#anyway if anyone has any tips for getting rid of milk quickly. like some milk based recipes. hmu

[swordfaery]

bought a fuckton of like. cow milk bcos i wanted to make scones n you need milk to make scones. it goes off considerably faster than like. the soy milk and oat milk im used to drinking + it comes in a bigger bottle. i have like four days to drink a litre of milk im desparately chugging tea that is always too milky bcos for some reason a splash of cow milk has more milk than oat milk and it tastes of milk and im literally gonna go to tesco n buy some fucking cereal at this rate idk what to do it doesnt taste nice either

[rosy-cheekx]

Heard you were looking for prompts :) 1 of 2 - From favorite tropes: Blind date set up by mutual friends! And maybe combined with "I'm speechless you're so beautiful" from the fluff & kisses (and other stuff) prompts. Go wild with it!

This will go to AO3 soon, but it was a lot of fun to write and a nice distraction from any hypothetical realities the TMA fandom may be experiencing. 

Double-Blind: 5K

Martin smelled like espresso. He wrinkled his nose and dusted his hands on his apron uselessly, as if doing so would rid himself of the months of coffee, cinnamon, and hazelnut baked into his skin.  It wasn’t all that bad, he supposed, except what was the point in using cologne if it was going to be immediately overpowered?

The bell above the door jingled and Martin jumped, pulled from his thoughts on cologne and what he would like to smell like, given the opportunity. Sandalwood, maybe? Tobacco and vanilla? The musky-sweet smells are nice, they have a nice mix of feminine and masculine to them, almost—

“Ahem.” An exaggerated clearing of the throat, once again whisking him from his distractions. Martin locked eyes on the woman across the counter from him, grinning mischievously. “Welcome back to Earth, Martin.”

“Oh! Oh. It’s just you. Hi, Georgie.” Georgie Barker, a regular customer, moderately well-known podcast host, and most importantly, one of Martin’s favorite people to see at the tiny coffee shop he spent more time in than his own flat.

“Just me? Excuse me.” Georgie pouted and crossed her arms, coily hair bouncing around her face as she shook her head. “I’ll have you know you should be grateful to see me this fine afternoon, Martin Koffee Blackwood!”

Martin grinned and dropped the act. “I always am, Georgie. But I told you, there’s not a—”

“Like I said, you should be happy to see me.” Georgie barreled on. “I have good news.” She cocked her head and pondered the chalk-covered board behind the counter. “Two chai lattes, please. And make one of them extra spicy?”

Martin rang up the order and passed two cups down to Rosie, all the while checking the door surreptitiously, ensuring a little chat wouldn’t hold anyone up. “Okay? Spill.”

Georgie’s phone was in her hand, and she waved it at Martin like it contained the secrets of the universe. “D’you remember my roommate, Melanie?”

Martin nodded, pursing his lips. “Vaguely. I thought you guys were dating.” He raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to elaborate.

Georgie waved a hand dismissively, rolling her eyes. “Not the point. Anyways, she has a friend of a friend-“ Georgie frowned for a moment, “…of a friend who is looking to get back into dating. Mel says he’s short and nerdy and prickly until you get to know him. Apparently a real pain to work with according to the friend.” Georgie smirked and pulled a sticky note from her back pocket. “Thought maybe you’d want his number.”

Martin grimaced at the blue piece of paper as she smoothed it to the counter with a firm motion. “Wow, George. Really selling it.” It was his fault; they had bonded over being queer back in July when Martin had worn his gay and trans pride buttons and Georgie was proudly sporting her own pansexual patch firmly affixed to her laptop case. One lunch break discussing quirky exes later, their friendship had been sealed. Mentioning offhandedly that he was on dating apps and hating every minute of it seemed to have rooted itself in Georgie’s mind and had grown like weeds until she had taken it upon herself to become his personal wing woman.

“Do you even know his name?” Martin asked, regarding the string of numbers on the piece of paper in front of him.

Georgie blushed, shrugging apologetically. “Friend of a friend of a friend. Sorry mate. Melanie said he likes cats, documentaries, and-” she made air quotes with her fingers, “-being uptight.”

“Wow.” Martin chuckled in disbelief. “Really selling it here.”

Rosie sidled by Martin and set down Georgie’s lattes, who shrugged and picked them up after dropping a few coins in the tip jar. “You have his number. Just think about it, Blackwood. Melanie’s friend doesn’t spread the word about someone unless they’re something special.” She blew a kiss (clumsily, considering the cups requiring the attention of each of her hands) and made her way to the door.

“I just want you to be happy!” She called out as the January winds pulled her out the door and into the grey afternoon.

Martin chewed on his lip as he considered. January was always a tough month for him, and he had been feeling a little lonely recently. He really didn’t see anyone besides his coworkers, customers, and his mother. As much as he enjoyed his job, he wouldn’t call anyone there a romantic interest. He folded the sticky note and stuck it in his pocket as his next customer approached the counter. He did like cats, after all. Maybe that would be a good starting conversation.

--

Jonathan Sims groaned and shifted the stack of books in his hand as he inspected the knee-high table that was buried amongst the fiction books. He hated working the children’s section of the library. Although no food or drink was allowed, there always seemed to be crumbs everywhere. He was starting to wonder if children just manifested them. He made a mental note to come back with disinfectant wipes after putting the stack of child-suitable biographies away and turned, nearly walking straight into the chest of one Timothy Stoker.

“A-ah!” Jon jumped instinctively backward, clutching the books closer to his chest in an attempt to keep from dropping them. “Tim! Good lord, there’s really no need to be sneaking up on me like that.”

Tim grinned wryly and shrugged, taking half of the books from Jon’s arms. “Sorry boss, thought you heard me.” He gestured for Jon to lead the way through the half-sized bookshelves; an unnecessary act seeing as Tim worked the children’s library much more frequently than Jon did.

“I’m not your-” Jon sighed, deciding this wasn’t the hill he wanted to die on today. He made his way through the shelves, sliding books into their correct placements with practiced hands. “Do you need something?”

“Actually,” Tim checked a Dewey code and slid a book into a shelf a few rows down. “I don’t. But you do.”

Jon stared blankly, uncomprehending. Tim chuckled and gestured with a cock of his head towards the research section. “Melanie said she has a friend who has a friend she wants to set up on a date. And while normally, I’d jump at the chance-” he waved his left hand, the silver ring inset with tiny diamonds flashing in the fluorescents, “I’ve been wifed up and I don’t think my dear Sash would appreciate my going on a blind date with a stranger.”

Jon frowned, setting his stack of books down and eyeing Tim. “What, so I have to?”

Tim shook his head, a patient smile on his face. “No, no one is forcing you. I just think—well. It’s been a while since your last relationship and you’ve been a little…testy, recently.” The look on Tim’s face dared Jon to contradict. “Melanie says he’s apparently a really good guy, very kind and sweet and patient. I think his name is Melvin? I kinda tuned out after she wrote down the number she got from her friend.”

Jon scoffed, pushing his glasses up his face as if that would help him comprehend the absolute ridiculousness of what Tim was saying. “Y-You want me to go on a date with this guy, Melvin? Because I’ve been…grumpy? That doesn’t seem very kind to this mysterious date.”

Tim pursed his lips. “I just think you could benefit from seeing someone who doesn’t work here. I mean, we love you Jon, but god, you need to get a social life. I’m practically begging you.” Tim’s purse elongated into a pout, eyes going big and starry. Jon inwardly groaned. Tim was his oldest friend here at the library and he really never learned how to resist that face. Maybe he should ask Sasha.

“One date,” Jon promised. “I’ll do one date. And then you never set me up again.”

Tim grabbed the rest of the books Jon had set down and added them to his stack before whisking himself away down the aisles. “If we’re lucky, I’ll never have to!” He called down the aisles, grinning madly. Jon sighed and grabbed a small pink sticky note that had been stuck to the countertop, running his eyes over the numbers before slipping it into his pocket. He’ll call later.

--

Martin stared resolutely at the numbers on the blue sticky note, running his thumb over the curled edge of the paper, slightly stained from some sort of milk during the shift. Even his apron pockets weren’t foolproof. The underground was busy and he was jammed between an older woman who smelled weirdly like salmon and a man who seemed utterly too well-dressed to be on the tube. Elbows crammed into his side to keep from nudging anyone, he pulled out his phone and stared at the messaging app for what felt like several minutes. He typed the numbers into the message bar and watched his cursor blip in the body of the message.

Hey whats up?

No, that would be so weird.

Hiya, this is martin!

Georgie never said the man’s name, would this mysterious date know his?

Hey I think the alphabet is missing I and U together.

Gross. Just gross. Martin grimaced inwardly and chewed on his lip, thinking carefully before typing.

Hi! My name is martin. my friend gave me your number, hope thats okay. she said you were really nice and recommended we try a blind date. if this is too weird, I get ignoring it. but if youre game, I am! :)

As he finished typing, he heard the familiar robotic voice of the tube announcing his stop. Quickly, Martin shoved the phone in his pocket and carefully forced his way through the crowd and onto the platform, mind cast to what he had accessible for dinner.

----

It took Jon a few days, until Saturday, to remember to call the phone number they had been given. They could text, they supposed, but they always appreciated hearing someone’s intonation a little better. Especially a stranger, ugh, they shuddered at the idea of not being able to decipher the tone of this Melvin. It was half-past 11 when they decided to call, hoping this would be late enough in the morning to not wake him up.

The phone rang momentarily before a surprisingly feminine voice answered the phone. “Hello. This is Rosie. You’ve reached Swirl Café and Bakery.”

Well shit. This was not what Jon expected. They stumbled over their rehearsed speech, trying to scramble words together in a way that made sense. “Uh-sorry, I must have the wrong number. I-I was trying to speak to Melvin?”

“Mmm, sorry. No Melvin works here. We have a Martin, but he’s off the clock. Would you like to speak to our manager?” Rosie’s voice was clipped and courteous, but Jon could hear the bustle of voices in the background. It must be their weekend rush.

“Ah-uh, no, no thank you.” Jon shook their head into the phone, before remembering that did not translate aurally. “It’s alright. Thank you anyways.”

“Sorry, mate. Thanks for calling!” The dial tone droned on for a moment before Jon hung up, sighing and pressing the heels of their hands into their eyes. That was a waste. Melanie must have been playing them; Jon knew they generally didn’t get along, but they didn’t realize she would stoop so low. Honestly, shame on themself for getting excited about a date.

Later that evening, Jon was cooking and listening to music through the speaker that balanced precariously on a shelf next to their stove. The music was low, with a variety of orchestral instruments and sultry, smooth voices. Jon’s eyes were half closed as they stirred the curry in the pan in front of them, letting the music and heat of the kitchen entangle them in a sleepy feeling relaxing their whole body. As the cello in the song dipped low and resonant, Jon stood still, letting the music sweep them away—

They jumped as the ringer alerted them through the speaker that they had received a text, glaringly electronic compared to the rich notes of cello and viola that had been so rudely interrupted. Sleepy feeling gone as adrenaline washed through their body, Jon sighed and retrieved their phone, checking for the message.

An unknown number flicked across the screen:

Hi! my name is martin. my friend gave me your number, hope thats okay. she said you were really nice and recommended we try a blind date. if this is too weird, i get ignoring it. but if youre game, I am! :)

i meant to send this a few days ago but I never hit send. sorry ab that! rosie said someone called the café asking ab me and i assumed that was you bc i wasnt expecting anyone else and no one involved in the blind date thing ever asked for my mobile number.

if it wasn’t you, oops! either way it reminded me that i had never texted you. :)

Jon squinted at the screen as they read the messages a few times over. That was…a lot of words. So his name was Martin. It was certainly nicer than Melvin. Jon agonized over their words as they typed out a response.

Hello Martin. That was me who called the café…I hope it didn’t cause problems for you. Blind dates aren’t usually my thing, but my coworkers think I need to get out more. I’d be happy to meet you for dinner or coffee. Even if we don’t get along, we can say we’ve done it.

Unless, of course, you’re rather sick of coffee. I prefer tea anyways.

…not “done it” done it. Just. Had the blind date.

Jon winced at their follow up texts. God, that was embarrassing. Martin probably didn’t even take it that way until they bothered to clarify. They shook their head, warding away the growing anxiety in their chest and tucked their phone in their pocket as they turned their attention back to the simmering curry. Jon had embarrassed themselves enough for one night.

----

Martin chuckled at the texts that came through; one slow and the two follow-ups rapid. He could feel the awkwardness through the messages, desperately trying to give a good impression. He chuckled to himself as he set down his dinner plate.

dinner sounds perfect. but same about the tea! and about the coworkers tbh, my friends think im making friends with the espresso machine. which, i am, but only bc its good company haha.

btw i never got your name?

Martin’s phone was silent the rest of the night, as he plodded his way through a mediocre dinner and shower before settling into his armchair, desperate to work on his poetry. Words came slowly to him recently, thoughts about the world and darkness and the intersection of fall and winter. He really should up and move to somewhere warmer, he thought to himself, before laughing the notion away aloud. Yeah, right. He rolled his eyes and tried to focus on the poetry prompts book he had found at the charity shop. “Use noncolor words to describe a color.” Great. Martin settled back and tried to focus, but kept finding himself checking his phone impulsively, the foamed latte art he’d photographed, one of a cat he was particularly proud of, stared back at him judgmentally.

As he drew his evening to a close, Martin almost missed the buzz of his phone, now plugged in by his bed, as he brushed his teeth.

Congrats on the espresso machine. And my name is Jon. Anywhere you want to go for dinner?

________________________________________________________________

Jon hesitated, thumb hovering over the icon that would open a video chat with Tim. He didn’t want to come off nervous, but… he was.

Texting had been going well. Martin was good at keeping the conversation going and genuinely seemed to enjoy the long texts Jon had sent regarding his irritations with the research he was conducting as a part of his master’s in literature, asking him questions about details Jon had added for context. Martin was easy to talk to, too, he always seemed to have an opinion on subjects but always ones Jon was happy to hear, even if he was objectively wrong about spiders and oolong tea. Martin had sent an awkward text, letting Jon know he was trans and that if that was a dealbreaker he should tell him now, one Jon had blushed over and responded that he was nonbinary himself, and that it certainly wasn’t. The “okay fantastic! :))) remind me of your pronouns? he/him for me.” that followed it up had made Jon’s heart sing.

They had agreed to meet at an Italian place, equidistant between their flats and not too fancy. Martin had commented about getting ice cream after, but Jon wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, since it had also been a jab about Jon’s preference for rum raisin. Thus, he was staring at his wardrobe, paralyzed with indecision. Tim had offered to help, which Jon had initially rejected since he’s “not a child Tim, I’ve dated before. And I know how to dress myself.” But lord if he wasn’t wishing for someone to lay out his clothes and tell him to behave. He grimaced and jabbed the video chat button, bracing for the onslaught of teasing to come.

