#but ill figure it out. at least i have weed now. maybe i get high too often and rely on it too much but its either that or feel suicidal

[hi-5-sunflower]

Chapter One

Finally decided to take the plunge and post a full chapter! Here we go!

Word count: 2,200

Summary: Laura sneaks into an alchemy storehouse at night in hopes of finding a medicinal herb for her sick father.

Content notices: Mild violence, mention of illness, mild blood

Laura never thought she’d be the type to commit a crime.

And yet, here she was.

Against a clear night sky, the alchemy storehouse loomed like a great block of granite, its entrance attended by a solitary pacing guard. Laura watched from the shadows of the field beyond, concealed amid a patch of dusty desert weeds, her spine burning from the strain of prolonged crouching. Clutching the heavy stone was cramping her hand, but patience was key if she had any hope for success tonight.

The guard’s dull yellow Glow lantern, hanging from a hook on the building’s face, did its best to fend off the gloom of the moonless night. Intuitively, Laura knew the field she hid out in was little more than a black void, but the night-vision tonic she’d taken kept fooling her; she could make out the cracks in the dirt beneath her feet, could count the twigs on the skeletal stalks around her as though a full moon shone overhead.

She watched as the guard approached the nearest corner of the storehouse before turning on his heel to march back, and Laura’s grip tightened around the stone, its jagged edges biting into her palm.

Almost.

As he reached the far corner, she seized her moment, rising up and hurling the rock as hard as she could. It sailed through the air, arcing over the field to a spot near where the guard stood.

With a thump and a rustle, it made contact with brittle shrubbery, and sure enough, the guard’s attention snapped toward it.

Now!

Laura darted from her cover, acutely aware of her footfalls pattering on the dirt as she hurried forward, pinning her knapsack to her body to silence it, making for the side of the storehouse. Giddiness fueled her as she sped across open land, not daring to look in the guard’s direction, not slowing her pace until she was tucked snug against the dark northern wall.

From here she crept silently alongside the building, staying deep in shadow. There might be another guard stationed at the rear entrance, but with any shred of luck, the first one wouldn’t raise the alarm.

At the corner, she knelt low, peering around slowly. This side was also lit by a hanging lantern, but to her immense relief, no one was back here. At least, not at the moment.

Still, that meant the first guard was responsible for watching back here, too, or there were others nearby. A stable and another low building were positioned in such a way that if someone inside looked out, they could easily see her.

No time to lose.

Unlike the front entrance, which was a standard door, the rear entrance was big enough to give entry to animal-drawn supply carts, closed off by a pair of massive wooden gates. An iron chain wound tightly between the gates, held fast by a heavy padlock. Laura approached, nodding to herself, and fished a set of lockpicks from her bag.

All week, she’d gathered every lock she could get her hands on in preparation for this moment, working at them for hours until she could’ve picked them in her sleep. Never mind that this lock was twice as big as those. That was just another of many hurdles to overcome tonight.

The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her as she fumbled with the greasy contraption, trying not to jangle the chain. She’d spent the last six years of her life in the Silver Guard, a faithful servant of the law, busting petty criminals for...

Well, this.

And yet, here I am.

She couldn’t afford to feel too bad about that now, though. That could come later.

With a heavy click, the lock popped open, and Laura exhaled, realizing she’d been holding her breath. The chain threatened to slide out of place, but she caught hold of it before it could make too much noise. She deliberately extracted it just enough that she could sidle between the doors and into the storehouse.

It was tempting to congratulate herself for this small success, but the job wasn’t done yet. She drew the gates closed behind her and turned her attention to the abyss she now stood in.

A broad skylight interrupted the middle of the ceiling, a dim sprinkle of stars visible through the glass panes, but the rest of the room was a jungle of silhouettes. She dug into her knapsack again, feeling around for her portable Glow lamp, as her enhanced night vision could only do so much in an area as large and dark as this. She pulled the little lamp out and switched it on, finding herself in an absolute labyrinth of towering shelves.

Oh boy.

She took a breath, inhaling the strange scent of the place—herbaceous, with a hint of horse—and reviving her determination. Lyusk root was the prize she sought, the key to alleviating her father’s incessant, painful coughing. Of the countless herbalists and apothecaries she’d visited in the last month, not a single one had the root for sale anymore, reducing her options to two: leave her father to suffer, or raid the stores of some high-profile alchemy company.

By that point, it hadn’t been a difficult choice. Now if she could only figure out where they’d stashed that damn root.

Her cylindrical lamp was designed to concentrate its Glow, but the cavernous darkness easily swallowed its faint white beam. She started down an aisle, checking crate labels, but some of the chicken-scratch print was barely legible. Squinting, she made out the words hyssop seeds on one.

The crates on the shelf beside it were labeled iceberry leaf extract, so she placed her bet on alphabetical arrangement. That meant she wasn’t terribly far from the lyusk root, assuming this place had some.

If it didn’t...

She pushed the thought from her mind and scanned labels as she hurried alongside the shelves, hoping she wouldn’t have to climb up high. Her pulse picked up as she skimmed the L’s: lavender...lion blossom...lotus concentrate...

Magnolia bark...

No!

Maybe it was up high after all. She took a few steps back, raising her lamp over her head to try glimpsing the labels on the upper shelves, but it was no good.

Taking note of her position, she went in search of a ladder, but before she could get far, a rattle echoed through the storehouse.

Someone was opening the gate.

Laura’s heart stopped. She fumbled with the lamp, switching it off, then knelt against a shelf in the dark, hardly daring to breathe.

“Okay, good try,” drawled a voice, echoing hollowly throughout the room. “I know someone’s in here. Let’s not make this harder than it needs to be.”

She could see the guard silhouetted in the thin gap between the gates, and to her dismay, he was flanked by two others. They, too, carried Glow lamps, but theirs were much brighter than hers, emitting long beams that cut through the darkness.

They split up, their beams swinging this way and that. As one set of footsteps approached Laura’s hiding place, she chose her moment and bolted, treading lightly as she wound her way through the maze.

She took refuge against a stack of crates near the exit. One guard still stood between her and freedom.

“I’ll make you a deal,” the guard called out. “Quit wasting my time and I’ll consider letting you go without reporting you.” Laura briefly considered the offer, but it was probably a bluff. She remained silent, trying not to breathe too hard or to let her nerves gain authority as she waited for her chance to escape.

The first guard’s lamp beam continued to probe into the blackness around him as he stood firm by the gate. Come on. You won’t find me like that. Any second now, one of his friends would make their way around a corner and spot her. She was stuck here until he decided to budge.

After what felt like an hour, he finally did, grumbling to himself as he made his way between two rows of shelves.

She sprinted for the gate. In her haste to get outside, her knapsack caught on the dangling length of chain, which emitted a deafening clatter as it slid to the ground.

Crap!

The guard’s beam honed in on the entrance just as she ducked away.

“Hey!”

Laura ran for it. Her heart battered against her chest as she skidded around the corner, trying to fight down her rising panic. They were pushing through the gate now. If she could make it into town, she could probably lose them, but she had to get there first.

Adrenaline spurred her forward, her hearing muffled by the rush of air in her ears. They were falling behind, she was sure of it...

And then, without warning, she collided face first into a brick wall.

Except the wall had hands, which closed around her wrists like a vice, resisting her attempts to wrench free.

“Alright, pal,” said her captor. “Fun’s over.”

Damn it.

The other two guards caught up, shining their blinding lights into her face, illuminating her failure. She squinted at them as defiantly as she could manage, and they responded by seizing her knapsack and tying her hands behind her back with scratchy rope.

“Nothing stolen in here,” said one guard, digging around in the knapsack. “Not much of a thief, eh?”

“Get her out of here,” said another. “Let the Guardians deal with her.”

They dumped her unceremoniously onto a rickety supply cart, and with her hands bound, it was a rough landing. A flash of white erupted behind her eyes as her head clashed with coarse wood, and after that, there was blood in her mouth.

It tasted like defeat.

Someone fetched a mule from the nearby stable, and a moment later the cart lurched into motion. Laura mentally cursed herself throughout the sore, splintery ride, trying not to think about the slew of problems she’d just created for herself.

Once they got into town, she was handed over to the Silver Guard as promised. As the official peacekeepers of the Tri-Realm Republic, the Guard were, to most, a symbol of leadership, protection, and upstanding citizenship. Laura grew up admiring that black-and-silver uniform and was ecstatic the day she finally got to don it herself, but at the moment, it was the last thing she wanted to see.

It was only a matter of time now before word of this incident got to her commanding officer. Before her own uniform was taken away for good. She cursed herself again.

“Alchemy storehouse, huh?” said the Guardian, mild amusement in her tone as she untied Laura’s hands. “Must be some fun stuff in there.”

Laura dropped her gaze, examining the prickly desert burs caught in the laces of her boots. “Yeah, yeah.”

“Where’re you from?”

“Silverton.” Laura sighed. “Listen, my mother’s name is Eva Alvez, and I suppose you ought to send someone to inform her of this.” Her mother was not going to be pleased with her, but better someone else broke the news first.

“You’re Senator Alvez’s girl?” said the Guardian, scanning her. “Oh yeah, I see it. Looks like the spikefruit fell a few miles from the tree, huh?” She paused to chuckle at her own joke. “Let’s getcha back to Silverton, then.”

The Guardian took her to the Rift station, which was fortunately quiet this time of night. There were still just enough people around to stare uncomfortably, though, as Laura’s chaperone took her to the front of the line and received clearance to the gate labeled ZASSK–SILVERTON.

Rift gates were the fastest way to travel long distances, and the only way to travel between realms. Suspended within a metal archway, the gate was a translucent, rippling surface, like an upright pool of water. Peering into it, Laura could just make out the blurred figures of people milling about on the other side.

She stepped through, momentarily engulfed in the familiar staticky sensation. Her skin prickled fuzzily, and not a second later, she was in the Rift station in Silverton, the capital city of the Republic and her hometown.

The Guardian led Laura to the local Guard post, though her feet reluctantly carried her there on their own. To her chagrin, astonished faces greeted her as her comrades realized tonight’s offender was one of their own. Pointedly avoiding eye contact, she let herself be escorted into the holding room, not at all in the mood to explain.

The small room was furnished with a half-dozen chairs, a low table offering a few recent copies of Republic News Weekly, and an off-white Glow lamp fixed high on the wall. In all of her years working here, she’d never known how stiff these chairs were.

Time crawled in the silence, making her acutely aware of her pounding headache and the smarting scrape on her temple. Not to mention the constant self-reminders that, for all the trouble she’d gone to tonight, she’d come away empty handed after all.

I’m sorry, Dad. I’ll get that lyusk root for you somehow.

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

Thanks for reading! Here's the full intro for the book if you're interest in learning more about it!

Tagging @thelaughingstag 🦌🙂

[p0gue420]

!Too Young To Feel Numb! (Kie x Reader)

ATTENTION!! There are a lot of trigger warnings in this one! Including: drinking, drugs, talks of feeling alone, depression.

Summary: Y/n started smoking weed at the age of 8, It’s all she’d known; She grew up around it so it was normal for her to start super young, she told herself that’s the farthest she’d go...only smoking weed..never any hard drugs. She thought she could learn from her parent's mistakes, guess not. 

pairing: Kie x female!reader, Rafe x Platonic! reader, JJ x Sister figure! reader

Warnings: Substance abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts, marijuana Underage drinking,(reader is 15),

A/N: Alot of grammar errors because i dont feel like checking it so sorry....not really,hehe

---------

I use to think people were crazy for even thinking about doing anything harder than weed. Yeah...I was like 7 so it doesn’t count.”Yo you gonna babysit that shit or pass it, I mean...I have all day but  would love to do something besides wait for you to pass the blunt.” I rolled my eyes waiting for JJ to hand it to me.”Chill, what’s up your ass today?”

He finally passes it, after what felt like hours. I take a long hit before seeing he’s actually wanting me to answer his question.”Nothin. man, I’ve just got places to be.” I mumbled out hoping he wouldn’t start asking any further questions. He stares blankly awaiting me to pass it back, knowing I don’t share my feelings so he simply lays off. “Hey. You trynna go surfing today….whenever you’re done with your….things..?”

“Uhh, yeah text me and-” I’m cut off by the sound of my phone vibrating...Barry.

Barry:

Meet in twenty? I got extra today

I look up from my phone stuttering my words, and fumbling.“Uhm, I gotta go do something, but I’ll text you later to surf, yeah?” I say nodding towards JJ as I began walking out.”Uhm yea sure, hey-” I was already out the door.”-be safe.” he muttered to himself left wondering why I left so fast. On the way to my bike, I ran into Kie and Pope laughing about something before Kie began to make her way over towards me.

“Hey, Y/n! Heading out so fast, are we?”Kie pouted her lip out mimicking a whimpering sound.” heh, yeah sorry bub. I gotta go handle some things and I’ll be back later.” I peck her lips in a swift movement as well as pull up the front of her crop top, covering her exposed cleavage.”Those are my love,keep them covered” I wink at her. She laughs and heads inside after blowing me a kiss,that I catch and pretend to place in my heart..Wow im so whipped.

My thoughts cut off by a loud vibrating noise.

Barry:

You coming?

Read: 46 sec.ago

Me:

Omw now!

Read: just now

I hop on my bike heading over to Barry’s place knowing a shortcut I found a few days ago.

It only takes 10 minutes before i’m in front of his house walking up the steps of the porch.My clean oxygen is immediately replaced by the smell of cigarettes,weed,and...Is that burnt hair?I scrunch my face in disgust at the awful smells.”Aye look who it is!” Barry calls out after seeing my face, He’s standing beside..Rafe cameron.

Now...I’m not friends with Rafe but i also don’t exactly despise him.I babysat wheezie all summer last year,most the time he’d join..keep me company;I don’t think he knew i was with Kie but he’s not all bad.He’s helped me more times than I can count,only because i've done the same for him though.

“Yo waddup.I didn’t expect to see you here.” I share a short handshake with Barry and side hug Rafe,he seems unprepared for it so he stumbles a bit but eventually hugs back quickly.”uh yeah.just doing some..business” Rafe says avoiding eye contact,looking everywhere except my face.”anyway i'm gonna head out, i'll catch you guys later.” Rafe walks towards,im guessing his bike;I head inside following barry so i didn’t really catch what he drove in.

“So like I said I've got your usual ,and then I got a little extra something I thought you may like.”He continues on but I'm so wrapped up in the fact that I want to consume something soon,anything;I don’t know exactly what he's saying.”Sound good?” He asked “Uh what?sorry I zoned out a bit.”I shook my head pushing my long hair out of my eyes.”Look,Usually altogether this would be alot of money but considering I stole the pills,I'll spare you the oxy,wadda yuh say?”, “Yeah sure,80$?”

He nods his head holding his hand out as i hand him the money.He hands you a bag full of coke in a plastic baggy, along with the pills in its original container it was prescribed. “Ight,thanks man.Ill see you later next week!” I wave goodbye as I show myself out, shoving the ‘things’ I had bought into my bag and swinging it back on my back.

~Incoming call from:Bubbs<3

I instantly pick up not wanting to worry her.

I instantly hear the boys laughing and playing in the background,but wait for her to say something.”Hey baby, you heading back yet?” Kie questioned sounding bored of the childish boys we spend our time with.”Not yet,i promise im almost done,ask the boys if there's drinks at the chateau please.”She turns her head away from the boys asking what there is to drink besides sink water.

I hear a chorus of “We just stocked up”,”All good momma bird.” and other sayings coming from the overly hyper boys.”Did you hear that,or need me to repeat?” She hesitantly says, making sure I’m still listening ”Gotcha,I'm headed your way now,see you there” I say quickly hanging up without giving her time to respond.

I hop on my bike and drive towards…...the opposite of the chateau,instead deciding to go to the Camerons.I drive,stuck in thought of what ill do when i get there,not quite sure why i decided to come.I had been so lost in thought I didn’t realise I was suddenly at the Cameron residence. I park my bike and began walking up to the door,but before I can knock,Rafe walks up behind me.

“Y/n?” I swiftly turn around being scared for a minute before realizing who it was.”Oh!uhm. yeah...hey” I ‘smoothly’ say”what are you doing here?” he asks..The whole conversation was a blur and before I knew it I was walking up to his room to hang out.I sit on the bed laying back asking about what he wants to do.”I don't know,you came here,what'd you have in mind?” He asked curiously.”I'm not sure.” I snorted at my inability to maintain a conversation.

I dig into my bag as he starts up about how he broke his bed frame the other day, because he put too many boxes on the bed while getting rid of some old things. I finally found what I was looking for,the baggy of white powder.I lifted it up smiling widely.”Can I do this here or no?”I question,feeling my body begin to sweat at the thought of getting to snort the white powder.

“Uh,I mean.. yea sure,didn't know you did that kind of thing.. but I mean go ahead.” He rambles. He stares into space as I do a few lines, my eyes opening wide at the sensation of sudden adrenaline;I look over to see him trying not to stare.”Oh my bad,You want some?” I ask holding up the dollar folded into a cylinder shape , gesturing to the lines of coke spread on the dresser.

---

Hours go by,giggling,cracking jokes with rafe as well as doing oxy and maybe overdoing it with the coke seeing as the bag was almost gone.Rafe hasn't done much.I on the other hand was feeling VERY shaky and everything was just so hilarious..until it wasnt.My high started to get bad and overall scary.I must've did too much in such a limited amount of time.I look at my phone .

17 missed calls from Bubbs<3

8 missed calls from John B:)

9 missed calls from Popey boi

11 missed calls from JJ

Incoming call from Bubbs<3

“He-h-hello ,hi,hey.”

“DON'T ‘HI’ ME!” Kie instantly began screaming into the phone making me move my face away from it as Rafe looked at me with a worried expression on his face.

“Y/n,Where have you been! I’ve been so worried! I’ve-” I Blanked out again not in the mood to be yelled at.”Yeah,hey I nee-need,will-can youcomeandpickme up” I say jumbling all my words together. “Are you okay?Why are you talking like that?''She ask worried about my state of mind.

“Yeah am- I fine,Yes” I say yet again struggling to sound normal. I guess I was on speaker because JJ immediately began yelling into the phone asking about where I was.”Rafes house” Rafe sat silently waiting for them to break out into hysterics about me being with him.The phone went silent for a moment before the call ended.”So does that mean they not-....Vodka” was all i said before heading downstairs Rafe was sober enough to be able to notice what i was doing.I quickly went downstair searching through the freezer.

“Yessss.”I exclaimed before chugging the vodka.”Rafe continuously asking me to give him the bottle.I chugg at least half the pint bottle before having to give it up because Sarah comes down the stairs.”Y/n what're you doing here?” She asks excitedly until she saw me tripping over my own feet walking towards her,”Woah!” she caught me just before I hit the floor.

She turned to the door hearing someone pull up.Kie.”Rafe what did you do to her?” Sarah asked, holding me up scared of how out of it I was.”SHE BROUGHT COKE HERE,i did a bit with her, but she did A LOT. I legit did nothing this time I swear on everything!”He trailed back up the stairs not caring about the situation now that Sarah was there to take care of you. 

I began to sweat, tears running down my face. scared of what's happening to me.John b and Kie rush through the front doors asking where I am.”IN HERE GUYS!” Sarah screamed for them to hear her.My eyes rolling to the back of my head as I went in and out of consciousness.

“BABYYYY!!!” i exclaimed making grabby hands at Kie as i started crying harder

Sarah helped me stand up shakingly as I tried to walk to my girlfriend,She came running towards me with a concerned look on her face. She grabs my face pecking my lips,”Bub. I need you to listen to me, okay?” I nodd in awe of the gorgeous girl in front of me.”John B is gonna take you to the van,we need you to tell us everything you took to get in this state, okay?” I drowsily  nodded,growing tired.

Just as she said,the tall boy picked me up bridal style carrying me out to the twinkie.

I take notice to seating arrangement so i can close my eyes and know whos talking ,JJ being in the passenger seat,Pope watching From the bench behind the driver's seat.Kie stepped up into the van sitting on the floor of the vehicle waiting for John B to place me down beside her.As he did I sat up enough to lean my back against her chest.

JJ was surprisingly silent.Too silent.Pope looked so worried at my sweating body and dripping wet hair from  sweat,tears,and vodka mixture.”Okay,Y/n,What did you take?” my girlfriend sits grabbing my face turning me to face her, my legs straddling her thighs on the floor as I nuzzle my head into the crook of her neck,but she pushes my head up making me pout but not being able to maintain due to the dizziness. “I took a few oxy,uhm when I -then i did a few lines of coke,and…..i chugged half a pint of vodka..” i said tears filling my eyes trying to not look into anyone's eyes,

Silent JJ was no more .”Are you fucking kidding me.Y/n Y/m/n Y/l/n.You’re not supposed to take oxy and drink alcohol together.much less do oxy or coke at all.ARE YOU DUMB!” JJ began turning around. A Quiet ‘im sorry’ came from my mouth.John B finally pulled into the chateau.

Kie carried me while my face stayed nuzzled in her neck still crying due to my,still,VERY high state.she sat me down on the couch out on the porch as everyone except her,went to get a few things.Pope came back with water and a wet rag to place on my head.JJ brought a blanket,John B came back empty handed because he only went inside to pee.

“Kie?” I whispered scared she was mad.”Yes baby?” 

“Are you mad at me?” I questioned hiding my face in her shoulder due to the amount of dizziness being insured. She leaned her head on mine with an unknown amount of emotions,not quite sure of how to fully answer. “No I- I just don’t know what you were thinking I just- Well I figured you wouldn’t ever do anything like this considering what we talked about-and -and what you went through with your parents..” 

“I know-I wanted to feel better tho..I just feel like i have no one-”

Shortly realising the guys were still in on the conversation as Pope cut in.

“Y/n, you have,and always will have us..” I lift my head from the girls shoulder  before slowly looking at Pope in his sad worried eyes.

“I guess, I like-I dont know guys what you want me to say..Im trying to be better for myself for everybody,but nothing was working and i ran into barry one day and we talked and he offered a way to help,of course i was hesitant but its really not that bad...Im actually fine!” I said standing up as John b followed me.

“y/n, you were just saying you need help,so what the fuck are we supposed to do ,one minute you need help and having to be ushered here so you dont die! And-and-the next thing you’re yelling at us about how your fine,you’re not fine and you know it!” I stopped as I watched the long haired boy fight back tears trying to explain how all of them feel.

“Fuck you guys honestly,Im not a child i know how i feel,this is all just bullshit!” I yelled at them all, I ran to the spare bedroom covered in sweat,tears,and vodka; I slowly sink into the bed as tears fall down my face crying myself to sleep,what i didn’t know was that my bestfriend’s and girlfriend were all huddled up outside the door awaiting me to fall asleep so that they could come in and cuddle me to make me feel better.Sometimes things get better, but i dont think this is one of those times atleast for now anyway..

