#Gate 2017 Admit card

[kyber-crystal]

Back to the Future

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Words: ~1.9k

Warnings: none except fluff and my bad writing bc this is kinda old, btw this is an AU 2017 timeline shhh steve is 33/99 in this hehe

Summary: In which you give Steve the best birthday present possible, with the help of a few genius Avengers and time travel. 

"Hey! It's one of my favorite kickass superheroes!"

"My favorite Baskin Robbins employee!"

Scott squeezed you into one of his signature tight bear hugs. "Hi! It's been a while."

"Two months is pretty long, yeah," you nodded in agreement. "Where's Cassie?"

"She wanted to come, but had to go to a friend's birthday party," he explained. "I can bring her here next time she's free, though."

"Sounds good."

"So, what'd Tony call me over for again?"

You quickly looked around the lounge before lowering your voice to a whisper. "Steve's birthday is today and we wanted to plan a special surprise for him."

"Ooh, surprises? I love surprises!" he said as you sat down at the kitchen counter together, taking a bite out of a chocolate chip cookie. "I'm listening."

"So..." you rested your chin on your hand as you spoke, "we're going to bring his mother back from the 40's..."

"That's amazing! So everyone else is in on this, right?"

"Yeah. I'm having Sam keep Cap out of the compound for at least another hour by making them take a run throughout all of Central Park. We should probably head out now. You got the van, right? And Luis?"

"Yeah, he's waiting outside by the curb. I'll let him know."

"Okay. Meet us in the hangar bay."

Sliding your army green parka, you grabbed your purse and took the elevator down to the giant hangar bay, where the rest of the team had all gathered. Tony was fiddling with the controls panel as Natasha opened the gates, allowing Luis and Scott to park the van inside.

"Aye, wassup, Y/N?" Luis stepped out of the vehicle as Scott prepped it for the time travel, giving you a high-five. "So I hear you're planning a surprise for your boyfriend?"

"Steve's not my boyfriend," you shook your head.

"Yeah? Then what's with all those lingering gazes?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't."

"When are they getting back?" Wanda asked you.

"We have about..." you tapped your watch a few times, "...exactly 52 minutes from now."

"I feel kinda bad," Peter admitted, "I mean, as soon as Cap wakes up we kick him out of the compound to go running and we're acting like we all forgot what today is."

"Don't worry, kiddo, this'll make up for it," Tony reassured him, clasping his shoulder. "I'm sure of it."

"Alright, so here's the plan," you clasped your hands together, "two of you will be sent back to 1935, a year before Sarah Rogers passed away. You'll explain the situation when you arrive and while that's happening, the rest of us will start setting up the party in the lounge. When you're ready, press the buttons on your suits and come back. Capiche?"

"Capiche," everyone replied in unison.

"Great. Who's willing to volunteer?"

"Clint and I can go," Bucky offered, glancing over at the archer for confirmation, and he nodded in response. "I know my way around there very well."

"Alright. Everyone else, you know what to do. Let's get to work."

Both of them being over six feet tall just like Steve himself, and having speedy and nimble limbs, Thor and Loki had the giant banner reading HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAP!, the streamers, and balloons up and ready within 15 minutes. Wanda helped you, Natasha, and Peter started laying out all the food on the counter, while Tony, Rhodey, Vision, and Bruce organized the gifts and got the cards ready for you all to sign.

By the time everyone was finished doing their respective jobs, you had roughly twenty minutes before the two men were scheduled to return from their mid-morning run. The elevator doors slid open to reveal Luis and Scott standing there with Clint, Bucky, and a golden-haired woman who had the same piercing eyes as your Steve.

"Hi," she greeted, "I've heard from these two gentlemen here that you are the Avengers. How is Steve doing?"

"He's on a run with Sam," you replied. "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Rogers. I'm Y/N."

"You're even lovelier than James described," she smiled warmly, shaking your hand. "And please, call me Sarah."

"I'm really not," you grinned sheepishly, rubbing the back of your neck, "But thank you. I can see where he gets his kindness from."

"Oh, you're too sweet. By the way, how old is he turning today? I've lost track of time. I guess that's what age does to you, huh?"

"Well, aside from being frozen and all...33," you returned her smile upon seeing her amazed look, "Yeah, I know. I can't believe it either, even though I'm not much younger than he is."

"My boy really has grown up, hasn't he...Does he treat you well, Miss Y/N?"

"Of course!" you laughed as you set the cake on the dining table. "He's a great leader, and teammate." "I've always pushed him to try and find a lady since he entered high school. From what I’ve learned, you seem like the right one for him," she commented.

"Me? No," you brushed the thought off, "We're just friends."

"I may not have known you for very long, but I saw that little twinkle in your eyes ladies only get when they show interest in someone. And Steve, he's very lucky to have you, you know."

"Mrs—Sarah! We aren't—"

"See, even she agrees!" Bucky pointed over at her. "We've all been trying to push them together from the moment they first joined the Avengers."

"When is he getting back?"

"A little under 15, ma'am," Natasha responded. "That should be enough time for the finishing touches."

It was all chaotic from there; with everyone rushing around and making last-minute changes such as how everything was arranged and all. As soon as you got the text from Sam that they were on their way up, you looked up and immediately told the others, as Tony ordered them all to get in position.

"FRIDAY, turn the lights off," he commanded.

"Yes, sir."

The lights dimmed and turned off, and you, Natasha, and Wanda crouched behind the kitchen counter together, as the others hid behind the dining table or simply stood there when there was no more room left, and Peter curled himself into a small ball underneath. Sarah was standing around the corner, behind the pantry.

"Yes, that would be perfect."

"Hello?" Steve called out as he stepped out of the elevator with Sam by his side, looking around all confused. "Tony? Y/N? Nat? Where is everyone?"

"Don't know, man," Sam feigned cluelessness, "Maybe they went out or something."

You felt a pang in your chest upon peeking over slightly and seeing the hurt look briefly flash across his features. Locking eyes with Tony across the kitchen, you gave him a nod that signaled it's go time.

The lights flickered on and everyone jumped out from their hiding spots. "SURPRISE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEVE!"

It took Steve a moment to register what was going on before he reacted, mouth dropping open slightly as he took in the scene before him. "You guys did this all...for me? When? How? And why?"

"Because we wanted to make this year extra special for you, Captain," Peter stated with a wide grin, spreading his arms out. "You deserve it. Happy uh...9..33rd!"

"Oh, wait! Before we get to the cake and all, there's one more thing!" Your face brightened as you spoke. "Sarah? You can come out now."

"Sarah what...Who are you talking about?" His brows furrowed together in confusion. "What are you..."

"Hi, Steve," she stepped around the corner, approaching her son. "Happy birthday."

"Ma?" A look of shock and disbelief appeared on his face, eyes widening slightly. "Are you...is this real?"

"Yes, dear, I'm real," Sarah reassured him. "I'm sorry for missing out on so much...I wish I'd been there to see you grow up to become this man you are now. James made sure to catch me up on all that's happened this century."

Tears began watering in his eyes and he was rendered speechless. "I..."

"Hey hey hey, don't cry, sweetheart," she laughed as she wrapped her arms around his broad frame, patting his back as his body began to tremble slightly from his sobs. "It's okay, I'm here."

"Aw, I'm getting all emotional now," Luis sniffed. "This is too much sentiment for me, man."

Steve pulled away a few moments later, laughing as he wiped away the remaining tears from his face. "I can't believe this."

"It was Y/N's idea!" Peter exclaimed. "You have her to thank, not us. You can thank Wanda and I for the cake, though! But this, was all her idea."

He immediately pulled you into his arms, rocking you from side to side and pressing a kiss to your forehead.

"You're the best," he mumbled, burying his face into the crook of your neck, as your arms circled around his torso. "I can't thank you enough. How am I supposed to payback for this?"

"It's fine, there's no need to thank me," you chuckled. "As long as I get to see you happy, that's enough as it is."

...

Sarah agreed to stay for the week so she could make up for lost time with Steve before returning back to her normal timeline. After eating Wanda and Vision's delicious feast of Salisbury steak and potatoes, you got ready for cake and presents, sitting around on the couches in the living room together.

"So, from what James has told me here," Sarah spoke up, "Steve has seemed to taken a liking to someone not long after joining the so-called initiative? He talks about you nonstop when you depart for missions without him, Y/N, and you do as well."

All heads immediately whipped over to face you.

"Oh, ha ha, that..." you chuckled nervously, feeling your face heat up. It didn't help that Steve was sitting right next to you, and could probably see how red your cheeks were. "We're just friends, nothing more. Neither one of us has feelings for the other."

"LIES! LIES!" Pietro shouted. "That's a lie!"

"I'm not gonna deny that, because why lie when the answer's already been made obvious?" Steve shrugged. Everyone's jaws dropped at his statement.

"Okay, the ice cream cake's gonna melt if we keep sitting here and watching the lovebirds," Tony cleared his throat and began lighting up the candles one by one. "Let's do this."

After a quick chorus of 'Happy Birthday' (which was surprisingly good to the point that Wanda videotaped it since she claimed you sounded like a church choir) you were on to cutting the cake.

"I just wanted to ask something really quick. I know it's your birthday and all, but...where's the engagement ring, Cap?" Peter questioned, a mischievous grin on his face. "Are you gonna pop the question?"

"There's an engagement ring?"

"No, Ma, he's joking," Steve chuckled, though his face was now a deep shade of scarlet. "We haven't taken that step yet."

"Yet?" You looked over at him, confused. "So we're dating now, huh? Didn't know that."

"I guess we are," he smiled, holding your gaze for a second longer than normal.

"Well then," Sarah beamed, "you have my approval. I wish you the best of luck in your relationship."

"Hahaha, we will never let you fair Midgardians live this moment down!" Thor boomed, voice muffled by the piece of cake stuffed in his mouth.

[erosjeon]

Part 1|?

⇢ In an age where information can save you or kill you; the concept of wrong place at the wrong time is a funny one. What do you do when you’re accused of stealing the hard-drive that holds restricted information belonging to the government? Particularly when they send a lethal robot to take you down? 

Pairing⍮ Jeon Jungkook x reader, Kim Namjoon x reader Genre⍮ robot!au, angst, slow-burn and eventual smut (no specific warnings in this chapter)  Word-count⍮ 4.6k

A/N: This fic couldn’t have dropped at any other time just as fitting to celebrate the belated birthdays of my loves Jungkook and Namjoon who also happen to be the main two characters. It’s also my birthday hehe! I had not actually planned to drop this now as a celebration at all since I had written it almost a year ago and had edited and gone back a thousand time. I think its safe for me to say that I had not worked any harder on any other fic on this blog so I hope it receives some love 💜

He took slow careful steps down the familiar stairs confined by white sterile walls leading down to his private laboratory. Tonight marks his fifth year anniversary in that building that filled with tranquillity that was anything but pleasant.

A sigh escaped his lips as he lifted the laminated silver card that hung around his neck to grant him entrance to the lab before he moved his hand to the switch by the door to turn on the lights. His fingers tugged at the plastic material and lifted it off his chest and into some place on the counter.

Kim Namjoon  –  robotics and autonomous systems specialist. 25.

At first glance, the place appears abandoned. There were barely any white coats other than his floating in choreographed concentration along the benches, as was usually the case. The smell of the setting agar and the faint humming sound of running machinery – as well as the lack of dust quickly dismissed any ideas. The modernity of the laboratory is showcased by the giant steel frames surrounding soundproof glass that welcome a view of the city where the light further brightens the dull lab, contrasting the black metallic roof above and floor below. 

Everything was the way he left it the night before, it has been a routine for him now after having completed the project of a life time and for someone so young – it was achieved way too early. He had fallen into a slump, he knew he would never be able to re-create what he had any better. He will never feel the same way he did the first time – the time when he laid his eyes on the smooth sun-kissed coloured skin that capsuled anything but natural. The devices he had the honour of being able to craft and create were the easy part of his job, a task that he was able to do by the end of the third semester years ago while he was still learning at college. It was the half nature of his creation that posed potential for the project to fail as nature screamed at the fusion of what should not.

He ran a hand through his hair as he paced to the pile of paper on the end of his desk where his leather chair waited awkwardly, looking through the notes that he compiled through the years that now serve as a reminding memory as if their content were not engraved in every one of his brain cells. He let out a bitter laugh as he looked at the not so innocent words in the initial research and proposal that gave life to what he had made today.

14th of October, 2015.

Robots. 

A concept that has been anciently configured. The fascination with ‘artificial beings’ has been around for thousands of years, evolving recently with the onset of the Industrial Revolution in order to create complex machines powered by electricity with the sole purpose of conducting their allocated tasks -  reducing the need for human assistance.  

Human reliance on artificial intelligence has increased drastically over the years –  first beginning in factories using simple fixed machines programmed to do a single action, over and over again repeatedly. The use of machine for different number of tasks followed right after, extending to the creation of human-sized robots with the capacity for near-human thoughts and movement and so has their purpose.

How to make robots softer or more compliant… less like rigid machines? How can we combine human and artificial intelligence?

Biohybrid robots 

Robotics with tissue engineering. They serve as a promising candidate for improved research investigation by providing biological dynamic system template through biological design. The concept of dual nature seems to have chance of success as although previous studies have shown that using skeletal muscle tissue on metal tend to shrink through the course of the tissue culture, it was not the case when an antagonistic pair were grown.

22nd of April, 2017.

Repurposing project to military (I don’t know how to feel about this, but Seokjin says I can’t do anything about it).

Military Robots

The need for reducing human casualty in war has become increasingly apparent by the public outcry and the great downfall in the number of men enlisting into the army over the years.  The world is evolving at such a rapid pace which forced the need for rapid adjustment to be almost compulsive, maybe that is what has allowed technological advances in the robot industry and invention to highlight the possibility of using robots in warfare which has been once regarded a topic of science fiction. The use of automated weapon systems is now considered the future of modern warfare and has become largely invested in for research and development by many countries.

Another sigh escapes his lips as he piles the scattered papers into their usual folder and away into the second drawer that he’ll open once again this time, next year. Leaning back in his leather seat and dropping his head back, he realised how much of a mess the place was. It was as if the storm outside had moved beyond the walls and into his rather suffocating workplace but he didn’t have time to think about cleaning up when far more important matters were to be done first.

His mind wandered to the stranded bot on the other side of the building who needed to have his microbiology screen completed today. There was an undeniable thrill in the routine tests he was in charge of, he looked forward to every instance where he finds himself a few feet away from his cell, not that anyone can blame him. He has never had actual contact with the robot – no one has before. He was programmed to comply with his assigned schedules, he knew when and where he had to stretch his arm across the metal barrier to sit it on top of a glass plate where they are strapped automatically to lock him in place for specimen collection.

He wished he had more authority when it came to the fate of him – he didn’t wish to have him locked away for all this time with minimal socialisation, all of which he knew were to be of consequence one day, inevitably.

The walk to the confinement was as any usual – the corridors dark and quiet. Not many people opt for night shifts in the field of his speciality for many reasons, some that undeniably reside in the depths of his mind every single day. This job is by no meant not your typical, there was risk in every move you make – especially when the guards are a bit too tired and a bit too unobservant in the late hours of the night. The secrecy of the projects withheld within confinement were much too important than human lives, the consequence of any fault is to be faced.

Two metal doors opened swiftly as he scanned his card by the projecting blue light. His anxiety swam to the surface as he dwelled on the chances of something going wrong. He knew he had to conquer his fears before coming face to face with the bot he gave life to. He knows just how capable he can use that against him -  how he can use anything to manipulate him.

He felt ashamed to admit that despite having built him piece by piece, he almost knows absolutely nothing about what goes in his computer mind. The second nature of Jungkook granted him that liability, the little ability and free will to conceal himself as he wishes from anybody without being coded onto one of these computer screens. Thinking about it now makes the uneasy feeling more difficult to go. There’s endless possibilities of things going wrong, the main concern being the possibility that Jungkook lets loose and decides to use his strength against the metal baring his own nature against his maker.

When the sound of the buzzer resonated in Namjoon’s ears to remind him of the job to be done, an unexpected guard emerges from the side door, he stops his footing a few inches away and inspects Namjoon fully despite the authorisation he received at the gate.

“What? No more naps on the job, Mr. Min?” Namjoon snickers, before giving his old friend a warm embrace, “I didn’t know you were back from suspension, what happened to you anyway?”

“Piss off Kim, one of you has either been a snake or that stupid janitor has ratted me out and told them what happe- anyway it’s nothing, I’m back. There.”

