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strangerfictions · 4 years

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The Fight Part 3

Summary: You are struggling to sleep so both you and Billy go for some coffee and contemplation.

Warnings: Mentions of Neil but other than that I think it is mostly angst

A/N: Hey everyone long time no post. AA few of you may know that I am starting to post my work on AO3 before here so that’s why it has been pretty quiet on here. I have been struggling with this part for a while so I restarted it and I am super happy with it. I don’t plan on doing too many more parts because it is taking up a lot of time and I would like to move onto something new now! Anywas hope you enjoy !

It was late and you were overthinking again. Something you did often the past couple of months. You didn’t have long left in your senior year and you were starting to question your college applications. You couldn’t help question your ability and put yourself down for silly mistakes you had made throughout the year.

You sigh and throw back the bed covers leaving the warmth of your bed. Walking towards the window you notice Billy’s lights are still on. Not unusual for him to still be up. You walk towards your desk and turn on the lamp which illuminates your room. You walk back towards the window and spot Billy leaning out his window cigarette in hand and smoke escaping into the night. You open the window which causes him to look up towards you. Without thinking, Billy jumps out his window, barefooted, and walks towards you.

As he walks towards you, you can see the smile on his face. Not something you see very often from Billy, but it is always a welcomed sight. Things had been great between you two and you were grateful for that. You had both discussed dating for a long time one night and concluded that keeping it causal would work best for you both for now.

“Hey” You whispers as Billy stops in front of your window

“Hi…unlike you to be up at this time princess” You watch as Billy stubs his cigarette on the wall beside your window.

“Mhmm can’t sleep I keep thinking about college applications” You move slightly expecting Billy to climb over your windowsill.

“I have an idea! Get dressed and meet me at the end of the street” Without any further instruction Billy runs back towards his open window pulling it closed as he climbs in.

You quickly pull on some comfy clothes and write a note to your parents explaining that you went for a walk because you couldn’t sleep. You climb out your window and close it behind you. You look over and see Billy’s light is off. You can’t help but think about what he has planned as you walk toward the end of the street. He isn’t there when you get to the end of the street, so you sit on the curb and wait for him. Within seconds you here is car roar to life and you quickly stand up knowing the speeds he likes to drive. You look up the street and watch as his car comes into view and stops beside you. You open the door and get in.

“So where are you bringing me? Not planning on killing me are you?” You ask while pulling on your seat belt.

“Mhmm well, I’m not going to kill you now am I?” Billy smiles at you knowing how annoying you find his sarcasm sometimes.

“Funny! Seriously it's 4 am where are you bringing me?” You question as you rub your hands together to get a little warmer.

“You will just have to wait and see princess!” You dramatically sigh and fold your arms pretending to be mad that he wouldn’t tell you

“Fine but I’m not happy”

“I’m not happy either having to deal with how annoying you're being but here we are!” You give Billy a knowing look which causes him to burst out laughing.

“Come on! It’s a joke. Lighten up” Billy continues to laugh at your stubbornness as you watch the lights from Hawkins fade into a pitch-black road. Billy’s car the only thing on it.

“Why were you up Billy?” You ask after a few minutes of silence. You look over expecting an answer but all you get is a shoulder shrug

“Great conversation Billy” You say sarcastically

“I just was. I don’t sleep very well wake up at the slightest things. I heard Max get up to get a midnight snack and I have been awake since then. Better conversation for you princess?” Billy sighs as the tension builds in the air.

You both sit in silence as Billy drives you to wherever he is taking you. Ever now and then Billy will sigh and tighten his grip on the steering wheel. Something he does when he is thinking something.

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to get like that with you” Billy finally says after a few minutes of silence between you.

“Mhmm okay…you know I’m here for you to talk to, right? It’s not like I’m going to use whatever you tell me against you. I’m here to help that’s what friends do!” You say reaching over and resting your hand on his upper arm.

“Jesus, I know I just…It’s not easy for me to be open with people is all. Can we drop it for now please?” You hum a yes and allow silence to take over the car again. Billy reaches over and turns on a random radio station and allows the soft music to play gently throughout the car.

After about ten minutes Billy pulls off onto a back road eventually coming to a diner. You sit up a little in the seat feeling stiff from the journey.

“This place has the best coffee and pie out there! So, we are going to get some and contemplate our life’s choices” Billy says as he pulls up a little away from the doors and turns the engine off.

You get out of the car and stretch a little while waiting for Billy to get out. Once Billy is out of the car he walks over towards the door and you follow before going inside he takes your hand in his and walks in.

On the outside, the diner looks bland but as soon as you step inside you are greeted by neon lights and the smell of coffee and pie.

“Okay so I have a usual booth and I haven’t not sat there ever and as you can its extremely busy so let’s just go straight to my booth before it is taken” You laugh at Billy’s exaggeration of the diner being busy. Well, maybe he is right. It is busy for 4 am. Two guys are sat at the front drinking coffee together. They look like truckers or something. And other than you, Billy and the waitress that all there is.

Billy practically drags you towards a bright red booth in the back of the diner. You scoot into one side of the booth and he does the same on the opposite side.

“Here’s the menu but I will tell you this…The apple pie here is pretty great so make your decision wisely” Billy says with a smirk as you glance down at the menu in your hand “You make it sound like it’s a life or death decision Billy” You laugh at how ridiculous Billy is being with you.

“It might be for all you know! You never know what could happen. This might just be my alibi for killing you later” You both burst out laughing as the waitress walks towards you.

“Good Morning what can I get you folks this evening?” The waitress asks. She is in her mid-fifties and is wearing a pink and white 50s style dress. Her hair gives away her age more than anything as it begins to grey at the roots.

“I will have a big slice of apple pie and coffee and my dear friend here will have the same!” Billy says glancing over at you to see how you would react to him ordering for you. You watch the ageing waitress take your menus and walk back to the front of the diner to get your order.

“You’re acting weird Billy. You’re not high, are you?” You ask analysing Billy’s facial expression.

“Jesus Y/N, Seriously? No, I’m not high I just enjoy a slice of pie sometimes” Billy huffs and slouches down in the booth

“Okay I don’t see you like this often is all” You say quietly afraid to speak any louder

“Like what?” Billy asks as he picks at his fingernails.

“Happy I guess” You say as Billy glances up from his fingers.

“I guess not. I suppose I should start from the beginning then?” Billy sits up and leans his arms on the table in front of you.

“The reason I was awake tonight was because of Max but not because she woke me up getting a snack.” Billy pauses and sighs deeply fixating on his fingers as he continues to pick at the skin around them. You notice his finger is bleeding and so you reach over and place your hand on his to stop him from pulling at the skin anymore. “I always wake up when I hear her because if I hear her getting up chances are so can Neil and I would rather him hit me than her.” Billy looks up at you as you process what he has said.

“Jesus…”

“Two slices of pie and two cups of coffee…Enjoy!” The waitress places the plates of pie and coffee in front of you both and walks away before you can thank her.

“I don’t want your sympathy Y/N that’s not why I am telling you this. I’m telling you this because I don’t want to get anyone else hurt…especially not you. The reason I haven’t asked you to out on a date is that if he knows he will hurt you and I’m not risking that okay…” Billy’s voice weakens. You pull your hand back to allow him to eat.

“I’m guessing you won’t appreciate me saying I can stick up for myself?” You ask taking a chunk of apple pie on to your fork. Billy looks up towards you taking a bite of apple pie.

“No you’re right I won’t. He is not someone to mess with Y/N and I would prefer not to get you involved so don’t go causing trouble for me! Now you know why I was up I want to know why you were up?” You take a sip of your coffee before answering.

“Fine but just know I’m always here for you Billy whether you like it or not!” You sigh taking another sip from your coffee “I don’t even know what started it but I got into bed and instantly started overthinking everything I have done over the past few months. The fight with Carol and Tommy, everything going on with us and college acceptance. I just went spiraling into a black hole of dread. It’s stupid I know but I just feel so lost with everything right now.” You realise you are slumped over the table and sit back into the booth seat. You feel nervous telling Billy this, but he had just opened up so much to you and you felt you could do the same with him.

“Talk about existential dread Y/N! That’s kind of a lot to be thinking about at once. Have you tried breaking it down into more thinkable chunks?” Billy reaches over to the napkin holder grabbing a napkin and placing it in front of you.

“Here! Write down everything you have been thinking about and that way you can think it through a little clearer.” Billy pushes a pen towards you and watches you as you start to write out a list of things that have been on your mind for the past few weeks

“I genuinely feel like I’m in a therapy session right now! Which I guess is a good thing” You laugh as Billy pretends to be offended.

“Wow, comparing me to a therapist I don’t know how I feel about that.” Billy grins at you as you look up from your list.

“Okay so far I have four things and well I guess I can cross of the you and me thing since you don’t want to date. Unless you want to date in secret. That’s ridiculous though. I guess all I have left is my parents, college and the fight” You say marking out Billy’s name on the napkin. You look up after a second realising Billy hasn’t said anything yet. When you see Billy’s facial expression you can't help but laugh.

“What? Why are you looking at me with that weird face?” You both laugh

“Sorry, just something you said about secret dating. That’s a wild thought” You watch as Billy takes the final bite of pie and pushes his plate away

“What?” He asks crumbs falling from his mouth.

“Are you going to continue that thought or just not expand on it?” You take another bite as Billy takes a large mouthful of coffee

“Right sorry, I just think it’s an odd and fascinating idea. Imagine us trying to date in secret! Ridiculous ” Billy laughs as you think about the possibility.

“I mean it would solve a lot of issues but yeah it’s kind of ridiculous. What do I do with the other three things on this stupid list!” You grab the napkin and crumple it in your hand.

“This is pointless. It’s not like we can both instantly solve the fact that my parents obsess over my life, or the fact that I won’t get into any college I applied to” You shake your head placing it in your hands letting out a frustrated sigh.

“Woah! That was quite the outburst Y/N! I know for a fact that you are going to get into a big college, leave Hawkins behind and start a life wherever you go. You're going to end up with the dream boyfriend who you will eventually settle down with, get married and have kids. The white picket fence…you get what I’m saying. You’re too smart to stay in Hawkins.

“Yeah and that’s what I’m afraid of Billy. I don’t want to go to college, met the dream guy, settle down a month after graduating, getting married, having kids and the white picket fence. That’s not me and I don’t think it ever will be me. College is something I want to do but settling down is just too permanent. I want to be able to explore the world a little before all of that” You feel all previous anxieties wash away as you let out your fears to Billy.

“So that’s what’s been bothering you? Why didn’t you say so? Look no one is forcing you to go to college and settle down immediately. I mean I’m not that great of an example clearly but just do what you want. In twenty years’ time, you will regret it if you don’t.” Billy stops talking to take a mouthful of coffee allowing you to think about what he had said.

Of course, Billy was right, but it didn’t help the unease you felt about the entire thing. You hated the thought of settling down so young, but you hoped that once you moved out of Hawkins things would be different.

“I guess you’re right. I guess I’m a little worried about the consequences of not doing what my parents want me to do.”

“It’s in the future you don’t have to worry about it right now. For all, you know things might be completely different in 24 hours let alone a year or two. If you’re finished let's head out before Neil discovers I’m not in the house.” You watch as Billy shimmies out of the booth stretching as he stands up. You follow suit and stand up felling your legs stiffen. You look at the clock and realise you had been there for almost an hour.

You both walk up to the counter and pay the waitress for your food. Billy offers to pay but you manage to drop a twenty down before he can even slip his hand into his pocket. You both thank the waitress and walk out into the cool air.

“Fuck being the person people expect of you and be the person you want to be. It’s worked out okay for me so far” Billy smiles at you as you open the passenger side door to get into the car.

“Yeah look how well that’s been working out for me Billy! First, we both had an argument, then I get into a punch up with Carol and Tommy and then even though we both like each other we can’t date because your dad is a shitty person. Even though I’m myself my life is still as fucked as ever” You sigh slouching down into the seat. Billy reaches over placing his hand on your knee causing you to look at him.

“Look I get it. Life is shit and all that, but you know you need to find something that keeps you going. For me I have a few things one being my car and as sad and soppy as this may sound, you’re the other thing. You have helped me in more ways than you think, and I thank whoever blessed me with your presence. You know I would drop everything to date you but I’m not risking it Y/N. He is not someone to be messed with and I hope you understand that. I don’t want to risk getting your hurt thanks to my selfishness. You will figure things out and I will be here as your friend to help you out too!” Billy takes his hand off your knee and places it back on the steering wheel turning the key causing the engine to come alive.

“Fine but you better get used to seeing this dinner cause that was some good apple pie and I expect to be brought here regularly!” You both laugh as Billy reverses out of the parking lot.

“Sounds like a deal to me princess!”

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curious-minx · 3 years

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October 2010s Music Deep Dive!

A mock up poster for the only possible music festival line-up I would be willing to risk my life attending. Tony Allen’s passing has caused the entire Octoberfest to be cancelled indefinitely, but all proceeds from ticks will be given back to the community.

Hope all of you special nobodies and overblown somebodies reading this right now are having a smashing start your first o November. All last month I had taken it upon myself to listen to as many albums and fragments of albums released sometime during the month of October spanning the entire 10’s decade, 2010 through 2019. This is all probably a result of drinking too much dead water, Quarantine brain, undiagnosed Autism, magical thinking and the death of boredom. I have created a Spotify playlist sporting 25 hours and 4 minutes worth of music with an arbitrary amount of albums getting multiple songs, but largely one song/album. This project did create a sense of madness because of the volume of music that gets cranked out. How can we expect anyone to properly criticize music when it is nearly impossible to keep up with it all? I largely culled these albums from Allmusic’s Editorial Choice section, but I did have to use Rateyourmusic to fill out the hip-hop and R&B gaps. In gathering up all of this music I am attempting to see if spooky music was relegated to the October season and any other possible trends. Even though October has been laid to rest her swelling calendar breast still contains a treasure trove of music worth discussing. Grab your broom, sharpen your heels and get the cobwebs out of your ears because we’re going on a Deep Dive!

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The 2010s Old Souls and Musical Auteurs

I consider any musician or band that endures more than a decade worthy of this veteran label. Music biz lifers seem found solace in the October release schedule. A trend that has carried onto the new decade with October 2020 offering revitalized releases by Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen reunited with the E Street Band. All three main members of Sonic Youth, Moore, Gordon and Renaldo are still harnessing that spooky Bad Moon Rising energy and carrying it over into their solo releases.

KIM GORDON’s NO RECORD HOME

The first truly proper solo album by Kim Gordon following up her pretty good noise rock releases under the Body/Head moniker with Bill Nace. No Record Home towers over Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo’s mostly okay solo releases because of how truly experimental and refreshingly modern sounding No Record Home is. This album sounds like it could easily have come out from a young Pacific Northwest Trip-Angle (RIP) label upstart. Instead, Gordon is defiantly aging gracefully and remains an all around important feminist voice in experimental rock music. No Record Home did not pop up on a lot of “Best of the Year” lists in 2019, nor did Gordon embark on any kind of touring for the release. I am hoping that more people will eventually discover this great album and realize that Gordon was truly the best, most truly experimental aspect of Sonic Youth. Her vocals on this album are the best she’s ever sounded because she built these songs and sounds with the intergral collaborator, producer Justin Raisen. A glimpse at Raisen’s Wikipedia page is a who’s who of great artists of the past decade: Yves Tumor, Charli XCX, and Sky Ferreira. The collaboration occurred at an AirBnB shared between Gordon and Raisen and birthed the first single of the project “Air BnB.” A song that completely sets the tone of the album and features one of those amazing music videos in the same line us Young Thug’s “Wyclef Jean. “

Björk - Biophilia

Can you name the last album the rolled out with its own app? Nine years have come and gone and I certainly can’t think of another album with such wholesome ambitions. Björk was getting passionate about ecological concerns in her native Icelandic home with Sigur Ros and using her sphere of influence to try to good. 2014 the app has found a permanent home in the MOMA, but outside of this curio status the album itself is still a worthwhile addition to the Björk canon. Biophilia finds Björk in musical scientist mode using sounds captured from a Tesla coil and making a whole musical universe onto herself. The rest of the 2010s found Björk going for bigger and more ambitious projects that continue to frustrate those who wish she would go back to her poppier roots. She remains one of those most consistent solo artists around and someone no one will be able to predict what she does next. The only thing is certain is that it will be visionary and will probably include a wildly ambitious rollout and a new piece of physical art like Biophilia’s $800 tuning forks.

NENEH CHERRY - BROKEN POLITICS

Featuring production duties for the second time from Four Tet (who also pops up in the October playlist with his 2013 album Beautiful Rewind). Broken Politics in Cherry’s words, “is about feeling broken, disappointed, and sad, but having perseverance. It’s a fight against the extinction of free thought and spirit.” The music video for single “Natural Skin Deep” was filmed in Beirut, a backdrop made even more painful given 2020’s Explosion. Cherry is an artist with deep spiritual and blood connections with artists central to jazz’s history. Broken Politics also features songs built around Ornette Coleman samples. This is all to say that Neneh Cherry is always going to be someone tapping into a creative cosmic vein that spans generations, and with that comes a hard wisdom. Two years later we’re still dealing with the same god damn guts and guns of history.

