#i like winter because its not as busy so hours get cut

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

Today I woke up at a reasonable time, ate breakfast, showered, washed my face, walked to the coffee shop, came home and finished four things, three of which were on my computer and one of which was fixing some pants. All within like three hours. Look at me. I'm neurotypical now.

[fandomfluffandfuck]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASEEEE WRITE SOMETHING WITH TOUCH STARVED WINTER SOLDIER AND MALE HANDLER READER (or stevie, whatever floats ur boat) I AM DESPERATEEEE

I've kind of written something with touch starved, early-deprogramming Bucky and Steve--"Don't Forget To Remember Me"--so, I'll go ahead with the x-reader part of this prompt here!

Mentions of HYDRA cruelty below the cut, nothing exactly "on screen." This is mostly angsty fluff, actually.

You aren't sure when it began because no matter how deeply you scrub your mind for clues, shifting through the heavy rubble of your time with "S.H.I.E.LD" going from a regular recruit to being drug into the ugly underbelly with the grimy cockroaches of HYDRA, there isn't a clear path. Perhaps it started when you were assigned the joke grunt work of waxing the asset's chest (x). Or, maybe, it really started after you had been shown to do a satisfactory enough job at stripping the asset to naked flesh, so then you were assigned to deal with the knots that had developed at the back of the asset's neck. Told to rip a wide tooth comb through its mane as the thought occurred to you that, huh, it felt a lot like when you used to have to do this for your younger sisters after a summer of wild, young shenanigans. Hollering at the top of your lungs late into the hot evenings. Swimming for hours in pools and lakes and any bodies of water you could get yourselves to, almost always with wrinkled fingertips, baths or oceans or anything just to feel the cool lapping water. Playing chase, flying out the doors of the house when your parents had finally had enough of bulls in their china shop. Running through fields into forests, racing to climbing trees and hopefully not tumble out of them and end up in a cast (again). Summers with the weather too nice and the sun staying suspended in the sky for hours, so you were too busy for silly things like brushing hair. You were only saved by the fact that your mother insisted on buzzing your hair to the scalp for summers, no need to brush that. Your sisters didn't have the luxury.

It's kind of like those times with your sisters--raking a comb through the soldier's unkept hair.

Once, with late, mature summer bleeding into gestating fall, the colors fading and muddling, you found your sisters hair had become too tangled to undo, so you complained, and your parents had made her get her hair cut. She balled her eyes out after they proclaimed it, stuttering and pleading, her thin chest heaving, just try mooore! The knots got in! They can get out! But no. They couldn't come undone. She would have to deal with it and learn to take care of her hair better or she could have her hair buzzed seasonally like you. (She was not thrilled, even if that was at a time when she looked up to you, her big brother, her hero)

Working harshly through the asset's mane is sort of like that. But not.

Really not.

You are never gentle with the soldier like you were with your baby sisters.

Left with the asset, you were instructed to tear the knots out, be as unkind (or cruel, if you like) as needed. Just get them out of the way. Tear them out. Lather them up and comb through. Buzz them off with clippers. And if the asset acts up, use a knife--it doesn't have to be just on its hair, you can't hurt it that bad, so don't think twice.

So...

Yeah, maybe it started then. Somewhere negligible and nebulous between the waxing of its chest and combing-slash-cutting of its locks.

If it started then, that would make sense, because now, whenever the soldier and you are alone for whatever reason (or nonreason), it crawls into your lap like some kind of desperate, feral raccoon. A creature that's dirty and trembling and, somehow, hungry enough to be entirely reckless, directly approaching the human who owns the trash cans it's rummaging through, trying to find anything to stuff into its mouth of rotten, putrid teeth.

And what are you to do in these times, alone with a lapful of weapon?

Typically, when it happens, the soldier seems too fragile to push away. If it is animated--thawed and moving of it's own volition--the asset is often fresh from a mission where you know it's been run ragged, barely fed, hardly given time to rest. As is protocol. So, it is fragile.

This time in particular, though, it's been so recently wiped you can still smell the sharp bleach and dull undercurrent of electricity wafting off of it, supposedly clean yet faintly fried. Acidic. Almost the smell of lazer hair removal but on steriods. Your lip curls up involuntarily at the stench. You always have a moment of hesitation when it does this. And this time is no exception.

You remind yourself that this will make your future grunt work easier. Right? That's why you accept this strange ritual. Isn't it? It's okay for you to lay your hands on the asset if it's part of your job. You will not be punished for it, nor will the asset. Right? This is just like waxing it's chest, combing it's hair, or adjusting its tac gear. Isn't it?

With it's surprisingly light weight in your lap, you do not viciously grab, digging your nails into it's flesh and scars and metal; nor do you slap or hit or pull, rather you set your hands on it's grimy, sweaty back. More evidence of it's recent wiping alongside it's still trembling muscles. Thick sweat overeating involuntary twitches so sharp it looks painful and unnatural, more like a robot jolting than an organic thing moving. Contortions. Convulsions.

With your hands on it's upper back and shoulder, the soldier makes a sound like metal creaking, bent too far, about to snap, warning the manipulator of the impending give. Shards will fly.

You do not feel threatened.

The asset is bent, nearly broken after it's mission and the maintenance after. It cannot hurt you. You could hurt it easily with its fragility and brittleness. Except, you don't intend to hurt it now or any other time when you are alone together. Instead, you allow the minutes to tick by before heavy footfalls announce the entrance of another cockroach, crawling out to shove the asset back into the freezer before scurrying away.

In your spare change minutes, you bizarrely reward the asset and it's starved raccoon behavior, rubbing the cold coins together, if the noises the soldier makes are anything to go by. Metal on metal. Rubbing. Rusty, almost whines as your hands sweep slowly down it's back, following the line of it's bent out of shape spine all the way down to the top of his tac pants that they've left on it this time.

Under your hands, it is only quivering lines of flesh, muscle, and bone shot through with harder callouses of thick scars and metal. If you go based off feeling alone, you would assume that the asset has already been broken--bent past the natural give sheet metal has to it--with all the shrapnel left in it's body. It has bent, snapped, and shattered. The feeling of the asset, by virtue of how rough and sharply-edged it is, makes your movements turn slower and even more gentle, you couldn't make your hands turn cruel if you tried.

You're nearly massaging the creature now, and you can't help but notice how cold it is as you touch it, rubbing its back, shoulders, and the nape of its neck. Every time this ritual unfurls, you notice. It is strange. Shouldn't a soldier with impeccable healing and speed and strength unfurling run much hotter? It puzzles you, but so do many of the things about the asset and the cockroaches that puppet it, crawling inside it, filling its frame with an infestation. Why does it do anything? You have no room to wonder, though, because why do you do anything they say, anyway? How did you get here? What would your baby sister's think of this? What would the wild, summer-sweetened boy you used to be think of this?

The asset creaks again, bringing you back to this ritual. It's pushing it's spasming back into your hands. You sigh, finding, feeling, a knot deep in the muscle below its metal shoulder. You are unwilling to tenderize the muscle, untangling the knot, because it would hurt. You've had deep tissue massages. They do not feel good. The mission and maintenance of the soldier are fresh in your mind and inhaled through your nostrils, so you can not bring yourself to add to its pain.

The best you can do, not adding pain, is some skin-deep soothing. Nothing more. You cannot change much. In parallel, you and the asset are stuck. What you can do is keep the asset's hair tangle-free, you can opt to shave the asset instead of wax it, and you can give into it's hunger. Sometimes. When it's safe to do so. If the cockroaches have the power to blend the soldier's brain into a slurry of nothing but obedience, they can do the same to you. If the cockroaches can twist and alter the precise balance of homeostasis to a sickly chill with injections that burn so badly inside the asset that it has to be held down, risking broken bones and torn muscles, than they can do anything. Everything.

So, shockingly, it is with a weapon lying across your lap--used against humanity as a precise knife between the ribs, slotting into the heart of men who represent hope and uprising and future--that you relocate your own organic nature. Your compassion. Your morals. Your humanness.

And if you leave the lock to the cage containing the asset for the last few hours before he goes back on ice open... that is been you and the asset you have cradled and held and come to know as organic and human despite the metal forced to be a part of him.

You can only hope the asset seizes the opportunity. A way out. The chance to reclaim the humanity it--he has been stripped of.

[siriusleee]

adamantine chains | part 7 & 8

"Amor et melle et felle est fecundissimus." "What does that mean?" "Love is rich with both honey and venom." "I suppose that is true." Or which in König finds you broken in the mountains. A (brief) retelling of Cupid and Psyche. König | Reader tags: pregnancy, unwanted/unplanned pregnancy, just vibing here a/n: have you ever written a story that has such an incredibly contrived plot because you didn't do enough planning at the beginning, but you can't stop until it's over. that's this story. but i'm just vibing with it. there are 2 more chapters (which i may post as one big one like i did this one). if you enjoy, subscribe to my ko-fi where i will be posting my writing updates, or donate to help me recuperate after buying so many damn school supplies. i also don't know how to do math, so my weeks are probably so off in this previous chapter | part one

For the first month König's gone, you throw yourself into helping Oma. The biting wind of winter threatens at the beginning of October, and everything needs to be cut back, dug up, covered in a thick canvas cloth to wait for next spring to reemerge. The dirt clings beneath your nails and at your knees - but it gives you something to do. 

Your camera sits on the bedside table in your room - you spend every night wrapped up in König's bed, breathing in the scent of him until it's nearly gone from the blankets. One day, folding laundry and putting it away you find his cologne tucked away in one of his drawers. You renew the house with the scent of him. 

Oma calls you the next day - the sound of the phone ringing wakes you from the nest of König's clothes you slept in. 

"Ja, Oma?"

"Bist du wach?"

"Ja, I awake. Are you alright?"

"Ich möchte, dass du vorbeikommst, wenn du Feierabend hast."

"Wie bitte? After work what do you need?"

On the other end of the line, Oma sighs - you know your slow grasp of the language frustrates her each day.

"After work, come over, please. I am cooking dinner."

"Ja, gnädige Frau. I will."

She doesn't say goodbye - a custom for her. You listen to the dial tone on the other end for a moment before letting the phone back down onto its hook. Your eyes are heavy and thick as you pad silently through the house, the cold floor making you shiver. Outside it's still dark - the sunrise only a hint on the horizon. 

Of course, Oma is awake. 

"It must be an old lady thing," you mutter to yourself, knowing that you'd never say it to her face. Your arms are covered in gooseflesh from the chill in the air - you rub yourself to try to keep warm. You're half in and half out of the hallway when you see why it's so cold - the front door is open and swaying in the early morning breeze.

"Fuck."

You slam the door shut and flick the lock but it sticks halfway in and out. It must not have latched completely last night and the wind blew it open - you think for a moment that you need to tell König to see if he can fix it. With a sigh, you shove the door harder. You'll have to fix it yourself. It takes a bit of strength, but you're able to get the lock into the right position - you won't be able to use it until it's fixed, but the backdoor will be fine. 

You think about going back to bed until it's time to wake up, but you know if you do, you'll just lay there for hours until it's time to get up. Instead you busy yourself cleaning, washing clothes that have piled up at the end of your bed, knowing that if König comes home and sees it, his nose will wrinkle - you've never met someone so obsessed with keeping their house spotless. 

 by the time you get ready for work, you're already worn out and tired, but you make sure to lock the backdoor behind you. 

***

"What is that smell?" You mutter to yourself, tying your apron around your waist. 

"Was?"

You look over at your co-worker, a sweet girl named Valentina, who smiles at you across the bar.

"You dont smell that?" You ask her; the air is filled with something that smells sickly sweet - reminiscent of rotting wood and dirt. Valentina shakes her head at you.

"It might be someone's," she mimes spraying herself, "Parfüm."

"Maybe."

It's your turn to do the cleaning - you do it without complaint, thankful of something to do, something to get you out of the house and away from the thought's of König and how upset he'd been at you about his mask. 

It's nearly noon and you're halfway through rubbing the chairs down with a disinfectant when Valentina calls you from the counter.

"Someone is asking about one of your photos."

A man with disheveled blonde hair stands at the counter, a print of yours in his hand. He looks not like he just rolled out of bed, but that he picked everything out to intentionally look like he just rolled out of bed. 

As you get closer you realize it's a print of König's shadow, rippling across a brick wall in the evening. The background is the town, lit up for night - nearly pastoral. 

"How much?" His accent is Western Europeanan, soft and lilting. 

"Oh -" You were expecting to have to try to figure out what to tell him in German, and his English catches you off guard. "Just however much you think it's worth. It's a pay what you think kind of thing."

You don't like the way he grins at you, sharp teeth almost predatory, but when he pushes a bill into your hands you take it from him. His hand lingers in yours, almost to warm before he pulls away.

"Thank you."

You watch the door swing shut behind him before looking down at the bill in your hands. A hundred euros. 

You raise it up at Valentina, who's eyebrows shoot up.

"Why would he give me this?"

"Maybe he thought you were cute."

"Gusch Valentina."

At the end of your shift you wave goodbye at Valentina. You're exhausted, much more than you usually are, and there's a dull ache at the bottom of your right foot; you want to call Oma and ask if you can reschedule, but you know she's got dinner waiting on you and you can't disappoint. 

On the ride it starts to sprinkle, and by the time you make it to her house, it's pouring outside, hard enough that you can barely see the road infront of you, but you make it, albeit slowly. You try to cover your head with your jacket as you run inside, rainwater filling your shoes.

"Oma; I'm here!"

The sound of silence and rain on the roof greets you. 

"Oma!"

"Komm mal her!"

You follow her voice to the kitchen, where there's already something boiling on the stove. Oma kisses you on each cheek, barking at you to sit down.

"Oma wie kann ich Ihnen helfen?"

"I do not need your help - just sit, you have been working all day."

You feel useless as she putters around, stirring whatever smells amazing on the stove, pulling bread out of the oven, filling a pitcher with water. 

She slides your plate across the table at you before taking a seat across from you. 

"Have you heard from König?"

You shake your head at her, ripping a piece of bread off.

"Nein. Not since he left."

"How long has it been?"

"Eight weeks, nine weeks. Something like that."

The two of you finish eating in silence - you're busy washing the dishes up for Oma when she speaks again.

"I have some friends who need help around their house. Old ladies who can't get things done like they used to. I told them about you - that you might want to earn some extra money and be out of the house while König is gone. It is not good for you to be alone all the time."

You dry the tines of the forks, your eyes trained on the rain falling roughly outside. 

"That would be nice, Oma. Thank you."

"Ja. I will let them know when you can."

"Danke, Oma."

You kiss her on the cheek good-bye and dash to the car, getting soaked for the second time that evening. 

Her figure, waving good-bye at you in the headlights, makes you want to run inside, ask her if you can stay the night. But you turn the key over in the ignition and drive home.

***

Oma's friends work you like a dog on your days off, barking at you in gentle German, pressing food into your hands whenever you leave. You have to start giving some of it to Valentina whenever you can, your work shirts getting a little tighter than you usually like. 

One of the women has you sorting seed packets when your cell rings; you hope for a second that it's König, calling to tell you he's home, but it's Oma. 

"You need to come to my house. Tonight. As soon as you can."

"Are you alright Oma?"

Her tone worries you - frantic and worried.

"Ja. You need to come. Do not forget."

She hangs up on you, leaving you staring at the screen. God, you wished König would come home, or even have given you an address to write him at - something. But he didn't; it worries you at night his silence, the fact that he's been gone longer than he had before and you've heard nothing. You reason with yourself that if something bad had happened someone would have called you.

Oma waits for you at the dinner table - the stove is empty and her expression is grim. Fear grips you for a moment: something has happened, and Oma was the one contacted. His body was dumped somewhere - this is happening to you again - this-

"You are pregnant."

Her words hit you viscerally, pulling you out of the dark the thoughts that whirled around you.

"Oma what the fuck!"

"Pass auf, was du sagst! Frau Müller said you threw up when she was cooking fish."

"It smelt horrific Oma, I'm not."

"You are going to argue with me? You have had no kids and I have had many."

You want to roll your eyes at her, but you fear her aim with a wooden spoon.

"Oma I think I would know."

"You would not because you have been to worried about König you haven't payed attention to anything. But I have - I know."

A new sort of panic sets in, a worry that she's right. 

"I will take you to the doctor tomorrow early. Do not go to work. Say you are sick."

"Oma you don't drive-"

"I know that - you will drive me."

You don't see a way out of this argument, out of this predicament. So you agree and walk out of the house in a daze. Halfway home, you have to pull of to throw up from worry.

***

You're frozen in the cold doctor's seat as he pulls the blood from the crook in your arm. You half catch the words that tumble between him and Oma; nod along at his clipped English, but you don't really pay any attention to him. 

His fingers are warm when he touches your shoulder, pulling you from the state you'd lost yourself in. 

"Three days."

Three days.

It had been nearly three months since König had left, and all you wished as you drove Oma back home was that you had a number to call him, some way to beg him to come home and take care of you. 

You don't even really know him.

The thought had bounced around your head since the night before, chasing away whatever sleep you'd been able to grasp. König's smell had already been washed away from the bedsheets, and it had just felt lonely in a way you hadn't felt in months. 

The entire thing was eating at you - you'd let a strange man sweep you into a fantasy and now there was a chance that he had you trapped with no alternative. Despite how good König had treated you, you still felt stupid for the entire thing.

But that didn't stop the elation you felt when you spotted the white envelope tucked into the doorjamb. Shuffling your purse and keys, you yank the folded up sheet of paper from the inside out. Smoothing it out as you step into the house, you slam the door shut with your foot and let your purse fall heavily to the floor.

König's heavy scrawl - like he's putting his entire weight behind the pen - covers the paper in chicken scratch.

I miss you. I will be home soon. Be good Taube.

Soon?

You can feel the panic rising inside of you; you'll have to tell him when he gets home. What if he's angry? Panic starts to constrict in your chest; you crumple König's letter up and shove it in your pocket. 

You can't think of this right now - the worry between wondering when König will come home and what the doctor might say is too much for you to handle right now.

You do your best not to think as you haul dusty cleaning supplies out from underneath the kitchen sink. The house had never been dirty; König was abnormally clean for a man his age and size. But there was nothing else to do - you had called off work for the doctor's appointment and you weren't sure if you could handle walking the shops.

So you immerse yourself in the process of cleaning. Beneath your fingers, a shine develops across the house that you hadn't seen before. Your back is cramping as you scrub the bathtub with a bristle brush; sweat pools in the small of your back. 

You even scrub the floor on your hands and knees, washing away the dirt that accumulated between the cracks in the tile. 

You throw yourself into cleaning until you fall into bed exhausted and for the first night in weeks you aren't plagued with dreams of your grandfather or König. But the restless panic starts again the moment you wake up, and you arrive at work three hours early.

Valentina looks at you with confusion across her face, but she doesn't say anything as you shake your head at her. Throwing your apron over your head, you speak without looking at her. 

"I'm going to organize the stockroom - I'll be out in a few hours."

It's different here - in the hot stock room with boxes stacked two deep and multiple highs. The panic is worse here, where the familiarity of the house isn't an innate comfort. But it's enough to keep you from checking your phone every five minutes to see if the doctor had called. 

You're not sure how long you're there before Valentina is calling your name.

"Are you going to keep working back there or are you going to come work the front with me?"

You trace your fingers across the sticker of an imported bag of coffee beans; you want to stay back here and hide away. You're worried that anyone will see it written across your face - the same way that Oma did. But you can't leave Valentina at the front alone for the rest of the shift.

"I'm coming!"

Wiping the sweat from your forehead, you duck out of the store room. It's cold up front - the air that had started to chill outside creeping in every time someone walked in. It's packed up front; you take over the line still not comfortable enough with your German to try to work the register. 

When the line starts to lull, you can see Valentina peering at you from the corner of her eye. You can see it bursting inside of her: the urge to ask you what's wrong. She's never been the type of person to keep herself from prying, but this time she manages to keep it to herself.

"I'm having a party this weekend if you want to come," she finally says, wiping the register down during a slow moment. "There won't be a lot of people there."

You force yourself to smile over at her, fingers paused in the act of scratching dried milk off of the counter. 

"That sounds fun."

"Would your - would König be coming?"

You keep your eyes trained on the dried milk, not looking over at her prying eyes. 

"I'm not sure. He should be home soon."

"How soon is soon?"

"Not sure."

After the two women who'd been in here bad mouthing König, you'd never bothered to ask him if anyone else in town knew what he did for a living - if anyone knew about his work in the military. He wouldn't have answered the question; but you could tell from how everyone said his name, how everyone looked at him when the two of you walked alongside each other, that they knew he did something they didn't want to know about.

You can hear it in the way Valentina speaks his name. She's being polite because she likes you, but she doesn't want König to show up.

You close the shop for the night, an hour after waving good-bye to Valentina as she disappeared around the corner. It's eerily silent as you count the change down, readying the drawer for the openers. You try to drag the last tasks as long as possible: sweeping behind the counter, putting new bags in the trash cans, but you can only drag it out for so long.

Your brain spirals again on the prospect of being pregnant - of having to explain to König what had happened. You try to script out the conversation in your head; a thousand different scenarios occupy your thoughts as you drive home. Each one ends in König storming out of the house, of you being forced to be alone.

You don't move for a moment as you park the car, the lights illuminating the glass in the window. You're halfway out the door, when a twitch at the window catches your attention- behind the curtain you can just make out the outline of someone waiting there. Your heart leaps, for just a moment you expect König to come bounding out the door.

But when the shadow moves towards the front door the overwhelming feeling that something is wrong washes over you. It's too small - too short to be your König. One foot is still poised in the car as you freeze. You scan the grass, looking for any sign that the giant truck that usually drops König off had cut through the grass earlier, but it's still pristine in the darkness. 

And König would have met you at work; he never let you drive at night when he was home. He'd never not come to meet you the moment he was home. 

The door cracks open - you don't know if it's a trick of your imagination or if whoever is in there is really coming out. In a blind panic you throw yourself back in the car, finger fumbling for the key to try to turn it on. Without looking back up at the door - scared of who you might see, you keep your eye focused on the steering wheel as the car comes to life beneath you and you slam the car into a turn.

As you straighten the wheel, you glance in the rearview mirror - a shadowed figure, just illuminated by your tail lights, peers at you from behind the front door.

[bomberqueen17]

farm life

Am at the farm. Just gonna witter on uninterestingly about that behind the cut because I"m too tired to be interesting.

Initially we were going to make chicken sausage this week but BIL decided not to, but then when I said I was coming anyway, he decided to cut up some chickens.

In past years they've always sold out of chicken parts way before they've sold out of whole chickens. But a couple of years ago a chef friend told him there was nothing really wrong with thawing a chicken, cutting it up, and refreezing the parts, and initially we were just thawing whole chickens to cut up to grind into sausage, but we did some tests and determined that actually, no, there's really no discernible loss of quality in the parts. So now we don't sell out of chicken breasts in December anymore, but can keep bringing them to market all winter.

So this year we took the whole chickens out of the store, stopped bringing them to market, and are *only* selling the parts, and are saving the whole chickens to thaw and cut up and refreeze as parts. It's working great. It's more work, but it's more profit, and also more sales. People just don't buy whole chickens that much.

So anyway we cut up 88 chickens, and saved like 60 of the carcasses into a pair of huge stock pots. Packaged all the parts up, labeled and weighed them, then put the stock pots on to boil. Today we packaged 89 quarts of chicken stock. I was going to deep-clean the commercial kitchen, but it's not ready for the full spring treatment: we're still washing eggs in there, which means baskets full of chicken-shitty eggs are coming in and getting set on the floor. So I just cleaned and sanitized the heck out of the stuff we were using, and also the floor drain, but have held off. In April when the temps don't go below freezing at night anymore, when the vegetable washing station can move out of the eviscerating room so the egg washing can move back in there, *then* I will haul all the big equipment out and wash the whole room from the ceiling to the walls to the floors to the back of the grinder, under the mixer, under the fridge, under the freezer, all of it is getting powerwashed within an inch of its life.

But not this trip.

Next week we're making pork sausage.

I have been taking my dose of adderall at 8am immediately before I go out to work. It's hard to judge the efficacy, actually, because I'm so busy and so rarely totally self-directed. The real test would be to have me have a day of idleness and half a dozen things I need to accomplish. But I can concretely observe that I don't get a sort of dizzy head rush when it kicks in anymore, and I don't crash around 3 or 4 pm anymore. No, instead I'm just physically exhausted at that time, but it's understandable that I would be, because despite my best efforts to work out all winter, I am in no way prepared for the amounts of heavy lifting, repetitive movements, and sheer mileage you have to walk around here.