“What? What happened?” 

“I said, it’s nothing”

“Look Yoongi, if this concerns your job which requires you to be alert for a reason then it is something, for god’s sake what happened? Is this concerning the bot?”

Yoongi sighs before he contemplates saying anything, If the higher ups know then Namjoon also has a right to know, “He attacked him, Namjoon.”

Namjoon’s whole world seemed to have paused when he processed the three words, he’s attacked someone. Jungkook, he’s attacked somebody and…. “What did he do?” Namjoon blurts, he needs to find out more. Why would Jungkook do anything like this unstimulated? 

“Well he twisted his wrist till all his bones cracked broken-”

“No, I didn’t mean the bot. What did the Janitor do, did he say anything? Do anything” 

“What?” Yoongi asks confused, “I don’t know? Maybe? I heard him speak but you can’t hear much out here. I promise it’s not because I was asleep, I was actually awake the whole day that day.”

“He must’ve said something to push him into violence. What’s the janitor’s name? details?” 

“Woah, woah! Look I’m just a guard, man. Take your investigation somewhere else, go ask Seokjin or something.”

“Seokjin knows?” Namjoon feels betrayed, Seokjin out of everyone who was meant to support him unconditionally. His supposed best friend. At least he knows where his royalties lie.

“Of course, he was the first respondent. Was walking in the hallway when it happened actually. Great timing”

“And what did Seokjin do?” he looks down at Yoongi with a blank look, he knows that this was no coincidence. Seokjin’s job position has never required him to be on field, since when was he authorised to enter confinement? None of it made sense.

“I don’t know, I guess he talked both of them down or something. All I know is he was here, took the dude out afterwards for medical attention and they were both gone. Bot was still inside. So, as I said, Seokjin is your guy here I won’t be much help.”

“I see. If you remember anything you know who to look for” Namjoon leaves before completing his sentence to enter the sterile room to find the instruments.

He throws a blunt needle, alcohol wipes, fluid container and gloves on a tray after sterilising his hands. All the routine now familiar to him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something is wrong, something is happening and he knows none of it. Jungkook has been in contact with a human for the first time in his existence, and he just attacks.

Letting the air trapped in his lungs out in a sigh, he puts on the gloves before making it to the double doors leading to the cell. Another buzzer sounded, this time no guard was present. He needed to know when this incident happened, he needed to know more. It was his responsibility if anything else goes terribly wrong, even though he was taken off the assignment.

Jungkook’s arm was already present by the time Namjoon walks to the edge of the cell. A small rectangular glass above allows him to have eye contact with the bot as he wiped his injection site clean, he knew he had to be calm and collected, as if he had no idea what he’d done. Grabbing the needle, he connected the end with the container before injecting it into a vein and drawing out blood.

Thirium

Blue blood as they call it, it’s the fluid that powers the androids biocomponents, it circulates to provide energy and electrical information as our nerves do. It is an extraordinary finding which has allowed hybrids to exist now as they do. But unlike human blood, it evaporates after a few hours and becomes invisible to the naked eye when it comes into contact with oxygen. Perfect for an erasable terror in war where there won’t be any remains to tell the story if the bot’s purpose fulfilment fails.

He knows he shouldn’t instigate a conversation, there were cameras everywhere. If seokjin hasn’t told him anything about the incident then there is a high likelihood it was only meant for a select few to know about it. They had even suspended Yoongi and he doubts that it was because his inability to do his job properly, this ‘incident’ had been done on purpose. Maybe a test? But he had to say something.

“How are you feeling?” he finds himself asking.

But there was no response. Jungkook was looking straight at him and the answer was clear. He wasn’t feeling anything, his eyes completely vacant. What had they done?

“You know, I’ve been meaning to apologise. I know how uncomfortable it feels to have blood drawn… and here you are getting it done weekly. I wish there was a different way to get your routine tests done. This one is going to be sent for microbial examination.”

Namjoon carefully removes the container from the needle, placing it onto the tray before taking his gloves off. He was not really expecting an answer, he was probably reprogrammed to be silent.

“I am sorry for what’s happened to you” he whispers. Not fully sure Jungkook would understand what he’s referring to. He just has a feeling that he hadn’t just randomly lashed out. He has never done that to him.

“You should not be apologising for getting your job done, sir” he hears the bot’s voice from the other side of the door, the dull eyes he was staring into turning rather soft before his hand was withdrawn and the flap closed shut followed by the sound of automated machinery.

Had he just gotten his un-programmed first sentence?

Has Jungkook spoken like that before? There was so much to find out.

As Namjoon made his way back to his private laboratory, he realised how wrong he was regarding his human capabilities. He might have created him but he knew absolutely nothing about the human side of Jungkook for he still has living tissue within him. His mind wandered to a specific conversation he had with Seokjin months ago.

7th of July, 2018.

“He is ready.” Seokjin speaks before he moves the pipette above a beaker, watching the mixture slowly swirl into hues of pink as he releases the chemical fluid. “He’s trained for a long time, he’s more than ready now. We have kept him thirsty for way too long.” 

Namjoon sighs before turning away from the laboratory’s senior - his senior. 

“Ready to murder every single human on this earth!” he releases a suppressed breath, “He hasn’t even had a single contact with a human before! With zero social skills, we’d be releasing a fucking killing machine!” 

“That’s what he’s designed for, remember? We don’t need him for anything else” the senior replies before taking steps towards his subordinate, “Besides, all we have to do to control him is to log on one of these damn computers. He’s already loaded with all the chips required, everyone who we want safe will be safe.”

“We were told he’d only be used in war, we didn’t sign up for this - all of this risk, millions of dollars for a single girl! They could easily have hired someone to do their dirty work.” 

Namjoon looks down at the stained bench as his senior joins him. 

“He might have cost us millions but I’m sure you can imagine how much more we’d lose if what we know goes out to the rest of the world. This one is out of your hands, I’m afraid”, he patted his shoulder before making eye contact “you seem to be getting too soft for this field of work, Dr. Kim. They wouldn’t be too impressed knowing that, especially not when you’re the creator of something so lethal.”

“You didn’t even witness anything that went down, I’d like to see you act all brave when he’s standing inches away from your face with the intent to kill – for being isolated all these years!”

He had thought so lowly of the bot he’s made from seeing him tackle bodies of plastic and various other instruments as part of his training. Although it is better to be safe rather than sorry he can’t bring himself to think that Jungkook would project his training on someone innocent, why would he harm someone he was not programmed to harm as Seokjin had promised.

Jungkook was to be released next week for his mission, he had received this information on the bulletin the next morning. Namjoon had no regard to time at this point, the night blended into day while he looked through any file he can access on the system, he knew he had to be careful with his investigation to avoid arousing suspicion. He was not stupid after all.

He vaguely remembers the mission Jungkook was set to complete, he had thought it was originally due to fatigue but now that he thinks back, Seokjin had not told him much – and after being removed from the bot’s case, he knows nothing at all. The last training he personally conducted with Jungkook haunted him.

28th of August, 2018.

“Let me run it one more time.” 

“It’s your third time already, he’s got it alright. He’s a machine!” Jin sneers as he fondles with the biohybrid’s file.

“Part machine.” Namjoon throws him a look before turning to meet his creation. “State your mission, again”, he orders. 

“Eliminate target Y/N L/N”, a monotone voice responds back.

“And?” 

“For fucks sake!” A familiar pestering voice behind him speaks again.

“I’m trying to follow the damn safe-conduct instructions here! If you can’t stand it then please, you may leave.”

Namjoon tries to collect his focus onto the robot sat in front of him, hoping that his supervisor won’t run his mouth again for all this is crucial in understanding even the slightest about the way his robot interacts with humans.

He had personally kept an eye on him through his training the past few months since his awakening, gawking from the camera lenses at the way he moves, the way he eats and drink, the way he speaks and conducts human like activities in isolation as after all – the bot was given a schedule to follow for the purpose of serving the scientists knowledge regarding his nature since personal interaction with him was not a viable option.

He was able to witness how he progressively began to speak less like a robot, his voice slowly losing that flat monotone only to flourish into a soft and almost musical one, how he became better at feigning freedom of expression as he recites what was stealthily stored into his system. He learned that just like humans, the robot required to eat and excrete, he’d observed that it had been awkward for him to do at the beginning; he would have been fooled to think of him as a child if it was not for his built body - and the lifelessness that lays between his irises. There was only one issue, he never had the chance to study his interaction with others and he has absolutely no idea what his human side is like, nothing regarding his though process and how much conflict that would bring to prosecuting his commands, there is only one way to truly find that out.

“Alright.” He palmed his face as it crunches in knowing soon regret, this is a terrible idea but what other choice does he have “What’s your name?”

“Jeon Jungkook.”

He had to find out more about Y/N too. He had one week to do all of this, one week to find something solid and halt the mission till he found more time to investigate into Seokjin, and the incident.

It was that time of the year again, the transition of autumn into winter is not one to be easily recognised when the flakes of snow have started falling ever since early September, just like the way the days have slowly converged into nothing but a stack of passing hours interrupted briefly by doses of sleep. There is no distinct moment where the frost has started chipping away at your skin, you think to yourself.

If you had to describe yourself, you could confidently tell the next person how painstakingly slow-paced your life was. You were nothing but an uneventful person, with an uneventful life. Everything had a schedule, your days began with a morning cup of coffee from your old (almost broken) machine that needed replacement, at 7 in the morning. You’d have not long enough before having to leave the house and attending the unnecessary meeting at your current job at POC where you worked as a reporter. This would typically be when your manager tells your team off for not working your butts hard enough to catch a break. On most days, there would be no one with good news worthy to report after the meeting, which is why Ollie, your manager, ensures the meeting comes first.

You’d spend the rest of your day in your cubicle by Park Jimin, he was your co-worker, and also your close friend. Jimin would usually be one of the few people with a story on the waiting list when the team had not caught anything worthy enough for news and you can’t help but be envious of that sometimes albeit his very hard work. You want to be like him one day, you think.

Work would usually end around 6pm, this is when your forehead is against the table and your eyes are closed shut. You were exhausted, because even though you leave the office at 6, your work never really ends. As soon as you stepped foot out of the intimidating building, you were basically out on field. You try not to get yourself too obsessed with catching a lucky break but you can’t help but feel desperate sometimes. Nevertheless, you usually would grab a takeaway and head home. On a good day, you would be having a barbecue dinner with Jimin and a bunch of other colleagues of yours. Today was not one of those days. It’s also not one of those days where you are enthusiastic to find a celebrity on a date with another to report on.

The way back home was pleasant. You had opted to cook food at home rather than a takeaway to give your body a bit of a break since you remember the groceries you’ve brought home the day prior. You were already thinking of what to make when you locked your apartment door shut, a carbonara sounded absolutely delicious, especially with fresh mushrooms. You left your bag on the sofa by the door where your makeshift living room is. Truth is, you still have not finished renovating your apartment despite having moved here 6 months ago. You were too busy worrying about newspapers to even think about buying a decent coffee table that could be in the centre of the room.

You were letting out a sigh and pulling at the camera that hung around your neck when a figure had moved within the darkness of your flat. You don’t remember inviting anybody over… your nerves shook as you thought of the possibilities anyone you know is inside with you right now. Did you just walk into a robbery of your own home?

“Hello?” you shout out, not knowing where the figure had moved to. You had to think of something.

You managed to grab the tennis racket from the box of all-random-things in attempt to defend yourself, thanking the disorganised part of yourself for having everything sit in the box knowing it’d come handy one day. If this is how you’re going to die then the least you can do is defend yourself.  How pathetic would it be to get killed in a robbery? You could just walk right out but how would you know the person won’t chase after you like a dog.

“I know you’re in there, come out!” you tried to sound strong, knowing full well that you’d shit your pants if whoever it is inside shows themselves. Did they have a weapon?

“Hello?” your hands are now shaking, you decided it’s wise to call the police and have them deal with it. The stillness of your apartment did nothing but install more anxiety and fear in the pit of your stomach.

You were walking to where you had left your bag to reach for your phone when the sound of movement and hurtle had caused you to hurry your movements. Someone was behind you. You could feel the heat emit out of their body and into yours, they were close when the phone was in your hand and all you had to do was dial the emergency but you were too late. You gulped - this is your end.

“Drop the phone.”  you hear the man behind you say, the sentence resonating in your head as you had thought of what could happen if you just tapped the green button. You decided that nothing could be worse than what you are possibly about to experience when you hit dial and the phone rang but before you could even comprehend you were forcefully turned and pushed against the wall, causing you to meet your offender eye to eye.

You couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped your mouth when his fingers wrapped around your neck and started squeezing.

You had imagined the worse when you thought of who would take away your life if you had to leave earth that way. You were expecting perhaps… someone filled with hatred, covered with scars that had driven them to commit such an act against you, or maybe just someone plain crazy and evil. But the person who stood in front of you was anything but. He was young, beautiful even. You couldn’t stop yourself from admiring the long brown locks that separated at the centre of his head at the top, the soft doe-like eyes that were filled with emptiness and his soft pink lips. Why would someone like that -  so innocent looking, a stranger, want to harm you? What had you possibly done to deserve being choked to death?

Your vision was giving away when you finally brought your hand to claw at his skin, your voice not strong enough to make out any word when the panic had finally set in, you were vibrating in sheer panic when you felt the air refuse to leave your lungs and your eyes started filling with tears, “Please, stop!” you wanted to cry out but to no avail when your vision started fading to black.

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[theycallmebeccawrites]

Chris & Ellie Series: Episode 8

With Tumblr holding my original writing blog @beccaheartschrisevans captive (aka flagged as explicit), I have made a secondary writing blog and may end up closing the other all together. In the meantime, I am reposting all of my stories on my new blog.

Pairing: Chris Evans x Ellie Spencer (OFC)

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: language

Episode Summary: This episode takes place in August 2013 and features Ellie, Chris, Scott and one of Scott’s friends going to the Dodger’s game vs the Red Sox.

Disclaimer: This work of fiction is not to be reposted, used or translated without my permission.

The Chris and Ellie series is primarily chronological.  It begins with a flash forward to 2016 and has a few other scenes in the future.  However, the majority of their story is told in chronological order starting in 2013 and going through 2017. Each episode starts with a date to help you place it within the story.

The Chris & Ellie Series Masterlist | Chris & Ellie Masterlist

Episode 7.5

Episode 8:  A Day at the Ball Park

August 25, 2013

Chris and Ellie were in the kitchen eating lunch when they heard Scott thundering down the stairs at top speed. They both looked up as at the younger Evans brother came skidding into the kitchen.

"Chris, your role as Ellie's favorite Evans' brother is about to be overtaken!" Scott declared with a grin on his face.

"I'm her favorite?" Chris responded as the same time Ellie said, "I have a favorite Evans' brother?"

"Yes and it was Chris," Scott said, waving off their comments. "But today, I'm the favorite, because I got us three tickets to the Red Sox game today against the Dodgers!"

"You are my favorite," Ellie declared with a laugh.

"Told you," Scott smirked.

"How'd you get tickets?" Chris asked his brother.

"My friend James was supposed to go with some friends, but they backed out at the last minute," Scott explained. "He remembered I'm from Boston and asked if I wanted to go and if I knew anyone else who'd want to go. I told him about you two and now we're going to see the Red Sox, bitches!"

---

Two hours later, they took a cab to Dodger Stadium and waited for Scott's friend James to show up. Chris and Ellie found a quiet, shaded area in hopes of not attracting attention, while Scott went to the spot he and James had arranged to meet.

Ellie was the first to spot Scott returning with his polo and golf shorts wearing friend. The closer they got, the more she liked what she saw of his tall, golden-skinned friend. His hair was cut short and spiky, but there was a surfer edge to the otherwise preppy looking male. She found he was even cuter when he was standing right in front of her and he had a charming smile, too.

"James, I'd like you to meet my brother Chris," Scott said, making introductions. "And our friend Ellie."

"Nice to meet you," James said shaking both of their hands. "Obviously, I missed the Red Sox hat memo." He let out a melodic laugh. "But maybe I'll buy a Dodger hat inside, just to spice things up a bit."

"We should go into the park," Chris said in a monotone voice.

"Great idea," James nodded. "We'll want to get drinks and food before we take our seats." He handed them their tickets and they headed for the gates.

With James and Chris walking in front of them, Ellie nudged Scott. "He's a good looking guy," she whispered.

"He is," Scott agreed with a sigh. "Sadly, he likes your type and not mine."

