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meta-sequoia · 4 months ago

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Rose genetics and the law of unintended consequences (or, ten rose bushes, reviewed)

I have a number of longposts in the backlog, including updates on a number of garden improvement projects I undertook over the winter, but I kept putting off posting them because there kept being Horrors. However, spring is here - in California anyway - and plants wait for no one.

Over the winter of 2025, as a coping mechanism for the aforementioned Horrors, I got really into roses. Because of who I am as a person, deciding what roses I wanted to buy also made me feel obliged to reconstruct the history of rose breeding, just to make sense of the teeming confusion of the tens of thousands of named rose varieties. Humans have been raising roses for food, medicine, and beauty for untold centuries, and so they've really grown up with us. The history of the development of roses, it turns out, is the history of the development of humanity in miniature.

This post has it all: history, some light phylogeny discussion, material analysis of English folk ballads, a conceptual framework for understanding how different kinds of roses vary and why, a #haul breakdown of what bare-root roses I got and what I thought of them, and some philosophical musings on what it means for an organism to be subjected to a long-term selective breeding process, to be remade wholly in the image of human desire. All that, and pictures of roses, under the cut.

My general region of California is considered to have a good climate for roses, much good may it do us. It never gets too hot or too cold, so they essentially never go out of season, and even though our winters are wet, the rest of the year is fairly dry. This is absolutely critical, because the main problem that makes garden roses hard to grow is fungal disease. Modern roses are incredibly susceptible to fungal diseases, which are caused, roughly, by Damp. This has typically been combated with toxic sprays (though there are now less-toxic options) and aggressive pruning regimens.

Needless to say, this is a ridiculous fucking problem for a plant to have. California natives, by comparison, hate irrigation - they have a natural life cycle involving being dry in summer and wet in winter, like California itself, so if you grow them in a climate resembling their natural range, without too much added water, they will be mostly OK. Roses, as far as I can tell, actually hate all water, including rain and humidity, which is much worse because gardeners do not control the weather. If it rains too often after, say, noon, the rose's leaves might get wet, fail to dry off, get a fungal disease, and die. If there is too much fog, or it is humid, as it is in most of the country in the summer, the rose's leaves might get wet &c. If you have a sprinkler system - you get the idea.

Fungal disease can also weaken roses and make them more prone to insect infestations. This is bad because modern garden roses are, without any help from The Weather, already incredibly prone to infestations from aphids, mites, beetles, and a mite-borne disease undescriptively called "rose rosette disease", which produces a habitus that I can only describe as "rose bush eldritch horror".

Now, this may all have you asking one question. Probably, that question is "why are you so obsessed with a plant that wants so badly to die?" I will not be answering this question today. Instead, I will be answering a different question, which is "Why do modern garden roses suck so bad?"

Now, if roses are subject to some manner of curse, then it isn't a family curse, phylogenically speaking. Roses - genus Rosa species extremely miscellaneous - are a member of the family Rosaceae, which contains a massive number of useful and delightful plants. It is possibly the most economically important family of plants next to the brassicas. The rose family brings us not just roses, but apples, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, peaches, apricots, and almonds. And the wild rose, untouched by human efforts, is a lot like a raspberry, actually.

Its flowers have only five petals, in pink or white. It’s got thorny stems that form thickets, and oval (or, technically, lanceolate) leaves with lightly serrated edges. Its flowers are fragrant, which is an adaptation to their long and necessary coexistence with pollinators and other insects - fragrance serves as a chemical signal for insects to "come here" or "go away", depending. The wild rose is hardy, like all wild plants, tolerant of various environmental problems that would kill a garden rose: shade, salt, normal levels of ambient insect and fungal disease pressure, drought, being consistently rained on in the afternoon or evening. It may reproduce asexually from suckers - strong shoots from near the base of the plant - and this makes it able to withstand browsing pressure from e.g. deer. (Put a pin in that.) It also can reproduce in the normal way, by having its flowers pollinated and forming seeds, which are borne in prominent reddish-orange fruits called "hips".

This is not a rose I bought, but here’s Rosa gymnocarpa, a California native rose. It’s a wood rose, so it’s shade-tolerant, and it’s often found in redwood forests specifically, so it tolerates relatively dry soil and very acidic soil.

Honorable mention: Rosa gymnocarpa (wood rose)

Source: Calscape

A raspberry plant in flower, for comparison. Source

The wild rose has another trait, which may be surprising to those who have only ever seen garden roses: it blooms once, usually in the summer. This is typical of flowers, which almost always have a season, for the exact same reason fresh fruit has a season. Flowering plants are on a tight schedule: they need to finish up their blooming, so they can set fruit, so they can get their seeds out before winter, in case the frost kills them off. And mostly we’re used to that: tulips are for spring, so you don't expect a tulip to make a second showing in fall, or to flower continuously throughout the summer. But roses have been bred to do this, and have done it for centuries, for so long we barely remember what it was like when "roses blooming" was a time of year, an event.

It's possible that for most of human history, roses were all the more treasured for being fleeting, which simply isn't an aspect of how we moderns understand roses. I am constantly subjected to traditional ballads at home, both in English and German, so I am very aware that multiple Child ballads mention roses as a way of placing the events of the ballad at a particular time of year. In 'Lady Isobel and the Elf-Knight', a song traditionally associated with May Day, one version of the chorus references the events as occurring 'as the rose is blown'. And at the start of 'Tam Lin', the protagonist meets her fairy lover while plucking a double rose, is "laid down among... the roses red" by him, and finishes the ballad on Halloween night heavily pregnant with his child. The course of the ballad is inextricably intertwined with the course of the seasons, and the bloom of roses is synonymous with early summer. (There's so much symbolism in 'Tam Lin', but especially around roses. Can I interest you in tam-lin.org at this time?)

European religious literature even uses "a rose e'er blooming" as a purely figurative phrase, something impossible and magical enough to be a metonym for the Virgin Mary - but in the modern era, most garden roses are ever-blooming. The perpetual-blooming rose is not the natural state of the rose plant, but a kind of technology that had to be developed. And I don't know, I just think that's neat.

So what have we learned? The wild rose is: once-blooming, tough, possibly shade-tolerant depending on species, very thorny, bearing simple pink or white five-petaled flowers, that are fragrant, pollinator-friendly, and produce fruit readily enough. In short, a practical, normal sort of plant.

The garden rose is…not that. There’s no other way to put this: the modern garden rose is the wild rose, but bimboified.

Now, in case today is your first day on the Internet - well, first of all, welcome, it’s bad here - but secondly, bimboification is a niche fetish where someone is transformed into a hypersexualized version of themselves that is also very stupid. Plant domestication is obviously analogous. I didn’t originate this joke; in fact, I reblogged a joke like this just last week.

Roses are like this but even more so. Like, wheat is clearly bimboified. Its sexual parts (seeds) have been remade, swollen to ludicrous proportions, and wheat is probably worse at being a plant than wild grasses. But we created modern wheat from wild grass because it was more useful that way, and wheat could in theory survive and spread without human cultivation. Roses are Like That purely because we wanted to make them a more perfect decorative object. Centuries of intensive selection pressure for appearance have rendered roses useless as an independent plant: they are so disease-prone they need extensive intervention to even survive, and they are often physically incapable of propagating themselves - one of the basic features of plants! - without human aid. That’s plant bimboification.

Source: Heirloom Roses. This one is called 'Oranges 'n' Lemons. Hardly seems like the same plant!

Here are just a few examples, of what we've done to roses. Humans love rose petals - eating them, distilling them into perfume, smelling them, just looking at them - so the garden rose has massive flowers that are so stuffed with petals that pollinators cannot get at their centers, rendering the rose incapable of reproducing except possibly with the help of a human equipped with a paintbrush. Humans love bright colors, so modern roses come in every color their natural pigments allow. Garden roses are often - though not always - less thorny than their wild cousins, because thorns are inconvenient to humans, and so have been somewhat bred out.

And what’s just as important is what was bred out of wild roses in the process of becoming modern roses - by accident. As mentioned above, modern roses are often useless to pollinators, and, not unrelatedly, can’t reproduce without human help. They often lose their fragrance, if not specifically bred for it. They are very susceptible to disease, because gardeners can keep alive, through sheer stubbornness, plants that natural selection would have culled. Likewise, they need full sun where many wild roses can get by even in the shade of big evergreens, and they can't tolerate nearly as much cold, heat, or salt exposure as their wild relatives.

This 'use it or lose it' thing, by the way, is a general principle of selective processes like plant breeding, or like evolution. If you have two independent traits, A and B, and you select hard for A, then B is likely to gradually drop out of the population, simply because the subset of A carriers that also have B is likely to be small. It's pure statistics. (It essentially is a human-created population bottleneck.) The more intense and ruthless the selection pressure, the stronger the effect. Evolution cares a lot about seed production and hardly at all about color, so wild roses are plain but make enormous rose hips; humans like beautiful roses the color of sunsets, and are indifferent to seed production, so modern roses don’t make hips at all. The failure to select for eventually becomes an implicit selection pressure against.

(Highly-bred organisms are thus less, I guess, well-rounded genetically even before you get to issues of inbreeding, and if you assume there is no biological link between your selected-for traits and other ridealong traits, e.g. domestication syndrome. Genetics is complicated!)

One adapted wild-type trait that - I speculate - was not bred out, due to its direct usefulness to humans, was the ability of roses to grow back vigorously from having leaves or branches removed. This is, it seems to me, an adaptation to herbivore browsing - if you are a rose with minimal regrowth ability, and a deer chews on half your canes, it’s curtains for you. But humans also fully remove half of the canes of their garden roses every winter - it’s critical to controlling the fungal disease that so plagues them. Specifically, pruning improves airflow through the plant, which evaporates the water that keeps falling on the leaves from the sky. (You know. The rain, that roses both hate and need to live.) In some sense, we are acting as caretakers here, shaping the plant in inscrutable ways for its own good. But to the plant, we are basically deer: just another in a long line of animals that want to steal its leaves. Unbelievable! It needs those! Fuck you too, buddy: here’s a faceful of thorns.

Truly, a tale as old as time.

This brings me to my first actual rose review, a kind of bridge between wild roses and the world of cultivated roses.

#1: Rosa rugosa, probably "Hansa"

Source: the author's yard.

This is a sucker - a vigorous young ground-level shoot - from an unnamed rosebush from my mother's house. I say "probably 'Hansa'" because we have no idea what this actually is, only that it is a rugosa hybrid, purchased from an unknown nursery in the Midwest sometime during the Bush administration.

'Hybrid rugosas' are crosses between garden-type roses and a wild rose species called Rosa rugosa, which is native to much of Asia. This particular rose bush has many traits carried over from its wild parent: it's violently fragrant, a glorious sweet-spicy combo that smells to me like childhood and home; it has wrinkly leaves (characteristic of Rosa rugosa in particular); its stems are practically coated in prickles; and it's quite tolerant of shade, drought, and salt (Rosa rugosa is a beach rose).

The main virtue evinced by this rose, derived from its wild parent, is the same reason that it is still here in my garden: it is extremely difficult to kill. My mother, after hearing me say I wanted this specific rose bush at my house the same way it had been at my childhood home, dug up a sucker from her instance, put it in a bag with some wet dirt, carried it by hand on a multi-hour cross-country plane flight, and handed it off to me. Once I received it, I stuck it in a pot, because I was ripping up my lawn and had nowhere to plant it, and mostly forgot about it, because I was busy ripping up my entire lawn. It lost its leaves suspiciously early in the fall. ("That's not good," my mother said, over FaceTime, brow furrowed. "Are the rest of your roses doing that?")

