#its been a while since I was a bather

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not sharing clients with my coworker?

This submission is using fake names for privacy.

So I'm going to preface this by saying I'm very inexperienced in my line of work. I'm a dog bather, and unlike my other two coworkers Andrea (groomer) and Kelly (fellow bather), this is my first time in a job where I work with animals so I'm still trying to get in the groove on how to act with the dogs and how to do my job. My coworkers know I'm inexperienced and said they're willing to assist me in getting better, which I appreciate.

This whole thing started yesterday when I noticed I had 3 dogs scheduled under me, and none for Kelly, which is a rarity. I was excited to have so many clients under me in one day, since it would be plenty of experience for me. I didnt think anything of the difference in our clientele, since there have been days where i had none and she had plenty, and I never took it personally.

While i was drying my second dog of the day, I noticed my third client was coming in. I decided to ask Kelly if she could continue drying my dog while i checked in my next dog. She said she'd only dry my dog if she could put it under her name and I said no, because i was going to complete the rest of the groom; I just wanted her to dry the dog while i was away for like 5 minutes. She said i could do it myself. I brushed off the rude comment and checked in my next dog before continuing with dog #2.

Fast forward to today, i noticed a woman in the salon waiting to be served. Since Kelly and Andrea were chit-chatting in the tub room, I talked to her and she said she wanted a nail trim for her dog. Since i couldn't find the dog on our schedule, i realized it was a walk-in and decided to put the dog under my name since i had nothing going on.

While scheduling I misclicked and accidentally put the dog under Kelly, before realizing the mistake and put the dog under my name instead. Keep in mind that all changes made to a dog's appointment gets logged.

After that, I was putting the dog onto my table when Kelly walked in. She noted the breed of the dog (one of her favorites) and checked the notes, and saw that the dog had been "originally" put under her name. She immediately asked if I had stolen that dog from her and I told her no, it was a walk in, I had just misclicked when making the appointment.

Just then Andrea walks in, telling Kelly that the dog was supposed to be hers. Immediately, Kelly blows up at me and called me a liar, that i was a client thief, that I was selfish, etc. I tried to explain that it really was a walk-in and that i wasn't lying, and Andrea quickly realized what was up.

She explained that she had been on the phone with the client, realized what breed the dog was, and made a mental note that she wanted Kelly to do the dog since it was her favorite breed. However she told the client to treat it as a walk-in and come in whenever she wanted, which meant no appointment could be made until she showed up.

FINALLY Kelly believed me, but she didn't apologize for yelling at me. Instead she told me that she was annoyed with me because I never share clients with her even though she shares clients with me.

My gripe is that I have never asked her to share any of her dogs with me. The only thing ive asked of her is to let me clip her dogs nails on occasion so i could get more experience and become more comfortable. And that was ONLY when Andrea (salon manager) didn't have any dogs to let me practice on.

I can kinda see where shes coming from, it can be frustrating to have no clients while your coworkers have plenty. And I can see how she thinks im being selfish for not reciprocating her "generosity." And its not like we make commission on each dog yet, so it doesnt matter which dog goes to who.

But on the other hand, like i said, ive NEVER asked her for any of her dogs. She doesn't have to share them with me, and i dont expect her to. But she expects me to share mine with her, despite knowing that i need the extra practice.

So AITA?

Tl;dr-

Coworker is mad at me because I dont share clients with her like she does with me; but I've never asked her for any clients, and its well-known in the salon that i need the practice and experience

[grimmywrites]

10 Things About Me

I was tagged by the talented @patiently-burning. I’m happy to welcome you to the Ghostsoap brainrot, especially with @valiants amazing art. My favorite Ghostsoap artist! Their work makes me feral; I’d kill for them -- or at least write for them. Below for random facts about me!

1.) I double majored in Archaeology and Creative Writing in college. I idolized Lara Croft and Indiana Jones and then, luckily, fell in love with the *actual* science of archaeology and Roman history so I’ve managed to stick with it. 2.) I’ve lived on and off in Italy (semesters where I taught abroad) since 2017; and a couple times before that for my own study abroad program and archaeological digs/dives. 3.) I’m a runner! I usually run an hour, but sometimes I run up to 9 miles a morning not only to stay in shape but as meditation. I listen to audiobooks while I do it!

4.) I worked as a dog bather for a couple years to get money to go to grad school and then in a dog ‘boutique’ because I love dogs so much. I love all animals, dogs just happen to be my favorite.

5.) I’m a huge Resident Evil fan. I’ve been playing the games since they first came out (I was a little kid and had no clue what I was doing lol). I can literally rant on and on about the lore and timeline; og re4 and re2 are the best but I love the remakes and all the new fans!

6.) I’ve been published for scholarly writing, but it’s my dream to write fiction, primarily historical fiction.

7.) I’m an oddball who likes nerdy things *and* sports - I played varsity softball in high school and I’m still on an adult co rec team!

8.) I stopped writing fanfiction for a couple years while working on my thesis for grad school. I started writing again for Nellis because I reread some of my old stuff and wondered why I ever stopped with these characters. Writing them feels like slipping on my most comfortable shoes or a favorite shirt. After I read that stuff I got metaphorically slapped upside the head with the idea for Retread (the ending in particular)... and let’s just say it’s grown a lot from what I had envisioned; but I’m a gardener writer, so that makes sense.

9.) Besides RE, my favorite game in the world is an obscure RPG called Shadow Hearts. It’s a Lovecraftian horror game set in China and Europe just before WW1 breaks out - it deals with horror, the occult, and some zany characters. I cry every time I play it and its sequel (Shadow Hearts: Covenant). Most people like the second game better, but I find the first one to be creepier, have better music, and the characters are more interesting. The sequel IS a good game, though.

10.) I secretly wish I had more time! I often feel guilty because I’m more of a writer in fandom than a reader because I’m so busy with life smacking me every which way. I also wish I could output more, but alas, we can only do our best, right?

Thanks so much for tagging me! I’m not apologizing for the love of Soap or Ghost. That was a well written campaign! I’m going to tag more than one person: @peculiarreality-main and @ohlookapan!

[toadkisses]

alistairs years in review

alistair has decided to publicly journal a summary of whats been going on the past two/three years or so. nobody is expected or obligated to read it, im just nostalgic for when i used to update my blog very frequently w/ life events :-)

this does contain descriptions of animal neglect btw though!

early 2020 i went to dog grooming school, i really loved my mentor. it was the first time since i was a kid that i looked forward to school! it was especially nice for a while because i was the only student for a bit. part of my education was handling phone calls and talking to clients, and i told my mentor how people have been trying to get me to be comfortable on the phone for years and no one has yet. but wouldnt you know! i really did get there!

i like working with the dogs, and i find caring for them to be really enriching. im also pretty good at it! i like grooming poodles the most, their hair texture is really great to work with.

a few months in though, we went into lockdown and i didnt get back to school for a while. eventually i did return, and there were other students, so it was cool that i got to have one-on-one education and companionship too?

before i graduated i had a job offer, a salon reached out to my mentor looking for new graduates. when i graduated my mentor hugged me because im one of her favorites :-)

the new salon was an interesting experience. there were three other groomers, a bather, and a receptionist. they were all very welcoming and involved me in conversation, gave me advice. i liked them and felt comfortable, the position also had some pretty nice benefits. however, after a few weeks i noticed they had a very different opinion on how to correct dog behaviors.

physically disciplining dogs is a divisive issue in the animal care community. i’ve always been against it, and my mentor was as well. however, it is commonplace in some practices to hit a dog if it is being aggressive or reactive. i very strongly disagree with it, but i wanted to give context that it is considered acceptable by many people who work with dogs.

my coworkers weren’t as extreme as some people i’ve heard about, but my supervisor still whacked a dogs muzzle with a metal comb when it whined and pulled away while she was brushing its tangles out. spankings were not uncommon.

they also made “jokes” and comments about gay and trans people that made me VERY uncomfortable. i wasnt out to any of them, so my supervisor felt comfortable commenting about how many gay people they had apply to the position and how it was so weird. when a coworker talked about a same gender client tipping her well and complimenting her appearance, and joked that it was because the client had a crush on her, the receptionist yelled, “FAGGOT!!!!” to much laughter.

i wound up talking to the owner (who was not a groomer or regularly in the shop) and resigned. i was there for maybe two months? i wish it had worked out, and the owner took me seriously and wanted me to stay while he instituted new policies, but i think it would have been very obvious who the whistleblower was since i was the only new person in the salon, haha. my mentor was really supportive and encouraged me to find a job elsewhere, and helped me look at options. she’s great!

after about a month, i applied to a salon near my home. a week later, i got a call from the doggy daycare i worked at for multiple years previously, and they wanted me to come over and groom for them. i found out later that they were in the process of buying the salon i applied to, which is how they knew i was looking for a job.

the center is connected to a vet office, and they told me they were in the process of opening a grooming branch for dogs being boarded. there was only one other groomer at the moment, and i’d be assisting her until the client base grew enough for both of us to be actively grooming. i was happy enough with this when it was presented.

i was happy to be back in the daycare environment, since it was familiar to me and i knew most of the staff pretty well. i was working with a groomer with about ten years experience, who was about 50, and we got along well.

issues became apparent fairly quickly, though. the room we were grooming in was in a windowless basement, so it got up to 80 degrees fahrenheit and 80% humidity at some times. the lighting was pretty poor. there was black mold under the sink, which i had actually found a year earlier while working there, and it hadnt been addressed since.

sometimes when grooming, one will have to stop the groom or do a less polished job than one would like if the dog is being aggressive or is clearly overstressed. other times, a dog will have health conditions that make it impossible to groom in a normal salon environment. when this happens, the usual course of action is to recommend that the dog be taken to a veterinary groomer, so they can be given medical support during the groom, by people who are trained to handle behavioral or health issues.

neither i nor my coworker were aware when we took the job that we would be getting veterinary groom clients.

you see neglect cases every so often when you are a groomer, and its never pleasant. matted fur makes every step a dog takes painful. it constricts bloodflow to the skin, so when you shave the dog, the blood rushes through previously bound vessels, and they can bleed through their skin. even if they dont, it still feels painful, but the mats have to come off, or theyll just get worse. mats can hide fungal or bacterial infections, or wounds, or bugs, or waste material. and, since its painful, and the dogs arent used to being groomed and dont understand, theyre often combative. im obviously very sympathetic, and would never blame a dog for acting aggressively under these circumstances. but i still have to avoid getting bit!

before working at the vets, i would usually see neglect cases about once a month. and i would be patient, and help the dog feel better, and was usually able to walk away feeling more good that i had helped it, than sad that it was necessary for me to.

at the vets, we were seeing neglect cases almost every day. we were left alone in a room with a dog that one of the vets was scared to get close to, and expected to shave his entire body. the dogs didnt get any sort of sedative or calming agent, because the vet office hadnt established any such protocol yet. and even though he had scars on his neck from a shock collar, by bringing a dog to the groomers, in the eyes of the law, the owner isnt neglecting it.

every day had the two of us in a hot, poorly lit room, me trying to hold a thrashing, panicked dog still enough for my coworker to groom it. even the normal clients we got still had to be done in a difficult environment.

the emotional toll was intense, and i gave them my two weeks notice after a few months. the owner of the clinic has known me since i was a teen, and tried very hard to keep me. and again, i wish it could have worked out. but the physical environment wasnt suited to grooming, and i was not up for burning myself out on grooming when i had graduated six months prior.

i still live at home, and since i had been suicidal, my family was understanding with me taking a break from work, and i was lucky enough to be able to.

im going to cut this here, but im planning on writing more about my dreadful medical experiences and how my darling perfect girlfriend and i got together later :-)

[theadventurek9]

@flannelmoth I agree that average pet owners need more info! Typically fur care is not that hard if you do it right and keep up on it. The problems start when you neglect it for a long time or do not do a thorough job. My time working in a grooming salon as a bather really showed me all levels of brushing from matted head to tail and perfectly maintained.

These are the tools I use for Aayla’s coat. Left to right is a metal comb, coat king, bristle brush and grooming shears.

The most important item here is the metal comb. If you have any pet that has a medium to long coat you need a good comb. That is the main thing I use to get out undercoat. This goes for non-shedding dogs with hair as well. You need to comb down to the skin. When I comb through all of Aayla’s coat without the comb getting caught in anything I know she is at her best.

Next I have the coat king. BE AWARE THAT THIS HAS BLADES ON THE INSIDE OF THE CURVED TEETH. You CAN cut a dog with these. You can also bruise/irritate the skin if you push too hard. You can over brush and damage the healthy coat with this. Why do I have it then? It is amazing for breaking up mats. (Those blades cut through them) and pulling out undercoat, impacted or not. I mostly use these to only break up mats, or if Aayla’s hind quarters start to get impacted. Otherwise I don’t use those too much. I used to use this ALL the time until I start noticing that it can have a lot of negatives if used too much or too hard. I’m found this to be great for breeds like huskys, thick furred labs, shepherds, aussies, goldens and those with similar coats. Does nothing for your shorter hair coated dogs, and I imagine would be coat damaging if used for anything more than a mat buster on dogs with hair type coats.

The bristle brush. I use it frequently, and so does the general public. The general public uses it as their main go to brush. It is not going to keep your doodle from getting matted 9use a comb) or get the undercoat out of your golden (use a comb) and its not doing a lot for your labs, shepherds and so on....IMO. I strictly use it to sometimes help break up tangles (not mats) in Aayla’s pants and leg feathers, and to help fluff up her coat for trimming, or to brush it back down after blow drying. I am not using it to remove coat or prevent mats.

The grooming shears I use for trimming her up. Pretty explanatory. If you don’t know what you’re doing, please have a groomer trim your dog. The wounds I’ve seen have been pretty terrible from owners trying to cut their dogs fur. Don’t cut mats out with scissors, they need to be shaved with clippers. The skin sometimes gets suck INTO the mats, so you may think you’re cutting fur when you cut through skin.

Well those are my tools, here is Aayla’s grooming process.

(If you have lab/husky/shepherd with impacted coat or a lot of shedding, sometimes blow drying before bath can be helpful. But everyone may hate you when you do this...so play it by ear unless you have one at home)

Find any and all mats first before washing. Remove with coat king (not around ears though) or shave. If coat is impacted, use coat king and comb to break up the impacted coat before washing.

Wash with good DOG shampoo, little DOG conditioner mixed in with shampoo. the SCRUB. Get down to the skin.

Completely rinse everything out

Blow dry, high power. Loose coat will start flying out AFTER the coat is almost completely dry. For long hair dogs I keep the dryer a little bit father away so I am not matting the fur. Once it dries more, I will bring it in close to try and blow out the loose coat. ((Blow drying make it so your dog doesn’t smell like wet dog after!))

Once 100% dry, I will use bristle brush to get any tangles out from the blow drying

Then I start with the comb and work through the entire coat until the comb is sliding nicely through everywhere.

Once again smooth out coat with bristle brush

Trim if needed.

VOILA. Clean doggo

All breeds can requires different grooming processes, talk with your groomer and I’m sure they would love to show you the best way to take care of your dog’s coat!

Some other thoughts:

-High velocity (not your human hair dryer) blow drying is the BEST tool for deshedding hands down.

-Furminators only work well on short coated dogs. Just like the coat king, be careful. You can over brush. You can irritate the skin.

-The more consistent you are with brushing, the less of a hassle it is. Long coat, means you have to brush more. If you have a doodle, brush it A LOT, with a COMB, TO THE SKIN. If you don’t want to brush your dog with hair type, then please just shave it or pay someone to brush it correctly weekly in between groomings. Aayla I do a fast brush about every week, and a serious brushing/washing about ever 4-6 weeks.

-During shedding season you most likely will have to brush more! (Duh?)

-Mats most often happen behind ears and in armpits.

-Shave mats. Don’t cut. (Repeating this)

-Remove mats before letting the dog get wet. Water makes mats get tighter and they’re harder to remove.

-Fish oil does wonders to make a coat shiny and soft!

[marvelous-imagines]

Forever and always

Johnny Lawrence x larusso reader

Request: I’m watching cobra Kai and have fallen in love with Johnny! Could you maybe do a short post on Johnny liking Daniels sister and then they meet again in cobra Kai 😱

Warnings: mild language. Angst. Fluff

I can't find the person's account that requested this👉👈🥺💔

1984....

You and your family have just moved to California, now living in a small apartment complex where you and your brother are sharing a room, which was really a pain in the ass. Especially since Daniel didn't really seem keen on keeping his side tidy, it was annoying really. But you couldn't change it, no matter how bad you wanted to. But you could get out of the apartment for a while...

That's how you found yourself now, exploring the new territory with excitement. You've done been everywhere you'd thought, until you found the beach, that's where you were now. Barefoot as you walk on the beach, watching the ocean with a relaxed gaze.

Until a something hit you on the forehead, making you fall on your back with a yelp, pain instantly taking over your head. You had your eyes squeezed shut, a groan emitting from you.

"shit I think you knocked her out Johnny!" someone laughs, but you didn't care to open your eye's to see who.

"shut up asshole!" someone else says, that's when you felt someone crouched down beside you, hands gently grasping at your shoulders and giving you a gentle shake. Hand carefully pushing hair away from your now hurt forehead.

"hey, you alright?" the same voice said, you crack your eyes open and see two beautiful blue ones looking back at you with concern, his blond hair falling in front of his beautiful eyes as you feel the air being knocked from your lungs, heart skipping a beat as butterflies erupted in your belly.

This stranger was by far the most hottest stranger you've ever seen. He was handsome, beautiful, gorgeous.

