#(but then the price of delivery was almost double what other people's were so we were like ... is that bc of distance or weight) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

descendantofthesparrow · 3 years

Text

Interlude - Rewrite POYW - Harry Hook x reader - Part 8 - apartment hunting and application delivery

-five months later (June 2019)-

Harry looked up from the paper that showed the address of the apartment and whistled, it was bigger than he thought it was going to be.

The apartment he had selected to view was near the ocean but still close enough to Auradon city and the forest Evie was looking at for her starter castle so they, the vks, could still hang out at a moment's notice/ break in to bother their friends.

The apartment was also less of an apartment complex and just a house that was listed as an apartment, Ben had suggested it to him after Harry had mentioned looking for places to live after graduating with (y/n).

“Harry Hook I presume?” Harry looked over his shoulder to see a well-dressed middle-aged man, taking off his sunglasses and holding out his hand towards Harry, a smile on his lips “I’m Dabier Warren, a pleasure to meet you” Harry turned and gripped his hand firmly, holding down the nervous feeling in his gut.

“Aye, that would be meh” Harry nodded, pulling back his hand as Dabier nodded and pulled back, pulling out a file and opening it, looking over the house quickly.

“So you’re interested in renting? Buying?” Harry shrugged and looked back down at the paper which detailed the apartment/house. “I’m lookin’ fer a place for my girlfriend an’ I ta live after we graduate, and renting or buying depends on the cost I guess…I thought it was just fer rent though?” Dabier nodded and walked over to the plant bed at the front of the house, kneeling down and unlocking a small green box.

“It was going to be originally, but the owners decided that if someone was willing to buy it, they would go for it. Let's get started then, I assume you have looked over the prices?” Harry nodded, following Dabier as he took the house key out of the green box and walked up to the front door, unlocking it and letting Harry step inside. “All right then, so the house has 1,500 square feet, and has a kitchen, breakfast nook, living room, two bedrooms, a master bedroom, and a normal bedroom, one and a half bathrooms” Harry raised his brow at that but kept quiet “You’ve seen the front yard and it has a balcony out back to see the ocean view and an open backyard.”

Dabier led Harry into the living room just to the left of the main hallway, Harry let out a low whistle, the living room was just as big as his old apartment back on the isle. He walked down the steps into the living room and walked over to the double doors that faced the ocean.

Dabier walked over to him and unlocked the doors, stepping outside and showing Harry the backyard, the grass was green and soft just off a small porch that was shaded with the master bedroom balcony.

Dabier and Harry walked back inside and Dabier then showed him the kitchen, it wasn’t a large kitchen, but it was still decent, in the corner to the left of the doorway was a little breakfast nook and to the right was the rest of the kitchen, against the wall was a black marble counter with white painted cabinets handing over it, a silver metal sink, a dishwasher, a white fridge, and stovetop oven.

Harry nodded as Dabier explained the room and its appliances, then followed the retailer out of the room as Dabier led him to the first bathroom, which held just a sink, toilet, and shower. It was nice, but clearly just a guest bathroom.

So far, Harry liked the house, an ocean view, a good-sized kitchen for just two people-the kitchen was bigger than his isle kitchen so he had no complaints there-and as Dabier led Harry to the master bedroom, Harry almost tossed his paycheck at him.

The master bedroom was about half the size of the living room, with double doors leading to the balcony with the prime ocean view, the bed at the moment was in the middle of the room just under the window, and the master bathroom was to the left of the doorway.

Harry nodded at the bathroom, it had white tiles with an overhead showerhead and a good-sized bathtub, the sink had wood-painted cabinets with a porcelain sink and black facet.

Harry and Dabier made one more walk around the house and soon they were both back outside, Harry staring at the house with his arms crossed, tapping his foot erratically as he thought about his options.

He had been to two other apartments, though they were more actual apartments compared to the house he had just seen. The first two were not suggested by Ben, they were much closer to the city and honestly a bit too small for even just Harry.

“So what do you think?” Dabier locked the house key back up and stepped in front of Harry, nodding back towards the house “You gonna go for it?”

“Aye, I think I will” Harry muttered, taking back out the file and looking over the prices of both the rent and the newly written price of the mortgage if Harry bought the house.

Dabier smiled and nodded, handing Harry the rental application along with telling him how to make an offer on the house to buy it if Harry wanted to.

Harry looked over the price the owners had stated and smirked, thanks to Evie hiring him as a model almost two years ago, he had plenty of money to buy it.

He made his offer.

You sat in Ben's office, going through the last few drafts of the application form with Evie and Ben, it was all so close, it was only just more than a month away from now.

Soon there would be more vks in Auradon and then many more to come. “Okay,” Ben sighed, crossing out a few lines on the applications and leaning back in his chair “I don’t want the application to be more than one page, so here's my final draft offer” he showed you and Evie his final draft selection.

The page had the boxes for the vk to fill out their information, with a large block of lines for the essay to be written, something you all thought was unnecessary, since “safety away from parents/the isle” was good enough on its own, but once again the council was a bitch so Ben had to deal with it. Ben flipped over the paper and showed the top of the back, where the parent/guardian would sign their permission for the vk to leave the isle if they were underage. (originally it was going to be parental permission but Mal made a point to say that some kids didn’t have parents to claim them, so it was switched to guardian)

“Well I think that’s good” you sighed, tossing your pile of drafts to the side and gesturing to Ben's “short sweet, easy to understand. Let's go with that one” Evie nodded in agreement, dropping her pen and rubbing her face, yawning a bit.

“Agreed, I’m so done with all this for now” Ben laughed a bit at Evie and set down the draft, grabbing a stamp and hitting it on the top of the page, now marked with bold red letters that read ‘approved’

“Well, that’s it….we’re done” Ben sighed, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his face “the application has been selected, the shelter is finished, the cps has been established. All that’s left to do is print, send, pick up, and choose.”

You and Evie cheered, slumping in your seats as sleep clawed at your mind and eyes. Ben let out a tired ‘woo’ before hitting his head against the headrest of his chair, taking a deep breath and blowing a raspberry as he exhaled.

You perked up slightly as someone knocked on Ben's door, Ben telling them to come in. You smiled as Harry stepped through the now open door and walked towards you, leaning on the armrest and smiling down at you “Hello darlin’ yeh done yet?” you hummed and nodded, giving a tired ‘yeee’ as Harry lifted you into his arms, one arm under your knees and the other cradling your back and cupping your shoulder. “Long day eh? Night yeh two” Ben and Evie waved Harry off and bid the two of you goodnight as Harry walked out of Ben’s office, closing the door with his foot as he did. “Come on darlin, let's get yeh ta bed” Harry mumbled, smiling as you lifted your head and buried it into his neck, arms wrapping around it a moment later.

Harry carefully opened your dorm room door and pushed it open with his foot, stepping inside and kicking it closed. He walked over to your bed and set you down, walking over to your dresser as you sat up and took off your boots and socks.

He pulled open the third drawer and pulled out one of his shirts you had stolen a good year back, then kneeling and pulling open the bottom drawer, taking out the black sweatpants that were also his that you had stolen a while ago. He smiled, half of your wardrobe was his, and it filled his head and heart with a fuzzy feeling knowing you liked wearing his clothes.

He stood and turned, tossing the shirt and pants at you, covering his eyes with his hand as he saw you start to take off your shirt and bra. “Harry” you chuckled, tossing the shirt into the hamper as you chucked your bra onto the ‘not dirty but worn’ chair in the corner of your room “It's not like you haven’t seen them before”

Harry bit his lip, still keeping his hands over his eyes. The two of you had...experimented with sex around your 18th birthday after you told him about your interest in at least trying it out, now Harry hadn’t been a virgin for years (something which still pissed you off to this day, I mean he lost it when he was fucking 9. It wasn’t fair to him) but it was the first time he had reciprocated those type of feelings back towards the person showing interest.

And even almost a year after your first time together, Harry still got flustered around the idea and image of you being undressed. “I-I dinne know if yeh were okay with meh lookin’” Harry mumbled, his tense arm relaxing a bit as you laughed softly and chucked your pants at him gently, the clothing landing at his feet.

“Harry, you can look, I don’t mind” you shook your head with a smile as Harry peeked through his fingers, his cheeks and ears red as he looked at you. You smiled again and shoved on his shirt, pulling on the sweatpants a moment later and standing, walking over to Harry and wrapping your arms around his waist “This is why I said yes”

Harry dropped his hand and rose his brow in confusion, wondering what you meant “Said yes ta wha’?” Harry asked, curling his arms around you and tilting his head. You tilted your head up and kissed Harry’s Adam’s apple, giggling as he swallowed harshly in reaction.

“This is why I said yes to you asking if I would be open to the idea of marrying you” you held in your laughter as Harry’s face lit up, curling in on himself in slight embarrassment. “you respect me, and my boundaries, even if I never stated them, you listen to me, and you take care of me. You are genuinely the only person I could ever see myself marrying and I love you so much” you let out a short laugh as Harry moved his face into your neck to hide, his arms wrapping tighter around you “whenever you ask me, don’t doubt I will say yes because I will”

Harry mumbled something into your neck, pulling away slightly as you hummed in confusion “I love yeh too” Harry muttered, closing his eyes as you pulled away from him and pressed your lips to his, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him into you.

You pulled away a moment later and pressed another kiss to his jaw, patting his chest and nodding towards the door “it’s late, go get some sleep” Harry glanced towards the door, then to you, then towards your bed, and nodded, kissing the top of your head and walking out of your room, leaving you alone.

You yawned and turned off your desk light, turning on the fairy lights hanging around your room, illuminating it in a soft yellow glow. You slipped into bed, hugging the shark plush Harry had bought you for your birthday two years ago.

A few minutes later, as you began to drift to sleep, your door opened again, then closed and was locked, quiet footsteps walking toward you. Harry pulled the sheets back and slipped in behind you, curling his arms around you and pulling you into his chest, molding you into the curve of his body.

“g’night Harry” you mumbled, Harry’s warmth lulling you to sleep as Harry buried his face in your hair.

“g’night meh love” he mumbled back, the two of you drifting off to sleep after the long day you both had.

-one week later-

You slowed your bike to a stop, Harry and Carlos doing the same as Jay pulled up with the car filled with application boxes into the old garage near the wharf, the tunnel leading to Uma’s ship echoing with the sound of the crew and isle residents going about their day.

“Welp” Carlos took off his helmet, ruffing his curly hair as he looked around the not as musty-smelling garage as he dismounted his bike “We’re here… let's get those applications to their spots.” You and Harry nodded, taking off your helmets and dismounting your bikes, throwing the keys and helmets into the limo and helping Jay and Gil get the six large boxes filled with papers out of the trunk, carrying them out of the old garage and first heading to the main square (which was now called Mal’s court) where the first drop off location was.

As you passed through the alleyways that lead to the main square, many kids and teens, along with some adults, stared at you, almost disbelieving as they read the side of the box.

-VK DAY APPLICATIONS-

You held down a smile as two children whispered to each other and pointed at the box, a whole group trailing after the five of you as you finally made it to the drop-off point. Kimmy, one of Harriet's crew members, stood exactly where the point was, nodding as Gil stepped up to her and handed her one of the boxes he held. She took it and spun on her heel, heading off to the spot the crew had chosen to make the pick-up location for the isle residents to get their applications and turn them back in when they finished. The group of kids dodged through your legs and bodies as they raced after Kimmy to grab an application.

You let out a soft sigh of relief, glad that the kids on the isle did seem to be interested in going to Auradon, for some reason you had feared they wouldn’t go for it, but it seemed it was all for naught, some teens and young adults following the kids to also grab an application.

You and Harry split off from Gil, Jay, and Carlos, the boys going to drop off the boxes at the schools while you and Harry went to the wharf, one box would be dropped off at Harriet's old ship, the scarlet maiden, and the other at the main area of the docks just off the market.

You and Xiaohui shared a nod as you walked up the gangplank to the ship, handing off the box “A set of guards will be back on the first of July to collect the applications, and then they’ll come back every Monday to collect any that didn’t get turned in the first round.” Xiaohui nodded at your explanation, turning and handing the box to Devin who took it and disappeared below deck.

“Sounds good” Xiaohui hummed, crossing her arms and tilting her head at you and Harry “how long do you think it'll be before the first round gets picked?”

“We’re looking at early August, probably the 2nd at best” Harry answered for you, shifting the box in his arms again. “We’re announcing VK day after graduation, jus’ lotta stuff righ’ now” Xiaohui nodded, taking a step back and nodding towards the rest of the wharf.

“Well, get going, there's a lot of kids who’ve been waiting for today on Its own, don’t wanna make ‘em wait longer” you and Harry nodded, walking off the ship and walking to the main area of the docks to drop off Harry’s box.

“Hard to believe we graduate this month” you muttered, smiling as Harry laughed and shook his head.

“Aye, and three years ago I thought I would never even leave the isle, now look at meh, i’m graduating from Auradon prep, i’m a model, I’ve got an amazing girlfriend, and meh dad will never bother meh again” he smiled at you, his eyes bright “I never thought this would happen but I’m glad It did, I’m glad I met yeh” Harry chuckled as you bit your lip and turned your chin into your chest, feeling your face heat up at Harry's ‘flirting’

Before Harry would say anything more, you arrived at the main area of the docks, pirate teens and kids alike staring wide-eyed as Harry set the box on the table where another one of Harriet's crew stood, his arms crossed as he watched Harry move back to your side.

“Pick up for Applications start July 1st, and continue every Monday after that” the male nodded, brushing back his dark red hair and opening the box, beginning to take out the papers and set them in stacks on the table, vks already going up to take the papers.

You waved at the small, who seemed probably no older than 5 years old, girl who stared starry-eyed at you and Harry, her purple and brown hat slipping over her face as she watched you and Harry walk away back towards the limo to wait for the boys to be finished.

About an hour later, as you and Harry sat against your bikes waiting for the boys, they finally returned, Carlos having a wide grin on his face “what did you do?” you asked, rising your brow as Carlos laughed loudly.

“I flipped off my mom~” Carlos sang, grabbing his helmet from the limo and putting it on, grabbing his keys and climbing onto his bike as you and Harry burst into laughter “I've never seen her that mad! And I tripped her when she tried to hit me”

“Good boy!” Harry cackled, patting Carlos’ helmet as he passed by him to grab both of your helmets and keys. “Proud of yeh”

“Same!” Jay called, climbing into the driver's seat as Gil hopped into the passenger's side. “She ran off screaming after she landed in mud!”

Harry snorted beneath his helmet and revved his bike, waiting for Jay to pull out of the garage before he, Carlos, and you followed after them, speeding through the barrier back towards Auradon.

‘Mission success, only a month and a half till vk day’ you thought, speeding off the bridge and taking the road back towards the dorms to meet up with Harry's sisters for some ‘family bonding’ as CJ called it. You all knew she just meant attempting to ‘murder’ you all with paintballs when you went paintballing with the Hook and Smee siblings.

Ben stared down at his class ring, twisting it between his fingers as he remembered when Mal gave it back to him after they agreed to break up until they were both ready again. He sighed, leaning on his hand and staring off at nothing, even three years after they had broken up, his chest still filled with a fuzzy feeling and butterflies when he looked at her, the intense want to just grab her face and kiss her senseless when she scrunched her nose or stuck her tongue out at him.

But he didn’t want to do anything until he knew they were both ready, last time she had love spelled him for the wand, and after he had unknowingly broken it at the lake, then he had falsely thought Mal had spelled him because she liked him, and from then their relationship was built on lies and spells, Mal not telling him about her original intentions until after their break up.

He knew he loved her, but he also knew that unless they truly started over their relationship wouldn’t be good for either of them. This time they would have to take it slow, with no lies, no expectations of intense change, proper communication, no secrets (though Ben did realize that there were things that he nor Mal were obligated to tell each other if they didn’t want to) and just…being better to each other than they were before.

Ben perked up as someone knocked on his dorm office door and stood, walking over and opening it, surprised to see Mal standing there, rubbing her arm and staring at the floor, her cheeks and ears bright red “Mal?” Ben rasped, glancing at the clock, it was almost curfew “What is it? Is something wrong?” she shook her head, peering up at him.

“No, um…can I come in? I-I want to ask you something” Ben tilted his head and nodded, letting her into the room and closing the door, watching as Mal started to pace around the room, messing with her fingers and muttering to herself.

“Mal, is something wrong?” Ben asked again, a more stern tone to his voice as Mal looked at him with wide eyes.

“No!” she shook her head widely, her plum hair fanning around her, reliving Ben a bit as she took a deep breath and shook her head again “No, nothing’s wrong... it's just…I-you-me” Mal huffed and ruffled her hair, biting her lip and looking to her feet “I've never-shit-fuck” Mal buried her face in her hands and took a deep breath. She took them away and looked ben right in the eye “can we start over?”

Ben blinked in surprise; out of everything he hadn’t expected that. “St-start over how?” Ben asked, wanting to make sure he knew exactly what Mal was referring to, he didn’t want to assume she wanted to date again.

“Can we start over with” she gestured between the two of them “Us? Like…us together? I-I want to try again, for real this time, no magic, no fake feelings, no lies. Just…us”

Ben couldn’t help the smile growing on his face as he felt his cheeks heat up, he took a step towards Mal and grabbed her hands, pressing a kiss to her knuckles as she squeaked “I would like to try again, with us, and this time, we’ll take it slow” Mal interrupted, her eyes sparkling.

“and communicate properly!” Ben laughed and nodded, bringing her hands down between them and holding them tightly.

“no lies”

“no magic”

“no false feelings” Ben finished, squeezing Mal's hands and grinning “we’ll do it right this time, okay? No moving forward unless we both know we're comfortable, no overstepping boundaries, no changing ourselves or trying to force change in the other.”

“Unless it's toxic!” Mal interrupted again, giving a shy grin to Ben as he laughed “yeah, there are definitely some things about me that I still have to fix, but I promise, I’ll actually work on them, and not just ignore it. Please call me out when I hurt your feelings, please call me out when I fuck up, I want us to work, I love you Ben, and I really want to be with you” Ben bit his lip as the butterflies in his gut flew everywhere, his head fuzzy with love.

“I love you too Mal, and I want to be with you too” Mal beamed and wrapped her arms around Ben's waist, pulling him into a hug. Ben wrapped his arms around her shoulder and squeezed her tightly, resting his head on hers.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Ben whispered, laughing a bit as Mal stubbornly nodded against his chest.

“yes, I even got confirmation from Lia that I was ready to start being in a relationship again, with you, and as long as I continue to better myself, I’ll be good…pun intended” Ben snorted and shook his head. He pulled back and kissed Mal’s forehead, smiling as he pulled back further and saw her eyes closed, a smile on her face.

“Alright, then let's do this. Mal-“ Mal reached up and covered his mouth, laughing as he gave her a look of confusion.

“Let me do it this time” Ben rolled his eyes and smiled against Mal's palm. “Ben?” he hummed against her palm, laughing as she pulled it off and smacked his chest “Will you be my boyfriend?”

“hmmmm” Ben took a step back tapping his chin and looking up at the ceiling “let me think~”

“Ben!!” Mal whined, crossing her arms, an amused smile on her lips. Ben laughed and cupped her face, pecking her lips quickly and enjoying the red spreading across her cheeks and ears.

“Yes”

Evie squealed and slammed into Mal as she returned to their shared dorm room that night, picking Mal up with surprising strength and spinning her around “E-Evie!!” Mal yelped, her arms trapped at her side and her head spinning as Evie danced about their room “I’m gonna be sick!”

Evie snorted at Mal's dramatics and dropped her on Mal's bed, flopping next to her and leaning on her hands, waiting for Mal to get ahold of herself again before bombarding her with questions.

“Sooo~ how’d you do it? Did he say yes? Did you kiss?!”

Mal pouted at her friend and hit her with a pillow, to which Evie grabbed and chucked it across the room, the pillow hitting against the glass of lizard Maleficent’s terrarium, the purple, and black lizard hissing and hiding away in its new castle that was modeled after her old one.

“Spill!”

“Okay okay! So yesterday I realized I still really really liked Ben and I wanted to be with him…”

-the camera pans away from the girls, zooming out of the dorm room and panning to the isle, where the barrier shimmers under the moonlight-

-end of part 8-

Part 8~ Harry found an apartment/house for yall to be in, the applications got sent and are ready to be filled out, and Bal is officially back together~ (and hopefully I can write them in a way that’s actually healthy than * gestures to D2/3* whatever that was) hope yall liked this part! two more to go and then the little oneshot showing (y/n) and Harrys relationship development and then its only Finale!!!!!!!!!!! Part 9 next week!!! also if any of you caught that reference i made to a fellow descendants creator you get a cookie.

permtaglist

@queer-cosette @sephiralorange @lunanight2012

@daughter-of-the-stars11 @musicarose @random-thoughts-003

@remembered-license @rintheemolion @verboetoperee

@imtryingthisout @thecaptainsgingersnap @jatp-rules-my-life

oh! also @darkprinceofdarkness i know you like Bal so you might like this part (i know you’ve already kinda read this part since i asked you for your opinion on discord but...yep heh)

#Descendents #descendants #disney descendants #harry hook descendants #harry hook x reader #harry hook imagine #harry hook #interlude #rewrite #shuffle playlist #finale

40 notes · View notes

writefinch · 4 years

Text

Family-Owned Small Business

(CN: incest, sex work, mentions of sexual assault & suicidal ideation)

The worst part of my job is administration. Last-minute rescheduling when a client flakes on us. Chasing up payments. Booking accommodation at short notice. Answering messages! Jesus, every time in the last year when I've slumped, sighed, and thought to myself "fuck working, I need a break from all this" it's been when I've opened my messages and seen thirty different texts that need a reply. Some people are fine with it I guess, but for me it's boring, time consuming, and stressful.

