#{ Granted you tagged me on your old blog but I just went ahead and tagged the new one. Hope that's okay? } | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tinyboxxtink · 3 years

Text

"Broken" A Sharky ANGSTY O/S

So I made a one shot called Baby Shark where Sharky and Rafael get pregnant and after some bumpy conversation, decide to have the baby and she grows up to be a great kid, and you love being a mother.

However, at the time I also had an idea for the OTHER outcome of the pregnancy. But I let it go, and then I got a request from-- someone, I don't know if they want this out in the world-- to write a fic about a miscarriage. So, I figured I'd go with the idea I had already planned out.

AND SO,

I present to you, the alternative outcome of "Baby Shark".

Warning: VERY angsty, dealing with abortions and miscarriages. Also religion, if you're sensitive about that.

Read at your own discretion.

If you would like to read the happy version of this story, it is here.

Tag List

@objection-argumentative

@madamsnape921

@lolliepopsicle

@chasingeverybreakingwave

@milkshqke

@wanniiieeee

@word-scribbless

@gibbs274

@sassyada

@aprildecker-blog

@bookishfanfic

@stars-in-the-skies-world

@stars-trash-18

@omgsuperstarg

You stared at the four pregnancy tests on the counter, waiting on the fifth. Plus signs and “Pregnant” words were sitting there, mocking you. You heard your phone alarm go off and picked up the last test.

Positive.

“Dammit!!!” You threw it across the bathroom. This was your worst nightmare. You didn’t want kids right now, you weren’t sure you wanted kids EVER. But you knew Rafael did, he probably wanted them as soon as possible.

“Mi Amor?” Rafael slowly opened the door.

“Raffi!” You spun around angrily. “Don’t you knock?!”

“Well I heard you yell…Oh my god,” Rafael suddenly noticed all the positive tests. “Y/N, are you…are you pregnant?”

“Yeah, well obviously,” You scoffed, gesturing to the many positive tests. You weren’t trying to be mean but he walked in just when you were trying to wrap your mind around this.

“…Why are you angry about this, carino?” He looked at you confused. “You…you do want kids, don’t you?”

“We really should have had this conversation before we got married, god why didn’t we have this conversation…”

“Oh my god,” Rafael stepped back. “You DON’T want kids?”

“I don’t know!” You threw your hands up. “Rafael I had given up on being a wife a long time ago, let alone a mother,”

“I can’t believe this,” He shook his head in disbelief.

“Look I just don’t want to have to make this decision right NOW,” You tried to act softer, lowering your voice. “You know we JUST got married, and we JUST started the practice. I just wanted some time to BREATHE,”

“So…you want to abort it?” Rafael’s voice was soft and sad.

“Christ Almighty Rafael it’s not ‘aborting’ it’s…” You paused, noticing his face was getting more horrified. “What?”

“I thought when you were defending me, your whole ‘cold medical’ argument was a tactic…”

“Yeah well,” You ran your fingers through your hair. “Look, baby,” You took his hand again. “If I…got rid of it,” You saw him flinch. “It would just be taking a pill that rips apart cells and tissue. It doesn’t disintegrate arms or legs, or a tiny beating heart,”

“Yeah I get it, Y/N” He dropped your hands and walked out of the bathroom, you ran after him.

“Rafael, come on!” You chased him through the apartment, grabbing his hand and making him face. “At least hear me out,”

“Why? Why should I? You clearly won’t hear me out! You’ve already made your decision, I bet you weren’t even going to tell me about it,”

“That’s not fair,” You replied, hurt. Of course you would have told him, wouldn’t you?

“And…it’s not just this,” He sighed, looking up at the ceiling.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you don’t want kids right now is one thing, if you don’t want kids EVER, then…” He wiped his eyes. “Then we’re just delaying the inevitable,” He said softly, you could hear the tears in his voice.

“What?” Your heart fell into your stomach. “What are you saying?”

“I want kids, Y/N,” He looked at you very seriously. “I want kids and I’m not going to give up that idea,”

“So, you would just walk away from me for some hypothetical kids you might have some day?” You were getting upset now. How dare he threaten you like that.

“I don’t…” He ran his hands through his hair, tears still falling from his eyes. “I don’t want to,”

“Then DON’T,” You crossed your arms.

“Why should I appease you when you won’t even THINK about it?” He suddenly went from sad to angry, matching your attitude.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t think about it, I said I really don’t want to decide NOW,” You yelled back, as you sat down on the couch. All of this yelling was making you dizzy.

“Then when do you want to decide, Y/N? When-- when our baby actually has fingers, toes? Is that going to change your mind about killing them?”

“Oh my god, you are so--” You stomped out of the bathroom and through your living room.

“Where are you going?” He called after you.

“To prove to you I’m not a heartless bitch!” You yelled back as you stormed out, slamming the door behind you.

=====

You drove to the clinic that Dr. Ramoray worked at, pulling into the parking lot and rushed into the waiting room.

“I need to speak to Dr. Ramoray,“ You informed her.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but we’re old friends,”

“Excuse me?” She looked at you quizzically.

“Can you-- can you just tell him Y/N is here and really needs to talk to him?”

“....Okay…” She looked at you skeptically but stood up and went to find the doctor. After a few minutes Dr. Ramoray walked out and greeted you.

“Hello, Y/N. Nice to see you,” He shook your hand. “Don’t tell me you have another case--”

“No, it’s personal this time doctor,”

“Personal?”

“I...can we…?” You motioned towards the rooms.

“Well...sure, Stella hold my appointments,” He informed his receptionist.

He walked you back and into a patient room. It was lined with charts of the different stages of pregnancy, lists of do’s and don’t during pregnancy, things like that. You took a seat in the regular seats as opposed to the patient stirrups.

“So, how can I help you dear?”

“Well, you know that man I defended?”

“The ADA? Well of course, that’s one day I will never forget,”

“Well he’s my-- husband,” You looked down, hoping that wasn’t a lie.

“I see,” He nodded. “Well, that makes a lot of sense now that I think about it,”

“Right,” You nodded sheepishly. “Well, see we uh-- I got us in a...situation,” You put a hand on your stomach.

“Ah,” He nodded again. “I see,”

“Yeah..”

“And guessing by your argument in court, you’d like to get rid of the...zygote?”

“I don’t know,” You shook your head. “I...I didn’t have the greatest role mode of a mother growing up, and I have no idea how to--” You rubbed your temples. Too much detail.

“Look my husband has the opposite stance on my...views, of a zygote,”

“Well that’s ironic, isn’t it?” He chuckled.

“Yes haha. I just want you--- I just need a picture of this thing to show him it’s just cells, it’s not a--”

“A baby,” he finished for you.

“Right,”

“Well, as you must know due to your research Ms. Y/N, depending on how far along you are it might be impossible to even see the zygote,” He explained.

“Well that’s even better,” You half smiled. “Then it will really prove to him I’m doing nothing wrong-- if I decide to get rid of it,”

“As you wish,” He nodded, gesturing for you to get on the patient table. You laid down on the table and pulled your shirt up, while the doctor got the gooey gel and rubbed it on your stomach. He pulled up a screen that recorded the sonogram, as he ran the scanner over your uterus.

“....Hmm…” He studied the screen intently.

“Hmmm?” You asked. “Hmmm doesn’t sound good,”

“I...well, there seems to be an...issue,”

“Excuse me?” You sat up. “An issue? What kind of issue?”

“Well Ms. Y/N according to this, your uterus is what we would call-- hostile,”

“Hostile?” You half laughed. “Why does that not surprise me…?” You shook your head. Of course you, the cold hearted shark, would have a hostile uterus on top of everything else hostile in your body.

“Yes, see all of this extra tissue? It’s not ideal for a fetus to grow and develop,” He pointed out clouds of white almost filling your uterus. “To be completely honest with you, it’s a miracle you even got pregnant,”

“...Oh Jesus…” You put your hands over your face. “Why...God why…”

“If you decide to terminate this pregnancy, there’s a slim to none chance this will ever happen again,” He continued.

“Great,” You chuckled sarcastically. “So now even NATURE is forcing me to make a choice right now,”

“Well,” He pushed the screen away. “If it helps your decision, there’s an 75% percent chance the baby will even survive full term,”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” You laughed harder. “So, even if I decide to concede to my husband and go ahead with this, there’s a 25% chance that he’ll get attached to it, and then it will die anyway?!”

“Look Ms. Y/N,” He put a hand on your shoulder. “In my experience, more often than not women with hostile uteruses that do actually get pregnant, end up having perfectly healthy babies. Granted most are preemies, but with today’s technology that’s almost never an issue,”

“...Right,” You shook your head with a dry sarcastic smile, still in disbelief this was all happening.

“And if you don’t mind me saying,” He added. “I really think this is something you should discuss with your husband,”

“I actually really do mind you saying, Doctor,” You said curtly. “I just...I need a minute, can I have a minute?”

“Sure, take a minute. Call him, maybe ask him to come down,”

“...Yeah, right,” You shook your head with a smile as you walked out of the room and down the hall through the waiting room and outside in front of the clinic. You walked over to a small bench off to the side of the walkway into the clinic and sat down, and before you could think your body just erupted in a loud, angry scream.

“....Do you think this is funny, huh?!” You yelled up at the sky. “Is this, what is this, some kind of TEST?” You stood up now as you continued your rant.

“Are you-- are you trying to test how much I love Rafael? Testing just how much I’ve REALLY changed? Or are you just trying to prove to me that I can’t be happy? I can’t have the nice, perfect man, with a perfect family? That I’ll just lose anything good that I touch? You’ve turned my own BODY against me?!” You started to cry in the middle of the grass.

“Why would you do this, huh?” You asked Him. “You know the kind of mother I grew up with, you know I have nothing GOOD to reference on being a mother!” Tears streamed down your cheeks.

“Why would you do this to me? Have I been that shit of a person? Really? I went through...I went through hell and back my entire life, and then I fought like hell for Rafael, for someone who actually loved me, for the very first time in my life! And now-- now you want to take that away from me? Or are you giving me a second chance? TELL ME! TELL ME WHAT I’M SUPPOSED TO DO!!!!!!!” You screamed, falling to your knees sobbing.

