#i did find a train station that seemingly has free all day parking ?

[celeryw]

actually need to go to bed i have been waking up extremely late

[thevampirelevi]

Adventureland | Part I

Masterlist

"Flight of Icarus." (part 1/7)

cw: vampire!eddie x fem!reader, mentions of grief, mentions of blood, introduction; no actual interaction between reader and eddie (yet)

wc: 1041 ☆

After the events of the Upside Down, a confused- albeit somewhat the same - 'Eddie the Banished' crawls his way back to Hawkins and seeks refuge in the now abandoned theme park, where he one day finds an equally confused - albeit somewhat the same - you.

The horizon ahead of you resembled something of an unfinished Michelangelo project with all of its ‘cadmium orange’ and ‘cobalt blue.’ The further south you drove, the more you found evidence of a burning ‘sienna’ in the mix as well, brushed onto that plaster sky still wet from the rain earlier today. You thought if you pushed the gas just a little more, you might soon start to see outlines of God extending his hand to Adam, but you were going 55 now and the only change in scenery was that the clouds were quickly taking on a darker hue.

The sun is setting and you’ve not even touched the asphalt of the fairgrounds yet. Maybe you should have admitted that you were somewhat lost one ‘Sattler Quarry’ ago, but you were too determined to turn back now. You had your mother’s Lou Reed cassette in your car stereo, playing “Perfect Day” from side A. You could sometimes listen to the whole tape without crying, and you had already had your mind set on today being one of those days.

You were also fixed on reliving some of your favorite memories with her, which is what brought you back to good ol’ Hawkins in the first place. Before the days of factory smoke pollution and L trains, you went through a good portion of your growing pains in Roane County. Then your father’s job pulled your family of three to Bloomington, before dreams of your own pulled you out of ‘Indie’ altogether.

But now you’re back, for the first time since the funeral. Has it been a year already? It felt like only yesterday to you, but so did all of your other resurfacing memories at the very moment you drove into your old hometown. Most of which plagued you the second your car neared that playground. You didn’t dare look in the direction of the schools, it took one year in Chicago and a whole other sabbatical year in New York for you to at least try to forget every classroom you’d ever entered since kindergarten. You had to practically reinvent yourself just to be free of any of the names you’d ever been called haunting every mirror you met. You prayed you wouldn’t recognize anyone, and moreover that no one would recognize you, especially those whomst had made you hate this town in the first place.

“You’re going to reap just what you sow,” sings your janky car radio as you cruise down Morehead Street, passing an abandoned house just as the Roane County Fairgrounds come into view. 

It had only just now occurred to you to consider whether or not you were dreaming as you silently sat in your car, staring past your rearview mirror and at the broken bulbs of the large and all too familiar ‘Adventureland’ sign. Last time you had caught even a glimpse of this place was in February of 1986, surely it couldn’t have been completely stranded since then?

The flecks of light snow you’d seen giving the place an almost powdered sugar finish last time, were now replaced with heavy and mangled vines, as well as wilder patches of moss. You could see that a bird had made itself a home in the ‘U’ of the buzzing sign, but there was no telling if it had belonged to the murder of crows that quickly flew away from the pavement at the creaky sound of your car door slamming once you stepped out of your station wagon.

It wasn’t the cold suddenly nipping at your nose that made you regret stepping out just as soon as you did, nor the fact that you were seemingly utterly alone. Rather, it was the slight prick of fear at the possibility that you weren’t.

Be it your intuition or not, you pushed that and all of your other worrying thoughts aside. Catching a peek of sunlight dancing on the broken glass of one of the carousel’s mirrors ahead of you, you used what little daylight there was left and the fact that there was still electricity powering the very broken sign as motivation to tread farther and approach the gates for a closer look at least.

Almost as if a sign to continue and no doubt only fueling your curiosity, you found the undone chain hanging from the rusted iron wickets of the gate to clearly have been cut with bolt cutters or something alike, as if anticipating your arrival. Determined to get at least half of what you came here for, and even more determined not to run away and cry at what might arguably be the biggest roadblock to your plans, you made your way inside the at least somewhat abandoned theme park.

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆───── ⋆⋅ᓚᘏᗢ⋅⋆ ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

The sound of metal scraping against the gravel of the ground made Eddie’s head snap toward the direction of the park entrance hundreds of feet away. Of course, thanks to his annoyingly heightened senses, he’d heard the sound of slightly balding tires screeching to a halt before that - but that itself wasn’t a rare occurrence here.

Occasionally, someone would journey too far past Forest Hills, only to find a more and more desolate and straight up abandoned version of Hawkins. But, like clockwork, they’d all turn right back around and rejoin the rest of society. This, along with the scavenging raccoons in the trash cans and squirrels climbing up and over the fences, or even the whisperings of things lurking in the woods nearby, were all sounds that Eddie had learned to ignore. In fact, most of his time here was spent trying to ignore all signs of life.

But this rare sound, a sound so rare he’d stopped worrying about locking the gates back up long ago, meant that not only was a human nearby, but now they were coming closer. 

So close, in fact, that he could smell the iron in her blood and hear just the faintest ‘thump, thump, thump,’ of her heart synchronizing with the steps she made drawing nearer and nearer to his hiding spot; his favorite ride when both he and Adventureland were alive, ‘Flight of Icarus.’

And man, Icarus sure was flying too close to the sun.

[jamestrmtx]

Fairytale Complex - [Undertale | Sans x Reader]

[Gender Neutral, Frisk's Parent Reader | Slow Burn]

Chapter Twenty Two | Another Medium (Part 2 of 4)

[First] | [Previous] | [Next]

"Hurry, ren. We're gonna be late!"

You smile down at Frisk and watch as they tug at the edge of your shirt to try pulling you along with them.

The door's left open, and even though those meant to pick you up for the event aren't here yet, they still urge you to go outside and wait.

"It's only seven, honey." Your thoughts drift back to your video call and Sans's most recent text message, letting you know half an hour later that he'd be here soon. "We've got a few minutes left." You grab their hand and put a stop to their energy, facing their eyes. "Are you that excited about starting school?"

They nod and grin wide. "Even more, if you're gonna be working there, too!"

Your smile falls as you remember the folder Sans had given you. It had been thrown into the farthest corner of your bookshelf that same day, and you'd been too reluctant to look at it any more ever since. You didn't want to take their kindness and help for granted, just as much as you didn't want to forget about your reasons for learning more about monsters. Your godmother was right in terms of you needing to understand them more, so you've established it upon yourself to bring that up during your first, official date night with the skeleton. Understanding the changes being made to the Underground could aid you with the slim chance of finding a way to either halt or delay it from becoming a big tourist attraction, and you could finally be more clear and upfront about your feelings related to the dream -- even if all of that was easier said than done. Not only had you crossed far too many boundaries with him already, but you were still keeping your dubious relationship with him, all while continuing to be wary of him and everyone else for their past. The subtle but no less irate light to his gaze when having your aunt bring up the the Judgement Hall had been more than sufficient for you to try something -- or at least, assist him and every other monster with that process.

In short, hypocrisy's absorbing you bit by bit, and today's your very first attempt at trying to break free from that. Whether you succeed or not doesn't matter. Giving it a shot, on the contrary, does. Even the slightest amount of closure achieved with your research could help in setting your thoughts straight, and -- perhaps -- to finally stop yourself from comparing monsterkind with Jerry.

To put it this way: you couldn't allow yourself one thing if you were allowing the other to continue happening.

After all, why were you willing to engage in a relationship with someone like Sans, when you were still far from forgiving and much less forgetting Jerry over abandoning Frisk for so many years?

Why were you willing to befriend someone like Alphys, who'd been close to ending up in jail due to the failed experiments made on those of her own kind?

Why were you willing to book a night at Mettaton's hotel, knowing he'd once set Frisk into danger greater than any other monster you knew had -- Undyne being a close second?

Even someone like Papyrus brought harm to them once!

"Ren," Frisk calls out, tugging your hand. "You look angry. Are... Are you okay?"

You nod and let out a breath, composing yourself. "I'm fine, honey."

"Are you still thinking about avenging me?"

Your eyes shoot wide open at that, and you can't avoid suspecting they might have the capability of reading your mind.

Regardless of their word choice, you were -- in a sense -- wanting to avenge them from anyone who'd once caused them harm, be it Jerry, the monsters, or the loud and nosy neighbour from next door wondering why Frisk enjoyed playing with action figures just as much as they did playing with princesses.

"Ren!"

Hearing their whine of concern, you snap out of it and look down to see they've let go of your hand, both their arms now outstretched and in wait for your embrace.

"Do you want a hug?"

Your smile returns at that, albeit a bit more melancholic compared to the first time. You get down to their height and pull them in for a hug, sighing when you have them safe in your hold; it feels right to have them close and in your care, no matter how much your mind insists otherwise. The question you brought up back at the Judgement Hall still feels like the most subconscious part of your mind had possessed you, insisting you turn back to how you used to be after Frisk's fall.

"You don't need to protect me that much!" they say, letting go. "I... I know all the monsters well, so I'd tell you if any one of them's bugging me. You don't need to hate them for my sake, and you don't have to compare them to dad, either." Without a doubt, if humans still had the capability of using magic and spells, you would label them a mind reader. "You should get to know them on your own first, and not just based on who they are to me. Because if that's really all up to me, then the only one I don't really like much is..."

At that, they stop; they bring a finger to their chin and tap it twice, delving deep in their thoughts along the way.

"Huh..." Frisk taps their chin again and their gaze turns furrowed, scrunching up the more they think about it. "I mean, I don't really know if I dislike any of them... I just know I wanna have friends!"

You're compelled -- if not, urged -- to argue against that, though your heart stops you from spilling any of those thoughts out. Still, your mind attempts to push through it. Personal feelings couldn't cloud your judgement, if that meant it could bring harm to your child.

"Even if they-"

Hearing the engine rumbling as Papyrus parks close by the sidewalk is a blessing in and of itself; the aforementioned date night with his brother can't get here any sooner. You need to sort your thoughts out once and for all. Almost half a year of waltzing with the seemingly never-ending issue of Frisk's journey and the bonds they made through it was far too much. If you were slowly making friends with those same people too, then you needed to stop this at once. No matter how much you wanted to avoid said confrontation, that had to be done -- for both CPS and reasons beyond.

"You're right." You huff, bring a hand to your forehead, and go lower to massage the brim of your nose. Not a moment after, you fix your glasses, look back to their side, and form a smile. "Thank you, dear."

• • •

You close your eyes just before the monster presses a damp cotton ball to your wound.

Isopropyl makes it sting immediately, yet you're too busy with your thoughts to care about it that much.

"You okay?" Sans asks, meeting your eyes when you open them. "You've been quiet since we got 'ere."

"I'm okay, but..." You think back to how you greeted him with a wave, right as you did with his brother. While the monster before you didn't seem to mind it, you can't avoid the thought of how you used to be with Jerry. It was easier to be more affectionate back then, and it was easier still greeting him with a kiss -- be it a simple one on the cheek or a quick one on the lips. Now, you can't so much as imagine the prospect of doing that with your new partner without overthinking or feeling stressed about it. "I was wondering if we... if we should maybe keep our relationship private -- f- for now?"

He finishes wrapping the bandages and fixes them tight before replying with, "That's fine with me. Did you watch the video?"

"No, I'm..." You grow short of breath at the thought of how many people have likely seen it by now -- how many times it's been shared, and how many more discussions and heated arguments have revolved around it. "I'm too scared to."

You can't bring yourself to look at him any longer, so his expression falls unknown as he suggests watching it together, a question you answer to with a quiet and mumbled 'sure'.

Sans proceeds with a nod and stores all the items used back into the first aid kit before taking out his phone, settling down in bed, and holding your hand with his free one. "Really sure?" he asks, squeezing it once. You reply with an even quieter 'yes' and watch in silence as he clicks on the link sent by what you assume is several people, based on how Undyne, Brenda, and even the man from the train station -- now his friend and your co-worker -- have messaged him the same information, all three left unread. The one he chooses is farther back and dated with yesterday, this one sent by Jerry.

It plays in an instant and the first thing to appear is Asgore's garden, while murmurs are what compose the audio as the one filming shows himself around a field of trampled flowers, these now a mess of broken pots, thrashed earth, and missing rocks. A few others make him company and engage in small talk, though it ends quickly when one of them shouts for everyone to 'get over here quick'. The group does as told, leading for the cameraman to rush along with them out of the garden and into the Judgement Hall. The audio grows quiet as he ventures further, steps and voices now discreet as he films a fuzzy image of two people sitting at one of the benches laid around, with the exception that one sits on top and has their arms wrapped firm and tight around the other. Multiple people urge the cameraman to approach the scene more, making him show you and Sans kissing, albeit of a blurry quality with how much he has to zoom in so as to not be caught. Even the noise is recorded with how silent everything else is, this one mostly composed of hitched breaths and clothing shuffling against each other as you hug him closer. Thankfully, no kissing noises are recorded, something you assume is due to him having a shapeable skull rather than lips, along with how slow and careful your actions are.

The video ends when the kiss does, and it leaves you in the same silence created right before clicking on it.

Regardless, Sans opens up the page it was posted on to reveal more information about the creator.

'Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this stuff? This is the future that awaits us, if we continue to act as if we can live peacefully with these people. Opposing these changes is necessary, if we wish to keep our normalcy. Casual make outs with a being so far from human shouldn't be the norm of our world', reads the caption.

Below, some of the replies read from ones saying the poster isn't the only one who shares those thoughts, to ones who've taken the time to write an entire paragraph about the situation.

'🤢🤮'

'Absolutely not.'

'No, you're not. This is outright hideous.'

'Click here to see my 👄 HOT 🔥 noods 🍝: www.uhohspaghettios.xd'

'Wow, this is just like 1984.'

'Next thing you know, we'll be the ones living in the Underground.'

'I need eye bleach ASAP!!! 😱'

'Yeah, no. Hard pass on whatever the hell I just watched. Why did you even film this?'

'That skeleman is nothing but a closeted cradle-robber. Anyone who's met (Y/N) knows how naïve and childish they are, and them dating someone like that screams bad news. Forget that he's a monster, people! What's more important here's how he's got a liking for them despite that gap -- both mentally AND physically. He should be ashamed for bringing their reputation even further down with this video. At this point, I have trouble believing they'll ever recover from all this.'

'...Ok, but...... Am I the only one who finds this kinda.................. Hot? 👀💦'

'Of course, even a monster would try to have his way with someone like them. Look at how they're dressed!'

'To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand how wrong this stuff is. The degeneracy infesting the Surface nowadays is extremely subtle, and without a solid knowledge of social sciences, most of the immorality will go over a typical person's head. There's also the skeleton's nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation -- his personal philosophy draws heavily from George Orwell literature, for instance. People like us understand this stuff; we have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these social rejects, to realise that they're not just ridiculous -- they say something deep about LIFE and SOCIETY. As a consequence, people who see nothing wrong with this truly ARE idiots -- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in the skeleton's existential catchphrase "Genocide is wrong", which itself is a cryptic reference to Er*n Yeag*r from Att*ck on Tit*n. I'm smirking right now, just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as our fight against this backwards evolution unfolds itself on their phone screens. What fools... How I pity anyone who disagrees with you and tries to defend this behaviour. 😂'

At the bottom of it all, a neglected comment reads:

'Not only are you and your companions trespassing in an unsafe location, but your recording shows clear evidence you were damaging former King Asgore Dreemurr's property. You have also chosen to film these people without their knowledge despite them being in a private area, and uploaded the footage to a massive social media platform, as well. This is punishable by law, and I will not hesitate to stand for these people, if they decide to file a lawsuit against you.'

What stands out the most goes beyond the commenter's name, as his profile picture is what captures your attention first, regardless of how well-dressed he appears in the image and how small it is without clicking on it. Sans seems to share the same thought as you, as he clicks on the man's account without thinking twice. It takes some time to load, but when it does, your mouth gapes and you find yourself at a complete loss for words.

'Gerardo "Jerry" Gonzalez Gutierrez del Valle. Family practice lawyer since 20XX. Co-founder of the first Alcohol and Smoking Helpline for monsters. Former quarterback for Ebott U's Football League,' his bio reads.

You're overcome by what feels like an hour of silence before you can process what you've read. The age-old experience of reviewing material from your textbook at three thirty in the morning arrives when you try to read through his profile a second time, then a third. Even his pictures are difficult to process, these a variety of him posing with his co-workers at the newly-opened helpline building, screenshots of his progress with quitting alcohol and his strike of days and months sober, images of him in different suits, and -- last but not least -- a couple of Throwback Thursdays from his glory days, featuring both high school and college memories. It's hard to decide which feeling out of multiple is stronger than the rest, as jealousy combines with the slightest thing you expect out of this discovery: being reminded of the good ol' days. Guilt arrives next when growing aware of your current relationship with the one sitting next to you, even if it's only the thought of how happy you used to be with the man in those pictures before everything went haywire.

"You're... You're seeing this too, right?"

You hear him chuckle and see him agree with a nod, though you can't exactly fall back down to Earth again; were this a dream, you would accept it as such.

"Yeah." The monster looks you over once before adding, "And am I imagining it, or did I catch you smilin' at 'im just now?" He winks.

"So you're telling me you're really not surprised by this, at all?"

"...Touché."

You stand up and give your back to him, irked by his assumption despite him being nothing close to serious about it. "But, please don't think I still like him." Your hands turn into fists at the thought of going back with someone like him, no matter his current intentions. "I still haven't forgiven him, and I still..." Bile rises to your throat as your stomach churns wildly. "I still hate him." Then, you take a pause to gather strength. "And maybe that's a strong word, b- but... It's hard for me to forget that's the same man who once accused me for every little thing that wasn't 'normal' with Frisk, from them running away the first time, to them refusing to call him dad -- even when I never prevented them from visiting him, and e- even when he stopped visiting them first." Your chest shakes as you huff. "I... I still dislike him, and I really hate that I remembered good things about him just now."

Your mouth refuses to shut up and makes you continue on with, "So if I still can't forgive him, how can I make a decision for CPS with so many of you and in so short of a time? I still can't decide what to do, no... no matter how much I've learnt about everyone else." Your throat turns dry, and you find it difficult to swallow. "Hell, it was only yesterday I finally gave into one of my doubts. I thought it twice before asking if you wanted to kiss, but it'd been in my mind for a long while before that."

"You're sayin' the kiss was you decidin' to trust me?"

"Yes."

He scoots closer to your side and furrows his gaze.

"Even after that dream, and even though I started it?"

"Y... Yes." You do the same as him and smile. "I trust you, and... And I know the dream's likely just me overthinking this. One thing's spilling the truth when you're drunk, and one thing's getting... too caught up in your fears -- to the point where you have these warped dreams about someone else, no matter how much they mean to you."

His irises soften in their light, and a hint of culpability seems to fall on him. "Then I'm sorry for bringin' your ex into this." You sit back down with him and hold his hand again. "It wasn't right."

"It's okay."

"Doesn't look that way."

Before you know it, you're held by your lower back, pulled close, and brought down in bed.

He stays on top, gaze focused on yours rather than on your lips or anywhere else suggesting something more.

"Have you found that help yet? Counseling, I mean." His gaze remains the same despite having changed topics so abruptly. "How're ya doin', puddin'?"

"Bubbles and Brenda suggested two recently, but I... I still haven't gotten around to calling either one of them."

"Want me to make you company while you try that now? We've got time."

"...Kiss me first, please?"

He lowers more and presses his teeth to your neck.

"Gladly."

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[fullmetalscullyy]

the way it was - epilogue

summary: what if riza never went to war? riza hawkeye has just married the man she loves. six months into their marriage, an unexpected surprise stops her from following roy to the military. a canon divergence au that explores what might have happened had riza been unable to join the military. there will be plenty of family fluff, angst, and royai.

rated: m | warnings: graphic depictions of violence (updated)

read on ao3

1915

you are so bright, shining above all the city lights

Riza scanned the windows of the train intently as it drew into the station. While it rolled past them slowly, she tried to look out for some familiar faces through the glass but didn’t find who she was looking for. There were no eager children on the other side, looking out and excitedly watching the world go by. There were only tired adults, exhausted after their long train ride from Xing, but also relieved that it was finally over.

Roy wrapped an arm around her back and slipped his free, gloved hand into his trouser pocket.

He’d picked the gloves out so they could hide his injuries from Mia. This morning was about a happy reunion, not explaining to their daughter how he’d hurt his hands. That could, and would, come later if she asked. Not to mention the thick leather would provide extra protection to his freshly bandaged hands. They didn’t need the sooty air getting into his wounds. Riza had also covered the bandage on her neck. Since it was healing they’d been able to arrange the gauze so it wouldn’t be as obvious or startling to anyone seeing her for the first time since the Promised Day, however no matter how hard they tried, a small part of it still poked out from underneath her shirt. While she’d been trying to think of a solution to cover it up, Roy had picked out a thin scarf from their wardrobe and playfully wrapped her up in it with a grin. It also happened to be perfect for the weather that day.

As they stood and waited, Roy didn’t tell her to relax or offer any sentiment like that because he was in the same state as her. It had been almost a month since the Promised Day. Almost a month since they’d last seen their children. To say they were simply excited was a gross understatement. It went so much further than that. Both were anxious to see their faces once more.

With his eyesight returned, Roy had been discharged from the hospital before her. With an injury as large as the one Riza had sustained, the doctors wanted to ensure there was going to be no risk of infection when she was sent home. Riza didn’t fight it, but she was still eager to leave. She felt well enough but trusted her physician.

Two days after Roy, Riza was discharged. Sleeping in her own bed, held tightly within her husband’s arms that night, was the best feeling in the world. It was only until she awoke with him that Riza realised just how much she’d missed it.

There had always been a yearning within her to crawl into his hospital bed and lie next to him, but she had to be careful. Anything that aggravated her injury would delay her progress, and that included lying on her side next to Roy. It would stall them in seeing Mia and Maes again, so, as much as she wanted to, Riza reigned in that impulse.

On their first day at home together, instead of getting up and readying themselves for the day, Roy and Riza treated themselves and didn’t rise until well into the afternoon. Grumman had given Roy time off for recovery and rehabilitation, so they truly had nothing to worry about. No one was demanding their attention or presence anywhere. There were no jobs to be carried out and completed.

It was freeing after the rollercoaster the last month had been for them both. It was also the most relaxed they’d both felt in a long time.

Just like before the Promised Day, the house was too quiet without Mia and Maes. The day after Riza was discharged she called Chris and said they were ready to invite them back home. Now the moment was here, Riza’s heart was beating erratically inside her chest, pounding against her ribcage with fervour. Her hands were sweating with her excitement.

She couldn’t wait.

The crowds were thick as people disembarked from the train. The platform filled, becoming even busier than before, but Vanessa and Chris were nowhere to be seen, Riza noted with dismay.

“This is the train.” Roy’s voice was suddenly close to her ear so he could be heard over the hubbub of the platform. “They will be here somewhere. We’ll find them.”

He must have picked up on her impatient shifting. Not that Riza had tried very hard to hide it. Even though her expression was schooled into one of concentration as she focussed on her search, Riza had been up on her tiptoes to try and look over some of the taller heads in the crowd.

As people started to vacate the platform, others boarded the train, but it was nowhere near the same volume that had alighted from it. The crowd thinned but Riza still didn’t spot them. She finally huffed impatiently.

Then, bodies parted, and her eyes settled on her daughter. She was walking by Vanessa’s side, holding onto the pram that carried Maes. Her small head swivelled around as she looked about her, causing her long ponytail to whip back and forth. Her bottom lip was caught in between her teeth and she chewed on it, seemingly anxious to find who, or what, she was looking for. 

All Riza could do was stare. A month had passed but it felt like years in that moment. It had been too long, and everything was rushing up to the surface at once, overwhelming her and freezing her in place. It must have been a figment of her imagination, but Mia looked older. She looked taller. Her dark hair seemed to be so much longer, tied up in its ponytail.

Never again would they spend so much time apart, Riza promised herself.

Riza’s face crumpled and she took a step forward but paused when Mia spotted her.

Mia’s face lit up with joy and it caused Riza’s inhale to get caught in her throat. Their daughter’s elation spread across her features beautifully as Mia’s eyes sparkled with excitement. Riza couldn’t hear her gasp, but it was obviously a loud one, given the exaggerated expression on her face. The brown paper bag she’d been carrying in her hand hit the ground and tipped over onto its side, forgotten. Mia sprinted away from a suddenly panicked Vanessa and headed straight towards them. Her bag bounced on her back as she ran and the happy laugh that left her was music to Riza’s ears.

“Mum!” Mia called. It almost sounded like a scream; it was so loud. “Dad!”

Riza fell to her knees and Mia ran straight into her arms. The force of her enthusiasm almost knocked Riza over but she held steady. She pressed her cheek against the side of Mia’s head as she held her incredibly tight, standing and lifting her off the ground, leaving her small legs to wrap around Riza’s waist securely. Mia’s happy laugh didn’t let up and Riza thought it was one of the best sounds she’d ever heard. She’d missed hearing it.

“Oh, Mia,” she sighed, overcome with emotion. “Oh, Mia Bear, I missed you!” Riza placed her back down on the ground and pulled away to get a better look at her daughter.

Mia beamed back at her, almost vibrating with excitement. She even started bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. Riza cupped her daughter’s grinning face in between her palms then moved to kiss her on the forehead, on her nose, then each cheek, making Mia giggle.

“I missed you too, Mum. And Dad!” She was quickly out of Riza’s hold and darted towards her father.