Big deal though, right, I mean nobody loves doing admin, why even bring it up? Well, if I tell someone that for work last night I ate a client's cum out of my mom's pussy, I'd expect that they'd get fixated on the sex work and the incest. I'd expect them to freak out and not pay attention to the specifics of what I'm saying. So, first, I'd like that person to know that the thing I hate about my job is probably the same thing that *they* hate about *their* job. I would rather lick my mom's asshole for five minutes than answer emails for five minutes, and I answer a lot of emails.

Do we have to worry about violence, danger, cops, and legal trouble? Yeah, we do. Am I scared of these things? Yeah, sometimes, but I had to worry about all of those things before I started doing sex work. At least now we've got the money to buy our way out of the worst of it.

I'm not saying that what I do with mom is an objectively healthy relationship, let alone a perfect one. If you took me back in time and told me I could pick a completely different life for me and my mom, I'm sure there's a bunch of choices I'd pick over this one. But I never had that choice. I got hurt a lot growing up. I feel like I've finally escaped the things that hurt me, but I know that I've barely started to recover from them.

That's why I'm writing this. We've saved enough money to afford some therapy and my first session is next week. I want help with the fear, the nightmares, the mood swings and insomnia, I want to stop the rush of rage and terror that flows through me every time I see the word 'dad,' I want help untangling the stuff that came out of being told I was a pansy when I was growing up, then figuring out I'm gay, then figuring out I'm a girl, then figuring out I'm all three of those things while I was living in a place that kept trying to kill me for it. What I don't want is for the psych to pin it all on the two least harmful and least fucked-up things about my life, and worse, I don't want them to make me believe it. This journal is a prophylactic, an assessment of my job, my relationships and my life that I can refer back to if and when someone sticks their fingers in my brain and swirls them around.

I'll start with a problem statement: my dad. The memories that hurt the most are the ones where he almost appeared human, the flickers of joy, curiosity and humor that stood out from the bland cruelty that made up the rest of his personality. I'll remember him buying me ice cream or talking about a book or a movie with me, I'll doubt myself and wonder if I just went crazy and cut him out of my life for no reason, and then my brain will hook onto a random act of sadism he inflicted on me.

The physical abuse was bad all on its own, real psycho shit like driving me out into the woods and making me pick through the brush for a switch he could hit me with and a whole lot more I won't go into, but the emotional abuse was worse. When I was eleven, I forgot to feed my cat one day. He gave her away to my uncle, but told me that she'd developed malnutrition and had to be put down. I didn't find out the truth for another two years, when he just let it slip at Easter. He bragged about it, even, like he'd invented a really smart child-rearing technique. I don't want to write too much down here because I don't need to, if anything I want therapy to *stop* everything he did from running through my head. He's a punishment-obsessed sadist, a Baptist, and he works as a judge. Did he ever sexually abuse me? No. Parent of the year, right? He kicked me out for being a fag the day I turned eighteen, so it's ironic that my biggest fear is that he comes looking for me. He doesn't even know I'm a girl.

On the other hand, my mom has had an interesting life. She's kind of a fuck up. When I was one year old, mom and dad split and dad got full custody--being a judge helped with that--while mom left the state. She spent a decade trying to kick a heroin habit and a year and a half in prison for related stuff, got banned from even entering the state I lived in on account of her parole--again, dad being a judge helped with that--illegally emigrated to Canada for a while, and went to Oregon by mistake, doing a mixture of bartending, delivery driving, MDMA dealing and whoring to stay afloat.

The only reason we met again is that I was in the same city staying with friends, also whoring. I don't remember the first time I saw her, but the first time we talked was in a mutual friend's tiny studio apartment with a few other hooker friends. We ended up comparing our Pest Lists, shared a few drinks, and swapped numbers. A week later we fucked, and a month after *that* we realized that we'd Oedipus'd ourselves. It seems funnier now than it did at the time.

That was an emotional time. We cried with joy that we'd found each other, we started tip-toeing around the ideas of rebuilding our lives together, and we agreed to pretend that the sex had never happened. Of course, we got drunk together a week later and fucked again. She's hot! I have a thing for older women, I have a thing for breaking taboos, and I have a thing for being mommied in bed. Blame dad for raising me like this, I dunno.

We started doing sex work as a team after she got a dental abscess. The bill for the hospital stay and the tooth removal was insane, and the dentist straight-up told her that she'd end up with another in a different tooth within a year if she didn't get two root canals. Even when she was recovering, we could only afford fish antibiotics off of Amazon. We crunched some numbers and made some inquiries, and figured out that we could pull in two week's worth of our combined income with one night of mother-daughter stuff.

Our first joint session was with a real estate pervert I'll call Stan, a chubby balding powerlifter in his fifties who we'd both had as a client before. Mom took me over her knees and switched between spanking me and fingering me while he watched. I sucked him off while mom made out with him, made out with my mom with his cock between our lips, licked his balls as mom licked my ass, then let him fuck my ass while mom sat on my face. That was the first half hour. He came six more times before we passed out in the early hours of the morning, and I drifted off nursing his finally-limp cock in my mouth. He paid us the price of a used Volkswagen for our trouble, and I blew him one last time before we left as a thank-you.

Six months later, mom's teeth were fixed, I was on spiro, and we had just under a dozen clients for our "doubles sessions." Only a few of our appointments are ones with me and mom together, three or four a month, we mostly work alone. That's not out of a deliberate choice, it's just that we've got a strict criteria for who we'll double up on.

Trust is one thing: depending on the lawyers we can afford, what we're doing is either kinda illegal or extremely illegal. Since my dad is presumably still a judge, I don't want him to ever find out about this. He'd put us in a prison or a mental institution. We won't do a double session with a client unless we've both had individual sessions with them.

Money is the other thing. Getting your dick sucked by a hot mom while her daughter sucks your balls costs a week's wages for the average person. Hiring us for the night is more like a month's wages. Even in a city like this, there's only a few thousand people that can drop that kind of money on hookers. Then, they've got to *want* to fuck a trans girl and her mom together. Don't get me wrong, more people are into mother-daughter incest than you'd expect, but it's not a universal thing.

Clients are, on average, annoying. It's a fact of life. The thing that all clients have in common is a ton of disposable income and a fondness for fucking hookers. They're not necessarily bad people, but there’s a heavy ‘What can a banana cost, ten dollars?’ vibe to them. It’s not that they’re adrenochrome-drinkers who don’t see regular people as human, it’s more that they don’t have an intuitive awareness that other people don’t have savings accounts, health insurance, an investment property, and four figures of walking-around money at any given time. I guess I'd feel differently if I was like, a concierge or a PA, but there's a lot more pillow talk in my job.

I've had bad and dangerous clients before, there's been at least two occasions where I was pretty sure I was going to die--one where the hospital afterwards stay wiped out four months of income, not counting the month where I couldn’t work--but they were all before I met mom, when I couldn't be so careful about screening prospective clients and dropping them if they threw up red flags. I'm sure we'll get bad clients in the future, but we're in a better place to deal with them safely.

I also wanna write down what a "normal day" is like. Friday was a good example. I woke up early at 9am and cooked breakfast for mom. She was up already doing the laundry. We entertain some clients in our apartment, so we go through a lot of clothes and a lot of sheets. You can't fuck a guy on top of another guy's cum stains, that's rude. Some of the job is Housework But More. We don't really use the main bedroom or the sitting room because we treat them like bed and breakfast guest rooms. It's annoying but every time we have a session without getting an actual hotel or motel room we save like $50 minimum.

After breakfast I epilated, showered, and went for a run. Personal grooming isn't that big a deal in terms of time, I'm not saying I don't spend a lot of time on it, I do, but I'd be spending that time even if I worked in a bar or an office or something. Look: I'm hot. I might have been a weird-looking spotty nerd when I thought I was a boy, but as a girl I'm a fucking dime. I could get like, 25% uglier before it had any impact on my earnings. The only part of personal grooming that's necessary for sex work and I wouldn't do all the time anyway is power-washing my guts an hour before every session.

After lunch, mom went to see some friends and I played Magic for a few hours. At two pm, the actual work started. I picked up the work phone for the first time that day and began answering texts. An hour later I'd cancelled the 6pm appointment, blocked out all of Sunday evening, checked in with a few regulars, and provisionally moved three guys to the 'Time Wasters' list.

I spent a while sexting with a good prospect. He was a good prospect because he paid up-front for the sexting instead of treating it like a free samples platter at Costco. We scheduled a tentative appointment for next Tuesday, when his wife would be out of town on a business trip. Most of the guys I fuck have kinks, and I swear that 'cheating on your wife with a sex worker' is the most common one there is. Do I feel bad about it? At my hourly rate, absolutely not.

Mom got back at half four, so I took a break. We made tacos for lunch together and ate while watching Billions. She nudged me and told me that I need to do my injection, and, well, we have a little ritual for that. I'm scatterbrained and I'm not great with needles, but mom has been incredibly supportive with my HRT, and when I told her I was having problems taking them on time, she came up with a way to make me as comfortable as possible. As soon as the needle is ready, I laid down in her lap and she cradled my head in her arms, pressing her bare chest against my face. I took a nipple into my mouth and nursed it softly while she stroked my hair. She called me a good girl, telling me how proud she is of her daughter, how much she loves me, and asked if I was going to take my medicine like a big girl. On good days I inject myself while she pets me and coos over me, and on bad days she takes the needle and does it for me. As soon as I dropped the needle in the sharps container, mom pressed a Hitachi against my cock and took one of my nipples into her mouth, called me her big brave girl, and asked if I was gonna cum for mommy.

As usual, the answer was yes.

Late afternoon and early evening is when the messages start flowing in, especially on Fridays, when the kinds of people with hooker money have either left work early and thinking about getting laid, or are still held up at work and are desperately thinking about getting laid. This kind of messaging gets trickier, because it comes down to what I'm providing. Like, setting up a session is the kind of normal administrative stuff that's baked into the price of a session. It's also partly a sales job, so I'm naturally flirty and solicitous, and because I do sex work I talk openly about sex.

However, *sexting* is not normal administrative stuff. If I'm sending you messages for jerking-off purposes, I can charge by the hour or by the text but I will insist on charging for it. Also, it's not just sex that me and mom provide. There's a reason that 'companionship' is an old euphemism for whoring, it's because whores are good company. I'm a good listener and I don't judge, which means I'm like the fun parts of a therapist but without all the homework and self-improvement. I'm (unsurprisingly) friendly with all of my clients, and I have more than a few clients and former clients who I'd consider good friends and vice versa. I talk to a bunch of them outside of a business context, especially the ones I met outside of my job, and that's a normal part of maintaining a pool of clients for any sales job, but on the other hand... it's a demand on my time and it's a part of my services. I can and have bluntly told guys that they're wasting my time when it comes to uncompensated sexting, but the platonic stuff requires a lighter touch.

One of my regulars, Fintech Pete, sent me a message. Two messages later, he sent me $100, and we're off. Describing in gratuitous detail exactly how I'm going to suck his cock, begging him to fuck me until my clit is drooling all over the sheets, sending him feet pics, things of that nature. Pete is great for sexting because he barely jerks off while he's doing it, he saves all the messages and pictures and jerks off to them later, because he's got some biohacking routine where he only cums once a week. He said once that part of the reason he hires sex workers is that he takes each nut a lot more seriously if he's paying three digits minimum for the privilege. He does this teleconferencing report with the board of directors at his company four times a year, and every time he hires me to kneel under the desk in his home office and suck him off while he makes his presentation.

Anyway, while we were going back and forth like that, he mentioned that I'd made a joke one time about doing a joint session with my mom. I told him it wasn't a joke, and to cut a long story short, half an hour later I was asking mom if she was up for an overnight session starting at 9pm. She agreed, Pete confirmed, so we both got ready--think getting dolled up for a night out but with a more thorough enema--and drove to his place. He lived outside of town in a two-bedroom suburban home, alone with his two dogs.

As soon as we were parked in his garage I did the safety call in front of him: I rang a friend of mine, told her we were visiting a friend, told her it was at the address I sent her earlier, and told her we'd call her again tomorrow morning. Was it really necessary to do that with someone like Fintech Pete? No, but practice makes permanent. If you let these things slip when there's no danger, eventually they'll slip when there is danger.

Now, I don't want to imply that I'm in a lot of danger! There's a reason that most of the faces you'll see on the Trans Day of Remembrance are of poor black and brown women, because real danger comes when you can't turn skeevy jobs, when you can't afford to take precautions, when you have to make the choice over and over between maybe starving and maybe getting murdered. I'm white, I've got a good support network, and I've been relatively lucky in that I can do all these things to minimize my risks. I've still got to do them, though! Things like safety calls are a good habit to get into and it helps all sex workers if there's an expectation that they've all got someone looking out for them.

...I get that there is some bravado creeping into this journal. I start off saying that admin is the worst part of the job and a page later I flippantly mention that the job has put me in the hospital. On a day to day basis yeah, the admin is the bit that sucks the most, but if you offered me a deal where the admin is twice as bad but I never took that session, I’d take it in a heartbeat. This job has left me with some scars. Any time something cold touches my wrist I get a vivid flash of the first time I had my hands zip-tied behind my back in a cop car. I've had nightmares all my life, and more than a few of my nightmares are about stuff that's happened since I got into sex work.

If it seems like I’m downplaying it, it’s because the harrowing stuff is where the job has gone wrong, it’s not baked into the everyday stuff, and most importantly it has nothing to do with my mom. The work I've done with her is some of the least stressful and dangerous I've had since I started this job, and whatever wounds I have, she's not the one who caused them.

On a more positive note, a cool thing about doing sessions with my mom is that we can dress pretty conservatively and still have it come off as insanely lewd. Mom wore a black cocktail dress with an imitation pearl necklace and her hair up in a bun, I was in a white blouse under a lambswool sweater, a pleated short skirt, cheap dark tights--Pete has a thing for tearing them--and patent leather shoes. When you're going to suck a guy's world entirely off alongside your mom, the more modestly you're dressed, the more perverted it looks. Out in the suburbs it also means you get to avoid the microskirts and fishnets look which screams to the neighbors 'I've just hired a pair of hookers' or the mid-range raincoat over microskirts and fishnets look which screams 'I've just hired a pair of pricey hookers."

Pete's living room looks like the back room of a Radio Shack, computer guts everywhere, every surface turned into a makeshift workbench. It's not a suitable place for lovemaking; I don't want to have to pull shards of a soundcard out of my perineum. His bedroom is a lot neater, with a king-sized bed to sit on, a ton of pillows to lounge up against, and a TV mounted on the wall. Mom poured out some wine, a mid-range red zinfandel that we'd picked up on the way, Pete brought out some imported dark chocolate that costs like $40/kg, and I swung my legs over his lap and turned on the Food Network. I took a bite of chocolate, mom took a sip of wine, and before either of us swallowed she pulled me into a deep kiss, mixing the wine and the chocolate. It's a good combination, and Pete enjoyed the show.

The night started off with chatting. None of us were in any rush, not with an overnight session, and since Pete has been a client for each of us for a while it was a pretty relaxed atmosphere. Pete's fingers danced over my thighs, absent-mindedly plucking ladders into the fabric as we talked baseball, business, sex work, the difference between the gentrified fag bar downtown and the really gentrified fag bar downtown, programming and other nerd shit, local politics, the contestants on Cutthroat Kitchen, just normal stuff. Mom and Pete started talking about fancy cooking stuff so I started annoying them both by claiming that sardines are just fully-grown anchovies, that DOP labels are all fake, and that instant grits are better than the regular ones until mom jabbed me with a finger and told me that my mouth should be put to better use elsewhere.

You know how some people say "Cilantro tastes like soap, that's why it's good?" Same thing for how weird it feels to go down on my mom. The first time I ever jerked off, watching a 144p clip of Rocco Sifreddi fucking a girl in the ass while flushing her head down a toilet bowl, knowing that this meant I was going to go to Hell unless I begged God for forgiveness and never did it again, I came so hard I passed out. It feels good, it feels wrong that it feels so good, and it feels even better because it feels so wrong.

She was already wet when I got between her legs. I kissed her clit and started licking, her bush tickling my nose and her thighs squeezing my ears. Fabric rasped over my head as she hiked her dress up to run her hand through my hair. Everything was muffled but I could hear kissing and clinking, and I knew that mom was undoing Pete's belt and jeans to give him a Catholic-quality handjob.

I got mom worked up, bucking her hips and getting all breathy, until she asked me to get up here and give her some help. I crawled up to his groin and winked up at him. He blushed and grinned back. Pete's not a bad-looking guy. I mean, I don't care about looks in general, I guess I can look at someone and say that objectively they're ugly, and if someone is beautiful it adds something to the experience, but like... it doesn't really figure into it. Obviously most johns don't look like supermodels but they're not uniformly ugly, as I said before the thing that johns have in common is being horny guys with a lot of disposable income. Still, Pete is towards the better-looking side of that scale.

...Okay there is one thing about him that's weirdly common for my clients, I call it 'John Balding:' where a guy is losing his hair but in a slow, uneven, and kinda weird pattern, so that even when they cross into being more bald than not, they never bite the bullet and shave it all off. Pete is only like 30% of the way through that process so it doesn't look terrible yet, but he's on that track.

Anyway, back to the sex. A fun thing about double blowjobs is that you can take them a whole lot slower than solo blowjobs. Me and mom have had a lot of practice so we go at about 1/4th speed and it feels twice as good. She started off by wrapping her hand around the shaft, slowly stroking it while she softly kissed the tip, and I licked his balls, gently lapping at one, then the other, cleaning away the day's sweat and musk, carefully taking both of them into my mouth at once. Mom swallowed half his length, and I started kissing my way up his shaft as she pulled back up, my lips touching the head as hers reached the very tip. She grabbed me by my hair and pulled me into a deep French kiss with his cock in the middle, precum mixing with spit, moaning as we felt him twitch and grunt, mom's hand on his balls and my hand on his shaft. We broke the kiss and repeated it in reverse, taking his cock in my throat as mom kissed her way down to his balls. He came after five minutes of gentle little schoolgirl kisses on each side of his cock from the pair of us. The first rope caught mom on her cheek, the second hit her hair, but I wrapped my lips tight around the head and sucked him dry before he could spill another drop.

You can't give a client a mother-daughter blowjob and not snowball the cum back and forth in front of him. We've done it enough times to get the timing down: wait until he sits up straight, because if you don't he'll be too dazed from nutting in your mouth to really appreciate it. Make sure he's looking at you, move your hair out of the way so it doesn't obstruct his view, open your lips so that a trickle of jizz almost sloshes out, move in close to your mom so that your noses are touching and it's clear that you're about to kiss, sink a palm into her tits as she grabs your ass, and then you gotta really go for it: wide-mouthed, feral, energetic, like you're trying to reach each other's sinuses. If a little bit of cum spills out because you're being so sloppy, that's a sign that you're doing it right. You're going to lick it up afterwards anyway.

We broke the kiss, I licked mom's face clean, and we took a break. We drank some more wine, he offered us cigarettes--the coolest clients are the ones that let you smoke indoors--and we cuddled and relaxed for a while with Guy's Grocery Games playing on the TV. Pete went to get some water, and returned with three bottles and a strip of Cialis. He downed two pills, we both stripped off--it was sweltering by that point--and got ready for the next round.

Mom played with his nipples and I got between his legs again, this time going lower than his balls to eat his ass out. Rimming is a trusted client privilege like the mom-daughter stuff is, except it's less about trusting them in the legal sense and more about trusting that it won't be grainy down there. I like it when a client is clean enough to rim, because I'm extremely good at it. Mom says she's better, she claims she once made a guy no-touch cum with a rimjob, but I don't fucking believe her.

He got hard after a minute of digging my tongue into his ass, but his cock was still super-sensitive so we figured we'd tease him for a while longer. We swapped places, mom ate his ass while he made out with me, squeezing my tits and playing with my cock. I like it when guys touch my tits, my cock is... fine, I guess? I don't viscerally dislike people touching it but it doesn't do much for me. After a minute of that he reaches around and works a finger into my asshole, which is much more my speed.

By the time he was two knuckles deep I looked down and saw his cock twitching, leaking precum onto his stomach. He seemed pretty worked up. I kissed his neck, nipped at his ear, and whispered, "Do you wanna breed me, Mister?"

He sure did.

I use condoms unless I've got an extremely compelling reason not to, and mom has a cool trick for getting them on. She grasped Pete's cock around the base, placed her lips around the tip, deepthroated the entire thing in a single stroke, and as she slowly lifted her head back up, his cock was neatly fitted with a condom.

As soon as I lubed up he put me on my back, pushed my ankles up to my ears, pressed his cock against my hole and sunk into me inch by inch. He muffled my moans with a kiss and rutted me into the bed. I gotta give it to him, all that biohacking and cardio is doing something right because he railed me at a fast, steady pace until my dick was leaking all over my tummy and I couldn't form sentences in my head any more. Mom made out with him as he finished, and at that point I was just babbling nonsense. He was gentle and cautious as he pulled out of me, stroking my hair as I reached down to take off his condom. I poured the contents out over my tits, slumping back against the headboard as mom licked them clean.

It wasn't yet midnight by then, and we went on like that through the night. Licking his feet, mom-daughter 69, him sucking my cock while mom rode his dick like a Sorority cowgirl champion, more wine, more double-blowjobs, tacking an extra $200 onto the fee for the privilege of pissing in my mouth instead of having to get up to go to the bathroom, a whole buffet of fun whore stuff.

We woke up at around ten in the morning, stayed for breakfast, then said our goodbyes. Me and mom thanked him for his custom, and he thanked us for a good time. By midday we were at home, we both showered, checked our calendars, messaged our evening clients to confirm that they were still on, and then... well, the rest of the day kinda evaporated. I played Demons' Souls until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, passed out in bed, and woke up when my alarm went off in the evening.

