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sierraraeck · 5 years ago

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Daylight

Spencer x GN! Reader

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Summary: After a long time without answers and your relationship ending on rocky terms, you run into Spencer and can finally put things to rest. Part one.

The prompt from @veraiconcos Fic Writer Challenge was “If I asked you to stay, would you?” This is bolded within the fic.

Category: Angst. Just pure angst.

Warnings: Cussing. Mention of normal CM stuff. Suggestive content.

Word Count: 5.5k

A/N: This was initially a songfic and now it’s not, however it was still inspired by the song “Daylight” by Maroon 5. If you wanna give that a quick listen, go for it, if not, that’s chill too. Also, I tried to make this gender neutral, but if I did not, please let me know what I need to correct.

Internal dialogue

Flashback

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In one word, complicated.

Yes, that was a cliche and overused, but there was really no better way to describe your relationship with Spencer. Unless of course people preferred terms like arduous, intricate, convoluted, twisted, entangled, or your personal favorite, fucked up. Although, that might be a little harsh. Kind of. It was complicated.

And things continued on that path when you waltzed into the San Jose precinct, ready to defend your client against none other than the BAU.

Despite being 28, you were already one of the most successful defense attorneys in the state, and had already had a couple run-ins with the FBI. Luckily, none of those had been against the ‘all-powerful’ behavioral analysis unit, and you were able to wrangle out some wins, or at least, the best you could have hoped for given the circumstances. This time, a man, Brayden Lee, had been arrested as a suspect for a series of strangulations, all of the victims tall, blonde, college athletes. Looking over his case and the amount of evidence against him, you felt sure that you could manage a favorable deal.

But now, your strides faltered as you saw the team of profilers standing around in a circle, speaking in hushed voices, immediately turning around to watch you in. Well, it wasn’t necessarily them that teetered your confidence, it was more like him. And that damn hair.

You were at your older brother’s graduation. A small, skinny kid with moppy brown curls walked across the stage, the gown he was wearing clearly three sizes too big for him. He looked really young, about your age, which immediately interested you.

“Spencer Reid,” the announcer called. He accepted his diploma, moved his tassel from one side to the other, and plopped right back down in his seat.

You just stared at him from your place high up in the bleachers, almost missing your brother as he walked across the stage. You clapped and cheered, but you still couldn’t tear your eyes from the strange kid who’d walked across moments before him. When the ceremony was over, you asked your brother who he was, and all he gave you was a shrug and an arched eyebrow. That was not exactly the answer you were looking for. So you took it upon yourself, being the awkwardly brave kid you were at 12, to find him and learn more. You ended up taking him home after the ceremony, and that was that. You still remember the dopey smile he gave you as he hopped out of the backseat, a smile that you would miss for three more years.

You tried to compose yourself as you avoided eye contact with any of them, marching toward the interrogation room to have some time alone with your client. But it had never been this hard to concentrate before.

Snap out of it. It’s been four fucking years, six if you really think about it, so you need to get it together. This man, the one right in front of your face, needs your help.

So you did just that. As a lawyer, you had to have intense focus, so you made yourself hone in on that skill. The two older men of the team came in to have quite the nice chat with you and your client, but it ended fairly close to how you predicted. He would be let off, for now, but you would have to stay on call in case they found more evidence of your client’s guilt. You ushered Brayden out of the station and into a cab, telling him that you’d be in touch if anything else came up and to keep a low profile.

You were ready to be done, but had to make sure there weren’t any other loopholes or things they weren’t telling you before you could leave. You trudged back into the precinct, expecting to talk to the two men you saw earlier, but found that once-nerdy boy you used to know waiting for you. Not to say he wasn’t still nerdy, you were sure he was, but he’d definitely changed since the last time you saw him.

You tried to act as professional as possible, “Is there anything else that I need to know about this case and your evidence against my client?” Honestly, you were shocked at how calm your voice sounded.

“As long as you’ve heard about his recent purchases and easy access to the material used to strangle these women, no,” he responded, just as casually.

“Okay great, and nothing else in the profile I should be aware of?”

“Nope.”

“Alright then,” you said, turning on your heels to walk out.

“That’s it?” Spencer’s tone suddenly sounded confused, even accusatory, which was such a stark contrast to the smoothe, gentle voice you remembered.

You were at the local library studying for your midterms before the holiday break. No one really went there anymore, and there were a ton of good research tools available, so it was the perfect quiet study spot. Well, mostly quiet, that was, until the ever-so-irritating ping of books being checked out was going off non-stop. You’d had enough, so you shot over your shoulder, “Jesus, how many books do you need?”

The pinging immediately stopped, and you heard a small, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bother you.”

It wasn’t a lot, but something about that voice seemed familiar. You turned fully around to see those piercing gold eyes staring at you, and you recognized those curls.

“No way. You’re the kid who graduated high school at age twelve! I remember you,” you blurted before really thinking.

“Yeah. Hey (y/n),” he said.

“I’m so sorry I snapped at you like that…”

“Spencer,” he filled in, after hearing you hiss like a snake, trying to jog your memory of his name.

“Spencer! Sorry about that, I’m just kinda stressed about my exams,” you explained.

“It’s okay, I understand,” Spencer replied, gesturing to his ever-growing pile of books.

You inquired about how things were going for him, and he told you all about how his first year and a half in college had been, already obtaining his bachelor’s in mathematics.

“That’s so impressive. Think you could help me?” you said in a somewhat mocking tone.

Of course, he took you seriously, not picking up on the half-joke. “Sure.”

Although, you were thrilled he offered, and the two of you spent the next couple of hours talking about high school and college classes, your seemingly easy math compared to his, and him helping you with any other subject you needed help with, like AP biology and psychology. At the end of the night, you gave him your phone number, trying to cover up your little crush with a joke about needing his help as you rushed out into the freezing night air.

He never used it.

“Yeah. That’s it,” you shot over your shoulder.

“(y/n), hold on, I-” he started.

“Doctor Reid, they need you in the conference room,” some lady said. Now that caught your attention. You spun back around to look at him with raised eyebrows. His mouth was slightly agape, and his eyes flitted between you and the lady who told him he was needed.

“What are you waiting for, Doctor,” you sneered. He let out a sigh, giving you one last pointed look before turning away. You didn’t even know people called him ‘doctor’ now.

You returned home, hoping that the case would get cleared up easily, that they’d find a different culprit and you wouldn’t have to risk that floodgate of emotions bursting open. No such luck. They found Brayden at the scene of the crime, literally in the middle of digging up an old victim to do god knows what with, and took him back into custody. When you got back to the precinct, you told your client not to say a word, and asked what the charges were and if he was going to be transferred in the meantime. The answers to your questions were not in your favor, and you had one of the worst client-lawyer conversations you'd ever experienced. The man wouldn’t tell you a damn thing, and if he didn’t tell you anything, then you couldn’t help him. Of course, it was your job to try and help him as best as you could, but you whole-heartedly believed he was guilty too, which didn’t help you keep the right mindset. Plus, your heart was pounding into your ears for more reasons than being across the table from a serial killer.

Focus, please, you begged yourself. And you did, for a while, but it became a futile effort. At one point you just wanted to say ‘fuck this shit, lock him up’ and leave, you were that desperate.

When it was all over and the station was getting everything together in order to transfer him to a holding facility, you tried to slip out the doors and wait outside. Only moments after, though, you heard the door squeak back open.

“(y/n),” Spencer started.

“I’m sorry,” you quickly interjected. You had been contemplating for the last day or so if you needed to apologize, and just figured you would, if not for your sake, for your clients’. I mean, they would probably end up testifying at some point, not like that was the main thought going through your mind, but you convinced yourself it was. “I shouldn’t have conducted myself like that earlier. It was unprofessional and you were just trying to talk to me.”

“It’s fine. I probably deserved it,” he acknowledged.

“Probably, but that’s all in the past and I should have left it there,” you concluded. You both stood in absolute silence until it became too much to bear. You decided you’d at least try to act natural, “So how have things been since the last time I saw you?”

Spencer looked at you with surprised eyes, but answered with, “They’ve been interesting. There always seems to be a new case. How about you?”

“Same. Just one after the other, but it’s nice knowing I’m helping people,” you added.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

Come on, what else can you throw out there? “Uh, so, they call you ‘doctor’ now?”

He offered a small laugh. “Yeah, they do. When I started, you know, I was much younger than anyone else in the bureau-”

“Still are,” you interjected.

He continued, “-true, but one of my mentors, who’s gone now, told people to call me that and I guess it just stuck.”

“Well, it sounds nice.”

“Thanks. I hear you are doing pretty well yourself, getting national mentions and such,” he stated.

You raised your eyebrows, “You heard about that?” A year or so back you got recognized as the top rising talent in your field of work, but you didn’t think that news would make it to the other coast. Unless he was specifically looking for that information…

“Yeah, I did. The FBI likes to keep tabs on people that might cause them the most trouble in a case, you being one of them.”

“Seriously?” You were astonished. The FBI was keeping tabs on you? “Why?”

“Just in case they get tired of opposing you and would rather work with you,” he shrugged, “But you seem to be having fun opposing right now.”

You let a smile reach the surface at that. “That obvious, huh?”

“I’m a profiler. Plus, you’ve always had a thing for opposing the ‘overbearing’ power and sticking up for the little guy.”

That was a little too close to home. You knew he meant that in more ways than one, and you couldn’t help but think about that god-awful night when you were just two kids trying to take a walk in the moonlight. The night that solidified your friendship.

It happened so fast. All you did was walk away for a second to throw your trash away, but that was all it took for the boys to pounce. Spencer had been attending CalTech for three years, and you were there to pop into the chemistry class, which you conveniently had with Spencer. Those other 20 year olds hated you and Spencer for the sole reason that you were two nerdy 17 year olds that were making them look bad. They’d already gotten in a few good punches before you returned, but when you did, you were livid. They were holding Spencer up while taking turns at him. You worked quickly, setting your phone to record before stepping in between one of the boys and Spencer. You hadn’t intended on getting caught in the crossfire, but you did, landing yourself a pretty bruise on your cheek for the next two weeks. You yelled at them about how they were assaulting a minor and how you now had all of their faces on tape, along with some other legal shit. One of them smashed your phone and went for another punch, but you kicked him in the throat before he could get to you, putting him flat on his ass. He tapped out, and you later found out he’d gotten whiplash from how he landed on the ground. They ran off, and when you turned around, Spencer collapsed in your arms. He was littered with cuts, blood, and already developing bruises. You took him back to his dorm and cleaned him up, spending the night before figuring out how to recover the footage. Once you did, you showed it to the board members, effectively expelling the boys and bringing them up on charges for assault. They got convicted, and no one screwed with either of you again. That was the moment you really decided to become a lawyer.

“Yeah, I guess I have,” you murmured. Brayden was brought out in cuffs and shoved into the back of a squad car, which was your cue to get moving. You had a full case on your hands.

You turned to leave, but as you did, Spencer stopped you. “Hey, would you maybe want to catch up later?”

You didn’t remember him ever being so bold before, and were caught off guard by the question. You stumbled out, “Uh, what did you have in mind?”

“Just … coffee, maybe?”

“Sure,” you said, and immediately saw Spencer’s shoulders relax. “Do you still remember where Arnette’s is?”

“Of course,” he responded. That used to be your favorite go-to spot.

“Alright then. I should be done with this at around eight,” you said, hopping into your car before he could respond. The officer with Brayden had already sped away, and you needed to stay close behind.

The whole drive you kicked yourself for saying yes. You were getting over him. You had gotten over him. And you loved Jordan and couldn’t help feeling like this was somehow betraying him. Plus, why should you be meeting him to catch up? He hadn’t been interested in that for five years! I mean, you put everything into making your relationship work. Sure, you were realistic that it wouldn’t last, but he could have at least tried.

You had it planned out. You would keep in touch until you could go out and visit him during the summer for Fourth of July during your sophomore year of college. The next year, he’d visit you, and the one after that, you’d visit him and so on. But that was the problem. There was no ‘so on.’ You visited him for the second time and that was it. And pretty soon, you could barely get him to pick up the damn phone. The last thing you heard from him was that he was pretty busy starting out with the BAU, along with an unanswered text wondering how his first case went.

But, you already agreed, so you might as well just see what happens.

You threw on some nice, non-work clothes and drove to the little shop on the corner. God you felt like a teenager.

It was just before eight and Spencer was already there waiting for you. Of course he was.

You took a deep breath, reminding yourself that this was supposed to be two people who used to care about each other, and honestly still do, just catching up. Simply talking. About the present, no need to worry about the past.

“Hey, (y/n).” You always liked the way he said your name with welcoming confidence.

“Hey,” you replied. He opened the door for you and you shuffled in. With no surprise, you were the only two in there, and he went ahead and ordered for both of you, remembering what you wanted with ease. You gave him a bit of a confused look as you waited for your drinks.

“What?” he asked, clearly uncomfortable by your staring.

“Nothing, it’s just that you remember my order, that’s all.”

“I do have a really good memory,” he reminded you.

“Yeah, but you also told me once that that only went for visuals, and your eidetic memory didn’t really work on audio,” you quipped.

“That’s true. I guess some things just stick. Plus, it’s not like you made it hard on me. You always ordered the same thing.”

You laughed a little, “I guess that’s true.”

You grabbed your drinks and left the hole-in-the-wall, autopilot kicking in, taking you both along the path that went around the park. Spencer sighed.

“Hm?” you questioned.

“Just, you know, thinking,” he said, brows furrowed.

“About what?”

“How we used to do this all the time. You’d finish your high school classes, drive over to CalTech for chemistry, and then afterward we’d stop by for coffee and a walk,” his voice sounded like he was in a dream, and he looked into the night air as if there was some answer or memory floating around out there. You guessed there was a memory floating around out here.

“Yeah those were crazy years,” you recalled. “I felt like I was constantly on the move and everything was happening all at once and I had all of this stuff I needed to get done. But this was always a nice place where I could clear my head and forget all of that.” That feeling was starting to return as you kept walking, the sticky air of California clinging to your skin.

“It was nice. I miss those days sometimes,” he said.

What is he getting at? “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

You walked in silence for a while, but you could see Spencer’s posture tense up more with each step. There was something on his mind and he wasn’t telling you.

“What is it?”

“What is what?” he acted bewildered.

“What’s on your mind?” He tried to shrug it off and deny it, but you knew him better than that. It might have been a while, but some things, like he said, just stick. And the way his body acted when he was thinking was one of them. “Don’t even try that. I know when there is something bothering you, now out with it.”

“Who is it?” That was all he offered and it was your turn to be confused.

“Huh?”

“Who has the other one?” he said, voice a bit harsher than before, motioning to the gold ring around your finger.

“His name is Jordan.”

“Jordan, huh?”

“Yep.”

“What does he do?” Spencer inquired.

“He’s also a lawyer. We actually met in law school,” you answered somewhat hesitant. You still didn’t know what he was getting at, if anything.

“Oh. Nice.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” your attitude starting to flare up.

“Absolutely nothing. Just not what I thought,” he stated with a bit of an edge to his voice.

“What did you think?” You were trying not to get offended by whatever he was implying, but you couldn’t help it. He asks me to catch up just to make passive aggressive criticisms?

“I don’t know. Not that, I guess.”

At this point, you wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. “Well, you know, you could have changed that,” you replied in the same passive aggressive manner.

“What would you have wanted me to do?” his voice was raising, obviously picking up on what you were putting down.

“Uh, I don’t know, how about respond to one goddamned text?”

“I tried.”

“Not really. And then you just went dark,” you spat.

“You seemed to be fine with that. You moved on pretty quickly,” he hissed, not even bothering to look at you.

“Why do you think that is, genius? I visited you, and then you stopped answering my calls. You stopped responding to my texts. I basically never heard from you again, and then the next thing I know, your showing up on my fucking tv, in California for a case, and you don’t even reach out. You didn’t even ask to meet up anywhere, not even stop by to say hey. Nothing. You did nothing once your job swallowed you up whole. I know what that’s like and it’s hard, believe me, I’m a lawyer for Chrissake, but I found the time. Plus, for all I knew, you had already found someone else, so I wasn’t going to wait around for the guy who seemed to love me much less than I loved him.” By the end, you were yelling, and thanking the stars above you that no one was around to hear it.

“You’re right,” he whispered after a while.

You were stunned, and could only manage a small, “What?”

“You’re right,” he repeated. “I should have put in more effort. I don’t know, (y/n), I wish I had a better answer for you but I don’t. I was young, and stupid, and I didn’t know what I was doing. I let my insecurities get in the way of us, and I will never be able to forgive myself for that.”

“What?” It was seriously the only thing going through your mind, however, you were able to force out, “Insecurities?”

“Yeah. I was worried that because I was away, you were going to tire of me, that you weren’t going to want to stay in a relationship. I thought that maybe, by being ‘tied’ to me, so to speak, that I was holding you back, which we promised each other we would never do. We said that we would never get in the way of the other’s dream, and I wondered if maybe I was going to do that to you. I just … I had all of these doubts, so I panicked. I stopped responding. And I was so wrong to do that.”

Now that he’d said them, they sounded like some of the same doubts he expressed to you the night before he left.

“What time is your flight?”

“Seven, which means I have to be there by six, which means I have to be leaving here by four-thirty at the latest,” he recited. He had all of his stuff piled by the door, which was hardly anything at all. You were in his hotel room because his house was soon to be taken over by a young couple, since he’d be living in Massachusetts, and his mother was in a mental facility. You’d just come back from visiting her, which left Spencer in tears.

You ate dinner while playing chess, which he effectively beat you at. You were actually pretty good at it, but no match for his math-based brain. You snuggled into bed next to him, willing yourself to keep it together because the last thing you wanted to do was spend your last night with him an emotional wreck. He queued up a movie, but neither of you paid any attention to it. His arm was draped around your shoulders and yours were clasped around his waist.

Spencer’s hand lazily circled your back until it moved with purpose down to your thigh. He continued his lazy patterns when you looked up at him, a question in your eyes.

You’d been with Spencer for over a year, and recalled your first time. You were ready before he was, which came as no surprise, but that didn’t stop the nerves from racing through your head. But if you thought you were nervous, you had no idea what was going through Spencer’s head. He later told you that he was absolutely terrified because he didn’t want to do something wrong, and he didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, and he didn’t want you to think less of him because of his body style, and a million other things that he was scared about. That’s how you accidentally said the ‘L’ word. “Spencer Reid, I would never judge you and you could never scare me away. I love you and your body and your brain, and you are not going to do something wrong, not like I’d know because we are both new to this and are doing it together. Understand?”

He gave you a shy smile. “I do.”

Now though, it was very different. Comfortable, confident, safe.

“Can I have you?” he asked, “All of you, one last time?”

You leaned up to kiss him, and he sighed when you pulled away. You looked him straight in the eyes, “I’m all yours.”

And you were. You felt like you always had been and probably always would be, and could only hope that he felt a fraction of the same. Your bodies pushed and pulled in perfect unison, fitting together as if you were two pieces of a puzzle, specifically crafted for the other.

You returned to your curled up position beside him, and you couldn’t hold it in anymore. The tears silently flowed out of your eyes, but you couldn’t make yourself peel your arms away from him long enough to wipe them away. You attempted to sob without making a sound, knowing that if Spencer saw you crying, it would make him cry, and he couldn’t cry because it would make you cry more, splitting you right in half. It didn’t matter how quiet you were being about it, because when you looked up at Spencer, you saw the same silent tears glistening on his cheeks. It was only then that you pulled your hands from around him and brushed away his tears.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring the mood down,” you apologized. “This is supposed to be exciting. You’re going to the best school in the country to get your PhD.”