"His loss," Ellie replied as she slipped her arm through Scott's. "You're the greatest."

They stood in line to get into the ballpark and then Chris headed down to their seats while the other three went to get food and drinks, Scott and Ellie promising to grab stuff for him.

Chris kept his head down as he waited for the others to arrive and he was slightly disgruntled to hear Ellie laughing as she, Scott and James got to their row. They took their seats according to the seat number on their tickets which meant that Ellie sat between him and James while Scott sat on Chris's other side.

"They've been laughing since we got in line," Scott whispered to Chris as he settled into his aisle seat. "It's adorable."

Chris grunted in response then took a long drag of his beer. Then he turned his attention to his hot dog while he tried to tune out Ellie and James' voices. There was something about the guy that he didn't like, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

The game started after the singing of the national anthem and the ceremonial first pitch.

"GO ELLSBURY!" Ellie yelled as her fellow Oregonian stepped up to the plate. It was followed a few moments later with a "Damnit!" when he struck out.

"You like baseball?" James asked Ellie.

"I love it," Ellie replied and then cheered loudly as Victorino hit a double.

"She loves football, too," Chris offered. "She's a big sports fan."

"I am," Ellie agreed. "COME ON PEDORIA!"

"That's cool," James said. "I -"

"YES! SAFE!" Ellie, Chris and Scott cheered as Pedoria was called safe at first.

"I don't follow many sports," James continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. "I prefer to surf."

The other three cheered again as the Red Sox scored the first run of the game after a hit from Napoli.

It took James a couple more interrupted attempts to realize that he had to wait until between batters to talk to Ellie without her being distracted. As soon as the top of the inning ended, he had her laughing again.

"I can't believe how well they're hitting it off," Scott whispered to him. "I love hearing her laugh like that."

"She laughs with us that way," Chris muttered. He wouldn't admit that he'd much rather be back at the house sitting on the couch next to Ellie watching the game. He heard Ellie let out a snort of laughter and frowned. "I'm going to the bathroom."

The bathroom trip took longer than he'd planned after he stopped to buy a beer and then met a dozen or so fans. It was only thanks to a security guard that he got away from the fans and made his way back to their seats.

His spirits were lifted when he saw Ellie and Scott both standing up as if looking for him. He gave a slight wave and saw relief spread across their faces.

"We weren't sure what had happened to you," Ellie said as he sat down.

"I got spotted," Chris replied with a shrug. "What did I miss?"

"The entire third and fourth innings," Ellie replied. "We're up 3 to 1."

A shout went up around them and Ellie turned to see the guy in front of them jumping in the air with his beer in one hand as he tried to grab the foul ball that had come their way.

Ellie squealed as warm, sticky beer rained down on her. The brim of her hat kept the liquid from hitting her in the face but it created a waterfall effect that made the liquid cascade down onto her shirt.

"Oh my god," the guy said as he realized what had happened. "I am so -"

"YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!" James shouted interrupting the guy. He too had gotten hit by the beer, but nothing like the dousing that Ellie had gotten. "YOU FUCKING RUINED MY $500 LOAFERS, YOU COMPLETE CU-"

"JAMES!" Ellie exclaimed over his vulgar word choice.

"I HOPE YOU HAVE YOUR GOD DAMN CHECKBOOK," James continued his rant at the fan in front of them.

The rant continued until a security guard arrived to intervene. They took in the situation and then told James to grab his stuff so he could be escorted from the premises. The fans around them cheered as James continued to rant and rave as three security guards led him up the stairs to the main concourse.

"Scott, I'm sorry, but your friend is a complete douche bag," Ellie said as she tugged on her rapidly drying, sticky clothes. "God, what did I even see in him?" She shuddered. "No wonder I'm freaking single if I'm attracted to assholes like that."

"I had no idea," Scott said, still in shock himself.

"At least you know now," the fan said from in front of them. "I'd feel sorry for ruining your date, but given what just happened, I think I did you a favor."

"It wasn't a date, but I agree!" Ellie laughed. "And honestly, it's ok, it's baseball. I'm just surprised I'm not covered in crackerjacks, too."

"You should probably go try and clean up," Chris told her. He kept his face somber even though he felt like tap dancing inside. "Use the credit card I gave you to buy yourself a new shirt."

"Are you sure?" Ellie asked him.

"Absolutely," Chris nodded.

"Thanks Chris," Ellie smiled. She scrunched up her face as she stood up. "God, I feel disgusting." She inched past them and then headed up the stairs.

Chris fought back a smile as he brought his beer to his lips and took a sip.

"Are you smiling right now?" his brother asked.

Chris lowered his beer and shrugged.

Scott shook his head while smiling to himself in his head.

Ellie returned fifteen minutes later looking more comfortable in a hot pink Dodger's shirt.

"They didn't have anything Red Sox," she explained to the brothers at their shocked faces. She pulled out some Wet Ones and quickly wiped down her seat to get the beer off of it before she sat back down. "So what did I miss?"

"We scored twice," Chris told her.

"Excellent," Ellie smiled at him. "Ok, next time the beer guy comes, I so need one."

They had a couple more beers each as the late afternoon became evening.

When the top of the eighth ended, Ellie leaned back in her seat and sighed. "I want to go to Fenway someday," she said. "I loved 'Sweet Carolina' long before I was a Red Sox fan, but I want to be in the stands and single along with everyone."

"We'll get you out there someday," Chris promised her. "And you know Ma won't let you stay anywhere but with her."

"That would be awesome," Ellie said with a smile.

The game ended an inning and a half later with the Red Sox winning 8 to 1. They stayed in their seats for a while to let everyone else rush out of the ball park before they made their way out of the stadium.

Knowing that it would take them forever to get a cab after the game, Chris had arranged for a car to pick them up. It took them a few minutes to find it, but they were inside and on the way home in no time.

"You guys are the best," Ellie yawned as she leaned back in her seat. "Gah, it feels so much later than 8:30."

"It's the sun," Chris said. "It takes a lot out of you. You can rest your head on my shoulder, if you'd like."

"Thanks," Ellie smiled. She nestled up against his side and laid her head on his shoulder. "You smell way better than that jackass did. He smelled like he bathed in his cologne, but I like the way you put yours on. I can smell only smell it now that I'm super close to you."

"How many beers did you have today, Ellie?" Scott chuckled.

Ellie opened her eyes and stared at him in horror. "Oh my god, please tell me I did not just say all that out loud."

"You did," Chris told her. "But I've sniffed you before, so I guess we're even."

"Wait, you've what?" Scott asked.

"Nothing," Chris and Ellie said together.

"You had to be there," Chris told his brother. He yawned. "I think Ellie has the right idea though, I'm exhausted."

Scott watched as his brother closed his eyes and Ellie followed suit. He took his phone out of his pocket and sent Isabelle a text with a 'thumbs up' emoji.

Episode 9

Want to find me off tumblr? I’m @beccatheycallme on twitter. I also post my stories on AO3.

My tag list is always open, just let me know if you’d like to be added!

[forestiyari]

CS JJ Day 18: Packing Poles

AN:  This is my (rather random) contribution to 2018′s @csjanuaryjoy.  It’s fluff and so far away from what I usually write that I’m amazed it’s making it out there.  Thank you so much to @lenfaz for organising this this year.

Packing Poles

Rated G - 2.5k

It was 11am.

At least that’s what the dial flashing in front of her said.  It did not feel like 11am.  Eleven, while annoyingly early, was a time that she could at least conceive of, but her body was telling her it was closer to 5am and having been awake for a good sixteen hours was rejecting her attempts to remain upright.

Emma hated international travel.

And after two hours in line at customs she was pretty sure she hated Stansted Airport too.  She’d followed all the advice she’d been given by her teammates, but despite wearing her official team USA hoodie, having her team USA ID badge poking innocently out of her passport cover and making sure all of her landing card was filled out in perfect, black inked, block letters the woman in front of her seemed decidedly unimpressed.

“You’re here for the what?”  Ms Ghorm, as her badge proclaimed her to be, icily asked.

“The World Championships?”  Honestly after the cramped flight and lack of sleep Emma was beginning to question herself whether that was the right answer… She was sure she’d answered at least three times already.

“Right, the athletics?  In Stratford, right?”

“No, London.”  Her brow furrowed, she had absolutely no idea what was going on- she just knew that if she failed to check in for training in… She checked her watch, took away five… two hours, then Mary Margaret was going to actually kill her.

“Well, Ms Swan.  If you wouldn’t mind just taking a seat over there then I’ll see what we can do about moving you through as soon as possible.”  The woman’s grin was sickly sweet and Emma swore it was the source of the headache she could feel coming in.  She turned her head to take in the seats that Ms Ghorm had indicated and was shocked to realise she was being put into a holding area; the square of seats gated off but in full view of all of the other passengers.  As she took a seat she felt like a toddler being put into a pen to be kept out of trouble.

Emma dozed, almost sliding off the plastic chair twice before she worked out how to wedge herself in between the arms, she took out her phone out of habit before discovering her European SIM card was in her hold luggage and the wifi was almost non-existent, she even considered reading the book that her teammate Archie had shoved into her hand back in Boston before remembering that it was a book on crown green bowling and that she hadn’t seen Archie since then.  She took in the queued passengers around her, but the rest of her flight appeared to have cleared and left her alone.  It was gone 8:30 when a smarmy-looking man with a clipboard approached the gate.

“Emma Swan?”  The man called.

“That’s me.”  She jumped to her feet.

“Follow me.”  The man span quickly before marching away, not checking whether she was following him or not.  She almost had to jog to keep up with him as he lead her down an ill-lit corridor to what was definitely some sort of interrogation room.  She groaned.

It didn’t take long for the interview to be set up: Emma on one side of the table, the immigration officer on the other and a small voice recorder between them.

“This is Eli Gold, officer number 02368, conducting interview in relation to case S6-41.  Present is the alleged Emma Swan.”  The man droned and Emma frowned.  Alleged?  Who else would she be?  “Can you state your name for the record please, miss?”

“Emma Swan?”

“Your full name.”

“Emma Swan.”

“Date of birth?”

“October 27th 1983”

“Country of residence?”  The inane questions continued for at least half an hour and Emma was ready to tear her hair out before the reason she’d been singled out became evident.

“Miss Swan, I have here your landing card.  Can you please tell me why you have listed your date of birth as being the first of August 2017?”

“Seriously?”  She ground out.  “Seriously?”  Her exhaustion suddenly wiped out by indignation and frustration.  “I have been travelling for twenty hours and managed to accidentally put today’s- sorry yesterday’s- date down and that’s why you pulled me in here for the third degree?”  She regretted her outburst almost immediately, the look that crossed Mr Gold’s face letting her know that she was going to pay for it.

“If you would like to take a seat in the waiting area, an officer will be with you shortly to let you know the outcome of your case.”

***

It was 9pm.

The smirk on Mr Gold’s face each time he passed the waiting area had been torture, but as soon as his shift had ended and a Ms French had taken over Emma had been free to pass onto British soil.

Only to discover the new nightmare that was the “unclaimed luggage” office.

“It’s bright pink.”  She explained slowly to the rather inattentive attendant on duty.  “Walter” his name badge declared.  “With a yellow flower.”  She cringed at the description she had to give, but since Mary Margarent had gifted her the monstrosity she’d had no problem finding her suitcase quickly- until now.

“It’ll be here somewhere.”  Walter said with a brief wave of his hand.  “Take a look.”  Had Emma been more awake she might have wondered at the lack of security, but honestly she just wanted out of the airport some time yesterday.  Her suitcase was easy enough to find, but as she searched around the shelves and floor she realised her other piece of baggage was missing.

“Does the oversized baggage come here also?”  She asked, only to receive a puzzled look.

“Of course not.”  Apparently Walter thought this should be obvious.  “That goes to the chute by carousel 9.”

As she crossed the baggage reclaim hall once again Emma couldn’t decide whether to cry or scream, but spotting her pride and joy lying in the middle of the floor, footprints and scuffmarks covering the dark blue casing, caused a chill to run through her body.  She sat down on the floor next to the bag and prepared herself for the worst.

The zipper opened easily and she stretched as far as she could to pull it along the side of the bag.  She’d barely opened it a third of the way before her fears were confirmed.  Three of the custom made fifteen foot long poles were broken.  Emma groaned and held her head in her hands.  She was crouched there a few minutes before a cool voice pulled her out of her thoughts.

“Y’know I’m not sure, Love, but I think you might be a shotputter?”  Emma had had a bad enough day that really anything could have set her off, but a smooth British accent filled with laughter and making jokes at her expense was definitely a decent target for her ire.

“I’ll give you shot-”  As she muttered the words through gritted teeth she rose to her feet and span around, ready to give whoever was there an earful… but she was brought up short by possibly the most handsome face she’d ever seen “-putting” she trailed off pathetically.

“Emma Swan, right?”  The man asked, extending his hand.  Almost in slow motion she took it and let him shake, not taking her eyes off his face- taking in the crooked smile, the sharp jawline, the oh-so-blue eyes.  Only when his brow creased slightly did she realise he was waiting for an answer.  She pulled back her hand and snapped her mouth closed, feeling the blush spread over her cheeks as she cringed internally at the thought that she’d been staring.

“How do you know?”  The question came out harsh, covering her own embarrassment.

“Love,” He said with a grin, “You’ve won three medals in the last eighteen months.”  Instead of clarifying anything this only made Emma more confused- yeah, she was good, but that hardly made her a household name.  Afterall, pole vaulting was hardly the world’s number one sport.

“And you are?”  She settled for in the end.  The man didn’t look like some kind of stalker and wasn’t dressed like any sports reporter she’d met before.  He laughed before holding his hand over his heart and dropping his eyes.

“You mean you don’t recognise me?”  She shook her head.  “I’m hurt.”  He reached behind her to the oversized baggage chute and picked up a long bag, just over half the length of her pole vault bag.

“Javelin?”  She asked stupidly.

“Aye.  I’m Killian, team GB javelin superstar.”  She frowned, rifling through her brain until she found what she was looking for.

“Killian Jones?”

“The one and only.”  He grinned and she didn’t like to admit she only knew of him because of Ruby’s rant about the British distracting the opposition with eye candy.  Not that Ruby had been wrong to class him as such.

“Why have you checked in javelins?”  Emma asked, more to keep the conversation going than out of real interest.  “That seems like a risk given you could just drive them.”

“I got held up in Monaco.”  He shrugged as if that explained everything.  It didn’t.  The diamond league meet in Monaco should have finished over a week ago and she may not have been an expert on Europe but she was pretty sure the length of drive was nothing compared to some of the cross country trips she’d taken with her poles.

“And you’re headed to London now?”  She asked, the vague beginnings of a terrible idea running through her head.

“Aye.  Why?  You need a lift?”  He asked casually and she felt the relief shoot through her at the fact that he’d offered before she had to ask.

“Kinda?”  She shrugged one shoulder, hoping to come across as contrite.  “I’ve been held up a while and I’m avoiding turning on my phone cos I’m too tired to deal with my coach’s voice right now.”

“And let me guess: you’ve never heard of public transport.”  Killian’s voice was teasing and Emma realised he was probably going to say yes.

“Have you ever tried to get a bag of five fifteen foot long poles on the subway?”  She asked, matching his teasing tone before remembering what she’d been looking at before he appeared and continuing in a much more morose tone;  “Even if three of them are broken.”

Emma could see the moment he took pity on her, shrugging his rucksack higher on his shoulder and scooping up his equipment bag before making a sweeping gesture with his free hand from her towards the door.

“After you Love, I don’t know if I trust you at my back with those poles.”  She snorted in response.

“Believe me; if I stab you with my poles, then you’ll feel it.”

***

It was 11pm.

The light was fading fast and after an hour of trying they still had yet to successfully find a way to reliably secure Emma’s pole to Killian’s car.

It didn’t help that said car was a battered VW beetle whose age was greater than its gas mileage.  And sported a curved roof.

Emma was an expert at securing pole vaulting poles to cars, but the beetle’s shape and lack of opening windows or trunk was proving beyond her and her trusty bungee cords.

“Killian, it’s fine.  I’ll call Mary Margaret and she can arrange for someone to come and collect me.  It won’t take long.”

“Nonsense Love.  We’ll manage.”

“You need to get to London, you have to be up for training tomorrow.”  She tried to reason with him, but he only offered a derisive snort.