That's one of the things I don't like about overnight sessions: you're technically only spending like, ten to twelve hours with a client, and for some of that time you're either not fucking or actively asleep, but it kinda feels like it destroys two days. By the time it's scheduled, everything in the rest of the day is either preparing for it or doing it, and when you get back it takes the rest of the day just to recover. I don't like that part of my job, and if I sit down I can probably go through a whole bunch of things I don't like about my job. I still know that my job isn't a *bad* job, because the last time I had a bad job it was at a chicken processing plant. Know how I know that the chicken job was bad? Because I excused myself for a bathroom break four hours into the shift, walked off site, and never came back.

You know what, there's another reason I know that this isn't a bad job and that mom isn't a bad mom, and I guess it's part of the reason I've written all this down in the first place. I was seven years old when I first wanted to die. By the time I got to high school, suicidal thoughts were just the radio static in my brain. I can't remember any point after like, grade school where I didn't daydream about suicide every single day.

Now? I sometimes go for weeks without thinking about killing myself. It hasn't gone away completely, it still pops up when I'm upset or stressed out or tired or really hungry, but what I do is I talk to mom about it, and she talks me out of it. I feel guilty sometimes about putting that pressure on her, and taking that pressure off is part of the reason I'm going to therapy I guess.

I hope it works out.

I really think it will.

#story #stories

65 notes · View notes

lacquerware · 4 years

Text

2020 Recap - My Year in Gaming

2020. What a year for video games. I had big plans for last year, but in the end I did very little besides play video games, and I don’t think I’m alone there since we were all stuck at home looking for a way out of reality. I wanted to do a year-end recap as I’ve done sporadically in past years, but this one will be different than the typical “Games of the Year” format because despite all the games I played in 2020, almost none of them came out in 2020, and some of the things that defined my year in gaming weren't even games.

Resident Evil 3 Remake (PS4)

RE3 was one of the only games I played in 2020 that didn’t coincide with the deadly pandemic's spread across the US. RE3 is, of course, a game about the spread of a deadly virus in Anytown, USA. It was an appetizer, I guess.

When the Resident Evil 2 remake dropped in 2019, there were some things I loved about it, and a few things that felt like steps back from the original. I feel much the same about RE3. I had also theorized that a Resident Evil 3 remake would be better off as RE2 DLC than as a separate full-length game, and considering how short RE3 turned out, with some of the best sections of hte original cut entirely (namely, the clock tower), I stand by my theory.

Oh well, at least Jill gets this rad gun, which for the time being is the closest thing to a new Lost Planet we can hope for anytime soon.

Sekiro (PS4)

Sekiro is the first video game I ever Platinumed. This is partly because conquering the base game was such a spartan exercise that going the extra mile to get the Platinum didn’t seem so bad, but it’s also surely a result of the pandemic. I needed a project and a big win. Who didn't?

I wrote at length about why I like Sekiro more than every other modern FromSoft game, and also about the game’s cherry-on-top moment that reminded me of blowing up Hitler’s face in Bionic Commando. Please read them!

Death Stranding (PS4)

Release date notwithstanding, this was obviously the Game of 2020. I wrote about it here, here, and here. This game bears the distinction of being the second one I ever Platinumed. It took 150 hours. Only then did I learn I had a hoverboard.

Streets of Rage 4 (PS4)

This is the only 2020 game I played for more than a few hours. In fact, I cleared the entire game at least five times. I still don’t think it captures the gritty aesthetic of the prior Streets of Rages (nor even tries to), but this is probably the best-feeling bup I've played. Huge bonus points for finally bringing back Adam, but in the end I found it hard not to pick Blaze every time.

Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch)

What impressed me about this sequel from Inti Creates was that it wasn’t just more of the same, even though that would've been fine. BMZ2 builds on its already excellent predecessor with a catchy new format where players can freely cruise the cosmos and stages take the varied form of planets—some big and sprawling, others short and sweet. Hopping at will from planet to planet without ever knowing what experiences and treasure each one held felt like system jumping in No Man’s Sky and island hopping in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, both of which felt like opening presents.

Dragon Force (Saturn)

Charming, satisfying, and addictive as a bag of chips. Unlike a bag of chips, when it’s over, you can do it all again. And again. And it’ll be different each time! This might be the first strategy game I've truly loved. Better late than never.

The PC Engine Mini

The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 Mini seems a particularly justifiable mini-console for people outside Japan because so many missed these consoles entirely, the games are hard to obtain, and the lineup includes titles spanning the entire convoluted Turbo/PC Engine ecosystem—the TurboGrafx-CD/CD-ROM², Super CD-ROM², Arcade CD-ROM² and SuperGrafx, in addition to plain, old standard HuCard games. I myself didn’t know the first thing about these systems before. It’s like reliving the nineties again for the first time.

Most of the titles included are simple action games that don't require a command of Japanese, but make no mistake: being able to understand Snatcher and TokiMemo does make me feel like an elite special person worth more than many of you.

(Side note: From a gender representation perspective, the difference between Snatcher and Death Stranding is stark. Virtually every interaction with every woman or girl in Snatcher is decorated with ways to sexually harass her. Guess someone finally had a conversation with our favorite auteur.)

A Gaming PC

I’d threatened to transition to PC gaming for years after beholding the framerate difference between the console and PC versions of DmC in 2012, and last July I finally took the leap, buying an ASUS “Republic of Gamers” (ugh) laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU. It seems like consoles are getting more PC-like all the time, especially with all these half-step iterations that splinter performance and sometimes even the feature set (à la the New 3DS and Switch Lite), so with the impending new generation seemed like a fine time to change course.

In the half-year since, I’ve barely played a single PC game more recent than 2013, but just replaying PS3-era games at high settings has been like rediscovering them for the first time.

I also finally experienced keyboard-and-mouse shooting and understand now why PC gamers think they're better than everyone else. Max Payne is a completely different game with a mouse. Are all shooters like this??

The USPS

Early in the year, I rediscovered my childhood game shop, Starland, which is now an online hub known as eStarland.com with a brick-and-mortar showroom. To my delight, it has become one of the best and most modestly priced sources for import Saturn games in the country, and I scored Shining Force III’s second and third episodes, long missing from my collection, for a mere ten bucks each!

In June, I treated myself to a trio of Saturn imports from eStarland: the tactics-meets-dating-sim mashup Sakura Taisen 2, the nicely presented RTS space opera Quo Vadis 2, and beloved gothic dungeon crawler Baroque. Miraculously, this haul amounted to just around thirty dollars total. Less miraculously, they never arrived. This was the second time I’d had something lost in the mail in my entire life, and also the second time that month. Something was wrong with the USPS, and it wasn’t just COVID pains. We would soon learn Trump had been actively working to sabotage one of the nation’s oldest and most reliable institutions in a plot to compromise the upcoming presidential election.

Frankly it’s a miracle there’s still such a thing as “delivery” at all, and a few missing video games is the last of my worries considering what caused it, but nevertheless this was an experience in my gaming life that could not have happened any other year. I won’t forget it.

*By the way, USPS reimbursed me for the insured value of the missing order, which was fifty bucks. So I actually profited a little off the experience.

Mega Everdrive Pro

I love collecting for the Genesis and Mega Drive, but I will not pay hundreds of dollars for a video game that retailed for about sixty. The publishers never asked for that, and the developers won’t see a (ragna)cent of the money. I'm also far less inclined to start collecting for Sega CD, since the hardware is notoriously breakable, the cases are huge and also breakable, and the library just isn't that good.

Still, I'd been increasingly curious about the add-on as an interesting piece of Sega history, so when I learned Ukranian mad scientist KRIKzz had released a new Mega Everdrive that doubled as a Sega CD FPGA, I finally took the plunge into the world of flash carts. This has proven a great way to play some of the Mega Drive’s big-ticket rarities I will never buy—namely shmups like Advanced Busterhawk Gley Lancer and Eliminate Down—as well as try out prospective additions to the collection. I never would have discovered the phenomenal marvel of engineering and synth composition that is Star Cruiser without this thing, but now that I have, it’s high on the shopping list.

The Mega Everdrive Pro is functionally nearly identical to TerraOnion’s “Mega SD” cartridge, but slightly less expensive, comes in a “normal” cartridge shell instead of the larger Virtua Racing-style one, and supports a single hardworking dude in Ukraine rather than a company with reportedly iffy customer service.

Twitch

Getting a PC also resolved issues that had long prevented me from achieving a real streaming setup, and much of my gaming life in 2020 was about ramping up my streaming efforts. I even made Affiliate in about a month. Streaming has been a great creative outlet and distraction, as well as a way to connect with other people during the COVID depression and structure my gaming time. Find me every Monday through Thursday 8-11pm Eastern at twitch.tv/lacquerware.

Metroid: Other M (Dolphin)

PC ownership also gave me access to the versatile Dolphin emulator, liberating a handful of great Wii exclusives from their disposable battery-powered prison.

One of the Wii games I fired up on Dolphin was Metroid: Other M, a game I’d always wanted to try but had been dissuaded by years of bad publicity and the fact that I never had any goddamn batteries. I know I should temper what I’m about to say by acknowledging that I was playing at 1080p/60fps on a PS4 controller so my experience was automatically a vast improvement over that of all Wii players, but I’m increasingly confident Metroid: Other M was the most fun I’ve ever had playing a Metroid game. I haven’t decided yet if I’m willing to die on this hill, but I will just say that if you like the Metroidvania genre in general and aren’t particularly attached to the Metroid series’ story or its habit of making you wander aimlessly for hours, there’s a very high chance you will enjoy Other M—especially if you play it on Dolphin.

Don't Starve Together (PC)

Don't Starve is the only game my friend Jason plays, so last year I tried to get into it with him. I respect this game's singular devotion to the concept of survival, but make no mistake: every session of Don't Starve ends with you starving to death. Or freezing. Or getting stomped by a giant deity of the forest. The entire game is staving off death until it inevitably comes. Even when death comes, you can revive infinitely (in whatever mode we were playing), which means even death is not an end goal. There is no end goal. You don't even have the leeway to "play" and create your own meaning as you do in similarly zen games like Dead Rising.

Don't Starve is a game for people for whom hard work is the ultimate reward in and of itself. Don't Starve told me something about Jason.

G-Darius (PS1)

In the early fall, Sony announced they were dropping PS3, PSP, and Vita support from the browser and mobile versions of their PSN Store, and since the PS3 version of the store app runs like a solar-powered parking meter in Seattle, I decided this was my last chance to stock up on Japanese PSN gems.

Among my final haul, the PS1 port of G-Darius proved an instant favorite. Take down the usual cast of mechanized fish in a vibrant, chunky, low-poly style that perfectly inhabits the constraints of the original PlayStation hardware. I believe this is the first Darius game that lets you get into giant beam duels with the bosses, which is quite definitely one of the coolest things a video game has ever let you do. The PS1 port is also surprisingly feature-rich, including some easier difficulty levels that present an actually surmountable challenge for non-savants.

This one’s coming to the upcoming Darius Cozmic Revelation collection on Switch alongside DARIUSBURST, a good-ass romp in its own right.

Red Entertainment

In my effort to shine a tiny spotlight on some of the unsung Interesting Games of gaming, I found myself drawn again and again to the work of Red Entertainment. First there were cavechild headbutt simulator Bonk’s Adventure and twin shmups Gates of Thunder and Lords of Thunder on the PC Engine Mini. Then I streamed full playthroughs of the PS2’s best samurai-era, off-brand 3D Castlevania, Blood Will Tell and the Trigun-adjacent stand-‘n-gun, Gungrave: Overdose. Then I was dazzled by Bonk’s Adventure’s futuristic spin-off cute-‘em-up, Air Zonk, which was also sneakily tucked away on my PC Engine Mini in the “TurboGrafx-16” section. It turned out all these games were made by the same miracle developer responsible for Bujingai, the stylish PS2 wushu game starring Gackt and a household name here at the Lacquerware estate. How prolific can one team be???

Month of Cyberpunk

In November, I started toying with the idea of themed months on my Twitch channel with “Cyberpunk month.” It was supposed to be a build-up to Cyberpunk 2077’s highly anticipated November release, but holy shit that didn’t happen, did it? Still, I always find myself gravitating toward this genre in November, I guess because I associate November with gloom (even though this year it was sunny almost every day). A month is a long time to adhere to a single theme, but cyberpunk is such a well-served niche in gaming that I could easily start an all-cyberpunk Twitch channel. The fact that we’re so spoiled with choice makes Cyberpunk 2077’s terrible launch all the more embarrassing. Here are just some of the games I played (and streamed!) in November:

Ghostrunner Shadowrun (Genesis) RUINER Remember Me Transistor Rise of the Dragon (Sega CD) Shadowrun (Mega CD) Cyber Doll (Saturn) Binary Domain Shadowrun Returns Blade Runner (PC) Deus Ex: Human Revolution Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Observer

Shadowrun on the Genesis gets my top pick, but the two most recent Deus Ex games are great alternatives for those looking for something in the vein of 2077 that isn’t infested with termites.

Lost Planet 2

Every year. I played through it twice in 2020.

Dead Rising 4

I slept on this one too long. While it's a far cry from the original game, it's easily the most fun I've had with a Christmas game since Christmas NiGHTS. This is the game a lot of people thought they were getting when they bought the original Dead Rising with their new Xbox 360--goofy, indulgent, and pressure-free.

Devil May Cry 5: Vergil (PS4)

Vergil dropped for last-gen consoles in December and breathed a whole lot of life into a game that was already at the head of its class.

Nioh 2

I’ve only played a few hours of Nioh 2 because I promised my friend I’d co-op it with him and wouldn’t play ahead. But he’s a grad student with two small children. Nevertheless, Nioh 2 is my Game of 2020.

And that's it! Guess I'll spend 2021 playing games that came out last year, and maybe eventually getting vaccinated? Please?

11 notes · View notes

diaryofaspookykid · 4 years

Text

January 7th 2021

I began this day like any other, falling asleep at around 4am, unable to get comfortable with anxiety riddled through my bones, so many thoughts passing through my mind, enabling me to rest. I put on my white noise rain playlist which is a total of 36minutes and somehow somewhere in that timeline, fall asleep. As i awake, i can see out my balcony a blanket of eerie fog so thick i cannot see past my backyard. I sign into a zoom class (because we are still closed until further notice at the salon) and begin my day. i spent about an hour of my time looking for birria tacos in my area, and crossing my fingers they deliver to my house. I struck gold as there was a place in gilroy called “Los Juniors Mariscos” and it was only around 12 min away and they doordashed. Doordash prices doubled the amount of my order for delivery so i decided to pick it up myself and it was well worth the drive. These damn tacos were amazing. Tender in all the right places, dripping in consome they have been bathing in.

In pop culture news of the day, Jeffree Starr has posted a youtube video responding to the allegations regarding him and Kanye West fucking. Which is the “reason” for Kim and Kanyes divorce. After watching his video, i have came to the personal conclusion that i feel this may be a clout chase to keep all parties in the mainstream media as they are all quite frankly dying down. Regarding this same topic you have people “clout chasing” and saying they “hooked up with kanye” to try and become relevant. People such as Cole Carrigan. This kid has tried to start so much drama with the community and we know him on a personal level from the Allstar cheerleading world where he used to essentially stalk athletes and just quite frankly be a drama starting pest. not a single thing has changed....not to mention the fact that he tried to start a “beauty house” and completely fucking flopped.

Moving on to conspiracies as i heavily invest myself in the crazy but completely intriguing and potentially real stories going around, i call my friend Gabrielle mother fucking Clark and Nancy and tell them about a recent conspiracy i have learned about. In summary, this conspiracy states that the entire year of 2020 we were shifted into a different dimension, everything negative that had happened, all was a result of us being placed in this different dimension. On new years 2021 the ball dropped 1minute late. Globally. At first youd think this is just a mistake by news stations etc, until you hear the theory. Apparently the ball dropping a minute late was due to our world clicking back into “our reality” our dimension. Thus, this year of “2021″ actually being the true start of 2020 in our dimension. On any apple device with siri, you can ask “How many days are their until 2021?” and siri responds “358 days until the year 2021″..... How is it that we are so advanced in technology and this mistake is just at random. Something else is afoot.

A Few weeks ago the covid bill was passed, this bill was 15 pages and signed and approved by the senate, but in this bill states that the pentagon and government of the United States must release all classified documentation, proof, footage, truth about alien life/extraterrestrials within 180 days of the bill being signed. Which means, by august of 2021 we should have some insight or truth on the mysteries of above that the entire world has been wondering since the dawn of time. i believe that all forms of government in every country know what lies in the stars, they just have an oath on not speaking about it. There has to be some reason all countries signed to protect Antartica, as it is rumored to be the threshold of bases for Alien life research and experiments. Only time will show the truth.

I ended my day with coaching, with covid-19 still ruining everything, i believe that this season will come to an end. Just as it ended last season. Every event is getting cancelled left and right aside and we have yet to have a shot at competing. Especially in this state. This was the first week seeing the kids in almost 6 weeks from being closed, and its so bittersweet as i love seeing them but it seems as if we are working toward nothing. As i arrived home, me and Nancy started watching our new favorite show “Pen15″ and we are hooked, but not trying to binge it all at once so we can savor the joy we get from this show. 10/10 reccomend.

Today i am feeling, clouded. Any time i had a thought to myself today, for some reason i would feel the anxiety crawl under my skin and creep toward my brain, like those beetles in the mummy movie franchise. I cannot seem to sleep anymore, but i will make an attempt now.

Goodnight,

Spookykid x

2 notes · View notes

hutchhitched · 4 years

Text

Maybe This Summer, Chapter 1

Summary: Katniss Everdeen needed a vacation. On a whim, she reserved three months at Panem Resorts in North Carolina. She expected to spend her time recovering from the recent death of her sister, exploring the nearby nature reserve, and reminiscing about happier times. What she didn’t foresee was bumping into Peeta Mellark, one of Panem’s most valued employees, during his early morning run. Neither did she think she’d grow to admire him when she’d hated him from first sight, but his killer smile and gorgeous blue eyes had a way of breaking down the walls she’d built around her heart. Maybe this summer she’ll finally get what she’s always deserved. Benefiting @fandomtrumpshate for @ldyglfr62. AO3

Author: @hutchhitched

Rating: Explicit (eventually)

Beta/Graphics: @xerxia31

The story will post on Tuesday mornings at 11:00 am CDT.

_________________

Welcome to Panem

Suddenly, Katniss was there. She steered the car up the long driveway marked by a large sign (almost the size of a billboard) announcing the entrance to the resort. It looked almost exactly the same as it had during her teenage years, although many of the buildings had been freshly painted and updated. Clearly, the owners had taken great care to upgrade the facilities and maintain the grounds in a careful blend of manicured and natural. She recognized the activities building and lodge to her right and the cave where she’d hidden and scared her sister the summer they vacationed here across the way. The beach and swimming area were carefully marked, and a dock beckoned those who wanted to sunbathe after a quick dip in the blue water.

Panem Lake sparkled brightly, and she envied the swimmers and kayakers who speckled the surface. Several canoes littered the beach just waiting for someone to take them for a spin. A large deck with a massive kidney shaped pool dominated the area just to the right of the lodge, and she noticed the number of tanned, thin women lounging with drinks in their hands. A few families scrambled toward the entrances to the hiking trails and pockets of other people were engaged in various activities. It looked like the ideal setting to while away the next few months.

Except she was alone. She had no family besides Gale and his wife, and they weren’t blood relatives. Not that they necessarily had to be, but she yearned for something to call her own. She hadn’t dated for so long, she couldn’t remember what it was like to be in a relationship, and sex was so far a distant memory, she wasn’t sure she still knew what it felt like to have a man inside her. How long had it been? Months, definitely. Maybe years. If she couldn’t remember, she realized, it had been much too long.

“God, that’s depressing,” she muttered and racked her brain trying to picture the contents of her suitcase. Had she packed her vibrator? Surely, she had. She didn’t expect to find anyone to sleep with here, so she might as well enjoy the privacy of her own hotel room—cabin—whatever it was she’d reserved—during her extended stay. Silicone and batteries had yet to disappoint her, which was much different than her previous sexual partners. Not that there had been many of them, but a few were adequate and two were downright terrible.

Pulling into the parking lot, she stopped her car, squared her shoulders, and pushed the unwanted thoughts from her mind. She had arrived and was determined to make the most of the time, no matter how much she’d rather be back at her job, in her lab, surrounded by samples, the fresh smell of dirt, and carefully controlled humidity. Or locked in a cabin with a man hung like a horse with a penchant for oral sex. Either way. She wasn’t terribly picky.

Grabbing her wallet, she chuckled as she stepped from the car and headed to the front desk. The lodge was much bigger than she remembered, a combination of glass, rock, and wood that blended seamlessly with the environment and made it feel protected from the elements and part of nature itself. Massive wooden beams propped up the cathedral ceiling that sported several skylights. The openings allowed the early afternoon sun to dapple the plush moss green carpet. Her feet sank into the pile as she crossed to the enormous reception area where a young woman in her mid-twenties stood waiting with a ready smile.

“Welcome to Panem. I’m Annie. How can I help you?”

Annie’s green eyes sparkled, and Katniss couldn’t help but envy the auburn locks that waved over the woman’s shoulders in riotous curls. Her creamy skin was speckled with tiny freckles that only highlighted the golden streaks in her hair. Prim had always wanted strawberry blonde hair, and the lighter shade in Annie’s was exactly the right color.

“I’m Katniss Everdeen. I’m checking in for the next several weeks.”