“It’s okay,” he replied, moving his hands up and down your arms, “Sometimes, I wonder if I’m making the right decision.”

This took you by surprise. He’d always seemed confident about this, passionate about furthering his education. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just don’t want to complicate things for anyone. For my mother. For you.”

“If I asked you to stay, would you?” You knew it was unfair, but it was the only thing you could think to say. The only thing you wanted to say. You needed him, and it was sickening wondering if soon, he might not need you. He stared at you dumbfoundedly, so you quickly covered it up with, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that. You are about to start a whole new part of your life, and you should go, pursue your dreams with the best education this country can offer. I don’t wanna get in the way of that.”

You repositioned yourself back on his chest, and started to drift off to sleep when you felt him sigh. You lazily peered up at him, meeting his restless eyes. “Spence, you need to sleep.”

“I can sleep on the plane. I need this more,” he said, smiling at you. You tried to stay awake like you knew Spencer would, but to no avail. You did, however, wake up to him getting ready to leave. He kissed you goodbye, and you held yourself together until he’d walked out, the door shutting with a definite ‘click.’

All the air had been stripped from your lungs and you felt like you couldn’t breathe, like you’d never again without him by your side. You cried yourself back to sleep, willing this all to be one giant nightmare, but when you woke, he was gone. And you felt completely numb. So while you may have been two pieces of a puzzle, aiming to create the same beautiful picture, you no longer fit together.

You felt yourself starting to get flushed from constantly going in and out of anger then feeling bad and forgiving. It was exhausting, and probably part of the reason things didn’t work out between the two of you. That didn’t mean you loved him any less, though. He was, in fact, your first love, and you guess people were right about that stuff being more powerful and affecting you longer. Hell, you walked into the precinct for a total of three seconds before he was affecting you all over again!

You took a deep breath in before saying, “I guess we both made mistakes and wished we would have handled things differently.”

“What would you have handled differently?” He sounded genuinely curious.

“When I saw that you were in California for a case, instead of … doing what I did, I should have been the one who reached out. I could have just asked you then what was going through your mind and what was going on between us. Who knows how that might have changed things? But, I was petty,” you gave a cold laugh, “I guess I still am sometimes, huh?”

You had definitely been acting that way lately. You felt guilty and ashamed about it, but in that moment of anger four years ago, knowing that Spencer was out there ignoring you, you sent him a hurtful message and then blocked his number. Only a week or so prior, you’d met Jordan who was clearly hitting on you, and you were so firm about moving on that you asked him out. He eagerly agreed, and the rest was history. Or, at least, you thought was history.

Spencer shrugged and dodged the somewhat rhetorical question. “We can’t really dwell on that now.”

You knew he didn’t really mean that, considering he was the type of person who dwelled, but he was right. You were engaged to a great guy and soon to be married. This, Spencer, was something you were just going to have to come to terms with, something you realized you hadn’t come to terms with yet.

You’d been walking so absentmindedly next to him that you hardly noticed you were outside of a hotel. He stopped just outside the lobby entrance and turned to face you.

“Walk you to your room?” you offered. What the fuck did you just say? Why did you say that? You can’t say things like that. Stop it.

Spencer gave you that small, closed lip smile of his which immediately ended your inner scolding, and nodded, holding the door open for you. You walked up the stairs together in silence. When you reached his door, instead of getting out his card, he leaned his back up against the heavy wood.

“Alright, well, it was nice catching up, and I wish you safe travels in the morning,” you said, turning to leave. He quickly reached out and grabbed your hand, stopping you in your tracks, and you spun around to face him.

“If I asked you to stay, would you?” Those words pierced through your ears, ringing all too familiar from when it was you who said them.

“Spence-” you started. And then his lips were on yours. Those sweet, soft lips. It had always been so natural between the two of you, and you felt his tongue bypass yours as you pushed further into the kiss. Then you remembered where, and when, you were, no longer that hopelessly devoted kid but an adult with a wonderful man waiting for you when you got home. You pulled away. “Spence-”

“I would have said yes, you know,” he confessed. The question must have been etched on your face, because he continued, “When you asked me that night, given the chance, I would have said yes.”

His words stung, and your whole body ached from rehashing old feelings, to igniting new ones, to the guilt of what just happened weighing on you so heavily you might just crumble beneath it. You murmured out, “Why didn’t you?”

“I thought you were right. I thought I was doing the right thing. Out of all the mistakes I’ve made, all the regrets I have, you, (y/n) (y/l/n), are my biggest one.” His honey brown eyes peered right into yours, like he was looking at something far greater than just your eyes, and repeated, “So right now, if I asked you to stay with me, would you?”

It was too much to handle. After all the time you’d spent wishing he was still yours, he finally could be, but you could no longer be his. Tears were streaming down your face as they once did, the first time you lost him, and you choked out, “I can’t.”

One More Night

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alisa-eroliskaya5503tx · 6 years ago

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supernaturalfaanzz · 6 years ago

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guessimjoiningthespidermanfandom · 4 years ago

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Peter Parker x black!reader

Peter Parker x villain!reader

Warnings: Mentions of violence, bruising, allusions to corrupt government, drug use, underage drinking, knives, mentions of neo-nazis, bad eating and sleeping habits, a mention of sex, mentions of death and the dead.

Word Count: 3.7k

Songs: Changes- Charles Bradley, 4 Morant- Doja Cat, Prey- The Neighborhood, Stay Together- Noah Cyrus, Without me- Eminem, Colors- Halsey, Where’s My Juul??-Full Tac, Pork Soda-Glass Animals, Everyday- A$AP Rocky, Facts- Kanye West, Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?, Immortal- J.Cole, High Enough- K,Flay, Drugs- UPSAHL.

A/N: This is pretty short but it’s also the fasest I’ve released a chapter after the other was released.

Series Masterlist Previous Part Next Part

I smashed the keypad multiple times with the handle of a knife before the metal finally fell. I pulled all the wires out before hearing the words ‘System Malfunction’.

If I hadn’t disarmed the alarm system already. I’d probably be worried right about now. I manually slid open the cell door.

That’s when she glanced up at me.

“Took you look enough,” She smirked.

“I could’ve gotten you out sooner if you didn’t get your ass locked up in solitary,” I tossed her the Black Cat suit.

“You know I still don’t know your name or what you look like,” She stated pulling the suit up “and I don’t think that's fair seeing as you know those things about me,” She cooed.

I pulled my mask over my face “It’s Y/N. Happy now?”

“Wow I always knew your voice sounded attractive, matches the face,”

“Okay, we can kiss my ass later but now we have about 2 minutes to get out before the guards come and get us,”

Leaving the building the same way I came in through the vent. You’d think they’d have better security. I was thankful they didn’t when we finally reached the car.

“Who’s car is this?” Felicia asked hopping in the passenger seat.

“Dunno,” I said, putting the car in the drive.

“Hold on tight,” I warned before ramming into the fence at full speed successfully knocking it down.

I was definitely not holding my breath that whole time. And I definitely was not doubting myself. Okay maybe I was, a little.

“I’m surprised that actually worked, none of this was planned at all,” I laughed in relief.

She laughed along with me

“Plans are for the ‘good guys’, if you’re smart enough you don’t need plans,”

“If that’s not the truth,” I replied turning onto a deserted road “You owe me again, I’m not counting, but I believe the score’s 3:1,”

She was right, you never need a plan. Second moral to the story is that even “villains” never work alone. I know I always talk that “every man for themselves” mess but everyone needs a support team. And for people who supposedly have no morals they haven’t betrayed me yet.

There are the bad guys and then there are the bad guys. The heroes didn’t seem to care which you were, they just wanted you locked up or dead and to get all the glory for it. I think it’s time one of us gets the glory.

“Ow!” I exclaimed, pulling myself out of my thoughts.

“Sorry,” Olivia muttered, “You need to be still,” She said, dabbing a cloth on my leg.

“Well it’s hard to be still when your leg is burning,”

I was expecting some jab or joke like normal but it was silent. She looked up at me and I could see the tears forming in her eyes.

“Y/N…” Her eyes drifted over my bruised and cut up body, her voice breaking.

“You don’t have to worry about me, I promise I’m fine,”

“How am I supposed to believe that when you won’t tell me anything?”

“I don’t tell you anything cause then you’d worry,”

“Well I’m already worried!”

The next day of school was very ordinary. Well as ordinary as it got when you were a kid who was wanted in multiple cities. My body wasn’t as sore as it was the day before, the bruises were clearing up, but honestly these new weapons were no joke. I’d seen them burn straight through buildings and a ferry now. Anyways like I was saying before today was ordinary, nothing exciting unfortunately.

Rich kids in Queens take homecoming a little too seriously. For the most part, I’m not complaining penthouse parties were fun. Rich white kids love their molly.

Harry Osborn was one of those rich kids. If we’re being honest I feel like he does coke on occasion. I don’t think he actually liked homecoming all that much seeing as he’s pretty new to our school. I just think he likes being able to brag about his parties and get wasted at parties.

One of those parties would be the one I was getting ready for right now.

Olivia walked into the bathroom and stood in the doorway. This bathroom was very modern as well as the whole house. Like an art gallery.

“Hey kitten,” I said since she wasn’t going to say anything.

“Hey,”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” I asked.

“You know how I feel about Harry’s parties,”

That I did, her dad and Harry’s dad seemed to have some sort of beef. That I didn’t care enough to get into. But Olivia's family took it pretty seriously. I guess I could say Felicia and Olivia’s family. It’s still weird to see them as siblings. It’s not surprising, just weird. Just a weird family of kleptomaniacs.

This isn’t something I say often but I looked really hot. Like really fucking hot. I had even winged eyeliner. A nice black tube top. A pastel pink tennis skirt. I had black thong type thing on, you could see the thin straps resting on my waist from above the skirt. It wasn’t like I was trying to get fucked or anything because I was not planning on being the slightest bit of sober.

I also had thigh high socks on but only because they could conceal a knife and I’d been on high alert lately. Just because I wasn’t going to be sober didn’t mean I couldn’t protect myself. It's a sort of muscle memory when it comes to knives, at least with me

If I wore this anywhere near the kids at my old school they’d probably call me a wannabe white girl, but those kids aren’t there and they have no part of my life anymore.

I just wanted to get so fucked up that I couldn’t think at all.

I couldn’t help but think. That’s all I could do lately. My brain wouldn’t slow down to let me breathe for even one second. I just wanted to breathe and go to bed. I still can’t sleep. At least now I have a valid reason. I don’t like talking about it because it’s not a big deal or anything, but today is the anniversary of-. It’s the day Rose died. No use sugarcoating it. It passes every year, no use being in my feels about it. Couldn’t help it though, every year I’d get sad about it for about 5 minutes until I did so many drugs that I couldn’t blink.

As soon I stepped into the house. I was hit with the buzz I hadn’t felt in a while. I missed it too. It wasn’t like Liz’s “party” her thing could’ve been fun but the whole headache, Vulture thing and lack of drugs made it suck.

Anyways who cares about that. I’d been at this school long enough to know who had molly. I’d either have to flirt with them or pay which I was down for either.

See I knew the chewlery gem rod I had attached to a necklace would come in handy one of these days. Now I wouldn’t bite my mouth.

Only problem is I could still think. Which wasn’t good. There was some sort of jungle juice on the table but I just went straight for a bottle of beer sitting on the counter, because I was shaking too much to pour anything.

Beer has to be the nastiest form of alcohol out there. It looks like pee, tastes like pee, it’s like they didn’t bother trying to mask the taste of yeast in it.

My body was vibrating in a good way as I started talking to people. By the time I’d made small talk with the third person around me. I’d finished the beer and I went back to the kitchen to fill a cup with some form of alcohol and soda I wasn’t picky. Harry must’ve had the same idea.

“Hey,” He said.

“Hey, where’s your groupie,” I said referring to the blonde that’d I seen around him earlier.

“You mean Gwen?” He said, bringing a solo cup to his lips.

“Probably,” I moved over grabbing the orange soda next to me.

“Why’re you wondering, jealous?” He asked being his signature flirtatious self. There was this one time that we… you know. But we were both drunk so it doesn’t count.

“You wish I was jealous,” I rolled my eyes “We both know you're the one obsessed with me,” I laughed.

“Yep, dream about you every night,” He joked back.

I took a sip from my drink squinting as it slightly burned my throat.

“I’m sure you do,” I headed out of the kitchen.

I could feel my brain slowing down as I started to calm. That was until Facts by Kanye came on. Then suddenly it felt like my blood was boiling in my veins and I couldn’t breathe and not in the good way. I made my way to the nearest bathroom and hoped no one was making out in there.

I opened the door and the coast was clear.

I splashed water on my face. When I looked in the mirror my pupils were dilated and my face was flush. Normally my skin tone masked the effects of blushing but not this time.

I wasn’t drunk. Maybe I was but I wasn’t enough. I was still laying on the bathroom floor because it was cold and felt good in contrast against my hot skin. I was going through my phone and landed on Peter’s number. I texted him because I was bored and I can text whoever I want.

you: helo

About thirty seconds later he responded, guess he was already on his phone.

P 😜🤚: Hey

you: do yuo like pengwings

pengns

fck

penguns

penguins

He read the messages and responded rather quickly

P 😜🤚: ?

You okay?

you: yesh im fine d you like penfuins

P 😜🤚: Are you drunk

you: no im nt drunk i m jst hPpy

P 😜🤚: yeah sure, where are you.

Before I could think, I clicked the option to send location. Even if I did think it wouldn’t have done much help. None of my thoughts were coherent. I was actually happy, like really really happy.

I was still laying on the ground when I felt the floor vibrate with the knock at the door.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Peter,” The voice called out

“Come in!” I said in a sing-songy voice.

He opened the door slowly and looked around before looking down at me.

“Hiii,”

“Hey, what are you doing on the floor,”

I shrugged after slowly pushing off the floor so I wouldn’t lose balance.

“How’d you get here?” Since I know he couldn’t drive.

“I got an Uber,”

“That’s adorable,”

“What’s adorable,”

“You, you spent money on a ride just to come see me,” I pointed out, voice cracking halfway through the sentence as tears started to well in my eyes.

“Wait don’t cry, I’m sorry, did I do something? If I did sorry for whatever it was-”

“No you didn’t do anything, it’s just me,” I moved a hand off the counter I was holding onto for balance before wiping my face. I don’t cry, at least not willingly and definitely not in front of anyone else.

“Well I was going to…” He fiddled with his hands before continuing “I was going to ask if you needed a ride because I didn’t know if you drove here or not and you’re clearly drunk-“

“I’m not drunk!” I said. “I don’t drink how could I be drunk,”

“Okay, but like I was saying do you need a ride?”

I was going to say I didn’t want to leave yet but it’s not like I was doing anything but being pathetic and hanging out in the bathroom.

“Fine, yeah”

Peter opened his mouth like he was about to say something but a knock on the door interrupted. I immediately opened the door and grabbed Peter’s wrist running, for no reason except I felt like it. I bumped into a couple doorways

By the time we’d made it out by the pool Peter was hunched over trying to catch his breath.

I started running toward the water and I could hear a faint

“Y/N don't!” As I was running but it was too late seeing as I was already in the water. I laughed as I broke the surface as I floated on my back.

Peter came over to the edge of the water and squatted down.

“Y/N”

“And nothing hurts anymore I feel kinda free!” I sang splashing around in the pool.

“Y/N”

“We're still the kids we used to be,”

“Y/N!” Peter yelled, snapping my attention back to him.

“Hmm?” I asked.

“You need to get out the pool,”

“I don’t wanna,” I whined.

“Yeah I know but don’t you wanna go home?” He asked.

The last place I’d ever want to go is “home”

“No, get in the pool,”

“Y/N,” He said sternly.

“Pleaseee,”

“Get out the pool it’s cold you’re gonna get sick,”

“Fine…” I made my way begrudgingly to the steps of the pool.

Peter gave me the hoodie he was wearing so I was able to take my skirt and socks off. I put the knife I had in the hoodie pocket.

The last thing I remember is getting in some car.

Oh shit

I woke up in a room that I did not recognize. I swear to God if I got kidnapped again. I sat up quickly and hit my head on something. It was dark but there was a nightlight. Thank God if we’re being honest I’m scared of the dark. Long story I don’t wanna get into it.

I was definitely hungover, headache prominent. It only worsened when I stepped out the room and the light from the TV hit my eyes. I glanced over to Peter laying on the couch.

Oh yeah I forgot about that.

“Hey…” I whispered. He shifted a bit “You awake?”

He sat up and looked at me rubbing his eyes before bombarding me with questions.

“Did you- Are you okay? Does your head hurt? Do you need painkillers? Sorry that I brought you here and didn’t ask. That's really creepy but you were asleep and I didn’t want to wake you because you seemed tired. Again sorry it’s just I didn’t really even know where you lived and I was-“

“Oh my God, shut up!” I interrupted.

He looked stunned, blinking a few times.

“Sorry,” I held my hand to my forehead in exasperation. “Sorry, it’s just you- you were making my head hurt.”

“Oh I’m sorry,”

“No, I promise it’s not you, if it’s okay with you can I go back to sleep? I don’t really feel like going home right now,”

“Yes of course you can!” He sat up and pushed the blanket off of him before standing. “Wait I’ll be right back,” He said. I nodded before hesitantly sitting down on the couch.

He came back rather quickly with a glass of water and some painkillers. I mumbled a quick thank you before taking them.

I yawned, surprised that I was able to actually feel tired. Normally it took at least a few hours before I could sleep if I even got the chance.

“You can take the bed,” Peter informed.

“I just wanna stay right here,” I said lazily.

He tried to scoot over but I already had my arms wrapped around him so I squeezed him tighter. I looked up and his face was tinted red, smiling before I drifted off.

I felt light hit my face and I heard the squeak of a door. I sat up and slowly unwrapped my arms from around Peter. Walking over towards May.

“I’m sorry I didn’t know if it was okay for me to stay here I should’ve called and asked,”

“No, no it’s perfectly fine,”

“Okay…”

“He talks about you all the time you know,”

I smiled at her and she smiled back.

“Thanks for not killing me for being in your house,” I joked. “But I should probably get home anyway,”

I didn’t go home. Mostly because I don’t have an actual home. I didn’t go to any of the almost 13 places I’ve stayed at, at some point either. I went to some shitty hotel. I had enough money to stay for about a week. Which was great I could stay for all of homecoming week then I’d have to find somewhere else to stay before I got more money at least.

The last step for this day was go to Olivia’s house and get my stuff back. I made my way into the house through the back door, and sure enough she was sitting on the couch like parents in movies when they catch you sneaking out.

She eyed the bag in my hand.

“So you’re leaving?”

“I-“ I didn’t get the chance to speak.

“And you weren’t going to tell me, oh okay,”

“Olivia…”

“Where are you gonna stay?”

“I’m going back to my grandma's house,”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, again I’m sorry that I tried to leave without telling you I just-“

“Didn’t want to be interrogated?”

“Yeah…”

”It’s okay, I get it, come give me a hug,”

I moved giving her a hug and she mumbled

“You smell like booze,”

As soon as I got back to the hotel I turned on the movie Frozen. Which I knew was a bad idea because the movie always made me cry.

I ended up crying myself to sleep and by the time I woke up I was late for school. I slept for 18 hours straight.

If I was going to be late might as well have had a reason. So, I got smoothies.

“I love smoothies a lot, but banana is so so strong. Which like makes it pointless to put anything else in it. People should stop saying strawberry and banana smoothie because in reality it’s a BANANA and strawberry smoothie,” I took another sip of my smoothie.

