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a-bucket-of-trash · 1 year

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Crashing Trust – Kelvin x Neutral Reader – Part 1/?

Prompt: You trust Kelvin to the bone, but maybe he is not the person you believe he is.

Tag: Angst

Your eyes looked up at the sky for a moment, seeing the heavy gray clouds move and you hoped it wouldn't start to rain, not yet. You sighed, feeling a bit cold on your face, but at least not on your body, not after walking so much on the island. You thought, walking again, with some of your weapons on you, studying the place, alert for any danger, while your head wondered if Kelvin had caught something in your absence. You denied to yourself, you knew he had done it. His skills acquiredafter years as a Boy Scout prior to the army were evident, he took prey from any corner and knew the use of most plants, whether they were edible, medicinal or poisonous.

You trusted him, that clumsy boy who little by little had recovered some of his faculties, just a bit of hearing and speaking, although there was still something blank as far as memories of him were concerned. There was a great majority of things that he still did not remember, but sometimes he would get up shouting, happy, with a new memory. He was kind, funny, caring and had trusted you as much as you trusted him. And you guys had even half flirted once. It was an island in the middle of nowhere, it was to be expected that you would flirt a bit, you were too close sometimes.

Your steps followed a hare, in the distance, but the animal heard you before, escaping. You growled, pacing the place, looking around, seeing the chopper in pieces on the ground. You passed, on one side, giving the military salute to the grave of your partner Fisheye, and Walter, the pilot. You had buried them a short time after falling there, a few months ago already.

You kept studying the place. It was something you did frequently, to keep yourself busy. You looked at a tree, the one where the helicopter had given the last blow at that time, before falling to the ground, and that it had half split it. It had almost no leaves anymore, partly because the blow had damaged it beyond repair, partly because it was autumn.

But your eyes fixed on something that was dark between the branches, and that you had not seen before because of the foliage. You celebrated in silence to not attract enemies, you were sure it was a backpack. It could be that of one of your fallen comrades, or even of Kelvin, that detail was irrelevant, what mattered was the content. Those backpacks were loaded with useful things, precisely for cases like this.

It took you a long time to get it down, you were forced to climb a tree that didn't look very safe, and the last thing you wanted was to fall in there, break something, and die of gangrene. But you managed to climb a little, hook it with your spear and pass it a rope, before lowering yourself and pulling, tearing it from the branch where it had been.

When it was on the ground you celebrated again, checking it, seeing the label with a K. You knew that each backpack had the letter of their code names, and the only one with the K was Kelvin. You opened it, more than anything to make sure it had the contents, check that no dangerous animal had nested there, or rotted or something. Everything was fine.

Among the things you found a hermetic bag with some content, a notepad like yours, a pen, a tactical knife, matches, useful things. You were euphoric, there was even a lot of medicine. You checked the notebook, it would be good for you to write things down, since yours was running out of pages.

And turning the pages, distractedly, you saw something written in the middle. You turned the pages back and stayed reading a familiar letter.

“Helicopter 1: Pilot Hubble. Soldier Gore. Raven Soldier. Private Cory. Destination: Eliminate. Method: C4 Installed in rear compartment. Detonation by control. Status: Stable.

Helicopter 2: Pilot Walter. Fisheye Soldier. Soldier Bucky. Destination: Experiment. Method: Sleeping pills. Leave outside Cube. Status: Stable.

Radio code to SaThe 885 510 931 074 Password #Puffton#”

You stayed static, reading that. You didn't understand well, but you understood enough. Kelvin's code name wasn't there, but yours, Bucky, was. The word EXPERIMENT resonated in your brain like poison. You didn't know what the Cube was, but you had seen enough of the mutants to associate them with some kind of experiment on the island. “SaThe” disintegrated in your mind. You had read a few things in the bunkers where you had been, in classified papers, and the word "Sahara Therapeutics" appeared next to Puffton, too much.

Your blood boiled in anger and betrayal. Kelvin hadn't gone there as a member of the rescue team, he had gone undercover as the Pufftons' competition to get information, experiment on you, kill your team and who knows what else. The man you had believed was a good soldier, next to you, was a lie. You put everything together, with hate and quickly walked back to your cabin, with the darkness of a hundred cannibals in your steps.

As soon as you got there, you saw him near the campfire, next to some fish he had caught. His ears couldn't quite hear you, he turned to you and smiled seeing you close, but you kicked him hard, making him stumble and fall on his ass to the ground. You kicked his hip hard enough for him to shrink into himself, covering his head in fear. You crouched down a bit to punch his arms a few times, hearing him groan and say “Stop” several times.

"You are fucking trash!" You stepped away slightly, furious and anguished “Son of a bitch, traitor! Killer!"

"What…?" He barely looked at you, very scared, still defending himself on the ground "I don't understand"

“I don't care if you don't understand me! I hate you! And I thought you were my friend!" You half sobbed, your trust breaking into a thousand pieces, as well as your heart.

“I do nothing…” He shyly extended his hand towards you “Honey… Explain me”

"Not honey, not anything!" You threw his backpack at his head, watching him hold it, confused "Trash" You threw the notepad in his face "Take your damn notepad and check what YOU wrote"

His confused and somewhat hurt eyes went from you to the small notebook that he had gathered from the floor, turning pages. Until he found what he had written. He read and reread, knowing it was his handwriting. His confused expression dimmed slightly, as some memory fragments flitted back into his mind. Kelvin stood still, his mouth open, searching for words he didn't quite have in his vocabulary.

“I can…explain…” He looked at you with sad eyes.

“I don't want a fucking explanation, Kelvin! You put a C4 on our teammates! You were going to kill me along with Walter and Fisheye! What fucking explanation can justify that!? None!" You furiously kicked his foot “Double agent, traitor!”

“Please… let me explain…” He reached out to you, pleading “I…” But he stayed still, silent. Even if he explained, he wasn't going to undo the fact that he had actually planned that. That he had forgotten about it, and the reasons why he had decided to do so, no longer mattered.

"Get out of here!" You took the fish and threw it on him “Take your damn dinner, your stupid backpack and go! Go away because I'm about to chop off your head, you son of a bitch! I see you around the island and I swear I will attack you like a cannibal!"

"But..." He stood up awkwardly, despairing "I love you... And... We'll survive better... together"

“Do you love me now!? You didn't give a shit about that when you wrote me down in your stupid little notebook as an experiment subject!" You sobbed again “I will survive alone! And I'll make it easier knowing I don't have a bloody traitor living under my roof!"

“But…” He tried to get closer to you, sobbing too “I really love you… I don't want to leave… Forgive me… forgive me… please…”

"I'm not going to forgive you! I hate you! I do not want anything with you! Go away!" You took your axe, firmly, ready to attack him “Get out! I said get out, you ungrateful deaf asshole!”