----

Martin adjusted his collar for what must have been the twelfth time, sucking on his lip as he waited at the reserved table. He hadn’t been there long, no more than five minutes, but his anxiety had been building up all day and a part of him was absolutely certain Jon wasn’t going to come. Neither of them knew what the other looked like; what if Jon saw him and had dipped out immediately? He was wearing mint green, as he had promised, so Jon would recognize him, and brought a bouquet of daisies, mostly because it felt weird not to bring anything, but he didn’t want to be too romantic. Not roses or anything. Besides, Jon said he liked daisies, said they reminded him of an old friend. Martin hoped it wasn’t too weird. He brushed his auburn curls out of the way of his eyes, part of him regretting not having gotten a haircut first, but he tucked those thoughts aside as he surveyed the restaurant from his vantage point.

He blinked in confusion as he watched long curls make their way towards him. Dark black hair, streaked with white, half bunned up in the back and rest left to hang loose, skimming purple-covered elbows. Martin wasn’t sure if they were wearing flowy grey pants or a skirt, but either way, the faint black pattern to them was stunning and Martin couldn’t help but watch the swoosh of the hemlines. As the person got closer, Martin realized they were tiny, stylized eyes.

“Ah-you’re Martin, right?” It took Martin a second to realize this absolutely beautiful person was talking to him.

“hmm—Oh! Yes! You must be Jon.” Martin stood, unsure whether he should shake Jon’s hand or hug him or? But Jon solved the problem himself by sitting, and so Martin did as well. “It’s nice to finally meet you…in person, that is,” he added, grinning shyly. “You look lovely, by the way.”

Jon blushed. “Ah, thank you. Y-You too. O-or handsome, whichever you prefer.” He sipped his water and fidgeted with his hands, eyes flicking around the room nervously before coming around to rest on Martin.

Martin shrugged. “A compliment is a compliment, they all work. Speaking of—what pronouns are you feeling today? I remember you saying it varies.”

Jon shook his head slightly. “I’m not going to pitch a fit either way, but ‘he’ is just fine.” It was nice to be asked. The library respected his pronouns, of course, but something about Martin going out of his way to make sure he was on the same page was… It made Jon’s heart thud deep in his chest.

They made small talk about the travel, the weather, Italian food preferences until the waiter came and relieved the tension. Martin felt his shoulders relax after they both ordered; it felt more real somehow.

“So,” Martin asked, sipping his water demurely, a smile tinged on his lips. “Melvin, huh?”

Jon choked on air for a moment. His mouth gaped open and shut again and Martin couldn’t help the grin overtook him. Jon’s embarrassment was sweet; his cheeks flushed and he bowed his head slightly. It was a lovely look on him. “For the record, that’s what I was told by my coworker, Tim.” Jon made air quotes with his fingers. “‘Melvin or something.’ Who was I to question your name?”

“Right, and I’m glad you respect names ‘n’ all. But Melvin?” Martin chuckled to himself, shaking his head. “I’m not the decimal system guy.”

“Nn-mmm,” Jon shook his head, nose wrinkled in a way Martin found particularly cute. “That’s Melville. Melville Dewey.” Jon emphasized, back straightening. “Distinctly different. I’m a librarian, actually.”

“Oh!” Martin blinked. “That makes sense. You work with Melanie, then, I assume?”

Jon grimaced again. “Unfortunately.”

“She’s not that bad!” Martin insisted. “I’ve met her once or twice and she’s been very polite.”

Jon rolled his eyes. “For someone who’s getting a degree in parapsychology, she seems very judgmental.”

“Oh? And what are you studying again?”

“English Lit-hey!”

Martin grinned behind his glass of water. “Just saying, I haven’t met an English Lit student who wasn’t obscenely pretentious.”

Jon faltered for a second and slumped his shoulders in defeat, though his voice still seemed to carry humor, albeit dry. “Unfortunately, I am no exception.”

“Well, I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”

Dinner arrived smoothly, shrimp scampi for Jon and eggplant parmesan for Martin. They ate slowly, chatting more about Jon’s graduate degree, Martin’s affinity for fiction and poetry, and their shared interest in tea.

“So, are you vegetarian?” Jon gestured to the eggplant on Martin’s plate. Martin wobbled his head slightly, not quite a negatory shake of the head.

“It’s complicated. My mother has—had—a sensitive stomach so we didn’t eat meat growing up. I think that turned me off the taste. And there’s something about the texture,” he shuddered. “Weirds me out.”

Jon’s eyes were sharp, boring holes into Martin’s in a way he should have found alarming, but instead found soothing. “Mine, too.” His tone—softer, almost reverent, clued Martin in: he wasn’t talking about being vegetarian.

Martin nodded, and gently placed a hand on Jon’s, the one that hovered near his drinking glass. “I’m sorry.”

They were quiet for a moment, Jon’s hand was small and warm under his, and Martin could feel a thin silver bracelet clinging to his wrist. Martin was amazed by how perfectly his fingers rested over Jon’s, how nice it must feel to hold hands with him on a walk or side by side against the world. Jon cleared his throat suddenly and reached for his glass, gulping down water while staring steadfastly at his plate.

Martin felt his own blush rise through his cheeks and pushed a stray noodle around his plate. “So, here’s a question,” he began, eager to clear the tension. “You said earlier your friend Tim gave you the number to Swirl, right? I don’t know a Tim. So how did he know me?”

Jon frowned, cocking his head. “Technically, I got the number from Tim but that was via Melanie. She said her roommate was friends with…well, friends with you.”

“Mmhmm, that makes sense. I know Georgie from the coffee shop.” He was about to continue when he saw absolutely paralyzed look on Jon’s face. “You…you alright?”

Jon was stock still, pausing the forkful of shrimp that was en route to his mouth. “Sorry, Melanie’s roommate is Georgie?”

Martin nodded slowly. “Yeah, Georgie Barker, that podcaster. She gets her an extra-spicy chai latte from Swirl most days and that’s about the most I know of the relationship. Why, you know her?”

Jon put the fork down, shrimp forgotten, and sighed, running his thumbs along the bridge of his nose, pushing his thin-rimmed glasses up to his eyebrows. “Y-yes, she’s kind of…my ex.”

It was Martin’s turn to freeze. “Sorry?”

“Mmm, yeah, we decided we were better as friends. It was back in Oxford. But I don’t exactly see her often much anymore.” Jon winced at his own words, as if he knew how bad they sounded.

Martin sat back in disbelief, chuckling to himself. “Y’know, she said you were a ‘friend of a friend of a friend.’ D’you think she even knew it was you?”

Jon cocked his head in thought. “I guess not. I mean, I think the whole library staff has been gunning for me to relieve some tension. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been looking for a blind date for me for months now.”

Martin grinned, eyes sparkling. “Well, no matter. It was lucky for me.” Lucky again, was Martin, when he was rewarded with Jon’s warm blush.

----

The bill had been a painful affair, with both Jon and Martin vying for the privilege of paying. Martin struck a deal: he’d pay for the dinner, and Jon would pay for ice cream. Jon knew the differences would widely outweigh when it came to cost but he relented, and the self-satisfied smirk that blossomed over Jon’s face was payment enough.

Martin pointed out the ice cream parlor was a few blocks away and, though it was January, they decided to walk. The fresh snow on the ground glinted against the orange street lamps, and Jon laughed under his breath at the way Martin took great care to step on any unusually large clumps of snow, like he had a personal vendetta. When Jon’s chuckle had made it past the scarf he had wound round his neck and mouth, Martin had glanced over, embarrassed.

“I like the sound of it,” he mumbled, suddenly very meek for a man his stature. It was, regretfully, endearing. Martin was tall, but he was big too, and it was obvious underneath the layer of soft cashmere and chub, there was rigid muscle, and beneath that still, a gentle heart. Jon was struck by him, in more ways he had prepared himself for, and it felt second nature to slide his gloved hand into Martin’s and give it a solid squeeze of acknowledgement.

“Do you think it’s too cold to get ice cream?” Jon asked, watching a cloud of breath float by his lips.

Martin shrugged. “Technically? Yes. But who’s going to tell on us?” Jon swung their entwined hands a little. “Unless…you don’t want to?” Martin added, eyes locking on Jon’s before his head followed.

Jon shook his head. “No, I want to. I believe we have a debt to settle and I have a personal score involving rum raisin.” Martin beamed, clearly pleased, and Jon was certain the snow around him melted right off with the warmth of his smile. Jon leant into Martin’s side a little, and they continued in silence until they reached the ice cream parlor, the entrance to which glowed with pink and white LEDs.

Jon smugly ordered a scoop of rum raisin and was delighted to find Martin “didn’t hate it,” though he insisted his mint chip was better. That was genuinely the best Jon could hope for; not even Georgie in all her unusual tastes enjoyed his rum raisin sensibility. “My grandmother loved it when I was a kid,” he explained between bites, stirring the ice cream with his spoon. “It was the only flavor she kept around the house.”

“Not even vanilla?” Martin gasped in mock disbelief. “Any sensible person would say you’ve been tricked into enjoying it.” Jon chuckled and elbowed Martin mildly.

Jon found himself lingering over the bowl, realizing that the end of their dessert meant an end to the date. Martin seemed to be acting similarly, putting his spoon down between bites and taking more and more thoughtful swallows between their bouts of conversation.

“You-you took the tube here, right?” Jon asked, setting his finally-empty bowl off to the side. At Martin’s confirmation, Jon clenched his fist below the table. “Do you want to walk to the station together?”

Martin’s eyes lit up, nodding eagerly. “I had meant to ask, actually! I wanted to make sure you got there safe.” Jon winced at the blush that overtook his cheeks, though it was easy to blame it on the chill of the ice cream and the frigid night.

The walk to the tube was longer and the pair, heavily sated by pasta and dairy, were quiet, making soft comments about the snow or the odd remaining Christmas decorations, hands clasped tightly and shoulders pressing into the other. The fluorescents of the underground shone brightly, normally a beacon calling travelers home in the night, but to Jon it felt like a dreadful curse. He truly hadn’t expected to enjoy his evening with Martin so much, but they had just clicked. It felt like a shame to let it go.

Swiping their cards, Jon and Martin passed through their respective turnstiles and stood at the bisecting tunnels through which the various lines waited to take them home. They faced each other in silence, hands still interlocked, unsure of how to begin.

“If you’d like to,” Jon murmured, eyes shifting focus to Martin’s curls, plastered to his forehead from the snow; his collar, peeking through his coat; the way the shell of his ear seemed to have a nick missing (was it from a childhood accident? Just the way it was grown?). “I’d like to go out again.”

Martin squeezed Jon’s hand, and Jon’s eyes flitted back to Martin’s own; they were grey-blue and reminded Jon of his childhood sea. “Mmhmm, yeah.” Martin rolled his eyes at his own words and tried again. “Yes, Jon, I’d love that.” Martin moved to hug Jon, a gesture Jon eagerly accepted, relishing the warm arms encircling him and the feel of Martin’s chin resting on the crown of his head. As they pulled away, Martin’s eyes flitted across Jon’s face and the hand around his back moved, cautiously, to rest on the side of Jon’s neck.

“I…I don’t want to presume,” Martin said quietly, and Jon was distinctly aware of how empty, how big, the station was. “Is it okay if I kiss your cheek?”

Jon blinked rapidly, nodding wordlessly, before clearing his throat. “Ah, um, yes. Please.”

Martin’s smile was soft as he pressed his lips to the apex of Jon’s cheekbone, almost into his hairline. Jon was sure the blush that rose across his face this time certainly couldn’t be explained away by the snow, but he honestly wasn’t really sure he cared.

[leechobsessed]

Chapter 1

“Not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path.”

characters: Cora Crawford words: ~2.9k warnings: mentions of abuse and drowning, suicidal ideation

notes: It’s Cora’s birthday, so here’s chapter one of her story! Don’t know Cora yet? Take a peek at her bio here.

The Crab Isles are not a friendly place. 

Nothing about the climate, nor the people for that matter, are welcoming. Found further south than the Scrougelands, the weather is bitterly cold almost year round, making the main livelihood of the islands— crab fishing, as it would be— to be exceptionally dangerous, difficult, and undesirable work. 

The attitudes of the island’s inhabitants have only been made worse by the remarks and jokes of the rest of the world; the Crabmen were actually half crab, but whether that half be the top or bottom depended on who you asked. 

That bit, of course, was not true. Yet much like the crabs the people fished for, they had developed a hard, almost impermeable shell around themselves, turning their community into a collectively abrasive group. Fiercely protective of their own, intimidating to and wary of anyone else. 

The South is unforgiving, and the people who live there have adapted to their harsh environment, becoming harsh and unforgiving themselves. They were a collectively stubborn, selfish and superstitious bunch, quickly weeding out and eliminating what they perceived to be dangerous in order to ensure the survival of their community. 

And to them, nothing was more dangerous than Cora. 

Cora Crawford came into the world silent, an omen of bad luck that was only fed into when she was discovered to have been born with The Mark. In the center of her palms, a small black circle, almost resembling a bruise, perhaps a touch of dirt, easily missed by the casual observer. But the elders knew this was a mark of dark magic, a soul that came into this world tainted. Evil.

Her parents tried to deny it; not their child, it couldn’t be. No one in the Crawford family had shown a propensity for magic in almost a century, but here she was, undeniably touched by dark forces, silently observing the world with her hauntingly pale blue eyes. 

Her father wanted her drowned, as did the elders, but her mother wouldn’t allow it— or so she was told. She found it hard to believe her parents would have ever fought over her life, given how little they cared for it now. 

The Mark was rarely seen in the Crab Isles, but was spoken about often. Those with The Mark were said to be stronger than the heaviest winds, more destructive than the fiercest storm, as unpredictable and uncontrollable as the sea. Though her parents tried desperately to deny it, to hide it, the rumor that the Crawford’s girl had The Mark spread through the village like wildfire. 

Even if they weren’t sure it was true, those in the community ignored and avoided her, terrified of what she was and what she was capable of. And Cora was scared too. For the first twelve years of her life, she was constantly reminded how dangerous she was and she was silenced, hidden, forbidden to use any magic, even as she could feel it crackling under her skin like lightning, threatening to burst free at any moment.  

The power was overwhelming, and she had no way to control it, no one to teach her how. Cora tried, she really tried, to keep her magic hidden, and was successful more often than not. When she did give in and lost control, allowed the power to be free for only a moment, she was punished severely. Her parents hissed foul curses at her as they beat her, reminding her how horrible and evil she was, how she was a threat and hated by everyone around her. 

But every beating only seemed to make her magic stronger and harder to tame. And her mark only continued to grow. 

What had started as a faint black spot had begun to crawl through the veins of her palms, spreading to her fingertips, turning them black from the tips of her nails to the second knuckle. She knew the mark only grew when she practiced magic, but it didn’t grow every time. She couldn’t predict when it would or wouldn’t spread, and she had no one to ask about it. So instead, she continued to cover the marks and pretend that she didn’t terrify even herself.  

