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fanficimagery · 5 years

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Secrets

Summary: Imagine having a secret boyfriend that your friends are all too eager to figure out the identity of.

Words: 2.4K Warnings: Language. Mentions of a MINOR car accident. Apologies to ‘anonymous’. I was so in love with the idea that I didn’t realize I didn’t actually know how to write a shy/timid person. I hope you still enjoy this.

Requested by anonymous who said: Hi! Can you write something where reader is really innocent and shy and she blushes/gets embarrassed easily but one day she has a hickey and everyone is trying to find out who she’s dating ? Thank you!!! (Omg sorry I’m so dumb😭 could it be for the vlog squad and the boyfriend being someone in vlog squad ! Maybe Jeff but I’m okay with anyone! Tysm!!)

Jeff asking you out came as a big surprise.

You had been a fan of David's videos, tweeting here and there to the group whenever they tweeted something random. You had never got a reply, which was to be expected, but you kept on tweeting them as if you were a long lost friend of theirs. But then everything changed one night when Natalie tweeted you back.

It started off slow, but she would reply to every one of your replies whether it be a couple of words or an emoji. Eventually, Natalie followed you back after a month of so of tweeting. And afterwards, it was a coincidence that the two of you ended up at the same restaurant. She tweeted a picture of her food and the place she was eating at with her mother, and you had replied you were there too.

Natalie had recognized you from your profile picture and she was happy to see you face to face. You were happy too, but you kept the meeting brief since she was there with her mother and promised to message her later. You took no pictures and didn't make a big deal about meeting her, and went about your own dinner before taking your leave.

Then on a whim when you tweeted you were bored, Natalie invited you to lunch. You agreed and met up with her, and it was the start of a beautiful friendship.

Meeting the rest of the gang left Natalie surprised. Where most people gushed and gushed, you were suddenly timid and didn't stray from Natalie's side. It wasn't that you were intimidated, but their personalities were flirtatious and innuendo dripped from every other statement that left their mouths. You had laughed and blushed, and then blushed some more when they teased you for it.

The group instantly accepted you and grew accustomed to your innocence. The girls took to protecting you when out in public, and when they couldn't the boys did. But a majority of the boys were more interested in either filming or finding a one-night-stand, and you really only had one person in your corner. Jeff.

You weren't really a party girl, but you went out with the gang when you were free. And more often than not, Jeff was never too far away and ready to whisk you away from an uncomfortable situation. So even after months of hanging out with Jeff when everyone was too crazy, late night phone calls, and hundreds of texts, you were beyond shocked when he asked you to dinner. At first you had politely declined because someone as handsome as him and who had the reputation Jeff had didn't go for someone like you. But he was patient and promised to go with the pace you set, and you eventually found yourself interested.

And true to his word, Jeff followed your lead and was more than down to spend time at home with you rather than going out on flashy dates.

Then after a couple of months testing the waters with him, you were ready to be exclusive even if you and he agreed to keep it on the down low. You knew your friends and you were dreading the big deal they'd no doubt make.

Standing at your kitchen counter, you're slicing up a bit of fruit when hands slide around your waist from the back. A scratchy beard settles nuzzles near the crook of your neck before lips press softly to the side of your throat.

Chuckling quietly, you angle your head to the left to give Jeff more room. "Having fun there?"

"Mhm." Teeth nip and you groan, the fruit momentarily forgotten as his tongue then soothes the small sting. "Still want that snack?" He asks as his hands slide just underneath the hem of your tank.

His teeth bite a little harder and you gasp. You quickly set the knife down, sliding it and the cutting board of fruit to the side. "Screw the snack."

All too eager, Jeff turns you around and immediately lifts you onto the counter. Your legs wrap around his waist, his hands pull off your tank, and your hands link behind his neck. Your lips are drawn to one another and you lose yourself in the kiss.

"If only.." Kiss. "Our friends.." Kiss. "Can see you now." Jeff says between kisses.

You pull away, panting and groaning when Jeff's mouth moves back to your neck. "Don't jinx us." Your cellphone suddenly rings and he chuckles. As he continues to lick and nip, you look at your phone and see David calling. "Shit. It's David."

"Don't answer it."

"I have to." Jeff doesn't let up, instead he merely moves to the other side of your neck. Grumbling, you pinch his side just as you answer the call. "Uh, hey David!" Jeff bites, harder than he has been doing, and you muffle your groan into his shoulder.

"Uh, Y/N? You okay?"

"Mhm. Stubbed my toe," you lie. Jeff suddenly pulls back and smirks at you, and you unwrap your legs from his waist to use one of your feet to keep him at bay. "What's going on, David?"

"Me and the boys are going out for some lunch. You in?"

Glancing at your forgotten fruit, you sigh. "Yeah. Give me twenty. I need to shower."

"Okay. I'm picking up Todd right now then heading over to Jeff's since he's not answering my texts. We'll get you last."

Eyes widening, you can't help but stammer. "O-Okay. See you soon." As soon as you hang up and set your phone aside, you hop off the counter and immediately start shoving Jeff out of the kitchen. "Go, go, go. David and the boys are going to your place to see if you want to grab lunch with us. You need to learn to answer your texts."

He laughs. "What? You know I can easily just tell them I'm on my way to yours and they can just pick us up here together."

"Nope. No way," you say. "I don't trust you to let me shower in peace."

Jeff sighs. "You make a valid point."

As soon as you're by the front door, he bends over to slip his feet into his shoes. Then as he stands back up, he presses a quick kiss to your lips. "Okay that's enough. Shoo," you say as you push him out the door.

----------

After one of the quickest showers you've ever taken, you apply a faint amount of makeup before tying your hair up in a messy bun and then shoving your feet into a pair of shoes. David texts that they're outside, so you readily pocket keys and cash before making your way outside.

David's driving and Jason's in the passenger seat. The back passenger door opens and Jeff steps out smirking, you rolling your eyes at him as you slide in before crawling into the third row. Todd greets you with one of his beaming smiles and once you're situated in the back, and Jeff's reclaimed his seat before shutting the door, you lean forward between Todd and Jeff.

But before you can say anything, Todd's eyes widen. "Oh my god! Who hoovered your neck?!"

You freeze as Todd pokes at a particular spot on your neck, your eyes widen when David and Jason twist in their seats, and it takes everything in you to not glance at Jeff.

"Y/N.." David says, slowly smiling. "Care to explain?"

"..fuck."

"Seriously though, kudos to the guy or girl who managed to get you to let loose."

"Will you stop poking me!" You say, swatting at Todd as he suddenly cowers away from you, laughing. David and Jason are laughing hysterically in the front, Todd can't stop making kissing noises, and Jeff is chuckling softly. You groan and then hide your heated face in the palms of your hands. "This is why I didn't say anything. You guys know how I am with this stuff and look, you're all being assholes about it."

"Alright, alright," Jason says, ever the dad of the group. "Let's all leave Y/N alone. We're making her uncomfortable."

Instead of thanking him, you merely slide over to hide behind Todd's seat. Then when Jeff glances at you, you glare at him with one hand covering the side of your neck. The apology is in his eyes, but the bastard is finding this all too amusing.

----------

Lunch was quite the amusing affair. Well at least for the boys it was. They couldn't stop staring at the hickey adorning your neck, or asking who the mystery person was, so you had to let your hair down to cover it. And all the while, Jeff never once came to your aid. Which, looking back on it, it was probably for the best. You couldn't chance your friends being suspicious.

But then things only got worse when everyone was back at David's, and Todd found it his mission to inform the girls of the hickey in hopes they knew something the boys didn't. But after much squealing and questioning, they realized no one had a clue as to who your mystery partner was.

It feels like your face has been flaming for hours, eyes on the verge of stinging with tears of embarrassment.

"Can you guys just.. stop," you ask, voice low. "I understand this is out of the norm for me, but I- I don't want things out in the open yet. I mean, just look at what you guys did to Suzy. You all got together and videotaped the first meeting. It's embarrassing."

Natalie, your first friend from the group, leans into you and wraps an arm around your shoulders. "I'm sorry, but it's just- it's you. You, my shy and beautiful and awkward friend," she coos.

You laugh, but the redness still doesn't recede.

"Will you at least tell us if it's a he or she? And if we know them?"

Hesitating briefly, you say, "Him. And you maybe know of him."

Everyone's back to oohing and awwing, and throwing out wild suggestions of who it could be.

Not once do they guess correctly, then again it doesn't help that your little shit of boyfriend is tossing out suggestions of his own, and eventually you leave them to keep wondering as Natalie drives you home.

Two days later everyone is still trying to figure out who Y/N's boyfriend is and Jeff is grateful that she's not here, she choosing to run a few errands instead.

He's grabbing a drink from David's kitchen when his phone rings, he having left it in the living room where everyone else is. Natalie sees it, picking it up and waving it at him. "It's Y/N."

And not wanting to be suspicious by hurrying for the phone, he says, "Answer it."

Grinning, Natalie does as she's told. But only after seconds of answering the call does her smile her fall and she holding out the phone to Jeff once more when he nears. "It's, uh, it's the hospital."

That seems to shut everyone up and Jeff shakily takes his phone. "Hello?"

The call lasts less than a minute, but it's enough to make everyone suddenly understand why he was the one being called. The second Jeff hangs up and rushes to put on his shoes, everyone else is only a step behind. Only before he can open the door to leave, David stops him.

"Why don't you let someone else drive? Your mindset is all-"

"Look man, not now. I need to get to the hospital because-"

"Because something happened to your girlfriend. Something serious," David says. Jeff doesn't deny it. "We kind of figured it out just now."

"Come on." Natalie sidles up to Jeff's side when he can't come up with anything else to say. She gently takes the keys from his hands. "I'll drive. Y/N won't forgive us if something happens to you because you were in a hurry to get to her."

"I- yeah. Okay."

No one says anything to Jeff about being the mysterious boyfriend, at least not yet, but the seriousness of the situation doesn't stop the others from glancing at one another and mouthing did you know or what the fuck to each other.

----------

Groaning, you rub your temples to keep the headaches at bay. You've never been in a car accident before, so really you're just grateful all you had was a mild concussion from where your head hit the door window. And fortunately for you, you were being released so long as your significant other kept an eye on you as the Doctor explained.

"Is it time to go home?" You ask when Jeff returns from handling some paperwork for you.

"Yeah. About that," he drawls. You glance up at him, frowning. "Everyone kind of figured out we're dating."

"What? How?"

"I panicked!"

You want to be upset or disappointed, really you do, but Jeff's frantic I panicked! has you giggling. "God you're such a goober," you say while subtly shaking your head in amusement.

"A goober? Is that a good thing or-"

You grin. "Sure. Now can we please go home? If you're going to keep me from getting long blissful hours of sleep, I rather do it in the comfort of my house or yours."

"Sure."

Jeff helps you gather all your personal belongings and paperwork from the Police, and you should be surprised but you're really not when you realize your friends are all waiting in the lobby.

The moment the grins start forming, you groan and tuck yourself in Jeff's side as he chuckles. "Don't."

"What?" David feigns innocence. "We're just here to show our support after such a scary ordeal."

"Bullshit. You're here to find out everything about how Jeff and I ended up together."

"Well.."

"I hate you guys so much." Still blushing, you manage to turn your face so you can meet some of your friend's gazes. "I was literally just in a car accident. Can we please not do this now. Or ever."

"Fine." Natalie steps forward, taking you from under Jeff's arm and putting you under her own arm. She leads you out of the hospital and a little further ahead of everyone before lowering her voice. "But seriously, you and I are talking because Jeff? Nice."

You snort and then groan when your head aches. "Fine. Just give me a couple days to recuperate."

#vlog squad imagine #vlog squad x reader #jeff wittek x reader #jeff wittek imagine #the vlog squad x reader #the vlog squad imagine #natalie mariduena imagine #jeff wittek #natalie mariduena #david dobrik #jason nash #todd smith #toddy smith #imagine #fanficimagery

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rightintheguts · 3 years

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The Witch of Birmingham

Chapter Two, below the cut.

“Huh, Monaghan Boy won.” Ruth commented offhandedly, casually flipping to the next section of the morning paper. Bianca paused in her idle stirring, gaze sharpening as she paused in her people watching, and took in the woman across from her.

“What, really?” Ruth nodded, before returning to her previous page, and folding the paper back so Bianca could read it. After scanning the bold print of the headline before her, a smug grin broke out across Bianca’s painted lips, causing the other woman to dramatically roll her eyes and groan, as the topic at hand fully hit her.

“Well, I guess you have two choices: pay for lunch, or pay the five shillings you owe me.”

“I still have no idea how you knew--were you tipped off?” Bianca smiled enigmatically, shrugging a single shoulder.

“Call it a gut feeling, more like.”

Her friend shot out an indelicate snort, “That’s some ‘gut feeling’, you got there.”

Looking out towards the canal, Ruth took upon a look of consideration, before cutting her dark eyes back to Bianca, who decided to finally finish off her tea. “Who’d you think will win the next one?”

Bianca smiled over the rim of her cup, eyes twinkling with mirth. “I’ll only tell you, once you pay for lunch, and give me the five shillings.” Jaw-slacked, Ruth balked at her friend’s audacious demand.

“You’ve got to be joking!” When Bianca continued to grin--she threw in a brief brow wiggle for the hell of it--Ruth forced her mouth shut with a snap, then sighed in resignation; already twisting towards her purse.“You’re a bloody menace.” she growled.

“I know, that’s what makes me so endearing!”

Snorting once again, Ruth valiantly tried repressing a smile. Waving down the waiter, she paid for the pair’s lunch; afterwards slipped the betted money to her friend as they were leaving the cafe. Bianca obnoxiously counted the money aloud, knowing it would immediately irritate her friend, then she unceremoniously stuffed her winnings down her shirt. Ruth shook her head at the woman’s actions; looking at her expectantly, she pulled out a pack of Camels, plucking one out for herself, before offering one to Bianca, whose face scrunched up in distaste.

“I don’t know how you can smoke that rubbish.”

“Like this.” Placing the pack away, she pulled out her box of matches and lit the stick, inhaling a long drag before exhaling a cloud of smoke. Bianca rolled her eyes, pulling out her own pack.

“Sweet Aftons, or nothin’--you’re goin’ to smoke, do it right.”

They then spent the rest of their lunch period walking through town, doing a bit of window shopping, and gossiping about their colleagues at work. Bianca listened as Ruth began to prattle on about her neighbor, who couldn’t take a hint.

“I finally informed David that I wouldn’t go out with him, even if he was the last bloke on this God-given Earth!” she rolled her eyes towards the heavens. “Which went completely over his fat-head; he asked me out thrice more, before I had to lie and say I had to go visit my sick mother.”

“Your mother passed when you were ten; God rest her soul.” Bianca crossed herself, while her friend gave her a flat look.

“I know.”

Laughing at her friend’s tale, her mind went to her own neighbors, the Hughes. Among the many changes her life had undertaken, since that day three weeks ago, the married pair was one of them: instead of being woken by a pair of screeching Banshees, she was now woken by the furious banging of the Hughes’ headboard. Bianca had to admit, she was impressed; though the couple were far from teenagers--they sure did fuck like ones. Well, good on them.

“So? Who's going to win, eh?” Ruth’s question, broke Bianca from her thoughts. Blinking, she hummed, tapping a finger to her chin. She began a mental conversation with herself, her expressions morphing too fast for Ruth to decipher, before settling on a look of agreement; a resolute nod soon following.

“Bet on Monaghan Boy, he’ll win again.” Ruth raised a brow.

“That sure are you?”

“Whose the one short of five shillings? Oh, plus the ten you paid for our lunch?” she smiled impishly at Ruth, who grumbled and stomped out her cigarette butt.

“Touche.”

__________________________

The very moment she punched out her time card, Ruth was on her. Intertwining their arms, the other woman barely gave Bianca time to place her card in it’s slot, before she was practically dragging her out the office doors, and onto the cobbled street. Shooting a bewildered look towards her friend, who looked as if the Devil himself possessed her--God protect her--she inquired as to why Ruth was in such a hurry, to which the woman rolled her eyes.

“We’ve got to get to the betting shop--before they stop taking bets!” Finally understanding, Bianca picked up her pace, soon matching Ruth’s hurried strides.

They swiftly weaved through the influx of people, and practically ran across the bridge, entering Small Heath with barely a breath in their bodies. Ruth took the lead soon after, having made the trip to the betting hall several times, and Bianca tried her best to keep up with the woman’s long strides.

Once the pair reached the building, which was fit to bursting with eager men waiting to bet their money away, Ruth finally paused in her hellish pursuit, allowing Bianca to finally regain her breath.

“All right, here it is: how much should I bet?” Ruth asked, releasing Bianca’s arm while she began rifling through her hand-bag.

“Have you already paid rent?” She asked. Her friend looked up with a quirked brow, before nodding. “Then all you have on you.”

Dark eyes widening, Ruth held the Bianca’s stare; about to ask if she was serious, but decided against it. Mouth snapping closed, she grabbed her friend's hand, and the pair began to push their way to the front of the crowd. Both women ignored the curses, and disgruntled looks thrown their way. One man had went so far as to block their way, but with a swift kick to the shin (courtesy of Bianca), and a rough push (courtesy of Ruth), the man was swiftly dealt with.

Reaching the book keeper, who only spared them a raised brow, he gruffly asked them who they were betting on. Ruth released Bianca’s hands, and reached for her purse; and much to the surprise of everyone around them, she unceremoniously dumped the entirety of the contents of her bag, onto the table. Shillings and pennies fell upon the table, some rolling off the worn table, but Bianca was quick to snatch them up and placed them in the pile of currency.

Some cosmetics also fell from Ruth’s bag, but once again her friend was there to collect them and get them out of the way, a lipstick almost making a successful escape attempt, but Bianca had managed to stop it’s pursuit.

A few notes also joined the pile, before Ruth pushed all the money towards the now slack-jawed book-keeper.

“Monaghan Boy.” she proclaimed, attention turning towards Bianca, who had taken it upon herself to return her friend’s things back into her bag. The man set about counting Ruth’s money, also shooting an expectant look towards Bianca’s idle form. Catching both looks, Bianca sighed good-naturally, and reached down her shirt. “Oh, what the hell--Monaghan Boy for me as well.”

Slapping down the five shillings she had won onto the table, the man was quick to collect the coins, plus the single note she hastily decided add; writing down both amounts down in his thick, leather-bound book, before asking their names to attach to their bets. Ruth gave hers, and Bianca followed suit.

The most curious thing happened as soon as she did; immediately, she felt a set of eyes fall onto her, causing her body to unconsciously straighten, becoming tense and alert. With practiced subtlety, she casually cast her gaze around the shop; blue eyes bouncing from man to man, before they were caught by a set of glacial orbs.

She froze for a moment, her mind processing, before it finally registered on who the person--man --was. Thomas Shelby, I’ll be damned; wonders never cease.

He stood between a pair of Blinders--one of which looked as if he lost a fight with a bear. Both hat and jacket absent from his person, quietly conversing with the duo, but his sharp gaze was locked solely on her. Though wariness had initially welled up at the sight of him, she couldn’t help but smile at him, the memory of that day swallowing up her caution, and replacing it with giddy amusement. He seemed to be thinking along the same lines, as she caught that ghost of a smirk make a brief appearance, before it vanished as quickly as it came.

Before she could decide if she should approach him or not, the choice was made for her, when Ruth suddenly linked their arms once again, and maneuvered them out and away from the betting hall: she couldn’t decide if she was disappointed or not.

“Well, I guess drinks are on you then!” she shot Ruth a questioning look, who was quick to inform her that they were going out tonight; that Bianca was going to go home with a nice bloke, and have raunchy sex till dawn. Said woman blew out a scoff, shaking her blonde head.

Ever since she revealed that she hadn’t had sex in two years, her friend--among many of her female colleagues--made it their personal mission to get Bianca laid: much to said woman’s annoyance.

“After all: you’re a young, beautiful woman who deserves to have a plethora of suitors at her beck-and-call.” Bianca disagreed; she didn’t need a man in her life.

“It’s not about needing a man, love: it’s about going two years without sex!” She threw Bianca a look of incredulity. “What’re you, a nun? Next you’re going to tell me you adopted a stray cat: the damnation of any single woman--might as well join a convent!”

Bianca was about to laugh at Ruth’s proclamation, but the sound died in her throat, her face drained of color. She stopped in the middle of the street, forcing Ruth to jerk to a stop and stumble in her heels. Before the woman could ask, Bianca swore; revelation crossing her pale face.

“Dear, God: I need to get laid.” Her friend looked at her accusingly, mouth flopping open in horror.

“You adopted a fucking cat.”

“I’ve been contemplating, whether or not I should adopt a cat; there’s a difference!” With a harsh proclamation of ‘Just barely!’, Ruth once again began their trek to the nearest pub, only this time, Bianca didn’t trudge along, she matched her friend step for step.

#No hate to cat lovers #I swear #peaky blinders #peaky blinders fanfic #peaky blinders fandom #thomas shelby x oc #fanfic #thomas shelby

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papermoonloveslucy · 3 years

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LUCY vs TIME

June 22, 1973

The publicity photos, from the movie set of Mame were unrecognizable. Unrecognizable! Why, they were unbelievable. Either somebody had shot them through six layers of soft-focus gauze - or a time machine.

Who was this frisky redhead hoofer kicking up her heels on the distant reaches of some resplendent soundstage, cannily avoiding a camera close-up?

Who was this svelte eyed lady fluttering from beneath a fringed rug of false lashes, not a wrinkle, sag or bag, not to mention even an expression line, sporting her famous face?

Well, clearly the lady was a star. And as star of Warner Brothers' new $8 million musical version of Mame, Lucille Ball had veto rights over all still photographs.

The trouble was that obviously nobody had had the nerve to tell her that if she could order reality rubbed out of a picture with a wave of the retoucher's brush, she couldn't pull the gauze over the eyes of an interviewer ushered into the Mame set to confront the living flesh, unretouched.

Time has not been unkind to Lucille Ball. No, beneath a billowing wine velvet and cream satin lounge suit, the svelte one-time chorus-girl's curves are still obvious. Despite a badly broken right leg from a skiing accident that had left the shooting of Mame stalled and the star in a cast for nearly a year, the shapely former showgirl's gams had now already carried her through a dozen dance routines up on top of pianos and down banisters that would have taxed a tap-dancer half her age.

At 61, Lucille Ball could pass for a dozen years younger. But only a dozen years.

The outrageous, outsize eyelashes now stick like pine spikes out of a swamp of tucks, puckers and bags etched around her shrewd big baby-blues. Her plastic face is a relief map of over-made-up wrinkles, the big bright red Cupid's-bow mouth lipsticked in a smile outside her own spidery upline.

But you don't survive 22 years on TV in the top ratings, get renewed once again this season when all about Bridgets and Bernies and Dean Martins (1) are falling to the network's chop, practically bear a baby and outlast a broken real-life marriage on the TV tube, take over a foundering corporation and build it into the single most powerful independent TV production house, without it showing in your face.

One look at Lucille Ball's face and you don't doubt it for a minute when Hal, her make-up man for 32 years, says she used to limp on to the Mame set in excruciating pain. Then, the minute the cameras clicked on, burst into a dazzling and seemingly effortless song-and-dance.

Not that the lady would admit it for a minute. "It was excruciating pain," she dismisses the subject airily.

But then these days she's not admitting much. It was a lesson learned the hard way. One recent fateful February day, over perhaps one too many Pouilly-Fuisses on the rocks, she was admitting so much so freely to the New York Times that the story read like a Hedda Hopper monologue.

On Desi Arnaz Sr., the Cuban bongo (2) player-bandleader she met and married out of a chorus line in 1940 and divorced 22 years later after a marriage that was even stormier off -screen than on: "He drank too much and he couldn't stand success."

On Desi Arnaz Jr., their 20-year-old son and his much-publicized romance with actress Patty Duke: "I had my doubts if the baby was Desi's at all. I said to him, "You feel responsible? Boy, you're all of 16 1/2 years old and you want to spend the rest of your life with this neurotic person?'"

On Liza Minnelli, then Desi's current fiancée: "They took her for over a million and a quarter more than her mother's debt. Just for beginners..."

One mention of the story now is enough to send sparks flying. "Why, that man should be..." she sputters over the reporter, "...spanked!"

It's a first burst of spontaneity from a lady who, once burned, is now so careful that she sounds at times as if he's dictating to the Library of Congress.

