#best baby monitor 2016

[chimivx]

yellow. (6)

pairing: Idol!Yoongi x Female!Reader (and always ot7)

summary: It's finally happened, you're living your dream. You've landed the job of your wildest fantasies, doing it beside someone who means a hell of a lot to you. It's only been a few months, but it's been pretty easy to settle into this way of life- the constant on the go, the always working, the barely sleeping. Your relationship has been flourishing as well, you and Yoongi working together better than ever... It seems, until now.

words: 5.5k

warnings: none for this part, still 18+ for nsfw occasional themes, if i missed anything please let me know!

a/n: I didn't mean to get angsty... but... I did. Thank you for being here! (Also, want you all to know that with what they're doing in this part- I don't have exact dates/I can never find exact dates. So if some timing is off because I don't have the actual facts, I apologize. )

~ sometime in february, 2016 ~

“Put them in front of the camera, play the track, and let them go nuts,” you mumbled, chewing on your thumb nail while you studied a couple of shots the crew was monitoring. 

The man dressed in all black who had asked you what you wanted to do next wasn’t walking away to do what he was told. Instead, he eyed the folded piece of paper in the hand that was folded over your chest, and lowered his brows ever so slightly.

Shifting your gaze over to him, you frowned. “What?” The man met your eyes and shrugged.

“Just thought there would be more, that’s all,” he said. “Usually there’s more detail involved.” His voice tapered off, and the tone he used was equally hesitant. All day every single male on this set had been speaking to you as if you hadn’t a clue as to what you were doing.

Well, every single male excluding seven of them.

Tilting your head to the side, you cross both of your arms and sit in your hip, raising a brow at the man. “There’s no detail involved, get them into that swimming pool, put a camera on the ground, and let them- and I mean it! Let them go nuts.” 

From over his shoulder you spot some of the boys reviewing choreography while the others mess with the set. Sunny was on the sidelines, comb in hand, ready to jump in the moment someone needed a touch up. Her dark eyes were sharp, focused on the boy's details. Work mode on, you knew there wouldn’t be any getting through to her until after the shoot had wrapped.

Behind Taehyung, who was goofing off for a camera capturing behind the scenes footage, Yoongi lingered beside Jin, half listening to his friend while he watched you from across the set. Dressed in a bright orange shirt and ripped jeans, your silver haired boyfriend scrunched up his face and raised his fist, gesturing to the man who walked away from you.

Holding up a finger you widen your eyes and smile, telling him no with a single look. You could handle this yourself, you were a big girl. You’ve done this before, you’ve dealt with the men before, and you’ll have to endure it for the rest of your life. The curse of being a woman.

On the set of Run, the entire company was concerned where things were going, and where the concept was being taken, but you didn’t care. You didn’t let any of their opinions stop you from creating your art, even if you improvised most of it.

Sure, the company created the storyline. The company gave you guidelines and the basics of what to do and when to do it, but everything in between? Well, that was up to you, and you ran with it. 

Run was your baby, and it will be forever. It’s chaotic, it’s over the top, it compels emotion. The boys were acting, the boys were having fun, the boys were smiling and laughing- and to you, that’s a win. You’ve seen how their shoots go when it’s just the other director on set. They exhaust themselves faster and don’t have nearly as much fun between shots. Bringing you and Sunny onto the team was the best thing the company could’ve done for these boys.

Yoongi smiled, then he drug his eyes up and down your body. You were dressed in all black and he was having a field day. The leggings you wore clung to your curves just right, and the long sleeved shirt that hung loosely off your figure belonged to him. Showing up in it this morning he had smirked at you and asked you where you had gotten it, acting like he didn’t watch you pick it up off of his floor mere hours before you both had to be on set.

Heaving a sigh, you walked away from the screen that replayed the shot of the choreography and took your time getting over to him. Eyes were on your back, you could feel them watching. Yoongi waited patiently, his smile growing the closer you got. 

“What was his name, I’ll kick his ass,” he said with a smile once you were a few feet away from him. 

“No ass kicking,” you said. “I can handle them. Drop the fake smile, I know you’re in pain.” 

His smile didn’t fall, but it did falter. “I can handle it.”

The shoulder had been talked about twice since you heard the full story of what had gone down to keep him living in this everyday hell. The first time was shortly after you found out, when you caught him taking pain meds he swears he never has to take in a bathroom at the company between rehearsals. Brushing past it quickly because it seemed to get a rise out of him, you preferred if he didn’t get mad and would hopefully talk about it later.

He didn’t.

This was the second time it’s been brought up.

“I’m good,” he shrugged. Pointing at the piece of paper in your hand he found a way to change the subject, fast. “What’s this?”

Taking him in for another couple of seconds, your eyes letting him know you couldn’t believe he wasn’t taking his injury seriously, you unfold the paper that had scribbles upon scribbles written on it from late night cram sessions.

“Notes,” you said. The boys' names, and nicknames, were all over it along with random ideas that weasled their way into your brain at inconvenient times while you were away from your projects. This sheet of notebook paper was the ‘inconvenient thoughts about Fire’ paper. It had been folded so many times that it wasn’t as strong as it used to be, and some of the corners were torn because it was poorly handled most of the time.

You were an artist. The state of which your notes were in didn’t matter, as long as the finished product was perfect.

Yoongi took the sheet from you carefully and held it close to read your tiny, scribbled writing, his eyes squinting to pick up the faded pencil marks. “Holy shit, you’re thorough.”

Folding your arms over your chest you nodded. “I am.” Your tone struck him, making him look up at you with softened brows. 

From somewhere in the back your name was called, a member of the crew beckoning you back to look something over so that they could move on. Leaving Yoongi without a word, he watched you walk away, and flattened his lips. Folding up your notes gently, following the creases that were permanently wrinkled into the paper, he starts toward you to return it, but in turn is summoned to wardrobe by Sunny and another woman.

The boys trudge over, Taehyung already stripping out of his jacket, but Yoongi hesitates. The way you were observing the shots on the screen, gesturing toward the equipment, speaking to the men like you were the boss, it was captivating. He adored watching you work, he adored getting to watch you make your art. He was proud of you, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had pissed you off.

“These shots are going to flash back and forth between the ones we’re going to film tonight,” you held both of your hands up to the screen, flipping one back and forth to visualize what you were thinking. “It looks boring now because it’s just one solid shot, but that’s also why we were zooming in and out so often.” The man who was sitting beside the screen held an empty stare. Swallowing a groan, you smile. “We needed one basic full shot of the choreography, if you get rid of this, I get rid of you.”

Now that caught his attention. His eyes shot open wide as he offered you meaningless apologies, turning toward the screen to make sure he saved every shot. You weren’t sure if you had the power to fire him. It wasn’t that you wanted to fire him, nor did you want to act like a bitch, but there was no way your point was going to get across if you didn’t threaten him with something.

“We’re done here for now, boys let’s change!” Sunny’s voice flooded the set, catching your attention for a second, but you didn’t dare look away from the men working around you. You could see Yoongi lingered behind. Wanting to see what he was waiting for, you held yourself back from giving him what he wanted- your attention.

It boggled your mind that he didn’t want to discuss what happened to him. In some ways, you can see why he wouldn’t want to, but at the end of the day, who can hold onto something so horrific and not talk it out? Seeking help through the boys, you asked every single one of them if Yoongi had talked about it since he first told them, and all six of them said no. Jin was the only one who had heard more, but it wasn’t like Yoongi acted as if it was a big deal.

If he could keep this hidden from you, and act like there wasn’t anything wrong with keeping it hidden from you, you were worried he’d be able to keep other things from you. And now that you were finally feeling a little bit excited about life, you weren’t about to let him get away with shit.

“Back everything up, please,” you said to whichever crew member was listening, and followed the boys and Sunny into the building you were set to shoot in next.

In the tiniest room all seven boys were changing, and getting their hair fixed and their makeup touched up. Elbows were bumped and chairs were knocked into, but this room with tile for walls was still bigger than some dressing rooms the group had been shoved into on the road. 

Pulling the creaky door open with force, it was heavy as shit, you almost walked head first into Jungkook who was shirtless and adjusting his belt while the woman who worked with Sunny toyed with his hair.

Barging into the room, your simmering anger- if you could call it that- fueled your feet, and you collided right into the kids chest.

A muffled “Whoa!” came out of you both, and though your voices were hushed, they carried around the room that was full of low chatter from everyone else.

Stiffening your hands by your side, you didn’t want to think twice about what you had accidentally touched, you looked the boy up and down and laughed. “Sorry, Kook.”

That toothy grin reassured you that you had nothing to worry about. “Why’d you look so mad?”

“I’m not mad,” you breathed, giving your shoulders a shrug. 

Jungkook furrowed his brows. “Yeah, okay. What’s the matter?”

Looking over his shoulder you spy Yoongi checking himself out in a little square mirror, adjusting a hat that covered his hair. As he turned around to button the shirt he had slipped into, you figured he’d want your attention like he did outside, but he didn’t seem to notice you were there.

“You guys fighting or something?” Jungkook asked, sneaking a glance at your boyfriend.

Fighting wasn’t it, that wasn’t the word you’d use to describe what was happening, but you definitely were not on the best of terms at this exact second. Actually, for the past month or so things have been off. Part of you wondered if it was the two of you adjusting to a new life. Well, you were adjusting to a new life. Yoongi was adjusting to having a girlfriend.

Still, the way these weeks have been going by, melancholy and a little stale, aside from the combined hours you’d spend between your sheets, it was a total flip from the second half of last year.

You wouldn’t be lying if you admitted the fear you had in the start of all of this was haunting you.

Popstar bored with his latest conquest.

Rockstar getting sick and tired of the same old, same old.

Twenty two year old male got what he wanted out of a twenty two year old female and is pushing her away so he didn’t have to be the one to send her home after she literally uprooted her life to take her dream job, one he unfortunately is heavily involved with…

“You are not okay,” Jungkook's quiet voice broke you out of your thoughts. He had a shirt on now, his outfit was complete all the way down to the accessories. Meeting his gaze, he was worried. The cheesy grin and crinkly eyes were gone, replaced with concern and furrowed brows.

“I’m fine, it’s fine,” you choked out. “We’re fine, everything is fine.”

Jungkooks hardened glare refused to let up. “You’re an awful liar, Honey.”

“I could say the same about you,” your tone was laced with snarkiness. “Where’s Jimin?” Glancing about the room, you finally break into a giggle when you watch his expression go wild.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he sneered.

Popping your brows, you smiled. “Exactly.”

“No, seriously, what are you talking about?” Jungkook stepped closer to you, but you reached for the door behind you, pushing it open. “No, no, you’re not escaping, get back here!” With a laugh you fled from the makeshift dressing room and hurried out toward the empty swimming pool that was in the center of the giant warehouse.

Circling the edge of it, you came to halt and could not hold back the screech that came out of you when Jungkook grabbed you by the waist, almost knocking you into the concrete abyss that was only five feet deep. “Don’t run away from me when I’m talking to you, especially after you say something like that.” You could hear the grin on his lips.

Lifting you away from the pool while you laughed like crazy, he carried you to a quiet corner and put your feet back on the ground, turning you around to lecture you.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said for what felt like the umpteenth time. Jungkook groaned, tipping his head backward.

“Why did you bring up Jimin?” His big, doe eyes bore into yours, genuinely asking you. Quirking a brow you tilt your chin a bit to question him. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t make me say it.”

Gulping, you gave him a slight shrug. “Do I know what you’re talking about?” This was not where you thought you’d have this conversation, on set, surrounded by crew members, while the very boy you spoke of had wandered out of the dressing room with the others god knows how long after you ran away from them.

Yoongi included.

Jungkook's lips tipped down a bit. The sight made your heart twist. “I swore you knew… What I was talking about… What you were… talking about… God.” Scrunching up his face he gripped his forehead and groaned again.

“Jungkook,” you whispered, putting your hands over both of his wrists.

“Thought I wouldn’t have to say it to you, the words, because I don’t know how to say them, and if you already knew then it’d really help ‘cause I dunno what the hell to say-“

“Jungkook,” you said louder, cutting him off, though you’d never heard the boy ramble like this before. He dropped the hand from his head and scrambled for your hands, squeezing them as tight as he could. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you… panic.”

He took a deep breath, one that helped you relax some. “I can’t…” Pausing, he sucked down another breath and shook his head. “I can’t say it.”

“Okay,” you nodded, dragging your thumbs over his hands. “That’s okay, you don’t have to.” He swallowed hard, beginning to nod with you. “Can I… Can I ask you a question? Just to make sure that I do know what you know?” 

His brows met in the center of his forehead. “Um… Yeah,” he answered with a sigh. “Sure, ask me.” The way his shoulders rose made him appear like he was bracing for impact. 

This was going to be hard. Getting him to break out of whatever norms he was used to was going to be a challenge. You knew already, you have for a while. You didn’t have to ask him about it, or torture him anymore by talking about it longer than he wanted, but he needed your help. He had to talk about it, or he would be stuck in this place forever.

Much like somebody else.

“I’ll… take this slow. And careful,” you said.

“Thanks,” Jungkook sighed. “It’s my first time.” He truly was an eighteen year old boy. Cracking a laugh at his stupid joke, you squeezed your eyes shut and shook your head. He was thankfully wearing a smile when you looked up at him.

“When you see me with Yoongi, do you want that?” Your question sucked the humor out of the moment. His lips pulled together curiously. “That type of… relationship? With a girlfriend?” His lips were sealed now. “Kookie, it’s okay,” you smiled, shaking his hands so they’d swing by your side. “Nothing’s gonna change.”

You were once again reminded of the separate worlds you and these boys came from. You grew up in New York, and spent most of your life in the city. In Manhattan for that matter, literally where everybody no matter what version of queer you were came to celebrate themselves.

Jungkook parted his lips, hesitating big time before he whispered, “It’s terrifying.”

“I know,” you said. “And that’s okay, it’s going to be. But, I can tell you right now that I will still love you no matter what, and I know damn well those six idiots over there, fully clothed in an empty swimming pool,” he giggled, “They will still love you. You are their pride and joy. Do you know how easily you could get away with murder with those guys on your side?” A laugh is shared before quiet falls around the two of you.

The voices of the six idiots in the empty swimming pool echoed through the warehouse, their words getting muddled in the air.

“You don’t wanna say it,” you began, and Jungkook rapidly shook his head. “I know,” you started to smile. “But… can I?” His face twisted with discomfort, or disgust, or he was cringing… You couldn’t piece it together. “I won’t say the word, relax,” you said. “I just need confirmation, I don’t want to get this wrong.”

A nod was all you were going to get from him.

Lowering your voice to the point where you weren’t even sure he’d be able to hear you though he was standing five inches away from you, you whispered, “You like boys.” 

A sharp inhale ripped through his chest. His face remained stone cold as he jerked his chin up and stared at the ceiling for all of three seconds before scoping your surroundings. Letting him have his moment, you knew he’d come back to you when he was ready. And he did.

Another small, meek nod was all you were going to get from him. And it was enough.

“Kookie.” A grin was plastered onto your face. He attempted to smile as well, but he wore his nerves… everywhere. “You did it, you just told me. That’s huge.”

He gasped a breath and huffed a laugh. “Technically you told me.”

“Doesn’t matter,” you squeezed his hands, throwing them away to wrap your arms around his growing body. He was getting more muscular everyday. “I’m proud of you.”

His arms snaked around your shoulders. Placing his chin on top of your head, he took a deep breath, one that made you rise and fall with his chest. His heart was racing, you could feel it pounding between his ribs. 

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Always here for you, Kook.”

“Honey!” Sunny’s voice shouted toward you, echoing against the roof, vibrating the walls. The sweet nickname she gifted you with when you were twelve had a way of sounding incredibly menacing when she forced it from her glossed lips with a bite.

Pulling away from Jungkook you looked toward her and the way she’s standing at the edge of the pool, gesturing into it.

“It’s like herding toddlers who just learned how to sprint,” she raised her brows. “They are all here, it’s now or never. The sun sets in three hours.”

“Let’s go,” Jungkook said, nudging you with his shoulder as he started toward the pool.

Following close behind him you watched as he jumped over the edge fearlessly and landed on his feet, rushing to Namjoons side. The leader threw an arm around the youngests shoulder and gave him a smile, one that Jungkook returned.

Bumping into Sunny, standing as close to her as possible, she eyed you curiously and asked, “Is he okay?”

“Yeah,” you said quietly. “He will be.”

Shifting your gaze over each boy to inspect what they were wearing and to ensure they were camera ready like Sunny declared, you find Yoongi looking up at you, your eyes meeting for the first time since you spoke outside. You couldn’t read him.

Hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, he was clenching his jaw so tight his teeth could crack. It was hard to tell whether or not he was angry, or upset, but he seemed it. Everything about his energy was… off. Like the past few weeks.

If he was miffed at you for whatever reason he could conjure up, you were certain it wouldn’t be as good as yours. All you wanted to do was talk to him. At this point in your relationship, you should know a whole bunch about him, not be discussing your days for a mere twenty minutes after work just to have sex and either fall asleep or go home.

Gritting your teeth, you sent a reciprocated chilling glare back to him, as much as it hurt your heart.

“Okay! Let’s go,” you called out to bring everybody back into the shoot, breaking the stare when it became too much to handle. “Bring it boys, let’s have some fucking fun!”

There was about an hour spent around the pool, you and Sunny either sitting on the edge behind the cameras, or jumping in to fix something or adjust the details. Both you and Yoongi fought to not look at one another, and you wondered if anyone else was being suffocated by the air in the room.