But as the saying doesn't go, "where there's green cambium, there's hope", and I continued to take care of it throughout the winter. I eventually even remembered to put it in the ground. It is now March, and in defiance of the mockery of certain judgemental housemates, who said things like "why do you have a stick in a pot?" and "it's giving 'dead', my guy", this "stick" has now decided to become a rosebush, and has a grand total of (approximately) twenty-five leaves.

Like I said: extremely difficult to kill. It is currently planted 10-ish feet from the base of a redwood tree, a tough environment where some hardy garden-style roses have nonetheless been known to thrive. Given that its resurrection has occurred entirely while it was planted under the redwood, it doesn't seem too mad about its environment.

Review: holy shit, it’s alive???

#2: Zéphirine Drouhin, the "old garden rose"

Source: Heirloom Roses

Rosarians have conceived of many groupings of garden roses, based on known ancestry, phenotype, genetic studies, and Vibes, but one major breakpoint is those bred before 1867, the "old garden roses", and after 1867, the "modern garden roses".

The old garden roses were derived mostly from ancient European and Middle Eastern stock, which had themselves been created from wild roses centuries prior. For example, this is Rosa x alba, an ancient European rose strain; it was used as the heraldic badge of the medieval House of York during the English conflict known as the War of the Roses.

Source: not mine

Some of these roses are perpetual-blooming, a trait introduced as late as the eighteenth century, and which is entirely due to trade contact with China: as far as I can tell, the genes for strong reblooming only come from the Chinese rose-breeding tradition, which was itself centuries old by that point. So the modern Western concept of perpetual-blooming roses as the default kind of rose - like so many other aspects of modernity - is a direct result of Europeans cribbing from everybody else.

Interestingly, France was a major center for rose development during the early modern period. You can see it in the way old garden roses are named: overwhelmingly after some eminent madame or monsieur. This is probably connected to the fact that Josephine, Napoleon Bonaparte’s empress, was a rose fiend: she had two hundred and fifty new varieties of rose to be brought to her gardens at Château de Malmaison, which was probably pretty much all the named varieties of rose that existed then, and many of which were new to European cultivation at that time. Again, this represented a massive inflow of rose genes that were previously restricted to other countries or continents entirely. Inextricably, these gardens also represent the proceeds of early modern global trade, and of empire: Napoleon, on campaign abroad, himself sent her hundreds of specimens of flowering plants, and the French navy confiscated plants and seeds from ships captured and sea and sent them to her.

Anyway, Zéphirine Drouhin, created at the end of the "old garden rose" period and named for some now-forgotten madame or mademoiselle, is highly fragrant - one of the few roses said to really perfume the air - with a vibrant but old-fashioned color palette. (Apricot and yellow roses were also characteristic of the Chinese rose gene pool, and so were significantly less common in old garden roses.) Zéphirine Drouhin is also thornless, a rare trait that we nonetheless see in some old-fashioned garden roses, and a few modern garden roses as well.

Old garden roses have a variable but generally good level of disease resistance. Zéphirine Drouhin in particular, gets something of a bad rap for poor disease resistance; English rose breeder David Austin Roses says, tactfully, that it "prefers warmer climates" (versus, one must assume, rainy England) and that "controlling disease can be a problem". By this you should understand them to mean that it is a whiny little pissbaby that constantly gets blackspot, a diva that will defoliate at the drop of a hat (or the drop of, uh, water).

However, unlike certain other newer roses I will mention later, I have found Zéphirine Drouhin to be pretty healthy so far. I received this rose, like many in this post, "bare root", basically a stick, dormant in a bag of wood shavings. Upon being planted in a part-sun area, it has leafed out with only a scattering of aphids to show in terms of disease.

Review: So far, so good. Looking forward to the fragrance.

#3 and 4: 'Mister Lincoln' and 'Fragrant Cloud', the hybrid tea brothers

Remember how I mentioned that 1868 is the breakpoint between "old garden roses" and "modern garden roses"? That year marked the invention of a new type of rose, the 'hybrid tea', that is in some sense THE rose, the ARCHETYPE of a rose. If you ask someone who knows nothing about roses to draw 'a rose' - if you look up clipart of a rose - a hybrid tea rose is what you'll get.

Source: Star Nursery

This is Mister Lincoln, and although it was developed as late as the 1960s, it has the classic hybrid tea rose form. Hybrid teas have a very distinctive shape, described as "high-pointed", with a spiral of unfurling petals that curl at the edges, and they're borne singly on long stems, making them great for cutting and putting into vases and bouquets. They are not always strongly fragrant, and they are not generally very disease-resistant. They come in a very wide variety of colors, intense and subtle. They are reblooming.

Hybrid teas were developed by another East-meets-West cross, when the Chinese tea roses, freshly imported from Guangzhou in the early 19th century, were bred with the old garden roses. Tea roses have the same iconic form as the hybrid teas; they have those unique, pastel shades that were previously quite absent from European rose stocks; they smell like a fresh cup of tea. All these traits they impart to hybrid teas. Hybrid teas have been very popular ever since, and have been subject to a great deal of selective breeding for color and form.

Hybrid teas don't generally spark joy, to me. I find the 'cartoon rose' shape kind of twee, honestly. And the reputation for lack of disease tolerance puts me off. But I heard Mister Lincoln was incredibly fragrant, and that drew me in. Likewise Fragrant Cloud (1967), which also has the charming feature of being a violent neon coral that is allegedly very difficult to photograph.

Source: Heirloom Roses

“It'll be fine," I thought. "How much fungal disease can it get? It's not like it's humid here."

Never again. My trust is destroyed; fuck hybrid teas.

please, my son, he is very sick

This is my poor Mister Lincoln, planted from bare-root in mid-December. It has three different fungal diseases, and also an aphid infestation I can't seem to get it to shake. It looks like one of those diagrams of a liver in a medical textbook that has fatty liver and cirrhosis and liver cancer all at once, just so you can see what all the diseases look like. This is a rose that has every problem! No other rose in this flower bed comes close to having every problem! 'Munstead Wood' is also a modern garden rose (though from a very different lineage - see my review below) and it has no fungal diseases and not a single aphid!

Well, maybe the other hybrid tea I bought is doing better... well, nope, it rained last week and Fragrant Cloud has powdery mildew.

Review: Come on, man.

#5 Unidentified ‘sunset’ rose

I didn’t buy these roses; they came with my house. As a consequence, I have no idea what they are, but I am now intimately familiar with their traits, and I think they are very indicative of both the high and low points of modern garden roses.

On the surface level, the fact that these rose bushes are still with us is an impressive proof of their persistence under adversity. When I bought the house, these roses were being choked to death. Lily-of-the-nile had been planted way too close to them, and then permitted to grow unchecked and undivided for many years; their roots were completely infiltrated and surrounded with lily roots. The lily roots had also damaged the irrigation lines, which were dribbling uncontrolled amounts of water into the shared root zone. So when I excavated these roses, the whole area smelled strongly of rot, with visible mold throughout; the roots were fully wet even in the heat of August. The roses were also infested with blackspot, not surprisingly. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was too little, too late.

But when they finally got some drainage, some direct sunlight, and some relief from the brutal root competition, they did start growing back, and even blooming. Come winter, I pruned hard, defoliated, and applied neem oil consistently. And they’ve made a comeback!

Source: these blooms are actually my roses.

They bloom, and they’re beautiful. They do this ombre thing, where the buds are bright yellow and as they open they go from yellow, to orange, and finally to red.

The growth is fairly vigorous, with no powdery mildew no matter how rainy it gets. But their foliage definitely suffers from blackspot, and occasional rose rust; the spores are probably ambiently present in the soil now, and they can’t quite seem to defend themselves, even with ample help from organic fungicides like neem oil.

They also have no fragrance. They smell like nothing. And that’s the standard modern garden rose in a nutshell, I think: beautiful color and form, shaky disease resistance, little fragrance. It’s a little sad, honestly.

Review: Okay, this one is really pretty, actually.

Interlude: Pesticides and the law of unintended consequences

So, yeah, you can sort of see how roses got a reputation for being picky divas. I can only imagine how bad this sort of thing must get in places that get (gasp!) rain or humidity in the summer.

Now, having created plants that are too disease-ridden to live, rose-lovers came up with practical and effective solutions to the disease problem they created. For the past century or so, the go-to fix for our increasingly disease-prone rose population has been chemicals: regular applications of synthetic insecticide and fungicide sprays, as well as plenty of fertilizer and herbicide to feed the roses and kill any competing weeds.

However, recall the theme of this post: the law of unintended consequences. In agriculture, the development of modern pesticides and fertilizers has been genuinely miraculous; the Green Revolution is estimated to have saved a billion people from starvation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Saving a billion people! Can you even begin to conceive of what it would be like to save a billion people, even grapple with the moral weight of that act? I know I can't; the number is simply too large for our moral intuitions to handle, I think. So I'm hesitant to bad-mouth pesticides and fertilizers too much.

But they do have massive downsides. Chemical fertilizers leach into the groundwater and cause algal blooms that make entire bodies of water go anoxic, rendering them uninhabitable to fish and the rest of the aquatic food chain. Insecticides are probably responsible for colony collapse, which endangers the pollinators that we rely on for our food supply.

And, well, even if you don't give a shit about the natural world - you are a part of the natural world. You are an animal, with all the frailty that implies. Our bodies use many of the same ancient metabolic pathways as insects and plants; the majority of your DNA is shared with a banana. And because you are an animal, it is very difficult indeed to create an insecticide that will poison other animals without poisoning you too, at least a little. Herbicides are somehow still worse, despite the more distant biological relationship between humans and dandelions: Roundup, for instance, is linked to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which has led to Monsanto paying out massive legal settlements to cancer patients who used their products.

So if we can't grow roses without coating them in poison, maybe we should just… not do that? Go back to growing super-hardy nearly-wild roses like rugosas, forgoing forever the elegance and sublime color of a modern rose?

Give up this? ‘Glowing Peace’, Heirloom Roses

Not so fast! Maybe this technological problem has a technological solution. If we bred roses so that they sucked, maybe we should just not do that! Make different roses! Make roses that don't suck!

#6-#8, ‘Ebb Tide', 'Eden', and 'Lavender Crush': roses that don't suck

Over the last fifty years, people have become increasingly aware of the impacts of modern lifestyles upon our health and the health of the planet and its ecosystems. So maybe this has made the public less willing to buy roses that need to be treated constantly with toxic sprays. Or maybe it's just that growing disease-prone roses is an enormous pain in the ass. Spray, prune, spray, defoliate, fertilize, spray, fertilize, spray, water - but not too much! Oops, powdery mildew. Defoliate and spray some more.

So the genetic health of the newer varieties of garden roses is greatly improved. The two hybrid teas I struggled with above were bred in the 1960s. All the named rose varieties in this section were bred since the 1990s or later: Eden in 1997, Ebb Tide in 2004, and Lavender Crush, the baby of the group, was introduced in 2016. All of them are vibrantly healthy and quite vigorous; Ebb Tide and Eden are shade-tolerant too, and Lavender Crush is allegedly very winter-hardy. After a scant two months in the ground, they've started to put out flower buds. And they keep some of the glorious color and form of older roses. Look at them!

