reactions were completely normal. Honestly, it was kind of a forced character-arc so that Dustin could lose an older-brother figure that isn’t Steve. Which I wouldn’t have minded so much if only losing Eddie wasn’t such big wated potential.

- Lack of Steve & Dustin. They set up a small conflict between them and it never got resolved. Steve obviously wants to be someone Dustin looks up to, so Dustin being 10 steps ahead of him intellectually makes Steve feel insecure. Yet, we just get Eddie telling Steve that Dustin thinks the world of him... and that’s that. You’d think Steve and Dustin would’ve been allowed to have a conversation, specially so that Steve could admit to Dustin that he was a little jealous of Eddie but that he now sees why Dustin likes the guy so much. But nope, nothing. They barely exchange a word with each other throughout S2. They really should have absorbed Steve into the Dustin & Eddie dynamic instead of sticking Steve with Nancy.

- Steve confessing to Nancy. Just why. Steve was doing so well, thanking Nancy and acknowledging their S2 arc. The convo should’ve stopped right there, or at worst, right after Steve wondering if they would’ve worked out if they had met now. That bit should have been followed with a “I guess it’s for the best, though. You have Jonathan now, and I kind of have my six nuggets.”. They could have even followed that with Nancy going “Steve, I...” only for Robin to interrupt them. That way it would have been 100% open ended and no one would’ve stepped onto each other’s toes. Instead they literally made Steve confess to her while Nancy is still with Jonathan. That feels like such a betrayal of everything Steve has gone through, he would’ve never done that to Jonathan knowing he himself has been in Jonathan’s shoes before.

- Steve’s screentime revolving around Nancy. WHY did they do my boy so dirty? Whoever said we need him to have a love interest at all? And what was even that speech about the 6 kids? Like I get it was supposed to be a cute nudge to the fact that he, essentially, is the babysitter of 6 kids and we all love him for it. But they should’ve realized that line wouldn’t be well received, specially not when said to Nancy out of all people. People are already twisting it into Steve wanting Nancy to be a stay at home wife. Why couldn’t they have chosen a smaller number like 2 so people would’ve been more inclined to take it a face value and let it slide. Like, I know Steve is a fan favorite, but they need to be careful with how they write him. I personally absolutely want him to stay that way lol

- Nancy's romances. Please just let the girl be single. She can't end every other season lying to her boyfriend and acting like things are fine, while she may or may not thinking of another guy. Come on.

- Will's feelings for Mike. I just want the kid to be happy. They could've chosen ANYONE to inspire Will's self-discovery, but of course it had to be a straight boy who already has his own OTP. I honestly feel like they went for it because the fandom has been wanting it to happen for so long, but this way no one wins. Will is stuck having unrequited feelings for a boy who is already taken, Mike gets demonized because he doesn’t have the emotional awareness to catch onto it and address it appropriately, Mike/Eleven gets trashed as the straight ship standing in the way of a queer romance, and those who do ship Mike and Will still don’t get their ship. It’s just lose/lose all around. I really wish poor Will had been allowed to fall for someone else, I’m so tired of seeing the poor kid suffer.

That said, I genuinely hope the D&D brothers won’t be tone-deaf enough to give Eleven a tragic ending in S5, and then have Mike end up with Will once she’s out of the picture. I genuinely feel like they’re not very good at writing romance and at realizing what things just don’t reflect well on their characters (the Jonathan/Nancy/Steve love triangle being the prime example of it), so I wouldn’t put it past them.

All in all, I’m definitely tuning in for S5, but I’m still as unimpressed with the writing when it comes to romances/new character introductions only to kill them off lol

#fandom: stranger things #tv: stranger things #spoilers

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shelobussy · 2 years

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I've literally never seen a single episode of stranger things tell me your opinions

Here's some stale cold takes from ur local fandom blog:

Stranger Things is actually really really good show all the way up to the end of season 2. Thereafter it becomes a kinda mediocre show that only gets as much hate as it does because the first two seasons (especially the first) is so strong.

Steve Harrington did nothing wrong in season 1. At best you can nail him on an accessory to slutshaming that lasts like a few hour before he backpedals. (He also did nothing wrong in season 2 or season 3 for that matter, not that I'm seeing people say that he did.)

Mike Wheeler starts being unbearably annoying starting mid-season 2 and I can already tell by his haircut that he's going to be even more unbearable in season 4.

Nancy Wheeler is one of my least favorite characters, but literally every piece of criticism I hear about her is sexist and stupid and you're all wrong.

Actually the entire Wheeler family is annoying.

Eleven peaked in season 2 and she's only going to get worse. Her character arc was interesting and Millie Bobby Brown is an exceptionally good actress, but after season 2 her character is completely trashed except for a few cute moments between her and Max.

Byeler is cute but it never going to happen. Yes I ship it. No I'm not delusional.

As long as we're talking about ships, there isn't a single canon pairing in the show that I enjoy EXCEPT for season 2 Jopper and season 2 Lumax.

If we're talking noncanonical ships, Steve x Nancy x Jonathan is big brained and if the writers had balls they would make it canon. Again, Byeler is cute. Elmax is even cuter.

Noah Schnapp is the best child actor on the show and they're wasting him. Kudos for giving him something to do in season 2 though.

Billy isn't interesting stop pretending he's interesting. I'm kidding we don't know each other you can do whatever the fuck you want. But he's not interesting.

Literally every outfit they put the characters in post season 2 are ugly as fuck. ASH IT'S THE 80S-shut ur fuck everyone looked FINE in the first two seasons. The only outfit in season 3 that I liked were the gayass uniforms Steve and Robin got to wear. All the season 4 promos are disgusting and make me want to throw up and NO I'M NOT BEING DRAMATIC GIVE THESE KIDS A HAIRCUT AND BUY THEM CLOTHES THAT DON'T LOOK LIKE WHAT MY MOM THINKS I THOUGHT SHE WORE IN THE 80S.

Robin and Steve were the highlight of season 3 and I can’t remember a single goddamn thing from that season (I’m lying the Byeler breakup plays on repeat in my head 24/7 I mean when Mileven broke up in that season, Mike looked a little bummed out BUT in the Byeler break up they’re literally standing IN THE RAIN and Mike all but CALLS WILL GAY and the looks on BOTH OF THEIR FACES ARE ABSOLUTELY TRAGIC AND-) is the interactions between Robin and Steve it was literally so good and the only in character dialogue.

If you don't read Will Byers as queer, you weren't paying attention.

Actually, on that note, Will Byers is the most interesting character on the show besides Eleven. They literally had so many parallels and there were so many links between them and the fact that they aren't best friends and don't already have sibling energy was siblingphobic of the writers. Do better in season 4 or else.

#if i say a single goddamn word about h*rringrove or whatever i'm gonna get shot #but i do also have opinions on THAT #anyway #stranger things #discourse.#except not really #these are mostly cold takes #ash speaks.#anyway i really like stranger things BUT [insert stupidly long post about things that annoy me]

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msmarvelouswinchester · 3 years

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Last First Kiss

Summary - Jensen finally lets his feelings towards you known but it doesn't get the reaction he had anticipated.

Pairing - Jensen Ackles x Reader, Jensen x OFC!Jessica (brief)

Characters - Jared Padalecki, Gen Padalecki, OMC Mark, OMC Luke, OFC Jessica

Warnings - Fluff, Insecurities, Bad dates, Implied smut, Language, Angst-ish, happy ending

Square Filled - Valentines Day ( @anyfandomgoesbingo ) Jared Padalecki ( @spndeanbingo )

Word Count - 2262

A/N - Written for my 500 Followers challenge

Request by @akshi8278 - Hi, once again congratulations on your 500 followers. 🥳🎉 Could you write number 23 and 25 for Jensen. It could be fluff/ smut, whatever you want. Thank you 😊 (I added a little bit of angst for the course of the story. Hope you like it!)

This is also a submission to @negans-lucille-tblr' 6k Roll The Dice Challenge

Unbeta'd. All mistakes are mine. Prompts are in bold.

Dividers by @firefly-graphics

You trudged down the empty hallway, your body slumped with exhaustion and feet hurting from wearing the ridiculously high heels to impress a man who never showed up. The silence in the empty halls was deafening unlike the crowded diner which was buzzing with lovestruck couples on the fine evening of Valentine’s Day. When you reached his door, you were barely hanging in there. Hesitantly, you knocked twice, immediately cursing yourself for fucking up his Valentines Day as well.

“Y/N?” Jensen tilted his head in confusion at your dejected state. “What happened?”

“I am done with dating.” A stray tear rolled down your cheek as you replied. Jensen pursed his lips as he opened the door wider to let you in. He threw an arm over your shoulder, guiding you towards the couch.

“Mike was a douchebag.” He said, as you plopped down on the blue couch.

“His name is Mark.” You rolled your eyes at him, “I dressed up all for nothing. I am done trying to find the perfect man. I will get a cat and become a cat lady. At least it will show up when we have a cat date with cat food and pizza.”

“You can't just swore off dating because Macaroni didn't show up.” Jensen smirked. “You just haven't met the right person yet.”

“I got stood up thrice within a span of two months. I surely know how to pick them.”

“Sweetheart, I'm so sorry but I know you'll definitely meet the right person. It's just a matter of time.” He rubbed your arm as you snuggled closer to him. “Should we order takeout? I am starving.”

“Mhm. I wouldn't mind some chinese. I'm sorry that I fucked up your plans for the night.” You said.

“I didn't exactly have anything better to do. Spending time with you is much better than third wheeling Jared and Gen.” He chuckled.

“What am I doing wrong, Jay? Something is definitely wrong with me or the entire male population is a douchebag.” You sighed, as Jensen took out his phone to place an order in your favourite Chinese restaurant.

“Y/N/N, nothing's wrong with you and there are good men out there in the world.” He said.

“They are all taken.” You replied, nonchalantly.

“I'm not.” Jensen said and your heart skipped a beat at his words.

“Maybe I was too blind to notice it,” you wanted to say instead you blurted out, “You're my best friend, Jensen.”

His hands dropped to the side as he visibly tensed up. An unbearable silence followed the awkward conversation. You could barely look at the actor beside you who was staring off into the distance, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. Fortunately you were both saved from further conversation by the delivery guy.

You bit down on your lip to stop the yawn that was threatening to leave as you pretended to listen to the man in front of you complain about his work life. You hummed along to the man’s words as your mind reeled back to that night at Jensen's house. You still didn't know why you didn't speak about your true feelings. Even though his little confession didn't break you two up, whenever you used to hang out, a discomfort lingered in the air and so you had ditched the weekly movie night the day before.

After another painfully long hour, your extremely bad date came to a very fortunate end. As a sign of politeness, you had agreed with Luke, your date, when he had offered to drop you at your doorstep. With no promises for a second date, you had left Luke’s car after successfully dodging his attempt at a kiss. You sprinted across the usually empty hallway and found yourself in front of Jensen's room. You knocked at his door.

“So I was on a date and oh god, time wasn't passing by at all! Luke was such a boring guy. I surely do know how to pick the guys- and I'm so sorry I didn't come yesterday for our weekly movie night-” You rambled on as soon as Jensen opened the door without giving him a chance to pitch in his two cents.

“It's okay.” He finally spoke but his words were soon forgotten when you saw the half-naked brunette standing behind him, glaring at you.

“I'm sorry,” You turned your attention to the man in front and noticed the swollen lips, tousled hair and his unbuttoned jeans, “I didn't know you had company.”

“Next time try to call before you barge in complaining about yet another bad date.” Jensen grumbled, rolling his eyes before he shut his door to your face. You stared at the closed door, crestfallen as tears started to pool in your eyes. You made your way back to your room which was on the next floor in the same apartment building all the while wondering if your insecurities had really messed up a good friendship.

Jensen had neither heard nor seen you since he had closed the door on your face. He winced every time he remembered how rudely he had pushed you out of his apartment when Jessica was over. He was finally trying to move on since now he knew how you felt. Jensen was definitely hurt when you made it clear that you didn't reciprocate his feelings but he didn't hate you. You were still his best friend so it hurt when you had started to distance yourself from him, even ditching him on your weekly movie night. All that bottled up frustration had turned into anger when you had knocked on his door the next night to complain about your boring date but he still regretted the way he had told you off.

“Is Y/N going to come to Gen’s party?” Jared asked his tv brother during one of the takes.

“I don't know. Why don't you ask her yourself?” Jensen snapped as he went back to reading his script.

“What happened?” The hazel eyed actor frowned at his friend's behaviour.

“I haven't talked to her in weeks nor have I seen her.” Jensen grumbled.

“You two are like the Siamese twins and now you are saying you haven't even talked to her? Dude, what happened?” Jared asked. “Maybe you should talk to her.” He said after Jensen opened up about what happened.

“I have called her. Dozens of times. She is not picking up.” He scoffed.

“Gen is going to invite her I suppose. Maybe you can talk to her then.” Jared shrugged as they were called back on to set.

Jared was right about everything. You were invited to Gen’s backyard birthday party and so was Jensen. You had hesitated before you finally made up your mind to go to the Padaleckis' because you knew someday you had to face Jensen. When you had returned home that night, you had realised why no one was ever good enough for you since the perfect person for you was right in front of you but your insecurities had made you blind. You knew you had missed your chance when you had caught him with the brunette but what hurt more was when he shoved you out of his apartment.

Jensen had called you a dozen times but you hadn't picked up. You didn't know what to say and the longer you stayed away from him, your feelings for him grew stronger so instead you started to avoid him like plague, trying your best to move on.

The clinking sound of bottles behind you pulled you out from your deep thought.

“Hey.” Jensen awkwardly said.

“Hi.” You returned the same awkwardness.

“You weren't picking up my calls. I'm sorry for the other night.” He said, his gaze quickly dropping to the floor.

“It's all right.”

“No it's not. Then you wouldn't have avoided me.” He said. “I know things have been awkward since that night but no hard feelings. It's perfectly okay if you don't feel the same. I just want my best friend back.”

“I do feel the same.” You muttered quietly which made him look up to you. Jensen stared at you dumbfounded.

“Then why didn't you tell me?” He finally said.

“I panicked. I got scared because you know me, I don't do well with men and I thought if we didn't work out, I would lose you.” Your lips trembled ever so lightly as you stared into his green eyes.

“You won't ever lose me.” Jensen walked up to you, “Even if things don't work out relationship-wise. I will always be your best friend.”

“I don't wanna lose you. You're my person, Jay. So I lied not realising that I had pushed you away myself.” You said.

“I will always be your person just like you're mine but I can't fight this feeling anymore. I think I'm in love with you and I don't know what to do.” He said while walking up to you.

“Maybe you do know now.” He leaned down, cupping your face, his lips hovering over yours. You closed your eyes, feeling his hot breath fan against your skin but then you felt him pull back. You opened your eyes as you saw him stare at you with a look of regret in his eyes.

“I can't.” Jensen sighed.

“Why?”

“I have a girlfriend.” You gaped at him, heart broken into millions of pieces. Before Jensen could get another word out, you fled the scene.

“Hey Y/N.” Gen beamed. “Are you going home already?”

“Yeah I think I'm coming down with something. Sorry Gen. Happy birthday, again.” You said and wasted no time to get into your car and quickly drove back to your home.

Jensen had repeatedly called you since you had fled the Padaleckis’ house but you hadn't picked up. The first two days you had hardly left your house. You had been sobbing uncontrollably. You had bared your heart and soul to the man you had fallen head over heels only to get your heart broken.

You were lying on your couch, watching a sappy romantic movie when you heard a knock on your door. Pausing the movie midway you got up to open the door.

“Hi.” The green eyed man spoke quiet as when you opened the door. The sight of him brought tears to your eyes again. He was carrying a box of chocolate and a bottle of wine. “I would have brought flowers but I know how sad you get when they start to wilt.”

“What're you doing here?”

“I heard a guy hurt my best friend so I'm here with chocolates and wine.” He smirked. You snatched the box of chocolates from his hands as you held the door wide open.

“Sappy romantic comedy? Oh sweetheart, want me to kick the guy's ass? He deserves it. No one hurts my best friend.” He said as he pulled you into a tight hug. The intoxicating smell of his cologne finally breaking you. “I'm so sorry.”

“I'm so sorry too.” You sniffled as you looked up at him. “Our timings sucked.”

“It did. Can we start afresh?” Jensen smiled.

“What about your girlfriend? I don't wanna be your ‘slutty mistress’.” You said, quoting Grey’s Anatomy which made him chuckle.

“I broke up with her. I tried to date other girls to keep you off my mind but there wasn't a single damn second when you didn't cross my mind because I am totally, completely, hopelessly in love with you.” He grinned as he leaned down to kiss your cheek.

“I am in love with you too, Jay.” You said, “Kiss me.” Jensen dropped his head as he leaned into you, capturing your lips with his. His hands travelled all the way down your body before stopping at your waist. He gripped you tightly and pulled you closer, your hands landed on his biceps as you tried to steady yourself. His teeth grazed your lips lightly, making you moan into his mouth. Your hands left his biceps, hooking themselves at the nape of his neck, your fingers tugging at his hair, eliciting a groan out of him.

“Are you trying to turn me on or are you just that oblivious?” He growled into your ear.

“Is it working?” You smirked. Jensen growled once more into your ear before pulling away from you. He effortlessly picked you up, your legs hooking behind him as he went towards the bedroom.

Panting hard you tried to come down from your high as you felt him go soft before he pulled out. He placed a chaste kiss on your lips and rolled off to the side. His chest heaved as he tried to control his breathing, a soft smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

Lost in an euphoric state, you didn't notice when Jensen had left the bed to get a cloth to clean you up. After a few minutes, he returned back to bed. You laid there in his arms, naked, basking in the afterglow of what was actually the best sex of your life. Jensen was tracing tiny, imperfect circles on your arm as a sigh of contentment left his lips. Your back flushed against his chest, smiling, you spoke.

“We might be each other’s last first kiss.” You turned towards, kissing the corner of his mouth.

“No more bad dates. No more bad first kisses. You're mine.” Jensen whispered.

“You're it. You're my person. My world is a better place with you in it.” You said, snuggling against his warm chest. “I love you.”

Feedback is highly appreciated!

#bees6krollthedicechallenge #jensen ackles x reader #jensen x reader #jensen x you #jensen ackles x you #jensen x y/n #jensen ackles x y/n #spn fic #anyfandomgoesbingo2020 #spndeanbingo challenge round 1 #supernatural fanfic #spn fanfic #supernatural fic #jensen ackles oneshot #jensen ackles #supernatural

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soulwillower · 4 years

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crush culture • richie tozier

(richie tozier x reader)

requested: fic where Richie and reader have been best friends since kindergarten, and have always had feelings for eachother secretly, until one day richie gets a girlfriend (just to take his mind off her), and the reader gets jealous and distances herself from him? he obviously gets upset by this- and things go on from there? sorry if it’s too specific! love u!

warnings: swearing, brief mentions of death, fighting, mentions of an abusive relationship, intentionally pissing off richie, a bit of angst, richie is an oblivious idiot, but reader is MUCH more of an idiot, like dude lmao, but i think that’s it, unedited tho

this isn’t rly based off crush culture, but i took the title from conan gray’s song :)

[losers + reader are 18+ in this!!!]

3.8k words L O L :))

♡

you swear to god, you’re getting sick. that’s what this was, for sure.

it started about a month ago, when you started to get headaches and terrible hollow feelings in your stomach. it happened everywhere - in the line for coffee, in class, driving home from school, at the dinner table. but it got a hundred times worse at night and then seemed to triple in force every morning when you woke.

and it all came at you some time after richie announced he had a new girlfriend.

you were really sick the few days after that, enough that you stayed home from school and laid in bed, the pit in your stomach sinking. it didnt take long for you to realize how bad richie’s girlfriend was - she treated him like a dog, like he embarrassed her - and he didn’t even seem to mind. he just brushed off every offhand comment, rolled his eyes with a grin when she told him she didn’t want to see his friends or when she told him to stop talking.

he still seemed to like her, anyways. and that thought made your stomach convulse.

so then you had to distance yourself from richie because it hurt you to see him with her. it hurt you to see him with someone who didn’t treat him like the incredible person he was.

so yeah.

you say you’re sick, but you know that’s not really true. it’s easier than accepting reality at this point, though, so you spew this nonsense (to yourself, mostly) in order to justify ignoring your best friend of nearly a decade because christ, he is becoming unbearable.

like the other day, at lunch while you were all sitting in the courtyard. it was your first time eating with them again after almost a week and a half, as you’d been eating alone in your car recently to avoid richie. “rich, why’d you take off the nail polish?” bev asked, out of the blue, sounding disappointed as she grabbed his free hand and examined it.

he blew smoke out of his mouth slowly and you had forced yourself to look away, the sight of richie doing nearly anything these days being pretty dangerous for you. it also made you sigh a bit - you knew he only smoked at lunch now, since his girlfriend hated it.

“don’t want my paws to be prettier than y/n’s when we hold hands.” he had joked, wagging an eyebrow at you. you’d shook your head and looked to the ground in lew of a real response, just as you had been doing a lot recently.

you'd missed richie’s frown at your reaction, but you did catch his next statement as it was added on, “nah, actually it’s because the ol’ G-F didn’t like it. thought it looked too girly.”

you, stan, bev, and mike all stopped chewing to look at richie, in varying stages of bewilderment. you'd cleared your throat quickly but decided against speaking up just as richie’s phone started to ring. he’d answered it nearly immediately, the enthusiasm of which made you feel like you’re going to be sick again - because richie never answers your calls until the last possible minute.

god, jealousy is a fucking disease.