[oneweekoneband]

her Nebraska (1982)

In July I flew to Massachusetts with a plague on, and I felt that it was wrong, but my mother had begged and I’d been out of work for months. Mornings there I ran in long, uneven ovals on the same roads I’d memorized in high school. There’s no sidewalks, but the few feet of dirt between the craggy pavement and the open mouths of the fields serve all right for a single body in motion. When a truck comes up close from behind, the ground shakes, and I step away bouncingly from the street toward thigh-high yellow weeds and grass, and keep going. I was slowly picking my way back in that dirt, sweat-slick from only a plodding couple of miles in peak summer heat, and sucking the wet cotton of my mask in between my teeth on every inhale, when Taylor Swift announced she was releasing a surprise album produced by the guy from The National. Not the guy from The National, like, the voice, but the guy from The National whose photo was circulated on Twitter earlier this year as some kind of antifa super soldier, which isn’t the case, but would’ve been rad. First, I stopped dead to send some outraged, misspelled text messages, and then I ran home faster than I’d moved in years.

Tall, blonde, patrician pop star Taylor Swift is to me something like a cross-between a wife and a boogeyman. Bound we’ve been since we were really children. Time and its changes haven’t rid me of her, and what’s worse is I have never quite been able to wish they would, though I claim as much all the time. Countless hours of my one wild and precious life have been spent on endlessly analyzing the minutiae of Taylor Swift’s music, the mind that made it, the real world events which influenced it. And though all the while I have known she is only a person, and that people, while each strange and lovely in their own ways, are, in the end, mostly dull, needful in just the regular manner, the fantasy is better, the sick dream of a megalomaniac songstress, curious, thrilling, probably evil, and I choose that. I don’t know Taylor Alison Swift, born to this world in, I presume, the usual way. But my Taylor Swift? I’m a renowned expert. I’ve always eaten up stories—movies, music, celebrity news, the one my grandfather tells about falling off his bike once in Ireland as a boy and his face “cracking open like an egg”—like a starved dog. I’m obsessive about my interests, but not inclined to intense fandom, and certainly not fandom in the mode of the stan. For one, I’m too self-absorbed. But caring intensely for a famous person is falling in love with a ghost, and that’s all right—I mean, what the hell? We’re here together just dying... Let’s enjoy—but is an affair best undertaken with the knowledge that everyone alive has their own complex interiority, as unruly as your own, and that you, a stranger, are not in any real way connected to the lawless, blurry middle of that celebrity, and will never be. It’s freeing and fun to know this. I mean, these people are basically in your employ. Glamorous dollhouse dwellers. Acknowledging that uncrossable distance allows for a different, healthier closeness of pure imagination. My feelings, then, can comfortably be at once both fiercely intense and entirely silly. I am a foremost scholar in the art of the Taylor Swift who exists in my head. The real person raised in Pennsylvania I don’t know at all. I have some conjectures on the matter, and, as with all my conjectures, every hackneyed theory, each picky little opinion, I’m sure they’re perfect, brilliant, just absolutely right, but that’s still all they are. Taylor Swift, figure of the cultural imagination, is the Jodie Comer to my Sandra Oh in Killing Eve, annoying and pretty in frills, taunting me endlessly and holding us trapped together in a dance of most enchanting death. But the real Taylor Swift has favorite bed sheets and a social security number and a British boyfriend, none of which I have any desire to know about, and if I saw her at a restaurant I’d politely avert my eyes before, yes, dive-bombing the group text. There’s nobody on Earth I’d stand in line to speak to, but then I’ve been speaking to a certain figment of Taylor Swift for nearly half my life.

I went to a Taylor Swift concert the night before I moved into college in 2009. My father’s work friend, firefighter by day, near professional gambler by night, got comped tickets to the Fearless Tour stop taking place at the nearby casino, and he let me have them as a reward, mainly, for happening to be seventeen. Live in-person and performed acoustically, “Fifteen” made me cry. A few years after that, in the thick, sticky part of my first post-college summer, I wrote approximately twenty-three million words about her in these very pages.  (”Pages”) At that point, Taylor’s most recent release was 2012’s Red, and the work I produced that long ago July about Taylor and her career, writing I was fairly pleased with at the time, feels now, besides just being extremely clearly written by a twenty-one year old, strange to me for the way it favors the sweet over the sour almost uniformly. There is a wholesome kind of ardor in that writing which maybe I’ve outgrown the ability to hold. Or maybe Taylor just proceeded to spend the next half a decade plus releasing one bad single after another, and it was taste—and trespasses against taste—and not some shift in my nature which altered the tenor of our bond. I have real love for my particular image, gleaned from public statements and published art, of smart, bizarre famous woman Taylor Swift, and I admire the bulk of her output very much. I’m just no longer so inclined to fawn. This is not to say I am here to offer a Taylor Swift hate screed. I couldn’t swing it, and, anyway, I’m not a pop feminist-for-hire circa 2010. But we’re older now. Things are different. At twenty-eight, twenty-nine this month—Taylor will, also this December, turn thirty-one—I regard Taylor Swift warily, like an ex with whom you have a tentative friendship, perpetually on the brink of falling one way or the other into hatred or delight, only to wobble back the opposite direction again at the slightest provocation, but still, despite best efforts, even, I regard her all the time. 

folklore was released at midnight on July 24th 2020, but I was at a cabin in rural Vermont without Internet or cell service. I drank Bud Light seltzers with my mother while watching the eerie pandemic return of Major League Baseball, and when I got into a strange bed there I stewed, knowing there were people out in the world all over who were hearing Taylor Swift songs I never had, and that this was a fundamental wrong, a disruption in the balance of the universe. I listened to it the next morning in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. 

And folklore is great. That’s the terrible thing. Slightly less great, maybe, than some people have insisted, tricked, I think, by just the pronounced shift in sound. But it’s great. A little gift I asked for a thousand times and was still surprised to get, like a wife who didn’t expect her henpecked husband to ever follow through and buy the paraffin wax hand bath as-see-on-TV. For years, I’ve been halfheartedly insisting that Taylor had a great album in her. I’d say it even, perhaps especially, while she stubbornly fed me gruel. Or worse, gruel with the occasional whiff of something better. With a ripe, little raspberry dropped into the slop. The bright, villainous thrill of “Getaway Car” made me believe Taylor, my Taylor, was in there somewhere under the lacquer of sequins and synth, which, while not objectionable by default, seemed a costume, and an ill-fitting one. The lived-in world of “Cornelia Street” made those old scars sting. That gay “Delicate” video. When she did “Call It What You Want” on SNL and played guitar while wearing an ugly sweater. If the abominable “ME!”, lead single off Lover, was the stick, 1989’s “Clean” was the carrot. I was Charlie Brown, and Taylor my Lucy, yanking the football back again and again. Over drinks I still yelled that Taylor Swift’s next album would be, “her Nebraska”, referring to my favorite Bruce Springsteen record, and learned to live with that egg on my face for good. I suppose I even came to like it. There was something inherently funny in taking up, like, “blind faith in the as of yet untapped greater artistic potential of massively wealthy and popular singer Taylor Swift” as my totally inane personal cause du jour, and eventually it was a bit, a gag I performed to be obstinate and didactic, but way down somewhere awful near my kidneys I meant it the whole while. And then she did it. A pandemic befell the world and amid a sea of human suffering Taylor Swift remembered she can write. She wrote, and with a massive, crucial assist from Aaron Dessner, whose music on this record is sometimes so beautiful it actually angers me, as the last thing I needed in already perilous times was to be made to try and marry my uniquely perverse emotional responses to beloved divorced dad band The National and fucking Taylor Swift,  she made an album which, if not her Nebraska, per se (I’ve come to realize that a major part of believing Taylor Swift will one day make an album I find as quietly devastating and gorgeous as Nebraska is knowing that no album will ever actually be Her Nebraska... That each will, rather, to me, be more and more evidence that it’s coming still, more proof that the limit is untouched, on and on ad infinitum, or at least until the seas take us into a place of salty peace.) is a shocking credit to all my hard-fought and deluded confidence. folklore is great. This fact has made me feel almost equally as disoriented from my understanding of the world as the time-melting COVID-19 lockdowns have, and it turned my Spotify year in review annual collective AI humiliation kink thing into a glaring indictment of my mental state, but still, I mean... It’s great.

In talking about folklore a bit this week, there are a number of specific topics I intend to cover—what a thrill it is to hear Taylor say “fuck”; Taylor’s terrifying birth chart; the astoundingly perfect bridge of “the last great american dynasty”; “because my ass is located at the back of my body”; the bit in last year’s “Lover” where deranged WASP Taylor Swift implies that to “leave the Christmas lights up til January” is some signifier of being a love-struck bohemian, when actually everyone who doesn’t employ domestic staff to take their lights down does this; how reputation is the best of the Taylor Swift records released in the latter half of the 2010s, actually, and the people who can’t see that are cowards—but intend mostly to let the muse move me where she will. Against the advice of my better angels, she—that tie-in marketing eldritch terror—always does.

[buckyhoneyno]

High Without Your Love Pt.5

********Warning*******

This book is being moved into a Stucky x OC fic rather than a Y/N. Her name is Athena, nothing else about the book is changing.

***************************************

Steve x reader x Bucky

Soulmate AU where the first words you say are tattooed on your soulmate.

“Sorry I’m high on feminism…and a little weed”

Pt.1 Pt.2 Pt.3 Pt.4

Masterlist

Warning: Smut, 18+

The trio decided to spend the next day on their floor together lounging about. Athena was sporting one of their sweatshirts, and a pair of boxers that she had to roll quite a few times to get them to stay up. It was still pretty early, around 8 in the morning.

"We can make..." Steve started saying as he looked in fridge, "...sandwiches?" He said it like a question as he looked at Athena and Bucky who were both sat at the bar drinking coffee.

"We need to go grocery shopping," Bucky stated as he stood up to put his empty cup in the sink.

"I need to go find out where my room is," Athena muttered as she stirred her spoon around the cup. "I can't really wear this to the grocery store,"

"Your room?" Steve reiterated. "I thought you would want to stay on our floor, you know with us," His frown made Athena's heart melt as she got out of her seat to move to his side. His arms instantly wrapped around her to pull her to his chest.

"Of course, I do, but obviously coming here I wasn't exactly expecting to find my soulmates. Tony had all my stuff moved in a few days before the party. At the moment, I was thinking of just using that room as storage for my stuff till we figure out our living situation," She ran her hands up and down his back in soothing motions before leaning up and placing a kiss under his jaw.

"We have about 3 extra rooms on this floor," Bucky mused. "and for the living situation, I actually had an idea for that," Athena and Steve looked at him waiting to hear his idea. "How about we pick one of the rooms on the floor as a community room, we can get an extra big bed, make it our own. Then we can each have our own rooms as well, for when we get sick of each other," He joked at the end.

"I think that's a great idea," Athena said with a smile, reaching a hand out for him she quickly pulled him closer. Leaning up she gave him a slow building kiss before pulling away. "We could go shopping for the shared room today if we want, I have everything that's meant for my own room now. I just need to move it all here."

"Miss Athena, would you like me to have the movers come by while you are out shopping," Jarvis's voice filled the kitchen, making Athena jump, still not used to the AI.

"Yeah that would be great," She replied, "You can have them all move it into..." she looked at the men with a raised brow.

"Move it into the room between Bucky's and mine," Steve supplied with a shrug. "There's one at the end of the hall that'll do just fine for our group room,"

"Alright then, I'm going to go find my stuff. You two can get ready here," she said with a nod.

"Well come with you," Bucky said quickly. "Just in case you need help," Steve nodded in agreements. If they were being honest though, the thought of leaving her, even for a moment was something neither of them liked. It was a feeling they knew would calm down eventually but at the moment their bond was so new that they felt threated by just about everything and everyone.

"I think I can figure out how to put some clothes on and pack a bag," Athena replied with a wink but sighed when she saw their unchanging expression. "But if you must," she teased before walking toward the elevator. Both supersoliders on her tail. "

The trio made it to her designated floor which she happened to share with Natasha and Clint. It wasn't uncommon for this to also be the floor that many of their other team mates seemed to gravitate towards. Currently at the kitchenette, Bruce and Nat sat drinking their morning cup of coffee and speaking in low tones to each other. Clint sat on the couch in a pair of iron man boxers and a baggy shirt, lazily skipping through channels, a bowl of half eaten cereal in his lap.

"Well good morning love birds," He joked noticing the trio walking in. "Have a nice night?" He teased with a wink.

"It was great," Athena replied with a little smirk as she continued towards her room, if you could even really call it that.

"Jarvis informed us that some movers were going to be coming to get your stuff today, so I imagine it was a lot better than great," Nat said off handedly, though they could tell she was holding back a little smile of her own as she teased the girl.

Athena only gave a hum in response, keeping some mystery alive in their little tryst. At one point, she knew that her and Nat would sit down and she would spill all the dirty details though. She just had to wait till her super soldiers weren't around. They might fuck like animals but they were still gentlemen from the 40s and she had no doubt that they weren't the biggest fans of sharing what they did in the bedroom.

Steve and Bucky chose to stay quiet through the interactions, happy to let their girl talk. It also helped that it was so early in the day, none of their team mates were to chatty before 11. They all made it into her designated room and saw that all of her things were still thankfully in boxes. She seemed to know which ones had what in them and quickly put the boys to work on finding her suitable clothes to wear while she found all of her toiletries. The two men had shower stuff she could have used but Athena would die before using a two-in-one shampoo conditioner on her beautiful hair.

"How about this Doll?" Bucky called over holding up a sundress and a pair of sandals. He seemed almost nervous but she smiled with a nod and he felt relief spread through him. It was a stupid thing to be worried about but he couldn't help himself.

"Maybe a jacket with it, I think it's supposed to be a bit breezy today," she added as she turned back to the box.

"Found one," Steve said from his spot on the floor tossing it to Bucky. "I think it matches," Bucky laid the outfit out on the bed and nodded.

"I should have you two pick my clothes from now on, it's a cute outfit," Athena complimented with a smile. "All I need now is to find underwear and shower," she ticked off her list on her fingers.

"Well all your underthings are in that box," Steve pointed to the one he happened to be sifting through on the ground. "And what a collection you have baby girl," His eyes seemed to darken as he thought of some of the pieces that sat in the box. A navy baby doll set had been the star of his current fantasy and he would do just about anything to see her in it right now

"Well maybe if you two are extra good today ill model a few of them tonight," She bit her lip as she leaned against the bed post looking over her two soulmates. Bucky looked into the box and reached a hand in pulling out a little lacey number that had silk strings holding it together, it was a shocking red color that looked like blood.

"Or you could do that now," He hummed as he walked towards her. Athena have a soft little laugh while taking it from his hands. Leaning up on her toes she let her lips ghost over his cheek before landing on his ear.

"Nice try sarg, but we got plans today," she whispered the words with a little nip that made him shiver. Stepping back, she clapped her hands together breaking the two men out of whatever spell she had them under. "Now that we have some of my stuff we can head back down to our floor and get ready, chop chop," She said with a nod while scooping up the outfit and the lingerie on her way by, her bag of toiletries swung over her shoulder as the men stood dumbfounded in the room. They looked at each other and then the box with her lingerie in it and silently decided they would grab it now.

The thought of another person touching her more intimate things made their blood boil. Steve quickly flipped the lid closed and picked it up. Bucky followed him out of the room and towards the elevator where Athena was waiting. She took one look at the box they had and had to hold in a laugh.

"You two are ridiculous," She teased as they stepped into the elevator. Bucky grabbed her free hand and pulled her to his chest.

"Your all ours pretty girl, which means we don't want some random movers handling your delicates. That's our job," He made her breath hitch as he let his hands wander down her backside, giving it a good squeeze. Leaning closer he found the spot on her neck that he knew drove her wild and gave it a sharp nip that had her letting out a mewl of need, before the elevator dinged, letting them know they were on their floor now. Patting her backside once he left the elevator leaving behind a slightly frazzled soulmate. Steve chuckled before following Bucky, towards the middle room which was going to be designated as Athena.

"She going to make us both pay for that one," Steve stated as he set the box down.

"Yeah, but it'll be worth it," Bucky said with a smirk. A huff could be heard from the doorway as Athena came in the room. She gave Bucky a halfhearted glare, though it came off more sexual then she planned. Placing her things on her bed Athena moved towards the bathroom with her toiletries and moments later the sound of the shower turning on could be heard.

The two men stood in her room for another few minutes debating what they should do.

"You know saving water is very important," Steve started looking at Bucky who nodded quickly.

"With global warming and all," he replied just as quick before the men practically flew into the bathroom clothes discarded. They were in the shower in record timing standing on either sides of their soulmate who didn't look the least bit surprised.

"took you both long enough," she teased while moving under the water, tilting her head back in a sensual motion as water cascaded down her body. Her hands wandered over her own chest in an almost clinical way but it still entranced the two men who were struggling to keep their eyes from popping out of their heads.

Steve seemed to lose his composure first as he lunged forward sinking his hands into her hair and pulling her to his chest. His mouth quickly descended onto hers and they fought tongue and teeth to gain dominance. Steve turned around, Athena still in his arms, and back her into Bucky's waiting arms.

The metal armed man waited very little time and let his hands rom between his soulmates legs. His fingers played with her little bundle of nerves, a moan resonating through the steamy room as she voiced her enjoyment. It was cut off by Steve though who continued to kiss the day lights out of the woman. His mouth though slowly trailed down her body till it found purchase on her chest, working over her nipples. Her hands sunk into his hair holding him to her as she let out another strangled sound of pleasure.

"Please," she whimpered as she felt Bucky line up with her back entrance, "I want it,"

"Oh, I bet you do, kitten," He mused back before lifting her legs, Steve quickly took them from his friend and wrapped them around his own waist, his erection sinking into her passage without warning. A ragged sounded building in her throat. Bucky didn't need any more motivation and found himself surrounded by sweltering heat when he pressed himself forward.

The three of them found a rhythm quickly and soon were making sounds in the shower that resembled some wild animalistic matting as they pounded into the woman who seemed to be loving every second of it.

"Fuck I'm gonn- fuuu-" Athena orgasm over took her suddenly making her shake in the men's arms as they raced to their own finish line. Another few thrust and then men were done for.

Minutes passed as they all came down from their high and disconnected from each other.

"Now that you have sufficiently made me dirty, why don't you two clean me off," Athena said with a sigh as she leaned back into Bucky's chest, her legs still shaking a bit.

__

Once the trio was clean and dry and had finished off yet another round in the shower they began to dress themselves for their day.

"How about we go get some breakfast somewhere first and then go look for stuff for the room," Steve delegated from his closet while Athena and Bucky sat cuddled on the bed both getting ready quicker then him. Stepping out fully dressed he knelt on the bed next to them, his hand slowly tracing patterns on Athena exposed thigh. "Then we can finish our errands at the grocery store,"

"Sounds like a plan," Bucky said with a nod before sitting up, they each took one of Athena hands and pulled her off the bed with them. "come on doll face, let's go face the world,"

--

I have a few more chapters ready to go so let me know if you want to be added to the tag list!

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[pinkfurygiver]

Rafe Cameron x Reader

This my first attempt, I’m foreign so excuse me if there are some spelling or/and grammar errors. Have fun (Y/N)!

Summary: Rafe and (Y/N) are really close friends (or maybe more?), and he usually sneaks in her room at night but this time something is different: he is covered in blood. (Y/N) is aware about his drug addiction, and even if she is still mad at him she decides to help him.

Tw: mention of drugs, underage drinking, blood. (Let me know if more)

“It’s three in the morning” (Y/N) said, feeling guilty that she left her room without telling her parents a thing. She wasn’t like that, not before him, she was the good daughter. The girl never went skinny dipping in the night, never talked back or neither did something to unplease the other. But since Rafe came in her life she become a trouble maker, always jumping out of her window to meet him and not caring about other opinions anymore. With him she felt so free, so free to be her true self. Always on the edge of time. Rafe made her stomach hurt, especially when he’s gentle touch met hers; she always felt like a dose of serotonin was injected in her vein.

But this time was different: she didn’t want to jump. Actually, she didn’t even considered doing so. It wasn’t strange for Rafe to call her that late in the night to meet her, but since the last time (Y/N) decided that she was fed up with his little game. If he wanted to spent some time with her then he could do it in the day time, maybe at the beach or somewhere else. She started to belive he was ashamed of being seen with her, and that hurted like a bitch.

“It’s home time, dumbass” She said, getting up of her bad with her blanket on her shoulders, because even if it was still summer, that night was pretty cold.

She looked out of her window, looking outside, with her phone still pressed against her cheeck.

Rafe was right next her gazebo, with his back on the wood of the construction looking right at her direction. She couldn’t see him properly because of the darkness, but she felt like something was about to go wrong.

His body language told her that something was wrong. He didn’t call her for some cuddles, he needed her. Even if she was still mad as hell with him now she decided to help him, ready to jump out of the window.

“This couldn’t wait until the morning?” She asked, trying to brake the tension between then with a fake smile on her face and a giggle. She opened her window and proceeded to jump on the green wet grass of her garden. Her window was on the first floor, so it wasn’t that hard to do this action and of course she had become a professional then. Her ankle hurted a bit, but she didn’t care: the goals was to figure out what was going on.

“I left you multiple missed calls” He mumbles, still not meeting her eyes. He was looking at the ground, messing with his own hair.

“Yeah, sorry I was sleeping” (Y/N) said, a little sarcastic. What else was she supposed to do? “Can you at least look me in the face?” She snapped, wanting his full attention.

And when he did face her, her heart almost stop. The beautiful face she always looked up in her mind when she missed him was now replaced with this now image: his mouth was full of blood, and the red stains cover his face arriving even on his cheecks. He didn’t even bothered cleaning him self or covering the blood, maybe thinking that wasn’t necessary. (Y/N) mind wondered if that was his blood or if he had fought someone.

The anger become to grow inside her chest, looking at the boy’s eyes with rage. What the hell had happened to him? (Y/N) knew that if he wasn’t at the police station to report the aggression was because that aggression was either his foult or was caused by illegal factors. And (Y/N) started to belive that the drugs was part of the equipment.

“Tell me this- She started, pointing with her chin to the mess his face was- has nothing to do with that Pugue-drug dealer” She begged, trying to hold his cheeck on the palm of her hand. He flitched, taking a few steps away. He didn’t denied the accusations, so (Y/N) figured out that was exactly what she feared. “Look, I dont need a lecture right now. I just need a place to stay for the night, if I go home looking like this my father will kill me”.

“I’m not helping you if you don’t explain yourself, Rafe” (Y/N) screamed with rage in her eyes. She hated what he was becoming, and she hated more the fact that she couldn’t save him form himself. His drug addiction was going to kill him, in some sort of way. And the first effects of his illness where showing with big red stains on his face. What was he thinking?

“What?” He exploded, not believing that (Y/N) was being such a bitch towards him. She was supposed to be his friend, and friends help each other.

“You heard me. You need to fucking stop getting high” She snapped back, waving a hand right in his face “Can you understand me or the crack burned all your neurons?”.

He left a little laugh leave his mouth. She was becoming really annoying at this point, and he started to regret calling her for help. Why didn’t he call Topper? God damn it, even JJ Maybank would have been more helpful.