When you approached Jungkook to shift him over, adjusting the spacing so that he wasn’t covering too much of Hoseok, you felt his eyes burning into you. Like you putting your hands on the teenager's shoulder made him want to burn the place down. You swear the earth rumbled.

You couldn’t help but feel a tad guilty. The two of you had spoken about Jungkook before, or Yoongi’s made jokes rather. He didn’t know what you knew, and now it was confirmed that Yoongi had nothing to worry about when it came to his friend. He just had no idea.

By the end of this style of shots, after watching the seven of them cruise through the choreography again and again, your eyes wandered to Yoongi when ‘cut’ was called. He rolled his left shoulder backward, frowning as he did. Folding your arms you joined the camera team behind the screens to monitor what they had captured, keeping your peripheral glued to your boyfriend who shimmied something out of his pocket.

He was coming toward you. He was looking directly at you, coming toward you. Turning your chin, nerves shot up your spine as you took him in. Not a single word was spoken. Looking into your eyes, he slipped something into one of your hands, paused for half of a second, then followed the boys out of the pool.

You waited until he stalked off to look at what he had given you. Opening your hand you found your folded up sheet of notes that you forgot you gave him. Shaking your head the slightest, you open it up to see if anything on it would spark your inspiration, and down in the corner, in the last available blank space, ‘I love you’ was written in his chicken scratch.

A lump lodged in your throat, one you attempted to swallow away. Folding the paper up quick, you glanced out to where he had walked away to, but he was gone.

The shoot wrapped up around two or three in the morning. No one was paying attention to the clock, everyone was having way too much fun. This video was carefully calculated chaos dipped in mischievous partying- The exact image BTS was aiming to articulate. And you did that.

After thanking the crew, thanking the staff, and thanking the boys, you ventured into the dressing room where seven exhausted bodies were still shouting at one another. It usually took them a good hour to wind down after something like this, especially if it were a show. Both you and Sunny knew that the second their heads hit the cushions in the car they’d be out.

Except Yoongi. Another thing you both shared, the inability to get good sleep. Unless you were beside one another.

Letting the heavy door shut behind you, the scene of the boys stumbling over their feet while they changed into their cozy clothes made you want to smile. Taehyung was already laid back in a chair fighting to keep his eyes open while Hoseok straddled his lap, dancing around to the latest trend to try to keep him awake. Jungkook was slipping into a hoodie, Namjoon was helping Jimin wipe off his makeup, and Jin was hovering over Yoongi, blocking him out of your view.

Sunny wasn’t here, she and her assistant stylist had cleaned up their things already to give the boys their space. The two were combing through the set now, making sure they didn’t leave anything behind all while cleaning up after the boys. There wasn’t much for you to collect aside from the piece of paper in your pocket.

You came in here for one more thing.

As the shoot went on it seemed Yoongi loosened up, the two of you shared the occasional laugh when something would happen, but other than that you didn’t speak. By the end of it all your heart was positively broken, watching him walk away from you with the boys without a second glance back. 

Not many of your past relationships made it past this point. Once you hit the first bump in the road it was split city. None of them had been as invigorating or exciting as this one has. You used to be able to see this coming, the relationship's demise hovering toward you like a cloud in the sky, letting you know it was all about to go to hell.

You didn’t want this one to go to hell.

You wanted this one to work out.

You weren’t sure what your future looked like quite yet, but you knew you wanted to figure it out with Yoongi. When you were with him, he knew parts of you you weren’t even sure you knew yourself. He could see you, he could hear you, just as you could see and hear him. Which is why this doubt started hanging over you in the first place.

Brushing past each of the boys who hit you with a generous thank you in some way or another, you only had a small smile to offer them. By the time you shuffled toward the back of the room and reached Yoongi and Jin, the eldest of the two took one look at you and scurried away.

“Nice,” you said quietly, watching Jin as he glanced about the room, looking for something, seeming to ask the other boys where to find it. “Was I a bitch today? Or…” Yoongi, who had his arms crossed over his chest where he sat, sighed heavily and shook his head, screwing his eyes shut.

“No,” he mumbled. Holding your hands behind your back you looked down at him and thinned out your lips, hoping he’d say more. Beneath your gaze he could feel it, the need for him to say more, to talk about it, to talk about something. “Honey, I… Listen…”

“I’m listening,” you whispered, barely moving. Yoongi threw his arms to the side.

“Why am I in trouble here?” His eyebrows furrowed over his eyes, just visible under his messy silver hair. The stiff tone of his voice sent a chill over your skin, and signaled to the boys that it was time to leave the room.

“Never said you were in trouble,” you said. The door slammed shut, echoing against the tiled walls. Jungkook was the last to leave, sending a longing glance your way, but you missed it.

“Then why act like I did something wrong,” Yoongi said, sitting forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “All day you’ve been treating me like I’ve done something to you, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is.”

After a deep breath you mumbled, “Yoongi,” but he cut you straight off.

“I’m so happy that you have this job. I’m so happy you are doing what you love to do, and you’re creating, and you’re making the art that you want to make. You’re changing the game for us, for the industry… For me. You’re breaking boundaries, you’re taking it a step too far, and it’s so damn exciting, Honey, it really is.” He paused to look up at you. His wide, pleading eyes lost in more ways than one. “I feel like I take the fun out of it for you.”

You didn’t miss the way his voice cracked, the sound hitting you straight in the heart. “D, please, don’t do that,” you whispered, taking a step closer to him. He drug his hands over his face.

“How can I not?” he shrugged. “You have more fun with Jungkook, you don’t speak to me, and when you do I somehow turn it all to shit.”

“D, what the hell are you talking about?” Taking to his side, you crouched beside him and rested your arms across his lap. He couldn’t look at you, his focus was elsewhere. “You do not turn it all to shit.”

The way he looked at you pained you like a slap to the face. “Don’t try to make me feel better when I know you’re pissed at me.” Narrowing your eyes, the only thing you can do is shake your head. “I know everything you want me to do. And I won’t do it.”

“You can do it, you just have to-”

“No,” he was firm. “I won’t do it. I don’t want to.”

Standing to your feet you tucked your arms behind you like they once were. His words were confirmation enough. If he wasn’t going to speak, if he wasn’t going to communicate… If he wanted to just brush over everything as if it were nothing, and continue living in ignorant bliss, acting like everything was fine… It was over.

What once was bliss and ecstatic euphoria had hit a dead end. This gorgeous face and beautiful mind that had shown you in many ways what it was like to live, to live for yourself, was giving this up.

Granted it’d only been a few months, and you’re certain you both said ‘I love you’ way too soon, but it was authentic, it was real, it was you. It was Yoongi. From the start you’ve moved way too quick, you’ve been sprinting since the day you met. It was a whirlwind of dramatic excitement, and it was everything you had ever wanted, everything you ever wished for.

But, maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe living in fast forward was what pushed this over the edge. Jumping headfirst into a relationship with a complete stranger from an entire different world, falling in love with them in mere weeks, moving across the globe, running from a life you used to know…

It wasn’t meant to be.

And that thought alone nauseated you.

You wanted him to be your forever.

Walking toward the door without looking back, you did your best to ignore the fact that he didn’t even try to stop you. He let you walk away.

He let the relationship crumble to pieces right in front of him, and he didn’t do a thing to save it.

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[armoricaroyalty]

Marriage wasn't easy. All relationships — romantic and otherwise — required some amount of time and effort, but the marriage state had peculiar demands all its own. Love and honor, cherish and obey, in good times and bad, in sickness and health. For twenty five years, Elise had upheld her end of the bargain. She had made mistakes, she hadn't been perfect, but when she was dead and buried she would be remembered as a good wife, a good mother, a good queen...there was no love without sacrifice, and she had loved him as best she could. That was the definition of duty, and she had always done her duty.

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8:13 PM / February 27th, 2016

HUGO | [sighs in his sleep] HUGO | [audible through the baby monitor] JACQUES | ...I don’t know what to do. We fight all the time. JACQUES | Today, when I said I was feeling bad and didn’t wanna go to the welcome banquet, she said, “good, I don’t want you there.” ELISE | Really? That doesn’t sound like something Vivi would say. JACQUES | You don’t know what she’s like when it’s just the two of us. JACQUES | She makes me feel like shit. ELISE | I’m sure she’s not trying to-- JACQUES | [snorts] I should’ve known you’d take her side. ELISE | I’m not taking sides, I’m trying to understand. The two of you have been together since you were kids. You were always so happy. What happened? JACQUES | I dunno. I guess she finally got everything she wanted. ELISE | [offscreen] ...what are you talking about? JACQUES | [offscreen] C’mon, Mom. Isn’t it obvious? JACQUES | We’re married, she’s got a baby and a royal title. She lives in a mansion and gets to wear jewels and go to fancy parties-- ELISE | Jacques-- JACQUES | It’s true! She eats that shit up! JACQUES | That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. She loves all the glamour and the attention, because all she has to do is show up and smile and wave and everybody shits themselves. They love her and hate me. ELISE | Oh honey...you’re on the same team, you’re not competing with her. JACQUES | [scoffs] ELISE | Go ahead and roll your eyes if you want. I’m telling the truth, JJ. ELISE | You’re married, sweetheart. You and Vivi are a package deal, now. Every marriage has its ups and downs, but nobody wants to hate you. ELISE | [offscreen] You’re right! The press loves her, but you can use that. JACQUES | ....what do you mean? ELISE | I didn’t that the way it sounded, but -- you know, if you show up to these parties arm-in-arm and let everyone see how much you love her...they’ll come around. Everyone wants a happy ending. ELISE | [offscreen] You and Vivi can give them one. JACQUES | ... ELISE | [offscreen] Just...trust me, JJ. ELISE | [sighs] The press, the parties, other people...they’re all distractions. You and Vivi are a team. Sink or swim, ‘til death do you part. You can still make this into something good, but you have to be willing to try. Understand? JACQUES | ...are you saying I should get dressed and go tonight? ELISE | It’d be a good start. JACQUES | Are you sure this is enough to make people change their mind? ELISE | Yes. Not overnight, of course, but you’ve got years to get it right. JACQUES | [sighs] I guess I should get changed, then. ELISE | I’m proud of you, sweetheart. It’s not easy, and these days, not everyone is willing to fight for their marriage.... JACQUES | ...what? ELISE | [sighs] It’s nothing, I’m just thinking out loud. JACQUES | ...okay. JACQUES | Thanks, Mom. ELISE | You’re welcome. Now go. JACQUES | Mom? ELISE | Hm? JACQUES | I love you. [door slams] ELISE | [sighs] [Elise pours herself a glass of wine and swirls it in the glass while Baby Hugo makes baby noises, audible through the baby monitor]

[bwoahtastic]

i feel like an obvious choice for a/b/o divorce is lewis and nico. they go from being childhood sweethearts to an f1 power couple with adorable baby pascal (he just fits so perfectly) to fighting on and off the track. they both love their baby so much, but they also both want to win so badly, and as the racing season progresses they get into more and more fights until they're hardly speaking at all. at the end of the season, nico wins the championship, but decides to retire and spend more time with their child. at first lewis thinks that this might be good for the relationship, but he's devastated when nico files for divorce and moves out, taking pascal with him. i feel like their divorce would be relatively amicable, as they both want what's best for pascal and they can agree that their relationship has not been good, but they miss each other like crazy, especially as lewis has to travel so much for work. nico is also very protective of pascal and doesn't want him in the public eye too much, and so doesn't like bringing him to races, which lewis understands but it still upsets him because it feels like he hardly ever gets to see his baby.

maybe lewis then has an accident whilst racing, and nico, watching at home, sees it happen on the tv. so he flies across the world to be there with lewis in the hospital, and of course brings little pascal to help make lewis feel better.

Oh plss!! Nico and Lewis with tiny Pascal being such a happy family for a while, Nico having had a hard pregnancy and birth bur it's worth it because he has a pup eith the love of his life! Pascal is such a sweetie too and its just bliss for a good while, but the 2016,season is so tense and while they tey to be nice to each other especially around Pascal, its so hard and they are just so cold and Pascal ofcourse notices daddy and mutti are fighting...

The season being over brings relief but it left their relationship so broken and they know it's over. The divorce is amiably and they explain to pascal as best they can what is happening. Pascal is scared at first but daddy and mutti both spend time with him, mutti the most but Nico always let's him watch daddy race on TV and Lewis comes over whenever possible! Also when Lewis comes over, Nico lets him stay in the spare room. Sure it's a bit odd, but they tried moving pascal to another place Lewis was staying for those days or weeks and the pup didn't like being away from "home". And nico and Lewis are amiable enough to deal with it!

Lewis being sad he doesn't see Pascal nearly enough because of the increasingly busy race calendars and while he agreed to keep pascal away from the spotlight, he naturally misses his pup a lot...

Lewis getting into an accident and Nico instsntly bags his bags and Pascal's bags too, and travels to where Lewis is, to support him himself but also because he knows Lewis would benefit seeing his pup! Pls Lewis in the hospital, relatively fine but hooked up to machines to monitor his vitals and the door opens with a worried outcry of "daddy!" And Nico trying to keep Pascal from jumping onto the bed too roughly. Pls it would be such a sweet moment!

[newsshout]

Some Companies Name your should Know !

Austropipes: Austro pipes is a PVC pipe manufacturer which is having their manufacturing unit in Hyderabad. Started in 2016, Austro pipes has grown as one of the top companies in its Industry.  Austro pipes have more than 3000 dealers and is one of the best performing companies in PVC Pipe industry. Austropipes is catering to commercial, industrial and domestic industry. Some of the product lines of Austropipes are PVC, u PVC and c PVC pipes. The quality of the pipes are thoroughly tested and is acclaimed for its global standards.

VRS : VRS Enterprises is a fast growing company in Bangalore. VRS Enterprises has more than four branches across Bangalore. VRS is in the business of money exchange, money transfer and loan against credit cards. VRS Enterprises helps people with its service to send money fast and also to avail loan through credit cards.

WINGS : Wings publication within a short duration has carved a name for itself in the arena of book publishing. Wings publishing helps the authors to get the best printed version of their writing and also take part in promotion of their books, by giving them a website, search engine optimization and other marketing materials.

THEPETNEST : The Pet Nest is known for its pet grooming services across Delhi. The Pet Nest helps the pet owners to groom its dogs and cats periodically and to keep their pet in a healthy condition. The Pet Nest also offers training for the pets too which is very helpful for the pet owners who doesn’t have enough time to train the pets.

MYCATSHOP : My Cat Shop is one of the best online market to buy global breed cats online. My cat shop has more than 6 varieties of cat which are highly in demand. All the cats are groomed properly, vaccinated and are sold. MyCatShop is one company which is a fast growing company in pet sectory

MYKITTEN: My Kitten is a marketplace for buying and selling cats. My kitten has varied breeds and has 100s of suppliers all across the country and one can find a supplier near by your place. My kitten offers proper guidance to buy a kitten online.

MEDICIN : Medicin software is a pharmaceutical software company which helps the pharmaceutical retail stores to manage their logistics, inventory , price , expired products, suppliers, customers, product list etc. Medicin software is very helpful for pharmacists and has installed their software for more than 3000 customers across the country

PACIFIC : Pacific constructions is a Bangalore based construction company which concentrates on building villas, commercial complexes, layout for offices and construction of Go-downs . Pacificonstruction is a fast growing company in Bangalore.

Qutoneceramic:  Qutone Ceramic is a tile manufacturing company. Its located in Gurgaon , Haryana and is manufacturing luxury and premium tiles for its corporate. Qutone ceramic is a privately owned company which has 3 directors and is run by a professionals team. Due to this  Qutone ceramic has reached more than 60 countries and has more than 1200 dealers across the country. Qutone ceramic has more than 300 designs and have tiles of different sizes to suit to individual needs.

NSE Trader : Lot of newbie investors find it difficult to learn stock market and end up making losses which are hard earned money. NSE trader software come in handy for those investors and helps them to pick the best profitable stocks. NSE trader software is one of the best performing software in the stock market industry and is able to help thousands of investors to earn decent returns.

Shanti Nursing: Shanti nursing services helps the patients at home and at hospital with their team of trained nurses. Shanti nursing services has male attendants, female attendants, nanny’s for baby sitting and home care nurses. They have trained nurses all across the country and is a boon to have working couples who have ill parents . Since they don’t have time to monitor and take care of their ill patients Shanti nursing services helps those customers.

Brightsun seo : Brightsun seo is a digital marketing agency which helps Small and Medium Scale Enterprises to promote their products or services digitally. When more than 85% of the users search online about the product and services it is a big mistake for any company to be absent from social media. Brightsun seo offers various services for companies, like Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Ecommerce marketing, Email Marketing , Content marketing, etc. Ranking in the Google and  popularizing in Social media are essential needs for any corporate.  Brightsun seo has a team of digital marketing executives, content builders, social media marketing executives, designers and developers to cater to the needs of the customers. Brightsun seo is servicing clients all across the country. Brightsun seo is also doing web designing and ecommerce store development for their clients.

Bosch : Bosch automotive rising is a service company for cars. Bosch has complete setup and technicians for managing cars of different make and models. Bosch is known for its quick service time, proper delivery and immediate attention for any service or maintenance work. Bosch is a preferred car servicing companies in Gurgaon.

Durgamba : Durgamba build solution is a brick manufacturing company which has different varieties in bricks. Durgamba build solution which is located in Bangalore has more than 100+ varieties in bricks. It has perforated , non-perforated bricks, jallies, pavers and roofing tiles. Durgamba also has taken dealership from Weinberger, Ramco and JSW for other product lines.  Durgamba manufacturing unit has state of the art machinaries imported from various countries and all the bricks which has been produced are properly tested under strict guidelines and then only it is sent to the market. Durgamba also innovate the product line continuously for serving its customers across the country. Durgamba with its quality and continues innovation is becoming a pioneer its industry .