“hey, sugar.” he had purred suavely into the phone and for some reason, hearing him call someone else sugar had you abruptly rising, gathering your things and nearly running off to put as much distance between you and four-eyes as you possibly could, because you’re not sure how much more you could take.

after that, you were absolutely sure it was just pure denial on your part.

as far as you could tell, richie wasn't noticing too much. he still phoned your house every day, just to be met with your mother telling him you 'weren't available,' and then he'd call your own phone, which you'd let buzz itself into a dark hole on your bedside table while you stared at it solemnly, guilt heavy on your mind as he left voicemail after voicemail.

he doesn't deserve it, you think as you open the doors to the school library, backpack on your shoulders. but you can't help it. you're not his girlfriend, and you're not mature enough to accept that with any ounce of elegance so instead you just ignore him all together. at least you're self-aware, right? that ought to count for something.

you shake your head just as a voice catches your attention, “well look who decided to show up!”

richie's sitting at the usual study table in the very back corner of the library, a spot tucked away by rows upon rows of dusty books and an alcove of couches. bill sits at the head of the table, scribbling his chicken scratch handwriting onto graph paper, mike next to richie with a textbook spread out flat. across from mike is stan, writing out his statistics work.

all three of them wave at you before going back to their work, whereas richie just watches you expectantly. his feet are kicked up on the table, textbook balanced on his lap as he hovers on two leg chairs. his smile is as blinding as always, a dimple faint on his left cheek and full eyebrows raised in jest. his curls frame his face perfectly and you want to scream.

but you take your seat next to stan with a tight lipped smile, not really sure how to respond to richie. are you even allowed to be flirty with him like you used to? he still does it on the rare occasions when you do see each other - but that itself is the issue, you figure. his flirting is just a joke, a tiff from one friend to another. but you can't see him as just a friend, and that’s unfair to him.

so you stay quiet, which makes it infinitely more awkward.

richie clears his throat and you pull out your work with an awkward expression, the minutes slowly churning by in what has to be the quietest hangout with the Losers yet.

you feel the tension building in your body and in the air, and you're not sure what's wrong with you or why you have so much resentment towards richie in this moment, because he's not done one single thing to offend anyone in the last ten minutes.

then richie's phone rings suddenly and mike jumps a bit as he's startled out of the passage he's reading. you all look down to richie's screen, where his girlfriend's name blares up at you and all you can feel is white hot jealousy coursing through your body.

richie looks half way exhausted and annoyed at the call, which you find extremely odd and out of character, not to mention persistently frustrating.

as you all stare at the phone, the tension in the room stretches tighter and tighter, like a rubber band and you can't breathe -

"uh, why is she calling you?" mike asks, as if this was something that was forbidden or shocking in any way, and for some reason, that is finally it.

the rubber band snaps.

"how could you forget, mike? they're in love!" you say with mock enthusiasm.

bill shoots you an alarmed look that you probably should read into or at least consider for a moment, but instead you're looking directly at richie, as if challenging him.

he blinks at you and clenches his jaw, "she and i haven't really been... talking recently." richie says lightly, shooting a glance to mike.

“well then maybe you’re just not right for each other.” you quip, the blood boiling in your veins. richie's eyes snap to you and you see the fire behind them as he suddenly breaks.

“sorry, did i miss the divine intervention when god floated down on a cloud of marshmallows and deemed you expert in relationships?” he says abruptly, making your eyes widen at his outburst. he continues, “because last time i checked, you’re a bit of a failure in that department. so i don't need some jealous, disappearing-act wannabe criticizing my life when she's barely even in it.” he seethes. it’s near quiet in the library anyways, but his words seem to silence the entire town.

with a quick glance to your right, stan and bill sharing an uncomfortable look, and mike is staring down intently at his work with wide eyes.

you want to die.

does richie know? has he known this whole time that you're just deeply, painfully head over heels for him?

"i'm so sick of your bullshit. maybe you're jealous because you want what i had, but you’re being really fucking rude."

you nearly cry. or scream.

“criticism doesnt equal jealousy, okay?” you spit without thinking, immediately regretting even opening your mouth. you're so intent on covering for yourself, you don't even take into account the phrasing he'd used when referring to his girlfriend, instead fighting with richie in order to keep your secret from him.

this is not how you’d intended today to go. he stares at you, eyebrows furrowed in a way that almost makes you keel over in sadness, the guilt of the situation falling too heavily on your shoulders and crushing you.

it’s tranquilizing to see him like this - he's fuming, but he's also got bright, glistening eyes which you think may be filling up with tears.

“i didn’t really ask for your input, though.” he mutters, cheeks reddening as tears definitely well in his eyes behind his lenses. “you can’t just ignore me at your every whim just to come right back and tell me what's good for me.”

you blink, shaking your head quickly, deciding to back off. now is not the time to fight, especially when you know he’s right. you had no idea it was hurting him like this. "richie, i... i just wanted-" you gape at him, extremely embarrassed.

“-i don’t fucking care what you wanted, y/n.” richie says sharply, causing you to shut your mouth so quick your jaw clicks in the silence. clearly, even the other boys are perturbed by richie’s actions and everyone’s staring down in silence at their homework.

it’s quiet like that for a few minutes, the tension so thick that you’d need a jackhammer just to chip away at it. but stan rummages through his bag suddenly, pulling out two painkillers and dry swallowing them. you don't look at anyone else, your stomach hollow and your heart thumping so hard in your chest you think you may explode.

"d-do you have a headache?" bill asks, looking at stan with concern. the sudden voice causes you to perk up, head flowing with humiliation at the fight you and richie had just had in front of your friends.

“yeah, but it’s not that bad. i guess i’m used to it.” stan says, pen between his teeth.

“just because you’re used to something doesn’t make it any less unhealthy for you.” you say louder than necessary, your mouth suddenly deciding to speak without consulting your brain.

the glare of pure frustration that richie throws you pierces your lungs and suddenly makes you feel lightheaded.

your pettiness doesn’t go unresponsive, of course, and mike sighs into his hands, standing up to gather his things. "alright. i can't study when you two are like this. i'll see you guys later."

richie sighs quietly and bill and stan mumble good-bye's. the library goes back to quiet for maybe three more minutes, until you see stanley start to fidget like he usually does when he's anxious. and then you notice it after a few seconds, too.

richie won't stop tapping his foot on the desk.

for everyone's sake, you try to ignore it, because you know richie can't help his compulsions - especially when he's upset (which, your mind painfully reminds you, is all your fault).

but it's driving you crazy.

“-if you keep doing that i’ll throw you out that fucking window rich, i swear.” stan mutters not unkindly, his eyes rolling to meet richie with a concerned gaze as richie stares out the window.

you raise your eyebrows, “what’re you even looking at?” you ask, trying to mend a bit of the open, festering wound you’d created in you and richie’s friendship.

without looking at you, richie shrugs. “checking to see how high the drop is. may be worth it to have schnoz just toss me down. it would certainly do you a favor right? gettin ol’ trashmouth gone for good.”

what was he saying? you look at him, scandalized. stan and bill don’t even say anything about the offensive nickname as you gape at richie. "what the fuck?" is all your brilliant mind can think.

"what, you can dish it but you can't take it?" richie says sharply. he shakes his head, looking upset. "i'm tired of trying to be friends with a fucking brick wall."

then he's gathering his one notebook and swiftly exiting your alcove in the library in a wind of cigarettes and cologne.

you blink, his words sinking in and making you sigh shakily. your stomach feels hollow as you remember the expression of glee on his face when you'd walked into the library, and how completely different and broken he'd looked as he'd left. you think you're going to cry.

“every minute that you don't follow him digs yourself deeper into this grave, you know.” stan says, giving you a stern but encouraging look.

you let out a shaky sigh and scramble to grab your bag, tripping over your feet as you run out of the library, flying down the staircase faster than you've ever gone and making it to your lifelong best friend just as he reaches his car in the parking lot.

"-a brick wall?" you ask, out of breath. you see richie hold back an eye roll, his arms crossing over each other as he serves you a look of discomposure.

he shrugs helplessly, looking as if he's at his wit's end.

"what do you want me to say, y/n? you've been avoiding me for weeks. i know i'm annoying and obnoxious and whatever, but i'm not blind." he says, making you swallow as guilt pangs through your chest. you have been so fucking selfish, haven't you?

it hurts to hear him say that about himself.

he sniffles a bit, sounding choked up as he goes on, "i've had a rough couple of days - weeks, even. but every time i'm near, it's like you've had more than enough, and you just leave. am i that repulsive? why do you suddenly hate me?" he asks, looking desperate as his eyes rim red, filling with tears again.

“what did i do?” his voice cracks as he whispers the sentence and your heart breaks in two.

your own vision goes glassy as he continues, "-i've needed you, y/n/n. i'm lost, i'm seriously not okay and you just don't care at all."

you're stunned for a moment, mouth opening and closing silently as your mind races to rush something out, anything,because you aren't sure you can bear to see richie look at you like this for one more second. but your silence comes off wrong to richie, and tears slip out of his eyes.

“don’t you love me?” he asks, voice hoarse and cutting right through you, deeper than any knife ever could. "don't you want me to be happy?" he adds and you take a shaky breath, looking helplessly at him, where you're met with nothing but glassy eyes and tear trails. your heart is slamming in your chest, tears falling from your eyes and you can't breathe.

"a-are you?" you ask, trying to keep your tone even although it comes out just as vulnerable as you feel. “h-happy. with her?”

richie freezes at your words, mouth slightly open and you watch a single tear course over his high cheekbones and down to his bottom lip as it shakes faintly. you curse yourself for the longing to feel those very lips against yours.

"i was." he whispers, voice shaking as he rubs his face with his hand under his glasses, the moisture of his fallen tears clinging from his long dark lashes onto his slender, shaking fingers. "and then - and then i lost you. and y'know, i got my girlfriend so i could distract myself, but she made me feel like absolute shit all the time and so i went and broke up with her, but -" he hiccups through his tears and you blink, biting your lip as tears cascade down your cheek in wet trails.

they broke up?

he broke up with her, and he's going through this breakup and trying to better himself after she tore him down and you've just been ignoring him - he thinks you don't care about him, that you don't love him. you start to cry harder.

"-i thought she'd distract me from you. i-i'm sorry." he says, his voice muffled by his hands as they cover up his angelic face, his shoulders shaking as more tears fall. "i'm so sorry."he repeats.

you see double for a second, completely shocked by his words as the breath leaves your lungs. he tried to distract himself from you... and he’s so hurt because of what you did.

but finally, for the first time this whole damn day, you find the right words. "i-no, richie, i'm sorry, please - fuck." you break, letting out a sob as you rub your eyes furiously in search of any relief from the guilt ripping you in two. "i didn't mean to hurt you. i'm so sorry, i can't believe i did this, i didn't want to hurt you, i'm just so selfish." you babble, his sniffles making you open your eyes.

he looks so alone and so vulnerable as he hugs his arms around himself in search of comfort, tears still falling from his bright eyes and down his rosy cheeks.

he looks devastatingly beautiful in the golden sunlight of the afternoon, a breeze ruffling his curls lightly. "just please, i can't - i can't deal with you hating me. please, please, please."

he's pleading with you and you think you may be sick from the guilt and sadness that envelopes you, so you spring forward and wrap your arms tightly around him. the force of your body pushes him against the side of his car and the way he clings back to you like you're the last thing holding him to earth just makes you cry even harder.

"i don't hate you, richie. i love you, i love you too much." you say, your body shaking as he just holds you tighter against him. "i'm so sorry, i didn't mean any of it. you're right. i was just jealous... i'm so sorry. i was so jealous of her, i couldn't see you be with her." you mumble. "i'm so sorry."

richie pulls you back gently at your words, his eyes wide and wondering as you look at each other. "what?" he asks so innocently, his eyelashes wet and dark and his lips parted.

you can count the freckles on his nose and cheeks, you're so close. you can feel his shuddering breath against your face as he huffs in a breath. your hands hold onto his shoulders and you decide to fuck it, you just have to tell him how sorry you are, to explain yourself.

"richie, i'm in love with you. and - and when you and her got together, it hurt so much, and i didn't want to deal with the fact that i couldn't have you, so i just ignored you. i’m sorry, i’m so sorry." you say it quickly and in one breath, looking down at your shoes and how they point straight towards his.

"you're in... love with me?" he says weakly, sounding hopeful as you finally look back into his eyes guiltily.

you laugh wetly, "of course i am, richie. how could i not fall head over heels for everything about you?"

he tears up again at your words, but this time it's accompanied by a beautiful smile and a light, wet laugh. he shakes his head, his arms circling your waist tighter as he presses his forehead against yours. your butterflies tickle your stomach at your proximity.

"fuck, y/n. i can't believe i spend my time trying to get my mind off you." he says and your breath hitches a bit. "do you have any idea how long i've been in love with you?" he asks quietly, and you let out another small laugh out of shock, but it's wet and gleeful.

"i'm sorry." you whisper, your finger curling around a strand of the dark hair on his head. he shakes his head, your noses rubbing slightly. "it's okay, y/n. i love you so much. please let me forgive you." he says, pulling a smile out of you that you don't think anybody else ever could. you nod shortly, looking into his eyes as one last tear falls.

he kisses you tenderly then, taking your breath away.

richie fills up your every sense as he clings to you desperately, his lips salty from your combined tears and his arms strong. his tongue is gentle as it runs along your lips and enters your parted mouth, one of his hands sliding up to tilt your head up towards him. you're breathless because of him for the millionth time in your life and you decide kissing richie is the only thing you want to do forever.

you pull away slowly, and as you lean back he presses a chaste second kiss to your lips, causing you to grin.

you barely make eye contact as you pull apart and then you greedily pull him back to you, his lips finding yours yet again with a sweet, loving laugh.

"i love you too, rich." you mumble against his lips. he sighs almost dreamily as you pull back, biting your lip and laughing when he opens the passenger door, gesturing to it with a shy grin.

"now can i please buy you a burger?" he asks, almost bashfully, and your heart does somersaults. you nod and kiss him again, his hand falling to the small of your back, palm wide and fingers lower than you'd expected. he pulls away and his grin is loving, his eyes hooded in pride as you caress his cheek softly before you slide into the car seat.

he holds your hand the whole night and refuses to let go until you slip through your front door at near midnight, blushes on both of your cheeks and lips kiss-bruised.

the butterflies you feel as you fall asleep with a grin on your face are the exact same ones richie feels as his head finally hits the pillow, a giddy smile on his own face as he smiles to himself in the dark halfway across town.

tag list: @gabiatthedisco @blisshemmings @stenbrozier @simplesammyx@brxken-heartsclub @clownsloveyou @baby-yoda-a @moon-shine-baby @daughter-of-the-stars11 @trashedfortozier @oceandog13 @finnskindofwoman @kait-tozier @upamongthestarss @fiantomartell @beverlyparkerr @beauregard-s @leighjaenikhowell @cowbellies @deepestofwaters

#richie tozier x reader #requests #losers x reader #losers club x reader #bill denbrough x reader #mike hanlon x reader #ben hanscom x reader #beverly marsh x reader #eddie kaspbrak x reader #stanley uris x reader

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vapid-slut · 4 years

Text

Perfect Harmony; Ch.1

Warning[s]: Swearing, Michael being a dirty bitch

Word Count: 1.8k

Summary: Entering her senior year as a cheerio, the reader is excited to combine both her love of music and her newfound popularity. To Michael, however, this is the perfect opportunity to fuck with his innocent neighbor

A/N: Can we say, I hate this, because I really do. I have no idea what has compelled me to post this dumpster, just know that if you read this, no u didn’t <3 + I did not proofread this so if theres any typos I’m so sorry, I’m running on 4 hrs of sleep and 5 cups of coffee

Music was your life. Your parents often joked that you were singing before you uttered your first word. Unfortunately, there were no music clubs during your past two years of high school. It was only last year that you and the glee club won nationals, hence why you were able to keep funding. School administration was never really fond of the arts, but they would bend over backward to give the sports clubs whatever they needed.

Your biggest dream was to get a scholarship, preferably for music, since you excelled at it. All your life, you watched your father slave away to keep you happy. You just wanted to repay his kindness. Abruptly, your dream, which entailed you winning a grammy, was disrupted by the ringing of your alarm clock. Your arm stretched over to your nightstand, turning the device off, bringing the sound to a halt.

Slowly, you removed the sheets off your body, standing up for a brief stretch before walking to your bathroom. You went about your morning routine much quicker than you typically would. Mostly due to your excitement, this year would be the first that you spent closer to the top of the social food chain. Over the summer, your dad became fast friends with Coach Sylvester. She had come over a few times. And although their relationship was strictly platonic, they both had grown fond of each other. A week before school, she offered you a spot on the cheerios, one you couldn't turn down. Cheerleaders were at the very top of the pyramid. Girls wanted to be them while boys wanted to be with them.

Once you had finished doing the bare necessities your morning required, you hastily made your way to your closet, immediately reaching for one of the three cheerleading uniforms hanging on the rack. You stripped out of your pajamas before slipping into the skimpy skirt, unaware that you had an admirer. Michael had moved next door a few months into your freshman year, was a rather charming boy. He quickly became a hot commodity, no doubt due to how impeccably handsome he was. You were never too fond of him, but even you had to admit that he was a divine sight.

It never truly bothered you that the window into your room was straight across from the one piercing into his. But if you could see the look of satisfaction on his face as he watched you undress, you'd feel very unnerved. The boy had always felt attracted to you. He saw you as a challenge. You were one of the few students in your grade who was still a virgin. Not due to your looks, you frankly didn't have the time to go to parties or hook up with people. Your focus was on your education. And if getting into a great school meant sacrificing your social life, you were content with that.

Once you had finished getting your uniform on and slicking your hair into a neat updo, you gathered your things into your bag and hurried downstairs for breakfast. "Mornin' kiddo!" Your dad said, greeting you with a smile. You muttered a cheerful 'hey' in response, walking towards one of the cabinets full of cereal boxes. "Oh, I forgot to tell you. My car had to get fixed up last night so, I'll have to take yours today." You shrugged as a reply, not caring. "So am I taking the bus today?" Your father shook his head, reaching for a spoon at the same time. "No. That nice boy next door offered to give you a ride today. Isn't that sweet?"

Fuck- you thought to yourself, of course, the universe found some way to screw up your day. You took a long sigh before shifting your eyes to the clock on the wall. "Shit! I'm sorry, dad. I'd love to eat breakfast, but the Glee meeting starts in 20 minutes." Your dad shrugged, not too bothered. "It's fine, go have fun and tell Michael I said hello." You nodded to your old man, and with that, you were up and out the door.

As soon as you stepped foot outside, there he was. Hair perfectly curled, toothpick dangling from his soft lips. You sighed, walking towards the blonde, waiting for him to get out of the way. "Wow, you become a cheerleader, and now you think you're hot shit?" He spat, you gave him a death glare before pushing him lightly to get inside the car. He followed suit, taking his place in the driver's seat. "As much as I find you annoying, your ass does look great in that skirt." You scoffed, rolling your eyes at the boy as he started driving. "Listen up, Pillsbury fuckboy. Though this might seem hard to understand, I don't like you. And I'd rather not spend my senior year arguing with someone as unbearable as you, so can you please leave me alone?!"

The blonde chuckled at your response. Your mouth said one thing while your thoughts said another. "Your wish is my command." He mumbled sarcastically before reaching to turn up the music on the radio to an obscene volume. The rest of the car ride was entirely uneventful, neither of you uttering a word to each other. Ultimately, you had reached the school parking lot. Not many cars were there since it was early, and only a few clubs were meeting today. Before Michael could do anything, you swiftly got out the car, making sure to slam it loudly. "Don't fucking slam the door!" He said, his voice reaching you even though you were still walking, in response you promptly flipped him off. "Fucking bitch." He uttered lowly as you slowly left his field of view.

-----

"Welcome back, New Directions!" Glee's coach, Mr.Shue, said as you embraced your friends. "As you know, this will be our last year together, and a few of our beloved friends have left for college already. Which means we'll be having auditions for some newcomers." As he spoke, he walked over to the whiteboard, grabbing his trusted magic marker. "But there's a twist." You and everyone else in the room watched as he wrote out the words American Idol. "This time, you'll be judging with me."

You would typically be seated next to Tina and Mercedes, but they were both absent for the meeting. Instead, you sat with Santana on your left and Quinn to your right. You had to admit that it felt nice. Usually, you wouldn't ponder on things so benign. But you had spent most of high school getting teased by Michael and the rest of his sought after friends. Not a day went by that slushies weren't thrown in your face, now you could finally walk the halls without fear of humiliation.

Besides that, you were also really ecstatic to help Mr. Shue with auditions. Glee club was what had brought a group of entirely different people together. So you'd be more than glad to share that with a new ensemble of students before you all went your final ways.

-----

The rest of your day went by quicker than usual. There wasn't much to learn on the first day. Once the clock hit 3:30, You rushed to the auditorium as if your life depended on it. You had to admit that you missed the stage, singing, and dancing with your friends. You made your way the middle of the seating area, taking your place beside Artie.