“No, You don’t get to tell me what to do. Your not my father!” He fumed, rising his voce while his red eyes opened even wider. (Y/N) wasn’t scared of him (she was scared of anything), and she knew she could top him anytime she wanted with the perfect line.

She knew where it hurted, and wasn’t playing around at all.

“You’re right, I’m not. I actually give a shit about you” She said, lowing her voice enough to make the sentance even colder. His face muted from anger to hurt, showing his most fragile side: Rafe hated feeling vulnerabile, and (Y/N) knew it.

She always liked looking inside peoples head, trying to figure out why they behaved like they did. She wanted to become a profiler or psychiatrist, and Rafe was her favorite subject. (Y/N) knew about his bad relationship with his father, the drug issues, anger issues and had seen that if moved in the correct way Rafe would crumble completely.

“Fuck you, (Y/N). You don’t know what your talking about”

“Then tell me why you called me?” She asked, nodding her head in a sarcastic way waiting for him to explain the reason. “Tell me why’d you only call me when your high?”.

Rafe couldn’t say anything to calm her at this point: (Y/N) had every right to be mad at him.

“Look, I promise I will get better” He tried, looking as the girl in front of him took a huge breath “Yeah, I’m sure you will... do you thing I’m that fucking dumb?”

(Y/N) felt so sorry for him. She knew it wasn’t her job to drag him out of his messy life but she couldn’t leave him like that. Not him feeling like he wasn’t good enough and alone in that cold summer night.

“Im trying to change your mind” She said again, more softly. Begging him to listen to her without actually telling him to. Rafe looked at her with a confused sight, not understanding the suddenly change of her behavior. Was she still mad at him or not?

“What? You want to help me now?” He asked with hope in his voice, taking a step forward. “When you look at me like that, what else I’m supposed to do? Your face looks like shit” (Y/N) tried to say, while looking behind her back. They had screamed like two gorillas before, and now she was afraid someone was going to catch them with their hand in the cookie jar.

(Y/N) took her car’s key from the pocket, waking in her pajamas towards the spot she usually parked it. And Rafe followed her silently, watching every moviment of the girl. She walked slowly and well aware that if they get caught she will never be able to see him again.

Rafe couldn’t help but think how much her skin seemed to glow under the moon’s light, making her seem like an angel. He didn’t know if it was because of the drugs, in fact he still had a great dose inside his body, but, while she was looking behind her shoulder for him, he caught the desire to kiss her.

“Why the fuck are you looking at me like that? Move your stupid ass inside” She snapped, pushing him inside the car while she took the driver side, putting his belt on as soon as she sit down.

“I’m not a child, (Y/N). Stop treating me like one” He declared, looking outside putting the car’s window down “Well, you sure act like one”

“Where are we going?” Rafe asked, still pretty confused “Are you taking me home? (Y/N) you said you wouldn’t!”.

“I know what I said” she snapped, topping him once more “I’m taking you somewhere safe. It’s a mansion my dad bought last summer, we go there almost every Christmas. So for tonight no one is going to disturb your beautysleep, princess” She said, making fun of him just a bit “Damn, you’re so mean” He commented, making her eyes roll with nuisance.

“Mean?” (Y/N) mocked him, looking at the guy with a little smile on her mouth. How funny. She was the mean one now. “Don’t act so bossy with me, I’m not your stupid boyfriend” Rafe continued, showing once again his jealousy towards her. Since he saw (Y/N) and Pope talk in front of school, last weekend, Rafe was dying to beat his ass.

“Shut up, you don’t even know what a relationship is. All you know is smoke weed and drink alcohol with your stupid friends. Too afraid of being seen with me, apparently” She broke out, not even looking him right in the face. Her eyes now glued on the road. Why the hell did she said that out loud? He wasn’t supposed to know how much his behavior metter to her.

“Nonsense” He responded slowly, as if someone else was listening their conversation. He was so tired he couldn’t even keep his eyes open, lying his head on the passenger seat “I’m in love with you” He continued “I just don’t want anyone to know I have feeling” Then explained, feeling his cheeck burning for embarrassment “I’m too messed up, my problems would effect you and I dont want that”

“Seems like it already does” She noticed, not wanting to belive he just told her he was in love with her.

“(Y/N). Do you like me like that?”

“Your high Rafe, I can’t have this conversation with you”.

[saedii-gilwraeth-simp]

Arsinoe&Billy 4 🤗🤗

This one was fun. Also the child of forced Heterosexuality™ was fun to write!

Teacher/Single Parent AU

Arsinoe has to say, that of all the students she teaches, the one who is simultaneously her favourite and also her least favourite was Mary Chatworth. The young blonde girl was bright and as sharp as a whip but also seemed to be the most pissed at the world and questioned every single thing any authority figure said to her. Which was fine with Arsinoe (she remembers being seventeen and traumatised) but made it extraordinarily difficult for her to teach the course content on time. 

But, she wasn’t going to call Mary’s parents. Getting a young women in trouble for wanting knowledge wasn’t her style.

Which was why she was surprised when she got a phone call from Mary’s father. He had simply requested a meeting with her and that was that.

He was waiting by the office building and turned to her when she approached. She was almost thrown off balance for a second as he watched her approach with his deep hazel eyes. Still, she remained professional and reached a hander out.

“Hi, you must be William. I’m Arsinoe, Mary’s legal studies teacher,” she says as he takes her hand a shakes. His hand is warm and smooth and he flashes her a blinding white smile.

“Just Billy is fine. Only my mother calls me William. Shall we?” He says with a warm voice and gestures for them to go. She nods and lets him fall into step with her.

“So, I was surprised to hear from you. I saw no reason to contact you regarding Mary so I have to ask why you wished to speak to me?” She asks, turning into her classroom and taking a seat at on of the desks. Billy sits across from her with a sigh.

“I got a call from a Mr. Arron saying her behaviour was unacceptable and I should ask any of Mary’s other teachers and they would say the same thing. You’re her favourite teacher so I was hoping you could enlighten me to her behaviour. I’m really worried about her lately…,” he trails off and she shoots him a confused look. He catches it and sighs again, running a hand through his clean cut blonde hair, “her mum and I split up amicably when she was younger but lately she’s not reacting well to Christine’s partner. I really am hoping Mr. Arron is wrong,” he says nervously and Arsinoe laughs.

“Don’t tell him I said this, because I have to see him at family lunch on Saturdays, but Arron is wrong most of the time. Mary is fine, she wants knowledge and asks a lot of questions, which can make it hard to move onto the next topic, but one should never fault a student, especially a young woman, for wanting to learn more. Arron’s just a tool,” she says with a smile. Billy laughs quietly.

“And you’re related to Arron? Who you just called a tool?”

“He and my sister drunkenly eloped years ago, I still haven’t forgiven him for not inviting me,” she shrugs. He laughs again, gentle lines forming around his eyes.  “Oh and feel free to tell him you talked to me when you go see him. I have the power of making him sleep on the couch whenever I want so…,” they laughed again.

“Well, I might go see him now,” Billy says standing. Arsinoe stands with him and shakes his hand. “I’ll make sure to pass on your information to him. Thank you for being so gracious with Mary, she really does enjoy your classes,” he goes to walk away and she is almost sad to see him go until he turns back to her and seems to pause as if considering what to say. Finally, he seems to work it out. “Feel free to say no, but would you like to go to dinner with me sometime? As a date?”

Arsinoe doesn’t let her happy surprise show on her face and instead moves to her desk at the back of the room, grabbing a pen and a slip of paper.

“I would like that. Here’s my number,” she scrawls it quickly and hands it off to him. “Have fun telling Pietyr he’s wrong.”

~

It seems that no-one in her family realised that Mary Chatworth noticed everything, even with her head in a book. She knew that her mum liked women before her new step-mother came into the picture, she knew her grandmother became less of a bigot after her grandfather died.

And she knew her dad was seeing someone new, and it was going well, considering he had been going on dates with obviously the same person for the last 6 months. Which led her to her current predicament. She was spying.

She had been steadily following her dad in traffic, staying two cars back so he didn’t notice she was following. Eventually he dropped his car off with a valet at a fancy restaurant - too fancy for her to have ever been taken to. Still, she gets lucky when her dad is seated in front of the window. He orders something with the server and waits, so she waits.

Her phone dings and she looks over at it.

Message from Mum: How’s the stakeout going? Also, will you be home in time for dinner?

She texts back, Boring, Dad’s still waiting, and probably not but could you put a plate in the microwave in case?

Message from Mum: Will do. Also, tell me if she looks interesting so I can tease Billy about it later. Love you

She snorts and throws her phone down on the passenger seat, watching her dad in the restaurant again. Finally, she sees him smile and stand, kissing a woman who approaches him. She is as tall as him with dark hair chopped around her chin and when they pull away Mary is stunned.

“Holy fucking shit,” she whispers to the empty car before lifting her phone and snapping a photo, sending it off to her Instagram group chat.

Somehow the HBIC (MChat) to Mary is the only Responsible One™: Are y’all seeing what I’m seeing?

Evil Twin Uno to Mary is the only Responsible One™: is that your dad on a date with ms. queen? holy shit bro

Evil Twin Dos to Mary is the only Responsible One™: crap dude are you okay?

Self-proclaimed Dingus to Mary is the only Responsible One™: that’s somewhere between oof and yikes

Viv with no nickname to Mary is the only Responsible One™: babe if you wanna come get high with me to forget that image, feel free to come over.

Mary scoffed at that. If there was one thing she would not be doing tonight, it was getting high. Her step-mother had the nose of a drug-sniffing dog.

Somehow the HBIC (MChat) to Mary is the only Responsible One™: I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe tomorrow night when I’m staying at dad’s

Everyone’s debatable favourite to Mary is the only Responsible One™: yeah, get out of the house so your dad can spend spend quality time with you legal teacher *wink emoji*

Somehow the HBIC (MChat) to Mary is the only Responsible One™: I hate you

Everyone’s debatable favourite to Mary is the only Responsible One™: wait, you’re not at your dad’s tonight. Stick around and see if they leave together

Somehow the HBIC (MChat) to Mary is the only Responsible One™: ew ew ew ew ew ew fuck you fuck everyone. 

She threw her phone back onto the seat and continued to watch. She had to admit, it was kind of nice to see her dad smile like he was now. She was so used to see him stressed or disciplining her that even though he laughed, he didn’t smile as much as he was on this date.

She threw her head back and groaned. If it came down to her opinions about it and her dad being happy, she had to let her dad being happy, even with a woman who she saw everyday in class. 

Somehow the HBIC (MChat) to Viv with no nickname: If they leave together I’m coming to get high. I need an excuse to be at dad’s house tomorrow morning.

Viv with no nickname to Somehow the HBIC (MChat): I’ll save you a joint 

~

She wasn’t still high, but she still smelled undoubtedly like weed, which is why she went to her dad’s. Plus, she wanted to see whether Ms. Queen had stayed over. She let herself into the house and went straight to the kitchen. She really wanted peanut butter for some reason and she knew her dad loved that shit.

She grabs a spoon from a drawer and the peanut butter jar from the pantry and hops up on to the counter, crossing her legs and twisting the cap off.

She’s happily eating spoons of peanut butter on her kitchen bench when she hears her dad’s bedroom door swing open and footsteps that are definitely not her dad’s pad down the hall. She braces herself just as Ms. Queen comes into the kitchen and freezes. Mary looks over the teacher, wearing the dorkiest glasses, one of her dad’s sleep shirts and a pair of shorts.

They stare awkwardly at each other until the teacher rubs her nose and fixes her glasses.

“You look and smell like you spent the night getting high. Let me guess, Vivian?” Mary nods silently and Queen snorts. 

“Sorry, miss,” she says and Queen shudders.

“To start, I’m wearing one of your dad’s shirts, we’re at the point where you can call me Arsinoe and to finish, I don’t care, so long as you were doing anything to endanger yourself or anyone else. I’m not trying to be your mum, you already have enough of them, right?” Arsinoe says and grabs another spoon before pushing herself onto the counter. Mary offers her the peanut butter with a smile.

“My step-mum was super overbearing when it first became evident she would be around a while, so thanks, I guess,” Mary says, resting her head against the cupboard behind her. Arsinoe passes the peanut butter back.

“Well, I don’t know how long I’ll be around, but I really like your dad so I hope it’s a while. But I was seventeen once and I remember how much it sucked ass, so you don’t have to worry about me cramping your style,” Mary interrupts her with a snort and Arsinoe laughs, “wow I really sounded old then, huh?” Mary nodded.

“It’s fine. My mum still says tubular,” Mary says, meeting Arsinoe’s eyes for a beat and suddenly both were laughing.

“Ah, good to see you two getting along. What are you doing here kid? You’re meant to be at your mum’s,” Billy says as he enters the kitchen.

“I, uh, may have gone and smoked with Viv last night and you know what Denise is like,” she shrugged and her dad pursed his lips at her.

“I don’t approve of you getting high but I am glad you were honest about it and that you came someplace you feel safe. Now go text your mum you’re alright and sleep it off, please?” He says. Mary passed Arsinoe the peanut butter and hopped off of the counter, hugging her dad.

“Arsinoe can stay, she’s chill,” she compliments. Her dad smiles happily before ruffling her hair and sending her off to her room.

Send me a number and I’ll write a fic

[missjanjie]

Signed, Sealed, Delivered | (4/?)

Title: Signed, Sealed, Delivered Summary:   Jan is in love with her French pen pal, Nicky. Her roommate, Crystal, is in love with her best friend, Gigi. A (perhaps ill-thought out) plan emerges: give Nicky a reason to visit by inviting her to Crystal and Gigi’s wedding. With a month to pull the scheme together, no one knows how this will end up. Word Count: ~2.9k (this chapter) / ~11.6k (total) Relationship(s): Sportsdoll (Jan Sport/Nicky Doll), Crygi (Crystal Methyd/Gigi Goode, Sportsmethyd (Jan Sport/Crystal Methyd) Rating: E

Read on AO3

Crystal was excited for today; it was probably the best part of pretending to be engaged, enough to make her wonder why she hadn’t thought of this sooner. Today, she and Gigi were going wedding cake testing. They had lined up three different bakeries after finding out which ones didn’t charge for the consultation, and they had just arrived at bakery number one.

“I’m not very picky about flavor or anything, I’ll try whatever you recommend,” Crystal was saying. “However, my wife-to-be here especially loves red velvet, but doesn’t really like chocolate, which is weird to me, but we’ll probably go with what she wants.”

When the baker went into the kitchen, Gigi turned to Crystal with a surprised expression. “How did you know my cake preferences?”

Crystal shrugged. “You’ve mentioned it a couple of times, and I know you always get excited when they have red velvet muffins in the dining hall.”

“Oh,” Gigi felt a fluttering in her heart that she couldn’t – or rather wouldn’t – explain. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and looked down. “Well, you’re more observant than I give you credit for, then.”

“I get that a lot,” she mused, then sat upright when the test slices were brought out. She tried to listen to the descriptions, but she was practically salivating and dug in as soon as she could. “Now the texture of this is really nice, I like how it brings out the subtle flavor notes.”

Gigi covered her mouth to hide a laugh. “You’ll have to excuse her, she binge-watched Cake Wars last night,” she explained, gently patting Crystal’s thigh. After that, they got through the rest of the tasting without incident, and they told the baker they’d be in touch and left with the leftovers (that they hid in Gigi’s oversized purse so they could go and do the same at the next two bakeries).

Crystal patted her stomach in satisfaction as they made their way back to her apartment. “I can’t believe we never thought to pull a stunt like this before. It’s like telling the waiter it’s your birthday so they give you free ice cream or something,” she mused.

“I feel kinda bad though, we should order something from those places. Just, you know, not a wedding cake,” she added.

“Oh yeah, for sure,” Crystal readily agreed. “So, did you hear back from your friend about doing a photoshoot?”

Gigi nodded, smiling brightly. “Yeah, thanks for reminding me, actually. Does Saturday afternoon work for you?”

She nodded. “Totally. How’s it gonna work? Like, are we gonna be in our dresses, or is it gonna be something different? I don’t know how this works.”

“We’ll do some in the dresses, some in different outfits. It’ll give me the motivation to finish the fucking thing so I don’t try to pull an all-nighter right before it’s due,” she decided. As they kept walking, her hand kept brushing against Crystal’s, until she just caved and held her hand. It wasn’t like she hadn’t before, but it felt different this time. Holding Crystal’s hand had never made her heart skip a beat before, and she was yet to figure out how much she liked that.

It was different for Crystal. She already knew how she felt, and maybe that made it easier for her. She could allow herself to just appreciate the small act of affection, even though she did have to look away when she started smiling too wide. She probably wouldn’t try to overanalyze it until she was alone, at least. All she could do at the moment was appreciate being close to her, as it never seemed she could get close enough.

They’d both stopped thinking about it by the time they got home, and Crystal put the cake in the fridge, shooing away the cat at her feet. “Not a chance, Tic Tac, the vet already says you’re getting too fat.”

“Don’t body-shame her,” Gigi playfully chastised.

“I’m just being a concerned mother,” Crystal insisted, then looked over towards Jan’s room. She heard her voice, but couldn’t distinguish the words. “Ah, she must be working on the French song.”

Gigi tilted her head. “I’m gonna take a shot in the dark and assume it’s for Nicky, huh?” She let out a small laugh, though not in a mean way. “She’s… really crazy about her, huh?”

Jan came out of the room before Crystal could answer. “Hey, guys. How did the cake tasting go?”

“Great, there are leftovers in the fridge if you wanna pick at them,” Crystal offered. “How’s your song coming along? What’s it called again?”

“It’s called Aimé by Loane. I haven’t looked up the English translation, I feel like that kind of ruins it, you know? But when I heard it, it just made me think of Nicky, like deep in my heart, I just know it works,” Jan explained.

Gigi chewed on her lip, fighting back her words until she couldn’t anymore. “I’m sorry, I just don’t get it. How can you be so head over heels over someone you’ve never been in the same room with?”

Jan didn’t seem terribly bothered by this question, it wasn’t a new one to her. “She’s not written in braille, Gigi. I don’t need to touch her to know her.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ve got an emotional connection,” Gigi assured. “But have you even been with anyone since you guys started talking? Or are you really saving yourself for someone across the ocean? We all crave physical intimacy, you know?”

“Are you coming onto me?” Jan asked in an attempt to deflect. She glanced over at Crystal, whose face said ‘don’t you dare.’ to which she silently conveyed ‘I would never.’

Gigi didn’t notice any of that, just laughing it off. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t deprive yourself because you’re too busy pining to get laid.”

Jan chuckled softly. “I appreciate your concern about my sexual wellbeing, Geege. But I can take care of myself, and anyone else that comes along,” she glanced back towards the fridge. “I am gonna have my way with that leftover cake, though.”

------

Ever since Crystal and Jan had embarked on this unusual adventure, they had gotten closer. And they needed it, considering they had both been driving themselves crazy trying to pull off this scheme while they were in the midst of taking their finals. The end was around the corner, but trying to get through the final stretch left them tense and exhausted. So when they didn’t want to bother their respective love interests, they turned to each other.

“I keep thinking about what Gigi said,” Jan admitted as she passed the joint back to Crystal. She had never considered herself any sort of smoker, but Crystal was so comfortable with weed that it didn’t seem so scary, and it had actually become something that helped her unwind as well.

Crystal furrowed her brows as she took a hit, letting the smoke billow out in an O shape. “What? About you not getting laid because you’re always in your feelings about Nicky?”

“That’s one way to put it, yeah,” Jan chuckled softly, laying her head in Crystal’s lap. “Am I limiting myself just because of my feelings? It’d be different if we were in an actual relationship but… I don’t know. Have you hooked up with anyone since you realized you have a crush on Gigi?”

Crystal had to stop and think about it. “I… guess not, actually. Maybe that’s why we’ve been so fucking weird about all of this,” she mused.

Jan propped her feet up against the wall. “You think if we found someone to have a one-night stand with, we’d be able to get through finals, graduation, and the fake wedding with our sanity intact?”

“I dunno, I’m not a doctor,” Crystal shrugged. “But I do know sex releases endorphins and shit, like, all that good energy and stuff,” she mused and passed the joint back to Jan.

“Ugh, finding a good hookup is so much work,” she whined and took a hit, then gave it back to Crystal to finish off.

Crystal rolled her eyes affectionately as she finished it off. “I mean, it can’t be that hard for you, looking like that.”

“Just being a lesbian makes it hard, Crystal. You know that.” Jan huffed dramatically, then looked up at her. “I think we should make out.” It was the perfect solution, wasn’t it? If it was her, it wouldn’t count.

“Do you?” Crystal wasn’t as surprised by the suggestion as she thought she’d be, nor was she terribly put off by it. She and Jan were close, and they were going through the same struggles. Maybe this was what they needed to let off some steam. “Yeah, okay, I’m into it.”

Jan sat up, then moved onto Crystal’s lap. She rested her hands on the back of her head, fingers tangling in the mess of curly hair as their lips collided in a languid kiss. The lingering taste of pot was in their mouths, and Jan swore kissing her made her even more high.

Crystal loved the way Jan felt on top of her. She was soft and warm and she smelled so nice. Her arms looked around Jan’s waist, holding her close as the kiss deepened, their tongues intertwining.

“You’re a good kisser,” Jan observed when she came up for air, their foreheads still resting together. She then sat back, noticing Crystal’s grin and downcast gaze. “What?”

“Hm?” Crystal looked back up, her eyes a bit bloodshot and glossed over, but still full of the lighthearted joy that’d always been distinct to her. “Oh, I was just looking at your tits. They’re really nice,” she explained.

Jan snorted with laughter, then rested her head on Crystal’s shoulder as she giggled some more. “You’re such a perv!”

“You can’t call me a perv,” she pouted as if she took sincere offense, “it was your idea to start making out, you can’t fault me for getting more into it, especially when you know I get hornier when I’m high,” she defended.

“Oh my god,” Jan sat back upright, shaking her head. “Sometimes I forget that there’s a horndog underneath that quirky art student facade,” she teased.

Crystal shrugged, placing kisses up Jan’s chest and neck, then up her jaw until she lightly nipped at her earlobe. “I’m enigmatic, Jan. Get into it,” she cooed as her hands ran up and down Jan’s sides, making her tank top rise up a couple of inches, then shifted to playfully bite Jan’s bottom lip.

“You sure are something,” Jan chuckled before connecting their lips in another kiss. “You’re lucky I’m so touch-starved,” she added as she took her top off.

Crystal’s face lit up like an excited child. “Whatever you say,” she hummed, her hands moving right to Jan’s breasts, happily groping them over the purple lace of her bra as they went right back to their deep, relaxed kissing.

Jan took Crystal’s t-shirt off next, looking down at her bare chest. “I keep forgetting that you have your nipple pierced. It’s so pretty,” she remarked, lightly pinching and teasing it, rubbing it between her fingers. She had started to zone out, and it wasn’t until Crystal started moaning that she was brought back down to earth. “Guess it makes things more intense, huh?”