“Damn bitch, you’re saying a lot and fast what’d they put in that smoothie,” Bri said examining the cup before turning to me again “And can I have some?” I laughed before lighty shoving her shoulder.

“Noo! Continue talking you were my reference for my excitement portrait,” MJ said flipping her sketchbook towards me “I’ve missed my one and only chance to see you happy,”

“Now I know you’re not talking, I don’t think anyone has seen you smile ever,”

I slid down the bench of the lunch table

“Whatcha watching Phineas?” I asked Peter. He quickly swiped out the app. “Was it porn?”

“No! Wha- What?”

I patted his shoulder “Relax dude, I was just messing with you,”

That was the last I’d spoken to any of my friends. In all actuality that was the last time I’d spoken to anyone besides the hotel staff. I hadn’t been to school since...what’s today? Wednesday. Well then I hadn’t been to school since 3 days ago. Which also means I haven’t eaten since a week ago?

Okay I know how bad that sounds but it’s not like I’ve been eating nothing. I just haven’t been hungry lately, I have had snacks though like goldfish and chips. I’ve just been too lazy to cook and don’t have the funds to cook. I’ve also been too lazy to fake a smile or whatever so I just haven’t been going to school.

However what I have been and haven’t been eating is the issue of concern here. It’s that alien shit from the Avengers a few years ago is so much deeper than anyone could have ever thought. I’d been in research mode for a while now. I call it the zone, anything you say to me will go unheard, I mean business when I’m in the zone. If I want something to happen it will.

“Okay so, I’ll start with the government flash drive. So the aliens that attacked a while back in 2012 were called Chitauri. So Loki had control of them and was using them as an army. Loki being Thor’s brother and the God of mischief,” I clarified.

''And Loki was attacking because he wanted to be king but his brother was king instead. I mean I think, I don’t really get that part. So there was this thing called the tesseract and it’s supposedly like super powerful. This branch of government called Shield doesn’t want Loki to have this so they keep, then the invasion ensues. This tesseract however is some space stone and Loki used it to bring in the aliens. It’s some sort of infinity stone whatever that means. Howard Stark found the stone in the ocean, because a Stark is always gonna be the one to fuck the world up when they think they’re helping. Then he and someone else founded Project Pegasus-”

“What’s project Pegasus?”

“I don’t really know but I know it stands for potential energy group alternate sources,”

“Oh, so it’s Shield that’s over this… Tesseract?”

“Exactly!” I clapped and the papers with all the information I printed from the flash drive rustled underneath me.

“What are you going on about?” Carmen asked. “Like what’s the bigger picture?”

“That’s the thing! I don’t know, this is like so covered up and coded that I can’t figure it out with information that I have,” I turned towards her “But I will, and that’s where your help comes in,”

“Y/N, when’s the last time you slept?” She tilted her head like those dogs in Minecraft when you have food.

“Last night,” I waved her off.

I looked down at the information I was able to find out about Kingpin since he was mentioned in the video my mom made for me. Apparently she worked for him for a while. So did Felicia but all she’d ever tell me was “He was an ass he did give me a gift I’m grateful for though,”. He had affiliations with everyone.

From what Black Widow released out unto the world he had connections with a Neo Nazi group called HYDRA which brainwashed people from what’ve heard.

Before I’d just wanted to take down the Vulture out of pettiness if we’re being honest, but now. Oh now? I knew I’d have to.

Another paper I’d printed from Kingpin’s affiliations caught my eye.

“Hey Carmen,”

“Hm?”

“Ever been to Vegas?”

Taglist:

@tomdiddlyumptious

#peter parker #peter parker fanfiction #peter parker x reader #mcu x reader #reader x peter parker #Peter Parker x Vigilante!Reader #peter parker x you #peter parker x fem!reader #peter parker x poc reader #peter parker x black!reader #peter parker x bi!reader #peter parker x bisexual!reader #peter parker x thorn #Thorn Series #spiderman x thorn #thorns prick

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tazzytypes · 5 years ago

Text

Apocalypse: Sanctuary - Chapter 5

Hey y’all! Thanks for your continued support. I love reading your comments and every like makes me feel more and more confident in my writing ability.

CONTENT WARNING: talk of past abuse and suicide attempts

See the masterpost for more chapters or read on AO3

The salon was unnaturally busy since Langdon arrived. Everyone seemed to have the same idea — keep an eye on those who have met with the man and wait for them to let something slip. Thing is, those who already had their interview relished in the spotlight, not really revealing anything of worth.

It had been three whole days since Langdon arrived and Em could glean nothing from her fellow Purples or even the few Greys that whispered to one other in the hall. They viewed Langdon as the second coming of Christ. She couldn’t blame them. Anything would be heaven when compared to the hell Venable had made for them in the outpost. When she couldn’t harm the Purples, the Greys became her target.

Gallant wasn’t as much of a boast as Em had expected, though he made up for that with smugness masked as humility. He was almost as bad as Coco… though that shouldn’t be much a surprise.

“So…” Coco started, using the same tone she had with Em the night before, “how do you think it went?”

Gallant was stretched out like a cat on the sofa, leaning back and grabbing a glass of water from the tray of the nearest Grey.

“I think it went rather well,” he said, cradling his drink as a smile pulled across his face, “and I expect another interview very soon.”

Em sighed and glanced over at Andre and Dinah. They had closed ranks, keeping to themselves. Dinah would do anything to protect herself and her son. If it came down to it, Em wondered how far she would go to survive or if she would give in to the call of the void and jump off the roof.

Em had yet to have her interview… an official one, at least. It made her anxious, being one of the few Purples that had yet to sit with Langdon in his office. It was probably his intention, a fact that did little to comfort her. Her heart still raced in her chest at the thought of dying in this tomb. Her fear of life was at war with her fear of death and she was just waiting for one of them to win.

She was used to the anxiety, though it was difficult to manage at times. Standing up to Venable had been good practice for her nerves though her heart still fell to her stomach every time she dared raise her voice. Old habits die hard, she supposed.

Em scoffed at her own train of thought, a small amused smile coming to her lips as she turned her attention away from the group and towards the ever-burning inferno in the fireplace. It reminded her of that one scene in The Avengers when Bruce Banner turned back and said, “That’s my secret — I’m always angry.”

Replace the anger with anxiety and you’d be able to describe her since the day she was born — an anxious ball of nerves.

Around her, they all spoke of interviews, never giving out too much information and repeating the same things over and over and over. Em had seen high-school students after AP exams with more nerve than them. Langdon had to expect talk, literal life and death be damned. Secrets were hard to keep and harder to hide.

“I just wish there was a Buzzfeed quiz that could at least give a hint at what our fate will be,” Coco bemoaned. Like Em, she had yet to have an interview. The brunette had yet to work out how she felt being put into a similar category as the young heiress.

“The Victorians used to have a game,” Em spoke, closing her eyes as a buzzing fill her head. She rejoined the group, hoping conversation would make it go away. “Women would hold a candle and a mirror and walk down the stairs backward. They’d look through the mirror to see behind them and it was said one would either see the love of their life or their death.”

Em chuckled to herself and looked at Emily, “though given the number of death-by-stairs of that era the irony is—”

The idea, despite her sarcasm, quickly caught on. Any idea to past the time was a good idea, these days — more so given the circumstance. Emily had roped Em into joining the Bloody Mary-esk game.

First to go had been Coco, naturally. Next was Gallant, then Dinah. Andre had refused to join. A game of love and death wasn’t fun when you lost one to the other. Thus, Em found herself standing at the top of the stairs, staring pleadingly at Timothy and Emily to spare her.

The candles of the salon had been put out, leaving only the candles of the upper balcony to light their way. The darkness was still enough to make her uncomfortable. Em felt like she was alone again, screams coming from her phone as the walls shook around her. She liked her nightmares to stay in her sleep.

“Really?” Em groaned as Timothy held out a mirror and candle, “Why can’t I just go to the library and—”

He was grinning clearly enjoying himself, “consider it karma.”

“If I die I will haunt your ass.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts?”

Em opened her mouth to retort only to be cut off from someone down below.

“Don’t be a pussy!” Coco called from the bottom of the stairs, followed by chuckled from her fellow Purples waiting below. Em sent a scathing look towards her friends.

“Alright!” she relented, taking the objects from Timothy, “Fine!”

With a smile, Emily came forward and gently eased her friend to the first step.

“Have fun,” she whispered, far too amused.

“Oh, fuck off,” Em muttered, smiling despite herself.

Em used one foot to feel for the edge of the step. Suddenly, memories of being a little girl in gymnastics flew through her mind, feeling for the bar underneath her feet, falling to the hard mat below that smelled like feet. She had quickly learned she wasn’t one for the sport.

She was pulled from autopilot by a flash of gold in the mirror, startling her just enough to miss the step ever slightly, her ankle bending awkwardly and causing her to fall down the last few steps. She could hear the mirror shatter as hands came to steady her fall. Instincts made her favor saving the candle over the wounded ego that awaited her below. If this place were to burn a few bruises would be the least of her concerns. The thought of it alone scared her half to death, the menace of fireplaces and large skirts with far too many layers.

It took a moment for Em to realize she was on solid ground, quickly jumping back from the hands that were resting on her arms. Langdon stood there, unfazed and patient as a saint. His hands returned behind his back as he let her gather her bearings.

The room was silent, everyone watching with wide eyes. Emily stood at the top of the steps, mouth still wide with a gasp behind her hands. Langdon seemed to be waiting for her to speak, waiting for anyone else to break to silence. He wanted to see who would break.

“Well that’s one hell of an entrance,” Gallant said with a laugh, leaning on the banister next to Coco and the rest of the Purples.

Em and Langdon simply stared at one another. She saw his lip quirk ever slightly when the hairdresser spoke — annoyance.

Langdon finally spoke, ignoring the man behind him, “It’s time for your interview.”

He strode past her and she followed. She may have a rocky relationship with life, but she was no fool.

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

Sitting in that chair made her feel like she was about to be swallowed whole. If not for the corset holding her spine as straight as a ruler, she’d be tempted to slouch into it and allow herself to be consumed.

Langdon liked to let things sit, she realized. Sometimes the best first move was no move at all. The anxiety in her made her want to fill the silence, spare herself from doing nothing as he pulled out his files. Her toe tapped in her shoe, but that was all the fidgeting she’d allow herself to do. Everything was a test. For once, her anxiety was serving her well.

Tossing a file on the desk he took a seat across from her. His hands rested on the arms of his chair and he leaned back, cocking his head as he watched her.

“What is your sexual orientation?” he finally asked.

“Flexible.”

He almost seemed to smirk, but the lights liked to play tricks on her, “I require a more specific answer… you understand.”

“I’m on the asexual spectrum,” she answers, “but I am romantically interested in both men and women.”

“So you have no desires of the flesh?”

“An idea is better than reality. It’s a spectrum and...it’s complicated.”

He leaned forward on his chair, “so you do experience attraction.”

“Emotionally, yes, but I’ve found relationships to be… stressful.”

This seemed to intrigue him, his head turning. It kind of reminded her of a dog, narrowing in on a sound or a curiosity.

“Stressful?”

Of all the questions — of all the tics to have...damn her anxious rambling.

“Like I said,” Em repeated, “ideas are better than reality. I’ve tried the whole…”

She gestured to nothing in particular, “… dating thing. Every time I try and get into a relationship it just feels… wrong.”

Langdon looked down at the file he had out, “and when was your last relationship?”

Em sighed, “Is that really important?”

“Let me be very clear,” Langdon spoke, voice betraying his aggravation as he placed both hands on the desk, “Your success in these interviews depends on your honesty. If you hedge, I will know. If you lie, I will know. If you try to trick me, I will know, and this interview will be over.”

“And I’ll die,” she finished for him, “suspected as much.”

“Good,” Michael said with a nod, retreating back in his seat, “now, as to my question.”

Em waved a dismissive hand, “My last date was just a while before the bombs. Didn’t work out.”

Langdon’s face was once again an iron and unreadable mask as he wrote something down. The corner of his lip twitched as if he hadn’t gotten the answer he wanted.

“What?” She found herself asking him, “I thought such an answer would please you — narrow down the pool of survivors to those... better at those sorts of things..”

His eyes trained on the file, giving Em the sense that he was more focused on it that her words, “Just because you have no desire to copulate with a man doesn’t mean you can’t repopulate.”

Em could only shake her head, “god, you make childbirth sound worse than I imagine it to be.”

“There are no gods here,” he was quick to correct, “this is the apocalypse. Those who survived the fire have been abandoned.”

This time Em cocked her head to the side, eyes narrowing ever slightly as she tried to figure him out, “for a man who seems so opposed to the thought of god you certainly know your bible facts.”

Michael smirked and clicked his pen, bringing the file to his lap, “only the parts that interest me.”

He quickly went back to questioning her, voice sounding more robotic as he read the question word for word.

“How, exactly, do you feel about childbirth?”

He looked up at her as she paused, a brow raising at her silence. Em bit her lip as she considered what to say, hands reflexively going to her hair as he continued to stare.

“It terrifies me,” She admitted, “but luckily the brain masks the memory of it due to trauma.”

“What about it terrifies you?”

She thought such an answer would be obvious, “The pain.”

Once again he seemed interested in her words, expression full of judgment, “you fear pain?”

“I’d be foolish not to.”

“Some would argue that it is a sign of weakness,” he noted.

“Courage is not the ability to be fearless, but to continue on despite the fear,” she told him, voice steady with the words she had told herself a million times before, “we fear pain because that fear keeps us alive.”

“What else do you fear?” He asked, once again leaning forward.

“Quite a few things,” Em said, leaning back in her chair as she became more comfortable. Rambling was equally a tic and a coping mechanism. Langdon intended to that to his advantage. “Some rational… some irrational.”

“Such as?”

“Rational or irrational?”

“Either.”

“Spiders, roaches,” she lists, looking up at the ceiling as she thought, “typical, I know. Then again, roaches may have survived this nuclear winter so perhaps not so irrational as one would think.”

The amusement seemed to return to Langdon’s eyes. He dipped his head down to hide his expression from her, but she had already seen enough.

“…Dolls,” she admitted after a pause, “creepy little things.”

He didn’t move to speak so she filled the silence for him, “Psychologists say it’s because they are not quite human. Our minds can’t decide between viewing them as objects or beings… subconscious and all that. The uncanny valley, I think they call it.”

Her voice trailed off. She knew how she sounded rambling off facts. Langdon looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

“Deeps waters so dark you can’t see your feet,” She continued to list, voice growing more distant the deeper she dove into her own mind, “yelling men, death.”

“What about death scares you?”

Silence, then finally an answer, “Becoming nothing.”

“You don’t believe in god.”

Not a question. Em sighed. This was always a difficult conversation to have. “I believe that I cannot claim there is a god.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am mortal... human”

Langdon hummed, jotting something down before he looked back to her. They both sat in silence until Langdon broke from her gaze, flipping through the files. No doubt hunting for more questions.

“Does it really feel like falling asleep?” She asked before she could think, “the poison in those vials?”

“Why would I lie to you?” he countered, offense glinting in his eye as he looked up at her.

“It’s not that you lie,” She corrected, shaking her head, “but that you don’t know the truth yourself. Lethal injections were supposed to be painless, but they merely gave the appearance of a calm death.”

“The pain… and nothingness,” he notes, referencing her previous words, “...things you fear... You seem quite convinced of a void-like afterlife.”

“I tried to kill myself when I was young.” She admitted, not sure why. The words just left her.

Langdon halted in his actions. His voice was quiet, almost sympathetic. “How young?”

“Which time?”

He was quick to change the conversation, raising to his feet and crossing the room. Em didn’t take her eyes off him, partly out of intrigue and partly out of paranoia. There was a table with a water pitcher and some glasses. He filled up two and turned around, stopping by her chair and holding out one of the glasses.

Hesitant, she reached out and took it from his hands. Langdon noted she made special care not to touch his hand.

“You’ve spoken of fear... But what about your anger?” he prompted, choosing to lean against the desk instead of returning to his chair. Em waited for him to take a sip of his drink before she did.

“The two are often related,” she noted.

“That they are.” He agreed before insisting, the fire in the room more prominent in his eyes, “tell me... what enrages you?”

“Generally?” She countered, “or specifically?”

He smiled and shook his head, “either.”

“Anger and any emotion come at random. It cannot be controlled.”

“Have you ever lost control?”

“Yes, but it was long ago.”

“How long?”

“I was a child,” she said, frowning as she was forced to remember bits of her past she had buried long ago… burned from her mind, “yet to learn that anger is fine as long as you know how to manage it.”

“What did you do?”

“Tried to bash someone’s head into a concrete floor,” she told him with a frown. It certainly wasn’t one of her finer moments. One that she regretted deeply.

“What was their crime?” Langdon pressed, far too amused than was healthy. He really was insistent about everything, wasn’t he?

She looked to her glass as she pulled the memory out, a rueful grin pulling at her lips, “stealing a dress-up shoe.”

When she looked up at the man she couldn’t help but laugh, a short laugh but a laugh none the less. It threw the man off, staring at her like she had grown an extra head.

“That amuses you?”

“You’re expression,” she said, “you were obviously expecting something more. I was a child, in my defense.”

“And when you weren’t a child?”

He watched as something flashed in her eyes, a familiar fire. Langdon’s face suddenly wasn’t all that amusing.

“I learned that violence isn’t the only way to hurt someone.”

“But certainly is the most satisfying,” he sighed, taking another sip of water, “wouldn’t you agree?”

“A martyr would see their death as a triumph,” Em reasoned, “to deny them that death would be far more painful.”

“And your father,” he noted, closing the file. Em’s jaw clenches at the mere mention of the man. Langdon knew he hit an Achilles heel. “What punishment is worthy of him?”

Em stared at the file before him. She wasn’t stupid. He probably had any and all documentation of her life from therapy sessions to many angry written tweets.

If she was being honest, she hadn’t thought of the man since the apocalypse. There were more threatening dangers than a narcissistic, vile —

Her answer comes quicker than Langdon expected. Her eyes meeting his full of hate and fury.

“To spend the rest of his days slowly rotting from radiation. To be helpless and forced to face that even the smartest men are at the whims of the world around them.”

This was the answer he was looking for.

He was looking right into her mind and reading her thoughts... or at least that’s how it felt. Langdon was diving deep into the parts of herself she buried down, raising them up like some sort of psychological necromancer.

“Fascinating,” He leaned forward with a sadistic grin. “Tell me more about him.”

The tenseness in Em’s body was no longer from anxiety, but restraint. The mere mention of that man was enough to make her see red. There was a reason she hated Venable. The over-seer was far too similar to the man she’d prefer to forget.

“I’d rather not,” she told Langdon, hoping he’d let it rest. She wasn’t even surprised at his pushing.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Because remembering gives him more power over my life than I want him to have!” She snarled, a pale, tightly clenched fist coming to slam into the arm of her chair. It sat there for a moment before shaking fingers curled away from the palm of her hand.

His hand reached out to hers, curled around the arm of her chair like a claw. The blond waited for her tension to cease, the white around her knuckles to disappear.

“What did he do to you?”

Her rage quickly returned and she snatched her hand from the man, hissing “What does that have to do with survival?”

“A great deal,” he explained, unfazed as always, “our past traumas can be indicative of future actions.”

He let her seethe in silence. She knew she would not be able to leave the room until she gave him the answer he wanted.

“The first memory I have of him,” she proceeded, speaking slowly as the words threatened to rip her apart, “he grabbed my arms so tight I thought they’d break and screamed at me after I dropped a glass of milk.”