He looked at you, crying, almost more than you. He lowered his eyes, holding his backpack better against his chest and turned, walking slowly, moving away from you with a slight limp, the product of the pain in his leg, caused by one of your kicks. He kept walking away, crying, listening to you cry hard, knowing that you must be really loud for his poor hearing to hear you so clearly.

Kelvin regretted what he had done long before he got on the helicopter, regretted his decisions, his betrayal of his squad, something that had led him to lose you, his mate and the only source of security and comfort on the island. He was now alone, at the mercy of enemies and even at the mercy of your anger.

Part 2

#kelvin #sons of the forest kelvin #sotf kelvin #kelvin x reader #sons of the forest

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rachymarie · 21 days

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Oh yuck, on top of all that it turns out that C4 is gonna have to be a chewer like the two Thiamine: it's horribly gritty so won't go down my throat normally with a swig of water, and to go with that it tastes horribly foul. I just could tell from the texture of it that if I had tried to swallow it normally it would have clung for dear life to the sides of my throat.

Good one, Pharmac 👍 trying to kill me slowly one chewer pill at a time.

As it is I choke on the Multivitamin every other week and have to splutter around and cough it up, getting the yellow dye on whatever it lands on.

I think I'll try ask the pharmacy if it comes in sugar pill form cos that shit nasty.

They really need to make more options than traditional pill swallowing and the butt jab bc I sure ain't getting the jab (if i have to be naked in front of anyone I'm not romantically involved in I don't want it) but some of these pills are just completely unswallowable especially if you have severe choking trauma like me

They need to think more about this stuff it's a serious problem (along with putting things that usually cause death like "C4" on medications for people who get delusions), especially for those in psychosis believing thinks like I believed: that each attempt to swallow each pill was a 50/50 life or death situation every time....

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remakethestars · 1 year

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I just came up with a brilliant analogy to teach my dad men the difference between Plan B and the abortion pill!

Plan B

Plan B prevents ovulation. The egg is never fertilized.

James Bond is pregnant. He's sitting in a Walmart parking lot in is Aston Martin, putting his recipt into his purse when he notices a baby waddling up to his car with a Glock.

As it goes to open the door, he hits the lock button and peels out of the parking lot. The baby shoots after him, putting a hole through the back window, but misses James Bond.

The Abortion Pill

The abortion pill is actually two pills. The first is Mifepristone, which causes the baby to stop growing. The second is Misoprostol, which sheds the lining of the uterus. This is rather painful and medically considered an abortion.

James Bond is pregnant. He's sitting in the Walmart parking lot in his Aston Martin, putting a recipt in his pocketbook. All of the sudden, his passenger door opens; a baby gets in, pointing a Glock at him; slams the door; and buckles its seatbelt.

"Drive," the baby says.

James Bond pretends to reach for the gear shift, but at the last second, he slams his hand on the eject button. The baby and the baby's seat go flying backward out of the car.

James Bond peels out of the parking lot. The baby scrambles to undo his seatbelt and sit up, and it shoots after the Aston Martin, hitting James Bond in the shoulder.

Miraculously, of course, the bullet misses the arteries and bones in the shoulder through the power of movie magic. James Bond goes home and heats a knife on the gas stove while he puts the groceries away one-handed. Then he cauterizes the wound.

Later, a friend messages him on Facebook, upset with him for ejecting the baby onto the pavement.

"The baby shot me," James Bond says.

"Well, that's what you get for ejecting a poor innocent baby," says his friend.

James Bond explains he ejected the baby because it was trying to jack his car and was pointing a gun at him.

His friend replies that if he didn't want his car to get stolen, he shouldn't have bought a car.

(James Bond knows for a fact his friend has lots of cars.)

Facebook gives the messages to the government, and they put James Bond on death row for ejecting the baby. After all, its his fault for buying a car in the first place.

Through the power of movie magic, James Bond turns his last meal, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, into C4 and blows up the wall of his cell, miraculously escaping death.

#abortion #women's rights are human rights #james bond #007 #tw: gun violenct #tw: car jacking #plan b #feminism #tw: knife #tw: knives #tw: cauterization #women's rights #uterus owners

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effectivestrategiesforjob · 2 months

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biormight · 7 months

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poliwat · 9 months

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Nipomo

Four weeks sharing a room in San Francisco, four weeks since I decided not to go back to England. Michael wasn’t sleeping. A quarter tab of acid for his breakfast. Spliffs throughout the day, booze and blue raspberry C4 preworkout all through the night. He was recording an album, working on his set, making a website, building a 24-7 open-source radio live-stream at a free hackers’ space, and not finishing anything.

I was trying to write but spending a lot of time crying on the hot roof of the apartment building when he wasn’t around. He found me up there one afternoon at the end of one of his twelve-hour stints at the hackers’ space. Two straw hats, a beer, two cups. “I know you like to drink out of little cups!” He smiled and the inside of his mouth was blue from the raspberry preworkout. How do you hate someone as much as you love them? He said he’d been looking for me because he had a great plan. A childhood friend in the city was driving down to their hometown and we could get a ride. I could meet Michael’s parents; go to the beach; see the fields, wildflowers, and back roads. So beautiful this time of year. I wondered if it might save us. “It’s God’s country,” he said.

We arrived at his parents’ the following morning, after a four-hour drive south. A low ranch-style house on a wide road of low ranch-style houses. Michael said it was too nice a day to be stuck inside, so he took me around the side and we climbed straight up onto the roof: “I know you like roofs in California!” I did like roofs in California. The front and back yards of gravel, wood chip, and pebbles, interspersed with the occasional palm tree or redwood. At the end of the road was the main street, a couple of stores, a steak house, and a taqueria. Beyond, fields of lemon trees and mustard grass and farmland that stretched a few miles inland, up to a range of golden hills. Above us, the sun shone like the grill of a new truck.

The house was full of knickknacks and shells and crystals and string lights. A “Be Grateful” sign by the coffee maker. A “Be Grateful” mat by the front door. A canvas in the kitchen printed with a picture of three fluffy ducklings and the words “I have joy down in the bottom of my heart.” It was hard to make out how many cats there were. And then PooPoo, the overweight chihuahua, waddled in from the hallway and charged at Michael, baring his red gums and gnashing tiny, pointed teeth. Michael told me the dog was the spawn of the devil and the root cause of all the issues that existed between him and his parents. I already knew that the issues between Michael and his family had begun when Michael had gone to college in Santa Cruz five years before, found drugs, wouldn’t get a real job, and kept having to move back home when he ran out of money.