“....Y/N?” A soft voice made you leap to your feet and spin around to see Rafael standing there, his mouth slightly open with a confused look on his face.

“Rafa,” You quickly sucked the rest of your breakdown back into your body, wiping tears away and clearing your throat. “W-What are you doing here?”

“I...I came to support you,” He said softly as he walked closer to you.

“Support me?”

“Well I figured, you came down here to--”

“To what, kill our baby? Without even discussing with you?” You scoffed.

“No!” He cried. “Well, maybe..”

“Right,” You shook your head with a dry laugh.

“But I was going to support you no matter your decision!!” He defended himself.

“Oh well, that’s really big of you Rafael. Coming down here to hold my hand while I abort our child and then breaking up with me as soon as we walked out of here,” You scoffed with a roll of your eyes.

“That’s not--” He shook his head. “Look, I think-- I think that what matters right now is your little...soliloquy there,” He gestured towards the bench where you were having your screaming match at God.

“...Right,”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me about your mother, carino?”

“Why would I, Rafael?” You rolled your eyes with a laugh. “I already inadvertently told you I’d never heard the words ‘I love you’ in my life before you, I thought that was pretty obvious I didn’t have the greatest parents,”

“...Fair,” He closed the gap between you, taking your hands. “I’m sorry, I should have taken that into account when were...talking,”

“Arguing,” You clarified.

“Right,” He nodded sadly. “I just-- I ...I’ve always--”

“Yeah, I get it. You’ve always wanted kids. I should have taken that into account when we even started dating. I should have thought this could happen. I’m usually so level headed and ten steps ahead of things, but with you--”

“It’s different,” He finished for you with a sad smile.

“Yeah,” You nodded softly, looking at the ground.

“Well,” He tilted your chin up. “I don’t--I don’t want to impose anything on you, but--”

“But…”

“But...you did just ask the big guy what to do, and I was here,”

“...So you’re saying, God is telling me to go through with this?”

“All I’m stating is facts, Sharky,” He rubbed your cheek with his thumb. “I’m not telling you to do anything, I’m really not. I swear,”

“....Well, you should know all the facts then,” You sighed, leading him back to the bench where you both sat.

“All the facts?” He asked you curiously.

“...Dr. Ramoray says that I have a…’hostile uterus’,” You shook your head with a laugh, just saying it sounded absurd.

“A hostile uterus? You? I’m shocked,” He joked, trying to ease the tension.

“I know right?” You chuckled. “Anyway um-- he said, that it was a miracle I even got pregnant,” You said softly while you played with his hand in yours.

“...A miracle?”” Rafael’s voice perked up a little. Did that mean you were considering it? Surely you wouldn’t have told him that if you were going to get rid of it.

“Yeah,” You nodded. “And um-- he said, he said if I terminated this pregnancy, there was a slim to none chance that I’d ever get pregnant again,” You looked at the ground.

“I see,” He squeezed your hand softly. “So...basically, even mother nature is forcing you to make a life decision right now,”

“That’s what I said!” You looked up into his eyes; you really were so in sync.

“...Which is why you were yelling at God,”

“...Right,” You looked up at the sky. “But there’s another thing,”

“Oh?”

“The doctor said that even if I decide to go ahead with the pregnancy, there’s a 25% chance that it will die anyway,” You looked into his eyes sadly. “Because of course, my body would be just like my mother, rejecting it,” You looked away from him with another sarcastic laugh, thinking of the irony of your situation.

“Hey,” He put a hand on your face, making you look at him. “You are NOT your mother,”

“You didn’t even know her,”

“I know she wouldn’t be wrestling with this decision, would she?”

“No,” You shook your head. “She definitely would not. She made it very clear that my father MADE her have me, because he didn’t believe in abortion,”

“....Like I was trying to do,” He said sadly.

“No baby,” You took his hands. “I know you weren’t trying to force me to do anything,”

“....But I kind of was, when I threatened to leave you,” He looked down in shame.

“No, uh uh,” Now it was your turn to pull his chin upwards. “It’s not the same. Not even close,”

“....So,” He took a deep breath. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“....Well,” You gave him a small smile. “I can’t exactly argue with God for giving me what I asked for, right?”

“Wha--you mean me?”

“I asked him what to do, and here you are,” You pressed your forehead against his. “I’d say that’s a pretty big red flag of an answer,”

“Carino,” His lips curled into a huge smile before they were on yours.

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

----Six Months Later----

You were in your last trimester, and were finally starting to breathe about your impending labor. Every month, every doctor’s appointment, you’d walk into the office with the worst expectations, and every time you were proven wrong. In that time, you had grown attached to your little girl, who you decided to name Isabella. Izzie, for short.

Rafael would talk to Izzie as much as he talked to you, always speaking in Spanish thinking she’d pick it up in the womb. You’d just shake your head with a smile, it was adorable the way he was so excited. It made you even more excited, just seeing him so happy. You had never been so invested in someone else’s emotions other than your own, especially not someone who hadn’t even been born yet. But you loved Izzie already, you would smile to yourself when you’d feel her moving around inside you. It was like she was snuggling you in her own little cocoon inside you.

However, on the day of your baby shower, all of your new hopes and dreams came crashing down. You were doing your makeup, humming and bouncing along with the Spotify playlist you had playing-- when you felt it. A sharp, overwhelming pain struck your abdomen, causing you to hunch over, falling to your knees.

“RAFAEL!!!!!” You screamed as your insides felt like they were being stabbed everywhere. Everything you had feared was coming true.

Rafael sprinted into your bathroom half dressed and instantly was down next to you.

“Y/N, baby what’s wrong?” He asked frantically, checking your body everywhere as you writhed in pain and began to cry.

“It’s...Izzie,” You sobbed, knowing what was happening. “I’m losing her,”

“Oh God,” Rafael dialed 911 while he tried to help you stand. When he saw your pelvis however, he stopped moving you.

“What?” You asked in a panicked tone. “What is it?”

“You’re...You’re bleeding, Y/N,” His eyes began to fill with tears as he watched you quickly begin to bleed out in front of him.

“What?” You tried desperately to look down at yourself, all you saw was a pool of blood running down the floor to your feet. Everything started to go fuzzy, you could barely hear Rafael screaming on the phone for someone to hurry up and come to your rescue. Pretty soon, you blacked out completely.

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

The next thing you knew you were waking up in a hospital bed with a nurse taking your vitals.

“Welcome back, Ms. Y/N,” She smiled sweetly. “We almost lost you there,”

“...Lost me?” You looked at her in confusion before looking down at your stomach. A huge bandage was wrapped around your torso, covering several stitches and tubes coming out of your pelvis.

“Oh my god,” You whispered, beginning to panic again. “Oh my god, oh my god--”

“Whoa whoa calm down sweetie,” The nurse tried to keep you from squirming around. “You’ll pop your stitches,”

“Where’s Izzie? Where’s Rafael?” You asked her as you started to hyperventilate.

“Your husband ran to get a coffee” She assured you. “And um, your-- your baby is…”

“She’s dead, isn't she?” You began to sob. “I killed her,”

“No! No ma’am,” She shook her head. “Well, I mean she-- she is-- gone,” She said sadly. “But you did NOT kill her,”

“No, just my hostile body,” You continued to sob.

“Look I’m-- I’ll be right back,” She rushed out of the room, leaving you crying and screaming in horror and guilt.

After a few minutes, Rafael was bursting into the room, instantly at your side and taking your shaking body in his arms. He was still covered in your blood, he hadn’t dared to leave your side since they had gotten you there.

“I killed her, Rafa,” You sobbed into his chest. “I knew it, I knew this would happen. I’m broken inside, I told you I was broken,”

“Shhh, no no no mi amor,” He whispered as he tried to not start crying himself. “Shhhh, you’re-- you’re not broken,”

“I am!!!” You sobbed harder. “I killed our baby, just like I knew I would. It’s the one thing I was supposed to give you,”

“...Shh, baby I know. It’s okay, it’s alright--” He looked up at the sky as he began to cry himself.

“No it’s not, it’s not okay!!” Your sobs became heavier, you could barely breathe. All of your fears were coming true, you were being punished. You lost your child and now you were going to lose the love of your life. “Please don’t leave me, Please please please,”

“What?” He suddenly looked back down at you, pulling you from his chest. “Why would I--”

“I KILLED OUR BABY!!!!!!!!” You screamed. “That’s the ONE thing you asked me not to do!! The one thing! And I did it anyway!!!”

“NO, you did NOT,” He took both of your shoulders. “You did not kill our baby, do you hear me? You tried so hard, you took such good care of Izzie, carino--” He started to cry again as he said her name.

“She’s dead, Rafael,” You had just started to get your sobs under control until you saw him cry. You hated seeing him cry. You hated being the reason he was crying. “She’s dead!”

“And so were you!” He said through his tears. “You died on that table, they told me. But you came back to me,”

“....What?” Now you started to control your crying in shock from this new information.

“We may have lost Izzie, but I almost lost both of you. And I-- I don’t think I would have survived that,” He was still crying. “I...I’m devastated about Izzie, but I’m grateful you’re alive,”

“....Even though I’m broken?” You sniffled.

“You are not broken, mi amor,” He shook his head as he kissed your forehead, getting his own emotions to calm down. “...And if you still don’t believe me, then I promise you, I will spend the rest of our lives putting you back together,”

“....Okay,” You whispered, finally relaxing into his arms as he laid back against the wall.

“I love you, Y/N,” He whispered as he stroked your hair. “I will always love you, no matter what,”

“I love you too,” You sniffled as you started to fall asleep against his chest.

You wanted to believe him, but you knew deep down inside: You’d always be broken.

