#but they're never the ones sending me these fucking emails

[scoonsalicious]

6.2 Lily

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader

Summary: Lily McIntyre, trainer for new SHIELD recruits at the Avengers Tower, has been in love with her best friend, Bucky Barnes, from the moment she met him. She's been content with her role of the #1 girl in Bucky's life, even if it means she has to sabotage a romantic relationship or two. It'll be worth it when he realizes that they're meant for each other, right? There's just one small problem: Lily McIntire never expected Bucky Barnes to fall for You.

Warnings: (For this part only; see Story Masterlist for general Warnings) Language, toxic plants being manipulative and toxic.

Word Count: Bucky done fucked up.

Previously On...: 2.5k

A/N: Please note: I will be taking a one week break from posting starting on Thursday, May 16th, to focus on writing. I will resume posting on Thursday, May 23rd.

If you ever feel so inclined to support my work, hop on over to buy me a coffee; it's much appreciated! <3

NOTE! The tag list is a fickle bitch, so I'm not really going to be dealing with it anymore. If you want to be notified when new story parts drop, please follow @scoonsaliciousupdates

Thank you to all those who have been reading; if you like what you've read, likes, comments, and reblogs give me life, and I truly appreciate them, and you!

He was on his way! 

After disconnecting from her call with Bucky, Lily bent down to her front driver’s side tire and, using her car key, pried out the nail she’d run over to ensure it would go flat while she ran the trail. Walking to the edge of the parking lot, she hurled the nail into the woods, getting rid of any evidence that she’d manufactured the current predicament she “accidentally” found herself in.

It didn’t matter if Bucky hadn’t come home from his date last night. Hadn’t told her that he’d even been on a date to begin with. What mattered was that, when Lily had called, Bucky had left the bitch behind and had come running. To her.

And that meant something. 

Right?

Bucky could go out with some slut if he wanted to, but when Lily had needed him, Bucky had dropped everything to be there for her, and that knowledge made Lily’s insides glow with warmth. She was still his number one girl; she shouldn’t have let herself get worked up over one date that probably didn’t mean anything. Bucky had dated before, and Lily had made sure none of them stuck around for very long. This time wouldn’t be any different.

So, Lily waited. She checked her email, she played some games on her phone, she listened to a podcast. Finally, a little over an hour after she’d hung up with Bucky, she saw one of Tony’s sportscars speed into the parking lot and make its way to the trailhead.

Her heart sank at the thought of Bucky sending Tony Stark to help her in his stead, so it was quite a shock to her system when the car pulled up next to hers, turned its engine off, and Bucky himself stepped out. He wasn’t wearing his usual tshirt and jeans, no– he was wearing a rumpled burgundy button-up, sleeves rolled up to the elbows and the first couple of buttons left undone at his neck, and a pair of fitted, black trousers. 

Lily swallowed. His hair was a mess, but she could imagine how put together he must have looked the night before, and that made her stomach twist. He’d made an effort. He’d made a real, genuine effort to dress up for this date that he lied to her about.

“Hey, Lil,” he said, once she got out of her car to meet him. He smiled, but she’d known him long enough to be able to tell when his smiles weren’t genuine, and this one didn’t reach his eyes.

“Hey, Jamie,” she said, offering him a fake smile  of her own to hide her distress. “Thank you so much for coming out. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” 

“I’m sure Steve or Sam or anyone from the Compound would have been more than willing to help you out, Lil,” Bucky said as he walked to the back of her car. “Could you pop the trunk for me so I can get your jack and the spare?”

Lily bent her head back inside to unlock the trunk, rolling her eyes as she did so. If she’d wanted someone else to change her tire, she’d have just done it herself. Or, you know, not popped her own tire to begin with. But that was beside the point.

She walked around to the back of the car so she could help Bucky move things around in her trunk to get to her spare. “You’re dressed awfully fancy for a Sunday morning,” she said, watching him out of the side of her eye. “You find God and suddenly decide to start going to church?”

Bucky chuckled. “Something like that,” he said. Lily stole a glance in his direction and caught him smiling softly to himself as he pulled her spare out from the trunk with his vibranium hand. Taking her car jack in the other, he moved around to the driver’s side and began loosening the lug nuts with his left hand. Lily shivered when she considered how strong he was, how much power that one hand contained.

Once all the nuts were loosened, he slid the jack under the frame of the car and began raising it. He was annoyingly efficient at this, Lily thought, and she realized her window of time with him wasn’t as big as she had originally anticipated.

“So, where were you when I called this morning, really?” she asked, leaning up against the side of Tony’s car as she watched him work. She just wanted him to be honest with her. She didn’t think she could take it if he continued to lie.

Bucky stilled in his motions. “I… I, uh, had a date,” he said after a moment.

Lily paused, playing confused. “A date on a Sunday morning?” she asked him. “That’s a really weird—oh.” Bucky left the car suspended on the jack and turned to face her, hands shoved into his pockets, and the guilt in his eyes nearly palpable. 

Good, Lily thought. Let him be guilty, now that he realizes I know he lied to me. “I didn’t realize you were seeing anyone, Jamie,” she said, voice deliberately meek and soft. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Bucky sighed and leaned back against her car. “It’s new,” he said. “Like, really new.”

Good, she thought. This hasn’t been going on for a long time. There was still a good chance she could nip it in the bud before it grew into a real problem. “So, when you said you were out with Sam last night…” She left it hanging in the air. Let him be the one to say the word.

“I lied to you,” he said with a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“Why, Jamie?” she asked him. “I didn’t think we lied to one another.” She thought about the hole she’d punched in her own tire. Well, she didn’t think he lied to her.

“We don’t, Lil,” he said. “I just… It seems like whenever I start seeing someone new, you just…” he paused to consider his words, and Lily started to get nervous. Did he know… did he suspect the things she’d done in the past to keep other girls away from him? He couldn’t. She’d been so careful… “You just form a lot of opinions on them, really quickly,” he said, and she released a breath. He didn’t know anything. She was safe. “I wanted to get to know this girl on my own, without any outside influences, before I decided to find out what everyone else thought about her.”

“I only tell you what I think because I care about you, Jamie,” Lily protested in her gentlest voice. She was going to have to walk a very delicate line here, between stressing her point and sounding sympathetic. “I’m just trying to look out for you, that’s all.”

“I know,” he said with a sigh. “I know you are, and I do appreciate it, but… I want to be able to figure out how I feel about this one before I start soliciting opinions about her from everyone else. Does that make sense?”

It did. Fuck, it did. Usually, Bucky was so eager to talk about the new girls he was dating, to introduce him to his best friends and find out what they thought about her, to get their opinions. If he was reticent this time, it could only mean one, horrible thing:

“You really like this girl, don’t you, Jamie?” Lily asked, trying so hard to keep her voice light, when inside, she felt like she was dying.

Bucky looked up at her. “Yeah, Lil,” he said, his dazzling white smile beaming at her and making her heart stop. “I really do.”

“That’s great,” Lily choked out. She turned back to the trunk of her car, pretending to busy herself with its contents so she didn’t have to look at him. “That’s really great.”

She heard Bucky move around and start working on the tire again. “Not really,” he said, his voice sounding dejected. Lily moved her head around from the back of the trunk to look at him. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, a spark of hope coming to life in her chest. 

Bucky let out a long sigh. “I think I might have blown it with her,” he said as he worked to take the flat tire off of her car. 

“Oh no,” Lily said, trying to keep the smile out of her voice. Maybe she wouldn’t have to do anything, afterall. Maybe Bucky had managed to fuck it up on his own. “What happened?”

Bucky was silent for a moment as he replaced the tire with ease. “I don’t really want to talk about it,” he said eventually. “Let’s just say that we left things very… ambiguously. I asked her if I could call her later, she didn’t really give me an answer either way. Just kind of shrugged. If she wanted me to call her, she would have just said so, right?”

Lily felt her stomach do a happy flip, but she put on a fake pout. “Oh, Jamie,” she said, fake sympathy oozing over her words, “please don’t tell me she’s playing mind games like that with you already! If a girl wants you to call her, she’ll tell you to call her, not play hard to get.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Bucky said defensively as he began re-tightening the lugnuts on the tire. “I just… I did something she didn’t like, is all. And she’s probably rightly pissed about it.”

Lily walked around the car to stand next to him as he finished up. “I don’t think I like this, Jamie,” she said cautiously. “You’ve barely started dating this girl, and already she thinks she can dictate your actions? That doesn’t seem healthy to me, at all.”

Bucky stood, running a hand across his face. “Nah, Lil– you’re… you’re getting it twisted. I made a mistake. I know I did, and she’s got every right to be mad at me about it. I need to talk to her, to sort it out.” Lily was losing ground; thankfully, she’d come prepared.

“Listen, Jamie,” she said, abruptly changing the topic in the hopes of getting his mind off this mysterious skank, “I was planning on having lunch up here today, since it’s so gorgeous out. I probably overdid it when I packed my food. Do you want to join me?”

Bucky heaved a sigh and looked like he was about to decline.

“Consider it my way of saying ‘thank you’ for you coming all the way out here to rescue me,” she added, knowing that she was laying it on thick, but not wanting him to walk away. “Come on, we’ll make a picnic of it. It’ll be fun!”

“Yeah, alright,” Bucky said, letting a smile cross his face. “I could eat.”

Bucky Barnes always did have a soft spot for a damsel in distress. With a grin, Lily opened the backseat of her car and pulled out the cooler she’d preemptively packed in the hope that just such an opportunity would arise. Lily was nothing if not prepared. 

Bucky reached for it. “Here, let me,” he said, taking it from her. Lily smiled to herself as she reached back into the car to pull out the picnic blanket she’d packed. 

“Such a gentleman,” she said as she closed the car door and led Bucky down one of the trails. It was a gorgeous late-summer day, and Lily could almost convince herself they were on a real date together. Almost. God, what she wouldn’t give for this to be the real thing. 

After they’d walked for about fifteen minutes, Lily veered left off of the trail and into the woods. “You bringing me back here to kill me?” Bucky asked in a playful tone as he followed her with the cooler.

“Yup,” Lily teased right back. “I definitely have faith in my ability to take out a super soldier on my own.” Her heart swelled when she was rewarded with an amused chuckle from Bucky. 

Soon, they reached her destination: a cozy clearing that sat along the bank of a creek that ran through the park, with a small waterfall that fed a crystal clear pool below.

“This is nice,” Bucky said, coming up behind Lily as she fanned out the blanket. “How’d you find this spot?”

Lily sat down and reached to take the cooler from Bucky, beckoning him to join her. “I was scouting some potential off-trail runs for the recruits and just kind of stumbled upon it,” she told him. She opened up the cooler and began taking out the food she’d brought– all of Bucky’s favorites.

Bucky nodded, then looked at the spread with wide eyes. “You packed all of this for yourself, Lil?”

Lily felt a slight blush creep up her cheeks– she had not, in fact, packed it all for herself, but specifically in the hope that he would end up joining her, though he could never know that. “I guess I just overestimated how hungry I’d be after my run,” she told him as she handed him a bottle of water. “Thanks for joining me so that all this food doesn’t go to waste.”

“No problem,” he said as he began to tear into the food she’d brought. “Thanks for getting a flat tire, I guess,” he added with a laugh.

They ate amicably, making small talk about their upcoming plans for the week, and how Lily’s latest batch of recruits looked. Lily was itching to ask Bucky more about his mystery date, to find out who she was, if she was someone Lily knew; but she didn’t want to bring it up– the less Bucky talked about her, the more likely he was to just forget about her all together, right? Especially if he’d done something to piss her off. Better to keep him distracted so that the window of opportunity for any reconciliation closed without him noticing it.

Soon, the food was gone, the sun high in the sky. Lily and Bucky both lay back on the picnic blanket, staring lazily up into the blue sky. “We should do something today,” Lily suggested, trying not to sound too eager.

Bucky chuckled. “Aren’t we doing something now, Lil?” he asked.

She playfully shoved his shoulder. “Later, I mean. Like, we’re having a good time; we should continue it. Go somewhere nice for dinner, do something after, like go to a club or see a show or something. Make a whole ‘friend-date’ night out of it!” Anything, she thought to herself. I’ll do anything, as long as I’m doing it with you. And who knew what could happen in the right romantic setting?