“How old were you?”

She shook her head and offered a half-hearted shrug, “the counters were taller than I was.”

When she finally leaned back in her seat all Langdon could see was a scared shell of a child trying to hide from the bogey-man. What would emerge from the tightly wrapped cocoon of trauma? Or had the creature already spread its wings?

“What else?”

Langdon’s voice was gentle, but she was not buying the act.

“Isn’t that enough!” she snapped, “Every word that left my mouth and every step I took was like walking on eggshells.”

She shook her head, a buzz beginning to fill her body, “and I wish I broke more of them instead of being afraid. I wish I-”

Langdon rounded her chair and squeezed her shoulder, the other pulling out a handkerchief and holding it out to her. She only pulled away from his touch.

“You don’t like physical affection,” he noted.

“Not from strangers.”

Langdon took a step back, curling the handkerchief around his fingers as he returned them behind his back.

“A physical examination is also required,” he said, voice back to the no-nonsense tone he addressed everyone with. “I can call Venable if you prefer but we both know she would not be fair in her examination.”

“My mom was a nurse,” Em said, turning to the man who stood just to her right, “A physical exam doesn’t mean what you are implying. So unless you’re going to test my blood and record my weight for your file —”

“Your file says you have a history with illness,” Langdon noted, grabbing it off his desk.

“Father smoked when I was a kid. Didn’t care about his own lungs and certainly didn’t care about mine.”

“What about your migraines?” he asked, reading down the list.

“Not terrible, but not entirely pleasant, either.”

“And your depression?”

Em scoffed, “it’s the end of the world. We’re all depressed.

Closing the file, he tossed it back onto his desk, “you’re the only one here that does not have a companion.”

Emotionally and physically tired, Em was ready for the interview to end. Survival or not, the line of questioning was lengthy and intense.

“We’re all companions,” She said, forcing a smile she usually saved for customer service or Coco, “are we not?”

“Not in a deep manner,” he noted, “Venable has Mead, Coco has Gallant, so on and so forth. Perhaps not the companions they wished for, but companions none the less.”

“I have Emily.”

Langdon shrugged, sitting in his chair like a kind on his throne. “When she’s not with Timothy.”

“You seem to watch us quite closely.”

“I’m tasked with choosing the people who keep the human race alive.” He said, enthusiastically gesturing to the world around them with a small turn, “I must comb through the choices with a fine-toothed comb.”

The blond had expected tears from her. He had worked his way up to the most important questions, the most emotional scarring memories… but she sat there, dry-eyed and looking like she’d rather toss him into the nearest fireplace than deal with any more of his questions.

“I am content with my own company,” She insisted.

He came back to her seat and caged her in her seat, hands on either armrest, “I thought we agreed not to lie, Emily.”

Nostrils flaring and eyes full of fire, she leaned forward until she was almost nose to nose with the man, gaze unwavering, “I’m not lying.”

He eyed her up and down in a way that made her feel like he was looking into her head or skinning her alive with his mind. Finally, he retreated. “Loneliness emanates from you in waves.”

“I said I was content in my own company, not that I liked being alone.”

Langdon’s brows knitted together, “are they not the same thing?”

“They are intertwined,” she told him, “but can exist separately. Thoreau wrote about it… Solitude I think he called it.”

“Are you lonely?”

“I think we all are… some of us just deal with it better than others.”

“And how are you dealing with it?”

He seemed to cling onto her words when she spoke. Timothy, Emily, and herself loved to speculate on philosophy and the nature of their own humanity, but the other two were more of scientific minds than poetic. Talking to Michael… well, she didn’t know how to feel.

“One must learn to be content with their own company before they can be content in the company of others,” Em said, “I try to think of it as some sort of test of character.”

“But are you content?”

Em smiled at the question, whatever doubt or anxiety in her bones completely gone and replaced with something Langdon couldn’t quite place.

“Never.”

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

“Thank you for your time,” Landon said, holding the door open for her to leave.

The interview had felt like an eternity and an instant all at once. Em kept her distance from him as she passed through the door.

“Is that a genuine sentiment or a warning of my possible demise?”

Langdon smirked, “it’s whatever you want it to be.”

She scoffed. It was a stretch to expect any answers from the man. He went to speak once more, but something down the hall caught his attention down the hall.

Stepping back, his features went blank. “Until next time.”

Em glanced down the hall to see Emily just standing there, lips twisting as she waited for her friend to get closer. When the brunette glanced behind her, she found the door to Langdon’s office closed. Lips pressing into a thin line, she made her way over to Emily.

As soon as Em was within reach, Emily was pulling at her arm and glancing over her shoulder like Langdon was hot on their heels.

“How was your interview?” she asked.

“How was yours,” Em countered with a smile which quickly fell as she saw her friends face. “… what’s going on?”

Already tripping over her own feet as Emily tugged her along, she nearly toppled over as the girl pulled her into a nearby room. Em had barely a moment to right herself as her friend shut and locked the door behind them.

“We have… varying opinions,” Emily finally answered, glancing at Timothy. Em nearly jumped at the sudden presence of the boy leaning against a table with his arms crossed. It looked like a sort of break room… or at least where Venable was staring excess tables and chairs. There was a surprising lack of order to the objects strewn about… definitely storage.

Em righted herself, brushing out her skirt as she looked between the pair. “Which are?”

“Emily thinks we should make a run for it.”

“Timothy!”

Em sighed and looked to the heavens for guidance as Emily stared daggers at her boyfriend. She had planned to gradually work up to her proposal, but Timothy wanted to get this over with before anyone noticed their disappearance.

“That sounds like a terrible idea.” Em sighed. Timothy made a small gesture to her before giving Emily a look that screamed ‘I told you so.’

“Langdon survived!” Emily tried to reason, looking between the pair, “so can we!”

“Langdon has access to more resources than we do,” Em said.

“We’re smart. We can—”

“Figure it out? Emily, we can’t even figure out how our own outpost is run and, trust me, I’ve tried.”

Emily was exasperated, looking at the other two as if they had lost their fucking minds.

“We can’t just sit here and wait to die!”

Em pinched her brow, feeling the buzzing feeling return once more, “I’m not putting my life on the line to play hero like were in some YA novel.”

“That’s what I said,” Timothy sighed.”

Emily was livid, gaping for a moment before throwing her arms up in anger. Her hands came to rest upon her head as she paced back and forth.

“What’s with you two?” She demanded, gesturing violently at Em, “you practically jump at the opportunity to oppose Venable!”

“This is bigger than airing someone’s bullshit,” Em said, trying to keep her voice even and calm, “It’s suicide. Have you forgotten the state of the world?”

“Have you forgotten the world?” Emily countered, “it wasn’t great but there were rules, opportunity… order.”

Timothy could only look between the two women as they engaged in debate. Things were stressful enough. Last thing they needed was to tear the other apart.

“I’m not saying our situation is great. But if we try to leave, we die. Plain and simple.”

“Not if we have a plan,” Timothy finally spoke, both girls finally turning to face him.

“Langdon…” He spoke, taking a moment to find the words, “there’s something wrong about him. I don’t trust him.”

Em scoffed, blood still boiling, “tell us something we don’t know.”

“Those snakes were dead!” He exclaimed. Em’s lips pressed into a thin line. He wasn’t wrong, but none of them could even begin to find out what it meant… if it meant anything at all.

“So Langdon is a necromancer,” Emily sighed, shaking her head at the absurdity of this new argument, “how does that change anything?”

“We don’t have to die here,” Timothy said, looking between the two, “we wait and then follow him to the sanctuary.”

“And how do we get in?” Em said, nose scrunching as she thought of a million ways the plan could go wrong, “security protocols here sound an alarm if you simply come within a football field distance of the outpost.”

“How do you—?”

The brunette waved a dismissive hand, “it helps to be nice to the prison guards.”

“We need to act,” Emily emphasized for what felt like the hundredth time.

“We need to get all the facts!” Timothy countered.

“We need to wait!” Em snapped. She was tired and emotionally spent and done with this conversation. “I don’t want to die without a fight, but we need to keep our heads low. It’s barely even been a week. We’ve all only had one interview.”

“Time is running out,” Emily hissed, leaning on the table and looking like she was going to strangle the girl on the other side.

“Time will run out faster if anyone hears a single word of this conversation! I won’t die because of a misstep!”

“Whose side are you on?”

“Mine!” Em practically shouted, “just like everyone else in this fucking place!”

Emily scoffed, stepping back and crossing her arms, “so we’re just scraps.”

“That’s not what she’s saying,” Timothy reasoned, reaching out for his girlfriend who only pulled away from his touch.

“Whatever,” she huffed, rounding the table and glaring daggers at Em as she stormed out of the room, “if you won’t do something, I will.”

The buzzing in Em’s head intensified as Emily slammed the door shut behind her. She rose a hand to ease the headache that threatened to appear, a flash of light exploding behind her eyes. For a moment she swore she saw something — Emily and Timothy… eyes staring blankly at the ceiling with foaming mouths.

Em moved towards the door, hoping to try and reason with the other girl, but was stopped by a hand on her arm. Timothy smiled at her, expression pity-filled and tired.

“I’ll talk to her.” He reassured, “Don’t worry.”

Em could only sigh, “I don’t want her to die a martyr, but if we act too hastily that’s what she’ll become.”

“Just let her cool down. Her interview… all our interviews have us on edge.”

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

Em stared up at the ceiling as she laid in her bed. She used to do that back when the world was alive, listen to the passing cars and people outside her window… the birds chirping and the breeze dancing through the trees. Now there was just silence… so much she could hear her blood pounding in her ears. Desperately, she tried to recall the sounds — like the faces of the dead, they had faded from her mind.

The fight with Emily had her worried. Friends fought… that was just reality and you couldn’t spend a year and some change in quarantine with someone and not get annoyed with them at some point. But this fight… it wasn’t over something simple — a tendency to be late or forgetting a birthday.

With a sigh, Em sat up and stared at the floor instead of the ceiling. This was why she did things on her own. It certainly made executive decisions easier. The greater good was all Emily cared about, but Em…

She was so tired of sacrificing herself for others… for the grander design. It was what she did all her life. Em kept quiet about her father because he was the only hope she had of getting through college. She let people use her again and again in the name of friendship, draining her dry until there was nothing left but sunken remains.

Michael was right. Everyone else had someone to rely upon. Em had to look after herself.

Em focused on the feel of her hands on her hair, fretting at the ends. She frowned at the roughness of the ends — overdue for a trim. Reaching back towards her desk, Em paused. Venable had confiscated her sewing kit, scissors and all, on the pretense of “hoarding supplies.”

Sitting for a moment, she reluctantly rose to her feet and wandered down the hall. Each step she questioned her judgment, but still, her hand rose to knock at Gallant’s door.

“Ugh,” a voice groaned on the other side, “what?”

Twisting the doorknob, Em poked her head into the room. Gallant had been laying in his bed, now propped up on one side as he looked at her.

“Can I borrow your scissors?” she asked.

He looked her up and down, “why?”

“I want to do arts and crafts,” she found herself saying, deadpan.

The hairdresser’s face contorted into disgust, “those are quality—”

Em rolled her eyes, “calm down, I just want to trim my split ends and the supplied conditioner really isn’t helping.”

Gallant finally rose to his feet.

“Do you even know how to use them?”

“They’re scissors.”

This time he rolled his eyes, wandering over to his vanity and motioning for her to sit down. She eyed him, coming into the room but not moving to the chair.

Gallant sighed, “this is a one time offer.”

“You’re petty, Gallant.”

He shrugged his shoulders, not moving to deny the fact as he arranged his tools, “and?”

“How do I know you won’t make me look like a soccer mom asking for the manager at McDonald’s.”

The man smirked and waved a comb in her direction, “because hair is the one thing I hold sacred in this cesspool of an apocalypse.”

Em eyed him for a moment before wandering over to the chair and sitting down. Gallant looked at her, obviously not expecting her decision. “That was easier than I thought it would be.”

“I know where you sleep.”

She could see Gallant smirking in the mirror, “touche.”

He continued to get his supplies ready before analyzing her hair.

“How was your interview?” He asked, breaking the silence.

“Tense. Yours?”

He shrugged, searching through his drawer for something, “alright. I guess. It’s not like we have a basis for comparison.”

“It feels like he’s reading your thoughts,” She found herself saying without thinking.

“Yeah,” Gallant chuckled, “it’s like he has fucking x-ray vision.”

“Remember when they used to have those spy-devices marketed to kids?” Em recalled, earning another amused smile from the hairdresser.

“You think Langdon’s following us around with a nice iPhone attached to a toy car?” Gallant asked, leaning on the back of the chair with his other hand on his hip.

“What if this whole place is bugged?”

“Normally I’d say you sounded like you were on LSD, but I wouldn’t doubt it.” He admitted, “might as well put on a show, right?”

“What if it’s like the fucking Hunger Games and we’re the entertainment.”

Gallant laughed, “this whole thing makes me feel like I’m in an indie-film fest.”

Finally, he began to work on her hair. Hands ran through the locks, figuring out the texture and thickness.

“How is your hair so soft?” He asked, running through it with a comb for good measure.

“Virgin hair.”

“You’re telling me you never styled your hair.”

“I never had to,” Em shrugged, “internet was full of natural solutions.”

She looked up at him without craning her neck, “rag-curls were a godsend.”

Gallant paused and made a face, “but is the stiff neck really worth it?”

“It is if you do it right.”

The man laughed, “I like you.”

They lapsed into silence once again, Gallant getting lost in the task at hand while Em wandered in her own thoughts.

“I used to have a friend who did hair,” She found herself telling him, “just graduated from cosmetology school. We’ve been friends… were friends for almost 11 years.”

Gallant was only partly paying attention to the conversation, “Was she any good?”

“Chopped off my hair right before the bombs dropped,” Em said, a sad smile pulling at her lips, “shit used to be down to my waist.”

“Ballsy,” Gallant approved, “I like it. Feels like I kept getting clients all asking for the same thing over and over.”

“What about Coco?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “I love her, but at the end of the day she’s another straight white girl. They never take risks.”

“To their defense, the first time I got a short cut my stylist made me look like I was wearing a fucking bowl.” Em chuckled, “Took me three fucking years to grow back.”

He fluffed her hair a bit, running a brush through it a couple more times before looking at her through the mirror, “Well, I might not have a mister, but I think I did a damn good job.”

Em smiled, “thanks, gallant.”

“Like I said, hair is my passion,” He took the towel from around her neck and shook it out, ”and working without modern appliances is now a personal challenge.”

She ran her hand through her hair, turning in her chair to look at the man as he put his supplies away, “They did some weird shit for hair in the Victorian era.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“About the hair?”

“About the fact that you know about the hair.”

“Like I said: I’m an insomniac and things get weird on YouTube. You want to hear or not?”

Gallant shrugged, “not like I have anywhere else to be.”

Em smiled and went into her explanation, Gallant sitting on his bed facing her.

“So they used to collect wads of hair from haircuts or just natural shedding and they’d use them either as plats or to give more volume… kind of like those ‘insta-bun’ infomercial stuff—”

Gallant was surprisingly attentive to her words, for once actually listening. Sometimes he’d even ask questions. At some point, he gasped and jumped to his feet.

“You gave me an idea!” he exclaimed, rushing over and turning her to face back towards the mirror, “Stay still!”

“What are you—”

“I need a guinea pig.”

“You’re not going to cut all my hair off, are you?”

“Like you said: you know where I sleep, but,” He mused, “your historical knowledge has given me a way to do this one hairstyle without blow-drying and I want to see if it works.”

Em sighed and looked back towards the mirror, “just don’t make me parade around like a model.”

“Your sacrifice is noted.” Gallant said, “besides, it’s not like there’s anywhere else for you to be.”

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

Em scratched at her scalp, still sore from Gallants tugging. The library was quiet, anatomy books scattered around her without a single sight of Timothy or Emily. She imagined the latter was still calming down. God, it hadn’t even been a full day yet.

She looked between the books before her and her sketches. The apocalypse had given her ample time to do studies of all the things she’d always put off. Her sketchbook nearly full, she wondered what she’d do once the final page was completed. At this point, she imagined she didn’t have to worry too much about that.

“You like to read,” A voice mused. This time she didn’t jump, head turning to Langdon as he appeared before her.

“I feel like we’ve already had this conversation.”

He chuckled, “I have to admit, I thought it was performance theater.”

“It’s not like I have a job or anything to pass the time,” she noted, “and there’s no internet.”

Cocking his head, he peered at her drawings from over her shoulder. Em gritted her teeth and tried to not show how much the action bothered her.

“Here to collect me for another interview?” she asked.

He hummed, taking a moment to process her question before responding, “merely observing.”

She closed her sketchbook, forcing him to look her in the eyes.

“Why don’t I believe that?”

Another smile was her only response.

“You never mentioned your mother.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t another interview.”

“I said I wasn’t collecting you for another interview,” he noted, coming to sit in the chair beside her, “I’m simply curious.”

“Your curiosity could lead to my own damnation,” Em turned to face him, her shoulder nearly brushing his, “a way to put me under a fine-toothed comb.”

“Curiosity killed the cat?” he offered.

“I’d use the word ‘murdered,’” she scoffed, “don’t know how the rest of the rhyme would apply, however.”

Langdon wasn’t amused… or at least didn’t let it show, “You’re avoiding the question.”

“Yes,” she said, “last thing I want to do is start in a new world with the shadow of my parents looming over my head.”

“They only loom if you give them the power to do so.”

Em sighed, yielding to her executioner.

“My mother was a co-dependent,” she said, the words rushing out as if they couldn’t get out fast enough, “too afraid to be alone that she’d put up with the worst of men instead of leading a fulfilling life on her own.”

“You blame her,” Michael noted, propping his head on his hand.

“I could have excused the desperation,” Em made abundantly clear, “if she hadn’t emotionally abused me as well — gaslighting and the like.”

“You’d rather be a punching bag?”

“Visible scars are easier to prove in court than those confined to your mind.”

He leaned back in his chair, watching as she rearranged the books. She was doing anything to not meet his gaze.

“What about you?” she finally asked.

His eyes narrowed ever slightly.

“What about me?” he echoed.

“Who is Mr. Langdon?” she asked before gesturing in front of her, “forgive me, I don’t have a file to reference.”

Langdon smirked. He liked this confidence she was showing. It was as if the end of the world had come about so she could thrive, unafraid and confident.

“Are you trying to interview me?” he asked.

“I may be a dead woman in the next few days,” Em reminded, “humor me.”

Langdon leaned forward once more, “What do you wish to know?”

“What do you fear?”

She noted the look wished flashed before his eyes, a memory… unsavory… traumatic. All Langdon could think of was the voice of Ben Harmon and the wrinkled face of an old woman, the scent of cigarettes and liquor coming from her dead mouth.

“I never could have helped you,” Ben spoke, looking down upon him with disgust.

“Loneliness,” He tells the woman before him, straightening a bit in his chair as he fought to keep the passive facade he wore.

“Fascinating,” she mocked, pulling a smile to his lips, “One would think you are a god, but you are just as human as the rest of us.”

“You think I’m a god?”

“You hold yourself like one,” Em observed, noting his smugness. His smile faded as she went on. “and I don’t mean it as a compliment.”

She watched Langdon’s lips pressed into a thin line, “Then what do you mean?”

“You’re condescending.”

He scoffed, “Gallant is condescending.”

“But he doesn’t hold our lives in his hands— thank god.”

This time she leaned closer to him, mirroring his previous movements and propping her head on her hand, “knowledge is power and you have done a fine job at keeping that knowledge from us.”

His eyes scanned over her face, “it’s for the best of the human race.”