"shit, can you hear me?" he asks, his voice bringing you out of your trance.

"y - yeah I'm fine - I'm okay" you stuttered out, trying to sit up, the handsome stranger helping you do so. "what the hell even happened?" you ask, watching how he let's a little smile sneak its way on his face.

"I threw my friends shoe away from him and it uh... Hit you in the face...he really hates sand..." he said trying not to laugh. You giggle a little, giving him a little grin.

"I'll have to admit, it's a little funny... But please watch where you throw stuff next time" you say with a chuckle.

"I can't make any promises sweetheart" he said, giving you a wink. You blushed, hating how handsome this man really was. His wink sending your heart into overdrive. "I'm Johnny Lawrence by the way" he stands up and offers you his hand. Which you gladly take, him helping you stand up.

"I'm y/n larusso, nice to meet you" you say rubbing at the sore spot on your forehead. Johnny looks guilty for a moment before his friends start shouting for him.

"to make it up to you for almost knocking you out, how about me and you go see a movie sometime, my treat?" he questioned, and even though you just got hit in the head you felt like you just won the lottery.

"that sounds nice, how about Friday?" you ask with a smile. Johnny gives you a smile as he stuffs his hands in his pockets, walking backwards and back to his friends.

"Friday it is" he confirmed, he set up the time and place and you felt yourself counting down the days until then.

Who would have thought being hit in the face with a shoe would have scored you a date with a handsome man?

Who would've thought that, that date would have brought you and Johnny closer, the outcome of being hit in the face making a beautiful relationship bloom. After that one movie date with Johnny there was more than one. One night you both went rollerskating another night you went mini gulfing. And after almost two weeks of dating Johnny had snuck you both into the local pool for a midnight swim. That was the night you first kissed, a night you would always remember.

You've been dating for a year, You fell so helplessly in love with him, he was sweet, loving, kind and even a gentleman. But you was the only one who saw that side of him. The only one who saw Johnny for who he really was. Everyone else saw him for his reputation, being a bully, a badass cobra Kai. They looked past his soft side that only you brought out, and looked straight at his tough guy attitude.

And even though he could be bit of an asshole and bully - especially with your brother. He wasn't really a bad guy. But you knew Daniel wouldn't agree with your relationship with Johnny, so you dated in secret. Always having dates when everyone in your house was asleep, hiding whenever you share kisses at school. Fleeting touches shared secretly, lingering gazes hidden.

But it was worth it, Johnny was worth it. And even though you knew Johnny and Daniel hated each other, you couldn't stay away from Johnny. You loved him. And the mere thought of leaving him hurt. So instead of choosing who you kept in your life, you tried keeping both. Because you knew if it ever came down to it Daniel wouldn't ever speak to you if he found out you and Johnny was a thing, that thought was painful considering you and Daniel was like twins, although he was a year older. And if Johnny knew Daniel wasn't speaking to you just because you two was dating, he'd make you runaway with him where you both could be together without someone trying to tear you apart.

You sigh at your wandering thoughts and live in the moment, that being seated in the sand, watching the ocean with Johnny's arm around you, holding you close against him you wearing his red jacket because the night wind was chilly. You've been sitting there for hours, listening to music on the boom box he brought. Talking and perhaps maybe making out.

It was nearing 2am when Johnny stood up, bringing you with him as he cups your cheek in hand and holds your hip in the other.

"we should probably get you home before you're family realize that you are gone" he muttered, face closer to yours. You smile and peck his lips before running off toward his bike. Hopping on the back and waiting for him you give him a grin.

"you better hurry slow poke!" you say, watching him run toward you with a laugh, the happiness on his face enough to cause your heart to swell.

Once he makes it to you he gives you a smirk, one hand resting on the handle bares of the bike while the other is resting on the seat behind you. He leans his face closer to yours.

"you're a tease y/n" he said, capturing your lips with his, the kiss deep and slow. His lips moving against yours perfectly. You pull away from the kiss and give him a cheeky smile.

"c'mon hot shot let's get going before Daniel wakes up for his usual kitchen raid" you joke making Johnny laugh. Hopping on the bike and listening to it roar to life. You wrapped your arms around Johnny's middle, holding him tight.

He then zooms down the road, wind blowing through your hair. You hold onto Johnny tightly, making him feel as if he was on top of the world. It didn't take long for him to slow down, before shutting the bike off. You was home, the apartment complex quiet all the lights off. You hop of the bike as Johnny stayed seated, watching you shrug off his jacket and handing it to him.

"I wish you could wear it all the time, it looks good on you" he said, taking it and putting it on.

"I think it looks pretty good on you Johnny" you replied back with a grin. He rolls his eyes and chuckles.

"you better get inside before Daniel or you're mom wakes up, my bike isn't exactly quiet" he points out causing you to sigh. "goodnight y/n"

"goodnight Johnny..." you lean in to give him one last kiss, him being the tease he is nibbles at your bottom lip. You giggle into the kiss and pull back reluctantly, Johnny smirking at you.

"I'll see you at school, bye babe" he starts up the bike as you back away slowly with a wave.

"bye Johnny, love you!" you say slightly loud over the noisy bike.

"love you too!" you watch how he gives you a wink before zooming down the road, disappearing from your sight. You sigh dreamily and head inside.

Completely oblivious to the watching eye's in your home.

You slip inside your bedroom and close the door quietly, slowly crawling in bed. As you laid down the light turns on making you jump up startled. Daniel gives you a look of disappointment. Making you instantly know that he knew.

"y'know I didn't believe Mr Miyagi when he told me that he saw you hanging around with Johnny but know I feel like a fool for not" he said, the disappointment Clear in his voice.

You sigh and hold your head in your hands. This was going to be a disaster...

"i was going to tell you -

"that's a lie" he scoffs, shaking his head. He looked angry now, he had a look of betrayal swimming in his eye's, "he's nothing but trouble y/n he's a bully! To be precise he bullies me!" now you scoff, looking up at Daniel with a annoyed look.

"I've been talking to him about that, he hasn't bathered you any now has he? he's not a bad guy Danny, he's nice, kind and he treats me like a queen! You just never give him the chance to be a nice civilized person because you instantly start going at each other's throats" you huff out, watching your brother shake his head.

"he's everything but good, did you see how he was fighting me at the tournament? He was fighting dirty!" he nearly yelled in anger, causing you to tense your jaw.

"he's different when it's just me and him, he's always so kind, so sweet...he loves me Danny, and I know you don't wanna hear it but I love him too... " you trail off knowing no matter what you say Daniel wouldn't change his mind. He didn't approve of the relationship, he didn't want you around him...

"he's a bad guy y/n, he's gonna end up breaking you're heart and I don't want that to happen to you... You deserve better" he muttered before cutting the light off and angrily going to sleep.

The next few days after that night was horrible. When you woke up you had walked into the kitchen, picking up a orange from the fruit bowl and tossing it to Daniel with a little 'think fast!' in hopes he would catch it like usual, a smile on his face. But instead he focused on his bowl of cereal and let it fall to the floor, ignoring you.

At school he didn't even look at you, wouldn't speak to you or even let you sit with him at lunch. It was painful, especially since you and Daniel was like bestfriends. He was always there for you when you needed him, a shoulder to lean on, cry on. You felt absolutely heart broken but thought perhaps he'd go back to being his normal self over time... But days turned to weeks and that's when you knew what needed to be done, no matter how hard it would be...

The room was dark, the only light being that of the moons blue hue shining through the window. You laid on your bed, watching the clock tick as you patiently wait for midnight to roll around. The cold silver locket in your hand felt heavy, your heart aching. You look down at the metal locket and sigh, flipping it open you let a little smile etch itself on your lips, the picture of you and Johnny one of your favorites, it was the night of your second date, the one where you had both went rollerskating. It was taken by Johnny, he held it further away from you both, smiling wide as you were. You close the locket as midnight had arrived, and for once you actually dread it.

Standing from the bed and slipping out the door, before you closed it Daniel spoke up making you freeze in shock that he was talking to you and fright that you had been caught.

"remember what I told you about him y/n, he's a prick, he'll kick you in the back any chance he gets" Daniel said, making a lump form in your throat. Looking down at the locket in your hand you nod.

"I won't give him the opportunity Danny..." you muttered, tears filling your eyes as you shut the door and leave the house with a heavy heart, a dark cloud lingering over your head.

The streets was empty, void of traffic or people. The star's twinkling in the night sky as the moons light danced across the ocean, waves crashing into the shore, sitting in the sand the man who stole your heart the moment you looked into his beautiful eyes...

Letting out a deep breath and wiping at your eye's in hopes the tears would go away you walk over to Johnny with a fake smile. He looks up at you with a smile.

"hey babe, before I came here I got you something" he grins up at you, holding a hand behide him and away from your sight. You felt your heart being squeezed by an unbearable pain. Out of all the nights he had to be the sweetest it just had to be now...

"oh, what it is?" you say sitting beside him, watching how he only grins wider.

"give me a kiss and it's you'res" you give him a genuine smile, leaning in and pecking his lips shortly. But that obviously wasn't enough, his pout saying it all, "what was that? That was hardly even a kiss!" he laughs, making you roll your eyes and press a more firm kiss on his lips, deciding to deepen it, relishing in the feeling of his soft lips on yours, engraving his taste into your memory as you place a hand on his jaw and pull him closer. Making him let out a noise of surprise into it, smirking as he pulls away slowly.

"how was that?" you ask teasingly. He chuckles and shows you the gift, which wasn't much honestly, just a flower, your favorite. You take it and feel your heart swell at the sweet gesture.

"johnny it's beautiful! Thank you" you kiss his cheek and decide you should give him the locket, even though you knew Johnny wouldn't even think twice about wearing a necklace, you still wanted him to have it. You pull it out of your pocket and hand it to him.

"I know you won't ever wear it, but I wanted you to have this..." you muttered, watching how he takes it and looks over it, a fond smile on his face.

"a locket?" he asks with confusion, looking inside it at the picture, "our second date..." he chuckles at the memory. He looks back up at you with a look of pure love and affection, making you feel sick to your stomach. Johnny noticed the change of mood in you and gives you a concerned look.

"what's wrong?" he placed the locket down and cups your face. You bite your bottom lip to stop it from trembling, unable to look him in the eye's.

"I - I'll always love you Johnny, no matter what... You know that right?" you say, voice cracking. He nods his head and wipes away a falling tear off your cheek. You didn't even know you was crying...

"of course, I'll always love you too y/n" he reassures you, but he only made you feel worse...

"I want to end things..." you let out your tears, your voice trembled. Johnny looks takem back by your words, shocked. He let's go of your cheek and flickers his eyes across your face, looking for any sign of anything but truth.

"what? Why?..." he questioned as he clenched his fist around the necklace in his hand. His once happy smile morphing into anger and sadness.

"we can't be together anymore... I'm sorry Johnny... I love you -

"if you loved me then you wouldn't be saying all that - bullshit!" he stood up, necklace in a vice like grip in his hand as he looked down at you with heart broken eyes, anger, betrayal.

"I'm sorry" you sob out, tears freely falling from your eye's. Johnny scoffs and shakes his head, tears swimming in a pool of anger in those beautiful blues of his, making your heart break even more.

"I should have expected this, you leading me on. You're no better then that loser brother of yours!" he yelled, taking one last look at the locket, his tears fell from his eye's making him angrily wipe them away, "love me forever eh?" he takes the locket and throws it somewhere away from you both.

You sit helplessly, crying on the beach as you watch Johnny walk away. But you knew if you had Johnny in your life your brother would never talk to you again.... It was a hard choice, and you found yourself regretting it...

2018....

You woke up with a loud groan, rolling over in bed spotting the book on your bed side table, reaching over and taking it, opening the book to see the old withered and slightly torn flower, your favorite. Although it's color was slightly gone and it was dead, you loved it. It reminded you of him.

Shutting the book you place it back on the table and stand up from your bed, deciding to begin the day with a hot shower. you gathered your clothes and head into the bathroom. After that you had a tiny breakfast and head straight to your brothers work, only to torture him a bit.

It's been years since that horrid night you broke up with Johnny, yet it still haunts you. The guilt and regret never went away, you never dated anyone after that, never got married. Although your brother would always set up blind dates for you, saying you needed someone in your life like how he had amanda, his wife.

You smile when you pull up into the auto shop, seeing the big letters of your last name plastered on the building. Parking your car and stepping out you head inside instantly spotting Daniel, who gives you a wide smile.

"well if it isn't the bum who always drops by!" he joked, hugging you. You laugh and hug him back.

"I dropped by to see if I could get my insurance this month payed off for free" you joke right back making him roll his eyes.

"no can do sis, I'm afraid you're gonna have to do that yourself" he said with a chuckle. "what are you here for though? Need a job? Because we are always hiring y/n - and I think you'd really love -

"Danny I don't need a job here" you laugh at his rambling. Daniel was always so eager to hire you, he wanted you both to work in the same field, under the same roof. But you didn't want to work at his business, although it was pretty awesome, you didn't really like the whole 'car selling and paperwork' theme. So you was a waitress at a old dinner, it didn't pay good but you wasn't poor. You knew Daniel felt slightly guilty for having so much money and a big house while you struggled to pay rent in a apartment building. That's why he made it a habit of loaning you - gifting actually, money. Even when you refused to take it.

"I actually came here to ask you about the whole dick in you're mouth thing?" you giggle at his face of horror and frustration.

"oh God you saw the billboard?" he asks with a low tone, a look of annoyance etched on his face.

"of course I saw it! I think everyone has" you laughed, almost at the point of wheezing. "I even took a picture so I can always have it as a reminder" you wheeze out, causing him to groan.

"of course you'd do that" he muttered with a roll of his eyes.

"who done that anyway?" you ask, watching his expression turn from embarrassing and frustrated to conflict and deep thought.

"they didn't find him...or her..." he muttered, turning his back on you. Confused by how he just obviously lied to you, you shrug it off and understand it's a touchy subject for him, Amanda kindly texting you not to bring it up, but you did because it was to good not to.

"okay, well I hope you're day doesn't suck to bad" you stifle a laugh at your pun. He groans and shoo's you away.

"get out of here before I ban you!" you laugh loudly and complie, leaving the place. But as you walk to your car you noticed a yellow flyer on the ground. curious, you pick it up, heart skipping a beat at the word's...cobra Kai... But your heart fluttered yet is clenched with a guilt filled pain at the picture.

Johnny Lawrence in all his glory. He looked the same, a bit aged but still the handsome man who stole your heart all those years ago.

Folding the picture up you hop inside your car, deciding a little visit to this new cobra Kai dojo wasn't so bad. So starting your car and searching for the place you let your mind wander.

Was he still mad at you? Did he hate you?

Of course he did. you broke his heart for Christ's sake. He threw the locket you gave him away like it was a poisonous snake. You sigh when the building comes in sight. You park and stare at it, debating whether you should go in or not.

What if he didn't want to see you? Or what the hell would you even say?

You let out a deep dragged out breath before opening up your car door and getting out. You wanted to see him again, you needed to. So without a second thought you approached the dojo, getting ready to open the door while your head was held low.

That's when you felt a horrible pain in your nose as you fall on your back, a yelp emitting from you as you hold your hurting nose. Feeling the warm sensation of blood slowly falling from it. With eyes squeezed shut you groan.

"oh my God! Are you okay?" the familier sound of the one and only Johnny Lawrence blesses your ears. You feel his hands gently push your hair away and out of your face. "lady you're gonna have to move your hands otherwise I can't see what the hells wrong" you would have laughed at his polite yet slightly rude words if you didn't think your nose was broken.

You move them slowly and open your eyes only to be greeted with his beautiful concern filled blue ones. That's when it hit him, the realization of who you were, "y/n larusso? Is that you?" you sit up slowly and nod.

"yeah, is it just me or do you greet all women by hurting them unintentionally?" you joke, causing him to smile a small smile.

"come inside and let me check you're nose out, try stop the bleeding" he says while helping you up, leading you inside. His hold on your hand never filtered as he held it all the way to a little office typed room. Cleaning his desk off and motioning you to sit down on it. You do so and watch how he disappeared into some other room and soon returned with a few tissues and a cotton ball.

"so what brings you here? Wanting to learn some karate?" he asks with a teasing smile, wiping the blood from your nose then delicately placing the cotton ball inside the bleeding nostril.

"no, I actually saw a flyer and wanted to... See you" you muttered the last sentence but he heard. Giving you a small barely noticeable smile he crossed his arms. "it's been a while" you say with a nervous chuckle. Taking your eyes off him and looking down at your hands.

"well, since I hit you with my door how about I make it up to you and buy you a drink?" he suggests, causing you to snap your head up eagerly and nod.

"that sounds only fair" you giggle. He chuckles and reaches for his keys beside you on the table.

"then follow me" he said as he leads you out of the dojo.

In a car ride full of silence besides the classic rock playing on the radio, you both had arrived at a quiet little bar, where you both sat tucked away in a booth in the corner. A beer in both your hands as you talked and laughed like old times.

"oh God, do you remember that time when I snuck in through you're bedroom window and I didn't know you and you're brother shared room?" he asks with a laugh, the memory a hilarious one.

"you had to hide under the bed for like 5 hours before Daniel went to sleep!" you laughed, remembering how Daniel stayed up that night for hours telling you horrible jokes and stuff. Poor Johnny hiding under your bed and suffering through it with you.

"nothing will ever be as funny as that one time we went skating and you nearly broke my neck trying to push me away from you because you saw Daniel with ali" he snickered, sipping his beer as you snort.

"you wouldn't stop trying to make out with me, I thought he would for sure see us" you giggle while sipping your own beer.