[anxiousunicorn1124]

My Fertility Journey

In 2016/2017 , I was working at savers at the time. It was that "time of month" and for some reason , it was different than usual. I would have to change my pad like every 10-15 mins which is far from good. I had to call my doctor who told me to come into emergency and see what's going on.

After an awkward and uncomfortable ultrasound, they confirmed my suspicions... I was officially diagnosed with an annoying ass disorder... Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome(PCOS). Its a hormone disorder where I produced more than normal amounts of testosterone. it also makes you insulin resistant. the most annoying for me is with all that testosterone, it brings in excessive facial and body hair. trying to keep up with shaving has become a exhausting hassle. On top of that, it also makes getting pregnant harder.

Fast forward to my current relationship. We have been trying over a year to get pregnant. I've done everything from trying medications to start my period regularly(PCOS made it a challenge to be regular), taking meds to kick start ovulation.. pretty much trying to conceive naturally with some side help from drugs.. All of that with no success. My boyfriend had even gotten a semen analysis to see if I was the reason or him for the struggle. his results did show a low count , so docs recommended to stop smoking weed(im not really looking forward to quitting). He quit a little over a month I think and his numbers damn near doubled or tripled in quality and quanity.

I decided to try IUI instead of IVF, its cheaper and less drugs/injections.. If you don't know what IUI is, it is intrauterine insemination. it involves tracking your period, and monitor when your ovulation so they know when's the best time for me to come in for the procedure. it entails few appointments of blood work and ultrasounds, a cycle of drugs and any other instructions they might need to inform me.

My man is then told that he has to put his swimmers in a cup , the doc then "washes" the sperm. By doing that, she's separating the stronger swimmers from the not so strong ones. After she was done with that, I came in for my appointment an hour later. the doctor informed me on all I needed to know and explained how the procedure works. Simply put, she is going to be physically putting his sperm where it needs to go.. hahaha. too lazy to go full detail so you can feel free to google more details if you like lol.

The paragraph above, happened today. I had the IUI done. It wasn't that bad and was pretty fast. Little uncomfortable when she was injecting the sperm and the cramping... whew.. had to grab my friends hand real quick lmao.. its been almost 12 hours since the procedure, still got some cramping but all good. only thing I don't like so far, is that they told me not to smoke no more weed until I know whether or not IUI worked. Im already aggravated and got "ants in my pants" haha. this is going to be a long struggle for me but I know when I see our beautiful healthy baby, it'll be worth it.

This is just a general overview of my fertility journey and I cant wait to see what happens next..

I test to see if it worked on march 31st so STAY TUNED!

[nursingucgconferences]

What the Heck Is Pediatrics and Neonatal?

Neonatal:

A newborn is another name for a neonate. The first four weeks of a child's existence are known as the neonatal period. It is a period of extremely rapid change. Several important things could happen during this time: Patterns of feeding are developed. Pediatric experts known as neonatologists specialise in caring for newborns and premature babies.

Present your research Globally, Gain Credit & Visibility for your research at CME/CPD accredited 13th World Nursing, Healthcare Management, and Patient Safety Conference, which will take place November 15-18, 2023 in Los Angeles, USA.

Track 41: Neonatal Medicine Submit Abstract here: https://nursing.universeconferences.com/submit-abstract/

How does that relate to children?

Pediatrics is the area of medicine that deals with the wellbeing and medical treatment of newborns, young children, and teenagers from the age of birth to the age of 18. The Greek words "pais" (meaning "child") and "iatros" (meaning "doctor or healer") are combined to form the word "pediatrics," which means "healer of children."

Pediatricians specialize in the area of medicine that deals with the mental, emotional, and social wellbeing of children from infancy through early adulthood. From preventative health care to the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic disorders, pediatric care covers a wide range of medical services.

Pediatric patients are those who are under the age of 21 at the time of their diagnosis or treatment, according to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act). Subgroups of children are further divided into the following categories: newborns and their first 28 days of life are referred to as neonates. Infants, from 29 days old to under 2 years old.

What distinguishes pediatric medicine from neonatal medicine?

The age span covered by pediatrics, which is the area of medicine that deals with the medical care of newborns, children, and adolescents, is typically from birth to age 18. Care for newborns is referred to as neonatal care.

Pediatric and Neonatal Acute Care Pharmacy Practice

In many regions of the world, the range of practise for pharmacists has increased, giving them more power to influence the provision of direct patient care. Pharmacists in Alberta are able to apply for an Additional Prescribing Authorization (APA) by sending in a description of their clinical procedures as well as sample patient care and documentation. Except for narcotics and regulated substances, pharmacists with APA are allowed to independently prescribe medications. The last ten years have seen pharmacists adopt this field of practice. When the electronic patient care system was modified to include pharmacists as independent prescribers, this scope of practise was formally authorised within Calgary acute care hospitals in the latter part of 2016.

Concerning neonatal medicine

We can give your child the best care possible if they need normal treatments or a complicated operation if they are born prematurely or are ill at birth.

With a 93-bed unit that includes three cots in both our neonatal intensive care unit and our special care newborn unit, The Portland Hospital is renowned across the world for its pediatric and neonatal treatment. Both newborns delivered in Portland and those with complicated medical or post-surgical issues can be monitored and cared for there because to the facility's cutting-edge technologies.

One of the most cutting-edge neonatal medical teams in the world is represented by our consultants. This encompasses the creation and improvement of numerous systems for sustaining a baby's life as well as the management of brain damage in both preterm and term newborn newborns.

What is perinatal medicine and neonatology?

Intense care for premature babies or severely ill neonates is the main emphasis of neonatal-perinatal medicine. These medical professionals are known as neonatologists. The neonatologists at Maine Health are expertly trained and enthusiastic about providing care for infants and expectant moms who are carrying high-risk pregnancies.

What does pediatric medicine mean?

Pediatrics is the area of medicine that deals with the wellbeing and medical treatment of newborns, young children, and teenagers from the age of birth to the age of 18. The Greek words "pais" (meaning "child") and "iatros" (meaning "doctor or healer") are combined to form the word "pediatrics," which means "healer of children."

Neonatology

Pediatricians that specialise in neonatology provide medical attention for newborn children, especially those who are sick or born prematurely. Since it is a hospital-based speciality, neonatal intensive care units are typically where it is practised (NICUs). Neonatal children that are unwell or need specialised medical treatment owing to prematurity, low birth weight, intrauterine growth restriction, congenital abnormalities (birth defects), sepsis, pulmonary hypoplasia, or birth asphyxia are the main patients of neonatologists.

Child burn surgery

15-20 children are sent to the hospital with burns every 100,000 times, but sadly, there is not enough data to determine the best pain management techniques. The purpose of this study was to determine whether caudal analgesia with a single injection of local anaesthetics decreased the amount of pain medication consumed by pediatric burn injury patients who needed surgery. A single regional burn center's retrospective data from patients under the age of 7 who underwent burn surgery in the operating rooms from 2013 to 2021 was gathered and examined. To produce matched cohorts, a 1:1 propensity-score matching method employing nearest neighbour matching without replacement was used. The primary outcome at 24 hours following surgery was opioid consumption, which is represented as opioid equivalents divided by patient weight in kilos. There were no statistically significant differences in the adjusted morphine equivalents received by the caudal group (0.122 [0.0646; 0.186]) and the no caudal group (0.0783 [0.0384; 0.153]) at 24 h following surgery (p = 0.06), when propensity-score matched groups were compared. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship between caudal analgesia and postoperative pain management in pediatric burn patients. For patients who had single injection caudal blocks, the data showed an increase in pain medicine consumption both during and 24 hours after surgery. However, when the data were corrected using propensity-score matching, the difference was no longer statistically significant.

The 13th World Nursing, Healthcare Management, and Patient Safety Conference, which is CME/CPD recognized, offers a chance to network with peers from the healthcare industry, academia, and other stakeholders. This conference is for you if you or your coworkers have any questions about nursing, healthcare management, or patient safety.

Register here: https://nursing.universeconferences.com/registration/ to join us in Los Angeles, USA, from November 15 to 18, 2023.

Connect with us: Visit: https://nursing.universeconferences.com/ Submit your papers/abstract/poster/case studies: https://nursing.universeconferences.com/submit-abstract/ Register here: https://nursing.universeconferences.com/registration/ Email us at nursing@universeconferences.net WhatsApp: https://wa.me/442033222718 Contact number: +12073070027

Our previous blog spot links:

Tumblr: https://at.tumblr.com/nursingucgconferences/submit-your-abstract-on-healthcare-simulation-and/9ponwhx0fuvv Quora: https://qr.ae/prYMT2 Kiko: https://kikoxp.com/posts/19682 Quora: https://qr.ae/prYMNg Medium: https://medium.com/@nursingutilitarianmeetings/submit-your-abstract-on-healthcare-simulation-and-register-as-a-speaker-at-the-12nhpsucg-ccf845649d3b Google sites: https://sites.google.com/view/submit-your-abstract-on-health/home LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/submit-your-abstract-healthcare-simulation-register-s-md-ph-d-/?published=t LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/submit-your-abstract-healthcare-simulation-register-speaker-g/?published=t

[cryoviva-india]

Is it Safe to Delay Cord Clamping?

There has been a conflict of ideas for a long time on the appropriate time to clamp the umbilical cord after the delivery of a baby. The umbilical cord was clamped in the "early" days within the first minute after the baby's birth, ideally between 15 to 30 seconds. There is mounting evidence that the baby benefits from delaying cord clamping until they are born or until the cord stops beating.

Delaying cord clamping can enhance the baby's blood iron levels for up to six months after birth, preventing anaemia. Later in life, this may result in nervous system issues and learning disabilities.

This is also seen as excellent practice in low-resource areas where newborns do not have convenient or sufficient access to diets high in iron. Children in these areas are more likely to get anaemia, characterised by abnormally low haemoglobin levels in the blood.

Benefits Of Delayed Cord Clamping

For most deliveries, delaying cord clamping has become a standard procedure in the healthcare system. The following are the benefits of delayed cord clamping:

Reduces the possibility of anaemia

Delaying cord clamping increases the baby's blood volume and iron reserves in full-term infants. This additional iron helps prevent anaemia because iron does not transfer well into breast milk. Low red blood cell volume is a defining feature of anaemia. Better development as the baby may result from the increased red blood cell count.

It can be performed along with a C-section

Cord clamping can occur after the placenta has been removed from the mother's uterus; postponing cord clamping after a surgical delivery carries no additional risk to the mother or child.

The method is extremely secure

For healthy moms and babies, there are very few complications related to delaying cord clamping. The major danger of delaying cord clamping is that the extra blood could make you ill with jaundice. Jaundice is a problem that can be identified and is monitored in infants. Placing the infant under a light that aids in reducing excessive bilirubin in the blood is one method of treating jaundice.

For premature infants, the advantages are considerably larger

A boost of pure blood from the umbilical cord can help reduce the risk of significant health problems in premature babies. It has been demonstrated that delaying cord clamping in preterm infants lowers the need for blood transfusions and the risk of intraventricular haemorrhage (a bleed in the baby's brain that may result in lifelong neurologic issues) and necrotising enterocolitis. These two serious complications can affect the baby's intestines).

 Boosts the oxygenation

The newborn has access to more oxygenated blood from the placenta during the transition period; keeping a premature baby linked to the placenta aids in stabilising them. Extremely preterm newborns, particularly those under 31 weeks, will benefit the most from this.

When To Prevent Delayed Cord Clamping?

There are some situations in which delayed cord clamping should be avoided. Delayed cord clamping is not advised in cases where the baby needs immediate medical attention after birth, such as in cases where the mother has an irregular placenta, is bleeding, or is delivering a baby. Medical professionals will swiftly clamp the cord to concentrate on the mother and child's health in these situations.

RJ Corp established the biotech business Cryoviva Biotech Private Limited in Gurgaon in 2016. The processing and storage of high-quality umbilical cord blood stem cells for both private and public donation purposes is our primary goal as one of India's expanding stem cell banks. We have networks in every town in India that offer cutting-edge processing and storage equipment that international authorities have authorised.

Cryoviva Biotech Private Limited is dedicated to offering its customers the best services possible and is steadily expanding. Visit our website to learn more about our stem cell banking services and other things!

[hanjisungs-bigtittyg0thgf]

Like this...

best friend!mingi x fem reader

Trigger warnings: n/a

Content warnings: names (tiny, baby, pretty, good girl, tiny baby), oral (f receiving), dry humping, really just soft and sweet, mingi is a confident, cocky bastard (affectionate),  hongjoong calls reader “missy” in the beginning, wooyoung’s annoying ass shows up at the end.

Summary: you’ve been in love with your best friend for years now but what happens when he gets all pouty after inviting you to watch him record?

Word count: 6251

A/N: i’m not gonna have this up by midnight so i apologize, it will be 12-15-22 instead of 12-14-22 ㅜㅜ anyways, this was requested by @foulbreadpirate​ and my mingi biased ass had a field day. it’s actually my first time writing for him so this was a ton of fun! i would die for this man. i hope you all like it! as always, consider following me here or on my main and consider turning on those post notifications so you know exactly when i drop new content. asks are open! also, i have started a ko-fi! here’s my first post! commissions are open and all proceeds go towards paying off student loans and the new laptop i had to get in order to continue producing quality content for you angels <3 anywayssssss enjoy!!

Smut below the cut

“Hey tiny.” Your attention was pulled from your phone when you heard your best friend’s voice. Immediately, you were all smiles as you watched him sit beside you. You mumbled out a soft ‘hi’ as he placed your coffee on the table in front of you. “I’m really glad you agreed to come today. It’s been a while since we got to hang out and the guys have been dying to see you again.”

You nodded as he spoke, still wearing a soft smile. “I’m glad you invited me. It feels like it’s been forever since we saw each other. Besides, I wouldn’t pass up the chance to see The Song Mingi doing what he does best.” You giggled softly and he rolled his eyes.

That’s right. Song Mingi, one of the top fourth generation K-Pop rappers, was your best friend. You’d befriended him in the 7Eleven downstairs on your way home after school one day. You’d stopped in to grab some snacks and this really pretty boy around your age started making conversation. You talked for almost twenty minutes before he got a call. He explained he was a trainee at the company upstairs (which you didn’t know existed at the time, you were just looking for food) and gave you his number before dashing out of the shop, presumably back upstairs.

You texted him as soon as you were home, giving the proper introduction the two of you had skipped and asking for his name. “Mingi” he’d answered. The name was easily the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen (and later heard, as his friends, fellow trainees, called out to him in passing). Any time he had off was spent with you after that.

That was in 2016. Now, six years later, you two were both extremely busy but still talked every day. Every night, he called you to chat for a few minutes before bed and every morning you’d wake up to a sweet text. Your favorite one was “I hope your day is as amazing as you are <3”, that text always ensured your day would be wonderful even if things went to shit.

Shortly after they’d been put together as KQ Fellaz, Mingi had introduced you to the rest of the guys and you became fast friends. By that point, you already had a fat crush on the sweet boy you’d met in the 7Eleven. It was obvious to everyone except Mingi that you liked him and they gladly accepted you. But they also realized after meeting you that you were the girl Mingi was always talking about, so they made sure to ‘label’ you as his.

Currently, the two of you were sat in the studio together. He’d invited you along to monitor him since you’d never gotten a behind-the-scenes look at what he did for a living and everyone wanted to see you. Jongho was in the booth at the moment but he was just about to finish up and then it would be Mingi’s turn. Jongho’s voice sent chills down your spine as he recorded one of the highest notes you’d ever heard.

After a few minutes, Jongho was seated in Mingi’s place and Mingi was in the booth. You started making small talk with Jongho while Mingi was warming up but you were keenly aware of the sounds your best friend was making. There were a series of grunts and growls to get his voice just raspy enough to record and you felt your pulse quicken. You’d wondered what he’d sound like in bed for four years now and even the slightest hint sent you reeling.

You felt awful over the feelings you had for your best friend but it was impossible not to fall head over heels for a man like Mingi. He was fucking hilarious and so sweet your teeth hurt sometimes. He was constantly making sure you’d had a good day. Again, he was the last person you interacted with before bed and he was the first person you interacted with when you woke up. He was an angel, you were convinced, and if he wasn’t then he was the closest thing to one. Plus he was fucking hot.

The second he started rapping, you felt arousal wash over your body. It was embarrassing just how strong his hold on you was. His voice was low and raspy to the point it was almost a growl and you instantly noticed the dampness between your legs. He didn’t even have to try in order to have your stomach in knots. You tried your hardest not to squirm in your seat, praying Jongho wouldn’t notice just how worked up you were getting. Luck was on your side, it seemed, as he continued to make comments on Mingi’s rap as you subtly squeezed your thighs together.

Thankfully, he only had to go over it a couple times before he was stepping out of the booth. You weren’t sure your heart could’ve handled it if he’d kept going. One look in his direction had Jongho making room so Mingi could plop down beside you on the small sofa. Normally you wouldn’t have minded sitting hip to hip with the gentle giant but you were currently battling with your libido and that man was not helping anything. “So?” He grinned and your heart thumped violently in your chest. “Whaddaya think, tiny?”

You didn’t know how you managed it but you kept your cool as you responded, returning his grin. “I was right. It’s even cooler behind the scenes.” You hummed, leaning into his side when he wrapped his arm around your shoulders despite the desire to run away and hide. “You look really happy when you record. It’s clear this is your passion.” You added, your voice soft as he laid his head over on yours and squished his cheek to your crown.