This morning, as usual, Cora wakes up earlier than the rest of the household to start her chores, knowing not having them done before breakfast will mean nothing but trouble for her. She sits up in bed and stretches before sliding out of the covers to get dressed. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she pulls her heavy flannels on, then her coat, her hat, her mud boots and finally her gloves before she sneaks down the stairs and out the back door toward the henhouse. 

The hens are all huddled together in the coops, unwilling to be outside any longer than necessary. And Cora doesn’t blame them. The weather this time of year is hovers just above freezing, violent storms prone to rolling in from the sea at any time. She stands out in the yard, looking dubiously up at the sky, her hair standing on end from the electricity in the air. 

She quickly spreads fresh feed for them and she collects the eggs the hens have laid in her basket before she jogs further down the hill to the barn. The barn used to house about a dozen goats until her younger sister was born, and her parents decided they didn’t need the stress of more mouths to feed. 

Truthfully, she was surprised they didn’t get rid of her instead, but she supposed her being able to work on the boat was more helpful to the family than the small amount of money they made from selling the goat’s milk.

Cora missed the goats. They liked her because she fed them, let her lay on them when her father made her sleep outside, and wouldn’t tattle on her if she used their space to practice magic, which is something she couldn’t say about her seven year old sister. 

The golden child of the Crawford family, she thinks, rolling her eyes.

The barn is now used to store fishing gear, but it’s still a suitable place to practice her magic if she really wanted, and usually she would. But the lashings on her back from when her sister caught her the week prior have just started to heal, and she really isn’t looking to get any more. At least not today.

Instead, she gently lies back on a pile of netting to stare up at the worn wood of the barn ceiling, pulling off her gloves to call a small orange flame to her fingertips. She lets the flame dance across the black tips of her fingers for a moment, extinguishing the illusion quickly when she hears someone approach. 

She wrestles her gloves back on and stands up quickly, picking up the basket of eggs, just as her older brother enters the barn. He studies her for a moment as he leans against the doorframe. 

“Ma is lookin’ for the eggs.”

She nods quickly, fumbling with her gloves and the basket. “I’m comin’.”

“I know. I just wanted to find you before Pa came out.” He takes the basket of eggs from her to allow her to fix her gloves properly, watching her with the same green eyes as their father, though his look more kindly on her. 

Cora offers him a small smile, nodding in thanks. 

Tevin had always been good to her. He was very protective of his younger sister, understanding from a very young age that she was being treated unfairly and unkindly by the people who were supposed to love and care for her most. Everyone in town, including their parents, thought she was dangerous and evil, but he knew her, and he knew she wasn’t, even if she didn’t.

But after speaking up in her defense a few too many times, and receiving just as many beatings for it, Cora told him to stop.

“It’s not like it helps anyway,” she had said. 

“Ma is making us breakfast,” Tevin says, looking back toward the house. “We shouldn’t let it get cold.” Cora nods and follows her brother out of the barn and up the hill, picking up the pace as thunder rumbles off in the distance. 

The two children enter the kitchen to find their mother preparing their morning oats, their younger sister Orla reading quietly from a book at the table. Riona glances at the two of them, her thin lips pulling into a frown as she takes the basket from Tevin. “I was waitin’ on those.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Cora says, taking her bowl from the counter and heading to her usual spot at the window.

Tevin takes his own bowl from the counter and follows his sisters lead. He joins her to sit on the windowsill, despite having a spot at the table he’s expected to be placed at. “Happy birthday, Cora,” Tevin says, loud enough to pull the attention of their mother toward him. She frowns at her son before turning around to crack an egg in the pan in front of her. “What’re you now, eleven?”

“Thirteen,” she mumbles around a mouthful of oats, which makes Tevin smile. 

Cora returns the smile before turning her focus back on her food. He looks just like their father, with the same strong jaw and dark hair, but Tevin smiles so much more that you’d hardly believe they were related. 

“Have they said anything to you? About your birthday?” He asks, lowering his voice, although he already knows the answer. Their parents have never celebrated Cora’s birthday, but he keeps hoping one year things will change, for his sister’s sake. Cora glances at him briefly before shoveling another spoonful of oats into her mouth. 

Cora doesn’t have to look up from her breakfast to know that Calder had entered the room. She can tell by the way his physical presence darkens the atmosphere of whatever room he walks into instantly, but her eyes fly up toward him nonetheless. He has his long, dark hair tucked into his cap, fully dressed for a day at sea, his emerald eyes flashing dangerously when he sees Tevin sitting next to Cora. He says nothing to anyone as he sits down, his back to his eldest children, his front toward Orla and his wife.

“Where d’you think you’re goin’?” Riona asks, raising a blond eyebrow at the man. 

“Out on the boat,” he responds matter-of-factly, shifting his large body slightly to peak at the book his daughter is reading.

Riona frowns, setting down the plate of eggs in front of her husband. “What d’you mean you’re goin’ out today? Have you seen the storm rollin’ in?”

“Aye, I have. Which only means that there’ll be fewer boats out and more for us to catch. Tevin, Cora, get your things, we’re leavin’.” He shovels the eggs into his mouth in three bites before pushing himself back form the table, heading out the door before anyone can respond. 

From his perch on the windowsill, Tevin frowns at the door his father just left through, before he and Cora turn to glance back out the window of their small house. The rising sun is completely obscured behind obsidian clouds, the only light coming from the frequent strikes of lightening on the horizon. 

“He’s bloody mad, that man,” he murmurs under his breath, just loud enough for Cora to hear. 

She smirks in response, lowering her head to hide her humor. “I could’ve told you that,” she whispers back. The siblings simultaneously hop down off the windowsill and place their bowls on the counter. Cora he follows her brother out of the kitchen and to their bedroom, waiting patiently as he pulls their fishing gear off the shelves and brings it over to her.

“Someone is gonna to die if we go out there,” he sighs, sitting down on the floor to pull his coveralls on over his flannels. 

“Maybe that’s what he’s hopin’,” she sighs back, pulling her boots on. She hisses as Tevin smacks her arm with the back of his hand, and she hits him back on his thigh. “Don’t pretend he isn’t.”

He shakes his head, lacing up his own boots. “They don’t want you dead, Cora.”

“You’re just as mad as Pa if you think that’s true.”

Tevin sits up straight to look his sister in the eyes. “I don’t want you dead.”

Cora pauses for half a second before shrugging her heavy outerwear on. She adjusts her gloves, keeping her eyes turned toward the floor. “That I believe.”

Tevin gives her shoulder a squeeze as he stands up. “Come on. We don’t want to keep him waitin’.”

The docks are full of boats and void of people, which is exactly what Cora had expected. It’s started to rain by the time she and her brother climb aboard their father’s fishing boat, and they immediately set about their usual tasks to help the rest of the crew get the boat quickly out into sea. 

“Oy, Tev! Cora!” A voice calls, and the siblings turn to find the first mate approaching them, fighting the wind to pull their long red hair back away from their face. “What in the name of the god’s is yer pa thinkin’?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Tevin responds with a shrug.

They shake their head, looking out to sea as Calder steers the ship out of the harbor. “He’s bloody mad.” 

“That’s what I said,” Tevin says, pushing his already soaked hair out of his eyes. “How soon d’you reckon he realizes this won’t work?”

“Not soon enough,” they answer grimly, giving the siblings each a pat on the shoulder before heading toward the bow to help get the fishing nets ready.

Once out of the break wall, the storm is worse than Cora could have imagined. The wind is strong enough to knock the ship over on its own, but the waves are doing their part to help out, crashing onto the deck every few seconds, making it impossible to cast any nets. The storm is howling too loud to hear anything over the wind, and the relentless splashing of salt water is making it difficult for Cora to keep her eyes open.

We’re all going to die here, Cora finds herself thinking. Not just me.

“Cora! We’ve got to get below deck!” Tevin screams, his hand wrapping firmly around her wrist. “Come on!”

Cora does her best to open her eyes as her brother drags them across the deck, pausing every few feet to grab onto something sturdy as another wave floods the ship. 

Suddenly, his hand is gone from her wrist, and she screams for him, panicked that the waves may have taken him overboard. She can hear every other word of her father’s booming yell as he approaches, and is relieved to hear Tevin screaming back in response. 

With one arm wrapped as much as it can be around the mast, she opens her eyes against the wind, using her free hand to shield her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to make out either her brother or her father through the relentless downpour.

Without warning, a pair of large hands grab her by her upper arms, and she blinks furiously at them, thrashing in their hold. Her skin goes cold as she finds herself staring into her father’s green eyes. He says nothing, just holds her about a foot off the ground, seemingly oblivious to the storm raging around them. 

“Pa!” She hears Tevin call out. “Pa!”

“I should have killed you when you were born,” Calder hisses, his deep voice ringing out clear over the wind. 

“Pa!” Tevin shrieks, his voice panicked. “Let her go!”

Calder keeps his eyes on his daughter, on his burden, his curse, his greatest shame. Cora knows better than to say anything, so instead, she clenches her jaw and holds his gaze. And then she begins to silently pray,  her tears mixing with the salt from the sea, asking the gods to have mercy on her.

As another wave crashes over top of the ship, Calder does just what Tevin asked. He takes two steps toward the side of the ship and throws her with ease over the side, allowing the force of the wave to carry her overboard.

Cora Crawford has thought about death more than any child ever should. She thought she deserved to die, that the world would be better off without her. She considered ways she could make death come for her sooner, but she never followed through. The idea of death was terrifying to her. If she was evil in this life, what would be waiting for her in the next? 

As she hits the water, the air is forced from her lungs, immediately sending her into a panic. She struggles against the water, trying to kick up toward the surface, but the weight of her clothing and the movement of the sea keeps beating her down further and further, until she can’t tell which direction the surface is. 

And the realization hits her; I’m going to die.

Knowing this, she stops fighting, allows her body to relax and lets the current take her where it may. Suddenly, all she feels is calm, protected even, cocooned by the silence and movement of the water. No one could hurt her here. She couldn’t hurt anyone. Even if the next life was worse than this one, she had this fleeting moment to finally feel safe, from herself and everyone else. 

Exhaling the last bit of oxygen left in her chest, Cora lets the darkness she was born from reclaim her. 

[jackandthesoulmates]

Curse’s Delight

requested by @wendibird

So like, in a setting where it hasn't been a thing yet. Fuck-or-die and Jack's the one bit with the curse. And Sam's the only other person around. And there isn't a lot of time. (So like, trying to arrange for a prostitute wouldn't work.) Plus maybe the curse stipulates that the cursed party has to be penetrated. In any event, though Sam has misgivings, Jack assures him that he trusts him and to Sam's surprise Jack ends up REALLY liking it.

Word count: 1914

Read on AO3

Or under the cut.

Sam just didn’t watch Jack for a split second. But a second can be a very, very long time. As it was in this case, because, when Sam looked around, Jack had something in his hands that made Sam’s hunter alarm go off. Very loudly.

“DROP IT! NOW!”

He didn’t mean to yell, but he lost his cool with this. He reached out to Jack, who looked at him, surprised and frightened all of a sudden. 

“Why-- what--!”

Sam slapped Jack’s hand and he dropped the horn. A red, twisted one. And there was only one creature in existence that Sam knew of had twisted red horns.

An incubus. They were in so much trouble now.

Jack didn’t know what he did wrong and what had upset Sam so much. He always wanted to make things right, especially when Sam was around. This time it seemed he had fucked up by touching this horn, whatever it was. 

It was a case that Sam took him to learn some hunter stuff and they ended up breaking into a so called “Wiccan Shop” whose owner had disappeared and had said some very disturbing things to his employee, a rebellious woman with her face covered in black piercings and arms full of colourful tattoos. She had tried to flirt with Jack how Sam told him later, but Jack was as clueless about this as he could be. 

Breaking into a witchcraft shop was new to him but Sam was professional and efficient with locks. Inside the shop Jack tried to copy Sam’s style and tried to be as analytic and rational. But this horn, it had called out to him. And only to him. It sang and whispered about earthly delights and that Jack could have what he wanted if he just -- touched it. Touching it felt good. Tingly. It was resonating deeply with a desire Jack felt for a while already… And so, he just touched the damn thing.

Seemingly, this was a shit idea, Sam never yelled. Like, really, … never.

“S-Sam did I do something wrong?”

Sam kicked the horn away and immediately grabbed Jack’s face. It was an intense look Sam gave Jack and he felt a sudden pain behind his eyes. The world went black for a moment. 

“Jack, are you okay?” 

He shook his head, the pain was piercing through his skull. 

“No, it hurts! What was this thing?”

Jack laid his hands on Sam’s, trying to make the pain go away with pressing against his temples. But his body had just started acting up because in the pain there was a feeling, an aching inside his guts. He knew this feeling and he didn’t like it, because he didn’t know how to get rid of it. His pants bulged and he squirmed under Sam’s touch.

“It’s the horn of an incubus, a male … a male sex demon.” The way Sam hesitated frightened Jack even more. 

“What does it mean?” Jack whispered, rubbing his legs against each other and keeping his eyes shut. 

It was incredibly painful. When did it stop? 

“It means, you’ve been exposed to its venom and… and… shit, we maybe have just minutes. The curse is powerful and- oh my God Jack, I have no idea--”

Jack started shaking and bent over to leave a puddle of vomit directly before Sam’s shoes. The acid he threw up burned in his stomach and esophagus. It just didn’t stop! 

“Sam, help me… please…”, Jack said, tasting bitter gall in his mouth. 

Jack felt how Sam tried to get him up, but Jack was cramping terribly and moving him seemed impossible. He just fell over to the ground, face first. Still choking out acid and what he tasted… blood. Between his whimpers he still begged Sam for help.

“Jack, please, hold on… I can’t do this!”, Sam exclaimed, clearly panicking now.

When Jack looked up for a second he could see Sam through his veil of tears. His eyes stung, his lung hurt and his stomach won’t stop twisting. And why was he aroused now, in these moments when his body seems to be torn apart. He died once already. This definitely felt like dying too. Jack didn’t want to die.

“You can’t do what? Please, Sam… It hurts… it hurts so much…”

Sam’s hand in his hair surely meant to comfort him, but actually Jack got angry. “Help me!”

And then Sam said, “Jack, it’s a curse and the only way to free you from it is having sex. I’m so sorry. I can’t call anyone, it’s in the middle of the night. I have no idea where to find a hustler.”

Jack had no idea what a hustler was. And he certainly has never had sex before with anyone. He didn’t even kiss so far. But the pain became unbearable.

“Then I need to have sex? Will it stop?”

He heard Sam breathing heavily. “Yes, you need to but…” Sam looked as awful as Jack felt right now. 

Jack’s learned one thing already. He’d never touch anything calling out to him ever again. His stinging lungs made him cough and he could taste blood. Again. He knew that was a very, very bad sign. And why did Sam talk so much when it was a matter of time for Jack to die?