“Yes, Ms. Everdeen. Cabin 12 is what I’m showing for your extended stay. It’s one of our more private spaces in the resort, and we are delighted you’re here with us for such a long vacation. Let me just double check one thing for you…”

Katniss shifted uneasily, uncertain what Annie could be checking. She’d been careful to reserve one of the more remote spots of the resort (as far as she could decipher from the map), and she hoped nothing would change that now at check-in.

“Yes, there it is,” the receptionist said with a wide smile. “I was just reviewing your amenities since you’re going to be with us for an extended period of time. Cabin 12 is equipped with a chef’s kitchen, a small private beach, and a jacuzzi. Feel free to use all these to your satisfaction. If there’s any issue at all, please let us know, and we’ll deal with it immediately.”

“Oh,” she mumbled. “Oh, that’s wonderful. I hadn’t realized, although I’m not much of a cook.”

“Not to worry. Our chefs are wonderful, and one of our employees bakes the most delicious pastries, cakes, and cookies in the world. They’re all very talented, and we offer delivery to the cabins for breakfast and some dinners if you’re unable to join us in the dining hall.”

Stunned at the service, Katniss nodded her head slowly. “Thank you so much.”

“It’s no problem, Ms. Everdeen. You booked at just the right time. Our summer special prices ended just after you made your reservation, but you snagged some of the best lodging at Panem,” Annie assured her with a warm smile. “Can I get someone to assist you with your luggage? It’s complimentary, of course.”

“No, no. That’s fine. I’m… Actually, yes. That would be lovely. I brought more than I probably should have, and I can’t really face unloading it all right now. I’m not much of a traveler, and it’s hard to pack for an entire summer.”

“Completely understandable, ma’am. Let me just call someone for you. He can escort you to your cabin and arrange things to your liking. Just one moment.”

Katniss nodded and waited quietly while Annie typed on her keyboard. The lodge was calm and serene, but it wasn’t empty. There were a few unoccupied tables in the lounge, and the patrons seemed relaxed and happy. Employees fluttered around the guests, and no one appeared too rushed or ridiculously idle. The entire experience so far had been calming and put her at ease.

“Ms. Everdeen?”

She turned quickly to face Annie again. “Yes?”

“This is Finnick Odair. He’ll be helping you to your room.”

Katniss gaped at the young man for several seconds until an arrogant grin split his face. “I get that a lot, ma’am. If you’ll follow me…”

She snapped her mouth closed and blushed furiously as he accompanied her to her car. Finnick was, by far, the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen with her own eyes. Tall and lanky with massive shoulders and biceps, shining auburn curls graced his beautiful face that held bedroom eyes the color of emeralds. His bronzed skin shone with a youthful glow, and his palm was warm as he helped her into her car.

“Welcome to Panem, Ms. Everdeen. I hope you’ll find your stay here pleasurable.”

“Katniss,” she gasped. “My name’s Katniss.”

“Katniss,” he agreed.

He savored the sound of her name, and she tingled at the care he took saying it. Still speechless, she watched as he popped something into his mouth and sucked on it. When he saw her eying him, he glanced over at her and asked, “Sugar cube?” She shook her head dumbly and watched the veins in his forearms as he steered her car to the far side of the resort.

“Cabin 12, huh?” he murmured while observing her carefully in a side glance. She felt every flicker of his gaze over her body, and she shivered at his familiarity. “Usually people with secrets reserve our private cabins. I bet you have a lot of secrets, Katniss. Have any that are worth my while?”

She chuckled at his obvious flirtation and ineffectual attempt at seduction and remembered the age gap between them. He was clearly significantly younger than her, and the way he talked demonstrated his immaturity. Sure, he was gorgeous, but she wasn’t in the mood to teach a younger man how to deal with a grown woman like her.

“Easy there, Odair,” she warned. “I’m just here to relax. You can stop your interrogation. Besides, if you try really hard, you can probably figure out my secrets all by yourself. Everyone else seems to know them before I do anyway.”

“Unfortunately, that’s probably true,” he said, his voice honeyed and decidedly seductive. She rolled her eyes at him and turned to stare at the trees. His guffaw surprised her, and she noticed out of the corner of her eye that his shoulders relaxed. “I knew you were sharp. The smart ones always resist me.”

“I have a feeling you don’t lose too much sleep over it.”

“See? Not just smart. Completely brilliant,” he quipped. “Here we are.”

She stared through the windshield and gasped at the sheer beauty of her home for the foreseeable future. “It’s lovely!” she cried before she flushed. Embarrassed at her enthusiasm with a stranger, she twisted her hands in her lap as he put the car into park.

“So happy you like it, Ms. Everdeen. Katniss, ma’am.” His grin was one of pure pleasure. “Let me just get your things.”

She nodded and allowed him to help her from the car. He quickly pulled a bag out of the backseat and opened the door to her cabin. Motioning for her to enter before him, she did and repressed an uncharacteristic happy squeal.

“You can put the bags down anywhere,” she mumbled as she floated from room to room. The cabin was small but comfortable with soft green walls and cherry hardwood floors. White trim surrounded large windows that allowed sun to stream in through the panels, and the back of the cabin opened through French doors onto a deck overlooking a little cove of the lake.

“That’s your private beach,” Finnick informed her as he set down the last of her suitcases in the bedroom and arranged her other belongings on the kitchen counter. “The stairs are just over there. Only a short flight down to the sand. It’s very secluded.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, drawn to the deck and the view there.

“Very secluded,” he repeated. “Perfect for skinny dipping, if you feel the urge.”

Her skin crawled, but she refused to react. She couldn’t get a read on him, and it bothered her more than she wanted to admit. Was he just a gorgeous young man who had trouble reigning in his arrogance, or did he really think his charm worked on a woman like her?

“If there’s anything else you need, ma’am, please don’t hesitate to ask. We’re here for your pleasure.” When she didn’t respond, he chuckled and added, “I’ll just let myself out. Your keys are on the table.”

It took several seconds for his words to register, and he was already out the door before she realized she should tip him. She fumbled in her wallet as he spoke into a two-way radio, and she rushed to the porch just as he bounded down the stairs to meet the golf cart that screeched to a halt at her driveway.

“Mellark, thanks for the lift back,” she heard him say to the blonde man behind the wheel, and she froze as he turned to glance in her direction. Deep blue eyes raked over her, and she grabbed her braid and tugged on it self-consciously. With a wink, he pulled away, and she stared after them—two handsome young men with enough youthful confidence to take the world by storm. Neither of whom realized familiarity was something to be earned, not expected. Both of whom made her feel desired in a way she hadn’t for a very long time.

“Do they grow them gorgeous and conceited here?” she muttered and turned to re-enter the cabin. She tossed the bills on the table and resolved to find Finnick later to tip him for his help. In the meantime, the deck called and, soon enough, so did the cool, blue water. The same blue as the eyes of the driver of the golf cart who’d piqued her interest with just the briefest look.

As she changed into her swimsuit, she pushed that from her mind. A thirty-three-year-old woman had no business thinking of anything other than what she’d planned from the start—relaxation, some nature work, and a lot of down time. And no skinny dipping.

With that, she opened the French doors and stepped into summer.

___________________

“You always get the good assignments, Odair,” Peeta Mellark teased as he headed the golf cart back to the lodge. “Must be because you’re dating the receptionist.”

“You keep Annie’s name out of your mouth, Mellark. She already thinks you’re perfect. That silver tongue of yours is kryptonite to women.”

Peeta chuckled, “Silver tongue. Is that what they’re calling it nowadays?”

“Don’t even joke about my girlfriend that way,” Finnick snapped. “I meant the way you can use words to romance the hell out of every woman in the world, not what you do to them in the bedroom.”

“Who needs a bedroom? Desks work just fine,” he joked and then laughed when Finnick shot him a dirty look. “As for words, that’s you, my friend. You, not me. I’m tongue-tied and mute with most women.”

“That’s not what Glimmer said when you two were dating. In fact, I think she might have sung your praises about the ways you used that tongue of yours on her.”

Peeta couldn’t help but grin. While he honestly lacked game with women, his ex-girlfriend had pursued him so hard during their senior year in college, he hadn’t had much of a choice but to give into her persistent attempts to get him alone. Despite her reputation of a tough girl, he’d found her kind and funny beneath her hard exterior, especially in her love for her twin brother Gloss. She’d also been amazing in bed and a rabid proponent of cunnilingus, which he’d practically majored in when they were together. They had chemistry, but there wasn’t much else holding them together. After graduation, he’d broken up with her. He’d been single since then. For 26 very, very, very long months. Over two years of celibacy. Too long. Long enough that one quick glance at the woman in Cabin 12 made blood rush to his groin. Thankfully, he was wearing very loose shorts that hid his chub, and it was strictly against rules to fraternize with guests.

“Don’t talk about Glim like that,” Peeta said, mirroring Finnick’s defense of Annie. “She was a great girlfriend.”

“But you broke up. Quite a while ago, in fact. Maybe it’s time to get back on the horse.”

“Women aren’t horses, Finn.”

“It’s a metaphor, Peet. Get back in the saddle. Get the boots knocking. Ride a cowgirl, or something like that.”

“You have got to stop,” he laughed. “I’m not interested in anyone here. Not really. It’ll have to wait.”

“New people come every day. Pun intended.”

“We can’t date the tributes, Finn,” he remarked, referring to new guests at Panem. Repeat visitors were nicknamed careers, and the lithe woman they’d just left definitely wasn’t one of those. He would have noticed her if she’d stayed at the resort during his employ. “Besides, I’ve worked with everyone here for the past seven years. It’s not in the cards this summer.”

“Rules are made to be broken, my dear boy. Be a rebel. Power to the people. Rage against the machine. You might like it.”

“Whatever,” Peeta muttered. “By the way, who was that you helped into Cabin 12? That’s a choice spot for so early in the season. Usually the careers get that place.”

“Katniss Everdeen is her name, and she’s definitely not a career. This is her first year here since she was a teenager, apparently. Not like those who come every summer and spend their lives around this resort. It’s nice to have some new blood around here.”

“Sure is.”

“And not bad looking either, is she?”

Peeta glanced sideways at his friend and narrowed his eyes at the smug look on Finnick’s face. “I hadn’t really noticed,” he said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

“I think you did.”

“I think you should butt out of my personal life.”

“Just don’t want that tongue of yours to get too out of practice. Other things should be stiff, but not your mouth.”

“Get out, Finn.”

“Seriously, Peet. How long’s it been? Annie and I want you to be happy.”

“I’m happy.”

“Bullshit. Bull. Shit. You love being in love. You’ve held a torch for a girl you saw from afar when you were five for two decades. Let the fantasy go and live in the real world.”

“You know, it’s not like I have her name tattooed on my biceps and stare at it in the mirror every day.”

“Is that because you don’t know her name or because you don’t have biceps to tattoo?”

“I hate you, Odair.”

“Gym later? I’ll help you work on your summer bod.”

Peeta laughed and shook his head. “You always have to have the last word, don’t you? I have a better six-pack than you do.”

“I don’t think so, sir,” Finnick hooted. “I’m a sea god, and you’re…”

“The god of bread?”

He grinned at Peeta and jumped from the cart. “You do have a bit of a gut. Thanks for the lift, Mellark. Just think about what I said.”

Peeta flipped him the bird and slammed on the gas. He couldn’t get away from his friend’s taunts quickly enough, and that bothered him. He didn’t usually allow his cold streak to affect him, but he’d recently turned twenty-five. At a quarter of a century, he was just starting to itch for something long-term. He’d always wanted kids, and the sheer number of families who’d already arrived this summer were a glaring reminder that he hadn’t had a date for almost two years.

He was young. He had time, but still. He was horny as hell with no prospects. And that dark-haired girl he’d spied on the beach so long ago… She’d captivated him. For twenty years, he hadn’t found anyone to push her from the back of his mind, although the new resident of Cabin 12 gave him distinctive sensation of déjà vu.

He knew he couldn’t date the guests, but there was nothing wrong with getting to know them, right? That was just good service, and Panem prided itself on catering to the whims of those who resided within its borders—to matter how long they were a guest. He wanted to be a good employee, so he’d keep his eyes open for opportunities to greet Katniss and welcome her. It was the least he could do for public relations at the resort. Maybe she’d give them a five-star review when the season ended. Maybe she’d give him one, too.

___________________

“Annie, darling,” Finnick drawled as he strolled across the lobby and toward his girlfriend, “we’ve got an assignment for the summer.”

“You’re an incorrigible flirt, Finnick Odair, and I’m waiting with bated breath to hear what devilish scheme you’ve concocted to torture one of our mutual acquaintances.”

“Not an acquaintance, gorgeous. Peeta.”

“Peeta Mellark?” she raised her eyebrows and considered her boyfriend for several moments before shaking her head. “He’s our friend. I have no desire to torture him.”

He leaned over the counter and stage-whispered, “He needs to get laid, and I think our new tribute is just the one to do it. Brunette, gray eyes, hair in a braid. Sound familiar?”

“That woman he paints…”

“Yes, that woman,” Finnick crowed. “And it’s not some random figment of his imagination. He bases that series on a girl he saw here twenty years ago—what he thinks she’d look like today.”

Annie grinned at him. “He’s a hopeless romantic. It’s so precious.”

Finnick sighed and backed toward the door. “If I have to hear one more word about how perfect he is, I may vomit.”

“Take some lessons! You could learn something from him.”

She giggled when he blew her a kiss, and she turned to a family who’d just arrived.

“Welcome to Panem. I’m Annie. How can I help you today?”

#everlark #everlark fanfiction #maybe this summer #peeta mellark #katniss everdeen

29 notes · View notes

katjacksonbooks · 5 years

Photo

Ummm, I started this romance last year at some point and then put it away, as I often do. But now that the world feels super bleak (super SUPER bleak? what’s the scale for everything sucks and I hate it all?) I’ve decided to add this story to my list of things I want to finish soon-ish. (I mean, it’s me tho, so what does soon even mean?)

Anyway, if you want to read a preview of Alien Escape (erotic ffm) and meet Drea, a girl with big dreams and a plan to get as far away from her toxic parents as she can, read on!

CW: allusions to domestic violence and emotional abuse

Also, if you’re wondering if I really have face inspiration for an alien couple, the answer is yes. I do! Y’all should watch Star Trek: Discovery!

Prologue

“Shut up!”

“You shut up! All you do is come in here and whine like a baby until you get your way.”

“When have I ever gotten my damn way in this fucking house? I work my fingers to the bone—”

“Where? When? Doing what?”

“Oh, fuck you! Someone’s gotta keep food on the table in this damn place—”

That’s about when I tune them out. My parents have the same fight every three to four days, like clockwork. It’s not really about anything, or not about anything specific; they just like to fight and really dislike each other. Mom hates living in Ohio, and she’ll never forgive dad for moving us out here. Dad hates living in Ohio too, but he refuses to admit that this was ever his idea. Money’s tight. There’s nothing to do. Neither of them can keep a job. Somehow, this is all my fault.

Different day, same bullshit, and why I don’t bother listening.

We all learn things from our parents, and mine taught me early and often that we all have lots of times in our lives when we can make decisions to not stay with people we barely know and can’t stand. My parents had more roads to escape than most.

My life as I know it might never have happened if their casual fling — without birth control, because dad didn’t believe in it — hadn’t turned into an unexpected, but obviously expected, pregnancy. That could have been a wakeup call, followed by a visit to a Planned Parenthood and an important life lesson learned, except mom was from a hardcore born-again family and didn’t believe in birth control or abortions. She believed in premarital sex, though, so I’m still trying to make sense of that faith system, but the damage was done. The damage being the mess those two made of my childhood because, even though they could have decided to co-parent or something, they apparently felt compelled to stay together. Why? I’ll never know, and I’m convinced they don’t know, either. My earliest self-realization wasn’t “This fucker took my nose!”, it was “My parents see me as a burden.” Can you imagine? Being barely old enough to sit up without wobbling and knowing, somehow, deep in your bones, that the two people who should love you unconditionally, don’t? It’s not a great life, just in case you need to see it in black and white. To my parents, I was just another mouth to feed, the thing that kept them bound to this person they hated more each day. Their entire relationship and my entire existence were just one bad decision after another, and the soundtrack to my entire life has just been this same argument.

They bickered all over New York in the almost-identical shoebox apartments they could just about afford, during our road trip West and ever since we settled in Akron. They don’t even like each other enough to shake up these knock-down, drag-out fights. Maybe a cheating accusation here, or a “Who ate the last piece of chicken?” there, but other than that, nothing.

The most interesting part of my life was that year just before they finally decided to move to Ohio. Dad had tried to feed me and mom some fairytale about how life would be different here — fewer people, better housing, more trees, less pollution and a stronger family unit. I never believed it, because in each of the yarns he spun, I was still with them — both of them — and there’s no happily ever after with them around; not for me, at least. But mom had been swayed, and next thing I knew, we were in a beat-up Ford truck, the entirety of our belongings packed precariously in the bed and heading West. Surprise of all surprises, none of dad’s stories had been true.

Well, okay, let me be fair. There are technically fewer people in Akron than the Bronx, and the house we’ve been renting since we arrived is bigger than those small New York apartments, but besides that, my parents’ dysfunctional relationship and my shitty life are business as usual.

There were more trees when we got here, but I’m not giving dad credit for that since most of them were cut down about a year after we arrived to make room for the new pipeline running right through our backyard. That’s why the rent’s so cheap.

My parents fight about that, too.

The move wasn’t a Band-Aid to their relationship, and it certainly didn’t make my life better — not that anyone was worried about me — and as far as my parents are concerned, every problem in their life is my fault. They fight about it regularly and then circle right back around to being united against me, and that’s why as soon as mom banged the pot of spaghetti on the kitchen table, I scarfed down my portion and excused myself immediately.

Their problems aren’t my fault, I know that, but there’s no reasoning with them. It’s best to just disappear. I headed upstairs to my room with a mumbled “homework” and waited. Once I heard them start sniping at one another, I did what I always do and climbed up to the attic and out onto the roof. This is the only place where I feel safe, emotionally, if not physically. If I’m being honest, I really shouldn’t be up here. It’s slippery, and a bunch of the tiles are a good gust of wind away from falling off, but if my choices are inside my parents’ house and up here, the roof wins every time.

Out here, there’s enough space to escape my parents’ incessant fighting. The late spring air is a marked change from the stifling, probably not-quite-safe gas heat in our house. On a clear night, I can stand on the eastern edge of the roof and see all the way downtown, not that there’s much to see there. I mean, I can see the marquis of the Burger King where I work, but I’m not interested in that, so I usually look in the opposite direction. There’s not much to see there either, just a few farmhouses surrounded by large fields and the pipeline.

But I’m not looking at any of that. I put my earbuds in my ears, turn my music up as loud as it goes and lay back on the roof to stare at the clear, dark blue sky. Sometimes, I haul my sketch book up here to draw, or pull my old astronomy textbook out and try to identify the constellations, but whatever I do, I say a prayer that my singular wish will come true. All I want is to get as far away from my parents as fast as I can.

My classmates are preparing for college, and lots of them want to enlist, but my only real goal post-graduation is to get away. I’ve worked out any number of escape routes up here. Instinctually, I know that I can’t just move to Columbus or Detroit. Those cities aren’t far enough away, and I’ve long been worried that my parents’ obvious co-dependency means that I need to put some serious miles between us if I want to have a chance at real freedom.

I toyed with the idea of leaving the country, but Burger King money doesn’t stretch nearly that far. Right now, I’m making just enough to give my parents one of my checks a month to help with household bills — and keep them off my back — and split the second between my cellphone bill and savings account. After three years, I have enough money saved to absolutely get the fuck out of Akron in exactly six months on my eighteenth birthday, and I plan to do exactly that, but I’m still working out the kinks in my escape route.

I’ve done the math, and I can either buy a decent used car or a plane ticket to California. Every time my dad comes home and tells mom that his paycheck was docked for calling in or mom hides yet another online delivery from dad, I’m tempted to go for the plane ticket, but I usually talk myself down from that impulse because I’m sensible, unlike my parents. Even though the thousands of miles away from here is attractive as fuck, I know that once I get off that plane, I’ll be broke as hell.

On the other hand, the rusty Honda Civic I have my eye on at the used car dealership downtown is sensible. It has less than 100,000 miles, good mileage, and if push came to shove, it could double as a temporary home. It wouldn’t be a six-hour plane ride to California, but I’ve got enough money that I could put some real distance between my parents and myself and have enough to really start the rest of my life.

But when I’m up on the roof, I also have another secret fantasy. It’s not real, but when my parents are really loud, and I worry that the yelling and crashing might turn to the sound of fists hitting skin and bone, I dream of space. Forget California or Tokyo, I wish I could go to the moon or beyond. There’s a tiny, terrified girl inside me that knows in her bones that the only way to really escape my parents is up above me. Sometimes, I lay back on the roof and imagine what it would be like to know that I was far enough away that I’d never have to hear my parents wake me up arguing again. It’ll never happen, but some nights, daydreams of flying up into the sky are the only things that make me feel safe enough to fall asleep. But just like with San Francisco, I bury that deep inside myself and calculate how many shifts I need to work to have the full price of the used Honda. The sky is my fantasy, just like Ohio had been my parents’, but that Honda Civic is the real path to freedom.

The sound of glass breaking hits my ears in the quiet between two songs, and I jump at the shock of it. I tap my cellphone screen to pause my music. I pull the earbud from my left ear and listen, trying to figure out which part of the argument they’re at now.

“Do you feel better?” dad yells at mom.

I roll my eyes, shove my earphone back into my ear and press play on the music again.