"we used to have so much fun" he muttered, a nostalgic look on his face. You give him a fond smile and nod.

"y'know, I never wanted to break up with you that night..." you say, mind slightly buzzed from all the beers you've had. Not quite drunk, just more bolder with your words. "the only reason I did was because Daniel found out about us... He Stopped talking to me for days, he hated me"

That caught his attention and made him devote his full attention on you.

"he stopped talking to me, completely acting as if I didn't exist. So I knew if I didn't end things between you and me, I'd lose my only brother" you sigh, shaking your head and giving him a apologetic look. "I'm sorry I think I've had way to many -

"I kept it..." he blurted out, cutting your words short. You give him a confused look. "the locket, I went back the night after you ended things and found it" he reaches for the neckline of his shirt and pulled out the silver necklace locket.

You felt a flutter in your heart, a hope blooming inside you that perhaps maybe you still had a chance with Johnny. He smiles and flips the heart shaped pendent open, revealing the photo inside.

"you found it?" you questioned as you stood only to sit beside him, shoulders nearly touching as he shows it to you.

"of course, I didn't really throw it that far" he said while closing it, shoving it back under his shirt, "besides, even though you broke up with me I couldn't ever get you off my mind" he confessed while looking at you with those big blue eye's of his.

"likewise, I regretted that night ever since it happened" you muttered while looking away from him, feeling the guilt and heartbreak weighing down on you. Tears slowly starting to glisten in your eye's.

But Johnny gently placed his hand on your face, palm firmly pressed on your cheek as he makes you look at him.

"I understand y/n, I understand that you done that because you're brother and I aren't exactly bestfriends" he reassures you. Causing a little smile to tug at your lips. "I never stopped loving you y/n, and even though I can't stand you're brother... I'd love to take you to dinner sometime?" he asks with a little half smile.

You felt a wave of happiness wash over you, heart swelling with joy as you nod.

"of course, I'd love that" you say with a wide grin. He let's out a little chuckle, a silence falling over you two, his hand still on your cheek as he just let's his eyes roam your face with adoration.

"I missed you" he muttered, his thumb rubbing at your cheek.

"I missed you too..." you murmured, as you lean into his touch.

And as if he couldn't live without his lips on yours he brings your face closer and pressed his lips on yours. You was surprised at first but soon let your lips move with his in the familier way you missed, the kiss was enough to take your breath away. The way he nibbled at your bottom lip caused you to giggle into the kiss. Pulling away he gives you his beautiful smirk.

"I see you haven't changed a bit Johnny" you murmur with, small smile on your face.

"neither have you y/n..." he placed another kiss on your forehead as he wraps a arm around you, holding you close to him. For once in your life you feel content, happy. And there is no place you'd rather be than in Johnny's warm arms..

A/n: I know this sucks, and I'm sorry it took so long, I'm a very busy person *coughs* it's classified👀

Also I left my phone unattended, I was also in the middle of writing this here imagine, and when I came back to check on it my little sister had down this:

I laughed at this for a while 😂🤣

[bailey-reaper]

YOU KNOW WHAT THIS BLOG NEEDS - A BEACH EPISODE - or to be more specific Klint and Lady B rope Barok into taking s/o with them to the beach

Fun in the Sun (ft. the Sea)

Notes: Oh my Goodness! You are absolutely correct, anon! A trip to the seaside is /SO/ very Victorian!!

S/O is gender neutral (they/them pronouns). Barok refers to them using petnames.

Content Warnings: everyone is wearing bathers

"What on earth are you blushing about, brother?" Klint asked as he finished donning his scarlet one-piece bathing suit, "You're redder than my bathing suit!"

"Oh," Barok roused himself from his stupor and looked over at his brother. He was still holding his own bathing suit, having lost himself to a momentary daze of nerves as it dawned on him that this would be the first time he'd seen his beloved in a bathing suit.

Klint folded his arms and hummed thoughtfully, "I suppose this IS your first beach holiday with your darling, isn't it? Oh ho!" a grin spread over his lips, "Is that it? Are you flustered about being scandalised by the sight of their bare ankles on the seafront?"

"Oh hush!" he muttered, turning away to finally change, "I was just thinking about how long its been since we've been to the beach together, that's all.," it was a partial truth, "And about how the last time we came here was your first time seeing Lady Baskerville at the beach."

"Ahem..." Klint coughed, and looked away, "Yes.. well... it was a wonderful outing wasn't it?"

"Yes..." Barok agreed with a smirk, "As I recall, you were almost as red as your bathing suit, brother."

"Mmmm. You know, being a tease really doesn't suit you, Barok..."

"Hmmm..." he smiled, messing around with Klint certainly managed to calm his nerves a bit, "At least I feel a little less... nervous."

He ruffled his little brother's hair, "Just be yourself, Barok, and you'll do yourself proud, I know I couldn't be prouder of you."

"Ah..." he nodded, "Thank you, Klint."

"Anytime. Now! Let's go out there and enjoy the sea side!"

──────≪⊰✥⊱≫───────

Lady Baskerville and Barok's beloved had set up a comfortable spot with deck chairs and a large parasol with large towels laid out, too. The sea was a stone's throw away and glittering like a vast blue jewel as the sun glimmered on its surface. A soothing breeze drifted by and kept the mewing gulls aloft as they hovered while scouting for food to steal.

"Barok!" they waved.

"Klint," Lady Baskerville called for her husband.

The two men made their way over, Klint beaming like a lovestruck puppy while Barok blushed and tried to keep his pounding heart in check.

"Greetings," Klint said as he went to join Lady Baskerville in the deck chair next to hers, "Well isn't this a splendid little set up?"

"Do you like it?" Lady Baskerville asked with a smile, chuckling as Klint took her hand to kiss the back of it before kissing her wedding band.

"I love it," he replied.

"Hello dearest," Barok said as he went to join his beloved on the towels, "You... um... you look great."

They grinned, "Thanks, so do you, that shade of navy blue really does suit you."

"Oh... thank you," he smiled, "So, what do you think of Weymouth?"

"It's lovely! The sandy beach is so much nicer than the pebble beaches I'm used to."

"Yes... there's a rocky part further up the way, but this part is nice isn't it..."

"It really is..." they bit their bottom lip, "Um... Barok? Could I... maybe ask you a favour?"

"Of course," he tilted his head, "What is it? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," they assured him, before pulling something out of the beach bag they'd brought with them, "Would you... mind applying some of this to my back?" they placed a pot of cream in his hand.

"Huh?" he looked at the jar quizzically, "What is it?"

"Apparently it's a cream that can stop damage to the skin from exposure to the sun, I mentioned to Albert that I was heading to the beach and he said that this should stop me from burning quite so badly as I usually do..."

"Oh, I see, so this is something Albert prepared?" It was probably safe then.. maybe... hopefully. For some reason, the idea of applying cream to his beloved's skin was making his blush burn all the hotter, "Um... yes, of course, I'd be glad to help...."

"Thank you!" they laid down on the towel and closed their eyes while Barok gingerly positioned himself behind them and tried to ignore his wandering thoughts as he contemplated their wonderful form. He carefully applied the cream to their back and shoulders, making sure that the product was evenly distributed.

"There..." he said, while his ears glowed bright pink, "I think that's done."

He noted that they were blushing, too, it seemed they were similarly aware of how... intimate this moment was, "Th...thank you, Barok," they smiled shyly, "Um... shall I ... put some on you?"

"W..What?"

"Well.. Klint said you usually burn terribly in the sun..."

"O-oh..." he coughed, before nodding, "Yes... I.. don't do well in the sun, I never have," not that it had stopped him as a child from having a wonderful time in the outdoors, but these days he did try to avoid the seething pain that came from spending too much time under the sun, "I... um... I suppose a little of that cream couldn't hurt, if you have any to spare that is..."

"Of course I do! Now, lay down," he did as they bade him and tried really hard not to think too much about their hands on his skin and the way it felt to have their fingers caressing over his contours... yes... he needed to stop thinking about that.

"Alright!" they said, "You're done!"

"Thank you..."

"Hey now!" Klint called over, "What are you kids up to?!"

"N-Nothing!" they squeaked, blushing, "Just putting some cream on to protect from the sun, that's all..."

"Oh ho!" the older bother nodded, "And when is one of you going to put some on me and my darling lady wife, hm?"

Barok rolled his eyes, "If you want to borrow my darling's sun cream, you could just ask brother..."

"Aw, but where's the fun in that Barok?" he smiled, before looking a little more serious, "May I use some of that lotion of yours on my lovely wife, dear little sibling?"

"Oh... yes, of course!" they handed the pot over so Klint could apply some on his wife.

"I'm sorry about him," Barok sighed, "He's a terrible troublemaker..."

They giggled, "Please don't apologise, I love both of them very much, but nowhere near as much as I love you."

Once more Barok was blushing, "G-Good to know... And... I love you too."

[thr-333]

Just Another Class Trip :) Part 6

Marinette goes on a nice peaceful trip to the pool. Me? sarcasm? how dare you sir!

First< Previous >Next

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“Did you find what you were looking for Marinette?” Kagami asks oh so foolishly.

“Kagami look into my eyes and ask me that again,” Marinette dares, her eyes red rimmed with bags underneath bigger than Chloe's luggage.

“... You found your glasses?”

“Never mind,” She sighs, finishing the rest of her coffee, “At least that one isn't missing,”

“I thought you only wore them as M-you-know-who,” Chloe whispers, a purposeful look towards Lila’s posse leading the way to the bus.

“Just wanted to try them out without a mask,” She brushes off easily, she needed to be able to transport back to Paris at any time after all.

“Oh it was just terrible!” Lila cries, capturing the attention of everyone surrounding her.

“Did she finally hear a recording of herself?” Chloe scoffs, making Adrien shush her and Marinette crack a smile.

“This Starling kidnapped and tortured me for information,”

If only I had

“Luckily Batman was there to save me, but I knew he would be,” Lila croons, the class fretting over her all the while, “He was probably searching furiously the second I didn’t return his call,”

“When did she get Batman’s phone number?” Chloe whispers to her.

“No idea, think she’d give it to me?” Marinette smirks.

“Oh sure I bet it's 3825968,” Chloe laughs at her own joke.

Marinette doesn't get it but Kagami starts laughing, so she moves to stand next to Adrien while they share a moment.

“Any idea?”

“Not really,”

They reach the door going through it to find Gotham in the nice peaceful state it's always been.

Just kidding, lights start flashing in their faces and everyone around them is yelling. Lila of course tries to take this opportunity to get attention. To Marinette's great delight they push right past her, and to her horror opt to shove a million microphones in her face.

“Miss Wayne were you adopted?!”

“Yes but-” the cameras start flashing and the yelling increases tenfold.

“When?! How long ago!?!”

“A baby I guess?” She hadn't known her birth parents after all.

“How have you stay'n out of the public's eye for so long?”

By not being like Lila for one

“Mari I don’t think you’re talking about the same thing,”

“Yeah thanks, I’m getting that Adrien,”

“Adrien Agreste? Are you two dating?!”

“Great,” She ignores them, instead whispering to Adrien, “From now on Buttercup will be your codename,”

“Cool,” He leans in to whisper in her ear, “But I don’t think that’s helping things,”

It’s at this point the cameras are going crazy taking a million pictures of the two whispering in each others ear, while Kagami and Chloe try to push them all back. The class follow behind just as confused. Madame Bustier is trying to reason with the crowd, trying to . They reach the curb, fighting not to be pushed onto the road by the crowd. A limousine  pulls up and for a wonderful second Marinette thinks Liam has come to save her, the wonderful manager he is. Instead Alfred steps out, surprising to say the least. He ushers her inside and tells the rest of the class the bus will be through momentarily. Marinette slides into the car right next to Bruce Wayne… well.

“Hello again, I um…” Marinette thinks back to their last meeting, “I don’t think I actually told you my name,”

“No you didn’t,” Bruce chuckles, “And Selina has been avoiding me ever since,”

“Sorry, well I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng Auntie Selina’s niece,” Marinette shakes his hand, “She didn’t tell me she was engaged,”

“Bruce Wayne, Selina didn’t tell me she had a niece,”

“Yeah, that's a bad habit isn't it?”

“Indeed,” Bruce pauses, both trying to reach for a conversation topic, “So you like fashion?”

She had said she would design her aunts wedding dress. She should probably double check that with the groom, whoops,

“I do I already sketched out some designs,” She takes out her sketchbook which has a good thirty pages dedicated to wedding dresses, “Oh you were probably going to hire a professional designer weren’t you?”

“We were considering MDC,”

“.... I think that’ll work out just fine either way,”

“Hm,” Bruce looks curiously at her as she hides away her sketch book, she would be using those designs either way.

“Anyway!” She changes the topic oh so subtly, “About those reporters…”

“Theres a certain rumour running rampant that you are a Wayne, after someone took a photo of you with my son at the airport,” Bruce explains, switching over to business mode in a heat beat, she could appreciate that, “We’ve been doing our best to contain it, but…”

“At the airport…” She mutters to herself, “Oh! Tim’s your son, that explains Alfred, that must mean Dick is too!... work at Wayne tower, yeah very funny,”

She tries not to roll her eyes at their understatement of the century, wasn't Tim Drake a CEO there?

“Impressive, have you met Damian too?” Bruce asks, a slight smile that would have called Kagami expressive.

“Not yet, but should I invest in a bingo card?”

“Maybe so,”

They fall into silence Marinette would usually hold polite conversation but her thoughts were in turmoil. Lila didn’t seem to know anything about the miraculous then again her interrogation was cut short by a certain someone . However Tikki had advised her against placing all the blame on Lila, she needed to consider other options as well. But who else could it be? she was in Gotham Hawkmoth couldn't reach her… unless he somehow...

“Marinette are you alright?”

Marinette startles look over at Bruce who is blurred by tears. She hadn't even realised she’d been crying.

“I-I’m sorry,” She hiccups trying fruitlessly to wipe away the tears, “I-it just…”

“It’s ok,” Bruce rubs her back comfortingly, but boy did he choose the wrong words.

“IT’S NOT OK!” Marinette yells not looking at anyone in the car, they didn’t matter, nothing else mattered, she had failed and people were going to suffer for it, “I left it behind! It’s all my fault! Now it’s GONE! It’s been stolen and I don’t know where it is!”

“What was stolen?” Bruce presses, getting over the shock of the polite and put together girl melting down into a puddle of sobs.

Now I’ve gone and messed up, time for a classic cover story and some half truths

“A good friend of mine gave me a very important jewellery box,” Marinette sighs, wiping the tears away and rebuilding herself, “It was stolen shortly after arriving in Gotham and I’ve been trying to find it,”

“Do you know who stole it?”

“I thought it was one of my classmates,” Marinette frowns, they should have certainly been there by now, “Still do honestly,”

“Which one?”

“Lila probably,” Marinette tries to keep her tone neutral, tries, “Brown hair that looks like sausages,”

Marinette could almost see the words ‘oh fuck’ written across his face.

“Miss Dupain-Cheng, we have arrived,” Alfred speaks up for the first time, not leaving her time to puzzle over the reaction, “Your class arrived some time ago,”

“How did that happen?” Marinette frowns, they should have arrived ages ago.

“Alfred must have taken the scenic route,” Bruce shrugs, acting like an innocent party in all this.

“Well then I guess I’ll see you for the wedding,” Marinette tries not to rush out of the car, certain her class or rather Lila would have caused some grief by now.

“I’ll make sure to send the invites to your family personally,” Bruce promises, shaking her hand before she can run off.

“And I’ll make sure Auntie Selina doesn’t destroy them,” Marinette smiles back brightly, she can see the concern for her all over Bruce's face but doesn't have time to reassure him.

Marinette walks into the indoor pool, knowing her luck the class was already inside. They were and the owner was not happy about it.

“First your class was late then you waltz in here late as well?” The manager berates her.

“I’m sorry sir,” Marinette tries to seem more sincere but her tardiness falls short on the things she has to worry about now.

“That class mate of yours came an yelled at me that one of our pools were dirty so we had to drain the whole thing,”

“Let me guess, sausage hair?” Marinette raises a bow, it really being all the energy she can put into the action.

“Yes,”

“Sorry sir I’ll talk with her,” Marinette promises, she slips into the changing rooms as they grumble about lazy employees.

There is absolutely no way Marinette was going to talk to Lila. She enters the changing room, a shower running somewhere. She tucks Tikki and Kaalki into her bag, Tikki had insisted she relax today, recharge and get ready to find the miraculous. She couldn’t find enough will to argue not after having to wake up in the middle of the night to fight an Akuma back in Paris.

She slowly changes into a red and orange ruffled one piece swimwear. She honestly just wanted to take a nap in here, hide away from the class and the well meaning questions from her friends. Instead she drags herself towards the shower, they are all open and there's someone towards the back standing underneath the spray in their bathers.

Something fires back at her to be careful, it puts her on edge but with miraculously potentially loose in Gotham city it’s no wonder her instincts are screaming at her. Instead she steps under the spray hoping to loosen up.

She doesn't, after standing there for ten minutes she still can’t relax. Maybe it’s the cold water, maybe its the other person. The were still standing there, they had been in the shower even before she entered the changing room. Marinette peaks over, they are still standing still, with their arm out… the same way they had been ten minutes ago.

“Are you ok?” Marinette calls, no answer, not even a twitch.

Marinette creeps over. They are standing stock still, she can’t see evidence of them so much as breathing.

“Hello,” Her voice echoes off the tiles, not a noise in the empty room besides from the shower running.

