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#compression shirts helps to reduce shoulder pain
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While seeking the help of trained medical professionals definitely helps, if you are wondering “Do compression shirts help with shoulder pain as well?”; then the answer is yes. They do! Want to know more? Read this blog now: https://www.activewearmanufacturer.com/can-compression-shirts-help-with-shoulder-pain-in-athletes/
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moechies · 8 months
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thinkin about toji who forcefully bent you over his lap because you've been a brat !! hes so big n mean it's scary !!
“ya better shut yer trap unless you want it t’ hurt even worse.”
you mewl into his thick thigh, tears bleeding through the fabric of his cotton pants.
you regret the smart remarks you snapped back at your boyfriend, constantly correcting him all day, and getting on his last and final nerve.
which led you here, bent over toji’s lap with a heavy hand on your shoulder, and another heavy fucking hand on the fat of your ass.
“ya fuckin like this don’t ya? look, your stupid cunt’s all wet.”
he plunges his fingers inside your soaked pussy, pulling out quicker than you can gasp. you’re inaudible, face still planted in the fat of his thigh as you hold onto him for leverage.
another harsh hand lands on your ass, this time it follows with a soft rub to ease the pain.. which is when you feel your own slick being rubbed onto your asscheek.
“face me and answer.”
“n-no..! m-m sorry, toji, i.. m-“
you sniffled, hoping the man would take any sort of mercy on you. hoping your whiny whimpers would allow his heart to soften for you, and to end your punishment a bit earlier.
“s too bad, ya got more comin for ya.”
bonus :3
after, he carries your over exerted body to the shower, placing you on top of his lap as the warm water hits your body. you face him as he helps you clean off, peppering kisses over your face. though it’s quiet, you feel his love through his acts of service.
he dresses you in one of his huge shirts and into a pair of your shorts, placing you in bed before using his huge cold hand as a cold compress to reduce the burning on your ass.. hehe
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what-even-is-thiss · 2 years
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If you don’t want to or can’t bind for whatever reason and you still wanna pass:
Layers. They add a level of confusion that distracts people from your boobs. Invest in some lightweight/moisture wicking button up shirts for the hot months. You can usually find used ones for a few bucks at thrift stores, and if you’re willing to buy new from outdoorsy companies like Eddie Bauer they usually have the most lightweight and durable ones.
Stubble. If you’re able to grow facial hair but still like the look of a clean shaven face better, using an electric trimmer or only shaving at night can give you visible stubble while still mostly looking like you shave. If you have visible stubble people are more likely to read you as male even if your chest is a bit big. Experiment with what works for you. If you can’t grow facial hair but still want the look there are tutorials online for how to make fake stubble with makeup.
Sports bras. I usually use tomboyX or champions brand sports bras. Compression bras or shirts for post surgery can also be an option to reduce the size of your chest if those work for you. Don’t wear them to sleep unless you have to though. Be responsible. If you don’t like your breasts moving around while you sleep, try wearing a looser fitting sports or sleep bra or wear a tight fitting t-shirt.
Loose fitting clothing. Not so baggy that it looks like you’re wearing a sack though. That can actually bring more attention to the shape of your body. Just a little bit big. Not skintight. If you’re overweight and/or have smaller breasts you might be able to go without a bra this way depending on your body type. Experiment with what works for you and your needs
Good posture/masculine stance. Gamer posture doesn’t actually hide your chest as much as you think it does. Go through life acting like you belong where you are. Visible nervousness and trying to hide your chest brings more attention to you. Move more with your shoulders than your hips, observe how cis men move, and act like you belong there. It’ll actually help more than a chest binder in most circumstances.
Kinesiology Tape. NOT for everyone and very painful if done improperly. But you can tape your breasts to the side for a few days at a time with skin safe tape. Please for the love of god do your research first though and do NOT use packing or duct tape.
Good luck out there kids and always listen to your body! If you’re hurting yourself, stop that method.
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therooftopsofketterdam · 10 months
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short starter for @thiefofcrows
Night had long since settled over the city, as Inej dipped a cloth in a shallow dish with ice water. Her hair fell over her shoulder, loosely curtaining a side of her face and spilling over the side of her leg and knee, as she looked into Kaz's pale face. Her brown eyes warm and soft on his.
He'd stretched out on the sofa, hat and coat abandoned, tie loosened and vest undone, bad leg elevated with a pillow and his head lay securely in Inej's lap.
"Tell me the other guy looks worse." Inej requested, her voice slightly worried as she brushed some of his hair out of Kaz's forehead, nails lightly tracing over his scalp. There was blood on his face and shirt, some on his gloves and cane as well. She knew how a fight looked like. There were lacerations on his face, a long cut on his forehead, blood trailing from his nose and bruises forming on his face. It looked painful.
Inej withdrew the cloth from the bowl, gently dabbing the edge along the cut on his brow, whiping away dirt, grime, fresh as well as dried blood in an attempt to clean it. The hope was that the ice water would soothe the inflamed tissue and reduce the swelling.
Her mother used to make cold compresses for her whenenver she tumbled off the rope or cut herself on stones and branches while running and climbing. That kind of practice was something she missed deeply...
Inej released a breath she'd been holding as she re-dipped the cloth into the water. "At least none of these will leave a scar." Quietly, she continued to clean his cuts and dab cold water onto the forming bruises. Her hand hesitated when she reached his eyebrow, a shiney mote of scar tissue cut vertically through it. She had always been aware of it, but never had the chance to properly see his scars and Inej wondered what had happened to him that he carried so many on prominent places...
Her index finger gently traced the outline of shiny skin, once, twice, before she moved on. Her hand now cradling the side of his face, a soft brush of her thumb against the side of his mouth where another jagged scar disturbed the softness of Kaz's lips. She'd kissed that scar before and now wondered how his seemed to be smooth and clean cut compared to the gnarled mess that she hid beneath her sleeves.
Kaz's scars where a show of strength, of battles won. Her own were a victory laced with pain, but there was no strength attached to it. Only the hope to be free of the cursed tattoo that had once inhabited her wrist.
Inej noticed another, much fainter rope of scar tissue just above his nose. A vertical scratch that didn't quite seem to fit into the mosaic of scars that marked his face, jagged marks the barrel had left on it's bastard.
Her thumb still rested against the side of his lip as she gently cradled his face to better reach. "How did you get these?" She asked, head slightly turned to the left as she looked at him inquisitively. Scars told stories... and Inej couldn't help but stealing secrets. And Kaz Brekkers secrets were her favorites.
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sbfsportshand · 24 days
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Preventing Carpal Tunnel | Symptoms to Watch Out For
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Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) can often be prevented by taking proactive measures, particularly if you engage in activities that strain your wrists and hands. Here’s everything you need to know about carpal tunnel symptoms.
What is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) is a condition caused by pressure on the median nerve, which runs through the carpal tunnel in the wrist. The carpal tunnel is a narrow passageway made of bones and ligaments at the base of the hand. When this tunnel becomes narrowed or tissues around the median nerve swell, it compresses the nerve, leading to symptoms.
CTS is frequently associated with repetitive hand movements, wrist injuries, and conditions like diabetes, thyroid dysfunction, and rheumatoid arthritis. Early diagnosis and treatment are crucial to prevent permanent nerve damage and maintain hand function. Treatment options range from lifestyle modifications and wrist splints to medications and, in severe cases, surgical intervention.
What are Major Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Symptoms?
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) is characterized by a range of symptoms primarily affecting the hand and wrist, stemming from the compression of the median nerve within the carpal tunnel. Here are the major symptoms to watch for:
 1. Numbness and Tingling:
    - Location: Most commonly affects the thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers. The pinky finger is usually not involved.
    - Timing: Symptoms often occur at night or upon waking. They can also be triggered by activities that involve bending the wrist, such as holding a phone or steering wheel.
 2. Pain:
    - Nature: Pain can be sharp or aching and may radiate up the forearm toward the shoulder.
    - Location: Often localized in the wrist and hand but can extend to the arm.
 3. Hand Weakness:
    - Symptoms: Difficulty in performing tasks that require fine motor skills, such as buttoning a shirt or holding small objects.
    - Grip Strength: A noticeable reduction in grip strength, leading to a tendency to drop objects.
 4. Swollen Sensation:
    - Feeling: A sensation of swelling in the fingers and hand, even if no visible swelling is present.
 5. Reduced Dexterity:
    - Impact: Difficulty in performing precise movements, such as typing or playing a musical instrument.
 6. Burning Sensation:
    - Description: A burning feeling in the fingers or hand, which can be particularly uncomfortable and disruptive.
 7. Hand Clumsiness:
    - Symptoms: A general sense of clumsiness or awkwardness in hand movements.
 Progression of Symptoms:
    - Symptoms typically start gradually and may come and go initially. As the condition worsens, symptoms can become more persistent and severe, significantly affecting daily activities and sleep quality.
 When to Seek Medical Advice:
   - If you experience any of these symptoms, especially if they persist or worsen, it's essential to consult a healthcare professional. Early diagnosis and intervention can prevent permanent nerve damage and improve treatment outcomes.
Understanding and recognizing these symptoms can help in seeking timely medical intervention, potentially avoiding more severe complications associated with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
Can Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Treatment Help Your Symptoms?
Yes, treatment for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) can significantly alleviate symptoms and improve hand function. Early intervention is crucial to prevent permanent nerve damage. Non-surgical treatments include wrist splints, which keep the wrist in a neutral position, reducing pressure on the median nerve, and anti-inflammatory medications to reduce swelling and pain. Physical therapy exercises can also strengthen the wrist and improve flexibility.
For more severe cases, corticosteroid injections can provide temporary relief by reducing inflammation. If these methods fail, surgical options like carpal tunnel release surgery can be effective. This procedure involves cutting the ligament and pressing on the median nerve to relieve pressure.
With appropriate treatment, many individuals experience substantial symptom relief and improved quality of life. Consulting a healthcare professional early can ensure the most effective treatment plan.
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Why Do Football Players Need Compression Garments to Help Prevent Injuries?
Are you a football player looking for that extra edge on the field? Are you tired of dealing with nagging injuries that keep you sidelined and unable to perform at your best? Well, look no further! In this blog post, we are going to dive deep into the world of compression garments and why they have become an essential piece of equipment for football players all around the globe. Whether you're a professional athlete or just play for fun, understanding how compression garments can help prevent injuries is crucial in staying at the top of your game. So let's get started and discover the power behind these stretchy wonders!
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What are compression garments?
Compression garments are specially designed clothing made from elastic fabrics that provide a snug fit and exert pressure on specific areas of the body. These garments, such as compression socks, sleeves, tights, or shirts, are often worn during physical activities like football to improve performance and reduce the risk of injuries. The main purpose of compression garments is to enhance blood circulation and oxygen delivery to the muscles. This increased blood flow helps in flushing out lactic acid and other metabolic byproducts that can build up during intense exercise. By improving circulation, compression garments can also aid in reducing muscle soreness and fatigue post-game. Another benefit of these garments is their ability to support muscles and joints. The gentle pressure applied by compression wear helps stabilize muscles, reducing vibrations caused by movement. This stabilization not only enhances muscular efficiency but also decreases stress on tendons and ligaments which can help prevent strains or sprains. Furthermore, compression clothing provides a form-fitting support system that promotes proper alignment while you move on the field. It offers targeted support for major muscle groups like quads, hamstrings, calves or shoulders depending on the type of garment used. Wearing compression garments during football training sessions or matches can be beneficial for athletes looking to optimize their performance while minimizing injury risks. With improved blood flow and muscular stability provided by these stretchy wonders' tight embrace!
Do compression garments actually help prevent injuries?
Do compression garments actually help prevent injuries? This is a question that has been asked by many athletes, including football players. Compression garments have gained popularity in recent years, with athletes of all sports turning to them for their potential benefits. But do they really work? Read more:
Compression garments are designed to fit tightly against the skin and apply graduated pressure to specific areas of the body. They are typically made from elastic materials such as spandex or Lycra and can be worn on various parts of the body, including arms, legs, and torso. One theory behind why compression garments may help prevent injuries is that they improve blood circulation. By applying pressure to the muscles, these garments can help increase blood flow and oxygen delivery to the working muscles. This improved circulation may aid in muscle recovery and reduce muscle soreness after intense physical activity. Additionally, compression garments provide support to the muscles and joints. The compressive nature of these garments helps stabilize muscles during movement, which can potentially reduce the risk of strains or sprains. Another benefit often attributed to compression garments is their ability to minimize muscle vibration. During high-impact activities like running or jumping, muscles tend to vibrate or oscillate. This repeated motion can lead to muscle fatigue and potentially increase the risk of injury. Compression garments claim to reduce this vibration by providing a snug fit around the muscles. While there is some anecdotal evidence suggesting that compression garments may be beneficial for injury prevention in football players and other athletes, scientific research on this topic still remains limited and inconclusive. It's important to note that wearing compression garments alone cannot guarantee injury prevention; they should be used as part of a comprehensive training program that includes proper warm-up exercises, strength training, flexibility work,and rest days for recovery.
How do compression garments work?
How do compression garments work? It's a question that many athletes, including football players, ask. Compression garments are tight-fitting clothing items that apply pressure to specific areas of the body. This pressure helps improve blood circulation and lymphatic flow. When you wear compression garments, the graduated pressure they provide can help increase oxygen delivery to your muscles. This increased oxygen supply is essential for optimal performance during physical activities like running, jumping, and tackling on the football field. Compression garments also promote better muscle alignment and support. They can help reduce muscle vibrations and oscillations during movement, which can lead to fatigue and injury. By stabilizing muscles and reducing unwanted movements, compression garments may enhance proprioception – your body's awareness of its position in space – improving coordination and balance. Additionally, compression garments exert gentle pressure on the skin's surface. This pressure stimulates sensory receptors in the skin that send signals to your brain. These signals may help improve neuromuscular control by enhancing feedback between your brain and muscles. See more:
Who can benefit from wearing compression garments?
Compression garments are not only for professional athletes or football players. In fact, anyone who engages in physical activity can benefit from wearing these specialized garments. Whether you're a weekend warrior, gym enthusiast, or someone recovering from an injury, compression garments can provide numerous advantages. For starters, individuals with poor circulation can greatly benefit from wearing compression garments. These tight-fitting clothes help improve blood flow by exerting pressure on the muscles and veins. This increased circulation delivers oxygen and nutrients to the muscles more efficiently, reducing fatigue and improving endurance during workouts. Moreover, compression garments offer support to your joints and muscles. They help stabilize the body's movement during physical activities such as running or weightlifting. By providing this additional support, they reduce the risk of injuries like sprains or strains. Another group that can benefit from compression garments is those recovering from injuries. The gentle pressure exerted by these garments helps reduce inflammation and swelling in injured areas while promoting faster healing. Furthermore, people who experience muscle soreness after intense workouts will find relief through wearing compression garments post-exercise. The graduated pressure applied to the muscles aids in flushing out lactic acid buildup and minimizing muscle soreness. Additionally, individuals who spend long periods sitting or standing throughout the day may also find relief by using compression socks or stockings. These products aid in preventing varicose veins by improving circulation in the legs.
Are there any risks associated with wearing compression garments?
When it comes to wearing compression garments, there are generally very few risks or negative side effects. However, it's important to note that every individual is different and may react differently to these types of garments. One potential risk is the possibility of allergic reactions or skin irritation. Some people may have sensitivities to the materials used in compression garments, such as latex or certain synthetic fabrics. If you notice any redness, itching, or discomfort while wearing a compression garment, it's best to remove it and consult with a healthcare professional. Another possible risk is improper fit. Compression garments should be snug but not overly tight. If they are too tight, they can restrict blood flow and potentially cause circulation problems. On the other hand, if they are too loose, they may not provide adequate support or compression. It's also important to remember that compression garments should not replace proper warm-up exercises before physical activity. While these garments can help support muscles during exercise and aid in recovery afterwards, they should not be relied upon solely for injury prevention.
Conclusion
Compression garments can be a valuable tool for football players in preventing injuries and enhancing performance on the field. These specially designed garments provide support to muscles and reduce muscle vibrations, leading to improved stability and decreased risk of injury. By applying graduated pressure to specific areas of the body, compression garments help increase blood circulation, which aids in reducing swelling and inflammation. This is especially beneficial during intense training sessions or matches when athletes are prone to muscle soreness and fatigue. Not only do compression garments offer physical benefits, but they also have psychological advantages. The snug fit provides a sense of security and confidence that can enhance an athlete's mindset during gameplay. It's important to note that while compression garments can be highly beneficial for many athletes, individual preferences may vary. Some players may find more comfort with looser clothing or other forms of support gear. It's crucial for each athlete to experiment with different options and choose what works best for their specific needs. As with any sports equipment or apparel, it is recommended that professional guidance be sought before incorporating compression garments into one's routine. Consulting with a sports medicine specialist or athletic trainer will ensure proper fitting and usage. So whether you're a professional football player striving for peak performance or an amateur enthusiast looking to protect yourself from potential injuries, consider adding compression garments as part of your training regimen. With their ability to improve circulation, reduce muscle fatigue, and enhance recovery time - these specialized pieces of clothing could make all the difference on game day!
Why Do Football Players Need Compression Garments to Help Prevent Injuries?
Are you a football player looking for that extra edge on the field? Are you tired of dealing with nagging injuries that keep you sidelined and unable to perform at your best? Well, look no further! In this blog post, we are going to dive deep into the world of compression garments and why they have become an essential piece of equipment for football players all around the globe. Whether you're a professional athlete or just play for fun, understanding how compression garments can help prevent injuries is crucial in staying at the top of your game. So let's get started and discover the power behind these stretchy wonders!
What are compression garments?
Compression garments are specially designed clothing made from elastic fabrics that provide a snug fit and exert pressure on specific areas of the body. These garments, such as compression socks, sleeves, tights, or shirts, are often worn during physical activities like football to improve performance and reduce the risk of injuries. The main purpose of compression garments is to enhance blood circulation and oxygen delivery to the muscles. This increased blood flow helps in flushing out lactic acid and other metabolic byproducts that can build up during intense exercise. By improving circulation, compression garments can also aid in reducing muscle soreness and fatigue post-game. Another benefit of these garments is their ability to support muscles and joints. The gentle pressure applied by compression wear helps stabilize muscles, reducing vibrations caused by movement. This stabilization not only enhances muscular efficiency but also decreases stress on tendons and ligaments which can help prevent strains or sprains. Furthermore, compression clothing provides a form-fitting support system that promotes proper alignment while you move on the field. It offers targeted support for major muscle groups like quads, hamstrings, calves or shoulders depending on the type of garment used. Wearing compression garments during football training sessions or matches can be beneficial for athletes looking to optimize their performance while minimizing injury risks. With improved blood flow and muscular stability provided by these stretchy wonders' tight embrace!
Do compression garments actually help prevent injuries?