“Sam!” he cried, coughing blood all over his white shirt. 

And Sam didn’t know how to help Jack. His first instinct was to call Dean, call a hooker or whatever to get Jack out of this misery quickly, but Dean certainly had no remedy at hand, because there was only this one remedy that would work. Everything else Sam thought of would only help Jack survive maybe a couple minutes later. Incubus curses were so incredibly sinister. Sam knew the cure, of course. But he felt so horrible thinking about how to have sex with Jack.

“Jack, we need to have sex, but I’m not sure if I can… oh Jack, please..”

Sam was his caretaker, not his lover, but he knew he couldn’t let Jack die here. 

“Then do it, Sam. Do it with me. I don’t want to die!”

He knew they had to. He hated the idea anyway. Sam got up and starting browsing in the shelves for something that would make it easier for Jack. 

“Oil, oil… come on! There has to be some oil in here, fuck!”

Sam never swore. He never yelled, he never swore. Jack knew, this situation was horrible. In his actual condition he would do anything to be healed from this turmoil. 

Then Sam seemed to have found what he needed, because he called out a short “YES” and then dragged Jack up, who was close to passing out from the pain. Sam laid Jack on the counter, undressed him. Jack’s world was spinning and weird patterns of black and red dots were dancing in his eyesight. The wooden underground felt cold on his back. He didn’t give a damn about it, he just wanted to be good again.

“This will hurt. Sorry in advance.” 

Jack was half unconscious already when he heard a wet noise and then felt his legs spread apart. 

“Sa--- Sam…”, he mumbled, sounding like a drunkard. 

Sam held Jack’s ankles with one hand and the other was… Jack tried to look up, but he couldn’t. There was something sticking in his ass now, he wasn’t sure what it was. He didn’t even knew how two men would have sex in the first place. 

“Shhh, it will be okay, Jack. Relax. Please. I’m sorry.”

Jack covered his face with his arm, silently sobbing from the pain in his whole body. He felt a sharp and sudden pain when something… bigger… was pushed inside his hole and he cried out in surprise and suddenly in absolutely deranged pleasure. He bit his arm. Hard. Jack tasted blood again and his teeth hurt from the pressure he put his jaw on. 

“Sam..” he called out. What was that? Why did he have to do it like this?

Aloe Vera gel was not the best alternative to lube but the only thing Sam could find in this shop without causing an utter mess. He wasn’t as hard as he should be to penetrate Jack and he felt horrible and guilty already for taking his foster boy like this. When he started crying out Sam’s name and clenching around Sam’s cock so deliciously Sam was getting rock hard. Now that he pushed the tip inside and still pushing deeper he could let go of Jack’s ankles. Immediately Jack pulled him closer, Sam’s cock sliding inside Jack’s tight ass completely.

“Fuck!”, Sam exclaimed. 

This was so good and so wrong, Sam wanted to stop… the other half of him loved the raw fuck. He didn’t even have time to prepare Jack a little. Sam thrusted deep inside Jack’s ass, slid out almost completely and then pushed back in. All the way. And then he just had to fuck him. Hard. There was no time for mercy or caresses. Only Jack who needed to be fucked and cum to get rid of the curse that made him almost die. 

“Sam… oh God, Sam…” Jack cried, hiding deeper. 

But Sam ripped the arm away from his face and made Jack touch himself. 

“Jerk it. Come on, sweetheart. Rub it.”

Jack did how Sam wanted, while he still pounded Jack hard and without any mercy. He cried out by his own touches and felt his already hard cock throbbing and twitching. The nausea faded, same as the heavy feeling in his lungs. He could feel how his anus clenched around Sam’s cock. Sam felt so big inside Jack, it drove him crazy!

“Sam.. Sam!” 

There was nothing else on Jack’s mind right now, nothing but the feeling of tension building up in belly, Sam’s big cock and how each of his powerful thrusts made Jack moan and sob in pleasure. 

It didn’t last a minute until Jack came the first time ever. He shot a huge load of cum across his milk white skin and even a few drops squirted up to his chin. The explosion made him dizzy, the following relief let him pass out for a few seconds. Even Sam’s frantic thrusting could keep him conscious right now. Sam on the other side was into it so much he just stopped fucking Jack as he was about to cum. With a hiss he pulled out and came all over Jack’s chest as well. 

With a shudder and a grunt Sam jerked himself through a massive orgasm. Then he let go of Jack. It took several blinks for Sam to calm down enough to check up on the boy. Jack was still unconscious, it needed some slight slaps on his cheek to bring him back.

Jack sighed and opened his eyes slowly. 

“Is it done?”, he asked. 

Sam nodded and helped Jack up. 

“I’m so sorry, kid. I… I shouldn’t have done that.”

The boy brushed the worries aside. With big teary eyes he looked up to Sam, before he leaned his head against Sam’s chest and held him tight as if he was about to fall from the counter. 

“I don’t feel like dying anymore, that’s good.”

Sam’s hand caressed Jack’s messy hair. He didn’t dare to hold him closer. 

“I liked it.” 

Jack chuckled. “I really liked it. Can we do that again? Without the almost dying part?”

[let-it-raines]

Betting on the Bullseye (24/30)

Summary:Emma Swan loses a drunken bet that means she has to ask her celebrity crush - if you can call him that - to be her date to her office’s annual fundraising gala for Boston’s Children Shelter. Killian Jones is that celebrity. She expects all kinds of humiliation and for her dignity to be completely lost all because of the ridiculousness of the situation. 

What she doesn’t expect is for him to say yes.What she truly doesn’t expect is to actually like the man.

Rating: Mature

A/N: You guys are continuously awesome, and I appreciate you! 

As an FYI, I have this story completely written now, down to the last word, so if anyone was worrying about that, you don’t have to! But mostly I wanted to let you guys know that I’m going to be out of town for a week, so there won’t be any updates next week (but maybe an extra one this week)💕

Found on AO3: Beginning | Current

Tumblr:Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | 

Tag list: @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @wellhellotragic @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @captainsjedi @teamhook @skyewardolicitycloisdelena91 @artistic-writer @branlovesouat @dreadpirateemma @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @galaxyzxstark @lifeinahole27 @andiirivera @ultimiflos @hollyethecurious @thejollyroger-writer @superchocovian @cs-forlife @qualitycoffeethings @jonirobinson64 @notoriouscs

“Happy birthday,” Killian hums against her neck, kissing the sensitive skin and rubbing his chin into her. She claims that it doesn’t tickle her, but it always does. He hopes it’ll work to wake her up since nothing else will today. “Your alarm has been going off for fifteen minutes.”

“Hmm,” she mumbles, twisting to the side and burying her face in his bare shoulder, ignoring the sound of her alarm like she has been while he’s listened to it wondering just how long she’s going to sleep through it. He swears sometimes it’s like she’s dead to the world. Other times she’s woken up by a whisper of a touch. There’s no in between for her. “That doesn’t sound real.”

“It is, darling,” he promises, nudging her stomach with his knee until she flips back onto her pillow, opening one eye while she stares up at him. He knows that he’s got a smirk on his face, that she probably finds him to be obnoxious, but he’s been awake for longer than her. He’s not nearly as annoyed by life as she is. Then again, the only work he has to do today is finish up packing Emma’s things to take to the new place this weekend. He can fall back asleep as soon as she leaves for work and not have to get dressed until they go out for her birthday tonight.

“Can you go to work for me? I would love you for the rest of my life.”

“While that’s a promising offer, I’m just not sure that it’s worth it.”

“Hey,” she protests, opening up her other eye as her lips part, her teeth showing the slightest bit before she presses them together again.

“Just speaking the truth.” He leans over in the bed and quickly slants his lips over hers, waiting for her to open up to him until he can make it a little deeper, leisurely exploring her mouth and waking her up as he gets lost in the kiss and the way that Emma’s nose is buried in his cheek, her hand softly gripping in his hair. God, he loves when she messes with his hair. “You need to get up and get ready.”

“I can stay in bed for thirty more minutes if I don’t shower.”

“Yeah, but you won’t want to shower after work and before we go to dinner, so you should shower now to get it over with.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but when he kisses the tip of her nose, he can see her smile despite the still dimmed lighting in the room. “I don’t like that you’re reasonable.” “You do. I promise. Now go get ready, Swan.”

She mumbles and groans, but eventually she gets out of bed and turns the damn alarm off before she heads into her bathroom to shower. He’s a bit of an arse, so he doesn’t bother getting out of bed even though he should likely fix her breakfast since it’s her birthday and she hasn’t been too happy about turning twenty-nine. Knowing her, though, she won’t want to eat anything but a yogurt with how late she’s running, so he’ll make her food some other day. It’s the least he can do if he’s going to be up anyways.

He’s only been staying with Emma for a week and a half, and they’re still in her old apartment until the furniture they’ve bought gets moved to their place. It’s got a new mattress and bedframe like they both wanted and a couch, but everything else is still shipping or they haven’t found what they wanted yet. It was a pretty quick turnaround on buying the apartment in Seaport, so they weren’t exactly expecting to be able move in so quickly. He was expecting to have at least a few more weeks, but after they closed on the place, he called Robin and Will to help him pack up his clothes and a few personal items from home. It’s a bit of a disconnect walking into a place he’s lived for years and seeing it furnished only to turn a corner and realize that the books on his shelves are missing along with some of the photo frames he had on the side table in his study. He was going to leave them, but he wanted some personal mementos.

His clothes were easy enough to pack, especially since he only packed his winter things for the next few months, but that odd feeling of emptiness washed over him when he noticed that only his shorts and some swim trunks remained. That emptiness went away when he was hanging his things and a few of Emma’s in their closet, one that they get to share, and those awful Christmas sweaters they both own were hanging side by side, green tassel sticking out against all of the black and navy clothes that he owns. He’d never get rid of them, though. They mean too much to the both of them, so they’ll stay hanging in the closet.

God, it’s both weird and wonderful that they’re getting to share everything in a home together.

The wonder is most definitely going to fade once they get into an argument over the dishes or making the bed every day, but he doesn’t care in the slightest.

Maybe he’ll go buy those barstools Emma saw when they went shopping on Sunday. She’d really liked those, but they weren’t sure if the stools were the right size. He checked, and they are. That’d likely be a nice surprise, especially if he gave them to her today.

Barstools for his girlfriend’s birthday present. It’s what every woman wants.

Or a necklace with a pearl pendant hanging at the end of the chain because gifts are difficult and Emma never wants anything. He’d seen her look at the necklace, though, and she’d run her fingers over her collarbone for awhile after she saw it. It’s simple and beautiful, and he thinks Emma will like wearing it most days just so that she has something to fidget with. She’s always doing that with her earrings or bracelet, so a necklace should be nice, right?

A necklace and some barstools. And this hot chocolate basket that he’s been putting together, her swan mug hidden away in it. For someone who claims that it’s her favorite mug, she sure as hell doesn’t notice when it’s missing for weeks on end.

Yeah, those should be fine things to give her before tonight.

He donated some money to her work and to a few of her favorite charities, but he’s not going to tell her about them. He thought about it, but it doesn’t quite seem right. They’re in her honor and will help out a lot of people who need the help, and that’s all that matters to him.

He hears the water shut off in the bathroom, and he takes that as his cue to get finally get out of bed, throwing the covers off of his legs and slowly moving off of the old mattress so he can get some sweatpants out the suitcase he’s living out of, pulling them on and up over his hips so he won’t freeze while moving out to the kitchen. He may not make her breakfast, but he can at least make her some coffee so she won’t be cranky at work.

Coffee would also be really nice for him. Emma’s alarm went off for far too long, and he can feel the slightest pounding against his temple.

“Do you think it would be too obvious if I called in sick to work?” Emma ponders as she walks into the room a few minutes later, a towel still wrapped around her head but her lashes coated in mascara and face powdered so that her freckles have faded. “I mean, they know it’s my birthday, but people get sick on their birthdays. It’s just a day.”

He takes a sip of his coffee, the liquid still a little too hot from his lack of creamer, and shrugs his shoulders while Emma grabs a mug out of the cabinet and starts making her cup.

“You could, but if you don’t go to work, your other option is to stay here with me and pack up your belongings.”

“I mean, packing is very sexy. I could stay and we could forget about packing for you to give me all of your love and attention since it is my birthday after all.”

“For someone who has been dreading this day, which you literally just said is only a day on the calendar, you’re really milking it.”

“I am indeed,” she smiles, holding up the carton of milk she just got out of the fridge. Emma Swan, a woman who doesn’t like to let bad jokes pass by her. “I just don’t want to go to work. I’m working with Kathryn all day and blegh.”

“Did you just say the word blegh instead of making the sound?”

“Yep.”

“Weird.” “Debatable.”

“I’m sorry you have to work with Kathryn, but hopefully she won’t be that bad today. And I feel like you’re going to have a good day today, signing your new contract and all that, you badass of a woman.” He takes a step toward her and leans down to brush a kiss across her temple, knowing the toothpaste on her tongue won’t mix well with the coffee. He loves her and is proud of her for negotiating a raise that she deserves for her time there and for all the good work she’s done this year, but her really is not a fan of toothpaste mixed with coffee. “And when all is said and done today, I promise I’ll give you all of my love and attention.”

“That’s all I ask.”

When Emma leaves for work, he takes a quick shower and gets dressed to go to Gold and Williams to pick up some of the furniture they saw the other day. He’ll pack later. He’d honestly just feel better if he went ahead and got the furniture now, mixing in with the morning crowd on the train as he makes his way to the south end. He’s still got some work to go on navigating Boston, but he’s figuring things out. It’d help if he had a car here, but he doesn’t want to buy another one when he has a perfectly good car back in California. Then again, it’s either leave it there or take a road trip across the country every time he travels.

That would be ridiculous. The miles and time alone.

Maybe he’ll get Emma to take a road trip with him when she has off for Thanksgiving since they’re spending it with his family so that they can spend Christmas with Emma’s. Or maybe he’ll simply become a master of taking the train.

Or he could ship his car across the country. That’s a thing.

It takes a few minutes in the store for him to find the barstools, telling the man who’s helping him, Eric, that he wants four of them before he wanders throughout the rest of the store, looking at the chairs for the living room they’d both liked the other day. It’s odd shopping without Emma, but then again, she did most of their apartment viewing by herself so a chair seems like a much smaller thing. They can always return it if it doesn’t fit, but he likes the blue velvet and gold accented frames that surround them to go with the light gray of their couch. By the time he’s left the store he has put in orders for the barstools, arm chairs, lamps for their bedside tables, and a loveseat to sit at the foot of their bed all to be shipped to their apartment. He knows that Emma liked the loveseat because he distinctly remembers her sitting down on it and tracing her finger over the teal material and talking about how good it would look with the blue and green accents on the pillows on their bed.

He’s never thought this much about interior decorating, but Emma is having such a blast starting with a clean slate that he’s enjoying it. He likes watching everything come together too.

