#Great Divide Trail Six Pass

[blasphemous-bill]

I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,

Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die —

Whether he die in the light o’ day or under the peak-faced moon;

In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;

On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;

In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;

By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead —

I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead.

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot

On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized boneyard lot.

And where he died or how he died, it didn’t matter a damn

So long as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone “epigram.”

So I promised him, and he paid the price in good cheechako coin

(Which the same I blowed in that very night down in the Tenderloin).

Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: “Here lies poor Bill MacKie,”

And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange,

Of a long-deserted line of traps ’way back of the Bighorn range,

Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man stiff and still,

Lying there by his lonesome self, and I figured it must be Bill.

So I thought of the contract I’d made with him, and I took down from the shelf

The swell black box with the silver plate he’d picked out for hisself;

And I packed it full of grub and “hooch,” and I slung it on the sleigh;

Then I harnessed up my team of dogs and was off at dawn of day.

You know what it’s like in the Yukon wild when it’s sixty-nine below;

When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow;

When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the silence of the wood,

And the icicles hang down like tusks under the parka hood;

When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,

And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit;

When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill —

Well, it was just like that that day when I set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand,

As I blundered blind with a trail to find through that blank and bitter land;

Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim heartbreaking woes,

And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows!

North by the compass, North I pressed; river and peak and plain

Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak — and who could stand unawed?

As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the foot of the throne of God.

North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes,

And all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes,

Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side of a hill,

And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill.

Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;

Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over all;

Sparkling ice on the dead man’s chest, glittering ice in his hair,

Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy stare;

Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms and legs outspread.

I gazed at the coffin I’d brought for him, and I gazed at the gruesome dead,

And at last I spoke: “Bill liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes,

A man had ought to consider his mates in the way he goes and dies.”

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole,

With a little coffin six by three and a grief you can’t control?

Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin,

And that seems to say: “You may try all day, but you’ll never jam me in”?

I’m not a man of the quitting kind, but I never felt so blue

As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying what I’d do.

Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were nosing round about,

And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn’t seem no good;

His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they was made of wood.

Till at last I said: “It ain’t no use — he’s froze too hard to thaw;

He’s obstinate, and he won’t lie straight, so I guess I got to — saw.”

So I sawed off poor Bill’s arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight

In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate,

And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down;

Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started back to town.

So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow grave and deep,

And there he’s waiting the Great Clean-up, when the Judgment sluice-heads sweep;

And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun,

And sometimes I wonder if they was, the awful things I done.

And as I sit and the parson talks, expounding of the Law,

I often think of poor old Bill — and how hard he was to saw.

- Robert W. Service

[thxnews]

Outdoor Adventures in Jackson: Whitewater Rafting, Wildlife Viewing, Skiing & More

  Nestled close to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park, Jackson is a picturesque town that is not only rich in wildlife and natural beauty but also offers numerous outdoor activities to keep adventure seekers busy. If you're looking for a fabulous vacation spot where you can mix outdoor recreational activities with unmatched scenic beauty, then Jackson, Wyoming is your ideal destination. Whether you're an avid hiker, a water sports enthusiast, a wildlife lover, or a winter sports fanatic, Jackson has something for everyone. Here's everything you need to know before planning your trip to Jackson.  

Hiking & Biking: Explore Jackson's Trails

Jackson has easy access to several hiking trails with fabulous scenery for hikers of all levels of skill and endurance. From leisurely strolls to challenging treks, here are some of the best trails to explore: - The Teton Crest Trail: For adventure seekers, the Teton Crest Trail is a must-see destination. Spanning 40 miles, the trail runs from Static Divide to Cascade Canyon, passing through Grand Teton National Park. The trail offers a range of hiking experiences, from easy to intense, with stunning views of the Tetons throughout. One of the highlights of the trail is the panoramic views of the snow-capped peaks as you traverse the high-altitude passes. Keep an eye out for the abundant wildlife, including bison and moose that call this area home. - Gros Ventre Wilderness: If you're looking for a more relaxing hike, the Wells Creek Trail in the Gros Ventre Wilderness is an excellent choice. The trail is about five miles long and offers a gentle, easygoing hike through the wilderness. The trail is relatively flat, making it ideal for families with young children or novice hikers. Along the way, you'll enjoy the beautiful scenery, including the meadows full of wildflowers and the pristine alpine lakes. Be sure to bring your camera as the views of the Teton Mountains are breathtaking. - Cache Creek Trail: Cache Creek Trail is a great destination for those who prefer biking over hiking. The trail stretches for about six miles and offers riders a chance to explore some of the most stunning landscapes around Jackson. The trail offers a range of terrains, from easy to challenging, making it ideal for both novice and experienced bikers. You'll ride through thick forests, open meadows, and rocky outcroppings as you make your way along the trail. Be sure to take a break at the overlook to enjoy the stunning views of the town of Jackson. - Shadow Mountain Trail: The Shadow Mountain Trail is another must-see destination for bikers. The trail begins about seven miles northeast of Jackson and takes you through some of the most scenic landscapes in the area. The trail runs for about 15 miles and offers a range of terrains, from easy to challenging. Riders can expect to see a range of wildlife on the trail, including bison, elk, and deer. You'll also have plenty of opportunities to stop and take in the scenery, including views of the Teton Mountains and the Gros Ventre Wilderness. - Snow King Mountain Trail: If you're looking for a challenging hike, the Snow King Mountain Trail is an excellent option. The trail is about six miles long and ascends to the top of Snow King Mountain, which offers fantastic views of Jackson, Grand Teton National Park, and the surrounding areas. The trail is relatively steep, making it a more challenging hike, but the views from the top are worth the effort. Once you reach the summit, you can take a break and enjoy a picnic lunch while taking in the stunning 360-degree panoramic views.  

Whitewater Rafting & Kayaking

The sight of the rippling waters and the breathtaking views of the mountains will leave you in awe as you experience the thrill of whitewater rafting or the tranquility of kayaking. Here are some options for water sports enthusiasts in Jackson: - Snake River Rafting: The Snake River is a popular destination for whitewater rafting in Jackson. With a variety of rapids ranging from class I to class IV, there are options for both beginners and experienced rafters. Guided tours are available, allowing you to navigate the rapids with the help of experienced professionals. As you make your way down the river, you'll enjoy the stunning scenery, including towering cliffs, lush forests, and the occasional wildlife sighting. - Flatwater Kayaking: If you prefer a more peaceful water experience, Jackson offers plenty of opportunities for flatwater kayaking. The Snake River offers calm sections where you can paddle at your own pace and take in the beautiful surroundings. Kayaking allows you to explore the waterways, navigate through gentle currents, and enjoy the serenity of the natural environment. It's a great way to relax and connect with nature while enjoying the tranquility of the river.  

Best Time to Go: Summer Adventures

The best time to visit Jackson for outdoor activities like kayaking and whitewater rafting is during the summer months. From June to September, the weather is warm, and the water levels are optimal for these activities. During this time, you can expect pleasant temperatures, clear skies, and a vibrant outdoor atmosphere. However, it's important to note that the popularity of these activities during the summer months means that you may encounter larger crowds, so plan accordingly.  

Wildlife Viewing: Nature at Its Finest

Jackson is renowned for its incredible wildlife, and it's no surprise given its proximity to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Here are some ways you can experience the wildlife in and around Jackson: - Wildlife Tours: One of the best ways to see the wildlife in the area is by taking a guided wildlife tour. These tours will take you to the best spots for wildlife viewing, where you can see animals such as bears, elk, moose, wolves, and eagles. Knowledgeable guides will provide interesting insights into the behavior and habitats of the animals, making for an educational and exciting experience. - National Elk Refuge: Located just north of Jackson, the National Elk Refuge is a must-visit destination for wildlife enthusiasts. The refuge provides a winter home for thousands of elk, as well as other animals such as bison, bighorn sheep, and various bird species. You can take a horse-drawn sleigh ride through the refuge to get up close to the elk and experience the magic of the winter landscape.  

Skiing & Snowboarding: Winter Wonderland

When winter arrives in Jackson, the outdoor activities shift to snow-focused adventures. If you're a fan of winter sports, Jackson has some of the best ski resorts in the country. Here are some highlights: - Jackson Hole Mountain Resort: Known for its challenging terrain and epic powder, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is a paradise for skiers and snowboarders. With over 2,500 acres of skiable terrain and vertical drops of over 4,000 feet, the resort offers a variety of trails for all skill levels. Whether you're a beginner looking for gentle slopes or an expert seeking steep chutes and bowls, Jackson Hole has something for everyone. The resort also features excellent facilities, including a ski school, rental shops, and cozy lodges where you can warm up and relax after a day on the slopes. - Snow King Mountain: Snow King Mountain, located in the heart of Jackson, is another popular ski destination. With its proximity to downtown, it offers a convenient option for skiing and snowboarding. Snow King Mountain features a range of trails suitable for all levels of skiers and snowboarders, as well as a terrain park for those looking to test their skills. The resort also offers night skiing, allowing you to enjoy the slopes even after the sun goes down.  

Conclusion

Jackson, Wyoming, is a haven for outdoor enthusiasts, offering a wide range of activities throughout the year. From hiking and biking in the summer to whitewater rafting and wildlife viewing, there's something for everyone to enjoy. In the winter, the focus shifts to skiing and snowboarding, with world-class resorts providing thrilling experiences on the slopes. Whether you're seeking adventure, relaxation, or the chance to connect with nature, Jackson is the perfect destination for your next outdoor getaway. So pack your bags and get ready to embark on an unforgettable adventure in the heart of Wyoming's natural beauty.   Sources: THX News & JacksonWY. Read the full article

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Laisse tomber les filles 7

Warnings: non-consent sex and rape; size kink; age gap; manipulation; sexual acts and dubcon (not explicitly tagged for a surprise but nothing extreme).

This is a dark!fic and Lee Bodecker x (short) reader and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Synopsis: You find yourself ostracized on campus by your shyness, but your reticence won’t deter an unwanted suitor.

Note: We back at it again! Happy Tuesday.

Thanks to everyone for reading and thanks in advance for all your feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 As usual, I’d appreciate if you let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

‘When I was nineteen, pureness was the great issue...I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn’t, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another. I thought a spectacular change would come over me the day I crossed the boundary line.’

You read and reread the paragraph. You couldn’t help it. The first time you read that book, you just didn’t get the cynicism. There were still parts you couldn’t quite relate to. But that passage sank into you like a pebble in water. You felt changed already and after something so little.

You hadn’t seen Lee since Saturday. He had your number now and called at night. A few times, there was noise in the background; people, cars, life. You realised he must’ve been at a payphone, taking a moment away from his patrol. That was another thing about him; he felt so established, so wise, and that made you feel even less.

When the phone began to ring that night, you ignored it. And when it stopped, you picked up the receiver and dialed the only number you knew. Your mom picked up and you heard the sink running in the background. She was always busy when you called.

“Mom,” you said, “it’s me.”

“Oh, hi, dear,” she replied in her creaky tone, “how are you? Oh, is something wrong?”

“Um… I’m okay, I just wanted to call, I…” you thought of telling her about Lee but you weren’t really sure how. You weren’t even sure why you called her, only that you felt alone. “I miss you and daddy.”

“We miss you, too,” you heard her steps and her grunt as she stretched the cord and twisted off the faucet. “He’s been working hard down at the steel yard and he’s so proud. All the other men tell him to hush up when he brags about you.”

“Yeah? I… I’m working hard. Got an A on my last paper,” you played with the coiled cord.

“That’s great, dear,” she chimed, “are you sure you’re okay? You sound tired.”

“I am tired,” you said, “that’s all. Studying and all that.”

“I hope so. I wouldn’t want you going out late to one of those parties,” she tittered, “Noreen’s son got arrested at one of those and spent a night in jail. They spent their mortgage to get him out.”

“No, no, I don’t, um, go to parties,” you assured, not adding that no one would even think to invite you to one.

“Oh, dear, I’m sorry, I’ll have to call back tomorrow,” she sighed as you heard the door clamour, “your father’s so intent on hurting himself these days.”

“Okay, um, it’s alright, I’ll talk later, love y--” the phone went dead and you listened to the dull tone.

You put the receiver back in the cradle and tapped your fingers on your lips. You picked up your book and sat back on your bed. You couldn’t focus on the words though as your mind lingered on the familiar sounds of home. You missed it terribly. You just wanted to take the bus and go hide in your old childhood bed.

The phone rang again. You knew it wasn’t your mother. You left it and when it silenced, there was only a second before it started again. You waited until the next lull and moved the receiver off the cradle and let the low hum rise from the speaker. You kept it off the hook and closed your book.

You didn’t want to deal with any of that today. Not Lee, not Plath, not the plague of woes that roiled your stomach. You flopped onto your bed and pulled your pillow over your head. You weren’t going to think again until your morning lecture.

📚

You sat near the front of the hall with your elbow on the small fold-out desk. You swirled your pen lazily in the air as you listened to the professor expound on the flaws of historical revisionism. He wasn’t the type to entertain questions or comments, he merely ranted and expected you to note those few words of value amidst the sea of thoughts.

You yawned, exhausted despite an early night. You felt empty and drained those last four days. Ever since…

You didn’t think about it. Tried not to even as it tugged at your mind. When the memory managed to poke through, you felt the same tingle between your legs and your cheeks burned in humiliation. 

How had you let it happen? How could you let yourself do that?

You were so confused by it all. How could it be wrong if Lee said it was right? He was older, he was a cop, and he knew much more than you. You never even kissed a boy before him and he was so confident in everything he did that he must be doing it all right. 

Besides, after everything, if you refused him, you’d have only been leading him on and using him for his kindness, even if you didn’t realise what you were doing. Because what you did know was that he was a man and you were a woman and that he was doing nice things for you. And you accepted them all. The least you could do was bide his affection. That was the age old exchange, was it not?

“Next week, we’ll review chapters five and six,” the professor’s tone piqued as his ramble subsided, “I expect a class discussion and you can expect ten percent of your mark to be evaluated from your contribution and I will know if you just ‘skimmed’ the introduction.’

The class grumbled as he dismissed you and you stood slowly, stretching the cramp from your leg. You packed up your bag and hauled it on your shoulder. You had a gap between that class and your afternoon publishing class. You trailed out behind the flow of chattering students but found many of them lowered their voices as they came out into the hall.

There voices fell to whispers as they entered the hall. The sight of a brown hat assured you of the reason. Sheriff Bodecker stood against the painted brick and watched the students pass by, each eyeing him nervously and some chuckling under their breaths nervously. You tried to hide behind a taller student but your name tripped you up.

Despite your efforts to maintain your invisibility, he’d spotted you and you knew you could run away. Several of your peers craned around to watch you, no doubt suspecting some trouble on your part. You dragged your feet and stepped out of the tide of fleeing co-eds to stand along the wall with Lee.

“Hi,” you said quietly.

“Young lady,” he said staunchly and kept his eyes on the other students, nodding at them darkly as they passed.

He waited until the hall was empty before he turned on you. You fidgeted and caught your bag as it slipped from your shoulder. Your thoughts wrinkled above your brow and you stared at his brown leather shoes.

“How did you… find me here?”

He was silent as he reached in his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He opened it and showed you a print-out of your schedule.

“Easy enough,” he tapped his badge nonchalantly, “I was worried. You didn’t answer last night.”

“I fell asleep early,” you said weakly, “morning lecture, you know?”

“Mmm,” he hummed, “not that early.”

“I’m sorry, I was sleep--”

“You’re no good at lying and I don’t like you telling me fibs,” he growled, “you playin’ around with me, honey.”

“No, I…” you blinked as he folded the paper back into his pocket and pushed his jacket back to settle his hand on his pistol.

“Did you forget who I am? What I am?” he arched a brow darkly.

“N-No, sir, I… I got schoolwork and--”

“You can’t stop and talk to me for ten minutes?” he challenged, “you hurt me, honey. I’m out on patrol all night, in danger, and the only thing I got to look forward to is hearing your sweet voice.”

“I, um, I… er, I’m confused,” you eked out, “I don’t know… I…”

“Honey,” he leaned in and his hot breath glossed over you as he lowered his voice, “you know what this is, we both know what a bad girl you were on Saturday.”

“I didn’t…” you swallowed and choked on your voice, “I gotta go to the library--”

You tried to turn away but were pulled back by his tight grip on your arm. He forced you against the wall and knocked the wind from you as your bag tumbled from your arm. You gasped and stared up at him in fright. In that moment, he seemed bigger than ever; taller, thicker, and strong as hell. Stronger than you for sure.

“You don’t go nowhere ‘less I say you do,” his other hand shifted on his gun, “you got me?”

“What are you-- I didn’t… why are you being mean?”

“Me? Honey pie, you been avoiding me and I’m mean?” he snarled.

“I wasn’t avoiding you, I’m just... busy,” you whimpered as he squeezed your arm so tight it throbbed, “you’re hurting me.”

“You’re hurting me,” he hissed, “you think I got time to be comin’ down here on duty to find you?”

“You didn’t have to--”

“I did,” he barked, “I had to make sure you weren’t hussyin’ around with any other boys, like I found you last week.”

“I told you, that wasn’t--”

“Shhhhh,” his hand flew to your chin and forced your mouth shut, “I don’t got the time for this, honey. I’ll be around tonight and you’ll wear a pretty dress for me, won’t you?”

You clenched your jaw and nodded stiffly as his thumb toyed with your lip. He smiled and the tension left his grasp.

“Good girl,” he drew away and squared his shoulders, “you be ready at six and don’t keep me waitin’ again.”

“Yes, sir,” you croaked.

“Mmm,” he nodded with a smirk, “you know, I think I do prefer ‘sir’.” He bent and kissed your lips before you could turn away. You let him and he stood straight again and adjusted his belt, “six o’clock, honey pie.”

[royalpain16]

Greater than Buckingham Palace

In the second volume of his magisterial life of W.B. Yeats, Roy Foster records a visit made by the poet to Markree Castle, County Sligo in late summer 1929. The house was then owned by Bryan Cooper, sometime poet and playwright, and for the previous six years a T.D. in Dáil Éireann. According to Foster, the visit was not altogether a success. Peter Cooper, one of his host’s sons, remembered it as ‘a great nuisance…he was deposited by his long-suffering wife, with instructions not to let him go out in the wet grass in his slippers, and she then disappeared off to Galway with the children.’ Bryan Cooper’s daughter Ursula was, it appears, equally not impressed when Yeats read her a poem he had just written. On the other hand, Bryan Cooper’s wife Lillian was delighted to hear from the poet that he had ‘realised the ambition of my life…as we have always looked on the Coopers and Markree Castle as greater than the Royal Family and Buckingham Palace.’ 

The first of the Coopers to live in Ireland is said to have been an English soldier who married the famous Máire Rua O’Brien after her second husband Conor O’Brien of Leamaneh Castle, County Clare was killed in 1651. Eight years later, Charles II granted Cooper land in County Sligo which had previously belonged to the McDonagh clan; it was based around a fort guarding a pass on the river Unsin, and this remains the site of Markree Castle. At some point in the 18th century, a classical house was constructed here, of three storeys with a five-bay entrance front (with three-bay breakfront) and the garden side with a single bay on either side of a curved bow. However, in 1802 Joshua Cooper commissioned Francis Johnston to transform the building into a castle. At that time Markree was also greatly enlarged, what had been the main facade extended to more than twice its original length and centred on a curved and battlemented tower; this now become – as it remains – the garden front. The entrance was now moved to an adjacent side, to which Johnston added a porch, while elsewhere an office wing was constructed, joined to the rest by a canted link. Further changes were made by Joshua Cooper’s nephew and heir, Edward Joshua Cooper, a keen astronomer who built an observatory in the demesne. Inside the castle, London architect Joseph Gwilt transformed the office wing into a private gothic chapel. Gwilt was also responsible for redecorating the interiors of the rooms overlooking the garden, in what Mark Bence-Jones described as ‘an ornate Louis Quatorze style; with much gilding and well-fed putti in high relief supporting cartouches and trailing swags of flowers and fruits.’ (These spaces are now used as dining rooms). In the mid-1860s, the next generation to live here, Colonel Edward Henry Cooper, initiated further changes, this time employing James Maitland Wardrop who gave the exterior its present heavily fortified appearance. The entrance was moved once more with the construction of a vast porte – cochère (with billiard room directly above). Inside, a baronial stone staircase leads up to the reception rooms and here a second Imperial staircase in oak, lit by a great arched window filled with heraldic stained glass with portraits of members of the Cooper family and monarchs, leads to a top-lit gallery off which open the main bedrooms. Francis Johnston’s former entrance was turned into a long gallery divided by pairs of marble Ionic columns.

The history of Markree Castle for much of the last century was one of seemingly irreversible decline, personified by the fact that in 1988 it was used for the filming of a television series based on J.G. Farrell’s novel Troubles, and that same year its staircase hall featured on the cover of Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland. Until the last quarter of the 19th century, the castle had stood at the centre of an estate running to more than 42,000 acres, but most of this was sold by Bryan Cooper under the new land acts after he inherited the property from his grandfather in 1902. He then spent much of his time in Dublin, especially in later years so that Markree became only occupied during the summer months. When Bryan Cooper died in 1930, his eldest son Edward Francis Patrick Cooper was left the place; he and his family lived there until 1952 when it became impossible for them to maintain such a large house. As a result, many of the original contents were auctioned, and the Coopers moved into the old service wing, leaving the rest of the building empty. In the early 1980s, Markree was passed to the next generation but the eldest son, Edward, did not wish to live in the house, and eventually it was taken over by his younger brother Charles who had trained in hotel management and therefore decided to turn the castle, by now in very bad condition, into an hotel. He and his wife Mary embarked on a programme of restoration and ran the business until 2014 when, wishing to retire, they put Markree Castle on the market. The following year it was bought by the Corscadden family who already owned a number of other hotels located in historic properties and, after further refurbishment, the castle has been open to guests ever since.

[therealvinelle]

Maybe this is bold of me to ask, but are there any deleted scenes from your fics, or scenes you had consideted writing but didn't? And if yes, would you be willing to share them someday?

Oh no problem!

Usually when a scene is deleted it stays deleted, so I don't have a lot to give you. There are a few things that were cut in betaing for various reasons, I can put a few of them below a readmore in this post.

There's the prologue that never was to Nebuchadnezzar's Dream, from back when the fic was supposed to be told alternately from Bella and Carlisle's respective points of view. In the prologue we saw how Bella, Alice, and Edward came to the point where they decided to overthrow the Volturi. Or, we would have, except I didn't actually like that prologue, and found myself jumping straight to writing chapter 2, the "Carlisle is at a party and gets attacked by a werewolf" chapter instead. My good beta @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin asked why I didn't simply make the whole fic from Carlisle's point of view, I realized she had an excellent point, now here we are.

For that matter, this is nowhere near the only significant change that happened to this fic during writing. One example, in the original outline I never brought up Carlisle's gift. Two significant things in the last chapter were not planned until after I published chapters twelve and thirteen, respectively (Luckily for me it'll look like I plotted them all along, so yay for that). For a tightly plotted fic, this one has had a lot of leeway.

Slight caveat, as I’m self-conscious: with most of these you will probably be able to tell why they’re deleted scenes. Especially the prologue. God, that prologue.

(Also, for the record yes I do write other things, but due to 1. being betaed, and 2. being long, I really only have examples for Nebuchadnezzar's Dream.)

The prologue that never was. Apologies for the fluff saturation:

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II once had a dream.

There was a statue that was gold on top, then silver, then copper, then iron, then clay and iron. As he watched, a rock struck its feet, and soon the whole statue crumbled, leaving nothing but rubble. The rock then grew into a great mountain that covered all the world.

This, the prophet Daniel told the king, was a message from Jehovah.

The statue represented five great human empires, the golden head being the Babylonian Empire, and the following three being those who would come after. The last would be both iron and clay, a divided kingdom. It will fall, and then the kingdom of Heaven will come, crushing those empires in its path.

Thousands of years later, in 1453, the Byzantine Empire fell. The last of the Roman Empire, a divided kingdom, had fallen.

The Christian world trembled, because reckoning was surely near. With the fall of this last, great human empire, all the world would fall to rubble.

-

Fifteen years had passed.

The Cullens had left Forks behind, settling in the small town of Grafton, Idaho. Carlisle had quickly settled into the new hospital, and Esme had designed a beautiful new home for them while the rest attended the new school. Jasper and Rosalie were Carlisle’s younger siblings while Bella, Edward, Renesmée and Esme comprised another set of siblings. Alice and Emmett were the fosters.

Jacob wasn’t far, he still lived with his old .

«Did you hear they all scored an A on Mr Rosen’s test? Seriously, all of them!»

The words were uttered by Jenna Gilbert, a blonde sophomore who reminded Bella very much of Jessica Stanley. She was sitting on the opposite end of the cafeteria from Bella and her family, though

«Jen, it’s the Cullens, that’s just what they do. You should stop comparing yourself…» her friend said soothingly.

Bella ducked her face into her hand to hide her smile, and winked at Alice, who grinned back at her.

It was Bella and Renesmée’s first time going to high school as a vampire. It was exactly what Edward and Alice had said it would be, for better and for worse.

For the worse, because she spent her days pretending to be a human girl, never using her strength or speed, pretending Edward wasn’t her husband and Renesmée wasn’t her daughter.

For the better, because she got to spend every day with Edward, Renesmée, and the rest of her new family. The others had done the high school routine too many times to see things the way she did, and Renesmée had never known a life without the Cullens, but to Bella, attending high school as one of Dr. Cullen’s adoptive kids felt like she had truly come full circle since that first day she spotted Edward in the cafeteria. She was one of them, truly, irrevocably, and high school was nothing if not a promise of the countless years to come surrounded by the people she loved.

Edward caught her eye, and she smiled back at him. She lowered her shield briefly to show him how happy she was to be with her family.

His face softened into that beautiful, lop-sided smile of his, and he leaned in to whisper into her ear, «You’ll be less happy when you’ve been through English 101,» he said.

«Hey, hey,» Jasper said quickly. «Don’t you dare, Edward, I need all the happiness I can get in this place.» He locked eyes with Bella. «Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.»

Bella laughed, and rested her head on Edward’s shoulder. He placed his hand above hers on the table, and she smiled. «Not a problem, Jazz.»

Jenna’s voice caught her notice again. «Look at how they’re sitting! Try and tell me they’re not incestuous, Cam. Just try.»

Her friend didn’t reply to that one, although a quick glance informed Bella that the girl was staring at the Cullen table with a frown on her face.

Bella and Alice caught each others’ eye again, and this time they couldn’t hold back the giggles.

***********

Later in the day, Alice’s eyes lit up. «You’ll receive a letter from Stefan and Vladimir a week from now,» she chirped.

«Oh!» Bella exclaimed. «What does it say?»

«The usual,» Alice replied, her eyes slightly distant as she concentrated. «They hope we’re all doing well, and they included a new story of how things used to be before the Volturi. It’s the story of how they once built an entire temple for themselves in just one day. Oh, and they have a new phone number. O-seven nine six five nine six.»

Bella’s eyes widened as Alice talked. She hoped they had included drawings of that temple, it sounded incredible.

Bella hadn’t expected the Romanians to stay in touch, when they left after the thwarted battle with the Volturi she thought they would slink back into the old European shadows they had cloaked themselves in for that past several thousand few years, not to be heard from until some new threat to the Volturi loomed.

But no, that very next Christmas Bella had received a gift from them. It was an old, if flaked painting of Ivan the Terrible looking a lot like Vladimir, and a note from Vladimir explaining how he fooled all of Russia into believing he was their ruler for decades, all right beneath Aro’s nose. Carlisle had broken into a fit of uncharacteristic giggles when he heard that, and even agreed to put the painting in the hallway. To this day, he’d huff with silent laughter whenever he walked past it.

After that, Bella and the two Romanians had been in touch. They’d send her gifts, stories, and their own observations about the Volturi, and she’d respond fondly.

It was a very unlikely friendship, but she was was eternally grateful to all those who had stood with her family when the Volturi came. The Romanians were no exception,

«Are you going to call them?» Alice inquired.

Bella nodded. «They were going to tell me about their visit to Thebes.»

(Outline: Prologue of sorts. Status quo update, everyone’s happy except for the part where the Volturi are waiting to kill them. Alice, Bella, and Edward form their plan. Alice sees that she’s going to have to send Carlisle away, and coincidentally his hospital colleagues are having their Christmas weekend in Montana. PERFECT. She talks to him.)

***********

Heavily altered scene from chapter 7

Carlisle makes more jokes than he did in the final product, they're unfunny to the point where my beta said "you can't publish this", the plague joke in particular is a bit too dark for him so I gave it to Jane instead. More importantly, the chapter itself has a very weird, clunky start:

«Is it the gift of being profoundly unimpressed by ridiculous claims?» Carlisle deadpanned. «Because if so, Aro, I think you might be on to something.»

Several seconds had passed since Aro made his ridiculous claim. At first, Carlisle had burst out laughing. Then, as he realized he was the only person in the room laughing and Aro was staring at him in full seriousness, his laughter had trailed off and he’d been left to stare dully at Aro for several long seconds, waiting for Aro to crack up and say «gotcha!».

Aro never cracked up.

Carlisle had absolutely no idea what Aro was playing at, especially not immediately after Carlisle had very reluctantly decided against shutting him out of his life.

«You can’t be serious,» he’d said.

Aro had sighed. «I’m afraid I am.»

And now, at Carlisle’s deadpan guess, Aro only shook his head. «Not quite.»

Carlisle stared at him for another second, before he ventured another, scathing guess. «Are you hoping it’s the power of being highly suggestible? Because I definitely don’t have that, or I would have abandoned my diet centuries centuries ago.»

Aro just looked at him. «If you would let me explain-» he began, but Carlisle cut him off.

«No, no, you want to try and convince me I have some sort of gift, then I want to guess at what you’re going for,» he said, crossing his legs at the knee and propping his chin up on his knuckle in a faux-pensive look.

«Now,» he continued, even as Aro gave him the world’s most unimpressed glare, as if Carlisle was the one who was being ridiculous, «I’m pretty sure I would have noticed the power to throw fireballs by now, so it can’t be that,» he mused aloud. «Same goes for the power of…» he searched his mind, «turning into a bat. That one would definitely have come up at some point. Or maybe I should suspend myself upside down in a cave. See if it triggers anything. Just to be sure.»

«Carlisle,» Aro murmured, but Carlisle wasn’t done.

«Maybe I spread disease. My father certainly thought demons did. Maybe that’s why I get so many interesting patients. Those brain fungi,» he nodded towards Renata, who was still sitting with the book open in her lap, «I’ve had two in one year. That’s a lot.»

«Carlisle-» Aro tried again, but Carlisle held up a finger, a wide grin spreading across his face.

«The power to change my eye color. You see, yesterday they were black-»

Aro actually rolled his eyes at that. Of course, he made the insolent gesture look like a fluid, enchanting movement.

«Yes, quite funny, now if you would let me explain…» Aro tried again while Carlisle tried not to snicker at his own joke.

***********

Two deleted paragraphs from chapter 9. The alteration was made because it was a bit on the nose about what Renesmée does.

Humans were mammals, and mammals were hardwired to protect their young. This extended across species, making mother cats care for puppies and humans care for anything that was small and cute. The instinct to love and cherish anything cute and helpless was an evolutionary necessity, and had to run deeper than anything if a species wanted to survive.

Enter Jane, who was the smallest, cutest thing Carlisle had ever seen, but from a species humans instinctively knew to fear. Maybe the very fact that she was something that humans knew they should want to care for made their fear exponential, made it impossible to deny that something was very wrong about her, that they were looking at a predator.

Perhaps too there was something to vampires having retained some of that human instinct to protect their young, if the countless stories of covens dying to protect their immortal children was anything to go by. Carlisle himself had been no exception when the Volturi came for Renesmée, even as he found himself risking the lives of countless friends.

How far things had come, he thought, from preparing to die along with his loved ones at the hands of the Volturi to sitting across a café table with Jane and pitching costume ideas.

***********

Chapter 9 was heavily altered, mainly as it was too funny the first (and second!) time around and I kept having to return to insert more existential dread. A side effect of this is that Carlisle in the original draft was still undecided on whether he had a gift up until the very end of the chapter, whereas it's proven beyond a doubt much earlier in the published version.

Jane was looking a bit daunted, though it was nothing compared to how Carlisle felt.

Silently, they went to stand in front of one of the many sports stores that Whitefish had to offer.

«This could still be confirmation bias,» Carlisle whispered, and leaned against the wall. For all the human blood that was in his system, his knees felt oddly weak.

Jane let out a startled laugh. «You’re seriously still in denial?»

Carlisle shook his head quietly. «They reacted pretty reasonably, just because they didn’t run away screaming…»

«Reasonably?» Jane echoed dully. «Carlisle, you can’t actually…» she shook her head. «Remember that bubble we talked about?»

Carlisle put his head in his hands, and let his fingers move up, under the wig, pulling it off in one neat motion.

Jane shook her head at him. «You look even more glamorous with your real hair.»

Carlisle still said nothing, balling the wig together in his hands.

Could it be he actually had a gift?

***********

The chapter 11 outline originally had Renata and Carlisle failing to communicate like normal people because they've spent too much time with Aro, and unintentional innuendo keeps ruining their attempts to make polite small talk. Sadly (or happily) this is a lot easier to conceptualize than carry out in actual writing, and their conversation wound up being far too serious for that, so it was cut. Luckily for you I did pen Carlisle flashbacking to a time his foot got in his mouth:

The moment after the words were out her face scrunched up.

Carlisle snorted. «Aro is a horrible influence on us all.»

He remembered one of his first talks with Jasper, when they were still getting to know each other.

Jasper had been a little starstruck when he learned Carlisle’s friends in Italy were those Italians.

He’d asked Carlisle a lot of questions once he got past a misplaced sense of awe, wanting to put a face to the eternal, petrified, leaders of the vampire world.

During a hunt with just the two of them, Jasper had been asking about Aro’s gift.

«What do you even think about when you’re with him?» Jasper had marvelled aloud, and he would later explain that the way he say it, this was like the way the Egyptian gods supposedly measured souls.

Place your heart upon the balancing scale against the weight of a feather, and if your heart weighs heavier it is devoured by the demon Ammit.

Place your hand in Aro’s, and if he deems you guilty of breaking his law, you will be torn to pieces in the space of a second.

Being friends with the man sounded unbearably stressful to Jasper.

Unfortunately, Carlisle’s mind had gone in the opposite direction, and what came out of his mouth before he could stop himself was, «England.»

He’d covered well enough for that, or he hoped he had. Jasper never asked.

***********

Chapter 11 was also supposed to have Renata being brave enough to ask for a selfie with Carlisle when they're both in black robes, this because I just really want Edward to sift through the Volturi group chat after all this and finding that. Alas, I couldn't work it in there. (Determined to not lose the joke, I had Aro take the photos in chapter 12 instead.)

***********

Chapter 12, the fandom ghost requested I include another butt slap and offered me fanart if I fulfilled her wish.

And so:

He held up a hand, presumably to touch Carlisle’s arm in comfort, but just then Alec started retching.

«He ate human food,» Jane deadpanned to Demetri, Felix, and Renata. Shaking her head, she brushed Alec’s hair out of his face as he hurled into the river.

Aro grimaced slightly, his hand hovering in the air.

Carlisle felt all the bread, corn flakes, and water that he’d swallowed press uncomfortably against his esophagus. «I’ll do you one better, Alec,» he choked, before he span around, fell to his knees and started retching, much like a cat.

Aro, evidently not sure what to do with his arm but not about to let it drop purposelessly, gave Carlisle a supportive pat on the bum before kneeling beside him to hold his hair as he hurled.

It was funny, but simply didn't fit the tone considering what happened after. It had to go. But hey, I got the art.

[kreepykix]

Peachy (Chapter 2)

a/n: ok ok so i started this forever ago and i already had the whole thing written out but it was crap so i went back and fixed it and decided to post it! i really hope you like it and ill probably post the last chapter in the next few days, enjoy! <3

Chapter 1

For a solid week you managed to avoid Roman successfully. After that day spent with him you just felt off, he’d make eye contact with you and your face would warm, he’d smile and you’d stutter or stare awkwardly. You knew that he was quickly going to realize something was up so you decided avoidance was the best way to go. And it worked, until Roman cornered you in the stairwell at school. He was standing in front of the door, arms crossed, looking pissed as all hell. You were standing at the bottom of the stairs and debated just turning around and leaving but you knew it’d only make things worse so you reluctantly walked up, leaving a few steps between you as you stopped.

“Hey!” You smiled, plastering on a happy façade.  

His expression didn’t change, “What’s up with you?” He pressed, taking a step down towards you, his height was intimidating and you swallowed thickly. It’s just the same old Roman, Y/N, no need to freak out. You thought to yourself weakly. 

“Nothing, I’ve just been busy,” You lied with a reassuring smile that he absolutely didn’t buy but the skepticism still written on his face. 

“Okay Y/N, I’ll just fuck off then.” He turned to go but you knew what he was doing. You’ve known Roman for most of your life and you knew how he reacted when he felt as though he was being pushed away or left out, you’d seen it plenty of times with Olivia. He’d turn defensive, even aggressive sometimes and shut down, creating a divide that you knew was meant to protect him but just hurt and you never wanted to be on the other side of that divide. He meant too much to you.

“Wait!” You grabbed his wrist to stop him and he whipped around to face you, anguish and desperation playing openly on his features.  “I’m sorry, it’s just that I've been feeling a little… strange lately and I took it out on you, I’m sorry, please don’t be mad at me.” You swallowed, searching deep into his eyes for a sign that you were okay. Without a word he pulled you into a bone-crushing hug, he had one arm wrapped around your waist and the other clutching the back of your neck. You wrapped your arms around him and just enjoyed the closeness between you two. No awkwardness or conflicting feelings in this still moment, just plain closeness. Eventually you pulled back and Roman looked down at you, concern racing through this gaze.

“How about I come over to yours after school and we can just hangout and talk, I don’t see enough of you as it is, I don’t want you running off on me.” He said with a reluctant smirk, butterflies fluttered in your stomach as you nodded with a thin-lipped smile. 

“Sounds good,” You agreed, parting ways till after school when he followed you home in his car. You pulled up in the driveway, Romans red Road Coaster pulling up behind you. You’d always loved his car, the warm summer nights spent with the top down and a destination nowhere in mind, just a road that seemed to trail on forever. The radio would blast your favorite songs and you’d sing them along together, that was back when you were a duo, not a trio, and while it was great for Roman to have another friend you longed for the days when it was just the two of you against everyone else. 

You hopped out of your car, the door closing with a slam. You heard Romans door follow with the same and you turned, shooting a smile to the beautiful boy in your driveway. His lips turned up, mirroring your own and you turned, heading for the front door. Roman caught up and wrapped an arm around your shoulders, pressing a quick kiss into your scalp and something inside of you flipped with nerves. You just smiled, pushing it down and continued to walk as if you weren’t questioning every decision you’ve ever made. You pulled open the door, leading Roman in and shutting it behind you. “Hmmmm,” You heard Roman hum and you turned to see what he was up to. He took off up the stairs, running down the hall in a moment of rare immaturity. 

You followed behind, racing up the stairs as fast as you could without tripping, “Roman!” You yelled, “What are you doing?” You raced into your room to see Roman with every blanket you owned piled on and around him, just his face peering out of the mound, a strand of hair had fallen into his face and you melted a bit at the sight. You shook it off and just laughed, kicking off your shoes before you hopped in right next to him, pulling back the blankets to make room for yourself. Roman grinned at your reaction and helped pile the blankets back on. Once you were settled you turned to look at him, a comfortable smile etched on his face. 

He noticed your gaze and turned with a questioning gaze, “You ready to talk?” He asked, nudging you with his elbow.

You sighed, turning your head away, it was easier to not make eye contact. “I guess I’ve just felt… off lately, Peter showing up just changed things and while I love Peter I miss us and I just figured I’d distance myself before you could do it for me.” You sighed, part of it was true but you weren’t ready to dive into the new things you were feeling for him, you didn’t even know how you felt yet, so why bother him with the uncertainty, especially since you know he doesn’t feel the same? You grabbed his hand from under the blanket and pulled it into your lap, the size of his hand completely eclipsing your small ones. You squeezed, turning to glance at him to see his gaze already trained intensely on you. Your cheeks warmed and his thumb started to rub soothing circles on the back of your hand. “I’ve just really missed you.” You murmured softly, leaning your head against his shoulder. A lone tear slid down your cheek without warning and you moved to brush it away but Roman had already seen it. 

He frowned deeply, lines creasing his features and he wrapped his arms tightly around you. “You know I’m not going anywhere right? I’m sorry we haven’t been hanging out as much, I promise I’ll start making time for you. You’re my best friend, don’t ever forget that. I would never leave you.” He whispered the last part and you nodded, sniffling. “How about every Friday from now on will be our day?” You looked up at him with surprised eyes. 

“Really? You’d do that for me?” You asked, suspicion in your gaze. 

He looked surprised, “Of course, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.” He said and you chuckled in disbelief. 

“Whatever, I’m holding you to that every Friday thing though.” You smirked, rolling your eyes. 

“Hey! Don’t brush me off!  You thought I’d forget about you!” He chuckled, rolling his eyes as if the idea were crazy. 

-

He kept his word. Every Friday for the next six weeks was spent with Roman, he’d pick you up and you’d drive somewhere or go back to his or even just stay at yours, it didn’t matter. Your friendship felt repaired, maybe even better than before and your feelings had mostly gone, mostly. You’d still feel dizzy when he’d catch you off guard with a dazzling grin and still get fluttery when he would kiss you on the cheek. 

Another Friday rolled up on you quickly and you headed towards the front doors of the school to find Roman and ask about the plans for that night. You found him on the front steps of the school, body pressed against some girl as they attempted to swallow each other’s faces whole. 

You don’t know what made your reaction so strong but you ran back inside, swinging the door to the ladies bathroom wide open as you ran to a stall, expelling your lunch into the toilet bowl. You coughed and brought your head back up, eyes watering. Maybe your feelings hadn’t subsided after all. You frowned and grabbed some toilet paper to wipe your mouth off and went to the sink, rinsing your mouth out and splashing some water on your face, looking in the mirror as it dripped down your face. You had to tell him how you felt, it was driving you crazy and you finally felt like you were in a good enough place that he wouldn’t abandon you after you confessed, things would probably just be awkward for a while. You didn’t expect him to feel the same way, you knew he didn’t but you still wanted to out yourself so maybe he would be a little less public about his infatuation with any member of the opposite sex and allow you to get over your budding feelings for him. You were crazy about him and you couldn’t stand seeing him with anyone but you. 

You patted your face dry and headed out of the bathroom and out the front doors yet again though Roman was now on his own. “Hey,” You smiled though your gut was twisting with the thought of telling him how you felt.

He returned the smile easily, looping his arm through yours as you made your way down the stairs together. “Hey, so I was thinking a chill movie night tonight, do you just wanna drive over to mine around seven?” This was the first time he had asked you to drive over but you didn’t mind, you knew he had things he needed to do. 

You nodded, “Sure, sounds good, it’s a full moon tonight, maybe we should watch a horror movie, just to add to the vibes.” You quirked your brow and nudged him in the side playfully with your elbow and he chuckled. 

“Sounds like a plan, see you later ok?” He said and you nodded, parting ways as you went off to your respective cars. 

——

That night you swiped your keys off the kitchen table, said a quick goodbye to your mom and swept out of the house, light on your feet with the prospect of spending the night with Roman. As you neared the Godfrey residence, your nerves started to flare up again. You weren’t sure how he would react to your confession, probably kick you out, but he had to know. He did, you were just trying to reassure yourself at this point. As you passed Peter's house you noticed a familiar red Road Coaster parked in the driveway and you pulled in behind him, figuring you’d just say hi to Peter then you and Roman would take off. As you lifted your hand to knock on the front door of the trailer, you heard what sounded a bit like grunting coming from around the side of the house. Curiosity piqued, you got closer and made out some voices that sounded a suspicious amount like Roman and Lynda. You turned the corner, gasping audibly at what you saw. Peter, hunched over and shaking like a tree on a windy day, his spine cracking and snapping. You watched in shock as his hands formed paws, his skin falling to the forest floor lifelessly as it was replaced with fur. You just stood there, shock encumbering your body, unable to move as you witnessed something that by all means should be impossible. You felt your whole world shift as you finally found your feet. You took a step back, stumbling on a stick you hadn’t noticed before as it broke with a snap. All eyes snapped to you in a moment, Lynda and Romans human ones along with Peters now bright yellow, animalistic ones. You were a deer caught in the headlights, eyes like dinner plates and mouth agape. 

“I…” You trailed off, at a loss for words. Roman rushed towards you but you took a step back, shocking him enough for him to stop, you couldn’t remember a time when you had rejected him. “I don’t understand.” You murmured, eyes glued to Peter as he stared at you, you stared back till he finally turned and bounded off into the shifting night. 

Roman took another step towards you, “I can explain, okay? You just have to promise not to tell anyone.” Your eyes flicked to him, betrayal stinging your eyes in the form of tears. 

“You knew about this?” You crumbled, you didn’t understand anything anymore. “You knew about this and you didn’t think to tell me or include me? You knew I’d been feeling out of place and you still didn’t think that maybe I would like to know that one of my closest friends becomes a fucking canine on full moons?!” Anger flared up in you as Roman opened his mouth to spout off what you knew was some bullshit excuse. You held up your hand, “Don’t, I don’t want to hear it.” Without another word you turned, breaking into a run for your car. You got in as fast as humanly possible and tore out of the driveway like a bat out of hell. Tears streamed avidly down your cheeks as you hastily drove back home, the headlights close behind alerting you that you had a follower. You knew in the back of your head that were definitely in denial. Your brain couldn’t process what you had seen, your breathing grew fast and ragged as you finally pulled up to your house, Roman right behind you. You let out a sob, head leaned against the steering wheel. You weren’t sure which was causing your breakdown, the thought that Peter could turn into a wolf or the fact that your best friend had been lying to you for god knows how long, probably a mix of both. You heard a knock on your window and looked up to see a concerned, desperate Roman, eyebrows raised and panic in his gaze.  You glared as you opened your car door, steeling yourself for the fight to ensue. You brushed off the tears left on your cheeks and flipped your panic into anger. 

“Fuck off Roman.” You shot out as you walked towards your front door. You heard his steps behind you and you whipped around to face him. “Please just fucking go before I say something I can’t take back.” You pushed against his chest in an attempt to get him to go but he stayed planted in front of you. 

“I didn’t want to keep it from you, it's just—“ You cut him off. 

“What? You didn’t trust me? Thought I’d tell someone because I have so many friends?” Sarcasm dripping from your words, your glare deepening. 

“Of course not, I just didn’t want to drag you into it, it’s a whole lot of shit Y/N.” He took a step towards you but you took one back. 

“Don’t, just don’t. I won’t tell anyone but I need some time… to process things and figure out where I go from here… where we go.” You turned and headed to your front door. As you put your hand on the doorknob you turned, seeing Roman still planted in the same place. “I was an idiot to have feelings for you.” You said it softly but you knew he had heard from the way he stiffened. That was as much an answer as you needed before you swept into the house, the front door closing with a soft click. You dragged yourself up to your room, collapsing carefully onto your bed. You laid there, staring at the ceiling. You had expected this night to go so different yet it still had a similar outcome. Although, the ball is in your court now. You just needed some time to let everything sink in, then have a talk with Roman. Your world had been flipped upside down and you deserved time to come to terms with that, plus the fact that though Roman had acted like everything was peachy and perfect he had been keeping a massive secret from you willingly and while a small voice in the back of your head told you you were overreacting a bit, your feelings were hurt. 

You kicked off your shoes and pulled back your covers, crawling into bed and falling into a dreamless sleep. You didn’t bother getting up the next morning, or the morning after that, or even the morning after that. You stayed in bed for 4 days, just thinking. You feigned sickness to your parents and didn’t feel obligated to get up in the morning. You didn’t want to know what was waiting for you out there and clearly no one cared if you dipped off the face of the earth for a while. On that fifth day you finally pulled yourself out of bed, dragging your feet to the shower as you peeled off your musty clothes and steam filled the room. The warm water seemed to wash away the dust that had been clouding your mind and you thought clearly for the first time in 120 hours. You could live with the fact that Peter was a werewolf, you had come to terms with that a while ago. It was Roman you were dreading. He had lied to you and you had outed your feelings. Things weren’t exactly sunny anymore. You were going to have to have a long talk before you could even begin to repair your friendship. God know what he was thinking and how he was going to behave knowing you had feelings for him. 

You turned off the shower and wrang out your hair before stepping out of the shower and wrapping a towel around yourself. You picked out a sweater and jeans, pulling your hair out of your face and applying light makeup before deciding you were presentable to the public. You headed to school, knowing that today would only bring chaos. 

[mc-lukanette]

Grade for Each Other (Part 6)

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

Luka had visited the bakery (or at least the inside of it) only once before, when he, Marinette, and the rest of Kitty Section sent their music video to Bob Roth. Tom and Sabine had acknowledged their presence, but were too busy at the time to do much else.

That was why it surprised him when he entered the bakery and Tom set his sights on him instead of either of his friends or Marinette. With an exuberant shout about how "Luka was here!" (Luka had no idea why this was important enough to vocalize), Tom strolled up and stopped right in front of him.

Luka briefly saw his life flash before his eyes as Tom lifted him up into what was an extremely powerful bear hug, Mito's voice briefly cutting in to insist that Luka had done nothing wrong and didn't deserve this.

Luka's breath left him, his back cracked, and the daze he was left in when finally put down had him off balance as Tom ruffled his hair for effect. Thoroughly confused, even when Tom walked away and told them that he'd send snacks up later, Luka glanced over at Marinette. Her face was pink with embarrassment and she was playing with the collar of her shirt.

That's when Luka remembered: Marinette had hugged him right in front of the bakery. If Tom hadn't seen it at first, Sabine had probably seen it and gotten his attention. It had been a long hug, after all. Luka didn't know much about Tom and Sabine, but given that they were Marinette's parents and clearly very different from his own mother, he could guess. Maybe they'd even asked her about it and she'd told them vague details?

Either way, Luka couldn't stop the pink blush from appearing on his face. Marinette's hug had been so... "distracting"... that it hadn't even occurred to him that they'd have an audience.

Roche jabbed him with an elbow. In the most serious tone possible, he complimented, "I don't know what happened, but you're doing well with the in-laws."

Luka didn't comment. He'd been doing that a lot lately. He just turned his attention to going up the stairs with everyone else.

"I'm so sorry about that," Marinette whispered beside him. "They were really worried when I was going to a new class with people I didn't know, so when they saw me h-hug you back then..." She trailed off.

He smiled. "I don't mind. I'm happy that your parents trust me."

She snorted, the blush not quite off her face yet. "That's an understatement."

As they gathered outside the door to the living room, Marinette opened the door and held it until everyone was inside. Promptly shutting it, she shrugged off her backpack and held it up for effect. "You can set your things anywhere. Just don't forget it when you go home!"

Mito beamed appreciatively. "Thanks! This is a nice place you've got here, Marinette."

"You mean her parents' place," Roche deadpanned.

Pouting, Mito responded, "I mean, I'm sure she could own a place if she wanted to. We're all basically adults, right?"

He proceeded to balance his backpack on the lamp next to the bookshelf.

Claudine took a seat on the couch and clapped loudly, earning everyone's attention. "Okay! So, we're studying. What do you guys want to do first?"

"I—" Marinette paused, fumbling a bit as she took her book out of her backpack. "—maybe just the lessons we went over for the week? The teachers said they'd tell me what chapters to go over if there's a test coming up that I missed the lessons to."

"Lucky," Claudine said in a playful, jealous tone. "You'll let us in on the details when it happens, right?"

Marinette went stiff, staring at Claudine for a few seconds before shifting uncomfortably. "Ah... um—"

"I'm kidding, don't worry!" Claudine assured, snorting and waving a hand dismissively. "We'd never do anything to get you in trouble, Marinette!"

Her shoulders eased in response. Letting out a sigh of relief that sounded very much like the words “don't scare me like that again” without actually using those words, Marinette went over and sat next to Claudine. She set her backpack between her legs, then sorted through it to find her books.

Luka felt the nudges of both Roche and Mito as they passed him, each giving him looks before sitting down on the couch as well and leaving a very obvious space between them and Marinette. Part of Luka wanted to mutter something to them about being too obvious all this time, but really, most of their actions made sense given that Marinette knew him best out of all of them. Had she shown signs of discomfort, he definitely would've asked them to relax, but as it was, she seemed unbothered by all of it.

He walked over, taking a seat next to Marinette. She tossed him a small smile before continuing to pull out books, eyeing them with shaky confidence.

Roche was the first to start shuffling through his own books, efficiently finding the pages containing the lessons they'd done. Luka wisely held back from finding the pages, knowing that the table would be full of open books by the time they were done, even just adding in Claudine's and Marinette's.

At least it looked amusing to see them figure out how to rotate their books so the pages would be visible enough.

Marinette scanned the assorted books. "Let's start with... this one!" She pulled out one of her books, Claudine and Roche following suit while Luka shuffled through his own book. Mito realized belatedly that his books were still in his backpack - which was still balancing on the lamp - though Roche was happy to share.

The actual study session started at that point. Luka had no idea how often Marinette studied with her former friends, but judging from her nerves and what he knew about her, he guessed that her kwami helped her when her friends couldn't.

At least, he hoped so. He presumed that all miraculouses worked the same, but he also figured that not all kwami were alike. Sass, in the few times Luka had spoken with him, seemed helpful and attentive, but he had no idea what Marinette's was like. Marinette relied on him for comfort which, while flattering, simultaneously worried him when he wondered if her kwami was well-versed in her needs. Part of him kept hoping for an accidental eavesdrop or glimpse at the kwami that'd give him an idea of what they were like.

The other part was currently taken by Marinette's relaxed expression, her shoulders easing more and more the longer the studying went on. Given how social she was, he supposed that he should've suspected that she'd be so calm around his friends eventually, but nonetheless, it made him happy.

They were thirty minutes into studying before the door clicked behind them. They all collectively glanced over the back of the couch, Tom coming in with a dramatic lift of a tray in his hands.

"Ta-daaaah!" he exclaimed in a sing-song voice. Luka gave his pitch a six out of ten for note-holding and a ten out of ten for enthusiasm.

Mito, Claudine, and Roche all made quick work of clearing the table of books, leaving an absolute (but acceptable) mess everywhere else. Tom walked over with an approving smile at all the studying they seemed to be doing, particularly with Marinette still holding her book as if ready to continue at any moment.

"I made these especially for studying!" Tom assured, gesturing proudly to his work. "They're study sweets!"

Roche picked one of them up, pretending to study it critically. "Good alliteration at least. Not sure if 'study sweets' are a thing but who am I to question a professional baker?"

Mito made a noise that sounded somewhat like, "exactly," but it was hard to tell when his mouth was full. Luka simply smiled and went for a treat, saying, "Thank you, Mister Dupain," as politely as he could.

Claudine took a bite of one of sweets first, humming in delight before echoing him. "Yeah, thank you! These are great!"

"Thanks, Papa," Marinette said, a little stiff but genuine. They had been pretty in the zone with studying so she was probably eager to continue.

Tom was beaming. "Any time, kids!"

"Except not this time," Roche observed with a smile, "because we have to study and you have a bakery to run?"

Tom's brows raised. He pouted, lost for a response, then settled for laughing boisterously. Giving an approving look to them, he turned and waved dismissively. "Alright, alright, I'll get out of your hair."

As he walked away, Claudine gave the sweets another look. "Maybe we should split these up between us?"

"So it's even or so no one scarfs all of them?" Mito asked.

"Yes."

Marinette glanced at the tray and nodded, seemingly to show that she'd been listening. Luka noted the way her eyes slowly scanned the table, gears turning in her head while she herself remained completely still.

Then, she abruptly straightened and shut her book, inadvertently getting everyone's attention.

"Ah! I forgot to offer you guys drinks!"

There was a beat of silence, followed by Marinette looking regretfully down at the book she just lost the page number for. Luka reached over in an unspoken offer and she passed it to him with a mouthed "thank you."

She got up, then left for the other side of the room. While he flipped through her book to find the page they'd been on, she returned with five plates. In their usual harmonious fashion, Roche, Claudine, and Mito began dividing the sweets evenly amongst the plates.

Luka looked up as soon as he'd gotten the book to the right page. "Do you want any help with the drinks, Marinette?"

"Ah—" He could see that instinctive no about to play from her lips, but she reconsidered too quickly to get it out. "—if you want?"

He set the book down and followed after her. They walked over to the kitchen, but just as she'd opened the fridge, her phone went off.

Luka didn't have to guess what it was; his own phone had started vibrating at the exact same time.

An akuma alert.

Marinette opened her purse, then pulled her phone out. If their synced phones weren't enough, her disappointed expression certainly made it obvious.

"Um..." She glanced at him, then his friends, then the fridge. "I... I better go get more drinks! There's not anywhere near enough variety here!"

His friends gave her confused looks, Mito speaking up to point out, "You don't have to do that though?"

"Oh, but I do!"

Luka could see the strain in her smile at the lie.

"A-anyway, I'll be quick!" Her hand shot up in an awkward wave before she shoved her phone back into her purse and ran off. "You can eat my share of sweets!"

"But—" Roche tried to cut in.

The door shut, frantic footsteps following after. Mental gears turned in Luka's head as he turned back to his friends.

"...Well," Claudine spoke up, "on the plus side, now we can nominate you both for sainthood?"

Mito made a gesture akin to popping confetti, but Luka wasn't in the mood to laugh at it.

"...I'm going to go after her," he managed, brows furrowed. "She doesn't know what any of you like."

If they gave him any sort of "knowing" look, he didn't see it (and they would've been wrong anyway). He was out the door and down the stairs in seconds.

He couldn't imagine what lying to one's friends must've been like for Marinette, especially since she'd been doing it for a lot longer than he had. Her not being a particularly good liar probably didn't help that either.

He exited the bakery, then finally checked the alert on his phone to get a rough gauge of where the akuma was. He made sure to take the long route there, not wanting to accidentally run into Marinette and inconvenience her.

He couldn't recall exactly when he'd started doing this, though it was definitely after Ladybug had given him the snake miraculous. He knew there was little he could do, but since he'd already helped her once, it gave him a sense of comfort to be nearby in case Viperion was needed.

Part of it was him being a "worried boyfriend," as Claudine would’ve put it. He had full faith in Marinette's abilities as Ladybug, but there was still a part of him that wanted to be near even if she didn't know he was there. It kept him close to the action while simultaneously out of harm's way.

And if Ladybug did happen to need him, he could easily get within her line of sight. He knew how it worked by now, mostly from observation, and it was the Lucky Charm. If she stayed to use it, she didn't need help.

As Luka got to his destination, he found a far off place to hide, then peeked out. It wasn't hard to see Ladybug and Chat Noir fighting the akuma, both because they could jump so high and because the place was devoid of other people.

He forced himself to suppress the twisting sensation in his heart. Ladybug was a great hero, but things could always go wrong. It didn't do him any good to worry, so it was best to just keep an eye on things without really thinking.

Eventually, Ladybug summoned her Lucky Charm. He couldn't tell what she was looking at from the distance between them, but when she finally did jump away, it wasn't to go far.

No miraculous today, it seemed.

Luka let out a breath, then pulled his phone back out. Ladybug had a plan, meaning there was little room for doubt anymore.

Keeping the news window on his phone available for later, he located the nearest shop that sold drinks and started to make his way there. Given the lack of severity of this particular akuma, he doubted that Marinette would forget about the drinks, he could simply wait for the battle to be over and then call her. It would save her some time at least.

Thus, he made it to the store he found and idly waited, leaning against the wall and watching any updates from the fight on his phone. Following that, he noted the way Ladybug left and knew that he wouldn't have to call her at all, so he merely preoccupied himself with checking any texts he may've gotten after he left the bakery.

Only a few minutes later, he heard her voice. "Luka?"

He glanced over, seeing her phone held in both of her hands. She'd presumably found the shop in the same way he did.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, slipping her phone into her purse.

"I thought you might come here since the akuma was just taken care of." Not many people were eager to flood back into a place where an akuma was, after all. "You don't know what my friends like, right?"

"Oh?" She paused, then gasped. "Oh! I don't! I'm glad you're here! I mean, I would've been glad anyway, but—" She stopped herself, pouting at his amused smile, then walked up and took his wrist in her hand, quickly changing the subject. "You must've taken a different route than me. I ended up running right towards the akuma!"

"Really?" he asked, feigning surprise. "Were you alright?"

"Mhm! Ladybug and Chat Noir were there, so it was okay!" She beamed at him. "Anyway, shall we?"

He nodded and let her lead him inside, happily awaiting the inevitable disagreement over who was going to pay for the drinks.

——————

When they returned to the bakery, Marinette opened the side door and was about to head up the stairs when something caught her eye at the front of the bakery. Luka followed her gaze and noticed his friends talking it up with Tom and Sabine, three empty plates on the table nearby.

The moment he approached alongside Marinette, Claudine saw them out of the corner of her vision. "Oh, hey! You're both back!"

Everyone turned to them. Mito frowned and slumped over Roche, hands on Roche's shoulders and chin resting on Roche's head. "We heard about the akuma attack. You two end up okay?"

Marinette raised the bag of drinks with flair. "Yeah, we were fine!" She grinned at Luka, who read her expression right away and nodded to back her up. "So, should we get back to studying?"

"Oof, ah~" Claudine looked off innocently at the wall and Luka immediately knew where this was going.

Roche shrugged Mito off of him and explained, "Actually, we should be going now. We have other things to take care of, but you two can keep studying together, so don't worry!"

Luka tossed a glance at Marinette, watching her expression cycle from confusion, then self-consciousness, then realization. He could practically see their previous conversation flash through her mind.

“I’m sure we’ll still get some time together with just us.”

“Really? How do you know?”

“Because they know that I’d want to spend some one-on-one time with you.”

Her cheeks tinted pink. "N-no problem! You should still take these though!"

Luka offered his hands, Marinette handing him his and her drink before giving the bag of drinks to his friends. Still, they lingered, presumably to finish whatever conversation they'd been having with the Dupain-Chengs, so Luka simply headed back upstairs with Marinette to let things continue.

Marinette took the two drinks from him, then went into the living room. Her eyes scanned the neatened-up table with hers and Luka's book, along with the two plates of uneaten sweets.

She frowned, a little disappointed. "I wish we could've finished at least," she admitted, setting the drinks down near the sweets.

He wanted to point out that it wasn't her fault - it was the akuma's - but he wasn't supposed to know that. It was one of the bigger disadvantages to knowing her identity.

He hummed in thought. "Well... at least this means our study date date can start, right?" he reminded her, remaining calm despite being slightly worried that he was coming on too strong.

She straightened, then looked over to him with her brows raised. After a pause, she brightened up, blushing with a, "Yeah, you're right!" before an abrupt horror settled over her face. "...Wait, no! Not right! Not alright! I mean—"

With unusual swiftness, she picked up a pillow and ran over to him. Shoving it into his face, her footsteps indicated that she was rushing off and up the stairs to her room, voice echoing, "Don't look at me!"

Luka felt strangely compelled to continue holding the pillow to his face, though that didn't stop his confusion. He could only hope that neither Tom nor Sabine came up to ask him what he was doing and why Marinette wasn't with him, as he legitimately had no answer.

A little over a minute passed. He heard the trapdoor reopen. "I'm back! Sorry!"

He chuckled. "Am I allowed to look now, Marinette?"

"Wha—yes! You... oh my gosh, please take the pillow off."

He grinned and lowered the pillow from his face, squinting briefly at the sudden lack of darkness. He tossed the pillow aside, then turned his head to see—

oh.

Marinette sheepishly twirled a strand of hair. "I know it's not - you know - a real date, but... I wanted to change at least."

He could only nod, eyes scanning her "date-appropriate outfit" up and down and never lingering on any one thing for too long. He felt underdressed all of a sudden, or perhaps overdressed considering his usual layers. It wasn't even the outfit that'd surprised him, but rather how seriously Marinette had taken their own suggestion. No matter how much he told himself that he shouldn't be so stunned - that literally everything she'd said was leading to this moment - he couldn't stop.

Marinette shifted, but her smile seemed to indicate that she knew he wasn't displeased. "Ah—before we get back to studying, can I ask you something weird?"

He finally snapped out of his trance as she walked past him and went for the couch. "Weird?"

She sat down, setting her purse next to her before rifling through its contents. She presented him with her phone, replying, "I...I want to take a picture of us for that clipboard I have next to my bed."

He approached, taking a seat next to her while keeping a polite distance between them. "What's weird about that?"

"W-well, because I waited until your friends weren't here, and because of what it's replacing, and—" She stopped, studying his calm yet happy expression. Looking back down at her phone, she relented, "Okay, maybe it's not that weird."

He leaned just slightly to watch her prepare her camera's settings. She seemed so determined to get things right, constantly testing the lighting options against the room to make sure it looked good.

"You can do whatever makes you comfortable for this," she said idly. "I won't mind. I want a really natural picture."

He eyed her for clarification, but she was too focused on adjusting the camera.

Natural? What made him comfortable? What did that mean? He was "natural" normally, so unless she meant—

"Ready!" Marinette exclaimed, raising the camera to just above eye level and getting into place.

Luka felt a tentative hand at his side as she pulled herself closer to him. Her meaning clicked - she wanted him to feel welcome to touch her - and his heart skipped a beat at the realization of it. He had no idea if she knew how often he’d thought about holding her hand or hugging her, but this was probably as close to a hint as any that he was going to get.

Their eyes met, her expression a mix of invitation and a shy, "is this okay?" Her scent was powerful, her clothes seeming so freshly cleaned and dried that Luka swore there was still lingering heat to them.

He swallowed, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder opposite to him. "I'm glad I didn't bring my guitar."

Her shyness turned to confusion; almost offense. "Why? You're so good with it!"

"I know," he replied, "but... I don't think even I could play a melody as perfect as this."

Marinette's face lit up in bright red, her grin wide and showing off her teeth for only a moment before she ducked her head to hide.

Simultaneously, he heard a clicking noise. He looked to see that Marinette's finger had slipped. The camera had caught her red-handed - red-faced? - with all her blushing, alongside his own love-struck expression.

He figured he should say something like, "Oops," but that would imply that he felt bad. Honestly, he wanted to frame it.

"Ugh," Marinette groaned, finally seeing what she just did. "I look terrible. Can we do it again?"

"If that's what you want," he replied as he released her shoulder, "but can you send this one to me first?"

Her head rose to look at him, searching his eyes. She squinted, asking with suspicion, "Are you teasing me?"

He chuckled. "Not at all. I just really like it." He glanced at the picture, gaze fond. "You wanted it to be natural, and if that's your natural response to what I said, I'm happy. It's a very you smile, and I love that."

She looked confused, but gave the picture another look. He tried not to stare, feeling like she deserved some sort of private moment.

When a minute seemed to pass by without her saying anything, he glanced back at her. "Do you want to do anything different for the next picture?"

She was still staring hard at the picture. With a far too serious look on her face, she responded, "...No."

He said nothing. She peeked up at him, apparently realizing the daze she was in.

"Um—no, is what I meant. I... don't want to take another one."

She settled back against the couch, now staring at her phone with fondness rather than seriousness. She looked at peace, and Luka silently hoped to see more of it.

"You're right," she admitted softly, "I... I like it."

[Part 7] [Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10]

[scullydubois]

one-shot: does a scully pee in the woods?

read on ao3 |  msr flirting and fluff | 1.6k | rated t | s6, pre-Field Trip

tagging @today-in-fic

While driving to North Carolina, Scully has to resort to some dubious tactics to convince Mulder to stop so she can use the bathroom. Unfortunately, she doesn't specify where he should stop...

---------

He promised they would stop once they made it out of Virginia. What Scully didn’t realize is that Virginia is five hours worth of highway, and despite his assurance that he is “driving as fast as he can” and his natural tendency to cruise as much over the speed limit as they can go without getting pulled over, they have still not made it out of the state.

“The next exit, Mulder, please,” she begs, squirming in her seat. She is not used to driving this long. Usually they hop on a flight--with a bathroom, thank you very much--and then head just a few miles out to their destination. But of course, the FBI is cutting their budget, and according to Skinner, the only way they could take this case is if they agreed to make the six and a half hour trip to North Carolina by car. Which hadn’t sounded that bad to either of them. I mean, the open road, the radio, and each other for six hours? What could be wrong with that? Then again, they hadn’t stopped to consider how early they would have to leave DC to make their lunchtime meeting, nor the exponential decline in their ability to tolerate one another with each increasing hour.

Mulder drums the steering wheel in time with the beat of the classic rock song playing. “I’m telling you, we’re almost to the state line. If you’ve made it this far, you can make it another twenty minutes.”

“Are you willing to test that theory?” Scully prods, an eyebrow elevating itself. “Because I know you are a man of many theories, but I really don’t think this is one you want to mess with.”

“Oh, I do.” He flashes a quick smile at her, as if to confirm that, yes, he is amused by her suffering, if she hadn’t noticed.

“ Mulder…” she whines, not even bothering to construct a coherent argument. It’s time to play the card she never plays, the one that will catch his attention and show him that she is serious about this. She hates to stoop this low, but at this point, it’s either play the card or pee her pants.

“Mulder,” she makes her voice sound languid and far out, “has anyone ever told you that you bear a great resemblance to Cary Grant in his young and handsome days?”

He is rather unphased by this. Too unphased for Scully’s liking. “No, and I really don’t, do I?”

“Oh, absolutely.” She lets her voice flutter through the confines of the car. “Dreamy, boyish, yet somehow retaining your masculinity. It’s astonishing, really.”

She sneaks a glance at him. He’s stopped tapping along to the song. He turns the radio down to listen to her like a dog’s ears pricking toward their owner’s voice.

She looks through the windshield, continues her reverie. “He looks like such a gentleman, but I can’t imagine that he’s a gentleman in…” She trails off suggestively, waiting for Mulder to raise some objection.

When she looks at him out of the corner of her eye, he is already looking at her. “What?” she offers innocently. “Do you have proof otherwise?” It’s always a contest of right or wrong for them.

“No, but I might have proof of aliens. Bounty Hunter, I know that’s you, what have you done with the real Scully?”

She considers what would happen if the Bounty Hunter had disguised himself as her and was driving alone with Mulder in the middle of a five lane highway with dozens of other cars. “You know, you’d be screwed right now if it were.”

“Yeah, I get that feeling.”

She wets her lips, navigates the next sentence with precision. “But since it’s not, you can get screwed instead.”

Mulder almost swerves into a jeep in the next lane. “Jesus, Scully!”

“I’m sorry, did I make you uncomfortable…?”

He focuses on the road. “Something like that, yeah.”

“Gee, I wonder what’s that like.” She looks at him with a devilish closed-mouth grin.

Mulder registers this and looks away just as he cracks his own smile. Silly, misbehaving, rebellious Scully has a power over him that would be comparable to religion, if he had one.

“So what I’m hearing is, you want to forsake your opportunity to make it the whole way through Virginia without stopping just so that you’ll actually have some semblance of comfort?” He checks to see if she’s smiling and is happy when she is.

“Something like that, yeah,” she says, imitating his reply from earlier by donning a outlandishly deep voice.

He coughs to hold back a laugh. “Well, the lady’s wish is my command, though I must warn you that the next exit’s not for another seven miles.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, we just passed a sign.”

“Mulder, I don’t know what kind of bladder you think I have, but I’ve drank two cups of coffee since the drive started and one before I left my apartment. I would classify this as an emergency.”

“I’ll pull over, then.” He switches lanes, turns on the emergency lights, and presses the brake slightly as he pulls onto the shoulder, all before she can protest.

“This is humiliating, Mulder,” she laments as he unlocks his door, pulls it open.

“While we’re at it, I’ll go too. Save us a stop in North Carolina.”

He’s way too excited about this, she thinks. She unclicks her seatbelt and climbs out of the car like a child dragged to church by their parents.

They proceed toward the woods at the edge of the highway. Mulder leads the way, a subtle spring in his step about getting to return to nature, so to speak, and to embarrass Scully while doing it.

As they hit the dividing line between grass and trees, Mulder looks back at this partner.

“Have you ever peed in the woods, Scully?” he asks with a smirk. “I’m assuming that’s what’s happening here, since you mentioned the coffee.” Scully winces at the rather disgusting image his implication puts in her mind.

She puts on a scholarly, serious tone as they head deeper into the trees. “You know, Mulder--and I’m glad we’re clearing this up-- I have peed in the woods actually. I seem to remember we were stuck in the woods overnight just last year. In Florida, was it? And contrary to what you may believe, I actually did relieve myself during that period of time. Thanks for asking.”

“Wow, you learn something new everyday,” Mulder jokes.

“Exactly.” Scully can’t help but laugh. What a funny little situation this is. They have shared so many instances when the stakes were much higher, life-threatening even, and this is what feels so grueling.

The vehicle noise having quieted significantly, Mulder gauges that they’re far enough from the roadway now. He stakes out a pine tree and steps up to it.

“Don’t look, Scully!” he teases, as if she needed the reminder, as if he really cared.

As he stands there, pants unzipped and all, he can’t help but wonder how many years this tree stood here before some human just decided to come over and do their business on it. That has to suck, huh? You’re just going about your usual tree life--swaying in the wind, rooting deep into the Earth, maybe providing a home for some critters--and then this creature that’s like, fifty times smaller than you comes over and pulls their pants down. What the hell?

A few yards away, Scully hunts for a place that might preserve an ounce of her dignity. Not that she has any left at this point, but it’s a nice idea. There’s some bushes not far off, or she could take a cue from Mulder and squat against a tree. This process is so much more complicated for a woman--you have to get down low, check the ground around you, not hit your shoes…

She chooses a spot behind a bush and crouches down. She hears Mulder zipping his fly, wonders if he’ll be able to see her when he turns around. She can’t see him, so theoretically he shouldn’t be able to see her,  but he’s so much taller that she’s never sure. Then again, she’s not as objected to being seen by him as she expected herself to be. Still, she waits for him to say something.

“Scully, please tell me this wasn’t just some elaborate plot to abandon me in the woods.”

“I’m over here, Mulder,” she reassures. “But don’t come over.”

“Why, what are you doing?” He laughs at his own joke.

“Very funny,” she says, trying to cover the sound of her faculties. This feeling of release is so desperately needed that it’s almost orgasmic. She finishes, then rezips her pants while staying as crouched as possible. Sated, she stands up, pops into Mulder’s view. She tightens her belt as she walks over to him.

She sighs. “I’m glad that’s over.” Mulder smiles. She’s been through far worse, in far more unpleasant conditions, and this is what bothers her. A complex being, his Scully is. They retrace their steps toward the highway.

“You do know that toilets weren’t invented until like, the Renaissance, right?” he teases.

“Sure, but they weren’t just squatting in the woods!”

He pulls the car keys from his pocket. “I guess we’ve solved another X-file…”

Scully gives him the look she’s been giving him for six years.

“...does a Scully pee in the woods?”

She bites her lip, obscures her smile. That’s her Mulder.

[96thdayofrage]

A beautiful late April day, seventy-two years after slavery ended in the United States. Claude Anderson parks his car on the side of Holbrook Street in Danville. On the porch of number 513, he rearranges the notepads under his arm. Releasing his breath in a rush of decision, he steps up to the door of the handmade house and knocks.

Danville is on the western edge of the Virginia Piedmont. Back in 1865, it had been the last capital of the Confederacy. Or so Jefferson Davis had proclaimed on April 3, after he fled Richmond. Davis stayed a week, but then he had to keep running. The blue-coated soldiers of the Army of the Potomac were hot on his trail. When they got to Danville, they didn’t find the fugitive rebel. But they did discover hundreds of Union prisoners of war locked in the tobacco warehouses downtown. The bluecoats, rescuers and rescued, formed up and paraded through town. Pouring into the streets around them, dancing and singing, came thousands of African Americans. They had been prisoners for far longer.

In the decades after the jubilee year of 1865, Danville, like many other southern villages, had become a cotton factory town. Anderson, an African-American master’s student from Hampton University, would not have been able to work at the segregated mill. But the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a bureau of the federal government created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, would hire him. To put people back to work after they had lost their jobs in the Great Depression, the WPA organized thousands of projects, hiring construction workers to build schools and artists to paint murals. And many writers and students were hired to interview older Americans—like Lorenzo Ivy, the man painfully shuffling across the pine board floor to answer Anderson’s knock.

Anderson had found Ivy’s name in the Hampton University archives, two hundred miles east of Danville. Back in 1850, when Lorenzo had been born in Danville, there was neither a university nor a city called Hampton—just an American fort named after a slaveholder president. Fortress Monroe stood on Old Point Comfort, a narrow triangle of land that divided the Chesapeake Bay from the James River. Long before the fort was built, in April 1607, the Susan Constant had sailed past the point with a boatload of English settlers. Anchoring a few miles upriver, they had founded Jamestown, the first perma- nent English-speaking settlement in North America. Twelve years later, the crews of two storm-damaged English privateers also passed, seeking shelter and a place to sell the twenty-odd enslaved Africans (captured from a Portuguese slaver) lying shackled in their holds.

After that first 1619 shipload, some 100,000 more enslaved Africans would sail upriver past Old Point Comfort. Lying in chains in the holds of slave ships, they could not see the land until they were brought up on deck to be sold. After the legal Atlantic slave trade to the United States ended in 1807, hundreds of thousands more enslaved people passed the point. Now they were going the other way, boarding ships at Richmond, the biggest eastern center of the internal slave trade, to go by sea to the Mississippi Valley.

By the time a dark night came in late May 1861, the moon had waxed and waned three thousand times over slavery in the South. To protect slavery, Virginia had just seceded from the United States, choosing a side at last after six months of indecision in the wake of South Carolina’s rude exit from the Union. Fortress Monroe, built to protect the James River from ocean-borne invaders, became the Union’s last toehold in eastern Virginia. Rebel troops entrenched themselves athwart the fort’s landward approaches. Local planters, including one Charles Mallory, detailed enslaved men to build berms to shelter the besiegers’ cannon. But late this night, Union sentries on the fort’s seaward side saw a small skiff emerging slowly from the darkness. Frank Baker and Townshend rowed with muffled oars. Sheppard Mallory held the tiller. They were setting themselves free.

A few days later, Charles Mallory showed up at the gates of the Union fort. He demanded that the commanding federal officer, Benjamin Butler, return his property. Butler, a politician from Massachusetts, was an incompetent battlefield commander, but a clever lawyer. He replied that if the men were Mallory’s property, and he was using them to wage war against the US government, then logically the men were therefore contraband of war.

Those first three “contrabands” struck a crack in slavery’s centuries-old wall. Over the next four years, hundreds of thousands more enslaved people widened the crack into a gaping breach by escaping to Union lines. Their movement weakened the Confederate war effort and made it easier for the United States and its president to avow mass emancipation as a tool of war. Eventually the Union Army began to welcome formerly enslaved men into its ranks, turning refugee camps into recruiting stations—and those African-American soldiers would make the difference between victory and defeat for the North, which by late 1863 was exhausted and uncertain.

After the war, Union officer Samuel Armstrong organized literacy programs that had sprung up in the refugee camp at Old Point Comfort to form Hampton Institute. In 1875, Lorenzo Ivy traveled down to study there, on the ground zero of African-American history. At Hampton, he acquired an education that enabled him to return to Danville as a trained schoolteacher. He educated generations of African-American children. He built the house on Holbrook Street with his own Hampton-trained hands, and there he sheltered his father, his brother, his sister-in-law, and his nieces and nephews. In April 1937, Ivy opened the door he’d made with hands and saw and plane, and it swung clear for Claude Anderson without rubbing the frame.1

Anderson’s notepads, however, were accumulating evidence of two very different stories of the American past—halves that did not fit together neatly. And he was about to hear more. Somewhere in the midst of the notepads was a typed list of questions supplied by the WPA. Questions often reveal the desired answer. By the 1930s, most white Americans had been demanding for decades that they hear only a sanitized version of the past into which Lorenzo Ivy had been born. This might seem strange. In the middle of the nineteenth century, white Americans had gone to war with each other over the future of slavery in their country, and slavery had lost. Indeed, for a few years after 1865, many white northerners celebrated emancipation as one of their collective triumphs. Yet whites’ belief in the emancipation made permanent by the Thirteenth Amendment, much less in the race-neutral citizenship that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments had written into the Constitution, was never that deep. Many northerners had only supported Benjamin Butler and Abraham Lincoln’s moves against slavery because they hated the arrogance of slaveholders like Charles Mallory. And after 1876, northern allies abandoned southern black voters.

Within half a century after Butler sent Charles Mallory away from Fortress Monroe empty-handed, the children of white Union and Confederate soldiers united against African-American political and civil equality. This compact of white supremacy enabled southern whites to impose Jim Crow segregation on public space, disfranchise African-American citizens by barring them from the polls, and use the lynch-mob noose to enforce black compliance. White Americans imposed increased white supremacy outside the South, too. In non-Confederate states, many restaurants wouldn’t serve black customers. Stores and factories refused to hire African Americans. Hundreds of midwestern communities forcibly evicted African-American residents and became “sundown towns” (“Don’t let the sun set on you in this town”). Most whites, meanwhile, believed that science proved that there were biologically distinct human races, and that Europeans were members of the superior one. Anglo-Americans even believed that they were distinct from and superior to the Jews from Russia, Italians, Greeks, Slavs, and others who flooded Ellis Island and changed the culture of northern urban centers.

By the early twentieth century, America’s first generation of professional historians were justifying the exclusions of Jim Crow and disfranchisement by telling a story about the nation’s past of slavery and civil war that seemed to confirm, for many white Americans, that white supremacy was just and necessary. Above all, the historians of a reunified white nation insisted that slavery was a premodern institution that was not committed to profit-seeking. In so doing, historians were to some extent only repeating pre–Civil War debates: abolitionists had depicted slavery not only as a psychopathic realm of whipping, rape, and family separation, but also as a flawed economic system that was inherently less efficient than the free-labor capitalism developing in the North. Proslavery writers disagreed about the psychopathy, but by the 1850s they agreed that enslavers were first and foremost not profit-seekers. For them, planters were caring masters who considered their slaves to be inferior family members. So although anti- and proslavery conclusions about slavery’s morality were different, their premises about slavery-as-a-business-model matched. Both agreed that slavery was inherently unprofitable. It was an old, static system that belonged to an earlier time. Slave labor was inefficient to begin with, slave productivity did not increase to keep pace with industrialization, and enslavers did not act like modern profit-seeking businessmen. As a system, slavery had never adapted or changed to thrive in the new industrial economy—let alone to play a premier role as a driver of economic expansion—and had been little more than a drag on the explosive growth that had built the modern United States. In fact, during the Civil War, northerners were so convinced of these points that they believed that shifting from slave labor to free labor would dramatically increase cotton productivity.

It didn’t. But even though the data of declining productivity over the ensuing three score and ten years suggested that slavery might have been the most efficient way to produce the world’s most important crop, no one let empirical tests change their minds. Instead, historians of Woodrow Wilson’s generation imprinted the stamp of academic research on the idea that slavery was separate from the great economic and social transformations of the Western world during the nineteenth century. After all, it did not rely upon ever-more efficient machine labor. Its unprofitable economic structures supposedly produced antique social arrangements, and the industrializing, urbanizing world looked back toward them with contempt—or, increasingly, nostalgia. Many whites, now proclaiming that science proved that people of African descent were intellectually inferior and congenitally prone to criminal behavior, looked wistfully to a past when African Americans had been governed with whips and chains. Granted, slavery as an economic system was not modern, they said, and had neither changed to adapt to the modern economy nor contributed to economic expansion. But to an openly racist historical profession—and a white history-reading, history-thinking public obsessed with all kinds of race control—the white South’s desire to white-wash slavery in the past, and maintain segregation now and forever, served the purpose of validating control over supposedly premodern, semi-savage black people.

Such stories about slavery shaped the questions Claude Anderson was to ask in the 1930s, because you could find openly racist versions of it baked into the recipe of every American textbook. You could find it in popular novels, politicians’ speeches, plantation-nostalgia advertising, and even the first blockbuster American film: Birth of a Nation. As president, Woodrow Wilson—a southern-born history professor— called this paean to white supremacy “history written with lightning,” and screened it at the White House. Such ideas became soaked into the way America publicly depicted slavery. Even many of those who believed that they rejected overt racism depicted the era before emancipation as a plantation idyll of happy slaves and paternalist masters. Abolitionists were snakes in the garden, responsible for a Civil War in which hundreds of thousands of white people died. Maybe the end of slavery had to come for the South to achieve economic modernity, but it didn’t have to come that way, they said.

The way that Americans remember slavery has changed dramatically since then. In tandem with widespread desegregation of public spaces and the assertion of black cultural power in the years between World War II and the

1990s came a new understanding of the experience of slavery. No longer did academic historians describe slavery as a school in which patient masters and mistresses trained irresponsible savages for futures of perpetual servitude.

Slavery’s denial of rights now prefigured Jim Crow, while enslaved people’s resistance predicted the collective self-assertion that developed into first the civil rights movement and later, Black Power.

But perhaps the changes were not so great as they seemed on the surface. The focus on showing African Americans as assertive rebels, for instance, implied an uncomfortable corollary. If one should be impressed by those who rebelled, because they resisted, one should not be proud of those who did not. And there were very few rebellions in the history of slavery in the United States. Some scholars tried to backfill against this quandary by arguing that all African Americans together created a culture of resistance, especially in slave quarters and other spaces outside of white observation. Yet the insistence that assertive resistance undermined enslavers’ power, and a focus on the development of an independent black culture, led some to believe that enslaved people actually managed to prevent whites from successfully exploiting their labor. This idea, in turn, created a quasi-symmetry with post– Civil War plantation memoirs that portrayed gentle masters, who maintained slavery as a nonprofit endeavor aimed at civilizing Africans.

Thus, even after historians of the civil rights, Black Power, and multicultural eras rewrote segregationists’ stories about gentlemen and belles and grateful darkies, historians were still telling the half that has ever been told. For some fundamental assumptions about the history of slavery and the history of the United States remain strangely unchanged. The first major assumption is that, as an economic system—a way of producing and trading commodities—American slavery was fundamentally different from the rest of the modern economy and separate from it. Stories about industrialization emphasize white immigrants and clever inventors, but they leave out cotton fields and slave labor. This perspective implies not only that slavery didn’t change, but that slavery and enslaved African Americans had little long-term influence on the rise of the United States during the nineteenth century, a period in which the nation went from being a minor European trading partner to becoming the world’s largest economy—one of the central stories of American history.

The second major assumption is that slavery in the United States was fundamentally in contradiction with the political and economic systems of the liberal republic, and that inevitably that contradiction would be resolved in favor of the free-labor North. Sooner or later, slavery would have ended by the operation of historical forces; thus, slavery is a story without suspense. And a story with a predetermined outcome isn’t a story at all.

Third, the worst thing about slavery as an experience, one is told, was that it denied enslaved African Americans the liberal rights and liberal subjectivity of modern citizens. It did those things as a matter of course, and as injustice, that denial ranks with the greatest in modern history. But slavery also killed people, in large numbers. From those who survived, it stole everything. Yet the massive and cruel engineering required to rip a million people from their homes, brutally drive them to new, disease-ridden places, and make them live in terror and hunger as they continually built and rebuilt a commodity-generating empire—this vanished in the story of a slavery that was supposedly focused primarily not on producing profit but on maintaining its status as a quasi-feudal elite, or producing modern ideas about race in order to maintain white unity and elite power. And once the violence of slavery was minimized, another voice could whisper, saying that African Americans, both before and after emancipation, were denied the rights of citizens because they would not fight for them.

All these assumptions lead to still more implications, ones that shape attitudes, identities, and debates about policy. If slavery was outside of US history, for instance—if indeed it was a drag and not a rocket booster to American economic growth—then slavery was not implicated in US growth, success, power, and wealth. Therefore none of the massive quantities of wealth and treasure piled by that economic growth is owed to African Americans. Ideas about slavery’s history determine the ways in which Americans hope to resolve the long contradiction between the claims of the United States to be a nation of freedom and opportunity, on the one hand, and, on the other, the unfreedom, the unequal treatment, and the opportunity denied that for most of American history have been the reality faced by people of African descent. Surely, if the worst thing about slavery was that it denied African Americans the liberal rights of the citizen, one must merely offer them the title of citizen—even elect one of them president—to make amends. Then the issue will be put to rest forever.

Slavery’s story gets told in ways that reinforce all these assumptions. Textbooks segregate twenty-five decades of enslavement into one chapter, painting a static picture. Millions of people each year visit plantation homes where guides blather on about furniture and silverware. As sites, such homes hide the real purpose of these places, which was to make African Americans toil under the hot sun for the profit of the rest of the world. All this is the “symbolic annihilation” of enslaved people, as two scholars of those weird places put it.2 Meanwhile, at other points we tell slavery’s story by heaping praise on those who escaped it through flight or death in rebellion, leaving the listener to wonder if those who didn’t flee or die somehow “accepted” slavery. And everyone who teaches about slavery knows a little dirty secret that reveals historians’ collective failure: many African-American students struggle with a sense of shame that most of their ancestors could not escape the suffering they experienced.

The truth can set us free, if we can find the right questions. But back in the little house in Danville, Anderson was reading from a list of leading ones, designed by white officials—some well-meaning, some not so well-meaning. He surely felt how the gravity of the questions pulled him toward the planet of plantation nostalgia. “Did slaves mind being called ‘nigger’?” “What did slaves call master or mistress?” “Have you been happier in slavery or free?” “Was the mansion house pretty?” Escaping from chains is very difficult, however, so Anderson dutifully asked the prescribed questions and poised his pencil to take notes.

Ivy listened politely. He sat still. Then he began to speak: “My mother’s master was named William Tunstall. He was a mean man. There was only one good thing he did, and I don’t reckon he intended to do that. He sold our family to my father’s master George H. Gilman.”

Perhaps the wind blowing through the window changed as a cloud moved across the spring sun: “Old Tunstall caught the ‘cotton fever.’ There was a fever going round, leastways it was like a fever. Everyone was dying to get down south and grow cotton to sell. So old Tunstall separated families right and left. He took two of my aunts and left their husbands up here, and he separated altogether seven husbands and wives. One woman had twelve children. Yessir. Took ‘em all down south with him to Georgia and Alabama.”

Pervasive separations. Tears carving lines on faces. Lorenzo remembered his relief at dodging the worst, but he also remembered knowing that it was just a lucky break. Next time it could’ve been his mother. No white person was reliable, because money drove their decisions. No, this wasn’t the story the books told.

So Anderson moved to the next question. Did Ivy know if any slaves had been sold here? Now, perhaps, the room grew darker.

For more than a century, white people in the United States had been singling out slave traders as an exception: unscrupulous lower-class outsiders who pried apart paternalist bonds. Scapegoaters had a noble precedent. In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson tried to blame King George III for using the Atlantic slave trade to impose slavery on the colonies. In historians’ tellings, the 1808 abolition of the Atlantic trade brought stability to slavery, ringing in the “Old South,” as it has been called since before the Civil War. Of course, one might wonder how something that was brand new, created after a revolution, and growing more rapidly than any other commodity-producing economy in history before then could be considered “old.” But never mind. Historians depicted slave trading after 1808 as irrelevant to what slavery was in the “Old South,” and to how America as a whole was shaped. America’s modernization was about entrepreneurs, creativity, invention, markets, movement, and change. Slavery was not about any of these things—not about slave trading, or moving people away from everyone they knew in order to make them make cotton. Therefore, modern America and slavery had nothing to do with each other.

But Ivy spilled out a rush of very different words. “They sold slaves here and everywhere. I’ve seen droves of Negroes brought in here on foot going South to be sold. Each one of them had an old tow sack on his back with everything he’s got in it. Over the hills they came in lines reaching as far as the eye can see. They walked in double lines chained together by twos. They walk ‘em here to the railroad and shipped ’em south like cattle.”

Then Lorenzo Ivy said this: “Truly, son, the half has never been told.”

To this, day, it still has not. For the other half is the story of how slavery changed and moved and grew over time: Lorenzo Ivy’s time, and that of his parents and grandparents. In the span of a single lifetime after the 1780s, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out plantations to a sub-continental empire. Entrepreneurial enslavers moved more than 1 million enslaved people, by force, from the communities that survivors of the slave trade from Africa had built in the South and in the West to vast territories that were seized—also by force—from their Native American inhabitants. From

1783 at the end of the American Revolution to 1861, the number of slaves in the United States increased five times over, and all this expansion produced a powerful nation. For white enslavers were able to force enslaved African-American migrants to pick cotton faster and more efficiently than free people. Their practices rapidly transformed the southern states into the dominant force in the global cotton market, and cotton was the world’s most widely traded commodity at the time, as it was the key raw material during the first century of the industrial revolution. The returns from cotton monopoly powered the modernization of the rest of the American economy, and by the time of the Civil War, the United States had become the second nation to undergo large-scale industrialization. In fact, slavery’s expansion shaped every crucial aspect of the economy and politics of the new nation—not only increasing its power and size, but also, eventually, dividing US politics, differentiating regional identities and interests, and helping to make civil war possible.

The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not an idea that people necessarily are happy to hear. Yet it is the truth. And that truth was the half of the story that survived mostly in the custodianship of those who survived slavery’s expansion—whether they had been taken over the hill, or left behind. Forced migration had shaped their lives, and also had shaped what they thought about their lives and the wider history in which they were enmeshed. Even as they struggled to stay alive in the midst of disruption, they created ways to talk about this half untold. But what survivors experienced, analyzed, and named was a slavery that didn’t fit the comfortable boxes into which other Americans have been trying to fit it ever since it ended.

I read Lorenzo Ivy’s words, and they left me uneasy. I sensed that the true narrative had been left out of history—not only American history in general, but even the history of slavery. I began to look actively for the other half of the story, the one about how slavery constantly grew, changed, and reshaped the modern world. Of how it was both modernizing and modern, and what that meant for the people who lived through its incredible expansion. Once I began to look, I discovered that the traces of the other half were everywhere. The debris of cotton fevers that infected white entrepreneurs and separated man and woman, parent and child, right and left, dusted every set of pre–Civil War letters, newspapers, and court documents. Most of all, the half not told ran like a layer of iridium left by a dinosaur-killing asteroid through every piece of testimony that ex-slaves, such as Lorenzo Ivy, left on the historical record: thousands of stanzas of an epic of forced separations, violence, and new kinds of labor.

For a long time I wasn’t sure how to tell the story of this muscular, dynamic process in a single book. The most difficult challenge was simply the fact that the expansion of slavery in many ways shaped the story of everything in the pre–Civil War United States. Enslavers’ surviving papers showed calculations of returns from slave sales and purchases as well as the costs of establishing new slave labor camps in the cotton states. Newspapers dripped with speculations in land and people and the commodities they produced; dramatic changes in how people made money and how much they made; and the dramatic violence that accompanied these practices. The accounts of northern merchants and bankers and factory owners showed that they invested in slavery, bought from and sold to slaveholders, and took slices of profit out of slavery’s expansion. Scholars and students talked about politics as a battle about states’ rights or republican principles, but viewed in a different light the fights can be seen as a struggle between regions about how the rewards of slavery’s expansion would be allocated and whether that expansion could continue.

The story seemed too big to fit into one framework. Even Ivy had no idea how to count the chained lines he saw going southwest toward the mountains on the horizon and the vast open spaces beyond. From the 1790s to the 1860s, enslavers moved 1 million people from the old slave states to the new. They went from making no cotton to speak of in 1790 to making almost 2 billion pounds of it in 1860. Stretching out beyond the slave South, the story encompassed not only Washington politicians and voters across the United States but also Connecticut factories, London banks, opium addicts in China, and consumers in East Africa. And could one book do Lorenzo Ivy’s insight justice? It would have to avoid the old platitudes, such as the easy temptation to tell the story as a collection of topics—here a chapter on slave resistance, there one on women and slavery, and so on. That kind of abstraction cuts the beating heart out of the story. For the half untold was a narrative, a process of movement and change and suspense. Things happened because of what had been done before them—and what people chose to do in response.

No, this had to be a story, and one couldn’t tell it solely from the perspective of powerful actors. True, politicians and planters and bankers shaped policies, the movement of people, and the growing and selling of cotton, and even remade the land itself. But when one takes Lorenzo Ivy’s words as a starting point, the whole history of the United States comes walking over the hill behind a line of people in chains. Changes that reshaped the entire world began on the auction block where enslaved migrants stood or in the frontier cotton fields where they toiled. Their individual drama was a struggle to survive. Their reward was to endure a brutal transition to new ways of labor that made them reinvent themselves every day. Enslaved people’s creativity enabled their survival, but, stolen from them in the form of ever-growing cotton productivity, their creativity also expanded the slaveholding South at an unprecedented rate. Enslaved African Americans built the modern United States, and indeed the entire modern world, in ways both obvious and hidden.

One day I found a metaphor that helped. It came from the great African-American author Ralph Ellison. You might know his novel Invisible Man. But in the 1950s, Ellison also produced incredible essays. In one of them he wrote, “On the moral level I propose we view the whole of American life as a drama enacted on the body of a Negro giant who, lying trussed up like Gulliver, forms the stage and the scene upon which and within which the action unfolds.”3

The image fit the story that Ivy’s words raised above the watery surface of buried years. The only problem was that Ellison’s image implied a stationary giant. In the old myth, the stationary, quintessentially unchanging plantation was the site and the story of African-American life from the seventeenth century to the twentieth. But Lorenzo Ivy had described a world in motion. After the American Revolution—which seemed at the time to portend slavery’s imminent demise—a metastatic transformation and growth of slavery’s giant body had begun instead. From the exploitation, commodification, and torture of enslaved people’s bodies, enslavers and other free people gained new kinds of modern power. The sweat and blood of the growing system, a network of individuals and families and labor camps that grew bigger with each passing year, fueled massive economic change. Enslaved people, meanwhile, transported and tortured, had to find ways to survive, resist, or endure. And over time the question of their freedom or bondage came to occupy the center of US politics.

This trussed-up giant, stretched out on the rack of America’s torture zone, actually grew, like a person passing through ordeals to new maturity. I have divided the chapters of this book with Ellison’s imagined giant in mind, a structure that has allowed the story to take as its center point the experience of enslaved African Americans themselves. Before we pass through the door that Lorenzo Ivy opened, here are the chapters’ names. The first is “Feet,” for the story begins with unfree movement on paths to enslaved frontiers that were laid down between the end of the American Revolution in 1783 and the early 1800s. “Heads” is the title of the second chapter, which covers America’s acquisition of the key points of the Mississippi Valley by violence, a gain that also consolidated the enslavers’ hold on the frontier. Then come the “Right Hand” and the “Left Hand” (Chapters 3 and 4). They reveal the inner secrets of enslavers’ power, secrets which made the entire world of white people wealthy.

“Tongues” (Chapter 5) and “Breath” (Chapter 6) follow. They describe how, by the mid-1820s, enslavers had not only found ways to silence the tongues of their critics, but had built a system of slave trading that served as expansion’s lungs. Most forms of resistance were impossible to carry out successfully. So a question hung in the air. Would the spirit in the tied-down body die, leaving enslaved people to live on like undead zombies serving their captors? Or would the body live, and rise? Every transported soul, finding his or her old life killed off, faced this question on the individual level as well: whether to work with fellow captives or scrabble against them in a quest for individualistic subsistence. Enslaved African Americans chose many things. But perhaps most importantly, they chose survival, and true survival in such circumstances required solidarity. Solidarity allowed them to see their common experience, to light their own way by building a critique of enslavers’ power that was an alternative story about what things were and what they meant.

This story draws on thousands of personal narratives like the one that Lorenzo Ivy told Claude Anderson. Slavery has existed in many societies, but no other population of formerly enslaved people has been able to record the testimonies of its members like those who survived slavery in the United States. The narratives began with those who escaped slavery’s expansion in the nineteenth century as fugitives. Over one hundred of those survivors published their autobiographies during the nineteenth century. As time went on, such memoirs found a market, in no small part because escapees from southern captivity were changing the minds of some of the northern whites about what the expansion of slavery meant for them. Then, during the 1930s, people like Claude Anderson conducted about 2,300 interviews with the ex-slaves who had lived into that decade. Because the interviews often allowed old people to tell about the things they had seen for themselves and the things they heard from their elders in the years before the Civil War, they take us back into the world of explanation and storytelling that grew up around fires and on porches and between cotton rows. No one autobiography or interview is pure and objective as an account of all that the history books left untold. But read them all, and each one adds to a more detailed, clearer picture of the whole. One story fills in gaps left by another, allowing one to read between the lines.4

Understanding something of what it felt like to suffer, and what it cost to endure that suffering, is crucial to understanding the course of US history. For what enslaved people made together—new ties to each other, new ways of understanding their world—had the potential to help them survive in mind and body. And ultimately, their spirit and their speaking would enable them to call new allies into being in the form of an abolitionist movement that helped to destabilize the mighty enslavers who held millions captive. But the road on which enslaved people were being driven was long. It led through the hell described by “Seed” (Chapter 7), which tells of the horrific near-decade from 1829 to 1837. In these years entrepreneurs ran wild on slavery’s frontier. Their acts created the political and economic dynamics that carried enslavers to their greatest height of power. Facing challenges from other white men who wanted to assert their masculine equality through political democracy, clever entrepreneurs found ways to leverage not just that desire, but other desires as well. With the creation of innovative financial tools, more and more of the Western world was able to invest directly in slavery’s expansion. Such creativity multiplied the incredible productivity and profitability of enslaved people’s labor and allowed enslavers to turn bodies into commodities with which they changed the financial history of the Western world.

Enslavers, along with common white voters, investors, and the enslaved, made the 1830s the hinge of US history. On one side lay the world of the industrial revolution and the initial innovations that launched the modern world. On the other lay modern America. For in 1837, enslavers’ exuberant success led to a massive economic crash. This self-inflicted devastation, covered in Chapter 8, “Blood,” posed new challenges to slaveholders’ power, led to human destruction for the enslaved, and created confusion and discord in white families. When southern political actors tried to use war with Mexico to restart their expansion, they encountered new opposition on the part of increasingly assertive northerners. As Chapter 9, “Backs,” explains, by the 1840s the North had built a complex, industrialized economy on the backs of enslaved people and their highly profitable cotton labor. Yet, although all northern whites had benefited from the deepened exploitation of enslaved people, many northern whites were now willing to use politics to oppose further expansions of slavery. The words that the survivors of slavery’s expansion had carried out from the belly of the nation’s hungriest beast had, in fact, become important tools for galvanizing that opposition.

Of course, in return for the benefits they received from slavery’s expansion, plenty of northerners were still willing to enable enslavers’ disproportionate power. With the help of such allies, as “Arms” (Chapter 10) details, slavery continued to expand in the decade after the Compromise of 1850. For now, however, it had to do so within potentially closed borders. That is why southern whites now launched an aggressive campaign of advocacy, insisting on policies and constitutional interpretations that would commit the entire United States to the further geographic expansion of slavery. The entire country would become slavery’s next frontier. And as they pressed, they generated greater resistance, pushed too hard, and tried to make their allies submit—like slaves, the allies complained. And that is how, at last, whites came to take up arms against each other.

Yet even as southern whites seceded, claiming that they would set up an independent nation, shelling Fort Sumter, and provoking the Union’s president, Abraham Lincoln, to call out 100,000 militia, many white Americans wanted to keep the stakes of this dispute as limited as possible. A majority of northern Unionists opposed emancipation. Perhaps white Americans’ battles with each other were, on one level, not driven by a contest over ideals, but over the best way to keep the stream of cotton and financial revenues flowing: keep slavery within its current borders, or allow it to consume still more geographic frontiers. But the growing roar of cannon promised others a chance to force a more dramatic decision: slavery forever, or nevermore. So it was that as Frank Baker, Townshend, and Sheppard Mallory crept across the dark James River waters that had washed so many hulls bearing human bodies, the future stood poised, uncertain between alternative paths. Yet those three men carried something powerful: the same half of the story that Lorenzo Ivy could tell. All they had learned from it would help to push the future onto a path that led to freedom. Their story can do so for us as well. To hear it, we must stand as Lorenzo Ivy had stood as a boy in Danville—watching the chained lines going over the hills, or as Frank Baker and others had stood, watching the ships going down the James from the Richmond docks, bound for the Mississippi. Then turn and go with the marching feet, and listen for the breath of the half that has never been told.

Excerpted from the book THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD by Edward Baptist. Copyright © 2014 by Edward Baptist. Reprinted with permission of Basic Books.

[gtunesmiff]

YOUR SUNDAY SERVICE

The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

BY ROBERT W. SERVICE

I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie, Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die — Whether he die in the light o’ day or under the peak-faced moon; In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon; On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw; In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw; By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead — I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead. For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized boneyard lot. And where he died or how he died, it didn’t matter a damn So long as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone “epigram.” So I promised him, and he paid the price in good cheechako coin (Which the same I blowed in that very night down in the Tenderloin). Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: “Here lies poor Bill MacKie,” And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited for Bill to die. Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange, Of a long-deserted line of traps ’way back of the Bighorn range, Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man stiff and still, Lying there by his lonesome self, and I figured it must be Bill. So I thought of the contract I’d made with him, and I took down from the shelf The swell black box with the silver plate he’d picked out for hisself; And I packed it full of grub and “hooch,” and I slung it on the sleigh; Then I harnessed up my team of dogs and was off at dawn of day. You know what it’s like in the Yukon wild when it’s sixty-nine below; When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow; When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the silence of the wood, And the icicles hang down like tusks under the parka hood; When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit, And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit; When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill — Well, it was just like that that day when I set out to look for Bill. Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand, As I blundered blind with a trail to find through that blank and bitter land; Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim heartbreaking woes, And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows! North by the compass, North I pressed; river and peak and plain Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I waked to dream again. River and plain and mighty peak — and who could stand unawed? As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the foot of the throne of God. North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes, And all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes, Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side of a hill, And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill. Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall; Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over all; Sparkling ice on the dead man’s chest, glittering ice in his hair, Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy stare; Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms and legs outspread. I gazed at the coffin I’d brought for him, and I gazed at the gruesome dead, And at last I spoke: “Bill liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes, A man had ought to consider his mates in the way he goes and dies.” Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole, With a little coffin six by three and a grief you can’t control? Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin, And that seems to say: “You may try all day, but you’ll never jam me in”? I’m not a man of the quitting kind, but I never felt so blue As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying what I’d do. Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were nosing round about, And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out. Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn’t seem no good; His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they was made of wood. Till at last I said: “It ain’t no use — he’s froze too hard to thaw; He’s obstinate, and he won’t lie straight, so I guess I got to — saw.” So I sawed off poor Bill’s arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate, And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down; Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started back to town. So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow grave and deep, And there he’s waiting the Great Clean-up, when the Judgment sluice-heads sweep; And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun, And sometimes I wonder if they was, the awful things I done. And as I sit and the parson talks, expounding of the Law, I often think of poor old Bill — and how hard he was to saw. w.

[thebaddie96-blog]

Once In A Life Time

~Chapter 5~

“ He can’t think I’m wearing that”

“What? I think it's cute. He knows you well; red is definitely your color.”  

“I personally think she would look good in anything.”  

“Of course you would.” So-eun whispers under her breath.

Yesterday was filled with nothing but greatness. After my victory beer in the park I met up with So-eun and Min-oh for lunch to fill them in on the big news, not that they had any doubts in my abilities. They too had invitations to the black tie gala.  Z met up with us later at a pool house near my air bnb. So-eun to say the least was not a fan of Z from jump. The first moment she met her, her face immediately went cold. Z, who I've come to learn a lot about in the 20 hours I’ve known her, is childhood best friends with Jay’s little sister and a recent college graduate. She's a psychology major per her parents request with a passion for photography. She says she's working for Jay till she can make a name for herself and travel the world snapping pictures. 

We were currently sitting in my living room studying the dress Jay picked out for me. It was beautiful, gorgeous but I'd be lying if I said I didn’t think Jay was tryna show me off.   

“You're sure this is the dress, you didn’t pick up the wrong one?” I ask Z.

“Honey, when you walk into a boutique that houses dresses like this, and say you're here to pick up for Jay Park, you don’t get it wrong.”

“It pains me to say, but I agree”

“Well thank you, to the both of you, and Jay I guess. I’ve got the contract over here, let me get it to you before you go.” I grab the contract and walk her to the door.

“We’ll send a car to pick you up around 7. Will there be others traveling with you?” She trails off peeking behind me.

“Haha yeah So-eun and Min-oh will both be with me. You should ride with us.”

“I don’t think So-eun would like that very much.”

“Don’t worry about her, she's just grumpy and old.”

“Ok, well I’ll see you tonight.”

Shutting the door I walk back in to see So-eun scanning a magazine.

“Really So-eun?”

“What?” She doesn’t even look up from the magazine. I roll my eyes sitting next to her on the couch

“You know what. Why are you so mean to Z?”

“I don’t know what you're talking about. I have nothing against her”  

“Ok sure and what about last night.”

“What about it?”

“I’m serious So-eun, you wouldn’t let her get a word in, in any conversation we had. Not to mention your intense pool energy whenever she went up to pot a hole.”

“Ok, so I get a little competitive.”

“What about just now ‘Of course you would’, it ‘pains’ you to agree with her.” 

“I was joking.” Deflection from the real problem.

“Don’t you think that after all these years I would know when you're joking or when you're being hostile?”

“Stop gilling me, I don’t have a problem with Z.”

“Mmhmm well she’s coming with us to the event tonight.” She shoots me a tight smile obviously fake. 

“Great. Enough about me and your suspicions. How are you feeling, really?”

“Honestly, it all feels so surreal. None of it has sunk in yet. I mean I just got off a plane 5 days ago, I'm out here for a completely different project I just-- I just don’t wanna fuck it up you know.

“You’ve always done your best when you follow your heart. Don’t let the fear of chasing your dreams stop them from coming true because of self doubt. You are one of the most talented people I know; next to Min-oh, and if anyone deserves this opportunity it you 100%”

“Thanks So-eun.”

I pull her in for a hug. as we pull away she notices a small piece of paper on the coffee table.

“What's this?” she asked as she picked it up.

“Oh it's the business card of the guy I met when I first got in. Mr. Yo? I think his name was.”

“Yu? Christan Yu? Christan Yu was the fuckboy who splashed you with his car?”

“Well I don’t think he meant to.” 

“Did you call him yet?”

“No, why would I?”

“He gave you his card. He obviously wants you to.”

“ No he doesn't, his driver gave it to me.”

“ He gave it to you, told his driver to give it to you, it's the same thing. No?”

“Absolutely not, and it's been damn near a week, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t remember who I am or the situation that happened.”

“How could he not? Imma call the number.”

“What? So-eun no stop.” 

She quickly punches in the number, throwing the phone at me after she presses speaker. It rings 3 times before a deep voice answers.”

“Hello?”

I just sit there staring at the phone. 

Say something. So-eun mouths.

Like what.

I don’t know anything.

“안요?” He asked again but in Korean.

I hesitate, rushing out a quick “Sorry wrong number.” then hanging up.

“Smooth babe smooth.”

“Shut up. No one told you to do that.”

“I was just tryna help you out. You could get some good Korean Dick while you're in town. And knowing your sex drive we will need to find someone soon.”

“ I have traveled in preparation thank you very much. And how would you know if his dick game was good?” She looks at me surprised then guilty. “Oh my god. Did you sleep with Christian?”

“Let's get ready for the Gala. We only have six hours till the event starts and if you're still the same girl from college it's gonna take you forever to get ready. What time are we supposed to be leaving?”

“Oh this is great. Does Min-oh know?” She’s stuck in it and she knows it.

“No, it was before we started dating.”

“Oh this is great.” I get up heading to the bathroom.

“Where are you going?”

“ To shower.”

“You won't tell Min-oh right?” I just continue walking to the bathroom whistling a tune “Right B?!?!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This dress was tight as fuck, my feet hurt, everyone who's anyone in South Korea is here, and oh, I’m the only one in a bright red dress. The fact that I don’t like big events like this isn’t helping my mood. I need to smoke ASAP. Lucky for me I smuggled a blunt in my bra at the airport. I just have to find the right time to sneak out. I scan the room from the corner I was standing in near the stage. A perfect view of everyone in the event but still hidden in the shadows.

When we arrived Jay swooped me away from So-eun, Min-oh, and Z. We spent almost an hour working the room. He introduced me to some of the label's top artists, producers, and stylists. Even some artists from H1GHER music. Don't get me wrong, it's been fun getting to know the people I'm gonna get to work with but this is all new experiences that I'm just gonna have to get used to.

"So here is where you're hiding" So-eun sneaks up next to me leaning on the wall.

"Ha, yeah I just need a break. So Many 'hellos' 'nice to meet you' and 'the pleasure is mine'. Did Min-oh talk to his guy?"

"Yeah we can pick up after the Gala."

"Ugh, ok I'm gonna head outside for some air."

"So you sneak away, leaving me to deal with Loopy and Nafla's drunk asses on my own. And you--" Min-oh turns to me, shaking his finger. " Why are you in a corner in the dark all alone?" 

He was clearly tipsy, he gets a little clingy and bossy when he's under the influence.

" You guys were only talking to each other. What was I post to do, stand there like a deer in the headlights?"

"Yeah and I was just going to get some air, I'll leave you two to talk. Where is Z."

" With her people." "With the AOMG guys'' They both said at the same time. I shoot So-eun a look for her comment and start to walk off.

" Ok, cool. I'll be right back."

Heading off toward the exit, I clutch my bag housing my soon to be smoked blunt. I'm close. I can see the exit in the clear, bodies start dividing, allowing me to pass. I've got one hand on the door ready to open. At the same time I push, the door is swung open and I come stumbling out colliding with the feeling of soft velvet against a firm chest. 

"Sorry I didn't know someone was on the other side." That voice. 

I look up, stepping back. It's him, the guy from the airport, I mean Christian Yu, and he was looking good. Fashionably late but fashionable he was. He was wearing a slim fit crimson velvet blazer jacket with silk black slacks and crimson velvet loafers to match, his hair was styled back making his jaw line pop. I stood there just staring at him.

" Are you ok?" No realization is present in his voice. He doesn't remember me. I mean I was covered in street water, but this is the second time we've had a forced interaction and I'd be lying if I say it didn't hurt my ego a bit.

" Yeah, sorry I was in a bit of a rush. Thanks for breaking my fall tho’ I don't think this dress would have survived." He scans my body taking in the silhouette of my dress lingering a little longer than need be. "Excuse me." 

I step to the left, walking past him and heading out the door. Yeah, that blunt will be nice right about now.

[holylulusworld]

The third man (2) - The brand-new toy

Summary: You and Bucky rule the underworld of the whole of New York, always grasping for more. When your eyes land on a brand-new toy, you can’t resist. Will the golden boy, New York’s highly decorated Detective fall for you and the games you play?

Pairing: Mobster!Bucky x Mobster!Reader, Cop!Steve x Mobster!Reader, possible Mobster!Bucky x Mobster!Reader x Cop!Steve

Characters: Tony Stark 

Warnings: angst, mobster business, illegal activities, foul language, seduction, lies, smut, unprotected sex, mentions of sexual intercourse (implied), voyeurism, jealousy, masturbation

A/N: Please be aware this series has nothing to do with the movie “the third man”. The title will make sense in later chapters. 😉

A/N2: Divider by @firefly-graphics

“What did Tony bear say?” Giggling you run your foot over Bucky’s chest, a dirty grin on your lips when he grabs your foot to suckle at your toes.

Water splashes out of the bathtub, but you don’t care. Not when your husband rubs around your bundle of nerves. “Bucky…god, you are insatiable…”

“Only with you, doll. Now back to business…” Disappointed you purse your lips when Bucky tries to talk to you about business instead of fucking you.

“No! I want to ride you while you tell me everything Tony said. Be my good husband and I’ll let you do the thing with thing you like so much.” Snickering you straddle Bucky’s lap. “Look who’s hard for his wife.”

His hands press against your lower back, just resting them there while you raise your hips to line his cock up with your entrance. “Baby doll, don’t make me go crazy…”

“Would never dream off doing so.” Being the devil in disguise again you painfully slowly sink down his length. “Feels so good Buck’, maybe I forget about Rogers?”

“No, you won’t, dirty girl. In a week you’ll beg me to help you corrupt the poor guy. I bet he will be putty in your greedy hands.” You rock your hips slowly, savoring the way Bucky fills you perfectly.

“You’re still the best…” Moans fill the room, along with the sound of water splashing out of the bathtub when you move faster on top of your husband. “The only one holding my heart…”

“I know you want Rogers but be careful this time. Rumlow was easy to get rid of. He was a small-town gangster.” Humming you wrap your arms around Bucky’s neck to hold tight onto him when your husband starts to fuck up into you.

“Oh-right there, baby. Don’t stop…don’t…fuck…fuck…” Your teeth sink into your lower lip feeling your high ripple through your body. “Love it when you cum inside of me.”

“Love to cum inside of you…” You peck his neck, just holding Bucky pressed to your body. “Love you…”

“Love you too. It’s just... Why can’t I stop playing?” Bucky falls silent before he clears his throat.

“We are kinky?” Your husband offers and you nod silently. “I don’t know, doll. It makes me go crazy seeing someone else touch you but at the same time, it makes me rock-hard. Do you want to fuck Rogers or just play with him?”

“Rumlow was a toy to play with and Tony, well he was fun for a while and a great investment. He’s still my Tony bear.” Laughing Bucky presses his lips to your neck. “I only love you, Buck…”

“I know you do, doll.” For a while, you just stay like that. Tangled in each other you let the minutes tick by. “Tony said Rogers believes I hurt you. He also said we can play with Steve, but not harm him.”

“I don’t want to harm him, Bucky. He’s just so shiny and new. I want to make him dirty and rotten. When I am done with him, he’ll yearn for me in a way Stevie will never understand.” Bucky loves your evil way to get what you want.

“You didn’t hurt Tony. He’s a cop too, Y/N.”

“Tony was never a problem, baby. He’s hopelessly in love with my cunt. One snap of my fingers and he is my good boy…and yours…” Bucky smirks, remembering Tony’s submissive side.

“Tony is reliable, not a liability as Brock was. That drooling bastard never knew his place.” Hissing at your failure’s name you look at your husband.

“It was my fault, Bucky. I was the one choosing the wrong guy. He was my first after we had fun with Wanda.”

You still remember the wild nights with Wanda and Natasha. It was a natural connection drawing you to them. “Pity they married and want an ‘ordinary’ life…”

“I missed them too…especially the thing they did with you when I was only allowed to watch,” Bucky smirks when you start to squirm in his lap. “I enjoyed it, tho.”

“I did too, baby. Now, tell me about Tony and his weekly report.”

“Looks good. The clubs are still profitable and the deal with Thor went smooth. Still, I miss Loki and his bad jokes.”

Poking Bucky’s biceps you give him a dirty grin. “I mean, he was a snake, but reliable. A pity Rogers brought him down six months ago.” Glancing at the papers in Bucky’s hands you sigh.

“You hated Loki. Thor is the better partner and not interested in killing us. Loki was always one step from shooting you, Bucky.” Nodding your husband closes the folder.

“Tony likes Rogers. I don’t know if we should involve him with your game this time. What if Tony decides your cute ass ain’t worth Roger's downfall?” For the first time, you worry about your plan.

Tony was an easy prey. He always had a thing for you and Bucky. One thing led to another and you ended up in a ménage a Trois for a while until you decided he’s better off with Pepper Potts.

“Let me sleep about it, baby. Maybe you are right, and Tony won’t keep his mouth shut but I’d like to play with Rogers. Stevie looked like a kicked puppy when I left him.”

“Boss, do I have permission to investigate the club and Barnes activities? I don’t want to cross a line, but apparently, he’s hurting his wife.” Steve insists. “If I can get her on my side…”

Tony chuckles, not knowing how to explain that Bucky would never dare to lay a finger on you.

“Listen, that’s a game they play. Y/N Barnes may be a lot of things, but she’s no damsel in distress. She’s as dangerous as her husband. I highly recommend not to get involved with her. Whatever you believe you saw or heard, it’s untrue…”

Tony swallows thickly, remembering the way you wrapped him around your pinkie. “I made the same mistake, Rogers. I tried to save her only to fall for her lies. It’s too late for me to stop them, but you can still make it.”

“I don’t understand, Sir. You fell for her…oh-I get it.” Steve stammers realizing his boss was sinfully involved with you. “What about her husband?”

“You see…we got drunk, there was a whirlpool and…well…things happened. One thing led to another and…” Tony’s flushed face tells Steve there was more than a bit skinny dipping. “If you tell anyone what I said, you are fired.”

“Boss, your privacy is important to me. I would never do anything to damage your reputation.” Steve is not used to talking to his boss about sex, so he clears his throat and tries to change the subject. “You think she wants to do the same to me?”

“Oh-she does it good…so good. I never…” Tony groans, almost vibrating when he remembers the nights, he spent with you and Bucky. “Y/N is a force of nature. Wild, and dangerous. Unleashed she can rip you apart and put you back together…”

“I’ll pass, Sir.”

“Tony was silent today. I got the feeling he was hiding something from me.” Nipping at your drink you sigh deeply. “I think he’s no longer reliable, Bucky…”

“Why’d you say that? Didn’t he give you enough attention?” Your slap to his cheek stings, but Bucky knows, he deserved it.

“It’s not about giving me attention, James.” His full name leaving your lips stings even more. “You know, last time he was all cheery to see me instead of you, and today he dismissed me like I am a random bitch in heat…”

“What exactly makes you think your Tony bear is hiding shit from us?” Bucky slides his fingers over your thigh, a smirk on his lips. “Did he say something wrong?”

“It was rather the things he did not say, Buck. We talked about business, his engagement with Pepper, hell even the weather but not a single word about Steve Rogers. I think Tony is not on our side any longer.”

“He’s playing with fire then…” Leaning against the counter Bucky chews on a toothpick. You hate his habit but remain silent tonight. “If Stark is not on our side, he’s an enemy and we take enemies down.”

“We can’t, baby. If Tony told Rogers anything about our arrangement or what we did behind closed doors, he’ll go after us when Tony disappears or falls victim to an accident.”

You mirror Bucky’s posture, letting your eyes wander around the crowded club. “Speaking of the devil.”

“I thought he’s the golden boy, doll,” Bucky smirks, riling you up for fun. “Do you still want to play with him?”

Meeting your husband’s eyes, you shrug before you turn your attention toward your drink.

“I will let him come to me, baby. Anything else would make him suspiciously. It’s his decision to play with fire, not mine…”

Steve hides in the darkest corner to watch you and your husband. He can see Bucky’s hand trail down your back and wishes it was his. When Bucky places a soft kiss to your neck Steve imagines you whisper his name.

There is a dark side in Steve wanting to break through seeing you with your husband. Never before did he feel a stronger pull toward a woman, another man’s girl.

“Anything I can do for you?” Liliane purrs but Steve dismisses her with a wave of his hand. Only taking the drink the waitress brought he trains his eyes on Bucky who slides his fingers over your exposed thigh.

Moments later you leave the crowded room to rush toward your husband’s office. Steve almost drops his drink to follow you close behind, forgetting you could see him.

Your mouth seals Bucky’s in front of his office and Steve can feel his pants tighten watching you palm your husband’s cock.

“Fuck me, baby. Please…I need you.” Your needy voice let a choked groan escape Steve’s throat as he must watch you push your husband into his office only to slam the door shut.

A heartbeat later you moan Bucky’s name and to his shame, Steve walks toward the office to press his ear to the door. He’s grasping the door handle, silently opening the door.

Throat dry Steve looks at the scene, not missing the way you react to your husband’s touch. Now he knows what Tony was talking about. He’s mesmerized by the beauty of your bodies moving in sync.

Bucky moans your name, gripping your thighs tightly as you slide your fingers through his hair. Your legs wrap around your husband’s waist and you are too lost in pleasure to recognize the man watching you and Bucky with darkened eyes.

Moan, grunts and the sound of your bodies collide fill the office. Eyes closed shut you cry out with every hard thrust while Bucky urges you on to come for him. “I love you, doll. No one else can have you…”

“Yours…only yours…” Right at that moment, you mean it as you always do. You play with other people, but your heart, body, and soul only belong to Bucky, your sworn partner in crime. “I love you…”

Steve silently closes the door, knowing he’ll never forget the way you writhed underneath your husband. He’s pressing his forehead and palm against the door when a cry of pleasure erupts from your throat.

“Let’s forget about that guy, Rogers. We don’t need him, baby. I only want to feel you buried inside of me. No more fooling around. It was nice to imagine having him but I don’t think he wants me enough to stay…”

“He’s a fool…” Bucky moans your name, shuddering as his high makes him buck into you repeatedly. “We could’ve given him the world…you…”

The cold shower doesn’t help to wash away the shame and the need Steve feels. His hand harshly fists his cock, imagining it’s you touch him the way he wants to.

For the first time in his life, Steve is losing control over his emotions and he doesn’t know if you will become his toy or the other way around…

[tearablemonsters]

A little NPC journal i started and let an AI finish. I did the first three days and it did the rest.

Go try it out at https://app.inferkit.com/demo

Day 1: We set out upon our journey. With us are six halflings, a half orc, three humans and a tabaxi aside from myself and my firbolg wife. We hope to travel safely and see no dragons.

Day 2: our journey was interrupted by a company of Hobgoblin. They wielded their swords and shook their spears, but let us leave in peace with a small tribute of gold and one horse. Our cargo was untouched.

Day 3: More travel. Once we made camp a dwarven cleric came to share our fire. In gratitude he healed my gout which has been ailing me for some weeks. He said a prayer and touched my feet with hands that glowed like sunlight and the pain was gone. I must remember to say a prayer to Moradin in thanks when next we pass one of his temples.

Day 4: Now I had always thought goblins were male, but here among the ruins of a dwarven watchtower, I met my first female goblin. She spoke ill of her people and the dreams of Harlon Ironfist that she saw as a young child. In truth she was more fearful of losing her children to Ironfist's cruelty than she was of the war he brought upon her people.

Day 5: For some reason as we neared the flatlands, the orcs along our trail became hostile. They began to bay and shout as we came, before moving into our path and attacking. When I slew the first two they were afraid of my anger. The rest fled into the woods and we continued on our way, narrowly avoiding a few encounters with enraged wild boars.

Day 6: a dwarven ranger approached us, sporting a steel plate over his face to protect him from the stench of the halflings and goblin who had toiled long in our company. He asked that we accompany him on an expedition against a group of orcs. He had little to offer us except the promise of weapons and provisions. We set out to see if this new fellow was truthful and he was.

We discovered that they were bandits and killed all but one of them. After having a look through their treasure, we discovered they were harboring Harlon Ironfist, but he was more interested in his women and gold than in fighting for his freedom. After we killed Ironfist, we left them with enough food and shelter to live until the next spring, and returned to the farmstead.

My husband rejoined us after a few days rest and we set off again.

Day 7: We soon came to the outskirts of the forest and were greeted by five human warriors. They asked that we accompany them on an expedition against a tribe of elves. We had heard of elves raiding human settlements and causing great harm, so we agreed to go.

Day 8: We discovered an elven camp and slew all but one. We were astonished to learn that he was of the same race as us. As we rode to the village, we noticed more of the same… Âgulch, yew trees, tall grass, etc. We soon learned that the elves worshipped the Holy Mother, and only used trees and grass as their sacred offerings. Our rescue was not meant to be.

We soon found ourselves pursued by a large number of elves with bows and arrows and began to retreat, but we were too late. We were forced to slaughter the elf on our trail and I would not have it done again. We made for the temple of the Holy Mother and found it unguarded. There we found several other lone elves, but they were all slain as well. I wondered what our saviors would have us do next.

Day 9: We rode back to the farmstead and retrieved our horses and provisions, when one of the soldiers who pursued us approached. He said that the holy mother had permitted us to take what we wanted from the camp, but no one was to touch the valuable weapons. He also said that we had killed thousands of elves, and that if we caused more trouble than necessary, they would make us pay for the damage caused.

Day 10: We rode to the very edge of the forest and were once again greeted by the five human warriors. They were divided between the two armies and were no longer actively involved, but only to observe.

We learned that the two leaders, the human and the elven, were long time rivals and the Holy Mother had no intention of allowing the orc army to engage the human and elf ones, but had set a certain date and the attack was already underway.

The human army had set up camp about a mile from the orc and elf camp. We camped nearby to keep watch.

Day 11: As the sun came up I saw three enormous trolls standing atop a hillock. They were some distance away from us, but I would not have to worry about that for long. I heard them speak and one of them told the others that there was a great gathering of their people, and the elves were joining them. They had seen several elf children being sent off to the human camp.

Day 12: The troll approached my husband and spoke in his own language, but I knew what he was saying. He told my husband that he was to kill my husband for treason. My husband did not deny it, and I could see the confusion in his eyes. He had never seen the orc army or their leader, so I knew he had not revealed this to the humans.

The troll demanded my husband’s life, but I stood before him and told the troll that he had chosen the wrong man. He told me that I should have been their leader, and that he had a better chance of escaping than my husband. He then charged at my husband, but fortunately my husband was skilled at disarming his enemy. The other troll was quick to try and join in the fight, but was quickly cut down.

I felt that my husband had proven himself worthy of my trust and it gave me great relief to know that he was still alive and that I was now free.

Day 13: A day that changed my life forever.

The night before we were attacked by orcs, we were visited by a witch, a fairy, and a sprite. They had been observing our camp and since my husband is one of the few who can speak the fairy language, he quickly learned it. He also learned to wield the fairy’s magic wand, a magic wand that could change the appearance of anything it touched, and with a little luck, with the exception of unicorns and dwarves. These three people told us that the orcs had been approaching the camp for several days, with the intent of cutting us off from our allies and forcing us to take sides. They had seen the orc and elf armies gathering in preparation for the attack. I was initially furious that they were not in our camp to warn us, but once again I quickly understood their logic. If they were afraid that the elves would try to take the humans and orcs over, then they were afraid of losing all their resources.

The fairy told me that she knew of a spirit that I could call upon to help me and the others in the camp. The fairy gave us each an incantation to help us through the battle. While I waited for the spirits to arrive, the elf and orc armies engaged one another.

We were attacked by several thousands of orcs. With the aid of the fairy, and our magic wand, my husband and I charged at the front of our camp and joined the elf army, hoping to secure our reinforcements before the orc army attacked.

While we fought, I had the fairy conjure several unicorns and dwarves to our aid. The fairy and I were a great team. She cast a spell that turned our ponies into mules and I cast a spell to turn the mules into paladins. I was proud of the way that my husband and I worked together. He may not be a mage, but he was an incredible soldier.

With the help of the magical unicorns and dwarves, we managed to turn the tide of the battle. The elves and dwarves, helped us rout the orcs. Many of the orcs were killed, and many of the elven archers were able to take shelter in the buildings we had built for protection. Some orcs managed to flee from the battlefield. We were greatly relieved.

We then had the fairy conjure all of the elf children, and then the fairy was given the task of teleporting the orcs and elves into the mountains and any surrounding woods. She then disappeared into the forest, presumably to help her people.

Day 14: I do not know how long I slept after I awoke, but I woke up to see a vision of the fairy. She had come to thank me for helping her people. She told me that if we had not sided with the elves and the other races, the orc’s army would have come to our village and killed everyone. There would be no one left to look after my son. I know that there is a possibility that the elves are trying to take over, but I have not

[ladymagunaofiguanas]

Morgan Stark at Hogwarts

The children all huddled and walked out of the chamber, back across the hall, and through a pair of double doors into the Great Hall.

 Morgan had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place. It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in midair over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting. The hundreds of faces staring at them looked like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight. Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shone misty silver. Morgan looked upward and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars.  

"It's bewitched to look like the night sky. I read about it” Morgan heard Hermione mutter.

“In Hogwarts, A History" Morgan whispered. Hermione looked at her and smiled. 

“Morgan Stark, right?”

“Correct.” “You are American?” Hermione asked, and Morgan nodded. “I thought they went to different magical school.”

“I guess, I am a special case then.”Morgan replied and turned around to see her surroundings, until her name was called.

“Hmm, Morgan Stark I see,You have got a kind heart but you are too sarcastic. Hmmm... difficult. VERY difficult. Plenty of courage I see and wit that far surpasses any I have come across. Ahh...There’s a burning desire to succeed; an ambition that cannot be easily quenched, oh yes. But here beats a heart of gold, fast as a drum. Now…where shall I put you?”

Morgan squirmed in her seat, waiting patiently. She tried to ignore the whispers in the crowd and the expectant beady eyes from the onlookers that seemed to be steadily burning a hole into her skull. This must be a dream, right? It had to be! She even started to smell that putrid scent of burning rubber as if…

“FIRE! FIRE ON YOUR HEAD!!!”

The whispers turned into screams as Morgan threw the Sorting Hat onto the ground and stomped until there remained only the faint glow of orange from the embers that persisted. She looked around and met Dumbledore’s murky eyes which seemed just as, if not more heavy than Morgan herself. 

“…why not give it another go, eh?” someone shouted from the befuddled crowed.Morgan rolled her eyes at the vocal Slytherin. Typical. He probably thrived off of chaos and pandemonium. Behind him, a thin figure with sallow skin, dark flowy robes, and unmistakable greasy black hair slithered into view. He crossed his arms and smirked, revealing yellow crooked teeth.  

“Well go on then,” he egged on. “I have my wand at the ready”

Morgan hesitated but didn’t dare defy the Head of Slytherin. After dusting off the ancient hat, she gently perched it upon her head. Before she was able to complete one full cycle of inhaling and letting the air back out, the hat burst into flames once more. Snape, after lingering a few seconds too long for Morgan’s liking, cast the Extinguishing Spell. 

“MISS MORGAN STARK, TO MY OFFICE IMMEDIATELY”

McGonagall’s shrill voice echoed across the hall. The reverberations jolted Morgan into the present and she tailed the dark green robes envying the pristine black witch hat that lay atop it’s wearer’s head. 

“Now Miss Stark. I don’t know what happened exactly, but it appears that you have caused the Sorting Hat so much confusion that self-combusted”

Morgan was unsure what she could respond to when she had barely just stepped foot into Hogwarts, and decided to remain silent. 

“I’m afraid we will have no choice but to suspend you and send you back home until we know what is going on..”

As soon as Morgan was about to raise her voice in protest, Dumbledore marched into the hallway, catching his breath from having to catch up to the two.

“I don’t think that will be necessary. Morgan can just live for a week in each house until she feels one is the best fit for her. After all, if we can ask the hat to choose which house we want, we should still be able to let our students decide for themselves. Morgan has done no wrong in my eyes.”

Finishing his monologue, Dumbledore turned away with McGonagall trailing him. Having been a diligent student in the muggle world,and remembering her uncle Steve telling her about the various houses at Hogwarts before she came, Morgan figured it would be best to start off with joining the Ravenclaws. She could compare the rest of her experiences to this one. A pleasant breeze drifted across the room and she was greeted with cobalt blue silks when she entered the common room. Students were scurrying about busily and the room was neatly divided between a quiet section and talking section. Morgan’s attention was drawn to the bulletin board in the quiet section, and she realized the students must be studying for the upcoming Hogwarts Mathematics Olympiad. She quickly signed her name in an empty slot as maths was one of her strong suits and found an empty table to call her temporary home. A few hours passed until a girl with straggly strawberry blond hair wearing black headphones tapped her on the shoulder bobbing her head to some unknown beat. 

“Hey it’s been four hours and I noticed you were still working! That’s some hardcore dedication.”

Morgan looked up sheepishly and explained the study “addiction” where time seems to move differently for her brain and thanked the girl.

“Morgan, right? I saw it on the heading of your paper. I’m Luna. Nice to meet you. We’re very excited you picked Ravenclaw house first by the way.”

Morgan, though kind, was somewhat wary of people. Good friends aren’t easy to find, but the more she chatted with Luna, the more she found herself opening up.She seemed very excited about Morgan’s childhood marveling at how Morgan was the youngest and was adored by those around her, and she was Tony Stark’s daughter.

“I am really excited for potions,” Morgan said happily.

“Wish McGonagall favored us,” said Harry. Just then, the mail arrived. About a hundred of owls had suddenly streamed into the Great Hall during the breakfast, circling the table until they saw their owners and dropping the letters and packages onto their laps. A barn owl flew over to Morgan and dropped a bunch of letters in front of her.  Morgan smiled at the sight. “WOW!That's a lot of letters.” Commented Ron from behind her. “I have got a very big family, you see,” She replied proudly. “But aren’t you your parents only child?” Questioned Draco from the other side.

“Well, there aren’t my family but we are very close,” Morgan replied. “Guys, she lives with..” Fred said.

“THE AVENGERS!” George continued,

“It must be really cool to have family full of superheroes.” Ron exclaimed. “Imagine having a God as a friend.” Harry said grinning.

 When everything seemed perfect, an unwelcome thought intruded Morgan’s mind leaving her with a prominent scowl on her face. Of course, Luna picked up on it quite instantly. 

“Wrackspurts go in your ears?”

Morgan perked up. 

“No, I just shift moods pretty quickly. Especially, when I remember something out of the blue.”

“Aw, I was having a lot of fun today. So…what’d you remember?” questioned Luna. 

“That’s the problem. Today was so much fun.”

Luna looked at with a puzzled expression. Morgan noticed a wrinkle popped up above her left eye whenever Luna was especially thrown off. 

“I’m failing to see the problem here…” 

Morgan knew she wasn’t explaining well, but she felt kind of silly. 

“I just remembered that I’m not actually in Ravenclaw, I’m just going to be here for a week…I’ll have to spend three weeks in the other houses too. I know I might be jumping the gun here by feeling so attached to this house when I’ve just spent one day here and it was the first one. I know I could like the others better and I should give them a chance. I-“

Luna quickly sat up and shot her a smile and cut her off exclaiming, “Well you don’t have to worry about that!”

Now it was Morgan’s turned to borrow Luna’s puzzled wrinkle. 

“First off, you still have six whole days left here, but no matter. You can still tour the other houses with an open mind because of this-” she said holding up another flyer “The Hogwarts New Student Talent Show”  P.S: I was inspired to write by my friend, it was kinda a gift to me by my secret santa :)

[amarabliss]

Galahdian Dreams - 12 (Nyx Ulric/Reader)

Synopsis: Your father was the king of Insomnia. He was good and just. You never thought you’d meet anyone like him after he was taken from the world. Your Uncle Regis, has taken the throne and followed through on your father’s plans. It was good to see the city in capable hands.

Enter Nyx Ulric, refugee, Glaive, fighter…how is it he can see all your secrets? He knows how to set you off and he’s promised to not let you go…(AU for sure, Regis wasn’t supposed to take the throne, and our lovely Nyx has more of a past then we thought…)

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six Part Seven Part Eight Part Nine Part Ten Part Eleven

Nyx let out a soft sigh as he reread the same line for the third time. He reached up rubbing a hand over his face before he glanced over to you. You were twirling a pencil in the air between your fingers as you read some report.

“You’re staring again.” You whispered as you began writing something on a notepad next to you.

“Yes I am.” You looked over to him, he smirked snapping the book closed as he stood up tossing it on the table.

“Is that…” You watched him walk around the table to you. You leaned back crossing your arms giving him a smirk of your own. Gods, the ways your lips moved drove him mad, sometimes he even had trouble focusing when you talked, “supposed to mean something?”

“It could…” He pushed your work away enough for him to take a seat on the table, “it’s hard working for someone when you only wish to do one thing with them.”

“You don’t work for me…you work for Insomnia.” You retorted as he stared down into your eyes. Always had to nit pick when he flirted with you.

“Fine…it’s hard protecting someone when there’s only one thing you want to do with them…” He amended as he began to lean down.

His eyes snapped open as the loud beeping of his alarm went off. Frustration filled him as he grabbed his phone turning it off. He let out a soft groan as he placed a hand over his face. Dreams of you had been more frequent since his confession. Since things…changed?

Did they though?

It was a strange situation all together. Things did change, but not so much the way he thought they would. Since your presentation you had been tasked with rolling out the proposal. Which meant a great deal of your time was working on allocating supplies for the project about to happen.

It just led from one thing to the next. Supplies…manpower…timing…dealing with moving tenants into buildings that would be repurposed. It was stressful, yet you maintained your composure the entire way through and managed to do everything with such grace. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it were it his job.

It left very little time to even try to reconnect to that moment they had shared several weeks ago. He cleared his throat rolling off the side of the bed into some pushups. He needed to work out some of this frustration somehow. Today was going to be even harder…

Today was groundbreaking day and you were leaving the Citadel to oversee everything here in the ward…here where everyone knew who he was…here where everyone still treated him like a king despite the fact that he lived as one of them. He’d tried to tell you that it was just going to be a bunch of crews bumbling around the first week. You were insistent. You didn’t want to just sit by.

He couldn’t blame you. You’d put in so many hours. This project was your baby in a way and you just wanted to see it grow up.

He got dressed hooking his kukris to his back and side but decided to leave the Glaive jacket home. If he was gonna be working in the trenches he didn’t need a fancy jacket. He laced up his boots looking over seeing his phone buzz and light up.

Reaching for it he smiled seeing your face pop up with the text. Snapping a picture had been a lot harder than he thought it was. You didn’t sit still with out making a goofy face when he pointed his phone at you. Finally, he’d gotten you in a relaxed moment looking out at something. It was cute, and most definitely you.

Y/N – Good morning! Did you enjoy sleeping in?

He smiled as he responded. This was one thing they had started doing more often. He was normally the one to first send out the morning text as he walked to work. Today was the exception, you were catching a ride with Titus since he was playing the role of representing the Galahdian people.

It was funny sitting in his office acting like you didn’t know who he actually was and like he wasn’t going to be making the decisions later. He told you it was like inside joke. Later it would look like he was really paying attention since he’d already talked about it with you earlier. Earning him a couple brownie points with the old man would certainly benefit him later.

“You torture him too much.” You shook your head smiling at him as he flipped through the proposal, “Does he push you that hard?”

He looked up laughing a little, “Yeah he does, but it’s good…I appreciate him so much. I know he means well.”

“He was your…” You trailed off hoping for him to finish.

“Uh…you’d call him your shield.” He thought about it scratching his cheek with his finger, “We don’t really have titles like that. He guarded my dad…then when he passed my mom asked him to look over me.”

“Seems like he still is.” You watched him running the same finger over a passage, “You trust him, right?”

Nyx looked up seeing concern flashing through your eyes, “With my life. He’s saved me so many times…he’s more then a guard…he’s more then a friend…why do you ask?”

“I just see him in the meetings…he’s very good at observing people. I find him looking at me with such a seriousness…it’s hard to know if he’s scrutinizing me or worried for me.” You played with a ring on your middle finger nervously.

He watched you for a moment before picking up a blade of grass using it as a place holder. In a swift motion he moved next to you taking your hand in his, “He is doing his job which is to protect the crown…I won’t lie, he’s a bit divided because of my presence, but I promise you he’s looking out for you, all the while ensuring your uncle is safe.”

He had meant to talk to Titus about it, but never got around to it. You weren’t alone in noticing his stern gaze washing over the crowd. He had assumed it was a reaction to the opposition of your plan, but the more he watched him, the more he realized he was piecing something together.

Nyx – It was nice, had a good dream.

Y/N – You’ll have to tell me about it when I see you.

Pass…he thought to himself as he pulled on his other boot lacing it up. The last thing he’d want to admit to you was that he was having smutty dreams about you. Just like he would never admit that he sometimes daydreamed about it while sitting next to you…probably why he dreamed about when he was home, now that he thought about it.

He shook off the thought as he grabbed his gloves and strode out the door. He smiled seeing an older woman struggling with a laundry basket and opening her door, “Doris…here let me help you.”

He took the basket from her and she smiled at him, “Oh dear…what would I ever do without you? Your mum would be so proud of you taking care of an old lady like me.”

He smiled as he leaned down when she reached up taking his face giving him a big kiss on the cheek before she turned and opened her door, “Oh I don’t know, you’d probably get super buff from wrangling a door and a laundry basket all by yourself. I’m really not doing you any favors.”

She let out a nice laugh like older ladies always did as he walked in setting the basket down on her table, “My dear, you have no idea how much it means to me…to know my king is willing…eager even to help his people in such little ways.”

“Doris, it is my honor and pleasure to help the prettiest woman in the building.” He smirked a little as he bowed. He chuckled as she reached out swatting him with her hand, “Now if you excuse me, I gotta go put these muscles to work.”

“You’re part of the build?” She asked him surprised.

“My charge, she’s the head of the project and insists on being present, therefore I will also be doing my part.” He told her watching her walk toward the small kitchenette in the corner of the room, “Auntie…what are you hiding in your oven?”

“Well my dear…” She grinned pulling out a large dish full up large baked triangular dough balls, “a day like today, you will need your strength.”

“Are these…” He took the dish from her taking a deep breath in, “Doris…are these the fancy samosas you use to make?”

“They are and you can expect to see many more delights throughout the day from all the cooks left at home to twiddle their thumbs.” She walked with him to the door, “You may want to tell your pretty lady friend to set something up for it.”

“I will do that, thank you.” He smiled as he started to pick one up off the plate as he exited into the hall.

“Do not eat all of them, Nyx Ulric!” She called after him as he waved munching on a big bite.

He enjoyed every piece of it as he traveled down the three flights of stairs coming out onto the street. He stopped as he licked jelly off his fingers seeing everyone out on the street. It was packed. Stalls were being packed up and removed already. He’d made a notice getting it to as many people as he could over the last few weeks that things were going to be changing and he needed help.

He didn’t realize how onboard everyone was. He slowly walked out into the street. He nodded to people as they greeted him. Everyone seemed excited about the prospect of the expansion.

He walked up to where several of his comrades in arms were standing. They all looked at him and quickly descended on him, “Breakfast!”

“Whoa, hey hey!” He managed to grab two before the rest of the plate was devoured, “Vultures! The lot of you!”

“These are…” Luche’s eyes widened as he took a bite, “These are from Auntie Doris!”

“They are.” He put the two back on the plate smiling, “I suppose if she thinks this is an occasion for her specialty, then we know we’re doing something right.”

“So…” Pelna made a face swallowing before he spoke, “When’s Drautos showing up?”

“Uh…should be any minute…but listen up…” They perked up as he began speaking with authority, “You’re all going to be managing teams. Some of you will be helping with street clean up, it’s boring but necessary so we can get the equipment and supplies in here. The rest of you will be helping with demolition…Did we get everyone out of the first section?”

“Yes sir.” Tredd gave him a small salute, “Once everyone starts rolling out, we’re going to make a second loop.”

“And everyone has made it to their temporary lodging?” Nyx watch his face fall a little causing him to sigh a little, “Tredd…take Luca and Yura…please go make sure everyone has someplace to sleep tonight.”

“Yes sir…sorry sir…” Tredd nodded hanging his head a little as he walked by.

“Hey…” Nyx put a hand on his shoulder making his stop. He smiled at him, “I’m not mad…I just want everyone taken care of. Think of it as if they were your kin…would you want them left wandering?”

“No sir.” Tredd shook his head, eyes lighting up with understanding.

“Then get it done.” Nyx smiled giving him a pat on the shoulder before turning back to everyone else, “Alright, so once Lady Caelum arrives, she’s going to have some clipboards. You’re going to write down the names of everyone under you, they will be your unit. They are your responsibility, if anything happens during this you are their point of contact, understood?”

“Yes sir!” They rang out all at once.

“Already getting things rolling I see.” He felt himself smile as he heard your voice behind him. He turned seeing you carrying a large box.

He quickly took it under one arm handing the plate to you, “Breakfast.”

“Oh…uh…” You looked at them surprised, “Thank…you…”

“One of them is for Titus.” He smirked a little as the captain approached, “Doris, sends her blessing.”

He watched his mentor’s eyes widen a little before he quickly took one off the plate, “Ma’am if you’re not interested in trying…”

“Don’t you try to swindle this piece of heaven from her. You’re a bad man, bad!” Nyx adjusted the box on his hip, “Everyone bare witness he tried to steal this…”

“Nyx…” He looked back at you as your face flushed a little, “It’s alright…I should eat something…”

“I promise you won’t regret it.” Nyx smiled at you as you lifted it up. He watched your eyes light up as the decadent jam spilled out a little as you bit into it, “I told you.”

“It’s so…soft and crisp…you have to take me to this Doris later so I can thank her.” You took another bite.

He chuckled reaching up wiping a bit of jam off your cheek. He smirked a little when he licked his thumb getting you to blush a little, “Happy to, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to meet you.”

“Thank you…” You whispered a little looking over to the Glaives standing by, “This is our group from the Citadel?”

“Yes…” He nodded looking over to them, “Some of them you’ve already met. Everyone is eager to help.”

“Good…let’s get started then.” You looked to Drautos who was just finishing his samosa, “If you’re ready.”

“Yes ma’am.” He nodded stepping past you to address the Glaives.

Nyx walked next to you tilting his head down to you whispering, “You look very nice today.”

You glanced up to him touching the back of your hair a little. You had done it up differently to keep it away from your face, though he much preferred it down it looked nice, “Thank you…I don’t look completely like I’m out of my element, do I?”

He looked you over quickly. Grey jeans, long sleeve grey top with little accents here and there, definitely not a top you should work in, but it was probably all you had, and boots that looked really uncomfortable, “I think your feet are going to hurt by the end of the day.”

“Yeah…” You looked down frowning a bit, “I don’t really have…normal shoes…”

He smiled a little shaking his head, “Well…I’m sure we can help you out with that. We can take off a bit early and get you something more appropriate if you’re going to insist on being here.”

“I insist.” You smiled at him before looking over to Drautos, who was giving about the same speech he had early.

“Did you take you meds?” Nyx whispered looking down watching you cringe a little, “Y/N…”

“I was excited…” You crossed your arms sheepishly looking away from him.

“You’ve been excited like ten times in the last three weeks…” He looked down at you with a serious look, “Three of those times have been in the last seven days…”

“I feel fine.” You looked at him smiling before giving him a gentle nudge, “Really…”

He rolled his eyes shaking his head, “You start feeling funny…I mean even a little…”

“I will tell my faithful shadow right away.” You turned to him raising one hand while putting the other over your heart.

“Now I know what Titus feels like…” He sighed a little getting you to laugh a little as you both stepped up.

“Know how I feel about what?” Drautos looked at him suspiciously.

Nyx shrugged a little as he kept going pulling out a clipboard from the box, “Nothing, you don’t already know sir.”

Drautos sighed heavily before turning to you, “Lady Caelum, is there anything else you’d like to add?”

“Uh…” Nyx glanced over watching you take in a deep breath as he handed everything out, “No…not right now.”

“Very well…everyone gather your groups. We’ll have a small briefing before you start for the day.” Drautos turned back to you, “Will you want to speak to everyone else?”

“Yes I would. What I have to say, it’s for everyone.” You smiled at him glancing back at Nyx. He smiled nodded to you as you turned with Drautos walking off.

“You and Princess seem chummier…” He glanced at Libertus walking over to him holding out a water bottle.

“What are you doing here? Thought you were making lunch for everyone?” Nyx ignored the question as he took the bottle from him.

“It’s eight in the morning…lunch isn’t until noon. I’ve got plenty of time.” Libertus smirked crossing his arms, “Can you vouch for Princess’ plan?”

Nyx took in a deep breath looking over at you talking with Drautos before he nodded, “It’s gonna be a lot of work, but if everyone continues to pitch in like we are right now…we’ll stay on track and we’ll all be doing a great deal better.”

“Wow…be careful, you almost sounded like a king right there.” Nyx rolled his eyes as Libertus laughed.

“When are you gonna join the Glaives, Libe?” He tapped his fingers on the top of the lid, “We could use you.”

“Me…nah…that magic crap…gives me a headache thinking about it.” He waved his hand toward him, “You can keep it, I’m happy running a bar But once you need your guards back, you know who to call.”

“Yeah I do.” Nyx smiled at him giving him a slap on the arm before he began walking away, “You better make me a good sandwich!”

“Good? I’m gonna make you the best damn sandwich you ever had!” Nyx laughed as Libertus shouted at him.

“Ma’am…” You looked at him as he approached. He held out the water to you smirking, “Stress can dehydrate you…”

You took it rolling your eyes a little taking it form him, “Thank you.”

“Just doing my job, ma’am.” He stood next to you like he would normally be surveying the crowd. He knew he could trust everyone here, but it would look really bad if something happened while you were away from the Citadel, especially surrounded by foreigners, “Captain, gathering the troops?”

“Yes…” You let out a soft sigh gripping onto the bottle.

He took a step closer to you before he carefully reached over putting a hand on your back, “You’re going to be great. Your father would be proud of how you got here.”

You looked up at him giving him a smile, “You know…when this all calms down…we should go see him…together.”

The way you said it made his face get hot. It wasn’t a command of the job…it was a request to join you. He smiled reaching up scratching the back of his neck, “Uh yeah, of course. I’d like that.”

“Good.” You had a rosey tint to your cheeks as you looked away from when Drautos came back, “Everyone ready?”

“At your command.” Drautos smiled a little waving toward the gathering crowd.

You let out breath before looking over toward the van you drove in with Drautos. You looked at Nyx, “Give me a boost.”

“What?” He followed you over, “Y/N…I don’t think…”

“Give me…” You looked at him shoving the water bottle into his chest, “a boost.”

“It’s high…and you’re not all that graceful.”  He smirked a little as you glared at him.

“Nyx Ulric…” You began as he raised his hands in defense.

“Ah…alright…I surrender.” He set the water bottle down as he leaned over threading his fingers together, “Just…don’t fall…that would be really embarrassing.”

“Shush!” You put your hands on his shoulders as you stepped up into his hand. You let out a little yelp as he hoisted you up with ease before you took a seat on the roof swinging your legs up. You stood up looking out at the crowd centering yourself, “Uh…hello! Can you all hear me?”

Nyx watched the crowd move in closer. He felt protect nerves bubble up in his gut. He looked over through the window at Drautos reaching inside grabbing the radio’s handset. Nyx smiled as he reached up toward you, “My lady.”

“Oh…thank you.” You took it standing back up looking out at everyone, “There… this is probably better…”

You swallowed taking in a deep as the echo of your voice diminished briefly before you began again, “I just…wanted to take a moment and apologize to all of you who reside here. I’m sure it doesn’t mean much, since I live in the Citadel where I find little discomfort, but I want you to know that this was not the way it was supposed to be.”

“Things were lost…filed away and forgotten when my father passed away. Promises he made to Queen Selena…broken and buried.” You frowned putting the radio down for a moment shaking your head collecting yourself before going on, “I sat by too long and didn’t see the damage being taken out on a brave and beautiful people.”

“That is why I am here today. To fix what has been broken. It will not be easy or quick, and I will require help from you all.” You smiled a little take a step forward making Nyx nervous. He hadn’t been joking entirely when he said you weren’t graceful.

Sure on the ground you could dance circles around him, but on ladder or stool…he lost count of the number of times he’d rescued you from a fall in the library, “It is my intention to see our two thriving cultures coexist side by side appreciating one another. Embracing each other’s differences. While I’m among you through these coming weeks of building, please talk to me. Express your concerns and I will bring them to the king. I will make your voice heard and I will do what I can to see change come for all of you.”

“You’re just one person!” Nyx looked out at the crowd trying to see who it was. Everyone began to murmur wondering the same thing. Why be here if you were going to stir up trouble?

“Yes I am.” You nodded looking at them all getting them to quiet down, “I remember my mother would say that to my father. You’re just one man, Malcolm…”

Nyx looked up at you seeing the tears prick the corners of your eyes as you smiled, “And he would say, yes I am…but if not me who? I am but one voice shouting in the wilderness…shouting at an emptiness called the world…I must make a choice and I choose to stand.”

“It was lyrics to a song that he heard when he was younger, and it just stuck with him.” You sniffed wiping your eyes with your knuckle, “It sticks with me too. I can still hear him singing it sometimes… I am but one voice…and my choice is to be here, and I choose to stand with you.”

Nyx looked back at everyone who had fallen silent. Slowly each Glaive in the crowd put their hand to their heart in a silent salute and following behind them everyone in the crowd imitated them. He looked back up to you as you took it in.

You smiled placing a hand over your heart as a tear fell down your cheek, “So what do you say? Let’s get to work!”

Cheers erupted as you handed the radio back to Drautos. Nyx tilted his head for you to head to the back of the van. You obliged him following him as you sat on the back portion of the roof. He reached up and you fell gently into his hands.

He set you down taking the opportunity to hold you as your hands planted securely on his shoulders. He looked into your eyes smiling with admiration, “You’re amazing.”

“It wasn’t awful then?” You looked at him nervously, your hands falling from his shoulder to his chest.

“You were perfect.” He leaned down slowly but pulled away instantly as he heard crunching approaching.

“Everything alright back here?” Drautos looked at you both began to separate.

“Yes…” You smiled at him adjusting your sleeves, “Just a little dizzy from the nerves.

“Do you need anything?” Drautos asked concern falling over his features. You shook your head giving him a little peace, “Nice work…did Nyx tell you that music is a big part of our culture?”

“No…I didn’t know that.” You looked at Nyx surprised, “Is that true?”

“Yeah…” He nodded crossing his arms trying to shake of the feeling of frustration, somehow he had a feeling this was going to be a trend, “We have a lot of ceremonies with songs…and in general we like our music. It helps us work, keeps us in sync…you know…”

“I didn’t…” You smiled a little, “I guess it was fate that I bring up that story then.”

“It was a good story, an honest one from the heart. I think everyone could see that.” Drautos smiled a little before looking at Nyx, “You two will be just making rounds today. Help a little bit everywhere, the point is for you to be seen in the beginning. We need to let our team leads coordinate their groups successfully.”

“Understood sir.” Nyx nodded before giving him a nod.

“Please…please…” Drautos looked at the both of you pleadingly, “Stay out of trouble.”

You peered around the corner watching Drautos disappear as Nyx shook his head speaking quietly, “You think it’s like I used to be handful or something?”

“You?” You looked back at him with a smirk, “Never!”

“Ah ha…I think you’re being sarcastic right there…” He stepped closer to you as you stared up at him.

You stared up at him expectantly, “Well I do have a very good example of it standing in front of me.”

“Sarcastic? Me? I’m offended!” He put his hands on your hips, “Appalled even! I demand compensation!”

“Compensation?” You smiled at him as you took hold of his shirt making it pull taut against his shoulders, “In what form, would you like this compensation paid?”

He didn’t waste any time capturing your lips with his own, fearing something or someone else would come and interrupt this perfect opportunity. It was brief, but electrified. He licked his lips pulling away from your seeing a hazy look fall upon your face, “Maybe one more of those at some point today and we’ll call us even.”

You blushed a little bit looking down as he stepped away, “I know…this isn’t…”

“Don’t.” He reached over taking your hand giving it a gentle squeeze, “I’m hoping it won’t be like this for too long…”

Your eyes lit up with curiosity, “Nyx…”

“We need to get going. Lots to do.” He interrupted you as he stepped around the van appearing before the crowd that was still getting organized, “We should start with the food tent, cause we’re going to need one.”

“I thought Libertus was already taking care of that.” You skipped a little to catch up to him before he bent over picking up your water handing it back.

“Ah yes…but I doubt he planned for every chef in the area donating a dish to pass…probably more then one.” He smiled a little, “It’s the village mentality. We all need to contribute somehow…this is their way.”

“I see…well then…” You looked around the area as every group began to disperse, “I suggest we get one of the tents and set it up where everyone has access to it. This is your home…show me where that would be.”

He felt positively giddy as he began showing you around. Setting the food tent was easy, but what followed was beyond what he dreamed of. You helped serve everyone you could.

He smiled next to you as you laughed hand out another plate. Everyone was enjoying seeing you right in front of them. They asked you questions, you answered what you could. You helped them, enough that he kept losing track of you.

You were never too far of course, but he always found you listening intently to whoever you were. When you finished you would take them into your arms, as was their custom, kissing each cheek to show your respect. How lucky was he, that you cared enough to remember even the littlest detail?

You walked with him later that day through the building that was being remodeled. The foreman was showing you around explaining each change. You listened intently asking many questions. He seemed to be finding problems in certain areas, and already it was going to take more supplies than anticipated.

“Hold on one second.” You smiled at him pulling out your phone stepping away.

He looked at Nyx, “Uh…sir…do you know what’s she’s doing?”

“Finding the solution.” Nyx watched as you began finding the supplies. At least enough to keep them going until you could find a better source.

“Just like that?” The foremen crossed his arms, “I thought…I thought we’d have to cut corners…”

Nyx looked at him shaking his head, “You’re gonna find that she doesn’t half-ass anything. Don’t be afraid to tell her the truth…even if it’s bad news.”

The foremen nodded smiling a little, “I’ve heard she’s something else…we’ll see if she can keep it up.”

Nyx looked back at you as you closed your fist throwing it into the air a big smile coming to your face, “I think we’re the ones going to have trouble.”

The foremen shrugged a little as you walked back over, “That seemed promising.”

“We’ll have everything you need by tomorrow morning and then some.” You told him beaming as you adjusted the hard hat, “Please don’t hesitate to let me ore Drautos know of anything else.”

“Yes ma’am.” He bowed a little, “I should tell everyone the news, it’ll change our process a little bit now that we can do everything.”

“Please, do.” You smiled at him as he turned away. You looked at Nyx, “Where to next?”

“Well…we have been on the street clean-up, demolition site, garden site…” He held up his fingers as he listed everything off, “All that’s left is the school.”

“Lead the way, sir.” You smiled at him.

“…” He smirked looking around making sure no one was around before he pulled out his kukri stepping close to you, “Hold on…”

“What…no!” You tensed as he threw the dagger out the open window. He chuckled when he landed on the fire escape across the way, seeing you clutching onto him tightly, “…why…”

“Because I want you to meet Doris.” He smiled at you before he turned to the window tapping on it. He knelt down when he saw her approaching and helped her open the window, “Mind if we come in?”

“Of course not! Please.” Doris beamed at the both of you stepping back. She watched as he crawled in turning back helping your through the window, “My my…this brings back memories.”

“Auntie…be nice…” Nyx grimaced realizing suddenly that maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

“Oh no…Doris…” You smirked at him, “Please go on!”

Doris let out a laugh as you turned to her, “You must be the breath of fresh air.”

“Y/N…” You stepped forward as Doris held open her arms. You smiled as she hugged you tightly, “and you are Doris, baker extraordinaire! Whatever you gave Nyx this morning was delicious.”

“Aha, I am glad to see them make it to you. I was afraid he’d be rolling around the streets with sticky fingers all day.” Doris laughed as she walked over to her cub board pulling out a kettle.

“Auntie we can’t stay long, we’re on the way to the school.” Nyx interrupted.

“Nonsense.” You looked at him eyes glittering, “I have all week to make it everywhere. I will pay special attention to the school tomorrow. Besides, I didn’t bring the surprise with me anyways.”

He sighed as you walked over offering to help her. He took a seat watching them. Doris explained how she had been the palace cook. When you found out she’d watched him grow up your eyes grew mischievous.

“Doris…I may have to come and have tea with you more often. Nyx doesn’t talk about his time at the palace that often and I wonder what a little scamp he might’ve been.” Doris glanced over to Nyx unsure of how to respond.

“Uh…it’s okay Doris…she knows.” Nyx told her with a smile and watched as you realized what you had done, “It’s okay…”

“I didn’t even think about it…” You looked at Doris frowning, “I am the worst at this game…”

Doris laughed guiding you back to the table, “My dear, dealing with royalty is never easy, but it does my heart glad to know my king has someone to be himself around.”

You looked at Nyx apologetically, “This…isn’t easy at all…”

“And that is one of the reasons why I didn’t want you here…” He sighed a little, “but I don’t think we can do it without you either. You make all the pieces fit together.”

You smiled at him reaching over putting your hand over his, “I will do better.”

The rest of the visit was Doris regaling you with a few stories of a kitchen thief who turned into a gentleman with a hole in his stomach. It was nice laughing about home instead of remembering how it was in ruins now. Doris hugged him tightly when it was time to go, “I will see you in the morning.”

“Doris, are you baking again?” Nyx stepped away smirking.

“Only for you two.” She winked before pulling you into a hug, “You take care of him now.”

He felt his cheeks get hot when he heard that, “Doris…I’m the one…”

“I will.” You interrupted him kissing her cheek, “See soon.”

You both stepped out into the hall feeling the cool air of evening setting in. He smiled at you a little, “Thank you for doing that…I know we have better places to be.”

“No…we really didn’t.” You looked up into his eyes, “She is a wonderful person and I am glad to have met her. I wish I could spend time with everyone like that.”

“That would be a lot…I don’t even I know everyone here…” He scratched the back of his head.

“And yet…” You stepped closer to him shrugging your shoulders up as you whispered, “they all know you’re their king…”

“It’s okay.” He let his arm fall as he smiled, “It was bound to happen.”

“I know…this is all so much harder than I thought it would be.” He watched as you looked down face getting redder, “We don’t get a whole lot of time alone anymore…not like before…”

“Yeah…I’ve been thinking that too…” He reached out letting his hand trail down your arm to your hand, “Things are only going to get busier…”

You laced your fingers with his looking up to his face finally as you swallowed, “I…Nyx…I don’t know how to do any of this to begin with. My life was planned out for me for so long…it still is in some things…but finding you…well…”

He smiled letting his other hand cup your cheek letting his thumb run over you bottom lip like he’d dreamt of doing so many times. The act of doing it was more alluring then the dream, “It’s okay…I’m not an expert, but I…I do know that there’s no one I’d rather spend time with. Even if it’s in small bits like this…”

The small sound of satisfaction you made when his lips met yours was enough to ignite something inside of him that he regretted, only because he knew he couldn’t give into that flame…not yet. Somehow, he knew you felt the same the way your hands grasped onto his shirt. A need that couldn’t be fulfilled in their present state, in their present situation, in their everything.

And yet…you stepped closer to him when he parted from you, “Why must I always wake up here?”

His eyes widened a little, “What was that?”

You flushed looking up at him mulling it over for a moment before you answered, “It’s embarrassing to admit but…I’ve been having this dream…it always seems to end here. Why can’t there be more?”

He felt as if the world had shifted and everything was left falling in a state of weightlessness as your words washed over him. It was a valid question…and needed a logical answer, “Because I’m Galahdian…and you’re a former queen turned lady…and…we’re not supposed to be here…together…”

“But…” You shook your head letting you hand slid up to his neck, “why does it feel like home? And why should it matter?”

“Y/N…” He sighed into your touch before taking your hand away, “We can’t…we have to be careful…we have to take it slow and believe me when I say, that is so painful for me to admit. Until something changes…we can’t do more…be more…”

You frowned stepping away from him, “…”

“Y/N…” He tried to take your hand. Reluctantly you gave into him, “It will get better…I have to believe that, but if you want to be here with your work…then…we have to make it work, not us…”

“Then we should check in…I’m sure Captain Drautos is worried…” You began to walk past him to the stairs.

“Stop…” He watched you freeze at the first step, “What do you want me to do? I’m not going to keep having you get angry at me because of how your country sees status…”

“So, it’s my fault now?” You turned to him as he rolled his eyes, “Nyx…I just…wanted to be with you...you’re the one who pulled away.”

He watched you turn moving down the stairs quickly. He stood their letting the words sink in. He was the one pulling away, wasn’t he? Every time…he was the one stepping away…bringing the harsh reality to light…

But he had to, right? It was to keep you safe…if anyone found out that he was a king…there were too many possibilities to fathom…war being one of them. He couldn’t do that to you or his people. Not when Lucis was already fighting a war…

He came out a few minutes after and saw you waiting just outside. He sighed stepping next to you, “I’ll take you home…”

“Fine…” You looked at him eyes burning a little as the streetlights started to kick on, “Probably for the best. It’s been a long day and it’s gonna be a long week.”

[ohshcscenerios]

Find Me

Chapter Six - Choose Your Own Adventure 

Previous Poll Result: Call the Black Onion Squad

“That was Haruhi!” Kyoya shouted in anger, slamming his fist against the table. He couldn’t control his outrage and kicked an empty chair across the tiled floor, forcing it tip over beside the wall. “Someone took her!” 

His outburst simultaneously stilled the room and rudely awakened Tamaki from his drunken nap. He rose with a few groans but Mitsukuni encouraged him to keep quiet. No one knew what to say - as if there was anything they could say - and allowed the shadow king to unleash his temper. 

They could see the fear darkening Kyoya’s eyes while he angrily paced about the room. It had all happened so fast that all of his emotions were now crashing over him like a tidal wave, consuming him with regret. Within thirty minutes his fiance had been plucked from his life and thrown into immeasurable danger. 

Kyoya pulled out his cell phone and pressed a button on speed dial. He held up his finger asking for silence while the phone rang, even though the room had already been silent.

“Master Kyoya.” Tachibana greated after three rings. He sounded tired, as if he was just woken up, but that was understandable considering the late hour. 

Kyoya didn’t waste time with apologies or details, “Ready the first and second commander of the Black Onion Squad. Have them meet me at 327 Yule Street in downtown Tokyo. I want them here within thirty minutes.” Without waiting for a response he slammed the phone shut and slipped it back into his pocket. 

He turned to address his friends, “I don’t trust the local authorities to properly handle this. There are too many legal hoops they’ll have to jump through first. Haruhi might not have that much time.”

His friends nodded in agreement, even Tamaki although he was thoroughly confused by the mess he woke up to. However he could feel the negative tension in the room and knew something terrible had happened. He understood that somehow Haruhi was in danger and knew it would be best to ask questions later. 

“Takashi and I will search the area. We’ll call you if we find anything.” Mitsukuni said as he hopped down from the booth. Takashi nodded and followed his cousin outside. 

Kyoya trusted in his hired men but he trusted in his two friends even more. With two very capable and skilled martial artists scouring the area he was sure they would at least find a trail. 

That’s all Kyoya needed right now, a tip in the right direction. Anything that would allow him to face the cowards that dared to kidnap a lone women in the middle of the night. No - his woman. 

Kyoya noticed Tamaki’s confused expression but didn’t want to be bothered with having to recount the troubling details. He didn’t want to relive the heartbreaking moments while they were still burning his chest. 

“Hikaru, please tell Tamaki what’s going on,” He instructed as he turned to the door, “I’m going to wait outside.” 

He heard the faint echos of Tamaki’s gasps and cries as he walked down the hallway. 

His first and second commander arrived to the karaoke bar in twenty five minutes and although they were technically five minutes early Kyoya frowned at how long they took. He was growing more anxious by the minute but he managed to control his expressions and breathing much better than before. Now that he was speaking with his men he didn’t want to appear frantic. He needed control. 

After a brief discussion over how they should tackle the search the first commander called his right hand to organize their unit for a city-wide search. The second commander began calling their legal department to construct a search warrant that guaranteed them access anywhere they deemed necessary.

Within two hours a unit of armored soldiers marched the streets with loaded rifles slung across their chests. It was an intimidating sight that would surely spark gossip in the area but Kyoya didn’t care how they appeared. The city should consider itself lucky that he didn’t order his men into civilian homes. 

He turned over the tape recorder to the first commander and ordered that the voices be analyzed and prepared to match. It would take a week before they could start matching audio recordings so he needed it started immediately. 

Three hours into the Black Onion Squad’s area search Takashi and Mitsukuni rejoined the group in the parking lot. By this time the karaoke bar had kicked everyone out and locked their doors, unwilling to have any part of what was happening outside. Kyoya threatened to have their very lives striped to barely nothing if he later found out they were involved in any way. 

Unfortunately the pair couldn’t report any findings. They passed through every alleyway and left no fire escape or dumpster unchecked. They couldn’t find anything that would lead them to Haruhi or her kidnappers. 

Kyoya felt tears welling in his eyes, wanting to fall, but he wouldn’t allow them. He refused to cry, even though he slowly felt himself falling apart with each passing hour, he wouldn’t cry in front of his friends or his men. He needed to remain strong, if not for his team then for himself. 

The former hosts didn’t go home. They called their offices and emailed their university professors explaining they would be absent for the next few days. They didn’t care if their impromptus absences created trouble, there was more pressing matters at hand. 

They couldn’t leave their friends like this. They could see Kyoya barely holding himself together as doubt and anguish consumed him. He was trying his best to stand straight and keep a leveled expression but they could see the fear i his eyes. 

As they looked among each other they realized they all mirrored his inner turmoil. 

A few hours later the first of morning’s light began to tint the sky. Birds cooed in the distance as the crickets subsided. 

Haruhi had officially been missing for seven hours. 

Tamaki thanked a soldier as he accepted two black coffees in foam cups. He turned to find Kyoya sitting on a parking lot divider, hunched over his bent knees deep in thought, and made his way over. 

“Hey buddy, here.” Tamaki squatted down beside him on the concrete divider and offered the coffee to him. Kyoya took a deep breath and nodded slightly as he accepted it. 

Tamaki took a small sip and sighed, “I’m so sorry Kyoya. I’m so sorry this happened. It’s all my fault for choosing this place.” He kept his eyes to the ground, unable to look at his friend’s somber face. He was also terrified for Haruhi and grimaced at the thought of anyone intentionally harming her. She was so small, so fragile, that almost anyone could easily overpower her. 

That’s how she disappeared, after all. 

Kyoya nodded again, “You’re right, it is your fault for choosing this place. What were you thinking, having us come to this shit hole? I don’t care if it meets halfway between our social rankings, Haruhi is supposed to marry me in five months and she’ll soon live our lifestyle. She won’t be a commoner anymore. I don’t even consider her one now.” He took a deep breath and blew it out through his nose. “But I suppose I should have been prepared for a situation like this. It’s no secret among our families that there are enemies who loathe us.” 

Tamaki nodded and took another sip of his coffee, “Unfortunately that’s true. Our wealth and power doesn’t always protect us from everything.” 

Kyoya took a sip of his coffee, thankful for the bitter burn that washed over his tongue, and rested his forearms on his knees. “When we find her I never want to return to his place again.” 

Just as he took another sip his cellphone began ringing. 

Should he answer the call? (Click to Vote)

Once again I fell back into the cursed pattern of updating late. I apologize for my tardiness. I’d like to stick to a schedule so I can push out at least four chapters a day. 

The next update should be around 11:00pm (ETS). Poll will end one hour prior.