“Yeah, that sounds like it could be fun,” Bucky mused. “Sure.”

“Really?” Lily couldn’t believe her luck. “Leave all the planning to me, then!” She’d make sure she got a table at the most romantic restaurant she could find, and get them tickets to something steamy that would put Bucky in the right mood… She knew just what dress to wear, to show just enough skin to be tantalizing…

Yes, tonight, things were going to change. Lily could feel it.

<- Previous Part / Next Part ->

[maeamian]

This may just be the autism speaking, but I fucking hate when customer surveys ask me 'how likely are you to recommend this or that to a friend' because they are lying about what they're asking. I am 0% likely to recommend almost any product to any friend and especially not by brand if at all possible, but what they want to know is 'did you have a decent experience with the thing' and that's a whole other fucking question if you want that answered fucking ask that. Except if I answer the question they're asking instead of the secret question, they yell at their employees on my behalf which I never wanted either. Terrible system, would not recommend it to a friend.

[sherlock-is-ace]

.

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

When you’re having technical difficulties with emails and the solution is to send the help team an email :)

[mars-ipan]

oh it’s never fucking easy is it

[auteurdelabre]

A LITTLE SUN - PART FOUR Dieter x f!Reader

rating: 18+ (MINORS GET OUTTA HERE OR I'M TELLIN'!)

Story Summary: As a PA to megastar and mega man-child Dieter Bravo you've had your fair share of headaches. Getting accidentally pregnant with his baby however takes the cake, especially when he offers to pay you to be his surrogate. You just weren't expecting to fall in love with him along the way.

Chapter summary: The secret is out. . . And you both have to face the music.

tags: Surrogacy, Pregnancy, Body changes re: pregnancy, Mutual Pining, Idiots in love, Mentions of Drugs, Mentions of Parental Death, Parental Issues, Vulnerable Dieter, Vulnerable Reader.

dividers by @silkholland

a/n: Next chapter is... gonna be a doozy.

part one / part two / part three

"Tell me it isn't true."

"Huh?"

You roll over in bed, wiping the sleep from your eyes. Your cell is firmly lodged against your ear as your mother’s frantic cry is heard on the other end. It’s early the morning after the ultrasound and you’re still reeling from everything. There are soft pings going off on your phone, but all are drowned out by your mother’s terrified voice. 

After the kiss you and Dieter had been driven back to the rental in silence, both of you processing. You were pensive, staring down at your phone reading through work emails. Dieter on the other hand was beaming, his smile never dimming.

He’d tried to talk to you when you entered into the rental but you’d made a beeline for your bedroom where you’d fallen into an unsettled sleep. And now you have your mother screaming down the line at you as you blurrily try to understand what she’s going on about.

"People haven’t stopped calling,” your mom says her voice wobbling. "I keep hanging up but now they're on the lawn!"

"Mom what are you-"

"Tell me you're not having that horrible man's baby!"

It feels like a cold bucket of water has been dumped over your head sending icy chills down your spine. You jerk up in bed, your eyed bulging.

"What did you just say?"

You pull the phone from your ear and see all the pings and alerts that haven’t stopped. While you were sleeping it turns out you have been making headlines back home in the US. TMZ is of course the one to break the news, photos of you and Dieter splashes all over the internet.

Dieter Bravo makes PA his sex slave

There you both are, standing in the parking lot of the hospital. Dieter is smiling at you sweetly, his hand splayed over your belly. Your mid laugh and the two of you appear to have eyes only for each other. 

The next shot is the kiss – the one with your hand on his neck, his hand on your belly and both of you with your eyes shut. The level of intimacy in the photo is staggering to the point that just looking at it makes your face heat. 

How did they get that shot?

“Mom, I have to go,” you tell her breathlessly, hanging up on her still shrieking voice.

"DIETER! GET THE FUCK IN HERE!"

The day is long and by the evening the two of you have turned off your phones. The pings of incoming messages and phone calls are getting to be too much. Diane has scheduled an early meeting with the two of you tomorrow to discuss further steps.

You settle into the TV room, putting on some nature documentary but neither of you is watching it. You're seated by the fire, eyes lost in the flames.

Dieter is stretched out on the sofa, one arm behind his head, the other on his belly. He looked like a lost child, dark eyes wide and unblinking. He’s run his hands through his hair so much that it’s even more wild and mussed than usual.  Eventually when the silence grows oppressive you glance over at him.

"Was Mia pissed?" 

"She hadn't replied to any of my messages." 

Good. 

You don't know where that thought comes from, but it does. A strange sense of victory threads through your body, making you tingle pleasantly. But then your eyes drift over to Dieter still looking anxiously up at the ceiling and guilt soars through you. 

"Are you upset?"

"Of course I'm upset," Dieter snaps. "I really liked her. She's funny and chill and me being a single dad didn't bug her. She wanted me."

You say nothing. You watch as he throws his arm over his eyes, mouth curling into a frown. 

"And the shitty thing is I was gonna tell her when we got back to LA," Dieter sighs. "Fuck."

"I'm sorry," you offer in a quiet voice. Dieter’s eyes are immediately on your face. He sees you turned away from him. 

"What're you sorry for?"

You can't face him. You just shrug instead, feeling the queasy sensation of sentimentality. 

"I fucked it up for you."

Dieter is off the couch and crawling over to you without thinking. His long legs carry him clumsily until he’s kneeling at your feet.

"You didn't," Dieter says with that husky earnestness you’ve come to expect from him. You don't respond and he furrows his brows. "Hey, look at me."

You shake your head. You don't want to look at him. Dieter hates talking to people without seeing their eyes, it makes him uneasy. He doesn't see the irony in him constantly wearing sunglasses. He moves his fingers to your chin, gently tilting your face in his direction. 

"You did nothing wrong," 

"I kissed you."

"You were excited."

"But I kissed you," you repeat. 

"And I kissed you," Dieter offers without thinking before stumbling over his tongue as his words finally hit his brain. "It's like the first time you were excited about the baby and I loved sharing that with you."

He holds your gaze as you hold your breath. 

"I don't regret that moment. I wouldn't change it." His hand slips from your chin to your jaw, his thumb brushing against your cheek.

His face is so close to yours you can smell the cologne he spritzed to cover up the smell of cigarettes. You can see the length of his dark eyelashes. You force your eyes not to drift to his pouty mouth. 

"Even if it fucks up everything with you and Mia?"

Dieter goes to respond to you when a loud bang sounds on the front door. The two of you break apart and Dieter groans as he stands muttering about his knees. You move to the seat by the window, not up for talking to whatever company Dieter has invited over but not wanting to be in your stuffy bedroom. 

"Mia?"

You turn as Dieter says her name. Mia shoves past Dieter into the rental without taking the time to say a word to him. Her hair is wild from the wind outside and her jacket hangs on the crooks of her elbows. Despite everything she still looks glamorous. She spies you sitting near one of the windows with wide eyes. 

"Hi," you offer weakly. 

Dieter steps forward to follow Mia towards you but you wave him away. He shifts back, hanging awkwardly by the front door as the two women in his life meet eyes. Mia is staring at you harshly, her hand going to motion towards your belly.

"It's his isn't it?" Mia demands breathlessly.

You think of denying it but you know she doesn't deserve it. You hang your head, chin touching your chest. 

"Yes."

"Fuck," Mia says shaking her head. "I'm such a fucking idiot."

"You're not!" You insist, struggling to a stand. The blanket that had been draped over your belly falls to the ground. 

Mia's eyes rove your expanded stomach, noticing the pronounced swell under your tight t-shirt more easily than the last time she saw you. Her eyes widen and you feel the need to explain before she starts screaming or crying.

"It was a one night stand," you explain in a rush. 

"One where you got pregnant and are keeping the baby," Mia says flatly. "Doesn't sound like a casual one night thing to me."

"Dieter is paying me."

Mia's reaction is as expected: confused and then horrified. Her perfectly manicured nails slide over her mouth in distress. 

"What?"

"Dieter, get Mia a drink," you throw over Mia's shoulder. You need him to stop standing there staring at you like a bump on a log. You look back to Mia. "Please, just come sit down and let's talk about this." 

Dieter scrambles, knocking into one of the chairs before scampering off into the kitchen, relieved to have something to do. 

Mia looks to be debating your offer before nodding. She follows you to the large tufted chairs by the window, taking the one opposite you. 

"I don't even know why I'm here," Mia laughs ruefully, not able to meet you sympathetic gaze. "It's not like... I don't..."

She fumbles for the words that you already know and you give a chagrined smile. 

"Because you like him," you tell her.

"We barely know one another," she says to her chapped hands. “We haven’t even slept together.”

She nestles back into the chair like a delicate bird making home in a nest. Dieter rushes over with two full glasses of red wine. He presses one into Mia's hand, wincing at her cool appraisal of him. His hand extends the wineglass towards you before he realizes the faux pas. 

"Oh fuck," Dieter says wincing. "I didn't-"

"Its fine," you say rolling your eyes. "You drink it," you motion to the sofa across the room when Dieter goes to perch on the arm of your chair, "over there!"

Dieter nods, shuffling quickly away from you, the wine spilling in like drops after him like a bloody trail. He places the wineglass onto the coffee table with a quiet knock. 

You glance over Mia's body tucked tightly into the chair. She looks so haunted, so defeated that it breaks your heart. Yes, you can admit that there is a part of you that is jealous of her relationship but you know that it's just hormones. Ultimately you want Dieter happy and Mia makes him happy. 

"Mia," you say her name softly, leaning forward conspiratorially as her large eyes turn on you. "You and Dieter have a strong connection."

She gives a scoff into her wineglass. "Right."

"I've seen the two of you," you insist. "You bring out the best in him. You seem happy when you're with him."

"He makes me laugh," Mia relents. 

You try not to notice Dieter's head poking up from the couch, his eyes flitting from you to Mia and back again. 

"Don't let this," you motion to your expanded belly, "get in the way of that." 

"You say it like it's not a big deal," Mia says with a distressed laugh, her hand gesturing to your belly. "It's a child you two made together!"

"It’s a business transaction," you say firmly. "Dieter wanted to be a dad, I got pregnant, he offered to pay and I accepted. That's how non-emotional the entire thing was. I never wanted kids."

Mia twists the stem of her wineglass between her fingers anxiously. The drink sloshes against the sides hypnotically. 

"Why would you do this?" Mia finally asks you gently. "If you never wanted kids, I mean. This is a big ask."

You know she doesn't believe you and you don't know how to convince her other than giving her all the brutal facts. You exhale slowly, lips pressing together tightly. 

"Because I have significant debt," you tell her leaning back into the chair. "And when Dieter offered me a very generous payment to carry the child to term I didn't want to turn it down."

You try to sound clinical and detached as you explain this. Dieter's eyes flicked to your face when you mentioned the debt, his brows raised. Now he just continues looking uncertainly between you and Mia. 

"You're not going to want to be in this baby's life at all?" Mia asks, brow furrowed. "You're just going to go work for Dieter every day and ignore your own baby?"

The way she says this sounds judgmental. Like you're a monster for choosing this. It makes your hackles rise momentarily before you remember that she's come here to understand everything. You smooth down the pillow absently, grounding yourself.  

"I won't be working for Dieter after I give birth," you explain in a rush, avoiding the way Dieter's eyes move sharply to your face. "I'll pay off my debts and then I'm going back to school to finish my schooling. I won't even be in the same city."

You hide a wince when you see Dieter's hurt expression behind Mia's shoulder at this proclamation. You know he’d been upset when you mentioned Sacramento in passing, but now he just looks devastated.

Mia blinks rapidly, looking even more thrown then before. "You won't?"

"Nope." You shake your head before giving a tepid smile. "But that means I won't be there to get in the way either. No random run ins, no having to pretend things aren't totally fucking awkward."

Mia gives a small smile at this

“It also means that your relationship with Dieter would be public news,” you tell her quietly. “It means tabloids running things about you being a stepmom. It means a lot of unwanted attention.”