Do compression garments actually help prevent injuries? This is a question that has been asked by many athletes, including football players. Compression garments have gained popularity in recent years, with athletes of all sports turning to them for their potential benefits. But do they really work? Compression garments are designed to fit tightly against the skin and apply graduated pressure to specific areas of the body. They are typically made from elastic materials such as spandex or Lycra and can be worn on various parts of the body, including arms, legs, and torso. One theory behind why compression garments may help prevent injuries is that they improve blood circulation. By applying pressure to the muscles, these garments can help increase blood flow and oxygen delivery to the working muscles. This improved circulation may aid in muscle recovery and reduce muscle soreness after intense physical activity. Additionally, compression garments provide support to the muscles and joints. The compressive nature of these garments helps stabilize muscles during movement, which can potentially reduce the risk of strains or sprains. Another benefit often attributed to compression garments is their ability to minimize muscle vibration. During high-impact activities like running or jumping, muscles tend to vibrate or oscillate. This repeated motion can lead to muscle fatigue and potentially increase the risk of injury. Compression garments claim to reduce this vibration by providing a snug fit around the muscles. While there is some anecdotal evidence suggesting that compression garments may be beneficial for injury prevention in football players and other athletes, scientific research on this topic still remains limited and inconclusive. It's important to note that wearing compression garments alone cannot guarantee injury prevention; they should be used as part of a comprehensive training program that includes proper warm-up exercises, strength training, flexibility work,and rest days for recovery.
How do compression garments work?
How do compression garments work? It's a question that many athletes, including football players, ask. Compression garments are tight-fitting clothing items that apply pressure to specific areas of the body. This pressure helps improve blood circulation and lymphatic flow. When you wear compression garments, the graduated pressure they provide can help increase oxygen delivery to your muscles. This increased oxygen supply is essential for optimal performance during physical activities like running, jumping, and tackling on the football field. Compression garments also promote better muscle alignment and support. They can help reduce muscle vibrations and oscillations during movement, which can lead to fatigue and injury. By stabilizing muscles and reducing unwanted movements, compression garments may enhance proprioception – your body's awareness of its position in space – improving coordination and balance. Additionally, compression garments exert gentle pressure on the skin's surface. This pressure stimulates sensory receptors in the skin that send signals to your brain. These signals may help improve neuromuscular control by enhancing feedback between your brain and muscles.
Who can benefit from wearing compression garments?
Compression garments are not only for professional athletes or football players. In fact, anyone who engages in physical activity can benefit from wearing these specialized garments. Whether you're a weekend warrior, gym enthusiast, or someone recovering from an injury, compression garments can provide numerous advantages. For starters, individuals with poor circulation can greatly benefit from wearing compression garments. These tight-fitting clothes help improve blood flow by exerting pressure on the muscles and veins. This increased circulation delivers oxygen and nutrients to the muscles more efficiently, reducing fatigue and improving endurance during workouts. Moreover, compression garments offer support to your joints and muscles. They help stabilize the body's movement during physical activities such as running or weightlifting. By providing this additional support, they reduce the risk of injuries like sprains or strains. Another group that can benefit from compression garments is those recovering from injuries. The gentle pressure exerted by these garments helps reduce inflammation and swelling in injured areas while promoting faster healing. Furthermore, people who experience muscle soreness after intense workouts will find relief through wearing compression garments post-exercise. The graduated pressure applied to the muscles aids in flushing out lactic acid buildup and minimizing muscle soreness. Additionally, individuals who spend long periods sitting or standing throughout the day may also find relief by using compression socks or stockings. These products aid in preventing varicose veins by improving circulation in the legs.
Are there any risks associated with wearing compression garments?
When it comes to wearing compression garments, there are generally very few risks or negative side effects. However, it's important to note that every individual is different and may react differently to these types of garments. One potential risk is the possibility of allergic reactions or skin irritation. Some people may have sensitivities to the materials used in compression garments, such as latex or certain synthetic fabrics. If you notice any redness, itching, or discomfort while wearing a compression garment, it's best to remove it and consult with a healthcare professional. Another possible risk is improper fit. Compression garments should be snug but not overly tight. If they are too tight, they can restrict blood flow and potentially cause circulation problems. On the other hand, if they are too loose, they may not provide adequate support or compression. It's also important to remember that compression garments should not replace proper warm-up exercises before physical activity. While these garments can help support muscles during exercise and aid in recovery afterwards, they should not be relied upon solely for injury prevention.
Conclusion
Compression garments can be a valuable tool for football players in preventing injuries and enhancing performance on the field. These specially designed garments provide support to muscles and reduce muscle vibrations, leading to improved stability and decreased risk of injury. By applying graduated pressure to specific areas of the body, compression garments help increase blood circulation, which aids in reducing swelling and inflammation. This is especially beneficial during intense training sessions or matches when athletes are prone to muscle soreness and fatigue. Not only do compression garments offer physical benefits, but they also have psychological advantages. The snug fit provides a sense of security and confidence that can enhance an athlete's mindset during gameplay. It's important to note that while compression garments can be highly beneficial for many athletes, individual preferences may vary. Some players may find more comfort with looser clothing or other forms of support gear. It's crucial for each athlete to experiment with different options and choose what works best for their specific needs. As with any sports equipment or apparel, it is recommended that professional guidance be sought before incorporating compression garments into one's routine. Consulting with a sports medicine specialist or athletic trainer will ensure proper fitting and usage. So whether you're a professional football player striving for peak performance or an amateur enthusiast looking to protect yourself from potential injuries, consider adding compression garments as part of your training regimen. With their ability to improve circulation, reduce muscle fatigue, and enhance recovery time - these specialized pieces of clothing could make all the difference on game day!
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osiiinikeboy · 2 years
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Sports bras: What Role Do They Play In Your Workouts?
Anyway, what is accepted and accepted by people is can sports bras be used as binders.
A lot of people think of sports bras as something only women use. But that’s not entirely true, as sports bras are an essential piece of gear for men, too. In fact, they can help you achieve better workouts and reduce the risk of injury. So what are the benefits of using sports bras? Here are four reasons you should start wearing one every time you work out: 1. They Can Reduce Swelling and Pain When you’re working out, your body goes through a lot of changes. Muscles get bigger, blood flow increases, and your body temperature rises. This all leads to increased pain and swelling in areas like the chest and shoulders. A sports bra can help reduce these symptoms by supporting your breasts and reducing the amount of pressure on your chest. This reduces the amount of pain and swelling you experience, ultimately making your workouts more comfortable. 2. They Can Help You Recover Faster The increased blood flow during a workout can cause some damage to muscles and joints. A sports bra can help protect these areas while you’re recovering by providing support and compression. This helps speed up the healing process and reduces the chance of future injury. 3. They Can Help
Benefits of Using a Sports Bra
When it comes to working out, many people think of wearing a T-shirt and sneakers. However, adding a sports bra can help support your breasts during vigorous activity, and can improve your posture. A study published in the "Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research" found that women who wear a sports bra during exercise have lower rates of breast pain than those who do not wear a bra. According to the study, this is likely because the sports bra creates greater pressure on the muscles surrounding the breasts, which in turn helps to reduce stress on the mammary glands. In addition to reducing pain, wearing a sports bra can also help keep your breasts more firmly attached to your chest while you are exercising. This will help to prevent them from bouncing around during movement, which can lead to discomfort and decreased attractiveness. Some other benefits of using a sports bra include: -It can increase endurance capacity -It can reduce chest compression during vigorous exercise -It can promote better posture
When Should You Use a Sports Bra?
When it comes to working out, you might think that wearing a sports bra is only for women. However, men can benefit from using one as well! A sports bra not only helps support your breasts during exercise, but it can also help reduce bounce and ease pain in the shoulder area. Additionally, wearing a sports bra during workouts can help reduce the risk of injury by minimizing movement in the wrong areas. So when should you use a sports bra? Here are four times when wearing a sports bra may be beneficial: 1. When lifting weights: A weighted workout is a great way to tone your entire body and wear a sports bra can help support your breasts while you lift. 2. When running: Running not only tones your legs and butt, but it also strengthens your chest muscles. Wearing a supportive sports bra while racing can help keep those muscles healthy and strong! 3. When doing cardio: Cardio is an important part of any fitness regime, but if done incorrectly it can lead to injuries like rotator cuff tears or bicep tendonitis. Wearing a supportive sports bra while doing cardio may help protect these injured areas and ensure that the session is safe for you. 4. When participating in strenuous activities: If you participate in strenuous activities like hiking or biking, wearing a sports bra can help reduce bounce and provide extra support for your breasts throughout the workout. Not only will this make the activity
Conclusion
Sports bras are an important part of any exercise routine, whether you’re working out to maintain your weight or trying to build muscle. They help distribute the pressure that is applied to the breasts during vigorous activity, so you don’t end up with pain and discomfort in those sensitive areas. Not only do sports bras help with your workouts, but they can also help improve your posture and support your bust while you’re sitting at work or watching TV.
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oteummlbr · 2 years
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The Best Methods For Chest binding For Large Breasts
For those with large breasts, chest binding can be a great way to reduce the size and shape of the breasts and improve comfort. Chest binding for large breasts is an increasingly popular form of body modification and has a variety of health benefits. This article will explore the different types of chest binding and the best methods for achieving maximum comfort and results.
Types of Chest Binding
There are several different types of chest binding for large breasts, including compression shirts, wraps, and bandages. Compression shirts are designed to compress the chest in order to reduce the size and shape of the breasts. Wraps and bandages are usually used to achieve a more drastic reduction in size. They are typically made from elastic material and can be worn for long periods of time.
Benefits Of Chest Binding
Chest binding has a variety of benefits, including improved confidence, improved posture, and improved comfort. By compressing the chest, chest binding can help reduce the size and shape of the breasts and create a more proportionate figure. It can also help reduce back pain, neck pain, and shoulder pain associated with large breasts.
How To Chest Bind Safely
Chest binding can be a safe and effective way to reduce the size and shape of the breasts, but it's important to take some precautions when doing so. It's important to use a product specifically designed for chest binding, as other products may not provide adequate support and may even be dangerous. Additionally, it's important to ensure that the product is not too tight, as this can cause discomfort, restrict breathing, and even cause skin irritation.
When To Seek Medical Attention
Though chest binding is generally safe, it's important to be aware of some of the potential risks. If you experience any pain, difficulty breathing, or skin irritation while chest binding, it's important to seek medical attention immediately. Additionally, it's important to note that chest binding is not a permanent solution and should only be used on a short-term basis.
Conclusion
Chest binding is an increasingly popular form of body modification that can be used to reduce the size and shape of large breasts. It has a variety of health benefits and can help improve comfort, posture, and confidence. It's important to use a product specifically designed for chest binding and to take precautions to ensure that the product is not too tight. If you experience any pain, difficulty breathing, or skin irritation while chest binding, it's important to seek medical attention immediately.
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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years
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Libel (Part 2)
Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Family Characters: John, Scott, Grandma, Tracy Family
Day 6 “touch and go” for @whumptober-archive and for the prompt bruises my muses decided to add on to my day 3 chapter, so have a rather displeased John.  I’m not expecting this one to go any further, but then again I wasn’t expecting to add onto it at all, so who knows what’ll happen the rest of this month.
<<< Part 1
Grandma was waiting for them when they got home, the smell of something heavenly and clearly take-out wafting through the front door as it opened, and John felt a flash of guilt for forgetting to warn her about Scott’s physical condition when her mouth parted slightly in clear shock.
Scott’s weight had increased against him slowly but steadily as they’d finished the trek home, until his head was resting against John’s and his arm hung awkwardly around his shoulder. His eyes were rimmed with an angry red, and salted tear tracks cut down across the blossoming bruises.  One eye, in addition to the tell-tale sign of crying, was swelling shut with a purple-black mark blooming around it, but while that was the worst mark on his face, there was barely any untouched skin. The exposed arms were also littered with colour, including vibrant handprints that told a story all of their own.
John was certain that Scott’s t-shirt was concealing more.
“What happened?” Grandma demanded after a moment, swooping in and gingerly cupping Scott’s face in her hands.  His brother’s messenger bag dropped to the floor, and John let his own do the same without ever relinquishing his grip around Scott’s waist.  Scott was clearly feeling the emotional damage more than the physical, but that didn’t mean that the physical didn’t promise pain in his brother’s future.
The weight against him increased again as Scott sagged at the question.  John couldn’t see his face very well from his angle, but considering how wrecked his big brother was about the whole thing – and understandably so, in John’s furious opinion – he couldn’t envisage him repeating the tale again.
“Bullies,” he said shortly, enough to give an answer without tormenting Scott further by retelling the whole thing in his earshot.  At some point the rest of the family needed to know that Scott and Christie were no longer together – preferably before one of them made an innocent comment – but he wasn’t going to dredge that up in Scott’s vicinity.
In his pocket, Scott’s phone hadn’t stopped vibrating with incoming messages.  If they were all along the same vein as the ones John had seen initially, he was very glad he’d decided to, for all intents and purposes, confiscate his big brother’s phone.  He’d probably need to change his number before it was safe to give it back.
“Terrible children,” Grandma muttered beneath her breath, before slowly stepping back and letting her hands reluctantly part with Scott’s face.  “Your dinner’s in the kitchen and your brothers are upstairs in bed.”  Had they stayed out that late?  “Alan’s sharing with Virgil and Gordon tonight so you two don’t need to worry about him.”  That was a relief – John loved Alan, and neither he nor Scott minded sharing a bedroom with the youngest, but tonight the last thing Scott needed was Alan’s innocent blue eyes forcing him to struggle to hold himself together.
Dinner sounded – and smelled – inviting.  Grandma had taken his warning text seriously and gone straight for Scott’s favourites, from the smell of it.  It was definitely a pleasant surprise in John’s book, and he hoped that Scott was up for trying to stomach at least some of the comfort food.  If nothing else, the apple pie, whose cinnamon-tinted scent was wafting through invitingly, should entice his brother in.
Scott hadn’t said a word since choking out what had to be an extremely brief summary of events, and his silence continued as he kicked off his sneakers – still not separating from John for a single moment.
It was familiar behaviour;going to a brother for comfort when the world went mad was a common tactic, but the brother they all went to was Scott.  He was never the one seeking comfort – that is, until now, and John couldn’t blame him in the slightest, so he stayed close and kept one arm around his brother without saying anything, hoping that it would help Scott as much as Scott’s presence always helped him.
“Get some food in your stomachs,” Grandma instructed.  “Scott, have you taken any painkillers?”
Hair rustled in John’s ear as Scott shook his head.  He still didn’t say a word and John rubbed his back gently.
“I’ll get you some,” she said, ushering them through the kitchen door.  “Once you’ve eaten, Scott, I want you to take a hot bath.”  She didn’t wait for a response before disappearing, leaving John to guide his brother over to the table, where Scott’s favourite burger waited.
To his relief, Scott didn’t need any convincing to eat, although the way he mechanically took each bite told John that he wasn’t really tasting it.  The apple pie went down a little better – while Scott still didn’t speak, or smile, his mouthfuls seemed to be a little more organic, and irregularly frequent.  John ate his own in equal silence, aware of the still-vibrating phone in his pocket but refusing to check the messages while Scott was next to him.
Grandma reappeared with Tylenol and a cold compress as Scott sipped at the soda, both of which were gratefully received, even if Scott’s reaction remained unusually muted.  Still, he finished his meal, accepted the painkillers without a fuss, and let Grandma press the compress gently over his swollen-shut eye, which was as much as John could ask, given the situation.
All the while, Scott stayed in physical contact with him, leaning in and seemingly trusting John to hold him up so he didn’t fall to the floor.  It felt rather like a metaphor, so when Grandma eased the compress back again several minutes later and nudged Scott towards the bathroom where she promised a nice, warm bath was waiting for him he didn’t hesitate to escort him.
The door clicked shut behind them and Scott sank onto the tiled floor, wrapping his arms around his knees. John settled down beside him and put his arm around him again, letting his brother lean in to the touch.  Silence continued to reign.
Outside the room, he could hear the running feet of several brothers – probably all of them – and the subsequent scolding for running in the house, followed by a reminder that they should be in bed and that they’d see their eldest brothers in the morning. John would be very surprised if no black or blond heads poked into his and Scott’s room during the night.  Dad was moving around, apparently finally appearing from his office for food, and John heard the outraged outburst as Grandma no doubt told him about Scott.
At least John could be confident that Scott wouldn’t be allowed into school tomorrow – with both Grandma and Dad on the warpath, his brother would be kept safely at home, likely not doing any work at all, although he might poke at some of his preferred subjects.
Speaking of his brother, Scott was showing no signs of getting in the water.  John nudged him gently.  “It’s going to get cold,” he prompted.  “Do you want me to leave?”
His brother groaned lightly, but straightened enough to yank at his top.  John shifted out of the way as the fabric came off over messy brown hair, and did his best not to let his reaction show on his face.
As suspected, Scott’s torso was awful.  Bruises littered the skin, the fabric doing almost nothing to protect it from the blows it had taken, leaving it a rainbow of red hues.  One in particular caught John’s attention – a large, darker area that sprawled across one side as though it’d been hit multiple times in quick succession. It took him a moment to yank his eyes away, shifting his entire body until Scott was out of view, and not turning back until water splashed and then stilled again.
Only his brother’s head and shoulders were visible over the edge of the bath, complete with one arm hanging over the side, fingertips just brushing the cool tiles of the floor. The heat of the water was rapidly adding even more pink to Scott’s skin, as though it needed it when there were enough broken blood vessels below his brother’s skin to change the hue all by themselves.  Even with the painkillers Grandma had bestowed, John knew Scott was in for a sleepless night.
Then again, the heartbreak probably hurt more than everything else put together.
“Do you want me to leave?” he asked again, already gathering his legs underneath himself in preparation.
“No,” Scott rasped, the first word he’d spoken since returning home.  His voice sounded scraped raw and weak, and John obediently settled back down again.  “Please.”
John was going to destroy everyone who had a hand in reducing his big brother to this.  There would be no mercy, and a large number of them were obligingly making his life much easier by blowing up Scott’s phone with messages his brother would never see hide nor hair of.
“Okay,” he agreed, settling his back against the toilet and shifting around until it was halfway comfortable. From that angle, Scott couldn’t see anything that might be on a phone screen, so while his big brother soaked in an attempt to ease the bruising, John got to work.
First was a message to Grandma from his own phone, giving her the basic rundown of events.  She didn’t reply, but she did leave him on read, so he knew she had seen it.
There was no doubt in John’s mind that she would do everything in her considerable influence and power to make sure Scott didn’t have to go in to school again, or at least until it all blew over.  His big brother was in good hands.
Still, John was not about to let things lie himself, either.  Scott’s phone was a veritable goldmine of information, and while there was little John could do without his laptop, he could at least take note of the names sending threats and begin to scheme how he was going to get revenge.
No one hurt his brother and got away with it.
Quiet sobs that started up after a while, muffled in a way that sounded like Scott had a hand or arm over his mouth.  John reached out for the dangling arm and tangled his fingers lightly with Scott’s even as he scoured his way through the social media of Christie’s two brothers, looking for the most damaging place to hit them back.  If he played it right, he could ruin their football aspirations with a neat black mark on their record.