A majority of the auditions were lackluster. Only a handful stood out. Like that girl Marley and that kid Jake. You were just about ready to leave and go home until something caught your attention. "Michael Langdon?" Your eyes lit up immediately as you heard the name. You watched as the blue-eyed boy made his way to the stage, smug look on his face.

There was no way in hell Michael fucking Langdon, the same boy who referred to glee as "homo explosion," would ever willingly audition. His rendition of "Suit and Tie" was incredible, which only pissed you off more. Not only was he insanely attractive, but he just had to be talented too, fucking men.

You watched as your fellow glee members watched in amusement. It was the girls who seemed most excited. Eventually, it all became too much, and before the boy could finish entertaining your friends, you stormed off into the parking lot. Far too upset with the blonde to drive home with him, you sent your friend Mike a text asking if he could get you. He lived pretty close to the school, so you knew it would only take a few minutes.

-----

By the time Mike had pulled up to the building, the other glee kids were exiting. You quickly reached for the door of his car, rushing to get to the passenger seat. "You alright?" He asked, worried by how fidgety you were. You nodded. "Yea, I just wanna go home." Mike was always very comforting. The two of you became friends during your freshman year, mostly because of how many classes you shared. You both had a love for music and were smart, so it wasn't long before you two clicked.

Within a few minutes, you had arrived at your house, Mike flashing you a smile. "Thank you for coming to get me. It means a lot." The dark-haired boy shrugged. "It's no biggie, see you tomorrow, cheerio." You rolled your eyes sarcastically. "Whatever, jock-face." And with that, you entered your home.

The house was currently empty. He was taking the night shift at the hospital so, he probably wouldn't come back till late at night. You walked up the stairs to your room, dropping your bag on the floor. After everything that had gone down today, you were exhausted. You quickly took off the scanty cheer uniform and slipped on your much softer penguin pajamas.

You practically threw yourself on the bed, hoping to get some rest, but were promptly distracted by a notification on your phone. The text, from an unknown number nonetheless, read 'look outside your window.' You quickly sat up, confused, and turned your head only for your eyes to be met by Michael Langdon, who just happened to be balls deep inside some random brunette.

You gave the boy a disgusted look before pulling down your blinds. Never in your life had you been more repulsed. Your mind tried long and hard to block out any memory of what you just witnessed. After around forty-five minutes, you received another text message from non-other than Michael.

'It's a shame you missed my performance."

'Go fuck yourself, Langdon.'

'If you say so ;)'

The rest of the night, you wondered what you had done to be the new subject of Mr. Pillsbury Fuckboys torment. You had spent most of your high school years avoiding him at cost. Suddenly it seemed like you weren't getting rid of him anytime soon. You were just lucky you only had to endure this for a few more months, and then you'd be on your way.

Or so you thought.

#Hawthorn!Michael x Reader #michael langdon x reader #michael langdong imagine #michael langdon smut #michael langdon blurb #michael langdon

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chayacat · 3 years

Text

Devil’s Sweet Star (18)

Fandom: Dead by Daylight

Ghostface x Female Reader

Rated M for Violence, Language and Smut

***

Life is like an endless road. Sprinkled with pitfalls, choices, regrets, happiness, doubts... so many things that could keep you going... or to end the journey permanently. At every important moment, two paths are open to you. and every path you take will have consequences. This is called the butterfly effect.

But when you look at Danny's life, you quickly notice that he continues on his way even though it should have stopped. Already just during his childhood, he escaped death twice. The violence he suffered because of his "father" almost cost him his life. then when he lost Carla. At first, our dear assassin wanted to end his life before changing his mind at the last moment, feeling unable to do so. That's when the truth came out. That's when his life took a whole different path. And the rest you know.

And there... there is another way opens up. The path you've opened. But how far will this path go? Only time will tell. But one thing is certain: Jed will have to disappear. Danny still can't believe you prefer Jed to him. Such a boring life is almost unbearable! While a life with him... exciting, dangerous is what makes him feel alive! We're going to have to really work on that. As for McKellan.... his time is running out now.

It's all set. All that remains is to wait. Once the discord between him and Hoggins gets to a certain point.... He will strike. It is not in his style or in his habit to blame someone else. But he has to admit that it was fun to make Wilhelm go around in circles. He couldn't wait to see his face when he found out that Danny had put him on a false trail.

“A little romantic dinner, huh? I knew that under those glasses and that nerd look there was a romantic boy.” said Melinda suddenly, bringing Danny out of his thoughts.

Oh, that's right. Have dinner. With you. He sent you a message to see if you'd prefer a restaurant or a meal at his house. And your answer was not long in coming, with a nice touch of humour, you told him that you would like to taste his cooking. He is not a great Michelin-starred chef but for you he will be able to make a meal worthy of the greatest restaurants. And with a little luck... he will be able to enjoy the softness and warmth of your body for the night... what? Don't forget that he is a man, above all! A man with needs... important carnal needs.

“I may be a nerd, but I'm not an idiot either. And then it was you who told me that I had to think more often about my personal life than professional, right?” said Danny scratching his head.

“that’s true, but I didn't think you'd listen to me. And also, at home. this story could end well ... If you know what I mean.”

“Not on the first night. That's not her style. Plus, we're not really ... Together. Maybe tonight will be the beginning of a relationship but... It can also be an embarrassing misunderstanding. I'm not sure it's reciprocal. She can always change her mind...

“Don't start telling you that the war is lost if you haven't fought in one battle! You don't know anything and that's normal! tonight it will be the perfect opportunity for both of you to be sure that it is reciprocal. And if that's the case... then this may be the best night of your life.” replied Melina seriously.

“Yeah, you’re right. I'll see what happens tonight. the boss's plan seems to be working. Apparently Hoggins is going to press charges against the Georgia newspaper. And he's not even aware that we've published it.” said Danny, re-placing his glasses properly.

“The most amazing thing about all this is that Hoggins has a tooth against McKellan! Apparently, he thinks he was the one who sold the wick to the journalist. it's going to create tension...” said Mattew, stretching his arms.

“That's going to spice things up. It can only be beneficial to us. Now don't make mistakes. If hoggins learn that it is us and that in addition they were stolen from his home ... we can say goodbye to life.” said Melina.

Jed nod while Danny smiled slyly. He will be dead long before he tries anything. Because of course Hoggins is going to die. When and how Danny doesn't know, but one thing's for sure: he'll kill him. Then maybe he will consider living somewhere else... You never know. and if he could take you with him... that would be the icing on the cake. He can't wait to see you tonight. More than ever. He wonders what you're going to wear... something soft for sure.

But it won't be the most interesting... the most interesting will be how the evening will end... He took the opportunity to bite into one of your pastries, since your reopening, you provide the newspaper with pastries and coffee. and everyone appreciates it! But Hembrook is the greediest. His personal order was rather.... Long. the latter passed through the offices, a brownie in hand before stopping in front of our trio.

“Don't forget you have a Ghostface article to write! I'm counting on you my little Jed to get a quality article!” He said with a proud smile.

“Of course, sir. You can count on me, I'm on my way.” respond Danny with a smile.

“This little bandit of Wilhelm does not give us much info. Did you find anything on your side?”

“Well... I shouldn't talk to you about it but... I found pictures... really horrible pictures... I didn't think he could do that. I... I dropped them off at your office.. So, you can see it for yourself. But I don't mean to offend you... you had a criminal among your employees.” replied Danny, holding back from smiling.

Two actually, but that, old man, you don't know. Because compared to Mike, Danny is a real cover-up pro.

“Yes... I can imagine the worst. Even though he was a drug addict, I can't even imagine what kind of crap he was doing. I'll be in my office. By the way, you'll tell your friend that I love her cakes! I'll pay for it at the end of the month. At work little kids!

Danny and the others resumed their work, the latter working to catch his article about the drug dealer they recently found. With Mike's murder, it's a big job but it doesn't scare our young reporter. All he cares about is your little face-to-face tonight. Just him and you... both in the same room. The little rabbit trapped by the big bad wolf.

The day passed quickly, the lunch break allowing everyone to take a breather, Danny took the opportunity to watch what he could cook you tonight. A Milanese cutlet with spaghetti was his final choice. He has everything at home to do them. What? Did you expect him to have only sandwiches and ready meals? Danny is a fine mouth and he likes to cook despite his ...bloody inclination. and you're going to be able to see his culinary skills tonight. Actually, Jed's skills from your point of view.

He has to make his alter ego disappear. once and for all. He was tired of being the nice little Jed Olsen. He wanted to be himself. He left his job and came to pick you up as usual. You were exhausted but delighted with this little meal between you. The way home was a laughing as usual and you separated in front of your apartment doors. Danny had three hours in front of him to prepare dinner. He's got plenty of time.

He put his things in his office, took a change, and went to take a good shower. hey he must be presentable tonight! no glasses, no hair tied, it's a very different "Jed" that you're going to see tonight. He left the bathroom, wearing a short-sleeved black T-shirt, black jeans, and grey sneakers. Well, they were white at the base but ... let's say that time has done its work. He was handsome, he knew how to showcase himself, without any artifice. Natural beauty is all that attracted him and made him attractive.

He began to prepare the meal, being careful not to be wrong. He has to make a good impression! if he has calculated his shot correctly, he will have to cook everything when you are there. He'll have a good half hour of conversation with you before he gets to the table. everything was calculated, like his murders. I told you, Danny is meticulously meticulous. Once the meal was ready, just waiting to be baked, Danny prepared the table, simple, sober, but effective. He opened a bottle of wine and tasted it before he smiled. A quality wine for a quality meal.

He placed the bottle on the table and checked that everything was in place and once that was done, made sure that the door of his office was locked. We never know, curiosity is a nasty flaw, and nothing says you won't try to get into it. He barely had time to return to the drawing-room, when he heard knocking at the door. A sneaky smile came to his lips. It's time.

He opened the door, and what he saw left him speechless. You had styled your hair in a beautiful bun, leaving two thin strands of your hair on either side of your face. You had very slightly made-up, very discreet that it does not even seem that you have any. You were dressed in a white and blue striped dress, flesh-colored tights and small navy-blue ballerinas. An angel, you were an angel. And visibly, Danny didn't leave you indifferent either.

“You’re...you’re beautiful.” said Danny, regaining his spirits.

“So are you. I wonder if I'm at the right address. What did you do with the real Jed Olsen?” You said laughing, making Danny laugh at the same time.

“Oh, let's say that when night comes, the little nerd I am is giving way to a perfect gentleman. Especially when I'm in perfect and charming company. But come in, please. The evening will be more pleasant inside than in front of my doormat.”

“Thank you, my dear little gentleman.” you replied, coming in while Danny smiles slyly, closing the door behind you.

“dinner is practically ready, but I'm saying we could... chat a little bit. Unless you're really hungry and then I better cook everything before you become a little demonic creature.”

“Really Funny Jed, don’t worry I'm not like Mattew. By the way, everyone enjoyed my cakes?”

“Yeah, especially Mr Hembrook, he's a real glutton, you would have seen him he wouldn't have stopped if you'd brought him more. But keep it to yourself, he's supposed to be watching his line. In fact, his wife does it for him. I met her once and I can confirm that these two there was meant to be together, they are literally day and night. But as they say, opposites attract each other, don't they?”

“It’s true. Melina told me that... that we were all connected to our soulmate in one way or another. and that all our lives we were guided to him or her. After that is it true ... In a sense when I think of my parents, or the Lawsons, I tell myself that it's true. But when I see some couple separating after years of married life.... I tell myself that it doesn't necessarily work every time. Or that we wanted to thwart fate and it put us back on the right path.” You answer shrugging your shoulders, looking at him.

“Sure...Well, Can I have a drink for you? If I remember correctly, you are not very friendly with alcohol then... Can I buy you a cup of tea? You'll still drink wine at least? just have a drink if you really don't want to, to make me happy.” He asks smiling.

“Yes, for the tea, and just one glass of wine, to make you happy.” You respond, smiling in return.

Danny serves you a small cup of tea and then give it to you before serving himself and sitting on the couch. You join him and talk for a good half hour. You discuss everything, Danny of his work, you of yours, recalling your little feat of yesterday. Danny smiled, the thought of you mastering this poor fool made him laugh inwardly. Who would have thought that this fragile little body was capable of such a thing? After this half hour of discussions, he got up and put the cutlets into the oven. He pulled out a jug of water that he had put in the fridge, to place it on the table on your side. He then turned on the pan where the spaghetti has cooked to warm them up a little before serving on the plate. Once the cutlets were cooked, he placed them gently on the plate and took them to serve on the table.

“I'm not a great Michelin-starred chef but... I hope you like it.” He said scratching his head.

“Oh, come on! I'm sure it's very good! Don't underestimate yourself like that! and at worst... You'll be my guinea pig for the next three months.” You respond laughing.

“Well, if it means free cakes...Why not?”

You start eating and he's taking only a bite to congratulate Danny, or rather Jed on his meal. Jed smiled as Danny smiled more widely, of course his cooking was good. He told you, you would be treated like a queen if you preferred him to Jed. The meal went in good spirits, from the dish to the dessert.

“It was really delicious Jed. Thank you. It's been a long time since I've had a... one-on-one with someone. If we ignore the meal, we made at the Chinese restaurant of course. And in the end, you do very well in the kitchen ... Carla was really lucky to have you.” you said smiling.

“Carla taught me everything. If she hadn't helped me with cooking, I would have been a great instant noodle addict.” Danny responds.

“... There's something I'd like to talk to you about. It's... It's about the two of us. I... I know you can't turn the page since... I mean, you know. But lately, we've both shown signs of affection...”

“We kissed. Twice. The first time was you and the second time was me. And you wonder if... if it's reciprocal on my side. You want to know for sure.” Replied Danny rising from his chair to stand beside you, his eyes staring at yours. He laughs slightly, seeing you nodding, blushing. “It's true that... I'm having a hard time moving on. Carla... was everything to me. She was the only one who didn't treat me like... someone different. And since we've known each other, I've felt that way again. So, if that can answer your question...”

He kissed you, without warning, and this time the kiss lasted longer. The softness of her lips added to the softness of his... It's a double feeling of silk touch, both for him and for you. As he was about to release you, Danny was surprised when, against all odds, you kissed him again, not wanting to let go of his lips for a second. Both eventually backed off and a smile was exchanged between the two of you.

“Is that okay with that answer?” he simply asks.

“Yes. You know I don't promise to be the perfect girlfriend...”

“I don’t promise to be the perfect boyfriend too. We're probably going to fight one day. For anything and everything. But know that if you have problems ... I'll be there. I won't let anyone near you. To hurt you, of course.”

“Me too. I... I’m started to be tired. I'm going to go to bed.” you replied, rising up and starting to walk you to the door. Danny hugged you and kissed you one last time.

“Good night my love. Have sweet dreams.” He simply said.

He let you go and addressed his angelic smile when you close the door. He cleared it all, wash the dishes, changed and went to bed. Looking at the ceiling he let himself be dragged by sleep. No stalking tonight. But in his mind one thing was clear:

When it all ends. When no one is on his way, whether it's McKellan, Hoggins, or those who will approach you... He'll have to be the only one in your eyes. Jed will have to disappear.

FOREVER.

***

(Done! well I took my time and start writing only since Wednesday, but I did it! I hope you’ll like it like the others! time for me to rest this week-end! have a good week-end everyone! See ya!)

#dbd fanfic #dbd #dead by daylight #ghostface #danny johnson #jed olsen

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stevishabitat · 3 years

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The summer wasn’t meant to be like this. By April, Greene County, in southwestern Missouri, seemed to be past the worst of the pandemic. Intensive-care units that once overflowed had emptied. Vaccinations were rising. Health-care workers who had been fighting the coronavirus for months felt relieved—perhaps even hopeful. Then, in late May, cases started ticking up again. By July, the surge was so pronounced that “it took the wind out of everyone,” Erik Frederick, the chief administrative officer of Mercy Hospital Springfield, told me. “How did we end up back here again?”

The hospital is now busier than at any previous point during the pandemic. In just five weeks, it took in as many COVID-19 patients as it did over five months last year. Ten minutes away, another big hospital, Cox Medical Center South, has been inundated just as quickly. “We only get beds available when someone dies, which happens several times a day,” Terrence Coulter, the critical-care medical director at CoxHealth, told me.

Last week, Katie Towns, the acting director of the Springfield–Greene County Health Department, was concerned that the county’s daily cases were topping 250. On Wednesday, the daily count hit 405. This dramatic surge is the work of the super-contagious Delta variant, which now accounts for 95 percent of Greene County’s new cases, according to Towns. It is spreading easily because people have ditched their masks, crowded into indoor spaces, resumed travel, and resisted vaccinations. Just 40 percent of people in Greene County are fully vaccinated. In some nearby counties, less than 20 percent of people are.

Many experts have argued that, even with Delta, the United States is unlikely to revisit the horrors of last winter. Even now, the country’s hospitalizations are one-seventh as high as they were in mid-January. But national optimism glosses over local reality. For many communities, this year will be worse than last. Springfield’s health-care workers and public-health specialists are experiencing the same ordeals they thought they had left behind. “But it feels worse this time because we’ve seen it before,” Amelia Montgomery, a nurse at CoxHealth, told me. “Walking back into the COVID ICU was demoralizing.”

Those ICUs are also filling with younger patients, in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, including many with no underlying health problems. In part, that’s because elderly people have been more likely to get vaccinated, leaving Delta with a younger pool of vulnerable hosts. While experts are still uncertain if Delta is deadlier than the original coronavirus, every physician and nurse in Missouri whom I spoke with told me that the 30- and 40-something COVID-19 patients they’re now seeing are much sicker than those they saw last year. “That age group did get COVID before, but they didn’t usually end up in the ICU like they are now,” Jonathan Brown, a respiratory therapist at Mercy, told me. Nurses are watching families navigate end-of-life decisions for young people who have no advance directives or other legal documents in place.

Almost every COVID-19 patient in Springfield’s hospitals is unvaccinated, and the dozen or so exceptions are all either elderly or immunocompromised people. The vaccines are working as intended, but the number of people who have refused to get their shots is crushing morale. Vaccines were meant to be the end of the pandemic. If people don’t get them, the actual end will look more like Springfield’s present: a succession of COVID-19 waves that will break unevenly across the country until everyone has either been vaccinated or infected. “You hear post-pandemic a lot,” Frederick said. “We’re clearly not post-pandemic. New York threw a ticker-tape parade for its health-care heroes, and ours are knee-deep in COVID.”

That they are in this position despite the wide availability of vaccines turns difficult days into unbearable ones. As bad as the winter surge was, Springfield’s health-care workers shared a common purpose of serving their community, Steve Edwards, the president and CEO of CoxHealth, told me. But now they’re “putting themselves in harm’s way for people who’ve chosen not to protect themselves,” he said. While there were always ways of preventing COVID-19 infections, Missourians could have almost entirely prevented this surge through vaccination—but didn’t. “My sense of hope is dwindling,” Tracy Hill, a nurse at Mercy, told me. “I’m losing a little bit of faith in mankind. But you can’t just not go to work.”

When Springfield’s hospitals saw the first pandemic wave hitting the coasts, they could steel themselves. This time, with Delta thrashing Missouri fast and first, they haven’t had time to summon sufficient reinforcements. Between them, Mercy and Cox South have recruited about 300 traveling nurses, respiratory therapists, and other specialists, which is still less than they need. The hospitals’ health-care workers have adequate PPE and most are vaccinated. But in the ICUs and in COVID-19 wards, respiratory therapists still must constantly adjust ventilators, entire teams must regularly flip patients onto their belly and back again, and nurses spend long shifts drenched in sweat as they repeatedly don and doff protective gear. In previous phases of the pandemic, both hospitals took in patients from other counties and states. “Now we’re blasting outward,” Coulter said. “We’re already saturating the surrounding hospitals.”

Meanwhile, the hospitals’ own staff members are exhausted beyond telling. After the winter surge, they spent months catching up on record numbers of postponed surgeries and other procedures. Now they’re facing their sharpest COVID-19 surge yet on top of those backlogged patients, many of whom are sicker than usual because their health care had to be deferred. Even with hundreds of new patients with lung cancer, asthma, and other respiratory diseases waiting for care in outpatient settings, Coulter still has to cancel his clinics because “I have to be in the hospital all the time,” he said.

Many health-care workers have had enough. Some who took on extra shifts during past surges can’t bring themselves to do so again. Some have moved to less stressful positions that don’t involve treating COVID-19. Others are holding the line, but only just. “You can’t pour from an empty cup, but with every shift it feels like my co-workers and I are empty,” Montgomery said. “We are still trying to fill each other up and keep going.”

The grueling slog is harder now because it feels so needless, and because many patients don’t realize their mistake until it’s too late. On Tuesday, Hill spoke with an elderly man who had just been admitted and was very sick. “He said, ‘I’m embarrassed that I’m here,’” she told me. “He wanted to talk about the vaccine, and in the back of my mind I’m thinking, You have a very high likelihood of not leaving the hospital.” Other patients remain defiant. “We had someone spit in a nurse’s eye because she told him he had COVID and he didn’t believe her,” Edwards said.

