#i mean the article is over thirty years old at this point but WOW

[the-music-keeper]

Objective #3 is done. The more articles I read and the more I consider what I'm interested in, the more convinced I am that my musicological research will lean heavily on the historical side.

[jimlingss]

The Seven Year Itch

➜ Words: 5.2k

➜ Genres: 99% Fluff, 1% Angst

➜ Summary: The seven year itch is the curse of all marriages. Your own parents divorced after seven years. Your friends separated after that doomed number too. And now, you're trying to prevent the same downfall from reaching your marriage with Yoongi.

➜ Warnings: Implied smut and discussion of sexual topics.

You and Yoongi met at eighteen.   It was during a crazy New Year’s festival on the beach around a bonfire when you were introduced to one another from friends of friends. Much to your mortification, you were totally drunk that night and hit on him while insisting he should make you s’mores since his toasted marshmallows were the best.   The two of you started dating at twenty two after a few years of friendship and a tedious period of time wondering if he liked you like that. That New Year’s Eve was spent on a cute, romantic date holding hands while watching fireworks by the river.    And now at thirty two….   “Did you do anything over the New Years break, Y/N?” Kijung asks as she stirs sugar into her steaming mug of coffee, leaning against the kitchen counter. She’s your colleague of several years now and part of the marketing team that attributed much to the profits and sales — or at least that was your opinion as part of the finance department. But your manager who has a stick up her ass and has a fixation for the research department would adamantly disagree.   “Nothing much,” you reply. “Did you?”   “Not really, but my boyfriend and I went on a road trip on New Year's Eve to the hot springs and we managed to catch the fireworks.” Kijung smiles and your eyes light up.   “Oh, I went there a long time ago with Yoongi. It was nice.”   “Yeah, I really enjoyed it.” Her cheeks are rosy and you muse how pleasant it is to be young and in love. Those old days of dating and shy flirtation seems so long ago. “Did you and Yoongi do anything special for the countdown?”    “I don’t remember…” you murmur gently while you try to recall. These days, everything blurred together. Waking up, eating, television, bed time. “I think we just slept through the countdown.”   “You make it sound like you’re fifty,” Seokjin laughs much to your chagrin, entering the kitchen and firing up the coffee machine.   “Easy for you to say,” you retort back to your coworker with a light scoff. “Weren’t you having back problems a month ago?”   “Nothing my chiropractor couldn’t fix up.” The human resource manager dramatically stretches out his muscles and rolls his broad shoulders as if to prove it. Much too early for his shenanigans, both you and Kijung exchange unimpressed expressions and choose to ignore him even when he begins to loudly protest.   “Oh yeah, isn’t your wedding anniversary with Yoongi coming up?” Kijung asks, remembering that a few years ago, you took a long vacation to celebrate right around this time.   “Yep.” You smile. “Seven years.”   “Wow, that’s a long time,” Jin notes as he sips on his coffee. “My cat hasn’t even been alive for that long.”   You’ve never really thought about it before. “It has been a long time, huh?” you hum.    Kijung grins. “Congratulations.”   “Thanks.”   Time was so gradual, one day after the next, one moment after another. It was only when you stopped to turn around did you realize how long and extensive the journey has been. That you discover that you’ve actually been married to Yoongi for seven years now.   Seven years….   Seven.   Suddenly, it hits you. There’s a sickly feeling pooling in the pit of your stomach. It makes you nauseous like you’ve dropped from a ninety degree roller coaster. It propels you forward, making your mouth and throat dry, your face drained of all colour. You can’t believe you could’ve forgotten—   The infamous seven year itch.

The seven year itch is a curse. It’s known to be the point where marriage satisfaction begins to decline. It’s the average length of a marriage. The point of no return.   To some, it may just be a myth or a simple statistic, but your own parents were together for only seven years before getting themselves into a nasty divorce. And you know friends who were only together for seven years — Hoseok and Jimin were separated six months after their seventh year anniversary. Jungkook and Eunbi left one another before their seventh year…   You can’t believe you’ve allowed yourself to forget about the cursed number seven.   And now that you’ve realized, you’re worried you’ve allowed your marriage to become stale.   “I’m home.”   The house is quiet and dark except for the sound of sizzling coming from the kitchen. You follow the dim light and cross your arms, leaning on the doorframe as Yoongi turns from the stove.   “The patties in the freezer were about to expire,” he says as if to explain what he’s doing and you nod.   “Burgers for dinner then?”   “Uh-huh.” Your husband is dressed in gray sweatpants and a black shirt oversized on his body, dark hair in a disarray as if he just rolled out of bed an hour ago. It might not be too off the mark considering he’s been working from home for a few months now, an arrangement he’s fallen in love with. Namjoon might never be able to drag him back to the office after this.   “I fixed the plumbing issue in the shower, by the way,” he calls out as you drag yourself down the hall.   You stick your head out the door. “You didn’t have to call Taehyung?”   “Nope.”   This was your life with Yoongi. He’s stable, a grounded and secure force, who lives in a consistent routine. It’s peaceful and you love it. It’s all you could have yearned for after your chaotic childhood and crazier teenage years. But now, you wonder if these habits you cherished will someday be your downfall.   This mundanity might breed boredom and then discontentment.   It’s only a matter of time now.   “—took me two hours at the hardware store. But then I managed to find—”   “Hey, Yoongi,” you interrupt him in the middle of his story in the midst of dinner, unable to shake the thought off your mind. There were more pressing matters to you than Yoongi trying to prove to Taehyung that he doesn’t need his help.   The man blinks at you. “What?”   “Do you want kids?”   Yoongi puts his burger down, visibly taken aback by the sudden change of topic. “I mean, if you want to. But I thought we were going to wait until we were finished paying off our mortgage and had more saved up.”   He’s right and having kids won’t make your mundane marriage any more exciting.    If anything, it might just make it worse.   “Where’s the diapers?” you would screech to the other while holding the howling baby in your arms, your phone sandwiched between your shoulder and ear in the meanwhile.   “I thought you bought them!” Yoongi would emerge from the bathroom, juggling the other two shrieking babies in his arms with his shirt unchanged from a week ago and still stained with milk puke.    Triplets, you can envision them as clear as day. A luck of the draw or a curse, you wouldn’t be sure of.   “What?!”   You dispel the horrible vision from your imagination, crashing back down to reality. “Never mind.”   Yoongi catches your long sigh, but doesn’t comment.    That night, you turn to him while you’re both in bed and the warm sheets are pooled around your laps. And more enthusiastically than you intended, you declare, “We should make our sex lives more exciting!”   He flinches from the sheer volume of your voice but it seems to catch his attention and his brows lift curiously. Yoongi puts his phone down. “What are you thinking?”   Your eyes are big and excited and you lean over as if to whisper a dirty secret in spite of being the only ones in the bedroom. “How about...anal?”   Yoongi’s blank expression remains unchanged. “We already tried that and we weren’t into it, remember?”   Oh. Right.   You quickly retract, stuttering and bumbling, “I-I meant you can be the one on the receiving end—”   “We already tried that in college,” Yoongi reminds.   “How about role-playing?” you offer, a last ditch attempt at trying to come up with something creative that the both of you haven’t attempted in your fourteen years of being together.    “We tried that on Valentine’s two years ago. It didn’t work out well,” Yoongi recollects.   “Never mind then.” You sigh, giving up. You’re going to need to put a lot more thought into how to keep your marriage from being so mundane.   But for now, you crawl out of the sheets to the bathroom and Yoongi takes off his rounded spectacles, placing them on the nightstand. He watches your backside with his lips pouted and his brows slightly furrowed, wondering what’s wrong.   //   For the following days, you begin to brainstorm ways to spice up your marriage with Yoongi and keep the seven year curse at bay.   You read a few articles here and there and ask some married folks around the office how they keep their marriages exciting — to which they give you too many details over their sex life that you never wanted. But your attempt at a candlelight dinner ends up with the candles blown out when the tablecloth nearly sets aflame. Yoongi also cooks again when you undercook the fish.    You try to surprise him by getting naked but you give up when he takes too long in the shower and you start violently shivering from the brisk air conditioning. You pull the whip out from the back drawer too to get freaky in bed, but one spank has you cussing him to stop. And when Yoongi denies you of your orgasm, you throw in the towel and call it quits, deciding to go at it the old-fashioned way for just some simple love-making.   The two of you aren’t as young and adventurous as you used to be — it was something you were quickly realizing.   But you weren’t going to give up so easily, not when you were so desperate to keep your marriage with Yoongi alive and keep boredom out of your partnership….   And it’s when you’re putting away the old leather whip to the back of your closet that another box comes tumbling out. It’s a memory box, full of high school yearbooks, knickknacks at amusement parks, and a bright pink book with pages and tabs sticking out of it.   “I forgot I had this,” you mutter to yourself, holding your worn diary that’s filled with memories and nostalgia.   Opening it up, the spine cracks and you’re met with your sixteen year old self encapsulated between the pages. There are scribbles and doodles, entries from random days, notes that you passed to your friends, pictures and movie tickets taped to the pages. There’s even a whole section dedicated to your old celebrity crush — Lee Hyun — and you cringe while reading the small blurbs around cut outs of him describing certain scenarios. First date. First time he held hands. First time he proposes and how the paparazzi go wild and you become famous too.   But as much as you cringe, it’s kind of wholesome.   You forgot what a hopeless romantic you were.   Flipping the page, you’re taken aback by the decoration, vivid colours and washi tape. It lines the paper, bright markers that bleed to the next paper. But what takes your attention is the bold letters at the top. It’s written: Couples Bucket List.    Your eyes skim the rest of the page.

Flowers delivered on doorstep :)

Receive a love letter!!!

Be confessed to***

Be serenaded outside a window!

Dance in the rain.

Go stargazing~

Take a long walk on the beach <3

The first on the list is to have flowers brought to your doorstep — which you muse has been completed many years ago. Yoongi did it once on Valentine’s….mostly because he had to go to work and you were busy running errands with your mom, so he had no other choice but to leave his gift for you at the doorstep. It still technically counts though.   The second goal you have written is to receive a love letter. That would be impossible. Yoongi doesn’t do declarations like that. He’s not one to talk about his feelings. But ironically, the third point on the list you wanted to achieve with your future significant other is being confessed to and he technically accomplished that one too….   In tiny text, there’s a description of your fantasy — how your crush would call you out to the back of the school and declare it underneath that giant tree that kids used to climb. It’s utterly ridiculous but you find yourself standing, grabbing a red pen from your vanity and putting a check mark next to it.   Yoongi might’ve never professed his love in the way you imagined it but you remember how he proposed to you. It was supposed to be in private, but the ring box fell out of his pocket and you noticed, picked it up, and he scrambled to get on his knee in the middle of the park.   You smile at the memory.   The fourth thing on the bucket list is to be serenaded outside your window. And you burst out laughing at the mere thought of it. Yoongi can’t sing for shit and he wouldn’t do it even if you paid him to.   The following point is to dance in the rain, but your husband would never. He hates the rain. Yet the sixth task on the list has been completed. The two of you had gone to a planetarium on one of your first dates and you’ve spent many late nights outside together during winter where you were able to see the stars past the light pollution.   You’ve taken a long walk on the beach too, holding hands and watching the sunset. It’s something you did on your honeymoon and you grin while recalling it.    You flip the rest of the pages in the diary, giving it a skim before you’re about to tuck it back where it belongs, but you hesitate. Your hand tightens on it. You can’t let it go.   There are still things that you have yet to complete.   //   “Hey, do you remember when we used to write notes for each other?”   Yoongi’s eyes are plastered on the television playing some random Netflix original series that was on his recommended section, one you had not bothered to pay any attention to.   He mumbles past his cheek full of food, “Kind of.”   Your eyes pin onto your husband’s profile and you rest your cheek in your hand, elbow propped up on your knee. “We should do that again….or maybe we could write a really long letter to one another.”   It’s still lingering on your mind — the couples bucket list and your unfinished task of receiving a love letter.   “Why?” Yoongi chews haphazardly and goes quiet for a moment to watch the action on screen before he speaks again. “We did that when we were living apart. If I need to tell you something, I’ll just tell you now.”   You hold your sigh in your nose. He’s not wrong, but it was still worth a shot.    You fail to notice the way Yoongi glances at you, obviously aware of your disappointment. But he doesn’t ask. It’s already been long established that you can come to each other for anything. Yoongi knows that you’re fully aware of that. So while he doesn’t pry, it doesn’t stop him from wondering what’s the matter with you.   //   It’s a Sunday afternoon when you’re quietly watching the rain pitter-pattering on the ground outside and against the window frame, spraying like an artist splattering paint on their canvas. It’s showering, enough to collect puddles and to wash the grime off the driveway.   The peaceful sound of the droplets hitting against the roof is interrupted by Yoongi coming up behind you with crossed arms and grunting, “Looks like we can’t pick up groceries today. We’re running out of toothpaste though. Do you want to pick that up tomorrow after work?”   You don’t answer. You merely turn around as an idea flickers into your mind. A mischievous smile spreads into your features and you grab hold of your husband's wrist.   “Let’s go outside.”   It swirls in the forefront of your brain — dancing in the rain.   But at once, Yoongi’s expression blanches and he looks as if he ate rotten eggs. “What?”   “C’mon! It’ll be fun!” You drag the grumpy, old man and he stumbles forward from the sheer force.   He whines childishly, already pouting at the thought of it. “We’ll get wet.”   “That’s the point!”   Yoongi’s not impressed with your antics whatsoever. When you open the door and try to haul him out, he protests and grips the doorframe like a child not wanting to leave a toy store. But he ultimately relents at your insistence and is yanked outdoors to the downpour of pelting rain.   You burst out laughing the moment you see him despite his glare. Yoongi’s black hair shags down in front of his forehead, nearly pricking into his eyes. His clothes are becoming drenched, heavy on his body and dragging down. The sleeves of his flannel pulls past his fingertips.    His tender features are wrinkled into distaste, lips pouted, his eyes unamused and full of hatred of the rain. Yoongi looks like an angry, wet dog.   Unable to resist, you cup his cheeks, lean in and kiss his lopsided mouth. It’s a short peck, one you can’t draw out when you’re grinning and he refuses to reciprocate.   “It’s cold!” Yoongi shouts as the rain becomes heavier.   You giggle and tug on his arm, dragging him further out onto your driveway where the neighbours might be able to see and conclude that the pair of you have absolutely lost your minds — something you’re sure isn’t too far off. But you don’t dwell enough to get self-conscious.   You clutch Yoongi’s hands tightly and slowly walk in circles as if you’re playing ring around the rosy.   “C’mon, husband, you can be more enthusiastic than that!” you laugh much to his dismay.   You step forward and back, dancing stiffly and Yoongi’s body is like jelly. He allows you to pull him along as you please even when you lift his arm, twirl around and land back in them.    “Why are we doing this? Why?” True to himself, he’s trying to act like he’s not at least enjoying this a little bit. You’ve known Yoongi for long enough to see the way he’s trying not to smile and opts for whining instead. “I already showered, you know!”   “You can always shower again!”   Yoongi lets you move his body like a marionette doll, dancing along with you, and your giggles finally lets a smile on his face slip. But at that moment, lighting flashes over the horizon and thunder booms loud enough to shake the ground. The pair of you jump and rush back inside.   You both enter in the midst of laughter and then Yoongi sighs lightly, looking at the mess on the tiled floor. “The floors are all wet.”   “You were going to mop them today anyway,” you cheekily retort and he playfully spanks you, ordering for you to get into the shower before you make an even bigger mess.   The two of you hop in together, but Yoongi finishes faster. He gets himself dressed while you enjoy the steaming water for longer. As he’s drying off his hair haphazardly with a towel in the bedroom, he picks up his phone. Yoongi notices the low battery percentage and searches for his charger. When he’s unable to find it in its usual spot, he assumes you stole it again and pulls out your vanity drawer.   Yoongi doesn’t find his charger, but he discovers something else inside.    A bright pink book with worn pages.   Curious, he picks it up and flips it open. It automatically falls to the doodled page that you’ve been studying most recently these days and he skims it.    After a moment, Yoongi scoffs. But a softened smile stretches into his face.   //   “You’re happy,” Seokjin comments passive aggressively as he observes your expression while stirring his mug of coffee on this cold Monday morning.   “Yeah.” Your grin widens and your dismayed colleague wonders if you know that the week has barely begun. “I am.”   These days, you’re having a lot of fun trying to find ways for Yoongi to secretly fulfill your wishes, even if it’s silly and childish. There were only two more things that needed to be done on your bucket list — receiving a love letter and being serenaded to, things you’re sure Yoongi would rather be killed than be seen doing. But your new fixation and ambition has kept you preoccupied from thinking about the seven year curse approaching in three weeks time.   It’s a win-win. The bucket list might, quite literally, be the solution to the seven year itch. Completing it might just be enough to deter the curse and keep discontentment at bay.    After a long day, you arrive home while brainstorming a strategy to get Yoongi to profess his love for you in a letter — perhaps something you might enlist Taehyung’s help in. But your thoughts are interrupted when after dinner, Yoongi suddenly grabs his coat.   “I’m going out. Don’t wait up for me.”   “What?”    You’re utterly confused at why someone who was as an intense homebody like Yoongi would want to step outside the comfort of his warm home at such a ridiculous time of night.   “We still need toothpaste, remember?” he says nonchalantly. “You forgot to pick it up after work.”   “Oh. Well, I can always get it tomorrow.”   “It’s alright. I’m going to stop by Jimin’s too. That brat keeps telling me I should come over, so don’t wait for me.”   “Okay.” You nod, bidding him farewell. It’s a bit of a foreign sight, one where you can’t tear your eyes away from until the door shuts and he’s gone. You end up surfing the internet and playing on your phone for a good half hour in the serene silence before your boredom spurs on yawns.   You decide to head to bed early and brush your teeth, completing your whole nightly routine.   But before you crawl into the toasted sheets, an unfamiliar envelope on your vanity catches your attention. It's thin and rectangular without postal stamps or an address — only your name written on it in sloppy cursive. You approach the dim light of the lamp on your bedside table to get a better view and you rip it open.    Immediately, a gasp tears out of your mouth.   Your heart stutters in your chest. Your breath holds. It’s Yoongi’s chicken scratch writing.   To my beloved wife,   It’s me. Your lovely, amazing, best husband, Min Yoongi.   This is really embarrassing and I don’t know what to write either. But I was just thinking about how difficult it is for us to meet and be together. If you think about it, there’s almost eight billion people in the world but we still met each other. I don’t know if it was luck but I’m relieved to have met you. I also can’t believe we’ve been married for seven years now.   Thank you for making so many memories with me.   Love you, Yoongi.   P.S. please stop digging your ice cold feet into my feet at night. go to the doctor it’s not natural.   You choke on your own saliva, tears flooding your vision as your overwhelming emotions swell into a lump in your throat. It’s Yoongi’s love letter. Everything that’s so unabashedly him encapsulated in a few sentences — not cringey, a bit distant, but tender all at the same time.   You don’t know why he’s written this so out of the blue or how he knew you wanted this so badly, but you don’t care enough to question it. You hold the letter to your chest, head falling as your tears rise to squeeze out of you — but before you can melt on the carpet, you’re startled by a giant rock slamming against the window.   You jump, screaming, and your face drains of colour.   What’s left on the glass window is a jagged line split in different directions and you rush over in shock, opening up the latch to figure out who the perpetrator is.   What you find is your dumb-ass husband standing below your window. “What the hell are you doing?! You cracked the window, you idiot! We’re going to have to get it fixed,” you hiss into the dead of the night.   “Shut up, will you?” he sharply whispers back and your eyes adjust to the darkness.   From the glow of the street lights and the lamp on your table, you’re finally able to discern the acoustic guitar slung over his body.    Oh my god.   Before you can even burst out laughing and tell him to get inside, much to your mortification, Yoongi begins to sing in spite of his tone-deafness. “If I should stay, I would only be in your way….”   He strums one chord, the wrong chord, and it jumbles with the false notes streaming from his vocal cords. Yoongi stares down at his fingers, stretching them across the guitar neck and he strums every other sentence. His singing is awful and it’s noisy, especially when you begin to laugh.   You’re tempted to grab your phone and record him, but decide to savour the moment first-hand.   Your husband struggles and at some points, the pitch goes too high and his voice cracks so horrifically that he stops singing altogether.   Yoongi’s only put out of his misery when across the street the lights inside the house turn on and there’s a grumpy voice shouting— “Shut up! Some people are trying to sleep!”   You end up running downstairs at the same time he’s finally coming inside and you’re still giggling as he sets his guitar down, leaning it against the wall. “Where did you even get that?”   “I borrowed it from Hoseok,” Yoongi sighs. “He kept on asking so many questions. I had to tell him that I was bored at home and wanted to give it a try.”   You close the distance and encircle your arms around his neck. Yoongi’s hands immediately find purchase on your waist and you plant a fat kiss on his mouth before leaning away, confused curiosity not allowing you to prolong the affection.   “Why’d you write me the letter and why….this?”   Yoongi answers you by moving away to the entryway table past the foyer that’s there more for decoration than usage. He goes for the second shelf and holds up your worn diary.   That’s when you realize you’ve been caught and Yoongi’s brows lift with a tiny smile.   “I hope I got to fulfill the rest of your wishes, even if they were back to back.”   The pair of you gather together in your cozy bedroom, guitar tucked safely away and the letter still displayed on your vanity where you’ll be able to see it for the rest of your days. But those silly antics are far from being over and you know it with the way Yoongi’s been looking at you.   “You should’ve just told me if you wanted to do those things,” he says as he rips off his socks and changes into comfortable pajamas.   “Yeah, but you would’ve refused…” You twiddle with the hem of the duvet and Yoongi hums after a moment, crawling into bed with you. He realizes that you’re right. He probably would’ve scoffed at the idea of writing you a love letter or serenading you if you asked up front.   “I thought there was something wrong. You got me worried for a few days.”   “I’m sorry. I just…..I know I’ve been a bit off.” You sigh, locking your gaze with your husband as you finally confide your concerns to him. “You know how our seven year anniversary is coming up, right?”   “Yeah. What about it?”   “I know this is going to sound really, really stupid and dumb, but I was kind of, a little bit, worried about the seven year itch.”   Yoongi’s brows furrow and he squints. “The what?”   “You know, the seven year curse thing.” When his expression remains blank, you exhale and explain, “it’s when marriages are known to go downhill and divorces happen because people get bored. My parents got divorced after seven years, remember? So did a bunch of our friends and I don’t know, the thought kind of freaked me out.”   Yoongi softens and the corner of his mouth quirks. His arm reaches over and around your shoulder, and he pulls you closer to him in a loose hug. “I don’t know about you, but I have no plans of divorcing you any time soon.”   You mold yourself against Yoongi’s embrace, allowing yourself to melt into his comfort. It was soothing to hear his deep timbre next to your ear, to let him reassure you in such a way.   In one instant, all your doubts seem to vanish.    “I’m not bored of you, Y/N.” Yoongi smirks and you lean your head on his shoulder. “I don’t think I’ll ever be.”   “Are you sure?”   “As sure as I was when we made our vows,” he consoles without even needing a second to think about it and pulls away with a tender, thoughtful smile. “Plus, we’ve survived this ‘seven year’ curse anyways.”   You frown. “What?”   “Didn’t we start dating ten years ago? Yeah. It’s our ten year anniversary of being together. So we technically passed it three years ago already.”   You’re puzzled — you’ve sure the seven year itch only applies to marriages, but in a way Yoongi was right. It’s not like you want to disagree with him anyways. But the pair of you have been together for considerably longer than seven years. Your relationship had begun much farther back.   You lean in, planting another kiss on Yoongi and it’s one he happily obliges to deepen.   It’s a familiar kiss, but not one you’re discontent with. It’s practiced, skilled and full of technique. Not hesitant, lackluster or sloppy like the first time. Yoongi kisses you the way he knows you like it. After so many years and spending so much time with one another, it’s been perfected after all.   He pulls apart and you snuggle in him with a giant smile, digging your cold feet into his warm ones much to his dismay. But this time, he doesn’t complain and molds himself against you.   Yoongi plants one more kiss on top of your head, feeling sleepy and too tired to even turn off the lamp on the bedside table. “Is there something special you want to do for this year’s anniversary? We still haven’t talked about it yet.”   “I don’t want to stay in,” you hum. “How about a road trip up to the hot springs? Kijung was talking about it and it sounded nice. We haven’t been up there in a while.”   “Okay.” Yoongi is happy to oblige. “Sounds like a plan.”   You and Yoongi met at eighteen. After four years of being friends, the both of you broke the barrier and started dating. It took only three years for him to put a ring on your finger and for you to share his last name. It’s been seven mundane but wonderful years since. And while it seems so long ago, you’re certain there will be many, many more years to come.

[judediangelo75]

Style Witch: Judith Harris

Inspired by the ask from @kc-needs-coffee to @that-scouse-wizard​  

Here’s a little story to go with this as well.

MC Friends: David Willows ( @that-scouse-wizard​ ), Katriona  Cassiopeia ( @kc-needs-coffee​ ), and Lizzie Jameson ( @lifeofkaze​ )

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

David was taking a small kip on the couch in the Hufflepuff Common Room when he was rudely awaken by the loud slam of a door. 

Slightly dazed and annoyed, he sat up to see the fuming little figure of his best mate, Judith.

“Where’s the fire, Little Tigress,” he yawned. The young witch paused upon hearing her dear friend’s voice. The fire that burned in those pale gold eyes dimmed when she looked at her friend’s sleepy face.

“Sorry, David. I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said softly. David stretched a bit.

“Don’t worry about it. Something’s bothering you, what’s wrong?” Judith crossed her arms with a huff.

“That bloody style wizard,” she grumbled. David arched a brow, waiting for her to continue. 

“He had the nerve to talk about my outfit today, saying it’s burning his eyes,” she supplied. David studied his friend from head to toe.

Her brown black hair was in twists, partially hidden under a dark blue bandanna. Her usually gold accessories were clipped onto her ears. Her face was make up free. A blue and white V-neck shirt, light gray 3/4 camo pants and white Converses clothed her body.

David didn’t see anything wrong with her look. He always thought she looked nice regardless.

“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” he mumbled. Judith walked over and sat on the couch next to him, angrily pouting.

“My point exactly. I told him that’s rich coming from a person who tried dressed me as someone’s mother for the Valentine’s Day Ball.” David snickered. 

David remembered that day clear as day. It was hard not to, seeing how peeved Judith looked when she was looking in the mirror. 

‘You lost ya damn mind if you think I’m going to the Ball like this, Egwu. I look like a mother whose in her mid thirties, demanding to speak to your manager to file a compliant.’

 David laughed to the point his sides hurt and he had tears in his eyes. 

“You’re not wrong, that pixie cut definitively wasn’t your style, Little Tigress,” David chuckled. He got a glare for the nickname but he knew there was no real hostility towards him.

“It sure as hell wasn’t. Andre had the nerve to look like I told him Pride of Portee was the worst team in the league. Then he said ‘I’d like you see you do better. Everyone knows I’m the Style Wizard around here.’ Damn title went to his head a little bit,” she grumbled. 

David looked at her curiously. One of the things he knew about his Little Tigress was being told that she couldn’t compare to someone else.

“Well, why don’t you show him? I’ll even let you use me as your little art project,” he offered. Judith gave her a glance.

“Are you sure,” she asked, slightly hesitant. She never styled another person before...

David offered her a smile.

“Positive.” Judith returned it with a shy one.

“Okay...”

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

David sat in her dorm room as Judith was taking notes.

She asked questions in regards to his shirt size, preferred jacket size, pant size, and shoe size.

“What’s a look you want to try again,” she finally asked, twirling the quill in her hand. David looked thoughtful for a moment before saying,

“I admit, I did like the Valentine’s Day look from last year. Ya know, the punk look?” Something shined in those pale gold eyes.

“Gotcha... I think I can work with that...”

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

Few days later, David was called back into Judith’s room. He spied the shopping bags that sat on her bed. He rose a brow at them.

“So I’m assuming you got something.” Judith looked up at him with a shy smile.

“Yeah... but I want it to be a surprise. So you’re gonna have to close your eyes. David shrugged.

“First off, hair,” she said. She pointed to her vanity, a chair already waiting for him.

“Sit.” Doing what he was told, he sat and allowed his friend to style his hair. His face would occasionally scrunch up when he felt the water from her spray bottle hit his face but relaxed at the feel of her fingers massage his scalp. 

After some fluffing, combing and adding gel, Judith step back to admire her handiwork.

“Perfect, now stay still. I’m gonna add a bit of color.” David nodded as Judith fetched her wand.

“Colovaria!” David felt the faint traces of magic dance over him before it fading. Judith was dancing on the balls of her feet, the biggest smile on her face. 

“I’m guessing it looks good,” he asked, ready to turn around to face her mirror. Only for Judith to take ahold of his face.