Oh, he understood why they’d reacted the way they had – if he’d gone to Scott and said someone had hurt him, there was no way Scott wouldn’t have launched himself straight into the situation entirely on his side.  That didn’t mean John was going to spare them from retribution; he wasn’t that benevolent.
Christie herself he left for the moment.  If he was going to hurt everyone who had hurt Scott, he was going to destroy the girl behind it all in the first place, and that would require his full attention. It would be most efficient to eliminate everyone else involved first.
From the state of Scott’s phone, it was a long list of targets, but John was nothing if not thorough as he sifted through the hateful messages.
Some of them were truly vile, and there were threats in there that made John feel sick just thinking about them.  He set those aside to show Grandma; some things needed an adult’s intervention to handle effectively, and he was certain that some of the threats were jail-worthy if acted upon.
Scott had barely moved since getting into the bath, and John wondered if he was falling asleep in the pleasant warmth.  Part of him hoped so; it was much better than wallowing in negative thoughts, especially ones he didn’t deserve.  He squeezed his brother’s fingers lightly and was rewarded with a twitch in return.
His brother still didn’t talk.  Not when he stopped crying again, wiping away tears with a wet arm.  Not when Grandma lightly knocked on the door to suggest that they get ready for bed.  Not when he got out of the bath, either, skin pruned and wrinkly, and John averted his gaze so he didn’t see anything he didn’t want to as Scott slowly dried off.
Dad was waiting when they left the bathroom, Scott wrapped up snugly in his favourite pyjamas, and wordlessly folded Scott into a big, warm hug which his big brother sank into bonelessly.  John took the chance to slip away, finding Grandma downstairs and slipping her Scott’s phone.
She took one look at the first message on the screen and her face turned to granite.
“Neither of you are going to school tomorrow,” she told him.  John hadn’t expected to be included in that, but it was clear there was no arguing.  It worked in his favour anyway; vengeance would be easier to enact using his laptop without the prying eyes of hovering classmates.  “And whatever you’re planning, John, don’t get caught.”
She followed him back up the stairs.  Dad and Scott had migrated into their bedroom and John took the chance to get into his own pyjamas – although sleep wasn’t on his agenda just yet – before going to join them.
A door creeping open as he passed caught his attention and he paused to see three pairs of worried eyes peering out.
“Is Scott okay?”  Alan was the one that spoke, not yet aware of the nuances of the indoor voice, but making a good go at whispering regardless.  John could see the question reflected in two pairs of brown eyes as well and sighed, shoulders slumping.
“He broke up with Christie,” he explained, keeping his own voice low enough that there was no way the brother in question would be able to hear from down the hall.  It was Virgil’s eyes he met, knowing that he was the only one old enough to comprehend what his next words would mean.  “It was a bad breakup.”  Sure enough, chestnut brown eyes widened.
“But is he okay?” Gordon asked, frowning, and John swallowed, not wanting to lie, but not wanting them to worry, either.
He settled on shrugging.  “He will be.”  I hope.
They surged forwards, apparently taking that as an invitation to go see him, and John had to plant himself firmly in the doorway to stop them. There was no way Scott would want them to see him in his current state.
“Tomorrow,” he said, somewhat sharply.  “He needs space right now.”
They grumbled malcontentedly, but he stood firm, pulling upon his rarely used big brother clout to get them to obey until the door closed again.
In all likelihood, they’d be sneaking in later, but hopefully Scott would be less visibly distraught by then.
John padded into his bedroom and headed straight for his bed.  Dad was sitting with Scott on his brother’s bed, arms firmly around him and one hand running through his hair as he sobbed. From the way he was slumped, and the weakness of the sobs, Scott was on the cusp of sleep.  John wasn’t naïve enough to think that he’d sleep all through the night, not with all those bruises, but he’d gladly support any sleep Scott could get.
For his part, he pulled up his phone and continued scrolling through the names of Scott’s year mates.  Most of them had left a message on his phone.
“Don’t stay up too late,” Dad cautioned suddenly and he jumped, checking the time to see it was much later than he’d realised.  Scott was neatly tucked into bed, the vision of a perfect slumber ruined by the tear tracks down his face.
“I won’t,” he shrugged, an acknowledgement but not a promise.  “Night, Dad.”
“Goodnight, John.”  He was pulled into a brief hug, kiss pressed against his brow, before Dad slipped out of the room, leaving him with his sleeping brother.
Armed with his laptop, phone, and the simmering fury kept at a boil by the sight of his battered brother, John got to work.
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novelconcepts · 4 years
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fic: having so much fun all alone (i wanna let somebody know)
Control never seems so important until it’s being slowly, inexorably stripped away. Jamie finds she’s been thinking about this concept more and more as the days go by, and it’s almost fascinating. It interests her, thinking about the concept of control--not the control of another person, but control of the self. Of a person’s own body, own mind, own future. 
Control had seemed a simple thing before Dani, so absent from her childhood that Jamie taught herself to seek it out the minute she had the option. It didn’t always go well. There is a fine line between wanting control over a situation and the desperate desire to feel something, anything; it had taken her too long to discover the difference. Jail time had impacted the idea something fierce, reducing the notion of control from a childish impulse toward what I want, when I want it to something smaller. Easier to fit in the palm of her hand. Control became, instead, the simplicity of keeping herself to herself. 
People can’t control you if they don’t understand you, she’d reasoned. People can’t control what you do, say, want, if you never let them in. And, to a point, it had worked. Jamie’s adult life became marked by a certain kind of quiet freedom, an awareness of her own limits. She learned to keep to herself. She learned to give no part of herself away.
And then Dani had happened. Dani, whose own relationship with control was tenuous at best. Dani, whose life up until this point had been very much marked by other people’s control over her body, her dreams, her right to love.
Jamie hadn’t meant to give her control, just as Dani hadn’t meant to ask it of her. There had been no part of the exchange intended for pain, for holding one another hostage--and Jamie knows that is the only reason it happened at all. The only reason either of them--two people so used to the shackles of other people’s expectations--were willing to let the dance begin. This mutual understanding that control is only granted so lovingly because the other person will not abuse the privilege, will not turn their grasp into a cuff. 
It hadn’t been simple, exactly, so much as natural. Give and take. Dani’s ghosts for Jamie’s regrets; Jamie’s scars for Dani’s still-bleeding wounds. In a way, Jamie thinks, the idea of passing control over their life together back and forth was appealing because it was the first time either of them understood how to communicate. The first time Dani had ever learned how to speak her needs in someone else’s space; the first time Jamie had ever thought someone might actually be listening in return. Not simple. Not easy. Organic, though--very much that. 
It has been...an evolution, certainly. There are things Dani is carrying Jamie can’t take off her shoulders--things Dani bears with the stoic acceptance of one already a little bit gone. Jamie tries not to think about it that way, tries not to look into Dani’s eyes and think, Not quite the woman I met. She’s in there, she’s still looking back at me, but there’s something else, too. 
Dani thinks that something else will, one day, supersede her. Will, one day, take the wheel in a way Dani will not be able to ward off. 
Dani thinks, someday, the question of control will have nothing at all to do with their relationship, with the bond built so carefully and so firmly between them, but rather to do with the thing in the mirror. She says as much to Jamie some nights, her hand tangled in Jamie’s hair, her breathing soft and steady against Jamie’s skin. Says, in a voice so weary, Jamie can’t bear it: “I don’t know what I’ll do, then. I don’t know what will be left of me when she wakes.”
Jamie can only take her hand in these moments, the ones she knows will pass by morning--the ones Dani will pretend not to remember by the end of the week. It’s still early-days, she tells herself, bringing Dani’s fingers to her lips as she did in a bedroom across an ocean. It’s still new, and fresh, and there’s nothing saying it will happen at all.
One day at a time.
In the meantime, there are other thoughts of control. Thoughts she finds considerably more pleasurable, considerably more safe. Thoughts of what Dani truly needs some days, to remind her who is still in the driver’s seat of her life. 
Jamie is more than happy to help. 
***
The day has not been bad so much as long, and Jamie finds herself dragging home with a gently thrumming headache. It’s sometimes still more than she can wrap her head around: the shop, where the hours are her own to set, and the apartment, where every inch of space is open to her, and Dani, who fits into both places so perfectly, Jamie has trouble thinking back to a time without her. The world they’ve built together is warm, constantly waiting to welcome her home, and Jamie doesn’t know if she deserves it. Doesn’t know if there is such a thing as deserve. She knows only that she is lucky.
And that even the luckiest soul needs a break. 
“Medicine,” Dani had advised, her expression concerned as Jamie prepared to leave the shop. “A hot shower. Uh. A cold compress.”
“Be fine,” Jamie murmured, glancing around for customers. Not a soul to be found, she pressed a kiss lightly to Dani’s lips. “Shame you can’t join me. Can think of one thing that tends to help nice and quick.”
Dani’s face lit with visible warmth, as Jamie had known it would. “I--you--”
“Easy,” Jamie said, kissing her again. “I’m only teasing, Poppins.”
“Right,” Dani said, a bit hoarsely, her arm sliding instinctively around Jamie’s waist. “Exactly. Rude to tease when I’m already worried for your health.”
“My health’ll be just fine as soon as I get home and into bed,” Jamie told her. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll just, ah, handle it myself?”
“Tease,” Dani repeated in a low, fervent whisper, even as the bell above the door chimed. Jamie tipped her a wink. 
It’s always fun making Dani turn new colors, but she hadn’t been kidding--about the headache or the proposed solution. Little aggravations tend to slip away to nothing with Dani present, Dani’s hands searching her skin, Dani kissing her until she forgets any minor aches or pains. Of course, until they hire additional staff, Dani can’t really afford to join her in the middle of the afternoon just because she’s Jamie’s favorite form of migraine therapy. 
Not so bad, anyway, she thinks, even as she takes Dani’s advice piece by piece in the empty apartment. Medicine, a nice tall glass of water, a shower so long it ceases to be productively hot midway through. She stands with her face against the comparatively-cool tile, trying not to think of Dani’s expression as she’d said tease under her breath, Dani’s grip on her shirt threatening to remain as Jamie slipped out from behind the counter. 
Should just sleep, she thinks, changing into shorts and one of Dani’s shirts. Sleep it off, sure. Better for the whole system. She’ll just lay down for an hour or two, letting the cool of the sheets soothe the warmth of her skin as she remembers the mingled longing and worry in Dani’s face as she’d walked away. Just close her eyes, letting the steady pound in her temples lull her...lull her...
“Fuck,” she mutters, rolling onto her stomach and pressing her face into Dani’s pillow. What does it matter; anything that’ll banish this throb is worth a shot, and anyway, there’s something about the way Dani had watched her go she can’t erase. Something about the way Dani’s lips had lifted ever so slightly, the way they do when Dani wants nothing more than to remind Jamie how glad she is--how glad she’ll always be--that Jamie stayed in her life. 
Just take care of it, she tells herself with the air of brushing her hands clean. The idea of Dani watching her, the idea of Dani missing her, is too strong to ignore. Just Jamie’s luck, to be the having the sort of day where a headache and a painfully strong desire to bring Dani to bed collide. 
She realizes belatedly her hips are already moving without the rest of her noticing, rocking slowly against the mattress, and she sighs. Won't be enough. Won’t be nearly what it would with Dani beneath her, dragging her nails down Jamie’s back, a thigh flexing between Jamie’s legs. Still--the image isn’t nothing. Dani’s pillow smells of her shampoo, the one Jamie never uses because it should be Dani’s, should remind her of Dani whenever Dani isn’t around. She presses her face against it now, lips parted in a sigh, gripping the sheets in loose fingers. 
She’d intended to be quick and dirty with it, a true resolution followed by actual sleep, but her body has other opinions on the matter. Her body, it seems, wants full control of the situation--wants her full attention on the idea of Dani thinking of her at the shop. Dani, moving among the arrangements, picking flowers, chatting with strangers, all the while thinking of Jamie here. Of Jamie having mentioned a hot shower. Of Jamie beneath the spray, one hand sliding down her breasts, the other between her legs. 
Dani, thinking of her for the next hour, her breath coming in sharp little pants she’ll try to hide behind her smile. Dani, pressing her hips furtively against the counter in the empty shop, closing her eyes for a moment and wishing she could have followed Jamie home. 
This’ll do it. Her grip tightens on the sheets, her legs spreading slightly. It’s all too easy to imagine Dani going slightly mad, working faster in an effort to distract herself. Easy to imagine Dani’s hands pushing back her hair the way she does when she’s most frustrated--or when she’s astride Jamie, rolling her hips to match Jamie’s pace. She breathes through the image, the perfect memory of the last time Dani had, in the middle of a movie, climbed into Jamie’s lap and kissed her like she’d been wanting to do so for hours.
Why wait? Jamie had laughed, and Dani had given a happy breathy sigh against her lips. 
It’s better with the anticipation, don’t you think?
“Yes,” Jamie mumbles into the pillow now. The anticipation, that’s the trick of it. Can’t go straight for the thing, can’t just let her hand slide between shorts and skin like she wants. If Dani can’t have her at work, Jamie ought to be polite enough to hold herself out of reach here, too. 
Already, she can feel the headache ebbing away, replaced by the adrenaline of pure desire. She presses herself against the mattress, enjoying the way the seam of her shorts moves against slick skin. She wonders, dimly, how long she could keep this up--how long she could hold herself in this limbo, biting down on Dani’s pillow to keep quiet, rocking at this leisurely pace. Could she do it until Dani gets home? Could this be how she greets a Dani pent-up from missing her: holding what she wants at arm’s length just until Dani comes to check in on her?
The idea nearly makes her shudder: Dani, stepping into the room just in time to catch her like this, rutting against the mattress and sighing Dani’s name. Dani, walking in just in time to watch her come apart. 
Control, she thinks, forcing her speeding hips to slow again. Forcing herself to wait until she’s confident she won’t lose her patience, take a hand off the sheets, press up and in until she’s--
“Couldn’t wait for me at all?” Dani asks, and Jamie gives a leap of guilty surprise, twisting to look over her shoulder. Dani is, in fact, leaning in the doorway. Dani is, in fact, looking at her exactly as she’d been imagining: her eyes dancing, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. Jamie presses her burning face against the pillow, closing her eyes. 
“I--hi.”
“Hi,” Dani says. She’s still just standing there, Jamie senses, in her jacket and boots. Just watching Jamie try to smother mild embarrassment on Dani’s side of the bed. “Oh, don’t stop on my account.”
“I wasn’t--” Oh, there’s no bloody point. “Headache’s gone.”
“Good,” Dani says mildly. “Then I won’t feel bad about what I’m about to do.”
Jamie darts another look over her shoulder, curious despite the mortification sending ripples through her arousal. “Why do I get the feeling I’m in trouble?”
“Not trouble.” Dani slips out of her coat like this is a perfectly normal conversation. Like there’s nothing out of the ordinary at all going on. She leans against the wall, removing her boots with the casual disinterest of a woman who has not just walked in on Jamie grinding against their bed. 
“Dunno if I believe you,” Jamie says, a bit breathlessly. Dani smiles. 
“What’s not to believe? You told me exactly what you were heading home to do...and, if you didn’t happen to do it fast enough, well...”
Fuck, thinks Jamie, her heart rate--which has not precisely calmed since Dani’s arrival--ratcheting back to full speed. She rolls onto her back, sits up, aware of the throbbing heat between her legs even as she pulls the sheets higher. 
“Dani...”
“Mm?” Dani is still moving with the grace of someone in absolutely no hurry to explain herself. As Jamie watches, she removes her earrings, sets them in a bowl on her dresser. Removes her watch, lays it beside the bowl. Reaches up to unbind the tie she must have used in Jamie’s absence, irritated with her hair falling into her eyes as she worked. 
“Dani, are you--”
“I’m wondering,” Dani says, “why you didn’t work harder at it.”
Jamie’s mouth is suddenly very dry. “Work...harder?”
“If you wanted to take care of it yourself,” Dani says. She’s walking closer now, almost strolling; Jamie draws in a breath, her hands bunching around the sheet. There’s something about Dani this calm, Dani moving with this kind of easy indolence, that makes her stomach do funny things. This version of Dani is one no one else ever sees. This version of Dani comes out with purpose. 
Usually a very particular purpose.
She’s climbing onto the bed now, sliding under the sheet to recline against Jamie’s side of the headboard. Her expression is cool, but there’s a light in her eyes Jamie couldn’t miss even with that headache still thrashing away, a certain bright hunger specific to this room, this sort of situation, Jamie. 
“So, I’m thinking, if you didn’t want to take care of it enough to do it fast,” Dani says, patiently parsing it out as she adjusts Jamie’s pillows behind her back, smooths her hands across the sheet over her lap, “there was a reason, right? You always have reasons, Jamie.”
She’s right, Jamie thinks with helpless attraction. Even now, playing whatever thrilling little game Dani has cooked up since arriving home, Dani understands her. Understands, maybe, more than Jamie even realized in this particular situation.
“I’m thinking about it,” Dani says, folding the sheet down once--again--pulling it down the bed until it’s barely covering either of them at all. “And the most I can come up with is...you wanted me here for it. Is that about right?”
Jamie grins, though her skin prickles in the chill of the air-conditioned room. “Always, Poppins.”
Dani nods, making a show of it, like there isn’t a fire burning low in her belly just now. Like she didn’t catch Jamie in the act and want to join her. Like her eyes aren’t blazing with that exact desire just now, pupils blown wide, dragging down Jamie’s body to drink her in. 
“You wanted me to watch.”
“Uh huh,” Jamie says, because whether it was true at the start doesn’t matter; it’s true now. “Or, y’know--since you’re here. Can always join in.”
Dani seems to consider it. One hand trails up Jamie’s thigh, toying lightly with the hem of her shorts. Jamie moves to twist at the waist, to shift into Dani’s lap and kiss her lips--and Dani’s hand rises, catching her by the front of her t-shirt. 
“You wanted me to watch,” she says, leaning in until the words are tracing Jamie’s lips. She does not, Jamie notes with a low groan of frustration, actually make contact. “So. Show me.”
Jamie swallows. “I--uh--just--”
“Here,” Dani adds, spreading her legs. She pats the mattress, a signal for Jamie to settle between them and lean back against her chest. Jamie draws a ragged breath. 
“Really think this could go faster if you just let me help you out of those clothes.”
“Think you’re right,” Dani agrees, and gives the mattress another firm pat. Jamie moves, dreamlike, where she’s been directed. Sits back, her hands uncertain of where to land. 
“Dani, honestly, I want--”
“You had a whole hour,” Dani says, “to get what you wanted. Now it’s my turn.”
Fuck, Jamie thinks again, a fresh surge of need clenching in her stomach. She turns her head, leans until she can see Dani’s expression clearly. 
“Maybe I didn’t start right away. Maybe I’d only been at it a minute.”
“You weren’t.” Dani smiles, the sort of smile she tends to wear immediately before kneeling between Jamie’s legs and offering a thorough distraction from their nightly routine. “I was there a while before you noticed.”
