#so this turned out very differently than i originally planned but i also like it
another tough day on the road
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Awhile ago @ouidamforeman made this post:
This shot through my brain like a chain of firecrackers, so, without derailing the original post, I have some THOUGHTS to add about why this concept is not only hilarious (because it is), but also...
It. It kind of fucks. Severely.
And in a delightfully Pratchett-y way, I'd dare to suggest.
I'll explain:
As inferred above, both Crowley AND Aziraphale have canonical Biblical counterparts. Not by name, no, but by function.
Crowley, of course, is the serpent of Eden.
(note on the serpent of Eden: In Genesis 3:1-15, at least, the serpent is not identified as anything other than a serpent, albeit one that can talk. Later, it will be variously interpreted as a traitorous agent of Hell, as a demon, as a guise of Satan himself, etc. In Good Omens --as a slinky ginger who walks funny)
Lesser known, at least so far as I can tell, is the flaming sword. It, too, appears in Genesis 3, in the very last line:
"So he drove out the man; and placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
--Genesis 3:24, KJV
Thanks to translation ambiguity, there is some debate concerning the nature of the flaming sword --is it a divine weapon given unto one of the Cherubim (if so, why only one)? Or is it an independent entity, which takes the form of a sword (as other angelic beings take the form of wheels and such)? For our purposes, I don't think the distinction matters. The guard at the gate of Eden, whether an angel wielding the sword or an angel who IS the sword, is Aziraphale.
(note on the flaming sword: in some traditions --Eastern Orthodox, for example-- it is held that upon Christ's death and resurrection, the flaming sword gave up it's post and vanished from Eden for good. By these sensibilities, the removal of the sword signifies the redemption and salvation of man.
...Put a pin in that. We're coming back to it.)
So, we have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword, introduced at the beginning and the end (ha) of the very same chapter of Genesis.
But here's the important bit, the bit that's not immediately obvious, the bit that nonetheless encapsulates one of the central themes, if not THE central theme, of Good Omens:
The Sword was never intended to guard Eden while Adam and Eve were still in it.
Do you understand?
The Sword's function was never to protect them. It doesn't even appear until after they've already fallen. No... it was to usher Adam and Eve from the garden, and then keep them out. It was a threat. It was a punishment.
The flaming sword was given to be used against them.
So. Again. We have our pair. The Serpent and the Sword: the inception and the consequence of original sin, personified. They are the one-two punch that launches mankind from paradise, after Hell lures it to destruction and Heaven condemns it for being destroyed. Which is to say that despite being, supposedly, hereditary enemies on two different sides of a celestial cold war, they are actually unified by one purpose, one pivotal role to play in the Divine Plan: completely fucking humanity over.
That's how it's supposed to go. It is written.
...But, in Good Omens, they're not just the Serpent and the Sword.
They're Crowley and Aziraphale.
(author begins to go insane from emotion under the cut)
In Good Omens, humanity is handed it's salvation (pin!) scarcely half an hour after losing it. Instead of looming over God's empty garden, the sword protects a very sad, very scared and very pregnant girl. And no, not because a blameless martyr suffered and died for the privilege, either.
It was just that she'd had such a bad day. And there were vicious animals out there. And Aziraphale worried she would be cold.
...I need to impress upon you how much this is NOT just a matter of being careless with company property. With this one act of kindness, Aziraphale is undermining the whole entire POINT of the expulsion from Eden. God Herself confronts him about it, and he lies. To God.
And the Serpent--
(Crowley, that is, who wonders what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway; who thinks that maybe he did a GOOD thing when he tempted Eve with the apple; who objects that God is over-reacting to a first offense; who knows what it is to fall but not what it is to be comforted after the fact...)
--just goes ahead and falls in love with him about it.
As for Crowley --I barely need to explain him, right? People have been making the 'didn't the serpent actually do us a solid?' argument for centuries. But if I'm going to quote one of them, it may as well be the one Neil Gaiman wrote ficlet about:
"If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization."
--Robert G. Ingersoll
The first to ask questions.
Even beyond flattering literary interpretation, we know that Crowley is, so often, discreetly running damage control on the machinations of Heaven and Hell. When he can get away with it. Occasionally, when he can't (1827).
And Aziraphale loves him for it, too. Loves him back.
And so this romance plays out over millennia, where they fall in love with each other but also the world, because of each other and because of the world. But it begins in Eden. Where, instead of acting as the first Earthly example of Divine/Diabolical collusion and callousness--
(other examples --the flood; the bet with Satan; the back channels; the exchange of Holy Water and Hellfire; and on and on...)
--they refuse. Without even necessarily knowing they're doing it, they just refuse. Refuse to trivialize human life, and refuse to hate each other.
To write a story about the Serpent and the Sword falling in love is to write a story about transgression.
Not just in the sense that they are a demon and an angel, and it's ~forbidden. That's part of it, yeah, but the greater part of it is that they are THIS demon and angel, in particular. From The Real Bible's Book of Genesis, in the chapter where man falls.
It's the sort of thing you write and laugh. And then you look at it. And you think. And then you frown, and you sit up a little straighter. And you think.
And then you keep writing.
And what emerges hits you like a goddamn truck.
(...A lot of Pratchett reads that way. I believe Gaiman when he says Pratchett would have been happy with the romance, by the way. I really really do).
It's a story about transgression, about love as transgression. They break the rules by loving each other, by loving creation, and by rejecting the hatred and hypocrisy that would have triangulated them as a unified blow against humanity, before humanity had even really got started. And yeah, hell, it's a queer romance too, just to really drive the point home (oh, that!!! THAT!!!)
...I could spend a long time wildly gesturing at this and never be satisfied. Instead of watching me do that (I'll spare you), please look at this gif:
I love this shot so much.
Look at Eve and Crowley moving, at the same time in the same direction, towards their respective wielders of the flaming sword. Adam reaches out and takes her hand; Aziraphale reaches out and covers him with a wing.
You know what a shot like that establishes? Likeness. Commonality. Kinship.
"Our side" was never just Crowley and Aziraphale. Crowley says as much at the end of season 1 ("--all of us against all of them."). From the beginning, "our side" was Crowley, Aziraphale, and every single human being. Lately that's around 8 billion, but once upon a time it was just two other people. Another couple. The primeval mother and father.
But Adam and Eve die, eventually. Humanity grows without them. It's Crowley and Aziraphale who remain, and who protect it. Who...oversee it's upbringing.
Godfathers. Sort of.
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Let Me In ~ Doppelgänger Francis Mosses/ The Milkman x Female Reader
Chapter 2
Word Count ~ 1.3k
Rating ~ Explicit
CW ~ blood and gore, body horror, character death, minor violence, dubious consent, eventual smut(not in this chapter)
Also available on AO3
Fanart used with permission @kaworinx on Instagram and TikTok
You stare at the door that separates the security room from the inner apartment building.
Waiting.
Your fingers curl around the edge of the counter, knuckles blanching. What was taking Francis’ doppelgänger so long? Was he immediately planning on attacking the residents? Leaving you, who was clearly an inept threat, for last?
The brass knob turns and you hold your breath. Your heart is beating so erratically you fear it will tear itself free of your chest. A creaking noise. The hinges need greasing.
He’s here.
In the room with you. Suddenly you realize you’ve never seen Francis except through the pane of glass. You’ve never viewed any of the residents without that transparent barrier dividing you, in fact.
You take a step back and your hand nudges the D.D.D. guidance chart you’d stopped referring to long ago, sending it fluttering to the floor. You know it by heart. Identification. Physical appearance. Entry request. Featured on the day’s list of expected visitors.
You hadn’t obeyed a single one of the rules just now.
The doppelgänger steps forward. Slowly. In no apparent hurry. Your eyes dart to the window. Would someone else enter? Could they get help?
Why had you let him in?
Francis smiles gently. Not really Francis, but the thing inside of him. Wearing him like a suit. You back up another step. The rotary phone was still within reasonable reach. But you’d never get more than a single number dialed. Despite his casual movement now, you instinctively realize he is more than capable of speed. You’re doomed. And you’ve condemned everyone else inside the building along with you. Not the first time it’s happened, but that had been a long time ago. Once humanity learned to fight back, it had been very carefully avoiding a repeat of that scenario.
And here you are, undoing all of that progress because of a single moment of weakness. Because of your very human feelings.
“Did you think we would be content with merely looking like you? No. That was not nearly enough. We started with the smaller creatures first. A dog, as I recall. Easier to mimic. Easy to infiltrate your ranks, too.” His voice is scarcely above a whisper. It crawls on your skin and you freeze, paralyzed by fear. “No, the goal all along was to become you. And we’ve succeeded. At last…”
The being disguised as the milkman regards the window for a moment, considering the exposure. His head tips to one side thoughtfully. Sifting through those memories again. Recalling the apartment number where his human predecessor had dwelled.
“Let’s go somewhere more…private.” He smiles again and this time it’s a gesture you’d never seen on Francis’s features. A kind of leering grin. His hand reaches out, fingers clamping down on your wrist.
You gasp but don’t struggle. You’d been expecting his skin to feel different; wrong somehow. But it feels human. Warm. He tugs and you stumble forward. Colliding against him. Your eyes note a few flecks of ruby near his collar, not visible until you'd had a side profile view like this. You’re not so naive that you don’t know what they are. Their originating source.
Oh, Francis.
He turns and pulls you along with him. Bypassing the stairs and moving towards the elevator. A soft chime when the doors slide open before your captor drags you along inside. He thumbs the button for the third floor and you feel the compartment lifting. Another soft tinkle of sound announcing you’ve arrived shortly afterwards.
The body stealing creature pauses at the door, hand rummaging in the pants pocket to retrieve a set of keys. A stalled moment until he discovers the correct one. You wonder if your absence has been discovered yet. It would still be awhile before your shift ended. The residents might think you’ve stepped out for a break. Not unheard of. At least you’d sealed the main entry door behind him. At least that last bastion of defense remained, for now. The man—no, he was not that, do not think of him as that—the imposter reaches for the light switch beside the door in a gesture that seems one borne of muscle memory.
The inside of Francis Mosses’ apartment is just as you’d imagined it.
Clearly the living space of a bachelor. Minimal decor. No plants. A basket of presumably clean laundry waiting to be put away beside the living room couch. The morning’s coffee mug still sitting on the counter, not yet rinsed. A crocheted throw spread over the sofa. A gift from his mother, maybe? Yesterday’s newspaper lying on the coffee table. You wish you could go back in time to yesterday. Before Francis had been killed. Before you’d let this evil nightmare inside the building.
A soft derisive sound emanates from him. Not impressed with his surroundings, apparently. You hear the deadbolt being drawn behind you, the lock on the door turned. Trapped inside securely. With the monster that looks identical to the man you’d harbored a secret crush on for so long.
“Let’s see what else this place has to offer, hmmm?” His lips beside your ear make you shiver. He shoves gently on your shoulder blades and you stumble forward. There’s not much else to see. Just the bathroom and the single bedroom across from it. Only a queen sized bed. The curtains still closed. Another light switch by the open door lifted, bathing the room in a soft, hazy yellow glow. “I can’t help but notice,” he begins, that wicked mouth near your ear again, “that you don’t seem quite as keen as before.”
“Why would I be? You’re not Francis.”
“I could be him. Your body would think so. You could make your mind believe it if you wanted to.”
You turn to face him, your hands balling into fists. He removes his cap and tosses it aside, looking at you with amusement. “Whatever you’re going to do to me, just get it over with. Just…just kill me.” It would be preferable at this point. The thought of that intruder putting any part of its body against yours makes your stomach turn.
The humor fades from his features, replaced with irritation. “I’d hardly have gone to all this effort simply to terminate your existence. No. I think we’ll stick with the original plan.”
“There is no plan,” you say through gritted teeth.
“Oh, but there is.” He reaches out to the gold and enamel pin bearing the letters of the organization on your chest, flicking the metal with his nail disdainfully. Then he’s pressed against you and his mouth is on yours.
You react instantly, the fists you’ve had ready attempting to strike, but he traps your wrists easily.
You’ve fantasized about kissing Francis many times.
Every daydream had been soft and sweet. Shy, chaste, gentle touches before passion overtook the pair of you.
This, though. This was nothing like that.
The doppelgänger’s mouth moves not so much in memory, as an imitation of something it’s seen, rather than experienced firsthand. Disregarding whatever the milkman had previously done, now relying more on instinct. It’s rough and awkward. Teeth accidentally knocking together. Tongue struggling to find placement. The incorrect pressure of lips.
You very nearly bite him but something halts you. The kiss is changing. Evolving. The lips seat on yours more naturally. Tongue slotting correctly, twirling over and under your own. The damned thing was learning much too fast. For a moment, you’ve forgotten what it truly is. This feels good. You’re enjoying it.
Then reality comes crashing down on you like a cold shower. This is not Francis. You do not want this.
He feels it, too. The precise moment when you cease returning his enthusiasm. He draws back, frowning at you. “Why did you stop?”
“Because you’re not him. Don’t you get it? I cared about him. Not just his appearance. Who he was inside, as a person.”
Confusion scrawled on his face. He doesn’t comprehend what you’re saying. The nuances of human emotions still evade his species.
“I am what remains of him,” he whispers. “All that remains. So cling to it while you can.”
His mouth covers yours once more.
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— bestfriend!ot5’s reaction to you offering to help with their boner ♡
pairing: ot5 x fem!reader (separate)
rating: nsfw, mdni
wc: almost 3k oops 😭
warnings: some smut (oral obviously, m receiving), suggestiveness, perviness, pet names (babe, sweetheart, pretty girl), tiniest but brief bit of angst in tyun’s, some alcohol in jun’s, beomgyu being an annoying brat lmao
a/n - this took me forever to start (and to finish.. all in one sitting rip my eyeballs) but i loved writing this omg who wants a pt 2 follow-up 🫢
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yeonjun: this is the moment he’s been waiting for, y’all
it’s just like any other tipsy late-night shit-talk sesh on yeonjun’s living room floor, until it’s not. you’ve been lazily sitting against the foot of his couch facing each other while joking about beomgyu’s latest failure to get laid when somehow the conversation turns to your own personal sex lives. it’s not like you’ve never talked about that stuff with jun before; you’re best friends, after all. but something about tonight feels different. maybe it’s because you’ve been drinking, maybe it’s because the dim lighting of his living room is giving it a strangely sensual vibe, or maybe it’s the way he’s looking at you- facing you with his chin in his hand as his elbow rests up on the couch cushion, eyes more lidded than usual and sculpted collarbone peeking out from the sweater that at some point had slipped down his shoulder- but when the topic turns to your experiences with oral and he’s in the middle of complaining about how his last fling always gave him the worst head, what comes out of your mouth as you suddenly interrupt him is a shock to the both of you.
“i could do better.”
yeonjun’s eyebrows shoot up. the words had died on his lips. your own eyes are wide as you freeze, before fidgeting nervously, attempting damage control. “i mean.. from what i’ve been told. just saying.” you swallow hard as you inwardly kick yourself, avoiding his eyes and his silence as you bring the bottle of soju you’d been sharing to your lips in an attempt to feign casualty.
“is that an offer?”
it’s your turn to be speechless, nearly choking as you set the bottle down a little too hard, turning quickly to stare at him in shock; oh, he’s not joking. he watches you expectantly, a level expression on his face; though if you were to blink, you’d miss the smirk that his lips were threatening to inch up into. when your gaze flickers down to see the tent in his sweatpants that he hasn’t even bothered trying to cover, you swallow hard. the tiny crush you’ve always harbored for your best friend suddenly seems not so unreciprocated after all. you collect yourself. you’ve gotta be cool about this.
“well… do you want it to be?”
your best friend’s hands wrapped in your hair and his shameless moans filling the room as he pumps his cock in and out of your throat isn’t exactly how you imagined the night to go, but here you are! you can already tell from the lewd promises and filthy praises that he’s groaning out as you swallow around him — your legs will definitely be sore in the morning. <3
soobin: soobin.exe has stopped working
he didn’t mean for you to see, he really didn’t. you weren’t supposed to be home for another 15 minutes; what else was he supposed to do when it’s the first time all week that his hermit of a roommate has finally left their shared apartment and he hasn’t been able to comfortably get himself off since last weekend?
your convenience store run ended in disappointment as the tuna gimbap roll you were craving turned up empty on the shelves. with a grumble you had just grabbed the nearest container of ramen and a snack for soobin before trekking back to your apartment sooner than hoped for (by either party..), not in the mood to sit there and eat as you’d originally planned; but unbeknownst to you, soobin hadn’t heard you arrive back home, and also unbeknownst to you, he was stuck in a very… compromising position.
“soob, they didn’t have the- oh, fuck.”
rounding the corner into the living room to see your best friend seated on the couch with his sweatpants shoved down around his hips and his head thrown back as his hand fists up and down his very hard - very big cock - was definitely not on your daily bingo card. (or your lifetime one either, to be quite frank.) at the sound of your voice he’s acting faster than you’ve ever seen him move, a pillow shoved over his lap and his large figure smushed back into the couch cushions so quick that you question whether you even saw his cock at all, or if it was just your mind playing tricks on you. you decide that it wasn’t the latter, however, at the sight of his bright red face and quick, heavy breaths- a deer in headlights as his mouth opens and closes for a few moments, trying to find the words to speak.
you’re in the same boat — what are you supposed to say? hey, sorry that i caught you trying to get yourself off in our shared space that i also own which you’re very much aware of? and by the way your cock is the most beautiful thing i’ve ever seen and i want it in my-
wait, what? you don’t even have time to process the sudden warmth between your thighs as soobin finally finds his words. well, kind of. “i-i’m so sorry, i swear i didn’t- i was just trying to- i thought you’d still be a while, i- it’s been so long since i-“ he cut himself off at the last part, an even deeper blush coming over his cheeks at his accidental admission. wonderful, now she’s gonna think i’m some sort of incel. but the last thing that either of you ever expects is happening as you step forward carefully, approaching his shocked form on the couch before stopping to maintain some distance.
“soob.. do you want help?”
let’s just say that his best friend slotted between his thighs as she bobs her head up and down his fat cock with eager moans and a mix of spit and pre-cum lewdly dribbling down her chin wasn’t exactly on soobin’s bingo card, either. but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t pay you back for it right after. <3
beomgyu: *laughs in your face* 👁️👄👁️ switch-up
um, did he hear that right?? it was an innocent instance of you utterly roasting each other into the grave with bullying remarks, just another tuesday for the pair of you- you’re just sitting on your bed in your usual criss-cross legged gossip-time position when beomgyu apparently decides that he’s bored laughing at something soobin did and chooses you as the better candidate to laugh at instead. the plushie of yours that he’d had resting in his lap is now a method of defense as you attempt to thwap him over the head with your own plushie, yelling at him to “take it back!” as he cackles mercilessly after claiming “at least soobin can get bitches if he stops being shy enough, you’re just an all-around lost cause.”
“you don’t even know what you’re talking about!!!” you whine as you finally manage to knock him onto his back, going in for the kill as your leg swings over one of his, your plushie smushing down into his face as his now-muffled giggles still ring out annoying as ever. “i get bitches too!” you defend yourself, although even your own words immediately cause you to cringe; damn, you really do sound like a loser, huh? but your momentary lapse of attention has beomgyu knocking your plushie away, laughing even louder as he responds “that is EXACTLY what someone who can’t get bitches would say.” you groan and smack his chest, rolling your eyes as he cradles himself dramatically. “you’re literally wrong. i’ve dated before! like once. and there was that other guy from the smoothie place last year.. we, like, hung out a few times.” but you’re mumbling now, pathetic to your own ears as beomgyu’s shit-eating grin grows with each word.
“you’re kinda proving my point, here, babe.” you shiver at the pet name, however condescending his tone may be. god, how is he still so attractive even when you want to strangle the fuck out of him? “you’re so cocky,” you complain with another roll of your eyes, an attempt to both distract yourself from beomgyu and distract beomgyu from the humiliating topic. he sits up to lean back on his hands as it’s clear you’re finished with your little murder attempt. “yeah, cuz of my monster cock.. that can get bitches.”
that’s it. the sudden urge to prove yourself to him overtakes you as you snap back, “i bet your ‘monster cock’ has never even seen head as good as what i can give.” another laugh— until he realizes you’re serious. the smile falls right off of his face. you don’t miss the way his fists clench around the blanket he’s leaning back on; or the slight strain in his voice as he answers, voice suddenly low and almost breathless- “yeah?”
you were right; beomgyu’s cock has never gotten head as good as what you’re giving him right now as your throat bottoms out with a filthy gag, no hesitation when you lift off with a pop before sucking on him hard enough to send his head reeling. you know what.. maybe beomgyu wouldn’t mind being proved wrong more often after all. but of course, he has to prove himself to you now, too. <3
taehyun: “if… you want to” he definitely wants to
taehyun was stressed. that was clear to anybody; the recent storm closing the businesses down for the week, including the local gym, and his own job that he of course relied on to pay rent. you had been over at his apartment when the weather took a turn for the worse; so now here you were, snowed in with no where to go, forced to work from taehyun’s computer, eat his food, and wear his clothes. (the latter of which neither of you would admit to being turned on by. …….yet.) taehyun was doing his best to work out from home with what little equipment he had, although he wasn’t able to do much, which frustrated him to no end — not as much because he was a gym rat, but more because it was his primary stress reliever. so today it doesn’t help, of course, that his pretty best friend is currently sat at his desk in one of his baggy sweatshirts and a pair of sweatpants that she had to roll 6 times to fit her little legs.
he didn’t mean to snap at you. when you accidentally knocked his extra monitor off the desk and onto the floor, cracking the screen, it was just because you turned around too fast— you were excited to see him :(— but it’s the last straw of the day for taehyun. he can’t work out properly, his job isn’t paying him during the off-time, he’s had a constant boner from you hanging around in his clothes all week, and now- now he’ll need to go get his stupid monitor fixed once the weather clears up. “shit, tae, i’m so sorry-“
“god, why are you so fucking clumsy, y/n?”
the silence causes instant realization as his eyes snap up to meet your wide, now-watery ones. “i’m.. i’m sorry..” you whisper, and immediately he wants to punch himself. “fuck,” he groans as he shakes his head, coming to kneel down in front of the chair you were still sitting in. “i’m sorry, i didn’t mean to snap at you like that. you’re not clumsy. i know it was an accident, please don’t cry.. i’ll pay for the monitor. it wasn’t your fault.” he’s murmuring while he soothes his hand up and down your arm. you’re shaking your head as you wipe at your eyes. “no, no, it’s okay; i know you didn’t mean to snap. i’m still sorry though. let me help pay for it…. i know you’ve been stressed, tyunnie.” you say the last part quieter, gentler as you meet his eyes. he hates that his cock twitches in his pants at something so innocent; but what you say next makes him feel much better about his own perverted thoughts.
you’re nervous about your next words. you really hope you’ve been reading the room right this last week. “let me help you..?”
his eyes widen, before he quickly recovers in an attempt to keep a level expression. “help.. me?” do you mean what he thinks you mean??? “the weather still sucks. there’s not much you can do, sweetheart.” he chuckles, testing the waters with a pet name as he studies your face carefully for a reaction. his eyes flicker down and quickly back up when your thighs squeeze together marginally in response. a-ha. “no, tyun… let me help you here.” you whisper with a soft, testing touch to the band of his sweatpants. oh, so you definitely mean what he thinks you mean.
who really needs the gym or your own closet after all, when you look so pretty on your knees for him with his cock down your throat as he calls you his pretty girl and promises to fuck you so good later just like you deserve? not the two of you, apparently. <3
huening kai: *spits out his drink* coughing fit
kai wasn’t kidding when he told you that he might be too busy to hang out if you came over, although this wasn’t exactly what you’d had in mind. when you headed over to his apartment you figured he was caught up studying for some big exam or something of the like; what you didn’t think you’d find was him yelling into his headset at beomgyu as his fingers flew over the buttons of his controller, leaning forward in his seat with crazy eyes and 3 open cans of energy drinks next to the screen. you sigh. “kai, really? this is what you meant by ‘too busy’..?” he jumps slightly at the sudden sound of your voice in his room, but doesn’t turn around. “y/n! yeah, sorry- i’m just in the middle of- FUCKING MOVE, BEOMGYU! of a tournament right now, been trying to rank up for hours- BEOMGYU!!!”
you wince at the intermittent screaming, plopping down on his bed to watch as you hear gyu’s protests of self-defense piercing through your best friend’s headset. “i think you’ll need a hearing aid after this..” you mumble, receiving no response as expected. however, you get bored after scrolling through your phone for a while, sulking shamelessly at the lack of attention you were receiving — although you were warned that if you came over he might not have any to give. you sigh, but you understand; these tournaments are important to hyuka, even if you couldn’t care less about them yourself. don’t get me wrong, you love gaming too, especially with your friends— especially with kai — but you weren’t exactly as obsessed as they were when it came to being the biggest legend in this group of - you squint - 100 players that this world has ever seen.
selfishly, you had almost even hoped for more from this evening… you’ve been trying to drop hints lately at your feelings for kai, although your level of success was yet to be determined. this would be the first instance all week that you’d have some alone time together; despite his claim to busyness, you still figured you’d try your luck by coming over. you eye the 3 energy drinks and his bouncing legs with a chuckle. what are my options here? hmm.. you’d worn some particularly short shorts tonight, knowing he’d definitely notice the plushness of your thighs.. experimentally, you stand up and approach his desk, standing next to it so he’d be able to see you if he shifted his eyes to the right. “hyuka, want me to get you some water? i don’t think you need any more of these.” you fiddle with one of the cans on his desk. he hums distractedly in response; you can tell he hadn’t heard what you said. “hyuka..” this time you reach out to card your fingers through his hair, effectively causing his fixed stare to snap briefly over to you in surprise; ‘briefly’ turning into a momentary distraction as his gaze catches onto your shorts, flitting back and forth between the screen and your soft thighs. “h-huh?”