Today I finished cleaning the kitchen and then spent a couple of hours with my trusty old pruners, helping Farmsister and Veg Man harvest pussy willows to sell at market in decorative bundles. They just chainsawed the trees off a couple inches above the ground, and then we went at them with pruners and only took the nice branches, and the rest are going through the woodchipper to be mulch. VegMan pointed out the line they'd cut back to last year: this is how you coppice willows, and you can harvest them like this every year. They were fifteen feet tall, all new growth.

Soon we'll have daffodils. Mom had too many at her house, and a couple years ago she and Dad dug up buckets and buckets of them and brought them over and we dug a trench in the hillside and tipped them in. And now they're about ready to be divided again, LOL.

We have pullet eggs too. The chickens are laying pretty well, manageable amounts. We've started packing the eggs by weight, which is a little time-consuming.

OK that's enough wittering. Have I got any photos? Hmm.

the view from the little creek down into the Quackenkill, alongside the back of the old granary. Morning, sun coming through the trees and lighting up the red-stained old siding, the neighbor's house visible at the other end of the cut.

2. A pig friend, muddy snoot questing toward the camera in the sunshine of the winter livestock barn, which has a plastic south-facing roof to let in all the light it can.

3. Farmsister, in her chainsaw chaps and safety gear, chainsawing down the pussy willows in front of the solar panels. (They measured, before they planted the little trees; they'd have to be 40 feet tall to block the light on the solar panels in any season, which I don't think a pussy willow would do, but it's still important to prune them back whether we harvest them for the catkins or not.)

That's all, happy spring. I'm so tired.

[crystalgastles]

After the flesh

This is a very rough draft of the first chapter of my Jeff the killer fanfiction please spare me if you find any grammar mistakes

Trigger warning for normal Jeff the killer stuff

Rain pattered outside my window, the cold grey of the morning stinging my eyes as the dull feeling of a headache began to brew at the bottom of my temples. My teeth felt sore.

The remnants of last nights events began slowly moving to the forefront of my mind and the reminder that I had to work a nine hour shift was threatening to make my hangover worse.

The coffee in my hand was bitter and the cigarette that graced my lips as I pulled from its burning embers was hot on my lungs. I should have stolen more sugar packets from work.

I could work up the courage to call out, use an excuse that no one wanted to ask more about but I need the money, rent was over due and I’m two weeks away from having the water and electricity cut out. Another drag out the cracked window, another sip of the coffee I don’t have cream or enough sugar to make bearable.

——————————————————————————

Another sip from the bottle, and a shit attempt at washing off my clothes in the river behind the house of a well off family. Father was a Lawyer I think mother was an accountant or receptionist or insurance broker?

I never know anymore. Lines blur the faces are warped, people look like animals the more I do this. Man sins he runs to church, monster sins he runs to the bottle, and I am no man.

Thunder rumbles in the distance as lightning crashes a little too close to my position than I’d like. I’ll just steal from the slaughterhouse I’ve created behind me, all that’s not covered in blood.

I rummage through the teenage boys things, never bothered to learn his name even though he was the one to wake up, he doomed the entire family. The soft white of the fabric made me wince. The clean white of the oversized material falling over my frame with ease.

——————————————————————————

The diners bright lights practically blinded me as I tried to get through the day. Zombies had more energy than I did at this point and tips were slow. I couldn’t blame the customers, but it would put a spring in my step if I got more than a five percent tip for large groups I mean, Can seven business men not afford more than five dollars to spare between all of them?

Cold ice water spilled down the front of my uniform as the clatter of glass hit the ground in a sharp ear piercing crack. I had tripped on one of their feet, made to look like an accident but it was because I forgot more creamer. I was sure if it. Fabric uncomfortably clung to my skin as one of them giggled like a school girl. “Jesus” I whispered harshly under my breath and didn’t turn back to face them before I ran to the back room.

Someone else could clean it.

My entire front was covered in water, the tips of my hair soaked and freezing, I couldn’t help but let out hard and choked sobs, my body shaking with each breath while I stood in the freezer in the kitchen trying to compose myself.

The end of my shift and I could even hold it together. I removed my apron and clocked out without telling anyone.

Mascara ran down my cheeks,my nose and cheeks flushed while I clung to my winter coat, it was cold enough to be uncomfortable but not enough for it to snow, the puddles from the earlier rain squelched as I worked on my walk to my car from the parking lot. 98 days since I had been kicked out from my family home, 26 days I had been couch surfing and 72 had been living in my friends apartment, barley being able to split rent. It was almost December. I missed my mom.

——————————————————————————-

I liked to watch the news, between the mundane and the weather the bright face of the news anchor would fall, sharing the details of the family I had ever so kindly turned into my art project. Three people, five people, an extended family of eight on vacation, only the dog was left. All me across different states, yet I wasn’t suspected for any except my own family’s. Dogs, animals can’t tell the police what you’ve done and sometimes they don’t care. I don’t leave witnesses that can speak.

The diner was mostly quiet, bright droning lights almost drowned out the sound of the box television hanging over the booth in front of me that displayed the news. The chief of police was speaking at a press conference, the bright white hoodie suddenly making me feel too visible for my comfort.

Politician. I killed a local politicians whole entire family.

Not that I particularly care about politics, quite a distaste for them actually. Police tend to work harder to find the people who harm them even at the local level.

My attention was drawn from the problem I was facing on the screen in front of me as I watched the guy in the booth across from my table in a group of suited fraternity brothers who barely graduated college stick his foot out and trip the server that was waiting on him. Making them drop the tray of half full ice water they were carrying.

The crash of glass and silverware clattered to the floor as the seven giggled, mockingly saying sorry and throwing their half crumpled napkins at her in feigned support of helping them clean up. Tears welled in their eyes as they stood up straight and ran to the back.

It’s easy to pick targets. Some people might as well paint giant red circles on their foreheads. I don’t usually pick people for their behavior on a whim, but I missed my portion of the news because the accident they caused. Not the server.

I don’t discriminate when it comes to what I do. I watch people, I study them, some more than others. Sometimes I don’t, admittedly I should be more careful but when you need a place to stay for the night you can’t be picky especially if they have a McMansion on the side of town people don’t expect murder in and you really need a shower.

I watched the seven, not pay walk out and to their respective gaudy cars, lifted trucks and one lime green hummer, but two, the one who tripped the server and the one who laughed the loudest, made the detrimental mistake of walking home.

I followed at a distance, hood up. The cloudy cold weather allowed me to have it that way without suspicion. I just wanted to see where they lived. I’d deal with it later.

———————————————————————————

My keys clinked on the glass of the entry way table into my shared apartment. My roommate wasn’t home yet but I saw the mess of papers, boxes, a box cutter, fake skin for practice and a half drunk Red Bull on the coffee table and knew she hadn’t been gone long. They’d never learn to pick up after themselves.

They were a night shift worker at a gas station who had a dream of being a tattoo artist, something I also wanted to do but apprenticeships were not in the cards for me, I needed to eat and a place to shield me from the rain. The clock I could barely see from the kitchen, a glowing green glob that i could barely make out read 9:15.

I shivered, my front still wet from the water spilled on my brightly colored and obnoxiously 50s themed uniform. I needed a shower and to change.

Warm water cascaded down my back while I sat with my knees to my chest, focusing my eyes on the vinyl coating on the shower wall that’s been slowly starting to peel. I hate the mundane, I wish for just once , something different would grace my life. Something that’s not wake up, go to work, smoke a cigarette, shower, watch tv, check the landline for messages that my mother still sent me, begging me to come home. I can’t.

I watched the remainder of my hair dye fall down the drain as I turned the water off, I would keep it on forever if it stayed warm. The rough material of an old towel wrapped around my body while I brushed my wet hair and then my teeth, got dressed in an old South Park t shirt I had from high school that my dad gave me, one of the only things we ever bonded over was that show. I swallowed the guilty feeling that overcame my senses as I pulled on my sweatpants and clipped my hair back so my wet hair wouldn’t stain my shirt. Perks of having dye that never seems to fully Rinse out.

The yellow glow of our singular lamp bathed the living room in a warm light, the couch seemed to sink in on me while the tv played some sitcom I wasn’t too invested in.

Tap tap tap

The unmistakable sound of fingers on glass made me turn my head towards our sliding door, I grabbed the box cutter sitting on the coffee table. Something my roommate left out after she had finished opening a package, her forgetfulness becoming something I was grateful for in this moment.

I could see a figure. My own reflection in the glass obscuring my late night visitor’s appearance as I approached the door. Seeing it was unlocked as the glass slowly started to slide open.

She forgot to lock the door.

A large black boot slapped onto the linoleum, wet with rain. The white hoodie the intruder was wearing, covered in red. The rain that had seeped into the fabric had turned the large splotches pink around the edges of what i could only assume was blood. And I didn’t want mine on there next.

Exposing the box cutters blade I ran at him, yelling obscenities as I hopped onto his back, a low grunt escaping his lips as he tried to pull me off and throw me onto my own kitchen floor,

Large calloused hands tried to grab at my arms as I wildly slashed without really looking. blood dripped onto my hands when I sliced his arm with the box cutter.

He grabbed my wrist and pried me off of his back, grabbing my shoulders and slamming me against the ground.

The wind was knocked out of me when the cold kitchen floor hit my back, the blood from his arm now dripping onto my face while he had me pinned to the floor, grabbing my wrist and wrestling my one and only weapon out of my hands.

Kicking, screaming, and biting I eventually got out from under him after I bit down his palm hard enough to draw blood and to feel his skin rupture between my teeth. I ran to my room, grabbing my flip phone off the living room table as he was preoccupied,clutching his hand where I had bit him and tried to shut the door but a steel toed boot stood in my way.

A deep gravely voice barely loud enough to hear came from the other side of the flimsy wood that was cracking in between my non stop pushing and the leather and steel on the other side

“I don’t want to hurt you. I need a place to sleep.”

What the fuck.

I tried to think, of something anything that would make him scared enough of me to leave but I kept drawing blanks. My lungs still trying to catch up with me.

“I have a roommate! He’s big and will be home in ten minutes, I have a shotgun in my closet if you don’t get out right now I’m blowing a hole through your stomach”

I lied. All I had was a box cutter that he now had, and a scrawny caffeine addict who was not a he who wouldn’t be home until six in the morning.

“You should go get it then, cause I’d rather have a hole in my stomach than be in a jail cell for the rest of my life”

I didn’t know what to say, my hands were shaking and I was covered in sweat and blood, my bangs stuck to my forehead and I pushed the door harder and harder, trying to push him out of the way so i could have some semblance of safety.

The crunching of the door reminded me of what was between me and this man, who was determined on staying in my home for the night, the sirens passing by my house one after the other, catching my attention. I made the connection that, that’s what he was hiding from pretty quickly.

The creaking from the door opening further brought me back down to earth, his foot swiping mine off balance causing me to fall back and balance myself on the wall, allowing the door to fully open as he stepped through, hands up as a show of surrender.

——————————————————————————

I returned to the townhouse three hours later, crouching behind a large bush right while I waited for one of the men from the diner to step out the back door and onto the patio, bong in hand.

I overheard on their walk home about a new strain they had gotten from a dealer in the city, something about how it was supposed to be smoother than a generic? I couldn’t give a shit I hope it was laced.

As if on queue I heard the glass back door open, to my surprise both of them stepped out, one carrying a small bag and the other carrying the large glass bong shaped like a family guy character.

Assholes. Stereotype defining assholes.

The water sloshed inside of the bowl when one of the men stood up, both backs turned to me as I lunged at one of them from the bush, large Bowie knife clutched.

Sharp Metal pierced between skin muscle and bone, the squelch of blood and raw screaming disturbed the peace of the quiet neighborhood, the glass bong shattering as it hit the concrete. The sound wasn’t as funny I guess when you’re being stabbed through the spinal cord.

The first one was swift. The man fell to the ground and was sobbing while his friend, the one who tripped the server stood dumbly off to the side.

I lifted his head by his shortly cropped and gelled hair, the crunchy pompous locks making me want to vomit.

“Open your mouth.”

“W-what?” The cracked voice of the man annoyed me. Once so proud and full of arrogance reduced to a babbling child

“Are you deaf I said open your fucking mouth.”

He did as I said, and as I placed his front teeth on the metal feet of the patio stable and kicked down. The sickening crunch of his teeth and skull satisfied me. He’d finally stop laughing.

I turned to the other man, who was now holding a wooden board.

I pulled my knife out of his friend’s back, looking him in the eye and slowly wiping the carnage off on the paper white of my sweatshirt, lightly laughing to myself.

“What was your friends name?”

The man swallowed, Lowering the board and taking a shaking breath before looking back at me

“Look man if I owe you money or something, I don’t make the Coke I just deal it, I can give you the guys number or-“

I shook my head. This guy watched his friend get curb stomped and he was worried that he owed me money

“Do none of you listen? It’s like you can only hear yourselves, what was your friends name sweetheart”

I was wasting time. The neighbors definitely heard and or seen what had happened. I would be hearing sirens soon enough. I needed to get this over with.

“Ronnie, um his name was Ronnie”

He finally answered my question and I let out a breath as I took a slow and deliberate step forward, tilting my head so I’d be at eye level with him. Keeping quiet while he just stood there as if waiting for me to make a move instead of actually doing anything to stop me or using that wooden board he had so lovingly clutched.

I stopped, tracing the blade along my fingertip. His unwillingness to fight back making me want him to just smack me square in the face with that wood just to prove to me that he wasn’t all talk, and that he didn’t only like to pick on people he deemed lower than him.

“It’s harder for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to travel through the eye of a needle”

Tears ran down his face as he let the board fall on the concrete, sniffling when he twisted his face to try and figure out what I meant “What does that even mean”

“I’ll see you where we both belong”

The knife slipped through the fabric of his shirt as his blood dripped onto the front of my jacket, the friction of flesh similar to when you slice an orange in half. One after the other after the other until his body resembled hamburger meat. I only stopped when i could hear sirens in the distance, my anger finally subsiding in a dull guilt.

I hopped the fence of the small back yard, running into back alley ways and parts of the city that were abandoned at night, only resuming when the sun came over the trees.

My lungs burned as I coughed, and sprinted through the streets. Hardly being able to catch a breath as sirens grew closer, reminding me I had to keep running.

I made my way to an apartment building, scanning the downstairs units until I found one tucked away at the end of the tree line, with a sliding glass door leading to the outside of the back yard that was connected to the other tenants.

I saw the tv on from the other side but couldn’t quite make out who was watching it from the other side, the light from a street lamp casting a glare on the glass. They probably weren’t even home.

I searched for the door handle, my fingers accidentally tapping on the glass when I finally found it, unlocked. I pulled on the door the loud scraping sound surely alerting whoever was home if there was anyone there at all of my presence.

I didn’t have time to react when screaming ensued, weight suddenly on my shoulders as whoever was sitting on the living room couch was on me, yelling at me to get out and waving around a box cutter wildly.

I reached up, grabbing this persons wrist and also thrashing, whoever this was was hell bent on staying on my back, getting me out, or stabbing me.

There was a sharp sting in my forearm as they sliced me in an upward motion that i could only hope didn’t hit any major arteries, can’t go to the hospital when you’re wanted in all fifty states.

I managed to grab their shoulders flipping them so they were facing me , then pushed and fell with them to the ground, using the time they couldn’t breathe to pin their wrists to the linoleum, clamping down so hard they had to open their palm so that the box cutter would fall out of that iron grip. I stopped for a moment, recognizing their face and hair. It was the server. The server that was tripped, the server I saw run away from broken water glasses and the men I turned into New York strip steaks was now tussling with me.

A few kicks to the stomach I can deal with, wiggling is easy to endure, teeth tearing through my fingers is not something I ever want to feel again.

I let go, but not before I kicked the makeshift weapon where they couldn’t reach and cradled my now bleeding hand and arm while they skittered to the living room, and to a room down the hall. Probably to call the police. I ran, my longer legs carrying me to the room right before they could close the door, and stuck my foot in between the frame and the wooden board.

“I don’t want to hurt you I just need a place to sleep”

[lionydoorin]

I'm now humbly requesting angsty Tara headcanons

now we're talking >:)

cw gonna talk about substance abuse and some disturbing thoughts here !

we need to talk more about post-5/pre-6 tara and her recovery process. the legacy killing happened in late september, so from what i know the 2022 school year had just started. tara and sam move in with the meeks-martin's for the rest of tara, chad and mindy's school year. they take two to three months to get back to school, still recovering from their injuries and having to deal with pitiful looks from their peers. tara absolutely despises it.

because the looks her classmates give her are haunting. they seem scared, imagining what she'd been through. they absolutely won't talk when she's nearby. they'll open up hallways, stare at her from their lockers. it just makes her grip on her crutch tighten and she just wants to look at someone and yell at them.

her senior year experience is what makes her hate the whole situation the most. it's what makes her yearn for the normalcy she'll never have the most, as well.

she lashes out during their lunch break, once, when she hears two girls whispering about them. tara turns to yell and tell them to shut up, to mind their own business, because she's just so fucking tired of them and their fake pity and whatever the fuck they think of them. they're not only survivors, for fuck's sake, they are people and they should treat them as such.

mindy and chad help her out of the cafeteria before she can hit them with her crutches. she sobs onto their chest for at least an hour before martha is there to pick them up. when she gets home, sam welcomes her with a warm embrace, telling her it's fine, that she can let it all out.

she's so wary of new people after 6 as well. her trust issues reach its peak. tara was already the worst at letting other people in, but knowing that, at any moment, someone new might be a masked killer trying to take her and her loved ones down?

it makes the classes that she doesn't share with chad and mindy so lonely.

she feels lonely most of the time. it's hard to smile when everything reminds her of everything she's been through.

with rapid weather changes, tara's injuries bother her a lot. rainy days are the worst, and she skips class a lot on winter. she relies on painkillers a lot to keep her going; they're not enough. they're never enough.

the stronger ones were off the chart after sam found out she got a bit of an addiction to roxanol.

having been through terrible things makes her mind wander to intrusive, disturbing thoughts a lot. she imagines what it would be like to be murdered anywhere she goes, how ghostface could crack her body, cut her into tiny pieces and leave its parts there to be found by someone. after the bodega episode, she thinks of people she doesn't even know dying a lot, as well. tara has panic attacks and has to leave class early constantly.

nightmares. constant nightmares. she sees amber a lot, sees her disfigured figure, remembers the night she first got attacked and wakes up to her leg hurting more than ever. sometimes, her mind plays the moment she stabbed ethan again, and again, and again, reminding her that she's a monster, because no normal person would do something like this.

she's not normal. she'll never be normal. she'll always be this empty shell, this dead girl walking.

tara thinks about it a lot. how she could've been dead. how, maybe, it would be better for everyone if she was.

[astrhae]

i know i'm asking for pain with this but:

wesper + a kiss on a scar? 🥰

double bluff | angst with a happy ending, canon-typical violence, 4k

------------------------------------

“There you are,” Wylan sighed.

He’d been waiting for Jesper to come back with lunch for two hours. The Van Eck office by the Church of Barter was an imposing building that spiraled upward to rival the Geldrenner’s clocktower. They worked on the top floor there three days a week, taking meetings and trying to grapple with the business – even after two years, the empire he’d stolen back from his father still felt impossibly large.

It felt even more impossible when he was hungry.

Things weren’t a complete loss, though: Wylan had managed to sketch some new factory floorplans while Jesper had been out, and he moved those papers away onto one of the armchairs that littered the private office, wiping the charcoal off his fingers.

They were trying to change how things worked in Ketterdam, but it was far more than an uphill battle. Sometimes, that meant upsetting people: like Councilmen who didn't approve of Wylan's plans to open up new harbors.

Jesper held up a bag of uitsmijter. He swung the door closed behind him with his hip, his pistol clattering against the polished wood. The other matching pistol was on the armchair beside the papers: they were also still working on putting down their weapons, one at a time.

“Sorry,” Jesper dropped the bag over the empty spot on the table. His words curled with the Kaelish accent that rarely ever showed itself. “There was quite a line.”

“A line?” Wylan frowned.

It was past three bells in the afternoon, the sun from the office’s bay windows was already beginning to sink near the horizon in the early winter. No one should be lining up for uitsmijter, which was why Jesper had suggested it in the first place.

“Yes,” Jesper shrugged. “Why don’t we get out of here?”

“Well,” Wylan was about to shrug it off – to say they should eat first – but he caught the red stain on the pistol at Jesper’s hip, stark against its pearl handle, and, “were you in a gunfight?”

“No.”

The answer came far too quick, and far too short. Wylan walked around the table, heart hammering. Hadn’t they talked about this? The uitsmijter shop was nowhere near the Barrel – so either someone attacked Jesper, or Jesper had taken a detour. Or, more likely: both a fight and a detour. His vest was too crooked on his shoulder, jacket far more crumpled than it had been when he’d left the office two hours ago, and was that a shirt in a different color?

They could deal with everything else later. For now, one thing at a time, and the most important:

“Were you hurt?” Wylan strode closer, reaching out to take Jesper’s hand, but –

Jesper jerked away, taking a step back. “I’m fine,” he insisted, lips pressed into a thin line. “Let’s get out.”

“Out?”

This wasn’t like Jesper. Yes, Jesper could be impulsive and brusque and rough, and some days even Jesper couldn’t bear to be touched, the world too full and his heart too hollow to do anything except run. Still, this wasn’t like Jesper – one staccato beat off tempo, and Wylan was stumbling to catch up, to try and understand –

“Yes,” Jesper said again, nodding toward the door he’d just closed. The gaudy laurels painted on it was really something they needed to replace soon. “Out.”

Again, too short and too quick.

Wylan stared at him, grey eyes he didn’t think he knew right now. He’d seen enough people change, seen enough people be twisted out of shape: in front of him, because of him. Until there were no more silver linings to hold onto, only slivers of lies he tricked himself into calling hope.

This wasn’t like Jesper.

This wasn’t –

The door swung open and –

Instinct kicked in. He made a dash for the other pistol on the armchair –

“Don’t!” Jesper’s voice rang out.

And it was Jesper’s voice, because it was Jesper standing in the doorway, shirt sticking wet on his shoulders and jacket gone and a cut dripping from his temple. And it was Jesper, too, standing in the office with Wylan, jacket askew and blood on his pistol.

(read on ao3)

[princessdiaries333]

December goals + accountability post

୭ ❄️ ✧ ˚. ᵎᵎ 🎀

DRINK WATER

i seriously need to cut back on the amount of soda i’m drinking its so bad for me. my skin is suffering and ik water is super super beneficial, it will help me achieve all the rest of my goals !! my goal is to drink at least 4 bottles of water a day.

DONT PROCRASTINATE

i have so many things i need and want to do, i’ve been so swamped and drowning in school work i need to spend this winter break to get ahead and study. i also need to get my permit, it’s been almost a year since i turned 15 and im still putting it off. if i keep waiting i wont be able to get my license till im 17. i also really really wanna get a job. my goal is to study for all my classes to prepare for the new quarter and get my permit.

WORKOUT

i’m currently the lightest i’ve been in a long time but i’m not satisfied with how i look. i feel fatter than ever and it sucks because ive worked so hard to get to this point and i can’t enjoy it. i think the biggest reason i feel like this is because i haven’t been working out, over the summer i was working out every day and i was getting really toned. now I’ve lost weight but in not toned at all so it makes me feel like im bigger than i am cuz it’s all soft fat. my goal is to do pilates at least 5 times a week and try to go on walks every day.

EAT HEALTHY

i NEED to stop binging sm crap. i’m constantly eating junk food that doesn’t even fulfill me. most of the food i eat just makes me feel miserable right after. eating healthier will improve my general health but also my mental health and yk that’s great !! i also want to eat smaller portions because my mom always piles food onto my plate and forces me to eat the whole thing. so to avoid this and so i can be completely aware of what i’m putting in my body, my goal is to cook my own food and meal prep healthy and nutritious meals.

GET OFF THE PHONE

i want to spend more of my time doing things that make lasting and meaningful memories and help me grow instead of spending every hour of the day rotting in bed on my phone. i’ve been so busy with school i haven’t been able to finish any of my books so id like to dedicate some of this break to finishing those. i also want to go out with my friends and boyfriend more. my goal is to spend less time on my phone and more time doing things i enjoy and spending time with the people i love !!