His parents were musicians who’d met in Santa Barbara in the seventies. She’d sung in one band and he’d played guitar in another. They’d both worked in the same hippie jewelry store downtown before marrying and moving to a smaller town up the coast. I met them that morning when they followed the pets into the kitchen. Gene was short and round with a kind face, freshly shaved with a peaked cap on his bald head and a smart cowboy shirt tucked into chinos. He gave me a warm hug that smelled of Irish Spring. He picked up PooPoo and fed him some bratwurst from the fridge. Mom went straight to the coffeepot. She wore a blue shirt with cropped leggings and had her blond hair put up neatly in a clip. She had the same unblinking stare as Michael.

Gene left to work his shift at a music shop in the next town over and Mom said she needed more coffee before her pain medication kicked in and she could talk properly. She had arthritis and had pain from a series of botched surgeries. The pain was the worst in the morning, but she was managing it with physical therapy, swimming, and half a pill on the bad days. She spent the next hour pacing around the house, telling me about all the things she needed to do—pay the bills, fill out paperwork, physical therapy, feed the dog, feed the cats—only to be derailed from doing any of it by the pets, or the phone ringing. She kept apologizing for being so busy, but she couldn’t seem to get anything done. The bills stayed untouched in a pile that took up most of the kitchen table, the phone rang and rang. There were Post-its all over the house: “Put coffee out,” “Tell Dad to clean sink,” “Ask Michael where he is living in SF,” “Be Grateful.”

Michael derailed her the most, as he tried to make breakfast and clean up after himself. Mother and son knocked around the place, from the coffeepot to the piano to the back door, to the front door to the coffeepot again. They both had the habit of getting lost midaction and the same strange sweetness. At one point, just after getting at him about putting the dishes away in the wrong place, she went into the living room and sang out with joy. When she came back into the kitchen she was smiling. She put her arms around her son. He rested his cheek on the top of her head and closed his eyes.

Michael and I spent the afternoon walking around town. Not a place built for walking but it had its charm, the slanting golden light making even the Vons supermarket look beautiful. We bought three beers for five dollars at the Stop and Shop and watched the sun go down as we sat against a fence by a dusty abandoned lot. He told me that the most famous thing about this town was a Dorothea Lange photograph of migrants from the thirties.

For dinner Michael made sandwiches and, to his mom’s exasperation, moved the bills off the dinner table and told everyone we were going to sit down. They were very good sandwiches, pastrami and banana peppers and mayo with a steak seasoning, on thick slices of bread. He made a sandwich each for his parents, and two types for me and him to share. “Me and Helen share everything,” he announced. “We’re in love.”

After a few bites, Mom started talking about how hard it was, living with her husband, how she loved him but needed him to leave. “I keep telling him, but he won’t go. He does nothing around the house, just eats and spends and plays his guitars.” She said that when she married him, he was already deep in debt. He’d never told her how bad it was. Then she said to me, “I love my son, but I’d understand if you wanted to leave him. Don’t make the same mistake I made.” Gene didn’t say anything in response, just happily ate his sandwich and seemed to be somewhere else. Michael went to the fridge and popped a Corona.

The next day was a Saturday. We borrowed Gene’s car and spent the day in the ice-plant dunes of Grover Beach. When the sun set, we snuck into a motel jacuzzi. Crouched in the bubbles, Michael said he’d told his dad that he’d marry me if he had a dollar. “I dunno about marriage,” I told him.

Gene was in the kitchen when we got back, enjoying a Corona Familiar in a frosted glass. He was in a good mood from playing a gig at a wedding where he’d devoured a seafood-platter buffet. “I tell you … those crabs. All that fish. Mountains of it.” We sat at the counter with him. Over more Coronas, Mom cackling along to Scrubs on the TV, he told me about his first love. At one point he made the mistake of asking Michael what his plans were. Michael said he was going to start an open-source 24-7 radio station that spread empathy across the world and freed a billion people. He already knew his mission on Earth, God had told him. His parents didn’t need to worry. Gene turned to me with a smirk. “I told Michael to experiment with LSD. I didn’t realize he’d be experimenting every day for five years.”

They drove us to the train station in San Luis Obispo the next afternoon. Another sunny day but things felt different. Now I knew that this impossible person had a mother and father and that he made some kind of sense beside them. When his parents hugged us goodbye his dad whispered something in Michael’s ear. “If I had a dollar,” Michael said.

We found a booth with a table in the train’s observation car, beside a window. Gene and Mom spotted us as they were driving out of the parking lot and circled back through three or four times, waving as the train left the station. Leaving San Luis Obispo, the train wound around and between the Pacific Coast Ranges. The slopes reached up on either side, rolling above the windows. Michael leaned on my shoulder while I read him a story I’d written about my alcoholic dad. It made him cry. I told him not to move yet—a girl in another booth was painting a picture of us. I could see it in the corner of my eye, strokes of yellow and green and gold.

***

Six months later, Gene was diagnosed with stage four cancer. A melanoma that had not been removed properly in the spring had spread to his organs by September. Michael and I were living in Chicago by the time Gene began chemo, sleeping on a futon at an event studio that my sister ran and earning a bit of money setting up and cleaning up after baby showers and photoshoots during the day and after parties and music videos at night.

The family told Michael not to come back yet. So we stayed in Chicago for September and into October. Michael’s desperate restlessness and acid-fueled benders had subsided, and the deranged passion that had brought us together had calmed to a more dependable, if rocky, companionship. We kept our clothes in a cupboard and pretended to the people who rented the space that we didn’t live there. When the studio was in use, we visited my sister and her son, or wandered around Lincoln Park, or walked along Lake Michigan, waiting for the call from his family to say that he needed to come home. Sometimes Michael brought his guitar and I brought my notebook and we’d sit playing and writing, cooling our feet in the lake. Other times we had long, agonizing arguments walking around the humid parks. He said I was unloving and spiritually dead inside. I said he was cruel and overbearing, that we were two very different people from different worlds and it would never work anyway, it was doomed. He said that only proved how godless and unloving I was. What was cruel was how little I believed in us. All that needed to happen was for me to find faith. We were twenty-seven. We could move off the grid, have lots of children, and raise chickens. I wanted to get on a plane and go home. Whenever we had an especially bad argument, he stormed off to the hot-dog place around the corner from the studio, where the staff was famous for insulting its customers. He made friends with the people who worked there. “The only real people in this city,” he said. Baby Jesus Ted Bundy was one of the names they called him. He would come back in the best of moods. He was on one of those hot-dog runs when his sister called and told him the doctor said it was a matter of days. He spent his entire savings, four hundred dollars, on a flight for the next morning. I packed up the futon and moved into my sister’s apartment. He called after two weeks at home. His dad really was dying now and he needed to see me. Please could I come? My sister found me a flight from Chicago to LA for fifty dollars for the following week.