“And what do you believe is best?” she asked, “what world do you envision?”

A smirk crawled back onto his face, “that’s classified.”

This time she studied him.

“You must hold a high position in this sanctuary.” She observed, “higher than Venable… perhaps even those above her as well.”

“And how do you come to that conclusion.”

“Personal opinions aren’t classified,” She leaned back, putting some distance between them, “but opinions of the larger whole are another nature entirely.”

“Or I could be condescending.”

Langdon watched as she smiled ever slightly. It unnerved him… like she had seen something he hadn’t meant her to.

“… Or you could be condescending,” Em echoed. There was a moment of silence before she spoke again. “For someone so afraid of loneliness you seem to have backed yourself into quite the corner.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said. She watched him, completely at ease despite her interrogation. It was as if he always had a knife behind his back ready to impale someone upon it.

“You have some plan, then?”

“If you’re prepared for the worst then you’re ready for the best.”

“A good mentality to live by,” Em nodded, “but speaking of preparation brings up more questions.”

“Such as?”

“This place is made for us to survive the nuclear winter,” she notes, “but it is so unequipped for the task.”

Langdon raised a brow, “you think you could do better?”

“Yes,” she answered quite quickly and resolutely, “natural light, for one.”

“On what electricity?” he prompted.

“Hydro-electricity, wind,” she says, “batteries, even.”

He scoffed, “you make it sound easy.”

“You’re part of a doomsday group,” Em reminded him, “For fuck's sake, even the government has a library of seeds for this situation. Self-sustainability is the most important part of our survival.”

Langdon shook his head and laughed before looking at her once more, “oh, I like you.”

Em eyed him, “I’m afraid I haven’t quite decided if the feeling is mutual.”

“Most of you are so preoccupied with winning I was starting to doubt the efficiency of The Cooperation,” he says, “salivating like dogs over the last bone.”

“Desperation certainly gives insight into true natures.”

“That it does.”

Langdon rose from his seat, straightening out his jacket before walking towards the door, “I look forward to speaking to you again.”

Mulling over his words, Em stayed only momentarily — long enough that she wouldn’t run into the man again on her way out. Though she didn’t put it past him to lay in wait at the door. Collecting the books before her, she began to put them away.

She knew the library like the back of her hand now. Organized it herself. The Cooperative didn’t seem to care what order the books were put in, a testament to their last-minute planning. The brunette didn’t mind it. There was little to do to amuse oneself these days.

When she finally meandered back to the table, she found a book wide open on its surface. Chalking it up to her own forgetfulness she approached, brows furrowing as she realized which book it was.

Turning around, she looked for a sign of any sign of Emily or even Langdon. Mind games were certainly the latter's forte. Every hair on her body was standing on end, goosebumps rising on her arm and she turned and turned, looking for a sign of a single soul.

Finally, heart hammering in her chest, she approached the book. It was opened to another spell she hadn’t noticed before, meant for finding something lost.

“Quod est super me manus quondam sciebant,” she mouthed as she read, “revertere ad me quid suo mihi admondum est alicui licentiam.”

She shrieked as the candles went out around her, an echoing chorus coming from outside the library as a gust of wind raced throughout the outpost. Hands went to cover her head as she crouched on the ground as if she expected the world to cave in around her.

Her heart wanted to burst from her chest, eyes frantically looking here and there only to find nothing.

“Emily?” She called out, voice cracking in fear, “Timothy?”

All she could hear was the screaming voices, begging for salvation. Whimpering, she backed up until she could feel a wall, slowly sinking to the floor as she covered her ears which did nothing to drown out the screaming that echoed in her head.

Timothy was right, something was wrong about this place.

#michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x oc #michael langdon #ahs x reader #ahs x oc #ahs fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic #ahs apocolypse #ahs apocalypse fanfic

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vlonellc · 4 years ago

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Vlonellc- Encouraging the standard progression

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#vlone jean jacket #vlone palm angels #vlone meaning #vlone air force 1 #pop smoke vlone #where to buy vlone

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klaineccfanficlibrary · 5 years ago

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Hi so I 've fallen into a hole of wanting to get cosey and read for hours, but feeling like nothing is peaking my interest. Would you be able to recommend some multichapter fics (around 6-12) or oneshots that are really immersive from the get go. Something interesting, fun and unique. Basically please can you help a bored gal out of her fic finding rut 😔 xxx

Number of chapters isn’t a good measure because the length of each one varies enormously, depending upon the author. If you go to our Klaine Misc. Finder, you will see tags covering different word count lengths. Here are a few fics around 40k words. If these don’t interest you, come back and tell us what your favorite tropes are and what sort of rating you like to read. - HKVoyage

Don’t Do It by @xbeautifulunseenx

Kurt, who works for a letter-writing service, spends a summer writing emails to Blaine, who thinks Kurt is the guy he’s been dating for the past month. Kurt only has one rule: don’t fall in love. Of course, Kurt Hummel was born to push boundaries.

~~~~~

Somewhere In The World by Water_Nix

Somewhere in the World is the world’s most popular children’s show, and its star, Blaine Anderson, has been touted as the handsome second coming of Mr. Rogers. Even Kurt watches the show religiously, and his list of Blaine’s best attributes is even longer than that of TV’s most gushing reviewer. Yes, okay, so Kurt has a little crush. Maybe. Possibly. Shut up. So when he’s given the chance to meet the man in the flesh, he can’t really say no, can he?

~~~~~

Floorshow by neaf

Rocky Horror Audience Participation AU, Blaine is a law student, forced into a strict life by his father, but he misses performing. A chance meeting spurs his old desires, and he finds himself joining the cast of the local RHPS AP, where he meets the enigmatic Frank, and starts to remember who he used to be. But Frank is much, much more than he seems.

~~~~~

Kama Seusstra by GSJwrites

When erotica author Kurt Hummel follows the hot guy from the book convention party back to his hotel room, he thinks it’s simply a chance to spark his lackluster sex life. But when a scheduling change finds him sharing a speaker’s podium with his one night stand, he discovers that he has hooked up with Blaine Anderson, America’s darling of children’s literature.

Can the writer of a popular erotic serial find love with the author who has made bow ties the literary and fashion trend of children everywhere?

Kama Seusstra follows both their efforts to navigate an unlikely relationship as well as their stories: “Out at Home”, an online erotic serial set in the world of professional baseball, and “The Brave Little Bow Tie”, a children’s story about a bow tie trying to find his place in the world.

This is a story of sex, love and the hard choices we make to balance happiness and success.

~~~~~

In College You Know Who You Are by honorarymaraudr

This was written as a response to a prompt on the kink meme: “Kurt goes to college in NYC while Finn goes to college at OSU. Once in a while he goes back to Ohio and visits Finn on campus, where he meets Blaine during a party. The two hit it off immediately but are not looking for a relationship for whatever reason but both have needs, so they settle for a one night stand. Kurt keeps running into Blaine every time he comes back to Ohio (either intentionally or not ;)) and they quickly become friends with benefits. They also have phone/Skype sex and eventually hang out more together outside of the bedroom whenever Kurt is in town, until they realize they might want their relationship to be more than just physical. :)”