“So do you.  I’m not leaving you here alone.”  He turned away from her, effectively ending the conversation and she let out a small relieved sigh.  She really didn’t want to wait here alone either.

As she circled the car for the fiftieth time it hit her- literally.  On the hip.  The passenger side of the car had an exaggeratedly large wing mirror.  Emma made sure that Killian was looking away before experimentally placing her hands on it and jumping to force her weight down.  It didn’t snap.

“I’ve got it.”  She said before heaving her pole bag from the sidewalk to rest on the mirror.  With the rear end suspended precariously on the back bumper of the bug, straps holding shut the door and her arm out of the window to offer support- or at least an early warning system- she slowly began the journey south.

**

It was 3am.

Emma was vaguely aware that in not much more than twenty four hours she was due to vault nine metres into the air at an international competition, but the part of her that was running on the best two hours of sleep she’d ever experienced in Killian’s car, adrenaline and giggles didn’t care.

Because wherever it was that Killian had dragged her to after declaring that the noises her stomach made were louder than a freight train was feeding her the best lahmacun and salad and she was on her fourth with no intention of slowing down and no shame.

The company wasn’t bad either.

In fact, she hadn’t felt this way just talking to a guy ever and she didn’t need the buzz of alcohol to appreciate the dimples and the self-depreciating smiles and the wisp of hair that was visible over the collar of his shirt.

And maybe it was just the effect of a really crappy forty eight hours, and maybe it was a really bad idea, but maybe taking him up on his offer of ‘resting up’ at his place instead of fighting to find her room in the athlete’s village wasn’t completely off the table.

Knowing he had a garage and she wouldn’t have to worry about leaving her remaining poles outside exposed to the elements or any potential thieves was helping with her decision too.

She really loved those poles.

It didn’t take her long to realise she could really learn to love the way he kissed too.

**

It was 11am.

The blinds were doing nothing to keep out the bright August sun and Emma felt herself being forced to wakefulness despite the soft mattress beneath her and the silky blankets on top of her and the firm body behind her.

Also the chirping cell phone really could do with shutting the hell up.

She felt Killian roll away from her and the murmur of his own sleep filled voice washed over her, both relaxing and thrilling at once.  Emma refused to open her eyes though and burrowed deeper beneath the covers, only allowing a smile to tug at her lips when he finished his conversation and wrapped his arm over her once more, pressing light kisses to her shoulder blades.

“So Love, it turns out my agent Regina is practically family to your coach.”  Emma frowned, knowing only enough of Mary Margaret’s personal life to know that she’s an only child.  “And when you fell out of contact yesterday the two of them set up some missing person operation.”

“Let me guess,”  She replied, “They found me.”

“Not exactly- but apparently reports of a yellow bug with fifteen foot poles stuck to the side made their way onto twitter.”

Emma groaned.  Mary Margaret and Ruby were never going to let her live this one down.  But as Killian rolled her over and lowered his lips to hers she wondered whether she really cared.

[theprocrastinatingalien]

Star Trek: Discovery - Which characters will survive to see Season 2?  (Plus a compelling fan theory)

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the first five episodes of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY.

We are just five episodes in, with ten to go.  Only four more before the Christmas break.  It’s probably a little early to be predicting the show’s second season - we don’t even know if there’ll definitely be a second season!  But it’s always fun to speculate.

So, this is my question - which of the main cast will still be main for the second season?

Historically, there aren’t many changes in the main casts of the Trek series.  In the Original Series, Deforest Kelley (McCoy) was promoted to the opening credits for the second season.  The Next Generation had the most changes, along the way losing Denise Crosby (Yar) and Wil Wheaton (Wesley) and firing Gates McFadden (Crusher) after the first season, only to reinstate her in the third.  For Deep Space Nine, Michael Dorn (Worf) was added in the fourth season, and after Terry Farrell (Jadzia) left in season six, she was replaced by Nicole deBoer (Ezri Dax) for the final season.   Voyager suffered just a straight exchange, replacing Jennifer Lien’s Kes for Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine.  Enterprise, however, stands as the only Trek series to leave it’s principal cast unchanged over it’s run.  Rumours that Jeffrey Combs’ Andorian Shran was to be promoted in the fifth season were sadly never realised.

But here, STAR TREK: DISCOVERY is a different kind of Trek.  We’re now in 2017, and the writers are very aware of popular series, where the trend is not to save your main cast, but to constantly put them in jeopardy.  Adventure is all the more exciting when you don’t know for certain if your favourite characters will make it out alive.  Series such as 24, THE WALKING DEAD and GAME OF THRONES, relish in killing off several main players each series… and the fans lap it up.

Apparently, we can expect the same from DISCOVERY, but only time will tell just how brave the writers are going to be.  I mean, we have had a number of deaths already, but they were- mostly - signposted…

Captain Philippa Georgiou.

Let’s be honest, did we think Michelle Yeoh’s character was ever going to survive?  Billed as the commanding officer of the USS Shenzhou, the fact she wasn’t the captain of the USS Discovery itself didn’t point to a happy end.  As predicted by many, Georgiou was killed in the second episode.  Now, her name was on the opening titles, but with the billing of ‘special guest star’, longevity wasn’t really wasn’t on the cards.  She has made an appearance since, via a holographic message, and we can expect future appearances - presumably in flashbacks, but possible also as part of the mirror universe(?).  The fact Georgiou was eaten by the Klingons (EATEN!!!!) Yeoh is never going to be a regular on the show.

Ensign Danby Connor

Actor Sam Vartoholomeos was announced early on, and it wasn’t clear whether his Ensign Connor would be a regular character or not. Sadly, one of the trailers actively showed him being killed, which took away the surprise when it happened in the show.  At least Ensign Connor can claim to be the first 'speaking role’ to be definitively killed off in DISCOVERY.

T'Kuvma

The cult leader, aiming to bring together the twenty-four houses of the Klingons.  Chris Obi was deemed to have a very important role… but T'Kuvma was killed by lead Michael Burnham just after killing Captain Georgiou. I’d say this was probably the first actual surprise death of the series.   But still, he wasn’t on the opening titles, so the chances of his longevity was already in doubt.

Commander Ellen Landry

This is an interesting one.  Not a particularly surprising one… other than how quickly Landry was dealt with.  Like the majority of the Discovery crew, she wasn’t introduced until the third episode.  The Chief of security (and I’d guess at second officer judging by her closeness to Captain Lorca), she wasn’t the nicest of people.  There’s was something shady about her.   Again, considering she’s the first crew member of Discovery we’re introduced to, and seemingly pretty important, with a bridge crew role, the fact she wasn’t included on the opening credits implied she wasn’t going to be around for too long.  Add to that we knew Shazad Latif’s Ash Tyler was coming in to be a security officer, and his name IS on the credits… the ONLY surprise, I guess… is that she died in only her second episode?!  Possibly a waste of Rekha Sharma, but a crowd pleasing moment - I don’t think Landry had many fans.

As noted, the above four characters are all missing from the opening titles.  Realistically, in all series, recurring and guest stars can be seen as cannon fodder.  A brave series will not shy away from killing off those named as main cast.   Which is why I’m going to predict which of the six DISCOVERY main players will survive until the show’s potential second year.

Michael Burnham

The producers have admitted they found it very difficult to cast Burnham, and were lucky to get THE WALKING DEAD star Sonequa Martin-Green.  Originally Bryan Fuller’s plan was to make an anthology series, with each season taking place in a different time period.  That would have been exciting, and I wouldn’t have minded that at all, but at the same time, it’s nice to build up a familiarity with the cast, watching them grow, both as individuals and as a team.  Anthology series miss that. Show bosses decided to veto that idea and a second season of DISCOVERY will see characters follow on… I have no real doubt that Burnham will still be the lead.  Too much as been made of the fact she’s a black female lead, to have her side lined.  Even if the series becomes more ensemble focussed, I’m sure Burnham will be a strong part of it.   I presume she’ll be entirely redeemed from her 'Mutineer’ status, and expect her to be reinstated, with a new rank and position. Whilst I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up as a Captain in time, I think the second season will be a little soon.  Maybe Executive Officer?  Maybe the Science officer?  Depends on who the commanding officer is (see below).   The only thing, and really the only thing, that could get in the way of Burnham’s presence in future seasons is that pesky word 'canon’.  She has never been mentioned anywhere else in Treklore… and whilst that’s understandable (Discovery hadn’t been created yet!) the writers might feel the need to keep her a secret from the record books… I don’t think so, though.  I predict Burnham will be our lead for as long as the series runs… be that one, two or seven seasons.

Captain Gabriel Lorca

In every other Trek series, the commanding officer has been our lead, the audience entry point into the story.  Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway and Archer, all heroes.  DISCOVERY is unique in that the main character is a lower level Starfleet officer. This mean’s the commanding officer can be… something different.  Captain Lorca is definitely something different.  Shrouded in mystery, already his attitude and actions are questionable and unlike those commanding officers names above. I like it. Lorca is interesting.  We don’t know what his motives are, not really.  He can keep secrets from us in a way the others couldn’t.   Jason Isaac’s doesn’t have a habit of playing heroes, more likely a villain.  Is Lorca a villain?  Or is Discovery playing with shades of grey?  Probably the latter, but that doesn’t discount the former.   Isaac’s has stated that he didn’t sign on until he was told Lorca’s entire arc.  I’ll say that again - entire arc.  To me that suggests Lorca won’t be a regular character come the show’s second season.  I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the last episode of season one, see’s Lorca, fully revealed as a villain and ultimately his demise.   However, I’d like to suggest something else.   I don’t know if we’ll ever fully know, or be able to call Lorca a 'hero’ or 'villain’.  He might be justified in his actions.  Or at least, justified in himself, even if not to others.  I do not see him continuing as a regular, certainly not as the commanding officer of the USS Discovery.  What I’d like to see, is Lorca to 'do a Krycek’.  In THE X FILES, the second season introduced a new partner for Mulder in the form of wet-behind-the-ears agent Alex Krycek.  He turned out to be a villain, but rather than kill him off, they had him run off and become one of those interesting rogue players, out for himself, shifting loyalties as he saw fit.  He’d pop up over future series, and you’d be guaranteed  that if the credits featured actor Nicholas Lea, the episode was going to be a big important one.  That’s the kind of role I’d love for Lorca.

Commander Saru

Actor Doug Jones has stated he’d love to see Saru’s homeplanet, or more people from his species in the second season.  That sounds like Saru might be around for it!  In some respects, I think Saru is the safest character for a return.  He’s the show’s only regular alien.  They created him from the ground up, and they’ll likely want to keep him.  If not for those reasons alone, then because Saru is already becoming a fan favourite, despite limited screen time.   We’ve already seen him promoted from a Lt. Commander science officer, to a first officer, and his relationship with Burnham is… complicated.  Complicated is good.  Whilst I have no doubt Saru will still be alive, what his function will be is less clear.  If I’m right about Lorca moving on/dying, Saru is the next in line to be the commanding officer.  We’ve already seen him in that position after Lorca was captured by the Klingon��s. In theory, Saru could become our first regular alien captain.  (Spock didn’t become a captain until the movies). That, in turn, would allow for Burnham to be installed as his first officer. An interesting way to continue their relationship. However, I predict something else. I reckon the showrunners will bring in a new captain.  Maybe with another 'name’ in the role, to get in new interest?  I predict a new captain, with Saru continuing as the first officer.  This would also keep Burnham further away from the captain’s chair, which is possibly the best thing for the series at this point.  

Lieutenant Paul Stamets

Stamets’ is a tricky one.  He’s a science officer, not an engineer, but is essentially the chief engineer on the USS Discovery. That’s because the ship was built entirely around Stamets’ work on the spore drive.  Now, we know that the spore drive is doomed to failure.  We know that because if it was a success every ship made after it would use it.  Enterprise’s D & E, the USS Defiant, the USS Voyager… but none of them do.  That says it all.  Discovery will likely be the only ship (RIP the USS Glenn) to use the spore drive… and we’re not entirely certain how long it will be able to continue to use it.  Either way, Stamets’ role is very linked to it.  No Spore drive, and probably no use for Stamets.    Episode 5 saw Stamets link himself to the drive and something odd has happened to him.  He saw the universe, and our last image of him was his 'delayed’ mirror image.  This might well tie in somehow to the mirror universe, but might be more personal to Stamets. I have no idea what Stamets’ storyline will be from here on in, and that makes it hard to predict whether he’ll stick around for season two.  I’m going out on a limb and say, yes.  I think the Discovery will continue to use the spore drive in future seasons, or a version of him.  Maybe with Stamets 'plugged in’… but I believe Stamets will continue in his Engineer/Science role.  They could shift him to a more straight forward science position of course, but I’ll edge away from that.

Question/Theory.  Whilst everyone is suggesting Stamets may now be something to do with the Mirror universe, I’ll just pose the question… do we know how the Q Continuum was created?  Could Stamets be the start? He has access to the entire universe, after all… (If he is, then no, I doubt he’d be a regular in season two… but it’s a fun question to ask).

Cadet Sylvia Tilly

Ah, Tilly.  The first character in Trek to drop the F-bomb.  Her place in History is now secure.  She young, and unsure… but she has ambition.  She might be annoying to a few, but to many she’s a comedic character, adding light to the shade.  She is supposedly a talented engineer and this is something to watch out for.  I believe she might end up the chief engineer should Stamets move on… or, and this is what I predict, she’ll work with Stamets to sort the spore drive - for the time being, anyway.   I did consider she might have been put in to win the audience over, be the ultimate likable one, before getting killed off by Lorca or something to cement an 'aww’ factor.  But the more I watch, the more I think, we’ll see Tilly change, and grow.  We’ll see her progress through the ranks.  I’m expecting Ensign Tilly to head up the Engine room with Lieutenant Stamets in season two.

Lieutenant Ash Tyler

Our last regular character… but one which is surrounded by a very interesting fan theory.  One I’m totally behind.   I, like many, believe that Tyler is in fact the Klingon Voq, surgically altered to look human.  There’s so much evidence to support this… both in the story, and in real life/behind the scenes.  If this is true, then expect Lorca’s pet tribble to out his cunning plan in the last third of the season… and that mean’s Tyler’s role will be done.  I don’t see Voq/Tyler continuing into season two. Probably killed by Burnham in the season one finale.

Haven’t heard the Tyler/Voq theory?  Behold the evidence:

In episode 4, L'Rell (Mary Chieffo) offers Voq a visit to her matriarch or spies but it’ll cost him… 'everything’.  Episode 5, Tyler has been in a Klingon prison cell, on L'Rell’s ship, and look’s surprisingly spritely. She also has a thing for him.  He’s been on the ship for seven months.  But we know (from the previous episode) she’s been with Voq stranded on T'Kuvma’s ship for the first six months of the war.  The story doesn’t check out.  In real life, actor Shazad Latif (who has been credited on the titles since episode one, but has only just appeared in episode 5) was originally announced as a Klingon back in December.  Months later he was reannounced as Ash Tyler.  We know he was about for filming back in the early episodes (he was out on the town with co-stars… check their social media).  The description of his character was a protégé to T'Kuvma - a description that certainly fits the Voq character.  His character may have been named Kol, and we now know Kenneth Mitchell plays Kol, and opposing Klingon presence… and finally, you try googling the 'actor’ credited for Voq. You will only see one credit, and it’ll be Voq.  Basically, Shazad Latif plays Voq, has been there since the beginning, and this explains a lot. 

It’s actually quite clever, and I think many fans will welcome this plot twist if we’re correct. It works on many levels.  We know, in the TOS era, Klingon’s should look human, but there was no real way for a 2017 series to 'do’ one of those Klingon’s.  But look at Latif.  The colour of his skin, the black goatee… he’s a pretty good fit for a modern take on the Human looking Klingons.  It also gives a practical explanation for the new look Klingons.  The new mask-type makeup on the Klingons allow a complete change of identity.  You can’t tell what the actor looks like under the Voq makeup.  Imagine the character with Worf-style makeup.  You can clearly make out actors… such as when Avery Brooks and Tim Russ have 'played Klingons’.  For this plot twist to be pulled off, Klingon’s needed a bit of a redesign.  If the theory is right, maybe as fans we can cut the show some slack.

So there we are.  To answer my question - which of the regulars will still be regulars come season two?  Burnham, Saru, Tilly and possibly Stamets.  I don’t believe for a second that either Lorca or Tyler will continue on. 