“Yeah,” she exhaled, “and we’re gonna end up doing a lot more than making out if you keep that up.”

“I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but threatening to fuck me isn’t exactly… a threat,” Jan smirked as she continued toying with her nipple and the piercing.

Crystal pushed Jan onto the bed and pounced on top of her. It wasn’t in a dominant way, if anything, it bordered on playful. She kissed Jan heatedly, her hands haphazardly fumbling to get her bra off, smiling to herself when she finally tossed it onto the floor. She trailed her lips down Jan’s neck, starting to nip at the skin until Jan grabbed her shoulder.

“Nothing above the bust,” she murmured.

Crystal obliged, instead of leaving a hickey on the underside of Jan’s breast, then let her tongue flick across and swirl around her nipple. She then rolled the two of them onto their sides, making it easier for her to tug off Jan’s shorts. “You have a great ass too,” she remarked, reaching her hand around and grabbing onto it.

“You think so? I’ve actually always been jealous of yours,” Jan told Crystal as she tugged her shorts off too. “It’s so cute and perky,” she hummed, squeezing it with both hands.

“We’re clearly both super hot,” Crystal observed. “Like, I bet people would pay to watch us fuck,” she mused as she slid her hand into Jan’s panties and began circling her clit with two fingers.

“Mhm,” Jan moaned instead of properly replying, tugging Crystal’s boyshorts down and moving her hand between her thighs to do the same. “Fuck, you’re so wet. That piercing really does make your nipple sensitive, huh?”

Crystal grunted softly and rutted against Jan’s fingers. “You’re just jealous you have to work harder to get turned on,” she retorted as she eased a finger into her.

“Seem to be doing just fine right now aren’t I?” Jan hummed between moans. The two of them mirrored each other’s movements, whimpering and moaning as their fingers steadily thrust into each other, thumbs rubbing uneven circles against each other’s clits.

And then it started to turn into a competition, the two of them trying to get the other to come first. Eventually, Jan won, smirking in satisfaction as she felt her friend clench around her fingers. But she didn’t last much longer, gasping out sharply as she came.

Once they were both spent, they lay calmly in bed, cuddled up to each other. “Do you feel any better?” Jan asked.

“I think so, actually,” Crystal mused. “The feelings are still there, but they don’t seem so scary, you know?”

Jan nodded. “I don’t feel so overwhelmed,” she agreed, then leaned up and kissed her cheek. “Thanks, you’re such a good friend.”

Crystal beamed and held her close. “And don’t you forget it.”

------

Heidi stared blankly at Jan after hearing the rundown of her situation. “So… You lied to your French not-girlfriend by inviting her to Crystal and Gigi’s wedding that isn’t real, but Crystal has a big ol’ crush on Gigi, and now the three of y’all are staging a whole ass fake wedding while you’re still taking finals?”

“I only have one final left,” Jan defended, rubbing the back of her neck. “Also, last night Crystal and I got high and had sex.”

She blinked slowly. “First of all, why the fuck are you telling me this?”

“Because if I told Jackie, she would keep trying to solve the problem and be all lecture-y about it. And like, I know you’re gonna judge me too, but at least I don’t feel as stupid when you do it.”

“I feel like I should be offended by that,” Heidi murmured. “Second of all, what the fuck are you gonna do when Nicky comes out here. You just gonna be like ‘sike, gotcha!’ or something?”

Jan sighed and looked down at her cup, sipping from it for a couple of moments. “I don’t know, honestly. I was thinking of telling her that Gigi and Crystal decided to postpone it because they’re too young. That makes sense, right?”

Heidi shrugged. “Well, I don’t have any better ideas,” she admitted, then furrowed her brows. “Wait, why did you have sex with Crystal? Am I missing something here?”

“Because we’ve both been losing sleep and getting super stressed over everything piling up, and neither of us wanted to go through the process of finding another girl to hook up with. So, we just… had each other. It’s not gonna make things weird, our friendship isn’t like that,” Jan explained as she finished her drink.

“Damn, I need to find me a friend like that,” she chuckled, finishing her drink as well. “Do I at least get an invite to the fake wedding?”

Jan laughed softly. “Yeah, you’re totally fake invited to the fake wedding.”

Heidi beamed brightly. “Thank you. Hey, can I see a picture of your little croissant boo? I wanna see what the hell’s causing all of this fuss.”

“Oh, yeah, here, she just sent me her new headshots,” Jan hummed, getting her phone out and pulling the pictures up before handing her phone over.

She studied the pictures thoughtfully, nodding slowly. “Okay, yeah, I get it. I’d throw my closest friends into a whirlwind of chaos over that too,” she decided, handing the phone back to Jan. “I think you should tell her how you feel before she gets here, though.”

Jan tilted her head as she put her phone away. “You do? Why?”

“Think about it, if she feels the same, you guys will be distracted and shacked up in your room, and maybe she’ll forget about the whole thing. And if she doesn’t, you can throw out the whole plan ‘cause it won’t matter. It’s a win-win, how has this not occurred to you?”

There was silence as Jan chewed her lip, mulling it over. “I… Yeah, I guess you have a point. I don’t know.” She exhaled deeply and looked up to the sky. “I’ll think about it.”

[eddiemilkman]

- Random Writing Prompt #1 -

Hey there! I’m pretty new to this platform and just trying to find my way around it for now, but I do wanna make a quick low quality post just to fill up a bit of space. I went on this website https://www.servicescape.com/writing-prompt-generator (This one here) and decided a fun thing to do when entering this cite was one of those funky prompts. So I did! And here's a portion of it. It’s late and I have a test tomorrow so I don't wanna stay up too long, but here’s a bit of writing to get a feel of what I’m all about. Hope you enjoy. (Also an important thing to note: I’m not a huge spelling or grammar buff so there’s probably mistakes and I’m sorry.)

ᴘʀᴏᴍᴘᴛ #862: ᴡʜᴇɴ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜɴɢ, ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ꜰʀɪᴇɴᴅꜱ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀ ɴᴇɪɢʜʙᴏʀʜᴏᴏᴅ ʙᴏʏ ᴡʜᴏ ʟɪᴋᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴀᴍᴇ ᴛʜɪɴɢꜱ ᴀꜱ ʏᴏᴜ. ʙᴏᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴇʀᴇ ᴅɪʀᴛ ᴘᴏᴏʀ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪᴛ ᴅɪᴅɴ'ᴛ ꜱᴇᴇᴍ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴀᴛᴛᴇʀ; ᴀꜱ ʟᴏɴɢ ᴀꜱ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴅ ᴇᴀᴄʜ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ, ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ᴡᴀꜱ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏꜱ ᴀ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ-ʙᴇʟɪᴇᴠᴇ ᴀᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏʀɴᴇʀ. ʜᴇ ɢʀᴇᴡ ᴜᴘ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴛᴀʀ ʙᴀꜱᴋᴇᴛʙᴀʟʟ ᴘʟᴀʏᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ, ɴᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʜᴇ'ꜱ ᴡᴇᴀʟᴛʜʏ ʙᴇʏᴏɴᴅ ɪᴍᴀɢɪɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴ, ꜱᴇᴇᴍꜱ ᴛᴏ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ꜰᴏʀɢᴏᴛᴛᴇɴ ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ʜᴇ ᴄᴀᴍᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ. ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇɴ'ᴛ ᴛᴀʟᴋᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ʜɪᴍ ɪɴ ʏᴇᴀʀꜱ, ʙᴜᴛ ᴀ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴀᴍɪʟʏ ʙʀɪɴɢꜱ ʜɪᴍ ʙᴀᴄᴋ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏʟᴅ ɴᴇɪɢʜʙᴏʀʜᴏᴏᴅ, ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ʀᴇᴄᴏɴɴᴇᴄᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴇɪɴᴛʀᴏᴅᴜᴄᴇ ʜɪᴍ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪꜰᴇ ʜᴇ ʟᴇꜰᴛ ʙᴇʜɪɴᴅ.

ᴘᴀʀᴛ (1/??) ᴘɪᴄᴋʟᴇ ᴄʜɪᴘ ᴇᴀᴛᴇʀꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ᴘɪᴄᴋʟᴇ ᴄʜɪᴘ ꜱᴇʟʟᴇʀꜱ

When we were young, my mother told me Gary was going to be a total tool. And I didn’t believe her at all. Gary was my friend so I couldn't imagine him growing older and not being good ole Gary. The Gary you could laugh and pig out with. The Gary who would holler and bark so loudly in class, the teacher would have to put him out in the hallway with nothing but his worksheet and pencil bag. He never acted like he was better than anyone else. When the washing machine would run busted, he would flip his shirt and wear it the next school day just like all of the rest of us. 

That's why when he was accepted into that fancy-schmancy college for scarf wearers and coffee drinkers, it knocked me straight on my ass. I was happy, and everyone strung up a plastic smile at his going away party, but when he left everything was so...colorless. I wouldn’t deem it tool behavior, but it did solidify my mother's suspicion of him one day up and ditching me. He was my other half and then just dipped out on me for prestigious people who read Shakespeare and go to those cafes where there's wifi. He didn't even know those people! He left his comfortable little river to swim out through the mouth into an ocean of unfamiliar specimens. Sharks and dolphins, all aggressively fighting for a reward neither of us would daydream of.

We both sort of assumed we’d be stuck sweeping the Quick Mart or selling rolled joints to middle schoolers until the end of time. Middle schoolers would never stop loving the abuse of weak drugs and the Quick mart floors would never not have puddles of vomit and booze. That sounds more like a secure job than something you can go to college for. You can turn around one day and boom, the stock market or something crashed (?) I don't know much about business. Anyways yeah, you get my point. Pickle chips and fake cheese the color of a school bus will never go out of style. Stupid businesses that make those fancy indoor bike things will. What if everyone one day woke up and said “wow, I can always just run outside…”. Then what would happen? Those who went to college and got that stinky degree would be thrown out on the street, eating away their stress by scarfing down pickle chips!

I never thought of Gary as a pickle chip eater rather than a pickle chip seller. I mean when we would scribble down our future on printer paper it was incredibly detailed and surprisingly dull for children. The fortune we manifested during a game of M.A.S.H read to us as a mere fantasy. When we reached middle school it was clear we weren't going to live a life of golf courses and acceptable day drinking. We sort of realized this a few weeks into middle school, when we would be lined up against a brick wall while tall beefy police officers with their beastly dogs raided lockers for weed and patted us down for pocket knives. We were treated like deadbeats so we sort of expected it from ourselves and assumed the only way out was if one of us won the Powerball or….if the other one won the Powerball. I thought that was the plan… Man, being a failure alone sort of sucks come to think of it.  

I wouldn't call myself a loser, just not a massive winner-ly type. I’m a goal-getter and I'll give myself that. I did land that job at Quick Mart restocking shelves, which is a little bittersweet now. 

Gary always popped into my head every other week. I guess I’m just hung up on the stuff I never got to say. Why didn’t he suggest we attend the same college? Why when it came to our future planning was he loud, but in reality, disappeared so quietly?

“CHAS!” A voice echoed behind me. So sharp and stern, mean and crippling. Ugh...Lester. “You’ve been sweeping that corner for 5 minutes! Quit bleeding the clock and go do some actual work!” 

I grip the handle of the broom and grunt. Fucking Lester. If there's anyone from high school I didn't want to land a job with, it's that joker. He was scrawny in size but a huge talker. It's crazy how the smallest of people always squawk the loudest. I do what he says because he’s a loudmouth and will probably rant and rave about me to the boss about how I leave all of the work on his tiny frame and he needs someone “competent”. Well, I need someone who doesn't act like a total ass-hat, but my needs haven't been accommodated yet so neither will his. I began toying around with some boxes of wafers on the shelf, just straightening them for no good reason. Sedated by boredom, I find my mind slowly drifting into other places. Where was he? Was he skipping around a college campus, holding onto his textbooks that he had to pay for?! Who pays for his pencils and books and highlighters? I bet he has that little bottle of white paint you slap over pen mistakes because your assignment is just too important for there to be scribbles on. 

“GET THE HELL OUTTA 'HERE!” 

My body suddenly jolts at the commotion from over near the cash register. Lester was using his thin little arms to violently push a grey round figure into the glass door. The man stumbled over his torn sneakers and gripped the doorframe. Lester used his small fist to pound on his fingers while simultaneously kicking him in the thigh. Once the man let go, Lester used the collar of his worn bomber jacket to throw him out onto the sidewalk. He shuffled from the door with hesitation, breathing like a wolf. 

“Damn” I whimper meekly through the gaps of the shelves. 

“That’s it, we’re closed.”

“Uh, Larry’s not gonna-”

“That meth head is gonna freak the hell out again. That joker comes in high as a plane every other day, and asks me if he can use his ‘coupons’ which I’ve told him a trillion times are fake and obviously printed out on a home computer-”

“Let him have it”, I squeak “he’s probably just really hungry”

“An iced tea, Slim Jim, and a loaf of bread should fill him up just fine! He treats shopping here like its extreme couponing. The worst part isn't the fake-y coupons, but when he wigs the hell out on me when I deny him. You weren't here when he sprayed me with fake cheese?”

“I think I was late that day”

Lester rolled his eyes. 

“‘Course you were. God forbid your 6-foot ass came and protected me from crazy meth addicts.”

“Can we give him the spoils in the back?” I ask as I make my move over to the back room. The pile of “spoiled” food had built up to a mountain of American waste. I was ready to cut a slice into my unofficial take-home pay to get a hungry guy some food. I mean at least he was crafty and wasn't trying to come to rob the place.

“He’s gonna come in here with a gun one of these days.” I from the back room. “And get sent to the joint for a 3 dollar slim jim and pack of Oreos?” Lester strolls in behind me.

“3 square meals a day...” I mutter. Prison never sounded so bad. Free food, chess, television if you’re good. I was a good guy. I'd probably be on kitchen duty or do something fun. 

“Well, I wouldn't put it past him...that crazy weirdo”

*Yah so this is the basic rundown of how I write and what maybe most of my posts will look like. As you can see its a umm....*ahem* easy read? I’m not that artistic with my writing sorry. Maybe ill improve one day.*

[szipps]

Feeling like shit today lul.

I went shopping for clothes but today for the first time I felt extreme anxiety. My parents are, to my knowledge, probably getting a divorce so my mom had my dad buy me clothes for when I go back to school. I don't think I've ever gone shopping alone with my dad so it was awkward. I didn't know where to look for clothes and I didn't have a second opinion like I would if I were with my mom, sisters, or friends. I felt so lost. I'm usually fine in my own skin and how I dress since I know what I want and I'm confortable with it but all the clothes they had just weren't for people like "me". It was all crop tops, flowy dresses, cute thin blouses, etc... The type of clothes you see people on tik tok wearing. Just trendy clothes that in all honesty, just look like a grandmas closet I'm sorry lol.

Anyways, I felt really out of place. None of it looked like something I'd wear and I just felt like a hick wearing my old clothes. My hands were getting so sweaty.

My dad is taller than me too so when we were walking around so I was kind of chasing after him the whole time we were shopping. I honestly hate that he was walking in front of me in the first place. I know he probably didn't think about it and was in a rush because he had some work to do afterwards but it made me feel like a fucking burden and a slug lol.

I felt like shit for being short, not liking any of the clothes, not having any money, and not having anyone to have fun with.

I know what kind of clothes I want to wear of course, I know those clothes aren't what I want to wear at all, I just felt like I wasn't welcome in a way...

Then come the feelings of feeling like I'm unlovable lol.

Of course I know that's not true at all because even the fucking weird kids have dates 💀 but I just feel like I'm so fucking boring and have a shit personality that ill never be able to catch anyone's eye. Also I'm straight and men lowkey terrify me because of crimes against women and just general "boy talk". I hope it easy to figure out what I mean.

I just think that if I was attracted to women I'd have an easier time finding someone to fall in love with, not having to panic because I feel like male culture is completely different than female culture. I don't know if that's true or not but its like were two different species.

My posture is bad, I'm a bit overweight, I don't have good skin, I'm not very friendly, I don't have many interesting hobbies, I'm not really sure what I look like to be honest lol, I'm fucking short, and my "standards" are too high.

I wish I was like my friend. She's really outgoing and has lots of friends. She even asked her boyfriend out first and they've been dating for about 2 or so years now? They're really happy together too.

Now look back to me lol. I freak out whenever I see any attractive boy and act "cool". Cool being uninterested and just acting like normal. Fucking seriously? I just can't imagine anyone legitimately being interested in me because literally no one is. Not even my own fucking friends and family. Feels bad :(

I want to fall in love and date someone cool, funny, and friendly. Hell, he doesn't even have to be even that attractive, I just want to date a good person who I know won't kill or harm me. The bar really is that low, wow.

But at the same time I want to date someone I can be proud off and show off. Fucking embarrassing 🤦 for someone like me to think about.

I really hope I'm completely wrong about the way I see myself but there's something that tells me I'm not. I'm self aware. I know what is proper and what isn't. I'm a damn clown fiesta.

I'm not going to accomplish anything. I won't even get a job and I'm already fucking 17. I don't even have my fucking license. I feel like everyone's leaving me behind. I can't see a future for me and I never have been able to. I don't have any real aspirations and I sure as hell don't want to live in the "real" world. I'm honeslty debating whether I should really kill myself. I'm such a fucking coward lol.

I know this is long already but bear with me lol.

I honestly don't even know if I even want to be friends with my best friend anymore. We've been friends for almost 10 years now and have gone through so much together. Well, I've gone through a lot of what she's gone though. No real pain in my end.

She has a troubled life and I honestly feel really bad once I think about it but most of the time I don't. Shes outgoing, friendly, cool, and basically everything I'm not. I'm not saying I'm jealous of her, I just feel like we're not very connected in most ways. Hell, I'm not really sure why we're friends in the first place. We know eacother really well, yes (thats probably why you're friends, dumbass) but I honestly don't like most of the things she does, which is to say, drugs. Yeah she's a fucking druggie lol. Not really, but she smokes a lot. I wouldn't really mind if she did, but its literally all she does and talks about. I'm not really comfortable nor do I care about drugs.

I hate that she smokes. It fucking stinks and it sticks everywhere. I come home smelling like cigarettes and weed and my mom is very against things like that. I don't think they've smelled it, but it they have, they haven't said anything.

With her smoking comes the realization that she really doesn't give a shit about me. She drags me around to her friends houses so she can get free weed and the like. She drives the car while high, Smokes in the car, all while I'm in the car with her.

Girl, I'm fucking getting second hand smoke over here!!!

Its not like I ever tell her how I feel about it, but its not like I should have to. Normally you don't blow your smoke at people who don't smoke. It's fucking rude.

Honestly, I've been feeling this way for some time, since middle school really.

We just stopped talking and hanging out all through middle school. All our interactions were just sitting together on the bus.

We've been friends since 3rd grade but she always says she didn't have any friends in elementary school. I feel like I wasted my fucking time. I didn't even have many friends but her because the one time I had another close friend, she got really jealous and aggressive towards her. Not that I have any bad feelings towards her then, we were kids, but it just feels like all I did with her then was really nothing at all for her.

I don't ever plan to tell her any bad feelings I feel towards her since I feel like if I did, it be a pretty hurtful think for her. I guess I did it to myself since I never complained and just silent company. I understand shes depressed and is having a really hard time, but it really feels like a waste of time when we hang out since all we do is lay in bed on our phones because she doesn't want to go outside.

I feel like its been long enough now. I've ranted for more than I wanted to lol. My earbuds have run out of battery and I'm in a better mood since I began ranting. My feelings are precious and not something I really want to share, even to the people closest in my life. I know I'm not alone in my feelings since there are way more people in the world than I could ever imagine, and there's bound to be someone who thinks the same way I do. So, I hope whoever reads this gets to be entertained by seeing what goes on in someone else's life or maybe no one will ever read this and I'm just talking to the void, at least ill be getting my feelings straight and sorted somewhere I can look back and laugh.

Goodnight! I hope things get better.

[looking-for-wisdom]

Bleeding Hearts (chapter one)

a/n: this was a fic I did for the @grishaversebigbang! It ended up being roughly 33,000 words, the longest fic I’ve ever written. I loved participating in this event and working with my gang as well as the tides :)

Corporalki: @villainofthepiece​, @dregstrash 

Materialki: @bucumber​ X, @koelsong​ X [art may contain spoilers]

Summary:   Zoya has spent her life learning to survive a world of fairy tales. She knows better to rely on wishes and fate; those things only protected the nice girls, the ones all the stories were about. She was used to doing whatever gruesome task was needed to get by, but now, with her aunt’s life on the line, she has finally met a monster she’s struggling to beat. A monster that comes in the shape of a kind prince she can’t help to grow attached to. 

But that’s always been the case. The monsters are what you find when happiness is just within reach. But she’s strong and she won’t falter— she’ll do what’s needed, as she always has before, to save the only good woman she’s ever known. Even if it means plunging a knife into the heart of the first man she’s ever loved. Even if it means becoming a monster herself.

Ao3 Link: Bleeding Hearts

(chapter one under the cut)

What becomes of the girls whose parents do not teach them unwavering kindness and whose fairy godmothers are not magic enough to keep them from harm? What becomes of the girls the slipper doesn’t fit and the prince does not steal away from drowning in cruelty? There is no happy ending promised at the close of their story. So they learn, learn to swim through the abuse and lift a sword themselves, lest they become another maggot filled body in the graveyard.

Zoya had read the kind of stories where young women overcame their evil stepmothers with their obedience and compassion. Unfortunately, Zoya had no stepmother, just one horrible regular mother who had birthed her and spent every moment after shaping her daughter into an equally horrible side character in someone else’s story. It wasn’t that she was immune to draw of fairy tales and their promises of futures with a prince who called her lovely, but not every girl had that in her cards. Zoya glanced over the hand she’d been dealt. She was not sweet or innocent enough to be the damsel in distress. The game of fate was rigged— with every girl who was saved from misery a hundred others suffered in her stead. 

Shivering but far too afraid to risk asking her mother for a place by the fire, the childish part of her hoped. Winter’s might be less harsh if she was not so alone and unloved. But compassion was a rationed resource, like medicine and wheat. It might have been nice to have, but girls with no one to fight for them had to choose their battles, and unlike bread, kindness didn’t keep her alive. 

Sabina Garin had been wealthy once, many years ago, and like most who had never seen sacrifice, she underestimated its sting. It was easy to be fearless when one had never felt real fear in the first place. 

When her father had passed his inheritance had been split equally between his two daughters. Lilyana, the eldest sister had invested in a plot of land at the edge of town where she kept a small garden and a chicken coop. She built a home there, selling vegetables and eggs in town when she was in need of money, and she was happy. 

With her own cut, Sabina enjoyed the same luxuries she had in her youth. Seeing no appeal in farm work the way her sister did she resided in the house that had belonged to her father. At nineteen she married a handsome man with nothing to his name but a winning smile, and for a while, she was happy as well. At least, until the debt hit. 

