━━ MOON RIVER ━━
todd anderson x amélie blanc
steven meeks    x      katie wells
a dead poet's society fanfic © vogueriots

( introduction . . . #one )
ʚɞ thick skull never did nothing for me

There was a time, when she wore the face of a younger girl, and the moon didn't feel so far away, where Amélie wanted nothing but the picket-fence-fantasy the other girls she knew raved about. She thought love was easy and mindless and was shown by making others the best versions of themselves. She liked to think she was smarter now, for, as far as Amélie Blanc was concerned, to marry was to conduct your death march, and to settle down was to maul art. Call her crazy, call her cynical, call her whatever you needed to, but she was more than happy to live her life the same way she came into it; Alone.

She was an artist, a creator, a girl who lived and breathed passion and ambition. All a husband would do is convince her to forget her hopes and raise his kids. Amélie didn't think she'd be a good mother. She wasn't very good at being gentle. She'd often read of honesty being a strength, but her inability to shield the truth only seemed to drive others away. She was restless and had finally accepted the fact that she was born to be dissatisfied. No matter how many top grades, or appraisals from her ballet teacher, or rare grins from her father she got, Amélie was always itching for more.

She wasn't a girl of many friends, or many comforts (by that, she means none.) The love she saw was the love between her parents, and, alongside her, that love grew terse and cold enough that, by the time she was seventeen, Amélie wondered if it was still there at all. She hoped for her mother's sake that it was.

Amélie didn't entirely like her parents—she didn't imagine many teenage girls liking their parents, but she insisted that her distaste was special because she didn't understand it, and Amélie Blanc was smart enough to understand everything. Her mother was subservient and lived like the lesser of her husband, because it's what she believed. She was her last name and her house was spotless. Amélie both pitied and envied her.

With every waking breath he drew, the power he held over his family swelled in her father's heart. He ruled over their house with a tyrannical fist and a demand for only the best. He was a powerful man with politics in his name and rebellion simply would not do, so, when Amélie flashed the slightest hint of teenage revolt at twelve, he sent her to his family's boarding school in Paris.

It seemed her imaginary friends waved her goodbye from tarmac, because Amélie hadn't known true loneliness until she went to Paris. The other girls, just as rich as her, only more snooty than she could dream of, turned their nose up at her craft-scissor bangs and American ideals of introductions (apparently "Hello" wasn't chic enough for them.)

   Amélie realised very quickly that, unless she was causing a scene or breaking a record, people didn't care whether she lived or died. Her parents called her once a month, and the longest conversation they had was seven minutes because Amélie got a demerit  and her father needed wanted to yell. She figured that, seeing as nothing mattered anyway, she might as well do what she wanted.

But, in her junior year, her father's campaign was running dry and he needed a big headline, so, after he phoned in an old favour and threatened to withdraw a donation, Amélie was taken from France and brought home to New England to attend... an all boys school. When her father broke the news, Amélie had half a mind to beg him to send her back, to roll her into a ball and use his college soccer skills to kick her across the ocean if it's what he needed.

His only consolation was that there'd be another girl in attendance that year, the sole graduate of Welton's Summer Success Programme designed to find the best of the best scholars, who'd been advised by the education board to let a few girls run in the competition to get restless parents off their backs. Katie Wells was her name. She was quiet, from what her father said, but painfully bright. All Amélie hoped was that she didn't snore.

English had always been one of her favourite subjects, second only to art, and she'd seen some brilliant teachers in her time, but all of them paled in comparison to Mr. Keating, and Amélie felt grateful to her father for the first time since she was a little girl sat on his shoulders at a fair. Despite its rigid reputation, Welton was proving to be less of a hellhole than she'd thought after only a few days.

...and it definitely had nothing to do with the shy boy who sat next to her in physics.

( introduction . . . #two )
ʚɞ treat me right, i'm still a good man's daughter

      Katie Wells was a creature of foul, unbridled resentment. It stuck between her teeth and rotted in her mouth and churned in her stomach until it wasn't something she felt, but instead something she was. She was the let-downs of her father and the hopes of her mother and the envy of her brothers.

      She was a great many things, and a great many of them were unflattering, but nobody could deny her intelligence. No matter how hard the wispy white haired totalitarians tired to credit her wit to her father, there was no denying that her mind was not the mind of her blood.