Furthermore, I think we’ll get a new Captain in… maybe a female one?  I wouldn’t be surprised if Wilson Cruz’ Dr. Culber gets upgraded to regular.  Right now he’s only a supporting player.  This could mean he’s got a bullet with his name on it.  But he does play one half of Trek’s first ever gay couple.  That might be enough to keep him alive, unless Uber-Stamets somehow kills him off in season one? I predict an upgrade though.

What do you think?  Do you believe the Tyler/Voq theory? Will Lorca survive the season?  What’s going on with Stamets?  Will Saru receive another promotion?

Let me know!

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[noelmu]

MONTH IN REVIEW 1/1/18 - 2/3/18

Last year about this time, I pledged that I was going to do a better job of keeping this Tumblr updated, while admitting (humblebragging?) that I’d become too busy to the write little weekly essays in this space that I’d penned previously. But as 2017 wore on, I started getting too busy on the weekends even to do a links roundup, with minimal commentary. So as the new year began, I considered abandoning this Tumblr altogether.

But my business cards have this web address on it, and for the few potential employers who might someday come here to see a comprehensive roundup of my work, I should keep making an effort to collect what I’ve done. I may only do it once a month, but I intend to keep it going.

So here’s everything I’ve written this year so far, including two fairly comprehensive looks at what i saw at the Sundance Film Festival. Please read! There are some good movies coming out soon, and (based on the assignments I’ve already been getting) another productive year head.,

The A.V. Club Lady Bird will likely get a lot of Oscar love… but how about in the editing category?

The Los Angeles Times  Movie Review: Supernatural thriller Devil’s Gate lurches from jolt to jolt Movie Review: Milo Ventimiglia's in good company in the diverting melodrama Madtown Movie Review: Horror remake Inside maintains chills Movie Review: Pulpy Acts Of Violence uses a dash of Bruce Willis and a pinch of Mike Epps to get the job done Movie Review: Horror icons Robert Englund and Lin Shaye can't save 'The Midnight Man Movie Review: A wicked premise and unhinged Nicolas Cage release submerged parental horrors in Mom And Dad Movie Review: Horror movie Living Among Us regrettably marks one of John Heard's last roles Movie Review: Vintage cheesiness of Wastelander not worth the slog New In Home Entertainment: It tapped into Stephen King's special brand of horror New In Home Entertainment: Blade Runner 2049 demands a lot from audiences, but the rewards are rich New In Home Entertainment: Last Flag Flying isn't typical Richard Linklater fare New In Home Entertainment: Only The Brave is old-fashioned — in a good way

The New York Times 12 Shows We’ll Be Talking About in February

Rolling Stone How David Letterman Just Reinvented the TV Talk Show – Again 50 Most Anticipated Movies of 2018 (I wrote about a dozen of these) 30 Most Anticipated TV Shows of 2018 (I wrote about a half-dozen of these)

The Verge Amazon’s Electric Dreams is more optimistic about the future than Black Mirror

Vulture TV Review: The Good Place Season 2 Episode 9: Boom, Roasted TV Review: The Good Place Season 2 Episode 10: There Goes The Neighborhood TV Review: The Good Place Season 2 Episode 11: Exit Through The Gift Shop TV Review: The Good Place Season 2 Episode 12: The People’s Court TV Review: The Good Place Season 2 Episode 13: Hot Diggity Dog! Why Did The Good Place Hide So Many Wizard of Oz References in Last Week’s Episode? Our 7 Biggest Questions After The Good Place Season Finale

The Week How the biggest movies of Sundance 2018 went small What the best movies of Sundance 2018 had in common

[pendragonfics]

Eleventh Time’s the Charm

Paring: Crowley/Reader

Tags: female reader, alternate universe - soulmates, time travel, reincarnation, Crowley being Crowley, murder, character death, but not really, angst and feels, angst with a happy ending, fluff. 

Summary: Living a dreary, slow life working in a diner-slash-cafe in a terrible small town, waiting for your life to start and soulmate to walk into your life...it happens. You meet the guy. And thus, the story begins.

Word Count: 4,461

Current Date: 2017-09-29

Everyone has someone. Your someone, was perhaps, preoccupied. Soulmates were a thing, and while it was good for the 99% of people who had their shit together, you did not have yours together, and lived out your days working days at the diner, nights working on your online education. Poor as hell, living out of a caravan in a nobody town’s trailer park, you rarely saw anyone new who wasn’t a regular at Bean There, Donut That. Apparently, when people met their One, everything sort of clicks. Comes into focus. You’d never had that happen with Joe who loved maple syrup more than life, or the coffee addicts with their stamp-cards.

One night, it might have happened. You’re not sure, because you were quite out of it. There was an essay due for your online university, and you’d left the only copy of it on your USB that was attached to your spare set of keys at work. You were rushing around, practically screeching for Zach the busboy to toss them to you. Zach was never good at throwing things, especially projectiles that weren’t footballs. Thus, a strange bearded patron was hit on the back of his head with your Punisher USB and keys.

“Bloody –,” he mutters.

But before he can blink, you scoop up your keys from behind his chair where he’s sipping pink milk, and give a wan, apologetic smile and dash out. “Sorry, man!” You call out over your shoulder, and dash out to your beat-up pickup truck.

You didn’t notice the clarity of the night until you’d uploaded the final essay for your exams and hit send. With the laptop shut, the lamplight inside the caravan low, stars littering the night sky outside the window brighter than ever before, you sit there, breathless. You don’t think it’s to do with Zach smacking your keys into that bloke until you’re dunking a camomile teabag into your Sherlock cup an hour later. Checking your watch, you see the diner has a few minutes before it’s closed for business, and with your old phone, call them up.

“Hello, Bean There, Donut That, it’s Keith.” Another co-worker, works the grill.

You sigh. “Hey, Keith, it’s __________.” You scratch your nose, and add, “Sorry it’s late, I was just wondering if you know who that guy was who came in today. Emr, earlier. When I was in.”

You hear Keith make a noise, and then, “Oli? He’s one of your regulars.”

Oli? No. “No, no, not one of my regulars…the other guy. Uh, beard? Older? I don’t know, I was in a rush. Zach hit him with my keys.”

The phone rustles, “__________, hey, did you submit that paper?” You hear Ned, the owner of the diner on the phone. He’s the type of guy who’d make you feel like absolute shit if you were late to work, but would be all Suburban Dad if someone was out to wrong you. “I heard what you and Keith were saying. Yes, we had a new patron come in, I didn’t catch his name.”

You sigh, nowhere closer to finding out if he was the guy. “Did he say he’d stick around town?”

“Didn’t get that either. But you’re working the morning shift anyway, so you can see for yourself.” Ned reminds you, and clicks his tongue into the phone. “Okay, diner’s closed. See you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, __________.”

You hung up. Brushed your teeth, straightened the picture frame above the bed of Vincent van Gough’s sunflowers, switched off the lamp. Your head was still spinning. For once in your life when you needed the clouded thoughts, all you could think about was the flash of dark green eyes as you ran out of the diner.

---

He was back again. You were wiping your hands on your apron when he came in the door like a warm breeze, clicking the pen to get it to write vanilla milkshake for the nice young couple on a date. Your breath caught in your throat, he stilled. But Keith’s voice called out for you over the usual din of the diner, and you gave the new order for the kitchen to make. You didn’t realise that he was standing beside you until you could smell him – a pleasant scent, a hint of chai and burned earth – and he cleared his throat.

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced.” He said, an accent thick, like cold butter lumpy over toast. Refusing to melt, insisting to stay in a brave new world.

You turn toward him, so he can read the name badge that sits above your breast. “I’m actually going to say sorry for hitting you with my keys yesterday,” you preface. “So, don’t take it out on Zach.”

He tsks, “Please. It’s all in his lack of coordination…none of your fault. Can I buy you a drink?”

“This – isn’t a bar,” you tell him. Ned eyes you over the bench, and motions to a new group of people who have been sitting for a while. “Sorry, I’m working right now. But I’d love coffee. If you’re into that. After I’m –,”

“__________!” Ned calls out, annoyed.

“Coming!” you reply, and spare a glance to your current conversation. “I finish at midday.”

He smiles. “I’ll see you then, darling.”

By the time you’re back from taking the order from the new table, delivering the milkshake to the other, and fixing the split bill (Zach is terrible at math, but he’ll never admit it) not on your area, you find a napkin where you’d been speaking to the guy sitting there. In a sort of half cursive script, reads, The name’s Crowley. Underneath the napkin, you find, is a handful of quarters and half dollars, and a folded piece of paper, with more writing that this time, says, Coffee’s on me.

By the time your shift has ended, you only remember the coffee plans when your fingers brush on the loose change in your pocket. Instead of ordering two cappuccinos from Zach, you opt for the takeaway joint down the road. It isn’t until you’ve got the two cups in your hands until you see him, Crowley again, strolling toward you like he owns the small town.

“Hello, darling.”

You pass him his cup, and grab a sachet of sugar from the vendor. “Hello yourself. Got you a black coffee.”

He smiles, taking a sip from the paper cup, and content, he sighs. “Mm. Like my soul.”

You walk in silence together, the small town’s area painfully small at that moment. It was a short walk to anywhere, really – with a police station caring for only less than a thousand people – the main street had all the places needed on it, be it clothes, food, money, sex. The cemetery around the corner. The school wasn’t too far away, either, and neither was the park. You gravitated toward the location of the latter, leading the mysterious man toward the empty commons and plastic playground.

“I think you’re my soulmate,” you tell him, closing the gate to the empty play area behind you.

He frowns at your wording. “What makes you think I’m your soulmate?” He questions, draining his coffee all at once, like a craven caffeine addict. “I could be a married man, with children and a dog named Pollyanna.”

“You’re not, though.” You tilt your head. “You’re a businessman.”

He raises a brow. “And? You’re a budding high school teacher, and that doesn’t erase the fact that I could be those things.”

You laugh, and take another sip of your coffee. “I just have a feeling, man.” You look over the park, and slowly, taking another sip, embrace the silence of the park, and the lack of bustle as opposed to that of work. “Just…everything’s clearer now.”

“Okay, slow down there, Johnny Nash. You think I’m your soulmate because you don’t need prescription glasses anymore?” The way Crowley said it made your point sound silly, if not puerile. “…I’m just a guy passing through town.”

You pitch your half-drunken coffee into a bin nearby, and when it misses the rim, go to put it in the bin. “You’re making this really hard on me, you know?” You hum, annoyed. “I’ve lived a really shit life, and I’ve always known that there were soulmates. Heck, even Ned has one, and he’s an ass to me.

Crowley lifted a brow at the latter remark, but didn’t question it.

“I’ve barely known anyone my whole freakin’ life! Everyone I meet could be the One, but they’re not, but you – you walk in like you’ve always been there, and just go and tell me it’s not real? Screw you, man.” You swipe a tear from the corner of your eye, and storm off. Leaving him standing in an empty playground, alone.

---

It’s two months later when you get your results back from the online university. It’s a stressful two weeks, and you take every damn shift at the diner you can, saving every penny and dime until Ned approaches you to ask if you’re okay, which doesn’t shock you as much as it really could. He’s nice, under all the sternness and responsibilities he has.

But you’re sitting in your caravan, staring at the screen of your laptop. You’re not observing the tab abandoned on the upper right side of the screen, reading that you’ve managed to save over eight thousand dollars in the last four years. You’re not seeing at the background image of your laptop, a still from My Neighbour Totoro. Nope. You’re staring at the marks the university have sent through, sitting in your inbox.

High distinction.

You almost whoop for joy when the power cuts out of your caravan. It’s not the first time it’s happened before, what, with the electricity company often having problems out in the middle of nowhere where you live, and calmly, you reach for your cell phone for the torch app. But in the dark, you can’t see it, and all the clarity you got those months ago is useless on moonless nights. Blindly, you walk to the entrance of the outside world, going to see what had happened.

You hear grunting, clash of metal on metal, animalistic groans as you open the door. A part of you wants to close the door, lock it, and pretend you’ve been dreaming since you opened the laptop this evening. Another, slightly larger part wants you to go out, and see what’s happening. Aided only by the light of the nearby gas station, you see two silhouettes, male, wearing odd clothes considering they’re battling it out with short white swords in a trailer park at eleven fifty at night. You don’t even get close enough to see their faces when a stone crunches under your foot, and one of the men’s faces look to you. A bolt of terror passes through you, but before you can react, a blade is thrown near your head, and the other man – wearing a suit, a coat, and a tie – presses his fingers to your forehead.

Then, it’s dark.

---

When you wake, your limbs are at odd angles, face cold, and mushed into the ground, mud wet on your face and smelling like fresh herbs. It’s dark, still – the kind of dark that you see right before dawn, when the birds decide to sing for the world to wake – and slowly, you tell your body to move, your limbs screaming from whatever it has happened to you. You remember approaching the two men who had been fighting, being touched, and then, nothing.

“Ah cannae believe yoo've dain thes, Fergus, efter aw we've dain!” A woman’s voice screeched, louder than the birds, her accent thicker than anything you’ve ever heard in your life. It’s English, yes, but it’s hard to focus over all the butchered vowels that are strange to your American-born ears. “– aw we've bin ben! Aam th' mammy ay yer bairn, an' ye - ye tak' a mistress since day th’ first day!”

When your eyes focus in the dark, you see a woman with unruly hair the colour of fire on the horizon, and from what light spilled over the hills, you could see a similar fury to match that hair of hers. She stormed off, her old dress billowing over her feet, a knapsack over her shoulder, running away from wherever it was where you were. Where you were. Your blood ran cold. There were no hills, where you lived, and there certainly was no spikey purple flowers that grew this, that, and every edgeways over the grass, and there certainly was no people who spoke like that.

Whatever that man had done to you, it wasn’t good.

“__________?” A familiar, albeit foreign voice asked, your name strange on their lips. When you looked up, your heart stuttered, your words failed. “Lassie, whit ar’ ye doing doon there?”

You’d seen this exact face two months ago, and not a day after you’d left him alone in the park for your askew coffee date. Some things had changed – he looked a little…younger, eyes wider, frown lines less prominent on his face. Even though he’s been arguing with the other woman, he looks at you so tender, it’s almost strange, considering how he’d last looked at you before. It isn’t until you see what he’s wearing, that you realise something very unnatural has happened, and instead of going through time the usual way (forwards, gradually), you’ve been thrust the other way (backwards, painfully).

“I – I don’t know,” you whisper, groaning as you go to stand. “What year is it?”

He chuckles, arms steadying you as you waver on your feet. “Ye say such strange things, _______, when yoo've bin drinkin...it’s a body year nigh ay th' century.” He brushes the dirt from your shoulders, and sighs, “Dornt tell me yoo've forgotten th' years spent wi' me warmin' th' sheets, hen.”

Your eyes widen. “I – Crowley, that – she’s your wife!”

He raises an eyebrow. “I'll have some’ah whit you've bin drinkin’, lassie.” He chuckles, knocking a final part of mud from your shapeless nightdress. Had you really time travelled in your nightie? “Ye – m’name is Fergus – an' och aye, she is mah wife. Don’t ye rememb’r aw those nights hidin' from ’er?” He motions to the cottage where you’re nearby to, and adds. “Come in. You’ll catch yer death in ‘at, lassie.”

Slowly, you will yourself to move beside him, walking toward the house. It’s a nice place, and even though it’s small, it’s nothing you’d be able to afford to live in with your current salary and savings. It has a thatched roof, the brickwork is beautiful, the door thick and heavy like a barrel that you’ve seen people make scotch in. Inside, the house is lovely, and lit and heated by a fireplace barely living through the frigid air. Naively, you go to it, hands extended to warm yourself.

Fergus chuckles at that, and busies himself at the other end of the room. You notice there’s two beds in the antipodes of the inside, and that he’s sitting in a handmade chair that rocks, hands busy at work with material and a needle.

“C–Fergus,” you correct yourself, his dark green eyes focusing on you, and not the stitching in his hands, “What am I to you?” You ask, voice soft. “Your wife –,”

He sighs, heavily. You see crowfeet lines mark in the side of his eyes, his face downcast. “She knows abit us...has dain, for a while, now.” He places the neat sewing he’s working on aside, and rests his hands to hold his forehead, like Atlas holds the world. “She has aye bin a strong-willed, loch me…but we're nae a match.”

You frown, piecing things together, “Fergus, where’s your child?”  