Roy bent his knees with a grin and opened his arms wide. Mia launched herself into them and Roy scooped her up. Her arms wrapped around his neck, holding on tight as she was lifted off the ground again. Roy was not shy in returning it either. His face was pressed into her shoulder, hiding it from view, but Riza saw his back heave greatly with his breath as he spun them both around on the spot.

“Mia!” Vanessa scolded, tugging a suitcase behind her while pushing Maes’ pram. “How many times do I have to tell you not to run off?”

“But it was Mummy and Daddy!” Her tone held no apology, only glee upon seeing them again.

“I know, but –” Vanessa sighed, rolling her eyes fondly. “Never mind,” she relented. “Hey, Riza,” she grinned. Maes was parked next to her, and Vanessa rounded the pram to engulf Riza in a tight hug.

“Thank you for looking after them,” Riza whispered, pouring all of her gratitude into the words she spoke.

“Oh, it was no problem at all,” Vanessa grinned. “We had a great time! Didn’t we, Mia?”

Roy had placed Mia back on the ground. He knelt before her with his hands on her shoulders, keeping her in place. While Mia turned to look at her Aunt Vanessa, Roy continued to watch Mia’s face closely. His eyes roved over her features and Riza smiled to herself. He was trying to commit her appearance to memory. Riza could understand that, especially after he’d shared the reasons for his upset while in that medical tent on the Promised Day.

“Oh, yes!” Mia clapped her hands together as she turned back to gaze up at her father. “You’ll never guess what we did on the train ride home!”

“Tell me,” Roy demanded immediately, his tone filled with awe. He marvelled at Mia, taking in every feature and change in her expression. His gloved hands smoothed down her hair then cupped her cheeks between his palms.

Mia giggled, feeling squished in between the soft, black leather covering his palms. “Dad!” Her complaint was accompanied with a laugh as she tried to wriggle out of his grasp.

“Sorry, Mia Bear. Tell me,” he insisted, letting go of her face and placing his hands back on her shoulders. “I want to hear all about it.”

As Mia launched into a story about their journey home, Roy was enraptured and watched every one of her excitable expressions with close scrutiny and joy.

With Mia occupied, Riza turned her attention to their youngest. Maes’ eyes blinked up at her, and for the tiniest moment, she feared he wouldn’t recognise her after all this time. He cocked his head to the side as he regarded her, and his small limbs grew still. His stuffed toy remained clutched tightly within his fist and he drew it up to cover his mouth.

He used to do that to feel more secure…

Riza’s chest ached as she watched that adorable frown she loved so dearly appear on his face but couldn’t help but start to think or fear the worst. A month was a long time for a child his age.

Maes had definitely grown. His hair had turned slightly thicker and was now more brown than black, which matched the colour of his chocolate brown eyes. And Maes looked so much older. His face had slimmed down slightly and had a little bit more shape to it than Riza remembered. He was a marvel, and her love for her son surged within her chest.

“Hello, little Maes.” The joy of setting her eyes on his face again choked Riza momentarily. Tears welled within her eyelids.

However, that was all Maes needed. He grinned, showing off his gums and tongue while his arms flailed outwards, asking to be picked up. He tried to sit up in the pram, causing his tiny body to strain against the straps holding him in place. There was an outraged sound of protest from him when he discovered he couldn’t move as far as he desired. That affronted frown returned to Maes’ face as his small fingers tried to reach and grab for Riza, making her bark out a shaky laugh. Unbuckling her son, Riza hugged him close to her chest as his face burrowed into the crook of her neck with a joyous squeal.

“Hey, Maes,” she cooed quietly into his ear, feeling a tear slip out. “I missed you so much.”

After sending them away, and throughout the Promised Day, Riza had tried her hardest not to dwell too long on when she’d be able to see their children again. If she did, all focus would be broken and the intense longing would leave her winded, struggling to breathe. That’s how it felt now though, holding them in her arms again. She wanted to crumple to the floor in her euphoria and relief but remained steady and strong.

It had been too much to think about that they may never get to see them again. It was too intense a sadness that left Riza gasping for breath, but they’d done it. It had been a long time waiting for this day to come while they were in hospital, but they’d made it through to the other side. Now, the payoff for their perseverance and resilience was more than worth it.

“Do I get a hug like that?”

Riza glanced up and saw Chris smirking at them both. She was joking, but Roy still strode forward and pulled her into a fierce hug anyway. Mia was his shadow and skipped over to her grandmother with him. Roy murmured something quietly in Chris’ ear and Riza watched as her expression softened, and she smiled warmly at him.

“No problem, Roy Boy. You know that by now.”

Roy let go of her and nodded.

“Mia?” Chris called to her, her face expectant. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Mia’s head cocked to the side and her brow furrowed in confusion.

She looks so much like Roy, Riza grinned to herself.

“Your present bag?” Chris prompted her further, then the penny dropped for their daughter.

“Oh!” Mia darted over to her grandmother to take the paper bag she’d dropped in her haste to reach them. “I dropped it. Sorry!”

“It’s all right,” Chris assured her evenly, “but be more careful next time, otherwise it might get lost or broken.”

“I will! Mum, Dad, I brought you back some presents! I got one for Hayate too. I can’t wait to see him again!”

“That was very kind of you, Mia,” Riza smiled as she bounced a happy Maes in her arms. “Thank you.”

There was a gentle tug at her neck and Riza flinched automatically, as it was on her injured side. Looking down, she wondered what Maes was doing, then paused to watch him. He was currently playing with a button on her jacket. He was gripping onto the one at the top of her lapel, grasping it carefully in between his thumb and pointer finger with such intense concentration, before letting it go. Riza couldn’t remember him ever doing that before but tried not to dwell on the fact she’d missed out on over a month of his development. She rejoiced in his progress instead, simply thankful she was able to see it.

“Button,” she told Maes, pointing at it.

He blinked up at her then gave her a wide smile. Again, he caught it between his fingers and let go.

“Do you like buttons, Maes?”

He giggled and grasped it again.

“You’re so clever,” Riza praised quietly before pressing a kiss to his temple.

Roy stepped up to her side and wrapped an arm around her back securely. His grip wasn’t tight, but his hand was still a welcome weight upon her hip and a comfort. “We’ll see them when we get home, all right Mia,” Roy quickly interjected before Mia could start to pull things out as she’d already, and impatiently, started to open up the bag. “Then everything will be safe and less likely to get lost.”

“Good idea,” Mia agreed. “Can we go now?” She was so serious that it made the adults laugh.

“Of course, we can,” Roy assured her. “But first,” he added, turning to face Riza with a wide smile, “I’ve got to say hello to your little brother first.”

Roy gasped playfully as he lifted Maes high into the air. It made their son giggle and his arms stretched out towards Roy. Once returned to Roy’s shoulder he remained there and lay his head against it, closing his eyes as Roy’s hand shifted to cover his back. He patted it gently and rested his chin on the top of Maes’ head. As Roy’s eyes closed to enjoy the moment, his expression was serene.

“Let’s go!” Mia cried excitedly. She grabbed Riza’s hand and tugged it gently, eager to be on the move.

“Calm down, Mia,” Chris scolded but there was no real force behind it. “We’re going, don’t worry.”

Vanessa looked at Roy expectantly, silently asking if he wanted to hand over Maes, but Roy shook his head.

“I’ll hold him while we walk.”

“I can push that –” Riza started to offer but Vanessa waved her off.

“Mia needs someone to hold her hand,” she argued. “Walk with her,” she smiled, “I’ve got this.”

“Thank you, Vanessa.”

Mia latched onto Riza’s hand tightly and started chatting away. She was telling her mother about their train journey home, the same story she’d told Roy less than ten minutes ago. Still, Riza nodded along and listened to her intently. Most of her attention had been taken up by Maes and she still wanted to hear what Mia had to say.

Once they left the station Mia fell quiet, finally spent from her story telling. Chris opened the car door and started to get a still excited Mia strapped in while Vanessa folded up the pram to store it securely with the suitcase in the boot of the car.

Before they entered, Riza reached up to squeeze Roy’s elbow gently to garner his attention and stop him for a moment.

When he turned to face her he was the most at peace she’d seen him a long time. Riza knew that feeling intimately well. Now that her family was all back together, it felt like all was right in her world. Everyone was safe and accounted for, as they should be, and everyone was together.

It felt like she was finally home.

“Well,” she murmured quietly to Roy, “were those the smiles you remembered?”

Roy’s arm wrapped around her waist as he let out a shaky breath. His head tilted to the side, coming to rest against hers, as his fingers did their best to curl around her torso inside his gloves.

“They were.” He squeezed her waist as best he could and Roy inhaled sharply, indicating he’d been greatly affected by seeing their children again, just like she had. “They were everything I remembered, and more,” he sniffed, smiling down at their son with a tear in his eye. He glanced over at her and leaned in, pressing a soft and loving kiss against Riza’s lips that left her grinning from ear to ear.

“I love you, Riza Mustang.” His breath hitched and another tear fell down his cheek despite his happy smile.

“I love you too, Roy Mustang,” Riza beamed.

She brushed the strands of hair out of his eyes, then gently wiped away the tear with her thumb. His cheek was cradled within her palm lovingly as she gazed up at him, finally feeling completely at peace.

“Forever.”

[heliads]

The Watching Hawk Chapter 1: Case File

Bucky Barnes is constantly haunted by his past, but the memories of his days as a Winter Soldier will come into a new light in the form of the Watching Hawk, his old HYDRA partner. Will he be able to trust her, and will she be able to move on from his mistakes?

series masterlist / next

The hum of the air conditioning is a distant sound as Bucky Barnes stares down at the closed case file in front of him. “You know, you don’t have to take this one on.” His best friend of several decades, Steve Rogers, leans against a wall in front of him. His voice is drenched in concern, like Bucky is a delicate man who could be set off by anything. “I know your relations with HYDRA,” Steve continues, “And if you think this will be a bad idea, it’s fine to stand down.” Bucky looks up at Steve again, then at Natasha and Sam, standing next to him. “I’ll be fine.”

Steve looks at him one more time, a searching look. Some days Bucky swears the Super Soldier Serum that made Steve Captain America must also have given him the ability to read minds. It wouldn’t surprise him if Steve’s been peering inside his head every time he sees Bucky. Steve nods slowly and continues on. “Alright. We don’t have a lot of information on the target, so we wanted to see if you knew anything. You know, from your days as a Winter Soldier.”

That piques Bucky’s curiosity, and so he finally flips open the manilla file folder in front of him. The only thing in the folder is a single, blurry image, but the sight of a woman framed by great arched metal wings in the photo is enough to elicit a sharp gasp from him. “I’m in. I’ll take the mission.”

Instantly, Steve leans forward. “You know her?” Bucky’s laugh is as harsh as a winter night. “Know her? I’m the reason HYDRA has her in the first place.” Bucky clears his throat, as snippets of memories long gone flash by him. He doesn’t remember much about what happened while he was under HYDRA’s influence- the mind control and rigorous programming was enough to erase anything and everything from him. Over the months after Bucky left, bits and pieces have started coming back to him, including the identity of this young woman.

“It was a warm summer afternoon. She was just coming home from work. She didn’t have the metal wings by then, they were still the natural feathers. She kept them hidden under her jacket so no one could tell she was an inhuman. She said hello to a neighbourhood kid, smiled at a passerby on a bike while she was getting the mail, and went into her house. When she saw the HYDRA agents waiting for her in the living room, she was able to defend herself using her wings and her fighting abilities. She took out all the soldiers, so they sent in me.”

Bucky pauses then, as he waits for the pieces of the memory to fall back into place. He hasn’t thought about that day in a long time, and he’s not sure if he really wants to. “She was strong, even without the wings, but in the end, I was able to knock her unconscious and take her in. They made her a Winter Soldier. We were often stationed together on operations.”

Natasha looks at him, her face unreadable as always. If he was supposed to be the ultimate soldier, Bucky supposes she would be the ultimate spy. Even after years of training, he can barely get anything out of her.

“When was the last time you had contact with this woman? Is there anything else you can tell us- a name, a weakness?” Bucky frowns up at the sound of Natasha’s voice. “I haven’t seen her since I was still with HYDRA.” He’s not entirely sure when that was- times and dates all melt together into a pool of distant memories when he was under mind control. “What exactly is this mission, and why does it involve her?”

Steve taps at a screen in front of him. It changes to display an image of a well-dressed politician, making his way up marble steps in Capitol Hill. “This is Dominic Cole. He’s a pretty solid politician, as far as politicians go. Unfortunately, he’s got the interest of HYDRA, because he’s about to present a new policy in a week that will allow the government to look into shady business dealings that could expose HYDRA operatives. There’s a pretty good chance it’ll get approved once he presents it, so HYDRA’s sending in a team to take him out. I think this woman, whoever she is, will be on that team.”

Bucky nods slowly. “The Watching Hawk.” Sam looks at him through furrowed brows. “What does that mean?” Bucky places his hands flat on the table in front of him, the photo still staring at him from in between his palms. “That was her codename. The Watching Hawk.”

Bucky tilts his head to the side as he studies the woman in the photograph. He’s not sure how long it’s been since he last saw her- could be months, could be decades. He has no way of knowing, but she still looks the exact same.

 “We were usually partners. They would send in both of us on the more dangerous field ops, the ones where there was basically a guarantee that no normal soldier would come back alive. She was different from me, though- I was under full mind control, and my memory was wiped periodically. They were worried that another brainwashed soldier could join up with the first and revolt against them, so they gave the Hawk her memory. She had free will, and could do whatever she wanted and say as she pleased, as long as it met with the HYDRA expectations. I think there were still some residual mind blocks, guaranteeing she couldn’t leave the premises unless ordered to, and she couldn’t hurt any of the HYDRA soldiers, but she could still think and do whatever she wanted. You’ll have to take that into account when you find her. Other than that, there’s nothing I can remember that you wouldn’t already know from when you tracked me down.”

Steve lets this information sink in, then looks back down at the photo from the case file. “Well, we won’t be able to have one great ‘Remember who you are’ moment like last time, but we should be able to take her down. Natasha, Sam, and I have experience with finding Winter Soldiers, and you know how they think. I think we’ve got as many cards to play as we can.”

Sam interjects. “Also, I’ve got wings too.” At Bucky’s raised eyebrows, he spreads his hands wide. “Look, if she can fly, it’s probably a good idea to have someone on your team who can fly after them, right? I feel like none of you really took that into account.” Steve does his best to smother a smile. “He’s right. We’ve all got our parts to play.” With that, he goes over the plan in more detail, leaving Bucky to question whether or not this will actually work.

Before he knows it, Bucky is watching a digital readout in a surveillance van parked near the Capitol. Dominic Cole, the man they’re supposed to be protecting, is making his way to work. The team decided to let Cole walk to work, seemingly without a guard, in the hopes of drawing out an attack. Steve’s got a theory that if HYDRA’s plan to take out Cole comes to light, they’ll call it off, but Bucky’s not sure if that will work or not. Regardless, here comes Cole, and just like clockwork, here comes a black van barrelling towards him. 

When soldiers dressed in black start racing towards Cole, Natasha springs out of hiding and starts to take them down. Bucky, Sam, and Steve join her, making sure Cole gets to safety before focusing their attention back on the HYDRA soldiers. They’re actually doing a pretty good job of causing a commotion and keeping them at bay, so Bucky supposes he’s not surprised when he sees a winged silhouette walking towards them from the smoky background of the city.

Bucky ducks around the black van, firing at the soldiers as he goes, making sure he’s headed towards the figure. He’s about a few yards away when she finally sees him, and her silvery wings arch up around her. “Well, if it isn’t Sergeant Barnes. I see you have your memory back.” A gun is in her hands before he can even blink, and it’s all Bucky can do to throw himself behind a nearby car to avoid the gunshots. “Less than you’d think.” He comes back from around the car, grabbing a long knife from his side and plunging it towards her unprotected arm as fast as he can. She blocks it, of course, and the two former allies find themselves locked in hand-to-hand combat.

“You can come with me, you know. Leave all of this behind.” The Hawk laughs, loud and incredulously. There’s a note of manic rage that Bucky swears wasn’t there before. “Now that you finally have your tongue, you use it to joke with me? We both know there’s no chance of that.” The fighting halts for a second, both opponents circling each other warily. “We used to talk about leaving, didn’t we? I may not remember much, but I do know that.” The Hawk charges him once more. “You’re so bold now that you’re out of their reach. Do you really think there’s any possibility that I’d go with you?” 

One of the HYDRA soldiers has a pouch full of small explosives, and they’re hurling them at the two fighters. Bucky is forced to duck for cover while still fending off the Hawk’s attacks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is that you once fought by my side, and once dreamed of a world where we could live without HYDRA.” The Hawk scoffs. “They were only dreams, Barnes. You know what you did.”

One explosive lands right by their feet, and the resulting explosion launches them both a few feet back. Bucky scrambles to his feet, noticing that the Hawk is holding her fingers to a scratch running across her arm. Her face is streaked with soot, as he imagines his face is as well. At seeing her like this, dirty and slightly vulnerable, Bucky is thrown back into memories long gone.

“Y/N.” The name rises to his lips, bidden by a time circled by darkness. He had called her that, once, when they were both captive by HYDRA. When she had trusted him, as much as you could trust anyone. When they had fought side by side, and sat even closer on the flights back from the operations to the HYDRA base.

For a second, Bucky swears he saw a glimmer of emotion flash across Y/N’s eyes, as if she too sees what he sees- two soldiers who swore to protect each other from everything, even when they had no more control over what happened to them than an infant.

But just like that, it’s gone, and a snarl of anger rips its way onto Y/N’s face instead.

“I will never forgive you for what you did.”

Before he knows it, the Hawk is gone, leaving Bucky behind in a haze of smoke and shouts of fighting soldiers.

He remembers her name, and he remembers her touch, but the only thing Bucky cannot remember is what he did to cause her such pain.

[wannabe-fic-writer]

Natasha Romanoff x Reader : Thin Line

Summary: You’re wild and free. She’s strict and trained. You and Natasha are polar opposites and it drives her crazy. Each move you make annoys her to no end. But, there’s a thin line between annoyance and adoration.

Rating: 18+ Violence, Language, Blood, Death, and Smut.

Chapter 6

"All right, what do you see?” Steve’s voice rings through your ear piece.

Your eyes scan your surroundings, taking in the passersby and the basic chaos of a populated city.

Wanda, being the one in training, replies to Steve,“ standard beat cops. Small station. Quiet street. It’s a good target.”

“What exactly is a good target? Like, if it’s a target doesn’t that automatically  make it bad?”

Wanda snickers at your comment and Steve ignores it before running through the general surveillance with her and directing her attention to a car parked across the street. 

"It's also bulletproof, which means private security, which means more guns, which means more headaches for somebody. Probably us.” Natasha remarks, causing you to instantly glance over at her.

She quirks an eyebrow at you over her cup of tea, quickly refocusing.

Wanda is quick to inform you all,“ you guys know I can move things with my mind, right?” 

“Neat trick but it’s not that simple.” You inform her.

Natasha agrees, telling her,“ looking over your shoulder needs to become second nature.”

“Anybody ever tell you you're a little paranoid?” Sam, your other teammate throws out.

“Not to my face. Why? Did you hear something?”

Laughing, you duck your head and cross the street, eyes following the traffic.

Steve tells everyone to focus. Rumlow is a pain in his ass and this is the closest Steve’s been in a while to shutting him up.

“Right, focusing.” Your eyes narrow,“ Sam mind tagging this garbage truck comin up on me? This guy is the worst driver.” You shake your head at the way the truck speeds through traffic with no regard to it’s surroundings. 

You hear Sam speaking to his gadgets, pulling up an x-ray of the truck, and then telling you all that it’s at max weight and the driver is armed.

“It’s a battering ram.” Both you and Natasha say.

Steve tells everyone to engage immediately, Wanda being a little confused as you then explain that the target isn’t the police station.

You hear Steve fighting before anyone else, calling out how many hostiles are left and what armor they’re packing. Soon after Sam and Wanda join the fight. 

Natasha pulls up on her motorcycle and you immediately climb on, her speeding you both to the IFID. 

“Rumlow has a biological weapon.” Steve breathes heavily.

“On it.” Natasha calls and the second she pulls on the throttle you pick up on her plan. 

You stand and jump off the motorcycle, over Natasha, and straight into an enemy. Your feet kick into his chest and he falls back just as Natasha’s motorcycle scrapes across the ground into the guy behind you.

Winking at her, and picking up on her smug smirk, you quickly engage the other hostiles in the area. 

Groans and complaints hum through the ear pieces as you all take down enemies. You catch small glimpses of your team fighting, but you don’t see Rumlow. Which is equally as good as it is bad.

Just when you think things are going smoothly you here the distinct sound of Natasha’s groan followed by an explosion. 

Your eyes snap over to the sound and you see her flying out the back of an armored truck, smoke billowing out after. 

“Dammit Nat.” You snatch the head gear of the last hostile and punch him straight in the throat before heading over to Natasha.

She groans and rolls on to her back, soot dirtying her porcelain skin.

“Open those eyes pretty girl,” you pat her cheek gently.

Another explosion sounds behind you and you frown, looking in that direction.

“What is with you guys and bombs today?”

Steve ignores the comment, instead telling Sam that Rumlow’s on the move.

You stand, pulling Natasha up with you, and heading over to the motorcycle. 

The two of you ride it as far as traffic allows before ditching it again to run over car roofs. 

Your informed that they’ve split up and ditched the gear, Natasha tells everyone you guys are following the two on the left while Sam follows the one of the right. 

Rumlow isn’t with either group which concerns you, until you hear him speaking to Steve. Sam calls that his guy doesn’t have the weapon which spurns you and Natasha on. 

It’s not until you’re in a market square that you catch the two. You both incapacitate the targets quickly, with the assistance of Sam’s drone. 

For the briefest moment your lost in Sam and Natasha’s banter, laughing at it until the biggest explosion of the day seemingly shakes the city.

Eyes wide, you and Natasha race to the scene as Steve calls for evacuation and medics. Upon arriving Natasha runs to Steve’s side, but your drawn to the very distraught Wanda.

It doesn’t take long to put two and two together.

“Wan.” You squat to wrap an arm around her shoulders. 

Tears pool in her green eyes as her hand covers her mouth in shock. She’s mumbling something incoherent, over and over. The people around, who aren’t hurt, glare at her or look on in horror. 

“Wan get up, come on.” She rises ever so slowly, trembling in the slightest, and you run your hands up and down her arms.“ I’m taking Maximoff to the jet.” 

The team agrees, obviously knowing exactly why she shouldn’t stick around.

You’re adamant on getting her out of the public eye just as much as you are about getting the civilians to safety.  

A groan involuntarily escapes your mouth as you collapse on your bed back at the compound.

Today was more hectic than ever and you feel it in your bones. 

The shower you took barely worked. Sure you’re clean but you still feel crappy. And if this is how you feel, you can’t begin to imagine what Wanda feels.

“Hey.”

You don’t need to open your eyes to know it’s Natasha. 

“Hey.”

She walks further into the room, after closing the door, and sits next to your laid out form. Her eyes scan your body, lingering on each bruise you received in today’s fight.

Despite having her own bruises and knowing there was no way you could’ve avoided them, she still feels hurt seeing you hurt. 

Knowing that, you pull yourself into a sitting position, and wrap her in your arms.

“What’s goin on this head of yours Romanoff?’ You place a kiss on her temple.

Her body relaxes into you despite the stress running through it,“ nothing.” She lies.

But you don’t push it. Things happen naturally between you two and so whenever she opens up about her thoughts and feelings you want that to be just as natural.

“Okay,” you hum.“ You speak to Wanda?”

That topic alone makes her take in a big breath and sigh,“ she’s torn up. Hating herself. Which is exactly how I felt on my first mission gone wrong.”

You nod, knowing the feeling all too well. Your first bad mission went as horribly as it could have and it tore you apart. 

Natasha of course senses the instant change in you. Sure you weren’t your usual cheeky self but you’re gaze just darkened even more. 

“Tell me.” She whispers, her hand cupping your cheek. 

You hated thinking about it. The memories alone were enough but each time you thought of it the emotions weighed down on you more and more.

*****Flashback*****

Maverick puts the cuffs on your target, hauling him up off the ground, and towards the SUV.

“And here I was thinking you’d be hard to catch.” You taunt, opening the car door, and smiling when Maverick chuckles.

You take the target from Maverick and shove him in the back seat.

“I must admit, your plan worked brilliantly Mav, so drinks on me.” 

His usual cocky remark doesn’t come which makes you frown.

“Don’t act all humble now yo-” your words die in your throat when you see the blood stain on the front of the car. 

Heart now pounding in your chest, you rush around to the passenger side. Lying on the ground, shirt slowly absorbing the blood from his wound, is Maverick. 

You drop to your knees beside him, pulling your mission issued communicator out. 

“HQ come in. We’ve been engaged by an unknown threat. My partner’s down, I need back up and medics now.” As mission control replies you hover over Maverick.

Searching his body for the source of all the blood, you find a bullet wound in his abdomen and another in his chest. He’s starting to gasp for air and you’re trying your best not to panic.

“Stay with me Mav, medics on the way.” You rip your jacket off and apply pressure to his chest wound.

Being focused on Maverick, you make the mistake of not focusing on the things around you. Which results in you being blown back when the SUV explodes, the same SUV holding your target. 

Your ears ring and your head starts to pound. Opening your eyes disorients you but it’s clear to see the fire blazing from what’s left of the car. And it’s also easy to see all the people hurt and killed by the explosion.