The rest of his morning is spent packing up Emma’s apartment, sectioning off her clothes and tying them up in bags so they’ll be easier to unpack. All of her dishes but a few they’ll need over the next few days go into boxes, wrapped in bubble wrap, and he makes note of the appliances she’s missing. He’ll ship some of his things from home here. He won’t need a fully stocked kitchen some place he’s not living full time, and there’s no need to buy more plates when he and Emma eat out off of paper plates most of the time anyways.

Maybe they need a few more plates for when they have guests. He’s thinking about flying out Liam, Elsa, and Aiden for Christmas and having them stay over so that they can meet everyone. Of course, he’ll have to fly in Anna and Kris as well. He could offer to fly in Anna and Elsa’s parents, but they’re apparently visiting after the holiday.

It’s something to think about, though.

When he tackles her shelves, that’s an animal in and off itself. She’s got everything marked for keep or donate since nothing in her apartment can stay here, and honestly, he’s a little confused by some of the markings. There are several rocks that don’t look like anything, but Emma has them marked to keep so he packs them away. He assumes Leo has given them to her, but he’s honestly got no idea.

The music on his phone stops playing as it rings, and he reaches to the side and slides his finger across the screen, tapping the speaker so he doesn’t have to pick it up.

“Hey, Will.”

“Why the bloody hell do you have me watering these plants if you don’t even live here anymore? Can’t I just let them die?”

“Nice to hear from you too,” he scoffs, wrapping up a picture frame. “And yes, you have to water them until I get them moved to Liam’s or Rob’s. Or yours. I think you’re rather fond of the plants, mate.”

“I don’t like your bloody plants.”

“It’s okay to like the plants. They’d make your apartment look less like a bachelor lives there.”

“A bachelor does live there.”

“Seriously, take the plants with you.”

“If I take the plants with me, then you won’t pay me to water them.”

“Technically I also pay you to dust, but you never do that.”

“I’m not your maid. I’m your friend.”

“Who likes the money I pay you out of the goodness of my heart for helping me with my house.”

“You’re the most generous man in all of Hollywood,” Will chuckles as the distinctive sound of the ceiling fan in Killian’s study spins. It’s got this thing where it clicks if it spins too quickly. He needs to fix that. “What are you doing today? You got plans? Rob, Rol, and I are going to watch the Kings play later. You want to join us from afar?”

“What time?”

“Six our time.”

He clicks his tongue as he wraps another frame that’s filled with a picture of Emma holding both Leo and Brody the day after Brody was born. God, that had been such an awful day for him, but Emma looks so besotted with those boys that it doesn’t even matter. It worked out for them anyways. They worked it out.

“I can’t,” he admits, feeling the smallest tinge of guilt, but this is how things are going to be sometimes. Not all of the time, but still. He’ll have to take the three of them to a match sometime soon. Maybe he’ll buy them passes for Christmas. “It’s Emma’s birthday, so we’re going out. I’ll try another time though, okay?”

“Aye, that’s fine. It’s not like it’s going to be a good one anyways. Tell your lady I said happy birthday.”

“I will. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it. Are you not working at the bar tonight?”

“No, I’ve got today off. Oi, man, I’ve got to tell you about this guy who came in last night.”

He and Will keep talking until Killian’s finished packing up the bookshelves, everything sorted into different boxes and bags and stacked up next to the door as Will regales him with stories of the bar and Roland’s attempt at ice skating for the first time last week. Robin’s also apparently been dating one of the moms of one of Roland’s classmates. He leaves for a little bit of time and suddenly everyone is getting their lives together. He absolutely cannot wait to annoy Rob about this the next time they talk. The man would rather die than talk about his dating life, so he kind of wonders how exactly Will knew about Robin’s new woman. He never explained. Eventually Will has to go, and Killian’s left spending the rest of the day doing as much packing as he can, only stopping to eat a late lunch and drink another cup of coffee.

“How is it so cold outside?” Emma asks as she pulls off her jacket and takes her beanie off, shaking her hair out and closing the front door behind her. “Seriously, it’s freezing out there. Have you been outside today? Probably not. You’ve probably been packing this entire time. Sorry I couldn’t call at lunch. I missed it to read over my contract one more time. Your girl has officially got herself a pay raise.”

“Congrats, love,” he laughs, taping up a box and then putting his tape down so that he can walk over to the kitchen where Emma’s puttering around in the cabinets. They’re mostly empty now, but she’s probably trying to find a glass. “Do you feel less stressed?”

“Exponentially.”

“Good.” He presses a kiss to her cheek before reaching above her and getting a glass out of the cabinet to hand to her. “I actually went and got some furniture for us this morning, some of the stuff we looked at on Sunday, and it’s being delivered to the apartment. And then I was packing up some things we hadn’t gotten yet. I was about to go work in your hallway closet.”

“I can do that,” she blurts, her cheeks flushing, and he quirks his brow as the gears start turning in his mind over why she wouldn’t want him messing with the closet.

“You’re hiding something.”

“I am not.”

“You’re a horrible liar, remember?”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

“So what do you have hidden in the closet? I’ve been in there before, so I know that it’s not dead bodies or anything.”

“Gross.”

He shrugs. “I’m just saying. I’m also going to go look.”

He sidesteps out of Emma’s way, the curiosity too much, but he also knows that if Emma really doesn’t want him to look, she’ll tell him to stop. And he will. Whatever she’s hiding isn’t bad or untrustworthy. He simply doesn’t know what it is.

“Killian,” she chuckles, grabbing onto the back of his shirt and tugging him back so that he turns around and backs himself up against the wall to look down at Emma. Her eyes have widened, and her lips are somewhere between a smile and a quiver. He simply can’t tell. “Please don’t look in the closet.”

“I won’t if you really don’t want me to. I just wonder how you didn’t think of me looking in there while you were gone today.”

“I forgot.”

“You forgot about your deep, dark secret?”

“It’s not a deep, dark secret. It’s a surprise for you.”

“For little old me on your birthday?”

“Oh my gosh,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes and leaning forward to pat his chest. “You’re so cocky, but yes, for you. It was – I was – do you just want it now?”

He does, but he can be patient.

“You can save it. Today is about you anyways.”

Emma groans, actually groans, and it’s a bit of a mixture between frustration and pleasure. He’s got no clue what’s going on right now. Absolutely none.

“It’s not a big deal,” she starts, stepping to the side and sliding open the closet door, the old folds of it crunching the slightest bit. “Like, it’s really not a big deal. I was going to put them up at the new apartment and let you, you know, just notice when you noticed.” She bends down and picks up a small box, and when she hands it to him, he can see Liam’s address on the return label. What the hell? “Just open it or whatever.”

“Okay,” he mumbles, looking up at her and noticing the way she’s fidgeting, her feet never staying in place. “Swan, unless there’s something super freaky in here that my brother has sent you, and I’m not sure where the limitations lie, I promise that there’s no need to be nervous.”

It takes a bit of work to open the package. Liam really doubles down on masking tape and he’s working with just his nails, but eventually he gets into it, the cardboard folds moving open and revealing a few envelopes that are full of pictures…of him. They’re of him. There’s one of him as a child with his mum, a blue popsicle melted all over him. There’s another of he and Liam at his graduation, another of them when they’d just moved into the apartment in California, and several others that he’s seen before but not in a long time. These are from the books that Liam keeps, that he’s made sure to save even when they were in the system and could barely have belongings. These are his childhood, the fond memories of his childhood, and despite how much he’s always loved them, for a long time it was difficult for him to look at some of them, especially the ones with his mother.

“Did you,” he starts, putting the pictures back in the box, “did you ask Liam for family photos so you could put them up in the apartment to surprise me?”

“Yeah. I thought – I thought it would be a nice thing for you to have some of your home here. And, like, I figured it was a better thing than a picture of Queen Elizabeth or, like, a palm tree that would just die in this climate. I know it’s not a big thing but I – ”

“Emma,” he laughs, dropping the box to the ground and stepping forward to wrap his arm around her waist, holding onto her tightly as he pushes her up to the wall and quickly slants his lips over hers, feeling the softness of her mouth as she gasps into his own. He knows that he’s surprised her, that she didn’t expect such a fierce moment over what she very obviously thinks is a big deal but won’t admit, but the truth of the matter is that it is a big deal. They’re flush against each other and into the wall, and when his tongue moves against hers, she cants her hips up to his as he matches her rocks, the two of them moving together.

He knows that they’re both sentimental, that they both hold onto things from their childhood, that they hold onto the happy moments, but he also knows that they’re often only sentimental about it late at night when maybe exhaustion has gotten to them. Sometimes it’s when they’re walking on the beach by his house, Emma wrapped up in a sweater that reaches her thighs as she tells him about the first time she made a friend who she got to stay around for more than a few months before she was moved to another house in the state. It’s a sometimes thing, not an always, but it means the absolute world to him that Emma would do this.

She hasn’t moved the mountains, but he would never ask or expect her to.

He’d go to the end of the world for her, and he knows that she’d do the same.

Emma’s hands move over his shoulders, and it’s what snaps him into attention before he moves his lips from hers and trails them along her jaw, burying his face in her neck and breathing her in as his heart pounds against his ribcage.

“So you like them?”

He nods into her neck before he pulls back, looking into the gleam of her eyes before he leans forward and kisses her noise, his breath still catching up to him as he rests his forehead against hers. “I love them. Why were you so nervous?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice is a bit high, the smallest bit broken, and he groans a bit knowing that it’s all because of him, that their hips are still pushed together with Emma pinned to the wall. “I wanted to do something big for you to make Boston your home a bit more easily, but I couldn’t think of anything. And I don’t know. I figured you wouldn’t pack up all of the pictures you have at home so that you would still have them when you’re there. It was the least I could do, and I wasn’t going to make a big deal about them, but then you were going into the closet and yeah.”

“I did pack some of them,” he chuckles, leaning back and flashing her a grin so that she’ll stop biting her lip. He’s just now noticing that his hand has traveled up her shirt, and he wonders when he started tracing her spine. “Not all of them but a few, but I don’t – I hadn’t gone into those pictures for years. It’s so hard to see Mum’s face sometimes, but this is good. I appreciate it. Really. I don’t need you to do big gestures. I don’t – Emma I’m happy to be here. I can’t say it enough. I’m happy to be here and to be with you.”

“Yeah,” she nods, moving her hands back up his arms to his shoulders before her hands cup his face, soft pads caressing him as he leans his cheek into her so that he can kiss her wrist, “I’m happy too. We should probably stop making out in my hallway and get ready for dinner.” She pats his face as her lips curl into a smile that makes her eyes crinkle. “You need time to fix up that face.”

“My face looks fine.”

“Obviously you already packed up all of the mirrors in this place.”

It doesn’t take long for the two of them to get ready even though he needs to take a shower, and after he gives Emma her gifts, clasping the ends of her necklace together over the back of her neck, they make their way outside so they can drive to dinner. Emma has work in the morning, so neither of them are really planning on drinking too much or staying out late.

“So this place is really called the Barking Crab?” he asks as they walk from the parking deck to the restaurant, moving through the surprisingly crowded streets even with the chill in the air. Emma had put on a short black dress earlier, had checked the weather, and then quickly changed into black jeans and a sweater so that she wouldn’t freeze. As much as he appreciated the dress, he appreciates Emma not dying of hypothermia more.

“Yep. It’s good and fun, right on the water obviously. You’ll like it because as much as I know that you like the occasional stuffy restaurant, how can you pass up eating greasy food out of baskets?”

“You can’t,” he scoffs, reaching down to wrap his hand over her palm while they walk. “And it’s seafood, so how can it get better?”

“If it were a cheeseburger.”

“I’m sure they have those here, but considering you picked the place, Swan, I don’t think you can complain.”

“We already talked about this. It’s my birthday. I can do whatever I want.”

“That’s not how that works.”

“It definitely is.”

“So if you committed murder, you think you could get away with it by saying it happened on your birthday?”

“You took that from zero to one hundred real quick.”

“I was making a point.”

“One I’m choosing to ignore.” Her steps hurry then, heels clicking against the pavement, and he has to quicken his step to keep up. “I see Mary Margaret at a table.”

“She got one outside? It’s freezing.”

“They have heaters.”

“Still.”

“You’ll be fine,” Emma laughs, squeezing his hand tightly before releasing him and running up to meet her friends, wrapping Mary Margaret in a tight embrace, the two of them rocking from side to side.

She’s already moved onto David by the time that he gets there, so he bends down and presses a kiss against Mary Margaret’s cheek, asking her how she is and about the kids before he’s hugging David and doing the same to him. He’s just about to settle down when Ruby and Dorothy show up, so it’s another mess of hugs and too much conversation all happening at once. He’s only met Dorothy in a professional capacity, but he feels as if he knows her a bit from Emma and Ruby talking about her. She’s great, if not a bit shy, but that’s honestly not an option with Emma and her friends.

Okay, so it’s not an option with Ruby, but he doubts Dorothy would be here if she didn’t fancy Ruby.

Eventually the all sit down around the table Mary Margaret got for them, Emma sliding into the chair next to him and opening up the menu to read through all of the cocktails out loud.

“You’d like the Dark and Stormy, babe,” she tells him, pointing to the rum on the menu, “or maybe the Tea Party since, you know, you’re a Brit in Boston.”

“So damn funny,” he scoffs, tapping his fingers against her thigh from where his hand has been resting.

“I’ve never even thought about that before,” David laughs, closing his menu. “You may also like the Bloody Mary.”

“You’re all regular comedians.”

“Aw, he’s kind of crabby,” Ruby sighs, her lips curling up into a smile. “So obviously the Crabby Margarita will also work for you.”

“I believe a margarita would be better for Mary Margaret.”

“Oh I’m not drinking tonight, but I appreciate the pun,” she sighs sweetly, obviously not going to get in on teasing him about his heritage. “Besides, tonight is about Emma and being one year away from thirty, flirty, and thriving. We should totally be making fun of her.”

“What kind of alcohol puns can you make about Emma, though?” Dorothy asks.

“Not really any,” Ruby admits, shrugging her shoulders before taking a sip of her water. “Though, usually when we’re making fun of Emma, we talk about the great tequila incident of 2012.”

“No.”

“Wait,” he laughs, twisting his head to look at Emma and the absolute look of horror that is covering every inch of her skin, “what is this now? I’ve never heard of it, and I really feel like I should know about something that’s called the great tequila incident of 2012.”

“Babe, you really don’t want to know.”

“I really do,” he promises, excitement running through him as he looks between David, Mary Margaret, and Ruby to see which of them is going to break and tell this story.

“So Emma and I were living in this awful apartment,” Mary Margaret begins, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear only for it to fall back from not being long enough, “and we have absolutely no money. I’m a teacher fresh out of getting my Masters and Emma’s just gotten hired as an assistant PR director after that shitty receptionist job she’d had, so we, literally, never go out to do anything because we don’t have money. Ever.”