***

The Amtrak train from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo goes up the Pacific coast, at times along the beach and at others high in the cliffs. Michael was waiting for me on the platform, wearing a black hoodie and a black cap with a small red-and-white mushroom on the front. He called it his mourning costume. In the car he gave me a paper bag. Inside was a bar of chocolate wrapped neatly in tissue paper. As he drove out of the lot a full moon appeared over the trees.

We arrived at the house to find Gene sitting on a red La-Z-Boy, watching Blazing Saddles, PooPoo on his lap. The dog jumped off when he saw us coming and charged at Michael’s ankles. Michael picked him up, thrashing, and plopped him outside, slamming the screen door. Gene had almost halved in size, his face completely sunken, his arms and legs, bluish and pale, poking out of a baggy T-shirt and shorts. I tried to hide my shock but it must have been apparent. People had been coming over all week to say their goodbyes.

When Michael had first told me they’d put Gene on home hospice, I’d assumed it meant he would be home under regular medical care. What it really meant on his low-cost insurance was a hospital bed in their house, medication, and thirty-minute visits from a nurse twice a week. The rest of the time it was up to Michael, his mother, and his sister to look after Gene. By the time I arrived, the home hospice had been going on for two weeks and they’d stumbled into a rhythm. Gene slept in the Blue Room (blue walls and carpet), which had once been Michael’s bedroom, then the bedroom of a series of lodgers, then a room for Mom to stretch in. Now it was the room where Gene was going to die. There was the hospital bed in the center and a folding table against one wall, covered in a red paper tablecloth, pieces of hospital equipment, dozens of pill pots, and Michael’s junk. Michael and his mother took turns administering a regimen of medication every few hours: liquid morphine, vitamins, blood pressure pills, pills to help his organs deal with all the pills. There was a mattress in the corner covered with a Lion King quilt where Michael had been sleeping. Gene had a little bell by his bedside that he rang when he needed something.

I was tired from the travel, so Michael set me up a bed in the Green Room next door. It had a single bed, another folding table, and a few blankets laid out for the cats to sleep on. Michael gave me his pillow and the Lion King duvet and put on another hoodie over the hoodie he was already wearing. We sat down on the bed for a moment and he rested his head on my shoulder. From the next room the little bell rang and he shot up. I curled up and drifted off.

The next morning Michael woke me up at nine o’clock with a mug of creamy coffee. “Get up! We’re going to the store!” His dad wanted egg bagels. They’d already given Gene his medicine, taken him for a shower, and rustled up a small first breakfast of eggnog and toast. It was only a quick drive to Vons but Michael drove very slowly, all the windows open, lighting one cigarette after another.

We returned to the sound of the little bell ringing. Gene wanted to sit out on the lounger. He wanted a coffee. Michael helped his dad outside and made the bagels. I did the dishes and Mom put on another pot of coffee while telling me how much pain she was in, her arthritis, her hip —she was falling apart.

I soon discovered that the most demanding part of the home hospice was Gene’s appetite. Over the next week we went out three or four times a day to find whatever thing he craved. The bell would ring and Michael would go running. “My dad wants a steak dinner!” We’d jump into the car to go pick up a steak, then sushi, then burritos.

Mom was paying for these elaborate requests with envelopes of cash she’d saved over the years, each one labeled with a particular purpose. Every time she pulled out a new one from the back of a drawer, my heart sank: forty dollars for Michael’s birthday, a hundred dollars for a plumbing emergency, a hundred for yard work—all gone.

As the morphine doses got larger and Michael more sleep-deprived, nights and meals and dreams collapsed into hallucinations. Gene would wake up, feel hungry, and ring his bell. Michael would help him into the kitchen and cook whatever Gene instructed. I’d hear all about it in the morning. Clam chowder from a can with packet noodles. Chicken soup with pork gyoza and taquitos. Michael told me that sometimes he’d drift off in the middle of cooking, laying his double-hooded head on the kitchen counter.

I slipped by the Blue Room one morning, sheepishly hoping I could just make a coffee and bring my book out into the backyard. “The English Muffin!” Gene called out. “I want an English pot roast. Can you do that?”

I returned to the doorway. PooPoo, who was more or less living on Gene’s chest by this point, greeted me with a growl.

“Yes!” I said. “I think I can.”

Waiting for the coffee to brew, I googled English pot roast. It seemed to be something to do with potatoes and meat, a stew. I couldn’t find Michael anywhere.

“Gene …” I said, eventually going back into his room. “What do you mean by English pot roast?”

“I mean Henry VIII creamy banquet pot roast. Pig’s blood! Potatoes! Lots of meat. Don’t forget the meat!”

I called for Michael all over the house, in the front yard, the backyard, down by the shed. Finally his voice came down from the sky.

“I’m up here!” he said. I couldn’t see him, but some branches moved at the very top of the thirty-foot redwood.

“He wants me to make a medieval pot roast,” I told Michael when he came down.

“He’ll go back to sleep. I need to give him some more morphine now anyway. He’ll forget all about it.”

Michael was right. While PooPoo barked and tore at his fingers, he fed his father the liquid morphine, and Gene fell back to sleep. Michael took a nap. An hour later the little bell rang again.

“Blueberry pancakes!” I heard. “Can she do blueberry pancakes?”

I found a mix for blueberry muffins in the cupboard. It was the middle of the day by the time they were done. One came out with a funny face. Two freeze-dried blueberries for wonky eyes and a crease below them like a sideways smile. I thought it looked a bit like Michael. I showed his mother and she agreed. Excited, we woke Michael up with the muffin doppelgänger on a plate.

Hold it up to your face, we told him. Do your wonky eyes. Smile sideways a bit. See?

Mom brought a muffin cut up in four with a pile of butter to Gene on a little plate. He put the whole lump of butter on one quarter, had a bite, and put the plate down on his lap, exhausted. “Do you like your muffin, Dad?” Michael said. Gene didn’t respond. I felt that in some great way I had failed.

***

Michael’s sister, Bonnie, lived in the next town over. She had a two-year-old girl, Sofia, and was heavily pregnant with her second. She’d bring a meal or some shopping over every few days and spend a few hours with her dad. When she and the little girl spilled in through the front door, the whole house seemed to calm.

One afternoon, Gene and Bonnie were stretched out on the sofa, the patio doors letting in a warm breeze. Sofia was running around, looking for the cats. Mom was out in the hammock. I was sitting next to Michael on the piano bench. He started playing a peaceful, sweet song. I asked Bonnie what Sofia’s birth had been like. She said it had been an amazing experience. She said she went full wild woman. At the moment of the birth, she’d been on all fours and felt her whole heart open wide to God. There was no pain, no body, no one else, just her baby and God. Gene said that was the way he felt about death. When the moment came, he was going to go into it with arms open to God. He held his arms out wide as he said it.