      Her brothers gave up hope of being doctors, or lawyers, or men of much acclaim. Much to their father's chagrin, they were more talented with their hands and became tradesmen. Alexander Wells; the man with a genius for a daughter and a carpenter for a son.

   But despite all of this, despite her merit and her medals and her mountains of blue ribbon, the doors of prestigious schools were shut to her. Her destiny was to be a teacher; overworked and underpaid and over-competent and underwhelmed and utterly miserable, or a mother; at home, by a stove she had no right being near, her third bottle of wine sliding down her throat, the cool of her rough-handed husband's wedding band digging into the flesh of her waist as he arrived home from his high paying job where he is underworked and overpaid and incompetent and pleased as punch to grab and squeeze and touch and kiss whatever he wanted.

   No.

   Katie Wells was going to be a fucking legend or she was going to die trying. She headed the advice of her grandmother and fell to her knees at her bedside and clasped her hands till her knuckles turned white and prayed so hard it felt like begging.

   And then it came. Her blessing in the form of a manila envelope slid through their blue mailbox. An offer for a seat at Welton Academy's Summer Success Programme. With 25 open chairs in total, this five-week-long intensive course was meant to weed out the best of the best students to add to Welton's ever-growing list of accomplishments. When you lift the thin veil of praise, you see it as what it truly is, an attempt to snipe bright students who slipped through their fingers as children or lived outside of New England before they graduated and brought other institutes to their ranking.

But Katie wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and she wasn't one to fixate on the fact she was the one of three girls there, or the fact that the other two were daughters of men rich enough to buy her home three times over. Instead, she focused on her work and how she was actually relieved none of the other candidates invited her to the open-secret parties they held after curfew because she didn't want to get to know them anyway.

      Stolen vanilla whiskey is fine, messy drunken kisses are fine, the hallmark branded 'teenage experience' is fine, seriously! But Katie Wells didn't give two shits about fine when she left that programme as the sole graduate and heard reporters hounding Sir Nolan until the headline was finally leaked.

      In September Welton Academy Will Welcome It's First Female Students; Katie Wells, Lone Graduate of Welton's Summer Success Programme & Amélie Blanc, Daughter of Political Candidate, Clement Blanc.

      The school year starts about as well as you'd expect for a bright girl with alarming social ineptitude and a roommate who couldn't shut up if you paid her. And to make matters even worse, she wasn't even the smartest person in the grade anymore! No, she was tied with a red-headed boy with wire-frame glasses and a crooked smile.

      Katie Wells was a creature of foul, unbridled resentment, and if Steven Meeks didn't step out of her way, then he'd better prepare himself to feel her wrath.

( introduction . . . #three )
ʚɞ villain and violent / infant and innocent

Far in the New England landscape, further than you may think, beyond the martyrs in pinstripe and the mothers in gingham, beyond the bending trees and the winding paths, there lies a pasture of clean grass, hidden from and untouched by the muddy paws of man.

As moon creeps to her rightful place in the night sky, she casts a pale halo down upon an unlikely pair. A lamb, fully equipped with trembling knees and soft skin, stands staring wide-eyed at a vulture that has just swooped down from its perch in the trees. The lamb blinks in acknowledgment, a silent question that the wind carries in its howl:

My old friend, what are you doing here? It's not time yet. Is it?

The vulture shuffles its feathers to tuck behind it. The lamb makes no mention of the empty patches on its wings or the red on its beak. It replies:

I missed you. That is all.

As the lamb treads closer, dewey grass squelching beneath its feet. It stops mere inches from the vulture. If man witnessed the scene, he'd yell and bat his hands at the bird of prey, terrified of the threat and the shadow of its past. But the lamb's eyes never stray behind its friend, what lies back there is just as inconsequential as what will lie ahead. All that matters is now.

The lamb leans forward and brushes its coarse nose against the plane between the vultures eyes. The coo it lets out was childish, as if it were no more than a hatchling or a hummingbird. It nuzzles the blunt curve of its beak into the crook of the sheep's neck.

Together they stand unbothered and unbroken by the influence of knives and lions and dragons and all else that may come. Bloodshed does not exist here. Badness does not exist hear. Goodness does not exist here. All that exists is warmth.