“I could give a fuck about that,” Mia says rolling her eyes. “They said I didn’t have a belly button last year. I don’t care what they print about me. I just signed an airtight three picture deal with Marvel.”

You want to laugh at how you pinned Mia as this innocent little waif who didn’t know what she was getting into. How wrong you were. She’s more shrewd and worldly than most fifty year olds you know in the business.  Suddenly your fears about her being too innocent, about her career being damaged, are pushed to the side.

But her smile drops and she jerks her head behind her to glare at a solemn looking Dieter who now stands braced against the edge of his couch. She places her empty wineglass next to her on the floor.

"You lied to me, Dee."

"I told him to," you break in before your boss can reply. "I begged him not to tell anyone. Even you."

Mia turns back around, brow raised. "Why?"

"Because I was involved in a one night stand with my boss," you say with a dejected scoff. "And I got pregnant from it. From the man the media once called Burnout Bravo. I was humiliated. I didn’t want anyone to know. My own mother didn’t even know until TMZ came out with it."

Dieter feels his heart sink as you say this. The truth that he always suspected so brutally delivered makes him feel like he's been punched in the gut. Burnout Bravo.

Mia begins twisting her fingers together nervously. "Really?"

"Really," you nod before shooting a look over at Dieter that says play along. 

"It's the truth," Dieter says hollowly. 

"So there's no feelings here?" Mia asks the both of you. 

You're the first to reply with a laugh you force from the bottom of your belly. 

"No. Never. It was a one night stand because we were drunk and because I hadn't been laid in months. That's all it was."

"Yeah," Dieter says laughing the same sharp way you do. "I don't fuck my employees. We were wasted." 

That stings. To be referred to as an employee and so carelessly. But it’s what needs to be done. The two of them fit together. You lean closer to Mia, dropping your voice so that only she can hear you.

“Mia what you two have is special,” you emphasize. “I’m not just saying that. I’ve known Dieter for years. You’re the first one I’ve really seen make him change for the better.”

Mia seems to soften at this and you watch as Mia pushes up from the chair and draws over to Dieter. He stands and she allows him to pull her into his arms. He closes his eyes as he holds her against him. She murmurs something into his neck and the moment suddenly feels incredibly intimate.

You feel your intruding on the two of them and you shuffle past them into your bedroom, closing the door quietly behind you.

Back in the kitchen Mia pulls back slightly to gaze up at Dieter.  "Do you want her, Dieter?"

"What?" Dieter blinks rapidly. "You already asked me that and-"

"And now she's not in the room with us," Mia finishes, peering into Dieter's face. "And I want your total honesty." 

Total honesty.

He can't give her that. Can't tell her how you occupy his thoughts at all times. Can't tell her that even if you weren't carrying his child he's crazy about you. Can't tell her that he's so touched that you care about him well past that of a personal assistant. Can't tell her that he's told you things no one knows because he trusts you more than anyone. 

And he can't tell her those things because he really cares for Mia, more than he ever expected to. If things continue between the two of them there's a very good chance he's going to fall in love with her because right now he's well on his way. 

He doesn't want to give her up. 

His affection for you will wane. When you leave for school he'll be able to forget you. You don't want him so why would he pin his affections on that?

He needs to move on from you. 

"No," Dieter says firmly. "It's not like that. I mean of course I care about her. She's been my assistant for years and she's carrying my kid." 

"You know that's not what I mean," Mia says flatly, her light eyes scanning his face. Dieter stares into those eyes, feeling himself melt. 

Mia is sweet and ambitious and she likes to party. She's got an edge, a relaxed way of being and she's fucking gorgeous. She's an actress so of course there's a bit of ego but that's nothing he can't handle. If anything he likes it about her. 

Mia had been so understanding, so cool. Dieter could feel himself falling harder and harder for her the longer they were together. Part of him thinks she suggested the casual nature of the relationship because that's all she thought he was capable of. She gets him in a lot of ways. 

But you’re here and you're carrying his child and even if you weren't, after breaking down the walls you keep up these past few months, Dieter doesn't know that he can stop wanting you. It doesn't make sense; you don't want him like that so why does he still desire you? 

He needs to quit it though. If he doesn't watch himself he's going to lose Mia and he doesn't want that. 

"I want you," Dieter finishes softly, cupping her cheek. 

Mia slides her manicured hand over Dieter's wrist, sighing as she looks up at him. 

"I think maybe we need to take a beat Dee."

"Huh? Why?"

Dieter can't understand what she's talking about. They're going at a glacial pace. He hasn't even taken her to bed yet. Something that would have bothered him in past relationships, but for this one just feels right.

"Because I need some time to think things over," Mia tells him gently. "This is a lot to take in."

Dieter frowns. "But, I like being with you."

"And I like being with you," Mia assures him with a smile. "But I need to wrap my head around this. I know why you did what you did, but I need to sit with it and let you know how I feel."

She’s dumping him.

Dieter isn’t an idiot. He’s done this song and dance in his time. He knows by the tentative way she meets his eyes, the way her hand stays lightly on his wrist. She’s softening the blow, he realizes.

"If that's what you want," he manages. He won’t force a woman to be with him. And despite everything he’s glad he met Mia.

"It is," Mia nods. She stands on tiptoe to press a kiss to his lips, smiling as she pulls back. "I better get back to the hotel. I have an early day on set tomorrow. Not all of us were lucky enough to finish wrapping their scenes."

"The price of being the lead," Dieter grins. Mia giggles, going to pull on her jacket before giving him a brief wave.

“I’ll see you later, Dee.”

You're in bed when Mia leaves, half dozing on your side. You’ve just removed the headphones from your belly and you’re ready to fall into a hopefully long sleep. You start when the door to your room creaks opens and Dieter steps inside, creeping over to your bed.

"Hey," you whisper in the dark. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," Dieter nods, unbuttoning his shirt. "We talked it out."

"Okay. Good."

The shirt is dropped to the ground, followed quickly by his jeans. Wearing only his boxers he stills, realizing he's not in his room but yours. 

"Did you... Can I sleep in here?"

"In here?" 

"Yeah," Dieter says and you can hear the insecurity there. 

"Sure," you say pulling back the covers. "If you can fit in this narrow bed with me and my stomach."

"I'll fit," Dieter grins. 

You feel him slip under the covers, shifting nearer to you until his breathing is fanning over the back of your neck.

His hand tentatively rests at your hip, tensing. He remembers last time the two of you were together in bed, you snuggling up to him, kissing his shoulder, holding him. There was nothing sexual about it, just comforting. He wants that again. 

"Would," he starts, feeling embarrassed. "Would it-"

"What?"

"Would it be okay if I held you? Not trying anything," he quickly adds which makes you smile in the dark. "I just like holding him." 

Your smile fades. He doesn't want to hold you. He wants to hold the baby.

Of course he does. 

You want to quell the beating of your heart. You want to remind yourself that this is transactional. 

But more than that you want to be held by him. 

You want to inhale the scent of his cologne and feel the ridge of his nose grazing your neck. You want to feel his hand curl against your stomach. And most of all you want to fall asleep with the man who helped you to create this life you carry.

"Yeah," you shuffle back against him. "I'm sure he misses you."

It's a silly thing to say especially since the baby doesn't even know it’s a baby yet. But Dieter grins at the comment, holding you. 

"I missed him," he murmurs, hand grazing softly against your abdomen. 

Guilt gnaws away at you though. 

"Would Mia be okay knowing you're in here?" You whisper in the darkness. "I mean, I know nothing is happening, I just mean... You know."

"Yeah. Pretty sure she dumped me." Dieter supplies.  He feels you tense in his arms, tilting your head over your shoulder to stare up at him concerned.

"What? Really?" 

"Yeah," you feel Dieter shifting behind you, his large arm coming to wrap tighter around your waist. "Says she needs time to process everything." 

“Doesn’t sound like breaking up.”

“Trust me,” Dieter sighs. “I know a break up monologue when I hear it. I’ve given enough of them.”

“Oh.”

You think on this, hand sliding under your pillow. Dieter sounds resigned, like this isn't necessarily something he wants. 

"You're okay with it, Dieter?"

"Yeah." 

"Maybe it was for the best," you offer, trying to cheer him up. "I don't know that monogamy was ever your thing." 

The moment stretches between you both, the room quiet. Dieter has found your left hand, his thumb coming to absently rub the ring you wear there. The ring he bought you that you never take off. The ring that if you knew how much it cost you would never wear for fear of losing it. He loves seeing it on your finger, knowing that something he bought you ties you to him in some way. 

"For the right person it would be," Dieter finally offers in a soft rasp. Before you can say anything he's flicking the lamp next to the bed off. 

"G'night." 

"Night."

Dieter wakes the next morning when the scent of your perfume on the pillow. He cracks his eyes open to see the bed empty and he feels a stab of disappointment. 

He showers before pulling on his clothes and robe and padding into the kitchen. You're sitting there, backlit by the sun and when you look up from your cereal bowl and cast a bright smile in his direction he feels momentarily breathless. 

You’re so fucking beautiful.

"Morning, ready for a painfully long flight home tonight?"

"Y-yeah," Dieter stammers before pouring himself a cup of the brewed coffee. 

You watch him looking anxiously around as he dumps the sugar into his brew before taking a seat opposite you. 

"So I was thinking about the Mia thing," You offer after a sip of tea. “She loves to travel right? Like, outside of work?”

“Yeah,” Dieter nods enthusiastically. "Last week she actually suggested we go on a trip together after the film wraps."

“So do it,” you insist. “Show her with action that you want and cherish her. Just the two of you somewhere romantic. Where does she like? Paris? Italy?”

“She was always talking about Prague,” Dieter offers as he recalls their times together. When they were first getting to know one another under the pretense of running lines. “She’s always wanted to go.”

“So take Mia to Prague,” you say enthusiastically as you can manage. “See the sights, stay at wonderfully fancy places, do romantic things. Prove to her that you want to be with her. Because she obviously means something to you Dieter.”

“You seem awfully concerned about my romantic life,” Dieter muses. “When did that start?”

“Contrary to what you believe, I care about you,” you say shortly. “And when I’m gone I want to make sure that things are stable. Mia is a good stabilizing force. And from what I can tell she’s a lot tougher than I gave her credit for.”

“So Prague,” Dieter echoes, thinking about your suggestion. It’s a good plan. A smart one if Mia will give him a chance to prove how much he cares about her.

“I won’t lie I’m jealous,” you smirk at your cereal bowl. "Always wanted to go there."

I'll take you. I'll take you anywhere you want to go.

Dieter shakes his head to erase this dangerous thought. 

No. No you won't, Bravo. She's leaving practically as soon as your kid is here. Stop thinking about her like that. She's your employee. 

"Well you'll have three hundred thousand dollars to play around with," Dieter says forcing a smile to his own face. 

"Two hundred," you correct through a mouthful of cereal. 

"Huh?"

"Well uh, I have to pay off my mom's mortgage. There's still about a two hundred thousand left on it. Then I have to pay off my student loans the next semesters' tuition and rent a place so... No trips to Prague for me." 

You give a little huffing laugh before going back to your cereal. Dieter takes a long sip of his coffee thinking about everything that’s gone on.

You begin to tap into your tablet, bringing up your flight details. Dieter watches you typing, transfixed by the way your fingers move, the way the ring he bought you sometimes spins on your finger. He recalls the way those same fingertips felt gripping him as he licked-

Fucking stop.

"Okay, that's done; the car will be here around three. Bags are packed, your passport is with mine," you say checking things off your list with a satisfied smile before it drops. “And our meeting with Diane is in ten.”

“Diane?”

Diane is the big guns when it comes to PR and Dieter’s career in general. Knowing that you’ve pissed her off stresses the both of you big time. And as if you’ve summoned a well organized demon the laptop chirps.

Seconds later you and Dieter sit awkwardly next to one another at the kitchen table, your laptop positioned between the two of you. A furious looking Diane is on the zoom call, her dark red brows knitted together. 

"I thought I was perfectly clear."

"You were Diane," you jump in, your cheeks red. "It's-"

"No public affection," Diane interjects. "No fraternizing with co-stars."