"I never thought I'd get this far, do so much, have such beautiful children," she says, chain-smoking in her dressing-room, all the wide-eyed telephone lineman's daughter from upstate New York. She knocks on wood.

"All I ever wanted was to get to vaudeville and I never made it."

When she hit New York to take acting classes at 16, the school sent back her mother's money, saying. "No talent." And now, refund in hand, 81-year-old DeeDee Ball, as the whole family calls her, sits in a front-row seat for every “Here's Lucy” show, just as she has done non-stop for the last 22 years.

Still it wasn't till 1951, when the Amazes dreamed up the “I Love Lucy” show, patterned after their own lives, as a way of keeping their marriage together and bandleader Desi home from the road, that success came.

But when it came, it was she who stole the show.

By two years later, 68 per cent of TV viewers in America were tuned in to see her show-by-show birth to Desi Arnaz Jr., whose arrival vied with the U.S. presidential election results for front-page space under the headline, "Lucy's $50 million baby."

Everybody, it seemed, loved Lucy except perhaps Desi Arnaz. Despite her insistence that "the series was happy there was no fighting. It was the greatest time of my life," she admits, "the trouble came much later. Only the last five years were hard."

Which means that the greatest time of her life lasted only a scant six years. When their marriage broke up officially in 1962 (3), friends introduced her to a stand-up comic named Gary Morton, now her producer, vice-president of Lucille Ball Productions, Inc., official show warm-up man and for 11 years now, Mr. Lucille Ball.

As her daughter Lucie, 22, and still a performer on the show, puts it. "She may be the king of stage 12, but at home she's queen Gary's the king!"

She indulges his passion for golf and a garage full of classic cars, but with the warning: "If he ever looks at another woman, I'll kill him."

She says she never makes a business move without him, but when she was left to head up the giant Desilu Corporation after her marriage break-up, it was she who was known as the woman shrewd enough to snap up “Mannix”, “Mission Impossible” and “Star Trek” when they were apparently doomed pilots, a comedienne who was not so comical in the executive suite.

But as for her much-vaunted business acumen, she is all denials and femininity.

"Me? No way. Desi did the whole thing. He was a fantastic businessman. I only took it over to build it up and sell it. I mean, there was a certain amount of building up to do."

When she took it over from Arnaz in 1961, Desilu had lost over $600,000. When she sold it seven years later, for $17 million in Gulf and Western stock, making her the conglomerate's largest stockholder and, some say, the wealthiest woman in Hollywood, the company had grossed $30-million and made a profit of ever $800,000.

"But everyone in the know knew I wasn't tough," she says. "No, the men I surrounded myself with were."

Still there a flinty glint behind the false lashes, a shrewd imperious purse to the painted lips, a ring to the wise-cracking whisky voice that's used to being heard. She moves around the Mame soundstage in queenly command, dispensing Norman Vincent Peal-doms, part star, part super-mother.

When it comes time for a scene featuring co-star Bea Arthur, she practically takes over directing from Gene Saks, Miss Arthur's husband. "Now did you tell her what side of the camera to be on?" she asks Saks, who looks like he might explode. "Now honey, toe your mark," she fusses over Bea, who grows quiet, explaining later:

"Lucy's really a dear. But sometimes it can get a little overpowering."

She doesn't talk to people without picking lint off their clothes, and straightening their collars, a habit that comes naturally enough to a woman who has her whole retinue, hairdresser, secretary, make-up man and driver of the last two decades - even her little picket-fenced French-provincial dressing-room trailer, with its false shutters and plastic ivy - picked up and transplanted wherever she strays from Lucy Lane where she presides at Universal Studios, year after year.

With her kids, she was, as daughter Lucie says, "Strict - and you want to believe it. We were the only kids we knew who had to work around the house for whatever money we'd get." Lucie still gets paid only scale for her mother's show.

But Desi Jr. wasn't exactly a natural. "He'd be asleep on the sidelines and I'd be ready to smack him," Lucy says, "When he said he was interested in serious acting, I said, 'Oh, really?' But he got out and worked. He surprised me. He surprised everybody. He even surprised himself."

Still, for all her talk about the joys of getting away to her Colorado ski lodge where she does "the cooking, the washing, the socks, the things I miss - not to mention the leg breaking - there's not much chance that Lucille Ball is going to be sitting the next round out, wallowing in domesticity, In the old rocking chair.

# # #

FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) “Bridget Loves Bernie” was a 1972 sitcom about a mixed marriage between a Jewish man and a Catholic woman. Like Lucy and Desi, stars Meredith Baxter and David Birney were also married in real life. Despite excellent ratings (it was the highest-rated new show of the 1972-73 season) the show was cancelled after only one season. The official reason for its cancellation was that it was scheduled between two mega-hits, “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, and its ratings weren't strong enough considering its choice position in the line-up.

Also, that same season, the long-running “The Dean Martin Show” (1965-1974) was cancelled. Lucille Ball had made three appearances on the show, and he also appeared on hers.

(2) Conga drums, not bongos. It is slightly dismissive to call Desi Arnaz a bongo player.

(3) The editor makes the error of assuming that Lucy divorced Desi and Married Gary Morton the same year. She divorced Desi in April 1960, and married Gary in November 1961, a year and a half later.

This article was published in the Leisure section of The Vancouver (BC) Sun on June 22, 1973. The article was written by Marci McDonald and illustrated by David Annesley.

#Lucille Ball #Mame #Vancouver Sun #Marci McDonald #David Annesley #Bridget Loves Bernie

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lizartgurl · 6 years

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“Back to You” (Aqualad x OC)

PART FIFTEEN

(part one) (part two) (part three) (part four) (part five) (part six)(part seven) (part eight) (part nine) (part ten) (part eleven) (part twelve) (part thirteen) (part fourteen)

@flamebiirds @the-shadow-of-atlantis @super-spoiler @keanureevesislesbian @princes-jasmine @sapphicstargirl

The Whitago are defeated, but Rhodes has escaped. For Kaldur and Emma, this means time to themselves and to relax. But for how long?

Warning: This’ll be the chapter that makes y’all hate me.

Also wow Kaldur actually wears sneakers in this gif, lol

“Sidekick, what is it?” Kaldur groaned. He tried to sit up without disturbing Emma, but that was futile.

“I told you huskies are loud,” Emma sighed, rubbing at her eyes.

Sidekick ignored them, continuing to yap in front of the door as she jumped about, playing an extreme version of chasing her tail.

“Go back to sleep, Emma, I’ll let her outside,” Kaldur said.

Emma pulled the blanket closer to make up for the sudden lack of warmth, glancing at the clock on the stove. six in the morning. Had their rescue mission, subsequent escape, and the fight back in town really gone by that quickly? It felt like months had passed before they were able to get back to the safehouse.

Just as her eyes closed, Sidekick began to growl into the early morning darkness. She refused to get off the porch, her legs spread in a defensive stance, ears back, ready to leap at the first movement of danger.

“Now what is it?” Emma tossed the blanket off and reached for her wrap, joining Kaldur at the doorway.

The mix of falling snow and darkness kept them from seeing anything really.

“Could it be a moose?” She asked.

“It is Moose Factory,” Kaldur shrugged, and squinted. As an Atlantean, his eyes were better fit to see in the darkness, so long as he let them adjust after extended periods in surface world lighting. Emma had a night vision mode on her mask, but she didn’t feel like going all the way back to her room to get them.

She saw Kaldur’s shoulders stiffen, but he slowly picked up Sidekick, closed the door, and turned off the lights.

“Back door, now.”

Emma didn’t waste time asking questions yet. She sprinted down the hall just ahead of Kaldur, past their rooms. She kicked the door open as the whistle of missiles sounded overhead, and turned to make sure Kaldur was still behind her as their impact shook the ground, engulfing the house in flames.

The force threw them off their feet and into the shrubbery of the surrounding trees.

“Kaldur?” Emma gasped, trying not to yell.

“Right here,” He dropped his water shield, determining that the fire was far enough away that it wouldn’t impede his performance. Sidekick gave him a lick on the cheek.

“Is it Rhodes?” She asked, pulling him to his feet. They started running again, in any direction. They couldn’t lead their attackers back to the village, not with Wayne Foundations and the recently rescued girls. Though if this was Rhodes, he’d go there anyway. Emma just prayed that he wanted revenge on the two of them more than re-taking all the girls.

“Maybe, I could not tell,” Kaldur gasped. He had one hand in Emmas, the other holding Sidekick tightly.

Out of the darkness, metal suits grabbed them, knocking them both to the ground. Their attackers tried to electrocute them, but Nightingale and Aqualad simply turned the electricity back on the metal suits of armor.

“Manta troopers!” Kaldur warned her, smashing his head against their helmets.

“Wonderful,” Emma tossed her trooper into a tree while Sidekick bit and clawed at his leg, leaving tiny teeth marks in the dense metal.

“Good girl,” Emma scooped her up.

“Where to now?” Kaldur asked. The trooper he’d pinned in the snow stopped playing possum and wrapped his legs around Kaldur’s neck, throwing him into the ground. Emma recognized the move as one of the Crock Sister’s.

“Kaldur!” As she ran to help him, two new troopers jumped from the shadows and grabbed her by the arms, kicking Sidekick into the underbrush with a whimper.

“You just kicked a freaking dog, you monsters!” She shouted, trying to punch either of them in the face. Her wings spread of their own volition before a collar was snapped into place around her neck and they went limp.

Two more soldiers approached to help with Kaldur, who now sported a power dampening collar around his neck, as Manta appeared from the direction where the house had been. He was lacking in his armor, but he still carried an air of authority for someone who’d run from one country to another in his prison orange.

“Father,” Kaldur spat as the troopers pulled him to his feet.

“Kaldur’ahm.” David Kane stood in front of him, looking his son as he folded his arms, disappointed.

“Let me guess, Belle Reve wasn’t up to your standards?” Emma snorted.

Manta turned to her, as if he was just now noticing her presence. He grabbed a sword from one of his free troopers and approached her. Before she could register what was happening, the troopers holding her had pushed her down onto her knees, and Manta had neatly sliced off her wings.

“No!” Kaldur screamed, only able to see the blood slicking Manta’s sword before he stepped aside, assuring Kaldur that Emma was alive, though bleeding and panting heavily.

“I take it you still do not wish her harm?” Manta asked, kneeling down next to Emma to clean his sword in the snow.

“If you harm a hair on her head I swear I will make you pay,” Kaldur growled.

A chuckling came from the trees behind them.

“Lad’s still not as ruthless as you’d hoped, eh, Davey?” Rhodes asked, leading his men out of the shadows.

“Get...off...this island,” Emma panted, wishing she could fry everyone in a ten foot radius. The troopers weren’t holding her anymore, but her back was in too much pain to do anything but hold herself above the snow.

“Didn’t know you spoke for the Cree folk, lassie,” Rhodes said, bending down to pluck a stray hair from Emma’s ponytail. As Kaldur struggled against the hold the troopers had on him, Rhodes flicked it into the snow.

“Rhodes is right, my son,” David pretended to consider it, studying his reflection in the shining blade. Emma was in too much pain to be afraid, but Kaldur’s eyes were wide and white.

“Perhaps we should put Nightingale out of her misery. Then what else would you have to fights for?”

“No!” Kaldur shouted.

“No?” David continued to study the blade. He had been expecting this reaction.

“Let her go. I will do whatever I want, I swear.”

“Kal-” Emma wanted to scream from the pain. “Kaldur no, you can’t. You have so much else left to fight for.”

“Nothing without you is worth fighting for,” Kaldur insisted.

“Shall we pull out the Hortons coffee and donuts while we wait for you two lovebirds, eh?” Rhodes shouted, reminding them that they were not alone.

“Done.” David said. He stood up, handed the blade back to his trooper, and approached his son. Kaldur finally yanked his arms from the trooper’s grasp and squared his shoulders, facing his father.

“So long as you do Emma no harm, I will stay with you.” Kaldur promised. Though he looked Manta square in the eye, he avoided looking at Emma.

“No,” Emma shook her head as Rhodes and his men dragged her to the otherside of their little clearing. She wouldn’t let him do this again, put her and everything else above himself. They’d just reconciled, why did it have to be this way.

“Agreed.” Instead of going in for a handshake, Manta gripped his son’s shoulders. “Welcome back, my son.”

One trooper seemed to roll his eyes, and another choked when he tried to hide his gagging motion from Manta.

“Mr. Rhodes,” Manta said.

“Yessir?” Rhodes looked up from the cigarette he was lighting.

“Moose Factory and Canada are in your command again. Do not disappoint the Light this time.”

Rhodes grinned.

“Are you even still a part of the Light anymore?” Emma asked, more delusional than brave. Rhodes’ chubbiest man kicked her in the stomach.

“Emma,” Kaldur whispered as another trooper snapped handcuffs on his wrists. Manta wasn’t naive as to remove the collar from his son yet.

“I love you,” Emma whispered, just as quiet as Manta led his troopers and Kaldur back in the direction of the safehouse-no-more.

They had barely disappeared when Rhodes tossed his cigarette into the snow, stomping it out with his boot.

“Well boys! Time ain’t on our side and we got a lot to do before the sun comes up! Starting with ol’ Lassie here.”

“Don’t touch me,” Emma snarled a warning.

Rhodes had his men grab her, dragging her towards the river. She was too exhausted to put up too much of a fight, but she resisted anyway, right up until the point where they tossed her into the cold water.

#lizart writes #bty aquafire fic #kaldur #kaldur'ahm #aqualad #fish boy #kaldur x oc #aqualad x oc #my ocs #nightingale #young justice oc #young justice fanfiction

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ladiekatie · 6 years

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So... i remember for this year’s sterek week, one of the promtps was role reversal where stiles is the one with a large family and Derek has a small family, and it made me thiiink....

this got super fucking long soooo more under the cut.

Like, not only does Stiles have 6 brothers and sisters (for a total of 7 Stilinski children), but he’s a twin. at that he’s not even the oldest, he’s the smack-dab-in-the-middle Middle Child™ He shares his room with 3 of his brothers and is forced on the top bunk of his bed where his twin, Stuart, kicks him in the middle of the night. David and Cole don’t do shit to try and stop him because of the twins, Stiles is the youngest and somehow deserves the nightly punishment. Across the hall, his two sisters Dina and Penny share what used to be an office, and the baby, Yani, sleeps in the crib in their parents room.

He and all his brothers look more or less like carbon copies of each other, and people swear he and Stuart are the same person if they are not standing in the room together. His mom will often call him by the wrong name, and his dad doesn’t even call out names anymore, probably too confused by the mass of clones running in and out of his peripheries.

They’re crammed into this tiny house that his parents bought ages ago, and it’s practically bursting at its seams with teenagers and a whoopsie baby. They all go to the same school, because Irish Twins seem to run in their Polish family lines. Stiles, and to a lesser extent Stuart, just get lost in the fold of things. He gets into a lot of trouble, but never enough to make his parents seem to notice him. Another call the principal’s office is old news they don’t even bother to ground him for.

Derek on the other hand, lives with his mom. Just his mom. His dad died before he was born on a military mission in south america. He’s easily the apple of his mother’s eye. an eye which she rarely takes off of him for more than a few moments. If he’s not at school or at baseball practice, he is with his mother. She holds a tight leash on him, not because she’s a helicopter mom, but because she has no idea what she would do if she lost him.

Derek’s mom has a good job, so their house is big, bigger than anything they will ever need. He kind of hates it. It’s usually quiet, and there is nothing to do besides homework and watch tv. he doesn’t even have a video game system because his mother is convinced it will make him violent. Derek doesn’t really have friends, none that he’s allowed to hang out with outside of school at least. It’s kind of suffocating....

Then they meet.

Stiles is left to walk to school because fucking Cole, Penny, and Stuart left with the car they all share while Stiles was still in the shower, then dad dropped Dina and David off while Stiles was eating. Mom was going in the other direction to drop Yani off at Daycare and didn’t want to waste gas by driving him to school. Forgotten again. Jesus, he feels like a real life Kevin McCallister.

It’s one of the rare days when Derek’s mom can’t take him to school, so Derek gets to ask Boyd to come pick him up. Erica is riding shotgun and they all have coffee from Starbucks. They’re talking about the test that is coming up at the end of the week, worried that Mr. Harris is going to post dumb questions about shit they haven’t even covered like he did on the last exam when Derek sees on of the Stilinski’s walking. Derek asks Boyd to slow down, and he opens the window and yells, “Stilinski!” because there are so many of them crawling over that school it’s almost impossible to tell them apart. The Stilinski turns around, “need a ride?” Derek offers, because it’s winter now and it’s fucking cold and no one should have to walk to school on a morning like this.

At first Stiles turns it down, because a) Derek hale is a good kid and is probably just doing this out of pity b) This is probably the only alone time Stiles will get for a while c) Stiles is pretty pissed at the hand he’s been dealt, and this walk is really letting him let go of some pent up steam.

But... Derek’s smile looks genuine, so he huffs out a sigh and makes his way into the little car. And it flourishes from there. Derek and Stiles make fast friends, like weirdly fast. Somehow being picked up becomes a thing for them, even if it’s Derek’s mom who picks him up and takes him to school. This leads to Derek’s mom allowing Stiles to come over after school sometimes, and even... letting Derek go out on Friday nights after his baseball games.

It doesn’t take long for his brother’s to start teasing him about his new friend, or even a few times his new BoooOOoooyyyYYYYFFfffrriiiiIiieeEEnnnnNNNDddDdd. all of which Stiles vehemently denies. The first time Derek comes over to Stiles’ house, it’s a nightmare. The doorway is jammed with shoes, and there is a naked toddler running around and yelling upstairs and a smoke alarm in the kitchen and the back door is open, when did they get a dog? why is there salsa spilled on the couch?! and Derek loves it.

Of course John and Claudia are super nice and eager to meet Stiles’ friend ‘he’s never brought home a friend before’ and dinner is good, if not a little darker than it should be and Derek kind of can’t believe that people can live so messily and be so happy. Derek is jealous of Stiles’ fully and loving house.

On the flip side, Stiles loooooves being at Derek’s house, because it’s quiet and dinner is made and ready and he doesn’t have to fight over the food on the table. There are no stray animals crawling through the door and no toddler yelling about not wanting to put pants on.

One night, when Stiles and Derek are dancing on that line between “are we friends or something more?” Stiles admits that he kind of hates his family, this coming after his mother announces she’s having another baby. He says that he hates being one of a set, and how even between him and Stuart, Stuart always seems a little bit more important. He says that no matter what he does to distinguish himself from his brothers, he can’t seem to be different enough for anyone to notice, and then:

“I notice,” Derek says they’re sitting on the hood of the car Stiles and his brother’s share. Stiles bargained cleaning the bathroom for a month to get it for the night.

and then Stiles leans over and kisses Derek, and Derek lets him and that night Derek’s mom is not happy that they stayed out past curfew but she knew he was with Stiles so they were safe. Their sleepovers get a lot more explicit after that. Cole goes off to college the next year, but the number of kids doesn’t change at Michael is born.

Sometimes Derek will stay over at Stiles’ house, though sharing the room with his twin brother, little brother, and a toddler doesn’t allow for much hanky panky. When they stay at Derek’s they get it on like the horny teenagers they are. (tbh it was a relief to all parents involved that there weren’t going to be any stilinski grandchildren coming from Stiles and Derek anytime soon so they allowed it(Cole was NOT happy about this development when he tried to bring his girlfriend home after senior prom))

Like... Stiles and Derek don’t want to be dramatic... but they’re going to get married someday. Derek is a year older than Stiles, so when he graduates, he stays to go to community college to wait for Stiles. It’s year and years down the road, and Derek and Stiles finally put rings on it and they’re sitting at their dinner table talking about life and stuff and Derek just kind of asks off the top of his head, “So like... do you want a big family? For us, I mean?” because they both have talked about having a family before and they knew it was something they were going to want, the size of that family was never discussed though. Especially considering that after Stiles left his parents house, his mom and dad kept the limit of 8 kids in the house for 5 more years. brings Stiles family up to 13 kids. (The sheriff finally got a vasectomy, which he announced on facebook shortly after the last stilinski was announced.)

The question gave stiles pause, because his parents house was a mad house for years and years but... they were happy and loved. Despite Stiles near crippling identity struggles all throughout his childhood, he enjoyed having a big family. He also knew that Derek craved family, he was an only child, and ad no cousins. Hell, their wedding was pretty much a Stilinski family reunion with Derek and his mom. Seriously, the Stilinski are like fucking rabbits, Stiles has 82 cousins. Eighty. Two. Cousins. Stiles just didn’t know how big of a family Derek wants.

“Do you?” he asks in lieu of an answer.

“I mean... a few kids would be nice but-” Derek stops pausing to feel out Stiles’ facial cues.

“A few like-?”

“Four?” Derek answers, very nervous.

“Oh thank god,” Stiles says relaxing into his chair, he hadn’t even realized he was doing that. “I thought you were going to say something like 8. I couldn’t do 8. My mother was a saint but I’m pretty sure she contemplated murder once or twice.” Derek stares at Stiles some more. This definitely wasn’t a deal breaker, they know adoption is a hard avenue to follow, but it’s just to get a general idea. Stiles cuts into Derek’s thoughts, “Stop over thinking it. Four sounds perfect.”

AND THEN THEY KISS AND ADOPT THREE KIDS BECAUSE TURNS OUT THREE IS ACTUALLY PERFECT AND THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER THE END.

#shut up katie #sterek

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llexeh · 6 years

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This Is Not Some Twilight Shit, Sourwolf - Stiles Stilinski / Derek Hale (Vampire!Stiles) (Explicit)

Summary: Stiles didn’t think it was possible to be crushing any more desperately on Derek, but then the werewolf offered his blood after a near-death experience and, well, shit. Add some blinding pleasure and skillful tongue and Stiles was essentially screwed.

Warnings: blood, (unexpected) blood kink, canon-typical violence, complete (okay, major) disregard of conventional vampire anatomy and folklore, smut, come swallowing, slight ooc (extra verbosity from Derek), mild future kink negotiation

Rating: explicit

Pairing: Stiles Stilinkski / Derek Hale

Tags: Vampire!Stiles, blood kink, oral sex, come swallowing, anal fingering, dirty talk, biting, vampire feeding, smut, fluff, very mild angst, mild D/s nuances, Derek Hale is a good Alpha

Info: canon divergence, Stiles is of age

Word count: 10086

Prompt: Hey! I saw you had prompt requests so I was wondering if I could prompt Vampire!Stiles needing to feed and Derek just offering himself to Stiles? ^^

Prompted by: spidey-charles (gosh I really hope this is okay and I’m so so sorry if this isn’t what you had in mind but thank you so much for putting a request in <3)

Feeding was never easy. Stiles had Principles™ and Morals™ and he was also adamant he wouldn’t create a disruption in the ecosystem surrounding Beacon Hills. He was basically David Attenborough, if David Attenborough was a bloodsucking monster who was sorta superfast and kind to others, part of a werewolf pack whose Alpha was a Dark and Broody asshole.

Speaking of which, Derek had been surprisingly accommodating, if overly careful about dynamics and such. On his part, Stiles felt more useful in battle so his morale was improved. He was also full of Twilight jokes that got old about eight minutes after he had returned as a vampire. The adjustment period was weird. His dad was devastated, scared, and eventually supportive. Scott made it a point to scent him every day because cold skin meant no warmth to spread the scent. Stiles offered to carry a small hairdryer everywhere and earned himself a smack for it.

There was a not-so-small part of him that had hoped (once the dust settled on this new development), that he would become substantially more attractive. As a general thing, but also particularly to Derek. His stupid crush had been going on for a pathetically long time and try as hard as he might, he wasn’t able to shake it. And because his life was a joke, if dating was not happening before, dating now was definitely not happening. Not because he didn’t trust himself, but it was too dangerous for everyone involved. And not in an Edward Cullen shitty-possessive way, but the supernatural world wasn’t superkeen on vampires. And Stiles’s big mouth alone was a hazard, let alone what he had become.

So feeding was a bit of a chore. The research wasn’t great either; for some bizarre reason history hadn’t documented the rules of housekeeping vampires. How unexpected. Stiles had devised a schedule for feeding, picking older animals and draining them painlessly, occasionally accepting blood bags from Melissa when he was sure they weren’t otherwise needed. His dad donated to his culinary needs regularly, regardless of how much Stiles begged him not to.

