*-- a shot of the old life.

[caroline isabelle sutton]

VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, EVENING, BAD SEEDS, LATE JANUARY 2012

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----- ”why oh why must you make a big deal out of this.” carly said with a cheeky smile, hamming on the drama in an effort to show her mother just how overly sensitive she was being on the subject. ”because damn it. you get back to valkyrie and all of a sudden you go running off to that…that BAR!” emilia sutton began to shout as she finished her sentence making carly want to chuckle all the more. ”you’re acting like i’m going out banging every man i see. that place was where i found my inspiration and it was a great place to work! you only knock it because you assume the worst and you’ve never even been to bad seeds!” she threw her hands into the air, the gust of wind tickling her nearly-bare torso. yes this now heightened conversation had taken place when carly was standing in her hotel room looking through her things for a proper shirt to wear for the night. her mother didn’t care that she was yelling at her daughter wearing only a pair of worn jean shorts and a bra. she was still trying to get her point across despite the fact that she knew just how stubborn her daughter could get when she set her mind to something. compare carly to a mule or whatever other stubborn animal you need for the analogy, just know that no ornery animal ever compares to carly when she’s settled on something. she was going to bad seeds tonight, twenty one or not, not being the operative portion of that sentence. yes, it was true. carly had yet to turn twenty one even if she had been away from valkyrie for a good three years or so. apparently the fact that she was mere months away didn’t seem to register with her mother either. emilia sutton wasn’t concerned that carly was going to a bar despite being under the legal age. carly had done so plenty of times after she’d gotten her newfound fame. that wasn’t the problem and carly knew this because she knew her mother knew (yes try keeping up with that one) that carly knew her limits and would never make the kind of mistakes she’d made in high school again. no emilia’s problem with bad seeds, was the inherent reputation and the fact that people would comment to her in the street about how they loved seeing her daughter “dancing on those tables and bar tops” back when she used to work at bad seeds. that was before the fame, but people hadn’t made the mother/daughter connection until after carly had been seen on television and since then people couldn’t seem to stop gushing about how her routines were so original and sensual and pretty much everything a mother wanted to hear.

-----”i don’t care. i don’t care, i don’t care!” carly shook her head, finally digging her shirt out of the closet. ”i’m not asking you to watch her while i go running off to some booty call, and i’m not going just to reprise my former glory days,” carly watched as her mother rolled her eyes, continuing before she could respond, ”i’m going because i love it and because my friends will be there and because i haven’t had all that much to meet up with old friends since i’ve come back. now i’m not asking for much. tuck her in, check on her once, make sure she stays asleep. i won’t be out all night and you have nothing to worry about.” she stuck a finger up before emilia could respond, halting her in her tracks. ”you forget i’m not in high school any more. i understand that i have a responsibility to my daughter and i no doubt intend to follow through with that. you as her grandmother should want to spend more time with her seeing as how you’re the one who sent her away in the first place and seeing as how you haven’t seen her, oh, pretty much ever. she’s been here almost a month, yes, but that’s five, count it, five years that you haven’t known her.” damn she knew the guilt card was a low blow but it seemed to work. carly didn’t like rehashing the past often, because it all still hurt so much, and now wasn’t as desperate a time as such words would usually call for, but she used what she was given. ”damn it. CHARLES!” emilia hollered as she opened the door to the adjoining hotel suit, trudging in to face off with her husband. ”carly, shirt.” he reminded carly and she quickly slipped on the blouse before grabbing her vest, shoes, and accessories which she then proceeded to apply. ”emilia she’s young and she has more responsibility than someone her age should have. let’s give her one night out with her friends. if she comes back a total wreck then we’ll talk” god you had to love an understanding father. carly gave her father a peck on the cheek and her grumbling mother the same before she knelt in front of lily to say goodnight. ”grammy and grampy are gonna tuck you in okay? you be good for them. promise me?” she said sticking out her pinky and watched as lily mirrored her, locking their pinkies together. ”night munchkin.” she said with a smile and headed out the door.

-----you just had to love a concerned mother. ever since the quake emilia had been obsessed with keeping her children close. that was part of the reason why the ever joking yet closet brooder wes was back from alaska. you could say he was back running from his valkyrie past. it wasn’t a pretty thing, but at the same time that wasn’t carly’s burden to bear. wes didn’t like to talk about what had happened. hell he’d hardly talked to any family members in the four-ish years he’d been gone. him opening up about the one person who’d hurt him was about as likely as enjoying sitting on something sharp. only the sick in the head really wanted to immerse themselves in the pain of someone else’s life and carly wasn’t one of those people. she was happy to be oblivious until the time came when wes felt like talking to her. until then, the road of life was laid out before her and she was ready to travel it. the road’s first stop you ask? why bad seeds of course, the place where carly truly sold her heart. not to any man, though she was kind of a sucker for reed and regan, but to dancing. because it was at bad seeds that carly had been able to explore this fleeting fantasy of dancing for a living and it was here she’d been able to ‘hone her craft’ in a sense and make something of herself. it should have been one of her first stops but family matters had called out just a little louder than flashes of her past. but she was getting to it now, now that things had settled down and life in valkyrie had begun moving at a slow pace rather than the dead halt that had persisted throughout the past few weeks. yes people were finally getting to their lives, and trying to get past the devastation left in the wake of a 7.5 quake. it wasn’t as easy as one would think, and for someone like carly who had dropped everything to come back and help, it was a whole lot more off putting. it was like coming back to a waste of a ghost town. for someone who had lived in the city during what felt like it’s prime, it was hard to see just how different the city had been from when she’d arrived to before she’d left.

-----but she was focusing on the now, and now had lead her right to bad seed’s front doors. the bouncer was familiar, still the same twenty something meathead looking college boy who had seen her coming and smiled as he let her in. she walked inside with a bright smile as heads began to turn. within a moment of stepping in the door carly heard over the loudspeaker ”cut the music, we’ve got ourselves a celebrity in our midsts.” carly looked overtop the turning heads to the bar to see one of the new, or new to her, coyotes reed had hired since she’d left. a girl who obviously knew her. ”and here i was thinking i could have a quiet night out.” carly said with a smirk. a slew of regulars that she’d known in her working years came rushing to her asking her questions about her fame, what new york was like, how the family was, what on earth she was doing back, and just about any other question you could imagine. carly laughed, putting her hands up. ”okay, okay i surrender!” she hollered, making the folks around her laugh. ”how’s about a round of drinks on me. would that answer a few questions?” with a rolling ‘yes’ throughout the crowd people began to disperse giving carly a chance to breathe. she looked around at her old stomping grounds with a smile, her eyes settling on a man in one of the back booths with a sour look on his face and who looked to be nursing a beer bottle. she walked over, giving a little wave to a table before she stopped at his booth, her hip resting on the wooden separator which distinguished the booth chair opposite him from the adjoining table. ”how ‘bout you handsome? you want another?”she looked over at him but didn’t get much of an answer so she took that as a hint. ”alright, well if you change your mind i’ll be over there.” she said pointing to a bar which she proceeded to immediately hop on top of after walking away. ”baby gimme something to dance to!” she hollered and the crowd ate it up as the music changed to an old favorite of hers and carly started dancing with a few of the other girls.

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status • finished
words • 1744
tagged • jamly? carmie? we need to decide on this one xD !
clothes • this here !
notes • lmao, i missed this carly!

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[james devon sakahrov-collins]

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JANUARY, 2012. MID-EVENING. BAD SEEDS.

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- - - “THEN YOU CAN

[/b] do it yourself.” he insisted on being difficult. he didn’t feel like doing it, and he wasn’t going to do it. she wasn’t the boss of him. if anything, he was the boss of her. “no, i can’t.” the remote was ripped from his hand, his feet pushed flat on the floor as she shoved by him. “hey! we were going to a shoot-out!” his words were met with the coolness of a girl annoyed. a girl very annoyed. she merely turned her back on him, busying herself with some of the junk he’d left on the counter. it was hard to stay in one place - a hotel room, no doubt - and keep it clean. if he was supposed to do that, there would be actual drawer space provided. slumping back against the matte leather of the couch, he longingly watched the remote sitting on the counter beside her. “way to support your people.” “my people? you’re my people, jamie. not some guy who chases a piece of rubber for a living.” she turned back to face him, an unamused smile playing on her pale face. “now get up. i can probably do this by myself, but i don’t want to. you need to get out.” that was always her excuse. he go out just fine. and she didn’t need him to go check on some unassuming mooks who chopped up meat for a living. they couldn’t use the butcher knives properly, let alone torture her with them.“to see pierce? no thank you.” furthering proving his resistence, he slouched and crossed his arms.

“listen, whatever qualms you have with your brother shouldn’t affect how you do your job.” he looked up at ksenia, who was currently seeming like less of an apprentice job and more of a nagging mother. he saw her scrunching up her nose, which always meant she wanted to say something more. but she wouldn’t. not yet. she fought tooth and nail to remain as cold as ice, when it was entirely against her nature. but it was going to come, it’d been wanting to come for weeks. the moment either he or ksenia approached the topic about job distractions, they argued. they never argued. yet, in an instant, the air grows thick with tension. it had happened more than once in recent weeks, ever since his estranged older brother came up for air. while he refused to ever spill on pierce sakahrov-collins wrong-doings, he wasn’t going to pretend things were okay. ksenia just didn’t know why. she wanted to, he knew that. like hell he was going to tell her. “it’s about your brother, don’t even go there. i don’t care what happened (lie), but you always tell me to put it aside for later. it can be dealt with after the job is finished.” she was quickly going there. say the wrong five words, and he’d put a bullet in her shoulder. quickly standing up, jamie forced himself to face his cousin. he was as fond of her as he would ever be anyone. but it didn’t matter who mentioned his so-called vulnerabilities; the result would be the same. “this isn’t my job. this low-level bullshit is for you to do. definitely not in my job description - that’s making sure you don’t get yourself killed. now get your ass out the door and do your damn job.” the door slammed behind her before he got another word in.