OTHER NOTABLES:

(Cat Power - The Wanderer; John Cale - Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood; Tony Allen - Film of Life ; Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Psychedelic Pill ;Bryan Ferry - Olympia; Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Ghosteen ;Yoko Ono - Warzone; Vashti Bunyan - Heartleap; Elvis Costello & The Imposters - Look Now; The Chills - Silver Bullets; Weezer - Everything Will Be Alright In The End;Laurie Anderson - Heart of A Dog;Janet Jackson - Unbrekable;The Mercury Rev - Light In You; Rocketship - Thanks To You; Van Dyke Parks & Gaby Moreno - Spangled; Donald Fagen - Sunken Condos; Prefab Sprout - Crimson Red; Pere Ubu - 20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo; Negativland - True False )

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TRILOGY OF BLACKSTARS

Three last albums released by three titans of 20th century songwriting. Two of them follow the trajectory of an older artist getting rejuvenated by a younger backing band. Lulu is beyond a meme at this point and is considered one of the most confounding flops since Metallic Music. Like Metallic Music, Lulu will get a reappraisal and find its audience. Mr. Blackstar himself Bowie considered Lulu one of his favorite releases. “Junior Dad” alone makes this album a worthy addition in Lou Reed’s discography. Scott Walker invited some similarly hairy and intense younger rock studs into his private castle and pulls off a far more natural combination. Soused fits like a velvet glove on a elegant corpse hand swirling thick slabs of guitar and demonic percussion. Scott Walker effortlessly orchestrates between elegance and moribundity whereas Lulu wallows and thrashes against the ugly riffage.

No riffs or oozing wall of sound are anywhere to be found on the sparse and pointedly elegiac You Want it Darker. Leonard Cohen never went full on sleazy I’m Your Man ever again but he didn’t become adult contemporary either. You Want It Darker finds Leonard and his son Adam Cohen. When Leonard passed away he was the only one to get a full David Bowie like museum tribute, Lou Reed only got a corner of a library. Cohen is far and away the most accessible mystical Jewish Buddhist monk with a penchant for fedoras and having a masked man with a leather belt beat him in the recording booth [citation needed]. You Want It Darker is the only one of these mortality laden kiss offs to win a Grammy. I do wonder if Cohen would have ever allowed a more adventurous production to touch his staid and timeless old fashioned sound. Tom Scharpling divides Leonard Cohen into his Pre-Fedora and Post-Fedora days. If you are being literal about that demarcation that still gives you a pretty vast body of music I just want sad bloated blurry black and white Leonard Cohen with a banana or the smiling cad on Songs of Love and Hate. Even the floppy fedora era has worthwhile albums and he sounds like if Serge Gainsbourgh was a muppet Gargoyle, he’s reliable. I will always beat myself for not buying that official Leonard Cohen raincoat at the Jewish Museum Leonard Cohen exhibit, but I hope someone has and they are finding comfort with Cohen’s music. A lot of his latter day period is comforting in a sardonic sexy mind bending nursing home sort of way.

I am glad that these men were ultimately spared from having to deal with Covid times and even someone as tasteless as Brian Wilson’s Ghost can acknowledge that it’s more important than ever to keep your elderly loved ones locked away in a well ventilated pod.

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(INSERT ARTIST HERE) SEASON

For a few sticky sweet select few artists the month of October proved to be a suitable release launch pad for more than one album. The Mountain Goats and clipping. have just joined the October two-timer club this year. The reigning queen of October releases is Taylor Swift and Adrianne Lenker. In chronological order swift released Speak Now, Red and 1989 probably Swift’s biggest run in terms of critical and commercial success. None of these albums have a particularly big place in my heart, in fact speaking on behalf of Brian Wilson’s Ghost Ltd. I’m not the biggest fan of America’s Sweetheart, Sweet Tea Poet Laureate. All three of these albums all came out in the latter part of October and based on the Target brand synergy roll-out felt as inevitable as pumpkin spice. Haunted. Sad Beautiful Tragic. Out of the Woods. These are either song titles taken from these three albums are the names of the under utilized Romantic Halloween Horror Comedy genre. Lady Gaga might have been spooking it up on American Horror Story, but Swift gives a far more chilling performance in Tom Hooper’s midnight madness of Cats and I could envision Swift excelling really well as a horror film actor. Especially in a role like Scarlett Johansson’s Under the Skin.

You cannot get more polar opposite from Swift than Adrianne Lenker. Who released her first solo album abysskiss and the second Big Thief album of 2019 Two Hands. Lenker will have also gone on to make her third October release this year with her second solo album songs & instrumentals. Striking that such a ghostly autumnal band would have only released one album in October, but autumnal feeling albums are not beholden to release calendars. The song “Not” from the Big Thief album Two Hands is a watershed breakthrough moment for the band and put Lenker and her band on the map. In 2019 Big Thief became a band that could get booked onto a Goodmorning American performance slot and more or less made Big Thief one of the rare 2010s indie bands to become more or less a household name.

Other notable artists to have released more than one album on October 2010s:

Less notable artists to have multiple October releases: James Blunt Korn

Calvin Harris

Kings of Leon

Pentatonix

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FORMER HARBINGERS OF HYPE

These are October releases from artists that once felt like whenever they put out an album a wider array of outlets and publications seemed to care more and would spill more digital ink over them. The big three artists that had the biggest drop off in attention and acclaim that stick out to me the most are Titus Andronicus, Justice and Why? All three artists debuted with strong starts back in the aughts, but according to critical reception more or less crashed and burned. Titus Andronicus’ Local Business was one of the last times Titus Andronicus would get positive marks from Pitchfork. Local Business a fun and shaggy follow-up to one of the most self-serious concept albums of the 2010s.

Justice’s Audio, Video, Disco similarly is a follow up to a highly acclaimed album that set the bar high enough to doom Justice into never living up to the hype. Justice’s 2007 s/t heralded them as the next Daft Punk, but unlike those soulful and thoughtful robots Justice mainly wanted to make big ridiculous unfashionable synth prog rock. Audio, Video, Disco is simply cheesy fun and even though we live in a world better off without parties and gatherings this album helps you feel like you are in high-def IMAX monster mash on the moon.

The leaves us with Why?’s Mump’s Etc. an album that already had the job of following up an already divisive follow up record Eskimo Snow. Why’s Alopecia is a really important 2008 indie blog rap album that helped thrust the online indie blogs into the hip-hop genre hybrid experimentalism. Why? would never make another universally beloved album again and with Mump’s Etc. ended up permanently in Pitchfork’s hate pit. In the original release review the Pitchfork writer essentially deems this album an act of “career suicide.” The whole review is essentially an assignation of Why?’s figurehead Yoni Wolf and taking him to task for all of his awkward lyrical blunders and the fact he is narcissistic enough to be a musician writing about his career in a meta fashion. Yet when I listen to Mump’s Etc. I am more or less enjoying Yoni Wolf’s personality and find the whole thing to be pretty charming. A perfectly serviceable 3.5/5 release that a media outlet like Pitchfork turns into a flexing opportunity to show how that they have the power to make or break a career.

A.C. Newman, an artist who appears on this playlist with his terrific 2012 Shut Down The Streets took to Twitter to scoff at the idea that a good Pitchfork review has done anything for his career. Shut Down The Streets currently remains the last solo album Newman has released under his name choosing to focus on his main gig with the New Pornographers. The Internet based hype machine is even more ADHD addled and twitchier by the day. The joy of doing this deep dive allowed me to revisit a lot of these artists and acts that I had fallen out of touch with. I had completely forgotten about King of Convenience’s Erlend Øye who released the album Legao in 2014. I rediscovered a good deal of bands like the Editors, The Dodos, Kisses, Black Milk, Crocodiles, Empire of the Sun, Juana Molina, Jagwar Ma, Here We Go Magic, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., YACHT, Peaking Lights, The Twilight Sad, Elf Power, Swet Shop Boys, Radio Dept, Allo’ Darlin, Foxes In Fiction, and HOMESHAKE are all bands not trying to change the world or challenge listeners with avant garde experimentation. Instead I feel like I maintaining relationships with old friends on the edge of obscurity.

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A HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS IN OCTOBER

A tradition stretching back as far as 2014 not October’s Idina Menzel’s Holiday Wishes, but Seth McFarland’s Holiday For Swing sweatily released on CD, digital, and vinyl on September 30, 2014. 2015 then brings us a Chris Tomlin and Ru Paul Christmas albums because every force of Neo-liberal good must be balanced with evangelical contemporary Christian music *shutters.* 2016 finds the Christmas in October era reaching a complete and utter nadir with R. Kelly’s final official LP 12 Nights of Christmas and A Pentatonix Christmas, but also buffered by Kacey Musgrave’s Christmas. 2017 only had time for Gwen Stefani’s You Make It Feel Like Christmas and no one else could evoke this feeling in October. On 2018, Michelle and Barack Obama’s combined one and only Christmas wish comes true, no not cancelling those drone strikes, but getting John Legend to join the October release jamboree; Eric Clapton claps open his guitar’s butt cheeks and hatefully squats out a half assed Xmas album defiantly opening the album with “White Christmas” [eyeroll emoji]; and finally 2018 found the Pentatonix announcing in October that Christmas Is Here. I apologize for all of that crude butt talk about the hateful racist Eric Clapton, but(t) I have festive gluteus Maximus on the mind, because in 2019 Norah Jones got her alternative country gal trio back together to remind us to shake our Christmas butts. Eat shit commercial shit, today’s Santa’s birthday! That’s the magic of the October release schedule!

The hallowed Christmas in October tradition continues on in 2020 with Dolly I-Beg-Thee-Pardon releasing A Holly Dolly Christmas right on time on October 2, 2020 (Carrie Underwood missed the memo and unwraps her unwanted My Gift in September 2020). Meghan Trainor, Goo Goo Dolls, and Tori Kelly released Christmas albums. Can you believe Seth MacFarlane comes up twice in this article, because his sleazy J. Michigan Frog croon is processed and grated like Parmesan cheese snow flakes all over a rendition of White Christmas. What a time to be alive!

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WHERE DID THEY GO?

A Brief Case For Class Actress’s Rapproacher

Among my October music travels I encountered one artist that really impressed me with her proper LP debut Rapprocher. The trio fronted by Elizabeth Vanessa Harper is essentially peddling the kind of competent moody 80’s inspired synth pop that belongs on a lost Donnie Darko sequel. Harper’s vocals are striking and expressive and they are melded with constantly propulsive bed of shiny synths and glossy barely-there gated percussion. Outside of an 2015 EP called Movies featuring exciting production contributions from Italo-disco icon Giorgio Moroder there has been nothing else from Class Actress. Highly recommend you check them out especially if you want to find the sweet spot between Chromatics and Kylie Minogue.

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THE OCTOBER 2010s MASTERPIECES

(Robyn - Honey, Big K.R.I.T. - 4eva is a Mighty Long Time ,Miguel - Kaleidoscope Dream, Crying - Beyond The Fleeting Gale , M83 Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming ,SRSQ - Unreality, Sufjan Stevens - age of adz, Joanna Newsom - divers, VV Brown Samson and Delilah, Kelela - tear me apart , Neon Indian - VEGA Intl., Fever Ray - Plunge , Antony and The Johnsons - Swanlights (goodbye album) , Caroline Polachek - Pang , Sky Ferreira - Night Time, My Time . Bat For Lashes Haunted Man, James Ferraro - Far Side Virtual , Grouper - Ruins , Kero Kero Bonito -Bonito Generation , DJ Rashad - Double Cup)

Maybe if I surround this VV Brown album with more well known artists she’ll finally get some more clicks? I should also mention that Joanna Newsom’s Divers is nowhere on my Spotify October Music playlist because Joanna Newsom thinks Spotify is bananas, and she hates bananas. I know I should also mention Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city and Tame Impala’s Lonerism. That’s the maddening thing about October music that just when you think you covered all your ground you find another hidden hump underneath the carpet. I feel remiss without mentioning striking debut and instant hidden gem Tinashe’s Aquarius, which did you know has a new album art on Spotify. Death Grip’s No Love Deep Web. T_T I didn’t even get around to making a big verbal mosaic to Thom Yorke’s witchy Suspiria soundtrack.Corpus Christi! I forgot to highlight The Orb album in the collage with my other veteran artists! As you can see this project nearly ruined me. I did not necessarily listen to all of these albums from front to back, but I did listen all of the songs on the playlist and chose them from the immense collection of October releases. I am pretty sure this is the kind of content for no one in particular but I really needed to get it out of my system. Let’s meet back up October 2030!!!!!

(Thank you to my beloved partner, best friend and Spotify provider Maddie Johnson XD)

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7sdLaNNaqWpKEKXRZ3jNqY?si=SLZxUwLMQYOQ5wA1xuZc7w

#spooky #spooktember #spooktober #spooktacular #octoberfest #autism #best of #music festival #Joanna newsom #sufjan stevens #kendrick lamar #tame impala #Taylor swift #big thief #Adrianne lenker #ru paul #kelly klarkson

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stanbillyhargrove · 4 years

Text

Ghosts chp 16

Billy x Katrina

A/N: this is a multi chapter series that will contain smut, angst, fluff, substance abuse BLOOD, BODY HARM, ABUSE

Billy's POV

"Neil?"

Her mouth twitched into a smirk, "very good."

"I swear, if you hurt her," I growled.

Neil tsked at me, "relax. It's corn syrup, like in the movies...well, most of it."

One of her arms lifted, just enough to show a shallow cut on the inside of her bicep that had already scabbed over.

"Had to check my control."

"Why? Why are you doing this? Why her?"

"I could have picked anyone really, she wasn't the only one I followed...but, you really want to know why I picked her?"

My jaw worked but no sound came out, I was frozen.

She spun the knife in her hand, stopping to point it at me, "because of you and your mother. She was fascinated with this girl, loved her like her own, that's why I started following her. And then she found you and you made it too easy. You're both so weak, it's pathetic really."

"Neil," I ground out, "why?" I could feel my eyes stinging with tears and clenched my jaw to stop it from wavering.

"You always were a weak bastard," Neil sneered, "never stopped fucking crying. Blubbering about like a baby. I tried to make you strong and I see I've failed. You're my biggest mistake."

"I was a child!" I yelled, "I didn't need to be strong!"

"You were weak!" She screamed back, stepping up to get in my face.

She followed me as I backed up, pinning me against the wall to grab my chin and hissed, "you are weak! You're too much like your mother."

"Katrina," I pleaded, "please, you're stronger than this, stronger than him. Come back...please."

Neil let out a cruel laugh, fingers tightening to bruise skin, "you really think that'll work? She can't hear you, she's gone," her hand came up to her chest, groping at her breast, "this body does have perks though. I quite like it."

I looked away, clenching my jaw, "don't."

She smirked and stepped back, "calm down. Your precious Katrina has no idea, can't feel a thing," the knife spun to point at herself, the tip pressing against the side of her stomach, "shall I test her? See how much I can do before she notices?"

"No!" I shouted, lurching forward.

But it was too late. The blade had sunk into her skin. She didn't flinch, even when slowly pulling the knife out, releasing a stream of blood.

"See? We feel nothing."

Katrina's POV

A handful of golden blonde hair, holding her close as she rocked against me. A hushed whine, muffled by her mouth against my neck. It sent shivers down my spine. Sent my hips stuttering up as I released inside her. We relaxed into each other, leaning back against the seat of my car. Shared lazy kisses as we caught our breath and sweat cooled on our skin.

"I love you," she whispered against my lips, "don't go."

"I'll be back. Before you even realize I'm gone," I caressed her face gently in my hands, "and when I get back, we'll get married and have lots of babies."

She giggled, "lots?"

"Don't you want lots of children?"

She shook her head, "just two, a boy and a girl."

I kissed her, softly murmuring, "anything for you, my love."

"Marry me, Olivia."

She smirked, "what? You mean when you get back?"

I shook my head, "no. I want you as my wife before I leave."

"Neil, you leave tomorrow."

"So we go down to city hall and get married today. We can have the party when I get back, what do you say?"

I cradled Olivia's cheek in my hand, using my thumb to gently pull her lip from between her teeth. She looked up at me with those ocean eyes, shimmering with salt water.

"Don't cry," I murmured.

"Will you write me?"

I smiled, "as much as I can."

I pulled her into my chest and pressed my lips to the top of her head. Her hands wrapped around my back, twisting in my shirt to keep me close. I could feel her back shake under my hands when she let out a shuddering breath and sighed, holding her tighter.

"Can I stay?" She whispered.

"Of course, my love," I answered, shifting her under my arm so I could walk her inside.

Olivia curled back into my chest when I leaned against the wall. I held her like that for a while, just relishing in this time with her.

"Hey," I whispered, tilting her head up to look at me, "just be here, now, don't worry about later."

A small smile tugged at her lips before she kissed me.

She let me lead her backwards down the hall, giggling when she stumbled a little only to be caught by my arm. I swung her to the side and pressed her against the wall, trapped her there with my lips. My hand trailed down the swell of her hip, to the thigh that had hitched up around my waist. She jumped and I was holding her up, both her legs wrapped around my waist.

We were lying in my bed, a sheet draped loosely over bare waists. My fingers lazily combed through Olivia's golden curls as she hummed quietly against my chest, her fingers drawing idle designs on my skin.

"Liv," I murmured, "I need up."

She whined in protest when I slid out from under her but quieted when I leaned over to kiss her softly, "I'll be right back."

I came back from the bathroom to see Olivia at the end of my bed, the sheet wrapped tight around her chest. She was running her fingers over my army bag, the carefree happy smile on her face replaced with sadness again. I crawled onto the bed behind her and kissed her shoulder.

"Do you have to go?"

"Yeah, I do," I sighed, "I signed on before I met you. But, all I know is now I want to stay here. Just want to stay here as long as I possibly can. You're all that matters anymore. If I could take it back, unsign my name, I would. You know that, right?"

She nodded and tipped her head against mine, "I put something in your bag, to remember me."

"How could I forget you, my love?" I smiled, wrapping an arm around her, "come on, don't think about it. Let's get some sleep."