#rafael barba #rafael barba x reader #rafael barba one shot #rafael barba angst #rafael barba x you #rafael barba fanfiction #angst #tw abortion #tw miscarriage #law and order svu fanfiction

37 notes · View notes

conncrfms · 4 years

Text

𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐫𝐤’𝐬 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐎𝐑 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐍 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭 , 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐉𝐀𝐂𝐎𝐁 𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐈 ! 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐚𝐬 @𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐦𝐳 𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐚𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 . 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐦𝐳 , 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐝 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐡 . 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐧𝐲𝐜 , 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐚𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 . 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐚 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐣𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 . ( 𝐜𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 + 𝐡𝐞/𝐡𝐢𝐦 ) + ( 𝐦𝐲𝐚 , 𝟏𝟗 , 𝐬𝐡𝐞/𝐡𝐞𝐫 , 𝐩𝐬𝐭 )

hi lovelies! allow me to introduce myself! my name is mya, you can reach me on discord for plots at ˗ˏˋ 𝐦𝐲𝐚 ˎˊ˗#8406 and i have never had a single cohesive thought in my life! now that that’s out of the way let me introduce you to my demon child connor! i spent literal hours on his intro and it’s still not good but that’s besides the point but for your best viewing experience you may wanna see it through his blog for the ~aesthetics~ anyways on with the intro!

triggers will be tagged and marked accordingly as they come up but here’s what to look out for: cheating tw, death tw, cancer tw, and alcohol tw

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐒

𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄

bellamy connor livingston

𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒

bells

𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐃𝐀𝐘

october 26th, 1997

𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓

6″0′

𝐀𝐆𝐄

23 years old

𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑

male

𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐒

he/him

𝐎𝐂𝐂𝐔𝐏𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

ceo of premier event manangement / event planner

𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐒

english

𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

bisexual

𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌

alex fitzalan

here is his childhood home, family vacation home, and his current home

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘

bellamy connor livingston was born in MANHATTAN NEW YORK on an unusually cold october day

his father was voted as the SENATOR of new york and his mother was a LUXURY REAL ESTATE AGENT who sold a majority of the penthouses on the upper east side, it wasn’t easy living in new york and NOT knowing who the livingston’s were, whether you saw their names on billboards on heard it in passing on television you knew who they were

but the livingston LEGACY precedes connor’s successful parents and goes way back to his ancestors who made their fortune, specifically one of his GREAT grandfathers who was granted 160,000 acres along the Hudson and was an OFFICIAL FUR TRADER AND BUSINESSMAN who earned the family a whopping $35 BILLION DOLLARS and the wealth continues to grow RICH KEEP GETTING RICHER

in short connor is a total TRUST FUND BABY.

while a family like this is usually drowning with TURMOIL the livingston’s lived a fairly scandal free life, even when you did MASSIVE DIGGING, no signs of infedlity, their four kids got along great, and they were BIG on philanthropy and giving to charity

𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐖

this is until you stepped behind CLOSED DOORS which is were the livingston’s liked their SKELETONS to remain, connor’s dad, was a SERIAL CHEATER and the only reason no one ever spoke up is the livingston family INFLUENCE no one dared to cross them

𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐖

despite growing up in such a TOXIC ENVIROMENT connor was actually a really good kid, his grades were nothing to write home about, and he was definitely a CLASS CLOWN but he did what he was supposed to, and stayed out of trouble for the MOST PART

he was the ELDEST of four children so he felt the need to be a good influence on what would prove to be a BUMPY ROAD for the family

connor’s high school experience was not what you would expect from someone of his CALIBER, well at least not ALL of it

for starters he had the tendency to be a bit ARROGANT due to who his parents were and because he knew the scope of their influence, and he used this to his advantage, he was definitively a “DO YOU KNOW WHO MY FATHER IS?” ass bitch, partly due to the fact people had always treated him differently and thus it went straight to his already empty head

and he PARTIED a lot, whether it was throwing parties in a penthouse his mother rented SPECIFICALLY for him, attending LAVISH parties, or jetting off to THE HAMPTON’S “for lunch”, school became a DISTANT PRIORITY

so distant in fact his parents ended up hiring a TUTOR to help him with his studies, and you wouldn’t believe me when i say connor FELL and he fell HARD

so hard in fact i’d say he CRASHED, two planets colliding into each other that was although a CATASTROPHE was ENCHANTING to see, but i’m getting ahead of myself

BEATRICE or BEA as connor and nearly everyone else called her, was connor’s opposite in almost EVERY WAY, she was a straight a student, and connor could hold a c average if he made the effort to CHEAT, she went to their private school on a SCHOLARSHIP, his parents had enough money to buy the ENTIRE SCHOOL, but they were IN LOVE

and i mean the kind of love you see in ROMCOMS the kind of SICKENINGLY SWEET love that others will tell you is IMPOSSIBLE, but they made it work, bea made connor more serious but his studies, and he in turn fell COMPLETELY and EFFORTLESSLY in love. see BEA was already WHOLE so think of this story less of two halves COMPLETING each other, and more so two wholes COMPLEMENTING each other

they continued to date throughout the rest of high school, and BEA became apart of his family, his mother referred to BEA as her DAUGHTER IN LAW, it was cemented in everyone’s minds that one day the two of them would be MARRIED

oddly enough connor NEVER met BEA’S parents no matter how much he BEGGED and PLEADED, all it took was BEA telling him her family life was something she was UNCOMFORTABLE with and he dropped the subject COMPLETELY

due to BEA’S influence, connor applied to university, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, to be exact and got ACCEPTED into the school of BUSINESS, of course BEA also applied an got ACCEPTED into the school of SOCIAL SCIENCES

connor didn’t HESITATE to PROPOSE to BEA and to no one’s surprise she immediately said YES and the plan was to get married IMMEDIATELY and so the date was set for JULY 17TH 2017, the theme to be WINTER WONDERLAND, it was BEA’S idea a winter wedding in summer, and seeing the way it made her absolutely BEAM it was worth it

the MONTH of the wedding was a tense one, GRADUATION, PREPARING FOR COLLEGE, and a WEDDING

however TRAGEDY would strike, BEA was LATE to the WEDDING and anyone who knew BEA knew that she wasn’t LATE to anything, that’s when connor got a call that would change his life FOREVER

𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖

remember how i told you BEA never wanted connor to meet her parents? that’s because BEA was sick, CANCER to be exact, and didn’t want connor to find out. her parents tried to rationalize that she didn’t want to seem him HURT, and that she told them EVERYTHING about him, she DIED with connor right by her side, and what was supposed to be the HAPPIEST moment of his life became the SADDEST

𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖

that was THREE YEARS AGO and to this day he hasn’t recovered since

𝐀𝐋𝐂𝐎𝐇𝐎𝐋 𝐓𝐖

since then he has gotten two new vices DRINKING and HOOKING UP, it’s not unusual to see him at a bar drinking his FIFTH or TENTH shot of vodka and taking home his SECOND or TENTH girl of the night

𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐀𝐋𝐂𝐎𝐇𝐎𝐋 𝐓𝐖

he has been CLOSED OFF to the idea of love ever since, and hasn’t held a STABLE relationship since then, he simply can’t see himself COMMITTING to anyone as he did with BEA

in LIGHTER news, he graduated from COLUMBIA with his associate’s in BUSINESS and is now a ceo of his own EVENT PLANNNG company, which has been extremely successful in putting on TOURS, CHARITY BANQUETS, CONVENTIONS, CONCERTS, and the like, they specialize in everything except WEDDINGS

and his father 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐍 has started his presidential campaign, that connor has somehow managed to rope himself into

𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐓

he fights in an underground fighting ring.

it started innocently enough, after BEA passed away he wanted an outlet something where he didn’t have to think about the GUILT and could let out his ANGER, really he wanted something to distract from the SADNESS

BOXING seemed like a good idea until he couldn’t harness the anger and nearly KILLED his opponent

that’s when things fell into place, his “ FRIEND ” who witnessed the fight first hand told him about this fighting ring that him and a couple of other people were involved in and connor decided WHY THE HELL NOT, he felt as he had NOTHING else to LOSE

and thus began the cycle of showing up to work in shade to hide BLACK EYES and surprisingly enough BRUISES are easy to hide behind three piece suits

and now current day it’s become THERAPY for him, since a lot of the guys are just like him, looking to ESCAPE from something in their PAST

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

𝐙𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐂

scorpio sun, scorpio rising, virgo moon

𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐍𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓

chaotic good

𝐌𝐁𝐓𝐈

estp-a

𝐄𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐀𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐌

type 7w8

𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓

choleric

𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄

slytherin

𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐒

in order: physical touch, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and words of affirmation

𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐒

adaptable, adventurous, affable, affectionate, ambitious, amusing, attentive, brave, bright, calm, caring, charismatic, charming, committed, courageous, creative, decisive, dependable, determined, diligent, determined, direct, driven, easy-going, efficient, engaging, enthusiastic, extroverted, flirtatious, forthright, frank, fun-loving, funny, gregarious, intelligent, knowledgeable, lively, logical, loyal, mischievous, neat, objective, observant, open-minded, organized, outgoing, passionate, persistent, playful, practical, pragmatic, protective, quick-witted, rational, realistic, reliable, responsible, romantic, self-confident, sociable, strong-willed, and trustworthy

𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐒

abrasive, aggressive, aloof, analytical, argumentative, arrogant, assertive, avoidant, belligerent, blunt, bossy, calculating, callous, cautious, competitive, condescending, confrontational, critical, cynical, deceitful, defiant, destructive, detached, discreet, dishonest, dramatic, evasive, explosive, foolhardy, grumpy, guarded, harsh, headstrong, impatient, impulsive, insensitive, intimidating, irrational, judgmental, melancholic, narcissistic, negative, opinionated, outspoken, perfectionist, pretentious, private, quick-tempered, rebellious, reckless, rude, secretive, stubborn, temperamental, thoughtless, unemotional, vain, and violent

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐎

i’d like to say he’s a weird amalgamation of characters i liked in media i’ve consumed, and although he relates more to some characters than others this is an incomplete list of my influences

p.s. you can click on the names of a character to see a gifset of them that reminds me of connor <3