Dieter gives a sheepish grin at that before his eyes jot to you. You can't even look at him in the small box of the zoom meeting. You feel so foolish about all of this. All your years of professionalism, striving to have things under control and this is how it ends? A blurry snapshot of you kissing your celebrity boss?

"The baby kicked for the first time," Dieter offers quietly. "We were just really excited."

"Congrats," Diane says without a shred of conviction. "Now we have a PR nightmare that we have to spin."

“I know we screwed up, Diane, but I swear it was a heat of the moment,” you implore her. “It won’t happen again.”

“You’re damn right it won’t. As of this moment you are no longer working for Dieter Bravo.”

“Hey-“ Dieter starts but Diane is talking over him.

“You wanted to keep her on Dee, and look what happened. And now we can’t even keep you on the books because it’ll look suspicious,” Diane snaps. “You can’t be seen fucking and paying your assistant, it’ll be career suicide. I’ll have to pay her wage through a third party and I really didn’t need this headache considering I was already finished up on a plan for unveiling baby Bravo and now I have to rethink the entire thing.”

 Dieter looks over to see your head hung low, your cheeks stained red. He knows how much this is killing you. How much you prided yourself on your work acumen and professionalism. He tries to slide his hand over yours but you pull away sharply, eyes going to Diane.

“I understand, Diane. Just tell me what I need to do.”

The flight back is a strained one. Diane has booked you both first class and private pods but across the plane from one another. You don’t interact the entire flight; instead you’re left to your own thoughts as you absently stroke your stomach.

You have a few things in your favor – it was getting close to having to stop working anyway. You’re officially showing and you’re still getting paid. That money can all go to the family.

The family.

Your mother’s voice over the phone rings in your ears. The shrill terrified shout that this couldn’t be true. You’ve disappointed her. You have to explain it all to her as soon as possible. It’ll be easier to just tear the band aid off.

Dieter rests in his own private pod three whiskey’s deep, his swollen eyes hidden behind sunglasses. He’s been holding back tears all morning and now they slip down his gold cheeks in the privacy of the flight.

He doesn’t get to see you or the baby until he’s born. It’s a fucking cruelty.

“If you want her to have a normal life, Dee, you’ll stay far away from her. She needs to be seen as a surrogate only, not a romance. We can write the kiss off as a one-time thing if we find an alternative romantic partner to highlight for you.”

Of course he’d agreed immediately. He doesn’t want you or the baby stressed. It’s his own fault for wanting you so badly it aches. You promised to update the app daily, to video chat at least every other day. That had seemed fair.

But now on the way back to LA, Dieter can’t help but feel this growing pit starting in his belly. A coldness that has nothing to do with the weather. He’s not going to see you every day, won’t be able to smell your perfume, hear your voice when you sing in the shower (off-key), won’t snuggle you to him as you watch nature documentary’s. 

At least before this photo Dieter had the option of going to your house to see you in the last few months of your pregnancy, but now with the media frenzy there’s no possibility. It’ll be horrible for you and your mom.

Once he’s off the flight Dieter’s phone is buzzing. He takes it out, surprised to see that Diane has already sent him a few texts. He’s confused before he remembers that without you as his PA he’ll be receiving her messages directly.

[12:33pm] I talked to Mia’s publicist. She’s agreed to a public romance rollout this Friday. New club opening.  Confirming your availability.

Dieter glances over at you in the luggage carousel, eyes flitting from bag to bag as you wait for yours.  You look like a goddess despite your dark black clothes and oversized sunglasses. He knows you’re trying to be inconspicuous.

[12:34pm] D: I’m available.

You’ve got your luggage and Dieter scrambles to grab his own before rolling it over to you. You notice his approach and try to affect a casual attitude. Thankfully no one seems to recognize you from the photos.

“I’ll make sure you get into your taxi,” Dieter offers quietly walking alongside you, his brows raised.

“No it’s fine,” you insist, taking your rolling luggage and giving him a soft smile. “I’ll be good. I’ll head out first; hopefully if there are any paps they won’t recognize me before I’m in the cab.”

“Right.”

When you walk out of the airport you think of all the things Diane warned you about over the phone. The photographers, the yelling, the attention. You thought you were ready for it.

You were wrong.

But there are at least fifty paparazzi all hanging around like flashbulb vultures waiting to catch you both looking vulnerable. Groups of men with oversized cameras are all shouting at you, calling your name, saying things to get your attention.

"Over here! Hey, over here!"

"Have you two picked out names yet?"

“Did you put holes in the condom?”

"Do you know the gender?"

“Do you sleep with all your employers?”

"Is it twins? It looks like it could be twins."

You feel anxious tears starting at the corner of your eyes. They’re going to photograph you and you’re going to be crying. You still in the crowd, hand on your luggage strap, frozen like a deer in the headlights.

The taxi seems so far away, the lights, the sounds; the sensation of being suffocated is all you can focus on. You feel like you’re drowning. Your chin wobbles and another camera is thrust directly into your face.

One hand curls over your belly protectively before you raise the other to shield your face. You feel completely alone and vulnerable, the tears almost spilling when you feel a warm hand envelop your wrist. You glance up to see Dieter there at your side, stony faced at the paparazzi as he pulls you gently towards him.

“Give her room to breathe.”

Gratitude floods you and despite Diane’s directions to avoid each other like the plague you let him lead you towards where his private SUV waits.

His arm goes to your back, urging you to move with him. As you and Dieter shuffle through the throng of shouting people you suddenly understand why Dieter drowns himself in drugs and sex and everything else. This constant whirlwind, this unbearable attack on all sides is exhausting. Photographers, fans, cameras, eyes, shouts. It's terrifying.

"Is this the result of a one night stand?"

“Dieter have you asked for a DNA test?”

 “How old are you?”

“DIETER I LOVE YOU!”

“Did you feel pressured because Mr Bravo is your boss?”

“Can I have your autograph!?”

“What a slut!”

“What’s the sex like?”

A camera is thrust inches from your face and you give a yelp, putting up a free hand in front of you as the light flashes.

"Hey, get the fuck away from her," Dieter says placing a protective arm around your waist and sweeping you along with him. He doesn’t let you go as he herds you through the line of shouting people. Dieter’s driver is there, grabbing your bag for you and loading it into the SUV.

“Just breathe, baby,” Dieter murmurs against your temple. “I got you.”

You want to tell him that this will look bad in tomorrow’s gossip column; that even just walking side by side will create a frenzy of tabloid speculation. But you’re terrified at the mob of people and your hand clutches at the front of Dieter’s jacket as you shy away from them.  

"Are you really pregnant or is this a publicity stunt?"

"Dieter what about rumors that you've been linked recently with Mia Rowe?"

"It's it true this child might be Robert Pattinson’s?"

When the last photographer starts shouting and shoving the camera in your face again you let out a small whimper as Dieter opens the door of the SUV for you.

“Please just stop!”

Dieter hears your cry and turns to see your terrified expression before you’re burying your face in Dieter’s shoulder.

Dieter loses all rational thought. All he can focus on is the way you’re trembling in his arms, the way your hand has gone protectively over your stomach protecting his son, the child you made together.   

Before you can stop him he's reared back and kicked the photographer in the vee of his legs and the man blanches. You look on in horror at the altercation.

"Dieter!"

Flashbulbs are going off like crazy as the man groans sharply, grabbing between his legs and collapsing onto the sidewalk.

“I said stay the fuck away from her!” Dieter shouts, his cheeks red.

He pulls himself in after you, closing the door before his arms are around you, pulling you against him. The windows are tinted, but that won’t matter after that little performance out there.

“Ready to go Mister Bravo?”

“Yeah, thanks Hank.”

The car is already in motion, heading for Dieter’s place as the sound of shouts grow quieter and quieter with each passing mile. You’re still shaking, still reeling from everything that happened.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “That must have been terrifying. I’m used to it now but I remember how it used to be.”

“How do you do it?” you ask, still trembling. “They’re relentless.”

“Coke. Sex. Booze,” Dieter shrugs as if this is a natural response. “I get by. But it doesn’t mean you should have to.”

Dieter has his hand holding yours, thumb rubbing soothing circles along the back of your palm. 

“And here I thought my Mom was going to be the most stressful part of today,” you say trying to offer a weak smile.

“Is it really going to be that bad do you think?”

“Honestly yeah, I do,” you say nodding.  “She’s going to be pissed and I’m going to have to walk on eggshells until the baby is born.”

"Why don't you stay in my guest house?"

You gaze up and over at Dieter, seeing that he’s watching your face with a soft expression as the car coasts through the busy LA traffic.

"What?”

"You don't want to stay at home, I have the empty space. I don't see why that's so weird. And if I’m honest I don’t wanna be so far away from my son,” Dieter finishes lamely. “I like seeing him growing every day.”

I like seeing you every day.

He can’t admit that to you. He never will. He’ll swallow it down deep.

“I have to go home, Dieter.” You insist. “Plus, Diane would murder me. This flies in the face of everything she’s trying to cultivate for your image.”

Dieter doesn’t say anything, but he does relax back into the seat next to you.  He doesn’t release your hand, instead he maneuvers his fingers, lacing them through yours and resting them on the seat between you both.

You tell Hank your address and you take a deep breath as a short while later he rounds on your street.

Your Mom wasn’t joking.

There really are tons of people littering your normally quiet suburban neighborhood. Many with expensive looking cameras and phones. You groan as the SUV crawls by them before you insist on having the Hank drive you around the corner. The last thing you need is to be seen getting out of Dieter’s car.

Hank goes to take your bags out of the trunk and Dieter readies himself to follow you out the door.

“I’ll come-“

“No,” you insist gently. “I have to do this myself.”

He wants to deny this but he sees the seriousness of your countenance and nods. He knows you’re a strong, capable woman. But the thought of you being messed with by those paps are making his jaw clench.

“Don’t worry,” you tell him with a grin as you slip on a pair of oversized sunglasses. “Thanks to you I know how to get them to leave me alone.”

He can’t help but let out a short laugh, cut short when you close the car door. Dieter watches you take the suitcase handle from Hank and thank him before you roll it down the sidewalk and out of his life for the foreseeable future.

The first thing you notice when you get inside your house is how quiet it is.

Especially compared to the madness that is just outside your front door.  You’d successfully ignored the men and women who shouted questions at you. You were busy on the phone with the local police ensuring that your Mother’s home would no longer be swarmed. You slide your suitcase to the left of the door.

“Mom?”

She appears moments later dressed in her sweatpants and oversized sweater.  She hasn’t left the house despite it being a workday.

“Your flight was okay?”

“Uh, yep.”

“Good.”

“You didn’t go to work today?”

“Couldn’t get my car out of the driveway,” your Mom says tightly.

“I called the city when I was walking up,” you tell her, toeing off your shoes. “They’ll take care of it.”

She nods but makes no move to smile or to hug you. She’s always been an emotional woman, prone to hugs and kisses so her complete lack of anything has you on edge.

“I made pie,” she says, “come have a slice.”

You hear distant sirens outside as you follow her into the kitchen, taking your coat off before plopping into seat opposite her at the table. You don’t miss how her eyes widen at the obvious swell of your stomach.  

“So it’s true.”

You watch her cut the peach pie she’s baked noting that her fingers are trembling. You say nothing in reply, simply watching as she slides your portion and a fork to you on the plate before she looks back at your face.

“You made a child with that horrible man.”

“He’s not a horrible man,” you say, your voice coming out more caustic than expected. “You don’t know anything about him other than what the media wants you to think.”

“Oh, he’s an angel then, is that it?” your Mother gives a humorless laugh as she sits in her seat, the cheap wood creaking. “He doesn’t do drugs? Doesn’t say crazy things? Doesn’t act like a fool?”

Your mother has always ragged on Dieter through your entire employment. Most of the time you could shrug it off, ignore it or even laugh along with her. But now? After everything you’ve experienced with him you feel a strangely intense feeling of protectiveness. For the soft man that holds you in bed and buys you rings just because. For the man that listens to you talk about your Dad and shares about his mom. Hearing her deride him makes you curl your fingers around your fork in anger.