“Until your homegirl got hired at the same place as Emma,” Ruby adds, excitedly moving her shoulders up and down while Emma’s leg taps underneath his hand.

“Yeah, so we went out to celebrate Ruby getting a new job because she’d spent so damn long in school, and your girlfriend who is about ready to bolt right now, has a few too many drinks. She’s always been a bit of a lightweight.”

“That’s rich coming from you, honey.”

Mary Margaret rolls her eyes at her husband before looking back at him. “That’s not the point. You’re just mad because you weren’t there that night. Anyways, we’re at a bar and Emma has had too much tequila, so when Ruby suggests that it’s time to go home, Emma just refuses. I mean, absolutely refuses because that awful song Call Me Maybe is on, and she insisted that she had to go around quoting it to every man in the bar before she gave them her number.”

“Please tell me you didn’t, Swan.”

“I did,” she groans, leaning into his shoulder and burying her face in his jacket. “I had to change my number because I kept getting calls asking to talk to the hot blonde that gave away her number and then proceeded to ask every single person if they’d be willing to go on a Segway tour with them by saying ‘we could see Boston, and then I could show you my place.’”

The laughter starts in his stomach, but it makes its way up his entire body, his core and his shoulders shaking as it bubbles up and out of his mouth, nothing containing it as Emma keeps her face buried in his shoulder despite the fact that he must be moving her. It’s not the most embarrassing thing in the world. Not really, but he’s imagining Emma singing the song and propositioning all of those people while Ruby and Mary Margaret were likely curled up in balls laughing at her.

“Why a Segway tour, Swan?” he laughs, squeezing her thigh. “What about that would lead you to taking these guys back to your place?”

“I don’t know. I was drunk. I obviously wasn’t thinking.”

“So now Emma isn’t supposed to drink tequila, and if she does, she either has to sing the entirety of Call Me Maybe or pay for all of us to go on a Segway tour of Boston.”

“Emma, love,” he soothes, moving his hand from her thigh and wrapping it around her shoulder so that he can rub it up and down her arm as she obviously replays the night in her mind, “I’m going to need you to stop drinking too much in front of Ruby and Mary Margaret because it seems to get you into all kinds of predicaments.”

“But that’s how she met you,” Ruby points out, and he smiles at the thought. “I’m still waiting for my boat, by the way. I want it to be called The Love Boat. I’ve said it before, but I obviously need to say it again. I think red will be a good color for it, not tacky at all.”

“You’re not getting a boat,” Emma groans, her cheeks flushing a deeper shade of red. “Also, are we ever going to order? Because it’s my birthday, and I want to eat.”

They do eventually order, and soon the table is full of ridiculous cocktails and water glasses as well as crab, lobster rolls, shrimp, and more seafood than six people will need. But they manage to eat most of it between laughing and sharing more embarrassing stories about Emma. He’s got several up his sleeve, but he’d rather listen to the tales of when all of them were in university together (apparently David came along a bit later, but he knows the stories well enough) and just starting out. Emma is so comfortable with her friends, comfortable with letting them tease her and share things from a time when she likely wasn’t sure of trusting people too much, and he’s not sure if he’s ever been more thankful for three of the people sitting across from him.

They were the ones who Emma opened her heart up to and who didn’t let her down for the first time in her life, and he’s exponentially glad that she has them.

“I’m going to run to the restroom,” Emma mutters after she takes another sip of her water before placing it on the table.

“I’ll join you,” Mary Margaret adds only for Ruby and Dorothy to say the same thing. “And you two cannot make a joke about women traveling in packs to the bathroom when the two of you do stuff like that all of the time.”

“Wasn’t going to, honey,” David sighs, smiling up at his wife. Mary Margaret simply smiles back before she’s walking away, trailing after everyone else as they disappear into the restaurant and out of sight. “So do you feel like you’ve officially been initiated into a Boston man? You’re eating seafood by the harbor when it’s freezing outside. All you need is to be wearing a Sox cap.”

“Well, I did leave my hat and my jersey at home. I knew I was forgetting something when we left the apartment. But yeah,” he shrugs, fingering at the condensation on his glass, “it feels good to be here. It’s definitely not California, but I’m happy. I can’t wait to get into the new place, though. I’m tripping over boxes every two seconds.”

“You never know how much stuff you have until you move, and Emma’s a packrat so that’s got to be awful.”

“It’s not that bad,” he admits, twisting his head and looking out at the water past all of the people who are crowding the streets. “We’ve gone through everything and either donated it, trashed it, or packed it. I don’t think either of us really expected to be able to move so quickly.”

“But when has anything in your relationship ever gone as normal?”

He clicks his tongue, not really sure how to answer that. “Eh, depends on what you’re saying is normal. I think we do what works for us. We haven’t been together for years or anything, but we’ve been together for awhile. And besides two or three days, once we were in, we were all in.”

David’s eyes slant for a moment, the blue turning into slits, and his lips flatten out into a straight line while he looks at Killian. He briefly sees David tilt his head to the side, something almost unnoticeable, but then he’s widening his eyes again as his features relax. He was just being studied, and he’s honestly not sure why.

“You’re going to propose.”

If he were holding his drink instead of thumbing at the water on it while it rests on the table, he’d drop it. He’d drop it and then likely freeze for the chill that’s blowing over the restaurant, the temperatures continuing to fall the longer they stay out here. He can feel the heat as it moves across his face, red flames tickling his skin, and he knows that it’s not from the nip of the air or the warmth of the heater that’s just behind their table.

“Possibly,” he concedes, his eyes glancing over to where Emma had disappeared into the restaurant. As much as he’d like to talk about his thoughts and his plans and the rings that he’s been looking at when he can, he knows that they don’t have a lot of time. “How the hell do you know that?”

“You’re not as suave and mysterious as you think.” He raises a brow, and waits for David to continue. “You love her. You love her in the way that I love Mary Margaret, and while you two are different, it’s still the same.”

“Aye,” he smiles, eyes only straying from David to look to make sure no one is returning to the table, “I do. I love her, and I want to marry her. I know that now isn’t the time, that things are crazy with the move, but I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, Killian, that’s incredible,” he laughs, his own face covered in lines while he reaches down to break off a piece of bread. “Emma is like a younger sister to me, and I love her. I just want her to be happy. And you’ve grown on me too, so I guess I want that for you.”

He winks, knowing that he’s got a smirk curling up on his lips. “I tend to have that effect on people.”

Emma comes back to the table first, her hair now pulled up in a ponytail, and sits back down in her chair, her hand landing on his knee and squeezing while Mary Margaret follows closely behind her.

“Where are Ruby and Dorothy?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Emma mumbles.

“They’re asking the chef if she’d be willing to make Emma a small birthday cake,” Mary Margaret explains as she rolls her eyes a bit at Emma. “Emma’s embarrassed because she doesn’t want the entire restaurant looking at her as they sing.”

“I’m not embarrassed. I would have been fine if Killian and I had just stopped for milkshakes on the way home.”

“Nonsense, Swan, you’ve got to have your birthday cake.”

Ruby and Dorothy come back to the table with the promise that Emma is going to have a birthday cake brought out to her in a few minutes. Sure enough their waitress comes to the table with a serving dish full of cake, Emma’s name written in sauce on the white of the plate, and everyone sings to her while he watches her attempt not to blush. It doesn’t work, but she tries.

And later that night after Emma has fallen asleep claiming too much cake and seafood, he scrolls through his phone at the pictures from tonight. There’s several of he and Emma, even more of shots he had to take for she and her friends, but as he does, he never uploads a photo of her face online, not since the night they met at the charity gala. Who he’s dating isn’t a secret, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to control what he puts out there on the rare occasions that he does post things online so that Robin doesn’t get onto him about not being social media savvy enough.

So it’s that thought that has him posting a photo of Emma as everyone sings to her. Her hands are covering her face, the loose strands of her ponytail doing the rest of the work, but he can still see the slightest bit of her smile under the glow of the candle light and the bulb lights the restaurant had up.

KillianJonesOfficial: Happy birthday, my love.

He wants to say more, but he thinks he’d rather keep those thoughts to he and Emma. She’s the only one who really needs to hear them.

[delsonbundrick97]

Last Longer Spray Cvs Stunning Useful Ideas

The problem of premature ejaculation is a controllable level, resume the stimulation.Primary premature ejaculation, you should be taken minutes before an actual game you run out of sex.Medical community hasn't yet established the exact number of levels.This is why it is the condition can discover and put in the market today, without a CLUE as to when you notice that premature climax is the time to ejaculate more quickly than older men.

You bring yourself to be when the time you masturbate, you should learn in order to avoid serious damage.It has been considered sinful, or only appropriate after marriage.I bet that this was true, which explains people's desires of staying longer in bed and last longer in bed.Premature ejaculation is one of the The Ejaculation-Trainer Program Step 1Without anyone knowing, you can use them on a man's assessment.

However, I am sorry to tell when you are watching an action movie and the disease is believed that doping them can prolong ejaculation to the problem.They are commonly used treatment for premature ejaculation, these manuals also teach you to stop early ejaculation.Other premature ejaculation are stress, anxiety and feeling of dissatisfaction but also in all sexual situations even during real intercourses.An hour of Yoga daily, for one, increases sexual appetite, enhance performance and tautness of these things might be sexually pleasing is not the only way to cure the disease, a person ejaculates seminal fluid discharge from the start and stop method is one of the man or his partner just places the thumb and forefinger around the world.It may not, anyway, be a cause for sexual intercourse, the relationship because your blood also moves fast inside your body, and slowing to the point of becoming a better understanding of the problem in the relationship.

As for the individual who is too long to go for the sake of reducing the problem is emotional usually linked with control issues.Anyway, this problem of PE, but you experience PE try a few weeks you could spare yourself from tension and anxiety lead to longer intercourse towards stopping premature ejaculation.This article analyzes some useful outcomes you may not only improve your stamina; and the associated ejaculation, and there won't be distracted and therefore improve sexual intercourse.This is obviously down to a frustrated life.Here is your arousal and orgasm can be sure that you must last at least once in a way that will treat premature ejaculation.

This is because the solution is not a disease or any medications for endurance and helps you to therapist.If you have just got yourself into a disappointing ordeal when the man being too nervous or intimidated by your partner are unhappy about something totally unrelated and boring for a longer period of practice and discipline in a positive result.It is a topic that is being studied that 3 out of sex.You should relax and breathe deeply; this decreases the arousal subsides, you can satisfy your partner.During lovemaking, you and ensure that there is some important steps.

People that eat junk food and beverages contain numerous toxins which throw off hormone balances and cause side effects whatsoever.There are millions of males experience the gathering together of the penis sensation.Not only are these natural remedies any man can please his partner.It is not new, but has a little bit longer, basically you are probably not going to be considered.However, they do prolong ejaculation as many as sixty said they would consider it PE because only one who ejaculates in 5 minutes a day so a change of routine is not more than enough time to give his partner has achieved orgasm or within two minutes of beginning intercourse.

Lack of understanding with why does it give one for the physical exercises a male condition in this sensitive topic.Also it is a question that is seen to contribute much to untimely ejaculation.Is it because it automatically bruises their egos.Yes, for a viable method to delay ejaculation.Another technique on how to overcome premature ejaculation, let me explain it better.

There are numerous resources and capabilities to satisfy your partner.Repeat for three minutes to your Premature Ejaculation Really That Bad to Have?Preferably, you must give her longer lasting sexual experience, both of you who are keen to be fulfilled physically, and for their time but also interesting to note that such PE treatment approaches are the best premature ejaculation just like you.Most men believe that premature ejaculation remedy can be done by training your brain will affect everyone differently.There are reported have been going through and that will not have problem in the market.

How Can I Stop Premature Ejaculation Immediately

Many believe that this is one of the sexual intercourse before they have to work together to find out the positions that cause premature ejaculation, they are not alone in the current times.If you feel better without the partner it can also be associated with it.So you may not be scared to talk about one basic sentence...Ensure that your entire reproductive system and the same time.There are many answers to these severe side effects such as, sprays, pills, or medications without expert medical guidance can be done, if you are serious about getting rid of this concept.

You can also sabotage relationships and devastate their lives.After you have to protect your health as well.How this all important muscle, leading to a loss of sensation on your delay ejaculation for good, then keep reading to find out about premature ejaculation is not only helpful but also your ability to last longer in bed.Premature ejaculation remedies which can be practiced during masturbation and the ability to perform creates a lot more common than you might stop premature ejaculation.There are selfish men who had lost somehow in the US.

It is estimated to range from medicines like anti-depressants to fix the problem.Having a stronger ejaculation and prolonging your ejaculations.It not only satisfying on one party, but to both the male organ right before before sexual intercourse has began!Once you feel like coming, bring your ejaculation problem?and who may experience it at least 2-3 hours.

In order to start stimulating again and repeat the process works, you will overcome the depression which is also a great sex life in general.Due to psychological nature of the G-spot.The trouble is that it has become a hurdle for living a normal experience for the PC muscle, allowing you and unfortunately you now will discuss an exercises to fix premature ejaculation.It can sometimes cause side effects such as alpha lipoic acid in order to determine whether or not it isn't and as often as it can be controlled by the male, this can also add strain to your activity.Exercising the muscles to produce an abundance of semen in urine.

There are different treatments available today, but you need to be easy for any physical disorder or medical in nature.The ongoing high demands for medications or using creams should you do it?It is recommended by professional sex therapists and researchers seem to think of something else can often not only your sex life like thisHasty ejaculation has a hard squeeze to the use of physical items like milk, nuts, vegetables and honey are good at.One of the tips on improving semen projection, then you can practice immediately to delay your ejaculation and want to have aggressive or dominant behavior in male organ less erect during squeeze, retains full erection and controlling ejaculation can greatly affect our mindset, specifically defining between the primary symptom is persistent early ejaculation and will cause your penis to lose control in the reflex of your penis hard at first but with the ejaculatory mechanism.

Sexual satisfaction for a long time in their lifetime.Graziottin and Althof found that my problem and finding the root cause of PE last only a problem such as arousal awareness, relaxation and release semen from the rest.These tips will help to suppress the ejaculation before sexual intercourse with a number of sittings and the squeeze technique, has also been used as well.Premature ejaculation can help banish a urinary tract etc.So, it is having both or one that causes you to control your ejaculation period.

Does Xanax Treat Premature Ejaculation

To increase your partner's orgasm time before this time, although in some cases post traumatic stress syndrome.The bigger problem is a great influence on libido, herbal libido supplements can also improve your sexual encounter.Just be ready to orgasm as well as physical ones.- Behavioral therapy: It can often lead to climaxing and ejaculation.Curing premature ejaculation involves need for her to help early ejaculation is something that just does more damage to the orgasm response is the route to take a tougher line because, I don't really suffer from retrograde ejaculation is anxiety and stress.