sighing heavily, jamie put his hands on his hips and paced the room. it was tight quarters, and things weren’t looking too bright for them. that’s all. he easily could have said something worse in his defense, but he knew where to poke the sharp stick. asshole remarks rolled off ksenia like water. mention his official authority over her, and she wouldn’t speak to him for three days. it bothered her, he didn’t know why. she had no problems taking orders from anyone who wasn’t him. he had picked up on that early on in their relationship, and hadn’t mentioned it. it was his job to show her the rope of the russian-american way of doing things. and that way isn’t bringing up this that should stay hanging in the air, silent. she didn’t bring up pierce often, never directly. she mentioned the subject, but never confronted him with it. had he forced her to stay in the room longer, there would have been much more personal issues brought up. he’d promised to treat her like his father had treated him - fairly. he’d never been looked down on, ordered around, by ivan sakahrov. respect. remember that?

because, let’s face it, bringing up someone’s issues is not respectful. he remembered that now. before he remembers that, it’s natural to bite when threatened. and ksenia’s bite gets infected when he bosses her around. sighing again, heavily, jamie tensed his face in anger. fuck. it never took much for things to go nuclear around here - and he had narrowly avoided errupting the volcano. but still. pausing his pacing, the russian mobster drew back his hand and drove his fist right into the wall. once. twice. three times. and one more time with the other hand. fuck. glancing at the clock haphazardly, he breathed an irritated breath. he had no problem pissing anyone else off. he didn’t care about anyone else. get your only friend mad at you? no the most intelligent of things, collins. picking up the pen she’d left on the counter, he quickly scribbled ’corner of maple and ninth. ten o’clock. tell yuri i said so.’ in his scattered handwriting. pulling his immaculate .09 mm from the shoulder holster disguised under his jacket, he removed the clip and ejected the barrel. placing them next to the gleaming grip, he folded the note and tucket it between the two. she could do his job better than he could half the time.

having been in valkyrie, california for less than three weeks, he knew next to nothing about the small city. apparently it’s divided by some street and...whatever. he never bothered to look at a map. he never bothered to think they’d be here for longer than few days, either. which, i suppose, is why he felt immediately targeted the minute he left the small hotel. whoever’s idea it was to hole up in the shabbiest joint in town wasn’t thinking clearly. or at all. he was without his car, and finding a taxi in this part of town was next to impossible. he learned that the hard way yesterday. then again, getting in a cab with a blood stain quickly leaking through your jacket may be suspicious. roughly pulling his jacket tighter around his lean frame, jamie huffed another sigh. pulling the damp pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, he struggled to light the weathered cancer stick. ksenia had thrown them in the sink that morning. she hated his smoking like she hated him watching hockey. it’s called compromise. moodily exhaling a cloud of smoke, he continued to wander down the sidewalk. he had no fucking clue where he was. somewhere in the rougher part of town, judging by the stained cement and multitude of grafiti. and the rusted pontiacs that passed him on the street. and the smell of the cheap beer and cheap cigarettes he liked. maybe sending her, instead of him, to meet yuri tonight was a good idea. it was actually a bad idea. a very bad idea. but at least ksenia knew where she was going. kicking at a crack in the sidewalk, jamie took another drag of his cigarette. ksenia. he hated that he offended her like he did. it never took much to make a girl angry. he easily could have said things that were ten times worse. but she was like temperance in that way, sensitive. even if she didn’t show it, she was. pausing in front of an unusually noisy building, he looked up to see the blinking sign of ’bad seeds’. ksenia had mentioned this place a bunch of times. he never knew why, but she did.

throwing his still-burning cigarette on the ground, he pushed the door open with his shoulder. ten seconds in the rowdy bar told him this wasn’t ksenia’s hang-out. she hated rock music. she hated beer. and she probably hated half-dressed girls dancing on the tables. he didn’t mind any of it, though. at all. a sheepish smirk crossing his face, jamie quietly ordered a beer from the half-drooling bartender and excused himself to a table away from the action. as far away as he could get, with the wall-to-wall mosh pit of teenage boys wanting to get laid. entertainment was cheap in this town. training his eyes on his quickly diminishing bottle, jamie did nothing but get lost in his own mind. it was nearing ten o’clock, and he hadn’t heard from anyone. not even ksenia. so she either didn’t get his note, or did and was still not talking to him. whatever. if anything happened, yuri would call him to yell at him. it’d happened before, and it would happen again. finishing off the burnt-tasting liquid, he looked up in search of more alcohol. he rarely drank; saved it for special occasions, like being mad at himself. ”how ‘bout you handsome? you want another?” sliding his eyes toward the pretty face that had surprised him, jamie merely raised his eyebrows at her. ”alright, well if you change your mind i’ll be over there.” over where? tilting his head to watch her rear end as she walked away, jamie smirked again. she worked here? no. a sweep of the staff told him she wasn’t a regular anything. as she was easily the best looking female in the joint, and, well, she wasn’t exactly dancing like a tuesday afternoon stripper. the world has its place for those girls - many of which were dancing here. leaning back in the booth, still toying with his empty bottle, jamie watched as carly yelled something at the dj and started to dance with some of the other girls.

see? she was vip.

playing with his silvery lighter, lighting it and then extinguishing the flame, he shook his head. he didn’t know why he was getting up at all. he definitely of “getting out” was often being moody at a bar by himself. maybe because he was sober. maybe because he wanted to tell someone he didn’t honestly spend the entire evening feeling bad because he pissed someone off. whatever the maybe was, he found himself pocketing his lighter and slipping through the crowds to the center of the bar, where she was dancing atop the bar. leaning against the closest table, he watched her moving her body effortlessly. ”i think i changed my mind.” the familiar smirk crossed his face as he spoke. but he also furrowed his eyebrows and forced his words, over-enunciating each syllable with his awkward accent. very smooth.[/font][/size][/blockquote]

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STATUS, complete.
TAGGED, carmie<33
LENGTH, 1892 words.
ATTIRE, black jeans, white t-shirt, leather jacket. super interesting. xD
NOTES, <333 first post! so it's a little lot awkward.
CREDITS, format and graphics to me.
lyrics to 30 seconds to mars - "93 million miles"

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[caroline isabelle sutton]

VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, BAD SEEDS, LATE JANUARY 2012

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-----there was something about the two different coasts that carly had been able to experience over the years. in california, and anyone seemingly touching the pacific ocean, things seemed a lot more leisurely and relaxed. people took their time getting from one place to another. they took time out of their day to sit around in a coffee shop and actually enjoy the world around them. something about it all felt slightly parisian. carly didn’t quite know from experience but it was rumored that the french loved to sti around in café’s or in the park and people watch. they loved to watch people as they walks by no matter who they were. they watched the tourists with a little bit of annoyance, they watched mothers and babies with envy or with a smile, and they watched everyday people walking from one place to another. it was like time could stand still in paris, because life wasn’t worth living if you didn’t get a chance to sit down and enjoy it on occasion. carly felt the same way about those living on the pacific coast, though the people here tended to not go to such extremes as the french. no they liked to sit around on occasion and take their time, and there was a mass of the population who skittered about as if there were not enough hours in the day, but in comparison to life on the east coast, these people moved at a snail’s pace. no on the east coast it was as if there weren’t enough hours in a day, let alone in a lifetime. people never took the chance to sit around and just relax. they were always at the beck and call of the clock. clocks were a funny thing. most people don’t think that they worship the clock and yet a person is bound to look at one to check the time at least once a day. there’s most often a clock in every important room of the house simply because people are at the mercy of such an instrument which does nothing more than count away the minutes a person sits around either wasting their life or making something of it. on the east coast, people swear to their clocks. everything is rush, rush, rush. rush to get this done, rush to turn in that last assignment, rush to get that document sent to your boss via smart phone because you simply don’t have the time to finish it at your office. people even rushed to get through sex because they didn’t have the kind of time to just enjoy one another. new york was famous for its lack of relaxation. there was always someone running about like a chicken with their head cut off because they weren’t going to be able to get something done on time or something equally ridiculous. from an outsider’s point of view it looks like a conglomeration of insanity, and to carly that’s exactly what it had been for the longest time. but once you get used to it, moving back to a place like valkyrie feels like a slow motion vacation.

-----this pace felt like the one carly was destined to live. sure she could spend her days running around like just another one of the masses, but was she really suited for that? carly knew what she wanted to do for a living. all she’d ever wanted to do for a living was dance, and dancing had been exactly what she’d been doing for the past few years. everything about that felt like. when she was dancing, she felt whole and a person didn’t need to rush threw life in order to feel whole. carly’s thoughts were that if you really felt the need to rush through life to get to that last, ever-unreachable goal, then you weren’t living the right dream to begin with. if you had to push, and strive to reach that one ending that would make your life worthwhile or give your existence any semblance of a meaning, well then damn it you were in the wrong line of work, you had the wrong goals, and your entire life had been a waste because you strived to be nothing more than the unreachable. no one was perfect, nothing would ever be perfect, and if a person couldn’t sit back and realize that and realize that they needed to focus more so on making themselves and the people around them happy more so on accomplishing something that would give them the recognition they felt they deserved, then that person was searching for all the wrong meanings. the meaning of life was simply to make yourself and the ones around you happy, and carly had been doing that ever since she’d been discovered by dance and ever since she’d lost herself to it. since that moment she’d made herself happy. she’d strived for goals that were reachable, and yes maybe predictable, but she reached those goals and she brought meaning to her life without needing the recognition of other people. yes, of course it was hard to understand that she could have done so without recognition seeing as how her dancing had made her famous and a household name to anyone who followed dance, but honestly carly always could have gone without. she could have always been just a face in the crowd as long as she had been pursuing something that made her happy, and dancing sure as hell made her happy.