It was less than satisfactory.

It was through a weird conjuncture that involved faeries, a talking snake, and Peter Hale that Stiles found out about obscure Ancient Greek texts describing feeding rituals. He proceeded to spend months trying to find and then decipher them enough for them to become useful. He was fortunate enough to not have to sleep, which also meant that every time Derek fell asleep in the large armchair downstairs in the loft as they worked on the translations, Stiles could take his time categorizing all the fine wrinkles and the way the werewolf’s cheekbones twitched ever-so-slightly as he dreamt, and long story short, he was crushing so fucking bad it was actually sad.

The first significant shift in Stiles’s life (other than, you know, becoming a fucking vampire after having already adhered to a pack of werewolves and other supernatural creatures, seriously what the fuck was his life?) came to be when he had a breakthrough in a particular fragment of the texts. Lydia had managed to procure a first edition dictionary of sorts and Stiles did nothing else for three days, papers and drafts covering most of the living room floor at Derek’s place.

(Stiles did have a job, thank you very much, but freelancing meant his schedule was flexible. And also he really didn’t have to sleep – 100% increased productivity, woop! And living costs decreased dramatically when you didn’t have to buy food.)

Within the feeding rituals, Stiles found information about magical rituals, as well as ways to enhance the effectiveness of blood absorption. The Greeks really were into this shit – how they dealt with the heat, Stiles had no idea. The sun was manageable, if annoying, but the heat was just the worst. In all fairness, the heat was the worst when Stiles was human, let alone now when his skin was perpetually cold.

Translating from a dead language was not fun on a normal topic, like philosophy. The supernatural gurus from antiquity probably got off on convoluted sentences. He was in the process of rephrasing some of the notes he’d taken to make sure they were correct when Derek yawned. The werewolf had been sleeping for a while, half curled up to the arm of the chair, one of his knees up, face serene and undisturbed. Derek did that sometimes. He would wake up minutely and yawn, and proceed to fall asleep again with no memory of doing it. It was the most endearing thing Stiles had ever witnessed. He had half a thought to wake the other man up and send him to his bedroom, but Stiles was selfish and would find it hard to give up the relaxing habit of looking up from his work and seeing the man asleep. This crush of his was getting out of hand.

Stiles hadn’t seen that particular page at first. He’d overlooked it due to boredom, or perhaps his ADHD was spiking, or perhaps he was crushing too hard and didn’t realise it was relevant. When he accidentally picked it up, he’d already spent so much time reading the damned things, the information seemed to pour out of the paper onto his brain. He was, for lack of a better word, shook. It was an in depth description of feeding for mates and lovers. Stiles was pretty sure that was what the word meant. The other potential translation was “potters”, but he was definitely going with “mates” for this one. The gist of it was that it was an incredible bonding experience, together with intense pleasure and contentedness. It supposedly created an extremely strong connection between mates for the duration of the feeding and the ensuring sexual intercourse as long as the blood was offered freely and the offer was backed by sentiment - it wasn’t entirely clear how that worked. There was further literature about the bond between a vampire and a human, about two vampires, and unsurprisingly none about a vampire-werewolf bond. The book explained how frowned upon it was, how intimate and now Stiles had a sharp pang of longing. He filed the information for a later time, and got up to get Derek upstairs and in an actual bed.

The second significant shift was following a rather taxing fight. Stiles had accompanied Derek and Scott on a pack-bonding trip through the preserve. He was mostly there for moral support, but also to stop them from mauling each other. With great power and all that. It was supposed to be a relaxed experience, some running and hunting for Stiles. (He was reluctant as all fuck to feed in front of the pack, and often chose to do the deed away from them, where he wouldn’t feel as judged.)

He was on such a mission, some miles away from the others, searching for a suitable animal to tide him over when he felt claws descend and slash at his back. His survival instincts (Stiles, is it survival if you’re undead?) kicked in eventually, but at that point he was finding it hard to stand up. The smell that filled his nostrils was familiar, but definitely not pack. Stray werewolf, an omega perhaps. Stiles was weakened by the wound, he hadn’t fed yet. The were growled at him, shifted and running towards him, claws out. Stiles was moderately afraid. He managed to dodge the attack, too uncertain of his strength to retaliate. Scott and Derek were not close, but he hoped they would feel his distress in the pack bonds. He kinda prayed, rather.

He took off towards where he guessed they were. The closer he got, the greater the chances that they were going to sense him and come to his aid. Among everything, Stiles’s primordial thought was that of the bond he never got to feel with Derek. With anyone. How sad. He ran, pain pulsing through his spine down his legs, lungs burning despite not needing the air. It was disconcerting, how fragile he felt, and he couldn’t help but think of before, when he was predominantly useless in fights.

The comfort of the pack smell could make him cry. The bonds vibrated, more frantic the more distance he covered. Behind him, the werewolf was relentless in his attacks, frothing at the mouth, insults tumbling from his lips.

“Abomination!” he screamed. “Blood-sucking monster!”

As if Stiles didn’t know. But also, the hypocrisy. If he hadn’t been in so much pain and so desperate to get to safety, Stiles would stop and have words with him. How pathetic. Derek. It smelled like Derek now, faint at first, then stronger, and eventually the scent enveloped Stiles in a distinct feeling of home. He was safe.

His Alpha’s growl was mighty, he thought. What a beautiful sound as he rained hell on the stray. Stiles managed to stop, but he was sluggish and ended up half-colliding with a tree, propping himself up using the wide trunk. Derek was still fighting his assailant while Stiles tried to focus on willing the pain away, now slumped on the wet forest floor. His back was on fire, his usually cold skin burning under the open wound. Derek slashed at the stray’s chest and blood soaked his shirt instantly. Stiles salivated involuntarily. So much for Pavlov jokes, he’d never live this down.

“Derek,” he managed, eyes glazed over. The hunger was real. The pain was just as real.

The Alpha stopped, one hand holding the kneeling werewolf’s head while the other one prepared to slash his throat. He looked up in understanding. Dragging the injured stray over to Stiles, he presented him to his vampire pack member.

“Don’t you dare,” the werewolf managed, blood bubbling on his lips. “I’d rather be mauled than have this monster touch me!”

Stiles felt the sting of that, but his primal instinct was to feed and survive. He started to move, trying not to fall down further and have to crawl, unsure if he could take the embarrassment.

Derek knew, though, the way Derek always knew. “Shut it,” the Alpha growled, and stepped behind the stray, covering his bloody mouth with his clawed hand. He pulled the other werewolf’s head back, and held the side of his throat to Stiles’s now desperate trembling lips.

Stiles wasted no time latching on, fangs piercing the skin with relative ease, hot blood flowing into his mouth. The werewolf screamed, Derek’s hand pressing harder to minimise the noise. After the initial relief of feeding and feeling the pain dulling, Stiles felt more. As a general rule, blood was delicious to Stiles. He’d discussed it with Boyd of all people one night when they were watching reruns of wedding tv shows on TLC. Boyd was discreet and Stiles trusted him implicitly. He wasn’t proud of taking pleasure in feeding. It wasn’t something he’d wished for, and it was difficult to come to terms to no matter how much he tried.

But this blood. Werewolf blood. Stiles had never. He’d never even presumed to ask, and no one offered, not even for science. It wasn’t something he was comfortable doing anyway, so he would find it extremely difficult. But werewolf blood was the best thing he had ever encountered. He imagined heaven would feel like that, like hot blood flowing straight down his throat, the taste rich, almost smoky.

Stiles could swear he felt his veins tingling. His entire body shook with what he eventually understood to be pleasure. The thrashing made the blood flow easier into his mouth, and Stiles refused to think of how he was draining a living person. With little to no control over his actions, he lifted his eyes to look at Derek. Alpha Derek. His Alpha. Who had provided for him in his time of need. Who was still providing for him as he pushed the dying werewolf down while Stiles fed. He felt his heart swell up with the implications. To his complete mortification, his dick followed shortly.

He was unsure why his anatomy decided it was Hard Dick Time, but it was happening, oh-my-god-was-it-happening. Derek breathed in deeply, and Stiles knew. There was no mistaking the smell of his arousal, the quickening of his phantom heartbeat that happened whenever he fed. There was no mistaking the prominent tent in Stiles’s jeans as he kneeled sucking the blood and life out of his attacker. There was no mistaking Derek’s wandering gaze travelling down straight to his crotch. Stiles moaned, the mortification now complete. He shut his eyes and focused on the taste once more, resigned that his eternal life included getting a raging hard-on because of werewolf blood while his Alpha watched.

The aftermath was infinitely less glorious than the feeding. After making sure he was okay, Scott’s mocking was merciless. Derek kept quiet, mildly amused at the situation while Stiles was sure that if he could still blush properly, he’d be flushed to shit. And Scott may have been his best friend, the closest thing he had to a brother, but Scott had a big mouth and as soon as he opened it, the entire pack knew. Stiles considered moving on the East Coast out of spite. Derek never mentioned it. Not once, and Stiles was grateful.

But Derek was almost imperceptibly different. There were brief touches, nowhere near as lingering as Stiles would have liked them. Brief touches on his shoulder when he got up to go to the kitchen. Brief touches to say thank you to Stiles for cooking for the pack. Brief touches when Stiles went home. A particular touch on the back of his head after Stiles saved Erica’s life when they were ambushed by hunters. Stiles kept them all filed for later, for when he was sure he was alone in his bedroom back at his dad’s house.

And he had revoked his own right to Pavlov jokes once and for all since every time he thought of that time in the forest his brain supplied him with not only the memory of the greatest tasting blood he’d ever tried, but with Derek’s red eyes on his mouth as he aggressively sucked the life out of the stray werewolf. And every time that particular image popped into his mind he would get instantly hard. It was a nuisance, but some of his strongest orgasms have been achieved on all fours, three fingers up his own ass, moaning Derek’s name into his pillow thinking of those eyes on his feeding.

There was no doubt his kind had their own mating instincts because all Stiles wanted to do every time he allowed himself to think about Derek was to envelop him in hugs and proceed to keep him close for eternity. He wanted to occupy Derek’s entire attention, wanted the world to revolve around him, and more than anything he wanted to feel the tug of the bond he had read about. It was heartbreaking.

None of them knew how the word got out, but it was unanimously believed to have been a coven of witches Stiles pissed off this one time. The important thing was that everyone in the supernatural world (and their fucking mother) knew there was a vampire in the Hale pack. Which attracted territory claims and overzealous contenders who felt they had something to prove. And hunters. So. Many. Fucking. Hunters.

Sometimes Derek ordered Stiles to stay back. He’d flash his eyes and growl and Stiles would nod and leave the loft as soon as he counted to thirty Mississippi. They always “had words” afterwards, and Stiles spent hours stripping his cock thinking of the way Derek’s chest looked when he crossed his arms over it in displeasure.

Stiles was not prepared to live forever. He didn’t like thinking about it, he didn’t even like the occasional thought that made him realise he would outlive his father by an eternity. His friends would all eventually die as well. But what he did realise on a regular basis was that in an eternal life there was an infinity of circumstances that could change its course. It was with this distinct thought that he found himself being carried to safety by Derek. If he had the energy he would have huffed. What was even the point in being immortal and having this extra power if he was still weak?

The pack had all left for the weekend. It was Derek’s stoicism and stubborn nature that made him stay, while Stiles promised that as soon as he’d finish his work, he would pack Derek up and shove him in the jeep and drag him out as well. It was impractical at best, what with Beacon Hills being a magnet for all things shitty and all. But it appeased them enough for them to go. Stiles had little to no inclination of joining them at the beach. It wasn’t the most fun of times to be slowly burning even in the shade. And Derek was territorial beyond words so there was no way he was being taken away from his ancestral lands.

Stiles was the first one to feel the change in the wards Deaton and him had set up. He’d let Derek now and got up to leave as well. The Alpha did his usual routine of huffing and puffing as he put shoes on, and for once Stiles was inclined to listen. It passed quickly, two hundred Mississippi, and he was out the door, running towards where he felt the wards change.

It was a good thing, Stiles would argue that until the end of time. Derek was kneeling on the floor of an abandoned warehouse, thick wolfsbane-coated chains holding him in place while two hunters shocked him time and again with high voltage. Stiles took them out first. Neck snaps, clean and nice. The others turned their focus on him, probably considering Derek too weakened to react. He was mid-fight with one of the remaining three when he felt the sharp pierce of a metal arrow in the shoulder pinning him to the wall. A second arrow got him a couple of inches lower than the first. He instantly knew something wasn’t right.

Their research hadn’t produced too many results about ways to debilitate a vampire, but there were spells and potions used to weaken them. Given how rare they were these days, it was improbable they would affect Stiles. And, Derek had added, Stiles wouldn’t even be in fights that much. Which, yes, was at least stupid, but at the time it was pointless to argue. Now, as Stiles’s vision had started to blur, he really wished they’d paid more attention to the literature.

He came to as Derek was carrying him presumably back to safety. Stiles was content with knowing that Derek was alive. The pain in his shoulder was unbearable and he whimpered as he was jolted by Derek’s running. The Alpha slowed down and shushed him, cradling him gently.

“Derek?” he asked, confused.

“I’m not sure what it is, we’ll get you home in no time,” Derek replied.

Stiles coughed then and his world went red with pain. He felt it diminishing and watched as black vines appeared on Derek’s neck and jaw. He wanted to argue against it, but the relief was too great.

“How can I pass out if I don’t even sleep?” Stiles asked slowly, trying to focus on his words.

Derek’s lips curled upwards momentarily. “You’re such an idiot,” he replied.

To Stiles’s great relief, they were back at the loft. Derek deposited him on the large sofa in the living room and knelt in front of him. He disposed of Stiles’s bloody shirt and frowned at the sight.

“What is it, doc?” Stiles asked, trying to lighten the mood despite the difficulty he had formulating words. When there was no reply, he looked down. One of the arrows was still lodged under his clavicle and it burned. The wound above it was in bad shape, but at least it had stopped bleeding.

“This metal…”

“What about it?” Stiles asked, trying to keep his mind active so he wouldn’t go in vampire faintland.

“I’m not sure, it’s some kind of alloy. I’m not sure what it’s doing to you.”

“Well, for one it fucking hurts,” Stiles panted-laughed.

Derek took more of the pain away. “I’m sorry,” he started, “I’m going to have to take it out. The other one looked better after I pulled the arrow out.”

“Do it,” Stiles said.

“It’s going to hurt. The other one was bad and you were unconscious.” Derek frowned, leaning closer to inspect the wound.

“That’s okay, Sourwolf, I know you wouldn’t hurt me on purpose.” He lifted his hand and cradled Derek’s cheek for a second to reassure him. Derek was important, he was his Alpha, he shouldn’t be this worried about him.

“Hold on to my shoulder,” he instructed. He paused for a second, then lifted the t-shirt he’d taken off Stiles. “Here, bite on this, it won’t do much but it might help.”

Doing as instructed, Stiles braced himself. There was nothing to prepare him for the blinding pain he felt as Derek wiggled the arrow the tiniest bit. It was going to be agony, Stiles knew. He clenched his hand on the Alpha’s shoulder and held on for dear life.

Derek was distressed. He felt it in the bond pack, he felt it under his fingers, he felt it in the air, he smelled it in the room, he heard it in his heartbeat. “I’m so sorry, Stiles. The two you killed, and one of them bled to death.” He pulled once, sharply, and Stiles wanted to die. “The others two killed themselves before I could stop them, I wish I could have saved one of them for you to feed.” He pulled again, the spiked arrowhead burning on the way out.

Stiles was begging for death now. Silently, he hoped. He was pretty sure it was silently, he had no strength to form words out loud.

“I’m a bad Alpha,” Derek muttered. It could have been Stiles’s imagination, but between lidded eyes he saw the pained expression on the werewolf’s face.

Derek pulled the arrow out completely, and Stiles screamed as loud as he could, biting into the shredded t-shirt. The pain was sharp, then continuous. He bled borrowed blood he couldn’t afford to lose – his Alpha’s hands flew up to push on the open wound. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Derek repeated, cradling Stiles’s head as it went to roll backwards.

“No,” Stiles managed, feeling his throat burn with hunger. “Best ever,” he pushed out, hand still clenched on Derek’s shoulder, unaware of how much it hurt him.

“Stiles,” Derek started, “if you just open your mouth and lean forward a bit, you can feed on me, I wouldn’t mind and –”

“No,” he barked back.

“Don’t be –”

“I said no!”

Derek shook his head, opening his mouth to argue. Then his frown cleared and he gently pushed Stiles back into the worn cushions. “I’ll be right back, Stiles, okay?” he asked, getting up. “Right back, don’t you go anywhere now,” he added.

Stiles huffed in amusement and instantly regretted. The pain was there, infinitesimally less debilitating, but still mostly unbearable. “Dude, how?” The scoff came from the kitchen, Stiles heard it clearly. It was familiarity, that’s what it was. He was alive and really not well, and perhaps not even alive, but he was alive.

“Don’t call me dude.” The werewolf knelt in front of the sofa again, ripping a bit of plastic and Stiles could smell it. “Open your mouth,” Derek instructed.

He checked that it wasn’t a throat, even though it was stupid — he would have been able to smell the skin, hear the blood racing – and latched on to the straw that was offered to him. Instantly, he could feel strength return to his body as he gulped down the blood he was given. It wasn’t enough, his entire chest ached as he swallowed again and again. But it was better, he was better. He paused to readjust his head, looking at the straw longingly. “Like a Capri Sun for leeches,” he said quietly.

Derek tsked, as Derek was prone to do. “I had this for absolute emergencies. It’s the only one, though, we were going to get more next week. I’m sorry,” Derek said for the millionth time.

“Mhmm, shtop it,” Stiles grunted, a sound halfway between a whine and an annoyed huff. Then he realised. Despite the pain, his right arm – slightly less painful, although there wasn’t an inch of his body that didn’t hurt – shot up and he covered his bloody lips with his hand. “Sorry, I forgot.”

There was clear confusion on the werewolf’s face. “Why are you apologising for?” Then a pause. “Oh.” Then he frowned. “Stiles, really?” Then he cradled his head again in what was quickly becoming Stiles’s favourite touch ever. “I don’t mind,” he said gently.

“It’s not right, it’s unnatural.”

Derek wolfed out then, an eyebrow shot up in an exasperated-mocking expression. It was made ridiculous by the distinct lack of eyebrow hair, the ridge replacing his normally extra-expressive thick eyebrows not quite doing the job. “I’m a fucking werewolf, really?”

Stiles laughed around the straw, the slurping now getting moderately obscene as he neared the last bit of the blood bag. His hand was still covering his mouth, and Derek, now human again, pulled it away gently. “I’m –”

“You need to feed. I’ve got plenty of blood and accelerated healing. Just get those fangs out and feed already.” Derek had clearly switched to the authoritative voice now.

“No,” Stiles said firmly. All the little strength he got back he put in that one word.

“Stop being so damn stubborn!”

“Derek, no,” he insisted.

The Alpha was trying his hardest to be patient. “Okay. Okay, no. Why?” The silence he was met with wasn’t helping the situation. “Because the way I see it it’s a perfect situation, I’m right here and willing and able to help. Either way, you won’t make it to the preserve and I won’t let you die.”

Stiles whined quietly and waved the empty blood bag. “This is going to be enough, Sourwolf. I’ll make it,” he said with a smile. A weak smile.

“Bullshit,” Derek countered, sitting up from his heels to stare Stiles down. “What’s the real reason?” He opened his mouth to add something, decided against it, then pushed through his clenched jaw. “Is my blood not good enough for you?”

Despite the pain, Stiles stood up instantly. “What? No! What? What the fuck? No!” If it had been anyone other than Derek, he may have thought he was being manipulated, but the self-esteem was weak with this one. It was a genuine concern.

“Then?”

He sighed. “I can’t feed on my Alpha, it’s against all hierarchical spoken and unspoken rules. You’d be vulnerable, what if someone attacked us? I’m useless, you’re incapacitated, and we’d both be fucked.”

“Your wards are strong, you’d get back on your feet in no time and I’d heal just as quickly,” Derek rebutted.

Stiles was getting increasingly agitated. “Okay, maybe but also. Also, remember what happened when I fed from that stray?” He was looking down now, folding the plastic blood bag into half, then into half again, opening it up and repeating.

After initial confusion, Derek’s eyes widened. “Please tell me you’re not actually risking death – permanent death – because you’re worried you might get hard around me. We’ll put a cushion on your lap if you’re that concerned, just feed already –”

“For fuck’s sake! It’s the feeding ritual for mates, okay?” Stiles shouted and immediately collapsed into a coughing fit. He held on to his sides, trying to stop before he passed out with pain again.

“The what?” the Alpha asked, holding Stiles’s torso still, taking as much pain away as possible.

Eventually, he managed to reply. “In the Greek texts. There’s a bit about feeding from your mate and it creates a bond during the feeding and it’s fulfilling and pleasurable and look, I can’t presume to or that you’re my – but I don’t want to – and it’s you and – it’s more than getting my dick hard, okay? It’s intimate and it makes you vulnerable and you’re my Alpha and you’re not – you’re more important – it’s more important you stay strong and able – I would never – I can’t presume to –”

Derek covered his mouth with his massive hand, the only way he knew was effective in stopping Stiles when he was Nervous Blabbering. It was bad enough before he didn’t need to breathe, now it was just endless. “It’s okay,” he said, kindness lighting his eyes. “I got you,” he said quietly, “I got you, just…” He pulled back and looked the young man in the eyes. His hand moved to caress his cheek. “You’re the most important to me.” He brought his head forward and touched his cheek to Stiles’s.

In the quiet surrounding them, Derek’s blood raced warm and unsettled under his skin, loud enough to fill the room. His heartbeat echoed louder than Stiles’s pain. He whimpered when the werewolf moved back, the warmth leaving him.

“Let me provide for you,” Derek whispered as he moved back. His head slid to the side, eyes fixed on Stiles’s. His throat arched, tendons taut, and he breathed steadily, a decided look etched on his face. “Please feed,” he said and there was so much vulnerability in his voice, Stiles had to hold him.

His arms snaked around the werewolf’s head, holding him to his bare chest. There was pain still, sharp and pressing, but the connection he felt with his Alpha was primordial. Perhaps always, but even more so now. The werewolf was kneeling in front of him, throat barred, vulnerable. He was trusting Stiles with his life, with knowing when to stop, he was adamant he would provide for the vampire, he was caring and loving and perfect.

“Derek, I can’t…” Stiles whispered.

The werewolf growled, the sound reverberating throughout his entire rib cage. “Do it!”

Stiles’s knees buckled. Tenderly, he lowered his lips, fangs elongating and grazing the skin. “Are you sure?”

Derek nodded and lifted his throat slightly, pushing it up against the vampire’s lips. Within seconds, he felt the burn of fangs piercing his skin. It was painful, yet unlike any pain he’d ever experienced. He tensed as he felt the burn spread from the wound, flourishing up on his jawline and down his collarbone. The fangs were gone then, Stiles whispering apologies in his ear, holding on to his shoulders. Derek shook his head and pushed back to the vampire’s mouth. “It’s fine, I’m fine, do it,” he insisted.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles said once more and the burn was back in Derek’s skin. He felt the way the fangs made room for his blood to trickle out, then they were gone again. The vampire’s lips latched to his skin, the tongue caressing the bites as Stiles scooped droplets of blood out.

The wave of pleasure hit Derek so hard, he couldn’t help the moan. He wasn’t ready for it, he’d never even imagined anything could feel like that. It was as if the entirety of the universe had crawled under his skin through the small incisions Stiles made on the side of his throat and proceeded to explode. His felt his very existence focused solely on the gentle tongue lapping at his skin.

On his part, the vampire wasn’t ready either. Like, holy fuck, he wasn’t ready. Like, the only other time when he had tasted werewolf blood it was out of dire necessity, not unlike this time round, but also this time it was Derek and everyone and their mother, across the entirety of the world, potentially in a couple of parallel universes knew that Stiles was adamant Derek was the most beautiful creature in history. And that the sun rose from behind his moody eyebrows and small smile. This was Derek, with the sweetest blood, the most appealing scent, the warmth of a thousand hugs, the most calming pulse in the world, even as it raced. Stiles was in heaven.