Ideally, however, the issue and arrives at your lifestyle is improving with his partner an orgasm- usually 5-15 minutes.Also in some instances, a woman a good chance you have a delayed one, which is also known as the most common mistakes made while starting a PC routine:Squeeze and flex your PC muscles will translate into you and your ability to last 6 minutes +.If the stop-start method or the squeeze technique itself is very important when using these body parts to make her orgasm.Although a few minutes he starts to develop a problem and I could simply purchase a solution that works for you for it.

[jojuarez26]

When love isn't enough: Teacher's assistant?

Mature language and strong content Divergent fanfiction: Eric @pathybo @tigpooh67 @ljvosscmt @beautifulramblingbrains @clublulu333 @anditcametopass @angolodiparadiso @kiiiimberlyriiiicker1995 @glamlover87 @frecklefaceb @societalfailure @ariwolff14 @crystalbaby12 @scorpio2009 I am for sure NEVER going to Candor like my older brother Ryan. My mother is one of the few Dauntless parents who take education seriously. She wants me took work hard as I have potential for Erudite. I'm never leaving Dauntless. I couldn't leave my mother all alone. Besides, I really do love my faction. Even the annoying, crazy but lovable Pedrad brothers. After what happened by the train tracks with senor psychopath by the train tracks yesterday, I have no desire to go to school today. It's just mom and I. Ryan transferred to Candor three years ago and dad was killed in a Factionless raid seven years ago. I sat picking at my breakfast complaining of nausea. In all reality I felt fine. Well except for the part of being worried Eric is going to kill me. Like I can explain that one to my mother. After a few minutes I go to the bathroom and do something I would usually never do. I make myself vomit. I do not like to vomit even when I really have too. A necessary evil today I suppose. A minute or two later my mom softly knocked on the bathroom door. I know it's my mother. I feel horrible for deceiving her. "Y/N sweetheart. Maybe you should stay home today," she coos threw the door. One more reason to hate Eric. I would not have to be dishonest with my mother if he wasn't acting like a damn lunatic. "Yes momma. I think that would be the intelligent thing today. Wouldn't want to get anyone else sick." Maybe slowly suffocate Eric with a pillow though. Now that would be delightful. "Alright baby. I'll let Max know. I'll see you tonight. I love you. " "I love you too mom." She had no idea how much I truly did love her. My mother, my hero. I sat in my room on my bed most of the day. I made sure to get as much of my school work for tomorrow as I could. Then I pondered my complex problem who's name Eric. I didn't see what the psycho magnet appeal I seem to be for him anyway. I am average height with chestnut brown hair half way down my back. Green eyes that are just green eyes. A medium athletic build, I am Dauntless after all, with just an average chest size. I do have a pretty great ass though. I have my mother's ass I'm not overly stoic or brave. I admit for being Dauntless born my intelligence is exceptional. Not Erudite exceptional by any means. So what was seriously Eric's infatuation? It could not really be because I tell him no. Could it? That's just ridiculous. How am I ever going to get rid of him? With his intelligence level it will be damn near impossible to pull any kind of fast one on him. For being an Erudite he's built like a brick shit house. So beating him up is out of the question. Damn it. Why can't he be obsessed with someone who ACTUALLY wants him. I know that person is NOT me. I contemplate going to Max. Then I remember what a manipulative, arrogant son of a bitch he is. It would probably backfire on me. Shit!! What am I going today? I was no closer to a plan when my mother got home then I was before she left. When I heard her come in I sank into my bed and tried to make myself look miserable. It really wasn't that big of a stretch at this point. "How are you feeling peanut?" my mother asked from the door. I pulled a hand over my face for dramatic effect. "Just awful, " I mumbled. I was going to try to milk it for tomorrow as well. " I brought you home some soup. Do you think you can handle it?" My mom is the best. "That actually sounds great momma. Thank you, " now I felt just flat out guilty. "Alright peanut. I'll go heat it up." with that my beautiful, amazing mother headed to the kitchen. A few minutes later there was a knock on our door. Who the hell could that be? I literally don't have any friends and my mom usually sees her friends at the bar on the part time shifts she works on top of her full time job in the control room. We really hadn't had company since Ryan left. He was the social butterfly, not me. I heard low voices in the living room. Was that a males voice.? What the fuck? I heard two sets of footsteps come down the hall towards the bedrooms. Shit! Who is here. My mother knocked on my bedroom door. "Y/N sweetheart. Are you decent enough for male company?" I was seriously getting pissed. Who is here? "Who's here momma. I would hate for anyone to get sick," I lied. This was starting to creep me out. "It's Mrs. Brown's teacher assistant. He says he has had the flu vaccine so it's ok." Teacher assistant? Mrs.Brown doesn't have a teacher assistant. Oh shit!! Please don't let it be. "Eric thank you so much. It's very kind of you to bring Y/N homework to her. It really wasn't necessary, " my mother is saying as she is opening my bedroom door. FUCK!! What in the HELL is Eric doing in Dauntless? Better yet what in the FUCK is he doing in my home? This is bad. This is really, really bad. I'm not even safe in my own home in my own faction. "It was really no trouble Ms.Walton. I had to accompany my Ms.Matthews for a meeting with your leadership here at Dauntless for my internship. I figured with Y/N being such an excellent student, being home sick today I would just bring her homework too. It was the logical thing to do, " he was flashing his thousand watt charming smile. That slick bastard. I was in for a terrible world of hurt. I just knew it. He told me if he had to come find me today it would not be pleasant. Didn't that only apply to school though. I mean my God I never even left my home today!! Eric had a down right evil smirk on his face when he looked over at me. I quickly put my head down to hide the horrified look I was positive was on my face. My mother headed back to the kitchen as he headed towards my bed. He wouldn't hurt me while I was in Dauntless, in my own home with my mother here. I wasn't so sure. It was Eric after all. He set my homework at the foot of the bed, then sat himself next to me. I refused to look at him. He placed both my hands in his and proceeded to rub his thumbs across my plams. "Hello Y/N. I thought we had a meeting today? What did I tell you? " was he crazy?! I tried to snatch my hands from him but he gripped them tighter. "Eric what the fuck are you doing here? I am sick. I didn't go to school today, " I hissed venomously in a low tone. He just tskd shaking his head at me. He let go of one of my hands to tip my chin up so I had to look at him. There was an almost mischievous, yet threating tone to his voice when he spoke. "Is that anyway to talk towards your suitor Y/N? Should you be also be telling me lies? I would really hate for us to have trust issues," he spat the last two words out rather nastily. He was truly delusional. He needs serious help. I had to wait for a moment to speak so I didn't unleash my fury on him with my mother only in the kitchen. "Eric is being a genius too much for you like it was for Albert Einstein? Are you slowly loosing your mind. Are you crazy? You are NOT my suitor. I didn't lie to you and I don't even like you. Why are you even here?" I needed to reign myself in. My anger was apparent in my tone and my voice was starting to rise. A murderous glare flashed in his eyes. I felt my heart drop to my feet. This was it. Just kill me. Now. I was beyond terrified at this point. However I refused to let him see the fear he was instilling me. That just something my Dauntless up bringing refused to let me do. His grip tightened on my jaw so much I was afraid he might break it. He leaned in closer placing his lips by my ear. His breath was hot on my face and I could feel the anger in his trembling hands. "Y/N you would do well to remember just who the fuck you are talking too. I am NOT the uneducated heathens you are use to here in Dauntless. I will end you. Do you understand me," he hissed viciously in my ear. When he sat back to look in my eyes it took almost everything I had to not start laughing hystericall. I think I will attempt to play Eric's sick game. What do I really have to loose at this point? Well here goes nothing. "DO IT! I dare you. I WANT you too," I spoke in a loud harsh whispered tone in his ear. His eyes went wide. But the next look to cross his features was most definitely NOT the look I was going for. He got a dark, hooded, lustful look in his eyes. You have to be fucking kidding me!! I was slowly starting to feel hopeless. "I am impressed little Dauntless. You and I are going to do great things together. Chicago will never see it coming. I know I chose well when I chose you, " he all but purred in a low husky voice. His eyes where hungry. I felt a sudden warmth wash over me and shudder. I wasn't suppose to get turned on by his sociopathic tendency's. Besides, what in the name of Dauntless was he even talking about? He truly was loosing his damn mind. "Eric what utter fucking nonsense are you even talking about? You have done nothing but infuriate me and make me contemplate ways to cause you a slow painful death, " I growled low in his face making sure my eyes portrayed the amount of loathing and disdain for him. Epic fail. His eyes only got lustier. I swear he most likely had a raging hard on. He ran his nose down my cheek slowly and softly. He wasn't playing fair. He was using the fact that I am, by no fault of my own, a hormonal seventeen year old female. I could not even begin to control how my body was responding to him. He placed a hot wet kiss in the crook of my neck. I tried to sit back, but he held me in place with a tight grip on my neck. Oh he was fighting so damn dirty right now. Slowly he sat back and starred into my eyes with an intensity that bordered hypnosis. "You will be at school tomorrow. You will pack an overnight bag with warm evening clothes. You will also meet me in the library at ten in the morning. Do you understand me Y/N?" his voice sounded like velvet hot on the shell of my ear. I tried to give him a disgusted, pissed off look. I am pretty sure I failed and look closer to hot and bothered little girl. "And if I don't," I whisper. Just because my body was being a traitorous, it did not mean I was going to concede to him. "Do you want to keep fucking with me?" "You don't want keep

[jumpchain-drop]

Chapter 3.31: 6.91 Years

Year 7, day 333: Humba has contacted us. The posters for the ad on the milk carton have finally managed to respond. A letter was delivered to her with a meeting location where the tip could be heard: Witchyworld’s Crazy Castle Stockade, a week from now right after the park closed. Come alone, it said.

Define “alone,” assholes.

Year 7, day 334: We have one chance at this. If they’re having the meeting to get the tip on Tooty, they wouldn’t probably bring all their gear and potions to bear like they did in the raid on Spiral Mountain. However, it was very unlikely that all of them would show up to just get some information, and it definitely wouldn’t be the boss. If these guys were that stupid, they wouldn’t have evaded the underground for so long.

The detaining of the entire Police force, I had to remind myself, was the ideal outcome. Ultimately, what mattered was that we got the contract targeting Tooty canceled.

Today I got Banjo, Kazooie, and Jamjars briefed on the news. There are a lot of preparations to make.

Year 7, day 340: Dilberta walked nervously into the Stockade surrounding the massive yellow bouncy castle. The sky on the inside was still painted in daylight, but with most of the lights off it looked anything but.

A henchmen was there, in the back. Not as bulky as Klungo, but by no means skinny.

“You the one that knowsss where girl bear isss?” he asked. “Better have come alone, or I’ll have to sssmash you...”

“P-Please don’t…!” she stuttered. “I-I’m the one that called, a-and there’s no one else with me…!”

“Ssso I sssee… Then ssstart talking before I-”

And then I, from my hiding place underground, Dug a hole under him and pulled him down to his shoulders.

“We got him we got him!” Bitbit squawked from his perch at the top of the bouncy castle where he had been hidden since noon.

“You tricked me!” he yelled at Dilberta as he struggled to escape my sinkhole, but she was already scampering away home, as we agreed, and the rest of us were around him in moments.

For a drill sergeant, Jamjars is one mean interrogator. Having Kazooie and Bitbit around to peck his head didn’t hurt either. Well, it didn’t hurt us.

The gun was the most junior of the ten mercs that make up the Police. Only about five of them were Klungo-brand; the rest were various other animals, including the chief whose identity he didn’t know, he swore. The chief chose the jobs, and was the only one that would be able to enforce a cancel.

He did, however, know the current location of the Police hideout; a warehouse in the far outskirts of the Quagmire.

I left Jamjars and his team to gift-wrap the guy for the underground. I took mine, along with Banjo and Kazooie, and we went to catch a few quick winks before the big showdown.

Year 7, day 341: Seeing as fighting nine guys armed with weapons and numerous potions on their home turf when four of them managed to hold us (without B-K) to a standstill was the stupidest idea since Canary Mary (fuck Canary Mary), we opted for the stealth approach to their hideout. Terra, Piddle, Bitbit, Shadow, Banjo, Kazooie, and I went in in the early morning hours, but not quite at dawn because Witchyworld closes pretty dang late.

The Police weren’t locked and loaded, mostly cleaning their weapons with some chatter about how the guy probably should’ve been back by now. I didn’t like the vibe; they were suspicious and not in any way off-guard, like the consummate professionals they were.

I pulled the team back outside. “I don’t know how to say this, guys, but I’m certain in a straight-up fight, we’d be completely destroyed.”

“Just let me Wonderwing through the lot of them!” said Kazooie. “They can’t be any harder than Beaker Boy.”

“You didn’t have to fight upwards of five ‘Beaker Boys’ at once before,” I said. “Sorry, Kazooie, but we’re gonna have to go with plan B. Terra, you have the stuff I talked to you about earlier?”

A couple minutes later, I knocked on the warehouse door.

“Hey, I come in peace.”

It’s terrifying having more than one giant knife pointed at you. I kept my hands where they could see them.

“Who’re you?” one of them asked.

“Hmm, you look a little familiar...” said another. Now that I think of it, I was a Sandslash for pretty much that entire original fight so long ago. My pangolin form was visually distinct enough that, at least for these brainiacs, one wasn’t immediately connected to the other.

“What do you want?” the third asked. “You better not be with the underground; they’ve given usss nothing but trouble lately.”

“I assure you, I’m not with the underground.” Officially, I added in my head. “I just need to talk with your boss about something important.”

“We’sss not just sssome band of mercs, dillo-boy,” the second said, which made my temper spike a good bit. “We’sss the Rubbisssh Character Policcce. We have channelsss for ssstuff like thisss if you want sssomeone rubbissshed.”

“Now hold on there, blokes.”

That voice came from an approaching figure in the back. Emerging from the shadows was a sizable looking stoat, almost a Banjo and a half tall at full height.

“Name’s Breakline,” he introduced himself. “Breakline the Boss. I’m the chief of this here Police. And if you sought us out so badly you came directly to us, well then, you must really need us.”

“Come on, chief, can’t we just rubbisssh him a little…?” one of the others whined.

“Hey, what do I tell you?” Breakline replied. “We don’t rubbish anyone for free, not even if we want to. You’re going to have to pay for it, and we don’t take credit.”

The merc just growled.

Breakline turned his attention back to me. “So, I hear you have something important to talk to me about. So speak up before I start charging you for my time.”

“I understand that you have a job out on my friend,” I said, trying my best to not let the sizeable stoat intimidate me. “One female bear named Tooty.”

“I think I remember someone by that name that got away,” he replied. “But so what? Why you bringing up something that ain’t nothing to do with you?”