Mom likes to break dishes when she’s really frustrated but trying to hold it together; it’s why the few dishes we have don’t match. I suspect she’s gonna drag me to the Goodwill tomorrow to look for a replacement for whatever she’s broken, and I can’t have that. I pick up my phone and tap out a quick text message to my boss, Peter. In a plea that he’s very familiar with, I tell him that I’m available to cover any shifts tomorrow. Peter’s a good guy, and I know that he’ll do what he can to get me a shift, even if it’s just a few hours or closing. I’ll take it, and he knows I will. I’ll also immediately put whatever extra money I get directly into my savings account and readjust my timetable to purchasing the Honda and getting the fuck out of here.

The music builds to a crescendo and mercifully drowns out my parents’ screaming as I look back up at the sky.

On nights like tonight, the moon is so clear and big that I swear it’s close enough to touch. I stretch out my right arm above me, squint one eye closed, tilt my head to the left and pretend to capture the moon between my thumb and forefinger. I smile for the first time in what feels like hours, maybe even days.

And then I see it.

While I’m looking, a small speck in the sky moves across my vision, only visible because it passes the light of the full moon. At first, I think it’s a distant star, or maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me. I blink, and something in the sky moves again. Whatever’s up there, it’s too far away to see clearly, so I sit up, trying to make sense of it all. It’s moving too slow to be a shooting star and too fast to be…well, literally anything else. I pull my earphones from my ears, as if it will sharpen my vision. I stare up at the speck that’s now bigger, closer; close enough for me to realize that the one speck is actually a cluster of distant lights. I’m not looking at a star or a planet but a constellation that’s moving in formation towards me. Toward the Earth.

But that’s not possible. I know that. I aced astronomy.

“What the fuck?” I whisper to myself.

As if in answer to my whispered question, those bright not-stars seem to move faster and get bigger in the large pane of sky above my house as they get closer. The lights seem to fill the sky of this boring ass town with a pipeline running through it dangerously close to the local drinking water; this town my parents hate that I can’t wait to escape.

I shake my head and turn to the right. My eyes land on the pipeline cutting through the fields behind our house. I can barely remember a time when it wasn’t the first thing I saw when I woke up in the morning. I’ve read dozens of articles about what it is and how much time it’s probably shaving off of my life. I guess the environmentalists were right and assume that thing must finally be leaking. It has to be. Because how else do I explain what I think I’m seeing in the sky?

And when I tilt my head back to look up there, I gasp and jump to my feet.

In the handful of seconds when I’d been looking away, those not-stars seem to have come closer. Like real close. Now they’re so close that no one can mistake them for stars because no stars have ever been so damn clear in the sky or moved so fast. I watch as they get closer and closer, and then I shriek in shock as the constellation breaks apart.

If I’m hallucinating this, whatever the pipeline is leaking is grade-A lethal shit.

The lights disperse so fast that I actually miss it. One second, there’s a cluster of lights heading toward me, too many for me to count clearly. The next second, I blink. Then the next second, there are only five lights still above me, but I can see turquoise blue light streaks in the sky heading in thousands of different directions. And then in another second, those five lights begin to slowly move apart, still descending, closer to the Earth’s surface. They’re landing, I realize, and my mouth falls open.

“Fuck,” I breathe as my mouth curves into a smile so wide it hurts.

Now that there are fewer lights and they’re even closer than before, I can just about recognize what’s hovering in the sky above me. They’re ships, and not space shuttles like the ones I’ve seen in my social studies textbooks about the moon landing. These not-stars are huge, bigger than the biggest plane I’ve ever seen in the sky, maybe even bigger than the entire town, and they’re not US-made shuttles or like anything I’ve seen of Russian or Chinese ships. These big, hovering ships look like they’re covered in shimmering jewels, glittering as if reflecting their own sunlight. “Fuck,” I breathe again.

“Drea, are you up there? Girl, get off the fucking roof, we can’t afford no emergency room visit. Do you hear me?”

I hear my dad yelling at me. I do. I just don’t give a shit, because there’s an alien spaceship in the sky almost directly above our house — an actual fucking spaceship — and this is infinitely more interesting than him reaming me out for being on the roof again. Besides, I hear the moment when he sees what I’m seeing and stops caring that I might stumble and fall off the roof. I hear the choked gasp that comes from his lips just before my mom bangs out of the front door, still yelling. I hear her words cut off when she sees the ship too, the final confirmation I need that I’m not having a pipeline hallucination, but still, I don’t care.

Because I’m speechless. I know, deep down in my gut, that this ship is going to change everything about the world I’ve ever known, and I can’t help but feel elated. My body feels light, as if I weigh nothing more than my fantasies. I swear I could float up to one of those ships, and that’s exactly what I want to do. I want to bang on the door of a ship and beg them to let me in, because I can feel the surety along every inch of my skin that this ship is going to be my way out. This ship is going to get me as far away from Akron and my parents and that damn pipeline as possible.

My mother’s scream is a delayed response to seeing the impossible, and it rips into the quiet night. She keeps screaming and screaming, but dad and I are too mesmerized to stop her. Eventually, I hear our neighbors begin to file out of their houses, probably when they realize that mom’s screams are different from their regular weekday fights. I hear them gasp and cry out. Babies are crying, and other people’s screaming joins mom’s. There’s even the sound of the hurricane warning blaring out eventually, but none of those noises seem to touch me; not anymore. It’s like they’re far away because I’m already gone.

14 notes · View notes

cardandpixel · 4 years

Text

RocketBook Flip - a rare review and it’s not a game!

Before I go any further, I feel I must point out that I don’t have any financial connection to RocketBook whatsoever – this isn’t a piece that was requested or courted by RocketBook or affiliates and I’m not receiving any reward or sponsorship either in product or direct payment for this article. I just like the damn thing and love it when an innovative piece of tech (in this case quite low key) just works. Hi I’m Paul, and I have a bit of a problem with notebooks – A4 lined, sketch, reporters, Black & Reds (ohhhh the sheer number of B&Rs), goofy ones, serious work ones, battered ones, pristine ‘for best only’ ones – and they all fill at an alarming rate. I make notes on everything. Working as a sound engineer and designer, there’s always mix notes, soundscape plots, ideas, VO notes and scripts, SFX ideas etc etc. At home it’s a very different story – it’s much worse. Game notes; blog notes; hurriedly scribbled quiz questions spurred by watching another episode of Mental Floss’ 500 facts about cheese; RPG notes and story ideas; my own script writing; world building; sketches; other creative ideas; song/music notes and ideas; and that’s before we get to to-do lists; and the dreaded ‘things I must remember’. So my journal life is many, varied and plenty. The usual issue is… ‘what frakking journal did I put that amazing idea in????’, and that’s way before we get to the utter horror that is possibly losing a whole journal or forgetting to bring one home from work. I’m 53, I forget more than I recall, and journals help bring some semblance of order to a massively chaotic and fertile brain. What I’ve needed for a long time is some way of organising all this info or centralising it in some way. Sure I’ve looked at apps – I used Things, Evernote, Notes, and One Note for years, and they are really, really good, but they relied on either having a charged device exactly when I need it (yeah – me too) or net access, which for a new-ish theatre, is surprisingly a bit of an issue at work. And the most important part – I actually enjoy the physical act of handwriting long-hand. I still write actual physical letters to people, it’s adorable and a bit creepy in this age, but I call it charming and leave it at that. Handwriting, for me, allows me time to think and process in a way that typing just doesn’t. Handwriting is slower, I rarely cross anything out, and so I always have the whole of the thought. So what I’ve ideally wanted for years, was a reliable way of organising all my notes and storing them electronically so I have access even without the actual journal, with OCR so they’re editable, and still being a tactile handwritten experience. I’m naturally a sceptic (I actually subscribe to Fortean Times – yeah – I card carry!) and so online ads and particularly FaceAche ads are a field day for critical thinking triggers. I don’t think I’ve ever received from Wish, exactly what I ordered from Wish. And so when an ad from RocketBook constantly kept popping up on my timeline a few weeks ago, I was naturally “it’ll never work” But their website looked legit enough – they had a dedicated UK shop, it was relatively steep to buy in but not so wild that if it didn’t work I wouldn’t be crying too much about the money wasted, and at the end of the day it was a 10th the price of a ReMarkable 2 which is actually what I thought would solve my problem. I’m furloughed at the mo and though I could argue the case for £300+ notebook (test me, I could), I just couldn’t justify it now. And RocketBook had a good summer intro offer. I ordered on the Wednesday, and the impressively glitzy and graphic-design-playbook poly package was dropped on my doorstep just 2 days later by my cheery postie who yelled up the drive “Package for ya, looks very exciting!!!!” I like that our postal service is still invested in the hopes and dreams of their customers. It was exciting. All the instructions for getting started with my new Teal RocketBook A4 Flip were right there before you even open it. The main body houses the pad and a cleaning cloth, and a clever little side pocket houses the supplied Pilot Frixion pen.

RocketBooks come in several models, all configured slightly differently. I have the Flip which is a top spiral-bound softback pad with 21 double sided ‘pages’ giving 42 pages in total. The Flip has lined paper one side, and dot paper on the reverse (great for D&D maps, impromptu tables, mixer channel plots etc)

DELIVERY & FIRST IMPRESSIONS The pads are nicely made, with sturdy covers (available in some really nice colours too) and a solid, thick plastic ring binding. Initially, The RocketBook does feel a bit odd. Its ‘pages’ are actually a synthetic polyester blend and feel quite shiny to the touch. The sort of surface you just instantly feel is not going to be great for ink! Each page is edge-to-edge lined or dotted with a heavy black border. At the bottom is a prominent QR code used for scanning and some very feint icons. These 7 icons are the key to the ease of use of the RocketBook series. But more later.

THE APP

The pads work with a companion app, that is absolutely free and available for Apple & Android. In fact, RB even do downloadable printable pages so you can try the whole system absolutely free before you buy – I didn’t, I just bought one, y’know. The app allows you to set up your destination locations, your preferences and does the actual scanning. Just one quick note, I have the app on both my phone and iPad and had to set-up the app the same for both, there appears to be no way of swapping preference settings between devices, though I can see why this may be intentional.

Currently, the RocketBook allows you to choose from the following locations to send files to: GoogleDrive, box, EverNote, DropBox, slack, OneNote, iCloud, OneDrive as well as simply to an email (or multiple) addresses and iMessage. Impressively, these are not fixed either, so you could choose your 7 destinations to be 7 email addresses of team members. These 7 locations are the icons at the bottom of each page. To select a destination for your file, you just make a mark in that icon box (tick, circle, something unsavoury) and that page will be sent to whichever you select. This makes the system very flexible indeed as not every page is necessarily sent to every destination. You always decide every time you fill a page. Change your mind on a second revision? No problem, add or change icons at any time and re-upload.

There’s a really handy table on the inside front cover for you to note what icon sends what where. This is also wipeable, so can be changed anytime.

I have mine set by default to:

Rocket > main email address (either as PDF, JPG, OCR embedded or as separate txt file)

Diamond > GoogleDrive (you can specify exactly what folder too)

Apple > iMessage

Bell > OneNote

That actually still leaves me 3 spare: shamrock; star; and horseshoe.

The app took me maybe 20mins to set-up, that included decision time for destinations and setting up a few target folders. It also included a few ‘test firings’. I didn’t get everything right first time and a few things didn’t send, but crucially, a tiny bit of digging revealed very simple troubleshooting (including the aforementioned issue with no sync’ing of phone and iPad), and all in I was finding the files in all the right destinations within about 30 mins. The website, FAQs and community are immensely helpful with any other issues as well. I had a tiny issue with OneNote seeming to take ages to sync, but I think that’s an issue with my OneNote settings, everything else was almost instantaneous. You can also handily set the app to auto-send as soon as it scans, or allow for manual review.

CLEAN UP ON AISLE ROCKETPAD The main reason I wanted to look at the RocketBook was the issue of reusability. My journal shenanigans are by no means the biggest ecological disaster on the planet, but if we are to believe Tesco (who probably issue as many receipts at our local Tesco Express in a day as journals I’ve ever used), every little helps. If I could find an ecologically better solution, I should at least take a look. The RocketPads work by partnering with Pilot pens called Frixion. The really clever bit is RB’s paper technology and how it works with the Frixion ink. At present, the pads only work with the Frixion pens – except the RB Colour which works with Crayola’s dry-erase crayons. When you write on the ‘paper’ with a Frixion pen, it remains wet for a few seconds and then dries pretty quickly. There’s no smudging whatsoever in transit, which is pretty cool. From then on, it may as well be permanent, until you have transmitted your page and decide you don’t want the text anymore. To wipe the page clean, you can dampen the supplied cloth and just wipe the surface clean, it’s weird but it works! But then damp cloth in your bag? So I use kitchen roll to dampen, then wipe dry with theirs. Others even have an adorably kitsch spray bottle in their kit. RB reckon if you are not going to use the pad for a few months, to clean the pages as the ink can get trickier to shift after a long time, but for day-to-day use, I’ve tried writing and wiping well over 20x and the page hasn’t become discoloured or tarnished at all. The only pad different in the range is the Wave which cleans by microwaving! Do NOT do this with any of the others, bad things will happen. The ink doesn’t take scrubbing or any time to come up, I clean my pages in about 10-15s. The page can feel a little tacky when it’s damp, but leave a minute or so and the page will be back to normal. RB do say that odd things can happen if the book is left near a heatsource or in a hot car, vis-à-vis, the ink can completely disappear horrifyingly enough. They say that putting the pen or the pad in the freezer for a little while will actually restore the ink, but I’ve not tried it yet so can’t confirm or deny how that goes. Handy for spies in hot countries though, so there’s another target market. If you are always going to send your pages to the same places, then don’t erase the marked icons, and the page is ready for new notes straight away, otherwise, scrub them too.

I CAN’T READ YOUR WRITING – ARE YOU A DOCTOR? Initially, the RB pads send their files as scans of the pages in high contrast monochrome (colour is available) when you snap the page in the app (which auto-frames for you and takes maybe 10s to capture). The formats are either as images or PDF. If that had been it, I would have been quite happy, but the RB pads have another trick up their sleeve. Firstly, they have a function called ‘Smart Titles’ which allows you to name your files directly from the page by writing a filename between double hashtags ie ## this is my scrawl 24/8/20 ## and the file will pop up in your destinations with the filename ��this is my scrawl 24/08/20” – this is insanely handy – there’s no protocol except your own and the hashtags, and it makes your files super easy to search. You can even send groups of pages as a single PDF. But the notebooks go even further. They actually offer full searchable OCR which the app can be set to send embedded in the PDF or image, or more usefully, as a companion separate .txt file. Now, my handwriting isn’t the neatest, but it’s not bad so I was prepared for some editing to be necessary, but impressively again, the OCR was about 90-95% accurate. In a page of text it missed maybe 3 or 4 words and even those not badly. This is all considering their full OCR is still only in beta! It gets confused with diagrams on the page, but that’s to be expected.

Text Generated by OCR: ## Blog post och test Aug 2020 ## This is a little demonstration of the OCR capabilities of the Rocket Book pads and app. I've told the lovely people that the hit rate is about 90-95% so please dant let me down here flip pad. Hopefully the file name will also prove another point further up in the section and not make me look like some charlatan or snake-oil salesman.Hope you enjoyed this demonstrahen, now go away and leave me to write the next great novella.Bye!

HOW MUCH? On average, I pay anywhere from £4-8 for a decent A4 notebook/journal, so at £30-37 (dependent on model), the RocketBook pads are not a whim purchase. That said, I get through a lot of journals in a year, and given that I would expect to easily get 2-3 years out of a RocketBook pad, then I’ve saved money. Will it replace all my notebooks? No. You need to be thinking of carrying this round as a kit: pad, Frixion pen (at least 2), and cloth. RB do a series of portfolio sleeves for the pads but it does push the price up a bit still, but for a rep, engineer or salesperson, this still makes sense. They’re less bulky than a normal A4 pad too. What I would say is Tesco and Sainsbury’s currently stock Frixion pens and at much better prices than buying them from RB directly, I just paid £3 for 3 pens on offer at Tesco compared to £10 from RB. You get one pen with the pad, but you’re going to want more soon, so stock up next time you’re shopping for truffle oil crisps. If you use whiteboards a lot, RB also have you covered. Instead of the pad, £16 will get you a 4 pack of ‘beacons’ – little self-adhesive triangles that effectively do the same thing as the QR code in the pad. You don’t have the icon options obviously, but if you’re looking to distribute quick meeting or group notes, this would be a boon. CONCLUSION Considering this was a fairly speculative purchase on my part, my early experiences with the RocketBook Flip have been really impressive. The flexibility, the ability to store every page in a different location if you really wanted to make it fantastic for organising my notes, which can save me hours of finding the right ^^$&^$&$ notebook in the first place, then scouring that for the one paragraph I was looking for etc etc. The searchable text facility, in-app history for re-sending etc and last but no way least, functional handwriting OCR, makes the RocketBook not only novel, but actually useable! Would I buy another? As a second notebook – yes. I look forward to seeing what the actual longevity of the product is once I come off furlough and start cramming my day bag with all my junk and a notepad again, but yes, I’d probably just have one at home, and one for work, but make the last 5 mins of each day, scanning and sending work notes so I have them with me wherever. Impressively, the RocketBook Flip just works and it works well. ‘Er Across The Table has already sold several folk at her work on the idea and she doesn’t even have one herself yet! I love it. It’s taking a little adjusting to, but it’s all good. The most important thing though is the writing experience, and I have to say, the combination of the Frixion pen/ink and the polymer technology of the Flip, again, just works. It’s smooth, doesn’t skip or smudge for me (I know some right to left users and left handers have reported some issues) and feels great to write on. If anything I have to slow down a bit as the contact is so smooth that your writing can get a bit ahead of you! RocketBook have produced a cracker of a product. It might not seem like much, but if practical working journals are your thing (ie not create and keep things) then I can highly recommend the RocketBook series.

2 notes · View notes

yeetingmyfeeling · 5 years

Text

A Rose Tattoo (wolfstar fic)

It was a brilliant, sunshiny morning. The sun was bright being seven in the morning on a Monday in London, granted, it was the middle of summer. It wasn’t too hot yet, but was sure to heat up as the day progressed. Remus knew this, but as usual threw on a long sleeved shirt and jeans.

Remus Lupin, 20 years old. He is tall, standing six foot two, with lanky legs- lanky everything. Striking bone structure and a skinny body. He’s got brown eyes, with speckles of green in them. Light brown fluffy hair. As well as scars on his face, but a smile that could brighten up any room.

“I’m heading down,” Remus called out to the flat as he was putting on his Dr Martens. He raised an eyebrow, waiting for the response.

“Okay!” A soft feminine voice called back. “Who’s on today?” The voice asked as the owner walked around a corner.

A woman appeared, the same age as Remus. She stands lower than Remus, at five foot five. She has a good build. Sse has green eyes and long red hair that goes down to her waist. Her smile was kind. Her name, Lily Evans.

“Myself, as usual,” Remus mumbled. “Mary’s coming in at ten, then Jake at one,”

“Need me to pop in?” Lily offered. “I do have classes until twelve, but then I’m free,”

“Nah,” Remus shook his head. “Should be good, if we do get busy though, I’ll call ya in,’

“Cheers,” LIly nodded her head. The two walked out their shared flat and down the stairs of the apartment block. “Have fun today,” Lily commented as they exited the building. The two friends waved goodbye as Lily went to her car, and Remus began his two block walk to work.

He walked down the road, holding on to his over the shoulder bag. Lily is one of his best friends, no, she is his best friend. She knew most of his secrets, kind of like a sister. He thinks, he never had a sister.

When Remus finally stopped, he looked up with a smile. Lupin’s Lotus’. OF course, he didn’t just sell Lotus’, but it sounded nice. Remus is a florist, with his very own business. Anyone who knew him could not have picked this career path for him. Alas, he was happy as ever in this job.

He unlocked the door, entering his shop and locking the door behind him. He flicked on the lights and took in a deep breath. The smell of all the flowers hit him. His nose was very sensitive, so he could almost pinpoint each flower by its smell, almost. He walked into the back office, going into his own office through that.

His office was plain and simple. A desk in the middle that was long and brown, then a black spinny chair behind that, and a regular chair on the other side. A bookshelf sat in one corner, heavy with books. In the other corner, was a large cabinet. Behind his desk was a large window.

Remus went over to the window and slid open the blinds, letting light flood into his office. He walked back out into the main office, beginning to make himself a coffee.

In the main office, a large wooden table sat in the middle, surrounded by chairs. On one side there was a small kitchenette, being a microwave, coffee machine, fridge, etc. On the other side a large white board sat on the wall. Pictures were drawn on it, motivational messages and plans. A calendar was next to the door, then a phone and a little table with notepads and pens, an open cupboard next to that. Opposite from the door into the shop, was the door to his office. A door next to the kitchenette led to a small bathroom of a toilet, sink, mirror. On the other side of the kitchenette, was another door that led to a large linen closet of storage.

Remus made his coffee, noting that they need more milk and sugar, and went over to the white board. He looked at it, checking over the messages and notes, all while sipping his coffee. He grabbed a notebook off the table, double checking the counting of inventory. Then he looked at the calendar, seeing when people were off.

He finished his coffee, rinsing his mug out and putting it in the sink. There were some flowers in the office so he began taking them out into the shop. He started setting up the shop. Putting some hanging plants outside, as well as a bike woven in flowers, and a wolf also woven in flowers. He put the plants inside, all where they should be. Made sure all the price tags were on and correct. Then we went through and gave them a light watering. Some didn’t need much watering, some needed lots. Once he was finished, and it was nearing nine o’clock, he flipped his beautifully floral closed sign around to open.

He started up the tablet and eftpos machine behind the counter. He checked the cash register, making sure there was enough money in it. Then the out the front notebook, checking to see if any orders were placed today. To receive or to give. Today they were getting a few deliveries. He also turned on the stereo, connecting the tablet to it and started playing David Bowie.