Source: Heirloom Roses.

I don't mean to say all 20th century roses are bad and disease-ridden. I also have purchased 'New Dawn' (introduced 1930), due to it being the fifteen-dollarest rose at the Home Depot. (My toxic trait is that I am an absolute sucker for a good deal. I don't go into TJ Maxx anymore; it's too dangerous.) 'New Dawn' has all the ancestral, throwback traits I laud here: shade-tolerance, fragrance, disease resistance. It even brings in the pollinators! But it seems to me there's been a noticeable uptick in the quality of newer rose introductions, particularly when it comes to disease resistance. I'm not wired into the professional rose world to know what that is; I'm Literally Just Some Guy. But it's a good trend.

Review: I am so excited for the buds to open, you have no idea.

#9: 'Double Knockout': the 'landscape' rose

Wait, no, I take that back. These roses have too much ease of care. Put some back.

The Knockout rose has one virtue: you cannot kill it with an axe. Literally.

This rose was planted right at the foot of a redwood tree in my garden, because the previous owner of my house was an idiot. This is a terrifically bad setup for roses and redwoods: redwoods acidify the soil, and suck up water and nutrients aggressively, leaving little for surrounding plants, and of course they provide dense shade. Roses hate the acid, the dry and low-nutrient soil, and the shade; this plant never bloomed all last summer. For their part, the redwoods hate having anything planted in their inner root zone - their roots are relatively shallow for such a large tree. This is not a good situation for anyone, so I hacked this rose back to the ground, dug out as much of the root ball as I dared, and in my naivete thought that would be the end of it. Well, it has grown back. Now I am faced with the dilemma of whether to risk root injury to my redwood tree, or just let the rose be, bloomless as it is. Probably the latter is better for the redwood tree, on the whole. Maybe it’ll get choked out if I don’t water it? Anyone’s guess, really.

The category of landscape roses is a 2000s invention. The first Knockout rose was introduced in 2000 after years of intensive selective breeding for being easy-care, free-flowering, and disease-resistant; the similar Drift line was the product of an amateur rose breeder in 2006 to much the same ends. Landscape roses are so named because instead of being demanding prima donnas suited only to those who love roses enough to take on the Rose Tasks, they’re just another pretty shrub in the landscape.

And I will say this for them: in that bad, fungal spore–inundated flower bed I mentioned, my landscape roses (plus Munstead Wood, see below) are notably free of fungal disease.

Also, I think that's leaf tissue proliferating at the center of the bottom left bloom?? A rare but harmless growth disorder of flowering plants.

This comes at a cost, of course, at least if you’re a snob like me. I don’t think landscape roses are very interesting-looking - though of course they come in a wide variety of colors, the better to coordinate with the color scheme of your house! - and they are generally, tragically, without fragrance. While I can’t complain about anything that gets US gardeners to use less pesticides, they are barely roses to me. They are, in fact, the closest roses come to being an inanimate object, a decorative thing you can just plonk down in your garden wherever, like a tacky concrete statue. They’re a commodity; the enchantment is gone. I wouldn’t rip them out where they’re well-sited, but I sure wouldn’t plant more.

Now, this is incredibly mean to people who love landscape roses, but here goes. I’m reminded of a thread from r/Ceanothus, the California native gardening subreddit, that is now burned into my brain. OP asks for a native shrub recommendation, but not just any native shrub. OP wants a native shrub that will grow very tall, but also stay very narrow - 1’ wide in places. OP needs a native shrub that will grow thick and vigorous, to block out their view of the neighbors. OP needs this thing to be evergreen; OP presumably wants low water inputs. And OP needs all this, in a shrub that will grow in full shade.

In fairness, OP was polite about it, and this is a common problem for urban gardeners. The dark, untended canyon between buildings is a very common phenomenon in Californian cities. I too have a narrow, shaded side yard containing a tiny strip of crappy, gravelly dirt, that I’d love to grow something in: how do you think I found this post? Dear reader, I am very much at that devil's sacrament.

And the ceanothusheads of r/Ceanothus tried gamely. But one commenter replied with something that fully changed how I think about gardening:

Source: Reddit

Sometimes, what you need is not a living organism, with its own needs, that will change over time in ways you may not endorse, that interacts with the world around it. Sometimes what you really want is a man-made object. Sometimes what you want to grow in your tall, narrow, lightless, bone-dry side yard, for your privacy requirements, is a fence. And that’s what I think about landscape roses. In Mediterranean and desert climates, as long as there's enough sun, you can always fall back on planting a succulent. But not every location can grow succulents outdoors year-round. In temperate climates, landscape roses could probably be successfully replaced with a particularly attractive boulder. Or, if what you want is a smart-looking, easy-care hedge: consider a fence.

Review: I’d maybe rather plant a fence a succulent.

#10: 'Munstead Wood': the old English rose, reloaded

‘Munstead Wood’, my final acquisition, is a credit to another major modern rose breeding program, this time out of England: David Austin Roses. The main idea of the David Austin rose-breeding project seems to be combining the particular charms of traditional English old garden roses - their fragrance, their romantic, sophisticated forms - with the virtues of modern roses - continuous blooming, a wide range of highly Instagrammable colors - plus disease-tolerance that twenty-first century gardeners now expect. And judging by their singular impact on the contemporary rose market, they seem to have been very successful at that goal. The Reddit reviews are glowing, the forums are abuzz for their hottest new releases (Dannahue restock wen?), their most popular roses are often sold out, and other rose sellers have catalog filters for 'English shrub roses' that allegedly share the looks and fragrance of David Austin's best.

From the author's camera roll. 'I can't believe it's not Dave [sic] Austin!'

Their marketing is also very slick. Their website is very informative, with separate filters for various kinds of roses you might want to buy ('Best for fragrance', 'For a shady spot', 'Thornless or nearly so'), all the rose varieties have literary or historical names or else are named after charming British locations, and are all beautifully photographed in their idyllic show garden, and the prose is carefully engineered to incite lust in the winter-weary gardener. They even do periodic drops of new roses, like a sneaker company.

So last November, I allowed myself to buy one David Austin rose, 'Munstead Wood'.

Source: David Austin Roses

'Munstead Wood' is really gorgeous, I think, blooming in a deep burgundy color. The website claims the fragrance is "Old Rose, with fruity notes of blackberry, blueberry and damson".

An interesting fact about 'Munstead Wood' is that it is actually region-locked. David Austin Roses sells roses in both the US and UK (and maybe other places; sorry I am so American), but the climate of the UK has been changing, with more extreme weather events and even more rain. And you know how it is with roses and the rain. 'Munstead Wood' was no longer able to thrive, and has packed up its little rucksack and gone out to explore the world as a lone vagabond - specifically, America.

So how is it doing here? Great, actually. It may have been rained on every day for the past week, but at least it's not in England, I guess.

'Munstead Wood' has no fungal disease. It looks like it's never even heard of fungal disease. I'm pretty impressed! I can't actually tell you whether the roses are good, but this is a pretty good plant, which is a good start.

Review: I'm holding myself back from buying more David Austin roses right now. God help me, I have two more open full- to part-sun spots in my garden right now.

David Austin, "Lady of Shalott". Call me the Lady of Shalott the way I'm languishing in my tower, gazing only at the mere reflections of the real world (stuck inside, looking at my phone, because of the rain) and am about to throw myself in the river with longing (to be out in the garden)

#this was mostly written like a week and a half ago #delighted to report it has now stopped raining :)#gardening #plantblr #roses #botany #...kind of. not a botanist i just like reading about it #longpost #original content #(i hesitate to call this an 'effortpost': aside from spending an hour on wikipedia trying to graph out the various old garden roses #and their relationships with the species roses that spawned them - it just kind of happened.)

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tokiwarcube · 7 months ago

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Uhh almost christmas so.. baking cookies/gingerbreads with Dethband and CHARLES, which make best cookie and which fucked up the cooke and which burned the kitchen

Cute!!! Anyone who follows me elsewhere knows I'm infamous for failing to get holiday posts out on-time, so I'm rather happy about getting something done ahead of time for once. Enjoy! <3

Charles Foster Offdensen

Charles is very attentive to even the smallest of details. You have to be, in his position — even disregarding the whole prophecy thing, his life is full of little things to micromanage and keep track of. Which is really what baking is, right? Perfect measurements, exact timing, sequential orders… which means he should be a natural at it, right?

Well, you’d be wrong.

He doesn’t burn down the kitchen mind you, but his baking adventures are… lackluster. You think the dough senses his lack of passion for the craft, because every time you manage to drag him into the kitchen to bake with you the results are just… average. Not that it’s a boring process, by any means — you still have your fun together! Chatting, dancing around him to grab an ingredient or two, swaying together before the timer goes off, sneaking a kiss here and there… It’s a fun winter project, even if the fruits of your labor are more run of the mill.

Nathan Explosion

Baking is not brutal, and truth be told, it kind of irks him that he’s so good at it. As a kid, he’d sit on the counter while his mom baked various treats for the neighborhood at Christmas time, and he supposes some of that must have sunk into his developing brain. He’s not gonna get in the kitchen unprompted, but if you want to bake with him, he won’t say no.

He’s not big on the actual decorating part… at least, not at first. Once you introduce the idea of making your creations a bit more metal, he gets really into it. The glasses are on, and he’s got a quarter of a million toothpicks out to help perfect his lines and sprinkles.

You’re snacking on decapitated gingerbread men and disembowled reindeer for weeks.

Pickles the Drummer

Pickles doesn’t bake, he gets baked.

Seriously, don’t let him near the kitchen. Ever. Best case scenario, you get a charred husk out of the oven. Worst case scenario… Well, it’s a good thing Charles didn’t spare any expenses for the sprinkler system. You don’t know how he does it, really — one minute things are fine, and then suddenly there’s just a mountain of flames erupting from 5 different ovens. You didn’t even think you had more than one on, but that doesn’t really matter when, again, there’s fire.

You’ll have fun decorating together — his gingerbread men are very charming, in a fucked-up kind of way — but that’s about the limit of his baking prowess. You can absolutely make a day of it — he’s a delight when icing your creations — but again, do not let him near the oven.

Skwisgaar Skwigelf

He’s such a perfectionist that you think he’d be great at baking but… he has a bit of a careless streak, and this is one of those moments where that really shines through. He’s a decent enough cook, but he can’t bake for shit. It frustrates him a bit, actually. His creations always turn out a little bit off — not enough for them to be inedible, but definitely not up to his standards. Do not let him lead on the actual chemistry side of baking, he will crash out.

That’s not to say he doesn’t want to bake with you, not by any means! It’s just better to (subtly) give him some instructions, or better yet, stick him with mixing, or decorating. His ego will thank you, even if he doesn’t.

The most likely to turn your baking adventures into scene out of a Hallmark movie — he’s a quiet lover of fun romance, and is prone to pulling you into a dance when the mood strikes. And we all know he’s been saving up his one-liners for today.

Toki Wartooth

Oh, this is his favorite time of year! Everything about it is just magical to him — he never really got to have the whole movie-magic Christmas growing up, so believe me when I say he takes every opportunity to bring those dreams to life. Toki’s a little too scatterbrained to actually bake solo — raw excitement and a little bit of undiagnosed ADHD draws him in too many directions at once, to where recipes fly into the back of his mind and get forgotten. He is, however, a wonderful assistant. And he’s an even better decorator!