I no longer saw the sunshine in her golden curls, couldn't find the joy in a chubby cheeked child. I had been chewed up and spit out. Thrust back into this life that I didn't know how to be in anymore. My thoughts were consumed with the faces of fallen brothers and my own bloody hands.

Anything for the mission.

I was sent back a hero after being liberated from the enemy camp. My knowledge of the enemy would lead the troops to victory. But my twisted psyche meant I wasn't fit for duty. I missed the victory because I had learned to enjoy my mission. Enjoy the pain I inflicted on others, the feeling of warm blood rushing over my fingers, the sting of another scar decorating my ribs.

No matter where I went, I was reminded of it. Men clapped my shoulder to congratulate the famous Butcher. Women fawned over the rumors they spread. It started making me feel caged and angry. Angry at the world for not leaving me alone. Angry at my wife, for pestering me, pushing me and angry at that little bastard that just never stopped. He was so god damn noisy all the time, crying and babbling. Attached to his mother like a pathetic extra limb.

Currently, he was sitting in a heap on the kitchen floor, tears streaming down his face.

"God, would you shut him up!" I yelled from the table.

Olivia whipped around from the counter, "he is a child, Neil! Your child! You could try spending time with him."

The chair I was in toppled to the ground when I stood up and I was across the kitchen in an instant, holding Olivia's chin tightly in my hand.

"Do not," I growled, "disrespect me like that again. Shut him up. Now."

Her eyes turned down away from me, "I'm sorry...I'll take him outside."

I stepped up behind Olivia, wrapping my arms around her waist and setting my chin on her shoulder.

"Let's go out tonight," I murmured, "just us."

I could see the bruise on her chin tremble.

"Neil," she whimpered.

"I didn't mean to, Olivia. I just lost my temper, you know how I get. It won't happen again, just, go to dinner with me."

"Neil!"

Olivia lunged forward, putting herself between me and our son. I stood up fast, swinging my arm out.

Two cracks, in quick succession before she thudded to the floor.

One when my hand hit Olivia's jaw, sending her falling down. The other when her head hit the edge of the countertop. Then she was on the ground, blood pooling on the tile.

I could feel myself coming back to my body, slowly waking up. I couldn't move myself but I was starting to become aware. I could hear his voice in my head.

"Good morning, pet."

"You're...Billy's dad?"

"Ah, yes, I could feel you rooting around my memories."

"Why are you doing this?"

I started to slip back into darkness as I heard, "We all go a little mad sometimes."

I groaned, finally coming back to my body. All I could feel was pain, hot and sharp as it radiated throughout my body. The back of my head, my stomach, everywhere was overwhelming pain. I tried to take a deep breath only for it to catch with a gasp.

"Katrina? Is that you?"

I struggled to open my eyes to see Billy hovering over me and realized my head was in his lap.

"Billy? What...?" I tried to move again but cried out instead when the tensing of muscles caused a spark of white hot pain.

"Billy, keep her still!"

"S-Steve?" I looked down to see him kneeling beside me.

It took me a moment to realize that the triplets were here too, all crowded around with worried looks on their faces. To really see that Steve's hands were covered in blood as they pressed into my stomach.

"How long until the ambulance gets here?"

Riley's hands were shaking as she tried to hold the phone to her ear, "fifteen minutes."

"Fuck, I need towels. As many as you can find. Hurry!"

The three of them scrambled to their feet and ran off, leaving me with the boys.

"Billy," I murmured, "I'm sorry...your...your dad. It's...him."

"Hey, it's okay," he soothed, "it's okay, we know."

I could feel things starting to get hazy and looked up at Billy with watery eyes.

"How...bad?"

"It's pretty bad but you're gonna be okay. You hear me? Steve's gonna make sure you're okay."

My breath hitched, starting to come quick and shallow.

I choked on tears, "Billy, I...I don't want to die...I don't want to die here."

His jaw clenched, "you're not going to. You listen to me, I'm not going to let you. Just stay awake, keep talking to me, okay?"

@alias-b @charmed-asylum @champagnesugamama

#billy hargrove #stranger things #billy hargove imagine #billy hargrove fanfiction #fanfic #stranger things fanfic #stranger things fic #billy hargrove fic #billy hargrove series #stranger things fanfiction #steve harrington

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uzuuzuking · 5 years

Note

Random question, but how do you feel abt ella enchanted, if you've read/watched it? do you think the movie did the book justice? personally i think it would've been a more popular movie if it was more romantic fantasy like stardust is, instead of a fantasy comedy movie

I FORGOT ABT THIS ASK UNTIL JUST NOW MY BAD FAM,,

EDIT: i didn’t think i was gonna go off this much when i started writing my response to this, but here we are lmao oops

ok so to start, i love ella enchanted - both the book and the movie. i watched the movie first and read the book not long after, and i have the childhood nostalgia filter on for both of them so i have that bias.

based on the plot alone, the movie absolutely did not do the book justice. besides the names and the fact that ella was obedient, pretty much nothing was the same. the movie was way modernized language-wise and had a lot of pop culture references that are still fun imo. i’m just gonna list some shit i remember about the book to the best of my ability (it’s been like a year or so since my last re-read so i might not remember everything)

in the book...

ella was like 13 or smth when she first met char who was 14 or 15 i think

mandy was an older kitchen fairy

ella was forced to go to finishing school with hattie and olive

hattie was dramatic af and wore a wig

ella Snatched that wig when she left the school in the dead of night

ogres were actually bad

ella had a talent for speech imitation, which ultimately saved her from the ogres as she could imitate them well enough to persuade them to spare her

both of char’s parents (king & queen) were alive and there was no uncle edgar or heston

ella made char laugh a lot as they got to spend more time with each other (there was stair rail sliding incident if i remember correctly)

when ella found lucinda again, lucinda promised to spend 3 months obedient and then 3 months as a squirrel

lucinda got a taste of her own medicine and realized she hadn’t been bestowing gifts but curses

she felt awful about what she’d done to ella and many like her, but she couldn’t take it back even when she wanted to

ella fell in love with char but knew they couldn’t be together because of the gift/curse

there were 3 masquerade balls she attended so she could see char again but she went anonymously every time (changed her voice with her talent so he couldn’t recognize her)

ella broke her own curse by yelling that she wouldn’t marry char when he asked

and then she did marry him when she realized she was free

in the movie...

ella and char were both 18-21 years old - ella was in college and char had no idea she existed until they literally bumped into each other as he was running away from the “prince char fan club” that was chasing him

mandy was young and hot for some reason and had a boyfriend named benny she accidentally turned into a talking book who was like a magic mirror and could show you anything you asked

ella’s dad cared about her way more than in the book

ella ran away from home to find lucinda and took benny the boyfriend book with her

she met an elf named slannen who joined her

note: neither benny nor slannen were in the book and aren’t treated much more than comic relief

char had an uncle edgar who acted as king before char’s coronation

char didn’t know that edgar killed his father and wanted to kill char too so he could keep being king

edgar also had a snake named heston who was cgi and talked

ella almost got eaten by ogres but char saved her and accompanied her and slannen to the giants’ wedding

which was where anne hathaway as ella sang “somebody to love” which was honestly an iconic scene that still sometimes gives me secondhand embarrassment (i mean that as a compliment)

ella went back to the palace with char to try to look up lucinda in the library records

edgar found her and ordered her to kill char the night of the ball for him so he wouldn’t have to do it

ella had slannen chain and lock her to a tree so she physically could not harm char

lucinda showed up and freed her against her will and ordered her to go to the ball

char whisked ella away and proposed to her and she almost killed him but broke her curse before she could

she got thrown in jail for attempted murder

slannen, two giants, three ogres, and benny the boyfriend book formed a squad to save ella so she could save char from edgar

edgar almost succeeded but ella used her sweet martial arts skills to beat the shit out of his guards

edgar accidentally knocked himself out by putting the poisoned crown that was meant for char on his own head

ella and char get married then sing “don’t go breaking my heart” happily ever after the end

oh yeah and mandy turned benny the boyfriend book back into benny the boyfriend man and slannen got with that one hot giant

so anyway i still really love the movie even though it was a hot mess LMAO. it probably would have been a more popular movie if they stuck closer to the book’s plot lines. idk what the producers wanted but it clearly wasn’t most of anything actually in the book lol. not gonna lie tho anne hathaway and hugh dancy had some Mad Chemistry and that fireplace kiss scene was just *chef kiss*

i think if they had given ella and char more romantic scenes like that and given them a slower relationship build rooted in friendship like in the book, it’d be a better romance. and like, some parts were funny but we really didn’t need slannen and probably not benny. benny the boyfriend book was only essential because he was ella’s map. slannen was comedic relief and added nothing to the plot. just. so many movie things didn’t make sense lmao, but it’s not the worst romcom i’ve seen!

in conclusion, i like ella enchanted. it’s one of the most unique adaptations of cinderella out there and i appreciate gail carson levine for creating ella’s world. i will always enjoy fairytales and fairytale retellings like ella enchanted. this ask has inspired me to go re-read it again.

(also, i don’t think any book to movie fantasy romance adaptation can compare to stardust because it’s just that good. neil gaiman really blessed us!)

#answers #ella enchanted #ella enchanted movie #Anonymous

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knox-knocks · 5 years

Text

Timeless ~ Chapter 3

read on ao3

playlist

Andrew woke with his hand over Neil’s, their fingers tangled on the mattress. It was sometime after dawn, and Neil was still asleep. His skin was warm against Andrew’s, but Andrew drew his hand back and rolled out of bed, careful not to disturb Neil.

The apartment was still and quiet. Andrew passed King asleep in her cat bed, curled so tightly she looked like a gray ball with tufts of fluff sticking up in every direction. Dawn light filtered in through the windows, blurring the edges in the apartment and making everything look grainy in the low light. The hard-wood floors were cold under Andrew’s bare feet, but Andrew continued to the kitchen anyway. He was halfway through cooking the bacon when Neil emerged from the bedroom, looking sleep rumpled and softened by the same gray light. His bruises had almost completely vanished.

Neil yawned and stretched, arching his back like a cat. He rubbed at his eyes and plopped down at the kitchen table. Andrew turned away before he could do something stupid, like run his hands through the soft strands of Neil’s hair.

“The bacon’s almost done but there’s a plate of toast and orange juice in the fridge,” Andrew said. The bacon sizzled and popped. Andrew quickly piled the rest of it on a plate before he could get burned from the grease in the pan. Then he grabbed the bread and set both plates on the table in front of Neil. There was only one chair so Andrew snagged a couple pieces of bacon and toast and leaned against the wall across from Neil.

“Thanks,” Neil mumbled and picked at the food. After a couple bites of his breakfast he pushed it away.

“Not hungry?” Andrew said around his piece of bacon. “You didn’t eat last night, either.”

“Diner food is great and all, but not when it’s a day old.”

Andrew leveled him a look until Neil sighed.

“My appetite is just a little low, is all. I’m fine,” Neil said, eyeing the woodgrain of the table. Andrew set his breakfast down and reached over the table to feel Neil’s head. His skin was hot to the touch. Andrew remembered Neil’s hand against his, he wasn’t just warm, he was burning.

“Neil,” Andrew said.

“I’m sure it’ll go away. I’m just a little warm.”

“Neil.”

“I don’t know if this is it, Andrew!” Neil snapped. “I’ve been sick before. Sometimes it goes away, and sometimes it doesn’t. I just don’t know.”

Andrew rounded the table and opened the pantry, retrieving a tall plastic cup. He filled it with water from the tap and placed it in front of Neil, with more force than necessary. “Drink all of that,” Andrew said. “I’m going to the store to get ibuprofen. You stay here and drink more water.”

The ibuprofen brought down the fever enough where Neil only felt slightly warm when Andrew placed the back of his hand against his forehead. Andrew made Neil drink two more glasses of water and eat another can of chicken noodle soup. Afterwards, Andrew debated sending Neil to bed to rest up.

Neil sighed. “I’m not fragile, Andrew. I can take care of myself.”

“I know,” Andrew said and took Neil’s bowl from his hands. When their fingers brushed, Andrew could feel traces of the heat.

“You can’t stop this.”

Andrew stopped in the middle of the kitchen, bowl still in hand. Slowly, he placed it in the sink with the other dishes.

Neil stood up from his chair. He tugged at Andrew’s shirt sleeve until he turned around. “Maybe I should leave. I don’t want to put you through this.”

“No.” And again. “No.”

Neil pursed his lips. “You said yourself that you didn’t want to have to keep watching me die. If it’s not this, it’ll be something else. And to what end? Eventually ten years will go by and I won’t come back.”

“You still have time, Neil. I promised that I would help you.”

“You are the one with all the time in the world, Andrew. Not me. I’ve never had enough time. Never. This is no different.”

“So, what? You are going to keep dying, over and over again until you’re gone for good?” Andrew shook off the hand Neil still had gripped in his shirt. “Where’s that survival instinct you had before? What happened to trying to stay alive?”

“What’s the point!” Neil shouted, his voice bouncing off the empty walls. “No matter how hard I tried to stay alive, I always died in the end. I’m trying to make this easier on you.”

“Don’t. None of this is easy.”

“I know that,” Neil said, the fight leaving his voice. He hovered a hand over Andrew’s elbow. When Andrew didn’t protest, he curled his fingers in the fabric there. Andrew reached up and held Neil’s hand in place. For a brief second, he let himself trace the scars he had long ago memorized. A small tug had Andrew facing Neil. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“It is always going to hurt,” Andrew said. Admitting it was like slashing a knife across his skin. Blood welling up, bright red and shocking against his pale skin. Andrew pulled out of Neil’s reach.

“Andrew –”

Andrew left the kitchen and entered the living room, Neil trailing after him. When Neil slipped in front of him and opened his mouth to protest, Andrew cut him off.

“I am visiting my family.” He paused in grabbing his wallet and his pack of cigarettes, and met Neil’s eyes across from him. Neil’s lips were flattened into a thin line, but he didn’t call Andrew back. Andrew turned away and the door closed behind him with a soft click.

The gravel crunched underneath Andrew’s feet as he walked the path to Nicky and Aaron’s graves. He eyed the others as he passed by. The farther he went, the older they got. These graves rarely had any flowers placed on top of them, and only a few tokens remained, faded and warped with age. Weeds bordered the path, weeks of not being plucked. While the front of the graveyard was pristine, not a leafy weed in sight, this part looked like it hadn’t been managed for ages. Maybe it hadn’t.

Andrew wondered if anyone even came this way anymore, or if he was the only one. He was sure the custodians who were in charge of the cemetery swept through this area like they did the rest. But maybe they didn’t. No one was around to visit these old graves, decades and hundreds of years old. No one except Andrew.

His family’s graves were almost obscured by big oak trees, gnarled and twisted with years of growth. Leaves littered the ground, sprinkled over roots and crunching under Andrew’s feet as he walked the pathway, it was the calling of winter. Andrew found the two graves he was looking for and sat between them, crossing his ankles and pulling his knees to his chest.

The tombstones were weather-beaten and crumbling, pockmarked from decades of wind and rain. Grass had grown over both of them, long blades overgrown, and little shoots of small white flowers swayed, buffeted by the gentle breeze. The words on the stones were almost completely gone, eroded with time. Years ago, Andrew had taken a knife and tried to carve the words back in, but that too, had started to fade.

Andrew let out a breath of air. He never knew what to do when he was here. Some people talked, as if the dead could actually hear their words. But what could he say?

I still think about what happened.

I blame myself.

Sometimes I wish I was buried here with you.

Andrew always stayed silent. The oak tree boughs and branches shook above him and the leaves rustled, sashaying in the wind. More leaves, brown and orange, drifted to rest on the ground around Andrew. One landed on Aaron’s tombstone, and Andrew brushed it off.

Nicky’s name was barely legible anymore. Aaron’s was only slightly better. The date on Aaron’s stone was gone, smoothed over from the elements, but Nicky’s still read 1871 – 1887. It has been one hundred and eighty years since their deaths. One hundred and eighty years since Andrew stopped aging.

Andrew rested his chin on his knees. The oak trees creaked. The leaves whistled. The gravel crunched with footsteps behind him.

Andrew didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. “You should be resting,” he called without looking up.

Neil sat down beside him, carefully settling between the grass and fallen leaves. His eyes swept over the graves, taking them in, all their decrepit glory. “I’ve been here once, when I first started looking for you,” he mused instead of replying. “I don’t really know what I was looking for. I think I was just hoping I wouldn’t find yours. I found mine, but not these ones.”

A truth for a truth. Andrew remembered the game Neil was trying to play. He came up with it in the early stages of their relationship, when he wanted to know every single thing he could about Neil Josten. Andrew guessed he still had a long way to go.

“They never found their bodies,” Andrew began, his voice filling the air. He’d never talked about it before, barely let himself think it. But he pressed on. “I always assumed they burnt to ash in the fire. There wasn’t really anything left of the house. Technically, these coffins are empty.”

Neil frowned. “What happened?” he asked quietly, tentatively as if Andrew were a wild animal he didn’t want to scare away.

Andrew swallowed. He tasted the ash in his mouth. He felt too warm despite the cool autumn air around them. “It was an accident. The stove blew up and the fire spread fast. I wasn’t there at the time, I was coming back from closing up at the pub. By the time I got there, the house was already in flames.”

The fire had been hot, Andrew could feel it all the way from the gate. He remembered the heat burning his face as he ran, feet trudging through snow. He had tried to get the gate open, but the latch was stuck. Nicky had told him to fix it a week earlier, but he hadn’t. By the time he scaled the fence and landed on the other side, it was too late.