“No looking! I’m just about done... just need a few more things...” Judith grabbed something from her vanity. 

“Close your eyes,” she said. Doing so, David could feel something cold being stuck onto the skin near his right brow and right ear. 

“Open.” David’s eyes fluttered open, to find Judith’s smile. 

“It’s slowly coming together... but there’s one more thing. You’re okay with facial hair, are you?” David blinked.

“I, uh, never thought about it...” Judith giggled.

“Don’t worry, it’s only gonna be a little. I can’t see you with a full grown beard.” They both shared a laugh at that, and Judith casted another spell on her fellow Hufflepuff. David could feel the hair solely grow on his chin. 

He rubbed it, feeling the new addition of Judith’s look on his face. 

“Wow, you look older. But in a good way. Huh,” she said thoughtfully. David chuckled.

“So, are you done with my face?” Judith laughed and nodded. 

“Now clothes, but remember keep your eyes closed. I’ll hand you the clothes one by one and you can change behind the screen over there. Got it?” David gave her a mock salute.

“Yes ma’am.” The young witch rolled her eyes. 

“Hush and hurry up and strip,” she demanded, shoving him behind screen. Making quick work of his running shoes, jeans and gray V-neck, David shouted that he was done.

“Remember-”

“Yes, eyes closed, I heard ya the first time, Little Tigress,” he sassed, closing his eyes yet again. He heard her annoyed grumble as she placed each article of clothing into his outstretched hand.

He could feel the rips in the pants she gave him and the leather texture of the jacket as well. He felt more and more excited to see what he looked like.

“Step out, I’ll help you put on the shoes,” Judith said. Doing so, he could hear Judith clap rapidly.

“Holy shit! You look great David! Oooohhh, I can’t wait for you see,” she cheered, grabbing his hand to lead him to her bed. David sat down and felt Judith slip on a pair of boots to his feet. They feel a bit heavy but not in a bad way...

“And done! Come, I’ll lead you to the mirror.” Following his little friend, he heard a door opening and Judith saying,

“Okay... you can look now...” 

Brown eyes opened to stare at his reflection only to widen in surprise. He stepped closer to the mirror to take a closer look at his reflection. 

His normally neat hair was now a styled mess, red dye blending into his brown hair, flaring at the tips. Two shiny piercings sat near his brow and a bigger one of his ear. The little bit of facial hair did age him well.

His outfit consisted of a plain white T-shirt, a red leather jacket, black fingerless gloves with a red wristband, black acid washed ripped jeans and black combat boots. He turned his gaze to a suddenly shy Judith.

“Well,” she asked, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly. She let out a squeal when she pulled off the ground and into a tight hug.

“I look badass! Thank you so much, Little Tigress,” David cheered, nuzzling her hair. Judith blushed and giggled.

“There’s one more thing, Hound...” David perked up at this, setting her down so she can retrieve it. 

Judith went over to the bags on her bed to pull out a black box the size of her hand before returning to David. Handing the box over to him, Judith bit her lip anxiously to watch her expression as he opened it.

David’s eyes widen before softening. In the box was a silver necklace. On the chain was a ram’s head, a aquamarine gem replacing its eye.

“It’s beautiful, Little Tigress,” he mumbled. Judith smiled softly at her tall friend before taking it out and putting it around his neck. Judith stepped back to admire her work.

“There, you look great...” David glanced at the mirror. The necklace definitely a nice finishing touch to his new look.

“Thanks Judith... why don’t we pay our resident Style Wizard a visit?”

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

Andre was in the Courtyard, talking to Talbott. 

“Then she said I made her look like someone’s 30 year old mother, can you believe that,” he ranted to his fellow Ravenclaw, who in turn snorted.

“Considering that she’s my girlfriend and have come backs for days, yes,” Talbott shrugged. Andre pinched the bridge of his nose.

Maybe ranting to Judith’s boyfriend wasn’t his most brightest idea...

“I’d love to see her try to do better,” he grumbled. Talbott’s red eyes trailed off him for a brief moment only to widen slightly at something behind him.

“Apparently she accepted that challenge. And it’s fair to say you lost, mate.” Andre let out a nose of confusion before turning around to see what Talbott was talking about.

Only to stiffen with wide eyes.

Approaching the two Ravenclaws was David and Judith. However, the attention was focused on David.

...At least they were pretty sure that was David.

“Cheers, Tal. Andre,” the guy greeted them as he stood before them. 

Yup, that’s definitely David Willows.

“Wha-?! How-?! Who-?!” Andre spluttered over his words as he took in David’s new look. 

“What do you think of my new look Judith created for me? Pretty badass, right,” David smirked. He glanced at his best mate to find her sharing a similar smirk on her face as they stared at the dumbfounded Style Wizard.

“Yeah, Andre? Pretty cool, right,” Judith teased. Andre shut his mouth and stared at the two Hufflepuffs with an unamused glare.

Damn it, he forgot how often they loved to push his buttons.

Talbott chuckled and walked up to his little bird to hold her hand. 

“Impressive work, little bird. If it wasn’t for the impish look in David’s eyes, I wouldn’t have recognized him,” he said, placing a quick peck on her cheek. Judith beamed up at him with a small blush on her cheeks.

“Thanks, Talbott...” Andre let out a cough, bringing attention to himself.

“I guess I know when I’m beat. Nice work, Judith,” he mumbled. Judith and David snickered at his sulking form.

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

Andre was at the pre-game party, sipping his Butterbeer when he felt a hand grasp his shoulder.

“Cheers, Andre!” He turned to greet David only to pause when he took in his outfit. 

A plain black T-shirt, a custom made letterman jacket, white and yellow track pants and tri-petal running shoes clothes the Hufflepuff Beater. 

“Wha...” David smirked.

“You like? Judith made this for me to wear at pre-game parties. Check out the back,” he said, turning around to show the Ravenclaw Quidditch player. The word ‘HOUND’ flashed at Andre before David spun back around. 

Andre narrowed his eyes.

“Yeah... pretty cool...” 

“Daaaaavvvvvviiiiiiddddddddd....” The two wizards turned to find the short figures of KC and Lizzie approaching them.

“Where is she?! I want to place a custom order of that jacket. I’ll even pay,” KC pouted. David chuckled.

“Sorry KC, Judith decided she didn’t want to show up this time,” he apologized. Lizzie groaned.

“David, you lucky bloke! You have a best mate to designs stuff for you. No fair...”

“You know you guys could ask me to make something you,” Andre quipped. Lizzie and KC looked at each other before looking at Andre.

“Did you think to make a letterman jacket before David showed up in his,” KC asked with an arched brow.

“No, but-”

“Okay, case closed,” Lizzie said. David laughed at Andre’s disgruntled expression as the girls fawned over his jacket.

[snlhostharry]

to be determined / one

harry styles x reader friends with benefits au

soon after moving to new york, you meet harry styles at a party. you convince yourself that there’s nothing between the two of you until it becomes too intense to ignore. if you keep telling yourself that he doesn’t mean anything to you, does that make it true?

a/n: hi everyone! welcome to my first harry styles series. This originally started as a challenge for myself to try and write a harry fic inspired by taylor swift songs so that’s where the chapter titles come from, it’s kind of become something bigger than that but I figured I would keep the theme anyway 

chapter 1: welcome to new york

The story starts in New York City. 

A place written about in countless stories, about love, about heartbreak, about giving up, about standing tall, and about putting broken hearts into drawers and slamming them shut. It’s easy to say that writing another story about New York is beating a dead horse, throwing characters into the same tired old setting and letting them live out the writer's wildest daydream. But it’s never been about the city itself, it’s always been about the people. Something about the city always manages to be the perfect stomping ground for people, for characters to find each other in a  whirlwind of A list parties and harsh billboard lights. 

Speaking of which you are suddenly very sick of said harsh billboard lights in the middle of times square. As someone who has read (and written) countless articles describing times square as a flurry of activity but also with some kind of inherent magical appeal, the center of everything it’s own small utopia, you know that everyone who wrote that had to be aware of their own bullshit. It’s a nuanced way of tourist trapping, smart, albeit annoying on a variety of levels. A gimmick to get wide eyed little girls to stand in the middle of chaos and think that maybe they could carve out a place for themselves here. 

You’re not trying to carve out a place for yourself, you’re trying to get to a stupid party. That and manage to not get any mud or other stains on this very nice dress you’re wearing. After what seems like forever of looking around and then suddenly looking back down at your phone just in case anyone wanted to even try to make eye contact with you, familiar faces appear out of the sea of people. 

You greet them with a look of disappointment, “Two questions: why did you want to meet here-” a tourist elbows there way past you mid sentence, inadvertently proving your point, “-and why aren’t we just taking an uber?” 

Molly, a tall black woman with objectively perfect hair (which is somehow gorgeous at all times), smiles and pats your shoulder like a kindergarten teacher, “I thought you would want to see Times Square.”

“I’ve seen it,” You shoot back, squinting again at the bright light coming from directly behind her head, and adjusting your jacket over your shoulders. 

She squeezes your shoulder quickly, “And also to teach you that any time someone asks you to meet them in Times Square  they’re fucking with you.”

“I figured you were fucking with me,” You tell her, “But thank you, god forbid the midwestern girl gets lost in Times Square waiting for someone to meet her who is obviously not coming.” 

Molly laughs, and so do you. She looks down at her phone briefly, and then back at you, “To answer your question, why would anyone ever try to get an uber in the city at seven?” 

You shrug, “What kind of self respecting party starts at eight?” 

Fletcher, who’s name admittedly sounds like it should belong to anyone but him, finally stops staring at the large elmo mascot a few feet away and jumps into the conversation. “The kind with an age range, twenty somethings to late thirty somethings, who no longer have the energy to go from nine to six am.” 

You sigh, “So boring then or-?”

“It’s about networking,” Molly says, “And also drinking, but mostly networking.” 

“One of those unique business opportunities where you get free food, and possibly run into celebrities, singers mostly.” 

You roll your eyes, “Wow you had me at various singers.” 

“Says the woman who did an interview series with Tik Tok kids who all live in the same house,” Molly snips, half joking. 

You shiver, half from the memories of that objectively terrible experience and half from a sudden breeze. Needless to say a significant portion of the reason why you’d left LA, was because their entertainment section was suddenly drifting away from profiles on actors and towards compilations of one minute videos made by sun tanned twenty somethings that somehow made them millions a year. That and after you’d spent two weeks semi living with ten of said twenty somethings for a story that had gotten a lot of buzz you never wanted to see anyone connected to the app ever again. 

You give Molly your best ‘I’ll kill you’ smile, “You have to decide what you’re going to make fun of me for, is it the midwestern thing or is it the Tik Tok thing because one of those involves you admitting that I lived in Los Angeles for a year which means I’m perfectly capable of handling Times Square in all of it’s elmo public urinating glory.” 

Fletcher looks again at the mascot who is not in fact publicly urinating, but honestly if it did suddenly start none of you would be surprised. 

Molly looks at you for a second and says, “Both,” She looks at Fletcher. 

He looks at you then back and Molly and nods, “Yeah. Both.” 

You roll your eyes, “So can we get going now or-?” 

The ride to the location Molly had all but refused to tell you was filled with talks of the impending deadlines on Monday for pieces that were anywhere from fifty to seventy percent finished. (your’s is at the lower end of the spectrum because there is only so much one person can write about an art installation that you found less insightful and more literal in the sense that the sculpture was literally just large amounts of clay pressed together in something that shouldn’t even be considered a shape with no metaphor or meaning behind it). 

Soon enough you’re standing in what looks like mostly a residential neighborhood, with one precariously nice building in the middle of the block. You turn to Molly, “What the-?” 

“Don’t finish that, just be patient,“ She interrupts as a response. “You are very impatient, you know that?”

“I’m a journalist,” You say, “I need to know all of the facts, including what the-” You take a breath, “-heck we’re doing in the middle of a nice little neighborhood, I was expecting something more Gossip Girland Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” 

“You’re definition of journalist is a lot looser than mine,” Molly says.

“Have you ever watched Gossip Girl? And isn’t Brooklyn Nine-Nine set in a precinct?” Fletcher adds. 

“No, and Jake and Amy live in an apartment.” 

“Beyond the fact that you’re a TV writer who has never watched Gossip Girl-” Fletcher sighs, even though you know he hasn’t watched it either beyond random snippets for a hit piece he wrote on it a few months back (not received well by the way), “The top floor of that building-” He points to the precariously nice building, “isn’t apartments its a loft, the floor is huge and only one house.” 

You squint your eyes, “You’re kidding.”

“And the rest are offices?” 

“How did they get zoning for that?” 

They both shrug at the same time. 

“Guys I want to know that if the police bust up this party, speaking of loose terms, I’m going to say that you dragged me here against my will.” 

“I always knew you had good survival instincts.” 

Molly turns to you, “Look when you’re getting special press access to the inside of the met gala you will be saying thank you Molly for bringing me here to catapult my career.” 

“I have catapulted my own career thank you, the Tik Tok thing-” You shake your head, “Nevermind can we go in and stop loitering, then we’ll really get arrested.” 

Party is a loose term but you learn that's not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not a rager with strobe lights and pumping bass but there is music playing albeit classical. People mill around at tables talking to one another, both twenty somethings and thirty somethings, you recognize a few faces from the media mostly. Fletcher was right about the food, and Molly was right about the drinks. You talk to a few people just to introduce yourself, a couple of them have heard of you, if only because your sudden cross country move to newspapers that aren’t necessarily competitors but might have a bit of a rivalry was something that people talked about. You’d made a couple thirty under thirty lists (no not the Forbes one) while in LA, which meant nothing to you if you were being completely honest but apparently meant things to other people which is fine.

When you’re finally exhausted at putting on a smile and nodding like you’re actively engaged in conversation and not thinking about something completely you hang out by the bar, not even drinking, just watching the room and all of the people there. You never wanted to get a reputation for being the quiet girl in the corner who just watched and listened because those kinds of people are always seen as weird or doormats or both but if you’re being honest this is where you’re the most comfortable. Making small talk just to get some opportunity down the road has never quite been your style. 

You turn to go and find Molly when you suddenly come face to face with someone you recognise right away. 

In that moment you realize that Taylor Swift was in fact onto something when she said, “Didn’t you flash your green eyes at me?” As weird as it is, the first thing you think when you meet Harry Styles is how that song is definitely about him, because those green eyes are striking and they are staring right at you. 

“Hi,” He says, quick to the draw. 

You take a step back just because of how close you are and say, “Hello.” 

He looks at you like he’s thinking about something, and then holds out his hand, “Harry.” 

“y/n,” You shake his hand. You recover from your initial shock quickly, and plaster on that fake conversation smile again, ready for whatever it is he wants to say, if anything. You came here to ‘network’ and you’re not sure what kind of advantage talking to Harry Styles could possibly give you, but for some reason you want to talk to him. 

“What brings you here?” He asks you. 

“My co-workers,” You shrug, “I would much rather be at home watching Succession on HBO and listening to the Beatles on my record player, like true people of culture would.”

He looks at you for a second, as you try to keep a straight face. Then he laughs, “Seriously?”

“Fuck no,” You say, “That’s my impression of the girl who meets Harry Styles at a party and has to convince him that she is not like all the other girls, she is the one for him.” You smile, “Was that good? Or should I try again?” 

He thinks about it, “I think you should try again.” 

“Because you think it’s wrong or because you think I’m funny?”

“What do you think?”

“Well if you think I’m funny, then I’ve already won, I’ve tricked you into thinking that I’m not like all the other girls with reverse psychology .”

“Are you screwing with me?”

“Of course I’m screwing with you,” You take a sip of your drink. “If I were home right now I would be playing Lizzo on my record player, and drinking something with a medically unsafe level of caffeine.” You pause, “What brings you here?” 

“Honestly,” He looks out over the room, “I thought that this was going to be a much cooler party. Instead it’s just a bunch of reporters, and editors and media people.” 

“Who are inherent mood killers?” You ask. 

He narrows his eyes at you, “Am I allowed to say yes to that?” 

“You can do whatever you want,” You tease him, “You’re Harry Styles, who am I to tell you what to say?” 

“I feel like it was a trick question, which means that you are also a reporter.” 

You laugh again, “That was funny, I’m going to write that down for my story. ‘Harry is genuinely funny which he tries to use to make up for the lack of small talk abilities’.”

“You’re screwing with me again.” 

“Of course I am,” You say, “I work in the arts section of the Times, well not the actual art anymore but the movies and television.” 

“TV critic?” He says, “So you’re harsh.” 

“TV critics are just harsh for attention, I don’t need to be because no movie snob or well meaning director is going to go to the Times to see what we thought of any given movie. I write honestly, sometimes under the influence of caffeine and try to contain my excitement at narratively unnecessary plot twists.” You explain, “That and I get paid to watch TV, and usually private screenings of movies.” 

He leans against the bar a sign that he doesn’t plan on moving anytime soon. You’re not going to say that you’re so awestruck by a celebrity that you have no idea what to say, or that he’s intimidating you but your hand shakes just a little as you clutch your fingers around the glass because he’s objectively attractive. Objectively attractive in the way that if he were on a dating app you would swipe yes and then put a lot of pressure on yourself to be funny and relatable even though you know that you don’t need him. 

“What did you think of Dunkirk?” 

“Oh!” You forgot that he acted, “That was before my time. I was working at the LA Times doing the music section then I think.” You know what he’s going to say next, “And before you ask yes there is a piece still posted of me reviewing your debut album. I think I reached out to get an interview with you, but I was suspiciously declined.” He looks embarrassed, “I was like under five years out of college I would’ve declined me too. They only gave me the story because it was the time where people weren’t sure that ex boyband members could make objectively good albums that meant something.” 

He tilts his head to the side for a second, “And? Can they?”

“I’m in no place to make a generalization,” You say, “But I think you did. Admittedly that album was something, very intimate.” 

“I don’t know if I should be taking that as a compliment.”

“I don’t want to give you a compliment because some people have a hard time with them, and this will get very awkward very fast. No shame, personally I have no mechanism to take compliments on my writing.” 

He laughs, “I think I can take it.” 

“Hmm.. okay,” You take another step back, “Okay are you sure you're ready?” 

“Yes.” 

“I think the entire album was very good, very unexpectedly good or at least I didn’t expect it to be. It was very open in that way that songs are vulnerable but still leave enough mystery that your fans don’t think you're a shitty person and I really like meet me in the hallway,” You say quickly, “In fact I listened to it just yesterday when I was working.” 

He doesn’t say anything for a minute, and then fake sighs, “See I don’t think that counts because it was more of a backhanded compliment.” 

“What?”

“You said you didn’t expect it to be good, that’s not really a compliment then-”

“I was saying it pleasantly surprised me,” You say, throwing your hands in the air in mock annoyance. “You surprise me, Harry.” He doesn’t say anything, and for a minute neither do you, but you snap back to life just in time to say, “Is that compliment enough to embarrass you?” 

He shrugs, but you know he’s messing with you. “It’s something but I don’t know if it’s really doing it for me.” 

“You are impossible, just another out of touch celebrity, is nothing ever good enough for you people?” It’s by now that you realize that you inadvertently closed the gap between the two of you, and you’re standing very close. 

He seems to realize this at the same time as you, “I-”

“Are you going to ask me to have sex with you?” You deadpan. 

“What?” He looks offended for a second, “No.” 

“I had to ask,” You tell him, “It’s happened before.” 

“I was going to ask you for your number.”

“See usually when a guy asks me that they’re asking so-” 

“It’s not for that.” 

“Then what’s it for?” 

He looks at you with something in his eyes that you don’t know the meaning of, “In case you want to do an interview, so that they don’t reject you this time.” 

You know that’s not it, but you give it to him anyway because he’s Harry Styles (which yes is not a valid reason but this ‘party’ is very boring and this is the most interesting thing to happen to you in at least the past week). It takes you a minute to remember which one is your real number and which one is the fake number you give off if a guy is asking because he wants a booty call, but you eventually give it to him. Then you scurry off with a quick goodbye when you realize how late it is, and how you do have work to do. There’s a new episode of Big Little Lies out tomorrow and you don’t understand why but people are very into the show, and very into your episode recaps. 

You corner Molly away from some guy you think might have actually been able to get her press access to the Met Gala and remind her that she also has a deadline tomorrow. The two of you go off to look for Fletcher and find him very close to sealing the deal with an objectively pretty girl, but you politely remind him that he has work to do and is very busy. The girl looks sad but let’s him go without much whining. You would’ve understood if she tried to get him to stay with her, he’s a little bit shorter than Molly but to be fair Molly is above averagely tall, and is nice and fit and has brown curly hair which you know from personal experience is sometimes just kryptonite. (you’ve kissed Fletcher before, long story, and can also say he’s on your top list of good kissers as well right up there with a guy you hooked up with in LA only to realize later that he was Robert Pattinson). 

Somehow the three of you are only able to make it back to your apartment. So the night ends with Molly and Fletcher in the living room on the couch and in a sleeping bag respectively, and you are comfortably in your bed. Your phone sits on your nightstand, suspiciously silent. You’re not waiting for Harry Styles to call you, nope, definitely not. 

[alexseanchai]

Fanfic 2020 in Review

I got tagged by @kasienda @noirshitsuji and @marvelousmsmol and I am tagging whoever wants to play!

1) List of fics completed this year in the order they were finished:

*filters own works to complete and updated in 2020*

1 - 20 of 57 Works by AlexSeanchai

nope. *adds filter to include only works of at least 1000 words*

unless otherwise indicated, these are all Miraculous Ladybug:

“don’t bake it lying down”, post-reveal Marichat vs Felix Graham de Vanily

“veracity”, canon divergence from “Ladybug” featuring Mister Bug and Verity Queen (so also Marichat, I guess)

“(no request is too extreme, if) your heart is in your dream”, in which Hawkmoth wins, for the thirty seconds or so before Emilie saves Ladybug and Chat Noir’s lives

“tell me you love me and make me believe it”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire ropes Ladybug into helping plan her civilian self’s escape slash social transition

“kingmaker, oathbreaker”, in which Hawkmoth wins and Emilie watches her son remove himself from the family

“stay and let me watch you break it down” (Twelve Dancing Princesses), a modern setting

“set a course for winds of fortune”, in which trans girl Chatonne Noire has already escaped and Gabriel and Nathalie are trying to bring Gabriel’s son home

“we ground love in a hopeless place”, in which post-reveal Marinette’s attempt to remain resolutely not in love with her partner dissolves like sugar in coffee when they start a pun war

“ring the bells that still can ring”, in which Alya is deeply confused about why Adrien and Marinette are planning a wedding when last night both were single

“burning wishes at both ends (the cold wind and long loud wail remix)”, in which Gabriel made a monkey’s paw wish and Emilie makes another

“words cannot espresso”, in which Marinette’s OC roommate is justifiably worried for Marinette’s safety, and meanwhile Adrien takes care of Marinette

“the compromise of truth” (the chronologically second-earliest part posted to date of nine lives, snake’s eyes), in which Adrien tells his friends how he won some freedom and respect from his father

“At The Present Time”, the Ladrien/Ladynoir marriage proposal follow-up to @art-deco-shrimp‘s  “Your Presents Required”

“j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”, in which the events of canon must just have been a series of dream sequences, Marinette and Adrien both think, until they both arrive at Chloe’s Halloween masquerade dressed as themselves from the dreams

2) Number of words written:

ahahaha no. I am not counting all my scattered fic drafts and trying to figure out what I did and didn’t write in 2020. I refuse.

AO3 says I posted 162K in 2020. it is counting all of keeps you guessing (like any real love), which (a) I started posting in 2019 (b) is co-written by @galahadwilder​; it is counting all of my meta snippets collection, much of which was written in 2019; it is counting the Vimeo passwords for my vids. but I probably cleared 150K by a safe margin.

3) Your most popular fic:

“veracity” has a four-digit kudos count, wow, when’d that happen? this is also the 2020 work with the most hits and the most bookmarks, but “tell me you love me” has four-thirds as many comments as its nearest competitor.

4) Your personal fav:

“cannot break us, not with a thousand swords”, no question about it. this is the one in which Ladybug proposes marriage to Chat Noir via Princess Bride meme on Tumblr. (if you intend to download the work or otherwise to consume it with creator style off, you want the accessible version instead of the primary version.)

5) Your fav scene:

aaaaaaaaa

—okay so this is cheating and I know it, since Uncertain Humors (the one where Marinette/Adrien is both Orpheus/Eurydice and Theseus/Ariadne) is nowhere near finished, never mind posted (maybe I'll get “Sanguine” done to post on my birthday?)

but it is still my favorite of the year. as you might guess from that description of the story, this scene has content notes for character death:

Hell is a maze. Marinette walks.

This acrid passage has little to see but damp stone, seeming blood-stained in the dim carmine light. At about the height of her heart, the faintly glowing thread cuts through the not-clammy air; it ought to be pulsing at the same rate as the heart it's bound to. She might be able to see her own reflection if she looked down at the open sewage pipe, or at one of the puddles that now and again she splashes through, dampening the canvas of her shoes. She might see reflected what's behind her.

She remembers Mme. Mendeleiev lecturing on human physiology. In healthy humans old enough to have learned how, urination is a voluntary action: one may not know which muscles one tenses and relaxes in order to do so, and probably isn't paying attention to those details when one is doing, but one has conscious control over whether one does. Usually. Stress and anxiety mean some people are unable to relax the relevant sphincter muscle and others are unable to stop themselves. It's voluntary for cats, too: it's one way they mark their territories. Cat-boys have other ways.

There is a moment in every human life when all one's muscles relax at once. Some Parisians have had several such moments.

The thread is braided with itself around her left fourth finger, rows of tiny red half-hitch knots, and falls loosely over the back of her hand to loop twice around her wrist. She holds it wrapped between the fingers of her right hand to keep it at a constant tension, as though knitting with this insubstantial thread, so fragile for something two (two dozen, two million) lives hang from—too thin to sew with, no thicker than one strand of his hair. As she walks, she winds it around and around and around her wrist.

Between her ring finger and her right hand, it loops twice.

Marinette's shoe lands in a puddle she didn't see. The rainwater splashes soundlessly onto her bare ankle and on the stone.

(With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal— It's a very loud song.)

She walks on.

6) A fic or scene that challenged you:

where the firelight fades, no contest. this is the second story I’ve ever been able to stick with more than a couple hundred words past the 20K mark, but it’s easily the twentieth novel-length I’ve begun. (though also, you know that kedreeva post? well, 90K later, I’m less than 15K from completing this 10K fic! I think.) and I have been learning so much about long-form fiction.

there has also been a lot of weeping and tearing my hair. case in point: I just trashed the chapter 15 draft because I figured out the reason it wasn’t going anywhere! I can probably keep the first few hundred words of that draft without any editing, and another few hundred with some revision...

7) A line of writing you’re proud of:

from “j'ai rêvé (so I don't have to dream alone)”:

Everything about their partnership is fragments of sentences in the dream diary Adrien writes in ultraviolet pen. Disjointed flickers of thought even when examined under the black light he hides in the snack cabinet under packets of Super Yoyo sandwich cookies and bags of cheesy Monster Munch potato chips and boxes of petit écolier butter cookies (chocolat noir)—none of which explains the gym-socks smell. All fleeting incoherent flashes, invisible between the mundane lines of La Modification shelved at his bedside between Leroux and Dumas. None of it is solid. Adrien has more proof his room's haunted.

okay let me break this down for you!

* Adrien started a dream diary to make sense of the memories

* in invisible ink, in a book that (according to Wikipedia) is thematically appropriate and won’t (if Gabriel sees it) look like anything other than Adrien developing an interest in French literature

* shelved between Phantom of the Opera and The Three Musketeers

* look I didn’t come up with the name “black light”

* or “chocolat noir” for what English speakers call “dark chocolate”, or “petit écolier” (that is, “little schoolboy”) for that sort of butter cookie

* also not my fault that “chocolat noir” sounds remarkably like “Chat Noir”, which, attentive readers may have noticed, is not a name that appears in the story after the header and before Miraculous Cure

* I found the website of a store in Boston, Massachusetts that caters to French expats, and the yo-yo cookies and the monster chips were right there in the photos, y’all

* the snack stash and the black light live in the cabinet where, in canon, the Camembert lives; yes, that cheese smells in the real world like gym socks

* this story’s akuma was not able to affect anything but squishy human memory: nobody affected remembers anything about Ladybug or Chat Noir or Hawkmoth, not in any solid way, not even when they read news articles about the subject, and this includes Marinette and Adrien not being able to see or hear or remember their own kwamis—but you know what Adrien’s Insta post about his poltergeist and Adrien’s Insta post with the floating sock don’t show and don’t explicitly refer to?

* I love this paragraph so much (my housemates may have been lovingly mocking me over it)

8) A comment that touched you:

there are people (y’all know who you are) who said y’all are studying my style. I ded of blush.