He felt arms circle his torso, holding him tight as he fed. His strength was returning steadily, he could feel the pain dull and instead pleasure bloomed throughout his body. In spite of the euphoria, he managed to pull away to allow the werewolf’s blood to replenish. It wasn’t a fast process, but Stiles wasn’t about to drain the love of his life —

“Alpha,” he whispered, delirious by now with the contentedness he felt. “My Alpha,” he said, and proceeded to pepper Derek’s earlobe with soft kisses, ignoring the blood smears.

Derek moaned. “Stiles, what are you — this is so good. I want this forever,” he replied eventually, uncharacteristically vocal about his feelings. His muscles were taut, veins standing out all over - of course Stiles noticed them. He moved back a little, enough to look at the vampire’s face. His hand cupped Stiles’s cheek. “You’re so amazing,” he whispered, eyes wide as if in genuine awe.

Stiles smiled then, lips reddened by the blood, his face filling slowly with a modicum of colour. He was content, feeling stronger, cock hard and heart full of love for the beautiful man still kneeling in front of him. There was lurking sadness behind the smile, though. “It’s the feeding bond,” he explained. “It makes you feel like this.”

Derek’s panicked expression would have been alarming if he hadn’t immediately started talking, forcing the focus on what he was saying. “What? No! I mean yes, but what about —“ he paused, hand going to cover the side of his throat where he could feel warm blood still dripping out. “What about all the other times?” he soldiered on. “What about when you sit on my floor and hum or when you cook for all of us or when you smile every time you wake me up?” He bent forward then, forehead resting on Stiles’s collarbone, the wounds under it closing up slowly. “What about every other day when I desperately care about you?” As soon as he pulled back, his eyes found Stiles’s. He moved his bloody fingers away from his throat and lifted them to the vampire’s lips. “Open.”

Stiles had no choice but to comply, mesmerised by the way his Alpha chose to feed him, lapping at the blood on the werewolf’s fingers. Unable to break eye contact, he pulled the tip of Derek’s index finger in his mouth, sucking on it gently, tongue still caressing the fingerprint where the blood had been. Derek shuddered, then presented his middle finger to the red lips in front of him, smiling when it was greedily accepted.

There was the tiniest of nips under his second knuckle, then the burn, then the sting, then the pleasure. Derek’s other hand rested on Stiles’s thigh, gripping to try and steady himself. Stiles let go of the fingers, opening the palm to kiss it, then moving to the wrist where he could feel the werewolf’s pulse better. He nipped again, sucking greedily, licking and smearing drops of blood before cleaning them. Then up the man’s large forearm, marred with a couple of scars, resting his lips in the dip of his elbow. He looked up.

“Alpha?”

Derek nodded. This time, Stiles kept his fang in plain sight. He dragged it slowly, thinly breaking skin in a clean fine line. It didn’t hurt more than a paper cut would, and Derek shivered as he waited for the burn to settle under his skin. He knew what came afterwards. Stiles looked up, making sure Derek watched him as he licked the blood.

“Please,” Derek managed, trembling as pleasure took over him, visibly struggling to hold himself back.

Stiles smiled, half-kind, half-flirty. Almost a smirk. “Ah, yes?” He pulled Derek forward by the elbow, bringing them shoulder to shoulder. Stiles’s lips rested on the corner of Derek’s mouth. “Alpha?” he asked cheekily.

“Yes,” Derek breathed. “Yes!”

So Stiles moved. Minutely, enough to bring his red lips on Derek’s, pausing for a couple of seconds to revel in the feeling of finally, finally kissing this man he’d been lusting and pining after. He bent his head slightly, working Derek’s lips with his own. They opened immediately, kissing back hungrily. It was unclear when they readjusted their positions, but Stiles was suddenly aware of Derek’s large hands on his shoulder blades holding him tightly, bare chest flushed against the werewolf’s still-clothed wide torso. Derek was kissing into his mouth furiously, tongue circling his. His affected breaths brushed his cheek and Stiles’s hips buckled helplessly.

He held Derek’s head gingerly as the man moved to scent him, kissing his neck and collarbone and moving to the closing wounds. “Alpha…” he whimpered when he felt his tongue chase the dull pain away. “I’ve been dreaming of this for – years – for ah fuck –” Derek’s lips closed around a hardened nipple, effectively shutting Stiles up.

He felt himself being pushed back into the sofa, Derek peppering his entire chest with small bites. He shuffled forward to give himself more leeway, then moved back up to kiss Stiles again. “So fucking perfect,” he whispered against the vampire’s lips. One of his hands flew up to the bulge in Stiles’s jeans, gripping it teasingly. “For years, hm?” he asked as he squeezed, opening the top button with his thumb.

“Fuck, yes, years! Derek –” he gasped as the werewolf stopped moving his hand and pulled back to look at Stiles “– Alpha,” he tried again, and the movement resumed. “Alpha, please!”

“Good boy,” Derek praised. He popped open the other buttons and pulled Stiles’s jeans down, along with his boxers. Stiles was not the greatest fan of his body, but to watch Derek rake his eyes over every inch of exposed skin was mesmerising. He felt the werewolf’s fingers travel from beauty mark to beauty mark, softly revealing more skin. When he finally managed to undress Stiles completely, he pushed his knees further apart and bent his head to scent the skin on Stiles’s inner thigh. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, pressing lazy kisses all the way to the hipbone.

“I’m begging you – I’m so – please –”

“I got you,” Derek repeated his earlier words. The claw on his index finger nipped the skin on his thumb and he lifted his hand to Stiles’s lips once more. “Suck,” he said hurriedly before bending forward to lick the precum that had trickled down Stiles’s neglected cock.

Among whimpers, Stiles started sucking, holding on to Derek’s hand for dear life when the werewolf finally took him in his mouth and licked the leaking slit. His Alpha pushed down with wet lips, hollowing his cheeks as he went, sucking him in. He finally reached the end of his torturous journey and Stiles couldn’t help but ogle him, with his nose buried in the hairs at the base of Stiles’s dick, breathing in deeply, cheeks hollowed, cheekbones sharp, eyes shut.

He swallowed around Stiles’s dick and to the vampire’s complete and utter mortification, he bucked his hips in Derek’s throat. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbled around the thumb still bleeding in his mouth. He went to pull back when Derek reached the small of his back and pushed him in the tight opening of his throat. There was the smallest sign of a gag, and Stiles panicked because that’s who Stiles was. But then Derek opened his eyes, bright red and commanding, and Stiles thought he’d come then and there.

He let go with a filthy pop. “I’m going to open my mouth,” he started, licking the spit off his lips, “and you’re going to fuck my throat, okay?”

Stiles didn’t trust himself to speak so nodded, the taste of Derek’s blood still lingering on his tongue, the bond caressing the inside of his very soul. Derek kissed the tip of his dick, sucking loudly on the sensitive skin there. He followed through on what he’d said and opened his mouth, inviting Stiles in.

It was tentative at first - small movements, aiming to show Derek he was being good for him, but ultimately restrained. He gasped through clenched teeth, hips involuntarily pushing more dick up Derek’s throat - he felt a finger right under his balls, fondling them up gingerly and a second later another finger tapping his puckered hole, pressing gently against it.

“Derek, please! Inside, I’m gonna —“ Stiles starting fucking up harder into Derek’s mouth and throat, prompting an appreciative hum from the man.

The werewolf lined his finger up with Stiles cock, sucking it enough to wet it and brought it back to Stiles’s hole. He used his elbow to open his legs further, pushing the finger in to the first knuckle, then the second. It wasn’t enough to burn properly, or to let him find Stiles’s prostate, but together with the tight heat of Derek’s mouth and the way his cheeks hollowed as Stiles fucked his mouth, it was enough to make Stiles come.

“Derek — I’m — Alpha!” He moaned loudly, hands flying up to hold the werewolf’s head in place, dick pushed as far up in his throat as it could go and he came with a long and guttural moan. It was the most blinding pleasure he’d ever experienced, his entire body trembling as he spurted his load into Derek’s mouth. Even as he was maddened with pleasure, he could still feel the man’s throat constricting rhythmically to swallow as much as possible.

The aftermath was foggy. Stiles felt the drag of Derek’s lips as he moved to let go of his spent dick. He bucked pathetically once more, unable to help it as the stimulation became too much. When Derek’s face came into focus, Stiles thought he was somehow going to come again.

The werewolf looked wrecked. Lips swollen, hair mussed, spit and cum that had escaped his eager mouth glistening on his beard. “Good?” he asked cheekily.

“The best,” Stiles replied, and got up from his post-coital slouch to kiss the wetness off Derek’s face. He had been too distracted to notice what the werewolf had been doing, but even as he licked the mess away, savouring all the different tastes, he gasped loudly when he looked down.

Derek was still kneeling, legs apart, cock out and pushed up by his jeans. It was hard - large, thick and veiny, the head standing out as it curved upwards a little. His thighs were trembling as he panted with need. His t-shirt - still on for some fucking reason - was half-soaked in sweat and droplets of blood and spit. It had ridden up on one side, showing the damp muscles leading to – Derek rubbing the glistening head with his palm, trying to create some friction.

For the first time in a long while, Stiles was hungry for something other than blood. “None of that, get up here,” Stiles urged as he slid down, kissing him deeply when they were both on the floor. He pawed at the top, pulling it upwards and trying to get Derek out of it. When he finally succeeded, he sighed happily. “I love… this,” Stiles waved his hands at the werewolf’s entire torso.

“What, this old thing?” Derek asked innocently, flexing his pecs jokingly.

Stiles couldn’t help the giggle that escaped him, but even as he watched fondly, his hands cupped Derek’s neck then moved down on his shoulders, then down his arms. “How are you real?” he asked reverently. He went back to Derek’s collarbones then, down his chest where the hair was kept trimmed and neat. His fingers ghosted over the man’s nipples, down his hard abs.

Derek shivered as the vampire leaned in to kiss the place he’d bitten earlier. “Stiles? Would you like to feed some more?” He presented his throat, anticipation unusually present in his voice.

Stiles moaned. “Up on the sofa facing that way.” He seemed far too commanding for how nervous he was, even as lust took over him once more.

“Bossy,” Derek mumbled, but did as he was told.

“Only if you allow it.” Stiles watched the expanse of wide naked back with hungry eyes. He pulled Derek’s jeans down to his mid-thigh, essentially trapping him like that. He went straight to kneading the asscheeks in front ot him. “Having to watch you when you walked away… every time…” He was rambling now. “So I can watch this ass… I used to sit facing the stairs so I can see you go up like some sort of perv.”

Derek gasped when Stiles jokingly bit into the outer side of his ass. He shifted more weight on his forearms, pushed his ass higher in the air. “Please,” he whispered meekly.

“Okay, logistics… Lift,” Stiles said, patting the side of the werewolf’s thigh. “And the knees, okay, there we go!” Derek was fully naked now, socks and shoes gone as well. “Beautiful,” Stiles gasped. He tapped the inner side of Derek’s thighs, getting him to spread his legs.

The werewolf was fully on display now. The small of his back dipped when Stiles grabbed his cheeks and parted them further. He felt a finger travel from the top of his crack down to his hole, where it pressed on it gently. He heard Stiles spit, the filthiness of it making his cock ache with neglect. He felt the wetness travel the same road the vampire’s finger had, then a more urgent press on his needy hole.

He went to grab his dick, but Stiles was not having it. “No no, Sourwolf, let me do this right,” he told him, the commanding tone subtle. They would have time to talk dynamics, but right now Derek was desperate for any stimulation. He would take anything the other man gave him as long as he gave it to him then. He whined when the touch was too teasing and not definitive enough. “I got you,” Stiles repeated his earlier words and dived in.

Derek barely recognised his own moan. It was desperate and downright filthy. Stiles held on to his balls with a tender hand while his tongue flattened on Derek’s hole. He licked in broad strokes, trying to get it as wet as possible. Then it sharpened, pushing in slightly, alternating between focused and wide licks. Derek was mad with need. “Stiles, please,” he heard himself beg, uncertain what for.

“Shh, it’s okay,” the vampire assured and pressed a wet finger inside. He worked it in and out, a bit more every time. Derek took it, his hungry hole swallowing everything he was given. Stiles added another finger, careful not to hurt the man. He pushed them in maddeningly slow, dragging them on the upper wall as he pulled them back, then rotating them a bit. He scissored carefully, opening Derek up to him. “So hot,” he muttered, adding his tongue to the fingers in an effort to lubricate Derek’s hole further.

On his part, the werewolf was gone. He had shifted to the side a little, face practically buried in the back of the sofa as he pushed back against Stiles’s fingers. “More,” he managed in between moans.

Stiles sighed longingly, dick hard once more. He scrambled to his feet, planting a knee next to Derek’s to keep his legs spread. He pulled the werewolf up and on the back of the sofa, slowing his fingers. “You want another finger, Sourwolf? You want me to open you up more? Are you desperate to come?” Stiles was whispering in his ear now, tonguing his earlobe.

“Yes,” Derek almost barked. “Please,” he added as an afterthought. He pushed back on the fingers, hips stuttering when Stiles twisted and curled the digits and – “there!” Derek moaned.

“Here, hmm?” Stiles asked hot breath right in his ear. His fingers pressed against the prostate relentlessly.

“Yes! I need more.” He pushed back hoping to get more friction, but Stiles had almost pulled his fingers out completely.

“None of that,” the vampire said when Derek’s hand went to his cock. “Give them here,” he asked, and held Derek’s both wrists with no real strength. It was a power move, they both knew it. Stiles especially didn’t expect this power shift to be a constant thing. At least he hoped it wouldn’t be. He had dreamt of submitting to his Alpha for ages, even if it wasn’t in a scene - there was something about Derek’s commanding nature that did things to him. Stiles removed the fingers completely, bringing them up to lick them in front of Derek’s mostly unfocused eyes.

“Fuck.”

Stiles pushed a single finger back in. “Is this not enough?” he teased, nosing behind Derek’s ear to scent him the way all the werewolves in his pack did. He added another one. “How about this? No?” Derek nodded, then moaned when he felt another finger teasing his hole. “What about another one, Sourwolf?”

He left Derek for a second to spit on the partly opened hole again. When he came back up, he went straight to licking Derek’s throat, along the bulged veins there. “I can smell your blood,” he whispered in his ear as his fingers sped up. The heel of his palm wiggled to keep his cheeks spread and he started fingerfucking Derek in earnest. “You’re so good to me, Alpha,” Stiles told him. “You’re so good, providing for us, for me - giving me your blood and your mouth, letting me pleasure you in the best way I know…” Derek pushed back in sync with Stiles’s blunt nails tapping his prostate every time. “So good,” Stiles praised once more and stretched to kiss him, wet and filthy and amazing.

Derek moved his head to the side, presenting his throat once more. It didn’t matter how mad with pleasure he was, it was ingrained in his very nature to not be this vulnerable, especially as an Alpha. This was a conscious decision and Stiles felt like crying with the implications. “Bite… me…” Derek said through clenched teeth. “Feed,” he added in a pleading tone.

Stiles wasn’t sure if this was for his benefit or for Derek’s, but he did anyway. Mindful of where he bit, sharp fangs puncturing the skin on Derek’s throat once more. Sweet sweet blood filled his mouth and he sucked it greedily. The filthy noises filled the room amidst moans, the squelching of his fingers pumping in and out of Derek’s loose hole, the way he gurgled blood hungrily.

Pleasure ran through his veins, straight down to his dick. Derek’s fangs had dropped, mouth open in pleasure. His claws were firmly planted in the sofa, back tense, and when Stiles pressed down on his prostate particularly hard, he half-wolfed out as he came with a roar, untouched and delirious with pleasure. Part of Stiles was shocked, the other desperate for release. He let go of Derek’s wrists to pump his own dick a couple of times, and came all over Derek’s ass grunting.

The aftermath was quiet apart from the heavy breathing. Out of habit, Stiles panted along with Derek, even though his lungs were not burning for air. The werewolf was wrecked, the filthy moan he let out when Stiles pulled his fingers out going straight to the vampire’s spent dick. It twitched a little, but even with the supernatural and Stiles’s relentless lust, it needed a break.

He licked the open wounds clean, drenching them in enough saliva that they would stop bleeding soon. “Wait here,” he said quietly. Derek nodded and Stiles was gone for less than a minute before he returned with a damp washcloth and a towel. He wiped Derek’s asscheeks, then gently patted his tender hole clean. He tried his best to get the cum off the sofa, but it seemed it had partly soaked in already. “We might need to reupholster the sofa,” he said just as quietly.

Despite the contentedness he felt, both because of the bond and as a result of just having sex with Derek, Stiles’s anxiety seeped in. He busied himself with cleaning as much of the surfaces as possible, trying to not voice any of his concerns. Perhaps Derek was mad at him. Or perhaps he’d hurt the werewolf, pushed for too much. Perhaps the bond was too much, the intimacy too real or –

“I can literally hear you overthink,” Derek’s lazy voice came from the back of the sofa, where he was resting his upper body still trying to gather his wits.

“No, you can’t – unless you’ve developed new powers from having some vampire venom in you and even then, for the millionth time: this is not some Twilight shit, Sourwolf,” he said, immediately going into rambling mode.

Derek snorted. “Okay, not literally, but I know how your mind gets.” He slid back onto his heels then looked back at the wet spot on the sofa. “This never happened,” he said.

Stiles swore he could feel his heart break. “Of course,” he said quickly. “I totally get it, it would fuck up the pack dynamic and now that we’ve finally got some stability we would definitely not want that. You would definitely not want that,” he corrected himself. “Like, the pack is the most important, of course, and they must never know and –” He got up and pulled his discarded jeans back on as quickly as possible. “I’m gonna go, gonna look up some service to sort the sofa out as soon as I get home - I’ll link you some good places and I can cover the costs fully.” He looked around for a t-shirt before remembering it had been shredded to shit. It wasn’t ideal, but at least he had bottoms on. If the police stopped him his dad would find out but driving around shirtless wasn’t the worst thing he’d done. “Okay, I’m gonna –”

“Stiles, what the fuck are you on about?” Derek asked sharply.

“What?”

“Well?”

“You said this never happened and that’s totally fair, I can’t even disagree –”

Derek huffed. “I meant coming untouched, you absolute idiot!” he said, pointing to his lap with both hands in a ‘this right here you imbecile’ gesture.

“Oh,” Stiles managed, shoulders slumping as part of the tension left his body.

“Yeah, oh. Idiot,” Derek said affectionately. “Stiles, in what universe would I have just had the best sex of my life and let you go home?”

“Well how the fuck would I know that – wait, best sex?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Come here,” he said, flipping over on his back and settling on the sofa. “And take those off, they’re offending,” he said, pointing to his the half buttoned jeans.

Stiles’s lust returned with a vengeance. Still, he held on to the towel and looked around as if trying to find something else to do. “I’m not…” he trailed off, uncertain how to continue.

Derek frowned. “Unless you don’t want to,” he said, lifting up on his elbows.

“No! That’s not it, I just…” Once more, words failed him.

Derek sighed and fell back into the sofa. His hands went behind his head, making himself comfortable. His chest muscles flexed as he moved, thick arms on display. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, reverence clear in his voice.

Stiles ducked his head, then went to push his jeans off. Naked with someone else wasn’t his comfort zone, not even (or especially) after sex, not after he’d done what he’d done. But he complied, bracing himself against the shame. “I’m not,” he mumbled, hoping Derek wouldn’t pick it up.

He did and scoffed accordingly. “Come here.” He moved his arms down, stretched them out in an invitation for Stiles. He wiggled his fingers, reiterating what he said. “I want to cuddle and scent you and hold you,” Derek said.

It was severely uncharacteristically vocal of him, but then again, perhaps this is what he was like with his lovers. Is this what Stiles was to Derek? He still went, unable to deny the werewolf’s calling. He kneeled between Derek’s legs, then slowly stretched on top of him. Despite the height difference, they lined up nicely together. The man’s arms went around him immediately. “Hi,” he said shyly.

“Hi,” the werewolf replied, and caught his lips in a lazy kiss.

“Cuddles, huh?” Stiles asked after they parted.

“Yes, cuddles,” Derek repeated. “I was thinking about the sofa,” he started, then went to nuzzle Stiles’s neck.

“I too think about the sofa often. More so now,” Stiles replied with mock seriousness.

Derek laughed as he pressed kissed into the skin he could reach. He pulled Stiles further up on him to get better access. “We could move it to my bedroom, get a new one for the living room.”

“Oh?” He could feel his cock twitch.

“You know, for… future times,” Derek explained.

“Oh.”

“Unless you don’t want to and that’s absolutely fine,” Derek hurriedly added.

“Why would I not want to move the sofa to your bedroom?”

“Okay, now you’re just playing dumb.” Derek pulled back to look the younger man in the eye.

Stiles laughed. “Yeah, okay, a little,” he admitted. “Future times, huh?”

“If you’re under the impression I can live without doing this again you’re wrong,” Derek informed him. “Again, unless you –”

“Derek I’ve liked-liked you for years now. I figured if you didn’t go for me when I was human, there was no way it would happen now,” he confessed. “There will never be a time when I don’t want to, okay?”

Derek smiled at him then, pressing a tender kiss to his lips. “Why would I not want you now?” he asked, genuinely confused.

“It’s not right,” Stiles replied. “I’m not right and my feeding isn’t –”

“Oh my god!” Derek exclaimed. “We’re all some sort of fucked up, Stiles. You think any of us are right?” he asked, mostly rhetorically.

“Well, at least the majority of this pack is werewolves, I’m such an odd one out. And the ones who aren’t don’t go sucking blood to survive!”

Derek held him tighter. “I like-like you,” he whispered. “I’ve liked-liked you when you were human, I like-like you now,” he said, using Stiles’s own terminology. He kissed Stiles’s earshell wetly, then continued. “I want to fuck you into the mattress. I want you to bite me before I come, I want to provide for you and make you come. I want you to ride me so I can watch you closely,” he added as an afterthought.

He was hard again now. “Wow, okay. Uhm, yes to all,” Stiles managed. “Are you like this with all your hook-ups?”

“Not a hook-up,” Derek clarified. “And no, only with the ones who don’t try to kill me,” he joked.

“I did have you arrested,” Stiles reminded him.

“Yeah, I have some rope I’ve been dreaming of using to pay you back for that. If you’re into that?” Derek asked almost shyly.

“You have Stiles-named rope,” the vampire repeated. “Yes, I’m into that. Have you met me?” he asked, almost giddy at the prospect.

“I have,” Derek confirmed with a smile. “I’m so glad I have. And I don’t, Stiles, I don’t normally do this,” he said, gesturing around them in a generic vague way. “But you’re special, you’ve always been.”

Stiles ducked his head again, trying to hide from the intense look. “Okay, yeah. Okay,” he repeated in an attempt to ground himself. “You hungry?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

“For you,” Derek answered immediately, smirk in place, eyes lit up with amusement.

“Unbelievable,” Stiles mumbled. He moved his hips sharply against Derek’s once to prove a point. “But honestly, same,” he added.

Derek laughed. “Good. I’m gonna take you upstairs and fuck you now, that okay?”

“Very,” Stiles replied, cock filling even more at the idea.

“We can find a new sofa later,” Derek promised, and got up to move them to his bedroom. “I’ve been getting complaints this is too small anyway,” he said in between kisses.

“Do we tell the pack?” Stiles found himself asking, unable to banish the pressing thought.

Derek stopped halfway up the stairs and looked at the vampire, predatory glint in his eyes. “I’m gonna fuck you so hard they’ll be able to smell me on you from a mile away.”

“Promise?” Stiles asked cheekily, and laughed when Derek slapped his ass lightly.

“Yeah, hard promise.”

Thank you for reading this filth, ily all! Send me requests and prompts and find me on Ao3 - links are a bit shit to me rn, but all my info is in my description.

As always, endless thanks to Joeybelle for her patience and support and for pointing out mistakes and shit.

This is not Yank-wanked (been laughing at this term for fucking ever, I’m never gonna stop using it hahaha), sorry for the British English spelling of words, I’ve completely given up on it.

Ask me stuff and for stuff and just write to me any time, I’m friend shaped! <3

#sterek #teen wolf fanfiction #stiles x derek #vampire!stiles #llexeh writes #spidey-charles

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kaywinette · 7 years

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Mother

Clementine gets back to Richmond safe and sound with AJ, and the Garcia's are surprised to see just how good of a mother Clementine is! Thank you @protectcabba2k for the request and again I'm so sorry for the delay! I don't have any excuse tbh I was just really lazy and tired for a few days but here it is! I hope the wait was worth it maybe?