Marriage for love is an appealing prospect, but the stories never talk about the bloody endings. No one mentions the way he yells when the money runs out. No one mentions the way she hoards the few jewels she has left because they’re the only thing that makes her feel like herself. No one mentions when the house is taken and she’s bloated and raging from the parasite inside her but he is nowhere to be found.

Sabina’s episodes began not long into her pregnancy. With no trace of her husband and no place to stay but an abandoned stone cottage at the edge of town it wasn’t long before she became unpredictable. It was a miracle that the child made it to its due date in the first place, though one could say it would be the first of many times Lilyana Garin would come to her niece’s aid. 

She had offered her sister help on many occasions, but Sabina had repeatedly refused Lilyana’s generosity. Pride, after all, was the only thing she had left. When Sabina became a danger to herself, however, the older daughter could stay away no longer. Though Sabina had no way of paying the housemaid who had worked for her father, Lilyana ensured she stayed the nine months until the child’s birth, hiding knives from the expecting mother and restraining her hands when she desperately clawed at her body until the skin was nearly gone. For months Lilyana held her breath, praying that her sister might be stabilized and the child would survive. 

And against all odds, her prayers were answered. 

The midwife said the birth went by with relative ease. The mother and child both handled the process exceptionally well. The only oddity was when she asked the mother for a name. Sabina had only sneered. “Call it what you will. It makes no difference to me.”

For the sake of simplicity, the midwife had given the child a placeholder name of sorts, at least until her mother came to her senses. She’d call her Zoya, just until Sabina saw fit to name the girl herself. 

She never did. 

So perhaps if it had been Zoya’s mother who fell ill, she wouldn’t have agreed to the witch’s terms. She couldn’t have cared less for her absentee mother, but when a letter reached Os Alta it brought news of the closest thing to family she’d ever had. 

Her young cousin, Lada, had written of her mother’s condition-- Lilyana had grown feverish and weak. The town’s medics estimated she had two weeks to live.

Desperation had a strange way of sending people deep into the woods where good, honest people lost their morals somewhere in the darkness. It had a way of turning skeptics into the arms of witches. But when it came to saving Lilyana’s life, nothing was too high a cost. Kill the prince. Carve out his heart and leave his body bleeding on the floor. Zoya wasn’t a killer, but a few towns away one of the few good people left in the world was dying. Zoya would have given her soul away a thousand times if Lilyana lived. 

The main square of town jittered with anticipation. The feeling filled Zoya’s chest, clamping down on her lungs and stealing away her breath. Gossip was sweet on the lips of housewives and young maidens, like the juice of an apple after taking a bite. Zoya was no fool; she knew what was on their minds. A few months earlier, the young prince Nikolai had proposed-- but not to a distant princess or nobleman's daughter. He’d given the ring to an orphan girl with no prospects or riches. Faces lit with hope and perhaps a bit of envy whenever they spoke of the prince’s fiance. She’d been from a town just carriage rides away from Os Alta. It could have been any of them. But yesterday, news had come that the girl had left Os Alta for good, leaving the promises of riches and romance behind her. Not a single person could figure out why. 

She’d been given a shot at a storybook ending. Zoya wasn’t gullible enough to believe her life would have been perfect, but when she thought of what her own future held, even she couldn’t help a pang of irritation. She would have taken wealth in a heartbeat over her fate. She shifted the basket she carried up onto her shoulder, the weight of it exhausting her arm at a rapid pace. With her other hand she lifted her skirts in a futile attempt to keep the mud from seeping into the fabric as it dragged along the ground. As she walked she overheard elated conversations.

“They say she was beautiful-- hair like starlight and a smile like the sun. It’s surreal, honestly, that some everyday girl won over a prince. She must be quite something,” said a girl she’d met only in passing, to a young blonde woman at the baker’s stand. Then, with a cheeky smile, added, “Maybe I'll find myself a princess soon with my winning looks.” 

Across the way a middle aged woman shared her own thoughts on the matter with her daughter. “Perhaps if you spent less time fooling around that could have been us! We’d have been rich, you idiotic girl!—”

Despite herself, Zoya felt a familiar chill go down her back.

Tiny people, wrapped up in their tiny lives, bound to accomplish tiny things. For perhaps the first time ever Zoya envied them. At the end of the city’s main road, after dozens of wooden merchant stands and civilians homes, were the woods. Travel in Ravka was unavoidable, but most families stuck within the cities borders as much as possible. The forests on the outskirts of town were places of darkness and witchcraft beyond the understanding of the standard civilian. However, there were ways to make navigating the woods less dangerous. Old wives tales said to carry black tea leaves in one’s left shoe or bury a lock of hair in the dirt before beginning your journey. Most nonbelievers opted for a professional guide. 

Zoya had no guide as she found her way between the brush and trees, though, nor was her shoe supplied with tea leaves. Her travels through the woods were not a situation of point A to point B. 

Zoya intended to find a witch. 

An hour in, Zoya had acquired a multitude of new cuts up her arms from low hanging branches and nearly destroyed what was left of her skirt by snagging it on thorn coated weeds. She’d also come across at least fifteen new types of bug she’d never seen before and honestly could have gone her whole life without. Zoya had learned to hold her own against all sorts of dangers growing up in Pachina, but that didn’t make her any less disgusted by the grimes and grudge of the Ravkan forest. 

She dragged onwards, a cool sweat gathering on her forehead and regrets filling her mind. Of course— hundreds of people go missing every year without any explanation and yet the one time she goes looking for trouble the death forest decides to be a normal lot of trees. Typical. 

“Don’t know how to handle someone who doesn’t fear you? Is that it?” She called out to no one in particular. “I didn’t realize witches were such cowards.”

Or perhaps she was just a stupid child, looking for magic where it didn’t exist. Perhaps those people had simply been mauled and eaten by bears and she was the idiot trying to be the next. 

The sun passed over the sky as she became more and more hopelessly lost in a forest where she seemed to be the only inhabitant. Honestly, witches had no respect for willing customers these days. She only realized just how much time had passed when dusk began to fall. Night was coming, and she had no idea how to get back to the city. It was one thing to be in the forest during the light of day, but trapped in the darkness with no food or water was something else entirely. 

The moon shone a sickening white glare onto the black dirt floor, seeming to take all the pigment from her skin. Zoya hadn’t been afraid of the dark for many years, but there was something… off about the way the darkness felt here, as if it was alive and feeding on any sort of life. Goosebumps rose on her skin, and she tensed, waiting for something horrible but not knowing what. 

She stood, frozen, listening for any sound other than her own shallow breathing. But nothing moved, not even tree branches in the wind. She was alone. 

Which made it all the more terrifying when someone spoke. 

“What could possibly bring a lone girl to the woods at night?” said a molasses smooth voice from behind her. 

Zoya spun around and was greeted by a pale faced man with dark hair who was far too close for her to not have noticed his approach. Every instinct in her mind screamed to back up, but she forced her legs to stay in place. She would not be intimidated. She met the man’s void black eyes with a fearsome stare. “I’m searching for a witch with the kind of magic to help me,” she stated, voice like steel. “Tell me, would you fit that description?”

A sly smile curled across his face and sent a chill down her spine.

 “That depends,” he crooned, “what can you offer me in return, Zoya Nazyalensky of Pachina?”

Zoya felt a certain sort of dread sink into her chest. There was something wrong with this man-- he knew things he shouldn’t. She should have been afraid, but a morbid part of her was drawn to it. 

She wondered, despite herself, what would it be like to be him? She’d never feel small with a power like that at her disposal. She’d never be made a fool of. For a moment, the swell of her envy almost overpowered her reason, but then she thought of Lilyana. She was not here to find a way to be rid of her own weaknesses. Zoya shook the initial fog of his presence from her mind and reminded herself that for once, she would not be selfish. 

“What is it you want?” she retorted.

His smile did not falter as he considered. He slipped past her, like an ink spill with legs, so that she had to turn to keep sight of his face. Her eyebrows furrowed together in confusion as he walked away from her, but just as she was about to call out for him to stop he paused and glanced back at her. “Well?” he asked. “Are you coming?”

Her mind was empty of a response, perhaps still caught up on the absurdity of what she was doing. Her legs, thankfully, had instincts of their own and carried her forward when he began walking again so she didn’t lose sight of him in the darkness. He led her through the trees, as if he was navigating a maze for which only he had the map. As lost as she’d already felt, it was nothing compared to the lack of an internal compass she had now. The forest had consumed her completely. 

This was insane. Her mind ran rampant with possibilities as the silence between them grew longer. She’d be murdered by this demon of the woods and no one would even hear her scream as he dismembered her. She should run while she still had the chance. 

Except, if she ran Liliyana died. 

So, she kept walking. They entered a clearing of land. At the center of the plot was a looming mansion of black stone and though Zoya was no expert on the woods, she had spent the day wandering its depths and knew for certain the building had not been there before. This man’s magic was dark, but it was also powerful-- she needed powerful. The dark haired man led her to the tall doorway of the structure and held open the wooden door. “We can discuss terms inside.”

She hesitated for just a beat. This could very well be the room in which he planned to butcher her and bake her liver into a pie. She considered this man she knew nothing about and what he was offering. If there was even the smallest chance he could help her, she had to take it. 

There was no going back. She stepped through the door frame and into the home of a witch.

Whatever she had expected, this was not it. She remembered the tale of witches with homes of candy to lure in naive children. She had thought she’d see cages filled with starving creatures and cobweb covered jars holding various gruesome substances. She had thought there would be a cauldron to brew potions that would cure dying aunts. To her surprise, though, there was nothing of the sort. The floors were a sleek black tile and the walls were covered in bookcases filled to the brim with titles in languages she didn’t understand. Golden lamps hung down from the ceiling, casting a warm light onto the sleek table in the center of the room filled with well kept paper and an ink well. Tapestries of the night sky made with painstaking care hung as the rooms most prominent decor. 

If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought she’d wandered into the home of one of Ravka’s most wealthy nobles. 

She swung around to face the man, who had been observing her carefully since her first step into the room. “First things first, who exactly are you?” She asked, eyes narrowed. 

“Names are a powerful thing, Zoya,” he answered as he walked towards the desk at the center of the room. Something about the way he moved reminded her of black silk. “For now, you can call me The Darkling.”

Her lips pulled together in a tight line and placed a hand on her hips. For a moment she considered calling him out on his pretentiousness-- what kind of title was “The Darkling”-- but she restrained herself. In the grand scheme of things his name hardly mattered, and angering him didn’t strike her as the best way to get what she wanted.

He took a seat at the desk and gestured to the chair directly across from him. Smoothing her skirt as she sat down, she felt almost like she was at a business meeting in the town square and not trying to make a blood deal. “I’ve heard that magic can do things science can’t. Buildings are created without any regard for physics and wounds that normally kill are healed in a split second,” she began, an authority in her voice that she hoped hid the fact there was no real power behind it. “My aunt is ill. The doctors say there’s nothing to be done, but that is the opinion of a medic, not a magician. Can you save her?”

A certain rage sparked within her when he didn’t look her in the eye. She didn’t have the time to waste on a man who could do nothing for her. She had already lost a day to the woods, and here he sat, unimpressed and hardly listening. Part of her wanted to get up and leave right then and there if he wasn’t going to give her request the dignity it deserved, but she stayed seated, waiting. 

He spoke then. “I can,” Zoya’s breath caught half way in her throat. Hope crawled into her lungs and left no room for breath, “but it will cost you.” 

“I don’t care,” she responded, not missing a beat. “I’ll trade my life for hers, just name the price.”

He wasn’t smiling, but Zoya could almost see the grin in his eyes and felt like she’d just walked into a hunter’s snare. “I know you’re afraid of me, Zoya,” he said, and though she wanted to insist that some stranger in the woods didn’t scare her, her words fell flat, “but I have known you for much longer than you believe. Your familiar with a blade, aren’t you?”

Zoya swallowed the lump rising in her throat and nodded. When she was young she’d studied swordplay when her mother was away. Soldiers left home to begin their training at fourteen in Ravka, and for a girl whose home had been anything but stable, it had been an appealing opportunity. The issue was, the army was for men only. She’d hoped they’d see her skill and immediately make an exception, but when she was finally old enough to enlist she’d been turned away at the gate. 

How this witch knew that was beyond her. “I believe we can help one another. For you, I will not only return your aunt to health, but also give you the chance to pursue your dream,” he continued. “All I ask in return is that you rid Ravka of what is standing in our way. The Lantsov line has held this country back far too long-- I plan to lead us into the future, and I’ll need a general by my side. The only thing you need to do is get rid of the old crook’s heir.”

Zoya could barely breathe. It was all too good to be true-- first he’d claimed he could help Liliyana and then he’d promised her what she’d dreamed of since childhood.  She would have taken the deal in a heartbeat if he wasn’t asking her to commit treason in return.

“Vasily,” she breathed, but he only shook his head. 

“He’s not nearly competent enough to be a concern. Talents like yours should be spent on a real threat. The king’s second born, Nikolai, is much more clever than his brother,” said the Darkling. “I know you don’t trust me yet, but my intentions are good. You, of all people, have seen the state of this nation-- the hardship it’s people face. You and I are very similar: ambitious, strong,  and intelligent. We can change things.”

She chewed her lip and shifted in her seat, weighing the pros and cons. Zoya was many things, but she wasn’t a murderer. 

At least, not yet. 

Her rejection from the army had allowed her to keep her hands blood free until now. It wasn’t that she had any compassion for the prince, but there was nothing noble about slaughtering an unknowing victim. The honor of serving her country and protecting her people against an enemy who would kill her if she didn’t end them first was vastly different than what he was asking her to do. 

In the end, the morality of the proposal didn’t matter. If it was one life to save another, Liliyana was more important. The only question was whether or not The Darkling had any credibility to his offer. It was true she barely knew him, but for the first time since she had first encountered him he seemed fully sincere. A tug in her gut told her he was right. She didn’t know if they were as similar as he claimed, but something deep inside her made her believe his love for Ravka was as real as her own. 

And if he was telling the truth about that, then he was probably true in his claim that he could heal her aunt, too. Or, at the very least, she had to believe it was true. She feared she would not be presented with another opportunity like this.

It was the best chance she had, even if it would make a killer out of her. She stared him down, taking in the room that had appeared from nothing. “I’ll do it.”

She could repent her sin later by aiding this man in his journey to lead Ravka into an age of prosperity. That was for later, though. For now, Zoya just needed a plan.

The Darkling smiled knowingly, but as far as she could tell it was not mocking. Looking away for only a moment, he pulled a quill from somewhere she couldn’t see and handed it to her. 

“Find your way into the castle and get close to the prince. Trust will make him foolish. If you need to contact me, use that quill. The ink will find its way back to me. When it is time to put the plan into motion I will contact you. Until then, keep your wits about you.”

“Wait--” she interrupted, afraid he’d simply dissipate after giving his orders. “How am I supposed to infiltrate the palace? They don’t just allow anyone inside.”

“Nikolai has been in need of a new Etherialki for a few weeks now,” he answered, unphased. She tried not to wonder what kind of spies he must already have under the Lantsovs’ noses to have that kind of information. “You will be filling the position.” 

The servants of the Lantsov family were divided into three orders: Coporalki, Etherealki, and Materialki. Coporalki had a tendency to remain in the palace. They were responsible for keeping the palace functioning properly and were trained in the art of medicine. Materialki was the class of any sort of specialist working within the Lantsov’s walls. From chefs, to tailors, to blacksmiths, each played their part in making up the artisans category. 

Etherealki were traveling companions to the royal family and whatever rich guest happened to be staying with them. They accompanied their charge from dawn till dusk, braving and complication of man or nature along the way.They were known to think on their feet to quickly amend any problem their employer might encounter. It was, without a doubt, the most fitting role for Zoya’s skill set.

 “What about my aunt? She might not last long enough for whatever you’re planning to be ready.”

“There’s no need to worry-- deliver your end of our agreement and I swear to you that your aunt will live.”

He extended a hand towards her and she examined him one last time. Growing up, she’d been told to never trust witches, and here she stood, going into business with one. If life had taught her anything, it was that the worst monsters aren’t always supernatural in nature. For all intents and purposes, the Darkling seemed to have good intentions. More than that, he had the power to save her aunt. 

From every angle, Zoya came out of this deal with what she wanted. 

She held his gaze and took his palm in a firm handshake before gathering her things and heading back into town.

[exhausted-joy]

SUPER RICH KIDS [YANDERE!BTS] [03]

CHAPTER THREE.

SYNOPSIS: Every summer, the super rich (albeit troublesome) kids of South Korea get sent to a three month long correctional camp in the ancient city of Gyeongju. While you aren’t at all a delinquent, your parents decide to send you anyway, claiming you need to ‘get out more’ and 'live a fulfilling life’. Everything is going swell at first–that is, until you accidentally butt your head into something you aren’t supposed to. Things quickly loop into a downward spiral and instead of choosing the right answers on a mock exam, you find yourself bouncing between life and death. Is this what happens when you leave the safety of your bedroom? It doesn’t take long for you to realize that you never should have left. 

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❞ super rich kids with nothing but loose ends ❞

"If you came here to make friends, then you will be thoroughly disappointed. Friends are a liability and only serve as an obstacle on the path to self-improvement, and your parents didn't waste all this money on you to go back home even more useless than when you arrived here. We strive for perfection and if you can't make the cut, then we won't feel bad weeding out the weaklings when you don't. But we'll make sure you do - it's guaranteed, after all."

That was what the founder of the Gyeongju Correctional Summer Camp herself told you and, well, everyone else when she stepped out from a balcony on the highest level of the facility when everyone was rounded up into their nice neat lines. She was dressed in all-white from head to toe and wore her hair in a regal updo that showed off her pale skin and sharp features. The aura that surrounded her suggested that she was indeed a powerful and influential figure in the facility, and the fact that she didn't even bother to speak to the masses at eye level made her seem all the more stuck-up and antagonistic.

It wasn't until her little PSA was over that the real fun began. The uniformed guards that stood in front of each line began to hand out schedules and dorm room numbers, all contained in a thick, laminated booklet (a lot like a passport). Yours had every single kind of identification that was related to you on it - including things that even you didn't know like your blood type, social security number, and a multitude of insurances you didn't know were plausible. There was also a barcode, which was to be used on the scanners for entering your room and any other recreational or educational area open to the students.

And speaking of dorm rooms, you are very uncomfortable in your own right now. Awkwardness stagnates the air in the room and tension hangs heavy as you and your roomate unpack your belongings. Your roommate is a pretty girl with short brown hair styled into a cute bob with choppy bangs that hang over her dark eyes. You learn that her name is Han Soha and she's a year younger than you at fourteen. And to no surprise, she's just as awkward as you - if not more - and her aloofness makes you feel insecure, as if she's silently judging you from afar.

You drop your phone onto the white comforter of your bed and sigh, relieved that it isn't sticking to your skin anymore. You will be forever thankful to Jimin because now you were able to use your phone, even though you technically weren't supposed to have it. Turns out they were confiscating phones and electronic devices at the entrance, and the outraged reaction from some ended up with them getting dragged away, probably never to be seen again. You were practically dripping with sweat when a guard had asked you if you had any electronics devices to hand over, and you almost collapsed when he told you step into a body scanner. Thank goodness you had decided wear a padded bra.

Shuddering, you imagined yourself getting dragged away like those boys, and your curiosity wanders to where they may have brought them to - though, you aren't quite sure you want to find out. However, you do want to see Jimin again, so maybe you might have to play detective to find any answers. You hope he isn't hurt or anything; you mean, how will you get your answers if he's become a cripple? From the way that guard had violently pulled at Jimin's arm, you wouldn't be surprised if he was in a cast the next time you see him.

Shaking those thoughts away, you fold your last t-shirt and neatly tuck it into its designated drawer before plopping down on your bed and occupying yourself with your phone. Soha finishes unpacking just a little while after you do, though most of her belongings just litter the floor haphazardly. She lays down on her bed with a loud huff and pulls her phone out from her pants pocket, instantly tapping away. The electronic clicks of her keyboard is the only sound that fills the silence, along with the occasional hum of the air conditioner kicking in. You glance at her once in a while, but her eyes seem to never leave her phone screen - not even when the huge metal wheel on the door begins to spin and the loud buzz of the scanner that pierces through it.

You quickly hide your phone beneath the sheets when the heavy door creaks inwards, the hinges squeaking with effort. A woman in uniform appears in the threshold, a hardened look on her face as she observes you and Soha, who has magically made her phone disappear in record time.

"Lunch time. Report to the canteen." The woman's clipped reply catches you off guard and you look to Soha, who seems unbothered and leisurely gets up to slip some shoes on. You follow her lead with a bit of hesitance, your muscles tense with discomfort as the guard's eyes scrutinize you with an unrelenting intensity. You shakily slide on some appropriate footwear and follow Soha out the door, the guard's gaze zeroed in on your form without a moment's wavering.

She leads the two of you out of your room, and you jump in fright when the woman's hand grasps your shoulder in an iron grip. Soha's eyelids droop with boredom as she completely disregards the grip the woman handles her with, while you almost have to suppress the urge to pull away and make a break for it.

You don't want to, but you can't help but notice how impeccably uniform everything is as you walk down the hallway. From the squeaky clean white marble of the floor, to the barren white walls lined with titanium, prison-like cell doors on each side, the feeling of confinement really beings to set in.

Everything passes by in a blur due to the pace the woman is dragging you at, and you don't have much time to let things soak in. The corridor stretches quite a length before you reach the end, which leads the three of you to an exit and then outside to a covered bridge with rails and window panes on each side, giving you a view of the large campus. Your room was located on the third floor of the girls' dormitory, which were apparently nicer since the rooms were recently remodeled and had less wear than the rooms on the first and second floor.

At the end of the walkway, you can make out a sign above two double doors that says 'cafeteria' in large, blocky text. You already hear the loud chatter of the other kids even through the closed doors and you suddenly begin to feel sick. Your anxiety takes over and the lonely elementary student in you begins to surface from the dark depths of your memories; where will you sit? Who will you sit by? You weren't used to not being constantly swarmed by people who found you interesting or wanted something from you because you had money. Since everyone else here is probably richer than you, you can't help but feel...normal, in a strange way. Like you belonged, somehow.

It's a feeling you didn't seem to mind, though.

The guard pushes open one of the double doors to reveal a sight to behold. A huge lounge-like lunch room filled to the brim with teens of all ages, all talking loudly and enjoying their meticulously arranged lunches. For a moment, it looked like a regular school cafeteria, and you almost thought that you were back at your own high school and ready to chow down with your less than real friends. That is, until you spot a section of the lunchroom that had been isolated with glass panels and house those same boys who had been dragged away from earlier. It reminds you that this is no ordinary lunchroom and thinking so might get you in trouble; you are new here and this is unknown territory.

The boys seem to be having lunch, but no one is talking as far as you can tell - you can only imagine the weight of the tension in that room, each 'gang' member all harboring some kind of ill intention towards one another. In fact, each one of them seem to be brooding and glaring at each other, ready to go for each other's necks if not for the guards watching their every move.