They stay that way until the wind stops and the moon makes her steady descent. With the sun on the horizon, the vulture leans back, careful to not knick the delicate skin of the lamb as it moves. It blinks once, shuffles again, and in one fowl move, launches to the air.

Goodbye, my friend.

The lamb watches as it leaves, big eyes focused on its figure shrinking against the hues of pink and purple. It tilts it head to the side and blinks. It turns and brings its teeth to the grass below and feasts.

I will miss you until I can hold you again.

Amélie Blanc ,  liv tyler
[ 17 , welton academy , doris day ]

louise never heard of puppy love 'cause they don't
know that term in france! // louise,              tv girl

Do not let fear keep you from living.
The world will be at a loss if you do.
— Mr. John Keating.

In a place that can make you change.
Fall in love again and again.
— Charli XCX

Todd Anderson ,  ethan hawke
[ 17 , welton academy , frank sinatra ]

hope tonight goes differently, but i show up to the
party just to leave // amoeba,                        clairo

To live is to lose.
But to lose is to love.
— Mr. John Keating.

I might say something stupid.
Talk to myself in the mirror.
— Charli XCX

Todd Anderson & Amélie Blanc

i would give all my time, all your words felt like
a nursery rhyme // amelie,       gracie abrams

Once you talk to me,
I'll talk to you, and say,
"Hey let's get out of here,
Shall we go back to my place?
— Charli XCX

Katie Wells , florence pugh
[ 17 , welton academy , elvis presley ]

and i want what i want and i want you to love me,
you // i want you to love me,             fiona apple

Your anger cannot define you.
Love in spite of your rage.
— Mr. John Keating

I wanna keep the apple,
grow all the seeds, but I can't help
but get so angry you won't listen. I leave.
— Charli XCX

Stephen Meeks , allelon ruggiero
[ 17 , welton academy , louis armstrong ]

you called me angel for the first time, my heart
leapt from me // unknown/nth , hozier

The world will not end if you look away.
Enjoy the respite, and all it entails.
— Mr. John Keating

I think about it all the time.
That I might run out of time.
— Charli XCX

Stephen Meeks & Katie Wells

and when i felt like i was an old cardigan under
someone's bed, you put me on and said i was
your favourite // cardigan , taylor swift

🐞 & 🦇 . . . THE PLAYLIST !!!

i. Moon River Audrey Hepburn
ii. Can't Take My Eyes Off You Franki Valli
iii. Suspicious Minds Elvis Presley
iv. Oh, Pretty Woman Roy Orbison
v. Be My Baby The Ronettes
vi. Dream A Little Dream Of Me Cass Elliot
vii. Here, There, And Everywhere      The Beatles
viii. I Will The Beatles
ix. (I Just) Died In Your Arms Cutting Crew
x. But Not For Me - Vocal Ver. Chet Baker
xi. You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You Dean Martin
xii. Linger The Cranberries

Wasteland, Baby! Hozier .xiii
Just To Keep You Satisfied Inhaler .ixv
Ketchum, ID boygenius .xv
Over The Moon The Marías .xvi
Thank You Clairo .xvii
Everything I Want beabadoobee .xviii
Romance Fontaines D.C .ixx
Something, Somehow, Someday ROLE MODEL .xx
By Your Side Beachwood Sparks .xxi
Stuck On The Puzzle Alex Turner .xxii
Anthems For A Seventeen-Year-Old Girl Broken Social Scene .xxiii
Growing Sideways Noah Kahan .ixxv

            ( all my blood for the sweetness of her laughter. . . )
sweetadoring goddessrots witchesraves -always4ever lversr0ck s0horrible angelsoath hollxe1 iinrainbows salkulti meanhoesdick beatopiafilms -graciesluvr godsandroses vqlluna loverspearl horrorot ultraqviolence 90scoffeegossip apollospoem

               ( disclaimers & warnings. . . )
this story will contain canon-compliant mentions of suicide & character death, girls making bad choices with good intentions, time-accurate misogyny, knox overstreet, girls hating each other (only for a small bit), puppy love.       i do not own any canon characters or storylines! i only own amélie, katie, and their storylines!

( author's note. . . )
the air is turning brisk, the leaves are curling and crunching, and the distinct sound of teenage girls screaming "he was good! he was really good!" between their tears is filling the streets! it is my time to shine!!!!!!!!!

charli is a dead poet and the dead poets are brats. in this ted talk i will—