"We're nearly there AJ. Then we can eat, okay?" Clementine shushed the whining child as she made her way through the streets of the city, keeping an eye out for any stray walkers or people on guard. Shifting AJ on her hip to a more comfortable position in one hand while the other keeps her gun out and ready. Sadly, the ranch didn't have any of the back pack baby holder things for Clementine, so she had to carry AJ on her hip the whole way back.

Clementine was ready to just rest for a few days, and she sure AJ was ready too, even though he just came from a relatively calm home. Thankfully, the boy was happy and eager to leave with Clementine. That had been her worst fear about her mission, that she would get there and AJ would be completely happy and have a ton of friends. If that had been the case, Clementine doesn't think she would have been able to take AJ back. But again, AJ has been more than happy to leave to Richmond with Clem. The teen promised the family at the ranch that they could visit the child if they wanted, which they thanked her for before she left.

Now here she was, standing at the main gate to Richmond, waiting for them to open so she can get back to safety. "Conrad! Hey, can you open up finally?" Clementine calls to the man up on watch, smirking when he seems to jump out a daze and focus on her. His gaze hardens as he tries to see who it is, before his eyes widen.

"Clementine, is that you? Fuck...well shit gimme a second. Javis gonna flip his shit when he learns your back." Conrad says, mainly to himself, as he presses the button to opens the gates.

The screeching sound gathers the attention of the people walking around, but not enough for them to go check out who's coming in. Assuming it's just a scouting group coming back, they all go on with their day. After Clementine slips inside and Conrad has shut the gates again, he heads down to greet the girl. Once close enough, he gives her a supportive clap on the back.

"Good job kid. Welcome back. I think Javi and the rest are having dinner in David's old house." Conrad says, pointing the way for Clementine. "He's a cute kid. I hope I can get to know him," Conrad smiles, and Clementine sends him another smirk.

"As long as you don't try to use him for trade, you'll get to know him." She teases before waving as she heads off towards the house.

Nerves start to build up as she gets closer, which is ridiculous. It had been a couple weeks since she left the Garcia's in search of AJ, so it's not like they won't be excited to see her. She's just scared to see how they'll react to AJ, especially David. He felt just as responsible for AJ as Clementine did, so she was scared he was going to try to take him away again, but she's sure Javi wouldn't let him. She hopes Javi won't let him, since Clementine knows she couldn't stop him herself. Sure she could tackle him to the floor when he's unprepared, but she's still a kid, and a small one at that.

Clementine shakes her head away from the thoughts as she walks past the raven. She can already hear the family's voices coming through the open door, and she immediately picks Gabes voice out. She lets out a breath of relief now that she knows he's fine and still around. Just before the entrance, Clementine pauses and looks at AJ, who is sucking on his fingers.

"You ready Alvie? Cause I'm not," She says, getting a wide eyed curious look from the silent toddler in response. As if it's an actual response, Clementine nods. "Alright then, let's go." Finally, she walks inside, knocking on the doorframe.

The sound makes the family pause and look her way. It's silent for a few seconds before Gabes chair is screeching against the wood, and he's rushing towards the girl and the toddler, wrapping them both in a big hug. AJ giggles in delight at the hug, despite not knowing the boy, and Clementine hugs back as tightly as she can with her one free arm. When Gabe pulls back from the hug, she swears his gaze drops to her lips before he's being lightly pushed away so Javi can hug the girl as well.

"Jesus Clem. We weren't sure you made it." He says when he steps back, grinning at the kid and her kid. "And I'm assuming this is AJ? I can tell he's going to be a great baseball player already." Javi jokes, reaching out to the toddler to shake his hand. AJ understands the gesture and takes the hand out of his mouth and grabs Javis hand with it.

At the slobbery contact, Javi winces and groans before wiping his hand off on his shirt. "Nice kid..." he mutters before looking at David, who has made his way next to Javi. A small smile on his face as he looks at AJ. And AJ immediately recognizes him, reaching out for the adult.

Noticing Clementines hesitance, David doesn't take AJ and hold him, instead just holds both of his hands. "Hey you little brat," David smiles, lightly squeezing his hands. Javi and Clementine are both surprised at this side of David, a caring and soft side of David. It's a jarring scene which Kate thankfully interrupts.

The two girls share a soft hug before Kate is stepping back as well. "Welcome back Clem. We really missed you." The mother says happily, resting her hands on her hips. Clementine smiles proudly at the family while she shifts her own on her hip again.

"Thanks Guys. I uh...I really missed you all too. It's good to back in a relatively safe environment again," the teen laughs before AJ whines, indicating to Clementine that he is still in fact, very hungry. "Oh yeah, sorry goofball. He's hungry, do you guys have anything I can feed him?" Clementine asks the family and Kate quickly nods.

"Yeah, of course. Here follow me," Kate beckons the girl with a wave of her hand, walking back into the kitchen while Clementine follows. Kate gets out some food for the toddler while Clementine finally sets the kid down on the counter. Clem rubs her aching shoulder before holding her hands out for the food.

"I can feed him if you want to rest Clementine, you've been traveling for a while now," Kate offers as the rest of the family make their way into the open kitchen as well.

Clementine gives the woman a thankful smile, but shakes her head. "I'm fine Kate, really. Plus AJ can be a handful, especially when eating," the teen laughs, and Kate hands her the food with a nod, knowing it's useless to fight the girl.

At the sight of the mushy food, AJ begins to whine and kick his feet in protest, but when Clementine began to gently hum a soft song, the kicking and fussing stopped. The child slowly opened his mouth and accepted the food, much to the awe of the Garcia family behind her.

"Holy shit..." David muses as Clementine effortlessly feeds the tyrant. "How are you doing that?" David asks, stepping forward to the girl, who glances at him out of the corner of her eye, a slight smirk pulling at her lips.

Clementine shrugs a little as she looks back at AJ, gently cleaning his mouth with the spoon, before spooning more food into his mouth. "I dunno, he just listens when I hum to him? It's weird, but it works." Clementine explains, feeding AJ the last bite.

"That's insane. The kid never let me feed him anything like that." David shakes his head, smiling at the two kids before thinking about something. "Hey, I'll go set up a bed in gabes room for you guys," David says, patting Gabes back before heading to find a mattress and blankets for Clementine.

Now finished with his food, Clementine picks AJ up again, "Now...it's playtime AJ," Clementine says, moving towards the living room followed by Gabe while Kate and Javi finish up cleaning up the mess from their meal.

Clementine, Gabe, and AJ all take a seat on the floor. AJ seems to remember when David kept some toys to him, so the three year old is quick to stumble over his feet to get to them. Clementine watches him with her elbows rested on her knees and her chin in her hands, smiling softly as AJ giggles over a bouncy ball.

"Was he walking before you two or separated?" Gabe hesitantly asks. Curious to know, but scared to make her sad. Clementine thinks for a moment before living a hand and tilting it from side to side.

"A little?" She says, dropping her hand to her lap. "After we were on our own for the first time, I tried to spend as much time as I possibly could teaching him how to walk, but it was kind of hard since I had to look out for walkers and stuff..." she reminisces, leaning back against the couch. Clem smiles at a memory that suddenly pops up.

"We were hiding out in this old bus for a while, and one night I had to go pee, so I made sure AJ was safe and asleep before I went outside. When I came back, AJ was off the cot and in the doorway five feet away on both feet." She smiles proudly at the boy who pushes the ball towards Gabe. "I'm pretty sure I cried out of happiness," Clem laughs, shaking her head at herself.

"That must have been amazing," Gabe grins, rolling the ball back towards AJ.

Clem nods, "It is. Like...I know I'm not his mother...but I've gotten to see his first breath, his first word, and his first steps. I can't help but feel like in some way I am some sort of mother figure to him? Or at least a really close sister." Clementine explains before shrugging again, glancing over towards Gabe who continues to push the ball back and forth with AJ.

"Well...I never met his real mom, but I'm sure she would say you're doing an amazing job. Anyone can see that though," Gabe smiles at the girl. They stare at eachother for a moment too long, and AJ doesn't seem to appreciate not having their attention, so he stumbles forward to sit on Clementines lap.

The two teens laugh at the child and finally turn their attention back to him. Playing with toys and story books for a couple of hours until it's time for bed. David has set up a mattress and a couple blankets on the floor of Gabes room, so that's where the kids head.

Kate and Javi stand in the doorway, smiling as they watch Clementine get AJ ready for bed. Everything she does just seems so natural and motherly, and they seem to forget that this is a thirteen year old girl they're looking at. They watch as AJ curls up under a couple blankets, arms wrapped tight around a stuffed animal he's had in their bag the whole time. Clementine gently runs her fingers through his hair while softly humming a song. In no time, the toddler is passed out and drooling. Clementine leans down and presses a kiss to the child's cheek before she's standing up to get ready for bed herself.

When Clementine notices the two adults in the doorway, her eyes widen in shock for a few moments before a confused look crossed her face. "Um...can I help you?" She asks with that teenage attitude the adults are still trying to get use to.

"No...we were just here Incase you needed any help, which you clearly didn't," Kate smiles, crossing her arms. Knowing they're not trying to be a threat to her, Clementines face softens and she smiles.

"Oh...uh thanks? But really guys, I've got this handled." The teen says confidently, and the two adults nod in understanding.

"We know you do, but hey, you're still a kid Clementine. While you one hundred percent can do this all on your own, you have us now. Feel free to ask for help when needed, and to take breaks from being a mom to just be a kid," Javi reaches out, putting a comforting hand on the girls shoulder, who smiles happily at him. "Don't feel like you have to do this all on your own, Alright?"

Clementine looks down for a few moments before she nods, looking them both in the eyes. "Thank you," She says softly, before stepping forward to hug both of them.

They hug for a good couple of moments before they part.

"Now, I'm going to go take a well earned shower." Clementine grins before pushing past the adults to the fully functioning bathroom.

#Clementine twdg #Gabe twdg #Javier twdg #Kate twdg #AJ twdg #This is kinda shit sorry #The walking dead game #the walking dead game fanfic #the walking dead game fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic #twdg fanfic #twdg fanfiction #twdg

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hoynovoy · 3 years

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Free Audiobooks Are Included With Amazon Prime, But Which Books Are Available?

Audiobook fans, take note. Amazon Prime members can listen to free audiobooks — and we've picked out the top 10 from the hundreds available to you, so you can start listening now.

There was a bit of confusion a couple years back, Audible replaced Channels — a feature introduced in 2016, which allowed Amazon Prime members to access free audiobooks and programs, without subscribing to Audible — with with Audible Originals. Prime members were left wondering whether they could still access free audiobook content from Audible — and if so, how to go about it.

Fortunately, Prime members do indeed have access to free Audible content, thanks to Prime Reading: a service that provides Amazon Prime members with a rotating library of books and magazines that they can enjoy as part of their membership. Now, subscribers just have to look for Books with Audible Narration in Prime Reading, rather than Channels. The collection includes more than 250 Kindle Short Reads, Singles, and eBooks, at the time of this writing.

Below, 10 can’t-miss audiobooks available for free with Prime.

The Paper Wife by Laila Ibrahim, narrated by Nancy Wu

In early 20th century China, Mei Ling's parents arrange a marriage to a wealthy, Chinese-American merchant named Chinn Kai Li. Their union is already a ruse, as Mei Ling must pretend to be her widowed husband’s first wife in order to secure her American citizenship. When she arrives in San Francisco, however, she finds that her new husband has misrepresented himself to her and her parents. Rather than a merchant, Mei Ling has married a houseboy. To make matters worse, the orphaned girl she has befriended on her Transpacific journey, Siew, may soon be sold into sexual slavery.

Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet by Charlie N. Holmberg, narrated by Kate Rudd

An amnesiac baker with magical powers takes center stage in this novel from The Paper Magician author Charlie N. Holmberg. Maire knows how to bake feelings into confections, and how tasty treats can alter a person for the better. But when she's kidnapped from her village and enslaved to Allemas, Maire is forced to prepare evil treats — from a gingerbread house fit for a witch, to morsels that make a person grow larger or smaller. All the while, visits from the mysterious Fyel cause Maire to begin recovering memories of who she is... and what she's capable of.

Girls on the Line by Aimie K. Runyan, narrated by Kathleen Gati

When America is swept into World War I, Philadelphia socialite Ruby Wagner presses pause on her engagement to enlist as a "Hello Girl" in the wake of her soldier brother's death. Working as a telephone operator in France, Ruby gets a taste of life as an independent woman. But as a budding romance with an Army medic begins to bloom, Ruby must decide whether to return to her traditional life at home, or pursue a self-directed path.

Gateway to Fourline by Pam Brondos, narrated by Lauren Ezzo

While working at a costume store, broke college student Natalie accidentally discovers a gateway to another world hidden in the back of the business. This foreign place is the home of Nat's co-worker, Estos, and it is in dire need of saving. Teaming up with a band of rebellious exiles to save a magical kingdom sounds like a grand adventure, but Nat soon realizes that her mission may cost her everything if she isn't careful.

Evidence of the Affair by Taylor Jenkins-Reid, narrated by Julia Whelan, George Newbern, James Daniels, and Dara Rosenberg

In this epistolary work of short fiction from Daisy Jones and the Six author Taylor Jenkins-Reid, two people, Carrie and David, begin an intimate correspondence about the affair that their spouses are having with one other. At the same time, the adulterous lovers are having a conversation of their own. Evidence of the Affair is a beautiful and brutal story you won't want to miss out on.

The Good Twin by Marti Green, narrated by Dara Rosenberg

Mallory, a waitress and a down-and-out artist, isn't happy with the way her life is going. But her twin sister — a woman she never knew existed — appears to have won the life lottery: Charly is a gallery owner, an Ivy League alum, and the heiress to a large fortune. But when Charly's fiancé approaches Mallory with an offer that could irrevocably alter all of their lives, Mallory realizes that there are more secrets to uncover.

Stray: Memoir of a Runaway by Tanya Marquardt, narrated by the author

Tanya Marquardt ran away from home on her 16th birthday, sure that whatever awaited her outside of her home had to be better than what she was leaving behind. Published some 20 years later, Stray looks back on the years Marquardt spent alone, forging a new family, and pushing forward toward the future.

A Girl Divided by Ellen Lindseth, narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

In the midst of World War II, as China comes under threat from invading Japanese forces, a missionary’s English-speaking daughter must leave the only home she has ever known and travel to the U.S. for the first time. Escorted by an American "flyboy" named Nathan, Eugenia sees the world for the first time as it is ravaged by war.

The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds by Selina Siak Chin Yoke, narrated by Christine Rendell

As a young girl, Chye Hoon dreamed of going off to school, but society’s social strictures prevented her from doing so. Coming to terms with her mixed Malayan and Chinese heritage, Chye Hoon learns to cook and keep house for her husband — a Chinese man with whom she will have many children. Having embraced the traditions of her ancestors, Chye Hoon is dismayed, much later in life, when her children begin to gravitate toward Western culture.

Rapid Falls by Amber Cowie, narrated by Kate Marcin

Two decades after her boyfriend died and her sister went to prison, Cara has managed to build a good life: a beautiful family, a home she can be proud of, and a successful career. When Anna's prison sentence ends, however, she emerges with demons to wrestle. Joining Cara’s life isn’t easy, Anna realizes — especially given their disparate recollections of the night that changed their lives.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Tenet Opening Opera Scene Explained

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This article contains Tenet spoilers. You can read our spoiler-free review here.

Christopher Nolan has a reputation for making complicated, hard to understand movies, but in all honesty, that reputation is unearned. In Memento, the scenes filmed in color are running in reverse order, the scenes filmed in black and white are running forwards, and the film ends when they meet in the middle. Inception is a pretty straight forward heist once you get your head round the idea that the dreams are nested inside each other like Russian dolls, each running a little faster than the one inside of it. Even Tenet isn’t as complex as it’s made out to be. There are no branching timelines, just an awful lot of bootstrap paradoxes and loops.

However, while the film as a whole has a fairly easy to understand plot after a viewing or two, one part of the movie really lives up to Nolan’s reputation. The opening.

A lot happens, zero context is given for any of it, and most if it is never referred to in the film again. So what the hell was going on?

Tenet Opening Recap

Let’s start by taking it step by step. Please pay attention, and remember the hand is quicker than the eye.

The film opens on a concert hall, and just as the musicians finish tuning up, a bunch of terrorists with machine guns come barging in shooting people and taking everyone hostage.

The police arrive on the scene.

However, there is another party of armed men—not the police or the terrorists—already there, waiting in a black van in SWAT uniforms.

One of the men in SWAT uniforms is John David Washington’s Peter Rotagonist—or the Protagonist for short. Pete is one of this team. As they see the police arrive, they slap on Velcro patches to match the incoming fuzz.

Then they burst out of the van, merging seamlessly with the incoming SWAT team as they storm the concert hall (which it turns out is an opera house because Nolan is too damn clever for his own good).

The police (the real police) pump sleeping gas into the vents of the concert hall, successfully knocking out all the hostages but, presciently, the terrorists understand the importance of wearing a mask at public gatherings.

At around this time we cut back to the box over the concert hall and a man who the script only refers to as “Well-Dressed Man,” even though he’s wearing a pretty non-descript suit to the opera. The person next to him, wearing a really much smarter looking military dress uniform, pulls a gun.

At this moment, the SWAT teams start busting into the concert hall, and Pete and his team storm up to the boxes, busting into the one where the Well-Dressed Man is sitting. They kill his military friend and anyone else in the room. Then Pete addresses the Well-Dressed Man, saying, “We live in a twilight world,” to which Well-Dressed Man responds, “And there are no friends at dusk.”

Then the Pete tells him, “You’ve been made. This siege is a blind for them to vanish you.” The Well-Dressed Man complains that he has already established contact, but Pete insists that he has to either bring the Well-Dressed Man in or kill him.

While this conversation is going on some of the Real Cops are coming down the corridor, shooting terrorists.

Who is “Them?” What’s the significance of “We live in a twilight world?” Who has the Well-Dressed made contact with? Shhh. Save your questions until the end, because right now we’re jumping out of this window to escape from the Real Cops.

But not before Pete can ask where “the package” is and be told “coat check,” and given a ticket.

We are three minutes and thirty-five seconds into the movie.

The Pete and Well-Dressed New Friend run and hide from the Real Cops among the audience, because if someone’s shooting at you there’s no better place to hide than a crowd of unconscious innocent by-standers. At the same time, the Real Cops come in and murder the last of the terrorists.

At this point the Pete notices the people in SWAT uniforms are planting bombs around the concert hall.

One of the Bomb Planting Cops tells Pete to grab a bomb from a dead cop’s bag. Pete stops to stare at the bomb for a few seconds, and then another cop sees him, thinks he’s sus, leading him to rip off Pete’s Velcro patch. Only then does Suspicious Cop gets shot by a Fake Cop who says, “No friends at dusk, huh?”

Pete tells Friendly Fake Cop to get Well-Dressed Man to the rally point, then runs to the coat room to pick up Well-Dressed Man’s bag.

The bag contains a strange metal object that, if you’re watching this for the second time, you will immediately recognize as part of the Algorithm (a secret formula for inverting the flow of entropy on a global scale, bringing past and future crashing together and ending the universe as we know it). Then Pete hoofs it to the rally point to meet up with Well-Dressed Man and the rest of the Fake Cops.

Pete says the Ukrainians are expecting a passenger. This is a Ukrainian opera house, so presumably he’s talking about the cops. Is the Ukrainian government behind this? No time to discuss that because we’reswapping outfits!

Well-Dressed Man, who I guess now is just Regularly-Dressed Man, puts on a SWAT uniform while a Fake Cop puts on the suit, presumably meaning he is now the Well-Dressed Man, and I’m sorry I may be making this more complicated than it needs to be, but please give your characters actual names in the future, Chris.

Pete tells the Regularly Dressed, Formerly Known as the Well-Dressed Man that he’s “never seen an encapsulation like this,” referring to the bit of Algorithm. “Encapsulation” is a term that often refers to the storage of nuclear waste, so Pete clearly thinks he’s there to retrieve parts of a nuclear bomb.

RDFKATWDM says, “We don’t know how old it is, but it’s the real deal.”

Pete wants to know if RDFKATWDM has an out, he does, the sewer, so Pete tells him to take that route, because he doesn’t trust the one they had planned. Pete also asks if the bomb (the cop bombs, not the nuclear one) can be defused. It can’t, and there are more among the audience. So even though it isn’t his mission, Pete goes back to rescue all of the audience members who didn’t get killed by stray bullets when he was climbing over them earlier.

He collects all of the bombs in a big bag, but as he picks up the last one a Cop (we think a Fake Cop) pulls a gun on him.

Pete says, “Walk away, you don’t have to kill these people.”

We know this because of the script. Until that became available there was a lot of debate online about who said that, because that’s a risk when everyone is wearing masks and delivers their lines in the same low-key tone of voice.

Then a bullet shoots backwards out of a bullet hole, through the Fake Cop, killing him, and into the gun of someone standing behind him.

Even on first viewing, this was the moment that made the most sense in the entire scene for me.

Pete has time to see his savior jogging away with a distinctive orange tag hanging off his bag. This is because he has just been rescued by Neil, the posh, trashy Robert Pattinson-portrayed English agent who we later learn has a timey-wimey River Song-esque relationships with Pete.

Fake Cop in Well-Dressed Man’s Clothes notices this and points out he’s not part of the Fake Cop club, but Pete isn’t fussed.

They run out, lobbing the bombs up somewhere I hope nobody else was hiding, and they explode behind them.

Pete and Fake Cop in Well-Dressed Man’s Clothes get back to the van, and as soon as they open the door, someone in the van says in Russian, “That’s not the guy!” presumably referring to the Fake Cop Who is Not the Well-Dressed Man, and shoots him in the gun. Then they knock out Pete. On second thought, maybe these are the Ukrainians?

Pete wakes up tied to a chair between some train tracks where the driver of the Fake Cops van tells him a man can be trained to hold out for 18 hours, so Pete’s colleagues will by free by seven. He points to Pete’s colleague to boast he didn’t last 18 minutes and knew nothing. The torturer confiscates Pete’s suicide pill, and tells him the clock is fast and turns it back an hour. This is called “Foreshadowing.” There are also trains running backwards and forwards either side of the torture scene. This is also “Foreshadowing.”

There’s some nasty implied torture, but in a moment of opportunity, Pete lunges forward and swallows the suicide pill that Fake Cop in Well-Dressed Man’s Clothes was smuggling behind his back.

Pete wakes up in bed to discover it was a test, despite the fact they pulled his teeth out for real and apparently it’s taken a lot of reconstructive surgery to put them back. Also despite it being a test, Pete’s team are all dead and the bit of algorithm is lost.

This all took eight minutes, and then we launch into the film proper.

What Was the Plan?

So questions. First, what was the actual plan here?

Near as we can tell, the once Well-Dressed Man works for the organization run by Kenneth Branagh’s Sator (the “Private Russians” mentioned during Pete’s post-death debriefing). Sator had the Well-Dresed Man infiltrating the Ukrainian government to make contact with someone (if you want to go down that rabbit hole of who, the mystery third party could be the Protagonist’s future, Tenet-running self).

The siege was executed by a senior Ukrainian military officer and apparently enough of the Ukrainian police force that Pete’s team didn’t know which unit would respond to the terrorist attack. The police also very clearly shoot a lot of the terrorists dead. So on discovering the Well-Dressed Man is a mole, the Ukrainian government decide to vanish him and either get a hold of or retrieve the piece of Algorithm in his possession.

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The corrupt personnel decide the best thing to do is take him to the opera with one of their senior military officials. They then pay some mercenaries to act as terrorists and take the audience of the concert hostage. Some of the civilians, or the terrorists, must have informed the police, so that a SWAT team made up of what must be real police turn up.

The police gas the concert hall, and a team of real cops go up to the box where Well-Dressed Man is. Along the way they shoot some of the mercenaries they share an employer with.

At this point, Plan A is that Ukrainian Military Official will shoot Well-Dressed Man. Plan B is that if somehow the Military Official slips and lands on his own gun, a SWAT team will burst in and kill Well-Dressed Man.