“some water?” you repeat innocently. “o-oh, uh, yeah..”
when you come back, to say you’re shocked is an understatement as the bulge in his shorts has seemingly popped up out of no where, and the bright pink blush on his cheeks tells you he knows it, too. you don’t realize you’re standing there staring at it with the glass of water still in your hand until kai quickly mutes his mic, eyes still glued to the screen as he groans “i’m so sorry y/n, please don’t think i’m gross, i- i had no time to grab a pillow, we’re in the middle of a battle and my score is-“ wordlessly, you’re sinking to your knees and situating yourself beneath the desk. his bouncing legs freeze. “what- fuck, w-what are you-“
“can i help you? you can keep playing your game,” you ask sweetly. the sight of your innocent eyes blinking up at him nearly has him cumming in his shorts then and there as he breathes out, “fuck- are you sure?”
you definitely show him how sure you are as you worship his cock with your throat, all sloppy and wet, making sure his mic stays muted so beomgyu can’t hear the way you’re making him whine and moan as he bucks his hips up into your mouth the best he can. now just wait until his tournament is over and he has you all to himself. <3
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Diabetes
Summary: You join arsenal and move in with Beth and Viv, you're nervous how everything will go, but ultimately it was perfect
Warnings: Diabetes, Hypoglycaemia, Glucagon shot, let me know if anything else.
A/N: Just a bit of a cute fluffy fic, I tried to get everything right medically but IDK if it is perfect. I hope you like it. If I did get something wrong let me know. Also as always happy to do part 2s if requested but pls add some detail on what you want to see.
You were originally going to move in with Leah however the Medical Team said it would be best for you to live with two people, so you moved in with Beth and Viv, you were very nervous as to how they would perceive you, and whether they would be accommodating of your diabetes or not. You knew the medical team had discussions with them and that the club had forced them to do the emergency training for really bad lows and highs, what you didn't know was that they asked the club if they could find them some more training courses, they had done just about everyone single one, from how to use a Dexcom and an Omnipod as these were the devices you used, to how to live everyday life with diabetes.
So when you turned up to their house you were very surprised to see some snacks sitting out on the bench, each with a piece of paper next to them, with the amount of carbs in them. They had really gone out of their way to help you settle in and make your life easier.
“Um, we have something to show you.” Beth said, kind of hesitant, you followed them over to a cupboard, “Um, it might be a little silly but this is for you,” she said as she opened the cupboard. It was empty other than some shelves, and draws, some organisation baskets, a mini fridge and a basket full of lollies. “There are some juices in there, we didn’t know what flavour you liked so we bought a pack of each, if you don’t like a flavour that's okay, we also got you these, they are all 15g of Carbs each, um but we can buy anything else you want or prefer, and um we thought you could put all of your supplies in here so they are organised and there is even a label maker so we can label the draws and stuff if you want oh and this is for you I suppose.” She said as she picked up a phone, it was a brand new iPhone 15 “it's more for the club, they were originally going to by you a android but we told them you wouldn't use it so yeah, the idea is we connect it to you sensors as like an additional deceive, so that everyone has access to your levels, so like at night we will keep it beside our bed so if anything happens we are alerted and during games the medical staff will have it and during training I think Kelly is mainly going to have it.” you nodded knowing you couldn't speak, the kindness of both women, and seeing how much they more cared and were going to 100% help you caused you to become emotional you felt a single tear roll down your face, causing the pair to pack lightly “You could have a cupboard somewhere else if you wanted or we could show you, your bedroom, it's pretty bare but we had plans to take you shopping so you could decorate it and make it your own,” another tear roll down your face, “are you okay, did I say something wrong? Did I do something wrong?” you shook your head “th-thank you” Beth pulled you in for a hug “it's nothing really” but it was something it was everything, it was perfect. You spent your day moving in.
You set up the cupboard first, you drew a plan of where everything was going to go, detailing it before everything started to get put into the cupboard. Your plan worked very well and the cupboard was very organised and practical. Viv thought it was quite cute, she was going to like this side of you very much. Once you had set up the cupboard you got to go shopping, first you went to the homemaker centre, buying some bedspreads, pillows, and decorations from multiple different shops, to make more room in the car you had to do a pit stop at home, chucking it sll through the front door, before heading back out for lunch, it was the first time Beth and Viv had experienced eating out with Diabetes, well even just eating and diabetes. You were very well practised at it, and helped Beth and Viv learn, showing them how you did everything, you taught them how to estimate carbs, but that differently needed practise on their end, you also showed how you can either your phone or your pod controller to set up the insulin delivery and you even pricked their fingers to test their levels for fun, you liked how they weren’t over cautious about it and how they weren’t treating you differently, and also the fact that they didn’t see it as annoying, really you just liked everything about them. You then went to IKEA to get a desk, a chest of drawers and some other items for your bedroom. Once you got home you set up your room, you were putting your clothes away when you were interrupted by Beth and Viv calling you down for dinner.
“Stuffed capsicums!” You yelled as you walked into the kitchen.
“Inside voice,” “Vivvy, it’s cute, your parents told us they were one of your favourites and we thought after the lunch we had today they would be a good choice, how many do you want?”
“Two please, thank you,” “you’re welcome, if you want we can sit on the couch and watch a movie.” you nodded your head before making your way over to the couch.
-
“Come in,” Viv said after you knocked on the door, her face dropped when you opened the door and she saw your red puffy eyes, and tear stained cheeks. You had been crying because you were so relieved and happy, and you wanted to thank them again.
“Kleintje, is everything okay?” Viv asked, causing Beth to pop her head out of the bathroom mid teeth brushing, the sight of you caused her to quickly move back to the bathroom rinsing out her mouth before pulling you in for a hug.
“T-thank you, for everything, it was perfect, you didn’t have to do any of it”
“Of course Kleintje,” Viv walked over to the two of you joining in the hug.
“We want you to feel welcomed and comfortable, it is now your house too. But please if you need us for anything at all you can come wake us up, our door is always open.”
“Figuratively, not literally” you giggled slightly at Viv’s comment.
“Let's all go to sleep. Hey. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow” Beth said.
_____
Your second day was a training day, you Beth and Viv arrived early, as you had a few meetings, the first one was with Jonas and Kelly, about everything but also your diabetes, then the medics and some other people, Beth and Viv came with you to all of them. As you sat in the tactical session, you sipped on your apple juice popper as you listened intently, trying to ignore Beth and Steph’s talking, you were one to think tactics were a major part of the game, something else Viv would come to like. You then had a short gym session and then it was lunch, everyone was wondering what it was going to be, you already knew but decided not to tell them, you had been given the menu for the week, to select some things that you would want, so that they could make up a plate for you, ensuring they could tell you the exact amount of carbs. You walked in to find your plate sitting on the bench next to all the other food, it was a chicken burger, on wholemeal bread rather than a burger bun, you also had some snacks. There was a piece of paper next to it that had your name on it and the amount of carbs in each item, including each item of the burger. You picked up your plate and walked over to Beth, who pointed to the table she usually sat at, so you sat down there, waiting for her and others to join you, Kelly soon walked in with your kit, which you accidentally forgot at the meeting, you took it from her gratefully and she told you what would be happening in training so you had some idea of how much you needed to adjust your insulin. You picked up your phone and checked to see what it said your sugars were at, your phone said your sugars were at 90 which was perfect considering your target range was between 80-100, you were unzipping your kit when some of the team came to sit down, Beth sat next to you, Steph, Katie, and Caitlin also sat down. You pulled out your lancing device and pricked your finger, using your metre to confirm your reading before putting the units you needed for the burger into your pod controller.
“Do you mind us asking?” Katie questioned what you were doing.
“Um, I have diabetes, I was diagnosed when I was two, but it means that I have to manually control my blood sugars. My body doesn't do it at all, so I have to calculate the insulin I need for when I eat," "Right,” she nodded her head.
____
You had a few hiccups with your diabetes since living with Beth and Viv, but nothing major, however that was going to change. It was the 60th minute and you felt your body start shaking, the medics hadn’t called a paused or called you over and even thought you felt funny at half time your levels were normal, if anything slightly high, but you knew you were low, not only was your body shaking, but your brain hurt and felt foggy, you were also struggling to not fall over. You knew you needed to get off the pitch soon, before you passed out. A corner gave you the perfect opportunity to tell Beth you were low, you walked up to her, she looked at you confused and concerned.
“L-Low” you managed to say to Beth before you collapsed forward on her, she lowered you to the ground and the ref immediately blew the whistle, the medical team was on the pitch immediately, players from both teams were starting to form a huddle around you, trying to protect you from the media.
-
They were checking your sugars, as Beth got a Glucagon shot ready, she was ready to go when she got the nod of approval from the medics. Beth injected the shot into you and you were immediately rolled onto your side by the medics, waking up just moments later, in a panicked state, sitting up.
“It’s okay, you passed out from being low, we had to give you a Glucagon, but it’s okay, you’re going to be okay.” Beth said as she rubbed your back.
“S-sta-stay?” you managed to get out eyes wide open with fear.
“Go with her, I’ll tell Jonas,” Beth nodded.
Viv met you and Beth in the medical room, she sat on a chair while Beth sat on the bed with you, you were given some gummy bears as well as an apple juice popper, to try and elevate your levels, you were still shaky and sweaty but your vision was completely clear and the medics and paramedics cleared you, which meant you didn't have to go to the hospital, but Beth and Viv had very strict instructions to take you to the hospital if certain things happened, such as seizures, loss of consciousness and others.
“Do you want to go home now Kleintje?” you nodded as you ate a gummy bear.
_____
You were very nervous for your first camp, for how the staff would handle your diabetes but more so the team. The last game you played for Arsenal was the one you passed out during. You visited your endo after that incident and he had recommended putting tape over your sensor and pod when you played. The sensor had slightly pulled out during your arsenal game and so it wasn't actually reading your blood sugar.
It was your first training session and Beth had helped you, with the supervision of the medical team, put tape around your arms covering your sensor and pod, it was so you could get used to the feeling of it before your first game. You weren't required to have tape over your sensor and pod during training as you had frequent breaks which you could be checked during.
-
As you warmed up with Lauren Esme and Niamh, Ella and Alessia walked over to you.
“Why do you have tape on your arms?” Ella asked. “Ella you can't just ask that” Mary said as she walked over with Beth, who had overhead the question, so she stood behind you placing her hands on your shoulders. “You don't have to tell them.” Beth whispered in your ear, you did want to tell them but you weren't sure you wanted to tell them right now.
“Oh um,” you were saved by Sarina calling the team over. While Sarina talked one of the medics came over to you, she handed you the phone and you saw your reading, being nodding and sticking your hand out to her, hoping that somehow in the non contact warm up the sensor had moved and that reading wasn't true, as if it was you most likely weren't going to get to do training this morning. You were handed a small container filled with 6 sour worms which told you the reading was true, you opened the container and started to eat them while Sarina kept talking.
“Why don’t we get sour worms?” Ella whined.
“Because you’re not special enough.” you inform her, causing everyone to break out into laughter.
“I like her,” Millie said as she high fived you. Sarina ignored all the commotion, she was obviously used to it and just continued talking. “Y/N could I just talk to you quickly?” she said as you and the girls started to disperse, you nodded and walked over to her.
“Sorry Sarina. I didn’t mean to-” “No, that's not what I wanted to speak about but I appreciate the apology. I wanted to talk to you about telling the girls, is it something you would like to do?”
“Um, yeah I think, I just don’t know how to tell them and like I don't want them to think of me differently”
“That's okay, I think sooner rather than later would be better, maybe today during dinner? During the announcements. Beckky could help you, or even Beth or anyone you wanted, I could even just tell them and we wouldn't need to discuss it if you wanted.”
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gojo satoru x reader | college au [18+]
kickoff ch.1 gojo satoru sent you a message
ᰔ pairing. college au - soccer player! gojo x film major! reader (f)
ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is the most popular guy on your college campus. he's tall, funny, hot, not to mention he's the most talented soccer forward the school has seen in years. but he's also a frat dude, which puts him in a world very different from your own, as he spends most of his nights partying & drinking while you spend most of yours working on your annoying film major assignments. but when he reaches out to you for a favor, you realize that helping him out might have something in it for you too.
ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fluff, angst, smut, college au, fraternities, sororities, partying, drinking/alcohol, mentions of weed, romance, jealousy, pining, slow burn, opposites to lovers, friends to lovers, she falls first he falls harder, gojo being an idiot
ᰔ chapter. 1/x (probably 12)
ᰔ words. 1.3k (short one to start off, but the rest are longer)
a/n. welcome to this pilot chapter! this was originally going to be a one-shot but i got way too carried away and ended up planning out a whole series. i hope you enjoy!
nav. ch1 :: ch2 :: ch3 :: ch4 :: ch5 :: ch6 :: ch7 :: ch8 :: ch9 :: ch10 (pending)
☾·̩͙꙳ moodboard no.1
♬.*゚playlist
|| 2:13AM Gojo Satoru has requested to follow you
You blink the sleepiness in your eyes away as the harsh light of your phone hits your face. Somewhere in the middle of the crazy dream you were having, you heard your phone incessantly pinging and eventually woke you up to make you realize you forgot to turn the ringer off before going to sleep. Among all the spam email, iCloud storage warnings, and news headliners, there was one notification in particular that had you wondering if you were still dreaming.
“Ugh…y/n, please, turn your phone off,” you heard your roommate Mina mumble in the twin sized bed at the other end of the room as she shuffled her pillow above her head so that it covered both of her ears. You glance out the window of your shared apartment, peering at the pale moonlight, before your tired and heavy eyes travel back to your phone and press on the Instagram notification.
Suspecting this was maybe some prank account, you clicked on the small icon in your inbox that took you to a profile page. Gojo Satoru, Senior at University of Tokyo, Business Major, D1 Soccer #10, SAE. 12k followers, 172 following, 38 posts.
Still thinking you’re dreaming, you accept the follow request and watch as the number on his following increases by one, now 173. Your thumb swipes up on your phone as you take in the square images of his profile. Pictures of him and his friends recreating memes…food that he’s eaten recently…frequent vacation posts in exotic countries…and a whole lot of what seemed to be professionally taken soccer photos of him striking goals and hitting balls with his head in mid air. You have put a lot of effort into your own Instagram photos (despite your modest 464 followers), mostly posting compilation slideshows of your favorite film photos that you’ve taken recently, yet somehow his feed looks much more inviting than yours.
You turn onto your side and continue to look through his photos. 624 comments, 373 comments, 958 comments. Many were from his friends trying to embarrass him, and many others were from girls that probably wanted him to notice them. You noticed he only really replied to comments from his friends.
You knew who he was, of course. Gojo Satoru was one of the most, if not the most, popular guys on your college campus. When you got to college, you thought the whole “social hierarchy” thing would be over but it still seemed like there were certain groups of people that almost everyone knew about, "elite" individuals who other students could only dream of associating with. At UTokyo, the fraternities and sororities practically owned the place so of course Gojo was well-known since he was a member of the school’s most iconic frat, SAE. Not to mention, the school adored its soccer team–undefeated since 2012–and Gojo Satoru was the most talented center forward the division had seen in years.
But as for why he requested to follow you, a film major that doesn’t play any sports and isn’t even in a sorority, well you’re just not sure.
It’s then when you get yet another notification.
“Oh my god, y/n, turn it off!” Mina mumbles into her mattress. You click the side button to turn off the ringer.
|| 2:24AM Gojo Satoru sent you a message
Your heart starts to beat a bit faster as you quickly slide to your DMs page. You notice three unread conversations from a few of your friends, probably from when they decided to send you their entire explore page, and then you see a little (1) next to your message requests box. When you open it, you see his icon in your inbox. It’s a simple picture of him in his soccer jersey, his smile wide as one of his team members who was mostly cropped out of the photo seemed to be putting him in a headlock. You see the first few words of the message.
|| 2:24AM Gojo Satoru: Hey, sorry if this is weir…
You’re about to click on it when you stop yourself. It was really late at night and you didn’t know if you wanted to entertain a conversation with this man you knew literally nothing about (at least on a personal level) and weren’t even sure why he was messaging you in the first place. Plus, he would see that you’ve read it and so you would feel anxious to respond. But there was no way to see his full message unless you opened it. Even though you considered this to be weirdly intimate since it was a message sent at two in the morning, you figured that was probably normal for the likes of people like Gojo Satoru, who probably were out drinking and partying until five in the morning every night, regardless of any 8AM lectures or not.
But unfortunately, curiosity always kills the cat (that’s the expression, right?) and so you click on his message.
|| 2:24AM Gojo Satoru: Hey, sorry if this is weird…I don’t think we’ve ever met before, but my buddy’s really into your roommate, and he’s tried to invite her out to our frat’s house parties but he’s had no luck. Think you could convince her to come this weekend? You’re welcome to come too, of course
You blink in surprise before rolling your eyes, not entirely sure why you were expecting any different. Maybe Mina wasn’t budging on his friend’s advances because she wants to be asked out on an actual date, and not to some house party. But you figured frat guys wouldn’t really understand that. Besides, how did he know that you were her roommate? You’re just about to type a response when you see three little dots in the left side corner, indicating he was typing, and you hold your breath.
|| 2:27AM Gojo Satoru: Here are the details
And then he sends you a post from what looks like his fraternity’s Instagram page. There’s an address, a time, the name of the DJ and girls get in free bolded at the top. You realize you’ve never even been invited to a fraternity’s house party until this very moment.
You briefly consider not responding to him and just setting your phone back down on your nightstand, rolling over, and falling asleep. But you find your fingers moving on their own to type.
|| 2:31AM You: you’re messaging me to help your friend get with my roommate?
There’s an uncomfortable two minutes where there’s no response from him and for some reason your anxiety is through the roof. You remember the countless times you’ve heard people describe Gojo Satoru in passing: there’s just something about him that demands your attention.
His notification pops up at the top of the Instagram app when you were scrolling through reels to distract yourself and you accidentally clicked on it too fast.
|| 2:33AM Gojo Satoru: Uh, yeah?
You sigh as you ponder the proposition. You don’t even know for sure why Mina wasn’t really responding to his friend’s advances, maybe the guy was a creep or just not her type. And even if she was somewhat interested in him, she’s already refused to go to any of their frat’s house parties, so how would you be able to persuade her?
You finally convince yourself you’ve had enough of Gojo’s messages for the night and you’ll choose whether or not you want to revisit the topic again in the morning, until another message flashes across your screen.
|| 2:38AM Gojo Satoru: What can I do to get you to convince her to come this weekend?
You bite down on your lip at his question, and an idea flashes through your mind.
|| 2:40AM You: i’ll find a way to convince her. my terms and conditions will come later
He responds in a second.
|| 2:40AM Gojo Satoru: Deal
a/n. thank you for reading! i also post this story over on AO3, if you're more into that format, but i just wanted to start posting over here on tumblr too. hope to see you in the next one!
➸ take me to chapter two!
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Hi, my dog is really sick and he has a huge tumor, I’m going to have to put him down soon and it really sucks, your writing makes life a bit better though so thank you for that! Could I possibly request a Vox x reader with a pet dog? Like how would the two of them interact or would he claim himself as the dogs parent or stuff like that. You don’t have to of course! Please remember to take breaks
Vox X Reader [Comfort]
In which you take in a dog you found on the street without asking Vox beforehand.
Vox isn't necessarily minimalist, but he is certainly a bit of a neat freak
Things should be organized, clean, not perfect! But not messy
So, animals were never his thing
I mean, the hair, the training, the scratchy nails on the floor, it just sounds like a huge hassle
Besides, he is already busy enough with the company and you, a pet would just be another thing on the list
You, on the other hand, love caring for sick animals
You've brought a smaller creature home before for the evening or taken it to a vet, but nothing for longer than a few hours
But this time was different
The dog was so messy you couldn't even tell the breed, all you knew was that someone had hurt it and it wouldn't last long on its own
So you snuck the puppy into your jacket and headed straight home
Vox comes home to the shower running and you giggling, and he's already worried about whatever strange thing you're onto this time
He sees you, splashed in soap and water, and a dog with muddied water dripping off it into the drain
And it barks at him
And he screams
Right. He is super scared of dogs and hellhounds
Not in a 'these things are scary' way, but in a 'these things are unpredictable and gross and ew.'
When you finish washing the dog and drying it the best you could in a swaddled towel, you'll find him pacing and murmuring
He is frustrated you brought that THING home without asking, but he also wont suggest you abandon it because he knows you won't
Gets a servant to grab some necessities for the dog, because lord knows you didn't plan this out
Just for a few days, right?
Except, a few days turns into a few weeks and into a few months
And slowly your tiny puppy grows into a 100-pound pride dobermann, known for being some of hells largest and most vicious dogs
Despite his size, Vox has already adopted the thing into his life, he stopped asking when you were going to give up the dog on day 15,
Part of the reason he loves it is because of how dangerous the dog looks, as sweet as it actually is, it's very protective of you and he likes that
Originally does not let you out on your own, but now its 'you can go if the dogs with you' because by good fuck that thing could kill a crowd
Expect him to dip into the pet market of devices; tracking collar, pet surveillance, automatic feeding bowls, etc...
All inspired by his want to give your dog a luxurious life
Probably got a custom collar with glowing blue spikes so he and the pup match
Would actually take a few days off work and sit in an armchair with his hands on his head if the dog ever had an emergency trip to the vet
Author's Note - I saw your second ask, and its totally cool you sent this! Honestly, I always wanted to open emergency requests. Theres no shame in looking for comfort, I can't imagine your pain right no. I hope this helps in any way!