𝑺𝑪𝑶𝑻𝑻 𝑳𝑨𝑵𝑮 ( 𝐀𝐍𝐓-𝐌𝐀𝐍 ) , 𝑬𝑳𝑬𝑨𝑵𝑶𝑹 𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑳𝑳𝑺𝑻𝑹𝑶𝑷 ( 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 ) , 𝑹𝑰𝑮𝑩𝒀 ( 𝐑𝐄𝐆𝐔𝐋𝐀𝐑 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐖 ) , 𝑫𝑨𝑴𝑶𝑵 𝑺𝑨𝑳𝑽𝑨𝑻𝑶𝑹𝑬 ( 𝐓𝐕𝐃 ) , 𝑹𝒀𝑨𝑵 𝑯𝑶𝑾𝑨𝑹𝑫 ( 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄 ) , 𝑱𝑶𝑯𝑵𝑵𝒀 𝑩𝑹𝑨𝑽𝑶 ( 𝐉𝐎𝐇𝐍𝐍𝐘 𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐎 ) , 𝑫𝑼𝑵𝑪𝑨𝑵 ( 𝐓𝐎𝐓𝐀𝐋 𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐀 𝐈𝐒𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃 ) , 𝑨𝑳𝑬𝑿 𝑹𝑼𝑺𝑺𝑶 ( 𝐖𝐈𝐙𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐖𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 ) , 𝑪𝑯𝑼𝑪𝑲 𝑩𝑨𝑺𝑺 ( 𝐆𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐏 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋 ) , 𝑪𝑨𝑺𝑬𝒀 𝑮𝑨𝑹𝑫𝑵𝑬𝑹 ( 𝐀𝐓𝐘𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 ) , 𝑳𝑼𝑲𝑬 𝑫𝑼𝑵𝑷𝑯𝒀 ( 𝐌𝐎𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐍 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘 ) , 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑫𝑬𝑹𝑬𝑲 𝑴𝑶𝑹𝑮𝑨𝑵 ( 𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐒 )

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

𝑹𝑶𝑴𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑰𝑪

𝑪𝑯𝑬𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑵𝑮. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑬𝑿𝑬𝑺 𝑶𝑵 𝑮𝑶𝑶𝑫 𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑴𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑬𝑿𝑬𝑺 𝑶𝑵 𝑩𝑨𝑫 𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑴𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑭𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑵𝑫𝑺 𝑻𝑶 𝑳𝑶𝑽𝑬𝑹𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑭𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑵𝑫𝑺 𝑾𝑰𝑻𝑯 𝑩𝑬𝑵𝑬𝑭𝑰𝑻𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄.

𝑺𝑲𝑰𝑵𝑵𝒀 𝑳𝑶𝑽𝑬. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑺𝑳𝑶𝑾 𝑩𝑼𝑹𝑵. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑷𝑹 𝑹𝑬𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺𝑯𝑰𝑷. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑻𝑶𝑿𝑰𝑪 𝑹𝑬𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺𝑯𝑰𝑷. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑼𝑵𝑹𝑬𝑸𝑼𝑰𝑻𝑬𝑫 𝑳𝑶𝑽𝑬. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑷𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑶𝑵𝑰𝑪

𝑺𝑸𝑼𝑨𝑫. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑹𝑶𝑶𝑴𝑴𝑨𝑻𝑬𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑮𝑶𝑶𝑫 𝑰𝑵𝑭𝑳𝑼𝑬𝑵𝑪𝑬. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑩𝑨𝑫 𝑰𝑵𝑭𝑳𝑼𝑬𝑵𝑪𝑬. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑩𝑬𝑺𝑻 𝑭𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑵𝑫. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑪𝑯𝑰𝑳𝑫𝑯𝑶𝑶𝑫 𝑭𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑵𝑫. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑵𝑬𝑮𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑽𝑬

𝑭𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑵𝑫𝑺 𝑻𝑼𝑹𝑵𝑬𝑫 𝑬𝑵𝑬𝑴𝑰𝑬𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑬𝑵𝑬𝑴𝑰𝑬𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑭𝑹𝑬𝑵𝑬𝑴𝑰𝑬𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

if any of these interest you feel free to message me! i have ideas for all of them that i’m always ready to share! also feel free to mix and match any of the plots above a good influence who has an unrequited crush but is also his roommate? sounds like content to me, a friend with benefits turned best friend turned exes on bad terms we love to see it! and if none of these seem interesting to you fill free to check out connor’s wanted connections page!

#wealthyhq:intro #cheating tw #death tw #cancer tw #alcohol tw #i didn't proofread this #so if there's any typos #rip

24 notes · View notes

elizaviento · 6 years

Text

Manipulation (part 8)

NSFW -- 2400 words

(FYI: This story is a sequel/companion piece to Assimilation, which can be found in the Rick Fic Masterpost link in my blog’s description along with additional chapters of Manipulation. Or, you can click the #manipulation tag in this post, within my blog, to access all additional chapters.)

*****

I woke up once in the middle of the night when I felt the humid, warm puffs of her breath bathing my neck and shoulder. Startled, I nearly throttled her before the memories of what had transpired hours earlier sprang forward from my memory bank. Releasing a sigh of relief, I rolled on my side and strained to see her face as my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness.

She was lying on her side, facing me with one hand tucked under the pillow. My scratchy blanket covered from her shoulders downward and I wondered if she was still nude. Gently and slowly lifting the shroud, so as not to wake her, I peeked underneath and smirked when I was rewarded with bare breasts. Then, I chanced placing the hand still under the blanket on her hip, confirming that no fabric covered her lower half either.

As exhaustion began to overtake me again, I wiggled closer to her on the cot and draped an arm across her waist. She stirred only slightly, but her features remained slack. Closing my eyes, I quickly banished the nagging thought of what would become of this once the harsh light of day illuminated our transgressions.

----------

Digging through all the crap I had stored on the metal shelves in the garage was always such a pain in the ass. Briefly wondering if I could somehow bribe Summer to organize it for me, my eyes were inexplicably drawn to the two boxes sitting next to the shelves; the same boxes that I’d begrudgingly agreed to allow her to store in here until she moved out. Stepping closer toward them, I tilted my head to read her handwriting scrawled down each side in black magic marker. One box was labeled as ‘random crap’ and the other simply as ‘photos’.

Photos, huh? I had missed out on over thirteen years so the pathetic curiosity was overwhelming and it took me all of five seconds to pull a pocket knife from my lab coat and slice the thick packing tape across the top.

It was an absolute cluster fuck inside. What appeared to be hundreds of loose photographs haphazardly tossed in a cardboard box with no cataloging or preservation method whatsoever. Thinking back to the state of the boxes on my metal shelves, I smirked to myself at this common thread between us as I removed a handful of photos from the box to leaf through.

Most of them were of the kids. In fact, discarding each one on top of the other unopened box as I went, I figured 85 percent. Some were of Beth, Jerry, Joyce, Leonard, other people I didn’t recognize and didn’t give two shits about. But, then, the next handful I scooped up and shuffled through revealed her in a sleeveless, knee length white dress. The kids were in the photo with her – one on each side – and they were also dressed in formal attire. She didn’t appear much different physically but the kids were obviously a few years younger. The next photo in the stack also showed her in that same white dress. Only now, just her father appeared with her.

Nice going, Rick. You stumbled across her wedding photos. You know what they say right? Curiosity punches the old man directly in the ball sack. Maybe you should quit while you’re ahead, huh pal? Maybe you should quit before you find one that she and her husband took of themselves while they fucked on their wedding night in some kind of amateur hour photo shoot.

Tossing the pile I had in my hand back into the box, I quickly threw the others inside as well before finding a roll of tape on my shelves to reseal it. It served me right, I supposed. I’d watched more than a few Ricks in the dimensions where her counterparts were still married play games of hide and seek with her husband. Most of them were having an affair and that presented its own set of challenges, but the ones who weren’t were just plain miserable. They avoided her and her husband’s counterparts like the plague, and I honestly couldn’t blame them. I’d only caught a glimpse or two of the husband through the goggles and honestly couldn’t pick the guy out from Adam. As it were though, I’d prefer to keep it that way for as long as possible. No good would come of stumbling across a photo of him, at this point.

Feeling grumpy from having almost sabotaged myself, I gave up my plans of recalibrating the ionic defibulizer and decided to go back inside to check on her. I’d left her sleeping in my room about an hour prior when I’d realized that I’d been staring at her while she slept for a creepy, stalker-esque amount of time. But, as soon as I entered the kitchen, I caught the faint sound of water running through pipes. Considering no one else was home, I felt my cock twitch as the cliché image of her soaped up in a steamy shower invaded my mind.

Again, it took me all of five seconds to decide to join her, even as I was already walking toward the bathroom. Jiggling the door knob, I found it locked – which was fucking adorable – so I fished an ink pen from my inner pocket, pushed it through the hole to pop the lock on the other side, shed every stitch of clothing and opened the door. The bathroom was completely shrouded in steam and I wondered if she was trying to boil herself alive. Then, the bubbly sound of her laughter could be heard over the shower spray. An intrusive thought crept in that she was trying to scrub the shame of our coupling from her skin, but I shoved it away as I forcefully yanked the shower curtain back.

She screamed. Loud. She also tried to scramble backward which only managed to pitch her off balance as the balls of her feet slipped up the tub wall. Thankfully she steadied herself before falling and cracking her skull.

“What w-w-were you laughing about in here?” I asked nonchalantly while trying not to laugh.

“WHAT?!” she screamed back at me. Obviously her brain hadn't fully caught on to the fact that I wasn’t there to murder her and I smirked as I stepped over the tub wall to join her.

“Jeez, tone it down – dial it back a bit or Jerry will start to suspect something,” I joked as I shimmied past her to get to the spray of water. Noticing the look of pure terror on her face at the prospect, I clarified that I wasn’t serious by adding, “Re-relax. He’s not here.” A moment later, she shoved me as I ducked my head under the shower spray. “Hey, watch it! I – I’m an old man, remember? If I shatter a hip, you’re cleaning – emptying my bedpan.”

She laughed, shaking her head and folding her arms across her chest as she shivered slightly. Her brow was also furrowed, making it obvious that she was having a serious reflection on what I’d just said. The last thing I wanted was for her to try to backpedal, so I moved in closer.

“I can hear the gears t-t-turning in that head of yours,” I said, grabbing one of her forearms to pull her in until we were chest to chest. Wrapping my arms around her, I rested my chin on the crown of her head and turned her until she was again under the soothing spray. Once I was sure that she had warmed up enough, I pulled back slightly to look down on her. When she shifted her gaze upward toward me, she also rose on her tip toes and kissed me, parting her lips slightly to encase my bottom lip between hers and gently tugged it with her teeth as she lowered back on her heels.

Wasting not even one second, I wrapped my arms around her tighter and continued where she’d left off – pressing several short, open mouth kisses to her lips before pushing inside; rolling my tongue over and around hers until I had her absolutely breathless. All the while, my cock filled and swelled against the soft flesh of her stomach. And, as I pulled away to trail kisses across her jaw, she leaned back to grant me easier access which, in turn, shifted her smooth skin across the head of my cock. That bit of stimulation flipped a switch in my brain, throwing me into a frenzy I could hardly control.