“Nae loch ye an' me.” His eyes are so sad, and if you didn’t know any better that this wasn’t the same person you met two months ago, you’d even go to him, console him. You sure did work minimum wage, but that didn’t make you a heartless b-witch. “I've gone an’ made a mess ay everythin' I’ve ever tooched…”

Your heart wrenches, but still, when you stand, considerably warmer than waking up on the glens of Scotland near naked, you motion to the door. “I’m sorry, I really am…but I need to, ah,” you motion to your bladder below your belly, and the older man nods, understanding. “Thank you.”

“Ye know where th’ lavvy is, lass.” He motions toward a small building across the way, and closes the door behind you to make your way.

But you don’t make it to the outhouse, instead, a familiar-scented hand grasping your arm and wrenching you out of view from the open shutters of the shieling where 15th Century Crowley-not-Crowley is inside. But when you go to fight your assailant, you see the face you had just parted with not fifteen seconds beforehand. But this time, you know it’s not the other one, Fergus. It’s Crowley.

“What – can this day get any weirder?” You hiss at him, trying to get out of his arms.

He nods. “Yeah. Wait about four seconds, darling.” You huff, complying, but internally agree. Because just like you’ve seen another Crowley, there, coming from the edge of the forest, is another you. She has slightly longer hair, braided nicely, and wears a dress like the one Fergus’s wife wore. She glances left, right, and seeing nobody was there, makes way to enter Fergus’s house. “You owe me money.”

You growl, turning to him. “I owe you nothing!” you push against his chest, infuriated at how calmly he’s taking your Alice in Wonderland of a day.  “You – you owe me an explanation. How did I – why are we –,” your anger is cut short when you see the figure of Fergus’s wife approaching, her fiery hair a warning across the morning sky. You’d think nothing of it, except, in her hands is a dagger, glinting in the early air of the day, and a murderous look upon her face. You cover your mouth with your hands, knowing what she will find when she enters her home. “Oh my g–,” you stammer, turning toward Crowley, holding your hands on your ears to block out the homicidal noises.

“__________,” he says your name with urgency.

Holding you close to his chest, Crowley moves through something dark, like a gate. A portal? You didn’t see, your eyes were closed, but when your eyes open once more, you’re not in Scotland, hiding outside an old stone house that another __________ has just been murdered in. You’re on the steps to your caravan, and sitting there, you shake. It’s warm out, and you’re not sure why you’re like this until Crowley places a blanket over your shoulders. Shock.

“__________,” he says again, and it’s only this time you realise that you’re not alone with one another. One another being, another pair of yourselves. Before you, are two men in plaid, and a man who you think you’ve seen before. “Hello, boys…”

You’re silent as they share words that make barely any sense or understanding over the static and numbness that fills your ears and that which lays between them. It’s only when you look to the blue-eyed man wearing a suit, coat, and tie which you confirm that this isn’t a normal experience. Because he’s the one who touched you, and made you go to the past in the first place.

“Can someone – explain this,” you motion gently to the air surrounding you, “to me?”

“Chronokinesis,” the man with the tie responds.

“Cas made you time-travel,” The shorter-haired man interrupted the fancy story, and added, “From what I hear, it was an accident. You’re okay.” The unspoken addition to that sentence is, at least, from what we can see. “Crowley got you in time, I hear.”

You blink. “This – this is normal, for you all…?” you question, mouth agape. “I saw myself being murdered by his wife in 1699, and its –,” you can’t blink the image of Fergus from behind your eyes, the way he moved so smoothly, like silk on lace, but you also can’t rid your ears of the sounds of the – “if this is what being a soulmate is, I don’t want it.”

The bow-legged man raised his eyebrows. “Soulmate? Didn’t think the demon King of Hell had –,”

“D-demon?” you whisper.

“Dean,” the longer-haired man interrupted, seeing your expression. He sounds hesitantly nice, and glancing to the man beside you, Ferg-Crowley, you wonder what his relationship is to this trio of strange people. “– Crowley, is there anything else we can do for you…before we leave you two to work out whatever just happened to you?”

“King of Hell…?” you breathe. “What?”

Cas puts a hand on both boys, and with a blink of an eye, all three are gone before they can answer you. Crowley scratches absently at his facial scruff, the blanket falling from your shoulders. You sit in silence for what seems like hours, but really, from the way the sun is spilling over the trailer park, awakening life back to this small, dreary town, it’s only minutes.

“You’re a demon?” you ask him, glancing to the face you’ve seen a lot of, of late.

He nods. “Yeah. Haven’t always been…you knew me, before.” He looks sadly into his hands, which sit like apples abandoned in his lap, and then to you, “Every thirty years, you come back to me, always with the name __________, always with your face, with your voice, with your –,” his voice chokes up, and you swear that there’s a glint of moisture in the corner of his eyes. “And you always die beside me.”

Your mouth gapes, words lost for a moment. “Are you talking about…reincarnation?” Crowley nods. “Wait. I don’t – I never signed up for this, I just wanted to find someone to buy a dog with, move into my first house with, call my family…” you wipe a tear from your eye now, feeling as sad as Crowley looked. “That knife, your wife used – do you think it did something to my soul?”

From a bag on his side, he withdraws a dagger, old and worn, but still as wicked sharp as you last saw it, when it was in the hand of his spouse from three hundred years ago. On the hilt, is etched, adelante, morte. But on the blade, there is a catch on the cannelure, a sharp triangle of metal missing.

“Is that Latin?” you frown, staying a safe distance away from your past-life’s murder weapon.

Crowley shakes his head. “Gaelic,” he tells you, and places it back in the bag. “It says, onward, death.” He chuckles. “Might have been cursed, and terribly looked after, as the chip might have only partially severed your –,”

Just hearing that, you gather the sides of the blanket that had fallen, and adjust them so you’re hidden from sight. Gone. Like a babe craving the seclusion of the womb after leaving it. The voice of your soulmate, so tantalisingly beautiful stops as you’re hidden, and while hidden, tears start falling from your eyes.

“Darling?”

You poke your head out from the blanket, gazing up at his face. As the morning settles over the lonely, little town you’ve been in for so much of your life, working, saving, sleeping, working some more, you allow your eyes to linger, focus on Crowley. The way his eyes watch yours, softer than the snarl he gave the trio of oddballs earlier. The way his hair on his face is slowly growing into a beard, now a soft covering over his facial features. How his hands are empty, and in your hands, you feel a want, a need to place yours in his.

You wouldn’t have been able to see this clearly months before meeting him. It’s only fair that with the clarity that came with finding your soulmate that you study the person you’re destined to be with.

“How many times have you met me?” you ask him, voice soft. “How many __________’s?”

“You’re the eleventh,” Crowley mutters, sighing deeply.

You’re sitting in a trailer park, beside the demon king of hell, considering the difficulties of what just happened to you, and what has happened to the pair of you over the last three hundred years. Eleven reincarnations of you. That’s almost enough to give you a T.A.R.D.I.S. and a popular timeslot on the BBC. And sitting there, on the steps to the caravan you’ve lived, breathed, studied, and lived through so far, you have an idea.

“If it’s all right with you,” you tell him, voice low, reserved, “I’m very happy just being number eleven.” He cocks an eyebrow, and you add, “You said that dagger had done something to me, severed my –,”

“Soul.” Crowley nods, “It’s not unheard of, but…I think I know someone who can help us out with this predicament. He owes me a favour.”

---

Everyone has someone. Your someone, was, in fact, the King of Hell, ruler of the underworld, the soulmate to ten other reincarnations of yourself throughout history. Soulmates were a thing, and while it was good for the 99% of people who had their shit together, you were proudly human. The 1% who still worked at the diner, despite being the domestic partner to the endless wealth and power of that of the ruler of Hell.

You’re fixed. The archangel who fixed you was disgruntled, snappy, but gets the job done. There will never be a twelfth __________. Just you, and Crowley.

With your degree completed, you managed to secure a job as an interpreter of ancient historical texts at the university in a flourishing town by the seaside, and with your savings You upgraded your living situation to live in a small house, with a garden out the front and a basement at the bottom (Crowley’s favourite haunt). While it was sad to leave your life in the sad, dead-end job and the small, tired town, it really wasn’t, and you were glad to leave Bean There, Donut That behind.

Life just isn’t that shitty. It’s all a little window that goes very slowly for the person living it, because life isn’t a television show which cuts to the action. You need to live the little parts. Make your hard work into the montage that the viewers cherish. It wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows, yes, but nothing really is. It’s like the Beatles said, all you need is love – except, perhaps, food, oxygen, and a place to call your own.

And with your new life with Crowley, you had all of that.

[coleymari-blog]

Where’s Lucy?

Submission for @nalu-week 2017 Masks; where one of our lovebirds goes on a small quest of their own.

“What do ya mean there’s gonna be a Ball?”

Natsu groaned as he swung casually in his hammock, rolling his eyes at his flying feline friend. Happy had gone down to the Guild Hall at his buddy’s request to see if Lucy was there. She hadn’t been but the cat had watched Mirajane plaster the flyers announcing Fairy Tail’s impending Masquerade Guild Ball all over the place.

“Just what I said, Natsu!” Happy exclaimed, floating up and perching himself inside of Natsu’s salmon locks. “Mira told me to tell you. It’s been a long time since the last one.”

The fire mage scratched his pet behind the ears and sighed. The last Guild Ball had been right before they’d lost Lisanna. He remembered her asking him only for Natsu to get caught up on a job, causing him to miss the party all together. Of course she understood but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel bad about it for years after her “death”. Though this time around, he figured there was someone else she had her sights set on, if they were able to find suits for all his ‘babies’ of course.

It didn’t take long for Natsu’s mental picture to shift to that of a certain blonde teammate. Would Lucy want to go? He gulped at the thought of her on some guy’s arm like eye candy, all dolled up and twirling around with the brightest smile painted on her lips. Gods how he wanted to be that guy. He always wanted to be the guy that made her smile and reminded her how to laugh. His thoughts were quickly interrupted by his cerulean partner-in-crime.

“You know, Gray was trying to find Lucy too, Natsu…” Happy cooed with a smirk, knowing full well what it would do to his best friend. There was no need to tell the jealous pinket that Gray had only wanted to ask Lucy’s opinion on a present for Juvia. He purred when he received just the reaction he’d been seeking.

“WHAAAAAT?!” Natsu bellowed, flames consuming his fists. No way was the Ice Princess asking Lucy to the Ball. No way in Hell. Without even thinking about it, he took off like a blur toward town in order to find his partner.

His first stop was Lucy’s apartment. Crawling through her window, they both landed on her already made bed and quickly sniffed the air around them. Yes, Lucy had definitely been there earlier but it had to have been a few hours since then. Nothing in the apartment was on, and even her novel pages that were usually strewn about her desk were neatly piled in the corner of her workspace. Her kitchen was neater than normal and her laundry wasn’t overflowing.

Part of the Dragon Slayer was ashamed to admit that he missed the overwhelming presence of her scent. Lately it had been like a drug for him, making his blood run hot underneath his skin. Sometimes when he was laying in bed with her at night (after he’d crawled in and she had yet to notice) it felt like he was boiling from the inside out. And when she accidentally rolled over in her sleep and draped her arm over his scar-ridden chest, snuggling up to him? It all made him feel like he was on top of the world, even better than when he won a bout against Gray.

Thinking about the Ice Dick roughly dragged Natsu from his daydreaming. If Lucy wasn’t at home, or the Guild Hall, where else could she be? The wizard sat on her bed and thought carefully, sifting through his options. Finally picking a location, he took off for the Book Store hoping to find Lucy there. He knew her favorite shop was only a few blocks away, so he popped back out the window and made for the shop.

Natsu entered the quaint, quiet bookshop and was immediately greeted by its owner. The two Fairy Tail mages had done various odd jobs for the elderly man over the past few years so he was always kind to his ‘two favorite youngsters’.

“Good afternoon, Natsu,” the merchant said warmly, placing a tattered book down on top of one of the many stacks of books beside him. “What brings you in today? Especially without Lady Lucy’s… supervision?” He liked Natsu plenty but that didn’t change how destructive the young wizard could be.

Natsu looked around wildly, simply listening to the old man. “Has Lucy been here today?” he questioned, briefly catching the familiar scent of vanilla and lavender drifting among the tomes.

The shopkeeper frowned and shook his head gently. “No, I’m sorry, but I don't believe she's stopped by today.” He put his forefinger up in the air, asking for a moment as he shuffled to the back room. Checking the small cubby he kept for Lucy’s orders and purchases, he saw that the book she’d been waiting nearly a month for was still there, meaning she definitely hadn’t come in. Returning to the front counter, the elderly man shook his head once more. “Sorry Natsu, but if she comes in, I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”

Natsu respectfully took his leave and burst out the shop door onto the street. He was running out of options. Picking the next location off his mental checklist, the pinket rocketed toward South Gate Park. Lucy loved sitting beneath the giant Sakura tree, book in her lap for hours on end. Half of him expected her to find her napping in the tree’s expansive shade liked he'd done in the past. He loved when she’d let him accompany her, usually lying in the grass and dropping his head into her lap. Her fingers would normally card through his salmon locks absentmindedly as she read aloud to him and Happy. The exceed never understood why the Celestial Wizard would rather pet Natsu than him, he was way softer anyway.

Running up to the center of the park, Natsu craned his neck and tried to surveil the area. He was looking for golden hair when he was met by one of the other guild members. Levy, shockingly unguarded by her puppies Jet and Droy, was sitting at a park table surrounded by at least three stacks of books. The pinket made his way over to her and asked if she’d seen Lucy.

“Sorry, but I haven’t seen Lu since this morning,” she replied quickly, eyes never leaving the tome she was racing though. Leaning over, Natsu could see it was written in some language that only the Gods (and Levy) could understand.

Growling, Natsu’s fists flamed up as he grew even more impatient. Where the Hell could Lucy be? He could barely smell her, everywhere he went carrying faint wisps of vanilla and lavender in the air. No one had seen her. His baser instincts told him something was wrong but he always knew when something happened to his partner, like a sixth sense that had evolved over the course of their friendship. She was somewhere, so he just had to wait until she found him. 

The sullen Dragon Slayer trudged up the hill back to his shack and had just arrived at the door when he smelled it. Lucy. Throwing open the door, he was even more upset to find that the house was empty, sans for a box with a note attached. The crate was covered in her scent, meaning she had to have just left before he arrived. Grumpily, he opened the box to find a suit from the Celestial Realm, a black and red silk Mask, and a note in Lucy’s handwriting: 

Natsu, 

I figured with all the running around you’ve been doing today, that you could use some help. I picked this out with Loke’s help so I hope you like it. 

Meet you at the Guild Hall? 

Love, Lucy

Noticing the time, Natsu hurriedly threw on the gifted outfit, tied the scrap of silk around his eyes, and took off for the Ball. The closer he got, the more he could lock onto her, vanilla and lavender wafting through the town like a path back to her side. 

After the quickest run of his life, Natsu skidded to a halt once he finally laid eyes on her. Lucy’s gown was heavenly. It complemented his perfectly, down to the golden flecks of tiny stars shining near the hems. The dress itself was black, but the mask was what caught his attention most. The red lace had this luminescent quality to it, making it look like flames when hit just right by the torchlight. Pair that with her honey hair falling loosely over her shoulders the way he loved? His poor racing heart didn’t stand a chance. 

“Heard you were looking for me?” Lucy teased, her voice light and playful as the rest of their guildmates filed through the doors around them. She smiled brightly before extending her hand and gesturing back toward the gathering crowd. It was in that moment that Natsu knew that he would follow her anywhere, be it into battle, the ends of Earthland, or even a dancefloor.  