There’s so much happening you aren’t even sure what to do. 

"Y/N.” Eyes snap to Maverick as he says your name with the little oxygen he has.“ Go.”

He knows he’s not going to make it, he doesn’t want you to end up like him.

“No, Mav-”

His eyelids start to droop and you feel your heart shattering. When they close, they don’t open again.

*****End Flashback*****

Natasha runs her hand over your back comfortingly but she doesn’t say anything. For two reasons: one, she doesn’t know what to say and two, even if she did, she knows no words could make this better.

“I can’t say he was my best friend cause outside of work we barely hung out. But then again, I didn’t really have friends outside of work so he was the closest thing I had. Losing him-” you sigh and blink away tears.“ I haven’t worked with another person since he died. It made it easier, not having to watch out for someone else.”

Fingers, combing through your hair, Natasha says,“ knowing you, I bet you felt pretty alone.”

“Yeah, of course, but like I said, it was easier. I got to do things my way, for the most part, and I completed missions much faster and more efficiently. But Fury got concerned when I started to do more reckless things.”

“Like blowing up building?” You chuckle along with Natasha.

“Right. Anyway that’s why he assigned me to the team. He said it would help me put things in perspective. He said there were things I needed to learn that I would only understand if I had teammates and the rest you know.”

“Well I think it’s working.”

The conversation stops there as F.R.I.D.A.Y informs you that Tony and the Secretary of State is here. 

In no time you’re sitting between Natasha and Steve as the Secretary tells you all you’re too dangerous. Footage of previous Avengers battles, some you weren’t here for, some you were. But then he plays footage of Lagos, how he got it so quickly, well it’s not hard to guess.

Still your eyes direct straight to your new found brunette friend. Her green eyes don’t stay on the screen long.

“Alright, alright, turn it off.” You snap at the man.

Natasha subtly places a hand on your leg but your concerned gaze stays on Wanda. 

Mister Secretary presents the Sokovia Accords and Wanda’s the first to pick it up, only to slide it directly to Rhodey. Wanda sends a single glance to you before looking back down.

Steve counters the Secretary as your eyes scan over pages of the Accords Rhodey just slid to you.

Everyone is sharing glances, trying to read each other in that moment, but no one gives away any distinct glances. 

“And if we come to a decision you don’t like?” Natasha leans forward and asks.

Mister Secretary turns to look at the red head,“ then you retire.”

You snort as Natasha gives a seemingly unbothered smirk, but you know she doesn’t like this one bit.

The compound has never, ever, been this quiet. Everyone came into the common room to have a discussion. You sit beside Natasha and she looks at you. Her eyes search yours for an answer you don’t have.

Sam is the first person to speak, voicing his disagreement with the Accords, and that incites a bit of an argument between him and Rhodey.

When Vision inputs his wisdom all eyes fall to him. And Natasha comments on Tony’s silence, which is definitely uncharacteristic of him.

“Boy, you know me so well.” he quips at Steve, wincing as he stands and walks into the kitchen." Actually, I'm nursing an electromagnetic headache.”

You raise an eyebrow, eyes trained on him like everyone else.

“That's what's going on, Cap. It's just pain. It's discomfort.” He pauses,“ who's putting coffee grounds in the disposal? Am I running a bed and breakfast for a biker gang?”

Wanda, for the first time today, smiles a little at your guilty expression. You swear you were going to clean it up but you forgot.

You divert your attention back to Tony as he makes mention of a young guy who was killed in the mess that was Sokovia. Your heart breaks at the expressions of your teammates and you almost instantly know who’s going to sign. 

But Tony tells everyone his stance anyway. He’s got all this blood on his hands and he’s done feeling guilty for doing what he thought was right. 

“I have to go.” Steve rushes out, leaving everyone confused.

You all disperse, Rhodey staying behind to talk with Tony. Sam follows after Steve, Vision goes off after watching Wanda leave solemnly, and Natasha walks with you back toward your room.

Once you’re a safe distance away she speaks,“ now you’re being oddly quiet.” 

Sighing deeply, you stop and lean against the wall.“ I can’t sign those Accords Tasha.”

“And why is that?” She tilts her head in the slightest.

Your mind races, there are a billion reasons why you shouldn't sign the Accords but for every reason why you shouldn’t you think of why you should,“ I- I don’t know.”

Her eyebrow raises as she waits for you to explain.

“Everyone is making this out to be black and white and it’s not. Signing the Accords means giving the government control over our team, not signing means all the control is in our hands-”

“This is about more than your control issues Y/N.”

Her words shock you. She says them in a monotonous way but you here how much she disagrees with you.

You scoff,“ you don’t think I know that? Of course it’s not about me or the team for that matter, or even the government. We don’t save lives for the government or ourselves. We do it for the families who expect their sons and daughters to come home-”

“And how many of those sons and daughters haven’t come home because of us?”

Lowering your head into your hands, you suppress a groan,“ why can’t you understand where I’m coming from Nat? I’m not saying this it’s okay but people are going to get hurt regardless. Are we really going to hand ourselves over to the people who were literally going to nuke NYC? How are their decisions any better than ours?”

Your had been private conversation is interrupted by Tony.

He approaches, as tired as ever despite the coffee he’s been drinking. But you know it’s more than just a physical tired. 

“I get what you’re saying Y/N, I thought the same thing but,” he sighs, running a hand over his face,“ we need this. As a team we need to answer to someone who can handle us cause if not we’re going to keep making the same mistakes like we’ve been doing.” 

You bite your bottom lip, understanding exactly what he means.

Without the Accords, more people are going to get hurt because of you. 

He steps closer and puts his hand on your shoulder,“ if we stick together on this it’s gonna get better.”

And that’s his whole point. Alongside not wanting to be guilty, he just wants the team to stick together. It’s not black and white to him either but it’s obvious what the better option is.

“You’re right.” You look down and then back up, eyes shifting between Tony’s and Natasha’s,“ it’s not gonna be easy getting Steve on board but, I got your back Tony.”

For the first time today you see relief wash over his features and you surprise him with a hug. And he surprises you by hugging back. 

“Go try to get some sleep man.”

He scoffs, smiles, and walks away,“ same goes for you and Romanoff.”

Knowing he’s right, again, you just grab Natasha’s hand and pull her to your room. She follows your lead as you lay down and pull her into your chest, fingers running through her red locks.

“We’re gonna be okay right?” You whisper, voice dripping insecurity and uncertainty.

Natasha sighs against your chest, hands gripping your shirt,“ yeah. We are.”

Despite her words, it’s in this moment that you know this won’t end well. For who, you don’t know, but it’s not going to end well. And it scares you shitless.

*******

Tag List: @uglipotata72829 @jumbojamba47 @fayhar @blackwidowromonoff @natasha-danvers​ @shycucumbersandwich​ @natasharomanoffsbitch-x​ @studywithrosie01 

[kafka-ish]

stanley’s sister has got it going on | r.t.

richie’s got a crush and he’s got it bad. the only thing that’s keeping him from the girl he’s been chasing is his best friend—her brother.

word count: 4,665

warnings/included: nsfw (not explicit), fluff, swearing, fem!reader

a/n: as i was rereading this i realized that this is the dirtiest thing i’ve ever written??? (so far). in comparison to other works it’s probably vv vanilla so pls bear with me

-

In the defense of Richie Tozier, it wasn’t his fault he ended up catching feelings for Stanley Uris’s little sister. There were a lot of things he couldn’t control. Like when his mouth opened and out came a poorly done impression of his chemistry teacher. (Which just so happened to have been done as Mr. Ford was standing behind the boy). 

Richie may as well just start a list of things he can’t help, marking y/n Uris down as number thirty-three. 

“Hey, Richie!” Well, well, well, if it wasn’t the person Richie had been most desperately trying to avoid. “Are you going to Stan’s tonight?” y/n asked. She was standing outside of his car door while he was in the driver’s seat, flicking through the radio stations, trying to find a good song for the ride home. 

Upon hearing the voice, Richie stopped fidgeting with the knob. It was honestly hopeless trying to find a good song at this point. None of the good stuff comes on until later. He turned his head to meet eyes with the accompanying voice from outside his car.

Bad idea. 

Of course, y/n chose to wear a tank top and the shortest skirt possible that day. Hell, any day he’d find his thoughts lost in her. Whether she was wearing a bikini at the quarry or in an oversized t-shirt and checkered pajama pants. 

“Earth to Richie?” y/n laughed. She waved her hand in front of his face, trying to capture his attention. Little did she know, that wasn’t necessary. 

“Actually, I was thinking about being a no-show today. I’ve been neglecting my training.” 

“Oh! You train? Which gym?” She was grinning wide and her gaze burned a hole through his heart. 

“The arcade. I gotta keep my skills fresh if I ever wanna keep that high score.” y/n rolled her eyes, but his comment still made her laugh. 

“Well, can you take me home? Once you drop me off I promise you can have all the time in the world to work on your skills.” Emphasis on ‘skills’. 

“Promise, eh?” Richie repeated, giving the girl a hard time. “Did Stan forget how to drive?” 

“No…” The ‘o’ part was drawn out. “He has his bird watching club today and I don’t feel like sitting in the sun for an hour while I wait for him.” 

Richie smiled to himself, thinking for a moment. On one hand, he shouldn’t be alone with the sister of one of his best friends’, as he had different intentions. On the other hand, he couldn’t just leave his best friend’s sister hanging like that. In hindsight, he had come to the conclusion that there was a possibility of Stan getting mad at him either way. 

Taking Stan’s sister home it was. 

“What are you waiting for, y/n/n, get in.” Richie finally made his decision. 

y/n cheered happily, thanking him, as she rounded his car and opened the door to the passenger’s seat. 

“You have no idea how happy this makes me!” y/n smiled, her expression reaching ear to ear. 

“Oh yeah. I bet you’re over the moon about getting a ride from your brother’s best friend in some beat up chevy.” Richie tried his best to distance himself. He really did. But he couldn’t help but notice y/n’s figure in the tight-fitting clothes, especially when she sat in such a close proximity to him. 

“I don’t think you get it, Tozier.” y/n hummed as she started turning the knob on the dash, finally settling on some rock station. She lowered the volume so they could still talk without yelling over the atmosphere. “We never hang out.” 

“We’re hangin’ out right now,” Richie argued, daring to look away from the road for one millisecond just so he could steal a glance at her. 

“Yeah, but… You hang out with Bill, Eddie, and Stan, and stuff.” She sounded disappointed. 

“I guess it’s different with them.” Richie shrugged. It was different with them. Bill, Eddie, Stan, Ben, and Beverly even, had their group together. They had the same classes together. They faced off a killer clown together. 

“I get that you guys have your own friend group and stuff.” y/n said quickly, not wanting to sound lonely or weird from her previous statement. “But we’re friends. Aren’t we?” She said this with an unsureness in her voice that Richie didn’t know how to reply to. 

I should’ve just left her at school. What’s so bad about waiting in the sun while Stan’s off watching some stupid birds? I guess it is kind of hot out. But a little heat won’t hurt anyone, right? Besides, she’s wearing a tank top. 

Richie peered over at y/n who was looking out the window as her head leaned against it. 

A white, lacy tank top that makes her skin look even more—

“Richie?” Concern washed over the girl’s eyes. Her attention turned to him instead of the scenery that passed by them. 

Richie whipped his head away from her body and stared blankly at the road. It was almost as if he were a ghost. Except he actually had color in his face. 

“What is it, y/n/n?” Richie’s eyes were still on the road. 

“I asked if we were friends.” The girl giggled, not being able to take anything seriously for longer than five minutes. “But that’s a stupid question.” She looked down and began to pick at her nails. 

“Of course we’re friends.” Richie insisted. The only problem is that I want more and your brother would kill me. 

Something inside of y/n calmed at the affirmation. “So we should hang out.”

“Already told ya, y/n/n. I got a date with destiny today.” 

“I don’t mind being the third wheel.” 

To be frank, that was the last thing Richie needed. It was bad enough that middle schoolers would wait lined up behind him, watching as he lost at some silly arcade game that he still had a passion for. He didn’t need some hot girl hanging over his shoulder while he did so, too. But Richie’s mouth had betrayed his thoughts. 

“Only if you want to, y/n/n.” He had avoided trying to call y/n anything other than her name or her nickname. He wouldn’t allow himself to call her any of the cutesy trademark pet names he’d call other girls that he would shamelessly flirt with for fun. He started implementing this tactic in sophomore year once he really started to notice her. 

At first, it was the way she greeted him every time the losers met up at Stan’s house. Maybe he was crazy, but he swore she gave him special attention: always running up towards him when she saw him, her lingering by his side before Stan yelled at her, asking if she had anything better to do. Her smile was seemingly wider and her eyes brighter whenever she held conversations with him compared to the other losers—or maybe that was just Richie looking into things too much. 

Due to drama and false rumors, y/n had started hanging out with the losers more this year. It was an attempt for her to take her mind off of the absence of friends on her part. None of the losers seemed to mind, even Stan. Thus, she became a regular when the group went on swimming trips to the quarry or slept over at each other’s houses. This didn’t really help Richie’s case. Now, he was basically forced to see her figure in a swimsuit and in every other setting imaginable. Not to mention, he couldn’t do anything about it either. 

The two had finally arrived at the arcade. Richie had managed to snag the closest parking spot to the entryway and y/n relentlessly made fun of how he never parked straight until they got in the door.

“Okay, kid. Once you get your license, you can criticize my ‘bad’ parking. But for now, since you’re hitching rides for free, I say you better just keep quiet for now.” 

“But you’re so over the lines! I can’t imagine your coloring if that’s how you park.” 

“I’ll have you know, y/n, I don’t color. For one, that shit’s for babies. And I am way past that preschool shit. And second of all, coloring’s way lame.” Richie had made his way over to the Street Fighter machine and inserted a quarter in the slot. 

y/n watched him thoughtfully for awhile as he fidgeted with the joystick and jammed the buttons. 

“Do you want anything to drink?” she asked, growing bored of watching the same repetitive visuals from over his shoulder. But she didn’t think she could ever grow tired of watching him. 

“Hold on.” His hand smashed against the buttons in rapid fire movements while he simultaneously maneuvered the joystick. A few seconds after, the game played a pitiful noise and the boy let out a groan. Richie had lost. 

“That’s a weird way of saying coke.” y/n hummed before skipping off to the lounge area. 

On her way back, she saw Richie’s face contort in frustration. Once again, he had lost to the game. 

“Cheer up, buttercup!” y/n passed handed him the glass bottle and Richie had finally stepped away from the Street Fighter machine. 

“Easy for you to say. You don’t got an inanimate object beating ya four to one.” Richie pretended to wipe the nonexistent sweat off his brow and looked down to y/n, offering her a smug look. 

“Would a kiss make you feel better?” The girl leaned closer to him and got up on her tippy toes, preparing to peck him on his cheek. 

This was the first of y/n showing any sign of real interest. And while Richie wanted to bask in the glory of his long time crush finally coming around, his thoughts also drew to Stan. What kind of friend would he be if he made a move on his friend’s little sister? Technically she’s the one making the moves- 

Cut it out, Rich!

His internal monologue argued for a while before he realized y/n’s lips were attached to his face. 

“W-what are you doing?” Richie belatedly snapped out of his thoughts and came to his senses. 

y/n pulled away. Her arms crossed tightly around her chest and her posture was now slightly hunched over. Oh. 

“I thought I could make you feel better.” She mumbled. When she eventually spoke, she let out a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding in. “Can you take me home?” She asked, though it was more of a statement than a question. 

“Of course.” The two started heading for the door and Richie tried to slow his pace so that his long legs would be in sync with hers. “To be honest, y/n/n, I was kinda getting tired of this ol’ dump anyways.” 

A small smile graced y/n’s lips as he talked. Even if she was still embarrassed from the previous events. 

“You’re not gonna be a professional video game player?” 

“Oh no. That dream’s been abandoned for a long time now.” Richie quipped back. He was turning the keys into the ignition and began to drive off. 

The car ride to Stan’s place was silent. Either because of the turn that had taken place earlier at the arcade, or because Richie didn’t wanna open his big mouth and accidentally slip up; ruining his relationship with both Stan the Man and Stan the Man’s hot sister. 

Richie’s old chevy slowly came to a stop at the front of Stan’s house. The sky was cloudless and an unnerving shade of blue today, highlighting how perfectly trim and green Uris’s lawn was. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?” y/n finally spoke up. Her voice foreign to Richie’s ears after the fifteen minutes of dead air from the two of them. But it wasn’t that foreign. Her voice echoed through his brain practically everyday. Whenever classes got boring or nights seemed endless, Richie found himself either replaying past conversations between them. Or other scenarios… She was an unhealthy addiction he couldn’t quit. Like smoking, only hotter and way more deadly. 

“What’s there to talk about?” Richie faced y/n, putting on his best ‘I’m-not-interested-in-you’ face, when he really felt quite the opposite.

“Richie, I feel like you don’t like me.” Her accusation was dead wrong, but there was hurt in her eyes. Somehow, Richie had managed to convince the girl of his dreams he hates her when that couldn’t be less true. 

“I don’t.” He forced a chuckle to ease the tension but y/n wasn’t having it. 

“Can I tell you something?” y/n asked. Richie nodded, a quizzical look on his face. Before continuing, y/n swallowed. She didn’t usually get nervous, but Richie was someone to get nervous over. “I like you.” 

Her words felt like something out of a dream Richie once had before. 

“What can I say, kid. It’s impossible not to.” Of course, y/n didn’t really like him. At least, not like that. She was probably just saying this for shits and giggles. Pulling his leg. A classic Richie stunt. 

“I mean, I like you like how Ben likes Beverly.” 

Richie’s eyes then widened at the declaration and his body stiffened. 

“It’s okay if you don’t like me back,” she said with such ease that Richie admired. She shrugged and the thin strap of her tank top fell down her shoulder. Richie couldn’t help but notice, his eyes wandering where they shouldn’t. 

“Listen—” He gulped. His eyes kept trailing down no matter how hard he tried not to. “Listen,” he repeated, now meeting her big eyes, “I don’t not like you, y/n/n. In fact the funny thing is… is—” his words got caught in his throat. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her. Not with Stan’s breathing always down his back (whether Stan was actually there or not).  

“What’s so funny, Rich?” Her soft, sweet voice filled his ears once again. It was like a spell, because suddenly (and conveniently), the thought of Stan was no longer in the back of Richie’s mind. 

“I like you too, kid.” His voice was low, but y/n still heard him.

“So what’s stopping this?” A sly smirk formed on y/n’s face. She climbed over the control panel and her already short skirt rode up to be even higher. 

y/n sat herself on Richie’s lap. The boy had to keep from pinching himself. What was happening was straight out of a wet dream of his he’d probably had last night. 

The girl on his lap was toying with a strand of his hair while looking into his eyes. Her shoulder was still bare from the strap that fell off it.

“I’m so glad you feel the same way.” Richie didn’t think he could help himself any longer with the sultry way she was speaking and the fact that she was on his lap. “Now I can do this.” 

y/n placed a tender kiss to the awestruck boy’s lips. It was slow and steady. She didn’t want to mess things up since they had just admitted their feelings to one another. 

But Richie was impatient. 

As soon as she pulled away, he connected his lips to hers again. He was sloppy and fast paced with his movements, yet still full of passion. 

y/n giggled into his mouth which caused Richie’s heart to skip a beat. She’d been waiting for this moment since she first laid eyes on him. 

The first time Richie stepped foot into the Uris household, y/n had greeted him excitedly. 

“y/n could you get that!” Stan shouted to her from their den. He was busy setting up board games, making sure every last piece was in its designated place. 

“Why do I have to?” y/n grumbled, still walking out of her room so she could get to the door anyway. “You were closer.” 

“I’m preparing for game night. This is the first time my friends are coming over and I want everything to be suitable.” Stan was polishing the game pieces now. 

“I don’t think your friends will mind if one of your little thing-a-ma-bobs is out of place.” y/n jokingly tipped over one of the players to Stanley’s game that he had already put into place but she quickly put it back upon noticing the discontent that marked his face as she did so. 

“I’ll mind.” Her brother replied calmly. 

Another knock at the door. 

“Can you please get that?” 

y/n got up and walked over to the door. She was first met with a lanky boy whose legs were too long for his torso and eyes were too big for his face. 

She didn’t expect Stan’s friends to be hot. 

“Hi!” y/n exclaimed, hoping to give off a good impression on the group.

“I didn’t know Stan had an underaged maid. I guess the Uris’ will do anything for labor work.” No one laughed at Richies joke. 

“That’s Stan’s sister, dipwad,” Eddie said, disgusted at his friend. 

Richie made an ‘o’ shape with his mouth and the group shuffled in, meeting Stan in the den. 

“Stan you never told me you had a hottie for a sister.” y/n could hear Richie’s voice from across the hall. Her intestines turned into butterflies and she could pass for a canary with how red her face had gotten. 

But despite having the hugest crush on Richie, y/n never shared any classes with the boy. She was a year younger than Stan, but in the same grade as him because of the accelerated classes she took. So y/n had to admire from afar. 

Well, not anymore. 

Her lips were now attached to his neck, eliciting a moan from him. She smirked at that and started to roll her hips against his. Her name fell from his lips over and over and over again which evoked her to keep going. 

“Richie!?” An angered voice called from the outside of his car. 

It was the one and only. Stanley Uris. 

It was too late to act fast. Richie pulled y/n off him and looked guiltily out the window to see the face that matched the voice. 

But Richie already knew who it was. 

“Who me? I dink you ghat de wrahng goey.” Richie did his best Irish man accent but it was no use. 

“Okay, Richie, cut the crap.” Stan’s face was twisted up in an expression that almost scared Richie. His hands were folded against his chest and he was waiting for an answer. 

Richie simply couldn’t bring himself to answer the boy. He sat in shame with y/n next to him staring at her brother. Richie may as well have had ‘I’M SORRY’ written on his forehead with the way he was gaping at Stan.  

“y/n get out of the car.” Stan said, breaking eye contact with his friend. 

The girl complied, whispering about how sorry she was to the boy who drove her home before getting out. After that, she didn’t dare glance back at him in his car and Richie didn’t have the energy to even look anywhere besides the steering wheel. 

That was last week. Since then, Stan and Richie hadn’t said a word to each other. Richie hadn’t spoken to y/n since then either. The tension was too thick between Stan and Richie and Richie didn’t want to mess things up more than he already did. 

“I c-cuh-can’t believe yo-you liked y/n.” Bill chuckled. 

It was after school and the two were in the library. The details of what happened that day eventually got out. Both Stan and Richie had told their sides of the story and the losers were respectful enough to not take sides. They just hung out with Richie when Stan wasn’t around and hung out with Stan when Richie wasn’t there. 

“What’s so bad about that?” Richie looked skeptically at his friend, trying his best to defend himself. 

“I mean, yea-yeah sh-sh-she’s cute—”

“She’s beautiful.” Richie cut off but Bill rolled his eyes. 

“What-h-ever. I-it’s just funny tha-hat you wuh-would go after her.” 

“I already told you she kissed me first.” Richie proclaimed, a little too proudly. 

“Sh-he’s Stan’s sister!” That was true. 

“And a good kisser.” That was also true. 

“Gross, Richie.” Bill returned to the book in front of him, but Richie kept egging on the conversation. 

“I don’t see why someone has to be off limits just because they’re related to a friend.” His annoyed tone was evident and Bill gave him a sympathetic look. 

“It-t’s b-ba-basically written in th-the br-r-ro code.” Bill paused for a moment and Richie didn’t know if it was because he was embarrassed of his stuttering or if he was gathering his thoughts. “But i-i-if you li-li-like her… wh-who am I to s-suh-say any-th-thing.” 

If Bill was insinuating what Richie thought he was, then that made him cooler than he already was. 

And that’s how Richie found himself in y/n’s room Friday night. The losers were meeting up at the Aladdin to see the new Jim Carrey movie and somehow Richie had been able to get himself out of it, claiming he was overdue on chores and couldn’t make it. 

“Th-that’s t-too bad, R-Rich.” Bill said over the phone (but he knew better) while the other losers pressed their ear up against it, listening in. “The c-co-omedy should be ri-right up your alley.” 

“Dumb and underdeveloped?” Eddie asked Bill. “I don’t wanna see a movie just to hate it,” he complained. 

“Yowza, Eds. And I thought you appreciated my jokes.” Richie feigned hurt over the speaker. “Anywho, I gotta make like a tree and hang up. The ‘rents are asking for me.” They weren’t. 

“O-okay. Maybe nuh-nuh-next wee—” Beep. 

Richie had already hung up. 

y/n grabbed his hand, which was clamped over her mouth and took it off. She was bursting to the seams with laughter. 

“I can’t believe you’re a liar now,” she tsked, trying to fake an ‘I’m-not-mad-at-you-just-disappointed’ look that her English teacher had given her once. 

“Only under these circumstances.” He was fast to attach his lips to hers. They didn’t have much time and he wanted to make the most of what they had now. 

Richie was on top of her now, his lips still on hers. He kissed her everywhere from the crown of her head to the crook of her neck. If his kisses left a print, her skin would be buried under them. 

“Rich…” She sighed contentedly, eyes fluttering from the pleasure he inflicted on her when he had found a sweet spot behind her ear. y/n kissed him back hard with force and a sort of dominance Richie didn’t know she had in her. 

She flipped them, so that she was on top now. y/n took this liberty of having full control to take off her shirt and Richie’s as well. 