Without warning, I unwrapped my arms from her waist to grip both of her biceps, turned her around and roughly shoved her against the shower wall. Then, placing one hand on the back of her neck, I pressed her cheek to the ceramic tile.

“I’m gonna fuck you,” I growled in her ear, rutting against her ass from behind. “Are you wet enough for me yet?” Moving one hand between her thighs, I spread her lips wide with my ring and index fingers before thrusting my middle finger inside. We groaned in unison – her from the sudden intrusion and me from the sensation of my digit sinking into that tight, wet snatch of hers. “Mmm, yeah, y-y-you – you’re ready,” was all the warning I gave her before swiftly positioning and slamming home. Her chest and face slid upward against the tile with the force of it and she cried out. For a split second, I wondered if I’d hurt her. Most of her counterparts seemed to like it rough now and again but perhaps I’d misinterpreted her earlier lip bite.

That is, until she demanded – “Do it again.”

Suppressing a moan, I gripped her hips a bit tighter. “Yeah? You like that?” I asked before pulling out and ramming back in.

“Oh, fuuuck…” she sobbed. “Don’t stop!”

Jesus Christ, it’s like Christmas morning and I’ve just been gifted the perfect toy, I thought as I shuffled back slightly – tugging her hips to move with me – and then positioned both hands to clamp down on her shoulders for leverage. Dropping a kiss on top of her head, I pulled out nearly all the way and then slammed home again and again and again.

“Oh, shit. Oh, Christ. I – I’ve fucked my hand so many times while – while dreamin’ about pounding you in this shower,” I confessed; the words spewing from my mouth unchecked as she slid and grunted against the tile. She moaned in response, her pussy tightly enveloping my cock and I continued to give it to her. “I can feel you squeezing my dick, baby, fuck. Touch – rub your clit for me. I want – wanna feel you cum.”

Sliding one hand down the tile, she squeezed it under her body. Seconds later, she cried out and her knees buckled beneath her. I adjusted my grip from her shoulders to her hips to hold her upright as she continued to massage her clit until her legs began to tremble.

“Oh my god! Oh my fucking god!” she screamed, slamming her free hand against the tile. Her cunt continued to tighten as I fucked her and I knew she was seconds from cumming. Leaning forward, I pressed my lips to her ear and commanded her to do so.

“Cum.”

And, she did. Her body seizing in the same manner as the night before, she hitched a sob as a flash flood erupted from her cunt, coating my cock as I continued to savagely fuck her. As each contraction pulsed and squeezed, I faltered my rhythm as I drew closer to the edge of that cliff.

“I’m gonna – gonna cum on your ass, baby. You ready?” I asked, my speed increasing as I chased my own release. The glide of her slick pussy was so god damn perfect and I wondered how I would contain myself from fucking her 24/7.

“Yesss,” she hissed in reply. Her climax ebbing, she steadied herself before continuing, “Cum on me, Rick. Do it, baby.”

“Ah FUCK!” I yelled as I pulled out and pumped my cock. Once, twice; the pressure building and building until it snapped and I came all over her ass – each rope painting the perfect landscape of debauchery on her backside.

Completely exhausted and panting like a dog, I hadn’t even realized I’d slumped on top of her until she spoke –

“That was fun. But, I really need to actually shower now.”

Laughing, I stood upright and wrapped my arms around her waist to pull her from the shower wall and steady her on her feet.

“I – uh – gotta get Morty, anyway,” I said, pulling the curtain back and stepping out while she angled her body back under the water.

“Morty’s in school,” she informed me and I scoffed.

“So? I’ve got shit to do and – and need his help.” Once I was fully clothed, I turned back toward her to add, “Don’t tell Beth.”

“Rick, that’s not fair,” she replied, pulling the shower curtain around her body to shield from the cold air wafting in from the hall. I should have known that her sense of duty to the kids would remain absolute.

“Okay, fiiiine,” I groaned, rolling my eyes before stepping out of the bathroom and closing the door.

“You’re still going to get him, aren’t you?!” she yelled after me.

Smirking at her correct assumption, I casually strolled toward the garage. And, as I did, I had the distinct feeling that what had just transpired had cemented something between us. Yeah, we’d fucked the night before, but it was under a haze of alcohol and vulnerability. She could have refused me just now. She could have screamed at me to leave the bathroom as soon as I ripped open the shower curtain. But, she didn’t. Even the short conversation between us after the euphoria of a good fuck had faded was natural and easy – no awkwardness or tension whatsoever. I supposed that, even at my age, it was never too late for firsts.

To be continued...

#rick and morty #rick sanchez x reader #rick sanchez #fanfiction #sister smith series #manipulation

69 notes · View notes

searchingwardrobes · 6 years

Text

Captain Swan is My Favorite Rom Com: Priceless (1/?)

Since the prologue was so short, I wanted to get this chapter to ya’ll quickly. Emma still hasn’t shown up yet (not really), but just stick with me! This one is all Brothers Jones. I wrote a lengthy explanation of why I decided to do this particular au when I posted the prologue, for those who missed it. Much love to @xhookswenchx for being my beta!

Summary: Desperate men can find themselves in places they never thought they would go, but for Killian Jones it would finally force him to be the hero his daughter always thought he could be. The job was simple: drive the truck, don’t open the back, don’t ask questions. But Killian Jones has never followed instructions very well . . .

Rating: M for mature themes

Trigger warnings: This story is about human trafficking, so there is non-con, rape, prostitution, sexual exploitation, and violence, some of it involving minors. Those who know me and my writing, you know I will not be graphic nor will I portray these things as positive. Still, know what you are about to read! This also has Knightrook and a young Alice, but her mother is Milah, not Gothel.

Can also be read on Ao3 and is part of my series Captain Swan is My Favorite Rom-Com: 2nd Edition. There is also the original series from a couple of years ago.

Tagging: @snowbellewells @kmomof4 @jennjenn615 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @bethacaciakay @teamhook @thislassishooked @shipsxahoy @shady-swan-jones @tiganasummertree @artistic-writer @jonesfandomfanatic @cat-sophia @hollyethecurious @thejacketandthehook @dassala @branlovestowrite @allofdafandoms-blog @flslp87 @pocket-anon @snidgetsafan @kday426 @delirious-latenight-laughs @winterbaby89 @onceuponaprincessworld @courtorderedcake

One thing I have to clarify right from the beginning is that I never meant for Liam to get involved. Unfortunately, he’s never stopped thinking he has to take care of me. From the moment our father left when I was eight, he’s taken the care of his “little brother” onto his shoulders. And though those shoulders are no longer as slender as they were at eleven, they still carry way too much. I certainly didn’t want him carrying this too.

“Liam, seriously, I don’t need a babysitter!”

“Where did you even get this job, Killian?”

I clenched my jaw and avoided his gaze. Of course, that probably only made him worry more. “Will Scarlett knew a guy who knew a guy . . . “

“Seriously, Scarlett? Are you kidding me?” Liam paced the room, nervously tugging at his hair. It was a nervous tick that ran in the Jones family. “Be straight with me. Is it drugs?”

I shook my head firmly. “I made it clear to Will that I wouldn’t get mixed up in that sort of thing. He swore it isn’t drugs. I know you don’t like him, but Will at least would never double cross a friend.”

“So why all the secrecy?”

I swallowed hard. I knew it could only mean that whatever I was transporting wasn’t legal. I was no fool. “I figure the less I know, the better.” Liam was going to fall through the floor soon at the rate he was pacing. “I’m desperate, Liam! I need something better than crashing on your couch, or I’ll never get Alice back.”

Liam’s expression softened. “So you pick the truck up from the docks, drive it to Vegas . . . “

“And that’s it. I’m five thousand dollars richer.”

Liam crossed his arms across his chest. “I’m still going with you.”

“That isn’t part of the deal -”

Liam silenced me with one raised hand. “I’m not asking for a cut. I just think you at least need someone to help you drive. I mean, it’s a cross country trip for heaven’s sake! I don’t want you driving off the road in the middle of Nebraska because you fell asleep at the wheel.”

I always hated it when he was right.

******************************************************

We picked up the truck at Boston harbor just where Will said it would be. It was plain white; a modest sized box truck. I couldn’t help noticing the padlock on the back. Liam caught my eye and raised an eyebrow.

“They want to be sure we don’t sneak a peek.”

I ignored Liam’s pointed look as I got behind the wheel. I wondered if he’d contemplated the possibilities of what we were transporting. I sure as hell hadn’t. I didn’t want to know, plain and simple. Every time I was tempted to wonder, I thought of Alice.

My brother and I were silent until we made it out of Boston traffic and were on a stretch of interstate. Then he twisted in his seat to face me.

“Why the desperation?”

I glanced at him. “What do you mean? My daughter is growing up without me. What more is there to say?”

“But you’ve been doing all you can, picking up part time work, pounding the pavement for more interviews. You visit her every chance you get, and you know Tiana is for you.”

I shifted in my seat, kneading the steering wheel with my fingers. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“What do you mean?”

I sighed as I rubbed at my temple. We weren’t even out of Massachusetts yet and Liam was already giving me a headache. “She wants to adopt Alice.”

“She can’t do that!” Liam exclaimed. “You’d have to sign over your rights!”

“For a formal adoption, yes, but a judge can grant Tiana permanent custody. It’s almost the same thing. She says I’m no good for Alice. That I break promises.”

Liam shook his head, and I could tell he was trying to reign in his temper. “You’re doing the best you can. That time you missed her school play, it was only because your boss threatened to fire you if you didn’t come in to cover that shift.”

I scoffed. “Then he fired me anyway when he found out I had a record.” I gave Liam a long look. “Now do you see why I couldn’t pass this up?”

*****************************************************

Have you ever driven from Boston to Vegas? Almost three thousand miles, forty long hours, and let me tell you, the American Midwest is . . . well, it’s not the most fascinating drive in the world. Liam wasn’t kidding about falling asleep halfway through Nebraska. Even with the two of us sharing the driving, it was getting harder and harder to keep our eyes open, but whoever was waiting for our delivery in Vegas had been very clear: drive straight through, no stops except for gas and bathroom breaks.