“And you didn’t speak up?” Years together, Jamie thinks. Years together, with no shortage of good sex between them, but this side of Dani is special. This side of Dani, the one perfectly in control of a situation, is to be cherished. “Just stood there, huh? Watched the show?”
“Thought you’d finish fast,” Dani says. She’s got Jamie’s right hand in her own, turning it over to inspect Jamie’s fingers, to trace a nail down Jamie’s palm. “Thought I’d come in just in time for the grand finale. But then I saw your hands.”
“What about them?” There’s challenge in her voice, pushing up against Dani’s calm. It’s always best this way, giving Dani a bit of resistance before she surrenders. Dani scratches a little harder, drawing a thin red line to match the ones grooved into Jamie’s palm. 
“You weren’t using them. You weren’t using anything. I thought that was interesting. Why not touch yourself, if you really wanted to take care of things properly?”
Jamie is struggling to keep her breath, struggling to keep from leaning that last little bit to press her mouth to Dani’s neck. That, she senses, is not the right move. That, she senses, will get her in trouble--and she’d really rather see where this is going. 
“I realized,” Dani is saying, turning Jamie’s hand over and mapping her knuckles with slow, tracing circles. “You were actually trying to make it last. Trying to go as slowly as you possibly could. Driving yourself crazy, I bet.”
“Yes,” Jamie says, unable to stop herself. She pushes back, aware of Dani’s body, of how warm she is. 
“I’m curious,” Dani says, applying light pressure to Jamie’s hand, steering it toward Jamie’s body. “How long do you think you can last?”
“Dani--”
“Only...if you want me to watch...” Dani smiles again, the smile that says she’d like nothing better than to drive Jamie out of her mind. “I really think I want a show.”
She’s dragging Jamie’s hand slowly down her own breasts, tracing down her taut stomach, pausing at the waistband of her shorts. Jamie holds her breath, waiting for Dani to slide with her beneath the band, waiting for Dani to use her hand as she sees fit--but Dani presses her farther down, curling around Jamie’s fingers as they cup together between Jamie’s legs over the loose material. And then she’s gone, leaving Jamie in place, her hand moving to rest on Jamie’s hip.
“Go on,” she says against Jamie’s ear, her free hand shifting Jamie’s hair aside so her lips can graze skin. “Show me.”
Jamie groans, letting the palm of her hand press hard against the heat pulsing through her shorts. She moves her hips, aware of the need she’s been cultivating for far too long already--
“Slowly,” Dani says into her ear. “You go until I say you’ve had enough.”
Jamie slumps back against her, boneless, a small noise escaping her lips. “I--fuck--rules?”
Dani gives the ridge of her ear a gentle nip, the barest scrape of her teeth. Jamie shivers. “That’s it. Go slow. Make all the noise you need, but remember: you are done when I say you’re done.”
Control, thinks Jamie, understanding, and knowing this is something Dani needs as much as she does. She licks her lips, drags her hand slowly against the front of her shorts. It would be so easy to rebel, so easy to wrench back from Dani what has been given to her--she could make herself come in no time at all, after all this. 
She turns her head, finds Dani watching her face with avid interest. She closes her eyes. 
“Slow,” she repeats, a promise. Her fingers slide across the soft material, tracing as though she has all the time in the world. Dani’s chin rests on her shoulder, her lips grazing through Jamie’s shirt once before she settles in. 
“Oh, and Jamie? Make it good.”
Jamie strangles another groan, too aware that letting herself go this early will have dire consequences. She cups lightly, the heel of her hand pushing against painfully throbbing nerves. Her fingers continue their soft work, index trailing down, circling where it would much rather be pressing in. 
“Good,” Dani says softly. She slides an arm around Jamie, spreading her hand low on her stomach, her eyes devouring Jamie’s tentative progress. Jamie leans her head back, breathing shallowly, trying to think desperately of flowers, of buds in bloom, of open petals and--
Nope, she thinks hastily, as her hips give a particularly sharp jerk. She pauses, closing her eyes, searching for solid ground before she can tumble. 
“Very good,” Dani adds, sounding impressed. “See, you’re doing great already.”
“Want you,” Jamie mutters. Dani gives her ear another nip. 
“Show me, then.”
It’s a balancing act, Jamie finds, letting her hips set a slow rhythm against the flex of her hand. A nice, easy balancing act, with her head braced back against Dani’s shoulder, every inhalation filling her senses with the scent of Dani, the push-pull of Dani drawing breath against her back, the trace of Dani’s fingernails across her stomach. A nice, easy, not-at-all-breaking-her balancing act. 
“I think you’re ready to step it up,” Dani says. Jamie, who has been trying to ride the friction of her own palm as minimally as she can stand, gives her a searching look. “I think it’s too easy on you. I think you need more.”
“More,” Jamie repeats. Dani’s hand is slinking lower again, grasping the band of Jamie’s shorts and lifting. Her free hand covers Jamie’s, pressing with sudden strength once between Jamie’s legs. “Fuck, Dani.”
“Not quite yet,” Dani says pleasantly, that too-nice voice she uses when she’s actively working to drive Jamie up the wall. It’s more effective than it has any right to be, Jamie thinks, though she's smiling, her body already desperate. 
She watches, her muscles loose to allow Dani full control, as Dani slides their joined hands higher, tucks Jamie’s hand into her shorts. Her fingers remain tight around the waistband, pulling it aloft and down until she gives herself a proper view of exactly where Jamie’s fingers rest. 
“There,” Dani says with dangerous pleasure. “Keep going.”
Jamie wants to twist, wants to capture her lips in a hard, brazen kiss. Instead, she lets her fingers resume their work--pressing in slow, careful circles against herself. She can hear the slick slide, the soft wet sound of skin on skin, and her stomach clenches with the near-painful urge to finish. She pauses. 
“Don’t think I told you to stop,” Dani says. Jamie bites down hard on her own lip. Her wrist turns, her fingers rubbing lightly--then harder, her desire sparking hard against Dani’s command. She works the throbbing little bundle of nerves between two fingers, her breath sharp, her free hand searching out Dani’s thigh to dig her nails into denim. 
“Fuck--Dani--I can’t--”
“Can,” Dani corrects. “So good, Jamie. You’re doing so well. Show me how much you can take.”
The words are low, calm, but Dani’s body is beginning to betray her, too; Jamie can feel the way her fingers are driving into Jamie’s hip, can see the tremble in the hand pulling at the shorts. Most of all, she can feel Dani beginning to rock slowly against her, her hips pushing up into Jamie in search of friction of her own. 
“Could be touching you,” Jamie hisses, urged into a better station of control simply by the knowledge Dani wants her to give in. “Could be three fingers deep by now, giving you--”
“You’re giving me exactly what I need,” Dani breathes. Jamie hears her own words coil into a soft moan, her hips beginning to buck. Dani’s fingers squeeze around her hipbone, dragging sharp red marks under the pulled-aside waistband. “Ride it out. Do what I tell you.”
Jamie grits her teeth, every muscle in her body tightening against the urge to lose control. Her hand is quickening, her fingers stroking and slipping and pressing until she’s certain she’s going to break. The friction is too much, every circle drawn tight around herself snapping a little more self-restraint. 
“Longer,” Dani whispers into her ear. She wraps her lips around Jamie’s earlobe, sucking hard enough for Jamie’s eyes to roll back. “Don’t give up on me yet.”
“Please,” Jamie hears herself whine, even as she obediently increases the pressure. “Please, I can’t--”
“Faster,” Dani says. “Come on, be good, be good for me, you’re so--”
She makes a noise, low and desperate, a spark of electricity straight to Jamie’s core. She’s grinding herself against Jamie, her hand gripping hard to Jamie’s hip for purchase. Jamie rubs faster, feeling as though she will lose this game, she will certainly not make it much further, and finding she doesn’t actually care as long as Dani is holding her this way. 
She loses herself in Dani’s voice, Dani saying with the rapid-fire recklessness of staggering toward the edge herself, “Inside. Inside, I want to see--” Dani, pulling the shorts sharply down now, allowing Jamie to spread for herself, watching as Jamie slides two fingers deep, pressing hard with the heel of her hand. 
“So good,” Dani mutters, “so good. Keep going. Make it last. It’s my mouth, imagine it’s my mouth, my tongue you’re riding, god, Jamie--”
Control, thinks Jamie, aware she’s losing it fast, aware there is little left that her body can possibly take even as Dani bites down hard on her shoulder. Imagine, Dani had said, like she isn’t right there, like she couldn’t be shifting Jamie out of her lap, sliding down her body, replacing Jamie’s hand with long, slow strokes of her tongue. 
But that isn’t what Dani wants. This is what Dani wants, to hold Jamie, to watch her finish the work she started wishing Dani could see. Dani knows all too well what this is doing to her; she can feel it in the cant of Dani’s hips, hear it in the sound she’s muffling against Jamie’s shirt. 
“Tell me,” she begs, as her muscles clench around her thrusting fingers. “Tell me, I won’t--I won’t until you--”
“How much,” Dani asks, her voice shaking with effort. “How much do you want it?”
Jamie curses, straining away from the edge. “You know,” she pants. “You know I--”
“How much,” Dani says directly into her ear, her hands digging into Jamie’s hips, “did you want it to be me all along?”
“Always,” Jamie breathes, the word a high, helpless plea. “Always, fuck, from the very start. Please, please, I--it’s you--it’s you--”
“Yes,” Dani agrees. “Show me how it feels.”
Jamie adds a third finger on yes, allowing her body at last to clench and shudder. It’s Dani, she thinks, turning her head and muffling her ecstatic cry against Dani’s neck. She can feel Dani’s grip tightening, pulling at her as Dani spreads further, rocks with sharp, needy thrusts while Jamie’s body chases the height of her orgasm. 
It’s Dani, she thinks again, Dani pushing in deep, Dani riding it out, Dani in control, this is all for--all for--
And then there is no thought at all, nothing but Dani crying out as she squeezes a hand over Jamie’s and feels for herself what she’s done. Nothing left but Dani’s name on her lips as Jamie arches, eyes closed, feeling very much as though she is no longer in possession of a body at all. 
She slumps against Dani, breath coming in short waves, her head clear of anything except the residual electricity from Dani’s fingers threading through her own. She exhales, rolling her eyes to watch Dani’s face. 
“Good show?”
Dani makes a muffled sound a bit like a whimper, her hips still twitching as though out of her control. Jamie shifts with some effort, breaking contact, leaving her rocking against nothing at all.
“You’re still hanging on? Well. That won't do.”
She tugs at Dani’s shirt, catching her in a hard kiss that seems only to draw Dani’s urgency higher. Dani’s hands are scrambling to pull Jamie back into her lap, and Jamie allows herself to be positioned. She lowers herself with a groan, loving the dark marks she’s leaving behind on Dani’s jeans as she presses flat against her tense thigh. 
“Ride it with me,” she insists, pushing her own knee hard between Dani’s legs. Dani’s head thumps back against the headboard, her hand anchored at Jamie’s back, watching with glazed eyes as Jamie provides friction to both of them with each rough grind. 
It’s a graceless thing, and yet, perfectly matched--Dani gripping at her shirt, Dani pushing up into her as she rocks down, and, this time, Jamie finds the force shattering. She’s wrapped around Dani, hands clawing into Dani’s hair, down her back, hips pumping, even as she feels Dani begin the age-old sign of falling apart: Dani, repeating her name as an endless mantra, over and over. 
Control, she thinks, as she’s losing the last of it all over again, as Dani is joining her with a long, shuddering kiss. What little good it does, when it is held too tightly. What little grace it offers, when not shared. 
“I should, ah, call next time?” she breathes as Dani wraps both arms around her, squirming down the bed until they're lying in a sweaty heap. “Maybe just...set up in the back and wait for you to join me?”
Dani laughs. “If you did that, we’d never leave.”
“Perfectly content with never leaving here, either, if that’s how we’re going to play it.” Jamie leans back, reaching down to brush her fingers across the ruined leg of Dani’s jeans. “Made a mess of you.”
“It was mutual,” Dani teases. She closes her eyes, draws in a long breath that turns to a yawn. “How is your head, for real?”
“Good as new. All beasts banished back to whence they came.” Jamie winces, peering at Dani’s face for sign of shutdown, but Dani’s expression is placid. 
“Good. I still think you should start with medicine.”
“Took medicine!” Jamie protests. “Did all the goddamn tricks. Not my fault this works best.”
“I think you just say that,” Dani says, “to get me naked.”
“Well, not doing a good goddamn job of it, am I?” Jamie sits up, gesturing broadly. “Still wearing every last fucking stitch.”
“Mm,” Dani agrees. “Maybe you should...do something about that?”
Jamie is still laughing when Dani pushes her onto her stomach, stretching out almost flush against her back. Her breath catches, something about the press of denim against her bare legs, the way Dani’s sliding the t-shirt Jamie stole from her side of the closet up her back making her feel deliciously undone. The idea of Dani, fully-dressed, pressing her half-naked body into the mattress draws a long shudder through her. 
“Unless you’re tired,” Dani adds, her hand curling around Jamie’s hips, sliding teasingly toward soaked, swollen skin. Jamie groans into the pillow, gripping the sheets in one hand, reaching back for a grasp on Dani’s jeans with the other. Dani’s hand, pushed between damp sheets and sticky skin, strokes her once, testing. She kisses the back of Jamie’s neck, rolling her tongue over the chain of Jamie’s necklace, drawing it between her teeth.  
“This is,” Jamie pants, even as Dani is playing her exactly as she’d watched Jamie work herself over, “exceptionally unbalanced.”
“Then do something about it,” Dani teases, kissing along her shoulder. Jamie, somehow, finds herself quite without the will to fight back. There is nowhere she’d rather be than angling herself toward Dani’s hand, seeking the firm, rough stroke of Dani’s fingers. 
Tonight, she reasons, is Dani’s turn. She’ll turn the tables some other time, when Dani isn’t itching for this exact thing, this exquisite dynamic: when the ability Jamie gives her to tell Jamie exactly what to do, exactly what she needs of her, isn’t the most important gift she could grant. 
Later, she’ll pin Dani to the wall or the counter, tease her until Dani is wild for her. It’s only fair, and Jamie knows it won’t take long at all for the power to change hands again when it’s done. 
“Stay with me,” Dani commands, rocking against Jamie with one authoritative motion even as her fingers sink deep and Jamie gasps. 
“Always,” she promises, feeling luckier than she could possibly explain.  
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ebthecelebrity · 3 years
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Sometimes the Grass is Greener on the Other Side Because it’s Fake
Introducing Brenda and Her Insecurities…...
Brenda stares at herself in a full length mirror. She turns to the left then to the right, eyeing her booty. She sucks her teeth and sighs. “Ugh, why did my mama give me her flat ass!” She walks off in disgust and plops down on the sofa. She grabs her phone and opens up Instagram and the first picture she sees on her timeline is a chocolate IG Model in an orange bikini on a yacht. She clicks on her profile and scrolls only to see more half naked pictures of this model’s voluptuous shape.
“Her ass can’t be real,” she mumbles to herself.
She clicks off and continues to scroll her timeline. She sees her high school classmate with his two kids playing at a park, a photo of some cute puppies, and The Shaderoom’s petty commentary on rapper Bow Wow. She cuts her phone off and walks into the bedroom to find her boyfriend, Keith, laying on the bed scrolling on his phone. He was zoned in.
“What are we doing today?” she asks. He continues to scroll his phone.
“Keith!”
“Huh?” he replies startled.
“What are we going to do today? Did you want to go out to eat at that new restaurant off 49th Ave?”
“I mean...I thought we could hit up the beach later. You know, pack the cooler with some drinks and maybe get something to eat out there.” Keith replies.  
Brenda shrugs her shoulders. “Okay, I guess that’s cool.”
Keith smiles and grabs on her leg playfully. “Put on that sexy swimsuit you bought last summer, you know the black one.”
Brenda rolls her eyes. “Naaaaah, I’ll just put on some shorts. I’ll save that one for another time,” she replies.
She walks out the bedroom and goes back to the full length mirror and analyzes her body again. Truth is, she didn’t like it and definitely not in a bikini. She imagines her pancake shaped booty and A cupped breast looking pitiful in the midst of DD’s and Georgia peaches flaunting in the hot sun. Keith tells her all the time that she is beautiful, that he loves her body, but she just can’t seem to believe him. They’ve been together for two years but till this day, there are many times that she caught his eyes wandering. The beach was just a playground for her feelings to get played with under his dark shades. She truly resents going there but in order to keep the peace this Saturday, she agrees to his suggestion.
“I think my butt getting big, butt getting big, butt getting big…..” The song loudly blasts out of the bedroom. “Buss it, buss it, buss it, buss it….” Brenda silently listens to Keith watch “The Buss It Challenge” on his phone. It’s the new tik tok dance challenge where women appear raggedy looking at first with bonnets, pajamas, no makeup, etc. and then they drop down and twerk in the camera made up with hair, makeup and form fitting clothing. Brenda knew you had to have something to twerk in order to participate. She saw women of all races do the challenge and pop their ass on the gram, gaining likes and lust. She heard whatever video Keith was watching loop in replay three times. Before she knew it, a tear rolled down her right cheek. She quickly wipes it away.
It’s been two weeks since Keith and Brenda’s beach outing. Brenda is now sitting in an exam room, waiting to be seen by a doctor. She nervously tugs at her shirt and looks around the room. A few seconds later, a short gray haired doctor walks in and introduces himself.
“Brenda London?” He asks.
Brenda nods her head. “Yes.”
“Hi, I’m Dr. Castlerock. Nice to meet you. What brings you in today?”
Brenda takes a deep breath and replies, “Well, I want a consultation on a Brazilian Butt Lift.”  
On the drive back home, she calls Keith.
“I scheduled it for August 16th,” she says.
“Brenda, why would you do this to yourself? I told you, I love every inch of you. It’s unnecessary man.”
She could sense the disappointment in his voice. “I don’t like every inch of me Keith! Why can’t you just support me?”
“I want to support you in everything you do, but this is not it. Where is your self love?” he replies.
“I got self love, and that’s why I’m doing it.”
“So you’re really just going to disregard how I feel about your natural body? Don’t I tell you all the time how beautiful you are?”
Brenda remained silent.
“And what about the cost? Isn’t it expensive?” He asks.
“I have cashed out my 401K.” she replies.
“Wow.” Keith replies.
“Listen, my butt has bothered me my whole life. I want to be the woman you lust after on Instagram. I want to be the bad bitch in the bikini!” Brenda cries. “You say you love my natural body, but you’ll love this even more.”
“Aight Brenda, do you. You’ve made up your mind. I just don’t understand, and I never will. I don’t lust after those females. I lust after you. I love you.” Keith replies.
Brenda bits her bottom lip and holds back tears. “I got to focus on the road Keith. I’ll see you when I get home.”
They both disconnect the call and Brenda lifelessly stares out the windshield of her car.