“Even if he did all those things, so what? If the worst thing you can say about Dieter Bravo is that he acts immature and says silly things and does drugs every once in a while does that really make him so horrible?”

“It makes him irresponsible,” your Mom snaps. The worst possible thing you can be in your mother’s eyes in irresponsible. “And he’s supposed to be the father of your child? Of my grandson? I’m not going to have a son in law that acts like he does.”

A son in law?

You could laugh at the thought of Dieter being a married family man. When would he have time to go on hippie retreats and have threesomes? Although considering his behavior of late perhaps that’s an unfair belief. Regardless, Dieter Bravo is not the marrying kind.

"Mom we're not getting married. Ever."

Your mom's fork clatters onto her plate, the pie forgotten.

"What? Why not?"

Fuck. This is going to hurt so much more than you thought. Hearing your Mom refer to herself as a grandmother is a new kind of pain you weren’t anticipating. You can see it there in her eyes that keep lingering on your belly – all the hopes and dreams of grandchildren running through her mind.

“We’re not in a relationship.… this isn't... I'm not keeping the baby," you finally manage to say in a thick voice.  

"What?” Your mom nearly shouts when she looks to your swollen stomach, her features contorted in horror.  "You can't just get an-"

"No, not like that. I mean, I'm giving the baby to Dieter. He's paying me to be his surrogate." 

Saying it out loud makes your heart hammer. If you thought she looked horrified at the previous comment, she looks downright disgusted now. She leans back in her chair, as if she physically cannot stand to be closer to you.

"What?"

"I'm getting paid," you explain in a rush, hoping that this will ease the pain of it. "Three hundred thousand dollars." 

You expect that this will soften the blow of the news but if anything she looks as if she’s been slapped.

“You’re… selling your baby?”

The way she says it makes your skin crawl, like you’re some backroom monster.

“It’s not like that,” you say raking your hands through your hair in frustration. “Mom, I’m not like, his Mom. I’m just carrying him. Like, remember when Liz had the surrogate? I’m like that girl they hired.”

“Liz didn’t let her husband sleep with that woman did she? They did it at the hospital, with a transfer,” Your mom peers into your face and you think you see a shadow of hope. “Is that what happened, honey? You got an embryo transfer?”

Fuck this is getting worse by the minute.

“No. We slept together. It was a mistake.”

You wince when you feel your son kick, a light flutter that has you gripping the sides of your abdomen in surprise.  Guilt immediately goes through you – can he understand what you’re saying during all of this? No, of course not, he’s a fucking fetus. And yet that doesn’t stop you from welling up.

"This is so…twisted,” your mom replies with a shake of her head. “It’s one thing to sleep with him and have his baby. But you… You’re not even going to be his mother? You’re selling him off like he’s a piece of furniture?”

A solemn quiet goes around the space and your mother drops her napkin to the table.  You take a bite of your pie, finding it bitter.

“That’s not at all what’s happening.”

"If your father was here-"

"Well he's not!" you snap out at her. “You had no one else to take care of you so I stepped up. I see how long the hours are that you work, how exhausted you are. You’re supposed to retiring at this age, not taking on double shifts. I wanted to pay off the mortgage for you. I wanted to pay for my schooling. And Dieter wanted a child, so how is this pregnancy a bad thing? We all got something out of it.”

“Got something out of it?” Your mother almost sneers. “You don’t get something out of it. You created life and now you’re selling him for profit to a man who needs help staying sober longer than a week. It’s disgusting what the two of you are doing.”

A searing pain goes through you as you sit there, the pie dry and tacky in your mouth. It hurts to swallow it down. But it hurts more to know that your sacrifice is now being thrown back into your face.

“I did this for you,” you tell her weakly.

"I never asked you to do anything for me," your mom says and now you see the shame in her eyes. The disappointment. “It’s disgraceful treating human life like a commodity. I… I can’t accept that money from you. It’s tainted.”

I did it all for nothing.

You feel numb. Your Mom has lowered her chin to her sternum and you can see fat tears slipping down her nose. She’s silent as she cries and when she does this it reminds you so much of your father’s funeral and the way she’d silently sobbed that you feel physically ill.

You can’t be in this environment. Not just because it hurts so much to have her talk to you like she has. But because you can’t spend the next several months on eggshells, high strung and anxious. You can’t do that to the life that is building itself within your womb, cell by cell. You will give your son every advantage you can.

"I can't be in this house," you say softly. "I'm sorry, mom. I... I can't."

“I think that might be for the best,” she agrees, and you notice that she can’t meet your eyes.

You move to your feet wobbling to your bedroom, closing the door gently behind you. You look at the awards on the desks, the beautiful painting you look at each morning, at the space you lived in with your Mom and Dad. You can almost hear his voice as he told he was so proud of his smart daughter and her science awards.

If you try you can remember how it felt to have him read you bedtime stories before you fell asleep in this very room. You can still smell the cinnamon bread your Mom would make you every year for your first day of school.

But then you blink and all you see is a room with a bed and a desk and some art on the walls. A past life of someone who doesn’t exist anymore.  You catch your reflection in your dresser mirror, amused to see that the woman staring back at you hasn’t been a child for a long time. She stands with a splotchy face and tired eyes, and a stomach that swells with life.

“You’re gonna be safe,” you tell the bump in the mirror.  “I promise.”

You glance out between your drawn blinds thankful to see that the group has been dispersed by local law enforcement. Good. You bring out your mobile and begin tapping out a message.

[4:31pm]:  Is that offer of staying at your place still on?

D [4:31pm]: i'll send a car

You don’t even fight him on it.

[4:32pm]: Thank you.

D [4:32pm]: u never have to thank me

You make your way to your closet where you bring out a second suitcase, filling it to the brim with everything you think you’ll need for the next little bit. Your suitcase full of clothes from your last trip is waiting for you at the front door for when you exit.

You sit on the end of your bed, waiting for the car when you feel your phone buzz at your hip.

It’s a photo from Dieter, one that makes your brows saddle. It’s of his guest house, the one he usually just keeps for out of town guests and overflow storage for his paintings and other purchases.

But you can see he’s organized it, swept the floors and set everything up nicely complete with a vase of fresh flowers from his garden sitting on the coffee table.

D [4:56pm]: ready and waiting, baby mama

Your hand is on your abdomen without thought, gently holding your son through the tendons and tissues. You give a watery smile at your screen before looking down at your belly, feeling a sense of relief bloom behind your sternum.

“Everything’s gonna be okay, little one. Your Dad is gonna take care of us.”

TAGLIST: @getitoutofmymindwrites @manuymesut @whirlwindrider29 @mostardentlypascal @lu62 @missladym1981 @heareball @sptbear @drewharrisonwriter @lizzie-cakes

[dazednstoned]

Modern Rdr2 hcs:

-Abigail dresses like it's the 2000s (I'm talking miniskirts, low rise jeans, heeled flip flops w the fucking sparkles). She will never change too.

-Charles and Arthur go on dates to those adoption events to pet all the dogs and cats

-the whole gang frequently gathers for family bbqs. Every time someone ends up getting punched, passing out, or storming off

-Abigail puts Jack on one of those backpack leashes for kids (John too if we're being honest)

-Tilly, Karen, and Marybeth do full goodwill, garage sale, and vintage market days. They do not mess around either

-the only thing hosea knows how to do on his phone is play chess

-Sean still can't read in modern time

-john plays guitar and writes really horrible love songs for Abigail

-Javier and john r for sure in a band together, they're pretty good when they sing the songs Javier wrote

-Lenny and Sean co-parent an extremely neglected widgetable

-Arthur listens to facebook reels on full volume in public w no shame. Isaac is mortified every time

-john has various tattoos, half of them are god awful. He definitely got Abigail's name or initials tattooed somewhere and she was livid

-Karen gives herself piercings with a really shitty piercing gun

-arthur and John work together in construction, an auto shop, or in the equestrian field.

-Dutch has a very rigid and lengthy skincare routine

-john uses 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner, but he says it's 3 in 1 bc it also counts as bodywash

-Tilly is the only one of her family to graduate college (Arthur dropped out of hs when Eliza got pregnant and john never went)

-Hosea is one of those old people you just see walking around the neighborhood at like 8am

-john and Arthur don't wear sunscreen or put on lotion. Abigail sometimes manages to force some sunscreen on John's face before he goes to work tho

-bill refuses to go to gay bars but uses Grindr

-Abigail cuts John and Jack's hair bc she refuses to pay for something she thinks she can do herself (she cannot do it herself)

-Kieran is a hair braiding god. I'm talking French braids, fish tails, you name it.

-john owns a really shitty pick up truck. Jack was either conceived or birthed in the backseat of it (maybe both)

-Sean falls for those free iPhone scams every time

-the only videogame charles plays is stardew valley. He thought it would be relaxing, it wasn't.

-Tilly and Mary Beth are in a book club together

-Abigail is the type of parent to not let her kid play w nerf guns or watch pg13 movies (John is the exact opposite)

-Sadie spends her weekends at rage rooms

-everyone's fridges are covered in drawings Jack made for them

-John, Javier, and Sean game together. Violence always ensues

-dutch does not tip waiters

-john tried to play catch w Jack once and ended up getting hit in the groin by a baseball. He didn't know 4 yr olds could throw that hard

-Abigail and Karen (& sometimes Charles) drink cheap wine together every Sunday and discuss the dumb things their boyfriends did that week

-Lenny and Hosea do the wordle everyday

-Jack is in little league soccer. John sits back drinking a beer as Abigail shouts at the referee

-Abigail got a tramp stamp of a little bow when she was 17 (she regrets it)

-Hosea exclusively sends emails

-Abigail hides John's weed socks bc she doesn't want Jack to see and "fall into a life of drugs" when he's older

-Arthur is a hiking dad through and through. While John is a sit on the couch drinking a beer w his kid in his lap kinda dad

-uncle is the old drunk that lived in the same trailer park as Abigail and John did when Jack was a baby. He kinda just stuck around after

-Miss Molly O'Shea would be a makeup god and u cannot convince me otherwise

I might do a pt 2 late in the future!

[seat-safety-switch]

All around you, businesses are suffering because they neglected the cybers. That's right. Cybersecurity is more important than ever, because Russians will send you an email attachment that you open, and then your whole network gets all fucked up. And the experts are run off their feet trying to clean all this mess up. In fact, they're so busy, that I decided to step into the breach and help them out a little.

First, some background: yes, before I went "freelance" by way of living a cash-heavy, odd-jobs, hand-to-mouth, criminal-record squatter lifestyle, I too had a regular office job. Perhaps you have one like it. Let me give you some keywords and you let me know if they trigger any deep-seated trauma: Microsoft Excel. Microsoft PowerPoint. Microsoft Project. Now that we've established our mutual bona fides, it's time for your employer to become my employer: by hiring me to clean up the next time that Bob Dipshit, CFO, decides he's going to double-click the wrong icon and hoses the entire Eastern Seaboard.

Do I have expertise in this kind of thing? No. Will I get your files back intact? Probably not. Will anyone else get your files back? About the same chance, if I'm honest. At least this way, we both – that's right, we're partners now – get to rack up some billable hours while we "study the problem" and "look for vulnerabilities" in the meantime. And you never know. Maybe once we send a photo of the car I used to get here, the Russians will realize you don't actually have any money and turn the whole thing off. Rust scares them, you see. Their cars are all made out of exotic compressed resins that goats occasionally eat if you park in the wrong place.

So the next time your office gets all screwed up, don't waste time calling the pros. Waste time calling a complete amateur, and together we can loot the company of a bunch of money before they resign themselves to having to restore from a backup. My rates are entirely reasonable, unless you're the one paying them.

[ghouljams]

FERAL FOR PROFESSOR GHOST AND DR LOVE SHE WOULD SO TOTALLY GET THE DISCORD INVITE AND NO ONE WOULD KNOW HOW (she fucking hacked someones account by sending them an email with a fishing link and sent the invite to herself and deleted all evidence bc im convinced she knows how to do that bc she had to change her grade in college bc one of her professors was stupid (it was a philosophy professor)) dont ask me how i know this i just do (she told me)

She did tell you that, you're right.