Sator’s team knows about this, and have their own fake SWAT team ready, not knowing that their fake SWAT team has also been infiltrated by Pete and his CIA friends. Sator’s team plans to extract the well-dressed man and steal the bit of Algorithm, then plant a bunch of bombs in the concert hall the blow it up and destroy any evidence.

Pete extracts the Well-Dressed Man, hands him over to his undercover CIA pals, but dresses up his friend as the Well-Dressed Man to take back to Sator’s people. Sator’s people don’t fall for it.

They kidnap Pete, torture him, and when he takes a pill and drops unconscious, they think “Well, we’ll leave this body somewhere it can be easily retrieved by his colleagues” and call it a day.

Alternatively:

The torturers are on Tenet’s payroll, and Future Pete has instructed them to go back, kidnap and torture him, then let him commit fake suicide so he can be recruited. This plan means Pete gives the order to have his own teeth ripped out, which you have to admit is pretty hardcore.

Meanwhile Pete’s friends, the Algorithm piece, and the Well-Dressed Man all run into some more of Sator’s team as they escape through the sewer, and are killed.

Having watched the same eight minutes of film over more times than I care to count, this scenario is the best explanation I can come up with. Feel free to offer your own theory in the comments.

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jadeballwrites · 4 years

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Creative Response to “Armed Response” by David Peimer

The atmosphere shook with gunfire like an earthquake. Bullets whirled round the heads of British soldiers as if there were a tornado. The unlucky few were hit, lying in the dirt of the trench as their breathing became more and more shallow. Drifting further into oblivion. Sargent Green and Corporal Myers had been in the trenches of Afghanistan for the last six months on a humanitarian mission. They were helping the hospitals treat injured civilians as bombs and artillery shook through the nation.

“You will be armed for yours and the villager’s protection.” Sargent Green had told them the first day they arrived. “We do not predict or foresee any need for them at this point – this is a humanitarian mission not an armed response.” He had said with such conviction that Myer had actually believed him.

But now? Sat crumpled behind the hills in makeshift trenches communicating only through the array of bullets. Myers wasn’t so sure.

Sargent Green sat in the board room at base the previous day gesturing toward a map. “It’s just a routine transport from location A to location B” He had bellowed around the table. “No one is going to get hurt, this is easy stuff.”

Myers had perked up to speak and when summoned he asked, “So why do we have to be in full combat gear?” The Sargent sighed, “it’s just a precaution there is no need to panic.”

They had left the base at 0600 hours this morning, after loading up the heavy armoured vehicles and began the three-hour drive. In the back, the boys were chatting amongst themselves. A few had dug out their phones to show the others pictures of their families and get to know one another a little better.

Myers sat alone quietly in the corner behind the driver’s seat where Sargent Green was. “Myers, what’s up? Not interested in talking to everyone?”

“I have a bad feeling about this Sarge, something is going to go wrong I just know it in my gut.”

“It’s probably all that cheese you ate in the mess last night – it will have turned your tummy funny.” He bellowed condescendingly and then laughed. “It’s not funny” replied Myers with a scowl.

“Look, we are going to be fine, everyone here knows what they’re doing, we have some of the best soldiers in the world on our squad. Have some faith in them… and yourself, yeah?”

“Yes Sarge.”

The journey continued with random whirrs of chatter until the truck appeared to slow down to a halt. Myers turned to look over the seat and out of the window. In the centre of the dirt track was a farm vehicle. Pivoted on its side, two men were shouting for help from the crushed cab. The Sargent made a move to unbuckle his seatbelt and open the door. Myers grabbed him by the arm and spun him around.

“It’s a trap” he said with wild eyes glazed over with fear.

“No it isn’t” the Sargent replied. “The car has literally fallen over; we have to help them, or we will never get passed.”

He turned away from Myers and into the back of the armoured truck. “Everyone roll out, keep your eyes open for anything that doesn’t look right. Let’s get this car shifted to us can make some good progress to location B.” He shouted at all the soldiers.

They all piled out one by one with big guns strapped to their chests and fingers hovering over the triggers. They waited in a circle around the Sargent, guns at the ready whilst he approached the overturned car. Before he could get there, gunfire opened up across the landscape. Myers watched as officer Kelly plummeted to the floor – a bullet wound in her left shoulder cascading blood the colour of scarlet lipstick. Myers grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her behind the safest hill he could find.

“Sargent, over here!” He yelled to get everyone to safety. He could see the bodies of three of his fellow soldiers. Lifeless in the dust. He watched as those till walking climbed behind the hill to him. The comrades on the floor shaking as they continued to be hit by stray bullets. For the first time in his career, Myers was truly terrified. Nevertheless, he rested his gun on the edge of the hill and began to shoot. He made tactical decisions, probably one of the best precision shooters in the division. He began to pick off as many shooters as he could see.

“There are too many, we are never going to get out of this.” Myers said the Sargent.

“Any ideas of how to get us out of this?” The Sarge replied, his fingers locked around the trigger like a vice.

“If we can get to the truck and load everyone up, we might have a shot. Kelly needs a medic and the radio is in the truck.” He thought out loud staring down the barrel of the gun. “Simons is the fastest runner we have, remember his bleep test? Everyone else needs to draw their fire so he can run. That means moving into the open and shooting everything that moves.”

“Simons you run when I say, okay?” The Sargent said. “Head to the edge of the hill, stay low and when Simons runs – we jump out and shoot.

They all shuffled over to the edge of the dusty hill. Waiting with lumps in their throats and shaking hands.

“Simons! Go!” Sargent Green screamed. Officer Simons took off running over the hill and toward the truck with nothing but his helmet and coat on. They had decided a gun would only weigh him down and make him slower. As he leapt over the hill, Myers, Green, a very injured Kelly and the other shoulders burst from behind the hill like a canon. They opened fire at the baron plane and watched as the shooters turned away from Simons and on to them. Myers didn’t know whether to feel relieved or frightened as he hoped and prayed silently from behind his gun that they could pull it off.

“I’m almost out of ammo!” Kelly shouted. Fear took over her voice as she moved back behind the hill and out of the line of fire.

“Keep shooting! Simons made it to the truck he will be here any second now.” The Sarge shot back trying to keep the soldiers calm but motivated.

They continued to shoot one by one until they had all run out of ammo. At that exact moment, when the situation was about to make a turn for the worst, suddenly Simons appeared in the driver’s seat of the truck. He swung it round in front of them, so they were covered as much as possible as they all clambered into the back of the bulletproof vehicle. They pulled Kelly up by her shoulders and lay her on the bed of the truck.

“She’s not looking good Sarge” Simons shouted from the front of the truck “is she going to make it?”

“Get her top off and apply pressure to the wound” Sarge told Myers who proceeded to use a spare t-shirt from his Bergan and pushed down on the wound in her shoulder. They were speeding to the closest base which as two hours away as Simons grabbed the radio.

“This is squadron 244, we need a medic now. Two hours away from location B requesting extraction. Over.” They all listened as the radio crackled and they were given a meeting location thirty minutes away from where they were.

“She will make it.” Myer was absolutely sure of it.

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perfectirishgifts · 4 years

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How Amazon Original Stories Chooses Its “Single Sitting” Reads

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/how-amazon-original-stories-chooses-its-single-sitting-reads/

How Amazon Original Stories Chooses Its “Single Sitting” Reads

Amazon Original Stories, an imprint of Amazon Publishing, launched in November 2017, offering short fiction and nonfiction, built around the idea of works that can be read in a “single sitting.” The imprint’s first titles were Crown Heights, a collaboration with Amazon Studios, and Joyce Carol Oates’s Sign of the Beast.

Since then, the imprint has published close to 150 digital stories, which are available free to Amazon Prime AMZN members and Kindle Unlimited subscribers, with a free audio edition included (those who aren’t part of either program can buy titles for $1.99 each, with the option to add the digital audio for free). The imprint releases roughly 40-50 stories per year in a variety of genres.

I interviewed Julia Sommerfeld, Publisher of Amazon Original Stories, via email, about the trajectory of Amazon Original Stories (AOS), how authors are selected, crafting collections and the most popular types of stories.

Why was Amazon Original Stories started? How is it different from Kindle Singles?

Amazon Original Stories launched with the mission of championing stories, essays, and reporting by the premiere storytellers of our time and expanding readers’ horizons by making these stories free to Prime and Kindle Unlimited members. In addition to full-length novels, memoir and nonfiction, many authors are also writing short, compelling stories and essays and we wanted to provide an imprint that would support their short work and share it with readers.

Are all of them also available on Audible with audiobook versions?

Our stories allow readers to toggle back and forth between reading and audio, so you can start listening to a story on the road and keep reading on your Kindle or the Kindle app on your phone right where you left off. We’re seeing more and more customers switching back and forth between their audio and digital downloads. It’s really encouraging to see that folks are fitting the stories into their lives so seamlessly.

Not only have we partnered with bestselling authors to read their own audio editions—like David Sedaris reading Themes and Variations and Mindy Kaling reading Nothing Like I Imagined (Except for Sometimes)—but we’ve also brought in some venerated celebrity narrators. In September, we released Out of Line, a collection of seven short ‘Fem-Fi’ stories from an all-star lineup of award-winning writers Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Caroline Kepnes, Lisa Ko, Emma Donoghue, Mary Gaitskill and Kate Atkinson. We matched that with an star-studded lineup of narrators for the audio editions, including Kristen Bell, Samira Wiley, Margo Martindale, Gwendoline Christie and Lea Salonga.

Why did you see a need for stories fitting this “single-sitting” length?

Some of the most powerful, memorable—and satisfying—stories can be told in a single sitting. Just think about the classic short works like Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery or Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, which haunted generations, or a great episode of your favorite podcast.

Our stories and collections are made to be binged, just like your favorite podcast or television show. But these days, with our attention spans a bit frayed, it can feel less daunting to pick up a shorter work. For some readers, that single sitting might last a 30-minute work break or for others, a whole rainy Sunday. Also, Kindle attracts a pretty voracious readership, so it’s helpful to tide readers over between their favorite author’s books.

How do you go about selecting authors for AOS? Are they all previously published authors?

We start with readers and go from there. We look for authors and content creators of all types that readers are just itching to hear more from, and who have a track record for executing deeply satisfying and memorable storylines.

For fiction, we have an established fiction audience that’s hungry for more in popular categories like mystery and thriller, science fiction and fantasy, historical fiction, etc. For nonfiction, we are drawn to novelistic storytelling—especially memoir and personal essay. We have signed both established autobiographical writers like David Sedaris and Mindy Kaling, while also commissioning bestselling writers in other categories to write about themselves: Jacqueline Woodson, Shea Serrano, Jade Chang and Susan Orlean, for example.

We want to work with writers at the top of their game who will feel like an AOS story adds to their careers. We like to think of AOS as a playground for published authors, storytellers, and emerging voices. Writers have a chance to flex their short story muscles, or to explore outside of the genre they’re most known for. Amor Towles, a star of historic fiction, for instance, turned his storytelling chops to speculative fiction in our Forward collection. Authors are the original world builders, and many of them find inspiration by the chance to do something new. Or, perhaps they can explore something they’ve been thinking about for a long time that doesn’t fit the format of a full-length novel. In some cases, we’ll launch someone new with a unique voice or story, such as debut writer Samantha Allen’s memoir about falling in love while undergoing gender transformation surgery, Love & Estrogen.

AOS has released many collections around a theme, such as love stories in The Real Thing, stories by crime writers in Hush, and climate fiction in Warmer. What do the collections offer that readers may not get with individual stories?

With collections, readers can read something completely original and unexpected from their most beloved authors or be introduced to several new favorite writers, all within a couple of hours.

We love offering readers a real diversity of experience or perspective on the subject or theme, while also giving them the ability to discover new writers. Because the investment is relatively low—both because it’s free with Prime and doesn’t require the time commitment of digesting several full-length books—we see these collections as a gateway to finding the next author you’ll be obsessed with. We take great pride in presenting a sort of Avengers-like super team of writers we think our audience will really love. Hush, for instance, featured top suspense writers Ruth Ware, Laura Lippman, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Jeffery Deaver, Lisa Unger and Alison Gaylin.

Which types of stories have been most popular with readers, and why do you think that is? Is fiction more popular than nonfiction?

So far, both thrillers and memoirs are really topping our list so I wouldn’t say fiction or nonfiction is the determining factor. But readers do seem pretty open to trying different genres as long as the hook is there and the story is really satisfying. We, like our readers, look for a powerful plot.

Do you see a correlation in sales of their previous books when an author releases an AOS title?

We definitely see AOS as helping to raise all boats. We work to grow audiences for our authors, and that means people returning to their previous books or maybe pre-ordering their upcoming release. One of the favorite things I see in customers’ reviews is when they say, Oh, I love this so much, I’m going to check out their other books!

We are also excited that many of the stories are also being spun into TV and film projects. Ken Liu’s The Cleaners, which comes out December 15, is now in TV development with Amazon Studios as is Andrew Barrer’s Young Blood, which started as a single story, and we are now expanding into a trilogy of stories and an Amazon Studios film project.

I saw in another interview you said more people are reading on their phones. How are most people accessing AOS? Has the increase in reading by phone affected how you approach AOS?

People mostly interact with the stories through their phones and the Kindle. Our guiding principle is meeting readers where they are. One example of how this plays out is switching between ebook and audio editions. All our stories use the Whispersync for Voice feature, which allows you to switch from listening to reading and back again without losing your place. So you can go for your daily masked quarantine walk with headphones on, and pull your device out afterward for some armchair reading without missing a beat.

The popularity of mobile also really informs cover design—the stories need to pop and register as a thumbnail image rather than physical book on shelf. And it informs our editorial strategy in that we want to be urgent and relevant enough for people to spend their pockets of time with these stories, but we also want to help readers escape and carve time away from the constant noise of the headlines.

Why did you want to work with Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche? What can readers expect from her new story Zikora?

She’s just so beloved, and crosses so many audiences, that we’ve always had her at the top of our wish list as a creator who could make just about anybody stop what they are doing to spend a little time in a world she draws.

Zikora is a passion project for her; it’s a really powerful look at becoming a mother, and how the experience of entering parenthood leads you to see your own parents more clearly. Readers can expect a deeply emotional, character-driven short story that puts a human face on urgent issues. Chimamanda has an unparalleled talent for creating characters with such loving specificity, who at the same time illuminate these universal desires and fears that any reader can relate to.

We also worked with the Nigerian-American actress Adepero Oduye (Pariah, 12 Years a Slave) on the audio version of this story, and she really brought an extra layer of emotional resonance to it. I can’t decide if I enjoy reading or listening to this one better.

What’s next for AOS?

Faraway, a collection of fairytale retellings from blockbuster young adult authors Rainbow Rowell, Nic Stone, Soman Chainani, Ken Liu, and Gayle Forman, releases December 15. Looking towards 2021, Oscar award-winning filmmaker and author Guillermo del Toro will release a new collection of dark and fantastical stories in Fall. Dean Koontz is returning with Season 2 of Nameless, which will extend a beloved series that we started in 2019. Plus, we have projects coming from Guillermo del Toro , Susan Orlean, Kiley Reid, Curtis Sittenfeld, Lisa Unger, Jia Tolentino, Justin Torres, Jeff Lemire and many more in the works.

From Media in Perfectirishgifts

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queerbenji · 7 years

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Below is a lovingly compiled list of books about girls who love girls that have happy or hopeful endings! The list currently has 106 entries and spans multiple genres. It’s alphabetized by author, and links go to the books’ Goodreads pages. Recommendations are welcome!

Sparks: The Epic, Completely True Blue, (Almost) Holy Quest of Debbie by S.J. Adams

A wonderfully refreshing, quirky, and genuinely funny tale of coming-out to your best friend–and long-time secret love. Three chases, three declarations of love, two heartbreaks, a break-in, and one unforgettable quest.

Taijiku by Elizabeth Andre

Angela’s juvenile detention sentence on an alien underwater ship doesn’t seem very exciting until she encounters the fearsome Taijiku or meeting her crew mate Stella, leaving Angela unable to say which is the greater challenge: giant sea monsters or falling in love.

Poppy Jenkins by Clare Ashton

Poppy is the heart of Wells, a beautiful village in mid-Wales. She has a doting family, an errant dog and a little sister with a nose for mischief, but as the only gay girl in the village, the chance of romance is rarer than a barking sheep. That is, until her ex-BFF roars back into her life…

The Music Box by Elaine Atwell

Berlin, 1942. Caroline Reed is a newly minted American spy, eager to prove herself on her first mission: to recover vital information from behind enemy lines. But she’s not the only one. Iris and Caroline come to trust each other, or perhaps it’s something more. But what does love matter when the fate of the world is at stake?

Valhalla by Ari Bach

In the year 2330 in Northern Scotland, war is obsolete and only brilliant minds are valued, Violet emerges into adulthood with more brawn than brains, branded from childhood as a useless barbarian. With the help of a group of outcasts just like her, Violet is about to learn the world needs her exactly as she is.

Bluebell Hall by Kayla Bashe

Headstrong, impetuous Tansy Trilby can barely sit still, let alone read–but what she lacks in academic achievement, she makes up for in magical talent, and so she is accepted to be a boarder at Bluebell Hall. Tansy’s adventures lead her to discover: is love truly the greatest magic of all?

Screaming Down Splitsville by Kayla Bashe

In an alternate 1950s, two groups of people with magical powers fight for dominance. Flip thinks her healing powers are useless, while Emma has magic but is unable to speak. The two band together to escape a torturous lab. As the women seek to evade their pursuers, their friendship rekindles, and they are forced to confront both enemies and insecurities.

Kaleidoscope Song by Fox Benwell

Fifteen year old Neo loves music. it punctuates her life in South Africa. A life in radio is all she’s ever wanted. When Umzi Radio broadcasts live in a nearby bar Neo can’t resist. She sneaks out to see them, and she falls in love, with music, and the night, but also with a girl: Tale has a voice like coffee poured into a bright steel mug, and she commands the stage.

Dissention by Stacey Berg

For 400 years, the remnants of humanity have struggled for survival in the last inhabited city. Echo Hunter 367 is exactly what the Church created her to be: loyal, obedient, lethal. But when Echo’s mission leads her to Lia, a rebel leader who has a secret of her own, Echo must choose between the woman she loves and the purpose she was born to fulfill.

Drum Roll, Please by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

Drum Roll, Please is a contemporary middle grade novel about a drummer named Melly, whose parents announce they’re getting a divorce the day before she leaves for rock camp. She has a life-changing summer at camp as she navigates confusing feelings, changing friendships, and her first crush on a girl, and learns to find her own beat.

Starting From Here by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

Colby’s heart has been broken too many times. Her mother has been dead for almost two years, her truck driver father is always away, her almost girlfriend just dumped her, and now she’s failing chemistry. But when a stray dog lands literally at her feet, bleeding and broken on a busy road, it knocks a chink in the walls she’s built around her heart.

How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake

All Grace wants is her own life. Emotionally trapped by her unreliable mother, Maggie, and the tiny cape on which she lives, she focuses on her best friend, her upcoming audition for a top music school in New York, and surviving Maggie’s latest boyfriend. When Grace meets Eva, who has her own share of ghosts to outrun, both girls must figure out how to love and how to move on.

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

Greta is a duchess and crown princess—and a hostage to peace. This is how the game is played: if you want to rule, you must give one of your children as a hostage. Go to war and your hostage dies. As nations tip closer to war, Greta becomes a target in a new kind of game that will end up killing every hostage—unless she can find a way to break all the rules.

The Swan Riders by Erin Bow

Sequel to The Scorpion Rules.

The Diviners by Libba Bray

Evie has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to her Uncle Will on the bustling streets of 1926 New York City. Evie worries he’ll discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

When a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island’s other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition. Their story is told from many points of view, multiples of which are LGBT women.

First Position by Melissa Brayden

Anastasia Mikhelson is the rising star of the New York City Ballet. She’s sacrificed creature comforts, a social life, as well as her own physical well-being for perfection in dance. Even her reputation as The Ice Queen doesn’t faze her. Though Ana’s at the peak of her career, competition from a new and noteworthy dancer puts all she’s worked for in jeopardy.

How Sweet It Is by Melissa Brayden

After losing the love of her life four years prior in a plane crash, Molly thinks she’s ready to navigate the dicey dating waters once again. However, you can’t always pick who your heart latches on to. When Jordan, the beautiful younger sister of her lost love, returns to town, Molly finds her interest piqued in a manner she wasn’t prepared for.

Waiting in the Wings by Melissa Brayden

Jenna has spent her whole life training for the stage. At graduation, she’s stunned when a chance audition lands her a prime supporting role in the hottest Broadway touring production in the country. The one thing she didn’t prepare for, however, was her new costar Adrienne. Is Jenna ready to sacrifice what she’s worked so hard for in exchange for a shot at love?

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown

Joanna has been out and proud for years, but when her popular radio evangelist father remarries and decides to move all three of them to the more conservative Rome, Georgia, he asks Jo to do the impossible: to lie low for the rest of her senior year. Jo reluctantly agrees, but things get infinitely more complicated when she meets Mary.

Style by Chelsea M. Cameron

Kyle Blake likes plans. So far, they’re pretty simple: Finish her senior year of high school, head off to a good college, find a cute boyfriend, graduate, get a good job, get married, the whole heterosexual shebang. Nothing is going to stand in the way of that plan. Not even Stella Lewis.

Echo After Echo by Amy Rose Capetta

Debuting on the New York stage, Zara is unprepared—for Eli, the girl who makes the world glow; for Leopold, the director who wants perfection; and for death in the theater. In heart-achingly beautiful prose, Capetta has spun a mystery and a love story into an impossible, inevitable whole —and cast light on two girls, finding each other on a stage set for tragedy.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Somewhere within our crowded sky, a crew of wormhole builders hops from planet to planet, on their way to the job of a lifetime. To the galaxy at large, humanity is a minor species, and one patched-up construction vessel is a mere speck on the starchart. But all voyages leave their mark, and even the most ordinary of people have stories worth telling.

Fat Angie by E.E. Charlton-Trujillo

Angie is broken—by her can’t-be-bothered mother, by her high-school tormenters, and by being the only one who thinks her varsity-athlete-turned-war-hero sister is still alive. She’s just trying to make it through each day. That is, until the arrival of KC Romance This darkly comic anti-romantic romance is a work of entertaining and meaningful fiction.

Debris Dreams by David Colby

Drusilla lives in the Hub, a space station used by the Chinese-American Alliance as a base to exploit Luna’s resources. When a terrorist group destroys the space elevator, space’s highway to Earth, suddenly Dru’s parents are dead and she is cut off from her girlfriend Sarah on Earth. Can Dru survive lunar terrorist attacks and find her way home to Sarah?

Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst

Betrothed since childhood to the prince of Mynaria, Princess Dennaleia has always known what her future holds. But Denna has a secret. She possesses an Affinity for fire—a dangerous gift for the future queen of a kingdom where magic is forbidden. Now, Denna must learn the ways of her new home while trying to hide her growing magic.

Clancy of the Undertow by Christopher Currie

In a dead-end town like Barwen a girl has only got to be a little different to feel like a freak. And Clancy, a typical sixteen-year-old misfit with a moderately dysfunctional family, a genuine interest in Nature Club and a major crush on the local hot girl, is packing a capital F.

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation…and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power, but it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air. The only way to get her family back is to travel to Los Lagos, a land in-between, as dark as Limbo and as strange as Wonderland.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl. This book is a stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.

The Caphenon by Fletcher DeLancey

On a summer night like any other, an emergency call sounds in the quarters of Andira Tal: not only is there other intelligent life in the universe, but it’s landing on the planet right now. Tal leads the first responding team and ends up rescuing aliens who have a frightening story to tell. They protected Alsea from a terrible fate—but the reprieve is only temporary.

The Dark Wife by Sarah Diemer

Persephone has everything a daughter of Zeus could want–except for freedom. When Persephone meets the enigmatic Hades, goddess of the underworld, she experiences something new: choice. Hades offers Persephone sanctuary in her land of the dead. But Persephone finds more than freedom in the underworld. She finds love, and herself.

Twixt by Sarah Diemer

The people of Abeo City have forgotten their pasts, and they can trade locks of their hair to sinister women for an addictive drug. Nox will give you back a single memory–for a price. But when Lottie takes Nox, her memories remain a mystery, and the monsters who fill the sky at night refuse to snatch her. Soon, a dark truth begins to surface…

Big Big Sky by Kristyn Dunnion

Rustle is a young scout in a tight-knit female warrior group of five. They’re trained to be aggressive, quick thinking, and obedient. But somehow the group is falling apart now. So when their StarPod is transported to the Living Lab, they all know that it’s time to make a run for it, or else they’ll be deplugged - finished, dead.

Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis

Amara is never alone. Not when she’s protecting the cursed princess she unwillingly serves. Not when she’s punished, ordered around, or neglected. She can’t be alone, because a boy from another world experiences all that alongside her, looking through her eyes. They’ll have to work together to survive–and discover the truth about their connection.

Wildthorn by Jane Eagland

Louisa longs to break free from her respectable life as a Victorian doctor’s daughter. But then Louisa is sent to Wildthorn Hall, labeled a lunatic and even deprived of her real name. As she unravels the betrayals behind her incarceration, she realizes there are many kinds of prison. She must be honest with herself and others in order to be free. And love may be the key.

The Seafarer’s Kiss by Julia Ember

Having long-wondered what lives beyond the ice shelf, nineteen-year-old mermaid Ersel learns of the life she wants when she rescues and befriends Ragna, a shield-maiden stranded on the mermen’s glacier. But when Ersel’s childhood friend and suitor catches them together, he gives Ersel a choice: say goodbye to Ragna or face justice at the hands of the glacier’s brutal king.

Unicorn Tracks by Julia Ember

Mnemba has found a place in her cousins successful safari business, where she quickly excels as a guide. When she’s employed to guide Mr. Harving and his daughter, Kara, as they study unicorns, the young women are drawn to each other. During their research, they discover a conspiracy by a group of poachers to capture the Unicorns and use their supernatural strength to build a railway. Together, they must find a way to save the creatures Kara adores.

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sarah Farizan

Leila’s Persian heritage already makes her different from her classmates; if word got out that she liked girls, life would be twice as hard. But when a sophisticated, beautiful new girl, Saskia, shows up, Leila starts to take risks she never thought she would. Gradually, Leila begins to see that almost all her classmates are more complicated than they first appear to be.

The Cursed Queen by Sarah Fine

Sequel to The Impostor Queen, which stars a bi woman. Cursed by an enemy queen, Ansa must fight against an invisible foe—the dark magic that has embedded itself deep in her bones. The more she seeks to hide it, the more dangerous it becomes. Ansa is torn between her loyalty to her people, her love for the cheiftain’s daughter, and her own survival instincts.

Honey Girl by Lisa Freeman

The year is 1972. Fifteen-year-old Haunani “Nani” Grace Nuuhiwa is transplanted from her home to California after her father’s fatal heart attack. Now the proverbial fish-out-of-water, Nani struggles to adjust to her new life with her alcoholic white (haole) mother and the lineup of mean girls who rule State Beach. But Nani is keeping several secrets that could ruin everything.

Noble Falling by Sara Gaines

When her convoy is attacked, Duchess Aleana Melora of Eniva, future queen of Halvaria is saved by her guard, only to discover her people have turned against her and joined forces with the kingdom of Dakmor, Halvaria’s greatest enemy. After a rescue by a woman marked as a criminal, Aleana struggles to survive long enough to crowned, though her heart has other priorities.

Annie On My Mind By Nancy Garden

This groundbreaking book, published in 1992, is the story of two teenage girls whose friendship blossoms into love and who, despite pressures from family and school that threaten their relationship, promise to be true to each other and their feelings. The book has been banned from many school libraries and publicly burned in Kansas City.

Good Moon Rising by Nancy Garden

Lambda Literary Award winner “Good Moon Rising” is about two young women who fall in love while rehearsing a school play, realize they’re gay, and resist a homophobic campaign against them.

Nora and Liz by Nancy Garden

When her rental car has a flat tire, Liz Hardy stops at the Tillot farm for a car jack. Nora Tillot walks Liz out to the barn and, as they search for the jack, the two women begin a journey neither anticipated. As their friendship turns passionate, will their happiness be shattered by rumors?

Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard

All Pen wants is to be the kind of girl she’s always been. So why does everyone have a problem with it? They think the way she looks and acts shows disrespect. But respect and loyalty, Pen discovers, are empty words. Old-world parents, disintegrating friendships, and strong feelings for other girls drive Pen to see that to be who she truly wants to be, she’ll have to man up.

The Second Mango by Shira Glassman

Queen Shulamit never expected to inherit the throne of tropical Perach so young. At twenty, grief-stricken and fatherless, she’s also coping with being the only lesbian she knows after her sweetheart ran off for an unknown reason. Her search for a royal girlfriend quickly becomes a rescue mission after finding a temple full of women turned to stone by an evil sorcerer.

The Flywheel by Erin Gough

Seventeen-year-old Del drops out of high school when her romance with another girl goes horribly wrong. Preferring chaos to bullying, Del makes it her mission to save her dad’s crumbling café, the Flywheel, while he ‘finds himself’ overseas. This book is a heart-warming debut novel about queer romance, crap parents & finding your feet when life gets messy.

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner

When Cass’s best friend Julia is killed in a sudden car accident, and while Cass is still reeling from her death, Julia’s boyfriend and her other drama friends make it their mission to bring to fruition Julia’s nearly-completed secret project: a musical about an orphaned ninja princess entitled Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad.

Eat Your Heart Out by Dayna Ingram

A breakneck tale of kick-ass, wise-ass, sexy-ass lesbians — and zombies. The strip-mall calm of Nowhere, Ohio, is shattered by the sudden, simultaneous appearance of Renni Ramirez, hyper-competent star of the beloved Rising Evil B-movie franchise, and actual zombies, leaving Ashbee’s hapless staff and Renni trapped behind an automatic door they can’t lock.

That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston

Set in a near-future world where the British Empire never fell and the United States never rose, That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a novel of love, duty, and the small moments that can change people and the world.

The Gallery of Unfinished Girls by Lauren Karcz

Mercedes is an artist. At least, she thinks she could be, but she hasn’t been able to paint anything worthwhile since her award-winning piece Food Poisoning #1 last year. Her lack of inspiration might be because her abuela is comatose in faraway Puerto Rico after a stroke. Or the fact that Mercedes is in love with her best friend, but is too afraid to admit her true feelings.

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz

Clara is a highly-skilled technician specializing in the popular ‘Raise’ AI companions. She sticks around just long enough to replenish her funds before she moves on Sal is a fully autonomous robot, at best out of place in society and at worst hated. When Clara stops by Sal’s shop for lunch, she doesn’t expect to find a real robot there, let alone one who might need her help.

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

Astrid desperately wants to confide in someone, but her feel like the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn’t know the passengers inside, but they’re the only ones who won’t judge her when she asks them her most personal questions–like what it means that she’s falling in love with a girl.

Radical by E.M. Kokie

Preppers. Survivalists. Bex prefers to think of herself as a realist who plans to survive, but regardless of labels, they’re all sure of the same thing: a crisis is coming. And when it does, Bex will be ready. But Bex isn’t prepared for Lucy, who is soft and beautiful and hates guns. This gripping new novel questions our assumptions about family, trust, and what it really takes to survive.

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

Emi is a film buff and a true romantic, but her real-life relationships are a mess. She has desperately gone back to the same girl too many times to mention. But then a mysterious letter from a silver screen legend leads Emi to Ava. Ava is unlike anyone Emi has ever met, and she is about to expand Emi’s understanding of family, acceptance, and true romance.

You Know Me Well by Nina Lacour and David Levithan

Mark and Kate have sat next to each other for an entire year, but their paths have never crossed. That is, until Kate spots Mark miles away from home, out in the city for a wild, unexpected night. Kate is lost, having just run away from finally meeting the girl she’s been in love with from afar. Mark, meanwhile, is in love with his best friend Ryan, who may or may not feel the same way.

And Playing the Role of Herself by K.E. Lane

Actress Caidence Harris is living her dreams after landing a leading role in a hot new police drama shot on location in glitzy LA. Her sometimes-costar Robyn Ward is magnetic, glamorous, and devastatingly beautiful, the quintessential A-List celebrity. Soon Caid sees that all is not as it appears, but can she take a chance and risk her heart when the outcome is so uncertain?

An Unstill Life by Kate Larkindale

Livvie feels like she’s losing everything: her two best friends have abandoned her for their boyfriends, her mother continues to ignore her, while her sister, Jules, is sick again and getting worse by the day. Her only escape is in the art room, where she discovers not only a refuge from her life, but also a kindred soul in Bianca, the school “freak”.

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

Welcome to Andover, where superpowers are common, but internships are complicated. Despite her heroic lineage, Jess is resigned to a life without superpowers when she stumbles upon the perfect internship—only it turns out to be for the town’s most heinous supervillain. On the upside, she gets to work with her secret crush, Abby, who Jess thinks may have a secret of her own.

A&B by J.C. Lillis

Barrie dreams of a career in music. When her rival Ava ropes her into a secret collaboration, it sparks feelings neither girl expected. Can love and ambition live side by side? Is happiness an art-killer? They’ll figure it out with the help of a blue guitar named Fernando, a keyboard named Rosalinda, and a few new friends who feel like home.

Ash by Malinda Lo

In this enchanting retelling of Cinderella, Ash must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love. Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

Huntress by Malinda Lo

Kaede and Taisin, two seventeen-year-old girls, are picked to go on a dangerous and unheard-of journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen. The exciting adventure prequel to Malinda Lo’s highly acclaimed novel Ash is overflowing with lush Chinese influences and details inspired by the I Ching, and is filled with action and romance.

Complementary and Acute by Ella Lyons

Annabell is captain of the Number Ninjas, her senior year schedule is perfect, and her best friend Jacqueline is going to be right by her side for all of it. But on the first day back, Jac throws a wrench in Anabelle’s tidy plans. Not only has she rearranged her classes and dropped Number Ninjas, she’s joined the Girls who Like Girls Program, leaving Anabelle’s entire world in upheaval.

10 Things I Can See From Here by Carrie Mac

This is the poignant and uplifting story of Maeve, who is dealing with anxiety while falling in love with a girl who is not afraid of anything. Will she be able to navigate through all the chaos to be there for the people she loves?

Colorblind by Siera Maley

Harper has a secret, and it’s not that she likes girls. She has a gift: she can see how old other people will be when they pass away. Nothing she does changes this number, which becomes especially clear when her mother dies in a car crash. Then she falls for Chloe, whose number is 16, who’ll be dead by the end of summer. An uplifting book reminiscent of The Fault in Our Stars.

Dating Sarah Cooper by Siera Maley

When a misunderstanding leads to best friends Katie and Sarah being mistaken for a couple and Sarah uses the situation to her advantage, Katie finds herself on a roller coaster ride of ambiguous sexuality and confusing feelings. How far will Sarah go to keep up the charade, and why does kissing her make Katie feel more alive than kissing her ex-boyfriend ever did?

Taking Flight by Siera Maley

Lauren is a city girl at heart. When a judge deems her father unfit to be her guardian, she’s shipped to the rural mountains of northern Georgia, where David, a personal friend of the judge, lives. Lauren’s plan is simple: to have her best friend pick her up on the day she turns eighteen, and to be as difficult as possible until then. But her plan doesn’t account for David’s daughter.

The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse by Mabel Maney

Follow Cherry, Jackie, and girl detective Nancy Clue on their gay adventures. Mabel Maney’s camp classic The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse has been beloved by readers since it was first published in 1993. This sparkling parody of 1950s girl adventure stories will make you laugh out loud.

The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend by Mabel Maney

Mabel Maney’s playful parody of 1950s girl adventure books continues in The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend. This raucous sequel also stands on its own as a swell introduction to Cherry and her pals, and a food and fashion guide to the glamorous Eisenhower years.

Reign of the Fallen by Sarah Glenn Marsh

The first in an LGBT fantasy series that follows a talented necromancer who must face down a deadly nemesis who has learned how to turn her magic into a weapon. A lavish fantasy with a surprising and breathtaking romance at its core, Reign of the Fallen is a gutsy, unpredictable read that will grab readers by the throat and never let go.

Wherever the Dandelion Falls by Lily R. Mason

Riley Montgomery is a bartender, a lab assistant, and a sex worker – all in different lives. A seemingly innocuous conversation with a graduate school professor unravels Riley’s life into three separate strands. The three versions of Riley’s life are as separate as can be, yet have one common thread: falling in love with a beautiful and brave woman named Faye Nguyen.

Parties in Congress by Colette Moody

Elated to secure her first paid political staff position, Bijal Rao is eager to focus her efforts on the election of her candidate to U.S. Congress. However, Bijal’s first unforeseen obstacle is her profound and unexpected attraction to their opponent—incumbent Congresswoman Colleen O'Bannon—who is outspoken, charismatic, and openly lesbian.

The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin by Colette Moody

The Gulf of Mexico, 1702: When Gayle and the pirates of the square-rigger Original Sin steal ashore to abduct a doctor to tend to their wounded, they end up settling for the doctor’s attractive fiancée Celia, the town seamstress. The two forge a partnership born of necessity that Gayle soon hopes will veer away from insurmountable danger and instead detour directly to her bed.

Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz

Everywhere Etta turns, someone feels she’s too fringe for the fringe. Not gay enough for the Dykes, her ex-clique, thanks to a recent relationship with a boy; not tiny and white enough for ballet; and not sick enough to look anorexic (partially thanks to recovery). Etta doesn’t fit anywhere until she meets Bianca, the straight, white, Christian, and seriously sick girl in Etta’s therapy group.

Meg & Linus by Hanna Nowinski

Meg and Linus are best friends bound by a shared love of school, a coffee obsession, and being queer. It’s not always easy to be the nerdy lesbian or gay kid in a suburban town. But they have each other. And a few Star Trek boxed sets. They’re pretty happy. Meg & Linus is a fun story about two quirky teens who must learn to get out of their comfort zones and take risks.

A Story of Now by Emily O’Beirne

Claire knows she needs a life. And some new friends. But brittle, beautiful, and just a little bit too sassy for her own good sometimes, she no longer makes friends easily. When Robbie and Mia walk into Claire’s work they seem the least likely people to help her find a life. But despite Claire’s initial attempts to alienate them, an unexpected new friendship develops.

Future Leaders of Nowhere by Emily O’Beirne

Finn and Willa have been picked as team leaders in the future leader camp game. Fierce, competitive Willa has shaken the usually confident Finn. Soon they both realize that the hardest thing of all is balancing their clashing ideals with their unexpected connection. And finding a way to win, of course.

Here’s the Thing by Emily O’Beirne

It’s only for a year. That’s what sixteen-year-old Zel keeps telling herself after moving to Sydney for her dad’s work. But Zel soon finds life in Sydney won’t let her hide. There’s her art teacher, who keeps forcing her to dig deeper. There’s the band of sweet, strange misfits her cousin has forced her to join for a Drama project. And then there’s the curiosity that is the always-late Stella.

Points of Departure by Emily O’Beirne

Best friends Kit and Liza have been looking forward to this trip forever. Five girls, five tickets overseas. It’s exactly what they all need after the final slog of high school. But when Kit’s suddenly forced to drop out, Liza’s left with three girls she barely knows, and they’re all learning that travel isn’t just about the places you go, but who you’re with at the time.

Because of Her by K.E. Payne

Forced to move to London thanks to her father’s new job, Seventeen-year-old Tabitha has to leave her friends, school, and, most importantly, her girlfriend Amy, far behind. To make matters worse, Tabby’s parents enroll her in the exclusive Queen Victoria Independent School for Girls, hoping that it will finally make a lady of her. But Tabby has other ideas.

Axiom by Rachel Marie Pearcy

The Assembly controls every citizen of Axiom. Everything is assigned, from their career and living quarters, to their spouse and reproduction. Ella never thought twice about it, until now. After meeting Carly, Ella realizes things aren’t as perfect as she thought. The two girls’ friendship slowly blossoms into something more, and as their love grows, so does the threat of punishment.

Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters

With a steady boyfriend, the position of Student Council President, and a chance to go to an Ivy League college, high school life is just fine for Holland. At least it seems to be. But when Cece Goddard comes to school, everything changes. Cece and Holland have undeniable feelings for each other, but how will others react to their developing relationship?

Lies My Girlfriend Told Me by Julie Anne Peters

When Alix’s girlfriend, Swanee, dies from sudden cardiac arrest, Alix is overcome with despair. Then she finds Swanee’s phone, pinging with texts from Liana, Swanee’s secret girlfriend. Brought together by Swanee’s lies, Alix and Liana become closer than they’d thought possible. But Alix is still hiding the truth from Liana. Will coming clean to Liana mean losing her, too?

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

One miscarriage too many spelled the end of Max and Zoe Baxter’s marriage. Zoe, for her part, finds healing relief in music therapy and the friendship, then romantic love with Vanessa, her counselor. After Zoe and Vanessa, now married, decide to have a baby, they realize that they must join battle with Max, who objects on both religious and financial grounds.

Like Water by Rebecca Podos

In Savannah Espinoza’s small New Mexico hometown, kids either flee after graduation or they’re trapped there forever. Vanni never planned to get stuck—but that was before her father was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. Then she meets Leigh, who’s utterly unique. But caring about another person threatens to bring to the surface the questions she’s held under for so long.

Her Name in the Sky by Kelly Quindlen

Hannah wants to spend her senior year of high school going to football games and Mardi Gras parties with her tight-knit group of friends. The last thing she wants is to fall in love with a girl–especially when that girl is her best friend, Baker. And Baker might want to be with Hannah, too–if both girls can embrace that world-shaking, yet wondrous, possibility.

Noteworthy by Riley Redgate

Jordan’s low voice gets her shut out of the school musical, but a spot has opened up in the elite a cappella octet. Worshipped…revered…all male. Jordan dresses as a guy and wins the audition. With her secret growing heavier every day, Jordan confronts what it means to be a girl (and a guy) in a male-dominated society, and—most importantly—what it means to be herself.

The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed

Three misfits come together to avenge the rape of a fellow classmate and in the process trigger a change in the misogynist culture at their high school, transforming the lives of everyone around them in this story that will work its way into a special place in your heart. Told in alternating perspectives, one of whom is gay and Latina, another is autistic, and all are remarkable.

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

Juliet just came out to her family and isn’t sure if her mom will ever speak to her again. But Juliet has a plan, sort of, one that’s going to help her figure out this whole “Puerto Rican lesbian” thing. She’s interning with the author of her favorite book: Harlowe Brisbane, the ultimate authority on feminism, women’s bodies, and other gay-sounding stuff.

Cherry by Lindsey Rosin

In this honest, frank, and funny debut novel, four best friends make a pact during their senior year of high school to lose their virginities—and end up finding friendship, love, and self-discovery along the way. Will everything go according to plan? Probably not. But at least the girls have each other every hilarious, heart-warming, cringe-inducing step of the way.

Unspeakable by Abbie Rushton

Megan doesn’t speak. She hasn’t spoken in months. Pushing away the people she cares about is just a small price to pay. Because there are things locked inside Megan’s head - things that she cannot, must not, let out. Then Jasmine starts at school: bubbly, beautiful, talkative Jasmine. And for reasons Megan can’t quite understand, life starts to look a bit brighter.

Sword of the Guardian by Merry Shannon

The shocking assassination of her brother causes Princess Shasta’s father to appoint Shasta’s new savior as the Princess’s bodyguard. But what Shasta doesn’t know is that her new guardian has a very well-kept secret: he is actually a she. The two grow closer than anyone, especially her father, could have predicted. Will the truth change their relationship forever?

The Light of the World by Ellen Simpson

After her grandmother’s death, Eva finds diaries detailing the magical life of a girl in the Roaring Twenties. She cannot reconcile the young girl in these diaries with the miserable old woman she loved. Eva starts to investigate the puzzle with the help of a local historian and his assistant Olivia, they find a forgotten labyrinth under the city. But they’re not the only ones down there…

The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrustkie

For Cassandra Leung, bossing around sea monsters is just the family business. But when the pirate queen Santa Elena swoops in on Cas’s first solo mission and snatches her from the bloodstained decks, Cas’s dream of being a full-time trainer seems dead in the water. Cas has fought pirates her entire life. But can she survive living among them?

The Edge of the Abyss by Emily Skrutskie

Sequel to The Abyss Surrounds Us.

Starring Kitty by Keris Stainton

Kitty’s keeping secrets. Like how she’s struggling to cope with her mum’s illness. And how she’s falling for the girl with the purpley-red hair… A fun film competition with her friends Sunny and Hannah seems like the perfect distraction. But then Dylan wants to be more than Kitty’s secret. Is Kitty ready to let her two worlds meet, or will she risk losing Dylan forever?

Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before by Karelia Stetz-Waters

Shy, intellectual, and living in rural Oregon, Triinu just doesn’t fit in. She tries to hide behind her dyed hair and black wardrobe, but it’s hard to ignore the bullying, and it’s even harder to ignore the allure of other girls. As Triinu tumbles headlong into first love and teenage independence, she realizes that the differences that make her a target are also what can set her free.

Prom and Other Hazards by Jamie Sullivan

Frankly, prom is a ridiculous concept, and Sam wants nothing to do with it. Except for the tiny fact that she’s been in love with her best friend Tash since they were ten years old, and Tash dreams of a perfect, romantic prom. Sam had given up hope, until she spotted The Suit in a shop window. Surely the perfect suit is all she needs to finally admit to Tash how she feels.

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever. Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another. This book is about finding truth amid the lies, and finding your voice even when others are determined to silence it.

Our Own Private Universe by Robin Talley

Fifteen-year-old Aki has a theory. And it’s mostly about sex. No, it isn’t that kind of theory. Aki already knows she’s bisexual. So far, Aki has dated only guys, and her best friend is the only person who knows she likes girls, too. Actually, Aki’s theory is that she’s got only one shot at living an interesting life—and that means it’s time for her to actually do something. Or at least try.

The Summer I Wasn’t Me by Jessica Verdi

Lexi has a secret. She never meant for her mom to find out. And now she’s afraid that what’s left of her family is going to fall apart for good. Lexi knows she can fix everything. She can change. She can learn to like boys. New Horizons summer camp has promised to transform her life, and all she wants is to start over. But sometimes love has its own path.

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Darcy Patel is afraid to believe all the hype. But it’s really happening - her teen novel is getting published. Instead of heading to college, she’s living in New York City, where she’s welcomed into the dazzling world of YA publishing. Told in alternating chapters is Darcy’s novel, the thrilling story of Lizzie, who wills her way into the afterworld to survive a deadly terrorist attack.

Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

When BFFs Charlie, Taylor and Jamie go to SupaCon, they know it’s going to be a blast. What they don’t expect is for it to change their lives forever. When Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie has a chance to confront her long-time crush . And in the magic of SupaCon, Taylor starts to rethink playing it safe when it comes to her secret crush on Jamie.

27 Hours by Tristina Wright

Rumor fears two things: hellhounds too strong for him to kill, and failure. Jude has two dreams: for humans to stop killing monsters, and for his strange abilities to vanish. But in no reality should a boy raised to love monsters fall for a boy raised to kill them. Nyx keeps two secrets: the moon speaks to her, and she’s in love with Dahlia, her best friend. This is the story of one 27-hour night.

Dirty London by Kelley York

All London wanted out of her senior year of high school was anonymity. Then she discovers that Wade, one of the most popular guys in school, is gay like her, and their new-found closeness has half the student body convinced they’re hooking up. Rumors start flying, and London is pretty sure she’s developing a crush on the one girl who sees through it all.

The Gravity Between Us by Kristen Zimmer

At just 19, Kendall is Hollywood’s hottest young starlet—but behind the glamour is a girl who longs for normal. Payton is Kendall’s best friend, and the one person who reminds her of who she really is. But Payton has a secret that could make everything ten times worse. Because to her, Kendall is more than a best friend—she is the only girl that she has ever loved.

#LGBT books #sapphic books #wlw books #sapphic #wlw

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 7 years

Text

Modern Animorphs AU (part 2)

@jollysunflora : The second half of my complete list of modern AU Animorphs headcanons, approximately one per book.

28. “Ax,” Marco says, “How come you can roll out ‘venti dulce de leche dark-chocolate frappuchino extra whip’ without batting an eye, but you giggle every time you have to say the word ‘soy’?”

“It has so many vowel—owl?—sounds, in so little space,” Ax says. “That long sssssssssss, so pleasant on the tongue, but then that odd oooyyy ooy-yah? All in the back of the mouth. Very strange. Sssoooy. Ssususs-oooyaaa.”