So far, two customers had come in. One came to buy a bouquet of roses for his wife, cliche. The other walked in, started sneezing, and promptly walked back out. It hit ten, and Mary Macdonald walked in.

Mary is older than Remus, twenty two. She is five foot six. She has platinum blonde hair going down just past her shoulders, and bright blue eyes. Her smile always had some kind of flirtatious flick to it.

“Alright, Remus?” She queried as she clocked in. “Busy morning?”

“So busy,” Remus rolled his eyes. He stood at the counter and listened as he heard her begin to make a tea. “I had two whole customers, sort of.”

“Sort of?” He could hear the humor in her voice.

“Well, one came in and started sneezin’ all over me flowers,” Remus huphed.

Mary laughed. “Potter come in yet to buy Lilies for Lily?” She walked out of the office, a mug of tea in her hands.

“Ah, not yet,” Remus shook his head. “She has classes this morning, so I reckon he’ll either come in after twelve, or skip today.”

“Sure hope he skips today, looking into those puppy dog love sick eyes makes me want to vomit,” She fake gages.

“Whatever,” Remus rolled his eyes. “Also, I don’t pay you to drink tea,”

“I drink what I say,” She smirked, taking a large sip of her drink. “And you pay me?”

“I shouldn’t,” He murmmered. “I’ve gotta go buy milk and sugar. Do we need anything else?”

Mary tapped her chin in thought. “Not that I know of, when are the deliveries?”

“At two, so Jake will be here,” Remus went to grab his keys and a bag. “All good on your own while I duck out?

She sighed dramatically. “Oh, I suppose. I’ll be so lonely.”