They aren’t the picture-perfect Pinterest treats with immaculate iced lines and sprinkled sugar, but they’re perfect to the two of you. There’s a very palpable passion and love that radiates from them, and that’s what makes them so magic. And it was even easier than you thought to find diabetic-friendly recipes — insulin-resistance be damned, he will be indulging in some Christmas cheer.

And yes, he does make a little gingerbread family of you and the rest of the band. He almost immediately breaks gingerbread-Skwisgaar’s head clean off to have as a snack. And yes, he does leave his gingerbread body in the pile when it comes to leaving cookies out for the boys. Is it a threat? Is it just Toki being Toki? The world may never know.

Do be warned, he is a menace when it comes to stealing batter. And if you’re not careful, you’re liable to get attacked with some icing when you’re not looking. Stay on your guard.

William Murderface

A lot of people assume he’s a shit baker — and he doesn’t really dispute that. He’s got a bit of a complex about it, and feels like it doesn’t fit his image. But in reality, he’s damn good at it. He doesn’t measure anything, and has never once pulled up a recipe, and yet… His creations are up there with the best of ‘em. He’ll deny his proficiency to anyone else, but he actually takes a lot of pride in it.

Don’t question him when he’s in the kitchen — he’s gonna suggest the most off-the-wall concoction, and it’s going to sound horrific, but when you actually try it? Divine. His decorating skills leave a bit to be desired, but who cares about presentation when the sweets are this damn good?

You make a good duo in the kitchen — he’ll do the chemistry, you’ll do the art. Do keep an eye on his hands though — he’s going to be covered in flour and batter and God knows what else, and he refuses to deal with that alone (despite banning you from actually cooking.) Wear a shirt you don’t care about, if you don’t want big white handprints on your Sunday’s best.

#metalocalypse x reader #dethklok x reader #nathan explosion x reader #skwisgaar skwigelf x reader #toki wartooth x reader #pickles the drummer x reader #william murderface x reader #charles foster offdensen x reader #metalocalypse toki x reader #metalocalypse skwisgaar x reader #metalocalypse pickles x reader #metalocalypse nathan x reader #metalocalypse murderface x reader #metalocalypse charles x reader

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hellishjoel · 2 years ago

Text

blue collar man

4.1k / joel miller x f!reader

← masterlist

Summary: Your boyfriend Joel is up to his ears busy with his contracting business. Tired and sore, he comes home to learn you’ve made the rest of the night all about him.

Warnings/Information/Heads-Up: Fluff, mentions of sex (but no actual sex), mentioned age difference, fluffy fluff fluff because blue collar man Joel Miller deserves it! He’s running a biz-ness!

A/N: based on this lovely request! I hope I could bring your request to life, I breezed through it so fast because I love him, he’s baby.

“Thank you for today.” He murmured into the pillow. You barely hear it, but even if you didn’t, you feel it in the way he holds your hand and keeps your arm settled around him. “Thank you for everything you do, Joel.” You whispered back, your forehead on the top slope of his back as you take in the smell of his body wash combined with the lotion, his body falling slumped in your protective hold.

Joel had found a lot of success with Miller Contracting over the summer months. Business was booming and his early mornings until late nights were dedicated to working on multiple projects to get things done on time for his clients. Joel worked on referrals mostly, so when he finished a client’s remodeled hill country home in late winter, the client had raved over Joel’s professionalism and hard work to their friends and now he had a list of upcoming projects.

Truthfully, you didn’t know much about contractors until you started dating Joel. You quickly began to understand the vastness of his duties. One day he could be working on home renovation projects where he was doing demolition like removing the walls or floors, electrical and plumbing work, flooring installation, even down to the last coat of paint.

Other opportunities were commercial like on a small office building downtown where he did site preparation, set the foundation, worked on the beams and columns, all the way up to finishing the roof. Whatever he couldn’t do himself that was a bit more specialized, he hired subcontractors to work on like heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.

What he hated the most was landscaping projects. He’d have to do the design layout of a large backyard garden and plant trees and flowers or work on seeding grass if it was a particularly hot Texas summer. Then he would add irrigation systems like sprinklers, pathways for people to walk on, pergolas for outdoor hosting, finishing it off with pretty and unique outdoor light fixtures. God forbid the client wanted a pond.

“Do you know how annoying koi fish are? They just… stare at ya while you’re tryin’ to work.”

You had grown to love the handy man that Joel was. Before you were moved in to his place, your shitty little apartment needed so much love that your asshole landlord never took the time to come and fix. But Joel would. That was his form of romance. He didn’t bring you flowers or chocolates on the first dates. Joel was replacing your leaky shower head and tightening your jiggly door knobs. He also managed to match the paint color on your walls so he could cover up the scrapes he made after he railed you into your mattress so hard that the frame made a few chips.

You were so happy to see his business getting the high recognition it deserved, however, Joel was taking quite the beating from it. You could tell by the way he slinked back into the house at the end of the night, his frame hunched over and walking with a slight limp.

He was sore, muscles aching and knees screaming at him. His joints were swollen by the end of the day and his sweaty, sticky skin ached for a refreshing shower.

The hardest part was always trying to shut off his mind when he got home. He was already thinking about the next day. What didn’t get done on time, what shipments of supplies were expected, how the delays would set the project back. He needed a break.

“Can’t take time off right now, baby. I’ve got deadlines to meet.”

There was this one specific project that was giving him hell. He called it the Astor because it was on Astor street. Every night this week he had come home beyond late because of the problems with the Astor. First it was that the project was exceeding the client’s budget, so they were giving him grief about that. Then it was labor shortage stuff, not being able to get people out there which then in turn caused timeline delays. With the client out of the country most of the time, Joel was receiving little to no communication from the owner. He was fighting permit and regulatory issues with the city, every day it was something new that caused a headache behind his eyes.

His dedication was admirable, but you knew that him being so physically and mentally clouded wasn’t good for him or for Miller Contracting.

You didn’t know shit about contracting, but you did know Joel.

You had texted him earlier in the day to drop whatever he was working on no later than 5 o’clock in the evening. You never did that, never told him to leave work early. But the last thing he wanted was for him to come home and have you upset with him. That was worse than any project issue.

Tonight would be about Joel. Anything you could do to make the stress melt away, you would try.

Joel pushed open the front door once home, a heavy sigh leaving him as he closed the door back in place and set his lunch box and keys down on the entry table.

“Joel?” Your voice echoed from the kitchen.

“Hi, baby.” His voice was low from the lack of energy.

Joel slowly moved down on one knee, a heavy breath exiting through clench teeth as his kneecaps throbbed while he untied one boot, then the other. They were covered in dust even down to the creases, steel toe covers making his feet sore.

“Hey, how was your day?” You asked as you grabbed a dish towel to wipe your hands with before tossing it on the counter, greeting him halfway as he made his way through the living room.

You were up on your tippy toes for a kiss, not wanting him to have to bend over and exert himself. He hated when you treated him like an old man, but with this job, you always teased him that it was coming sooner rather than later.

He kept his hands to himself, knowing they were a bit greasy and sweaty. His overgrown beard hairs tickled your face as you peppered him with a few extra kisses, one of his eyebrows playfully raising.

“Was fine. Did you see what I texted you?” He asked as he looked down at you, watching as your fingers grabbed the hem of his shirt, helping lift it off his head.

“Mhm. The HVAC guys didn’t show up until noon even though you scheduled them for nine in the morning. Did you see I texted you back? Five hours ago.” Your teasing tone made him crack a smile.

Joel was bad at texting. Typical guy thing, typical older guy thing. He said he wouldn’t even have a phone if it wasn’t for work and if Sarah didn’t insist on how texting was the new way of communication. Even though you texted him ten minutes after his initial one, his phone was already back in his pocket and he had long forgotten about your conversation as he returned to his work day.

His response came out in a chortle, a heavy breath through his nose since he was too tired to chuckle.

“Sorry, baby. Just wanted to complain, I guess.” He said as he watched you fiddle with his Miller Contracting shirt that had a worn in hole by the neckline. He went to reach for it, wanting to toss it into the dirty clothes bin, but you were quick to hold it to your chest.

“I’ve got it.” You said as you went to give him a soft kiss to the open plane of his chest, smiling at the salt and pepper chest hair he was sporting. It looked so good on him. You walked off to the bedroom and did it yourself, grabbing him a fresh shirt for the rest of the evening, a pair of boxers, and his worn dark plaid pajama pants he liked.

Joel’s curiosity had gotten the better of him. A heavenly smell was drawing him into the kitchen, his eyes lighting up at the sight before him. You had green beans in a frying pan and a gravy softly bubbling in a sauce pan. Then in a skillet was the most perfect looking chicken fried steak, the coating coming to the perfect crisp. He pulled the oven handle open just an inch to see golden biscuits rising.

“I put clean clothes on the counter in the bathroom, go shower, handsome.” You said before returning to the kitchen, frowning as he found his dinner before you had a chance to plate it.

“Joel.” You playfully scolded, pinching at his hip. “You’re ruining your own surprise.” You teased as you shooed him out of the kitchen, hearing an audible grumble in his stomach. It made you sport a proud grin. It was his favorite meal, said it reminded him of his mom’s cooking growing up with Tommy.

“I’m making mashed potatoes, too.” You said as you drained the water the potatoes were soaking in, putting them in a new bowl and getting out some milk and butter.

“You’re makin’ me hungry.” He hummed with a small, tired smile as his hands came up loosely on your hips.

His hands on you instantly made you grin, gently shaking your head at him as his head came to rest by your own.

“You’re distractin’ me.” His low voice carrying the weight of his day.

“No, you’re distracting me.” You made clear as your elbow playfully dug into the core of his stomach.

“Go shower, please. You smell like drywall dust… and paint.”

He rolled his eyes with his smile still lingering.

“Yeah, okay. Thank you.” He said as his lips dropped down to place a sweet kiss of sincerity at the base of your neck, a shiver rolling up you as you let out a huff and returned your focus to your five-star meal.

You heard the water hit against the shower wall and his small radio crackled to life, finalizing the last touches to Joel’s favorite dinner.

Joel came back to the living room in the clothes you had set out for him, his hair slicked back wet from his shower. God, he looked so good.

“Here.” You handed him his plate, seeing his lips part in excitement. His stomach let out an audible rumble. He probably didn’t have a spare minute to eat his lunch today, poor thing.

The two of you settled on the couch, Joel expecting you to turn on one of your shows since a new episode came out today.

“Do you uhm.. Maybe wanna watch one of those movies where they’re flying the jet planes? You said you wanted to show me it a while ago.” You offered, glancing over to see him already inhaling his food with the fork scraping across the plate to not let a single bit of gravy escape him. But your offer made him pause.

“You wanna watch Top Gun? You hate Tom Cruise.”

“Well, yeah, he seems kind of like a douchebag, but it’s okay.” His eyes narrowed on you as he thought about your offer but ultimately shook his head, shrugged, and kept eating.

“‘t’s fine, you can put somethin’ on.” He said as he stabbed a green bean, smeared some mashed potatoes on it before putting it past his lips.

You took a deep breath and issued him the remote control.

“You pick something tonight, honey. It’s your night.”

That caught Joel’s attention. His head whipped a little to fast towards you, his thick eyebrows furling at the concept.

“‘t’s not my night. It’s a Thursday.”

The look you gave him set him straight.

“Okay, okay.. It’s my night.” He declared in playful defense, taking in a deep breath through his nose and opted for some old Western show he liked. You didn’t care much for it, but Joel did.