ACADEMICS

i’ve been telling myself for so long that i’ll do a deep dive and fully research all things regarding college so i can build my game plan for the next 2 years. i’m a sophomore in high school so i want to know exactly where i want to go from here. i need to know what schools i want to go to, how to qualify for certain scholarships, what i want to major in, what are the best schools for my passions, how will i pay for it. there’s so much to find out and if i make my plan now i’ll save myself sm stress down the road. my goal is to set up a college plan and do thorough research for my future.

[suneeater]

odd bnha headcanons!

✎a/n: we had so much fun with these!! they're all just harmless headcanons that we thought of one day while joking around, so we thought to share them since we currently don't have time to write much^^

✰warnings: slightly nsfw

𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐢.

she is a huge vocaloid fan, but her favourite is hatsune miku!

mei has tried to make several miku-bots in the past to try and replicate her, but none have managed to reach the divinity that is hatsune miku herself.

she will continue to try and make the perfect miku.

𝐦𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐨.

mirio cries at sad pet commercials. all of them. even if they're completely and utterly horrible.

for example, that tiktok audio with the odd voiced-over dog: "I'm in heaven now!"... he cries at that too.

there could be a robbery going on, but that sounds more like a job for the police in his opinion. he's too busy scaling a tree to save a cat.

𝐭𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢.

he is a league-of-legends player

often plays with shigaraki, but he has absolutely no idea.

his online personality is the complete opposite from his usual self, and his every other word is a profanity.

𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚.

everyone looks up to a hero, but her idols are the dallas cowboy cheerleaders.

her secret passion is knitting!

𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐨.

sero refuses to set things like keys and his wallet down, so he uses his tape to stick them to the wall! can't lose something that you taped to the wall, now can you?

if he doesn't have pockets, he just tapes stuff on himself or kaminari.

has taped kaminari to the door once. aizawa just sighed deeply and told them to pay for a new one, because they broke it while trying to get denki off the door.

𝐤𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢.

denki has a relatively popular tumblr account!

one of the things he posts on there is fanfiction and "headcanons" about the heroes from his generation (mostly his friends; there are a LOT of bakugou and sero scenarios)

(kaminari denki is the secret fourth mod of suneeater?! /j)

people comment things like: "wow these feel so accurate! its like you actually know dynamight lol"' and kaminari just giggles in his room, kicking his feet on his bed

he's also really good at writing. like... really good. there is a popular theory that he's a famous YA author undercover, when really he has just absorbed different writing styles. he's read more books than his classmates might assume^^

he has anime girl cardboard cutouts and obsessively plays dating simulators! his favourite ones are mystic messenger (down bad for 707 and ZEN) and doki doki literature club! (really likes yuri!! she likes literature just as much as he does)

𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭.

has an only fans and she is thriving on there.

she could post a photo of herself wrapped up in a winter jacket, but her fans would eat it up, no complaints!

𝐤𝐚𝐦𝐮𝐢 𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐬.

his friends joke that he is totally into trees. he has neither confirmed nor denied this accusation.

if you cut him open, you can count the rings inside to see how old he is.

𝐡𝐚𝐰𝐤𝐬.

he has a nest in his apartment. no further explanation needed.

𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫.

just like his hair and facial hair, endeavor can turn his pubes into flames.

𝐚𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐰𝐚.

aizawa listens to weird asmr to help him sleep.

his favourites include "kawaii catgirl meows you to sleep :3 no speaking!" and "cat purring sounds 12 hours"

he slides his phone into his pillows case and he's asleep almost immediately.

he absolutely owns a flask.

𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭.

often comes out with a bunch of books and other trinkets that just don't have any value at all, just have his face plastered on it.

all might is a self help book author. most of the advice inside is something along the lines of "just smile!"

he often says "if you’re poor, just work harder" and cannot comprehend why poverty exists

if he didn’t suffer erectile dysfunction, all might would exclaim "I am arriving!" during sex

he’s got nasty yellow toenails like a true old man

which is how the all might pedicure arc starts

he asks midoriya to help him with it because he can't even bend down enough anymore:

‘deku… call my podiatrist. the number is on the fridge’

[the fridge covered in drawings and letters most of it is midoriya's fanmail. you can't even see the actual fridge.]

he wrote the number on the back of a drawing izuku made him - he uses midoriya's fanmail as paper - he knows he's gonna write more anyway

all might unironically makes poems, but they're super bad.

here's a sneak peek from his upcoming poetry collection "Always All Might, Never No Might."

꧁the sea is blue and the people cheer as i come down to swoop and save them the villain falls to his knees tears falling from his eyes i cough up some blood time is running out.꧂☆

[builtbybrokenbells]

belladonna | iv

Too beautiful to resist, and too deadly to survive; the tragic tale of belladonna in all its glory.

Masterlist | Taglist

Pairing: Danny Wagner x f!reader, f!reader x OC

Word Count: 16k

Warnings: mentions of toxic/abusive parents, mentions of/toxic relationships, mentions of criminal activity/criminal records, poverty, fighting/name calling, crying, arguing, mentions of homelessness, mentions of physical violence, mentions of blood, mentions of AA/NA, NA meetings, heavy descriptions of addictions, use of/mentions of drugs, mentions of relapsing, mentions of OD, mentions of drinking, flirting, mentions of hookups/sex, smoking, depression/anxiety, mental health struggles, fluff, swearing, sorry if I miss any!!

hi lovelies!! so happy to be back with this. i missed belladonna dearly but needed some time away from it to get my head straight. i hope you like this, and please heed the warnings for this chapter! as always, be kind, enjoy, and don’t mind any grammar mistakes 🫶🏻

May 9th, 2022 - 3:31 AM

The chime of the bell above the main entrance caused a brief pause in Dylan’s story, the silence hanging heavy over the entire kitchen for a few uncomfortable seconds. You looked across the room, your eyes burning into the girl leaned over the metal countertop. She was focused on a video playing on her phone, completely ignoring the three sets of eyes now settled on her. You took in a long breath, calming your nerves before you spoke, keeping your tone as nice as possible.

“Don’t worry Katie, I’ve got it.” You rolled your eyes, pushing past the two boys standing in your way. Dylan scoffed, just as peeved as you were about Katie’s lack of interest in her job. As your conversation got cut short for the millionth time and you made your way into the dining room, he took the time to send the middle finger to Katie across the kitchen.

You had been running all night to serve customers, and she didn’t seem to care much at all. On top of that, it was exceptionally busy for a Friday graveyard, but you accredited it to the unusually warm and sunny skies during the day. Now that summer was nearing its beginning, the town was bustling with people who were eager to get out of the house after being holed up all winter. Thankfully, that also meant that the Fox’s summer hours for the staff had begun, turning your 6-6’s into 4-4’s. The mornings needed much more staff due to the more demanding crowd, and there wasn’t enough people willing to work the nights. Years ago, John had created the schedule to appease his workers, and now it was second nature.

So far, you were enjoying the opportunity to get off work earlier, usually because Danny had taken to picking you up after your shift and going home with you, or vice versa. Together, you’d sleep away the early morning and wake up side by side. You weren’t sure if it was the fact that you were getting more sun, or if you were just happier because you spent most of your days delicately intertwined with Daniel and his lifestyle. Over the last few days especially, you were beginning to feel like an entirely different person.

Instead of waking up cold and hungry, you were often too warm, which was a problem you’d never known. Your belly was full, but not with an abundance of food. Instead, you were completely full of joy, which was also something you never had much experience with. NA meetings went back to once a month, because the usual horror that followed you was nowhere to be found. Life, including all of your usual struggle, was not gone completely, but it was much easier to digest now that you had someone to hold your hand along the way.

Danny and Sam had become part of your daily routine, but you still failed to make anything official with the boy you cared so much about. He spent so many hours sitting at the diner, slipping you love notes on recycled paper and crumpled receipts, and nearly every night beside you in bed. Most of your days were devoted to creating new memories with him, yet you were frozen with fear at the idea of putting a label on it. Although sex was plentiful, and so were sweet nothings and date-like activities, the two of you carried on as if you were friends. The idea of the end constantly loomed over your head, and the debilitating feeling of uncertainty never fully fled.

You loved your relationship with Danny, and you loved all of the memories you shared. You loved his company, and nearly every single thing about him, but you could not shake the thought that he might leave if you let him get too close. He already knew so much about your life that you intended to keep hidden from him, and you were committed to knowing him for as long as his stay in New York allowed. By sharing the worst parts of you, you risked scaring him away. By letting him get too close, you risked hurting yourself even more than you were preparing for. By making it official, you would ensure that his departure at the end of the summer would be fatal.

So, you opted to stick to your original plans; enjoy him while you could, and let him go when the time was right. It was the only way to ensure that your heart was properly protected.

As for your current shift at the Fox, it was as normal as it could be. Considering the recent tension between you and Vincent, it was actually pretty good. That night, he was quite amicable about his feelings about your current relationship, and even took the extra step to make small talk with you. Perhaps after days of complete silence from you, he realized he actually had the capability of missing you. Of course, you did not dwell on that thought for too long, because you couldn’t allow yourself to feel special, especially on his behalf. After the three day stretch of working together and avoiding each other at all costs, he seemed fed up with the tension constantly lingering in the air. Since the start of your Sunday night shift, he had presented himself as approachable and even friendly at times. Within a few hours, you were joking around with him the same as you did so long ago, before your relationship turned sour.

It made you realize that despite your dislike of his behavior, you still loved him as a person. Laughing with him was nice, and talking to him was something you missed, so long as the conversation was good. When business was slow, you found yourself caught in constant conversation with Dylan and Vincent in the kitchen, sharing cigarettes and stories you had missed out on due to the lull in friendship. As for Katie, she’d gotten to work (late, of course), and she hadn’t served a single table, including the ones in her section. Only part of you was angry, knowing the tips flowing your way would be generous, yet you couldn’t help but grow more irritated at her with every customer. You were tired, and more than that, you wanted to keep talking to your friends, to hear what they had been up to in your absence.

You pushed your way through the swinging half door, giving it more force than originally intended. It ricocheted off the wall, sending an echoing slam through the room. With a smile on your face, you hoped to cover up the moment of anger with a facade, praying that you could convince the customer the slam of the door was a mistake. When you looked upwards at the front door, your fake smile dropped into an expression of relief.

“What, no smile for me?” He asked, raising an eyebrow at you as you continued to walk towards him.

“Sorry, I can go back and try again if you’d like?” You offered, now within arms reach of him. He scoffed at the idea, already stepping forward to greet you.

“No, I think that’s okay.” He grinned, wrapping his arms around you as you collapsed into his hold. “Long night?”

“You have no idea.” You muttered, closing your eyes as his cologne surrounded you. If there was one thing Danny was good at, it was making you feel better just by existing. Over the weeks you had spent with him, his arms felt more like home than any building ever had, and the hints of citrus clinging to his skin was more euphoric than any drug you had ever tried.

“I’d kiss you, but I don’t want to start a fight.” He whispered just loud enough for you to hear, already noticing Vincent’s burning stare through the kitchen window.

“Probably a good idea. Things haven’t been too bad with him today.” You nodded, your words muffled from your face pressed to his chest. Then, you realized how utterly ridiculous it was that the two of you were in desperate need of secrecy all in hopes of keeping someone else in good spirits. Vincent was not your boyfriend, and you were not his property. If you wanted to kiss Danny, you were free to do so, and Vincent should not get a say in the matter at all. “Is it bad that I don’t even really care anymore?”

“No, don’t think so.” He shook his head. “But I don’t want the rest of your night to be ruined.”

“But it would make it so good right now.” You were nearly pleading with him. He gave a low chuckle, parting from you just enough to look down at your face. He raised his hand to your cheek, cupping it for a moment as he brushed his thumb over the tired skin. He wanted it just as bad as you did, but he knew better than to put you in such a position.

“If you can survive another,” he paused, looking down at his watch. “Thirty minutes, you can come over and we can do whatever you want.” He offered, subconsciously checking over your shoulder as he continued to worry about pushing boundaries.

Danny was not scared of Vincent, but he knew that if he did as you asked, you would face many more consequences than he would.

It was not an act of cowardice, but rather one of great care.

“Whatever I want?” You raised an eyebrow, smirking at his open-ended offer.

“I’m a man of my word, am I not?”

“So far, yes.” You nodded, grinning softly. “You want something to eat?”

“Not really.” He shook his head, still mindful of the set of eyes burning into him.

“Drink?” You tried again, nodding towards the soda machine behind the front counter.

“Live to please, Utah?” He chuckled, stepping to the side and taking a seat at a booth. While he did so, he did not dare look away from your face, scared to miss a single second of admiring you.

“Only for you.” You shot back, grabbing a bucket of sanitizer and a cloth from the counter to wipe off the tables. You loved when Danny came to visit, mostly because he was excellent company to keep while you puttered about your mind-numbing tasks. That, and he was nice to look at, of course.

“I like the sound of that.” He hummed, watching the sway of your hips as you walked towards the soda dispenser, placing a cup underneath and picking one at random. When the bubbles settled, you grabbed a paper straw between your fingers. Carefully, you walked it over and placed it in front of him. He barely gave the cup a sideways glance, still too busy watching you.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” You said, dipping the tip of your finger in the sanitizer water, carefully withdrawing it and flicking the droplet of liquid at him. He barely flinched at the action, grinning up at you as he spoke again.

“You have a guide to middle school insults in your back pocket? Been waiting for a chance to use that one all night, or what?” He teased, watching you as you leaned over the table to swipe away any dirt from the surface. You couldn’t help but notice his eyes trailing down over your collarbones, settling on the exact spot where your shirt pulled away from your chest. Gravity was helping you in keeping his attention, but it wasn’t like you were trying very hard in the first place.

“Yeah, been studying it all day, actually.” You grinned, looking over at him through the corner of your eye. “You want to check what else I have in my back pocket?” You asked, swaying your hips towards him only slightly. It was so miniscule that you weren’t even sure if he noticed it, but you were foolish to think he would miss even the smallest of movements from you.

In the kitchen, Dylan was beside himself with laughter at the sight of your shameless flirting, knowing that in all of his personal efforts, he’d never gotten such a response from you. Vincent, on the other hand, was not as keen on watching.

With a hard-set jaw and a sick stomach, his foot collided with the mop bucket. The filthy water inside sloshed, spilling over the sides onto the grimy tiles of the floor. Dylan looked back over his shoulder, wondering what the commotion was. As his eyes landed on Vincent, green with envy and crimson with rage, a sorrowful grimace crossed his lips.

He did not know because Vincent willingly told him, but it was not hard to piece together the root cause of Vincent’s ill feelings.

“I should go out there and beat his fuckin’—“ Vincent cut himself off, slamming his fist down on the industrial sinks. The sound of the impact lingered in the air, but it did not compare to the sound of Vincent’s breaking heart.

“You should calm the fuck down.” Dylan corrected, placing a firm hand on his shoulder so he could not swing on another inanimate object. Vincent shook him off, the feeling of his touch only furthering his anger.

“Don’t tell me what to do, asshole.” Vincent seethed through his heavy breaths. “That’s my girl out there.”

“She ain’t nobody’s girl, idiot.” Dylan argued further, the scowl decorating his face telling of his own discontent with Vincent’s actions. “She don’t belong to you, or me, or him. She can do whatever the fuck she wants, and you better not get in her way this time, or I swear to god I’ll kill ya’ myself.”

“Fuck does that mean?” Vincent stepped forward, nose to nose with Dylan in the moment of high tension. Both boys were ready to swing on each other, blinded by their own opinions and unable to reach any common ground.

“That means,” Dylan said, towering over the other boy as he used his size to his advantage. “She’s tryin’ to be happy, and you ain’t helping.” Vincent seemed to freeze at the thought, his anger fleeing him momentarily. At the idea of being exactly what you were trying to get away from, his throat seemed to close on itself and his blood ran cold. “I get that ya love her, man. She’s hard not to love, but you ain’t doin’ her any good. She asked you to clean yourself up, cause she can’t run with that stuff anymore. You want her so bad, do it. If not, let her go.”

“She’s asking too much of me, Dyl. This is all I’ve ever known, and she keeps sayin’ she loves me, but how can she love me if she don’t want me as I am?” Vincent spoke, calmer than he was moments before.

“She’s asking for what she needs, Vin. If that’s too much for you, then don’t do it, but you don’t get to stay in the middle, mad ‘cause she won’t bend to your rules. If you don’t want to see her with someone else, try.”

Dylan was speaking the truth, but Vincent had never been keen on listening to anyone other than himself.

“Don’t wait until she’s too far gone. Try, Vincent, but don’t you dare go and try breakin’ those two up, ‘cause I won’t be this fuckin’ nice. Get clean, cause she deserves better than this.” Dylan finished, pushing Vincent away from him as he spoke, silently letting him know the conversation was done.

“Fine,” Vincent grumbled, steadying himself on his feet after the harsh shove. “You’ll do it with me?” At that, Dylan let out a laugh, loud and offensive to Vincent’s genuine intentions.

“Fuck no.”

Dylan had used up every bit of common sense he could find, and unlike Vincent, getting clean had not only never been a priority for him, but a thought that never even crossed his mind.

𓇢𓆸

May 9th, 2022 - 4:17 AM

“Shhh,” you whispered, calming Danny down from a fit of laughter caused by a well-timed joke. As he bit his tongue, he closed the front door of the Airbnb behind him. Sam was asleep, long before Danny even left to go to the Fox, and you wanted to be extra cautious to avoid waking him.

“It’s just Sam,” Danny brushed you off, flipping the lock. “He’ll live.”

“I don’t want to give him any reasons to not like me.” You confessed, keeping your tone hushed as you tiptoed towards Danny’s bedroom.

“Are you kidding, Utah? He loves you.” Danny assured you, nearly tripping over himself to open his door for you. You slipped inside the dark room, knowing it better than the back of your hand now. The air was cool, the open window letting the night air in through the mesh screen. Despite the ventilation, the essence of his cologne still lingered around the room, wrapping you in a hug after a long day of being away.

“Exactly why I don’t want to wake him up.” You explained, turning to face the boy hovering by the door. Despite the lack of light, you could still see the definition of his curls, the outline of his nose, and the sharpness of his jaw.

Even in near total darkness, he was stunning.

“Tell me about your day.” He changed the subject, smiling as the glow of the porch light filtered in through the expensive blinds. It hit your face just right, allowing him to admire the softness of your features.

“It was… normal, I guess.” You said, slipping out of your jeans that were filthy from the twelve hour shift. Even as you did so, his gaze never trailed away from your face. You kicked your legs softly, the button scratching against the true wooden floors as they fell away from your ankles. “Very busy.”

“Tell me more.” He pressed further, breaking his attention away from you only for a moment to pull his shirt over his head. His sweatpants sat low on his hips, deliciously tempting as they framed the outline of his hip bones.

“Katie was late.” You shrugged, taking your own shirt off. He threw you the one he had on seconds earlier, knowing not to let it fall to the ground. As it landed in your hands, you noticed the warmth of his body still desperately clinging to the fabric.

“As usual.” He commented, watching as you unclipped your bra and pulled the shirt over your head. Once you were out of your dirty clothes, you sat down on his bed, noticing the softness of the mattress immediately. You would never say it aloud, but you were almost embarrassed to have him stay at your apartment, knowing the springs sticking out of your beaten up mattress could never rival the coziness of his.

“She didn’t serve a single customer all night.” You continued, crawling to the head of the bed and burrowing under the comforter. “So that sucked, but I got wicked tips.” Once you were comfortable, he joined you in the bed, resting his head on the same pillow you were on.

You felt his hand go in search of your thigh under the blanket. The touch was small, and it was innocent, but it felt like a million dollars. His rough fingertips grazed over your cool skin, sending goosebumps over your entire body. You melted into the feeling of him beside you, nudging closer to him until eventually your cheek was pressed to his bicep. Without hesitation, he turned onto his side and lifted his arm, inviting you even closer. You jumped at the opportunity, rolling into him and resting your head on his chest. When his arm dropped, he guided the rest of your body into him with little force.

Although you wanted to keep yourself convinced that the relationship with him was fun and did not come with any strings attached, you knew you were fooling yourself. His arms felt more like home than anything else, and you’d been searching for such comfort since you learned how to walk.

“Vincent actually talked to me tonight.” You added. He didn’t respond right away, but you could feel his heart speed at the mention of his name.

“Did he?” Danny asked, trying to remain calm and supportive over the idea. Although he was not Vincent’s biggest fan, he knew that you cared for him. His biggest worry was not a lack of loyalty, but rather your well-being entirely.

“Yeah, but it was just like it used to be. Like it was when we were friends.” You wanted to assure him that he had nothing to worry about, but the connotation of friendship between you and Vincent was not a comfort at all.

You may have been happy to be friends, but Vincent always seemed to want more.

“What did you do while I was gone?” You asked, letting your fingers trail down his bare stomach. The tickle sent a shiver down his spine, and as you traced shapes into his skin, he felt his heart begin to beat for you in that moment.

“Not a whole lot, really.” He admitted, letting his hand fall to the curve of your back. His fingertips rested above the seam of your underwear, threatening to go further but never crossing the boundary. “Think we wrote a new song.”

“That’s not a whole lot?” You chuckled, craning your head up to catch a glimpse of his face. He looked down, meeting your gaze with a small smile stuck on his lips. “I think it’s a whole lot. I’d like to hear it, whenever you want to share.”

“I’m sure we could make that happen.” He whispered, his eyes flickering to your lips. Without even realizing it, you were leaning upwards, desperate to remember what it felt like to kiss him. “I’d like to take you on a date tomorrow, if you’re interested?” He offered, feeling the tip of his nose graze yours as you continued to gravitate towards him.

“Oh yeah? What do you have in mind?” You asked, so close to him that you could feel the warmth of his breath on your skin.

“Surprise?” He raised an eyebrow, hoping you would go along with it.

“How do I know if I want to go if I don’t know what we’re doing?” You challenged, your lips brushing his as you spoke.

“You trust me?” He offered the idea as if it were something that had never crossed your mind before. His hand drifted downward, cupping your ass in his palm. The feeling sent a rush of arousal through you, despite him barely doing anything at all.

That was just how fantastic he was; he barely had to look your way to have you swooning over him.

“That’s a lot to ask of me, you know.” You said, finally pausing in place. If you moved any closer, the conversation would come to an abrupt end. He chuckled, letting his fingers dip below the waistband of your underwear. The warmth of his skin against yours sent your stomach twisting into knots.

“Anything I can do to convince you?” He asked, smiling ever so slightly as he watched your face.

“A couple things, yeah.” You nodded, continuing the act. One thing you loved about being around Danny was that everything was playful and rarely serious. His company came with the notion of fun, never a dull moment and always lighthearted. It was so different from everything else in your life, and that made it hard not to love it.

He leaned forward, capturing you in the kiss he’d promised you at the diner. Your eyes fluttered closed, your heart speeding in your chest as your abdomen filled with butterflies. It didn’t matter how integrated he was in your daily routine, or how comfortable you were with his company. Every time you found yourself in the position, it seemed to shock your system in the most pleasant ways.

When he pulled away, you noticed his grip on you had tightened every so slightly, silently telling you he felt the same way.

“How was that? You convinced yet?” You gave a soft shrug, continuing to tease him about the same things. You rolled away from him, settling into the mattress as you stared at the ceiling. He chuckled at your sudden movements, but didn’t complain about you parting ways.

“Tell me about your song.” You hummed, feeling the deadly grip of exhaustion begin to take hold. Your eyes burned as you listened to the sound of his breathing, waiting for him to divulge into the story of his music.

“I guess… it’s part of a bigger story, you know? Like the whole album is this big metaphor for life and death, and love, and we’re just trying to find missing pieces of the puzzle so the story can tell itself. It’s about war and peace, and nature too. It’s about everything, and every song is so different but still important. We don’t really decide what the songs are about, the album does.” He rambled, seemingly falling into the same position as he stared at the ceiling. It was like the entire picture was playing out on the warm beige paint that decorated the room, growing more intense as the words left his lips.

“You can’t tell me the meaning of one without knowing the rest of them.” You whispered, looking over at him, in awe of his passion for his music. You watched him nod, happy you understood his words. As he did, your mind tunneled elsewhere, your thoughts digging down to the deepest parts of your brain in search of something you did not know you needed an answer for. You blinked a few times, swallowing your thoughts as they swirled around, seemingly aimless. “The story tells itself.” You mumbled, blinking a few times to process the idea again.

“Yeah,” he agreed again, glancing over at you as he noticed your change in tone.