Later, Bonnie’s husband, Paul, came over. They got out some guitars from the garage, brought them into the Blue Room, and sang songs around Gene’s bed. Nineties folk—The Moldy Peaches, Bright Eyes—and then an amazing rendition of “O Holy Night,” Paul on the harmonica, Michael on the guitar, and Bonnie singing. I sat on the mattress and watched them. I wanted them to keep playing—no more talking, talking, talking. “O night divine, o night …”

At the end of the song, Mom came in. She said it was late, Dad was tired, she was tired, we were all tiring him out. Michael said, “Wow Mom, you even managed to ruin this.” Bonnie snapped at Michael, “Don’t talk to her like that.” Michael said, “Yeah, yeah, it’s all my fault.” Bonnie’s husband asked no one in particular if they’d noticed that the moon’s face had changed. “They’ve done something to the moon’s face,” he said. “I swear …”

“He’s tired,” Mom said, turning to Gene. “Are you tired, sweetie? Tell them you’re tired. No one believes me. Someone’s gotta look after him. He needs his rest. Tell them for once. I know how tired you are. He’ll never say it himself …”

“All right, Mom. I’m tired.”

I followed Michael out to the backyard with a beer and a cigarette and found him up in the redwood again. I coaxed him down with my offerings and convinced him not to climb all the way up the tree in the dark.

***

Gene’s body was shutting down. His legs and arms were swelling and leaking fluid. He had to carry paper towels around with him to mop up the mess, but he never complained. We took turns massaging his legs to ease the pain. When it was my turn, I made a bit of conversation, asked him about his life. He didn’t want to go into any of that. He just smiled and told me to massage with all the strength my skin and bones could muster.

Amid all this, Michael wanted to have sex whenever he had a minute free. When his dad was sleeping he’d usher me into the Green Room or drive us out to the back-road fields and pull over on the side of the road. At night, with the hills behind us, the hum of cars in the distance, a light breeze through the grass, it was kind of spectacular. But I was never in the mood. So often we would go all the way out there for me to freeze over. “You’re removed,” he told me. “Checked out. A sandbag.”

“Well, sorry,” I said. “But I massaged your dying dad’s legs earlier. I’ve come all the way here. I’m doing what I can do. Right now all I can be is a sandbag.”

“I’m exhausted and I need love.”

“We just had sex.”

“Oh yeah. ‘We just did this, we just did that. I gave you a blowjob last week …’ ”

“I know you’re sad but you’re being a dick. How can you not see that?”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“You were the one who started the conversation. I was just lying here.”

“Exactly.”

***

The days went on and Gene held on. One evening I noticed a slice of a moon through the kitchen window and realized it had been two weeks since I’d arrived. Despite the pain, Gene still wanted to move around, take a stroll with his walker, barbecue pork, play guitar on the patio with his son. “This is not how normal hospice patients behave,” Mom said. We were standing in the kitchen, looking at family pictures. In many of them the whole family and some friends were sitting around jamming, having a good time. Not that long ago—five years, maybe.

“Most people just lie in bed. But my husband—he’s on his feet demanding fine dining! I don’t want to complain, but it makes me think—miracles can happen. And if he does get better, things would have to change around here. There’s no money. We can’t live like this. Steak-dinner takeout! We’d lose the house.”

I nodded and made to say something, but she carried on.

“Sometimes I think I might be an alien,” she said. “I’m not like other people. Like lying—people lie so easily but I can never lie. Neither can Michael. We’re both like that. I can see how hard it is for him in the world. We just don’t make sense here! He needs to get a job, get a car. Get going with his life. You’re so good for him. He listens to you. I always told him, If you wanna just do what you want, then find a groupie. You’re no groupie. You’re like an angel sent here. I mean it. I prayed to God for you and you came. But you’ve got your life ahead of you.”

Michael must have been listening because he ran out of the Blue Room at that point.

He took my hand and peeled me away. “We’re going on a walk now, Mom. She doesn’t wanna talk anymore.”

“See,” Mom said. “He’ll do anything for you.”

***

Gene was still ringing his bell on his sixty-fifth birthday, November 16, a milestone that had seemed unthinkable a month before. We arranged a small party for his family and a few of his music buddies. Michael spent the morning setting up the backyard with microphones and guitars. He even put a TV and VCR on a cart on wheels to play home videos. We drove out to the Mexican supermarket and bought carnitas and a case of mini Corona bottles. On the way out he impulse-bought a ceramic Day of the Dead guitar to give his dad. When the friends arrived at the house, Mom took the opportunity to go have some time alone and run errands at Vons and CVS.

The men barbecued pork, and I made pico de gallo, according to Bonnie’s instructions. It was a hit. The men in their cowboy getups were shocked that the English girl had prepared it. The sun was shining, people were sitting out, eating the barbecue. Michael tried his best to get people to play music but it wasn’t happening. How do you celebrate the birthday of a dying man? I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself. At one point, Michael gave his dad the ceramic guitar wrapped up in Christmas wrapping paper. “Día de los Muertos,” said his dad. He held the guitar in his palms, disgusted.

The men got it together and started playing “The Cowboy Who Started the Fight.” Gene watched on in his wheelchair. He closed his eyes as they sang “screamed through the veins of the street.” They sang a few more songs. Michael and I took a break to catch the sun go down over a field of tomato vines. In the ten minutes that we were out, Gene stood up with a guitar to play a song with them. He was just sitting back down as we came in the door. Soon after, the guys all left.

“Man plans, God laughs,” Michael said.

Mom was gone for most of the day. She returned from her errands with a gift for Michael. She was so excited about it, she wanted to give it to him straight away. Out of a green and white paper bag, Michael pulled a fluffy llama with wonky eyes. He squeezed it and the llama squeaked.

“It’s a dog toy,” he said, sounding like his father when he held the Day of the Dead guitar. Mom laughed and laughed. She said it reminded her of Michael and the blueberry muffin. I laughed too. Michael grimaced.

“Oh no … I think he’s angry,” Mom said.

“Here,” I told Michael. “Don’t be angry. Squeeze your dog toy.”

He took the llama in both hands, crossed his eyes, stuck his tongue out, and let it rip.

***

November 18 was the eighth anniversary of my own father’s death. I woke up feeling sad and drained. At this point, I thought to myself, Gene needed to die or someone else would. I spent the morning swinging in the hammock by the redwood at the bottom of the garden, hiding from everyone. I heard Michael and Mom calling for me from the house. Gene wanted a massage, they said. His legs were hurting. I couldn’t face it. Michael called my phone. I ignored it.