Some health-care workers are starting to resent their patients—an emotion that feels taboo. “You’re just angry,” Coulter said, “and you feel guilty for getting angry, because they’re sick and dying.” Others are indignant on behalf of loved ones who don’t already have access to the vaccines. “I’m a mom of a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old, and the daughter of family members in Zimbabwe and South Africa who can’t get vaccinated yet,” says Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis, who works at a Veterans Affairs hospital in St. Louis. “I’m frustrated, angry, and sad.”

“I don’t think people get that once you become sick enough to be hospitalized with COVID, the medications and treatments that we have are, quite frankly, not very good,” says Howard Jarvis, the medical director of Cox South’s emergency department. Drugs such as dexamethasone offer only incremental benefits. Monoclonal antibodies are effective only during the disease’s earliest stages. Doctors can give every recommended medication, and patients still have a high chance of dying. The goal should be to stop people from getting sick in the first place.

But Missouri Governor Mike Parson never issued a statewide mask mandate, and the state’s biggest cities—Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield, and Columbia—ended their local orders in May, after the CDC said that vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors. In June, Parson signed a law that limits local governments’ ability to enact public-health restrictions. And even before the pandemic, Missouri ranked 41st out of all the states in terms of public-health funding. “We started in a hole and we’re trying to catch up,” Towns, the director of the Springfield–Greene County Health Department, told me.

Her team flattened last year’s curve through testing, contact tracing, and quarantining, but “Delta has just decimated our ability to respond,” Kendra Findley, the department’s administrator for community health and epidemiology, told me. The variant is spreading too quickly for the department to keep up with every new case, and more people are refusing to cooperate with contact tracers than at this time last year. The CDC has sent a “surge team” to help, but it’s just two people: an epidemiologist, who is helping analyze data on Delta’s spread, and a communications person. And like Springfield’s hospitals, the health department was already overwhelmed with work that had been put off for a year. “Suddenly, I feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day,” Findley said.

Early last year, Findley stuck a note on her whiteboard with the number of people who died in the 1918 flu pandemic: 50 million worldwide and 675,000 in the U.S. “It was for perspective: We will not get here. You can manage this,” she told me. “I looked at it the other day and I think we’re going to get there. And I feel like a large segment of the population doesn’t care.”

The 1918 flu pandemic took Missouri by surprise too, says Carolyn Orbann, an anthropologist at the University of Missouri who studies that disaster. While much of the world felt the brunt of the pandemic in October 1918, Missouri had irregular waves with a bigger peak in February 1920. So when COVID-19 hit, Orbann predicted that the state might have a similarly drawn-out experience. Missouri has a widely dispersed population, divided starkly between urban and rural places, and few highways—a recipe for distinct and geographically disparate microcultures. That perhaps explains why new pathogens move erratically through the state, creating unpredictable surges and, in some pockets, a false sense of security. Last year, “many communities may have gone through their lockdown period without registering a single case and wondered, What did we do that for?” Orbann told me.

She also suspects that Missourians in 1918 might have had a “better overhead view of the course of the pandemic in their communities than the average citizen has now.” Back then, the state’s local papers published lists of people who were sick, so even those who didn’t know anyone with the flu could see that folks around them were dying. “It made the pandemic seem more local,” Orbann said. “Now, with fewer hometown newspapers and restrictions on sharing patient information, that kind of knowledge is restricted to people working in health care.”

Montgomery, the CoxHealth nurse, feels that disparity whenever she leaves the hospital. “I work in the ICU, where it’s like a war zone, and I go out in public and everything’s normal,” she said. “You see death and suffering, and then you walk into the grocery store and get resistance. It feels like we’re being ostracized by our community.”

If anything, people in the state have become more entrenched in their beliefs and disbeliefs than they were last year, Davis, the St. Louis–based doctor, told me. They might believe that COVID-19 has been overblown, that young people won’t be harmed, or that the vaccines were developed too quickly to be safe. But above all else, “what I predominantly get is, ‘I don’t want to talk to you about that; let’s move on,’” Davis said.

People take the pandemic seriously when they can see it around them. During past surges in other parts of the U.S., curves flattened once people saw their loved ones falling ill, or once their community became the unwanted focus of national media coverage. The same feedback loop might be starting to occur in Missouri. The major Route 66 Festival has been canceled. More people are making vaccine appointments at both Cox South and Mercy.

In Springfield, the public-health professionals I talked with felt that they had made successful efforts to address barriers to vaccine access, and that vaccine hesitancy was the driving force of low vaccination rates. Improving those rates is now a matter of engendering trust as quickly as possible. Springfield’s firefighters are highly trusted, so the city set up vaccine clinics in local fire stations. Community-health advocates are going door-to-door to talk with their neighbors about vaccines. The Springfield News-Leader is set to publish a full page of photos of well-known Springfieldians who are advocating for vaccination. Several local pastors have agreed to preach about vaccines from their pulpits and set up vaccination events in their churches. One such event, held at James River Church on Monday, vaccinated 156 people. “Once we got down to the group of hesitant people, we’d be happy if we had 20 people show up to a clinic,” says Cora Scott, Springfield’s director of public information and civic engagement. “To have 156 people show up in one church in one day is phenomenal.”

But building trust is slow, and Delta is moving fast. Even if the still-unvaccinated 55 percent of Missourians all got their first shots tomorrow, it would still take a month to administer the second ones, and two weeks more for full immunity to develop. As current trends show, Delta can do a lot in six weeks. Still, “if we can get our vaccination levels to where some of the East Coast states have got to, I’ll feel a lot better going into the fall,” Frederick, Mercy’s chief administrative officer, said. “If we plateau again, my fear is that we will see the twindemic of flu and COVID.”

In the meantime, southwest Missouri is now a cautionary tale of what Delta can do to a largely unvaccinated community that has lowered its guard. None of Missouri’s 114 counties has vaccinated more than 50 percent of its population, and 75 haven’t yet managed more than 30 percent. Many such communities exist around the U.S. “There’s very few secrets about this disease, because the answer is always somewhere else,” Edwards said. “I think we’re a harbinger of what other states can expect.”

#covid 19 #pandemic #missouri

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thebraingremlinsaremad · 3 years

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Daily Blog #6: August 13, 2021

Okay, okay, I know it's a couples days later, but I can assure you that I did not forget; I purposefully, and kinda without a better option, didn't post on Friday, and you'll see why.

So the day started off pretty regularly: I got up, ate breakfast, got a shower, and then sat around playing games and watching YouTube for a bit.

That was until my friend showed up at my house...

He called me and said to come outside, so I did.

It wasn't long until I got into his car, and we started driving.

I definitely should have been more anxious or nervous heading out, but for some reason, I just sat there with my head absentmindedly poking out the window, not really thinking about it.

I really wish I had grasped the situation a little better.

We got down there after an hour and a half of driving and we parked a bit away because there were so many people there, so many people there, in fact, that we just got some food until it calmed down again.

It was gonna be a great fucking concert.

Hella Mega Tour 2021, originally supposed to be Hella Mega Tour 2020, but postponed for obvious reasons.

We shopped for a tiny bit beforehand, not buying anything, and then headed over to the stadium 45 minutes before the concert was set to start. We were let in about 10 minutes later, and we filled our contraband water bottles that we managed to hide on the way in.

We sat there for a bit, me just listening to music on my Redmi Buds 3 pro.

I love these things.

Pretty soon the music started, and it was The Interrupters; everyone was feeling pretty lazy for this bit.

It's not like they were bad or anything, they were actually pretty good, but I guess everyone was just getting situated and didn't wanna bother using up all of their energy lol.

So The Interrupters' set is up, and they tear down the stage and reset it. Before too terribly long, Weezer starts up, and there's a lot bigger reaction from the crowd than there was before: people knew the songs, like Africa, Buddy Holly, Beverly Hills, and Feels Like Summer to name a few.

I was getting into it a bit, I knew a good few of the songs, I was moving along, I sang a bit, took some video.

What's cool is that I could feel myself moving along the scale, like going from no excitement while no one was playing, then tapping my foot and grooving to The Interrupters.

When Weezer first came on, I was just sitting there like, "alright, this is good shit." Towards the end, I was quietly singing Buddy Holly, their last song for the night.

I say quietly because there was a lot more loudness to come.

I should add that, up until this point, the music had been kinda unbearably loud, the highs really piercing and hitting hard.

Additionally, up until this point, I had been trying my best to document the concert with videos and audio recordings; it wasn't so much about enjoying the concert, for I've always been taught just to record stuff and not worry about the concert.

I don't think I've ever really enjoyed any of the concerts I've ever been to; I was there, but I wasn't. I didn't really know too many of the songs, and I had only listened to the artists in passing, not to mention the fact that my mother had been at every other concert I've been to, which is stifling in itself. I really can't enjoy anything when she's around.

But here we were; it was starting to get dark, and Fall out Boy was coming onstage. The crowd was getting into it with Weezer, and it was time for Fall Out Boy. The energy here had far exceeded both Weezer and The Interrupters, and this went for me as well.

I was sitting there, singing along and still occasionally recording, but I didn't have my phone out too much. I started to dance in my seat with every song, for I knew almost every one: Sugar, We're Going Down, Centuries, My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark, Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy, The Last of the Real Ones, Save Rock And Roll, and Dance, Dance being a few.

Throughout this set, everyone was singing along, but the real fun had yet to begin; the scent of smoke from the flames and fireworks finding its way through the crowd, the music now strong instead of piercing, a sense of unity between everyone in this packed stadium, between people of all walks of life: men, women, children, transgender, cisgender, non-binary, gay, straight, lesbian, ace, black, white, Asian, Mexican, young, old, middle-aged, and everything in between and outside... It didn't matter who you were or where you came from; you were at a fucking party, and everyone was gonna fuck it up once the main act came on stage.

Meanwhile, everyone was more than happy to celebrate with Fall Out Boy and some of their greatest and most memorable tracks.

Part way through Fall Out Boy's set, I decided to get off of my ass and join the growing number of audience members who were really getting into the groove and feeling the music.

It was so close to becoming an explosion of energy once Fall Out Boy was about to leave the stage.

After they left, the set was torn down once again and set up for Green Day.

Their was a low mix of music playing through the speakers all the while things were being set up. Once the stage was set, the music continued for a bit, but was then cut and replaced with a voice and lyrics that everyone knew immediately.

"Is this the real life. Is this just fantasy."

The crowd sings along to every word.

"Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality."

Freddie's voice poured out into the crowd, and the crowd sang them right back.

"Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see"

The song continued, and the whole crowd sang to the very end.

This really goes to show how impactful some people and groups can be on our lives... Although no one at the show was connected to Queen or Freddie Mercury, everyone who came to see these 4 bands still knew this great group.

Once the song was over, a mix of some of the most famous rock anthems began to play:

"We will, we will rock you"

"I love rock and roll"

"Hey, Ho, let's go"

A glorious piece all lead up to the 4 running onstage, Billie Joe Armstrong, Jason White, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool, joined now by 2 new members, Jason Freese and Kevin Preston.

All at once, it was an explosion of strong and passionate guitar jamming, soon followed by the drums and vocals of American Idiot. All at once, the crowd was rocking along with bopping heads, stomping feet, and swaying bodies. I only had my phone out to record for a short moment before I put it away and scarcely removed it from my pants for the rest of the concert.

I couldn't help but feel cocky, as a bi/pansexual (idk which one lmao), being allowed to sing the line,

"Well maybe I'm the faggot America"

I was like, "You straight bastards better not be singing that line 🤣"

It was absolutely incredible; the crowd cheered passionately and wholeheartedly at the end of every song and solo, after every quote from the band.

The coolest part about the concert was the fact that everyone just lost themselves in the music, as well as that everyone, without hesitation, followed what Billie Joe said. He says jump? WE FUCKING JUMPED. He tells us to scream? We. Fucking. Screamed. And when he wanted us to sing, we sang. I mean, okay, we were singing the whole time xD. I'm sure we would've sang if he told us to and we weren't already doing so lmao. What he said was our law, and we were doing our jobs as the dutiful citizens of Suburbia by following those laws.

It really is hard to express the level of pure energy at this gathering, especially when it radiates from every point in the packed stadium.

I screamed so loud and hard, and sang so long and passionately, that my voice started to go. But. Guess. What.

When you're at a place like this, no matter what, you just have this insatiable urge to keep going no matter what. When my arm got tired of throwing my fist in the air, I kept fucking going and even used the other arm too.

It's such a strange feeling when you feel like you're about to give out, like your voice is gonna break, or you're gonna collapse from dehydration and exhaustion, but you find around you the strength and power to keep on going, no matter how quickly your vocal health deteriorates.

Ask my friend, I couldn't speak properly after that shit xD. He even threatened to send a video of me talking to my choral teacher, who honestly would have been mad at me lmao.

Meanwhile, Green Day is playing some of their greatest hits, old and new alike, and I knew every single fucking one of them. I sang every song, and only took a break between 2 of them to down my whole bottle of contraband water in 3 seconds flat.

At one point, the band stopped playing, and Billie spoke into the microphone.

"Get your pretty lights out. I wanna see the pretty lights."

Everyone got their phones out and turned the torches on, as per his command.

"Turn the house lights off."

The lights go off, and the stadium is lit up almost as bright as it had been before, but this time with the lights of thousands.

"Look at that."

It was honestly an incredible moment.

That brings me to another point: when you go to a concert, you're not just paying for the music, you're not just paying to see a band, you're paying for an experience.

Let me tell you, this was one hell of an experience.

If you don't leave a concert feeling fulfilled, then the performers didn't do their job of giving you the experience that you paid to be a part of. I'm so happy that these four bands, especially Green Day, were able to deliver.

I really did love every moment of that show, which is such a rarity for me. I'm really happy that my friend took my mother's place. I can't fucking enjoy everything when she's around.

Oh yes, it wouldn't be one of my daily blogs without me talking about how my mother consistently pisses me off. Don't worry, I have some happy shit left to end on.

I swear to fluff though, she always manages to ruin everything for me. When we went to see The Lion King on Broadway, she insisted on coming with. That meant that I wasn't able to relax in my seat because this disgusting woman was sitting next to me and I had to cram myself to the side of my chair away from her. It meant that I wasn't allowed to cry when Mufasa died or during Can You Feel The Love Tonight because I knew I'd get made fun of for it.

I even went to a Fall Out Boy concert before, her refusing to let me go myself, and I didn't sing a single song because she'd just tell me to let the professionals handle it.

And for fuck's sake, the time she compared me trying to fucking validate my existence as a trans person to her wanting a car... That will always fucking piss me off.

Sorry, I got sidetracked. I was talking about how she ruins everything for me.

I literally cannot be myself around her. I've always been judged and ridiculed by my parents, and still am. I can't enjoy anything when they're around because I'm too focused on trying not to get made fun of or yelled at.

That being said, that concert was absolutely fucking incredible. I was with thousands of people who felt the same way that I did, and I could fucking jam out if I wanted to.

Apart from everyone being really on top of their game, and Billie Joe basically not aging since he turned 25, the only really notable thing left to say about the performance was when they pulled a kid guitarist onstage. He played for a bit, and they ended up letting him keep the guitar lmao.

BEST PART IS:

I SAW THE KID AFTER THE CONCERT, AND I WAS LIKE,

"Omg, hey, can I get a selfie with you?"

I was trying to be really low-key and quiet cuz I didn't wanna draw too much attention to him lmao.

The security guard was like, "Yeah, sure, but hurry up."

I TOOK THE PIC REALLY QUICKLY AND THEN HEADED OUT

HERE IT IS

YES, OF COURSE I BLOCKED OUT MY FACE

But I absolutely love the vibes of this photo xD. It's blurry, the lighting is shit, and you can barely make out any details. It has a lot of character, and I would take this over a clean, clear photo any day.

Walking away, the kid's mom said, "You're like, the coolest kid ever now."

Agreed.

Then it was time to go home. Honestly, I didn't feel sad that it didn't last longer, or disappointed that I had to leave. I was actually very satisfied and fulfilled with what happened, which is honestly the way it should be.

Driving home, I stayed awake by sticking my arm out of the window and letting the cold rain hit fast like tiny needles.

I got home.

I passed out.

Although, that was technically on Saturday 🤔

ANYWAY, THIS IS MY LONG ASS BLOG FOR FRIDAY THE 13TH

I hope you enjoyed

Be good people!!!!

-Leonna

#Concert #Green Day #Fall Out Boy #Weezer #The Interrupters #Green Day Concert #Daily Blog #Blog #Trans #LGBTQ #alternative rock #Alternative #Pop Punk #Punk Rock

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safflowerseason · 3 years

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Anonymous Asked

(post #5 in the “Tumblr ate my asks” series)

“No pressure if you're short on time since I know there's a lot to say about it, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the relationship between Amy and Selina”

Hi Anon - you sent this in weeks and weeks ago, and I’m sorry it took me ages to get around to it! But the question has been on my mind recently as I’m rewatching S3 and writing the next chapter of BMTL.

What I find kind of interesting and frustrating about Selina and Amy’s relationship as presented on the show is that it’s a bit opaque compared to Selina’s other relationships (or Amy's with Dan, her other primary emotional foil on the show). We know virtually nothing about how Amy came to work for Selina (other than that she must have been quite young) or what she did that made her so invaluable; the most evident dimension of their connection—the fact that they are two women in a heavily male-dominated workspace—is never addressed explicitly by the writers. From the very beginning of the series, Amy has to try and defend her close relationship with Selina, but since we didn’t see how they became so close…to me, it always feels a little like there is something missing, in the way their connection is laid out.

I think the pilot actually works well as a kind of microcosm of Selina and Amy’s dynamic as it plays out through the Iannucci years of the show. Amy is presented as Selina’s right-hand woman; Selina clearly regards her as the smartest person on her team and has some measure of her respect for her that she doesn’t have for, say, Mike. But by the end of the pilot, she’s also gone over Amy’s express recommendation (hiring Dan) and has no objection to Amy performing a humiliating and sexist task (go on a date with Jonah in exchange for fixing the card situation). This is the dynamic that plays out through S4—Selina turns to Amy last and often only when she feels she’s truly backed into a corner and/or can’t discuss a particular issue with the men on her team. There is something very intimate about this kind of relationship, of course, and it’s drawn in deeply emotional terms. But in exchange for this particular kind of political intimacy, Amy has to fake a miscarriage, flush Selina’s toilet, get picked last for campaign manager (and only after she sabotages Dan and thus the very campaign she wants to run), and essentially watch Selina make increasingly bad political decisions based on advice from her current favorites while ignoring whatever Amy tells her. And one might say the tragedy of Amy’s character is that she endures these indignities not because she’ll get fired if she doesn’t do them (although that is literally true in some cases), but because she clearly derives a lot of her personal and professional self-worth from doing Selina’s dirty work. To a certain degree, and in face of stark evidence to the contrary, Amy believes that her willingness to do these things means that Selina values her the most of all.

That all sounds a bit darker than I mean it to. Of course Amy does experience small moments of genuine triumph under Selina, and she obviously wrestles with the uneven terms of their relationship during the first four seasons of the show—she thinks about jumping ship in S2, we see it dawn on her in S3 that Selina is basically her entire life in a way that probably isn’t healthy, she goes through phases of trying to develop some kind of life outside her work. Her own personal ambition is also a huge part of what’s going on. She’s very invested in the idea of being the managing force behind the first female Vice President (and President) and that helps her put up with Selina's most infuriating qualities as a politician. And of course, she does ultimately quit mid-way through S4, as she comes into this realization that she got her chosen horse into the White House and it’s a fucking disaster.

As for Selina’s side in all this…this is where the opacity of their relationship really features for me. I admit, I don’t quite understand viewers who talk about Iannucci-Selina as if she is Amy’s endlessly supportive older gal pal. Selina says more nice things about Gary in the early seasons of the show than she does about Amy. Yes, she obviously sees Amy as someone who can perform a certain kind of emotional labor for her and she relies on her greatly for that. Selina is very isolated emotionally, and I think Amy’s presence in her entourage as a young woman who is personally and professionally devoted to her is very reassuring to her, even if she doesn’t really realize it until after Amy leaves. This is something @thebookofmaev pointed out to me and I think it's quite telling: Selina reacts to Amy’s resignation in S4 by arranging “girls night” with her old law school friends, which she obviously finds excruciating. It’s significant to me that Selina is trying to fill an emotional hole, rather than a political one. While it’s obvious Selina generally prefers the company of men, there is something in her relationship with Amy that I think she finds very uncomplicated and soothing in a way she doesn’t find any other relationship on the show. She needs Amy for the moments of emotional extremity that Ben can’t handle. But considering how she treats Amy outside of those few moments, it's hard for me to view the relationship as one between genuine equals (not to mention the literal power imbalance between them). She needs Amy when she needs her and there’s no space for anything else in their relationship.

Amy returns to Selina in the S4 finale and it’s clearly a deeply psychological impulse more than anything else, more to do with herself than Selina, I would argue. It’s one of Amy’s most honest moments in the whole show—she can’t not be there after spending so much of her life invested in getting Selina elected. Selina collapses in her arms and wails that she should never have left and it’s genuinely moving and borderline romantic…and then she tells her supporters at the election rally that Amy took time away because she had a mental breakdown. Plus ça change.