Dr. Love regularly shares stories about her strange and unusual academic record: accidentally hooking up with a professor before starting their class, hacking her grades, the time not one but two other people copied her research, the book of erotic love poems she published under a pseudonym no one has been able to find... Honestly no one should have been surprised that she grabbed herself a discord link, it was only a matter of time.

The fact that the grade she changed in college was for a philosophy course is less common knowledge. Now, the problem Love had with the class wasn't the reading or the concepts, but rather the professor's interpretations of them. Fundamentally Love disagreed with him, and wasn't afraid to tell him that. Which should have been fine for someone who studies something as opinion oriented as philosophy but it WASN'T. Love has always been the person she is, the pink and heels, the bubbly disposition, it puts her at odds with most men, and especially puts her at odds with professors that think she's stupid.(legally blonde who?)

You might think that this would lead her to dislike philosophers and Ghost, especially when he dismissed her as a student as soon as he saw her. However, Ghost is so hot. He's also never diminished her intelligence, and seems to listen to what she has to say on the philosophers he gives her. Does he kick her out of his office 9 times out of 10? Yes, absolutely. That's not an intelligence thing though, that's because he doesn't like her flirting.

Actually, it's sort of funny for her to learn that there's a discord dedicated to her bothering Ghost. She originally steals an invite and hops on to see if her students are complaining about all the interruptions, and it.... I mean... She didn't realize-

She scrolls through photo after photo of Ghost staring at her, of his hand hovering behind her, of his eyes so soft when she's not looking. She reads through discussions from his class of the way he stares after her each time she leaves, how he stalls in his lecture sometimes because he mentioned passing her a book on the philosopher they're studying, how he never lets anyone but her interrupt his office hours, how he slows his walk when he goes past the anthropology offices... She reads through short notes from her own class, students near the door mentioning when Ghost laughs at her jokes (a soft chuff of air that he doesn't think anyone notices) and smiles to himself when she gets particularly involved in a lecture point.

It's worse seeing her own soft stare. Suddenly the flirting doesn't feel so casual anymore. She tells the chat "I'm going to fuck that old man" and beats a hasty retreat because Jesus fucking Christ. She didn't realize Ghost liked her, she thought he was just putting up with her. For God's sake she didn't know she was in love with him.

[btnclmrttn]

How they react if you send a spicy picture (OPM) (+18)

Under the assumption they have a phone imagine having to email a nude asdghdksvs

(bored and horny tbh I'll figure out the other three boys later 😭)

Saitama

💛"Wow, you have no idea what I'd do for some of that right now"💛

If he didn't turn so red in the face he could probably play it off in public if he were to open it. Has definitely cracked his screen on accident over the shock/initial embarrassment of hoping no one saw that.

Always a pleasant surprise when he's alone. He's probably bored anyway. One of the best cures he could have in those moments is "excitement". Exchanging texts and nudes gets him super jittery, and he loves the addictive anticipation.

Building up self confidence slowly, but is rather shy with returning the favor. He doesn't wanna be unfair and not send any at all, but they usually are just body shots, seldom face. Muscles like that though? It's hard to get a bad angle on a body like that

Like 2 saved in gallery max. Would just rather have the real deal, but the couple he keeps is because they're generally pleasant for him to look at. Huge sucker for panties/boxer shots. They don't have to be full nudes for him to get riled up. He can confidently return his own underwear shot as well! (fucking love me a dick print pic ughhh)

Genos

🩵"Oh you're perfect. I would love to see more of that angle"🩵

Around the public he doesn't show visible embarrassment, but he's very quick to pull up his phone. That could be the only obvious tell he's looking at something he doesn't want anyone else to see.

Full attention on you for sure if you managed to send at a time when he was alone. No matter where he is he's quick to respond, but much more detail and thought is put into responses when alone.

Always will return the favor. Has a couple of his own in his gallery if he was ever out and received one. It's only fair in his eyes! They're also never basic he makes an effort to look like the prettiest boy for you and he does a damn good job. Not only is the cyborg body cool, the way he takes pictures with angles and perspectives makes it much more sexy.

Yes he saves all of them it's taking up a huge space on his phone storage that's also photos of you in general. Doesn't really have an urge to get off to the photos or texts because it's never the same or as satisfactory, but he still likes to appreciate them because you're attractive. (Lemme throw in though that he would definitely love to get riled up to your voice/phone sex. He would end up hanging up and showing up shortly if he's over excited)

Garou

🖤"fuckkkkk just you wait till I get my hands on that"🖤

Around people he doesn't get super embarrassed, and couldn't care. Will try to keep his phone close and low key as he studies your body so no one else sees what's just for him. If it's around Bang he might have a fuss or a fumble.

Might take his time to respond, but he's definitely not ignoring you. He's taking that shit in every fine detail he can see like you're a work of art. The pauses between all his messages is just him drooling over you

He'll send back, but not the full deal. Garou can make more of a game out of the tease. Loves sending pics back of his dick print through his pants (usually sweatpants yessirrrr) to show you what you just did for him. Will progress to more skin, like his abs and hem of his boxers, until you get some real nice pictures~

He's got a couple few favorites that never fail to get him off. Any shot from an angle above you will be saved definitely. Although, he ends up not getting completely satisfied taking care of it himself with pictures/texts alone. It's a last resort kind of thing if he knows he can't see you. If he knows your wear abouts, he will just show up.

[vanwritesfan-fiction]

It Could Be Worse

Warnings: Smut, mentions of injury, lots of nice fluff

"Baby, where are the girls?" Travis peeked his head into your office. You looked up from your computer, a pen between your teeth. "They're with my parents today." You returned to your endless email inbox, sending a couple to the trash can. "Alex is sleeping at Jacob's house this weekend", you continued, knowing that was going to be your husband's next question.

Travis entered the room and limped over to the leather sectional at the far end of the room. He sat down with a groan, rubbing his knee cap. He was already injured before the season had started, a bone bruise, and he was set to be sidelined the first game of the season.

He was putting on a brave face for his family and his team, but you knew him too well, and it was obvious that it was tearing him up inside.

"How are you feeling, babe?", you asked, turning to him, knowing he was going to give you the same rehearsed answer that the public heard.

"It could be worse", you both uttered in unison, Travis chuckling to himself when he realized you knew exactly what he was going to say. "Ha, nothing gets passed you, huh?" He scratched at his beard, leaning back on the couch. You walked over, pulling your legs underneath yourself as you sat down next to him.

"I'm sorry baby. I wish there was something I could do." Your hands found the back of his head, your nails gently scratching at his scalp while you pressed a kiss onto his temple. You continued to trail your mouth down the side of his face, each kiss as gentle as the one before until your lips touched his, deepening the kiss, warmth pooling in your stomach.

Travis pulled you into his chest, his large hand on your waist, your lips only separating for short breaths before crashing together again. Lost in the moment, you swung your leg across his waist, settling in his lap. "Shit." He whimpered out in pain into your mouth as you pressed down onto his thighs.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, Travis." He tried to hold you in place as you got off his lap. He leaned back, his eyes closed tightly, trying to catch his breath as pain radiated through his leg. "No, its fine. I can keep going." He gritted out between his teeth.

"No, babe, this was a bad idea. I'll never forgive myself if I hurt you."

He grabbed your hand, pulling you back into his lap. "Hey, you didn't hurt me. I'm fine, I promise. I want this." You shivered as his hand slipped under your shirt, his fingers tickling your skin. Your lips parted as pressed his tongue into your mouth, digging his fingertips into your sides.

"Let me know if you want to stop", you whispered as you dropped to your knees between Travis' legs. He nodded, shifting in his seat as your mouth ghosted kisses over his clothed bulge. "Just do it, it's fine", he grunted out. You slowly pulled down his sweatpants and boxers, Travis biting into his fist as he lifted his hips to get them past his knees.

His erect cock rested against his toned stomach, precum leaking from the tip from the anticipation of your warm mouth on member. You licked the head clean, dragging your tongue from the base to the tip as you took his length in your hand. You started with slow strokes, grinning as Travis' stomach contracted with each movement.

"Fuck", the word suddenly left his mouth when you took the head of his cock between your supple, pink lips, swirling your tongue around the tip. He cupped your cheek in his hand as you looked up at him, slowly bobbing your head up and down, taking him down your throat as far as possible with each dip, never breaking eye contact. "So fuckin' pretty, baby", he moaned out, his hand gripping the back of your head.

You took him all the way down, your lips touching the base, before you came up for air, tears brimming in your lashes. Travis felt his muscles start tense, pressure building up at his pelvis as you quickened your strokes. Even though he felt a sharp pain coming from his knee cap, he was way past stopping any of your actions and he wouldn't dare ask you to stop.

"I'm gonna cum, baby." He bit down on his bottom lip, trying not to move as much as possible, his fingernails digging into the leather of his seat. You slowed your movements as he came down your throat, his hot ejaculation leaving a salty taste on your tongue. You felt his cock twitch against your tongue, Travis' chest heaving with each breath.

"So good, baby." You muttered, fussing over him, gently pressing your lips to his bruised knee. You pressed kisses on his thighs, gently stroking your hands up and down his calves as he came down from his orgasm. You offered a hand to help him stand up, carefully pulling up his sweatpants.

"I wanna take care of you, too. I'll make it work somehow." You felt Travis' hand on your lower back as you tried to walk away. "Uh, no, baby. I don't need the entire Chiefs organization hating me because you injured yourself further trying to eat your wife out." Travis chuckled, pressing a kiss to your forehead. "You have to admit, it'd make for a hell of a story."

You turned and looked up at him, grabbing his hand. His blue eyes were glazed over, his pupils blown, as he struggled to stand even with you there for support.

"Sit please, Trav." , you slowly lowered himself down on the couch again. "I need you to get better, and then you can take care of me all you want, ok?" You pulled his chin toward you for one more kiss, your noses grazing.

Taglist:

@sporadicpaperchopshop

@marz22224

@rosesnothornes

@macey234

@amylouwho9

@jackharlowscumslut

@gloriousmessofagirl

@ctn26

@xangelonmyshoulderx

@livinginmyfantasies

@caelipartem

@savaneafricaine

@thatchigirl99

@sweetlittlethings15

@buonalima

@tk87kc

@m-1234

@marchmaiden

@questionable-behaviour

@queenisa17

@anacarangel

@tjkelce87

@giannalove9202

@vir-tual

@fearisthehandthatpullsourstrings

@bernelflo

@caroline334

@hufflewhore128

@urbanandjackfanpage

@trust-tequila

@lightsoutstyles

@luvvtrent

@aga21

@talicat713

@brixo

@mmb219

@queenravioli

@there-goes-thefighter

@kmc1989

@princessmermaid1289

@fantasywritersstuff

@kelcemenow

@kristinamae093

@w1ldthoughts

@iknowdatsrightbih

[lilykatelyn-blog]

Hello! I read your storys and they're so good 😭 idk what your guidelines are but, if your comfortable with it, would you mind writing cockwarming with txt? Thanks in advance if you decide to write it! Also im not certain what anons are, but if positions are open could I be 🍰 anon?

Cockwarming w/ TXT

pairing: txt x Gn!reader

genre: smut

warnings: cockwarming, taehyuns a lil shit.

notes: Yeah ofc! (Idk if you meant you didn’t know what anons were or what anons I had so I’m just gonna explain, anons are like labels so I can identify each anonymous user that messages or send me asks <3) sorry this took so long 😭

❤︎Yeonjun❤︎

Would be so into it, and he would be a menace. Constantly asking you “what’s wrong baby? I thought you asked for this, now you’re complaining?” And tsking, constantly telling you that you brought it upon yourself and you need to deal with it, even when he was the one who brought it up. He’d have you cockwarm him while he was practicing lines or responding to some work emails. It always ended with him giving you the best fuck of your life. He’d have you on his lap purposely taking long to respond or practice a single part, but he was done, it would be so pleasurable. One hand stimulating your clit (or cock) while fucked into you from behind. Cock sliding in effortlessly from the amount of precum/arousal fluid you had produced. All while he whispered how good you were doing for him in your ear.