When I went back inside, the two of them were maneuvering Gene into the living room. Michael almost dropped him and he fell back on the sofa with a cry of pain. “You’re not helping!” Mom screamed at Michael.

“Mom. I am midhelping. You’re brain-dead from your painkillers.”

“Enough!” Gene’s voice boomed from the sofa, where he was half-collapsed, falling off the side of it. “Stop it! Both of you!”

Mom and Michael stopped, ashamed.

“Now, son.” Gene took in a quiet, pained breath. “Can you help me off this damn sofa and take me back to bed?” Michael pulled him up by the armpits.

That night Gene could only manage a spoonful of canned tomato bisque.

“I think he’s going to die today. The same day as your dad. If our dads die on the same day that’s God talking. We’ll have to get married.”

Later, Michael slept next to me in the Green Room while his mom was with Gene. I dozed while I listened to Mom talk to Gene, telling him about their life together. “We’re good people,” she told him. “Weird people.” She could have been saying anything really, the hum was so soothing. “There’s no one around here like us.” It kept sending me back to sleep.

I woke up to Gene’s voice crying out: “Help! I can’t breathe!” I pushed Michael and he bolted into the Blue Room. Mom woke up too. “I’m coming!” she called out.

I stayed in bed, listening. They were arguing about how much morphine to give Gene. Mom said Michael was giving him too much. Michael said it wasn’t enough. She ran to get the phone to call the nurse. Gene was desperately trying to get words out. He couldn’t breathe. And then a desperate gargling, drowning on thin air. Michael was saying, “It’s okay Dad. I’m right here. I’m right here,” all through the gargling until Gene was no longer making any sound.

When I walked in, Gene’s skin had already yellowed. I realized I’d seen three dead bodies now. My dad, my granddad, and Gene. They all looked the same, laid out on a hospital bed. It was five minutes to midnight. An hour later a nurse came. Another hour, and a man and a woman arrived from the mortuary. At the door, their long, gray, thinning hair obscuring half their faces, they told me they were here for the body. Never have I seen more ghoulish-looking people. They wore baggy suits with sleeves that came down over their hands, and round, shiny shoes that also seemed a few sizes too big. They moved slowly. “Was he in the military?” they asked. “No,” we said. “He was not in the military.”

“Okay, thank you.” They put a sheet over Gene’s body and wheeled him through the house, out the front door. Mom followed him out, holding PooPoo. She wanted to show the dog that Dad was leaving. Dad was being wheeled onto the van.

“See, it’s okay, PooPoo. There he goes. They’re wheeling him in now. He’s going …”

Michael didn’t want to watch his dad go into the back of a van. I found him in the backyard with a tall glass of vodka, smoking a cigarette. He joked that he’d been praying to his dad as he was dying. “Come on, five more minutes. If you make it five more minutes I won’t have to marry her.” Then he said that he was plotting to steal morphine to kill the dog.

All the lights were on. It was three in the morning. Michael pulled out a crate of home videos and Mom and I told him to put them away. I made us some tea. We had some more vodka. Mom went to bed and I put Michael in the shower. I washed his hair and cried, but he was like a stone. I could tell he was still obsessing about killing PooPoo. After the shower, I put him in a clean T-shirt and underwear, tucked him in to bed, and held him tight until he fell asleep.

I woke up in the morning to Michael sleeping soundly next to me. He looked so at peace I didn’t want to wake him up. It made me cry. His eyes opened. “Dad?” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. Soon after, we heard Mom howling. Long, slow howls. One of the saddest, strangest noises I’ve ever heard. “My life!” she called out between the howls. “My life!” It was almost like singing.

After that first day Mom said she needed to mourn alone. We needed to leave so she could scream and cry and talk to God. We went to Bonnie’s for a night but then Bonnie said she was too sad and stressed to have us there, with the baby coming soon. A little desperate, we decided to go camping. For the next week we drove between beaches along the central coast, walked, wrote, drank beer. Michael wrote a list of plans for the future, plans that involved him getting paid to travel, recording his album, singing at a body of water every day, building the 24-7 radio live-stream, moving every three months. He was going to give this list to his family, to prove to them that he had a plan. “You two need to move on with your own life now,” Mom had told me before we left. I couldn’t understand how his family could abandon him at a time like this. I’d had to remind her that Michael had come home to look after Gene, that we’d been living and working in Chicago. At the same time, I got what she was saying and why they didn’t want him hanging around. Michael was a liability, and now he was my liability.

***

Gene didn’t have a funeral. They were going to take his ashes out to the ocean in the spring. After the week of camping, Mom got lonely and wanted Michael back again. I decided to leave, to stay with a friend in Brooklyn for a while. I found a flight from San Francisco and booked a train from San Luis Obispo up the coast. Before I left, I found Michael a job doing yard work for a neighbor. He would save some money and leave in January. We said we might travel around. I tried to believe it could happen but I knew that it would not.

As we left for the train station, a commode arrived for Gene, more than a month late. Mom couldn’t bear to look at it, so we said we’d give it to Goodwill on the way to the station. She gave us a trash bag of old blankets to donate, too. I said a tearful goodbye to Mom and she gave me an envelope with a hundred-dollar bill in it. She thanked me for all the help and told me to get something nice for myself.

“Michael doesn’t want you to go,” she said.

I hugged her again and got in the car. “I never say goodbye,” she said. “I only say see you later.”

We drove up to the back of Goodwill and waved down a man who seemed to be accepting donations. “Is that a commode?” he asked.

“Yep. My dad just died. He never used it.”

He shook his head and tutted. “Nah. We can’t take that. That’s nasty.”

“How about these blankets?” Michael said, pointing to the trash bag.

“This bag? Those blankets?” The man took a quick sideways look. “Nah, we can’t take that either. That’s nasty, too.”

We were in a silly mood, driving to San Luis Obispo with the commode rattling in the back. It was a fresh December day. You could feel a change in the air. We stopped off at Ben Franklin’s Deli and I ordered three Californian sandwiches from the cashier, one for me, one for Michael, and one for him to bring home to his mom.

“My dad just passed away and my girlfriend is leaving for New York!” Michael announced out of nowhere.

There was still some time before the train. At the station we ran up over the footbridge to get a good view of the tracks and the hills. I took a few pictures of Michael. He took a few of me. The train came, we said goodbye, and I found a spot with a table at the back of the second-floor observation car, the same booth we’d sat in after that first trip. My bags stowed away, I looked down and saw Michael on the platform below, dancing to get my attention. He was trying to say something, but I couldn’t understand him. He mimed and danced around a bit more. Got on his knees. Drew a picture of a house with his finger in the air.

A man sitting a few seats ahead of me watched the scene in awe. All of a sudden he began narrating it to the rest of the car.