It’s now August 21st and Brenda can’t sit, drive, properly shower, or even have sex. She’s currently lying on her stomach on the couch, watching tv in a compression garment to help reduce swelling and discomfort. This week has consisted of strong pain meds, tears and a little regret.  Even with his disapproval, Keith agreed to be her caretaker for the next two weeks.  He walks out the kitchen area and hands her a small bag of Lay’s potato chips.
Brenda grunts in discomfort while lifting up off the couch a little to grab them. “Thanks”, she says.
Keith looks at her in an emotionless stare. “I got to make a few runs. You good?” he asks.
“Uh yeah, how long will you be out?” Brenda replies.
“I’m not sure.” Keith grabs his fitted cap from the back of the bedroom door and walks towards the front door.
“Okay, well be sa…” Before Brenda could get out “safe”, he had already slammed the door and walked out. The past few months leading up to the surgery had been difficult between them two. It’s like all the love and admiration Keith had for her went out the window. They had not really been intimate and he refused to discuss the BBL. Brenda yearns to get the man she fell in love with two years ago back. She feels that as soon as her recovery is here within a week or so and he sees her new curvy ass, they will bounce back. He will not be able to keep his hands off her. She smiles while envisioning the make up sex they will soon have and how things can get back to normal. Her phone rings. It’s her best friend, Sadie.
“Hey girl, what’s up?” Brenda answers.
“Girl….” Sadie reponses with a pause.
“What?” Brenda sits her upper body up in attention.
“I just saw Keith with a bitch.”
“Say what?!” Brenda tries to get up off the couch but suddenly feels a sharp pain in her upper left thigh. “Owww oh my God.”
“Take it easy girl, I did not want to call you with this shit, but you know I took pics of the evidence. Sending the pics now.” Sadie assures.
Brenda’s phone alerts with the text message. She quickly opens it up and clicks on the picture of Keith and a random girl hugged up outside of a gas station. Her mouth drops open and she’s in disbelief. The random woman has the biggest smile on her face while he holds her close and has both of his hands palming her booty.  Sadie yells the words right out of Brenda’s own mouth.
“How the hell is he going to cheat on you with a flat booty bitch?!”
Introducing Trevor and His Enviness…..
“Aye excuse me Sir, can you take this pic for me real quick?” Trevor hands his iphone X to a stranger walking by who agrees to snap a pic of him in front of a silver 2020 Mercedes Benz S 560. It’s valet parked outside of the Ritz Carlton Hotel downtown. The man snaps the pic of Trevor and hands him back the phone. Trevor looks at the pic for a hot second and smiles.
“Thanks man,” Trevor says.
The man nods his head and replies, “No problem bro, that’s a nice whip you have!”
Trevor is a little startled by the compliment but replies back. “Uh yeah man thank you.”
“Those are going for like $100k.  I’m sure it rides nice.” The man stares at the car in admiration.
Trevor nodded his head in agreement. “Oh yeah man, it’s laced out inside.”
“So dope, I’m trying to get like you one day bro,” the man says. “Take care and stay up.”
“You too.” Trevor replies.
Trevor waits until the man walks out of view and walks the opposite direction. He hurriedly walks two blocks down the street and stops at the bus station. He takes a seat on the bench and pulls out his phone. He pulls up the picture of him in front of the Benz on Instagram and captions “Just dropped 100 bands on the new whip. Talk to me nice.”  He clicks upload and chuckles to himself. The city bus loudly pulls up and comes to a screeching halt at Trevor’s feet. He jumps up off the bench and gets on it to go home.
That next morning, Trevor wakes up to a loud vacuum outside his bedroom door. The door bursts open.  He jumps up startled and rubs the cold out of his squinted eyes.
‘Really Mom?!” he says groggily.
His mom frowns her face and rolls her eyes. “It’s time to get up!” she says loudly over the vacuum. Trevor sighs loudly and rolls over to the edge of the bed. His mom, Cynthia cuts off the vacuum and looks at him annoyingly.
“If you don’t get a job by the end of this week, you gotta get out,” Cynthia says.
“This week?” Trevor asks, confused.
“This week is what I said. All you do is sleep in late and eat up all my damn food,” she replies.
“Ahhh man. Mom, you got to give me a little more time than that. Getting a job doesn’t happen overnight.”
“I don’t know who you think you are, but you are 30 years old still living with me and unemployed. You are not too good to drop them fries at Wendy’s down the street. I told you they were hiring last week and you still refused to put in an application,” Cynthia says. “I’ve had enough!”
Trevor sucks his teeth. “Man, I’m not working at no Wendys. I’ll figure something out,” Trevor replies.
“You got 5 days and I mean it,” Cynthia replies. She angrily cuts the vacuum back on and rolls it out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Trevor stares at the wall for a minute, in an effort to fully wake up. He has no desire to work at Wendy’s. In his eyes, it was not good enough. He decided to get up and look online for a job. He pulls his laptop out of the closet and begins his search with indeed.com.
“Hmmm...desired salary range? $75,000 a year will do,” He says to himself.
Upon clicking search, he finds a lot of great paying jobs with benefits but the catch 22 is, they all require previous experience. Trevor has a high school diploma. After failed attempts to get into very prestigious universities, he was unable to secure an acceptance. His mother begged him to attend the local Community College to start off with his electives, but he felt that was not good enough. Trevor had dreams of becoming a journalist. He enjoyed writing and he used to record his own radio show for leisure. In High School, his grades were just not up to par for some of the schools he applied for. This discouraged him, and he never thought twice about going back to school. That was 12 years ago, and he has since worked dead end jobs and has yet to move out of his mother’s house. He became somewhat of a hermit, not engaging with friends and family. He secludes himself from everyone. His social media shows that he is a successful businessman residing in Atlanta, but in reality, he is broke, depressed and his mother still makes his bed.
After 30 minutes of searching online, his frustration grows and he slams his laptop closed. There is no way he can work at Wendy’s.  He fears that his fabulous lifestyle would be exposed by running into anyone he knew. He opens up his Instagram and looks at his profile.
“532 likes?! Haha, that’s crazy,” he says to himself while admiring the photo of him in front of the luxury Benz from last night.  He then scrolls his timeline to find a picture of a black suit and purple tie that someone had laid out on a plush hotel bed.  He screenshots the picture and opens his profile up again. He captions “Rise and Grind. #GoodMorning.” and uploads it. He then puts his phone down and prepares to take a shower.  He opens up his dresser drawer and pulls out a pair of blue boxer briefs. They had a hole in the back.
“Damnit!” He yells and slams the drawer.
Three days have now passed and Trevor is in his room playing his Playstation. His mother, Cynthia busts in his room.
“It’s Thursday young man and I’m not playing with you. Have you found a job?” She demands.
Trevor doesn’t take his eyes off the game and responds. “I’ve applied to a few places Ma, can you give me some time? I can’t just find a job in a week like that.”
“You’re lazy! And I want you out tomorrow! You better go stay with your cousin or something. I am no longer taking care of a man child,” she replies.
Trevor pauses the game.
“Ma, are you really going to kick out your only son? I’m really trying.”
Cynthia throws an empty box at him. “Pack some things. It’s time for you to grow up,” she replies.
She walks out the room. Trevor just knew he couldn’t live with his cousin Maurice. He still owes Maurice $500 from weeks ago. He truly had nowhere to go. Finally, years of misleading people with untruthful social media posts, borrowing money without repayment, not willing to work low wage jobs, and trying to keep up with the Jones’ has suddenly come crashing down. In desperation, he opens up his computer and types in “PPP Loan.” He reads where he will need a legitimate business to qualify and knows the consequences. This fictitious lifestyle has pretty much caught up with him but now he’s desperate.  He wants the car, the money, the clout…. He clicks on the SBA website and begins to fill out an application.
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duhragonball · 3 years
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[FIC] Luffa: The Legendary Super Saiyan (153/?)
Disclaimer: This story features characters and concepts based on Dragon Ball, which is a trademark of Bird Studio/Shueisha and Toei Animation.   This is an unauthorized work, and no profit is being made on this work by me. This story is copyright of me. Download if you like, but please don’t archive it without my permission. Don’t be shy.
Continuity Note: This story takes place about 1000 years before 66 years after the events of Dragon Ball Z.
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And then there’s these jerks...
[24 December, Age 762.  Planet Namek.]
A stiff breeze blew over the azure plains of Namek.   The Time Patrol had recruited Luffa from the distant past to hunt down a mysterious enemy who was altering history.    She had found them.  
They were humanoids with pointy ears, snow-white hair, and ice blue skin.    They wore matching costumes of black and red.   Towa carried a long spear in her slender hands, while Mira appeared to be the warrior of the pair.    With a voice devoid of emotion he threatened to destroy Luffa for daring to oppose them.    
Luffa had already taken a beating.   Undoing the changes to history had led her to several pitched battles with the Ginyu Force.    Her pants were reduced to strips of yellow rags that hung from her waist and boots.   Fortunately, her black compression shirt and shorts were much more durable.   Since arriving in this strange era, Luffa had found her powers to be a pale shadow of her former glory.   Once, she had been the Legendary Super Saiyan, and she would have destroyed the Ginyu Force with a swipe of her golden tail.    Now, it had taken everything she had to defeat them one at a time.
She raised her outstretched hand towards Mira, and curled her fingers toward herself, beckoning him to do his worst.  
"You acted a bit rashly a moment ago, Mira," Towa said.   Usually you ask my permission to attack before you power up.    Not that I mind, of course.   This Saiyan will make a good test run for you, but I am rather fascinated by how eager you are to fight her."
"He's just smart, that's all," Luffa said.    "He knows that I came here to fight, and you two are next on my list."
Mira charged at Luffa and the battle was on.    She avoided what she expected was a right punch, only for Mira to grab her by the face with his left hand and drive her into the nearby hillside.   She attempted to reverse the grab into an armbar, but he was quick enough to release her before she could lock in a grip.   She settled instead for a barrage of punches and kicks.   Mira deflected all of these with ease, but Luffa was only testing him at this point.    So far, she liked what she was seeing.  
"Towa," Mira called out.    His voice was louder, but showed no more emotion than before.    He spoke like a man reciting passages out of a phone directory, and now he simply raised his voice to be heard.    "This is the one who has been interfering with us all along."
"I'd say you're right, Mira," Towa replied from a safe distance.    If she was concerned at all about getting hurt during this battle, she didn't show it.    It irked Luffa enough that she was tempted to fire a ki blast at her just to make a point, but she didn't want to give Mira any openings.   She would deal with Towa in due time, or so she told herself.  
"It's a shame, really," Towa said.   "We made history a lot more interesting, and then you came along and put everything back to normal again, didn't you?    How disappointing.    You struck me as somewhat impressive, but all you care to do is maintain the status quo.    That's not very adventurous of you, now is it?"
"Is that why you came here?" Luffa asked.   "No big plan, just tampering with history for a few laughs?"
Asking that question nearly cost Luffa her head, as Mira fired a large ki blast from his hands that she almost didn't dodge in time.    It was like her Galick Gun, but not quite.   There was a hint of Saiyan style in Mira's fighting moves, but Luffa wasn't entirely certain what that could mean.  
"Oh, I'm here for more than a good time, if that's what you're asking," Towa said.    "But speaking of laughs, I did enjoy that part where you switched bodies with Ginyu.    Very amusing.    You had no idea he could do that, did you?"
"You two were watching us fight the entire time?" Luffa asked.   "But none of us sensed your energy.     I'm kind of surprised Kakarot and Vegeta aren't rushing over here now to see what I'm up to."
"Your friends will not save you," Mira said in his gloomy monotone.   "They have no idea that you're here."
Luffa went low and attempted a kick to sweep Mira off his feet.   He avoided her foot, but he failed to account for her tail, which hooked his ankle and flung him over her shoulder.    He recovered quickly, but not quickly enough to take back the initiative.    Luffa pressed on, hammering away at his defenses with rapid strikes.    Mira showed no sign of despair or frustration, but Luffa smiled anyway.  
"I've been generating a cloaking field around us ever since we came to this time," Towa explained.   "It doesn’t obstruct line-of-sight, but it does prevent outsiders from sensing our energy, so that way we can operate and observe without attracting any unwanted attention.   That's why you didn't notice us earlier, or on Earth, when we were conducting experiments before."
"Experiments?" Luffa sneered.   "That's what you call it?   That purple crap you used on Raditz, and then Vegeta and the others?"
"I have to give you some credit," Towa said.   "Because of how well you performed against the Ginyu Force, I decided to try the same spell on Frieza's entire crew.   I wouldn't have considered trying it otherwise, not that I expected them to beat you, but it certainly made things more amusing.    And it seems like you've gotten a little stronger since then.   There's something odd about you.   I like that."
Mira suddenly set his jaw and tensed his arms, and a bright green field of energy surrounded him, deflecting Luffa's attacks and forcing her away.   As the field subsided, he pushed back on Luffa, fighting harder than he had before.    
"Getting serious, Mira?" Luffa asked.    "Took you long enough.   I thought maybe you two were waiting for Frieza or some other goon to show up and bail you out."
"Hmph," Towa said from the sidelines.   "I guess you thought I was bluffing before.   You're from Earth, aren't you?   What do they call it on Earth?   A duck blind?   Something hunters use to avoid being noticed by their prey.    This whole area has been camouflaged, so they won't sense any of us, no matter how hard you and Mira fight.    And we're too far away for them to see or hear us.   Well, maybe Namekian frogs could pick us up.   They have an uncanny power to sense humidity.   Did you know that?"
Luffa hadn’t known this, but it explained how she found them.   Captain Ginyu had trapped himself in the body of a frog, and somehow he had noticed Towa and Mira from a great distance away.    Perhaps his new amphibian senses had picked up the moisture from their breath.   If Luffa hadn’t been watching Ginyu, she might not have discovered them.    But she had no intention of admitting that.  
"So there won't be anyone else joining us?" Luffa asked.    
"No one," Mira said.
"Excellent," Luffa replied.
She ducked Mira's next ki blast and then drove an uppercut into his abdomen.     Despite his cold, stoic demeanor, Mira's eyes went wide as the breath was driven out of him.
Luffa used the lull in the action to turn her head and spit on the ground.    "Don't get me wrong," she said.   "I wasn't waiting for someone to help me, and I wasn't worried about someone else showing up to help you.    I just wanted to make sure I could fight freely without causing anymore time anomalies.   And if no one sensed that little love tap, Mira, then I guess they won't notice this either..."
She balled up her fists and began to scream.   Mira recovered from her punch, but he wasn't in any hurry to renew his offensive.   He stood his ground and winced as Luffa's ki aura grew stronger.    Towa raised an eyebrow, but nothing more.  
"You were so excited to fight me, Mira," Luffa said when she finished.    "Let's see how you like me now."   With a cheerful growl, she raised her left hand over her chest and flung a ball of green energy at him.   Unable to dodge in time, Mira tried to block it, only to be stunned as the ki made contact with his body, like his hands had gripped a live wire.    The damage was minor, but it gave Luffa an opening to slip behind him and drive her knuckles into the small of his back.   To add insult to injury, she grabbed the length of cloth that hung from his waist and swung him around a few times before tossing him into the ground.  
"Mira...!" Towa said under her breath.  
"You said you watched everyone," Luffa snarled.    "Observed all of the fighting.    Didn't you pay attention to how those fights ended?"
She pounced on Mira's chest and knocked him over before he could get up.   Then she began punching his head as hard as she could.    Her hands glowed a furious crimson as she charged them with enough ki to make every blow as painful as possible.    
"They ended with my enemies whimpering with fear!" Luffa shouted.    "With me slaughtering them like livestock!    And you call yourselves the hunters?    Not anymore, Mira.   Now you're just another victim."
At last, she hit him hard enough to draw blood.   It was purple.    
"Enough!" Towa gasped as she raised her spear.    Luffa caught this motion out of the corner of her eye, and leaped clear of Mira to defend herself.    
"So, you finally got bored with watching, Towa?" Luffa asked with a grin.    "You're welcome to join us whenever you like.    Mira could use a hand, couldn't you, Mira?"  
With a horrid look in her eyes, Luffa glared at Towa as she licked Mira's blood off her knuckles.    
"You have no idea who it is you're dealing with," Towa insisted.   She was almost beginning to look worried.   "Mira has defeated far greater warriors than you, little girl.    Let me show you..."
The spear began to glow, and Luffa expected an attack, but instead it was Mira who was affected, as he suddenly glowed with a dark red aura, much like the one he had displayed before the fight began.   He rose to his feet, and stared at Luffa with a renewed sense of purpose.  
"Your fate is sealed," he said, his gloomy voice cutting through the rushing pulse of his ki aura.    
"You can make him stronger?" Luffa asked Towa.   "Hah!  You should have done that in the first place!    Do I have to kill him before you'll take me seriously?"
"I had been conserving that energy for other applications," Towa said.   Now that Mira was back in the game, Towa had regained her former composure.    "But I won't just stand by and let you damage my masterpiece."
Mira wasted no time.   As he rushed towards Luffa, she noticed that his wounds had even been healed.  Curious, she backed away, retreating into the sky and keeping her distance.  
"You two make a hell of team," Luffa taunted.    "Mira does the fighting and Towa handles support.   Does she fight at all?    I was looking forward to seeing what she could do after I kill you, Mira, but I'm starting to think she might not last very long."  
Mira didn't answer.    Instead, he increased his speed, and suddenly appeared less than a meter away from Luffa, then caught her with a roundhouse kick to her ribs.    Before she could fall, he caught hold of her wrist, then wrapped his arms around her and dove head-first to the ground.   Just as they reached the surface, Mira released Luffa and jumped clear, leaving her to suffer the impact alone.    
"N-not bad..." Luffa muttered as she slowly rose up from the ground.   But before she could get to her feet, Mira fired a wide ki blast over the crater she had made.   For several long seconds, there was no sign of Luffa from within the intense purple light of Mira's attack.    When he ceased fire, she was still alive, but had dropped to one knee, her head tucked behind her forearms in a desperate attempt to defend herself.   The burns and scrapes on her skin proved that she had only barely managed to survive.    
Mira attacked again, zipping around Luffa with blinding speed, and finally stopping to deliver an elbow strike to the back of her neck.    She collapsed, only for Mira to grab her by the collar of her compression shirt and toss her high into the air.   He crouched and widened his stance, then held his hands together on his right flank.   As he charged his energy again, he spoke.  
"Ka...! Me...!  Ha...!  Me...!"
"Wonderful, Mira," Towa said with a chuckle.    "You really do know how to put on a show."
"...Ha!" Mira finished, and he extended his hands, wrist-to-wrist, and fired a burst of blue light directly towards the falling Luffa.    The beam caught her in mid-air, breaking her fall and shoving her further into the sky.  And further...
And then she stopped.    
"What--?" was Mira's only reaction.    And then he began to feel something pushing back.
"That... that can't be right," Towa said.   "She couldn't be strong enough to handle that attack, especially not after the beating she just took...!"
And then the Namekian skies echoed with raucous laughter.