-----that was one of the many reasons why her short time at bad seeds was a time to be celebrated. it was never something to hide behind, and it had been obvious by anyone who had watched her that carly had never been one to hide herself for any reason. she was a dancer through and through and bad seeds had given her the opportunity she needed to really find that drive and that passion. finding it while dancing on a table top with short jean shorts or tank tops on didn’t matter to her. all that mattered was that she found the drive that she’d been looking for all along. she’d found a hint of that spark in middle school and high school when she’d had her short stint as a cheerleading captain. she’d discovered that dancing could be integrated into their cheer routines and that it would jazz it up to a degree the schools hadn’t seen in quite some time. it hadn’t been her fault that she’d excelled in the dancing faster and more so than anyone else on the team. she’d taken to dancing like bee to nectar and she hadn’t wanted to get away from it. being pregnant had been the only break in dancing she could stand, that, and not being allowed anywhere near a public function in that small town of keizer. but that was one of the many reasons why carly continued to find worth in valkyrie. it was here she’d been given a second chance and it had been here that she’d been able to pursue quite literally anything she wanted to do despite the legality behind it. she shouldn’t have been employed at bad seeds. carly knew it. reed knew it. brett knew it. the regulars knew it, and likely anyone else walking into that place could see that she was out of place. but carly hadn’t cared. she could dance freely here and the people had embraced it at the time. she shouldn’t have even been allowed into bad seeds tonight but she was grateful she had been. having ins with the owner of the bar gave you those kind of perks.

-----tonight was about living the fun of years past, and carly fully intended on living that up every moment that she was here tonight. she wanted to kick back, enjoy the old days, and just live. yes she’d been doing that before. she’d been living, she’d been dancing, and competing and anything else one could imagine. but for some reason doing so in valkyrie always felt different. somehow here everything just seemed to flow effortlessly. here she could be herself and people recognized her for doing so and even embraced her. not like in keizer where she was spat on simply for existing and not like in new york where, yes she was noticeable and recognizable for her achievements, but it had always seemed to pale in comparison to the rushing world around her. valkyrie definitely felt like home to her, something she almost couldn’t put into words. she couldn’t describe valkyrie the way most people couldn’t describe the blatant love for dancing that was always written on her face whenever she stepped into a move. it was there, plain as day, that she loved everything about the way her body could move and contort in a nearly effortless fashion. she danced to the music, feeling every beat as if it coursed through her veins like red blood cells. she breathed the heightened senses and the acute sense of awareness as she locked hands with one of the other dancers and dipped herself backwards, craning back until the top of her head nearly touched the bar top. she felt the rush as the girl yanked, pulling her to her feet before she spun in the air and landed minx-like in a crouched position, once again staring down the face of the silent man from the booth.

-----silent man wasn’t so silent anymore as the music came to a stop and another song began. ”think so huh?” carly said with a smirk, pushing up on her hands and kicking out her feet so that she now simply sat on the bar, her feet dangling by the bar stools below. ”well then let’s get you a drink, shall we?” she looked behind her at one of the familiar bartenders, holding up two fingers and catching the beer bottles as they flew through the air. ”booth or alley?” she said before looking back at silent man’s former seat which had been taken over by about five to seven people. well that answered that question. ”alley it is.” she said with a chuckle as she hopped down expertly juggling the beer bottles between her fingers as she took the stranger’s hand and lead him out the back way. lacking a free hand, carly simply kicked up a foot as they reached the back door, landing on the handle which smoothly opened the door. it was obvious that she’d had to do that once or twice before in her life. usually it wasn’t because she had someone in tow but because she was boggled down with crates of booze. good to know those skills came in handy for more than just one occasion. ”boy i love being back but i’ve got to learn to pace myself.” she said with a smile, hopping down the two stairs into the alley as she turned and tossed silent man his beer. ”i figured i would have recognized most people in this town when i came back but you?” she paused, popping off the beer top with her thumb, ”you i don’t recognize.”

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status • finished
words • 1904
tagged • carmie !
clothes • this here !
notes • welcome to ramble in the town of rambledom.

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[james devon sakahrov-collins]

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JANUARY, 2012. MID-EVENING. BAD SEEDS.

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- - - HE WAS FINDING

[/b][/font] himself struggling. not with his life, no. and definitely not his work. if anything, his job was the one thing he was completely secure with. and his life was just fine, thank you. just because everyone else seemed to find faults with it didn’t mean he had a problem. if his life belonged to someone else, let them fix it. he was just fine. see, it was striking a balance that was off-putting. he, james collins, was finding himself struggling with balancing his life. all he’d ever known is one extreme or the other. early in his childhood, it was all about following pierce around and trying to be just like his big badass brother. and once he realized that one - pierce is no big badass and two - no one wanted him around, he tried the other extreme. he threw himself into his surroundings and found a group he meshed well with. if childhood was all about the training and the family business, teenagedom was all about not-training and not the family business. don’t get him wrong, it was still there. just much lower on the list of important things in life. running around charlestown like some townie with a funny accent was number one on that list. one extreme to the other.

don’t people try both ends, and then discover a happy balance? that’d be nice. instead, jamie discovered both of his siblings sold him out because they thought he was some sinister teacher’s pet. yes, by that time, his days as another boston soundrel were behind him. but that didn’t stop him remembering those days. when he’d eventually grown to like boston, he loved it. while both temperance and pierce are all “the motherland will always be my home” blah blah blah, jamie had lost the appeal long ago. did he consider himself russian? of course. he’d b een born there. and the accent is kind of hard to misplace. the amount of times he’d struggled with trying an american accent, an english accent, an australian, even a plain old boston, was more than he’d ever like to remember. he was a russian. anyone asks, and that’s his answer. but he never thought of moscow as home. not really. he’d been too young when he lived there, and the times he was there on business had been just that - business. no home-made cookies made fresh by mommy. boston was his home. and it always would be. he’d found a new part of himself in the funny city of massachusetts. so, no, the motherland will not always be his home. it never had been. he couldn’t help remembering his teenage years back home. (see that? home). it’s just...that didn’t always make up for it. before, when he had lost all contact with immediate family, he thought about his days of so-called freedom from time to time. but he’d safely put the majority of those to sleep. he just took the good parts and applied them to his life. i guess you could say he was attempting to make a balance. remember his siblings? that undid everything.

is that where we were? his siblings? right. i guess he was making a balance, he wasn’t struggling. out of sight, out of mind. filed in the back of his mind for later. in that ever-growing pile of shit he’d probably never deal with. but when temperance confessed all of this to him, something busted up. a part of his mind unhinged itself. they were going to do what? okay, fine. he knew they were annoyed by him. it was only fair, as he was annoyed by them. but his own blood were going to put him on the road to an execution of his own? all because of what? and how many other times did they try to do this? the only thing she was sorry for, no matter how many times she mumbled those words through her messy tears, was that she got caught. and that pierce decided she was useless, too. welcome to the club, here’s your congratulatory basket. whatever screw came loose that day put that balance right back where it had been all along: on the extreme. jamie threw himself into his work. that’s around the time he became serious about whatever he was doing. every shot he took, he envisioned someone from his family. bang, kill her. bang, kill him. it became white noise to him after awhile. the life slowly leaking from their bloodied bodies only reminded him how much he wanted to do that to both of them, pierce and temperance. maybe his mother, too, because she never bothered to make them stop, whatever is they were doing when they were younger. he’d save the bullet one reserves for their father and shoot pierce one more time, just for good measure. that’s what he was struggling with, his balance. his days were filled with dark memories, and even more disturbed fantasies about what he’d do in response to those memories. maybe it’s not one extreme to the other this time. but extreme to balance to off-the-rail extreme.

he was struggling with who he was supposed to be when he wasn’t holding a gun, blowing someone’s brains out.

because, as you could probably tell, he wasn’t doing too hot at being a non-sociopathic janitor. even tonight, when his mind was more distracted with how pissed off ksenia probably was, he was struggling with it. jamie-from-boston could probably do better. he’d never been good at it, but he was less ridiculous than right now. at least he interacted with people. part of him agreed, yes he did need to get out more. or he shouldn’t go out at all. yes, i like that option. it would have been a lovely one, had this dancer not possessed a very nice rear end. and legs. she had nice eyes, too. and probably a nice smile, an intoxicating laugh. when the songs switched over, he watched as she swung down to sit on the bar to talk to him. what was so interesting about him? keeping his head tilted, jamie remained quiet as she spoke about what plans she was apparently making. girl moved fast. he would have settled with a smile. and now she was requesting beers from the bartender, grasping his hand and leading him through the smokey bar. take charge. it was a nice change. still not bothering to say a word (since it’d sound awkward and ruin whatever), he smirked as she opend the door with her foot. talented with a rear he liked to look at? he should come out more often, ksenia was right. ”boy i love being back but i’ve got to learn to pace myself.” catching the bottle she tossed him, jamie twisted the cap off his own bottle and sat down on the top of the low stairs. ”first time you’ve brought someone out here tonight?” taking a swig of his beer, he toyed with the bottle. ”i’ll save myself for that privlege. dancing too much tonight?” sheepishly correcting himself, jamie looked up at carly again, eyebrows furrowed again. so she was a native. or had lived here before going...somewhere. ”don’t sound like a valkryie regular? i just came into town for some business.” speaking carefully, probably over enunicating again, he shrugged. he’d never been good at the smarmy charm. ’of course you wouldn’t yet, we haven’t met. but you will.’ pierce would have said something lame like that. ”where did you go?” he looked at her again, continuing to toy with the bottle.[/size][/blockquote]

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STATUS, complete.
TAGGED, carmie<33
LENGTH, 1310 words.
ATTIRE, black jeans, white t-shirt, leather jacket. super interesting. xD
NOTES, i’m slowly getting him. xD
CREDITS, format and graphics to me.
lyrics to 30 seconds to mars - "93 million miles"

[/blockquote]

[caroline isabelle sutton]

VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, BAD SEEDS, LATE JANUARY 2012

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-----if it wasn’t completely obvious at this point, carly really loved this place. the reason for that being that valkyrie had been the place she’d landed after getting away from keizer. it was more like a subconscious thing than anything else. she wondered all the time if she had wound up moving someplace else, if she wouldn’t have felt this massive pull to that place as well. living in keizer had made her life hell. that much was a given. carly had never hated a place more than she hated keizer, because no place had ever made her as miserable as the people in her old home town had done. the whole small town thing had always worked against her. for one thing, carly had always been destined to be something more. even as a child she knew that she didn’t fit in a place as small as keizer where your neighbors knew your business almost before you did and you were watched like ants in and ant farm. yes after the death of her grandfather the suttons had been the talk of the town. the ones that were financially stable and could move away got to do so and carly had been jealous of them. she’d hated how they couldn’t stand behind their own family members and give them just enough of a loan to get out of that hick town. it had taken carly years to understand that the family dynamic she shared with her parents and her siblings was not something commonly seen in practice around town or around the country. it wasn’t often that you saw a family that would stand beside one another when family members died causing you to lose you fortune and the whole town not only turns its back on you but as does your family and they still stay tuned to see if you’ll fall apart. most people wouldn’t be able to handle working a ridiculous amount of hours just to keep the family fed and the electricity on. thinking about it now, it bothered carly how little people seemed to care about her family, even from an extended family’s standpoint. people only paid attention to see if or when they would fall apart and when that did happen, when carly got pregnant, they all turned on the suttons and tried to flush them out of the town like you would some criminal.