Once you two finished dinner, plates stacked on the coffee table and discarded, your head was on his shoudler and your hand ran slow, soothing circles over his chest. You could feel him breathing deeply, relaxing with you.

You asked him questions about the main characters, showing genuine interest. Even going as far as to add a dramatic gasp when a shot was fired from a cowboy’s revolver which made him let out a hearty laugh.

“You’re so full of it.”

He was talking with a huge grin, you could hear it in how he spoke, and it warmed your heart.

Towards the end of your night, your hands were in yellow dish gloves as you washed your plates from dinner, sliding the clean ones between the dividers of your drying rack.

Joel slipped his strong arms low around your waist, his burly shoulders pressing into your own as you nearly toppled over with his presence

“Thanks for dinner tonight. Hit the spot.” He said as he kissed your cheek then on a spot where your jawline met your neck, right by your ear. His beard hairs tickled. You could feel that they were freshly trimmed now, he probably felt a lot better.

“Night’s not over yet.” You hummed, a playful smile on your lips that he was quick to take notice of.

“Oh?” His voice dropped an octave, rolling your eyes a bit as you dug your elbow into his stomach for the second time tonight to put some space between you.

“Okay, cowboy. Relax. How about you go to the bedroom and take your shirt off. I’ll be there in a sec.” Your choice of words were still leading him in a different direction, you almost felt bad. But it was funny watching him get worked up.

After finishing the dishes and blowing out the eucalyptus scented candles, you peaked into your bedroom. Joel was still cautiously removing his shirt, moving slow as to not disturb his aching muscles. You hated seeing him come home every night like this, as if his body had just been in a fight and taken a brutal beating.

Joel undid the clasp of his watch, the band and watch face dirty and making digging a bruise into his wrist, but it told the time. He felt better after his shower, having made it a steamy one to relax the stinging in his upper neck and shoulders as well as his lower back.

His belly was good and full, happy to have something homemade rather than a quick pizza in the oven or just a cold bottle of beer before bed.

You were taking care of him tonight. Not that you didn’t every other night. He was actually giving you the time to take proper care of him. It felt off at first, taking on all the attention he usually reserved for you after long days. But maybe it’s what he needed.

His head turned as he felt a warm pair of arms circle just above his plaid pajama pants, your soft fingers undoing the knot he had tied in the front of them.

“I would’a taken my pants off for ya if you’d just ask.” His tone taunting, stepping out of the soft material before spinning in your arms and attempting to scoop you into him.

“Lay back, goofball.” You said with that gleaming smile of yours. Made his stomach twist. Whatever you had planned, you obviously wanted the lead on.

He did as instructed, happily falling into the comfort of the mattress with ease.

“Close your eyes, please.” Your voice was sweet like honey. He’d follow it into the shadows, into hell, more likely into heaven since it’s where Joel thought you belonged.

He could already fall asleep, though it was no later than eight. He felt the bed dip first at his legs, your body shifting up to sit by his hip. His hand naturally felt out for you, his warm palm holding you at the curve of your lower back.

When Joel was given the okay to open his eyes again, he was surprised to see a few candles lit around the room, the golden glow adding a bit of ambiance.

He watched as you squirted a few pumps of a lotion in your hands, circling it up in your palms to make it a little warm before you started to lather it into his calves.

The sensation made his breath hitch. You were giving him a massage? He sat up on his elbows and watched the white-ish cream get all wrapped up in his dark leg hair.

“Darlin’-”

“Shh.”

He tightened his lips, feeling a bit futile all of a sudden. There was a pause before he spoke again.

“Don’t have to do this for me.” He insisted, his eyes on yours, but you were focused on adding subtle pressure to his calf muscles.

“Know I don’t have to. I want to. Lay back down.”

You wanted to. You wanted to take time out of your evening and bathe him in attention. You had cooked one of his favorite meals, and to perfection he might add. You also let him watch a show he wanted to watch, something he knew you didn’t have a taste for. But you were intrigued anyway, to show you cared.

He was so comfortable and at ease, the problems of today didn’t seem to matter much anymore when you were here to greet him so lovingly.

Your fingers kneaded gently into his skin, Joel’s eyes dipping closed as he began to sink deeper into the mattress. Of course he couldn’t just do nothing. He had his warm palm splayed on your back where the shirt you were wearing was riding up a little bit. You smiled at the gesture. No matter how much effort you tried to dedicate to Joel, he was still showing his care even when he was dead exhausted.

You worked the lotion up into his thighs, the slight tug on his hairs making his face crinkle a little. You dared not to get too high, again, not to give him the wrong idea of where the massage was heading. It was okay to be just attentive to his needs for tonight. You could relax him in other more sensual ways another time. He needed something a little deeper.

You leaned down and peppered sweet kisses up his torso and over those salt and pepper chest hairs you admire so much, stopping just at his lips with a small smile.

“So handsome.” You praised in a whisper, kissing him with a grin on your lips.

He hummed softly and moved his hand to gently cup the back of your head, keeping your kind presence in his proximity just a moment longer.

“I’m getting too old for you.” He whispered back in a teasing tone, making you bubble up a laugh in your shared space.

“You’ve always been too old for me.” Your thumb gently glided over his chin and admired a small white patch just at the base where his neck sloped down. “But I’ve never minded. Because you’re a good man. A hard working, blue collar man. It’s very sexy.” You teased with a smile, happy to see one blossom on his lips as well.

“Thanks for treatin’ me so good tonight. This week’s been…” he let the sentence die before shaking his head.

“I know, Joel.” You said with a small nod before pressing a gentle kiss on his lips again before sitting up straight.

“Wanna roll over and I’ll do your shoulders?”

He let out a breathless laugh as he looked up at you. “Please.” Like you had to ask.

He wasn’t used to this sort of treatment, but boy, maybe he should start asking for it.

Joel moved to lay on his belly, letting out a short groan in the process that made your chest flutter.

You let out a short huff before you straddled his back, topping yourself right on his butt after getting a short groan from Joel for being on his tailbone.

More lotion was squirted into your hands before you started to apply it across the landscape of his back.

“We should do a skincare night.” You said, feeling his body shudder at the cold lotion.

“Uh what?” Joel’s voice muffled against the comforter, his head to one side so he could see you just out of his peripheral.

“You know what skincare is, you see me do it every night.”

“I don’t know what the he-ll you’re talkin’ ‘bout.” He said, his words stuttering as you pushed particularly harder in his lower back. Jeez, it was knot after knot under your fingertips.

“Ugh, Joel!” You whined as your motions paused.

Joel had a habit of doing this. Declaring he had no idea what it was that you were talking about, making you tirelessly explain for several minutes, before he goes ‘Oh, why didn’t you just say that? I know what that is.” It made you roll your eyes each and every time.

“You’re handsome, but you don’t listen.” You hummed out before cupping your hands at his shoulders and doing circles with good pressure, your upper body weight being put into his stern muscles.

“All I heard you say is that I’m handsome.” He moaned into the sheets, a blush creeping on your cheeks at his comment, but also his heavenly moan.

“It’s.. where you apply skincare to your face. You know, using a cleanser, applying an exfoliator, moisturizer..”

This was when Joel started muffling random nonsense into the sheets and you playfully pushed into his crying shoulders harder until he let out another long groan of discomfort.

“Okay, okay, I know what you’re talkin’ about. Skincare. I don’t need it.”

You tutted, shaking your head as you held in a laugh.

“Everyone needs it. Every. One.” You said as you leaned down and kissed the back of his head where his curls were starting to form.

“Especially you, Joel! Your pores are so big, you’ve got dust and dirt getting all in there. And it’s been so hot outside, your skin’s drying up. Gotta take care of your skin baby.”

“Why? So I’ll look young agian?” He teased as he reached a hand back and squeezed your hip as well as he could from his position.

“Because it’s good for you. Makes me feel good after a really long day.”

You could feel his eyes on you, a throat hum leaving his lips. “Thought I made you feel good after a really long day.”

A huff left your lips as you were back to doing circles into his shoulder with your thumbs. “Shut up.”

The last of the lotion had sunk into his skin, the massage hopefully healing more than just his dry skin.

Night’s like this with Joel were rare, but exceptionally special. He had energy to talk to you about everything under the sun, something you didn’t expect to transpire with your age difference at first. You discussed your mutual plans for the weekend, a barbeque at Tommy’s house. Joel was insisting on you wearing your new bikini, green to match his beautiful eyes. He could be such a horn dog.

He wanted to stay up as long as he could, but the long day he endured couldn’t help but put weight on his eyelids. His words turned to mumbles, his arms snaking around your waist in his silent gesture to fall asleep with you.

You shook your head with a small, tired smile, your hands planting themselves on his forearms to put a stop to his motions.

“Turn around.” You whispered, the notion making his tired eyes pop open with a “huh?” leaving his parted lips.

“You heard me, old man. Turn around.” You said as your hand roamed over his warm hip.

Joel assumed you didn’t want to cuddle tonight, maybe he was too warm for your taste despite the fan running above the both of you.

Joel’s chest tightened as he felt your warm body return right behind him, a bashful grin on his face.

“Are you tryna big spoon me?” His southern accent was dripping heavier than usual with the tiredness stringed in it.

The question erupted a giggle from you, Joel feeling you kiss over his taut shoulder blade.

“I don’t know how well I can big spoon you.. You’re so long.” Your arm tightened around Joel’s waist anway, his big hand finding yours as your fingers interlocked. He felt grateful in this moment, albeit a bit shy about the position. He was used to being the big spoon, it was different for him to be on the receiving end. But it was warm and settling, he couldn’t deny that.

“So I’m uh.. I’m like the ladle to your big spoon?” Joel asked. He could feel your grin on his back, your legs tangling with his own.

“Yes… you’re the ladle, but even the ladle needs a big spoon.” Joel’s blinks slowed until his eyes were closed, heavy with sleep.

“Thank you for today.” He murmured into the pillow. You barely hear it, but even if you didn’t, you feel it in the way he holds your hand and keeps your arm settled around him.

“Thank you for everything you do, Joel.” You whispered back, your forehead on the top slope of his back as you take in the smell of his body wash combined with the lotion, his body falling slumped in your protective hold.

#joel miller #pedro pascal #pedro pascal the last of us #pedro pascal joel miller #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller one shot #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x female reader #tlou #tlou fic #the last of us #the last of us fanfiction #hellishjoel #joel miller fluff #joel miller imagine #fluff fic #joel miller one shot fluff

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dracl-dragon · 3 months ago

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Steampunk au lore dump!

(These are my lore notes but edited to be a little more coherent)

Basically its steampunk fantasy so theres still magic and stuff

The red kingdom starts out incredibly isolated.

The story would start right before the age of discovery, so basically right when it does in canon

The red steves already have big machines and stuff, but its been so long since they traveled that they think they could find resources to improve their lives and their technology

Each civilization they find will have very different types of tech of their own

Also: some characters get robotic body parts

The obsidian steves are something between living statues and machines, combining magic with engineering

The forest steves have mostly agriculture related stuff, machines to make farming easier, sprinklers things like that

The desert steves are focused on construction and creativity, building insane mechanisms to get to high places and to dig really REALLY deep.