“Yeah?” There was that deep voice again. Why did it have to keep dipping lower than usual? You were trying to calm down! “Well only one other thing makes me that happy.” He waited until you nudged him to continue. “Spending time with you. Which means today is one of the best days of my life.”

“Oh my god, shut up!” You whined as you laughed softly, bringing your hands up to hide your reddening face. “You’re so cheesy!” You complained as he laughed and wrapped his other arm around you.

“Maybe so, but it makes you blush and I think that’s cute.” He teased and you felt your face grow a darker red as you laughed it off. He’s just messing with you, y/n, he’s not secretly in love like you. Calm down.

Before you could respond, Hongjoong entered the room holding up boxes from the fried chicken place down the street. “We’re setting up lunch in the next room, come eat.” You didn’t immediately move and he gave you a playful glare. “Including you, missy.” His expression quickly morphed into a sweet smile and if you weren’t in love with your best friend you’d have felt butterflies erupt in your belly at the sight. The man was pretty. “You’re the guest of honor!” You allowed Mingi to pull you from the couch, rolling your eyes while smiling softly at all the attention you were getting.

————————————

The rest of the afternoon went smoothly, Mingi not moving from your side unless it was absolutely necessary. You didn’t notice how his jaw ticked when you started hyping up Hongjoong between takes, unable to hold still when his charismatic rap met your ears. It was a completely different effect than Mingi had, but the poor sap was entirely unaware of the internal meltdown you had over him and he was getting jealous.

He was never the obviously jealous type, he was more passive aggressive than anything. So you knew something was wrong when he barely spoke as he set up his gaming console back at the dorms. You didn’t ask, hoping some one-on-one time would help sooth him. But after two hours of sitting on his bed and playing games, he still wasn’t talking and you were getting kind of irritated.

“Mingi, what’s wrong?” You finally asked, careful to keep your tone gentle and steady. You didn’t wanna start a fight. You’d had a few over the years and you absolutely hated being at odds with him. He didn’t respond so you turned to face him and asked again. He kept his eyes glued to the title screen before him so you reached out and gently turned his head to look at you. “Please talk to me. What’s wrong?” You asked for a third time as his gaze finally met yours and he let out a sigh.

“Did you really want to be there today or were you just there to see everyone?” Your eyebrows knitted together in confusion and he looked down. “You seemed like you had more fun after lunch and you didn’t gas me up like you do when we drop a song…” Wait, he was pouting because he thought you didn’t enjoy seeing him in action?

“I had the best time.” You shifted so you could lean a little closer and prop your chin on his shoulder, smiling a little. He tensed but you didn’t notice. “I was happy to see the guys but I missed you most, you know. Plus, you looked fucking badass in the booth and I think I can safely say I have the coolest bestie ever.”

“You just seemed super excited when Hongjoong was recording and you didn’t look like that when I was in there…” he bit his lip and looked back to the tv. “Come on, you’ve got controller A.”

“I’ll worry about the game once I know you’re not upset anymore.” You shrugged, pulling back and crossing your arms over your chest. “And for the record, I was sitting there in shock at how fucking great you are and wondering how we got to this point.”

“What?” He finally looked at you properly and you stuck out your tongue playfully. “What do you mean ‘how we got to this point’?” He asked, ignoring your expression. Mostly. God he wanted to shove his tongue in your mouth.

“I mean, we met at a fucking convenience store and you’re a celebrity now while I’m about to start grad school. We took very different paths but still managed to stay so close and I got to see you work your magic today.” You smiled a little as you looked down at your lap briefly before locking eyes with him again. “I’m so proud of you. I’m in awe that you kept me so close and even introduced me to the rest of your group-“

“I introduced you because I wanted them to know you were off limits. You can’t just date your bandmate’s best friend. It’s against bro code.” He deadpanned.

“I’m pretty sure that one really only applies to family, not friends…” you quirked an eyebrow at him.

“It applies to whoever I want it to apply to. And I don’t want them hitting you up.” Before you could ask why, he leaned in dangerously close and gave a teasing pout. “What? You want to flirt with Hongjoong?”

“Absolutely not.” You responded far too quickly and your cheeks heated up. You were on board with him making sure you were off limits. You only wished it was because you were his girl, not just a dear friend. “Look, he’s sweet and all, but I don’t see him like that. I don’t see any of them like that. I don’t get why you’re acting so weird about this, they’ve never once-“

His lips met yours briefly and your pulse pounded in your ears as you froze in place. “Good. Because you’re off limits to them.” You nodded dumbly, still reeling at what had just transpired.

You stared at him in shock as he took the controller from your lap and started playing with the game settings before you could respond. He was already selecting a character by the time you gathered yourself. You instantly knocked the controller from his hands and leaned in front of him to obstruct his view. “Uh, what?”

“I said you’re off limits to them.” He tried to reach around you for the controller but you blocked him, asking again what had just happened, and he let out a soft sigh. He’d regretted kissing you as soon as he did it because he was certain he’d just ruined everything, even as the urge presented itself once more with your proximity. Now he was gonna have to address what he’d just done. Great. “Y/N, can we please just pretend I didn’t do that?” Your face fell when he begged and he panicked. “I don’t know why I did it.” Liar.

“Why should we pretend you didn’t do it?” Your voice was so small and hurt. Your heart was steadily sinking. He’d just kissed you and then decided it didn’t happen. How could you not be upset by that? Especially when you’ve had feelings for him for almost the entirety of your friendship.

“Because I shouldn’t have done it. Not like that.” Your heart flipped at his tone, the same one from earlier that drove you up the wall in the best way possible.

“Then how should you have done it?” You whispered as he lifted his gaze to meet yours. Luckily, you hadn’t felt the sting of tears yet. If you had, you would’ve immediately dissolved into a sobbing mess.

When he finally processed that you were giving him a do-over, he felt like he’d been hit by a bus. He knocked the controllers off the bed and pulled you onto his lap, his hands on either side of your face. The size difference between the two of you meant you were at eye level while seated on his lap and the thought sent a shiver down your spine, which he noticed as both of you began to breathe heavier.

“Like this…” he whispered before pressing his lips to yours. It was slow and sweet, everything about him growing softer as he kissed you. Well, almost everything. You didn’t notice though. Your head was spinning as your hands tried to wrap around his forearms, your thumbs unable to meet your fingertips. He noticed just how small your hands were in that moment and he couldn’t stifle the groan that bubbled up at the thoughts that flooded his mind.

The sound made flames erupt under your skin and you let out a soft whimper as you subconsciously tried to squeeze your thighs together. You couldn’t, of course, given that your knees were planted on the bed on either side of him. It seemed he didn’t mind the vice grip your legs had on him since he let out another soft groan before licking over your bottom lip.

You instantly let him in, your grip on his arms getting tighter as his tongue explored your mouth. You were so high strung at the present moment that you’d probably cum on the spot if he told you to. Your pulse was loud in your ears and the only thing you could hear over it was his noises. You couldn’t even pick out the sounds coming from the tv or the chatter from the living room anymore. None of it mattered anyways. All that mattered was him.

Finally, he pulled back so you could both take a breath and rested his forehead against yours. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long…” he whispered and you felt your cheeks heat up again as you gave a slight nod. “To be honest, y/n, I’ve wanted to do that since the day we met. The moment I learned your name, it became my favorite word.” One of his hands slid further back and his fingers began to massage your scalp as he spoke.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about the pretty girl I met during a water break. If I hadn’t left my water bottle in the dorms that morning, I wouldn’t have met you. I remember being so upset when I realized I’d forgotten it. But Yunho was tired of sharing after lunch and I remember being grumpy that he wouldn’t just go refill his bottle and keep sharing. Then I saw you downstairs when I went to get one for myself and it felt like time slowed down. I had to know you.” He pulled back a bit and pressed his lips to your forehead.

“And here we are…” you whispered. By this point, you were so flushed your eyes were watering. You were so overcome with emotions that there was no denying you felt the same. Even so, he wanted to hear it. You could tell what he wanted by the silence even though you couldn’t see his face because you still had your eyes closed from the kiss. So you gave him his way.

“I was having the worst day when we met and just wanted some junk food to munch on while I decompressed. But you stopped me to chat and for twenty minutes, my day didn’t suck. And every day after that was even better because I knew I’d wake up to some sweet message.” Finally, you opened your eyes, which were far less teary than you’d imagined as the burn in your cheeks subsided ever so slightly.

“I remember being so worried about whether or not you’d have to follow the same dating rules as other idols even though we weren’t a couple. I was so fucking relieved when you told me the company didn’t impose a dating ban, that they just said you couldn’t play mafia because you tried to choke Wooyoung.” You giggled softly as a shiver wracked your body from the way he played with your hair. “I felt like I was getting ahead of myself and I always felt guilty for wanting to be with you because you’re my best friend. I-“

“Well no more of that.” He cut you off and your mouth snapped shut instantly. “No more feeling guilty for liking me. Because I like you too.” His words hung in the air before you and for a moment you stopped breathing. Then you surged forwards and caught his lips in another kiss. You couldn’t take it. You needed to feel close to him.

He let out a surprised sound but quickly relaxed into the kiss, the hand in your hair holding your head in place. He was not about to let you go. Not when he finally had you in his arms and he knew his love wasn’t one-sided. His other hand began to move from your face but his fingers tangled in your hair and gave an accidental tug as he tried to drop his hand to your hip. You couldn’t hope to stop the soft moan that slipped out at the slight pull and you prayed he wouldn’t think it was weird that you liked it.

He didn’t. In fact, he thought it was one of the hottest things he’d ever discovered about you. You liked having your hair pulled? He could do that. As you tried to hide your embarrassment over your reaction, the hand on the back of your head turned into a fist that pulled gently at your roots. The sound you let out made his dick twitch and he let out a soft sigh against your lips as his mind ran wild.

The hand that dropped to your hip was holding you tightly and you worried you’d burst into flames if he did anything else. He broke the kiss and you almost pouted before he spoke. “Can I- is it okay if-….” He paused and pulled back to look at you. “How far is too far? I want you. So fucking bad. But I don’t wanna scare you or hurt you or overstep any boundaries.”

Your breath hitched and you felt like you’d pass out any moment now. Was this actually happening? Of course it was, the steady tug on your hair was enough to tell you this was real. So you forced yourself to answer. “Go as far as you want. I’m all yours.”

It was a simple statement but so loaded at the same time and it felt like a punch to the gut when he heard it. “Damn right you are.” His voice was somewhere between a groan and a growl as he moved to the edge of the bed with you still on his lap. He easily lifted you up and placed you on his right thigh. “Ride.”

You felt shy once again at his command and bit your lip. Your stunned expression made him think he’d been too forceful and his hands instantly gave your hips a reassuring squeeze as his expression softened. “Mingi, wait, I’ve never-“ you shook your head and took a breath, not meeting his gaze. “I’ve never like…been on top. Can-…will you guide me?”

He felt like he’d just walked into the sun. It took everything in him not to flip you over onto your back and fuck you senseless. But he reminded himself he could do that another time - he would do that another time - and he moved one of his hands from your hips to your ass for support. “Like this, baby.”

His large hands pulled you close before guiding you back, his thigh tense between your legs. Would it have been even better sans pants? Yes. But were you going to argue that point? Hell no. You’d get there eventually.

He set a rhythm that you soon settled into and you no longer needed his guidance as he buried his face in your neck. Your head tipped back of its own accord as his lips assaulted your neck and shoulder with kisses. You tried your best to muffle your sounds, failing miserably the second he forced you to grind down on his thigh. “Mingi, please-“

Hearing you fall apart like that just from riding his thigh was driving him insane and something in him snapped when he heard you begging. He pulled back and stopped your movements, his chest rising and falling rapidly with every breath. “Lay down for me, baby. Gotta lock the door.”

You scrambled off his lap and began getting comfortable as he locked the door. He didn’t immediately come back, taking a moment to queue up some music - which went straight to your pussy - to help cover up the sounds he was determined to draw out of you. He dropped his phone on his desk before crawling over you, his eyes half-lidded and full of lust. You’d only ever seen him wear and expression similar to this on stage so to see it close up and directed at you was making you dizzy again.

“You’re so tiny under me, baby.” He cooed teasingly before leaning down to nip at your jaw. “Can I take this off, pretty?” He whispered against your skin as one hand slipped under your shirt and pressed flat against your tummy. You nodded quickly and he let out a soft laugh. “Can you say it for me?” You hesitated but ultimately gave in, begging him to take your top off. “Good girl.” You keened at the name and he smirked against your skin. Noted.

He moved from your neck so that his lips could leave a trail of kisses going up your body as he lifted your shirt. He paused when he reached your chest, catching the tiny bow on your bra in his teeth and looking up at you before giving a little tug. You whimpered and bit your lip, still reeling from what he’d just done even as he finished taking your shirt off. He wasted no time in attacking you with kisses and bites, pulling your bra down a bit so your entire chest was on display for him. Tonight, you were his canvas and he was determined to paint you shades of purple and red so it was obvious whose you were.

You helped him unclasp your bra and gasped softly when you felt his tongue flick over one of your nipples, your hands instantly tangling in his caramel-colored hair. His large hand gently squeezed your other breast and you let out a pathetic whine. “Mingi-“

“You want more, baby?” You nodded instantly, mumbling out an agreement, and he didn’t hesitate to pop the button on your jeans. The unzipped them and before you could take a breath, his hand was stuffed in your panties. His long fingers began teasing your clit and he bit his lip at how wet you were, thinking about how good you’d feel taking his cock. He nipped at your skin once more and you let out a quiet moan. “You’re so fucking wet. Is this for me?”

“Mhm…” you hummed out, rocking your hips as he toyed with you. “Been so fucking needy since you stepped in the booth…” you added and he paused as he looked up at you with a wolfish grin. “Please don’t stop, Mingi..”

“My tiny baby got turned on while I was working? Is that what you meant earlier when you said you were thinking about how ‘fucking great’ I am?” God you loved when he was confident and cocky like this. “Maybe I should bring you to the studio every time I record so I can get you all worked up.” He teased, eliciting a soft whimper from you as he removed his hand from your pants.

You didn’t want him to stop. Why was he stopping? You didn’t have a chance to really protest before he was moving off the bed and pulling you to the edge. You squeaked in surprise but helped him take off your jeans before he sank to his knees beside the bed. You felt a tidal wave of arousal wash over your body as you processed what he was about to do when he hooked your legs over his shoulders.

“I’ve always wanted to do this…” he groaned softly, kissing up your thighs until he reached your sky blue panties. His nose bumped against your covered pussy and you bit your lip as he inhaled. “Are you as sweet as you smell, baby?”

“Why don’t you find out?” You goaded. You didn’t know where the confidence came from but it seemed to excite him. He placed a series of sloppy kisses between your legs, the wet patch on your panties only growing larger with each kiss. Finally, he pushed them aside and let out a soft curse at the sight of you.

“So fucking pretty…” he praised before flattening his tongue against you. You bit your lip to muffle your whimper, bringing one hand to clamp over your mouth while the other tugged at his caramel hair. He’d just started but you could already tell he was fucking amazing.

You couldn’t help but rock your hips, grinding your pussy against his tongue. He quickly put a stop to that though, his massive hands splaying out over your belly and holding your hips in place. He pulled back to look up at you and you let out a frustrated whine. “Be patient, baby. You’ll get what you want, you just have to be good and wait. Can you do that?”

You nodded immediately. “I-I can be patient..!” Your voice said otherwise but you’d try your damndest to settle down for him. You wanted him to do whatever he saw fit and you’d do whatever it took to get that.

“Mm good girl.” His voice was a low rumble and it sent thrill through your body as he dove back in, eating you out like you were the last thing he’d ever get to taste. It was bordering on impossible to stay quiet when he was so good with his tongue. You had high expectations, he was a rapper for fucks sake, but he was exceeding those expectations.

Your toes curled when he slid two long fingers inside you, pressing against your g-spot almost instantly. “Oh fuck-“ you gasped, trying to stay quiet since the music could only mask so much. You’d slept around a bit during college in the hopes of getting over your famous best friend but it never worked and now you knew no one else would ever compare, not that you’d be going to anyone else from now on.

He smirked against your soaked pussy and curled his fingers inside you, drawing out another desperate sound. He set a steady pace as he secured his lips around your clit, sucking and flicking his tongue in tandem with each thrust of his beautiful fingers. If he didn’t let up, if he kept abusing those nerves, you wouldn’t last long at all. That seemed to be his goal though.

It was. He was determined to make you cum on his fingers and when he wanted something, he got it. So he was relentless in his efforts, finger fucking you until you saw stars. You were unable to hold still even with one of his arms acting as a bar over your hips and your back arched as white hot pleasure flooded your body, a string of soft curses falling from your lips.

He didn’t stop right away, guiding you through your orgasm until you were left with only the aftershocks of pleasure before he slowly pulled away, finally taking your panties off entirely as he went. By that point, he was unbearably hard and was certain it wouldn’t take him much to get off. He probably would’ve cum untouched if you’d held off any longer.

Your breathing was ragged as you recovered and you felt weightless in the moment. You watched as he stood between your legs and shivered in delight at just how small you felt. He crawled over you and you bit your lip at his expression, shuddering when his necklace tickled your skin. “Do you have any clue how fucking sweet you are?”

You wanted to take his hand and lick his fingers clean but before you could ask, he was already pressing them to your lips. You eagerly accepted them and began to suck them clean as you tugged his shirt up a bit. His jaw went slack, his eyes half shut as your nails lightly dragged along his abs. He suddenly pulled his hand back and crashed his lips to yours, letting his body rest against yours and pin you to the bed.