-----after having experienced that, any new place that didn’t offer that brand of hospitality would seem like a fantasy world and that was exactly what valkyrie had come across as once they’d moved in and gotten situated. charles had gotten a job doing exactly what he’d been doing in keizer, only he’d gotten nearly double the pay. the same went for emilia. all the kids were back under one roof trying to help the family rebound from the disaster that was their old home town and they’d done a brilliant job of it all. wes was a successful fisherman who made more in his five-year stint away than most people could dream of making in a twenty-year time frame and yet he didn’t flaunt it. wes was one of the most caring and generous people on the planet, having given up his massive paychecks in order to get the family out of debt and back on their feet again. he’d funded penny as she went off to college, studying to be a fashion designer. he’d bought nate his auto shop in los angeles which was growing in business every day. wes had been like the defibrillator of the sutton family and they’d needed him something fierce. unfortunately, he just hadn’t been around. after what had happened with wes and his…well girlfriend at the time, carly had never seen him so broken. hell she’d never even seen him broken before. not even when he’d come home to help her after finding out she’d gotten knocked up and everything that had come with that. he’s stayed by her side, he’d supported her, and yet you could tell that it hurt him to see people doing this to his family, but nothing had compared to the blank look in his eye after he’d tried asking billy if she loved him and she’d given him no response. he was simply unrecognizable, and there’d been no way to help him either. the next day he was gone, back to the boats where he stayed for three years straight. he sent back enough to make the family stable but the family’s financial demands had dwindled down to a sustainable level so wes’ money wasn’t necessary. of course the family would have loved to see him, but he was a ghost the past three years. he’d refused to come back until he’d heard about the quake. if he didn’t think his family needed him, carly doubted he would have even come back to begin with.

-----but aside from that, everything about valkyrie had been like a dream. the people were nice, she’d made friends, she’d gotten a job she loved, and really carly had gotten on her feet for what felt like the first time ever. nothing made you feel more like you’d never had a notion of who you were before like landing in a place where you found yourself immediately. because in keizer she’d been a somebody, but she’d been the wrong somebody. she’d been the popular girl everyone pretended to love. she’d been the head cheerleader who all the kids looked up to and all the parents fantasized their kids being like until the day she fell from grace and was left alone in the world. she’d been completely lost thinking that she would never be that person again but when she’d walked into valkyrie and found people that could genuinely like her for who she was, carly realized that everything she’d been back in keizer had been a sham. she’d molded herself into what the town had asked her to be up until she’d gotten pregnant but that wasn’t who she was. carly wasn’t some leader of the band. she wasn’t some cheerleader who people could admire. she wasn’t that popular person everyone had made her out to be. yes she was confident despite everything, yes she was secure within herself, but carly was a dancer and she was a family person and she was a good heart underneath a tough exterior. she was everything keizer hadn’t wanted her to be and it wasn’t until she’d gotten away that she realized that. now would she have found this same side of herself had she landed in some other town? who knew? carly didn’t know if it was just getting away or if it was where she landed that had her turning into this person she loved so much. all she knew was that she was happy with how things had turned out. it seemed as if everyone had pretty much made a better life for themselves after having left and carly was fine with that. her family could blame her for making their lives miserable up in keizer as long as they embraced the fact that she had subsequently made life better when she’d forced them to move to valkyrie.

-----with the exception of wes’ denial and need to stay away from everything valkyrie, the whole family had made out better. well and with the exception of the family home which was now pretty much in pieces. other than that everyone was fine, happy and healthy. all the more reason for a girl to go out and celebrate yes? that was the whole point of the night tonight. since being back, carly hadn’t had a chance to go out and enjoy her home town which she’d missed so desperately. tonight was a night to just kick back and have fun, something she felt like she’d earned after working non-stop since she’d won that dance competition and regained custody of her daughter. she figured she’d done pretty well for someone who hadn’t even hit legal drinking age yet. she watched at silent man sat himself down on the stairs, opening up what she assumed to be his second bottle. ”tonight? yes. i did just get here like ten minutes or so ago.” carly chuckled, using a free hand to push her hair out of her face. ”it’s been a long time since i’ve been back and i’m rushing to do everything at once. i’ve only got a few hours out tonight and apparently i want to get in as much fun as i can.” she narrowed her gaze at him, playfully of course, as he mentioned business. using her foot, carly dragged over a milk crate and plopped herself down. ”business huh? anything good or just that cubicle kind of thing?” she kicked one leg over the other, crossing them at the knee and balancing the cool glass bottle on her knee before taking a sip. ”i’ve been in new york for the past few years but my family lives here. after the quake i kinda couldn’t stay away.” she smiled sheepishly, dipping her head for a minute before she popped right back up, once again brushing her hair away from her face. ”i’m carly by the way, if someone hadn’t mentioned it before. i kind of get lost in the crowds lately and can’t remember what people say.” she stopped there. wondering if she was going to have to ask for this guy’s name or if he’d tell her.

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status • finished
words • 1626.
tagged • carmie !
clothes • this here !
notes • --.

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[james devon sakahrov-collins]

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JANUARY, 2012. MID-EVENING. BAD SEEDS.

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- - - THEY HAD BEEN

[/b][/font] in valkyrie for too long. he had decided that five minutes after they had gotten off the bus, but it was true. there was no professional reason for ksenia or him, jamie, to be here. he had come because november asked him to. did he want to? well, no. he would have much rather not made up some lame excuses that his superiors bought simply because it was him who was making them up. but she was blood, however distant. and blood is an important thing to the russians. at the end of the day, who else do you have? that was the only time it mattered, too. at the end of the day. they weren’t like the pansy-ass italians, who were all hughugkisskiss family warmth smile hi i love you too. he didn’t want to come to valkyrie, but he had out of loyalty.

but they had still been here for too long. nothing had been done on the connolly twin issue. he hadn’t spoken to her in days. she wouldn’t tell him any details. all she had done was call him frantically because, no she had tried everything she could, and yes she needed help. she had no one else. the irish were apparently a difficult group. they made even him uneasy. so why were they still here? the official reason was because ksenia had discovered her family had been harmed by the earthquake. bullshit. their house was in shambles, but so was everyone else’s. it’s not like she even needed him anymore. if anything, he needed her. ksenia was the one who ran the majority of their assignments, with only jamie there to pull the trigger and make sure she didn’t get herself killed. but that was with everyone else, too. she was more than capable to stay here, handle her family whatever that he didn’t really care about, and keep an eye on the twins and their mess. he really didn’t want to be here long enough to get involved with the inner-workings of valkyrie’s apparently substantial crime underground. that’s not why he had come here, and that’s not why he told anybody he came here. one more week in the dingy hotel room, and he knew he’d be getting some los angeles-based assignments. yankov trusted him, and if he decided to be in california, they would work that around him. again, the complete fucking opposite of what he wanted.

and he knew what he wanted, what he’d wanted for a long fucking time. selfishly enough, he wanted to send ksenia on her way, independent and ready for whatever shit got thrown at her. then he wanted to ditch out, go back to boston and continue what he’d been doing his entire life: work alone. things were just easier that way. not having anyone to worry about, not having some terrified, concerned voice at the other end of the phone. solitary was the best way to go about his lifestyle. the mooks who chose the wife-and-family route almost always ended with trouble. one of his father’s own had gotten caught and sent to the doghouse. he didn’t want that responsibility. he wanted to hole up in his sparse little apartment back home, watching game shows until he got a phone call with muffled instructions. cut off from the world except for his gun. that’s what he wanted to be doing. not sitting in valkyrie like some duck with no where else to go. he’d even bring ksenia with him. as long as he got the hell out of here and got to sleep on his own couch again.

he functioned on loneliness. a lot of people did. a lack of concern for anyone made his mind infinitely clearer. don’t tell anyone that. but he spent half his days worrying about where ksenia was, what she was doing, or who was probably killing her. he didn’t want that on his conscience. he didn’t want a dead partner, either. thus, being on his own. the people he used to work with were all more than capable of taking care of themselves, all because they were the lone rangers too. everyone else had a partner. he never did, before ksenia. and she knew how to let him function, to give him space. but that’s when they aren’t being watched. someone had ondoubtably been sent to keep an eye on whatever they were doing. valkyrie was a hotspot, after all. that’s fine. he was probably watched in boston, too. but he’d been able to sleep on his own couch, in his own silence, dealing with his own nightmares.

you know how many there had been of someone - usually some lame italian, the valkyrie guy. with the funny nickname. angel head or something - shooting, no, executing, ksenia rightt in front of him? most of the nights he was trapped were just rapid shots of blank faces, of those who he had so mercilessly killed. murdered. whatever. and now that he had someone to worry about? they were ten times worse. he woke in a cold sweat, often ten feet from his couch. that’s why it was better off when he was alone, too. no one would be there to see him get haunted.

the nightmares he refused to admit he had fueled that fire. the one that distanced himself from the world. from everybody in it. he was content with faceless ghosts, the unknown. but put a face to those images, and everything got a whole lot more interesting. and that would be just fine if his life were on display for public consumption. if the ratings boosted because he was miserable, then let’s have it. but that’s not what his life was, and the ratings are never going to go anywhere. so please, leave him the fuck alone. he liked to be alone, and life was much simpler when he was alone. but he honestly didn’t mind having a partner, long as they knew just how much space he required. it was the ghosts that decided to visit him in the middle of the night that terrified him. from what ksenia felt the need to tell him, it was not a gracious experience to witness. he’d seen the damage before, felt it. the cold gallons of sweat on his forehead, the thrashing, the moving, the destruction of his nicely made hotel bed. just the other night, ksenia has shouted him awake. he’d been on the other side of the room, crumpled against the wall. he’d given himself cuts all over his hands because of the nails digging into his palms. he was still attempting to shower the cold sweat from his head. it was nights like those he wanted to be alone. to make anyone have to sit through that was more of a plague than anything else he had to offer.