Richie smirked and began to kiss lower. His pace was slower than he originally started. Painstakingly slow. y/n wined at how delicate his lips felt tracing her skin but she needed more. 

“Touch me,” she urged. Richie obeyed, his hands were now on her chest, massaging and caressing her delicate skin. 

There weren’t enough words to describe the thrill and satisfaction Richie gave her. y/n could relish in this boy’s embrace forever with how good he made her feel. She began grinding against his jeans, just like the day they were caught by Stanley, so she could ease the ache for him between his legs. 

Richie chuckled, feeling her press against him. He knew precisely what she wanted but to give or not to give in was the question. 

“y/n/n, we don’t have that long,” He warned. 

“I don’t care.” She started peppering his face in kisses the same way he had done to her. At the same time, she began to unbutton his jeans. Who would Richie be to turn down sex anyway? 

She was fast at getting him inside her. Definitely not inexperienced. But Richie didn’t want fast. Not with y/n, at least. He wanted their first together to be slow, sensual, special—

“You’re amazing,” he grunted and she blushed in response. 

Her pace quickened at his praise. Their movements together felt electric and y/n herself was so hypnotic, Richie felt he could get lost in the thought—or the feeling —of her forever. 

A feeling that was indescribable washed over Richie once the two of them were finished. He had stayed inside of her, and y/n was now laying on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and tracing circles on his skin with her thumb. Their chests rose and fell together at the same time, a small action that Richie melted at the sight of. 

“For the record, I didn’t want it to happen like this,” Richie said. There was a sort of fear palpable in his tone. 

“For the record, you kissed me first.” y/n eyed him suspiciously before giving him a peck on the cheek. “And what does that mean? Did you…” She shyly decided on her words for a moment. “Did you not want to..?” 

“No, no, no, no.” Richie immediately counteracted the girl’s suggestion. “I so wanted to do this. I’ve dreamed about doing this—” Richie stopped himself before his talking could make things worse, but y/n found his rambling amusing. 

“So, what did you mean?” y/n tried again. She reached out to hold his hand, intertwining her fingers with his. 

“I mean.” He let out a sigh before continuing. “I wanted us to be, like, an official couple and shit before we do this shit.” He motioned between them and to where they were still joined. 

y/n flushed at the sight and covered her face. 

“Hey.” Richie was soft. Softer than y/n had ever seen him be. He took her wrists in his hands, uncovering her face so he could admire her. 

She was stunning even after sex. 

“I don’t want this to be a one time thing.” He was almost embarrassed to admit it, but with y/n he didn’t feel the need to be afraid. “I want us to go on dates and hold hands and tell each other about our day.” He was looking at the ceiling, daydreaming at the thought.

y/n’s eyes searched his face thoughtfully. “Of course, Rich. I want that, too!” She kissed his lips once more, elated at the boy in front of her. Her face fell shortly after she had a sudden understanding. “What’re you gonna do about Stan?” 

“Who’s Stan?” But Richie’s fake grin wasn’t fooling anyone. “Uh, well, we could tell him…” But when Richie saw a certain uneasiness consume y/n’s face, he ruled that option out. “How do you feel about dating in secret?” He offered. The situation wasn’t ideal, but at the time it seemed to be the lesser of the two evils at hand. 

“Okay,” y/n whispered. “So you should leave.” 

“Woah, babe, I just got here.” Richie sat up, looking for his shirt. 

“Yeah, but the movie should’ve ended by now.” y/n gestured towards the alarm clock on her nightstand causing Richie’s jaw to drop. 

He was heading towards the window now, knowing he had enough time to get out, but he wanted to be careful. 

“See you tomorrow then?” y/n giggled at how clingy he could be. 

“I’ll call you.” And Richie just couldn’t get enough of the smile she was wearing. 

“Sounds like a date!” He yelled from outside her house. 

During the drive home, Richie’s thoughts became lost in y/n once again. This was just the beginning.

[theessaflett]

72 Hours (ish) in... MANCHESTER

Your friendly neighbourhood Essa has a look round a city best known for the industrial revolution, bees, and bad weather. 

…The start of my trip to Manchester wasn’t the smoothest.

The only thing I could find to eat at Euston station for my tea before my 19:40 train were chips coated in some sort of suspicious chilli dust, so it was a very queasy Essa who arrived at Manchester Piccadilly a few hours later and wandered around trying to find the exit. (I had in fact been to the station before last October as part of a band tour, but as I was VERY sick and feverish at the time I had very little recollection of the place indeed!) I trundled my suitcase out of the station and off into the night - and my, what a night.  9.45pm on a Saturday night in Manchester is quite the experience, and as Google Maps took me down back alley after back alley I found myself humming ”Just keep swimming, just keep swimming” to myself with increasing speed. One particularly memorable back alley held two sad looking figures, one of whom was violently throwing up behind a bin. 
“You alright, Tim?” called the other one, who was busy trying to use a wall to stay upright. Tim was almost certainly not alright. I left them to it. 

After about 20 minutes of nervous trundling I arrived at Hatters Hostel. It turned out that Hatters was on top of a nightclub, opposite a nightclub, and instead of being part of the Hilton hotel chain as I’d originally surmised it was called “Hilton Hatters Hostel” because it was on Hilton street. I was beginning to regret some of the decisions that had led to this moment. 

Looks nice, doesn’t it. LIES. 

I tried to get the eye of the receptionist, was told I would have to wait as she was “doing the money”, and sat down on the only couch next to a man in gym clothes who had seemingly waited so long he’d passed out. Many minutes passed. In the end I passively aggressively opened and shut all the leaflets next to the desk  - Manchester offers two walking tours and a make your own beer festival, incidentally - and once Sleeping Man had been woken up and his booking put through it was my turn. Sleeping Man had been asked for ID, and I nervously started my explanation that I’d forgotten my passport but had my 16-25 train card when it was cut off by the receptionist. She didn’t really care, it was just a formality. Also, where had I dyed my hair? She’d tried to dye it that colour but it had just gone green and her mum had made her cut it off because green wasn’t an acceptable colour for her sister’s wedding. But now it was purple which was also cool. I murmured positive words about purple, took the key card and headed for the lift, trying to ignore the fact that the floor numbers on the wall were peeling off. I found 104, glad that the door looked less battered than some of the other ones, and after the second time of trying, keyed myself into my home for the next three days.

…The Hatters Hostel website photographer deserves some sort of award for misguiding photography. And possibly to be sued. I was expecting a fancy room, plush and cosy. I admittedly got quite a comfortable bed, but I also was given a TV that had been installed at an angle that meant I would need to be the girl from the Exorcist to watch it in comfort, a broken heater, no main light, no kettle, thin, pathetic towels…and a hell of a lot of noise. Here’s the thing about arriving, at 10.30pm on a Friday night, into a room on the first floor directly on top of a night club and opposite several other nightclubs: it is astonishingly, awe inspiringly, horrifyingly loud. The vibrations shuddered through the floor and up my legs, and my suspicions about the sturdiness of the walls were confirmed when I laid a hand on one of them and felt vibrations shuddering through the brickwork too. Some optimistic soul had put in double glazing on the one, sad looking window, but it was no good: the pounding music was coming up through the bare linoleum floor and in the cracks between said floor and the walls. Friends, I am not so proud as to deny that I had a bit of a disappointed sniffle as I sat on the edge of the bed in the cold, listening to four different nightclub bangers (that all had driving dubstep basses…they sadly didn’t even merge into one pleasing cross-rhythm beat) and trying to reassess my accommodation expectations. The reason for the massive tub of free ear plugs on the reception desk was becoming terribly, horribly clear. After a bolstering call to my parents where I let them know I’d arrived and tried to elicit some sympathy for the damp boombox situation in which I’d found myself (“Well go down to reception and ask if you can get another room then, sitting there moping at me isn’t doing anything”  is arguably the Scottish version of “Aw poor diddums” so I consider the sympathy bid a success) I mournfully trailed back to ground level and put on my best pleading puppy face. It was no good: there were no other free rooms for the whole weekend, he was very sorry, my heater should be warming up at any moment. (this was a lie. I am certain that I had no heating for the full three days.) I grimly stocked up on earplugs and, comforted with the paltry commiseration that the nightclubs shut at 1.30am, went back to my unappealing room. This was it, was it? This is what £264 got you for three nights in central Manchester? Bloody hell. Tried out the shower. It was cold. Went to bed and sulked. (To be fair, several Destiny’s Child and Britney Spears medleys later, the noise did mercifully stop at 1.30am. Which was just as well, as by that point I was fantasising about punching night clubbers.)

Day 1

My main reason for being in Manchester over the weekend was to attend a one-day writing course at the LGBT Foundation  - 2019 may be a year of me writing lots of things but there’s still not much time for writing “just for fun” so I was looking forward to writing anything I liked for a full day! I blearily made my way out of the hostel - glaring at anyone who looked like they might have been making noise six hours earlier - and headed off to the Foundation, stopping at the “park” (a few trees and a bit of squelchy grass does not a proper park make, Manchester) Cafe Nero on my way. This proved a wise move, as soya milk has not yet made it to the LGBT Foundation so I was sadly under caffeinated for the day…

The LGBT Foundation 

The writing day itself was lovely; I enjoyed the chance just to spend time tapping away on my laptop, the other course members were friendly and the heating was on. The only real disaster was lunchtime, when I ordered rice at a nearby Asian to-go place and got noodles instead. I can’t eat noodles. Ended up eating random selections of snacks and showing people my noodles whilst saying sadly, “Look, they gave me noodles!” (Received a satisfactory amount of sympathy from all.) The LGBT Foundation staff were friendly and it’s great that there’s such an extensive support centre in the heart of the Gay Village…my only quibble about the building would be that it was surprising and disappointing to see they only offered Male or Female toilets and there was no mention anywhere of the additional “IAQ+” that I’m used to London folk using most of the time. It would be a real shame if Intersex/Asexual/Non-Binary/Gender Queer young people used the building and didn’t feel like they belonged, when just a few posters and different bathroom signs  would make the Foundation welcoming to absolutely everyone. (Alright, snowflake millennial moment over!)

After the course I headed over to HOME   - stopping off at Pizza Express on the way, where a chatty waitress asked me if I was an artist…I considered creating a new persona but in the end decided I didn’t have the energy - to see the Old Vic production of Wise Children. 

Part of the HOME complex

Although I felt like some elements of the production jarred (why must new plays always include grim scenes of child abuse, incest and/or rape?) and the ending was just bizarre, I thoroughly enjoyed the onstage music and the breath-taking stage design…and the fact that I knew one of the cast members! Paul Hunter from Told By An Idiot didn’t look very different to when I worked with him on Get Happy in 2013 and it was great to see him in action, getting belly laughs from the whole audience as he strutted up and down the stage in full-blown comedic idiot mode.

The brilliant stage design for Wise Children

Getting back to the hostel afterwards proved a little more difficult than anticipated due to a lost Uber driver and there being two Hatters Hostels (naturally I was delivered to the wrong one) but I eventually made it back to Purgatory Room and grimly waited out the Michael Jackson remixes coming through the walls by watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine clips with my head underneath the covers to retain warmth. By 1.20am I was passing the time by fantasising about how I was going to switch on both of my radiators in my London flat when I returned on Monday night and toast myself in front of the two of them until the heat was similar to Barbados in August.

Day 2

I groggily crashed out of the hotel at 11am with only one clear thought: CAFFEINE. Manchester decided to give me a true North of England experience: it was cold, grey, and miserably wet. I tried to find my cafe of choice with some urgency.

Teacup Kitchen Cafe

Teacup Kitchen was recommended as a vegan cafe on Yelp. This, it turned out, was not wholly accurate. Some of their menu was vegan. Very little of their menu indeed was gluten free, but it turned out that that at least was easily rectified as they did have GF bread. As I had clearly stumbled into the Manchester equivalent of Shoreditch the decor was brutally bare, the music was loud and everyone was dressed in black so it was impossible to tell who were the waitstaff and who were just pretentious. (I found this very funny until I realised I was also dressed in all black, at which point I found it slightly less funny and instead wondered when it was exactly that London had turned me into such a hipster stereotype). 

Note the bare light bulbs... 

I ordered poached eggs and avocado on toast, which, this being Northern Shoreditch, came with chilli flakes and raw onion for some reason. I pleaded for no onion but got it anyway, which led to some sad toilet trips later.

General Public Announcement: Food intolerances aren’t just fads, everyone!!!

Who would ruin a perfectly good avocado by dumping a whole load of onion on top of it anyway?! 

Indignant with this most first world of first world problems, I paid an eye-watering £17.10 for what was essentially eggs on toast, a cup of tea and a juice (more expensive that Shoreditch?! Discuss)  and trudged out into the rain once more. …Then hopped into Forbidden Planet, because Forbidden Planet!! For the uninitiated, Forbidden Planet is a magical world of deep nerdy joy.  

If a non-geek person would react to an object by saying, “Oh that’s from that show you like, isn’t it…that’s nice…?”, they probably have it. That being said, they did not have nearly enough Doctor Who or Tim Burton merchandise for my liking and after wandering around having fun spooking all the nervous looking nerdy teenage boys (A woman!!, I could practically hear them whisper amongst themselves. The last time we had one of them in here was in 2009! Darren still hasn’t recovered!!) I headed off to the John Rylands library.

The (rather wet in this photo) John Rylands Library

Now, my understanding of the John Rylands library was that it was one, quite impressive, hall. This proved to be similar to saying that the Titanic was quite big. It was absolutely massive, with four or five main library spaces and lots of awe-inspiring  corridors and staircases in-between, many of which I am certain have been used in Harry Potter films. By pure good luck it was a great time to be visiting, as there were two really interesting exhibitions on about the role of women in literature and society in general. The Women in Manchester exhibition in particular was fascinating and gave a brief but vivid idea of how crucial the women of the city were both in the Suffragette movement itself and in protests before and afterwards. The “Historical Bathroom” is worth a visit too (if you’re as curious as I was about that description, it turned out to be a ladies bathroom that had been preserved exactly as it was when the library opened in the early 20th century. It was fully functioning but very draughty), as is the main Historic Library. 

The magic of the building overall was, for me at any rate, slightly dimmed with the knowledge that it wasn’t actually very old at all, just built in the style of earlier buildings by late-era Victorians wistful for an earlier “Utopian” age of social harmony, unnerved as they were by the unrest and turbulence of the Industrial Age in which they found themselves. I’m sure that most infamous of old-school folk song collectors Cecil Sharp, for instance, would have been delighted by the righteous pomp of the marble statues and stuffy regal halls, the library a grand symbol of an age and an Empire already on the way out when the building first opened.

That said, the John Rylands library is still beautiful, impressive and well worth a trip - just allocate more time than I did! I finished off my visit with an organic cola (would not recommend) from the rather chilly open-plan cafe then tried to decide what to do next. My initial plan had been to go to the Museum of Manchester, but a quick check of their website brought up the unwelcome news that due to renovations the only section still open was “Fossils and Meteorites”, which was not a gallery that exactly filled me with unbound excitement. In the end I decided to go to the People’s Museum instead  - admittedly because it was only four minutes away and, after inevitably going the wrong way and walking round in circles for a bit scowling at Google Maps, I arrived at the brutalist museum in dire need of the loo and a plug socket for my fast-dying phone battery. 

The rather damp looking People’s History Museum 

They had both of those things, so we were already off to a good start when I guiltily ignored the “Use The Stairs, Save Our Environment!” sticker next to the lift and saved my aching legs the climb to the third floor. It became fairly clear very quickly that this was a museum where if you accidentally started the exhibition backwards everything was really quite confusing, but sadly that was what I somehow did on every single floor. (There are still some things that I’m puzzling over, and probably will be forever.) I also started off foolishly presuming that as I was on the 3rd floor I would be going chronologically back in time rather than forwards, but it turned out that there was no such clear organisational system in place for the exhibits: rather, photographs from the 1940s and propaganda posters from the 1880s rubbed shoulders in cheerful harmony. This only added to my overall confusion but gave a nice overall air of linear history being an unnecessary construct of our modern-day society. The writers of the Old Testament would have approved wholeheartedly!

The museum was truly fascinating, and quite shocking in how openly socialist-bordering-on-communist it was in its beliefs; lots of Karl Marx quotes on the walls and leftist liberal exhibit blurbs. I enjoyed it thoroughly -  particularly the excellent section about the Votes for Women movement - and was delighted to find the cafe offered a proper cuppa and gluten free biscuits. This was the life. The museum sadly shut at 5pm (as do many, many things in Manchester) so I was turfed out to wander the wet streets once more. After an accidental detour into a very posh outdoor dining area complete with more decorative lightbulbs than you could shake an over-priced mojito at, I arrived in China Town. My main aim was to get a good photo of the famous China Town arch, but as I achieved that in the first five minutes I decided to also do something else, whatever that might be. 

China Town’s Arch

I’m not sure what I was expecting from China Town, but I was expecting it to be big; instead, unless there were lots of shops hiding from me, China Town was largely just a square - bizarrely, a square built round a car park - with maybe 20 or so shops… and then that was pretty much it. Those shops were wonderful though, and I loved being an unabashed tourist and wandering round a seafood place full of giant tanks of lobsters, supermarkets filled with cans of things you never thought to pickle but apparently are in fact pickle-able… pickled mango was an especially interesting concept… and gazing hungrily at the menus tacked up outside the many Chinese restaurants. (I had no luck. Very not Essa friendly indeed.) 

Instead I settled for a bubble tea from Chatime. I made several bad decisions and ended up with an apple tea with little ball things (??? Tapioca??? Whatever it was they were suspiciously savoury and worryingly chewy) and rainbow jelly. I gave up halfway through as I could feel my teeth beginning to rot. 

Diabetes in a cup. 

Chatime 

After risking my life and health on some questionable 50p Asian sweets - they were covered in sugar and salt and my pathetic Western constitution decided it couldn’t quite cope with this final insult - I finished off my day out with a very nice sit watching the coloured fountain display in the “park” and then going off to somewhere I could confidently expect to be fed: Zizzi’s. 

The very splooshy water fountains. 

...They may have fed me undercooked, over salted gluten free pasta, but it was gluten free pasta never the less, and I trooped back to the hostel fed and happy.

After attempting to write my journal in the communal kitchen next to a group of very noisy Italian twenty-somethings making a very complicated meal that seemed to need lots of loud chopping, banging and semi-regular cheering, I relocated to the communal lounge instead and turned up Royal Blood to eardrum-bursting volumes to drown out the horror film the other two sofa loungers were watching. By 11.30pm even loud rock wasn’t managing to drown out the film and I was beginning to suspect the heating had been switched off as it didn’t seem much warmer than my own little ice box of a room, so I waved the white flag of surrender and beetled off to watch YouTube under the covers once more. Would it be too much to hope that Sunday nights at least were fairly quiet here in nightclub land…? My heading to bed was foiled, however, by the fact that the key card to my room no longer worked. I trailed unhappily back down to the ground floor and explained the situation to an unsympathetic receptionist who said, “Oh it always does that for 104, just try it a few more times” without looking up from his computer. I explained through gritted teeth that I had been trying it for five minutes, thanks very much, and he reluctantly came with me to see what the problem was. I passed the journey by mentioning how my heater didn’t work. “Oh, that heater,” he said without a hint of irony. “Yeah it doesn’t work, it’s just for decoration.” Apparently my room was meant to be heated by a magical vent blowing warm air into the room. I said grumpily that it did not seem to be doing that at all. “Well, it’s 104,” he said with a shrug. “It’s always cold and the door never works. Dunno why, it’s really weird.” As I contemplated the fact that I HAD BEEN STAYING IN THE POLTERGEIST ROOM THIS WHOLE TIME he swiped me through with his master and left me in my Spectre Apartment. I lay in bed in the dark that night pretending very hard that I wasn’t the slightest bit unnerved and listening to the pounding bass coming through the walls (one stubborn nightclub somewhere in the middle distance was subjecting its patrons to Sunday night indie rock) until 1.30am blessedly rolled around and Geoffrey the Ghost and I managed to get some sleep.

Day 3   

By this point I was thoroughly sleep deprived and just generally over the whole staying-in-a-hostel thing, so it was with a happy song that I stuffed my belongings back into my suitcase. It was an uneventful exit from Hatters apart from one heart- stopping moment when a bit of the shower fell off at exactly the same second that the bathroom light went out (…It was just the timed light clicking off and me turning the wobbly thermostat wheel too firmly. But, hey -  let me tell you: when you’re standing there in the pitch dark, naked and alarmed, “ARGH!” is the defining first thought rather than “I’d better wave my arms and get the light to switch back on.) I strode out into the Manchester streets and decided that as I’d had an improvised breakfast of snack bars I didn’t really need anything else apart from a cup of tea, which I could probably get at Chetham’s Library. Second library of the trip, here I came!

After a significant amount of lost trundling, sometimes round in circles, my suitcase and I finally arrived at Chetham’s, which is situated next to a very nice but sadly throughly fenced-off park and an absolutely enormous museum about football. I sat on a little stone pillar, tried to enjoy the park’s water feature despite the massive fence and munched on fruit I’d bought from the nearby M&S (it had occurred to me that I hadn’t really had much in the way of fruit or vegetables since arriving in Manchester, which is possibly a true representation of the Northern diet but it did seem a shame to get scurvy on my weekend off). 

The very picturesque park with a very large fence. 

It was all very nice but I needed the loo  - an ever present theme in my life - so I decided to get a move on and go see the Library. This is when my day went horribly wrong.

I had not, you see, realised that the Chetham’s Library  - unlike the Bodleian Library -  didn’t have anywhere for visitors to dump their suitcases. Worse, the grumpy security guard refused full-stop to let me take my suitcase anywhere near the building whatsoever. What was I meant to do, I asked him with quite poor grace. I had the suitcase. I wanted to go and see the library. Couldn’t he look after it in his little security hut? What if it had a bomb in it? I assured him there was no bomb. No. Absolutely not. I had a suspicious unidentified suitcase. Hadn’t I seen the news recently? Maybe I could see if the station across the road had lockers.

It was an unimpressed Essa that stomped into Manchester Victoria on the hunt for a locker. There were no lockers. The Information Centre might have been a useful place to ask for advice about what to do next, if it had been open. I went to the loo (always a good thing to do in a time of crisis, I find), stared suspiciously at a very creepy statue of a bee in a dress and decided that as I seemed to have found the busy hub of tram travel I might as well get on a tram.

TRAM!!! I thought the trams were very exciting. 

 After trying to buy a tram ticket at a ticket machine for actual trains for an embarrassingly long amount of time I realised that the tram ticket machines were on the tram platforms and navigated the alarming open-track walkway to get to the right bit of the station. (Manchester runs its public transport system from the viewpoint that if you’re stupid enough to cross a walkway without looking left and right first you deserve to get mangled by a massive tram. I only nearly died once, which frankly is quite good for me all things considering.)

I bought my astonishingly cheap £1.40 one-way ticket, tried to tap my paper ticket on the machine for tapping in plastic travel cards and was puzzled for really an unacceptably long amount of time for a 23 year old before I figured out what was going on, and got on my first TRAM!! It tooted to another tram and I felt like I was living my best life. It would have been even nicer if the tram hadn’t smelt of weed and wee, but as most of Manchester seems to smell of weed and wee I accepted my fate. I realised I had previously been unfair on the “park” as we rumbled through it  - there were considerably more trees than I had first thought and the grass looked less mushy. I admired the greenery, noted with resignation that the tram was making me travel sick and then realised it was time to get off! In a…deserted dark tunnel…? I really don’t know what I did, but I found out later there was actually a legit way to exit the tram station, with proper doors and a little escalator and everything, and I most definitely did not do that. I ended up wandering around a tunnel, nearly getting run over at one point when a tram unexpectedly came round a corner (told you I’d nearly got mashed) and finally finished my mini underground journey by being spat out next to the taxi rank. After some seriously bemused searching I found the train station, only to decide that it was actually just too draughty a place to wait out out a few hours and marched down the hill towards the Costa…that was about an 8 minute walk from the Hostel I’d left with so much optimism several hours previously. Ha. Ha. Ha. Isn’t life funny. As I was meeting a friend at Manchester Piccadilly I decided to just call it quits, buy several random Costa snacks to create lunch and have a quiet few hours in the warm before having to heave my suitcase back up the hill to the station for 3pm. Who says I don’t know how to live a wild life…? 

After a very enjoyable catch-up I was back on the train and headed, feeling slightly battered, back to to noise and grime of Euston station. It had been quite the weekend, and I left still unsure of what I thought about Manchester. At times it had seemed ruggedly attractive, the several red-brick old buildings nestled in amongst all the mid-20th century concrete particularly eye-catching, and at times it had just seemed…wet. And a bit grey. 

The whole “bee mascot” thing has, to an outsider, been taken to a slightly unbelievably wild extreme - there were bees everywhere. On walls. On doors. In restaurant and shop logos. On mugs. On bags. On posters. Even on street bins. As someone who doesn’t particularly like bees, this was a bit unnerving.

On the whole, I did like Manchester - and I would certainly visit again, which says something in itself. 

Next stop: My mum and I’s trip to Berlin in April! Where should we visit? 