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thinking about how people who watch the emperor's new groove and somehow come out of it shipping pacha and kuzco, or thinking yzma only became evil when kuzco fired her and that she would've been a better ruler than him, are both so wrong in so many different ways and are also missing one of the things that i absolutely love about the movie. which is that, the way i see it, pacha and yzma are counterparts. as parental figures to kuzco.
like, just to get this out of the way first, yzma was a dismissive asshole to a peasant whose family was starving. and yeah, if kuzco had been in her place he definitely would've also done that, which... is why she would not be a better ruler than him. she'd just be the same because they're both horrible people in the exact same ways. her reaction to being fired is to plot murder, and as soon as his funeral is over she sets everyone to work on replacing paintings of kuzco with paintings of herself and covering the palace with imagery that makes it clear that it's all about her now. i'm not even sure why this is a discussion tbh.
and also, kuzco is literally a teenager. he's barely 18 years old. source: in the movie, yzma says at his funeral that kuzco was "taken from us so tragically on the very eve of his eighteenth birthday." she also claims in the movie to have "practically raised" him, to which kronk replies "yeah, you'd think he would've turned out better". and sure, she could be exaggerating, but what evidence do we have that she is? we learn absolutely nothing of his parents, who are never mentioned even once in the movie, or of anyone else who could've raised him, and she's his advisor who for some reason sees no problem with attending to royal duties in his place. most likely because she's his regent. also, i'm not exactly a fan of the sequel tv series "the emperor's new school" but it does have something that backs up my point: kuzco is revealed to be an orphan and just before his father went and got lost at sea, he asked yzma (who was also his advisor) to take care of kuzco if anything happened to him. so, yeah, the writers who worked on the series clearly thought that yzma genuinely did raise kuzco, and nothing in the movie contradicts this.
and i find the idea of her being his only parental figure for pretty much his whole childhood incredibly interesting because, and this also goes back into why she wouldn't be a better ruler than him--she mirrors him as a reflection of what would've become of him if he'd never met pacha. they're both incredibly arrogant, power-hungry, selfish, and cruel, with a tendency to blame their problems on everyone but themselves. yzma was even originally going to have her own reprise of kuzco's theme song "perfect world", which i really wish had been kept:
[ID: Lyrics that read:
I'Il be the sovereign queen of the nation
And the chicest chick in creation
I'm the cat with all the cream and ooh-la-la
This deadly concentration
Will put an end to my frustration
Now this perfect world begins and ends with moi
What's my name?
Yzma, Yzma, Yzma
Yzma (what's my name?)
Yzma, Yzma (What'd you say?)
Yzma (Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) Yzma.
End ID]
(this song can be fully heard in "the sweatbox", the documentary about the making of the movie, and is also on youtube btw)
anyway, i'm sure yzma would not exactly have been the most nurturing or hands-on guardian, especially given that she and kuzco don't exactly treat each other like family. but it makes a lot of sense to think that her behavior influened kuzco's throughout the years. and for the entire movie, she remains determined to kill him. when he tries to reason with her and admits that he should've been nicer, she says the same thing to him that he originally said when he fired her. she never grows or changes and in the end, she hurts the one person who was willing to stand by her (and even then, kronk had never fully been on board with her plan) and he ends up trying to crush her with a chandelier. kuzco on the other hand is able to realize the error of his ways, come to regret who he was in the past, and start taking steps toward being a better person. his theme song gets a reprise where it's changed from a song about one person being the center of the world to a Power Of Friendship song. why? because, as i've already mentioned, he has pacha.
pacha, who similarly to both yzma and kuzco is in a position of authority as the leader of the village but unlike either of them is gentle and humble. who isn't afraid to stand up to kuzco and be honest with him even though he's the emperor, who agrees to take him back to the palace but has no obligation to be so helpful, kind, and caring toward him--and just about every reason not to be--and still chooses to be anyway. pacha who is 45 years old (also stated in the sweatbox documentary) and can see that kuzco is practically still a kid, not a single day over 18, who has time to grow and change. pacha, who already has a wife and two kids with another on the way, but practically treats kuzco like one of his own. who acknowledges that if kuzco dies all his problems will be gone and then still worries about him and goes out of his way to rescue him after he wanders into the jungle. who sees kuzco shivering at night and covers him with his poncho, who carries him when he's genuinely too weak to keep walking, who refuses to give up on him even after repeatedly being betrayed by him because he believes there's good in everyone.
also, while yzma ends up repeating kuzco's harsh words of dismissal as she tells him of her plans to kill him, kuzco had previously repeated pacha's words that "nobody's that heartless" after he saved pacha's life. and as the movie progresses kuzco and pacha's relationship becomes more and more equal and is constantly contrasted by moments of yzma being cruel and unappreciative of kronk's kindness. a good example of this is how kronk is constantly being forced to carry yzma everywhere on his back while yzma literally walks all over him and steps on his hands when she gets down, whereas when pacha briefly carries kuzco after the latter collapses he tells him he'll have to walk the rest of the way later and kuzco doesn't even protest.
idk if i'm even explaining well what i'm trying to say here. but basically, if yzma actually raised kuzco and contributed to his current behavior, then she and pacha both are figures who guided him and helped him grow. only yzma helped him become the tyrant that he was at the start of the movie, who was selfish and callous and saw everyone else as beneath him. whereas pacha helped him see the value in being selfless and considerate of others. and in the end, yzma is stuck as a cat and nobody is concerned about her. kronk has found a new job that makes him genuinely happy, while kuzco has decided to build a hut on the hill next to pacha's and effectively joined his family. in the sweatbox documentary it's even mentioned that chicha and the kids were at risk of being removed from the film, but it was decided that they needed to be there because having just pacha as a single guy who lived alone wasn't interesting enough--kuzco needed to go from having basically an empty world where he had nobody to being able to come together with pacha's whole family. and i just think that's incredibly satisfying and beautiful. it also leads up to one of the few things i really do enjoy about the emperor's new school, which is the fact that during the show kuzco moves in with pacha and chicha and pretty explicitly thinks of them as basically his parents while he's like a son to them.
idk. i feel like my mind went in a million different directions while i was writing all this. but i guess i just think that for all of the praise the emperor's new groove gets for its comedy and for how hilarious yzma and kronk in particular are as a duo, the movie also has a lot of genuine heart that gets overlooked. kuzco's character growth and his unique dynamic with pacha is, for me, really what elevates the movie from just a funny movie that i like to one of my favorite disney movies. and i wish more people appreciated that aspect of it and saw it as a found family story in the same way that treasure planet, brother bear, and lilo and stitch are all found family stories.
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Machi's #12 DPxDC Idea
Dick shivered, Klarion had him against the wall and the sword. Quite literally. He had tie him up to a wall and now was threatening him with a sword.
"Relax," Klarion said. "I only want to talk."
"Funny way to show it," Dick quipped back.
"Oh? You mean this?" Klarion said swinging the sword. "Don't pay attention to it, is just a little failsafe in case things don't work as planned."
Dick narrowed his eyes, he was sure Klarion wasn't afraid of him or Batman so, what kind of creature could make him afraid? Dick needed to know more.
"What did you want to talk about anyway?"
Klarion swifter his feet, as if pondering what to say.
"Don't you ever get tired?" Klarion asked Dick surprising him.
"I mean, always in the same place, fighting the same fights, a never ending circle. It's so boring, so predictable. Wouldn't you like to fly away? To be able to see new places and meet new people?"
Dick thought about it, it was true that he was tired of being tied up to the same place. Back in his childhood he used to be constantly traveling, constantly moving. That ended when his parents died, Bruce had tried to help the itch by taking him on several expensive trips but it was not the same. He wanted to walk away without knowing where he would end up, enjoying the way more than the destiny itself. But he was fine, he was doing good, he was making the world a better place. His own comfort was secondary.
Klarion smiled, "that's what I thought."
Dick frowned, what were Klarion's intentions? But he didn't have time to ask. Klarion slapped something in his forefront as a portal opened.
"Klarion!" Yelled a feminine voice. "Time to pay up bitch!"
Klarion squawked and held his sword harder.
"He yearns for freedom! Take him!" He yelled as he pointed at Dick and took a step back. Dick gasped, so this was his plan! Not very original but very problematic for him.
Out of the portal came an old wrecked ship and from it fell a woman. She wore a mismatch of clothes from different time periods, several piercings on her pointed ears and a scarf tied up in her head. She also had long white hair and bright green eyes. Dick shivered as she smiled a too sharp smile.
"Not bad," she said getting closer to Dick. She turned to Klarion, "the payment is acceptable." Klarion let out a sigh of relief as she grabbed Dick's arm and pulled him up with her.
"Welcome abroad bitch, get ready to explore the realms and see what nobody has seen before. What nobody is supposed to see." Dick gulped as the boat traveled away through another portal
-
Bruce was desperate, it had been months since Dick had disappeared and they weren't any closer to find him than they were on day one. They had looked under every stone, every brick in the world and nothing. They had asked for favors from every person they knew, spent all the resources available to the justice league and even called for the green lanterns help. Nothing. Until Jason found a new book titled "kidnapped by the pirate queen" a romantic book about a rich boy that yearned for freedom and it was kidnapped by the pirate queen to travel the world and fell in love in the process. Coincidentally enough, it was written by one R.G.W. The batfam was divided if the clues were there or if it was a coincidence. Until the second book of the series came out, and then the third. With each new book it was more obvious that it was Dick writing the books, now only one question was, when they were going to meet their new sister in law?
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Baby Fever
Pairing: Miya Atsumu x f!reader
WC: 1.2k
Summary: Osamu and his wife just had a baby. Now Atsumu sees them everywhere.
A/N: This kind of took a very different direction than I was originally planning and tbh, I kinda hate it now, but I spent over two hours writing it, so I'm gonna roll with it anyway. Maybe when I re-read it in the morning, I'll hate it less 😅
There's a term for it. Atsumu isn't sure what it is, but he knows that as soon as you're exposed to something new, you start noticing it around you more and more. That must be why, ever since Osamu's son was born, he's been seeing babies everywhere. They're at the grocery store. They're at the park. Suddenly, half of his teammates have been expanding their families like it's some kind of competition.
Suffice to say, Atsumu has seen more than his share of babies over the past few weeks. Sure, they're cute, or whatever. When a baby smiles at you, you can't help but smile back. When they grab onto your finger, you let them hold it for as long as they want. When they engage you in a staring contest across the grocery store aisle, you only put up a little bit of a fight before giving them the satisfaction of winning, flashing a sheepish smile at their mom or dad as you turn the corner.
The sight of the little monsters has started to trigger a strange twinge in Atsumu's middle, which he chalks up to the fact that he's an uncle now. There's a brand new member of his family, and he's really happy for Osamu and his wife. Seeing the babies everywhere reminds him of that. That's all it is.
See, the two of you had talked about this. You aren't ready for kids right now. He's in the prime of his volleyball career, and you love your job. You're both happy as just the two of you, spending your free time together doing the things you enjoy and getting a full eight hours of sleep each night. Having a baby would change everything. Your last discussion on the topic, right after Osamu and his wife had shared their pregnancy with the two of you, had ended on that exact note. He's pretty confident that's still how you feel. He's relatively confident that's still how he feels, too.
Of course, the longer it goes on, the harder it is to explain away. He watches Osamu doting on his son, snuggling him close and kissing his cheeks and smiling bigger than Atsumu's ever seen before. He knows his brother is tired, but he doesn't seem to care. He watches the way he looks at his wife, and the way both of them look at their son, and it softens something inside him. He sees you cradling your nephew close, cooing down at him with a soft smile, and his heart turns over in his chest.
Finally, one day, he comes to Osamu with a question.
"What's it like?" Osamu is wiping down the counter at Onigiri Miya, clearly trying to disguise his surprise and mild consternation at seeing his brother show up out of the blue, five minutes before closing time.
"What's what like?" He grunts, scrubbing at a ground-in glob of rice.
"Y'know," Atsumu gestures vaguely, "Being a dad."
"Ah," Osamu hums, grasping that quickly what this is all about. "It's incredible. I mean, don't get me wrong," He chuckles, "It ain't easy. It's way worse than whatever ya try to imagine based off a' everybody's helpful advice," He lifts his hands in air quotes. "But somehow, it's also worth it, in a way ya never could've imagined it would be. The way ya feel every time ya look at 'em - ya can't even put it into words."
Atsumu isn't sure how he's supposed to respond to that, so he just nods. Osamu smiles, looking him up and down with a too-critical eye. "Any special reason yer asking?"
"No," Atsumu says with a quick shake of his head, "Just curious, 's all."
Osamu nods, not saying another word, but the smirk on his face is more than enough to make Atsumu want to knock it clean off. Osamu's answer is exactly what he'd been afraid of.
It comes to a head one sunny Saturday afternoon when the two of you meet up with Osamu and his wife and son to visit a festival. The afternoon is starting to wind down when Osamu unceremoniously dumps the baby into Atsumu's arms. "Hey, mind watching him while we go to the bathroom quick?"
"Ah, sure," Atsumu says to his brother's already-retreating back. You poke at the baby's irresistibly pudgy cheeks, giggling along with him when your attentions illicit a bout of laughter.
"Oh my, what a sweetheart!" The elderly woman seems to appear out of nowhere, something Osamu is constantly describing but which Atsumu hasn't experienced until this moment. "Such a happy baby," She grins. "How old is he?" She looks expectantly at you, and after you gather your wits, you answer her.
The woman nods knowingly, as if she'd predicted as much. "Are you having a fun day with Mommy and Daddy?" She asks next in a goofy voice, completely oblivious to the way Atsumu chokes on the breath he'd just been inhaling and you shoot him a wide-eyed glance.
"Ah, well, actually-" You stammer out, at the same time Atsumu blurts, "We're not his parents."
"I see," She says good-naturedly, "Well even so, he looks very happy with you." With that, she goes on her merry way, and you and Atsumu share a bewildered look. Osamu and his wife return from the bathroom, and neither of you mentions the awkward encounter. It doesn't come up until later that evening, when the two of you are lying in bed.
"That was really somethin' today, huh?" Atsumu asks, trying to ignore the fact that his stomach is suddenly in knots.
"The old lady?" You chuckle weakly. "Yeah, 'Samu's right, they really don't have any shame, do they?"
"Yeah," Atsumu says, then takes a deep breath. "Do ya think, maybe, it's time to have that conversation again?"
You're silent for a few moments, and he can't quite place the emotions that cross your face. He doesn't have to explain which conversation he means.
"Maybe," You finally agree in a low voice. "Are you saying that your decision might be different this time?" It could be his imagination, but Atsumu almost thinks that you look hopeful.
"Maybe," He says carefully. "Would yours?"
"Maybe," You echo him, but there's a smile playing at the corners of your mouth.
"There would be a lot of changes," He says softly, fingertips tracing aimless shapes up and down your arm.
"Maybe we're ready for those changes," You murmur back, catching his hand in yours and letting him twine your fingers together.
He brings your hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to the back of it. "As long as I've got you, I think I might be."
"Me too," You say, leaning in slightly to nudge the tip of your nose against his. When he kisses you, he hopes the pressure of his lips can convey even the things he can't put into words. He can't imagine living this life with anyone else.
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An original species inspired my the moon phases :]! Long post warning ⚠️
These are new moons, they are the smallest and the weakest sub species of the moon kinds
These little creatures can be found everywhere, some living amongst the humans, some in the forest, some even under water
Their height range from 5cm to 30cm
New moons who lives in the human world disguises themselves as everyday objects so they can blend in and not be caught, they steal little trinkets and foods when human’s not looking
These are the crescent moons, they act mostly the same as new moons the only difference is they’re taller and stronger
New moons would sometimes disguise themselves as other moon species so they don’t get attacked by them. Moons are not the kindest to the other sub species. New Moons usually go out in a group of 3 or more, that way they can look out for each other in the big dangerous world.
New moons dress up in heavy layers not only to blend in with their surroundings, it also because their natural body is very soft and fragile, they need the layer of protection to not die easily in the wild
Their disguise of choice is like their second skin it aids and protects them, even tho it is changeable and won’t hurt them when damaged, the little guys value them greatly
This is a Sun, they are the natural enemies of the Moons, while Moons are like little humans, Sun are more like big shiny long dogs, they’re not as smart as the moons but they are much stronger and faster than them
Suns hunts New Moons as food
And in return New Moons do the same
Whenever a Sun is killed by the New Moons, the little creatures would gather together and throw a big party to celebrate their rare victory against their biggest threat in the wild
They called the celebration “The Feast of Eclipse”, like the name, Eclipse appears rarely, and it is the only time a moon can dominate a sun, even if only for a short amount of time
During the celebration, they would dance and sing around their kill and pray for the safety of their kind and for their god to protect them against the many predators they face. It’s a traditional ritual for them
After the ritual, they would cut up the Sun beast and prepare its flesh for the feast. Suns are very good nutritions for the Moons so they won’t let anything go to waste, they make wine out of their blood and meat for the main dishes, after the meal left over flesh will be make into jerkies, and bones will be turn into tools or decorations
Enough about New Moon, let's talk about some other sub species of Moons
This is a Full moon, they are the rarest of the Moon kind. Alike other Moons, they also disguises themselves to blend in their surroundings, but unlike others who gathers material to make their second skin, Full Moons are natural shapeshifters. They release a orb like liquid from the back of their head which made up their body, they can mold it into any form, the only flaw is that they are not able so change their facial structure and their skin patterns.
Full Moons are on the top of the Moon food chain, they eat every single Moon species which including their own kind. These bastards eat ugly look away.
They are the only Moon kind who can own and train a Sun, some keep them as pets but most use as hunting dogs to catch New Moons.
This is all I got at the moment! here's a chart of all the Moon phases, I am planning to introduce the Quarters and Gibbous in the future so keep an eye out if you're interested! I love making character concept it gives my brain something to work with when I'm on break :]
Oh also! feel free to make your own little Moon Phase creature designs and please tag me if you plan to post it I wanna see I’m curious what y’all make of them!
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On the Way to a Smile (Dark!Rafe Cameron x F!Reader)
Paring: Dark!Rafe Cameron x F!Reader
Summary: On the cusp of your wedding, you are haunted by a shade from your past who just can't seem to leave you alone.
Warnings: Implied non-con, drugging, loss of virginity, original characters, wedding crashing, possessive behaviour, flashbacks, bullying, substance use, cheating, implied eating + body image issue (18+)
🦇gill – "I made a story board for this on pinterest if anyone is interested, this is my first dark fic + semi smut so any feedback would be very appreciated! I also included some linked visuals but that's only how I imagined things to look, you can follow your own destiny." 🌬 17k (buckle up ya'll)
i.
"What's all this?"
Strewn across the Cameron's dining table was an array of objects that could only be described as a mixed blessing. Multiple binders containing silk swatches protruding from the edges, sticky notes with potential dietary requirements, and different flora species – planning a wedding was less of a journey and more of a ride.
Averting your burning eyes from your laptop screen, you acknowledged Rafe with a cordial smile, lazily gesturing to the conglomeration of wedding itinerary.
"My future."
The blonde simply hummed, eyes narrowing as he leisurely rounded the dark oak to stand beside you. He silently lingered there for a moment, ring-clad fingers dancing across the drafted invitations with an indecipherable expression.
"Where's Sarah? Ain't she supposed to be helping you with all this shit?"
You refrained from rolling your eyes. Rafe was, after all, a friend of the family, and by extension earned your respect. Even If he could be a complete dick–
"I am helping, thank you very much!"
Sarah's voice, now tinged with irritation, reverberated from the pantry before she emerged with a bag of microwave popcorn. "What do you have to offer other than giving us a headache?" A deep crease settled between her brows as she threw her flaxen locks into a low ponytail, setting the bag into the microwave.
"Well you see, Sarah, I'm a man with a fine eye for detail." He prodded his haughtily puffed chest which Sarah scoffed at, glancing towards you with disbelief.
"Says the boy who'd be leaving the house with his shoelaces undone were it not for Wheezie."
"Now you're just making shit up–"
"Both of you, please!" With an exasperated sigh, you cradled your throbbing temples in the seat of your palms. "If you're going to argue, do it somewhere else."
Ding!
A much-needed reprieve from the stifling tension in the room, the microwave beeped, signalling that the popcorn was ready. However, the pause was short-lived. As soon as the timer stopped, the silence was disrupted by Rafe's voice. His tone mocking and derisive.
"Ordering me around in my own house, hm?" His short, dirty blonde locks cascaded over his eyes as he shook his head, failing to conceal his lour. "Nah, that's not how it works sweetheart. Maybe I'd allow it if you were marrying me."
"Rafe." Sarah hissed. "Shut up and get out."
In the typical fashion of the first-born Cameron, Rafe disregarded his sister's command, instead opting to leer down at you like some voracious beast reading to trap you in its gaping maw.
"So where's the lucky man? He got to stake his claim, now he's leaving all the work for you?"
You ignored his taunts, for that was what they were. He fed off reactions like a leech. You had come to realise this over the years as he evolved into an obnoxious variant of the boy you once admired. Rather than giving him the attention he craved so dearly, you turned your focus to Sarah as she came to sit beside you.
"If you must know, he's working to pay off his student loans," You fought the urge to bite back at his spiteful remarks, ultimately losing when you added; "Maybe one day when you take care of your responsibilities, you will understand."
Sarah suppressed her snot beneath a mouthful of popcorn. As you reached for a handful of your own, a hand slid in between, suddenly pushing the bowl out of reach.
"Careful." Rafe drawled warningly, pointing to a trumpet silhouette dress advertised in a women's magazine you had circled with a red marker. "That dress is real pretty, it would be a shame if you outgrew it."
ii.
It was winter, 2006.
You were five, perched on your mother's lap in the front seat of your father's Chrysler 300C as she consoled you through hiccuping sobs. This Christmas, the esteemed Camerons were your family's special holiday destination; a far cry from the usual dinner and movie at your grandparents.
Numerous road signs were posted throughout Figure 8, warning drivers to approach the winding roads with caution due to the unusually high levels of sleet. Despite the treacherous conditions, your father traversed along as he usually would. You whimpered and pawed at your mother's blouse in a bid to be reassured, but she merely shushed you.
"Don't worry, baby. You're safe."
As you pulled up along a circular drive encompassed by large plains of neatly trimmed verdure, a house came into view… if you could even call it that.
A quadruple frontage acting as a supporting beam for the large balcony above donned with red, white and blue flags and multiple seating arrangements. On the right side of the glass entry doors was a metal plaque spelling 'Tannyhill'
You beamed up at the place in awe. "Is this a castle?"
Your father chuckled, ruffling your loose hair.
"Something like that."
A man emerged from the double doors, dressed in the typical 'low-key' Figure 8 attire: white slacks, a chequered shirt, and leather loafers. He was a splitting image of your father and all the other men on the island, carrying an aura of confidence in every sedate step.
You were urged out of the car with a gentle but firm push. The strange man’s beady eyes— like two pale corks screwed into his head— landed on you disconcertingly, as though you were a microorganism being inspected beneath a scope.
"Hello, little one." His eyes crinkled as he smiled, bending down to your level. "What's your name?"
Your young mind could not fathom why he frightened you like the animated villain in your favourite TV show. When he extended his hand to you, you instinctively retreated into your mother's skirt.
"Don't mind her, Ward." Your father emerged from the driver’s side of the vehicle. "She'll warm up real fast if you offer her something sweet."
"A sweet tooth?" The man, Ward, mused. His voice mild-mannered and pleasant to the ear. "My son is the same, I'm sure you'll get along just fine."
Inside, the house was even more impressive. Tannyhill had been the proud ancestral home of the Cameron family for generations and their wealth and prestige were evident in the sheer opulence of its interior. The walls of the hallway were draped in thick upholstery, varying in shades of crimson, indigo and gold. An ornate floral pattern embroidered in gold thread was meticulously sewn onto the walls.