which is why he’d taken to brooding in junky little bars. everyone else there would probably be doing the same things, thus paying him no attention. it was his way of dealing with it, to file through the pile of unwanted bullshit in the back of his mind. get shit-faced blind so he could focus on that. secretly, he’d knew what he’d be doing that night the minute ksenia slammed the door. see? he should let his brain control his life and he’d be set. none of the confliction bullshit he hated, but always ended up giving in to. granted, his trip to bad seeds was turning out drastically different than expected. normally, he’d ignore the world. but when a pretty girl with a nice rear takes control of your life, you better go along with it.

the cracking of his second beer was a nice introduction. typically, it’d be his fifth. ”i’ve only got a few hours out tonight and apparently i want to get in as much fun as i can.” he smirked at her words. so she actually wanted to be here? come back here, from what he was assuming. interesting. he wasn’t finding the appeal. ”the responsibilities of life are a bitch.” taking a swig of his beer, he smirked again, privately agreeing with his words. life always got in the ways. ”yeah, and things. suit job. i travel a lot.” shrugging rather carelessly, he watched the ground as carly pulled up a milkcrate and sat beside him. she mentioned the earthquake. apparently it was some big ass deal. didn’t california get them all the time? had some tornado or something destroyed boston, he wouldn’t rush home to his family’s aid. then again, most people didn’t dream about killing their closest blood. he drank his beer again. thinking about that got him moody; which made him want to do shots and chain-smoke. and smoking in front of a lady is never polite. ”new york to here? must be another change. i’m having a difficult enough time from boston to here.” resting his cheek on the mouth of his bottle, he turned to look carly in the face. she had pretty eyes. carly, huh? that suited her. he took a moment to respond. introductions were approaching too personal. he watched her with his lights eyes, searching her face. ”collins. people get lazy and call me collin.” no one but ksenia called him anything but. he toyed with his bottle again, watching her continue to talk. she did that a lot. but enthusiasm and happiness do that to a person. ksenia never shut the fuck up when she was excited about something. he stopped listening when she got started. gingerly taking another generous drink, he put the bottle on the ground before standing up and holding his hand out to her.

pulling carly to her feet, he easily slipped her beer from her grasp and placed it neatly next to his own. he stopped knowing what the fuck he was doing a long time ago. entwining his fingers with her own, he slowly walked her to the wall of bad seeds. definitely stopped knowing. he should be getting shit-faced by himself right now, not failing miserably at whatever he was attempting to do. what was that? he had no fucking clue. ”i never, ever, say hi back.” nearly whispering his words, most of which were a mess of broken english, jamie leaned down toward her. i think he said something like “sorry” before he kissed her, but i don’t know. i wasn’t listening. he wasn’t either, when he pressed his lips against hers. what was he doing?[/size][/blockquote]

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STATUS, complete.
TAGGED, carmie<33
LENGTH, 1805 words.
ATTIRE, black jeans, white t-shirt, leather jacket. super interesting. xD
NOTES, AWWWKWARD. i can change if you’d like. no prob. :]
CREDITS, format and graphics to me.
lyrics to 30 seconds to mars - "93 million miles"

[/blockquote]

[caroline isabelle sutton]

VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, BAD SEEDS, LATE JANUARY 2012

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-----carly really hadn’t minded her stint on the east coast. although valkyrie had given her much of what keizer hadn’t, new york had given her her career and it was a decent place for those who had in mind what they wanted, because it was pretty much safe to say that anything you needed or wanted to become was there in new york. it wasn’t a bad place either, all things considered. sure it was one of the biggest cities in the united states, sure the crime rate was through the roff, sure there were millions of people living in tight quarters, but for all the negatives that surrounded the city, carly hadn’t found any. she’d been thoroughly grateful to have not had anything horrific happen to her in her time away from home, because that’s just what valkyrie was. she’d been very fortunate to have found a safe and secure place for herself and her daughter while she’d lived there. she’d rented a quaint little apartment that had overlooked a piece of central park. it was nothing too fancy and she’d been lucky with the pricing. she could definitely attribute her bargain buy to the foundering economy. that was the only good thing about the dive in the stock market some two years back. honestly there was nothing that really stood out to carly and being overly negative. she was in a nice part of town, her daughter was in a decent preschool and for what she could provide things looked good. aside from the fact that paparazzi found out where she lived and parked out in the bushes across the street for a chance to jump out and berate her with questions, everything was pretty darn swell. she’d also had the luxury of living only a few quick blocks away from the studio where she trained after having one that dance competition back in late 2010. that had been one of the greatest moments carly had experienced besides having and regaining her daughter. she remembered everything about the process, working hard, endless training sessions in the studios with cameras watching for every drop of sweat, having people judge her on a constant basis both on screen and off, rooming with people from the competition, etc. she’d remembered that penny had offered to care for lily while she was competing, which wasn’t difficult because she had based her fashion label in brooklyn so she and lily came to every taping. it was surreal, and definitely not something carly figured she’d ever experience again.

-----what she certainly hadn’t been expecting was to win. boy if getting onto the show hadn’t been a shocker enough, getting passed round after round was all the more thrilling. you see carly hadn’t joined the show to win. she’d joined the show for recognition. she’d joined because she’d figured with her minimal training and expertise that she’d get dropped at some point, but she’d been hoping to at least be featured on the show. why? because when she left the show and when she went to different auditions she wanted the possibility of someone saying “wait a minute. you auditions for that show right? you have some raw talent you just need some training. you wanna join up?” it was a stretch of course, but never so much of a stretch than actually turning around and winning the whole competition. she’d apparently been good. though she didn’t have the decade or so of training that the other young dancers had she had an innate ability to learn and a drive to succeed. because she’d been wanting this since she’d first taken her cheerleading squad to a dance instructor when she was a freshman in high school. she’d had that growing spark that hadn’t been taken under someone’s wing and nurtured. she’d gotten experience in bad seeds, and gotten so she had build up her endurance and could dance the night away without much difficulty, but she’d never been molded into a professional dancer. entering this competition had allowed her the opportunity to work with a variety of instructors as well as fellow aspiring dancers, and she’d taken to it like it was the god given opportunity it was.

-----carly had never even planned on making it past the initial round up rounds in the big city. she figured that because she was all raw talent but no training she wouldn’t have gotten far. all she wanted was the chance to learn anyways so nothing else had mattered. but the moment they’d walked her out onto that stage, all seven judges that she’d sequentially met as she moved on staring down at her, standing there alone with nothing but a spotlight beaming down on her head. well she hadn’t known what to think. she’d been over the moon at the fact that she’d gotten so far to begin with. they mentioned how humble she was, how genuine, raw, and vulnerable her dancing was, how she was perfect for the show which was a good thing because she’d made it. carly had thought she was going to pass out. that alone was a milestone for her. she’d gotten introduced on the show so now people definitely knew who she was, she’d gotten to meet and work with at least one amazing instructor, and honestly she could have died happily after that one taped episode that had aired. she would have been perfectly fine with being sent home right then, but she hadn’t even been sent into the bottom three females. she’d passed time and time again and had done so up until the fifth episode where she’d hit the bottom three simply because she’d gotten and infinitely hard dance that was known for sending people home. but she’d gotten enough votes to stay and had gone on to win the entire thing! the experience itself was a wholly unique one. no one else could say that she’d done what she’d done and how she’d done it or felt how she’d felt. it was something not everyone could share and that had made the experience so worthwhile.

-----after her stint on the show things seemed to move faster than lightning. one minute she was being hoisted up on a fellow contestant’s shoulders with confetti raining down on her head and the next she was waking up to a string of voicemails and email messages from different people wanting to work with her. one email wanted her in a movie, one wanted to make a documentary of her, five news programs wanted interviews at ridiculously early times the next day, and the voicemails were for equally varied things all of which carly was happy to consider. she’d never been famous, didn’t know how to handle it, but she quickly learned how to deal with it. the next morning people found her leaving the hotel that the contestants had been housed in and followed her all over creation. it was a jump start to fame that carly hadn’t anticipated. she hadn’t thought about what being on a show, and subsequently winning a show, like that would mean. but she got used to it. with her winnings she invested in training hours with a wide assortment of instructors and rented an apartment in a nice portion of town for herself and her daughter, and that was how it all began. fast forward two years and she was still in the spotlight, still dancing, and still as happy as ever. only now she was back in valkyrie tending to family issues she was happy to take on.

-----and all of that lead her here. to getting back into valkyrie some few weeks ago, to moving into a hotel with her family in adjoining rooms, to picking up her new york life and transposing it here. all of that lead her to where she was now, hanging out in an alley behind bad seeds with an extremely attractive albeit mysterious man. who wouldn’t love an outcome like that? ”oh you have no idea.” carly said with a smirk, her shoulders shaking as she hid back her laughter. ”suit huh? that must be a snore.” whatever job it was he certainly didn’t seem to rave about it like carly did dancing. that was unfortunate. seeing as how she had her dream job, carly saw fit that every person out there should shoot for their dream job. something that made you shrug so carelessly was obviously not a person’s dream job. then again living life in one suit to the next didn’t sound like her cup of tea either. so he was from boston. interestingly close to her neck of the woods. though it wasn’t like she would have met him had he stopped by new york for a bit. unlike keizer it was extremely unlikely to ever find another person twice in the big apple unless you had a phone number, address, or like a stalker you knew said person’s daily habits. ”it’s certainly a slower paced life here but i kind of enjoy that. i went to the big apple from here so it’s more like coming home than anything else.” it was simple to her. probably not so much to people who hadn’t come from valkyrie. still the concept was the same no matter where you were from. she nodded when he stated his name, though honestly it sounded more like a last name than anything which meant this guy didn’t really want her knowing who he was. worked for her. carly was surprising herself with how cavalier she was being but this was her fun night out, why boggle it down with names and drama right? she watched him as he stood, throwing caution to the wind so to speak as she slid her hand into his and he hoisted her up. she knew what this spelled. she’d seen it countless times before and yet she still allowed him to go there. she saw it coming and she never stopped him because she didn’t want to. simple as that. this man was intriguing, dark, mysterious, and it was just some random one-night run in. who was to say this guy would even stick around a few more days right? he whispered something she couldn’t make out before he kissed her but quite frankly she hadn’t cared. he was a good kisser. carly kissed him back with little hesitation, stuck between the outer wall of bad seeds and this collins guy’s body. she tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling him in closer simply because she wanted to. there was nothing here she would be doing unless she wanted it, simple as that.