His weight on you was oddly comforting as he slipped his tongue into your mouth, letting you taste yourself. He was right, you were sweet. You could feel how hard he was from the way he pinned you and you wondered how he hadn’t snapped already. Deciding he needed some relief, you began to roll your hips, grinding against the tent in his jeans.

He felt fire under his skin at the friction and groaned into the kiss, one hand stilling your hips. He’d finish too fast if you kept at it. “Baby, wait…” he mumbled against your lips and you froze in place. Were you getting too far ahead of yourself? Did he not want more? “I’m so fucking hard right now. If you keep doing that, I’m gonna go insane…”

His admission made you clench around nothing and your fingertips began to dance along his sides. “What if I want you to go insane? I’ve wanted you for so long, Mingi…” you whispered and he let out a ragged breath against your lips.

“Fuck, tiny, you can’t just say shit like that..” he groaned, forcing himself to hold still. “I’m trying to go slow with you, baby, it’s our first time and I want it to be special.”

“It already is, Mingi.” You whispered, gently pushing him back so you could look him in the eye. “It already is special because I’m here with you. Because it’s our first time.” You waited for a response that never came, his battle clear on his face. He was trying so hard to control himself. “You don’t have to go slow. Please take me…”

That was it. He couldn’t take anymore. He immediately pulled away and shed his clothes, his gloriously tanned body on full display for you. He was fucking beautiful. And big. You shuddered in delight at the thought of him filling you and he seemed to catch on to what you were thinking because he lined up almost immediately.

When he didn’t immediately put it in, you tried to wiggle your way down onto him but he held you in place. He didn’t look away from your face as he slid the tip in, wanting to see every expression you made as he filled you up. “Fuck…” he groaned, the word long and drawn out as you enveloped him in warmth.

You’d always loved when a guy did that. It made you feel so sexy and powerful. So to hear it from Mingi of all people was just…you thought you’d go up in flames if you heard it again.

You gasped when he pulled your legs up, pushing them towards your chest with his large hands. You weren’t quite folded in half but you wouldn’t have minded if you were, he felt so good like this. You brought your hand back to your mouth to muffle your sounds when you felt him bottom out before setting a slow pace.

It’s like you were made for each other. He fell into the rhythm that never failed to turn you into a mess and the drag of his cock inside you made your back arch. “How do you like it, baby? Want me to go faster?”

You shook your head immediately. “Nuh uh. Like this. Keep it just like this, Mingi, please…” you begged quietly and felt him twitch inside you. Fuck. So he liked when you begged? The next time you did this would be at your place so you could moan and beg freely for him.

He nodded and put one of your legs on his shoulder, turning to kiss your calf as his now-free hand pressed down on your pelvis. You almost squealed at the feeling, your free hand grasping at the sheets by your head. How the fuck was he so good at this? You didn’t actually want to know, you didn’t want to think about how many people he could’ve been with on tours and such considering how many people you’d been with in the past.

Instead, you focused on how good it felt to finally make love to your best friend, the man you’d been in love with for years now. You bit back a series of soft moans and whimpers as he drove you up the bed, his thrusts slow but powerful. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, he moved his hand from where it was pressing against you so that his thumb could draw tight circles over your clit. You made a choked sound as you tried not to cry out his name, a delicious burn filling every part of your body as the coil in your belly wound tighter with every thrust.

Finally, you couldn’t take it anymore and your second orgasm crashed down over you. Your pussy clenching around him threw Mingi over the edge too and he let your leg fall from his shoulder as he leaned down, crashing his lips to yours to stifle the sounds coming from both of you. You whined into the kiss as he came inside you, your nails digging into his shoulders. There would be little crescent shapes there for at least thirty minutes after this.

As you both came down from your highs, you buried your face in his neck and began to press little kisses there. He’d given you several love bites and you wanted to give him at least one in return. He’d made it obvious you were his so you had to do the same. His temperature skyrocketed when you bit down and he let out a pathetic moan, his voice pitching upwards this time. Fuck that was pretty.

Finally, when you were satisfied with your work of art, he pulled out and moved to lay beside you instead. You rolled onto your side and snuggled into him, pressing a kiss to his chest before laying your head there. “I didn’t imagine today would go like this.” He chuckled softly in agreement at your words and pulled your leg across his waist. “But I’m glad it did. I-“

“It’s about fucking time!” You heard Wooyoung shout from right beside the door and you felt panic and embarrassment fill your body. “Y/N, we’ve been telling him to just go for it for so long now! It’s about fucking time he did it! Judging from-“

“Wooyoung.” Hongjoong’s tone was threatening, you could tell even over the music. Thank fucking god. If someone hadn’t stopped Wooyoung you probably wouldn’t have the courage to face the rest of them again. At least you wouldn’t have to worry about hiding anything but knowing they heard you was embarrassing and you found yourself hiding your face in Mingi’s chest as you both tried not to laugh.

It was always obvious to everyone that you were his. But now you truly were and you couldn’t be happier that the evening had gone like this.

[crimeculturepodcast]

Hispanic/Latino horror movies

In honor of Hispanic Heritage month, this week we talked about horror movies out of Latin American and Spanish speaking countries. There were some we couldn’t get to so here is the full list:

Spain

The Devil’s Backbone (2001)

Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Audience Score: 89%

Google Score: 85%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Critics Consensus: Creepily atmospheric and haunting, The Devil's Backbone is both a potent ghost story and an intelligent political allegory.

Description: “Set during the last years of the Spanish Civil War, The Devil's Backbone is a Spanish gothic horror movie that follows Carlos, a young orphan boy who is deposited at Santa Lucia School among several other children who have been displaced by the conflict. Though he finds friends in the professor and the head mistress, he is plagued by a wandering spirit with a link to the violent caretaker's secret past.”

Trivia: The movie, which he wrote in college and was in development for 16 years, is strongly inspired by Del Toro’s personal memories, especially his relationship with his uncle, who supposedly came back as a ghost. It is also included among the "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" edited by Steven Schneider. Although filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is Mexican, this film is set in the Spanish countryside (largely filmed in Madrid) that’s why it’s on the Spanish list. The Devil’s Backbone has all of the impactful elements of spirituality, horror, and the supernatural that come up again and again in Del Toro’s work. This film has been referred to as the “brother film” of one of Del Toro’s best known works, Pan’s Labyrinth. 

[REC] (2007)

Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Audience Score: 82%

Google Score: 85%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Critics Consensus: Plunging viewers into the nightmarish hellscape of an apartment complex under siege, [Rec] proves that found footage can still be used as an effective delivery mechanism for sparse, economic horror.

Description: “Late-night TV host Angela and her cinematographer are following the fire service on a call to an apartment building, but the Spanish police seal off the building after an old woman is infected by a virus which gives her inhuman strength.”

Trivia: The movie was filmed chronologically in real locations (no sets were built for the movie). The actor’s were never given the script in its entirety and didn’t know what was going to happen to their characters until the day of filming. The movie is also a big inspiration for the horror survival game Outlast.

Considered The Blair Witch Project of zombie movies, REC had a lot of competition in the found footage style (it came out the same year as George Romero’s Diary of the Dead and the first Paranormal Activity movie). It more than holds its own among them, so much so that an American remake called Quarantine came out the next year. Director Jaume Balagueró keeps the movie disturbingly real and doesn’t fall prey to jump scare after jump scare.

Veronica (2017)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 49%

Google Score: 80%

IMDb: 6.2/10

Critics Consensus: A scarily effective horror outing, Veronica proves it doesn't take fancy or exotic ingredients to craft skin-crawling genre thrills. 

Description: “During a solar eclipse, a teenage girl and her friends want to summon the spirit of the girl's father using an Ouija board. However, during the session she loses consciousness and soon it becomes clear that evil demons have arrived.”

Trivia: Based on the true story of 18-year-old Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro. I won’t go too far into it because we may do an episode on it in the future but if you want spoilers, watch the movie (if you dare).

Directed by Paco Plaza (same as REC), the possession theme is done over and over again in horror but this movie is a terrifying and fresh take. 

The Bar (2017)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 55%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 6.3/10

Description: “In bustling downtown Madrid, a loud gunshot and two mysterious deaths trap a motley assortment of common urbanites in a decrepit central bar, while paranoia and suspicion force the terrified regulars to turn on each other.”

Directed by Álex de la Iglesia, it’s labeled as a horror-comedy. You can watch it on Netflix.

Who Can Kill A Child? (1976) - Tells the story of a happy couple, two English tourists who decide to vacation on a secluded island in the Mediterranean. There they discover – almost too late- that the island has been taken over by a group of murderous children.

The Baby’s Room (2006) - Featured on Six Films to Keep You Awake at Night. A new family renovates and moves into a grand old house. Nervous first-time mom installs a baby monitor but hears mysterious sounds on the other side. Once they install a high-tech video baby monitor, what they see chills them to the bone.

Sleep Tight (2011) - Apartment concierge Cesar is a miserable person who believes he was born without the ability to be happy. His self-appointed task is to make life hell for everyone around him, a mission in which he has great success. It has big home invasion/stalker vibes. 

Timecrimes (2007) - A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences. It sounds like a “Happy Death Day” type of plot (but proceeding it by a decade).

Thesis (1996) - Angela is doing her thesis on the effect of violence in the media when she discovers a snuff film. This discovery leads her down a dark path where she must confront her greatest fears and question everybody around her.

Witching and Bitching (2013) - One article I read said it perfectly, “What Shaun of the Dead did for zombies and What We Do in the Shadows did for vampires, Witching & Bitching essentially did for the cinematic depiction of witches, albeit on a less visible scale.” Great pick if you’re looking for something a bit more lighthearted.

Mexico

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Audience Score: 91%

Google Score: 90%

IMDb: 8.2/10

Critics Consensus: Pan's Labyrinth is Alice in Wonderland for grown-ups, with the horrors of both reality and fantasy blended together into an extraordinary, spellbinding fable. 

Description: After the Allies invade Nazi-occupied Europe, a sadistic captain sends a troop of Spanish soldiers to flush out rebels,bringing his new wife and her daughter along on his exploits. While his family resides in the countryside, he leads his men on a murderous rampage, much of which is witnessed by his step daughter. In an effort to escape her reality she plunges into Pan's Labyrinth, a mystical world at the border of her own.

Trivia: Guillermo del Toro is famous for compiling books full of notes and drawings about his ideas before turning them into films, something he regards as essential to the process. He left years worth of notes for this film in the back of a cab, and when he discovered them missing, he thought it was the end of the project. However, the cab driver found them and, realizing their importance, tracked him down and returned them at great personal difficulty and expense. Del Toro was convinced that this was a blessing and it made him ever more determined to complete the film. Del Toro also repeatedly refused offers from Hollywood producers, in spite of being offered double the budget, provided the film was made in English. He didn't want any compromise in the storyline to suit the "market needs" (he even did the English subtitles himself). The film received 22 minutes of applause at the Cannes Film Festival and in 2007, it became one of the few fantasy films ever nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars. It’s another on the list "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" edited by Steven Schneider with The Devil’s Backbone. It was on more than 130 top 10 lists in 2006. It is also the 5th highest grossing foreign language film in the US.

The Similars (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Audience Score: 49%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 5.9/10

Critics Consensus: A smart homage to genre filmmaking, The Similars is a fun and frightening film that balances socio-political issues with aplomb.

Description: A monstrous, once-in-a-lifetime thunderstorm strands passengers in a remote bus station outside Mexico City in 1968. As they listen to the radio, they realized that the storm has spread all over the world. As they look at each other, they also realize that everyone’s faces are slowly changing, and not for the better. 

Trivia: The film used make-up and special effects techniques never before done in Mexico. Director Isaac Ezban was influenced by B-movies of the 50s and 60s as well as TV shows and movies like “The Twilight Zone”, “The Thing”, and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.

We Are What We Are (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 72%

Audience Score: 48%

Google Score: 77%

IMDb: 5.7/10

Critics Consensus: We Are What We Are is elevated horror that combines family drama and social politics, with plenty of gore on top.

Description: After a family patriarch dies, his survivors are tasked with continuing the rigid family rituals that involve hunting meat, preparing it for consumption, and eating it. The “meat” in question is human flesh, since they’re a family of cannibals. With two detectives hot on their tail, the family of cannibals strains to maintain their family traditions in a modern urban environment.

There was an English language remake in 2013 (86% on Rotten Tomatoes) with Wyatt Russell and Odeya Rush (Lady Bird, Dumplin’, and Goosebumps)

We Are The Flesh (2016) - A joint French-Mexican production released in Spanish as Somos la carne, this post-apocalyptic nightmare involves a brother and sister who roam the land desperately seeking food until a kindly old man takes them in under the condition that they help him renovate an abandoned building. Oh, and they also have to have sex with one another while he watches. And after he breaks their will by getting them to do that, he makes them do all sorts of other things. This film was one of only four in Mexico to receive a “D” rating—which is reserved for subject matter that is considered extremely disturbing and/or pornographic.

The Witch’s Mirror (1962) - An abusive and cheating husband kills his wife so that he can be with his mistress. The woman’s godmother was a witch who originally tried casting a spell on a mirror to protect her from domestic violence, but the spell failed. Still, she is able to bring the woman back from the grave, and the two witches set out to destroy the evil woman-beater.

Here Comes The Devil (2012) - A married couple lose their children while on a family trip near some caves in Tijuana. The kids eventually reappear without explanation, but it becomes clear that they are not who they used to be, that something terrifying has changed them.

Chile

Downhill (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 60%

Audience Score: 22%

Google Score: 43%

IMDb: 3.5/10

Description: Deeply upset by the passing of his best friend, a professional BMX rider accepts to partake in a race in Chile. Everything goes as planned until he stumbles upon a man who is infected by a mysterious virus and becomes the target of local assassins.

Trivia: Filmed in 13 days

Post Mortem (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Audience Score: 61%

Google Score: 70%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: In Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende’s presidency, an employee at a Morgue’s recording office falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears.

Aftershock (2012)

Rotten Tomatoes: 39%

Audience Score: 24%

Google Score: 61%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Critics Consensus: Aftershock hints at an inventive twist on horror tropes, but ultimately settles for another round of mind-numbing depravity that may alternately bore and revolt all but the most ardent gore enthusiasts.

Description: In Chile, a group of travelers who are in an underground nightclub when a massive earthquake hits quickly learn that reaching the surface is just the beginning of their nightmare.

Trivia: Horror icon Eli Roth wrote and stars in this film.

To Kill A Man (2014) - An attack on his daughter leads a mild-mannered family man to take revenge on the vicious street thugs who have tormented him and his family for a long time.

Columbia

Out Of The Dark (2014) This is in English

Rotten Tomatoes: 24%

Audience Score: 22%

Google Score: 77%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Description: A family moves to Colombia to take over the operation of a manufacturing plant, soon they learn their new home is haunted.

Trivia: Starring Julia Stiles (10 Things I Hate About You, Dexter) and Scott Speedman (The Strangers, You) 

The Squad (2011)

Audience Score: 53%

Google Score: 82%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Description: After a secret military base ceases all communications, an anti-guerrilla commando unit is sent to the mountainous location to discover what exactly happened. The squad expects to discover that the base was attacked and taken over by guerrilla units, but instead find only a lone woman wrapped in chains.

Trivia: In one scene where the actors are shooting guns, one actor accidentally picked up a real gun instead of the prop and fired a real shot (no one was hurt).

Cord (2015) - On a post-apocalyptic world of never-ending winter, a sparse cast of outsiders live underground. Due to their unsanitary conditions, sexual contact has become dangerous. Masturbation has become the paradigm of sexual experience and an array of low-tech devices with this purpose has come into existence. In this bleak reality, a dealer of such machines a sex addict make a deal: she will allow him to experiment new devices on her body in exchange of pleasure. Soon however, their relationship goes out of control.

The Hidden Face (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes: 80%

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 86%

IMDb: 7.4/10

Description: Shattered by the unexpected news of their irreversible break-up, an aspiring orchestra conductor is puzzled by his girlfriend's mysterious and seemingly inexplicable case of disappearance. But, can he look beyond the facts?

Trivia: There is a Turkish version of this movie and a 2013 remake out of India called “Murder 3”

At The End Of The Spectra (2006)

Google Score: 83%

IMDb: 6/10

Description: A young woman who has become agoraphobic due to a traumatic incident is holed up in her apartment, she begins to suffer from hallucinations, paranoia and an obsessive neighbour.

Trivia: There is a Mexican remake called “Devil Inside” and there were once rumors of an American remake starring Nicole Kidman but that’s the end of that.

Uruguay

The Silent House (La Casa Muda) (2010) 

Rotten Tomatoes: 68%

Audience Score: 37%

Google Score: 63%

IMDb: 5.4/10

Critics Consensus: Shot in a single take, The Silent House may be a gimmick movie, but it's one that's enough to sustain dread and tension throughout. 

Description: A girl becomes trapped inside a house and becomes unable to contact the outside world as supernatural forces haunt it.

Trivia: The plot is supposedly based on a true story that occurred in the 1940s in a small village in Uruguay. With a budget of just six thousand dollars, it was filmed using a handheld high-definition digital single-lens reflex camera (the Canon EOS 5D Mark II), 2 handheld lamps, and a couple of lightbulbs over a time period of just four days. The claim that the movie was filmed in one continuous take are suspect. The Mark II camera can only record up to 15 minutes of continuous video at a time. Uruguay's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 84th Academy Awards 2012.

Monos (2019)

Rotten Tomatoes: 92% 

Audience Score: 85%

Google Score: 69%

IMDb: 6.9/10

Critics Consensus: As visually splendid as it is thought-provoking, Monos takes an unsettling look at human nature whose grim insights leave a lingering impact.