❤︎Soobin❤︎

Never thought he’s be into it tbh. But the moment you brought it up, he felt himself get hard. You’d sit on his lap while he’d work or something, and once he finished he’d be so whiny, asking you to ride him. You’d make him wait a while, pretending to be busy on your phone while he whined. Accidentally bucking up into you, earning a slap on the thigh from you. He’s be kissing your neck, trying not to fuck up into you. When you clenched he’d see stars and he’d accidentally fuck up into you. Once you decided enough teasing was enough, you’d let him fuck you or you’d ride him, whatever he wanted. He was your sweet binnie after all.

❤︎Beomgyu❤︎

honestly I don’t see him being a big fan, but once you sat on his dick, he’s immediately have to hold himself back. Use this as a punishment if he intentionally makes you jealous or acts bratty. He also uses this as a punishment for you when you act bratty and he just makes you sit there while he games, ‘accidentally’ bouncing his thigh every once in a while, making you go crazy. When he’s had his fun and made you frustrated, he’ll stop and carry you to the bed, not pulling out. Then he’d fuck you into oblivion, telling you to never do that again. I think he’d be more into it if you were the one being punished tbh, not if he was. He finds it frustrating, but he loves feeling your arousal fluid (or precum) seep down to his thighs because of how turned on you are at him punishing you.

❤︎Taehyun❤︎

until you mentioned it, he thought he’d hate it. But when you finally sat on his dick, he had to bite your shoulder to stop from moaning. Whenever you would shift he’d hold your waist and tell you not to. But after a while, he’s get comfortable and start teasing you. He’d purposefully shift, or bounce his thigh, or buck up, claiming he was just adjusting his position. He kiss your neck, grope your chest and your ass. When you’d clench he’d chuckled and buck up slightly to make you clench more. If he’d feel you pulse around his dock, he’d stop teasing and switch your positions. Having you on the bottom and him on the top, finally fucking you as you’d both wanted. He’d fuck you hard, until you were seeing literal stars. Then when you would be finished and ready to doze off, he’d whisper in your ear “let’s do that again Jagi, good night.” Then go and sleep.

❤︎Hurning Kai❤︎

He’d be even more whiny than Soobin. He’d whine about how he wants to fuck you, how he can’t handle just staying still. But he’ll comply and stay still because he doesn’t want ti face the consequences of disobeying you. Now if this wasn’t a punishment and he was the one leaning towards dom this time, he’s be chill, working on something or listening to music, or actually paying attention to the movie while you were the one whining in his ear about how you needed him and needed him to fuck you. He’d eventually agree and fuck you. But not before playing with your clit/cock and almost making you cum then ducking you hard on the couch, not even bothering to turn off the tv, just laying you down and fucking you right then and there, without a care in the word for your neighbors.

[theemporium]

For Daniel x sunshine what about sunshine being courted by another team to work for them, and it turns into a fluffy moment about how sunshine has no plans of leaving Daniel and not work on his car an stuff because despite working for a team, they're a team themselves :) I hope this makes sense!! <3

thank you for requesting!🫶🏽

.

It had been like every other night in your shared apartment.

Daniel was in the kitchen, hips swaying and lips mouthing the words to whatever playlist he had put on whilst he made dinner. Salem was perched on the kitchen counter, nibbling on the small bits of food Daniel would sneak him, despite your constant insistence not to do so. You were in your office, finishing up some emails you needed to send off before you could enjoy the relaxing night with your boyfriend, and the odd weekend you both had off between races. 

Soon enough, you would finish your work and make your way into the kitchen, cracking open one of Daniel’s branded wine bottles and pour two glasses to enjoy with dinner. Daniel would make a joke about complimenting the chef. You would lean over and kiss him on the lips, letting the bittersweet taste of the wine linger on both your tongues. And then, you would curl up on the couch with Salem beside you both as you finished off whatever show you two were binging together. 

That was how the night was supposed to go.

The night took a turn when Daniel reached over to grab a lemon from the fruit basket, needing it for the recipe he had impulsively decided to make for the night, only to come to a halt when he noticed a letter lying at the breakfast bar. 

A letter with your name on it and the McLaren logo in the corner. 

He frowned, quickly turning the stove off and giving Salem a soft scratch under his chin when he meowed out for Daniel, but his attention was fully focused on the letter. He turned it over, seeing it had already been opened and his stomach dropped a little. 

It was wrong. He knew it was wrong. And yet, he still pulled the letter out anyways and let his eyes scan over the words, only for the pit of anxiety inside him to grow with each passing line. 

A job offer. They were fucking offering you a job with them, and for a hefty amount as well. 

He was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear the sound of your feet padding down the corridor towards the kitchen, or even see you as you rounded the corner, smiling as the smell of the dinner Daniel was making wafted through the house.

However, you stopped short when you noticed your boyfriend glaring at something. 

“Babe? You good?” 

Daniel lifted his head, the uneasiness clearly written across his face because your face instantly dropped in concern as you stepped towards him, a frown on your lips. 

“Danny, what’s wrong?”

He couldn’t bring himself to say anything, he didn’t even know if he could say anything as he lifted the letter. You didn’t need to look at it, the logo printed on the page told you exactly what it was and you let out a heavy sigh.

“It’s not what you think,” you murmured softly.

“I didn’t know you were looking for another job,” Daniel commented vaguely, because the truth was that he would never hold your career back. He would never want to be the kind of boyfriend that told you what to do or where to go.

But the idea of you working for McLaren of all teams made him a little sick to his stomach. 

“I’m not,” you said with a shake of your head, stepping closer to him. “They sent me an offer unprompted.”

“It’s a good offer,” he murmured, every inch of him wanting to reach out to hold you but he held back.

“Nah,” you said with a shrug. “They couldn’t offer me what I wanted.”

His brows furrowed together. “What’s that?”

“You, Grumps,” you smiled up at him, teasingly poking his stomach until you saw his lips twitch upwards. “They could offer me millions and I would have still said no.”

His chest tightened at your words. “All for little ol’ me?”

“We’re a team,” you told him, your words thick and heavy with sincerity as you wound your arms around his neck, and his instinctively fell to your waist. “Sunshine and Grumps. They can’t separate us.”

Daniel couldn’t fight back his smile. “No, they can’t. That genius brain of yours is reserved for my car and my car only, Sunshine.”

“Always,” you smiled, tilting your head back until he caught the hint to lean down and kiss you. “Plus, I’d never go to those fuckers of all teams.”

Daniel snorted. “You can’t hold a grudge, Sunshine.”

“Watch me,” you muttered. “I love the boys there but fuck that team and everything they put you through. I would never betray you like that.”

“I know,” Daniel smiled before he leaned down to kiss you again.

.

[janewayintersection]

the amount of people who are like "omg i ditched kaidan for garrus after he was mean to me on horizon!!" baffle me. shit on bioware's writing for making shep work with cerberus all you want, but kaidan calling shep out on this and not joining them is NOT the issue. in fact, him reacting like this is why i love him??

he specifically states he trusts shep, just not cerberus. which is the only rational response in that whole entire goddamn game!! like?? you spend all of me1 stopping cerberus operations. they kill several alliance soldiers and admiral kahoku, try to make a rachni army -- they are WELL known for cloning and ais... miranda even outright states she wanted to plant shep with a control chip. there is literally zero reason for kaidan to believe the shep in front of him isn't some cerberus sleeper agent. or an ai. or indoctrinated. or being manipulated (THIS ONE IS CANON BTW). even if he trusts shepard, he doesn't trust cerberus not to pull any of this. quite frankly, i'm baffled more companions don't have this exact, entirely justified concern.

loyalty is important, but blind loyalty is dangerous.

honestly, the crew in me2 is lucky that the illusive man was so weirdly and uncharacteristically insistent on shepard remaining untouched. things could have gotten very bad otherwise.

being best friends with someone, or more notably, being in love with someone, isn't the end all be all magic potion in this world. being in love with someone doesn't mean you should blindly trust their actions. if my significant other joined a terrorist group, you can bet my ass i wouldn't join them! sorry! if anything, it's healthy that kaidan has his own sense of morals and priorities he follows over shepard. he's his OWN person, love shouldn't be something that makes you suddenly give up who you are and what you believe in.

not to mention kaidan is entirely out of the loop for the whole game. his intel states that cerberus is behind the abductions (the horizon incident is partially a result of cerberus' fiddling btw), and that shep has been alive and never even reached out to anyone. he doesn't have the information we the players have. he doesn't know that the illusive man insisted on no control chip. he doesn't know about the lazarus project or its specifics.

and as for the "cheating" discourse if you romance someone new in me2, i do personally believe shep getting with one of the me2 love interests is cheating on their me1 love interest. to shep, they skipped those two years. they wake up as they did during the me2 prologue. no time has passed. and then they immediately get with someone else after one (1) argument with their love interest over them, may i remind you, joining a terrorist group. even if you don't think it's "technically" cheating, it's at the very least pretty trashy and flakey.

if anything, i'm gonna say it! kaidan is more forgiving than i'd be! the fact that he even sends an email saying he still cares and that they can see what happens after this is all resolved is WAY more than i would have done. the fact that kaidan will find out shep got with someone else, and STILL be willing to give shep a chance is like. man. it's saying a lot. i am just saying.

imagine losing someone. you see them literally die as your ship explodes and they burn up in the nearby planet's atmosphere. you grieve. you put yourself into your work. then suddenly, two years, later. they pop back up again. ALIVE. and with a terrorist group. and basically tell you the equivalent of "just trust me bro" despite the fact that while you trust them, you don't trust the terrorist group. so you're like hey, what the fuck. why are you with a terrorist group. and they're like i'm not with them, we just have common goals. and you're like. i'm gonna say it again. i trust you, not the terrorist group. okay?? i can't join you for this reason. please be careful out there, seriously.

and then they immediately jump into the pants of that one guy you knew back on a mission from two years ago.

what would you do?? would you not feel hurt? betrayed? upset? confused?? i'm sorry, i'm completely on kaidan's side. i'd go as far to say that he's far more understanding than he should be in me2.

me3 is all about regaining that complete and undying trust back, and that cerberus didn't fuck around w shep. or that being with cerberus didn't change them. his "loyalty" quest is just visiting him in the hospital and showing him shepard still cares. that they're still the same. that cerberus truly didn't alter them. that there was more going on. that shepard was forced to work with cerberus out of complete necessity and only did what they thought was right. and i think that's neat!!!!

[olderthannetfic]

As someone who's college age: yeah, there's a TON of people my age who don't know how things work and don't try to learn. Can't unzip a zip file, want to know where to download anime but haven't tried looking it up, ask things on subreddits a Google search or quick search on the wiki would answer, ask questions answered in FAQs or by professors or in the syllabus, say they can't download and install a new browser or app or program because they don't know how and they never think to look up how to do so, go months without logging into their student email because no one explained to them how to do so and they never thought to ask anyone how to do it, go months without washing their laundry because they don't know how and they also don't know how to look up instructions on how to do it, don't know how to cook and can't Google a recipe so they throw things in a pan and pray it works out, don't understand how to back up files, don't know how to attach a pdf to an email to send to a professor, cannot manage to put stuff on a USB drive + go to the library + print it off of the library computer, etc.

I spent most of freshman year teaching people things. The year after, my patience got more frayed and "Google it" started coming out of my mouth a lot more. This last year I gave up and now if people fuck themselves over, that's their decision. I'm not going to stand there begging people to do basic things they should already know how to do.

It was really funny when someone from Career Services came to talk to us about resumes and said we didn't need to put down 'can use Microsoft Excel' on there because everyone knew that and all but three people said actually no, they didn't. People who are 40+ really think we're all good at tech by default, like we fall out of the womb clutching a little phone already making spreadsheets in Excel or coding computers or whatever.

Meanwhile in reality you see a ton of people posting on tumblr going, "How do I post fic on tumblr?" whose blogs proudly state that they're under 18. The thought that you could just type into a Word doc and then copy and paste onto here never hits. And it's not going to.

I hate to break it to millennials and older people but yeah, actually, my generation does in fact have morons. We're not a moron-free demographic. I'm pretty sure moron-free demographics don't exist, tbh.