“Exactly!” You exclaimed, keeping your voice hushed as you scrambled to sit up. Danny’s eyebrows furrowed, confused about what you were talking about and even more confused about your sudden burst of energy.

You twisted your upper half around, reaching to the nightstand on the bedside. In the dark, you fumbled around to find the familiar leather binding of your notebook. When your fingers touched the surface of the journal, you hauled it over and dropped it in your lap.

“I’ve been stuck on the same stupid part of this story for days now. I keep thinking I need to come up with the perfect scene, and I keep changing it because it just doesn’t seem right. It’s not right because it doesn’t fit the story. I stopped the flow, I tried to change the whole mood because I thought the scene needed to be more interesting, but it doesn’t. The story needs to tell itself.”

Much similar to your fictional world, that realization would have served you well in every aspect of your life, specifically when it came to the boy laying next to you. You were trying so hard to shove your feelings down, to equate your care for him to a love of fun, but you were standing in the way of a story that was bound to tell itself sooner or later.

He watched you, smiling at your revelations, but you weren’t paying attention to him anymore. You had already flipped open the cover, finding the pen stuck between pages, and tried your best to keep writing in the dim moonlight filtering through the windows. As an act of love, he reached over and flipped the switch for the lamp beside the bed, ensuring that you wouldn’t strain too much trying to write in the dark. As if he never moved at all, you did not even register the shift in the atmosphere, nor the movement beside you in bed. Within seconds, you were immersed in the imaginary world unfolding on the paper before you.

Danny bit his tongue, holding back any more words so he did not break your focus. He laid back on the mattress, turning on his side to face you. Carefully, he inched closer to the end of the bed and slung his arm over your legs just below where your journal sat. His head rested on the pillow beside your elbow, and he leaned his head forward to place a gentle kiss to your forearm.

His eyes floated upwards, focusing on your determined expression. He studied the furrow of your brow and the purse of your lips as your hand scribbled words on the lines of your paper. He thought you were the most beautiful thing in the whole world, and he would be happy to sit in silence and watch you write for the rest of his life. Under the blanket, his thumb drifted across the soft skin on your thigh, a gentle reassurance that he was overjoyed he had given you a breath of inspiration.

He wanted to tell you that he was your biggest fan, but something inside of him felt that you already knew it.

Just like everything else in the world, the story of you and Daniel was beginning to tell itself, and neither of you had the ability to change the tale along the way.

May 9th, 2022 - 11:26 AM

“Where are you taking me, Daniel?” You asked, reiterating your question for the millionth time. He had his GPS programmed to the Bronx, but everything else had been kept secret since the minute you stepped outside that morning.

“I told you, it’s a surprise. Do you not know what that means?” He chuckled, squeezing your thigh gently. His hand had been permanently anchored there since you took post in his passenger seat, and you were keen on keeping it that way.

“I do, but it doesn’t mean I like it.” You huffed, looking out the window as you watched traffic pass you by. You had been driving for a while now, and if you had it your way, you would drive all day long with him. The intimacy of being alone together in his car was something you had been craving, considering most of the time you were in the living room with him and Sam both. It wasn’t a problem to spend time with Sam, but you would be lying if you said you preferred it over alone time with Danny. “You know we don’t have to do anything fancy. I’d be happy to just spend the day with you like this.”

“I know you would, Utah.” He said, nodding along with your sentiments. “Have you considered that maybe I want to do this?” He raised an eyebrow, a smirk tugging at his lips. “And who said it was fancy? Maybe you’ve got the wrong idea.”

“I wouldn’t have to guess if you’d just tell me!” You exclaimed, rolling your eyes at his stubborn nature. When you couldn’t stand the irritating smile he constantly held any longer, you turned to look out the window, wondering if you could piece together the location just by road signs and familiar directions.

The longer you watched, the more you understood that you would never be able to piece it together, because you rarely left the secure bubble of your poverty stricken suburb. Then, your mind wandered elsewhere as you realized Danny had zero familiarity with the area, even less so than yourself. You turned back to face him, a new thought bugging you as you watched his face.

“Does being so far away from home make you nervous?” You asked, unable to hold back your random curiosity. He glanced over at you from the drivers seat, just finishing sipping at the coffee he’d grabbed when you stopped for breakfast. As he placed it in the cup holder, he gave a small shake of his head.

“No, not really. Guess I’m used to it, now. We’ve been all over the place, playing shows and stuff. It’s fun more than it is scary. I miss home a lot, but I’m not nervous when I’m away.” He replied. You gave a slight nod, processing the information before speaking again.

“I guess… I never really realized how foreign this place was to you. Like, I don’t really come to this part of New York much, but probably still more often than you do.” You explained yourself more, hoping that the words made sense to him. Sometimes, you had an awful habit of struggling to relay thought to speech, and your intent often got jumbled on the journey between the two.

“Yeah, you’re right.” He nodded, clicking on his signal light as he pulled into a cutoff lane. “It is all new, but it’s nice, you know? Only thing I don’t like is having to rely on a map or a GPS all of the time. I get lost all of the time, even on the way from my place to yours sometimes.” He chuckled, the thought striking him as funny.

“Really?” You asked, amazed at the comment. To you, it was second nature to navigate the backroads of your tiny little world, and you never would have guessed that someone would find it difficult to catch on to.

“Yeah,” he nodded, smiling over at you. “I would never be able to find my way to the park we went to on our first date without help.”

“What!?” You exclaimed, laughter mixed in with the shocked question. “Okay, hold on.” You said, reaching down to your bag by your feet, pulling it into your lap as he watched you with curiosity. You pulled your journal out, grabbing at one of the loose pieces of white paper held inside. Then, you grabbed a pen and a highlighter from the very bottom of the bag. You tossed the canvas material of the dollar store tote back on the floor, settling the journal on your lap and the paper atop of it.

“What are you doing?” He laughed, glancing between you and the road as he tried to figure out your next move.

“You’ll see.” You responded, tucking a loose lock of hair behind your ear as you closed your eyes, trying your best to recall the layout of your suburbs from memory. After a moment, you opened your eyes, carefully drawing a few long lines on the paper.

You pulled your bottom lip between your teeth, focusing intently as you mapped out the land as best you could. Eventually, when you were happy with the makeshift roads with the black pen ink, you used the highlighter to draw yellow stars at the most important places. There was a slight shake in your hand, the lines bumpy and messy every time the car made an unexpected move, but you did the best you could with what you had. Once you drew the stars in, you labelled each one, looking it over once before a triumphant smile crossed your lips. You flashed the paper in his direction, knowing he couldn’t focus on it too intently while he drove, but okay with explaining it to him.

“Here’s a map. It’s not a very good map, but it’s a map, nonetheless.” You giggled, throwing the pen and marker back in your bag. He looked up at your gleeful expression, finding his heart swell with affection as he listened to your words. “This is you and Sam,” you pointed to the yellow star in the very top corner of the page. “And if you go down your road and turn onto the highway,” you continued, tracing the long black line with your finger “you get to the Fox.”

“Okay.” He nodded, following along with your words as he remained mindful of the road.

“If you turn up this first street after you pass the Fox, you can go back to the old abandoned school. I haven’t shown you that yet, cause there isn’t much to see.” You explained, tracing your finger carefully so he clearly understood you. “That’s the road before the cutoff to mine.”

“Oh, okay.” He said, genuinely intrigued at your explanation. “If you keep traveling up the highway, you get to the cutoff for my road—it’s the Main Street between both suburbs, so it gets the fancy turnoff from every side.” At that, he laughed. “If you follow the road, you’ll pass the Pony, and then here’s my complex.” You pointed to each respective star. “If you turn up the street between me and the pony, you’ll find the old church they turned into an NA hall.” You failed to explain why you knew the directions to that specific building, but you thought you ought to include it anyway, considering there wasn’t much else to add. “If you keep going past my place, there’s another road, and that’s where the gas station you picked me up from that day.” You said, showing him the next star.

“Huh,” he hummed, a smile growing on his lips as he listened to you talk. As of late, listening to you had become his favourite pastime. “Past that on my road, it’ll lead to a dead end if you’re going straight. If you turn down, in the direction the Fox would be, you can get to those fancy stores we passed, and the antique shop. If you keep going, you get to the park!”

“You are quite the woman, Utah.” He laughed, finding the glee in your face make his heart beat a little faster. “Thank you for drawing that.”

“Hopefully it helps.” You smiled, sticking it in the sun visor above your head.

“You know, if I hadn’t been there before, I wouldn’t understand a word you said, or any part of that map.” He laughed, reaching over and placing a loving hand on your thigh to lessen the blow of his harsh words.

“Hey! I thought it was pretty damn good!” You defended, your eyebrows furrowing together in frustration. Your response only made him laugh harder, and eventually, you couldn’t help but join in. The sound of his happiness was infectious, and you felt like being miserable around him was a waste of time.

“You are an excellent writer,” he began again, slowing as you pulled up to a red light. “But for the love of god, please don’t get into cartography.”

“Says the guy who doesn’t even know where he’s going.” You rolled your eyes. “Maybe if I had a little more time, it would have been more helpful, but your directionless blundering around town makes me nervous.”

“Nervous, eh? Like you care about me or something?” He raised an eyebrow, his fingers tightening on your thigh ever so slightly.

“Don’t give yourself too much credit.” You teased, but he knew it was a joke. You were both comfortable with the fact you cared about each other, and even more so with expressing it. Although, the real reason you drew him the map partially was because you didn’t want him getting lost, and more so because you wanted him to memorize where you lived. Selfish, maybe, but you were completely shameless about it.

It wasn’t much longer before Danny pulled off into a crowded lot. You straightened in your seat, filled with excitement at the sight of lush green trees and flowers lining the white building. The architecture of the building was breathtaking, the entrance surrounded by large panel windows and the upper half made nearly completely of glass. He pulled into a parking spot, glancing over at you with a smile on his face.

“Danny,” you breathed, taking in the sight with wonder in your eyes.

“You mentioned it a few weeks ago… said you’d never been. I thought it would be nice if we saw it for the first time… together.” He articulated his words carefully, wondering if maybe it was too much and you were off put by the thought.

“I can’t believe you remembered.” You said, reaching over and placing a gentle hand on his bicep. “Nobody’s ever… remembered, like you do.” You stressed the point, understanding that after 23 years, he was the first person to care enough to listen while you spoke. “You’re the sweetest.” He gave your thigh a gentle squeeze, saddened at the sound of your words but touched by your sentiments.

“Good thing I like remembering, and I like you.” He grinned. “Maybe you can write me a poem about it when we get home.”

Home.

Unspecified as to where, but without a doubt including you. He found as much comfort in your company as you did in his, and he was unashamed to admit it.

“I’ll write you all the poems you want, Michigan.” You promised, feeling your heart beat just a little faster as you held his gaze. Little did he know, you’d already been doing that; every stanza seemed to pertain to his heart, and every single word was inspired by his beautiful face. You would write about him until there were no more words left to say, and then you would create your own just to tell the world how much he meant to you.

“That’s a big promise, Utah.” He warned, trying to keep his thoughts in check as your hand lingered on his arm. “If it were up to me, I’d never stop reading your poems.”

“Shut up.” You squeaked, your cheeks burning red as you gave him a slight push. He fell back into the door, a laugh stuck in his throat as he dusted his thumb over your leg.

“Never.” He promised, turning the car off and making sure he had all of his things. “Now let’s go, we have a botanical garden to see.” At that, he jumped out and rushed over to your side of the car, opening the door for you before you had a chance to do it yourself.

With a playful eye roll, you grabbed your bag from the floor and checked inside to make sure you had everything. You had nearly everything, not realizing what you were missing until your fingers landed on the bag of sour candies you always kept close by, noticing it was far too light. Your stomach dropped as you looked inside, realizing it was empty. You rummaged around the bottom of your tote, checking to see if they’d fallen out or if you had eaten them all and forgot to replace them.

“What’s wrong, Utah?” He asked, noticing your panic.

“Nothing.” You assured him, rushing the word out as you tried to cover your momentary panic. They were gone, and you were stupid enough to forget about buying more when you ran out.

“Utah.” He spoke, using a tone of voice that told you he knew better than that.

“It’s just… I’m okay, I just ran out of sour candy.” You said through your teeth, knowing it didn’t seem like a big deal to him, even if it felt like the end of the world to you. “I know, it’s stupid. I’ll be okay.” You breathed, realizing you couldn’t tell him why it was such a problem.

You could make it through a few hours without a fallback, a few amazing and fun hours with your favorite person. You checked not because you needed one, but because you never went anywhere without them. You had been having so many good days that you hadn’t reached for one in a while, and you could keep up the good work for a little while longer.

Issue was, now that you knew you didn’t have a quick distraction if a thought plagued you, it was all you could think about. You weren’t amidst a craving, and you likely never would have been if you didn’t notice that the candy was gone. Now that you did, it was the only thing running through your head.

“Oh,” he laughed, like you had told him a joke. You couldn’t help but feel a twinge of annoyance, your lungs burning and your stomach sick while he laughed it off.

You couldn’t be mad at him. He didn’t know.

“Here, baby.” He said, reaching over you and popping open the center console. You looked at him, your eyebrows furrowed in confusion, turning your head to watch as he pulled something from it. At the sight of the familiar green and yellow bag, your entire body relaxed, but instead of just a sense of relief, you felt a wave of adoration join it. “I keep one in here, just for you. I know you always eat them, and I saw them at the store, so I grabbed one. Guess it came in handy after all.” You turned back to face him, your eyes soft and your heart filled with love for him.

Wait—love?

No, that couldn’t be right.

You pushed the thought as far down as you could, swallowing the lump in your throat as you reached for his face. Your palms landed on his cheeks, and you were leaning forward and pressing a kiss to his lips before either of you could register it. He dropped the bag in your lap as he grabbed your hip, an automatic response to the feeling of your mouth on his.

He had no idea, and that almost made it worse. He had no idea what you needed them for, and he likely thought it was a childish fixation that you could live without, but he didn’t care. Even if he thought that, he still went out of his way to keep them in his car to make you happy.

“You are extraordinary, Michigan.” You whispered, slightly breathless from the kiss, suffocating from the feelings you had for him. “Thank you. You saved the day.” He seemed to do that a lot, but you tried your best not to focus on it.

You wanted to save yourself, but god did it feel good when he did half the work for you.

“I’ll always save the day for you.” You couldn’t help but feel the twinge of pain in your chest, the one that was felt every time he said something like that. It wasn’t because his sweet words weren’t welcomed, but rather that you knew it wasn’t true. Daniel would not always be around, and the relationship between you would cease to exist when he packed up his Airbnb and left for Nashville. You spoke to each other as if the end wasn’t near, like it wasn’t a possibility at all for the two of you to go your separate ways, but you both knew you were lying to yourselves. “Now come on, let’s go see the flowers.”

“Right.” You grinned, shoving the bag of candy in your purse and hopping out with him.

He shut the door behind you, slipping his hand in yours as you walked together. You approached the entrance to the building, where he held the door for you. As you stepped inside, you were overwhelmed with excitement. You had lived in New York for over a year, and you’d never had the chance to visit the main attractions much. You lined up to pay your entry fee, and your eyes fell upon the screen flashing with prices.

Your stomach dropped, the final piece to the puzzle only clicking in for you when you saw the dollar signs. Hastily, you reached for your bag, dropping your hand from Danny’s to grab your wallet. He noticed your sudden withdrawal, his gaze turning to you as he watched you open the clip and search for dollar bills that weren’t there.

“Hey,” he whispered, his hand landing on your lower back to snap you out of the fit of panic. Your eyes met his, your nervousness written all over you as he studied your expression. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Daniel, I can’t let you—“

“I want to.” He corrected, his tone firm and his eyes genuine. “It was my idea to come, so I’ll pay.”

“Baby, you don’t have to do that.” You argued, feeling guilty that your own impoverished lifestyle was affecting him.

“I know I don’t have to.” He said, raising a hand to your face to brush the stray hairs from your eyes. “I’d be a pretty terrible date if I didn’t pay for it.”

“That’s not true—“

“Hey,” he cut you off, showing you he was serious. “Don’t worry about it.” He reiterated his earlier statement. “All you need to worry about is having fun.”

“You’re too good to me.” You hummed, dropping your wallet back into your bag. Such generosity was something you’d never experienced before, but you were slowly getting used to it with his help.

“I love being good to you. You deserve it.” You tried not to focus on his words, finding it so different from the way Vincent normally spoke to you. You didn’t want to make it mean anything more than it did at face value, but it was hard not to latch onto the sentiment behind it.

After he paid for the two of you, he grabbed a map so he could navigate the large area. Hand in hand, the two of you began the journey, walking slowly to soak in the sights around you. The first thing you noticed was the looming cherry blossoms decorating the doorway as you stepped back out into the yard. The light pink hue caught your eye, entrancing you as you walked underneath it. The sweet smell of the petals struck you with force, causing your eyes to flutter closed in bliss. Daniel seemed to be just as immersed in the moment, appreciating the beauty of you amidst such things, rather than the trees themselves.

The sight of the conservatory dome behind the breathtaking landscape was otherworldly, the view ethereal as you tried your best to commit the memory in your mind forever.

“Danny, this is… stunning. I’ve never seen anything like it.” The fresh air around you seemed to pull you into a warm embrace, the greens of the leaves and the pristine shape of the cobblestone walkways below your feet all making you feel undeserving of the gift he had given you.

“It is, huh?” He said, in just as much disbelief as he turned to look at the tree branches billowing behind him. You hugged your bag tighter to your body, the rough fabric of the tote scratching against your exposed side. Choosing to wear Danny’s muscle shirt seemed like the right idea at the moment, but paired with your torn jeans and worn out converse, you now felt completely underdressed. “Where do you want to go first, Utah?” He asked, flicking open the map so you could take your pick. You inched closer to him, leaning forward to get a better look before you decided.

“I want to see the perennial garden… oh, daffodil hill! And the lilac collection! The Rockefeller Rose Garden sounds beautiful, too.” You gushed, unable to contain your excitement. He smiled softly, wrapping his arm around you as he placed a kiss to the top of your head.

“Let’s do it all, then. We have all day.”

“Really?” You looked up at him, your eyes sparkling as you admired his face.

“Really, Utah.” He promised, giving your arm a gentle squeeze. “But I want to see the meadow and water feature with the native plant garden, and I have to see the tropical pool.” He bargained.

“Deal,” you nodded, knowing you would do anything so long as it meant you could spend time with him. “We better get started.”

Hand in hand, you made your way to the first stop, following the map closely as you walked. He raised the sheet closer to his face, following the path with his eyes as you faced a fork in the road.

“You know, Utah, you could really take some tips from this map. I can actually read it.” He quipped, lowering it as he flashed you a grin. You rolled your eyes, knocking shoulders with him and watching him falter slightly.

“You love my map—don’t pretend to hate it.” He chuckled, knowing that he did love it, but only because it was made by your hand. To him, anything you created was worth loving.

“I do, even if it only confuses me more.”

“Whatever, Michigan.” You scoffed, pulling him in the direction of the tropical pool. He shut up quickly once he realized where you were headed, following along silently as his eyes scanned over the greenery sprouting from the small pond lining the walkway.

“Holy shit.” He breathed, taking in the sight of the lily pads floating on the surface. “Those lily pads are huge!” He exclaimed, clutching the map in his palm as he pointed towards the ones he was referring to. You giggled at his childlike expression, finding it incredibly endearing as you approached the water.

“Do you ever wonder if in another life, we’re two frogs living on lily pads like that?” You asked, posing the ridiculous rhetorical question without thinking twice.

“For sure.” He hummed, gazing out at the still water with greenery sprouting from the surface. “We would have the cutest lily pad ever.” He corrected, making your cheeks turn crimson.

“All the other frogs would be so jealous of us.” You added, noting the reflection of the dome in the water.

“Yeah, cause I’d have the prettiest frog girlfriend.” He said as a matter-of-fact, neither of you paying any mind to the title he graciously placed upon you, even if the intent was in a joking manner. You were too high on life to even consider bursting the bubble, so you enjoyed it for a moment, letting yourself feel the fleeting moment of joy that came with being his.

After a few moments of wandering around, you moved onto the next sight on the list, navigating your way to daffodil hill. As you approached the plot of land, the breath was stolen from your lungs. Thousands of yellow and white flowers lined the ground, busy bees floating around the brightly coloured petals to scavenge the pollen from them. Scattered around, there were a few large trees with pink blossoms lining the branches. The sight was breathtaking, much like everything else you had experienced thus far.

“Danny,” you whispered, looking over your shoulder at him as you guided him through. “This is beautiful.”

“I know.” He nodded, but he wasn’t looking at the plethora of flowers tickling the grass. “Wait, I want a picture.” He said, pulling his phone from his pocket and motioning for you to pose. You stood before the field of flowers, the brightest smile stuck on your lips as you raised your arms above your head. He laughed at your expression, barely able to understand the flurry of emotion taking over his mind as he snapped the photograph. Before he joined you by your side, he set the picture as his screensaver, knowing it was the most precious thing his phone camera ever witnessed.

The lilac collection was just as stunning as the daffodils, which was almost unbelievable to you. You couldn’t believe how much beauty the world held, especially after spending all of your time in the shittiest neighborhood around. It was so easy to think that all of the world was gray and miserable, that the thick cloud of misery that surrounded you at home would follow you no matter where you went, but the longer you walked through the garden with him by your side, the harder it was to believe it.

You looped through the large patch of forest in the middle of the garden, taking your time to meander through the thickets and enjoy the feeling of being surrounded by nature. Living in New York was good, but it made you miss the connection you once had to the mountains and river-eroded canyons. The city was great, but it wasn’t what you hoped it to be, and being stuck in such a beautiful place made you realize that the concrete jungle was not what you wanted after all.

It was hard to place the feeling of need, because it was pulling you in all different directions. It wasn’t tied to a single place or thing, but it all revolved around the same theme; you craved feeling free, to be limitless and without bounds. You came to New York in hopes of finding that, but theathered yourself with another, tighter chain to a life equally as miserable as the last. Until Danny walked into your life, you convinced yourself that you were happy with struggle and that you still had your life in the palm of your hands. Now that he was beside you, showing you a more beautiful, brighter side of things, you wondered if life really had to go back to the way it was before you met him, or if you could continue feeling this way when he decided to leave.

Maybe the feeling of being free had nothing to do with the sights you were seeing, and everything to do with the person you were sharing them with.

You wanted to believe that you weren’t attached to Danny, but as you walked through the forest with your fingers intertwined with his, it was hard to picture life without him by your side. It wasn’t a dependency, not an addiction like you were so used to feeling, but rather a desire and a willingness to be loved. It was a gift, getting to spend your days with him, and it gave you a break from the horrible things you’d grown so used to. It was teaching you that you were capable of being loved, rather than forced to dish it out and never have it be reciprocated.

It made you excited to see tomorrow, rather than staying stagnant in the past while you waited for the next bad thing to happen.

You knew you couldn’t hold on to him, that you had to utilize all he was teaching you and find it in other places, but it was hard. Before him, you didn’t believe good things could happen to you, and the idea of trying to find them without being able to share it with him killed you, but the end of summer would come, and you would be left facing that exact issue whether you wanted to or not.

You had to grieve him before he was gone, and it was incredibly difficult when all you wanted to do was open your heart and your soul to him.

You had to convince yourself his love was meant to fade, that he was a beacon of light only meant to touch your life so you could pick yourself up off the ground. You needed to understand that the two of you weren’t meant for forever, but you could love each other enough to make the few months you had together last a lifetime. It was the only way to survive his absence when it inevitably came, but it was devastating to imagine, especially when he was right beside you and loving you like nobody ever had before.

You made your way through the perennial garden, taking your time to admire the beauty of it all. The greenery was a nice change from the abundance of flowers you’d seen moments before. The shrubs and trees were all different coloured, some burnt oranges and some deep emerald green. There were patches of purples and jades, all forming together to create one picturesque scene.

The rose garden nearly brought you to your knees, the rainbow of colors lining different bushes and the scent of the floral garden invading your senses. You approached a bush of ruby red roses, letting your fingers ever so gently glide over the satin petals.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” You said, reiterating the same sentiment as earlier. You were trying to wrap your mind around the whole thing, floored that he cared about you enough to grant you such a special memory. “Roses are my favorite, I think. Kind of a cop out answer, but it’s true.”

“Your favorite, huh?” Danny hummed, admiring you as you admired the sight before you. “I’ll have to remember that.” Your stomach filled with butterflies at his words, your head snapping upwards and your gaze catching his own.