Description: On a faraway mountaintop, eight teenaged guerillas with guns watch over a hostage and a conscripted milk cow. Playing games and initiating cult-like rituals, the children run amok in the jungle and disaster strikes when the hostage tries to escape.

Trivia: Moises Arias (Hannah Montana) and Julianne Nicholson (I, Tonya, August: Osage County) most of the other actors had never acted before. The movie draws inspiration from Lord of the Flies. Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider. It was selected as the official Colombian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.

Peru

The Entity (2015)

Google Score: 66%

IMDb: 4.3/10

Description: A group of students decide to study 'reaction videos' and are led toward an old film, hidden in the archive room of a cemetery. It appears that everybody who has witnessed the film has met an untimely demise under suspicious circumstances. When the students view the footage, they discover first hand, what the demonic spirit is capable of. Fulfilling the ancient curse of a woman cruelly killed during the Spanish Inquisition.

Trivia: The Entity has been billed as Peru's first 3D horror film and to have been loosely based on true stories. Review websites Flickering Myth and Nerdly commented that the movie suffered from being too overly familiar to pre-existing works (Blair Witch, The Ring).

The Vanished Elephant (2014)

Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 88%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: Crime novelist Edo remains obsessed with what happened to his fiancee Celia after she disappeared during an earthquake. When an enigmatic woman brings him photos that may help him solve the mystery, he senses he is being drawn into a dangerous game.

The Secret Of Evil (2014)

Google Score: 65%

IMDb: 5/10

Description: Video footage depicting a supernatural encounter is all that remains of a filmmaker and his crew who disappeared while exploring a haunted house.

When Two Worlds Collide (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes: 91%

Audience Score: 69%

Google Score: 93%

IMDb: 7.6/10

Description: An indigenous environmental activist takes on the large businesses that are destroying the Amazon.

El Vientre (2014)

Google Score: 81%

IMDb: 6.1/10

Description: Silvia, a beautiful 45-year-old widow, is obsessed with having a child and finds in attractive but naive Mercedes the perfect candidate to bear it. Silvia kindly offers her a job and a room in her house, and then manipulates her into seducing a young man named Jaime. They soon fall in love and Mercedes becomes pregnant. Silvia will do anything in her power to keep the baby, even if it means leaving a couple of bodies behind.

Argentina

Terrified (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes: 77% 

Audience Score: 65%

Google Score: 82%

IMDb: 6.5/10

Description: Paranormal researchers investigate strange events in a neighbourhood in Buenos Aires.

Luciferina (2018)

Rotten Tomatoes: 83%

Audience Score: 25%

Google Score: 69%

IMDb: 4.6/10

Description: Natalia is a nineteen-year-old novice who reluctantly returns home to say goodbye to her dying father. However, when she meets up with her sister and her friends, she decides instead to travel the jungle in search of mystical plant.

Francesca (2015)

Audience Score: 67%

Google Score: 73%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Description: Two detectives track a serial killer who has been targeting the impure. To catch him, they'll have to solve the case of a girl who went missing 15 years ago.

Cold Sweat (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes: 75%

Audience Score: 

Google Score: 58%

IMDb: 4.8/10

Description: The movie follows Román, who stumbles upon his ex-girlfriend Jackie, who has somehow gotten caught up in a torture cult run by two sadistic, old men. The aging political radicals have managed to put Jackie’s life in incredible danger. But when Román and his friend try to help Jackie out of her confines, the elderly psychos prove to be more than meets the eye.

Penumbra (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes: 50%

Audience Score: 26%

Google Score: 75%

IMDb: 5.5/10

Description: A woman desperate to find a tenant for her decrepit apartment apparently finds the perfect candidate, unaware of a sinister plot involving an imminent eclipse.

Venezuela

The House At The End of Time (2013)

Rotten Tomatoes: None 

Audience Score: 72%

Google Score: 91%

IMDb: 6.8/10

Description: Dulce encounters apparitions in her house and unleashes a terrible prophecy. Thirty years later, Dulce, now an old woman, returns to unravel the mystery that has terrorized her for years.

Trivia: Winner of the Audience Award at Gävle Horror Film Festival 2016 (Sweden). Not only is it Venezuela’s highest-grossing horror film, it’s also the most distributed film from the country. By August 2016 it was announced that the American studio New Line Cinema acquired the rights of the film to make a remake for the American public. Hidalgo is still at the wheel so its chances of success are high.

Ecuador

Cronicas (2004)

Rotten Tomatoes: 71%

Audience Score: 77%

Google Score: 80%

IMDb: 6.9/10

Critics Consensus: An unsettling and absorbing cautionary tale with John Leguizamo playing an unscrupulous TV reporter who uses the medium to further his own goals.

Description: Reporter Manolo Bonilla (John Leguizamo) goes to a jail in Ecuador to interview Vinicio Cepeda (Damián Alcázar, Narcos, Narnia), a hit-and-run driver whose crime incited a riot. After Cepeda tells him he knows where a murderer called the Monster of Babahoyo buried a young female victim, Bonilla posts bail in the hopes that he'll learn more about the crime. Bonilla finds the girl's body, but, as he nears the scoop of his career, it looks as if Cepeda might be withholding some key details.

Trivia: Inspired by a true story? As well as being both a Cannes and TIFF favourite, Cronicas is the official submission of Ecuador for the 'Best Foreign Language Film' category of the 77th Academy Awards in 2005, it was produced by Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) This is John Leguizamo’s first film in Spanish. He said he felt awkward talking in Spanish while acting, like he didn't know the language. 

English Language Horror

The Silent House (2011) This is in English

Rotten Tomatoes: 43%

Audience Score: 

Google Score: 72%

IMDb: 5.3/10

Critics Consensus: Silent House is more technically proficient and ambitious than most fright-fests, but it also suffers from a disappointing payoff.

Description: Sarah is working with her father and uncle to renovate an old family home to prepare it for sale. Long vacant, the house has no utilities, forcing the trio to rely on battery-operated lanterns to light their way. Sarah becomes separated from her relatives and soon finds she is trapped inside the cabin, with no contact with the outside world. Panic turns to real terror as the young woman experiences events that become increasingly ominous.

Trivia: Elizabeth Olsen (Wandavision) The plot is based on a true story that occurred in the 1940s in a small village in Uruguay. Contrary to the marketing's claim that the film was shot in one uninterrupted take, the entire movie was actually shot to mimic one continuous real-time take, with no cuts from start to finish, as a result the time span of the film's plot is exactly 86 minutes. It was shot in roughly 10 minute segments then carefully edited to hide the cuts.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) - This along with the rest of the Dead series are the work of George A. Romero, whose father is from Cuba.

Ash vs. Evil Dead - I love the Evil Dead movies and although this series wasn’t perfect (I’m sure die-hard fans will say it's far from it), I still think it kept to the heart of the main story. Bruce Campbell is obviously perfect and the addition of Lucy Lawless is amazing, it’s really Puerto Rican actor Ray Santiago that steals the show.

The Others (2001) - Directed by globally renowned Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar, The Others starring Nicole Kidman is a Spanish gothic horror movie that combines elements of the supernatural, psychological, and mystical. It focuses on the strange events that occur at the estate of a woman and her young children, plagued by spirits in the aftermath of WWII. It has the distinction of being the only English-language Spanish movie to be given the Best Film Award at Spain's national film awards, the Goyas. In total, the movie has seven Goya Awards, including for Best Director. Although it might not read as particularly “Spanish,” it was produced, written and filmed all in Spain, shooting in Cantabria, Northern Spain and Madrid.

[rockislandadultreads]

AAPI Month: Fiction Picks

Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month:  Authors & Works in Fiction

The Farm by Joanne Ramos

Nestled in the Hudson Valley is a sumptuous retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, private fitness trainers, daily massages—and all of it for free. In fact, you get paid big money—more than you've ever dreamed of—to spend a few seasons in this luxurious locale. The catch? For nine months, you belong to the Farm. You cannot leave the grounds; your every move is monitored. Your former life will seem a world away as you dedicate yourself to the all-consuming task of producing the perfect baby for your überwealthy clients. Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines and a struggling single mother, is thrilled to make it through the highly competitive Host selection process at the Farm. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her own young daughter's well-being, Jane grows desperate to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she'll receive on delivery—or worse. Heartbreaking, suspenseful, provocative, The Farm pushes our thinking on motherhood, money, and merit to the extremes, and raises crucial questions about the trade-offs women will make to fortify their futures and the futures of those they love.

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Willis Wu doesn't perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he's merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He's a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy--the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it? After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he's ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration--Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu's most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.

The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood

Following two families from Pakistan and Iraq in the 1990s to San Francisco in 2016, Bad Muslim Discount is a hilarious, timely, and provocative comic novel about being Muslim immigrants in modern America. For fans of Hanif Kureshi, Mira Jacob, and Mohammed Hanif. It is 1995, and Anvar Faris is a restless, rebellious, and sharp-tongued boy doing his best to grow up in Karachi, Pakistan. As fundamentalists in the government become increasingly strident and the zealots next door start roaming the streets in gangs to help make Islam great again, his family decides, not quite unanimously, to start life over in California. The irony is not lost on Anvar that in America, his deeply devout mother and his model-Muslim brother are the ones who fit right in with the tightly knit and gossipy Desi community. Anvar wants more. At the same time, thousands of miles away, Safwa, a young girl suffocating in war-torn Baghdad with her grief-stricken, conservative father will find a very different and far more dangerous path to America. These two narratives are intrinsically linked, and when their worlds come together, the fates of two remarkably different people intertwine and set off a series of events that rock their whole community to its core. The Bad Muslim Discount is an irreverent, dramatic, and often hysterically funny debut novel by an amazing new voice. With deep insight, warmth, and an irreverent sense of humor, Syed Masood examines quirky and intense familial relationships, arranged marriage, Islamic identity, and how to live together in modern America.

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. The woman at the center wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties. The city she calls home, an engaging backdrop to her days, acts as a confidant: the sidewalks around her house, parks, bridges, piazzas, streets, stores, coffee bars. We follow her to the pool she frequents and to the train station that sometimes leads her to her mother, mired in a desperate solitude after her father's untimely death. In addition to colleagues at work, where she never quite feels at ease, she has girl friends, guy friends, and "him," a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her. But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits. One day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun's vital heat, her perspective will change. This is the first novel she has written in Italian and translated into English. It brims with the impulse to cross barriers. By grafting herself onto a new literary language, Lahiri has pushed herself to a new level of artistic achievement.

[impressedbymckayla]

M*ggie continues to be absolute trash. 

If she could travel back in time, before she was suspended from gymnastics after being accused of berating and mistreating her athletes, including an Olympic champion, Maggie Haney says she would change the way she coached.

She wouldn’t push some of her young gymnasts to redo a routine again and again after even the tiniest mistakes. To demand their focus, she wouldn’t yell at them. Instead she would learn to let some imperfections slide.

“I think my mistakes were that I cared too much, and wanted them to be a little too perfect every day, when maybe that’s not possible,” Haney, one of the most prominent coaches in the sport, said this month in an interview with The New York Times, the first time she has spoken publicly in nearly a year. “Maybe what used to be OK is not OK anymore, and maybe it shouldn’t be. I think maybe the culture has shifted.”

Haney has not coached at her gym in central New Jersey or anywhere else since February, she said, when U.S.A. Gymnastics, the sport’s national federation, temporarily suspended her before later barring her from coaching for eight years for what it called her “severe aggressive behavior” toward her athletes. She said she hasn’t even coached her own daughter, who is 11.

The athletes who have trained under Haney include Laurie Hernandez, who won a silver medal on the balance beam at the 2016 Olympics and helped the United States win the team gold medal.

Hernandez’s complaint to the federation was one of nearly a dozen that led to Haney’s ban, which she is appealing to an arbitrator. It was considered the harshest penalty for emotional and verbal abuse in the sport’s recent history.

The suspension was also viewed as a warning that coaches could now face stiff penalties for the mental and nonsexual abuse that was long accepted in the sport before the Lawrence G. Nassar sexual abuse scandal shed light on the toxic culture in gymnastics. Nassar was the longtime United States national team doctor who in 2018 was sentenced to prison for molesting more than 200 girls and women under the guise of medical treatment.

Haney said the accusations against her — particularly those from Hernandez, whom she coached from age 6 — had come out of nowhere, and she vehemently denied them. More than 30 gymnasts at MG Elite, Haney’s gym in Morganville, N.J., and their families continue to support her and are awaiting her return to the sport, she said. Some have voiced their support for Haney in a YouTube video compiled by the public-relations firm she hired to help restore her reputation.

Haney, 42, said she was convinced that U.S.A. Gymnastics had used her as a scapegoat after its missteps in the Nassar case, in which the organization failed to protect its gymnasts from a sexual predator. The federation needed to do “something bold, something dramatic,” she said, to prove to the public that it cares about its athletes.

“I’ve dedicated my whole life to this,” Haney said, her voice beginning to waver. “To be out of the gym has been really hard. I feel like it was unfairly taken away from me.”

Haney’s accusers have not wavered. They say the ban is warranted, and some even wanted a permanent one. They claim that she bullied her gymnasts, publicly shamed them about their weight, encouraged eating disorders and forced them to train with injuries.

Hernandez, who is now training in California for the Tokyo Olympics next summer, told The Times in April that Haney’s treatment of her was “just so twisted that I thought it couldn’t be real.” She said the abuse included Haney calling her weak, lazy and messed up in the head and that the emotional abuse led to a continuing battle with depression.

Riley McCusker, who has a good chance of making the United States team for the Tokyo Games, filed a lawsuit against Haney last month. Among the accusations in the complaint was that Haney had forced McCusker to train through injuries, including while she had a painful, potentially serious medical condition called rhabdomyolysis, which is a breakdown of muscle tissue that can happen from overexertion.

In a separate lawsuit filed last month, another gymnast, Emily Liszewski, a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh, accused Haney and an assistant coach of forcing her to perform an advanced skill on the uneven bars at the Arena Gym, a gym not far from MG Elite, and it led her to fall and hit her head. Liszewski was unconscious for three days, with multiple skull fractures, and had seizures because of the injury, the lawsuit said. The suit also claimed that Haney once picked Liszewski up from the floor by her hair after the gymnast had fallen.

“These situations are not at all the way I recall them,” Haney said, adding that Hernandez’s mother and McCusker’s mother were often in the gym — sometimes on the training floor — but never expressed displeasure over her demanding coaching style. (Neither mother responded to a request made through a representative to comment for this article.)

Haney added: “I just think when money gets involved, people will say and do different things. I think a lot of this is about money.”

The arbitrator’s ruling on Haney’s appeal is expected in the coming days, said one of her lawyers, Steven Altman. He said he hoped that Haney’s suspension would be rescinded because U.S.A. Gymnastics’s hearing for the case had been biased and flawed, and “as a practical matter, a kangaroo court.” Seven of Haney’s accusers were not even coached by her, Altman said, and the gym offered a fun environment amid the intense training that is generally needed to master the sport’s daring moves.

“When they were doing gymnastics, it was serious,” Altman said. “They worked on life-threatening skills for hours a day.”

U.S.A. Gymnastics, in an emailed statement, said on Sunday that Haney’s hearing was “both fair and impartial, and adhered to the requirements” of the organization’s procedures, as well as the law that oversees Olympic sports in the United States.

Haney conceded she could be intense in the gym. But she said that most of the time “everybody is smiling and laughing and music is playing.” She carefully crafted the atmosphere at the gym, she said, knowing that parents had entrusted her with their children, at times from morning until evening. The program, Haney said, included closely monitored online learning, a certified teacher holding classes during the day and an emphasis on safety.

As a young gymnast herself, training in an elite program for a while, Haney worked with harsh coaches who screamed at the girls, she recalled, and had them step onto a scale daily, then listed everyone’s weight on a bulletin board in the gym. To make the girls lose weight, the coaches forced them to wear rubber suits or 20-pound belts and jog around the gym, she said.

“It didn’t faze me and didn’t bother me, but that kid next to me, it could’ve really bothered and scared them,” she said, adding that she never weighed her gymnasts or forced them to lose weight. “I think what I’ve learned over the last year is that so much of this comes down to perspective. Every person. Every athlete. Every coach. They have their own perspective of things.”

Some of the families whose children continue to train at MG Elite were drawn to her gym because of what they described as an exacting nature.

Henry Rivera, an engineer at a software company, moved his 12-year-old daughter to MG Elite last year so she could train with Haney. He said she had left her previous gym because her routines were getting sloppy and the coach there was pushing her to perform skills she didn’t feel prepared to do.

Rivera said he appreciated that Haney had made the gym a safe space for his daughter, yet never babied her.

“If I wanted her to come home happy and smiling every day, I’d send her to clown school; I’m serious,” Rivera said. “If my daughter has goals and her goal is to be an elite athlete, I need a coach to teach her the right things and safely, and to push them.”

Rivera said if Haney ever was abusive to his daughter, he would have noticed because he monitors what she is going through “emotionally, mentally and physically,” considering it his job as a parent.

“As parents, we need to be vigilant,” he said. “And if you don’t like it, get up and leave.”

In a telephone interview with her parents standing by, his daughter, Hezly, said Haney just wanted her gymnasts to be the best and was tough on them, “but not like to the point where it was horrible.” She said that she was sad to see Haney go and that she missed her.

“She never crossed the line,’’ she said.

Another parent at the gym, Charisse Dash, is a sports agent who recruits athletes from the Dominican Republic to play in Major League Baseball. Her 10-year-old daughter has worked with Haney since she was 6.

“You’re not there to play, you’re there to work,” Dash said, describing that type of gymnastics as “a 9-to-5 job.”