“I tried to get them out,” Andrew continued. The roof started to cave, bowing under the hungry flames as the wood crackled and popped. “I was only about ten paces from the house when it blew.” The windows shattered, bits of glass flying through the air, sparks singeing Andrew’s face. Hot. Red hot. “The next thing I knew, I was waking up face down in the snow, the neighbor shaking my shoulder.”

Neil was quiet for a long time. Long enough for Andrew to feel something rise up in his chest and longer still for him to push it back down again. Andrew had long since figured out how to get a handle over his rage, but it still bubbled up, hot as the fire that burned that house to the ground on occasions like these. Andrew gritted his teeth and glared at the gray stone.

“You ever died in a fire, Neil?” Andrew asked. There was an edge to his voice, one he hadn’t quite managed to tamper down.

“No,” Neil said. “But I drowned once.”

“Those are two very different things.”

“Yeah.”

Andrew sucked in a long stream of air and held it in his lungs. When he released it, he let his body deflate, easing the tension and putting it away. Neil wasn’t the enemy, he wasn’t the one Andrew was fighting against. Neil was on limited time, Andrew didn’t want to waste it with arguing.

There was a tiny leaf in Neil’s hair, nestled between the auburn curls. Andrew plucked it out and let it fall from his fingers to the ground with the others. When he glanced up, Neil’s face was open and vulnerable. Andrew would rather die than betray that.

The sun was already sinking below the horizon when Neil and Andrew caught the last bus back to the apartment. The sky was cast with bright shades of orange and streaks of magenta, dark indigo clouds reminding them of the darkness to come. At some point on the walk from the bus station to the apartment, Neil had slipped his hand in Andrew’s, and Andrew had let him, squeezing once in reassurance.

Back at the apartment, King waited for them at the door. Andrew went to the bedroom to change his clothes while Neil opened a can of cat food for King to eat. Andrew switched his hoodie out for a simple t-shirt and grabbed a pair of clean sweats. Neil had been borrowing his clothes, but Andrew didn’t really mind. After a moment’s hesitation, he slipped his armbands on and left the room.

Neil was bustling around the kitchen when Andrew walked in. A small saucepan filled with water was beginning to boil on the stove. As Andrew passed by, he turned the heat down to medium and peered into the pan. Behind him, Neil rummaged through the pantry.

“What are you making?” Andrew asked, leaning on the counter with his elbows.

“Ramen. Nothing else sounds good right now.” Neil closed the pantry door with a red packet of ramen in hand.

“Is my food not good enough for you?” Andrew deadpanned.

“You know I require the most delicate of foods. I have a sensitive palate.”

Andrew huffed, almost amused. He was glad Neil was actually eating. “Do you need more ibuprofen?”

Neil’s hands stilled, lowering the ramen to the counter. “I’m fine,” he said, and began to crush the noodles with the heel of his hand. He tore open the ramen, dug out the little packet of seasonings, and dumped the crushed noodles in the boiling water. When he stepped away to throw out the trash, Andrew caught him around the arm and turned him around.

“I promise,” Neil said. “I’m okay.”

Andrew hummed. He scanned Neil’s face, looking for the lie, the crack in his mask. When there was none, he took a step closer. Neil stayed still, even when Andrew wrapped both his hands around his arms. “Yes or no?” Andrew asked.

“Yes,” Neil said on an exhale.

Both of them leaned in at once. There was a tentative brush of lips, and then Andrew moved his hand up Neil’s arm and cupped his cheek. Neil leaned into Andrew’s palm and deepened the kiss.

The kiss was slow, tender. Even when Neil opened his mouth and let Andrew in, there was no real urgency to it. Only the ever-present warmth and glow that filled Andrew’s chest when he was with Neil. They were testing new boundaries, relearning each other all over again with every brush of lips and soft sigh. Andrew had missed this, more than he cared to admit. In the back of his mind he vaguely registered moving Neil’s hands to rest in his hair, brushing his thumb over Neil’s cheek, smoothing his hand over his waist and pulling him closer.

Their lips moved in perfect tandem and Andrew’s heart fluttered a drum-beat rhythm in his chest. For a moment, Andrew felt mortal. He felt his years numbered rather than stretching forever in front of him. He was sure he could die, would die, if Neil were to disappear under his fingers or vanish when he opened his eyes again. He was achingly human.

Andrew broke away first, letting himself catch his breath while they leaned against each other, their foreheads touching. Andrew dropped his hands to rest at Neil’s wrists, his fingers still entwined in Andrew’s hair. Slowly, Andrew eased Neil’s hands away and brought them to his chest where he would feel his heart thumping like a bid for freedom. “Neil,” he murmured, his lips so close they brushed Neil’s. Neil hummed, his nose nudging Andrew’s as he placed butterfly-kisses on Andrew’s cheeks. Andrew tilted his jaw away. “Your ramen.”

Neil blinked, confused. And then his eyes widened when he remembered his forgotten dinner. Andrew stepped away as Neil scrambled to turn the stove off before the pan boiled over.

“It’s okay,” Neil said, poking at the noodles with a fork. “It’s still edible.”

Neil finished up and sat at the table to eat. Andrew didn’t know what to do with himself. Reality rushed back to him all at once. He kissed Neil because he couldn’t bear the thought of staying just out of his reach anymore, not when Neil was so close. But now Andrew felt his absence keenly.

“Do you want some?” Neil asked.

Andrew shook his head. “My palate requires more delicate tastes.”

Andrew left Neil in the kitchen to splash water on his face in the bathroom. When he was done, he patted his skin dry with a towel and ruffled his hair, eyeing himself in the mirror. He wondered if things would be different if his and Neil’s lives were switched. Andrew, always dying. Neil, never changing. Andrew grit his teeth and flicked the lights off, plunging the bathroom in darkness.

Neil was still sat at the table when Andrew walked in, bowl empty, hands clasped in front of him. Andrew’s footsteps were light on the hardware floor as he approached. Neil didn’t look up when Andrew stepped in front of him. Instead, his eyes were unfocussed, staring at his clasped hands, a slight frown tugging at his lips. He would stay like this for hours, if Andrew let him. He was spacing, something that Neil did often when they first lived together.

“Neil,” Andrew called, reeling him back in. “Are you coming to bed?”

Neil blinked, and the haze cleared from his eyes. He rose his head and met Andrew’s gaze, that pensive look on his face. Then it was gone, and Neil was back. “Yeah,” Neil said, pushing up from the chair and putting his bowl in the sink. “I’m right behind you.”

Andrew was already settled on the mattress when Neil got dressed for bed. Before Neil turned out the lights, Andrew peeled off his armbands and set them aside. They weren’t necessary, not around Neil, and it was more comfortable to sleep without them on. Neil settled beside him and Andrew pulled the blankets overtop both of them.

When both of them were situated and had stopped shifting around, Andrew met Neil’s gaze and held it. Neil tilted his head, just a tiny bit, and Andrew considered him. His eyes dropped to Neil’s mouth, the perfect bow of his lips, and Andrew leaned in. The kiss was light and only lasted a couple seconds, but it still left Andrew breathless. When they pulled away, Andrew drew Neil to his chest and wrapped his arms around him.

With Neil’s back pressed against his chest and his arm snug over Neil’s waist, pulling him closer, their legs tangled between them, Andrew fell asleep.

He woke up on fire, burning, his skin turned to a crisp by the flames enveloping him. Wood cracked and sputtered and snow crunched underneath him. Andrew opened his eyes to find darkness; no fire, no burning house. Instead of snow, his face was pressed into soft curls. Neil.

Neil was radiating heat, his fever returned with a vengeance. Andrew couldn’t see anything, his eyes not yet adjusted to the low light, but he could feel the clamminess of Neil’s skin, the sweat on his brow. Everywhere they were pressed together was too hot to touch. Andrew stumbled out of bed, nearly stepping on King Fluffkins on his way to the light switch.

Light flooded the room but Neil didn’t stir. His bangs were plastered to his forehead with sweat and his brow was furrowed, his face twitching like he was caught in the throes of a nightmare. His skin was pale and a sheen of sweat clung to his body, soaking his thin t-shirt.

“Neil,” Andrew called. When Neil didn’t respond, Andrew knelt down and shook his shoulder. “Neil.”

Neil groaned and peeled open his eyes. They were bright with fever. Andrew didn’t need to feel his head to know he was burning up. Andrew pushed his hair back and helped him sit up.

“Neil, can you hear me?” Andrew waited for Neil’s nod. “I’m going to get you more water and more medicine to bring the fever down again. I’ll be right back.”

Neil nodded again and Andrew went to the kitchen and came back with a cup of water and two small ibuprofens in his hand. He gave Neil the pills and watched him swallow them, then he helped him drink the water. Neil’s hands were trembling and he could barely hold the cup himself. Andrew had him take small sips until it was all gone, then he refilled the cup and wet a towel with cool water.

He helped Neil lie back down and put the towel on his forehead. Neil grimaced at the contact but didn’t try to move away. Andrew held the towel in place and carded his fingers through Neil’s hair while Neil squinted up at him with blue eyes brightened with sickness. After a couple more minutes of gentle stroking, Neil’s eyes drooped shut and he fell asleep, leaving Andrew alone to hope the fever goes down.

The fever didn’t go away. When it got worse, Andrew debated bringing Neil to the hospital, but ultimately decided against it. While Andrew had an updated ID, Neil didn’t, and it would be too difficult to explain an unregistered dead-man-walking. Neil’s first death had been complicated enough as it was. Instead, Andrew paced around the house, not daring to leave in case Neil’s condition worsened even further.

Neil started to cough after three days, great hacking coughs that shook his whole body. He couldn’t leave the bed at all, and there were few times when he wasn’t completely lucid. Mostly, Neil drifted in and out of consciousness.

Andrew knelt down beside the mattress and gently felt Neil’s wrist. His fever hadn’t gone done at all, and he was already losing a lot of weight. But it was one of the few times Neil was awake enough to know what was going on.

Andrew helped Neil up and walked him to the bathroom. He already had the bathtub ready, filled with lukewarm water and salts that would help the ache in Neil’s joints. Carefully, Andrew leaned Neil against the counter and helped him undress. It was slow work, and Neil was winded by the time he was in the tub.

Andrew sat on the edge of the tub and used a soft cloth to clean the sweat from Neil’s body, gently wiping the crust around his eyes and nose while Neil blinked miserably at him. “Is the water too hot?” Andrew asked, cleaning Neil’s neck and chest with slow, gently strokes.

“No,” Neil croaked and grimaced at him. “Everything hurts anyway.”

He coughed, bending over himself as he heaved for air. The cough sounded wet and ragged. Andrew waited until the coughs subsided and helped Neil sit up when he was done, keeping a steadying hand on his neck. Andrew wrung the excess water from the cloth and hung it on the side of the tub. Then he rubbed Neil’s back with soothing fingers.

Neil groaned and closed his eyes, his head rolling against the back of the tub. Andrew let him catch his breath, then he cradled the back of Neil’s head and neck and lowered him in the water, taking care to not submerge his face. He massaged shampoo in his hair and washed it out again, then did the same with the conditioner. The entire time, Neil kept his eyes closed.

When Neil was clean and there were no more bubbles in his hair, Andrew pulled the plug and helped him out of the tub. Neil was unsteady on his feet and braced himself on the edge of the counter and had to use Andrew’s arm to keep himself from falling. Andrew wrapped him in a fluffy white towel and led him into the bedroom.

Neil sat in the middle of the carpeted floor while Andrew fetched clean clothes for him. He looked on the verge of passing out, so Andrew made quick work of drying his hair and body.

“I can dress myself,” Neil said, grabbing the t-shirt from Andrew’s hands. He was still trembling, but Andrew couldn’t tell if it was because of how bad he was shivering or from the lack of food he was able to keep down.

Once Neil was dressed and in bed, Andrew bundled him in the blankets and wrapped an arm around his waist to keep the sheets from slipping off of him in the night. Neil was still shaking, and goosebumps covered his arms and legs, but he seemed to be doing a little better. In the morning, Andrew could try to get Neil to eat some more soup. In the meantime, he had to get him through the night.

Unsurprisingly, Neil refused to eat anything the next morning. Andrew found the untouched bowl of soup where he left it by Neil’s bed and dumped it down the sink. Neil looked like he had hardly moved since Andrew last saw him. He was laying on his back, eyes closed, arms straight out like a soldier sleeping in the barracks. When Andrew switched the light on, Neil’s watery eyes opened and he frowned with disapproval at the glaring light.

Andrew ghosted his hand over Neil’s forehead, touching his skin as little as possible since even the slightest touch seemed to cause him pain. Andrew could feel the heat radiating off of him anyway, he didn’t need to have his palm against Neil’s head to know the fever hadn’t gone down.

“I should take you to the hospital,” Andrew said.

Breathing ragged, Neil shook his head. He opened his mouth to reply, but all he managed was a raspy groan. Neil’s face screwed up with pain that Andrew was helpless to soothe.

“No hospital then,” Andrew said. The corners of his mouth tightened. They’d run out of ibuprofen last night and Andrew didn’t want to leave Neil right then, in case Neil needed him when he was gone.

Neil had drifted off after that, so Andrew turned down the lights and left the door ajar when he made his way to the living room. There wasn’t much for Andrew to do when he wasn’t tending to Neil. He’d lost his job days ago, after the third time he refused to show up to work. He stopped bothering to call in sick since Andrew knew he wouldn’t be returning to the diner.

If Andrew didn’t get the fever down, it would only get worse for Neil the longer he was sick. He wasn’t ready to give up yet, not when Neil still had a chance. After pacing around the empty room for nearly an hour, Andrew decided that he would run to a nearby convenience store and buy whatever medication would help Neil the fastest. He needed to be quick, especially with Neil already deteriorating in the other room.

“Neil,” Andrew called, poking his head in the darkened room. King had snuck in when Andrew was distracted and was curled up near Neil’s head. Neil’s eyes cracked opened at Andrew’s approach.

“I’m going to get more medicine,” Andrew said. Neil immediately started to shake his head, struggling to get up. He couldn’t make it more than a couple inches off the mattress before he collapsed again. Andrew eased him back down and carefully tucked the blanket tighter around his shivering frame. “I’ll be fast.”

“No,” Neil said, his voice like coarse gravel. “Don’t go.”

“I am not willing to give up on you yet. I need to get you medicine.”

Neil squinted up at Andrew, his expression a pitiful mixture of discomfort and sorrow. Andrew took Neil’s face in his hands and smoothed his thumbs over his flushed cheeks and under his eyes, wiping away the feverish tears. Neil’s face crumbled. He snaked a hand from out of the sheets and gripped Andrew’s wrist in a weak, trembling grasp.

“Columbia,” he gasped. The effort it took to stay conscious and talk was wearing on him. “I died in this city twice, so I’ll be reborn here a second time. I’ll do my best to come back but I can’t make any promises. It’s getting harder and harder each time I – ”

“Stop. You are not going to die. Not today. Stop saying things like that.”

Neil just looked at him sadly. “Just in case,” he whispered.

Andrew leaned down and placed a lingering kiss on Neil’s forehead, his lips barely brushing his skin. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

It took fifteen minutes to get to the convenience store, even with Andrew running. He nearly got hit by a car while dashing across the street – and hadn’t he reprimanded Neil for that before? – but ignored the driver’s angry honking. He shoved open the door and managed to get his breathing somewhat under control before skipping to the back of the store.

“Hey, uh – how can I help you?” Andrew turned to find one of the store clerks eyeing him nervously. Her black hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun and she had a crate full of boxes propped on one hip.

“Medicine,” Andrew said. “Anything to bring down a fever as quickly as possible.” When the clerk just stared at him, Andrew snapped, “Now.”

The clerk set the crate on the floor and led Andrew to the medicine aisle at a brisk pace. Andrew searched the shelves, skimming over painkillers, cold medicine, and other various medicines that were useless to him.

“Just a fever? No flu?” the clerk asked.

“High fever, about 104 degrees. Shivering, coughing, loss of appetite,” Andrew listed impatiently. He tapped his foot on the ground, checking the time on his phone. He was supposed to be back five minutes ago.

“This ought to help,” the clerk said, pulling a box from the shelf. “It should bring the fever down some. Anything else – ”

“Great.” Andrew snatched the box out of the clerk’s hands and nearly slammed into the cashier’s counter in his haste to pay. When the medicine was finally paid for, Andrew grabbed the box and left without bothering to wait for his change.

The apartment was quiet when Andrew returned. Neil’s room was dark and heavy with sickness, and Andrew could just make out the outline of Neil’s body bundled in the blankets and sheets. King lifted her head and whined when Andrew stepped in, her green eyes catching the light from the hallway and glowing like twin orbs in the darkness. Andrew switched on the lights and took a step toward the mattress. He could see Neil’s auburn hair sticking out from underneath the blankets, matted to the back of his neck with sweat, his face turned away. Andrew knelt down beside him, letting the medicine fall to the ground with a quiet thump.

“Neil?” Andrew brushed the back of his neck, brushing away the damp hair. His temperature had gone down, and for one second Andrew almost thought that Neil had fought the fever off himself. Until he didn’t stir at Andrew’s touch.

“Oh, Abram,” Andrew said softly, slipping his hand under Neil’s clammy neck and turning him over. His head rolled to the side, limp against the pillow. His face was slack, not so much as a twitch.

He never should have left. He should have stayed here so Neil wouldn’t have been alone as he slipped away. Andrew should have been at his side, holding his hand, brushing the thin beads of sweat from his forehead. It was all for nothing.

Andrew sucked in a ragged breath and laid his forehead against Neil’s still chest. There was no heartbeat, no movement of air through his lungs. Ten years. Ten more long years until Andrew would see Neil again, glimpse the ocean in his eyes, hear the cadence of his voice. The thought was unbearable, even to someone who had lived for nearly two centuries. “I’ll wait for you,” he said. “I’ll find you. No matter what it takes, Neil. I’ll find a way to save you.”