“You don’t…” you trailed off, shaking your head slightly. You didn’t want him to feel like he had to get you flowers, because it simply wasn’t true. You lived twenty three years without ever receiving them, and you would survive another twenty three without them. You feared if he did, you would never be able to let him go.

“But I will.” He assured you, not willing to take any arguments on the matter. “What color is your favorite?” He asked, stepping closer to you as he placed a hand on your hip. Your eyes scanned the bushes, finding it difficult to choose when all of them were so stunning. That, and it was difficult to think of anything with his touch burning into your skin.

“The pink ones, I think. The really light ones.”

“Mhm?” He hummed, but his eyes weren’t looking at the flowers. They were settled on you, watching you as you came to a decision.

“Yeah, definitely those.” You breathed, turning your head to look at him. Your nose brushed his, and your arms automatically wrapped around his neck.

“Good to know.” He smiled, slipping his arm around your waist as he leaned toward and pressed a lingering kiss to your lips. He dipped you backwards ever so slightly, and you pulled him forwards so you didn’t lose contact with him.

When he pulled away your head was spinning and your lungs were burning for air. You needed him more than you ever thought was humanly possible, and you never wanted him to stop holding you like he was in that moment. The chirp of birds overhead made the scene all the more ethereal, and you started to wonder if you were still sleeping, caught up in the perfection of a dream.

“One last stop, Utah. You ready?”

“Yeah.” You whispered, nodding ever so slightly. His face was still close to your own, the taste of his lips on your skin and tempting you further. You leaned toward him again, unable to resist the urge as you pressed a softer, more delicate kiss to his lips. “Let’s go.” You smiled, not straying too far as you turned around and led the way to the meadow.

The last sight was just as awe inspiring as the last ones, and when you reached the end of the path, you felt a sinking disappointment fill your heart. You wished you could stay there with him forever, frolicking amongst the flowers and covered under the shade of the trees. As if he was feeling the same way, he slowed his pace to draw out the last few minutes you had there together.

“Don’t wanna go home.” You mumbled under your breath, taking steps in time with his own.

“We can come back.” He assured you, giving your hand a slight squeeze as you neared the building you entered through. “We can go wherever you want, Utah.”

“Is that a promise?” You smiled, focused only on him despite the swarming crowd of people around you.

“It’s a fact.” He corrected, placing a kiss on your forehead. “Whatever you want, Y/N. Wherever you want. You just have to say the word.”

There was one word in mind, but you thought it was a bit too heavy to inflict upon him so early, especially knowing how the two of you would end.

“How about dinner?”

“Sounds good to me.” He grinned, but you couldn’t help but notice a slight disappointment in his eye.

You didn’t want to think too much about it, but you wondered if it was the same disappointment you had bargained with so many times before, disappointed because he couldn’t truly have the one thing he so desperately wanted.

May 13th, 2022 - 1:17 AM

“Hey, beautiful.” Danny smiled, sliding into a booth and greeting you as you walked towards him. Sam was close behind him, taking post across the table from his counterpart.

“Fancy meetin’ you here.” You grinned, motioning for him to scoot over so that you could sit beside him. When your ass touched the bench, he snaked an arm around your shoulders and pulled you into his side. “Grabbing something to eat tonight, or just here to bother me?”

“We’re actually here to eat for once.” Sam replied, a tone of surprise even in his voice. “Little late night snack while we pound out some more songs.”

“I see.” You hummed, a smile still lingering on your lips. “Well, if that’s the case, what could I get for the musical prodigies to help them out?”

“Veggie burger.” Sam replied, earning a kick from Daniel under the table. “Please, Utah. Would be greatly appreciated.” He added quickly, wincing at the lingering pain in his shin. You swallowed back a giggle, finding Danny’s protective nature endearing.

“What about you, sweetness?” You asked, turning to the boy beside you. He was in a long sleeve shirt, his jeans worn and form fitting. His hair was falling gently over his shoulders, and you noticed the tiredness in his face.

“Whatever you think, baby.” He said, casting a lingering glance your way. You wanted to reach out and touch him, to swipe your thumb over his cheek until the gentle tickle lulled him to sleep, and you wanted to hold him until he woke on his own, well rested and ready for the day. Instead, you gave him a soft smile, telling him you sympathized with his exhaustion because you were feeling it too, knowing loving him so openly with Vincent in the next room would end in a disaster.

“Okay.” You whispered, giving his knee a gentle squeeze under the table as you made a move to stand.

“Wait.” He said, placing a hand on your thigh to stop you from moving any further. He checked over your shoulder, looking to see if anyone was watching, and when he noticed the coast was clear, he placed a quick peck on your lips. Your stomach twisted with butterflies, your face turning red and your heart speeding.

Damn him and his ability to turn your whole world upside down.

“I’ll be right back.” You promised, sliding from the booth and quickly scurrying away to the kitchen. You pushed through the swinging half door, finding Dylan and Vincent standing by the open door in the back, the smell of cigarette smoke with a skunky undertone flowing in. “Hey,” you caught their attention, your voice timid as you feared Vincent’s volatility. He hadn’t been as bad as of recent, but you could tell there was tension constantly lingering between the two of you.

Vincent looked back over his shoulder, his eyes softening for a brief second at the sight of you, then reverting back to a stony expression. Dylan slowly turned, his eyes landing on you as a goofy smile crossed his lips.

“Want a hit?” He asked, raising his hand to flash the spliff in your direction.

“Yes,” You giggled, stepping towards the two. “But there’s an order, too.” You grabbed the expertly rolled joint from his hand, letting him know that play was over and work was beginning.

“What is it?” He traded places with you, stepping back towards the smoky grill.

“Regular and a veggie platter, please.” You smiled.

“Anything for you, doll.” He said, spraying the top of the stone with the heavily diluted cleaning solution and scraping off any debris. He let the steam flow as he stepped into the freezer in search of the premade burger patties, leaving you and Vincent by yourselves for a moment.

There was an awkwardness between you that you’d never quite felt before, like being so close to him was wrong, like he was upset just by your presence. You didn’t know what to say, instead raising the joint to your lips and inhaling, hoping he would start off the conversation.

“Your boyfriend here with his boyfriend?” He asked, staring out at the blackened sky as he awaited a response. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes, exhaling a large cloud of smoke into the night. You rested your head on the doorframe, wondering how you got yourself in such a situation.

“No boyfriends to talk about.” You replied, answering both of his quips with little effort. At that, his eyes flickered to you, almost hopeful as he listened to the words.

“What, you givin’ him the same run around you gave me?” He muttered, reaching for the joint clasped between your fingers.

“Can you cut the shit, Vin?” You scoffed, reluctantly handing it to him. You expected him to explode, to storm away at the thought of being called out for his ridiculous behavior, but he did neither; instead, he leaned back against the door, watching you carefully as he waited for you to continue.

‘Wow, okay.’ You thought to yourself, shocked at his lack of fight.

“I just want… I want you to talk to me, actually have a conversation instead of backhanded comments and insults, please.” He considered your comment carefully, and after an extended bout of silence, he nodded in agreement.

“You’re right.” What? “I’m sorry, doll.” Who the fuck was standing beside you, and what the hell did they do with Vincent? “If you wanna talk, talk.” You waited, stunned at his response and half expecting Dylan to jump out with a camera like they were playing a joke on you.

“I didn’t give you a run-around.” You muttered, snagging the spliff from his hand when he wasn’t paying attention. You gave him a small smile, one that was surprisingly returned. “I gave you a choice, and you didn’t pick me, Vin.”

“You didn’t give me enough time.” He stressed the point, wanting you to see it from his perspective. Unfortunately, you had given him more time than he deserved, even if he didn’t feel the same way.

“I gave you lots of time, honey.” You whispered. “Eighteen months, to be exact.” He was silent, nodding along as you spoke. You could see his cheeks turn red, but he didn’t react with anger. Instead, he looked up at you with sad eyes, swallowing back the million things he wanted to say.

“It’s just hard, you know? I’m so used to waking up next to you, to having you around all the time, and now you don’t even come to the Pony with us after work. Went from all to nothin’ in a day, it seems, and it hurts. I want to be better for you, doll. I’m trying real hard, but you have to cut me some slack, give me some time to show you how good I can be for you. You can’t see it if you’re spending all your time with Mr. Country Club.” He said, keeping a steady head and a calm voice as he spoke. He was terrified you would be willing to see it once he did clean himself, because you would be long past in love with someone else. Your stomach twisted with uncertainty, fearful you had judged Vincent too harshly. He was standing before you, completely calm as he explained how he felt.

He was trying, but it would never be enough.

“I can’t be around ‘till you’re better, Vin. It’s too hard for me. I’m not sober enough to be around all of it, and I’m sorry if it came off worse than I intended it to.” You were being nicer than you needed to be in hopes of sparing his feelings, even if you knew you shouldn’t. You were giving him hope for something that would never happen, but you were afraid if you told the truth, he would fly off the handle.

He gave a bleak nod, watching as you took a few puffs from the joint before stealing it back. “So what? Are you two together, or just fuckin’?” He asked, unable to bite his tongue and desperate for an answer.

“Not together, no.” You shook your head, giving him that much truth at least. “He’s only here for the summer. He’ll leave and I’ll still be here, so no point in being together.”

“So just fuckin’ then?” He asked, a smirk on his lips despite the pain in his eyes. You rolled your eyes, giving him a gentle shove. For the briefest moment, things felt okay again, like you two were actually friends and not a mess of high emotion and sexual tension that acted like friends.

“Don’t break your own heart, Vin.” You gave a sad smile, telling him to drop it. He flicked the cherry from the roach and pulled out his tin cigarette case, placing the small bit of weed left inside.

“I don’t have to; you do that for me, sweetness.” He said, placing a lingering touch on your arm as he turned and walked back into the kitchen.

You didn’t understand the wave of sadness washing over you, knowing that you truly didn’t want to be with Vincent, but heartbroken for the mess of a man who stood before you, trying more than he ever had. You tried not to let the sympathy change your opinion, but even so, you felt your heartstrings tug in a direction you didn’t appreciate. Instead of lingering on it, you rushed back to the front of the diner to join Daniel and Sam, begging yourself to understand the implications of letting Vincent wiggle his way into your heart.

𓇢𓆸

May 13th, 2022 - 3:42 AM

“Alright, boys. The front is clean, the floors are mopped, and the tips are counted.” You said, keeping an eye on the front door to watch for the morning staff.

“How much did we make, dollface?” Dylan asked, leaning on the serving window separating the kitchen and the front of the diner. You filled your reusable coffee cup from earlier in the day with a little bit of orange soda, sipping away at it as you passed Dylan’s money to him. “Gross.” He turned up his nose at the bright, artificial orange drink you were enjoying.

“S’good.” You shrugged, knowing anything was good when it was free.

“So, how much is it?” Dylan asked, looking at the bills and coins sat before him.

“Count it.” You said, untying your apron and slipping it over your head.

“You know I’m no good at that stuff.” Dylan laughed, the second joint taking its toll on him the more tired he became. His eyes were red, the lids drooping as he tried his best to focus on your face.

“How are you going to get better if you never try?” You urged, knowing he definitely could count it, but he was much too lazy.

“You got me, sweetheart.” He sighed, shrugging his shoulders.

“91.20.” You gave in, giggling as he let out a breath of relief.

“Each?” He raised an eyebrow, surprised that so many people had left a tip. “Must be ‘cause of your little boy-toy and his friend.” You cringed at the sound of his words, shaking your head slightly as he began to regret the nickname he used.

“Never say that again.”

“Yup, never again.” He agreed, sliding the bills from the ledge and into the pocket of his jeans. “You know, I really gotta get a wallet.” He pondered aloud, hearing the change clatter against his leg as he pushed himself upright.

“Would probably make your life easier, yeah.” You smiled, letting your eyes trail over his tired face. Dylan was undoubtedly one of the most attractive boys you’d ever laid eyes on, but the temptation was never really there for you. Perhaps it was because you were tied up with Vincent, or maybe because he made a better friend than you thought he would a lover. No matter, you couldn’t help but admire him every now again, human urge taking over and common sense fleeing you.

“Just seems stupid,” he explained further, the deep tone of his slow voice echoing through the air. You raised an eyebrow at him, begging him to continue. “Paying money for something to hold your money. What a waste.” At that, a powerful laugh shook your shoulders and made the muscles of your stomach ache. It took you a few seconds to calm yourself, the tiredness taking its toll and causing everything to seem funnier than it truly was.

“I love you, Dyl.” You said, letting out a long breath as you wiped a tear from your eye.

“Love you too, baby.” He grinned, proud of the laugh he had pried from you without even trying. At that, the swinging side door opened and Vincent came barreling out from the kitchen, catching both of you off guard as he walked towards you.

“You okay, honey?” You asked, noticing his irate expression.

“Yeah, fan-fuckin’-tastic.” He grumbled, grabbing a disposable coffee cup and filling it with sprite from the fountain. You noticed a slight tremble in his hand as he reached to press the button, twisting your stomach with anxiety.

“You sure? You’re sweating.” You stepped towards him, never able to rid yourself of the compassion you held for him. You raised a hand to his forehead, wondering if he was coming down with a bug. At the feeling of your hand on his skin, he jerked his head away, shooting you daggers with his eyes as he pulled the cup from the soda machine.

“Said I’m fine.” He snapped, the vein in his forehead popping out as he spoke. You shied away, recoiling back at the harsh words.

“Right, okay.” You whispered, cowering under his stare, wondering what happened in the two hours between this conversation and the last. “Sorry, Vin.”

“These mine?” He completely disregarded your timid tone, failing to apologize or acknowledge his own wrongdoings as he pointed at the pile of tips on the counter.

“Yeah.” You nodded, feeling your skin begin to tingle with numbness, the same feeling you always got when he turned volatile towards you. You watched as he reached forward, his trembling hands separating the bills on the counter so he could tally it in his head. You swallowed hard, knowing you should leave it be, but unable to ignore your concerns about him.

Your eyes flickered to Dylan, who was disengaged with the situation, knowing just as well as you how insufferable Vincent was when he was angry. You turned back to Vincent, watching as he counted the change, muttering curses under his breath as he lost count. Your eyes trailed upwards, wanting to catch sight of his face to see if you could decipher what kind of anger he was stuck in, but your eyes got caught on something before you could.

You froze, your skin prickling with a plethora of different emotions as your gaze settled on the point in which his forearm met his bicep. More specifically, a cluster of red dots, irritated and bruised. Your stomach twisted with nausea, your head pounding as a flurry of questions stormed your mind. Without thinking twice, you reached forward and grabbed his wrist, forcefully pulling his arm towards you for a better look.

“The fuck is your problem!?” Vincent shouted, trying to pull away from your grip. Something inhuman took over as you held his wrist in your hand, your fingers locked tightly to hold him in place.

“My problem?” You fumed, looking up at his face. “What the hell is your problem, Vincent? Are these fucking track marks?”

“Oh, don’t pretend you care, doll. We all know that you don’t give a shit about me.” He seethed, giving another rough yank of his arm.

“Care?” You echoed his words, your eyes lethal as you stared a hole into him. “Vincent, I have given everything for you. You’ve nearly cost me my job, my place to live, and my sobriety. Caring about you is all I know how to do, even when it fuckin’ ruins me.”

“There it is, whining like a little bitch again. Was wondering how long the peace n’ fuckin’ quiet would last.” He growled, not backing down from your hostile embrace. “Nobody asked you to do it, sweetheart. You just get off on sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. We don’t need you, and we never have. Why don’t you run back to Utah and find someone else to bitch at, ‘cause I’m gettin’ fuckin’ sick of hearing it.”

You dropped his arm, his words equal to a stab in the stomach. His skin was burning, the heat lingering on your hand even after you cut contact. You knew his volatility was because he was suffering through the violence of withdrawal, but you held little sympathy for the fact, especially after every other injustice he had committed against you. He was suffering, but it did not excuse his mistakes, nor did it make the pain that stemmed from his words hurt any less. He may be sick, being eaten alive by a disease you knew to be the deadliest of all, but it didn’t change the fact he lied. He wasn’t fucking trying at all, and he only said it to gain a sympathy card from you.

Just like always, the only person he ever cared about was himself.

You weren’t sure why it stung so badly, but the damage was done, and you were sickened at the thought of the person who stood before you. He was someone you thought you loved, who you gave everything for, someone who pulled you along by a string but never gave anything in return. You were having a hard time feeling any remorse for what you did to hurt him, because he seemed to make hurting you into his life’s purpose.

“Fine, Vin. I’m done. If that’s what you want to hear, I’ll say it: I’m fucking done.” You felt tears rush your eyes, your chest burning with indignation as you swallowed back his harsh words. “Keep ruining your life, but don’t fuckin’ call me to fix it anymore.”

“Yeah, okay.” He cackled, mocking you as if your breaking point was humorous to him. It was no more than salt in an already lethal wound. “We both know you’ll come whenever I call, no matter who’s in your bed. You know what you fuckin’ deserve, doll, and you’re looking at it. Keep actin’ high and mighty like you aren’t a junkhead too, but we all know it, and you’ll come crawlin’ back to me sooner or later.”

“Fuck you, Vincent.” You spat, feeling the tears fall onto your cheeks. He was so good at ruining you, and even if you believed you’d built yourself back up, it only took him a moment to tear it all down again. “You’re a piece of shit.”

“Quit with the pity party, sunshine. You’re no better. Go cry to your fuckin’ boyfriend—maybe he’ll actually give a shit.” He snatched his money from the table, shoving it in his pocket as he turned on his heel and stormed out the front of the building. You bit back a sob as the door of the diner slammed shut, and listened as his car door did the same. In an instant, he was backing out of his parking space, and not long after he disappeared down the street.

“Come on, doll. You know he doesn’t mean that.” Dylan whispered, joining you in the dining room and wrapping an arm around your shoulders. He reached to your face with his other hand, swiping your cheeks clean with the back of his hand. “He’s just in a rough spot right now.”

“God, stop defending him!” You exploded, sickened at the thought of Dylan excusing Vincent’s horrific behavior. It wasn’t Dylan’s fault, but in the moment you were so angry with Vincent that it was bleeding into every aspect of your life. After hearing him say so many horrific things, it hurt to think Dylan was so forgiving of his actions.

“I’m not defending anyone, angel.” Dylan corrected. “What he said was awful, and it’s not true, and you know m’gonna give him shit for it, later.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” You let out a shaky sigh, pressing your palms to your eyes to satiate the tears irritating them. The coolness of your skin felt good against your swollen face, the dreaded consequence every time you dared to shed a tear. “It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t be mad at you. I just get so frustrated. He tells me he’s trying to be better, but then he goes and does shit like this! Makes me feel like he doesn’t care at all, like he doesn’t actually want to try.”

“He cares, sunshine, and he wants to be better. Just don't know how.” Dylan shrugged, pulling you into his side a little further. “This is all he’s ever known, all he ever thought he needed, ‘till you came along.” Both you let the words hang heavy in the air, not sure how to continue on from there. “Vin’s always been the heartbreaker, and he doesn’t know how to handle it now that the tables’ turned on him. He loved ya, doll. Still does.”

“If he loved me, why the hell did he let us get here? Why is he so mean, all of the time? Always trying to break me down, to hurt me so I feel stuck with him. I loved him as he was—I just needed him to get sober.”

“That’s like leading a horse to water and telling it not to drink.” He laughed, his eyes crinkling in the corners as he thought of the sad analogy. “Vinny’ll always be this way. Maybe not this fucked up, but it’ll always be a part of him. Got it from his folks n’ they got it from theirs. Do you want to be with him?”

“I did. M’not so sure anymore.” You mumbled, closing your eyes as you rested your head on his shoulder. He smelled like cheap cologne and cigarettes, a comforting smell that had become your favorite part of the day. “Even if he changed tomorrow, I don’t think it would take away all the bad he’s already done.”

“Mr. Country Club have anything to do with that?”

“Stop calling him that.” You laughed, lightly jabbing your elbow into his stomach. Dylan faltered slightly at the action, but his own laugh filled the air not long after. “I don’t know… maybe he does. We’re not in love or anything, and he’s leaving at the end of the summer, but it made me realize I wanted more, I guess. More than Vin, more than the life I’ve built for myself here.”

“Then chase it, sweetheart. If he feels the same, don’t stick around for us. You gotta be happy. You gotta take care of you.” Dylan said, more serious than ever before. “You waste your time and energy keeping us alive, then you wonder why you can’t get ahead. We’d be lost without you, but I’m scared we’ll lose you if you stay, too.”

“It’s just a lot, you know? I moved here to make something of myself, and I did the opposite. Now I’m stuck here, and I’m terrified of taking another leap of faith. What if the next one turns out worse? Least I know the shit this life has to give me.” You explained, staring out into the parking lot as you noticed the morning workers begin to pull in. “It’s all scary, Dyl.”

“Sure it is, but you’ve got a good head on your shoulders and I know you could make it anywhere in the world. If he asks you to go with him, go. I know you worry about us, but you’ve been searching for a ticket out, baby.” He explained. “If this guy really is all that, it’s worth chasing. I’ve never seen you this happy.”

“How could I leave you, though? How could I leave Vin, or John. Hell, I’d even miss Liam.”

“That gangly fuck?” Dylan laughed, looking down at you. “Bet there’s a million guys just like him running NA meetings all over the states.”

“It’s too early to tell. I’ll just have to see it through, decide when I get there. Never been a person to plan anything. Chaos is the only thing that makes sense to me.” You frowned, saddened by the truth behind the statement.

“You can make anything make sense if you try, angel.” Dylan gave your arm a squeeze, making sure you understood what he meant. “As for Vin, he’ll tire himself out. I’ve seen him go through this before, and he always pulls himself out of it. You just have to make up your mind, okay? If you don’t wanna be with him, he’s gotta know that he’s never got a chance. If not, you’re both hurting for no reason.”

“It’s hard because I always want to be with him, even if I know I can’t be, or I shouldn’t be.” You explained. “I just want him to try, to show me that he wants me and he means it when he says it.”

“He means it, Y/N.” Dylan assured you. “Drugs aside, he loves you. He might not know how to show it, but he sure as hell feels it for you. I’ve never seen him so pussywhipped for anyone—I knew from the very beginning it had to be more than just some tail. Being caught up on girls was never his thing… ‘cept when that bitch at the Pony gave him the clap. That was for a different reason, though.”

At that, the two of you found yourselves in a fit of giggles.

“Thanks, Dylan. I know it’s always been you two against the world. I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to get between that.” You whispered, grateful for his presence but remorseful for taking him away from Vincent.

“You kidding, doll? You’ll always be my favorite girl, even if you don’t put out for me.” You rolled your eyes, knowing he was joking so you let it slide. “You’re the only name I got saved in my phone, after all.” He reminded you, giving you a gentle pat on the back as the door swung open and the morning crew piled in. “Get home and get some sleep, baby. I’ll see you tomorrow, and I’ll be sure to tell him he’s a fuckin’ idiot.” He stepped away from the counter, nodding at the morning staff as they passed by.

“See you tomorrow, Dyl.” You breathed, refilling your cup with soda as you watched him walk towards the door. “Thanks again.”

“Don’t mention it.” He said, backing into the push-door and stepping into the early morning air. You watched as he disappeared into the parking lot, the peek of sunshine on the horizon sending his shadow over the gravel below, growing larger as he approached his car.

“You okay, Y/N?” Betty, an older waitress approached you as she tied her apron around her back. You broke yourself from your thoughts, swiping away the lingering tears under your eyes as you gave her a nod.

“Yeah, f’course.” You assured her, pushing yourself off the counter. “You have a good shift, now. I’ll see you this afternoon.” You offered her a smile, shoving your tips in your pocket as you grabbed your bag from the counter. You felt bad for avoiding her, but talking about Vincent was not something you were keen on doing with someone who would never understand. For some reason, you still felt the need to defend his name, even when he did all he could to trash yours.

You sent a wave over your shoulder, sickened at the memory of the words spat in your direction, but forcing your legs to carry you outside and continue on despite wanting to lie down and give up. The fresh air felt nice, but the vibrations of your phone in your back pocket did not. You fished it out, glancing at the screen to see who was calling. Your lips dipped down into a frown, seeing Danny’s name scrawled across the screen but not having the heart to answer. Instead, you let it ring to voicemail as you walked down the street towards your apartment, pulling a cigarette from behind your ear and lighting it with an almost dead lighter in your pocket. After a few moments, you drafted up a reply for Daniel, apologizing for not answering and letting him know you were much too tired to talk tonight.