9) Something that inspired your writing:

by volume of fic drafts that can be blamed on any particular person, the winner is probably @norakwami​

10) Your proudest accomplishment (that one scene; finally finishing that one fic; posting your first fic; etc):

so that longest-story-ever-written record I set in 2007 with the 89.5K story that, till where the firelight fades, was the only story I’d gotten much past 20K?

I broke that fucking record!

and then I deleted the draft of firelight chapter 15 😭

11) Do you have any writing goals for the next year?

I’m starting work on a fantasy novel, a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which I explore (among other things) the economic consequences of the king’s ordering all the spinning wheels burned, and I want to make significant progress on that. and I want to not make my hands any worse; I kind of need those!

(breaking news alert: bodies fucking suck. so does giving yourself repetitive stress injuries in doing one and a half to two people’s worth of work for an organization that was never ever going to pay you more than one person’s worth of pay.)

[alleiradayne]

Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story…

THE MIDNIGHT RIDE

Long is our list of ghost stories laid to rest. But when the dark rider returns thirty years after his exorcism at the hands of the Winchesters, Sam, Dean, and I are faced with the possibility that we’ve been wrong about one thing.

Some urban legends never die.

Part II - Tales From the Crypt

Summary: In Sleepy Hollow, New York, Sam, Dean, and the reader begin their investigation. Warnings/Tags: A dead body, talk of bodily harm, language, alcohol consumption, and some flirting. Characters/Pairings: First Person Female!Reader, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester Word Count: 3,103

“We were able to identify most of the bodies, but a few are still John or Jane Does.”

The coroner led us around a table where a cadaver lay covered by a thick white sheet. She continued talking as she drew the sheet to the corpse’s waist, but I heard little and less of what she said. I barely stifled a yawn before sipping from my thermos. Coffee scalded my tongue but I’d rather deal with that than pass out on my own two feet at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Sam and Dean had insisted on driving through the night. Every time I had managed to fall asleep in the Impala, I had woken up sore and aching ten minutes later. So instead of risking another chiropractor bill, I had researched what I could of The Headless Horseman. Unfortunately, I had learned next to nothing besides boring variations on the same bullshit story from the urban legend.

Another yawn scattered my thoughts, and my vision finally focused on the exposed body before me. Headless as expected, no surprise there. Lacerations crisscrossed all over the torso and what remained of the neck, also expected. But something about those lacerations piqued my interest and so I leaned closer.

Thin black crusting outlined every cut, no matter how deep or superficial. The coroner and Dean were chatting amicably when I prodded Sam in the rib. He regarded me with a raised brow as I pointed at the lashes and said, “Look.”

Sam bowed in beside me, and the scent of his freshly washed hair filled my nose. So close, I eased into his warmth and leaned closer. “That,” I muttered as I pointed. “Aren’t those burns?”

He eyed me with a suspicious sideways glance before his smile spread across his lips, and he nodded. “Good catch, Y/N,” he started. “But the lashes alone are confusing. Since when does the Headles—”

“We’ll get back to you if we learn anything else,” Dean said loud enough to drown out Sam. “Thank you for your time, miss.”

Sam and I followed Dean’s lead and thanked the coroner for her time as well. She thanked us in return—flashing a warmer than casual smile at Dean, who blushed—and covered the cadaver as we headed for the door.

In the hallway, Dean breathed a sigh of relief. “Christ, she’s too smart.”

“What, did she reject you before you even asked?” Sam jested.

Dean tossed a tentative glance my way. “Nah, I got her number. But after that, she started asking about the decapitations and the lashes looking strange…” He trailed off as we stepped out into the cool fall breeze and pale October sun. “I don’t think she knows more, but I’ll have to be on my toes later.”

“And by later you mean after we finish this hunt, right?” I asked across Sam.

At the car, Dean popped the driver’s door open, then said, “She asked me out tonight.”

As they slid into the front seat, I eased into the back. “And you said what?”

He shot me a dark glare in the rearview mirror. “I asked her for a rain check until this weekend.”

Wow. “Okay, I’m impressed,” I replied.

“I’m… not surprised,” Sam replied. “Considering what’s going on.”

The Impala roared to life as Dean twisted the key in the ignition. When he pulled away from the curb, I leaned over the backrest and asked, “What is going on?”

Sam shot a nervous look at Dean before he took a deep breath. “Can we solve the case first?”

When he turned to look at me, I glared back. Earnest. Honest, even. But I wasn’t about to let my feelings for him cloud my judgment. “No. I need to know what we’re up against and...” I paused, my attention snared by the houses we passed. Every yard displayed a scene from the urban legend that had put Sleepy Hollow on the map. Various iterations on The Headless Horseman stood in every yard, myriad pumpkins and overly detailed horses impressively crafted. But each and every rider had a jack-o-lantern for a head or held one aloft. Not a single display had armed him with a whip or a cannonball. “Seriously, those lashes were burned into that victim. Since when does he wield a whip? And what kind of whip can do that?”

“One made from the spinal bones of human corpses,” Dean strained under his breath.

I blinked several times before I responded. “Excuse me?”

“Alright, here’s the deal,” Dean started. The Impala followed his command as it lumbered over the driveway into a diner’s parking lot. “We’re gonna eat dinner here. But we can’t talk about work. Once we’re in there, we’re FBI agents, and on-going investigations are off-limits. Got it?”

Better than nothing. “Once we get back to the motel?”

Dean pulled into a spot and slid the shifter into park. “We’ll tell you everything.”

Everything. So foreboding. As if all of their skeletons had been buried in an urban legend. Both of them turned over the backrest when I remained quiet too long. Weighed and measured, their expectant glares demanded an answer.

So I agreed.

“Deal.”

“I haven’t had a pot roast sandwich like that in ages.”

Dean covered his mouth with his fist as he held back a deep belch. “The pecan pie was damn near the best I’ve ever had.”

“And that hot cider!” I added. “That was definitely homemade.”

“Uh, you’re damn right it was homemade. Everything there was homemade,” Dean replied. “Well, except for maybe Sam’s salad.” He turned to Sam and his face fell. “Sammy?”

I followed Dean’s concerned glare and found Sam near the motel room door, eyes glazed over and staring into the middle distance. I knew that look. I’d felt it before, and I’d seen it on both of them too many times over the years. The severity of the situation sank in then, and reality returned in a rush. Forgotten was the pot roast, the pecan pie, and the hot cider. Abandoned was the lighthearted banter, and our carefree dinner.

Death stalked us in the shadows, no longer a friendly face.

“I think we should sit down,” Sam suggested as he crossed the room. When he slumped onto the bed, he said, “This story gets dark in a hurry.”

I shed my suit jacket and boots at the small table under the singular hanging lamp. “I get the feeling something pretty awful happened,” I said as I crossed the room and sat beside him.

Dean withdrew a bottle of scotch from his duffel bag. “Normally I’d save this for after we waste this asshole, but,” he paused as he popped the cork free of the bottle. “I have some doubts that’ll ever come to pass.” He pulled three short plastic cups from his bag then and poured two-finger pours into each. He handed a cup to Sam, who passed it on to me, and handed another to Sam before seating himself at the table with the third. A sip and a hum preceded his thoughts. “You got that picture handy, Y/N?”

I dug through my backpack at my feet and withdrew the article. “Right here. I saw The Headle—”

“Yeah,” Dean interjected. “He’s back there, in the field. Anything else jump out at you?”

Confused, my brow knotted as I focused on the article once more. “I mean, there’s this family standing in front of what is clearly the Sleepy Hollow museum. I recognized the building when we got into town,” I said. Another yawn reminded me I had not slept more than a couple of hours over the last twenty-four. "But I don't see anything else. No aberrations, no distortion, no orbs… other than Tits McGee up in the field there, I got nothing."

Sam pointed to the father. "Look a little closer here. You might recognize someone."

Recognize? The picture was thirty years old. Hell, I'd have been a kid back then. Probably just shy of seven years old.

Seven.

My focus snapped to the caption.

Thomas (7).

Something instinctual snapped my attention to Sam, and I saw it then. My jaw dropped as recognition crept along my spine. Boyish charm had grown ruggedly handsome, but the fear behind his wide stare had remained the same. I returned to the photograph, focusing on the older brother, and the truth settled in the pit of my stomach. A suave sense of confidence radiated from John (11). And he was the spitting image of his father, Richard Phillips (36).

He still is.

The image blurred as tears burned my eyes. I looked up to find Dean glassy-eyed and well into his cup. The start of so many thoughts stuttered on my clumsy tongue. How had I missed it back at the Bunker? Of course John Winchester would give an alias to a reporter. When I returned to the photograph one last time, I stared at their father, and the tears rolled down my cheeks.

"Every few months, John grew out his beard," Dean started. "He had this laser-like focus on hunting down the thing that killed Mary, and a time or two every year, he'd get a wild hair up his ass so bad, he'd forget to shave."

"That year," Sam said as he pointed to the photograph, "the wild hair was Sleepy Hollow. He was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that we would learn something important here."

Dean finished his pour of scotch and refreshed his glass. "He found nothing except for a bunch of busted pumpkins and a vengeful spirit."

I wiped at my eyes with the cuff of my shirtsleeve. When I turned to Sam, I asked, "How did he exorcise it?"

He shifted closer on the bed as he looked at the photograph. "We don't know. I was too young yet."

Dean grunted as he sat up in his seat and stood, caught his balance, then shuffled across the room to sit on the opposite bed. "Dad had just started filling me in on what he was doing about a year before we came here. But he did his best to ease me into it. Sam had hardly a clue until that day," he said as he pointed at the photograph.

"What happened?" I asked as I turned back to Sam.

A deep breath allowed him space to stall, but that same fear in his eyes returned. "I saw something." His stare glazed as it drifted off into the middle distance once more. "Bodies. Headless bodies," he stuttered. "A headless rider on a dark horse." He continued through a stream of consciousness, as though he were somewhere else. Sometime else. "Cannonballs and a whip of human spinal bones engulfed in flames."

My heart railed against my ribs as if to escape. Numb with dread, my fingers and toes burned, and fresh tears blurred my vision. "You were so young. That must have been terrifying."

He nodded and sipped from his drink. "At the time, yeah. I had nightmares for months. Over the years, I must have forgotten about it or blocked it out. But then you found this case. However you ended up with that article, it was no coincidence."

I looked to Dean then, and he clarified. "Something wanted us to come back. I think. To actually finish the job Dad didn't."

Something about that statement sparked a thought I had not yet considered. "How do you know this isn't something leftover from Chuck?"

A thoughtful look twisted his face. "We took care of Chuck and his mess. It's definitely a hunch but, I'd wager this isn't related. No, I think Dad just got this one wrong. He thought he did the job and we skipped town. But he screwed up and now The Headless Hessian is back again."

Hessian.

"What did you just call him?" I asked.

Dean regarded Sam, and they shared an equally confused look. "The Headless Hessian."

"I thought Hessians were German soldiers that fought for the Brits in the Revolution," I said.

When Sam nodded in agreement, he said, "You would be correct. And that was the original story until more retellings of the urban legend were printed."

Retellings. Talk about wild hairs. I dove for my backpack then and tore out my tablet. As it booted, I said, "I tried doing some research on The Headless Horseman on our way out here, but all I found was bullshit about the urban legend. Pumpkins and horses and heads and Ichabod Crane and crap like that. Nothing about cannonballs and whips made out of human spinal columns."

Sam propped one leg up on the bed as he turned to face me. "Regardless of what I saw as a kid, that story sounds familiar, too. I know the Hessian angle but I know I've also heard a version with a whip and a cannonball."

"Those," I started, then paused to type furiously, "I never knew. I always thought the myth was Ichabod Crane. But yesterday when I was searching for information, I think I found a website that mentioned a Hessian soldier as a part of the myth." Once I had found what I searched for, I turned the tablet to face them. "I thought it was a mistake. I know way too much about American history and its bullshit colonialism, so I wrote it off as a discrepancy. But when Dean referred to him as the Headless Hessian, it clicked."

The image on the tablet flipped through several iterations of a headless rider. The first carried a jack-o-lantern high over his head, then a headless horse with a headless rider appeared on the screen. Next, a rider carrying his own head, followed by a headless rider brandishing a sword. Then another hefting a muzzleloader, and finally a headless rider wielding a vicious whip made out of bone.

"Wait, which legend is that one?" Sam asked as he pointed.

The image of a man carrying his head under his arm while astride a horse froze on the page. "According to the website, that appears to be the dulachan. Irish folklore. The whip is a part of that legend, too."

"But our guy doesn't have his dome on him at all," Dean clarified.

"Exactly," I said, "Which was why I basically wrote this website off. Came to the same conclusion."

Sam pointed to the screen as the image changed to a giant man astride his horse brandishing his own head high above his shoulders. "That's the Gawain myth. Gawain beheaded the Green Knight."

Excitement flooded my senses as I exclaimed, "Yes! The Green Knight returns to challenge Gawain to a duel every year." The image changed again to that of a headless rider and horse. "And that's the Scottish story of the would-be chieftain, Ewen, who was decapitated at the battle at Glen Cainnir."

"And the headless man on a carriage?" Dean asked as the image changed once more.

"The Coiste Bodhar. Sometimes referred to as the gan ceann," I explained. “Damn, this website has everything…”

"But what does it all mean?" Sam asked.

I opened my mouth to reply but found I had nothing to say. A sudden silence filled the tiny motel room, all the wind sucked from our sails. It had to mean something. So many stories with their variations. Then again, they all shared a singular consistency.

“Maybe they’re all correct,” Dean mumbled.

Confusion scattered my rambling thoughts, and my focus snapped to Dean. “What are you saying?”

“Every story has the same headless dude in it, right?” he asked, echoing my idea. “Even the Hessian myth isn’t the original story. Irish, Scottish, English. They all have their own versions that are way older than the American story.”

“But a lot of Americans are the Irish, Scots, and English,” Sam added.

“Son of a bitch, we are English. I bet our forefathers fought in the Revolution,” Dean concluded and Sam agreed with a confident nod.

With the pattern weaving before my mind’s eye, I found a thread, a singular frayed end, and tugged on it. “So it’s not surprising at all that the stories are so similar. Immigrants made up the Headless Hessian based on their own urban legends from the motherland.”

“Exactly!” Dean declared.

Elation filled me for a brief moment before Sam ruined it again. “But then what is it?! A fae? A spirit? A curse? It could be anything with that theory!”

“You’re a real party pooper, you know that?” I said as I flopped back on the bed. “We were so close to something, I know it!”

Dean stood in a rush, then quickly returned to the bed. “Okay, that’s enough of the hooch,” he said as he crushed his empty cup and tossed it into the bin. “Let’s pick something and go after it. We’re never going to figure out what it actually is in a reasonable amount of time.”

“That’s a terrible plan!” Sam barked. “We’ll waste more time just trying random shit.”

Both of them fell quiet at that. My brain, on the other hand, was anything but. We had everything to handle a fairy, a vengeful spirit, even a curse. But how? How could we blindly choose? I agreed with Dean; we needed to do something and fast. And yet, Sam had a very valid point. I gritted my teeth against the frustration that supplanted my hope. What kind of spirit manifested once a year to kill a bunch of people? How, if all the stories are true, could we put down a fae-curse-spirit?

Then it dawned on me.

I bolted upright on the bed and blurted, “It’s all three.”

“What?”

Between Sam and Dean’s incredulous faces, I forced myself to grasp the last shred of confidence before it fled. “It’s all three. A spirit cursed by the fae.”

They regarded one another again, then turned away, silently considering my theory. Even I struggled to believe it. But then Dean snapped his fingers and said, “If it’s ultimately just a cursed spirit, all we need to do is roast his bones.” He pointed at the tablet as he jumped to his feet, steady as a rock. “The Headless Hessian was buried in an unmarked grave of the Old Dutch Church!”

I turned to Sam then, tense as a drawn bowstring. When his crooked, knowing grin spread across his lips, my stomach jumped into my throat. I hadn’t seen that smile in what felt like a century. And when he spoke, my heart nearly burst with relief.

“Looks like we’re doing some digging tonight.”

REBLOGS AND FEEDBACK ARE AWESOME. IF YOU WANT IN ON THE TAGS, SEND ME AN ASK OR A DM!

THE MIDNIGHT RIDE MASTER LIST

ALLEIRADAYNE’S SPN MASTER LIST

[persephonescat]

Birds and Other Supernatural Phenomenons

Chapter 3!!!!!!! Wow. 

Ch. 1      Previous    Next    Masterpost    AO3

________________

Ch. 3: I Came Here to Have a Good Time...

The problem with making friends with a villain past midnight and getting into an hours-long debate on psychology with them? 

Well, you know the thing when you lay unconscious in your bed in order to function? It kinda gets left out.

Marinette drank two cups of coffee in the morning - she didn't even like coffee -, and she still wanted to kill everyone she laid her eyes on and then herself. (Guess who spent their practically non-existent free time reading memes?)

It was too early to check on Luka and Kagami, plus they made her promise she would at least try to have a good time, and Kaalki had absolutely no interest in taking her to Paris if there wasn't a clear threat. Normally, she wouldn't have thought about going on a school trip at all. For two years, she managed to "get sick" every time there was an outing on the horizon, and she took no pleasure in going to a different continent for two months, while Paris' population was completely vulnerable to a terrorist. 

However, Gotham might've had been even more dangerous than Paris, and she couldn't let her classmates go without protection either. Not to mention how the whole trip was... kind of her fault.

In her protection, last year, when Mrs. Bustier presented the class with the opportunity, she didn't think they had any chance. So when the woman said she was going to speak to her colleagues in her favor if Marinette filled out the application and convinced the class to reach the requirements, the girl didn't think twice. They shot a cool campaign-video, got recommendations from Jagged Stone, Cheng Shifu, Nadja Chamack, Penny Rolling, Gabriel Agreste, Audrey Bourgeois, the major, the principal and even the Kitty Section for good measure, then she wrote a five pages long essay about the ways they could spend the vacation and the money that came with it. Now that Marinette was thinking about it, they might've overshot the mark a little.

Thanks to Mrs. Bustier, this way she could at least maintain her grades a bit, which came handy after the late-night patrols she was still getting used to at the time.

Giving the Miraculouses to Luka and Kagami after swearing never to use them again was hard, but necessary. As Ladybug, she fed them a story about having to go to the east for a Miraculous-mission two weeks before Marinette actually left, so she could see them in action - Hawkmoth was getting sloppy; he only sent out one akuma during that time period, and it was a pretty weak one too -, and so it wasn't that easy to connect the dots, 'cause... Ladybug and your friend, who magical camouflage or not, look pretty much alike, leave and come back at the same time. You have three guesses.

She made them promise to call her if there was any damage she had to "Cure" or if an akuma was too difficult for them to handle, and she hoped that at least Kagami, being the more responsible one, would keep that promise.

Alya's voice, still hoarse from waking up, pulled her out of her thoughts.

"Mornin'." She stopped to yawn and tried to smooth her red tornado of a hair out. "Where did you get coffee?" 

Marinette pointed at the pot on the counter. Alya shuffled towards it with closed eyes, muttering "coffee" under her breath over and over again, her hip hitting every chair on the way there. She might've cursed a few times, but it came out so tangled, Marinette wasn't sure.

Then came Nino storming down the stairs, probably waking the entire city with his steps, humming Jagged Stones' Jeudi soir. He put a hand on Alya's back, lead her to a chair, then poured her a cup of coffee and smiled at Marinette while mixing two spoons of sugar into it. She smiled back fondly. 

She wasn't sure when she and Alya stopped being best friends. Things just... changed. Marinette started growing out her hair, wearing it in a braid instead of piggy tails. Alya's usual shirts were swapped to fandom T-shirts and crop tops. Marinette's clothes got more red and black, Alya started running another website beside Ladyblog, about her everyday life and various topics from movie-critiques to the art of journalism. Marinette ran out of pink lipstick and purchased a cherry one instead. Alya went to a festival with Nino and it was the best week of her life. Marinette's crush on Adrien disappeared, while Alya's relationship with Nino got more and more serious. 

It was slow and painful at first, but she didn't realize how much changed over a few months until one day she reached for her phone to call her friend and tell her something about a commission she got, then it hit her: they were not like that anymore.

It was comforting, on some level, that she no longer had that responsibility. Or that's what she told herself.

When the rest of her class arrived, she stood up and left the cafeteria. 

***

In the morning, they went sightseeing. Not as if Gotham had a lot of sights, they might've been the only people stupid enough to go there for fun.

No, it was more like two hours of "don't go here", "don't go there",  and "please, don't go there either" as they were shown around the city by a young lady whose posture was radiating stress all the time. Marinette could understand why. Their last stop was the Wayne Tower, where they were told to pair up with each other and discover the shops, cafés, and restaurants around the square.

She locked eyes with Adrien and mouthed "cover for me". The boy nodded, then Marinette quickly turned around the corner and walked around the square a few times before finding a sympathetic café, only one street away from the tower (technically, it wasn't on the square, but close enough).

She took a seat and ordered her third cup of coffee that day (she was healthy like that), before pulling out her phone and researching Wayne Enterprises. She checked it out back home of course, but there was a lot more material there than she had time for

She was reading yet another biography on Bruce Wayne and pretending her tired eyes weren't constantly tearing up and stinging from the screen when she heard it.

"I can't believe it. Have you read this?" an old man asked his wife sitting at the table next to Marinette's.

"Please, Robert, you can't throw a tantrum every time someone gets killed in this city," the women answered flatly.

The man turned a few pages in his newspaper then pushed it under her wife's nose.

"Not just someone, Martha! A girl! A young girl! She was barely older than Katie!" That seemed to pique the woman's interest.

"A girl, ya' say?" she murmured, pulling out her glasses. "Who did it?"

"You'd think they know, right? I mean, they have a list of all the psychopaths rummaging the streets, it can't be that hard to figure out, but no-," the wife shushed him just by raising a finger.

She took a few seconds to read the article before speaking up again.

"This says it was near Crime Alley. No girl goes near that just by accident."

"She was stabbed twelve times in broad daylight! She wasn't that near Crime Alley, look-," he turned the newspaper, searching the lines then he pointed at something, "-she was found on St. Anthony Street! That's five streets over!"

The woman hummed.

"What did ya' say, how old was she?"

"Sixteen. Katie might've seen her a few times, they went to the same school."

A waitress came and interrupted them, giving them their check. Marinette, who was pretending to drink her coffee peacefully all along now turned to them just as the man opened his wallet.

"Excuse Moi? May I ask what time it is?" She asked with a thick French accent. 

The man stopped halfway in paying the waitress and glanced at his watch, giving Marinette enough time to study the wallet in his hand. It was small and black leather, probably a gift. There was a picture too, just as she expected. It showed a girl around thirteen with blond hair and bangs, smiling in her school uniform. "Katie", if she had any luck. 

"Half-past two," the man told her helpfully.

The girl thanked him with a smile, paid for her coffees, then left the shop. 

She walked around the block to get out of the old couple's sight before visiting the Gotham Gazelle's official website on her phone. The dead girl's name was Joanne, but her surname wasn't published and there was no photo of her. She was found the day before yesterday, with twelve identical knife-wounds on her body. The police said they were looking for the culprit, but they clearly didn't have much to go on, given their lack of suspects.

Marinette took out her sketchbook and started scribbling down some notes.

Joanne

16 yrs old

Lives in Gotham

Student

She paused. The uniform on Katie's picture was blue with a red tie. Gotham didn't have many schools, but they all had different uniforms. Blue and red meant Gotham Academy.

Student in Gotham Academy

A quick Facebook search later she had the girl's last name and profile picture. Bless the modern age.

If she had to be in Gotham, she might as well not die in boredom, right?

St. Anthony Street was a little over thirty minutes from the Wayne Tower. She had time.

________________

As always, coffee is my nectar and comments are my ambrosia, so penny for your thoughts!

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@northernbluetongue

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[tervacious]

Oh.  Oh wow.  Okay.  [cracks neck]  [stretches arms and hands]  [loosens fingers]

After the rage has dissipated, after overcoming alcoholism as a coping mechanism, even after a new and beautiful family comes on the scene, a great sadness still persists - and likely always will.

That's the message from men talking about their experiences of abortion, a voice rarely heard among the passionate multitudes in the US abortion debate, though abortion rights supporters argue that this group is an outlier and does not speak for the majority of men involved in an abortion. Currently, the usual male perspectives that feature are legislators pushing to restrict abortion procedures, drawing the ire of pro-choice supporters accusing them of trying to legislate women's bodies. But now would-be fathers denied by abortion are speaking out.

You mispelled “women”.  It should read “would-be fathers denied by WOMEN”.  That’s what they are mad about.  That’s the cause of the rage, alcoholism, and sadness.  A woman said NO to them.  Not an abortion.  Abortion isn’t a free-floating miasma that just randomly takes “fatherhood” away from Teh Menz.  A WOMAN said NO.

An Alabama abortion clinic is being sued by a man after his girlfriend aborted their unborn baby - at the six-week stage - against his will in 2017. The case is the first of its kind because the court recognised the man's unborn baby as the plaintiff and the father as the representative of his baby's estate. "I'm here for the men who actually want to have their baby," the man told a local news agency in February. "I just tried to plead with her and plead with her and just talk to her about it and see what I could do. But in the end, there was nothing I could do to change her mind."

Currently in the US, fathers have no legal rights to hinder the abortion of a pregnancy for which they are responsible. State laws requiring that a father be given a say in, or even notified of, an abortion have been struck down by the US Supreme Court.

"I was in my 30s living the good single life in Dallas," says 65-year-old Karl Locker. When a woman he was seeing told him she was pregnant, he says he felt "like one of those wolves with its leg caught in a trap".

Nevertheless, he decided he had to support her - and the pregnancy. "I tried everything, I offered to marry her, to take the baby myself, or to offer it up for adoption," Mr Locker says, explaining that he felt keeping the child would be the right thing to do. "She said she could never give her child up for adoption - it didn't make cognitive sense."

Those women are just hysterical bitches, huh Karl?  Not at all trapped by what YOU DID TO HER, no, you’re the trapped one, who just can’t understand the concept that babies don’t materialize by magic, there’s this whole PREGNANCY thing involved.  You know, that thing that abortion ends?  And then you, Asshole of the First Part, Mr. “I’m here for the men who actually want to HAVE THEIR BABY” what baby are MEN having?  Did you mean “force a woman (and in your case a literal girl) to have a baby FOR YOU?”  You did, but you’re too busy channeling the actual root of Patriarchy Itself to say it plainly.

In the end he drove the woman to the clinic and paid for the abortion. Afterwards he says he moved to California as he couldn't bear the knowledge of what he'd done.

"I didn't know how I was going to survive; I wasn't going to jump off a bridge, but I probably would have drank myself to death," says Mr Locker, who believes that reconnecting with his faith and starting a family with another woman saved him. "I've thought about what happened every day for the last 32 years."

Wah.  Thirty-two years of making something all about you.  You’ve already talked too much, and here we have an entire article of your babbling to get through.

Men are usually involved in an abortion in one of four ways, all of which can leave men traumatised when they come to reflect afterwards on their roles, say those running counselling groups for post-abortive men. Sometimes men coerce a woman into having an abortion against her will; others say they will support the woman's decision either way, while steering that decision toward abortion. Some men find out about the abortion for the first time after the fact, or the abortion goes ahead against their wishes.

What polling has occurred indicates that a majority of women say they do not regret having an abortion, but fewer studies have been done on men's reactions. What data there is for men comes from post-abortive support groups, which is dependent on men seeking them out, making it difficult to make any broad statistical observations. But the accounts include commonalities such as feelings of anger, guilt, shame and deep sadness on anniversary dates.

I gather from the actual data that the vast majority of men do not regret women having an abortion, because most men don’t whinge away like the dudes in this article do about the subject.  In fact, the vast majority of men support abortion rights and every woman I’ve known who had an abortion did it entirely on her own with no support from the man in question.  (Ironically, men ARE responsible for 100% of abortions, given they are the ones who didn’t wrap up their shit and then pull the fuck out, but let’s not get into the weeds about who did what to whom, or who bears the actual burden of pregnancy, and how no man on earth can ever come close to grasping the reality of pushing an entire human out between his legs.  We have some serious straight-faced entitled WHINGEING to do.)

"Men are meant to be protectors, so there is a sense of failure - failing to protect the mother and the unborn child, failing to be responsible," says 61-year-old Chuck Raymond, whose 18-year-old girlfriend had an abortion in the late 70s when he was a teenager. "There is incredible guilt and shame about having not done that."

Yeah Chuck, you did fail, spectacularly.  Guess what?  The thing about failure, even when you’re not the one who bears all the physical rammifications, is that there are fucking consequences.  You failed to protect a teenage girlfriend as a teenager yourself, and all you’ve learned is how to bitch about poor widdle you.  I wonder what she learned.