A rasp of sandpaper-tongue over his knuckles had Andrew lifting his head. King blinked at him and nudged her wet nose against Andrew’s arm with another quiet meow. Andrew swiped angrily at the moisture on his cheeks and entwined his fingers with Neil’s. The flush had drained away from his skin, leaving him pale and gray in the dim light. Andrew’s fingers tightened over Neil’s unresponsive hand. “I promise,” he said.

#aftg #tfc #all for the game #the foxhole court #andreil #timeless #void walker fic #mine #my writing

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sunnyupsidedown · 5 years

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barely breathing 3 / 4

[part1] [part2] [AO3]

A/N: Goodbye open ending, hello happy ending. Well, not yet.

Renee was humming softly under her breath as she hung up the last of her clothes when a knock came at their dorm door.

“I’ll get it,” Dan said from the living room. The old, beat up recliner creaked as Dan stood, her footsteps soft on the carpet.

“What are you doing here Andrew.”

Renee paused at Dan’s tone.

“Renee.” Andrew’s voice drifted into her room.

At the obvious summoning, Renee set her last shirt on the bed to put up later. Out by the door, Dan held the door open but blocked Andrew’s path in. Renee examined Andrew closer. She saw him at the court earlier but now was a little different. His expression was neutral, like the times before he stepped onto court for a game when he was off his medicine. But it was worse now. So much worse. Before, mania creeped into the edges of his expression, a ghostly imprint of the drugs still in his system. Now, it was like a blank slate, a face slack in sleep or in death but with the eyes still open to the world.

Their eyes met and it was like looking into a void. Andrew gave the barest of nods before leaving. Renee understood and went to change into some looser clothes.

They met up at the usual place in the Fox Tower’s basement. The air chilly compared to the higher floors. Andrew slid into a starting stance the moment Renee walked in and she followed suit.

They stared each other down, slowly circling around the room. Andrew moved first, a little unusual in their spars. Renee reacted quickly and Andrew was on the ground from an easily dodged maneuver.

“You’re distracted,” Renee said to Andrew’s supine form.

Andrew didn’t say anything and got up to start again. It was a repeat of the first time; Andrew was back on the ground.

Renee had enough. Andrew got into a starting position but Renee sat down cross legged and stared up at Andrew pressuring him to do the same. He submitted and sat.

“What’s wrong?”

Andrew was silent for a long time before he spoke. “I seem to have some gaps in my memory. Is he one of mine or one of yours?”

Renee’s eyes drew to his neck, to the bandages peeking out from the edges of his collar and suddenly she knew what had happened while Andrew was at Easthaven. And she knew who Andrew was referring to as well. Her own faded scars ached for a short second. It was harder to breath like her throat was clogged despite the emptiness she knew was there.

“What do you want to know?”

“Neil Josten.”

Kevin grabbed two shots from Neil’s tray and downed them in quick succession. His eyes were already glazed from the first round of drinks and the packet of dust he inhaled earlier, but Neil still played it safe and spoke German anyway. “Why does Roland think you’re tying me down?”

There it was again in Andrew’s eyes, a deep emptiness like part of his soul was missing. “He probably thinks you’re as bad at following directions as he is.” Neil frowned. That wasn’t quite what he was looking for. He tried again. “What’s outside of coach’s pay grade?”

“It’s irrelevant since I don’t exactly know who you are.” Andrew closed his mouth and Neil knew he would get no more answers out of him for the night.

Neil frowned while he turned Andrew’s words around in his mind. He was careful. Andrew couldn’t know everything about him except the things he’s told him and Kevin wouldn’t say anything.

And then it hit him and his stomach clenched like his drink was spiked again.

Neil was smart. He wouldn’t have survived as long as he did if he didn’t have some deductive reasoning skills. He ran through every interaction he’s had with Andrew since he came back from Easthaven. The clues were everywhere: the way he ignored Neil at first, the coldness that everyone said was normal when Neil knew Andrew was far from heartless, the bandages that were around his neck and the scars that lie under them. He didn’t know how he could be so blind especially since he suffered from the same disease. Neil was going to puke but this time not from the flowers.

And that’s when the second realization came.

Andrew was in love with him.

But not anymore.

The world tilted on its axis, nausea sat rooted in the pit of his stomach, and pain blossomed in his chest. He never expected anything to happen between him and Andrew, but the cold truth still stung. Neil planned on running at the end of the season, but there was no use to it now. If his father doesn’t get to him first, the flowers will take care of him. Either way, he was doomed to an early death.

The days passed slowly and Neil found himself seeking Andrew out. It would never be anything. Every moment spent with him, another spike of pain lodged itself in his chest, but being with Andrew, was like being on an exy court. With every meaningless conversation they had up on the rooftop and the secrets exchanged in their game of truths, Neil felt like himself. Not Chris or Alex or any of the personas he’s created while on the run. He felt alive. When he was gone and he was just a footnote in the Foxes’ yearbook, he knew that there at least one person who cared about him, that he left some type of mark on the world, that someone would remember the insignificant man named Neil Josten.

His birthday came and blood dripped from his locker, a number counted down on his cell phone. The game was a blur. He vaguely knew they won but it was like watching everything through binoculars from the top of the Fox Tower.

Everything snapped into focus the next day when Andrew gripped the sides of Neil’s face and leaned in. Their lips crashed together and Neil’s heart stuttered to a stop. It was brief, lasting seconds before Andrew backed away with a storm in his eyes.

“Andrew--” Neil began, desperately trying to catch up in their conversation. “No,” Andrew frowned. His eyebrows creased together. “This is nothing.”

“Didn’t you say you wanted nothing?”

Andrew’s gait faltered briefly before he kept walking.

Something warm stirred in Neil’s chest. Andrew was not someone who would do something he didn’t mean. Neil didn’t want to say it was hope, but even he was foolish sometimes. The warmth grew until it burned through Neil’s veins. He could feel it coming and whatever hope bloomed in his chest was choked by the poisonous vines growing, thriving, constricting his lungs. He leaned over the side of the roof. Wind pushed his hair out of his face. It was a long way down.

He puked.

He wiped his mouth, his throat raw, his hand stained red like the blood that poured from his locker.

It was nothing, like Andrew said.

He was fine.

“How are you today Andrew?” Betsy asked. Andrew’s face remained mostly blank, but his eyebrows scrunched together. A frown, Betsy has learned. The mug in front of him has long cooled off.

“It hurts Bee.”

“What does Andrew?” Betsy asked, straightening in her chair.

“It hurts Bee but there is no longer anything there.” Whether he knew it or not, Andrew’s hand moved to grip his shirt over his chest.

“Ah. I was afraid that was the case.” She tried to keep her voice neutral with the sudden anger rushing through her veins. Easthaven has some explaining to do and if it didn’t end in a malpractice lawsuit she would damn well make sure the doctors responsible were punished. “Since you came back, I noticed the injuries around your neck. I had a guess but I hoped it wasn’t true. I did some research anyway. Would you like to hear what I found?”

Andrew didn’t say anything. Betsy continued.

“Hanahaki disease is unique in how it’s a virus that attacks the emotions, specifically feelings of love. Left unchecked it will kill you. Most cases end that way, but since the discovery of the removal procedure, the fatality rate has dropped significantly.”

Betsy paused to checked Andrew’s reaction. He was still slumped on the couch but his eyes were alert with interest.

“When it’s removed, you have to remove all of it and what it feeds on. Any shred left will leave room for relapse. The surgery is sometimes lifesaving but it’s also a double edged sword due to the memory loss.

“Andrew. You’re a smart man. Just because the flowers are gone, it doesn’t mean you lose the ability to feel. There’s nothing holding you back from what you want. I want you to think about that for our next session.”

Neil Josten. Neil Abram Josten. The name tasted like dust on Andrew’s lips. The aching hole in his chest consumed him whole.

“Andrew.” Neil’s voice was soft. Andrew looked up at Neil leaning over his bus seat and he continued, “Let me ask you this. Do you believe in fate?”

The question sounded familiar and Andrew didn’t have to think about his answer. “If fate were tangible, I would destroy it.”

Neil smiled like he knew something Andrew didn’t. The sun streamed through the window, making Neil’s hair glow like fire and his eyes burn like dry ice. “Then, Andrew, you have to let me go.”

Andrew swallowed. He felt like he was backed into a corner with no way to escape except through the path Neil provided. He didn’t like it. It was unsettling how much he trusted Neil, how he was going to break his promise because it was Neil who asked. It left a sour taste in his mouth, but Andrew never really knew what sweet was supposed to taste like.

The little black ‘4’ was a blemish on Neil’s face. Death, in so many languages. Bad luck. His heart hammered in his chest.

“Okay.” Two sides of Andrew’s mind were at war and a bomb just went off. It was a punch to the gut that felt worse than waking up in Easthaven with a spotty recollection of the fall semester. In the settling dust, only one thing remained. “Okay,” he said again because he was getting into the habit of saying useless things.

“Thank you.” Neil smiled wider and the look burned itself into Andrew’s memory. A weight should have been lifted from a promise he no longer need to keep but it was like gravity tripled since the word ‘okay’ left his mouth.

Neil trailed behind and when Andrew stopped to look at him the words slipped from his throat. “Thank you.” For the keys, the promises, the flowers both gone and sprouting within his chest. For letting him go. In his life he never knew he would have the chance to feel like he does towards Andrew. He never knew someone would feel that way towards him. If their timelines lined up a little different, if Neil fell a little faster, if Andrew refused to go to Easthaven, Neil wondered what could have been. Could they have avoided the tragedy of missed opportunities? Could they have shared more than that one short kiss? The sobering zero and Romero and Jackson reminded him that whatever way it went it would end with him in a body bag so maybe it was best if the thing between them remained in the starting gates. Neil was a dead man walking and Andrew didn’t deserve a love built on a ticking time bomb. He deserved to have some sort of happiness in his life and he knew that he only brought misfortune. “You were amazing.”

Andrew’s eyes narrowed in thought. He opened his mouth to say something but they were pulled outside and the final act of the tragedy of Nathaniel Abram Wesninski began.

[this is where part 4 goes when it’s done] [AO3]

#andreil #aftg fanfic #aftc #tfc #andrew minyard #neil josten #andreil flower project #hanahaki #write junk #well time for bed #why do i do this to myself

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danielyrosner · 4 years

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Fanfic - Neil's Chains - Chapter 5

Chapther 5 - Dhampirs

July 30, 1995

My torture has been getting worse and worse, I believe that Jefford has taken out his frustrations on me, after all, it has been a year and a half since his beloved wife had the twins and she cannot produce another child, I think that is their karma, because they are so unhappy with me and the children, everyone has what they deserve. Speaking of the bitch, she has barely stayed with her own children, she started to mistreat them and beat them, sometimes even calling them monsters, I suppose she or her man's project did not see themselves in the mirror.

Speaking of children, they are so intelligent and their powers have started to appear, they are fast and very strong, but they have great kindness and a very cheerful spirit. I have also taught them several languages and believe it or not they learn very fast, I have thought of teaching them to fight because the way my torture goes I don’t know if I will get out of this alive and I want them to survive in this world that will try to hurt them in all ways.

October 07 , 1995

I've been teaching the boys to fight hidden from the retarded people in this house, because if they knew for sure they would punish them severely and because of the white oak root I have been very weak, apart from my lack of regular food.

Lukka is an excellent warrior, since Gil is more shy and reclusive, they will be great vampires someday very powerful so alone that when they are together they will be unbeatable and that makes me very relieved.

I found some silver I want to make a birthday present for them, but I think it will not be enough to give them both and I hope they like it and use it to protect themselves.

December 10 , 1995

I found more silver, and their training is getting better, Lukka has proved to be very powerful and Gil is making good progress despite not letting go yet, but there is something different about them, especially in her, she is very tired and with reasoning one little bit slower, I'm getting really scared of what might be.

February 27 , 1996

Lukka got sick and Gil is also staying , Cassandra started acting like a mother now what is infuriating Jefford, I have been trying to remember what this mysterious illness can be, which has not helped much.

But maybe there is someone who can, Dyton, that old man.

~ • ~

Neil goes to the bedroom, opens the door and sees Cassandra lying with the boys on the bed and Jefford was sitting sulky by the dresser.

“I had an idea, but I have to go to the city and take the children with me” Neil says

"As well?" Cassandra asks

"There's a ..." Neil starts to count, but is interrupted by Jefford who shouts in the room "YOU CAN ONLY BE PLAYING, I WELL KNOW THAT YOU ARE GOING TO ESCAPE THESE DEATHERS"

The children are frightened and start to cry and call out to their parents, Cassandra tries to calm them down, but in vain, Neil approaches and talks to them until they fall asleep.

“Look, I'm not going to run away, I'm not in good shape for that, in the city there is someone who can help me, help the children” Neil says, alternating between Cassandra and Jefford “In fact, if you think about using it in research, you will regret it because he is not like me, he is protected by nature ”

"He is a Druid" Cassandra reveals

"We wouldn't even be crazy to mess with that kind of being" Jefford adds "It's like asking to die".

Cassandra gets up and goes to her husband "They are going to die without him"

"For me to die" He answers her.

Cassandra's eyes fill with tears and she slaps her husband's face. “It's not because they are not yours, because they belong to Neil, because they are from a vampire that I will abandon them” She cries out in tears to him "THEY ARE ALSO MY CHILDREN! AND I WILL TAKE CARE OF THEM, NO MATTER WHAT I HAVE TO DO ".

Jefford gets up and looks at Cassandra “Okay, you'll be responsible for everything that happens, Cassi!” He says in a threatening tone.

She turns around goes to the children and rubs their faces “I was not a good mother, as soon as they were born I abandoned them" she says crying “Now they are almost leaving and I don't know if I will have how to fix my mistake” she looks at Neil "The children will stay here, with me, but you will get the druid, I promise you that I will take care of them"

Neil turns and walks to the door, he stops and watches the children next to Cassandra and whispers "I promise to come back, that I will heal you, my little hopes" then leaves without looking back.

~ • ~

I went to Dyton's bar, when he saw me he was scared, he wanted to talk, but we didn't have time, I just begged to go with me to the mansion, he saw that it was important and he followed me leaving his twins with his wife. On the way back to the mansion there were only my children in my head and he knew that something was disturbing me to the point of despair. When we arrived, I went to the room and during that time I had forgotten that he was with me, when we entered we ended up waking up Cassandra who was sitting on the floor with her head lying on the mattress. As soon as she saw us she got up and smiled.

~ • ~

"Good night, would you be?" she asks

"Help, I just came because an old friend asked" he taps Neil on the shoulder "Could you leave us alone"

"But why? They are also my children and I want to know what they have! ” she questions him.

He comes very close "I know the fame you and your husband have, believe me, you won't want me to take this to another level, will you?"

"No" she answers him "please just cure them" she asks rubbing her face to wipe the tears "When it's over you can tell me please"

Neil puts one hand on her hand and the other on her face “Of course, my love.” Cassandra smiles and whispers “Thank you so much, Neit ” then leaves the room.

Dyton just looks and gives a smile mocking shaking his head.

"What is it, Elder?" Neil questions

"Nothing , " it 's another laugh "Well let's see these fofuras" he turns to face Neil "Who are they? Count Dracula ”

"My children" Neil replies.

Dyton stares at him and stammers "Your ... Sons?" he gazes between the twins and Neil "How is it possible?" before Neil answers him he shakes his head "Damn ... You had children ... You know it's forbidden ... A taboo ... And that maybe they die? ..." he walks from side to side.

"That's why I called you here, to try to save them" Neil says in a pained tone.

"My old friend ... Neil ... You know that ..." Dyton tries to complete the sentence, but Neil cuts him off "Please, they are all I have" tears roll down his face, his expression is in pain " If something happens to them ... I ... I ... I don't want to exist anymore, everything will die for me too " he falls to the ground and faces Dyton" So I beg you, save my children, for them, I can take anything, I don't care about anything "

“Okay” Dyton comes over to his friend and helps him to get up “Calm down, I'll see them and then I'll have to ask you a few things, okay?” he tells his colleague to just nod.

~ • ~

Dyton saw the boys, gave them medicine and told me they would be fine, then he started with the question session, lol , it was a while since I opened up to anyone, he listened to me and offered me shelter as soon as it was over, I just thanked him, but before he left he warned me about the children, who should tell them what I was, what I ate, what they were, that from that day on they should eat like me, that they would be walk away.

I thanked him and accompanied him to the door, after that I went to tell Cassandra that she was in the small room drinking a dose of cognac while trying to stop crying. I told her about the boys and made her promise that she would not tell her husband, as amazingly as she agreed, she knew that for him to do something with the twins was a leap. I went up to the room and said goodbye to them and returned to my prison, when the morning came, I was so tired that I didn't have the strength to stay awake, I just fell asleep waiting for nightfall.

March 12 , 1996

The twins are finally better, more active than ever, Lukka mainly, keeps asking me when will there be a room for her, as for Gil, he is afraid of being alone, in the end this separate room thing is not a bad idea , Lukka is already a young girl and Gil needs to leave his sister for a while. I decided that I will tell them on their birthday, I have also tried to build up the courage to tell them, about what I am and what they are, about their food, I have deceived them by saying that it is red fruit juice to improve health.