You would send it when you got home, when you had peace and quiet so you could truly suffer through and process the wrath of your raging heartbreak. You felt guilty for brushing him off, but you couldn’t let him see you like this over a boy you promised you were well and done with. Danny didn’t deserve silence, especially not after the plethora of goodness he’d granted in your life, but that’s all you could afford to give him in the moment. You thought it was for the best, unwilling to subject him to the pain that you were constantly suffering from, unable to cause a change in the beauty of your relationship with the darkness Vincent carried around with him. Instead, you had a date with the bathroom floor and possibly even a cold shower (if the pipes were willing to grant you water flow, that is), which was the least appealing idea when you knew the comfort of Danny’s arms.

Once again, without even knowing, Vincent managed to wiggle his way through the boundaries you’d set in place, ruining every good thing you’d been working so hard at building up.

Once again, you were letting Vincent ruin your life. Instead of acting to change it, you would go back tomorrow and try to make amends for something that was never your fault to begin with.

This time, your heart was not the only one at stake, and the universe was begging you to realize it before it was too late.

Taglist: @imleavingyoufornewyork @itsafullmoon @bladenotblaze @jessicafg03 @dont-go-home-without-me @peaceloveunitygvf @torniturntomyarrow @lostoverseer @clairesjointshurt @jordie-gvf @lallisonl @smoking-jakelane @gretavangirlie @hollyco @aintthatapity @dont-go-home-without-me

[chasseurdeloup]

Family Matters || Andy and Kaden

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @declinlalune and @chasseurdeloup LOCATION: The cabin SUMMARY: Andy comes home to find Kaden tearing out the banister on the stairs. Their casual chat ends up being a lot deeper than either of them bargained for. CONTENT WARNINGS: parental death (mentions)

There was one thing Kaden could say about the cabin, he’d never be bored there. Every time he fixed something, he found three other things that could use some attention. Today it was the railing on the stairs up to the loft. The whole banister wobbled back and forth if you dared to try and use it. Thankfully, it wasn’t essential by any means, but it was a disaster waiting to happen, that was for sure. Part one was to see if tightening the screws on the end of the railing would be enough. And of course not. He sighed and got to taking the whole damn thing apart. It was going to be a whole damn afternoon project. Good thing he had the place to himself for the–

Kaden nearly jumped out of his skin when the door swung open. Putain, guess alone wasn’t happening. “Hey,” he called to Andy over his shoulder as he yanked one of the railings out of the base of the stairs. 

–

Andy had finished work for the day, and early, too. It hadn’t been very busy, so she’d been cut loose, and she wasn’t complaining. She had a bit of a headache, so she was grateful to go home, take something, and eventually get started on whatever project had been evading her while busy with other things. 

When she pulled up to the cabin, Kaden’s truck was in the driveway. Andy wasn’t entirely sure what his hours were at work, and she hadn’t bothered to ask. She didn’t want to make him feel like he was under some watchful eye, because neither did she. Andy rotated her jaw, pressing her fingers just beneath her ear as she shouldered the front door open. As he greeted her, she stopped in her tracks, brows raised at the railings that were on the ground. “What are you doing?” She dropped her bag by the door and kicked her shoes off before closing the door behind her. “Did you break something?” Probably not. He was probably fixing something, like he had been doing with just about everything in the cabin. 

–-

The second railing was in there a lot better than the first. Kaden was going to have to use some actual strength instead of coasting on the advantage he had from being a hunter. He wrapped his hands around the bottom of the pole and leaned back to try and wedge the damn thing out. The whole thing was at the wrong angle, couldn’t just stay like that. “What does it look like?” he said between grunts. So fucking close. One more good pull and it should be–

Kaden stumbled backwards a few steps as the railing finally gave way from the base. He wiped his brow with the back of his palm, tossing the wooden pole to the ground next to the other. Before he went to the next, he turned to Andy. “Break something?” He rolled his eyes. “No, I’m fixing the damn railing. It was about to fall out of the damn stairs on its own.”

Andy winced as Kaden stumbled backwards, though she made no move to catch or break his fall (if he had). She stood by the door, watching as the railing split from the hinges, clattering to the ground. They barely used the loft, but it seemed a little late to explain that. It was mostly for storage; things that they had accumulated but didn’t need went up there, or winter gear. 

“We don’t really use the stairs, so we didn’t bother to fix it.” Andy sighed and moved into the kitchen, grabbing herself a glass of water. “What else have you been fixing?” She knew he meant well, but she couldn’t keep up with the mini-projects he’d been doing, or if they were in line with what she wanted. Maybe he was earning his keep. The cabin was way nicer than anything else she and Alex had lived in in the past several years, but it was still… a work in progress, and probably seemed a lot worse to Kaden than it actually was. 

– 

“I figured,” Kaden said as he went back to work. The next few railings he pulled out were so loose they practically fell out on their own. “But it still wasn’t safe. And you both are usually carrying boxes or other shit up and down that are so big you can’t see where you’re going. So I figured I'd fix this before it becomes an actual problem.” The easy part was almost done. Taking the thing apart was going to take a lot less time than putting it back together correctly. 

He paused and looked around the cabin. What else had he done? “Uh, the cabinet hinges. Table leg. Leaky faucet in the bathroom. Not all today. But yeah.” He knew there were more little things all over the place for him to take care of in his down time. Part of it was because it bothered him to have things in disrepair, sure, but he was also there crashing on their couch. It was the least he could do to help out. “If there’s something else you want me to look at just let me know.” 

–

Andy grabbed the bottle of generic aspirin from the cabinet above the stove and took two, throwing them back with a swig of water. “Hey, I didn’t say I wasn’t grateful.” Because she was. She had to be, all things considered. Kaden being around was still a little weird, and she knew that Alex didn’t know what to think of him, but Andy hoped that they would get along. The topic of hunting, however, was still ever present. 

“I was wondering why the table hadn’t tried to fall over the last time I put something onto it. Thanks.” Andy finished off her glass of water and put the cup into the sink before returning to where Kaden was at the loft stairs. “Nah, I think you’ve got all the most annoying shit handled.” There were a few other things, like cleaning the gutters, but she could do that herself. The last time she had done it, she’d found a squirrel’s tail. Not the squirrel, just the tail. Maybe she should have Kaden do it this time around. “Do you need any help?” Even though she had a headache, she could still be useful. 

– 

“Okay just checking,” Kaden said, relieved. He wanted to help but he didn’t want to overstep. It had been so long since they’d seen each other in person prior to the past few months, they hadn’t quite figured out the rhythm of it all. “Figured it was the least I could do.” There were plenty of times when his extra sensitive hearing was more of a burden than a gift, but came in handy enough times. Like when he caught the rattle of small, hard items in a bottle of some sort. It was either candy in a jar or pills. Kaden leaned over to check and surely enough, Andy was swallowing something, probably painkillers. “You alright?” he asked. He figured it wasn’t serious by any means but still worth asking. 

He waved off her thanks with a small hand gesture. It was no big deal and he didn’t want to make it too much of a thing. He wiped his hands off on each other and was about to get started sanding, but he turned when she spoke to him. “Hmm? I mean I don’t need it, but I’ll take it if you’re offering.” He handed her one of the railing poles. The tops of them were ragged, unsurprising given the shitty construction. “Want to sand down the splinters?”

–

Even though she’d been younger then, Andy still held onto all of the memories concerning Lyon and before Lyon. She didn’t like to remember Tennessee for the sake of her own sanity, but France was easier to stomach. Kaden had been kinder to her than Keira had ever been. Claire was similar to her own parents, and maybe that should have comforted her some, but instead, it made her feel guilty and unworthy. Claire had made sure of that. At his question, she shrugged. “Small headache. Some lady came in wearing perfume that smelled awful and way too much of it.” It was probably that and the constant banging outside on the street from a group of high school students and their percussion instruments. Some end-of-year thing. “Plus the whole town reeks right now, so that’s not helping anything.” They were luckier, out where they lived, though. 

She didn’t like watching other people do things. Andy would sooner fight past the headache as well as any other ailments and help somebody than sit idly by. She grabbed the sheet of sandpaper and the railing that Kaden handed over and got to work, not bothering with gloves. Her hands were calloused already from the amount of work she’d done to begin with, as well as having to deal with all of the hot and heavy trays at the bakery. “How was your day? You haven’t been doing just this all day, have you?” 

–

Kaden nodded with understanding. “Yeah, I don’t understand why some people decide to bathe in perfume. Always makes me wonder what they’re covering up.” He was always glad that his nose wasn’t as sensitive as his ears were. Especially right now, with the town the way it was. “It’s not usually like this, right? You didn’t just invite me out to a stinky town, did you?” He was mostly joking, but he did have to wonder. 

He huffed out a laugh as he leaned over the stairwell. The holes for the rails were in, well, interesting shape. He was going to have to fill some of those in with putty, no doubt there. “No, I had the early shift today. Definitely not doing this all day.” Good thing, too. He hated spending too much time inside. There was no way he’d have stayed in the cabin all day even if he’d had the day off. “Wasn’t bad. I had to chase down a loose dog. Then I had to get a raccoon out of someone’s house. Didn’t run into anything supernatural today so that was nice for a change.” It was rare that was the case in Wicked’s Rest. Most days he ran into at least one monster masquerading as a cat or dog. 

–

“I’m sure the town stinks in some places, like Gatlin Fields, but…” Andy sighed, “not like this, no, not usually.” She wasn’t sure what was going on, but it all started with the fissures and the weird obsidian crabs, and then there was the ooze, too, that she still didn’t have an answer on. She wondered how Alex was fairing, if the smell was giving her headaches. 

She was a little interested in what Kaden got up to at work, mostly because she couldn’t imagine him wrangling racoons from people’s basements. Andy continued sanding down the one side of the railing, looking up at her cousin as he reaffirmed what she had thought it was like. “It’s a little weird that these people might not know what they’re looking at, so they’d call a regular guy–” She paused. “Well, not you, but somebody else who might work for the department for something like a… I don’t know, a hellhound.” The thought was more terrifying than it was funny. “But I guess it’s a good thing, right?” She didn’t know if Kaden still hunted. Didn’t know if he tracked down defenseless people or creatures. To stay ignorant would provide to the problem, but she wasn’t sure she could stomach the truth. 

– 

“Well that’s good to know,” Kaden said as he continued to work. He peeked up to catch a glance at her as she wondered aloud. “If I had to guess, I’d say there’s a reason why the death rate for the position was abnormally high.” He felt bad about the poor saps who had tried to do the job before him. They had no fucking clue what they were getting into. They never stood a chance. “Gary’s the only other AC officer on staff and he avoids the field like the goddamn plague. Must have learned his lesson. Which is fine by me. It means he gets to do all my paperwork if he wants to be chained to a desk so damn bad.” 

The gaps in question were filled, just had to wait for the putty to dry, so Kaden grabbed a rail and began sanding, too. “It works out pretty nice for me, though. Get paid for the shit I’d do anyway, which is a nice change of pace. Usually chasing after basilisks and bies is just a thankless job.” He could feel a twinge of tension in the air. They hadn’t really talked about hunting before then. In fact, they avoided the topic. All of them. “You, uh, don’t anymore? Do you?” Kaden dared to sneak a look over at his cousin. “I mean, uh, hunt. That is.” 

– 

Andy didn’t know who Gary was, but he sounded smart. While she couldn’t completely understand feigning ignorance about what happened in the town (especially with the casualty rate), she could understand being acutely aware of what you were equipped to deal with. Andy didn’t think that aside from the hunters' cache, Wicked’s Rest assisted much at all in keeping the town safe. After all, the emergency response units were a joke. “That makes sense.” Andy turned the railing over in her hand, examining it to make sure that she hadn’t missed any of the uneven wood. “Paperwork sounds like a bitch, so I guess you sort of lucked out there.” That, and Gary wouldn’t get in Kaden’s way. How far would Kaden go to eradicate something as simple as a snicker-snacker instead of just rehome it? 

As he continued to explain what it was he liked about the job, Andy’s grip on the railing tightened. So he was still hunting, then– found fun in it, maybe? That seemed more in Keira’s wheelhouse. At his question, she looked up at him, brown eyes darkening slightly. How he could even think she would do that, or could after everything that happened. “None. Not at all.” She put the railing aside after she noticed the tension had made her sand down one side a little too far. She’d need to even it out. “How could I?” Andy’s expression wavered, but she fought for neutrality. “With Alex, it all changed. I never…” She took a deep breath. “Never really liked it anyway, so it was easy to give up.” The first time she’d been faced with a raiju, she’d let it get away on purpose, only for her dad to come up behind her and kill it in her place. She hated the way it sounded as it died, and she hated the way her father had looked disgusted in her, but proud in the fact that he’d rid the world of something existing within its own world, out in the woods where it wouldn’t hurt anyone else. “But I think you already knew that.” 

–

Kaden did his best to keep any expression off his face, though he couldn’t quite keep his brow from rising a little at her answer. Not at all? He kept his eyes on the sandpaper and the railing in his hand, didn’t want to make this a big deal. Or make her think that he judged her or anything. He wasn’t in any fucking place to, not now. Not with his own worldview shattered into a million pieces lately. “Yeah,” he replied, “guess I did.” He’d noticed the lack of weapons in the cabin. Well, besides his. 

“I don’t–” he started, looking away from his hands. Only he didn’t know what to say. Hell, he didn’t even know what he wanted to say. He let his gaze fall back down to the task at hand. “I mean I, uh, I guess you already know that I still do. Considering, you know. That.” He gave a small nod to the chest full of knives and guns and whatnot by the couch. “But, uh, I’m not….” How could he explain this to her when he couldn’t explain it to himself? “I don’t follow the code anymore.” Wait. That sounded bad. Didn’t it? “I mean, I do, it’s not like I don’t have any guideli–  but it’s not my family’s. I don’t–” An exasperated exhale left his lips. Words still didn’t come to him, none that felt right. None that didn’t dredge up the events that brought him here. And he wasn’t ready to dive into that. 

“Anyway, this banister’s going to be unrecognizable when we’re done. You won’t even believe it’s the same thing.” The smile he offered was half-hearted a best, but he hoped that she’d want to change the subject as much as he did.

–

Andy clenched her jaw tightly, just enough to grind her teeth. She watched him carefully, looking out for any telltale signs that there might be something else there. That there might be something he wasn’t telling her. No matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find it. So instead, Andy dropped her gaze back down to the railing that she’d put to the side. 

She stared at it for a long while as Kaden spoke, not sure she could stomach the idea of looking up at him. He fell over his words like she figured he would, but she was surprised to hear about his family’s code. Andy pressed her tongue up against the roof of her mouth as she stared down the shaved sides of the wood, and how the sawdust had fallen to a mess at her feet. She hadn’t even paid attention. “What are your guidelines?” She looked up to finally meet his eyes, but by then, he’d already looked away. 

Now was as good of time as any to have the conversation she’d been skirting around. At first, she wasn’t sure she wanted to have it, but where her sister was concerned, Andy knew she needed a straight answer. Did she need to force him to look at Alex in shifted form so that he would remember the color of her coat so that in the chance she got loose from the shelter they’d built, he wouldn’t shoot? “I want to know. Because I can’t have you staying here if you’re a threat to Alex, or to people like Alex.” She emphasized the word, because that’s what they were. Not monsters. She’d met more monsters who wore skin like her own than those who shifted into something else. “I’m not trying to make you feel like shit, Kaden, and I’m not trying to misunderstand what you’re trying to say, but I need you to reassure me that you aren’t hunting people.” 

–

Kaden froze. There it was. The question he was hoping she wouldn’t ask. Because he didn’t have an answer.

What are your guidelines?

He didn’t know. Not yet. That’s what he wanted to figure out. But he knew, he knew before she even said it, that his place here was contingent on them. 

Before he could even begin to answer, the blood and the knife and the look on Damien’s face all flashed before his eyes. 

The railing rattled and clanked as it fell out of his hands onto the ground. He didn’t remember leaning back to sit on the stairs, but he was. He didn’t know when it had become so fucking hard to breathe, but it had. He wasn’t sure what he had been looking at before, but now he was staring at the floor with his hands wrapped around the back of his head. 

He concentrated on breathing. Inhaling and exhaling, trying to find the oxygen in the room. It was only after he could hear anything other than the sound of his heart pounding in his chest that he remembered that he wasn’t alone. Shit.

Kaden jolted up to look back at Andy. She had said a lot. More than just the first question. And she was waiting for an answer. Fuck, what was the question again?

Guidelines. His guidelines. And something about people. 

“Sorry, I’m–” He cleared his throat, hoping to clear away the shakiness in his voice. “Felt a little lightheaded. But, uh, yeah I’m… figuring those out. I just know that, um…” The look in Keira’s eyes, the resentment and disgust, lingered in his mind. He bit into the side of his mouth, pain forcing him back into the present. “I know I don’t want to be–” Keira. He didn’t want to be her. But he couldn’t say it. Not that he was sure he could say the alternative out loud either. “I don’t want to be a murderer.” The last sentence was soft, subdued, something that would have been hard to hear if his cousin hadn’t been a hunter, too. And part of him wished she hadn’t heard him at all. 

–

Kaden looked like he was going to fall apart at her feet. Andy felt a pang of remorse, but it didn’t last very long. She knew now that there was no way to avoid this conversation, not if she wanted to foster some kind of relationship with her cousin. Where Keira had been cruel and unjust, especially towards the two girls during their time in Lyon, Kaden had been kind. Andy wanted to be kind to him, but she needed to know that he deserved it first. 

It was rich, Andy thought to herself, that she would try and dictate where her kindness started and ended, especially when she could hardly be kind to herself. 

The only sounds to stir within the cabin were that of its worse-for-wear beams creaking with every gust of wind from outside and Kaden’s shallow breathing. Andy knew the look on his face, she’d seen it within herself every time she looked in the mirror after a particularly bad nightmare or close call with Alex. 

Andy stayed silent, lips pressed firmly together. She should avert her gaze, look at something else– focus on the railing she’d sanded down too finely, maybe, but she couldn’t look away. The sound of Kaden’s heartbeat reached her ears, a rhythmic thump loud and clear– uneven, too. What the fuck had happened in Lyon? She knew that people like them, they were traumatized from an early age, but this was something else entirely. 

As he began to speak, all Andy could do was listen. It was clear that something had happened to get him to this point. She wondered if it had anything to do with Keira. 

I don’t want to be a murderer. 

If Andy hadn’t been paying attention, she might have missed it. She maintained a neutral expression, all aside from the knot in her jaw. “Okay.” Maybe if she were raised right, or maybe if she hadn’t raised herself, she would have known how to comfort him. It was easier with Alex. She had practically raised her sister, even before their parents died. 

Without saying another word, Andy got to her feet. She went into the kitchen and began to start the kettle. She’d spare him the horror of using the microwave to warm the water, but only this time. She decided to let him have a brief moment alone after the water had finished heating before returning with a cup of peppermint tea. 

“This helps me.” She sat down next to Kaden on the stairs, holding out the mug to him. “Not always, but sometimes.” Though Andy wanted to ask what happened in Lyon, she bit her tongue. The answer she wanted had been given to her. He wouldn’t hurt Alex. Really, it seemed like he didn’t want to hurt anyone. 

“I’m sorry.” It wasn’t often a hunter apologized– though, could she really consider herself to be one anymore? “For whatever it was that happened.” Sorrow clung to her like tar, sticky and unruly. 

– 

Kaden didn’t know where she went. Part of him was sure that she was walking away to pack his things for him and send him packing. How could she trust someone who didn’t know what they fuck they were doing? How could she let him stay there when he didn’t know what his fucking morals were anymore? Who would want him there after he failed his little sister and got his best friend killed?

He’d missed the part where she’d come back. How long had she been sitting there next to him? There was something in her hand. A mug. When he managed to process that it was for him, he took it with a small nod, only to stare down into the hot water, watching the steam rise from the cup. 

I’m sorry. For whatever it was that happened.

“Nothing happened,” he said without hesitation, without thinking, only saying what he told himself far too often out loud to her in return. It was easier to lie to himself in his head. Speaking it was harder to pretend. I’m fine. Nothing happened. I just wanted a fresh start. I’m fine. 

The silence hung in the air and the lies felt more and more hollow, their power to placate him fading away with every second that passed. Still, the last thing he wanted to do was relive it all. Again. And telling someone– if he told someone, that would make it real. It would start seeping in, and the wall he tried to build around himself would start to be washed away. 

“Sorry,” he said, eyes still on the tea. “I mean, thanks. For saying that–” There weren’t words that felt right. “It’s…” He pressed his thumb against the ceramic wall of the mug, letting the heat prick at the pad of his finger to the point of pain. “There’s a reason I left. You’re right.” He just wasn’t brave enough to say it. “It’s–” What was there even to say? That he could say without falling apart? “Alex isn’t… she’s not the only werewolf I–” That he cared about. The words wouldn’t leave his lips. Hell, he wasn’t sure he could even find them. He hoped she could fill in the blanks. 

–

He lied to her, just as she expected he would. She would have done the same. Andy sat in silence. Had it been Keira? His mother? No, he probably would have told her already if something had happened to either of them. Though she was not fond of her cousin or her aunt, she knew what it felt like to lose family.

As he spoke, Andy lifted her gaze to his hands. They were wrapped around the mug as if an anchor. Like if he didn’t hold onto it to the point where his knuckles turned white, he’d drift away with whatever memory was clearly plaguing him. 

Andy steeled herself for whatever tragedy that had befallen him. Though he didn’t give her much to go off of in his initial admission, it was enough for her to understand. This was where normal people hugged, and where she should tell him that it was okay. But she knew it wasn’t. Because if anything were to happen to Alex, then that would be the end of it all. Judging by Kaden’s demeanor, Andy could take a few guesses as to what had happened with the werewolf he mentioned, but she couldn’t be sure, so she reeled in her assumptions. 

“The world’s fucked up, isn’t it?” Fucked up in that you’re taught one thing and then that world crumbles around you and you’re left to flounder, and to question everything you’d ever been raised to believe. Andy guessed this was where she got lucky. She hadn’t believed in anything much at all even before her parents were mauled to death by the very things she’d been raised to hate. There weren’t many condolences passed onto hunters who’d lost loved ones. It was a part of the cycle. In part of breaking that, Andy rested a hand on his arm– a subtle enough gesture. “You don’t have to tell me the rest if you don’t want to.” There were things she wasn’t ready to talk to him about, but maybe she should. Just… not now. 

“Just know that I… won’t judge you. For whatever it is.” Would that be true, if Kaden had been the one to pull the trigger? Or to shove the blade into the chest of the individual who he claimed to care about? Andy couldn’t be sure, but clearly whatever had happened had fucked him up enough that she didn’t think he’d be doing it again. Or maybe it was something else. Keira came to mind and her stomach twisted. 

–

An unexpected laugh spilled out at her words. “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head, “that’s putting it lightly.” Kaden had to wonder how often normal people imagined what their life was like if they had been born into some other family, some other life. Everyone probably did every now and then, but he had a feeling that hunters let their minds wander in that direction more often than most. He knew he did. If he hadn’t been a hunter, would he have kept both his parents? Probably. Would he still have his sister? He didn’t imagine they’d necessarily be as close as some siblings, but he was sure they wouldn’t be where they were now. In some other version of themselves somewhere, maybe Keira got a chance to be normal. Her intense drive and determination could have been used for good. And not for–

Andy’s hand on his arm broke his thoughts. Probably for the best. It was strange, not the sort of gesture he was familiar with; not from family. Showing empathy or offering some sort of condolences, well, it just didn’t usually happen. Kaden was pretty used to it. What he wasn’t used to was the sense of comfort that spread over him. It was small, sure, but, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, it was the sort of shit he’d always longed for from his immediate family. It had been a long time since Keira had shown any sort of caring, been capable of any empathy. That had been stripped away from his sister a long time ago. She probably never even knew she’d lost it. 

Kaden nodded at the offer to tell his story. It lingered there, dangling in front of him. The desire to let it all spill out on the floor and out of his mind was tempting, but it clashed with the fear of making the whole thing solid and real. The scent of peppermint wafted up to his nose as he inhaled deeply. It was clear, fresh, almost cleansing. 