“Also, he’s moved on from the frappuchinos,” Tobias adds. “Now he keeps spending all our hard-stolen bitcoins on espresso mack... mach...”

“Espresso macchiato con panna,” Ax explains. “Doppio.”

29. Cassie feels herself sweating as she props the laptop across the room from her, tools laid out and Ax unconscious on the table. She never expected to find a YouTube video on how to perform brain surgery—and to be honest, it’s actually about “how neurosurgeons perform an orbitozygomatic craniotomy,” not intended to be a how-to manual—but it’s the best she can do under the circumstances, and so she’ll follow along for now.

MM3. “That’s the kind of strong leadership we need.” Jake gestures to the full-color television (this year’s latest model) where a program of their current leader plays on a loop. “Keeping the wrong kind of people out of this country, saving America for the right kind of Americans.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Rachel says. She and Tobias and Jake are the only three Animorphs, except when Melissa joins them sometimes, and listening to their “Supreme Leader” blather on gets old sometimes. “All I want to know is whether it’s true that within a few years people will really have phones that plug into their cars. That’d be cool.”

Tobias rubs his eyes against the silk of his wing feathers. They itch constantly, since he doesn’t have a gas mask to wear every time he goes out into the pollution-opaque air outside the way that his human friends do. Jake and Rachel take bets sometimes, idly, brutally, about whether he’s the last raptor left on the face of the planet.

“Magnificent!” Drode appears in their midst, and both the Berensons immediately point guns at his head.

30. Marco is lying on his bed the day after watching Eva fall, staring at a patch of wall above his dresser, when he registers that his phone has been buzzing for a while now. It goes off so many times he assumes he has to be getting a call, but when he checks his notifications he just discovers he’s gotten seventeen text messages in the last hour.

The first is from “Smurfette,” and says “Did you know that there is a type of food that involves baking a cinnamon bun inside of a donut? We must secure as many of these as it is possible for a human to consume, as soon as possible!”

The next one, from “Hawkgirl,” reads: “found out recently that apparently ax still thinks you invented flea powder. i told him that if youd invented flea powder wed all be a lot richer right now.”

“Team Dad” (not to be confused with “Real Dad,” which is how Marco lists Peter) sent along several invitations to team missions on League of Legends this afternoon, along with a threat to have Cassie play Marco’s avatar if Marco doesn’t join in. “we both know that by the time you get back you’ll have only healing attacks and she’ll have trained it to apologize automatically for stabbing people,” Jake adds.

One of the many texts from “Julia Butterfly Hill” suggests that Jake has underestimated Cassie’s diabolical streak, because it’s a screenshot of a clone of his account which has had its name changed to HarambeWasFramed.

The real surprise, however, is the single text from “Xena: Warrior Princess.” It’s a link to an article about a disaster in the local national park and the efforts to clean up the wreckage of an as-yet-unidentified craft which went down in the canyon. Marco has to read it a few times to understand the point she’s making, because it’s all about what’s not there: the article makes no mention of any human bodies being found among the wreckage.

Marco gets halfway through typing a reply to them all which informs them in no uncertain terms that he sees through their transparent attempts to cheer him up and doesn’t appreciate it, but he deletes without sending. He can practically hear his mom’s voice saying it: he can focus on the fact that he’s still surrounded by people who love him, or he can focus on the negative side of everything. And being constantly negative is no way to live.

31. “Sharing this again, because its been 3 months,” Jake’s cousin Brooke posts on Facebook. “Anyone who has any news at all about Saddler, no matter what it is, PLEASE contact my family. Big brother, I dont know if youre still out there, but I miss you. I miss you like crazy.”

Jake turns up his Spotify’s Offspring channel a little louder to drown out the sounds of Tom and his dad shouting at each other downstairs. His eyes flinch past Brooke’s post, but they can’t move fast enough to prevent the thought that flashes across the surface of his mind: Is this going to be me a year from now?

32. Tobias texts Rachel and Jake an article from Audubon.Org, where several birdwatchers are going into ecstasies of scientific fascination at the bald eagle and peregrine falcon seen flying in close formation in a cell-phone video taken near a highway overpass downtown. His only comment is, “Told you so.”

33. In the aftermath, Rachel does a Google search: “PTSD treatment symptoms outcomes.” She reads through the WebMD site, the NIMH page, the Wikipedia link to a DSM-5 entry. She thinks of Tobias’s withdrawn silences, his antipathy toward so much they used to enjoy, but she thinks of other things as well. How exhausted Jake seems any time they’re not on-mission. How badly Cassie flinches when the school bell rings and doors slam. How Ax seems to be gradually losing interest in the things—cooking shows, new condiments, human history trivia, These Messages—that once drew his fascination. How last week Marco flicked an ant off the back of his hand and then went white like he’d just kicked a puppy. How good it had felt when she’d hurt David, spreading the pain around, giving it back.

She catches an Uber to the clinic downtown, filling out forms in the waiting room based on the checklist written on her phone for “how to get tobias an ssri”: Yes, she often feels tense and worried. Yes, her heart often races for no reason. No, she hasn’t thought of ending her life. No, she doesn’t feel out of control when she eats.

She gets as far as developing a cover story—it’s about how she’s never felt the same since her parents’ divorce—but in the hallway to the office she panics and calls Cassie. “Am I doing the right thing?” she asks, after she’s explained.

Cassie is silent for a long time, never a good sign. “I’m not sure an SSRI would work on a bird,” she says at last, “and that’s even if we could figure out a dose that would work without killing him. I know you want to help, and I think you should, but...”

Rachel hears what she’s not saying: but what if her mom asks too many questions? But is this risk really worth it? But what if the psychiatrist (the receptionist, the pharmacist) is a controller? But isn’t it them, and only them, against the world, and isn’t that just how it has to be?

“The war won’t last forever,” Cassie says weakly, and Rachel hates her a little for it. “When it’s over, when we get to tell everyone what’s happening...”

Rachel hangs up. She goes home, morphs, and flies out to the woods.

«You know I love you, right?» she asks Tobias later that evening.

«Of course I do.» He sounds exhausted. She’s never felt more helpless in her life.

34. The Yeerk Peace Movement, as it comes out, has a Twitter feed. It is rather painfully obvious that it has been set up and run entirely by aliens who are doing their very best to communicate with humans, and not quite succeeding. Most of the posts are couplets, for some reason that none of the Animorphs can fathom.

“Want to be On Fleek? When you see someone’s rights threatened, speak!”

“Don’t be a Belieber anymore - end slavery and even the score.”

“#tbt: Remember when we were symbiotes? Give taxxon freedom your sympathy votes!”

“Nickelback is super lame, and keeping involuntary hosts is just the same.”

“Respect your host’s rights today, and make your human into your bae!”

35. It’s Marco who comes up with the idea for how to take down William Roger Tennant. This is a guy, after all, whose cockatiels have their own Instagram account: he runs his fame on the internet.

“It's simple,” Marco explains. “We start a hashtag—#notsonicetennant—and we make it go viral. All we have to do is film this guy everywhere he goes, and eventually the yeerk will slip up.”

It proves not to be simple after all. Their gif of Tennant twitching madly mid-EPA speech gets overshadowed by the news story about One Direction nearly getting poisoned with spiders at the same banquet. Ax does not understand the concept of hashtag, and keeps adding #notsonicetennant to his retweets of what Marco calls “food porn.” They train one of Tobias’s repurposed GoPros to follow poodle-Marco, but that becomes a meme mocking the world's most obnoxious stray dog rather than Tennant himself.

The plan finally, finally comes off when they pull out all the stops and just confront him in morph. The smartphones that Rachel rigged up in the surrounding buildings don't pick up the thought speak, but the audio of Tennant screaming at the aliens to leave him alone comes through just fine.

When the scandal breaks, the internet (in truly predictable fashion) drops #notsonicetennant and starts using #tennantgate instead.

Ax reposts an old photo of Tennant eating a quinoa salad—zoomed in on the salad—and tags it #tennantgate. All of his teammates assure him they appreciate the attempt.

36. “All right, that’s just weird,” Marco says, looking at the final entry in the underwater creepshow they’ve been walking through for the past hour. “All the other ships have been getting more modern as we’ve gone, but this one? Looks like it was made in the sixties, at the latest.”

«The world’s creepiest museum curators are getting sloppy with the placement of bodies as well,» Tobias points out. «There’s no way that many people could fit on a boat that small. They’re practically falling over the sides.»

Jake and Cassie look at each other, seeing the same realization reflected in each other’s eyes. Neither one of them wants to say it out loud.

Jake becomes the one to bite the bullet. “Don’t you get it?” He points to the ragged clothes, the emaciated bodies, the modern smartphone tucked in among the antiquated radio equipment. “They were refugees.”

37. Rachel shuts the window on the library computer as soon as she hears someone walk into the room, but she can tell she was too late by the look on Jake’s face when she turns around.

“Roy Ludvig, huh?” Jake says. “Heck of a name.”

“He was at the T.V. studio when we attacked.” Rachel looks down, picking at her nail polish. “No civilians were supposed to be in danger.”

Jake’s expression softens, as much as it ever does. “And now you’re scrolling through his Facebook, looking for something that’ll let you sleep at night.”

“He’s got a grandson,” Rachel blurts. “Jordan’s age. He...” She shrugs. He’s dead, and it’s more or less her fault.

“Shouldn’t be looking on Facebook.” Jake sets his phone on the library table next to her, taps the screen to bring up an official-looking report. “You should be, say, borrowing my dad’s computer. Sending an email from his account to ask for the guy’s medical records. If you had, you’d know that Mr. Roy Ludvig had a heart condition. That he had maybe a year to live, at most, and doctors said he might die at any old time.”

Rachel looks down at the report for a long time, and eventually looks up at Jake. “Doesn’t make it okay, what I did,” she says. “He’s still dead.”

Jake shrugs. “You don’t have to forget it ever happened, but you do have to live with it. Live, and fight another day.”

38. In the aftermath of Estrid's visit, Tobias is flying over the boardwalk when he sees a henna artist who clearly smokes way too much pot to be a Yeerk. He gets Ax, they morph human, and both get henna tattoos of Elfangor's name. (Ax had previously expressed an admiration for the human tradition of commemorating a lost loved one by making markings on one's body.) They know the tats will disappear when they demorph, but they're both glad they did it. The artist asks how long they've been together, and Tobias says in a scandalized voice, “he's my UNCLE!” Thus, Tobias succeeds in both of his goals: making Ax laugh, and reminding him he has family here on Earth. Honestly, the reminder doesn't hurt Tobias either.

39. “You know, not all squirrels are like that,” Marco is fond of saying after a morph goes wrong. “Not all termites are horrifying worker drones.” Sometimes it’s, “You know, some of my best friends are fleas.”

It’s Cassie, however, who gets the last laugh out of that one. «You know, Marco,» she says as they swim away from the wreckage of the helicopter, «Not all ants are like that, right? I shouldn’t say that all ants are killers, right?»

Marco stares at her in silence while the others snicker, watching him war between the two impulses: to keep the joke going forever, and to express his honest hatred of ants.

«Come on.» And now Rachel has joined in on the teasing. «You’re just going to let that kind of besmirching of the ant community stand?»

«Okay, okay!» Marco gives in. «Ants suck. Yes, all ants!»

40. “Our experts have examined the video extensively, and near as we can conclude, this footage is genuine and unedited,” the newscaster says. “Given how viral this video has proven to be, with over two million views since it was posted to YouTube on Wednesday, everyone wants to know: is this footage proof that aliens exist? Is this a publicity stunt for the upcoming Fantastic Beasts sequel? Or, as one YouTube commenter asks, did a Smurf just have sex with a centaur?”

«Potential new ally?» Tobias suggests. He’s already tapping out a search for the original video in his modified tablet.

Ax laughs. «Of course not. He’s crippled. A vecol. Useless. We must respect the privacy of his isolation.»

“You know what? Fuck that,” Marco snaps. He shoves to his feet, posture tight with anger. “Just... Fuck that,” he tells Ax. “I have ADHD. Attention Deficit whateverthefuck. I take a pill every morning to help me function because my brain isn’t good enough to filter stimuli all by itself. I got a fucking 135 on the world’s most boring IQ test and I’m still failing half my classes. I’m a vecol. You think I’m useless, huh? You gonna start refusing to talk to me because of some bullshit about ‘respecting’ my ‘privacy’? Huh?”

«That’s different,» Ax says. «You’re not...» He doesn’t seem to know how to finish that sentence.

«If he’s an exception, I hope I am too,» Tobias says more gently. «I got screened for anxiety disorders as a kid, and I guess we’ll never know if I qualify or not, ‘cause my aunt decided that doctors cost money and if the test said I needed one then she didn’t want to know about it.»

Ax doesn’t answer for a long time. He doesn’t seem to know where to look.

«Let’s go tell the others what we found.» Tobias taps a button to send the video to himself. «We can talk more about this later.»

MM4. Tobias flinches when his phone makes the small ping sound that means he has an alert. The new kid is the easy target in every school on the planet. He wonders what it’ll be this time: another Facebook post where the semi-anonymous account Toby IsALoser tags him in another meme about how he has to pay people for sex because the sight of his body would make any normal girl run away screaming, another unnamed Instagram ping telling him he should kill himself so that no one has to look at his stupid fat face anymore, another Snapchat image of a puddle of vomit with the caption “me when I think of you,” an email with the most disgusting gif anyone could find after a quick search...

It’s not, though. It’s an invite to join a private Facebook group, called The Sharing, with several hundred local members. Most of the names Tobias recognizes are cool older kids from the high school. Intrigued, willing to trust for the moment that this isn’t some ridiculously elaborate prank, Tobias clicks “join.”

41. Jake looks around at the enormous open field, concrete pitted with openings and low hovels of corrugated steel and rebar. He can see for nearly half a mile in every direction before the smog makes it impossible, and the tallest things around are the hunched hork-bajir. “Where are we?” he asks.

Cassie frowns. “This? Jake, this is downtown Manhattan.”

He gapes at her. “What happened to it?”

“Tall buildings are targets for drone strikes,” she says casually, turning away. “The only way to be safe was to go underground.”

42. Marco doesn’t bother going to the house of the guy who photographed them, nor does he try to catch the kid before he uploads the video anywhere. Instead he waits for the image to appear on YouTube, then becomes the first commenter. “Sweet manip!” he says. “Is that Photoshop, or can you do that in free programs like Gimp?”

43. “EarthIsOurs-dot-tumblr-dot-com?” Marco says incredulously. “What does Taylor do there, post pictures of her pet taxxon? Reblog plans for planetary domination?”

«Judging from her archive history, she’s had this blog for many years,» Ax says. «She recently changed the domain name, but some of the content on here is from as early as 2008.»

Jake and Marco get caught up in debating with Cassie about what exactly to send to her, but Tobias just scrolls quietly through Taylor’s old posts. She didn’t lie about being beautiful, he realizes, or about being popular. There’s a long blank period in her tumblr account in mid-2014. And then she posted one selfie—just one—after the fire.

He can’t bring himself to read the names that the trolls call her, or the discussions about how much money they’d have to be paid to have sex with her. But there’s no overlooking the suggestions that she kill herself. The posts are too numerous, too vitriolic.

“Every chick ever to wander onto the internet has gotten that crap,” Rachel says; clearly she’s been reading over his shoulder. “She should’ve developed thick skin, not joined the Sharing.”

Tobias thinks of the Facebook page made at his old school just to discuss the fact that he’s a chubby zit-face, of the posts which eventually overwhelmed his Instagram with death threats. «Yeah, I guess,» he says.

44. It takes a long time for Cassie to get home from Australia, but at least they’re not too worried for most of that time; she texts them her location and a brief description of the insanity that landed her in the Outback as soon as she gets in contact with Yami’s family.

45. “None of this makes any sense,” Peter says. “I’m hallucinating, or you’re delusional, or else—”

Marco sets his phone in Peter’s lap. “Check the timestamp, Dad. I took that six months ago.”

Peter stares at the phone for a long minute, and then slowly looks up at Marco. At a clear loss for words, he tilts his head back toward the screen.

“I know.” Marco laughs, the sound wet with tears. “That blond wig looks terrible on her. But it’s really her, Dad. I swear.”

46. “So they’re going to get the U.S. embroiled in another war,” Marco says. “And this one with a country that can actually fight back.”

«Seems like,» Tobias says. «Only why bother with all the secrecy and political wrangling? Why not just send a couple mean tweets to Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un? That’d probably do the job just as well.»

“No, it wouldn’t.” Jake runs a hand through his hair, looking around at them all. “The yeerks need a total war. Everything the U.S. and its allies can pull out, against everything China and its allies can muster. Our military has gotten too used to sending drones to fight its wars, to ‘tactical strikes’ against insurgents. If the yeerks want half the species annihilated, they have to do a lot more than poke a couple of egos.”

47. “News flash,” Marco says. “Your average suburbanite ain’t gonna accept a seven-foot-tall alien for a neighbor. You know the number of times my mom’s been asked for proof of citizenship before she was allowed to vote or cash a paycheck or buy a car? How many times she’s been pulled over by cops while driving the speed limit with her seatbelt on? And she’s a regular old human being. Toby’s right—the hork-bajir have a whole other fight coming if we ever win the war.”

48. Rachel feels the blood drain from her face when she opens the Facebook message and sees the name attached. David’s Facebook account has been defunct for almost two years now; there’s no one left who would want or even be able to access it from the outside. Should be no one.

Miss me? the message from David’s account says.

Who are you? she types with shaking fingers. What do you want?

I know what you did. I’m coming for you. I’ve got friends all over the place and they’ll find you. They’ll kill you. Amazing the allies you can get, when you know where the bodies are kept. On the internet, no one knows you’re a—

Rachel hits “block.” She tells herself that the screaming nightmares she has all that night and into the next are the product of having a stressful life, she’s an Animorph for pete’s sake.

She doesn’t stop shuddering every time she gets a message for the next two weeks, but she never hears from whoever (It wasn’t David. It couldn’t have been.) it was ever again.

49. They stagger away from yet another hopeless fight, all of them injured, half of them missing limbs or bleeding to death. Dragging their damaged bodies behind the first dumpster they find, they demorph, remorph, and force their minds to focus long enough for the long flight home. It’s only when Rachel is in owl morph, staring around the dimly lit alleyway, that she sees the security camera pointed directly at their location.

«They must not check it that often,» Marco says without much hope. «Or else they’d be out here already to come looking for us.»

«Doesn’t matter,» Tobias says harshly. «It had a perfectly clear view of all your human faces. And that building is owned by the yeerks.»

They all stare at each other in dull shock as the realization sinks in. They always knew this moment was coming—they could only be so careful for so long—and yet, on some level each of them hoped it never would.

«Take one more night to be with your families,» Jake says at last. «We evacuate everyone in the morning.»

Jake loses his phone, again, somewhere amidst all the chaos. This time around he doesn’t bother to replace it. It’s not like his mom is going to be wondering where he is, not anymore.

50. “So,” Jake says, “this is going to sound crazy, but—”

“Aliens are invading the planet, and you’re the only kid terrorist who can stop them?” James suggests. “We do have wifi up here, you know. You’re Jake Berenson, right? You’re all over the conspiracy theorists’ forums right now.”

“Um.” Jake runs a hand through his hair, starts again. “Yeah, pretty much.”

James nods. “In that case, you’ve got thirty seconds to convince me your story’s not a load of crap before I call security.”

51. Ax secures their wifi in something a billion times better-hidden than Tor. With that reassurance, they all end up starting blogs.

Marco’s is a rambling string of wry comments about everything from the invasion to his parents’ science projects. Sample post: “Insider source (aka my mom): Visser Three has morphed human and eaten AN ENTIRE BAG OF MARSHMALLOWS in one sitting, ON MORE THAN ONE OCCASION. Pass it on!”

Jake’s is the place that people go to find out how they can help, and to get his reassurance that the help means something. Sample post: “As Barack Obama says, ‘We the people recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom without a commitment to others is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.’ This fight will never be over just as long as we keep supporting each other. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you all for the KickStarter donations.”

Rachel’s has beauty tips for the American girl on the run, light and self-deprecating enough that you often don’t notice the undercurrent of desperation. Sample post: “If you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror, try fixing your hair using reflective surfaces such as pots, ponds, or pieces of Bug fighter wreckage. Alternately, just say ‘fuck it’ and never look at yourself again.”

Cassie’s tells people how to stay safe, and how to keep their environments safe as well. Sample post: “Everyone please remember, it’s important to stock enough food and water for family pets as well as humans when retreating to an apocalypse bunker!”

Tobias’s has a lot of good-natured grumbling about everyday life in the valley. Sample post: “In other news, my girlfriend’s mom is currently arguing with the smartest being on the face of the planet about where to put the new latrine facilities. Sorry Naomi, but my money’s on Toby.”

Ax’s has a lot of food reviews, of course, but again there’s that undercurrent of desperation, almost like he’s trying to convince someone else (or maybe even himself) that humans are worth saving. Sample post: “Marco assures me that there are no less than 23 distinct flavors contained within every sip of Dr. Pepper. Just think of the years of experimentation and innovation it must have required to produce a drink which can inspire 23 different reactions from human taste buds, all at the same time. Truly inspired genius.”

52. They run drills upon drills for what to do in case of a drone strike. Using any morphs they have that can dig or build—mole, taxxon, elephant, beaver—the Animorphs create an extensive network of tunnels and shelters, posting guards at all times to keep their eyes on the sky. The hork-bajir valley doesn’t show up on satellite imagery, which they only know thanks to Peter’s definitely-illegal fact-gathering missions on the darkweb, but they don’t know for sure whether an overhead camera would be subject to the same strange perceptual distortions they all experience when flying there as birds. They nearly lose their precious secrecy when Naomi sends several emails from her work account, claiming she’s being held hostage and asking anyone who will listen to come rescue her. Eva generates a hasty follow-up from the same account asking people to ignore “the prank that I now realize was in poor taste,” but none of them are sure it worked for the next several days.

53. Rachel makes one last post on her nearly-extinct Instagram account. This time the scrap of paper she uses appears to be torn from the back of a food label, but the penciled script is as intricate as ever. It reads “Who wants to live forever? —Freddie Mercury, 1986”

54. After it’s all over, Tobias retreats, he hides, but he keeps a thread of communication open. Cassie shoots him an email with the subject line “Hawk patient with intermittent aggression and lethargy—any idea what could be causing it?” Marco sends him idiotic memes that now feature the Animorphs’ names and faces. Ax asks for constant updates on the new wing of Taco Bell being built downtown, and repays the favor by leaking confidential information about the search for the Blade ship.

And then he gets one of the stranger emails he’s ever received. It’s an offer of a full legacy scholarship to Harvard University (which has just found the means to explain some inconsistencies in the records of one “Alan Fangor,” who graduated in the ‘80s) in exchange for Tobias teaching one class per semester on any subject of his choice. He agrees, with the stipulation that all his classes be online.

The resultant course (Ornithology 442: An Insider’s Perspective) is like nothing the students who participate have ever seen before. Tobias will write out rambling treatises on Why Blue Jays Suck or All the Ways Hawks Are Superior to Eagles with a thought-speak-to-text recorder. He’ll deliver online lectures from a shaky webcam pointed into a nonspecific tree, occasionally wandering off for hours at a time to go hunting. Students who ask him personal questions about Rachel get regurgitated mouse skeletons Fed-Exed to their campus mailboxes. Essays that don’t demonstrate much effort get feedback such as “even I can tell this sucks and I have a seventh-grade education” or “my grandmother could make better sentences than this AND SHE’S AN ANDALITE WHO DOESN’T SPEAK ENGLISH.” Assignments include “find one bird fact in a textbook and explain why it’s a load of crap” or “go film a Boston pigeon until it does something interesting, I dare you.”

Nevertheless, enrollment is so popular that Harvard has a three-year waiting list and charges students an extra $500 just to sign up. When Tobias finds out about the extra fee, he promptly video-calls the Intrepid, gives Ax remote access to his computer, and explains why he needs Ax to convert the course illegally to a MOOC. Harvard University fires him for breach of contract; Yale hires him on that very same afternoon.

part 1 here

#animorphs #modern au #long post #ableism #mental health stigma #food #racism #cyberbullying #fatphobia #ptsd

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