Mr Raymond says he thought a child would have interfered with educational plans and his military training at West Point military academy, where cadets are not allowed to be married or be raising children. "Once I was involved in training, I got caught up in everything and suppressed the event, keeping it out of my consciousness. Years later though, I realised that a tragedy had occurred, and we had made a tragic choice."

He likens the mental and emotional anguish that can follow an abortion to battlefield post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  

So you pressured a girl into having an abortion so your career wouldn’t be effected, but now you have PTSD and pretend it was because of a tragedy that “occurred”.  YOU were the tragedy, my dude.  YOU were the tragedy that happened to her.

The Supreme Court's landmark Roe v Wade decision issued on 22 January, 1973, is the best-known case on abortion, for having legalised the procedure across the United States. But two later cases had more of an impact on men, says Allen Parker, president of The Justice Foundation, a conservative law centre in Texas.

After the 1976 Supreme Court decision in Planned Parenthood v Danforth, the father's consent to an abortion was no longer required. In its 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey decision, the court went further, saying fathers are not entitled to be notified about an abortion.

"There's so many contradictions around all this - it's abortion first, and be damned if otherwise," says the Reverend Stephen Imbarrato, a Catholic priest and anti-abortion activist. Before entering the priesthood, Father Imbarrato got his girlfriend pregnant in 1975 and steered her toward having an abortion, finding out decades later she had been carrying twins. "Men regret lost fatherhood, as men are inherently called to be fathers." 

This entire article is like a primary resource for identifying abusive violent violating men who then turn around and instead of realizing what horrifying people they were, they double down and advocate for abusers and violators to have EVEN MORE POWER OVER WOMEN AND GIRLS.  Because, you know, they have feelings and emotions now, or something.  (Also, really fucking weird for an ostensibly celibate Catholic priest to claim all men are inherently called to be fathers, but then I guess he did his due diligence already by knocking up a girl and then forcing her to abort her twins.)

But others argue that the number of men traumatised by abortions are outliers.

Gillian Frank, a historian of sexuality at the University of Virginia, says that the 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey decision found that "in most contexts, where there was a stable and loving relationship, men and women made the decision together". "And when men are absent from the decisions, it is often because there is a risk of violence or coercion in the relationship. These decisions [by the courts] rested on the fact it is not a child, so the situation is not analogous to child custody."

There is disagreement on the ratio of women who have abortions without telling men, or in spite of them, or because of them. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organisation that analyses abortion in the US, half of women getting abortions in 2014 said they did not want to be a single parent or were having problems with their husband or partner.

Fancy that.

"It has been recognised time and again that when people say they are arguing for men's voices to be heard it is actually more about being able to control women and to regulate their decisions," Mr Frank says. "And I don't see it as men have been absent, quite the opposite, men have always been vocal about women's ability to control their reproductive destiny."

Before Roe v Wade, he notes, this took the form of women having to go in front of a panel of usually male doctors to plead their cases for an abortion, and it continues today with "the men controlling pharmaceuticals and the men behind desks making decisions".

Also that whole pesky laws thing, solely constructed by men, but I mean that’s totally ancient history, right?

"Outside our clinics, it's typically men who are leading the protests and clambering onto cars to yell over the fence with bullhorns," says Sarah Wheat who works for Planned Parenthood in Austin, the Texas state capital and a major battleground over Texas legislation on abortion. Planned Parenthood is an organisation that provides sexual health care services, of which about 6% involves abortion, Ms Wheat says.

"It's usually loud and intimidating, designed to shame, stigmatise and intimidate. And when we go to the Capitol it feels very similar with the legislators. From our perspective, it feels men are still overrepresented."

Indeed, much of the pushback against men's involvement in abortion is steeped in the historical context of a patriarchy telling women what to do.

"There is a disconnect," Mr Locker says. "Men have a responsibility - as they should do - hence their wages get docked with child support if a baby is born, but at the same time they get no rights on an abortion going ahead."

“Men being forced to pay money to support a baby is totally a good reason to give men the power to force a woman to have a baby she doesn’t want.”  There, I fixed it for ya, asshole.

"People don't see it, they keep men out of it," says Theo Purington, 34, whose pregnant girlfriend got an abortion in 2006 against his wishes, leaving him "depressed and a mess". The experience led to him becoming involved in pro-life advocacy and counselling post-abortive men enduring similar struggles.

Post-abortive men.  I’d be happy to abort every single one of these men myself.  Then they can find out what “post-abortive” really means.

"If men had to sign off on an abortion, I think you would see a 50% drop, and that's why the [abortion providers] don't want men involved," says Mr Purington.

Yes, the “abortion providers” are totally the reason why.  Big Abortion.  Huge business.  Right up there with Viagra.

"The greatest injustice in this country today is that a man cannot protect his unborn child from abortion [in the same way as] men protecting our children is part of our responsibility."

Shut the fuck up.  You couldn’t even manage to take responsibility for the one job you had in this story, which was not to fucking impregnate your girlfriend against her will.  You had ONE JOB and couldn’t even do that.  I hope you die a horrible death.

Amy Hagstrom Miller, who runs Whole Woman's Health, a company that manages seven clinics that provide abortion in five states in the US, says: "Yes, men are clearly involved at the beginning, in terms of getting the woman pregnant."

But she adds: "When it comes to her body, then there is a line that is drawn. It is the woman's pregnancy, she is carrying it in her body, and you don't get to tell someone what to do with their body and force them to carry to term - once you do that you start going into terrifying areas."

Ms Hagstrom Miller says that the abortion rights movement hasn't helped itself by framing abortion as just a woman's issue. "Abortion benefits women and men and families. Millions of men have benefited from having access to abortion."

She notes that over 60% of abortion patients are parents already - a figure supported by the Guttmacher Institute - and that at her clinic many couples turn up who are wrestling with an unplanned pregnancy and all the complex issues surrounding it. Some factors they consider are what size of family they want to have and how a new child would impact their current situation or family.

Okay, the reason the issue is framed as a woman’s issue is because this is a pitched battle over women’s bodies since no one actually cares about the fetus, including the men.  Yes, men do benefit from abortion.  That’s why the vast majority of men support it, not because they give a shit about women and female autonomy.  Yes, “families” have benefited from abortion, in that women are the usual heads of families so it stands to reason.  The idea that we all need to change tone to make Teh Menz feel better is annoying as fuck when those same Menz are trying to make The Handmaid’s Tale into a fucking documentary.  Especially since the tone you seem to be advocating for is to an economic one, and women and our decisions are dehumanized enough under capitalism.

But, counter those involved in post-abortive counselling, it's what can happen further down the line that is not being acknowledged or spoken about enough due to the politics and posturing.

"Because of the rhetoric out there, people can't address what is there, which is a sense of loss, and affects men and women and whether you went into it pro-choice or not," says Kevin Burke, a social worker and co-founder of Rachel's Vineyard, which runs weekend retreats for post-abortive men and women. "But you are not given permission to speak about any of that, so you can't process it."

Why do men like to pretend so hard they need “permission” to speak about anything?  The bastards can’t shut the fuck up about literally anything, but they need permission to talk about the very thing they themselves set into motion all of a sudden?

Mr Burke adds how he has found through his counselling work with imprisoned men from racial minorities that the fallout from an abortion can be heightened if a man previously experienced difficulties growing up.

"The abortion experience for men, especially with previous father loss, abuse and trauma, can contribute to the other issues that can lead men to express their grief, loss and rage from childhood abuse, and their abortion experiences, in destructive ways," Mr Burke says. "What we have learned is they seem to interact in a kind of toxic synergy."

Women are to blame for men’s trauma, the loss of their fathers, racism, out of control incarceration, crimes men commit, and of course women and girls who are impregnated by these men and don’t want to be have never experienced any of these things themselves.  No “toxic synergy” for women, oh no, that’s a special Man Feel, which they need special permissions to express because they have no institutional power.

Commentators note you don't have to be an anti-abortion advocate to feel sorrow over an abortion, or be haunted about whether you did the right thing. Hence, Mr Burke explains, later on many men and women carry a huge amount of moral and spiritual wounding.

Ms Hagstrom Miller says she would like to see the debate "moving away from a conversation of rights to a conversation about dignity and respect, empathy and compassion" - a point not that far from sentiments held by some of those against abortion.

"I hate it when you have people outside abortion clinics shouting things like 'You are going to hell'," says Mr Locker, who has joined prayer groups outside clinics.

"For one it's not getting the job done [of dissuading the woman], and it shows no compassion, and just condemns the mother, who is feeling just as much like she has a leg caught in that trap too."

The pregnant woman ALSO “feels” she has her leg caught in a trap!  Wow, he’s such a Nice Guy (tm), he cares so much, such equality!  I mean, the actual fact of being pregnant and not wanting to be is, like, whatever, but she has feelings like men do, like HE did!  Now he’s valid and can make the decisions for her because they are equals, see!

In the meantime, we could be hearing more from increasing numbers of post-abortive men, says Ms Bonopartis. She puts this down to a combination of the technological advances in ultrasound revealing more of what is occurring in the womb and the revelations of the passage of time since the Roe v Wade decision.

"It's changing now, men are fed up," Ms Bonopartis says. "Men had bought into how they have no say in this and that if they speak out, they are against women, but now the impact is being felt by more and more of them as the repercussions of 45 years of abortion are being seen."

The last forty-five years of abortion are WAY more important than the last 10,000 years of abortion, because NOW men are FED UP because THEY had NO SAY bitch how about you shut the fuck up too, you embarassing excuse for a female?

tl;dr  Lucky you, I wish I hadn’t read it either.

[spideyxchelle]

When Peter Met Michelle

the when harry met sally au 

  Betty looked right past Michelle. Her words trailed off. She raised her eyebrow, “Elizabeth, what are you looking at?”

Her best friend tilted her head, “There is someone looking at you in the romance section.” Michelle turned over her shoulder scanned the little bookshop for the offending watcher. She spotted a rather short man not-so-subtly hiding behind a book with a rather busty damsel draped in the arms of a half-naked sailor. She could not properly make out his face without her glasses. She squinted. Still, his eyes did not ring any bells.

Michelle turned to Betty, “Do you know him?”

She shook her head, “Nope. I’d remember that face. He’s cute.”

Michelle rolled her eyes, “You think every crusty white boy is cute.”

Betty sighed, “I know. It’s my greatest weakness.” Her friend snapped to attention, her spine straightening and she hissed, “Crusty white boy is coming over here.”

Her back prickled. Michelle was not in the mood to be harassed by some man she had never met. She had other things she needed to accomplish that would very certainly get derailed if romance-section-guy made her life difficult. Michelle grabbed the sleeve of Betty’s shirt, and implored her, “We should go.”

“Michelle?” A third voice she had not heard in nearly three years hoped tentatively.

She dropped Betty’s sleeve. In all the bookshops, in all of New York, Peter Parker had to walk into her favorite one. “Peter,” she breathed.

At thirty, he still managed to retain some boyish charm to his looks. His hair was not receding and the wrinkles around the corners of his mouth and eyes looked more like markers of smiles than markers of age. All in all, he had aged well.

Betty cleared her throat.

Michelle ducked her head and cursed, “Shit. Sorry. Betty this is, uh, Peter Parker. Peter Parker this is Betty Bryant. We both work together at—”

“The Daily Bugle,” Peter finished for her. He flushed, “Sorry, that was rude. I read your article last year on the bathroom bill, Miss Bryant. It was really something.”

Michelle saw Betty completely melt into mush. Her best friend was many things—an ace reporter, an excellent cook and a horrible sap around moderately attractive men. She waved him off and giggled, “Oh please.”

“Really,” he grinned. “It was great. Really made me think.”

She took a half-assed curtsey, “Well, thank you.”

Michelle interjected, trying to move the conversation into duller and less intimate conversation, “How’s married life, Peter?”

His smile deepened into a frown. Hanging limply off of his wrist was a plastic bag from the bookstore, and he pulled a recent purchase free. Peter flashed the title. It read: Surviving Separation and Divorce.

A tidal wave of shame flooded her system and drowned whatever sarcastic remark she was cooking up on the off chance he decided to be the same infuriating person she had met years before. Now, she felt like the asshole.

Betty sympathetically cooed, “I’m so sorry.”

Peter shrugged, “It happens.”

“What happened?” Betty indelicately asked. Michelle groaned. Her friend flushed a deep red and stuttered, “Oh shit. I’m so…wow…that was….shit, just ignore me. I’m going to…” Betty pointed behind herself and stepped away slowly as her mouth continued to run, “…go, I think. Nice to meet you. Sorry about your divorce. Oh. Shit. There I go, again.”

“Betty,” Michelle called after her friend who was ducking out of the little book shop. “Betty, where are you going?”

“Anywhere else,” she said.

The front door of the shop swung shut and the little bell hanging over the door tolled. Michelle dropped her head and sighed. Peter chuckled. Michelle looked up, “What?”

He scratched the back of his neck and smiled graciously, “Nothing. That was just—”

“—a lot,” Michelle agreed. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I don’t think she meant to offend you. She’s a reporter. Asking questions is a reflex.”

He slipped his book back in the translucent plastic bag. Michelle loathed the stretch of quiet that webbed between the two of them, connecting them in the most uncomfortable manner. She feigned a stretch, “Well, I should probably—”

Peter swiftly cut her off with a question, “Do you want to get some coffee?”  

Michelle felt her eyebrow raise so high it hid in the curls swept all over her face in a messy fashion. She cleared her throat, “Excuse me?”

Peter swung the bag between his thumb and forefinger anxiously, “Just, uh, I feel like I owe you an apology. And a coffee.”

She should have said no. She should have learned from the two experiences she had with Peter Parker. She should have wished him well on his divorce and gone on her merry way. She knew she should have, but she couldn’t help herself from nodding, “Yeah, alright.”

Coffee turned into lunch. Lunch turned into a mid-afternoon stroll through the crowded New York streets, ducking strings of tourists, while Peter did his best impression of Tony Stark.

Michelle laughed. It was the kind that ached from belly to her toes. Her entire body sparkled. She had not laughed so hard in years. Perhaps, she thought, since before Harry Osborn had punched a hole through her life and left the empty bits a hollow cave.

She wiped laughter tears from the corners of her eyes, “God, I haven’t laughed like this in years.”

Peter nudged her arm with his elbow, “You should laugh more. You have a nice laugh, Michelle.”

Michelle rolled her eyes, but it was more affectionate than she had ever imagined she could have conjured for such a man. They were not twenty-two anymore. Thirty had softened their edges.

At twenty-two, she had been a healthy skeptic of his intentions and he had wanted to sleep with her.

At twenty-seven, she had been unwilling to adjust the sour taste he had left in her mouth from their first meeting and he was obnoxious to a fault.

At thirty, they had lived enough life to take every interaction at face value and learned that people were capable of change.

And it was only for that reason that Michelle tucked a curl behind her ear and said, “My friends call me MJ.”

Peter looked gobsmacked, like someone had beat his head in with a bat, “I-I thought you didn’t think men and women could be friends?”

Michelle glanced at the piss-stained New York City street, “I didn’t.”

He smiled at her. She smiled back. And their eyes locked.

His phone buzzed and jerked them out of the unnatural moment. She was glad for his distraction. She couldn’t pinpoint why she felt so vulnerable. He squinted at the screen, “I’ve, uh, got to go.”

She extinguished the fire of disappointment that raged in her stomach and, in that smoke, asked, “Where are you going, Peter?” He blanched. “What are you hiding?” He struggled for purchase, until she laughed, again, “I’m just kidding. I don’t care.”

Peter good-naturedly tossed her a careless grin, “You’re just the same, Jones.” She teasingly crossed her heart. He returned the gesture. Peter asked, “Does this mean we’re friends now?”

“Careful,” she warned, throwing her hands to her hips, “or we just might be.”

They were.

Peter and Michelle spent most days together. Mostly laughing. Michelle could not remember a time where she had laughed so much. She had always been considered a serious girl and a harder woman. Laughter was a hard won feat and Peter Parker bubbled laughter out of her like a professional. And the laughter was accompanied by something better—talking.

They could talk about anything and everything. There was no pressure and no stress. They were two old acquaintances that had fallen into friendship. There were no rules.

As they walked through Central Park toward the bitter end of November, Michelle sipped her coffee and let the cup linger near her nose so she could skirt off some of the chilly air with the steam. Peter waved his hands dramatically as he recounted his dream from the night before, “Then, I’m making out with that cute girl from my office.”

“Gwen,” Michelle helpfully supplied.

Peter snapped his fingers, “Right. Gwen. And suddenly, my Aunt May is there and she’s giving me pointers. Like, ‘Peter do this’ or ‘Peter don’t be so handsy’ or ‘Peter that’s too much tongue’ and I’m very stressed. How am I supposed to impress office girl…”

“Gwen,” Michelle reminded him.

“…if my Aunt May insists on being there,” Peter finished, undeterred from her interruption.

Michelle took another thoughtful sip of her coffee. Peter patiently awaited her thorough assessment. He was an insane dreamer and she, better than anyone, could piece through the bullshit. Anyway, she liked that he valued her opinion. For someone so chatty, he liked to listen. “Well,” she started. He perked up and she rolled her eyes, “It sounds like you’ve got some kind of crush on the office girl.”

“Oh, shut up,” Peter chuckled. She lifted the coffee to her lips, but he stole it out from underneath her hands and took a generous gulp.

Michelle frowned, “Ask first, dork.”

He returned her coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his mouth. “Besides, you know I’m not ready to date yet,” Peter said quietly.

Michelle sighed. She had not meant to insinuate he should be dating. After all, she knew that the ink had barely dried on his divorce from Felicia, but he had been chattering on about the office girl, Gwen, for two whole weeks. He deserved to date someone nice after the viper known as Felicia had bled him completely dry.

Eventually, one of them had to start dating, again. Peter seemed the type to start first.

Michelle knew it was hypocritical to expect him to date while she was still humbled by her break up with Harry, but she couldn’t imagine dating any more disappointments. She had known when she met him they were not going to get married. Hell, he had even told her that he wasn’t the type of man to get married, but after nearly three years of dating, she had started to harbor a secret hope.

It had all been blown to bits when she had figured out her most deep, secret wish—she wanted kids. She wanted conventional. Or, at least, as conventional as Michelle Jones could swallow. She wanted to be a wife and mother, and a journalist and feminist. It was 2018. She could have everything she wanted and more.

Except Harry didn’t want any of that.

She had told him, quietly, that she wanted kids, leaving marriage to the side as not to overwhelm him, and he had stared at her blankly. He had stared at her for a long time. When he had stopped staring, when he looked away, Michelle had known it was over.

Really, she was glad it was over. She deserved to be with someone that loved her without conditions.

“I thought I told you,” Peter grumbled, yanking off the tie that Michelle had wrapped around his neck, “I’m not ready to date.”

“Yes, you are,” Michelle pulled his hands away from the tie he had ruined and meticulously retied the damn thing. It was a deep blue. She had seen it at the store the other day and thought it suited him, so he was going to wear the thing or else she was never buying him anything, again.

Until she saw something else that was perfect for him.

He was a hopeless case of a man. He didn’t know how to shop for himself and as his best friend she had a moral obligation to help him not be such a human disaster. Besides, he needed to look nice for the date she had squared up for him.

“You’ve met Betty,” she stuck her tongue out thoughtfully as she focused on his tie. He had really made a mess out of it. She tightened it. “She’s nice.”

“I don’t want to date Betty,” Peter pouted. “I just got divorced,” he pitifully moped.  

Michelle raised her manicured, unimpressed eyebrow, “Seven months ago. You can’t keep using that as an excuse.”

“You and Harry broke up nine months ago and I don’t see you dating.”

“Careful,” she pulled on his tie. He swiped a kiss on her cheek and sidestepped her to look in the mirror. Michelle rested her hands on her hips and watched him fuss with his reflection. It was endearing how nervous he looked. “You look great. Don’t be nervous,” she said.

He smoothed down his shirt. “I’m not nervous about the shirt.”

She moved beside him and stuck her tongue out at him in the mirror. He laughed. Michelle checked his hip, “Then, what?”

He made a funny face at her in the mirror. She mimicked the gesture. “I, uh, asked my friend Ned to come.”

Michelle blinked. Then, deeply scowled. “Excuse me?” she gritted through her two front teeth. It had taken her three weeks to convince Peter to go on a date with her desperately single friend Betty and he pulled this stunt? Oh, yeah. She was going to kill him.

As if sensing her murderous intent, he put his hands up, “Hang on. Wait. I just figured we could, uh, make it a double date. Ease into it.”

Michelle tossed a sock at his face, “Double date? Who is going on this dumb double date, huh?”

Peter sheepishly caught the sock, “I was hoping you would.”

“No,” Michelle laughed bitterly. Peter took a step toward her, adopting his most pathetic, adorable face. Michelle really was going to kill him. His face would not be weaponized. She was not going out. Michelle had a date with a carton of ice cream. She repeated, more seriously, “No.” He pouted. “No,” she said with finality.

No, she was not going. No, sir. Not her.

The restaurant was bustling with happy couples, all except the foursome that sat in center at the deep purple round table. Betty picked up her fork and counted the prongs for the twentieth time. Peter pursed his lips and kept a wary eye out for the waiter that would mercifully save them from the silence. Ned was sweating. Badly.

And Michelle loathed being roped into the whole mess.

The waiter appeared with too much exuberance for their morose bunch. She flipped open her notepad and chirped, “What can I get you, folks?”

Michelle flew out of the gate with the most decisive (see: complicated) order of the group. She liked things to be just right. The waitress looked overwhelmed, but dutifully jotted down each instruction. Betty and Peter were both used to the way Michelle ordered, but she could feel Ned watching her with more than a healthy dose of skepticism.

When the waiter scurried off with their orders, Peter broke the silence, forcing a stuffy, formal introduction on Ned, “Michelle is great. She orders things in a way you’d never expect, but it always make the food better.”

“It was a lot,” Ned mumbled.

“But better,” Peter insisted. He winked at MJ and she was, as always, so thankful for him.

Ned rested his napkin on his lap, “If you say so.”

The table grew cold and quiet once more.

She was certain this painful meal was penance for some terrible crime she had committed in a past life, like the guy that created glitter or bedazzled track pants. Michelle attempted to drag the group into some semblance of conversation and turned to Betty, “Did you know that you and Peter are both from Queens?”

The blonde smiled thinly, “Really?” Peter nodded. Betty added, “I was actually raised in Brooklyn, though.” The table went dull and mute.

The lapses in conversation were long enough that to an outside observer, Michelle wondered if people thought they were some kind of traveling performance art group doing a commentary on silence. Michelle would have preferred if they were.

Ned spoke next, “I read a fascinating article in the Daily Bugle today.” Michelle nearly audibly groaned. They had exhausted all topics of conversation that Ned was going to talk to her about some article he skimmed in the Bugle that morning. As a reporter, there was nothing worse than hearing news regurgitated back to her as small talk around the dinner table. It was, undoubtedly, the worst double date she had ever, ever been on. “About the future role of AI in politics. It was fascinating. Terrifying but fascinating.”

Michelle’s eyes flew to Betty whose own were as wide as saucers. Her friend slowly grinned, “I wrote that.”

Ned’s jaw dropped, “Get out of here.”

“No,” she laughed. “I totally wrote that. It was my article.”

“Wow,” Ned smiled, loopy and dumb, “It was…wow. I mean, I shared it with nearly all my co-workers.”

Betty blushed a pretty pink, “You’re joking. Get out of here.”

“Swear it,” Ned scooted his chair closer to Betty.  

Michelle watched in silent horror as the sparks flew across the table. Peter nudged her under the table and their eyes met. He looked equally horrified.

It was, without question, the worst double date of her life.

Then, Peter shrugged, as if to say, “Ah well, at least someone is having fun”, and MJ decided she rather agreed with him.

Later that night, after Michelle had kicked off her heels and curled into bed with the pint of ice cream she had originally planned to share an amorous evening with and curled up to a movie marathon on TCM, she called Peter. They watched the film together from their respective apartments and chatted over the phone.

She swallowed a mouthful of rocky road, “I can’t believe Betty and Ned left together.”

“Are we so out of practice with dating, we just repulse people? Is that it?” Peter crackled over the phone.

Michelle squinted at her television. It was the end of Casablanca and, like always, she thought Humphrey Boggart was a beautiful man. He was smooth and selfless and didn’t let a dinner table go stale without conversation. God, that double date was awful. “I don’t think I’m repulsive,” Michelle wondered out loud.

Peter huffed into the phone, “Trust me, you’re not.”

Michelle smiled, “Thanks, Peter.”

On the television, Ingrid Bergman walked out of Boggart’s life forever and he handled it all with a stiff upper lip. Michelle admired that. He was able to handle heartbreak like a chip on his shoulder and he carried it well. It wasn’t a burden.

Her love life didn’t always feel that way.

As the credits rolled, Michelle put the empty carton of ice cream on her bedside table, “I’ve got to get up for work in a few hours.”

Through the line, Peter yawned, “Me too.”

“Lunch tomorrow?” She turned off her television and the bedroom light. “I’d never miss it.”

Michelle smiled, “Good night, Peter.”

“Good night, Michelle.”

“You’re joking,” Michelle peaked over the top of her cubicle to gawk at Betty who was clacking away on her computer. Her friend’s face was an inscrutable mask and Michelle chose her next words very carefully, “You’re moving in with Ned? But you’ve only been dating four months.”

Betty patiently pulled her glasses off and looked up at Michelle. With some kind of wisdom Michelle knew she did not possess, Betty said, “When you know, you know.”

Michelle gnawed on her lip, mulling that over, and countered, “But Ned?”

Betty stood up and rested her elbows on the frail wall that stood between their two cubicles. She tapped Michelle affectionately on the nose, “I like him.”

Michelle was more than skeptical. She had liked Harry Osborn, too. She had moved in with Harry Osborn and thought she had the whole dating scene figured out. It had all imploded in her face and left her very much alone. She melted down all of that worry in one sentence, “Are you sure?”

Betty grabbed Michelle’s hand and squeezed it. “Absolutely.” It didn’t make her feel completely better, but it took some of the edge off of her worry for her friend. “Now,” Betty grinned and shoved an article in MJ’s arms, “Can you edit this for me?”

“I think its sweet,” Peter threw his arm around Michelle. The fragrant May air tickled her nose and she buried under his arm that wasn’t quite the right fit. He had always been a little more than a hair shorter than her.

Michelle gave him an discouraging look. Peter smiled wider, “I do. Come on, Ned is a good guy and Betty is sweet. It makes sense.” Michelle grumbled. Peter kissed the top of her head, “You’re just being grumpy.”

“I am,” she determined. Something playful welled up in her and she trilled,  “I’ve been told I’m awful cute when I’m grumpy.”

Peter lamented, “I said that one time. It was New Years. Let it go.”

Michelle wrapped both of her arms around his waist, “Never.”

Peter smothered a kiss in her curls.

They walked in companionable silence for several city blocks until Peter grinded to a halt. Michelle unwound her arms from around him and groused, “I don’t want to unpack boxes at Ned and Betty’s too but…” Her words trailed off when she saw Peter’s face. It was dark and open and sad. He was zeroed in on something in the distance—Michelle turned around to find the source of his distraught—or someone.

There was a beautiful blonde woman with long, lean legs and a chest that rivaled Marilyn Monroe. She looked vaguely familiar to Michelle, but she could not put her finger on where they had met. It was hazy, like she had seen her in a photograph.

The blonde approached the two of them with a truly stunning man wrapped snugly around her waist. Michelle looked between Peter and the woman, and it dawned on her just when Peter said, “Hi Felicia.”

“Peter,” Felicia said politely. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Peter looked lost. He wasn’t even trying to come up with any kind of response. He was staring at his ex-wife sadly and beseechingly. She had torn out his heart and stomped all over it with her thick six-inch heels.

Michelle extended her hand and introduced herself, “Hi. I’m Michelle. Peter’s friend.”

Felicia tentatively shook her hand and Michelle felt the sharp scratch of her nails as they made polite. She wanted to toss this careless, frivolous woman across the street. The man beside her, though, would most likely take objection to her plan.

Michelle offered her hand to him, as well, “I’m Michelle.”

He smiled tightly, “I’m Gene.”

Peter finally found his voice on whatever desert island he had lost it on and said, “You look well, Felicia.”

She locked her arm in the crook of Gene’s arm and said, “Thank you.” Felicia hesitated only a second longer before adding, “Well, we should be going…”

Peter nodded. It was all he seemed capable of being able to do. Felicia showed no remorse for his obvious discomfort and, with Gene, left the pair of them standing in the middle of sidewalk.  

Peter silently unboxed another set of kitchen supplies as Ned and Betty argued in their new living room. Michelle rubbed her temples as Betty tried to be diplomatic about the ugliest coffee table in existence, “Ned, sweetheart, I don’t want the coffee table in the living room. It doesn’t match the couch.”