Before you are able to see if Jimin is in there, your own hovering demon whisks you away and towards the daunting lunch line. Relief floods every inch of your body when the woman releases her hold on you and Soha - it almost feels like you can finally breathe normally. She gives you one last glare before leaving you and Soha to go stand by one of the exits, the shadow of her hat hiding her face from view.

You turn to Soha, ready to offer her your word of complaint about how rude the woman was, but she shuts you down before you are even able open your mouth. What she says next almost shocks you into another century - admittedly, not something that you wouldn't have minded at the moment.

"Listen, I know you're new here and all, but I'm not looking to be your friend. Especially after what happened in the parking lot," she pauses and leans in closer, furrowing her eyebrows as her brown eyes darken. "So do me a favor and act like we don't know each other, okay?"

You flinch back in shock, a hurt look flashing across your face. Soha returns to looking normal, the same deadpan expression on her face from before settling seamlessly over her features. To say the least, you are quite offended at her drastic change in attitude compared to the way she had acted in your shared dorm room. While she wasn't exactly friendly and talkative, she didn't act as cold and hateful as she had just now. You stand frozen for a second, mouth agape and ready to retaliate before you shake your head and turn around to close the gap with the person in front of you.

Despite what the younger girl had spat at you, you couldn't be surprised. It's not like you could blame her - what had happened in the parking lot was freaky, and you were the main attraction. It was fine for people to avoid you as if you had hands for ears—it's not like you were interested in talking to anyone anyways! You would be fine on your own and things will get better when you find Jimin. Right..?

You awkwardly shift your weight from side to side as you wait in line for your meal, Soha's words still ringing through your mind. The smell of the food wafts throughout the lunch room, filling the air with the pleasant aroma of cheap meats and sauces, which would have sounded appetizing any other day and in any other place. Right now though, you weren't really feeling up to eating anything.

Luckily, you didn't have to wait long until you reached the serving counter as the line had shuffled along rather quickly. You weren't particularity used to eating school lunch, so you grabbed a tray, some silverware, and a couple of empty bowls before setting it down on the metal surface of the counter and hoping it was good enough. The people serving the food were dressed in extremely pristine, white clothing with plastic gloves and hairnets for, what you presume, food safety regulations. You realize that you don't really get a choice in what you want to eat as you see the person in front of you get a hefty helping of some kind of chunky, brown sewage (which also could have been some sort of beef stew, but you honestly couldn't tell the difference).

Sliding your tray along, the bowls that sat on it were gradually filled with different dishes, all of which didn't look very edible in your opinion. It's almost worse than the food at your own school, and your school's food was pretty bad considering the amount of money getting poured into it. You suddenly crash into the person in front of you, not even noticing that they had come to a stop, and you quickly mutter an apology when you recover from the contact. Furrowing your eyebrows, you hear a loud, obnoxious laugh from somewhere further down the line, and you peek over the person's larger frame to see what the commotion is.

A girl at the front of the line giggles at something one of the food servers says, a flirtatious smile stretched across her face as she nods her head vigorously to something he's saying. Observing the server, you notice that he doesn't have a face mask on like some of the other workers and is particularly handsome from where you stand. He's tall with a strong stature, broad shoulders, and clear skin coupled with warm, brown eyes. He gently smiles at the girl as he sets a plate of tiramisu onto her tray and, if reality weren't plausible, you'd probably be able to see the hearts appear in her eyes.

"Hey, what's the hold up?!" Some kids from the back of the line begin to voice their complaints, their feet tapping impatiently against the ground as they glare at the pretty boy flirting from behind the counter. She whips her head around to shoot them a sharp glare, her eyes glinting dangerously, which instantly shuts them up as if she had some sort of superiority over them.

Eventually, after another few long moments, the girl and the food server wrap up their flirting session, and the line moves along normally once again. The person in front of you is grumbling incoherently beneath their breath, their shoulders trembling with what you felt was some sort of brewing madness. You lag behind a bit, somewhat cautious that even being too close might set them off. Your plates continue to fill up with various half-edible looking dishes until you reach the end where dessert is being handed out. Sliding your tray along the last inches of metal, you reach for a plate of tiramisu. Except instead of making contact with the cool glass of the plate, your hand is engulfed by one much larger and warmer. You quickly retract your hand as if you had been burned, and look up to apologize to whoever's hand yours had touched.

And, of course, it's that handsome boy with the charming smile.

"Sorry but that one's been sitting out for a while. Take this one, dear," The pet name rolls smoothly, naturally, off his tongue, and you fight to keep the blush from arising. He bends over to slide another freshly made slice of tiramisu on your tray, shooting you a sly wink as he does so. You quietly thank him and quickly turn around to make your escape; away from him and the table of girls who glare at you hatefully from across the lunch room.

You look around for the nearest exit, hoping to find some sort of outside courtyard to eat in. Truthfully, you just wanted to get away from the bustle of people for a while, and it was the perfect time to be antisocial. You didn't want to be bothered at the moment and you were certain no one was planning on doing so based on what had happened in the parking lot and, more recently, with Soha. You firmly believe that you deserve some alone time - you won't be able to get that once you get back to your room, and you know it.

Your eagerly scouring eyes notice two large doors on the other side of the lunch room with a sign labeled 'courtyard' in an unmissable, clunky font. Feeling like you have hit the jackpot, you quickly begin to make your way over, making sure to stick to the walls to avoid any unnecessary staring. You feel as though every person you pass glances at you with an air of recognition before they begin to fiercely glare for a few seconds.

Hoping it's only your overactive imagination, you pick up the pace to a brisk walk before finally reaching your safe haven and pushing the doors open to reveal a large plot of grass dotted with clusters of trees.

On the right side, you are greeted with the sight of tables in the shade while on the left side is a multi-purpose ball court where a group of boys are playing a game of basketball. Slightly intrigued, you choose an empty table closest to the court to get a better view of the game while you uninterestedly pick and prod at your farmyard lunch.

You notice some of the boys have white bandanas tied around their necks. It's strange; you wonder why they aren't caged up with the other boys or being cautiously monitored like serial killers in padded rooms. Most of them seem to be a bit on the younger side, maybe around the ages of twelve or thirteen. You recognize a couple boys who are older, one with stark black hair and opaque blue ey—

CRASH!

As if in slow motion, you watch your whole lunch go flying halfway across the courtyard, chunks of beef stew and pickled radish soaring through the air like birds in the sky. Not long after, you see the carefully crafted plate of tiramisu topple over on its side, watching as its cold, gooey contents seep through the holes in the picnic table and pool conveniently into your lap like some sort of safety net. The basketball lands underneath the table, bounces from the impact for a few seconds before rolling down to bump into your foot, ceasing its motion.

...It's silent.

Everyone in the courtyard is staring at you. The group of girls who sit at another table stare pitifully, while another clique is holding in their mocking laughter. You want to scream. You want to just lie down in a ditch and just cry yourself a river. In fact, you can feel the breakdown welling up as you hang your head, catching sight of your food stained clothing through the unshed tears of shame. You don't even comprehend the shadow that engulfs your shuddering figure or the comforting touch that tenderly rubs your back as you hold in your angst.

"Shh, it's alright, *милая. It's okay, I'm here." The familiar voice draws your attention and you look up, only to come face to face with those same blue eyes that made everyone avoid you like the plague. You furrow your eyebrows and narrow your eyes resentfully, watching as he slowly sinks down on the bench next to you. The boy observes your ruined clothing for a moment with a thoughtful look before rolling the basketball from under the table the chucking it to his boys who all stand lost in the middle of the court.

"What're you lookin' at?!" He barks aggressively out into the open air, pure dominance radiating off of him in what seems to be waves. Quickly, everyone returns to normalcy, the game back in action as if nothing had happened. You watch the boy grab your wrist and then pull you to your feet, gently wrapping an arm around your shoulder.

You snatch your wrist away and recoil from his touch, still training your narrowed eyes at him in caution. He merely chuckles at your actions. "Come. Follow me." He gestures, a small smile adorning his lips which reveal a charming set of dimples carved in his amply chiseled cheeks. You feel conflicted, but all you want right now is to just get away. Internally shrugging, you decide that nothing can make this day worse than it already is, and you grab his outstretched hand to allow him to guide you to wherever.

You get a weird feeling about the boy. You get a weird feeling from the other kids, the guards, and practically everyone else in the facility, too. But you brush it all off, ignoring the deep sinking in your stomach that effectively riddles your mind with anxiety. Whatever was wrong with this place couldn't be kept secret forever. You assure yourself you'd find out sooner or later. Hopefully before it's too late.

But for now, you allow yourself to be dragged along, the food on your clothing now drying into a crust, and the tears in your eyes still threatening to spill.

You hope, with all your heart, that the three months go by very, very quickly.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

THOUGH, through your turmoil, you fail to spot Jimin's worried gaze, which watches with sorrow from the window in the max security lunch lounge as you are whisked away by the enemy. He knocks his knee with his leader's, grabbing his attention and jerking his head in the direction of the window.

The sight makes Jimin's superior's blood bubble with rage and envy. Usually a move was never made this quickly. So it's begun.

"You got a plan, JK?"

JK tilts his head, dark hair shifting to obscure a brown eye from view. An unnoticeable smirk appears on his otherwise emotionless face as he watches the two frolic through the courtyard and disappear behind a building on the other side. He doesn't answer the inquiry.

Instead, his smirk only grows wider and that, in itself, was answer enough for Jimin.

--

*милая = Russian word commonly translated to 'sweetheart'.

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MASTERLIST

[sirfleurs]

i was sixteen years old when my hand was blue.

The grayscale pitch

Preface      

Life is not easy when you are high and alone watching television or pulling an all-nighter listening to Jimi Hendrix. The brain becomes dull. Overstimulated by genius. You stop thinking and overthink at the same time. I guess that’s what some people call daydreaming. All your bad thoughts get loose and all your inhibitions disappear. I figure this is right before the moment you are most likely to kill yourself. I’ll give it an hour before my Manic-Depression shows its ugly face. As I haven’t killed myself yet in an age of 23 I think I’ve done pretty well. I was sitting in my room in some Woodstock apartment writing on my first ever soon to be book. I had decided to call it ‘The Pitch’. It would be about some witty guy who had a great idea and he would be trying to sell his ‘pitch’ to everyone who’d listen. I had thought the rest of the story through. To be honest I didn’t know more than that. As I was about to sit down I had a beer, smoked a cig and 5 minutes beforehand I had masturbated to a busty forest nymph. Believe me was I tired.

A week ago I was checked-in at Fitzroy Hostel in New York City. It had been insane. My supposedly friends and I were drinking cheap wine in our room during this pandemic across the country. Geez after two bottles of wine I somehow managed to pay for- and eat two caps of MDMA and it blew my mind. I sat on the floor to cool my ass but everything began to spin and it hit me hard like a jolt. Andrew said “hey dude, maybe you should go to the bathroom and stick two fingers in your throat you don’t look too good”. But he was just too late. I burst like a water balloon, vomiting on the floor of Duncans room. Duncan was this nice guy that played XBOX and drank occasionally. Geez was I sorry. I locked myself in the bathroom to get the caps out. I was trying to vomit and I began to feel heated. The MDMA had already kicked in and it was too late to reverse it. I would have to wait this one out. Everything started to feel nice all around the body. My eyes became big as small plates and my teeth began to clench. I got an strange urge to stick my hand in the toilet to cool my body. Something I am not very proud of. On the small shelf I found a shampoo that I emptied in the toilet too just for the hell of it. Minutes later people would lock the door up with a coin and find me covered in shampoo. The helped me in the shower and I went to bed shortly after. Hours later I woke up. Two guys invited me for a joint. Something I couldn’t decline. It was only the second time I had ever tried drugs. While we smoked this cat, Alex told me “you know this only happened because you drank too much. You can never be too careful with mixing alcohol and MD. It doesn’t help that you hadn’t eaten anything either.” “Geez, I was not in control at all. I’d better stick to weed and drinking. That’s something I know”. Always do drugs with very good pals of yours.

So I went to the street and couldn’t make any money. I was to make something one way or the other. Which isn’t always easy when you don’t know what profession you want to be in. All I knew was that I didn’t need any tiresome busy work in my life. I like to feel needed but not so much that I can’t laugh and have breaks during the day. Life is life you know. But I would dance down the street like drums banging through the air. Long time ago I would have taken every job offered to me now I’m not so sure. I went to a fruit parlor in the New Habor Market in near Manhatten in princess St. I asked the first guy :” how much are these avocados.” “two fifty for three piece”. Fruit in the markets are much cheaper than everywhere else and the life is strong on the street which I thought couldn’t be bad. Everyone just running back and forth doing their bussinnes as usual. The markets was one of the places that hadn’t closed due to the pandemic. Nice, I thought to myself. I handed the guy three dollars and told him to keep the rest. “ hey man, how you get a job here standing here selling fruit, I’d really like to know”. “ah young man, I could take a look at your resume if you’d like”. Problem was I didn’t have much to offer him, so I stalled him trying to promote myself in person. I can be a very persuasive guy sometimes. When I’m in the right mood and I felt it crippling in my fingers my mood was good for this situation. “Hey man, I don’t exactly have a written resume. But I’ll tell you everything you’ll need to know. Im good at shouting and a quick learner give me a shot and ill prove to you, you didn’t waste your time”. I sounded like a sucker. But I couldn’t eat my words. The guy didn’t seem interested. I said “I promise give me a shot and I will not blow it.” He looked me in the eye and we stood for a few seconds staring at each other. “come down tomorrow at 6 sharp I’ll see what you can do. You won’t be paid for your three first shifts and from thereon you’ll be paid commission on how much you sell”. Sounded good to me so I nodded “you betcha” I said with a coy smile I sounded like a dork geez. Anyhow that’s how I got my first job. It went fairly well. I continued down the street. I still had something else to do before my first shift. Let me stand next to your fire I thought to myself. I was excited as hell. Down the road I saw a green balloon it was helium filled balloons. A clown was giving them out to kids. Everything was nice the weather was good and you could hear the wind sweep from central park. I needed to buy some weed for the next time coming. So I got up my phone and rang my friend Alex who had a connection. “O boyy I got a job fix me up with some of that green”. I met him outside the hostel and bought a quarter ounce for 50 dollars which is a fine price for nugs like these. Then I went home and lit a blunt. Just a small one while I sat at my outside porch. We had a giant tree and a lot of ungroomed weeds in our garden. We also had a cat I personally named Pysser in the name of my favourite old person who recently died. He was a sergent Knud Romer was his name. He once wrote an article about me when I was fifteen going to summer camp for young boys with no other places to go for their vacation. God was I sad to see him go. When I was done with the blunt I went up to my room and opened my book. It was called Pimp and the author went by the moniker Iceberg Slim. What kind of badass shit was that. It was kind of interesting the way he proclaimed the pimp life. And he was a real gangster. His bottom whore at the end of her mileage. Meaning the whore who kept every other whore in his house in line. When she goes everything always goes to hell for a pimp. He conend her. He made a whole setup with actors to con her into thinking she killed a rich motherfucker. She would be in the hotel room and this guy would collapse on her. Slim would come up to the room and call a doctor and get the guy collected. Slim conned her into thinking he bribed the police. That way his bottom whore was good to go for more tricks. That’s some cold shit. My thought whirled reading about the cocaine snorting and his nose hurting feelings of something scraping at the roof of his brain made me dizzy. I closed the book and stared at the ceiling. Dreaming. Aw man what do I do now. My head bounced like a bass line I felt slick. Breathing heavily but still relaxed. I went down for a cig to clear my thoughts. Sitting there I couldn’t stop looking at all the animals we had in this household. Cat and two dogs just lying freely whenever wherever.

The next morning I came back 6 sharp. A long 10 hours shift. My legs were aching and my head spiining. I wasn’t used to long as shifts. I was only used to lying around doing nothing chilling with friends. But it would come to me In time oso I ekpt coming there shouting like the others. Loud and confident keeping my back steady trying to pull in costumers in. At the end of each shift you would get paid a percentage of what you’ve sold. The first day I sold I couple of vegetables to this old lady who though I was cute and some couples wanting watermelon smoothies. It didn’t go so well. And I sure as hell didn’t want those pity purchases from old ladies. I made two fifty. It really wasn’t much. But at least I was paid the first day. Something I wasn’t expecting. I went to home sat on the couch with the other living there. We sat there chilling drinking beer and playing chess. And some girl that was visiting was playing skyrim.

Dreamers day

I remember when I was a small kid. I would look at the ocean and dream of being a bird. I would be on the moon. I was a gay kid, really. So much that my mother and sister thought I was actually gay. I remember the beach of Turkey. The warm ocean on my limbs under the moonlight. The salt burning in your eyes. Those were the days of happiness and good rest. Father would show us to surf the water on our stomachs whenever a wave came. Also the days of Levanto were nice. Father and I would hike the mountains at daybreak. We would struggle to find a parking spot and Father would cuss. Sister and I would get mojitos and look at the natives. The parties were everywhere. We would bathe in the clear water by the cliff. I remember many young adults would jump in. Everyone wearing speedos except one skinny langy kid. A couple kissing. The guy would get a boner and the girl would cover his little man with her belly. They kissed passionately. People would jump in from 5 meters and even more. Chances were one day they wouldn’t jump far enough into the water and they would hit the sharp rocks at the cliffs bottom. I picked small black clams from the rock and lurked it open. Levanto was a trip through forests cussing. We were in Italy. Driving a big bad car. I would lie across the extra three seats in the behind. I would push my bare feet against the cold glass of the window. I would see the damp print of my feet and the water drops on the other side of the window. I was glad I was inside the warmth of the car. My sisters friend was along. I liked her. She must have been sisters best friend. Not anymore.. I would lie in the bed reading. I was afraid of small gold fish. We would see the colosseum. I would ask “is it real”. Father would laugh for 10 years. I am now here in bed. On the other side of the world. Mother was different. We would be inside. I would care about her. She would be weaker. Depressed. I would be worried sick. I am still worried. But I am also smarter. She can care for herself. She stopped smoking now for the seventeenth time. She says one day she will make it. I hope it for her sake. I am not sure. The price of cigarettes went up. I would watch television. I would come out and talk to her she would listen and I would cry. This pretty much sums up our relationship. I still love her though. I was a dreamer. My English teacher told my sister I lived on the moon. That was fine with me. Not anymore. I want to be in this world now. I want to do good.

The days when we were friends we would go around your backyard make silly films. Scream like small girls. But we were small boys. Guess there is not that big of a difference. We would draw silly faces in class. We would play on the smartboard. We didn’t care about anything but fun. We would be older and try to learn music. Try to do good in school. People break apart and new people find each other. Right now I don’t find anyone. I am alone with the people I live with. The are polite and we drink together. But we are not friends. Not yet but we could be., I think things can happen. “Don’t think twice it’s alright”. You can get everything down the first time you try. You see poetry and stories are written in the haze in the bottom of your mind. You have to write it now not think too much. Know what you want to write and hurry up. Times against you. You have to run or it will be dull or you will be drowsy. Don’t let anything walk up behind your back. Keep your ears and eyes open for everything. This is not the time for storytelling. Open your eyes open your ears. You didn’t see the best minds of your generation starving hysterical naked.

Three small kittens

The day came after the weekend to go back to work at the fruit parlor., The guy seemed to be very contend with my abilities. I would make at least ten dollars for my self each shift. And I would have just enough for food for the day. Not that it was enough. I still had rent to cover. So I seeked my boss for help asking “how do you make a living out of this. Whats the catch.” He responded “the catch is catch 22 anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy”. “would you have to be crazy to want to be in combat?” he nodded “and it works the other way around too”. I pondered it over “you would have to be rationel to want to come out of combat?” “exactly”. It didn’t make any sense to me. What did that have to do with anything. After the shift my chef handed my a fairly small red book with the title Catch-22. I had only made eight dollars this day. It felt lousy. At least I was able to take as much leftover I wanted. That would cover my hunger, but the money wouldn’t cover my rent. Soon I would run out of money and I had no idea as to what to do. I came home and fell down the stinking madras on the floor of my room. I opened the first page of the book he had handed to me. Whatever it was about I was kind of excited to dick in. Every two hours I would go down for a cig and occasionally a glass of water. Didn’t eat anything except avocados. They sustain you for a long time and are delicious with salt. Just be careful some of the avocados are bad inside and will give you diarrhea. It isn’t very comfortable to go to the bathroom every ten minutes during a shift with your boss around. Next I had collected 330 dollars earning eleven dollars for myself. Which is a personal record of mine. I knew I could do better. Catch 22 was a real witty book I didn’t know what I had to learn from it. Each day I would come back to work my boss wouldn’t mention the book. He would just keep yelling for ten 12 hours straight like a muezzin standing on the top of the tower calling to prayer. He was insane. During the day his temple would pulsate like an angry cat who had catched syphilis. Sometimes his lips would be blue and he would have to sit down. Whenever that occurred shortly after he would pull up a small orange container from his pocket and down some pills. He must have had a heart disease or something. I wouldn’t get involved though. He never brought it up himself. So I figured he must have had a good reason to keep low profile. It wasn’t my fight to fight. Four times a day I would go further away with some of the other youngsters trying to make it as a fruit parlor. I was doing the worst but who really cares. It was no competition. I was just trying to make a living.

[suffering-and-happy-about-it]

Imagine Samuel being a father

A/N: So, in my opinion... Samuel Drake as a father would a killer. I think that he would be somewhere between Ryan Reynolds (find his parenthood tweets, oh lord) and Josh Wolf (such a good stand up comedian).

He would love his children endlessly, he isn't his own father, after all, but he'll maybe terrorize them a bit. Like in a funny way.

Also, I might start a series of one-shots, because I have a ton of ideas for this one.

Warnings: Samuel being a kickass father. There's some weed mentioned in here, but it is meant to be fun.

You and Samuel were together for some time.

Let me say, you were that badass Californian couple - partying, drinking your ass off, smoking weed and doing a lot of fucking things.

Like, you were practically animals. Party animals.

And of course, you were on your pills. We don't want any accidents here, right?

But, if ya know and are aware of - antibiotics and hormonal pills kinda don't do a single shit when mixed.

You should let him know that when you were finishing your antibiotics after a looong illness.

But you somehow magically forgot when he started to nuzzle you on the sofa. You know the drill really well. But why not, you were horny as hell, you missed his weenie and his body. Boy, it shouldn't be a sin to make love with your boyfriend, right?

Ya know how this goes, don't you? You don't? But I do and let me tell you.

Nuzzling > nude dudes > just the tip > oops, I cum in you.

It wasn't a sin to make love with your boyfriend. But you didn't count on that you actually get pregnant.

Yet there you were, holding that goddamn stick in front of his hazel brown eyes.

"Alright, young man." - You went. - "You wanna tell me something about dat? Because I'm pregnant and I don't certainly didn't impregnated on my own." - You asked, looking at him with that you know what you have done. But he just slapped you in the face with his answer.

"Maybe it's God's will?" - Samuel asked and you didn't know if you were about to cry or laugh actually. There was a fucking baby on the way and you two weren't that couple who would get rid of it. Maybe it hadn't the most perfect timing, yet you two have done it, so it was your responsibility now.