“Shame,” Remus said and left.

~~~~~

It was three in the afternoon, and Remus, Mary and Jake had only just finished dealing with the deliveries.

“Well,” Remus huphed. “I say this calls for a cup of tea?”

“Calls for?” Mary questioned. “Isn’t that usually meant in a situation of congratulations, or something is wrong.”

“Mary,” Jake put a hand on her shoulder. “The man is offering us a cuppa, be grateful.” They all just laughed and went into the office.

Jake Middleton, he is nineteen, so younger than his co-workers. He is just below six foot, with quite a muscular build. He has brown hair that’s shaved down, and hazel eyes. His smile was caring.

Remus went over to the kettle and turned it on, getting their cups ready. THey heard the bell for the front door jingle. Jake got up to deal with the customers, only, he called out,

“It’s Lily and Marlene!”

“I’ll get their tea going!” Remus called back.

Jake entered the room with two girls. Lily, and Marlene.

Marlene Mckinnon, same age as Mary. She stood at 5 foot seven with a toned body. She has dirty blonde hair and light green eyes. Her smile was shy.

The group of five sat around the table now, drinking tea and eating biscuits.

“Did Potter attack you again today?” Mary asked a mouthful of biscuit, crumbs falling everywhere. “He didn’t come in the shop.”

“No,” Lily shook her head. “He sat next to me in History, and I overhead something..”

“Deets!” Mary and Marlene shouted. They looked at each other than giggled.

Lily rolled her eyes. “He works for his friends in a tattoo parlour, his best friend is the owner of the tattoo parlour,”

“Sexy,” Mary practically drooled. “A tattooed man, I could get tattoo’s for free!”

“Didn’t you say he’s scared of needles?” Jake asked.

Lily hummed. “According to him, deathly afraid. I guess, only if they are near him? Maybe,” She thought. “Oh, but! It’s the parlour across the street.”

A loud, high pitched squeel was heard. Mary was positively bouncing in her chair, face bright red. “Sirius Black’s shop! He’s so hot!”

“Oh boy..” Remus muttered.

#harry potter #remus lupin #lily evans #mary macdonald #marlene mckinnon #own character #remus and sirius #maruders #wolfstar

11 notes · View notes

cindylouwho-2 · 4 years

Text

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, May 24 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles I came across since the early May report, although some may be older than that. Due to a need to get my taxes filed, and a continued busy jewellery business, I don’t expect to be able to do another update for a few weeks. You can follow me on Twitter for important breaking news, though!

Have any topics you would like to see me cover in more detail? Drop me a line here on Tumblr, or email me through my website.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

Small businesses can survive the pandemic and beyond, if they learn to provide what customers are now looking for. From desks to 3-D printed face shields, to including toilet paper on your takeout menu, to moving online, acting quickly has given these businesses hope. ABC also did a piece on this topic. [text & video; mentions Etsy & masks] Here’s another article discussing adapting to pandemic ecommerce “new normal”, with interviews with staff from Etsy, TechStyle and Zulily.

Ecommerce is about to get way more competitive (it probably is already), & arguably the retailers who will succeed are the ones who already put plans in action, including advertising plans. (mentions Shopify, Google Shopping & Etsy.)

Facebook and Instagram will now have “Facebook Shops”, which are free to set up. Sounds like it will be a slow rollout, though. Many take this as direct competition for marketplace sites such as Etsy, but it will probably also have a large impact on small website builder sites such as Indiemade.

ETSY NEWS

Etsy’s first quarter for 2020 was good, but April was astonishing by any standards; I covered it all here.

Etsy Payments will soon be available to sellers in Turkey, Malaysia, & Mexico. This will likely be welcome news to sellers in Turkey in particular, who haven’t had an easy way to accept payment for Etsy orders since PayPal left Turkey a few years back. It looks like this move will be optional at the moment for those 3 countries, unlike those of us who are forced to use EP if it is available in our countries.

Etsy gave some listing credits and ad credits to shops who had substantially lower than normal sales in late March through April; the credits don’t kick in until July, though.

Etsy is beta-testing a new listing video tool. You can join here; if you want more info first, here are some details. Note that the videos must be quite short, and will not include sound.

Etsy is still getting some good traction from the face mask initiative: “I would argue they were just in the right place at the right time," says Kodali. "When you think of who is able to consolidate the power of a million sewers in the country, the only answer is Etsy." However, they are also getting some criticism for masks taking forever to arrive, if at all. The slow customer support is also annoying many of these new customers that the CEO was so happy to attract, with little to no response from Etsy.

The Wall Street Journal did a well-received article on people buying food (mostly baked goods) on Etsy [paywall]. Other sources have picked it up, although some are a bit skeptical about safety.

More trend info directly from Etsy: first, summer at-home ideas with Dayna Isom Johnson [podcast links with transcript]. It also covers what to do for socially-distanced celebrations. “[P]eople are taking what they would typically do for a birthday, but then doing it virtually. So many people love paint night parties and I've actually seen quite a few paint kits that Etsy sellers are creating. It’s a wonderful way to celebrate your birthday and still have that experience of expressing your creativity and having fun with your friends, but just through a screen.” Also, “tie-dye is blazing hot right now.”

Second, craft supply sellers get their own trend article for a change. Supply searches close to doubled in April, with “346% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for “diy”. Many buyers are making their own masks with supplies from Etsy; “2,089% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for “elastic”. Do read the whole article if you want to spin your shop in this direction, as there is a lot of good info included.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google pushed out a core algorithm update starting May 4, which finished rolling out on May 18. It seems fairly large, maybe the biggest in some time, and may have hit more areas than other recent core updates. They did take some criticism for releasing it during a pandemic. Possible targets aren’t agreed on yet by the people tracking it, but could include cryptocurrency, travel, real estate, health, tech, finance & dating. Or maybe we shouldn’t rush to pick winners & losers so quickly? News media changes may be affected by the regular algorithm reaction to people reading a lot more news these days, and some ecommerce companies had a boom that could affect their rankings. This article discusses Etsy among other companies, who might have benefitted from the update. [I’m not sure on the Etsy complaints, as I have been seeing multiple links for some searches for well over a year now.]

Link building is generally the hardest part of Google SEO, in part because you aren’t allowed to do any of the obvious things that might get you easy links. Anyone confused about the rules & the benefits should check out this guide for 2020.

While you can learn a lot from general SEO guides, if you have a Shopify site, this guide provides some specific SEO tips.

LinkedIn managed to de-index itself from Google on May 6, at least for the United States. Here’s one theory. Well-paid webmasters for major internet companies can still screw up, it turns out.

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

If you are one of those organized marketers who plans their campaigns ahead of time, here are 5 content marketing ideas for June.

With so many people not working as much as usual, this might be a good time to start a podcast. Gizmodo has compiled instructions on doing it cheaply.

The best time to send an email depends on the purpose of the email. For example, “General site traffic emails have always been most effective mid-week — mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Mondays and Fridays tend not to perform as well” while “A general awareness campaign can be sent almost any time to be effective.”

Refreshing your evergreen content can be more productive than producing new content. That has some really good ideas for many types of businesses produce

Facebook bought Giphy, and while it will still be available to people without Facebook-owned accounts, it will be integrated directly with Instagram.

Instagram is testing new fonts in its Stories feature.

Twitter is enabling users to see how many people quoted a tweet, but so far only on IOS. They also have a new test where you control who can reply to your tweets.

LinkedIn is rolling out both video events and polls, but maybe it is too late to get a big bump from either change?

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Online advertising can be expensive; here are some stats on the cost of various search engine ad clicks as well as a bit on social media.

Google Merchant accounts now let you compare your prices to other sites and also look at trends in clicks.

Here is a good brief overview of the new free Google Shopping listings, including the 3 main reasons the author believes Google made this change. Here is another much longer overview, with screenshots for those not in the US, and info on how to set this up for your website. The PayPal integration is now available.

Online advertising clicks seem to be bouncing back from the worst of the pandemic, according to several sources, including this one. It is still far too early to tell if this will last, however.

YouTube has re-conceived its premium ad program, now called YouTube Select.

If you have ads that slow down people’s computers or drain batteries by being too “resource-heavy”, note that Chrome is going to begin blocking those in August. “Chrome will filter ads based on the following thresholds: 4MB of network data or 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30 second period, or 60 seconds of total CPU usage.”

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Seeing all hits to one page in Google Analytics is a lot easier if you exclude the URL query parameters (but note that sometimes they are useful, such as for various pages on Etsy.) If you like the idea of filtering your GA results in general, here is another tutorial on that.

If you want to do A/B testing on your website, here is a fairly straightforward introduction to Google Optimize, which is free to use.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Many online companies had a good first quarter despite the pandemic, including Shopify, which beat income estimates and saw its stock rise 5% after its first quarter report. “New stores created on the company’s online platform jumped 62% between March 13 and April 24 as many brick-and-mortar businesses migrated online.”

Shopify rolled out software that allows its users to more easily do curbside pickup orders. “...Shopify was already in the process of redesigning its POS before the coronavirus, but decided to accelerate the development of a few new features, namely fulfilling curbside pick-up orders and home delivery. Shopify said that by the end of April, 26% of its merchants with a brick-and-mortar presence were offering local delivery or buy online, pickup in-store, compared to 2% in February.”

Rolling out for the US first, Shopify is also getting into financial products, offering a new debit card which you can use to receive your sales income on the same day you earn it. Shopify Balance can be described as “a merchant account with no fees and no minimum balances.” It’s also setting up an instalment plan feature for customers.

Also new with Shopify: a Pinterest app for turning all your products into shoppable pins.

An Amazon VP quit - very publicly - over the company firing several whistleblowers and labour organizers. “Amazon declined to comment.” The company is taking heat for those issues as well as poor management of and information about how many employees have tested positive at various warehouses. Several employees are known to have died of COVID-19 so far.

Amazon has extended its order performance suspension exceptions for the pandemic to May 31. Which is a good thing, because it seems that buyers are leaving more bad feedback than ever before [soft paywall] “More than 11 percent of reviews left for sellers in the past 30 days are negative. That’s nearly twice the level of frustration vented by shoppers regarding Amazon’s third-party sellers during the holidays, when customer anxieties spike over not getting presents on time”. eBay extended some seller protection changes until July 19. [note: if you sell on these platforms outside of the US, lease check for your own country’s rules, as some of them are different.]

Amazon Handmade sellers from the US got a boost from a new local makers page and the accompanying blog post. [I was unable to find any similar promotions for other countries; seems like a missed opportunity]

Buyers in Canada and the US are trying to get class-action lawsuits certified against Amazon for their policy preventing/discouraging its vendors from offering lower prices elsewhere. This article includes the US class action complaint paperwork.

If you are wondering about Prime Day, Amazon is apparently going to try for September, but there is no official announcement yet.

eBay will be changing the fee structure for sellers using managed payments, including charging one fee on the entire transaction instead of separate commission & processing fees.

USPS, complaining of deficits and being pressured by Trump, is reportedly reviewing its package delivery contracts with large companies such as Amazon. “According to the Washington Post, over the last few weeks the USPS has been seeking bids from consulting firms to reexamine what the agency charges companies like Amazon, UPS, and FedEx. Contracts are generally reviewed on a yearly basis, and analysts have repeated warned that suddenly raising package prices that drastically would cause more bad than good, not just for the USPS or Amazon, but for small businesses and individuals too.”

Square has created an easy online checkout option that works without being connected to a website/shop. (US only)

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Google has introduced a new Trends-like tool that covers recent top product searches by the amount of growth. Yes, it is free!

Gen Z wants to see “fun and exciting advertising” during the pandemic, because they are bored. They are apparently not really fond of “things are different now” ads. Also: “A survey taken seven weeks ago indicated that younger consumers were more likely than older adults to say they wanted to see purpose-driven advertising that showed how companies were helping others.” Actually, Gen Z isn’t alone in wanting something different from commercials right now

Consumers want to see companies taking positive action and supporting their employees during the pandemic - and claim they will remember who did a good job, so they know who to support with purchases.

Not surprisingly, mobile usage is up during the day time since the pandemic was declared, and people are also staying online later during the week. Web browser usage is up, and more serious news and information is getting attention.

There will likely be many more bankruptcies as the effects of COVID-19 ripple through the economy, but some businesses don’t have enough cash flow to go bankrupt. [text & video]

Canadian retail sales were down 10% in March compared to 2019, but many things went up, including general merchandise stores (6.4%) and online retailers (40%). Note that the online numbers didn’t include sales made from Amazon.com or Amazon.ca and delivered in Canada, so ecommerce was actually higher than that. In the US, March retail sales were down 8.7%, but April looks like it turned around for many ecommerce sites.

MISCELLANEOUS

So-called “cookie walls” are not enough to comply with the EU’s privacy laws. “[I]n order for consent to be legally valid under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) there are specific standards to meet: It must be clear and informed, specific and freely given. Hence cookie walls that demand ‘consent’ as the price for getting inside the club are not only an oxymoron but run into a legal brick wall.”

Website layouts (and even other elements) are starting to look like each other more & more.

#search engine optimization #EtsyNews #content marketing #smallbiz #ecommercetips

1 note · View note

baeklooming-day · 6 years

Text

Fleeting | Baekhyun

Summary: You lead a double life. For everyone else, you are the pretty girl with a great sense of fashion who works at Sephora. But it isn't your only job. For the other one you require only two things: the collection of weapons you keep in your closet - and zero emotions.

ft. Luhan

Genre: assassin!au, mafia!au, street racer!au, fluff, angst

Word count: 4.5k

playlist

"Really, Y/N? You know I love you, but lately I feel like the only reason you call me is for you to ask for favors."

"That's not true! Pretty please Sujin! I will be just a few minutes late."

"Hahaha! Good one."

"Sujin. I really need to take care of something right now. Will you help me out one more time?"

"..."

"Sujin!"

"Okay, okay. I'll cover for you. But, whatever it is, hurry up and come here right after, understood?"

"Of course. See you in a bit!"

You hung up.

Sujin was your coworker and friend. She totally adored you, and maybe that's the only reason why in the end she always let slide you being late for work. Well, you weren't always late. Sometimes it just happened for the problem to have to be solved during your usual work hours at Sephora.

Like today.

Your grip on your rifle tightened.

Easy. Focus.

After all, you've done it many times.

In this long time you've worked for Zhang Yixing you've never seen him as nervous as that evening.

"Listen Y/N, you do know the CEO of Kang Corporation, is that right?"

"Yeah, I mean, not personally but I know who he is. Kang-something...?"

"Yes, him. Listen. You also happen to know who Jackson Wang is, right? The CEO of Wang Enterprises?

"Yes-"

"Alright, here is your task."

He quickly slid a piece of paper in your direction.

You picked it and started to read.

You snorted.

"Why could I see something like this coming? It was so obvious. I assume our big CEO Mr. Wang wants all the power and glory to himself. Is he actually aware what might happen if suddenly the second big CEO disappears from the scene? Everyone knows those two don't particularly love each other."

"This is none of our concern, Y/N. Make sure you take care of this."

You paused for a brief moment.

"How much?"

Yixing hesitated. Woah there, you thought. So it is the highest price I've ever got.

"10 Million American dollars." He said, not breaking eye contact with you.

"Woah."

It always amused you, how desperate some people could be only to take down somebody who wasn't doing in their favor.

"'Woah' is a good word to describe it. Anyway, Y/N, I trust you to solve it without any complications as always."

"Will do, boss!"

With that being said, you directed yourself to the exit where you paused, only to quickly turn around and send Yixing a childish 'bang!' with a finger gun.

So now, you found yourself sitting on the roof of the Plaza Hotel - it would be quite romantic to say the least, if it wasn't for the purpose you were there.

You were a paid murderer. You killed people in an exchange for money.

Your current target was a certain Kang Seojun - the CEO of one of the biggest corporations in the city.

It wasn't your first time that you had to eliminate some important persona. You already had a minister, a few influential politicians and even a famous actress on your account.

It was always the same process. Find the target, observe them for a while, get some more information and finally, attack.

You adjusted your rifle.

To be quite honest, you've never been a fan of making a 'task' look like an accident. This regards arranging a car accident or literally setting the target's house on fire.

No, it was too much work than it already was.

So you just sticked to the classic solution.

Right now you were waiting for Kang Seojun to arrive at the Corporation's building right next to Plaza where their company meeting took place.

"Where on earth is this man", you mumbled to yourself. "If I don't kill you today, Sujin will kill me for being late again."

While you still waited, you looked at your own reflection in the small pocket mirror you always carried with you.

Your dark red lipstick and eyebrows were perfect as always. At least you looked good doing bad stuff.

Then you heard a vehicle pulling to stop and muffled voices in the distance that was separating you from the street beneath you.

You immediately straightened.

You could see the car's door open and a blonde head peeking out.

There he is.

He surely took his sweet time. Ironically, he didn't have much of it left.

Don't move a muscle. Concentrate.

He was now slowly heading to the entrance of the building. You had to act quickly and effectively.

Breath in. Breath out. It's a piece of cake.

Your fingers carefully clasped around the trigger.

"Bang."

You shoot.

It didn't take long for the hell to break loose. But by now, you were accustomed to it. After all, that part of your job was always the same as well - after having eliminated the target, you had to escape as fast as you could. Without being seen by anyone.

You had to have your eyes wide open. And you had to be careful.

Very, very careful.

You knew exactly what happened to people like you who were being careless about the whole thing. So already in your early training days you decided to never put your guard down.

The moment you entered Sephora you were met with Sujin putting a new delivery of Nars foundation onto the perfectly cleaned shelf.

To be honest, you actually really enjoyed working there. In your free time - time, when with a gun hidden in your boot you didn't run down the stairs of hotels, skyscrapers, apartment buildings, you name it - you liked playing with makeup and going shopping.

You could say it was a little benefit for you. You had to seem innocent, powerless. You had to be like a normal girl.

Well, at least pretend to be one.

"Hey, Sujin!"

"Finally! I would say 'right on time', but..."

"I'm sorry?"

She looked at you with an unreadable expression on her pretty face.

"Come on, help me sort it all." She pointed to the big box that rested beside her leg.

"Oh my." Your eyes scanned the new arrivals. "These are all so nice."

"Y/N, I know what you are thinking right now, come on. You basically have half of this store at home, you do not need another bottle of foundation."

You chuckled. "I didn't say anything!"

There was silence for a moment before Sujin spoke again.

"Actually, Y/N, are you seeing anyone at the moment?"

There it was. The question. You knew that one day she will completely see through you and get it that you were lying all along the way.

You always told her poor excuses for how come you never go out on any dates and aren't particularly interested in boys in general.

Because what else could you tell her?

You couldn't get too attached. Being who you were, didn't include love. You couldn't show anything that could be easily used against you.

"No, why? And on top of that, I already told you I'm too busy for a boyfriend." She looked unconvinced.

"What about Baekhyun?"

"What about him?"

You could expect her to ask about Baekhyun. Except for Sujin, he was your only friend. As if it wasn't obvious by now that you didn't have many friends. The less, the better, you always told yourself. In the end you were risking their safety as well. If you ever got discovered…

No. It won't happen.

Not again.

"Oh, don't be like that Y/N. Even a blind person could tell he likes you. He's liked you since you moved here! Why don't you just give it a chance? You two would be so cute together-"

"Sujin." You paused her. "Please, just leave it already, will you? Me and Baekhyun are good friends, but nothing more. Besides, Baekhyun is-"

"I'm what?"

You froze. Speaking of the devil. How did he even manage to sneak up on you like that everytime you least expected it?

"Baekhyun!" Sujin stood up to give him a quick hug. "Good to see you, how are things going?"

"I'm not complaining." He chuckled at her enthusiasm. "I see you two have some work to do."

"Just the usual. What brings you here?"

"Actually, I'm here for Y/N. Can I borrow her for a sec?"

You looked up at him from the foundation box you were sitting by.

His black hair was all messy, yet still managed to looked presentable. He was dressed in his standard outfit - plain white tee, black leather jacket and black ripped jeans, which, to be honest, were a little more than worn out.

Any other guy would look ridiculous, so why did he look so good?

Damn you, Baekhyun.

You stood up to properly face him.

"Sure, let's go."

He flashed you a wide smile before turning around and heading for the exit with you following behind him.

"So, what is it you wanted to talk about Baek?", you asked once you were in the main venue of the mall.

"To tell the truth, I just wanted to see you."

Is this guy being serious right now?

Every other girl like Sujin, would probably think it was the cutest thing for a boy to do. But you weren't like the other girls.

"Aww, could it possibly be that you missed me?"

"Maybe."

"You literally just saw me yesterday, Baekhyun."

Well, that was very true, you two used to quickly meet at the crossing in the morning before work quite often.

"Oh c'mon, you know what I'm trying to say." He lightly poked your arm. "We aren't spending so much time together anymore. And you always tell me you're busy. If I was somebody else I would even think you are avoiding me or something."

He didn't say it in an accusing tone but you knew he was partly right. Baekhyun just happened to be around almost always. It would be a lie if you said you didn't enjoy his company, because you did. But in your opinion, that alone was already one step too far. You preferred to turn him down and have him upset with you for a couple of hours than to risk being seen by someone who could use that information for certain purposes, or turn him down just because you had to take care of something at that time. Of course you told him you were busy, which also was true. But it seemed like it looked like a one big lie to him.

"Look, I know, but it's really not like that. If I say I'm busy, I really am. You know I wouldn't lie to you like that.

"So..." Baekhyun looked at you with puppy eyes. "Are you free this afternoon?" Another feature about him that honestly annoyed you, because you just couldn't help it but melt, was when he used that puppy look on you.

"Yeah, sure." Those words left your mouth before you could even think about it.

Dammit. You really needed to do some practising in resisting that boy's requests.

You found yourself sitting on the rooftop of an apartment building sipping on a big cup of Starbucks coffee. The spot was lovely - actually, it was your favourite spot in the city back then when you first moved in into your apartment. It was also the spot where Baekhyun brought you when you hung out for the first time. Of course it wasn't a date - none of the times you two hung out was. At least you wouldn't call it in that manner. Maybe Sujin would, but in her eyes everything had a different meaning.

Baekhyun was sitting right beside you and sipping on his own cotton candy frappuccino while gazing onto some unindentified point in the space.

Funny, you thought. He usually was the one to talk, he rarely got so quiet when you two were together.

You turned to him and sipped as loud as you could to get his attention.

"Hmm?"

"Something happened?" You brought your attention back to your cup. "It's strange to see you shut up like that."

"Nah, it's nothing." He hesitated for a brief moment but then spoke again. "Actually, Y/N. There is something I've been meaning to ask you, but..."

Oh no. Sujin couldn't be possibly right, could she? Shit.

"I mean, for the past two years that we've been best friends I don't really know much about you when I think of it, and it just kind of bothers me."

Oh my god. You let the breath you didn't realise you were holding. So he wasn't about to ask you out. Good.

But what were you going to tell him now anyway?

"Uhm, what do you exactly mean?"

Baekhyun shrugged.

"Besides that you are eyebrows-obsessed, speak more languages than any other person I know and can't get through the day without coffee or chocolate I don't know nothing about the times before I met you and where you came from, who your parents are..." He glanced at you.

You gulped. Why did he suddenly want to know all of this?

"I don't know who your parents are either. And before moving here my life was just a little, hm, complicated to say the least." You carelessly run your hand through your locks hoping that he won't dig any deeper.

"Fine, let's leave the parents thing out." Now he was directly looking you in the eyes. "But what do you exactly mean by complica-"

Buzzzzzzz.

Buzzzzzzz, buzzzzzzz.

He didn't get to finish the sentence when both your phones started vibrating in your pockets.

Baekhyun took his phone and looked and the bright screen.

"Aish, sorry I have to take this." He gave you an apologetic look.

"No worries, I have to take mine as well. Might be something important at work."

You smiled before quickly staying up and taking a little distance to finally slide your finger across the screen to accept the call.

"What the actual hell Yixing? I told you not to call me during the day!" You were careful to not be too loud, just in case.

But still, you completed your task just as he wanted, so what could it possibly be now?

"What-" His voice on the other line sounded a little bit irritated. "Would you quit shouting like that? Geez, my poor ear…"

"Look, I'm with a friend right now, so hurry up and tell me why you're calling before he hears everything."

"I'm calling you because I need you to show up at my office, like, right now." He paused before quickly adding "very urgent."

Sometimes you really just wanted to throw a shoe in his face.

"Yeah, fine. Already on my way."

You hung up.

When you were about to go back to where you and Baekhyun were sitting just a few moments ago, you saw him approaching you first.

"Y/N, I'm so sorry, but I have to go." He started to nervously scratch his neck.

"I have to go too. Something came up and they need me at... uhm, work." You wanted to sound confident but your voice sounded like anything else but that to you.

"The universe just wants to keep us apart for some reason, huh?" Baekhyun smiled ironically before quickly hugging you and making himself on his way.

Keep us apart, you thought to yourself. Maybe this is just the way things should be.

You arrived at Yixing's office not more than 15 minutes after you said goodbye to Baekhyun. You entered without knocking and immediately sat on the chair in front of his desk.

"So, what is this all about? Everything went smoothly in the morning, the guy is still very dead."

Yixing looked up from his laptop.

"I know, but this is not about that."

You raised your eyebrows.

"I just got a phone call. I don't know how to explain this, this is the first time a client requests something like that, though." He furrowed his eyebrows.

"What exactly is this request?"

"The client asked to meet you before you complete what they want you to do. Tomorrow, Cloud 9 at 11 o'clock."

What?

"Cloud 9? That fancy café on the 22nd floor? Pardon me, but what for?"

Yixing raised his palms. "I seriously don't know Y/N. They only said they wanted to reveal to you some particular information on the target. Other than that, they didn't name any price, so I suppose that's what they want to discuss with you personally."

"Well. Well, alright. How will I recognise them? Is it a man or a woman?"

"It was a woman's voice on the phone, and she didn't say anything about her appearance except for short blonde hair. She said she will recognise you."

"Fine, so be it." You nodded. "Can I go now?"

Yixing waved his hand in the yeah-go-away manner. "Yes, dismissed."

A client wanting to meet up with you? Well that was new.

The next day, you were preparing yourself for the "meeting". That woman said she would recognise you, right? But wait. How was she going to recognise you? And how did she even know how you look like?

Hold on, calm down.

After all you were pretty popular among the more significant people from dark businesses. There's no need to invent things.

You didn't really have a plan what to wear, so you decided you will keep it simple but with style. You went for black ripped jeans, white off-shoulder top and your casual white sneakers.

Perfect. None would even think of who you actually were, which was always your kind of a motto.

When you arrived at Cloud 9 it was 10:45. The client should appear soon as well. You walked in and took a seat at a table possibly far from unsuspecting ears.

The Cloud 9 café was a really nice place. It was on the 22nd floor, so it had a wonderful view at the entire city. The floor was a white marble while the walls where in warm shade of deep chocolate brown. The café alone was in shape of a circle, so it basically had glass all around, through which you could admire the beautiful view.

You took a look on your phone. 11:10. The client is not here yet. But they said 11 o'clock, right? Do they really think they can just keep you waiting like this? Instead, your screen lit up once again with an incoming call from Baekhyun.

That boy.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Y/N! Where are you right now?"

"I'm supposed to meet up with someone but they're already 10 minutes late." You stopped. You shouldn't be just spilling everything so carelessly to Baekhyun.

"What? With who?"

"Uhm, none in particular. Work, you know. She's a... she's the boss of Sephora on the other side of the town, you know. We wanted to discuss which new brands our both stores could take to... to widen the whole thing. Or something." You weren't convincing even yourself, but scratch that right now.

"Oh." If he didn't believe you he didn't show it. "Uhm, so, did you say they were late? Where are you?" His voice sounded as if he had been running.

"I'm at Cloud 9. Why?"

"I, well, I just happen to be nearby so I can keep you a little company while you wait?"

"Yeah, alright. I'm hanging up now."

You looked at your screen once again. 11:20. Was ist some kind of a joke? Why is this woman, or whoever that client is, already 20 minutes late?

You decided to wait another 15 minutes, and if they won't show up, you will go straight up to Yixing and tell him to stop playing some stupid tricks on you, or whichever ridiculousness that was, which was just taking place.

You couldn't get more annoyed because just then you noticed Baekhyun's black fringe peeking inside. You waved him over.

When he approached your table, you also noticed that he was breathing heavily, just as if he really had been running.

"Woah, there. Are you running away from someone?"

His eyes immediately widened. "What? No, no."

"You look like you just ran in a marathon."

"Well, thanks Y/N." He glanced at you with a pout. He always looked like a little boy when he did that. "Anyway, how long are you planning to wait? When were they supposed to be here?"

You frowned. "They were supposed to be here at 11, but looks like I have been forgotten." You looked over to your phone for the 10th time. 11:28. Really?

You glanced at Baekhyun. His cheeks were red and he was licking his lips nervously. Something clearly was going on, and you wanted to know what.

You put your arms on the table.

"Baekhyun, come on, tell me what-"

You didn't get the chance to finish your sentence when there was a loud BANG! just a few meters away from you.

You both snapped your heads in the direction where the noise came from.

There was a man wearing a long black coat along with the rest of his clothes as well as his hair which also were all black.

He was holding a gun in his right Hand.

But then he turned around and you saw his face.

You knew that face.

And apparently, he recognised you. But also, his gaze seemed to waver on Baekhyun as well with a spark of recognition too.

You quickly glanced at Baekhyun.

His eyes were wide and his expression blank.

Then the man spoke.

"Well, well, well. What do we got here?" He looked around himself and at the frightened people who were probably praying for their life. "To tell the truth, this doesn't concern any of you here, so will you gather your asses and fuck off before I change my mind and kill y'all?"

The people started rushing out of the café making as little noise as possible, probably terrified of the thought that that crazy man in all black could start shooting anytime.

"And don't even think of going to the police! If you still want your brains in your heads, just saying!" The man called behind them, waving with his gun.

Shit. This was all so confusing that all you could do was to look back and forth at the man and at Baekhyun, who, still motionless, sat beside you.

The man took a few steps forward before speaking again.

"No, this is just too good to be true. Honestly, I would never, ever think that our two delinquents know each other." He was now grinning maniacally, which to be completely honest, creeped you out like nothing before.

But wait, did he just say "our two delinquents"?

"What do you want Tao?" You and Baekhyun spoke at the exact same time.

What?

You both looked at each other. "You know him?!" Baekhyun pointed at the man called Tao.

"Yes, but how do you know him?!" Now you also raised your finger to point at Tao.

Then you heard a very loud laugh.

"Seriously, stop!" Tao was rubbing his wet eyes. "Ah, this is so good. You have no idea who he is - and you, you have no fucking idea who she is!"

Okay, now it was getting really sick.

"Care to explain what's going on?" You glared at Tao.

"But of course. I'm here because of two reasons. First" He looked at Baekhyun. "I really was hoping to find you here, to be honest. Like we made it clear the last time we saw each other - you won't get away with what you pulled on that race. And also, we want that car back."