The ocean steves don't have quite as many machines, since they're underwater, but they have things like water filters and even a few submarines

The winter steves have cooling systems, some small enough to wear like a backpack, to allow their people to travel. They also build boats despite being able to walk across the water, since its safer

The obsidian steves are very focused on combat, so most of their machines are types of weapons. They still have their spears and swords, but they've created some more advanced ranged weapons, including ballistas and some of them even have guns (like really old guns, made of wood and stuff)

Now for the chromatics-

Red steves have things like typewriters and printing presses for making books without having to hand write every single copy.

Orange steves, similar to the desert steves, have machines for building, but theirs are far more creative. They build insane, towering, mechanical structures with everything from automatic doors, opening dome roofs, and sometimes working legs

Yellow steves, being focused on energy, have generators, along with things similar to batteries. They help to power the machines the orange (and green) steves make.

Green steves mainly have medical devices, along with some agriculture stuff. Their main focus is definitely their medical devices, though. While their machines are usually smaller, they're still very useful

Blue steves have airships. That's pretty much it. They never needed many machines in the world beyond.

The indigo steves have completely nonsensical, practically incoherent things made of metal and gears and wires that serve no apparent purpose other than the fun of building them and watching the gears spin.

The violet steves are alchemists, so the few machines they have are very focused on that. They also have telescopes due to the belief that the position of the stars effects how well potions are made.

A few hundred years before the main story, what gets called the Great Chromatic War happened. The seven chromatic steves brutally fought, mainly for resources. It was thought that the red steves had been wiped out during this time. Nobody ever went to check. The red steves have few remaining records of that time and before, as most of their books and journals had been burned. So they have no record of other steve types existing, they just knew that there had been some kind of large war at some point.

At the point of them retreating, the alliances had been: the Green kingdom and Violet kingdom, the Yellow kingdom and the Orange kingdom, and the Indigo kingdom (before they retreated to the Middle World) and the blue steves that chose to live in the overworld.

There are no known blue steves currently living in the overworld. They all either retreated back to the World Beyond or were killed during the Chromatic War, and haven't shown themselves to anybody in the mortal world except the giants since.

The biome steves had been far less affected by the war, and the only ones with remaining records of it are the obsidian steves and the winter steves. It was forgotten by the other biome villages.

Also most of my original steve species are in this, too, so thats fun :)

@chaoticcyprus

#steve legends #steve legends au #Steve Legends Steampunk Au #SL Steampunk Au #Lore dump

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admin-cock-creations · 1 year ago

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Date a Merc: Chapter 14

Fandom: Team Fortress 2 Pairing: Engineer / Reader Summary: Date an Engie who loves and appreciates you. Warnings: N/A

The Mann Co. Wars were over and gone, with most of the general public still greatly unaware that such a war had gone on for so long. The remaining mercs had been paid their severance packages and bonuses based on their years of servitude and slipped back into their subjectively normal lives as if nothing had changed. A great deal of the former mercenaries on both teams kept in contact with one another, even forming a few support groups that regularly met around the globe. Some returned to husbands, wives, and families, while others were thrilled to experience the dating scene without the need to conceal their identity. Your darling husband was one such former mercenary.

Neither of you had been looking for a relationship, and you’d quite literally stumbled into one another at the local fair the year after the liquidation of Mann Co. Joseph had been in the livestock barn admiring the animals set to be shown, and you’d been repairing the sprinkler system that kept the critters cool in the festering summer heat. He hadn’t been paying attention to where he was walking, and you were just trying to get down from your ladder. Thankfully the two of you only tumbled into a nearby hay wheelbarrow full of feed and not something worse, and you’d both gotten a laugh out of the fumble, but he still insisted on making it up to you somehow.

You started spending your time together at the fair that day, staying to watch the animals be shown and discussing which Joe should purchase for his ranch. He’d come expecting to leave with just a heifer or two, maybe a young bull, but ended up purchasing a few more fine animals he couldn’t resist. You certainly came in handy when you offered to help him haul the animals back, given that you’d brought your trailer to the fair, too. Now he was left needing to doubly repay you.

You weren’t sure how much time passed until he officially asked you out, much less when he kissed you for the first time, but the flow of time continued until you eventually found yourself with matching rings on your hands and sharing the comfort of a home.

It was quite the crisp fall day for the Midwest, and Joseph had been out most of the day, working away on repairing his tractor before winter came. You had been dutifully tending to the animals and your kitchen garden, gently checking in on your husband once in a while but knowing better than to interrupt when he got deep into his machines. Especially when it looked like he was about to take this one apart piece by piece.

You wouldn’t have guessed it, but Joseph was actually less intensely invested in his work than you thought, and that was greatly in part thanks to you. Were he still at Mann Co. he’d be throwing and kicking things by now, but something about your sheer nature had seeped some kind of gentleness into the very fibers of his being, and while he was very annoyed, he was still level-headed about his tractor project. You checked on him one last time, dropping off a thermos of warm coffee before returning to the house. He couldn’t help but smile as he listened to the front door, noting the pause of the screen door swinging shut that signaled you letting in the old tomcat.

Both of you lost track of time as the day continued, you lost in the preparation of dinner and some little chores around the house while Joe remained outside. Finally, you stepped back out onto the porch, standing at the top step as you wiped your hands on your apron and called for your husband across the field.

“Josie! Supper’s just about done!”

Joseph let out a heavy sigh as he wiped his own hands on a grease-stained rag, placing his tools away back in his toolbox before hefting himself up from the dirt. He took a moment to stand there, wiping his hands some more as he stared at you with a little crooked smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He could see the signs of dinner on your apron, see how the toes of your houseshoes wiggled in soft impatience, see the old denim of your favorite overalls you had sewn flower embroidery into on a whim. His heart was warm, and his belly grumbled as he finally moseyed back to the house.

“Make any progress on her?” You questioned in that gentle tone of yours, making his smile break even bigger.

“A little. Gettin’ closer to solvin’ the big problem. One little problem at a time.”

You walked inside, Joseph stopping to hang up his hat and coat by the door before following you into your little dining room. He sat down in his chair after shooing away the tomcat, sighing in relief as the wooden chair was more comfortable than the cold dirt ground he’d been on all day.

“I guess you’d figured something out. Saw how you were eyeing up that part you pulled out a couple hours ago so I went ahead and called up to Tom’s and told him you might be up later this week for something.”

Tom’s was the main part store in town, a small but well-stocked and family-operated business that knew you and your husband well by name. Joseph felt his heart flutter as he watched you serve him up a plate of dinner, acknowledging that you’d gone ahead and made a call he likely would have made on his own.

“Thank you, darlin’, you’re wonderful.”

He let you place down his plate and utensils before grabbing your wrist and placing a series of small, lingering kisses on the back of your hand.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

You chuckled and leaned down to place a return kiss on his temple.

“You’re still making up for knocking us into that wheelbarrow.”

#reader insert #tf2 #Team Fortress 2 #tf2 engineer #tf2 engie #engineer/reader #engineer x reader #tf2 engineer/reader #tf2 engineer x reader #tf2 engie/reader #tf2 engie x reader

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caelwynn · 1 year ago

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Caelwynn's Mod List for Stardew 1.6.9+ - Gameplay/Quality of Life (pg 1)

Last Updated: April 17, 2025

Page 1. Page 2. Page 3. Page 4.

Abilities — Experience Bars 1.6 — Adds additional information to the experience bars, such as how much XP you have and how much you need. Also makes it easier to show such information for mod-added skills.

Actually Lucky Rabbit's Foot (Rebooted) — Makes the Rabbit's Foot actually give you some Luck! A passive luck bonus is applied to your character whenever you carry around a rabbit's foot.

Activate Sprinklers — lets you activate sprinklers by right-clicking them.

Archaeology Skill — Adds a new skill tree based around digging artifact spots and panning mechanics as well as a couple of new machines, new food, and a way of displaying artifacts.

Auto Animal Doors — automatically releases your animals from the buildings at a set time each day, and then locks the buildings back up at another set time.

Auto Heal and Energize — Automatically consume food to recover when your health or stamina is low!

Automatic Gates — for those of us too lazy to open/shut gates.

Better Crafting — an extensive overhaul of the crafting system. I mostly use it for the ability to bulk craft.

Better Chests — allows for better organization and search/filtering capabilities for your chests.

Better Friendship — adds a bubble above the heads of NPCs informing you if you've spoken with them today and what in your current inventory they might like to receive as a gift.

Better Junimos — allows Junimos to automatically plant crops, fertilize, water plants, harvest forage, clear dead crops, and NOT harvest your flowers.

Better Quarry Redux — improves the spawn rate of geodes, ore, and gems in the quarry.

Better Ranching — adds a bubble above the heads of farm animals informing you if they need petted and/or milked/sheered/whatever.

Better Truffles — Adds the capability for pigs to dig for truffles in tall grass and provide a bubble to show that the truffles are there.

Better Winter Star Gifts —reduces the number of 'dud' gifts at the Feast.

Bigger Backpack — allows you to purchase an additional row of storage space in your backpack.

Bigger Fridges — Increases the size of the fridge from 36 slots to 70.

Blue Eggs and Golden Mayo — allows you to make blue eggs/blue mayo from blue chickens, and golden mayo and ostrich mayo.

Boss Battles — This mod adds 7 new unique bosses to the mines with varying difficulty settings and arenas, each dropping cool costumes and valuable materials.

Brown Cows Give Chocolate Milk — Exactly what it says. Also allows you to make chocolate bars from chocolate milk.

Build and Place Anything Anywhere — Lets you build, farm, or place furniture / objects anywhere.

Catalogue Filter - Continued — Adds a filter field for shop menus and catalogues that lets you filter shown items based on text input.

Central Station — Travel to other mods' destinations by boat, bus, or train. You can also get a ticket to the Central Station to change line, visit the gift shop, and more.

Challenging Community Center Bundles — A bundle overhaul mod which tries to create a challenging but not frustrating experience playing Stardew Valley.

Chests Anywhere — access your chests from anywhere on the map, or from select locations as set up in the config.

CJB Cheats Menu — a GUI to access various console commands. I mostly use it to freeze time while decorating or to warp to certain locations prior to unlocking the minecarts, because with as many expansions as I have, it takes for-freaking-ever to walk everywhere.

CJB Item Spawner — allows you to spawn any item in the game. Useful for cheating for respawning an item that bugged.

CJB Show Item Sell Price — shows a tooltip telling you how much an item (or stack of items) would sell for.

Cornucopia - Artisan Machines — Similar to PPJA Artisan Valley, this adds ten new artisan machines, over eight new goods, four new special orders, and vanilla-style balance.

Cornucopia More Crops — adds over 90 new crops and 35 new trees. I moved to this when PPJA did not get updated for 1.6.

Cornucopia More Flowers — adds over 40 new flowers and 5 new flowering trees to the game. Again, moved to this after PPJA was discontinued.

Custom Wedding Ceremony — Adds seven different wedding locations, more decorations, changes Lewis's speech, and other delightful small details.

The Masterpost for all of the mods is located here.

#caelwynn's mod list #stardew valley #sdv #stardew valley mods #stardew mods #sdv mods #modded stardew valley #stardew 1.6.9+#stardew QoL mods #stardew gameplay mods

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the-wisteria-library · 8 months ago

Note

hhaiiii bubbaa !!! can i req handler! boothill carin for a lil puppy regressor pretty please ? /nf thank uu vry much !! (╯▽╰ )

Of course I can munchkin!

Our first Pet Regression HC post, how fun! I hope I did this justice ^^

Boothill PetRe Headcanons

Boothill is basically a golden retriever himself, so he'd be honoured to be someone's handler!