March 22 , 1996

The big day has come, they are two years old, Cassandra has behaved more like a mother and has even bought new clothes for them. Today I said it would be a very special day with big surprises so I deserved new clothes for everyone, I thought it was really strange, but I didn't say anything. For Gil she bought simple shorts, a dress shirt, a wool vest and sneakers; for Lukka she bought a beautiful little blue dress with butterfly embroidery and a little shoe; for her husband she bought only a pipe and for me, she remembered me, a completely black suit, despite everything I was happy.

When midnight arrived, after the boys' congratulations she took them to the second floor where she opened two doors facing each other, the children were very happy with the new rooms, Jefford and Cassandra said goodbye to the boys and went up to the room, I stayed there with them between rooms, so I knew it was time.

~ • ~

"Lukka, Gilthunder, come here!" Neil calls them and they go downstairs in the small hall, so Neil takes courage and says "Children I have to tell you something about Dad and yourself" Neil sighs "But know that you must keep this secret for the rest of your lives, did you understand me? ” the children agree with the father sitting across from him.

"Do you remember the stories I tell you a long time ago?" He asks the children

“Yes, but it's just stories , people can't live that long” Lukka tells his father and Gilthunder just observes, Neil was always very proud of his children, they knew many things about the stories and also many languages which was unusual for their age.

So Neil continues, “Actually, we can,” he passes a hand on his daughter's face and the other on his son's head “And you know that very well, you are also not normal, you are stronger and faster than the others”

"Isn't it because we are children?" Gil asks.

“No” he looks at nothing and sighs for courage and the right words “Daddy is a Vampire ... A very old vampire and you are Dhampirs”

The twins look at their father and then look at each other, Neil could have taught them a lot, but this part that the supernatural existed, he had never even mentioned it.

"But vampires don't ex ..." Gil says, but he is cut off by the sister who screams " Wow ... how cool" his eyes shone and smiled.

Neil knew that the daughter who was most attached to him and for that reason she would always believe in him. Seeing that reaction he laughs, laughs, and he takes the long and time consuming embrace, then placed next to his brother.

Then continues "Yes, vampires exist, but they hide in the shadows far and near to humans"

Gil makes a cart for his sister who still thinks it is great and asks “If it's true why do you live here with them? Mom started to be around us now and Uncle Jeff hates us. Why don't we just leave? ”

“It's complicated, son, I'm not in my best shape and you have everything” he takes Gil by the arm and brings him close “One day you will understand what I mean, but now, the well-being of both of you is more important than mine, do you understand? ” Neil asks.

"Not very well" Gil replies, when hearing these words Neil embraces him and a tear falls on his face.

"Daddy?" Lukka speaks.

"Yes Sweetheart d the" he responds putting Gil sitting on the floor.

“If you said you are a Vampire and we are Dhampirs. What is a Dhampir ? ” She questions him.

Neil takes a deep breath, then begins " Dhampir are half-human and half-vampire" "he looks at children" They are forbidden creatures "

"But why?" Gil asks.

"Because, Dhampirs always become natural hunters from all over the supernatural world" Neil replies.

"But how?" Lukka asks.

Neil sighs and lowers his head then looks at his daughter “Dhampirs have all the powers of vampires, including they can develop gifts that only after the hundred years of life can they develop” he takes the twins' hand “You got sick for that reason , your gifts began to appear and with that the vampire blood in you also appeared, now you must feed on blood, just like me ”

"How disgusting ..." They talk together

Neil laughs at both "You are already taking my blood, but you didn't know, so you are fine"

“But Daddy, it's still disgusting” Gil speaks with a pout and puts it under his chest.

"We'll have to drink it until when?" Lukka asks.

Neil joins forces to continue “Until the age of eight, after that you will return to being human until the age of twenty-five years after that you will be hybrids forever, but the good thing is that you will have got used to it”

“Ew. Do we know when to drink this? ” Gil asks.

"Don't worry, you won't notice, but as time goes on you will taste it, but until then Daddy will take care of you, I promise!" Neil says "I have one more thing for both of you" he gets up and takes two long carved wooden boxes and hands the box to the children, they open and take out two small silver hunting swords, the blade was clear with engraved details, the guard was also silver with details of chains, the dagger was of acacia and at the four ends it had a small wolf.

"They are beautiful, aren't they?" Neil asks them.

"Are they, sir, what did you do?" they answer it.

"Yes, they are twins and unique like the two of you" He answers them "Promise me that they will always keep them close, for protection"

"We promise" They speak.

~ • ~

After telling the truth to them I felt more relieved, the necklaces would hide them from being chased and the swords would be to kill their enemies, because the silver was bathed by the full moon along with the blood of an ancient elder, even now it is not with them one my piece will always be me and that 's peace.

I took them to the rooms and put them to sleep, when dawn they did not come to torture me, because Cassandra was staying with the boys and abandoning the research, Jefford appeared in my room furious he took advantage of my decadent state and raped me for a while until I took courage .

~ • ~

"WHY?" Neil shouts "I DID NOTHING, DIDN'T BREAK MY PROMISE"

Jefford pulls him by the hair and yells “WHY? BECAUSE YOU GOT EVERYTHING FROM ME. THOSE CHILDREN SHOULD BE MY. CASSANDRA SHOULD LOVE ME MORE. BUT YOU ... ”he puts his hand on his head and laughs.

"ALL RIGHT. I'M SO SORRY. YOU CAN HURT ME AS MUCH AS YOU WANT, BUT IF YOU TOUCH MY CHILDREN, I SWEAR I WILL KILL YOU ”Neil threatens him.

Jefford laughs "Okay" he approaches Neil "The day is going to be long and I have a lot of accumulated anger to release, Leech"

~ • ~

As he said it was a long day, he beat me, hit me, whipped me, broke my bones and cut me for hours. Until he relieved himself, unfortunately it was over and my children couldn't see me today and that certainly broke my heart ...

#Fanfic #MoonlightLovers #Neil

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victor-v · 4 years

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so yesterday i finished all for the game for the second time in my life (weird thing i've never read a book or series twice) and it wrecked me for the second time. it was unexpectedly nice that i actually understood everything with so much clarity, but that makes sense i've got lot of practice in reading english since then. also, i wrote my thoughts on the book this time.

i can't understand how a book can have such an impact on me, i hate that and i love it, everything else that crossed my mind is under the cut

★huh andrew really bullied aaron into dressing identical to mess up with neil

★"i don't swing either way" is the phrase that made me feel more valid that the whole queer community ever

★neil is pure nihilism

★how can i EVER forget neil wore a tight long sleeved TORN tshirt that andrew bought this is way too much

★seth is dead and all kevin can think about is the line up tbh i do that often

★they are making a scandal about how they sit

★kevin telling neil "destroy him" filled me with power

★the most unreal part is neil ALWAYS keeping his roots another colour the guy must dye his hair every fucking week

★how did neil buy andrew's promise to protect him from the japanese mafia's professional murderers when the only people he physically bullies is an obsessive young adult with anxiety, a princess in high heels and his sunshine sister in law

★wait a fucking minute andrew saw neil filled with terror while holding the phone and immediately gave him the car keys so he could be alone fuck

★nicky fucking hemmick attended to improv class

★ according to dan few athletes were crude enough to start trouble at an ERC event, you mean as crude as neil?

★how to take care of your teammate while he's in a crisis according to: andrew→show concern and reassure him. wymack→10 seconds of vodka

★"hey, jean. jean valjean" is peak comedy

★the ravens walking in v formation is genuinely the most cringy thing you can think of

★neil first finds out the only possible person to date him is andrew because he was jealous of renee are you kidding me

★andrew only missed 13 from 150 shots on goal for fucking real what a Man

★renee is an angel, she's specifically andrew's angel

★neil truly is a watcher

★bee wearing a bee costume is the only good thing on this world

★dan and matt dressed like greek gods!!!!! they can adopt me already

★can you believe nicky is the one who got into neil's brain and planted the idea of realying on someone, and since then neil actively pursues an investigation on andrew's relationship status how on god's name i missed that HOW he's not even subtle about it damn

★he first worries about renee now about kevin goddamn it josten how can't you se how much you care about him

★it's funny how sexuality is such a heavy topic between them when they sure as fuck have some pretty huge stuff going on you know like dying in the hands of the mafia or being tortured

★i imagine andrew running to renee all bonkers like "listen if the cute guy asks, for fucks sake tell him i'm gay but make it ~casual~ maybe this way he'll get it"

★the sole mention of thanksgiving dinner makes me want to die

★kevin is checking the scores in a newspaper I forget this book is so 00's

★they should have spent the day eating turkey and frozen pie at abby's fuckkkkkkkk

★are you kidding me they are in the middle of a conversation and andrew casually chokes neil a little but it's ok they carry on wtf

★"we are all going to regret this" is the fucking worse piece of foreshadowing in this book

★neil interrogating andrew the same night he was raped what kind of fucking piece of shit does that

★i can't fucking believe neil went ahead and shoved andrew's hand under his tshirt in front of kevin, wymack, betsy and two fucking lawyers are you kidding me

★neil asking "are we? friends?" to nicky is so relatable because i also would have an aneurysm if someone told me i am their friend

★someone else tries to flirt with him and he immediately considers andrew how i was too ace to see it the first time i read

★jesus fucking christ riko is one truly fucked up sociopath and neil is the bravest motherfucker on the land

★how can he face riko like that in the nest and be extremely pure in other occasion

★"are we watching the ball drop? i want to make a wish" he wants to make a wish and i want to die thanks

★i can't believe the whole if it means losing you then no and side effect of the drugs shit it's unreal fucking unreal how oblivious neil is too ace to realize anything SOMEONE JUST CALLED YOU "DREAM" THE LEVEL OF ROMANTICISM

★the amount of heavy staring in this trilogy is ridiculous and all i can think about is twilight

★these books made me see how far from the 00s we are, for many reasons, but mostly for some jokes that can't let slide; like calling neil a battered wife, domestic misogynistic violence is not a joke

★i can't believe from all people, wymack was the first one to get andrew was into neil

★"that doesn't mean I wouldn't blow you" is such a funny phrase to be said casually why is it

★"you are a racoon, not a fox" oh andrew

★it only took andrew admitting he had a crush for neil to be all sentimental and shit, and that disarmed andrew too

★they are like some kind of animal that while you think they are fighting, they are actually mating, that's exactly what nora meant with feral

★half of last book is neil mooning over andrew jfc

★nicky made neil smile while distracting him from riko im gonna throw myself off a cliff

★i can't quite believe neil goes through a detailed monologue about andrews memory the man is impressed and borderline turned on about every talent on his crushe's shelf

★i literally can't follow and will never understand the quarrel/promise/agreement between aaron and andrew what a bunch of pretentious idiots

★every time neil's phone buzzes all i fear is the fucking countdown

★i thought "i want to see you lose control" was a collective fever dream i can't believe it's written on the books

★if i was nicky i already have told andrew to stop his freaky pretentious shit towards me

★neil to the upperclassman: ha ha fellas is it gay to unthinkingly call andrew in the middle of a anxiety breakdown

★"you gave me a key and called it home" is as soft as heartbreaking i want to jump off a cliff

★"i won't be like them, i wont let you let me be" is actually pushing me off that cliff andrews feelings are a fucking storm

★neil was kidnapped and tortured the day of my bday and that's not a coincidence

★neil's talent to twist the truth in order to convince andrew of anything is outstanding

★excuse me they have no right to be this soft i hate them

★they miss so many opportunities to be funny about the whole "protection" thing

★did he really had a mental breakdown over where to fucking sit on the bus lmao

★"don't come crying to me when someone breaks your face" is the second most awful piece of foreshadowing

★lets be honest for a second andrew should be a fucking writer because all those things he says? edgy myspace pretentious poetry

★im sorry but i don't care about literally anything except neil smiling onto andrew's neck bye

★andrew ghosted a kiss across neil's hip im dead for real

★abby kissed neil's forehead farewell after cleaning all his injuries i have no words he's recieving all the affection he deserves

★cant believe you don't see aaron is fucking worried neil is taking advantage of andrew

★i mean yeah ok don't talk love but neil is sad that nicky thinks it was only hate sex, and he immediately acknowledged it meant more than that to him bc his demi btw wtf does hate sex mean i can't believe you hate someone so much you wanna suck his dick

★they all went horseback riding when will i have a group of friends like that

★"who's humanising who in that relationship" i know right nicky

★kevin locking himself to have a panic attack is the most relatable thing

★the car encounter with ichirou holds the same tension as a mr robot scene

★the proposal of playing olympics and being unstoppable feels like marriage or smth

★neil is literally having his hot girl summer

★i adore neil's overflow of emotions after swallowing everything for so many years. represented, thanks.

★andrew terrorising katelyn who the fuck does he think he is what an annoying asshole

★"did you know i've never been skiing" is the most epic line

★i cheer to the sole mention of laila

★alvares can deck me right now and i would say thank you

★"war is profitable" aaron knows what's up

★sometimes i want to slap them is2g

★that scene at eden's where they are all discussing how roland found out and aaron ends up being the only straight one lmao boy it's your punishment for being so homophobic

★the whole "deadliest piece on the board" spech is 100 times better when you consider kevin was wasted and overly exaggerating every word and gesture

★can you imagine those few fans supporting kevin's new tattoo screaming YAAAAASSSSS QUEEEEEEEEEN while snapping fingers i'm cackling

★matt in court body slamming into anyone that's been a problem to the foxes: VIBE CHECK MOTHERFUCKER

★neil kissed andrew in castle fucking evermore the audacity i adore him

#the foxhole court #the raven king #the kings men #all for the game #tfc #it really fucking wrecked me #how can a fucking book do this to me #my thoughts

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onestowatch · 7 years

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Make Music Thought-Provoking Again: An Interview with Declan McKenna

Hook-ups. Love. Break-ups. Regret. Empowerment. Uncertainty. Listen to any pop song today, specifically those from younger artists, and the lyrics will more than likely embody one of the themes listed above. More often than not, they’re written to appeal to the masses, to relate to a scenario all of us may be going through or feeling--while foregoing their personal touch along the way. In the world of pop lyricism, it seems there is no place for complexity. Enter Declan McKenna. The 18-year-old songwriter has proven that complexity can be popular, and in a sea of generic lyricism, McKenna digs deeper. His first single, “Brazil,” which speaks on the corruption during the 2014 FIFA World Cup, amassed over 20 million streams on Spotify, and took the number one spot on Sirius XM’s Alt Nation’s Countdown for three weeks back in 2016.

We see even more of this intricate and thought-provoking songwriting on his debut album What Do You Think About The Car?, which dropped July 21. Rather than use his experiences from relationships like many other artists, McKenna’s lyrics were written through reactions and impulses to issues happening around the world over the past four to five years. Each catchy song is initially deceiving to the ears. While the music feels light and poppy, the lyrics are telling a different and often darker story. Whether it’s tackling religious hypocrisy on “Bethlehem” or speaking out against transgender conversion therapy, and more specifically highlighting the death of transgender teen Leelah Alcorn on “Paracetamol,” McKenna isn’t afraid to tackle taboo topics, and it’s because of this that many have compared him to Bob Dylan.

McKenna is already hard at work on his second album, juggling the demands of touring with writing. I spoke with him the day before his album released about his glittery upcoming US tour, admiration for Run The Jewels & St. Vincent, and the negative stigma aligned with millennials.

OTW: When did you first start writing and develop interest in making music?

DM: I started to have an interest in music from a pretty young age. There’s a little clip at the start of the album from when I was four years old, and I was very much into music then if only because of my older siblings’ influence on me but as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in music. I first started writing probably only a few years after that, really. I was still in the single figures age-wise when I started writing songs. I was in band with my sister and my cousins but yeah, a pretty early start I think.

OTW: Because your lyricism and the ideas you write about are more complex, did you start out just writing in general, or writing lyrics?

DM: I think I’ve always tried to have some kind of depth to the lyrics I’ve written. Sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully especially first starting out, but I think what you write about is something you learn. You develop your own sort of skills, almost like imitating and taking from a lot of the artists you know already, and I think what I’ve written about is not only a reflection of that, but a reflection of how I’ve grown up, the world I’ve grown up in, friends I’ve got, family I’ve got. They’ve all sort of pushed me to write in a certain way.

OTW: For me personally, you’re breaking the mold of what people expect artists, especially younger artists, to write about. You’ve proven that complexity can be popular. What made you want to write about taboo topics like American politics, police brutality, being transgender, and the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, even though they may not directly affect you?

A lot of it is just kind of hearing about something and being like, “Oh, that’s wrong.” Like, that’s the kind of official thing, that’s just been like, “Oh that’s shitty” or you know whatever it is you write about, and just wanting to write a song about it--having that sort of impulse. I think in the grand scheme of things of what I do, there’s just a lot of stereotypes around young people and pop musicians, as well as together seen as ignorant or unintelligent or not insightful or anything, and not to say that I am like the most intelligent thing since whatever, [laughs], but I think I try and make a point to at least try to say something, to say something that I actually care about because I think there are a good range of artists out there doing it. I think it’s important to do that, and in the world of pop it can be shallow and I think you have to understand that, but appreciate that but also it can be great, and it can be whatever you want it to be. I think that’s why I like doing and making it what I want it to be. Whether its very meaningful or just for fun, I want it to be all those things whenever I think it’s appropriate.

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OTW: Does your track “I Am Everyone Else” go along with this theme of writing from other people’s perspective?

Potentially. It’s kind of a weird one because the writing was really staggered so that song for me was about kind of a bunch of different things at once, but it all revolves around that theme that you can say whatever, you can do whatever, but no one understands everyone. And you can’t pretend to do that. I think that is sort of vaguely what that song revolves around, even with the lots of different things that happened at that time in my life.

OTW: Are there any artists that have inspired you or influenced you to write about bigger topics?