Adorning the hallway to the kitchen were multiple picture frames. One in particular caught your interest; a young boy sat on Ward's lap in a velvet-lined chair, smiling and well-groomed with golden locks and a well-pressed collar.
You wondered if this was the aforementioned son.
Ward's explanation of the Plantation's historical significance fell on deaf ears as you gaped up at the towering ceilings. Your mother attempted to conceptualise it for you through the metaphor of an onion; Tannyhill was composed of multiple layers of history, each integrating to create the rich heritage value of the place.
"You came here once when you were just a little bean in my belly."
"I don't remember that."
She pulled you into her side by the shoulder as she laughed. "Of course you don't, darling."
Ward came to a halt at the staircase, raising a finger to his lips.
"Sarah's nursery is upstairs. We just got her down before you arrived but I'll let you have a peek."
"Oh, that’s alright, Ward. We wouldn't want to disturb her." Your father interjected, mirroring Ward’s hushed tone.
"That won't be an issue, my angel is a heavy sleeper," he whispered, motioning for you to follow him with a reassuring wave of his hand.
“Rafe's up there at the moment,” Confusion enveloped you as a frown settled in place of his previous jovial demeanour. When his stiffened gaze met yours, heat bloomed beneath your cheeks and you perked up. “Maybe you can keep him company, little one."
The first door on the right was painted a light, dusty rose. Above the door frame were little wooden letters decorated by fairies and flowers spelling out ‘Sarah’. The dry hinges screeched as Ward opened the door.
“Rafe, come meet our guests.”
The boy from the picture emerged, older now and taller than expected. Unlike the bright smile he wore in the photograph, there was not a trace of joy on his face. But despite his gloomy demeanour, there was a certain charm about him that you couldn't help but notice.
Beautiful, he’s beautiful.
“Hello.” He said robotically, as though the syllables were being tugged out of his mouth by an invisible wire.
Ward glared disapprovingly at his son. There was a silent exchange between the two before Rafe finally sighed as if submitting to some sort of inevitable conclusion.
“Merry Christmas, it’s nice to meet you all.”
His eyes met yours. Crystal orbs of cerulean, framed by a dark outer ring… you were transfixed by his beauty.
You sat mutely at dinner, only answering direct questions with the bare minimum of words. Mrs Cameron was a lovely and welcoming woman who did her best to include you in the conversation despite your reluctance to participate. Rafe's occasional snarky remarks seemed to anger Ward. His face would darken each time and he would glare in his son's direction with a look of disapproval. The tension between the two was thick, oozing onto you from across the table. You made eye contact with Rafe a few times. He held it with no indication of discomfort whilst you were always the one to eventually flit your attention elsewhere, unable to withstand the strange intensity.
As the maids began to clear the table, Ward suggested to both you and Rafe, “Go and play while us adults have our talk.”
With the sun making a hasty departure below the treeline in the distance, It had cooled off exponentially outside. You trailed behind Rafe as he led you to a small shed next to the pool, struggling to tug your gloves over trembling fingers.
You waited outside as Rafe disappeared beyond the frame, returning a few moments later with a black and white ball.
“Do you know how to play?”
The ball was familiar but you shook your head, unsure of the rules.
“Don’t touch the ball with your hands or make contact with me.”
“Make contact?” You tilted your head in confusion.
“You can’t kick your enemy on purpose, got it?”
You gave a nod– still unsure about why you’d want to kick anyone on purpose– and Rafe tossed the ball at you. The ground was partially frozen beneath your feet and you stumbled backwards with the sudden force of the ball, nearly toppling over.
“Good, let's play.”
At first, it felt hopeless as your feet slipped on the icy ground cartoonishly. Rafe’s size, strength and experience did not deter him from going full pelt, and it quickly became apparent that the only way you could gain any leverage over him was if you were to be sneaky– which of course, was easier said than done.
Every pivot of your foot he anticipated. His agile movements made it nearly impossible to bypass him and you found yourself huffing in frustration as he swiftly confiscated the ball from your weak stance.
“This is not fair!” You cried exasperatedly, ego depleted after numerous failures.
“You’ve got to try harder if you want to beat me.”
Rafe’s arrogant tone only stoked the flames of your wrath. Slowing down, you realised that your frantic footwork before an attack left your defences vulnerable. Watching Rafe’s strategy, you could see that he was coming head-on, anticipating that you would focus your resources on an attack.
This time rather than barreling towards him head-on, you hunkered down into a low stance, turning slightly and awaiting his arrival. Once within range, you swiftly kicked your right foot out, connecting with the ball. It shot through his legs, the suddenness of your attack delaying his reaction ever so slightly, allowing you ample opportunity to rush past him and possess the ball.
After the shock wore off and Rafe turned to face you, his face was adorned by a countenance of surprise. “Wow, not bad.”
“Got you!” You giggled, spinning around in glee.
“You’re more fun than Sarah.” Rafe earnestly remarked. “She never wants to play. All she does is sleep and cry.”
“I like playing with you.”
The corners of his lips tugged upwards, his dour demeanour melting away into a softer grin.
“Let’s try something different.” He suggested, your stomach clenching in apprehension at the mischievous glint in his eyes.
“...Ok.”
“You stand over there,” He pointed to a small clearing between two trees, “That is the goal. You have to try and protect it.”
“Ok.” You giggled, heart thumping in rhythm with your hasty steps.
“Ready?”
You gave a thumbs up and he backed up. Once he was pleased, he took an initial calculative step before thundering towards the ball, sending it soaring through the air. You were sure that it would not make contact with you as it was well above your head. However, after it had risen, it quickly descended back down with the speed and precision of a hunting eagle. It slammed into the edge of your brow, making contact with a surprising amount of force. Your legs gave way under the pressure as you clutched the spot where the ball hit, eyes tearing up from the impact.
“Ow.” Your voice wobbled as you cradled your head.
“Oh, oops.” Rafe rushed to kneel beside you, gingerly lifting your chin to inspect your face. “Are you ok?”
You didn’t respond, and when he noticed the tears welling up in your eyes, his entire body stiffened.
“Hey, hey, hey. Don’t cry, you’re ok.”
Blinking furiously, you managed to keep it together, but your voice came out as a dry croak. “Am I bleeding?”
“Nah, it’ll just be a little bruise. Nothing to worry about.”
His assurance dampened your concern, and you nodded. “Even though that really hurt, I still won. The ball didn’t pass the trees!”
Rafe began to chuckle but was abruptly disturbed by the click of the back door. Your mother called your name into the still air. Sniffling, you brushed your hair back into place when his tight grip clasped onto your shoulders, stilling your frantic movements.
“I was saving this for later,” His voice was hushed now as he removed a lollipop from his back pocket. “But it’s yours if you promise not to tell.”
Wiping the corner of your eyes, you smiled, “Alright.”
iii.
You froze in front of the mirror.
Floor length, delicately laid seams stretching taut against soft curves, the colour perfectly harmonious with your undertones– The dress was a beautiful testament to how far you've come, like a chain binding the past and the present together.
There was just one issue…it wouldn’t zip up the whole way.
You urged the seamstress to keep trying, tugging the resistant zip until it eventually gave way. It didn't, and on one particularly harsh tug, the zip got caught and pinched your flesh. You hissed, and she apologised before releasing it down and backing off.
“Your wedding is in a week?” She inquired, glancing over your frame insouciantly.
“Yes, Saturday week.”
“I should be able to add some alterations to the back in that time.”
Her attempt at assuaging you was futile – your mind could only focus on the wheel of possibilities, endlessly spinning. “What if there’s nothing you can do? Or the alteration destroys the style of the dress? Is there another alternative?”
Her smile was solemn as she met your frantic gaze in the reflection. “Well, I suppose the only other suggestion I can make is to move more and eat less.”
You pressed your lips together before stepping out of the changing room into the harshly lit waiting space. Your mother’s eyes immediately widened as she shot off the couch with a mixture of admiration and concern concocting within her irises.
“Oh, Darling. The dress is beautiful, but you don’t look happy. What’s the matter?”
“There is a slight issue…with the back.” The seamstress sighed, urging you to turn.
Your mother attempted to stifle her gasp beneath a freshly manicured hand. She skittered forward brushing delicate fingers over the fabric, prodding and pushing at the broad opening.
“Mum,” You groaned. “Just be honest with me, how bad is it?”
“Well, it’s about two inches so it’s not unnoticeable.” A crease formed in her brow as she inspected you, momentarily stuck in thought. “Have you considered styling your hair down?”
“Yes, but that's not going to fix the issue.”
She nodded, turning her attention to the seamstress, “Ma’am, I am willing to pay the price to have my daughter's dress prioritised.”
Before she could even consider the request, the familiar chime of your phone rang out, breaking your dazed stupor. As you peered at the screen, the name vibrantly lighting it up like a lighthouse beacon made you deeply exhale.
“Sorry, I’ll just answer this.”
“Is it Thomas?” Your mother’s ears piqued up in interest as you shuffled back to the changing room, her thin lips stretching into a downward crescent.
“Don’t sound more excited than me, mum.”
You swiped the accept button on the call after clicking the lock shut. “Hey sweetheart, how’s it going at the shop?”
A pit swelled within your stomach. “Things could be better.”
“Is there an issue? Last time you couldn’t have sounded happier.” Thomas’s voice was laced with concern, the image of his deep-set frown and fidgeting fingers flashing into your mind.
“I mean, it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Just a minor issue with the beading.”
“Alright then, so it could be worse? Regardless, I’m certain you look beautiful.”
“You’re kind of required to say that, y’know, as my fiance.” You whispered timorously.
“Required or not doesn’t make a difference if I mean it all the same.”
The impressive weight of the dress’s train dragged the bodice down with it as it cascaded into a pile of limbs on the floor. A chuffed smile melded onto your face. “Was there any real purpose to this call?”
“Depends on what you count as purposeful. I wanted to hear my beautiful fiancé’s voice…and ask what other plans she has for the day?”
This time you snorted. Thomas was always vying for your attention. “I’m supposed to be meeting Edie at the club for lunch. She’s afraid you’ll hog up all my attention after the wedding and plans to get me drunk so she can find out all your dirty secrets.”
“Well she’s not wrong about the first part,” He heartily chuckled. “But try not to reveal too much, I think we’ve had enough rumours spread about us for a lifetime.”
“I’ll do my best. Anyway, I probably should get going, I’m already running late.”
“Alright, I’ll see you later then. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Your mother resumed her position on the plush white couch while she waited for you, snapping up as you beckoned for her towards the entrance. She stalked closely behind your tail, approaching warily as you headed to your car.
“We discussed options on how the dress could be altered. It seems like the quickest solution will be to make it backless.”
“Honestly at this point, I don’t really care,” A heavy and tired sigh escaped your lips as you unlocked your car. “As long as it fits, that's all that matters to me.”
“Darling,” Her cold grasp caught your arm, forcing you to face her. “I know how you get. Your mind is all over the place, I can see it in your eyes.”
“It’s fine mum. I gave up on perfection a long time ago.”
“Either way, this is your big day and I want you to enjoy it. Don’t let this small mishap ruin it for you, alright?” She sagely advised, soothingly rubbing your shoulders.
“Ok, I won’t. Promise.” Though the smile was forced, you didn’t have it in you to counter her pleading eyes. She hugged you firmly, planting a kiss on your cheek as you parted ways.
The country club was brimming with familiar faces, each passing by with a nod of the head. In all honesty, you couldn’t remember half of their names, only being acquainted through your parents. Etiquette was an expected part of the club, though, so you returned their superficial pleasantries with an equally superficial smile.
The dining hall was occupied by an elderly couple sharing hushed whispers beside the far right window and a group of young men ravenously devouring their meals after an afternoon playing golf.
However, there was no sign of Edie.
Allowing your intuition to guide you through the hive-like hallways of the facility, you eventually ended up at the outdoor bar overlooking the course green. That was where you found her; firey tresses flowing loosely over her shoulders, hunched over the bartop as she swirled a glass of glistening rosè.
“I see you started without me.”
Without having to turn she squealed as the sound of your voice carried over to her, attracting the attention of curious onlookers. “You made it! I was starting to think you’d bailed on me…again.”
“Ed, that was months ago. I think it’s time we move on.”
She hummed and with a light giggle tapped the stool beside her. “Only if you let me buy you a drink and promise not to complain about the heat.”
“Deal.”
Nothing ever changed with Edie. Some people would describe her as immature, solidly stuck in the same old adolescent patterns of staying out late, drinking to the point of blacking out and entertaining unsuitable partners based on her attraction to them. But despite the opinion of others, her consistency came as a comfort to you. She knew how to have fun, and this energy never ceased to rub off on you.
“Now I know you’re probably sick of hearing it,” Already knowing where this was going, you rolled your eyes to emphasise how you felt about this turn in the conversation. Her voice was slightly slurred at this point, having gone through half a bottle of prosecco together. If you didn’t keep your wits about you, your tongue would soon become looser than you wished.
“But I have to ask–”
“Ed.” Your tone was firm.
“Are you sure about this?”
You sighed, leaning back in the stool like a beleaguered outpost, utterly surrendered and defenceless against her heavy onslaught.
“The amount of times you’ve asked me this is making me think you just don’t like him.”
“Babe, you know it’s more complicated than that.” She gently clasped your hand. “If you’re happy, I’m happy, promise…even with his track record.”
Your muscles stiffened, weighing you down like a heavy stone in your seat. “We put that behind us many years ago.”
“Well yeah,” She reticently continued. “I guess I’m still in the process of forgiving him, though.”
“If I can then I’m sure you have it in you.”
Her viridian eyes continued to pierce into you as she tilted her glass up to glossed lips. Sensing the finality in your tone, she nodded.
“So, are you?”
“Am I what?” You chortled incredulously.
“Happy!”
“Yes! Trust me if I wasn’t you’d be the first one to hear about it.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” She shimmied her shoulders with a giggle, the previously heavy aura dissipating and being charioted away by the breeze.
The debate over your love life has been a perpetual thorn in your side for many years. People liked to voice their opinions as though your life was paltry gossip they could pass on to their hairdresser. But not many took the time to consider your perspective, your feelings, your anguish.
Edie geared the topic of discussion to her latest rendezvous. A welcome change. Her sporadic lifestyle always kept you on your toes, considering there had been no major updates in your life for some time now... well, aside from the engagement of course. With the warm buzz pulsating through your veins, nothing could disturb the serene ambience of the club.
Almost nothing.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the two finest women on this island.” Kelce, and that could only mean–
“And if it isn’t our favourite troublesome trio. What brings y'all here this evening?”
Rafe lingered behind his posse like a shadow, his feathery locks tucked beneath a dull grey cap. Though his eyes were shielded by black-out shades, you could sense the burning heat of his gaze from a mile away– your body well attuned to it.
“Only the same as you two of course. Mind if we join you?”
“Sorry boys, but it’s kind of a girl’s night.” You quickly interjected, masking the unease in your tone with a fleeting smile.
Edie groaned your name, “Come on, the more the merrier.”
“Yeah come on,” Rafe echoed petulantly. “It’s been a while since we last hung out.” And you got the feeling he wasn’t talking about the rest of them.
Kelce and Topper occupied the two stools adjacent to Edie, leaving the last available seat directly beside you. Rafe was entirely isolated from the group, nursing a bitterly scented beer, and you had become his sole companion.
His stool made an awful scraping sound as he encroached on your personal space. The thick, solid weight of his thigh nudging into yours caused you to flinch and you could have sworn he smirked at the.
“So, how’ve you been?” He lazily drawled and you didn’t miss the way he blatantly zeroed in on your ring.
“The same as always Rafe, but I can’t say that bothers me.”
“No? Y’know that surprises me, you were always so…adventurous. Didn’t think you’d settle for the housewife lifestyle so soon.”
“You of all people should know that others can change.” You argued with a morose huff.
“Yeah, but not you.” His chuckle was merely a blank imitation of humour, shamelessly inauthentic.
“This is kind of unfair. You seem to know my whole life story while I can barely piece yours together these days.”
“You wanna know what I’ve been doing?” You nodded and he slouched back against the bar stool, taking a hefty swig of his beer and removing his shades with a flick of the wrist.
“I was at the shops recently, saw your mum,”
“...Ok?” You scoffed, struggling to see the relevance.
“She says you’ve been acting strange lately, distant, that true?”
“She always thinks I’m acting strangely.” She also apparently likes to gossip about my personal life.
“Thing is,” He paused for a moment, grimacing as if struggling to formulate the proper words. You knew better. Nothing Rafe did was without reason. “She’s under the impression it’s got something to do with the big day.”
“The big day, are you kidding me?”
Your heart synchronised with the beat of the music, drowning out all other immaterial noise as it pounded slow and steady in your ears. For the first time that evening, you dared a glimpse into Rafe’s eyes, immediately noticing his pupils dilated to the size of pennies.
“Jesus– Rafe,” You hissed, snatching his chin between your fingers. “I thought you gave up on that shit.”
“Always worryin’ about me.” A humourless laugh floated from his hollow chest. Cool silver dug into the supple flesh of your wrist as he gently pried your hand away. With a bated breath, you snatched the limb from his grasp.
“Yeah, well someone has to.” You scoffed. Remanence of snow dusted his collar and without thinking you brushed it away, watching as it fluttered into small clouds before dispersing.
“I did give up on it, by the way,” You frowned as your eyes flitted back up to him, brow raising in disbelief considering the blaring evidence that suggested otherwise. “But something’s been bothering me recently. You know what that is?”
“No.”
His grin was so juvenile you struggled to fathom how this man-child before you was in actuality a twenty-two-year-old well on the way to developing his frontal lobe.
He leant forward, resting the weight of his upper body on those muscly thighs, shallow breaths puffing hot and dewy onto your neck. There was no subtlety to his show of bravado. No attempt to hide his objective as the invisible string urged him forward, enabling his crude behaviour.
He wanted to make you suffer.
“The fact that I may have been the first man to have you, but in a week… I might not be the last.”
iv.
Brighton Grammar wasn’t any ordinary school, and it certainly wasn’t for the weak.
On your first day, you witnessed a scrawny boy with haphazard streaks of green throughout his locks get tripped in the hallway and laughed at. The next day, he returned with a full head of brown hair.
His conformity was duller, sure, but it removed a target off his back. The positive side to being different was that you stood out and the negative was that you stood out.
It was a lose-lose situation.
“I don’t see why you bother with all those clubs and shit.” Rafe dallied beside you with his hands stuffed in his pockets. He took it upon himself to chauffeur you between classes, and you didn’t miss the way the crowds parted for him like a proverbial red sea.
A sense of discomfort washed over you as Rafe’s hallowed presence had both girls and boys alike turning their heads. Then there was just you. Plain old you. It was unfair, like pitting a stone against a diamond– ultimately you stood no chance.
“I’m trying to find my passion and form connections. You should try it sometime, then maybe you won't be such a grouch.” He snarled and swerved to the side when you reached to pinch his arm. His reaction stirred a playful snicker from your lips.
“Uh-huh. You talk like my fuckin’ grandma, y’know that?”
“I guess that means, unlike some people I have manners.” He glared at you again, a growing grin nearly breaking his unbothered countenance. “Anyway, I am very capable of making my own decisions and I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“You, capable? That’s not something I ever thought I’d hear.”
“Oh screw you! Starting today I am an independent woman.”
This time he barked out a laugh. “Whatever you say, sweetheart.”
You came to a halt outside the locked classroom, leaning against the bulletin board frame and waving at your classmates as they mingled amongst each other. Rafe snatched the scheduling paper from your hands, snorting when you cursed him for it.
“General maths with Mr Dubra? Damn, all I can say is good luck.”
His words registered someplace in your mind, but your attention had ventured elsewhere. Rafe followed your transfixed gaze to the bulletin board; a bright-coloured poster with cursive font drew you in like a moth to a flame. In the centre of the A4 page was a picture of a small collective of students, the boy at the front particularly capturing your attention as his pointed finger directed at you.
Auditions for Brighton Grammar’s Hamlet are to be held in the auditorium during lunchtime this Thursday! Do you have what it takes thou thespian?
“I think I’ll join the theatre club.”
Rafe’s expression could only be described as utterly mortified. “Hey if you want to be labelled a fucking loser, be my guest,” He raised his hands in surrender. “I ain't gonna stop you since you’re an ‘independent woman’ now.”
Your attempt to swing at him failed miserably as he dodged your attack with ease.
Ironically enough, you had been joking. The spotlight never called to you the thought of that much attention made your skin crawl. What you were drawn to on the other hand was the underappreciated art of stage crew, the glue that binds a production together.
But the ironic part of it all was that you did end up joining. For one, pathetic and degrading reason:
Thomas Hughes. The boy on the poster.
While you would describe Rafe as universally attractive, Thomas was the kind of handsome that not everyone could appreciate; a somewhat lanky build, eyes deep set into his skull as though he were eternally sleep deprived and unkempt hair tied into a loose bun.
But most notable was his aura, one of complete self-assurance and radiating warmth. He was also in Rafe’s year level– the grade above you –and you were certain the blonde would not approve, which made it all the more thrilling.
And for the sole reason of your silly little schoolgirl crush, you found yourself itching to get out of class after fourth period on Thursday. Unbeknownst to the pack of hounds you liked to call friends.
“You coming to lunch?” Topper asked as you passed him in the hallway, heading in the opposite direction of the cafeteria.
You shook your head with an affable grin. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”
“Rafe won’t be happy.”
“Remind me to give a fuck.”
The auditorium was located on the west wing of the school, an old block that had been neglected by the school's previous funding. The heavy double doors creaked as you pushed through them, eyes momentarily adjusting to the dim lighting.
At the front of the stage sat a panel. Some students, some older, presumably teachers. You took a seat a few rows behind them, intent on simply observing.
There were six others in the crowd, bouncing their knees and fidgeting with their jewellery anxiously. All apart from one girl who sat up straight, clad in a stained white gown. She caught your intrigued gaze and softly beamed in return, offering you a wave.
Thomas emerged from the right wing clasping a manila folder. “What a turnout, huh? Now as you probably all know, I will be starring as Hamlet–” The audience erupted in a fit of claps and he bent over into a small bow.
“Thank you, thank you, I am honoured. But more importantly, we are in desperate need of an Ophelia, Gertrude and a Polonius. The show can not go on without them! So I invite you all today to give it your best shot.”
He gave a cue to someone in the light box and the overhead fresnels were adjusted to a neutral glow. “Well then, I don’t see any point in keeping you all waiting. Who would like to go first?”
The girl in the white gown sprung her hand up with little hesitation. “Alright, thank you, Cindy. The stage is all yours.”
Cindy, as you now came to know her, strode up the steps, hips swaying confidently like a lioness on the prowl. She was offered a script but turned it down, “I’ve memorised this act.” Another girl in the crowd scoffed, shaking her head.
As she began, you took note of the dip in her cadence as it transitioned from her naturally firm voice to something delicate and wispy. She had an interesting way of manoeuvring across the stage, light-footed movements carrying her graciously on the wooden surface akin to a small cloud conquering the great big sky. As her performance came to an end, the panel of judges clapped and hooted, and she hid her face in the palms of her hands as it turned notably red.
Thomas offered his hand to help her off the stage, “Great job Cindy! Although I would add for you to maybe tone down on the crazy. It is only the beginning of the play, Ophelia is still fairly sane.”
The gleam in her eyes faltered slightly. “Oh–uh…ok. I’ll remember that for next time.”
“If there is a next time, don’t get too cocky,” Thomas spoke without looking up from his notes, missing the way her jaw fell open in surprise.
“Who’s next?”
The room was swept into silence, everyone glancing around with hesitation.
“You in the back!” Your head snapped upwards, heart dropping instantly, and you awkwardly gestured to confirm that he was indeed referring to you despite the burning of eyes trained on you like being under a spotlight. “Yes, you. Since no one else was brave enough to volunteer, I nominate you.”