She is right behind them, they haven't even moved, arm still raised. She walks around to see their face. Frozen in a look of concentration, not so much as blinking with water running into their eyes. She follows their eyeline to see them peeling off dead skin from their arm, stretching towards their fingertips. There's a faint glow of yellow all around them, concentrated at their back.

Marinette steps away, walking out the showers, she closes the nearest door to find herself in the pool area. Her friends are on the other side. Kagami is dunking Adrien as Chloe waves her over. Marinette sprints over to them.

“No running!” The life guard yells.

But that doesn't matter, all that matters is that there is someone using the bee miraculous for evil, she has to stop them before they get another Hawkmoth. They probably have the whole miracle box! She'll need the back up.

“Mari-”

“Come with me,” She doesn't let them have another question helping Adrien out of the pool.

She pulls them along despite Chloe's protests, pushing them through the door.

“Mari what's-”

“Hush now Buttercup,”

“You were serious?” Adrien gasps, Chloe just giggles.

“Yes,” She walks over to the frozen body, “Look at this,”

“Whats-” Chloe pokes them, immediately recoiling, “The fuck?”

“They’re frozen,” Kagami does the same.

“We have to help them,” Adrien waves in front of their face, looking on in horror.

“We have to hide them,” Chloe pokes them again, getting slapped away by Kagami.

“We have to find the culprit,” Marinette races at the idea that this could be the Bee miraculous.

“We’ll do all three,” Kagami decides, getting their attention, “Now first let's put them in a stall so we don’t alarm anyone or the villain, then we need to look for clues,"

They all nod, Marinette turns the water off. Adrien tries to move their arm to no avail.

“Looks like we have to carry them,” Adrien suggests, he and Marinette each taking an arm.

“Ew, no I’m not touching it Buttercup!” Chloe cringes away, backing up as Kagami lifts a leg off the ground.

“Has that really stuck?” Adrien asks Marinette, as Kagami sends Chloe a powerful enough death glare to get her to help.

“You bet Buttercup,” Marinette grins, as they shuffle through the changing rooms to the toilet stalls.

“Fine then, I’m calling you Cupcake,” Adrien teases, sticking out his tongue.

“As you wish Buttercup,”

“Someone get the door,” Kagami commands.

“I will!” Chloe lets go of the leg, the body becoming no heavier.

They manage to fit them inside the stall without too much hassle.

“Who could have done this?” Adrien looks on sadly at the person, tilted at a slight angle to fit into the stall.

“I’ve been thinking,” Marinette speaks up, “If this is a villain it doesn't make much sense to attack a random person, and if they were trying to be stealthy they would have hidden the body,”

“They aren’t dead!” Adrien says aghast.

“Exactly, why wouldn’t a villain just kill them?”

“That's very dark of you Cupcake,” Kagami says, missing Adrien’s pout, “What’s your theory?”

“This is likely a new villain, one not ready to kill,” Marinette decides, not even blinking at the nickname, “They have something against the pool, they probably want to ruin its reputation,”

“You did say that this was a very safe pool for Gotham,” Chloe closes the stall door, “Minimal murders, so why would someone want to ruin it?”

“Insurance? Sick of their job?” Marinette’s eyes go wide in realisation, “The pool!”

She darts out the changing room the others close on her heels.

“No Running!”

“Where are we going!?”

“The manager said they were refilling the pool,”

“Why- oh my god,” Chloe gasps, overtaking the lot of them, “Run faster!”

They burst into another pool room, the pool noticeable empty with diving boards on the other end. They run to the edge of the pool. A frozen body wearing employee uniform frozen at the bottom the water slowly rising.

“Get them out! Get them out!”

Marinette jumps down into the pool, causing a splash, the water is up to her ankles, barely a centimeter from covering the person at the bottom. She runs over and tries to pull them up. Kagami makes a splash behind her running over to help. They drag the person, frozen in horror the yellow focused on their chest instead. The pool is far too deep to climb out of so they pass the body up to Adrien and Chloe.

“Who would do this?!” Adrien can just reach them when Marinette and Kagami lift the person over their heads.

“I heard the manager mutter about lazy employees,” Marinette gives one last push, Chloe and Adrien pull them up over the edge.

“So we have a suspect,” Kagami says, water rising up her leg, “We should check their office next,”

“Well, they went from no murder to yes murder in record time,” Chloe huffs, the employee safely to the side.

“It’s concerning, but they may have more of a grudge against them than the other person,” Marinette points Kagami towards the ladder to get out.

“More evidence towards the manager,” Kagami nods, letting her up the ladder first, “We should choose codenames if the manager is potentially familiar with us,”

“They did have the class roster,” Marinette nods along, then grins, “You should be Teacup!”

“Fine by me,” Kagami nods, not showing how happy she truly is with the nickname.

“Oh I want to be-” Chloe cuts herself off head snapping towards the door.

They hear scratching at the door, everyone tenses. Marinette crouches in a position to defend her friends. The door slowly creeps open and… a little snout pokes through followed by the rest of the dog.

“Is this what you wanted to see Cuppy?” A person wearing a lifeguard uniform follows in a second later.

“Excuse me is your dog named Cuppy?” Marinette plasters on a fake smile quickly pulling a nearby towel over the body.

“Yes it’s a weird name I know,”

“No! It’s perfect! On another note could we please borrow your dog?”

“Um... sure?”

“Thank you, we have to go! Careful the pool is empty!” She calls as they race out the room, the person tucked away out of sight, “Come on Cuppy!”

"NO RUNNING!"

The dog wags its tail following them out the pool area and through the changing rooms. They come to stand outside the staffroom door, dripping water on the carpet.

“Everyone ready?” Marinette asks, hand on the door, they nod and Cuppy lets out an 'off', the door slowly creaks open.

Marinette looks through to see, nothing, the hallway is desolate and dark.

“It’s safe,”

“You call that safe?” Adrien pokes his head through the door, followed by Chloe and Kagami.

“Be brave Buttercup be brave,” With that Chloe pushes him into the corridor.

They creep along the empty hallway, footsteps echoing around them. The manager's office door could be seen at the end of the hall. Gold color plate glinting in the few stray beams of light filtering through. Marinette could feel every hair stand on end, danger seeming to lurk from every shadow in the dark hall. The pressure of something ready to pounce and immobilise them at any moment hung heavy in the air, dragging them down into a pressure that-

“HIC!”

Everyone jumps out of their skins, Adrien actually hits the ceiling, rubbing his head on the way down. Kagami draws her sword, Marinette falls into a defensive position.

“Hic!”

“Chloe!

“I’m sorry! Hic! It’s not like I can help it! Hic,”

“Thats it! You’re Hiccup!” Kagami snaps, Marinette tries not to snort.

‘What?!” Chloe screeches stamping her foot, “No way!”

“Deal with it and lower your voices!” Marinette shouts, Cuppy barks along, “Not you too Cuppy?”

Another yip

“Traitor,”

“Cupcake stop picking fights with the dog and lets move on,” Adrien implores, still rubbing his head.

Marinette rolls her eyes speed walking to the manager's office before the tension rises again. The reach outside the door, Marinette counts down to three on her fingers and they burst through the door.

Inside is silent, the bright light blinds them for a second, she shuffles in front of her friends acting as a shield, waiting for them to adjust. When she does she sees the desk chair is turned away, Cuppy pads forward Marinette doesn't grab his collar in time.

He starts licking someone's hand, Marinette creeps around the desk, waiting for the hand to snap out and grab her. The others follow, surrounding the chair preparing to come face to face with the villain. She peeks around the edge they are sitting there, she freezes the others following her lead. A beat, another one, nothing. They’re frozen.

“It’s not the manager,” She relaxes, patting Cuppy’s head.

She lets out a sigh, releasing all her tension.

BAM

Turning around the door is slammed shut, a striped villain standing before it. They all drop into a fighting stance watching for the stinger on their right hand. Cuppy starts wagging his tail, trying to approach the villain.

“Cuppy no,” Marinette grabs his harness, bringing the Pitbull back.

“He’s my therapy dog,” The villain growls, Cuppy wagging his tail happily.

“Not a very good one is he?” Chloe sneers, looking the villain wearing her stripes up and down with disgust.

“Wait, you’re the lifeguard at the pool?” Marinette gasps, maybe she really shouldn't have run, “Why did you-”

“I work here, you can’t imagine the horrors I face every day, people are disgusting,” The villain shudders, this was the guy who stole the miracle box?

“Yes, but murder?” Kagami gets a nod from Chloe and hissed at by Adrien.

“My co workers are completely useless and the boss always yells at me,” A sinister smirk crosses their face, “Or at least they did,”

“So you thought murder before you thought quitting ,” Adrien points out, probably not the best time to imply a villain is stupid.

“I didn’t kill anyone,”

“Ah yeah thanks to us!”

“Shut up!” They lash out at Chloe, stinging her in a single strike.

“Run!” Marinette shouts, they all scatter.

Marinette dodges the first swipe, ducking down. They get distracted by Kagami lashing out. Marinette darts around them to get closer to the door, Kagami gets hit. Marinette reaches the door the villain comes after her, they are inches away. Adrien leaps in front of her, getting stung. With the distraction Marinette bursts out the door Cuppy on her heels.

“Traitor,” She sprints down the hall, “Did you know?”

Cuppy happily pants beside her. She can hear the villain banging around the corridor behind her and runs faster. She dodges into a room around the corner, hiding among the pool noodles. She sees the shadow pass under the door. Pause. She holds her breath intently watching the shadow, she has no one, not even Tikki. He heart beat rises, she can feel her breaths shorten, this is it, this is it, this is it, this is-

Something nuzzles her hand, she looks down to see Cuppy. He starts to lick her hand, letting her relax into it, focusing on him as the shadow continues on. With a sigh Marinette starts to take off her skirt, flipping it inside out to the cape side.

“You aren't going to tell anyone about this are you?” Marinette asks Cuppy, right before pulling up her mask, he lets out a happy bark, “Good boy,”

She sneaks out the room, looking up and down the clear hallway. She walks the opposite way of the office. She doesn't need to see her friends paralysed, she just needs to help them, she just needs to fix her mistake.

She reaches the pool area, hiding behind a lounge chair, watching through the slats as the villain gathers everyone together. Starling sneaks closer, Cuppy on her heels. There are several civilians, locals if their calm demeanour is anything to go by, although they do seem uneasy at an unknown villain. Her class is significantly less calm.

She had told them time and again that there was no coming back in Gotham, no miraculous cure. It seems for once they had decided to listen to her. Unfortunately they did not do well under pressure. Lila of course was aggravating the situation, making empty threats. The villain reared up to silence her and man, Marinette could relate.

“I don’t suppose I can wait a minute can I?” She whispers to Cuppy, he settle a paw on her knee, letting out a quiet whine, “I guess that’s a no,”

She runs up behind the villain, signalling the civilians to be quiet. Lila looks down at her, anger flashing over her face. Starling bears her teeth right back, she can just try it. Lila ultimately decides her life is more precious than petty revenge, a hard choice for her to be sure.

Starling stands up to her full height behind the villain tapping them on the shoulder. They turn around in surprise, to find her dazzling smile. But the real thing that makes them see stars is her right hook. As the fall Starling rips the bee miraculously right out of their hair, their transformation falling. Marinette stands above them as they detransform, Pollen hiding behind her. It makes her stomach churn watching them detransform, looking up at her with fear. The twisting of her insides lessens when Cuppy nuzzles up next to her. She busies herself with hiding the miraculous away.

“It’s them!” Lila screeches, ah now she can get to that petty revenge, “The one that kidnapped me!”

“Look what you did,” Staling bites instead, looking down at the villain.

“I had nothing to do with this!” Starling is highly entertained when Cuppy growls at Lila, actually getting her to back off.

“Sure you didn’t,” Starling openly rolls their eyes, grabbing the villain and hauling them up by their shirt, "Where is the rest!"

"I-I don't know what you're talking about!" She scowls, making them whimper, guess they really didn't know,

Shit

"Where did you get this?" She holds up the miraculous.

"I found it! it was just lying out on the street!"

Shit

"Did you see any others?!"

"No!" the blubber swearing by it and begging for mercy.

Shit

The police sirens can now be heard, Starling drops them and runs from the room.

“NO RUNNING!” She turns on her heel and glares down at the villain, “... sorry, it’s a reflex,”

She nods running from the room to change, grabbing her bag with Tikki and Kaalki on the way. After a small celebration at finding another miraculous and reunion with Pollen, they have to make a plan to find the other miraculous. They are cut short when sirens are heard outside. She wears the Bee miraculous under her ponytail, to keep it hidden from view.

When she is ready she goes to find her friends. They are outside talking to the police. Marinette only gets the chance to signal she’s ok before being intercepted by officers to get her statement. When she’s retold her account of trying to find the pool freezer she is finally allowed to check on her friends.

“Hey Cupcake, glad to see you missed all the fun,” Chloe teases.

“Sorry Hiccup,” Marinette looks her in the eye deadly serious grasping each shoulder, “You were an adequate shield,”

“Shut it,” Chloe pushes her away playfully.

“Teacup, Buttercup are you alright?”

“It was nothing,” Kagami assures.

“Didn’t you guys think their powers were a lot like Queen Bees?”

“You would know Hiccup,” She nudges Chloe playfully, “If it was I think we should keep that to ourselves, wouldn't want that information somehow getting back to Hawkmoth,”

She looks purposefully towards Lila, the others nod along.

“Still some random person now might have the miraculous,” Chloe glares down at the ground, “Can we really trust this Starling person,”

I mean no I'm operating on negative six hours of sleep, but also yes

“I don’t think we have much other choice,”

“Marinette,” She freezes at that familiar, low gravelly voice.

“Batman, sir,” She adds, trying to look like someone who wasn't chased down by him yesterday, “How can I help you?”

“I heard you knew the most about this villain,” How did she get in trouble for interrogating Lila when this is how he talks to civilians.

“Not really I just found someone paralysed and tried to find the culprit,” Marinette shrugs, hoping her friends wouldn't point out that she is lying to The Batman.

“You didn’t call the police,”

Well thats a good point, not that I would have

“... To be honest it absolutely did not occur to me,”

“These abilities were spontaneous and now they seem to be gone,” Batman points out, damn he already knows too much, “Do you know what caused this?”

“I do not,”

“Very well,” Batman nods turning away, “Go to your class,”

“Yes sir,” Marinette walks away far too quickly.

How was she going to search the city with that hunting her down?!

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

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[qqueenofhades]

i noticed that you like to write a lot of heartrender husbands from fedyor’s side of things (which makes sense cause fedyor is fun!) but i have to ask in the modern au, what was ivan thinking the whole first two months 😂??

like was he carrying the joke the whole time? did his brain short circuit around fedyor?? was he worried about what fedyor was thinking or did he just think he was shy? Did he think the first date went well ☠️?

This was supposed to be lighthearted, but then there came Feels. So here is Ivan's backstory in Phantomverse. Content warning for mentions of an abusive relationship, familial homophobia, implied sexual manipulation, and dark themes. Nothing graphic, but duly noted.

Also on AO3.

Brighton Beach, 2015

It’s safe to say that Ivan Ivanovich Sakharov Kaminsky did not ever, not in a thousand years, not in a million, imagine himself ending up here. At one point, even Moscow would have been a stretch, and that was obviously still Russia. The fact that he would be walking down a sidewalk in Brooklyn, under the elevated tracks of the Q train that rattles and bangs overhead, on a cool spring morning to do his shopping at the Brighton Bazaar – in, should this somehow not be clear, America – and then returning to his apartment and his husband is, quite frankly, something out of an alternate-Ivan timeline. One from the Twilight Zone, or whatever they are calling that kind of thing these days. Sometimes when he thinks about it too much, he gets afraid that it is in fact a dream. That no matter how long it has gone on and how good it has been, it will suddenly and inevitably end. After all, he is Russian. Sunny optimism has never been accused of forming a notable facet of the national character, and Ivan himself would never be described as the hopeful type. But God, for this, he does.

He reaches the bazaar – a bustling blue-awninged international supermarket with three-quarters of its signs written in Cyrillic – and steps inside, grabbing a basket and pulling a scrap of paper from his pocket to double-check his list. He knows what he needs, but he likes the tidiness of writing it down, and he proceeds into the crammed aisles, passing customers speaking English, Russian, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Yiddish, and several other languages he can’t identify by ear. Brighton Bazaar stocks all the Russian products necessary to satisfy even a homesick expat like Ivan, and he enjoys being able to navigate the store with ease and read all the labels at first glance. He can get by in English, if he’s pressed, but it’s easier to leave it to Fedyor, who is fluent, and in here, he can conjure the illusion that he will walk out on the street and be back where he truly belongs. He likes Brighton Beach a great deal more than he ever expected to, but it’s no replacement for the real thing.

Ivan collects his purchases, along with a few special extras, and takes them to the counter. He is greeted in Russian by the checkout clerk, who knows him well for always turning up at the same time every Saturday morning with military precision. As Semyon Pavlovich Kuznetsov (who is called Syoma by his friends, but he has not clearly stated that Ivan can use the diminutive and therefore Ivan does not) scans his items, Ivan consents to exchange a few gruff words of small talk on the weather (nice) how the Mets did last night (badly) and the old guy who apparently died of a heart attack two days ago in the Russian bathhouse on Neck Road (making Ivan glad he did not choose said day to attend). It’s this weird Russian-American hybrid of things, since Semyon is the teenage grandson of a Red Army veteran who fought at Stalingrad, but he was born and raised in Brooklyn, loves American video games, and is fully fluent in American pop culture. It startles Ivan to realize that while this kid speaks Russian perfectly, he has probably never done so in Russia outside of a few visits back to the old country when his family can afford it. That is a very personal question to ask one’s grocery clerk, however, and he does not.