"Mira!   Finish it now!" Towa said.    "This is no time to be playing around."
"I'm not 'playing'," Mira said.   His expression was as blank as ever, but the strain in his voice was unmistakable.    He was doing everything in his power to kill Luffa.    It just wasn't enough.    And then, finally, his Kamehama Wave deflected at a near right angle.    The beam continued on into the sky, leaving only the one who had deflected it.    
Luffa dropped to the ground and smiled triumphantly.   The yellow rags had all been burned away, and even her black shorts and shirt were beginning to show signs of wear.    Her hands were trembling, and her eyes were wide with wild, desperate emotions.   But she was still alive, and eager to continue fighting.  
"Come on!" she shouted, pointing at her face.  
"You've gone mad with terror, then," Mira said.    "Very well."
He rushed Luffa again and struck her in the jawline.    Luffa absorbed the blow, and responded with a punch of her own.    Mira stayed on his feet, but the impact staggered him.    
"That's not all you've got, you bastard!" Luffa snarled.    "Again!"
"Mira, watch out--" Towa warned, but Mira took the bait.   He tried a kick this time, and Luffa winced and gritted her teeth when his boot hit her ribs, but she recovered and fired back with a kick of her own, which landed squarely on Mira's right thigh.    He shuddered as his quadricep began to spasm from the impact.    
"You used to be a lot stronger than this," Luffa said.   "I can read it in your fighting style.    You're accustomed to fighting on a higher level than where we are now.    But you can't attain that level anymore.    You might get back there eventually, but you've got a long way to go."
"I have all the power I require to destroy you," Mira insisted.  
Luffa laughed and held her hands behind her back.    "You don't have anything," she said as she held up her chin, daring him to take another free shot.   Her wide eyes glared at him as she waited for him to answer.   "You've got skill, Mira, and you know how to handle all that power, but you've got no spirit, and that's why you'll never win against me."
"You're bluffing," Mira said evenly.    "If you think your feeble threats can intimidate me, then you are a fool.   I will end this here and now."
"Maybe you're right, Mira," Luffa said.  "I honestly don't know myself, and that's what makes it so exciting.   But I feel very sure of myself right now.   Like the next punch you land is going to push me over the edge.    So how about it?   What do you feel?"
She held her ground, waiting for Mira to make the next move.    For a moment, he hesitated, but only for a moment.    "It's over," he said.   "Don't worry.   I'll use your energy well."  
Then he drew back his right arm and prepared to strike, until--
"Hold on, Mira!" Towa called out.    He stopped immediately, and waited for her next command.  
"Looks like someone's not ready to find out if I was bluffing," Luffa said.   "Too bad."
"Oh, don't flatter yourself," Towa said.   "I only wanted to ask you a few questions before Mira kills you."  
She approached the two of them and stood beside Mira, who seemed mildly annoyed at being ordered to stand down.    Towa looked very calm, but Luffa couldn't help but notice how she held the spear in her hands, rolling it anxiously in her slender fingers.
"Who's supporting you?" Towa asked.   "Who's backing you up?   It's not as if you could have done this on your own."  
"Why not?" Luffa said with a grin.  
"Don't play dumb with me," Towa said.   "You traveled through time, came to this planet, just to fight us?    It doesn't make any sense.   Someone put you up to this.    I'd like to know who."  
Luffa's only reply was the sadistic grin on her face.    
"I see... So it's the silent treatment, huh?   No matter."   She gestured to Mira.   "Let's leave her for now, Mira."
Mira crossed his arms indignantly, though his blank expression remained unchanged.    
"You don't mind, do you?" Towa asked him.   "As she is, she's nothing right now.   I could extract her energy, but it wouldn't amount to much.   But maybe things will be different... later."
Mira harrumphed in reply.  
"Well, let's move on to the next era," Towa said.  
"What makes you think you can just walk away?" Luffa asked.
The two of them turned their backs to Luffa, and Towa glanced over her shoulder and laughed quietly.   "I'll let you live for now... little girl.   But if you decide to get in our way again... I'll have you erased."
"Why wait?" Luffa asked, but before she could do anything, Towa and Mira vanished.   She couldn't sense them anywhere.    For a moment, Luffa considered that they might be hiding again, using the "duck blind" that Towa had spoken of.   How long would it take to search the planet?   Were they even still on the planet to be found?    
Before she could weigh her options, the world around her began to fade into a swirl of colorful light.   Luffa had experienced this before.    The Time Patrol was bringing her back from the past.    For now, her mission was over.  
NEXT: The Time Breakers.
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foursideharmony · 4 years
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Collateral Damage (Part 3)
Summary: Roman gets into trouble while questing in the Imagination. Rescue arrives, but will the rescuer be all right?
Word Count: 2,108
Relationship(s): Platonic LAMP, with some extra Prinxiety focus
Warnings: It's a whump/hurt/comfort fic, sooooo... hospital/clinic setting, some really disturbing imagery including fire and darkness and other unpleasantness, medical sutures, poison, illness, description of inflamed wounds, Remus mention, nightmare mention
Logan taped down the last bandage and stood back, admiring their handiwork. “There. I think we can put him to bed now.”
“He looks better already,” said Patton. “A little like a mummy, but I think he'd be okay with that. Remember that one Halloween?”
“Patton, that was Christmas Eve.”
“Oh. Right.”
Roman had begun visibly improving shortly after drinking his antidote, which made sense. His scratches remained a bit swollen, but the other two Sides had disinfected them, daubed them with ointment and patched them with gauze, and the prince was now resting peacefully and well on the road to recovery. Logan estimated thirty-six hours before his rapid recuperative powers (something they all enjoyed, as non-physical beings) brought him back to full health.
He waved the examination room away, transforming it into a small but pleasantly appointed hotel room, with Roman tucked into a full bed and a smaller cot alongside. Putting the Creative Side back in his own room would have been ideal, but they couldn't enter it from the common space without him being conscious to allow it.
“One of us should stay with him until he awakens naturally,” Logan said, “and I volunteer.”
“All right,” said Patton. “I'll look in on Virge after he's had a chance to rest up. And I'll keep an ear out for Thomas and let him know what's up if tries to call on us.”
“Excellent plan,” said Logan, changing from his medical garb into a simple combo of tee-shirt and sweatpants. He maneuvered onto the cot as Patton sank out and was soon dozing.
Fire. Fire and hot darkness and and pain, a dull yet insistent pain that was everywhere with no way to locate its source. And the fire was black fire, doing nothing to light up the oppressive, suffocating darkness. And the darkness was made of voices, too whispery quiet to be heard clearly yet at the same time so loud that they were like physical blows to his ears, inflicting more pain and more fire.
He couldn't move and he could barely breathe (the fire was somehow also water) and everything was wrong and everything hurt and he didn't understand why. There was no such thing as time—no past to remember in order to understand, no future to anticipate so he could plan—there was only an eternal present of pain and darkness. And fire.
~~~~~
Roman woke slowly, feeling unusually refreshed for a mere nap. It took him a moment to realize that no, it hadn't been a mere nap. His back was dreadfully sore at first, but the pain receded into the background as his awareness brightened, and he remembered.
He opened his eyes and glanced around as much as he could without moving just yet. A modest bedroom, furnished in subdued colors. Morning sunlight filtering in through medium-weight drapes over either a large double window or a sliding glass door. A framed piece of art on the wall, its image invisible behind the reflection of light on the glass cover. A bureau and a small television. So, a hotel room—not luxurious, but far from the worst place to be. He tried to sit up a little to take in more, but found himself hissing in pain as something twinged in the small of his back.
Suddenly Logan was there, standing up from wherever he had been and fumbling for his glasses on the bureau. “Roman? Are you awake? Is it morning?” He paused to yawn and change back into his daywear. “Don't try to get up too quickly or you'll pull on your sutures.”
“Sutures...” Roman repeated, easing himself up more carefully and reaching around his own back to feel the knobbly knots under the bandage. “Was it that bad?”
“Just in one spot. I put in two sutures to close up a laceration. I doubt you'll need them long.” He paused again, and cleared his throat. “How do you feel?”
“Well enough,” said Roman, just before his stomach rumbled. “Strike that—I'm starving. I don't suppose...I might get breakfast in bed?”
“Not from me, you won't. It should be safe for you to get up and walk as long as you're careful. Come on—Patton and Virgil will be very pleased to see you on the mend.”
“I owe Virgil, for sure,” Roman said. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and gingerly got to his feet. “These are nice pajamas; did you put me in these? I just need to make one little addition for the occasion.” He reached into the hem of his sleeve, like a magician doing a scarf trick, and drew out a swatch of gold-tinted chiffon which whipped around the shoulder opposite and knotted itself, creating an impromptu arm sling.
“Roman, that is entirely unnecessary. Your arm suffered only superficial damage.”
“It's for the 'recuperating hero' aesthetic. Let's go eat!”
~~~~~
Patton dumped an extra spoonful of sugar into his peppermint tea...yeah, it was that kind of morning. He was trying not to be morose, but it was tough going when the last he'd seen of his fellow Sides was Roman unconscious and Logan settling in for a bedside vigil. He wondered whether it was worth making breakfast, and for how many.
There came a soft sound from the stairwell, and then Logan's unmistakable imperious tones. “Descend slowly. Don't disturb your dressings.”
“I know how to walk down stairs, Logan.”
And just like that, Patton's morning was 100% better.
“KIDDO!” he bubbled, his sock-clad feet slipping on the kitchen linoleum as he hastened to meet Roman. “Look at you, almost all better! Wait, what happened to your arm? I thought...”
“Aesthetics,” Logan said flatly.
“So it's safe to hug him?” Patton said, not even waiting before sweeping Roman into a joyful embrace. “Anyway, we should have a special breakfast to celebrate your recovery! We can make it together! You two do me a favor and get out the stuff, and I'll go wake Virgil!” He all but leapt up the stairs, buoyed by relief and delight.
Patton and Virgil had an understanding. Patton was allowed to enter Virgil's room without specific permission under the following circumstances: 1) He was reasonably certain that Virgil was in there, 2) He was entering for the purpose of either gently waking him up or rescuing him from a presumed panic spiral, 3) He knocked first anyway and announced his intention to enter, giving Virgil a chance to deny him if it was a bad time.
Patton knocked on Virgil's door. “Virge? Kiddo? Roman's up and he's doing great! We're gonna make breakfast together.”
There was no response, so he rapped again, said “I'm coming in,” and did so.
And just like that, Patton's morning was 100% worse.
“Logan!” he blurted before he had even processed the entirety of the scene. “LOGAN!”
There was a crash of dropped dishes from the kitchen, followed by the rapid rhythm of someone charging up the stairs. Logan appeared in the doorway, his jaw dropping.
Virgil sprawled fully clothed on his bed—pale, trembling, panting, whimpering. His eyes, open a crack, were rolled back until only the bloodshot sclera were visible. The sheets around him were damp with perspiration. Patton repeatedly reached a shaking hand toward his face to offer comfort, but pulled back every time, unsure whether he should make contact. “What do we do?” he pleaded. “What's wrong with him?”
“I can't say without more information,” Logan confessed. “But it looks like—”
“It's the poison,” Roman said, having just arrived. “That's what it does without the antidote. It's one of my brother's favorite dirty tricks, so I know all about it. But I don't understand; he wasn't wounded! Unless...”
He shrugged out of his bogus sling and gently lifted Virgil's left hand, undid the zipper on the sleeve cuff, and turned down the fabric. Two punctures, one larger and deeper than the other, were revealed in the soft, pale skin on the underside of the Anxious Side's wrist. The flesh around them was horribly swollen and red, with inflamed blood vessels visible through the skin, radiating out from the wounds.
“The thorns penetrated after all,” Roman said. “It must have been so slight that he didn't notice at the time. The poison takes time to fully kick in.”
“Oh, Virgil,” said Patton, finally overcoming his hesitancy and ruffling Virgil's sweat-drenched hair. Virgil flinched away from the touch, his head thrashing back and forth until he finally flopped over entirely, facing away from them, and curled up into the fetal position. “He's burning up,” Patton said, following Virgil to the other side of the bed. “Roman, do you have any more of that antidote? Please say yes.”
Roman rubbed a hand over his face. “It's too late for that. There's about a two-hour window. After that, the only thing to do is ride it out. It's not going to be a good time for any of us, Virgil least of all...but he will make a full recovery. Remus doesn't go in for lethal stuff, on the grounds that dead people can't pay him attention.”
“He's not wrong in that. Roman, you have suffered the full effects of the poison before?” said Logan.
Roman nodded.
“Please tell me whatever you can about it. It may help advise a course of action for treating Virgil's symptoms until his system purges the toxin.”
“Nightmares,” Roman said softly. “He'll be knocked out for a couple days, and the fever will give him fever-dreams...bad enough, right? Now try to picture fever-dreams designed by my brother. Better yet, don't.”
Logan adjusted his glasses. “Would reducing the fever alleviate the visions?”
Roman shrugged. “Maybe? It can't hurt.”
“I'll set up some cold compresses,” said Patton, rising from his kneeling position. “And we should move him. This is no place for a sickbed. You two are already showing some under-eye smudge.”
“I do find myself becoming increasingly unsettled,” said Logan. “Thank you for spotting that, Patton.”
“I volunteer my room,” said Roman. “The atmosphere of pleasant fantasies should help to combat the nightmares.”
“You two work on that, then,” said Logan. “I will inform Thomas so that it doesn't catch him off guard if Virgil's suffering spills over onto him. In fact, he may be able to counter it from his end.”
The three of them nodded to each other, and they got to it.
~~~~~
It was a day and a half before Virgil woke up.
Roman had been watching him, as usual—it was his room, after all, and by concentrating he could modulate the atmosphere to produce only the sweetest and most beautiful of ideas, though he could only hope they were filtering through to Virgil's lowered awareness. He was changing the cold compress, which was a bit trickier than just removing one wet washcloth and replacing it with another, cooler one, because the delirium had Virgil recoiling almost violently when anything touched his head or face. The way to calm him, they (actually Patton) had discovered by accident, was to pick up his hand and gently massage the pad of his thumb.
Roman was in the midst of this process when Virgil's hand abruptly tightened on his, and then the Anxious Side's eyes flew open and he let out a brief, barking yell.
“It's all right!” Roman said on reflex. “It's just me, Virgil, I'm right here and you're safe. You're safe. You're safe, Emo the Frownfish.”
“P-Princey...?” Virgil said, his voice barely a squeak.
“Yeah,” said Roman. “We're taking care of you. You'll be okay.”
“D...d...don...”
“Don't what?”
“Leave. Don't leave. Please.”
Roman had been planning to go inform the other two that Virgil was awake, but after a plea like that, it was completely off the table. They would find out sooner or later. “I won't,” he said softly, squeezing the hand he was still holding.
There was a long pause while Virgil sank back into the pillow, whimpering.
“I know,” Roman said. “It hurts. It'll stop hurting pretty soon now that you're awake.”
Another pause, and then Virgil said, “Have you really been here this whole time?”
“We took turns, actually. But I'm glad I'm here now, so I can thank you properly for rescuing me the other day. You were my hero, Virgil. The least I can do is be yours for a little while.”
“Sap,” Virgil muttered, proving that he was going to be all right.
The End
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dimigex · 5 years
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Priorities - Kakashi/Rin
It’s not the next chapter of Altered Reality yet, but hopefully this snippet will make my AR fans happy. 
Blood oozed through a gash in Kakashi's armor, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He grunted and pressed a hand beneath his flak vest to staunch the flow. Blinking through rain that reduced his visibility to less than a dozen feet, Kakashi tried to pinpoint his location. The treacherous footing had forced him to travel on the ground after entering Konoha. He'd avoided the gate because it required answering questions that he didn't have the strength for. Not yet, anyway.
The injures on Kakashi's body were a testament to how badly the mission had gone. He ignored the pain stabbing through his leg with every step. Kakashi knew that he needed to report his failure to the Hokage's office and surrender himself to the hospital for observation, but more important matters took precedence. There were things that Kakashi had to do first.
Thunder cracked overhead, loud enough to make the buildings tremble, then lightning temporarily blinded him to the present and dragged him into the past.
A woman begged then screamed, horror palpable in her voice. Hot blood fountained, spraying Kakashi's face and mask. A second cry drowned out the first, and a man stumbled forward. Overlapping commands filled Kakashi's ears, then laughter.
The lightning faded, throwing Kakashi into complete darkness. He steadied himself against a wall, leaving bloody trails in his wake. Rain washed the marks away almost instantly. Kakashi didn't notice. He didn't have room for anything beyond his current objective. Shoving sodden hair from his eyes, he stumbled as the building in front of him doubled, tripled, then coalesced as one again. Kakashi pushed forward, ignoring the trivial annoyance.
Kakashi estimated the time to be well past midnight, but the clouds made it difficult to get an exact reading. The streets were empty enough that he could move freely on the ground, at least, almost unheard of in a shinobi village. The darkness and weather gave him the cover that he needed. Thankful for small blessings, the jonin slipped down another alleyway.
Pain pulsed behind Kakashi's eyes when he stopped to check his location. Nodding, he cut across one of the parks that dotted the village. Wet grass clung to his legs as he jogged and Kakashi tripped, falling onto his right hip. He didn't hit the ground hard, but rolled onto his back and sucked in a pained breath anyway. Grunting, Kakashi pressed his hand against his still throbbing side, only to be rewarded by a fresh stab of pain. His wound must have reopened. Just hold on a little longer, he pleaded.
Gritting his teeth, Kakashi struggled to his feet and managed to find them on the second try. He rested his palm against a tree trunk as the world spun and concentrated on breathing. Blinking to clear the persistent black spots dancing in his vision, Kakashi shook his head. For the next five minutes, he focused on putting one foot in front of the other until he reached his destination. Then, he had just enough mental capacity to second guess himself.
The voices returned. Their pleading, screaming, and incoherent weeping drowned out the thunder. Kakashi covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut to stop the memories. It didn't help; they poured through his mind.
Pressing a hand into his wound pulled Kakashi back to the present. He leapt for the small balcony overhead, misjudged the distance when it moved mid flight, and had to catch himself on the railing to avoid pitching back to the street. The movement knocked the air from his lungs, but muscle memory helped him swing exhausted legs across the banister. He stumbled on the wet stone and nearly fell.
Sheer purple curtains covered the doors leading into the apartment. Kakashi drew a ragged breath and rested one hand against the pane. His fingers left streaks of crimson as darkness swirled before his eyes. Kakashi's knees buckled, then he collapsed. Even the universe doesn't want me to do it, he laughed soundlessly,succumbing to unconsciousness.
------------------------------------------
Rin startled awake with the impression that something was wrong. Heart hammering against her ribs, she pushed the blankets off and looked around her room. Everything was exactly as she'd left it when going to bed. Rubbing her arms, she checked the clock. Almost two in the morning.
"Must have been a nightmare," Rin said to fill the echoing silence. When she couldn't shake the feeling of uneasiness squeezing her chest, Rin pushed to her feet. The earlier storm had spent its fury, tapering off to steady rain that pattered against the window. Moonlight peeked out between the clouds.