"Are fucking kidding me?" Now it was Baekhyun who snapped. "Where are your eyes? Everyone saw and can confirm that it was all fair! I won. And that car was never yours, so quit talking nonsense."

You felt your head spinning. Race? Car? Was Baekhyun also hiding Secrets?

"Wait." You turned to Baekhyun. "You are racing?"

"Y/N, I..." He run a hand through his hair.

Tao began to laugh again. "Right, let me make this clear to you. This idiot over here, is doing illegal street races for about, let me think, 2 years now? He somehow managed to drive off with our car from the last race in Shanghai, so that's why I'm here for his sorry ass."

"I told you that car is NOT yours!"

"Yeah, whatever. I will deal with you later." Tao turned to look at you. "And you darling, tell me, isn't it too much for you to live with the awareness of all the lives you have taken?"

You swallowed. Shit. That bastard just exposed you in front of Baekhyun, and nothing can take it back.

"Don't talk to me as if you're better, Tao."

"Oh, besides I heard the news. Kang Seojun is dead? Good job, Y/N. Were you playing hunter on the roof again? But fuck, you really must be a millionaire by now, with all these little paid crimes."

"What..." Baekhyun opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, imitating a goldfish. "Wait, no. You... you kill for money...?" He looked as confused as a human being can look. "Hold on a sec, you mean... like seriously doing that stuff assassins in the movies do?"

You felt like you were about to cry. You never wanted him to find out. Now he probably will hate you. Probably will be disgusted and disappointed in you.

"This is so funny" Tao chuckled. "And guess what I'm about to do with you, little princess? Remember Kris, right? Well, long story short he wants you dead."

Tao pointed his gun at you.

You saw your life fleeting before your eyes.

Shit. Shit, that wasn't how it was supposed to end.

"It was nice knowing you, Y/N. For the good old tim-" Shatter. He didn't finish the sentence, when a glass bottle shattered on his head.

Tao fell on the floor, unconscious.

You stared in complete shock at the person who just knocked him down. A scream of surprise left your lips.

You were met with a petite figure of brown-haired boy with sweet eyes which looked at you.

No, this can't be. After these years, you thought he might have ended up dead. But he was standing right in front of you, very alive.

The first most important person in your life. You grew up together and went through good and bad times together, arm in arm.

He was the reason why you promised yourself that you won't get attached to people, ever again.

You saw everything in a blur. What has just happened?

You placed your palm on your cheek, still looking at the petite boy in front of you, who still was holding the half-broken glass bottle.

You slowly stood up.

"L-Luhan...?"

The boy threw the glass on the side and smiled.

"Long time no see, honey."

A/N: End of the first chapter! This is my first ever fanfiction, so I’m really excited (and hella scared, lol) to finally post it! If this piece gets positive feedback, I will be more than happy and motivated to continue and make it a mini-series! I put lots of my time and heart into this first ever fanfic and I would love to properly start writing and improve my skills. So please please please leave me your thoughts, I would very appreciate it! Also don’t forget to leave a heart if you liked it, and feel free to reblog if you want to! <3

349 notes · View notes

dkquills · 4 years

Text

The Warden Chronicles - Chapter 1

On a threadbare mattress strewn on the floor of a derelict apartment, a young mage slept… Or at least he was trying to.

“Blue, wake up. I need your help with something.”

Durden groaned and swatted his friend away, burying his head in his pillow.

“C’mon, man. Please?”

Begrudgingly, Durden removed the pillow and opened his eyes. His friend crouched next to him, freckled face pleading like a stray puppy. “Speck, what the… What time is it?”

“Bout eight in the morning.”

Durden ran his fingers through his matted azure hair and sat up. “Fuck, I just got to sleep like… two hours ago. Gimme a sec.”

“Tagging all night again?”

“Yeah.” He yawned, noticing that he’d missed washing some paint in the creases of his knuckles. “Down on Gallows Ave.”

“The grime tunnel? That place is gross. Nobody goes down there unless you want dry tongued head from a tweaker or a knife in your ribs.”

“No blowjobs or stabbings for me, thank you very much. It was actually empty. Shocking.” Durden rubbed the barely formed crusts out of his eyes as his stomach growled at him. When was the last time he ate? “Well, it’ll be a little less grimy until the city finds it and sand blast it away. Then it can go back to looking like mold and piss stains. Urban improvement at its best.”

“What’d you paint this time? Another political toon? Pin-up girl?”

“Nah, nothing like that. I actually did a mural of a raccoon and a crow sharing a huge mushroom as an umbrella.”

Speck tilted his head questionably. “Sounds trippy. You been using your own product?”

“Course not… Well, just weed. You know I don’t touch the hard shit.” He stretched, earning few satisfying pops from his spine.

Durden and Speck had been peddling drugs for Auntie’s Gang for the better part of a decade. Her shop was down the road in a part of the slums that was perpetually under construction. ‘Auntie’s Sweets Coming Soon!’ was written on the front window in cloyingly sweet colors. A front, of course, that the local guards wisely chose to ignore.

In the back was the room where they got shipments of drugs and where they cut up the harder stuff. Amberbliss was one of her top items on the streets these days. An amphetamine that was the highest of highs, but came at a steep price to one’s money, health, and sanity. It was said that Auntie’s baked goods were the best.

Auntie – nobody knew her real name- though sweet in name and her middle aged, librarian-esqu appearance, was well known for her ruthless grip on those who owed her money, or worse, those who stole her product.

They still hadn’t found the last guy who stole from her, but her pet pigeons had been looking exceptionally well fed lately.

Nobody crossed her. Ever.

“Don’t ask me why I chose to paint it… I thought some of the bums down there would want something nice to look at. Raccoons and crows are scavengers just like them.” Just like us, he thought. “The grime tunnel is their umbrella, after all.”

“Whatever you say.” Speck didn’t look impressed.

Durden rolled his eyes. “What did you wake me up for again?”

Speck sat back on the floor and swatted a roach away. “Auntie wants me to run a package out to the East Pith and I don’t want to go alone.”

Fumbling for his pants, Durden scanned the room for his shirt. “You go out there all the time. What do you need my help for?”

Speck put his hands together and got on his knees, pouting his lip out and making his eyes as big as they could possibly go. “Pleeeeaassssee?”

“Oh my gods, stop it.”

After pulling his shoes on, Durden found his pack and rolled himself a cigarette with the last pinch of his weed in it. He lit it, taking a deep drag. He’d have to remember to buy more once he was paid. He’d spent most of his money on paint last night. “Fine. I’ll help, but I want three things from you.”

Speck nodded.

“One, quit calling me ‘Blue’. I hate that shit. Two, we’re getting breakfast on the way. I’m starved. And three, I want half the cut since you woke my ass up so early. Just let me brush my teeth before we go.”

“Oh my gods, Blu- Durden. Thank you! But… I don’t have any money for food. Not till we make the drop.”

Durden smirked and blew smoke out of his nostrils. “When has that ever stopped us?”

The tent market of Malus Pith was a hodgepodge to say the least. Generally pop-up or rolled carts clogged up the main thoroughfare. Most of it was good people trying to make a buck despite the shady neighborhood. So long as people kept their wallets close and their head down, one wouldn’t expect much trouble. Already it was bustling with people eager to get the best picks of the day in produce and other goods. The scent of spiced meats, nuts, and hot cider wafted from the food carts, making Durden’s stomach growl. He double checked his pockets and found only the scant change he had left over from buying his paint and smokes the previous evening.

Thankfully, apples were plentiful and cheap this time of year.

Making his way over to a produce stand he eyed the flat of chicken and duck eggs for sale before turning to the variety of apples. He selected two big golden ones, noticing the vendor eyeing him suspiciously, her hand resting on the hatchet on her hip as a silent warning. Her expression changed when he actually produced a bill from his pocket. She turned her back to him for an instant to make change and handed it back to him with a thanks.

He tossed Speck an apple as the two of them made their way down the busy street. “I thought you didn’t have any money for breakfast?” said Speck, taking a big crisp bite.

“I only had enough for the fruit. These however-” Durden produced two eggs out of his coat pockets.

“You sneaky bastard. Can I have one?”

“No. Mine.”

Once they rounded a corner Durden tucked behind a delivery truck and held one of the eggs between his hands and blew hot breath on it. Slowly the egg grew warm, then hot to the touch. Durden continued this until he almost burned his palms. Placing the first egg on a ledge, he repeated the act with the second one.

Speck scanned the crowd behind him to make sure nobody was watching. “Aren’t you worried someone is going to see you doing that?”

Durden scoffed and cracked the egg against the brick wall before peeling it. Steam wafted from it in the cold morning air. “Shouldn’t you be more concerned about the drugs in your pocket?” he whispered.

To that, Speck didn’t say anything. He just kept an eye on the passing city guards across the street while Durden ate. Speck was the only person that knew Durden was a mage, and honestly, he should have given him more credit for keeping his secret.

“You manage to save up enough money for that train ticket yet?” Durden asked between bites to pass the time.

Speck sighed. “For the ticket, yes. Funds for when I get out, no. It’s why I’m covering Beth’s customers.” He turned toward Durden. “I still think you should come with me. See what else is beyond the walls and explore Loralli. Maybe find a place more tolerant of someone with your… talents.”

Durden looked from his friend up to the fifty-foot stone wall that made up Malus’ outer protection ring. Its top was stringed with sharp spikes that crested the ridge like a dragons back and glittered in the morning sun, protecting them from the bandits and wildlife that called the outside world home.

He shook his head.

While the walls were initially erected to keep the dangers of the Waste out, Durden always felt like it was a prison. Even if he started saving money like Speck had there was no way he’d earn enough to start a life elsewhere. Besides, he knew very little about even the closest cities like Hyperion, Helios, and the Port of Jebrahl. They might be even less tolerant to mages than Malus was. At least here he knew he could hide it pretty well.

Speck, on the other hand, just wanted to better himself. He’d been studying small engine repair and was getting pretty good at it too. He wanted to find honest work. Maybe see a little bit of the world while he was at it.

Feeling a pang of guilt for withholding much needed calories from his friend, Durden tossed Speck his uneaten apple.

After he had eaten most of it, Durden asked, “Tell me the truth. East Pith is bad and all but you’ve worked that territory loads before. What gives?”

Speck swallowed guiltily, wiping juice from his lips. “It’s Tanner’s place.”

Durden furrowed his brow. “Tanner… why do I know that name?”

“He’s John Carpelarosi’s nephew. Beth’s his usual dealer, but Tanner and his boys assaulted her last week. She’s still recovering.”

Durden’s shoulders tensed. Oh… That Tanner. “You’d think being in a mob family he would have his own supply for drugs.” Durden offered. The Carpelarosi family run the whole East Pith in Malus and some of the South too. A family that powerful normally had their own inner drug empire. Durden suspected Tanner must have done something nasty to have been cut off from the family, but apparently still had enough sway not to incur Auntie’s wrath after hurting one of her dealers.

There was something more to this, and Durden didn’t like it one bit.

Tanner lived in a second story apartment in what was arguably one of the worst parts of the Pith district. The façade of the brothel across the street was falling apart, the electrical cables that hung overhead thrummed angrily, and the gutters were so choked with garbage the streets were still wet from the rain the previous night. The feted stench of rotten food and human waste wafted through the cold air as a distant siren sounded blocks away.

Durden and Speck stepped over a man sleeping on the stoop and hit the buzzer on the front door. It took a few seconds before a gruff voice came over the other end. “Who is it?”

Speck cleared his throat. “Auntie’s Baked Goods.”

The door buzzed, unlocking to let them in.

Once they were standing in front of the apartment door Speck lifted his hand to knock, but the door swung inward before he could. A thin woman wearing only an oversized stained t-shirt stood there, staring through them with a haunted look. At first Durden thought they were at the wrong apartment, but a gravelly voice called from behind her, “Get out of the way!” She staggered to the side.

Durden felt a pang of guilt for the waif. She had a nasty bruise on the side of her face and if her behavior alone was any indicator, he’d say she was going through the beginnings of withdrawals.

“Bout time.”

Durden turned toward the voice and his eyes widened. Now he saw why Speck wanted backup. Durden had heard of Tanner, but had never seen him in person. The man stood nearly two heads taller than Durden and was over double his weight. He had a mean tattoo of a spider web that stretched across the back of his bald head and someone long ago had taken a chunk out of his left ear.

Speck produced a bag from his pocket and held it out for him to inspect. Tanner took it and held it up to the light, catching the amber crystals of amberbliss within like tiny prisms. The thin woman chewed her nails to the cuticle as she bore a hole in it with her eyes. Seeming satisfied enough, Tanner wordlessly pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket and tossed them at Speck before turning to the coffee table to lay out a line.

Picking up the bills from the floor, Speck counted them. “Ummm… Sir…” Tanner ignored them as he scraped the crystals across a small mirror in his hand. The thin woman fidgeted. Speck counted the bills again and a lump formed in Durden’s throat. “Tanner… you only gave me half the-”

“Fuck off,” Tanner spat. “We’re done. Out.”

Now what? They could stay and try and get the rest of the funds from this Sasquatch, or they could go back shorthanded and face Auntie’s wrath. Durden wasn’t sure which was worse.

He opted to step forward. Clearing his throat, he tried his best to look semi-authoritative. “Sir, I know you’re aware we can’t go back to Auntie without the funds. It’s business. I’m sure you underst-”

“I said, fuck off.”

Apparently, the waif had run out of patience, because when Tanner yelled ‘off’ she chose that moment to lean in to get her fix, but tripped, accidentally knocking the whole mirror out of his hand in the process. Durden watched in slow motion as the amber crystals tumbled down and heavily seasoned the filthy shag carpet below.

The woman froze. Durden and Speck froze. Tanner just looked up at the woman with rage in his eyes before winding up and punching her square in the face. Durden heard bone crack as she was lifted off her feet by the blow and collapsed over the coffee table. Blood gushed from her nose.

She moaned weekly and rolled over in the sparking bed of tempered glass.

Rubbing his knuckles, Tanner bent down and tried to salvage some of the crystals before they vanished further into the fabric sea, but between the mess and the rug fibers it was futile. He stood up and turned towards them. “Give me another bag.”

Speck was white as a sheet. “I… I don’t have any more.”

It felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. Durden’s heart dropped down somewhere into his guts.

Tanner stepped forward and spoke slowly. “Give. Me. Another. Bag.”

“I don’t…”

Durden’s back hit the doorknob before he even realized he’d been shoved. He wasn’t sure how Tanner had moved so fast for his size, but he had Speck lifted off his feet against the wall like he weighed nothing, strangling him. His friend’s eyes were impossibly wide and already bloodshot.

“I know you have more.” Tanner’s voice was hot gravel.

Speck thrashed his legs, but the kicks to Tanners midsection didn’t seem to faze him in the slightest nor did the clawing at his monstrous hands.

Durden scrambled to his friend’s aid, trying his best to push Tanner away, but he didn’t budge. Climbing behind him he jumped up and tried to get him into a choke hold, but before he could even wrap his arm around Tanners neck, the drugged out giant bit down on Durden’s forearm. Durden could feel the bite pressure in his bones.

Now stuck between trying to save his friend and his own limb, Durden wound up as hard as he could and punched Tanner square in his damaged ear.

It didn’t seem to dissuade the choking, but it did cause Tanner to open his mouth. Falling back, blood already began to run down Durden’s wrist and saturate his sleeve. Speck’s thrashing slowed, but the giant showed no intention of letting go.

Durden could probably run at this point. The door wasn’t locked after all and there was the fire escape. But what about Speck? He would be dead for sure.

Looking around for something anything to separate the two, his eyes finally landed on an oversized glass ashtray on the floor next to the shattered coffee table. Picking it up he heaved it at Tanner with all his strength. It made solid contact with the addict’s forehead, splitting his eyebrow open. Blood squirted forth, splattering Durden’s shirt and the carpet beneath him.

Speck dropped to the ground like a ragdoll. His attacker paused for a moment and stumbled, more surprised than in pain. After an instant of confused stupor, Tanner turned his rage to Durden. Instead of getting choked-out, Durden was picked up by the collar of his jacket and the next thing he knew he was airborne. Glass sliced the back of his neck and cheek as he passed through the window and landed on the fire escape beyond with a painful clang. The railing bent with the impact before he fell to the rusted slats below.

Blood was soaking through the arm of his sweatshirt now, cold and sticky against his skin while another trickle slid down his cheek, mixing with the tears he never realized had started flowing.

Glancing through blurred vision and the shattered window, Durden could see Speck lying there. Still as a corpse.

Something bubbled up inside Durden that he couldn’t quite explain. At first it felt like he was going to be sick, but the feeling expanded up through his chest and down his arms. It morphed and shifted into a tingle then a purr of energy that he felt at his very core.

The world spun on its axis. A thrum of electricity and sparks from the damaged power lines lit up Durden’s blurred vision like fireworks as Tanner tried to fit his thick frame through the broken window.

He beheld Tanner with a mix of fear and hate so corrosive he felt it would melt him alive.

All it would take was one more push and Durden would be cast to the pavement below. Tanner got his shoulder through the window, cutting his own flesh as he did. Though he didn’t seem to notice. Pure, drug addled rage was all that was behind those eyes, and Durden was certain it would be the last thing he ever saw.

In that moment the smell of ozone and static filled his nostrils as his hair began to stand up on end. Ropes of electricity arced from the nearby power lines. The transformer growled and popped angrily. Lifting his hand toward Tanner there was an instant of fear in the addict’s expression before the damaged transformer exploded. Electricity ripped through Durden like a conduit and exited through the tips of his fingers.

So, this was what it feels like to be hit by lightning.

Spots flashed before Durden’s vision. He distantly felt his body collapse on the metal fire escape and could smell burnt flesh as the welcoming veil of unconsciousness enveloped him.

#The Warden Chronicles #TWC #Chapter 1 #writing #DKQuills

1 note · View note

windandwater · 5 years

Text

back from Finland and my nightmare flight situation got really fucking funny (and awful) at the end so I’m gonna tell you the whole goddamn thing. cut to save you from Airline Stories.

I mentioned in a previous post that I had to sprint through Heathrow to get to a flight, and it wasn’t my fault. that turned out to be just the beginning but here’s what happened.

airline randomly decided to change my flight to an earlier time

I found out about this from a 3 am text that I read at 8 am on my way to work

cool I have to leave work much earlier

I do that. it was about to rain in New York so it was a good goddamn thing. no subway delays at all.

I sit at the gate for a bit. an hour before boarding, there are still zero airline employees to be found

what the fuck.

I google my flight number. it is not at the gate I’m sitting at.

great.

I walk over to the new gate, the lady there explains “it got changed.”

fine. I’m still on time.

….

the flight is not.

the rain started while I was in the airport and New York is gridlocked, and they barely had enough flight attendants to take off

I check my flight information. I have a connection in Heathrow that’s an hour after my flight and my flight is delayed…you guessed it. an hour.

I’m definitely gonna miss my connecting flight

I accept this (I am on a lot of anxiety medication) to deal with when I get there (thank you, medication!) and go to sleep (so. much. medication.)

arrive in Heathrow

announcement on the plane says that the connecting flight to Helsinki is also delayed, and to see them up front if you are getting on that flight

so I talk to them

“they’re leaving at 8:20 (it is now 7:50), so you can make it but you have to BOOK”

me: “GOT IT.” *takes off*

*accidentally knocks off a baby’s blanket. does not stop, like an asshole. yells EXCUSE ME to every British person in the way, while elbowing them, I’m from fucking New York, MOVE*

“few people runnin' about” happens

gotta go through security first

lady at the desk spins her computer monitor to show me what it says when she scans my boarding pass: “please proceed directly to gate 9”

me: “TRUST ME I FUCKING KNOW”

someone in front of me for some reason has every glass bottle in the world, doesn’t speak enough English for the security people to explain that it’s fine so long as there’s no food or liquid in them

somehow I get through and make it to the gate

“if you had been 10 minutes later you would’ve caught us, but you’re good!”

phew.

find out later that my family had a similar yet worse experience in Frankfurt. ha.

turns out that was only the fucking beginning. because I still had to come back. here’s how that went.

day 1:

I’m supposed to fly out Saturday at 3 pm. my brother is flying out Saturday at 7 am. Friday night, we are on our way to the BnB and I double check my email.

surprise! my flight has changed. now at 7 am.

ughhhhhhhhhh

fine. I’ll just go to the airport with my brother.

we do that. Air BnB host nice enough to wake up and drive us—for a price, but a pretty good one.

they had a sauna and I had to skip out on using it (I only got to do it once) and I was pretty upset. fuck you, airline.

get to the airport at the asscrack of dawn

I check my email in the car one more time

….

wait a second

the date on this is for Sunday

fuuuuuuuuuuck

screw it, I’ll wait around until their service desk opens and have them put me on a flight

1 hour: nothing

I try and call them. on a janky phone that has issues with phone calls

customer service is closed, because Europe

call the US number

customer service is open and in English but it rings a few times and then I get a message in Icelandic and it hangs up.

….I’m never flying a Scandinavian-based airline ever a-fucking-gain.

2 hours: nothing

fuck. this.

I start googling hotels by the airport instead. check into one. get a shuttle there. room itself isn’t too expensive, but not money I really have.

oh fucking well

I pass out.

wake up, have to leave the hotel to get lunch, come back and read Yuri on Ice fanfic

oh daaamn this hotel has a sauna

tight

get smoked reindeer pasta at the hotel restaurant

go to sauna again

go back the fuck to sleep

day 2:

airport shuttle at the asscrack of dawn but this time I’ve slept all day

feeling annoyed but optimistic. this will suck but at least I’m rested.

get to the airport

once again they have changed the airline on me. this was not self-evident in the email

haul my ass to the right terminal. thank fuck there are only 2.

that last sentence is foreshadowing

in line for getting my ticket (b/c of course I can’t check in at a kiosk) and two people in front of me are going through the same shit. airline answered their phone calls tho and promised them money back

feeling more hopeful

am now flying through Amsterdam. they can’t print my connecting flight boarding pass. I will have to get it printed at the airport when I get there.

there is only an hour between the flights

I am hit with a sudden premonition of doom

but am still hopped up on anxiety medication

here we go again!

make it to Amsterdam with no drama

phone battery is dying. my external battery stopped working abruptly and there’s no charger on the smaller planes. it wouldn’t charge at the gate; was plugged in but draining. I turn it off. charges 2%.

more foreshadowing

I get off the plane and have to ask where to go to get to the correct airline. someone directs me. it’s a different terminal. I run-walk over there, knowing what’s about to happen.

passport control. spend 5 minutes panicking that I don’t have an e-passport b/c I don’t know where to look for the logo. turns out it’s on the front cover! I’m a dumbass.

get there. can’t check in/print off boarding pass

oh boy

have to wait in line for a service rep

this wait takes 35 minutes

I get to the front. my seat reservation somehow does not exist

she manages to print off my ticket. and call them to tell them I’m coming.

looks me in the eye: “you run.”

me: “I run.”

I do that.

new gate is 2 more terminals away

Amsterdam is fucking big and I have now run across 3 terminals of it.

the Dutch are better at moving out of the way than the English

I make it to the gate and people are there yelling “New York? New York!!” make it on the plane. phone won’t charge. ...... great.

no podcasts for me! I watch a Stonewall documentary, a gay rom com, and a slew of nature documentaries.

at least I’m on brand.

make it to New York in one piece. meet a nice German lady and everything.

it was hell coming back here from Greece but from Scandinavia it’s fucking amazing.

anyway

slight panic after going through passport control. I handed them my receipt, promptly forgot I did that, then got my baggage and began looking for my receipt to show to the next set of cops.

receipt was gone

ummmmmm

I empty out my entire bag

nothing

I ask the lady next to me if they kept the receipt

she says yes they did and I nearly collapse. guess there’s no next set of cops this time around. it’s different every fucking time.

she sympathizes. we have a nice chat. she has family in Helsinki and just got back from Greece and Italy.

Scandinavians are not friendly. FUCK I missed New York.

because some people will assume otherwise if i don’t say so: it was not a white lady. I really really missed New York.

I manage to make it to my subway stop with no more drama than wondering why I’m the only person on the train

I realized literally this morning that it’s almost a holiday weekend. oops.

make it to my apartment door

they installed a new front door while I was in another fucking country

(there were issues with the old one)

sign on the door says go see the super. who never answers his door, only the phone.

my phone battery is now at 10%

….

super’s not answering his phone. or the door.

text and call neighbors who live near me. leave messages. try not to panic.

feel raindrops

look up

there’s a storm cloud coming in

I hear thunder

this is the point where I started laughing

I try the super’s other number

“uhhh you changed the door”  “you were sleeping!”  “I was in FINLAND!”  “okay, give me a minute, I’m on my way”

turn phone off

super appears. I am not soaking wet and laughing hysterically. yet. if he’d been any later it would’ve been another story

make it inside. plug in phone. it’s at 3%

answer all my family’s frantic texts, order food delivery, take a shower, go the fuck to sleep, and sleep 14 hours. felt fucking great.

go to work today because it’s 4th of July and if I don’t I’ll only be in for two days. oh well!

#adventures in text posts #finland 2019 #travel #I was dreading the flight #I had just got back from greece and didn't want to fucking do it again #everyone was telling me it would be okay #well #this. is. why.#I'm parking my ass in new york city for 6 months and you'll have to drag me out by my teeth to get me to leave #I can do this again next year god dammit. for this year: no more!!

5 notes · View notes

terresdebrume · 6 years

Text

I am home

Well, I thought weddings were tiring before but let me tell you French weddings have nothing on Cambodian weddings (soft edition)!

I am currently slumped on my couch, waiting for meal delivery (and also maybe death, judging by the sting under my eyes xD) and vaguely thinking that I should maybe consider getting up to put my laundry out to dry (that will probably wait until I need to get down for my food, tbh).

Longer account of the past three days under the cut!

Things started pretty good on Thursday because no one was late or got lost or had major trouble, and the minivan was even at the rendez-vous point on time which, it being Cambodia, is not always a guarantee, even if we did book the van for our group. We strapped down for an 8 hours bus drive around 9:30pm and chatted a little bit before settling down and all would have been fine if, like the driver had driven like a reasonable person.

Which he did not.

Apparently (I couldn't see the dial) we drove at an average of fifty-ish kilometers per hours, sometimes sixty, which you just should not do on Cambodian roads, especially not at night, on account of

The poor state of the roads (especially considering the guy ditched the main road and went for the country roads, aka sometimes we were drivingon dirt trails more than actual roads)

Everyone drives but almost no one has a license, which means you get a lot of really funny behaviors like people driving without lights at dusk, people driving with their lights at maximum intensity all the time (including anti fog lights) or our own driver taking turns fast enough to make us all think about barrel rolls every time

Sometimes, a roaming animal appears! I'm pretty sure there's a veal out there who's still a little shaken from our encounter with it on Thursday night.

So, the trip was strange. The driver stopped about ever hour to go and pee (we nearly forgot one of our friends, Champey, at one point. He was lucky his girlfriend noticed his absence) but apparently didn't know a place where there were actual toilets, which is how at least one of our friends accidentally mooned a passing car and then a random and adorable woman ended up taking us to her home so we could pee at two in the morning.

(Side note, there is something really eerie about having about nine or ten people crossing a random family's main living space, motorbikes on the left and people asleep on the right, trying not to overheat in the warm layers they put on to fight off the chill of overeager air con and whispering about their misadventures in toilet-using while traveling and the perils of our driver).

At one point, we stopped to deliver a package (and also I think another dude who wasn't with us but whom the driver must have sold a ticket to on the side, because that's prety common in Cambodia) and then things mostly went in an uneventful, if really bumpy, way.

Although of course I think all of us would have appreciated it if the buss ride had NOT turned out to take 10 hours instead of the estimated eight.

Anyway, we got to Ratanakiri province mostly in time for the wedding (I think around seven ish?) and went to change. I had to limp because eight hours in a bus were hell on my left ankle, which I now know for certain is sprained, but other than that it went fine. We did a bit of washing up, changed, got ready, and rejoined the wedding... and waited.

And waited.

I swear, so much of being a guest in a khmer wedding is about waiting xD

From the outside, a lot of the ceremonies seemed to be essentially visual things. Julie & Channy (the marrying couple) had to change outfits throughout the day (Julie had EIGHT outfits to go through in a day! Plus hairdos!) and a lot of the ceremonies seemed to be mostly about taking a billion pictures of them under ever angle, slightly adjusting the pose and thentaking another billion pictures from there. There was also a LOT of talking, which I'm pretty sure doubled the length of everything and felt really unusual to me... and then more waiting.

My favorite part of the day was the last of the morning rites, during which the newlyweds are surrounded by their parents and the attending 'stable couples' and candles are passed around the circle of guests so they can pass their hands through/over the candle and send the flames of love toward the bride and groom. After that, anyone who wants it can go and tie a red string around the couple's wrists to wish their marriage longevity (the newlyweds are then supposed to keep the strings on at least three days).

I didn't go and do that, because I really had to go and prop my ankle up but also because I was embarrassed at not having anything to give as an offering (I mean, I know Julie & Channy wouldn't have minded, but I was still embarrassed). That is, honestly, my only regret throughout the day x)

Anyway, after this ceremony, which apparently the key one (as in the point where the couple is officially married) our group was shown to the place where we'd sleep at night and proceeded to 1. wash up a little and 2. collapse into a nap. We pretty much slept on the bare hardwood floor so I was anticipating an achy back when I woke up but that actually didn't happen at all which was a great plus!

Then around six, we changed back into our pretty utfits and went for dinner, which was delicious and greatly enjoyed. There was one more ceremony, which I didn't see, and then some dancing but at that point I went back to our sleeping spot because my ankle hurt and it's not like I was going to do any dancing xD

In the meantime, Champey (who took care of most of the dealing with the minivan driver) had gotten a call from the driver who said he wanted to leave at 4PM on Saturday, instead of 8pm like we'd planned. That was not exactly well met by the group (at least the French portion was pretty open about that. Khmer people tend to be more reserved about what they think, but I'm not sure they were entirely un-annoyed either) but since his argument was for security we thought it might actually be for the best. So, we agreed, but asked him to drive us to a nearby lake we wanted to visit on Saturday so we'd be on time. He was, apparently, insistent that we should be ready to depart at the set time, which is absolutely hilarious (in an ironic way) when you consider the propensity of khmer people in general to not be punctual at all xD

(That's an interesting culture gap tbh, and it would have been purely funny if we hadn't been peeved about his wanting to change the departure time and being difficult about our rendez-vous point in Phnom Penh the night before).

So, come Saturday morning, we took the bus at ten (maybe five past, mostly because of me, oops) went to the aforementioned lake and dealt with the usual khmer/foreigners price difference, then had to wait while someone (either the driver or the lake guards) refused to take the $20 bill they were given on the basis that it was 'too damaged' (it was not). And then, finally, WATER! :D

I'm a huuuuuge water baby, I could spent entire days in the water if I have someone or a book to pass the time with, so obviously that rejuvenated me in record time. We had a great time there, bathed a lot, ate a lot (the caramelized chicken was delicious) and I bought a shirt. It was really cool.

We were mostly done around 3:30pm, so we called the minivan so he'd come and get us, but when the driver and his wife arrived and opened the door, it turned out there were now two car engines there, one of which was in the way of entering and exiting the minivan. It took something like twenty minutes of insisting before the driver agreed to move it to the front, where his wife sat (she wasn't happy about it) because he tried telling us we'd only reserved 15 seats in an 18 seats minivan (wrong, we'd gotten the whole vehicle) and then apparently said the engines were for a nearby delivery (they were still with us when we reached Phnom Penh) and then the guys (minus me) had to move the engine up to the front themselves.

So that was fun.

The ride back to Phnom Penh was as bumpy as the ride out of it, but there was a lot more singing and aside from two really scared dogs there wasn't really anything of notice. We got proper toilet breaks this time (lucky for the periods-havers of the group) and even got to buy some bamboo rice on the way there, which was a really nice evening meal :D

After that, it was mostly a matter of waiting the ten hours to Phnom Penh, getting in tuktuks (in my case, with one of the group members who couldn't go home to her parents (or didn't dare ride alone?) at 2am) and crashing into bed.

And today, or mostly this afternoon, will be mostly dedicated to being a couch potato until bedtime as far as I'm concerned xD

#My Posts #Matt has a life #Shit from home #Matt lives in Cambodia #Cambodia

4 notes · View notes