“Oh, well I wasn’t actually going to audition. I was just interested in seeing how this all…works.” You chuckled nervously.
“Nonsense! We don’t bite, do we?” A chorus of ‘no we don'ts’’ echoed in the large space. “Besides, it’s worth a shot. Some people are naturals and you will never know if you don’t give it a go.”
It wasn’t like you couldn’t refuse. These were theatre kids not abductors with a gun held to your head. But there was an indescribable intensity radiating off of them as if they could sense the refusal on the tip of your tongue, and for the first time, you felt the agonising weight of what your mother would call peer pressure.
“Alright, why not.”
“That’s the spirit!” You were ushered up to the stage before you had the chance to reconsider, face burning and legs trembling. Thomas’s fingers scraped against yours as he handed over the script. Your breath momentarily hitched and you flinched as though a spark of electricity had been transferred between you.
“Just read what’s been highlighted, the other shit isn’t necessary.”
You nodded, mumbling in recognition as you noticed that at least two-quarters of the page had been highlighted in yellow.
Inhaling deeply, you centred your focus on the script, attempting to block out the sets of eyes trained on you. You opened your mouth…and laughed. A painstakingly timorous noise that could only be controlled by slapping a hand over your traitorous lips.
“I’m sorry, this feels so unnatural to me.”
“No need to apologise, we’ve all been there,” Thomas’s tone was earnest, void of any judgement and this quelled the pin-pricking sensation circulating through your extremities slightly. “How ‘bout we read through the scene first so you have a better understanding of it. Shakespearean language can be a real bastard if you’re not used to it.”
You giggled at his jocose attitude, relief washing over you like a damp cloth. “I think that would help, thank you.”
From what you gathered the scene went as follows: Ophelia's father Polonius and her brother Laertes say their good-byes, consecutively warning her not to trust Hamlet’s promises of love as well as ordering her not to see Hamlet again.
Although you still admired her performance, Thomas’s criticism of Cindy’s portrayal made much more sense now. Though Ophelia is famously driven to madness later on in the play– accumulating in her untimely and equally ambiguous end– at this stage of the story, she is merely a heartstruck girl observing the world through rose-tinted lenses.
“Good to go?”
“I think so.”
“Alright, everyone! Give it up for…sorry, what’s your name?”
Your voice echoed with a newfound confidence and the crowd repeated it in a cheer. Perhaps you had been wrong, maybe you did like the spotlight, only you’d never given it the proper chance.
Mimicking Cindy, you adopted a higher pitch. Not shrill like the birds that resided outside your window each morning, but a pleasant touch of feminine; soft and delicate. You ambled across the stage, not in the same floaty manner she had employed but instead surefooted, conveying Ophelia’s clear-mindedness at this stage of the play. Unlike Cindy, however, you did not have the lines down, forcing you to take a slower approach. But this seemed to work in your favour, your slowed speech giving you plenty of opportunity to focus on your facial expressions, ensuring that they matched what was being described in the cues.
As your performance wrapped up and the adrenaline steadily receded, you couldn’t resist fixating on Thomas in the crowd who gazed up at you as though you hung the moon and stars in the sky.
And for the first time at your godforsaken school, you felt seen.
v.
The hum of silence echoed in the Cameron’s dining room, encompassing the yellow walls in a damp sheen that refused to dry. Silver cutlery clinked against delicate porcelain, and as you picked away at your food, Rose smiled at you from across the table.
“So…Rafe tells us that you’re going to be in the school’s performance, what was the name–”
“Hamlet.” The blonde blankly interrupted, and you were surprised that he even knew that. “She’s playing the girl who kills herself.”
Ward hummed in interest, passing you the salad bowl. “That's excellent news. Theatre was a thriving business in my generation but it seems to have become somewhat of a dying art. Good on you for keeping it alive.”
“Well I didn’t exactly plan on joining, it just kind of happened–”
“She’s got a thing for the main guy, Tobias or some shit, that’s why she auditioned.”
“Rafe!” He grunted as you nudged his shin, lips peeling into a provoking smirk at your scolding.
“You gonna tell me I’m wrong?” He teased with a venomous undertone only you seemed to register, and your eyes narrowed at him.
“I want to see, I want to see, who’s this guy?” Sarah wheedled with her big brown eyes.
“Shut up, Sarah–”
“Rafe! Do not speak to your sister that way.” Ward’s voice boomed like a deafening clap of thunder, and once his pulsating anger settled, a small cry erupted from Wheezie who tried to conceal her tears beneath a dotted napkin. Rose was quick to placate the young girl with promises of dessert, whisking her off into the kitchen but not before refilling her glass of chardonnay.
Once they were out of sight, Ward beckoned Sarah to clamber onto his lap, folding her small face into his broad neck before regarding his son with a scalding glare. “Look at what you’ve done.”
The interaction was unsettling, to say the least, but not uncommon. Rafe’s lips pinched shut, suppressing a whimper. In the face of his father’s wrath, he would always detract from his usual tough persona, retreating into the shell of a wounded puppy. You didn’t blame him. Ward could be cruel with no regard for the effect his words had on his son, and you loathed him for his blatant favouritism.
You reached for his hand underneath the table, intertwining the cold extremity with your own. He flinched at first, aggressively flicking his head toward you. But as you gave it a gentle squeeze he seemed to catch on to your intention and his body fell back into a relaxed state.
You tried to be there for Rafe as much as you could, but despite your efforts, the void left by an absent father was irreplaceable. You could only try your best, but sometimes you had to put yourself first, even if that meant neglecting the needs of those closest to you.
The production was a much bigger commitment than you initially thought. Rehearsals pulled you from classes multiple times a week and you began to worry that it could potentially detract from your other subjects. But as a young woman, the possibility of it reeling you from your scholarly responsibilities was not quite as concerning as it was that you felt you were failing at your duties as a friend.
It had been raining consistently for the past five days. Endless bouts of downpours during spring thickened the soil and left the air with an unpleasantly muggy tinge. You and Rafe slouched against the linoleum floors of the school gymnasium, slightly obscured from view by the red curtains of the wall-length window. He shut your concerns of being caught down by offering you a swig of whatever concoction he’d brought onto school premises.
“How about instead of getting your tits in a twist about it, you have some.”
Classic Rafe.
But you did end up having some because as soon as he began ranting you knew it was necessary for your own mental wellbeing.
“You better fucking be there ‘cause there’s no way I can deal with all those old farts on my own.”
“Am I even invited?” You grimaced as the bitter taste invaded your tastebuds, eagerly handing the flask back, to which he condescendingly snorted.
A gathering with Ward and his highly esteemed guests could only entail boredom to a deadly degree. Even thinking about it made you yawn, but on the other hand, you would feel bad if Rafe had to endure it on his own.
“Dad says you're more than welcome, he likes having you around,” He let out a small chuckle, ruffling his short bangs. “He says you keep me sane like we’re an old married couple or some shit.”
At that, you couldn’t help but barked out in laughter. “Yeah right. Say we ever did hypothetically get married, one of us would probably end up killing the other.”
“Yeahhh, probably.”
He drank again, eyeing you scrupulously, and in that moment you wished you could climb into his brain to know what he was thinking. There was a brief awkward pause before you cleared your throat and asked, “Wait, when did you say this was again?”
“Friday, afterschool…why?”
“Shit, Rafe–”
“Nah. You gotta be fucking kiddin’ me, again. They can’t keep you after school on a Friday! That’s criminal.”
“I know, trust me I agree.”
“Don’t go then.” He countered with a raised brow, testing you.
“I would If I could, you know that. But there’s two weeks till the show, there’s just too much to do.”
“Sure, whatever you say.” He lifted the silver cylinder back up to his lips, taking a long swig.
“Rafe,” You sighed, trying to reason with him. “Please don’t be mad at me, I’m sorry–”
You were cut off as the doors to the gym groaned, opening to reveal the last person you expected to see.
Thomas.
“Oh, hey. What’s up?” He seemed surprised to see you, but even more surprised to see you with Rafe, eyes flickering between you with confusion.
“Hi Thomas, we were just,” His attention flitted down to the flask, incriminating evidence that you quickly swept beneath Rafe’s folded leg, “Uh, what are you doing here? Never took you as the sporting kind of lad.”
Shit, that was bad. As if Rafe was thinking the same thing, he snorted into his fist. You wanted to crumble right then and there.
Thomas seemed to find your comment amusing, however, bowing his head as he chortled. “Damn, it’s that obvious, huh? But nah, I’m just tryna help Cindy find her phone. I would ask what you guys are up to, but…well, I don’t really wanna know.”
“Ah, well I hope she finds it. We didn’t see anything, did we, Rafe?”
“Nope.” He popped his ‘p’ when answering, and you frowned, unimpressed by his cavalier attitude. “Hey man, why don’t you join us?”
Rafe tilted his head at Thomas in what would appear to the average eye as a friendly gesture but you knew better; he was up to no good.
“I would. But as I said, I gotta–”
“Oh c'mon, I’m sure she could do with the detox.”
“Uh…”
“Is that a yes?” He gestured toward you, “She won’t mind. In fact, I think she’d much prefer to hang out with you than me–”
Classic Rafe. You desperately waved your hands at Thomas, attempting to damage control before he had the opportunity to make the situation even more awkward. “Don’t listen to him, he’s way too used to getting his way. Go if you need to.”
A brief glint of relief flashed across Thomas’s features, and like a rabbit caught in a tiff, he seized the opportunity you provided to flee. “You’re right, I really ought to go. Thanks for the offer though, man. See you both around.”
As soon as the doors clicked shut again, you wasted no time. Rafe didn’t even attempt to defend himself against your slew of attacks, simply taking your weak hits for what they were.
“What the fuck was that?” You finally hissed out once you’d calmed down.
“What was what?”
“Don’t be a moron, are you trying to embarrass me?”
“Oh, sorry for being a good wingman.” His shrug was insouciant, further frustrating you.
“What you’re being is a pain in my ass.”
He didn’t react to that in the way you expected. Generally, he found the humour in your insults, but this time a coldness you weren’t accustomed to receiving glazed over his eyes.
“You really like this guy, huh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cut the shit. You’ve only ever acted like this with that kid who proposed to you in the sandpit.” As you stood he sighed, realising you were refusing to engage in this conversation. “So will I see you on Friday or not?”
“Probably not.”
“See! I knew you’d rather hang out with him than me!” He shouted after you as you stormed off to your next class, gait regretfully swaying as the effects of Rafe’s concoction set in.
In the weeks leading up to the performance, things only became more hectic. If you were to get your cortisol levels tested the results would likely conclude abnormally high. To make matters worse, Rafe was mad at you. Topper and Kelce tried to assure you that he wasn’t, but you knew better. He didn’t respond to your texts, barely acknowledged your presence at school and hadn’t invited you over in a week. All very abnormal behaviours as, while yes, he was an inherit dickhead, you were usually exempt from this.
So naturally, you did what any normal person in such circumstances would do; gave him the same treatment in return. Only acknowledging the damage his behaviour was inflicting upon you in furious scribbles in your lavender spiral diary.
You were having your costume fitted in the small dressing room adjacent to the auditorium. Cindy was booked for her appointment afterwards and in the meantime she lazed on the tattered purple couch in the corner of the room, scrolling through her phone.
A girl from the costume department examined the logistical functioning of your costume as there were a few instances in the performance where a quick change was necessary. Her vivacious red curls bounced as she turned the room upside down in search of her pins.
“Ok then, you’re pretty much done. I’ll just have to hem the base so we adhere to theatre-safe practices and all that stupid shit they assess…” She paused and eyed you over, tugging at the loose sleeve of your dress with a hum. “You look so pretty, like a fairy.”
“Thank you.” You bashfully smiled. She returned it before turning to the other girl in the room.
“Cindy.”
“Hm?”
“Cindy.”
“What?” She snapped, tearing her gaze from her phone.
“What do you think?”
“I mean it’s alright” She shrugged, face peeling into a saccharine grin. “Not really your colour but you definitely suit rags.”
You would’ve burst out into laughter had you not been so shocked.
“Now I remember why I don’t ask for your opinion,” The redhead rolled her eyes, shoving Cindy’s garment bag into her lap. “Be useful and get changed into this. I’ll get started on you in a moment.”
Once Cindy had left the room, she bowed her head apologising.
“I’m guessing you’re not her biggest fan?”
“Not a fan, period.” She sullenly snorted. “She’s a sanctimonious bitch who can’t keep her nose out of other peoples’ business.”
“She’s pretty at least.” You tried to see the best in people, despite how difficult they made it for you.
“Well, that’s about all she has to offer. I’m Edie, by the way.”
And the rest was history.
Similarly to the majority of the cast and crew, Edie was in Rafe’s grade. And when she discovered (during your break on Friday rehearsals) that you knew the infamous blonde personally, you did not hear the end of it.
“You’re friends with Rafe Cameron?” Her jaw fell open so quickly that you worried it would pop out of alignment.
“Yeah, I mean we practically grew up together. I’ve spent half my life at his house.”
“You go to his house?! Holy fuck, you’ve been living my dream life like it’s nothing to you.”
“Trust me it’s not as good as you might think. He can be a real ass–”
“Hope you’re not talkin’ about me?” An arm suddenly snaked over your shoulder. The limb was heavy but warm– comforting –and emanated a pleasant aroma. Thomas let his hair hang loose today, long ebony strands pirouetting over the surface of your skin when you glanced up at him.
“Ah-ha not specifically, but I don’t know, maybe it applies to you too.”
In true theatrical style, he sputtered out a choking noise, clasping onto his chest to imitate immense pain. “Ouch. I think you just broke my heart.”
“Oh really? I didn’t realise Martians could feel pain.”
He gasped, and Edie chuckled at the interaction from beside you, shaking her head at your antics. “O-kay as cute as that was, can we please get back to the topic of Rafe.”
Thomas’s expression pinched in discomfort at the mention of the blonde and you recalled your last interaction with them both, inwardly cringing. “Does he have a problem with me or something? I feel like he does.”
“Wouldn’t be surprising. He’s always looking to have a problem with someone.”
“Seems to tolerate you though.”
“Barely,” He opened his mouth to respond but was beaten to it by a loud screech sounding out the syllables of his name. Cindy stood atop the stage, tapping her foot rhythmically against the solid wood with her arms crossed over her chest, not bothering to contain her lour.
“Thomas!” her voice pierced across the auditorium again like one of those pesky drillers going off on a Sunday morning. “I want to go over the cues for this scene, c’mon.”
“Hey,” Edie halted him as he begrudgingly moved to acquiesce to her demand, “Just remember you have free will.”
“Well look how far that’s gotten me.”
You weren’t sure what he meant by that, as though it were some cryptic message you’d been tasked to decode. He smiled, bidding you both goodbye with a simple wave and you paused for a moment, observing as he trudged away.
Edie cleared her throat and you were snapped out of your daze, returning to the present only to realise– with much dismay –that your face had been donned with a damning grin. Her brow quirked and you knew what was coming.
“What’s that look for?”
“Something you wanna tell me?”
“Um… I don’t think so?” Your voice came out in a pathetic squeak and you cleared it, although the damage had already been done.
“Oh come on,” She scoffed with an omniscient smirk, “You’re about as transparent as my gran’s panties…You like him.”
“Not you too.” You groaned, pivoting on your heels to take a seat in one of the rows of chairs furthest away from anyone else. If she wanted to have this conversation it was going to be out of earshot. Lest someone else managed to uncover your secret it would soon spread like wildfire. Her girlish giggle followed, and she saddled up beside you.
“There’s no shame in it, babe. Tom’s a good guy, and you seem to get along…but–”
“But what?”
Her expression soured, as though the words on the tip of her tongue were full of bile. “One thing you should know about Tom is that for many years, he had a thing for Cindy,” Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, “She rejected and rejected him, and eventually he moved on…but she didn’t like that. Not one bit. But now it seems the tables have turned. Did you know she fucking hates theatre?”
“Doesn’t seem that way to me.” You were prompted to glance up onto the stage where the two were currently rehearsing; she made it seem so effortless. How could she hate the things she was good at?
“Exactly. That’s why she’s so dangerous, she can keep up a good act.”
“I see…” This information shouldn’t have unsettled you. The past was set in stone for a reason and it was only possible for it to be resurfaced if you allowed it to. But it did unsettle you. Cindy possessed a classic kind of beauty you weren’t sure you could compete with. “So do you think if she were to ever bring it up, he would go for her again?”
“Hard to tell, with both of them. I’m pretty sure it’s just a game to her, she likes the attention. But as for Thomas, I think he’s beginning to see things clearer now.”
You tilted your head, unsure of what she meant by that.
“He’s not thinking with his dick.” She clarified bluntly, the crass wording making you gasp and then chuckle.
“Right. Good to know.”
Your phone vibrated from within your jeans pocket and you were surprised to see that it was Rafe calling you, considering you’d essentially gone with no contact for days. Assuming the worst, you excused yourself.
As you placed the phone to your ear you could only manage to make out a whooshing sound as though he were standing atop a viciously windy mountain. Then it stopped in tandem with what sounded to be like a string of expletives before he finally spoke.
“Yooo, what’s up? You coming?” Your brows furrowed at his elated tone. Last you’d checked, he was ignoring you.
“Rafe, I already told you I can't–”
“Chill, it's fine. Got dumb and dumber to come over, keep me entertained”
“The fuck you just call us?” Topper and Kelce both shouted in unison somewhere in the background. Aside from their outburst, you couldn’t make out any other noise so you imagined they’d locked themselves away from all the action with Ward and his friends. Rafe detested hanging out with the oldies.
“OK, good. Saves me from feeling bad. But are you alright, you sound a bit…” Happy. The word you were grasping for was happy because you couldn’t remember the last time he’d sounded so carefree.
“Better than ever!”
“And are we ok?”
“Yeahhh, you’re too cute to stay mad at for long.”
His response stifled you for a moment. “That’s real funny, Rafe.”
But in the coming days, something told you this may not be the case.
Instead of avoiding you, Rafe wasn’t even showing up to school anymore. You were worried he was still clinging onto the remnants of his unjust anger until you received another phone call at 2:30 am, the night before your performance.
“Rafe…” You rubbed the sleep from your eyes, voice groggy and disoriented as you checked the glaring red lines on your digital clock. “What’s wrong? Do you even know what time it is?”
“Yeah, uh I’m sorry…” He sniffed. “I’m outside, can I come– ah actually y’know what just come out front, will you?”
You paused. On any ordinary occasion, you’d have told him to piss off, too tired and frustrated to entertain his larks. But a stab of concern reared its ugly head at his shakey tone– this was very out of character.
“Yeah, yeah of course. I’ll be out in a minute.”
It was a blisteringly cold night so you shrugged on a coat before trekking downstairs quietly, praying your parents weren’t lying awake to witness you sneaking out of the house in the wee hours.
The front door scraped against the doormat as it opened. Rafe remained slumped against one of the white veranda pillars, motionless, as though he hadn’t heard you. His breaths were heavy, and upon assessing him you frowned at the fact that he was merely clad in a thin polo shirt and khaki shorts.
“...Rafe?” You brushed your fingers gingerly across the wide expanse of his shoulders. He violently flinched, whipping around as though your touch was a burning affliction upon his supple skin. But his harsh reaction quickly softened when he saw it was just you.
“Shit, don’t do that.”
“Sorry.” You whispered, dragging your eyes from his head down to his toes, assessing for any injuries. His unmarred skin left you stumped and it was only when you honed in on his frantic gaze did the issue finally dawned on you.
“Are you high?”
Your question seemed to strike a nerve. He scrunched his face within his hands, as though he were in pain.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I-it’s like I’m seeing shit and hearing shit and my head hurts so fucking bad.” He was reacting badly. “And all I could think about was seeing you.”
“Did you fight with Ward?” This time he didn’t flinch as you grabbed onto his bicep, hoping to ground him.
“Yeah, uh, yeah he’s just–”
“It’s alright, you don’t have to explain that right now. I’m here.” His burly arms engulfed you as he accepted your hug. You entangled yourself within his embrace, understanding that right now, all he desired was some comfort.
“Thanks.”
His voice was muffled by the position with his head stuffed into your shoulder. You gently tighten your hold in response, focusing on the rapid stuttering of his heartbeat which gradually slowed and levelled out into a calmer rhythm.
What came next was like an inevitable chain of events: both of you pulled back at the same time and a frisson of confusion swept over you as he remained there, content with your noses practically intertwining. Although you weren’t confused. No. You were evading the truth. The truth that had become crystallised at this moment, glistening so bright you could hardly ignore it.
One moment you were pinned to the spot by his sodden gaze, sporadically alternating between each region of your face. Mapping out each detail but notably lingering on your lips. Emotions raged within those viridian orbs like a violent coastal storm, threatening to destroy whatever stability you had left.
Then, as though it were natural to him, he met you in the middle.
You’d never experienced anything like it, and any story you’d been told was not comparable. His lips were firm and demanding in a way that surprised you and there was not a single trace of hesitation in his movement, as though he’d been waiting for this moment for a long time.
Reality came crashing into you like a truck; you were kissing your best friend. The boy you bathed with as a child, who allowed you to snot into his sleeve as you wept and who vowed to protect you from the plight of men; It felt nice, but this sentiment was so heavily outweighed by the fact that it felt wrong.
This revelation ignited your dormant reflexes. As he began to paw at your lower back, you realised this had gone too far.
The rate at which you pushed him away stunned even you, and a wave of guilt ebbed through your system as his back collided with the pillar; you didn’t mean to be so harsh, after all, he was already in a vulnerable state. He remained crumpled in that position, fingers ghosting over his lips as if he were attempting to savour the taste of your own.
“Shit, I-I’m always fucking up, I’m sorry,” He cupped your chin, the action causing you to jerk. “Sorry.”
It unnerved how contrived his apology sounded, and you wondered if he could hear it too.
“Uh-no no it’s ok,” Your body was frozen in a state of shock. “You're all over the place,” Surely he’d brush this off as a mistake by morning. “let's get you inside, yeah?”
His eyes glazed over your face once again, scrupulously this time, as though he were searching for something. He nodded when he didn’t find it, seemingly wanting to say more as he brushed the back of his neck but he chose to remain silent as you led him inside.
It wasn’t unusual for you to share a bed; you’d done so numerous times in the past. But it felt different now, like an invitation you were reluctant to hand out. You wanted to be there for Rafe, but you couldn’t let him get confused.
So you lay there, keeping an appropriate amount of distance from the snoring blonde. If you acted normal, things would remain as they always had, right? Would it be swiped under the rug? Deep down you realised the implications of what had just occurred, and the potential for your…brief mistake to alter both of your futures. It was a classic tale, one you’d heard so many times (both in reality and fiction) it had burned deep into your psyche. A slow evolution between boy and girl, from friendship to beyond. But that didn’t mean you'd end like that, you repeated it over and over again like a mantra.
You just couldn’t.
So you lay there, deciding to enjoy this peaceful moment. Naturally, your mind drifts over it all: the play, Thomas, and Rafe beside you. All share a common denominator– pumping your life full of both excitement and stress.
But as the saying goes; all good things must come to an end.
vi.
Rafe experienced what you liked to call a reverse metamorphosis during your senior year.
Why reverse? Well, instead of transforming from a raggedy moth, expanding his wings to flourish as a butterfly, he took a drastic turn for the worse; as though he’d retreated into a slimy cocoon.
Not that he’d ever been exceptionally well-behaved throughout his schooling years– busted for truancy more times than you could count, dabbling in all sorts of allusive substances among other nefarious things that you try not to dwell on –but as a recent graduate privileged with all the resources needed to pave a bright future, you had at least expected he’d try.
Unfortunately, things didn’t always pan out as you imagined they would.