Putain. He’d have to tell someone eventually. There was no way he could hold onto this forever. Maybe if he just said a little, it would be enough to lift some of the weight. “I had a friend. He…” Fuck. His throat tightened already. This was going to be harder than he thought. “Damien. I, uh, knew him a while. Pretty close.” Understatement. He was pretty sure he spent more time at Damien’s apartment than his own whenever he was in town and not on a hunt, to the point where they joked that they were roommates. Not to mention that Kaden’s free time had pretty much belonged to Damien by the time he… “He got bit. Turned.” Kaden swallowed back whatever was threatening to spill out, not sure if it was emotions or bile. “Keira, she… She found out.” His thumb glided along the side of his mug while his teeth grit against each other. “I didn’t… So she–” Kaden clenched his jaw and did his best to focus on the tension, the pain. It was better than the alternative. It’s not like he dared to say anything more anyway.

–

Andy’s usual impatience fizzled as she sat next to Kaden. She felt as though any sudden movements might scare him away, or make him turn in on himself and decide that his trauma wasn’t worth bringing up. She held her own tucked beneath her tongue, not yet ready to face the onslaught of emotions that’d surely rise with their exposure. 

As Kaden began to explain what had him falling apart at the seams, Andy stayed silent. She was good at it, sometimes. What Damien actually meant to her cousin, she could only guess. Her heart sank as he continued on, her own skin prickling at the mention of Keira. Before he even finished the sentence, she knew where Damien had ended up. It wasn’t entirely Keira’s fault that she had ended up that way. She’d been taught to believe one thing and she followed it blindly. Andy couldn’t begin to imagine doing something like that to Alex– to take a friend from her for the sake of what she was taught. 

Despite the pain Kaden’s story made Andy feel, it reaffirmed that she’d done the right thing by leaving with Alex. She wasn’t always so sure. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wanted to believe that because they were blood, Claire would have helped with Alex. But she knew that wasn’t true. Alex would have died by one of their hands. Probably Keira’s, given this story. Andy still had the scars from when she and her cousin were forced to spar. She still remembered how Keira had laid her out, ridiculing her for not being able to beat her. Andy hadn’t wanted to hurt her cousin, that was all. Keira didn’t seem to care about that. 

“I’m sorry.” The words felt weighted, but there were no marionette strings holding them up as an act. They were genuine, and they fell into the space between herself and Kaden. “I’m glad that you’re here.” Their earlier conversation had been heated– Andy’s accusations sharp like knives, but now she understood. Maybe not wholly, because at the very least, she still had Alex. She took a deep breath and stared across the way, testing the number of things she could say before deciding against the lot of them. “Whatever you think you did to cause it, or if you think you could have stopped it.. None of that is your fault.” She gave his arm another gentle squeeze. “I’ve… learned, over time. It gets easier. It’s fresh now, so…” Could she even tell him to give himself time to grieve when she couldn’t even give herself the chance to do so? Their situations were different, though. “It might not be okay, but you’ll… it’ll get better.” Andy cleared her throat. 

–

Kaden had hoped that saying it, that speaking the words would be a relief, that the weight would lift, but he still felt it pressing down on his chest. His throat was tight and tense and he was going to start bleeding if he bit the inside of his mouth any harder. He knew why, what was threatening to let loose, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to fall apart any more than he already had sitting on the stupid steps holding a mug of tea while his cousin tried to comfort him. He didn’t want to cry. Some part of him worried that if he started, he’d never stop. The dam was cracking, though, bit by bit the fracture that had started out as just a hairline was growing bigger and bigger.

Andy’s words were another crack in the dam, even if the reason was the opposite of the rest. I’m glad you’re here. Putain, he didn’t realize how much he needed to hear that. All he could manage to do was lean into her ever slightly, feeling her shoulder up against his arm. 

He didn’t know what he expected her to say next, but he hadn’t been ready for that. It tapped into thoughts and fears that he hadn’t even acknowledged yet, that this was his fault. Kaden found himself shaking his head, unable to accept her assessment of it all. Of course this was his fault. Of course it was. There were at least twenty different ways he’d already imagined how he could have prevented it. In his mind, there was nothing to debate. It was his fault, at least in some part, and he was going to have to live with that til the day he died. But he didn’t have it in him to argue. Or to say anything, really. 

The stretches of silence were broken only by the small sniffles from Kaden. Since he refused to let any tears fall from his eyes, they threatened to find some other avenue. He held onto them, tried to stuff them away as they sat in the quiet of the cabin. “I’m not letting anything happen to Alex,” he said, sharply slashing the silence, turning to look at Andy finally meeting her eyes. “I know she’s not my–” Sister. Alex wasn’t his sister, no. He had failed his sister. “But I promise I’m going to look out for her. Or try to, at least.” He wasn’t convinced he was capable of protecting anyone at this point if he ever was in the first place. 

His gaze drifted back down to the mug. The corners of his eyes started to sting and he continued to ignore it. “I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I just know… I just know that it’ll be different. That I can’t–” He inhaled and looked up at the ceiling, trying his best to hold off the stupid fucking emotions a little longer. “I can’t be that.” Not anymore. “All I want to do is try and keep people safe. Whatever the fuck that means.”

–

When Andy and Alex had arrived in Lyon, Andy had been pressed with questions. Why had their parents been intent on protecting their children instead of fighting? It was because the sisters were incompetent. At least, that’s what Claire had claimed. That their parents’ deaths were more so on Andy’s hands than Alex’s, but that they should have known what to do. That at the very least, they should have died with them. Andy had held onto that guilt for years. She’d seen the rage in Claire’s eyes, and in Keira’s, too. She’d felt it, with every punch that her cousin had thrown. While it took Andy a long time to realize it wasn’t her fault that they had died, she still felt guilt over the accusations thrown forth by her family members. If she couldn’t protect them, what made her feel like she could protect Alex if something similar happened?

The two sat in silence for a beat longer, leaving Andy to regret her choice of words. Had she gone too far? Just as she was about to say something– an apology, maybe, the sound of Kaden’s sniffling had her tighten her jaw. She wasn’t a crier, and she knew that he wasn’t either, so hearing him lean into his emotions rather than ward them off was a shock all on its own. 

Andy tensed slightly at his words. She looked over at him, noticing the sincerity. “You and me both.” She had spent many years looking after Alex, raising her on her own– one state to the next from dirty and dusty hotel rooms to the backseats of broken down cars in junkyards. They were just kids, and while Andy hadn’t always made the best decisions, she had at least done right by her sister. Or, she hoped she had. Now that she had his confirmation that he wouldn’t hurt her, Andy felt all of her earlier worries melt away. Sure, there were the anxieties of Kaden running into the wrong people and it falling back onto them, but that couldn’t be helped. Even with herself and Alex, that was a possibility. “Me, too.” 

“Thank you, by the way. For telling me. I know that it might have been a lot.” Andy removed her hand from his arm and rested it on her own knee, tapping her index finger against it. “I’m glad we had this talk. Honestly I wasn’t…” Her eyebrows furrowed. “It’s been a lot. Over the past few years. But um, I mean it when I say that I’m glad you’re here.” It would be easier with Kaden around, Andy decided. He would help her. They could be a family– a real one. Not one of those fucked up ideals of unity, guilt, and duty that her parents had always spouted. “She’ll come around to you, too. Eventually. Like I said, it’s… well, you can imagine. I won’t tell you her story, she can tell it to you herself when she’s ready, and you can tell her yours when you’re ready.” Andy smiled at Kaden, fighting back the exhaustion that’d begun to sink into her shoulders. The conversation had taken a lot out of her, and she was sure it’d taken a lot out of him, too. 

–

It felt like his emotions were still trying to fucking drown him, but Kaden could feel the weight of the tension in the room lifting. It was easier to breathe, at least. Even if nothing much had really changed. Still, he couldn’t help but let out a small laugh when Andy mentioned she was glad they had this talk. “Yeah well, I sure didn’t plan on telling anyone. At least not anytime soon,” he said, watching his thumb as he used it to make circles on the side of the mug. “But, uh… probably good that I did. So thanks. For giving me the chance. For taking the risk, too.” Andy knew what she was potentially inviting into her house when she told Kaden he could come to Wicked’s Rest. She knew she was inviting a hunter to live with a werewolf. He was pretty sure he didn’t deserve that kind of grace or trust but there weren’t words for the gratitude he felt. Even if there were, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to say it properly anyway.

“I’m sure it’s just a matter of a few dozen more hours of being forced to listen to Taylor Swift,” he said, returning the smile. He knew it wasn’t going to be that simple by any means, but they had time. Kaden finally brought the mug to his lips and took a sip of the tea now that he didn’t have to brace as tightly against the wall containing his grief. She was right, it was nice just to have. Hell, it was nice to feel some sort of accepted. The cabin had felt more like a pit stop or a go-between for him since he first got to town and he’d figured that was how Andy saw it, too. It might be too early to say, sure, but he had a feeling that it might be more of a home than that, for him as much as for them. Kaden looked up and took a glance around the cabin, trying to see if it looked any different now.

Right. The railing. There was still sawdust all over the floor, the banister was in pieces, and it wasn’t even close to done. “Yeah, might have to finish that up tomorrow,” he said with a nod to the evidence of the unfinished project. “Sorry about that.” He sighed as he brushed some of the sawdust off of the stair with his boot. “So. Take out tonight? My treat?” It wasn’t a question so much as an offer that he was pretty sure wasn’t going to be turned down. It felt small, like his attempt at helping around the cabin, but it was the least he could do to try and extend even half the kindness his cousins– his family had shown him already.

[annabtg]

Perspective Flip: I’ll write a scene from [that fic] from another character’s point-of-view

Customer In Law - from Lily or Sirius' point of view for the scene where the whole "fake" plan is formed : )

Unusual fic-specific asks here!

It’s very interesting that you should ask for this, Athena! See, the first draft of the first scene (which was later split into two scenes) contained a Lily who was much less assertive – it was James who had asked her out in desperation, and she was more like confused, he looks nice but I don’t know him at all – but it wasn’t working out so well. My beta (my beloved @ksarasara) suggested that Lily should be more into him and more of a go-getter for this plotline to work – and she was right! I’m much happier with this Lily, and she also drove the rest of the story so damn well ;)

Here we go, then! Under the cut for length (875 words!!)

Never mind Lily Evans’s endless complaining about corporate life; she actually liked her job, and she was good at it.

However, she was a real sucker for the way James Potter’s attention locked on her when she launched into one of her tirades.

The excuse of a late lunch was perfect for catching him at a low traffic hour; now without the espresso machine calling for his attention, he leaned on the counter right in front of her, offering her a great view of his gorgeous hazel eyes and those divine forearms, always exposed from under his short-sleeved shirt even in the middle of the winter – then again, he was always surrounded by heat and steam, she figured – and listening to her with that half-smile that was as hot and delicious as the coffee he made for her twice daily.

It had been with great effort and dismay that she’d made the decision not to make a move on him, beyond flaunting her availability at every opportunity. It wouldn’t be wise to bring him to a difficult position right there in his workspace – better to keep things at this liminally professional flirting until she figured out whether there was actual interest behind his charming demeanour, or it was all a ruse for a customer’s benefit.

Still, she couldn’t help the thought – wishful as it might be – that the warmth in his voice felt a little too friendly to be just professional.

“This is why I chose to open my own business instead,” he commented. “I’m not one for drama and people telling me what to do. And I get to meet much more interesting people here.”

“Yeah, well, not all of us can afford to do that,” she said, her smile genuinely sweet and almost wistful. “But I like it there. It has its perks.”

“Like the lunch break.”

She chuckled, hoping that the heat she felt at his teasing manner wasn’t rising all the way to her cheeks. “Highlight of my day, for certain.”

His eyes seemed to liven up, the light brown in them glowing like amber, and for a moment, she thought he’d reciprocate – but then they were interrupted by Sirius, who shoved the phone in James’s hands. “For you.”

“Who is it?”

“Someone who’s looking for her baby.”

“What?” James put the phone in his ear with an expression of dread. “Hello?” At the answer on the other side of the line, his eyes narrowed into a withering look for Sirius, even through his obvious relief. “Hi, Mum.”

Lily held back a giggle. She’d heard a lot of stories about James and his mum – many of them from Sirius, who seemed to have sniffed the particular interest Lily held for his best friend. Even if he hadn’t, though, the anecdotes of older middle-aged women visiting a coffee shop to set their daughters up with the owner were too good to pass up.

James was now ranting to his mum about one of these ladies; Lily sipped her coffee, occasionally exchanging silent, amused looks with Sirius.

Finally, he hung up the phone – or his mum did, because he remained still for a moment, staring at it before shaking it at Sirius. “She invited Athena!”

Sirius ignored him and turned to Lily instead. “That’s the one from last week,” he explained.

“I figured,” she said, exaggerating a pout. “I always miss out on all the fun.”

With the corner of her eye, she noticed James’s indignant expression, but Sirius now seemed to have better things in mind than humouring his best friend. “Evans,” he said, his tone very deliberate. “Why don’t you go with James to his mother’s birthday party?”

James seemed to go pale, but she’d deal with that later; for now, she focused on Sirius. If that was her chance to get to see James outside of his work, she wasn’t going to let it slip. “What are you thinking, exactly?”

“Well. If James has a date, it’ll ward off all those potential suitors he doesn’t care to give the time of day to. His mother will be pleased he has a girlfriend. There’ll be food, and drinks, and you’ll get to meet Athena in all her unhinged glory,” he finished with a very self-important expression.

“Sounds good,” she replied and turned to James, who still hadn’t recovered his colour.

“You don’t really want that,” he warned. “They’re ruthless. They’ll be out for blood.”

She’d got that much, but she wasn’t afraid. “Really sounds like you shouldn’t be alone there, then.”

“They’ll be nosy and ask you all sorts of personal questions.”

“Just like my sister.” Piece of cake.

James sighed. “My mum is going to start planning our wedding.”

“Cool,” she said, without missing a beat. “My wardrobe could use a long white dress.”

His gaze dropped to the floor for a moment in surrender; when he looked back at her, his gaze was vivid with that amber glow again that told her she was right to insist. “Fine. It’s your funeral.”

“I thought it was my wedding.”

She was definitely going to have the last word on this – and judging by the grin that parted his lips at her words, he was going to enjoy every minute of it.

[avinoliving]

Modern Living Perks

There is nothing you won’t love with Avino’s 1-bedroom apartments in Carmel Valley. These apartments come with a range of modern features designed for convenience and comfort. Residents can benefit from a professional high-speed business center equipped with both Mac and PC options. For those who cycle, there’s a dedicated cycle repair shop on-site. Each apartment includes direct access garages with electric vehicle charging stations, making it easy to keep vehicles powered. Avino also offers a concierge package delivery system and a conference room for business needs. With these amenities, Avino’s 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom apartments provide a blend of luxury and practicality, perfect for today’s lifestyle.

The Geography of San Diego, California

San Diego, California, is located in the southwestern corner of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. The city is known for its varied geography, which includes sandy beaches, rugged coastal cliffs, and rolling hills. To the east, mountains and deserts border the area, while the city sits close to the border with Mexico to the south. San Diego's coastal location gives it a mild Mediterranean climate, with warm summers and cool winters. The San Diego Bay provides a natural deep-water harbor, making it an important location for trade and military activities. The city's diverse landscape and ideal climate make it a popular destination for outdoor activities and tourism.

San Diego Zoo

The San Diego Zoo is one of the most well-known zoos in the world, located in Balboa Park. It’s home to over 3,500 animals from around the globe, including pandas, elephants, and polar bears. The zoo is known for its large, natural habitats that allow animals to live in environments similar to their wild homes. Visitors can take guided tours, ride the Skyfari aerial tram, or explore various exhibits like the African Safari and the Panda Trek. The zoo also focuses on conservation and education, helping to protect endangered species. With its beautiful gardens and fun activities, the San Diego Zoo is an ideal place for families to learn about wildlife and enjoy a day outdoors.

Small Business, Franchise Owner Burdened by New Minimum Wage

Minimum wage regulation is important because it helps ensure that workers earn a fair income for their jobs. It aims to provide enough money for people to meet basic needs like food, housing, and healthcare. However, some small business and franchise owners in San Diego are feeling the pressure from new minimum wage laws. They worry that higher wages can make it harder to pay their employees and keep their businesses running. Small businesses often have tight budgets, so increasing wages can lead to tough decisions, like reducing staff or cutting hours. While raising the minimum wage can help workers, it’s also essential to consider how it affects local businesses and their ability to thrive in the community.

Link to map

San Diego Zoo 2920 Zoo Dr, San Diego, CA 92101, United States Get on CA-163 N from Park Blvd, Brookes Ave, Richmond St and Robinson Ave 5 min (1.3 mi) Continue on CA-163 N. Take I-805 N and CA-56 E to Carmel Valley Rd. Take exit 3 from CA-56 E 16 min (17.6 mi) Use the left 2 lanes to turn left onto Carmel Valley Rd 1 min (0.5 mi) Avino 5040 Camino San Fermin, San Diego, CA 92130, United States

[newstfionline]

Thursday, December 22, 2022

Maple Syrup (CTV News) It was a bumper year for maple syrup production in Canada, where producers have made 79.1 million litres of maple syrup. To translate for Americans, that’s 20.9 million gallons of a fascinating tree-based alternative to high-fructose corn syrup. The maple syrup harvest is up 53.8 percent over 2021, and is the highest yield on record. Quebec was responsible for 91 percent of that figure with the province claiming to produce 72.3 million litres of maple syrup, which means it made 19.1 million gallons.

Tens of thousands without power after California earthquake (AP) Tens of thousands of homes and businesses along the Northern California coast remained without power Tuesday evening, nearly a day after a powerful earthquake jolted people awake and shook homes off foundations, injuring at least 12 and leaving many without water. “It felt like my roof was coming down,” Cassondra Stoner said. “The only thing I could think about was, ‘Get the freaking kids.’” When the ground stopped moving, Stoner’s family was fine—a daughter even slept through the racket. But when she showed up to work at Dollar General, she found tiles had fallen from the ceiling, shelves were toppled and the contents of the discount store she manages were scattered on the floor. The magnitude 6.4 earthquake occurred at 2:34 a.m. near Ferndale, a small community about 210 miles (345 kilometers) northwest of San Francisco and close to the Pacific coast.

DEA seized enough fentanyl to kill every person in the U.S. in 2022 (Washington Post) The Drug Enforcement Administration said Tuesday it has seized more than 379 million potentially fatal doses of illegal fentanyl this year, as Mexican drug-trafficking organizations continue to flood the United States with the cheap synthetic opioid responsible for record numbers of U.S. overdose deaths. The agency said it has confiscated more than 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder and 50.6 million illegal fentanyl tablets so far in 2022. That was twice the number of tablets seized in 2021, when more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses. Two-thirds of those deaths were caused by fentanyl, according to U.S. public health data.

Zelenskiy visits the U.S. (Bloomberg) US President Joe Biden welcomed Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the White House Wednesday in the Ukraine leader’s first trip abroad since Russia attacked last February. Biden voiced hope for a “just peace,” but the visit comes at a critical stage of the war: Ukraine has faced a barrage of missile and drone attacks targeting civilians and energy infrastructure in recent weeks, leading to power and water cuts in brutal winter weather. Zelenskiy has pleaded for more advanced weapons systems to blunt Russian attacks and for additional energy and economic support. As for Putin, who has called up hundreds of thousands of untrained recruits to reanimate his stalled attack, he contends Russia has “no limitations” on military spending, and urged his army to continue the war.

Mexican ambassador expelled from Peru over meddling claims (AP) In a roller-coaster day for Mexico’s relations with Peru, Mexico announced Tuesday it had granted asylum for the family of ousted Peruvian president Pedro Castillo. Hours later, Peru declared the Mexican ambassador to Lima persona non grata and ordered him to leave within 72 hours. The Peruvian foreign ministry said without elaborating that Castillo’s wife, Lilia Paredes, was under criminal investigation in the South American country, where corruption allegations had dogged her husband’s administration. Paredes and the couple’s two children were at the Mexican embassy in Lima. Peru said it would allow the family to leave for Mexico, but could later demand Mexico extradite Paredes Navarro if she were to eventually face any charges in Peru. Peru’s foreign ministry said in its social media accounts Tuesday that it was expelling Mexican Ambassador Pablo Monroy because “of the repeated statement by that country’s highest authorities about the political situation in Peru.”

U.K. nurses strike over pay, testing a health-care system in crisis (Washington Post) The British newspapers are calling it the “winter of discontent.” Huge strikes are creating chaos in hospitals and standstills at transit hubs, as walkouts by firefighters, baggage handlers, paramedics, driving examiners, immigration officers, bus drivers, construction workers, mail carriers and railway conductors mount. The public has been warned to avoid train travel on Christmas Eve. Most worrisome for the government—and the public—is that nurses have just gone on strike, too. Teachers are threatening work stoppages early in the new year. Workers in wide swaths of the public sector are in open revolt against 12 years of “austerity budgets” by the Conservative Party and the soaring costs of living in 2022. Energy prices are so high here that the government stepped in to cap and subsidize home heating bills so that people wouldn’t freeze in their flats. During the worst years of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of ordinary Britons stood on their doorsteps during harsh lockdowns to bang pots and pans and clap their hands for National Health Service workers, hailing them as front-line heroes. Now the nurses are saying they need more than applause. They are burned out, overworked and underpaid, they say, and want a real raise to keep up with inflation, which has topped 10 percent.

Putin orders FSB to step up surveillance of Russians and borders (Reuters) President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered the Federal Security Services to step up surveillance of Russian society and the country’s borders to prevent risks from abroad and traitors at home. Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s Security Services Day—widely celebrated in Russia—Putin said the “emergence of new threats” increases the need for greater intelligence activity. Putin instructed the FSB to maximise their “use of the operational, technical and personnel potential” to tighten control of the society. The FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, has already been operating in Russia as an expansive surveillance and censorship apparatus and Moscow’s invasion in Ukraine has involved a large swathe of the security services. Since the start of the war, demonstrations and dissent have been swiftly quelled in Russia, with more than 1,300 detained in September at protests denouncing Putin’s military mobilisation of 300,000. In a rare admission of the invasion of Ukraine not going smoothly, Putin said that the situation in Ukraine’s regions that Moscow moved to annex in September is “extremely difficult” and ordered the FSB to ensure the “safety” of people living there.

Surrender to a Drone? Ukraine Is Urging Russian Soldiers to Do Just That. (NYT) Tens of thousands of drones have been employed across Ukraine to kill the enemy, spy on its formations and guide bombs to their targets. But this month the Ukrainian military began a program to use drones in a more unusual role: to guide Russian soldiers who want to surrender. The program had its genesis in late November, when the Ukrainian military released footage of a Russian soldier throwing his weapon to the ground, raising his hands and nervously following a path set out by a drone overhead, leading him to soldiers from the Ukrainian army’s 54th Mechanized Brigade. A few weeks later, the Ukrainian General Staff released an instructional video explaining how Russian soldiers can surrender to a Ukrainian drone, and it is now part of a wide-ranging effort by Ukraine to persuade Russian soldiers to give up. The program, called “I want to live,” includes a phone hotline, a website and a Telegram channel all dedicated to communicating to Russian soldiers and their families.

Snow piles deep in northern Japan (AP) Heavy snow in northwestern Japan since the weekend has left at least three people dead, stranded hundreds of vehicles on highways, disrupted trains and left thousands of homes without electricity, officials said Wednesday. The powerful weather system brought heavy snow to Japan’s northern coastal areas since Saturday, with snow piling up more than 2 meters (6.5 feet) in parts of Niigata, Yamagata and Aomori prefectures. Self-Defense Force troops helped clear Niigata highways, where hundreds of cars and delivery trucks were stuck in lines stretching more than 20 kilometers (12 miles), and to provide other support. Local volunteers also helped to provide food and other necessities to those stranded inside their vehicles for hours. With improving weather conditions, road closures were lifted Tuesday, but another snowstorm is forecast to affect the region toward the weekend.

Taliban Bar Women From College Classes, in a Stark Reversal of Rights (NYT) The Afghan government on Tuesday barred women from attending private and public universities, officials said, in the latest severe blow to women’s rights under a Taliban administration that has all but reinstituted the hard-line rule the group maintained during its first stretch in power during the 1990s. The move is the most recent sign that the Taliban’s leadership has cast aside any intent to moderate, and it is the realization of fears that 20 years of Western human rights and governance initiatives would be undone after the Taliban took power last year. The new government in recent weeks has reinstated Shariah law, carried out public floggings across the country and conducted one public execution. All that is likely to threaten the influx of badly needed international aid that has kept Afghanistan from the brink of famine as it grapples with a devastating economic collapse.