Unfortunately, we can’t know what Iannucci had planned for Amy and Selina…I suspect we would have seen a few more “break-ups” in their relationship as it became increasingly unstable, and Amy would continue to wrestle with the costs of remaining within Selina’s orbit. Obviously (as a Dan/Amy shipper, haha) I think Dan would have been part of that journey for her…S4 is pretty explicit (in my opinion) about the fact that Dan now officially occupies the third point of the triangle between Selina, Amy, and some semblance of a life, not to mention the fact that the Dan/Amy/Selina triangle is a major structural anchor of the show in its own right.

Of course, one of the greatest objections fans had to Mandel as a showrunner was his approach to Amy and Selina’s relationship, largely driven by Selina’s transformation into the ultimate mysogynist. I don’t agree with this interpretation of Selina, but I do think the deterioriation of Amy and Selina’s relationship is very plausible even under Iannucci. Amy has to leave Selina at some point, like most strategists move on from their bosses if they want to remain politically relevant. But Selina's attachment to Amy is primarily emotional and not political, and Amy permanently moving on from her would be a bitter pill for her to swallow…she clearly views Dan and Amy at PKM as non-WH extensions of her staff, but Amy leaving to work for another politician, especially a female one, would be unbearable for her. Similarly, I do not think any version of Selina would react well to the news that Amy was going to have a baby. We can’t know if this was a sure thing in the Iannucci Veep universe, obviously, but considering how she reacts to Mike potentially becoming a father…I just can’t see Selina embracing the fact that someone else is going to have a superior claim on Amy’s time and energy. (But I also don’t think Iannucci-Selina would ever order Amy to have an abortion, of course.)

My fic, Bring Me to Light, is exploring this theme to a certain degree. It imagines a future in which Amy has fully invested in a life outside of Selina, and when her old boss makes a reappearance, Amy struggles with old professional demons (and of course, because I’m the author, she has to reckon with Selina and Dan’s separate professional relationship as well 😈)

Well, this turned into quite an essay, so I’ll stop there. You’re right, Anon—there’s so much to say!

#amy brookheimer #selina meyer #dan egan #veep

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elsac2 · 4 years

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Prompt by @darknessstartstorise

Hey, I saw your post about sending prompts. I am not sure if this is something you would be interested in. I am a fan of paranormal romances, and was wondering if you would ever consider doing an AU kinda based off the In your Eyes film. I wasn't crazy about the film itself but the idea of seeing through others eyes..that person being your soulmate and what not. I don't know if that is a very good one but figured I would put it out there for Richonne.

" and the hallucinations?"

Michonne raises her head at the question.

She scratches her eyelids out of acquired habits.

She blinks to centre her vision.

" It didn't last past a week," Michonne replies with a tone, which hides her lies.

" That's good."

He kisses her, and Michonne remains stoic. Lying does not sit well with her, but she does not want to risk psychiatric internment over simple hallucinations due to a severe coma.

Michonne already made a mistake to say too much about her visual hallucinations.

She would not truly call what she has hallucinations. The thing is close to something, which she cannot explain.

It feels like becoming blind to see through someone else's eyes.

She sounds crazy, and it only gets worse when she tries to explain.

"Don't worry," She cajoled her boyfriend. " the doctor says I'm recovering well enough. I will be ready to go back to work, Mike."

" and it's what worries me. " Mike replies, " You should take time to rest before jumping back into your job. The world won't end because an art gallery owner takes five days away."

Michonne smiles, and it is hardly different from a grimace.

"Yeah," she begrudgingly agrees.

….

" and the hallucinations,"

Michonne sighs, and she should have been careful. She picks her shirt, and she begins to button it. Michonne almost feels vulnerable with all those wires on her.

" all gone," she regulates her breathing to maintain her heartbeat at an appropriate rhythm.

" I hope it's not a lie," Michonne's doctor says as she feels a pile of documents, which Michonne needs. " I can't let you back on the field if you still are experiencing trouble with your sight." She raises her head and looks at Michonne.

" I feel brand new." She smiles.

" I'm going to clear you out for a desk job first," her doctor says." Two weeks later, you will be able to return to the field." She signs the files and returns it to Michonne.

Michonne is not happy, but it could be worse. She scratches her eyes. The discomfort is almost unbearable.

….

" Michonne,"

She does not immediately reply. Even the loud yelling does not pull her out of it. It is nothing different from her usual hallucination.

A small scene of everyday life, she watches it happen enclosed in a body, which does not feel like hers.

She lifts a little girl with blond curl waves, and she hears laughter. For a moment, she sits on the breakfast table with the girl and a teenager

"Dad," he calls her.

" Carl, finish your breakfast." She replies with a rather masculine voice. " your mother is coming to pick you up, and you know how she gets."

"Michonne, "

She breaks out of her hallucinations. Michonne looks around her, and she notices her heavy hand.

" What is going on with you?" Her colleague asks. " You froze while shooting." She adds. " maybe you weren't ready to come back. How many more sessions with the psychiatrist?"

" I'm fine, Sasha" Michonne promptly responds. " I got shot before, and it is part of the job." She continues. " No trauma here. " She lies.

…

Carl

Michonne writes the name on her note pad. She adds more of what she can remember. The hallucinations began after being shot while on a mission in Nicaragua.

She draws from her memories the little girl. Everything feels strange about her visions.

It feels like looking through a window.

Michonne draws a deep breath. On the last day, the hallucinations have not bothered her. In a week, she won't need to be on the desk. She would go back on the field.

Michonne closes her notepad. It would slowly go away.

….

It does not go away. She lets her cup of coffee fall. Michonne is no longer in her kitchen. She is staring through the windows.

There are broken glasses everywhere. She stares at a gun.

" You thought we would not find you, Grimes. "

A man says while he presses the gun on her. It is not truly how Michonne can describe it. He points it on Grimes. She is only behind the window watching it happen.

" It doesn't have to be that way," Michonne recognises the voice.

It is always the same voice. Carl's dad or Grimes, and she begins to believe they are the same man. Michonne does not get to see more, and the window shatters into darkness.

…..

" Michonne," Mike calls her.

She finishes packing dinner. He cooked, and she agreed to clean. Michonne has not had a hallucination in days. She scratches her eyelids.

Michonne is going to return to the field in a few days. She has her lie made up. Michonne would tell Mike that she has to go recover a piece of art in Malaysia. She has a mission in the country. It sounds like a simple one. Michonne only has to recover intelligence.

"What?" Michonne yells from the kitchen.

" There is something on the news," Mike replies.

Michonne assumes it is something about painting or an art gallery. She comes to the living room to feign interest.

" What is going on?" She asks when she sits.

" There is a local cop who has disappeared," Mike replies.

Michonne cocks an eyebrow. She does not see why he would call her over it.

" Hmmm," Michonne says with slight confusion.

" Detective Grimes," He says the name.

Michonne freezes, and her eyes quickly turn to the TV.

It has been about a week since local hero Rick Grimes. One of Atlanta PD finest detectives also one known for his grand coup against drug cartels plaguing the city has disappeared.

On 7 March, his house was attacked, and the security alarm went off. The police arrived a few minutes later and found a scene of horror.

Michonne registers the date. She loses part of what the news anchor relates. She thinks of her last hallucinations.

Blood has been found in Grimes' home with nobody in sight. There are many signs of struggle, and many clues lead to believe in a vendetta against the officer.

Michonne scratches her eyes, and she leaves the room without a word. She retrieves her notepad, and she reads a detailed description of her hallucinations. Signs of struggles. It does not sit well with Michonne.

It is nothing, but trauma.

….

For a minute, it is pitch black until the window is clean. She struggles to see blinded by the light. Michonne stares at the face coming to focus.

" They are all looking for you, Grimes."

There is no answer. She looks around her with slowness. She focuses on every little detail. She does not focus on what they say. Michonne sees a foot coming toward her, and the image moves out of focus.

" You're going to rot here, and when we're done, they will find your body."

Whoever the man talking to Grimes is, he spits toward him before living.

Michonne waits, and she continues to stare at the room.

"Michonne," she hears him mumbling, " That is your name, right." Grimes talks to her. " I know you're here." He insists, " I get in your head sometimes." He continues." Talk to me." He pleads.

Michonne panics. It all ends before she can respond.

She leaves her desk. She rushes to the bathroom to wash her face. Michonne is frightened. It is insane. She is going insane. Nicaragua is coming to haunt her. Her entire career in the CIA is claiming her sanity.

Michonne takes a deep breath, and she returns to her desk.

She opens her motor of research, and she does what a good agent would do. She begins to dig.

….

Rick Grimes is a white man in his late thirty. By all standards, he is attractive. He is a father of two, and he recently divorced from his wife. She finds nothing out of the ordinary. Until his date of divorce coincided with the day when she pulled out of her coma.

Michonne takes note of it. She continues to dig. He is an excellent police officer, and he made himself some good enemy. From negan to Philip Blake, Rick Grimes is responsible for the biggest seizure in the Atlanta narco world. It is all impressive and yet nothing explains why she would build a story around him.

It started while she was lying on that wet floor in a dirty room of a hotel in Nicaragua. She had finished her mission. Michonne was waiting for extractions. Someone burned her, and next she knew the bullets were breaking through the walls.

An hour later, she began to have hallucinations. Nothing important more like little things she dreamed off. She spent six months in the coma.

She spends six months in her head having a conversation.

Those conversations became hallucinations when she opened her eyes.

Michonne stares at the screen. She continues to read articles about Rick Grimes. He has a teenage son named Carl.

She searches Carl Grimes.

Staring at the many pictures, she recognises the one from her drawing. Michonne switches off her computer.

She is going insane.

….

Michonne fails to forget. She wakes up, and she has again fallen asleep on the sofa. Things have been different since she woke up from her coma. She doesn't like to share a bed with Mike anymore. She pretends to fall asleep on the couch.

Michonne pulls her computer. Her mind will not allow her to forget. She has found all she could find about Rick Grimes. It does not answer her question. She needs more.

Sharing sight post coma

Michonne finishes typing on Google. Many pages appear. She meticulously reads through articles. It is mayhem of information. There is a lot of useless information. Until a small article about death and soulmate. It is more ridiculous than the rest.

However, she reads it. It speaks to her. The little testimonies at the bottom of the article sound almost convincing.

Michonne finds a scientific article about soulmates or half of an orange. She reads how it works. The intricate connection between souls and it is so rare that most people don't have one.

Michonne ultimately returns to the article. It is ridiculous. She wants to believe it is written by some lunatic. Between the thousand comments, there is one by Maggie Rhee. The experience sounds like Michonne's one. She closes her computer.

…..

Hold on… don't sleep.

Michonne wakes up with sweat coating every inch of her body. She feels like puking, and she rushes to the bathroom. Michonne empties her stomach. For months, she did not remember the day in Nicaragua.

What is your name

Michonne recognises Rick Grimes' voice. The same one who pushed her to keep going and stay awake.

Michonne stares at the mirror. She is going insane. She sits in the bathtub, and she searches for the ridiculous article. She remembers seeing Maggie Rhee' s number.

Michonne calls, and she waits for someone to pick up.

….

Michonne has a soulmate if she can trust Maggie Rhee. Why would she trust a young woman who lived what she is living? She didn't understand the specific.

Something happens when anyone is at the brink of death. The fracture of the soul and it only depends on how strongly your soul is linked to your soulmate. Her connection with Rick Grimes must be one stronger than iron.

Whatever, Michonne understands is that she owes her life to Rick Grimes talking her back to consciousness. Now, it feels right. She always thought it was Mike keeping her alive with small talk.

Now, she remembers where she picked her new habits. It all comes for hours, days, and months of conversation with Rick Grimes.

Michonne draws a deep breath. Maggie told her to try and project. She tries and it does not work at first. She knew it was lunacy. Soulmates and life miracles are bullshit.

…..

Michonne stares at the ceiling. She fails to forget. She plays some country music. Michonne used to hate it. She began to like it after resurfacing from her coma. It is the same way that she now loves deep southern accents.

"Hello," Michonne hesitates. " If you hear me, reply. " she does not have faith it would work.

" I'm going insane." She concludes.

" As long as you do it after,"

Michonne sees her ceiling fade.

" Richard Grimes?" She calls with hesitation.

" Yeah," he replies, " but Rick will do, Chonne."

It does not feel strange that he calls her that.

" I'm not insane," Michonne tells him. She looks at the room before him. " You're not in my head."

" I don't think you got it right," he replies with nonchalance.

" I'm in your head, and you're in mine." Michonne sounds crazy.

" That's my girl," He says with liberating joy.

Michonne does not react to what he says, and it feels normal. She is his girl. Michonne has been for the last six months.

" You're dying," Michonne comes to term with reality.

" No," Rick casually replies, " Not if you can help it." He says with confidence. " only stay with me."

….

Michonne does stay with Rick. He helps her, and she returns the favour.

" What is your big plan?" He asks while he scans his surroundings.

" kill everyone in my way," Michonne replies while she straps her weapon.

" That is not a plan," Rick replies. " That is a suicide mission."

Michonne groans. They have been going back and worth. She knows Rick won't be alive for long if they continue to talk about it.

" Call the police," Rick deadpans.

" and tell them what?" Michonne retorts. " My soulmate is Rick Grimes, and he is in my head telling me that Merle Dixon kidnapped him in retaliation. They would think I'm insane." Michonne points out.

" You're insane." Rick rebounds. " A dozen men are here. What are you going to do alone? It is a heavy rotation of armed men." He points out.

Michonne grabs her duffle bag. She leaves her home. She carefully places a letter on the table for Mike.

" What is that?" Rick asks. " your fucking suicide note." He says with seriousness.

" My goodbye to Mike," Michonne replies, " I think he has been waiting for that break-up."

Michonne enters the car. She drives to the place where she suspected they held Rick.

" Michonne," Rick attempts to resonate with her. " We're both going to die. Chonne, don't."

" Oh my god, " Michonne argues, " shut up Rick Grimes and waits for me to come and rescue you,"

…..

It is chaos, and a few men are on the ground. Rick manages to help himself up. A man watches him, and Rick opts for the clear solution. He jumps on the man before he can drag his gun out. He sinks his teeth in the man's neck until he bleeds to death.

Rick twists and gyrates until he can drag his hand in front of him. One of his shoulders slipped out of his socket through the effort. He grabs the man gun, and he begins to head toward the source of gunshots.

He pushes the door, and he finds chaos. Most men are dead, and Michonne has melted into a headlock. A man runs toward her, and Rick immediately shots at him. She looks toward him, and he freezes into actions.

" behind you," Michonne yells.

Rick immediately fires behind him. Michonne continues to squeeze Merle windpipe until he loses consciousness.

" How much left?" Rick asks while he begins to head toward Michonne.

" None," She replies with a smile, " they were eleven men," Michonne tells him.

Rick fixes the safety of his gun, and he aims it toward merle.

" Hello," He tells Michonne.

" Hello, Rick." She replies.

They exchange a look, and it quickly ends as the police siren song fills the air.

" How do I explain this?" Rick laments.

" The less crazy version."

…..

Rick indeed does not explain beyond a sketchy version where he killed eleven men. How else would he explain that his soulmate sees through his eyes and speaks in his head?

" You could have approached me," Michonne tells him.

" You wouldn't have bought the story," Rick replies, and he sips his beer.

" I…" Michonne hesitates. " I would have felt this pull." She decides to settle on the truth.

"I thought I was insane until I found you," Rick explains to Michonne. " I didn't want you to go through it." He confesses.

" I still thought I was going crazy. I would get those flashes of your life and day after day." Michonne counters.

" Sorry about that, I did think a lot about you. I couldn't always get you out of my head." Rick says.

" So that it is the deal," Michonne asks. " We're soulmates, and…" she searches for what's next.

" I'm single, and so are you." Rick points out, " so far this first date is going well. We're facing a complicated topic. We're good at chemistry. We can try a second date. " He suggests.

" We can try a second date, " Michonne agrees.

Their date is like many first dates, and Rick has the advantage of already having six months worth of conversation. Their date ends at the door of her apartment. Michonne does not know if it is the entire soulmate thing, but she finds him charming. She certainly likes his walk, and she can not say that about many men.

" Good night, Michonne," Rick says, and he reaches for her hand.

Michonne holds him back, and she pulls him toward her. She rises on her toes and kisses him.

#richonne #Rick Grimes #Michonne #rick x michonne #richonne fanfiction

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logicalbookthief · 5 years

Text

will you take this babe to be your only

"It’s all yours, Eds," he says, batting his eyes at Eddie’s glare. "On one condition."

He drops to his knee, just like they do in the movies. His lips make a wet, smacking sound as he kisses the back of Eddie’s hand, grin unrepentant.

"Make me the happiest man in the seventh grade?"

OR: Five times Richie proposed to Eddie as a joke and the one time he was serious. Based on THIS amazing, adorable reddie art by @faiyx. Title from “Let’s Get Married” by Bleachers.

Link to ao3

Richie saunters over to friends – specifically over to Eddie, who’s giving Stan and Bill a wide berth as they fiddle with Bill’s bike. But Eddie catches the glint of his ringpop in the sun and crowds him instantly.

"Hey! Where’s mine?"

"Sorry, Eds. Only one left." He is sorry for that; Richie meant to buy one for Eddie, too. He is decidedly less sorry for the reaction he knows his counter-offer will induce. "Tell you what, I’ll share."

"Gross!" Eddie reddens with his signature disgust. "I don’t want your spit. Who knows what germs you’re carrying! Flu, strep, halitosis–"

"You can’t spread halitosis," Stan interrupts. Eddie shoots him a look that is both confused and scathing.

It’s kind of cute, actually. The furrowed brow, the tightening around his lips. Everything Eddie does is at least kind of cute. Even when he’s trying to connive Richie out of his candy.

"C’mon, Rich. Red’s my favorite flavor."

"Red isn’t a flavor."

"You know what I mean, dipshit."

"Eds, you kiss your mother with that mouth?" Richie tuts. "Or does she save all the lip-action for me?"

"Shut up! You’re so fucking gross.” Eddie scowls, making a lunge for Richie’s arm. He’s got a couple inches on Eddie, and it’s way too easy to hold the ring out of reach, so Eddie has to jump for it.

Richie could tease Eddie like this all day, but an idea strikes, and oh, he can’t resist.

"Okay, you’ve convinced me. It’s all yours, Eds," he says, batting his eyes at Eddie’s glare. "On one condition."

He drops to his knee, just liken they do in the movies. His lips make a wet, smacking sound as he kisses the back of Eddie’s hand, grin unrepentant.

"Make me the happiest man in seventh grade?"

Eddie sputters, his cheeks a hot, fluorescent pink. Too deer-in-the-headlights to even freak over the germs from Richie’s saliva.

"Our Eddie could do better," Stan shouts. Richie yelps in offense.

"Take that back, Stanflakes!"

While he’s distracted, Eddie swipes the ringpop and sticks it in mouth. All smug, completely unrepentant. Richie would be annoyed, if his stomach wasn’t twisted in fluttery knots all of a sudden.

Weird. Maybe he should lay off the candy, after all.

"Expert quarry-diver, Richard Tozier, will now attempt his triple back-splash bellyflop." Richie clears his throat of the British voice, the tips of his toes dangling over the edge of the cliff. He bends to a diving pose, sticking his butt towards his audience.

"Would you be careful?" Eddie nags. "Do you know the statistics of water-related injury among kids our age?"

"Do you know the statistics of virgins who quote statistics all the time?" Richie mimics Eddie’s high-pitched tone, chuckling at how huffy he gets. "Lighten up, Eds."

Mike peers over his shoulder. "It is a pretty big fall."

Richie snorts. "Not as big as my–"

His foot slips, careening back into nothing. The last thing he sees before he plummets is Eddie, seized by terror.

As far as last sights go, it isn’t so bad.

He slams against the water, hard. The impact punches the air out of his lungs. He sinks for a bit, dazed by pain, until the tightness in his chest becomes almost unbearable.

Disoriented, Richie flails his arms, aiming for the surface but going nowhere. His lungs have started to ache with urgency when he’s grabbed under the arms. They breach the surface, gulping in a glorious burst of oxygen, and finally, he’s set on land. He gasps, water sluicing past his lips, tasting all the nasty shit Eddie claims is in there.

Eddie.

"Eddie," he croaks, his vision blurry. He must’ve lost his glasses.

"You idiot," Eddie screeches. Wetness clings to his lashes. Richie suspects it isn’t from the quarry yet doesn’t dare voice this aloud. “I told you, I told you to be careful, and what did you do!? You could’ve broken your neck!"

"Or my huge dick,” Richie coughs, as his glasses are shoved back onto his face. He looks up to see Stan rolling his eyes.

"Besides his brain, is anything broken?”

"Dr. K doesn’t think so," says Ben, smiling in relief. "He jumped in after you, then Bill and I, and we swam you to shore."

"My hero," Richie sing-songs. He grins at his savior. "Marry me, Eds?"

"Pull that shit again and I'll let you drown," Eddie promises, though it's sort of undermined by how he's still hovering over Richie. Clingy Eddie is a worried Eddie, and selfishly, Richie likes it.

"You’ll have a helluva bruise," Bev remarks, poking at his skin.

"I’ve only seen people fall that way in cartoons," Mike exclaims.

Stan guffaws. "You dropped like Wile E. Coyote."