Ned slid over to the round, wagon-wheel accessory and pled its case, “Okay, but imagine, we’re watching old Westerns and BAM! It’s like we’re in the movie.”

Betty patiently took up his hands and offered an alternative solution, “How about we put it in your study?”

Ned shook his head, “I want the guests to see it.”

Michelle rose her hand, “As I guest, I don’t want to see it.”

The bickering took on a new life as Ned and Betty discussed the pros and cons of the worst interior design choice ever put on coffee table legs, when Peter stormed into the room. He had been silent the entire afternoon, dutifully doing what was asked of him but not contributing at all to the conversation. So, the whole room stopped.

He addressed his friend with an abnormal tightness to his voice, “Hey Ned? Do me a favor and put your name on this coffee table okay? Do it with all your stuff. Because you might think you’ll be together forever, but then one day she’ll start coming home late from the office and you’ll be left at home with a cold dinner for two.” His voice steadily rose from intensely quiet to shouting, “And when the divorce comes, she’ll want to take everything from you, including this stupid, wagon-wheeled, Roy Rogers garage sale coffee table!”

Three sets of eyes stared aghast at Peter as he stormed out of the room, but before he left Ned found the courage to yell, “I thought you liked this coffee table!”

Peter threw his hands in the air, “I was being nice.” The front door slammed shut.

Ned and Betty slowly turned to Michelle for answers. She wanted to explain how cold and callous Felicia had been that afternoon, and how Peter had looked so devastated by the mere sight of her. She wanted to explain that Peter had spent over a year working on becoming okay with being a divorcee. She wanted to explain how he was finally crawling out of the hole of hell Felicia had bombed in the center of his life just for her to show up to remind him of how much she had hurt him.

Michelle said, “He just bumped into Felicia.”

Both Ned and Betty tried to pry details from Michelle about the meeting but she waved them off and plummeted down the stairs after Peter. He was furiously pacing in front of the apartment building and muttering to himself.

Michelle perched herself on the stoop and waited for him to speak. It took him a few minutes but he finally stopped walking and said, “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have done it.”

Michelle patted the concrete step beside her and offered some sage advice, “Peter, you’re going to have to find some way of not expressing every feeling you have every moment you have them.”

He bristled, “Oh really? Well, next time you’re teaching a lecture series on social graces, make sure to let me know.”

Michelle suddenly pushed off of the concrete and stepped in front of Peter on the sidewalk, forcing him to stop his infernal pacing. She jammed a finger in his chest, “Hey, you don’t have to throw your anger at me.”  

Peter demanded, “How is it possible nothing bothers you? You never get upset about anything.”

Michelle felt the pesky well of some unacknowledged feeling churn deep in her stomach. Before it could manifest, she turned on her heel and bounded up the concrete steps, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Peter pursued her up every steps, testing her resolve with every word he spewed, “I never see you get upset about Harry. How is that possible? Don’t you experience any feelings of loss? If you’re so over Harry why don’t you see anyone?”

Michelle turned around, two steps above him, and glared, “I see people.”

Peter shook his head, “No, MJ. Have you slept with anyone since Harry?”

The feelings she was pushing down were rolling up and coursing through her in ways she never permitted, in manners she never allowed. Michelle forced them down to the pits of her subconscious and spit, “That will prove I’m over Harry? Because I fucked somebody?” Peter physically froze. Michelle took a predatory step down the steps and got squarely in Peter’s face, holding him utterly accountable for every stupid, ridiculous word he had thrown at her in attempt to hurt her feelings. “You think throwing the sex thing in my face is going to make the fact that Felicia hurt you, go away? You make me hurt, too, so we hurt together? How the fuck is that fair? I’m not going to commiserate in mutual misery, Peter. I won’t do it.”

She was fuming. Her eyes were firing with anger that he had pulled to the surface. Luckily, that was all he had brought up. She wasn’t ready to have a breakdown about Harry Osborn. She was never going to give Harry that power over her. He had left her and she was fine.

It was fine.

Peter whispered, “Can I say something?”

Michelle blew some stray curls out of her eyes, “Yes.”

“Are you finished?”

Michelle crossed her arms over her chest and huffed, “Yes.”

Peter’s entire face fell and he took the last step up so they were face-to-face and pulled her into a hug. “I’m sorry,” he said fiercely. “I’m so, so sorry.” He rubbed his hand up and down her back, and she hugged him back.

In each other’s arms, they took a deep breath and let it all go. Felicia. Harry. Their fight.

When the hug was over, Peter dropped a careless kiss on Michelle’s forehead, “Come on, we should get back upstairs.”

The front door to the apartment building blew open and Ned tumbled out, struggling with the ugly coffee table. He marched it down to the curb for the garbage man and grumbled, “Don’t say a word.”

The receiver clicked. The voice on the other end of the phone had gone silent. There was only the faint buzzing of the dead line in her ear or, she wondered, if perhaps the buzzing was her ears.

Harry Osborn was getting married.

She tasted the salt of her tears as they leaked down her face. Michelle furiously wiped at her wet cheeks. She hadn’t cried since she was sixteen years old.

Michelle blindly began to type in a new number, one she knew by heart. It rang only twice before a sleepy and rumbled sounding Peter answered the phone, “Em?” He yawned.

Michelle turned inwards on herself, making a cocoon of blankets around herself, and sniffled, “Could you come over?” She knew it was well past midnight, but she was desperate.  

Peter sounded wide awake, “What’s the matter?”

“He’s getting married,” she mumbled into her thick duvet.

“Who?”

“Harry.”

There was the briefest pause. And then, Peter said, “I’ll be right there.”

She heard the frantic knocking coming from her front door. Michelle willed herself to get out of bed, but the warm embrace of her blankets was too good to untangle herself. Besides, Peter had a key to her apartment. He could let himself in.

The front door creaked open and she heard the clacking of his shoes on her wooden floors. She didn’t make a sound when he sat on the edge of her bed and the mattress dipped. Michelle peaked out from beneath her comfortable prison of blankets, “I’m sorry for calling you so late.”

“Hey,” Peter said, folding back the blankets so he could see her entire face. He swiped some of her curls off of her face, “It’s okay.” He looked so sad for her, as if he pitied her, and, for some reason, that made her cry harder. She was Michelle Jones. She would not be pitied because her ex-boyfriend was marrying some girl he preferred over her. That was inane. That was silly.

Harry Osborn was getting married.  

Her shoulders shook from the weight of her tears. Peter pulled her to a sitting position and slung a comforting arm around her. She buried her nose in his shoulder and wiped her nose with the back of her hand unprettily, “He just called me up.” Peter nodded patiently, encouraging her to speak. “And we got to talking and all I kept thinking was I am over him. I mean, I am really over him. I can’t believe I ever was into him. And then,” Michelle’s voice hitched. “And then, he said he had some news.” Her tears completely enveloped her entire body. It was like a wave crashing into her chest and rippling out to her extremities. “She works for his father. Some kind of lab assistant or something. Her name is Lily Hollister.” She hid her face in her hands to muffle a sob, “He just met her. She’s supposed to be his transitional person, she’s not supposed to be the one.”

She felt Peter rub soothing circles into her back. Michelle loathed how much the small action was settling her tears. When her crying subsided enough that she could speak without her raw throat burning from the strain, she said, “All this time I’ve been saying he didn’t want to be married. But, the truth is, he didn’t want to marry me.”

The truth snapped the last chord of restraint she had on her wildly overwhelming emotions. It was as if years of keeping her feelings at bay had finally cascaded out of her like an avalanche, and she could not stop the natural disaster. She watched on in horror as the strong woman Michelle Jones was reduced to tears by her piss-stain of an ex-boyfriend.

Peter chastely kissed her forehead, “Listen, if you could have him back right now, would you?”

Michelle hiccupped, “No. But why didn’t he want to marry me?” Her voice was more shrill than she could ever remember it having been. She was revolted by the grating sound. It made her cry harder. “What is wrong with me?”

He shook his head, “Nothing.”

Michelle flopped back on her bed. Peter did not wait to follow her down. They lay, side-by-side, and their faces faced each other. Michelle scratched her nose with her fist, “I’m difficult.”

“You’re challenging,” Peter corrected her.

“I’m too cold. I’m completely closed off,” she fought.

He simply tapped her nose with the pad of his forefinger, “You’re particular.”

“And,” she wailed dramatically, “I’m going to be forty!”

Peter openly gawked at her and she could see the ticking mechanism in his brain working through her words, “What? Michelle, when.”

“Some day,” she sat up, perfectly happy to wallow in her own sorrows.

He raised his eyebrow, “In nine years.” Peter sat up and brushed his shoulder against her own. It was a little gesture, but it reminded her that he was here for her, that he had taken a cab across town to be with her after midnight. Harry Osborn didn’t love her, but she had a good friend that did. “C’mere,” he cooed, and she easily fell into his arms.

She whimpered, “I’m going to ruin your sweater.”

“I hate this sweater,” he supplied.

Michelle nuzzled her nose into the fabric and sulked, “I bought you this sweater.”

Peter shrugged, “I stand by what I said.”

His words surprised a laugh out of her. The corners of his eyes crinkled in the pleased little manner that was all Peter. He had such a soft, gentle way about his smiles and the magical ability to make her feel like he only smiled at her that way. As if she was special.

“I’ll go make you some tea,” he said, pressing a kiss to her head.

Michelle clutched his sweater and shook her head furiously, “Peter, will you…will you stay with me a while?”

He pulled her closer, “Of course.” She fell openly into his arms and tucked her chin on his shoulder. She held him until her tears began to subside in earnest. Her heartrate slowed and her breathing evened, and she felt wholly like herself once more, or at least the imperfect version of herself before Harry Osborn called and made those imperfections shards of glass that cut away at her self-confidence.

Peter squeezed her and she smiled. “You good?” he quietly asked.

She nodded and unwound her arms from around him. Michelle rubbed her eyes with the flat of her palms, “Mhmm.”

He smiled and kissed her wet eyes, “Good. Tea?” Michelle bobbed her head. Peter kissed each of her cheeks patiently, “Okay.”

“Okay,” she echoed.

He playfully reiterated, “Okay.” And left a brief, sweet kiss on her lips. Michelle rolled her eyes and pushed his chest without any effort. Peter closed his hand over her hand on his chest and beamed, “Tea, then.” He brushed a friendly kiss against her mouth. She dropped another perfectly friendship worthy kiss on his lips and felt her stomach swoop.

He left another kiss on her mouth, less friendly. Oh, it was all together not friendly.

It was the least friendly kiss she had ever been given in her life.

The hand resting against his chest fisted in his sweater and pulled him closer. They fell into a heady mix of open-mouthed, deep kisses and Michelle ceased to think.

Peter unceremoniously knocked the used box of tissues onto the floor and tipped Michelle backwards on the bed.

The last lucid thought she had before they tripped into the awaiting night was, of course, it had to be him.

[elsalapizza]

Fic: What’s in a Name?

Relationship: Castiel/Dean Winchester Word count: 2,500 Square filled: Poly fic (#15) for @spnfluffbingo​ Written for day #22 of @notfunnydean ’s advent calendar “Rocking around the Christmas tree” Summary: Dean is a ballroom dancer who can't find a date. His brother is a ballroom dancer in a happy polyamorous relationship. Castiel is a journalist writing about a ballroom dancing Christmas competition. Things get complicated. Read it on Ao3

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Dean knew very well that most people didn’t consider competitive ballroom dancing to be a very manly sport. Hell, most people didn’t even consider it to be a sport at all. Dean had made his peace with it a long time ago, and frankly he didn’t care too much what people thought anyway.

Well he did care a little bit. But only in the way it affected his dating life. Because believe it or not, but most women he would be interested in thought he was gay, and most men he would be interested in thought he was dating his dancing partner. As neither of those statement was true, it made Dean’s little bisexual heart pretty lonely.

What was the most unfair of all though, was that Sam, who’d been ballroom dancing almost as long as Dean, did not have this problem at all. Actually dating your dancing partner did that to someone. And that option wasn’t even available to Dean, because Sam had the audacity to also be dating Dean’s partner. Dean was well aware there wasn’t anything dubious about it; they’d explained their polyamorous thing to him when they’d started it, and what the three of them had honestly seemed awesome, but still. It was very unfair that Dean had to be alone and his brother dated two awesome chicks. (Well, one awesome chick and Ruby.)

So Dean resolved to focus all of his attention on dancing. And more precisely, on dancing for the Rocking Around the Christmas Tree holidays competition that took place every year in December.

As much as ballroom dancing was the Winchester family business, the RACT—as it was easier to call it—had been their nemesis. Dean and Sam had both failed in the semis numerous times, and their parents, who’d been ballroom dancing state champions in their time, had also never managed to bag that one. It was during a RACT final that Grandpa Campbell had broken his toe back in the sixties, barring him from dancing for several months afterwards.

Needless to say, the stakes were high. Dean insisted on doubling the number of training sessions in preparation for the RACT, and he could feel Jo hating him for it a little bit. But Dean wanted to win, and he didn’t care that Sam and Ruby weren’t as invested in the competition, and that he encroached on the fun times Jo could have with them. They had a chance to win, and even though it didn’t mean as much to Jo as it did Dean, they had to try.

But the point was: Dean was good, he really was, and he and Jo had progressed a lot during this last year. Dean sincerely thought that if they didn’t win the RACT this year, they never would. Sam was good too, but Dean and Jo had always ranked a bit better than Sam and Ruby, so he didn’t really worry about this competition. Dean even sometimes thought of himself as the Serena to Sam’s Venus, but the analogy only worked so far: one, Dean was good at dancing but not as good as Serena was at tennis, and two, the public for ballroom dancing competitions was rather confidential, so nobody actually knew who they were, making it a rather moot point.

Winning this thing was right now the most—the only—important thing in Dean’s life, but nobody but the true ballroom dancing aficionados actually cared at all.

Which was why it was such a fucking surprise to find a bona fide journalist there one day before the beginning of the RACT. Not just a student working for his college newspaper or an old lady who would send her impression of the competition to her local rag to be published. No, this guy had the credentials for a national newspaper, and seemed to be interested specifically in the Winchester brothers’ performances.

He was a real journalist, and a good looking one too. Dark hair and clear eyes, and Dean was struck. It might not be true, but in this one instant, Dean felt like he had never seen a man so pretty before.

“Hello, Mr. Winchester. Would you have the time to answer a few questions?” the man asked, with a deep gruff voice Dean felt like drowning in.

Dean was so stunned to have someone so beautiful ask him for an interview, that he gaped for a good thirty seconds before he remembered to actually answer the question.

“Yeah, sure. Why not. I can answer a few questions,” he managed to say sufficiently intelligibly that the journalist nodded and got out notebook and pen.

“How long have and your brother been performing in ballroom dancing competitions?” The man asked pretty dryly.

All right, so this was very obviously an assignment he had not asked for. But what was Dean thinking? No journo worth their while would ask to cover a Christmas-themed ballroom dancing competition in the middle of Kansas.

“Um, we’ve been dancing ever since we were kids, and started competing right when we reached the legal entering age,” said Dean. “I’ve been dancing with Jo from the beginning, and Sam has been dancing with Ruby for about five years now.”

“How many times have you failed to win the Rocking Around the Christmas Tree competition?”

“Wow. Thanks for that. What did you lose to have to come cover this competition?” Dean generally tried not to be rude, but his stance was that if the other person was rude first, it was completely justified.

The journalist seemed a bit taken aback by Dean’s intensity, then after a pause when he obviously realized what he’d just sounded like, began again, “I apologize. I am used to interviewing hostile politicians with whom you have to get to the point fast or risk never getting answers. This kind of…interest piece is a first for me.”

The guy looked genuinely sorry, so Dean decided to give him a break. “All right. Let’s do it over. I am a bit disappointed you’re not a big wig sportscaster, but I can work with an interest piece, I guess.”

“So, er…I know you have a history with this particular competition. Would you like to talk a bit about it?”

That was way better. Dean smiled his most charming smile while answering, and hoped it wasn’t too obvious how much he wanted this guy to take him out and call him sweet names, then make sweet love to him.

They talked for a while, and it went well, better than that really. By the time Dean needed to get back to his training, it didn’t even feel like an interview anymore.

Dean had learnt that the journalist’s name was Castiel (but he’d already decided in his head that he would be calling him Cas) and that he was coming from out east for a new column in his newspaper that was supposed to draw better pictures of “forgotten America”. It sounded a little bit like crap, but Cas was just so genuine about it and about doing justice to people that weren’t always given a voice, that Dean couldn’t help but being charmed.

They’d agreed to continue the conversation around a cup of coffee after Dean was finished with rehearsal, and Cas even stayed to watch while Dean and Jo started practicing their dance routine. Dean could feel his gaze on them the whole time. At one point Cas even got a camera out. Dean couldn’t help but feel more self-conscious about his sweat and the general unkempt air he knew he had during training.

Jo, if her smug look was anything to go by, was obviously well aware of what was going on. Dean was tempted to make her pay for it, but so close to the RACT, he couldn’t afford to antagonize her (even if she didn’t mind antagonizing him).

After they’d done their routine enough times that Dean was satisfied (for now), he went directly under the shower, scrubbing himself thoroughly and maybe taking a little more time than necessary on arranging his hair.

When he got back in the main room, Cas was interviewing Jo. And, all right, that was fair. His article wasn’t supposed to be entirely on Dean, it was normal that he would interview Jo too. They were a team, and even if Dean was a bit of a control freak, they participated equally in any of their successes or losses.

Dean noticed pretty smugly though that Cas didn’t look at Jo the in the same captivated way that he had looked at Dean. Dean waited for Cas to be finished, far enough that he couldn’t eavesdrop on them, but still was deadly curious about what Jo was telling him and whether it involved Dean.

Dean felt pretty excited and confident with his not-a-date-but-still-kind-of-a-date with Cas, but when Cas came towards him once he had finished with Jo, he had traded his nice smile for a thoughtful frown.

“Listen, Dean, I am not sure coffee was such a good idea. I have to focus on my article, and it would be detrimental to it if I got too close to its subjects,” Cas blurted out in one breath before getting out, not even leaving Dean the time to answer.

Dean felt like the floor had opened up beneath his feet. He’d been so sure there was a spark there between him and Cas, and yet… What the hell had happened between their earlier conversation and now for Cas to have so completely changed his mind about Dean?

He asked Jo if she had said anything unsavory about him, but she swore she had not uttered his name once during her conversation with Cas.

Dean spent most of the afternoon, and the evening, and the night thinking about Cas and what could have gone wrong. When he hadn’t found an answer the next day—and as he was fucking tired from tossing and turning all night—he decided to let it go. This wasn’t the first time one of his crushes had gone to shit. He was used to disappointment in the matter of the heart, and why should this one be any different? He had a competition to focus on, and most importantly to win.

Cas was just some guy who would leave for his fancy east-coast job sooner rather than later, and even if the coffee-date had happened, it certainly would have lead nowhere anyway.

Dean unilaterally decided to stop thinking about Cas. There was some dancing to do.

It was, unfortunately, a way easier thing said than done. Because Cas was a diligent journalist, and of course he wouldn’t miss one minute of the competition. Dean could see him in the audience every time he glanced towards them, and it definitely didn’t help his stress levels.

They did manage to win their quarter final though, and when it was announced that the semis would be against Sam and Ruby, Dean knew that if he didn’t clear the air with Cas, he would never be able to concentrate enough to beat his brother.

(He may well pretend to be the Serena to Sam’s Venus, but he was always more stressed about competing directly against Sam because there was a part of him that wanted his little brother to win too.)

So before he could discuss strategy with Jo, for whom being against Sam and Ruby was even worse given her relationship with them, he turned around and started to make his way towards the spot he’d spied Cas last.

But before he could go very far, Cas was in front of him with a look on his face very different from the cultivated indifference he’d seen for the last few days.

“Dean,” Cas said before Dean could say anything. In Cas’s mouth, Dean’s name sounded like a revelation and Dean realized that it was actually the first time Cas had spoken his name. Dean expected Cas to go on, say what he had to say, but all he did was repeat himself. “Dean,” he said once more, with even more awe in his voice.

There was definitely something beyond Dean’s understanding going on here.

“Uh, yeah, that’s my name. What’s up with you, Cas?”

“I…have a confession to make,” Cas said, his eyes down. “I might have made a terrible mistake.”

“I don’t understand—” Dean started before Cas cut him off.

“I thought you were Sam.”

“What? I don’t understand…” Dean trailed of. This didn’t make sense. How could Cas think he was Sam? Wasn’t he supposed to be writing an article on them? How could he not know their identity?

“I—ah. I am bad with names and I knew you were one of the Winchester brothers, but I didn’t know which. But when I talked with Jo and she kept gushing about Sam, I’d naturally concluded that being your partner, it would be you she was talking about. She was also hinting at being in a relationship with Sam, and because I knew your brother was dating his partner, there was no doubt in my mind that you were with Jo and…well. I felt a bit disappointed and even angry that you would flirt with me so blatantly if you were in a relationship... And so far in the competition, they only used your family names each time, and it is only now that you’ll be competing against each other that they said your first names and that I realized how dire my mistake has been…”

This was a lot to take in, and Dean wasn’t sure the few seconds it took Cas to word-vomit it all would be enough. When he thought about it though, it was true that Cas had only called him Mr. Winchester at the beginning of their interview, and Dean hadn’t actually taken the time to fucking introduce himself. And Jo seemingly had been telling the truth when she said she hadn’t spoken a word about Dean to Cas, which had actually created the problem in the first place. Screw his brother and his perfect relationship that none of the outside world seem to really comprehend.

“I can’t believe it,” Dean finally said. “You thought…you thought I was—”

“I thought you were taken,” Cas interrupted, and Dean definitely could get used to such forwardness. “So, if you’re able to forgive me for withdrawing from that coffee date… I would like it if we could start over.”

Dean didn’t know he could be so relieved to be hearing these words from Cas. He’d tried to pretend he didn’t care, but he hadn’t fooled even himself. Knowing he had a chance with Cas after all was everything.

“You know, this isn’t the first time we’ve had to start over, but I’ll definitely allow it,” Dean said, feeling his smile pulling at his cheeks. “So when are you free for that coffee?”

“Whenever you are,” Cas answered, and Dean could tell this was not just a line.

“All right. I’ll win this thing and I’m all yours.”

And because Cas looked at him like he believed in Dean so much, Dean did too. He would definitely win that thing. Looking at Cas’s smile, he already felt like he had.

[magicalsalamander]

The Firefly that Guards the Fox III

Pairing: BTS Taehyung  ⇆ Reader

Genre: Hybrid | Lawyer | Murder Mystery| Fluff | Angst | Smut [Epilogue] |

Words: 6.9K

Warnings: Overall story rated mature; Explicit themes, action/ violence, bloodshed, death of minor characters.

Summary: His mother and father weren’t supposed to fall in love. They weren’t supposed to find a mate in one another.

They weren’t supposed to.

After losing his father years ago, Taehyung vows to find and avenge the injustice his family has gone through. You were childhood friends with Taehyung. The four of you Taehyung, Hoseok, your older brother and you were inseparable. You were torn apart from Taehyung, your fox who’ve you’ve always vowed to protect and be with, without a warning. He called you Firefly, you called him Tae-Tae the fox. Was your fate supposed to end there in the past with your childhood?

A/N: Orig post date: 01|17|18; Updated intro 12|12|19. Part of the KLF Universe.

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Before the elevator doors could open to the ground floor you stood up, but the haze in your eyes didn’t clear. You walked out of the elevator and out the glass entrance door weaving yourself into the sea of passing people. The crowd took no mercy on you, the masses were on autopilot. Standing in the midst of the crowd shoulders knocked against yours repeatedly; your purse was pulled to the ground on accident when a business man on the phone carelessly ran into you. Still, you remained indifferent to everything. He kept going not bothering to apologize. Everyone kept moving, except you. You were frozen.

He was alive! However, meeting him again and finding out that he’s a well-known lawyer, your potential boss, was not the way you pictured the reunion. How could he be in such plain sight? It clicked so you rushed to pick up your purse and pulled out your cell phone. It was one of the first generations of smart phones, but it still worked and it didn’t have any scratches on it. You open a web browser and searched “Kim Taehyung Hybrid Welfare Legal Law Group, LLC,” and instantly over 10,000 results came up. The first article was of him walking from a courthouse with the title “Kim puts the notorious serial, hybrid killer behind bars”, another was “Lawyer Kim Taehyung gives statement on bringing the CEO of CJT Corps, who abused his hybrids, to light.” You were stunned, he’s been in plain sight this whole time. It was the twenty first century, why didn’t you use the internet? You already knew the answer to that though, you were just too busy and didn’t have any social media.

You kept scrolling and opened the company’s website moving past the other lawyer’s bios until you found his. This is why you should’ve done your research. You stopped when a photo of him working came into frame. They must’ve taken his picture without him knowing from the candid shot. He was looking down at some paperwork with his head propped at a 45-degree angle resting in his hand at his desk. It was weird seeing him grown up and so--manly looking, his deep voice rang in your head picturing him in the exact same way minutes ago. You shook yourself out of staring at the photo and read his short bio, “Kim Taehyung has been a brilliant lawyer for Hybrid Welfare Legal Law Group, LLC, since 2014. Kim graduated early from the national University at the age of twenty, opting to take honor and advance placement classes. He graduated with a degree in Linguistics and a minor in Philosophy. Kim entered the University’s Law program the following semester after graduation and left three years later ranking in the top 10% percentile of the Bar Exam takers. He’s worked for Free Will Legal Office, LLC, and Liberation Legal Advocacy Corporation, LLC, throughout Law school and interned afterwards. He started working for us at the age of twenty-four and worked his way up to being one of the four main lawyers of our office. A quote from Kim, ‘I will work hard until I can put an end to hybrid abuse and put those who abuse hybrids behind bars.’ We believe Kim Taehyung is the future in hybrid rights.”

Your jaw fell agape, you couldn’t believe this was the same Tae. The Tae you knew was a clumsy, happy-go lucky, carefree kit. Time has really changed things. You crossed your purse over your chest and put your phone back in its slot. You tucked your blazer closer to you when a breeze blew by and walked towards the nearest bus stop. You felt so ashamed of yourself, you wanted to see him again, but he didn’t even remember you. Were you that forgetful? Did your friendship mean nothing to him? You kept walking to the bus station and sat on the cracked, plastic bench and almost missed your bus when you were lost in thought. You ran after the bus, almost slipping on mud, smacking the side of the bus until it captured the driver’s attention and he stopped for you. Even on the ride on the bus you couldn’t stop thinking about him. The rest of the day was spent in this weird smog as if you were walking through a valley of smoke.

You walked up the steep hill to your apartment late at night after your closing shift. You deviated from your path and stopped at the living room converted into a convenient store tucked in one of the houses along the road and perused the short isles. You picked up a few beers from the fridge and chips on a stand. The auntie who sat on a loveseat watching old soap operas just asked for the money with an outheld hand without even paying you any mind. You’ve been here enough to know eachother by first name, “Thanks Lola.” She waved you off with her enclosed hand, you were interrupting the dialogue of her show. You walked up to your rooftop apartment and sat down on the low platform outside your apartment. You sat the crinkling plastic bag next to you along with your purse and just sighed. You dug inside and pulled out any one of the two beers. You pulled back the aluminum tab that released a satisfying hiss. You hoped that this little thing would release some of your pressure too. No, you weren’t a drinker only having drank a total of two times before; both times with your brother when you graduated college, then law school. You just wanted to indulge in this one time.

You took the can and cheered it to the sky before taking a hefty gulp of the stout and breathed a sigh of relief afterwards. You really didn’t understand why people like the taste of alcohol or the flavor of beer at this point, it tasted awful. However, you spent five dollars on all this you weren’t going to let it go to waste. You kept sipping with furrowed brows trying to catch a buzz to sleep better tonight. You laid back on your elbows supporting you looking up at the starry sky. Its been so long since you’ve looked up and taken in the world around you. The stars were so beautiful they twinkled and glimmered as if they were communicating with one another. You picked up your beer and took small sips. This reminded you of the old days when the four of you were laying on the same type of platform doing the same thing. You were starting to feel tipsy, maybe because you never drank or maybe the alcohol hit your system fast because you haven’t eaten in a while. Maybe. You took a deep inhale and then yelled out, “Yah! Taehyung! You’re alive! You’re-- really alive and doing well! I’m so… proud of you! Wow, I saw you today and you didn’t—you didn’t even recognize me! Did I really change that much? Huh?” You had to catch your breath you were so worked up and somewhere along the line you started crying. “How could you—how could you do that to me?” You don’t know when but as some point exhaustion took over from crying so hard and yelling. You fell deep asleep on the platform.