Note: PDF and EPUB files are available to download here.

~~~~~

Love Me Like a Hufflepuff by kookaburrito

Everyone has warned him about the Beauxbatons boys, how they only break people’s hearts. But Blaine, a Hufflepuff from head to toe, cannot resist a particular Beauxbatons boy. Is it true love or just deceitful veela charms?

#klaine #klaine fanfic #klaine fanfiction #fic finder #anonymous #xbeautifulunseenx #writer!Kurt #penpals!Klaine #Water_Nix #actor!Blaine #neaf #actor!Kurt #GSJwrites #writer!Blaine #honorarymaraudr #college!Klaine #kookaburrito #crossover fic #harry potter crossover

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idairsauthor · 6 years ago

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This Fcking Impeachment: Episode 4, Irregular Channels

PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to the least influential of the Sunday morning talk shows! With me in the studio today is imaginary talking head Conn mac Emer. Conn, welcome back to the show.

CONN: About thurking time.

PLAIDDER: I’ve been busy, and also despairing over the fate of the republic.

CONN: There’s so much that’s happened since the last episode, I don’t even know where to start.

PLAIDDER: Well don’t start with Yovanovitch, I already ran a piece on her.

CONN: Yes. I saw. Your president and all his lackeys are all lucky that I am imaginary.

PLAIDDER: I know. And now they’re all, well, her testimony was irrelevant because she didn’t actually witness any of the--

CONN: Well, of course she didn’t. They got rid of her precisely so that she wouldn’t. Anyway, she has the same story to tell that al of the other men are telling, it’s just a different phase.

PLAIDDER: And what story is that?

CONN: The story of the irregular channel.

PLAIDDER: Ah. Yes. You remember how Buttercup tweeted about his “absolute right” to appoint whatever ambassadors he wants, and then Yovanovitch said, sure, but why didn’t he just recall me then instead of letting these jackasses smear me for a year and a half? I’m paraphrasing, of course.

CONN: I do remember.

PLAIDDER: My guess is that you have an answer to this question.

CONN: Indeed I thurking do.

PLAIDDER: So I think some of our readers might like to know, before we get into this, that while you were serving as the Ideiren ambassador to the Nation, someone in your embassy decided to create an “irregular channel.”

CONN: Isn’t that a spoiler?

PLAIDDER: We don’t have to get into the details. Let me just ask: in your experience, why do people open up “irregular channels”? If you’re a head of state, and you already have an ambassador whose job it is to advance foreign policy in that country, why would you open an “irregular channel” between yourself and that country’s leader?

CONN: There are two possible reasons you might do that. One is risky but, for better or worse, a fairly common diplomatic tactic. The other is corrupt.

PLAIDDER: Let’s take the first reason first.

CONN: There are certain goals that you, the head of state, might wish to accomplish, but which would be difficult to do through official channels. So for instance, during the IRA hunger strike in 1980-81, there were negotiations to try to resolve it going on between the British parliament and the IRA, through a back channel created by MI-6.

PLAIDDER: Why through a back channel?

CONN: For the same reason this kind of thing is usually done through a back channel. The government in question wants to be able to say, “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.” So when--as it must--that government DOES negotiate with the terrorists, it has to be done in such a way that the head of state and the party in power can deny knowledge of it. In fact the IRA negotiator was told that if the government’s offer to the strikers was ever leaked to the media, they would deny any knowledge of it.

PLAIDDER: And at around the same time, Jimmy Carter’s government was negotiating for the release of the hostages in Iran--

CONN: --also, initially, through a back channel.

PLAIDDER: Why do governments negotiate with terrorists?

CONN: Because you can’t resolve a conflict without negotiation.

PLAIDDER: I think you CAN--

CONN: You can if you don’t mind killing people.

PLAIDDER: All right.

CONN: My point is: with a lot of acute crises like that there’s a public-facing policy and a private policy. But they’re working *together,* is my point. Everyone has the same goals and everyone’s doing their part to get to the same outcome. The final stages of the Iranian hostage negotiations were done through normal State Department channels. Everyone involved knew what was going on and they were all working together.

PLAIDDER: As opposed to this Ukraine situation--

CONN: Where Yovanovitch was kept in the dark about everything Giuliani and his friends were doing until some of the Ukrainian officials she worked with told her about it.

PLAIDDER: OK. So that brings us to the second reason you would create a back channel.

CONN: The second reason to create a back channel is that you want to do something corrupt or criminal and you don’t want anyone apart from your accomplices to know about it.

PLAIDDER: Can you just talk about what “something corrupt” means? I fear an increasing number of Americans are unclear on the concept.

CONN: All right. So. One reason this is confusing is the perception people have, which is not totally wrong, that all politicians are ultimately motivated by self-interest. And many of them are; but there’s a difference between ambition and corruption. It’s one thing to take a course of action because you think it will benefit, or at least please, the people who voted for you, or people who might later vote for you. It’s quite another thing to do something purely because it will benefit you.

It’s easier to see the difference when there’s money involved. If you’re a head of state and you’re taking people’s tax money out of the treasury and buying yourself palaces with it, people can tell that’s corrupt.

PLAIDDER: One would like to hope.

CONN: Well, in this case, your president was using people’s tax money to try to buy himself another four years in office. That’s just as corrupt as just stealing that money and putting it in the bank.

PLAIDDER: Because it only benefits him.

CONN: Exactly.

PLAIDDER: And hurts the country he’s supposed to be working for.

CONN: Right.

PLAIDDER: So how does this answer the question of why they had to smear Marie Yovanovitch instead of just recalling her?

CONN: Well, first of all, Yovanovitch is obviously not going to get involved in something like this. Leaving aside questions of personal integrity, she is experienced enough and smart enough to know that the whole thing will blow up in the faces of anyone involved.

PLAIDDER: Right. So they have to get rid of her. But why doesn’t Buttercup just recall her, in that case, and put in someone else?

CONN: You’re assuming that this whole mess was masterminded by a single person. A single intelligent person.

PLAIDDER: Yes. I am. Always a mistake with this crew, but I keep making it.

CONN: Your president wasn’t just gratifying his own corrupt desires here. He was also being played by Ukranians who wanted to gratify their own corrupt desires and used him to do it; and also by--

PLAIDDER: Vladimir Putin.

CONN: Perhaps not directly or personally, but yes. The smear campaign against Yovanovitch not only removes her from that post, it ensures she’ll never have a high-level post in this administration again. That’s what Lutsenko and his corrupt friends want. It also means there’s no American ambassador to Ukraine--because ambassadors have to be confirmed by the Senate, and support for Ukraine is one of the few things both parties can agree on, and they would want to make sure whoever went into that post was actually good at their job. That benefits Vladimir Putin.

PLAIDDER: The same way another four years of Buttercup destroying America would also benefit Putin.

CONN: Right. The same way that the overall destruction of your State Department benefits Putin.

PLAIDDER: And the smear campaign also contributes to that.

CONN: Yes. It will mean fewer people like Yovanovitch are willing to work for this administration under any circumstances--because now they know that this could happen to any of them.

PLAIDDER: So Buttercup has these two things that he wants. But a lot is going on here that’s much more about what Putin wants or what Yovanovitch’s Ukrainian enemies want or what Giuliani’s two goons want.

CONN: Exactly. Your president thinks he set up this back channel to get what he wants. But in fact he’s just being played by other, smarter people trying to get what they want. And that’s why they want to keep him in that job. So they can keep using him to advance their own agendas.

PLAIDDER: No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet.

CONN: What?

PLAIDDER: Never mind.

CONN: No, really, what are you talking about?

PLAIDDER: Back in the old days, we used to call a country that was nominally politically autonomous but in fact actually controlled by the Soviet Union a puppet regime. Buttercup’s presidency is turning the US into Russia’s puppet regime. You really cannot imagine how that feels to someone who remembers the 1980s. But anyway. You were explaining how Buttercup abusing his power for personal gain isn’t the only or even the worst thing that’s happening here.

CONN: No. Because he’s also creating more opportunities for other corrupt people to get what they want. That’s the thing with an irregular channel. You’re basically creating an infrastructure for corruption. Once you’ve built it, anyone can travel through it.

PLAIDDER: Ironically, after eleventy hundred Infrastructure Weeks, this back channel is the one highway he’s actually built.

CONN: Can you answer one of my questions now?

PLAIDDER: I’ll try.

CONN: Who is Kim Kardashian?

PLAIDDER: Oh my God.

CONN: Is she a head of state?

PLAIDDER: NO! No, my God, she is not a head of state.

CONN: So why was Ambassador Sondland discussing her with your president on that phone call from Kyiv?

PLAIDDER: Just to get this straight for our viewers...you are asking me why, when Gordon Sondland called the President of the United States on an UNSECURED CELL PHONE in a RESTAURANT in Ukraine to tell him how Zelensky had agreed to give him everything he wanted during a meeting where career diplomats were NOT ALLOWED to attend or take notes and that Zelensky “loves [Buttercup’s] ass” and will do anything Buttercup wants--why, after Buttercup talked to Sondland about this SO LOUDLY THAT HE COULD BE OVERHEARD BY PEOPLE AT THE TABLE, which let’s remember is a table in a crowded RESTAURANT, they then went on to discuss the matter of A$AP Rocky’s arrest in Sweden on assault charges with an equal amount of urgency and discretion?

CONN: Well apparently it has something to do with Kim Kardashian.

PLAIDDER: You are referring to this passage: “During the course of the phone call from the restaurant, Sondland also consulted with Trump on another matter of importance to the president at the time: efforts to free the American rapper A$AP Rocky from jail in Sweden at the request of reality television star Kim Kardashian.“

CONN: I am.

PLAIDDER: I am sorry to have to tell you, Conn, that Kim Kardashian is the star of a TV show entitled Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

CONN: Is...is it a news program?

PLAIDDER: NO IT IS NOT A NEWS PROGRAM!

CONN: So she’s...not a journalist.

PLAIDDER: No! She’s a celebrity!

CONN: What’s she famous for?

PLAIDDER: For being famous!

CONN: I don’t understand.

PLAIDDER: NEITHER DO I!

CONN: Isn’t there something she must have done at some point to become--

PLAIDDER: Yes, there was, but honestly Conn, I don’t want to talk about it. You have been through enough and so have I.

CONN: But what has she got to do with American foreign policy?

PLAIDDER: NOTHING! Don’t you understand? This is what we are dealing with here. We are dealing with a man who 'reads’ Kim Kardashian’s Instagram but can’t sit through the presidential daily briefing. We have elected as President of the United States someone who is more concerned about whether Kim Kardashian thinks he’s done enough for A$AP Rocky than he is about whether Ukraine will be annexed by Russia. I mean I don’t think you can really fully appreciate this, Conn, because nobody in either Ideire OR the Nation is LIKE THIS.

CONN: Not even the Chowderhead?

PLAIDDER: NOT EVEN HIM.

CONN: Wow.

PLAIDDER: OK, we’re just going to end this here, I think. If I think about the whole Ukraine/Kardashian juxtaposition for one more second I will literally explode. Tune in next week, I’m sure there will be plenty more developments.

#the current catastrophe #this fcking impeachment #impeachment #wof

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eerythingisshaka · 6 years ago

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Mr. and Mrs. Stevens

This is my submission for @hoopshoney and @purple-apricots Black Panther Anniversary/Valentines Fic Fest! Not sure if this fic goes with the theme of the fest and if its a bit....I don’t know, however I did a thing and that’s that on that!

Warnings: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations

Word Count: 4k

Erik Killmonger x Black!OC

Prompt: “Try not to get blood on your clothes. We have dinner reservations in half an hour.”

Her phone trills in her bra as she checks herself out in the mirror. The shift she picked up for a friend starts in 15 minutes and she hates when he calls beforehand.

Picking up the call she answers. “Hey Erik.”

“Wassup baby girl? You at work?” His voice carries extra loud in her ear and kind of scratchy.

“Yeah actually. So why are you calling?” She asks in annoyance while applying her lippie.

“Aww, now don’t be like that. You -- money tonight e--? So don’t trip!” His voice crackles in her ear.

She takes a step back to look over herself in the mirror, pushing her braids back and turning around to check her behind. “The only thing I’m tripping over is why you obviously aren’t using the new AirPods I got you last month? I can hear the 10.99 drugstore quality in my ear, it’s bringing down my mood.” A loud sniff interrupts her train of thought as she sees a brunette leaning over the rim of a sink with a rolled up dollar bill.

Erik tuts at her. “Come on, you know I’m a traditionalist when it comes to the audio experience! I gotta, I gotta have, you know, an immersive, like, surround sound type of thing and like, the cords help-”

She leans on the sink in front of her. “You lost one at the gym today huh? When I called you and you said ‘shit shit shit!’ that was you dropping my money down the drain, huh?”

“Your money? Since when is it your money only?” Erik asks out the side of his mouth.

A girl taps her on the arm, wiping her nostrils as she holds out the dollar bill with a line left on the sink. She shakes her head with a polite smile. “Since I been doing all the work here. These long nights, planning my own appointments, working these guys for tips with only my own damn wit, when they obviously want more!”

“Pssh, aight aight, calm down. You know I appreciate this. It’s OUR thing though, so don’t get your butt on your back with me. I know you nervous cuz a high roller comin in today.” Erik says calmly.

She picks up her bag and stuffs it in a locker, slamming it closed. “Yeah, it’s basically now or never, Erik. If I’m not what he’s looking for, he’s moving on and then we ain’t got shit!”

Erik shushes her softly. “Chill, trust me. You what he’s lookin for. Guys like him love bitches like-”

“You better be kind and rewind that for me!” She demands. Erik always slipping his tongue at the wrong times, ignorant self.

Erik laughs. “I don’t mean you! He likes ‘females’ like you. He studies them the most, you know? That better?”

She sighs, choosing to ignore the still derogatory term. “Fine. You just be here when it’s all said and done. I need you in times like this.”

“You do, huh? I need you too, if you wearin whatever was in that bag you packed. Shit looked tiny, so you ain’t covering much.”

She cackles out loud, her laugh bouncing off the walls of the room. “Shut UP! Don’t be silly right now!”

“Ain’t nuthin silly! WE ain’t playing, you feel me?” Erik says authoritatively.

She kicks her heel at the ground, biting her lip. “I might be in a mood to see my friend backstage tonight.”

“Oh, so you claiming this dick right now? Cuz, I thought this was MY dick! Since I put in all the work around here, getting hard, staying hard, breaking your fucking back so all you gotta do is take it and you can barely handle that-”

“Oh Erik, fuck on with that. Buh-bye!”

“You get it now? Be good, DeDe.”

---

Johnny Rocket’s Adult Entertainment Club has a reputation for high profile clientele and catering to every kink imaginable. Politicians, celebrities, CEOs, and anyone with a 7 figure or more annual salary has the possibility of getting in any night, however the waiting list was 6 months back, minimum. If your name is powerful enough, you may receive a bump for the inconvenience, but there’s no way that list would move, as people kept looking for a chance to have an extravagant night inside.

One did not have to be looking for a touch from a stranger in order to enjoy themselves there, the club scene is just as hopping with exquisite seating, expensive liquors and miscellaneous party favors for the bold. Tonight, Johnny Rocket’s is packed wall to wall for a birthday party of the man who runs the Upper West Side of Las Papeleras, of that’s what he would call it. Mark Foley is the embodiment of greed; a shark tank businessman with a lust for power. His monopoly of the financial district kept his pockets running over and the local law enforcement’s lined to keep his shady dealings going at an accelerated rate.

His dealings started off with drug trades across the southern border of the United States, renting out the time of immigrants on the promise of Visa documents and safe keeping of their families on the road to citizenship. This was a messy business however, as many of his vulnerable employees would be caught shortly after a drop or killed for being intercepted to ensure the details of his operation remained unknown. It wouldn’t take much to cover his trail with his buddies in DC anyway. Even with a successful run, Foley would instruct his subordinates to drop off the grid, leaving his pushers high and dry until ICE came for them eventually.

But he was out of that game, now it is all about real estate. Foley knew exactly where to upstart businesses for friends and confidants that would make him the richest man in America.

“The rundown, dangerous, and poverty stricken neighborhoods are nestled so conveniently between downtown and the burbs. We just need to get those low lifes sucking off the teat of our taxpayer dollars to get off some extra dough, or get the fuck outta there.” Foley slurs his words, picking up his tumbler of 12 year old whiskey.

One of his associates respond, shaking his head. “Ahh, come on, Foley. Those people have been living there for so many fucking generations! How could you uproot them like that, changing there way of life at the drop of a hat like that? Where’s your heart?”

Foley blinks his eyes a couple of times, staring at his acquaintance from across the room for what seemed like hours. The flashing, multi-colored lights of the club blur his vision as the bass of A$AP Rocky pounds at their temples.

“Really?” Foley asks loudly over the music, frozen with his drink in his hand.

The man laughs out loud, banging the back of the couch as he leans his head back in blissful humor. “Fuck no! I’m just fucking with you Foley, come on!” He boasts, picking up a bottle of whiskey, clanging it against Foley’s glass.

Foley shakes as his hoarse laugh builds in his gut. “Ohh, man, you had me going there for a second! You can’t joke like that with me man, you’re still on probation with me.”

The associate combs his hair out of his face, adjusting his tailored, chocolate suede jacket. “Let me have some fun, huh? Anyway, you know what to do. Call up Johnson to get in touch with Hesson about his eminent domain clause on the block, and kick those sons of bitches out on the concrete. They’ll find a way, roaches never die, you know? They just skedaddle on to a new nest to infest.”

Foley lights up a cigar, pointing it his way. “Exactly. I consider this motivation to do better for themselves. Hell, once I clean up the pigsty, they can bring their credit score and occupation info, if they have one, and make a deposit with 6 months rent to settle in to the swanky new digs I transform those rat traps from!”

A waitress comes over in a leather miniskirt and thigh high boots with a fringed crop top that rests off her shoulder. Half of her braids are bound on top of her head, with the rest cascading down her back. Even in the dark room and the intensity of the strobing lights, her melanin shown beautifully rich, bringing the table to her full attention.

“Can I get you gentlemen another round?” Her voice said with a sultry timbre, leaning forward to pick up bottle and adjoining glasses. Some of her braids fall in the face of a hypnotized Foley who reached his thick hands through them, sniffing.

“Mmm, if you mean the juice, that’s not what I need another round of, sugar.” Foley says wagging his eyebrows.

She looks over at him, pulling her braids back and out of his hands. “You are Mark Foley, correct?”

He nods slowly, mouth half hanging open. “I like the way you say my name, doll.”

“My name is Sade. Your friend here made arrangements for us to...get to know each other a little better…” Sade bites her lip, using her almond shaped eyes to invite Foley into the possibility.

He didn’t need too much convincing as he clapped his hands looking over at his associate. “You sly dog! You planned this for me?”

He shrugs. “Nothing but the best, for the man who holds my old hood in his hands.” Raising the bottle up again in solidarity, Foley springs up out of the booth, grabbing Sade by the waist.

“This EXACTLY what I need! Let’s not delay, drop those glasses at the bar and let’s boogie!” Foley exclaims, leading Sade along and leaving his associate with the bill.

Foley’s hands were lit up over Sade’s body, feeling her soft and firm portions of her body with no shame as she led him to the quieter, private rooms in the bottom level of the club. A black door marked with the number 8 in gold is where Sade took them before pausing to turn around and face him, snapping her fingers to regain his sober attention.

“Once we cross this threshold, you will need to behave yourself. I won’t ask you again, otherwise consequences will be set.” She says calmly.

Foley looks around the hallway, rubbing his hands together before whispering. “Whatever you say, mistress. I am at your command.” His Dad-bod practically vibrated with excitement as she opened the door. As it closed with a clang, Foley peers around to inspect the various chains, harnesses, chairs with binding mechanisms that decorated the room.

“Whew, this is-”

“SHUT UP!” Sade yelled with a crack of a whip. Foley turned around quickly in shock.

“Sade, I wasn’t-”

“Are you speaking out of turn after an order?” Sade snarls. In the midst of Foley looking around the room, she has put on a black lace mask covering her face and a nine tailed whip in one hand with ropes in the other.

Foley shakes his head excitedly. “My apologies!”

“Turn around and get on your knees.” Sade says walking around the perimeter of the room like a lioness tracking her prey. Foley does as he is told, fitting the profile of sub perfectly as he avoids eye contact.

“You are a stupid, worm-grubbing quim aren’t you?” Sade says matter of factly, playing with the nine-tails in front of him.

Foley nods aggressively.

“ANSWER ME! Don’t you have a tongue?!” Sade demands, this time cracking the whip across Foley’s arm.

He shrieks. “Agh! Yes! Yes mistress, I am! I do!”

“Hm, we’ll see about that later...Do you have a problem with authority?” Foley stammers, not sure how to answer. “A man of such wealth and status must know a thing or two about breaking rules….Are you going to break mine?”

“No mistress. I’ll listen to every word!”

Sade puts her heel into his chest, leaning against him on her knee as she speaks in his face. “Have you ever let a Black person tell you what to do?”

Once again, Foley is at a loss for words as Sade runs a gloved hand through his thin, short strands of hair, before bringing the palm of her hand square across his cheek with a hard SLAP.

“That ends today. Tell me Black Lives Matter.” Sade commands with a dig of her heel that makes him wince.

“Ahh, Bl-Black Lives Matter.” Foley says hesitantly.

Sade takes her foot off of him before cracking the whip on him again. “LOUDER!”

“Black Lives Matter! Thank God, they matter!” Foley says more enthusiastically.

Sade looks him over with disgust. “Take off your clothes as you recite every Black person you know that has contributed to the fabric of our nation. Go!”

Foley starts with the buttons on his jacket and an ode to Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. (Sade had to whip him for leaving off the Jr.) getting down to his briefs before stuttering on names, giving up before after he said Bill Cosby, holding his hands in front of his manhood.

“It’s not cold, put your hands down!” Sade demanded.

He does do quickly, looking embarrassed at the small protrusion he can’t seem to control.

Sade shakes her hand tutting him. “I’m glad you’re having fun. It’s a shame though, how little you know. The American private school system really failed you. However I am in a generous mood and have every intention on catching you up to speed. With a little help from a friend.”

On cue, the door opens and in walks his associate.

Foley protests. “Whoa, hey, this may have been incorrect info you got. I’m not into THAT.”

Sade grips his hair at the root. “Have my boot as a snack while the adults talk.” Stomping her foot in front of him, Foley bends down on the concrete floor to kiss and lick her shoe.

Sade sighs, wiping her brow. “Babysitting is so hard. What took you so long Erik?”

He unbuttons his jacket sighing. “His fucking card wouldn’t go through upstairs. So this muthafucka owe me his life and some change now.”

Erik picks up Foley’s pants, ruffling through his pockets for his wallet.

“Whoa, bro, what are you doing? You aren’t a part of this!” Foley says.

Sade was not pleased with this interruption, bringing her boot around to land it squarely with his chin. The crack of the impact echoed in the room as Foley flopped on his back, writhing in pain.

“What...the….FUCK!” He yells out, blood starting to coat his fingers.

“Damn, Sade!” Erik exclaimed, staring at his girl.

Sade inspects her boot. “Shit, he got a damn scuff in it, now I’m really pissed. Tie his ass up so we can move on.”

Erik handles Foley like a ragdoll, turning him over and using Sade’s ropes to tie his hands behind his back.

“You fucking niggers don’t know who you’re dealing with!” Foley says through clenched teeth.

Erik pulls him up by his arms over to a part of the wall with a collar and chain attached to it. Turning Foley around, he hooks his neck up to the contraption.

“You really want them to be your last words, bitch ass cunt?” Erik says, tightening the collar on the last possible notch. “Gotta use they language to get to em sometimes.” Erik says to Sade.

Foley laughs nervously as tears fill his eyes. “I could make you rich, man. Get your mom out the ghetto. You got any siblings? You could take them anywhere! I’ll turn your life around in ways you never seen, just let me out of here with this bitch!”

Sade sits on a stool trying to buff out the mark on her shoe. “Erik, his voice is annoying me…” She says in a sing-songy manner.

Erik pulls out Foley’s phone from his pants pocket, holding it up to his face to unlock it.

“Fuck! I shoulda known that facial unlock would bite me in the ass.”