[indiatimejobs-blog]

BSNL Recruitment 2019 –2510 JTO Vacancy Application Form

New Post has been published on https://www.indiatimejobs.com/bsnl-recruitment-2019-2510-jto-vacancy-application-form/

BSNL Recruitment 2019 –2510 JTO Vacancy Application Form

BSNL Recruitment 2019 –2510 JTO Vacancy Application Form Dear Readers, Finally BSNL Recruitment Board has released a recruitment advertisement for the 2510 JTO Posts. As per the official notification, BSNL Vacancy 2019. for JTO Posts Online Application Form finally started on 06 March 2017 and closed on 06 April 2017, All Mandatory details Like Eligibility Criteria, Age Limits, Application Form Date, Selection Procedure, Exam Date, Admit Card and other details maintained bellow.9

The BSNL Recruitment 2017 –2510 JTO Vacancy Application Form @www.externalexam.bsnl.co.in, BSNL JTO Recruitment 2019, BSNL JE Recruitment 2019, BSNL Vacancy 2019, BSNL Jobs 2019 during

BSNL Recruitment 2019

BSNL Recruitment 2019:- Today I will go to show an Exciting and interesting update for all job hunter those are waiting for BSNL Junior Telecom Officer Job 2019.before The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. will soon release notification. to recruitment. of Graduate Engineer for 2510. posts of Junior Telecom Officer through valid GATE SCORE 2019. Candidates those appear in GATE Exam 2019 can apply online BSNL JTO Application

Form before the last date of it. As per notification candidate will soon notify to invite application form in the upcoming month. Besides the application form, the applicant also has required age limitation eligibility criteria to make an application form. You hardly know that the candidates must need to qualify in GATE examination to become part of this recruitment. For upcoming information of the BSNL JTO Job Notification 2019. Application Form and others follow this web page regularly. before All the Readers who are going. to apply for the BSNL JTO Vacancy 2017 are informed that BSNL JTO Vacancy 2019 Online Application Form will be available till 6th April 2017, So Application can be soon applied for the BSNL Vacancy 2019 till the Last Date

BSNL Recruitment 2019 (JTO) Notification

BSNL Recruitment 2019:- The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited a telecom company established on 15th September 2000 with the headquartered location at New Delhi. It provides their telecom services and network management from the Central Government Departments of Telecom Services and Telecom Operations across India. before For the best service in this field it has required of the well qualified and skilled employer so now it will go to announced BSNL Recruitment JTO Notification to invite all job hunter those have all eligibility criteria and interested for this posts. After fill application

form candidates selection will make bases on Branch wise and scorecard in GATE examination. It is a golden opportunity for that applicant who has completed their Engineering Degree and appears in GATE Examination. Do not miss Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited JTO vacancy 2019 for their future. during All the Readers are informed that, Finally, BSNL JTO Vacancy 2019 Online, All the Candidates who will be applied for the BSNL Vacancy 2019 for JTO Posts, they can be collected all details on this page across the Official notification (JTO) Recruitment 2019

Name of Department: – Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited

Name of Posts: – Junior Telecom Officer

Number of posts: – 2510 Posts

Mode to register Application Form: – Online

Job Category: – Govt Job 2017

Job Location: – India

Official URL: – www.bsnl.co.in

How to apply?

Click here to more Jobs details.

Click here to Apply

[rogue-cup-hq]

2018 Recap

" And God said, "Let there be vodka!" And He saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let there be light!" And then He said, "Whoa - too much light." ~ Anonymous

With the two decade run at Deep Creek officially over, the Rogues found themselves a nomadic herd – a band of idiots without a home, inmates in need of an asylum, the old familiar structures and routines taken from them abruptly. No more snore isolation chamber; no more gas containment chamber - where would William and Goldy sleep? Questions abounded…. Not to mention, the daunting question of “what other drinking courses can we golf on.” The North Carolina contingent (AKA Goldy and William) stepped forward to take the laboring oar in hand and became de facto chairmen for the 2018 event. They secured an incredible deal for the group to convene in North Carolina at two beautiful venues in the Pinehurst area, which conveniently allowed PA an opportunity to double up a visit with family without compromising the annual liver workout.

The 2018 event drew a field of 10 players: PA, Goldy, William, Andrew, B. Smith, G. Berner, Ed Moore, Turns, and of course, Gary "Sandy Bags" Ozenbaugh. Notably, prodigal son David Sautter returned after missing last year due to his move to that little slice of paradise in Maryland called Port Deposit. Schnetzler was a no-show (again) but swore he would return in 2019. Jay“bird” Erbe let yet another year pass without a golf club or wine glass in hand. The usual perennial no-shows (Walter, Luigi) were once again, no-shows. Of those in attendance, several finally at least admitted they had been golfing regularly, but continued to swear they were awful and hadn't improved. The second part of the statement clearly proved true; a touch of honesty was finally beginning to infect the Rogue players..…

The event was “hosted” at the Talamore Villas, with the Rogues bunking in a few condos spread across the complex. The weather was unique for a Rogue event, as we dealt with ungodly high heat and humidity (we all would soon regret our decision to opt for the earlier week):

The courses themselves also represented a radical departure for the group. Rather than seeking out isolated, rural mountain courses with goat pasture fairways and banjos echoing faintly in the distance, we found ourselves playing on real golf courses – our first day of 2018 would be spent battling Talamore, a course the Rogues had no business playing. Day Two would find the Rogues meandering around the course originally known as Pinehurst Plantation, now known as the Mid South Club.

PA, anticipating the heightened challenges of these venues, undertook an ambitious eBay research project in the months leading up to Rogue, intent on replacing those irons he noticed were missing during the 2017 event. The multi-week search for matching Cobra irons came down to the wire, with the final replacement club arriving at Whispering Pines a day before the event. In an odd contrast of fate, PA came out of retirement and went back to work, while B. Smith showed far greater wisdom and left Lansdale to begin life at a lakefront paradise in Virginia (where he immediately set to work preparing “Smithlake” for a pre-Rogue party. And thus the table was set for Rogue 2018; we all pointed our compasses toward the sandhills of North Carolina. The standard decades old caveat/disclaimer regarding the marginal accuracy of my memory still stands. What follows is pieced together from a few notes jotted down on the plane ride home, amidst the cobweb corners of my pickled mind.

Wednesday - PA arrived on Wednesday to visit for a few days with his brother Mark & Mom, enjoying a quiet, relaxing evening. Other than reminiscing with a nostalgic look at old golf clubs gathering dust in the garage, golf was not on the agenda. Beer, however – was…….

Thursday A pre-Rogue gathering was held at Smithlake (I was informed that B. Smith declared that “swimsuits were not optional”). While I wasn’t present, it was described by attendees as a reasonably calm night. All Rogues (PA in Carolina, the rest of the gang at Smithlake) spent the evening watching the Eagles beat the Falcons in a nail-biter 18-12 on NFL opening night; the game came down to a last defensive play against Julio Jones in the end zone, naturally. The Eagles succeeded in swatting the ball away and earning a victory - Go, Birds. 

Friday - the group arose in their respective locations and found their way to Buffalo Wild Wings in Southern Pines for some chow and beer before golf. The forecast was hot, humid with heat index in the mid 90's. Forget the forecast – it was already so. With bellies full of mediocre pub food, we made the short drive to the course.

Upon driving through the gates and parking our vehicles, reality slapped us hard in the face. There we stood – looking at a beautifully groomed course fronted by an elegant southern-style clubhouse. Yes, Talamore…. a course constructed in 1991 by famed course architect Rees Jones. With more than 150 feet of elevation change, wetlands, lakes and towering longleaf pines, Rees had carved out a course layout that the Rogues should not have been granted permission to play. Talamore is consistently ranked at the forefront for outstanding golf courses in the Village of Pinehurst area.

Beverages in hand (the usual iced tea and lemonade containers, and modest beer coolers), we were quickly humiliated by the vast, undulating putting green and our public displays of ground abuse on the driving range. An immediate controversy faced the Rogues on the first tee, as the debate raged over which tee box would govern the day. We had choices – gold, blue, white or green. Gold and blue were immediately vetoed by the majority…. Leaving the whites (or the greens, normally reserved for super seniors and women). After fierce debate, the group chose the green tees. Oh, the humanity and embarrassment….

With putters in hand for their first drive off the super-senior tee boxes, the round was underway and reality set in. The Talamore fairways and greens played like billiard tables – true rolls, and hard as a rock. A shot-by-shot analysis of the tattered scorecards revealed the mighty struggle -

B. Smith was his usual consistent self, with a pair of 43’s on both front and back nine – no real blow-up holes on the way to an 86 to establish himself yet again as the benchmark “zero” (go figure). PA started his round with par, double, triple on his way to a front nine 48. Righted the ship somewhat on the back with bogey golf to enter the clubhouse at 92, his first time ever scoring lower than the outdoor temperatures at a Rogue event and first time ever using a driver less than 5 times in 18 holes. Andrew made a statement: carded a 10 on the first hole, followed by a triple/double sequence after which he settled down for awhile, and after his highlight of the day (a birdie on #13) he had a rough sequence at the end, notching a three hole stretch of double/triple/double that left him with a tidy 100 on the day.

Goldy and Sautter shot matching 51’s on the front nine; the scorecard image was suspiciously faded on several of the holes – hard to determine where the trainwreck happened. Despite his usual elegant swing, Mr. Sautter’s wheels came off completely on #11, where he began a sequence of quintuple/quadruple/triple before finishing the round with a pair of triples on #17 and #18 to stumble home with 110 to trail the pack; however, this disaster of a round partnered him with Smith for the championship round, and would have implications on Day 2. Goldy stayed on the double-bogey train to card a 103. Ozy started out at a torrid pace, scoring 40 on the front nine. At that point, he had completely embraced the spirit of the event, evidenced by his 49 on the back, leaving him at 89. Turns had a tidy 45 on the front and seemed to be in a good rhythm; whatever he did at the turn didn’t help him, as he started off the back nine triple/double/quadruple on his way to a 53, putting him at 98 on the day.

Gary, Ed and William’s scorecard was very faded – Mr. Berner & Ed appeared to have an inauspicious start with each putting a triple on the card for the first hole. GB finished with the front nine with a 53, to Ed’s 48. William, quiet and steady as ever, played tidy bogey golf for a 45. On the back, GB played just as “well”, finishing with a pair of double-bogeys and tallying a 107 for the day; he had a gallery of angry, frustrated geese following him up the final hole. William maintained himself in the zone, finishing the back at 42 for a very nice 87 on the day.Others staggered to the finish in various states of physical disrepair.

Exhausted and teetering on heat stroke, the group sought refuge in the air-conditioned villas, languishing in various states of consciousness and disbelief that they had been so humbled by a paltry 5,500 yards of golf. The alcohol had made no difference. Everyone mustered their remaining energy and managed to organize/fund/retrieve a takeout order of sandwiches, pizzas, whatever and chose to stay in the safety of the villas – the evening was spent on internal alcohol rubs, card games, a moment of floor-rolling and cackling, a few chose chair naps. The Rogues were readying themselves for the day ahead. 

Saturday – Sunny, hot & humid again in the 90’s, a possible scattered t-storm in the forecast never materialized, although it would have been welcome. The Rogues contemplated their choice to have the team play on Mid-South, an Arnold Palmer signature golf course described as offering a “challenging yet enjoyable” championship layout. From the back tees (an option the Rogues never considered), a player has to carry their drive 225 yards just to reach the fairway. Not to mention Mid South’s 11 acres of bunkers (the Rogues became painfully familiar with the entirety of that acreage).

Having adopted the previous year's team format again, the pairings based on top-bottom scoring of the previous day’s bludgeoning of Talamore were as follows – Smith/Sautter, Whitehead/Berner, Ozy/Goldy, Andrew/Ed and PA/Turns. Foursomes were purposefully done to split up the teams and balance the consumption levels: 

Sautter, Ozy, Turns and Smith Goldy, Ed, Berner William, Andrew, PA

Notably, as we prepared for Mid-South, Smith’s and PA’s perennial beverages were on full display, but the usual wine bladder in Mr. Berner’s bag was absent (“red wine is a bad choice for a hot day”). Ozy promised to take up the slack and live the spirit of the event….. PA’s trusty lemonade container was present, as were the copious amounts of beer and what-not.

As we stared down the fairway of the first hole preparing for our tee shots, the heat index was 95. For the 4th round in a row (spanning two years now), a majority vote reinstated the “Great Rogue Compromise Rule of 2017”, again converting the event into a quasi chip-and-putt competition. Some of us looked around sheepishly and silently prayed that the 95 year old husband and wife teeing off on the teebox further back behind us didn’t ask for our IDs. The Rogues had an inauspicious start, with the first group all needing mulligans to get a single ball in play (it had nothing to do with distance). They don’t make fairways wide enough for the Rogues. In fact, it was so ugly that the starter, an elderly gent with a good sense of humor, instantly granted the remaining Rogues permission to hit into the leading group. Our kinda guy.

The Rogues spent their entire Saturday afternoon hacking, duffing, hooking, slicing, chunking, skulling, blading and wandering the Mid-South roughs and bunkers.

PA started triple/double/triple which accelerated his pace to finishing the “lemonade” far too early in the round; he needed every drop on his way to a debilitating 104. Andrew started off well, until the 4th hole – at which point he began a double/triple/triple sequence that loosened the lug nuts, and strung together double bogeys on the remaining holes to tie PA at 52 on the front. On the back, Andrew managed to gain a little traction and finished with 101. William had a rough start with a double/double combo, but then settled down - with a few pars, he managed to score 46 on the front. His story was similar on the back nine, with just a couple blow up holes to shoot 49, getting him into the clubhouse at 95.

Meanwhile, the group of Goldfarb, Moore and Berner were also incurring the wrath of the Mid-South course gods. Goldy had a tidy 10 on the 9th hole on his way to a 52; it got no better on the back nine as the final 4 holes saw Goldy run triple/quad/triple/quad, for a painful 110. After shooting a respectable 48 on the front, Ed decided to mimic Goldy, running quad/double/triple/triple to finish with 104. Gary Berner? Nothing if not consistent…. Started the round triple/quad and finished the round with a triple/quad, placing an enormous 116 on the card. His endurance and physical conditioning were admirable.

The final group (Sautter, Ozy, Turns and Smith) provided the gallery with the full spectrum of Rogue golfing skills. Smith put a tidy 45 on the front nine, with no real blow-up holes. Turns, on the other hand, consistently delivered doubles and triples to card a 58. Ozy worked a triple/triple/triple stretch to smear his opening nine with a 52, while Sautter seemed to be on track with the previous day, putting up a 54. On the back nine, a quad/double/quad finish produced another 58 for Turns, as he staggered off the 18th with a 116. Ozy’s wheels weren’t just off, he may have left them on the front nine. His triple/quad/triple/quad stretch on the back produced a 58 to match Turns, and a rather rare triple digit 110 score. On the positive side, Oz had unquestionably lived up to the spirit of the event. Smith fired another tidy 45 on the back to produce a 90. But the story of the 2018 Rogue golf was clearly David Sautter’s back nine, where he fired a scorching (for him) 43, bringing him in at 97 to clinch the 2019 Rogue Cup team win for himself and Smith….

Some vague personal recollections/observations from Saturday’s Cup round at Mid-South: while I managed to strike some thunderous drives, once off the tee I floundered helplessly in a state of confused ineptitude. No mid-iron skills, no short iron skills, and I hit wedge shots like I was swinging a tree branch. I recall holing an impressively long curling putt on 18… it mattered not. I also recall broad proclamations of despair over the choice of foursome going off first and the subsequent snail-like pace of play. Universally, Ozy is blamed.

Following the round, the group made its way back to the condos to tally up the cards and determine who “won”. We were also in desperate need for a cooling-down period (also known as a “nap”). Sautter and Smith proudly held the Cup high - Smith had gotten so used to wearing the Jacket that a simple nod that he’d won it was sufficient; no need to try and put it on. In a rare combo, Sautter had also secured the Sox as top sandbagger, in addition to having his name engraved on the Cup. This new team format may find the Sox/Cup combo a more frequent occurrence. The Shirt (for highest overall score) was naturally once again in the hands of Gary Berner.  For the record:

We found ourselves at a little local watering hole called Maxie’s, after which Andrew gave us an inadvertent driving tour of the area. I recall copious amounts of Crown Royal & ginger the rest of the evening, much of it inspired by Turns.

Sunday was a brief affair – the group fumigated the villas, packed and bid farewell – no decisions made as to a 2019 venue (although we all agreed that NC temperatures required a later date). And thus the 2018 Rogue Cup drew to a close for another year. Farewell, Talamore and Mid-South...thanks for the drubbing! Cheers to all….what will 2019 bring?

2018 Photo gallery here - https://photos.app.goo.gl/UsKXmXVcAk5XF9vE6

[pigeonpocket5-blog]

Auschwitz and Anti-Racism: The Past (and Racism) is Another Country

Aurelien Mondon is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bath. Working with Aaron Winter, his work looks at the relationship between the far right and the mainstream, with a particular focus on racism. Aaron Winter is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at University of East London. 

It is in the here and now that UK racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, far-right and mainstream, are situated, embedded, and do harm. It should be tackled, not displaced and denied.