She added: “Do I classify the rigor of the training as abuse? I think you really have to see it on a case-by-case basis.”

Dash said she and her husband ran “a very tight ship” at home with their five children, where screaming, not coddling, was common. So, to them, Haney’s demanding style was a great fit.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that Maggie is an abuser, by all means,” Dash said. “It depends on how much any child or any person can tolerate.”

Haney’s U.S.A. Gymnastics hearing in February and March was held by telephone, and Haney listened to weeks of it while huddled in a closet so her two children would not interrupt her. About a half-dozen parents testified in support of her, but not all of the parents who wanted to testify were given the chance to, she said. Even when Haney herself testified, she said, she felt that her side of the story didn’t matter. She was sure the three-person hearing panel had already made up its mind.

Some of the gymnasts who accused her of abuse, she said, had been asked to leave the gym because they could not physically keep up. The part she remembers as the worst, though, was sitting through Hernandez’s live testimony. Haney considered their relationship strong, so it was inconceivable to her that Hernandez felt mistreated.

Hernandez often slept at Haney’s house and was considered a part of the family, Haney said. Haney took Hernandez to the beach, to restaurants, to get her nails done, and gave her a tuition break at the gym. When she and Hernandez returned from the 2016 Olympics, Haney said, she helped organize a parade in her town, in Hernandez’s honor.

When Hernandez was competing on the television show “Dancing With the Stars” soon after the Rio Games, Haney said, she spoke to her one night for three hours. The coach remembered their talking like old friends, about makeup and music and how Haney, with her perfectionist’s eye, noticed that Hernandez’s foot had slipped during an earlier dance, but that she had covered the mistake well. Haney recalled telling Hernandez to enjoy her break from gymnastics.

“You’re a star now,” Haney said she told her.

Within days, Laurie Hernandez’s mother, Wanda, called Haney to say that they were cutting all ties. Though Wanda Hernandez told The Times in April that she had severed the relationship after learning that Haney had mistreated her daughter, Haney said she was blindsided by the move and now thinks it was financially motivated because the Hernandezes first offered her a cut of Laurie’s income after the Olympics, but then did not follow through.

“For me, it was never about the money,” Haney said. “I just remember being so confused and not understanding any of it.”

Neither Wanda nor Laurie Hernandez responded to interview requests made through Laurie’s agent, Sheryl Shade.

The situation left Haney wondering what she had done wrong. She said she had been protective of her gymnasts, even when it came to food, as she watched other coaches at meets hover over the meal table to control their athletes’ consumption.

“My kids were never the ones stuffing bread into their pockets,” she said, describing how some athletes felt compelled to sneak food back to their rooms.

She said she encouraged her gymnasts to make smart choices, though McCusker’s lawsuit said Haney promoted unhealthy eating and weight-loss habits.

Haney acknowledged that there had recently been a change in how some gymnasts expected to be treated by their coaches, especially since this summer, when hundreds of them worldwide began speaking out about the abuse they endured from tyrannical coaches.

Many coaches, Haney said, now don’t know when they might cross the line or upset an especially sensitive child or parent, so they “are just letting the girls do whatever because they don’t want to get in trouble.”

The culture has shifted perhaps too far, she said, and she expects the sport, going forward, to be filled with underachievers. She said she thinks coaches will not push their athletes as hard.

Haney blames parents for that. They have become too invested in their daughters’ success, she said, and now are emboldened to lash out at anyone — and potentially crush anyone — who stands in their daughters’ way.

“I feel that somebody needs to stand up for coaches,” Haney said. “If I don’t stand up and fight for the truth, then other coaches aren’t going to, either. I know if this can happen to me, I think it can happen to anyone.”

Video linked in the article if you’re feeling like extra self-punishing today: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&fbclid=IwAR01mlcDzMzw8RlzbRS97gXD5f0vIucwBZEdXuPqZJiMalbLZZI8lj7OCwI&feature=youtu.be&v=5YyrN7nZwx0#menu&ab_channel=GymFacts

[omg-baeyoung-baeran]

Maybe I Should Resign (Jumin/MC Oneshot)

Summary:

When your cringeworthy, cutesy cat-based post-its meant for your depressed friend are accidentally sent to your stone-hearted boss...take it as a sign to turn in your resignation letter.

o-o-o-o

It was mischievous and amusing, he admitted. The words written were always related to his current situation for some reason. Initially, it was odd and suspicious, but after it had given him comfort on several occasions, he had grown a little fond of the notes sent attached to his cup of coffee. 

Unless it was something related to cats, he was never the type to waste time, energy, or even money on something that did not involve the family and the company’s benefit; therefore, he never bothered finding the person behind it. He figured it was another scheme from someone who wanted to get ahold of his affection, so it was in his best interest to leave things be. The interaction went on for months, and the unknown person did not seem to have missed a single day doing the same task.

Impressive.

This mysterious person had persistence he would applaud of if he or she were not using it on something insignificant.

“Make efforts for yourself too because you are worth it!” The sticky note was purple this time.

That day, he bought himself a cat mug and was delighted by it.

Is this what commoners mean by “reward yourself”?

The first time the note made him frown deeply was when his father was involved with another woman, though the message was not the reason why he had made such a face. He wondered once again who the person might be behind the notes. Is it a woman who has the same intentions like his father’s passing lovers? Is it a man who is sucking up for a promotion? 

He had asked Jaehee before who had been preparing his coffee lately, since he had her retire from the task to handle more important matters at hand.

“It’s the chef’s son who prepares the coffee for the executives, Mr. Han.”

“He is not an employee.”

“Yes, but he volunteered to work without pay to help his father fulfill his duties without problems. I have offered to raise the concern to you, Mr. Han, but he refused.”

He hummed, raising his hand to his chin in thought. “Make him sign a contract and ensure his pay is more than sufficient to compensate for the days he did not get paid.”

Jaehee nodded and reconfirmed, “We will need to help him get a lawyer for the contract. The chef has mentioned before that his son is illiterate, so I will be contacting Mr. Joyou for recommendations.”

For a brief second, his eyes flashed in confusion. “Are you sure his son is illiterate?”  

He received the third report the next day, proving that the chef’s son was indeed illiterate.

From mysterious messages, it went down south to suspicious messages.

Fortunately, nothing other than passing one-sided notes was happening. The messages were innocent and can sometimes be helpful, thus there was no need to be alarmed.

“Meow~ a kitty a day keeps the purrblem paway!”

It can sometimes be… cute… he begrudgingly confessed. 

That was the first time it made him smile and his heart flutter.

0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0

It was a huge mistake.

All this time, she was digging her own grave, and she had no idea she had dug deep enough to be a knock away from entering the gates of hell. She had been writing him notes to cheer him up and, perhaps, brighten up his troubled days. Pretending to be a maid to gather information unavailable online from a huge company seemed to be a huge hassle. He was tasked to do it for months too; hence, she made sure he wouldn’t get too lonely.

She wrote him notes—which she thought might help him smile—and stuck them on the cup of coffee he would serve for the employees. He never mentioned anything about it whenever they got the chance to chat. It was a bit disappointing, but her little help appeared to be working well. He seemed genuinely happy, and that was the only thing that mattered.

That was until she got a response in the form of a cat-shaped baby blue sticky note.

The coffee area was empty early in the morning. Most employees were yet to arrive, but the tray holding the cup where she usually stuck her messages already had a sticky note attached to it. Her lips touched the rim of the mug, her own sweetened coffee warming her cold lips.

Oh? A response? I wasn’t expecting that….

She took the note, flipping it around to inspect it.

Cat-shaped? Aw, so cute! Seven really loves cats. 

Her eyes scanned the message written.

“Write something about cats today.”

Huh? Wait, hold on, something’s wrong here.

She felt the heavy feeling of dread fill her stomach as she analyzed the piece of paper in her hand. Her mother had always jokingly called her “stupid” when she was in her teens, but she never believed it was true until she actually gave evidences to such hypothesis. Her joke was probably not a half-meant joke but a prediction of what she would become in the near future.

One thing she was certain of….

This is totally not his penmanship.

She had known Seven for years and was one of his closest friends. He would even take her out at random times to get ice cream even when his schedule was loaded. They would write on receipts and draw doodles of whatever came into their imagination. His penmanship was not necessarily messy but it carried its own charm.

This, on the other hand, looked too elegant to be his.

“Umm… good morning, Ma’am,” greeted a young man with brown hair and light brown eyes.

She forced a smile, tucking the note into her skirt’s pocket. “Good morning! Are you gonna grab a coffee?”

“Oh! Umm… no… haha! I am more of a tea person, though I make coffee for the executives.” His laugh sounded awkward, but she thought he looked like a nice guy. “Please do excuse me,” he muttered before passing in front of her, grabbing the tray where the cup with the note was placed.

The coffee she drank nearly burst out of her nose when she choked.

“Miss?” the boy questioned in a low voice, albeit slightly alarmed, “Are you okay?”

Her laugh can sound as fake as it was, but her petrified mind was too horrified to function.

“Ohohoho! I am fine! Nothing to worry about!” she beamed between coughs.

Later that day, Jumin did not get his daily note.

He tried to deny it the best he could, but it was just too evident.

It was the first time it made him upset.

Just a little bit.

0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0

When a week came without a single note from the mysterious messenger, he started to feel unusual. It may be childish of him, but because he had learned to like it, it brought him disappointment to find a typical cup of coffee served in front of him. Perhaps it was from the fact that he forcefully abandoned his childhood before that his childhood spirit came back to bite him now.

Each morning, it got him curious of what secret message he would receive for the day. Will it be another joke? Another cat pun? He learned to find excitement in the short letters and “freebies” that came with it. Once, he got a stamp, and it caused him to raise a single brow.

“What is this?” he asked the chef’s son while he studied the white cat stamp between his fingers.

The chef’s son cocked his head to the side. “I do not have a clue, Mr. Han. I just found it on the tray next to your cup. I assumed it was something important and someone wanted to send it to you.”

It was nothing expensive, yet he kept it displayed on his table.

That was weeks ago… and he missed it.

Again, just a little bit.

0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0

The gossip which greeted her ears the moment she entered the office mortified her beyond belief. Apparently, the heir of the C&R International company had asked if anyone knew of someone who was courageous enough to leave “memos” on his cup of coffee. He worded it terribly, as though it was a violation of the company’s rules and regulation, so it was not a surprise people made a huge deal out of it.

I’m leaving this company. I will never rise from the ashes of my shame and humiliation. Surely, Mr. Trust Fund Kid will know immediately if he’s ever free to check the cctv footage.

With a silent battle cry, she filed her resignation a day later…

and just her luck, a secret agent had successfully stolen quite an important document from the CEO the very same day.

“You are relieved from your mission, Agent 707.”

0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0

“Are you sure you did not misplace it, Father?”

Three people stood inside the CCTV control room. They were surrounded by more than 20 monitors that were flashing previous clips from the past weeks.

“I am sure without a single doubt that I kept it hidden in drawer 7.”

Dark, calculating orbs scrutinized the video. It was the last clip they were reviewing, and it was where the chairman can be last seen holding the documents prior leaving it in drawer 7.

“How can it disappear when no one has entered Father’s room? Have you double checked the system if anything’s amiss?”

He patiently waited for a response while the control manager worked on the system check—his eyes drifting back to the multiple clips they were previously analyzing.

There was Yeonwa chatting with Jaehee...

Jaewoo bringing in three boxes of pizza...

Helena bumping into Chong—

He frowned.

“August 6, 2018” was coded on the top right corner of the screen. If he was not mistaken, the company suspended all works that day to celebrate their successful purchase of Grace Cup Store.

So why are there employees working?

“Mr. Han,” the male manager cut off, “I believe the entire footage was placed in a loop since March using videos back in 2016.”

“Since… March?” He racked his brain for any memory that happened back in March. There were international events, meetings, partnership requests….

“Surprises will start today~ I’ll make sure you’ll enjoy it.^^”

Now that he recalled, he was pretty sure the notes started back in March.

o-o-o-o

Soooo this is meant to be an open-ended oneshot, but we MAY post a second chapter (emphasis on “may”)

[abundanceofsoph]

SkyFire 2: Chapter 12

The Late Show with Steve Colbert: September 28th, 2016

Word count: 2.8k

Song is Reaper by Andie Case

SkyFire 2 MASTERLIST

Aurora was anxiously pacing backstage as she waited for her time to walk out onto the set. She listened as Stephen Colbert began his opening monologue and she swallowed thickly as he explained how the following day marked the first anniversary of the shooting and how this episode was in honour of the 43 lives they had lost that day. Mark squeezed her shoulder in support as she was announced and she let out a shaky breath, trying to push her anxiety aside as the curtain was pulled back for her. Her hand trembled as she walked out into the bright studio lights, the crowd applauding as she approached were Stephen Colbert stood in front of his desk. She hugged him before taking a seat on the sofa next to the desk; the audience continued to clap and cheer for a few extra moments before Stephen shushed them and she felt the weight of everyone’s gaze fall on her. She had a smile plastered on her face and if her family were there, they would recognise how fake it was, but to the audience in front of her she looked calm and collected, some would even say excited to be there.

“Aurora, welcome,” Stephen said once the audience fell silent. “Thank you for joining us tonight.”

“Thank you for having me,” Aurora replied. “I know we’ve been trying to make this happen since your first show last year.”

“We have and of course everyone watching knows that it’s been an incredibly challenging year for you, so we are very grateful to have you here. What has this last 12 months been like?”

“Like you said it’s been really challenging. When I woke up in the hospital they told me I’d been shot about a dozen times, once in the abdomen, 4 times in my shoulder and then another 7 or possibly more in my left hand, so for the first few months I was just focusing on all the surgeries and trying to heal.”

“And about a month after the shooting you were trending online after you joined your fiancé Harry Styles on stage for One Directions last concert show. What brought that about?”

“I think in the wake of tragedies like the Columbia shooting we all focus on the victims and their recovery but not a lot of thought goes to the victim’s friends and families if they survive. For those that die, their families receive overwhelming support, but if your loved one survives, there’s not a lot of emotional support and that’s something I never realised until I found myself in that situation. While I was recovering physically and receiving the help I needed to deal with the PTSD and the emotional trauma, my family was struggling and that became pretty clear to me when I watched fan videos from the One Direction tour and I saw the way that Harry and the other lads were hurting. I can’t begin to imagine the trauma of hearing someone you love has been involved in a mass shooting and that they might not make it. That leaves such devastating wounds that I knew I had to go to London and help them through that pain. Getting on stage was just this last minute idea we cooked up to celebrate that I was still there and to thank the fans for all their support.”

“It was a beautiful moment to watch,” Stephen replied, “but you’ve been pretty quiet online since then.”

“I have yeah. I stayed on Instagram and I’ve kept posting there but I deleted all my other social media accounts after the shooting.”

“Why was that?”

“Emotions were running high and unfortunately the anonymity of social media really encourages the worst in people. There was quite a lot of awful things being said about myself and my family in those first few weeks and mentally I wasn’t in a good place so I just deleted everything and my manager does a great job of keeping my Instagram comment section clear of the worst of things.”

“Why stay on Instagram at all? Why not delete it as well?”

“Despite the fame and attention, I’m like most 21 year olds. I want to see what my friends are doing and share the aspects of my life that I’m comfortable sharing and I love my fans. They’re really wonderful people and I like being able to invite them into my world in small ways, I’m just learning how to do that in a way that’s right for my mental health.”

“You said you were receiving a lot of hate after the shooting, what kinds of things were being said?”

“While most people were incredibly supportive, there were also a lot of voices pointing out the special treatment I received because I’m a Stark. I saw the best surgeons and I never had to worry about hospital bills. I also survived because my parents responded to the emergency as quickly as they did, and I was rushed to the nearest hospital. A lot of people died because nobody got to them as fast as they got to me.”

“Did you agree with what they were saying?”

“Of course, and I still do. Growing up poor and then being thrust into my dad’s world has always caused me to have a tremendous amount of guilt. I have so much privilege and even though I knew how lucky I was I didn’t use that privilege to help people. It was really confronting to get called out for that on such a massive scale, especially when I was at my most vulnerable.”

“And you used that as a wakeup call, didn’t you?”

“I did. My father’s charity, the Maria Stark Foundation stepped in immediately in the wake of the shooting and set up the ColumbiaStrong fund to pay for the medical care and funeral expenses of the other victims. The fund has ensured that everyone had access to the surgeries they needed, as well as providing therapy for those of us who developed PTSD and other mental illnesses from that day.”

“It’s an incredible initiative,” Stephen agreed, “and we’ve heard that you’ve taken a more hands on approach in recent months.” Aurora looked at him for a moment, trying to work out what he was referring to. “It’s been reported that you’ve been visiting hospitals over the summer.”

‘Ahhh’, she thought, ‘So people finally caught on to that.’

“I thought I was doing a good job of sneaking around and keeping that out of the news,” she chuckled, attempting to cover her nervousness. “Ever since my own amputation I’ve been visiting the children’s hospitals and speaking to kids with prosthetics and residual limbs.”

“They must love meeting you.”

“They’re incredible kids. Honesty I think they’ve helped me more than I’ve helped them. They’ve always got a smile on their faces and they don’t see themselves as victims. Meeting them helped me come to terms with my own situation.”

“You’re very humble.”

“I just don’t like to take credit for things like I’m some hero. I’m just 21 year old girl that survived something horrific and I’m just trying to do the best I can with what I’ve got.”

“Well we’ve got some people joining us tonight who are also doing the best they can with what they’ve got,” Stephen said to the camera, the audience clapping along. “We’ll be right back with more of the incredible survivors of the 2015 Columbia Shooting and a performance by Aurora Stark.”