"Idiot," Eddie repeats. He hasn’t let go of Richie’s wrist, the point of contact burning so hot it may as well be imprinted on his skin. “Next time, you better listen to me.”

Richie beams. "Of course. What would I do without you, Eds?"

"Die, apparently," says Bill, and Richie laughs so hard water spurts out of his nose.

It’s the dead of night when Richie climbs through Eddie’s window, but the motions are so familiar, he could probably do it blind. He’s walked the distance from his house to the Kaspbrak’s so many times he could tell you the exact amount of steps it takes from his room to Eddie’s front door.

The excursions used to be a necessity, considering how frequently his mom would keep him home from school, and how she refused to let any of them visit Eddie when they brought his homework. Ever since Eddie put his foot down over the gazebos, he hadn’t missed nearly as much, until about a week ago.

A few days of absence is tolerable, though by no means enjoyable for Richie. A week is his absolute limit.

He slides the window open and slips inside. The room’s empty, except for a nest of blankets on the bed. Richie frowns, scanning for signs of life. Then the nest shifts, and he hears a sniffle.

"Rich?" Eddie pokes his head out of the cocoon. "What’re you doing here?"

Maybe it’s that he figured this was a case of Mrs. K’s smothering, but he isn’t prepared for the sight of Eddie: cheeks flushed, hair rumpled, his voice a sore-sounding whisper. "You really are sick, huh," says Richie, dumbly.

Eddie scoffs, a cough wracking his whole body. "No, I quarantined myself for fun! I love the smell of stale air and Vicks vapor rub."

"Geez, if you’re gonna be a dick, I’ll take my care-package and go," Richie turns on his heel, as if to leave.

Fingers curl around his arm, stronger than he expected. Richie cuts to Eddie’s eyes, wide and vulnerable. "Please don’t go."

"Eds, hey," Richie says gently. He cards his fingers through his sweaty hair, feeling like an ass. "I was kidding."

Shakily, Eddie nods. "No, it’s okay... I forgot how it was, you know? Being hold up in my room, all by myself, because I’m sick." He swallows, drawing out a wince. "It’s..."

Lonely. Eddie doesn’t have to say it for Richie to read him loud and clear. And who wouldn’t be, trapped in a dark house with only Mrs. K and her soaps for company?

If he wasn’t just some punk teen with two bucks to his name, he’d take Eddie away from this – this prison of a room, with his mom as warden; this shithole town, with all its shake and secrets – in a heartbeat.

"Marry me," he blurts. Eddie blinks at him.

So you’ll never be alone, is what he means. What he says is, "That way if you die, I’ll get your comics."

"Fuck you," Eddie rasps. It sounds more like fug you. Richie snickers.

"You’re cute when you’re congested. I can’t take anything you say seriously."

"Why don’t you put your mouth to good use for once," Eddie grumbles, and slaps a comic into Richie’s palm. "My eyes are too watery to read."

Richie grins and does as he’s told. Probably the only instance Eddie doesn’t complain about his voices are when he reads aloud; even when they were little kids, Eddie would sit entranced, saying he was the best storyteller.. He attempts to keep the volume low, even though there’s a 90% percent chance Mrs. Kaspbrak is already passed out with a bottle of Chardonnay.

After a while, Eddie starts to doze against his shoulder, and even Richie can’t hold his eyes open much longer. He may as well spend the night; as long as he skedaddles before breakfast, Mrs. K will be none-the-wiser.

"Move over," Richie orders, slipping under the covers. They’re all elbows and knees, yet still skinny enough to fit together in the bed. It’s narrow, though. The fit is tight. His heart’s fluttering so loudly he hopes Eddie’s ears are congested, too.

"I’ll get you sick," Eddie frets. A tidal wave of affection rushes over Richie, because the concern is I’m infectious stay away, not ew, get away from me, you fag.

He dreads the day they’ll be too old, or it’ll be too gay, for Richie to sneak into his room and share his bed. So he savors it while he has it, this closeness. Shuffles their positions until his chin is tucked over Eddie’s shoulder, his chest pressed against Richie’s front.

"There," he says, grateful they’re no longer facing each other, so Eddie can’t see the flush on his cheeks. "Now you can’t breathe on me."

Eddie shivers against the cool gust of air over his neck, or maybe he’s feverish, curling back against Richie in search of warmth. Emboldened, Richie throws an arm over his middle, slotting them together. For Richie, it’s like a piece of himself falling into place.

Tomorrow he’ll complain about Eddie’s hideous morning breath and be kicked for his trouble. Tonight he drifts off to the hiss of Eddie’s breaths and is thankful for every wheeze.

"Jesus, Rich. Those things will rot your lungs before you’re forty."

Eddie grunts when he spies Richie, a cigarette dangling between his fingers. The glow is unmistakable in the low-lighting of Derry’s school halls.

Richie takes a long, exaggerated drag. "Yeah, yeah, so you’ve told me. A gazillion times."

"You survived an evil sewer clown just to kill yourself with cigarettes?" Eddie makes his bitchiest face.

"When you put it that way," Richie mutters, stubbing it out. Doesn’t want to give Eddie a reason to leave, anyway.

He slinks over to Richie, nose wrinkling at the smell. "Why aren’t you with Becky?"

"Who?"

Eddie rolls his eyes. "Your date, dumbass."

Of course Richie remembers. Becky “B-Cup” Wilkins. She sits by him in physics, where they copy each other’s work (usually with mutually devastating results). This was the first year of high school she had her braces off, and with the metal gone, she was keen to practice her kissing. Richie was more than happy to oblige.

He was a little floored when she asked him to the dance, though. Him and the Losers generally had a pact to go together, but that may have more to do with the lack of invitations from anyone else. They all encouraged Richie to accept the invite “before she realizes what she’s getting into,” as Stan so eloquently put it.

Becky was pretty, overbite or no, and she ran with a crowd of girls that were way out of his league. She had a mean streak to her, too, and apparently he liked that in a girl.

(And apparently in boys, too.)

Her friends were nice to him the whole night, even laughed at his jokes. Whether they thought he was charming in an off-beat kind of way, or simply being considerate of Becky, he wasn’t sure, nor did he particularly care.

Until he returned from the punch bowl to the girls in a cluster, giggling.

"Come on, if you had to pick a loser, who’d it be?" asks Liz Maloney.

"The short one, I guess," another girl answers. Curious, Richie follows her gaze, heart sinking at the sight of Eddie, standing off to the side with Ben and Stan, while Bev and Bill dance. His hair’s combed for once, shiny with gel, and the sweater that looks soft to the touch. Not as soft as his skin, yet it isn’t a fair comparison, since Richie’s imagined touching that for far longer.

"God, Kris, you know he’s gay, right?" Liz jeers. His stomach lurches at the disdain in her voice. "He’s never so much as looked at a girl."

"So what, he’s gay and can’t be cute?" Kris puts a hand on her hip. "Better gay than fat."

"At least Hanscom isn’t allergic to pussy."

They crack up at that, and in the mix, he hears Becky’s little snigger, the one he found so charming. Not anymore.

"You know who I’d pick?" Richie bursts in obnoxiously, startling Kris so bad she yelps. "All of them, over you."

Becky shot him a look as he left, like he was the weirdo upset over nothing, and Richie decided he was a better off a loser.

"Oh! Her." He snaps his fingers. "Yeah, we weren’t compatible, you could say. Turns out, her B-Cup was mostly tissue."

"She dumped you," Eddie surmises.

"Yeah," says Richie, because it’s easier than the truth.

His expression dims, sympathy bleeding from every pore. Eddie bumps his shoulder. "I’m sorry, dude."

Richie shrugs. "Bev is saving me a dance as we speak. I’m sure she’s got one saved for you, too."

"No thanks, I’m good." Eddie shudders. "All the sweat, the touching, the–"

"–the bacteria?" Richie finishes knowingly. "Fuck. Can’t you let loose for one night, Eds?"

"Don’t call me that," he snaps. "And what’re you doing?"

"Crossing it off your bucket list," Richie says cheerily, yanking Eddie to his feet. "C’mon, man. What if you wake up with a staff infection tomorrow? Do you wanna die without dancing at your senior homecoming?"

"Shit for brains, that isn’t how staff infect–" At his unfaltering grin, Eddie relents. "You know what, fine! Whatever it takes to shut you up."

"That’s the spirit!"

It’s obvious Eddie doesn’t quite know where to put his hands. Richie knows exactly where he wants to put his, yet he’s too much of a coward.

"You can barely hear the music," Eddie complains. "We look like idiots."

"Nobody’s watching," Richie presses, holding Eddie a bit tighter, the fear he’ll pull away worse than the fear they’ll be caught. "I could hum, if you prefer."

Eddie snorts, ducking his head, chin brushing Richie’s chest. "I don’t really know what I’m doing," he admits, self-consciously.

"Relax, you’re fine." Richie twists him into an awkward twirl, then does the same to himself, cackling at Eddie’s reluctant smile. "I’ll show you some moves when we go camping at Mike’s next weekend."

Immediately, the smile disappears. "My mom won’t let me."

"Eds," Richie groans. "You’re killing me."

"I tried!" Eddie cries miserably. "I tried to ask if I could visit my aunt in Chamberlain, and sneak out with you guys instead, even though it was a long-shot. But she wouldn’t go for that, either!"

"Well, there is no way you’re missing Ben’s triple-layer s’mores or your dancing lessons. Let’s brainstorm." Richie spends a second wracking his brain. "Option one, we fake your death."

"Be serious, Rich."

"Okay, okay. Option two." He makes the mistake of looking at Eddie, the words briefly catching in his throat. "We get married, run away together. As your husband, I’d totally overrule your mom."

"Where’s my ring?" Eddie asks, smirking.

Richie surprises him with a dip, just to hear his squawk. "You got to admit, Eddie Tozier has quite the ring to it," he jokes, his mouth so close to Eddie’s he feels light-headed.

"Sounds like a bad cologne brand." Eddie stares up at him, dark eyes imploring. Like he truly believes in Richie, trusts him to fix anything. "What’s option number three?"

"I stop living in sin and make it official with your mom," Richie blurts, wriggling his eyebrows. "As your stepdad, I could persuade Sonia to let our darling boy have fun with his friends."

He should’ve predicted the smack, but it jolts him enough that he drops Eddie on his ass, collapsing into a fit of giggles next to him on the floor.

"You’re sick," Eddie hisses, with no real bite. "No wonder your date left you."

Richie yanks him into a noogie. "Good thing I’ll always have you, Eddie Spaghetti."

He has Eddie, wholly, unconditionally. Until he doesn’t.

Until the memories fade, day by day, month by month, and he forgets every lingering touch, every averted glance, every painstaking swipe of his father’s pocketknife as he carved their initials into the kissing bridge. He loses Eddie, only to find him twenty-seven years later, and then only to lose him again.

Almost. Richie sighs, savoring the steady beep of the monitor beside him. He almost loses Eddie.

They narrowly escaped being crushed to death under the Neibolt, mostly because Richie, in his desperate certainty that Eddie was alive, refused to leave him behind. How could he leave him to die in that cold, dark chasm – Eddie would’ve hated it, he was afraid of the dark, kept a night-light well into his teens, and Richie couldn’t tell the others, not only ‘cause he was sobbing too harsh to make any sense, but ‘cause he promised Eds he’d never tell a soul – when he could barely pry himself from Eddie at the hospital, while the doctors insisted they take him into surgery, now.

So Richie waits, his hands quaking at the memory of Eddie’s skin, gone cold with shock. He waits, helpless, while the doctors try to shove Eddie’s innards back in and stitch up the hole in his chest.

By some miracle, they manage to do it with, and with him only flatlining once, the nurse informs him proudly. Like Richie should be ecstatic that Eddie had to be physically resuscitated, even after they brought him to safety, after killing that fucking clown.

"I’m sorry. Until he’s moved to a room, only family are allowed in the ICU," she explains to the six losers standing vigil. Richie is more than a bit bewildered when she motions him forward regardless. "Sir, you can come with me."

Still a little dazed, he follows without question, lest this privilege be revoked.

"Your husband is heavily sedated, so if he wakes he’ll likely be disoriented. I’ll be good to have a familiar face." She nods to the chair at Eddie’s bedside. "Make sure to keep him calm and comfortable."

With a final, warm smile, she leaves them alone. Richie staggers into the seat, fumbling for Eddie’s hand, where it lies limp against the starch white sheets. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the fat drops of tears are sliding down the bridge of his nose and into the bed. His chest swells, full of all the regrets he’s carried, all the shame he’s hidden. All the love that’s interwoven into the two.

And Eddie has no idea.

No idea that Richie would fight a million fucking clowns if doing so would keep Eddie safe, let him smile, bright and buoyant, like he had at Richie when he thought he’d killed It for real.

Hell, the nurse from middle-of-fucking-nowhere Derry could tell he was head-over-heels in love, yet he couldn’t find the balls to confess to the one guy in the world who deserved to know.

Richie isn’t sure how long he’s slumped over, their fingers intertwined, before Eddie stirs.

"You’re okay, Eds. It’s Richie, I’m here," he says softly, clutching his hand tighter. "Not leaving you, buddy. Not ever again."

His brow pinches, bewildered. "When did you...?"

"Never mind," snorts Richie. His smile hardly wavers, and it’s hopelessly adoring. Eddie has that effect on him, it seems. "Just running my mouth."

"Per usual," Eddie huffs, weakly. "Did we... It, did we...?"

The monitor speeds up, signaling his distress. Richie acts on instinct, standing up, using his body to shield him from the room, the world. It’s only them, just Richie with his palm over Eddie’s cheek, thumb caressing his scar, his dimples.

"It’s dead," he assures. "Everyone made it out, we’re safe. You’re safe now."

Eddie turns into the touch, nose brushing against his fingertips. Richie sucks in a breath, his heart a jackhammer in his throat. He’s never wanted to kiss anyone like he wants to kiss Eddie right now.

Talking. Talking will distract him from that dangerous line of thought. "We carried you out. You’re in the hospital, attached to no less than a thousand wires, that I'm afraid to poke in case you explode."

A groggy smile tugs at the corners of Eddie's mouth.

"Oh, and the staff thinks I’m your incredibly devoted husband," Richie adds wryly. "What do ya say, Eds? Don’t want to get accused of hospital fraud."

Eddie hums dreamily. "I have to divorce my wife first."

Richie nearly swallows his tongue.

He could blame it on the drugs. Hell, it's probably a joke. Like his half-hearted attempt to startle a laugh out of Richie, his chin smeared with blood, the "I fucked your mom" comment followed by a streak of red.

Except it isn't a joke. This is something else entirely.

"Wha– What are you saying?"

His eyes open to slits, glaring at Richie through his lashes. "I’m trying to be brave."

Richie chokes out a laugh. "Eds, you’re braver than anybody I’ve ever met."

"Hmm." Eddie exhales, eyes slipping closed. Richie stifles the pinprick of panic begging for Eddie to keep your eyes open, stay awake, please, look at me. "Brave. Not happy."

And if that doesn’t fucking break his heart.

"We can fix that," Richie whispers, the words unbidden but earnest. He talks a lot of shit, but this, this is as vulnerable as he's ever allowed himself to be. "You and me, Eds. I want–I want you to be happy."

Happy with me.

There’s no answer. Snores drift from Eddie’s slackened lips. Richie laughs, wobbly and tear-laced, as he nuzzles his hair.

"You rest, Eddie Spaghetti. I’ll be here when you wake up." He strokes his knuckles over his forehead, and then kisses him there, just below his hairline. Fuck it, he’s tired of fearing the worst, hiding the truth.

If Eddie wasn’t afraid, neither was Richie.

"Did I ever tell you guys I proposed to my boyfriend when we were twelve-years-old? With a ringpop?"

He garners a couple of hollers and a few scattered ’awws’.

"Let me finish!" Richie shushes. "I proposed to Eddie when we were kids, and, while our friend Stan was dunking on me, he stole the ring off my hand and stuck it in his mouth. He was all: haha, got ya bitch! The lil’ shit."

The crowd titters. Besotted, Richie lays a hand over his heart and sighs.

"Proposed with a ringpop. That is the height of romance – but only if you’re a twelve-year-old. If I pulled that stunt a a grown man, you wouldn’t be waking up to a Buzzfeed article titled: 42-year-old Comedian Ties Knot with Childhood Sweetheart. You’d be reading a news report claiming: 42-year-old Comedian Justifiably Murdered By His Boyfriend."

Cheers ring out, despite him yelling, "Don't cheer for my death!"

"You know what’s really pathetic? Besides the fact my romance game peaked before puberty." He pauses, allowing the chuckles to peter out before he continues, "The worst part is, it was a joke . Yup. I didn’t know I was gay, let alone in love with my best friend! I did it solely to get a rise out of him, and boy, did he get cute when he was mad."

In a thoughtful tone, Richie reflects, "In retrospect, the gay thing should’ve been clear sooner."

At the crowd's glee, a grin splits his cheeks.

"Speaking of my gay awakening, he’s in the audience tonight." He locks eyes with Eddie in the front row, sandwiched between Ben and Mike. "Eddie, my love. Light of my life. Fire in my loins. Won’t you join me on stage, so the adoring fans can get a look at you?"

The crowd claps in thunderous agreement. Eddie shakes his head, vehemently at first, losing gusto as the Losers gently (forcibly) encourage him toward the stage. He flashes a quick, uncomfortable grin at the audience before leaning into Richie, whispering "The hell are you doing, asshole?" which, for all his tact, the mic catches anyway.

Richie tucks a now blushing Eddie against his side, showing off his gorgeous boyfriend. "Am I the luckiest guy in the world or what?" he shouts to raucous wolf-whistles. "Okay, that was maybe too enthusiastic. He's spoken for!"

He runs his palm over Eddie's shoulder, soothing the discomfort centered in the tendons of his neck. Once he relaxes, Richie trails it down his arm, skirting across his lower back. "I know you all paid good money – frankly too much money – to hear me joke on this stage tonight. But if you don’t mind, I am going to be serious for a minute."

Performative groans echo here and there, but for the most part, everyone's listening attentively.

"Twelve-year-old me was too afraid to be serious about things. The gay thing, the in love with my best friend thing. God, a lot of things." He turns to Eddie, his throat bobbing with nerves. "I’m not afraid anymore."

He’s thirty years older, his joints a lot creakier, but it’s the simplest thing in the world to drop to his knee and reach for the tiny velvet box in his pocket.

"Sorry it isn’t red-flavored," he says dryly, unclasping it to reveal the gold band inside. "Or edible."

In addition to the spotlights, there’s a dozen camera flashes going off. None of it matters, his sole focus on Eddie's deer-in-the-headlights expression.

"Rich," Eddie wheezes. It isn't an asthma attack, though it sounds like one. "What are you doing?"

"About to be shitting my pants on stage." Eddie snorts out a laugh, an effortless reminder of how in love with him Richie is. "But you make me brave."

The creases of his mouth loosen, his eyes wet around the edges. After a year, Eddie still tends to get that look – that look of utter awe. Less now than before, yet it seems that no matter how much or how often he's told, Eddie is awed by being so loved. Luckily, Richie never tires of telling him.

"Eds, I love you more than anything on earth. Will you marry me?"

He barely asks the question before Eddie hauls him to his feet, down into a kiss so hot his glasses fog up.

The audience erupts into deafening applause. Richie doesn't need to hear anything besides the frantic "yes, yes, yes, I love you, you idiot" Eddie’s pressing against his lips. Parting with a firm, wet smack of lips, Richie pulls away before he jumps him there on stage.

"You’ve been a lovely audience, folks!" he exclaims into the mic. "But if you'll excuse us, I've got a proposal to consummate. "

With a wink, Richie bustles Eddie off-stage. They make it past the curtain before he’s got Eddie hiked up against the wall.

Eddie paws at his shirt, while Richie’s slide towards the swell of his ass. "Can’t wait to get you out of these clothes, God, Eds," he moans reverently, raking his eyes over his fiancé – hang on. "Is that my shirt?"

"Is that my ring?" Eddie fires back. He’s smirking, though, and oh, without a shadow of a doubt, he was getting laid after the show, proposal or no.

"All yours, baby." Richie takes the hint nonetheless, slipping the ring on Eddie’s finger, where it belongs. He can’t resist another kiss, this one longer, sweeter.

"I was always yours," Eddie murmurs once they’ve parted, cheeks pleasantly flushed. "All you had to do was ask."

And it’s shit like that, confessions of love spoken so plainly, without the conflict that’s ruled most of their lives, that reminds Richie how lucky they are to have each other.

They are also a huge pain in each other’s ass, so, "Does that mean I should return the ring?"

"Fuck no," Eddie scoffs. "I’m wearing it forever. And tonight, for sure."

"It’ll be the only thing I wear tonight," he adds, a sultry whisper against in Richie’s ear.

He really is the luckiest man, ever.

#reddie #reddie fic #eddie kaspbrak #richie tozier #it chapter 2 #oblivious childhood sweethearts eventually realize they're in love #and eddie lives so they live happily ever after #rip to stephen king and andy but I'm different

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tomhiddleslove · 5 years

Text

The screen and stage star is making his Broadway debut as the bottled-up husband wearing a “mask of control” in Harold Pinter’s romantic triangle.