—Boothill was very nervous at first, every "what if" scenario under the sun ran through that boy's head. Boothill wanted to make sure his pup felt safe and happy in his care, so he researched as much as he could beforehand.

—Boothill saved up his bounty rewards to get his pup their very first collar, he was so happy to gift it to his pup that he couldn't wait for a birthday or special occasion and just gave it to them immediately.

—Boothill works best with hyper pups, as he himself has a lot of energy, but he absolutely adores low energy pups too. He'll buy an unnecessary amount of blankets, and there's a nice comfy bed for his pup in almost every room of his house.

—Boothill loves spoiling his puppy, toys, treats, special bowls, the pup gets like 80% of his income.

—Having grown up on a farm with sheep herding dogs, Boothill knows better than anyone the importance of keeping his puppy enriched. Boothill will come up with fun and engaging games he and his pup can play, while keeping in mind any limitations his puppy might have—chronic illness, disability, birth defects—he's very considerate. Very mindful. Very cutesy, very demure

—Boothill is admittedly rather bad at enforcing any punishments, especially if his pup is really young. How can he get mad? They're a pubby! Just a lil thing. Ya know that one saying "this hurts me more than it hurts you"? For once it's true. Boothill's more upset than his pup is when punishments happen!

—Boothill always has snacks and treats on hand for his pup, he's careful of any allergies too. If requested, Boothill will also restrict foods like Chocolate or garlic from his pup since bio puppies can't have them either. To make it feel more real for his lil pubby.

—Boothill, head pats, belly rubs, chin scritchies, you ask, he'll give them. Boothill is not opposed to being affectionate. As said before, he's basically a puppy himself, affections come easy.

—Boothill gets a little worried playing games with his pup due to his mechanized body. Tug-of-war is one that really gets him anxious, he's always worried he'll pull too hard on the chew toy and hurt his pups teeth or give them a bruise.

—Bath time is always fun with Boothill, especially in the summer. You know how some puppies like water hoses or sprinklers? Yea Boothill will let his pup play in the sprinkler system or playfully squirt his pup with the hose—if already been told his pup is okay with it, Boothill never sprays them without permission.

—Naptime is the best, Boothill loves to help his pup wind down for bed, be it a bottle, a pacifier, some cuddles, he doesn't mind. His puppy always has the option to sleep on the bed with him, but their puppy bed is available too. Sometimes in the winter of Boothill feels it's necessary, he'll put the dog-bed in his own bed so his pup stays warm no matter what they choose.

—overall a great Handler, might need to get some adjustment time in the start to establish a routine, but once Boothill and his puppy are on the same page, it's smooth sailing from there.

#agere honkai star rail #honkai star rail agere #honkai star rail age regression #age regression honkai star rail #pet regression honkai star rail #honkai star rail pet regression #petre honkai star rail #honkai star rail petre #handler boothill

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fishnapple · 10 months ago

Note

What a fun idea for a mini-game!

Name: Leo

Color: #10473d ("Eden")

Regardless of whether I get picked, here's a story for the road:

Amidst an unprecedented icy winter storm that overtook my entire town, I was among the rare humans foolish enough to still show up to work. Now stuck at a nearby inn for the night, the sprinkler system took this time to burst apart. With deafening fire alarms blaring non-stop, I helped the mother-son hoteliers dump out the deluge of water flooded the entire first floor I was on. Propping the front doors open with a sturdy bench & luggage cart, I used all manner of portable containers to dump out the water: a large wheel barrow, a mop bucket, cardboard boxes. Eventually the fire alarm stopped, and I changed out of my soggy clothes, hanging them to dry. I certainly slept well that night! 😂

Hi, Leo, your story sounds like a great podcast material (let's not name it A series of unfortunate events).

3 things that are lovely about you:

1. You are calm

2. You are a hard worker (totally not deducted from your story), you work hard at your life, not just your job, you know how to put in the effort and can patiently wait

3. Your humour, fun and warm

You are not a Leo, are you?

Mini game - You're lovely

#mini game #you're lovely

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tedotsfinest · 2 years ago

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#Sprinkler Repair in Toronto #Sprinkler Maintenance in Toronto #Sprinkler System Installer in Toronto #Sprinkler Irrigation in Toronto #Sprinkler Opening in Toronto #Sprinkler Blowout in Toronto #Sprinkler Winterize in Toronto #Rainbird in Toronto #Hunter Irrigation in Toronto #Rachio in Toronto #Lawn Sprinklers in Toronto #Underground Sprinklers in Toronto

0 notes

exitrowiron · 2 years ago

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Getting ready for winter

Temperatures have started to dip below freezing so I spent some time last week on winterizing chores.

After watching (and paying) the landscaping company blow out our sprinkler system last year, I was able to do it myself this year. My compressor is only 40 gallons so it takes longer, but I install the snow sticks along the driveway while waiting for the compressor tank to refill.

My big innovation this year is a new home built solution for containing snowblower snowmelt while also preventing rust marks on the garage floor from the steel skid plates. I found this large tub and four small ramps on Amazon and then connected the ramps with steel joist hangers from the hardware store. I’m very proud of it.

We also have a lot of heat tape on the roof and in the gutters to prevent ice dams. Last year the installers just plugged them in with thermo cubes which meant that the tape was on whenever the temp was in a certain range, even if there wasn’t any snow present. Heat tape draws a lot of current so it’s expensive to use, so installed Lutron remote controlled exterior plugs and SwitchBot digital thermometers so I can turn them on from my phone when they are needed. Unfortunately the new plugs required me to install new outlet covers too.

The last chore was cleaning pine needles off the roof and gutters. I’m thankful we don’t have deciduous trees so we don’t have to rake leaves, but the small fir needles can be troublesome. Even though I have gutter guards, the needles were able to get through the guard and clog the gutter.

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toodleoorblx · 1 year ago

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Fractured Persona

Agatha Harkness x Rio Vidal

Word count: 3,318

Summary: Rio's a phytologists, a scientist who specializes in plants. Or, she was a phytologist. After the outbreak (that she may or may not have caused) happened, everything went downhill.

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - /?

Warnings: Violence, cursing.

A/N: So I was gonna post this tomorrow but i got excited. So here's my new Zombie Apocalypse AU! I got inspired while watching The Walking Dead. This will be uploaded to Ao3 once I finish writing chapter 5 for Natural order. Enjoy <3

Zombie apocalypse AU

Chapter 1

Rio traverses the dense forest, with the daylight piercing through the canopy of trees above. Every sound of snapping twigs and crunching leaves fills her with deep unease. It’s been several months since the outbreak, and since her father's passing; and a few weeks since she managed to escape.

Prior to the outbreak, she was conducting experiments with her dad at the SHIELDS laboratory. The virus originated from a plant they were studying called arctic-fall. This flora only emerges during winter, hence the name. Its spores release a zombifying disease. Rio was the scientist who uncovered it, along with her father, who was one of the first to fall victim to the infection. The spores infiltrated the ventilation system, spreading and claiming the lives of all the workers and guards, only for them to rise again.

When the virus initially spread, it rapidly engulfed Washington. There were fires blazing, people screaming, sirens wailing, helicopters circling, cars colliding, and gunshots ringing out.

Curtis noticed that Rio had been bitten during the initial outbreak. She hadn't even realized she had been bitten until Curtis pointed it out.

_____

Curtis ushers Rio into a small, secluded office tucked away near the back of the building. The room feels forgotten, the only light source being a flickering light bulb. With only a single window offering a view of a scaffold outside. The space is sparsely furnished, dominated by old filing cabinets and empty paint buckets.

With urgency in his movements, Curtis pushes one of the filing cabinets in front of the door, barricading them from whatever chaos raged beyond. Outside, the air is filled with the cacophony of alarms blaring and sprinklers hissing, while distant gunshots echo from the lower levels. They’re currently on level two.

Curtis's labored breaths fill the room, punctuated by occasional grunts as he frantically searches for anything sharp amidst the sparse surroundings. Rio's grip tightens on her white lab coat, her gaze darting around the room, avoiding the blood splatters that stained the fabric. It’s a grim realization that washes over her, sinking deep into the pit of her stomach.

Trapped in the confined space with her best friend, Rio feels a wave of dread wash over her. The only semblance of defense they have is a rusted pocket knife, its age surpassing even her own, and the feeble barrier of an empty filing cabinet—the only thing standing between them and the relentless horde outside.

Great… Fuck her life.

Before Curtis found her, she watched one of her associates get pinned to the ground by what looked like a herd of them, they tore her open like she was made of paper. Clawing at her and chewing on her flailing limbs, actively losing mobility. She saw the pain and agony on full display on her colleagues face, before it got mauled.

Rio’s senses felt assaulted, she couldn’t hear, couldn’t speak or yell, she just… watched. Watched in horror. She felt frozen, maybe it was shock, maybe it was the fact she felt like if she moved she’d be next. But luckily Curtis swept in just in time. She felt two pairs of hands grip her, two warm strong hands on her left arm, and two bonier hands grip her right arm, with a harsh force. They felt cold and… lifeless. One pair of hands led her to safety… or so she thought.

"Alright, I-I think we're safe in here," Curtis mutters, his voice tinged with uncertainty as he paces back and forth before Rio. Her once tidy brown hair now hung disheveled, streaked with blood and viscera from the gruesome scene they had just narrowly escaped. Rio's eyes track Curtis's movements, her own gaze clouded with shock and exhaustion.

"Vidal," Curtis sighs heavily, his hand coming to rest on his hip while the other raked through his short brown hair. His lab coat, once pristine, now a macabre tapestry of blood and gore. "I don't- fuck, I don’t know what to do!" he confesses, his voice trembling with a mixture of fear and frustration. "I don't know what went wrong, but you were there. You know. You and your dad were both in the advanced lab, working on experiment-3.” he licks his lips and huffs a mirthless laugh. “What. Happened."

Rio remains silent, her mind a whirlwind of confusion and guilt. She longs to explain herself, to provide some semblance of clarity in the chaos that surrounded them. But the words elude her, trapped within the confines of her mind like caged birds taunting her with their elusive freedom. All she can do is stare at Curtis with hollow eyes.

It wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t her fault.

She didn't even realize she had said anything verbally til Curtis pushed her back with one strong motion. His expression is warped with anger and confusion.

Curtis's laughter rings out, but there was no joy in it, only a hollow desperation that echoed through the tense air. Tears well up in his eyes as he speaks, his voice trembling with emotion. "It's not your fault? It's not your fault!?" He chokes on his words, his laughter turning into a mixture of anguish and disbelief. "You and your father were the only people in the room, hell, the vicinity! And you're telling me that whatever happened in there wasn't your fault?!"

“Yes.” Rio's voice is barely a whisper, her head bowed as tears drip from her hidden face, her fingernails digging into her palms.

Curtis huffs, his frustration evident as he points an accusatory finger at Rio. "You…" His voice trails off, prompting Rio to slowly lift her head. What she saw is unexpected—a pair of wide blue eyes, filled with fear, staring into her very soul.

"...W-what?" Rio stammers, her voice barely above a whisper as she tries to comprehend Curtis's apprehension.

Curtis's hand hovers over his pocket knife, his movements slow and deliberate as he takes a few cautious steps back. His eyes remain fixed on Rio, filled with a mix of uncertainty and suspicion.