And then there’s that other thing, which he would definitely never be asked in Russia, especially not these days. Semyon hits the button to tally up Ivan’s bill, informs him that he owes $56.77, and then says cheerily, “How is Fedyor?”

Ivan concentrates on digging the exact amount out of his wallet in cash, since he never had a credit card when he lived in Russia and is still somewhat leery of them. “Fedyor is fine,” he says curtly, in the tone that makes it clear that he understands this question is an expected part of an American social interaction, but that is all the information he is willing to venture. “Here is the money.”

Semyon accepts it, counts it into the till, and rings the transaction through, handing Ivan his bags and his receipt. “Have a nice day, Mr. Kaminsky!”

“Thank you, Semyon Pavlovich.” Ivan accepts his purchases and leaves the store, taking a deep breath of the salty, sunny air and the wind whipping off the seafront. It’s still a little too early in the year for there to be many bathers on the beach, though there are always people strolling on the boardwalk. It’s only a few minutes to the apartment, which is just off Brighton Beach Avenue and overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. Ivan buzzes into the old brownstone, takes the stairs to the third floor, and as he unlocks his front door and lets himself in, wonders, yet again, at the sheer impossibility that his life has led him here.

Ivan is the third of five boys, but he was the one who was named after his father. It was not, of course, because they had some special hope for him to be the great inheritor of paternal pride, but a simple matter of logistics. His oldest brother, Roman, was named after their paternal grandfather. His second-oldest brother, Oleg, was named after their maternal grandfather. When Ivan arrived, only then was it proper to name him after Ivan Romanovich, Ivan Sakharov senior, since rushing too fast to glorify yourself as an individual, rather than your community and your ancestors, could be seen as running contrary to the collectivist ideals of the great Soviet Union. By the time his two younger brothers arrived, his parents were hard pressed for ideas; Yuri (for Gagarin) and Vladimir (originally for Lenin, though that has obviously acquired a different connotation those days) were clearly obtained by putting the names of national heroes into a hat and picking.

Five children was quite a lot for a Soviet-generation family, and Ivan doesn’t know anyone else his age with that number of siblings. After all, more children meant more time standing in line at Municipal Grocery Store #5 for food that has to be shared among more mouths, more worries about how to clothe and educate and accommodate them, more chances for one of them to go terminally astray and betray the family honor. Ivan wonders sometimes if his parents only really wanted Roman and Oleg, but decided to keep going as a matter of gaming the system, so much as it was able to be gamed.

By the early 1980s, the aging, decrepit, dying USSR, run by aging, decrepit, dying men, was in the grip of a demographic crisis so extreme that it was a contest between worrying about which one would end them faster: crazy President Reagan with his finger on the nuclear button, or the whole country just keeling over of old age. The idea of what a family even meant had been under constant challenge since the heady days of the Bolsheviks, who denounced marriage as a construct of bourgeoisie oppression and preached for free love and sexual liberation. Then it went hard back in the other direction during Stalin and the Great Patriotic War, holding up the traditional nuclear family as the highest ideal and offering rewards to mothers who had multiple children. Then it lurched away again. Abortion and contraception had been legal and freely available since the days of the revolution and most Soviet women made good use of them. Plus, of course, the obvious difficulties of maintaining a sizeable family when it was increasingly impossible to obtain even basic supplies and foodstuffs. It just made no sense.

Desperately trying to counter this slide toward self-inflicted obsolescence, the late-stage USSR came up with a number of incentives to boost the birth rate by any means necessary. They allowed mothers to refuse to list fathers on the birth certificate, to avoid social shame if he was married, foreign, a drunkard, or otherwise unsuitable, and beefed up programs to support single women with children. They also went back to the old-school plan of granting extra stipends, housing privileges, and state recognition to families that had more than two children, and Ivan himself was the third of his. It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that he was almost surely conceived for the tax benefits.

Not, that is, that it didn’t work. When Ivan was born in 1984, the family lived in a tiny apartment on the tenth floor of a building with no elevator (or rather it did have an elevator, but it was always broken), crowded in with three single young men who were at the very bottom of the list for being assigned housing. By the time his youngest brother, Vladimir, was born in 1987, they had been moved to a small house of their own on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk, not far from the bus that his father took two hours a day out to the mine. The cynical old joke in the USSR was that the people pretended to work and the government pretended to pay them, though in Ivan Romanovich’s case, the work was backbreakingly real, even if the money wasn’t. He would come home exhausted and filthy after a sixteen-hour shift and yell at Galina Sakharova to feed him, bark at his sons, and then fall asleep in front of the television, only to get up the next morning and shuffle off again.

Ivan Ivanovich has spent a lot of time after he left home trying to understand what that kind of life would do to a man, mostly because he didn’t do it while he was there. Of course he didn’t. He was a child, and it was simply what he was used to, the only way the world could possibly be. On the night of December 26, 1991, as Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev signed the United Soviet Socialist Republics out of existence with a single stroke of the pen, Ivan remembers his father crying and swearing and throwing things at the wall, the heavy yellow-glass ashtray that always seemed unbreakable, perched on the kitchen table to collect the detritus of his constant cigarettes, smashed to bits just like their country, their sense of self, their security. It wasn’t as if life in the USSR was so wonderful. It was just the only thing they knew. Beyond that, there was nothing but the terror of the utterly unknown.

At any rate, the world didn’t end. The oligarchs moved in and began snapping up Russia’s newly privatized economy. Ivan Ivanovich, of course, had no goddamn clue about this either, aside from overhearing his father curse about it some more. He trudged through secondary school and left at eighteen, without even trying to proceed onto university. Those weren’t for someone like him, he knew that. Instead he got a job at the ever-troubled Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant, and went straight to work on the factory floor.

It was around this time that the one disruption in his otherwise humdrum life, the one thing that stopped him from just settling into the same miserable existence as his father and going on like that forever, became too impossible to ignore. And that was the fact that no matter how much Ivan tried to squash it down, push it aside, or otherwise pretend it didn’t exist, he could no longer deny the fact that he was attracted to men, and only to men. He bought some of the cheap porn magazines from the tabak, tried to flip through them and get something out of the girls in heavy eyeliner and bleached-blonde hair, spilling out of their scanty lingerie, and just… didn’t. He wasn’t even interested enough to try a conversation with a real flesh-and-blood woman (not that Ivan had ever gotten through a conversation with another human being, especially a woman, without disaster) and see if it was different in the flesh. Nothing about the experience, even imagining it, appealed to him at all. But men…

He knew it wasn’t right, just because – well, you knew that sort of thing, you didn’t have to ask about it, you didn’t let on. But nonetheless, something, somehow, must have given him away, because one evening after the end of his shift, one of his coworkers cornered him in the back. His name was Konstantin and he was a few years older, big and bluff and constantly smelling like machine oil. He stood there, folded his arms, and said, “I will give you five hundred rubles if you suck my dick, Ivan Ivanovich.”

Ivan didn’t know how to answer. He had never spoken to Konstantin about anything aside from the job. He didn’t like him, he wasn’t attracted to him, and he didn’t want his filthy fucking rubles. He wanted to go home and take a shower.

And yet. He wanted to know. So when he went home, it was with five hundred rubles in his pocket, and a strange, indefinable feeling of something both excitement and shame. He looked it up later and found that it was barely seven American dollars, barely enough to buy a sandwich in this place he now lives. Then after that it became – not a relationship, not exactly. But he had done it once and Konstantin knew that he was at least theoretically willing, and there was no getting away from it now. Soon enough it became something of a regular thing, and then Konstantin wanted to try other stuff and not always pay, and if Ivan ever protested, Konstantin would threaten to get him fired from the factory or tell his family what they were doing. Ivan knew that he couldn’t let this happen, and besides, this was a relationship, or so he would tell himself. It was rough and it wasn’t very enjoyable and he didn’t like the way it made him feel, but it was probably the best he was going to get, here in this place, so he had no choice but to put up with it.

Until one night when his older brother came to pick him up from work, which he didn’t usually do. Something about it set off Ivan’s alarm bells, but he got into Roman���s battered old Zhiguli anyway. They didn’t head back toward the house. Instead they headed for the country, the narrow, crumbling road that led into the vast forests of Krasnoyarsk Krai. The city was often voted one of the most beautiful in Siberia, surviving even its long periods of grim industrialization with something of its soul intact. It wasn’t as cold as Yakutsk or Oymyakon, the places where it stayed at sixty below zero all winter long and boiling water froze when you tossed it out the window. Winters only got down to a few degrees below, and in Russia, that was par for the course. Ivan loved his hometown, and he was used to the outdoors. He was a sportsman, a natural athlete. He played hockey, bandy, football, rugby, and basketball (surprisingly popular in Russia). He swam and boxed. He was tall and tough and muscled and most people never bothered him. But when the car coasted to a halt in the middle of nowhere and Roman turned off the headlights, he was still terrified.

His brother said, “I hear you’re doing things, Vanya.”

Ivan didn’t answer.

“I hear you’re doing things with men.” Roman reached over and grabbed him violently by the shoulders, pinning him against the seat. “Disgusting things. I will not have one of those in the family, do you hear me? Do you hear me? If I find out that you have done it ever again, even once, I will make sure that you pay the price. Are you listening? Say that you understand.”

“Yes,” Ivan said. “I understand.”

What he really understood was that he was going to leave, when he had barely been out of Krasnoyarsk Krai in his life. Going as far as Novosibirsk for a shopping trip was unusual, and once, in school, he went to Georgia, which was the first time he had left the country (though of course, it used to be the country). But he knew that he could not stay here anymore, and in a moment of welcome serendipity, that was also when his conscription notice arrived. At the time, every Russian man over the age of eighteen had to serve two obligatory years in the armed forces (though it has since been lowered to one, of which Ivan does not necessarily approve), and his number had come up. So he quit his job, did not say goodbye to Konstantin or tell him where he was going, packed his few boxes of things, and moved four thousand kilometers and four time zones west to Moscow.

Ivan arrived in the capital trying not to present himself as a wet-behind-the-ears country boy, to act like he knew what he was doing, to show he was much tougher and meaner than any of these spoiled, pampered little children whining about how hard it was when they trudged into headquarters and presented their army notices. In that, he had a genuine advantage; he had worked hard for his whole life, he had already been through whatever could possibly endured with a father and four brothers, and he found the strict routines, harsh discipline, and predictable tasks of the army comforting. Everyone was scared of him, he didn’t need to try (though he did), and that was also gratifying. He worked hard and pleased his commanders, who tried to entice him to stay on as a full-time professional serviceman. There were many opportunities for a man of his talents, and more money than Ivan had ever dreamed of. As for his personal life, as long as he was scrupulously discreet and kept turning in good results, they would not trouble to enquire too closely. That was already better than from what he had expected with Konstantin. Once again, he thought it would be the best he got.

That was where, therefore, he met Aleksander Ilyich Morozov.

Morozov was his opposite in many ways – rich, well-spoken, well-educated, the son of a legendary KGB commander and the inheritor of comfort and privilege even in the lean last days of the USSR. He was about Ivan’s own age, but he had a self-possession and a gravitas that made him seem older. He had started training for a career in the Russian security services practically from childhood, and he had pegged Ivan as a particularly promising recruit. “You should come with me,” he said. “We would find an excellent career for you.”

Ivan was never sure how to respond when Morozov started talking like this. He admired the man and was admittedly attracted to him – not just the dark, elegant handsomeness, but the manifest air of being a person who mattered, who made the rest of the world sit up and take notice and play by his rules – and while he knew that Morozov was ruthless, he wasn’t bothered by that and was willing to do the same when it was called for. Ivan didn’t see the world as some nice candy fairy place where good deeds were always rewarded and violence was always wrong, not least since he knew full well that it didn’t work like that. He didn’t have time for these idiots who thought they would get out there and hold hands and change the world with the power of sunshine and kisses or whatever it was. He didn’t.

Then there was one night when Morozov was at Ivan’s apartment, and they had been drinking and making big plans for ruling the world behind the scenes, and Ivan forgot himself entirely and leaned over the table and kissed him. He tried to pull back almost at once, but Morozov didn’t resist. In fact, he leaned in and put a hand behind Ivan’s head and kept him there, and in that moment, Ivan knew that while this might not be personally objectionable for Sasha (his sexuality was undiscussed but evidently fluid), that wasn’t the reason he was going along with it. It was because he knew instinctively that it was a perfect way to control Ivan, to harness his attraction and his weakness and his willingness to go along with whatever Sasha wanted, and in that, despite all the big plans they had put together and the way Ivan had dreamed of his life changing, it was just Konstantin all over again, and Ivan was straight back at the factory on his knees, small and cornered and powerless. It was visceral and it was wrong and it wasn’t the best he would ever do and he wasn’t, he wasn’t taking that.

They pulled back and Sasha made an enquiring noise, like he wanted to know if Ivan was interested in sealing the deal, and instead Ivan ordered him to leave right now, get out. That was the end of their friendship; they never spoke to each other again, and when his third year in the army ran out, which he had already taken voluntarily, he left. He got a job at some Moscow industrial plant and it was there, through the friend of a friend, he met Nadia Zhabina. And it turned out that she was queer (the first time he had ever heard the word spoken in a good way, something he wanted to be, something he didn’t mind accepting, rather than as an attack), and it turned out after that that she had a friend she wanted him to meet, only it clearly meant that she thought they should go out. Like. On a date.

Ivan flatly shut her down. He did not date, he did not want to date, he did not think he would be good at dating, he did not want to meet some pansy city boy from Nizhny Novgorod who he would immediately dislike, and he was not going to do it, the end. Only Nadia really seemed disappointed, and maybe it was not the worst thing to try a little. This would backfire terribly, he would get over it, and move on with his life.

In Ivan’s opinion, the first date with Fedyor Mikhailovich Kaminsky was, at least on his own behalf, a modest success. He was unavoidably late, thanks to the bus running behind schedule, but he introduced himself, his hobbies, and made it clear what sort of person he was and what he was interested in. He even sent a polite follow-up text with an invitation to meet again. There. No questions, no confusion, everything very straightforward and clear. Nothing to complain about. That was how you did a date, yes?

It turned out, however, that Fedyor Mikhailovich was either very reticent, or perhaps confused, or maybe he did not even know that they had been on a date and Nadia had not clearly explained to him. Burned by his experiences at home, knowing how easily word could get out to the wrong people, Ivan did not want to bring up the subject explicitly, but he had to admit to a considerable confusion. Maybe Fedyor actually liked to just mince around Moscow city parks together, like something out of a Tolstoy novel, or to sit on his couch and watch bad American action movies together. (Later, Ivan learned that Die Hard is actually something of a cult classic, but it’s still slightly lost on him.) That wasn’t bad, because Ivan – to his great bafflement and wariness – liked spending time with him. Fedyor wasn’t like him at all, but they clicked nonetheless. He was the exact kind of idealistic activist that Ivan had long disdained, but it was different with him. When Fedya talked, he liked to listen, to dream about a world that really did work that way. It didn’t, but it felt closer.

Besides that, he was cute. He was well-put together. He was charming and vivacious and could talk to people that they met, while Ivan stood scowling with his hands in his pockets and wondered how long this was going to take. He really desperately wanted to kiss Fedya (and for that matter, do other things to him), and he found himself thinking about it a lot. But what if it was like with Sasha again, and it was either Ivan opportunistically taking it for himself, or Fedya selfishly trying to keep him there, to use him for his own purposes? Maybe Fedya was the idiot. He had to know they were together, right? Or were they together? Ivan suddenly wasn’t sure. Damn it! Why didn’t Fedyor subscribe to the school of just being clear about things? Ivan himself had nothing to do with the problem.

But then there came that night, and Fedya cooking dinner and stumbling through trying to ask him if they were maybe something, and in that moment, Ivan found it all so hilarious that the only thing he could do was sit there and let the whole thing play out. Then it turned out, of course, that they were together, and that Fedyor kissed him just as deliciously as Ivan had imagined, and maybe Nadia Zhabina was not so wrong after all.

Maybe she was not wrong in the least.

Ivan takes his supermarket bags to the sunny kitchen of the mostly-remodeled apartment and sets them down. Fedya has picked out all the colors and wallpapers and furniture and paint, and Ivan has done most of the work, since he is gainfully employed as a handyman and repair-person and he doesn’t want to pay some American to half-ass a job that he can do better. The apartment is really quite lovely now. The living room has been done in a pale, springy green, the white plaster moldings washed and repaired, all the junk of the previous owner finally cleared out except for one or two collectibles that they decided to keep. There’s a bookshelf and a desk filled with Fedya’s work things, a couch and a television and a coffee table and new curtains. The bedroom is big and airy, with a ceiling fan and new carpets. Framed pictures and art pieces hang on the wall. It looks like a place where real people live.

Ivan makes breakfast, cooking and stirring and brewing the coffee, and puts it all on a tray. It’s Saturday, so of course Fedya is still asleep, and Ivan pads through the apartment to the closed bedroom door, balancing the tray on his hip long enough to open it and cast a strip of light inside. It takes a moment, but Fedyor rolls over, groggy and tousled and very, very cute with his bed-headed dark hair and squinting eyes. “Vanya? What smells so good?”

“Happy birthday, my love.” Ivan sets the tray on the bedside table and leans down to kiss him, as Fedyor makes a happy humming sound and throws his arms around Ivan’s neck, cuddling against him like a barnacle. “I have made you breakfast.”