"Are you joking me?"

"Babe, I have one question and I am scared of the answer." - He whispered and you waved your fingers as sing for him to go on. - "I've heard some... Rumors? Like... Will your vanana be the same when he or she gets out of your body? I kinda like your tight little girl."

So yeah. There were no fights, no yelling or tears. The only two things Samuel was concerned about was the health of the baby and how actually make your vanana tight again after that.

He's an idiot. Don't mind him. At least he was looking forward to being a father. He looked like the type who runs away directly after telling him - but he was fucking pumped for your child.

That didn't mean he would be a good father. Not at all. You could tell, you could fucking tell, that he'll be that prankster, pretty tough dad with some terrible fucking jokes and you were sure that when your child will be an adult, they'll have some freaking funny memories to share.

Let me say one thing - he read as many books about labor and pregnancy as he read on the topic of vanana. He has his priorities straight. And you couldn't tell otherwise.

But no one else could believe.

"I'm with a baby." - You told Elena and Nathan who has their daughter just a few months ago. She was gorgeous after her mother and you were all scared that she'll catch Nathan's attributes.

Nathan started to laugh hysterically, but you guys were looking at him with a frown. Elena slapped his back and her stare was like can you calm the fuck down, man?

"I meant that they were joking."

Nobody could believe that Samuel Drake is about to be a father.

But when your belly got bigger and bigger, they figured out you might not be joking at all.

Samuel loved when he could speak with your belly, whispering to it when the evening came and you two lazily lied on the sofa, watching some dumb movies with Bruce Willis.

"Hi there, little one." - He carefully descended between your legs, nuzzling your belly with his lips and nose. You unconsciously messed his hair with your hand.

"Had a crazy day, I tell ya, buddy. My head is blowing up with one thought at the moment." - Samuel sighed dramatically.

"What thought, daddy?" - You messed with him with a quiet laugh. You were all in about calling him daddy in the family way and in a naughty way as well.

"I was thinking about marrying mommy, little fellow."

It wasn't history's greatest proposal, but it was something, right? It was romantic in its own way and it made you really happy.

And when the baby moved under his palms for the first time ever, it made him legit cry like a little boy.

At the moment he officially started the age of Sam, the sensitive and loving father™ (even tho it was insanely lovely, it didn't stop you from making fun of him).

He acted around you as if he was walking around some porcelain which he could break easily. He made sure you don't drink, you don't even get close to some weed, he was cooking you the healthiest recipes and even bought you some pregnancy clothes.

You wanted to know the gender, of course, but Samuel was strictly against it. So you knew it would be a boy from the start, right?

But his curiosity almost killed him. He asked you many times during different events.

Once you made dishes? He asked. You were cooking? He crept being you and almost killed you because of freaking out. You were washing clothes? Dear, that man just magically stood next to the washing machine.

But in the end, you finally told him.

And he cried again - he was about to have a baby boyo. His own son. Someone to pass the legacy on.

That made him the happiest man under the sun.

When that day came and Thomas finally saw the light of the world, Samuel was under serious pressure, shaking and crying a big time, white as a fucking wall - and you were screaming that you'll kill him if he ever tried to have another child with you.

And yes, your firstborn son was named after a pirate - Thomas Tew.

It was a long and let's be honest, painful a fucking lot in the end, labor but there was a small little bean in your arms, both of you were crying like little fucking girls and you almost immediately fell asleep after breastfeeding the baby and having all of those pregnancy things out of your body.

"You can breastfeed me as well." - Samuel whispered wickedly, thinking about sexual stuff again, and you were so disgusted by it after baby just fucking crawled from your vanana that you smacked his cheek hard. He was mesmerized, shocked and partially amused.

"If you ever put your lips close to my boobs or your penis somewhere near my vagina, you better be sure that I'll cut your weenie off, you motherfucker." - You sighed painfully with your eyes closed. He chuckled.

"From today on I'll be a motherfucker, I solemnly swear." - Samuel said in a loving tone.

He called Nathan as soon as he left you when you fell asleep. Both of them cried and they decided to have a shot for the welfare of his son - which meant that Nathan vomited in the park at three am and Samuel tried to kick hydrant because that hydrant insulted him.

They were fucking high, having the biggest hungover of their lives, waking up on the beach and neither of them knew how the fuck they got there.

You came home after a few days with a baby in a safety cradle and you couldn't believe your eyes. Those little things which made baby safe about sharp edges and some fuses.

The funniest was when Samuel forgot how to open the one on your toilet. And he needed to pee desperately. 

He always thought that babies are more fun than just crying, eating and pooping - why would everyone want them then? 

He kinda didn't understand Nathans feelings about Cassie. It doesn't mean that he doesn't love his little baby boy, alright? He was just that kind of a man who thought that babies crawl out of the woman and they immediately do everything. He needed to learn that it takes some time before they walk and talk.

So when he was holding Thomas in his armchair, he whispered him his pirate stories and fact and that little one didn't understand a single word, but it calmed him down.

So be sure that Samuel was PUMPED when the boyo started to crawl around and saying those sweet nonsenses. Samuel also almost threw a huge celebration when Thomas said mama for the first time or when he did his first step.

“He's a genius! Have you heard the pronunciation? Our little boy is exactly like his dad - fast, charming and extremely good with ladies. Have you seen him with Cassie?”

“Samuel, I think that you're freaking out and overthinking it a lot.”

He was basically pumped every everything Thomas did. 

And when his boy started to draw? Jesus, Samuel was ready to call him Picasso. In his eyes, he was extremely talented (and you didn't ruin it by saying him that Thomas is completely normal, little boy).

You were pretty lit parents, to be honest. 

When you had a long day at work and Samuel was too sick from Thomas making him angry (like when he fucked up your beautiful white wall with Nutella and fucking ketchup), you just waited until your son fell asleep.

“Are you ready for it?”

“You bet your ass, Samuel. I just need to turn off my brain.”

And you two smoked some tree (weed, who doesn't know). You were high as a kite. You didn't smoke weed much, just sometimes and it wasn't even a lot of it. Just to make you feel ok, restart your brain.

But one day you came to the bedroom and Samuel was pale and looking into your closet. 

“What is up, baby? You look scared.” - You said and stood next to him, looking into that closet next to him. - “Babe?”

“You were... You know, eating our happy brownies what you've baked for today's evening?” - Samuel asked and you shook your head and his eyes and expression went to “What?” to “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Thomas ate your weed baked in brownies. There was not a lot of it, thank god, so he was mostly okay. He was totally fine the next day - but the evening, man, that was a wild one. You both didn't leave his side all night, watching him and you didn't even fall asleep. Nothing happened, thanks to god.

Even tho, years later you burst out of laugh when Samuel was talking about his baby boy getting high on accident.

Yet, from that day on, you started to hide your edibles and weed more carefully.

From that day on, Samuel sometimes didn't leave his side all day - he woke him up, prepared breakfast, took him to kindergarten, took him out, went out with him and so on - sometimes he even fell asleep during telling him a proper pirate story. 

Especially when you somehow got pregnant, again. What should I say? This man just has good genes and really good sperms. 

Nobody knew how it happened again. 

But Thomas was just about to have a sibling when he was four years old.

So Samuel took the role of father for 24/7 when you got really pregnant. It was nice and Samuel was a lot calmer this time. 

He was a self-proclaimed pregnancy expert since Thomas was born and he was pretty sure your vanana can be tight once again after labor because you were successful the first time.

Especially he loved to take Thomas out to the park. 

He was sure that his son will be like him. When he was five years old, he was pretty good with the girls his age and because he took after your beautiful face and he took after Samuels' eyes, he was good even with women. Thomas was an adorable boy.

But that's what made Samuel worried - if he would be like Samuel as a teenager, you will through some tough shit. 

But hey - for that moment, he was only five and he had a little sister named Anne after a pirate woman Anne Bonny. Sam did his puppy eyes for that one and he promised you endless nights of eating out if you name her Anne. 

And Thomas was like “Why the fuck should dad eat mommy?”. He was pretty scared at that moment.

When Anne was actually born, you had already learned from the mistakes you have done with Thomas. 

Your life went on - you got a house, Sam was still in the business with Sully and yet Sam wasn't exactly the youngest, he had a hella energy for his children and job. And he got a hella money from that. Sully knew really well what he was doing. Tom started to go to elementary school and it wasn't a much of time before Annie went to kindergarten.

You stopped smoking tree at home; Elena and Nate were looking after Tom and Annie and you just got off to the woods or you want on to some mountain cottage. But you have still done that only when life was too hard on you and you needed to relax really badly.

Sometimes you took Cassie to your house, planning the evenings of their life to them.

Samuel and Nathan even started a competition who will do it better - but let's say that Samuel wasn't as much pussy as Nathan. That prison made him crazy a bit.

But oh man, then it started. 

Thomas was twelve years old and he was a high-school boy. So watch out. Obviously, you are old as fuck and you don't know shit about his cruel, tough life.

He stopped telling you everything, but you know it was only a natural thing that you had to accept. Annie was seven at the time and she was Samuels little sunshine and princess and you were her best friends.

But Tom had a strong relationship with Sully and Nathan and Sam. And the older he was, the stronger it was. 

He wasn't that little boy anymore. He slowly started to be a man. And you couldn't be prouder.

He had his moods, yeah, but he helped you at the home, he cared about his grades, he even hadn't that much of a mess in his room and he was really well brought up. And he loved you more than anything else in the world - you were his mommy. 

But just as Sam, Nate, Sully, and Tom had their club, you, Elena, Cassie and little Annie got you a one.

But oh my fucking Lord, you loved the stories what Sam was telling you when you got to bed. He didn't tell you Tom's problems in from of him, but you two were still his parents and you know how the drill goes: what does your dad know, your mom knows too.

"Dad?" - Tom came to Samuel one evening and he was looking like a piece of shit. Samuel frowned immediately and put his newspaper on the table. He was still worried about Tom even tho he was really smart, pretty non-problem thirteen-year-old boy. He knew how to take care of himself.

"What's up, kid?" - Samuel smiled and massaged his son's shoulder with his palm, trying to calm him down.

"I, uh, oh damn I don't know how the hell I should start." - Tom said quietly and if you were there, you would look at your son and mouth language, but there was only the two of them, so it was cool. - "Okay, okay, okay, I have a problem. It's a huge problem. I think that there's something wrong about me." - Tom whispered.

"Why would you think that? Look at you, you're a handsome young lad, just as I was back in my days." - Sam chuckled and gulped a sip of beer.

"I just gonna tell it, okay?" - Thomas took his face into his palms and started to mumble. - "So my classmate Lindsay had a really nice, tight shirt on today and I saw her boobs in a coincidence and something happened in my pants, you know, with my weenie. And then it happened again when I was a math class and I don't know what to do, because it never happened before and I'm so scared." - He finished and Sam just smiled and patted his shoulder.

"There's nothing wrong with that. Your body just tells you that you're ready to have a woman. But try something when you're underage and I'll kill you, understood?" - Samuel told him with a proud smile. - "And I don't know if this happens, but if you get hard for a man, I don't tell you it has to happen, it's just as good. I don't care whom you bang when you'll be an adult, understood? But you are still young for doing that, so try anything and I'll tell your mother."

He was so proud at that moment. His boy became an official man in his eyes. He wasn't little anymore. But still fairly young.

And you also worked as the biggest threat to Tom, so he was almost shitted because of fear at the moment. You were worse than a hurricane when he did something really bad, like throwing up on your mom's dog or when he broke a toilet at his school.

And you giggled when Sam told you that your son is a man.

He talked with Sam about everything as he grew up - he had told him about his first making out with a girl, about his first boob-touching session which he was really excited about (Tom hummed songs all evening, which wasn't a thing he would normally do) and he even asked for advice when he was about to touch his girlfriend's, her name was Carmen and she was a lovely girl, vanana for the first time ever. They had a big group meeting with uncle Nathan and pa Sully about that - it was huge for Tom and they just quietly remembered how it was for them.

But let me say - Samuel and Nathan aged like a fucking good wine. They maybe weren't the youngest around, but hell, they still did something to the women around and they had plenty of experience.

And it was three times more for Sully. Even he got married to a woman named Florence (@missdictatorme I had to) and when he was twenty years younger, he knew how to do her good.

"Alright, old man." - Eighteen-year-old Tom sat next to his father and grinned at him in the Drake-typical way with his corner-turning upwards and his eyebrows risen a little. - "Might I ask you for some tips and tricks? I think I really love her and I need to be gentle with her so she would enjoy as well."

"I might be an old man," - Sam grinned and looked at his younger brother. - "But I think your mom doesn't think so at times. Am I right, boys?" - He looked at Sully and Nathan, and every one of them laughed a bit. Sully was a really old man; each one of them was considered old, and he was now sitting on a wheelchair. He could walk, but those years of treasure hunting hadn't done any good to his poor knees.

"Ew, Jesus. That's gross. I don't wanna think about that at all."

But they got him some useful tips. Like: don't try to find her vanana on her stomach or when you stick a finger inside, make sure it's wet and don't your hand just, you know, stuck out there. Move it.

They had a great bond. Otherwise, he and Samuel would never talk about it this openly.

You two as parents got a lot of fun with your son, especially when he was nineteen and he was ready to try some new stuff. You knew he will get drunk - but when he vomited all over your terrace and when you heard him speak and say I love you for a million times while you recorded him, you had the fucking time of your whole life. Don't worry, you made it clean up after himself.

Samuel recorded all of his son's bullshit - how he spoke when he had eaten those weed-brownies when you were camping in the wood while he was eight and somehow he got his shit on his earlobe when he totally burned your Christmas sweets... Baby, there is a lot of your son's mistakes you had a proof for.

But the biggest fun actually came when he wanted to try weed. You and Sam acted a bit mad, but you knew it had to come at one point.

So, in the end, you told him "Okay, you're eighteen, so you're in law, but we'll do it together so when something happens, we are with you". And of course, he went like "Wtf no".

But you have all of that shit recorded, and when you have your bad day, you just play the speech of your stoned son. It's embarrassing and he wanted you to delete it immediately - so you knew you'll play it at his wedding.

But when it came to Annie, his baby princess and a flawless small girl being in the same age his son were when he started his sexual life, oh dear lord.

A boy looked into her direction? Sam was there, looking at him like "touch her and I would fucking break your hands, hands and penis, punk".

But you knew it is going to happen someday, so you went all in about hormonal pills, condoms, other sources of protection, you told her a hundred times that she shouldn't do it because every girl has done it but because she loves somebody... And she was like "mom, you've told me a million times and I'm not an idiot."

But you know - Tom, now a twenty-two-year-old adult, and his fiancée moved into a flat together, so you took care of Annie even more intensely.

Annie accepted your opinions if they were useful and not too idiot-sounding like. But you know girls her age - she was sure that Samuel is a huge dick who just wants to make her life harder.

And he almost fainted when she came home with a boyfriend. His name was David.

In your opinion, he was a nice boy, he was really nice to you and your daughter and polite to Samuel as well. They got through everything together - first kiss, boob-touching, making out, even first sex.

Annie even married him five years after that evening. And they moved out as well.

At the end of the day, besides for your son getting high as a kite when he was just five years old, your daughter accidentally drinking aid alcohol, losing your children in the mall a few times, a heck of bruises and a load of embarrassing, childhood stories... You were good parents.

And your son and your daughter knew that they were very lucky to have you because you taught them how to love and enjoy life and every time they need you for anything...

You were there for them.

[alarawriting]

Inktober #14: Overgrown

Not sure what I’m doing with 13: Ash yet, so here, have 14. This features a character from the Cold Light universe but not part of that book. He’s a Proxima, like Meg, but instead of becoming a hero or villain with his powers... he does something else.

Max looked over the yard. “Yikes.”

The executor nodded. “It looks like they didn’t do anything to take care of the yard for the past 10 years. When Walter died, the paramedics had to borrow a weed clipper from the wife to get the walkway wide enough that they could get the stretcher through.”

“My God,” Max said. “Is – was there any chance they could have saved his life otherwise?”

“Oh, no, I’m sure there wasn’t,” the executor said. “He was pronounced DOA. But Helen wants to sell the place and move to an assisted living community. Apparently Walter’d been telling her for ten years that he was having things taken care of – either he was doing the chores, or he was having a landscaper come by, or something – and with her being mostly bed-ridden, she took his word for it.”

“That poor woman. She really hasn’t left her house in ten years?”

“Aside from going outside to bring in grocery and package delivery, neither did Walter. We’ve found a few paths he made through the underbrush to get to the gate where they’d leave the packages, but they weren’t big enough to bring the stretcher through.” The executor shook his head. “The best we can figure, either he was a hoarder of garden vegetation, or he had the worst cast of procrastination anyone’s ever seen.” He gave the suburban jungle one last eyeing-over before turning to Max. “What can you do with this?”

“A lot,” Max said, “but too much of that growth is woody for me to just make it all disappear. When green-stem plants die, like flowers and tomatoes, they just collapse to the ground, but woody plants like trees and shrubs and some kinds of vine will still be there when they die… they won’t continue to grow, their roots will shrink and they’ll dry out and be easier to dig out or cut down, but it’s still going to take some work to remove them.” He pulled at a woody vine that had completely swallowed the white picket fence… at least he thought it was probably a white picket fence from the tiny bits of picket that showed through the vines.

“Well, any cost from landscapers coming in and cutting down whatever’s left after you do your job will be more than made up for by what Helen can get from selling the house, and it would cost a lot more to have them cut it all down while it’s alive.”

“Not to mention the rats.” Max looked at the executor. “You did know about the rats, didn’t you?”

“Uh… no. Helen didn’t mention rats.”

“Just for due diligence, she doesn’t have a family of pet possums or a colony of feral cats living on the property, does she?”

“She has two cats, they’re indoor cats and fixed.”

“And they’re not on the property anymore? It’s important that nothing she wants alive should be on the property at the moment.”

“I get that.” The executor’s smile was nervous. Max took a step away from the man, casually, as if he was inspecting the vines, and saw out of the corner of his eye the executor relax slightly. “She’s got her cats with her, I believe.”

“Staying with kids or something?”

“No, a friend’s house. Walter and Helen never had any kids.” The executor snorted. “If they had, I’d be having words with those kids now. Walter was obviously mentally ill or something, and Helen wasn’t physically capable of enforcing him dealing with the yard even if she knew there was a problem, but if they had kids, there would be no excuse for anyone letting their parents live like this.”

“There’s some smallish creatures in the house. Can we confirm she doesn’t have fish, or other terrarium pets she might have left behind?”

“Huh. She did go to her friend’s in a hurry; it’s not like she’s moved out yet. I’ll check.”

While the executor called the widow to confirm whether or not the lives Max was sensing in the house were wanted or not, Max walked along the fence. Most of the life he was going to have to deal with was deep inside, nowhere near the fence. It was a large property, and he wasn’t going to be able to do it by radiating an area of effect, since there were neighbors. He sighed. Dammit, he was going to have to get the hedge clippers himself, or a machete or something, just to get deep enough into the yard to be able to do his job.

“I don’t get paid to be a gardener,” he muttered.

Well, he didn’t get paid to be a plumber either, but there’d been that colony of mutant amphibious mice that he’d had to track through the pipes in that one house. And at least the homeowner was willing to make a clean sweep, none of “don’t touch my prize rosebushes but get everything else”.

Still, he made a mental note to quote the executor a 20% increase in his usual fee.

“Good news,” the executor said. “Nothing in the house is supposed to be alive.” A little nervously, he asked, “How do you know there’s living things in there? Can you tell what they are?”

“I can tell their approximate size, and, vaguely, about how high off the ground they are,” Max said. “What I’m seeing could be consistent with pet fish, or animals in terrariums… or it could be a few colonies of mice living in the walls. There’s also a lot of insect life, all over. Uh. I think maybe you’re gonna want to check for termite damage after I’m done.”

“Wait, there are termites?”

“Some kind of insect living in parts of the wall that I think might be studs,” Max said. “Could be something like powder post beetles if there’s wooden furniture up against the walls.”

“But you can take care of them?”

“Sure can, but I can’t fix the damage they might have done, so get the place inspected thoroughly before you put it on the market. I can certify that I treated the place for you, once I’m done; I’m licensed to certify state-approved no-toxin extermination was performed. There’s bedbugs, too. That’s weird for people who never leave the house.”

“I’ll just… have the mattresses burned.”

“No need, I can deal with those little suckers too, including the eggs. But the mattresses should be thrown out; there’s gonna be tiny little bloodstains all over them. Nothing bio-active, but people looking at it won’t be able to tell it’s been sanitized. Don’t burn them, the chemicals mattresses are made of turn toxic when you set them on fire.”

“Anything else?”

“Major flea infestation. Those poor cats. Let the friend know and get the homeowner have them professionally treated right away.”

“Is that something you could do?”

“Not without making the cats sick. I don’t do parasites on living creatures; I’m an exterminator. I kill stuff. People aren’t a big fan of exposing their pets to things that kill stuff.” It wasn’t impossible; he’d killed skin cancer once, and the person who’d had the melanoma was still alive, but it was delicate work and dangerous and he’d only done it because his friend hadn’t had insurance and he’d been terrified the thing would metastatize before his friend could raise the money for chemo. Also because chemo was probably worse for people overall than one exposure to a pinpoint death touch. Cats were more fragile than people anyway.

“Okay, I’ll let Helen and her friend know. If Helen’s cats infest her friend’s house with fleas, you’d be able to help with that, right?”

“Yep, with all the usual caveats. Get your pets out of the house for the day, that includes any fish, prized houseplants, and if you want me working on your garden you show me every plant you don’t want dead when I’m done, yadda yadda.”

“Sounds good. So when do you want to get started on Walter and Helen’s yard here?”

Max pulled out his phone, did some quick calculations, and presented the executor with the total. “You can give me a check now, or you can call my secretary and give her the credit card number over the phone.”

“We’ll do a check, that’s simplest.” The executor didn’t even blink at the price. Silently Max kicked himself for not raising the price even higher.

“And I’m gonna need those hedge clippers.”

“I figured as much.”

***

Half an hour later the executor was gone, driven off to get lunch or something, far more than a safe distance away. Max could sense as far as a city block, but he had no idea if he could actually drain life that far away, because he’d never tried.

Numerous supervillains had tried to recruit him since he’d discovered his powers around the age of 14, but Max thought that capes were, in general, ridiculous people. Well, the Peace Force were all right, as heroes went, and his doctor was great despite being a supervillain in her spare time, but why the hell would he ever want to work a job where the entire reason he was on board was to threaten to kill people, or actually do it? He still had nightmares about his grandfather’s death, and the man had been in his 60’s, old enough to die of a heart attack even if Max had had nothing to do with it. Max felt bad when he accidentally killed someone’s pet goldfish – which had happened, in the beginning of his career, because idiots heard “get your pets out of the house” and for some reason mentally tacked on “except for your fish, they aren’t really alive.” Why would he ever want to kill anything another person cared about, let alone a person themselves? Hell, the only mammals he was cool with killing were the rats and mice, and that was mainly because they carried disease and ate people’s food. He wouldn’t take on rural assignments, they kept wanting him to dispose of bunny rabbits and gophers. No thanks. And he didn’t do birds. Pigeons were beautiful creatures and geese were shitheads but mostly just because they weren’t scared of humans, and Max respected that.