“Marry me,” the man said. “We’ll have a house by the sea.”

Michael mimed writing in a notebook, then swimming, then playing guitar.

“You can write poetry. I’ll swim. Play music,” said the man.

By this time everyone in the observation car was watching. The narrator turned to me.

“Does he have a phone number? I want to tell him something.”

“He doesn’t have a phone,” I said. “But you can leave a message on his mother’s answering machine.”

So the man dialed Mom’s number, and Michael, feeding off the audience, mimed a phone in response. I thought of Mom at home alone, rattled by the phone ringing. The man spoke to Michael through the glass and Michael nodded along, though he definitely couldn’t hear. Neither of them broke eye contact. The man said he was a preacher. He’d married about a hundred couples by now. Each time it had been uniquely special. “Why wait?” he told the future Michael, who would be listening to his mother’s answering machine if he ever got around to it. The preacher ended his message with his number, saying to call him if we wanted to get married.

The train started moving and Michael ran along the platform. I waved until I could no longer see him. Soon I was coasting inland. A rush of green-gold on either side. Pesticide farmland, trees, bushes thick with leaves, sunlight gracing the tip of everything. I stared out the window the whole journey. No sign of December anywhere, no sign of time passing. So much talk of marriage in God’s country. No doubt He had it all planned out for me.

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botanyone · 1 year

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Introducing our new Botanical Pills

Introducing our new Botanical Pills https://ift.tt/uvyMXUd Even though plants constitute 80% of the biomass on planet Earth, the green world is generally underrepresented in science education programs at all levels – from primary school to university degrees. That’s why Botany One science writers and editors often wonder whether their blog posts need a “supplement” to better explain basic (or complex) botanical concepts to help fully understand the scientific background of a research project or the results of an academic article. So we’re launching a new blog series Botanical Pills, a digital resource for (non-academic) plant lovers aimed at filling knowledge gaps in plant science. Botanical Pills are composed of a text with some examples and links to related bibliography to deepen the theme, accompanied by a cheat sheet with brief annotations and visuals for quick reference. We have started with “Arabidopsis thaliana – the botanist’s lab rat” [PDF]to introduce the most used model organism in plant research and continued with “Plants under pressure” [PDF] to briefly review how plants sense and respond to environmental stressors. We are planning more botanical pills on plant evolution, specialised plant structures (e.g., flower and seed) and plant-specific processes (e.g., C3 and C4 photosynthesis). If you are interested in a specific topic, please let us know by dropping a message (comment box below). The post Introducing our new Botanical Pills appeared first on Botany One. via Botany One https://botany.one/ May 18, 2023 at 03:39PM

#Botany #Plant Science #Botany One

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anotherdepressedfemboy · 1 year

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I just had the most insane dream??

Insane dream where the Dr.Seuss universe is invaded by mutant alien things like the tyranids from Warhammer 40k. All the little who girls and boys were put onto a giant spacecraft leaving the doomed planet and all the who girls and boys were drafted as soldiers. I had to fight alongside my brothers as we were swarmed with hundreds of thousands of them. The inside of the ship had some classic dr.seuss looking architecture and we had dr.seuss looking rifles and C4 detonators to fight off the aliens. I had to leave my brothers to be slaughtered by the aliens but there was nothing I could do to save them besides detonate the explosives around them as they were overrun and swarmed.

There were 7 levels to the ship separated by these giant round glass floors kinda like cathedral rosette windows. The mayor tried to just have us all sedated by having us drink big jugs of soda with sleeping pills added as some kind of mercy or distraction as he fled in an escape pod, but I was able to snap out of it before falling asleep.

I had to defend the mayor as the hive queen crashed through the last ceiling but somehow we killed her at the last second ending the onslaught.

#one time i dreamt #dream #dr. seuss

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polizwrites · 11 months

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WIP Update - 14 Jun 2023

A more normal writing week - I touched 4 fics (2 WIPs & 2 new works) for a total of 2755 words.

On Ao3, I posted:

Chapter 4 of My Love is Vengeance - young!Tony/bodyguard!Winter Soldier (who becomes recovering!Bucky)

Chapter 1 of A Sugar-Coated Pill - No Powers AB/O ‘verse with Alpha!Bucky/omega!Tony in a Sugar Daddy/baby relationship.

On Tumblr I posted:

Solving for X - Ever since he was a child, Tony had wanted to know the reasons behind the way things were the way they were.

All the King’s Horses - Bucky discovers a dark part of queer history, and Tony and Steve ask him to help overcome the repercussions.

I have 15 active WIPs with my current deadlines being the Bucky Barnes Connect Four Alt-Juniverse , the WinterIron Pride Prompt Party and Choose Your Own Stony Story events, all of which wrap up at the end of June.

See below cut for what I’m working on/planning to work on - arranged more or less by bingos/challenges/etc. As always, feel free to send me prompts or plot bunnies as well as asks regarding any of these projects or any other WIPs I’ve got out there. Interaction really helps feed the Muse and keep me motivated!

Seek & Destroy Collab

After reading @psychiccatpanda‘s amazing Morguna and the Green Queen, I got the itch to explore the Soldier’s POV and talked Faustie into collab’ing with me! We’re working on a new part of the series, and I’ve contributed about 900 words towards the 2500-ish we have so far. Going to see if I can squeeze any of my BBB squares into this fic.

Choose Your Own Stony Story (CYO_SS] - Ends 29 Jun]

Another fun event hosted by @stonyauniverse - this one uses flow charts where you choose a starting point, a genre and a prompt and are then assigned an AU and a trope to create a fanwork that incorporates all four into a single work. I was challenged to combine the following: AU: Med School, Hurt/Comfort, Miscommunication, and Bathing. Blind Luck is coming in at 825 words at the moment. It will will need a bit of trigger/warning tagging (cadavers & eye trauma) and will post on Friday the 16th

Bucky Barnes Connect Four Alt-Juniverse Event (BBE_C4)[ends 30 Jun 2023]

Signed up for this event over at @buckybarnesevents - you get a four-square card featuring ideas for AUs. The prompts can be used as stand-alones or combined with each other or other events. Thanks to crossovers, I finished out one card and have a WIP that combines 2 square and an idea to combine the other two. .

* C1 - Interior Designer - combining this with my Gender Swap square for a continuation of Shifting Alliances - domestic Bucky/Maria (bonus Peggy/Steve) fic. This ficlet came in at 639 words and will post on the 21st.

* C2 - Gender Swap - see above

* C3 - Professor/Student – Possible continuation of Technicalities from Bucky’s POV - could combine nicely with my FWB square below.

* C4 - Friends with Benefits – I may combine this with my BBB Never the Fall that Kills You square and/or Professor/Student above.