It was my turn to drive, and the highway was a lonely stretch of road, nothing but fields of wheat and prairie grass for miles ahead. That humming, hypnotic sound of the engine and the spinning tires was pulling at my eyelids no matter how hard I tried. Liam was snoring beside me, and I didn’t want to wake him. I rolled my shoulders, slapped my cheeks and turned up the air conditioning. The radio, unfortunately, was busted.

The glare of the setting sun helped keep me awake for about an hour, but once the sun went down fully, I was in trouble. I felt my head loll, and I shook it. My eyelids drooped, and I forced them wide. But at some point, I lost the battle, and the next thing I knew, the sight through the windshield wasn’t the yellow lines stretching along the asphalt. The truck’s headlights shone on tall prairie grass and the wheels bounced along rough terrain. Liam awoke and shouted in alarm as I put on the breaks. I was trying to keep the truck steady, but we still fishtailed a little before finally coming to a jerking stop.

And that’s when we both heard it: the screams from the back of the truck.

I turned towards my brother, and I knew my eyes were probably as wide as his, my face just as pale.

“Did you hear that?” Liam whispered.

We both fell silent, straining to hear. It was faint, but I thought I heard . . .

“Is someone crying?” I asked.

Liam was out of the truck before I could finish the question. I jumped out as well, slipping on the loose soil as I raced around to the back of the vehicle. Liam was already yanking at the padlock. I pounded my fists against the door.

“Anyone in there?”

Liam stopped as we both awaited an answer. Nothing. Liam’s face was a picture of anguish, and I was sure mine was no better. My lips set in a grim line, I marched to the cab of the truck and rooted around inside. Behind the seat was a tool box, and I pulled out the sturdiest thing I could find – a crowbar. The padlock was old and slightly rusted in places, so I hoped it would give. After my first whack of the crowbar, screams came once again from inside the truck.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Liam called out, “we’ve got to make sure you’re okay back there.”

He nodded, and I continued pounding at the lock. Finally, it gave, and Liam quickly opened the roll up door. The crying was louder now, and as we squinted into the dark interior, I thought I saw three figures huddled in the back. I pulled up the flashlight app on my phone and shined it inside. I was shocked at what I saw; a large bottle from a water cooler, almost empty; several dirty blankets; a bucket; and the crumpled remains of food packages.

But the worst thing were the three young women clinging to one another and squinting in the sudden light. I wasn’t transporting illegal goods. I was transporting people.

#cs ff #cs movie au #csromcom19 #captain swan is my favorite rom com #priceless au #brothers jones

20 notes · View notes

because-its-important · 6 years

Text

transitions & transformations

i. the rest of my batch at RC

I spent the first six weeks of my batch at Recurse Center in an out-and-out sprint. I learned Python, built and released projects, and wrote blog posts every week. I wasn’t sure where my limits were, but I was determined to find out - preferably by overshooting them, then adjusting after the fact.

A curious thing happened. I kept finding that I was more than capable of starting and finishing projects, especially when I had a firm mental image of the end goal. There were at least as many unexpected good-turns as there were setbacks, and I certainly didn’t come up against any inscrutable barriers. Mostly the challenge was in overcoming the distance between a thing that doesn’t exist and a thing that does, which I was able to sort out pretty handily through a consistent application of effort across time.

Who’d have thought?

A selfie taken on my birthday, which also happened in the last few months and was really great!

The second half of my batch was not so visibly productive - with the exception of The Question Game. The Question Game is a simple game designed to help groups of people get to know each other better IRL. I designed it with my friend Brittany a few years ago as an icebreaker when we found ourselves in a group of folks who knew us but didn’t really know each other. The game only really needs a method of generating random numbers for a small but arbitrary group size, but building it out as a toy webapp was a good excuse to get practice working with a JS-only stack. I learned React, got a lil more familiar with node, and even went as far as to attach an otherwise completely unnecessary PG database and Sequelize ORM. You can see the code for it here. Outside of this project, however, I didn’t publish any code. I didn’t publish any writing, either.

So I’d like to take a moment and shine a bit of light on the work that I did during the rest of my batch.

🌒 🌓 🌔 🌕 🌖 🌗 🌘

First, I made the decision to leave community.lawyer, the social impact startup I co-founded in 2016 following the Blue Ridge Labs Fellowship.

I’m happy to report that I left on the come up, which seems a rare and privileged thing for a founder to be able to say. Gaining traction in a hyper-specialized industry like legal tech takes a gargantuan amount of sustained forward momentum, and I departed just as we began to reap the fruits of our labor. In the last few months community.lawyer has reached final approval on partnerships a year in the making, won federal grants we’d submitted to in 2016, and every day our software is being used to help connect people who have legal needs with credible lawyers. Our first two partners were exactly the types of legal organizations at the heart of our mission: the Justice Entrepreneurs Project and the DC Reduced Fee Lawyer & Mediator Referral Service.1 Based in Chicago and Washington DC respectively, these orgs are specifically chartered to deliver quality services at rates that more Americans can afford. I am so proud. ⚖️

Second, I started my first ever job hunt as a software engineer. Wowee, this was scary! I knew that I had to prepare for interviewing, which meant a) getting my career change narrative straight, b) studying Data Structures & Algorithms 101, and c) learning how to perform my handle on both of these in a live, semi-adversarial environment.

At one point during my batch my laptop broke. I read through this wonderful illustrated book during the two days it was being fixed.

In order to direct my search I also had to craft a set of selection criteria of my own. Foremost: “What good will my work do for the world?”2 Additionally, “What degree of access will I have to supportive mentors?”

Getting started with interview prep was a challenge, at least partly because I had so many options for where to start. But I did get started! I read Cracking the Coding Interview, I did the free trial and weekly free problems on Interview Cake. I attended a few group mock interviews at Recurse Center and signed up for a 1-1 mock interview with an RC alum. Her name is Leah, and she’s amazing - the superbly friendly and encouraging Comp Sci TA I wish I’d had years ago. 💚Brittany also set up mock technical screens for me with her pals, Leaf and Ian. They were the vanguard against my outsized anxiety about programming for an audience and they each took the time to give me solid feedback.

Third, I extended my batch at Recurse Center by another 6 weeks. I had decided early on I wouldn’t extend (for no real reason) and stuck with this decision up until two days before my batch ending. A small group of folks - Lily, Connor, Alicja and I - went to NYX in Union Square to try out lipsticks. We played with different colors and finishes (satin! matte! shimmer!) for half an hour or so. There came a point when I looked up, glanced across the narrow makeup store at my beautiful friends’ beautiful faces and thought, “You know, you don’t have to leave yet, right? What’s the rush?” I’d already accomplished my primary goal, to forcibly rework my identity as an engineer, but it sure seemed that I could stand to reach for a second one. That night I decided to extend my batch, with the intention of sampling a more open method of self-directed learning, i.e. with a little more chill and a lot less panic. Specifically, I wanted to practice connecting meaningfully with my limited supply of social energy.

In my bonus six weeks, I: gave three talks (2 planned, 1 impromptu) under encouragement from Ayla and Lily, learned to juggle thanks to instruction from a fellow RCer, Edward, who also loaned me a book about learning, made it into weekly Feelings Check-in (read as: opt-in support group) fairly regularly, picked my first ever lock, saw a live-coding show and then later attended two live-coding workshops (one on TidalCycles, another on Super Collider), sat in a dark room and played howling wolf clips while Microsoft Sam read grimoires aloud, got my hair braided for the first time in a decade, made dumplings and DJ’d for a dinner party, connected with folks about queer-poly relationships, gave fiery advice, and received compliments so earnest and rational and persistent that it was difficult to refute them.

Zine fair plus Lightning Bolt concert inside a movie theater in Times Square??

I also put my interview prep to use and interviewed with a handful of Recurse Center partner companies. Job searching meant squaring off against impostor syndrome and a ton of related anxieties in rapid succession. I successfully choked most of that down when it mattered, though, and it was only a couple short weeks before I received my first offer.

To that end, I’m super happy to say that I’ll be joining Blink Health as a Fullstack Product Engineer! Blink Health is a healthcare startup in SoHo. They make it easier for people to afford prescription drugs, especially for those with limited insurance plans or none at all. These savings aren’t trivial either: an extra $50 can spare someone from choosing between groceries or medicine that week, and for some folks Blink saves many times that. I’ll be starting at the end of this month. ✌️🤓

The last two years have been a wild ride: participating in a social impact fellowship and accelerator, busting my product chops and learning web dev to get a public benefit company off the ground, then diving into four months of self-directed learning at Recurse Center. I’m really looking forward to having some externally imposed structure again. Real health insurance, too.

ii. some hard truths

I made a few radical life changes in 2016, like getting involved in activist spaces, dating more, biking everywhere, building strong friendships, going capital-B Boogying, programming full-time. As I carried those changes forward through 2017, I began to notice a lot of mental and emotional reconfiguration happening to me.

Did you know that along its way to becoming a butterfly, a caterpillar nearly completely liquifies inside its cocoon?

Psychological growth is confusing, full of false starts, and generally painful. You’ve got the static pain of stretching beyond your limits, the pleasure-pain of feeling an old knot finally release, the frustrating pain of stubbing your toe because some helpful asshole has been rearranging your psychic furniture when you weren’t looking. There’s the more dramatic knife-in-the-gut pain of realizing that just because you’re growing doesn’t mean the people closest to you are, and that now in certain cases what you previoulsy regarded as friendship actually looks a whole lot like run-of-the-mill exploitation or even emotional abuse, if you're being honest, and it's a realization that only hurts more because it’s so irredeemably cliche and boring. And despite all that pain you gotta go ahead and grow anyway, claw your way out of the relative comfort of ignorance. Transcendence may not be the only show in town but afaik it’s the one most worth watching.

Prior to attending Recurse Center I’d spent lots of time exploring my surroundings and cataloguing people and places worth coming back to. My view of myself did change (and positively!) as a consequence. But sooner or later, ya get tired of the taste of low-hanging fruit.