What Essa saw:

Manchester LGBT Foundation 

https://lgbt.foundation/ 

HOME Manchester 

https://homemcr.org/ 

Teacup Kitchen

https://teacupandcakes.com/

Forbidden Planet Manchester

https://www.facebook.com/fpmanchester/

The John Rylands Library (free entry)

https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/ 

The People’s History Museum (free entry)

https://phm.org.uk/

Manchester’s China Town

https://www.visitmanchester.com/things-to-see-and-do/chinatown-p275031

Where Essa stayed (but does not recommend):

https://hattershostels.com/manchester-hilton-chambers/ 

[whimsical-ness]

Guilty | Chanyeol

◇ Link to Masterlist

◇ Genre: Angst

◇ Warnings: Contains themes of adultery and cheating (obviously these things are UNACCEPTABLE; this fic is not meant to promote them)

◇ Summary: Two strangers. Two different marriages on the verge of disrepair. A sudden, illicit romance that never meant to break any hearts; but did.

◇ Word Count: 7.6k

◇ A/N: Based on the Bollywood film ‘Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna’.

“What is a beautiful bride doing sitting out here by herself when the groom is waiting at the alter?”

You looked up with a start, only to be met with a tall, lean man, his hair falling over his eyes. “Excuse me?”

To your surprise, he plonked down on the bench next to you with a sigh. You inched away from him.

“Do I know you?” you asked, unnerved by this stranger. He glanced at you. “No. But I was just passing by and thought it a bit strange that a bride should be sitting on a bench outside the wedding hall looking dejected, when this should be the happiest day of her life.”

You stared at him. 

The stranger smiled slightly. “My apologies. I’m naturally very intrusive. But you look like you need someone to talk to.” You cleared your throat. “I’m fine, thanks,” you said. When the stranger didn’t budge, you sighed.

“Okay. I’m not fine. I’m scared, and uncertain, and confused. I don’t know if I want this marriage,” you blurted.

The stranger held up his hands. “Whoa. Maybe you just have cold feet.”

You swallowed. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“How long have you known the guy?” asked the stranger. “My whole life. We basically grew up together. When my parents died...Alex and his family became mine too,” you said, fiddling with your hands.

“Alex. Sounds like a great guy, then,” mused the stranger. “Do you love him?”

“Yes,” you admitted. “I’m just not sure I love him enough.”

The stranger looked at you knowingly. “Trust me, once you’re married, everything’s an adjustment anyway. Things like love...I’m not even sure they matter after a point. Even so, I’m sure it’s possible to find love even after you’re married. Don’t you think so?” 

You tilted your head. “Why does it sound as if you’re talking from experience?” 

He snorted. “I’ve been married for 2 years now. My wife and I were madly in love. Nowadays we just—tolerate each other.” It stunned you to see how calm he looked as he said it. 

“But don’t let that daunt you,” he continued. “In my opinion, you should give it a chance. You love this guy, he loves you. I’m sure everything will work out fine in the end.”

You didn’t really know what to say. “Thanks for the free advice,” you said softly, still a bit overwhelmed. 

“No problem,” said the stranger, getting up, his slight smile returning. “Now get back in there and get married.”

You smiled. “I’m Y/N, by the way.”

“Chanyeol,” he responded, raising a hand in farewell. “Hope to see you around, Y/N.”

3 years later.

You were incredibly late to work. Your boss was going to kill you. And you were going to kill Alex, for being the reason for it all.

He had insisted on taking you out to a ridiculous party the night before, and had completely ignored your repeated protests regarding it being a working day. And you had come home terribly late and obviously been unable to wake up this morning. 

You cursed under your breath as you made a beeline for the subway station, simultaneously rummaging through your purse for your wallet. 

You were in such a rush that you barely noticed where you were walking, and ran smack dab into somebody who was walking in the opposite direction, equally as fast. Your heel slipped against the station floor, your arms flailing as you tried to catch your balance. Unfortunately, your foot twisted, leaving you yelping in pain and dropping down to the floor in agony.

The person you’d run into cursed. “Shit. Shit I’m sorry.” He crouched down beside you, extending an arm. “Can you stand?”

“No, I don’t think I can,” you snapped angrily. “I think I’ve twisted it now. Fucking fantastic,” you said, glaring up to see who the hell had caused this mess.

You blinked. The man blinked back. “I know you,” you said stupidly. “Yo-you’re that guy I met before my wedding. Chanyeol?”

It was definitely him. His hair was still flopped over his forehead, his eyes still that warm brown color. They widened as he recognized you. “Y/N?”

You made Chanyeol take you to the hospital to get your foot bandaged up. It was only fair.

“Why did I agree to this?” he wondered, shaking his head as you sat with your arms crossed on the hospital bed. “Because it’s common courtesy. You injured me,” you pointed out.

“You know, if you’d just been looking up as you walked, neither of us would be here right now,” he shot back. “I was in a hurry. And you weren’t looking where you were going either,” you replied.

Chanyeol let out an exasperated breath. “Fine. Forget this. How’s married life?”

You looked at him in surprise at the sudden question. “Um. It’s good,” you said awkwardly. Chanyeol raised his brows. “What?” you asked defensively. He shrugged. “That was a lie, wasn’t it?” 

You gaped at him. “How dare you? I wasn’t lying! I’m happy with Alex. And why do you care anyway?”

“Hey, I just wanted to know how my advice turned out,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And seemingly so, it didn’t go so well.”

“I can see it in your eyes,” he said, leaning forward. “That emptiness. The longing for something more, the hope for things to change. Your eyes...they’re not so different from my own, Y/N.” He looked sad.

His words rang in your head, loud and clear. They unnerved you. But who the hell did this guy think he was?

“Look, Chanyeol, you don’t know me. And you know nothing about my husband, or my marriage. I don’t appreciate you being so rude and all-assuming for God knows what reason,” you said fiercely. “Thank you for bringing me here. But if you don’t mind, I’m going to leave now.”

“Not on that foot,” he said, a small smile spreading across his face as he saw you notice your bandaged but still throbbing foot. 

You huffed and looked away.

“Why don’t you look around you when you walk, baby?” said Alex that night. You’d annoyingly had to call him to pick you up from the hospital. 

“I wouldn’t have been in such a goddamn rush if I had woken up on time, Alex,” you said, seething. “It’s all because of that stupid party that this happened.”

Your husband let out a short laugh. “You’re kidding. If you were really that against coming, you should’ve said so.”

“I did Alex! But you don’t ever listen! That’s the problem,” you said, shaking your head. The pent up anger was bubbling inside you, threatening to blow up. “Tell me, when was the last time we did something I wanted?”

Alex snorted. “We never do anything you want because your idea of fun is boring. You’d have us cleaning the house or something. No offense babe.”

You felt something snap. 

Later, as you stared at yourself in the bathroom mirror, Chanyeol’s words haunted you. Your eyes. Was the emptiness you felt on a daily basis that visible in them? The unspoken desires, wishes and hope? 

The fact that, even after 3 years of being married to someone and having them by your side, you always felt terribly alone?

You ran into Chanyeol the next day again, with you limping along this time. “You again,” he said, looking you up and down. 

“How is it that I’ve been using this subway almost everyday for the past 3 years but only now am I running into you all the time?” you muttered. “They say you only run into the people you want to meet,” mused Chanyeol.

You rolled your eyes. “Well, now that I’ve met you, let me ask you a few questions about your marriage,” you said, emphasizing the words. “It’s my turn to be intrusive.”

Chanyeol shrugged, getting into the train behind you. You turned to him as you sat down next to him. “How have 5 years of marriage suited you?”

“Not much has changed,” he replied coolly. “We’re still together, but only on paper, you see. We live together, but we almost hardly see each other. She’s always travelling around.”

“What does your wife do for a living?” you asked curiously. Chanyeol’s smile was bitter. “She’s a model. Tia Park.”

Your mouth dropped open. “Y-you’re married to Tia Park? Sh-she’s the most sought after model in this country! She’s—”

“Gorgeous, breathtaking, sexy,” Chanyeol said, ticking the imaginary words off in the air. “Yeah. I get that a lot.”

You still couldn’t believe what he’d told you. “Wow,” you said. “You must feel like the luckiest man on the planet.”

Chanyeol laughed, but there was an edge to his voice when he spoke. “For the most part, maybe. Of course, a ridiculously attractive woman is only worth all the admiration when it comes to bed. Other than that—“

You cut him off, disgusted. “You’re despicable. She’s your wife. Have some respect, will you?” 

Chanyeol said nothing, but you could see something dark simmering in his eyes. You stood up as your station arrived, and he stood up with you. “What, you get off at the same station as me?” you asked, surprised.

“My studio’s around the corner,” he replied. “Studio?” you asked.

“I’m a music producer,” he said, smiling slightly. You were impressed. “You have quite an interesting life, Chanyeol,” you said, stepping out of the train. 

“You don’t know half of it,” he said, and with a half-hearted wave, he was gone.

An idea was moulding itself into your brain. You weren’t sure whether it was a good one at all, or whether it was even necessary, but you wanted to give it a chance all the same.

And so you were ready for Chanyeol when you saw him the next day. “Give me your number,” you blurted, holding out your phone. He raised his eyebrows. 

“Look, I have this idea. And it’s probably dumb. But I think we could both use some help, you know?” you said. Chanyeol took your phone and entered his number in, smirking. “Well if you want to call it help, by all means, do so,” he said, still smirking as he handed your phone back to you.

It took you a second to realize what he was implying. You glared at him. “Shut up. That’s not what I meant. Meet me at the Starbucks across the station when you’re done with work, okay?”

You were pleasantly surprised when he actually turned up, his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. He was quite attractive, you realized.

“You came,” you said, clearing your throat. Chanyeol grinned, taking the seat across from you. “Only to help,” said slowly, winking. You rolled your eyes.

“I thought about what you said to me the other day,” you started. “About how my eyes look empty, how I seem as if I’m seeking more.”

Chanyeol said nothing. You looked down at your cup of coffee. “And you were right. I’m not happy in my marriage, Chanyeol. I thought once I got married that I would come to love Alex the way he loves me, that I would be happy. But it’s been 3 years and I’m still waiting.”

Chanyeol leaned back in his chair. “And?”

“And from what I can tell, and from what you’ve told me yourself, you aren’t happy with your marriage either,” you said slowly. Chanyeol looked at you expectantly while you paused. 

“So I was thinking...and I think we could help each other,” you said finally, biting your lip. “I need a friend, Chanyeol. I need someone who can relate to what’s happening in my life. And...I think it should be you.”

Chanyeol let out a short laugh. “And what exactly is this friendship going to do for either of us, hm?”

You swallowed. “Don’t you want to fix your marriage?” Chanyeol hesitated. “If I say yes?”

“Then I’ll help you,” you said. “I’ll help you, Chanyeol. And you can help me fix mine.”

Chanyeol sighed. “Alright. Fine. Let’s do it, then. Let’s make things right, together,” he said. 

You let out a relieved breath. “Together.”

And so began Fix Your Marriage 101.

You and Chanyeol met everyday, exchanging advice at the station, on the train, at the café after work. You telling him how to treat his wife better, him telling you be less uptight and to try and understand your husband better.

“It wouldn’t hurt you to let your hair down a bit,” he said one day, while the two of you were walking along the streets leading back to your apartment block. “This Alex of yours, he likes parties?” You nodded, sighing. “He owns an event management firm. He basically lives and breathes parties.”

“Ah. Then it’s not so wrong of him to expect you to go along with him for a few,” said Chanyeol. “What about you, then?” you shot back. “Do you go to Tia’s shows? Do you show her how much you care, how you’re proud of her and that you’ll support her no matter what?”

Chanyeol was silent. “Exactly. I think we both know what we need to do,” you said, knowingly.

And so you took his advice. In fact, you decided to throw Alex one of his much loved parties yourself, for his birthday as a surprise.

You spent the week planning it, with Chanyeol helping you buy decorations. He even helped you put them up in your apartment, when Alex was out. He seemed uncomfortable with it at first, being in your house when your husband wasn’t. But when you insisted that of course it was only to help you decorate, he gave in.

He sat on your couch, unwillingly blowing up balloons, his cheeks puffed up, his hair over his eyes. You found yourself smiling as you looked at him. When he locked eyes with you over the balloon, you quickly looked away, feeling embarrassed to have been caught staring.

You grabbed the streamers, climbing up onto a chair to stick them up onto the walls. Infuriatingly, you couldn’t seem to be able to stick the tip of the last one, and you stretched as far as you could, groaning as your arm strained itself, your foot at the edge of the chair. And before you knew it, your foot slipped. 

You yelped in surprise, trying to hold on to something, anything, to stop your fall. And then you felt a pair of strong arms wrapped around your waist, steadying you, lowering you onto the ground. You looked up in surprise.

Chanyeol was gazing down at you, his lips parted. You felt an odd skip of your heart beat. You were suddenly acutely aware of the way he was holding you, the scent of his aftershave, the way his breaths were uneven.

You quickly pulled away from him, feeling your face grow hot. He cleared his throat. “You honestly might be the clumsiest person I’ve ever met,” he said, laughing awkwardly.

“Do you—do you want to come to the party too?” you asked suddenly. Chanyeol rubbed the back of his neck. “Um. And who exactly would you introduce me as?”

His question caught you off guard. “My friend,” you said slowly. Chanyeol looked away. “Nah, it’s okay. Just let me know how it goes, yeah?” he said.

“Yeah. Of course,” you replied, suddenly awkward.

The party turned out to be a huge success. Alex was genuinely surprised to find all of his friends there, popping champagne and handing him presents.

His eyes lit up when he saw you shyly standing on the side. “Baby, you did this for me?” You nodded. “Happy Birthday, Alex.”

He pulled you in for a kiss as his friends cheered, and in your head you thanked Chanyeol for his help. You’d finally scored a goal. You’d made Alex happy, and you felt happy.

Except, for the rest of the evening, you found yourself wishing that he was with you to celebrate this tiny victory. 

“You’ll never believe what Alex told me yesterday,” you piped when you saw Chanyeol the next week. “His company is organizing a charity fashion show here next week. And he very excitedly informed me that Tia Park is going to be on the runway.”

Chanyeol tilted his head. “What a strange sort of coincidence.”

“I know!” you said excitedly. “And this is the perfect opportunity for you to make your move. You have to come to the show and support her. She’ll be so pleased.”

“Oh I don’t know—”

“Nope. You have to come. Surprise her. Wear your best tux, alright?” you said, patting him on the shoulder. “Let’s show everyone how romantic Tia Park’s husband really is.”

You managed to convince him, but he dragged you into taking him shopping for a tux, because apparently, he didn’t have one.

“I can’t believe you’re married to a model and don’t own a decent tuxedo,” you said, sighing as he held out one to show you in the store. “I don’t go to many fancy parties,” Chanyeol said, shrugging, and went inside the changing room.

Your breath caught in your throat when he came out, the expensive black material fitting him perfectly, as if it were made for him. He looked so different from his usual casual hoodie and jeans attire, that his handsomeness struck you all at once.

He glanced at you as he adjusted the blazer, grinning when he saw you staring. “What, do I look that good?”

You coughed. “You clean up nicely, Yeol,” you said. He seemed startled at the sudden use of a nickname. “What, does no one call you that?” you asked, suddenly regretting what you’d said. “Tia used to. A lot,” he said, smiling slightly.

Right.

That weekend, Alex was a nervous wreck because of the show. You tried your best to calm him down and assure him that everything was going to go smoothly, but he wasn’t having any of it, instead lashing out and making a fuss.

You were, quite frankly, fed up. 

You put on your best dress for the event, and did your hair and makeup properly for once. Of course, you couldn’t compare to any of the gorgeous models that were going to walk down the runway there. Especially Tia Park.

That brought your mind back to Chanyeol. You hoped he was okay, that he would turn up and that everything would go according to plan. Not that there was really a plan. All he had to do was be there and look happy for his wife.

Once you reached the venue, Alex disappeared from your side, rushing backstage to ensure nothing was wrong. The place began to fill up with people, all posh and important looking, dressed to their finest.

You craned your neck around to search for Chanyeol, but you couldn’t see him. You pulled out your phone and sent him a text.

And then it was finally time for the show. You took your seat next to your husband, still praying that Chanyeol would turn up.

The models began to walk down the runway, one after another, all donning clothes that were later going to be auctioned off, with the money all going to a charity. Trendy music blared in the background.

You smiled and clapped as the models posed, and so did Alex, seemingly now relaxed to see things going smoothly enough. “See, I told you you’d do a good job,” you whispered to him, and he squeezed your hand in thanks.

And then finally, the star of the show, the most popular model in recent years, Tia Park, strutted out onto the runway.

You’d seen countless pictures of her, of course, but seeing her in real life, doing her thing, was something else entirely. She was stunning. Tall, ultra slim, and insanely graceful. Her raven black hair flounced over the shoulders as she walked, her smile radiant and endearing. 

Any guy would fall head over heels for her. Even Alex was staring at her, his lips parted in awe. You smacked his arm to get him back into his senses.

She spun once, posing as the cameras flashed repeatedly. And then she waved and bowed in thanks, as all the other models came back onto the runway. Everyone cheered.

And then, in the corner of your eye, you spotted him. Chanyeol. He’d made his way to a seat in the last row; you could hardly see him. But it was him. You smiled as you saw him clap in appreciation, his eyes on his glowing wife.

After the show, there was a buffet dinner. The guests all began to disperse, talk, and mingle. Alex introduced you to countless people, and you smiled and talked to everyone politely. 

But only Chanyeol was on your mind. 

And then finally, you saw him. He was with Tia, and she looked incredibly happy. “I can’t believe you surprised me like this, Yeol! You hate events like these,” you heard her say. You felt a jolt as you heard her call him by his nickname.

Chanyeol smiled at her. “For you, darling. Of course I came.” 

You caught your breath as he glanced towards you and Alex, and you locked eyes with him. He looked dashing.

“Babe, let me introduce you to Tia Park,” said Alex from beside you. You averted your eyes from Chanyeol as you approached them, Alex greeting Tia with a typical cheek-to-cheek kiss. “Tia, this is my wife, Y/N,” said Alex, and you put on your brightest smile. 

“It’s lovely to meet you, Tia. You absolutely stole the show,” you said, and Tia smiled modestly. “You’re too kind,” she said. “Oh, this is my husband,” she said, turning to Chanyeol, who to your surprise, was still looking at you. Your heart thumped.

“Trust me, it’s rare to find him at any of my shows,” she joked, and Chanyeol smiled. “It’s nice to meet you,” he said, his voice low as he shook Alex’s hand. His gaze brushed over you, once, and his lips lifted slightly. 

You wanted to talk to him so badly, for it to be the just the two of you. You didn’t understand why it had suddenly become so hard for you to speak, and why he was acting so cold towards you.

And then Tia was whisking him away with her, to introduce him to people, your chance of talking to him gone.

You couldn’t fathom why your chest had tightened so much, suddenly. You let out a breath you hadn’t even realized you’d been holding. You tore your eyes away from Chanyeol and Tia, an uncomfortable prick in your heart. 

You should be delighted, shouldn’t you? For your husband, who’s show had been a success; for your friend, who had finally made his wife happy? 

Then why did you feel as though something inside you had broken?

The next time you met Chanyeol, you almost wished you hadn’t. Something about him was confusing you, and you didn’t like it. And you were weirdly hurt by his behavior at the fashion show. 

Hadn’t you been the one who had persuaded him into going? The one who had picked out his tux, had texted him advice? Admittedly, you’d at least expected him to say something, if not an outright thank you.

But then you had to remind yourself that he had been there for his wife, not you. Who were you, anyway, to compare to the beautiful and successful Tia Park?

And so you didn’t bring up the event at all, when you saw him. And he didn’t talk about it either.

“Hey, if you aren’t doing anything after work, do you want to come see my studio?” he asked suddenly. You wanted to say no. That it was probably a bad idea, because your thoughts were a mess.

But you nodded. “Sure. I’ll stop by.”

And so you did. Chanyeol came outside to greet you. He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not the most amazing place in the world...but it’s my favourite place in the world,” he said, opening the glass door. 

You smiled as you looked around. His hoodie was draped over the large leather chair. All sorts of recording equipment were present, all of which were extremely unfamiliar to you. The only thing you recognized was a guitar, resting on its stand, and the comfy looking couch in the corner.

Chanyeol noticed your face and began to laugh. “What?” you asked bewildered. “You look so lost,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s hilarious.”

You grinned. “Hey, cut me some slack. I’ve never seen the inside of a studio before.”

“Alright, let me show you the works,” he said, pulling back the chair and gesturing for you to sit. He grabbed a stool and sat down next to you.

He spent the next 15 minutes explaining what each little button did, how he could manipulate the sound, how he recorded the music he created. You listened to him with fascination.

But it wasn’t so much because the things he was saying were interesting you; it was him. You were enthralled listening to him speak in earnest, his fingers flying over his laptop to play you his music. You could see his excitement, his passion for doing what he did. It was crystal clear to you he loved creating music. Something about this made you flustered, but you couldn’t put a finger on why.

You didn’t realize you were staring at him until it was too late. He was saying something about his guitar, but you had zoned out. You were staring at him, his warm brown eyes, his sticky-out ears, his plush pink lips. 

And then he stopped speaking, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion at your lack of response. Your heart hammered as his gazed back at you. You had never in your life seen anything so beautiful. You saw him swallow. 

“I-I asked if you wanted to listen to a song I’m working on, on my guitar,” he said finally. You let out a breath. “Oh. Yeah, I’d love to,” you said, trying to shake yourself out of it. What was happening to you?

He picked up his guitar and began to strum, a soft, pleasant melody that seeped through your skin. And when he began to sing, his voice deep and low, you thought you would stop breathing. 

When he stopped, he glanced up at you. “What do you think?”

“Beautiful,” you whispered. You weren’t just talking about the song. 

Chanyeol’s eyes were shining. You felt as though you were falling. 

“You know,” he said, his voice strangely hoarse. “Sometimes, I wish I wasn’t married.”

Your breath caught in your throat. “Why would you say that?” you asked softly. And then he was shaking his head, averting his eyes from yours.

“No reason.”

You decided to avoid Chanyeol for the next week. Which meant asking Alex to drop you to work everyday. A fact he wasn’t too happy about, which meant you taking a cab instead.

You understood, of course, that it was because he was busy. He didn’t have the time to drop you off; it was the truth. But the logical aspect did not stop you from feeling hurt anyway.

He just wasn’t meant for you. You had always known it, deep down. He didn’t make your heart race, your breath quicken. He didn’t make you breathless, nervous, or excited.

Like Chanyeol did.

You felt horribly guilty for even thinking it. But you knew it was true. You were falling for Chanyeol, and you didn’t know what to do about it. 

It was driving you crazy. You couldn’t stop thinking about him, every day, every night. It was wrong. It was so wrong. But you couldn’t help it.

Then one weekend, it was as if everything came crashing down. You had an argument with Alex. A huge one. You hadn’t even realized how it had started. It had been something small, surely, but it had erupted into an unstoppable mess. You, accusing him of being selfish; him accusing you of never having loved him. 

His words had cut you deep. They were too close to home for you to bear. It had been the truth, hadn’t it? You had never loved him, not the way he wanted you to.

You had grabbed your phone and your coat and had left the apartment, your breaths coming in heavy gasps, your hands shaking as you dialled the number of the only person you wanted to see, the only person who would make you feel okay.

You made your way to the subway station, the night breeze ruffling your hair. You were desperately holding in the tears that were threatening to fall. 

And there he was. Standing in the centre of the deserted station, wearing his ever-favourite hoodie. His face was grim.

You stopped a few meters away from him, swallowing. “You came.”

“I was almost not going to,” said Chanyeol. “But then, I decided, I didn’t have to stoop down to your level and avoid you. So I came.”

You felt a lump form in your throat. “I can explain—”

“Explain? Please do,” Chanyeol cut you off. “Explain to me why you’ve been avoiding all my calls, why I haven’t seen you in nearly 2 weeks, why you suddenly decided you wanted nothing to do with me anymore. Go ahead. Explain.”

You voice shook as you spoke. “Why don’t you explain some things too then, Chanyeol? Explain to me why at the fashion show, you looked at me as if I was a stranger, why you pretended as if I didn’t even exist. I want to know.”

Chanyeol narrowed his eyes. “There are so many questions that need to be answered, aren’t there?”

You crossed your arms over your chest, defiantly. “Go on then. Why don’t you answer them for me?”

Chanyeol let out a short laugh. “You want answers? Okay. I’ll give you answers. The 18th of March, 2014. The day I met you for the first time, sitting on that bench in your stupid wedding dress. I remember the exact date, Y/N. In that moment, I felt as though I had known you for years, even though I’d just met you.”

Your mouth fell dry.

Chanyeol’s eyes were blazing. “Every single day, I miss my station on the subway and get off at yours instead, and then take a cab back to my studio. Why? Because it means I get to talk to you for 5 extra minutes. Does that answer your question?”

“Chanyeol—”

“Or the fact that even though we part ways every morning, or we go back to our respective spouses at night, the only thing on my mind is you and your smile?” he said, his voice shaking now. “Tell me, Y/N, are those the answers you wanted to hear?”

A single tear spilled down your cheek. “What are you trying to say?” you whispered, though you knew what he was going to reply.

Chanyeol ran his hand through his hair roughly, his breathing ragged. “I love you, goddamnit! I fucking love you. And you love me too,” he said, his voice rising.

You began to shake your head, the tears spilling in constant streams now, with no intention of stopping. 

“Wh-what should we do?” you stammered through your sobs. Chanyeol’s eyes were moist as he replied. 

“I don’t know, Y/N. I don’t know.”

And with that, you turned on your heel and walked out of the station as fast as you could, brushing at your cheeks roughly to wipe the tears away, even as you cried the entire way home.

He loved you. Chanyeol loved you. And he knew—he knew you loved him too. Had you made it that obvious?