A half hour later your brother walked up the side stairs, his black combat boots clinking against the metal staircase leading to the apartment. He hummed and blew a puff of smoke in the air from his hot breath hitting the icy air. He rubbed his gloved hands together and shoved them in his pocket for any warmth and dug for his keys. The yellow-green flood light dulled against the cement floor, but it caught his attention when it reflected against the plastic bag on the platform. He stepped closer to see exactly what was there only to find you sprawled out sleeping. Tired from his long day as well, he came up to you and smacked your cheek, “hey, hey wake up.” You just groaned and turned to your side landing on top of the plastic bag and knocking over your half full beer. “Hey!” Your brother went to grab the sticky drink before it leaked any further onto the wood and shook his hand in frustration when it coated his hands. He really took in your appearance redden nose, dirty clothes and sneakers haphazardly thrown. You had your “suit uniform” spilling out of your purse as if it was shoved in angrily. He hated seeing you work endlessly and keep going to job interviews tirelessly. He wanted to make your life easier, but he didn’t have a direct way fix that. He sat you up and slung you over his back and then hung your purse over his neck. The plastic bag was in his hand while the other held the house keys, “Yah, you feel too light. You’ve lost too much weight. Why aren’t you eating stupid?” He knew you couldn’t hear any of his complaints, but he still complained none the less. He flopped you onto your twin size bed and pulled the comforter over you. He sat next to you and flattened your wild hair down, it was the least he could do for you after all the things you do for him. Somewhere down the line the roles have changed, and you started taking care of him. He kissed your forehead and turned off the lights closing your bedroom door.

The next morning at seven thirty you woke up to your phone alarm blaring that repetitive noise and a fat headache. You were in pain, but you still had to turn off your insistent alarm. You looked at yourself and wondered how you got inside, it must’ve been your great instincts. You blindly made your way to the bathroom and took a shower. The hot water was so comforting easing the headache to a dull pain. You made it back to your bedroom to change into your day uniform, but were stopped by a surprising figure in the kitchen.

With eyebrows raise you looked at your brother who was diligently mixing something over the counter. He had something on his cheek when he turned around, “Morning sunshine, you look great!” You furrowed your brows and grumbled to him, “shut up.” He laughed, “be out soon to eat before you leave. You don’t have much time before you have to go.” Not about to argue with his comeback you went to change and ready your purse. You packed your only other set of skinny jeans and the same black t-shirt into your bag replacing your suit uniform. You made your way out of the room with light makeup on since it was more appropriate for your day job. You took a peek over your brother’s shoulder on your tippy toes and made a face pulling the sides of your lips down impressed with his makeshift breakfast sandwich. He smacked your creeping hand trying to grab extra pieces of packaged ham and said take some aspirins. “Yes, mom. Love you, mom!” He laughed at your annoyance and you followed through really needing it to carry on today. He let you slip your shoes on before handing you paper bag with a ham sandwich and a breakfast sandwich to carry tucked into a napkin. You were so touched your brother never did stuff like this. You looked at him suspiciously, “did you do something wrong?” He played up an expression of upset with a hand over his chest, “can’t a brother do something nice for a change?” You smiled not willing to have your sandwich revoked and hugged him tight, “thank you for everything.” You snatched the sandwich and placed it in your mouth as you ran out the door waving him goodbye.

You made your way into the diner and grabbed your apron from of your locker. You greeted the older auntie who ran the shop and your coworkers, it was back to the basics. You were working non-stop until you had a fifteen-minute break around noon. You went to your locker in the breakroom and pulled out your phone. There was a missed call from Mrs. Lee. You were panicking internally. What if it was something important? Why was she calling back so soon? For sure only early call backs were rejections, how could he decide overnight? With a shaky finger you hovered over the call button but pressed it and brought it up to your ear. You sat in a chair shaking your leg impatiently while chewing on your thumb in anticipation. There was no voicemail, so it was up in the air to what she needed. She picked up after the seventh ring, “Hello Mrs. Lee this is Y/N Y/L/N. I’m sorry I missed your call I wasn’t able to answer the call while on shift.” She waved it off bidding everything fine, “I understand. I wanted to call you with the results of the interview.” Your heart was racing and begging her to put you down gently. “Mr. Kim has decided that he wants to hire you. We would love it if you could start as soon as possible.”

You were frozen. You were hired! You were hired? “I’m sorry Mrs. Lee, can you please repeat that please?” She laughed at your confused state, “You’re hired Ms. Y/L/N. When can you start?” It took a few seconds, but you were smiling like and idiot and bowing in thanks even though she couldn’t see. “Are you sure Mr. Kim relayed the message right Mrs. Lee? I don’t mean to guess your work, I just can’t believe it,” you spoke at her rapidly and in disbelief. “I’m positive Ms. Y/L/N.” You promised that you would be able to start in the next few days since you had to let your current jobs know you would be resigning. She congratulated you and hung up. You were so excited with the news you stood up and danced, you absolutely couldn’t hold in your excitement. You stopped mid jig and the news really set in. You were going to be working with Taehyung. Would you tell him who you were? So many thoughts were running through your mind, but first things first you had to quite these part time jobs!

You spoke to all your employers who were happy for you, but they asked for a few days more until they could find a replacement. Your bosses from both places were more like long time friends now and they wished you luck and to keep the door open to use you for legal help. As soon as all things were set you called Mrs. Lee to let her know you could make it exactly in three days. She was glad to hear that you worked it all out and would see you very soon at eight a.m. sharp. You were so excited that that night you went home and told your brother you finally got the job! You even made a video call with your brother to your parents telling them the news. They couldn’t be happier for you, and it felt like things were finally working out. You spent that night sitting in bed scrolling again through the company’s website on Taehyung’s bio page. You reread the information over and over again. This was too important to pass up and if Taehyung didn’t recognize you, that was fine. You were going to start fresh again now anyways, so if he didn’t remember you it wouldn’t be the end of the world. You wondered if he still spoke to Hoseok. You wondered a million and one things, but it still didn’t change how hurt your heart felt. You plugged your phone in to your charger and set it on your bed side table. You stared out your window and thanked the stars for watching over you.

You adjusted the same blazer, button up and slacks you wore on your interview. The same flats were adorning your feet, ready for work. You pulled your hair up in a pony tail in the elevator. The smooth, long locks flicked side to side as you looped it in the hair tie. The elevator doors opened to the receptionist lobby. The receptionist, who now asked you to refer to her as Mrs. Smith, congratulated you on your employment. She looked left and right subtly then curled her index finger to beckon you in whispering distance. “Mr. Kim can be a bit…rude. He’s not the kindest, but he works very hard. You’re the only interviewee that made it out of the 150 that applied just this month. I don’t even…” Mrs. Lee came into the receptionist office and cleared her throat. You jumped back and bowed to greet her. She smiled politely at you and raised a brow to Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith began humming and went back to work like nothing happened. Mrs. Lee signaled for you to follow her down the hall. You trailed behind her into the open work space.

“This last row of desks in this open space in the far back is where we will be working. The other three rows are meant for the other lawyers.” She pointed along with her words as she lead you down the rows of already busy workers, some gave you a glance while other worked diligently. You were shown to the first desk at the beginning of the row where it was empty, “this is your spot. You can decorate it as much as you like.” You thanked her setting down your purse and she lead you to the other employees under Mr. Kim. The first employee she introduced you to a man who went by casually by the name Key, but his actual name was Kim Kibum. He was a paralegal and was Taehyung’s right-hand man. He looked you up and down, but welcomed you politely. Key carried this sassy carefree air about him that seemed to lack for a lawyer. The next employee was female employee younger than you who was there as a legal assistant. She was still in law school and working her way to becoming a lawyer. She was cold towards you and didn’t care to respond, but Mrs. Lee let you know her name was Jung Krystal. She was pretty, but her attitude made you want to take that statement back. That was the whole team. You could see why they needed you on the team. There weren’t enough members on the team, you wondered how they’ve won so many cases so far with so little people.

Mrs. Lee lead you to Mr. Kim’s office knocking getting the typical non-lingual response. She motioned for you to enter and followed behind closing the door. Your heart was racing seeing him again, in fact it’s been racing as you entered the ground level lobby. He was in a navy-blue suit that really brought out his orange fur on his ears. You tried to calm yourself knowing hybrids can sense your heart rate and anxiety levels. He was in the same position as the other day, but instead he had a cup of coffee in his hands taking sips of his black coffee delicately. You gulped and after Mrs. Lee called to you, you turned to him and reintroduced yourself with your self still bent in a bow thanked him for hiring you. You slowly raised yourself to standing position, but didn’t bring your eyes up immediately. You raised your eyes slowly and as if the world slowed his eyes locked on yours holding them in amusement. He held his gaze on yours silently with a raised brow. He was sizing you up, so you continued, “I will work hard under your team as a lawyer.” He laughed a little, “No, you won’t be working under me as a lawyer. At least not yet.” You looked at him wide eyes, but he continued, “You will be working alongside Ms. Jung, until you prove you can hold your own.” He took another sip of coffee looking for you to challenge him. You were going to have to start from the bottom, the literal bottom of the food chain. You were ready for the challenge though, you lived for the challenge. You smiled politely at him, “I’m willing to show you that I’m a worthy member of this team Mr. Kim.” He was curt and just hummed waving you both off to leave. You understood Mrs. Smith now.

Mrs. Lee escorted you back to your desk and Krystal and Key came over to your desk to drop four boxes full of paperwork that needed sorting and to be categorized by case. You sighed internally at the amount of work, but rolled up your sleeves went to work. Mrs. Lee patted your shoulder and wished you luck. Before you knew it the hands on the clocked turned and it was noon, you were barely a quarter of the way through with one box. Mrs. Lee tapped your shoulder interrupting your concentration, “Mr. Kim is calling for you in his office.” You got up dusting yourself off and made your way over to his office. You knocked lightly and wiped your dusty hands on your slacks and got the approval grunt. You stepped in and was only greeted by an outstretched sticky note in which you took in both hands. “What is this Mr. Kim?” You couldn’t make out the coding of what FR, OC and BrB meant. He looked up at you with a glare as if you’ve just insulted his mother. “My lunch, now go pick it up for me,” he looked at his watch, “and I want it by 1 p.m. Now hurry.” You looked at the clock on the wall and it read 12:15 p.m. How were you supposed to make it back to the office in 45 minutes?

You were going to prove him wrong for underestimating you, “Of course, Mr. Kim.” You stepped out of his office and power walked back to the open space, but was stopped by more sticky notes by your team; even the intern who should be doing all this. You were a little upset by the intern’s rudeness, but you weren’t going to let this shake you. You took them and asked them to decode Mr. Kim’s note first. “Its fried rice, orange chicken and broccoli beef from Panda Express.” Not caring to waste any more time you ran out of the office like lightening. You had to pick up coffees from Starbucks, sandwiches from Subway on top of Mr. Kim’s order. You were walking so fast with three bags swinging on your arms and four coffees in a carboard cup holder. You were adjusting a bag on your arm trying to reach the sticky notes your blazer pocket one last time when someone ran directly into you. The coffees in your hand down poured onto you soaking your white button up. A mix of hot and cold pungent liquid all over your white button up. You liked coffee, but not to this extent. You weren’t concerned about your shirt though, you were about the coffee. You checked the time and ran back to the coffee shop a few stores back. The man who was trying to apologize to you was left standing there in confusion.

You made it back to the office panting at 12:59 p.m. and set everything down on the round conference table of your section. The members at their desk all looked at you concerned with the blatant brown stain on your shirt, but you were in a rush. You only had a minute left! You grabbed his tray, fork and napkins along with his venti coffee. You knocked on his door with your elbow and got the grunt. You made your way into his office and set the food down on the cleared portion of his desk. You stepped back waiting for his response. He set his pen down and took his Ray-Ban Clubmaster glasses off. He looked at you judgingly and then took in the brown stain poured down your front. He chooses to not comment but went to grab the tray. He popped open the container and hummed, not in approval or disapproval just a throaty noise. You were sweating for more reason than one. He finally said something, “you’re late by two minutes Ms. Y/L/N. How do you expect me to depend on you with that kind of timing?” You were shocked you made it late but bit your tongue, “I’m sorry Sir, it won’t happen ever again.” He raised a brow, “better not Y/L/N.” You were surprised that he addressed you by your first name. It felt weird hearing it again. He grabbed at the plastic fork but tossed it in his small trash bin, “I don’t eat my Chinese food with a fork, go get me chopsticks.” You were panicking you didn’t grab any, so you tried to think of anything besides having to go all the way back. You remembered you had your own chopsticks for your lunch. You asked him for a second and ran to your desk and rummaged your purse until you found your chopsticks at the bottom of your lunch bag. The metal chopsticks would work perfectly. You knocked again and handed him the utensil with both hands. He took them from you and commented, “I prefer wooden ones, but I’ll settle.” You were holding your comeback in, you were glad you weren’t a dragon hybrid at this moment. You asked him if that was all he needed, and he waved you off again. You made it back to your desk where everyone was now eating and working at their own. Mrs. Lee and Kibum thanked you, but Krystal just ate quietly. She’s yet to say a word to you.

You got back to work and ate your food with an extra plastic fork left in one of the bags. Again, time has passed by quickly and before you knew it the rest of your team was leaving for the night and biding you good night. Mrs. Lee told you to, “go home soon, there’s always tomorrow.” You smiled and said you would, but in by the looks of your desk you knew it was going to be a long night. Your desk lamp was the last one on in the office and you were working on the last four case files from the third box. You sat up cracking your back then heard a voice next to you, “I’m not paying you for overtime.” Jolting at the sound you banged your knee on the desk but stood up with a click of your knees and replied, “Mr. Kim! I know, but I want to finish before I leave.” He looked over your shoulder to see the stack of different sorted casefiles. He looked back at you stoically with his tail swishing casually and just walked off. You called after him, “Good night Mr. Kim” and you whispered, “Good night Tae Tae” when he was around the corner while rubbing your knee.

Taehyung came home to an empty apartment. His roommates Hoseok, Jimin and Jungkook were still out. Jimin and Hoseok was out practicing choreography for an upcoming tour for a famous artist. Jungkook was probably working a late shift at the station. They’ve all made it into fields they’ve dreamt of. Taehyung pulled out a bottle of wine from the wine rack and popped open the cork. He used his better sense of smell and took in the fruity flavor of the vintage wine. He poured himself a glass and pulled out some ingredients from the fridge and went to prepare himself dinner. A few minutes later he heard the keycode being punched in and the scuffing of boots at the entrance. The heavy timberlands hit the floor with a thud near the shoe rack and a Bunny still in his police uniform set his phone on the island counter along with his badges and plopped himself in a bar stool across the stove. He greeted Taehyung, “Hyung, I’m home! You won’t believe the day I had!”

At home Taehyung could let loose and be himself, he didn’t have to put up a hard exterior that he did at the office. “Tell me about it then, Kookie.” He went on to say about a few weeks ago a drunk uncle was abusing his young hybrid but a heroine stepped in and saved the hybrid. She was a lawyer too! She beat the man into submission and pinned him to the floor. She went with the hybrid to the hospital and he found out she knows Jin too! He took the hybrid into his shelter according to the report and getting a phone call from the bear himself. “Anyways, she was really pretty hyung, and I wanted to ask her on a coffee date, you can’t let a cool woman like that just walk by. But that’s not the point, the point is the drunk man is suing the station for taking away his hybrid when he was in an inebriated state.” Taehyung turned to him to him with raised brows and tail swishing in interest, “did you ask her out?” The bunny’s ears went down in sadness, “No, she got into the ambulance before I could even say anything.” Taehyung and Jungkook always told eachother stories going on in their work since they both often shared cases.

More noise came from the front door and in came the last two roommates. Hoseok came into the kitchen first doing some gliding moves but Jimin kneed him in the butt to move out the way. Jimin greeted the two and did the secret handshake that only they would know. Hoseok came next to Taehyung at the stove, “Tae Tae, what are you making? Is there enough for all of us?” He didn’t plan on making enough for everyone, but wordlessly he was throwing more portions onto the skillet. Hoseok thanked Taehyung and the three sat down on the island next to Jungkook who retold his story of his day. Hoseok listened intently then said, “Hey, Tae, doesn’t that girl remind you of the girl from the country side where we used to live? She would do the same for us when we were kids. Her and her brother would always stand up for us!” Taehyung smiled remembering the face of that girl, she had choppy hair and rags for shoes, but she was always happy. He couldn’t remember her name and her facial features were blurry to him now, but he knew the person. He answered honestly, “I do Hobi, it’s was so long ago. Her face is blurry to me now, but I remember that choppy bowl cut flying squirrel.” They all laughed at him calling you a squirrel. Jimin turned to Hoseok, “is she that girl in that photo at Tae mom’s house?” Hoseok lit up remembering the photo,” Yeah! That exact girl!” They carried on chatting and joking. They ended the night with some video games. Taehyung was about to get into bed when he pulled out his phone and in the gallery, he took a picture of that photo in his mom’s house. There was water damage on the photo, so all the faces were blurry. He zoomed in on your face and smiled fondly, “Hey Firefly, it’s been a while. I hope you’re doing well. I hope your still kicking butt and saving foxes like you used to.” He stared at the photo a bit more then set it to charge for the night, “Good night Firefly.”

The next morning you came to the office with the same outfit. You didn’t have enough money to buy any new clothing, your last paycheck to pay utilities and rent. The coffee stain came out of your button up after soaking it in a concoction of home remedy stain remover. You were the first of your team in the office. You finished all the filing last night at 2:30 a.m. A few moments later Mrs. Lee made her way over to your row, “good morning Y/N!” You greeted her back, but she rushed to drop her bag off at her desk to go back to the receptionist area. You sat down at your desk and waited for her to return. Mr. Kim came around the corner with his briefcase adjusting his glasses. You stood up to greet him, but he stopped in his tracks, “You’re still here?” You raised your brows in question, “you hired me correct?” He nodded and carried on to his office closing the door behind him. You saw Mrs. Lee escorting the same family you saw the day you submitted your resume. This time the young man had bruises and a black eye. You looked worriedly at Mrs. Lee, but she just mouthed “later” to you. She sat them at the conference table and told them to wait for her. She came over to you asking for you to get some files for her to present to them. You nodded following her instruction.

When you returned with the case files she asked for, you to sit with her and the family. She introduced you to the woman, Mrs. Miller, and her son David. You shook their hands introducing yourself. She spoke to them about the new revisions and terms that were set by the recent lawyer meeting. You listened intently picking up that she was going through a lawsuit where the other party is suing for assault and defamation. It was hard to believe with David looking as if danger was waiting around the corner for him. Mrs. Lee directed them towards Mr. Kim’s office to discuss things further and Mrs. Lee returned to you. “Mrs. Miller and her son are in a civil lawsuit. A few rich kids at the private school assaulted him, and their parents are trying to turn it around on them. Claiming that David inflected the injuries on himself and are trying to ruin their image. They don’t want to settle out of court. With all evidence we have so far, it points towards hybrid discrimination.” You nodded silently, longingly looking at the office down the hall. Mrs. Lee went to get up but you stopped her before she went on to give you work, “what did Mr. Kim mean when he said ‘you’re still here’?” She looked at you with raised brows sitting down beside you again, “We’ve hired people before you to join the team, but they never stayed after the first day. We’ve gone through 15 people leaving after the first day. They complain that they don’t want to do bottom work with a lawyer’s license, they want to practice already. He always lets them leave. He purposely is a bit overbearing in the beginning to really see if people are made out to work here.” You slowly nodded finally understanding his words. You smiled at her and said, “please give me more work to do!” She laughed at your eagerness, but then went to hand you more boxes. You honestly were more motivated to work harder, this was your dream even if it was starting at the bottom. Nothing good is every handed out, it’s earned.

You went back and forth around the office and brought all cases up to date on filing. The next few weeks you worked endlessly proving yourself. You stayed late often re-doing reports and checking and rechecking paperwork. Taehyung would stop by your desk nightly before he left seeing you were the last one, but never said anything. He just stared at you then walked off, but you always wished him a good night and that he worked hard today. When he stepped away you always called him Tae Tae. It was hard to control your beating heart around the handsome fox.

Taehyung was impressed by your hard work, but he would never tell you. He was impressed the first day when you offered up your chopsticks. He knew he was being difficult, but he needed you to be flexible and adaptable. The things he’s been putting you through were test, not just miniscule task. You still had a long way to go before he trusted you to work on a major case.

But the day came, a month in working at the office. He finally asked you to do something else besides paper work and running small errands. You knocked on his door and stepped into his office. He asked you to sit down in the chair in front of his desk. You were slightly worried thinking you were in trouble, but he interrupted your thoughts, “I want you to go out tomorrow morning with Mr. Kim to David Miller’s private school to get a testimonial from the school and any evidence. We need some papers signed by their principal.” You were relieved you weren’t in trouble and the anxiety turned into happiness. You tried to hide your smile but failed miserably when your lips twitched and settled into a smile. “Thank you, Mr. Kim, I’ll do my best.” He just looked at you dully, “this is work Mrs. Y/L/N not something to thank me for.” You bowed and asked him if he needed anything else before you returned to your desk. He breathed in deeply looking you once over then tilted his head to the side, “is that the only clothes you have? That “uniform” of yours should be put away for a new one, don’t you think? Wear something else for tomorrow’s visit.” He looked down to his paperwork again and waved you off. You were excited with the given task, finally he trusted you enough to do actual work. However, his comment on your clothes sucked a bit off happiness out of it. You knew very well that you shouldn’t wear the same clothes every day, but it was the only thing you had. You bowed and left with a smile still on your face. You ran into Mrs. Lee who was about to knock on the door, you excused yourself and walked down the hall. Mrs. Lee was still staring at you walking down the hall, she overheard and was surprised you didn’t look phased. You were a strong woman indeed.

There was something about you to him. The sense of familiarity only got worse over time. Something in his gut was pulling him to you, maybe it was your pretty face? Maybe it was your persistent personality? Every time he looked at you he just felt like something was missing, but he didn’t know what it was. A mysterious nostalgia. He smiled to himself when you left the room and laughed quietly at your cute behavior. It was hard holding back and keeping a stone face when you were here. He felt comfortable with you. Every night when he passed by your desk he always wants to speak to you, to chat casually, but he doesn’t want to cross professional boundaries. In the end he just walks away leaving you to work. When Mrs. Lee walked in he corrects himself immediately, coughing and clearing his throat to cover his laugh.

The next morning you came in to work, again being the first of your team. You still had your “uniform” on, but you had no choice. None of your friends, even your ex-coworker, had any professional clothing they could lend you. You sat at your desk turning on your computer to get to work until Key came into the office. Mrs. Lee came into the work space humming and swinging three, large, unfamiliar bags. You didn’t pay any mind to her after you greeted her normally. She came up behind you and tapped on your shoulder. You turned to her holding up three bags in front of you blocking your vision. “What is this Mrs. Lee?” She lowered the bags and said, “I was going through my closet yesterday cleaning it out any of the pieces I had that were still in good condition, but I never used. I was wondering if you would want them? It’d be a shame to throw out such good pieces.” You looked at the bags and then back at her, “Oh, I can’t take something so nice.” She stopped you, “No, I won’t be using them anymore! We seem to wear the same size so please, take them. It’s my gift to you.” You reluctantly took the bag and then pulled out some gorgeous blouses, slacks and pencil skirts. The last bag had two pairs of heels, one was classic black, thin heel pump and an ankle strap, nude heel. You turned to her amazed at the beautiful clothing, “this is so expensive. I—!” She stopped you again, “Hush, take it and don’t let them go to waste on an old woman like me.” You pulled out a white, bell sleeve blouse, a black, knee length, tight fitting pencil skirt, and the black heels. You went into the women’s restroom and changed into your new outfit. It fit perfectly, even the shoes! You were a bit unstable at first but got used to it quickly. You looked in the mirror at yourself, you looked like a real professional. I guess fair feathers make a fair bird. You pulled your hair out of the ponytail and it cascaded down into romantic, tousled waves. You didn’t get a chance to dry it after showering last night tying it up wet. You smiled at the new you, ready to take on your mission today! You folded your old clothes and walked back to the work room. You got some stares from the other lanes as you walked by, but you kept going avoiding their gaze. You made it to your desk and stuffed your old “uniform” into one of the bags. You pushed them under your desk until your shift would end. Mrs. Lee came up to you and simply said, “wow, you clean up really well Y/N. These clothes were meant for you! You look great!” You were blushing folding your hands in front of you not sure how to receive compliments. Krystal even raised her eyebrows at you and nodded, but quickly returned to her work.

“Mrs. Lee, do we have a guest?” You heard Taehyung ask Mrs. Lee from behind you. You turned around to look at Mr. Kim, who was wide eyed when he realized it was you standing there. “Oh, Y/N. It’s you.” He was thrown off by the woman standing in front of him, it was you, but different. The way the pencil skirt hugged your hips and your collar bones showed through your blouse was captivating. You were a fresh Spring day, the warmth of the sun that came along with the season and freshness. Your scent filled him to the brim. The biggest note of yours was lavender, it calmed him the more he inhaled. It was like a crisp breeze came through him as he took in your scent. It was heavenly and soul soothing. He had to shake himself out of his spell realizing he was staring, and just casually said good morning. He walked to his office leave all three of you just staring at his disappearing figure. You shared a look with Mrs. Lee raising your eyebrows at his strange morning greeting. You never got those.

Key made it to the office ready to leave to visit David’s school for a statement. You walked down to the parking garage of the establishment and got in his Mercedes. The twenty-minute journey to the middle school was anything but boring. You found out more things about Key, he’s quite chatty and funny. You shared things about yourselves even obscure things. You were having too much for this to be professional. You arrived at the front of the school stepping outside the parked car. Key and you made your way to the front office and sat down waiting in the reception. Key went over with you that he would do a majority of the consultation, she can be a stick in the mud. The woman stood up at the secretarial desk and instructed you to follow her into an office. The woman in the office looked like a true private school principal. The gaudy jewelry, the stuffy suit, and botched plastic surgery showed off her wealth. You both sat down in front of her desk after introductions and she immediately began to defend herself. “I’m sorry Mr. Kim, we will not provide any assistance in that regard. The offenses happened off campus and it was not under school hours. This is a private personal matter.”

She was obviously using any legal loophole she could find to take the responsibility off the school. Key informed you on the way here that this school had records before of hybrid students being assaulted or discriminated. You were genuinely upset that the system that was supposed to be protecting all kids equally failed them. You tried interjecting, “Ma’am, we still need –,” but she held up her hand stopping you. Key and you exchanged a look knowing there wasn’t going to be any way to get her signature. You shook her hand and left with Kibum. He stopped you once you left the building and with a cat-like grin asked, “You know we should go find David. You know… observe the environment to get a feel for it.” He knew that this was probably crossing the line, but he was always up for gathering evidence. “This way we can find out and study if there are any other discriminations going on.” You nodded agreeing with your fist held up to his in a fist bump. You walked down the halls trying to observe the private school for any abnormalities. You kept walking until you made it to the gym area near the back of the school when you heard it. You heard the huffs and grunts of someone, and a gaggle of laughs. You and Kibum crept around the corner of the building peering over the edge of the gymnasium. David was on the floor surrounded by five, tall built boys who were obviously older than him. Two of the kids were smoking cigarettes passing it between them. The one who just kicked flicked the still lit stick onto the young bunny. Anger boiled within you and you made a step towards them when Key stopped you and hushed you. He brought out his phone and began recording the situation. You needed evidence.

“Little Bunny, who’s going to save you now, huh?” They continued to kick him in his fetal position, but when they got tired of it they pulled on his ears. He let out a large yelp in protest. They continued their ministrations, but you’ve had enough! You didn’t even spare a look back at Key who was whisper yelling at you. Your heels clicked as you paced over to the group of men surrounding David. You yelled out, “Hey, leave the kid alone!” You stood a few feet away with a hand on your hip the other pointing at them when the group of five stopped what they were doing and turned towards you. They raised an eyebrow at you, “who are you lady?” David was clearly scared, but limped behind you when he recognized you. He tugged on your shirt, “Mrs. Y/L/N, please, save me!” You bent down to his level and petted his ears, “It’s okay David. Go to Mr. Kim over there, okay? He’ll protect you. Don’t come out until I say so, okay?” He nodded and ran over to Key who was still recording.

You were going to handle this as rationally as possible, but the boy standing in the center just lit up another cigarette taking a drag. You supposed all of them were around seventeen years old, maybe seniors here. The leader, you assumed, approached you taking a few steps out of his group, “Look lady, do you know who I am? My dad could-.” You laughed, “Look kid, I don’t care who your dad is. I’m going to call the authorities to handle this okay?” You went to turn around, but the kid grabbed your wrist roughly. “No, were not lady. This is going to be kept quiet.” You’ve had enough turning halfway around to look at his firm grip on your wrist. You asked him calmly to release your arm. He refused to release it, but you asked once more, “let my wrist go, please.” He laughed and looked at his friends who were egging him on. “Fine,” he suddenly yanked of your wrist causing you to stumble onto the ground. Your knees scrapped against the hot, black asphalt and one heel fell off. You stabilized yourself on your aching wrist from breaking your fall. You noticed your one heel still on had broken! You just got them! His friends were laughing hysterically and so was he, he dropped his fag in front of you and stepped on it twisted his foot tauntingly. The laughing stopped when you flipped the switch on them. You stood up and tied your hair into a pony tail kicking your broken shoe off. It was game on.