[ By Laura Collins-Hughes

Aug. 21, 2019, 5:00 a.m. ET ]

Tom Hiddleston was posing for a portrait, and the face he showed the camera wasn’t entirely his own.

That had been his idea, to slip for a few moments into the character he’s playing on Broadway, in Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal”: Robert, the cheated-on husband and backstabbed best friend whose coolly proper facade is the carapace containing a crumbling man. And when Mr. Hiddleston became him, the change was instantaneous: the guarded stillness of his body, the chill reserve in his gray-blue eyes.

“It’s interesting,” Mr. Hiddleston said after a while, analyzing Robert’s expression from the inside. “It gives less away.” A pause, and then his own smile flickered back, its pleasure undisguised. “O.K.,” Mr. Hiddleston announced, himself again, “it’s not Robert anymore.”

It was late on a muggy August morning, one day before the show’s first preview at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, and Mr. Hiddleston — the classically trained British actor best known for playing the winsomely chaotic villain Loki, god of mischief and brother of Thor, in the Marvel film franchise — had been in New York for less than a week.

He’ll be here all autumn for the limited run of the production, a hit in London earlier this year, but he wasn’t going to pretend that he’d settled in. “I literally have never sat in this room before,” he’d said at the top of the photo shoot, in his cramped auxiliary dressing room, next door to the similarly tiny one he had been occupying.

He’d had nothing to do with the space’s camera-ready décor. So there was no use making a metaphor of the handsome clock with its hands stopped at 12 (“Betrayal” is famous for its reverse chronology; far more apt if the clock had run backward), or of the compact stack of pristine books that looked like journals, with pretty covers and presumably empty pages: a bit off-brand for Mr. Hiddleston, who at 38 has a model-perfect exterior with quite a lot inscribed inside.

Take the matter-of-fact way he said, in explaining that he’d first encountered Pinter’s work when he studied for his A-levels in English literature, theater, Latin and Greek: “It was a real tossup between French and Spanish or Latin and Greek. I thought, I can always speak French and Spanish, I can’t always read Latin and Greek, so I’ll study that and I’ll speak the other two.”

Though, to be fair, he only said that because I’d teased him slightly about the Latin and Greek, and I’d teased him — not a recommended journalistic technique — because he was so disarmingly good-humored and resolutely down to earth, chatting away as he waited for the photographer to set up a shot. It didn’t seem like it would ruffle him. He laughed, actually.

From a one-night reading to Broadway

In this country, Mr. Hiddleston is mainly a screen star, known also for playing Jonathan Pine in the John le Carré series “The Night Manager” on AMC. There are plans, too, for him to bring Loki to Disney’s streaming service in a stand-alone series.

But at home in London, he has amassed some impressive Shakespearean credits, including the title roles in Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet” and Josie Rourke’s “Coriolanus,” and a turn as Cassio in Michael Grandage’s “Othello” — a production that Pinter, saw some months before he died in 2008. That was the year Mr. Hiddleston won a best newcomer Olivier Award for Cheek by Jowl’s “Cymbeline.”

Jamie Lloyd’s “Betrayal,” which has a staging to match the spareness of Pinter’s language and a roiling well of squelched emotion to feed its comedy, is Mr. Hiddleston’s Broadway debut. Likewise for his co-stars, Zawe Ashton (of Netflix’s “Velvet Buzzsaw”), who plays Emma, Robert’s wife; and Charlie Cox (of Netflix’s “Daredevil”), who plays Emma’s lover, Jerry, Robert’s oldest friend.

Beginning at what appears to be the end of Robert and Emma’s marriage, after her yearslong affair with Jerry has sputtered to a stop, it’s a drama of cascading double-crosses. First staged by Peter Hall in London in 1978 — and in 1980 on Broadway, where it starred Roy Scheider, Blythe Danner and Raul Julia — it rewinds through time to the sozzled evening when Emma and Jerry overstep the line.

The most recent Broadway revival was just six years ago, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Daniel Craig as Robert, Rachel Weisz as Emma and Rafe Spall as Jerry. It might seem too soon for another, let alone one with sexiness to spare — except that Mr. Lloyd’s production is also marked by a palpable hauntedness and a profound sense of loss.

Reviewing the London staging in The New York Times, Matt Wolf called it “a benchmark achievement for everyone involved,” showing the play “in a revealing, even radical, new light.” Michael Billington, in The Guardian, called Mr. Hiddleston’s performance “superb.”

What’s curious is that Mr. Hiddleston, so good at bad boys, isn’t playing Jerry, the more glamorous role: the cad, the pursuer, the best man who goes after the bride. But Mr. Lloyd said that casting him that way was never part of their discussions.

Last fall, when Mr. Lloyd persuaded Mr. Hiddleston to read a scene with Ms. Ashton for a one-night gala celebration of Pinter in London, part of the season-long Pinter at the Pinter series, there was no grand plan. Having asked Mr. Hiddleston about a possible collaboration for years, since “just before he became ridiculously famous,” Mr. Lloyd said, this was the first time he got a yes.

“I just really admired his craft of acting, the precision of his acting, as well as his real emotional depth and his real wit,” Mr. Lloyd said. “And he’s turned into what I think is the epitome of a great Pinter actor. Because if you’re in a Pinter play, you have to dig really deep and connect to terrible loss or excruciating pain, often massive volcanic emotion, and then you have to bottle it all up. You have to suppress it all.”

This, he added, is what Mr. Hiddleston does in “Betrayal,” where characters’ meaning is found between and behind the words, not inside them.

“Some of the pain that he’s created in Robert, it’s just unbearable, and yet he always keeps a lid on it,” Mr. Lloyd said.

The scene Mr. Hiddleston and Ms. Ashton read at the gala appears at the midpoint of “Betrayal”: Robert and Emma on vacation in Venice, at a moment that leaves their marriage with permanent damage. Within days, Mr. Hiddleston told Mr. Lloyd that he was on board for a full production.

‘What remains private’

Photos taken, back in the faintly more lived-in of his Broadway dressing rooms, Mr. Hiddleston opened the window to let in some Midtown air — and when you’re as tall as he is, 6 feet 2 inches, opening it from the top of the window frame is easy enough to do. Then, making himself an espresso with his countertop machine, he sat down to talk at length.

“I’m always curious about the presentation of a character’s external persona versus the interior,“ he said. “What remains private, hidden, concealed, protected, and what does the character allow to be seen? We all have a very complex internal world, and not all of that is on display in our external reality.”

He can tick off the ways that various characters of his conceal what’s inside: Loki, with all that rage and vulnerability “tucked away”; the ultra-proper spy Jonathan Pine, in “The Night Manager,” “hiding behind his politeness”; Robert, a lonely man wearing “a mask of control” that renders him “confident, powerful, polished,” at least as far as any onlookers can tell.

In “Betrayal,” each of the three principals has an enormous amount to hide from the people who are meant to be their closest intimates. It’s a play about power and manipulation, duplicity and misplaced trust, and what’s so threatening about it is the very ordinariness of its privileged milieu. This snug little world that once seemed so safe and ideal — the happiest of families, the oldest of friends — has long since fallen apart.

But to Mr. Hiddleston, Pinter’s drama contains two themes just as significant as betrayal: isolation and loneliness.

“The sadness in the play — it’s not only sadness; because it’s Pinter, there’s wit and levity as well — but if there is sadness in the play,” he said, “I think it comes from the fact that these betrayals render Robert, Emma and Jerry more alone than they were before.”

Trust and self-protection

One-on-one, Mr. Hiddleston was more cautious than he’d been during the photo shoot, surrounded then by a gaggle of people affiliated with the show. Still, when I asked him about betrayal, lowercase, he went straight to the condition it violates.

“To trust is a profound commitment, and to trust is to make oneself vulnerable,” he said, fidgeting with a red rubber band and choosing his words with care. “It’s such an optimistic act, because you’re putting your faith in the hands of someone or something which you expect to remain constant, even if the circumstances change.”

“I’m disappearing down a rabbit hole here,” he said, “but I think about it a lot. I think about certainty and uncertainty. Trust is a way of managing uncertainty. It’s a way of finding security in saying, ‘Perhaps all of this is uncertain, but I trust you.’ Or, ‘I trust this.’ And there’s a lot of uncertainty in the world at the moment, so it becomes harder to trust, I suppose.”

An interview itself is an act of trust, albeit often a wary one. And there was one stipulated no-go zone in this encounter, a condition mentioned by a publicist only after I’d arrived: No talk of Taylor Swift, with whom Mr. Hiddleston had a brief, intense, headline-generating romance that, post-breakup, she evidently spun into song lyrics.

That was three years ago, and I hadn’t been planning to bring her up; given the context of the play, though, make of that prohibition what you will. Mr. Hiddleston, who once had a tendency to pour his heart out to reporters, knows that he can’t stop you.

“It’s not possible, and nor should it be possible, to control what anyone thinks about you,” he said. “Especially if it’s not based in any, um —” he gave a soft, joyless laugh — “if it’s not based in any reality.”

That’s something he’s learned about navigating fame — about being put on a pedestal that’s then kicked out from under him. He knows now “to let go of the energy that comes toward me, be it good or bad,” he said. “Because naturally in the early days I took responsibility for it.”

“And yes, I’m protective about my internal world now in probably a different way,” he added, his tone as restrained as his words. He took a beat, and so much went unsaid in what he said next: “That’s because I didn’t realize it needed protecting before.”

Even so, he doesn’t give the impression of having closed himself off. When something genuinely made him laugh, he smiled a smile that cracked his face wide open.

And the way he treated the people around him at work — with a fundamental respect, regardless of rank, and no whiff of flattery — made him seem sincere about what he called “staying true to the part of myself that’s quite simple, that’s quite ordinary.”

That investment in his ordinariness, as he put it, is a hedge against the destabilizing trappings of fame, but it doubles as a way of protecting his craft.

It’s also of a piece with his insistence that vulnerability is a necessary risk to take, at least sometimes.

“If you go through life without connecting to people,” he asked, “how much could you call that a life?”

#tom hiddleston #hiddles #twhiddleston #the new york times #Betrayal #harold pinter play #Betrayal Broadway #bernard b jacobs theater #August 21 2019 #Devin Yalkin #tom hiddleston interview #loki #tom hiddleston portrait #black and white photography #new york city #link to original article in source

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melon-kiss · 4 years

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Screaming, Pt 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Link to the part on AO3

____________________________

I hear voices over the black fog of my unconsciousness but I can’t be sure they’re real. I think it’s the doctors. They try to revive me. I hear that I have a stable pulse and I breathe. Good. Or whatever.

When I open my eyes, I’m sweaty and frightened. My T-shirt is so wet it changed its colour to dark grey. My hair is sticking to my face. My eyeballs go from one side to another in an utter madness. I notice it’s already dark outside. Doctor Mike lights up a small lamp on my nightstand. I think he suspects me of being scared of darkness. I’ve never been. Now he’s right. He says comforting things, like: “You’re safe now” or “I can see you’ve been tortured”. But “torture” doesn’t even cover it. I’ve been through a vivisection. Sherlock gutted me out and now I know for sure he did it on purpose.

I fight insomnia for very long hours. When I manage to fall asleep, I hardly find any rest in it.

I toss and turn endlessly. It never gets better. The bed sheet is too hot or too cold. The dreams I have are horrifying. All the memories I’ve kept safely tamed resurface and haunt me. Suffocate me with their weight. They’re my burden now.

They burn me out. They wreak havoc. I feel every cell in my body ache as I remember the pain of all the words unsaid, all the moments not lived. I see the bright blue eyes, always looking through. I hear the voice. It lies to me. Does it, though? It says: I... I love you. And again, quieter: I love you. It hurts because I’m sure it’s insincere. It couldn’t be any other way. He’ll never love me like I want to be loved. He can’t give me safety and protection. He can’t support me. He can’t be with me. He can’t be with me. He can’t be with me.

I scream. The hot air rips my lungs into shreds. My voice is hoarse and piercing at the same time, it echoes in the entire building. I scream as though being cut in two; a primal shriek finds its way out of me. It’s the only thing that keeps me sane - otherwise the pain would be unbearable. I want to be dead. I scream so loud the night staff comes to my room every fifteen minutes to wake me and assure me I’m safe but it doesn’t take long for the circle to go around again. They finally give up and inject something into my arm. The dangerous mix of fear and pain is numb now. It doesn’t vanish; it’s covered with a warm fluff of the meds. It’s there. He’ll never love me the way I want to be loved.

My eyes are stuck on one point on the ceiling. I want to scream but I can’t.

* * *

The cold late-autumn air lashes my face when I place my foot outside the door. I wrap the scarf tighter around my neck. It’s difficult to keep yourself warm when there’s not much of the fat tissue in your body.

My therapist says it’ll get better. I don’t know. I don’t think he tries to lie to me. I choose to believe him. He also says that I’ll never fully recover. My psyche is broken beyond repair. LSD killed me and didn’t do it at all. All I can do is to try to make the best of it. “Regaining your memory was the most important part,” he said once. “And you’ve succeeded in it.” I think he hopes that there’s a chance for me to get back to my old self in that. I’ve lived with my missing memories for over six months and today is the first day I feel good enough to leave the house. I’m going to face death. Many deaths.

I walk down the London streets and the air soaks up in my lungs. It’s cold but in a pleasant way. The hot air gets out of me with carbon dioxide. I breathe in the chill oxygenium with my eyes closed. I relish the moment. I never know when my brain will snap and turn everything into endless sadness. I don’t have fury attacks anymore but instead, I wake up in the middle of every night, screaming. The scream eventually turns into cry. I curl up in my bed and wait for the pain to let go. It never really does but its level decreases to the point I’m able to live with.

Being yourself. What does it even mean? Whatever I do, I’m me. I’m me when I walk down the London streets, heading to work. I’m me when I jump out of my bed and choke someone. I’m me when I throw up because my body cannot contain the anxiety caused by my fugue. I’m me when I scream my head off in the middle of a night. I’m me when I kiss someone I love. I’m me when I cry because I couldn’t be more broken. I’ve learned to simply accept whatever comes to me. This is who I am. A mess. Fixing me is a job for a lifetime.

I’ve been missing the lab. I throw myself into work because it helps me soothe the suffering. The relief is temporary but whatever works, right? I love the sound of the glasses clinking against each other. I love how my brain focuses entirely on bringing out my scientific knowledge and it almost resembles the mind I used to have. These are the moments when I know the old Molly Hooper is still there. She didn’t die because she always wins.

It’s almost dark outside when I turn off the lights. I take a short look around to make sure I’ve cleaned everything up. I push the door open and fix the handbag on my shoulder. I walk out into the corridor, pale-y lightened with the cold hospital lamps. I raise my head up and freeze.

He freezes as well. He’s changed; weaker, sadder. His blue eyes widen and I can see his breathing stops. His mouth are open in an utter shock. He’s speechless but doesn’t look away. He swallows with difficulty.

“Molly.”

The soft whisper fills out the space of the corridor. I begin to get dizzy and my heart rate quickens rapidly. I take a small step back and cling to the door behind me. I’m close to hyperventilate. He makes a move towards me but I start visibly shivering in response.

“Molly...”

He’s filled with guilt which adds a fair weight to his movements. His eyes, usually cold and focused on looking through his mind palace, are mild, even glossy. His eyebrows frown in worry. I’m sure he pities me. I don’t need his pity. I slide down the door and sit on the floor with my legs pulled to my chest. I see his coat getting closer with a corner of my eye. My body trembles strongly. I let out the tears.

“Leave me alone,” I whisper.

He stands in place for a while and walks off eventually. When he’s no longer in the range of my eyesight, I curl up on the floor and cry. He can’t be with me.

* * *

I’m slightly cheerful on my days off. The winter is pretty ugly this year; it doesn’t look like the ones I remember. No fluffy snow and colourful lights. But maybe I’ve just gotten too old to see them? I think it’s sad. We become adults and forget all the beauty we’ve had as children. We forget that the key to happiness is not only in winning the jackpot but also in seeing the little things and enjoying them. In finding a four-leaf clover and thinking: “Today I’m going to be lucky”. In hearing your mum is going to make your favourite biscuits because she loves you so much she could do anything to see a smile on your face. I sound like The Little Prince, don’t I? When your brain tries to find its way back to sanity, you happen to have a lot thoughts. Trust me.

I deliberately step into every grey, muddy-snowy-watery puddle and smile. My shoes will get soaked up for a while but I enjoy this childish activity until I can. I just hope my groceries won’t slip out of my shopping bag to fall into one of these snowy monsters. I think about the small but pleasant stuff: like ordering a pizza and watching a film. My brain loves turning into tapioca. Well, it doesn’t, I do. I also bought brownies and can’t wait to stuff my stomach with them after the pizza box is empty. For a moment I think of the poor person who would have to go through my stomach content if I killed myself tonight, and then shake it off. I don’t want to die but I don’t have much of a will to live as well. I’ve learned not to joke about suicide around other people, though. It turns out death is a difficult matter for normal human beings. I wouldn’t know, I’ve always been very practical about it. It doesn’t scare me that much. Well, maybe a little because I’ve never been through this. They say I have but I don’t remember a shred from this moment. I’ve regained a memory of being strongly hit in a head in my house but then... it’s all darkness. The next thing was the hospital ceiling and the conversation The Three Horsemen of Madness had in my room.

I’ve loved watching trash telly (and not only this) because it keeps my sadness and insanity at bay. I’m well aware of that. My therapist didn’t have to tell me this but he did it anyway. He even asked if I wanted to do anything about it. I didn’t but he says (because the matter obviously wasn’t dropped) it would work out for the best because a broken heart cannot be mended by watching stories about other hearts being healed. I thought he was supposed to help me keep my post-LSD psyche under control but it seems I couldn’t have been more wrong. When I look back at the memories I’ve retrieved, I can’t help but think... maybe this craziness has always been with me? The way I sewed my happiness with his skin, desperately, utterly, unconditionally, obsessively... Omnipresent but invisible. Courageous - with a rabbit heart. The smallest spark of hope I’ve ever seen kept me by his side. Maybe LSD only sped up what was inevitable: a nervous breakdown. Although I wasn’t really weak. My heart just popped, heavy from all the sorrow it has carried for five years.

Now, after being completely broken, I’m learning to live in a world without him. I don’t blame him - after all, it was me who asked him to leave me alone. I thought he would fight for me but I’m glad he didn’t. My insanity would feed on the scraps he would throw me, reliving the annealed wounds with a red-hot steel. He doesn’t come to Bart’s or maybe he does but he’s good at avoiding people. And sometimes, when everything seems fine and I’m home alone (which is always), I fill out the silence with singing. I choose the saddest songs I know and sing. I bet my neighbours have had to call an ambulance to save their bleeding ears at least once but I’m a psycho. I can do whatever I want because I don’t care.

I’ve recently watched Eclipse and I sing a song from its soundtrack under my nose when I unlock the door. The door clicks and I enter my completely dark house. I don’t turn on the lights and enjoy the fact that it’s already dim outside but it’s too early for the street lights to turn on and shine into my kitchen. I stand in the entrance room and soak in the emptiness. It fills me out and seeps into my bones. This is where my body find its way to the state of default. I put my shopping bag away on the floor and untangle my winter shoes. After that I move the groceries into the kitchen, almost tiptoeing, as though afraid of waking someone up.

I take off my coat and scarf, putting them down on the kitchen counter. I start unloading my shopping bag, thinking about the pizza I’m going to order. I’ve gained some weight, maybe a little too much but that’s all right. I couldn’t care less about my body. If I had to worry about my appearance as well, I would definitely kill myself.

“My love has concrete feet, my love’s an iron ball, wrapped around your ankles, over the waterfall...”

“If I didn’t know better, I would think it was on purpose.”

A glass bottle of a carrot juice slips out of my palm as I jump in a complete horror. My socks soak in the sticky liquid but I can barely seem bothered by this. I turn on the heel and look at the utter darkness in my living room. The same moment the street lights turn on and a beam of weak light falls on his face as well. I feel my body trembling. I want to back out but there is no escape - he could catch me any time. Not that he would but the fear takes over my mind.

“You... you broke into my house?” I ask, panting. A panic attack is around the corner.

“I entered your house without your knowledge,” he replies, utterly steady. “There’s a difference-“

“What are you doing here?” I put on a tough act but we both know it’s a ruse. I don’t care. I don’t want him to break me again. I might never recover.

“I came to see you.”

I scoff.

“You could do it the normal way.”

“Would you meet me, then?”

“No.”

“Exactly.”

I’m pressed against the refrigerator and I feel a pain in my back as the metallic door resists to my spinal bones. He makes three steps forward. He takes off his gloves and shoves them into his coat pockets. He takes if off as well, with no rush, and throws it away on my couch. Without unlocking our eyes, he approaches me. I’m sure I’ll tip over the refrigerator in a second because he’s so close there can’t be more than a foot between us. He stops. My head is dizzy and I feel like throwing up but then he squats and begins to collect the shreds of glass bottle from the floor. I’m sweaty but relieved. The tension leaves my body and I exhale loudly.

It catches his attention. He looks up at me.

“I’m not here to hurt you.”

I scoff again.

“It doesn’t matter.”

I turn around to face the kitchen counter and find paper towels but they’re on the opposite side. I glare down and see that the juice is everywhere but my socks are completely soaked up, so it wouldn’t be smart of me to walk off to the bathroom for a mop. Besides, I could step into the cracks and that was not the point of his help.