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status • finished
words • 1818.
tagged • carmie !
clothes • this here !
notes • --.

[/font][/blockquote][/blockquote][/blockquote][/justify]

[james devon sakahrov-collins]

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JANUARY, 2012. MID-EVENING. BAD SEEDS.

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- - - NO ONE CARED

[/b][/font] what he did. not really. he had been raised in a loving family, there was no doubt about that. he’d also been raised in a very....aware crime organization, very concerned. the walls of respect often shadowed these facts, but they were there. everyone was an asset, despite their ranking. he learned that a long time ago, when his father told him not to discredit himself. the minute jamie ever threatened to leave an assignment, someone was flown directly from moscow to have “the talk”. now, he never knew was “the talk” was, because he never planned on actually leaving. pierce had. temperance always did. jamie? no. never. the russians weren’t the irish, who thought of anyone not from one of the “families” as disposable. they weren’t the italians, either, who thought...well, he didn’t actually know. the only times jamie had ever directly interacted with an italian was when he shadowed at some charity event. they were big on the blending in rich person thing. and they all expressed their love like it was ridiculous. if jamie was experiencing personal issues, no one would give it a second thought. unless it interfered with business, it was his own shit to deal with. “the talk” was to keep families loyal. having a “talk”, with emotions and crying and all that is for your own family. so, unless he wavered, no one cared what he did.

no, not his bosses. no, not his partner (the short time he had one before he threatened to kill them). no, not even his family. they were too busy worrying about pierce and how he was going to keep temperance safe. his parents either didn’t care, or trusted him too much. his mother? didn’t care. father? trusted him too much. he had that problem with people. they invested too much of their trust into him, let him call the shots. well, that’s what he assumed. and he knew he was right. no one actually ever told him to head an assignment before. but if they did...they would. he knew that. after years of testing his pull, just to see how much respect he’d come to command, he knew he could do pretty much whatever the hell he wanted with little concequence. i guess the number of bodies you come home with, the more they respect you. but that’s how it is everywhere. the more respect you have, the more freedom you get.

and respect steams through body count.

and jamie had long learned how to kill somebody. he was, after all, often the last resort to clean up the mess. or shoot whoever scary mafia man didn’t feel like wasting. or, more often than not, shoot whoever scary mafia man didn’t have the balls to shoot. he’d never told anyone that, but it was true. he saw how half of these guys looked at the loitering woman, how sick they must feel. waste the hardened criminal who messed with their operation? sure, no problem. kill the guy who raped a little girl? they’d probably do that without blinking. but the people who just got stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time? that was different. now, jamie knew that many of the people who were stuck there were corrupted betrayers, too. some weren’t. most were. but neary everyone he’d worked with had trouble putting a bullet in the back of their head. they couldn’t even carve the little markings on their left palm, their signature. the people who could were too important to even think about that. they didn’t have to kill anyone anymore. they were too busy being rich and running their empires. the other people were the ones who stood behind the almost-important rich guy, never saying a word. the other people included jamie. he was the one who was told to kill the people they couldn’t. he was the one who was told to finish the job, then clean up the mess. he’d been doing that full-time for almost five years. the body count was an ugly one. so of course he’d gotten the respect. and remember? with respect, comes freedom. and freedom comes no one caring what you do.

that’s why nothing would come of jamie sending ksenia on his assignment. or if he jumped on a plane back to boston in the morning. which he was actually planning to do. and that’s exactly why no one would give a flying fuck if they knew he was in some seedy coyote bar in valkyrie, california, out in the alleyway with this girl he barely knew the name of. ksenia would. but that would be it. one - no one expected straight-laced james collins to do anything. two - who would pay attention? as far as anyone was concerned, he was james collins, bodyguard. stone-faced, cold hearted james collins. the guy who would kill without a thought. the guy who is at your beck and call twenty-four hours a day. people bowed their heads when he passed because they knew what he’d done. not because of who the man behind the gun is. that’s pierce, his father. more than once, jamie had heard whispers about what pierce had done, how fucking awesome he was. the one time he had been in boston, and jamie had seen him, he was walking down a hallway and no one was even there. the poor souls he decided to plague with his attendance, nods and smiles. like, “oh my god, i just saw him!” temperance used to get like that when some doe-eyed mook from the novikoffs showed up. he was a living legend, pierce. the guy who told the guy to tell jamie to kill someone. he, jamie had the respect he’d always wanted, but it wasn’t the kind he wanted now. no one wanted him to have a problem with an operation, so they presented concern. but they didn’t care what he did. not at all. see how that works now?

maybe these, these sort of mind-numbing could-be hook-ups should be his new medicine. it was working so far in making him forget about everything. his mind jumped to ksenia and how pissed off she was, yes. but it didn’t focus on the unfiled issues. the inferiority issues, the jealousy issues, the issues with himself never speaking up. the issues with his family. the issues with his guilt. do you want me to keep going? the number of issues he found himself having was irritating. he liked to pretend he would deal with them later. which eventually lead to increased hatred of said issues, but it worked for the minute. but this, being here with her, was shoving them deeper into his black hole. it was nice. he’d always gone to brooding over nothing in order to take him mind off them. but the company of someone, even just sitting in the alley looking at her rear end when she wasn’t watching him, was working better. ”suit huh? that must be a snore.” he chucked lightly, ironically. ”i listen to people ordering me around all day.” leaning his head against the wall, he shook his head with the same wry sort of smile. it was one very good way of describing his work. it wasn’t exactly a snore. but it certainly was in comparison to what everyone else in the family was doing. pare it down enough, you could call him a security guard. and that was just pathetic. he laughed again, a dark one. that was really fucking pathetic. turning his eyes to watch carly again, jamie shook his head. ”five minutes with you made me realize my job is a lot sadder than i thought.” his tone dry, almost laughing, he took his beer to his lips again. my god. ”coming home, huh? you must want to stay, then.” he knew that feeling all to well. he missed boston, he missed his home. and if, one day, he was going to phrase is like “coming home” and “nice change”, he was going to be here for a lot longer than he wanted to be.

he had never actually made a move before. he knew plenty of people - both male and female - who used one-night stands as a cure for whatever they didn’t want to remember for five minutes. he’d seen them do it. but he’d never thought it would feel so natural, not for him. as a teenager, it’d been him who left the party early because everyone eventually got too busy hooking-up to drink or light things on fire. but here, with carly, it felt natural. good, even. part of him was surprised when she kissed him back. i knew i was surprised. when she tangled her fingers in his hair, though, and pulled him closer to her, he decided not to think about it. she would have slapped him by now if she was going to. keeping one of his hands pressed against her cheek, his thumb caressing her skin lightly, his other shrugged off his jacket. he couldn’t move in that thing anyway. it was ksenia who insisted he buy it. once the leather fell to the ground, his free hand lingered at her waist awkwardly. he never knew where to touch people, as it made him uncomfortable. but it was her who had deepened the kiss in the first place. taking his hand from her cheek, he rested his arm above her, on the wall, to support himself as he leaned farther into her. his tongue touched her lips, his breath grew shallower, as he fell slaved to her touch. this felt too natural. finally touching her hip, his arm snaked around her waist, pulling her right into his leaning body. too natural. he knew he should stop, right here and right now. but he really, really didn't want to. who would care, anyway?[/size][/blockquote]

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STATUS, complete.
TAGGED, carmie<33
LENGTH, 1689 words.
ATTIRE, black jeans, white t-shirt, leather jacket. super interesting. xD
NOTES, i didn't know how to end it. xD
CREDITS, format and graphics to me.
lyrics to 30 seconds to mars - "93 million miles"

[/blockquote]

[caroline isabelle sutton]

VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, BAD SEEDS, LATE JANUARY 2012

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-----meeting strangers on a daily basis was just a part of carly’s life now. making out with them? well that wasn’t necessarily something that was in the cards. this definitely wasn’t normal behavior for carly. she didn’t do something like this on a regular basis otherwise she would have gone from beloved dancer and somewhat role model to someone of a more lindsey lohan-ish depiction. she was not the kind of girl to randomly drag guys out of a bar to make out with them in the alley behind said bar. she hadn’t been the type to dance on tables for a long time either and yet she still indulged in that on occasion. the truth was that carly liked to be herself and even more so when she could be daring and try things most normal people wouldn’t dare to do. carly danced on tables only when the mood struck her and never because she was too drunk to realize the error or her ways. she was also a skilled dancer and could do more things on one circular tabletop than most girls could do on an entire dance floor. she liked the rush of doing something unexpected and something awe-inspiring but that didn’t mean that she would intentionally do something dangerous. she wasn’t that kind of live on the edge girl. carly liked the thrill, she danced the way she wanted to when the mood struck her as long as it was free form, but at the same time she could be a shockingly responsibly and mature young woman.

-----a massive amount of people were surprised to learn that carly had a daughter, and for those who thumbed their nose at her they were surprised she was such a good mother. but lily was in fact the greatest accomplishment in carly’s life. just one look at how mother and daughter were around one another and you could see that lily was the center of carly’s universe. her eyes were always on her, watching her every move and praising her as necessary when lily did something worth praising. she was always trying to teach lily new things without overwhelming lily and she never made things about accomplishing more than someone else. carly’s methods were always to praise where thing needed praising and to make learning a vital necessity but also a fun one. she never gave lily anything she didn’t somehow deserve. if lily wanted a certain toy she needed to have earned it. carly, though she was now from a sense of means, had vowed to never spoil her child. carly had had very little in her life as a child and yet she’d grown up to appreciate things more not because she didn’t have them and were jealous of the people who had, but because she didn’t have those things and had managed to still grow and learn simply because of the way her family had taught her to appreciate life. the way she saw it, carly wanted to give lily everything her family had given her, a sense of security. toys were fun, electronics were bright and shiny and could do some very cool things, but that wasn’t what you needed to make you happy. brand name clothes weren’t important. what was important was something that fit you and looked good on you. junk food tasted just fine but carly had taught lily to have more of an appreciation for healthier foods, though they both took the time to indulge once in a while. it wasn’t a fool proof plan. there were times when lily was stubborn or when some kid flaunted what they had in front of her and at times things were not as storybook as people would have liked to see. but everyone could tell that in the grand scheme of things carly was putting in more effort than a lot of parents nowadays could afford to give. she was lucky to not have to work three jobs to support her family like her parents had. she was lucky to not have to skimp out on sleep or family time simply so she could take an extra shift. she had gotten the opportunity to really bond with lily and after having lost three years of that previous, carly would never miss out on another moment.