Erik opens his camera to take some pictures. “Aww, shit! You finna be the Belle of the Ball once these circulate through your contacts. No way your bros at the Capitol can clean this mess up.” Erik laughs, showing the gallery to Foley, who is whining for mercy.

“Come on! Don’t do this! Let’s talk this over! You need some money? Let me give you something something, and we can work this out. No harm no foul!”

“Give him your bank login, we’ll handle the rest.” Sade instructs from across the room.”

Foley shifts, blinking the sweat out of his eyes. “I-I mean, you don’t wanna give me a figure first-”

Erik sends a strong blow to Foley’s gut, knocking the wind and dignity out of him.

“O...k…” Foley rasps as he coughs through his username and password for Erik to set up a transfer.

“Thanks for the paycheck, bro.” Erik, takes some leather gloves off of a table, sliding them, flexing his fingers. “No way in hell you can help me while you still got breath in your body. And ain’t shit you can do for me. That neighborhood you wanna run over so fuckin bad ain’t yours to take. White folks can’t never miss out on a land deal, fuckin colonizers.”

Foley struggled against his bindings, becoming agitated. “I am providing a service! Something that will make their world better!”

Erik punches the wall next to his head, cracking the concrete. “A world you ain’t got no plan to let them in? They already got a place to stay, and you want them outta there cuz the living is too cheap and they barely affording that. So instead of working for them, you’re just gonna build shit that they can’t afford, segregating them even more until they gotta leave. Turning half the shit into fucking parking lots any damn way.”

Foley breathes heavily, swallowing hard. “It’s so disappointing to hear you settling for less, bro. It really is…”

Sade comes up behind Erik, handing him a club and brass knuckles.

“I don’t need that shit, I got this.” Erik insists with a wink.

Sade rolls her eyes. “Try not to get blood on your clothes. We have dinner reservations in an hour.”

As Erik takes off his jacket and dress shirt. Foley says, “Aye, what was it you said before? Roaches always surviving? What’s it to you when they’ll find another hole to crawl into? Making babies and killing themselves, it’s the circle of life. I'm just tired of seeing your Black asses fucking with my city.”

Erik reaches behind his back near his waistband to swiftly take take out his military issue knife, grabbing Foley by his neck, slamming his head into the wall. As Foley neck folds sheath his hand, Erik brings the knife slowly to his eye socket as Foley closes his eyelids tightly. That only makes the process more messy as he screams in excruciating pain while Erik skillfully gouges him.

“There. Now you aint gotta see shit. That better?” Sade says, walking away at this point when all she heard was the pounding of Erik’s fist in bone. Foley’s feebled cries in pain didn’t last long when Erik socked him in his mouth, making him swallow his own teeth. Sounded as if he even indulged in the knuckles and the club after all, as he dared Foley to say something again, until it was impossible to do so Sade sat in her seat, reviewing her manicure as the cacophony of pounds into Foley’s body turned soft.

Erik’s breathing was the only thing left as he made his way back over to Sade with a wild nature in his eyes, and blood coating his knuckles and face.

“Ohhh, look at you! You’re never careful when I ask you to!” Sade scolds him as she pulls out a handkerchief and water, wiping down his hands.

“You know how I get carried away in the moment.” Erik says, voice gravelly as he stares at Sade.

Sade finishes off his hands, reaching for his face to clean. “Mhm, I know. Lucky for you, I brought a spare undershirt to change. What about your pants…” Sade brushed some dust near his crotch, feeling his dick twitch under her touch. “That is enough! I’m not cancelling this dinner. It's been weeks in the making!”

Erik bites his lip, leaning over Sade as she digs through her bag. “You blaming me when you out here dressed like that, kicking white folks in the face and not expecting me to wanna fuck you for that?”

Sade reaches for the collar of his shirt, tearing it halfway off his him with a blade between her teeth. She takes it and aims it over his chest. “You know how we celebrate…”

Applying pressure, she drags it slowly across his skin, red liquid bubbling along the length of the cut as Erik seethed. The satisfying release of his skin allowing the penetration of her blade made her breath hitch in her chest. “We got another one, we mark the occasion. Without him contacting his people in DC, no way they can settle a vote to gentrify now.”

Sade runs her thumb along the blood trickling out, wiping it clean before bring her face in his chest to lick his wound. The soft, muskiness of his skin is too tempting for her to let go as she caresses his chest.

Erik sighs deeply, taking one hand to grab her ass and the other wraps her braids around its knuckles pulling her face back as he devours her mouth hungrily. Erik lifts her up and onto a nearby table with a thud, pulling her skirt up to her waist as she reaches to free him from his trousers.

“Ooh, dont make me scar your back up now. This is lucky number 57?” Sade chuckles as Erik brings ankles to his shoulders, leaning over her.

The way Erik looks at her, one might think she was his sworn enemy. But this is Erik’s favorite time with Sade. Not just fucking, but taking out white folks that aren’t doing shit for anyone but themselves, leaving a trail of dead brown and black bodies behind them. Doing this vigilante justice together never got old.

“Try me. And a lot more to come.” Erik promises as Sade kisses his keloid riddled arm, biting down once he entered her.

Sade peppered Erik with affection as they fucked. Their roles easily switched from business to pleasure. Sade being the brains behind most of the operations, and Erik being the muscle, all he needed was to be told where to go and he had the rest. But as lovers, Erik took control of her, and she needed that change of pace.

As Erik reaches for her throat, he put his weight on her, lapping at her neck as he digs her out desperately. Sade gasped with each stroke he dropped inside of her, seeing stars as her breath quickened. Her head fell to one side as she got a full view of the damage Erik did to Foley’s body. The bruising, the bone jutting from his skin, blood pooling near his collapsed skull was all too much for Sade. She came so hard, Erik nearly slipped in her wetness flooding between them, tightening up on Erik until he contributed his own fluids to their celebration.

Erik lays still on top of her panting. “How much time left we got on the room?”

Sade rubs his back, still smooth but hopefully not for long once they continue their mission. “45 minutes.” She smacks his shoulders, willing him to roll off of her. “You’re cleaning up by yourself this time. Your dick is making me miss dinner, I’ve suffered enough.”

Erik laughs slow and deeply as he rubs his face, satisfied all the same. “You need a mop-iana?”

RagTag (it’s been so long since I wrote, I’m forgetting who likes to be tagged)

@chaneajoyyy @bidibidibombaclaat @wakanda-inspired

#erik killmonger fanfic #black panther fanfic #withlovefromwakanda #shakafic #fanfic

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finderskeepersff · 6 years ago

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63. Part 4

How did I let this happen, that’s all I can think about. I trusted a number and a name without even checking it out, why was I so careless. I gave this person pictures of me, my son and one with Cassius in it and I continued to tell them everything. Why did I not check this, I am legit angry at myself right now. I just didn’t think, stupid me didn’t think to just check the number out first, it’s my fault. I am so caught up in this bubble of Cassius and Cartier that I just don’t think of anything else, I worry so much for Cassius because I am scared he could do it again. It stresses me out, I don’t want to say that to him and I don’t want to tell my friends that but it worries me that behind my back he could do it again, I have so much shit happening and then I’m here and my son is there, I’m pregnant again. When does it stop, when do I get to hit pause on my life, I guess it’s happening now. I guess my mind has hit pause and it’s hitting me on what I did, I did wrong and I know it. I don’t think I will mention this to Cassius, he will end up being angry with me and then say I’m careless and yes I was, it’s my mother and I rather it be her then anything else, my god. I can’t get over it at all, groaning out as I placed my hand on my stomach, how can I be so stupid. I think it does worry me about Cassius, he’s in that lifestyle and he’s with that shit, he could slip into it again I mean it is so easy to do it. When he goes out at night, or even when he does. I search his pockets and then check every part of the house he’s been too, I check the car and then his little hiding spot, the cameras around the home. I am worried for him, and now I have told him this. I am a dumb bitch, that is final.

I am just staring at the ceiling, I mean I am self loathing I guess but I don’t want to move and I have probably been here for an hour now “coming in” Mia announced as she pushed the door open “come in” I mumbled, I don’t think she heard at all but she entered “we are going out, I assumed you would have been ready? We need to see more of Cali, what the hell?” She is right, I was supposed to be ready “I don’t think I want to go out” my eyes not leaving the ceiling “I didn’t ask you I told you, now move!” Mia spat “you staying here with Olivia when she is out here asking for her ass to be beat, she is also staying behind so do you want that?” I also don’t want that either “I’m a mess Mia” I am so dumb “what’s new, go on then. Tell me what happened?” Feeling the bed move a little “I was texting a number I thought was my brother and it was my mom, I never thought to ask. I mean I could have got my man killed for my stupidity but I wasn’t thinking, I am so sad! Like I sent this number my son’ pictures I mean luckily it was my mother but still, I am just heartbroken that I did that” getting up from my laying position to sit up “oh Sofia, what made you think it was ok?” She questioned “I have had so much going on, when I saw it was Leyton I was like ok anyways moving on, I just didn’t think. I am so caught up on thinking about my son and Cassius. And then Cassius is upset I went to the club pregnant, he put the phone down on me, and then I have told him about that night he was high, it’s just a mess. He knows and that could affect him going back, I am so stressed!” I barked “what happened that night he was high?” I paused “I’ve done it again” I just can’t hold it in, I bursted into tears, I can’t do this “Sofia, seriously. It’s not the end all, calm down” I can’t do it, I sobbed out crying feeling everything just get on top of me.

Mia rubbed my back, I am just a mess and I keep making the mistake of putting my foot in with everything “I am so upset with myself” I am doing everything wrong “don’t be, Sofia. You’re a young girl still, you can’t be this harsh on yourself. You’re twenty six and you’re pregnant with your second child, you’re dealing with a lot for your age. You have been through so much, you made a mistake it’s fine. Just calm down Sofia, I honestly don’t want you to feel like this Sofia” Mia is trying to calm me down and console me but I am so sad right now, and then I was about to put my foot in it with what Cassius did that night, what even is my problem “I need to take my mind off this, but I am just wondering what does my mom want? What is she gaining from this? Why does she want to know me” my phone pinged “it’s Grace Sofia, she is bipolar as fuck. One minute you’re her everything and the next you are a hoe, I can’t really say why. Maybe she is going through a phase where she loves you now? I don’t know, but also I think with her being in Barbados has calmed her crazy ass” unlocking my phone, Leyton has sent me picture. The actual Leyton and not my mom, tapping open the picture. Staring at the picture and it’s my grandparents home “awwww” my smile grew “he wasn’t lying” turning my phone to Mia “is that you?” Mia took my phone from me “forget me, it’s Cartier on the famous family wall” Mia grinned “bitch your forehead in your school picture” Mia screamed out laughing, snatching my phone from her “that is cute, Cartier is there next to me” I sighed out smiling, my son is so welcome there “maybe your mom is changing? I don’t know, can’t say” locking my phone “she doesn’t care for Cassius though, she hasn’t accepted him and that is the thing with this” Mia pulled a face “then we don’t accept her” I chuckled.

This uber driver is a pervert, he has not stopped talking about if we are single. I mean he is ok, he seems young but he does nothing but check us out “you girls here for long?” he asked “oh look at that we are here” I said as he parked up “you not slipping that number” I swear to god “I have a man thanks” opening the car door, I need to get out of this bitch “nigga bye” Mia said behind me as I got out of the car, I honestly can’t be bothered “look at that ass hoe” Mia slapped my butt “you think?” turning to her “I do think” Mia grinned “I am still hungover, don’t mind me. At this point I wish I was Sofia, she is sober as shit” I grinned fixing my bag on my shoulder “that is a good way of hiding your bump though, oversized sweathirts” Mia pointed out “I know, but my bump ain’t big is it? It’s funny because I was thinking. I was like what if I am actually having a girl, I am much smaller bump wise than I have been before” turning around as the girls started walking into the mall “could be, oh my god. Imagine a mini Sofia” Amira gasped “she will be so pretty, you got strong genes because Cartier is like you. But I love this look, you look so good. Not a lie” it’s really nothing “Cassius wouldn’t be impressed with my legs out but it’s hot” I shrugged “anyways, let’s act single for a while and go shopping” I need some new clothes.

Waiting for Mia to come out of the changing room, she is trying on clothes upon clothes, she is spending her man’ money today “and this!” she stepped out “what you think hoe” she walked over to me “I think it is nice, I love the dress. The colour suits you, I would say it does” Mia popped her booty in my face before she walked off, she is too hype for a bitch that was drunk as fuck last night “I have just one more thing to try” nodding my head as she walked off, seeing this group walk into the waiting area too, a couple and some friends also “I am going inside” she announced “I am trying this on” Amira said, these bitches. Seeing the guy sit next to me ont he couch “I will sit myself here” I think it’s his girl announced and made hweself comfortable, my phone started ringing in my bag. I mean honestly, she can keep him because my man is beautiful as fuck. Getting my phone out from my bag, it’s facetime from Cassius. I sighed out and answered, this should be quick “I am out so don’t say anything stupid” Cassius cleared his throat “oh ok, I will call back later. I just wanted to say I love you. You look nice” I grinned “thank you Cassius” I said in a whisper, Cassius is looking at everything, he just staring “call me aight” nodding my head “I love you too” disconnecting the facetime “and this!” Mia and these damn outfits.

Out of all of this I only got myself a top, I don’t know why I just didn’t want anything which is weird for me “y’all really shopped didn’t y’all?” Amira and Mia did a lot of it “we did, also we got a thing. I mean I do, when I found out that we coming here. I pulled a few strings in the clubs and we going to see A$AP Rocky, he is hosting and we got VIP so yeah that is a thing” my eyes widened “erm, Cassius won’t like” Amira laughed out loud “Cassius don’t like much bitch, fuck that. Stop being boring. You doing this with us, lie to him again. Sofia. You can’t be like this. You always obey the man, everytime. Cassius has his time but do you? And what makes is even more wack is that he got you pregnant again, you’re twenty six and you just doing this to yourself. This should be peak times off having fun, sis I ain’t fucking with that shit. I ain’t about that at all, Cassius got a problem he tells me. Why come here? For what? You can’t even drink and now you don’t want to go to the club, stop hiding in his shadow. You do this with with every man when you think they will hate something to avoid an argument, I ain’t dragging you but I am also not hearing this bullshit from you, live a little. I am not happy you pregnant Sofia, I am not your mother but I am your friend. You drowning yourself in these diapers, bitch no. You could have waited, enjoy life. You telling me Cassius is that bad?” shaking my head “just don’t tell him” Amira said “I end up speaking on it, I always do it. I already caused shit, trust me. I am not happy either” I mumbled “I am happy if you happy but sis, I ain’t feeling that happiness your way. Not like Cartier you was, I was supposed to bring this up with you anyways, you acting like an old bitch. Jumping through these hoops, you both can’t even get married right and now there is baby number 2, I am sorry. I got triggered, you just need to live a little. Cassius is this and that, I didn’t do this for that. I did it to see you and spend time with you. Be free” Mia is pissed with me.

Maybe it’s me, maybe I have made life complicated. Am I just making myself think I am happy, I mean I am happy “I am sorry Sofia” Mia apologise “don’t” I looked up from the plate and at Mia “you spoke on how you felt, you know me” Mia sighed out “I do, and I know how much you can get yourself into this bubble. First it’s your family holding you back and now Cassius. I ain’t blaming him but it’s you, please let’s not argue on this. You pregnant now and god bless but think of you yeah? Just be happy about yourself and not make it about is Cassius happy, because we know he is as long as he is with you. Am I wrong Amira?” Amira is very quiet “I do think Sofia needs to have her time, during these past four months you have done nothing but worry and be there for Cassius. You just need your time, I can agree on that” taking in a deep breath “you know what, I have finally found someone that does love me and honestly, I will continue to make it about him because that’s what love is and I will ask him before I go because that’s what a couple do, I am happy, just I have a lot on right now. Cassius needs me and if anything was to happen to me that man wouldn’t be where he is, I have a family to think about now. I really don’t care for what any of you say, I love you girls but Cassius comes first” Mia looked away from me “so if he says no then what? You going to stay behind” I shrugged “then I will talk to him about it, I want my man” I get they are worried but no, I can handle myself.

#Chrianna #Chrianna FF #Fanfic #Fanfiction

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ventingviper-blog · 5 years ago

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VENT a short essay (only partially chronological)

My grandparents tried throwing me a surprise sweet 16 and it was a surprise I had fun. But I walked in and only two or three of my friends were there. One that’s still my friend to this day, another who is my current boyfriend's best friend, but were on rocky terms now and a basketball teammate. Like I know I should get over it but when you’re told the guest list after the party and realize 10 or so people didn’t show it really sucks. The party ended up being mostly family friends, all of which are my grandparent's age, and family. Like I’m grateful for the people who did show up and I still love them which is why I don’t care if my boyfriend's best friend doesn’t like me anymore he’s always gonna be a person I’ll help no matter what. But damn it really fucked up my self-esteem, I feel like most people around me purely tolerate my existence and don’t actually enjoy my company. I’ve been dealing with abandonment issues since I was a child and I can’t even feel happy trying to create a new family of friends because it stopped being worth the effort. I stopped reaching out to see people and now going out to events is a drag. We hang out with my boyfriend and his friends but honestly trying to feel welcomed in a group of people that been together since 1st grade is a long shot at best. I went with two of them to get drinks at one point and they literally stood in a way where I was the 3rd person on a 2 man sidewalk. He so badly wants me to be a part of his group of friends and I’m trying but there’s literally only 1 it seems I get along with. Then his controlling mother and ass hat of a father, literally my entire, ENTIRE, fucking family loves this man I love this man but his fucking family is a GIANT. BAG. OF. DICKS! Like I get it him and I fucked up in our last month of high school and got pregnant. I WASN’T EVEN THE FIRST PERSON TO KNOW AND I WAS THE PREGNANT ONE! My grandma, she’s amazing but also a cunt at her worst, went into MY kaiser account, she had the password, and checked my test results then called me yelling at 8:30am on a Sunday, after I’d just left the house. So in the 10 minutes it took me to go pick up my boyfriend, he was in the car, I answer the phone and its pure rage, I have no idea what's going on, so she says look at the results and hangs up. Well, we went back and told his mom, who literally says “ what is ‘current boyfriend’ going to think of me?!” great priorities there. Then I went to my grandparent's house to discuss it with them, and my grandma starts off with “ well you have one option”, which I didn’t and then after 2 weeks made my final decision but that two weeks was a living hell. My grandma threatened to revoke my brothers and my graduation trip because of everything that was going on and then said we ( oh yeah grandpa’s been silent this whole ass time) feel you should move in with your mom. I HAD NEVER BEEN MORE PISSED IN MY LIFE! THIS WOMAN HAD MY FATHER AT 17(I can do simple math) AND WAS SUPPORTED BY HER FAMILY YET SHE COULDN’T DO MORE THAN SCREAM WHEN IT HAPPENED TO SOMEONE ELSE. Then my mother comes at me from the other side saying “oh we're going to run away to Washington state and I’ll help you raise the baby” - not going to lie almost agreed to this... so we told my family cause I couldn’t figure out what to do and was honestly thinking about keeping the baby and raising it or, more likely, adoption. WELL HERE COMES THE GOD DAMN CHOIR. My grandma, a look of disgust. His father Not even dogs give away there young. My mom, and the option I was leaning towards the most actually and wanted to do, “ Your aunt had a hysterectomy and hasn’t been able to have children, is willing to take the baby and raise him” She would have raised him as his aunty which wasn’t necessary I wanted him to feel like the people with him were his real parents, and I’d just have to fly/ drive to Washington to give birth, I was ready for this one, happy about the choice. but happiness can’t last too long right, of course not. His father decides to chime in, “insert adoption comment here” oh and the pièce de résistance “If you don’t break up with this girl I will have you castrated or you can dump her.” the two options and the bonus, “If you do anything other than abortion I’ll disown you”. Threatening your son into convincing his pregnant girlfriend to have an abortion. Then his mom joins the fray of people, we go out to lunch she tells me her sob story of how she had an abortion in college and felt it was the right thing to do and feels that her son is the same soul she aborted and all that great stuff, that honestly, I don’t even know if it’s true or not. But damn I haven’t really gotten over the fact that I went through his phone during that time, yes I know It’s wrong I got over doing that after the first year, HE WAS SCREENSHOTTING OUR TEXTS AND SENDING THEM TO HIS MOTHER AND THEN COPYING AND PASTING HER RESPONSE TO ME, I was pissed so I texted him and mentioned us taking a break because obviously tensions were high and I wasn’t feeling the best towards him and he comes back almost instantly with “why? so you can ruin my life?” HE DOESN’T EVEN REMEMBER SAYING THAT TO ME BUT I SURE AS FUCK DO. That one still comes back up to piss me off every so often. So I ended up having an abortion, the medication made me vomit, I can still remember the cold tone the nurses used towards me and the warm tone to the woman next to me, we were in for the same procedure but they’d accidentally punctured her uterine wall, I still get sad and teary when I think about it and its been 5 years, I still get flashbacks to the feeling of the blood between my thighs, It was more than a period ever prepared you for and the clots are just huge, I cried myself to sleep and he held me the entire time and stayed by my. which is probably why we're still together.