Rin frowned into the night. Kakashi was out there somewhere, on another mission that she wished he hadn't taken. She knew that they were shinobi and it was his job, but she missed having his back. When Rin dedicated herself to learning medical ninjutsu, she'd been removed from active status until she completed her training. Eventually, she'd be able to watch over Kakashi, and Obito too, but she had to trust someone else for now
Trying not to shiver, Rin crossed her arms over her chest. The grey pants and long-sleeved, white shirt that she wore should have been enough to drive back the chill but they didn't stop the goosebumps that crawled over her flesh. Rin pulled a blanket from the foot of the bed and draped it around her shoulders. The calmness of her room felt unsettling and restless energy kept her from returning to bed.
Rin normally wasn't superstitious, but her nervousness refused to quiet. Sighing, she crossed the room to gaze out at the night sky. She'd always found the stars calming, though she wasn't certain that she'd be able to see any with the remnants of the storm in the sky. A dark shape huddling against the wall caught her attention. Frowning, Rin pushed the curtain aside to get a better look. It took her longer than it should have to recognize a body slumped in the rain.
Fear pumping through her chest, Rin tore open the door and rushed outside. Slippery stones made her fall next to the shinobi. Her eyes did a double take at the unmistakable silver hair plastered to the icy forehead. Dampness soaked through the fabric of Rin's pants, but she didn't notice. "Kakashi?"
The man didn't respond. When Rin raised a hand to Kakashi's cheek, it felt as cold as the water pouring between them. A keening sound reached her ears, and a terrified moment later, she realized it had come from her throat. You're a medical shinobi, get it together, Rin chided, trying to settle her frantic thoughts. Shaking off the paralysis of shock, she dragged Kakashi into the relative warmth of her apartment.
Flicking on the lamp revealed a scene from Rin's nightmares. Crimson stained the front of Kakashi's flak vest, overlapping layers of fresh red and dried brown. His normally pale skin had taken on an ashen cast, turning blue around his lips. Repeating Kakashi's name, Rin tugged at the zipper of his armor, cursing her numb fingers and the slick surface. It finally came loose. A bandage had tangled in Kakashi's sodden shirt, pulling away from a deep puncture wound between two ribs when Rin tossed the garment aside. The lack of blood pumping from the cut terrified Rin in a way that her mind refused to accept.
"No, no, no," Rin repeated. Her frozen fingers struggled to remove Kakashi's mask then fumbled for his pulse point. She forced her mind not to think about how cold he felt while waiting for the reassurance of a heartbeat that never came.
Cursing, Rin scrambled to Kakashi's side and centered her hands against his chest to start compressions. She couldn't think of anything but the speed and force of the movement. With every press of her palms blood leaked down Kakashi's side to puddle on the bedroom floor.
"Breathe for me," Rin encouraged before covering Kakashi's lips with hers. She forced two quick puffs of air into his lungs then moved back to his chest. As the minutes dragged on, memories of Obito dying in her arms filled Rin's eyes and ran down her cheeks. "I can't do this again."
Rin pulsed chakra into Kakashi's body, searching for an answering flicker of life. She knew his energy signature almost as well as her own, but it wasn't there. The green healing glow emanated from her skin as she willed life back into Kakashi, muscles trembling from the effort of each compression and breath.
Something clattered by the door, but Rin didn't have the energy to turn. If she was meant to die tonight, at least it would by Kakashi's side. Someone whispered her name, then strong arms scooped she and Kakashi up like they weighed nothing. The world spun.
---------------------------------------------
Warmth woke Kakashi, racing through his veins and muscles like fire. He shivered at the sudden return of sensation, then gritted his teeth when pain followed in its wake. Everything hurt, like his body had been ripped apart then stitched back together. His chest ached like someone had beat on it with a hammer. Broken bits of conversation reached Kakashi's ears, and he forced his eyes open despite the harsh fluorescents overhead.
"We can take it from here-"
"I'm not leaving him." Kakashi couldn't place the first voice, but he would have recognized the second anywhere. Prying his eyes open a second time, he found Rin looming above him, hands poised over his chest. Tears had left dirty streaks down her cheeks, and guilt haunted her expression in way that Kakashi had only seen one other time: the day they lost Obito.
A hand touched Rin's shoulder, and she turned toward it in a daze. Shame prickled through Kakashi as her body came into view. Blood coated her stomach and arms, soaking through her shirt and pants. Kakashi's mind registered the various hues like a timeline, darker blots for when she'd discovered him shifting toward brighter reds where his wound reopened in transit.
The touch on Rin's arm tightened, guiding her away. "Come on, let them do their jobs."
Rin nodded, movements stiff as she took in the faces around her without recognition.. She paused halfway off the bed, drawing a deep breath that turned into a sob, then her knees buckled. The air beside Rin stirred and someone caught her before she could hit the floor. Kakashi glimpsed a familiar swirl of red and white before darkness pulled him back under.
The next time that Kakashi opened his eyes, calm had replaced the frenetic energy. Sunlight filtered through the trees outside his window, burning his eyelids enough to make him turn away. Kakashi's body responded sluggishly to the command, and terror rose in his throat before he recalled the common symptom of chakra exhaustion. He blinked at the ceiling, wondering how long he'd been unconscious.
"Almost a week." A voice answered Kakashi's unasked question. He cut his eyes to the side, surprised to see a shock of red hair where he'd expected brown. "And, you're damn lucky that you woke up at all."
Kakashi ran his tongue over his lips, trying to wet them enough to speak. It felt like he hadn't had a drink in months. After three attempts, he managed to croak Rin's name. Kushina snorted and rose, pouring a glass of water from the pitcher beside his bed. "I sent her home to shower and sleep. And, before you ask, I shooed the Hokage back to his office."
While Kakashi hadn't been planning to ask about Minato, the fact that Kushina used his title wasn't a good sign. It might have been better if Kakashi's body had waited a few more hours before waking. He opted to close his eyes and take a mental inventory of his injuries. Chakra exhaustion made for a nasty few weeks, but it wouldn't kill him. And, if he'd been unconscious as long as Kushina said, he should be on the upside of things. He tried to focus his chakra and immediately released the tension when his head felt like it would split from the pressure.
"Not a good idea," Kushina observed from beside the bed, tone difficult to read. "You're supposed to be resting."
Kakashi grunted, unsure if his vocal cords were up to the challenge of speaking. Kushina held the cup of water to his lips, her frown deepening as he drank. The lukewarm liquid eased the parched feeling just enough. "How bad?"
"Bad," Kushina answered, pinching her lips together like couldn't decide whether to burden Kakashi with something he wouldn't like. Then, the words spilled out without warning. "Do you have any idea how close you came to dying? You lost so much blood and exhausted your chakra to the point that your heart stopped. If Rin hadn't found you when she did, if she didn't have the medical training that she does..."
Kushina stopped, inhaled for a measured count, then let the air out in the same manner. If anything, her blue eyes looked angier than when Kakashi had first woken up. "What were you thinking, going to her apartment instead of the hospital? I know she's a medic, but it's not the same thing."
As Kushina's tirade lost steam, shame rolled through Kakashi. He'd known that his chakra level had sunk dangerously low, but it shouldn't have been enough to render him unconscious. Similarly, his wounds had been bad, but not life-threatening, especially considering they'd been bandaged. Kakashi frowned. He remembered his urgency to find Rin, but the other details were fuzzy.
"You were damn lucky," Kushina hissed, slamming the cup back onto the table so hard that water sloshed out. "When Rin couldn't get your heart beating, she panicked. The frantic surge of healing chakra somehow activated the seal on her wrist. Minato was able to get you to the hospital in time, barely."
Kakashi wanted to offer some defense, a compelling reason that he'd gone to Rin instead of the hospital, but nothing came to mind. Broken memories flashed through his mind: the blood on Rin's clothes as Minato pulled her away, slender, shaking hands, and terror in her eyes. Kakashi's empty stomach clenched, bile surging into his throat. For one horrifying moment, he thought he'd throw up, but managed to fight the sensation down. "I'm sorry."
"You're sorry?" Kushina scoffed, managing to turn the apology into an insult. She opened her mouth to argue further when the sound of the door stopped her. Something heavy thudded against the floor, then warmth bowled into Kakashi's side hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
"You're awake," Rin gasped, tears spilling down her cheeks as she ran her eyes over Kakashi's body like she couldn't believe what they were seeing.
Before Kakashi could think of what he wanted to say, Rin's open handed slap jerked his head to the side. The sound echoed in the still room, and he was too stunned to rub the sting away from his jaw. Rin's brown eyes were rimmed in crimson and fresh tears had smeared the purple streaks on her cheeks. The image sparked a visceral reaction that threatened to choke Kakashi. It was identical to the night of Obito's memorial.
Gritting his teeth against the weakness in his body, Kakashi forced one hand from under the blankets to tug Rin closer. She startled at the touch, but didn't pull away. If anything, she melted closer.
"I love you," Kakashi whispered. He hadn't planned to say that, not really. He wanted to apologize for the horrors that he'd put Rin through over the past week, but there were no words strong enough. He settled on the one thing that he knew was true and hoped it was enough.
Rin frowned as she pulled back to look into Kakashi's eyes. Surely the woman knew that she was the center of his world and had been for years. Kakashi's mission had gone horribly wrong, but he hadn't worried about his injuries or making a report, he'd only thought about seeing Rin and telling her that he'd been an idiot. For asking her-
The reason that Kakashi had gone to Rin's apartment slammed into him. Suddenly, he wished that he had the strength to stand, kneel, or at least push himself into a sitting position. Butterflies fluttered inside Kakashi's stomach as he cupped Rin's face. Then, he took a deep breath and asked the question that had been weighing on him since he reached Konoha. "Will you marry me?"
Rin's mouth fell open, a mix of anger and shock on her face as Kushina snorted from the other side of the bed. Kakashi swallowed around the lump in his throat, ignoring the woman. "I wanted to ask you the other night. That's why I went to your apartment instead of the hospital."
"I thought I'd lost you," Rin choked, fresh tears washing down her face. "I couldn't bear-"
"I'm sorry," Kakashi whispered, shushing Rin before the rest of her words could come out. He wished that he could offer something besides inadequate apologies, but that was all he had.
Kakashi waited as Rin's quiet sobs spent themselves against his chest. She stayed still for several long seconds before pushing onto her elbows above Kakashi'. "Never do that again." He opened his mouth to say that he couldn't promise that, as much as he'd like to, when Rin spoke over him. "Yes."
"Yes?" Kakashi asked, repeating the word stupidly.
Rin laughed and nodded. Then, as reality sank in, Kakashi found himself laughing too. Especially when Rin tugged down his mask to kiss him. For once in his life, everything felt right.
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zoadgo · 6 years
Text
Kinktober Day Five | Sadism/Masochism | in a twisted way i don’t mind it; i like what you do | D’avin x Fairuza | Killjoys
Words: 3882
Tags: Sadism, Masochism, Spanking, Paddling, Light electro-stim play, Femdom, Guilt, Masturbation
Note that this is a kinktober prompt fill. It will be explicit smut, and quite likely, kinky. Mind the tags.
ao3
When Pree had told D’avin about Fairuza, he hadn’t even entertained the concept in the slightest, no matter how much the bartender insisted a session with her would do him a world of good. He’d laughed it off and gone about the business of war, because wasn’t there always some kind of war, with him? Army, Killjoys, Dutch, Johnny… It’s always violence, and he always has to do the hard parts. Not the thinking, not the politics, but the nitty gritty, teeth in the dirt, soldier work. And sometimes, the sending people to die work of a General too.
That’s really what gets to him, and in the end, he’s pretty sure that’s how he ended up here, with a tiny girl who’s all pale skin, black leather, and haughty confidence ushering him towards a mildly frightening bed. The guilt, the sleepless nights, and the willingness to do anything to take the edge off, even if it means Pree is right.
“So, do we do introductions, or…?” D’avin asks with a lopsided smile as Fairuza looks him up and down, much as one would while inspecting a slab of meat. Cold. Clinical. Everything D’avin has to be sometimes, and really, really isn’t.
“You can call me Mistress. Your name doesn’t matter. Now sit down.”
It was silly of him to ask, really, because of course they both know each other’s names already. It’s not like he hadn’t booked this appointment. It still feels weird for her to dismiss his name so simply, and seemingly dismiss him as a person in the process. He supposes maybe that’s part of the whole thing. But he’s not sure, he’s entirely out of his depth here, and that’s not a way he’s really all that accustomed to feeling.
Evidently, D’avin takes too long to obey. Fairuza reaches out and cups his jaw, slender fingers curling up, base of her thumb resting lightly against the side of his windpipe. D’avin holds still, holding her eyes, tense through and through. His vague attempt at being casual only seconds ago seems so ridiculous. It’s something in the air about her, the way she holds herself; a part of D’avin buried deep down reacts to it instinctively.
“Sit down.” It's a simple command, but something in D’avin resists it anyway. Which is ridiculous, because he's the one who came to her and asked for this, but what can he say. Being a stubborn ass is a hard habit to kick.
Her trip tightens, just shy of being painful. D'avin breathes shallow against the slight punishment, and he sits. With that action, that surrender, something tight like an elastic band inside of him relaxes. He breathes out shakily, and Fairuza smiles, predatory and pointed.
“Good boy.” Her words have more of an effect on D’avin than he’d care to admit. How long has it been since someone told him he was good? “From here on out, if you need me to stop for any reason, you say ‘red’. Do you understand?” At D’avin’s assent, she nods shortly. “Now that we're being more cooperative, why don't you tell me why you're really here.”
“The same reason as anyone else, I guess?” D’avin shrugs as Fairuza crosses her arms, looking down at him impassively. He can somehow feel he’s given the wrong answer, without knowing it.
“And what do you think that reason is?” Her tone is just this side of patronizing, further reducing him in regards to her. On the one hand it rubs him wrong, but on the other it makes her seem much grander, and her being so clearly in control gives D’avin a modicum of relief he hadn’t fully expected.
“Uh…” D’avin’s gaze slides significantly to the rack of whips and chains on her wall, before returning to her face, “to get hurt?”
“See, most people who come in here wouldn’t say that with a question mark at the end. You’re different. You haven’t even looked at my tits once.” She curves one perfect eyebrow with that, inquisitive.
“I’m a gentleman?” D’avin tries. Fairuza’s arms remain crossed and her expression cold, which makes D’avin feel once more like he’s given the wrong answer.
“Gentleman or no, ninety percent of the people who walk through these doors view me as nothing more than a jumped up sexer. Even when I’m beating them, they view me as their property. You haven’t once looked at me as an object. Which means you’re not here because you want a pretty girl to hit you and call you names. I need to know why you’re really here, if I’m going to be able to do anything for you,” Fairuza explains, and D’avin can’t help but wonder how different he is if she can read all of that out of their limited interactions. Or are others really that greedy, looking at her like something they own just because they’re paying her? D’avin knows better than anyone that paying someone doesn’t mean you own anything of them other than their service.
“It’s-” D’avin starts, but he stops himself. He wants to give her the right answer, so he thinks it through. He’d known what he was getting into, in some part, so why did he think this would help at all? He figures some of it out, and speaks around uncomfortable memories with a small frown. “You see, there was this Scarback. Alvis. He taught me some stuff. Not as much as I could have learned, but I was stubborn and I didn’t listen and now- Well, now it’s too late. But he showed me some of how pain can change things.”
“You want absolution? Go become a monk, I don’t have any forgiveness here.” Fairuza’s eyes flash at mention of the Scarback’s, and D’avin shakes his head.
“No, that’s not what I- Listen, I’ve done things. Bad things. Everyone tells me they were for good reasons, and I had no other choice. Hells, I tell myself that every night to get to sleep. But the truth is I-” D’avin breathes in and drops his gaze to his hands, clasped in his lap. If he tries hard enough, he can forget about the blood he’s stained them with, but he doesn’t know how that’s right. “I think I need to be punished for it all. I need some pain, or something, to balance the scales.”
“I can work with punishment.” Fairuza finally moves, uncrossing her arms. D’avin slumps a little with his admission, looking back up at her as she turns away. She drags her fingertips lightly over a rack of whips. “So you say you had no other choice, hm? Well, you truly have no choice now, not until I’m done with you. Everything that happens in here is my call, you get no say. Understand?”
It’s a frightening concept, and unsettles something within him. Paying her in order to have her walk all over him? It’s not a situation he ever thought he would be in, let alone seek out. But that part of him that is shaken by it is also what tells him to just have a shot of hok and ignore it all, which is exactly what he wants not to do. What he’s done too many nights already.
“...Yes.” D’avin weighs the word as he says it, feels the importance of it in his chest. Fairuza stops with her hand on a shiny wooden paddle, craning her neck to look over her shoulder at him.
“Yes what?”
He knows the word she’s looking for, and he knows there really is no going back if he says it. But he’s come this far already, and he won’t back down now.
“Yes, Mistress.” The title tingles along his spine, and Fairuza nods solemnly at it, shifting from the wooden paddle to a kinder looking leather one. Another right answer, then, D’avin wonders if he can keep it up. Granted, there might not be many more questions now that the formalities are out of the way.
“Take off your shirt, pants, and shoes. Underwear on,” Fairuza orders, tone brooking no argument, and D’avin does as she asks. The act of stripping down doesn’t unsettle him until he’s standing there in front of Fairuza, holding his clothes and awkwardly waiting for her next command. But she seems more than content to watch him squirm more with every passing moment. D’avin swallows awkwardly and tries his best not to fidget, his skin feeling odd and itchy under her scrutiny. He’s not sure if he’s somehow done something wrong, or-
“Put your clothes down.” Fairuza finally takes pity on him, and D’avin almost sighs in relief, hurrying to obey. “Now get on the bed. Hands and knees, ass in the air.”
D’avin wants to make some snarky comment, but more than that, he somehow really wants to do what she says. And since that’s what he’s paying good joy for, he goes with that instead and doesn’t question it. He props himself up, position slightly awkward but not that uncomfortable, clasping his wrists in front of him. Nothing happens immediately, once again, and D’avin breathes deep and slow to manage his nerves. It seems to be Fairuza’s preferred way of putting one on edge, simply making them wait. Well, it works damn well with D’avin; he almost jumps when Fairuza touches him without warning, running her hand firmly over his cloth covered ass.
The bed compresses as she kneels next to him, and if D’avin hangs his head he can see her knees denting the sheets, the paddle she had selected sitting next to her. The hand on his ass runs up onto his back, and before he can question that, her other hand comes down on his rear. Not as hard as he’d feared, but certainly harder than he’d been prepared for. A puff of breath leaves D’avin in shock at the impact.
It didn’t really hurt through the cloth of his boxers, but Fairuza sets rapidly about changing that. She gives him no respite, raining firm blows with her open hand across his buttocks, and seeming to strike harder each subsequent time. The sensation builds to something sore, and then to something definitely like a low level pain. Not anything approaching D’avin’s limit, but recognizable.