If he wasn’t drunk, or at least on the brink of it, then he was under the influence of some other powdery or herbal substance. Wasting his days away under the soft confinements of his bedding, recovering from late nights and remaining slumped against the toilet for the better half of his waking hours. Then he’d repeat the cycle, with absolutely no lessons learnt.
Sometimes you’d receive a call. Incoherent slurs that reminded you of that fateful night months ago, where lines were blurred and boundaries crossed. His drunken words held no meaning, right? That’s what you would tell yourself, like a mantra, over and over until your mind believed what it heard the most.
Nonetheless, you couldn’t spend your whole life worrying about Rafe. Not when you had other, more imperative issues at hand.
Or… between your legs.
The nonsensical droning emitted from the food network on your TV fell on deaf ears as you sat perched on Thomas's lap. The weight of your knees was supported by cherry sheets and pink frilly pillows as your lips moved against his at a languid pace. It was soft, sensual…tame, but at the same time exhilarating, and you trusted Thomas to guide you through it.
He let out a low groan as your fingers absentmindedly tugged on his shiny locks. Much to your dismay, he recently cut his hair shorter than it's ever been; his new look attracted attention from those who previously dismissed him, and this stoked the flames of unease within you.
You lowered your position, leaning impossibly closer until your chest brushed against the flimsy cotton of his t-shirt. A jolt of electricity transmitted up your spine as his hands found purchase on your lower back, traversing dangerously low, and a soft whimper floated from your chest.
But as you were still discovering, the art of intimacy was much more complex than you initially believed, and you hadn’t quite learnt how to toe the line.
Without thinking, your thumbs dipped into the waistline of his pants. Just barely tickling the surface, but enough to make Thomas jerk his head back, the hasty action subsequently halting your heated movements.
“What’re you doing?” His voice was outlandishly thick as his breaths came out in heavy puffs, scented in confusion.
“I-i just thought…” You sat back, feeling suddenly unmoored. “Sorry, am I doing something wrong?”
“Of course not, just not right now, ok?” His deft fingers kneaded into your side, but their intended comforting effect did nothing to quell the pang of his rejection.
“Sure.” You halfheartedly smiled, slipping off of his warm body to settle by his side.
Had you been as stiff as a board this entire time? And why was your bedroom becoming increasingly suffocating? As though the walls unanimously decided to close in and focus every second of awkwardness into one concentrated area.
“Wanna watch a movie?” Thomas eventually broke the heavy silence, refusing to broach the elephant in the room– which you were thankful for.
Clearing your throat, you rolled out of your bed, pulling on a pair of fuzzy socks. “Yeah, I’ll-uh get us something to eat. You choose the movie.”
Your relationship with Thomas had been smooth sailing…until it wasn't.
As you busied yourself slicing up a platter of fruit in the kitchen, you couldn’t resist analysing each possibility as to why. Thomas was acting strangely. This wasn’t an assumption, and it couldn’t have been a coincidence that his change in demeanour always seemed to occur in your presence. So then what were you doing wrong? And why did he insist on keeping you in the dark?
Your train of thought came to an abrupt halt as you noticed an onslaught of notifications popping up on your phone. With an exasperated groan, you leaned over the bench to see who dared to disrupt your moment's peace.
Rafe. Could you get a break?
To: Princess Rafe 🙄👑
Piss off I’m busy.
You left it there, praying to any deity willing to lend you an ear that that would suffice. But clearly, you’d also managed to vex the higher beings, as his response was immediate:
From: Princess Rafe 🙄👑
I’m going 74 mph yet I take the time to talk to you 🖕
Yep. No break for you.
To: Princess Rafe 🙄👑
???? Dude get off your fucking phone.
From: Princess Rafe 🙄👑
Since you asked so nicely.
And if his cavalier regard for the law wasn’t bad enough, his next message sent your jaw straight to the floor.
“Nope. Not dealing with this.” You shoved your phone into your pocket, ignoring the buzz of a new notification, both for your sanity and Rafe’s safety.
When you returned to your room, Thomas had migrated to the carpet, perched atop a pile of decorative pillows you’d previously discarded onto the floor as he flicked through the pages of a familiar lavender spiral notebook.
You gasped, the realisation of what he was rifling through and slapping you right across the face.
“Oh, hey.” He smirked– that sick, condescending bastard!
“STOP!” You screeched, and his laughter verged on hysterical. “Put. That. Down.”
He swiftly dogged the stuffed animals you pelted in his direction, pouting derisively as you proceeded to storm towards him. “Aw, why would I do that? I was just getting to the part where you’ve described my scent. Lemon myrtle? That’s pretty specific, it’s actually musk–”
“Thomas.” Your tone acquired a sharp edge, but clearly, he hadn’t tortured you enough as he teasingly flicked to the newer entries.
“Oh, and what’s this…” His posture went lax, abruptly pausing. His wide eyes darted in between the lines as though the words were a mirage he was reluctant to put his trust in. Then his lips pulled down into a small frown, and your stomach clenched.
“What? Where the hell are you up to?” Your attempt to snatch at the book was fruitless as he kept it raised well above your reach. “Wha–”
“Alright, I’ve had enough of this game for one night. Let’s watch the movie.” You stumbled to catch the book as he carelessly discarded it, pivoting around you as he flopped back onto the bed.
“Okay…but don’t make a habit of breaching my privacy.” Your laugh was intended to lighten the mood, but it seemed to have the opposite effect.
“Why, got something to hide?” He sullenly spoke, staring at the ceiling. Again, the inexplicable tension had wormed its back into your room. It was like a stubborn parasite that adapted to its surroundings, never completely disappearing.
“Nothing too damning I’d imagine.”
The movie Thomas chose was a 20th-century romantic tragedy featuring many themes typical of that era such as misogyny and class which made your eyes roll. Your attention to the plot was continually hijacked as Rafe continued to flood your phone with messages, making it difficult to follow along with the plot. You’d been in the middle of responding to one of his many texts (complaining about how some guy at a party was getting on his nerves) when the movie suddenly paused.
“Mm, why'd you pause it?” You peeled your eyes from the screen to be met by Thomas’s blank ones.
“Can I ask you something? And I want you to just be honest with me, don’t tell me what I want to hear.”
“Uh, sure.” His quick transition into seriousness caught you by surprise, and your body tensed like a coiled spring.
“Alright look, I hate to be this guy,” His face scrunched into a grimace as he glanced anywhere but your eyes. “But you’d tell me if there was someone else, wouldn’t you?”
“Someone else? What do you mean?”
He sighed, clearly frustrated. “Let me be more clear then. If you liked someone else, would you string me along…or would you break things off?”
You couldn’t believe what you were hearing, now twisting your body to face him with a scoff. “Who do you think I am, Thomas? I was the one who asked you out, remember? That wasn’t on a whim, I did that because I liked you.”
“Liked?”
You groaned. Why was he making this so complicated?
“Liked, like. What difference does it make? To me, this seems like you are trying to come to the conclusion you want to hear?”
“I’m not jumping to conclusions, just tryna test my hypothesis.”
“Okay, and what’s that?” Probing information out of him was like bribing a kid with vegetables; fucking tedious.
“That you care about Rafe more than you’re letting on, maybe more than you even realise.”
“What?” You almost laughed in disbelief. Where was this even coming from? “He’s one of my best friends, wouldn’t it be more concerning if I didn’t care for him?”
“I never said you couldn’t care about him to a normal degree, but he may as well be in the room with us! It’s never just me and you, he’s always occupying your mind. Do you not stop to think about how that makes me feel?”
He did have a point. Rafe was like a dog, constantly demanding your attention, and it had been that way since the day you met him. Still, you sat there in shock, realising he must’ve been bottling this up for some time now.
“I didn’t mean- well alright if we’re suddenly being honest, half the time I’m with you it feels like you don’t even want me there.”
“What does that mean?” Now it was his turn to sound confused, offended even.
“You confuse me! One moment you’re all over me and the next you’re pushing me away as though I make your skin crawl.”
He paused, contemplatively digesting your words before his pretty features twisted into an indignant scowl. “So does that excuse what you did? Because I don’t show you enough attention?”
“What did I do?” You were at your wit’s end.
“Oh stop pretending like you don’t know what I’m talking about. I saw it, written in your pretty fucking handwritten; you kissed him.”
Oh. Shit. Of all entries, it was that one he had to have read; which did not paint the clearest picture of that night. You got halfway through documenting what had happened before stopping right at the point when you realised it was wrong, no longer feeling in the mood to relive the moment…no wonder he was furious.
“It’s not what you think.” You internally cursed yourself for how cliche that sounded.
“No? Enlighten me then.” He sat up straight like a judge awaiting your testimony from a convicted criminal.
“Rafe has issues…okay. Stuff at home, and he’s never known how to cope on his own–”
“Oh right, so that’s where you come into play. Are your lips like some magical cure for interpersonal issues?” He queried cynically.
“Would you shut up and listen!” This time, he reared back at your outburst, “That night he was really out of it. I’m talking delirious, like some rabid dog. He kissed me, not the other way round, and I stopped it because it didn't feel right… and because I liked you.”
You could see the cogs churning in Thomas's mind as he absorbed your words, taking the time to process each one. With a gentle gaze, he met your eyes, his expression softening into an apologetic smile.
“I see. This all happened before we got together?”
“Yes, of course it was before. I would never do something like that to you,” His drop in hostility spurred you to lean forward, dragging his warm limbs into your embrace, “I promise.”
Surely this would be the end of it. It had to be. Everything was out in the open, and miscommunications cleared. But when you pulled back, his guilty grimace told you otherwise.
“There’s something else I have to tell you.”
vii.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Another fervid sob was ripped from your maw. You burned from within, rife with malice clawing up your raw oesophagus till it was raw and prying through your lips in ugly bated breaths. You allowed a moment to pass before trying again.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
…
“You ignore my fuckin’ texts and now you wanna talk.”
“Rafe,” Your cracked voice butchered the syllables of his name, sounding almost unrecognisable. Pathetic. “Can I see you?”
Not even 10 seconds later a notification appeared on your phone. He’d shared his location, some vaguely familiar residence on the outskirts of your neighbourhood.
“What–”
“I’ll see you soon.”
Being vulnerable wasn’t your forte, nor was it Rafe’s, and there was no doubt he was currently perplexed by your sudden change of heart. But tonight, you needed someone. And that’s how you found yourself stepping into a stranger's house at 12:45 am, scouring the misty rooms in search of a familiar burly figure.
A low whistle piqued your attention. Topper emerged from the kitchen as you were passing by, two red solo cups in his possession. “Didn’t expect to see you here, not that I’m complaining.”
His eyes quickly swept over your frame, the respectful gentleman he was. You couldn’t contain your scoff. Even in black track pants and a muted pink top… guys really could be attracted to anything as long as it walked on two hind legs.
“Bit cliche, don’t you think, Top.” You retorted with a halfhearted snort, gesturing to the cups. What was this, a freshman's first house party?
He rolled his eyes, extending one to you. The nefarious liquid sloshed over the rim and you shook your head. “Uh, no I’m good, thanks.”
He fixed you with a pointed look. “It looks like you could use it.”
With a huff, you snatched the cup from him, to which he chuckled. “I hate how you’re always right.”
He began to ferry you toward Kelce and their gaggle of friends who huddled around a small coffee table in the living room, passing a clumsily rolled joint between them. When Kelce’s wide-set brown eyes landed on you, he abruptly stood, knocking the table's contents in doing so as he manhandled you into his side.
“How’s my favourite girl doing?”
He balanced the joint between two fingers, residual smoke clung to his body in a damp sheen. Your eyes watered as you suppressed a cough, “Fine, until I caught a whiff of you.”
“C’mon, nothing takes the edge off like a good toke.” He waved it in front of your face, an offer, snorting as your face contorted into a grimace.
“As great as that sounds,” You pushed his arm off its perch on your shoulder with a bitter smile. “Is Rafe here?”
“Yeah, pretty sure he went upstairs.” His hand absentmindedly flicked toward the staircase and you quickly excused yourself before they could become too attached to your presence.
The ambience upstairs was much more quaint than below, mainly consisting of couples who split off from their respective groups. A few were making out, some others collapsed asleep on the furnished floorboards; typical party antics reminding you as to why you generally avoided these places.
The walk from your house had cooled your system, remedying your flighty instincts ever so slightly. This you were thankful for, as upon opening the final door along the lengthy hallway, you were met with Rafe’s determined gaze, and you knew he would demand answers.
“Been messaging you.” The mattress creaked as he lifted his weight off its surface. His gait was straight and steady, and this was perhaps the closest to sober you’d seen him in a long time.
“I know, I just wanted to see you in person.” Despite your best efforts, the burning of your eyes became so overbearing and you fought to hold back the overwhelming emotions coursing through your veins. It was like the moment someone asks if you're okay when it's obvious you're not, the floodgates open and emotions come crashing down around you in an unrelenting wave.
“Hey hey hey, what the fuck happened to you?” He rushed over, forcing you to face him with a firm grip on your shoulders.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The fuck it does,” His hands rubbed over his face exasperatedly as though he were controlling the urge to be rougher with you and extract an answer forcefully. “You can’t call me all hysterically crying and shit then give me nothing. Did someone hurt you? Did Thomas do something?”
The mere mention of his name sent you spiralling even further. “Alright, come on, sit down.” Rafe didn’t give you much of an option, dragging you to the bed in an iron grip and then forcing you onto the black sheets as he sat beside you.
“What happened?”
“It’s Thomas.” You affirmed solemnly.
“I’ll kill him.” He seethed through his teeth and your head violently shook.
“No, no I won’t tell you if that’s how you’re gonna respond.” He went to ark up but you interrupted him before he had the chance. “Rafe, I'm serious.”
“I’ll decide for myself once you tell me.”
With a heavy sigh, you finally conceded. “Do you remember that one girl from my theatre club? The diva one?”
“Who?”
“Cindy! Blonde hair, beautiful. She was in your year level.”
Rafe’s brows furrowed in confusion. “I seriously don’t know who the fuck that is.”
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, before me and Thomas started…dating, I found out he had a thing for her for quite some time.”
“So?”
“Jesus- just let me finish!” He reluctantly relented, nodding for you to continue. “Since you’re so impatient, I’ll tell you the short version: Thomas stopped liking her then me and him started dating. He thought we had something going on secretly and confided in Cindy…then he used that to justify sleeping with her.”
The silence that followed was like dust settling back onto the road; static but still very much disturbed.
“What.”
“There’s nothing else to say.” You croaked, dabbing your sodden eyes on your sleeve.
Not a moment later he shot up, pacing back and forth a few times before submitting to the battle raging in his head and storming toward the door. “Rafe, no you promised me–”
“I didn’t promise you shit!” He whipped back around to face you, face wild with fury. “That motherfucker is gonna get what’s coming for him!”
“RAFE.” His cheeks were ablaze as you cupped them in your hands, eyes darting around sporadically as though he were high on adrenaline. “Please, I need you right now. What happens next is for another time. Let it rest.”
His nostrils flared as he finally met your eyes. You pulled him closer, sensing your words were having an effect, softly whispering another plea– and it was like deja vu when his lips met yours for the second time. Only it wasn’t. As he pressed himself firmly against you, unyielding in his advance, you realised this was truly happening again… and to your horror, it felt nice.
In fact, you didn’t want it to stop.
In the time you’d been together with…Thomas…the intimate experiences you shared allowed you to act with heightened confidence, no longer feeling the need to skittishly paw at his chest like a bunny caught by the big bad wolf. Now you moved with your own validity, placing your hands upon his taut chest and following the pace he set.
His palm suddenly clamped down on your ass and you gasped into his mouth, surprised. Thomas was a respectful lover, never so daring, but Rafe’s impulsivity stirred a concoction of excitement and nervousness within your belly.
He took this window of opportunity to dip the tip of his tongue into your mouth. Testing the waters at first, and when you showed no signs of disapproval, delving full throttle. “Shit,” He groaned, using his grip on your lower half as leverage to guide you backwards.
Your libidinous scrambled brain only registered his intention when the backs of your knees came into contact with the bed, instigating your loss of balance. A pathetic squeak floated from your throat as you fell onto the soft confinements of whoever's sheets these were.
Rafe didn’t hesitate to slot himself between your parted knees, crawling over your limp body like a predator readying itself to ravage a meal. His head dipped into the crevice of your neck, planting strategically placed kisses and sucking on the tender flesh, subsequently sowing the seeds of your growing excitement.
But as he remained in that position– feverish palms exploring your clothed body, hot enough to burn through the fabric –your heart began to race. Why did you feel a shudder of anticipation run down your spine? What if he were to stop and really look at you? Why were you scared?
It wasn't until he gained the confidence to explore the curve of your body beneath the fabric that you jolted back into reality, your heart racing and breath catching in your throat.
“Wait!” He peeled himself off of you with an expectant look, blown pupils peeved by your interruption. “I’ve, uh-... never done this before.”
You whispered it, timorously, ashamed even.
You were expecting rejection, after all, that was the only response you ever received from Thomas. What you weren’t expecting, however, was his lips to twitch up in a haughty smirk, his desire for you not faltering whatsoever. You would even go as far as to say that the gleam that appeared in his eyes indicated that he found this revelation rather pleasing.
“You trust me?”
Your nod was automatic like a reflex, saving you from mulling over the question too deeply. In response he sat back on his thighs, swatting away your hands which had fallen to your stomach (perhaps subconsciously attempting to create a separation between the two of you) allowing him to slide your loose shirt above your navel and then over your chest, the material bunching around your neck. He marvelled at the exposed skin, tentatively brushing over your stomach causing you to squirm at the new sensation.
“Then lay back and relax, sweetheart.”
From then on, the sequence of events was a blur; a tangle of limbs and a symphony of noises all coming together to form an incoherent memory.
Your shirt was the first to come off, followed shortly by his. Rafe’s bare chest was nothing you hadn’t seen before, but in this context, your vision was obscured by a rose tint. His sculpted biceps flexed as he worked on tugging your pants down and you couldn’t help but notice the way he tucked his lower lip between his teeth in concentration or the dewy sheen covering his skin.
It was akin to looking into a kaleidoscope for the first time and not knowing where to cast your gaze.
“If he thinks he can hurt you like this,” His firm lips danced across your throat.“Then he’s got another thing coming.”
He spoke in a harsh growl, hooking his fingers beneath the straps of your bra and dragging them down in one sweeping motion.
You squeaked in shock, heat blossoming beneath your cheeks at the abrupt exposure of your tits. Your tingling nipples quickly began to harden, and you weren’t sure if this was due to the draft slipping through the slightly ajar window or the firm attention Rafe was paying to your flesh.
Nonetheless, your arms instinctively twitched upwards, preparing to cover yourself from his prying eyes. He anticipated this, however, promptly collecting your wrists and pinning them beside your head.
“Don’t, don’t do that.” His voice exploded into a vehement tone. “I don’t even remember who that bitch is, let alone what she looks like…think that’s saying something.”
Before your short-circuiting brain could formulate a response, his lips descended upon your chest, laving at one of the sensitive buds before sucking on it harshly. Your body reacted viscerally, flailing at the newfound stimulation. You mewled, squirming, as he pulled away with a breathless chuckle.
“See what a girl like you does to a man.” He forced one of your hands down to his boxers. Your eyes widened as you felt how hard he was, and you let out a soft gasp as he throbbed around your palm.
“Feel that? Yeah, that’s all you baby.”
“Rafe, ple–” Your breath hitched as his knee drove forward, the delicious pressure nudging into your clothed core.
“Go on, I want to hear you say it.”
“Please…”
“Already speechless? That’s cute.” His words had you shrinking in on yourself, trying to flee from the heat radiating off his body. “It’s alright, I know what you need.”
While your racing thoughts kept you occupied (as well as demanding lips), you were oblivious to the fact that Rafe had removed his knee from between your legs, opting to slink his deft fingers inside the flimsy cotton of your underwear. That was, of course, until you felt something foreign swiping against your most sensitive area, teasingly prodding at the tight entrance. You flinched, shuddering beneath the unfamiliarity of his touch.
“I’m gonna fuck you now, is that okay?”
Your head bobbed up and down ardently, voice tiny and breathless and he grinned. “Ok.”
“Okay then.”
Your body fell in and out of consciousness, wrecked from a night filled with both pleasure and anguish. When you finally woke up, it was well into the night. The heavy breaths falling onto you from behind drowned out the eerie silence of the house. A gust of wind howled through the night sky, and your naked form shivered as the cold managed to slither beneath the sheets.
Rafe’s arm laid heavy across your waist. Anchoring you down as though— even in sleep —he was paranoid you’d slip away. You carefully lifted his arm, halting as his breathing accelerated before replacing your warmth with a pillow.
The first step went surprisingly smoothly… but that must’ve been a fluke as what came next was nearly debilitating.
An aching pang shot up between your legs, sharp and sudden. You gasped, clutching onto the bed frame for support. The sensation wasn’t extremely painful, rather unpleasant and even worse it acted as a punishing reminder of the choices you’d made tonight.
What you just did.
Fumbling around the floor on all fours was equally deplorable and you now understood what others meant when they described the after-fact as a ‘walk of shame.’
You eventually located your pants, desperately patting them down to find your phone. The screen flashed on when you pulled it out of the pocket and you hissed as the harsh light penetrated your retinas, a dull throb settling between your eyes.
There was a flurry of texts from Thomas. Apologies, explanations, and pleas for a response. He’d left your house without much resistance earlier in the evening as you cried for him to do so, but it seemed he wasn’t giving up on you so easily.
Your heart clenched painfully, and it was as though all of the synapses in your brain fired at once; What have you done?
A pool of saliva formed within your mouth, stomach suddenly churned. You stumbled across the floor, making a beeline for the ensuite as your throat heaved. In a matter of seconds after collapsing on the floor before the toilet, you were vomiting into the bowl. Violent hurls that only subsided once you were completely empty.
Could you be any more putrid?
The facet rasped as you turned it, a steady flow of water filling the bathtub as you rinsed out the vile taste in your mouth. It was bitingly cold as you slowly lowered each aching limb into the water, sighing in relief as your body acclimatised and began to relax.
When you were on the cusp of sleep once again, you started cleaning yourself. Scrubbing your skin raw with soapy suds until the water turned a sickening pink and you felt sick for the second time that night.
You dipped below the water and watched as bubbles rose to the surface.
viii.
Everything was becoming surreal.
In half an hour your given moniker would be permanently altered. It was the ‘essence of your identity’ your mother would say, but you’d never been particularly sentimental about it. This likely stemmed from your childhood, as in the mind of a little girl, it was only a means to an end. You used to long for a prince mounted upon a dark stallion to come and sweep you off your feet with promises of a perfect future; all that was required in exchange was a simple change of your name.
Of course, reality hit like a truck when you learnt that there weren’t enough princes around for each little girl in the world. But still, perhaps your expectations had been too high.
Mrs. Hughes.
Mrs. Hughes.
Mrs. Hughes.
There was a certain ring to it that you couldn’t quite pinpoint, similar to when you found a puzzle piece that looks right, but it isn’t the exact fit.
After kicking everyone out of the room, you’d spent the last fifteen minutes distracting yourself by mulling over your appearance. The seamstress did everything she could to preserve the original cut of the dress but was ultimately forced to make it backless due to the inflexible time constraint.
Despite the reassuring gushes you’d received from the bridesmaids, you couldn’t help but feel exposed. The material that once clung taut against your curves now flowed freely in all its feathered glory, displaying the tender expanse of your back to all those who cared to witness.
A firm knock reverberated off the oak door and your lips pinched down in a small frown; you’d been explicit in your desire to be alone.
You cracked the door ajar, bewildered to be met with the familiar blue orbs of the eldest Cameron upon peeking out into the hallway. His pale blue suit was neatly pressed and tailored to his body, a black bow tie complimenting the look, making him appear youthful.
“...What are you doing?” You whispered incredulously, glancing to each side of the empty corridor.