On 11 October 2018, it was reported that Chelsea Football Club has proposed sending supporters accused of anti-Semitism and racism to Auschwitz-Birkenau as an alternative to banning orders. That action was being taken by the club came as good news for those concerned about the issue in football and particularly at Chelsea, where some of their supporters are known for anti-Semitic chanting and making the ‘hissing’ sound of gas chambers when playing the traditionally Jewish supported Tottenham Hotspur and other teams.

In terms of wider football, less than a week after the Chelsea announcement, West Ham suspended Mark Phillips, who coached their under-18 team, after he attended a march organised by the far-right Democratic Football Lads Alliance.

The Chelsea plan was proposed by team owner, Roman Abramovich, who is himself Jewish, as part of the club’s ‘Say No to Antisemitism’ initiative, in partnership with the Holocaust Educational Trust, which runs the ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ programme. According to Chelsea Chairman Bruce Buck: ‘If you just ban people, you will never change their behaviour. This policy gives them the chance to realise what they have done, to make them want to behave better’. The club sent a delegation to Auschwitz for the annual March of the Living in April 2018, and 150 staff and supporters went on a trip in June.

At this stage, it is just Chelsea doing this, but it has also been discussed as a way of approaching the prevention of far-right extremism and de-radicalisation of far-right activists in Britain. It wouldn’t be surprising to see it become more common in the context of the revival of the far-right across North America and Europe, including countries once occupied by the Nazis. However, we are unconvinced and even opposed to the idea for a number of reasons.

Educational?

While Auschwitz, as well as other concentration, labour and death camps, Holocaust museums and memorial trusts, have long served educational purposes, firstly we question the wisdom of sending racists and anti-Semites, as well as fascists, to such a place – one that is also a solemn memorial and cemetery to the victims of Nazism, and gathering place for survivors and descendants. This offers offenders a free trip to a site of sensitivity to the victims of anti-Semitism as a result of expressing anti-Semitism.

There is also a real risk as Auschwitz is not immune to anti-Semitic acts, including a recent case of three young women giving Sieg Heil salutes at the gate. Like many sites associated with Nazism, it is also a rallying point for the far-right to offend, desecrate or deny. Cases include Holocaust denier David Irving organising tours there and visits from the Magyar Guada (Hungarian Guard) and others.

Past victories

Secondly, using the Holocaust as a reference point for understanding and addressing cases of anti-Semitism today and in Britain is not unproblematic. It places anti-Semitism in the past, in the extreme and elsewhere, in a different country, locking it into a particular time and space. This can serve to negate the very contemporaneity of the act and the continuous existence of anti-Semitism, as well as its specific history and legacy in Britain, on the far-right and in the mainstream, as well as the links to a wider racism.

There have been ongoing issues throughout the post-war period (including at Chelsea), and earlier. It is not uncommon that racism, particularly in the so-called ‘post-racial’ era is reduced to the illiberal far-right, something ‘we’ in the liberal mainstream defeated, with the far-right reduced to fascism and specifically Nazism, something ‘we’ as a nation defeated in the past.

Yet, even if we have to travel back into history to learn lessons about anti-Semitism, then why not look at Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and the way they were chased out of the East End at the Battle of Cable Street in Whitechapel on Sunday 4 October 1936; or the rise of the National Front in the 1970s and 80s and the British National Party in the 1990s and 2000s. We could go back even further to the conspiracy theories prominent in liberal circles in the nineteenth century, where Jews were blamed for fomenting revolutions; or even to King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion of Jews from the United Kingdom in 1290. They were not readmitted until 1655. No Nazis required. In the context of Brexit, the Chelsea trip also appears as somewhat ironic, with racism and the far-right seen as ‘a European problem’ historically.

Colonialism missing piece

Thirdly, while the Chelsea situation is more clearly linked to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, the strategy not only skips British fascism and anti-Semitism, but wider racism. It fits too closely with the British use of Nazism and the Holocaust as a distraction from its own historical, foundational and institutional racism, including colonialism and its legacy.

Of particular interest is the way in which Nazism and the Second World War acts on the British popular imagination. The Blitz, D-Day and other specific battles (except Cable Street whose left-wing roots go against the national narrative and hegemonic practices) are commonly used in a hagiographic fashion on TV, in films, popular non-fiction, public ceremonies and school lessons. As such, it constantly reminds the population that ‘we’ defeated racism qua Nazism at a moment when the racist empire was still being held onto, and also when much of the politics leading to fascism had been tried out experimentally in our own liberal societies. The past, when it is dark, truly is another country.

In fact, where colonialism is acknowledged, it is widely seen in a positive manner and is celebrated both in politics and popular culture, particularly in the context of Brexit, where nostalgia for Empire played a significant role. The royal honours are still given ‘of the British Empire’ and films such as Victoria and Abdul (2017) are produced and screened alongside Second World War fare such as Dunkirk (2017) and Darkest Hour (2017). In the context of Brexit, Liam Fox called for the creation of ‘Empire 2.0’, and former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recited Kipling in Burma (in addition to a number of other racist comments, regularly propagated on his multiple media and political platforms).

In the meantime, criticism of British colonialism and Empire, including its violence, is regularly dismissed and critics attacked as unpatriotic, overly repentant and, in some cases, subjected to racism. This was the case with Priyamvada Gopal when she challenged Nigel Biggar’s Ethics and Empire project and Kehinde Andrews when he criticised former Prime Minister, colonial racist and Nazi fighting war hero Winston Churchill on GMTV. And yet one does not have to look far to find quotes such as that in 1937, when Churchill told the Palestine Royal Commission:

"I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

He also defended the use of poison gas, bombing and other forms of violence to maintain the Empire. In the context of discussing anti-Semitism and where to find it historically, it is also worth noting Churchill’s unpublished article ‘How the Jews Can Combat Persecution’, from 1937 during the war:

"It may be that, unwittingly, they are inviting persecution - that they have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer … There is the feeling that the Jew is an incorrigible alien, that his first loyalty will always be towards his own race."

Churchill embodies the exchange system between British racism and colonialism and Nazism, with the latter negating the former. In a similar vein, and as is the case with other colonial powers, slavery is rarely acknowledged unless to celebrate its abolition, even though the British not only played a key part in the establishment of the system, but also benefited from it massively and fought tooth and nail to uphold it.

Having said all this, the Holocaust is of course part of our universal, and particularly central to our continental history, and thus should be taught in our education system in those terms as well as part of a wider education on racism and genocide. It should also be taught in communities who espouse anti-Semitic views such as the Chelsea supporters.

Existing provision

In fact, there is excellent Holocaust educational provision in Britain for this, including from the Jewish Museum and the Weiner Library, as well as football focused anti-racist organisations and campaigns such as Show Racism the Red Card and Kick it Out. You do not need to send offenders to Auschwitz.

However, this is not enough if we do not also discuss homegrown fascism and the racism at the core to the colonial system, throughout much of British history actively, honestly and explicitly. We must also move beyond history lessons and engage with the present and the impact of a system built on racism and exclusion in our society. The Nazis were defeated, but fascism and racism were not.

The ‘hostile environment’ bites back

In addition to ongoing structural and institutional racial inequality, we are currently experiencing an increase in hate crime and far-right activism as well as a normalisation and mainstreaming of racism and the far right in Britain and across much of the west. It is not a foreign, far-right or football phenomenon. The Tory Government sent around Go Home Vans and created a ‘Hostile Environment’ for immigrants and stigmatised Muslims and legitimised Islamophobia through Prevent.

Refugees have also been subjected to suspicion, demonisation, accusations, medical tests and left to drown in the Mediterranean, locked up in detention centres or deported (including those belonging to the Windrush Generation).

This is occurring in a country that lays claim to the Kindertransport rescue of Jewish children from Nazism as part of its history. Ironically, even with the focus on the Holocaust and Nazism, the lessons have not been learned here in Britain in the mainstream.

During the Brexit campaign, Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU campaign group used a Nazi-esque image of refugees crossing from Croatia to Slovenia in 2015 with a banner reading ‘Breaking Point: the EU has failed us all’. More recently, only days after the Chelsea news, Farage discussed the disproportionate power of the ‘Jewish lobby’ in America on his radio show on LBC, one of several mainstream media platforms, including BBC, where he has done so.

While history can teach us much, it is in the here and now that racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, on the far-right and in the mainstream, are situated, embedded, do harm, and should be tackled., This needs to be acknowledged and addressed, not displaced and denied.

This article was originally posted on openDemocracy, 22 October 2018.

Source: http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2018/10/22/auschwitz-and-anti-racism-the-past-and-racism-is-another-country/

[shannrussell-blog1]

I’ve just returned from my first trip to Europe and the United Kingdom. It was a whirlwind adventure that took me through 9 cities and 7 countries, on 10 planes, 13 trains, 6 taxies, and 4 bike hiring schemes.

I enjoyed the cosy pubs of London, saw the très grand monuments of Paris, experienced the superior bicycle infrastructure of Berlin and Copenhagen, and was moved by the sad history of Kraków in Poland. It was a trip filled with hundreds of memories I’ll keep for the rest of my life. It was also a trip that brought many practicalities to the fore.

Things I wish I had known beforehand and hadn’t stumbled upon in my research. Stuff I think others would benefit from before embarking on their own Europe adventure, whether it’s part of an organised group like a Contiki tour, or self-guided. Here are my top 17 tips for having a hassle-free and amazing time in Europe:

Gear

1. Wear hard-wearing, quick-dry travel clothing

The sort of clothing you’d find at an outdoors shop, as it’s just plain practical. We didn’t exclusively carry this sort of clothing on our trip – we had jeans, cotton t-shirts, and so on.

These garments needed washing after a time and a go in the tumble drier. About 6 hours of the whole trip was spent sitting in laundromats waiting for waschmaschinen and kleider trockner (German for washing machine and clothes dryer ). Don’t say you don’t learn anything here!

Synthetic and merino wool outdoorsy clothes can be washed in the shower or hotel basin and dry very quickly. The best thing about merino is it takes a lot to get smelly, so you can wear it over and over.

2. Choose a backpack rather than suitcase

You can always tell the suitcase totters when you disembark onto a busy train station platform. They’re the ones struggling along, trying to make their case stable on two wheels, while you try and push in front of them. With a backpack, you’ll be much more agile and stairs and escalators will be fair game.

The Pacsafe Coversafe X100 Waist Wallet protects against your cards or passports being hacked, or physically stolen. 

4. Invest in a good neck pillow

We flew Etihad. They supplied very basic neck pillows in economy. Very basic. I’m sure a quality neck pillow would have added a few more hours of sleep to our cumulative 48 hours in the air.

Money

5. Always have cash on you

Cash is becoming less commonly used in Australia. What, with our obsession with plastic, PayPass, and now Apple Pay and so on? That doesn’t mean the rest of the world is in the same place. I asked one shop assistant in Germany why people don’t use their cards as much. She responded, ‘They’re Germans. They like to see their money’. Fair enough. Always have some notes and coins on you*.

* When you’re carrying Kroners, you’ll feel extra rich as everything is in 100s and 1000s. Until you calculate the exchange rate and then you’ll feel really poor.

No matter where you go you’ll soon come across a peculiar sign. This one was on a train in Poland. It was meant to convey, ‘Do not throw rubbish out the window’. Or so it seemed.  

6. Be careful with airport ATMs

Shop around for currency conversion and don’t use the first ATM you find. The machines conveniently located in airports usually charge high fees or commissions.

Transport

7. Get to the airport early

It’s easy to think that because you’ve been to a few airports you’ve been to them all. Wrong. Until I experienced the security queue in Københavns Lufthavn (Copenhagen Airport, Denmark) I had this impression that most airports are efficient beasts. An hour and a half of waiting, very strict rules when it comes to liquids, and the way one shuffles through the scanner, and being almost the last one to board my flight had me reconsider this.

Do your research and don’t take things for granted – just because Coolangatta is easy peasy doesn’t mean Charles de Gaulle will be.

8. Hire a bike

We found the best way to get around Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen and Warsaw was by bike. The bicycle infrastructure in each of these cities varied a lot but one thing was for sure, cycling is part of life and is a quick and fun way of exploring. Our favourite hiring scheme was ‘Vélib’ in Paris. You pay a small fee to access the system (1,70€ at the time of writing) and can use a bike for 30 minutes for free.

The trick is to ride for half hour or less and return the bike to one of the plentiful stands, have a look around, grab another bike, and enjoy another half hour for free. Merci, Paris.

We hired bikes in Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Warsaw. The Vélib’ system in Paris was without a doubt the most comprehensive and value-for-money. 

9. Use public transport

Most European cities have robust networks of public transport. Intercity and intercountry high-speed trains, underground metro rail, light-rail, buses – I was quite taken by Düsseldorf, Germany. For a city smaller than Adelaide it had trams galore, an underground rail system and linked neatly with the rest of Europe with high-speed rail.

The best bit was that public transport across Europe is relatively cheap and will take you where you want to go.

10. Low-cost airlines are often very basic (and crafty)

Like with airports, not all low-cost airlines are the same. You think Jetstar is basic? Try flying some of the European low-cost carriers. I didn’t read an email from one unnamed carrier as carefully as I should have and got stung 419 złoty ($140 AUD) at the gate to check in!

Yep, some will make you check in online (no less than 2 hours before departure) and print your own boarding pass.

Safety

11. Be vigilant of swindlers and street sellers

I’ll admit it, I found it quite entertaining watching tourist after tourist get duped by three cup shuffle in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. But those guys before kept winning? Isn’t it uncanny they look like brothers? Have your wits about you, don’t sign things or buy things from people in odd places and don’t ride with strangers.

Isn’t this what travel is all about? Experiencing things you could never imagine or see at home?

12. Use your hotel safe

To avoid huge transaction fees it is a good idea to withdraw more cash, less often. Keep it in your hotel safe, if they have one, to keep it well – safe. Likewise cameras, watches, and other valuables. As a further precaution, I read it somewhere recently, ‘If it would ruin your afternoon if it were stolen, don’t take it with you.’

General

13. Do a free walking tour

Many cities run free walking tours. The best we found was by the Free Walking Tour Foundation in Kraków. You can join when you want, leave when you want, and leave a tip if you want. A guided tour of a city or particular attraction will always give you a better understanding of it. And when it’s free, what have you got to lose?

Nyhavn, Copenhagen.

14. When in doubt, ask

After getting lost many handfuls of occasions, especially in the straße of Berlin, we soon realised it was better to ask for help than think of yourself as a master of navigation. Everyone we asked for directions or recommendations was only too happy to assist.

Either in our limited grasp of the local language or in English, everywhere we travelled, including Poland, most people we met spoke good English.

Accommodation

15. Check if your hotel has air conditioning

Many European and British hotels don’t. We learned this the hard way, suffering through many nights where the inside temperature didn’t dip below 30! Modern accommodation usually had effective systems.

Food

16. Carry a refillable bottle

Tap water in most European cities is perfectly safe to drink. Interestingly, and as much as this is the case, you’ll be hard-pressed to be served it in Polish cities. Hotel rooms usually boast free bottles of water and at restaurants, when asked, they’ll bring you bottled still or sparkling for a fee – though, in złoty, the cost is negligible. When out for the day, fill up your own water bottle.

17. Eat local, drink local 

Whatever you do, do not pass up the opportunity to try local food and drinks. We had the best bangers and mash with flat beer in London, beautiful bistro meals with carafes of red wine in the laneways of Paris, schnitzels as big as your head, served traditionally with a lemon wedge rather than lashings of sauce, in Dusseldorf and beautiful little pillow-like pierogi and half-litre glasses of Polish beer in the milk bars of Kraków.

I think you learn a lot about a place by sampling their food, wine, and beer. So, ignore those pizza and burger joints and immerse yourself.

When in Paris, sip black coffee and eat a plain croissant for breakfast. Seriously, the perfect start to the day.

18. Be careful when catching a cab, especially in Poland

No dig at Poland, it was a lovely country to visit. But be careful when catching a cab as the drivers are notorious for ripping people off. Rather than hailing a cab on the street or out the front of the airport, book ahead. That way you can agree on a fee beforehand.

If you do hail a taxi, ask the driver how much the fare will be before accepting it. Some hotels will allow you to book with them and their preferred taxi company at a fixed rate, especially if you’re travelling to common places like the airport.

19. Pack a small set of scales

Being slugged excess baggage is the worst. Weigh your bags beforehand to see if you meet your allowance. That way you can redistribute the weight, remove items, or book more weight online for a cheaper fee.

This post was updated for 2017.

  Got any handy tips for enjoying Europe? Share them with us below. 

  The post What You Need to Know Before Going to Europe appeared first on Snowys Blog.

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