This is uncomfortable more than anything, and it sets off some sort of itchy response within D’avin. He’d been hoping for something- well, he’s not sure what, but something more, maybe. Just as he begins down that train of thought, Fairuza startles him once more, pulling on the waistband of his boxers. Occupied in his own thoughts as he was, D’avin moves on instinct to stop her, and gets his hand smacked.
Hard.
Far harder than she’d been spanking him, which drives home to D’avin that it must simply have been a warmup.
“You don’t move unless I tell you to,” Fairuza hisses, and D’avin returns his hand to its position, holding himself up.
“Yes, sorry, Mistress.” It’s weird how the word doesn’t feel so weird even on the second use of it. And how it doesn’t feel all that wrong to apologize for something so ridiculous.
“You will be,” Fairuza promises, and she resumes pulling his boxers down. She only tugs at the waistband at the back, exposing his buttocks to the air, which somehow feels a little more embarrassing to D’avin than if she had taken them off entirely.
Her next strike is against his bare skin, and D’avin gasps in a breath at it. Okay, well, he had been hoping for something more, and that was absolutely more. She hits him again, and again, and again, and D’avin finds his heart racing, his breath hitching with each blow. His ass is on fire, and some of that heat seeps into him in a strange way. It spreads through his chest, to his head, and makes his mind a little fuzzy. It’s not bad, though, just different than anything he’s used to.
There’s a pause in the blows, and D’avin blinks, dropping his head to look at what bit of Fairuza he can see. He can’t see much, but he does realize that the paddle is gone from the bed next to her. He notices this in the second before it connects with his ass, the resounding thwack loud in the relative silence of the room, echoing in his head. It drives an actual grunt from him, and Fairuza chuckles.
“Sorry now?” She asks, hitting him again. The paddle falls slower than her hand had, but the force of it is so much more unyielding.
“Yes Mistress,” D’avin gasps, pain lancing through him and only adding to that fuzzy feeling in his head. It curls within his core as well, and D’avin knows in some distant part of his mind he’s hard. But that is so, so much less important than everything else happening.
“Say you’re sorry,” Fairuza demands with another blow.
“I’m sorry.” The words are gritted through teeth against the pain, and Fairuza digs the nails of the hand on his back into his shoulder. Normally that wouldn’t feel like that much, but under the onslaught of sensation his body is experiencing, it feels like talons ripping into the core of him.
“Not just to me. Say you’re sorry for everything. Everything you’ve done.” It’s another command, and one that’s harder. Because it makes D’avin think of all of his sins, even around the growing white heat within his mind. But he doesn’t have it in him to resist, especially not when another solid smack rings through the room.
“I’m sorry. Hells, I’m so sorry.” He practically sobs the words, deep emotion rippling through him, mingling with the pain within him in some dark mixture that burns, but leaves cleansed tissue in its wake. It’s old sorrow, anger, rage, guilt; everything he’s not allowed to feel, because he has to be strong, and stubborn, and solid.
Except here, she doesn’t want that. She wants him weak, pliant, and choking on the words she demands of him.
Fairuza lays aside the paddle and runs her hands smoothly over his rear, the skin tingling intensely. She pats him gently, and even that makes him startle slightly. Gods, D’avin doesn’t even want to consider what it’s going to be like sitting in the shuttle to go home. He winces a little at the thought of it, before Fairuza draws his attention back by standing.
He can hear her boots click as she crosses the room back to the wall. He can’t be sure what she selects, only hears something slide as she picks it up. He wants to look, but he’s already been punished once for moving without permission, and he wants to do the right thing. He aches for it, deep inside where that heat is curling.
“Deep breath,” Fairuza whispers, as way of warning, and D’avin heeds her advice. He expects another paddle or whip of some sort and is entirely unprepared for the tiny little explosion that goes off on the back of his shoulder.
He grunts and his shoulders fall forward onto the bed, mostly from surprise, his brain not quite able to process what the sensation was, other than startling and painful. He scrambles to get back into position, before Fairuza has to correct him, and another sensation explodes against his side. This time he’s slightly less startled, although his body still does involuntarily twitch away from it, and he hears the sparkling crack that accompanies the sensation.
He figures it out on the next one, on the back of his thigh. It must be some form of an electric shock, not dissimilar to stun rounds but way, way lower. It’s different than the beating, so much more intense in the moment, blinding bright pain that quickly subsides. D’avin grunts and gasps at each shock, and each one drives a little more of that darkness out of him. It hurts, a lot, and it’s somehow exactly what he needed.
The sparks stop for a moment, and D’avin takes advantage of it to close his eyes and catch his breath.
“You're doing good.” Fairuza runs her thumb up the base of his spine with the words.
D'avin almost sobs, a deep shudder wracking through his body at the praise and the gentle touch. It's a brief break between bouts of pain, but it does a world of good for his head. He's not awful, not irredeemable. At least right now, crumbling under her adamantite grip, D'avin is good.
When the shocks start again, D’avin’s eyes remain closed and he gives himself entirely over to the strange feeling brewing within him. The pain stops being quite so painful, instead it’s flashes of brightness in the fuzzy light filling him. It’s not anything he would have called pleasure at any other point in his life, but right now, he thinks maybe it might be. It’s overwhelming, and entirely out of his control.
D’avin thinks he maybe cries, at some point, but Fairuza doesn’t comment, or stop. And if he does, well, he’s pretty sure he needed it. Needed some release other than that found in the bottom of a bottle of hok or one of Pree’s sexers. All he knows is that by the time Fairuza stops and walks away once again, he feels a million times lighter.
“Sit on the edge of the bed.”
D’avin hurries to obey, his elbows creaking somewhat, giving tell to how long he had been holding that pose. When his sore bottom hits the sheets, soft as they are, he hisses involuntarily. He looks up at Fairuza expectantly, and is somehow not at all surprised to see she looks just as cold and impassive as ever.
“Touch yourself.” This order sounds the same as every other one she’s given him, but D’avin hesitates, breath puffing past his lips in gentle pants. He’s hard, there’s no denying that, but he hadn’t thought he was here for any form of sex. Like she pointed out, Fairuza isn’t a typical sexer.
He waits a second too long, and Fairuza presses her knee between his legs, not on his erection, but in the crook of his hip. In his sensitive state, as she grinds her knee in cruelly, it’s hard to tell the difference. D’avin whimpers, and she lifts her leg.
“I gave you an order.” Her voice is cold steel, and D’avin nods.
“Yeah- yes, Mistress.”
He can’t bring himself to look at her, so he drops his gaze to her boots as he slides his boxers down, erection springing free. She doesn’t turn away or even shift in the slightest, watching him so intently D’avin can feel her gaze. He blushes, which he finds hilarious on some level, given all she’d just done to him. But this is different, this doesn’t feel like punishment, no matter how embarrassed he may be.
D’avin grips himself at his base and pumps himself slowly, the first few strokes dry before his precome slicks the way. He’d definitely have needed to do this before heading home, but he’d figured on tracking down a bathroom or perhaps a more conventional sexer, no matter how much that might make his bank account cry.
His breath comes past his lips in soft little puffs as he jerks himself off under Fairuza’s supervision. It’s different than when he normally touches himself, and he finds himself wondering what he’s permitted to do. Should he put on more of a show, go slower, faster? Does she even want him to come, or is this another form of control over him?
Before he can become lost in his own thoughts, Fairuza interrupts them, speaking once more, “Good boy. You’ve done everything I asked of you, so now I want you to come for me. Five strokes, count them for me.”
D’avin breathes heavy with relief, knowing he’s not messing up and knowing what she wants. He licks his lips and nods, closing his eyes and focusing on the sensation of his hand. It’s not hard, his entire body seems so much more sensitive given the particular attentions it’s been receiving. If she’d asked him to finish in two strokes, he’s pretty sure he could have, and not in the least because he’s so intently keyed into following her orders.
“One,” D’avin counts as he pumps his fist, up and down. He can still feel her eyes hot on him, and it sends sparks racing under his skin.
“Two.” D’avin swallows thickly as he moves his hand. Embarrassment leaves him as pleasure builds, and he opens his eyes a little. Still not looking up at Fairuza, but watching her boots.
“Three.” He catches a breath, twisting his wrist and resisting the temptation to bucks his hips into his own touch.
“Four.” D’avin bites his lip, his orgasm so damn close, and he can’t help but look up at Fairuza through his lashes. She’s looking at him with such a naked, dark hunger that he barely makes it through his next and final stroke.
“F-five,” D’avin gasps it out and climaxes, eyes squeezing shut and tears stinging at the corners of them. It’s far more than the pleasure of touching himself or the relief of coming, hot and sticky over his own hand. It’s the culmination of everything that’s happened, and it’s a release of tension so profound it chokes him for a moment.
He struggles to catch his breath as his climax ebbs, feeling no shame over the few tears that trail down his cheeks. He simply gathers himself, pulls himself back from the intensity of the experience, vaguely noticing a peculiar sensation between his legs. His eyes flutter open and he reconnects with his body some to realize it’s Fairuza, cleaning him up with the most ridiculously soft cloth he’s ever felt. She wipes him down gently, pulls his boxers back up, even takes care to clean his hand and each finger individually.
When she’s done with cleaning up his come, which D’avin had not expect but deeply appreciates, she produces a handkerchief from her pocket and even more delicately dabs the tears from his cheeks. D’avin relaxes into the touch, feeling boneless and entirely at peace. The care settles something that had been somewhat rattled loose in him, and D’avin breathes deep and strong, remembering who he really is for the first time in too long.
“There,” Fairuza states, turning his face in her hands to inspect her work. When she’s done, she steps back and offers a hand to D’avin, to help him to his feet. Out of the role of subservient, back into the role of person. He takes it, without reluctance or regret. So maybe Pree had been right.
“Is it too weird to say thank you for that?” D’avin asks, and Fairuza smiles, not predatory, but almost kind.
“You’re welcome, D’avin.” Her use of his name isn’t lost on him, and D’avin simply nods and grins in response as she leads him to the door.
He stands a little taller as it closes behind him, despite the pain in his rear and back. That would fade, but what Fairuza had given him, well, he’s certain that will last a bit longer. Okay, yeah, Pree was definitely right, and there’s no way he’ll ever let D’avin live this down. But maybe D’avin’s okay with that, as he hasn’t been okay with anything in a long time.
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rainybirdsweets · 3 years
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Sports Wear: Between Fashion, Innovation and Sustainability
Sport is an important part of many people’s lives—as both recreation and entertainment. It is also a sizeable industry with political and economic ramifications in today’s world. Within the last half-century or so, sports wear has become a driving force for new trends in fashion and for textile innovation. This special issue of Fashion Practice was inspired by the “Spandex to Sportstech—Fashion and Innovation in Sportswear” conference, organized in 2011 by guest editor Mette Bielefeldt Bruun at the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen.
The stated purpose of Fashion Practice is to provide a site for multidisciplinary treatments of the practices of fashion. “Spandex to Sportstech” was designed as a cross-disciplinary forum for renewed consideration of functional, social, aesthetic and environmental issues connected with sportswear, and some of the papers presented here are rooted in original conference contributions. This journal issue is truly cross-disciplinary, beginning with fashion history, represented by Michael A. Langkj?r with “Urban Fitness, Gendered Practices, and Fine Art: The Significance of Antonio Lopez’s Sporty Styling of Fashion” and moving on to the sportswear industry itself with its brands and markets, represented by Kristine Holm-Jensen with “Specialized in Sportswear: Transformations of the Generic Knitwear Industry in Post-War Denmark.” Several articles then consider fiber and textile technologies and their design applications. Jane McCann leads this group with her “Sportswear Design for the Active Ageing.” McCann is followed by Deborah A. Christel and Nicole H. O’Donnell with “Assessment of Women’s Plus-Size Swimwear for Industry Applications.” Alicia Potuck, Sarah Meyers, Ariana Levitt, Erik Beaudette, Hong Xiao, C. C. Chu, and Huiju Park complete the group with their “Development of Thermochromic Pigment Based Sportswear for Detection of Physical Exhaustion.” In “What’s the Problem? Odor-control and the Smell of Sweat in Sportswear,” Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Madeline Buck, Kirsi Laitala and Marit Kjeldsberg look at how fiber technologies connect with our social values associated with body odor and its suppression; in doing so, Klepp et al. also mention the issue of sustainability. A forthright appraisal of the problem of sustainability within the sportswear industry is given by an industry representative to Lena Erdnü? in “A Perspective on Sustainability Initiatives of a Swedish Outdoor Brand: An Interview with Lennart Ekberg from Hagl?fs.” Finally, Lauren Downing Peters has contributed a review of the Museum of the City of New York’s 2013 exhibition: “Stephen Burrows: When Fashion Danced.”
A 'tool to empower': The evolution of women's sportswear
Before the advent of designer activewear, women's sports wear ranked low on the list of fashion priorities. But a new exhibition demonstrates that sporting attire has long been a valuable tool for self-expression and an important path towards greater liberation."Sporting Fashion: Outdoor Girls 1800 to 1960" includes about 65 ensembles from mainland Europe, the UK, and the US, ranging from Victorian hunting dresses and couture-level leisure wear to tailor-made team uniforms. Organized by the FIDM Museum at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles and the American Federation of Arts, the show opens at the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh on July 3, before touring nationwide through 2024.
Design innovationGarments from the early 1800s are tailored to strolling in parks, gardening, and ice skating -- easy, acceptable activities for women propelled outside by an interest in horticulture, health and fresh air.
The idea of a woman exerting herself was still taboo: In 1806, an article in the popular British magazine La Belle Assemblée, excerpted in the show's comprehensive catalog, warned that, "the constitution of women is adapted only to moderate exercise; their feeble arms cannot perform work too laborious and too long continued, and the graces cannot be reconciled with fatigue and sun-burning."
That's the outlook for men's sports wear as the fall wholesale buying season gets under way this week. And while merchants and manufacturers have been expressing their traditional optimism as the new lines open, the unknown factors resulting from President Nixon's economic stabilization program have brought a modicum of caution to the trade.
Consumer spending for men's and boys’ apparel amounted to approximately $16‐billion last year, with sportswear a major but undefinable percentage of the total. What is even more significant, however, is that while production of a number of other categories of men's wear, such as suits and dress shirts, declined during the year, sportswear manufacturing was greater in 1971 than ever before.
And while statistics on the sportswear category are not collected by any government agency or trade association, conversations with retailers last week indicated that 1971's volume advances would he continued at the same rapid pace in 1972.
WHY ARE SPORTS BRAS IMPORTANT
Physical activity makes breasts bounce up, down and even in a figure-eight. Continuous and repetitive movements can result in soreness, pain and sagging.
Women's sports bra is made to reduce this movement. Breasts have no muscle, yet without proper support, the skin and Cooper's ligaments (ligaments near the breast which give them their size and shape) can break down and cause sagging. Once your Cooper's ligaments stretch out, they do not bounce back.
It doesn't matter what size breasts you have, everyone experiences bouncing during physical activity. Therefore, every woman, no matter what size she is, should wear a sports bra while running or exercising.
TYPES OF SPORTS BRAS
Compression bras work the way they sound, by compressing breasts against the chest to restrict movement.
Encapsulation bras have individual cups. Each cup surrounds and supports each breast. Most regular bras are encapsulation bras and have no compression.
Combination compression/encapsulation bras combine compression with individual cups and offer the most support.
Bra tanks, also known as shimmels, are tank tops with a built-in shelf bra. These are okay for low impact activities, but not for running.
Finally, there are differences in straps. Spaghetti straps provide less support than wider straps. Racer-back straps are more supportive than both spaghetti and scoop back.
FITTING A SPORTS BRA
You want a sports bra that fits well, both in the band and cups. Overall, your sports bra should feel a bit tighter than a regular bra, however, you should be able to breathe deeply and comfortably. Hook it in the middle and take some deep breaths. Is this comfortable? Good. It should be.
The band shouldn't move. It should fit snugly and comfortably. Raise your hands above your head. Did the elastic band move? If it crept up your rib cage, try a smaller band. If the bra has straps, try adjusting them.
Your breasts shouldn't bulge, pay close attention to any bulging at the top or by the underarm. Furthermore, the cups shouldn't have any wrinkles or gaps. If the cup fabric is wrinkled, try a smaller size.
Make sure there is nothing rubbing or chafing around the armholes, straps, seams, hooks, clasps or anything else. Many sports bras offer adjustable straps. Adjust them to feel supportive, yet not uncomfortable. Furthermore, make sure the straps aren't digging into your shoulders.
Underwires are supposed to sit flat on your ribs, not on your breasts. The front (between the wire) should be against your chest bone.
Luckily, most newer sports bras use high-tech fabrics, including moisture wicking. This can improve breathability and help remove excess moisture from sweat which can cause chafing. Cotton bras will stay wet, this can lead to uncomfortable skin irritations.
For the last step, jump up and down, jog in place, do jumping jacks. If it feels supportive, you're set! If not, keep looking.
How Sportswear Took Over Your Wardrobe
“Sportswear as casualwear is essentially a preppy invention – the carryover from hearty WASP athletic pursuits which gave us the likes of the sweatshirt, sweatpants and letterman jacket,” says Josh Sims, author of books such as Men of Style. “Sportswear was appreciated for being tough and practical.” Like military uniform, that other stalwart of menswear, mens sportswear set has long been valued for the rugged characteristics it both possesses in itself and indicates in its wearer. And in sport, like war, competition results in game-changing technological breakthroughs. What we wear on the fields of battle and play has advanced more dramatically than what we wear elsewhere. If sportswear is at the cutting edge of fashion right now, that’s because – in technical terms – it always has been. The current, unprecedented sportswear boom though can also be seen as a pendulum swing away from the hashtag-menswear sartorialism that followed the economic downturn and increased competition for jobs – coinciding with the 2007 airing of Mad Men. As employment rose again, so did jobs that didn’t impose traditional dress codes and a social media-fuelled emphasis on individual creativity.Then there’s the swelling fashionability of fitness, which has given us a legitimate excuse to wear sportswear outside the gym beyond comfort and sheer laziness. Instead of spending valuable time fastidiously parting our hair and folding our pocket squares, we’re throwing on hoodies and baseball caps. And if you’re running around town all day, it makes sense to wear shoes designed specifically for marathons. It’s arguably the luxury sector that’s setting the pace. Streetwear designers like Demna Gvasalia at Balenciaga and Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton are running the show(s), elevating previously utilitarian sportswear to the very height of fashion. T-shirts, down jackets and sneakers, which grew by 25%, 15% and 10% respectively, were “standout categories” in the 2017 Bain Luxury Study. With its links to skateboarding, surfing and other sports, you could argue that streetwear – whatever that loaded term means – essentially is sportswear. “I’m not sure streetwear is the dominant mode, if you’re talking urban, hip-hop-driven streetwear,” contends Sims. “It’s sportswear with graphics, in effect. “There’s not much original design in streetwear – unlike sportswear, then and now – and what there is tends to be driven by – ta-da – sport.”
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