DM: Yeah, I think so. One for me at the minute that I really love is Run The Jewels. I’m a big fan of them. There is such a wide range of hip-hop, and a wide range of things that people write about but people do slate it for being shallow, even though I very strongly disagree. They are just a really great example of very powerful music, and they also just come across as really nice guys which I think makes a difference when they put across their opinions and views, and you can kind of relate to them or just have a nice impression of them. It really helps with that, and I think that’s what is really nice about Run The Jewels.

OTW: How do you make these heavy topics feel light, specifically “Brazil” because it’s a really catchy song but the root of it is corruption.

DM: I think it comes from listening to a lot of The Beatles, honestly. I know everyone kind of references The Beatles quite a lot, but I feel like you can say a lot with sound. Like entrusting sound with lyrics, or having something that’s kind of bittersweet, something they do quite a lot, can actually maybe say more about how you feel, and you can also have lyrical content that expresses your feelings about it. For example, how the World Cup in Brazil might have been seen, compared to what was happening behind the scenes, you know, it could be two different things between the music and the lyrics, which is kind of fun to mess around with even if it’s very vague. People might not pick up on it because it’s not an obvious thing but it can just be fun in your head to work out these things, and it can mean different things to you and nothing to someone else, or even if it means something completely different to someone else, which is kind of the beauty of music.

OTW: I love that! How did you get yourself in the headspace to write about these situations?

DM: I don’t know, it often just happens. I try as often as possible to focus on writing but it can be really hard to just make yourself do it. A lot of it is just an impulse thing. I think a lot of it just comes down to what you see, what you hear, and kind of keeping notes in your head, and making sure it will all come together at one point, or something can happen that just inspires you. I tend to try to go on impulse as often as I can, although the more and more I’ve been touring, the less easy that is because being like busy all the time and tired catching up on sleep; it’s not as easy. Your writing becomes very different because you actually have to focus and learn to put time aside for it, and I think that has changed my style of wiring now, especially going into the second album. Not so much with the first because obviously a lot of those songs came before I was heavily touring.

OTW: I want to touch on a few of your tracks that were released prior to album. “Paracetamol” is a really beautiful track. Can you talk a little bit about how it came to be? I know a little bit about the background, but the title specifically?

DM: Paracetamol. It wasn’t originally the title of the song. I never originally had a bridge or anything when I first went into the studio with it. It’s kind of a weird little story of how it came about. We actually found a little Agogo bell in Neil’s studio, the producer I was working with, and it was about in tune with the song. It kind of worked, we were doing this samba rhythm with it, and I was like “Maybe we can have something like that in the song,” and we just started this whole other section because I felt like it needed something else, and I didn’t have any lyrics. On my walk home, I was just thinking about what would fit here? What would go with like what I wanted to say in the song? And I pretty much wrote the lyrics on the walk from the studio to the train station.

A lot of the song is based around people thinking that their opinions can be right in regards to how other people identify, and that certain people can be changed, or to tell someone it’s a choice, and that it can be changed, and fixed with something like therapy, and I wanted to compare that to like an everyday drug. Like, “Oh, you can cure yourself with Paracetamol” because it would be just as messed up an idea to consider that someone can be changed through medicine. It was a very simple little metaphor, but it felt right at the time to kind of make sense of the theme of the song, and give it a slightly different section to break it up a bit.

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OTW: Let’s talk about the video for “The Kids Don’t Wanna Come Home.” In the beginning of the video we see a young girl say, “I think the way we view ourselves is very different to the way other people views us.” For you personally, why do you think our generation is negatively viewed/has the stigma that it does?

DM: I don’t know, I think it’s easy to because I think the mistakes that young people make now, as compared to a while ago, are documented. If someone says something silly at a young age or does something silly, it gets filmed, it gets documented, it gets posted online. The Internet is a thing which has been popularized, and people often blame that but it just means that you can see more of peoples’ lives, and it means that people are insecure and a bunch of things, but I don’t think it means that people are unintelligent. I don’t think it means that people are naive, or anymore naive than a young person would have been awhile ago. I just always find it quite hypocritical that the generation that gave us all of these phones, the Internet, everything, and marketed them to us and made us want them are now kind of saying, “You’re always on those things that we made you want to have.” [Laughs]. Yeah, I just struggle to understand how anyone could actually have that opinion of the younger generation.

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OTW: Let’s talk about the new album. If there are three feelings that you want your listeners to experience while listening to the album, what would they be?

DM: That’s really hard because I don’t want people to feel sad, but also, it does kind of have that. [Laughs]. I don’t know, I think I want people to feel excited listening to it. Just every feeling that is the opposite of bored, basically. Happy, excited, but like with a slight tinge of melancholy just for good measure. That’s what I want because I think, like we were talking about earlier with the happy sound and slightly darker lyrics, I don’t want the music to make people feel down about bad things. I think music in itself should be enjoyable, and I think even when songs have a hard topic, I want people to be happy and excited and enjoy them.

OTW: What is your favorite song off the new album, and why?

DM: Properly, I have to say “Humongous.” I love playing it live, and I really love all of the production and everything we did with it. It’s not one I listen to and have anything I would change. I feel like since it’s the most recent one I wrote for the record, I just still relate to it as much as I could a song I wrote yesterday because I’ve changed a lot, definitely as I wrote a lot of songs on the album so I think it being not that old to me even is quite a special thing and quite nice because I’ve often spent a year or two after writing a song waiting for it to come out, and with that one, it was out within a month.

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OTW: With the new album, what can fans expect at your live show during your US tour?

DM: Confetti and balloons hopefully, if we can find them in America. Glitter. Dancing.

OTW: I think you just need to go to a Party City when you get here. They’ll have everything you need.

DM: Yeah I’ll find a college town or something, I think we try more and more to keep the shows really upbeat and party-esque. We try to put as much into it as possible so we’ll probably come up with fresh ideas but lots of just bright, shiny things. [Laughs].

Photo: Birger Hagevold Johansen

OTW: Sounds good! I’m so bummed that California isn’t a stop on your US tour. When can we expect you on the West Coast?

DM: Yeah, I was expecting to come in April but we had to cancel that whole tour. It was a bit crap. Hopefully before the end of the year but I don’t know. I’m really hoping to come back because I love being in the warm places. [Laughs]. Yeah, I’m up for that.

OTW: If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be?

DM: I say this all the time, but St. Vincent. I just, I don’t know. I try and make my live show and make everything, somewhat...It’s all kind of somewhat inspired by her live show. As a performer, as a songwriter, I really look up to her so I would love to be able to create something with her.

OTW: Who are three artists on your OTW list?

Feet - They’re a really cool new band from Coventry in the UK. A lot of different sounds. It’s like psych, punky, indie rock, and it’s really really well written music, and there’s a cool video out for a song called “Petty Thieving.” Yeah, they’re really good.

Jealous of the Birds - It’s a product of Namoi Hamilton. She supported us out in Ireland, Dublin, and Belfast. She’s from Northern Ireland, and has some of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in a long time. Yeah, I really really love her.

The Rhythm Method - They’re sort of coming up in a minute from London, and they’re very cool. It’s somewhere been the streets and PC music, and it’s really interesting. I’m looking forward to them releasing more music. They only have a few tracks out.

#declan mckenna #what do you think about the car #indie #rock #bob dylan #brazil #paracetamol #bethlehem #matt lambert #st vincent #run the jewels

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celticnoise · 4 years

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Resolution 12 and the way that matter has closed out has thrown up as much anger and frustration as I expected.

The question people have to ask themselves is “what do we do next?” I have read a lot of bluster and a lot of nonsense about what this means … what I have not read, anywhere, is any coherent plan for what should be done in response to it.

Let’s be straight on a couple of things; the SFA is not running Celtic.

Our club has not been “handed over” to anybody. That is over the top for me.

So is the assertion that part of, or all of, our club has “died.”

Celtic is bigger than these people, it is more than just those making the decisions in the here and now.

The idea that they have permanently damaged our club is just wrong. You are giving these people more back-handed credit than they deserve; they are a small part of the history of Celtic. It is their own egotistical mistake to believe they are more than just temporary office bearers … it is not a trap we should be falling into with them.

They cannot transform the ideals of this club any more than humans can destroy the Earth.

We may destroy ourselves, but that’s not the same thing .. just as these men have wrecked their own reputations and tarnished their own legacies.

But they can never change the soul of Celtic.

So that sort of emotive language and hyerbole about what we’ve “lost” is unhelpful.

It creates a lot of noise, but no solutions.

To be frank, I wonder if there are solutions here.

Bloggers ranting and raving is not going to shift this.

The board has made a decision. The only two ways that is reversed are if they change their minds or something happens which does it for them. Banners in the stands and pitchforks in the car-park aren’t going to do it.

I want to be realistic about this, so let’s be.

There are people who want to overthrow the board over this.

They have no plan for doing so; in their anger they simply want to charge the guns.

Even if I believed that this issue merited regime change – I am on the fence over that, and only because I see Resolution 12 as part of a wider set of concerns – I would be wholly unwilling to put my name forward for a suicidal dash across No Man’s Land. Uh-uh.

Without even the slimmest prospect of success it’s just stupid.

I was in politics a long time. I think about the visual here … a bunch of supporters standing protesting and demanding the resignations of the entire board at a time when we’ve got eight titles in a row and are going for nine. It would look, to the outside world, and most of the people in the orbit of our club, as if we had gone completely insane.

Imagine the first press conference where they ask Lennon about it.

The second he expresses his disbelief and says that the board is the best he’s ever worked with, that they care about Celtic, the second he makes it clear he doesn’t support even the idea of it … the campaign is dead. Where does it go from there? What is the next move?

Venting is fine, but let’s deal in reality and the reality is this; our board of directors is going nowhere.

There is no way to remove them that doesn’t involve the unified action of the support and you aren’t going to get anything like it whilst this team is winning everything. Lawwell will be here until he decides to retire. Desmond will be here as long as he’s interested, and the idea that he will hand over his shares to his son as if this is an antique tea set and not a major institution absolutely appals me … but it’s the way it’s going to be until something fundamental shifts.

So yes, they have chosen a direction of travel and it is not the one that many of us would have liked.

They have made a decision on Resolution 12 and the matter has been set aside.

The club’s official policy is not to pursue this.

They said they have taken it as far as they can and they want to move past it and get on with other things.

We can spit the dummies out of the pram or we can accept that.

There will be a price to pay regardless. Lawwell believes that he’s entitled to a statue at the very least for his “administration” of the club thus far, but he too often strays outside of his official remit and when he does the results are occasionally disastrous. Whatever game he was playing with Rodgers blew up in his face; he only got away with that because the manager left such bitterness behind him that many set aside Lawwell’s contribution to the affair.

I had a front row seat to Lawwell’s own egotism. I know that both men were equally to blame, that neither put the club first during that appalling period in the summer of last season, when we fumbled about like idiots and let John McGinn and others slip through our fingers.

Lawwell’s brinksmanship was pathetically bad. He misjudged things at every stage.

The truth is that Lawwell is very, very good at what he does within certain parameters and I have long wondered whether or not we’re getting full value for money there. For all his alleged skill at politicking he has been unable to set out an agenda and have others back it up. He has been weak. Our club has been weak as a result of that.

He has propped up the corrupt regime at the SFA. He is the only reason Neil Doncaster still has a job. There are people in our game who would have been hunted out of it had Celtic shown leadership and balls at the time of the Ibrox implosion … we never did.

The chance for genuine root and branch reform probably went by the boards because of our failure.

An historical opportunity was not only lost, it was squandered.

Lawwell is grossly overpaid in his role. He has chronically underachieved at using Celtic’s unassailable power and position to benefit the rest of the game, and that has implications for how well protected we are from the activities of cheats and charlatans.

It is because of that failure that there is a financially doped up Ibrox club clinging to our coat tails.

God Help Lawwell if they win something with the crooked King in the building when this site and others have telegraphed the need for FFP rules in Scotland for years now.

I know our board’s failures, and I know there is an argument in favour of removing the lot of them and filling our club with people who possess real vision. Lawwell has been over a decade in a job where the average stay is a handful of years; this is because people get stale, they run out of ideas, the whole ethos of the place changes to suit their outlook … and that causes problems, sometimes major ones. You can see signs of it at Celtic Park and the most obvious symbol of it, ironically enough, is sitting in the manager’s office right now.

Lennon has been a phenomenal success so far, but the decision to appoint him not only showed a staggering lack of imagination and vision on behalf of the board but the manner of it was abysmal, cynical, deceptive and reeked of amateurism. That he is getting it right does not mean that they did; Lawwell is often luckier than he is good. It’s a nice trait to have, but luck doesn’t last and this could have been a total disaster. It still might be.

That Neil Lennon is manager still scares the Hell out of me and not because I still worry that Lennon might prove to be a monumental mistake; I am extremely confident in his abilities now and have no doubt that he will continue to grow into the role.

It scares me because people inside our club put no thought into this. That they grabbed the first warm body they could. That some of them thought this was the best we could do, that giving a guy who failed at Bolton and Hibs the job on a permanent basis was the best of all the options. What other options were there? Lawwell said they didn’t even look. That’s his own words. That’s the “official position” of our club, that they didn’t even try.

Lennon has surpassed expectations, but that does not afford Lawwell or the board an alibi. They did not know how this would turn out; it was an incredible gamble, an act of staggering recklessness. If it goes wrong, more than the manager should pay with his job.

Worse, by far, is the complete ethical failure that lies at the heart of the Resolution 12 decision.

That moral failure, that spineless decision not to challenge a corrupt association and a corrupt decision, that act of gross negligence, is a small part of the larger malfunction of vision. They have abrogated their responsibilities to Celtic, yes, but also to the wider game, in favour of an easy life. They can hide behind UEFA as they will, but this and other failures to act are failures of their own leadership and their own ability to drive through change.

That they have failed both to avenge past transgressions against us, as well as failing to fire-proof us against future corruption is a given. We don’t know what the long-term consequences of that will be, but even without them these failures are what they will be remembered for.

At the gravest moment in the recent history of the game here, and at the time of the greatest opportunity for change, they were nowhere. When it came to fighting tooth and nail for truth and for justice not only for ourselves but every other club who suffered in the EBT era, they backed away from the fight. The opportunity for reform came and went and we did nothing but call for a toothless inquiry and they didn’t even have the juice to get that.

This is their legacy and this is how all of them will be remembered. Revisionists will point to the trophy haul and the success on the park, but managers and player secured that, and we should have been entitled to expect success with our advantages. Their wider responsibilities have not been met, or have ended in failure. The game itself is no better way and we are still unprotected for corrupt practices and the possibility of being overhauled via them.

Just as there is no unified Celtic support at this time, neither is there a unified version of history. There are people who will think Lawwell and this board are the greatest in the history of the club; they are entitled to that view, but that view will not prevail.

Because the conditions are ripe for another disaster in our game, and when it comes our board is going to have as much responsibility of it as those who triggered it. This game is no safer than was, no more stable than it was, no more immune from scandal than it was.

The scope of their moral failure is immense. No-one builds statues or names stands after such gutless wonders. They have left us exposed and vulnerable, and their weakness in this case has invited further atrocities against us.

These are not leaders, whatever they might think they are, but for the moment we are stuck with them and probably for a long time to come.

That doesn’t mean they got away with it.

History judges us all, and as we know some people will never give them praise because that would be to give Celtic praise, neither can they rely on the goodwill of people like us.

Whilst our enemies will never credit them with any of what we did, the rest of us will damn them for what they didn’t do.

I wrote before of how they had an opportunity to rise above all the boards that came before them, or go down with the White’s and the Kelly’s; there were no in-betweens because of what this moment demanded of them.

They have made their choice.

Disgrace and dishonour it is.

If you haven’t done the Sevco liquidation quiz yet do it below … another quiz will be up during the week!

Please share these articles widely, and join our Facebook Group for discussions about the pieces and other issues.

If you have trouble finding the articles you can subscribe, follow us on Twitter and get every piece on Celtic News Now. And you can, of course, bookmark the site itself and check it for updates throughout the day.

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vickeyeppunitarj42insurance-blog · 5 years

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rachaeljwilliams-blog · 5 years

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Workshops

During this semester we have experienced a variety of different art practice workshops in order to widen our knowledge of different practices and try new things. Overall, I think this experience has had many ups and downs due to the tutors choosing to present their workshops in different ways. Some chose to talk about their practice and what we would be doing next semester whilst others provided us with a workshop where we could take part in their practice in order to test it out for ourselves. Personally, the approach of letting us test the techniques out for ourselves was more valuable to me than talking about a specific technique. Testing things out is an exciting adventure for me because it has opened my mind to try things I never would have if I hadn’t be forced to and helped me to learn more about other art prectices which is valuable because you will never know if you like something unless you have tried it. However, these workshops that have had us creating work have often missed out the purpose they were created for (for us to choose what we want to do next semester) and the tutors sometimes didn’t even mention next semester at all. This to me seems there has been a lack of communication in the purpose of these workshops.

Neil - printing

Neil’s workshop was one where no practical work had taken place and being honest I understand why. Printing is a traditional art method and we are experienced enough now to know how to print and if we want to do it, so in a way printing sells itself. Printing is my favourite technique and will be my first choice for next semester.

Eva - Drawing to music

Unfortunately the week our group was meant to have Eva she was off for an unknown reason. I was very disappointed about this as I feel this would have been relatable to my practice at this time because I am working with an art therapy team and drawing to music can be seen as a type of art therapy. After having not been to this workshop I didn’t think it was sensible to have it in my choices however if I had of had the opportunity to go I would have considered it.