(His younger self was wrong, and he has never been so glad of it.)

(This was the best, this is the best, this was waiting for him, this kind of happiness could happen for him, and he is grateful beyond all words that he fought for it and believed it until it did.)

[sillyrabbit81]

Her Heavy Cross

Summary: Three years after tragedy hits, Lana she decides to start dating again. She meets Will through a dating app and they begin an online romance. After months of constant requests, Lana relents and agrees to meet and go on an irl date with Will. But is Will who he says he is? Lana is quickly pulled into an intense relationship forcing her to confront her tragic past. Will Lana face it or will she close her heart forever?

Pairing: OMC x OFC

Word Count: approx 2.6k

Warnings: swearing, mention of death, angst

Authors Note: The story started as a Henry Cavill fanfiction but I changed it to be an original character, but shades of Henry are still there. Hope you enjoy the story and thanks for reading.

Part 12 Part 14

Part 13

Liam said we should drive to the restaurant. I wanted to get an Uber because I didn't think we would get a car park close to the restaurant. The shoes I was wearing were not made for walking.

"We don't have to worry about the car. They have a valet service," Liam said when I suggested an Uber would be better.

Of course, they do. I don't think I've ever used a valet service in my life, and Liam tells me like it's an everyday thing. I suppose it is for him. Earlier in the week, I was amazed to find out that he gets driven to work most days even though he only lives about 10 minutes away. No wonder movies and tv shows are so expensive to make if they have to pay for things like drivers on top of everything else.

I was excited about going in his car, though. I was itching to drive it. I wanted to ask him if I could, but I didn't. As stupid as it was, I was scared he'd say no. Every guy who had said no to letting me drive his car ended up being a prick. So I was floored when he said I could drive if I wanted.

"Really?" I asked. I was practically bouncing with excitement.

"Yeah, you seemed to like it. I was going to ask if you wanted to take it out before we got..." Liam paused, seemingly to look for the right word. "Distracted."

I clapped my hands and squealed like a child. I'm such a dag, but I was excited. I'd never driven a car that fast or expensive before.

The drive was exhilarating but too short. Its 5.0 litre, supercharged V8 engine was insanely powerful, and since it was AWD, its handling took me a bit to get used to. When we got to the restaurant, I couldn't stop smiling. "Thank you! That was heaps good!"

"You're hilarious."

"Why? What did I do?" I asked, getting out of the car and handing the keys to the valet and thanking him.

"Don't think I didn't notice that you deliberately went the long way and on the highway so you could drive faster."

"I don't know what you're talking about." I widened my eyes and tried to look innocent.

Liam just shook his head and placed his hand on my back, guiding me into the restaurant.

The food was modern Australian, Liam had a scotch fillet and salad, and I had barramundi. Liam wasn't drinking and said he would drive home. I had a couple of glasses of white wine and felt a bit sauced.

I had trouble staying awake on the way back to Liam's, and eventually, the rumble of the engine lulled me into sleep. The wine combined with the stressful week had caught up with me. I woke up when Liam pulled into the garage.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to doze off," I said as we got out of the car.

"Never mind," Liam said. "Come on, let's go to bed."

We walked across Liam's backyard holding hands. I looked around as the first time I was lead through here, I only had eyes for Liam. It was big for a house so close to the city. "You have a pool? I wish you would have told me. I would have brought my swimmers."

Liam opened his back door. "You don't need bathers," he said winking. I blushed then yawned. "Poor princess. Do you want a shower? Or straight to bed?"

I nodded, "yeah, a shower would be good. I've gotta wash this makeup off too." I kicked my heels off. The relief was euphoric, my calves were sore, and I rubbed them as I bent to pick up my shoes.

"Want a bath instead?" Liam asked, noticing my massage. It was sweet that he noticed little things like that. "The bathroom on the third floor has an enormous bath. I haven't had a chance to use it yet."

"Fuck, yes! That would be awesome. What other crazy shit do you have in this place? I think you'd better give me a tour tomorrow."

Liam laughed as we went up the lift. "Yeah, ok, there's a couple of things you might like that I've not shown you yet."

The bathroom was stunning, like a hotel or spa. The bath was the hero piece of the room, and it was huge. It sat in the middle of the bathroom on a raised platform and had tiled steps around it. The whole room was decorated to be a romantic space, a couples bathroom. Candles and body wash sat by the bath, and the room's lighting was warm. Robes hung on the wall near the tub. Although there were a shower and sinks, there was no toilet. The room was definitely built for romance, not practicality.

"I thought you said you hadn't used this bathroom."

"I haven't." I pointed out the candles, soaps, towels and robes. "A stylist got all that, fitted out each room with basics so I can move in, and it's all done." My jaw dropped.

"Your life..."

"Isn't normal." He interrupted with a half-smile. "I know." Liam started the bath. "Do you need anything? Your toiletry bag? Toothbrush?"

I nodded. Liam kissed me as he left to get my stuff. The bath would probably take 20 minutes to fill, so I thought I'd wash my make-up off and brush my teeth while it did. I got undressed and put one of the robes on. They were both huge, no his and hers, but it was warm and soft.

Liam returned, and I started to wash up. I put my hair in a bun with a scrunchy and washed my face. I brushed my teeth and saw that Liam was sitting on the edge of the bath, still fully clothed, watching the water fill up.

"You're not getting in?" I asked with a mouthful of toothbrush and toothpaste. Liam looked at me confused, so I finished brushing, rinsed and repeated my question.

Liam turned the water off, bath finally full and got up. "I thought maybe you'd like to soak by yourself for a while."

"No," I said. I wrapped my arms around Liam's waist, feeling short again as my head rested against his chest. "I want you to get in with me."

He lifted my chin and kissed me softly, almost lazily. "Alright, Sweetheart."

I lifted his jumper and raised it over his head. Liam had to help by ducking. He sat and took his shoes and socks off and then stood to remove his pants. I hung my robe back up, and we both got in the water. I sat between his legs and laid my back against his chest, my head resting on his shoulder. The water was bliss, almost too hot but soothing. Liam had put some fragrance in the water, and it smelled of lavender. Breathing it in relaxed me, and I closed my eyes.

Liam nuzzled into my neck and caressed my arm. I smiled as he kissed my neck and shoulders until I felt him stir against my back. He stopped kissing me, and he just held me close to his chest like he was trying not to get turned on. It didn't seem to be working as I could still feel him, but I admired his efforts.

"Lana, I want to ask you something," Liam said. His timbre was soft but echoed slightly through the room, making his words seem more ominous than he probably meant them to be.

My body tensed slightly, and hesitantly I said, "Okay."

He cleared his throat, and I realised he was nervous. I don't think I had heard him unsure like that before. I felt cold. "I uh, I have a premiere to attend on Thursday evening, one of Myra's. Tom, my agent, set it up." Oh fuck. He's not going to ask me to go with him, is he? "I would very much like it if you came with me." I sat up quickly, and water splashed everywhere. "Sarah said that since the cats out of the bag and I'm serious about you, you should come too." He added quickly.

I looked back at him, furious. "Why would you ask me that?"

"Because you're my fucking girlfriend." He was also mad now.

"I'm not your fucking girlfriend." I stood up and got out of the bath. I almost slipped on the tiles as I did. His hand shot out to steady me, but I pulled my arm out of his grasp. I stomped over to the robes and pulled one on. Then I grabbed my clothes from the floor.

"What are you doing?" Liam asked, getting out himself. He didn't put his robe on, and he just stood there. I don't know why, but that seemed to make me angrier.

"Getting my shit and going home."

"What the fuck, Lana? Why?"

I grabbed my bag and went to leave and found him blocking my way. "Because I want to, that's why. Get out of my way."

"What's wrong with you?"

"Just piss off."

"No, tell me what's wrong. Why don't you want to be seen with me? Why don't you want to be my girlfriend? I don't understand." He was shouting now, his voice full of anger and frustration. "You treat me like a fuck toy one minute, and the next, you're treating me like we've been married for ten years. What do you want from me? You say you aren't my girlfriend, but you sure act like you are. If you just want to fuck me, fine. Come over and fuck me, then leave. But don't lay with me and cuddle all day, cook me food, confide in me, talk to me at night until you fall asleep and make me fall in love with you. I can't take that."

For a moment, I softened. In so many ways, Liam was right. We had fallen into this relationship so easily. I felt like I knew him because we talked for months before meeting. I did enjoy hanging out with him talking. He's often felt like home to me, a safe place, a person I could trust. He was my boyfriend in everything but name. He saw the change in me and moved towards me.

I stiffened, "No, fuck you. Don't put this on me. I told you to go slow. I told you I don't want a relationship in the spotlight, and you won't listen to me." My frustration poured out. "You lured me in under false pretences with no thought about how I would feel. Like having the great Liam Cross interested in you would be enough. You're so fucking self-centred. I'm not impressed by all this," I waved my hand around the room, "Or that," I waved my hand at his naked body. "For fuck's sake, put some fucking clothes on. You're not that attractive."

Liam looked over at the robes and saw how far away they were. He shook his head. "I think we need to talk, Lana. You can't run away from this."

"You can't keep me here." He just raised an eyebrow. I gasped horrified. "You wouldn't?"

His body tensed, and he looked like he was going to try to stop me for a minute. But then his shoulders slumped, and he stepped aside.

"Thank you," I said through gritted teeth as I walked out.

I took the stairs down to his room and got dressed. He followed me, still naked and dripping water. I thought he would try to keep talking to me, but he went straight to his dressing room.

When he came out, he wore tracksuit pants, his chest was bare, and he still had beads of water clinging to his chest. My traitorous eyes looked him up and down, and I noticed it looked like he wasn't wearing underwear. Fuck me. He was magnificent. I tore my eyes away and back to packing my bag. I wasn't going to let his body distract me.

"Please, Lana, just talk to me."

"What's the point?"

"The point is so you'll let me in. You talk to me, you tell me things about you, and just as it cuts close to the bone, you clam up."

"I'm my own person, Liam. I'm allowed to have secrets." My bag was packed, and I stood up with it.

"Why didn't you tell me about Andy and your father's car accident? I had to read about it on the fucking internet."

I felt like I had been punched in the guts. I felt both hot and cold waves flow over me, and for a moment, I thought I was going to throw up.

"You're a fucking prick." I was raging.

"Alright, Lana, have it your way. Go back to being miserable and alone. Go put your wedding ring back on because obviously, you'd rather stay in love with a dead man than be seen with me." He was still shouting. Liam's body was taught, so much tension in his muscles. His lips almost looked cruel, twisted up into a sneer. His eyebrows were drawn low, making his eyes seem small.

"Yeah, you're right. I would. I shouldn't be here with you." I was near screaming now. I was irrational, tired, slightly drunk and drained. "I should be miserable and alone, and I should be thankful for that. It's my fucking fault he's dead. I fucking killed him. It should have been me. It's my fault..." I sobbed. The tears started, and I knew they couldn't be stopped. "Oh God, it's my fault." I couldn't breathe. I dropped my bag and clawed at my shirt, trying to get a breath. I was on my knees, now fighting the panic that threatened to overwhelm me.

Liam's arms came around me. I tried to push him away, fight him. He was too strong. "Shhhh shhh." He tried to soothe me. He rubbed my back. I wanted to scream at him to go away, to leave me alone. He wouldn't let go. He held me tighter until I couldn't fight anymore and just let myself go. He pulled me onto his lap, and I curled up into him as he whispered, "You're ok. It's ok." I kept sobbing until I clutched at his neck and cried into him.

I don't know how long we sat there. It felt like hours. "I'm sorry," I said when I had calmed. My throat was sore. I don't think I could have spoken any louder.

"Don't be. I shouldn't have pushed you. You were right. I was being selfish."

"I should have told you before you found out. It still hurts. I can deal with them being gone, but I can't get past the guilt. I should have been in the car with Dad. Andy was doing me a favour because I was too tired from Christmas. I wanted a day off, you know? A day where I didn't have to deal with people." My throat was feeling raw, and my mouth was dry.

"You don't have to tell me."

"No, I do. Just let me get through it, ok?" He nodded and pulled me into a more comfortable position on his lap. "I was supposed to take my Dad to Dave's house for a second Christmas. My parents had split up a couple of years ago. I fought with my mum the day before and didn't want to go through it all again the next day. My Dad couldn't drive anymore; his eyes were too bad. So Andy said he'd drop him off and I could stay in bed. He said he would tell them I had a migraine. So I laid in bed sleeping while my father and husband laid on the road, dying, trapped under a truck."

"I'm so sorry," Liam said. "I don't know how I would deal with that either. But it's not your fault. You know that, right?"

I didn't say anything. Liam was quiet after that. But he didn't let me go.

Part 14

[anindoorkitty]

Benedict Cumberbatch On His Upcoming Movie "The Courier" And Life During Covid-19   By Annie DarlingAugust 07, 2020  (x)

From the moment he donned his deerstalker as the great Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch’s popularity soared, but his ego didn’t. The actor talks about his forthcoming spy drama and how he’s spending lockdown learning the banjo

Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of the alarmingly awkward Sherlock Holmes has catapulted his career to unimaginable heights. Before donning the detective’s hat in 2010, the distinctive-looking London native landed several quirky acting jobs. He’s played theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, Van Gogh and, lest we forget, the hair-raising paedophile in Atonement (2007). But it was his fast-talking performance as the private investigator, which Steven Spielberg has called “the best Sherlock Holmes on screen”, that transformed Cumberbatch into a high-cheek-boned dreamboat, quite literally overnight.

Now 43, Cumberbatch has proven to be the ultimate chameleon, having played everyone from Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate (2013). His portrayal of British mathematician Alan Turing, who cracked Nazi Germany’s Enigma military code during the Second World War, earned him Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. This year, the performer stars in true-life drama The Courier, which is set for an August 28 theatrical release.

STARRING ROLES

This Sixties-based spy story bursts with intrigue and political subterfuge, but what was Cumberbatch’s most memorable moment on set? “The last scene we shot because I got to eat a doughnut afterwards,” he tells me. For the role, he lost a striking amount of weight to transform himself into British businessman Greville Wynne, who spied on the Soviet Union during the Cold War and spent 18 months in a Moscow prison after being caught. Directed by Dominic Cooke, The Courier is based on Wynne’s real-life experiences, and production had to be suspended to give Cumberbatch enough time to slim down to Wynne’s post-lockup figure.

Drawn to characters he describes as “unexpected”, Cumberbatch enjoys the challenge of an on-screen transformation. But when asked about his greatest achievement, he refuses to answer. “That’s a question for others. Getting my first paid acting job felt as good as anything I’ve been lucky enough to land.” His thoughtfulness has somehow survived super-stardom. “Life’s about the journey,” he reminds me, before admitting that winning his first BAFTA for the title role in Patrick Melrose (2019) was a “wonderful moment”.

For Cumberbatch, there was never any doubt about which road his career would take. When asked what he would do if he could no longer act, he draws a blank. “I have no idea. Maybe I’d be a surf instructor in Costa Rica. Or a tree surgeon.” The only child of British actors Tim Carlton of Downton Abbey (2011) and Wanda Ventham of Only Fools and Horses (1989-1992), Cumberbatch grew up in London’s exclusive Kensington neighbourhood before attending Harrow, one of the oldest all-boys schools in Britain. From there, he headed straight to drama school. On advice from an agent, he began calling himself Benedict Cumberbatch—adopting the surname his father had dropped years before, thinking it too complicated.

You’d be wrong, however, to assume it’s all been smooth sailing. While filming the BBC mini-series To the Ends of the Earth (2005), Cumberbatch and two of his co-stars were kidnapped in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, after a day spent scuba-diving. When the trio pulled over with a flat tyre, six men jumped them at gunpoint. After a visit to the ATM, the hijackers let them go. Surprisingly, this harrowing ordeal hasn’t put Cumberbatch off the underwater sport. “I’ve loved diving ever since I learned how to do it with a friend in Mozambique years ago.”

DIVING TOOLS

It’s one of the reasons Cumberbatch wears a Jaeger-LeCoultre Polaris Memovox. The original from 1968 had one of the first diver’s alarms, which would remind divers when it was time to resurface. Cumberbatch was introduced to the Swiss watchmaker when he starred in Doctor Strange (2016), in which he plays one of Marvel’s more mind-blowing superheroes. He’s currently learning lines for the sequel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (planned for 2022).

“In 2016, Jaeger-LeCoultre was just another watch brand to me,” admits Cumberbatch, but he learned more about the company after visiting its manufacture in Vallée de Joux. Engraving and enamelling require hours of minute manipulation. “There was a George Seurat masterpiece called Bathers at Asnières projected onto a screen that was the size of the original painting,” he recalls. “Not understanding what I was looking at, I turned around and saw that a lady was painting it onto the back of a Reverso watch, which is no bigger than a postage stamp. She was doing it with a brush barely bigger than a millimetre.”

Halfway across the world, at the time of interview, Cumberbatch and his family were adjusting to life after lockdown in New Zealand, where he is filming Jane Campion’s upcoming drama The Power of the Dog (planned for 2021). He and his wife, the stage director Sophie Hunter, have two sons, Christopher (nicknamed Kit) and Hal. “I’ve tried to maintain some sense of sanity by using lockdown as a forced opportunity to be in one place.” Fun-filled activities include learning how to play the banjo and baking bread. “Actually,” he contemplates, “it’s been really busy.” And a good thing too, because we won’t have to wait long before he’s back on the big screen.

[pikapeppa]

Fenris the Witcher: Simply Just

In which I shamelessly adapt the Geralt/Yennefer bath scene from episode 5 of the Netflix show to Fenris and Rynne Hawke. This is entirely @schoute​‘s fault, as is the BEAUTIFUL ART. 