There was no point even thinking about it though, was there? You were married. He was married. You were both being delusional.

But god, did you want him. And now that you knew he wanted you too, it was taking everything in you not go running into his arms.

And so you continued your regime of avoiding him. You were determined to get him out of your head. Even if it meant you secretly cried in the bathroom every night while Alex was asleep.

Your regime lasted a grand total of 10 days. 

On the 10th day, you found yourself standing outside his studio, your hands shaking with the thought of what you’d come to do.

You pushed open the glass door and there he was, sitting in his leather chair, headphones over his ears. You steeled yourself and walked over to him, pulling the headphones off his head.

He swung around in his chair. “What the fu—”

And then you grabbed his face and leaned down, pressing your lips to his. Your mind was spinning.

Chanyeol made a surprised noise at the back of his throat, but his hands came up to hold your waist, and he pulled you down onto his lap. He kissed you back with such vigor that you thought you were going to run out of air to breath, every cell in your body alive.

When you finally broke apart, both of you breathless, your lips swollen, you could hardly believe what had just happened.

“You’re insane,” breathed Chanyeol. “One minute you’re running off crying and I hear nothing from you for like 2 weeks, and the next thing I know I’m being ambushed and kissed like I’ve never been kissed before.”

You blushed scarlet. You attempted to get off of his lap, embarrassed, but he grabbed your arm so that you couldn’t move. 

“I don’t know what came over me,” you mumbled. “I just missed you.”

“I missed you too,” said Chanyeol, his eyes softening. “So damn much.”

“So now what?” you asked, biting your lip. “I think you made that choice by coming here,” he replied. “If you want this, I want this.”

You nodded, pushing down the guilt that was beginning to rise up inside you. “I want this,” you said, with a sense of finality. 

Your heart swelled as Chanyeol smiled, his dimple on display. Whatever the consequences of this relationship were going to be, you decided, you were ready for them.

After that, it was like you were transported into a whole new world. A different universe, where it was just you and Chanyeol. Chanyeol and you.

The days and weeks passed by in a blur, the two of you in your happy little bubble of just being together. You met each other every single day, first on the subway, then for lunch, and then at his studio after you were done with work.

You had never felt this happy before. And it scared you to think that this happiness was scarred by a perilous circumstance.

Because you were cheating. You were cheating on your husband, and Chanyeol was cheating on his wife. This affair the two of you had going on, how long was it going to last, before something went terribly wrong?

For Chanyeol, it was relatively easy, because Tia was travelling so much of the time. But for you, you had to go back home every night and face Alex, something that made you sick to your stomach. The guilt very nearly ripped you up inside; how he was completely oblivious, and how he never suspected a thing.

And then one day, a shockingly close encounter brought the both of you crashing down to your senses.

You were meeting Chanyeol for lunch, not a care in your mind about anything but seeing him again. And you could see him just across the street, a pedestrian streetlight being the only thing separating you. You waved at him excitedly, shaking your head fondly when he held up a huge bouquet of flowers.

He really could be very romantic if he wanted to be.

And then the streetlight turned green, and you began to walk towards him, still smiling. His grin in return was radiant.

And then all of a sudden, you saw a sudden panic wash over his features. You furrowed your eyebrows, confused, as his eyes darted from you to somewhere behind you. 

You were almost there now, about to open your mouth to ask him what was wrong. And then he was tearing his eyes away from you, plastering a smile onto his face.

“Tia!”

You felt your heart stop and you whirled around, praying she hadn’t seen you. You bent your head, your hair falling over the side of your face. Your heart hammered as you realized what could have happened.

“Flowers? For me?” you heard Tia exclaim in surprise. “Chanyeol, when did you get this romantic?”

You felt an uncomfortable lurch in your stomach as you walked away from them, not daring to turn back even once in fear of been seen and recognized.

Later, Chanyeol found you outside the restaurant, his face sad as he handed you a single rose. “Managed to save one for you,” he said softly, kissing you on the cheek.

You attempted to smile. You hoped it hid the raw guilt that was eating away at you inside.

One weekend, Alex surprised you by taking you on a spontaneous trip. This mean you couldn’t talk to Chanyeol at all, and even though you wanted to, a part of you was almost glad to have the time away from him.

It meant that atleast for a few days, you were relieved of the constant gnawing guilt.

Alex was surprisingly sweet the entire time, agreeing to do whatever you wanted to. It was his apology, he said, for the way he had behaved that night when you’d fought.

Oh, that fateful night.

His sudden change in attitude was only making you feel worse. You were committing the worst sort of crime possible in a marriage. You had never fathomed that you would be that person; the person who mercilessly cheated on their spouse and didn’t care.

Chanyeol was in a strangely bad mood when you arrived back home. You went to see him at the studio as soon as you got back.

“How was your weekend with Alex?” he asked, his tone sarcastic. “Quite nice, actually,” you replied, narrowing your eyes. “What about you? Spent some time with Tia?”

“Yes I did, actually,” he said nonchalantly. “I had forgotten how good she was in bed.”

Your mouth turned sour. “What did you just say?”

Chanyeol raised his eyebrows. “What? That I slept with my wife?” You let out a short laugh. “You’re joking, right?”

“Why, does that bother you?” he asked, something dangerous simmering in the depths of his eyes. “Of course it fucking bothers me,” you snapped. “Why are you being such a dick?”

Chanyeol shrugged. “Don’t act like you expect me to believe that nothing happened between you and Alex on your little weekend getaway.”

You felt something nasty unfurl inside you. “You’re right, actually. We did sleep together. And it was the best I’ve had in awhile, let me tell you,” you said.

It was a lie. You hadn’t slept with Alex in a long time.

But the effect it had on Chanyeol was instantaneous. A muscle ticked in his jaw as he clenched it, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. You saw a glint in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“What?” you piped, knowing perfectly well that you should shut up. “Did that bother you, Chanyeol?”

His nostrils flared, once. And then he was grabbing you by the arm and pulling you to him. You gasped as you felt his fierce grip on you. “Yes, it bothered me,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “I don’t want the image of him even touching you in my mind. You’re mine, Y/N. Only mine.”

And then he was crushing his lips to yours, with an urgency that you had never experienced before. His hands wound up in your hair, and you let him part your lips with his tongue, shuddering as the sensation overwhelmed you.

Before you knew it, he was lowering you onto the couch, his shirt already on the floor, his hands grabbing at yours to get it off of you. “Mine,” he whispered, in between wet kisses down your throat. “Only mine.”

The small voice in your head that was warning you that you were going too far was completely shut out by the blinding desire you felt, only wanting him to get closer to you, to hear him whisper your name, to feel him unravel in pleasure because of you.

And so you let it happen. You let your body talk instead of your mouth, you let yourself cross that one final line you had established you would never ever cross.

And later, as you lay there with him, tangled up on the couch, his fingers drawing lazy circles into your shoulder, you had never felt more alive, more in love, or more guilty, all at the same time.

It was another 2 months before you realized that it had to stop. Everything.

Ever since that night, when you’d crossed the forbidden line and ended up sleeping with him, nothing had been the same for you. You still loved him, you loved him so much it hurt, but you couldn’t carry on like this in secret, breaking Alex’s heart without him even knowing it.

The guilt was going to kill you.

“We can’t keep doing this,” you whispered, one night at Chanyeol’s studio, the place that had almost become a second home to you by now.

Chanyeol nodded, clenching his fists. “I love you, so much,” you said. “But I want to love you properly—not like this. Hiding, lying; the constant fucking guilt that eats at me every single day...it’s too much,” you said shakily, a silent tear dripping down your cheek.

Chanyeol was silent as you gently took his hand. “We have to tell them the truth,” you said, biting your lip.

Chanyeol’s eyes widened, “I’m going to tell Alex the truth,” you said again, wiping the tears from your face. “And I’m going to tell him that it’s over, that it’s not going to happen again.”

Chanyeol ripped his hand away from yours. “You want to throw this all away?” he asked, his voice shaking. “You want to throw this away for a marriage that’s already far past saving? There’s no hope for us anymore, Y/N, there’s no hope for our goddamn marriages. You can’t fix what’s already broken,” he said.

You knew it was true. 

But you knew what had to be done. “I don’t want to break any hearts,” you whispered. “Please understand, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol looked away, his eyes glistening with angry tears. “You already have. You’ve broken mine.”

You couldn’t tell him you’d broken yours, too. Beyond repair. 

With one last lingering kiss, you said goodbye. 

Nothing had ever hurt as much as seeing the dejection on his face as you left him. For what you believed was for good.

1 year later.

You were alone. And not just in the way you’d always thought you’d been.

You’d been lying to yourself, naively thinking that there would have been a tiny chance that Alex would have forgiven you, that he would have taken you back.

Of course he hadn’t. He couldn’t have. The utter look of heartbreak and betrayal in his eyes had made it clear enough. He’d asked you to leave.

The divorce had been finalized 2 months later.

So now you were truly alone, living by yourself. You hadn’t dared to contact Chanyeol, hadn’t even informed him that you were now divorced.

It wasn’t until you saw the news article online that you realized.

Tia Park confirms divorce from husband.

He was just as alone as you were, now. It was what both of you deserved, you thought bitterly. You had only brought it upon yourselves, hadn’t you?

You had dragged two innocent people into your mess, had succeeded breaking not one, not two, but four hearts.

And yours had perhaps broken the most of all. 

But it seemed as though fate had another plan for you and for him. Because impossibly, you met him again. 

Running late to work, barely looking up to see where you were going, bumping right into the chest of a tall, lean man with dark hair falling over his eyes.

He took your breath away all over again. “Mind watching where you’re going?” Chanyeol asked, raising his eyebrows.

You couldn’t even reply, too overwhelmed to have him in front of you, after having imagined this moment a countless times in your head.

You ended up going for a coffee.

“I’ve thought about you every single night for the past year,” he said suddenly. “I tried not to. But I couldn’t help it. I thought I would never see you again.”

You swallowed. “I got a divorce,” you said slowly. “Alex left me.”

Chanyeol nodded, looking away. “So now we’re both leading half-lives.”

You laughed despite yourself. “That’s a funny way to put it. A half-life. But it’s pretty accurate. I only feel half-alive everyday.”

“Sounds like you need some help fixing that” said Chanyeol, his lips perking into a slight smile. 

You bit your lip. “What if I say yes?” you asked, mirroring what he’d said to you, all those months ago.

“Then I’ll help you,” he said, leaning forward, his eyes filled with an unspoken hope. “And you can help me. Let’s fix our lives, shall we? Together.”

You let out a breath.

“Together.”

And maybe, just maybe, this time, it would all turn out alright.

A/N: And that’s another monster of a fic done...bit of a taboo issue being dealt with, huh? As always, leave me your thoughts! x

[tomandharriet]

An Indian assault course

If you were trying to design a week in India which aimed to scare off any visitor, it would most likely follow the path we took at the beginning of our second stay in India. A good old bout of Delhi belly aside, I think it’s fair to say we took everything India had to throw at us in our stride the first time around and came out in awe of the place. This next week proved to be a lot more challenging and it all began thanks to Tom’s second booking mishap, which featured an accidental 15 hour stopover in Chennai - all in the name of a cheap flight!

We arrived into Chennai at 5am and caught a taxi to a hotel, of sorts, not too far from the airport. They had kindly agreed to let us use a room for the duration of the day. In the darkness of the night, what we didn’t realise until we woke up slightly disorientated at 1pm, was that we had arrived in an area which felt less developed than the slum we had toured around in Mumbai! Even that had it’s trickle of tourists wanting to visit it! We ventured out to find some food and ate probably the only bad curry we had in India, from a takeaway kitchen which presumably serves other parts of the city with deliveries and wasn’t expecting sit down guests at lunchtime!

We just about got ourselves through the day and eventually arrived into Delhi late at night. Excited based on how much we had loved Mumbai, we were pretty much instantly hit by an ever present wave of disappointment, in the form of heavy air pollution which lingered in the air. Thanks to a tip from Joel & Alecia, we were staying in an area called Hauz Khas (or House of Cards as Harriet calls it) and this was the only real saving grace for Delhi in our eyes. It had a bit of a Berlin / Shoreditch does India feel to it and we enjoyed its liveliness and some great restaurants. And that’s about as far as the compliments for Delhi can go. Oh, the modern art gallery and national railway museum were two good ways to pass time when. Ok that’s all the best bits covered. Pollution aside (which is a pretty big ask to try and forget about) we just didn’t like Delhi. The people lacked the warmth we had encountered everywhere else. Someone tried to scam us when we got to the train station, which set the tone! The landmarks were busy and underwhelming. And when we thought we’d come up with a great way to forget about it - even our night at a jazz club turned into an absolute failure. We had our most expensive (and worst) meal in India there, which was a gluten free pizza, presumably gluten free as the base was seemingly made from cardboard. And any hope of the music saving the day was lost when a bumbling German walked on and started introducing his experimental sci-if jazz band, which we couldn’t hear for all the young Indian crowd who were clearly at the jazz club, just to tell people that they had been to the jazz club. It really was like a scene from the Fast Show jazz club. In hindsight we now find the whole thing very entertaining, but we definitely weren’t laughing at the time! To top it all off, we found out that one of our favourite DJs was playing on the night we left Delhi - and it was too late to rearrange our plans.

We’ve come to realise that so much of traveling is about expectations and that experiences can vary greatly, hinging on little more than chance. And due a bit of luck and not expecting much from our time in Agra (other than the Taj Mahal itself) we were pleasantly surprised. In fact you hopefully won’t have to hear too much more negativity from us again. Delhi definitely felt like the only low point we’ll remember. Arriving into Agra was a literal breath of fresh air. With a warm welcome, we were soon enjoying a late dinner on a rooftop which apparently overlooked the Taj Mahal. It was dark so we had to take his word for it then. We woke early, got near the front of the queue and excitedly entered the grounds, waiting for our first glimpse. During the winter months, there is a mist which rolls off the river behind the Taj and creates a truly atmospheric backdrop. As the sun warms the air, this mist dissipates to reveal the Taj in all it’s glory. With such high expectations, we were delighted that the Taj Mahal didn’t disappoint and we spent a couple of hours exploring this vast marble wonder and its beautiful grounds. Yes it was busy, but deservedly so. And once you’ve seen one riddiculous selfie pose here, you’ve seen them all - so we parked that in the back of our minds and just enjoyed it for what it was.

We had heard from a nice English couple that Agra fort was also worth a visit, so we headed there after breakfast and after a bit of uncertainty, we decided to take our first self-chosen tour guide of the trip. Going on nothing more than the outfit he was wearing, we felt like we might be in good hands. Tom’s first impression was that, a bit like Santhosh back in Alleppey, the guide, Kumar, is probably the type of guy who rides a Royal Enfield. We later found out that this strange hunch was infact true. Hiring Kumar turned out to be an excellent decision, as he really brought the place to life with tales of the Maharajahs who had lived there and the invasion attempts which had outlined it’s history. We decided to go along with his recommendation of a visit to an embroidery shop and again we’re pleased we did - they too had a fascinating history, displayed in a mini-museum of their own shop, including many orders from the British royal family and and some beautiful examples of work. Obviously we were also brought here as he works on a commission basis - so hopefully the Christmas tree decoration we purchased helped him out. Even if it was the cheapest thing in the shop! We spent the remainder of the day doing a bit of Christmas shopping for our families and relaxing on our hotels rooftop, which did indeed come complete with a view of the Taj Mahal. Reflecting on a short but sweet visit to Agra, we received a text update to inform us that our night train to Varanasi was running late. We didn’t realise at that point, that we’d end up getting into Varanasi nearly 7 hours behind schedule.

When it comes to the competition for India’s craziest place, Varanasi comes first, with daylight in second place. Our words alone won’t come close to describing everything that Varanasi encompasses, but in short, we’re glad we went, but definitely won’t be going back! It really is a place you’ve got to see to believe. Stepping out of the station felt like going back in time. Varanasi, built up on the banks of the river Ganges, is one of the oldest cities in the world and is regarded as the holiest of 7 sacred cities in Hinduism. The consequence of this, to put it bluntly, is that many Hindus come here to die. And cremations happen out in the open, as bodies are washed in the Ganges before families cremate them at the side of the river. It’s also seen to be good luck to shave your hair off before visiting Varanasi - but unlike many visiting Indians, we passed on this one! Dead bodies aside, Animals roam more freely than anywhere else we’d seen in India, in fact its the only place we had to jump out of the way of a bull beginning its charge. There were goats roaming everywhere and the overwhelmingly tame and loveable street dogs we’d grown accustomed to elsewhere, were visibly aggressive here. Oh and there’s lots of naked people who cover themselves in white paint and get angry if you encroach on their spot during the evening religious ceremony, a Varanasi must see.

Our favourite experience was a sunrise boat trip, which was preceded by a religious ceremony which seemed to be a dress rehersal for the daily evening show we had already seen. Made particularly entertaining by our boat skipper who had skipped bed and come straight from a wedding, on this tour you get the best view of Varanasi’s many ghats (step baths into the river) where locals come to wash and brush their teeth in the same water that you can see families washing the bodies of their loved ones. That evening, back at our hostel, we got into a very interesting conversation about the ethics of photography, a particularly apt topic in a place like Varanasi. It was prompted after seeing a gaggle of tourists photographing a sleeping homeless man by the river and we were speaking to a travel photographer who often has to consider where ‘the line’ of acceptable photography is. We didn’t exactly reach a conclusion, but it’s a conversation which has been food for thought ever since, particularly when visiting remote towns or places with cultural traditions which feel a million miles away from ours and which need treating with sensitivity and respect.

This stretch of India had undeniably tough parts and at times felt like a test of our love for this country. When we found out that our online ticket reservation to leave Varanasi had been unsuccessful (we won’t get into the complex ticketing system) we were faced with the prospect of having to unwillingly extend our stay in Varanasi. At the station we got talking to a couple from London who were on their honeymoon. They looked pretty shell shocked, having flown straight into Varanasi and now having similar problems with trains. But talking to them about their route through so many of the places we’d already been to and loved reminded us just how much India has to offer and how you’ve just got to take the rough with the smooth. It turns out Varanasi is notorious for train delays and an incredibly patient lady who was dealing with a never ending queue of tourists desperate to get out, eventually found us a solution from a relatively local train station. The good news was that we would be leaving later that evening, the bad news was that we had to go back to Delhi!

Food

It’s difficult to pin point exactly what the key differences were between Sri Lankan and Indian curries. We found Sri Lankan food to be much richer in flavour, whether that be down to Sri Lankan’s using more oil or coconut milk in their food or just due to the difference in spices from each country. Sri Lankan food was great but it did start to become quite an endurance towards the end. It’s safe to say we were really looking forward to eating Indian food again, we had really missed it.

Our first meal back in India kicked off to a pretty epic start at a wonderful restaurant, nestled amongst all the higgledy-piggledy buildings of Hauz Khas in Delhi, called Naivedyam. Naivedyam is the offering of food to god just before pooja begins. They quoted in the restaurant that “we in the hospitality business believe that the ‘consumer is god’” and that very much carried through to the whole experience and service of this meal. Even before ordering we were served a hot and spicy lentil drink called Rasam, some poppadoms accompanied with a fresh tomato chutney and a coriander chutney along with ice cold water served out of some very fancy silver jugs. Put it this way, it was like all the service and food ‘freebies’ of a Michelin starred meal at the cost of a boots meal deal.

Tom didn’t hesitate for a minute to order his absolute favourite, masala dosa. Harriet on the other hand went all out (shock) ordering a Naivedyam Tiffin Thali (basically an Indian breakfast thali), which included.....wait for it; a mini toppi dosa, rasam vadai, idly, umpa, curd rice, lemon rice, aloo subji samba, coconut chutney, tomato chutney, pakoda, pickle and kesri bhath (a sweet dish that Harriet may or may not have realised halfway through her meal). The food just kept coming and coming and being refilled if Harriet got anywhere close to finishing anything. Although triggering one hell of a food coma, it was a great fast track way to sample all of the traditional breakfast food, especially the bits we hadn’t already tried. One stand out had to be the rasam vadai, which was essentially like a small light and fluffy savory doughnut. Perfect for dipping in all of the wonderful array of chutneys. It was no surprise we squeezed in two more visits in our short stay in Delhi.

The next part of our trip involved A LOT of traveling on trains, meaning our diet pretty much consisted of chai teas. Tom even tried to make a desperate attempt to leg it onto the platform to get in a cheeky round, only to find the train was moving when it was his turn to be served. Much to Harriet’s relief the desire for chai was overruled by the prospect of being split up in the middle of nowhere India.

Another highlight for the “first leg of the second part of our trip to India” was the dosa cafe in Varanasi (shout out to Alecia and Joel for the recommendation). The restaurant was so small you were made to cram together and share tables with fellow diners. We were sat with a Russian “hard core” traveller it would seem who was shocked that we were only spending 2 months in India. We felt we had to excuse ourselves for having lives to get back to after this trip. Luckily a cow trying to enter the restaurant broke the ice and she warmed up a little.

However, back to dosas, and every type of dosa you could imagine with more variety of fillings we had ever come across. But the real star of the show had to be the chocolate fudge idly served with ice cream. Basically it was the gooiest, sweetest delight of a pudding that was even more of a treat because the base ingredient was rice so Tom could enjoy every last mouthful.

Travel Jukebox - ‘Teen Dream’ by Beach House

For the second week in a row, we had an album from an artist that we had never heard of to look forward to. This time it was from Tom’s big sis, Jo, who has an excellent track record of filtering down musical discoveries and is largely responsible for turning Tom into a music snob from an early age. Jo and Nick enjoyed their own adventure in ‘the East’ several years ago at a similar life stage and it was this album which apparently soundtracked much of their trip.

The album has been a real grower, which may not sound like a compliment but it really is when it turns into an earworm of an album. It starts very strongly with ‘Zebra’ and ‘Silver Soul’ both tracks which sound so familar, despite not recognising Beach House. On first listening, maybe it was the wrong mood, maybe it was the long, hot bus journey with a driver who thought he was Lewis Hamilton, but much of the rest of the album seemed to mould into one. But with further listenings, of which there have now been many, each track has really grown on us and familiarity has given this album a real warmth, making it easy to see how it became an album to soundtrack a trip.

Beach House describe themselves as a Dream Pop duo, which explains better than we could, why their music seems so apt for traveling. In fact, this was exactly the type of album which made us realise just how difficult it is to write about music, when sometimes there’s not much more to say than it put a smile on our faces and stuck with us and there’s a good chance you’ll like it too!

TLDR; We thought Mumbai was the deep end, but that’s the baby pool compared to Varanasi..!

[realrhythmskrp]

DISPATCH, 03/30/17: BKB Entertainment has officially released information about leader and main vocalist, Park Aejeong, also known as Aej, on silverBEAT’s official website! Aej is an ‘89 liner and has been beloved by fans since her debut in 2010. Find out more about Aej below!

I, Park Aejeong, have read and understand the terms and conditions as my position of silverBEAT leader and agree to honor the standards that are to be expected of me as an employee of BKB Entertainment.

OOC INFORMATION

Preferred name: Trice

Pronouns: She/her

Timezone: PST

IC INFORMATION

Faceclaim: Park Kyungri

Name: Park Aejeong

Stage name (if applicable): Aej, pronounced “Edge” ; her unofficial stagename by fans (and her nickname within the group) is “AJ”

Idol concept: Her concept originally started out as cute (which she hated immensely), but as silverBEAT’s concept started to evolve, so did hers; BKB began to market her as a confident, proactive go-getter, passionate and fiery, who would do anything for her group. While this last part is true, the rest is not; Aejeong, while protective of her group members, is calm, levelheaded, gentle, and above all, tired; she hates the slave contract BKB has tricked the group into, and is one of the members who intends to sue upon release (and also talked some of the re-Fuse trainees out of debuting with the group).

Birth date and age: December 3, 1989 (age 27)

Company name: BKB Entertainment

Group Name (if applicable): silverBEAT

Group Position (if applicable): Leader and main vocalist

Strengths: Aej is known for her power vocals. She can belt out a note at seemingly any range and hold it for ages. She sings just as well live as she does on recording, and can move from note to note with a grace and ease that few possess. It is because of this that she has begun a solo career, and despite rumors surrounding her, she still garners respect as a vocalist. Her dancing skills are well-developed, and she never misses a step.Additionally, her skills as a leader are rather refined; she puts her group ahead of herself, taking extra work where necessary in cleaning the practice rooms, cooking dinners and breakfasts, and putting herself in the line of fire to negotiate extra free time with their manager, all so that the others can get a few extra minutes of sleep.

Weaknesses: While Aej isn’t a “bad” dancer per se (in fact, she took ballet as a child and can dance en pointe; she had wanted to be the main dancer pre-debut), she’s rather unenergetic due to the jadedness that surrounds her and her career. She tries her best to put on good shows, but it’s difficult for her to hide how angry she is that she’s locked into BKB for another three years without her consent. Additionally, her variety show skills are lacking, as her blunt, deadpan honesty and scathing, subtly-concealed jabs at BKB’s CEO tend to cause a few awkward laughs while hosts and fans try to decipher if she’s serious or not (only her group members would know that she is, indeed, very serious). This has earned her the reputation of “Ice Queen” and is the cause of most of her attitude scandals; despite the fact that she respects everyone in the company except her dishonest CEO, most netizens consider her a diva. She is mostly indifferent to these scandals.