--

It infuriates me that my father (in his 80s) is always saying to me that he needs to find a 12-year-old to explain his tech to him. I (40s) keep telling him it's more like a bell curve or something. We had a blip of people being taught in school or having their asses kicked about technology. But then it went away again.

I think we made computers and then phones much more accessible, which is great, but we forgot we still need to teach people things. I know not everyone got explicit instruction in school even in my era, but it seems like the US, at least, phased some of that out as we started assuming The Youth automatically knew it all.

That said... in my day, college freshmen were also terrible about doing their laundry, so some things never change.

[storagebay29]

james somerton 'apology' video transcript

Note: for those who do not want to watch it. For those who do, here's a link to a reupload as the original has since been deleted. There are a lot of a pauses and 'um's/'uh's, the latter of which are largely ommitted from the below transcript. Posted under a readmore as it's pretty long.

I'm sorry for taking so long to make this video, or to say anything. I'm in the hospital- I've been in the hospital for a little over a week. I tried- Fuck. I tried to do something really stupid... (pause) I'm only here now because before I did it, I called my dad to talk to him one more time and, he figured out something was wrong, called paramedics or 911 or… and they got here and I woke up in the hospital and, yeah.

…

Anyway, I'm not trying to make this a sob story, I'm just trying to explain why I've been so quiet. I had a friend from back home checking my emails and stuff, and yeah.

…

But anyway… I wanna say that I'm really really sorry, really really sorry... for the stuff in the videos, the not crediting people, and for a lot of videos, you know I, I did the opening titles thing, and I tried to put like ‘this is based on X's- this person's research, or on this person's book,’ but I know now that wasn't enough, that wasn't okay. And then there were a lot of times... that uh...  oh god. There were a lot of times that stuff just got put in and there was no attempt at crediting anybody (pause) and I'm really really sorry.

And I'm not, I'm not sorry that I got caught, I'm sorry for ever doing it, I didn't- I honestly honestly... didn't realise that I was hurting people... And now that I know that I was hurting people… I'm just really sorry.

I lost my best friend because of this. Nick and I have been best friends since 2011 or [20]12? We'd been friends online and then. He lived in Ottawa, I moved to Ottawa so we could be, like, friends in person, and then we moved back to- I moved back to Nova Scotia, and Nick came with me. We eventually moved to the Toronto area where we lived together for 7 years? 8 years? We lived together for a really long time… and… he hasn't spoken to me since this happened.

Sorry, sorry I said I wasn't gonna make this a sob sorry. I should’ve got some Kleenex.

Then again I'm really really really sorry for the things I did in the videos: copying people's work and not crediting them properly or at all. I also wanna apologise for the misinformation and just outright lies that ended up in the videos? I didn't- I honestly say that I never intended for any of that stuff to be in the videos, most cases I didn't write it but I should’ve, you know it was my face on the channel, my name on the channel, I should have been, I should have been more diligent about fact checking and stuff. ‘Cause there was a lot of really stupid shit in there. It would’ve- it's just so easy to check, I just never did, I just took it for granted…

I also, I wanna thank Hbomberguy and his team for setting up the fund to make some money available for the authors that were wronged and the journalists and writers and…

I wanna help somehow, I don't know how, a lot of- I've seen a lot of people online saying how much money I apparently make and they’re way overestimating. Beyond the fact that Nick and I split everything 50/50, they're still way overestimating how much money came in… And the Toronto area is expensive, so there's not really any kind of savings, I'm moving home really soon… ‘Cause without Nick there's nothing for me here, and like I said it's really expensive…

And so I wanna say I wanna thank them for setting up that fund, and I wanna help somehow. The only thing I can think of right now is to make the videos, most of the videos public again and every month I can send the ad revenue from all of the past videos- ‘cause there were plenty that didn't have any, any uncredited stuff in them... But I can make them public again, and then every month I can send the AdSense to- either I can send it to Hbomberguy's team, that they can add to the fund, or I can start a fund myself? And every month I can publicly say how much money was made on the AdSense and show it. And send that to the writers and stuff every month. I don't know... what the system for that would be? But I would be more than happy to do that

You know some of the videos like the ‘Killing Stalking’ video brought in like a pretty decent amount of money every month so that would be helpful I think/to them. I'll also put in either the description or the pinned comment the names of the authors so that anyone watching the video knows where all of the information came from, that it wasn’t me going out doing journalism- I never thought that anyone thought that I was doing journalism and stuff, and I don't think anyone did. For the people who actually were doing it should have been given the credit they deserve, they did the hard work, all I did was edit a video. They did the hard work and they- they deserved the credit

(cut) Sorry about that, phone stopped recording.

But- yes. They deserved- they deserved credit, and… when it was something... when it was something like the, the recent... ‘history of hollywood’ videos, right there in the opening credits, I put the Vito Russo's name, that it was adapted from his book ‘The Celluloid Closet’. Same thing went for the gay panic video and the gay holocaust video, they were- the holocaust video was adapted from two books, and the gay panic video was adapted from a lot of journalism, and I- I put their names right at the beginning of the videos.

But and- I understand that's not how citation works... now. I understand that, I get it. And I wanna do better. And I know a lot of people hate me now, ‘cause I did bad shit. But I wanna try and do better. At some point I’d like to make videos again. I'd like to do videos that are fully sourced, where I will put a link to the script where you can find all the sources so that everyone is properly given the credit that they deserve, any the kind of research that's done, credit for any b roll that's used whether it's stock footage, or movies or TV shows or video games, or anything like that, have it all in there. I would like to become a really really good example of giving proper credit to writers and journalists

And I know a lot of you watching this aren't- aren't really gonna care, you'd rather I just disappear. But I would like to try to do better.

I never ever intended to hurt anybody. I never thought that that's what I was doing. Before I went- before I went to the hospital, I read a lot of stuff from people who were really hurt, not just authors and stuff but people who watched my videos who were hurt by stuff in them. People think that I hate ace people and women and bisexual people and lesbians and that's not true. It's really- it's just- it’s not true. And I’m sorry that stuff made it into videos that just shouldn’t have been there: misinformation and lies... But I promise you I did not write that stuff.

I should have been a lot more exacting when Nick and I would be editing scripts but I promise you that those are not- I don't think those things. I specifically want to apologise to asexual people who feel that I just completed delegitimised you. Nick being ace, I- I know that it's kinda like you know, no two gay people are exactly the same, no two ace people are exactly the same, but I kind of, when it came to that I just kind of ran with Nick's judgement and his observations and stuff like that. And I’m not trying to throw Nick under the bus, which a bunch of people are saying that I was setting him up as doing, which is not true…

This whole thing, Nick and I were 50/50 partners, it wasn't I hired him to have a scapegoat or something like that. I never hired Nick. Nick and I were roommates for years before I started doing Youtube videos and then they started- people started watching them and I asked Nick if he wanted to help me write them and he said yes and we started splitting the- first the AdSense and then the Patreon and then the sponsorships, we just split everything. Nick was never supposed to be a fall guy.

I'm sorry. Maybe I should have waited longer to do this. But yeah, I- the- I did not- I don’t think those things and I don't think Nick does either, I think it was just how fast we were writing stuff, and how fast we were putting videos out, it was just too fast. And we weren’t putting the care into them that needed to be put into them.

I've seen a lot of people on social media and other youtubers even lying about me, but other- other- Hbomberguy was not one of them, I just wanna be clear about that, except I was never setting Nick up to be a fall guy and. It was never a grift or anything like that. I swear it was not. It is not.

In the next couple of days, I'm gonna send out a message to the Telos supporters on Indiegogo and explain the whole situation in more detail to them because we were not super clear about everything that was going on with Telos and so I can- I understand if it seems like we weren't doing anything but we were. We were doing a lot of work on Telos. We just weren’t talking about it is because we- we made that initial first announcement for ‘final girl’ and that fell through and I'll explain that to the message I send out to the supporters which I'm sure will end up on reddit or somewhere… And after that we didn't- we didn't want to talk about it too much until we had something really concrete, and I will explain all of that in that message

Telos was and is not a grift. I was never gonna take the money and run. None of the money that came in for telos was ever going to be paying me or Nick. It was going to be paying queer actors and artists, musicians, things like that. And I know there's been lots of talk about budgets and all this stuff, and people saying that I'm really stupid for thinking a movie could be made for that little money, but there are examples of it being done, and I actually do have a work ethic.

Anyway. but yeah. anyway

I do want to keep making videos and I know a lot of you won't watch them and that's- that's fine. But I really liked making videos…

We ended up making a lot of videos we didn't wanna make because people were asking for them, and so there were a lot of videos that we made that we didn't wanna make, and I think those videos are very clear on which ones those were. One of them never got officially released. It was released to patrons, some patrons have shared it to other people before all the videos went private. A lot of people hate the analysis that Nick and I did on it but. And so maybe it's good that that never got properly released, because… maybe it would have hurt people. And I don't want that.

But I do wanna make videos again sometime. I'd love to do like retrospectives on important gay movies. If you watch the channel ‘Be Kind Rewind’ they're an amazing channel that do a lot of retrospectives on older Hollywood movies and I would love to do that for gay movies. A lot of gay movies, people my age and younger have never heard of, things like ‘Torch Song Trilogy’ and ‘Longtime Companion’, and stuff like that, movies from the seventies and eighties and the nineties, things that were like really influential for gay cinema that no one talks about. And you know, I'd like to talk about not just those movies but how they got made and stuff like that. I would love to do something like that.

I swear on my mother's grave that there will be no copying people, no copying pasting. Every source will be cited in a document and on screen. ‘Cause I usually liked doing the research. I loved doing research - reading the books and articles and stuff like that. I- the part of me that was lazy was the copy and paste part. Instead of just putting it into my words and citing them properly and giving them credit… that's where the laziness came in. That was- I wasn't trying to be malicious. That was just laziness. And I promise for anyone who does watch the videos that I make going forward… I promise that will never happen again. I welcome the highest level of scrutiny on the new videos.

…

As for Patreon, I’m going to reactivate it. Because I saw a lot of people on social media saying that I was probably going to reactivate it right on January 1st so that everyone could get a surprise billing and I could take the money and run. And, no. First of all that was never my plan and I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna reactivate it now so that anyone who wants to leave - which I imagine will be the vast majority - can leave and not have to worry about being billed again in January.

… Yeah. So. In closing. I'm again incredibly sorry... And again I'm not sorry because I was caught, I honestly didn't know how much I was hurting people… and how much harm I was bringing to the community, because that's not ever what I intended. I wanted the channel to be a safe place. I spent so much time deleting comments that were hateful

I recently found out that I wasn't being notified about- that I wasn’t seeing comments that were in replies to other comments so there were plenty of hateful comments in the comment section that were plenty hateful that I wasn’t seeing, and I didn't know that. But I wanted the channel to be a safe place and it ended up not being a safe place.

And for the misinformation, that kind of falls into two categories. 1. I did the wrong research in the historical things and other things they're not what I wrote.

Again, thank you to Hbomberguy and his team for making the fund for the writers. I'd like to try to contribute to that somehow so- if- if it's okay to make the videos public and send all of the- public and send all- it won't be all of videos ‘cause some of them had to be taken down because sponsors wanted them taken down, but I can put the videos back up with the sources properly put in either- for the I guess for the videos that would be going up from zero, I could actually put in sources for the videos, which would be good.

I guess I could- For the other ones that would just be made live again, I could put them in a pinned comment. ‘Cause I think people read pinned comments more than they read the descriptions, cause like the descriptions disappear in a lot of places. Something like that. Something so that I can try and- it won't make up for what I did but just. Something.

So I’m really really really sorry. I hurt a lot of people that I really respect and that really sucks. And.  Nick if you're watching this I know you're probably not but I miss you and…

Yeah I want to do better. I want- I want to do better. I want to prove that I can do better. I don't expect anyone to just give me the benefit of the doubt. But I want to show that I can do better, so I hope you'll let me do that.

Again, I'm really sorry. I'm sorry that the things I did- I'm sorry that I disappointed you. I promise going forward I will do better.

Thanks for watching, and...

…

And I’m really sorry.