Read here on AO3 instead; ~4000 words.

The bathing chamber was very nice, and it put Fenris on edge.

He cautiously examined the well-equipped room. A raised platform in the center of the room boasted a luxurious sunken bath that was easily large enough for four. Large stained glass windows along the western wall would allow the bather to enjoy the full sunset – if the sun was still up, that is. At this late hour, the bathchamber was lit by a multitude of candles instead: far more candles than Fenris needed or wanted, but which the sorceress insisted on lighting. 

For a romantic mood, she’d cheekily said before leaving him here alone. He supposed he should be grateful she’d left, given the heated way she’d been eyeing him since the moment he’d dragged the damned bard through the doors of the keep. 

His gut twisted at the thought. Fucking bard, he thought. Fenris had told the bard countless times that he preferred to travel alone: that his work was dangerous, and there was no place for someone so vulnerable at a witcher’s side. And yet he continued to follow Fenris across the continent, making his inane comments and singing his fucking songs…

That sorceress better be able to heal him, Fenris thought grimly. The last thing Fenris needed was for news to spread that an innocent bard had met an untimely demise while travelling by his side. Especially a bard as popular as Dorian. 

Fenris pushed the thought aside; there was no point worrying until the sorceress finished her work. He might as well wash the stinking drowner guts away in the meantime.

He took a bracing breath, then finally dropped his towel and stepped into the sunken bath. The water was hot and fragrant, smelling of something woodsy and sweet, and the soap at the side of the tub was just as sweetly scented.

Fenris ignored the scent as he roughly washed his hair. He scrubbed his neck and arms briskly, and in a matter of minutes his skin was clean, stained only by the lyrium and ink that had marred his body for almost as long as he could remember. 

He dunked his head one last time and slicked the hair back from his face, then stood up and waded toward the edge of the tub. Now that he was clean, he should get out of this chamber. Go find Dorian and make sure he was healing properly from the curse that was fulminating in his neck and closing off his windpipe. 

But the sorceress had said the healing ritual would take time. Even if Fenris did go to check on Dorian, there was nothing he’d be able to do to help. 

Besides, the water in this tub was so warm. It had been months now since Fenris had last bathed in warm water. Or indoors, for that matter.

He paused with his hands on the edge of the tub. He stood there for a long moment as the heat soaked into his aching legs. Then, with a sigh, he sank into the tub once more. 

He would just stay here for a little longer until his muscles loosened up. He needed to be ready to move again as soon as Dorian got his damned voice back, and stiff muscles never made for a timely departure. 

He leaned back against the curved edge of the tub and closed his eyes, all the better to meditate for a moment and relax his muscles even more. He sat in the water for some time, floating in a state of half-awake restlessness as he waited for the tension to leave his shoulders and his thighs.

A creaking at the bathchamber door pulled him from his uneasy reverie. He whipped around and glared at the door, his fingers hovering tensely near the small silver dagger that was always strapped to his ankle. 

The door swung open, and the sorceress stepped into the bathing chamber. She sauntered right up to the platform and smiled at him. “How is it?” she asked. “Warm enough for your liking?”

He narrowed his eyes. She’d promised him some privacy. From the bold-as-brass grin on her face, however, it seemed that any privacy he’d had was now forfeit.

He turned away from her and settled back against the edge of the bath. “It is warm enough. Thank you.” 

“You’re very welcome, Fenris of…?” She leaned her elbows on the edge of the tub and peered at his profile. “I didn’t quite catch where you hail from.” 

He frowned. It never ceased to aggravate him that people cared where he was from. Was it not enough that he hunted and destroyed the monsters that prowled these god-forsaken lands? According to Dorian’s nagging, it wasn’t; Dorian was constantly saying that Fenris would sound more trustworthy and heroic if he said he was from somewhere. 

But Fenris wasn’t trying to be heroic. He was just trying to eke out a living in a world where he was reviled for multiple reasons that were neither his choice nor fault.

He glanced at the sorceress. She was still looking at him expectantly. 

He grunted. “It is simply Fenris.”

She hummed thoughtfully. “‘Simply’ Fenris. I like it.” She pushed away from the edge of the platform, and to Fenris’s dismay, she sashayed up the few small steps until she was standing on the platform beside the sunken tub and looking down at him. 

He kept his stony gaze on the wall of windows, unwilling to betray his discomfiture at her open stare. He was no stranger to the staring; he was stared at wherever he went, eyes crawling over his uncommonly white hair and the tattoos that trailed across his body like malevolent vines. On the rare occasions when he bedded someone, tolerating their morbid fascination was just part of the price he had to pay. Just because the staring was common didn’t make it comfortable, however.

The silence stretched for a few loaded seconds. Then, to Fenris’s surprise, the sorceress sat beside the tub and crossed her legs comfortably. “You’re welcome, by the way,” she said. 

“Excuse me?” he said blankly. 

“For saving your bard,” she said. She adjusted the long skirt of her beaded white gown. “He’s fine. He needs sleep to make sure the spell takes, but he’ll be fine.”

An uncomfortable spike of guilt poked his gut. He hadn’t even asked how Dorian was doing. 

He bowed his head to the sorceress. “I… I’m in your debt, Lady Amell. Let me know how I can repay–”

“Please, don’t call me ‘lady’,” she said. “It’s just Rynne. No need to stand on ceremony when you’re sitting naked in my bathtub.” She raised a salacious eyebrow.

He eyed her curiously. Nobles were never this informal with him. “All right,” he said. “‘Just’ Rynne.” He raised an eyebrow at her in turn.

She grinned at him, and his breath caught for a moment as he gazed into her unusual eyes. They were a bright warm gold, almost fiery with reflected warmth from the candles that she’d insisted on lighting around his bath. 

He forced himself to look away. Odd-coloured eyes shouldn’t surprise him; he saw odd-coloured eyes every time he happened upon his own reflection, after all. Freakishly bright green eyes in his case instead of Rynne’s brilliant gold, but odd nonetheless. 

She stretched out comfortably on her side — an unusually casual pose by any measure. Her skirt slid apart at the thigh, exposing the golden length of her leg.

A ripple of carnal heat ran from his scalp down to his toes. Oblivious to his heated thoughts, Rynne was talking again. “Truth be told, it’s actually Rynne Hawke, not Amell,” she said. “But we like to pretend in this household that the Hawke name didn’t exist.” She propped her cheek on one fist and smirked. “Rather difficult when we all look so much like my father, but what can you do?”

He tore his greedy gaze away from her bare leg and gave her an odd look. “This is your family home?”

“That’s right,” she said.

He gazed at her with growing surprise. “You returned to your hometown after your training at Arlathan?” He raised an eyebrow. “I assume you trained at Arlathan, at least.”

“I did, yes.”

Fenris tilted his head. “That’s… unusual. That they sent you back to your hometown. Is it not more common that mages provide their services outside of the jurisdiction where they were born?”

“It is,” Rynne confirmed. “But I’m a strange mage.”

He frowned, and she let out a little laugh. “That’s my coy way of saying I’m a rather weak one. The Sisterhood couldn’t find much of a use for me, so they sent me home. Which is what my mother wanted anyway. She gets an Arlathan-trained mage to bolster the Amell name, I got to come back to my family…” She shrugged affably. “It’s a happy ending all around.”

He eyed her pensively. Her tone was light and she was smiling, but Fenris got the impression that there was something she wasn’t saying.

She waved her hand dismissively. “Enough about me, though. I’m curious about you.” She smiled sweetly at him and trailed her fingers in the bathwater.

He wilted slightly in resignation. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything,” she said brightly. “Everything. Tell me the last place you’ve been.”

“Before this?” He shrugged listlessly. “I was in Starkhaven last. I was there to hunt and kill a werewolf.”

Her eyebrows rose. “A werewolf? Shit. Well, you clearly won the fight.”

Fenris shrugged again. “It was not a true werewolf. Just a particularly large rabid wolf. Still, I put the creature out of its misery.”

“And took the coin, I presume?” Rynne said.

“Half of it,” Fenris said. “The wolf was not a true monster.”

She hummed thoughtfully and continued to swirl her fingertips in the water. “A witcher with a moral compass,” she mused.

He shot her a resentful look. “I take it you subscribe to the common view of witchers, then.”

“And what view would that be?” she asked.

“Freak,” he said baldly. “Mutant. Heartless mercenary, glorified butcher. Take your pick.”

“That’s not the view that I have,” she replied. Her eyes slid suggestively over his bare body beneath its feeble veil of water.

He huffed. This sorceress was certainly a bold one. He leaned his elbows back on the edge of the tub with affected casualness. “You speak your mind. I’ll give you that.”

“I try to,” she said cheerfully. “Even when it’s not always appreciated. On that note, I’ve got another question for you.”

He grunted. “I doubt that I can stop you from asking it.”

She flashed him another smile, but her bold golden gaze was tracing slowly over his neck and shoulders, and he sighed. “Go ahead. Ask about them,” he muttered. “Everyone does.”

She smirked. “If you insist. What’s the story with the tattoos?”

“What stories have you heard?” he said dryly.

“That they’re magical,” she said. “That you add to them every time you kill a new legendary beast.” She chuckled. “One story said you have a line or dot for every beautiful man or woman you sleep with.”

Damned Dorian, Fenris thought in annoyance. Still, the bard would be thrilled to know his fanciful stories were travelling as far as Lothering. 

Fenris closed his eyes and pretended to ignore her keen gaze. “Those are interesting stories,” he said. 

“They are,” she agreed. “I’d rather know the truth.”

“Wouldn’t they all,” Fenris drawled.

“They wouldn’t, actually,” Rynne said. “Most people prefer stories. They’re easier to swallow and nicer to think about at night.”

His eyes popped open. Considering her light-hearted manner, that was an oddly cynical statement to fall from her raspberry-red lips. 

He studied her carefully. Her expression was pleasant, but there was something serious and heavy about her gilded eyes – a weight that made him think her lightheartedness was just as affected as Fenris’s own ease with his naked skin.

They stared at each other for another heartbeat. Finally he deigned to feed her a crumb of truth. “I was given these marks as part of the ritual that made me what I am,” he said.

She tilted her head. “Tattoos are part of the usual witchering process?” 

Yes, he thought. He could easily tell her this lie; there were no other elven witchers left alive in the world to refute him, after all. 

“No. They aren’t,” he said instead. Then he frowned at his hands. Why hadn’t he lied to her?

“Ah,” she said. “You’re just the lucky one to get them, then.”

Yes, he thought again. After all, he’d survived the process – a stroke of fortune by any measure. 

“Quite the opposite,” he said, to his own dismay.

Her eyebrows rose slightly. “What do you mean? 

“I didn’t want–” He pressed his lips together hard, irritated at himself for revealing so much to this woman that he’d only just met. There was something about her, about this Rynne Amell – no, Rynne Hawke, he thought – that loosened his tongue in an odd way.

Suddenly it occurred to him why he might be talking to her so much – more in five minutes than he had in weeks, in fact. He shot her a hard look. “Are you enchanting me?” he demanded.

Her eyebrows shot up. “No. Why?”

He glared at her, and her fingers went still in the water. “Oh ho. Now who’s subscribing to a common view?” she said archly. She sat up and adopted a mocking voice. “‘Sorceresses are temptresses and manipulators. Purveyors of pleasure to keep their masters and mistresses happy.’ Or so some ignorant people think.” She shot him a flat look. “Including you, apparently.” 

She made as though to push herself upright, and Fenris grasped her arm. “Wait,” he blurted. 

She stopped and met his gaze, and once again, he was arrested by the limpid clarity of her eyes. In all the decades he’d walked this cursed world, he’d never seen eyes of Rynne’s particular shade of gold. 

A shiver ran down his back, lifting the fine hairs on his neck and his arms. The bathwater was getting cold. 

His eyes widened as he realized why. Rynne’s fingers trailing in the bathwater… 

“You were keeping the water warm?” he asked. 

She pursed her lips. “Does that offend you?” she said stiffly.

He stared at her for a second longer, then released her arm. “No,” he said. “It was… subtle, in fact. Skillful.” He settled in the tub once more and gave her an appraising look. “You’re not as weak a mage as you make yourself out to be.”

She lifted her chin slightly. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“Wha… no,” he said. Then he realized that that’s exactly what it seemed like he was doing.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Fasta vass,” he muttered. “That was not my intent. I apolog–”

“You’re from Tevinter?” she said suddenly.

A spike of alarm jolted through his chest, and he gaped at her. How had she figured that out? He was always so careful to mask his native accent. The only one who knew he was from Tevinter was Dorian, and then only because Dorian was from Tevinter too. If this information got out, no number of Dorian’s ballads would save Fenris from going entirely broke. 

He swallowed hard. If his pulse wasn’t four times slower than the average man’s, he was sure it would be racing now. “No, I’m… I’m not. Why do you think that?” he blustered gracelessly.

Once again, Rynne surprised him by smiling. “You swore in Tevene,” she said. “Swear words are extremely telling, you know.” She chuckled and stretched out on her side again. “You should train yourself in using different swear words. Try a little ‘fuck’ here and there.”

Her tone was back to its usual warm and playful timbre. Fenris studied her for a moment, then settled back against the edge of the bath again. “Believe it or not, I’m usually quite apt at using ‘fuck’ instead,” he said. 

“Mm. I can only imagine,” she murmured. 

He darted a glance at her. Her expression was heated and sly, and his cock stirred with interest. Suddenly the idea of ‘a little fuck here and there’ didn’t seem entirely terrible. Or terrible at all, if he was perfectly honest.

He breathed slowly through the inopportune surge of lust until it ebbed away. Rynne’s fingers were drifting in the bathwater again, and when the water was hot once more, Fenris broke the silence. 

“Only Dorian knows,” he said, very quietly. “It–”

“–would ruin your reputation, I imagine,” Rynne said. “I can understand that. Your secret’s safe with me.” 

He glanced at her. A little smile was playing across her lips, but even so, she seemed sad.

He regarded her curiously for a moment: her casual lounging pose, the enticing line of her leg, the composure in her sad little smile. “You are not as young as you appear, are you?” he said.

She looked up and met his eye, and her smile widened into something more genuine. “What a question to ask a lady.”

“You said not to call you a lady,” he replied.

Her smile broadened further still, giving Fenris a glimpse of a dimple at her left cheek. She playfully splashed a bit of water at him before speaking again. “If you want, you could always tell people you’re from here. From Lothering, I mean. I’ll back up your story in case anyone asks.”

He stared at her, thrown off once again. She was offering not only to keep his secret, but to reinforce it, even though he’d accused her of enchanting him? Not only that, but she’d offered to save Dorian’s life before Fenris had even had a chance to offer any payment… 

He dropped his gaze to his tattooed hands. “Why are you doing this?” he said stiffly. 

Her fingers went still. “Doing what?”

Talking to me, he thought. Helping me. Being kind.

He shot her a hard look. “What do you want from me?” he said.

She raised her eyebrows and continued trailing her fingers in the water. “Nothing,” she said. She gave him a cheeky little smile. “Your company and conversation are payment enough.” 

He gazed at her beautiful face in silence, unable to find a suitable reply. His company and conversation… nobody wanted Fenris’s company and conversation. Well, there was Dorian, but Dorian didn’t travel with him for the company. Dorian was reaping the benefits of Fenris’s infamy, taking the grit of his life and turning it into glamour for their mutual benefit. What Rynne was suggesting – that she actually enjoyed his presence in her home, despite his surliness and his suspicions and his twisted, freakish nature… 

His chest felt tight, like an odd sort of discomfort was swelling in his ribs and his throat. All of a sudden, he didn’t want to be in this bathtub any longer.

He stood abruptly and stepped out of the bath without meeting her eye. He grabbed the towel he’d dropped and hastily wrapped it around his waist, wishing that he had something more protective to cover his scarred and stained skin. 

“What, finished already?” she said. “You’re quick. I prefer to take my time, especially if it’s hot.” She snickered. “The bathwater, I mean.” 

Her tone was playful and warm, and it set his teeth on edge. He stalked over to the bathing chamber door. “I would like to see Dorian now,” he said gruffly. He stepped into the adjoining bedroom and quickly pulled on the trousers she’d left on the bed for him to borrow. 

The trousers were tight – nearly too tight. He scowled as he laced them up. Then Rynne’s drawling voice followed him into the bedroom. 

“I believe I sized you up quite nicely,” she said, and she openly eyed his crotch.

He gave her a chiding look and reached for the shirt, but Rynne sat on the bed – and on the shirt – before he could pick it up. “There’s no rush, you know,” she said. “Your friend can’t leave until tomorrow at least.” 

“He’s not my–” Fenris broke off before he could say something callous. He’d already been unkind enough to Dorian for one day without clarifying that Dorian was not his friend. Not that Dorian was here to hear him say it, but it would injure Dorian’s feelings if he did. Not that Fenris was particularly concerned about Dorian’s feelings.

He ran a frustrated hand through his damp hair. Then Rynne spoke in a more serious tone. “You’re safe here, you know. Both of you. You can let your guard down for one night.”

“There is no such thing as safe,” he retorted. “Not truly.”

She tilted her head. “If you really think there’s no such thing as safe, then why do you bother hunting monsters?” 

He scoffed. What a foolish question. “It is my job,” he said.

“Really?” Rynne said. “Saving villages, risking your life to hunt enormous monsters, killing rabid wolves and only taking half the coin… that’s all just a job to you?”

“Yes,” he gritted.

“Do you ever feel called to some higher purpose?”