But then we were put through a test again. We went out drinking one night, played videogames and whenever you lost you took a half shot, spoiler alert I. LOST. EVERY. GAME. I played maybe 6 games and ended up becoming the designated loser (loser stay till they win) I was the drunkest person there. Well it came time to go cause the host's girlfriend wanted to go to a bar but we wanted to go home when I was sober my boyfriend and I agreed to Uber home his friend parked his car in place where we could leave it overnight and it wouldn’t be towed, his friend said it’s in the lot across the street (important), well we decide to leave and my boyfriend says he’s good to drive, had like 4 beers and a shot is he’s 6′3″ ish and 200lbs. Well, we're heading out and start to go find the car, I realize my jacket is gone, I let him know. NOW ACCORDING TO HIM I RAN BACK TO THE HOUSE TO GET MY JACKET. I don’t remember this however I do remember turning around and my boyfriend was no longer there. So I ran to go find him, still no jacket, I remember checking for headlights and not seeing any so I ran across the street, checked the parking lot and couldn’t find him or his car, so I ran back. As I get back to the other side of the street, everyone's favorite light show starts and I get pulled over by two cops. Well, theY sit me at the bus stop and question me, I HAVE NOTHING ON ME, PHONE, KEYS, WALLET, NOT A SINGLE DAMN THING. So they ask what I’m doing I explain I was at a friend's house drinking a bit and came outside to find my ride, and like clockwork, my boyfriend pulls up and goes to pull up to the curb and see what's going on AND. TAPS. THE. FUCKING. CURB. Immediately the cops say “did you see the way he hit that curb?” He gets out the car to see what's up they yell at him to get back in the car nothing else, so he drives into the parking lot and parks then comes back, they're still talking to me, address, phone number, SSN all that jazz, which I somehow remembered. Then they start focusing on him, they never asked him to come over they allowed him to because he had my wallet. They start giving him the test, pupil, walking, breathalyzer I got kinda cold so they asked him for his jacket to give to me. I’m watching and then I turn around, the cars have multiplied another cop showed up, not even sure when. They start discussing something while we're sitting on the bench, then they say we gotta do one more test and have him come too near the squad car. Well, I’m talking to the other cop then I glance to see how the test is going and he’s cuffed and being put in the car. That was all the info I got they’re taking him in. Of course, drunk me starts crying and I get up and go get his friends and then the cops take his keys and moves his car back to the lot it won't get towed in, well we don’t know what to do so we decide to call his mom, I couldn’t speak because I was crying too hard so his friend spoke. They call me an Uber and it takes me to fucking Aqui’s, so now I’m drunk by myself and crying in the middle of downtown Campbell after everything has been shut down and its a ghost area. I call his best friend and don’t know what to do I just feel guilty his friend asks if I need a ride and I say no, cause you can never inconvenience someone for such a trivial matter, and make it seem like I just called crying like a crazy person ( he hasn’t really talked to me since). I get myself in an uber and to my grandparent's house, I live by myself 5 mins from their place but couldn’t be alone that night, I set up on the couch and get the it’ll be alright comfort speech. They leave I call my mom, history of abusive junky boyfriends and baby daddies with drinking problems, who would know more about someone being arrested than her? She gives me the rundown on what's going to happen and tells me not to feel guilty. So I lay my trashed ass down and watch tv and fall asleep, I had called his mom and so I knew someone was looking out for him I just didn’t know what to do and knew to go to a police station absolutely blasted would be a terrible choice, but apparently, his fucking mother was like She should be here all night worried like I am. I woke up at 3am to 5 missed calls from the police station, queue worst guilt I have ever felt in my entire life! and then the alcohol said the parties over, I vomited and dry heaved the worst tasting vomit in my life. He got picked up I went over around 10:30 11:00 no one was awake but his best friend was outside so I took him to get my boyfriend's car and keys. Literally later that day my boyfriend comes over and he says his mom is pissed and that she literally asked if he was going to dump me and when he said no she said: “then what's it going to take?”, she complained about me not doing anything saying she heard it from his friend, didn’t notice the call came from MY PHONE, “your best friend went to get your car I don't know who took him but he got it”, bitch I took him, and then “you’re not surrounding yourself with the right people” she absolutely “loves” his friends and “loved” me until we started dating, and she greets all his friends with a smile but will barely acknowledge either of us if we come inside. She blames me for this entire thing and I am no longer allowed at his house. She threatened to kick him out and make him come live with me, which would violate the agreement I have with my grandparents upon renting a place from them and is why I told him to not tell his mom I moved out because she’s prone to this line of threat. ( I was threatened once to be kicked out and said fuck your timeline if you want me gone I’m gone and moved in with my mother). His parents literally referred to me as “that stupid little girl he’s dating” and when describing what happened his mom said she was being stupid and running around in the middle of the street then walked up to three cops and started talking to them. I got pulled over, the most I could have done was acted like I hadn’t seen them. The only thing I really feel guilty about is that I got let off without even a warning they just kinda brushed over me and went straight for him. We now have an arrangement that he’s never allowed to approach me when I’m with cops. You wouldn’t think you’d have to have that talk.

Summary: I’m really fucking done with my boyfriend's shitty parents and I’m about to tell them to fuck off. But my boyfriend just wants peace in this world so now I’m here.

I’m also still recovering from trauma throughout my life.

Edit: He blew a .08 on the field test the legal limit exactly and then .06 in the lab thats less than 15 mins away

#family #abortion #dui #drinking #family drama #bitches

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carry-the-sky · 7 years ago

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karen runs.

(for the lovely @thestarsbeyondthestorms and @edourado, who requested ‘things you said with too many miles between us’ and ‘things you said on the phone at 4am’. UH THIS PROMPT COMBO. RIP ME. also posted on ao3.)

She’s had a bag packed since Fisk moved out of prison and into the penthouse. All she has to do is use it.

There are flowers, on the kitchen table. White roses. Not the ones he’d given her, but they may as well be. She can’t buy flowers anymore without thinking of him.

They catch her eye as she’s hugging Foggy, and she feels the breath leave her lungs, swooping out in the space between heartbeats. Tensile strength, she thinks. Kevin was taking AP Physics the year he died, the year she killed him. She remembers helping him study. Ultimate tensile strength, he’d recited from his flashcards, measured by the maximum amount of stress an object can withstand without breaking —

Karen leaves, and doesn’t look back.

She uses her credit card to buy a southbound bus ticket to Baltimore, hopes the paper trail will buy her a little time. Fisk and his goons have probably already started sniffing her out, but she’ll be long gone by the time they catch on.

She’s heard the Rockies are beautiful this time of year.

The plan is to lay low. The plan is to limit contact with other people, as much as possible. The plan is —

“This seat is — taken?”

Karen glances up. The woman staring down at her from the aisle reminds her sharply of Mrs. Cardenas — same toothy smile, same hopeful eyes, and Karen feels like her chest cavity has been scooped hollow.

“Uh — no,” she hears herself say. “Not taken.”

Karen left a lot behind in New York, but her inquisitive tendencies have stuck. It’s not long before she knows more than she probably should about her seatmate — Sofía Rosales, sixty-seven years young, three grandchildren with a fourth on the way. She talks with her hands and very kindly doesn’t laugh at Karen’s mangled Spanish. Karen likes her immediately, and that’s when the sirens start going off in her head, that’s when everything starts spiraling. She ruins everyone she touches, no matter her intentions, even when she tries to be kind and good, even when she tries to do the right thing it all goes wrong —

(That’s what you do, Karen. That’s what you do.)

She switches seats in the middle of the night and doesn’t talk to Mrs. Rosales again.

Karen ditched her phone before she left, but she has a few numbers memorized. Ellison, Matt, Foggy, home.

David Lieberman.

She’s not sure why his number stuck, but it’s there, burned into her hippocampus. Just one of the many details she learned about him while digging for info for Frank.

She has an hour to herself in the station in Columbus, where she’s transferring buses, so she slides into the nearest coffee shop and fidgets with the burner in her pocket, to give her hands something to do. Flips it open, then shut again. Open, shut.

She thinks of the elevator — him leaning into her, closing his eyes and aligning his breath with hers, all those unsaid things in that quiet cocoon of space — and laughs aloud.

And she sort of owes him, right? For saving her life. She owes it to him to let him know it wasn’t for nothing, that she is, in fact, still breathing.

There’s an open single seat in the very back of the new bus. She sinks into it, waits until they’re on the highway again before punching in David’s number with shaking fingers.

“Hello?”

It takes a second for her lungs to catch up with her brain. “Hello, David?” she croaks. “Is this David Lieberman?”

There’s a slight pause. “Who’s calling?”

She should hang up, now. Trash the burner, never, ever, do something this fucking stupid ever again —

“Karen?”

Every muscle in her body tenses. He sounds uncertain, but there’s something about his voice, even over the phone. Something layered beneath. Karen doesn’t know much about this guy, but he seems like the type of person who wouldn’t ask a question he doesn’t already know the answer to.

She blows out a breath. “Yes. Jesus, you’re good.”

“Holy shit. Holy— shit, it’s good to hear from you.”

“I guess you know why I’m calling, then.”

"Yeah,” David huffs out a laugh, “yeah, I have a pretty good idea. I gotta tell you, Karen, our mutual friend has been, ahh, more of a pain in the ass than usual, as of late. I’m sure you can relate.”

She’s gripping the phone so tightly her tendons are starting to burn. There’s breath somewhere in her body, right? Beneath her ribs, maybe, threaded through the struts of bone. She just has to find it. Just take a breath, Karen, just one.

“Our — friend,” she says carefully, past the lump in her trachea. “I need you to let him know that I’m okay. I’m just taking some time, away from the city. But I’m alright. If you could tell Fra —” she squeezes her eyes shut. “If you could tell him that, I would really appreciate it.”

“Karen, hey —”

“Thanks, David,” she says, and hangs up.

She’s fine.

After two nights on the bus, Karen decides she needs some actual sleep. She finds the cheapest motel she can and collapses once she’s in the room, asleep before she can even take off her coat or shoes.

She dreams about Fisk, then Kevin, and jolts awake long before the sun comes up.

There’s a pad of paper in the nightstand. You’re okay, she scribbles out, over and over.

You’re okay.

He’s never far from her thoughts. She knew she wouldn’t miss him like she misses Matt and Foggy — he exists in her mind in splinters, a kaleidoscope of sounds and images and feelings that she can’t quite piece together. She knows who Frank Castle is from a distance. It’s when she looks closer that everything gets blurry.

She cycles through her burners. The one she’d used to call David stays in the bottom of her duffel. She hasn’t turned it back on since then, but she can’t make herself get rid of it, either.

She calls Foggy, once, in a moment of weakness. The line rings and rings and she hangs up before he can answer.

She wonders if loneliness can actually kill someone.

They ride the bus with her, sometimes.

Kevin pops up the most. The first time, he’s hunched over his guitar, the one mom had given him before she died. He’s picking the strings randomly, strumming chords to life that Karen swears she’s never heard before.

“Stop showing off,” she jabs.

“Hey, it’s not my fault you don’t have a musical bone in your body,” he smiles, not looking up.

“Ouch. Where’d you learn to be so mean, kid?”

Now he snaps his eyes up. “I’m not a kid.”

You are, she thinks. You’re just a kid, you’re so, so young. Your whole life is there, just waiting for you to fill it —

Paxton visits occasionally. He never says anything, just sits and stares out the window. They’re driving through Kansas now, nothing but grass and plains for the past day and a half. Karen wonders if her father is thinking what she’s thinking when he looks out, if he’s wondering what it would be like walk off into the sun and dust, feet to the horizon.

“Hey.”

(It says something about the state of her life that Frank’s voice does something to her, even when it’s in her head.)

“You found me,” she says, not turning. She sees him in the window, his reflection distorted slightly.

“Thought I wouldn’t?”

“Hoped.”

He rumbles a laugh between his teeth. “You know me better than that, Miss Page.”

“Why,” she says, “why are you always here?”

“I just got here, Karen, what’re you —”

“I mean, in my life.” She looks at him, finally, taking his face in like she always does in case this is the last time she sees him. “Every time you leave, you come back. I’m tired of trying to figure out why, Frank, so if you could just fucking tell me —”

His hand is warm as he slips it through hers. She can almost feel the calluses on his fingers.

“You mean somethin’ to me,” he says. “Don’t you know that?”

He’s gone, when she looks again.

She runs until she hits mountains. Denver seems as good a place as any to stop, at least for a little while. There’s people here, not like New York, but enough for her to blend in, go unnoticed. Just one face in a million.

She finds an apartment and scoops up a night shift at a local bakery. It feels good, working with her hands. Making things instead of ripping them apart.

Time passes. Karen tries counting the days at first, but soon loses track. Weeks, months. She’s still here. She’s still here.

I killed him, she growls at Wilson Fisk, again and again. Sometimes it’s him. Sometimes it’s Kevin, or Ben, or Mrs. Cardenas, or —

She’s not sure she knows who she’s hiding from, anymore.

It had to happen, eventually. A material can only be stretched so far until —

She shouldn’t do it. She knows —but she’s starting to forget people. The color of their eyes, the sound of their voices. She just needs something, something to remind her she used to have people in her life who knew her real name, who cared she existed.

She calls home.

A strange voice answers. “Hello?”

“Uh—” she sputters, thrown off. “Hi, I’m — I’m looking for Paxton Page?”

“Shit, I really need to get this number changed. He moved, about, oh, a month and a half ago? Doesn’t live here anymore.”

The pit of her stomach turns to ice. “He — he moved? He’s gone?”

“Yeah. Think he said he was going out of state, too. Didn’t leave a forwarding address, though. Sorry I can’t be of more help.”

Karen sinks, melts into the floor, lets the phone slide out from between her fingers. Stupid, stupid. He told her himself, all those years ago. I don’t want you here, Karen. She thought, maybe, maybe if enough time passed, maybe the wound would start to scab over. Maybe he’d change his mind, and they could try to be some semblance of a family again.

I don’t want you here, he said, but what he meant was —

I don’t want you.

“Fuck,” she whispers to herself, the empty room, the universe. Anyone who’s listening. The answering silence is what finally does it. She unravels, slow tears at first that quickly devolve into throaty, heaving sobs that rock up the length of her spine, fan out across her shoulders, rip through bone and marrow and every little thing that’s holding her together.

She cries until she can’t anymore.

Karen blinks and the world pieces itself together. Floor, beneath her, every muscle in her body protesting loudly as she rolls into supine. Her brain feels like it’s bursting out of her skull. She must have slept here. It’s still dark — just before four a.m., the clock on her nightstand says.

C’mon, Karen. Sit up. Just sit up.

It’s muscle memory, after that. Stand, shuffle over to the sink, splash water on face.

Cross the room, dig through the duffel in the back of the closet. Find his burner.

It’s muscle memory, switching it on.

He calls less than a minute later.

“Karen? Karen —”

“Hey, Frank,” she says.

He makes a fractured noise on the other end. “She’s here, Lieberman, she’s — christ, Karen, you’re here, I can’t — you’re okay?”

“No,” she says with a low laugh. “But I’m here.”

“I’ll take it,” he says. “It’s — shit, it’s good to hear your voice.”

“I’m sorry, Frank.” She sinks her fingers into her hair. “I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t do that. You don’t do that with me, you got it? Jesus, Karen, I — I thought that was it. Thought—” he goes quiet, and she can almost see him tilting his head down, working his jaw. She can almost imagine wrapping her arms around him, her chin on his shoulder and her hands in his hair, the smell of him, how he feels pressed against her, warm and safe.

“I miss you,” she says.

She hears him pull a ragged breath between his teeth. “You have no idea, Page.”

Her fingers are wet, when she swipes at her face. “I don’t — know what to do. I don’t know what to do, Frank, please tell me, because I can’t do this, I can’t.”

“I’m here, Karen.” His voice swells, crests like a wave, and she realizes he’s crying, too. “Right here, yeah? I’m here, always.”

Just take a breath, Karen. Just breathe.

In, out, in again — and across the miles, she can hear Frank breathing, with her.

#kastle #kastle ff #kastlenetwork #daredevil s3 #dds3 #my fic

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onestowatch · 6 years ago

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What Is Your 2019 Summer Anthem? | Staff Picks

“Summer anthem.” The term is thrown around in music journalism and idle conversation with such a reckless abandon that even we here at Ones To Watch are undoubtedly guilty of calling a fair share of songs a “definitive summer anthem.” Yet in spite of the arguable overuse of the term, it endures, because what is summer without a said anthem? As we find ourselves in the midst of the summer of 2019, we asked ourselves that very question.

The soundtrack to trips to the beach, twilight escapades, locking eyes at the club, wasting the days away in bed, and so much more–summer is not summer without a soundtrack. So, what single song defines the summer of 2019 for those of us at Ones To Watch?

Joji - “Sanctuary”

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A great song always feels tailored to the moment, even one as visually hyperbolic as the ocean etched road shimmying alongside the Okinawan Coast. I always love summer songs years after the fact, when they become an ether, inhaled in nostalgia over drinks or gasping laughter, a form of mental “Sanctuary.” I can’t wait for Joji’s earnest vocals to be my one call away, igniting my sonic synapses and taking me back to a hot, languid summer bus ride back from Churaumi Aquarium.

-David O’Connor

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keshi - “summer”

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Summer days are waning, real life is creeping in, and keshi’s music is here to guide you through the inescapable nature of it all. “summer” is taken from the enigmatic lo-fi R&B artist’s recently released EP skeletons and plays out with all the fleeting beauty of watching a firework burn out in the night sky. It is the score to summer flings that are drowned by the fear of what happens when real feelings develop. This is your soundtrack to sad boy and girl summer.

-Maxamillion Polo

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BURNS, A$AP Rocky, Sabrina Claudio - “Energy”

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This. This is the song that plays in the background when I lock eyes with my future ex-girlfriend at the day club. 102 degrees. Scorching hot. The woman that’ll break my heart in the worst way possible. But hey, it’s Summer 2019 and I don’t know that yet. I’m just trying to have a good time. But before we start dancing to “Energy,” let’s get A$AP Rocky out of Sweden.

-Green Lee

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SG Lewis, Clairo - “Throwaway”

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Featured on the aptly-titled Dawn, SG Lewis’ sunrise-illuminated conclusion to a wild night out, “Throwaway” is akin to capturing the very initial spark of summer love. Yet, with that spark comes the fear of abandonment. It is an otherworldly collaboration that perfectly pairs Clairo’s ethereal vocals with SG Lewis’ immaculate and understated production. Grab your summer fling, look up at the night sky, and make a wish on a shooting star while you hum the melody to “Throwaway.”

-Jenna Singer

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BAYNK, Hablot Brown - “Simmer”

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Two of my favorites decided to collaborate for this sexy number on BAYNK’s Someone’s EP II, and it contains all the sonic elements that make my heart flutter: sensual and smooth falsetto curtsey of Hablot Brown, subtle electronic enhancement courtesy of BAYNK, and a steady bass foundation that keeps you bobbing throughout. It’s the perfect addition to your next pool party DJ set, jor just the thing to alleviate the sunburn at your post-party wind-down. Simmer down, let’s go!

-Yasmin Damoui

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Dominic Fike, Kenny Beats - “Phone Numbers”

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Summer is not without its fair share of overcast moments, and Dominic Fike and Kenny Beats’ impressive outing is here to give you the perfect sonic accompaniment to those less than perfect days. “Phone Numbers” is for anyone who has ever felt that at-times endless nature of summer can indeed be the birthplace of your loneliest of times, as Fike and Kenny Beats pair buoyant production with wistful lyrical feats. This is a summer anthem that hits different.

-Jeffrey Young

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Mark Ronson, Angel Olsen - “True Blue”

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This unlikely duo has created a standout track that captures love, heartbreak, confusion, and lack of control all in one. "True Blue" is June gloom; it’s crying in the club. The song is filled with anticipation and power. It sets you in a haze that mimics those late summer nights where you contemplate all of your life decisions. This modern yet classic track is drinking banana daiquiris as you catch up with old friends who you have nothing in common with anymore. It’s clenching your jaw as you enter new uncomfortable situations in unfamiliar places. It’s dancing alone at the party, heartbroken or not, you’re alone and you accept it. I won't be able to listen to this track, or Markson Ronson’s stunning Late Night Feelings project without thinking of the summer of 2019.

-Jess Myers

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Zack Fox, Kenny Beats - “Jesus Is The One (I Got Depression)”

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Honestly, this song was created as a joke, but that seems to be the theme of hits this year. Zack Fox has been lighting up Twitter feeds with laughter for the past five years. Collaborating with rising hip-hop producer Kenny Beats organically has turned this parody into a viral TikTok hit. Name a better song about depression that came out in the past five years… I’ll wait.

-Malcolm Gray

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Rosalía - “Millionària”

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“Rosalía’s “Millionària” is the ultimate beach party song. Featuring the singer's iconic fluttering vocals, flamenco-inspired rhythms, and sun-drenched synths, this track will bring you right back to Barcelona’s sandy shores, drinking sangria with all the beautiful Spaniards during your semester abroad. Even if you can’t exactly live the lavish lifestyle Rosalía depicts in the song (because of, as she says, “fucking money man”), the track is sure to get everybody swinging their hips at your local barbecue, pool party, or summer soirée. Be sure to reapply your sunblock, because this song of the summer is extra hot.

-Brady Moses

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Emarosa - “Givin’ Up”

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Let me ask you: You are poolside drinking and “Givin’ Up” comes on. What do you do? If it doesn't get you dancing you're most likely drowning in sadness, or just drowning in general. Can we get a lifeguard, please? Either way, saxophone summer is here and Emarosa's leading the charge.

-Jimmy Smith, Editor of our sister site The Noise

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Mahalia, Burna Boy - “Simmer”

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With Hot Girl Summer in full-swing, Mahalia is bringing the perfect summer breeze to cool you down. “Simmer” sees the rising UK artist linking up with Nigerian star Burna Boy to deliver a track that balances a fervent passion with an effortless cool. Sampling Jeremy Harding’s infamous dancehall anthem “Playground Riddim,” which was, in turn, most famously sampled on Bennie Man’s “Sim Simma,” “Simmer” is the theme song to your Hot Girl Summer.

-Kendall Heyford

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Prince - “100MPH”

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Admittedly, “100mph” is a track that was originally conceived by Prince sometime in the mid-‘80s. However, with this summer’s posthumous release Originals, we catch a glimpse of the tracks that didn’t quite reach the Purple One’s perfectionist standards at the time. After an intro that can only be described as “triumphant cheese” Prince snaps into one of his most infectious melodies to date. Accentuated by a staccato vocal harmony, ripping snares and a bassline that you can chew on, this track brings the funk to the summer of 2019 like no other release I’ve heard yet this year. If this is not a summer vibe, I don’t know what is.

-Alec Wing

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Johnny Utah - "Honeypie"

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Within just a few seconds into "Honeypie," I could already predict that I'd be obsessed with this indie-funk masterpiece for months to come. Fast forward to two months later, and I still have this infectious tune on repeat well into the summer season. Not only does Johnny Utah gift us with his feel-good falsetto, but he crafts otherworldly funky pop melodies that'll have you dancing (or chasing your honeypie) in no time.

-Alissa Arunarsirakul

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Dreamville, Cozz, REASON, Childish Major - “LamboTruck”

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Dreamville or TDE? Dreamville or TDE? Why not Dreamville and TDE? While we constantly try to compare the two, “LamboTruck” shows that these two can play nice–except for REASON threatening to rob J.Cole. You won’t be hearing this in the club, but it’s my song of the summer because it packs a punch and shows you how who’s up next in the rap game. After you bump this song, might as well go listen to all of Dreamville’s Revenge Of The Dreamers III.

-Chase Nathan

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PVRIS - “Death of Me”

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Who hasn’t fallen down the rabbit hole by falling for someone… and no better time than summer to dive into something new, or realize that you’re already under the spell of a “sweet poison” and may need to get out immediately. PVRIS struts into this track woke to the precariousness of having such awesome yet powerful feelings. All wrapped up in a power anthem about becoming powerless, PVRIS gives us an outlet for the war between head and heart that we’ve all felt. It is a war that only gets worse at night, that we all fight, and that fvcks with our sense of wrong and right.

-Alexa Schoenfeld

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Bastille - “Nocturnal Creatures”

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My pick is off of Doom Days, Bastille's latest concept album which chronicles the various stages of the night. “Nocturnal Creatures” captures the thrill of being free of the stresses and responsibilities of the day to experience what nighttime has to offer. The song is perfect for a late, summer night drive as frontman Dan Smith melodically entices listeners to take control of the night and make the most of the few hours of freedom.

-Allissa Williams

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Megan Thee Stallion, DaBaby - “Cash Shit”

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How could we even talk summer anthems without mentioning Megan Thee Stallion? Hot Girl Summer has taken over the world and Megan Thee Stallion is leading the charge. More than just the meme of the summer, “Cash Shit” illustrates exactly why the Houston rapper is the next big thing in rap. Unapologetic, sexually charged, and utterly infectious, Megan Thee Stallion and “Cash Shit” will be playing on repeat for many summers to come.

-Miranda Hyman

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LAUNDRY DAY - “CHA”

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Well, my boss keeps blasting this from his office so that must mean it is a summer banger! The infectious project of five high schoolers out of New York, LAUNDRY DAY surely knows a thing or two about capturing the timeless energy of summers spent running around with friends, dreading the day when school rolls back into session. “CHA” is summer youth encapsulated.

-Hunter Halpert

#megan thee stallion #dreamville #johnny utah #mahalia #prince #rosalia #kenny beats #dominic fike #keshi #joji #clairo #mark ronson #angel olsen #ASAP Rocky #sabrina claudio

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