He finishes and throws the glass away. He remembers very well where my bin is. After that, he wordlessly goes to my bedroom and comes back with a pair of dry socks. I can see that he spread a bit of the juice on the floor but his gesture successfully disables my frustration. He sticks out his arms towards me. I hesitate. What is he planning to do? I slowly reach out to his arms but he slides them under my armpits and lifts me up over the juice, placing me on my small kitchen island. Then he disappears in the bathroom and comes back with the mop. He wipes out the floor. Not a word slips out of his lips.

I slowly take off my wet socks, watching his every move. I put the dirty socks away next to me and reach out for the paper towel. I dry my feet out while Sherlock cleans up my kitchen floor. Even my old self would say that only a lunatic would find it possible. Cheers to all of us, crazies. I put away the used paper towel as well and put on my new socks. I start to swing my legs a little bit as Sherlock finishes the cleanup. He walks off to the bathroom to rinse off the mop for the last time and comes back to me. I can’t look away somehow.

“Thank you,” I say in a hoarse voice. I clear my throat.

“I’m sorry,” he replies. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, nor be an intruder.”

I shrug.

“It was just a carrot juice. I’ll drink more water, then.”

My legs swing more and more intensively. I know what it means and so does he, so I force myself to stop because a smirk crawls up on his face. I feel my cheeks burning up and I instantly regret tangling my hair into a pony tail. This is probably the most normal thing that happened to me in about nine months.

He places his hand next to my left thigh and leans on. I feel his perfume and something in me shivers. My heart rate goes wild but I cannot force myself to look away. He puts his palm really gently on my right cheek and his face is so close I can see every pore on his skin. I give in and let out a quiet exhale. I close my eyes and my body is fulfilled with warmth as his lips lock with mine. He moves a little to stand fully in front of me and takes my face in both of his hands. His lips open more and more eagerly as he doesn’t see any objection on my side. My legs clench around his waist, I throw my arms around his neck. I pull him closer but it’s difficult to say whether I’m motivated by the kiss or the simple need of a hug.

I feel awaken. My body’s warm, pulsing with every beat my heart does. For the first time in many months I feel alive and I relish this moment because I know that in a minute, everything will end.

And it does.

I push him away a little too hard. He has to take a step back to prevent a fall. The passionate fire turns into anger.

“Don’t do it.”

I feel a twinge in my chest seeing pain in his eyes. He looks as if I just crushed his last hope. His blue eyes are tired, miss their old spark. I hate myself for pushing him away and feeling the way I feel.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because it doesn’t make sense,” I hiss through my teeth.

“What doesn’t?”

“Us.”

He winces and shifts nervously.

“What?”

I clench my palm into a fist and press it against my forehead, leaned forward. A forgotten suffering comes back to me. I’ve buried it so deep inside I was certain it was gone but it’s been waiting for me. A battle I didn’t want to fight starts right here and right now. And I, again, want to be dead and dead only. I close my eyes so tightly it almost hurts as does every cell in my body.

“We don’t make sense,” I utter after anticipating a less painful moment.

He starts breathing quicker. He’s as lost as he’s never been before. I imagine that’s how he looked like calling me to save me. Helpless in the face of the truth.

“How could you have fallen in love with me, then? ” he asks, hopelessness taking over him. “Despite all the pain I’ve caused you, all the things I’ve said...”

“I suppose love is a kind of madness,” I say, my unseeing eyes focused on one irrelevant point.

“Your love is illogical, since I’ve always been an utter cock.”

“Not always,” I reply, smirking weakly. “But we don’t love for the logical reasons. We love despite all the illogical ones.”

We fall silent. I enjoy my most sane moment for several minutes. It can disappear anytime.

“I love you.”

I raise my head up. It feels like my heart skips a beat.

His eyes gaze at me with pain I’ve never seen on his face. He almost pants, his arms are unfolded. He’s like a living target. He’s just showed me where to shoot and I stretch my bow, aiming for his chest.

“But you cannot give me the love I want,” I reply, my voice stifled. I finally sigh in exasperation. “We’re far two different. It would be a disaster of a relationship. Can you imagine yourself cleaning our flat every Saturday, planning our wedding, putting our children to sleep? Because this is want I want. But it would only hurt us more.”

“I can change,” he says.

I scoff.

“And that’s the point,” I respond. “I don’t want you to change. I love you the way you are. I love every part of you. But you cannot love me. You couldn’t have loved me before and you can’t do it now.”

“I think I’ve loved you long before,” he says in a weak voice.

I am... sorry. Forgive me.

You can see me.

You do count.

I’ve always trusted you.

Thank you.

The one person who mattered the most.

I hope you’ll be very happy, Molly Hooper.

You look well.

I’m worried about you, Molly.

I love you.

I gaze at him almost breathless. I blink and make myself utter a response:

“I love you, too,” I whisper. My eyes fill with tears. “But you cannot make me happy... Sherlock.”

His name tastes sweet in my mouth. I’ve missed saying it. Now I glance at his lips and think about the moments we shared a few minutes ago and back then in the hospital. I could share them with him forever. I would never get bored of him. But there would be times when he would forget about my presence in our flat, when he wouldn’t listen to me, chasing a lead. When he would be lost and I couldn’t find him.

And now... me with my mood swings and moments of insanity striking when the least expected. With my broken mind. Unfixable. Fucked up.

He suffers and this time, I’m the one to blame. I’ve broken the unbreakable man.

“I’ve turned you into something you’ve always hated,” I say. “You’re weak, you’re an easy target. You’re emotional and vulnerable.”

“As I’ve always been,” he replies. “You’re my strength.”

I wince.

“Strength? Sherlock-“

“You’re my strength because you’ve helped me understand myself better than anyone. I’ve never had to pretend with you. And... and back then in Sherrinford, when I realised how much pain I’ve caused you... no one ever has made me realise so much of me with so little words as you have. You are the reflection of my sensitivity. With you, I’m no longer myself.”

He begins to slowly get closer.

“But... But this is my point!” I protest. “It’s not a good thing becau-“

“It is a good thing because... what does it really mean - being myself?” He stops at less than a foot from me and scoffs. “I am myself in every minute of my life. I won’t miss my old self, though. I was a completely blind moron, who couldn’t appreciate people around him. And you’ve managed to look behind this curtain and see the man I am now. You’ve taught me to be who I am now.”

He smiles, lifting only one corner of his lips but he knows. I try to back out and escape his look but I feel that I don’t want to. My body is slowly giving in. It is so warm. It feels so good. I love him so much.

“But the old Molly may be no longer there. I’m a mess now,” I mumble, trying to avoid his gaze.

He cups my face in his palms again and places our foreheads together. I can’t resist. I don’t want to resist. I lose control over my head and I’m not even worried. A pleasant wave of chemicals floods my body and they’re better than any of the antipsychotics I’ve taken in the past nine months. I’m still a mess. I know that Sherlock will regret his decision one day when a switch in my brain goes off and I’ll stand at a rooftop (flashbacks will kill him, though). But I’m tired of trying to be normal.

“So am I. When I found out that Eurus had attacked you... I was both furious and hurt. I was torn. I still feel guilty over the fact that I couldn’t have prevented this and that she could have killed you. I was ready to bring hell on Earth. Maybe you’re a mess... but you’re also somehow a piece of puzzle that’s missing from my messy life.”

I feel the warmth of his breath on my face, the softness of his hands on my cheeks. His curls tickle my eyelids. I so weak.

“Oh, come on,” he whispers, “just give in already.”

I giggle and lose myself completely. I want to scream... but everything I do speaks louder than words.

#sherlolly #fanfiction #sherlock x molly #molly x sherlock #sherlock holmes #molly hooper #screaming

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ayatosmlktea · 4 years

Text

𝑪𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒚 𝒏𝒂𝒎𝒆

A/N: wow after two thousand years I’ve finally written a second chapter! After posting the first one I got really discouraged becauseeeee I waited too long to write down my ideas and lost ALL of them SO here we are. It’s going to stick pretty close with the themes in supernatural but I’m going to add my own twists here and there because I can. I also haven’t watched supernatural in like...5 years so I mostly going off things from like season 1-7. For those of you who are still interested in this, thank you for your support! It means a lot to me. If you would like to be tagged in this series leave it in the comments! I hope you enjoy this next chapter :)

Tag list: @angelanimedesaray, @regalillegal

Previous Chapter

𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 2

♡ ♡ ♡

“You’re weak Y/N” Grisha’s words ring loudly in her ears, repeating over and over like an endless broken record. Slowly they mix in with Eren’s voice, taunting her for being so useless.

“You’re pathetic, You should have kept her safe! I’m ashamed to call you my daughter” Y/N covers her ears with her palms squeezing her eyes shut.

“Shut up!” she yells but their voices only grow louder, new unfamiliar ones danced around her head but she refused to open her eyes. The air was becoming increasingly hot, and the longer she stayed there unmoving the more her skin began to burn unbearably. Turning her body away from the distorted image of her father, she wills her eyes to open and runs from the trail of flames that were inching closer to her body with every second she remained unmoving.

The sounds of blood curdling screams makes her blood run cold, bodies littered the corner of her vision but Y/N couldn’t bear to look. The smell of burnt flesh and blood was enough to make her throat burn with bile but she forced herself not to vomit. It was the same story every time, she would run until her legs were so stiff she couldn’t move anymore. The bright light calling out to her like a siren always just out of her grasp, the exit was so close but she always lost. Her lungs burned for oxygen, the muscles in her legs aching with the need for rest. Distant barking makes her heart jump into her throat, she couldn’t stop now. If the hellhounds caught up to her it would be futile.

“Better hurry up sweetheart” an all too familiar sickly sweet voice drawled, he felt too close to her body and Y/N could practically feel his breath at the back of her neck. The hellhounds were going to catch up to her, there was nothing else she could do anymore. Her mind was screaming relentlessly to get up, keep going. Her body collapsed onto the dirty wet ground, chest heaving as she gasped for air. Zeke’s smile was anything but warm, his eyes always twinkling with the same sadistic expression he always wore. It made all the hairs on her arms stand up, no matter how many times she experienced this nightmare Y/N still couldn’t fight the trembling that overtook her body.

“Such a shame doll, I really thought you were gonna make it this time” his sinister smile made her want to punch him in the throat. Crouching down to her level his hands tilt her chin up.

“Time is ticking Y/N. I suggest you hurry up, I’m not a patient man” She can see the hounds of the corner of her eye, the sheer size of them alone made her freeze up. It was a losing fight, she was nothing more than a weak mortal and Zeke didn’t have to use a quarter of his strength to easily overpower her.

“I’m thinking tonight we take it a little slower, what do you think? My hounds aren’t patient either but I think we’ll all enjoy watching you bleed out.” Her body suddenly feels as though it’s being weighed down by an anchor. The tightening pressure against her chest is agonizing and causes her to draw in uneven gasps of air.

“Be a good girl and let me hear those screams yeah?” Y/N squeezes her eyes shut bracing herself for the feeling of dagger like teeth digging into her skin but it never comes.

Cold pellets of rain beat down on her skin as her body is slammed unceremoniously onto muddy grass. The pressure that was there moments ago finally released, the rain a welcome sensation against her reddened skin. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the heavy downpour making it difficult to see anything more than a few feet away. A flash of lightning illuminates a figure standing in front of her. His pale grey eyes quickly captured her attention. His presence didn’t make Y/N anxious, in fact it was comforting and almost...familiar.

Crouching down to her level his hand brushes wet hair from her forehead.

“What am I going to do with you Y/N?” He asks, the smooth baritone of his voice gliding over her senses like silk.

“Who are you? What the hell is going on?” The rawness of her throat makes her voice painfully raspy. His touch is gone as quickly as it had come, her skin already missing his touch. The man leans forward, his lips just barely grazing her ear lobe.

“Time is running out. Now wake up and find me”

♡ ♡ ♡

“Y/N! Wake up goddammit!” Her eyes shoot open, Mike’s concerned eyes are the first thing she sees. Her head felt like it was swimming, her body was shivering uncontrollably under her drenched clothes.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” Mike’s firm voice helps bring her consciousness back to reality.

“Huh?” Blinking slowly she realizes that she’s standing in the middle of an open field, her bare feet are covered in mud. Grabbing her arm gently Mike leads her back to his truck, opening the passenger side door he helps her in, covering her with a thick blanket before sliding into the driver’s seat. The sound of rain beating against the roof of the car pulls her barely conscious mind towards sleep. Snapping his fingers in front of her face Mike forces her to look at him.

“Sorry but you can’t go to sleep yet hun.” Y/N groans through chattering teeth. Her body was shaking so hard it almost hurt.

“We’ll be home soon and then you’ll have some nice hot chocolate. How does that sound? Can you stay awake for me Y/N?” She could barely understand anything he was saying, but could make out enough to grunt in response. The promise of her favourite hot beverage gave her something to focus on as she visualized the pleasant feeling of warmth sliding down her throat. Before she knew it they were back at the house, Mike scooped her into his arms and ran inside where Mikasa was already shuffling around the kitchen. Her head whipped around at the sound of the door slamming shut.

“Get her out of those wet clothes, I’m going to get more blankets” Mike instructs setting Y/N down in front of the fireplace. Her eyes are glued to the orange flames, the way they danced along the burnt wood captivating her attention.

“Y/N can you lift your arms for me?” Mikasa’s voice was so soft, Y/N couldn’t help but comply with her sister’s simple demand even if her arms felt like lead. The feeling of warm dry clothes made her sigh in content. The hot chocolate had tasted even better than she imagined and it wasn’t long before Y/N had fallen asleep again on the couch.

“What the fuck is going on? This is the fourth time this has happened!” Mikasa sighed, her heart felt heavy. Something was wrong with Y/N, ever since they had gotten to Mike’s after leaving the hospital she had started sleep walking. Questioning her after the fact was pointless, Y/N couldn’t remember anything that had happened after waking up.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s residual stress from your hunt.” Mike mused, green eyes trained on her sleeping form. It had been a little over a month since the girls had shown up at his doorstep. Y/N had confessed everything the night they’d shown up after Mikasa had gone to bed, he knew about the deal she’d made to save her sister.

“Please don’t tell Mikasa! I can handle this on my own but she can’t find out that I sold my soul” Y/N pleaded with him, tears slowly streaming down her cheeks. Mike’s heart ached for them, he’d been hunting long enough to know that their lives were never destined for happy endings.

“You don’t think she’s going to notice when your ass gets dragged to hell by hounds?” He retorted harsher than intended. Y/N bites her lip nervously, of course she’d thought about it.

“I’ll...I’ll tell her in my own time. But I need your help finding Levi, whoever the fuck he is” Mike didn’t want to have to lie to the younger girl but he knew that Y/N needed all the help she could get. He’d heard of Zeke before, his status as a high level demon had made him infamous among hunters. The fact that they’d both managed to get away unscathed meant that Levi was a major player in whatever plan Zeke had in mind.

“Fine but you have to promise me you’re going to fight like hell to undo this. I don’t care how dirty you have to play, you make sure your soul stays on this goddamn Earth”

“Get some sleep kid, I’ll stay up and watch her.” Mike pats Mikasa on the shoulder before settling in the armchair in the corner of the living room. Mikasa curls up on the sofa next to Y/N, the fear of constantly waking up to find her sister missing was making her increasingly paranoid about leaving her side. Losing Eren had been hard enough but she refused to lose Y/N too.

Mike waited until he was sure the younger girl was sleeping before pulling out his cell phone to make a call.

“Yeah Hange, it’s Mike. I’m gonna be calling in that favour now.”

Masterlist

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bowieandqueen11 · 5 years

Text

Carved / Ben Hanscom Imagine

Request: hello, how are you? could i possibly ask for an older!ben x reader in which the reader is newly pregnant and they are married and it’s the scene when ben is getting his stomach carved but it’s the reader instead? so she’s getting the carving and because she’s pregnant he freaks out and doesn’t know what to do and he’s yelling and crying? but it isn’t real and she’s fine it’s just pennywise’s tricks? much fluff and angst. it’s completely fine if not i love your work either way thank you love☺️

This legit made me nearly cry in the cinema so catch me crying now

All comments are much appreciated!

Also warning! Some strong language!

Dust layered on the floor, like a thick carpet, muffling Mike’s footsteps as they slam into the door. Cobwebs hang off the walls, their owners nowhere to be seen. Damp seeps across the ceiling, like reaching fingers, the smell overpowering. Shafts of sunlight burst through the boarded up windows, casting a dim light across the room. The smell of mildew and mould made you cover your mouth and nose, the scent unbearable and nearly making you gag again as you walk out of Ben’s arm towards the counter at the edge of the room.

‘Ben- this place is seriously freaking me out. It’s like... I remember being here before, when you got your stomach pretty much ripped out, but even that doesn’t feel real.’

Your grip tightens on the broken piece of black metal railing that you twirl in your fingers, a distant look on your face that nearly breaks Ben’s heart as he realises it was the same pain in your eyes from all those years ago.

Your free hand reaches down to spread over your stomach without even realising, your fingers pattering over your shirt with a happy humph. Neither do you realise the little smile that twitches on Ben’s scared face as he watches you, an absolute joy flowing out of his heart until it encapsulated every fibre of his being with a happiness he never thought he could feel in his life. Why did he deserve this? How, when he had been so alone his whole life, did he deserve to meet you? Why did you ever choose someone like him?

‘I know, sweetheart, but I’m not going to let anything happen to you, or our baby. As soon as we end this, we can all leave and pretend it never happened again.’

‘If we end this.... We didn’t do very well last time.’

‘When we end this’, Mike pipes up from the corner of the room, and you jump a little at his voice, not expecting it from the protruding darkness. He slams his fist again and again, one last time for good measure on the cracking splintered wood of the door, the hinges groaning slightly underneath his weight before he turns back to the two of you. His face flashes like a crack in the rusty mirror as he frowns deeply, unprepared for such bad luck so early on.

‘Well, looks like we’re going to have to find another way round to Eddie, Bill and Richie.’

Before you can even answer, your mind screamed out in pain as an answer. Every thought you had became confused as the burning pain licked up your stomach like scorching fire. You collapse down onto your knees, pulling at your shirt as Ben collapses down next to you, his hands shaking as he puts his broad fingers over yours and rubs them harshly, before quickly pulling one up to cup your cheek. He doesn’t even notice his eyes cloud over with haunting tears as they scan yours, his mouth soundlessly making words as you begin to let out short little screams of pain.

‘Baby-baby, jesus, what’s wrong?! Baby you have to tell me. Mike! Mike what the hell is going on!’

Pulling up your shirt, Ben lets out a disgruntled whimper as he sees the ‘H’ slowly being carved into your skin like a knife sliding through butter. The blood slowly drips in pregnant droplets down the curve of your side, landing and staining against his fingers as he just stares on in shock, small moans leaving his mouth as his mind freezes. He can’t move. All he can think of is the same scar Henry Bowers gave to him. He can’t do this, he can’t let this happen to the one thing he has truly loved in his life, he can’t.

‘Please! I’m here! Take me instead! Not her, you bastard, me! It was always supposed to be me!’

The pain is increasing in waves, small lulls giving false hope of an end. Each peak robs your ability to speak, sends you crashing into a writhing mess as you kick against the floorboards, not noticing the yells of Ben at Mike, the fumbles of Mike over, so uncertain of what to do or say as Ben’s hands dig into your arms hard enough to draw the remaining blood out.

‘Welcome home’.

You can’t see him, but you know he’s there. He loiters around you whilst you helplessly try to shut him out, scratching and aching your every bone; he crawls around in your stomach whilst Ben fires spears at your heart, his muffled sobs as he dips his head into your neck making you ache further.

It was as if every sound that escaped your mouth was set to the frequency that would shatter Ben’s heart to pieces again and again and again. He tried to ignore your cries of pain as he pulled you backwards across the room and into his lap, his muscular arms wrapping around your middle with a familiar warmth. But you didn’t feel it: all you could feel was the invisible brush of cold steel tipping against the edge of your jugular, drawing a faint line into your skin. All you could see was Mike’s confused face as he pointed back up at the mirror, the biting grin of the void eyed clown floating next to your own.

When he at last he turned his face to the mirror, he was a picture of grief, loss, devastation. It was the face of one who had suffered before and didn't know if he could do it again. Mike was the one who had to swing into action, picking up the metal from your hands and running towards the glass, not even faltering for a moment before cracking into it, ducking down and raising his arms up to protect himself from the shower of glass that rained down on his beige jacket like a storm.

Crawling quickly back over to you, all you could feel were Ben’s harsh pants against your back as his hand roamed down below your bellybutton to rub against your stomach, making sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him and your skin was whole again. Mike’s eyes showed a kind of gentle concern, laying his hand lightly on your shoulder and leaving it there as he spoke with such a soft voice you felt his words calming you more by the way they were said than the actual words.

In seconds Ben’s body is moulded to your own, sharing his body heat as easily as he shares his heart. You felt a hot breath on your neck, a soft tear, then the tender brush of lips, burning as they make contact with your sore skin. A hand runs through your hair, as the kisses become harder and more urgent. Another hand slides around your waist, and pulls your close to his pine scented, and slightly musky body.

‘It’s okay sweetheart, you’re safe now. You’re safe now.’

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