As the cameras cut to the commercials, Aurora stood up, making her way off the set to where Mark was waiting for her. “You did great,” he said and they both turned to watch the crew swap out the seat she’d just vacated with a three seater sofa and add three bar stools behind it. There were 5 other survivors of the shooting guesting on the show, all choosing to be interviewed together as apposed the solo interview that Aurora had just given.

“Welcome back to the late show,” Colbert said when they returned from the commercial break. “I’m joined by 5 incredible young men and women; Chris Watkins, Jacinta Flores, Brandy Taylor, Jacob Lawler and Daniel Thomas.”

Aurora watched the interview on one of the monitors backstage. She felt like her own experience was being recounted by the 5 people on set as they discussed their own recoveries and the challenges facing them, so similar to her own. 3 had returned to Columbia to continue their studies, while the other 2, like Aurora, couldn’t face going back. They all had a range of injuries, but she found that they all shared the same burden of nightmares, flashbacks and guilt. After Colbert threw to another commercial break, Aurora headed back out onto the set, this time heading for the stage area. She smiled at the members of Harry’s new band, grateful that they agreed to join her for this performance, and she felt a little less nervous with them sitting behind her after spending so much time with them all in her home studio. Sarah gave her a supportive thumbs up from where she was already sat behind her drum kit, Adam similarly smiling in support with his base guitar in hand, and despite feeling more at home with a guitar in his hands, Mitch had happily volunteered to play piano once he’d heard Aurora talking to Harry about how scared she felt to play live. She didn’t allow herself much time to be nervous about her first solo performance in years, taking a seat on the stool set up behind the microphone and listening on silently as Stephen continued to interview the other 5 survivors. She wiped her sweaty palm against her thigh and then she heard Stephen thanking his guests before walking over towards where she and the band waited.  

“With her new single raising money for the ColumbiaStrong fund,” he said into the camera, “this is Aurora Stark with Reaper.” The lights dimmed across the set, a solitary spotlight softly lighting where she sat as the song began.

Broke down, thought that I would drown Hoped that I'd be found, 'fore I hit the ground Sun rays out the corner of my eye Saw you weeping, saw you creeping Saw you sneaking in the shadow's dawn I feel so strong Saw you out the corner of my eye

Don't come for me today I'm feeling good I'mma savour it Don't come for me today I'm feeling good I remember when You came to take me away So close I was to heaven's gates But no baby, no baby, not today Oh, you tried to track me down You followed me like the darkest cloud But no baby, no baby, not today Oh reaper Oh no baby, no baby, not today Oh reaper Oh no baby, no baby, not today

So come back when I'm good to go I got drinks to drink, and a man to hold I got good things to do with my life, yeah Oh, I wanna dance in the open breeze Feel the wind in my hair, hear the ocean sing I got good things to feel in my life, yeah

Don't come for me today I'm feeling good I'mma savour it Don't come for me today I'm feeling good I remember when You came to take me away So close I was to heaven's gates But no baby, no baby, not today Oh, you tried to track me down You followed me like the darkest cloud But no baby, no baby, not today Oh reaper Oh no baby, no baby, not today Oh reaper Oh no baby, no baby, not today

Reaper  

As the song finished, the lights lifted, and Stephen walked out to hug Aurora before turning to the camera as the audience applauded. “Aurora Stark everybody!” Stephen yelled. “Reaper is available now, all proceeds going to the ColumbiaStrong fund to support victims of gun violence. We’ll be right back.”

She quickly hugged Mitch, Sarah and Adam before following Stephen back over to the desk, joining the others on the sofa.

“That was an incredible song,” Stephen said when the show returned from the ad break. “Thank you for sharing that with us, Aurora.”

“Thank you,” she replied.

“Now back at the start of the show we were talking about the ColumbiaStrong fund started by the Stark family to help survivors of the shooting, and I’m interested to hear what you all think about it.”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here without that money,” Brandy said. “My mom’s health insurance wouldn’t have covered the therapy I needed afterwards, and I was really struggling. My dad isn’t around so my mom was already working 2 jobs to pay the bills and send my 3 younger sisters to a good school. My medical bills would have bankrupted us if the Starks hadn’t helped us.”

Everyone else nodded and agreed, adding their own versions of the same story, while Aurora felt her eyes growing damp. She knew that the foundation had paid peoples bills and she knew that her father’s money had helped people but being confronted by it made it all the more real to her.

“I know Aurora was saying earlier in the show that she felt guilty that Iron Man and Captain America got to her so fast, but I’m grateful they did,” Daniel added. “If she hadn’t been on campus and they hadn’t responded, I hate to think about how many more of us would have died that day. When Iron Man stopped the shooter, he was heading for one of the busiest parts of campus. A lot of people walked away unharmed because Aurora sent out that SOS.”

As he spoke, Aurora felt her cheeks burning and she ducked her head in embarrassment. If she’d known that agreeing to this interview would lead to these people praising her for her actions last year, she would have declined the invitation. She didn’t deserve their praise or their thanks. All she’d done that day was cower under a table in fear and call her dads to come save her, but here these other survivors were, acting like she’d saved peoples lives. She hated it.

“I don’t know about everyone else, but I know I deal with a lot of guilt,” Jacob said. “My therapist called it survivors’ guilt and he said it’s pretty common for those who experience trauma to struggle with trying to understand why they survived when others died.” Everyone else nodded in agreement. “Aurora, I want to thank you, even though I’m pretty sure you don’t feel like you deserve it. You saved a lot of people that day and the money that your family has donated has saved a lot more. You shouldn’t be ashamed of your privilege because your using to help people around you. So, thank you.”

Aurora felt a few tears slip down her cheeks, painfully aware of the audience and cameras watching every moment. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want them thanking her for something she didn’t deserve.

“It’s very nice of you to say all of that but I shouldn’t be the one you’re thanking,” she said, quickly wiping at the tears threatening to drip down her blushing cheeks. “The first responders deserve our gratitude. The doctors and nurses. And my dads were the ones to set up the money so please don’t thank me for that. I was lying in a hospital bed just trying to hold myself together just like the rest of you. I’m not anyone’s hero.”

Jacinta, the blonde sitting next to Aurora on the sofa, pulled her into a tight hug.

“As you can see ladies and gentlemen,” Stephen said to the camera’s as the two girls hugged. “The emotional scars left behind by this tragedy are still very fresh in the minds of those who survived. Thank you for joining us this evening in commemorating those we lost and those still healing. Aurora’s single, Reaper, is now available for purchase from all the usual places with all profits going to the ColumbiaStrong fund to ensure support is available for those affected by gun violence. Thank you for watching and goodnight.”

Stephen stood up, walking around the desk to shake everyone’s hand as the audience applauded and Aurora pulled herself back together. She said her farewells as soon as she could, making her way backstage to where Mark and the band were waiting for her.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know it was going to go that way.”

“It’s ok Mark,” Rori promised. “I don’t think anyone expected that to happen.”

“Let’s get you guys home yeah?” Mark replied. “Steve said he was cooking a big dinner for everyone.”

NEXT CHAPTER

OR CONTINUE READING ON AO3

[mustangshelby04]

Boston Boy - First (Second) Best Christmas

It’s here! (It’s a little later than I intended it to be, but it’s here!) The first one shot of the Boston Boy series. It’s just a cute little Christmas story with Kate and Chris. Pure fluff. MERRY (Belated) CHRISTMAS!!

“Chris, it’s too big!  It’s not going to fit!” Kate complained. “Oh!  Ow!”

“Shit!  Fuck!  I’m sorry!” Chris cried, stopping his movements immediately. “Are you ok?”

“I’ll live.” Kate sighed. “It’s not going to fit.  We need to take some off the bottom.” 

“I guess you’re right.  I really thought our ceiling was high enough for it.”

The husband and wife duo looked at the tree that was about a foot too tall for their ceiling.  They had ordered their tree to be delivered from a tree farm upstate and Chris had guessed at the height they would need.  He sighed and grabbed the saw.

“Uh uh!  Do that out on the patio.” Kate said.

“Why?”

“It’s going to make an even bigger mess that I’ll have to clean up.”

“I’ll help.” Kate just stared at him. “Ok.” Chris sighed and dragged the tree out to the patio.

Kate turned and looked at the boxes and bags of decorations.  Her mother had sent up some of the family ornaments while Chris had brought some of his decorations from Boston.  The two of them had also gone shopping for decorations of their own.  She reached into one of the bags and pulled out the personalized ornament they had found.  It was a crescent moon with a baby Minnie Mouse sleeping on a pink blanket.  The moon had the words “Baby’s First Christmas” written on it and the blanket had 2016 on one side and Madison written on the other side.

It was the day after Thanksgiving.  Chris, Kate, and Madison had spent all day in Sudbury for the holiday the day before.  Kate’s mother had insisted that Kate spend the time up there with her husband’s family.  Kate hadn’t fought it too much because she and Chris were surprising her family with the annual trip to Disneyworld this year.  He had booked them resort rooms and gotten them tickets while Kate had worked it out with her parents’ boss that they would get the time off for it.  Her brother, sister-in-law, and niece were also coming on the trip.  The entire Allen clan would be invited every year from now on.

“This should do it.” Chris announced, dragging the tree back in.  He set it upright and the two feet he had cut off worked perfectly.

Kate grabbed her phone and turned on the Christmas playlist she had compiled on her music app.  The Bluetooth soundbar in the living room picked it up and the room filled with the sounds of “The Twelve Pains of Christmas.”  Chris let out a loud laugh as he and Kate worked to set the tree up in the stand they had bought.  When they finished getting the tree settled and watered, Kate grabbed the tree skirt and started pulling the tags off.

“What are you doing?” Chris asked.

“Putting the tree skirt on.” Kate said, confused he was asking.

“That goes on last.

“What?”

“The tree skirt goes on last.” “Why?”

That stumped Chris. “Because it does.”

“You don’t know why it goes on last?”

“I guess I’ve just always put it on last.  Why do you want it on first?”

“So I can get it situated on the stand so we can water it easily and not worry about knocking off the ornaments near the bottom.”

“Huh…. That makes sense.”

“I know.” Kate crawled under the tree and set to work adjusting the skirt while Chris pulled out the boxes of new white Christmas lights.

“Are you sure it’s ok we got white?” Chris asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“Some people prefer colored.”

“I’m not those people.” Kate slid out from under the tree and nodded at her handiwork. “I prefer pretty white lights for an elegant tree.”

“Me too.” Chris smiled and kissed her. “I’m really happy we’re getting to spend our first Christmas together.”

“This is our second Christmas together.”

“We weren’t living together last year, though.”

“True.” Kate smiled as she looked over at the baby monitor’s screen.  Madison was napping peacefully in her crib with the Disney lullaby playlist playing softly in the background.  She had finally transitioned from her bassinette to her crib the month before. “We did have her, though.”

“Yes, we did.” He pulled her to him and started dancing to a sweet rendition of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.”  This was one of Kate’s favorite things about Chris.  He would randomly pull her to him and start dancing with her.  It didn’t matter what they were doing, he would stop and dance with her.  It was so insanely romantic and so very much a Chris thing to do and she adored it. “So, Mrs. Evans, what do you want Santa to bring you this year?”

“More moments like this one.”

“Oh, that’s a good wish.”

“What about you?”

“That’s a tough one.”

“Why?”

“Because I have everything I want.  I have the most amazing wife in the history of wives.  We have a perfect little girl together.  I finally feel settled.  Even with the sporadic travelling for work, I feel grounded and settled.”

“Does it help when I’m there with you?”

“It absolutely helps.  More than you know.”

Kate nodded. “Ok.”

“Ok, what?”

“You’ll just have to wait until Christmas.” She looked up at him as they broke apart and started unboxing the ornaments. “Speaking of Santa, I don’t want to give him credit for the good gifts.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, when Maddie is older, I don’t want Santa to get all the credit for the good gifts.  He can have maybe one good gift, but he can have the credit for the stocking stuffers and some little gifts.”

Chris laughed, but stopped when he saw how serious she was. “You mean it?”

“Yes, I mean it.”

“Ok.  If that’s how you want to play Santa, I’m fine with that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.  It’s not how I grew up, but….”

“It’s not how I grew up either.  I just…. Look, we’re her parents.  We provide for her.  I almost died giving birth to her.  Some fake fat man in a red suit isn’t going to get all the credit for making her happy.  That’s our job.”

“Ok.  We’ll give Santa one good present and the stocking stuffers.”

“Cool.” The started hanging ornaments on the tree, meticulously picking the best spots for each one.

Chris paused, a Hallmark Beauty and the Beast ornament hanging from his hand. “Hey, what about an Elf on the Shelf?”

“I swear to god, Christopher, if you bring one of those demons in this house, I will throw it off the top patio.”

Chris laughed, slapping a hand to his chest and almost dropping the ornament. “I am so glad you said that because those things creep me the fuck out.”

Kate laughed and kissed her husband. “I’m glad we agree on that.” She paused, looking uncertain about what she wanted to say next.

“What is it, babe?”  

“What are we doing about Christmas with our families?  We’ve both got our traditions with our families, and we celebrated that same way last year pretty much.  But this year is completely different.  We’re married and we have a kid.  And honestly, the thought of all that travelling with her freaks me out because of the amount of shit we have to take with us wherever we go with her.  Just taking her to a grocery store is like packing for a week on vacation.”

Chris nodded.  Kate was right about how much stuff it took to travel anywhere with a baby.  It made him nervous, too. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Chris….”

“Kat, I promise we will work something out that works for everyone.” He gave her a grin and she sighed.

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

Christmas Eve, Kate and Chris’ penthouse was packed to the gills.  Scott and Lisa were staying in the office, sharing the pull-out couch; Carly, her husband, and three kids were in one of the guest rooms; and Killian, Maura, and Hailey were in the other guest bedroom.  Helena, Bill, and Jan were staying at a nearby hotel at Helena’s insistence.  The whole family had flown in from Orlando the day before.

Chris had insisted that Christmas be at his and Kate’s place this year.  That had been his solution for not travelling with Madison.  He was also extremely excited to finally have a family of his own and hosting Christmas for the first time ever really got him going.  Kate, Lisa, and Helena had spent the day cooking.  Chris had rented a couple of extra tables and chairs to accommodate everyone as well as some beautiful tableware.  He had worked hard setting the tables and making place cards for everyone.

It had been decided that everyone would open one gift that night and then go to bed.  The kids were excited to leave out cookies for Santa that night and Chris was excited to actually get to play Santa finally.  He and Kate snuck downstairs with the presents they had hidden in their closet and the nursery closet.  When they were done, the presents spilled out from under the tree.  They headed upstairs, checked on a sleeping Madison, and then closed the door to their room.

“I have a gift for you.” Kate announced, walking towards the bed from the bathroom after cleaning her face and brushing her teeth.  She was in an oversized Home Alone t-shirt and her hair was in a high ponytail.  

Chris held his arms out to her from his place on the bed and she climbed on top of him.  His hands instantly cupped her round backside. “You can’t wait to give it to me till the morning?”

Kate shook her head. “I’ve been holding onto this for a while now.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.  Quit distracting me.” One of his hands had drifted between her legs and his lips were trailing kisses along her neck.  

He chuckled and leaned back against the headboard. “Ok, lay it on me.”

“Ok, so do you remember a little while back you said it helps you stay grounded when I’m there with you?” Chris nodded. “Well, I started thinking about it.  I love to travel and I love being with you and I really love being a mother.  I don’t like being away from Maddie constantly.  Especially for work.  I still want to take pictures…. I mean, I really do love it, but I don’t want to do it as often as I have been.”

“You haven’t said anything.”

“Because it’s part of your Christmas present.  Shh.”

“Sorry.”  

“Thank you.  So, I’ve been talking to Danielle and she came up with a brilliant solution.  One that even I couldn’t have dreamed up.”

“What?”

“She decided to sell me a stake in her company and make me a partner.”

“Are you serious?” Kate nodded excitedly. “That’s awesome!  Congratulations, baby!”

“All of this means that I can pick and choose the jobs that I take.  I can stay home or go away with you or do whatever I want to do.  I’ll still have my own thing.  I’ll have a job and be making my own money, so I won’t be relying completely on you….”

“Which I’ve told you not to worry about.  You’re my wife.  What’s mine is yours.”

“Hush.  I’m not done.”

“Sorry.”  

“And the final part of all of this…. Which is leading to your actual Christmas present…. When we’re ready, we can grow our family.  Intentionally this time.”

“We haven’t talked about that yet.”

“No, we haven’t, but you want more kids.  I’ve known that about you for a long time that you want to have kids: plural.”

“What about you?”

“Until I met you, I wasn’t even sure I wanted kids.  But Maddie is amazing and you’re such a wonderful dad and I absolutely love being a mother.  More than I ever thought I would.  I want to give you more kids, Chris.  Maybe we can eventually move to Boston and raise our family there…. Where you grew up.”

“Really?” “Yeah.  I love Boston.  We met there.  We conceived Maddie there.  We got married there.”

“What about Virginia, though?”

“What about it?”

“You grew up there.”

“I grew up all over.  Kentucky, Illinois, Nebraska…. Virginia is just where I settled for a while until I found my permanent home.” Kate reached up and gently held Chris’ face, stroking his beard with her thumb. “You’re my home, Chris.  And Boston is where you’re happiest.”

He stared at her in wonder. “And just when I thought I couldn’t love you any more than I already do, you go and do this.”

“So, Merry Christmas!  We’re going to move to Boston and have more kids…. Eventually.”

Chris laughed, pulling her lips to his. “Best Christmas present ever.”

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