You caught the leader’s hand, who was attempting to grab you in an outstretch reach, into your right hand and with your left on the boy’s collar of his button up shirt. Using the momentum of his weight charging towards you, you flipped him to the ground. These boys towered over you, but they didn’t have the same life experience as you. The boy was groaning on the ground and when realization struck his comrades they came rushing to you. They all began circling around you stepping back and forth trying to scare you. One of them even brought out a pocket knife and started waving it at you with a smirk. You were thanking the heavens that your brother taught you things in his free time.

Two boys came at you at once, but you ducked avoiding his right hook. You stood back up avoid his second attempt. You round house kicked the guy in the neck. He stumbled bent over and you took advantage of it bringing your knee to his face. The other guy came at you while you were distracted and grabbed your pony tail pulling you back. The one with the knife attempted to stab you while you were being restrained but avoided it losing the bell sleeve to the grazing. You wiggled yourself free of the pony tail grabber and pushed him away. The knife wielder came back at you, but you grabbed his wrist before he could do anything and twisted it past its normal extension. He wasn’t a knife wielder, it must be for show since he was coming at you sloppily. You heard his wrist pop and the knife clang to the floor. He backed away holding his wrist screaming, “She broke my wrist!” These boys looked stronger than they were. The last two stood there watching their friends and decided they should make a run for it.  They were stopped though when two police officers intercepted them.

Key was running over to you, “Y/N! Are you alright?” You retightened your pony tail, “Yeah, that was nothing.” You dusted your hands off in a satisfied manner and key spoke again, “Your shoes--!” Before Key could finish authorities along with the principal came around the corner. The principal was yelling, “No, not these boys! They would’ve never done anything wrong! That Miller kid must’ve provoked them!” You were in complete shock, despite the clear evidence she still chooses to side with these kids. The police officers rounded the boys up and took the one with the broken hand to the ambulance. A familiar face came up to you, “M. Y/L/N, we meet again, in another unfortunate situation.” You look around squinting at his uniform and caught his name and it clicked, the same bunny hybrid officer from that night! “Officer Jeon,” you shake his hand, “Our lawyer, Mr. Kim, sent us here to get a testimony, but we caught our defense under attack by the same boys who are holding a lawsuit against him.” He wrote down your notes and testimony. He turned to Key and asked for his story, who basically repeated after you. Key whispered to you, “Y/N, I think you’re going to have to with them to the station. You’re a badass, but legally beating up minors doesn’t work out.” He was right, but you weren’t going to stand by watching someone get beat up. Another officer came up to Jeon and discussed things you couldn’t hear. He turned to you with an apologetic look, “I’m sorry Ms. Y/L/N, but we’re going to have to take you down to the station for further questions.” You weren’t surprised, the chances of you scathing by this with rich kid’s parents protecting them was unlikely. You told Key to go back to the office and report everything without you. You held your wrist out towards Officer Jeon with no words and he silently cuffed you walking you to his patrol car.

Key was impressed with you, he felt like he was watching a live super hero film the way you jumped in saved the kid and beat up those guys! He had to snap himself out of his giddy atmosphere and let reality sink in. He had to let Taehyung know and get you out! He had to get you out! He picked up your broken heels raced to his car slipping into the driver seat and peeled out of the parking lot. He made it back to the office in record breaking time, parking haphazardly in his spot in the parking garage of the office. He snatched the heels in the passenger seat and ran to the elevator. He pressed the up button of the elevator repeatedly as if his life depended on it. The door opened, and he stepped inside pressing the fifth floor and mashing the close door button. He was sweating at this point, it was supposed to be a simple task, but it escalated into something major fast. The elevator doors opened, and he zoomed past Mrs. Smith who called after him. He speed pass the work room not paying attention to his team who was eyeing him in wonder. He repeatedly knocked on Mr. Kim’s door not waiting for a come in, and he closing the door behind him. Mr. Kim was on the phone which gave Key time to catch his breath. He was tapping his foot impatiently on the floor. Mr. Kim finished his call and turned to his team member, “What is--?” Key interrupted holding up the shoes, “Taehyung, Y/N! Y/N, she was taken by the authorities—you know what just watch this!” He pulled out his phone and came around the desk and showed him the video of earlier. It began with the kids bullying David, but then you came in the picture. Everything was fine until the kid laid a hand on you. You were tossing the kid around and even dodge a knife. He was worried when he saw the shoes, but it got worse when he saw the video. When the video finished he turned to Key, “where is she?” Key looked down at the floor, “The police took her. They want to question her further.” Taehyung got up from his desk, “Fuck!” and without any other words put on his coat and took his keys and made his way out the office with Key behind him.

The longer it took them to get to the downtown station the angrier he got. How could you carelessly attack? You didn’t think ahead at all! They made it to the station and walked into the entrance. The phones were ringing, officers were running around, some hanging around at their desk. He recognized a familiar face who was standing next to his partner, Kim Yugyeom who was a friend of his as well. Wordlessly he walked up to Jungkook and grabbed his arm, “Where is she?” Jungkook was surprised to see Taehyung here, it wasn’t common he ever came down to the station. “Who hyung?” Taehyung looked around the office not seeing you anywhere. “Y/N. Y/N Y/L/N.” Jungkook eyes lit up, “Oh! She’s in a holding cell. Do you know her hyung?” He didn’t care to respond to him, but carried on, “Take me to her, I need to see her.” He was seething at this point; his tail was flicking, and his ears were down turned. Jungkook picked up on his anger with his ears standing straight up, he wondered what did Tae have anything to do with you? Jungkook tapped his partners arms then lead him and Key to the back hallway where the holding cells were. He unlocked the metal cage door revealing rows of cells along the hallway. He let them enter and directed them to the second to last cell on the right side. Taehyung came up to the cell, but held his tongue when he saw you curled up in the corner. Your knees have crusted blood dripping down your leg and your shirt was torn. He turned around running his hand through his hair calming himself down.

You looked up to the noise slowly and noticed the three of them staring at you. You went to sit back on your heels despite the pain and leaned forward in a bow, “I’m sorry Mr. Kim.” You stayed in that position even as he responded, “I can’t believe you. On your first errand…How--.” He walked back to the station’s main room with Jungkook following him. Key remained crouching down, “Y/N, get up. He’s gone.” You rose with a stoic face, you felt so guilty that may you had ruined the case. You wanted to bring justice to David, but you were just complicating things. In your heart you did the right thing, you stopped violence and the innocent from getting hurt. “It’s going to be okay Y/N. Taehyung may be upset right now, but he’ll get you out. He’s not one of the four famous lawyers at our firm for nothing,” Key explained. It made you feel a bit better and you offered him a small smile. He left you but offered his blazer to keep warm and you took it from him reluctantly.

Jungkook came up behind Taehyung who was staring at the Miller family situated at one of the desk. The mother was rocking her son back in forth in comfort. She had tears in her eyes and her bunny ears were flopped down in sadness. This hurt his heart. It reminded him of his own mother when she comforted him those nights realizing his father wouldn’t come back. He wasn’t going to let these kids get away with their bullying. Jungkook spoke up, “Who is Y/N to you hyung?” Taehyung turned to him, “she’s my newest employee.” Jungkook’s mouth formed the perfect “O” in realization. Jungkook lead Taehyung to the family and they discussed what actions would be taken further. Their discussion was interrupted by a few women coming in yelling at the top of their lungs. “My son is innocent! Where is the bitch that ruined his wrist!” the fancily dressed woman shouted into the room. Jungkook stood up addressing the women, “Ma’am, please sit down,” directly the woman to sit at the desk. “No, I want to see that women who beat up my son and his friends!” Taehyung stood up as well attempting to mediate the situation. Mrs. Miller was holding her son closer, protecting him in the best way she could. The woman struggled in Jungkook’s hold but everyone stopped when a tall man, with overly gelled back hair walked into the room. He has a uniform that was littered with badges on his left chest. The man spoke loudly, “Ma’am, we need to ask you to calm down and take a seat.” The woman turned in Jungkook’s hold, “and who are you to order me around?” Jungkook bowed to his senior, “Chief.” The man waved him off and took charge of the situation directing the woman to sit down at one of the conference tables.

Taehyung and the woman’s lawyer went at eachother for a while back and forth trying to come to a resolution, but they were stubborn. Taehyung was off in the corner trying to come up with a new statement when the lawyer asked for a break. Jungkook came up to him with a coffee in a Styrofoam cup which Taehyung took thanking him. Jungkook sat next to him, “Hyung, remember how I told you about that heroine?” Taehyung nodded after taking a sip of his dark coffee. “That’s her. Y/N is her.” Taehyung raised his brows not expecting the wonder woman of Jungkook’s story to be you. He laughed though, you were full of surprises today. Jungkook patted Tae’s back returning to his desk. Taehyung finished his coffee tossing it into the trash. Mrs. Miller, the rich wives were already gone, and Key went back to the office it was only him left. He sighed with a heavy heart and made his way back to the dimly lit cells. He walked slowly to your cell to find you in the same position as earlier. He crouched down to your level and called to you, “Hey, hey!” You looked up at him with sad eyes that he had to turn away. “You’re going to have to stay here for the night. There seems to be progress with the families, but this isn’t a simple lawsuit anymore.” You nodded knowing that there was no way going the easy route. He got up to walk away from the cell wordlessly like always. You spoke softly in whisper as always, “Good night Tae Tae.” The footsteps once moving down the hall stopped, turning around to you even faster. Taehyung grabbed the bars knocking on the cell door with a rattle looking at you with wide eyes, ears at attention, “What did you just say?”

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Copyright 2018  © by magicalsalamander. All rights reserved.

[cryptostache-blog]

The 'Stache Invades Crypto Invest Summit; What I Saw & What You Missed!

All good conventions in LA begin about the same way, with sitting in traffic on the 110, 101, or the 405 at some point! This was, of course the case as I headed downtown Los Angeles to Crypto Invest Summit at the LA Convention Center. If you follow my journey here you know that I have been writing about all the things I was excited to see and do at this falls event and I was not disappointed. Check out all the trouble I got into at CIS and day-by-day review of the event and keynote speakers! Crypto Invest Summit Double Top Pattern Emerges As I wrote in previous articles, I was super excited about hearing both Steve Wozniak as well as Tim Draper speak at the event and I found both of them inspirational & motivating in very different ways. Each day of the summit kicked off with one of these major keynotes and it really set the pace. I JUST about missed the start of the Woz speaking, but managed to get my badge and get in there quicker than I anticipated. Here is how Day 1 at CIS went. CIS Day 1

I got my media pass quickly thanks to the amazing staff at CIS and headed into the expanded main hall (it was much bigger this year than last year). I got there just in time to see Adam Draper finish his opening remarks with event co-founder Alon Goren. Adam has a style all his own compared his father Tim and I enjoyed hear the tail end of what he had to say about the future of crypto and predicting that in the next few years you will have 3 apps on your phone that use blockchain and you won't even know it. 

Steve Wozniak came out next and was being interviewed by my buddy David Bleznak of Totle who always kills it on stage. When you talk about tech legends they don't get much bigger than Steve and hearing him recant the beginnings of his career and correlating them to current conditions with crypto as an emerging market was fun. Steve tends to go off on a few tangents from time to time which I actually enjoyed even if it didn't really answer the question presented. The spark that you see in other "crypto people" you can hear in Steve's voice as he talks broadly about the subject, claiming he sold all his Bitcoin and only retains 1 for testing purposes.

Network Hokey Pokey At CIS After Steve speaking I headed over to the booth floor and started mingling with people and projects. I first ran into my friends over at Blockchain Beach who had a media booth and were on fire with the number of interviews they were pushing through. They even roped me into doing an interview for them with a project that was overbooked and I had a lot of fun helping out!

Shortly after that I finally got to meet CryptoBeadles of my youtube buddies who also produces great crypto content as well as co-founding the Monarch wallet (which I will be reviewing very soon). He had the whole crew out there with him doing interviews on site as well and I had a blast hanging with them at the booth throughout the day. I headed inside to check out the booths, but I could hardly make it a few feet without running into someone I knew! One of the things I love about going to these cons is talking with everyone. I got to do an interview with my buddy Gaston for Blockchain Beach as well with a quick appearance by Ernesto from Crypto Space San Pedro.

I ran into the infamous Kenn Bosak and of course we had to get a pic of the epic meeting! This guy is a crypto warrior, spreading adoption everywhere he goes. Talking with him, he said he is on pace to hit 50 conferences this year! wow!

When you go to these things a few times you do start to see a lot of the same people which makes it fun and what conference would be complete with out a little Brekkie Von Bitcoin? We had multiple Satoshi Droppers in the house including Andy & Daniel from the Coinboys, BitcoinBella and CryptoWendyO on Day 2. I certainly made a lot of new friends on the day and saw a ton of other people like Crypto Rick here below. 

Favorite Booths I make a point to talk to just about every booth at the conference since there are 2 days and you can easily do so with the amount of booths there depending on how many speakers you catch. 

My overall favorite has to go to the Abra booth as they had a great looking setup, but they best thing? They were giving you $25 in Bitcoin for downloading their mobile crypto wallet right there on the spot! Epic! They had this screen counting down to how much of the free Bitcoin was left. I would have loved to see it counting down in Satoshis, but still really cool. 

I had fun at the Sense chat booth too as well as got to do a quick interview for them (Brekkie did one too!). Sense is a decentralized messaging app. They had one of those fun wheels and my first spin landed on a CryptoKitty, but they were out, so I ended up getting an invite to Taco Tuesday at their office sometime soon along with a sweet hat. I talked to Matthew at Kingsland School of Blockchain and I really liked what they are trying to do with training blockchain engineers and helping make the end connection. Since this is right up my alley I wanted to let them know I supported their cause and would love to help out if I could in any way.  The IDEX / Aurora crew was also at the summit and I got to talk to them a bit about the recent decision to stop allowing New York customers use their platform. They have a solid team and I think with a hybrid solution this makes a lot of sense legal wise to be cautious of where you operate.  Of course Totle is always on the top of my list and the Title sponsor of the event did not disappoint with David, Jordan, and the rest of the team help many learn how to improve their DEX experience by using the Totle software. 

Rounding out the list is the Autonomy chain project that had a cool autonomous car prototype there showing you how the scanner works. The folks over at Crypto Poker Exchange have a very clean and fun looking blockchain poker, and I HAD to include ODB coin (named after the late, great Old Dirty Bastard of Wu Tang) who are making coins for individual music artist.  Day 2 At CIS

As I walked into day two at Crypto Invest Summit bright and early, there was CryptoWendyO already doing interviews at the Blockchain Beach booth, so I said hi real quick and headed over to the main hall to hear legendary investor Tim Draper speak.  When it comes to crypto Tim knows his stuff a little better than The Woz does and I really love how excited he gets over how it can change our future. This is a guy who lost his BTC in the Mt. Gox crash and then doubled down and went in again because he believes in it that much. We kicked the morning off with some jumping jacks at Tim's request and then Alon settled in and they dove in. I think when we see well known and respected men like Tim & Steve giving crypto their seal of approval it really means we are headed in the right direction of mass adoption in my opinion. 

Directly after the great keynote by Tim, Ran Neu-Ner the host of CNBC's "Crypto Trader" show did a live taping and had Tim on as the first guest along with a few other great guests. It was cool to see them hustle to pull this off completely unscripted! I will say one of the highlights was this really funny eToro commercial featuring a Game of Thrones kinda theme! https://youtu.be/Ihd0moB0ehM I cut out a bit early before the taping ended to get in the VERY long time to get a free copy of Tim Draper's new book "How To Be The Startup Hero" signed by the man himself.

They had a huge pile of books to give away to everyone at the summit, but damn was that line long! I waited about an hour and thirty minutes but it was worth it to get a personalized copy of the book and this great selfie with Tim!

I hung out for a little while longer at the convention talking with people and projects and I was even surprised by my buddy Arnold with these amazing mustache shaped cuff links that he gave me! How amazing are the people I continue to meet in this crazy crypto world?!?

After such a great conference I am really looking forward to the next one, but until then... 'Stache That Crypto Friends!

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[pjstafford]

First Listen to “Every Third Thought”

I just listened to David Duchovny’s highly anticipated sophomore album “Every Third Thought”.  I have only listened to it once, but am so excited about it that I wanted to capture my immediate thoughts upon first listen so that a few months or a few years from now I can come back and relive the excitement!  At some point I might do a more thought out review after several listens, but I don’t want to let this moment of the First Time I heard this album pass me by without putting down my thoughts

In case this is being read by someone who has never read one of my blogs or never met me , full disclosure is that I am a David Duchovny fan girl (heart eyes forever).  I love his writing -song lyrics, novels, television, movies.  I am a fan or his words, his imagery, his world view.  Also, I had heard six of the songs on this album performed live and two additional songs in video of his live performances of them prior to tonight. That leaves four songs off of the album for me to fully discover in the first listen.  Also, I love his freshman album.  So, the fact that I love this album already is probably not something to stop the presses and wake up the neighbors about, but even I am surprised by how much I like it.  

I was a little nervous because Sophomore albums sometime disappoint and I knew that he had been changing some of the songs I heard live.  Also, quite frankly, the live billboard performance of some of the songs was not great - although, the Paste performance was- so I was holding my breathe a little. Also, while I was excited for new tunes,  I actually was not expecting to like this album as much as the first album because I love break up albums and Hell or High Water is a break up album- so I was excited with managed expectations.  

To set the stage for the listen, the album was supposed to be available for download this Friday.  Some of us ordered in July so its been a long wait!  At some point mid afternoon I started seeing social media reports that Consequence of Sound had it for streaming along with David’s comments on the tracks.  I read the article quickly, but I was too busy adulting today to properly listen.  Finally it is the evening...I have to get up early tomorrow so couldn’t even open up a bottle of wine, am in my hotel room in Santa Fe (here for thirty days on business), turned off all the lights, got into bed thinking that it was likely as tired from adulting as I was I would be ready to sleep once the album was over.  No, it is not a lull you to sleep type of album and instead I am up blogging and will listen again before sleep.  

“Hell or High Water” is a break up album (my favorite kind) and while “Every Third Thought”  has some songs about heart break, it is not a break up album. David has become known among his fans for the phrase “Be Here Now”” which is a concept I embraced long before I ever heard of David Duchovny (Omar Khayyam is my philosopher of choice) but I, like most, sometimes fail to live up to my philosophy.  This album is a “”Be Here Now” album, but of a distinct time and place.  It is an album written by someone who has fewer years ahead of him then behind and has some regrets.  He know he should move on but needs to be here now in order to do so and is OK, really, with the age thing, and the place in time thing and the transitioning nature of this mid-fifty year old time.  (Is that a lot to read into an album lyrics?).  I will come up with a shortened way to say this with more contemplation, but that’s what the album says to me upon first listening.  I am there too- with fewer years ahead then behind- but with a lot of good times ahead as well.  I have made so many mistakes, but I can’t undo, I can’t unwin, I can’t unlose and I’m here, now, in this mid fifties place.  This album really speaks to me.  

In almost every song of “Hell or High Water” there is at least one line that is golden - worth repeating, making a cross stitch, getting a tattoo of and at least one line that you kind of shake your head and say -probably should have wordsmith that a little more.  This album seems more lyrically complex. some lyrics have layered meanings and conjures up more than one image. It is also more musically complete.  Live versions of most of the songs of “Hell or High Water” seem better because the band seems more coherent as a band than when the album was produced.  Makes sense- they have been touring together.  With the second album the band has matured together and are playing together far better - even the background singing just seems more complimentary.  It is very appealing that this is a collaborative project this time around instead of a man and his back-up musicians.  

Favorite  song off the album at first listening is “Last First Time””.  It reminds me of a blog I wrote recently about saying Goodbye to the Some days I will.  It is a song of some age, but it seems to be the most representational of the quality I like best in David’s writing - that duality of realism and magic.  The lyrics of this song seem sardonic and biting at times - talking, for instance, about the tattoo on the ring finger and, yet, also seems like a song of love and hope. There’s a beauty in the last first night you will ever stay over. There’s a hope in finding a love for the remaining third of your life.  I have not yet had my last first time.  I hope when I do it will be someone with a good sense of humor, an ability to be in the moment and a sense of joy- even with a sense of irony about the moment.  

Absolutely love the lyrics of the songs I just heard for the first time.  “Jericho” - a song about laying the dead down is a heartfelt song of both regret and love for a parent gone.  “When the Whistle blows” has great lyrics - there’s not a place called away but I need to be there (probably paraphrasing since I only heard it once) but wow, so impressed, and the music! Its the song that most made me want to dance. 

Spiral is not a song written by David, but by his band mates. There is a difference in style, but it is very good and certainly fits thematically with the album.  I didn’t really like “Roman Coin” when I heard it live and was not  that happy with the first few verses tonight as I was listening, but then at the end there is a poignant verse of the fountain and water imagery. I so want the lyrics posted so I can read them!  Much like some of the lyrics in “”Hell or High Water”” my favorite verse of lyrics might end up being in a song that I am not that fond of over-all.  

In terms of other songs that I had heard previously, I have raved about  “”Half-Life”” since I first heard it almost a year ago now in Seattle. My opinion has not changed. I think “Every third thought”” has improved over time and is an appropriate title for the album.  The most improved song from first performed live to the album is “”Mo”” and, also, speaks to the sentiment  that at this moment in time you have what you have so be content.  

Least favorite song at this point is “”Someone else’s girl.” Its a little pop for me and, while I like the musical arrangement more on the album than what I have heard previously, the changes to the lyrics and the styling of it makes it a little less hard edge.  Watch me - it will be the song I hum in the shower.  

Great album upon first listen.  Looking forward to many more listens to come. Hope it is not the last first time I will hear a new David Duchovny album.  

[floggingink]

Riverdale, “Chapter Twenty-Five: The Wicked and the Divine”

Jughead has seen more “mob movies” than I have, so I can’t verify his “classic trope,” but he’s speaking my language

I found Archie’s Devil Wears Prada errand-montage zippy and playful, much like Hiram Lodge himself

especially the direction of the construction guy’s arm clapping Archie’s shoulder to add movement to the swerving transition (not a technical term) as he steps into the trailer

Hiram’s soft V-neck sweater is, I assume, cashmere

Veronica’s look is so inseparable from collars and pearls that she has a collar made of pearls sewn into her dress

RAS wanted a Veronica-confirmation episode, so by God, he is getting one, and Veronica’s age be damned! Hiram and Hermione wanted “the same monsignor” from Veronica’s baptism, who I guess has been on leave at the Vatican for five years okay!

Archie wants to know if Veronica will have “to memorize stuff”

Veronica’s confirmation sponsor is her grandmother, which is par for the course, as is volunteering at a soup kitchen for her like 8 hours of required community service. I also had to write a report on Saint Lucy and pray a rosary in front of an abortion clinic. Veronica probably won’t have to do that, since you can’t say abortion on Riverdale

do soup kitchens have any actual paid employees, or are they all stocked with kids who just need volunteer hours/Matthew Goode’s character from The Good Wife in his spare time wearing that blue sweatshirt to characterize him as being “just that nice”?

Hiram is such a fucking soap opera star when he says Veronica has made him “the happiest father ALIVE.” like, alive?

“ISN’T SHE A MIRACLE?”

on FP’s kitchen table is the same kind of half-gallon of milk that Jughead was drinking from the morning after his birthday party. the Andrewses kept a spare half-gallon of skim milk just for Jughead in their fridge? the nicest thing Fred ever did for him

Jughead doubts it: Jughead is VERY sassy with Sheriff Keller and FP loves it!!!! because Jughead can have an anti-authoritarian ’tude WITHOUT NECESSARILY being “a gang member” at that particular moment!

FP is so crisp and put together! FP looks GREAT! what up though, Gladys?

wow I can’t believe Jughead’s article wielded so much political power that its legal ramifications echo throughout the entire episode, as if Jughead were Nellie Bly

“CAN I GET A QUOTE?” this is the Jughead that FP plainly adores

Jughead and Betty both drink skim milk, so, their wedding will be soon

are men on webcams actually fool enough to ask the webcam girls if they can MEET IN REAL LIFE? I have no knowledge about this world, but I would imagine the answer would be “Have you ever seen a film, ever?”

50 Shades of Betty: Betty looks pretty great in that severe black fucking wig and I still want an apology from Chuck specifically about dissing the wig

“Catholic chic” means veils optional, like the stole in black tie

What damn high school in America: Jughead doesn’t have to wear the preppy Lodge uniform, I see? shame

Best costume bit: Betty’s heart sweater is possibly my favorite thing she’s ever worn. I want it BADLY

ARE YOU TELLING ME HIRAM LODGE WANTS TO SUE A HIGH SCHOOL NEWSPAPER?

“DEFAMATION OF CHARACTER”? IS THERE SOMETHING HE WROTE THAT WASN’T TRUE? ARE YOU ~NOT~ BUILDING BOWLING ALLEYS ON NATIVE AMERICAN LAND? I will fucking suit up and be Jughead’s lawyer on this. as has been demonstrated, I have seen every episode of The Good Wife and can probably practice law in Illinois (for instance I know that in Illinois you only need one-person consent to secretly record a conversation)

I love Betty and Jughead being in the same room, of course, but Betty’s gentle, poking “And...did you?” is EXCEPTIONALLY cute. Betty is so cute. and sometimes scary

Jughead’s least clueless moment of the season so far is him looking back knowingly at Betty when she says maybe he would do it to “avenge Toni’s grandfather”

“WE’RE PALS.”

Jughead kind of looks great leaning against the window. like the lighting or something. God, please let me one day see the two of them making out with Betty in her cheerleading uniform

okay, I thought Betty and Jughead, IT WAS IMPLIED, had already had sex, because I was shown them waking up together after they had slept together in the trailer. apparently they LITERALLY slept together. APPARENTLY THEY HAVE NOT HAD SEX YET. I should have known, from the sleeper biceps, that Jughead was still pining IN THIS WAY, FOR THAT! I should have KNOWN Betty had not RIDDEN JUGHEAD INTO THE SUNSET YET. fuck! what am I doing!

Every triangle has three corners, every triangle has three sides: I also emotionally defend Betty’s ecru lie about not having “done anything” with anyone since the breakup since, as one will recall, immediately after her and Archie’s kiss they stared in horror at each other and have not talked about it since, thus cancelling it out as a real kiss (this is also a statute of Illinois law)

Hermione Lodge has some sort of skinny gold Lothlórien belt on over her deep merlot blazer

Archie > Dawson: Archie is sweet when he apologizes for making Pop double-check the order: “It’s more to make sure I get everything right.”

Archie hears Pop’s slip about Hiram being “the boss,” but other things happen and he FORGETS! at what inopportune time will he remember? when he’s physically embracing Jughead Jones?

although couldn’t Pop just play it off like Hiram is Archie’s boss? think on your feet, Pop

for the record I love Agent Adams and his whole deal. his plan is so insane that it might be brilliant. I just do still wish he were being played by either Sterling K. Brown or Max Greenfield

he doesn’t appreciate Archie’s attitude: “Is there a problem?” yeah, uh, Archie’s like twelve years old and not a trained undercover field agent? I love this stupid shit

oh, everyone’s being evicted from Sunnyside? if only Jughead hadn’t driven the southside’s only lawyer out of town with Kenickie Murdoch’s switchblade

OH MY GOD HERMIONE’S PANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

according to everyone’s facial expressions, Veronica is under the impression she is doing good political maneuvering inviting the McCoys to her confirmation, Hermione is stunned she did so, Veronica really wanted to sing a solo, and Josie doesn’t know why she has to fucking apologize for anything

Josie being Veronica’s “gift” from Mayor McCoy is horrifying

Sixth period is Intro to Film: Cruel Intentions is a fantastic Catholic standard, containing as it does cocaine, “experimental” girl-on-girl French kissing, Ryan Phillippe’s ass, the line “I'm the Marcia fucking Brady of the Upper East Side and sometimes I want to kill myself,” and implied step-sibling fucking, all of which I think Riverdale should include more of

the blue and red lighting inside the Wyrm is still nice. does the Wyrm even count as a dive? strippers probably wouldn’t waste their time at dives

wow there are some true beards in this crowd

okay…..the idea that Tall Boy is a better suspect than Jughead…...because he’s physically taller…..is singularly the most fantastic thing…..I have ever heard…..