WinterIron Pride Prompt Party [WI_PPP] (Ends 30 Jun)

This is a daily prompt event hosted by the WinterIron Discord server that will be running all month. I’m shooting to write something for at least half of these and have completed six prompts with Tumblr ficlets so far: Day 1: First Meetings = Potential for Retribution; Day 2: Yearning = Dressing for the Occasion ; Day 3: Gender Euphoria = Where Will He Be Tomorrow? Day 4: Dragons are Gay = A Shift in Their Relationship; Day 5: Fluidity = Tony Stark’s Pride 101; Day 7: Questioning = Solving for X and Day 9: Older Gays = All the King’s Horses.

Hot Bucky Summer [BBE_HBS] (Ends Aug 30)

Another @buckybarnesevents event, this time with weekly smexy prompts. I’d like to complete at least two fics per month for this challenge.

Week One: “What should I wear?” + Collar - Posted Dressing for the Occasion to Tumblr on June 2nd as a crossover with the WI_PPP Yearning prompt as well as the Flash Fiction Friday prompt [#FFF203 Yes Sir!!] . It came in at 325 words and will get posted to Ao3 before the event ends.

Week Two: “What Should I Call You?” + Alpha - combining this with the ACB June Monthly Mission AU: Sugar Daddy as well as the Knot In My Name Anti-AI A/B/O event prompts: Sugar Daddy AU. Chapter One of A Sugar-Coated Pill, posted to Ao3 this morning. Up and coming politician Alpha!Bucky starts a sugar daddy/sugar baby relationship with a young omega!Tony. Turns out both of them have secrets they’re hiding. Chapter One came in at 1190 words.

Week Five: “When I First Met You..” + Fireworks - filling this with Chapter 2 of A Sugar-Coated Pill - combining with WIB Dancing and BBB Pet Names prompts. The first draft is coming in at 1087 words and may get tweaked a little before posting on 6/30.

All Caps Bingo [ACB_R1] (Ends 30 Sep)

I’ve got thirteen completed fics, two WIPs and will be pursuing the One Fill, One Bingo Challenge for Row 5.

* I1 - Mutual Pining - may combine with something on my BBB card - see if the Centerfold fic idea fits in here.

* G1 - Isaiah Bradley - Planning to add more to The Fist, Defeated. (possibly present day)

* O3 - Pararescue Sam Wilson - may try to squish this into an expansion of A Rising Star - a previous Flash Fiction Friday fill.

June Monthly Mission: Sugar Daddy - See Week Two of BBE_HBS above.

Sam Wilson Bingo [SWB_R3] (Ends 15 Oct 2023)

I have three fills and one WIP - I need to work on cross fills between this and the All Caps and Bucky Barnes bingo!

* G3 - Joaquin Torres - see ACB Pararescue Sam Wilson above.

WinterIron Bingo - [WIB_R1] (Ends 16 Dec 2023)

I have nine fills completed and three WIP for this brand-new bingo event that I’m helping mod! Along with crossfilling against my other bingos, I’m going to try to combine my B column squares for the Iron Soldier badge (complete a bingo with a single work). – Alpha Tony Stark, “That was not my intention.”, James Rhodes,Alpine loves Tony and Blind date.

* N1 - Bucharest – I think I can fold this into a future chapter of My Love is Vengeance - where a young!Tony and a recovering!Bucky have been kidnapped by Hydra, who still thinks Bucky is the Soldier.

* G4 - AU: College Students – looking to expand Beaten to the Punch with some backstory on Bucky and Tony as science camp counselors to fit with this square - will also cross over with my WFB Volunteering Together square.

* O5 - Gentle – use this poem as inspiration?

* JUNE ADOPTABLE - Dancing - see Week Five of BBE_HBS above.

Bucky Barnes Bingo - [BBB_R5] (Ends 10 Jan 2024)

I’ve got five fills, seven WIPs (!!) and a couple more Vague ideas.

* B4 - Shapeshifters - wrote . A Shift in Their Relationship as a crossover with the WI_PPP prompt Dragons are Gay. This came in at 404 words and will be posted to Ao3 before this event is over.

* U2 - Clint Barton/Hawkeye - Dredged up my year-old Winter Soldier/ young Clint WIP You Can’t Stop It With a Gun. Chapter 3 was already in progress and is now up to 548 words.

* C2 - Yelena Belova – The plan is to use this prompt in the next chapter of Peresmešnik, (aka Three Avengers and a Baby) , which is currently sitting at 1100 words (400-ish of which are mine).

* C5 - Marriage of Convenience/Pretend Couple - next chapter of Lady Natasha’s Consort and Lord Steve’s Companion. Not quite sure where to take this next at the moment. 😕

* K3 - Magic - Aro!Bucky sickfic idea?

* K5 - “Don’t Touch Him” - Using this prompt for Chapter Five of My Love is Vengeance It’s coming in at 1372 words and I have some decent notes that should allow me to finish this up in six or seven chapters total.

* Y2 - [image: IW Bucky with the good hair] A Flash Fiction Friday prompt [#FFF198 What Comes Next] was a perfect match for an idea I’d already been playing around with to fill this square. I banged out Getting Prepared -(updated title = Preparations) an A:IW missing scene set between the time that T’Challa and Okoye come for Bucky and the moment he sees Steve again. I will post it to Ao3 sometime in the next month or so.

* Y3 - Alpine - see WIB Iron Soldier combo.

* Y4 - Forgotten Things - I may use this for Chapter 2 Half of the Flesh and Blood That Makes Me Whole, a Bucky POV remix of at least the first part of Take What Was Wrong (And Make it Right), which is current sitting at 52 words. I’m expecting at least one more chapter, possibly two, depending on how far I want to take the remix.

Warm and Fluffy Bingo - [WFB] (no end date)

I got my card from @warmandfluffybingocards back in February but really hadn’t done much with it - however, I’m picking it back up for some crossover possibilities!

* N4 - Affectionate Teasing – Expanding a bit on Starting Something New , so I can crossfill with my Tony Stark Bingo square Pairing: Tony/Pepper (I got a sneak peek at my card! 😁) The ficlet is now sitting at 396 words.

* O5 - Volunteering Together – see WIB AU: College Students

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On other creative fronts: I have an Loki-gator Stuffed With Character figure in progress. I will be making an announcement about commissions by the end of the month, so if you’re looking for one of a kind gifts for birthdays or other celebrations, check out Stuffed With Character over on Facebook for a full list of my designs (now over 100!). These soft stuffed figures are mostly Marvel and monsters, but I have some Star Wars, Star Trek, DC and Disney figures as well. Plus I love to take custom design requests for any fandom!

#writing stuff #WIP Update #WIP Wednesday #shameless self promo

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