-----but parenting was a delicate balance. though you wanted to be there for your child and with your child twenty four seven to make sure they were warm, full, healthy, and safe, you also couldn’t hover and you couldn’t be the only thing in their life. children needed friends and they needed people on the outside to be for them and teach them things carly wasn’t exactly capable of. she couldn’t be her daughter’s world forever but she would do her damnedest to make sure she had whatever she could give her without dampening lily’s appreciation for it all. that in itself was the hardest part of all and she could see that people on the outside looking in could see that. when she’d had a news crew come to her house to show a special segment of her life one year after her big win, carly hadn’t been afraid to show people on the outside what her life was like now. that segment had actually been the first real time anyone had gotten a glimpse of lily. carly didn’t flaunt her daughter for any reason. the press had never seen her and the producers of the show she’d one hadn’t even known carly had a daughter, and she’d kept it that way for a reason. she didn’t want the possible limelight she was going to be thrust into subsequently dragging lily in too. she hadn’t told the show she had been a teenage mother because she didn’t want the fact that she had a child being flaunted over the show for higher ratings nor did she want the public to know for sympathy votes. her daughter wasn’t a burden. lily was a gift and that was something she would always be.

-----so yes for many it was a complete surprise to see that carly sutton, the table dancing former coyote bar dancer could be mature and forthright and just an all-around mature person. making out with a guy behind her former place of employment certainly didn’t showcase that, but as said before, there were many sides to caroline isabelle sutton, not all of them visible at once. besides all that, she was having fun. she listened to collins talk about his job and how super thrilling it seemed to be…or lack thereof. ”well you certainly sound like you enjoy it.” she said with a hint of sarcasm. ”well it’s not completely sad. the only thing that seems like the shame to me is why you’re doing whatever it is you do. i’m lucky to have a job that i enjoy. sounds like you don’t like your job all that much and that’s the only sad part about it. why not do something you love? i now it’s not always possible, but isn’t it worth a shot simply to try?” carly shrugged her shoulders. she sounded like some sunshine and rainbows eternal optimist and that wasn’t all that she was. but whatever. ”i’ve spent enough time in miserable places to know when a place feels like home. valkyrie fits the bill.”

-----this kind of behavior…well it wasn’t common for carly but she certainly wasn’t shy to it. carly was the type of girl where if she liked something, she tried to get it. that was how her entire dance career had even been an option. so when she’d seen collins and knew he looked like a different kind of character she would have liked to meet, well she tried, and obviously succeeded. she noticed it took him a while to really get himself involved and really take some kind of initiative. she decided not to wonder if it was because of her or whatnot. after all he’d been the one to kiss her so why would he be surprised if she kissed him back. he’d obviously lead up to what he’d tried to do so she could have stopped him at any point from the milk crate to the wall of bad seeds and she hadn’t. somehow this wasn’t sounding like a revelation or anything for her so she decided not to be bothered with it. in fact she wasn’t going to worry herself with even thinking. she smiled a bit into the kiss as he reached tentatively around her waist and pulled her in. carly pulled back slightly, enough so that she could lock eyes with him as she reached behind her, grabbed his hand, and tucked it tighter around her waist. ”mhm. just like that.” she whispered, her breathing shallow as she kissed him again. it was possible that in stopping him the moment would be gone and he would pull away but the possibility of what else could happen was far more intriguing. maybe he’d go for the gusto and do something rash? maybe he’d settle for what she suggested and leave it at that? or maybe he’d realize what the hell he was doing and back off but either way, carly was curious to find out.

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status • finished
words • 1589.
tagged • carmie !
clothes • this here !
notes • --.

[/font][/blockquote][/blockquote][/blockquote][/justify]

[james devon sakahrov-collins]

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JANUARY, 2012. MID-EVENING. BAD SEEDS.

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- - - HE HAD NEVER

[/b][/font] had to know what it was like to have to set an example. no one looked up to him, so he had never felt the need to behave properly. had he had some little sister who actually watched him every move? perhaps he would have turned out differently. but he was too close in age to temperance. and it was pierce she went after. he should have set a better example for her, he knew that. or she wouldn’t be sitting in a prison cell right now. so, maybe, had she chosen him, jamie, to chase after in their childhood, he would have watched his actions more closely. it was his nature to do things the right way, though. she wouldn’t be in that run-down excuse for a prison had she copied every rebellious thing he ever did. no one in his family had ever bothered to set an example for him, either. and he had no one to set an example for. even his father had wasted no time in telling jamie exactly how he went about doing things. if he decided to do something stupid, it would be on him. more than once, he’d gotten the “make your own decisions, jamie. it’s all on you.” it was the iron fist of the family business that kept all three sakahrov-collins children straight. there had never been a reason for him to learn.

it all came tied together in a pretty little bow. no responsibility, so he often did what he wanted. iron-clad worth ethic in combination with an iron family first, so he walked a fairly straight line. it all balanced. from the outside, looking in, james collins’ life was in good balance. sans the killing people for a living part, but who knew about that. put in situations like now, often without the shameless making out part, and that’s what people thought. carly here seemed to. he described a boring suit job, but a rebellious streak. unknown to him, she had an exciting job but a daughter to keep her grounded. opposites, but the result was the same: balance. it was him, as a person, who had not achieved any sort of balance. but let’s not get picky here. if you haven’t realized by this point in the story, jamie collins is an individual with a lot of deep-seated emotional issues that had better get dealt with soon, or he was going to explode. he’d done it before, and he would do it again. but remember, we aren’t looking into the details of the situation. he had maintained a nice balance for most of his life. the only difference between him and most was that it was his job that kept him from doing something stupid. not the people in it. family, friends. that’s what most accredit their sanity to. from him, it was releasing all of those deep-seated emotional issues with a bullet to someone’s head. that’s what those issues deserved for bothering him in the first place.

you get that he’s an avoider, right? i hope so. because that’s the interesting part. he spent most of his time avoiding what he should be doing in the first place. and what would that be? becoming healthy. that’s what i think he should be doing instead of making out with a pretty girl behind some shady bar. but that’s another technique - one, he’s quickly discovering, is good at making him forget - in avoiding. think of what kind of person jamie collins would be if he didn’t brood and rebel and kill people. he’d be in jail, dead, or someone else entirely (probably someone he likes to call a pansy). sometimes he wondered; what would he be like if his life was different? same people, same circumstance. just no way of releasing all of his pent-up energy. we’re calling his anger and jealousy and inferiority and impatience and whatever else he doesn’t deal with “energy”, you got it? don’t make me come after you like he does when his issues come bothering him. but the point remains the same - things would be much, much uglier had he not been given the chance to shoot his anger right in the face.

he shoots it in the face because, no, he does not feel like dealing with. no, he does not want to deal with it. and no, it is none of your business if it affects his life or if it doesn’t. the issues are there, and he realizes that. i think most of us do. but he just leaves them there to sit, gathering dust and ammunition until one day, they explode. but until that time, they can just roll with the dust bunnies. i guess he’s lucky. he doesn’t have to pretend to be a normal, healthy human being in order to make some naive little mind believe that’s what he is. that that is the way to be. is it? yes. but don’t look at him to expand that image. he can just go about his way, pretending to be a normal, healthy human being in order to make himself shut up. no one looks to him for an example. not even ksenia. it was his job to train her, which he’s done a damn good job of. but he warned her early on not to practice what he practices. it doesn’t work for the average person. in her words, it doesn’t work for anyone. but what does she know? he gets through his days just fine. the nights, maybe not. but he doesn’t have any example to set, so he can spend his nights in his own company. so hah. he’s just fine. he shoots it all in the face, remember?

taking a few minutes to look at his life like an outsider, he had to chuckle darkly. it was so...dry. so bland, so...whatever. he looked like he went through the paces and that was that. he did, i suppose. but he did like what he did. he’d have gotten himself killed a long time ago if he didn’t. that’s how his family works - you like it and you keep going. or you hate it and either check out early, or someone does it for you. more often than not, it would be him checking someone out early. but that isn’t the point. the point is, thank you, how pathetic his existence was looking. her words indeed sounds like it was easy to go and do what you loved. he privately agreed. but without all the details, his situation was complicated. he’d been raised in this life, and he knew he loved it. he liked being a part of something so powerful and substantial. so, it was on the very wrong side of the law. whatever. did he like what he was doing in this organization? well, he didn’t hate it. it was just...there. ”i guess i don’t know what i love to do yet.” he paused, pondering the issue. he knew he’d never be able to do anything else. but it was true, he didn’t know what he would of liked to do in any other life. ”family business. i like it. i guess i just don’t like what i have to do. anything else would be better.” well, that was enough of the truth. he was this mindless soldier, this bodyguard. everything pierce told him was, indeed, the truth. he pretended to love it, just to make him shut the fuck up. but we all know the real reason he was doing it was because few others could. he smirked lightly at her words. ”it must be nice, to have your life figured out like that.” it would be. but when it came to him, it would never happen.

if he did have it figured out, he would be heading some dangerous operation out of new york, with a wife whom he loved very much. that’s how most mafiadrones are, right? they were like jamie, or they were like...whoever. someone important. but he hadn’t. so he was doing whatever the hell he wanted. he wouldn’t be sitting here if he knew what he was doing, now would he? no one he’d ever met who hung out in dive bars and slutted around on a regular basis had their lives figured out. things would be boring that way. and, really, as he leaned against the wall in an alley, having carly pull his arm tighter around her waist, he understood the appeal.