So, armed with the bookshelf of a philosophy grad and a burgeoning psychoanalytic vocabulary begging to be let off leash, I decided to use my time at RC to try confronting a few of my Hard To See truths in addition to becoming a better programmer.

Here’s what I’ve found so far.

Truth #1: People like me a lot. This causes me problems.

I’ve been metabolizing this one for some time. I remember having a conversation with Brittany in January of 2016. I don’t remember what social anxiety I’d been vocalizing, but I must have been worrying that someone “hated me.” Brittany cut me off, exasperated in the way that only a friend can be in the face of utter delusion: “No one hates you Nicole! You’re always worried that people don’t like you and it’s never true!”

I carried that admonishment with me through two years of voracious friendship-building. On the whole, seeing that people do in fact enjoy and seek out my company has curbed the most egregious overreaches of my social anxiety. But reckoning with my anxiety honestly has also meant acknowledging that my compulsive instinct to withdraw from social situations is also a protective (if suboptimal) response to a few very real dangers.

Most acutely: being friendly, generous, and intensely empathetic makes me a ready target for users. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt for as long as I can, which makes me proportionally susceptible to being taken advantage of and then gaslighted about it. A lifetime of socialization as a petite woman don’t help, neither. This leads to a pattern where, semi-regularly, I look up and take stock of how someone has been treating me and realize that the answer is Very Badly, For Quite A While. This in turn leads to rough periods of cutting ties and moving on. Ideally I’d like to be be able to filter bad actors out sooner, but I also want to stay open, giving, and hopeful beyond reason. Those desires are fundamentally at odds with each other - raising vs. lowering one’s defenses - but it’s clear that I need to come up with a strategy that balances both.

More broadly, though, I operate under an ever-present dread of inevitably disappointing everyone who knows me. Whether people project onto me because they already like me or like me more because they project positively onto me, I am extremely sensitive to the fact that when people meet me the conception they form has waaay more to do with what they want to find than what’s actually there. My body is a surface readily projected upon: young, female-shaped, ethnically ambiguous, small, smiling. These well-intended projections cause me the most trouble when people see me interacting socially; they’ll witness fifteen minutes of seemingly effortless extroversion on my part and extrapolate out massively. As far as they’re concerned I’ve got plenty of social energy to spare, and if I don’t spend it hanging out with them, it must be because either my friendliness is fake or I don’t like them.

Pretty much none of this is conducted consciously, of course, but it still creates a lot of unnecessary pressure that I can’t pretend not to feel and resent. I know there are people who dream about attaining this kind of “popularity” - to be assumed Cooler than one truly is - but getting buffeted around by folks’ totally unexamined, unarticulated psychological desires mostly sucks.

Truth #2: I’m non-binary.

I’ve also spent a very long time resisting this one. Two decades on the rack, easy. As such, the story of getting here is long. Perhaps one day I’ll tell it. 😛

The short of it, though, is this: I’m probably at least as much of a boy3 as I am a girl. Outside of where my life has been mutated by the chronic background radiation of sexism, “benevolent” and otherwise, I don’t strongly identify as a woman. Furthermore, I find the two-gender system to be infinitely more alienating than comforting. Gender is a social construction designed to impose order on the natural messiness of sexual experience, and as far as I’m cool with that, I am decidedly Not Cool with the “normal” state of affairs, i.e. aggressively shoving whole human beings into an absurdly reductive false dichotomy.

Between its either-or-ism and its forced assignment, the traditional approach to gender reveals itself to be obviously bullshit to anyone who spends more than a few minutes thinking about it. Its boundaries are arbitrary, inconsistent, and generally ill-fitting at the level of individual experience, which why they require such an outrageous amount of coercion and bodily violence to enforce. As much as other folks want to participate in a system of ritualized violence I guess they are free to? Personally, I’d prefer to see it actively dismantled.

If gender is to be saved it’ll be by subverting it, taking it apart, remaking it into something life-affirming. Not the dehumanizing garbage we’ve got now.

As of yet I don’t have any plans to change my presentation because I don’t fuckin’ gotta!

I do have a preference towards They / Them pronouns, but She / Her is still fine. For most of my friends this isn’t going to be at all surprising nor will it in any way negatively impact our relationship. Anyone who needs me to just-be-a-girl, however, can expect turbulence.

Truth #3: My righteous anger is justified and I am good at using it to help others.

I have felt conflicted about my anger for a long time. Since a very vocal childhood I have been regularly frustrated by prejudices and injustices, and I was frequently the first voice of dissent against them, whether that meant challenging adults or my peers. Unsurprisingly, I became well acquainted with the standard strokes of the backlash.

When you are confronting bigotry in a mixed environment, the voice of the status quo will generally manifest in one of two ways:

Gaslighting, e.g. “you are wrong to have said this at all, obviously I am a Good Person, you are just imagining that what I said sounded like XYZ, honestly how could you even think this, as a matter of fact it is I who is offended!”

Tone policing, e.g. “you’re too upset about this! after all, I, the person who did Fucked Up Thing, am perfectly calm about Fucked Up Thing, so any amount of anger makes you irrational by contrast, and I get a raincheck on whatever this is about!”

I know these responses are repulsive. I know they are merely the signs of a weak and imperiled ego acting out of fear. And yet I still spend an inordinate amount of time second-guessing my own anger. Gaslighting and tone policing are a favored weapon of the status quo because they work, and they work in direct proportion to how agreeable their target wants to be.

content warning: the following segment talks about sexual harassment and assault

About couple weeks ago I had the misfortune of being sexually harassed at a club in Bushwick. After numerous rejections and explicitly telling a creep bothering me, my friends, and other women in the club to get lost, I finally went to get a bouncer to eject him. The bouncer got the creep to leave. When I went to thank him, the bouncer told me a whole story about how the creep was “a harmless guy.” Then he reached down and grabbed my ass. Presumably he felt entitled to do this after helping me get rid of a person I asked him to remove... for unwanted touching.

It Really Sucked.

At every turn during the whole ordeal (and its aftermath) I had to hold onto my anger, convince myself that I wasn’t overreacting, remind myself that anyone who thought this was acceptable to do to me is almost certainly doing worse to more vulnerable people. I kept picturing myself the way this guy, this man in a position of power, must have seen me in order to feel okay doing what he did. That I was young, small, female, too friendly to say No, already indebted anyway; that he was one of the Good Guys, that his behavior was also “harmless” because he had decided it was. I conjured up as much anger as I could, pushed down the nausea of envisioning my own degradation from an attacker’s POV, and got to work. I reached out to the club and was quickly put in contact with the owner. The venue now has a publicly posted zero tolerance sexual harassment policy. The entire staff is going through training with a local org dedicated to creating safer nightlife spaces. And that motherfucker has been fired.

I demonstrably made the world better. I wasn’t alone, but all that happened because of my actions. Me and my anger, we did that.

I wish more people were this fucking angry. 💢

~ end of content warning ~

iii. an opinion

My Saturn return is upon me, y’all. As Frank Ocean serenades, we’ll never be those kids again. I have lived a few of these here nine lives and it seems only prudent to be moving forward with some sort of opinion on the matter.

My opinion is this: us folks with financial and physical security should be spending more time fixing shit around here. Figuring out what needs fixing and how you might help are the first steps.

If you’re operating on a similar scale of privilege as I am, maybe that means changing jobs to do more mission-oriented work. If you can’t swing a change of that magnitude, maybe it means showing up to community events and engaging with, caring for, supporting people you otherwise wouldn’t talk to. Churches, libraries, volunteering, supporting local artists, participating in local politics - this all counts. If you’re already doing this sorta thing, that is awesome! Maybe you also have a friend worth inviting who you sense is just itching for a chance to exercise compassion?

I’m using “fixing” pretty loosely here, too. Fixing, to my mind, means making the world brighter, safer, and sweeter for your fellows, human and otherwise. We’ve all got different ideas about what that looks like, and there are definitely folks - myopic or malevolent or both - who will swear up and down that their fear- and hate-driven behaviors will bring about better world. Ultimately, though, I believe that many hands reaching towards their personal vision of Better will in fact make things Better, especially when that vision is informed by meaningful interaction with the real world and its real sorrows and its real triumphs.

But ya gotta reach. Ya gotta try.

I am so tired of hearing my well-fed, well-homed friends piss and moan about late capitalism4 without lifting a damn finger in service of the communities bearing the brunt of material hardship. Unfettered capitalism sure does have a marked tendency to wreak havoc on organic life! But capitalism is not a monolith, and lamenting the abuses perpetuated by its principle benefactors as unchanging or inevitable only normalizes them. Any investigation into the history of capitalism (or the broader phenomena of how a Few come to subjugate the Many) will very quickly disabuse you of the notion that this shit is going to stop without a great deal of active resistance.5

So unless you are personally doing work to put our current strand of democracy-withering corporatism six-feet-under, seriously, just STFU instead. Your nihilism is boring! You don’t sound woke! Save it for your local DSA working group!

Which isn’t to say that I’m not convinced of the wickedness6 of the problems we’re facing: skyrocketing wealth disparity with no relief in sight; the destruction of most of Earth’s biodiversity via mass extinction; a pernicious climate of racism and xenophobia that scapegoats black and brown folks and then visits misery upon them; the weight of an aging population bearing down on the shittiest healthcare system of any nation in its class; a widely disenfranchised electorate further fragmented and fatigued by hyper-polarization; the gendered terrorism that is inflicted daily on women, trans and non-binary folks, and queer people at large; a rising wave of depressive anxiety as people become more aware of these problems and how thoroughly they’ve been disempowered from changing things for the better.

So yeah, I get it. These are hard problems. I just don’t see any better option than trying anyway. I want to spend my time fixing things around here and encouraging others to try their hand too. You already know the bad news: real change is hard and it can take a very long time. You might work your whole life sowing seeds whose fruit you never get to taste.

The good news, however, is that you can get started whenever and wherever you are. The good news is that a sense of purpose is its own reward.

iv. how to get started

When you’ve got hard work ahead of you, your best bet is to use your beautiful human brain and create some leverage. Ask Archimedes about it.7

Lever systems got two parts:

The lever, which is the tool you use to amplify your effort. The longer your lever is, the easier your job will be.

The fulcrum, which is the wedge the lever rests on. The nearer your fulcrum is to the thing you want to move, the easier your job will be.