Rick - Painting

Unfortunately I was unable to attend this workshop due to illness however, I spoke to Rick personally about his workshop because I didn’t want to miss out. On speaking to Rick he described his workshop to be similar to Neil’s workshop saying painting sell’s itself so if I wanted to do painting I’d know. I’ve never been a painter in my practice and wasn’t really interested in it at the time I chose my choices so it wasn’t really one I considered. However, now I suppose I am taking a little bit of a painting root within my work by planning to paint onto vinyl’s. I am still glad I didn’t choose the painting workshop though because I feel my skill level is still quite low and the painting I plan to do it more of an experiment.

Claire - Performance

In Claire’s workshop she took a practical approach and asked us to create our own mini performance piece. I found her workshop one of the best because she had the talking but beforehand like Neil where she shown us other people’s work but then made us respond at the end. Unfortunately, Clare was running late on the day we had her and we only had a short 20 mins to create our piece of work so unfortunately I didn’t have a finished product however I had a clear idea to be able to feed back to the group. My idea was surrounding the subjectivity of words. For example you can say the word no but that can have a thousand meanings behind it, no as in angrily, jokingly and so on. So in my performance I would repeat the word no but with many different subliminal meanings. Overall, I enjoyed Claire’s workshop and it opened up my mind to performance art which I didn’t really understand until then.

Adam - Curation

I think our group had drawn the short straw with our workshops because once again this week it was cut short as Adam had a meeting and John who he had been acompanied by previously couldn’t make it this week. Curation had been a subject I had been interested in and wanted to maybe choose as my option as I had heard good things from people who had had this workshop previous. However I felt this week the workshop wasn’t the same as it had been for others because it finished much earlier and John wasn’t there so I never took as much away as others did. However, he still had some valid points I was interested in so I was thinking about choosing this as one of my options.

Bedwyr - Writing

Bedwyr chose to do his workshop practically, however he spoke to us for 10 minutes and then left us to it which I thought wasn’t very helpful because he only told us what we had to do rather than examples of other people’s or anything. He instructed us to write an absurd story linking to an object and showed us one he had created about a spoon. He told us to go and do our work and email it into him. After I emailed him the work there was no reply or feed back or being able to read anyone else’s work so I didn’t really understand the whole process. I have no intentions of choosing this one for next semester. However, it was fun to create a story in a childlike manner.

Trish/Chris - Green screen

Both Trish and Chris’ workshop were very similar both about green screen and concerning an object and a place. One piece I created for these workshops was a video piece of a teddy bear having a dance off with a street gang in a bar. Although I found this humourous it was just a joke to me and it would never be something I would use as my work seriously. Due to this I didn’t save the piece not realising we needed documentation of it and when I went back to try and find it on the computer I couldn’t which was unfortunate. I think work like this needs more time to be thought out carefully and would have been better if we were able to record our own things on the green screen instead of using readymades.

Peter - Sound

The sound workshop was one I didn’t think I would particularly like however, I found it quite therapeutic and fun. We were told to walk around and record sounds and when we re joined as a group we put the sounds together and made a soundscape in audacity. This was a product I had never used before but I found it quite useful because it relates to the music bingo I am creating at the moment. Although the piece I created by the end didn’t really mean anything to me it was a learning curve for me to learn how to use the software and made me think about maybe developing my bingo piece by mixing up the songs to take it further. I don’t think I’ll pick this one for next semester but it was a good learning curve for me.

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itsworn · 7 years

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Bruce Leven’s Gran Turismo–Winning 1951 Ford Coupe

It Took 60 Years to Do it, But Bruce Leven Now Has the Sports Rod He Wanted as a Kid

The notion that ordinary cars can become extraordinary is the basis for HOT ROD magazine and its readers. The model of the manufacturer as the creator went straight on its ear. The consumers—like you and me—are the ones calling the shots. Cars and their parts merely become our building blocks, spawning a feeding frenzy of would-be enthusiasts with a mantra: “One day I’m gonna.”

Bruce Leven can identify. “I wanted to build this car since I was 16,” he says. “I’m 78 now. I just fell in love with it.”

The car Bruce fell in love with 60 years ago is Ron Dunn’s 1950 Ford club coupe. That was the seed for this one, but to understand this car you have to understand that one.

Ron Dunn and his shoebox as Eric Rickman saw it in June 1957. Ron got the car as a gift from his parents. He drove almost directly from the dealership to the shop. The similarities are unmistakable, right down to the big wheel openings and the perimeter grille and roll pan.

Ron’s “Monte Carlo” (what he called it) owed a great deal of its fame to Dean Batchelor. Dean was as comfortable in a Ford as he was in a Ferrari. Case in point, when his stint ended at Hop Up—a decidedly hot roddy/custom car magazine—he slid right into the seat at Road & Track, which was very sporty. Years later he wrote a bunch of books about Ferraris and hot rods.

Back then he was also good friends with Valley Custom’s Neil Emory. Neil’s son, Gary, recalls, “Dean would pick up Dad, and they’d go to lunch talking about whatever car Dean was testing at the time.” And the sports cars he brought were different to the core, which influenced Ron’s car.

Europe taxed on displacement, so cars there had smaller engines. Smaller engines meant smaller bodies, which required higher roof lines to fit occupants. Neil and Clay approximated those proportions by removing a 5-inch band from the perimeter of the body of Ron’s coupe—think of it as chopping the body rather than the top. (Neither the idea nor the process was original; Edsel Ford had his people do the same thing to a Zephyr to make the original Continental—its name and shape inspired by the cars Edsel saw on “The Continent,” aka Europe). A 1957 revision made Ron’s more like a sports car, with a mesh grille, roll pans, and delicate nerf bars front and rear. The Monte Carlo name was no stretch; this was a European-inspired car.

Lincoln’s 368 was the second-biggest engine made in 1956, making it appropriate for a period-influenced sports car. It’s also physically massive, requiring a custom pan and belt driven oil pump to fit in the slimmed-down shoebox. Dan Brewer at Shaver Racing Engines coaxed more than a horse-per-cube from it, a respectable ratio for the age the car represents.

Ron’s car wasn’t fast with a stock flathead six engine that appealed mostly to grandfathers and fleet operators at best. But particularly after the 1957 rehash, the car had the spirit of being a hot rod, as some people believed the movement was progressing.

Bruce’s car isn’t a clone. Part of the “one day I’m gonna” mandate says you’ll bring to bear your own experiences and interests. And Bruce’s experiences and interests are wholeheartedly in sports cars—starting with a Porsche RSR in the 1970s, a purchase that led to IMSA, Trans-Am, and even IndyCar racing.

Stock dashes get a bit bulky in a sectioned car, not to mention the shape kind of limits options, so Lindsey Butler and Justin Messer built this one entirely from scratch. Touching upon his sports-car roots, Bruce chose a Nardi wheel.

He chose Wicked Fabrication in Auburn, Washington, to execute the project on his recently found 1951 club coupe.

Sectioning is the defining element of the car, but since this is an homage more than a clone, the team took a different approach. Guided by Bruce and Craig, Adam Hart and Josh “Pappy” Green sliced the body in two, slid the upper half into the bottom, and crept up to the ideal amount (which works out to a band 2-1/2 inches wide removed at the back to about 5-1/2 inches out of the front

Some modifications sometimes invite more work. “All of a sudden, the top looked like it had a big bulge in it,” Bruce recalls. So Lindsey Butler and Pappy thinned the crown 1-1/2 inches, a process called pancaking. This opened the door for another modification that fits the sports-car theme. Trimming the skin made it too narrow to fit the top, so it was cut down the middle and then the sides welded in place, which left a gap down the middle of the top. They filled that gap with a skin from a shoebox sedan with a longer roof, so now the rear section followed a more gradual curve and floated off the back of the roof. “That was an opportunity,” Bruce says. “The ’58 Impala had a fake vent in the roof because sports cars like the Mercedes Gullwing had a real one.

Craig built up an inner lip in one side of a 1951 grille surround with plastic body filler to create a new grille shape. After scanning, he tuned it in CAD and mirrored it to create the rest of the grille, which was machined from 6061 aluminum. The hood straps pay homage to European racecar construction.

After rust repairs and sectioning, all that remained of the front fenders were their tops. The chin and tail each got a pan, and Craig made up a grille border like the revised Monte Carlo. He reshaped a 1951 grille surround slightly, had it scanned and mirrored to make a perimeter, and then Dick St. John machined it from aluminum. “Bruce wanted to take some of the peak out of the hood,” Craig explains. By the time they would have finished, they could have made a new hood from aluminum more easily, which is what they did.

Early in the transformation the car got a new Art Morrison chassis located just around the corner from Wicked. One of Bruce’s mandates was independent rear suspension. “When we were racing, there was a guy who ran a Jaguar sedan with an IRS setup and a quick-change centersection,” he recalls. “That really stuck with me.”

Designing any suspension from scratch is no walk in the park, but as luck would have it, the guy who cast the reproduction NOVI IndyCar wheels—Ray Franklin at Vintage Engineering—happened to know how to set up IRS. “We used Thunderbird uprights, but built the rest of the suspension from scratch,” Craig says. With the wheels in place and the car at its final stance, the Wicked crew set about making the wheel openings round, but with a hint of a flare.

The fuel tank is basically a shell for an ATL bladder. The small box on the left houses the battery, and the kit on the right has a bag of tools and knock-off mallet. The Wicked crew made the strap hardware and Miller made the straps.

“I didn’t want it to just look like a sports car,” Bruce admits. “I wanted it to have enough power to back it up.” He chose a highly unlikely powerplant: a Lincoln 368ci Y-block, a term coined by Ford referring to its fully skirted V8 engines of the 1950s. Dan Brewer at Shaver Racing Engines built the engine. It has the goods: polished and nitrided crank, Carillo H-beam connecting rods (that measure a whopping 7.063 inches!), and JE pistons, oversized 0.03 inch for 373 ci of displacement. The 368 heads have large valves, so Dan replaced them with stainless Manleys. By virtue of a 75cc chamber, the compression remains low at just shy of 9:1.

This engine wasn’t easy to fit, either. “It’s 3 inches taller than a big-block Chevy,” Craig says. “And, oh boy, is it heavy!” The shallower engine compartment meant mounting the engine low requiring a custom pan, which Dan Olson built. What’s more, the oil pump interfered with the crossmember (FoMoCo Y-blocks are side-oilers). “So we did an external pump belt-driven like a dry-sump pump, although single stage,” Dan clarifies.

The top end wasn’t any easier. The stock Lincoln manifolds mount the carburetor below the ports—a no-go performance-wise. “In the ’50s Mercury went to Daytona for speed runs,” Bruce says. In a nutshell, famed race-car builder Bill Stroppe lopped the windshield frame off a 1957 convertible and hired famed Sprint Car builder Eddie Kuzma to craft a canopy of sorts. He then built a thumper of an engine, hiring Hilborn to build an injector among other things. “Hilborn made four sets of those injectors,” Bruce says. “I found a guy with a Lincoln injection who wanted to trade it for a welding machine! So I bought that thing.”

Dan sent the injector back to Hilborn for new shafts and a general rebuild. He also converted it to use a FAST ECU, but rather than weld bungs for the injectors, he made a system to hide it all, making tall blocks that mount between the injector manifold and the heads, carving them out for ports, then machining pockets adjacent to these ports. “The injectors mount inside those finned blocks so you can’t see them,” he says.

The relatively low compression and smallish ports dictated modest cam specs (224 degrees duration at 0.05- and 0.448-inch lift). Despite this mild tune, the engine made a respectable 389 lb-ft of torque at 2,800 rpm and 375 hp just shy of 5,000 rpm—not exactly a barnburner, but up to the popular horsepower-per-cube performance mandate when this engine was new.

With the individual components complete, the car went to Byers Custom and Restoration. Alan Donald, Howie Davis, Jered Lobbin, and owner Jon Byers prepped the body. The colors come from a 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300SL, likely Modegrau (exterior) and Aschblau (interior). “We couldn’t use the old color codes because they don’t translate to modern paints,” Jon says. “But it just so happens that the codes cross-reference real closely to two modern Porsche colors.” Those are Grauschwarz (exterior) and possibly Graphite Blue, and Jon applied both in PPG DBC.

Adam Hart formed the simple, sports-car-inspired bucket seats. Tony Miller from Stitches Custom Auto Upholstery in Poulsbo, Washington, trimmed them in a combination of antiqued leather. The 2-inch latch-and-link hasps harken to military-surplus harnesses, yet accommodate passenger-car webbing.

Tony Miller and Tom Bidle at Stitches Custom Upholstery in Poulsbo, Washington, tag-teamed the cockpit. They used a combination of Denim Blue and Tracker Brown distressed leathers for the seats, and an Irish Cream distressed leather for the headliner. They also made the hood straps. The floor wears tan German square-weave carpet.

Bruce Leven’s sectioned shoebox does a number of things more than looking good. For one, it fulfills the sports-car promise that Ron Dunn’s car made so many years ago. For another, it bridges a generational gap; Sony’s Kazunori Yamauchi, creator of the company’s flagship driving game Gran Turismo, dubbed it Best of Show at SEMA’s 2016 event in Las Vegas. The award includes induction into the game’s future editions, where it will be exposed to future generations.

Most important in a global sense, it makes good on this premise that we build upon the work of others. At the very least, it gives us hope that someone, somewhere, still looks at cars like this and thinks, “One day I’m gonna.”

Hilborn produced injectors for Bill Stroppe’s 1957 Mercury “Mermaid” Daytona program. One of Bruce’s friends found this one, a lucky proposition, as Hilborn made only four and he needed one to clear the lower hood line. Hilborn rebuilt this one and Dan Brewer set it up to run electronically with a FAST ECU.

Rather than spoil the vintage vibe by exposing the injectors, Dan machined risers that house them—they have pockets adjacent to the ports. And because the factory Lincoln rocker covers are a thing of beauty, he machined them to match.

Josh “Pappy” Green made the inner fender panels and Adam Hart fabricated these inserts. The louvers don’t match any existing dies—Adam cut and hammered them manually. Hand-bucked rivets hold the insert in place.

The engine spins an alternator, Saginaw power-steering pump, and an oil pump, three things not available then or now for the Lincoln Y-block, so the Wicked crew made one-off brackets. The expansion tank likely came from a Ford FE and corresponds with a crossover tube, a necessary component because the Hilborn injector lacks the feature.

Extensive body reshaping meant making the core support and associated structures from scratch. Pappy built it in the likeness of race-car construction using flared-hole dies to add lightness.

Classic Instruments fashioned a set of gauges in the likeness of vintage Jaeger pieces. Dick St. John machined the housings and Lindsey Butler made the brackets.

Ian Dunn wired the car with period-style, cloth-covered wire from American Autowire, but instead of fuses he used circuit breakers. Again, Dick St. John and Lindsey Butler made the housing and bracket.

Even with an S-10 tail stock, the Borg-Warner T5 puts the shifter far forward for a sports car. Adam knew there was a better way to move it back, and he came up with this pantograph mechanism that puts the shifter within reach.

The pedal assembly started as Wilwood, but all that remains are the pedal arms and cylinders. The Wicked crew fabricated a new bracket and a repeater-arm setup that fits the tight confines between the engine and chassis.

In the weight-saving spirit of race-car construction, Bruce specified thin plastic windows and insisted on eliminating the regulators. That meant an alternate means of securing the windows in the up position, which Adam obliged with cabinet latches.

More than saving weight, eliminating the windows also meant opening the door in the way that most grand-touring cars were entered in the 1950s. Also in touring-car style, the pull strap doubles as the latch release. The door top extends the dash shape.

The exterior door buttons also evoke the image of 1950s sports cars. Ian Dunn built these around Mazda mechanisms then machined the main ring, and shaped a piece for the little finger pull, welding the two together.

Most Americans won’t recognize semaphores, but they were the default turn signals on European cars into the 1960s, making them perfect for this car’s theme. These particular ones came from a Volkswagen Beetle.

Kirk Brown, aka Crafty B Nostalgic Speed, makes fuel fillers. Adam recessed the body for it. Note the polished trim piece around the perimeter.

The roof vent was a creative and appropriate way to solve a problem. Pancaking the skin left a big gap down the middle. They used a sedan roof skin that’s longer and has a less-pronounced crown.

Bruce says he liked the idea of the 1951 trim spear, but not its bulk, so Jeffrey Gibson machined a thinner spear and bezel. Adam recessed it into the body.

The wheels resemble the ones Halibrand cast for Novi’s Indy car in the 1950s. These 15×5-1/2 and 15x7s are the first that Ray Franklin at Vintage Engineering cast in their likeness. They’re authentic down to the magnesium alloy and Dow 7 coating.

Ray Franklin consulted on the independent rear suspension. It runs a Speedway Engineering centersection with Porsche 930 CV joints, gun-drilled axles, and late-model Thunderbird uprights.

The FAST system Dan Brewer set up with the Hilborn gear relies on the distributor for the engine-speed signal. A real magneto won’t work, so he used one of Joe Hunt’s mag-look distributors. Oddly enough, the one from Ford’s Y-block fits.

Back in old grand-touring days it was common to swap plugs mid-race, and teams often made plug holders for the engine compartment. Few were as trick as this one carved from aluminum.

The hood would’ve required so many individual custom panels that the work justified making a new one from scratch in aluminum.

Dies don’t exist to do these louvers, so just as he did for the inner-fender panels, Adam formed these manually.

Mounting switches overhead keeps them out of the way yet close enough to reach. Lindsey Butler made the surround and Ian Dunn made the switch plate itself.

Adam fabricated the pop-out window frames. He also fabricated the latches, patterning them from the ones Volkswagen used on the Beetle.

The post Bruce Leven’s Gran Turismo–Winning 1951 Ford Coupe appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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