His extermination business was certified by the state to be wholly organic and no-toxin, which was good for the environment and for the health of the people he helped. From Max’s perspective, he’d taken a power that terrified most people and kind of screamed “supervillain” to anyone who paid attention to capes, and used it to improve the life and health of people and their pets.

He started at the gate, where the paramedics had hacked a pathway to the house wide enough to get the stretcher through. The pathway was partly the actual original walkway, partly ground that had once been occupied by tall pokeweed plants. As Max walked along the path, he cast his awareness out as far as he could see, to the limit of the yard edge or his eyes’ vision, whichever came first. Life everywhere, from the bacteria and the worms in the dirt to the weedy jungle overrunning every square inch of the yard.

They’d have to replace the worms, when he was done. If Max was going to get all the seeds, he’d have to get everything within the top six inches of the soil. He could leave the bacteria alone – they were small enough that they couldn’t be anything else, and soil needed bacteria to rot the things he was going to kill – but worms were, unfortunately, indistinguishable from small plant shoots, and the garden wouldn’t do well once the worms were all dead.

He stood in the middle of the area he’d mentally bounded, and pulled life energy from it.

Most of the plants slumped immediately. The pokeweed, which wasn’t exactly woody but was easily the thickest non-woody stem Max was familiar with, stood up for a while even as its leaves shriveled, but eventually collapsed on itself. The woody vines and the overgrown shrubs lost their leaves, pulling the water out of any extremity they had in a doomed effort to save themselves. Plants interpreted the pulling of their life force as dehydration, probably because they weren’t evolved to experience this kind of death from any other force.

When he was done… there were still woody sticks and vines and leafless shrubbery everywhere, but everything green was gone, slumped to the ground.

With the clippers, he began cutting himself a path through some raspberry plants that had gotten way out of control, moving toward the side of the house. Once he was far in enough that he could see an area of the yard he hadn’t been able to see before, he did the same thing. Set the range, then pull the life.

It was very important to Max that he could physically see the area he was killing. He could sense life, and its approximate size, so things like the time some absolute shithead had left a child playing in the basement weren’t a real danger for him. He’d notice something as large as a child right away, and had,  that time. (He couldn’t prove that said shithead had wanted him to kill the kid so they could sue his insurance for wrongful death, but at the very least the act had been neglectful enough that he’d seen the kid taken away and given to a foster family, and he’d testified at the hearing that had terminated the asshole’s custody. The kid had deserved better.) But kittens, puppies, songbirds, other creatures like that… life came in sizes, for him, and he couldn’t tell the difference between a mouse and a hummingbird, aside from the fact that hummingbirds didn’t stay still as often as mice did and were usually found higher than mice (not always, though… mice climbed on things.) So outside, where most living things were just minding their own business and not bothering the humans, he wanted to be able to see what he was killing.

Back out of where he was, head up to the porch, over to its side where he could see the other side of the yard. Set the range, pull the life. He included part of the house itself in his sweep this time, killing infestations of insects and an absurdly high number of rats and mice. What the hell had been wrong with that guy, that he’d let his disabled wife live in this shithole without doing anything to maintain it or keep the pests under control? Max got the concept of procrastination – the dishes in his own sink hadn’t been done for a week, he just kept killing the fruit flies and mold rather than actually washing them because he hadn’t run out of dishes yet – but this was appalling. He really didn’t want to go in the house, and from what he could see through the windows of the piles of clutter everywhere, the house plainly didn’t want him to go in, either. Hopefully he’d be able to get the place fully sterilized without having to enter.

The whole job took two hours. It was easily the longest a yard this size had ever taken him. By the time he was done, he was twitching with restless energy. The life went somewhere when he took it – it went into him. Max was in his thirties, but physically looked and felt like a man barely out of college; he grew facial hair just so people would take him seriously as a business owner. He’d been sick exactly once since he’d developed his power, mainly because he’d been binge drinking a lot at the time, and apparently that suppressed his immune system no matter how much life force he was brimming with. Max used to know a guy whose power allowed him to siphon off the excess life energy, which he used to pay Max for since he could use it to help sick people for cash, but someone had shot the dude last year and Max hadn’t found anyone else with a similar power set yet.

So here was the part where he wound up the job and went to the gym, because he had to do something to get rid of the energy, and neither of the exactly two girlfriends he’d had in his life had been able to keep up with him in bed when he was like this, so he needed other outlets.

As he left the place, Max looked back at the disaster of a yard. It actually looked significantly worse now – instead of green overgrowth covering everything, now it was sparser, but winter-brown and dry, nothing but lifeless shrubs and the tracery of woody vines still twined around everything despite being leafless and dead. But at least now, the landscapers would have an easier time of it; there’d be no difficulty telling the difference between legitimate, desired plants and weeds when all of them were dead, and dead plants were significantly easier to cut or remove.

He pulled out his cell phone as he headed for his car. “Hey there,” he said to the executor’s voice mail. “I finished the job. Go ahead and send the landscapers in before rats move into the vacuum I just left.”

Max really needed to find someone else who could siphon his excess energy, he thought. The money he’d just made was good, but it’d be better if he could do two or three jobs this size in a day without having to have a few hours in the gym to burn it off before draining anything else. Although, on the plus side, at least now he was really, really buff. Too bad that didn’t help much on the dating scene after he told girls about his power, but it wasn’t like he was going to lie.

[nomnomnibblenibble]

Frat Party (hybrid series)

Count: 1.6k words

Type: angstish, fluff

A/N: 1st of a series that will involve all members (inspired by the dream of a 🦎 aka Liz)

The bass of the blaring music was so loud you and Yoongi could feel it underneath the asphalt. If you hadn’t yet adapted yourself you’d be on the ground in agony.

From in front of the frat house the two of you could see people shuffling in and out. Some of them you could recognize from around campus but most of the faces blurred together in insignificance.

“Are you sure about this?” You asked turning to Yoongi. The idea to go a normal people party had been at his suggestion. One that took some convincing for you to accept. It was safer for the two of you to avoid any unnecessary human interaction.

Your super hearing was something you had gotten under control. From being a clueless twelve year old you had learned to tune out and turn down the sounds you didn’t need. A sheet of paper no longer hurt your sensitive ears as it could before.

Yoongi’s mutation on the other hand was more physical. Looking at him currently he would look as any college student although a bit small weight wise. It was when he let his guard down or he lost control that the furrier side came. He was a young kid when he had figured out he was a cat.

Not fully, but paws, tail, ears, and whiskers. Those were all there. His parents made sure to keep their unique son as guarded as possible. Of course for his own good, but their actions proved somewhat detrimental. It took Yoongi so long to learn how to keep his human form. College away from his parents wasn’t looking like an option until he met you in his senior year of high school.

Two freaks who could safely be abnormal.

With no answer Yoongi walked ahead of you into the packed house. You followed close behind him not wanting to lose sight of him. The two of you walked into the threshold to be bombarded with the smell of alcohol and weed at least that’s what you assumed.

The center of the room had partygoers squished together as though they were kept in by invisible walls. Girls and guys, guys and guys, girls and girls all grinding on each other as though they were trying to chafe off glue. The blue light that illuminated the room doing more to hide faces than to reveal them.

Naturally the two of you migrated to the ‘outskirts’ of the large front room. Still surrounded by people but at least breathing was possible.

Yoongi looked amazed by what was before him. Large gatherings were hardly something he was used to. You on the other hand were searching for something that didn’t make you uncomfortable to look at. Stupid drunk kids and students pushing back on each other wasn’t ideal.

Turning in your place you spotted the kitchen considerably more empty. It would do as a temporary escape.

Before walking away you shifted towards Yoongi to alert him only to find the boy in a near state of bliss. His gums were on display as he smiled like a kid in a candy store. He was experiencing, although uninvolved, a part of young life he was expected to miss out on. Pure happiness out of watching his peer act like idiots.

Deciding against disturbing his joy you went over to the kitchen knowing you could listen out for him.

The kitchen was abandoned compared to where the party was concentrated. Four people at most standing around looking like they’d rather be anywhere else. The alcohol wasn’t situated in this room so that left little reason for anyone to be in here.

Deciding a cup in hand, preferably non alcoholic, was better than standing by with nothing you enlist the help of another party goer in the kitchen. From behind there is only black hair as an identifier as you tap on their shoulder. A familiar smiling face appears. If there was a boy who didn’t seem as though he belonged in a traditional fraternity, it was Park Jimin.

Ladies man sure, charming definitely, did you have slight crush, of course. But Jimin was more known for his dancing. He was a dance major that was member of a fraternity. A combination that couldn’t be described as stereotypical.

“Hey you” Jimin said recognizing you from your shared anatomy class. You two weren’t close, but there were the occasional friendly conversations as you two were lab partners.

You replied with a slight smile not wanting to appear too eager, “Hey yourself”

His head turned slightly to the side like a puppy looking up in confusion without the smile ever leaving his lips “I don’t take you for the partying type. What’re doing here?”

It’d be great to note that with the music still blasting the two of you were standing closer than normal. Obviously you would be able to hear him from 100 feet away, but he was human after all. You had to make accommodations.

“You’re right. I’m not, but my friend wanted to come see.” It was no use telling him who the friend was. Yoongi didn’t involve himself in much. He preferred to attend class (sometimes) and be home away in his room in the safety of music. His reputation around campus was non existent.

“Well good thing you came. Did you need anything?”

“Yea, actually. I wanted a drink. The non alcohol kind and I’m not sure where to find that here.” You stated referring to the obvious.

Jimin nodded “I got it. I can go check for a soda or something down in the basement. Wait here.” The steps he took out of your space gave you your breath back. Your face finally didn’t feel as hot. Being a little more at ease you relaxed into the sway of the music rocking back and forth in your little bubble.

The party seemed like a swell idea until you heard the sound of heavy breathing. A familiar breathing that you knew could only belong to a panicked Yoongi.

Rushing out of the kitchen you saw a small crowd congregating where you left him in his happy state. You push through the two person thick crowd to see Yoongi crouched down holding his head in his hands. The obvious signs of his panic attacks that you had come to know over the years.

Crouching down next to him you try to gently shush him to calm him down long enough to move him. Having him surrounded by people would do nothing to quell his distress.

“Come on Yoongi, help me out here” you said while attempting to lift him. He was small himself but still more in size than you.

The sound of Yoongi’s speeding heart filled your ears so you didn’t hear the pleas for people to get out of the way from Jimin. You didn’t notice his presence until Yoongi was actually managed to be lifted from a ball on the ground.

With stares from those immediately surrounding you, the two of you dragged Yoongi’s stiff body into a surprisingly empty room. Laying him on the bed, Jimin stood back watching as you fanned Yoongi’s face with your hand.

“Do you need anything?” Jimin asked sounding a little out of breath himself.

While Yoongi definitely was calming down you knew that he could very well turn any moment. No matter how thankful you were to Jimin or how much you wished the conversation could continue you had to get him out of the room.

Vigorously shaking your head you explained “No, it's alright. He’ll be fine, but I need to be alone with him. So if you could…”

“Oh..oh yeah. I’ll go.” Jimin said turning around to the door. He gave a friendly smile before gently shutting the door.

You turned your attention back to a much calmer and different looking Yoongi. His whiskers were visible and his ears took on their pointer form. He was staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes taking deep breaths. The worst of it was over.

You sighed in relief “You alright now?”.

He nodded still silent.

Knowing not to push until he was ready you opted instead to lay next to him joining him in staring up at the ceiling. His heartbeat, now where it needed to be, brought you peace. Moments of comfortable silence passed within the room.

“I thought someone had found me out.” his tail coming up to wiggle to what he was referring to. “People were starting to stare. I panicked.”

You nodded in understanding although he probably couldn’t see you. Most likely there wasn’t anyone who saw him outside of his human form, but Yoongi having grown up so paranoid about everything and everyone around him sometimes viewed slight glances in a different light.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I guess I went too far-” he continued.

Letting him make himself feel bad for wanting something so simple was not gonna slide. You knew he meant no harm and you were happy to let him experience his youth as much as possible.

“Don’t be like that. And don’t worry about it. It wasn’t all bad.” you interrupted. The music in the background giving a consistent beat that didn’t bother the atmosphere you two shared within the room rather adding to it.

In silence a hand laid against yours, a small paw more like in the case of Yoongi. A paw that fit perfectly with no eclipsing or being swallowed by your own. He remained still and you could hear his breaths slow indicating he had fallen asleep.

The two of you in a familiar place. Next to each other, not talking, not even looking at one another, just finding comfort in the existence of the other.

[skeletonwrites]

[BOOK TITLE PENDING]

Marianne Martinez used to be normal. It wasn’t even her choice to become anything else, really. C’est la vie, she says as she breaks into a top-secret supernatural testing facility.

Chapter One, ‘No, no she didn’t’, under the cut. 

Growing up living eight feet apart from someone, you get used to their presence. Their walking gait, their laughter, their every tick and tock. You begin to understand them in a way that isn’t easily accomplished. You know them, and they know you.

Jackie and I grew up next to each other. We weren’t relatives, but we lived in a shabby apartment complex with only a thin plaster in between our apartments that made it so we may as well have been living together. Every week day, Jackie would walk into our (my mom and I lived together, dad having been out of the picture for a long time) apartment, and help my mother prepare lunches for us. In the beginning, he knocked. It didn’t take very long for him to be given his own key. We were inseparable- we ate breakfast, prepared lunch at his apartment (he lived with his older brother), and walked together to the bus-stop. There was nothing we didn’t do together.

Jackie and I shared all our classes, obviously. It was a competition between us, you see. Who could get the best grades? Who could answer the teacher correctly the most times? It got to the point where our teachers separated us in every class. It didn’t matter, we had other ways of communication. By tapping our feet, or hands, we would talk to each other in Morse code. Jackie had been in the library for a research project in third grade when he found a book on Morse. When we got busted for that, we made our own language- we still tapped our feet and hands, but the language was of our own making. 

We weren’t bad kids, though. Our conversations usually consisted of what we were going to do when we grew up, or who we thought was being stupid at any given time, or which teacher we thought would be more likely to pick their nose. Sometimes we cheated (we were kids and didn’t see a problem with that), but for the most part we were mischief free.

However, there was that one notable time when Jackie decided that school was not for him that day. He tapped a quick message to me, took a paper ball, lit it one fire with a matchstick from our backpack- we had a third one we shared between us that we kept our ‘survival tools’ within- and threw it into the trash can. By some power, maybe even from above, no one saw him do it. No one but me even noticed until the smell of burning wicker and smoke became too powerful to ignore. 

School was cancelled for the rest of the day because everyone was required to evacuate. Jackie and I went to a local park with a grove of trees and played pirates.

Our schedule stayed like this for years.

I’d like to say that high school didn’t change anything, that we were able to overcome teenage hormones and treat each other with respect. 

And for the most part? We did. But in the middle of freshman year, Jackie started acting distant. He wouldn’t say anything was wrong, and we still hung out all the time, but something was different. He religiously avoided talking about his feelings in any capacity. It was bullshit. Finally I confronted him in our secret grove. He still refused to tell me what was wrong, so I punched him. He had wasted an entire school semester where we could have been best friends with no problems, but somehow he got it in his head that this was acceptable behavior. We fought, obviously. The grass left stains on our clothes, and leaves stuck in our hair. I got a black eye, he got a busted lip. We tired ourselves out, until we were laying on the ground staring into the sky. The moon was out, stars above and clouds non-existent. It was beautiful. Jackie finally confessed that he had developed feelings for me. Poor man didn’t want to ruin our relationship, so he hadn’t told me. I panicked and came out to him. We sat there for so long, just staring at the sky and thinking. 

The horrid affair was over the next day, and I quickly moved past Jackie’s ill-conceived romance. He moved on from me, too. Life went back to normal, and high school passed quickly in a blur of drama, homework, dating other people, and general teenage angst. 

And then college happened. Jackie decided to major in technology. He wanted to work with computers, and I wanted to work with art. There were no good colleges that offered exceptional courses for both, so we parted ways. There were tears, but life had to move on. We stayed in touch; every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, we video called each other, catching up and talking about our problems. Jackie got a girlfriend, I focused on my homework. Life was as smooth as college can be. 

And then college was over. I was shoulder deep in student loans and other debts, and Jackie was just making it by on a seventy hours at his job each week. I had to cancel my internet, and Jackie and I only texted sometimes. We lost touch, and I didn’t notice until it was too late. 

I worked at a museum for a while. It was fun, but the income was only enough for my basic necessities. To pay off my debts I worked as a nanny on the side, while also freelancing my own art. Life wasn’t so bad, for the most part. I had acquaintances everywhere I visited to say hello to me, I lived in a small apartment with my cat, and I was steadily building a savings while paying off my debt. 

It was comfortable. I finally reached out to Jackie again, though I had to search a bit to find him. He lived five hours away now, working as a technician for a big name brand. Lucky for me, he also missed our friendship. We started messaging each other regularly. Six years of distance left a huge gap, but we figured we could mend it some. 

And then I was approached by a government agent. He came to my front door, wearing a neat suit and holding an official looking briefcase. I hid my weed and tried to look like I wasn’t high off my ass. Hopefully he wouldn’t bust me for smoking.

That wasn’t what he wanted, as it turns out. He was there to recruit me. He said his name was Agent Cole, and that I was perfect for a job they needed done. It was only a one time thing, he said, and I would be paid sufficiently. Obviously I was extremely suspicious, so I told him I would think about it. He gave me his card, then left. I sighed out of relief and sat back on my couch.

I had no intention of accepting. I told my mom about it, and we discussed possible scenarios. She said to take the job. It might be shady, but I had debts to pay, and I didn’t want to live with that all my life, did I? 

I called the number on the card, and then waited. It didn’t take long. 

They briefed me on what needed to be done, and then let me loose. My job was to look up ways to hide a fist sized object from everyone. When I suggested tossing it into a nearby river, they specified that they wanted  no one to ever find it. Every week I gave them my ideas, and every week they rejected them. In a speedbump, in a tree, under a skyscraper, in a brick. Nothing.

I was almost about to give up, when I realized that it was a challenge- not a job. They were testing me for something. And so, I gave it my all. Never let it be said that Marianne Martinez backs down from a challenge. 

Every week, I gave them ideas. Every week, they rejected them. Every month, they paid me. It wasn’t a bad setup, and I continued my freelancing while doing it, as well as nannying. My debts were finally paid off, and I could begin to save more money. I began to move forward with my life. It was satisfying, to say the least. 

The research eventually turned into other things, as my mom had predicted one late night. They never really told me much, but they did train me. Every evening, from six pm to nine pm, I was either in the gym, running, or researching things for them. They said that any government agent went through the same training, I wasn’t a special case. I stopped complaining after that. I don’t recall them ever providing evidence that they were genuinely government workers, but I couldn't care less. I was paid, I was healthy, and no one really cared what I did in my free time.

My agility and speed grew with my confidence and knowledge. Everything was looking good. I had made some progress, I thought, on my research. The supernatural means of hiding were looking better every day that my ideas were rejected.

And then my mom passed away. It was a stroke, the doctors said. She had been cooking, probably for a neighbor down on their luck, when it happened. No one was there to call an ambulance. She died, alone on the kitchen floor.

It tore me up. Why hadn’t I been there? Was my life so important that I wasn’t there when she needed me most? I arranged a funeral, and used a third of my savings to make it as good as I could. If I wasn’t there for her in life, I would be there for her in death.

Jackie came to the funeral. He had changed. He was thinner, less confident, slouching. He didn’t look too good, but I couldn’t say anything about it. I’m surprised I noticed, honestly. I had other things on my mind. He and I grew closer after mom’s death. Every weekend, we would go to a cafe and talk. I always paid.

He moved closer. He said it wasn’t because my mom died, but it looked to me like he had no other reason for coming back. He now lived two blocks away, close enough to walk to his house in the dead of the night, when memories of my mom grew to great to remember alone.

He didn’t have a wife, he said. He and his girlfriend broke up ages ago, and there hadn’t been anyone since. Was I doing fine? Did I have a partner? No, I was much too busy. What did I do? Oh, I do freelance art. Is that enough to get by, really? How was my debt? Surprisingly, yes, it is enough. I’ve paid them off, but what about you? Are you doing well? For the most part. Mostly, sure. He was fine.

And time passed. He grew thinner, more ragged. He wasn’t eating, though he didn’t outright say it. It took me three months to get him to move in with me. 

We fell into a new pattern. He would make breakfast, since I had always hated cooking though I wasn’t bad at it, and I would clean up. I would go do errands, whatever needed to be done, and he would either stay home or go out. He never said where he went. He would clean the apartment, and I would bring lunch from somewhere. I would clean up, and we would go our separate ways again. Supper was always ready when I got home. I always cleaned afterwards. I would then leave to work out, or train, or research. He would do his own thing. There were variations, of course, but that was mostly it. Routine was easy to fall into. 

And then, one  day, I came home and he was gone. His stuff wasn’t anywhere to be seen. There was no sign of a struggle. I didn’t call the police. He was a fully grown man, after all, and I didn’t need him financially. It was callous, but I hoped he moved on to better things. Maybe he would be back, maybe he would keep in touch.

It hurt, though. We had been close. At least, I thought we were. 

My research had hit a block. No matter where I looked, no matter what I thought I had found, the agency was never satisfied. Eventually, I began to look more into the arcane. Wizards and witches, elves, goblins, fairies. I had finally given into the urge to follow that line of thought.

Fairies, in particular, interested me. They were said to have powers of undefinable proportions. They were beautiful creatures, tall and fair. In one book that I read, during a feverish night of desperation, I found an passage of interest. 

“Woe to those who seeke

What they cannot understand,

Woe to those who find

For their fate is worse” 

It was practically nothing, but my sleep deprived brain latched onto it. Who was seeking? What were they looking for? Could I use this to hide the agency’s object? Was there such a thing as magic, real and powerful and present?

I learned about the Folke, as they called themselves, but I left that one passage alone. It wasn’t enough.

Strange things began to happen at my apartment. A moved book here, a light turned on there. Nothing much, but just enough to spook me. I looked into it, of course, but I could find no reason for anything supernatural to bother me. I hadn’t stolen any fruit, I hadn’t moved any ancient tombs, I hadn’t called on any ancient beings. 

Small nuisances turned into inconveniences.  My car keys, lost for two days. Milk gone bad the moment it was put in my fridge. My cat outright refused to sleep in my room anymore. 

And then bad things began to happen. The water heater for my apartment complex broke for three weeks. Electricity was out for days on end, ruining all my cold food and making it unbearably hot. It was summer, after all. A window broken, a rotted roof, a nail in my tire.

It got to the point where I told my handler from the agency, Joanna, about it. She seemed disturbed.

And then I got a note on my door.

“We told you not to

But did the seeker listen?

No, no, she didn’t”