He flashed you a grin, holding up a long-neck bottle with a pretty red ribbon wrapped around it like a noose. “Wanted to say my congratulations. I’m guessing you’ll be a bit tied up later on.”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” His head tilted to the left in confusion and you sighed, “It’s bad luck.”
He hummed, smirk grew patronising as he deadpanned; “I thought that rule only applied to the groom?”
“Is this for me?” You chose to ignore his previous remark, gesturing to the bottle he still held in his possession.
“Yeah. Rose wanted to give it to you herself but she was more than happy to let me do so when I offered.” You knew what he was hinting at; she missed having you around to keep her stepson in line. You didn’t know why you were surprised, it was in the Cameron's DNA to stoop to sly tactics.
"Mind if I come in?" Your reluctance must’ve been evident by your unwavering grip on the door. He rolled his eyes, voice now tinged with a touch of condescension. "C’mon. One last hurrah, that’s all I ask for."
What can five minutes hurt? Then hopefully he’ll leave you alone for the rest of the night. “Alright, fine, but make it quick.”
You clicked the door shut, aimlessly lingering by the window as he lined up two of the clean champagne glasses left over from the earlier celebrations. The side seams of his suit tapered around his shoulders, extenuating the strain of his muscles and they rippled beneath the fabric. You averted your gaze, choosing to fix it on a lone swan floating out on the lake instead.
“Thought I should say,” He turned to face you as he removed the cork with surprising ease, the stopper not even popping as it was released. “You look beautiful.”
You snorted, brushing over a crease in the thick curtain. “That’s just custom speaking.”
He seemed genuinely miffed by your comment, mouth hanging open with a small huff. “That right there is proof that no one takes me seriously, I mean it.”
“Well thanks, I appreciate it. I did end up fitting into the dress so, guess I proved you wrong.”
His brows furrowed as the cardinal liquid poured into the glass. “Don’t tell me you took that to heart? I was just fuckin’ with you.”
“Yeahhhh, I know.”
He brought the two glasses over by the stem, passing the one which was filled exceptionally fuller to you.
“Going easy?”
“Designated driver.” He affirmed, leaning against the opposite side of the window frame.
Your mouth opened, a soft ‘ah’ flicking off your tongue. “I must say I’m surprised and impressed.”
With a humoured scoff, his eyes rolled to the back of his head. “Alright, it’s your special day, what are we toasting to?”
You stilled for a moment, scouring your mind for something appropriate to say. When it came to you, you grinned: “May you be in heaven a full half-hour before the devil knows you’re dead.”
He hummed in approval before extending his arm to meet your glass somewhere in the middle.
“Cheers to that.” You said in unison, falling silent as you downed the entirety of your drink– it was your day after all, so fuck it, you were going to need some liquid courage to make it through the coming hours.
The drink was shockingly sweet, oozing down your throat like a hot teaspoon of honey and you grimaced. “What is this?”
Rafe shrugged, placing his untouched glass down. “Some guy who distils it himself. Disgusting, right?”
“That’s an understatement.”
Words died in the air between you, lost and forgotten as a thick silence surrounded you both. The energy within the room grew dense, tensions steadily simmering and only increasing in intensity. You squirmed in your position, noticing as Rafe grew fidgety; something was dancing on the tip of his tongue, ready to be released.
“Remember when I told you that your mum was worried ‘bout you?”
“...Yeah.” How could you forget, his drunken induced admission which soon followed still haunted your psyche.
“Was-uh…was any of that true about you acting strangely?”
“Your timing is truly impeccable.” Any of the previous lightness was sponged from your tone, replaced by defensive shrill which was painful to your own ears.
“I’m just sayin’, it’s good to get this shit out in the open before everything is finalised, don’t you think?” He began to gesticulate with his hands, flapping motions which were distracting.
“There’s nothing to ‘get out.’ I’ve had my doubts, but that’s normal. My mind is clear now.” You stated firmly, struggling to believe that he would have the audacity to question your decision just as it was about to come to fruition.
“Is it?” His words carried a soft almost sympathetic note, as though you were a child and he was trying not to upset you.
“Is it what?”
“Is it normal to have doubts? I mean that reaction before didn’t seem very convincing to me.”He let his breath out in a soft sigh as your gaze remained defensive, backed into a corner like pitiful prey. “You see what this is telling me? That you don’t know how to make a decision that’s good for you.”
Your head was reeling, throbbing as the lights intensified, the artificial brightness causing you to squint. You were struggling to think, let alone formulate a sentence. All you could conjure up was a childish response: “Shut up, shut up.”
The room tilted as you abruptly stood, staggering forward like a limp doll. You were on a rollercoaster, extremities weighed down by the impressive force of gravity. Rafe caught you before you could collapse, supporting your nape against his chest. Confusion ebbed through your veins as you clung to him, a delicate whimper falling from your lips.
“Steady now.”
“Wha…” Your heart thumped realising how slurred your speech had become.
His hand drummed along the exposed skin, shushing your protests. “It's okay,” a soft and hungry whisper. He drew the zipper down. An expanse of naked, supple skin awaited. A fresh carcass, ready for the taking.
“I'm prepared to make that decision for you.”
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Vintage Drarry Fics
Thought I'd put together a list of some of the old Drarry 'classics' of my teenage years, for anyone interested. All posted between 2001-2006, compiled using my (bad) memory, a lot of googling, fanlore.org and numerous different LJ rec accounts (including the incredible @capiturecs). I checked as best I could, but if anyone knows of any fics that their author doesn't want to be shared, please let me know and I will of course remove.
Please also note that these fics are of their era, when attitudes may have been different, and they may not all be grammatically perfect. I haven't reread all, as my own tastes have changed, but most importantly do note that they may not be tagged - don't blame me when, for example, Harry dies tragically on a rooftop at sunrise...
Hogwarts Era (mostly 5th-7th year)
A Thousand Beautiful Things by Duinn Fionn/geoviki (M, 105k)
Draco Malfoy struggles with changed fortunes, shifted alliances, an ugly war, and an unusual spell, with the help of a concerned professor, an insightful house-elf, and an unexpected Gryffindor friend.
All Bets Are Off by Allegra (R, 53k)
I am SICK of Good-little-innocent!Harry...Enter Playboy!Harry and his Overinflated Ego, a challenge, a bet, a couple of Really Cunning Plans - and there you have it, "Forty days and forty nights", Hogwarts style. Mayhem ensues!
Angels and Devils by beren (E, 52k)
Harry defeated Voldemort and his act of heroism is famous throughout the wizarding world. He's trying to finish his final year at Hogwarts in peace, but, thanks to the method he chose to destroy The Dark Lord, something peculiar is happening to him, something he never would have expected. It's all rather embarrassing and making his life very complicated.
Artful Facade by Sky Sorceress (T, 66k)
Sometimes you fly too close to the sun and lose your wings. With sixth year approaching, the danger Harry seeks can be found only in the form of Draco Malfoy. What follows is a twist in the line between hatred, love, and need.
Beautiful World by Cinnamon/Lissadiane (M, 70k)
Harry finds out he's going to die on his 16th birthday. He embarks on a journey of self-destructive behaviour and drags Draco along for the ride.
Beneath You by Cinnamon/Lissadiane (M, 113k)
Draco had no idea that the repercussions of stealing Potter's journal and shoving it down the back of his trousers would be so extreme.
Bond by AnnaFugazzi (M, 173k)
It seems 95% of H/D writers feel compelled to write a "Harry And Draco Are Forced To Be Together By Something Beyond Their Control And Then Unlikely Stuff Happens That Leads To Twoo Wuv" story. Count me among the 95% ;)
Checkmate by Naadi Moonfeather (T, 245k)
Draco has the perfect plan to get Harry Potter and challenges him to a game of Dare Chess. But is it love, or betrayal, he has in mind?
The Cicatrix Cycle by Ivy Blossom (NC-17, long!)
Three parts: Origins, Haven, Belong
Draco In Darkness by Plumeria (T, 41k)
Following an accident in his seventh year, Draco loses his eyesight. After Harry elbows his way into Draco's dark world, both boys find themselves in a strange new friendship, and they each learn new ways to see each other … and themselves.
Eclipse by PhoenixSong/Mijan (T, 287k)
"You're dead, Potter... I'm going to make you pay..." Draco swore his revenge on Harry for Lucius's imprisonment, and Harry all but laughed at him. But Draco is planning more than schoolyard pranks this time. The old rivalry turns deadly when Draco abducts Harry for Voldemort. It's the perfect plan, guaranteeing revenge, power, and prestige, all in one blow. But, when Draco's world turns upside down, the fight to save himself and Harry begins, and the battle will take them both through hell and back. If they come back.
Friend Like Me by Lady Vader (M, 11k)
Draco's rendition of the love story that never was.
How Harry Potter Got His Groove Back by Durendal/Eleveninches (R, 12k)
Snape tries to hang himself, Draco enters an alternate reality, and Harry Gets a Clue. Humor, SLASH, naughty language, and other Evil Things. Harry/Draco, Snape/James/Lucius.
Irresistible Poison by Rhysenn (PG-13, 124k)
Under the influence of a love potion, Draco learns that poison doesn't always bring death -- there are other ways to suffer and live. Chemical emotion runs feverish as Harry and Draco discover the intoxication of love.
Lettered by pir8fancier (M, 7.8k)
Harry has a secret penpal, whose identity is as plain as the nose on his face. Except he's not wearing his glasses.
Love Under Will by Aja (R, 116k)
In their 5th year, Harry and Draco choose to be with one another; but the story--and the battle-- is just beginning...
playing the game, living the lie by Abaddon (R, 159k)
Set in Sixth Year, both the wizarding and Muggle worlds are threatened as Voldemort plans a final revenge. Past, present and future collide as all must consider where their loyalties lie; who they are, and who they want to be. Amidst it all, Harry and Draco begin a dangerous journey of understanding. Is it possible to leave everything you thought you were behind?
Resolution by Frances Potter (R, 322k)
When you've spent six years fighting evil, all you really want is a quiet time. But when your name is Harry Potter the chances of that are very slim. A series of vignettes chronicling Harry's final six months at Hogwarts. Exams, friends, lovers, Quidditch, the war and Draco all conspire to make the year end seem a very long way away.
Seamus is Seamus and You are Yourself by Ari Munami (PG-13, 31k)
Harry goes through some er... changes in his Sixth Year and everyone, including Draco Malfoy, sits up and takes notice.
Snakes and Lions by GatewayGirl (M, 139k)
When Ron and Hermione get together, they notice only each other. A nightmare prompts Harry to return alone to the empty Chamber of Secrets, and leads to a new look at an old enemy. Harry enjoys the company, but with Bellatrix Lestrange actively hunting him, how far can he trust a Death Eater's son?
Something Impossible by epicylical/Cassandra Claire (PG, 6.4k)
As punishment for an act of vandalism, Draco is forced to perform three tasks to win Harry's forgiveness - only they don't turn out to be exactly the kind of tasks he'd been expecting. With wet shirtless Draco, paint-covered Harry, and Proust-reading Goyle.
Transformation by amalin (E, 98k)
In Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts, he must face the consequences of the attack on the Department of Mysteries and the effects of Voldemort's return. And in doing so, he finds that even your enemies can teach you valuable lessons—about the world, and about yourself.
Walking the Line by SilentAuror (E, 179k)
Sixth year is over and Draco Malfoy is on the run. The war is on and an unwanted assignment is forced upon him by the only people he trusts - and a one-time arch-enemy just may be out to kill him.
Post-Hogwarts
Adagio in G Minor by furiosity (NC-17, 18k)
Seven years after Hogwarts and the war, life continues in the wizarding world. Draco Malfoy is rich, bored, and slightly jaded. Harry Potter is famous, busy, and somewhat disillusioned. They've not seen each other since school ended. What would happen if they were to cross paths again? What if it involved music?
Big Dick, Come Quick [PDF] by Calanthe (NC-17, 204k)
Draco’s got a theory. About sex. And after much searching for the right candidate, it appears that only Harry Potter, his life long enemy, can help him test it out.
Draco's Escort Service by Cheryl Dyson/dysonrules (15, 12k)
Draco's job is to escort travelers through the dangerous, war-torn countryside. Harry Potter is forced to hire him, but his destination isn't quite what Draco expected.
Left My Heart by Emma Grant (E, 85k)
Auror Draco Malfoy has disappeared, and Harry Potter has been sent to San Francisco to find him.
Malfoy, P.I. by Nancy (R, 60k)
"I'm Draco Malfoy, private investigator. I've seen a lot--I mean a lot, and I'm like sweet seventeen a lot. I thought I'd seen it all, until a pair of green eyes stepped into my office." A noir AU set in L.A. where passion and magic collide. Slashy and sexy.
Queen of Hearts by scoradh (E, 65k)
A spectre is haunting Harry - the responsibility of his destiny. It looms over his future and, more importantly, over the future of his friends. Harry is determined to exorcise this spectre for the greater good, but on the way, he enters into a few unholy alliances.
Tissue of Silver by fearlessdiva (R, 76k)
A love story concerning possessed furniture, black silk pyjamas, courtroom drama, premonitions of doom, assassination attempts, Death Eater yoga, absinthe, bare feet and a sensible werewolf.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by November Snowflake (M, 58k)
When the long-missing Draco Malfoy turns up at a Ministry field hospital with amnesia, bitter Auror Harry Potter must confront the shadows of their shared past to shed light on a potentially deadly mystery.
Transfigurations by Resonant (E, 71k)
Five years after Voldemort's defeat, Harry returns to England to help re-open Hogwarts.
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A summary from someone who was at the premiere:
Hi! I'm the person who was at the premiere and noted how Viv ignored her fans (yes the theater was small looking back on it, this was my first time going to an event like this)
Here are the summaries of the first 3 episodes
Episode 1 The episode starts with an origin story about how the angels created the world and Lucifer was one of them and was very creative and shit. So when the angels made Adam and Lilith (and before you ask yes Hazbin's Adam is the first man, they confirmed it in the episode) and Lilith rebelled she and Lucifer became chums and ended up convicing Eve to eat the fruit, which brought sin into the world and made the angels banish Lucifer and Lilith to hell which made Lucifer sad and lose his spark because he's now surrounded by shitty humans. Lilith meanwhile continued to inspire demons with her singing and because heaven didn't like that they sent the exterminators to make sure demons do not rise up against them. But now it is up to Lucifer's and Lilith's daughter to help sinners.
Then it turns out that this was a book Charlie was reading and Vaggie comes in and comforts her telling her she believes in her. Also it turns out that Charlie has not seen Lilith in 7 years. Vaggie then tells Charlie that Alastor has a surprise and we get to see the ad Alastor made. Turns out that they forced Alastor to make an ad with video (and yes he was upset about it). Big woop the ad sucks cause Alastor insulted people in it. Angel Dust suggests to remake the ad into a fucking porno because of course he does.
Then Charlie gets a call from Lucifer who tells her that Adam wants to meet with her and she sings Happy Day in Hell during her walk to Heaven's HQ thing. Meanwhile Vaggie decides to redo the ad which involves Husk reading off the script and Angel sexually harassing him. Vaggie gets upset and Alastor sees this and promises to make a deal wirh her, he helps her make the ad with a video camera and in return they never make him do shit with video again.
Charlie reaches the Heaven's HQ where she meets Adam who literally talks like Chaz. He swears all the time, talks about sex, and even called himself "the original dick" or something , I dunno I had a stroke. He just spends like an hour or so talking to Charlie about how cool he is, how he had sex with this one chick, ect ect. He's really no different from the average demon. Also he's a hologram and he eats ribs during this. Charlie than finally gets to explain her plan to Adam but he and Lute go "no" because sinners had their chance as humans and Adam likes killing them. He then sings a song which I forgot the lyrics for, and yes the "this shot is EVERYTHING" clip came from that song, and he kicks out Charlie. Oh and the next extermination will be 6 months later because Adam felt like being a dick.
Charlie comes back home all sad and shit and Vaggie tries to cheer her up by showing her the new ad. Until it interrupts and Katie Killjoy announces the news that the next extermination will be in 6 months instead of 12. And yes her voice is literally just Bryce Tankthrust's. The episode ends with Lute showing Adam an image of a decapitated exterminator, and now they want to kill all demons because of the murder of an exterminator.
And that's episode 1
Episode 2 Episode 2 starts out with Charlie realising sinners are freaking the fuck out, and that this 6 month deadline may mean sinners may get desperate to redeem themselves. Also Valentino is constantly DMing Angel because Angel moved out. Then Sir Pentious shows up to fight Alastor again but Alastor kicks his ass.
We then meet the 3 VVVs, and Valentino disemboweled Velvette's model because he's angy Angel moved out, so she calls Vox to calm him down. Vox shows up and calms down Valentino. And bruh, Valentino somehow acts no different from Stella. He's so unthreatening and goofy with how much he acts like a spoiled child who got mad his lolipop got taken away it fucking hurts! During their chat, Valentino mentions to Vox that Angel is not the only patron at the Hazbin Hotel, but Alastor is as well which angers Vox because he thought Alastor was gone when he vanished 7 years ago.... wait-
Alastor defeats Sir Pent by punting him after he rips off a strip from Alastor's jacket. Alastor leaves to get his suit fixed up but not before summoning some monsters to guard the hotel, with whom Angel flirts with because of fucking course he does. Then we get a duet between Alastor and Vox where Alastor basically announces he's back baybee. The three VVVs then try to inflitrate the hotel so Vox they have to hire someone Charlie would not expect as a spy.
Charlie returns with no new patrons until Sir Pent knocks on the door. Vaggie is about to murk him when Charlie decides to give him a chance and welcomes him into the hotel. There she tries to teach Sir Pent how to be good by making him learn about apologizing, so he apologizes to Alastor for ripping his jacket and gives him back the strip he tore off. Alastor responds by burning the strip.
Charlie then does an excersize with the crew where they all introduce themselves, and only Charlie and Sir Pent do it. At some point we get the Roleplaying scene where Sir Pent pretends he is an innocent kid, and Charlie tells him he'll be on his way to redemption in no time, which makes Angel sad for some reason. Angel goes to his room where he scrolls through voice mails Valentino sent him which flip flop between "Angel baybee I'm so sorry" to "Pick up you fucking whore". And the last one is him telling Angel that "there is no hope for you" while red smoke wraps around sad Angel.
Later that night Angel gets up to get a drink of booze when he walks in on Sir Pent putting up a camera from Vox. He confronts Sir Pent and they start fighting. Charlie and Vaggie walk in and Angel reveals what Sir Pent did. At that moment Vox calls Sir Pent and tells him he's a failure who should die because he failed. Sir Pent then bows down to Angel and Vaggie saying he's sorry and they can kill him. They're about to do so when Charlie breaks out into a song how redemption starts with a sorry. They all then go back to bed when Alastor t poses into the room and bullies Vox for a bit before breaking the watch Sir Pent used to have to talk to Vox.
||Also Niffty simped for Sir Pent for a bit because he's a "bad boy", but after he and Charlie sang that song she got upset that he wasn't a bad boy anymore||
And that's ep 2
Episode 3 So episode 3 starts out with it being one week since Sir Pent joined and Vaggie is chewing him out for building weapons and havine egg minions. So she has Alastor take the egg men away. (We also get a scene of Alastor eating a deer carcass for breakfast) Sir Pent also keeps trying to shoot ppl because he doesn't trust anyone.
In response to this Charlie tries to do some trust exercises for the rest of the crew, such as having them say the most intimate things about themselves while also falling down and letting the crew catch them. She tells them how much she loves them and Vaggie catches her. Angel sexually harasses Husk by saying he loves sucking popsicles and then falling in his arms and saying he loves sucking dick too. Sir Pent says he loved his minions and tells ppl not to catch them but they all do anyways. Niffty confesses that she loves killing mama bug infront of their babies so they learn fear. No one catches her but she keeps jumping off the stage over and over. Then Angel suggests another exercise.
Cut back to Alastor and the egg fellows who meet up with Zestial (who also has one of the hottest voices in the show like holy fuck, then again he's voiced by Ozzie's VA). Also people seem to be so scared of Zestial they either run away or the hurt themselves. Alastor and Zestial talk about how Alastor went missing for 7 years and is now working with the princess of hell or sumthin. They end up in a meeting for overlords where Rosie shows up but she says nothing. Also despite Alastor telling the egg sapiens to stay outside one of them ends up following him. Here we meet Carmilla who gathered the overlords to talk about protecting sinners from the extermiation or something. Then Velvette shows up because Vox and Val didn't wanna show up, and she reveals to the overlords a dismembered exorsist head. Then we get a song where Velvette and Carmilla duet and the song kinda slapped? I forgot most of the conversation tho. Then after the song Carmilla tells the Overlords to leave, and Alastor makes the egg man that followed him spy on Carmilla, and it turns out that she's the one that killed the exorsist but I forgot why she keeps it a secret. Also Carmilla and Zestial seem to be a thing. Then she gets a song that's also a duet with Vaggie which I also forgot what it's about.
Speaking of, Angel takes the crew to a BDSM club because of fucking course its a sex joke. Vaggie says no and then takes the crew to a turf war and makes them all fight against other sinners to make them learn how to trust one another??? It some how ends up working btw. Later on after the afromentioned duet Vaggie apologizes to Charlie but she says it's ok since Angel, Sir Pent, Husk, and Niffty seem to be chummy now now that they helped one another in that turf fight. Alastor returns with the eggs and Vaggie allows Sir Pent to have them back. The episode ends with Sir Pent and his eggs going to bed.
And that is the end of my Hazbin screening.
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My Chemical Romance, Hardcore Sexual Repression, and the Lemon Stealing Whore
[Content warning for non-graphic references to pornography, sex, sexual violence, and negative attitudes towards sex work. There is no explicit nudity but you might not want to read this in front of your boss. All images have descriptions in alt text. See sources here. Read this essay on my Dreamwidth here.]
It’s the setup of a joke: Gerard Way, Mikey Way, Frank Iero, Matt Pelissier, and a porn actress huddle around a leather couch in a dingy room as a camera rolls. The actress, a young and bright-eyed Joanna Angel, asks each member of My Chemical Romance in the room, “Do you guys watch porn?”
Most of us have seen the interview. If not, stop and watch it now, because nothing else I say will make sense otherwise. (And here, just for you, I’ve reuploaded the video with at least 10% more pixels. Watch below, or read a transcript here.)
The fact that My Chemical Romance, whose faces have decorated shirts at Hot Topic for over fifteen years, whose songs have saved lives and inspired memes, who all have wives and children, would end up associated with an alt porn website like Burning Angel often baffles fans watching the interview for the first time.
For example, see these comments left on the original video uploaded to YouTube:
These comments, though more than a few years old, generally represent how a lot fans understand the interview. Other people think it’s funny and perhaps a little out of left field, but don’t question how four members wound up on a porn site like Burning Angel. Both attitudes are a pretty typical example of the MCR fandom’s ignorance about the New Jersey hardcore scene, as well reflecting general weirdness about sex work.
Since I cannot turn my historian brain off, I wanted to provide some of the extremely interesting historical context behind the video. The post I had originally planned to make very, very briefly outlined how MCR ended up being interviewed by Joanna Angel, founder and longtime CEO of Burning Angel. But the more I looked into it, the more I fell down a rabbit hole. This eventually turned into something of a mammoth manifesto about women and sexuality in the late 90s hardcore scene that gave My Chemical Romance and Joanna Angel careers. I will warn you: this is long. But it’s also important historical background information that rarely gets discussed at all—especially by MCR fans.
(So, with all that said, please feel free to ask any questions about anything I say here! Sources for will be posted on a different post which I will link at the end, and I have been quite thorough, though not as thorough as I could have been.)