If you’re starting from zero - “I want to do more for the world but I don’t know how!” - my advice is to forget about the lever arm for now. A lever ain’t shit without a fulcrum, anyway. Your time is better spent exploring the world, keeping an eye out for problems you’d like to solve, and identifying nearby points of leverage. If you want to get into activism, a fulcrum might be volunteering to fold pamphlets for an organization with a mission you believe in. If want to see more self-expression in the world, it might be might be inviting your friends to a zine-making class or hosting your own arts and craft night.

The best fulcrum is one that makes you Feel Good when you apply any amount of effort against it. Too many people get caught up in a self-defeating belief that if they can’t give 110% of their creative energy to something they might as well not try. I can confidently say that trying is itself a virtue. Every time you try even a little bit you make it easier for yourself to try again later, and more importantly, you make trying easier for others. A bunch of people altering their behavior a smidge in the same direction doesn’t add up to nothing; on the contrary, it’s a sea change.

If you’ve got a decent idea of the types of problems you want to solve, though, and you’ve tested your fulcrums, and you are thinking, “Okay, but is this all I’m capable of giving?” then it’s probably time to work on your lever. Given your own interests and inclinations, what skills can you develop that will increase the good you’re doing 10x, 100x over? This is the long game, but it scales a whole lot better than “keep doing what I’m already doing, but more.”

For me right now this means deepening my technical knowledge, building a resilient support network, and sharing what I’m learning. Helping others has been a powerful motivator for self-improvement, not the least of which because it’s a convenient shortcut through the snarl of self-confidence issues.

I am so grateful that Recurse Center was a stop on lengthening my lever! What a concentrated cluster of helpful, considerate beings.

I’ve spent the last two years wandering around New York City in wide-eyed wonder, asking myself the most ambitious question I could think of: how do you save the world?

Getting older comes with a lot of downsides, but asking yourself big questions and living your life as the answer is the primary pleasure of adulthood. It took a ton of courage to get started and I am still frequently awed to find myself moving in the right direction. I’m humbled by the grace and fortitude of the folks who’ve been at this for way longer.

I’m also a hell of a lot happier. This summer’s gonna be rad. ☀️

There are lots of extraordinarily sexy company names like this in the legal world. ↩︎

Having the choice to direct my energies in this way is a privilege. Working in tech gives me this freedom of motion and I have been drawn to software engineering in part because it is the freest of the free (if you still gotta labor for your living). ↩︎

😱😫😖😬😬😬... 😏 ↩︎

Substitute with whatever modifier is en vogue. As a point of fact, “late capitalism” is a term that’s been floating around for literally over a hundred years. ↩︎

Thankfully, history also clearly demonstrates that the tide can be turned. ↩︎

“The use of the term ‘wicked’ here has come to denote resistance to resolution.” Wikipedia page. ↩︎

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” etc etc. ↩︎

#recurse center

3 notes · View notes

patheticphallacy · 5 years

Text

I honestly cannot believe it’s August already!

July was a weird month for me. I went back to work, so a lot of the month has just been going between that and chilling at home, and I kind of put most things on the backburner- including this blog- just so I could get over a really bad June. Overall this Summer has been strange, really, but my mental health is better than it has been since the beginning of the year, so I think I needed July to adjust.

Reading Rush happened! It was kind of a mess in some regards, and I struggled to engage with others again. I’m just still not sure how to navigate being in the book community, to the point where I’ve made two separate Twitter accounts just because I get so overwhelmed with my book one. I’ve been in this community for so long and never been sure how to make friends within it, and that kind of hit me hard with some conversations during the month on Twitter.

I have some things planned for August, mostly in regards to saying goodbye to friends (one of my old roommates is moving to Japan for the year!), and also getting ahead on University reading. I have so many classics to read and I’m just not sure what I’m going to do about it, I have no energy to read anything intense.

It’s been a bit of a weird time for me, and going into the latter half of the year now, I just really hope I don’t completely fall away from this blog. It means a lot to me, but it gets difficult being happy with the content I produce sometimes, which is why I’m trying to understand where I want to go with the content I produce now.

I hope you’ll bare with me, and I hope everyone had a good July!

READING WRAP UP

Sheets by Brenna Thummler– Sheets is one of my new favourite graphic novels. It deals with grief and coming-of-age, and the societal pressures of conformity to fit in. There are major content warnings for child death!

Super Fun Sexy Times by Meredith McClaren– Oh, this was so good. It’s out at the end of August and has five stories following different couples in the super world and the sex stuff they get up to.

Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker– I wasn’t as big a fan of this one! I really enjoyed the treatment of sexuality and gender, and I like the overall story, but I don’t think it was paced very well and I struggled to feel attached to some characters.

No.6 Volume 5 by Atsuko Asano– Still going absolutely coocoo bananas for No.6, honestly. This is my favourite volume so far, and I’m aiming to finish the series by end of September for a post I want to do on it come October.

The Avant-Guards #6 by Carly Usdin– I love these students! There are hardhitting messages and themes being explored, but the charisma of the characters really softens some of the blows and makes this series an easy read while still having deeper layers.

The X-Files: Earth Children Are Weird by Jason Rekulak– A picture book I bought in June when I went to Foyles, this is just a charming story for anyone, but especially the younger people in your life. It’s so cute, and I love the art. It may be for kids but it honestly captures the personalities of Dana and Fox so well.

Serious Moonlight by Jenn Bennett– This was- okay! It didn’t blow me away, and I was ultimately deflated by the ending because it has one of my least favourite tropes, but the romance was cute and most of the mystery was really fun.

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Volume 3 by Hideyuki Furuhashi– THIS WAS SO GOOD HOLY SHIT. Volume 2 was so disappointing, but this one just blew it out the ball park. I think the creators are doing so many great things to make this a worthy companion to My Hero Academia.

Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant– Meh! Not my favourite Grant, but it’s a decent prequel to Into the Drowning Deep that provides some backstory to the investigation there, and has also convinced me the audiobook is the way to go. There’s a bit where a mermaid mimics a human and it was so unsettling to hear.

By Night #11&#12 by John Allison— I’m distraught this series is finished. It’s a bit of a mess, honestly, but I’ve absolutely adored it, and I’ll definitely end up re-reading it at some point.

Teen Titans: Raven by Kami Garcia– While I didn’t find myself completely enjoying the plot, and I found elements of the conclusion cheesy, I really love Raven as a character and I’m so excited this is a series. I’m just- Tim Drake! Might have a volume! My boy! Also, Gabriel Picolo’s art style? *Chef’s kiss*

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson– A very compelling murder mystery. Didn’t completely buy into the romance, but I love the main character’s convictions and how multi-dimensional each character was without ever feeling like a stereotype. When they do, layers are peeled back so you see a side to them that betrays what you initially believe they are, and I love that. It’s like, they’re quirky without ever feeling embarrassing or forced.

Horimiya Volume 1 by Hero– THIS IS AMAZING. Horimiya is about two teenagers who see a different side to one another and bond outside of the classroom. I love the different character dynamics and how soft this series feels overall, and I like how much miscommunication is addressed and conflicts are overcome without ever making anyone out to be a bad person.

The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang– Disappointing. The storytelling is a mess of time jumps and poorly developed characters, to the point where the only person who ever feels significant is Akeha. No joke, at one point there’s a time jump of about eight years where you’re told (in the first chapter) someone is pregnant and then expected to believe (in the following chapter) that the child matters emotionally to the characters even though there’s absolutely no development to show this.

Love Complex Volume 1 by Aya Nakahara– A cute manga about the friendship that comes out of an agreement between a girl who’s 5’8 and a boy who’s 5’1 who agree to help one another get the person they like even though they dislike each other. It’s a very soft enemies to friends back to enemies back to friends conflict that will eventually become a romance, and I’m really glad I picked it up!

After the Rain Volume 2 by Jun Mayuzuki– Eeeeee. I’m trying to stay hopeful that this series won’t actually have a romance between a 45 year old and a 17 year old and it’s just one big long ‘SIKE’ moment, so I’ll keep you updated. It’s annoying, too, cause this volume introduces writing to the plot and I honestly love when writing is a major part of a character’s life.

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare– This was honestly a really entertaining tragedy. I listened to a fully-cast audiobook for this as I read along with the play, and it really helped with the reading process.

Assassination Classroom Volume 2 by Yusei Matsui– I’m loving this series! A great cast, really adorable moments, and is not what you would expect when the premise is ‘alien threatens to destroy planet if a bunch of teenagers can’t kill him by the following year’. It’s very soft!

Beauty and the Blacksmith by Tessa Dare– My first Spindle Cove read, and I really enjoyed it. It follows the quickly-developing relationship between a blacksmith and one of the local women who moved there for her asthma several years before. One of the better romances, too, although I still don’t rate the sex scenes.

Do You Want to Start a Scandal? by Tessa Dare– Charlotte is a minor character in the previous novella, the youngest sister of Diana, and I really love her character. There’s a very interesting discussion on consent and station in relationships, and it definitely comes across like Charlotte, in some ways, is the dominant between her and Piers. I’m not sure if that was intentionally done, but it certainly made listening to the audiobook more interesting.

TBR JAR PIC FOR AUGUST IS: OTHER WORDS FOR SMOKE by Sarah Maria Griffin!

TV SHOWS/MOVIES/VIDEOS

In the latter half of July (literally the last few days) I really got in to Knowing Bros, a Korean show- called Men on a Mission on Netflix- where a group of male comedians have guests and play games and run skits. It’s honestly hilarious, and yes, Heechul is my favourite.

I watched a lot of Reading Rush content, but I especially enjoyed booksandlala and myreadingisodd during the week!

This Summer Chelsea and James from Dead Meat have done the ‘Paranormal Pool Party’ where they talk about the Paranormal Activity films on their podcast, and it has honestly been a delight!

I got really into the Child’s Play films this month! I watched 1 and 2 with my sister, and I’m planning on finishing the rest of the series in the coming months.

REVIEWS I POSTED

Three Graphic Reviews: Super Fun Sexy Times, Mooncakes, Sheets

Shame Is An Ocean I Swim Across by Mary Lambert

Three YA Reviews: Serious Moonlight, The Unexpected Everything, The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried