#and then he proceeded to give me a speech about his own road to becoming a hygienist

[cinnaminsvga]

actual conversation i had with my dental hygienist

hygienist: so what did you study at university?

me: chemistry...

hygienist: damn, no wonder you look so sad!

[thepandapopo]

Weak - Sylvix Week Day 2: PDA

Sylvain and Felix embark on the road to becoming a couple in typical Sylvain and Felix fashion – completely backwards and embarrassingly obvious.

OR

Felix is weak for Sylvain.

OR

Four times Sylvain initiates PDA and the one time that Felix does instead.

i.

Felix really should have known better.

He should have known that this joke, this mockery of his pent-up feelings, would become more than a one-off thing. But he is weak; so very weak to Sylvain and even if he could, Felix doesn’t think that he would have put a stop to it anyways because despite all his hissing and cursing, he really is touched starved for the fool.

Yet here they are again, about to ride off into yet another battle – because that’s what war is; just a never ending string of blood and death and loss – and Sylvain is leaning down from atop his warhorse, looking every bit the intimidating Dark Knight that he is with his black armor shining boldly in the afternoon sun, and threading one large hand between the inky strands of Felix’s hair to bring his face closer to his prize.

Felix has lost count how many kisses Sylvain has bestowed upon him in the calm before the storm. It’s a testament to just how many battles they have gone through together, how many wordless promises they have made to each other to come back alive and whole after the blood has finished soaking into the earth beneath their feet.

However, no matter how many times Sylvain brings his warm, soft lips to Felix’s own rough, chapped ones, Felix still feels the strength drain from his legs and all his senses hone in on the heat of lips on lips, sliding easily over each other with practiced movements slicked with spit.

“Come back to me alive, yeah?” The words are murmured so close to him that Felix can feel the brush of Sylvain’s lips even as the hot air escapes between them, flushing both of their faces with soft crimson.

Felix scoffs – a typical Felix response – and that’s more than enough of a promise for Sylvain who straightens back on his horse and gives his lance a practice twirl with a grace that belied his fierce strength.

“I always do. You’re the one who needs to be careful, what with your dismal training regimen.”

And it’s true. Felix always keeps his promise and comes back to Sylvain. After all, he thinks to himself, he still has yet to confess his feelings for his childhood friend and Felix knows, just as he knows that the sky is blue and that Sylvain’s hair is more beautiful than any sunset will ever be, that he will always come home; home to Sylvain.

How else will he get another kiss?

ii.

Felix is weak for Sylvain.

But then again, that was something that Felix had already established early on in his life – even before they had made what Ingrid liked to call their ‘morbid childhood death pact’.

Not many could say that they could annoy the Fraldarius heir to the point of sputtering without making an immediate acquaintance with the sharp end of a blade. Even fewer could get away with initiating physical contact with Felix outside of training, much less casually throwing an entire arm around his shoulders and then proceeding to whine like a child about anything and everything.

But the most telling sign of Felix’s softness towards Sylvain is the fact that the Gautier heir is the only person who is allowed to touch his hair.

“Tilt your head down a little.” A calloused broad hand cradles the back of his head gently and pushes Felix’s forehead to meet the warm muscle of Sylvain’s shoulder. They must make an intimate picture, Felix thinks to himself as he inhales the warm citrusy scent of bergamot and honey that he has come to associate with his childhood friend. They are in Felix’s room behind closed doors and it is still early morning. Were anyone to enter his room, the sight of Sylvain kneeled at the edge of the bed between Felix’s legs with his hands buried in raven locks and Felix with his face in Sylvain’s shoulders would have invited more than a few salacious rumors to the monastery grounds.

“Ow. Be careful.” Felix hisses at the not-so-gentle snag of fingers against a tangle.

“Sorry, Fe.” The puff of hot air grazes the back of his neck and sends shivers down his spine.

In the back of his mind, Felix recognizes that it’s probably a colossally stupid idea to let Sylvain tie his hair up every morning while he is recovering from a broken arm. The fact that the Fraldarius heir allows himself to indulge in their pre-battle kisses is already torture enough; but letting Sylvain run his long fingers through his raven strands to pull and tame them into his customary ponytail?

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that Felix’s nights have since gotten more restless.

“Your hair is longer now.”

It’s a plain statement. Neutral grounds in terms of speech, but the sinful way Sylvain tugs his hair, landing a little on the side of deliciously hard, makes the words drip with suggestion and invitation.

Felix must be going crazy if he thinks he can hear anything other than plain, factual observation in Sylvain’s tone. But if it is the madness that conjures images of the Gautier heir yanking his hair to expose the expanse of his neck and suck his claim… then he decides that insanity must not be half bad.

It is both an eternity and not long enough when Sylvain finally announces that he is done with a breathy whisper. Reluctantly, Felix pulls back and reaches his good arm up to pat the neatly tied strands under the pretense of checking Sylvain’s work. If Felix secretly revels in brushing his fingers along the lingering warmth clinging to his hair, then that is his own business.

A familiar strip of leather lays on the desk to the side.

“You didn’t use my normal hair tie.”

Sylvain smiles as him just a little too wide. Wide enough that Felix is suspicious.

“Yeah. I figured it was starting to get really old so I got you a new one.” Sylvain says very matter-of-fact. The sincerity in his voice sends Felix’s heart thumping wildly in his chest and he feels the heat in his cheeks even as he scowls.

“I am perfectly capable of buying my own hair ties.”

As usual, Sylvain is an expert in understanding Felix-speech and simply laughs. You’re welcome rolls off his tongue with ease born from years of enduring harsh words and learning to read the subtext behind barbs.

Even as they walk through the monastery hallways together down to the dining hall, Sylvain rolls with the punches and their conversation doesn’t so much as falter for even a moment, instead slipping into a familiar and achingly comfortable banter that hides years of unspoken emotions.

No one mentions anything about how Sylvain seems to stick more closely to Felix now that his arm is in a sling.

No one mentions the bright Gautier-red leather strip that stands out so glaringly obvious against the dark canvas of Felix’s hair.

No one mentions anything when Felix hands Sylvain that same hair tie the next morning to complete their new morning ritual, the unspoken subtext wrapping soothingly around them as Felix once again bows his head in the only surrender he will ever acquiesce.

I’m yours.

iii.

“Felix!”

Pain. Screaming. Panic. Sylvain.

Where is Sylvain?

“Fe! Fe, stay with me. Don’t you dare die, you stubborn asshole!”

The part of his mind that is still rational and conscious tries to cajole the rest of his body into letting out an indelicate snort, but all that comes out is a wet cough that sends pain and blood spilling out his mouth.

“Mercie? Lin? Marianne? Healer, please, anyone! I need a healer!”

Felix’s arms feel more like dead weight than limbs at this point given the numbness of his extremities, but that doesn’t stop an agonizing lance of pain from shooting through him as he feels his body lifting up and being cradled against a cold metal chest plate.

A low moan manages to slip its way unbidden past his chapped lips.

“I know, Fe.” Warm honeyed words wash over him. Even in his half unconscious and delirious state, Felix can hear the unbridled fear that lurks beneath the forced calm. “You’ll be okay. I’m gonna get you to Mercie and she’ll fix you right up, okay? Stay with me.”

Sylvain’s voice cracks at the end along with Felix’s heart.

He doesn’t like it when Sylvain is in pain.

With herculean effort, Felix manages to pry his eyelids open just enough to look at the underside of Sylvain’s clenched jaw.

Huh. When did he get on a horse?

“Are you… okay?” The words are harder to wheeze out than Felix is comfortable with, but he forces his lungs to work with him because above the pain and fear for his own life looms the overwhelming need to make sure that Sylvain is unhurt.

Otherwise the axe he took to the side would have been for nothing.

Sylvain lets out a choked laugh, “yeah. Yeah, of course I’m alright. Fuck Felix, you shouldn’t have pushed me out of the way like that.”

You should have trained more, is what Felix wants to reply, however his mind and body are no longer working in tandem and somewhere along the line his heart decides to step in instead.

“Don’t…cry, Syl…”

In all their years together, Felix can count on one hand the number of times he has seen Sylvain cry; most of them in their childhood before Glenn dies. The last time Sylvain had allowed his emotions to bubble up to the surface was the day he shoved his lance into Miklan’s chest in an attempt to give him a merciful ending rather than living on as a demonic beast.

But none of those times can compare to the wrecked look and unending rush of tears that are carving their way through the grime and gore on Sylvain’s cheeks.

Felix doesn’t hear the reply that Sylvain gives, but knows that he must have said something given the comforting rumbling he feels against his cheek.

The world is dark now. There is nothing but a large black pool of nothingness and Felix can feel himself slowly sinking down, down into the depths.

He does not know how much time passes, but through the empty void Felix can hear fragments of words from someone he knows is important, but for the world cannot seem to remember.

Stay with me, sweetheart.

Don’t leave me, please. I can’t do this without you.

I love you.

Come back to me, Fe. My heart.

Felix clings to those words and the warmth that they bring. It takes an eternity, and slowly but surely, he manages to pull himself from the darkness and into the light.

When he wakes, he wakes with a full body ache and in the familiar arms of his crush, who apparently is still dripping salty tears on him and refusing to let him go despite Mercedes insisting that he’s fine. Of course that idiot is too busy sniffling to notice that he’s no longer unconscious.

“I told you to stop crying, didn’t I?” Felix croaks, bringing both Mercedes’ and Sylvain’s attention to him.

A new batch of tears well up in his favourite honey brown eyes and piercing relief crumples Sylvain’s expression like a house of cards in the wind.

“Fuck, Felix. Don’t ever scare me like that again.” Sylvain’s voice wobbles as he clutches at Felix just a little tighter, pressing his head to his chest as if trying to hide him away from the world.

The rapid staccato thumping against his cheek stays Felix’s hand and he lets himself (in what is starting to become a concerningly frequent habit) indulge in the physical display of affection, not caring that the rest of the world inside the infirmary can see them.

Right now, there is only Felix, Sylvain, and their beating hearts. And if that’s what Sylvain needs to chase away his fears, then Felix will happily concede because there is nothing that he wouldn’t do to protect Sylvain from the world and his own demons.

iv.

For a person born in the second coldest region of Faerghus, Felix does not do well when the temperature plummets.

Although his regular outfit consists of at least three separate layers - one of which is fur lined, for crying out loud – the cold somehow still manages to seep its way into his bones, rattling his entire core with shivers.

“Shitty night to not have a tent, huh?” Sylvain laughs humorlessly from where he is huddled up beside him, his long legs folded up as close as possible to his chest to conserve heat; his Gautier crest emblazoned cloak is thrown of his shoulders as are two more thin blankets that also cover Felix as well. Their sides are pressed together like two halves of a whole and on a regular day, Felix would have spontaneously ignited at their close proximity, but right now the heat that is radiating off of Sylvain is the only thing that keeps his body from succumbing to the cold. At their backs, Sylvain’s trusty warhorse acts as a third source of heat and also as a sturdy wall to lean against.

“Fucking bandits just had to torch our shit.” If they weren’t already lying six feet under buried in a shoddy, half assed grave, Felix would have personally saw to it that every single one of them died a horrible and painful death by his blade.

All around them their friends and comrades sat in huddled pairs, much like him and Sylvain. The sad, dismal fire they had managed to start did little to stave off the chill, but when literally everything around you is wet with sleet, it is already a small miracle that there is any fire at all.

“At least we’re together and alive though, right?” Sylvain smiles at him and it’s the small genuine one that Felix recognizes is specially for him; the one where burnt sienna glows molten and the corners of his eye crinkle with rarely used crow’s feet. “It was a pretty nasty ambush and we’re honestly pretty lucky that we had a small enough unit to quickly mobilize and pivot.”

Felix scoffs but it comes out as more of a pathetic chattering of teeth.

He doesn’t know when it happens, but he and Sylvain have become closer over the last few weeks. Close enough that Sylvain’s eyes no longer hold a shadow of doubt whenever he leans in for his pre-battle kiss, as if he now knows that Felix will give into him even as obligatory protests escape his lips. Close enough that Sylvain doesn’t even ask for permission anymore, but instead just silently reaches over to play with stray locks of hair that have escaped his updo after a long day.

Close enough that Sylvain now just takes whatever he wants from Felix because there is a mutual, silent understanding that no matter how much Felix protests, Sylvain just needs to look into his golden irises and find all the consent he needs from there.

“Come here, Fe.”

Felix often forgets that despite his awful training schedule, Sylvain is still a soldier through and through and is much stronger than Felix thinks. Such strength Sylvain currently demonstrates as he is quickly lifted like he is no more than a sack of potatoes, and gently deposited in a very warm lap.

If it weren’t for the cold, Felix would have run his childhood friend through with a sword for his audacity.

Of course, it’s only because of the darned cold that Felix’s hands slip under the outer layer of Sylvain’s armor to fist themselves in the fabric of his undershirt.

And it’s only because of the darned cold that Felix instinctively cuddles up to the human furnace next to him and presses his nose into the warm divot at the base of Sylvain’s throat, causing the older man to shiver at the hot puffs of air against his neck.

Yes. It’s only because of the darned cold.

“Better?” Sylvain’s voice is rough even as his words smooth over Felix like a balm. The one hand that isn’t curled around Felix’s back and supporting him reaches over to pull the two blankets around them so that they are swaddled in a little cocoon of warmth, leaving only their heads visible above the swathes of fabric.

Although a large part of his brain is screaming that this is wrong, dangerous, and too close; Felix cannot stop his body from betraying him as the shivers slowly subside and he begins to melt into Sylvain. Underneath the blankets and hidden away from the world, a gloved hand moves to settle near his upper thigh and rubs hot little circles that sends heat of a different kind flushing through him.

It’s unfair how his heart and body have decided to stage a mutiny against his mind.

Fuck Sylvain and his stupidly beautiful smile and his stupid velvet voice.

“Yeah.” Felix mutters, squeezing his eyes tight against the orange glow of the fire.

He practices counting his breaths using the meditation technique Glenn taught him back when he was only ten years old and manages to wrangle his heartrate into less of a sprint and more of a steady gallop. Whether Sylvain notices or not, he makes no indication that he can feel Felix’s heart trying to escape his chest, though Felix is pretty sure he can tell based on their proximity.

Instead, Sylvain lets his body curl loosely around Felix’s until his chin rests on the crown of midnight hair, barely disturbing the tresses even as his breath evens out and he falls to the persistent clutches of sleep.

Of course, it’s because of the darned cold that eventually Felix also lets himself be dragged under into dreams of memories long past when he never used to be fear being touched.

v.

It was quite well known that Margrave Gautier was not a patient man.

It has not even been three moons since the fall of Enbarr when a letter arrives at the Fhirdiad castle sealed shut with ink the color of crimson and emblazoned with the Gautier crest.

“Father wants me to return home to meet a potential suitor.”

The teacup clatters loudly against the table, spilling Almyran pine over the dainty white tablecloth. In the pits of his stomach, Felix can feel the claws of jealousy and anger sink into his gut and travel up into his throat.

Perhaps it is because his mind is still in a daze trying to process the fact that the war is finally over, or maybe it is because Felix is half delirious from lack of sleep (no one had told him how much more exhausting cleaning up after a war would be than actually fighting it) that the words tumble out of his mouth before he can stop them.

“I’ll go with you.”

And fuck if Sylvain doesn’t light up like he was just told it’s his birthday, the millennium festival, and Valentines day all in one.

Felix is weak for Sylvain.

No matter how many times Felix repeats it in his mind, that statement has gone far beyond simple fact now into the realm of absolute truth. And it is exactly because it is an absolute truth that Felix rides with Sylvain non stop through the night all the way back to Gautier castle, and it is because it is an absolute truth that Felix finds himself eavesdropping outside the large oaken doors leading to Margrave Gautier’s study where he is introducing some noble girl to Sylvain who looks like he would rather be anywhere else.

“Olivia here is the daughter of a minor lord from the Gideon territory. Their family has done well with managing their lands and they have also made a name for themselves through the war.”

The margrave prattles on, completely ignoring the increasingly uncomfortable look on Sylvain’s face even as he tries his best to plaster on his signature fake smile.

From his position, Felix can only see Sylvain and his father through the tiny gap where the door sits ajar, but thankfully he does not need to strain to hear the conversation.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lord Gautier.”

Of course her voice sounds like wind chimes. She’s also probably fucking beautiful too given the Margrave’s tastes. It makes Felix want to dry heave just listening to this and he can’t imagine how Sylvain must feel having lived this exact situation hundreds of times.

“The pleasure is all mine,” Sylvain replies without missing a beat even though his voice comes out a bit strangled.

“The war has been rather unfortunate with our people and crops this year, but Olivia’s father has mentioned that their lands have an overabundance of yield that he has agreed to share with us should the wedding take place before the first snowfall.”

“What?” For the first time, Sylvain’s mask falters and there is an abject look of horror in his eyes.

“Preparations will need to be made immediately, but –“

“Father, this is too sudden. I cannot –“

“You will hold your tongue and stay silent. I have given you time to find your own wife, but you have done nothing but squander my generosity. This is no longer a choice you get to make.” Venom coats his words and the poison seeps into Sylvain’s veins as his mind automatically falls back to the terrified little boy who could never disobey his father.

Sylvain is pale and shaking, his eyes darting around frantically looking for, at the very least, a physical escape from this hell that he has walked into.

“As I was saying, preparations will need to be made immediately. I have already sent for a caravan to retrieve the dowry, but when it arrives, you will need to accompany them to ensure that they return safely. I expect that you will inform his highness of your engagement prior to your departure so that he has ample time to ensure his attendance.”

“I… no – this… I don’t…”

“Shut up, boy. I am your father and you will do as I say.”

“Like fucking hell he will.”

The door slams loudly against the wall and all three occupants jump at the sound. They whip around to stare in various expressions of shock as Felix stomps up to them burning with a fury that he has never felt before.

His heart is pounding out of his chest like it wants to escape, but the only thing Felix can focus on right now is trying to stifle the overwhelming urge to draw his sword and cut down the Margrave where he stands.

“Fraldarius.” Like the reptile that he is, Margrave Gautier hisses his surname and spits it out like venom.

“That’s Duke Fraldarius to you.”

Sylvain chokes on his own spit.

“Duke Fraldarius-” ugh, just hearing his voice makes Felix’s hand twitch for the hilt of his sword. “-I would implore you to keep your nose out of business that isn’t yours. This is highly improper to interrupt-“

“I don’t fucking care if it’s improper.” Shifting slightly, Felix positions himself closer to Sylvain while engaging in a stare down with his father. Eye contact be damned, Felix will not let himself lose this silent battle of wills even though all he wants to do is look away. “Sylvain is not marrying this girl.”

“Oh? You dare to come to my home and tell me what I can and cannot do with my son?”

His blood is boiling and images flash across his mind, filling his head with memories of a younger Sylvain looking so scared and sad every time the summers came to a close and he has to return home.

No. Never again. Felix will never let Sylvain go back to a life where he is shackled and beaten into submission by a family that only conditionally tolerates him and uses him for their own benefit.

“Sylvain is not marrying this girl,” Felix repeats adamantly.

“And why not?”

This is the moment.

Felix can feel the tension in the air; he can feel the Margrave’s furious and challenging glare on him, daring him to speak and make a fool of himself; he can feel Sylvain standing rigidly next to him, barely a hair breadth’s away watching with wide, fearful eyes (Nonono Fe, stop it please, I can’t let him hurt you too. Never you).

It might be 26 years late, but Felix finally figures out how he can give Sylvain the home that he has always deserved.

“Because…”

Confidence blooms in his chest and Felix is proud when the gloved hand he extends to tangle in the collar of Sylvain’s jacket does not shake nor tremble under the weight of what he is about to do.

“…he’s mine.”

Felix yanks and tilts his head up to catch Sylvain’s lips as he stumbles forward, their noses slotting against each other like two puzzle pieces and their lips meeting in the same practiced way they’ve done hundreds of times.

The kiss lasts only for a moment, but when they part, Sylvain is gasping for breath like Felix has stolen all the air from his lungs. Honey brown irises are nearly eclipsed by blown out pupils and the strong jaw that Felix so desperately wants to nibble is hanging agape in shock.

Felix doesn’t wait around for the aftermath of his actions. Immediately locking his fingers with Sylvain’s, his cloak flutters around him as he spins on his heels and proceeds to walk out the door with a shell-shocked Gautier in tow.

Later, it occurs to Felix that he didn’t even spare a look at the girl, so he will never really be able to confirm whether or not she was beautiful.

Not that it matters.

Right now, as Felix makes a beeline for his guest room to retrieve his belongings, the only thing that matters is getting Sylvain out of this wretched place and back to Fraldarius where he will never have to deal with that pathetic excuse of a father ever again.

“Felix, wait. Felix!” Sylvain tugs on his hand forcing him to turn around when they are finally behind the safety of closed doors. “Holy shit. What the… holy shit.” Reluctantly, Sylvain releases Felix and instead settles one hand in his own hair, tugging on it as if trying to ground himself with the pain.

“Go pack your things, Sylvain. You’re not staying here with that pathetic waste of space anymore.”

“What? But where are we going?”

For the first time in years, Felix allows the walls around his heart to come down as he looks as Sylvain. He has wasted too much time already punishing himself by depriving himself of the one thing he thought he could never have, but after five years at war with only stolen moments to motivate and push him towards survival, Felix would be a fool to ignore this bond between them any longer.

“What do you mean, where are we going? We’re going home, idiot. Back to Fraldarius.”

Sylvain freezes for a second as if he has misheard, but when auburn eyes detect no hint of a lie, the smile that blooms on his face is one that Felix has never seen before. It is radiant and genuine and everything beautiful that Felix knows is Sylvain.

And just like that, Felix is falling for him all over again.

“Hey Fe?”

“Hm?”

“I love you.”

“…I love you too, you idiot. Now go pack.”

 BONUS:

Halfway to Fraldarius territory, Sylvain hums thoughtfully and turns to his now-boyfriend.

“Hey Fe?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I be your trophy husband?”

“Shut up.”

[optima-chama]

I Remember...

I remember the first time I experienced racism.

It was quite long ago, I believe I was around 7 (I’m 22 now). I remember how shocked and hurt I was by it, yet still so confused. Even though the day was over a decade ago, it’s still vivid and fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday. I lived in Illinois back then, with my mother, father, and little brother. We lived in a predominately-white suburban neighborhood. Obviously, we were the only black family on that street, so we stood out quite a bit. I had a few friends on that street. Waterford Lane, Lake in the Hills. I still remember that two story house fondly. School had just let out, and just like several other kids, I had gotten on a bus to get home. Ah, those were the days--Elementary School was such a great experience to me, you know? I loved to learn. I loved to read. I loved making my teachers smile and exceeding their expectations and making them proud of me. In school, during that time, we were learning about 3D shapes. Another group of kids that weren’t in the same class as us had gone through their lessons a bit faster, and finished the project to be made at the end of the lesson. A 3D shape of your choosing made out of plastic straws and those twisty-ties that people use to keep bread loaf bags shut. I, being the curious child I was, had been fawning over the 3D shapes those kids had carried onto the bus. I was sitting with a group of kids I had made a pretty good friendship with, or so I thought. One of them even lived on the same street I did; a little white boy my age. We used to bike all the time around the neighborhood together, and he had even been inside my house to play games. I remember asking one of the kids I was talking to if I could see their little 3D project because I just thought it was so cool. My ‘friend’ (who hadn’t even been a part of the conversation) interjected, and said something that shocked me into stunned silence. ‘No, you can’t, because you have dark skin!’ I ran off the bus crying to my parents, who had been waiting at the bus stop for me. I told them what my ‘friend’ had said. I remember them being furious and unleashing holy hell onto that little boy’s parents while all of the other kids and parents watched. I remember being so hurt by what he had said, but so confused as to why his parents were so apologetic and embarrassed and stammering before ushering away, clearly talking to their child in hushed, furious tones. Why were my parents yelling at his? What had they done to deserve being yelled at? Did I really deserve less just because I had brown skin? Because a child doesn’t just go around saying that out of the blue. That boy had never been allowed near my house again. I remember the second time I experienced racism.

Third Grade. I had a teacher by the name of Mrs. Gross (yes, that was actually her name). She was a short, pretty woman in maybe her mid-30s. I revered teachers, because they were authority, and they were giving us knowledge. Teachers couldn’t be bad, right? I still remember the first day we had started that grade, where she gave us a nice sweet flowery speech about how if she offended us in anyway, to come to her and let her know. We could be safe with her. We could trust her. And then came the day she made fun of my birth month during a lesson and didn’t like that (I was a sensitive little kid). I went to her during quiet reading time and told her I didn’t like that, because all months are great. That was when I learned her little ‘You’re Safe With Me’ speech didn’t apply to me. She was dismissive and blew me off. I was hurt by this, but figured, maybe I was just being silly? I could get over it, I wasn’t one to hold grudges. I just wanted to make the adults I respected proud. It took me many detentions, her calling me a cheater due to me being the one student with the highest reading skill, and becoming the scapegoat of the classroom and getting in trouble for many things I never even did to realize that not all authority deserves respect. I remember the first time I ‘fought back’ against racism.

Still third grade. Mother and Father were going through divorce proceedings, Father had left leaving a sore bleeding hole behind in our once idyllic home and it was wreaking havoc in our household. I was a sad and angry little girl. I started acting out more, even in school; because I figured I was being treated like a villain in school anyway, so why not act like one? There was hardly a day that went by that I wasn’t being bullied by my peers, my teacher, or older students that were in the Fifth Grade. I remember this one particular girl in the fifth grade, Nora (of Indian descent), who I thought was my best friend, but in actuality tried to get anyone and everyone she could to make me cry just so she could get a laugh. She liked putting me down, just to make herself seem cooler. God, after I realized how toxic she was, I hated her with a passion. She even turned this one fifth grade boy I had a crush on (he had pretty red hair, silly I know) against me. I’d only ever see him on the bus, but he’d make the bus ride to and from school a living hell. Calling me names, pulling my hair, the like. I tried to tell my teacher about it, but lmao, of course she didn’t do anything. Hell, she even snidely told me I deserved it. So I just sat quietly and took all the abuse, because I knew that no one would help me anyway. One day, I had had a particularly rough day at school. Ridicule from my teacher and peers, and knowing I’d be heading back to a broken home where no father was waiting to hug me and wipe my tears away? I was stressed. I was angry. Mother had heard me crying one day before this, and told me I had her permission to defend myself if I needed to, but ONLY if someone else put their hands on me first. I was NEVER to throw the first punch, she told me. I didn’t understand why, but I trusted my mother above all else. I got on that bus that day. That little boy had a wild hair up his ass for some reason; was showing off for a group of friends. Calling me ‘blackie’, ‘a fat tub of lard’, ‘stupid’, etc. I ignored him, and this made him angry. Then he stood up and kicked me in the stomach. I saw red through the tears of pain blurring my sight before blacking out. When I came back to reality, the bus had been pulled to the side of the road and I was being pulled off the boy by the bus-driver. He had a split lip, a quickly swelling black eye, and was sobbing through chipped teeth. I was banned from the bus for a week after that, during which time I learned that he had a fractured jaw and bruised ribs from my rage too. I remember being pulled into the office by the Vice Principle, with my mother and his parents there, and being shown the tape from the Bus Camera that had caught the whole thing. I remember his parents being angry that I was even still in the school despite their child being clearly in the wrong, and being called a ‘monster’ and a ‘danger to the school’. The VP was cool though, and was on my mother’s and I’s side, saying it was Self-Defense. They said they’d sue, to which the VP laughed and said ‘Go ahead; with this tape, it won’t go anywhere’. I didn’t get in any official trouble, but the glare that mother had given me sent chills down my back. The rumor of what I did spread around the school very quickly. The only good thing about that was that I wasn’t being bullied anymore. I remember the first time I was told I wasn’t as pretty as other girls around me because I had dark skin.

Still in Illinois, but different school. I was in Fifth Grade now. Mother had won custody of my little brother and I, and we had to move from that big old house that I adored into a much smaller condo apartment. Mother had to work long hours to support us, so I had to help her parent my brother. Help out with chores, make sure we got to school on time, help her cook, make sure my brother and I did our homework, we ate, and got to bed on time, stuff like that. I remember feeling quite a bit of pride for being such a big girl to deserve my own phone back then, so my mom and I could keep in contact while she was at work and we were home alone. There was this boy I had a small crush on in my class, he was most definitely the clown. Got in trouble a lot for playing pranks, and joking around and talking while everyone was working. I liked him because he was funny, and made me smile even though I was clinically depressed (that’s a whooooooooooole other story). I had told a ‘friend’ in confidence that I liked him, and well, of course that didn’t remain a secret for long. We were heading to art class when he confronted me and made fun of me for it, in front of our whole class. He said ‘That’s cute, but honestly, I could do a whole lot better than you’. I was hurt. Distraught. One of the other girls seemed to have a bit of sympathy for me and said ‘That’s so mean, why would you even say that?’. I still remember his response to this day. ‘Black girls aren’t as pretty as White girls.’ I remember the first time I was ridiculed by people who looked like me. We had moved to California, to be closer to my mother’s side of the family. I remember being vaguely shocked and excited to suddenly be surrounded by people who looked like me. New friends I could make! Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad anymore! Maybe I wouldn’t be so lonely anymore! I remember my first day in my new school, Sixth Grade. The class was so much more diverse in terms of ethnicity. Not a single white kid in sight. I remember being very wary and even distrustful of my teacher, because he was a white male. I learned better as the year went on though--He was quite honestly the best teacher I had ever had, and I’ll remember him forever.He was strict but fair, and he made learning fun again for me. He was the one teacher who ever told me that it didn’t matter what I looked like-- If I wanted to succeed, and was willing to work for it, I’d be great in whatever I decided to set my mind to do. He believed in me. But anyway, I remember being introduced to my new students, and everyone looking at me like I was a shooting star or something. Illinois was so very far away, after all; I remember getting swarmed by my peers during recess asking me if I wanted to play, and I was so excited. But as the day went on, and I kept talking and laughing with them, they kept giving me weird looks, so I asked them what was wrong. ‘You talk white. Why are you talking like that? Do you think you’re better than us? You sound just like a whitie/gringo. Don’t you know what they do to people who look like you? Why do you want to sound like them?’ It wasn’t long after that that I became lonely again. I remember the first time I had been stopped by a security guard in a public setting. This was during my make-up phase. I had reached my mid teens by now, and I was feeling really insecure about my image. I particularly liked lipstick and eye shadow, and I would beg my mom to take me to the local Walgreens to get some whenever I had saved up enough money. I liked collecting random colors and flavors; it made me happy. I had made the mistake of wearing a baggy hoodie that day. I loved hoodies, still do; they make me feel safe and warm, like a hug. Mom hated them, cause I liked using the hood to hide my face and kept my hands in the huge pockets they had, ,which I personally didn’t get. When we walked through the doors, I had sped-walked straight towards the make-up section. I was looking at all the different brands and colors, touching them while oohing and aahing over them before putting them back; none of them were really catching my eye. Over the intercom, we heard a lady give a strange nonsensical code. I turned to my mom and joked that maybe they thought I was stealing or something (I felt it was funny because mom had put the fear of God in me when it came to stealing; I was terrified about even thinking about committing the act). Turns out, when we were done and walking towards the entrance after paying for our goods and I got stopped by a security guard, that I had been right on the money. I got patted down and forced to empty out my pockets and little purse in front of the doorway, in front of the whole store, for that security guard to be sure that I hadn’t taken anything without paying for it. It took fifteen minutes. They didn’t find anything, of course, but I was practically crying by that point. When we were allowed to leave, I was ushered out the store by my mom and when we were in the car, she took the time to calm me down before telling me that was why she didn’t like my hoodies. Because I would be looked at with even more suspicion when I was in a store than I already was. My mom told me that in order to not be bothered by authority, I had to look as non-criminal as possible. ‘B-But why...?’ I asked, like a naive child. ‘Because you’re black.’ She sadly told me. I didn’t go back to that Walgreens for at least a year. I remember the first time I felt threatened by a police officer. We were living with my disabled grandfather after his second wife had passed by this time. I still thought that the majority of cops were good when I was turning 17. Why else would they be protecting the public, right? They were strong and brave, and put themselves on the line to keep citizens safe. They were the good guys. Sure, there were some bad apples, but you couldn’t judge a whole group based on what they wore, right? There was bound to be some worms no matter where you go, and I had been coached extensively by my mom and uncles about what to say and do if you’re approached by an officer-- Be respectful, stay calm and compliant, and don’t speak too much (this confused me, but whatever my family said I’d do). I was walking with my little brother back from the 7-11 near our house, after a snack run. My brother was 14 then, and he had a bike. It was a pretty cool red bike that he absolutely loved, and he rode it around everywhere. If he was out and about in the neighborhood, chances are he was on his bike. We were laughing and squabbling with each other, like siblings usually do and just minding our own business. When we were only, I’d say, a quarter mile away from home, a police cruiser coasted up beside us on the sidewalk. We immediately went quiet and stared ahead, trying not to look like we were up to no good or anything. I whispered to my brother to let me handle the talking if they spoke to us, because my bro had a bit of a temper back then and I didn’t want him mouthing off to an officer. They followed us for a small distance down the street, before the passenger side window rolled down and the (white) officer in the passenger seat asked us to stop. We did. He then asked us where we were going. ‘Home’, I said, sorta shielding my brother from view. ‘Oh yeah? Where’s home?’ ‘Close by.’ We stared at each other in silence for a bit (I wasn’t dense enough to not realize there wasn’t tension) and I could feel my brother gripping onto my shirt from behind. I could feel him shaking a little. The officer looked at my brother, and consequently, the bike he had been riding down the sidewalk. ‘That’s a nice bike’, he said. ‘T-Thanks!’ My brother said, realizing he was being addressed and eager to talk about something he loved to a guy he thought was doing a really cool job. ‘I love my bike, I ride it everywhere!’ ‘Your bike, huh? Got proof that it’s yours?’ My brother’s eyes went wide in shock. They wouldn’t let us leave that spot until we proved that the bike in our possession was my brother’s. I remember having to call my mom who was at home, wondering where the hell we were, and explain to her that two police officers had us cornered in a nearby street and weren’t letting us leave over a shiny new-looking bike. I remember hearing her losing her shit over the phone, saying she’d be right there and not to panic, and in the background, my grandfather insisting he’d come with to try and ease things to (and to keep my mother in check, cause she’s one hell of a spitfire). I remember shaking and whispering to my brother that everything would be okay; while trying to shield him from view as we stood there for five whole minutes waiting for our mom to save the day, all the while the officer was asking us increasingly invasive questions about us and getting more and more irritated when I gave short, polite answers that didn’t reveal much. I remember taking a further look into the car than I should have, and feeling my heart drop when I realized the officer (of course) had a gun on him. And his hand was resting over the holster. I had seen it. And when I looked back up at him in the eyes, it was clear he knew I had seen it. But his hand didn’t move away from the gun. Mother showed up quick, and with my grandfather in tow. Thing is, my grandfather could pass for white. Only slightly tanned skin that could be dismissed due to the California sun, and bright blue eyes. My mother, with fury in her eyes, clearly caused alarm for the officers, but when they saw my grandfather trying his best to hold her back and keep her from cussing them out with the receipt for the bike she had bought for my brother clenched tightly in her hand, they quickly backed down and tried to seem as friendly as possible before driving off in under two minutes, wishing us a good day. I remember my brother and I quickly being rushed home, the both of us rattled out of our minds while my mom ranted and told us this was why she told us to be on our best behavior while in public. I remember that day as the day it really hit home for me. I was not seen as equal by those around me because of something I had no control over. I would be looked at with suspicion while in public because of my skin color unless I somehow managed to prove I was trustworthy. I wasn’t seen as pretty as girls with lighter skin were. Authority wasn’t always right, nor was it unbiased. Police officers weren’t friends to people who look like me. Whether I was being passive or aggressive didn’t matter to those around me if people wanted to pick a fight; if I wasn’t careful, I would most likely be the first to get accosted/handcuffed/a harsh sentence/killed. And that the freedom that the American Flag stood for, that several of my family members had pledged their lives to, military, medical, or otherwise, didn’t mean a damn when it came to us.

[ribcage-rodents]

Post two

Diana

Diana smiled indulgently resting a hand on Donna’s shoulder.

“Hello Donna, it is wonderful to see you again, I have some exciting news.”

Donna

She fidgeted awkwardly trying to act like she hadn't been eavesdropping.

Diana

“You are finally going to see the Man’s World. Go pack your bags, we will leave once you say your goodbyes. We can discuss the rules of your mission in my plane.”

Her excitement was only shown by the joyful flash in her eyes.

Donna attempted to keep her face in a soft smile with her eyes telling her emotions

much like her older sister does, as she made her way towards her home.

Scene 6

Bruce sat at the kitchen counter a cup of steaming coffee in one hand, while his face rested heavily in the other.

Alfred

Alfred curved around Bruce to top off his drink and use a rag to clean up a puddle of coffee Bruce had spilled while complaining about League business.

“I don’t understand why you can’t just let the boy have friends, master Bruce.”

Bruce

Bruce looked up exasperated from where his face was resting.

“Because Dick is more skilled and intelligent than all of those other ‘heroes’. I don’t want him to be influenced by those immature, idiotic, side kicks. Who knows what one of those older kids could encourage him to do!? He’s much safer at home.”

He said moving his hand sharply to the left spilling coffee all over the counter.

Alfred sighed deeply moving to clean up the coffee, sending Bruce a disapproving stare while he sheepishly averted his gaze. Dick was upstairs in his beautiful, pink-marbled bathroom leaning over the counter worriedly applying concealer to purple bruises on his neck as Tate Agile played in the background, he stopped for a moment to read to a text from ‘science lab partner’.

Dick

“Come on dude, it's not that big of a deal Bs never gonna know”

Dick sighed becoming even more concerned, he glanced in the mirror frowning at his reflection before replying.

“Idk Babs, I’d be in a ton of trouble if B found out”

He stared at his phone for a couple of seconds then added,

“Especially since you’re like a little too old for me”

Dick’s hand squeezed around his phone as he shut his eyes, he counted to ten silently before exhaling. Pretending he wasn’t waiting for her response he went back to covering up the bruises on his neck, despite his eyes flicking back over to the black screen every couple of seconds.

Yet when the phone finally pinged he hesitated, it wasn't until the second text arrived that he actually answered.

“No, our age difference really isn’t that big, if you think about it people get married with like a 10 year diff.”

“Are you gonna come out w me tonight?”

Dick sighed softly, his cheeks lighting up pink.

“Yeah I got some free time around 12-2am. But we’re just gonna hang out ok, just like a little bit of kissing. No making out or hickies or anything.”

His phone pinged again.

“Haha yeah sure that's what you said last time.”

“What's up w your schedule man? 12-2am is so random.”

“You might not need sleep but I do, next time we should just meet up during like second period or something.”

Dick’s frown deepened.

“I’m not skipping school. I think you’re a bad influence on me:(“

“You know we don’t have to do anything when we meet up we could just cuddle or something.”

He paused before deleting the last message.

“Ha, maybe I like making you into a bad boy”

“See you tonight, maybe I’ll make you break into the school to find the best secret makeout place!”

Dick set his phone face down, scratching at his arm he went back to covering up those bruises.

Scene 7

Wally was in his tiny little bathroom that looks like it was designed in the 1950’s. He was leaning over the tiled blue and turquoise countertop messing with his forever windswept hair. There was a loud banging at the door as Wally dragged a brush through the birdsnest on top of his head.

Wally

There was a brief pause before Wally once again dragged the brush through his messy hair. The banging returned causing Wally to jerk smacking his hand against the counter, he turned and opened the door staring annoyed at his uncle.

“What?”

Barry

Barry stared back a pleased smirk on his face leaning against the door frame.

“Come on kiddo, we’re gonna be late.”

He reached out and plucked the brush from Wally’s hand as he spoke.

Wally

Wally did a full body groan leaning back, he shot one last mournful look at himself in the mirror before he moved towards the door, his uncle disappearing into his room. Wally sighed rummaging through his room for his suit. “What's the point of having super speed if you’re gonna be late to everything?”

Barry

Barry zipped over to his nephew ruffling his hair, effectively ruining any improvement Wally had managed.

“I ask myself the same question everyday when I show up late for work.”

Flying down the streets of central the two speedsters made haste, two flashes of red and yellow sped down the streets and around buildings. Stopping quickly at a hotdog vendor, handing the man a red credit card decorated with tiny lightning bolts, the city's way of thanking the heroes. Before getting back on the road.

Flash

“So kiddo, are ya nervous?”

Flash called stuffing a whole hot dog in his mouth.

Kidflash

Kidflash made a contemplative noise, looking down at his feet.

“Well yeah, I’m not exactly good at making friends,... or being cool.”

Both speedsters came to a halt, Kidflash resumed looking down self-deprecatingly, shoving the last 12 hotdogs into his mouth. Flash slipped behind him resting a hand on his shoulder.

Flash

“Don’t worry kiddo, just be yourself they’re gonna love you!”

He punctuated his statement by ruffling his nephew’s hair one last time. The two then proceeded, one at a time to enter the transporter.

Scene 8

Kidflash stepped into the JL headquarters quickly moving to catch up with his uncle as he sped towards the monitor room.

Flash

“Welcome to the Justice League break room!”

Flash called happily swinging his arms open to fully display the room. He leaned in close,

“It used to just be the monitor room but we all started to hang around here, mostly because Wonder Woman and Supes like to annoy Bats.”

He said with a nod.

Wonder Girl sat alone on the edge of one of the ugly green couches, sipping on a mug of herbal tea periodically.

Flash

Flash bumped his shoulder against Kidflash’s, whispering an encouraging,

“You got this kiddo!”

The Flash then departed, walking over towards Batman and Wonder Woman chatting by the supercomputer both holding steaming cups of coffee.

Kidflash

Taking a deep breath and gathering all his courage Kidflash confidently strided over to where Wonder Girl was perched. Looming over her he plastered on his best ‘Wall-man’ smirk. Wonder Girl cocked a single eyebrow as a supercilious look settled on her lips.

“Hey gorgeous, I hope you brought your library card because you can totally check me out!”

He flinched expecting to be hit or splashed by her tea.

Wonder Girl

“Wow, I’m already regretting this,”

Wonder Girl huffed glaring at Kidflash

“Maybe I should’ve stayed home,”

She mumbled quietly to herself.

Speedy

Speedy came up behind Kf’s right purposely smacking their shoulders together before plopping down on the couch causing Wonder Girl’s tea to slosh spilling over the rim and roll down the side of her thigh.

“Ew, dude have you ever actually gotten a girl with that line?”

He asked his arms resting on the top of the couch. He then raised his hand in a halting motion.

“Nevermind don't answer that, you have loner-loser written all over you.”

Kidflash

Kidflash lost his composure striking his arms out, before bringing his hand back around to point towards himself.

“Hey! I get tons of ladies!”

Speedy

“Yeah whatever dude,”

Speedy cut him off waving his hand still resting on the top of the couch, looking in the opposite direction of the scene before him.

Garth

Garth parted from his King’s side as they entered the break room with a nod, he walked towards the other heroes, his dark eyes calculating.

“Hello, I’m Garth.”

He said before sitting down on the couch next to Speedy.

Speedy

Speedy made a face.

“Great intro fishboy! But shouldn’t you have like a superhero name?”

Garth

“No, I don’t have a secret identity.”

Garth spoke, his tone relaying how idiotic he thought Speedy was.

Kidflash

“What about protecting your family man?”

Kidflash asked, lifting both his eyebrows, he was never able to just move one, leaning towards Garth.

Garth

Garth’s eyebrows pulled together as frustration took over.

“I don't wear a mask, villains will know who I am regardless.”

Speedy

“Wonder Girl doesn’t wear a mask,”

Speedy said leering at Garth.

“Maybe we should come up with a dumb superhero name for you, personally I like Fishboy!”

Kidflash laughed loudly, Wonder Woman groaned standing up and walking towards her sister.

She was stopped by the Flash calling them over in an energetic voice waving the rest of the sidekicks towards them.

Green Arrow

Green arrow spoke first giving all of the teens a cursory glance before focusing completely on his own sidekick.

“Now listen up, this mission is very important to your future as legitimate heroes.”

Within his brief pause Black Canary sighed heavily at Green Arrow's natural talent for being a terrible parent. He moved one hand to his hip as he spoke lightly elbowing Aquman in the process.

“All ya gotta do is sit and watch your targets,”

Once again there was a lapse in his speech when he turned to check that Batman had brought up the images of the targets and the suspicious big black bags, as well as the address of their hideout. After seeing Batman had in fact project the correct information, Green Arrow nodded to himself before turning back toward the sidekicks. Jerking his thumb backwards, he continued.

“These are them.”

He took a moment to clear his throat at the odd phrasing.

Flash

Flash took that moment to take over patting his colleague’s shoulder as he stepped closer to the center of the group.

“We’ve been monitoring these guys’ set up for a couple weeks. We think that they’re smuggling something illegal in those big black bags-”

Speedy

“What do you mean “illegal” things?! Don't we get to know if there's gonna be guns or drugs or something, idiot-man!”

Speedy cut in sharply placing both hands on his hips and leaning forward, aggressively sneering in the Flash’s face.

Green arrow placed a hand on each side of Speedy’s chest pushing him back as Flash stood there shocked.

Flash

“So we’ll drop ya off at their hideout, be very careful sneaking into the building and while choosing stalking positions. If they begin to pack up and leave or the situation starts to turn violent, stay safe and contact us before attempting to fight. If they have guns, retreat to the transporter immediately.

Batman then swiveled around in his chair, sending a questioning glance at Wonder Woman from across the room, ignoring the conclusion of Superman’s story much to his disappointment.

Batman

“Why would you send these children out into the field if you don't trust them to fight without supervision?”

It was a statement rather than a question, challenging all of the other mentors.

Wonder Woman answered anyway with a judgemental look of her own, but Green Arrow was the one who spoke.

Green arrow

Green arrow took several long strides towards batman.

“Well we’re not just gonna leave our kids at the mercy of a bunch of gun wielding scumbags. I mean, Flash can’t even stand a chance against a handgun, do ya think any side kick could survive that?!”

Batman

Batman glared at him but spoke in a calm voice, only failing a little to keep the smugness out of his tone.

“Robin could.”

Aquaman

Green Arrow geared up to make another loud and spity remark but Aquaman spoke up for the first time since the debriefing began.

“If he is so proficient then why is he not here?”

He questioned with far more smugness in his tone.

Batman

“Because Robin is currently working on his own personal mission tonight.”

The statement was followed by Batman swinging his chair back around and continuing to type up a mission statement.

The group dispersed most of the sidekicks getting last minute pep talks, Kidflash who reached out to his uncle grabbing his elbow as he went to go carbo-load.

Flash

The flash turned to look at his nephew.

“What’s up kiddo?”

He asked, placing a hand on each of his shoulders looking at his face in concern.

Kidflash

Kidflash looked down taking a deep breath before locking eyes with his uncle.

“I-I don't know if I can do this uncle B.”

Flash

Flash answered with a sigh rubbing rough but soothing circles on his shoulders and nape.

“Alright listen kiddo, ya made a jerk out of yourself.”

kidflash‘s face whipped up to face his uncle.

“I know I flirt with all the ladies but I do so in a joking manner that means no harm or a promise for furthering the relationship...just apologize to Wonder Girl.”

Kidflash made a face at the ground scuffing his shoe against the shiny tile floor.

“Make some small talk when appropriate on the mission and you’ll have three new best friends in no time!”

Flash turned him around to face the other sidekicks and smacked him on the back pushing him forward.

Scene 9

A wide shot of the seedier area of Arizona, several of the lamp posts have been shattered and no longer work, streams of light shine across the wet road through boarded up windows of an old warehouse. The sidekicks crouched behind a stack of molding crates, listening intently as the goons played cards and chatted about their personal lives, peering at them periodically.

Roy

Roy groaned softly clunking his head against the rotten wood.

“This is so boring! They aren’t doing anything, I say we just jump ‘em now!”

Roy whispered looking expectantly at his teammates.

Garth

Garth glared annoyed, grabbing Speedy’s wrist in a surprisingly strong grip.

“We were given direct orders-”

Speedy

Speedy shoved his flat palm into Garth’s face creating space between them.

“Calm down Fishboy, I’d never go against our wise and fearless mentors’ orders,”

Speedy sneered, ripping his arm from Garth and rubbing his wrist.

[janeyseymour]

Escape- pt 22

pt 1. pt 2. pt 3. pt 4. pt 5. pt 6. pt 7. pt 8. pt 9. pt 10. pt 11. pt 12. pt 13. pt 14. pt 15. pt 16. pt 17. pt 18. pt 19. pt 20. pt 21. 

Jane Seymour has stayed with Henry long enough. Cue Catherine of Aragon and the rest of the girls to save her (Aramour)

Jane and Lina get married.

“Jane?”

“Lina!” the blonde snapped. “Stop trying to look at me. It’s bad luck!”

“Oh please. I can’t believe you believe in that stuff.”

“Close your eyes, and then I can give you Eddie.”

“You’re-”

“Close them, or I’ll just have Kat bring Eddie to you. And then, I’ll get the moms!”

“They’re closed! They’re closed!” The last thing Catherine needed was for both their mothers on top of Katherine berating her on their wedding day. She walked in and felt the room around her.

“I’m right here,” Jane laughed. Her eyes were closed too, but she could just picture her future wife blindly feeling around the room. “Here, I’m holding Eddie out. When you feel him, take him from my arms.”

“You’re a real pain in the ass. You know that?”

“I know, and yet you still love me enough to marry me today.”

“You’re lucky.”

“I know! Now get out!”

“I love you,” Catherine tried to get a sneak peek at her beautiful bride, but Kat was having none of it.

“Cath! Keep your damn eyes closed! Jesus.” She smacked a hand to her forehead. “You try to follow one tradition,” she muttered.

“I love you too Lina.” A devious smile spread onto Jane’s face. “But get the fuck out!”

“So,” Fred drew out. “Are you ready for this Catalina?”

“Dad, you know how long I’ve been in love with her,” Catherine replied as she walked back into the room with Eddie.

“I know. I’m ready for her to become an Aragon.”

“So am I.”

“I’m not quite ready for her to not be a Seymour anymore, but having her be an Aragon sure as hell beats her being a Tudor.”

“You can say that again,” Both Catherine and her father snorted.

“Having her be an Aragon sure as hell beats her being a Tudor.” John shook his head with laughter before going surprisingly serious. “Do I need to give you the talk?”

“I’m pretty sure I got the talk when I was like ten, so I’ll pass,” Catherine replied dryly.

“No. The ‘You hurt her, I kill you more than I’m going to kill Rob when they find that sick son of a bitch’ talk.”

“Give it to her!” Fred threw in.

“Dad!”

“No. You need to hear it. Go on John.”

“Look, my daughter is so in love with you. She has been ever since high school, whether she wanted to admit it or not. She never, ever looked at Henry the way she looks at you. Now, you’re also a mother to her child. If you are ever, and I do mean ever, anything like my father was to me, God help me, I will do things to you, and you will wish you were never born.”

“Do you really think I would ever hurt Janey or Eddie?”

“No, but I thought the same thing about Henry at first too. I knew he wasn’t good enough for my sweet girl, but he didn’t seem like he would harm her.”

“Here’s the difference though: Rob only loved her. I love her, obviously. But, I also really like her. And that is so, so important. I hope Eddie finds it too. The best thing you can do is find love in a friend.”

“Are you getting cold feet?” Margaret laughed.

“No, I am so ready to marry my best friend and show my son a great love and friendship.”

“You’re lucky honey.”

“I know.”

“Good. Don’t ever take that for granted. When Dad and I had our troubles, we knew that we always loved and liked each other. Always love Cath and appreciate her.”

“I will. Come on. I need to get married to her- my best friend.”

“Kat? Shouldn’t you be helping Janey get ready?”

“She’s pretty much ready. I just came to talk to you.”

“Oh. What’s up honey?”

“Can I hold Eddie?” Catherine handed the small boy over. “Are you ready to be married to her?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Don’t fuck this up.”

“I-”

“I’m serious. My mom,” Katherine paused and smiled the softest and most genuine smile Catherine had ever seen the girl show. “My mom,” she continued. “ has been through so much shit, and she still has come out of it with all the love and kindness in her heart. Don’t break that in her.”

“I’m not going to Katherine. If you remember, I’m the one who brought her to you.”

“I do.” Katherine nodded her head. “Thank you for that by the way. Now, are you ready to be like my step-mom?”

“I’m more than alright with that. Any child of Jane’s is a child of mine.”

“Good. Let’s get you married to my mama.”

“Jane, oh god. I wrote all of this stuff down, but it just doesn’t seem like enough. So, I’m just going to see whatever falls out of my mouth. You, you make me feel, it’s indescribable really. It’s the little things that make me fall in love with you more and more everyday. It’s when you get nervous and bite your lip and twiddle your thumbs in a way that you think is dorky. It’s your bedhead. It’s the way your eyes sparkle when you talk about something you love- specifically Eddie and Kat. Your dorky dance moves. It’s the way you crinkle your nose. The way you are with Kat and Eddie, and the way you love me. I thought I knew what love was when I was younger. My parents were hopelessly in love. They still are.” The hispanic pointed over at her parents and nodded. The small group gathered awed. “And uh, I met you. I watched you with someone else. And there were people who told me I was an absolute idiot to stay faithful to a girl who wasn’t even mine, not that you’re mine now. You’re your own person, and I respect that- but I hope you know what I mean. I was okay with it though because even then, I was pretty sure I knew that I was just waiting here for you.” She wiped at a few tears that had fallen. “And now, if you’ll have me, I will spend the rest of my days loving you, and I will let you love me.”

“Jane?” The minister smiled.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to top that,” Jane giggled. “So, I’m going to keep it simple. Here we go: I love you, and I like you. I’m going to show you, Katherine, and Eddie our endless love. I will love you, and I will let you love me.” Catherine never thought so few words could be so perfect.

The two were finally wed, finally where they were meant to be, sealing off their marriage with a kiss.

“Fuck yeah!” Anne shouted before realizing what she exclaimed. “I mean,” she quickly tried to play it off.

“No. It’s a fuck yeah,” Kat’s tone was light. “They just got married! Fuck yeah!” She screamed the last sentence, getting a few strange looks from the brides’ families. Jane and Catherine could only shake their heads, somewhat embarrassed but also not caring too much. They did just get married after all.

“When I first met Cath and Jane, well, we all know the situation Jane is in. Cathy told us all to be nice to the two. When I found out everything about Jane’s circumstance, I really thought she was going to turn out to be a bitch. I was wrong. Wow! The one and only time the Anne Boleyn will admit she’s wrong, I know.” This caused the small group to chuckle, and to milk it more, Anne proceeded to bow. “But, I will happily admit time and time again that I was wrong about our dear and sweet Jane. She is the kindest, most caring person you will ever meet. So, to Catherine: don’t fuck this up. You’ve got the real deal. Don’t hurt her.” Anne eyed the hispanic suspiciously. “I’ve got my eye on you.”

“I know I’ve got the real deal Anne.” Catherine rolled her eyes playfully.

“To Jane and Cath! Can I get a massive hell yeah?” The woman with space buns (yes, even at a wedding, Boleyn had her signature space buns in) laughed as she raised her glass. She was met with possibly the loudest “hell yeah” she ever thought she would get, Officer Beale even joining in with a smile on his face..

“Alright listen up,” Anna started. “I’m normally not one to make any toasts or anything, but these two are pretty rad, so here we go. Cath and Jane were made for each other, and I will take no criticism.”

“No criticism needed. You’re right!” John laughed.

“So, to Jane and Cath!” The tall woman raised her glass and chugged what was left of her drink.

“And, as an additional wedding present,” the woman in red said mischievously. “I give you this.” She hugged the two brides.

“Anna hugged me!” Jane yelled. “Yes!”

“When you were in the hospital, I promised you I would give you a hug if you woke up. See this as me following through on my promise,” Anna whispered. Jane only hugged her tighter.

“Oh, and Cath?” the older bride glanced at her. “Don’t you dare hurt her.”

“I’m not going to!”

“Just making sure you know that I could have your ass kicked if you do.”

“No need for threats,” Jane muttered as she pushed her friend into her seat.

“So, for Jane’s side of the family, I’m Cathy, and I’m Catherine’s cousin. Cath called me one morning begging me to let her bring Jane to my house. Now, I had heard of Jane time and time again because poor Cath had been over here pining for Jane since they were sixteen. So, of course, because I’m a wonderful cousin, I said yes. I didn’t expect to get a best friend and sister out of that though. So, to Cath and Jane! And Cath? Don’t you dare hurt her.”

“What the hell Cathy?” Aragon laughed nervously. “You’re my cousin!”

“And Jane is much too pure for this world. Don’t hurt her.”

“So, I guess I should make a speech too?” Kat muttered as she stood and clinked on her glass. “I’m Kat, and I just wanted to say a few things. To the two brides: I hope this marriage brings you a long and happy life. You two deserve it more than anyone I know. I also want to say that even though I’ve only known both of you for a short amount of time, you two are family and always will be family. So, thank you mom and Cath.”

“Mom?” Margaret spoke up confused.

“Yes mom. She might only be a few years younger than me, but that doesn’t stop me from mothering her,” Jane explained.

“Any family of Jane’s is a family of ours. Welcome home sweetpea.” Margaret stood and hugged the pink haired girl.

“I can’t wait to see where this road takes you two, but I’m glad to be even just a small part of it. Here’s to you, and Eddie, and our entire crazy and dysfunctional family. But Cath?”

“Let me guess,” Catherine put a finger to her chin. “Don’t you dare hurt her?”

“Don’t you dare hurt her.” Kat’s smile disappeared, and a serious face appeared quickly before returning to a smile. “I love you two endlessly.”

“And we love you, my sweet girl.” Jane wiped a tear from her eye as she hugged her surrogate daughter.

“So Mrs. Aragon,” Catherine whispered.

“Yes dear wife of mine?”

“Nothing. I just love hearing you respond to Mrs. Aragon.”

“I love it too. I love you.” Cries rang through the house. “And, there’s our lovely baby.” Jane began to hoist herself up from the bed.

“Honey, stay here. Katherine told us she would tend to Eddie all night.” The older woman pulled her wife back down onto the bed.

“But,” the blonde began to argue.

“Listen, if he doesn’t stop crying, I’ll go. And then maybe...?”

“You’re ridiculous,” Jane tried to say sternly, but the smile on her face gave her away. “Yes, we’ll have sex.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter Mrs. Aragon!”

“Am I wrong?”

“Let’s just say, you have your wedding traditions, and I have mine.” The hispanic lightly smacked the blonde’s ass.

“Pervert.” Another cry from Eddie echoed through the house. “Go get your son. If he doesn’t calm down, just bring him to me.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Hello?”

“Cath? It’s Beale.”

“Hey. Did you-”

“There’s a lead,” the officer rushed out. “Someone saw someone who resembled him a few towns over from you.”

“Are you telling me we have to move again?”

“No. I couldn’t do that to you guys. Congratulations by the way. I would’ve come and said hello at the reception, but you two seemed so busy between your friends, parents, and that beautiful baby boy of yours.”

“Thank you,” Catherine said gratefully. “I would’ve come over, but I had my hands a bit full with Eddie.”

“That’s quite alright. Your wife-”

“My wife!” Catherine practically squealed into the phone before composing herself. “Sorry. I just really love that I can say ‘my wife’ and it’s Jane.”

“That’s quite alright. I used to feel the same way about my wife before she passed.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s quite alright. Jane came over and spoke with me briefly. She was so excited that day, and it was so good to see you two happy. Anyway,” Officer Beale stumbled over his words a bit. “I’m still in the area because of the sighting. I imagine he’s going to check out the big cities first, so I’ll be around there. However, if I’m wrong, I suggest that if you and Jane don’t already have one, buy a gun and learn how to use it. I honestly can’t believe I’ve not told you this already.”

“We’ll do that right away. If we take lessons though, we-”

“If one of your friends can't, I would be more than happy to watch Eddie. He’d be safest with me. Just let me know, and I can always come down.” The officer secretly hoped he would get to watch the young boy.

“I appreciate that sir. Once all of this is done, we’ll have to invite you over for dinner as a thank you. Jane’s a great cook.”

“When all of this is sorted out, that would be nice. I’ll keep that in mind.”

[blossom862]

Mixed Match Challenge Part 2

Warning(s): Fluff, mentions of drugs, SMUT!

Note: This is my first time writing smut, so please be gentle. 

Word count: 3,682k

Y/W/N: Your Wrestling Name

Alofa: Love

Tag list for this series: @balorollinszayn​ @calwitch​

*** If you are under 18, please do not read this.****

After confessing your feelings to Roman, you guys decided to go out on a date since you both had the remaining week off. During the date, you guys got the chance to get to know each other better and immediately connected. Roman told you that he liked you and he wanted to get to know you more. He also told you that his kids meant the world to him and that he needed to know that you were okay with it.

“Y/N, I just want to know that you are okay with it. My kids are everything to me and the person that chooses to be by my side needs to know that. I know that you don’t have any and that maybe you don’t feel comfortable dating a man that already have children, but I j-“ before he had the chance to proceed with the mini-speech of his, you took his hand onto yours and looked at him with adoration in your eyes.

“Listen, I don’t care if you have kids or that you were married once. I want to be a part of your life. Hell! I want to meet them one day and tell them how amazing their father is.” You told him with a laughed and a quick wink.

“ Where had you’ve been all this time?” And with that said he learned to give you a quick peck on your lips.

After the first date, he took you to many other ones. To the park, to museums, to clubs, and even to your favorite restaurants. He treated you like a princess (and he still treats you like one). Later on, during a live event, he asked you to be his girlfriend. You couldn’t contain your excitement and jumped into his arms while placing multiples kisses all around his handsome face.

“Finally! I thought you never asked.”

All the WWE roster and even the fans know that you guys are dating, after that kiss you gave him after the Mixed Match Challenge, they knew that you guys were going to be an item after that. And they were not wrong.

The Raw roster was currently getting ready for their European tour but during the meantime, Stephanie and Hunter had given everybody a little break. All the wrestlers were busy making their luggage and saying goodbye to their loved ones since they knew they were gonna be gone for at least another 2 months. You were glad to have your boyfriend with you during the tour. He means the world to you and you to him.

You were currently packing and cleaning up your messy room since you barely have time to clean it. Who can judge you? You are always on the road and half the year you are either facing a new opponent or doing interviews.

“You know, I never thought that Y/W/N was such a messy person outside the ring.” 

You didn’t notice when Roman approached you and wrapped his strong arms around your curvy waist. You were so consumed by your thoughts that you couldn’t acknowledge his presence, till now.

Leaning back, you felt his lips against your neck. He was such a lovable a passionate lover. The big dog knew your body better than you did, and that was a surprise. No, you guys haven’t slept together yet, but you guys had done other things other than kissing. You could say he knows what to do with that mouth of his.

“Hmmm, baby. Don’t start something that you can’t continue. You know we need to make sure we have everything we need for this upcoming trip. You know how much I hate procrastination.” You murmured to him while giving him a tender kiss. Gently, he grabbed your chin and proceed to raise your head for you to admire his brown eyes while he spoke.

“Don’t challenge me, sweetheart. Just because we haven’t slept together doesn’t mean I can’t make you see stars. I know your principles and you know mines. I won’t make you do anything that you don’t want. So honey, get your pretty little butt moving and finish packing and when you finish, I’ll guarantee you I’m giving you the best orgasm of your life and you can believe that.” With that said, he planted a fierce but loving kiss on your plump and red lips.

Mesmerized by the sudden gesture, you wrapped your left arm around his neck while pressing your lower back against his. Deepening the kiss, he took the opportunity to turn you around to have your face to face. Both of you were so into the moment that you guys didn’t realize that someone was in the room as well.

“Ugh really? Can’t you guys don’t do that here?” Grounded a masculine voice near the door of your room.

Putting your hands on Roman's chest, you gently pushed him away and disconnected your lips from his.

Clearing his throat, Roman looked at the individual that had entered the room without permission ready to argue.

“Listen, man, haven’t you heard of privacy? Or perhaps knocking?” Roman said while whipping his mouth with his thumb.

“Hey! You guys knew I was here. Next time I’m staying at the hotel.” And with that said, Seth turned around and headed out of the room not before closing the door. 

Jesus! If Seth didn’t interrupt the two of you, you didn’t know if you were gonna stop yourself from jumping and riding him like a madwoman. 

It is not that you were a virgin or anything, but you wanted to wait a little longer before you guys take that big step in the relationship. Before Roman, you were involved with another wrestler. He always was there for you, he supported you and encourage you to be better in everything you set your mind to. Everything was going amazing for the both of you, the WWE universe knew that you guys were together and you were the “IT” couple long before Maryse and The Miz were.

Sadly, after being involved with each other for so long, you discovered that he was cheating on you with one of the WWE interviewers. After the scandalous breakup, he decided to publish online some intimate photos that you had sent to him when you guys were dating. You were devasted in such a way that you almost turned to drugs. If it wasn’t for Seth and your brother, you didn’t know if you were able to go through it. After that, you swear to never send pics or be intimate with someone else after getting to know the person and had at least waited a year.

You talked to Roman about it and to your surprise, he took it well.

“Baby girl, I’m not going to pressure you to do something you don’t want to do. If you want to wait a year or even two, I would wait as long as you want. That doesn’t take the fact that I want to be with you. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to make love to you as soon as possible, but if you are not ready, then we won’t. I’ll wait as long as I have to because I like you.”

Roman was a true gentleman and you were lucky to have him in your life. 

“Well, I think that is my clue to finish packing. Oh god, who I am lying to? I want you so bad it physically and mentally hurts.” You growled while giving him a sad smile. You were so desperate to be in his arms and give yourself to the man standing next to you. 

Taking a couple of steps towards you, Roman tugged a curl behind your ear while kissing the top of your nose. Taking a deep breath, you wrapped your small arms around his waist while bitting your lower lip.

“Oh, baby girl you don’t have any idea how much I’m trying to control myself. Is impossible to not touch you whenever you are near. When I’m with you, I feel like a horny teenager again.” He spoke while laughing and kissing your shoulder. 

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

You were currently putting your wrestling gear and preparing yourself for your match against Becky Lynch. After your long-time rivalry with Sasha Banks, Stephanie decided to give you a shot to become the next WWE Raw Women Champion. You were so excited about the opportunity and it didn't matter that you were facing Seth’s Rollins girlfriend. Every single person who comes to the WWE has one goal in mind, and that is to become Champion. 

“Baby girl, are you ready to kick some ass?” Shouted Roman while entering the private dressing room that you both shared.

After announcing that you guys were partners, Hunter decided to give you guys a separate and private dressing room. He told you that the majority of the couples had their own. Roman had a smirk the entire time Hunter was talking to the both of you.

Lacing your knee-length boots, you proceed to answer his previous question with a happy “hell yeah” and with a small giggle.

Seating down in the bench that was located next to you, he placed his left hand in your left butt-cheek without caring.

“I cannot wait to see you held that title in your hands. You deserve that title opportunity.” He whispered against your ear. Giving you a small slap in your behind. He took your hand in his and carefully gave you a long kiss on your lips.

Following his lead, you deepen the kiss while caressing his long and glamorous mane. Sliding one of your hands under his shirt, you proceeded to caress his chest. Taking the hint, he took his shirt off and trowed it behind his back. 

“Hmm, you are so damn handsome” you whispered against his chest. You deposited some small pecks against his chest while looking at him with your big Y/E/C. He places his hand against your rebel curls and tugged gently. 

“Y/N, alofa. I’m so hard right now.” He spoke while patting softly.

Giving him a small smirk, you sensually kneed in front of him. Slowly, you started to run your hands all over his enormous and manly thighs. You were obsessed with the man’s thighs. Just the thought of having your pussy against his thighs is enough to make you wet.

Looking at him through your long eyelashes, you noticed how excited Roman was getting. Unzipping his dark pants and pulling them down, you started to careless him through his Calvin Klein boxers.

“Hmm, Y/N. If you keep doing that I’m not going to last much longer. Baby please, do something.” Protested the big dog while desperately shoving his clothe member right in your face. Giggling, you decided that it was time to stop playing games and take action. After giving his member a small peck, which made Roman moaned, you release him from his underwear and started to massage him. Gently but with a firm grip, you started to pump his dick.

“Oh, g-god ba-by girl. Yes, just like t-that.” Whispered Roman while throwing his head back. 

After making sure he was hard as a rock, you decided to take the next step and put your mouth to great use. Taking his tip in your mouth, you started to suck him softly. Moans were all you could hear all around the dressing room. Stroking and bobbling his member as fast as you could, you were determined to make him cum.

You were so turned on that you started to touch yourself. Pulling down your tight wrestling shorts, you slid your unoccupied hand under your panties. Teasing your clit with your middle finger, you started to moan against his dick.

You tried to take him all the way, but the man was so damn big that you had to wrap and pump your fingers on the parts that your mouth could not take. 

“Oh shit, Y-y/N, I’m gonna........ FUCK” his head tilted back and his mouth agape when he released into your mouth. Small moans were coming out of your plump lips

Watching him come undo before you was enough to make you start moaning. Rapidly, you started to touch your clit and inserted two fingers in order to make yourself cum. You felt two big hands caressing your curly hair.

“Stop baby girl. I want to be the one to make you cum.” The strong man took your busy hand in his and slowly started to suck on your dripping fingers. After a couple of minutes of sucking and tasting your nectar, he releases your fingers with a loud and sensual “pop”.

A small “fuck, you taste so good.” came out of his mouth.

You couldn’t take it anymore and started to take off your top. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you position yourself to ride him as fast as you could. Tonight was the night that you would let yourself lose. You needed him and you were gonna take some action.

“Wait, baby. Are you sure you want our first time to be like this? Don’t you want to wait for a little more ?” Asked Roman while pulling you gently away from him to look at you in the eyes.

You could see that he was nervous but at the same time, he was filled with lust. You couldn’t judge him, he was a man after all.

“I’ve never been so sure in my life. I want you and I want you right now. Make me cry, daddy.” That was the key that helped you release the big dog. Taking you in his huge arms, he turned you over and made you stand in front of him with your back towards him. He positions you in a way that had you stretch for him. Both of your hands were against the lookers, one of your legs was on top of the bench, and your ass was press against his lower abdomen.

You felt his hand caressing your lower back with such love and determination to make you feel good.

You turned your head around to see what was taking him so long. You were desperate to be close to him. You were going to protests but before you could even say anything, he pulled your shorts down and without any words he slowly but gently stated to enter you.

“Ooh.... y-yes. Just like that baby.” You moaned while making eye contact with Roman. You had never felt this kind of pleasure before. Yes, you had sex with your previous partner, but it was nothing compared to this.

With each passing minute, he started to pick up his speed and before you know it he was making you see stars.

“Yes... omg yes. Ugh.....pull my hair, Ro. Use me, destroy me.” You shouted while wrapping your hands on his neck.

Instead of getting a reply back, he took your chin in his hand and gave you a desperate but passionate kiss. It took you a minute to identify the sudden pressure in your lower abdomen. You were about to cum any minute now. Pulling away from the kiss, you looked at him in the eyes before telling him that you were about to come.

“Ugh, n-not yet. I-I want to cum with you. T-together. Let’s cum together Y/N.”

“I’m coming.... fuck I’m coming so hard.” You told him while touching and giving your breast the attention they craved.

“Oh fuck, yes. Touch yourself, baby. Ugh, I’m coming soon.” And with that said, you both orgasm together.

“Oh FUCK! ROOOO.”

You only heard him let out a loud groan before pulling out of you and before you could register what was happening, you felt his cum in your ass cheeks.

“Jesus, your low key makes me feel like I’m in my twenties again. What did you do to me woman?”

Letting out a tired laugh, you gave him one last kiss before giving him a loving hug.

“I love you so much, Roman.”

“I love you too sweetheart. You don’t know how much I love you.”

——————————

“Weighting Y/W pounds, accompanied by Roman Reigns, from Y/C. Y/W/N!”

The cameraman gave you the signal for you to get out to the main arena.

Roman was holding your hand while waving to the crowd. You couldn't have asked for more support than the one you were receiving at that moment. Your fans we're going insane plus your boyfriend was being so supportive.

Once settling in the ring, you waited for your opponent with your favorite Samoan next to you.

”Relax baby girl, you are gonna be just fine. Take a deep breath.” whispered Roman while caressing your delicate face.

Whoa

Whoa

Whoa

Hey!Hey!hey

”And her opponent, from Dublin, Ireland. Accompany by the Architect, she is the Raw Women's Champion, The Man”

With great determination, Becky walks down towards the ring with a serious look on her face. If looks could kill you'll be dead already by the look she gave you once in the ring.

Seth and Roman were both looking intensely at each other while supporting their girlfriends which were about to face each other for the Championship.

Becky took several steps toward you and held her Women's Championship high in the air. Your noses we're touching and if it wasn't for Roman that gave you a quick tug you probably would have started the fight right away.

”This fight is for the Raw Women's Championship. The challenger, from Y/H/T, Y/N!” shouted Jojo with a big smile on her face.

You turned around and gave the crowd a big wink while doing your signature pose in which Becky rolled her eyes.

”The defender, she is the Raw Women's Champion, Becky Lynch.” with that said she gave you a challenging look and made her way to the robes in which she raised the championship hire.

”I’m your damn Champion!” she shouted to the loud crowd.

Once she made her way to her corner, Roman gave you a quick peck on the lips and made his way down to the ring not before giving Seth a ”you better not get involved” look.

Once the bell ring, Becky took you from your curls and gave you a hard punch in your abdomen. It took you a minute to recover from it, but once you were capable of acknowledging your surroundings, you pushed yourself up.

The woman was laughing at you while looking at you with pity in his malicious eyes.

“AWWWWW, look at her. She thinks she the best of the best because she dating “The Big Dog”. She shouted at you while approaching you.

She thought that she had the upper hand, but before she could throw another punch at you, you decided to do something crazy that could help you win for sure. You wanted to finish as soon as possible and take the Raw Women’s Champion home with you.

Taking her by surprise, you performed one of her moves, “the Exploder Suplex” and later on you played dirty and performed her signature move “ Dis-arm-her”.

The crowded was going insane and Seth tried to distract the referee by climbing over the ropes, but Roman took him by his shirt and performed a DDT to him.

“Come on BECKY!!!! Tappppp. Your streak is over. I’m the next champion.” You screamed at him with great fury.

“AGH!!!” she protested but the pain was too much and even someone like The Man could not handle it.

Without any words, she gave you the nastiest glance and proceed to rapidly tap.

With that said, the announcer announced the victory while the referee took you by the shoulders in order to separate you from the Irish woman.

“The winner of this match and the NEW RAW WOMEN’S Championship, Y/W/N!”

Giving you the title, the referee abandoned the ring while Roman climbed over the ring.

“I’m so proud of you baby!” He told you while wrapping his arms around you.

You couldn’t be so proud of your accomplishment.

“How do you feel right now?” Asked Jojo while resting her left arm on your shoulders. She was one of your closes friends in the company. You could see how proud she was of you for winning the Raw Women’s Championship.

Trying to stop your patting, you looked up from the title to her.

“Well Jo, you know how hard I’ve been working to have this opportunity. Since I was a little girl I always had a vision of not only becoming champion but also inspire people to achieve their dreams. So I’m standing right here and I’m looking at every single one of this amazing crowd here tonight and I’m filled with so much happiness right now. This year had been filled with so many blessings and positive things that had changed my life for the better. I started dating this amazing and handsome as hell man standing next to me. And now, I’m the new Raw Women’s Champion. What else can I wish for?” When you said that, the crowd started to cheer.

Roman wrapped his arms around you while giving you a delicate kiss in your head.

“Y/W/N, I gotta say, I’ve never seen you this happy before. I’m so happy that you had found the right person for you. Before letting you go celebrate tonight’s victory with your boo, I had to say that you’ve had inspired so many people through your journey here in the WWE. As a friend and as a woman myself, from behalf of all of the women here present, I’m thanking you for demonstrating how far women had come in the wrestling business. We love you and I couldn’t have been more proud of you love.”

All around you all you could hear from the crowd was a chorus of “You deserve it!” And “Who's the Man now?”

“That’s right! My baby girl is the NEW Women’s Champion and I couldn't be so proud.” With that said, he wrapped his strong arms around you and gave you an intense kiss. 

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WOOOOWWWW!!! That was intense as hell!! I gotta said it took me a while to finish this because I’ve been having some writer’s block. Anyway, like I always said, I apologize for any grammar errors and I hope you guys liked the final part of this short-short story. Also, my ask is always open and ready to write some new imagines.

*This story is mine, I don’t give permission to post it on another social media. I spend a lot of time on it.

[canid-slashclaw]

The Outliers - A Guildwars Love Story

Chapter 5

Four months had past since Kaleb's introduction into the Seraph guard. During that time, both he and his best friend Brad had distinguished themselves as fine, albeit troublesome, soldiers.  Cynthia Waterstone who had been their mutual friend, commanding sergeant and (occasionally) Brad's lover, had helped the two young men excel in many facets of their military life. 

Training as a warrior, Kaleb had become renown for his use of the broadsword as well as the use of short-range pistols.  Brad, meanwhile, excelled at using the long bow, and as a ranger, he could also do petty well with axes.  

The trio was stationed at a Lionguard base known as Kessex Haven that was located in the Kessex Hills region.  Throughout their brief duration at the base, they had all seen plenty of combat; especially against the centaurs.   Kaleb was busy affixing a piece of armor to his damaged pauldron when Sergeant Waterstone stepped in front of him.  

"Ten hut!"

"Ma’am!  I mean, sir!" Kaleb stood up as he saluted his commanding officer. 

"At ease, private.  How goes the repairs?"

"Armor cracked after receiving a blow from a centaur’s javelin.  It’s all better now," Kaleb said as he showed her the now-repaired piece. 

"Not a bad piece of work there, private.  Even if I do say so myself." Cynthia saluted him then turned away.

"Thank you, sir.  But I have a question..."

"Go ahead and ask." "Rumor has been floating that Seraph are prepping for a major assault on Earthworks Bluff.  Is there any truth to this?"  Kaleb asked as he refastened the repaired pauldron onto his armor.

"Officially, you are on a need-to-know basis.  And right now, officially, you don’t need to know," Sergeant Waterstone replied. 

"Then what about the antithesis of official?" "Unofficially? We may be setting up for a major assault upon the centaur main base. The reason being, our supply lines keep getting disrupted and all roads leading into our fort have become too hazardous for many merchants to travel," Cynthia said with a hint of resignation in her voice. 

"So what you're saying is we are being strangulated."

"Yup, that's what's happening. Unless we find a way of neutralizing their main base of operations, our supply lines will continue to be disrupted to the point merchants will be too afraid to replenish our stores.  The Lionguard are stretched thin as it is and they can only do so much to protect the roads.  The rest is up to us, unfortunately."

Brad located his friends among the throng of gray armor-clad soldiers. As their gazes met, he slung his sturdy long bow over his left shoulder and began to give them a hearty wave.   "Come join the party, corporal.  Three's company is good company as my father used to say," Cynthia shouted as she beckoned for him to come over.

"Any luck scoring a few hits on some apples?"  Kaleb asked as he shook the hand of his lifelong friend.

"One taur got it through the eye socket.  Arrow didn't pierce that thick skull of his, but that beast did run off in full gallop bleating like a castrated bull," Brad said with a laugh.

"Ouch. That must bite for them being unable to wipe their own bottoms.  I mean, what would happen if one of them got shot in the ass and no one was there to pull the arrow out?"  Kaleb mused as he made a mock gesture of firing a bow.   "Only you would think of something like that, Kal."  Cynthia quipped. "Just considering sound military strategy, ma'am... I mean, sir." Shortly thereafter, the platoon captain arrived and announced the official plan in preparing for the assault.  He mentioned that food stores were in dire shortage and that the only feasible supply route was via a nearby lake port town called Triskell Quay. 

Captain Errol Conrad stood in front of his troops to address them.   "Each of you may have heard rumors regarding the assault upon the Earthworks Bluff.  I am here to confirm that those rumors are, in fact, true.  Before the next sunrise tomorrow, our forces will be marshaled at the foothills of the centaur base."

The captain gazed across the rows of armor-clad troops as he continued his speech.  "It is also true that our food stores are running dangerously low.  We are in desperate need of grain and protein staples.  About twenty miles from our base, lies at the lakeport town of Triskell Quay.  Information from the locals indicates that there are a couple of meat supply stores located somewhere within the town."

"Currently, our garrison has only one serviceable supply carriage.  All of the others have either been damaged or destroyed.  Henceforth, what I am calling upon is for at least one qualified volunteer to commandeer said carriage, ride into town and requisition the necessary supplies."

Without hesitation, Kaleb shouted.  "Then I'm you're man, sir."

"Say your name, private."

"Private Kaleb Grimwald, first infantry, sir.  I'm a wagon maker by trade and can probably lift and carry more stuff in a shorter amount of time than just about any man, or woman, here."

"I can vouch for him, sir," Sergeant Cynthia Waterstone shouted as she saluted the captain. 

"Me too," chimed Brad. 

Shortly thereafter, several other soldiers vouched for Kaleb's abilities as well. 

"Congratulations, private.  It looks like you've been volunteered."

"Thank you, captain. All I need is a sturdy dolyak and a trusted comrade to tag along."

Brad whistled.  "That's me! Sir!"

Several of the Seraph soldiers helped Kaleb hitch the dolyak onto the transport wagon.  His friend, Brad, made sure everything was secured properly before climbing onto the riding bench. 

Kaleb made some last minute checks to see if the wagon's structural integrity was secure.  Captain Connor approached then beckoned for the two men to come. 

"A brief word, private, corporeal.  I didn't want to announce this to the rest of the troops, but there's something else you and your comrade should know."

"What would that be, sir?"  Brad asked curiously.

"Just so the two of you are aware - the only meat suppliers in town who have the capability of providing enough stock for our troops are, shall we say, not human."

"Well, if they are norns then loading up a ton of meat will be a breeze," Kaleb said with a smile.

"That makes two problems, private.  First - the owner is disabled.  Second - both he and his offspring are charrs." 

The news hit Kaleb and Brad like a load of bricks. 

"Charr?! Why would their kind be living in a mostly human settlement?" Brad said in a disgusted tone. 

"Dunno.  Perhaps they are taking advantage of the peace treaty to expand their business.  Either way, I don't want this information to become common knowledge.  Is that clear?"

Both man said to their captain in unison.  "Yessir!"

The captain gave a quick salute.  "Good luck you two." 

Kaleb then turned to Captain Connor and asked.  "Sir?  You mentioned about one of them being disabled.  What about the other one?  Are they able to do anything?"

"The other one is about your size - small by charr standards.  And rumor has it that it - can't tell if its a male or female as they all look alike to me - mostly sits up in their room doing whatever it is that charr do.  In other words, I wouldn't hold your breath on expecting any help from either of them.  The both of you are on your own.  Now, dismissed!”

With a final salute, the two lifelong friends headed out from the base as they began their journey towards the small fishing village. 

***

The air that permeated Triskell Quay was rife with the odor of dead fish that emanated from the boat docks.  Kaleb's nostrils had not yet acclimated to the pungent scent that was typical of all waterside communities.  As the two men entered the outskirts of town, they noticed a couple of pedestrians walking by.  Not being of shy disposition, Kaleb immediately took it upon himself to ask for directions. 

"Excuse me.  But where can I find a meat marked that's run by a couple of charr?"

"I dunno why fellas like you would be lookin' fer um, but they's place is just up the road a couple of miles due west.  Look for the sign that says Blazeridge Butcher Shop & Marketplace. And if ye can't find it, just follow yer nose till ya gets a whiff of something that smells like a cross between dead cows and a smeltin' factory."

Kaleb and Brad thanked the gentleman for providing the directions then proceeded to follow the instructions they were given.  When they rounded the west corner, Kaleb could detect the unmistakable smell of burning coal along with the faint stench of ripe meat.

"Holy Balthazar!  Are charr really this nasty?  The cistern in my uncle’s backyard smells better than this place!"  Brad commented as he winced up his nose at the pungent aroma. 

"You are naive, bro.  All slaughterhouses have about the same foul aroma.  As a matter of fact, this one smells rather pleasant compared to some of the places I've been to," Kaleb replied as he slowed the cart to a complete stop just before exiting from the right side of the seat.

"Are you comin in too?"

"Nah. I'll wait outside here and guard the cart.  Besides, you’re better at the PR thing than me," Brad said with a wave.

"You just don't like charr, that's all."

Brad laughed. "Nah.  I think every human should have a right to skin one."

Kaleb looked up and saw the sign that read - Blazeridge Butcher Shop & Marketplace. When he walked in, much to his surprise, his nose was greeted with a symphony of exotic herbs and spices.  Once the door closed behind him, a high-pitched whistle sounded for a split second. 

It must be a charr version of a doorbell, he thought as he walked towards butcher counter. 

Within moments, a massive feline-looking creature greeted him.  It had horns jutting out from either side of its head just above its eyes and its face was caged with rows of menacing dagger-like teeth.  The large paw-like hands sported massive claws and its fur was a tiger stripe pattern of umber and dark orange strip patterns.

"Something I can help you with?"  Came the creature's deep and almost thundering voice. 

Kaleb promptly saluted him then pulled out a series of documents from under his breastplate.  "Private Grimwald of the Thirty-First Seraph Platoon, sir.  I am here on behalf of the Queen's army to requisition a supply of protein products from your establishment, sir."

Ludrick grumbled for a moment then promptly snatched the paperwork from the jaded human's hand.  He quickly looked over the documents while muttering a string of incoherent words to himself. 

"Everything seems in order.  But what makes the Queen assume that we even have enough product to supply an army of your size?  Look around you, human.  I sell to the locals.  My supply chain doesn't accommodate masses of marching mice," the charr grumbled as he handed back the paperwork. 

"Well.  I'll remember to say that the next time I'm enjoying a few brews with my friends.  Just repeat after me - masses of marching mice.  Masses of marching mice.  Masses of marching..."

"Gah!  It's got to be something in the air around this village.  It seems to make everyone around here behave like obnoxious morons."

Kaleb bit his tongue.  "Oh.  Sorry Mr. Charr, sir. The heat has made me a bit loopy.  Plus I've never met one of your kind before.  I just tend to say stupid things when I'm nervous."

"The best thing you can say to me right now, human, is 'what can I buy' or 'I'll take x amount of product y'.  If those aren't the two phrases coming out of your mouth then I suggest you get out of my shop."

"Hey.  I'm just here on the Queen's orders.  No need to bite the head off the messenger, kind sir.  But I had heard things through the asura gate that yours is the best meat supply market around.  My soldiers are in need of food badly and what better way of fostering a sense of good will between our people than to make a noble contribution to mutual corporation," Kaleb said with a smile. 

"You're damn right.  Mine is the best market around!  Now, are you going to reciprocate that 'good will' and buy something from me today?  Look around you, it will take days for me to carve up enough cattle to supply your damn army." Ludrick looked away for a moment before glancing back at the rather bulky-looking human.  

"Well, if you must insist.  I would very much be interested in those briskets over there.  But first - I would very much like to inquire about those oh-so savory spices I've been smelling since I walked through the door."

"Not my expertise.  But hold on..."

"Amalthia!  Customer interested in the spices."

Kaleb stepped back for a moment trying to locate the origin of the fragrant aromas.  As he walked towards the nook of spices on display, he heard an echo of footsteps coming down the spiral staircase.   He turned his head to see a slender charr not much bigger than him, padding gracefully down the bare metal steps.

Her pelt had an orange yellow hue and her markings were of a tiger-striped pattern as well.  Four horns framed her amber-eyed face.  The two bigger horns extended from the mid-ridge of her skull and tapered off into elegant points while and two smaller ones jutted back along the length of her cheekbones. 

The young man deduced right away that this charr was, in fact, a female.  He had done enough history lessons to easily recognize the distinction between the two sexes. 

"How may I help you?" She asked in a slightly deep, but otherwise noticeably feminine voice. 

"Those spices other there caught my eye the moment I smelt them," Kaleb said in a strangely sheepish tone. 

"Hmm.  That's something the legions never told us about when we were at war with your people."

"What's that?  If I may be so bold as to ask."

"Bold you are, then.  For your people seem to become unhinged and stutter about like adolescent cubs whenever you meet one of us for the first time," Amalthia commented as she walked over towards the spice nook and pulled out a tray of some dried herbs. 

"Well, I told your dad...."

"Sire."  She corrected him.

"Excuse me.  Ahem... 'sire', that it was my first time meeting your kind..."

"A fact that I already stated to you.  Did you even listen to what I said just thirty seconds ago?"

"And do you, have a habit of always interrupting your customers before they had a chance to finish their sentences?"  Kaleb quipped.

"You just did and I did not.  At least that time," Amalthia retorted.

"What did I not do to you the thing you said I was supposed to have done?  You lost me there."

"I think you are only confusing yourself further.  What kind of spice would you be interested in?"  Amalthia grumbled.

"No. You are the one who is trying to confuse me. I'll take the Siverpeak bay leaves and the Ascelon sagebrush stalks."

Amalthia plucked the chosen spices from their respective boxes then proceeded to individually wrap them with some tissue paper.  As she moved, Kaleb couldn't help but study her form.  He had never seen a charr up close let alone a female one.

She immediately glanced in his direction.  "Is there something else you want?  You can't seem to take your eyes off me."

By now, Kaleb was visibly blushing.  He rarely felt embarrassed about anything, but yet there was something about this charr that he was drawn to, something he couldn't quite explain.

"You have twice as many ears as I do, yet you only seem to possess half the cognition.  Didn't we make it clear earlier that when I get nervous I tend to say and do crazy, stupid things?"

"I think you must have been talking to the wrong charr.  Or is it because you think that all of our kind seem to look alike... hmm?"  Amalthia chided as she carried the packaged contents to the register. 

Moments later, Brad popped his head through the door.  "Hey, bro.  What the hell is taking ya so long?  Don't you realize we have a mission to complete?"

"Hold your dolyaks, Brad.  I'm in the process of delicate inter-species negotiations.  I'll be there once I iron out a few things."

Ludrick looked at Amalthia then Kaleb.  "Still going to purchase that brisket?"

"How will I be able to get it to my base before it turns rancid?"

Amalthia reached over one of the counters then pulled out a small jar of rubbing salt.  "By using this.  Don't worry, it won't leave an aftertaste like so many other salts do."

After the meat was treated and wrapped, Amalthia handed him the salted brisket as she rang up the final sale. 

"Thirty silver even."

"Thanks for the stuff.  And thank you, Amalthia, for being such an interesting... person.  See ya later," Kaleb smiled as he turned to head out.

"Two rules to follow the next time you come here.  First - we are not on a first-name basis.  Second - I'm not a person... like you.  Got it?" Amalthia said as she gave the impetuous human a clawed thumbs up.

Kaleb gave a wink and a thumbs up in response.  "Forever and always."

Brad looked over as Kaleb stepped out from the shop door.  "Here ye, here ye - to all citizens of Kryta. Today the esteemed Kaleb Grimwald has single-handedly started an entire new round of negotiations with the charr.  From now on humans and charr shall rub salts together and sate each others' hungers with copious amounts of meat."

"Hey.  Don't knock it bud!  It was a classified operation.  Somebody somewhere's gotta take the first step toward world peace.  Am I right?"

"If you say so, bro.  If you say so..."

[kshitij1997]

Hello again!

This story goes more complex as I write it :D

Building from the cliff-hanger last time, I have a major responsibility of bringing this story justice. We shall meet a lot of new people this time, some of them we know from the movies, some we don't. I hope it turns out as satisfying and gripping as I intended.

All frozen and Tangled characters belong to Disney, all I own is this head-cannon and the original characters.

With that, let's continue!

Chapter 5- Of parents, their children and the legend of Flynn Rider

Even as the king and queen of Arendelle announced the arrival of princess Elsa, they were more worried about the kidnapping of princess Eva Rapunzel, which was a scandal that was starting to make the crown of Corona look bad. King Reginald deployed a massive force to look for the princess and her abductor across Europe, which was christened 'The Golden Knights'. While The Golden Knights were supported in Corona by the backing of the king, they were seen as invaders in the rest of Europe, as a legitimate threat to the sovereignty of various kingdoms in the continent. Things came to a head as The Golden Knights grew throughout Europe, with some opportunists recognizing the possibility of grabbing power. The kingdoms feared that The Golden Knights would enable the local people to hedge more power, instigate revolution and crumble the hard-earned peace after nearly three decades of war. Such was the state of early 19th century Europe, rapidly industrializing and rife with mistrust and caution even among royal families related by similar blood.

It was left to Iduna and Agnarr, who had already conceived their second child, to come to Corona's rescue; who promptly called a conference between all the European nations in the only non-aligned country on the continent, Switzerland. Nearly every country's monarch came, except for the Tsar of Russia and the Emperors of France and Great Britain, as their respective health had started to fail. They had sent their chief advisers. As for the Ottomans, they refused to attend as a gesture of defiance. With queen Iduna presiding over the meeting, king Agnarr began to speak. "Your most royal majesties, lend me your ears." Said Agnarr, as he addressed the conference "The pope has been kind enough to grant us this neutral ground in order to decide how the business of looking for princess Eva must be conducted in the continent, or beyond. Now, king Reginald saw it fit to summon a huge force to look for his daughter. It is our moral duty to help our fellow monarch in this time of distress." The Arendellian king proceeded to continue his speech when he was rudely interrupted.

"This is such a crock of shit." Spat the duke of Weselton "I personally cannot believe the energy put into searching for a lost girl of a godforsaken kingdom."

"What are you trying to say, honourable duke?" snarled king Reginald, even as Agnarr tried to calm him down.

Ignoring the implied death threat in the question, the duke continued " Every time a problem arises in Europe, it always comes from fucking Corona. Be it Napoleon deposing the former king or queen of Corona, or the king threatening war in the middle east either for restitution in Serbia from my biggest partners there; the Ottomans, or for exotic medicine for his cursed fucking wife, or now, when he sends an invading force into my fucking fief to look for his damn litter. It has been two months already, give up, let us live in some fucking piece already, and conceive again. It's not as if the princess was to be the heir anyway. Moreover, you and your wife obviously know how to-" the duke's rant was cut short as king Reginald lunged towards him, kicked him once in the gut and once under the belt, and then proceeded to throttle the life out of him.

"I'll POUND YOU TO FUCKING PIECES, YOU FUCKING WEASEL!" roared king Reginald, the six-foot three king more than a match for the five footer duke. He would have made good on his threat, had he not been held back by the kings of Arendelle, the Southern Isles and Austria-Hungary. Agnarr finally managed to pull Reginald away and slapped him in the face "What the fuck is wrong with you, Reginald?!" Agnarr screamed to Reginald in the face, and Reginald was ready in sock him in the face, when-

"SILENCE!" thundered queen Iduna and banged the dais with her hands, which stunned everyone into being quiet. "WE WILL NOT REACH AN ACCORD IF WE CONTINUE TRYING TO ANTAGONIZE THE KING OF CORONA WHEN HE FACES THIS TOUGH TIME! MOREOVER, SUCH UNPARLIAMENTARY LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED IN THIS SOLEMN GATHERING!" Iduna finished her tirade, then began again "I shall at once direct king Agnarr and king Reginald towards a period of recess, during which time they shall settle their differences peacefully and reach common ground again. As for the duke of Weselton, his disgusting behaviour and efforts towards instigating discord in this meeting, are grounds enough for me to expel him from the conference with prejudice." Iduna finished as she settled down.

The duke was beside himself with anger "I get kicked out of the meeting for calling a spade a spade?! All right….in front of all the kings of Europe I say this, your kingdom will regret this decision, Iduna."

"Leave of your own volition before you are defenestrated." Iduna said with a voice ice-cold, as the marshals prepared to throw out the troublemaker. Anticipating a painful recovery if he were thrown out from the windows, the duke beat a hasty retreat.

"Swine" muttered king Christian of the Southern Isles under his breath.

The gathering continued more or less smoothly after the duke's departure as Agnarr and Reginald were able to calm down and join the conference again. To remove any troubling feudal implications from the Golden Knights, it was agreed to change it from an armed force to a humanitarian one; a landmark decision as no prior organization like that had ever existed. While its primary objection was to still locate the lost princess and hopefully bring her kidnapper to justice, the Golden Knights now became a proto salvation army, setting makeshift camps, soup kitchens and clinics in princess Eva's name all over Europe. Resistance was still met; but it never broke out into open revolt.

Some questioned where queen Sophia was in all this. European society expected her to be the distraught and helpless parent praying for her child's safety, rescue and return. However, queen Sophia was not most people. She had been down this road before, wallowing in her misery and praying for fortune to reverse its unkind ways. But now she knew better. As Iduna and Agnarr went to support her dear Reggie, she stayed back in order to care for baby princess Elsa. It was she who nursed the curiously cold child. When she discovered her secret as Elsa's emotions became more prominent, she embraced her presence even further. The baby ice princess was unusually intelligent for her age, always understanding when Sophia was sad, or happy, and acted accordingly, making snowflakes and loud gurgling noises, which melted the queen's heart. As for the public, queen Sophia turned her attention to public welfare, instituting public laws that protected the wages of the emerging working class in the cities, and creating a vast chain of clinics, hospitals, and orphanages and institutions, all this in princess Eva's name. Soon, it led to Corona having the most public-centred and public-friendly policies in Europe, which brought both the king and queen respect from across the continent. When asked why this sudden change, she simply answered,

"When a mother loses a child, all that love has to go somewhere. And what are the citizens of this great kingdom if not my metaphorical kids." It was a masterstroke of an answer that endeared her to the public, along with adding princess Eva's name in all her ventures. Princess Eva soon acquired a mythical status, a figure who was sacrificed to bring prosperity to the people of Corona.

As good natured and effective Sophia's take care demeanour was, it couldn't keep away the outside world from drastic change. In this din and pandemonium of all these things, the thirteenth child of king Christian was born without incident. It was a young boy, who took after his polish mother in terms of hair and eyes and took after the king in his nose and general face. His mother planned to name the prince Janus, after the great Polish king Jan Sobieski, who had led the charge of the winged hussars, ousting the Ottomans out of Vienna and protecting Europe from Ottoman dominance and suppression back in 1683. However, the king of the Southern Isles didn't care much for the name, believing it was too effeminate and silly for a prince, and had him christened to the more publicly acceptable Hans. His mother seethed at this utter disregard for her culture and identity to such an extent that, even as the baby prince was only beginning to recognize those around him, she decided to make sure prince Hans was raised Polish first. The fact that the Russian Empire, Corona and Austria-Hungary took every opportunity to carve out new territory from her ancestral home of Poland didn't help soothe her rage.

As for Sophia's policies, while they did a lot to bring the ever-increasing middle class out of poverty, it brought new problems along with them. Consider the Rhineland, the new industrial heartland of Corona. Even as the kingdom was modernizing, the climate of Northern Europe had started to change. As a result, the rains in the kingdom had started to dwindle, leaving agriculture not a very viable option for the populace. The cities of the Rhineland had started to burst at the seams with new arrivals from the countryside as a result, and the cities had become saturated with people from all walks and varieties of life as a result, from artisans, scholars and philosophers to the bargemen, dockworkers, other various blue collar jobs and veterans from the Napoleonic wars. There were a lot of orphans from the Napoleonic wars in Rhineland, and the cities had various orphanages built to accommodate them. However, while it was comparatively easy to build new spaces for those orphans to live in, trying to raise them into model members of society was a different beast all together. Soon, there were scores of kids doing odd jobs like selling trinkets, sweets or little items like candles and matchsticks on the street, sometimes sneaking into factories and demanding work from the factory owners, who readily gave them work, quietly ignoring the child labour laws the Monarchy of Corona had set up. Some found their real home on the street, joining a gang to get a piece of the action.

Two such children with these stories were Eugene and Mabel, a couple of nine-year olds who had become friends in one such orphanage. However, the two couldn't be further different from each other. Mabel believed in the good in people and honesty, raising money on her own in order to afford to go to those new-fangled schools being set up in the country. To raise said money, she often sold odd titbits on the road to pedestrians and passers-by. Eugene didn't believe in such lofty ideals, choosing instead to believe in standing up for himself and being on the never-ending hustle. Eugene was part of a gang of 10-year-old robbers led by a brutish eleven-year-old boy named Markus, and they regularly held up carriages and coaches inside and outside the city. Eugene got into the gang through his presence of mind and wit, and his ability to look innocent. It was Eugene who came up with the shivering dodge, the lucifer dodge and the scaldrum dodge. The shivering dodge was bit of play-acting, making oneself shiver by bathing in cold water, when one could get their hands on it, or wearing their thinnest clothes to make sure they shiver. Then one would go around the streets of the city, pleading for money for a warm coat or a hot beverage. As for the lucifer dodge, one carried some trinkets, and pretended to be pushed when a rich toff passed by, throwing one's merchandise on the ground. Looking at their ruined shop, they would pretend to bawl their hearts out and people would throw some coins in sympathy. Lastly, the scaldrum dodge, which Eugene found disgusting, but fell back onto in desperate times. It involved bruising oneself, by rubbing vinegar open soapy arms making them look like nasty blisters. It was uncomfortable and dirty, but at least one could get to spend a few days in the hospitals that were set up recently. Moreover, one could lay low in the hospital to stay away from watchful eyes of the law, which was beginning to crack down on gangs like theirs.

It was a clear contrast to what Markus preferred to do; garrotting. A typical garrotter used to hide in the horse-drawn carriages that carried people around. During the ride, the garrotter choked the passenger by his knuckles, being careful not to crush the windpipe and kill the unfortunate sod but enough to render them unconscious, then robbing the unconscious passenger and paying the carriage driver who was in on it. Another favourite money-maker of his was to nick purses at a public execution, to disappear into a crowd of spectators and ending up with enough wallets and cash for weeks. Last but not the least, there was always the smuggling of tea, China and other such valuables along the shipping routes of the Rhine river into all of Europe, and into Arendelle's canals and the dark sea up north as well. Markus' ways were rewarding but dangerous, as it was clearly a crime punishable by death.

Eugene's scams were far safer and as a result ,they were decent money makers, and soon a lot of kids were doing it for some pocket cash, but they had to pay tribute to Markus and Eugene, who were the clear two leaders of the gang. It was a strange camaraderie between the two of them. For to the world, Eugene went by his own name, but for Markus, he was Flynn.

"The fuck kind of name is Eugene anyway, huh? What are ya, bent?" Markus cackled once during such a talk. "The fuck does that mean, asshole?" Eugene grinned.

"It's not just the name, the whole damn act that you put, you know." Markus said.

"Brings in the dosh now, don't it? And without the noose threatening me neck" Eugene replied.

"True, but that's the street life I chose." said Markus. He loved the streets and saw no future for himself beyond that.

"You make me sad, you bastard. I see myself living in a big house, with the love of me life beside me, and an army of servants to lord over."

"Like the mansion at the outside the city huh? With your little trick?"

"Sure. However, she ain't no trick. Her name is Mabel."

"I know who she is, and I also know she don't like me."

"Well , you ain't no choir boy, punk."

"Yes and thank fuck for that."

"Ha! You twat!" Eugene laughed.

"Right back at ya, fuckin' romantic actor!" Markus laughed back.

Markus may have been an oaf, but he was right about how Mabel felt about him "That guy's a bad influence."

"A 'bad influence'? The fuck does that mean, Mabel?"

"It means he's rubbin' off you the wrong way, Eugene. In addition, if you want to cuss like a sailor, go to the barge and earn your keep."

"Bad influence, in addition, money well spent on books, eh?"

"It's our job innit? To become better and rise up?"

"Aye, that's what I'm doing, Mabel."

"Yeah, for the big house, huh?"

It was well-known throughout the orphanage how Eugene claimed that he would own that mansion one day. He used to get starry eyes when he started talking about it. If there was a child in Eugene, he came up in times like this.

"Hmm" rued Eugene.

"Speaking of that mansion, I got a job there, as a seller from the mansion." Said Mabel with a smile.

"Fuckin' result, that's damn neat!" shouted Eugene excitedly as he hugged Mabel.

"Eugene!"

"Sorry, got excited in the moment."

"That's all right, I think it's swell too. But if I want to study, I got to earn quick and stop working." finished Mabel.

"Don't worry about dosh, I always have some."

"Sure, but no more scams alright? They're cracking down on stuff like that."

"I swear I'll be sharp, Mabel."

"As for Markus, look I don't think he's that bad, but he's certainly an idiot. You gotta take care of him, make sure he doesn't land in any scuffles."

"Okay. I'll do it."

"Promise?"

"Sure"

"Look at you, taking charge." Mabel grinned.

"Look at you, moving up and caring for Markus." Eugene laughed.

"Hey Mabel, call me Flynn from now on."

"No" giggled Mabel as she gave him a small peck on his cheek.

This happy mood was not to last, as it became clearer to Eugene that Mabel was becoming miserable a few months later, towards the end of the year. It was a mansion in all but name as her employer was a hard-hearted taskmaster, resorting to abuse if his targets were not met, and poor Mabel suffered the worst of it, both physical and emotional. As for Markus, his life had become tougher as the law was coming down on his operation, and it was becoming tougher to buy off the bargemen, the carriage drivers and the law as a result.

"Those sons of bitches, they dare PISS IN MY HAT?!" screamed Markus on one such day.

"Zip it Mark" Eugene tried to calm him down.

"If those bargemen don't straighten up, I'll set their fuckin' ships ablaze, you hear me, Flynn?" Markus growled.

"You realize that they can wring your neck in one go, right? Don't be stupid. Talk to them, reach an accord and put this shit to bed." Eugene spoke.

"Reach an accord? Another expression from Mabel, eh Flynn?" Markus snapped

"Don't joke about her right now, she's in terrible shape. I gotta help her too somehow."

"Then go with her, don't worry about me, I'll talk to them." Markus said

"Yeah, burning their fuckin' ships?!" Eugene exclaimed incredulously

"Hey, I was just hurtin' and blowin' off some steam there, alright Flynn? Even I know better than to engage those seven-foot giants in a mosh pit." Markus replied.

"Alright, fine. I'll go with Mabel. Just don't blow your head open, Mark." said Eugene as he went on his way to Mabel.

What he saw Mabel, it wasn't a pretty sight.

There she was, in torn rags, bruised all over, beaten half to death and possibly molested, or worse.

"Eugene!" she cried as she collapsed into his chest, his vest quickly becoming wet from her tears and her blood as she sobbed.

"Who did this?" Eugene growled, even if he had half guessed who it was.

"They abused me and….threw me out in the middle of winter to fend for myself." Mabel wept, as she caught her breath.

"The people at the mansion?"

"Yes"

"I had to do something I never thought I would do, even in the direst of situations." Mabel cried.

"What?" Eugene asked, dreading how she might answer.

"I stole a week's supplies, planning to escape from that torturous place. I thought I could get out of the city, after selling what I could, then go as far away as possible from there. But I was caught. Those bastards, they beat the life out of me, and stripped me naked and-." Mabel couldn't finish her sentence as she crumbled into sobs again.

Eugene tried holding on to her, tears ebbing out of his eyes, but Mabel pushed him away, clearly hiding something she either couldn't tell Eugene out of shame, or at a loss to explain what had been done to her. Eugene considered going to the law, but decided against it, as it wouldn't change anything. He was jolted out of his thoughts when Mabel began again,

"Eugene, you've always been good to me, thank you so much for that. But I'm afraid I must get out of this city, and never come back."

"Wait, don't go! I'll make sure they pay, I promise." Eugene pleaded.

"I can't stay here after what happened, I must leave." Mabel pleaded back.

"Eugene choked back a lump that threatened to become a bawl when he said "Alright, but at least take some cash." He gave her his day's cut of his operation, two Corona Marks, which would have been enough to sustain someone for a month.

Mabel embraced him in gratitude before scurrying out of sight. Eugene sighed "Maybe, someday, she'll come back."

Alas, but there was no joyful end to Mabel's plight, as a rival gang member, jealous of Eugene, followed Mabel and beat her up again, and robbed her at knifepoint. He didn't even spare her shawl, which she used for covering herself, leaving her further bruised, in tatters and only a few matchboxes to keep her company as it started snowing on Christmas eve.

Eugene was ignorant of this misfortune as he scurried back to Markus, who'd been done for.

It had started well for Markus, as he had managed to find common ground with the carriage drivers and most of the law enforcers, but he made the mistake of going alone without muscle to back him up. The bargemen took the opportunity to anger Markus, who lunged at them with his razor. But it was over in an instant for poor Markus, as the bargemen broke his neck with one smack of their hand, and law enforcers shot him in the head for good measure. There Markus lay dead, his face blackened and bloody onto the snowy streets.

Eugene stepped back from the corpse in horror at the realization; he'll have to turn rat to save himself.

And so he did, in the snowy, dark night of Christmas eve 1820.

He went straight to the magistrate's office, cut a deal with law enforcement to let him go, after ratting out everyone from the three rival gangs to the corrupt law enforcers and bargemen. It was mayhem in the city that night, as the rival gangs were dealt with extreme prejudice, and the other bargemen, law enforcers and carriage drivers were arrested and dealt with savagely. Even the smuggling cargo ships were set ablaze or sunk.

It was an emotionally drained and tired Eugene who started to arrange for his departure from the city on Christmas morning when he glanced at something, or someone that would stand as a sheet of flame in his memory forever.

There lay Mabel, cooped up in a street corner, under nearly half a foot of snow, frozen to death.

Evidently, the poor girl had burned up the few matchsticks that she had left to keep warm. She had also tried in vain to knock on the doors and beg to be taken in for the night. Tragically, the Christmas spirit of giving didn't apply to a supposed bottom-feeding orphan like her.

But now, a crowd had started to gather around the frozen corpse, the people now showing sympathy to the lost soul according to their convenience. Eugene moved away from the scene in disgust. He hated it, he hated them all, he hated this fucking city. Fuck them, fuck them all.

As he moved towards the outskirts of the city, his aggrieved rage renewed when he saw the big house again. It all started here, for him, for Mabel, for all of them.

Once, staying in that house was all that he ever wanted.

Now, the mere sight of that monstrosity made him retch.

He sneaked into the house's kitchen, lit some coals alight, and let them loose onto the flammable powdered flour. As for good measure, he barred all the escape routes once he came out, cut loose one of the tethered horses, and rode off into the dawn as the house started burning in earnest, and the screams of people being charred to death could be heard in the distance.

It was pandemonium with all this chaos in the city, with rumours of a certain Flynn Rider exposing the criminal gangs, the corrupt officials and the bargemen. It was further rumoured that it was the same Flynn Rider burnt down the house that rumoured tortured little children for amusement and made them work almost to death, directly in violation to the Monarch's laws.

And thus, on Christmas day 1820, the legend of Flynn Rider came to be.

Whoa, this was a painful chapter to write.

As I can see, this is shaping up to be a neat Tangled-Frozen crossover, I promise I'll get to everyone in time.

Hang in there, people!

As always, constructive feedback is always welcome.

[jiminscaramel]

at bay | mark [nct] | 01

[GENRE] fluff & angst

[COUNT] 2.6k

[PAIRING] fem holiday-rep!reader x holiday-rep!mark

[WARNINGS] none 

[AU] holiday representative au (is that a thing?)

[A/N] as requested by anon! I have no idea what it’s like to be a holiday rep and so I’ve based a lot of this on pure research so I apologise if it’s not accurate! I know anon requested a oneshot but I feel, with the way I’ve written this, it’ll be better suited as a 2- or 3-part series. 

01 | 02 ⤑

You lay and stare blankly at the ceiling, listening to the dull buzz of your alarm drill through your ears. You don’t know why you even continue to set it after all this time; your body has become so used to waking at ungodly hours that it no longer relies on the shrill chimes of electronic bells. Your lungs rattle with a tired sigh and you switch the alarm off, plunging the room into a dangerous silence. The sky outside is still a deep indigo, swipes and dashes of oranges dotting the horizon and although the sun has yet to rise, the temperatures are already sweltering.

The cool tiles of the villa kiss the soles of your feet as you stretch your way over to your windows, opening each one as far as it’ll go. The birdsong is no longer muted by the glass and flows freely into your sizeable room, encouraging you to get on with your morning routine. But the peace is short-lived.

“LUCAS!” You hear Mark bark from the bathroom, a hint of exasperation colouring his tone. “Stop fucking around, I’m gonna be late!”

His shouts are quickly followed by sounds of giggling that get louder as they approach your door and in an attempt to diffuse whatever situation was occurring out there, you step out, bumping head first into the devil himself.

You notice his face-splitting grin, reaching from ear to ear, a complete look of accomplishment plastered all over his sleep-swollen face. His hair is awry, messy and fluffy and he seems to be parading around the villa shirtless, but it’s neither his dishevelled appearance nor his lack of clothing that capture your attention. It’s the towel grasped possessively between his large hands.

You sigh as you put two and two together, holding back a laugh. “Lucas, just give his towel back.”

“Awh, not you too. None of you have a sense of humour.” His lips pucker into an unimpressed moue but the playful glint still shines bright in his round eyes.

“It is funny. Honestly, it is. On any other day I’d let it pass,” you nod in agreement, thinking about how easy it is to wind Mark up, how effortlessly flustered he becomes. You would even go as far to say it’s endearing, almost, to watch the tips of his ears burn bright red in embarrassment as he’s subjected to Lucas and Johnny’s relentless teasing. “But Mark and I have to be at the airport for six and the carpool arrives in,” — you tilt your head and peer at the clock on the wall over his shoulder — “twenty minutes.”

He shrugs and playfully shoves the towel into your chest. “Whatever. You give it back then. Seeing as you’re so eager to help.” He smiles suggestively, earning a firm smack on the shoulder to send him on his way.

“Get fucked,” you laugh, nevertheless taking the towel and proceeding to the bathroom. From the other side of the door you can still hear Mark cursing under his breath before the water is cut off. You gently knock but he snaps at you before you can call out to him.

“It’s me, you donut.” You roll your eyes as his tone subsides, muttering half-assed apologies. “I’ve got your towel. Can I open the door a piece?”

He cracks it open from his side, allowing enough space for you to pass the towel to him without catching an eyeful of his most treasured bits. You’re not easily embarrassed, in fact, it’s pretty safe to say that ruffling your feathers is a difficult thing to achieve. You have a resolve of steel, in complete control of your emotions and you refuse to ever let them control you, a skill even your boss admires. But Mark Lee has a peculiar way of getting under your skin, responsible for a handful of butterflies in your stomach and one too many skips of the heart. Subtly flushed cheeks and hot ears are only some of the many byproducts of Mark’s unwitting charm.

“Thanks,” he mutters into his chest as he emerges from the bathroom, steam dramatically wafting out behind him. “Bathroom is free now.”

He scurries off, absolutely mortified before you can thank him, but you’re used to his jittery demeanour by now. You smile as you prepare for your own shower, locking the door behind you to ensure your own things don’t get swiped.

You’d set out on this job as a holiday representative with only one rule, trusting yourself to uphold the same standards you would at home and not being led astray by washboard abs and a ton of sun. You allow yourself the odd crazy weekend, the few lazy days and one too many trips to the shopping mall to buy things you’d never really need. But the one thing you could never indulge in was somebody else; the only rule you’d set out for yourself was to not get into any relationships – of any kind.

Despite the delay Lucas had tried to cause first thing in the morning, you and Mark arrive at the airport on time, in fact an hour early. You bundle out of the nondescript people carrier, eagerly stretching your cramped muscles. The sun is now peeking over the horizon, brightly reflecting off the glass and you shield your sensitive eyes.

“I knew you’d forget them,” something taps your shoulder and you swivel around to find out what.

Mark holds out your leather sunglasses case, the one you swore you’d packed into your bag before you left. You notice he already has his Raybans on, slightly too wide for his face, perched quite stylishly on his nose.

“God, thank you,” you blink in respite behind the lenses, able to see a lot further now that they’re on. “I swore I took them...”

“You pretty much bolted out the door without looking back. They were on the table in the hall.” He shrugs awkwardly, unable to steer the conversation elsewhere, knowing it’s a dead end.

A beat of silence passes, filled only by the overhead roar of planes taking off.

“So, what’s the schedule for today?” You start off towards the terminal entrance, following the signs to the gates.

Mark is hot on your heels, scrambling to keep up. “Y-you didn’t check?”

You roll your eyes. “Of course I checked, I’m just testing you.” Which is only half true.

“We need to head to Gate H, which is on the other side of the airport. We’ve got about an hour until the flight lands so we could probably grab something to eat...?” He trails off, his voice getting smaller as he realises just what he’s proposing. “I– I mean we could meet up with the the rest of the group to eat too, if you prefer–”

“Breakfast sounds nice. You’re buying.” You cut in with a devilish smirk. There’s no sense in running around the lobbies to find the rest of your colleagues and besides, there’s very few of them you can actually stand.

His face falls, only half serious, but refuses to go down so easy. “Rock, paper, scissors.” He states, now completely serious.

You snort and lift your sunglasses up to rest atop your head. “What are we, twelve?”

“I don’t think I’ve aged a day past,” he smirks back and holds up his fist, determined and adamant to challenge you.

You narrow your eyes at him and slowly hold out your fist, mirroring his stance. You can’t read his expression behind his glasses but know from observing countless matches with Johnny that Mark always throws paper first.

“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!” You chant simultaneously, throwing your choice into your other palm.

“Oh,” you sigh as your scissors are obliterated by his rock, his fist still clenched, palm pink and his knuckles white.

He punches the air in victory, finally removing his glasses and dances away in the direction of the food outlets. You’d always been a sore loser, hating any result that didn’t place you above everyone else, even in the smallest competitions and contests, but it was impossible to feel bitter around him. His energy is contagious and lights up even the darkest mornings, fuels your most early starts and although it had only been a few months, you couldn’t have wished for a better partner.

After a decent continental breakfast accompanied by a mint mocha topped with whipped cream, Mark seems even more lively. You, on the other hand, still feel like a sleep-walking zombie already on the verge of needing her next caffeine fix. You let him deliver the welcome speech once the headcount is complete and once everyone has settled aboard the coach, handing him the mic. You feel a little twinge of guilt but eventually talk yourself out of it – if you’d paid for breakfast, he could get this out the way for you.

The coach eventually sets off on the short trip back to the resort, leaving behind the tall, mechanical structure of the airport for the long stretch of highway. Though your job doesn’t require you to do much for now, you know better than to expect some peace and quiet for a couple hours of sleep. There’s always someone who has too many questions, too many complaints, there’s always a disgruntled kid, a rowdy child, a boisterous group of young adults. There was always something.

However, your eyelids start to droop dangerously, the repetitive motion of the coach lulling you to sleep; the din fades away as the roar of the tyres against the road soothes you further. That coffee had barely touched the sides.

“Excuse me,” a voice startles you awake and you clear your throat, doing your best to look alert. You find a kid, no older than seven, stood beside your seat twiddling her thumbs. You absently wonder where her parents are and realise they’re probably catching a break just like you. “I– I don’t feel well.”

You blink at her for several seconds before finally understanding, noticing a sickly look in her eyes, probably due to travel sickness. But your main concern is getting her strapped back into her seat. “Oh... ok. Just... head back to your seat, sweetie, it’s not safe to get up while the coach is moving.”

You unbuckle your own seatbelt, unsure of how to proceed but a hand on your knee stops you.

“I’ll go,” Mark offers, quickly retracting his hand. He grabs a sick bag from the net in front of him and a chilled bottle of water. “Get some rest.” He places his cap on your head, pushing the brim low over your eyes to block out the light.

You let go of a breath you hadn’t realised you’d been holding, your heart thudding violently in your chest at the minor interaction. His warm fingertips against your knee had been a simple brush of skin against skin, but you’d missed his touch the instant it was gone. A wave of what feels like fire ripples across your body as your cheeks light up in embarrassment at the thought.

Get a grip.

You chance a look over your shoulder and spot him crouched down to the child’s level, holding the bottle to her lips. He smiles and cracks a joke which earns a little giggle. You stare for a lot longer than intended, noting just how natural he seems with kids. And no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise, it’s a big weakness of yours.

Of all the ridiculous things you’ve ever considered since taking on this job, breaking your number one rule might just be one of them.

You mill around in the kitchen, fixing yourself a bedtime snack and cool drink before you you pass out for the night. You’d showered as soon as you got in, but the humidity still clings to your skin, refusing to let you breath. A thin sheen of sweat had already coated your body, making you uncomfortable and sticky.

You bring your refreshments round to the open-plan living area and place them on the coffee table, offering a glass to Mark. He quickly tugs out his headphones and scoots closer to accept it.

“Thanks,” he almost downs the iced tea in one take, paring only to breathe. The heat is so unbearable you’d have been less surprised had he chosen to tip the whole thing over his head.

You sink back into the couch, mindlessly scrolling and cycling through your social media feeds, checking your emails, before finally checking your schedule for tomorrow. Though it was a later start than today, tomorrow would be all the more tiring.

“What did you do before flying out here?”

You blink, realising a little too late that the question is directed to you. You’d been so wrapped up in dreading tomorrow, you hadn’t heard Mark speak. “Uh... you mean as in school?”

“School, other jobs. Not everyone just decides to fly out to the Caribbean on a whim.” He laughs softly and averts his eyes, downing the remainder of his drink.

“Well... I was a travel agent back home. Got bored of sitting behind a desk to reach sales targets so I thought I’d come out and get hands on to do it.” You shrug at your uneventful life so far. “Doesn’t pay as well but I guess I’m having more fun. That’s what matters right?”

He nods thoughtfully, thinking about your statement as if it had never crossed his mind before. Money had never really been an issue for you. You’d always managed somehow to live comfortably, always having enough to pay the most important bills and being happy to see there was just enough left over each time to spend on yourself. Smart budgeting or just luck of the draw, you didn’t know what to attribute your financial success to.

“What about you?” You ask, actually intrigued. You’d never asked your roommates about their history or what brought them here, you’d never expected to like them enough to ask.

“Me? Oh, I’m on a late gap year. I finished college but I felt like I hadn’t seen enough of the world yet, you know? I wanted to travel a bit before I had to get serious but then figured that was gonna be pretty expensive. So... I chose to work here as a rep. Covers my housing and food and I get to explore a different country. It’s a win-win, really.”

“A no-brainer,” you agree, watching as he becomes more and more animated with each word. “What did you study?”

He laughs nervously, eyes flickering to and from your face to the floor. “Music production. Graduated top of the class.”

Coming from anyone else it would’ve sounded arrogant, a bragging statement made only to impress the listener. But he remains humble even when his words don’t seem so, almost timid and drawn into himself.

And so for hours the two of you talk, bouncing back and forth off each other. You grow closer not only figuratively, but quite literally too, shifting towards each other on the couch as you also become more comfortable around him.

The front door sweeps open, welcoming back the other half of your roommates, looking as tired as you feel.

“Oh, sorry to interrupt your date,” Lucas teases, dumping his bag by the entrance and heading straight for the kitchen. Johnny smirks but says nothing, often choosing to enunciate Lucas’ teasing rather than add to it.

“It’s not a date,” you surprise yourself by retaliating, feeling the need to make it clear, though you have no idea why. So what if it had been?

“W-we were just talking,” Mark jumps to his feet and tries to hide his blush by gathering the empty glasses on the table, dumping them in the dishwasher for later. “I’m going to bed.”

He shuffles off down the hall to his room and you stare daggers into Lucas’ back. He turns around, mouth full and shrugs. “What?”

Part 2 ⤑

[foreverlogical]

The election season of 2015 and 2016 was defined by chaos, infighting and a pool of deep resentment that came boiling over when votes were cast. But this election was barely noticed. It happened on February 17, 2016, in a rundown labor union hall in Portland, Oregon. Union members were voting on a new contract with their employer, Koch Industries. The union members felt powerless, cornered, and betrayed by their own leaders. The things that enraged them were probably recognizable to anyone who earns a paycheck in America today. Their jobs making wood and paper products for a division called Georgia Pacific had become downright dangerous, with spikes in injuries and even deaths. They were being paid less, after adjusting for inflation, than they were paid in the 1980s. Maybe most enraging, they had no leverage to bargain for a better deal. Steve Hammond, one of the labor union’s top negotiators, had fought for years to get higher pay and better working conditions. And for years, he was outgunned and beaten down by Koch’s negotiators. So even as the presidential election was dominating public attention in late 2015, Hammond was presenting the union members with a dispiriting contract defined by surrender on virtually everything the union had been fighting for. He knew the union members were furious with his efforts. When he stood on stage to present the contract terms, he lost control and berated them. “This is it guys!” his colleagues recall him yelling. “This is your best offer. You’re not going to strike anyway.”

I thought of the free-floating anger in that union hall often as I travelled the country over the last eight years, reporting for a book about Koch Industries. The anger seemed to infect every corner of American economic life. We are supposedly living in the best economy the United States has seen in modern memory, with a decade of solid growth behind us and the unemployment rate at its lowest level since the 1960s. Why, then, does everything feel so wrong? In April, a Washington-Post/ABC Poll found that 60% of political independents feel that America’s economic system is essentially rigged against them, to the advantage to those already in power. Roughly 33% of Republicans feel that way; 80% of Democrats feel the same.

What reporting the Koch story taught me is that these voters are right— the economy truly is rigged against them. But it isn’t rigged in the way most people seem to think. There isn’t some cabal of conservative or liberal politicians who are controlling the system for the benefit of one side or the other. The economy is rigged because the American political system is dysfunctional and paralyzed—with no consensus on what the government ought to do when it comes to the economy. As a result, we live under a system that’s broken, propelled forward by inertia alone. In this environment, there is only one clear winner: the big, entrenched players who can master the dysfunction and profit from it. In America, that’s the largest of the large corporations. Roughly a century after the biggest ones were broken up or more tightly regulated, they are back, stronger than ever.

I saw this reality clearly when I went to Wichita, Kansas to visit Charles Koch, the CEO of Koch Industries, a company with annual revenue larger than that of Facebook, Goldman Sachs and U.S. Steel combined. Charles Koch isn’t just the CEO of America’s biggest private company. He also inhabits one extreme end of the political debate about our nation’s economy. A close examination of his writing and speeches over the last 40 years reveals the thinking of someone who believes that government programs, no matter how well-intended, almost always do more harm than good. In this view, most government regulations simply distort the market and create big costs down the road. Taxing the wealthy only shifts money from productive uses to mostly wasteful programs. Charles Koch has been on a mission, for at least 40 years, to reshape the American political system into one where government intervention into markets does not exist.

But for all the free-market purity of Charles Koch’s ideology, there is not much of a free market in the corporate reality he inhabits. Koch Industries specializes in the kinds of businesses that underpin modern civilization but that most consumers never see—oil refining, nitrogen fertilizer production, commodities trading, the industrial production of building materials, and almost everything we touch, from paper towels and Lycra to the sensors hidden inside our cellphones. This is the paradox of Charles Koch’s word – he is a high-minded, anti-government free-marketeer whose fortune is made almost exclusively from industries that face virtually no real competition. Koch Industries is built, in fact, on a series of near-monopolies. And it is these kinds of companies that do best in our modern dysfunctional political environment. They know how to manipulate the rules when no one is looking.

Consider the oil refining business, which has been a cash cow for Koch Industries since 1969, just two years after Charles Koch took over the family company following his father’s death. Charles Koch was just in his early 30s at the time, but he made a brilliant and bold move, purchasing an oil refinery outside Saint Paul, Minnesota. The refinery was super-profitable thanks to a bottleneck in the U.S. energy system: the refinery used crude oil from the tar sands of Canada to be refined into gasoline later sold to the upper Midwest. The crude oil was extraordinarily cheap because it contained a lot of sulfur and not many refineries could process it. But Koch sold its refined gas into markets where gasoline supplies were very tight and prices were high.

Why didn’t some competitor open up a refinery next to Koch’s to seize this opportunity? It turns out that no one has built a new oil refinery anywhere in the United States since 1977. The reason is surprising: the Clean Air Act regulations. When the law was drastically expanded in 1970, it imposed pollution standards on new refineries. But it “grandfathered” in the existing refineries with the idea that they would eventually break down and be replaced with new facilities. That never happened. The legacy oil refiners, including Koch, exploited arcane sections of the law that allowed them to expand their old facilities while avoiding the newer clean-air standards. This gave them an insurmountable advantage over any potential new competitor. The absence of new refineries to stoke competition and drive down prices meant that Americans paid higher prices for gasoline. Today the industry is dominated by entrenched players who run aged facilities at near-full capacity, reaping profits that are among the highest in the world. In this industry and others, the big gains go to companies that can hire lawyers and lobbyists to help game the rules, and then hire even more lawyers when the government tries to punish them for breaking the law (as happened to Koch and other refiners in the late 1990s when it became clear they were manipulating Clean Air regulations).

The oil refining business is just one example of how Koch has benefited from complex regulatory dysfunction while public attention was turned elsewhere. In the 1990s, for example, a Koch-funded public policy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) pressured states to deregulate their electricity systems. California was a pioneer in this effort, and the results were disastrous. Lawmakers in Sacramento created a sprawling, hyper-complicated system that surgically grafted a free-market trading exchange onto an aged electricity grid. Virtually no one paid attention to the 1,000-page law as it was being written. Almost immediately after the markets went online in the early 2000s, electricity traders at Koch Industries and Enron began gaming the system. They earned millions of dollars doing so, even as prices skyrocketed and the state’s grid collapsed in rolling blackouts. Lawmakers were blamed when the lights went out, and then Governor Gray Davis was recalled. The role that traders played in the crisis was hard to understand and hidden from view. Federal regulators filed a case against Koch for manipulating markets in California, but the legal proceedings dragged on for more than a decade. Koch ended up settling the charges and paying a fine of $4.1 million, long after the damage was done.

To take another example: In 2017, Koch helped kill part of the Republican tax reform plan to impose a “border adjusted” income tax that almost certainly would have hurt Koch’s oil refining business. The plan was being pushed by none other than Paul Ryan, a onetime Koch ally who was then Speaker of the House. Ryan wanted to include the border adjustment in President Trump’s tax overhaul because it would have benefited domestic manufacturing and would have allowed the government to cut corporate taxes without exploding the deficit. But former Koch oil traders told me that the border adjustment tax would have hurt profits at the Kochs’ Pine Bend refinery in Minnesota. Koch played a vital role in killing the border adjustment tax before a vigorous public debate about it could even begin (A Koch Industries spokesman insisted that the Koch political network opposed the border-adjustment measure only on ideological grounds, because it was basically a tax, and not to protect profits at Koch’s oil refineries) . By the time most people started paying attention, Paul Ryan admitted defeat and jettisoned the border adjustment.

Charles Koch doesn’t talk about issues like this when he talks about free markets. When I met him, Charles Koch was giving interviews for his new book that described his highly detailed business philosophy, called Market-Based Management. I had heard a lot about this philosophy, but what surprised me most when I interviewed the people who worked with him, some for decades, is how much they admire him. They said he was brilliant, but also unpretentious. He was uncompromising, but fair. I felt this way too, the minute I met the billionaire. I remember him telling me something along the lines of: “Hello, Chris! You didn’t need to put on a tie just to see me,” when I walked in the door (my audio recorder wasn’t even running yet, so the quote might be inexact).

Charles Koch’s avuncular, aw-shucks persona masks his true nature. I think of him instead as an uncompromising warrior. He has been fighting since he was a young man. He fought his own brothers, Bill and Freddie, for control of the family company (and won). He fought a militant labor union at the Pine Bend refinery (and won). Most of all, he fought against the idea that the federal government has an important role to play in making the economy function properly—even while taking advantage of government laws to maintain his company’s advantages.

When Charles Koch became CEO in 1967, the U.S. economy operated under a political system that is almost unimaginable today. The government intervened dramatically in almost every corner of the economy, and it did so to the explicit benefit of middle-class workers. This happened under a broad set of laws called the New Deal, which was put in place in the late 1930s. The New Deal broke up monopolies, kept banks on a tight regulatory leash, and even controlled energy prices, down to the penny in some cases. It greatly empowered labor unions and boosted wages and bargaining power for workers. Charles Koch dislikes every element of the New Deal. He has formed think tanks to attack the ideas behind it, donated money to politicians who sought to dismantle it, and built a company that was hostile to it.

As it turned out, the American public joined Charles Koch, to a certain extent, during the 1970s. Vietnam, Watergate, rampant inflation and multiple recessions shattered Americans’ confidence in the government’s ability to solve problems for ordinary people. Passage of the Civil Rights Act shattered the political coalition behind the New Deal, which had relied on Southern segregationists for support. Ronald Reagan rode the tide of antigovernment sentiment to the White House. But even Reagan wasn’t able to repeal the New Deal. He failed miserably when he tried to repeal Social Security, for example. He cut taxes, but never could restrain spending. What emerged during the 1980s and 1990s was an incoherent governing system, one that is deregulated in some key areas, like banking and derivatives trading, but hyper-regulated in others like the small business sector.

If the American political system is confused, Charles Koch is not. He rules over his company with undisputed authority, and he uses that authority to spread his Market-Based Management doctrine. This philosophy inspires the rank-and-file employees at Koch Industries—the company cafeteria is full of young, entrepreneurial workers who thrive in a system that heaps promotions and bonuses on top performers, while unsentimentally weeding out employees considered weak. But the unbending nature of Market-Based Management, and how it applies to the factory floor, played a big role in building the rage that swept through that union hall in Oregon.

When Steve Hammond, the union boss, tried to bargain with Koch, he found himself fighting over ideology, not benefits. In one case, the Koch negotiators wanted to strip down workers’ health care benefits, requiring employees to pay more money out of pocket for their benefits. The Koch team framed their request not as a way to make more money for Koch, but to create a system that better reflected the ideals of Market-Based Management. “It’s a matter of principle,” recalled union negotiator Gary Bucknum. “The principle is that an employee should be paying something toward their healthcare, or otherwise they’ll abuse their health care.” It was hard to bargain against principle. And the unions didn’t have the leverage to fight. The policies that once supported labor unions have been steadily undermined since the 1970s, dragging union participation in the private sector down from about 33% of the workforce to less than 10%. The union took the cut in health care benefits.

The current American political debate is focused on the shiny objects, the high-profile contests between Team Red and Team Blue. But companies like Koch Industries have the capacity to focus on the much deeper system, the highly complicated plumbing that makes the American economy work. This is where Charles Koch’s attention has been patiently trained for decades, as administrations have come and gone in Washington.

Thanks to this focus, Koch wins every time.

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[comeandreadawhile]

Congrats, It’s a Spider-Boy (Part 2)

Marvel MCU

7,022 Words

As promised, Peter and Tony go on a bonding weekend away.

Tony had hardly slept before the sun had begun its ascent into the sky, dawn spreading its rays further and further across the floorboards from the slightly parted curtains with every passing minute. The billionaire found it almost poetic, the previously pitch dark room becoming violet with warm streaks of pink and orange; a new dawn of its own broke last night, and instead of warm colors, Tony could still see the bright and sharp neon blue bands of DNA linking him to Peter before his eyes.  Peter, no doubt still fast asleep in his room down the hall, had been a breaking dawn in the darkness of Tony and Steve’s falling out, even if Tony hadn’t known it until the metaphorical noon—midmorning really.  

The mounting number of metaphors piling up seemed like a good indicator that he probably needed to eat something.  Tony stretched as he sat up, and earned a few satisfying cracks in the process.  He’d pulled on some socks before leaving his room, and still tried to tread carefully past Peter’s room.  In case the kid—his kid, Tony reminded himself proudly, still had dialed up senses during sleep, he’d hate to wake him up.  

First order of business upon entering the kitchen was turning on the coffee machine, before beginning what was probably somewhat of a ridiculous effort to make pancakes as close to silently as possible; ridiculous or not, Tony was determined to make a better breakfast than the one time he’d tried to whip up an omelet for Pepper, if one would be so kind to call the slightly burnt, very dry egg patty an omelet.  Bacon was pretty safe, he figured, after all the only thing one needed do was drop a strip or eight in a pan and wait until the bacon was cooked however one preferred it.  Tony took a sip of coffee, asked F.R.I.D.A.Y. to make sure his schedule had been cleared for the day, and flipped the first few pancakes onto a plate. Pouring more batter onto the large skillet, Tony checked that the pancakes wouldn’t burn if he took a few minutes to go wake Peter.  

He still attempted to walk quietly down the hall and knocked quietly on Peter’s door in case the teen already happened to be up.  Tony’s eyes took a second to adjust to being back into a dark room after he opened Peter’s door, and saw his son curled around a pillow.  His son…Tony let out a content sigh.  He sat gingerly on the side of the bed; Peter shifted and let out a breathy mumble as he curled more tightly around his pillow.  Tony lifted a hand to brush though the sleeping boy’s brown locks.  

“Pete.”  When the teen didn’t react, Tony brushed a thumb over Peter’s cheek, “Peter, it’s time to wake up.”  That time, Peter’s eyes opened slowly and locked with his as a lazy grin spread across his face.  “Hey bud! Good morning,” Tony greeted softly, and felt his own grin pull at the corners of his mouth.  

“G’morning,” Peter slurred, the pull of sleep still clearly tugging at his mind.  Peter rubbed at his eyes, finally freeing his pillow, and the action made him look so much younger; Tony wondered if in a different life, he’d have seen Peter waking up at an even younger age, voice slurred with inexperience in speech instead of sleepiness, and tiny fists poking out of the cuffed sleeves of a fleece onesie.  It didn’t do to linger on such fantasies, and Tony was determined to enjoy what time he had from then on with his baby.  

He ruffled Peter’s already horrendous bed head, “I’ve got some breakfast waiting for you in the kitchen.”

Peter looked at the cup of milk quizzically, but before he could say anything Tony piped up after returning the milk jug to the fridge.

“You can have some coffee after your growing bones get some calcium; drink that milk up, spiderling.”  The billionaire smirked at Peter’s feigned pout, which lasted the few seconds it took for Peter to raise his glass to his lips, and Tony returned his attention to the bacon.  

The scene was overwhelmingly domestic, what with the finished pile of homework and the backpack on the far end of the counter and Peter eating his fill of pancakes and what bacon had gone into the pan first. Tony made a mental note to schedule a day with May to go to the courthouse and amend Peter’s birth certificate.  

“Mr. Stark, is Ms. Potts having breakfast?” Peter asked, a bacon crumb at the side of his mouth.  Tony hummed while grabbing a napkin.

“No, little Stark, Pep had to leave around four in the a.m. for a business meeting with some partner company reps in D.C.” He didn’t comment on Peter flushing pink at the nickname, but instead held out the napkin.  Peter thanked him quietly and wiped his mouth.  Tony turned his mind back to his mug of cooling coffee and took a long drink before topping it off again from the coffee pot.  The rest of breakfast proceeded with comfortable silence, with brief interruptions of questions or reminders of forthcoming events, and soon enough Peter was packing away his homework and had changed into the clothes he’d brought along with him for the trip upstate.  

Tony found himself operating on auto-pilot during the car ride to the Parkers’ apartment, the realization that it would soon come time for Peter to learn to drive at the forefront of his busy thoughts. Every so often he’d take a glance over at the teen, but Peter simply sat quietly, a content expression on his face as he watched the scenery pass outside the window.  Yet, for all the quiet and peace that seemed to make the drive last forever, a moment suspended outside of the passage of time, the sun still did rise higher into the sky and it seemed that all too soon the traffic of the city began.  Once an orange Audi was parked less than a block away, and the two had made their way to the door of the apartment, May swung the door open.  An anticipatory grin stretched across her features, and Peter had to physically stifle the groan fighting to be born at the sight of May’s arms heavily laden with photo albums.  

Tony was just happy he didn’t have to ask to see Peter’s baby photos like a creep.  May locked eyes with him, and her grin seemed to only get wider.  She addressed him with a sing-song voice, “Let’s begin.  I’ll make copies but the frames are on your dime.”  

He chuckled darkly, looking at Peter.  May joined him with her own feigned evil laugh before Tony responded, “Frames won’t be an issue.  You have 15 years to debrief me on.”  Tony passed Peter to walk into the apartment, ruffling the boy’s hair in doing so, as May shuffled to the breakfast table and plopped down the first photo album.  Peter was in for a long, nostalgic, and slightly cringe-filled Saturday; good thing he’d had a filling breakfast.  

Days bled together in the weeks leading to Peter’s weekend with Tony, and with the arrival of the Friday they were to leave, Peter’s excitement was born anew.  He’d rushed home from school, head full of details for stories to fill the car ride with, and upcoming events to share his excitement about.  It would be the first day that week that Tony wouldn’t need to call him for an update; the billionaire had adopted the habit of calling daily, although the timing could be sporadic, to check in on Peter and hear about his day.  

As he was stuffing his laptop charger into his backpack Peter felt a small smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.  Tony really was trying where he could to be a father…

Just the previous week Tony had met May at the courthouse and they had done the necessary paperwork to get Tony recognized as Peter’s father; Tony had made a point that he didn’t have any intentions of changing Peter’s name however, since “The name he grew up with is already part of his identity, it wouldn’t be reasonable to change it.” They’d made plans to have Tony claim Peter to the public just before the Parkers’ lease on their apartment was up so that any paparazzi would have a harder time finding them once they’d moved.  Peter figured it was about as close to perfect as the situation could be.

Tony wanted to claim him as a son in front of the world…

He’d finished packing just as a knock sounded from the apartment’s front door; he could hear May welcoming Tony in seconds later. With his backpack over one shoulder, he hefted his duffle bag’s strap onto the other and walked out of his room to greet his father.  When Tony saw him he’d held his arms out wide, looking about as excited for the weekend ahead as Peter felt, and Peter dropped his bags on the couch to accept the hug.

“Hey kid, how was school today?” Tony asked, pulling back just enough to be able to look at Peter through his sunglasses. Peter shook his head in response.

“Good, but I’m saving the details for the car.”

Tony nodded, “Can’t wait to hear ‘em.  You ready?  Everything packed?”  Peter gave him an affirmative ‘yeah’ and gestured to the dropped bags.  “Alright, then, let’s get this show on the road. May, I’ll give you a call if we run into any snags on the way back Sunday evening.”  

May simply hummed to acknowledge she heard him, far more occupied with giving Peter a hug and kissing his cheek, “Alright, call me if any crime fighting is done, young man.  Have a good time, be safe, I love you,” May punctuated her reminders by kissing Peter’s other cheek for good measure, using one of her hands to cup and squish the boy’s face while she was at it.  She didn’t acknowledge his pink dusted cheeks when he gave her another farewell squeeze before going to pick his bags back up; she was just happy her little boy hadn’t grown out of goodbye kisses, even if he might’ve been embarrassed Tony saw him get his face squished.  Said man clapped Peter on the shoulder, took his duffle bag to carry and waved to her as he and Peter were walking out of the apartment.  May sighed, a content smile on her face despite having no clue what to do with a weekend to herself; this would be good bonding time for Peter and Tony.  

Tony chuckled quietly as Peter rambled on about his day, from thinking up a more water-resistant webbing formula during downtime in his chemistry lab, to having to pretend to be winded and tired after running a still questionably quick mile in gym.  Tony interjected with a suggestion, “If you want to join a sport to get rid of some energy, gymnastics seems like a good fit.  It’d be sorta like training for your spider-man business.” Tony glanced over to see Peter nodding. “Or a martial art, whatever.  Male dancers are usually in short supply if you’d want to go down that road.”  He remembered upon first meeting Peter that the teen had wanted to but felt he couldn’t play football.  Peter tapped a finger to his lip, apparently really giving the idea thought.

“Gymnastics would be fun…” he trailed off as a wide grin broke out across his face, “I’d have to use a ton of that powder stuff so I wouldn’t stick to the bars.”  Tony snorted and shook his head.  His kid thought of everything.  

With a couple hours until closing, Tony pulled the orange Audi into a space and parked in front of a white building spotted with blues and greens.  Tony could hear Peter gasp as they exited the car.

“An aquarium?!  Yes!”

After paying for tickets, which Peter appeared to vibrate with excitement while waiting for, Tony watched the teen go to each and every tank pointing out marine life he thought looked cool or interesting.  The lights from the tanks cast the darkened rooms with an otherworldly glow, yet did nothing to dim the look of awe in Peter’s smile and wide eyes.  Peter’s excitement couldn’t have been more endearing.

“Mr. Stark, did you see it? The stingray swam up to let me pet it!”

“Look, Mr. Stark, that sea turtle is huge! That’s so cool!”

“Oh!  Tony, I found the octopus!  It’s curled up in that little hole!  That one there in the back—there—you see it?”

Tony had felt his heart stop for a moment when Peter had grabbed his arm in the shark tunnel, a large bull shark seemingly headed towards them only to swim overhead, following the shape of the tunnel and swimming away further into its tank.  Peter had gasped, the sudden appearance of the toothy shark seemed to have surprised him, and Tony had heard a breathy “Dad!” leave the teen’s lips. As Peter’s wide eyes followed the retreating form of the shark, he felt Tony wrap the arm he’d been clutching around his shoulders.  The brief moment of fear was soon replaced once again with awe as more sharks and some large turtles swam overhead.  

Near the exit of the sharks’ exhibit was the transition to the penguins’ wing of the building, and Peter cooed at a few of the different chicks waddling about their enclosures, usually either chased by or chasing their parents.  Peter watched a parent aggressively grooming a chick only for the chick to complain loudly and fail at trying to run from its caretaker; Peter had to giggle, reminded of May always fussing over his unruly curls on school picture days, but stopped when he felt a hand combing through his hair.  Taking a moment to let himself savor the silent form of affection, Peter hummed and leaned into Tony’s hand.  He made no move to reject his parent’s attention as the chick did, even if at one point he felt Tony had been overbearingly protective and it had ended with a dropped building and a downed plane.  

But such things were in the past.  He still felt Tony was very protective, but he knew Tony was just looking out for him, so here he stood letting his newly-found father pet his hair as if he’d been doing it since Peter was small.  It was food for thought, how different his life would’ve been if he’d gone to live with Tony when his parents passed instead of May; he’d probably have been running around and tripping over things in the lab at a young age, and a lot less prone to stage fright.  But he had Tony and May in the here and now, and Peter couldn’t ask for a pair of parents that tried harder than they did.  He was brought out of his thoughts when he felt Tony tilt his head against his own.

“You know,” Tony started, and Peter could hear the grin in his voice, “I think the reptile and arachnid terrarium wing is next if you wanted to say hi to your cousins.”  Peter snorted and lightly jabbed an elbow into Tony’s side, effectively breaking the little side hug they’d had as they walked on.  

Peter settled into the car with a grin, “I kinda want to watch Finding Nemo now…” As he buckled his seatbelt he saw Tony in his peripheral lowering his sunglasses.

“Truly a masterpiece of cinema,” Tony remarked, nodding with finality.  “We’ll watch it over dinner.  What’re you in the mood for?”

Peter hugged the penguin and penguin chick plushies they’d bought to his chest, running a thumb over the faux fur feathers of the stuffed toys as he thought.  “I’m not really craving anything in particular, what about you?”

Tony took a few moments to answer, tapping the steering wheel with one hand a few times, “There’s a sort of umbrella Asian restaurant a few blocks from the condo; we could just make an international take-out feast of it, get some lumpia, kimchi, steamed buns, the works. They do really good honey-garlic Korean fried chicken, too.  How’s that sound?”

To a boy like Peter who had an advanced metabolism and loved Asian food of all kinds, that was apparently the best suggestion Tony could’ve made, and he could guess as much before Peter even opened his mouth from the boy’s delighted brown eyes and anticipatory grin.  “Okay I should set a good example so we’re going to order steamed veggies, and we’re both going to eat them before getting any second servings.  Capiche?”

Peter’s expression became one that even with his glance while driving Tony could tell was feigned seriousness and completely accepting of the condition before Peter replied, “Capiche,” with an obviously forced bored tone.  Suddenly the car in front of them slammed on its brakes, and despite the Audi being programmed to automatically brake, Tony’s hand still shot out in front of Peter’s chest.  Once the car ahead began moving again Tony let out the breath he’d been holding and he saw Peter relax in his peripheral.  At least they wouldn’t have to been witnesses to report some kind of crash…

Tony heard Peter let out a small laugh in the passenger seat, “You do that thing May does when she drives.  Ned and I call it a ‘parent reflex’,” he explained.  Tony whistled a generic video game achievement tune, one from a vague memory of his and Rhodey’s MIT days, and tried to lower his voice an octave to emulate a game narrator.

“Plus 5 Parent Points obtained; Level Up!”

Peter snorted before pitching his voice and tone to what Tony always attributed most flight attendants’ speech as he added “Achievement Unlocked: Dad Reflexes, one out of one son shielded.  Four vegetables needed to unlock Achievement: Healthy Eating.”

Tony shook his head with a fond smile, letting Peter’s add-on hang in the air a few seconds so changing the subject wouldn’t seem like a dismissal.

“You have anything specific you want to do tomorrow?”  Tony glanced at Peter to see him shaking his head, still smiling.  “Well if you had fun at the aquarium we can see about hitting up the zoo tomorrow, maybe after a lazy brunch?”

He’d had the boy at ‘zoo’ when out of the corner of his eye Tony saw Peter’s head whip around to look at him, eyes still discernibly wide with a gaping, open-mouthed smile to match.  Peter quickly realized he hadn’t answered and cleared his throat, “Yeah, the zoo sounds awesome, let’s do that.”  

Peter had been unpacking his duffle bag in his designated room when Tony had called him to come out.  Two large white take-out bags filled to bursting sat on the marble-topped island in the middle of the kitchen.  Peter came into the room just as Tony was opening the first bag, a freshly washed stack of the seldom-used condo’s plates sitting nearby on the counter.  Tony seemed to be searching for a particular container in the bags, and after the man had let out an exclaimed “A-ha!”, Peter was having a stare-down with the steaming container of vegetables.

“Let’s get this part over with and get to the good stuff,” Tony said, wrinkling his nose but still smirking all the same as he handed Peter a plate and fork. Soon enough Peter had a small mountain of veggies on his plate and the end of a broccoli stem hanging out of his mouth as he got a can of soda out of the fridge.  He could hear Tony bringing the bags of food into the living room as the opening theme of Finding Nemo filled the apartment. Grabbing an extra soda for Tony and his plate of veggies, Peter joined Tony on the wraparound couch.  The billionaire had an arm around the back of the couch, the other jabbing at the plate of vegetables balanced on his lap; as Peter sat down he felt the arm on the back of the couch fall around his shoulder.

As dinner and the movie progressed, Peter leaned more into Tony’s side.  Whether Tony had been conscious of it, at any times the titular character had been in danger the arm holding Peter’s shoulder would clutch him just a bit tighter.  The rest of the evening was spent exchanging quips and passing food, and at Bruce the shark’s sudden appearance Peter jumped.

“I always forget when he shows up!” he cried, and pouted at Tony’s chuckling.  Tony wrapped his arm back around the pouting teen and Peter settled his head back on Tony’s shoulder.

“Pete, there’s no shame in being zero to two losing to shark jump scares in one day.”  Tony offered Peter another piece of lumpia, to which the teen broke his pouting to take and nibble on the food, a mumbled ‘Thanks’ meeting Tony’s ears. Tony ruffled Peter’s hair as he turned his attention back to the TV.  

As the jazzy ending credits began to play, Tony sat up with a satisfying stretch.  He made a note to order grocery delivery for in the morning as he and Peter took their dishes to the kitchen to wash.  As the sink began to run Tony glanced over at the piano in the corner for a moment, and it seemed Peter followed his gaze.

“Do you play it or does Ms. Potts?  The piano, I mean.” Peter inquired, taking up a dish towel to dry the dishes as Tony washed them.  “It’s really pretty.” He added.  A grin pulled at one side of Tony’s mouth; he’d said the same thing when Maria had first brought one into his childhood house.  

“It’s mine.  I haven’t played it in forever, though.” He paused to hand Peter a washed plate to dry, “Funny enough, my mom first bought one for our house because she missed playing at her parents’ before she was married.”  Scrubbing the second plate Tony looked back over at the corner the piano sat in, no doubt needing to be dusted and maybe slightly out of tune from disuse.  He’d lost his other one when the Malibu house fell into the ocean.

Peter laid the plate he’d finished drying on the counter to take the second one as Tony rinsed it off, still curious about the sleek black instrument.  “Did she teach you to play it, or did you have lessons?”  

“When our first one was delivered, Mom wasted no time showing me what songs she remembered how to play.  I was still small enough for her to scoop up and set me on her lap, and she’d put her hands over mine to show me where to put my fingers and which keys to press.  The boring stuff like keeping time and reading sheet music came later.”  

Peter seemed content with that answer, and the pair went about finishing up doing the dishes quietly, only the clinking of ceramic and silver ringing through the space.  After they were finished, Peter said he was going to go shower.  Once he’d figured out which knob started the hot water and had grabbed a towel, he could faintly hear the tinkling of piano keys being gently pressed down the hall.

Tony expected the missed keys and such that came with years without practice, but it seemed like something to take up again while Peter’s hearing was muffled with the rushing water of a shower.  He’d tossed the cloth he’d used to clean off the dust from the keys a few feet away before sitting down, and tried to recall the notes to songs he knew Maria had sat down and taught him.  He hadn’t heard the shower turn off or the quiet footfalls approaching; he hadn’t even noticed a whole teenager sitting on the couch a few paces away until some time had passed and he’d had his fill, finally looking up and over to where Peter lounged.  It had gotten quite dark outside while he’d been playing, and it seemed Peter had been there for a little while.  Peter’s hair, still visibly damp but not dripping, had become even curlier from the shower and a lack of a brush; Tony stood up from the piano bench and ran a hand through it a few times.  Peter had evidently been asleep for some time, as throughout Tony petting his hair, the boy did not stir.  With a sigh and a lopsided smile Tony picked him up to take him to his room.

The penguin plushies were sitting together on the bed, carefully placed together against the far-side pillow; Tony had to resist a snort as he tried to pull back Peter’s blankets without waking the teen up.  He’d managed to get Peter into bed and brought the blankets up to his shoulders, and as an afterthought removed the far-side pillow from the plushies to set down at Peter’s side, knowing the teen liked to curl around them while he slept.  Tony took a moment to make sure Peter was tucked in, for the moment at least, and figured he could do some work on his tablet until he went to bed himself.  Before moving away to leave Tony moved Peter’s bangs out of his face, and with a moment’s hesitation, leaned down and pressed his lips to Peter’s forehead. He tore himself away and sighed, “Goodnight, Son.”  

Tony had expected a few things from waking up the next morning, like grogginess and a caffeine craving; he hadn’t been expecting the split second heart attack he’d had upon seeing Peter sleeping on the other side of the bed.  The massive jolt he’d had must’ve been enough to wake the boy, as a couple sleepy brown eyes blinked up at him and Tony was able to take a breath.

“Hey Baby-Mine, didn’t like your own mattress?” Noticing the grey fluff poking out from under Peter’s arm, Tony noted he’d brought the penguin chick plushy with him.  

“I had a nightmare and I didn’t want to wake you up…”

“Oh…” Tony trailed off; he knew how that was. “You wanna talk about it?” he asked, propping himself up on an elbow.  Peter shook his head and hugged the plushy just a little tighter.  Tony let out a breath through his nose.  “Okay, well,” he paused to brush Peter’s bangs out of his eyes, “Would you want to discuss breakfast plans instead?” The mention of food seemed to brighten Peter’s mood as a grin spread of his face.  “Look at me,” Tony continued, and Peter’s eyes met his again, “Wake me up next time, okay?”

“Okay.”

With a final ruffle of Peter’s hair, Tony untangled himself from his blankets and got up to go make breakfast.  Once Peter was eating his fill of waffles and yogurt, thank goodness for the grocery delivery that came shortly after Tony and Peter had gotten up, Tony had started trying to find the spare sunglasses and sunscreen he’d packed.  He’d set them on the counter once they’d been found so he could get his own breakfast plated up.  

“What’re those for?” Peter inquired, gulping down the waffle that’d been in his mouth.  

“You.  We’re going out when the sun is high in the sky, so you’re going to need sunglasses for you precious little spider-sense eyes, and sunscreen because you are by no means tan or UV-proof, sweet child of mine.”  Tony punctuated the explanation by shoving a yogurt-laden spoon in his mouth and taking a waffle off the waffle iron to plop on his plate.  

Sure enough, true to his word once they’d finished eating Tony had Peter practically bathe in sunscreen while he took care of the dishes.  He picked the bottle out of Peter’s hand once his limbs had been covered.  

“Look at me for a sec.” was all the warning Peter got before Tony started spreading the sunscreen over his cheeks and forehead, and at Peter’s pout ‘booped’ his nose with a streak of sunscreen for good measure.  He’d cupped the boy’s face in his hands to finish spreading it under his eyes and on his nose, and at Peter’s expense had to coo at how adorable the boy’s face was with his cheeks squished.  

Despite the harsh sun, the day carried on much like the one before it with Peter rambling excitedly in the car and running to and fro from the exhibits with stars in his eyes.  After a couple hours Tony had the boy slathered with sunscreen again and Peter pouted for all of ten minutes, ready to jump back into the fray of exploring the park instead of waiting for the sunscreen to soak in. They’d gotten some water while waiting on Peter’s skin protection regiment, and some shaved ice as an afterthought; suddenly Peter’s pouting became delighted humming once more, and Tony didn’t give a single care about what Pepper or May would say about him spoiling his baby boy.  The resemblance was uncanny still when Peter had on a pair of his sunglasses, even if at the moment he’d been pale as a sheet.  

They’d apparently come on a good day; there were only a dozen or so small families and a single field trip, so foot traffic hadn’t been obnoxious and they could walk at their own pace.  Peter would excitedly gasp at the ‘cool’ animals, even if they were napping like the lions had been or cutely playing in a mud hole like the elephants; they’d had a good chuckle over a rhino aggressively defending its ridiculously small mud hole from other rhinos that had been headed to a bigger mud hole nearby anyway.  Tony was glad to see Peter acting like a carefree kid, cooing over pandas rolling down a hill or jumping up and down with excitement because a tiger chuffed at him before promptly jumping into its pool.  

Even if he was over a decade late, he was content to spend time with his kid in the here and now; he’d be able to do things with Peter that Howard had never bothered to do with him.  The thought made Tony glance down at his watch; Peter had forty-five minutes until it was time for a sunscreen reapplication.  

“You clearly want to ask me something,” Tony pointed out, briefly looking up from the tomato he was cubing.  Halfway through the drive home and since they’d gotten to the condo, Peter would look over at him and open his mouth to say something only to close it and look away again.  “Look, I know sunscreen is tedious but I don’t want to get an earful from May because our kid got sunburnt the first weekend he spent with me.”

Peter gave a little laugh at this, but no explanation.  “Come on, kid, the sooner you ask the sooner I can answer.”  Peter nodded at that, scratching the back of his head.

“I,um…this isn’t really the time or place, I think,” Peter shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”  

Tony put down his knife and grabbed a towel to dry his hands, “I’m probably the worst person to tell not to worry about something, Pete,” he said, walking over to sit on the couch next to Peter.  “What’s up?”

Peter brought his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, resting his chin on one of his forearms and pointedly not looking at Tony.  

“I’m really happy you want to spend time with me, like, super happy, and I’m happy you’re being more physically affectionate with me, okay?”

Tony nodded before prompting Peter, “But?”

Peter brought a hand to the back of his head again, silent for a few moments.  “Would you have still wanted to spend more time with me if you didn’t know I was yours? I’m not disappointing, am I?”

Frankly Tony was taken aback by the questions.  He could see small signs of Peter getting more anxious with every moment he took to answer.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

“Yes, Boss?”

“Could you pull up those receipts for my Florida plans from my email and display ‘em for me?”

Wordlessly the A.I. carried out her creator’s request and several holograms appeared to shine out of Tony’s watch.  Peter saw Disneyland, Epcot, and Universal Studios among the fold.

“So,” Tony started, and Peter heard no offense in his tone, “These, which were meant to be a surprise, are all dated about three months ago, scheduled for your Christmas break with four tickets reserved all around for you, May, Pep, and I over the span of two-ish weeks,” Tony made a ‘so-so’ gesture with his other hand.  “With an Orlando resort suite booked as well.  I can also pull up plans I made several more months ago for your birthday but that would ruin the surprises. I trust that answers your first question.”  He turned to Peter who was staring at the holograms with a mix of surprise and relief.  “Don’t think for a second I’m not delighted that you’re my son.  I think you’re brilliant; you’ve certainly started out a much better person than I ever was.  I loved you way before that test, but it would’ve been kinda creepy, you can’t deny, for me to have been as affectionate with a kid I wasn’t related to.”

That finally got Peter to crack a smile, “Yeah, May would’ve probably given you more than a side-eye.” Peter wiped at one of his eyes with his palm, incredibly relieved to have that confirmation.  He willingly let Tony pull him into a hug.  

“Don’t ever think that you’re a disappointment; I am so, so proud of you, okay?”

Peter just nodded into Tony’s shoulder.  A loud rumble filled the room, and Peter felt his face flush as Tony pressed a kiss into his hair.  “Come on and help me finish dinner.  We’ll see what the spiderling can catch in his web.”  

“…Thanks, Dad.”  

Tony knew he was grinning like an idiot while giving Peter another squeeze, “No problem, Son.”

As they both got up to go back to the kitchen, Peter spoke up again. “Could I ask you something else?”

“Go ahead, anything,” Tony answered, clapping Peter’s shoulder before picking his knife back up to finish off the tomatoes.

“Could you tell me more about your mom?”  

Tony looked up, quizzical but not opposed. “What do you want to know?”

Peter shrugged, while washing and tearing some lettuce.  “Anything; I’ve heard about Howard in school but he doesn’t seem like the greatest family man.  I don’t really know anything about my grandma.”  

Tony let out a fond sigh, “Let’s see…” he started while dropping tomatoes into the lettuce Peter had torn.  “Firstly, she’d probably want her grandbaby to call her ‘Nonna’; whenever Howard wasn’t home she’d call me ‘Antonio’ and its pet name variants, and if she’d known you, you would’ve grown up thinking your name was ‘Pietro’.  Anyone who knew her knew Maria knew she was proud to be Italian.”  Tony considered the boy for a second, “You would’ve been fluent in Italian and Spanish by now if she’d had any say in it, and aced all these Spanish quizzes.”

Peter watched Tony get a cucumber and some carrots from the fridge, and set the carrots to the side before continuing, “She’d have been thrilled you were a band kid, and she would’ve loved hearing you play, and playing duets with you.”  The cucumber was chopped and added to the growing salad.  “Whenever you learned to toddle she would’ve had you on the bench with her at the piano.  She’d sing if the song she was playing had lyrics; I was always falling asleep on the music room’s couch when she’d play.”  

The knife was handed off for the carrots so that Tony could start the chicken in its marinade.  Peter washed the carrots before carefully trying to peel them. “Was she super domestic or really career driven?” Peter could recognize the look of reminiscence in Tony’s eyes that he’d seen in the mirror’s reflection of his own whenever he thought about Ben.

“Little bit of both; she took care of the behind-the-scenes work of planning Stark Industries’ charity events and parties, and usually gave the resident chef the night off because she liked making dinner at home.  Mom made all her pasta and pastries from scratch.”

Tony took the carrots Peter had finished cutting and stuck them in a pan with a splash of water and some butter.  Peter watched him take down cinnamon and brown sugar, adding healthy amounts of both once the carrots has started to soften. Peter felt a lopsided grin form on his face, “Would she have been okay with you and I doing our ‘hero’ thing?”

A few silent moments passed before Tony smirked, “Mom would’ve screamed, and she didn’t raise her voice often, but she would because she’d be worried.  At the end of the day, though, she’d probably have some heaping plates covered in the fridge and a kind word for our efforts.”  Peter nodded, an infectiously adorable grin on his features that reminded and reassured Tony just how much of a child Peter still was.  

“I think I would’ve loved her.”

“She would’ve adored you, and spoiled you rotten to boot.”  Thinking it might be a bit soon still to reciprocate and ask about Ben Parker, Tony made a mental note to ask in the future; he was eager to know about the man who raised his son.

Sunday morning was spent lazily, as Sunday mornings should be.  At Peter’s request F.R.I.D.A.Y. began a playlist of the Star Wars movies while he and Tony tried to figure out how to make muffins.  The A.I. had transferred the movies to the TV in Tony’s room, who didn’t care a wit about crumbs getting on the sheets as he and Peter had their breakfast in bed.  They had agreed to deliver Peter back to May’s care after dinner, and every so often tore away from their blankets and the different cosmic bodies and planets on the TV to get more snacks or refill drinks.  Pepper had called to video chat for the first time that weekend during a transition between movies; she’d asked how things were going, and jokingly asked Peter to forgive his ‘evil future step-mom’ for interrupting his marathon with his father before mentioning that they’d need to schedule him an appointment with a tailor among other reminders for Tony.  

Peter had cocked his head to the side after Pepper hung up. “A tailor?” he parroted.  Tony took a sip of his drink while nodding.

“Pep and I decided you would make social functions much more bearable, and it’d be better for you to have a selection of suits custom made for you to choose from—if you’d want to go, of course, no pressure.”  

“Am I going to be looking like a mini-you? Sunglasses, the works?”

“If I have anything to do with it, absolutely.”

“Cool.  Play the next movie, F.R.I.D.A.Y.?”

“Sure thing, Peter.”

It was late when May finally heard a knock at the door; not absurdly so, Peter still had time for any homework he might have needed to finish, but enough that she had long since done the dishes from her dinner and the sun first meeting the horizon. She’d opened the door and quickly tugged Peter into a hug, and complimented how cute the penguin plushies sticking out of his bag were.  

Almost immediately Peter began rambling about what he and Tony had been up to since they’d left, and every so often she snuck glances at the proud father looking on from a few paces away.  

When Tony announced he should’ve been heading home, May saw Peter’s expression fall.  She’d offered the billionaire some coffee before he left, but Tony politely declined.  May nodded, before inquiring if Pepper would be back the next day.

“No, Pepper’s going to be away for the week.”

“You should have dinner with us then.  You’re family, after all,” May offered.  Tony had clearly been flattered if his lopsided smile told her anything before he thanked her and accepted the invitation.

“I’ll pick Peter up from school, and any groceries you might need you can just text me and we’ll pick them up.”  

May nodded her assent before announcing she’d be going to her room, leaving Tony and Peter to say their farewells as they would. Peter dropped his bags just inside the door to the apartment before launching himself toward Tony, wrapping his arms around his dad’s middle.  

“This weekend was awesome,” he mumbled into Tony’s shoulder.  Peter felt a sigh displace some of his hair before a hand cupped the back of his head and another wrapped around his back.  

“Anything for my spiderling; get thinking on what you’d like to do on your next weekend with me.” Tony gave the boy another gentle squeeze, “I’ll see you tomorrow, and you can tell me all about your day.” Peter didn’t lessen his hold around Tony’s waist in the slightest, and Tony waited a few moments before prompting a response. “Pete?”

Peter tightened his grasp on Tony for but a moment, and Tony’s ribs were reminders that the boy had enhanced strength.  He almost missed Peter’s comment.

“…Love you, Dad.”

The arms around Tony’s middle held fast as he pulled away from Peter’s embrace just enough the cup the teen’s cheeks in his hands. Peter’s round eyes must’ve come from Mary, but his baby boy shared the same shade of brown with him.  Oh no, he scolded himself, he was not going to choke up now, not until he was in his car.  Tilting Peter’s head up slightly Tony placed a kiss on the boy’s forehead before giving him one last goodbye hug, ruffling Peter’s mess of brown curls as he did.  It would be a long day of meetings to wait through until he could see his bouncing baby spider-boy again.

“I love you too, Son.”  

( @nxtalia-rxmanova and @demigodwitch22 asked to be tagged, I hope you all enjoyed reading!)

[sonofadeanwinchester]

A Long Day

Summary: After a long day of hunting, you need a night to chill. 

Words: 1786

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader feat. Sam Winchester

Warnings: Swearing; Fluff; a little angsty?

A/N: This one was requested by @alliekay727 ! Sorry that it took me forever to write/post. Hope you enjoy it!!

Tags:  @221bshrlocked @marvelouslyme96 @shellymaesworld @titty-teetee @pawallday @chameerah @buckylicious @nerdywitch @teresaoliva20 @guera31 @i-should-probably-be-asleep-rn @ssweet-empowerment @jhangelface0523 @sarahp879 @parkerrpeterr @bxxbxy @mrs-meghan-winchester  @kaleidoscopez96  

I rub the back of my neck feeling the tight muscles clench under my movement. “Dammit.”

Sam sits beside me. “You okay?”

I nod. “Never been better, love.”

He chuckles. “You are allowed to admit that you’re sore.”

Dean winks at me. “Yeah, (y/n), you can admit that you’re sore.”

“Oh shut up, Winchester. You only wish you could make me sore.”

Sam’s face goes red and he chuckles. “Apparently, Dean, you lack charm with this one.”

He rolls his eyes. “Oh shut up, Winchester.” He glances his gaze at me. “As for you, your time will come.”

I snort. “I take it you put emphasis on the come for a reason.”

He lifts his hands off the steering wheel for a brief second to defend himself. “Your words, babe, not mine.”

“Right. Well, better get used to do it solo because this-” I gesture between the two of us. “Ain’t ever gonna happen.”

“Mhmm. Give it time, sweetheart. I always have everyone kneeling at my feet.”

I roll my eyes. “If only your dick was a big as your damn ego.”

Sam bursts into laughter. “Wow, uh, okay.”

I watch Dean as his expression goes from surprise to annoyance to challenging. “You’ll be eating those words.”

Back at the bunker, I lay flat on my stomach on my bed. The boys had accepted me onto their team about six months ago when they found me. I was a lone hunter, barely getting by on credit card scams and crappy diner food. Sam chuckled when I told him my story, explaining that’s how he and his brother had gotten by and their father before them. I smirked. “I obviously get this insane body from eating bacon cheeseburgers every other day.”

Dean had laughed at this. “You’re a burger girl? Thank God. Don’t think I could stand another health freak.”

Sam scoffs. “Dude, it’s good for you. That’s why I’m gonna outlive you.”

Dean shakes his head. “If I have it my way, you’ll outlive all of us.”

I cocked my head to the side but didn’t question his wording.

Now, as I lay on my stomach, I feel the effect of pulling some muscles can have. My whole body aches with pain and I feel like I’ve been hit by a half-wheeler. A light knock came from behind me and I moan. “Come in.”

The space beside my limp body dips as the figure sighs. “You okay?” It’s Dean.

I nod, my neck screaming with pain. “Yeah.”

He snorts. “You want a massage?”

I shrug. “I’d love one … from Sam.”

“Jesus, what’s with you?”

I try to sit up but my body screams no. After what felt like an eternity, I pull myself into the sitting up position, my back on the headboard. “Whatcha mean?”

He runs his hands down his jeans and sighs. “You’ve been acting weird lately.”

“Dean, I’m a hunter. We all act weird.”

He shrugs and nods but then starts again. “It’s been like ever since, we-” He stops as his mind jolts back to the night of drunken sex between the two of us.

I shake my head. “I’m sorry Dean, but that was just sex. We were both drunk and feeling high after that hunt.”

He drops his eyes and sighs. “I thought it was more than just sex.”

I shake my head. “Dean, you’ve never felt anything for anyone. You refuse to let yourself go down that path.”

He gawks at me. “Not true. What about Jo or Lisa?”

I pat his knee. “You went down that road with Lisa and had Jo lived-” he sucks in a sharp breath. “-then you two probably would’ve ended up together. But with Lisa, you tried, you really did. But, in the end, you can’t let yourself become seriously involved with anyone.” Rolls his eyes. “I get it, okay, I really do. It’s part of the job, kill the bad things, have some meaningless sex with some rando and then move onto the next town. It’s how we keep ourselves from going crazy.”

He smirks. “Pretty profound for someone who’s never gotten laid.”

“Bullshit. Did you not hear the part in my, beautiful I might add, speech where we have meaningless sex with rando’s?”

He nods. “I heard it but I don’t agree with it.”

I throw my hands up, letting them plop down in my lap. “You’re the biggest player I can name. What the hell don’t you agree with?”

He slides an inch closer to me, rubbing my shoulders. “I don’t think that keeps us from going dingo-ate-my-baby-crazy. I think it’s family and friends. The people you risk every day to save. If it wasn’t for Sam and Bobby, I’d run off to the loony bin years ago.”

Enjoying the massage more than I should’ve been I nod. “Of course. You and Sam are the only real friends I’ve had in a very long time. You’re like brothers to me.” His movements stopped momentarily then proceeded. “What I mean to say is thank you.”

“For what?” Dean runs his calloused fingers over my shoulders.

“For, you know, taking me in and saving me from myself.”

He laughs. “You’re full of the Dr.Phil quotes today.”

I pop an open and see he’s staring at me, a smirk on his face. “I learned from the best.”

He winks. “Means a lot that you’ve finally admitted that I’m the Miyagi in this scenario.”

“And I’m who? Daniel?” He nods. “Right, well, I always took for more of Johnny type.”

A chuckle comes from the doorframe. I angle myself to see Sam standing there, leaning on the frame with his arms crossed. “Mr.Miyagi? Really Dean? I always took you as the Johnny type.”

I laugh. “Thank you!”

Dean drops his hands from my body and stands. “Whatever. You need a day to chill out, clear your head.”

I shake my head. “I just need some sleep.”

Dena sighs. “I’ll give you two hours of rest and then we’re doing something.”

I roll my eyes. “If you want me to watch that porn channel again...”

He points a finger at me. “Casa Erotica is amazing and I know you love it.”

“On my own time, maybe.”

He cocks his head to the side and smirks. “Hmm, good to know. Seriously, rest and then we’re going out.”

I roll my eyes as the boys leave, shutting the door behind them.

Two hours later, Dean is knocking at my door. I crawl out of bed, turning the doorknob slowly. “You’re punctual.”

He eyes my bed slept hair and wrinkly clothes. “You’re not dressed yet?”

“No Dean, I just woke up.”

He pushes into my room, rummaging through my drawers, throwing out a black t-shirt, a red plaid button up and a pair of jeans. “Wear these with your black leather jacket and boots.”

“Apparently, I’ve become incapable to pick out my own damn clothes.” He sighed, running a hand over his tired face. “Have you slept yet?”

He shakes his head. “I’ll sleep when we get back. Hurry up.” He turns to leave and stops. “Oh, and wear your hair down.”

“Right.”

I come out of my room, dressed in the outfit Dean had picked out for me but instead of wearing the button up on me, I just tied it around my waist. Dean clicks his tongue. “How can you misuse such an article of cloth?”

“I know that plaid shirts and fifty layers of clothing are the uniform for the Winchester Bros but come on, it’s like eighty degrees outside.”

He huffs. “Fair enough.” He wiggles his brows. “Let’s go.”

Halfway up the stairs, I see Sam still sitting at the table reading one of the books from the library. “Sammy, aren’t you coming?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, this is more an of Dean thing, you know? But you two have fun.” He winks at me as I continue to climb.

Sliding into the passenger side of the Impala felt like the most natural and comforting thing I’ve felt in a very long time. As Dean turns Baby’s engine over, he drives us into the sunset. “You gonna tell me where we’re going?”

He shakes his head. “You just need to know that I’ve pulled some strings for this to happen, okay?”

I sigh. “God, we’re gonna get arrested.”

He snorts. “Ye of little faith. Not everything I do is illegal.”

“Dean, we literally have ten fake badges each sitting in the dashboard.”

He cocks a brow. “So?”

“Whatever. Just know that people like me don’t survive prison.”

“People like you?”

I nod. “Beautiful.”

He scoffs. “Well, sweetheart, hate to burst your bubble but this sweet ass survived prison.”

I shrug. “I’ve seen sweeter asses.”

He rolls his eyes as he pulls into what seems to be an abandoned amusement park. “God, are we here for a hunt? You really have no idea how to relax, do you?”

“My God, you run your mouth a lot. Just shut up and follow me.” He slides out of the car and waits at the hood for me to follow him. “Here we are.”

“And where exactly is here?”

“Hey, Ralph, light it up.” Dean yells into the dark.”

“Ral-” My question is cut short as the entire park comes to life. “Oh.”

He smiles at me, his eyes beaming against the light. “I remember you saying something about going to amusement parks as a kid with your folks before, you know, and you needed a night to just chill.”

I hug him tightly, kissing his cheek. “Thanks, Dean, this is amazing.”

His cheeks flush and he shrugs. “What should we do first?”

I laugh, well, giggle like a six-year-old. “Uh, let’s do the roller coaster.”

He claps his hands then grab my arm, dragging me behind him. “My kind of girl.”

Three hours later, we walk back to the Impala, my arms full of teddy bears and winning odds and ends. “God you scream like a girl.”

Dean’s face beams with a smile. “We were at the top of a wooden roller coaster, obviously, I’m going to scream.”

“Pussy.”

He scoffs. “Right, well, I seem to remember you screaming as we were on the twirly thing.”

“The Tilt-A-Whirl? Mostly because my stomach was threatening to empty itself.” I sigh and grin as I climb into the car. Dean slides in beside me, a grin still on his face. “Dean, thanks for doing this.”

He shrugs. “I did it mostly for me.”

“Whatever. But seriously, I needed this.”

He smiles, eyes gaze darting from my eyes to my lips. I chew my lip as he leans in, kissing me tenderly. “You’re welcome.”

[xtruss]

The Great American Tax Haven: Why the Super-rich Love South Dakota

It’s known for being the home of Mount Rushmore – and not much else. But thanks to its relish for deregulation, the state is fast becoming the most profitable place for the mega-wealthy to park their billions.

— By Oliver Bullough | Thursday, 14 November 2019 | Guardian USA

Illustration: Guardian Design

Late last year, as the Chinese government prepared to enact tough new tax rules, the billionaire Sun Hongbin quietly transferred $4.5bn worth of shares in his Chinese real estate firm to a company on a street corner in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, one of the least populated and least known states in the US. Sioux Falls is a pleasant city of 180,000 people, situated where the Big Sioux River tumbles off a red granite cliff. It has some decent bars downtown, and a charming array of sculptures dotting the streets, but there doesn’t seem to be much to attract a Chinese multi-billionaire. It’s a town that even few Americans have been to.

The money of the world’s mega-wealthy, though, is heading there in ever-larger volumes. In the past decade, hundreds of billions of dollars have poured out of traditional offshore jurisdictions such as Switzerland and Jersey, and into a small number of American states: Delaware, Nevada, Wyoming – and, above all, South Dakota. “To some, South Dakota is a ‘fly-over’ state,” the chief justice of the state’s supreme court said in a speech to the legislature in January. “While many people may find a way to ‘fly over’ South Dakota, somehow their dollars find a way to land here.”

Super-rich people choose between jurisdictions in the same way that middle-class people choose between ISAs: they want the best security, the best income and the lowest costs. That is why so many super-rich people are choosing South Dakota, which has created the most potent force-field money can buy – a South Dakotan trust. If an ordinary person puts money in the bank, the government taxes what little interest it earns. Even if that money is protected from taxes by an ISA, you can still lose it through divorce or legal proceedings. A South Dakotan trust changes all that: it protects assets from claims from ex-spouses, disgruntled business partners, creditors, litigious clients and pretty much anyone else. It won’t protect you from criminal prosecution, but it does prevent information on your assets from leaking out in a way that might spark interest from the police. And it shields your wealth from the government, since South Dakota has no income tax, no inheritance tax and no capital gains tax.

A decade ago, South Dakotan trust companies held $57.3bn in assets. By the end of 2020, that total will have risen to $355.2bn. Those hundreds of billions of dollars are being regulated by a state with a population smaller than Norfolk, a part-time legislature heavily lobbied by trust lawyers, and an administration committed to welcoming as much of the world’s money as it can. US politicians like to boast that their country is the best place in the world to get rich, but South Dakota has become something else: the best place in the world to stay rich.

At the heart of South Dakota’s business success is a crucial but overlooked fact: globalisation is incomplete. In our modern financial system, money travels where its owners like, but laws are still made at a local level. So money inevitably flows to the places where governments offer the lowest taxes and the highest security. Anyone who can afford the legal fees to profit from this mismatch is able to keep wealth that the rest of us would lose, which helps to explain why – all over the world – the rich have become so much richer and the rest of us have not.

In recent years, countries outside the US have been cracking down on offshore wealth. But according to an official in a traditional tax haven, who has watched as wealth has fled that country’s coffers for the US, the protections offered by states such as South Dakota are undermining global attempts to control tax dodging, kleptocracy and money-laundering. “One of the core issues in fighting a guerrilla war is that if the guerrillas have a safe harbour, you can’t win,” the official told me. “Well, the US is giving financial criminals a safe harbour, and a really effective safe harbour – far more effective than anything they ever had in Jersey or the Bahamas or wherever.”

Those of us who cannot vote in South Dakota elections have little hope of changing its laws. But if we don’t do something to correct the imbalance between global wealth and local legislation, we risk entrenching today’s inequality and creating a new breed of global aristocrat, unaccountable to anyone and getting richer all the time – with grave consequences for the long-term health of liberal democracy.

South Dakota is west of Minnesota, east of Wyoming, and has a population of 880,000 people. Politically, its voters enthusiastically embrace the Republicans’ message of self-reliance, low taxes and family values. Donald Trump won more than 60% of the vote there in 2016, and the GOP has held a super-majority in the state’s House of Representatives since the 70s, allowing the party to mould South Dakota in its image for two generations.

Outsiders tend to know South Dakota for two things: Mount Rushmore, which is carved with the faces of four US presidents; and Laura Ingalls Wilder, who moved to the state as a girl and wrote the Little House on the Prairie series of children’s books. But its biggest impact on the world comes from a lesser-known fact: it was ground zero for the earthquake of financial deregulation that has rocked the world’s economy.

The story does not begin with trusts, but with credit cards, and with Governor William “Wild Bill” Janklow, a US marine and son of a Nuremberg prosecutor, who became governor in 1979 and led South Dakota for a total of 16 years. He died almost eight years ago, leaving behind an apparently bottomless store of anecdotes: about how he once brought a rifle to the scene of a hostage crisis; how his car got blown off the road when he was rushing to the scene of a tornado.

In the late 70s, South Dakota’s economy was mired in deep depression, and Janklow was prepared to do almost anything to bring in a bit of business. He sensed an opportunity in undercutting the regulations imposed by other states. At the time, national interest rates were set unusually high by the Federal Reserve, meaning that credit card companies were having to pay more to borrow funds than they could earn by lending them out, and were therefore losing money every time someone bought something. Citibank had invested heavily in credit cards, and was therefore at significant risk of going bankrupt.

William ‘Wild Bill’ Janklow, the former governor of South Dakota in 1988. Photograph: Per Breiehagen/Life Images Collection via Getty Images

The bank was searching for a way to escape this bind, and found it in Janklow. “We were in the poorhouse when Citibank called us,” the governor recalled in a later interview. “They were in bigger problems than we were. We could make it last. They couldn’t make it last. I was slowly bleeding to death; they were gushing to death.”

At the bank’s suggestion, in 1981, the governor abolished laws that at the time – in South Dakota, as in every other state in the union – set an upper limit to the interest rates lenders could charge. These “anti-usury” rules were a legacy of the New Deal era. They protected consumers from loan sharks, but they also prevented Citibank making a profit from credit cards. So, when Citibank promised Janklow 400 jobs if he abolished them, he had the necessary law passed in a single day. “The economy was, at that time, dead,” Janklow remembered. “I was desperately looking for an opportunity for jobs for South Dakotans.”

When Citibank based its credit card business in Sioux Falls, it could charge borrowers any interest rate it liked, and credit cards could become profitable. Thanks to Janklow, Citibank and other major companies came to South Dakota to dodge the restrictions imposed by the other 49 states. And so followed the explosion in consumer finance that has transformed the US and the world. Thanks to Janklow, South Dakota has a financial services industry, and the US has a trillion-dollar credit card debt.

Fresh from having freed wealthy corporations from onerous regulations, Janklow looked around for a way to free wealthy individuals too, and thus came to the decision that would eventually turn South Dakota into a Switzerland for the 21st century. He decided to deregulate trusts.

Trusts are ancient and complex financial instruments that are used to own assets, such as real estate or company stock. Unlike a person, a trust is immortal, which was an attractive prospect for English aristocrats of the Middle Ages who wished to make sure their property remained in their families for ever, and would be secure from any confiscation by the crown. This caused a problem, however. More and more property risked being locked up in trusts, subject to the wishes of long-dead people, which no one could alter. So, in the 17th century, judges fought back by creating the “rule against perpetuities”, which limited the duration of trusts to around a century, and prevented aristocratic families turning their local areas into mini-kingdoms.

That weakened aristocratic families, opened up the British economy, allowed new businessmen to elbow aside the entrenched powers in a way that did not happen elsewhere in Europe, and helped give the world the industrial revolution. “It’s a paradoxical point, but it wasn’t a bad thing when the scion of some family from out in the counties came down to London and pissed away his fortune. It was redistribution of wealth,” said Eric Kades, a law professor at William & Mary Law School in Virginia, who has studied trusts.

English emigrants took the rule to North America with them, and the dynamic recycling of wealth became even more frenetic in the land of the free. Then Governor Janklow came along. In 1983, he abolished the rule against perpetuities and, from that moment on, property placed in trust in South Dakota would stay there for ever. A rule created by English judges after centuries of consideration was erased by a law of just 19 words. Aristocracy was back in the game.

In allowing trusts to last for ever, South Dakota did something genuinely revolutionary, but sadly almost everyone I contacted – from current governor Kristi Noem to state representatives to members of the South Dakotan Trust Association – refused to talk about it. For an answer to the question of what exactly prompted the state to ditch the rule against perpetuities, I was eventually directed to Bret Afdahl, the director of the state administration’s Division of Banking, who wanted the question in writing. A week later, back came a one-word response: “unknown”.

Initially, South Dakota’s so-called “dynasty trusts” were advertised for their ability to dodge inheritance tax, thus allowing wealthy people to cement their family’s long-term control over property in the way English aristocrats had always wanted to. It also gave plenty of employment to lawyers and accountants.

“It’s a clean industry, there are no smokestacks, we don’t have to mine anything out of the earth or anything, and they’re generally good paying jobs,” said Tom Simmons, an expert on trust law at the University of South Dakota, when we chatted over coffee in central Sioux Falls. Alongside his academic work, Simmons is a member of South Dakota’s trust taskforce, which exists to maintain the competitiveness of the state’s trust industry. “Janklow was truly a genius in seeing this would be economic development with a very low cost to the government,” he said. (By “the government”, he of course means that of South Dakota, not that of the nation, other states or indeed other countries, which all lose out on the taxes that South Dakota helps people avoid.)

As the 1990s progressed, and more money came to Sioux Falls, South Dakota became a victim of its success, however, since other states – such as Alaska and Delaware – abolished the rule against perpetuities, too, thus negating South Dakota’s competitive advantage. But, having started the race to the bottom, Janklow was damned if any other state was going to beat him there. So, in 1997, he created the trust taskforce to make sure South Dakota was going as fast as it could. The taskforce’s job was to seek out legal innovations created in other jurisdictions, whether offshore or in the US, and make them work in South Dakota.

Thanks to the taskforce, South Dakota now gives its clients tricks to protect their wealth that would have been impossible 30 years ago. In most jurisdictions, trusts have to benefit someone other than the benefactor – your children, say, or your favourite charity – but in South Dakota, clients can create a trust for the benefit of themselves (indeed, Sun Hongbin is a beneficiary of his own trust). Once two years have passed, the trust is immune from any creditor claiming a share of the assets it contains, no matter the nature of their claim. A South Dakotan trust is secret, too. Court documents relating to it are kept private for ever, to prevent knowledge of its existence from leaking out. (It also has the useful side effect of making it all but impossible for journalists to find out who is using South Dakotan trusts, or what legal challenges to them have been filed.)

Leona Helmsley with her dog, Trouble.Leona Helmsley with her dog, Trouble. Photograph: Jennifer Graylock/AP

This barrage of innovations has allowed lawyers to create structures with complex names – the South Dakota Foreign Grantor Trust, the Self-Settled Asset Protection Trust, etc – which have done two simple things: they have kept the state ahead of the competition; and they have made South Dakota’s property protections extraordinarily strong. “The smart people want privacy,” explained Harvey Bezozi, a Florida financial adviser and tax expert who blogs under the name Your Financial Wizard. “South Dakota offers the best privacy and asset protection laws in the country, and possibly in the world, for the wealthy to protect their assets. They’ve done a pretty good job in making themselves unique; a real boutique place where the people in the know will eventually gravitate to.”

Among those in the know were the lawyers of Leona Helmsley, the legendarily mean hotel heiress, who coined the phrase “only the little people pay taxes”. When Helmsley died in 2007, she left $12m in trust for the care of her dog, a maltese called Trouble. Trouble dined on crab cakes and kobe beef, and the trust provided her with $8,000 a year for grooming and $100,000 for security guards, who protected her against kidnappings, as well as against reprisals from the people that she bit. When a New York court – not entirely unreasonably – decided to restrain this expenditure, trustees moved the trust to South Dakota, which had crafted “purpose trusts” with just such a client in mind. Other states impose limits on how a purpose trust can care for a pet, on the principle that perhaps there are better things to do with millions of dollars than groom a dog, but South Dakota takes no chances. The client is always right.

Despite all its legal innovating, South Dakota struggled for decades to compete with offshore financial centres for big international clients – Middle Eastern petro-sheikhs perhaps, or billionaires from emerging markets. The reason was simple: sometimes the owners’ claim to their assets was a little questionable, and sometimes their business practices were a little sharp. Why would any of them put their assets in the US, where they might become vulnerable to American law enforcement, when they could instead put them in a tax haven where enforcement was more … negotiable?

That calculation changed in 2010, in the aftermath of the great financial crisis. Many American voters blamed bankers for costing so many people their jobs and homes. When a whistleblower exposed how his Swiss employer, the banking giant UBS, had hidden billions of dollars for its wealthy clients, the conclusion was explosive: banks were not just exploiting poor people, they were helping rich people dodge taxes, too.

Congress responded with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca), forcing foreign financial institutions to tell the US government about any American-owned assets on their books. Department of Justice investigations were savage: UBS paid a $780m fine, and its rival Credit Suisse paid $2.6bn, while Wegelin, Switzerland’s oldest bank, collapsed altogether under the strain. The amount of US-owned money in the country plunged, with Credit Suisse losing 85% of its American customers.

The rest of the world, inspired by this example, created a global agreement called the Common Reporting Standard (CRS). Under CRS, countries agreed to exchange information on the assets of each other’s citizens kept in each other’s banks. The tax-evading appeal of places like Jersey, the Bahamas and Liechtenstein evaporated almost immediately, since you could no longer hide your wealth there.

How was a rich person to protect his wealth from the government in this scary new transparent world? Fortunately, there was a loophole. CRS had been created by lots of countries together, and they all committed to telling each other their financial secrets. But the US was not part of CRS, and its own system – Fatca – only gathers information from foreign countries; it does not send information back to them. This loophole was unintentional, but vast: keep your money in Switzerland, and the world knows about it; put it in the US and, if you were clever about it, no one need ever find out. The US was on its way to becoming a truly world-class tax haven.

The Black Mountain Hills of South Dakota. Photograph: Posnov/Getty Images

The Tax Justice Network (TJN) still ranks Switzerland as the most pernicious tax haven in the world in its Financial Secrecy Index, but the US is now in second place and climbing fast, having overtaken the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong and Luxembourg since Fatca was introduced. “While the United States has pioneered powerful ways to defend itself against foreign tax havens, it has not seriously addressed its own role in attracting illicit financial flows and supporting tax evasion,” said the TJN in the report accompanying the 2018 index. In just three years, the amount of money held via secretive structures in the US had increased by 14%, the TJN said. That is the money pouring into Sioux Falls, and into the South Dakota Trust Company.

“The easy takeaway is that people are trying to hide. But wanting to be private, to be confidential, there’s nothing illegal about that,” said Matthew Tobin, the managing director of the South Dakota Trust Company (SDTC), where Sun Hongbin parked his $4.5bn fortune. We were sitting in SDTC’s conference room, which was decorated with a large map of Switzerland, as if it were a hunting trophy.

Tobin added that many foreign clients had wealth in another jurisdiction, and worried that information about it could be reported to their home country, thanks to CRS. “That could put them at risk. They could be at risk of losing their wealth, it could be taken from them. There’s kidnapping, ransom, hostages. There is risk in a lot of parts of the world,” he explained. “People are saying: ‘OK, if the laws are the same, but I can have the stability of the US economy, the US government, and maintain my privacy, I might as well go to the US.’” According to the figures on its website, SDTC now manages trusts holding $65bn and acts as an agent for trusts containing a further $82bn, all of them tax-free, all of them therefore growing more quickly than assets held elsewhere.

When I spoke to the official from one of the traditional tax havens, who asked not to be identified, for fear of wrecking what was left of the jurisdiction’s financial services industry, he was furious about what the US was doing. “One of the bitter aspects of this, and it’s something we haven’t said in public, is the sheer racism of the global anti-money laundering management effort,” he said. “You will notice that the states that are benefiting from this in America are the whitest states in the country. They’ve ended up beating the shit out of a load of black and Hispanic places, and stuffing all the money in South Dakota. How does that help?”

I put those comments to a South Dakotan trust lawyer who agreed to speak to me as long as I didn’t identify them. The lawyer was sympathetic to the offshore official’s argument, but said this is how the world is now, and everyone is just going to have to get used to it. It is, after all, not just South Dakota and its trust companies that are sucking in the world’s money. Banks in Florida and Texas are welcoming cash from Venezuela and Mexico, realtors in Los Angeles are selling property to Chinese potentates, and New York lawyers are arranging these transactions for anyone that wants them to. Perhaps under previous administrations, there might have been some appetite for aligning the US with global norms, but under Trump, it’s never going to happen.

“You can look at South Dakota and its trust industry, but if you really want to look at CRS, look at the amount of foreign money that is flowing into US banks, not just into trusts,” the lawyer said. “The US has decided at very high levels that it is benefiting significantly from not being a member of CRS. That issue is much larger than trusts, and I don’t see that changing, I really don’t.”

We have no idea yet what this means in the long term, because the revolution in trust law that began in South Dakota and spread throughout the US is only a generation old. But the implications are ominous.

Here is an example from one academic paper on South Dakotan trusts: after 200 years, $1m placed in trust and growing tax-free at an annual rate of 6% will have become $136bn. After 300 years, it will have grown to $50.4tn. That is more than twice the current size of the US economy, and this trust will last for ever, assuming that society doesn’t collapse altogether under the weight of this ever-swelling leach.

If the richest members of society are able to pass on their wealth tax-free to their heirs, in perpetuity, then they will keep getting richer than those of us who can’t. In fact, the tax rate for everyone else will probably have to rise, to make up for the shortfall caused by the wealthiest members of societies opting out, which will just make the problem worse. Eric Kades, the law professor at William & Mary Law School, thinks that South Dakota’s decision to abolish the rule against perpetuities for the short term benefit of its economy will prove to have been a long-term catastrophe. “In 50 or 100 years, it will turn out to have been an absolute disaster,” said Kades. “Now we’re going to have a bunch of wealthy families, and no one will be able to piss away that wealth, it will stay in the family for ever. This just locks in advantage.”

So far, most of the discussion of this development in wealth management has been confined to specialist publications, where academic authors have found themselves making arguments you do not usually find in discussions of legal constructs as abstruse as trusts. South Dakota, they argue, has struck at the very foundation of liberal democracy. “It does seem unfair for some people to have access to ‘property plus’, usable wealth with extra protection built in beyond that which regular property owners have,” noted the Harvard Law Review back in 2003, in an understated summation of the academic consensus that South Dakota has unleashed something disastrous.

And if some people have access to privileged property, where does that leave the equality before the law that is central to how society is supposed to function? Another academic, writing in the trade publication Tax Notes two decades ago, put that unfairness in context: “Perpetual trusts can (and will) facilitate enormous wealth and power for dynastic families. In the process, we leave to future generations some serious issues about the nature of our country’s democracy.”

With Washington unconcerned by what is happening, and the rest of the world incapable of doing anything about it, is there any prospect of anyone in South Dakota moving to repair the damage? The short answer is that it is too late. Two-dozen other states now have perpetual trusts too, so the money would just move elsewhere if South Dakota tried to tighten its rules. The longer answer is that South Dakotan politics appears to have been so comprehensively captured by the trust industry that there is no prospect of anything happening anyway.

The state legislature is elected every even-numbered year, and meets for two months each spring. It last updated the law governing trusts in 2018, and brought in Terry Prendergast, a trust lawyer, to explain the significance of the changes. “People should be allowed to do with their property what they desire to do,” Prendergast explained. “Our entire regulatory scheme reflects that positive attitude and attracts people from around the world to look at South Dakota as a shining example of what trust law can become.”

There were a few questions from the representatives, but they were quickly shut down by Mike Stevens, a Republican lawyer, and chairman of the state’s judiciary committee. “No more questions. I didn’t understand perpetuities in law school, and I don’t want to understand it now,” he said, laughing.

Susan Wismer, one of just 10 Democrats among the House’s 70 members, attempted to prolong the discussion by raising concerns about how South Dakota was facilitating tax avoidance, driving inequality and damaging democracy. Her view was dismissed as “completely jaded and biased” by a trust lawyer sitting for the Republicans. It was a brief exchange, but it went to the heart of how tax havens work. There is no political traction in South Dakota for efforts to change its approach, since the state does so well out of it. The victims of its policies, who are all in places like California, New York, China or Russia, where the tax take is evaporating, have no vote.

Wismer is the only person I met in South Dakota who seemed to understand this. “Ever since I’ve been in the legislature, the trust taskforce has come to us with an updating bill, every year or every other year, and we just let it pass because none of us know what it is. They’re monster bills. As Democrats, we’re such a small caucus, we’re the ones who ought to be the natural opponents of this, but we don’t have the technical expertise and don’t really even understand what we’re doing,” she confessed, while we ate pancakes and drank coffee in a truck stop outside Sioux Falls. “We don’t have a clue what the consequences are to just regular people from what we’re doing.”

That means legislators are nodding through bills that they do not understand, at the behest of an industry that is sucking in ever-greater volumes of money from all over the world. If this was happening on a Caribbean island, or a European micro-principality, it would not be surprising, but this is the US. Aren’t ordinary South Dakotans concerned about what their state is enabling?

“The voters don’t have a clue what this means. They’ve never seen a feudal society, they don’t have a clue what they’re enabling,” Wismer said. “I don’t think there are 100 people in this state who understand the ramifications of what we’ve done.”

• This article was amended on 20 November 2019 because an earlier version misnamed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act as the Financial Assets Tax Compliance Act.

[classyfoxdestiny]

Parliament proceedings live | Deve Gowda reminds about pending women reservation Bill

Parliament proceedings live | Deve Gowda reminds about pending women reservation Bill

The Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed the Constitution 127th Amendment Bill, 2021 with unanimous support from the House, and with this, the Lower House is expected to be adjourned sine die today.

The Rajya Sabha witnessed extraordinary scenes on Tuesday, with Opposition members, majority of whom dressed in black or sporting black bands, clambered onto the table in front of the Chair, protesting against the government for trying to push through a diluted debate on the farmers’ issue instead of going for a repeal of the three controversial farm laws. The protests are expected to continue today in the Upper House.

Here are the latest updates:

Rajya Sabha | 4.10 pm

K. Raveendra Kumar (TDP) recalls the crucial role in implementing reservation for OBC community.

Centre is compelled to bring this Bill after the Supreme Court judgment, he says.

He says the latest census should include caste enumeration. Without these figures we can’t make proper policy for the country, he says.

Sardar Balwinder Singh Bhunder (SAD) speaks in Punjabi. Some members complain they are not able to get the translation. The Chair asks him to speak in Hindi or English.  He says he wholeheartedly welcomes the Bill. This is the first time the Centre has restored powers taken from states since 1947.

The farmers protesting today are poor and frustrated. This is injustice with Punjab. Now you have the chance to repeal the 3 farm laws, he adds.

Rajya Sabha | 4.00 pm

Deve Gowda reminds about pending women reservation Bill

Former Prime Minister Deve Gowda welcome the Bill. Reservation in Karnataka was started by Maharaja of Mysore in 1918.

In the last session, the government 10% reservation for EWS over and above the existing system. Will the cap now be 60% now, he seeks clarification.

He says during his tenure, Rajya Sabha approved women reservation. It should be brought to Lok Sabha.

Karnataka provides 23% reservation to OBCs. Within that Muslims are also included and there was no opposition. Let the government clarify if such a reservation is possible after this Bill is passed.

Rajya Sabha | 4.00 pm

Include Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians in SC list: Abdul Wahab

Abdul Wahab (IUML) says he was surprised the government brought this Bill in this session. Dharmendra Pradhan talked about giving petrol pumps to OBCs. If you privatise all institutions, who will give them jobs, he asks.

He recalls anti-Mandal protest and an upper caste youth who self immolated himself in 1990.

He reads out the abysmally low proportion of OBC faculty in higher education. He says in most cases, they stamp NFS (none found suitable) to evade reservation.

He demands including Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians in SC list.

Rajya Sabha | 3.35 pm

Modi ensured reservation does not get lapsed if vacancy is not filled in IIT teaching posts: Dhrmendra Pradhan

Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan lauds the House for a constructive debate. Some members questioned the language of the 102nd Constitutional Amendment Act. It was drafted by the Select Committee. The then Minister had clearly said there will be two lists — one for state, one for Centre.

This is not a knee jerk reaction of our government. Noone should doubt our intention. Some members of DMK raised IITs were not following reservation. It was a news for me. Then we found out the reservation lapses if the vacancy was not filled up. Mr. Modi ensured the reservation does not get lapsed, he says.

We implemented OBC reservation in Jawahar Vidyalayas.  He lists out how they ensured petrol pump licences were offered to many OBC people.

On why a cap on reservation, he says over 80% States have crossed the cap. He says many welfare schemes of NDA government uses the same census data.

He says his father was also part of the then Madras Presidency. It was because of their BC scholarship, his father could become a doctor and he himself could be part of Creamy Layer.

Rajya Sabha | 3.35 pm

Reservation is for the self-respect: Thambi Durai

M. Thambi Durai (AIADMK) says the Bill will go a long way in ensuring equitable distribution of resources. He recalls the contributions of Periyar, Anna, MGR and Jayalaithaa. Reservation is for the self-respect, he says.

He recalls how Justice Party brought reservation in Madras Presidency in 1921.

Rajya Sabha | 3.25 pm

Odisha has started its own caste enumeration: Amar Patnaik

Amar Patnaik (BJD) narrates how Odisha provided social justice despite the Indira Sawhney case. He says Odisha wanted to provide 27% reservation for SEBC, but are able to provide 11.2%.

The Indira Sawhney case highlights that there is no scientific data to support reservation. The government of Odisha has started collecting data by its own since March.

Rajya Sabha | 3.15 pm

A speech targetting Congress

Harnath Singh Yadav (BJP) hits out at Congress. He claims in 70 years, the grand old party has not done much for the OBCs.

He wonders why the Congress and UPA couldn’t grant constitutional status to the OBC Commission. His entire speech is targetted against Congress. He claims Sardar Patel was not allowed to become PM because he was the son of a farmer. Congress members object to it.

The Chair asks him to end his speech citing paucity of time.

Rajya Sabha | 3.10 pm

Meritorious people should not be included in reservation: Rajmani Patel

Rajmani Patel (Congress) says the several opposition parties have forced the government to bring this Bill by approaching the court.

Had the government’s intention was favouring OBCs, they would have not gone on the roads with Kamandal, he says.

Congress brought reservation for OBCs in Madhya Pradesh. The subsequent BJP governments didn’t take it up and the Supreme Court struck it down. Whereas Tamil Nadu fought well and ensured 69% reservation continues there, he says.

He seeks change in the roster within reservation with binary roster.  Even animals are counted, why can’t OBCs be counted, he asks pitching for caste cesnsus. He also seeks reservation in promotion. Meritorious people should not be included in reservation but should be alloted in general category, he says.

Rajya Sabha | 2.55 pm

You are shedding crocodile tears, Binoy Viswam tells government

Binoy Viswam (CPI-M) while supporting the Bill terms it election adjust Bill. B.R. Ambedkar must be weeping now. It was V.P. Singh that brought justice to his words. Who raised the slogan Mandal vs. Kamandal? Who raised Mandir to hide Mandal? he asks.

He quotes M.S. Golwalkar’s words against quota. Now that BJP, with thought of votes, is coming with a Bill on reservation. Please don’t cheat the country, he says.

You are supporting people who raped and murdered young Dalit girls and you are shedding crocodile tears for Dalits, and OBCS, he tells BJP.

Rajya Sabha | 2.45 pm

War of words between Sanjay Singh and Naqvi

G.K. Vasan (TMC-M) says the Bill will uplifit the OBCs socially and economically.

Sanjay Singh (AAP) supports the Bill. He says the government’s claims on OBC welfare are laughable. He shows Uttar Pradesh OBC report flagging the reserved teachers post not filled yet. He also speaks on Hathras rape and murder, the atrocities against Dalits in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.

Deputy Leader of the Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi seeks expunging the references of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. Jairam Ramesh supports Sanjay Singh. The Chair says it will be reviewed.

Rajya Sabha | 2.40 pm

 Indira Sawhney case should be revisited: NCP

Vandana Chavan (NCP) also supports the Bill. Let us ask ourselves if the 102nd Constitutional Amendment passed the test of being unambigious. She wonders if the earlier amendment was only to seed the protests.

This Bill gives powers to the State, unfortunately without action, she says. The Indira Sawhney case should be revisited, she says.

She says the migrated people are also a deprived lot. They should also be considered for reservation.

Rajya Sabha | 2.30 pm

Narendra Jadhav, nominated member, also supports the Bill.  He says nearly 1/5th of the OBCs would have lost the benefits of reservation had the Bill was not brought in.

Sanjay Raut (Shiv Sena) says he supports the Bill and will talk about Pegasus in the evening.

He recalls the Maratha reservation agitation, and lauds the youngters for taking part in a peaceful protest. However, he says the issue is far from over, despite the passage of the Bill. Only the removal of the ceiling limit can provide a permanent solution, he says. 

Rajya Sabha | 2.25 pm

Change your mentality on caste enumeration: Manoj Jha

Manoj Jha (RJD) terms it a historical moment when the House is unitedly supporting a Bill. He remembers former member and writer Tulsiram, a Dalit who faced discrimination while he was in school.

Many members have asked several times requested to make public the caste census data. He recalls how a BJP member in Lok Sabha demanded it yesterday. “It is not a Freudian Slip, it came from her heart,” he says.

He pitches for proportional representation. Recalling BJP’s earlier statement that we are ready for categories but not for caste enumeration, Mr. Jha says this mentality should change.

Rajya Sabha | 2.20 pm

Time to make Lohia’s vision a reality: JD-U

Ram Nath Thakur (JD-U) recalls Ram Manohar Lohia’s agitation for reservation.  He recalls Nitish Kumar granting 50% reservation for women in Panchayats and wards.

He urges government to fill up the posts lying vacant in higher education institutions.

He also insists on caste-based census.

Rajya Sabha | 2.10 pm

Act cannot be implemented well without taking a fresh caste census: Ramgopal Yadav

Ramgopal Yadav (SP) supports the Bill. The fruit of the Bill will truly be felt only when the 50% reservation ceiling is lifted, he says.

The Act cannot be implemented well without taking a fresh caste census, he says.

He counters Sushil Kumar Modi by listing the number of posts reserved for OBCs lying vacant in various higher education insitutions.

Rajya Sabha | 2.00 pm

When reservation creates inequalities within the reserved class itself, the state has to intervene: Kareem

Elamaaram Kareem (CPI-M) says it is a welcome step and the government is rectifying its earlier mistake. This cannot be taken as something to glorify the government, we all know its OBC policy.

The earlier amendment took away the rights of the State. The States could only send suggestions and the Union government can only add a caste to the OBC list.

After wasting time, the government has decided to bring this Bill. He also asks the government to review the EWS norms. Dalit Christians should also be included in reservation, he says.

When reservation creates inequalities within the reserved class itself, the state has to intervene, he says.

He also takes up the Pegasus snooping row. The unconstitutional attitude of the government led to this situation, he says.

Rajya Sabha | 1.55 pm

What is the scientific basis for 50% cap on reservation, asks Banda Prakash

Banda Prakash of the TRS asks, “what is the scientific basis for 50% cap on reservation?”

He demands a Caste Census. “Without data, how will you implement reservation?” he asks. He demands a Ministry for Backward Classes.

Subhas Chandra Bose Pilli of the YSRCP speaks in Telugu.

Rajya Sabha | 1.45 pm

Govt. compelled to introduce Bill: Tiruchi Siva

Tiruchi Siva of the DMK says Tamil Nadu, with its 69% reservation, leads in empowerment and social justice.

Supporting the Bill, he says, the government was compelled to introduce the Bill as 671 OCBC committees were being affected. “This was done under compulsion. Federalism is not a suitable word for you (government). For you, all is unitary– one language, one religion, etc. But federalism is the core feature of the country.”

“Caste Census should be immediately conducted and the 50% cap on reservation should be done away with,” Mr. Siva says.

“We support the Bill. But our appeal to you, to bring changes in the interest of the people and not out of compulsion.”

Rajya Sabha | 1.40 pm

RJD happiest if States’ powers restored: Prasanna Acharya

Prasanna Acharya of the BJD speaks in Odiya.

This Bill will strengthen the federal structure of the country, he says. “RJD will be the happiest party if the powers taken from the States are restored,” he says.

He says the 50% cap on reservation should be reconsidered and also asks that Ceste Census take place.

Rajya Sabha | 1.30 pm

Will talk about legislative incompetence of govt.: O’ Brien

Derek O’ Brien of the TMC says to the Speaker, “Through you, Sir, I want to request the Prime Minsiter to come to the House, when an important discussion as this is taking place.”

He makes a remark on Pegasus, invoking a reference to “the Olympics god Poseidon”.

Making a refernce to Sushil Modi’s remarks on winning elections, he says, “we don’t talk, we do. We want to remind them of the elections in West Bengal.”

He says he supports the Bill, “but I also want to talk about the legislative incompetence of the government.” “We warned the government to go slow on the GST, although we supported it. In 10 months, 376 changes were made,” he says, as an illustration.

He cites the CAA and the farm laws as mistakes of the government. “The government did not listen and continued to make mistakes.”

He says the Trinamool has studied 98 Bills passed by the government, and “29 Bills are anti-federal”.

He asks why Caste Census is being done away with.

Mr. O’ Brien recalls that the government did away with reservation to Anglo-Indians based on a census that wrongfully said Anglo-Indian community comprises only 200 people.

Rajya Sabha | 1 pm

Sushil Kumar Modi is heckled in the House as he makes statements bashing the previous Congress govts.

Sushil Kumar Modi says a review petition was filed by the govt. withing 8 days of the judgment by the Supreme Court. “We have brought this Bill early, unlike Mr. Singhvi’s insinuation, as soon as our review petition was rejected.”

Quoting from the minority judgment Of Justices Bhushan and Najeeb, Mr. Modi clarifies the legislative intent of the Bill. Our intention was not to deprive the States, he says, adding the Supreme Court misinterpretated.

He says, “we supported the V.P. Singh decision of giving the OBC reservation. We gave constitutional recognition to Scheduled Tribes Commission. What did the Congress do?”

He makes statements bashing the previous Congress governments. He says Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government has brought in favourable changes.

The Opposition members express disagreement to some statements. Chaotic scenes ensue in the House.

Mr. Kharge says false claims are being made by Mr. Modi.

Rajya Sabha | 12.35 pm

The wrong of 2018 being rectified, Bill long time coming: Singhvi

Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress, says, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions. The Bill was a long time coming. But I also want to point out that the government is only correcting its big mistake of 2018.” Mr. Singhvi was making a reference to the 102nd amendment made in 2018.

The government committed a mistake and the government is congratulating itself for rectifying it now, he says.

An amendment was proposed in this House, many MPs also made some suggestions when it was sent to a select committee for recommendations, he says.

He says, “as feared, the Supreme Court faltered in the interpretation of the ambiguous language of the legislation.”

Speaking about the Maratha reservation issue, Mr. Singhvi says, the 50% cap on reservation cannot be followed as a strict rule. He gives the examples of States like Nagaland and Tamil Nadu which have more than 50% reservation. “The Supreme Court will not reconsider this. So, the government has to, and make the change.”

Mr. Singhvi brings up OBC seats lying vacant ingovernment employment.