Before Rio could respond, the deafening roar of gunfire shatters the tense silence, sending both of them instinctively diving for cover. A bullet tears through the wooden door, grazing Rio's right shoulder with a searing pain that elicits a sharp cry from her lips. She recoils slightly from the impact, her hands instinctively pressing against the wound to stem the flow of blood, staining her once pristine white coat crimson.

Glancing up through the haze of pain, Rio meets Curtis's gaze, expecting to see concern or at least a hint of action. But to her dismay, he remains rooted in place, his eyes fixed on her as if waiting for some sign or revelation. Rio can’t lie, that stung. Him not moving an inch when she’s literally bleeding out!

She wants to flick him off, but the pain and shock leaves her immobilized, her world reduced to the agony pulsating through her wounded shoulder.

The gunfire slows slightly and the moans of the monsters quiet more and more. Curtis slowly rises up from his hunched position.

“HELP, SHE'S BEEN BITTEN AND SHE'S NOT CHANGING!” Curtis yells without takinging his wide eyes off of her.

Rio's brows furrowed in confusion, her mind racing with a whirlwind of disbelief. Changing? But she hadn't been bitten… had she?

With trembling breath, Rio slowly lowers her gaze to her arms, her heart pounding erratically in her chest. And there, on her right wrist, she saw it—a bite mark, its not too deep, but it penetrated her skin. The irritated bite is crimson against her tan skin. A wave of nausea washes over her as the reality of her situation sank in.

Her complexion pales as she feels her heart skip a beat, her breaths coming in shallow gasps as she shakily inspects the wound. How had she not felt it? The adrenaline coursing through her veins must have dulled her senses, but that offers little comfort in the face of the looming threat.

What troubles Rio even more was the absence of any signs of transformation. She knows little about the process or how long it took to turn, but she is certain she shouldn't be feeling completely fine aside from her gunshot wound. The uncertainty gnaws at her, a knot of fear tightening in her chest

"I feel fine, Curt. I'm- I'm still me. Your friend," Rio reassures Curtis, her voice trembling with a mixture of fear and desperation.

But Curtis shakes his head erratically, his breathing ragged as he struggles to contain his emotions. He tightens his grip on the pocket knife until his knuckles turn white, his gaze darting nervously to the approaching footsteps and the sound of guns being cocked.

"Rio," Curtis begins, his voice barely above a whisper as he shifts uneasily on his feet, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for wh-"

Rio's words are cut short as Curtis swiftly moves the filing cabinet away from the door. Before she can react, the door bursts open, revealing a man clad in a military suit, rifle in hand, with several others standing behind him.

The military man's gaze locks onto Rio's arm, his expression darkening at the sight of the bite mark. The rapid rise and fall of his chest betrays his displeasure as he raises his rifle, causing Rio's heart to lurch in her chest. She freezes once again, her body tensing as she braces herself. Dammit.

"Take her back to base. Strucker will know what to do with her," the man commands, his tone slow and cautious, betraying the gravity of the situation.

"Take me where?!" Rio manages to mutter, her voice filled with confusion and fear. But her attention was so consumed by trying to comprehend her situation that she failed to notice one of the military men handing Curtis a syringe filled with a strange blue liquid.

Before Rio can react, Curtis grabs her shoulder with a harsh grip, eliciting a pained yelp from her lips. She feels a sharp prick as the needle pierces her skin, injecting the mysterious serum into her neck. A wave of dizziness washes over her, and she collapses to the ground, her vision fading to black as unconsciousness claims her.

_____

After that, Rio was subjected to a series of grueling experiments, the location shrouded in mystery but the duration lasting at least a few weeks. It seemed unlikely that they had enough time to achieve their objective, whatever it may have been—perhaps a search for a cure, though Rio could only speculate.

The only information Rio gleaned from her captors is that she’s immune. Immune to their spores, bites, and scratches, as evidenced by the multiple scars that marre her skin. With the threat of infection seemingly nullified, Rio's vigilance waned, and she grew a little sloppy in defending herself.

The days blurred together as they poked and prodded her, manipulating her blood in a desperate quest to uncover the secret of her immunity. But despite their efforts, they failed to crack the code. Rio scoffs at their incompetence, confident that given the opportunity, she could have deciphered the mystery herself.

Sedated for much of her captivity, Rio's memories of the ordeal were fragmented at best, if they existed at all. The passage of time became a haze, punctuated only by moments of pain and disorientation

Rio’s eyelids grow heavy, she's exhausted. And the soothing sounds of nature aren't helping at all; she almost dropped her M16, her weary muscles protesting with each step. She's so tired. She needs shelter, somewhere safe to sleep and evaluate.

She could try to find a tree with a big enough burrow in it. But that's pretty compromising. Granit, the crawlers can't run, but they can sneak up on you, and start clawing at you if they can smell you. It was a bad idea to begin with.

Rio sighs heavily as she comes to a halt, taking a moment to survey her surroundings. To her surprise, there’s no crawlers in sight, nor any signs of wildlife.

Strange.

Rio doesnt know how deep exactly she is in the forest, but she figures she's deep enough to see wildlife somewhere. Though she does see tons of edible plants.

Turning to her left, Rio sees something in the distance. About half a mile away. She squints as she uses her hands as a visor, hiding her eyes from the bright sunset. Rio’s eyes widen in surprise as she catches sight of a small cabin nestled amidst the trees. A surge of relief floods through her, infusing her with renewed energy despite the encroaching darkness.

Feeling a newfound sense of hope, Rio readjusts the weight of her supplies on her back and tightens her grip on her M16. With determined steps, she makes her way towards the cabin, her heart pounding with anticipation at the prospect of finding shelter for the night.

_____

The door creaks open, the home is adorned with chipped and rotting wood. She takes a deep breath and walks in with great caution. As Rio cautiously steps through the creaking door, she’s greeted by the sight of a humble interior, bathed in the soft glow of twilight filtering through the grimy windows. The walls are adorned with peeling wallpaper and patches of chipped paint.

Furniture, worn and weathered with age, dot the room—a threadbare couch nestled against one wall, its cushions sagging with use; a rickety table cluttered with discarded books and trinkets; a rusted stove standing sentinel in the corner, its once-shining surface now dulled by neglect.

Rio turns around to find a quaint kitchen, dull blue paint coats the cabinets and counters. A scentless candle is lit, illuminating the kitchen. Rio narrows her eyes in distrust.

Wait.

Before Rio can turn around she feels something quick and hard hit the back of her head, she whimpers in pain before her vision goes black.

As Rio slowly blinks, her vision struggles to focus, her head throbbing with each heartbeat. A sharp pang of pain shoots through her skull, and she winces.

Groggily, Rio surveys her surroundings, her eyes adjusting to the dimness of what appears to be a basement. Its abandoned, overrun with moss and tangled vines, the air heavy with the musty scent of neglect. Cracked pillars loom in the darkness, casting eerie shadows across the damp stone floor.

There are no windows to offer respite from the darkness, only a solitary lantern perched on a vintage table, its feeble light barely penetrating the gloom. And there, upon the table, lays all her belongings—her gun, pocket knife, damascus kukri and bag. They sit there untouched, almost taunting her.

Regret floods Rio's mind as she realizes her mistake in coming there. How could she have known someone lived here? It looked completely abandoned!

With a frustrated sigh, Rio attempts to rise, only to nearly trip and fall as she discovers her wrists and ankles bound with zip ties. Panic wells up inside her as she squirms and struggles against the restraints, but her efforts only result in raw irritation and a sharp pain as the zip tie digs into her skin.

"Is anybody there?" Rio's voice echoes through the dimly lit basement, raspy and dry from disuse. How long had she been unconscious? Furrowing her brows, she scans the room for any sign of life, but finds none.

Lovely.

As the stairs creak ominously, Rio's heart races with fear, her mind racing with possibilities of what—or who—might be approaching. The tension in the air is palpable as she braces herself for the unknown, her muscles tense and ready to (try) to spring into action if necessary.

With each echoing footstep, Rio's anxiety mounts, her breaths coming in shallow gasps as she presses herself against the cold wall, eyes wide with apprehension.

Finally, the figure emerges into view, and Rio's breath catches in her throat. It's a woman, her presence commanding and her gaze as cold as ice, the color of her eyes is piercing blue. Her wild, curly raven hair frames her face, a bold streak of white cutting through the dark locks, hinting at her age. Fine lines crease her features. She looks to be in her forties.

The woman wears black combat boots, a dark green thermal jacket, and a gray tank top, her dark jeans completing the ensemble. Around her neck, a necklace adorned with a brooch glinted in the dim light.

As the woman's sneer pierces Rio's defenses, she can't help but feel a wave of dread wash over her.

"Why did you come here?" The older woman's demand cuts through the tense silence, her voice a surprising contrast to the chaos Rio’s grown accustomed to. It's like a breath of fresh air, soothing and unsettling in its calmness. Rio's eyes widen slightly as she takes in the sight of the woman crossing her arms, a dagger held firmly in one hand. The sight sends a shiver down her spine.

"I didn't mean to intrude, lady.” Rio scoffs. “I just wanted shelter. I didn't know anybody was home." Her words came out steady and monotone. (Though she's freaking out internally.)

The woman huffs, her expression unreadable as she licks her dry lips and closes the distance between them. Rio's heart pounds in her chest as the woman crouches down next to her, her hands fidgeting with the dagger as her intense gaze bores into Rio's.

"Then tell me, sweetheart," her voice is low and steady. "Why should I not kill you right now, hm?"

Rio's eyebrows furrow at the unexpected threat, caught off guard by the woman's directness. (How humanity has fallen.) She hesitates, chewing nervously on her lip as she watches the older woman's gaze flicker down to her lips before meeting her own confused eyes.

With a resigned sigh, Rio gathers her thoughts. "I can help. If you let me stay," she offers, her voice steadying more and more as she speaks. "I know how to navigate forests, I know what plants are edible and which are deadly. I've noticed that wildlife is scarce outside," she continues, observing the slight faltering in the woman's stoic expression. "Something tells me that canned food will only last for so long. I can keep us fed."

For a tense moment, the woman remains silent, her gaze piercing through Rio's. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she relents with a reluctant sigh. "I... suppose," she concedes, kneeling down to grasp Rio's wrists. Rio's breath hitches in her throat as the woman's bruised hands brush against her skin, their touch simultaneously soft yet strong. The woman is leaning in front of her, the smell of vanilla and lavender invade her nose. She tries to ignore the goosebumps that erupt on her arms as the woman deftly cuts through the zip ties binding her wrists and ankles. “Have you been bitten?”

Rio doesnt know what to tell her. Yes she's been bitten numerous times but none of which have had any effect on her. She decides to keep her immunity a secret. For now. “No. No, I haven't been bitten.”She shakes her head.

Agatha’s eyes turn to slits, she huffs in skepticism. But thankfully leaves the matter alone. "Agatha Harkness," the woman introduces herself with a quiet and begrudging tone.

Agatha. Rio repeats in her head.

The older woman stands up and with a swift motion, she sheaths her knife in her thigh holster before taking a few steps back, crossing her arms defensively. A small sneer tugs at the corners of her lips.

Rio can’t help but find amusement in Agatha's demeanor, she sounds like a child being forced to share a toy. Suppressing the urge to laugh, Rio offers a warm smile in response.

"Rio Vidal."

#marvel #agatha harkness x rio vidal #mcu #zombie #alternate universe #horror #survival #agatha harkness #rio vidal #Spotify

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