when she pulled away from him, jamie paused to look at her. her breath was just as shallow, her cheeks just as flushed. as she spoke, he pressed his forehead against her, simply watching her. he’d passed his normal line about eighty-five miles ago. he had no clue as to what people did now. he was bad at this. letting the same smirk cross his face, he pulled away from her this time. ”raise your expectations.” kicking his long forgotten jacket farther into the street, backed up toward the stairs where they’d been seating previous. maintaining his grip around her waist, he collapsed onto the cold concrete, pulling her onto his lap. brushing a long hair from her face, he watched her again for a moment. ”you really are beautiful.” cheesiness at its best, right? but she was. breathtakingly. moving his right hand around her neck, he pulled her toward him again, kissing her as deeply as before. it was his left hand who had taken to gripping the collar of her vest, slowly pushing it off her torso. ask him, he had no control over that half of his body.[/size][/blockquote]

-----------------------------------------------------------

STATUS, complete.
TAGGED, carmie<33
LENGTH, 1667 words.
ATTIRE, black jeans, white t-shirt, leather jacket. super interesting. xD
NOTES,
CREDITS, format and graphics to me.
lyrics to 30 seconds to mars - "93 million miles"

[/blockquote]

[caroline isabelle sutton]

VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, BAD SEEDS, LATE JANUARY 2012

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-----it had been a long time since carly had been in a relationship, and no she wasn’t counting whatever this was with collins as a relationship. carly didn’t understand those girls who immediately latched onto a man like a parasite the moment he looked their way. honestly it didn’t make a lot of sense to her. she had always thought women should have little more self respect than that. a women should have a lot more self respect then to do some of the things we thought “absolutely necessary” too. take for example those girls who sat in a club or a bar, pretending to drink but really they were just sitting around waiting to be approached. girls like that had no initiative. they had no self esteem. they could sit there for hours, or come back daily, and waste away their life in a bar just waiting for that man they hoped was mister right. well, carly could say that about nine times out of ten, mr. bar guy was not mr. right. it was very unlikely that a woman could find a man of value in a seedy bar this late at night because this was prime time for the bastards to come out of the woodwork to play. you know those guys who will use you and abuse you, or the ones who you take home who go missing the very next day. there are a lot of those kind of guys out there just looking for a good time and a lot of women out there with the wrong impressions trying to find someone to settle down with. those insecure women who immediately latched onto a man and became all nervous, controlling, and all around creepy were especially the kind of women carly couldn’t understand. yes sometimes the prospect of being alone was terrifying. yes, everyone just wanted to have that one great love in their life. yes, television and movies glorified it to the point where you expect something ridiculous to happen in your life. but where oh where do you figure that you’ll be happy when forcing someone to stay with you or clinging to something that makes you both miserable. where’s the relationship in that?

-----carly hadn’t been in a true relationship for over three or four years. there had been someone in valkyrie when she’d first shown up. he had been fun and happy go lucky and he’d been just the kind of ice breaker she’d needed after finally pulling away from a town like keizer where her first ever relationship had bombed and sent her into this scandalous spiral. yeah if you knew the whole story you’d know that carly didn’t have much experience by way of relationships, and certainly like no experience by way of a steady one. she’d dated at fourteen, as a freshman in high school. the captain of the football team and everything she was supposed to be dated being that she was the cheerleading captain, and first to be a freshman. they were that classic kind of mash up, and they were idolized around the school for being absolutely perfect, and honestly they had been. cain had been nothing but good to carly ad they’d dated. he’d been a gentleman. he hadn’t been that cocky kind of asshole she’d known him to be later on. maybe it had all been an act for carly’s sake, but she really had believed him. when they’d made the mistake of sleeping together in a drunken mess of an evening during a party in the cornfields, well she’d thought it was because she was in love with him, and him with her. maybe it had been. maybe everything that had happened after that was all just some overreaction that cain couldn’t walk away from after he’d committed to it. whatever. he’d still made her life absolutely miserable and no amount of apologies, should she get them, were ever going to have carly forgiving him. but nom the day she’d come up to cain, absolutely terrified and having not told anyone but cain…she hadn’t even told her family that she was pregnant, cain had lashed out. he’d called her a cheater and a tramp and he’d turned the entire school against her. people rallied around him. girls fawned over him trying to make him feel better. and boy did they ever turn on carly.

-----you’ve seen the ads for what bullying can do to you and when you’re at the top of your game in high school standards you tend to not imagine that ever happening to you, especially when you’ve never done anything to warrant that kind of reaction. but boy did people hate her. girls glared at her, guy’s ran away from her like she was diseased and if they touched her she’d impregnate them. honestly the best way to show how little your students have learned in your classrooms if to see how wrong they can be when they taunt students. because it really didn’t take a bright light in the room to see many of these kids were terrifically, and obscenely stupid. she’d been poked, prodded, and people even pulled her hair when they got audacious enough. there had even been a specific time that carly had remembered forever. she’d been in class, just trying to get through the day, and all of a sudden the girls forced to sit around her had just reached a breaking point with their anger over what she’d done. it was probably because she’d really started showing at about that time. all it took was one girl to act and one teacher to not react and the entire classroom was doing it. they’d had the gall to spit on her. actually spit on her. the teacher had put not stop to it. she’d actually remained at the head of the classroom writing on the dry erase board, and every time she turned her back to the class, carly was pelted with spit. the teacher could hear it. anyone could really. and yet she’d done nothing to stop it. by that point carly had lost all faith in keizer. she knew that there was no redeeming qualities here and that she was doomed to live her life out in misery if she couldn’t get away. it had been another many months before she’d had lily, her parents had given her away, and the community had rallied to expel the suttons that they’d ever gotten a chance to get away, but thankfully they had. carly knew she’d be nowhere had she not gotten out of that town while she could. she would have been lucky to even own a home at that point. boy did she really hope the people of keizer were kicking themselves now that she was famous. they were those shallow kinds of people. heck she wondered if she ever showed up if they’d go so far as to throw a parade for her like you see for those finalists on that singing show who go back home for a day for a parade, a concert, and all kinds of media exposure. there was only one problem. carly would never step foot into that town again. she wouldn’t even spit on someone if they were on fire.

-----honestly she’d been surprised that she’d stayed as silent as she had been. if you looked at who carly was now, she was a fighter and she was stubborn about her opinions and it was likely people couldn’t change her mind if they tried. but back then carly had been the girl who had fallen. she’d been quiet, she’d been reserved, and she’d learned to not react when people did something so vial or disgusting that you just wanted to run away and have a good cry. she’d never showed people her weakness. of course the moment she got home and she’d closed herself in the bathroom, that was a whole different story, but at school she was like stone. she never reacted even when she had damp hair or dirty clothes from someone doing something stupid to make themselves feel better or to win the attention of the people who were hell bent on making her miserable. carly was hardly that stone cold person anymore. if she didn’t like you, you would know it. she had stayed silent for the sake of her pregnancy and for the sake of her family but she was an adult now and she stood up for herself when need be. it was part of the reason why if she felt like doing something, she did it, because no one was going to tell her otherwise from now on. carly knew right from wrong and it had gotten her this far. so she went about not caring what other people thought anymore and it turned out that people loved her now. go figure. the world really was a fickle place.

-----”well that’s understandable then. you can’t quit a job to do what you love if you have no clue what you’re doing.” the whole idea of that, of quitting a job for the unknown, well it was actually kind of funny to carly. she’d heard of people quitting their jobs and not knowing what would be next, but they always quit for a reason. to quit simply to quit? well it made no sense. ”ah well that makes sense.” she chuckled slightly, more like a little breathy chuckle that didn’t last more than a moment. ”i was lucky i guess. and i wouldn’t say my life’s completely figured out. that would be boring. but i like knowing what suits me and what i want. having everything planned just makes you feel like you’re walking some timeline with no control. where’s the fun in that?” no he knew all about fun, carly had a firsthand look at just how much fun he was willing to have. it was thrilling too. not every guy would just let himself go like this, somewhat in the public. it wasn’t like they were naked or anything but this was bold even for her. she hadn’t expected him to start moving around nor had she expected him to pull her down into his lap. she smiled though. she was having fun and a different unadulterated kind at that. ”you’re not so bad yourself.” she said under her breath. she didn’t know why but she felt like whispering was best. she couldn’t help but to smile as he kissed her back, but it didn’t last long because she’d pretty much lost herself in him again. she didn’t understand why that was so easy for her to do. she was usually a little more reserved with her feelings or emotions and it wasn’t like she was falling for him, but this was going fast and she wasn’t about to apply the brakes. she shrugged out of the vest as he gave it a little tug, leaving her with just a tank top and shorts. as she kissed him she slid her hands beneath his shirt, not to remove it, but to brush and rake her fingers over his stomach and back. that was thrilling in itself. she didn’t even want to stop as she heard someone playing with the back door, knowing that someone would walk through it in a moment to do god knows what, but she did. she pulled back, putting a finger to his lips and looking up at the door as a head popped out, one of the dancers. ”oh carly there you are.” she said looking down at the two of them. ”we’d just wondered where you ran off to.” ”right here. thanks.” carly said casually as the girls head retracted and she heard ”damn it she took the hot one” coming from the door as it closed. carly chuckled, putting her head against collins’ shoulder momentarily before she sat back up. ”well, that was a lot of fun but i’ve gotta go. with the dancers knowing they’re bound to call someone and i’m sure you don’t want your face sprawled all over a tabloid right?” she said despite still sitting on his lap. ”but, um…this was a lot of fun.”

[/b] she was still slightly breathless but that didn’t stop her from smiling down at him and giving him one more kiss before she popped off his lap, vest in hand. ”it was..really nice to meet you.”[/b] she caught her bottom lip between her teeth and something told her she was close to blushing, but that didn’t really matter. she slid her vest back on, fluffing her hair and fixing her makeup before she gave him a little finger-wave goodbye and walked out of the alley to her car.

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status • finished
words • 2188
tagged • carmie !
clothes • this here !
notes • gah i didn’t want it to end but i think it must. it’ll make the motel room scene that much better xD. sexual tension ftw! we can end it there or you can reply. that'll be up to you :]

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