He asks why Caste Census is being done away with. “We did it in 2011. Why not do it now in 2021?”

Suggesting an amendment to the Bill, Mr. Singhvi says, “This amendment is clarificatory. But unless it is applied restrospectively, no State list between 2018 and 2021 will be valid.”

Rajya Sabha | 12.30 pm

Allow discussion for more than three hours: Kharge

Manoj Jha asks the Speaker to allot sufficient time even for the smaller parties, who have equal stakes, to speak about the “important amendments” suggested in the Bill.

Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge tells the Speaker, he has the power to change the decision taken by the Business Advisory Committee. “No one is going to oppose this Bill…Even if the discussion time is increased by two or three hours, the country or the House will not be at a disadvantage.”

Minister Piyush Goyal suggests that the House sit until all the day’s business is completed, even beyond 6 p.m. “If we need to increase the discussion to beyond three hours, then we need to be on agreement to this.”

Member Anand Sharma says, “It is not acceptable that the extension is conditional.”

Mr. Goyal responds and restates that the day’s business will have to be completed, and “it is only fair that we agree to sit beyond 6 p.m. for it.”

There is chaos in the House.

Mr. Harivansh says the discussion will take place for four hours.

Rajya Sabha | 12.15 pm

House takes up Bill restoring States’ rights to specify OBC groups

Motion is moved in the House for the consideration of The Constitution 127th Amendment Bill, 2021 by Dr. Virendra Kumar, Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment.

Mr. Kumar thanks all members for the consensus shown in discussing the Bill. “It is a history-making Bill.”

The Bill give back power to states to identify social and economic backward classes.

He says, the constitution amendment bill passed by Lok Sabha on Tuesday will empower states to prepare and maintain their own list of socially and educationally backward classes (SEBCs) and provide them reservation.

Rajya Sabha | 12 pm

Question Hour, lunch break suspended

Proceedings resumes in the Upper House.

Deputy Chairman Harivansh is in the chair.

Minister of Parliamentary Affairs of India Pralhad Joshi asks that the House suspend Question Hour and lunch break to discuss The Constitution 127th Amendment Bill, 2021. The House agrees.

Mr. Harivansh condoles the demise of Thindivanam K. Ramamurthy, ex-Member.

Papers being laid on the table of the House.

Productivity of the Lok Sabha

20 Bills passed this session, only OBC Bill passed after discussion

At a press conference after the adjournment of the Lok Sabha, Speaker Om Birla said it pained him that the Lok Sabha didn’t function smoothly this monsoon session.

“The House functioned for only 74 hours and 46 minutes. The total productivity was 22%,” he said.

A total of 20 Bills were passed in the session, of which only the OBC Bill was passed after discussion. The remaining Bills were passed in din without discussion, through voice vote.

“I always expect the MPs to maintain the dignity of the House. There have been debates, agreements and disagreements in the House but its dignity was never lowered,” he said.

Urging all MPs to follow the Parliamentary traditions, Mr. Birla said sloganeering and raising of placards are not a part of these traditions.

Lok Sabha | 11 am

Lok Sabha adjourned sine die

Proceedings for the day begin.

Speaker Om Birla condoles the death of former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, who was earlier Member of Parliament and a Minister at the Centre. Obituary references are made for Nityananda Mishra, Gopalrao Mayekar and Sudarshan Roy Chowdhury.

Mr. Birla gives an account of the works undertaken in the Lok Sabha this session.

The House is adjourned sine die.

Rajya Sabha | 11 am

Venkaiah Naidu expresses anguish over yesterday’s events

Chairman Venkaiah Naidu calling the actions of some members as “acts of sacrilege”, says “I have no words to express my anguish and condemn the actions of yesterday. I slept a sleepless night.”

Mr. Naidu got emotional and said he was distressed to see the sacredness of the House being destroyed over a difference of opinion. “I am distressed as the way this sacredness was destroyed yesterday when some members sat on the table some others climbed on the tables of the house, perhaps to be more visible, was an act of sacrilege. I have no words to condemn the act as I spent a sleepless night,”

When a discussion on agriculture was listed in the list of business for the day, the opportunity was not taken by the members to air their grievances. “Even a discussion on the farm laws could have been taken up,” he says, expressing his displeasure and “anguish” over the last day’s events.

The Opposition begins to raise slogans.

The House is adjourned till 12 p.m.

Meeting of Opposition parties

A meeting of Opposition parties underway at Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge’s office on August 11, 2021.   | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

  A meeting of leaders of Opposition parties in the office of Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge is underway. Leaders from INC, including Rahul Gandhi, DMK, TMC, SP, SS, NC, CPM, RJD, CPI, IUML, RSP, VCK, KC(M) and LJD are attending the meeting.

Discussion

Member Vinayal Bhaurao Raut is scheduled to raise a discussion on the situation arising out of Covid-19 pandemic in the country and various aspects related to it, under Rule 193

Legislative Business

Rajya Sabha

Bill for consideration and passing

The General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Amendment Bill, 2021

Bills for consideration and return

The Appropriation (No.4) Bill, 2021

The Appropriation (No.3) Bill, 2021

Lok Sabha

Bill for consideration and passing

The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020

. Source link

[darallia]

Sapphire (beginning)

Silver cloud academy, a rather odd public boarding school. It is a place of learning for the elite of society and trains those destined to become of the highest importance. Like any respectable establishment meant for polite society, it is divided into four houses: sapphire, ruby, emerald and zircon. It is isolated from the world in a fruitful valley in the northern green lands, away from prying eyes. The story thus begins here:

Daniel Westmarch, was a young aristocrat and by the grace of the King, a nobleman. It was by the shrewdness of his father that he came to possess such great wealth and status. Although he was a highborn, his father was not, in fact he came from the lowest of the low, where not even a penny be sparred. Upon reaching the age of seventeen, his father sought to compensate his youngest son's lack of inheritance by giving him the best of educations and sending him to silver cloud academy, unlike his oldest brother, who would inherit the title given to his father by his royal highness the king. His other brother, Ellis would join his majesty's armed forces and his sister is to be wed to a Scottish viscount. Indeed. Daniel's life was not an easy one, ignored most his life by those that would call him kin, maligned by whomever, felt the slightest threat from him. He wasn't violent but rather too intelligent for his own good. There was a sense of superiority that would be born in those who learnt to use his own kindness against him and managed to dominate a man of his stature: Even though he be kind, his towering height and unsightly appearance would stir up the feeling of uneasiness, when in his proximity or let alone be subjected to his gaze. His parents thus thought of a way to remedy both their problems by sending him away, where he could not spoil their good reputation. An early Saturday morning, they sent for a carriage to escort him from Cambridgeshire to Allerdale.

The ride was long and full of thoughts. He knew nothing of the school to which he was going. He had only once heard of its name, when he had spoken to a young lady who was fond of him, Leonor was her name. She told him that her brother studied there and that it was a rather odd school, with a code of conduct unseen in their time and that they had produced most members of the king's privy council. He also thought of her, would he ever see his only friend once more or will the past depart to never be seen again? He was curious as to why a Marquis's daughter would ever subject herself to him, who was despised by all who laid eyes on him, he correctly guessed that she fancied him. He loathed the idea of having to start anew, and worse of all be forgotten. Whilst thinking, he would look onto the road, the breeze gently caressing his soft skin, blowing his black hair backwards, it would however prove to not be sufficiently strong so as to force him to look away. He eventually grew tired of this and laid his head backwards into the darkness of the carriage. He arrived late at night, to a rather grandiose palace, clearly divided into five structures. They were built of smooth stone and decorated in a baroque architecture. He was in awe; the entire school would prove to be several times larger than Windsor castle.

Upon arrival at the court of honour, he was swiftly greeted by a young-looking woman, she was beautiful. She had black hair, tied up in an elaborate chignon. She donned around her neck a discreet but beautiful collar, made of a mixture of platinum and white gold and encrusted with sapphires. It held the shape of a caduceus. Whilst she stood in front of the carriage door, she introduced herself to him:  

_ " Hello. My name is Alexandra Aurelia Sidhebourne, I am the headmistress of sapphire house", she warmly uttered to him.

_" Hello to you too, my name is Daniel …"

_" I know your name, Mr Westmarch ", she interrupted, all the while opening the carriage door. " Would you care to come with me?", she said whilst extending her arm to him. As soon as he stepped off the carriage, he immediately noticed her stature. Indeed, she was as tall as a man. " Ah, you now see, why I too have been exiled ", she said as a smile began covering her pale face. They entered the main building and soon found themselves walking along a rather long hallway, that lead to a grandiose staircase. As she took her first step, Daniel stopped and said:

_ " If I may be so bold as to ask, may I inquire as to why an all-male boarding school, has a woman as the headmistress of one of its houses? And why exactly do houses require headmasters?". Already on the first step, and eye to eye with Daniel, she answered:

_ " Of course, you may, it is natural that you have questions about our "special" academy. And it might as well be, if we are to live together for several years. Silver Cloud is unique, in that it ignores previously held beliefs, completely. It is a gift, almost a refuge. Here, not even god can reign."  

_ " What? I don't understand." He impulsively replied

_ " I guess you didn't notice the black tulips in the court of honour"

_ " What does that have to do with anything?" He riposted, as he raised his voice.

They were suddenly interrupted by the headmaster. Seen as Alexandra was tall and that the institute was renowned, he expected the headmaster to also reciprocate in height, as well as bearing other prominent features such as a heavy face, broad shoulders and an impeccable physical condition. But much to his dismay, Alexandra was right and there, nothing is as expected. The headmaster of a quite advanced age, was only just about 1,70 metres tall, although he usually wore a rather large hat, that gave him an additional 10 centimetres. His hair was mostly white with a few stray grey strands of hair on the sides. He bore a large and refined moustache, one would expect to only see in caricatures. It too, had its colour worn out. The "sun king" as the student host commonly mocked him, had a conspicuously large belly, from which his epithet came. His attire like all in the school, consisted of a suit, a white shirt and a red tie. He however took on the licence to change his wardrobe to distinguish himself from all others and wore a bow tie. Anyhow, he approached them both at just the right distance so that he didn't have to stare up at them. " Ah, Mr. Westmarch. We've been expecting you. My name is Emmanuel blod, I am the Headmaster of this wonderful academy." He said

_ " Pleased to make your acquaintance." He replied

_ " Would you please come this way, to my office" he said as he began walking up the stairs.

They walked up the red, carpeted stairs, into his office just at the end of the hallway, facing the court of honour.  He slowly opened the door, as if making sure that all was as it should. He then extended his arm towards the inside of the room and invited them in. Daniel let Alex pass first, then immediately followed her, before being himself catenated by Emmanuel. He had a quite spacious office, bearing decoration and wallpaper, with a striking resemblance to the rest of the edifice. They were decorated in a French classicist manner. The walls were white with golden with woodwork attached to them, the floor covered in a red and gold carpet, a wooden cabinet displaying finely garnished Chinas, two ornate wooden chairs, facing a magnificent davenport, with a small yet comfortable chair. Nothing less than as expected from such a reputable and wealthy family. At his request they both sat on the twin chairs, and begin to face him, that is if he like them, were to sit down. He instead insisted on presenting them some sweets, he had previously obtained, whilst away on vacation. Now all seated, he began to inquire about his previous living conditions, status and education: " So, I've been told you...are from Cambridge. Am I correct?" He said, whilst placing his hands together in front of him.

_ " You are indeed, headmaster", Daniel replied.

_ " But, excuse my prying... Why is it that a young noble from Cambridge, who from what I've heard managed to impress the dean of trinity college, would ever step foot in an academy nearly a thousand miles away?", he curiously inquired, all the while attempting to unwrap a candy wrapper. Daniel's face was frozen in both contemplation of his ill-fortune and amazement of the headmaster's deductive reasoning. The silence was then abruptly broken, by the headmaster just having failed to get a hold of his sweet: " Bollocks, why won't this bloody thing open?" He nearly shouted. Upon realising what he had just said, he leaned his head back, with his hand over his mouth and his enlarged eyes. The taken back Alexandra; Then readied for speech, but before she could fulfil her objective, someone knocked on the door. "Ah. That must be Mr. Freudekraft", said Emmanuel, taking the opportunity to let his indiscretion pass unmolested. He then stood up, went around the table and opened the door, which revealed a handsome young man, with dark brown hair, light brown eyes, with a round face and an impeccable wardrobe. He proceeded to walk up to the desk, now at Daniel's right, and presented himself: "How'd you do? My name is Alexander Finnigan Leopold Freudekraft, and I am Sapphire's head prefect, I am here to take you away, so to speak", he said whilst looking exclusively at Daniel. He however, was not paying much attention to what his superior was telling him, but instead focused on the little details about him that have now become clear, due to their proximity. He already had a fully-grown beard, although it was shaven, the marks were still visible. He had a quite round face, with no prominent cheek bones as Daniel had, he however more than made up for it with a perfect white-teeth, genuine-looking smile, that covered his face nearly every time he was in the presence of superiors. It took him a few seconds to snap back into the present, at which time he responded with a swift and shy: "Yes, of course. Shall we?". The headmaster then said his final statement of encouragement, and upon its cloture, Finn placed his hand on Daniel's shoulder, prompting the latter to look at Alexandra who greeted his blushing face with a smile. And after saying their goodbyes to the headmistress and the headmaster, the two young men retired to their house.    

[amwritingmeta]

12x19 Deconstruction: Part II - The Mixtape Exchange

(A MIXTAPE, GUYS. A GODDAMN MIXTAPE!)

So, yeah, there really wasn’t anything else I could possibly call this piece of dialogue, was there? Nope. Let’s set the scene:

Dean is at his computer. There’s a knock on the door. Cas opens it, pauses, and what we learn from this, by the way, is that Cas was waiting for a response and when he didn’t get one he proceeded inside, thinking Dean wasn’t there. What does this visual exposition tell us?

a) Dean’s bedroom is not off limits to Cas if Dean’s not there, because there’s trust b) Cas didn’t come to the room looking for Dean

The reason Cas goes to Dean’s room is to get the Colt - the mixtape is just his excuse. So, then, what an utterly beautiful tool of exposition this innocent piece of prop becomes, and how incredibly well it’s used to highlight exactly what the problem has always been in this relationship: the lack of fucking communication. In fact, not only does the mixtape highlight the lack of communication, it goes further as it turns that problem on it’s head completely when, suddenly, both of these men open up to each other. And the fact that Cas is there on a mission, that he’s effectively playing Dean, doesn’t take away from all the truth that is in this exchange as well. Not that there’s complete honesty. Not just yet, but it’s coming. Oh, it’s absolutely on the horizon. It has to be. And this exchange is, as so many others, riddled with subtext which makes the interpretation of it layered to the extreme, but what I have on offer today is my take. So, here goes:

Cas: I’m sorry, Dean. I just wanted to return this. Dean: It’s a gift. You keep those. Cas: Oh… Dean: Cas. You can’t— with everything that’s going on you can’t just go dark like that. We didn’t know what’d happened to you. We were worried, that’s not okay. Cas: Well, I didn’t mean to add to your distress. I… Dean, I just keep failing. Again and again. When you were taken I searched for months and I couldn’t find you, and then I let Kelly escape on my watch and I couldn’t find her and I just, I wanted - I needed - to come back here with a win for you. For myself. Dean: You think you’re the only one rolling snake eyes here? Me and Sam, we had her. We had Kelly and we lost her. Cas: And if you find her again? Dean: Sam’s working on it. Of course, he’s hellbent on finding something that doesn’t mean killing her. Or her kid. Cas: Right. And if he doesn’t find something? If you run out of time could either of you kill an innocent? Dean: We will find a better way. Cas: You mean “we”? Dean: Yes, dumbass - we. You, me - and Sam. We’re just better together. So now that you’re back, let’s go Team Free Will. Let’s get it done. Cas: I’d like that. Dean: Great. I’d like a beer.

Yeah, just to let you know upfront that this comment is going to be a long one. There’s so much stuff in here that it makes my brain melt. I will try to create bullet points and stick to them or I’m scared you’ll get utterly sick of my rambling. Here we go:

Cas: Sorry, Dean. I just wanted to return this. Dean: It’s a gift. You keep those.

Now, I believe Cas did think that tape was always meant to be returned and that he, now, possibly reluctantly, but by necessity, saw it as a chance to go into Dean’s room and look for the Colt. Had Dean walked in on him, Cas could have simply given him the tape as an excuse for him being in there.

That said, to everything - a twofold, right? This extremely short exchange of two lines of dialogue gives us significant insight of how these two relate to one another. 

Dean made that tape for Cas as a gift assuming he would understand it was a personal gesture - Cas was given a tape by Dean assuming it was nothing more than Dean, with his need for music on the road, presenting him with an item Dean clearly thinks it’s obvious that every car with a stereo should have.

But here’s what’s so interesting to take stock of, something Cas would most probably never have even considered: that tape is not old. It’s not faded or scratched. The label looks almost new. This was not dug up out of some drawer or the back of the glove compartment. Dean did not make this tape when he was fifteen or twenty-one or even thirty-three. Dean made that tape for Cas and I dare deduce that he made it this year, which fits perfectly with Dean’s character arc of Realisation in S11. He knows he’s in love with Cas. He made that tape as a way of telling him, showing him, even joining him all those times Cas goes away.

Oh my daisy days, my head is going to explode.

Especially since Dean refusing to take the gift back, even with the hell Cas has just put him through, even with the angels being back on the scene again, even with Dean sensing Cas isn’t being entirely honest with him, tells us that none of that matters, because Dean loves Cas regardless of his actions - he loves Cas unconditionally - and that kind of love isn’t returnable. Ever. 

To me, Cas more or less snatching the tape back when Dean reaches it out to him is just a visual punctuation mark to this subtextual exchange: before Dean can change his mind, Cas retrieves what he didn’t think was his to keep in the first place.

Do you realise that this is the first building block of textual Destiel? Because to me it is.

Fuck, I’ve written half a page on two lines of dialogue. (I did warn you.) (Totally crapping all over my idea of bullet points, but oh, well.) Moving on.

Cas: Oh… Dean: Cas.

And I’m cutting Dean short there because this - this is the moment - this is the moment of all moments - this is the moment to begin all the following moments, if I’m right, if what I’m hoping is in the cards for these two in S13, then this is where the moment was that finally began to open up the lines of communication. Dean closing his eyes shows exactly how hard it is for him to break down his own walls and for the first time ever speak his mind (that he doesn’t want Cas to go) and stop Cas walking out of the room before the conversation is over.

And then - once this moment has been delivered unto us, the audience - the following gem is handed to us, this absolute blossom of honesty, even though there’s that “we” instead of an “I” again, sneakily stuck within all of this truth, including “we” appearing right before the word “worried”, which, in turn, is such an understatement of what Dean’s been feeling since Cas went off the radar that it’s almost sad how he still simply can’t express himself properly and say “I was losing my mind thinking about what might have happened to you”. But at least this gem still holds proper sparkle as he instead says:

Dean: You can’t— with everything that’s going on you can’t just go dark like that. We didn’t know what’d happened to you. We were worried, that’s not okay.

Dean expressly tells Cas that he can’t do this anymore with that “that’s not okay”. He’s still not looking at Cas, his body language is still tight, closed off, pissed. How can Cas not know by now, after all this time, that this behaviour is not okay? Dean’s not just about to forgive him. Saying these words doesn’t mean that the tension across his neck and shoulders has lifted: Cas’ reaction will determine that - and Cas’ reaction is a thing of beauty. Because Dean has finally made a move in the right direction toward what these two need more than anything - open communication - and that action makes Cas say this:

Cas: Well, I didn’t mean to add to your distress. I… Dean, I just keep failing. Again and again. When you were taken I searched for months and I couldn’t find you, and then I let Kelly escape on my watch and I couldn’t find her and I just, I wanted - I needed - to come back here with a win for you. For myself.

That first line, regarding Cas adding to Dean’s distress, is a direct response to Dean’s “with everything that’s going on”, which, by the way, is Dean avoiding stating the truth to Cas, i.e. I thought you were dead and I never want to feel that way again, you stupid son of a bitch, and which also makes me think of his “we forget about everyone else” line from 11x23. In doing this, Dean is detaching from making this conversation into something only regarding Cas and Cas’ actions: Cas’ actions are part of the bigger whole, always - they’re not just affecting Dean personally.

With this, Cas still isn’t sure, when he says that first line, what exactly he should do with what Dean has just offered him. That first line comes off as non-committal, even though Cas clearly means it because he never meant to add any distress to what Dean is already going through. Only, once he’s made that statement, the rest of Dean’s words take effect: “we were worried” and “that’s not okay” are very personal, and there’s a plea in both of them for Cas to, please, understand that he means more to them than someone who can just take off without letting them know where he is.

Cas responds to these statements of tentative affection with the honest reason to why he went away. Everything he says about failing, about needing a win, is also the truth. He’s not just telling Dean why he felt he had to go away, why he stayed away, he’s also - in extremely clever exposition - telling us why he’s working with the angels again.

What is extraordinary to me in this speech isn’t the content, because these sentiments of duty and failure are such a deep part of Cas’ character that his motivation isn’t a big shocker, the extraordinary detail is the moment he adds “For myself”.

Why?

Because everything he’s ever done has been for Dean, it’s been to raise himself up in Dean’s eyes, to prove himself, to save the life of this mortal man, whom he’s fallen completely in love with, to make himself worthy of Dean loving him back (which, you know, unbeknownst to Cas are the exact  same motivations that Dean is subconsciously wrestling with), but with that earnest “For myself” we finally get to witness the final step toward Cas choosing his own future as an individual who is using his free will to determine what he wants out of life, not what he believes is right in relation to someone else - like Dean, or God, or Heaven, or even to the world at large.

This is an enormously important character progression for the Destiel love story to end happily, because their love story has all been about individual character growth leading to the understanding that they’re meant for one another, not because it’s destiny or written in the stars, but because it’s real and human and this unstoppable force that was set in motion the moment Cas touched Dean in Hell. 

They both choose the other because they love the other for everything they are and with every last flaw and dent and scratch the other possesses. That’s true love. 

They know each other so well. They know each other well enough that even with all the tension between them in the episode, Dean can still toss his car keys to Cas without needing to look where he is. This could be seen as a dismissive gesture because Dean is pissed, but they’ve been shown to engage in wordless cooperation before (disposing of the burning Bible in 12x08 comes to mind) and so this, to me, is further underlining of their acknowledgment that however annoyed they may be at the other, there truly is this profound bond, this love between them, that makes them know it’ll be alright, they’ll reconcile, they always do.

But I digress, so back on track we go.

I would like to add that I loved how Cas’ “I needed to come back here with a win for you” feels extremely directed at Dean specifically. He doesn’t even add “you and Sam” to clarify: he’s speaking to Dean frankly because he’s hoping Dean is telling him that he’s open to that, telling him the tape was more personal a gift than Cas had dared hope, insisting he keep it. There’s a sense of forgiveness there already. What then changes the energy between them completely is Dean, swivelling to face Cas, his entire body language suddenly opening up, inviting Cas in. 

This simple movement, to me, declares in no uncertain terms that this conversation is changing the playing field. It’s a visual aid to what that “Cas” from Dean has already flagged in the dialogue: Dean can’t keep his need for open communication down any longer, he can’t have anymore deception or half-truths between them.

This is, as ever, a twofold moment (and is moving into headcanon territory, but oh well): to my mind, leaving for his room after the Reunion Exchange, Dean’s been turning what was said over in his head from the second he sat down in front of his laptop, and that nagging feeling of Cas being a little off has grown into a conviction that Cas is keeping something from him. The undefined role of the angels back on the scene has already begun to niggle and the thought that Cas might be led astray, or taken advantage of, or choosing the wrong thing to do the right thing yet again, is a huge red flag to him.

And yet - with all of these impressions raging through his thoughts - he still can’t accept that tape when Cas tries to give it back, doesn’t want to accept it, because whatever Cas is doing Dean knows, just as we do, that he’s doing it out of a sense of loyalty, of duty, and all Dean can do about it is confront that loyalty and sense of duty head on. Add to that the fact that he is absolutely and utterly in love with this man, the opening up to him in this moment is not only necessary, but inevitable: Dean is not losing Cas again.

The lack of direct honesty (as in I love you and I want you here with me) is due to, shall we all say it together: fear of rejection. So, a show of solidarity it is. An application for Cas to remember who his real friends are. That’s why Dean brings the conversation into this territory:

Dean: You think you’re the only one rolling snake eyes here? Me and Sam, we had her. We had Kelly and we lost her. Cas: And if you find her again? Dean: Sam’s working on it. Of course, he’s hellbent on finding something that doesn’t mean killing her. Or her kid. Cas: Right. And if he doesn’t find something? If you run out of time, could either of you kill an innocent? Dean: We will find a better way.

Dean listens to Cas question him about whether the brothers could kill an innocent if it came to that and, to me, there are wheels turning in Dean’s head by now that I can practically hear. The expression on his face almost looks like a physical “click” of realisation. So, he seems to be thinking to himself, is that what this is about? Killing Kelly Kline for Heaven? And Dean still doesn’t want to believe it. He wants to trust Cas to make the right decision. He wants to believe Cas will choose him and Sam, even when everything is telling him that Cas won’t, because Cas is lying. 

In order to reach through to him, Dean quotes Cas back at himself from 12x10, bringing up Cas’ hope that they will find a better way, not only to remind him of what his true mission has always been, which is protecting the innocent; Dean also uses this quote as a direct link to a moment of encouragement given by both the Winchesters, where they told Cas his change has all been “for the better”. Dean needs Cas to remember his loyalty to the brothers, not realising, of course, that that’s exactly where all of Cas’ loyalty still lies. Then Cas does something else kind of remarkable as he says the following:

Cas: You mean “we”?

Cas gestures between them and for the first time ever inquires whether Dean means “we” as in him and Cas. A unit of two, not of three. It’s so subtle that Dean doesn’t pick up on it, but I did and man, did I love it, because this makes it visually undeniable that Cas needs Dean to acknowledge there is something more between them. Cas is, in effect, asking Dean what he means to him. What the mixtape is really all about. And this is such a shoutout to the Brologue of 11x23 that it makes my skin crackle with excitement, because it makes me feel that Cas is waiting for Dean, just as Dean is for Cas, to make the first move, and in this exchange both of them are tentatively taking the first step towards that moment. Dean with the mixtape “I made this specially for you, idiot, because I was thinking of you” and Cas with this simple query of “Are we a ‘we’? Because I always thought that expression was reserved for you and Sam so what sort of ‘we’ are we?”

Then Dean counters with something that made me sit bolt upright literally and then yell at the screen with glee at how the textual callbacks begin right here with:

Dean: Yes, dumbass - we.

The dumbass to end all dumbasses, man. I could barely sit still. The “So are you saying we’re both a couple of dumbasses” exchange of 9x10 is such a staple to show how much strength Cas actually gives Dean, because Sam - Dean’s entire world - is being tortured and is screaming in pain and Cas distracts Dean away from that to the point of making him smile. What also makes it poignant is that the conversation surrounding the dumbass comment deals with how both Dean and Cas are reeling after both getting played, Cas specifically by an angel, and how Cas was the one, in that conversation, to bring up trust. This callback, in this moment, when Dean’s faith in Cas’ intentions must be swaying like a pendulum on a string, shows exactly how much Dean needs Cas to remember what they’ve been through, and understand what Cas means to him, how much he needs him to choose him this time around, because if the intent of this exchange isn’t to make the audience aware of exactly this then I’ll eat my shoe for breakfast. Then Dean continues:

Dean: […] You, me - and Sam. We’re just better together. So now that you’re back, let’s go Team Free Will. Let’s get it done. Cas: I’d like that. Dean: Great. I’d like a beer.

So, obviously, the Team Free Will is amazing, but even more important is how Dean ties back into the theme of “better” with how they’re “better together”, going so far as to deepen his want to believe that Cas will possibly and finally get how much he means to him by him if he says this: “You, me” and for the first time ever adding Sam as something aside from them, rather than adding Cas into the context of the brothers, to then state “We’re just better together.” Here, I believe Dean doesn’t mean the three of them - he means that he has always been better with Cas around and he feels, on some level, he’s done the same for Cas and can they just acknowledge that here and now and build on that?

As an aside: that together melted my insides because this is what I feel they need so badly (the three of them) - that sense of togetherness, mutual trust, no more going dark or closing down or hiding behind well-worn patters: it’s time to break out of all of that now. It’s time for real change.

To conclude, Cas’ “I’d like that” is said with his eyes leaving Dean’s and Dean’s taut “Great. I’d like a beer,” comes across as him realising, due to Cas’ evasiveness, that he hasn’t properly reached through, that Cas is still on the fence about what “the right thing” is. 

What’s more, Dean leaving Cas alone in his room tells us that Dean doesn’t know Cas is there to take the Colt. Dean doesn’t know exactly what Cas’ game is, only that he’s playing at something. Dean doesn’t piece it all together until he discovers that Cas has gone. There Dean is, standing in the doorway of Cas’ empty bedroom, and it’s suddenly crystal clear: the angels, Cas’ lying, killing Kelly Kline -> the Colt. Which was in his bedroom, tucked under his goddamn pillow. And yeah, this moment hurts Dean deeply because it all fits to show him exactly what Cas was doing in his room in the first place and what is he supposed to think about that?

Time to kick some feathered ass, is what he’s supposed to think.

Of course, this is only the beginning of the episode. And by the end of it, what I take from the mixtape exchange has been restated more than once: it doesn’t matter what either of them does - they love one another and that’s that.

Now, how they’ll actually manifest this love story on the show and bring it evermore into the canonical text is a different matter altogether - one that I’ll explore in the next post I’m working on - but I cannot believe for one moment that they won’t. If they don’t, it will rip up nine years of subtextual narrative that has been deepened and evolved at such an incredible pace it just blows my mind that we’ve reached the point where they’re ready to lay all the cards on the table. At long last.

Thanks, as always, for your time and patience. I hope you enjoyed this read - I know it was a lengthy one. The material is just so damn rich and engaging, I couldn’t help myself. Blame Andrew Dabb - I always like to.

Also, sorry for how static this long post is! I’ll provide gifs for the next one, pinky swear! And do argue, disagree or engage in a discussion if any of this just doesn’t sit right with you: I’d love to hear your thoughts and I absolutely encourage you to interact with me if you feel inspired (or riled up enough) to do so. *gulp* I’m never going to claim to know for a fact that my interpretation is the correct one. We all take something personal from the show and from the characters themselves and it’s as it should be. If you can see what I see then, hey, let’s limbo! If not - it’s all good! Let’s just all agree on this one thing: 

Destiel exists. ;)