Positive traits: Gentle, nurturing, playful, patient

Negative traits: Proud, critical, bitter, jaded

PERSONAL HISTORY

.01—- her earliest memories are the ones of her mother, her sister, and the star shining its light outside the window. that star holds a special place in her heart, brightening and dimming with a fluid grace to be admired. she doesn’t let her mother draw the curtains, and it paints itself beneath her eyelids when she sleeps. she still remembers it when she twirls alone across her practice room’s wooden floors in the dead of night, humming the melody to whatever song dances through her mind.

.02—- her mother is a flighty, whimsical woman who tears up when she talks about aejeong’s father (“the other woman made much more sense than i did, i suppose”) and her sister was an infant when aejeong was four. aejeong protects her fervently and learns to cook and clean to care for her better when their mother is away. they are as close as family can get. their dark hair tangles together when the sounds of their laughter at a moonlit sofa in their seoul-stationed café, and they listen to music that is just as eccentric as their matriarch. that music, too, nests itself in the warm space of aejeong’s memory, and the star from years ago begins to glow to its tune.

.03—- they enroll aejeong in the ballet studio that opens down the street when she is six, and she takes to it like a bird in flight; her toes spin her around and around like the earth around the sun.

.04—- aejeong grows disciplined with her form and observant with watching the technique of the older ballerinas. she is shy among the reflections of stocking-clad legs, and more awkward than the other students. it takes her far longer to learn the dances than the rest of them. if she is a star, then she is dim.

.05—- yet when she does learn, she moves with the fluidity of a petal in the wind. she works to land each step precisely. eventually, her late hours dancing catch her up to the rest and propel her ahead. she is en pointe by the time she is twelve. she, too, can now dance along to the starlight.

.06— dance makes her quiet, her mother jokes sometimes. now she’s always watching the customers come and go from the café and what they leave on their plate or at the bottom of their mugs. aejeong can remember the orders for the customers even when they don’t visit in a month, and they praise her on bringing their coffees so efficiently. she observes the arch of their feet and picks out the flaws in the way their knees bend, even though their form of dance is flitting in and out their door. it’s quite distasteful, and oftentimes she wishes she was surrounded by other stars rather than being the only one.

.07—- bkb entertainment is holding auditions. she is thirteen and has had enough of being the only star in sight (occasionally she reprimands herself for this arrogant train of thought). she dances to the song to which she’s practiced for months before the audition and doesn’t miss a beat, her body in tune from her head to her heels. then,

.08—- ‘can you sing?’

.09—- and a heavenly sound comes out of her mouth, one that sounds like a siren song and it hits her with mild surprise (besides impromptu karaoke nights with her mother and sister, she hasn’t sung a day in her life) and just a little bit of dread; she is supposed to become a main dancer. she will not be the main vocalist for any group, she will not be the main vocalist for any group, she will not be the main vocalist for any group—

.10—- ‘congratulations. we believe you will be the perfect main vocalist for a future group.’

.11—- she just about dies right then and there, but beggars can’t be choosers; maybe they’ll realize that she’s not worth being a vocalist. but much to her chagrin, the longer she trains, the better she becomes at singing, and the farther she gets from her goal of main dancer. she doesn’t have it in her to fail on purpose, so she gets closer to the position of main vocalist. and yet she hopes.

.12—- and fate, of course, has it out for her. it’s announced when she is eighteen that she will be the leader of a brand new group, silverBEAT . . . and the main vocalist. she secretly prays that the group will fail, and she will have another chance at the position of main dancer in a different one.

.13—- as expected, she is evaluative of the prospective members when they first meet. she can see the flaws in their trades as well as she can see the flaws in her own. but she also sees the beauty behind the little things the other members do, and with a satisfied smile, she decides that this group will be perfect for now.

.14—- it is far easier to be comfortable around them once she gets to know them. she can joke and laugh and play in their presence as if she has known them for years, and she takes the skills she learned from caring for her sister and applies it to them. despite this, she feels guilty as her prayer is not granted; not only does silverBEAT not disband, but they become the most popular group in the industry. a dancer position is even farther from her than she could possibly imagine; who would dream to let her change positions so far into her career?

.15—- but her group is enough. she may hate their cute concept with a passion. yet even when she grimaces from the far back positions in their performance formations, she passes the flashes of teeth off as smiles. she cares for her group and thanks the star through her window that they did not disband as she had hoped. but still, she has heard things about other companies like mirage; of course a visually-oriented company like them will appreciate dancing skills like hers. she is not an idiot. she knows that bkb is treating her unfairly, and plans to switch out as soon as their contract ends.

.16—- then 2014 rolls around, and her beloved ninth member and fellow vocalist applies for a contract termination. aejeong tries to hide her disappointment; she’d hoped, at least, that she would stick around till the end of the contract three years down the road. but she holds her tongue; she understands why one might want to leave early, what with how dangerous bkb is. this, unfortunately, manifests in aejeong ignoring her soon-to-be ex-member, and aejeong is heartbroken to learn, after the girl’s official exit from the group, that too many believe aejeong hated her and kicked her out.

.17—- she doesn’t mind. no, that’s a lie: she does. it hurts to think that she could hate any group member, not when she watches them make their acting or modeling debuts, or when she buys her ex-member’s brand new solo debut on her phone and listens to it every night when she makes dinner. perhaps she was critical of them at first, perhaps she wanted nothing to do with them at first, but that doesn’t matter; they are now her little sisters, the ones she’d protect with everything she is. she soon finds that that even means protecting them from their company.

.18—- because it is now 2017, and bkb springs them with a revelation of fine text that had apparently been in their contract since 2014. (numbly, aejeong wonders if she should have left with their ninth member.) she could collapse with pain, but she can’t stand to cry in front of them; she is already a failure of a leader, a fake main vocalist, a disappointment who couldn’t protect her group from three extra years of long nights and health-threatening schedules. she goes home and weeps with her sister and mother, curses their ceo. silverbeat’s concept has long since changed from their hated cute one, but despite this, aejeong can’t find it in her to keep her energy. when they coerce her into a solo debut, she doesn’t flinch, completely numb to the dishonesty that is this company. she no longer cares about performances— all her time and resources will go into keeping her group guarded from the hell that is three more years (just three more years, three more years). even if she can’t join mirage afterward, even if bkb killed her passion for dance long ago, park aejeong holds out hope for the comfort that her seven little sisters will continue their careers as unscathed as she can keep them.

[pizza-is-my-buziness]

Today I watched Zootopia with my class. And today I talked to @plinysabout the necessity of a Zootopia AU.

And today @plinys made my whole life better by making an amazing aesthetic, so I just had to write a little ficlet to go with it. It’s based off this scene and I really want to write more in this AU? So?

Fitz is embarrassed to admit that he’s out of breath by the time he catches up with her, but in his defense, he’s a bit out of practice since graduating from the academy. Parking duty hasn’t exactly offered a lot of opportunities to go chasing after criminals or beautiful women. Or a beautiful woman who might also be a criminal.

“Hey!” Fitz calls when he’s finally on the same side of the street as the woman. Ophelia, she’d said her name was, assuming she’d been honest with him for at least that portion of their conversation. “Hey! Wait!”

Ophelia pauses, a half second’s worth of hesitation that allows Fitz to catch up with her, putting a hand on her shoulder. She turns back to face him, smiling brightly. The same smile she’d used hours earlier, when their paths had crossed the first time. “Officer Fitz!” She says just as brightly. “I didn’t think I’d be running into you again! What’re the odds?”

“What are the odds,” Fitz begins, taking a breath to steady himself and attempt to regain some of his composure, “that you would also be a criminal?” Okay, not his best lead-in but he’s still trying to get his bearings on the situation. Ophelia looks at him, raising both her eyebrows. “After I stuck my neck out for you.”

Ophelia crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not following, officer,” she tells him. “You’re going to have to run all this by me again.”

Fitz looks at her pointedly, trying to remember the intimidating tactics he’d learned during his time in the academy. He’d never made top marks in anything there, especially not anything that required him to throw his weight around -literally or metaphorically speaking. “That guy from earlier, the one I stopped from harassing you…he wasn’t really harassing you, was he?”

“Believe it or not,” Ophelia says dryly, “women don’t appreciate being cat-called on street corners.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Fitz protests. “I saw you two together again later. The same routine, only this time, you swiped the wallet of the poor guy who stepped in to help you.” Ophelia opens her mouth to protest and Fitz interjects, “I saw you do it. Don’t try to lie.”

She rolls her eyes. “It wasn’t just that guy,” Ophelia tells him sweetly, giving him a look.

It takes Fitz several beats of silence to get her meaning. He reaches toward the back of his pocket, only to find himself coming up empty. No wallet. He has the sinking feeling that if he’d kept his badge strapped to his belt, she would have swiped that too.

Fitz looks up at Ophelia, sputtering a protest. “What…what are you…how did you…”

“It’s called a hustle, sweetheart,” Ophelia corrects, holding his wallet back out to him. “That one was for free.”

Fitz snatches the wallet back from her, stuffing it back into his pocket. “I could arrest you.”

Ophelia shrugs. “But you won’t,” she tells him without a hint of doubt to her tone. “Because it’s your…what? First week on the job?” She flicks the brim of his hat and Fitz reaches up to jam it back into place. “You still have to make a good impression, after all.”

“I’m pretty sure arresting a petty criminal would make a good impression,” Fitz retorts.

“Petty,” Ophelia repeats, frowning slightly. “I’m insulted. But, sorry I can’t help you, Officer Fitz,” Ophelia says with another shrug. “You have no proof that I’ve done anything wrong. So consider this your first lesson in real police work.”

Ophelia turns on her heel and starts back in the direction she’d been heading before Fitz had caught up with her. He quickens his pace, cutting her off before she can get too far. She looks mildly annoyed with him now.

“I went to the police academy,” Fitz tells her through gritted teeth. “I am an officer of the law. And I will uphold the law-”

“I’m sure you will,” Ophelia assures him. “And you’ll do it while wearing that stylish vest.” She points to the neon yellow and orange vest he’s worn over his uniform for the past several days while patrolling the city, handing out parking tickets and helping drivers jump their batteries. “I feel safer already.”

Fitz exhales slowly through his teeth, trying to resist the urge to handcuff her and drag her down to the station. Just to wipe that smug look off her face.

“Listen, what you’re doing is illegal and-”

“I’ve been doing this my whole life,” Ophelia assures him. “A lot longer than you’ve been here in the big city trying to make a name for yourself as a police officer. So why don’t you leave this type of thing to the professionals and come find me again in a few years when you’ve got the training wheels off your meter tricycle. Okay?”

Fitz feels his face turn crimson as he sputters for a response and finds himself unable to say anything at all. Which, unfortunately, only seems to encourage Ophelia. She smiles at him, the same sugary sweet smile she’d used before when he’d seemingly come to her aid. “But thanks for earlier, officer,” she tells him with a wink. “I appreciate your help.”

Fitz feels utterly at a loss as he watches her walk away, taking with her the last bit of the dignity he’d had left after writing parking tickets for three days.

The most embarrassing part is that Fitz lets her go because he’s not entirely sure he could survive another round of going head-to-head with her. A man’s got to know his limits, after all.

[skinnydrunkhoe]

Your twenties are a time to go on adventures, try everything once, fall in love, drink too much, and grow into the person you are meant to be. Whether you are going backpacking for the summer, or just spending a week or two exploring a new country, traveling helps you to expand your mind and find new respect for people of different cultures.

I followed my heart all over the world for most of my twenties. I believe that traveling in your twenties is the most fun when you steer clear of fancy hotels and opt for social hostels, cheap eats, and wild parties. You can do the fancy thing in your later years! I’ve been living in Europe on and off for five years now, and these are my picks for the best cities to visit in Europe during your freedom years. Since we can’t really travel at the moment, it’s fun to spend some time planning the next big trip.

Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona is the place for culture, food, and lots of fun. It’s a hotspot for staying up all night in nightclubs, roaming winding streets with your friends, and lounging the day away at the beach.

There is so much to see and do in Barcelona, you could easily spend several weeks in the city. I would recommend a stay of at least three nights, to ensure you have a proper taste of what it has to offer. Check out the seemingly never ending shopping on La Rambla, explore the hidden vintage shops down the winding side streets, and try tapas everywhere you go. Catch a tan on the beach before heading out to have a few drinks and getting your boogie on in the late night clubs. If history is your thing, there are museums all over the city to stop by, and historic cathedrals and monuments to cool down in. There is really something for everyone.

Exploring Gaudi’s Park Guell

Where to Stay: St. Christopher’s Inn – Central hostel with a bar/restaurant attached; book directly on their website for a discounted rate

Where to Eat: Casa do Acai – Brunch; fresh acai bowls and salads Quimet y Quimet – Lunch and dinner; standing room only authentic tapas and wine La Malandrina – Dinner; affordable steak house 

Where to Drink: Nevermind – Cheap happy hour beers; has an indoor skate park!  Two Schmucks – Cocktails; small cocktail bar with incredible drinks and bartenders

What to Do: Magic Fountain of Montjuic – Gorgeous fountain that dances along with music La Sagrada Familia – Gaudi’s famous unfinished church with stunning views inside; book online for discounted tickets and shorter wait times

The magic fountain in action

  Check out all of the trips and experiences offered by Stoke Travel while you’re in the city. They run boat parties and nights out that are the perfect way to meet like-minded young travelers.

Budapest, Hungary

Ahhhh Budapest. I’ve spent several weeks in this city, and yet have so much left to see. It’s a city unlike any other, and it’s so affordable, making it a perfect destination for twenty-something travelers. Again, I would recommend spending at least three nights here to soak it in.

I recommend staying at one of the many party hostels in the city. They can take you along on one of their legendary bar crawls to all of the hidden hot spots in the city. It is important to stay safe in Budapest, as the city is not known for being particularly safe.

Budapest has a rich, turbulent history that is reflected in the architecture and layout of the city. Catch a free walking tour to get your bearings on your first day in the city, before heading out into the nightlife. Enjoy a drink in the spas, watch live music in one of the ruin bars, and ride the Jager train in your hostel’s basement.

Embracing my inner festival girl at Sziget 2016

  Where to Stay: Grandio Party Hostel – The king of Budapest party hostels; keep an open mind and you’ll have a ball

Where to Eat: Trofea Grill – All you can eat… and drink, for about 12 Euros. Enough said. Bors Gastro Bar– Located right next to Szimpla Kert, this soup and sandwich shop is notorious for its quality, cheap eats. Cash only, and very small, but very worth it.

Where to Drink: Szimpla Kert – An eclectic indoor/outdoor bar where you can enjoy a beer while sitting in a bathtub

What to Do: Sziget Festival – Seven days of music, sunshine, parties, and art; one of the most affordable music festivals in Europe; August Szechenyi Spa Baths “Sparty” – It’s a party, in a spa. You’ve gotta try it.

Berlin, Germany

Burgermeister, my long lost love

After I worked at Oktoberfest in 2016, I took a cheap Flixbus up to Berlin and stayed for almost two weeks. Berlin is one of the most hip places I have ever been. The people in Berlin are just so cool. There is an abundance of art, cool bars, history, and great food. The nightclubs are open 24 hours, and people tend to be very free and open about nudity and sexuality inside. 

I’d recommend staying in Berlin for 5-7 days. There is so much to explore, you would have an amazing adventure every single day. From the traditional stuff, like walking the Berlin wall‘s art gallery and visiting Checkpoint Charlie, to the more unique experiences in the clubs and abundance of abandoned buildings, there is really something for everyone. And as an added bonus, I found that Berlin is actually quite cheap.

Checkpoint Charlie

Berlin Wall

Where to Stay: 36Rooms Hostel– Affordable hostel in a good location in East Berlin. It’s surrounded by bars and restaurants and is a good base camp for exploring the city. 

Where to Eat: Burgermeister– I literally ate here for breakfast and lunch most days. It is incredible. It’s just a small burger shack in what used to be the toilets of a train station, but it’s some of the best food I’ve had in my life. I still think about it often.

Where to Drink: Berghain– This is a nightclub that is notoriously hard to get into. Even if you don’t get in, its an experience to just try. And if you get in… it’s an experience. (Note: I did not get in.) Klunkerkranich– This is a really unique bar located on the top floor of a parking garage. 

What to Do: Free Walking Tours– My favorite was the Berlin street art tour, but there are tons that cover the historic sites in the city as well Spreepark– So, you’ve got to break in to get into this abandoned amusement park. We did, and it was so eerily cool. The Ferris wheel still turns, on its own… There are a bunch of other cool abandoned places around the city to check out! 

These are just a few highlights from these three incredible cities, entirely based on my own experiences visiting them! I feel as though I barely scratched the surface with all three places, so please feel free to drop your own recommendations into the comments! Counting the days until we can all travel again… sigh.

    The Best European Cities to Visit in Your Twenties Your twenties are a time to go on adventures, try everything once, fall in love, drink too much, and grow into the person you are meant to be.

[zed-air]

On the Road: 2018 Toronto

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Wagons east! First stop: Toronto.

Visited in: 2004, 2006, 2010, 2018.

Click the “keep reading” link below for blog, photos, and more.

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TRAVEL / ARRIVAL /  LODGING

The flight was the shortest one I’ve taken in years, and not too bad. I spent it reading Kitchen Confidential - a book I’ve wanted to read for years. (Why not start things off in a positive way.) We flew into Pearson Airport, arriving in the mid-afternoon local time. Traditionally, I hate this airport, and their security people tend to hate me. No issues this time around. We took the (new?) train from the airport to Union Station in downtown Toronto. The trip was convenient and comfortable. Once arrived, we walked up to Queen Street for a quick meal before tracking down our Air B&B via streetcar. No issues to speak of. 

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We stayed in a basement suite of an old house, which was well suited to our needs. The suite, though oddly configured, didn’t interfere with or complicate our stay. Good location; good amenities; somewhere we’d gladly stay again if the price doesn’t skyrocket. 

QUEEN STREET / ORIENTATION

My wife and I last visited Toronto in 2010 on the return-end of our honeymoon, again to visit family and to see the first screening of an animated film I’d soundtracked. 2010 was probably my worst experience in the city, and one of many reasons why it took us eight years to return. But, even with such long gaps between visits, it’s refreshing and hopeful that my seemingly-failing memory has as much capacity for orientation as it does for useless trivia. Especially while on Queen Street (either end), I usually knew more-or-less where I was at all times. Various landmarks I’d seen on earlier trips were in the correct spots - those that haven’t moved, anyway....

Sadly, one of my favourite local landmarks is gone now - first a mysterious and abandoned-looking sign with no clues, just ‘CZEHOSKI’, but a few years later a restaurant occupied the space under the same sign. I just read that, after a decade, it closed in 2015 under dubious circumstances. 

BEST BREAKFASTS

The Eggs Benedict at Lady Marmalade were the best I’ve ever had in Toronto. Really excellent and the side of tomatoes is an ideal and underused one with Benedicts - better than the sloppy fruit assortments one typically gets. 

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Toronto has history in pork production, and bacon sandwiches are a good food item to enjoy here. I only got to sample one variety, but Rashers’ Hogtown Sandwich (fried egg, peameal bacon, grain mustard) was excellent.

BEST DINNERS 

Cote de Boeuf was a last-minute substitute when our initial dinner plans for Portuguese food failed. Cote de Boeuf was very full, but open late. We opted to stand outside for 30 mins waiting for a table rather than finding somewhere else, but it worked out alright. Thank goodness their front window is filled with raw meat.  They cook a good steak au poivre, and make the best Old Fashioned I had in Toronto. Ridiculously tiny table, though. 

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Pizzeria Libretto makes good Neapolitan-style thin-crust pizzas, and the prosciutto and arugula pizza I had here was outstanding. Very much like Famoso’s on a good day, but with different varieties. 

OTHER MEALS AND ALMOST MEALS

Shortly after exiting Union Station upon our arrival, we wandered in the direction of our streetcar stop, and ate at the first place where there seemed adequate clearance for ourselves and our luggage. That place was Bannock. The servers were friendly and attentive, and the others really enjoyed their mac & cheese and ribs. We also had very good bannock bread in various preparations with dip as a starter. I ordered the poutine, which started out ok but the small bowl quickly became this dense black hole of heavy food that sat like a rock. A crisp local lager helped move things along. 

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I met a family friend for lunch at Rodney’s Oyster House and had raw oysters and smoked fish. The prairies aren’t really an ideal place to eat raw oysters, so I figured I’d have better luck eating them nearer to water and served by specialists. The oysters were good, the smoked fish a bit underwhelming, and the visit overdue. 

Kalyvia on Danforth made us a half-disappointing Greek meal. We love Greek food, but it seemed the heat and/or the food was stacked against us. Most of my family had unhappy tummies after this meal. My lamb shanks were disappointing (stick with Souvlaki, moron...), but the appetizers were enjoyable and flavourful. 

Hollandaise Diner is a favourite of the Toronto-branch of the family. Went there for breakfast one morning, but even though I had maximum customizability there, and made something nearly identical to what was had at Lady Marmalade, I didn’t really enjoy the results. Weak flavours. I’m guessing it was an off-day for their kitchen.  

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Remarkable Bean makes a dependable cup of coffee, according to the missus. 

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Sadly, we didn’t get a chance to eat at the terrifically-named Reliable Fish & Chips (est. 1930).

THE LONG WALK

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After my lunch of oysters, I had the afternoon to myself to explore town. Historically, when I travel I walk everywhere I can, and it helps me learn the place. This walk ended up being far longer, and far less fruitful than I’d hoped. Part of the problem was I’d really underestimated the distance between two stops. 

I have good memories of an instrument shop in Toronto called Capsule Music, and they used to be located near Trinity Bellwoods Park on Queen Street West. Since my last visit, they’ve moved to a different location north west of the old one. Meanwhile, a different shop, Shyboy & Tex Repair Co., appeared to open on the same block, leading me to think they’d taken over the same address. Well, I walked up and down that block and saw no sign of anything resembling an instrument shop, despite Google Maps telling me it was there. Giving up on Shyboy, I decided to walk to Capsule’s new address. This resulted in walking for several unsure kilometres along the edge of Little Italy through various unremarkable residential areas. Due to poor/nonexistent signage, I ended up walking past Capsule by a few blocks before turning back at Dupont Street. This oversight cost me precious time. When I did manage to find Capsule Music, it was two minutes before they closed for the day. The staff seemed annoyed (understandably) that some weird sweaty guy walked in as they were closing (to be fair, their open sign was still on...), but I said hello, looked around, and wished them well. Then, when exiting, I smashed the top of my head on the cement ceiling at their doorway. Thanks to the extreme heat and my already exerted self, I’m not sure of the impact of the impact. Hurt like a bastard, though. 

Now, quite far away from anywhere, I decided to continue walking in the general direction of home. Rather than heading back directly to Queen Street and taking the next streetcar home, I kept exploring - this time walking Bloor Street eastward. This took me through Korea Town and a few other ethnic regions. Bloor is a neat stretch, and one worth exploring more extensively when rested and flush with time. Once I reached Spadina, I turned south and walked (another greater-than-expected distance) to Queen Street, and gratefully sat down in the streetcar home. 

I estimated I’d walked about 10km in total, but Google suggests it was closer to 12km, with nothing to show for it but an aching body and a lost afternoon. Oh well. 

STARSKY

I got invited on a drive just outside of town to check out the terrific Starsky - a European food/goods superstore near Mississauga. One of my favourite things to do when traveling abroad is to explore grocery stores, supermarkets, and other goods vendors to see how they differ. This place was a stupendous place to spend a day exploring products, and their deli is a wonderland unto itself. Plus, they had an impressive selection of loose-leaf teas (some of which shown below).

And hey - free haircuts! (?)

CITY ATTITUDE AND STYLE

For those outside of Canada, Toronto occupies a similar place in the national psyche as London does to the English - the major centre that all the outsider towns resent for being self-important and acting superior. The fact that Toronto also has a reputation for thinking it’s the centre of the universe (NYC Jr.) and the greatest place in Canada often contributes to this resentment. It’s always felt to me to be an insecure place. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, depending on what one does with it.

I didn’t explore the town beyond a few neighbourhoods this time around, but it’s funny how, at least up and down Queen Street, Toronto has gone from NYC Jr. to Brooklyn Jr.. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but certain things were surprising. It almost seems to be mandatory for people in Toronto to have tattoos now, especially the women. Most of the tattoos I saw weren’t particularly artful or well-executed. The clothes were a surprise too. It’s as though the early 90s have come back and the majority of folks are wearing ugly garments that fit badly. And the number of adults wearing shorts.... I don’t even think I own shorts. I think back on what I wore during my first visit here, and how I was criticized for it - this is worse. Of course I’m not saying this applies to everyone in the city, but it was prevalent. 

There are also a lot more people visibly dealing with homelessness, drugs, and mental illness - more than I ever remember seeing on my previous visits - regardless of time of day and in plain sight. Even when walking through the residential parts of Little Italy, an obviously mentally-ill man was walking around mid-day, unhinged, screaming at no one visible to me. I did see some kindnesses toward a few of these people, folks helping where possible, but it was surprising how much more prevalent and visible this is now compared to previous visits. Maybe I just missed it before.