Tl;dr: Joanna Angel came up in the exact same scene as My Chemical Romance, Thursday, and Midtown, a scene which stigmatized open sexual expression, at the expense of women and queer people—especially those involved in sex work. When she started her porn site, Burning Angel, she applied the same DIY values that her peers did to their own bands, but faced violence and ostracization from a subculture much too repressed to embrace such blatant expression of female sexuality. In this context, the My Chemical Romance interview with Burning Angel in 2004 was not only a group of guys doing a favor for someone they had probably known for years at that point; it can also be read as a somewhat controversial act that pushed back against this aversion to sexuality, and that helped legitimize and popularize both the site and Joanna Angel’s career.
Burning Angel: the Movie (2005)
Say you’re a diehard My Chemical Romance fan in 2005—if you really want to watch your favorite band discuss their porn-viewing habits, you’ll have to travel to either your local adult entertainment store or go to the hardcore porn site BurningAngel.com and order their first DVD, appropriately titled Burning Angel: The Movie. Once you have the disc, you’ll have to fast forward through several sex scenes and interviews with other bands before you arrive at what you wanted: the actress who you’ve just seen in hardcore sex scenes asking Gerard, Frank, Mikey and Otter questions about their preferences in adult entertainment.
The DVD was Burning Angel’s first attempt at more professional pornography, and Joanna’s first foray into full participation in filmed, live-action sex. Joanna Angel would later go on to be one of the most well-known porn stars of our time—in Virgin Territory (2006), for example, she played a lemon stealing whore; you might have seen the video—and Burning Angel would be credited with the popularization of the “alt” porn genre, which broke from the exploitative mainstream porn model and typically featured models representative of subcultures.
But in 2005 her alt porn empire was still in its infancy, and Joanna was still struggling to rectify her recent full expulsion from the local New Jersey hardcore social scene with her enduring devotion to DIY values—and the fact that members of the sexually repressed subculture that had ostracized Joanna were her site’s target audience.
Joanna Angel on the Scene
Any thoughts of a future career in adult entertainment and the last name Angel were far from her mind when Joanna Mostov enrolled in Rutgers University in 1998.
Though she often pushed back against the wishes of her religious orthodox Jewish family, the extent of her adolescent rebellion had ended at sneaking out to punk shows and getting piercings her mother wouldn’t approve of. At Rutgers, Joanna quickly became enmeshed in the New Brunswick hardcore scene, putting her in the same circles as a host of people whose names you might recognize: Geoff Rickly of Thursday (who ran hundreds of shows out of his basement), Gabe Saporta of Midtown and Cobra Starship, and Alex Saavedra of Eyeball Records.
Geoff Rickly: Well, you know, the funny thing is that, at the time, Joanna, who would later go on to form Burning Angel and become a famous porn star in her own right, was playing in her goth bands with chelsea haircuts and the basement shows. Like, her local goth band would play. And they’d bring out people and stuff, and I’d put touring bands on that show, and so it’s funny to me how, weirdly, DIY punk hardcore scenes and porn had weird associations then. [source: Going Off Track: Geoff Rickly, 2012]
The NJ hardcore scene was close-knit enough that while she only has documented friendships with some of these people, she had to have crossed paths with most of them multiple times (for example, Joanna was at the show on December 31, 1998 where Thursday and Midtown played their first real sets). She went to every show she could and hosted some in her own basement.
While we don’t necessarily have a written record of her friendship with Frank Iero and Mikey Way of My Chemical Romance, the fact that Joanna attended plenty of shows in the North Jersey area and also spent a lot of time at the Eyeball House (Alex was a close friend; and Pencey Prep was on his label) suggests that, at the the very least, Joanna, Frank, and Mikey were aware of each other’s presence in these early years. They were peers in the same scene, just as they were with everyone else who frequented the same venues or played in the same basements.
For years, the hardcore scene mattered to her more than anything else; it was her social life and what she based her values upon.
Those hardcore values and a growing curiosity about her own sexuality lead Joanna to sex-positive feminist activism and a writing internship with Nerve.com, an online magazine which explored topics related to sex and romantic relationships. From there, her interest in expressing her own sexuality continued to develop.
[Suicidegirls in 2001]
So, in 2002, when her roommate and friend asked her if she wanted to start a porn site that offered more explicit content than sites like SuicideGirls, which featured punk aesthetics and band interviews but stayed away from anything more than simple nudity, Joanna agreed.
BurningAngel.com went live in April 2002. It wanted to do things differently than other porn sites. While not necessarily pushing the boundaries of beauty standards, the site used models who were beautiful but in a more approachable, average sense. Joanna has said that since she had little experience even watching porn prior to starting the site, she wanted the site to mimic the kind of sex she was having with actors who looked like the people she was having sex with.
Joanna: When we started the website, it was a reflection of ourselves. It still is to this day. There's band interviews on the website, the style of girl that we use is not your average typical porn star and the personality on the website is a little bit different. All the members interact with each other, all of the girls have blogs and profiles, and people become friends with each other. It's more of a community and a reflection of a subculture rather than just being a website with content to jerk-off to and never think about again. [source: Complex: Interview: Joanna Angel Talks Alt Porn, Piracy, And Her Blow-Up Doll, 2011]
[Burning Angel’s homepage in June 2002]
Hardcore Punk Reacts to Hardcore Porn
Her longtime involvement in the scene and her application of DIY ethics to her porn business did not mean that the hardcore culture actively nurtured Joanna Angel’s career in porn. In reality, many parts of the scene were actively hostile towards Joanna and the site once Burning Angel went live.
This backlash isn’t incredibly surprising within the context of late 90s hardcore, a subculture that by and large refused to acknowledge sexuality of any kind.
The sexual repression in hardcore reflected several different aspects of its culture: a negative perception of women active in the scene; a reaction against the violence of tristate hardcore in the early 90s; and, more than anything else, the general privilege of those involved in the underground.
Like Joanna, Geoff Rickly, and Frank Iero, most people involved in New Brunswick hardcore were enrolled at Rutgers, and white, middle-class male college students dominated the scene. For many of them, applying DIY values to their own lives meant distancing themselves from their socioeconomic upper-hand. Consequently, the scene as a whole developed an attitude of asceticism, rejecting anything that served no purpose beyond pleasure or personal enjoyment. (Of course, it was easy for them to reject their social privileges, especially when they could just as easily cast off their aesthetic of poverty and self-denial for an adulthood of relative comfort.)
To do anything just because you enjoyed it, or because it brought you happiness in the moment, was seen to be a betrayal of hardcore’s higher intellectual goals—and that included sex. You can see this trend, for example, in lyrics from NJ hardcore bands, which focused on things like political issues or childhood traumas instead of the common themes of sexual and romantic desire found in mainstream music.
Joanna spoke about finding comfort in the general sexual repression of the scene because of her own adolescent insecurities:
Joanna: Me being very sexually not advanced and insecure, [90s hardcore] was the perfect place for me, because I could ignore [sexuality]. I was getting older, I don’t know, I wanted to explore myself more. So I began to write these graphic sex stories. My roommate, Mitch, knew about it, and I remember him getting a kick out of it. [source: Turned Out A Punk #127: Joanna Angel (Burning Angel)]
For another salient example, Geoff Rickly of Thursday has spoken about his own struggles with the hardcore scene’s repression, especially in regards to the shame he felt about writing sexually explicit stories for pay:
Geoff Rickly: You have to think, this is the 90s punk scene. It's not now. Nobody would openly talk about sex in DIY punk. It was such a repressed PC time, where — I mean, a lot of that stuff is my heart, like the political activism that was still such a part of punk, and actually just giving a shit about things that matter, and modes of how you're doing what you're doing. Those things seemed to matter back then, and I appreciated that side, but it was also so uptight. So repressed. [source: Going Off Track: Geoff Rickly, 2012]
While its general aversion to sexuality might have been born out of an initial desire to reform the violent misogyny of other hardcore cultures, it created the conditions for certain social problems to go completely unaddressed. After all, how can you address the rampant misogyny, homophobia, and sexual violence in your community if any acknowledgement of sexuality is taboo?
(For a brief but interesting perspective on the impact of hardcore sexual repression upon queer people in the scene, check out Episode #4 of Geoff Rickly’s podcast Dark Blue, in which Steve Pedulla and Norman Brannon discuss their experiences as gay musicians in the scene.)
Of course, these issues aren’t confined to the New Jersey hardcore, nor were they unique to the late 1990s. This particular brand of sex-averse misogyny reflects important threads within the feminism of the time which villainized open female sexuality—especially when it concerned sex work. Left-leaning spaces like music undergrounds adopted this sex-negative, misogynistic attitude as a part of their feminism—not in opposition to it.
In particular, the Riot Grrrl movement of the late 80s/early 90s pushed back against a culture (and a subculture) that shamed women for publicly expressing their sexuality. Following that, early fanzines and performance practices addressed the mistreatment of sex workers in hardcore as one way that female bodily autonomy was limited and women’s bodies were policed. Bikini Kill frontwoman and Riot Grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna has spoken about her past in sex work, the hostility she endured for openly discussing it, and the importance of that experience in shaping the form of Riot Grrrl’s protest.
Kathleen Hanna: “Whenever we were written about in the press, I wanted my sex-work history to be part of the description, because I wanted other women whom I danced at clubs with (and who never knew my real name) to see themselves reflected in some way. A lot of women who are doing music now have been sex-trade workers, prostitutes, dancers; I thought it was really important that I didn’t hide that. But I also didn’t want to glamorize that experience in being a super-cool thing in itself. I just wanted other women who work in the sex industry to remember that we can be sex-trade workers and be philosophers, writers, musicians, artists, or whatever. [Andrea Juno, Angry Women in Rock (1996)]
Riot Grrrl gained significant traction and nation-wide attention. In the decade or so after Kathleen Hanna and her peers catalyzed the movement, bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile remained incredibly popular, and likely contributed a lot to shifting attitudes towards sexuality in music subcultures.
Still, these sex-negative attitudes prevailed among enough people involved in local underground scenes that, when Burning Angel launched in 2002 and Joanna started marketing it in local hardcore spaces, the site received a lot of attention—both good and bad. The positive attention fueled the site and allowed it to expand beyond just photographs, text interviews, and low-budget personal sex tapes that characterized its early content.
However, the negative attention Joanna and her site received was vocal, targeted, and occasionally involved literal physical violence. As Kathleen Hanna had faced moral condemnation for her time in sex work, Joanna Angel faced criticism from fellow members of her subculture who thought sex work to be completely antithetical to their social justice goals. She has spoken about how difficult it was to see a community she had cared about for years turn her back on her completely for engaging in a type of work that she found enjoyable, and that she thought could be done with moral integrity.
Joanna Angel: People were calling me ugly, calling me all sorts of mean shit, how [Burning Angel was] making a profit, [we were] exploiting women, blah blah blah. And I was so bummed. I was like, you know, this isn’t fair! I always support every fucking band in the punk scene. Even if I don’t like the band, I support them—I go to their shows, I would hand out fliers for their shows. I thought it was like a code, in the punk scene, that it doesn’t matter whether you like it or not. If this is part of the scene, you accept it, and you help it, and you love it—and I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. I remember being very hurt, you know? I was like, dude, I didn’t violate any punk laws by starting this. My friend from my computer class is the one who put it online. All the other girls on the site—all three of them— were punk chicks and part of the scene. And I felt really bad; people were insulting the other girls, and I really thought I was starting this cool thing where girls could just explore their sexuality. And mind you, at the time, the beginning of Burning Angel was just photos, not even videos. People were getting all up in this upheaval because of a handful of naked photos on the internet. It’s crazy to think about now. [source: Turned Out A Punk #127: Joanna Angel (Burning Angel)]
Amidst the mounting antagonism and after an incident at Hellfest 2004, Joanna officially decided to leave the hardcore scene that she’d been involved with for over five years.
Joanna Angel: I remember going to Hellfest one year. Maybe it was like 2004?…these girls were throwing water balloons at us because we had a booth there. Because we used to get booths at some of these shows and sell tshirts. We didn’t even have any DVDs—we’d literally get in a booth and sell tshirts and hand out fliers and stickers. And these other girls were throwing water balloons at us and calling us sluts. I was like, “Hey, that sucks, can you stop doing that?” And one of my friends—he owned a record label. He owned Eyeball Records, Alex…he saw the girls picking on us, and he went over to the girls, and said, “Hey, can you cool it? They have a booth here—let them do their thing. They’re not gonna get in your way.” And then those girls and their boyfriends beat him up, and he wound up in the hospital. He almost died. It was terrible. And I was like, we have to get out here. Let’s just stay away. If we’re a porn site, let’s just be a porn site. Let’s promote ourselves with other porn companies; let’s step away for a little while. Everyone in the punk scene knows who we are. They’ve made their decision about if they like us or not. I’m still gonna interview bands, still gonna do that thing—but I’m done. [source: Turned Out A Punk #127: Joanna Angel (Burning Angel)]
Joanna and Burning Angel’s separation from the NJ hardcore scene in 2004 finally brings me to Burning Angel: The Movie, My Chemical Romance, and that interview.
So, 2004: after over two years spent largely behind the camera and slowly expanding her porn site, Joanna finally decided to get in front of the camera and produce a more intentionally crafted alt porn video that retained the feel of the website. Thus Burning Angel: the Movie was born.
As Joanna explains in the interview, the general idea of the DVD was that different self-contained pornographic scenes would be interspersed with band interviews. One of the key features of Burning Angel, like Suicide Girls before it, was the band interviews subscribers could access alongside the porn, so it made sense to preserve this aspect of the site on the DVD experience. Joanna interviewed five bands in early 2005: Killswitch Engage, Eighteen Visions, Shadows Fall, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and, of course, My Chemical Romance—all bands that Joanna admired, and who had been involved in the same scene that she had recently left because of very real threats to her emotional and physical well-being.
Within this context, My Chemical Romance’s decision to participate in the Burning Angel interview was a statement, as they put their support behind an enterprise that was highly controversial within the social circle most immediately relevant to them.
Fresh off the 2004 Warped Tour and promoted Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, My Chemical Romance might have appeared to be largely divorced from their scene of origin, but they still acted in response to those politics—politics that impacted American culture at large more than you’d think—in both intentional and incidental ways.
That is not to say that MCR was being overtly political; they’ve made a clear effort to distance themselves from the clear-cut political imagery and goals of some of their peers in hardcore. Still, the band (Gerard especially) very obviously cared a lot about using their music and stage presence to express shades of sexuality that they perceived to be lacking from some forms of music.
Gerard: I also wanted, at the same time, [for] the record to be a testament to self-expression, and putting stuff in there like that, while not being a homosexual myself, but expressing myself in a homosexual way, is either going to push your buttons in a negative way or you’re going to identify with it. [AP: Well, this whole scene wants you to be sensitive, but not too sensitive.] It is extremely homoerotic, especially the whole emo-sensitive thing. Everyone’s wearing women’s pants; everyone’s got women’s haircuts; everyone’s wearing youth-medium shirts. I don’t want to come out and say it. It’s blatantly obvious. Wearing a leather jacket is an extremely masculine thing to do in this scene. Even the hardcore bands, the really hard ones, you see them in makeup and stuff. I like that. I think it keeps it dangerous. It keeps it exciting. In a way, sex has really been missing from rock, especially because of all the sensitivity. That’s what I really wanted to convey on the record, too. I wanted the record to be very dangerous and sexy at the same time. There’s such a lack of sex in music. It’s been more about getting in touch with your feelings and being there for each other, which is great, but it’s definitely lacking this sexual duality. [Source: Alternative Press #193, Aug 2004; emphasis mine]
Additionally, many of their moments of explicit sexuality on stage were designed to be somewhat incendiary and polarizing.
But it’s important to remember that, just as late 90s New Jersey hardcore was not the first subculture with issues of sexual repression, My Chemical Romance does not represent the first attempt to push back at this asexual culture and definitely weren’t leading that particular conversation. Gerard took inspiration from artists already pushing those boundaries and incorporating sexual expression into their art. He has spoken, for example, about the impact of Riot Grrrl acts upon his music and stage presence (Joanna Angel has similarly pointed to bands like Bikini Kill as significant influences). These bands had already incorporated resistance against harmful sexual repression, values which Gerard and his band mates took on when they adopted their styles into My Chemical Romance.
(I also want to mention briefly that other significant people in the hardcore world have spoken out against pornography, such as Ian MacKaye of the formative post-hardcore band Fugazi. MacKaye owned Dischord Records, the definitive underground music label, to which a young Frank Iero unsuccessfully attempted to get his band Sector 12 signed. The matter of pornography and its role within the hardcore world was not one upon which you could maintain a neutral stance after, say, appearing on a porn DVD.)
As shitty as it was that they needed approval from the men in the scene, My Chemical Romance, along with other bands, supported Burning Angel, a new kind of porn, and helped legitimize Joanna Angel’s claim that what she was doing was not backwards or exploitative but had integrity.
Have you had an issue with people you grew up with when they find out you're in the adult industry?
Joanna: At first people had problem[s], but not anymore. Once the cool kids in bands said, "I think what she's doing is cool" all the others turned around. Everyone I ever respected didn't have an issue with it and all the stupid, annoying hardcore kids had a problem. For as much shit as I got, I also got a lot of support. [Source: Hustlerworld Interview: Joanna Angel]
I don’t mean to glamorize the porn industry or to depict Joanna Angel as some savior of female sexuality in the early 2000s. But, as Kathleen Hanna points out, sex work is legitimate work, and sex workers deserve to have workplaces that treat them with dignity and communities that recognize their humanity. The reality was that NJ hardcore as a community did not support sex workers. Fundamentally, these were the barriers that caused Joanna and Burning Angel to make an exodus from the local hardcore scene—and they are the attitudes we risk reproducing when we express discomfort that a band we admire has interacted with a sex worker.
My intentions with this post (which turned out longer than I had ever anticipated, so Jesus, thank you for reading) were to shed light on the historical context of one moment in My Chemical Romance’s history. I’ve found that the average MCR fan, even those with a specific fondness for their early years, doesn’t actually know much at all about it—so I hope this has given some clarity.
I’ll end on this note: Without bands supporting Burning Angel, who knows—we might have never seen the lemon stealing whore. At the very least, the culture surrounding porn would look a lot different. That might not mean it would look better or worse—though you can’t deny the role that Joanna Angel played, nor the role that bands from the New Jersey Hardcore scene like My Chemical Romance played in shaping the American culture of pornography.
Find sources for this post here.
[acknowledgements: thank you so much for reading! my forever thanks, as always, to nic @raytorosaurus, sophia @sendmyresignation, vyn @bringmoreknives, and maddy @8thnotes for their continued cheerleading as i spent over a month writing this long, long post. additional thanks to wes @killrockstar for very kindly offering some incredibly helpful guidance about riot grrrl and sending me resources about kathleen hanna. and much gratitude to merlin @void-flesh and @transmascfrankiero for their feedback on the final draft of this essay.]
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WOoOoOoO SPOOKY SEASON REQUIRES SPOOKY STUFF
Anyways
I would love to request an Child ghost!reader and the gang, basically child reader got murdered when they were using the VR and their soul got stuck into the game.
Their soul being so GORY AND DISTORTED, like an arm is missing, one eye is like hanging out and their head has an hole. Reader can get invisible like a ghost and move things with only their mind, and they are very quiet and just observes, rarely get mad or anything, but when they snap (for example: Because of jax's pranks) they start throwing things around dim the lights and scream, and lets put like, Reader's screams are like LOUD as hell, basically like an ghost tantrum.
So basically Child reader is just an sad messed up lil goof who needs comfort and therapy.
Sorry if its long, i love love love your blog btw!
-🌹
TADC cast x ghost!child!reader (platonic + light found family) !
going to take a different approach to writing this one, since i feel bad about being selective of cast/multi characters today, so! rather than having divided segments like usual, its going to be a group thing! hope thats alright!
going to be the last request of this batch them imma make something to eat rq for dinner then get back to writing YAHOO!
when you joined the digital circus, you were already very obviously different from the rest of the gang. even if your gore was toned down thanks to your body being digitized; the programming seemed to struggle with altering your body into something unique... strange... it also seems your body is fighting back against the programming of the world, seemingly trying to restore itself. The effect makes you almost look like you're glitching, or even abstracting
Caine doesnt immediately pick up on your presence, i feel like its in his programming to be aware when a new member joins the circus, but for some reason he didnt notice you until he saw you, or someone brings you up to him
It was Ragatha, who was trying to get answers from him. Who's kid was this? Is it really fair to let a kid be stuck here? Obviously she knew Caine couldnt do anything about it now that you were here, nor did he have any hand in you putting on the headset.
Except... you correct them and say you didn't put on any headset, you were trapped in it.
Of course you're trapped, just like the rest of us, Jax says
None of them immediately believe you try to tell them you're a ghost. Except of course, Kinger, who reasons that that's why you look the way you do; and Gangle, who in my opinion probably finds interest in the supernatural.. or maybe that's just me projecting onto her. Who knows. But the point still stands, almost everyone doesn't believe you.
Not long after, Jax accidentally ropes you into prank that was originally intended for Zooble, I dont think Jax would go as far as to bully a child.... well... actually no, he seems like the type to bully kids on roblox.
The prank wasnt planned for you, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You open a door, and are immediately greeted with a fake snake lunging out at you. You scream, more so out of surprise and fear than anger. It does turn into anger when Jax laughs at you, still finding some kind of joy from the prank getting at least someone. Your scream rises, causing nearly everyone to cover their ears, the rest were not there in the room but would come rushing to see what the hell was going on
I think it would be that instance as well as a few other; namely ones where you became invisible and started removing one of Zooble's limbs after they (unintentionally) said something a little too mean to you. The idea of you being a ghost was further cemented when both Gangle and Ragatha watched you literally phase through a wall. But hey at least someone (Jax) starts laying off of you when it becomes clear you weren't lying
There's mixed feelings, a lot negative. I mean, you're just a kid and you're. Well, a ghost. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion that something happened to you. Whether or not you remember the details of your death when you became a ghost, or after joining the digital world, is all up to you
Caine, as mentioned before in posts where the reader is a child, tries to be a father figure. He's not the best, since he's programmed to be a ring master, but he definitely tries his best. I like to think he tries to read you bedtime stories when the digital world simulates 'night'
Pomni, who I totally didn't forget, tries to overcome her fear of you and your ghostly powers, ultimately becoming sympathetic you and your situation. Not only was your life cut short, but you were trapped here too, you didn't even get to roam the world in the afterlife. Interactions with her are awkward but there's an effort to try to bring you some form of comfort
Jax, after he stops pulling jokes on you cant deny that he doesnt find you creepy. I think, though, he would ask you if you want to help him scare some of the other members. Whether you be offended by the concept or not is also up to you, since I'm not sure if you wanted the reader to be sensitive regarding their current predicament or not
Ragatha goes into full big sister mode, even before it's confirmed that you're a ghost. Sure, she's a little put off by your ganky and gorey looks, but her heart aches for you. Similar to Caine she tries to do general child care activities with you, perhaps if you let her, she would do your hair and make you dresses
Kinger will take a while to warm up to you, but I think after some time would start to open up to you, usually it's best to interact with him when he's already in a calmer state. He already gives me dad vibes that I cant pin down... but he would tell you stories of his past (in house) adventures and some funny stuff that has happened over his time in the digital world
Zooble is going to need a moment to get over the invisible dismemberment thing... as well as Zooble being Zooble and needing some time to warm up to people in general... Not much to be said, yet...
Gangle would offer to lend you some art supplies... kids like arts and crafts stuff, right? Thats her logic, at least, and if it means you have an outlet for your emotions then that would be great!
Overall you now have a funky found family, so hey, at least things aren't totally... terrible.. Unfortunately with them stuck in the digital world they can't do much to get you justice, if you let them know you were murdered. But rest assured if your killer somehow gets trapped in there with them and you recognize them, they have your back
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