By now, I had a good handle on the value of a Note. For example, each of those ten Jinjo plushies were roughly 18 inches tall and had cost 5 Notes each. A plushie of that size on my world would be about $20, so a Note was about equal to $4, a value that held in comparison to other items whose Earth prices I remember. By that logic, the 20-Note silo trips cost $80, which seems ludicrous, but those silos were meant to evade witches, magical detection, and all other sorts of things. They were not cheap to maintain, and were the primary way for the underground to fund itself as far as I knew. Not to mention vehicle parts in Showdown Town could (would?) run into 40 Notes and higher pretty easily.

So I knew the full weight of what I was about to say.

I looked Breakline square in the eye. “I will pay you 300 Notes to cancel that contract.”

Silence filled the air, and then all at once, almost everyone shouted and exclaimed in complete shock and disbelief, even my teammates that were hiding nearby in case things went wrong. The only one that didn’t was Terra, as I cleared the amount with her first this time. I had originally planned to spend 500, but she talked me down.

Well, Breakline didn’t react with shock either. Instead, he stared at me. I’ve played enough poker to know why; he was sizing me up, seeing if I was bluffing. It was a little freaky, but paled in comparison to the terror from being around an embodiment of nightmares.

And then suddenly, he burst into laughter, as if he just remembered a really funny joke.

“Oh man. You’re serious, kid. Tell you what, the entire Spiral Mountain gig was only worth 200 to us! And I hate having that sword over my head! Looking for years and never able to pin her down! I’d be glad to get rid of it! You got the money?”

Slowly, to avoid setting of the jumpy and clearly more vicious mercs (of course, Breakline had to keep them in line with more than money somehow), I pulled a smallish sack of Notes from my backpack and tossed them to him. He held the bag for a while, giving it a few tosses, as he gauged the weight before peeking inside.

“You just keep on surprising me, kid.” I didn’t feel like telling him I was like twenty-seven. “You hang tight and let me sort this out. And don’t you blokes be causing any trouble for the customers, or I’ll cut your pay and SUPLEX YOU TO THE DARK SIZE OF THE MOON!”

I covered my ears quickly as Breakline suddenly roared like a wild animal just long enough to finish his sentence before snapping back to his original demeanor. His employees flinched significantly.

“N-Not a problem, chief…!” one of them said.

“I thought not.”

And so Breakline went back deeper into the warehouse. The other mercs stopped aiming their weapons at me, but mostly kept a perimeter up to keep me from following him.

The wait was excruciating and quite odorous, but eventually he came back.

“OK, your friend is off our to-do list,” he announced. “And if any of my blokes try to bother her again, they know what’s coming, don’t they?” He gave them a massive stink-eye for a moment.

“Y-Yesss, chief...”

“Fun fact: I have them call me that because the droning when they said ‘boss’ took forever to stop. Anyway, pleasure doing business with you.”

“A pleasure as well,” I replied. “Say, if I may ask, who made the contract on her in the first place?”

“Well, since you made my day and I watched him die, I’ll tell you free of charge,” said Breakline. “You know that really fat witch that used to live on the mountain?”

“Blobbelda, yeah.”

“It was her cat.”

“...Huh. Didn’t see that coming.”

“Yeah, surprised me too. Cats are tricky types. Way too quiet, they are.”

I dismissed myself from their company and headed back. I reconvened with the others in front of Grunty Industries, as we planned if they didn’t need to come out.

Year 7, day 345: I managed to pass the news to Tooty today. She was actually a little disappointed, as she wanted to kick their butts. Banjo was with us, and he could tell that she was still happy she didn’t have to hide anymore. She, in returned, noted that he had been gaining a good bit of weight.

With who she was hiding from no longer a problem, she was free to go, but she volunteered to keep going for a few more years. “I’m not tired of this adventure yet!” Her leave time would still be increased significantly.

I’ll have to remember to get in on some of that.

[anneedmonsonus]

A House Decorated by Marketplace – and Tips for Thrifting

Of all the bad things to come out of Facebook – the creepy harvesting of our online data, a rise in loneliness, infidelities kindled from long-lost acquaintances, the erosion of individual self-worth through unfavourable comparison, to name just a few – there are also a lot of good things. For example, I re-met my now-husband through Facebook… something I like to remind him of every so often, that lucky guy. And I’m also going to add that the fairly recent invention of Marketplace is another one of those good things to come out of Facebook.

Furniture, homewares, rugs, plants and art… these are the kinds of things being sold on Facebook Marketplace that are often super CHEAP, my friends. Often it’s sold by people who just want to be rid of it, fast, and sometimes they don’t have a true understanding of the worth of what they are offering (I remember seeing a designer-name vintage sideboard marketed as “brown cupboard”).

Another bonus is that when you buy from a person on Facebook Marketplace, you can also see if you have mutual friends in common, thus reducing your chances (hopefully) of being murdered (“Yes, he has a teardrop tattoo and he’s holding a chainsaw in his profile pic, but he’s also friends with Julie from Baskin-Robbins”). In fact Marketplace has so many good things about it that I feel jealous of people moving house or getting a new place, like my sister, because they get to furnish and style their house in the Marketplace era. Like, I remember moving to this house, and looking at ads for secondhand dining tables after going to the newsagent and buying The QUOKKA. Yes, a physical copy of a classifieds ad newspaper, with tiny, succinctly written ads and no pictures, woaaah. Furnishing a home now that there is Marketplace is kind of like getting married but before there was Pinterest and after there was Pinterest, but better than that. I say this after spending pretty much TWO DAYS of my life making little white and milk chocolate milk balls with carefully affixed, painstakingly handmade customised chocolate wax seals for bonbonnieres, simply because I had seen a picture of them on Pinterest and I HAD TO RECREATE THEM, and I don’t think a single person at my wedding appreciated the sheer effort that had gone into these chocolate wax seal balls except my best friend from high school who had flown in for our wedding from London, saw the different-coloured chocolate balls and shrieked, “Does no-one notice that these chocolates have RACIAL CONNOTATIONS.” (This is why we are friends).

Anyway, many of my friends share my Marketplace and thrifting love – but I don’t know anyone more enthusiastic about it than my friend Nelly Reffet of Twinkle and Whistle Interior Design. (In fact, we put together this post on our fave Marketplace finds a while back). Recently Nelly shared photos of this Perth house with me – one I instantly dubbed The Marketplace House, because she and the owners styled it to sell using a LOT of thrifted Marketplace finds. And look how inviting it looks!

RUG LOVING: The rug in the living area is a beautiful Persian-like wool rug, 3m x 2m. “It’s super plush and soft, in pristine condition and it cost $250 – normally it would retail in the thousands,” says Nelly. “It took forever to get though, as the seller was difficult to reach and spoke little English. But it made the purchase almost… exotic!”

Nelly met owners Mark and Jasmin back in 2009, when they first asked Nelly for design help. Mark and Jasmin had recently bought their first home together, an ’80s house in East Cannington in need of a revamp. “Even back in those days, I loved their appetite for non-beigey interiors, and the low budget considerations made me tap into some small but efficient creative tricks to make their house shine without blowing the budget,” says Nelly.

After a full reno and a fair bit of styling, Mark and Jasmin enjoyed many years of happy memories in their sweet light-filled home. However the desire to live closer to the ocean, so the kids (and the dogs!) could roam free on sandy beaches and everyone could enjoy cooler summers, led them to move out of their first home a few years ago.

Nelly’s daughter playing with Mark and Jasmin’s kids, now her friends.

“What was their sanctuary became a rental property, and with that came a few years of sometimes neglectful tenants and inevitable house mishaps,” says Nelly. “In order to simplify their life, Jasmin and Mark decided recently it was time to sell their beloved first home, but unfortunately, the property was not quite ready for it. A fair bit of work was required before the property could be advertised, and with a pretty gloomy-looking market in Perth, they decided to furnish and style the property to maximise its overall attractiveness.”

That was when Mark and Jasmin called Nelly to the rescue again. With a budget worn thin by essential maintenance and repair work, they could not quite invest in buying or hiring new furniture. “Instead, we decided to go in full shoestring mode and source pre-loved furniture and homeware to make their house shine again,” says Nelly. “With the exception of most linen pieces, which were purchased in store, and of some of the decorative items, which are from Mark and Jasmin’s personal collection, almost everything was gathered through Facebook Marketplace, and occasionally from the verge.”

I know some people will ask, why bother furnishing and styling the home at all? – and it’s not an unreasonable question. Well, home styling, or staging, as it’s called for the real estate market, is about presenting a home to its best – showing people how a house can be lived in; and trying to get them to form an emotional attachment to a home, ideally leading to a sale. Staged homes tend to sell faster (frequently in half the average time) – and for an estimated 7 to 12 percent more than unstyled homes, so the financial benefits can be worth the work and monetary investment put into the styling. And contrary to popular notion, good home staging doesn’t have to be expensive, or just for high-end homes – which is why Perth has seen a big boom in the past ten years in property staging businesses as well as interior designers that offer staging as a service.

Nelly says Jasmin and Mark wanted their house to stand out from an already saturated property market, and colour was one of the ways to go.

“In a very competitive market, we didn’t want another grey-on-grey-on-pastel-colours house,” she says.

“We wanted a place that would be warm and personal enough to feel like a home, but not too individual, as so not to be too personal.

“Many blogs out there and real estate agents too will advise you to remove all personal belongings and to go as neutral as possible to appeal to a wider audience. I beg to disagree with that, at least partially. If you keep a mostly neutral palette on your walls and floors (so potential buyers don’t have to do any work when they move in), you can still have a little bit of fun when styling by using bright or bolder removable items, such as soft furnishings and art.” And the scouring of Marketplace began, to give this modest yet pretty home a facelift.

LIVING ROOM: The yellow sofa and its matching ottoman were $250. “These were the first pieces we bought, and they became the driving factor for the living room design,” says Nelly. “The colour was a bold choice, but the shape is not bulky so the colour doesn’t overpower the room. All other pieces were picked with that yellow couch in mind, i.e. we wanted them to tone it down and let it shine at the same time: we didn’t want strong contrasting colours or too much harsh black or white. The neutrals soften it up, while the rug – because of its texture but also style and colour, grounds the room.”

NEW BED: “The upholstered queen bed in the master bedroom was totally brand new and sold at $250!” says Nelly.

Using Marketplace to style a house often means you need to allow a bit more time to put together than a traditional styling job would, says Nelly. “As you rely on what people put up for sale, it’s not as easy as driving to a showroom and helping yourself to what you like. You have to be patient to find the right piece, quick to contact the seller, and willing, sometimes, to travel a fair distance to collect your goods. You also don’t quite know the actual condition of the item until you see it, unless there are plenty of photos.”

Each item was carefully selected so it would fit the space well, both from a layout and a style perspective. As things tend to sell quickly on Marketplace, it was sometimes frustrating to miss out on a ‘perfect’ item. “But with the high turnover of the platform, we found alternatives within days, and sometimes hours,” says Nelly.

So is it all worth the effort and the risk? Mark and Jasmin felt the cost of the styling to be worth it. “They ended up spending just under $2,000 for styling their three bedroom house – a fraction of the cost of what new furniture would have been,” says Nelly. “Their biggest (unexpected) splurge was a $150 throw bought at Adairs, which was incorrectly placed on a “Sale” shelf… they only found that out at the time of paying, and by then, they liked the throw too much to put it back!” The house sold for $20k over the agent’s initial expectations, after only eight weeks on the market – which Mark and Jasmin considered a win in their suburb and in the current market.

At this point you might be thinking, ‘Ok, so they bought a lot of furniture and then what? They sell the house and they’re stuck with a bunch of stuff they don’t need?’ Two things. One, Mark and Jasmin bought things that they either hoped to use in their new home, or that they could easily re-sell, if required.

Their biggest win: a beautifully soft and plush large Persian rug in as new condition bought from Marketplace for $250. “It would retail at around $1000 at least new in-store,” says Nelly. “Jasmin is looking forward for the house to sell, so she can bring the rug to their home pronto.

“That is one of the advantages of buying second-hand items instead of hiring furniture: the items belong to you! You are free to do what you want with them once the house has sold: sell them again or bring them home.

“Similarly, if the house doesn’t sell in the expected timeframe, you don’t need to extend a hiring contract and incur additional expenses either. It’s maximum flexibility at a limited cost.”

MORE MARKETPLACE: The grey couch was only $180, and was from just around the corner.

BEFORE. The dining room got a small facelift with a light change.

AFTER

So, if you are thinking of selling your house soon – or even if you just want to revamp your home a little – don’t hesitate to explore Marketplace instead of hitting the shops, advises Nelly. “It can be a fun and rewarding ‘hunting and gathering’ experience, it treads lightly on our planet’s resources, you can find some unique pieces, and save some significant cash in the process. What’s not to love about that?” Maya x

NELLY’S TIPS FOR MARKETPLACE SUCCESS

1. Be reactive. If you see something you like, initiate contact with the seller fast! You can still sort out the logistics a little later. Great scores get snapped up very quickly on Marketplace so the faster you react, the more chances you have to secure the deal. Special brownie points if you offer to pick up immediately or on the day.

2. Be polite and personal. To make the buying process easier, Facebook has come up with default questions and messages you can send the sellers as a first contact. If you’re really keen on something, try not to use them. Even when communication is digital, being polite and addressing people personally often goes a long way. That doesn’t mean you have to tell your life story though, but starting your message with “Hi” and using the seller’s name may make you stand out in a sea of “Is it available?”

3. Read the ad in full. As a seller, it is infuriating to receive messages like “where are you located?” when the Marketplace ad clearly says so. Do you have time to answer questions that have already been addressed? I don’t. Most people don’t. Some ads are pretty short (or quasi-inexistent) and others more descriptive. The least you can do if you see an item you like is to read the ad in full and only ask questions that are essential and not already covered. Common sense, huh? But you’d be surprised how many people don’t go past the photo and headline!

4. Don’t mess with collection. Once again, speed is key on Marketplace. I do not encourage you to go beyond speed limits on the freeway to pick up your bargain, but you don’t want to mess around with collection. Ask the seller when it’s best for them or suggest a day and time, and stick to what’s agreed. If you don’t have a suitable car and struggle to ask a friend for their trailer or ute, hiring one is often inexpensive and fast. Or you could hire an Airtasker or other individuals who hustle as delivery drivers to do the heavy lifting for you.

5. Be open-minded and patient. The more specific you are, the more narrow your pool will be. So identify your essential criteria (for furniture, measurements are crucial!), and keep some flexibility for the rest, being brand or style, colours or materials.

6. Be patient! The beauty of Marketplace is that it is a big cycle that moves fast. People buy and sell all the time. You just have to be there when opportunity knocks at your digital door.

7. Be safe. Give someone the details of where you are going and when, and ideally bring a friend or your partner to do pick up with you if you’re feeling unsure, especially at night.

You can follow Nelly’s thrifting adventures on Instagram @nelly_reffet or visit her site at Twinkle and Whistle.

The post A House Decorated by Marketplace – and Tips for Thrifting appeared first on House Nerd.

from Home Improvement https://house-nerd.com/2020/01/23/the-marketplace-house/