CUTLER AND GROSS

A happy surprise was finding a legitimate Cutler and Gross store. I’d never before seen a place dedicated to the brand in person, but I’ve worn their glasses for a decade. It was nice to see and try on lots of different frames back to back and in different colours. My daughter enchanted the room by putting on an ocular fashion show (a real spectacle!), and the staff were kind to let her try on so many glasses. I found a few pairs I don’t mind, but none of them fit me as well as my current pair (not the ones in the photo below). Didn’t buy anything this time around - maybe I’ll get to return someday when I have benefits again.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I first visited Toronto in 2004, aged 20, and hadn’t done much long-distance traveling before that. Thinking back, apart from an unexpected family trip to Hawaii a year earlier, that was to date the farthest away I’d ever been from Edmonton, and my first trip east. I went to visit family, and to see two brilliant concerts (first Kraftwerk, then Einsturzende Neubauten). During that first trip, I was repeatedly made to feel like a hick by the people and atmosphere of the place. I’ve since traveled to much bigger, and much better cities around the world - some I’ve loved, others I’ve hated - but none of the others left me with that hick feeling which echoed and tainted my subsequent visits.

I have a complicated history with the city. I’ve had some good and bad experiences almost every time I’ve visited. Toronto’s a different vibe, and a different attitude to where I’m from. Several (too many) of my friends who moved there tended to change for the worse. Maybe living in Toronto let them feel comfortable being themselves. Most aren’t friends any longer.

That being said, 2018 was my most-enjoyable visit to Toronto to date, and I left better inclined toward the town. It’s still not my favourite place on Earth, but it was nice to learn I can still enjoy myself there. Good food and good company always help.

[1magazin]

One Mom’s Guide to Visiting The Franklin Institute

If you have kids who love to play, create and explore and live or are visiting the Philly area, then you must stop by The Franklin Institute! Set in heart of historic Philadelphia, the Franklin Institute has been entertaining and delighting children by encouraging them to dive into the world of science. The museum was founded in honor of America’s first scientist, Benjamin Franklin and is one of the oldest and premier centers of science education and development in the country. Today, the Institute continues its dedication to public education and creating a passion for science by offering new and exciting access to science and technology in ways that would dazzle and delight its namesake. This is one mom’s guide to visiting The Franklin Institute, so you can get the most out of your trip next time you are in the area.

The Franklin Institute is one of my kid’s most favorite places to visit and for good reason. It is FULL of amazing exhibits all dedicated to leaving about science, technology, energy and nature. It is the most frequented museum visited in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and helps to inspire kids (and parents!) to get hands on and up close to the amazing world of science and technology.

Before you go

The Franklin Institute is great for any aged kid, but I believed it is more suited for slightly older kids, since it is more science based. It has been open since the 1930’s and is in the heart of Philly, surrounded by parks and near the Philadelphia Art Museum with the “Rocky Steps”. There is a pay as you go parking garage so parking isn’t and issue and two places to eat lunch in the building, so you don’t have to go far for lunch! Admission is what you’d expect for this type of museum and memberships for families are available. There is also two IMAX theaters and additional rotating special exhibits that can be purchased for a few additional dollars per person. Currently they have the Mirror Maze exhibit, which encourages patrons to learn how math is used to unlock the mysteries and majesty of the patterns of our world through a series of engaging interactive elements and immersive experiences, and at the center is a HUGE mirror maze! This was one of our primary reasons of going this last visit because it just looked so fun! I’ll share more about the Mirror Maze exhibit below.

What to bring

The Franklin Institute has everything you could need for a fun filled day, so you don’t have to bring anything but yourselves! There are plenty of quiet spaces with tables so you could bring some water and healthy snacks if your kids need a break form the action- and don’t forget your camera too!

What we did

The Museum has many exhibits for all kid’s interests. It is home to three floors of interactive exhibit zones designed to encourage learning through science and technology. I encourage you to let your child be your guide as you explore their unique environment. We visited every exhibit and had lots of fun in each!

Must-do’s

The Franklin Institute is three floors of fun, it doesn’t matter where you start or where you finish, just be sure you check out everything because it’s all super fun! You enter in on floor 2 which has the most exhibits on it. Here are some of our most favorite exhibits from the whole museum:

Your Brain

Your brain is always changing, find out how and why when you explore Your Brain, The Franklin Institute’s newest—and biggest—exhibition. My kids loved all of the interactive sections in this exhibit, especially the two-story tall neural network climbing structure! It’s lined with a with dynamic lighting system and has sound effects that are triggered by your footsteps.

The Giant Heart

For more than half a century, walking through the Giant Heart has been a rite of passage for children in Philadelphia. No visit to The Franklin Institute is complete without visiting the icon that generations love with all their hearts! The Giant Heart tells you all about how to keep your body and heart in tip top shape and you can learn more about the anatomy and physiology of our own bodies.

The best part, is literally the giant heart that you can climb through to learn all about how the heart works. It’s fun to climb though again and again!

The Franklin Air Show

In this awesome exhibit you can put your piloting skills to the test that introduces you to the history, majesty, science, and technology of powered flight! You can hear the roar of planes overhead as you explore the basic principles of aeronautics and explore life stories and artifacts from the earliest aviation pioneers.

My kids LOVED pretending to fly, learning how to make the perfect paper airplane and getting to sit in a real retired Air Force jet! It was great for all of my kids.

Changing Earth

Love our planet and don’t mind getting your hands wet? Then your kids will love this exhibit! In Changing Earth, you can learn all about the science behind our weather, natural disasters, and how these powerful forces shape our air, land, water, and weather—and constantly transform our planet.

Sports Zone and Sir Isaac’s Loft

These two exhibits are always my sporty kid’s favorites. They’d spend all day in there if I let them! They are both upstairs and have tons of hands-on activities perfect for kids with lots of energy. You can explore how sport connects the science of the human body, laws of motion, and technical innovation and also about physical fitness, nutrition, equipment, and safety as you prepare to play.

Learn about the science behind your kid’s favorite sports, from running, to baseball, basketball and surfing! Kids and adults can race their favorite athletes in a 40-foot long race challenge and high speed cameras track and analyze your run. You can test your jump in the basketball area and see how high your lift is. Also, you can learn how to pitch like the pros!

Learn about pulleys, prisms, and pendulums in Sir Isaac’s loft. When you enter this “playground of experimentation,” you’ll be fascinated with falling objects, chain reactions, and optical illusions that bring Newton’s laws to life in whimsical and artful ways!

The Train Factory

Downstairs on the first floor, explore all about trains in the train factory! This exhibit has a REAL 350-ton Baldwin steam locomotive the center that you can climb in and imagine it’s taking you anywhere! You can learn how steam and coal powered the first locomotives and discover how diesel, electricity, and magnetic levitation are used to power modern day locomotives to travel longer distances at greater speeds.

Explore Virtual Reality in Space Command

VR and space meet downstairs in the Space Command exhibit. There are multiple VR stations (which my kids just couldn’t get enough of!) where you can imagine you are traveling inside the body or deep under the ocean and then travel deep into space and learn about the planets and stars in the rest of the exhibit.

Mirror Maze

Now through early September, come be one of the first to explore the traveling Mirror Maze exhibit, that focuses on how math presents itself in nature, in our bodies and how we apply it in the designs we use every day. You can learn how patterns appear everywhere, from the nested spirals of a sunflower’s seeds, to the ridges of a mountain range, to the layout of the Universe, and how math plays a role in these patterns.

Mirror Maze teaches us how math is used to unlock the mysteries and majesty of the patterns of our world through a series of engaging interactive elements and immersive experiences. You can get hands on learning about music and how the repeating patterns make sounds, you can learn about your body by taking an “epic selfie” and, of course, travel through the 1700 square foot massive mirror maze!

As you and your kids navigate your way through a seemingly infinite repeating pattern of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, challenge yourself to discover how geometry, tessellations, and repetitions are the building blocks of the world around you—and how they may reveal the world’s most hidden secrets.

The Mirror Maze is as easy to get lost in as it is fun, and great for all aged kids. Mine had a blast searching though each and every corner, trying to find their way through the massive maze.

Be sure to check out this amazing exhibit before it’s gone! It’s only visiting in Philly until the end of September.

Where we ate

The Franklin Institute boasts a beautiful cafe that serves all sorts of healthy lunch options for families so you don’t even have to leave to eat! We were just visiting for the day so we ate at the caferieria before we played. Sometimes we are heading into the city after and eat someplace else, but it’s nice to know there are plenty of food choices inside the building too! There were all sorts of healthy and family friendly options that my kids and I loved! You cannot bring food in to the main museum so be sure to stop by and take a break and eat while you are there!

You can learn more about the Franklin Institute and it’s newest exhibit, Mirror Maze, by visiting them online, on Facebook, twitter and Instagram! If you live near by, consider becoming a member! Members and their families visit for free and receive discounts at the cafe and shop. They have many different membership options. Check out their options here. Also, use the promo code MMYBLOG* to receive $3.00 off up to 4 adult, daytime tickets to A Mirror Maze: Numbers in Nature! To redeem the code, contact the FI at 215-448-1200 or visit fi.edu.

Have you even been to the Franklin Institute? What did you think of it?

Disclosure: Thank you to the Franklin Institute for providing us tickets to experience the museum! As always, all opinions are 100% my own.

*$3 off Daytime Adult Admission tickets to A Mirror Maze: Numbers in Nature. Limit 4 tickets per person. Includes General Admission to The Franklin Institute. Cannot be combined with any other offer or discount. Upgrades available on-site for IMAX and 3D Theater. Redeemable online or over the phone. Processing fees apply when ordering tickets in advance. Excludes holidays. Valid through 8/20/17.

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Seeing the World | Cambodia

From Bangkok, we decided that we were going to loop the South East Asian countries anti-clockwise and hit Cambodia next! There are trains running twice a day from Bangkok Hualamphong to Aranyaprathet; one at 5:55am and the other at 1:05pm. Aranyaprathet is home to the border crossing into Cambodia, and we were told that if we wanted to make it during opening hours, we'd need to get the 5:55am train; however I've since learned that the border is open until 10pm, so either train should be fine. 

The fare is ฿48 (just over £1) and takes about 5 hours. The train itself is very basic; it's all 3rd class, so you'll have to deal with nature's aircon (open windows), however I find this to be amazing as you can really witness the sights and smells of Thailand! The downside is that if you're facing forwards, you'll get filthy from the dust coming in the open window. You'll experience the street vendors try to sell you things in the aisle and through the windows, but they're polite and will leave you alone if you want. 

Once you get to Aranyaprathet station, you'll need to get a Tuktuk or taxi to the actual border, but it's only 6km, so you can get it for next to nothing if you're good at bargaining (we settled at ฿60 between 4 of us!). When you get the border you'll be surrounded by plenty of people trying to sell you 'cheap visas' for Cambodia, DO NOT BUY FROM THEM! They're selling you knock offs and you'll just have to buy a real one when you walk over the border. 

In Aranyaprathet there are plenty of places to eat and a market when you can buy last minute things with the Baht you have left (little shops over the border might take Baht, but the rest of Cambodia won't). 

CHECKLIST! When crossing the border, make sure you have these things:

Passport 

At least one passport photo (you'll pay through the nose before the border if you don't)

$30 or ฿1200 (they took Baht for us) 

Your departure card that you received when entering Thailand

If you have all these things, as well as your wits about you, you'll be fine. Once you get across, there are plenty of buses and taxis to take you to wherever you need to go next, our next stop was Siem Reap.

Siem Reap

The first stop on our Cambodian adventure was Siem Reap. This province is world-renown for its famous Angkor temples and that's exactly the reason we were here! 

Getting to Siem Reap seemed easy at first, but turned out to be a bit more difficult than previously imagined. At the border we bumped into a seemingly lovely man named Long, who said he worked for the Department of transportation and would happily find us a taxi to our Hostel in Siem Reap. We got into the taxi and drove for over two hours to the city for ฿400 each. When we were about another 5 minute drive from the hostel, he pulled over and said he couldn't take us any further and a tuktuk driver told us that he was going to take us for free. We soon found out that this was only free if we go on a tour of the temples with him... We'd been done! We soon decided to refuse the tuktuk walk the rest of the way on principle (you’ll find this quite a lot in Cambodia). It took us about 30 minutes but we finally arrived at our destination, Siem Reap Uncle's House (http://siemreapunclehouse.com/).

Siem Reap Uncle's House is a lovely little hostel; it's very homely and the staff were very friendly and helpful. We stayed here for 3 nights and only paid $16.50 for two beds in a six bedroom dorm with aircon! BARGAIN! The immediate locality was a lot less touristy than other places, but it was nice to be in the 'real Cambodia' and the people were lovely. They would all say hello and the children wanted to practice their English on you, it's amazing to see such a friendly and caring place!

On February 1st, the Cambodian government increased the price of entry to Angkor Archaeological Park for foreign visitors. Now, a one-day ticket will cost you $37, a three-day costs £62 and a seven-day costs $72. It's a huge leap from the original prices ($20, $40, $60) but from every ticket sold, $2 is being donated to Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital, which provides free treatment to Cambodian children. Now, to get the ticket you need to go to the main ticket sales office at the Angkor Conservation Area ticket booth on Charles de Gaulle Road. This is a fair distance from the temples, so make sure you don't miss it on your way, otherwise you'll be turned away when you get there! As far as I know, currently there is no way of buying tickets online. 

Before you buy your tickets, you need to figure out how you're going to navigate the temples (some of them are over 10km from the others). When deciding how to do the Angkor temples, there are a few options to consider as there are different ways of doing it: tuktuk, bicycle, scooter or walking.

You can hire a tuktuk for the day and he'll take you around to all the temples and he'll wait for you as you go in and out of them.

A few of the people we met did the temples on bicycles which they rented from our hostel for $2 a day. Now whilst you'll be able to see a lot on a bicycle, other people's experience suggest it's a very tiring way of doing it yet very freeing. However, after a full day of visiting temples in the blistering heat, you'd have to cycle back.

I wouldn't really recommend walking, as you probably wouldn't get very far and wouldn't see much! However, if you're an avid walker, then you could always travel between the temples on foot, but I'd recommend getting to the start in a taxi or something.

Lastly, and the way we did it, on scooters. We arranged a price of $7 per bike and travelled to the temples on the scooters. It's such a freeing way of getting around as you're not relying on a tuktuk driver and can get around just as fast. The only issue is carrying your helmet around with you, but we didn't really find an issue with that. Even on the scooters, just walking around the temples is enough to wipe you out for the day. Plus, fuel is dirt cheap too!

All the temples we visited were absolutely spectacular, but one thing I'd definitely recommend, is getting there for sunrise and seeing it rise over Angkor Wat. It's an amazing experience and probably something I'll only ever see once in my life! Out of all the beautiful temples in Angkor, three temples stand out more than any: the infamous Angkor Wat, the Bayon Temple at Angkor Thum and Ta Prohm, the temple that's been reclaimed by the earth.

Angkor Wat is the 'poster boy' for Siem Reap and Cambodia, it's an amazing architectural feat and boasts huge towers which create and absolutely stunning skyline. It's home to troops of monkeys which will harmlessly walk through and interact with the crowds, but may get rowdy if touched. As it's the most famous temple of them all, it hosts a multitude of tourists and vendors trying to sell you trousers and paintings, but there's always enough room to grab your photographs and take in the sheer beauty of the place.

Next is the Bayon Temple at Angkor Thum. Whilst you may not have heard of this temple, you'll have definitely seen pictures of it either on TV or online, as it is home to the giant faces carved into the stone. The vastness of these faces leaves you in awe and it really makes you think of how long it must've taken to design and build such a masterpiece. This one can also get quite crowded as the walkways in the temple are a lot slimmer than Angkor Wat, so it feels a lot more cram packed!

PSA: They offer elephant rides outside of this Temple; I implore you, please do not ride these elephants. It's animal cruelty as they are treated appallingly and it's best you're not a part of it!

Lastly, my personal favourite, Ta Prohm. This temple is literally falling apart due to the forest it resides in claiming it back. There are gigantic trees which span their roots throughout the temple and through the brickwork. It's absolutely amazing to see and it's so beautiful. Out of all the temples in Angkor, I'd recommend this one the most; there's a peaceful atmosphere about the place that makes you want to sit down and take in the surroundings, its stunning.

Other than the Temples, I didn't find too much in Siem Reap in the way of excitement; the nightlife however is booming! If you're looking for a good (and cheap) night on the town, Siem Reap has what you're looking for. There are plenty of bars and restaurants on the aptly named 'Pub Street' and they all have their specific offers and gimmicks. We spent a long time in a bar with beer pong and limbo and throughout the whole night, probably only spent about $25 and we were well on our way (some more than others!).

Personally, I liked Siem Reap and would've loved to spend more time exploring the Angkor temples, but unfortunately the budget wouldn't allow it. Other than that, there isn't much else to recommend about the place. Next stop: Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh

From Siem Reap, we'd arranged a bus to the capital through our Hostel for $8, and 6 hours later we made it to Phnom Penh. Phnom Penh is the capital city of Cambodia and home to the famous Killing Fields. For a backpacker on a budget, it's not the friendliest of places as the prices seem to hike (like any other capital), so it can get quite expensive for things like food. However, we only spent 2 nights here so you cannot take my word as gospel, I can only advise from my own personal experiences. We stayed in quite a trendy hostel in the business area of Phnom Penh called Lovely Jubbly Villa (https://lovelyjubblyvilla.com/). The reason we were super stoked about this place wasn't the dorms or the people or the food, it was the pool. We were desperate for a swim and this hostel had a lovely, clean pool with sunbeds. For two nights, it only cost us $20, for two beds. The rooms themselves were basically decorated, but the beds where quite comfy and the aircon kept the room cool throughout the day, so you're not sweating at night.

The main attractions in Phnom Penh are the Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, both of which show you what it was like for captives and the country during the reign of Pol Pot in Cambodia in the mid to late 70s. For entry and an audio tour of the Killing Fields it only costs $6 and I can't recommend it enough. You get to hear stories from survivors and the audio tour tells you about the time in great detail. From there we headed to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which was an old school in the early 70s before the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison where they would torture their captives. Entry to the museum is $3 without the audio tour and $6 with it; we chose the $3 option as we didn't have too much time. Here they still have the original cells that they used to keep people in, with blood stains and pictures of the captives when they were incarcerated.

BE AWARE! The Killing Fields and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum aren't easy places to visit and what you hear and see are not for the faint of heart. During Pol Pot's reign, millions of people were slaughtered for no reason whatsover (i.e. they wear glasses, they have soft hands, etc.). What frustrates me the most is that we don't learn about this mass genocide in schools back in the UK; for some reason it's not important enough. I definitely think people should be more aware of these atrocities and we should group together as the human race to make sure this never happens again! (Rant over.)

We rented a tuktuk from our hostel for the day to see these places and it only cost us $16 between four of us. He'd drive us to the place then wait outside whilst we're inside, before taking us to the next place. I'd recommend doing it this way as you get your own freedom, but can get around pretty easily with someone who usually knows a bit about what you're going to see.

WE only spent two nights in Phnom Penh so this is the only thing we did of any substance however, on 4th March it was Tamsin's birthday, so we headed to a local burger restaurant called Cousin's. For $7.70 we could get an awesome burger, some sweet potato fries and a drink; for Phnom Penh, that's a bargain!

Sihanoukville

From Phnom Penh we decided we needed the beach, so we booked a bus down to the coast, to a little city called Sihanoukville. The bus took just over 5 hours but only cost us $7.49 each. We had a bit of an issue with our driver as (just like the taxi in Siem Reap) he wouldn't take us the whole way; he dropped us at a station further away and we were expected to take a tuktuk the rest of the way. Of course we refused and we set off walking. When travelling, you need to expect this to happen, the bus drivers and tuktuk drivers will be in cahoots to try and get more money out of you, but just stand your ground and, if need be, walk.

We arrived at Monkey Republic (http://monkeyrepublic.info/), a large chain hostel which was just a 5 minute walk to Serendipity Beach. We were taken to a large, 4 bed, air-conditioned room with an en suite bathroom and it only cost us $5 each per night, so we couldn't complain. We didn't experience much culture in Sihanoukville as it seems to be a place where backpackers come to blow off steam, have a swim in the sea and party. We spent most of our days chilling out either by the pool or in the bar area playing card games. 

The hunt for food is a major part of our travels and we're always trying to find a balance between cheap and tasty (not always easy). In Sihanoukville there are numerous different restaurants and cafes selling pretty much any food you could want and the prices range from about $2-$6 for a main course. One of the nights we treated ourselves to a pizza at the local pizzeria, Olive and Olive. For a garlic bread and a large margarita pizza, we paid $6.50 between us; not a bad price at all.

Like I said, we stayed a 5 minute walk to Serendipity Beach, but when we got there, it was full of trash and people hassling you to buy things so we went off in search of a different beach. Just a 15 minute walk through the dirt roads of Sihanoukville, we arrived at a beautiful, white sand beach named Sokha Beach. The sea was warm and I couldn't help but go straight to it and dive in! The great thing about Sokha beach is that there is hardly anyone there and no one trying to sell you anything, however, if you want a sunbed, it's gonna set you back $20 (take a beach towel and sit on that, it’s for the best). I could've spent all day there and I can't wait for the Vietnamese and Thai beaches! We came back to Sokha Beach in the evening also, as the sun sets over the hills and sea, its stunning.

There are plenty of shops and stalls in Sihanoukville, so you literally buy anything you need from here and if you want to rent a scooter, it will only cost you $5. We spent 4 days here by the sea before heading to our next destination.

Kampot

We decided that from Sihanoukville we were going to head to the less touristy province of Kampot. Through our hostel, we booked a mini bus to take us there and it only cost us $5. Our hostel was another Monkey Republic (http://monkeykampot.com/), right in the heart of Kampot and we'd booked a double room for $30 for 3 nights. The room was smaller than Sihanoukville due to only having one double bed but it didn't have aircon, only a rotating fan on the ceiling of the room which didn't really keep the room that cool. We did keep the window open with the mesh over it to keep the bugs out which cooled it down a little. Apart from Siem Reap, Kampot was probably our favourite place in Cambodia; on arrival the place is so much cleaner, there aren't too many tourists and all the people were lovely.

In the centre of Kampot, there is a local market which sells pretty much everything. As you walk through, it changes drastically from clothing to gold to food, yet it works. We spent about an hour in here and bought some fruit and some sort of donut thing for 1000៛. It's a lovely little market, but because it's so small inside, it can get very hot, but you'll find anything you need from here.

Kampot is built on the Kampot River and this is home to numerous boats with restaurants and night clubs on them; we were offered a party on one of them, but unfortunately it just a bit too expensive for us, so we had to decline. However, the boats also offer firefly tours and daytime city tours. By the river is where all the restaurants are and they all sell pretty much the same food at the same prices, but everyone finds their favourite. The food is delicious and staff are usually very welcoming.

There is a lot of things to do in the surrounding areas of Kampot and into the city of Kep, so we decided to rent scooters again and head out on the road. We rented them from Bison Tours, across the road from our hostel, for $4 for 24 hours. Our first stop on our scooter tour was to the Salt Fields in Kampot. Here they dry our salt water and gather baskets upon baskets of pure salt. Kampot is well-known for its pepper and salt and it was great to see where it came from (I've never really thought about where salt came from), however we didn't stay very long and we were soon back on road heading into Kep. Our next destination was the caves. 

We went to three different caves: the batcave, the white elephant cave and one cave we didn't get the name of. It was unreal to see these vast canyons in the mountain which had natural corridors that you had to side shuffle down. Others had lots of stairs heading down into darkness with bats flying about above your head. I'd definitely recommend going to see these caves, they're just so beautiful and all have their own different characteristics; I think years ago, monks inhabited some of them and they were used as temples. For entry to the caves it will cost you $1, but it will definitely be worth it. When visiting the caves there will be people around offering tours, you just need to make sure they're legit, but that should pretty obvious as they'll be with the people who take the money. The tours aren't expensive and probably worth it, but we preferred to do it without. 

From the caves we headed into Kep to look for some food and ended up at a small restaurant called Captain Chim’s. The food was inexpensive and awesome, and we met a lovely Canadian who said it was the best food in Cambodia (he wasn't wrong!); I ordered the chicken satay for $3.75 and it was delicious. 

A short drive from here is a beautiful butterfly garden in the heart of the forest that is home to hundreds of beautiful butterflys and plants. It was free to enter, however they do ask for a small donation to continue their conservation work. It's a wonderful little place and it has something for everyone, I'd definitely recommend a trip to the butterfly garden, even if you only spend half an hour there. 

The last stop on our trip was the seaside. If anyone knows me, they know I'm in love with the sea, so we stripped down to our swimmers and headed into the water. The water had warmed up all day, so it was lovely and hot and the sun was just setting, so we waited in the water for it to go down before setting off back to the hostel. You've not lived until you've watched the sunset whilst swimming in beautifully warm water.

Kampot does a lot to help people with special needs and people with other needs (i.e. Orphans, etc.) and the Kampot Traditional Music School takes orphaned and special needs children and trains them in the traditional arts. Kids live in the school and learn how to play instruments and dance; I love how it keeps them off the streets and in the school. People can go and visit the school and possibly take part in teaching, unfortunately we were there over a weekend, so they were shut. Another great venture in Kampot is the Epic Arts Cafe; its a small little cafe that hires deaf people and promotes art within the special needs community.

We loved Kampot as there is so much to do and the place itself is very beautiful. Out of all the places in Cambodia, this would be one we'd definitely come back to as we feel we didn't do everything we could.

Quick Cambodian lesson:

Hello - Sous-Dey

How are you? - Sokh Sabbay Chea Teh?

Fine - (Chah/Baht) Khñom Sokh Sabbay

Thank you - Orkun

Yes - Chah/Baht

No - Ort Teh

If you are male, use Baht or female, use Chah.

If you have any questions about my time in Cambodia, hit me up on social media or via email and I’ll be happy to answer them as quickly as possible.

Stay blessed, stay you.