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: the sound of Archie shifting on the leather of Hiram’s couch is real good

“I RESPECT A MAN WHO WOULD GO TO SUCH EXTREMES.” HIRAM PLEASE!!!!! ARCHIE IS TOO DUMB FOR THIS!!!!!!

Gay?!: Ben? who the fuck is Ben? who is BEN? who the fuck?

OH MY GOD Jughead got in to see the mayor AGAIN! is Ethel Muggs her secretary???

Jughead interrupted Mayor McCoy eating her salad at her desk

for like the third time in the series she says she’s “always liked” Jughead, which, fat lot of good that’s done him

in Riverdale there is a red uniform at the soup kitchen, because even THE POOR must abide by aesthetics

Archie doesn’t know what cutting cigars means

Archie’s shoulders are nice under that polo

Betty’s plan about “treat it like a missing person’s case” and making it like this snooping Blue and Gold intrigue thing is of course welcome as a pretense for the two of them working together (on the show’s part), but in reality it’s just the fucking bare minimum that THE AUTHORITIES should ALREADY BE FUCKING DOING THEMSELVES

at this point I went to bed and had a very gripping, sexy dream about Veronica and Jughead. Veronica and Jughead

“Damn good coffee”: Hiram floating having to “bring Archie in” on the Lodge Family Tammany Hall is only slightly less absurd than the Federal Bureau of Investigation having already done so. what does Archie need to be brought in on, exactly? he’s just Veronica’s arm candy. he barely knows what a cigar is

while it is STILL ODD that Veronica has done a 180 on her accepting her father’s criminality, she still holds Archie up as a beacon of goodness, because, like I said, shoulders, polos

Jughead’s “order of the Ophidians” as he tapes up the Missing poster is either, so far as I can tell, an extremely obscure MMORPG reference or he’s just calling them snakes, but like, in Latin

Penny didn’t die of gangrene from her blistering wound like on the Oregon trail? probably a plus

FP is in some deep pain here. this is so far beyond his worst fears about Jughead joining the Serpents that he like never even fucking considered—I NEVER FUCKING CONSIDERED IT, IT WAS FUCKING RIDICULOUS

I certainly don’t think Penny’s terms are like, PARTICULARLY OUT OF LINE

ooooh Jughead’s little snipe at his father for fridging Jason!

I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH “YOU WILL BE THE DEATH OF US,” THE ANGUISHED REALIZATION IN FP’S EYES, GLADYS STAY AWAY!!!!!

I can’t believe the sixth season of The Wire takes place in Riverdale and doesn’t even have Sonja Sohn playing Agent Adams

Alice’s angel wing-white Founding Father blouse and Betty’s textured peach sweater

Hal is REALLY skittish about Chic, considering that HE’S HIS SON, SO FAR AS WE KNOW. but Hal hordes important information until the bitter end, so he probably just knows some shit

The Blossom Whoever the fuck’s spawn: “He’s a stranger. That’s my beef.”

“It’s been ~some time~ since my last confession” is usually the most accurate clocking I could give as well

I love the very dangerous clusters of candles inside the confessional

These students are legally children: NO ONE is helping Veronica. Veronica is trying to “find her thing” like, in the dark, lit by votive candles

I loved the circle of beautiful mob wives drinking wine and talking about how praying to “the Almighty” for “forgiveness” makes them feel better #aspirational

Hiram isn’t fucking around with Mr. Man “disrespecting Pop Tate.” Pop Tate is an angel, doing his best out here in a chaotic world. his poutine is probably great!

Archie’s stuck using the wrong kind of plunger

Poppa Poutine says Hiram lost his “mojo” in “the joint”

is Poppa right? is Hiram weak? if you subtract the Andrews boys, he doesn’t seem to have any problems

The 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie was a masterpiece: Josie is back with killer witchy earrings, a lovely dress, and a fierce hold on the remainder of her personal agency

of course it’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” but with harps. you know the Verve doesn’t get any royalties from that song? are the Rolling Stones the worst band in the world?

I LIKE THE SWOOSH FROM LARRY OR WHOEVER AND POPPA BACK TO ARCHIE WATCHING THEM

the back of the church is bathed in purple, the altar is yellow, the monsignor is in BRIGHT PALM SUNDAY RED, and this is what church should have always been like

Fwoopy hair is the best hair: Hermione’s strong-shouldered structured white jacket is amazing and Jughead forgoed his hat, to be respectful

Cheryl’s a chaos angel from hell: slightly strangely, Cheryl isn’t there at all this episode, but what we are truly robbed of is seeing what she would have worn to the confirmation

Veronica has a SUPER-SWEET very light pink/purple manicure!

Summer + Blair = Veronica: you better believe when Veronica was asked if she renounced Satan I was like, IS SHE GOING TO LOOK AT HER FATHER AND STORM OUT OF THAT CHURCH????? I THOUGHT SHE MIGHT!!!!!

instead I got an amazing thematic light show about Veronica choosing to believe in Archie’s unflagging internal compass and following his light (“the light of the Lord”!)

HE GIVES HER A TINY HAPPY NOD WHILE SHE’S THINKING, LIKE “YEAH BABE I KNOW YOU RENOUNCE SATAN!!!!!”

Veronica was rich: Veronica does look like a fucking angel up there

wow, Dilton isn’t DJing the afterparty? weird

why are Betty and Archie standing together AT ALL?

Abuelita is 100% right about pinching Archie’s cheek and Archie goes with it because he is respectful

Jughead eats: Jughead is so tormented he neglects the buffet!!!!!!

Jughead’s suit is very nice. I like the progression of his wearing better and better suits

Betty takes the news of Jughead’s CONFESSION that he “cut” Penny pretty stoically, as she did boil a guy once

POOR JUG IS RIGHT, IT DIDN’T EVEN MATTER!

Closed Captioning tells me the junkyard guy’s name is “JUNKYARD STEVE,” MY MAN

“If only we lived in a town where the answer could be no.”

Sexy, aesthetic Southside: Jughead in his leather jacket OVER HIS SUIT JACKET is pretty good!

“BY ANY CHANCE WAS THIS GENTLEMAN TALL?” OH MY GOD!!!! CASE FUCKING CLOSED BOYS!!!!!!!

Hermione hauling Veronica back for the photographer

Archie looking up from behind the closing art deco elevator doors

The female gaze: Archie is of course so handsome and perfectly proportioned in his suit. his handsomeness is such a given that I take it wholly for granted, like how when not suffering an allergy attack I can breathe from both nostrils but when one hits and I’m sneezing up my guts I’m like, air coming in from both nostrils? true bliss, I’ll never forget it again

God, did he get rid of his tailored cranberry Blossom suit? not the WORST crime committed in Riverdale, but probably worthy of eviction

Fifth period is AP English: as @hangingonyourwords noted, Archie knowing the word “coup” is VERY surprising! GOOD, ARCHIE

Hiram Lodge is, I think, listening to that song from Carmen while pouring himself a stiff drink, the massive Rory Gilmore portrait of Veronica over one shoulder and the blue light of an antipodean sea streaming in over the other, using a rotary phone to call in A MURDER

Tall Boy having to suffer interrogation by Jughead, whom he surely must have always despised, is his final indignity 

Jughead calls Betty “one of us,” which has not been given enough fanfare by ANYONE in the show! Betty is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT as much a Serpent as Jughead, unless Jughead’s mother is a Serpent, except that she hasn’t had to shout their stupid rules into someone’s face yet

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: “YOU HAVEN’T ANSWERED MY SON’S QUESTION.”

the poor Serpents have been twisted around rich northsiders’ fingers for so long that they don’t have any fucking idea what to be doing when NOT at the behest of a blackmailer or bribery. I don’t know what it means to be a Serpent except that it means you’re poor and comely. and VERY civic-minded

“You’re a Judas, Tall Boy. And an idiot.”

Gay.: Sweet Pea raises both his arms to vote

FP’s gonna run Tall Boy out of town. a word of advice: one town over is not far enough

hell, Archie’s seen all those mob movies too! he and Jughead must’ve watched them together while Jughead was sleeping in his bedroom

Archie’s speech to Veronica is GOOD, ARCHIE, and what Veronica gets out just reinforces my thought that Hiram is literally starting a second town under Mayor McCoy’s nose, which would concern me expect that it has been definitely shown that even after things are executed on Riverdale I confuse myself and am invariably exactly wrong

I would probably kiss Archie too if he looked at me like that and said “I’m with you,” which I think explains Betty

HAHAAAAAAAAAAA OKAY!!!!!! SOMETHING IN THE WATER IN FP’S TRAILER

Jughead’s suspenders? a startling plus!

I like the quietness of “Maybe we can ask Veronica on Monday.” it reminded me of Archie’s face-saving some-other-time-definitely promise to go to the library with Jughead

“Maybe we should just investigate quietly until we know more.”

BLESSED BE THE CHILDREN and Jughead’s brusque scoff at himself for saying “my darkness”

in a move that the last few episodes haven’t shown him as having enough sense to make, Jughead puts his hand, not on Betty’s hand, but directly on the skirt of her dress

also Jughead knows that dress zippers have a point where you think it’s gone all the way down but really you’ve got a little further to go otherwise you can’t get the waistline over the hips? Jug’s got a little bit of game going on!

I like the silhouette of Jughead’s Adam’s apple

while Jughead is doing an excellent job delicately checking in with Betty’s sacral chakra, with his bare hand, I don’t want to overlook either his own gently crossed ankles as he holds her or his AMAZING SOCKS

when Betty tells him she needs to tell him something, he EXHALES a “What?” before he says “What is it?” WHOOP

she is missing a pretty sick meatloaf or pork of some more at her mother’s dinner table

I didn’t think there was a physiognomically scarier white guy around than Chic himself, but I was wrong!!!! it’s definitely that guy at the door!!!!!!

oh shit, Archie sort of got somebody (else) killed. this is like when Jughead didn’t mean to but definitely got somebody’s face beaten in by Tall Boy and Serpent Baby—holy shit what happened to that kid!!!! where did Serpent Baby go???

Certified pedigree: OKAY SENDING THE STATUE HEAD TO HIRAM LODGE VIA A CONFIRMATION “PRESENT” TO HIS DAUGHTER IS A PRETTY GREAT MOVE. I ASSUME THIS WAS YOU, FP JONES. FP IS REALLY GOOD AT PUTTING WORDLESS THREATENING MESSAGES INTO BOXES

in the shot bingo of Riverdale, the middle box would have to be Betty coming through her front door and pausing because she hears something suspicious

Mädchen Amick, MÄDCHEN AMICK: the squishy sound effect of the rags on the wet floor? her perfect hair? her bright blue turtleneck? “Elizabeth, did you lock the front door?” Alice is already three steps ahead!!! Alice Alice Alice!!!!!

Alice and FP have now both cleaned up somebody else’s murder’s cranial blood (I’m assuming Chic clocked this guy, which means it was probably Melody), further proof they belong together

Please protect Betty: Betty fucking Jughead probably saved her life

Next week: Cheryl shoots a bow and arrow!!! into my heart!!!!!!!!!

[blueboxesandtrafficcones]

All I Want for Christmas is You (Naked) - Chapter 4

Today, the Doctor and the Tylers arrive at the house where they’ll be for the Christmas holidays.

@chiaroscuroverse @dwsecretsanta

@timepetalsprompts - Eccleston bingo - hand porn

@doctorroseprompts​ because the whole fic’s going to be a bedsharing/fake relationship Doctor/Rose catastrophe™

Beta’s by the wonderful @stupidsatsuma

NSFW

Masterlist

The next morning, Rose startled awake to the sound of her mother pounding on her door, calling her name.

“Get up! The car’ll be here in an hour.”

“Ugh.” Rose flopped back onto the mattress, unsurprised to find she was alone. 

Grimacing at the sticky, messy way she felt, particularly between her sore legs, she crawled out of bed, threw on a robe, and headed for a shower.

Forty five minutes later, she walked into the living room to find the Doctor seated on the couch, tinkering with the toaster, sonic in hand.

“Morning.” Rose yawned, still half asleep as she bent to kiss him.

“Morning!” he beamed back. “Tea’s over there, just the way you like it.”

“Ta.” Grabbing the mug, she settled beside him to let the heat and caffeine wake her up.

They sat in silence, content just to be together while she came slowly to and he ‘fixed’ the toaster. The only thing missing from their usual morning routine was the hum of the TARDIS. When Jackie finally appeared, ready to go, she stopped to stare for a moment at the sweet scene they made.

“Well,” she started, amused when they jumped apart guiltily. “I’m about ready. Got your bag?”

Rose pointed to the suitcase sitting by the table.  “Everything’s in there.”

Jackie pursed her lips, but let it slide, not missing that they’d be sharing a bag. “The car should be here soon.  Let’s go down now, yeah? You’ll get the bags, won’t you Doctor?”

Without waiting for an answer, she strode out the door leaving Rose to laugh at the incredulous look on the alien’s face.

Kissing him on the cheek, she skipped out behind her mother without a word.

-

“You said car,” Rose said blankly, staring at the Bentley idling in front of them, the Doctor already helping to load the bags in.

“That’s what Mo told me,” Jackie replied faintly.

“Are we going or what?” the Doctor called, irritable.

The Tyler women slowly made their way over, Rose allowing her mother to slide in first, before crawling in – she’d already decided her best bet was to stay between Jackie and the Doctor at all times possible. He climbed in next, settling beside her with no thought to her personal space.

“You really don’t know anything about this boyfriend?”  Rose asked once they were on their way.

“No, she wouldn’t say, other than that he was rich, handsome, and spectacular in bed.”

The Doctor made an odd wheezing sound, and Rose put her hand on his knee to both comfort him and keep him from throwing himself out of the moving car.

“Well, that’s good. But no name, origin, nothing?”

“Nope,”  Jackie shrugged, nonplussed. “Find out when we get there, I suppose.”

“Right. Well, how’s Bev doing?”

“Well, wait ‘til you hear this…” And Jackie was off, hardly stopping for breath for the next two hours, to the point where as soon as the car pulled into a long driveway and stopped in front of a gigantic house, the Doctor all but leapt out and kissed the ground.

The Tylers followed at a much more sedate pace, Jackie going over to flirt with the driver while Rose checked on the Doctor.

“All right?” she asked, rubbing his arm sympathetically.

He glared at her. “The Shadow Proclamation has articles on torture, you know.  Never mind your own Geneva Convention.”

“I promised to make it up to you,” Rose reminded him.

“Oh, you will,” the Doctor vowed. “Right now, I’m thinking the first ever performance of Hamlet. Did you know it’s over four hours long?”

She grimaced. “I think I’d rather pay in sexual favors, ta.”

“Nope. Hamlet. And maybe a few others.”

He began to stride off towards the house, before doing an abrupt about-face. “That’s in addition to the favors, mind.”

Sighing, Rose followed him up to the house, where the door had opened and Mo was currently hugging Jackie.

“I deserve that.”

-

“Rose!” Mo cried, throwing her arms around her. “Good to see you!”

“Hey, Mo, Happy Christmas,” Rose replied, hugging her cousin back. “Thanks so much for having us.”

“I’m glad you happened to be passing through London, were able to make it. Come on in.”  She ushered the trio into the grand entryway, making Jackie stop and stare in shock.

“It’s like on telly!” she gushed, spinning in a circle.

Rose managed to reasonably keep her cool, having been in plenty of castles and manor houses in her time with the Doctor, but even she had to admit it looked spectacular, especially all decorated for Christmas. “It’s gorgeous.”

The Doctor made a vague sound of agreement, going over to the honest-to-God medieval suit of armor in the corner and frowning at the helmet.

“Right, well, do you want a tour and then to see your rooms, or vice versa?”

“Tour,” the Tylers chorused, before grinning at each other.

“Right, let’s start here. This is the formal dining room, it can seat up to thirty…”  Mo lead them around the first floor expertly, showing the living rooms, game room, and library, each more lavishly decorated for the holiday than the last. By the time they returned to the foyer to go upstairs, Rose was admittedly jealous and Jackie was almost green with envy.

“Does he have any single friends?” she wanted to know as they walked upstairs, not noticing Rose and the Doctor fall behind.

“All right?” Rose asked, taking his hand. He gave her a look, squeezing her palm.

“Peachy keen.”

“Doctor.”

He sighed. “I’m here for you, Rose, and it is what it is.  But after this, we’re diving into the first trouble we can find, yeah?”

“Promise.” Seeing they were momentarily alone, she reached up to peck his cheek.

“Rose!” her mother called, and they hurried to see the other women standing by a closed door.

“I was just saying this is our room.”  Mo explained, letting them peek into the opulent bedroom, done up in heavy brocades and antique furniture – it was a room fit for a king.

She pointed out that down the hall was their bathroom, a private office, an annex to the library, and another two bedrooms, before leading them upstairs.

“This is where guests would stay. There’s five bedrooms, two of which have been upgraded to en suites. Those are the ones I’m giving you, as you’re our only overnight guests.” She led them to one door, saying as she opened it, “Jackie, this is your room.”

Rose took one look and knew it would be a battle to get her mother to leave on the 27th; if Jackie Tyler had all the money in the world, her room would be spectacularly close to what they were looking at. Leaving Jackie to delight in her room, Mo guided Rose and the Doctor to the far end of the hall.

“I figured you’d want to be as far from your mum as possible. And don’t worry – the walls are very thick, sound doesn’t carry well.” She winked, throwing open the door to show where they would be sleeping for the next several nights.

Rose’s jaw dropped, slowly entering the room. The four-poster bed was something out of a story, and there was a real fire roaring in the fireplace. It looked exactly like what she’d seen in Henry II’s bedchambers when he’d accidentally tried to seduce her a few months earlier.

“Wow,” she breathed, belatedly remembering to protest, “Oh, we’re not tog-”

Mo snorted, waving a hand. “Whatever you need to tell Jackie. But you only brought one bag for the two of you – I can read that writing clear as anything. Trust me, you won’t be disturbed down here.”

“Thanks,” Rose said gratefully, deciding to leave the issue alone. After all, Mo was only assuming the truth.

“Course ducks. Now, I’ll leave you to get settled in, whatever. Remember the informal sitting room? Let’s meet there in, say, two hours?”

Rose gave her cousin another squeeze, whispering her thanks, before making sure the door was shut and locked behind her.

“So, we’ve got two hours, and I’ll need one to get ready.  What’ll we do during that time?” Rose teased, turned to find the Doctor had flopped himself onto the bed, and was staring up at the ceiling with a confused look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t get it.” He gestured for her to join him. “Why would you put a mirror up there?” He pointed up, and sure enough, there was a large mirror attached to the top of the bed.

Her lips twitched in amusement as she settled on her back beside him. “So you can watch.”

“Watch what, someone sleep?” He turned his head towards her. “It’s pointless.”

“No.” She let out an embarrassed laugh, never having expected to have to explain something like that to a nine hundred year old alien. “So you can… watch.” She said in her best seductive voice, turning her head to face him. She saw the moment understanding hit, as his eyes widened and his mouth fell open.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Mmhmm. Giac had one over his bed, nice and big.”

“Giac? You mean – Rose! You said you didn’t shag him,” he complained, leaning up on an elbow.

“I didn’t! I did get a tour, and he tried, but I turned him down flat, and not just cause his breath didn’t half stink.” She giggled at the outraged look on his face, and eventually he settled down.

“And it’s supposed to, what – enhance the experience?” he asked derisively.

“Yep.” Rose popped the letter, considering their reflection above them. It had seemed absurd three days ago when handsome Giacomo had explained it to her, but now… She watched in the mirror as her feet separated and her knees fell apart, biting her lip at the surprising trickle of moisture the image evoked.

The Doctor was still rambling, and she tuned in only long enough to know he didn’t need her for the conversation. Somewhat fascinated, she idly brought her hand to her stomach, watching in the mirror as she ran it over her abdomen. Feeling her heartbeat begin to pick up, she tried running her fingers over the seam of her leggings, exposed by how her dress had fallen around her hips. She had to bite her lip at the sensation when she pressed the seam against her clit. Liking the feeling combined with the visual, she slipped her hand inside the leggings, grateful she’d skipped knickers under them.

Rose felt herself grow steadily wetter, somehow finding it more of a turn on to only be able to see a hint of what she was doing, while still experiencing the full feeling as she lightly traced her folds with a single fingertip.

A strange, strangled noise to the side of her said the Doctor had noticed what she was doing, and a quick glance proved he was watching the mirror in rapt fascination.

“Are you…” He trailed off, moving closer to press himself against her side, glancing from her hand next to him to the image above.

“Am I…” she teased, having to momentarily close her eyes when she brushed her clit.

“Are you going to keep going like that?” His voice was husky, his blue eyes had gone very dark, and even in the mirror she could see the growing tent in his jeans.

“Maybe.” She pumped the tip of her middle finger inside herself a few times, unable to tell if the growing wetness was due more to her touch, or the sensuality of the situation.

“Do it,” the Doctor commanded, palming himself.

“All right,” she agreed, watching him rub his hand along his zip.  “But only if you do.”

He froze, turning his head to look at her. Pursing his lips, he stared for a long moment before asking awkwardly, “naked?”

“Is there any other way?” She teased, quickly peeling off her leggings and sweater dress.  Within seconds, she was completely naked beside him, watching expectantly. Her left hand palmed a breast while the right wandered aimlessly through her folds.

He hesitated, hand on his zip, looking from her to the mirror several times before standing next to the bed. He reached for his belt, but had barely begun when suddenly Rose was there.

“Let me,” she offered before taking her time to undo the belt and push the jeans from his hips. Ignoring his pants for the moment, she pushed off the leather jacket and slipped her hands under the hem of his jumper, pulling it up slowly. Leaning down, Rose brushed her lips over every inch of skin she revealed, spending an excessive amount of time just above his boxers, carding her nose through his happy trail.

The Doctor watched, rapt. She was crouched in front of him, bare bum swaying in the air with her movement. When he looked down, the visual was almost overwhelming, seeing her mouth so close to where he wanted it.

He grunted at the stimuli, cradling the back of her neck with one hand. Eventually, she pulled the jumper off, but instead of going for his pants she nudged him back slightly so she could lean halfway off it to reach his boots, carefully unlacing each one while he bent forward to both hands over her arse and back. He must have decided she was taking too long, because just as she finished untying the second boot he brought his hand down on her left cheek in a firm slap.

“Oi!” she cried indignantly as she made him lift his foot so she could remove the boot, the Doctor steadying himself by resting his hand on the cheek he’d hit.

“Sorry.” She could hear the smirk in his voice as he moved the offending hand down to rub through her wetness, one finger pumping inside.

“Liar,” she huffed, even as she slid back on the bed, dislodging his finger but leaving her right at eye level with a bit of him that looked awfully happy to see her.

Rose glanced up to see him watching her intently, and pursed her lips. It took all she had not to laugh when his hips bobbed forward slightly, a hopeful look on his face.

Propping herself up on her forearms, she leaned forward to take him in, pleased at the deep groan he let out at the feel of her mouth. She brought one hand up to lightly rub at him while she sucked his tip.

Eventually she pulled back, letting him go with a soft pop and moving back to her original position under the mirror.

Turning her head, she found him watching her with what could only be described as a sulk, arms crossed, manhood standing proud and angry, an unsatisfied red.

Crooking her finger at him, she pointed at the mirror. “You wanted to watch, remember?”

With a put upon sigh, the Doctor climbed onto the bed, retaking his place beside her. “So, we’re just gonna lie here and touch ourselves and watch in the mirror?” he asked, frowning.

Rose rolled her eyes. “Boy, way to make that sound dead sexy. Yes, that’s what we’re gonna do.” Leaning up slightly, she caught sight of an old fashioned, floor length movable mirror in the corner, and instantly began concocting plans for later.

“I don’t like that plan,” he informed her, even as he rubbed one hand along his happy trail before taking himself in hand.

She shrugged.

“You do you, Doctor, and I’ll do me.” She smirked at her own pun, before firmly turning her attention to the mirror above them.

And so they did.

[messiahtqde637-blog]

Executive Coach - How To Pick The One That's Right For You

"I have the opportunity, as a doctor, of meeting with females in my workplace every day to talk about signs and concerns related to the natural aging process. The assessments that I provide can go in many instructions whether it hormones, emotions, physical requirements, or mental requirements. I ought to also beginning this article by saying that these women I meet services in every walk of life and are in every phase of life from young to old. I offer care to executives, regional stars, doctor, school instructors, stay-at-home mothers, ministry spouses, building workers, and nearly any role you can picture. After years of doing this, I can state without a doubt that no one, no matter professional status or obligation, is exempt from the effect of depression. Each time I do an assessment, I constantly touch on the issue of anxiety and stress and anxiety to totally evaluate the reasons for various issues. The ""cause"" of anxiety is in some cases recognizable, however frequently is not. For some, anxiety can be explained as an intrinsic propensity to anxiety due to a strong family history of the disorder; for others it's induced by stress and psychological trauma; for others it's a slow downward decrease due to kids transports unhealthy relationships and bad socials media; for others it's the constant feelings of failure or not conference expectations; and for others it's due to endocrine and biological shifts of the body due to some other disease state. The truth is that whatever the cause, the impacts can be considerable and lasting for some ladies who struggle with clinical depression.

These are the hardcore stats about depression so you have an understanding of how substantial this is:

- The World Health Organization recognized depression as the 3rd most important cause of illness burden worldwide in 2004, and it is estimated that, worldwide, anxiety will be the second leading reason for special needs by the end of 2020.

- In the U.S., depression is the most typical kind of mental illness (affecting 26% of adults).

- Women experience anxiety two times more than guys.

- Bringing the data ""closer to home"" (so to speak), I did an audit of charts that I keep in the workplace and understood that 88% of my customers responded ""Yes! I have experienced anxiety"". Quarter specified they had actually experienced it one or two times in their life. Twenty-three percent said they experienced anxiety one or two times a year.

- Then to bring it ""really close to home"", I found that anxiety among those that I take place to understand remain in ministry (or simply ministry spouses) experienced a typical age beginning of depression in their early thirties. That's our YOUNG WOMEN in MINISTRY. WOW!!! The majority experienced depression at or near 5 to six years in their ministry profession. Mentoring girls in ministry are plainly required and crucial. The very first five years have a HUGE effect emotionally for those starting their journey in ministry.

What should a lady do if she has constant sensations of anxiety?

Talk to your partner, talk to your most relied on mentor or good friend, and go see your physician. Among the greatest errors made by well-meaning individuals is to provide someone who is crying out for aid the old ""it'll get better"" pat of dismissal on the shoulder. That, sadly, is often what takes place when someone attempts to express the feelings of remaining in a deep blue sea reasonable state. Lots of women and especially girls become confused that depression is a state of weak point and find themselves very vulnerable in reaching out because of the viewpoints and suggested remedies of others. Or, they just soon realize that it's the ""thing I dare not speak of"" because of the reactions of the past. If there is something I have actually discovered over the years, it is to take these conversations about anxiety very seriously and ask the right questions to direct each female, as an individual, towards the proper aid. Often having an outlet to share feelings and aggravations is all that is required (together with terrific studies of the Word naturally), but constantly keep in mind that from time to time, there requires to be medical intervention.

In covering this up, I want to end on the power that faith holds in the battle with anxiety. Maybe it's more understandable to discuss the effect of a skewed perspective in this way. I once had a restroom scale that was clearly broken and unreliable. I might step on the scale and it would display 108 pounds. That appeared terrific up until my seven-year-old daughter and my partner each stepped on it and it exposed the exact very same number. The scale was obviously broken, however I believe we as ladies want to use a faulty scale to identify our status in life. Plain and basic, you can't utilize society's unreliable ""self-worth"" scale to identify YOUR own self-regard. I constantly inform women not to get their hands caught in the comparison trap. It will fracture you and your spirit in a heart beat. The bible is clear on the reality that we are each extremely preferred by God. No doubt, our earthly life will bring with its trials, temptations, loss, and often defeat, however God's view people does not change and is not faulty in any way. The bible states that He is the splendor and the lifter of our heads. (Ps. 3:3) There will be times when we need to utilize the scripture to re-evaluate and re-calibrate our view of ourselves.

I wish to tell you what God needs to say about you (By the way, His scale is never broken).

Mark: we are to be followers and not skeptics.

John: Christ's friend, selected, and a recipient.

Romans: Justified, redeemed, without regret, and holy

Corinthians: A new production, fixed up.

Ephesians: blessed picked, redeemed, forgiven, God's craftsmanship

Timothy: saved and called

Peter: a living stone, established, picked, royal, God's own, and a partaker.

Each of us might state that ""He likes me the most!"" and we would be right. I firmly believe that God is our ultimate Source and we constantly require to be aiming to Him. I also think that he has actually called and equipped pastors, leaders, mentors, and healthcare professionals to minister to others who require a helping hand and a thoughtful heart as they struggle through the depression. I believe it's the time we end up being sensitive to others and particularly to those that are younger in ministry. Our actions and suggestions might mean all the difference ""ON THE PLANET"". Literally."