Children among 547 detained Syrians declared dead—rights monitor (Reuters) Ever since Yehya Hijazi and his two sons were detained in 2012 by the Syrian government, their relatives had clung onto the hope they were still alive and might be released one day. But after a decade of silence from the authorities, their hopes were shattered when the independent Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) monitoring group contacted the Hijazi family to tell them it had obtained death certificates for all three. The SNHR said the documents confirming the death of Yehya and his sons were among 547 detainee death certificates issued by the authorities since 2017 that it had obtained from whistleblowers within government departments. The rights group said the documents provided answers to the fates of hundreds of missing people. The war in Syria spiralled out of a 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule and has killed over 350,000 people, uprooted more than half the population and forced millions abroad as refugees. Tens of thousands are estimated to have been held in Syrian government detention centres, according to the U.N. commission. Detainees are often held incommunicado, leaving their families wondering about their whereabouts, or if they are even alive, the commission and families of detainees have said.

Biden’s strategy for a far-right Israel: Lay it all on Bibi (Politico) President Joe Biden and his aides have a plan for how to deal with the far-right, anti-Palestinian tilt of the incoming Israeli government: make it all about Benjamin Netanyahu. The Biden administration will hold the presumptive Israeli prime minister personally responsible for the actions of his more extreme cabinet members, especially if they lead to policies that endanger a future Palestinian state, two U.S. officials familiar with the issue told POLITICO. Netanyahu is the person U.S. officials will publicly turn to, refer to and rely upon for any remotely serious talks on issues ranging from Israeli settlements in the West Bank to Israel’s relations with Arab states, the officials said. The Israeli politician has, after all, stressed that he’ll be running the show. The Biden team’s approach underscores the complexity and the growing fragility of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Israel’s role as a security partner, as well as its role as a haven for the Jewish people, means any serious break is not feasible, no matter how radical its government. But the rightward trend in Israeli politics is also eroding what was once strong bipartisan support for the country in Washington, especially among Democrats who are increasingly willing to criticize Israel despite blowback on the campaign trail.

Biotechnology risks (nti.org, economist.com) In recent years, the cost of DNA synthesis has continued to plummet, new suppliers have emerged in countries around the world, and bench-top synthesis devices that make it easier for scientists to print DNA in their own labs are now commercially available. Safeguards have not always kept up. Even more concerning, one of the main barriers to a step-by-step blueprint to assemble that DNA into a transmissible, lethal virus could be no more than a paywall in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Many journals continue to publish the latest science on how to tinker with pathogens to make them more transmissible or virulent, and how to make them from scratch. These developments are taking place in the context of accelerating bioscience and biotechnology advances that are revolutionizing the capability to engineer living systems. These can have real potential benefits in improving human health, fostering economic development, and combating climate change. However, these advances also pose significant risks of deliberate exploitation by malicious actors or through inadvertent misuse.

[captain-buckyyy]

worst behaviour ⭒ part one

summary: steve and bucky break your number one rule: no playtime without mommy’s permission

pairing: sub!steve x reader x sub!bucky

warnings: swearing, steve and bucky call reader ‘mommy’, steve eats reader out, pet names, male x male smut

word count: 2.4k

a/n: this is part one of two! hope u enjoy!

Bucky can’t sleep, his head wracked with thoughts of you. His cock is achingly hard in the snug material of the sweatpants he wore to bed. You’re sound asleep next to him and on the other side of you is Steve, who snores gently. Bucky sneaks a glance at you laid there, your skin glowing in the early morning light; he can’t the way his hand palms over the bulge in his grey sweatpants at the sight of you. Bucky’s blue eyes can’t leave your supple flesh as images of him on his knees eating your sweet pussy out for hours flash through his mind.

“Fuck!” Bucky lowly groans as he kneads his hard cock through his sweatpants as you stir slightly in your sleep moving an inch, enough for the material of the thin vest you’re wearing to move and Bucky gets a peek at the soft flesh of your breasts.

“Shit! Fuck!” Bucky practically whimpers at the sight, his sweatpants are getting uncomfortably tight and his cock is painfully hard and needing release.

The sound of Bucky’s moans and sweet little whimpers entice Steve away from his dreams of sucking your tits and tasting the sweet nectar of your milk. Steve wakes confused and startled as Bucky’s moans get louder as his hands slip under the soft material of his pants grasping his thick cock and slowly jerking his hand over it, his hips bucking into his flesh hand instinctively as the familiar rush of pleasure waves over him.

“Buck?” Steve rasps out, his voice thick and full of sleep, his eyes adjusting to the light as he focuses on the sight of Bucky sitting up in bed next to you, stroking himself as he focuses on your body.

Bucky’s eyes reluctantly tear away from your body to focus on the sight of his rather sleepy boyfriend sitting up in bed, eyes zeroed on Bucky’s cock.

“Buck, stop! You’re gonna get in trouble,” Steve says ever the obedient little boy, Bucky’s always been more of the troublemaker of the two. Steve would do anything and everything for you but Bucky liked to act out, he liked the thrill of the rush and the way the paddle felt on his bare bottom when you spanked him as a punishment.

Bucky merely smirks at Steve words, the super-soldier couldn’t deny that the thought of you punishing him was exhilarating. The last time you punished him, his ass was red and raw and he came so hard he nearly passed out.

Bucky ignores Steve, too busy with the feeling of his wet hand gliding over his cock, high-pitched moans leaving his plump pink lips in ecstasy. Steve can’t help but grow hard at the sight of Bucky jerking himself, Bucky’s head is tipped back against the headboard, one hand gripping the curve of your ass, the other secured tightly against the flesh of his thick cock. Bucky’s teeth rake over the plump sensitive skin of his lips, clamping down against it and the moan Steve lets out at the sight is sinful.

“Come on Stevie, let’s have some together. Mommy doesn’t have to know,” Bucky says quietly not to wake you. ��Steve sighs, his face taken over with thought as he weighs his options: he could be good and go back to sleep and pretend he didn’t see anything to avoid punishment or he could be a little naughty and have some fun with Bucky.

Steve barely has time to think before Bucky is getting up from his side of the bed coming over to Steve and pressing his lips to Steve’s. Steve moans almost immediately the moment he feels Bucky’s wet and warm tongue slip past his lips, Bucky can’t help but smirk as his hand slithers down to the boxers Steve wore to bed and he feels the hardness of Steve’s clothed cock. “Bucky!” Steve moans but the sound is swallowed against Bucky’s plump lips that are devouring Steve.

Steve whimpers as Bucky pulls back, his lips reluctantly leaving Bucky. “Shhh… we don’t want to wake mommy up do we?” Bucky says smirking at Steve as his hand palms over Steve’s shorts-covered cock. Steve shakes his head before diving in and capturing Bucky’s lips, his hips rut up against Bucky’s metal hand and small whimpers leave his lips as he feels Bucky’s metal fingers squeeze his hard cock.

“You’re so hard,” Bucky laughs, pressing harder against Steve’s now painfully hard cock. Steve can’t help the animal-like mewl that leaves his throat at the sensation.

“Please Bucky,” Steve whines, making Bucky smirk wide at the sinful sounds escaping Steve’s lips.

“What do you want?” Bucky asks with a smirk.

“Please Bucky, need you to suck my cock,” Steve whines loudly and that was his mistake. The sound of one of your perfect little puppies whining wakes you quickly, Steve’s whine is so loud it fills the room and wakes you almost instantly.

Your eyes take time to adjust to the light and when they do, they’re suddenly met with the sight of Bucky removing Steve’s shorts as Steve hisses in desperate want and need at the feeling of Bucky’s flesh wrapped tightly around his hard cock.

“Need your mouth, Bucky,’ Steve practically begs the other super soldier and Bucky can’t help but coo taking pity on him, his warm pink lips wrap around the thick base of Steve’s cock and it feels too good Steve can barely string out a sentence instead opting to moan Bucky’s name over and over.

They don’t seem to notice the fact you’re awake, eyes open laying watching them disobey your number one rule: no playing without mommy’s permission. It seems your usual good little obedient puppies are being naughty and from the sound of Steve’s moans, they seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Bucky’s tongue swirls across the swollen red tip of Steve’s cock and Steve’s body jolts as pleasure consumes him, “Fuck!” Steve says, tears falling from his blue eyes as pleasure wrecks through his body. Bucky can’t help but laugh at how far gone Steve is and he’s barely even started. Bucky likes to be submissive to you but on the rare occasion, he’s naughty and plays with Steve without your permission Bucky likes to take control and watch Steve squirm.

The sight before you makes wetness pool in between your legs, your thighs instantly lubricated and sticky with your oozing slick as you watch your two little pets play with each other. It’s arousing, there’s no denying it but Bucky and Steve have broken your number one rule so as much as you’d like to join them, have Steve suck on your erect nipples as Bucky sucks him off; you need to remind them who’s in control and who calls the shots.

“Well isn’t this a lovely sight to wake up to, my two little boys misbehaving and breaking our rules,” you say tutting as you sit up in bed arms folded across your chest as you glare daggers at the two super soldiers.

Bucky immediately releases Steve’s thick cock from the wet and warm confines of his mouth making your other pet whimper at the loss but one harsh look from you has Steve immediately shutting up. Bucky can’t help the way blood rushes to his cock as his little plan play out before him: he wanted Steve to wake you up because something about getting punished is all too enticing for the former winter soldier.

“Mommy-” Steve tries to but you cut him off.

“I didn’t ask you to speak pet,” you say, silencing him and Steve hangs his head in disappointment. He knew he shouldn’t have let Bucky get to him, Steve isn’t used to breaking rules and he’s not sure he’ll be able to handle whatever punishment you’ll dole out.

“Bucky, speak!” You command and Bucky already knows what you want him to say, you’ve trained him to perfection.

“Mommy, Steve was so hard, I had to take care of him,” Bucky says his blue eyes round and begging as he puts on that sweet like sugar voice he knows can get him out of any trouble. However, this time that sweet little voice of his has lost its magic.

“Steve, is that true?” You ask.

Steve instantly shakes his head, “No mommy, I woke up and Buck was playing with himself and then he said we should play with each other and to never tell you.” Bucky should have expected it, Steve ratting him out but he’s rather surprised when Steve exposes him.

“Momm-” Bucky tries but is cut off when you slap his thigh, his cock jumping in excitement.

“I should have known you were the little mastermind behind this, you like getting punished too much. That’s what all of this is about, you want mommy to spank and edge you?” You ask and Bucky’s head hangs low in shame as he nods.

“I’m really sorry, mommy,” Bucky says, his eyes glassy as he looks up at you. You can’t help but scoff at the sight of unshed tears in his eyes, he’s really committing to his little act.

You laugh and that’s when Bucky knows you’re not going to be taking it easy on him and he gets so painfully hard he’s sure he could cum just there as he thinks of all the ways you could punish him. Maybe you’ll tie him up again and make him cum so much he can’t cum anymore.

“Stevie, my little pet come over here,” you command, spreading your legs and of course your little Stevie does as you say and immediately settling on his knees between your legs.

“Such a good boy” you coo, hand coming up to stroke his soft cheek. Steve practically purrs at your gentle touch and hopes you continue to be so happy towards him.

“Now Stevie baby, you’re gonna eat mommy out and Bucky you’re gonna watch and if you make any noise or touch yourself at all then you won’t be allowed any playtime for a long time,” you say smirking at the cute little pout that etches its way onto Bucky’s face.

Steve is practically glowing at your words, he’s so unbelievably happy Bucky’s the only one in trouble and he’s of course happy he gets to please his mommy. The panties you wore to bed slip off with ease and Steve wastes no time, he dives in and the moment you feel the wetness and warmth of his tongue glides across your clit you can’t help the moan that leaves your lips.

Your eyes find Bucky and he’s looking at you with such intensity you’re sure he's bound to pop a vessel with the level of concentration he’s trying to uphold. Steve practically devours you, moaning into your wet pussy at the sweet taste of you on his tongue and whimpering lowly as he hears you tell him, “you’re such a good boy for mommy, you’re making mommy feel so good.”

Bucky can’t help the way tears fall down his soft cheeks as he hears you praise Steve; as much as Bucky liked to be bad and get punished he also loved to hear you call him your good little boy and right now he just wanted to push Steve out of the way and eat you out so good you squirt all over his face.  

Steve's lips wrap around your clit and your legs shake violently around his head, air leaves your lungs and you're breathless at the pleasure that washes over you consuming you. Bucky watches with envy, he wishes he were Steve and all he wants to do is make you scream louder than Steve could ever make you.

“Fuck, it feels so good!” You practically scream and shout, fingers tangling in the short strands of Steve’s blonde hair. You can’t resist bucking your hips up into wet tongue and plump lips and the deep groan Steve lets out as you do makes wetness ooze out of you onto his awaiting tongue.

“You taste so good, mommy,” Steve moans momentarily, tearing himself from the wetness of your pussy. He can’t help but stare in amazement at the wetness that flows out of your cunt making a mess on the mattress below you.

Steve’s fingers dip into your tight, wet hole gathering slick before he pulls them out and breathlessly pulls them into his mouth, hollowing his cheeks and sucking them till every last drop of you is on his tongue. “So good mommy,” Steve moans before he’s pulling your legs wide apart, two of his fingers in your pussy and his lips wrapped tightly around your clit.

The way his fingers curl into the spot that makes your legs shake uncontrollably makes Bucky want to scream, all he wants to do is to make you cum. In Bucky’s opinion, Steve doesn’t deserve to make you cum not with the way he snitched on Bucky so quickly.

The moment you cum Bucky can’t help the whine that leaves his lips. You almost don’t hear it too caught up in the bliss of your orgasm but when you do you can’t help but smirk. You’re truly surprised he lasted this long and even more surprised he didn’t cum in his sweatpants like he usually does.

The second the whine leaves his lips, Bucky realises his mistake and for the first time, he’s truly scared of his punishment. Steve, however, can’t help but be excited about Bucky’s punishment, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t rooting for Bucky to slip up.

“Fuck!” Bucky mutters as both yours and Steve’s eyes lay on him.

You can’t help the chuckle that leaves your lips as you look at your pathetic little puppy.

“Please mommy,” Bucky begs but the shake of your head tells him there’s no use in trying, begging and pleading because you’ve already made your mind up.

“I gave you one instruction puppy and you couldn’t even follow that,” you say, shaking your head in faux disappointment.

“And you Stevie, you broke the rules just like Bucky did so the two of you are getting punished together, no playtime, no cumming for two weeks,” the look on Steve’s was just hilarious as if you just let it slide and pretend Bucky wasn’t sucking his cock ten minutes ago.

“But mommy-” Steve starts but a tug of his blonde locks shuts him up.

“If you complain, you try to go behind my back and break my rules then you’ll be punishment will be upped to a month, do you understand me?” You ask.

“Yes mommy,” they both reluctantly say and you can’t help but feel giddy about the torture you're gonna put them through for the next two weeks.

PART 2

[chinaaesthetic]

Chinese New Year! 新年快乐!

*please note that the information below isn’t celebrated by everyone in the same way. Some customs are more common in northern China rather than southern China and vice-versa.

How to wish someone a Happy Chinese New Year:

1. 新年快乐！Xīnnián kuàilè! - Happy New Year! (This can be used one the first day of the lunar calendar as well as the Gregorian calendar).

2. 新春快乐！Xīnchūn kuàilè! - Happy Spring Festival!

3. 新年好！Xīnnián hǎo! - Hello! (This is how you greet people during Chinese New Year).

When greeting or wishing someone a Happy Chinese New Year, many Chinese people wish their family and friends things like: “I hope you have a happy and healthy family,” “I hope you get a job promotion,” “I hope you have good fortune and pockets overflowing with gold.” Here are some examples:

4. 恭喜发财！Gōngxǐ fācái! - Wish you a successful and prosperous year! (This saying is known well because of this Chinese New Year song you can watch here).

5. 阖家幸福! Hé jiā xìngfú - Wish you a happy family!

6. 事业有成! Shìyè yǒu chéng - Hope you have a successful career!

You can watch this YouTube video or read this article to learn more about how to wish someone a Happy Chinese New Year!

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What is Chinese New Year?

Chinese New Year, also known as lunar new year or the spring festival, celebrates the first day of the new year on the lunar calendar. In 2021, this holiday falls on Friday, February 12!  This holiday is the most important holiday to those who celebrate this - its importance can be comparable to how Americans celebrate Christmas.

People have been celebrating Chinese New Year for about 3,500 - 3,900 years. It’s exact origins are unknown, but this tradition is believed to have started in the Shang Dynasty (1600-1049 BC) when people would make sacrifices to the gods and their ancestors towards the end of a year. However, the tradition was recorded and official during the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) when Emperor Wu began using the lunar calendar. He chose to follow this calendar because it would let him know when second new moon after the winter solstice was.

Now, many Southeast Asian countries and people besides the Chinese celebrate Chinese New Year such as: Koreans, Vietnamese, Tibetans, etc. However, it is common to not see Japan celebrate Chinese New Year.

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Why do I keep hearing about the Year of the Ox/Cow?

Just like in western culture, there are zodiacs in eastern culture that the Chinese follow. There are 12 zodiacs, and these zodiacs follow a cycle of 12 years. Each new year represents one of the zodiacs. 

In order, they are: Rat/mouse, Ox/cow, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig.

2021 is year of the Ox/Cow - 2020 was year of the Rat/Mouse - 2019 was Year of the Pig... and so on. 

Because each zodiac has its own characteristics, they define a year. Chinese zodiac scholars have said in 2021, Year of the Ox, will be a flip-around positive change. They believe this year will be lucky and that it will be a good time to focus on love and relationships. People who are born in years of the Ox are known to have a lot of endurance, be calm and confident, but are also stubborn.

Just like in western culture, these zodiacs are believed to affect personality, fortune, etc, and instead of getting your zodiac by your birth month, you get your zodiac by your birth year. If you are interested in your Chinese zodiac, you can type in your birthday on this calculator and read about it.

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What happens during Chinese New Year and how long do you celebrate it for? Lantern Festival?

On average, Chinese New Year is celebrated for about 15-16 days (from about New Year’s eve to the first full moon). Preparations start seven days before New Years because stores and restaurants close and people travel to be with their families. Most students are also on their big break during this time - they get off from school around the beginning of january and go back after Chinese New Year. It should also be noted that Northern China and Southern China celebrate the new year differently.

During the preparation period, people go shopping for food and decorations. They also clean the house very well. If living in a different city than one’s family, many people will travel back to their hometown to celebrate with family.

During the New Year’s Eve period, the house is decorated with New Year’s decorations, and there is a reunion dinner with family at the host’s house. Out of all the dinners you have during the year, it is incredibly important you don’t miss this dinner, which is why there are so many issues with travelling during this time. At this dinner, you eat many lucky foods such as dumplings and fish. Also during this time, the older generations will give younger generations something called 红包, which translates to “red envelope.” These envelopes are filled with money and are only given on very special occasions such as new years and weddings. Friends give these to each other, but it is not common at all for a younger generation to give one to an older generation person. There is a custom where families stay up late to “watch over the new year,” which is called 守岁. Late at night, people also like to go to temples to hear the first bells of the new year ring because they believe it will drive away bad luck.

On Chinese New Year’s Day, fireworks go off, families cook and eat large meals together, sacrifices are made to ancestors, etc. (Fireworks are especially important because they believe it will make your business more successful.) One popular tradition you might know of is the dancing lion/dragon parades where people wear a dragon costume and parade through the city. Dragons are very representative of Chinese culture and are thought to bring luck to a community. Lions are a symbol of protection.

For about a week after the first day, most people go visit family and friends. A lot of times people will visit the other side of their family. For example, someone will spend most of the time with their mother’s side of the family during the new year, then during this week, they will go visit relatives of the father’s side.

After that week, most people go back to work. This is around day 8-10. Businesses, restaurants, and stores reopen, and many people leave their hometown to go back to jobs in the city.

Day 15, the final day of Chinese New Year, is the Lantern Festival. On this day, the first full moon of the new year happens. To celebrate, people will light more fireworks, revisit family, eat sweet dumplings (called tangyuan), and participate in the Lantern Festival. People release lit lanterns into the sky to honor dead ancestors. This is called 元宵节.

You can read more here.

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What foods are eaten during Chinese New Year, and what do they represent?

During Chinese New Year, many special foods are eaten, and these are foods that are considered to be lucky and to bring fortune into the new year.

1. Dumplings - represent wealth. Dumplings take hours to make and involve family help. They’ve been eaten for at least 1,800 years and are especially popular in northern China. It is said that the more dumplings you eat during the new year, the more money you will make.

2. Fish - represents prosperity and success. The word “fish” in Chinese sounds like the word “surplus” in Chinese.

3. Glutinous Rice Cake/Nian gao - represents success in your work (more money, better position). 

4. Spring rolls - represent wealth. They get their name because they are most often eaten during the Spring Festival which is CNY. This dish is more popular in eastern and southern China.

5. Oranges, tangerines - represents luck and fortune. This is originally a Cantonese custom, but many people grace their tables with citrus fruits. The word for “tangerine” sounds similar to the word for “good fortune” in Chinese.

6. Longevity noodles - represents longevity. These noodles are longer than usual to represent a person’s long and happy life. This is more commonly eaten in northern China. *It should be noted that these are mostly eaten on birthdays but can be eaten during the NY as well.

7. Sweet rice balls/tang yuan - togetherness in family. This food is eaten during the Lantern Festival, the last day of Chinese New Year. The shape and pronunciation is associated with closeness of the family.

8. Snacks - represent a sweet and pleasant life. Any sweet snack like dried fruit, candy, tanghulu is eaten during this time.

When it comes to food during Chinese New Year, there are superstitions about how foods should be prepared and what makes them lucky. You can read more about them here as well as here.

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What kinds of decorations are put up in houses during the new year? What do the colors represent?

1. Spring/door couplets - These couplets originated in the Shu era. As seen in the picture below, you post these on doors in couples - in Chinese culture, even numbers are seen as good luck. On many of these couplets are written wishes or poems for the new year. Each couplet should have the same rhythm and the same number of words.

2. Paper cutting - Translated as “window flower,” these intricate, red paper cutting pieces are placed on windows and often represent the zodiac of the new year or other symbolic animals such as fish, dragons, and phoenixes.

3. Upside down characters/Fortune - Many Chinese people during the new year hang up positive characters such as Fu, which means happiness and good fortune. It is written in calligraphy on a red piece of paper and then put upside down on doors and windows. It is hung upside down because the people want the good fortune to fall down onto them.

4. Red lanterns - These lanterns push away bad luck and are seen during both the Spring and Autumn Festival. They can be hung on trees, outside houses, etc. There are also many styles - they can come in many shapes and have symbols written on them.

5. Kumquat trees - As said before, citruses represent good luck and fortune. People place kumquats and citrus fruits on their tables or decorate their homes with small kumquat trees.

You can read more about decorations here as well as here.

Common colors seen during Chinese New Year are red and gold, but green can also be found.

The color red is not only dominate during Chinese New Year, but it is also very representative of Chinese culture as well. Red signifies fire, good fortune, and happiness. It is representative of good luck, keeps the holiday very joyous, and scares away bad spirits.

Gold or yellow is considered to be a very beautiful color. Gold symbolizes wealth, riches, and prosperity.

Green represents money, harmony, and growth. 

Though these are the most common colors, it should be noted that a color combination of green and red is considered to be tacky in Chinese culture. 

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What do people wear during Chinese New Year?

On the first day, it is traditional to wear new clothes and new accessories as it symbolizes new beginnings. However, there are people who like to wear sentimental accessories to respect and remember their ancestors.

Some people like to wear traditional Qipao/Cheongsam, Tang Suits, and Hanfu, but many people stick to western clothes like skirts, dresses, and pants. There is also a tradition of wearing lucky, red underwear for New Years.

Tang suits are the most popular to wear during the New Year, Qipao is also popular, but it is often too cold to wear during the winter months. Many people are starting to wear Hanfu again to celebrate the new year, but it isn’t widely accepted yet to wear during the new year.

During the new year, people wear a lot of red and gold. It is important to NOT wear mostly white and/or black. These symbolize death, and white is worn at funerals. Anything that is bright, bold, and upbeat should be fine to wear, but you should go for something that is red.

*If you want to wear something that is traditional Chinese for New Years, please make sure you know about cultural appropriation and know how to wear these properly.

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As there is so much information about Chinese New Year, I cannot possibly tell you all about it in one post. It is truly something that you must experience in your lifetime. It is very beautiful, fun, and there are so many things to do and celebrate. I ask you that you please research this more and look at all the beautiful pictures of food, lanterns, fireworks, etc. 

Please stay safe and 新年快乐！