He glared at her. Why was she asking him such personal questions? “Do you?” he retorted.

She laughed lightly. “I don’t think so. But I’ve got no fucking clue. That’s why I’m asking you. You’ve lived longer than I, if the stories are true. I thought you might have some insight to share.”

He glowered at her for a moment longer, but her gilded eyes were wide and waiting, and… venhedis, it was so damned strange to meet someone who was so utterly uncowed by him. 

He unfolded his arms. “There is no such thing as a higher purpose. This is all there is.” He looked pointedly at the shirt she was sitting on. 

She smirked and shifted so he could pick up the shirt, then replied while Fenris pulled the shirt over his head. “What stops you from just lying down and giving up, then? If nothing will ever get better or safer?”

He shoved his hair back and frowned at her. “Are you asking my opinion or looking for counsel?”

She shrugged. “Maybe both. You’ve had more time to think about this, after all.”

He eyed her appraisingly. Odd that her tone of voice was breeziest when she was saying the heaviest things. 

On impulse, he reached out and tipped her chin up. Her eyes widened, making her look young and guileless again, and Fenris was seized by a strange sense of… of mismatch, almost, between the obvious youth of her body and the existential weight of the questions she was asking.

“How old are you, Rynne?” he asked quietly.

She nibbled her lush lower lip in the most enticing way before replying. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” she murmured.

His traitorous gaze dropped to her lips. When they curled into a cheeky smile, he released her chin and stepped away from the bed. “Fuck’s sake,” he muttered.

She laughed – an undeniably lovely sound – and rose from the bed. “Now that’s more like it. Come on now, ‘Simply’ Fenris, I’ll take you to see your precious not-friend.” She winked at him and wafted toward the door, and for the first time, Fenris noted the hint of a wicked-looking tattoo on her left shoulder blade peeking out from behind the veil of her gown.

He raised his eyebrows. That was very unusual to see on a noblewoman, even one who was a mage. 

He frowned slightly, then followed her toward the door. She was free to call him ‘simply’ Fenris if it amused her, but something about her quixotic manner made Fenris think that this Rynne Hawke wasn’t ‘just’ a weak mage. 

This Rynne Hawke didn’t seem like ‘just’ anything at all. 

[madrasbook]

Once Upon a City: Amusing Anecdotes about Madras

Madras that is Chennai celebrates its birthday on August 22, possibly on presumption, going by what S. Muthiah, the city’s finest chronicler who left a treasure of information on the city, records in Madras Rediscovered, which has run eight editions starting from 1981. A deed was signed on behalf of John Company by Francis Day and Andrew Cogan with the local Nayak rulers in Wandiwash and Poonamalle, Venkatappa and his brother Aiyappa, and that deed is dated as July 22, 1639.

That grant is dated July 22, 1639, but since Day reached Madraspatam – the name mentioned in the grant – only on July 27th, the chances are that ‘July’ is an error and August 22, 1639, is more likely the date the East India Company acquired the land to found their settlement.

The British men were given a small strip of land (which Muthiah terms “no man’s sand”) on lease on which they established a “trading post that was in effect a warehouse-cum-residence with some fortification,” to quote Muthiah.

And the land was chosen in Madras hyped up on a lie by Francis Day that cotton cheap in Madras as Day claimed in his recommendation to his superior, Andrew Cogan. And the city—which did have a notorious scale of gossip and scandals later on due to colourful men decorating the East India Company’s services or their agents, friends, or just men from England—was ostensibly founded on a famous gossip:

Day’s own explanation for choosing this barren, sandy site was that its hinterland offered “excellent long Cloath and better cheape by 20 per cent than anywhere else”! A noted gossip of the time, however, had it that the choice was determined by Day having a mistress in Portuguese San Thomé; the nearby settlement-to-be would ensure “their Interviews might be the more frequent and uninterrupted”! Whether this was indeed the case is a matter for conjecture, but that there was a mistress appears to have been gossip with some substance; a friend and successor to the charge of Madras, Henry Greenhill, is reported as having succeeded to the willing gentlewoman!

Madras Rediscovered is not a boring collection of facts and details to construct the past of Madras but a charming text to be read to understand how a small trading post evolved to become the metropolis of modern times, told in a very conversational, yet sophisticated and flowing language.

Where you actually give yourself to giggles, laughs, disbelief, and even tears are the anecdotes that punctuate the 20 chapters, which Muthiah chooses to name Once Upon a City. The first one begins thus:

I had promised to show him Robert Clive’s watering-holes in and around Madras. Little did I realise he’d turn up at my house in the best Clive manner, complete with coach and escort. His outrider that morning roared up on an iron steed, quickly dismounted at my gate and threw a smart salute. Moments later the carriage chugged up behind the police inspector and ensconced in the auto-rickshaw was a short, tubby, safari-suited Stanley Clives peering owlishly through heavy glasses to make sure he’d got right an address no Clive had ever known. Once sure, he broke into a broad, most unClive-like grin and proceeded to explain the comedy of errors that had earned him a police escort and which had raised in his esteem more than a notch the Madras police force whose sense of duty encompassed helping harassed strangers.

So a Clive (he also tells how the Clive became Clives) descendent arrived to meet Muthiah in an autorickshaw escorted by a police vehicle. What a setting! That engaging style, with wit and humour, is what you could expect to be treated to in these anecdotes. The main narrative about Madras is full of flourishing text that draws you in, arrests your senses, and piles up your curiosity.

You better read up on how the Survey of India had its roots in Madras. There are stories on mysterious murder, heads over heels love that would make would make “true love an eternal bestseller”, and the forgotten merchantmen (among whom my favourite is Coja Petrus Uscan, the Armenian merchant who enabled the connect between Mambalam and St. Thomas Mount through the Marmalong Bridge [now Maraimalai Adigal Palam]).

Muthiah delves into the Cooum (which once was a bather’s delight, now a polluted nightmare), the French dalliance with Madras that fell through only because of a poorly designed treaty, and life of Annie Besant and how printing came to Madras in the following anecdotes.

The stories of Parry & Company and Crompton & Company, two of the affluent British firms of Madras in their heyday, the founding of Indian Bank, Indo-Saracenic architecture, Edward Winter who was Day’s contemporary, film making in Madras and the city’s metamorphosis are captured in other anecdotes.

I have my favourites though in those Once Upon a City anecdotes—about The Hindu, on my lifeline poet Bharathi and on mathematical genius S. Ramanujan, and the Chepauk cricket ground.

The bewitching write on Chepauk first:

To me – and to most enthusiasts of the game as played in another, more leisurely, perhaps, even more gracious, age – cricket in Madras will for ever be associated with Chepauk’s lovely sward of lush springy turf tended with infinite patience and care to billiard table smoothness by Munuswamy of old, the entire emerald oval surrounded by towering cassias and acacias, some a century old, shedding their cool shade over low, tin-roofed stands. From these stands, which did nothing to mar the English county cricket ground atmosphere of Chepauk, you could watch in stretch-legged comfort Johnstone and Ward and Nailer, Gopalan and Ram Singh and Rangachari do epic battle against each other in the annual Pongal Week ‘Tests’, the Presidency Match that pitted European versus Indian in many a famous contest, then team up together to do yeoman duty for Madras against the rest of India in the Ranji Trophy matches of the 1930s and 1940s. [my emphasis]

Once Muthiah bowls you over, you go on to finish the story in double quick time and keep going back to it for inspiration, again and again. Talking of Pongal tests, which at one time the Chepauk was famous for, and we, the young then, often termed Indian sloppiness on the field as buttery fingers (after a generous scoop of Sakkarai Pongal with hands)!

The Hindu is an icon of Madras, always holding a place in the city’s ethos with an unparalleled history, a rare case of a newspaper intertwined with a city’s culture. Muthiah wrote Madras Miscellany for years in this newspaper without a break! Except once when his home was flooded in 2015 and when he finally had to give up due to his uncooperating health. Those stories were served on Monday morning with unfailing regularity, with this chronicler’s gaze often deep and amusing. But let’s get back to The Hindu itself, in Muthiah’s words:

“You might like The Hindu or you may not,” starts this chronicler, who should have collected copious paper cuttings of this newspaper in to his journals. And goes on to say, albeit grounded in the very tradition of the land:

… the paper has always reminded me of a one-time neighbour abroad. A middle-aged wisp of a woman in a nine-yard saree, chattering away in impeccable but strongly accented English, she organised the neighbourhood’s best coffee parties and bridge sessions in the mornings, drove herself through snarled traffic for sareed tennis in the afternoons, and with supreme aplomb threw boisterously successful cocktail parties or staid sit-down dinners, replete with her best silver and traditional vegetarian cuisine, in the evenings. Yet she remained true to Olde Madras in all those years, in dress and makeup, in habits and customs, above all in the practice of rituals of faith and worship. She was, bless her daunting soul, the finest example I knew of that rather overpowering but slowly vanishing personality, the Modern Orthodox Madras Conservative. And The Hindu has tended to be that over the years.

Only he could style The Hindu as “A middle-aged wisp of a woman in a nine-yard saree.” And what follows about the newspaper’s history is nothing short of fabulous. And he told me once that he was so inspired by the coverage of Lakshmikanthan murder case in the newspaper.

The mathematical genius of Ramanujan is not what Muthiah dwells upon but his life struggle and his work. Not so much with linguistic flourish though. On occasion, your eyes moisten while reading it because of the way the story is told. Combined in this anecdote is also the story about S. Chandrasekhar, the astrophysicist who won the Nobel in physics, long after it was due though. Maybe the future generations would get some inkling of this outstanding scientist from Muthiah’s account. I for one didn’t know much about this tall figure in such detail before reading it here.

Bharathiar is a universal poet. And there would be a few who wouldn’t have heard about him in the Tamil land. And to immerse yourself into his works gives not only inspiration but also a charge that would light up your life, for ever. Muthiah writes:

During the two years that he was a subeditor with the Swadesamitran, Bharati not only was trained as a journalist by Subramania Aiyer but also acquired his fire. The bouquet of heady wine made Bharati want to burst into patriotic verbal extravagance.

Not much about Bharathi’s fiery poetry finds mention but more of his journalistic career and life forms Muthiah’s focus. He says:

Bharati, in exile and deprived of a journalistic career, undoubtedly turned softer. The same thing had happened to VOC, who had come out of jail a crushed man, and, earlier, Subramania Aiyer, who had been shattered by the very threat of imprisonment. Aurobindo Ghosh, a fellow exile in Pondicherry, turned to spiritualism and V V S Aiyar, another fiery revolutionary in exile, turned to the world of letters, writing the first Tamil short story in 1917, Kulathangarai Arasamaram, after an initial spell of training gunmen. In this atmosphere of broken dreams and literary timewhiling, Bharati attempted to retain his interest in politics by writing sedate letters to the editors of Madras journals. As his prose became less fiery, his verse became more lyrical. He became the supreme poet. He also gave up his rural indifference to appearance and opted for a buttoned-up frock coat, loose turban to hide his baldness, and a pampered moustache to go with his clean shave.

Muthiah weaves into Bharathiar’s life as a careful observer, picking up the story in its magnificent simplicity, and this was so thrilling to read, of his meeting with C.R. Srinivasan, manager of Swadesamitran, when Bharathi rejoined the newspaper:

They introduced themselves. Srinivasan later recalled: “The Bharati I saw that day is indelibly imprinted on my mind’s eye. Middling height. Thin build. Shining, light brown complexion. Layer after layer of a turban wound round the head. A broad forehead. A dot of kum kum of a quarter anna size in its middle. Thick brows that stood guard over the roving eyes. The upturned nose highlighting the sunken cheeks. Though an aggressive moustache hid the upper lip, the lower lip revealed a listless life. A shirt without buttons to cover the body and an alpaca black coat over it. That too torn while jumping from the cart. He sat on the chair. Tongue-tied, the eyes rolled around, sizing everything. They alighted on me also, moving up and down. Rebellious eyes; sorrowful eyes; eyes that exuded peace; eyes that captivated. They stole my heart.”

The greatness of Bharathiar told in succulent text, captivating to read. Who says Muthiah has left us? His text speaks to us and the city’s now popular historian, Sriram V, has kept alive his memoirs of the city by covering many of the sites, especially favouring North Madras, described in the book in his heritage walks.

If working with these two men of letters and history isn’t a blessing, what is?

[jj-lynn21]

Cozy Cove: Old wounds

Previous in Cozy Cove: Saved by an Angel ,   A side of tits with your pancakes,   Fires Burn Ho , Spending the Nights, Learning and Loving,   The end id not always the end,  Axel Grease ,  Big Decisions, Sex and Jet Skis, Late night fun ,  Old Wounds , Storms pass, Dangerous Waters

Warnings: smut talk, very angsty, talk of a parent leaving children, fear of alcohol abuse. 

A silver of afternoon bright sunshine snakes its way through where the blackout curtains come together. It beamed right on to still sleeping Axel and Susie. She further buries her face in Axel’s chest.

He snorts covering his eyes with his free hand. The other resting on her back, “Close the curtain, baby girl.”

Susie whines without moving.

“I got it Mr. Axel,” Carol whispered. “Rest as long as you need, I will clean quietly.”

“Thanks, Carol,” Axel mumbled. “Put coffee on?”

“Of course, Sir,” She picked up some cloths on the floor and put them in his dirty cloths basket to go do laundry. 

A half hour later, the couple woke slowly to the smell of coffee. Susie stretched rolling to her other side. Axel kissed her shoulder softly before getting up, grabbing some cloths and heading to the shower. The hot water felt amazing as he stood there with his head down, palms flat against the wall, as the water beats over him.  

The door slides open for Susie to get in with him. She wraps her arms around him and lays on his back. Axel stands. He turns towards her smiling down as droplets of water tumble off his hair, down his nose to the tip of hers.

“How are you doing this morning Babe?” He grabs a shampoo bottle squirting some in his palm. “Turn around.” He starts to wash her hair.  

Susie turned closing her eyes as she leaned her head back a bit for Axel to wash her hair. “I’m a little sort, Daddy.” She muttered.  

Axel grinned, “Not when anyone is in the house Babe. That little game is between you and me. Would you like to have an interview for that mechanics job you want? We can make it like a game.” He rinses her hair and adds conditioner combing it out gentle.

“Yes, I would love that.” She smiles wide keeping her eyes shut as Axel rinses her hair. “Only I don’t think of that as a game, Axel. An interview with any company is to be taken seriously.”

“Maybe you are always to Serious Susie Q, but I guess I will find that out in a few hours.” He washes every part of her.

Susie giggles, “I am perfectly capable of washing myself, Axel.”

“I know,” he smiled. “I just like to take care of you if it is alright?”

“I guess it’s fine,” She turned as he rinsed her with the handheld shower head.  

“Now go get a nice sundress on,” He opened the back of the shower door. “I believe Carol has coffee, donuts, and fruit for us to have for breakfast. She always has good treats when she comes to clean.”  

He stays in the shower to wash when she gets out. She does what he tells her without a second thought. Her only thoughts were how nice it felt for him to get her clean and of course, coffee. When Susie ventures out to the kitchen she saw to coffee mugs, a basket of fruit and box. On further inspection she looks in the clear window at the top of the box to see a myriad of donut holes in a variety of flavors.  

Carol rushes over to pour her some coffee, “Good morning Miss. Do you like the flavored creamer that is in the refrigerator?”

“Thank you, Carol,” She smiles. “I would like the creamer. You can call me Susie.”

“Sure thing, Miss Susie.” She gets the creamer and pours it until Susie holds her hand up to stop.  

Axel Comes out in Camo board shorts drying his hair with a towel. As soon as Carol sees him, she pours his coffee, adds a little sugar to it before starting back to straighten up the bedroom.

“Thank you, Carol,” Axel yells after her. “We will be out of your hair for a few hours after breakfast.”

“You are welcome Mr. Axel,” She rambled, “You need to eat more. You are to thin.”

“If you say so Carol.” Axel laughed, “Carol has been the family housekeeper as long as I can remember. She also took care of me and my brother Josh when my mom,” He looked down fidgeting with his fingers before taking a sip of coffee. “When she left us.” He popped a sprinkle covered donut hole in his mouth.

“I’m sorry, Axel.” Susie took his hand from across the table. “Can I ask what happened? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want.”

Axel shrugged, “I was about thirteen and saw how my Mom was kind of flirty with guys other than my Dad. It was disgusting. I think her leaving was the best thing that ever happened to him. But he was pretty pissed when I told him that.  

“Josh was only eight. He cried a lot for a few weeks as far I remember. He needed a Mother. Carol tried her best to fill the void. Eric was trying to get a degree in something when she left. I can’t remember what. I just remember he came home on break and never went back. Dad was disappointed. I was happy. My mom couldn’t embarrass me when she hit on my teachers.” He popped another donut hole.

Susie ate a strawberry cream filled and sipped her coffee not sure what to say. Her parents never seemed to notice anyone else but each other. And they could sometimes be amorous in public which was embarrassing for her. It was embarrassing for her now. It was ten times worse when she was thirteen. But She didn’t think it was nearly as embarrassing as Axel’s situation.

“How about we take a walk on the beach,” He sighed. “The ocean air always clears my head in the morning. Then I’ll take you to the garage to do that interview. I don’t think you are dressed correctly for an interview, but I’ll let that slide since I told you what to wear and you look fine as Hell.”

“I guess it pays to know the owner,” She giggled. “If you give me the mechanics job,” She picked up another donut hole licking the glaze off before slowing sucking it into your mouth to eat. “I’ll give you another kind of job.”

“Hell no,” Axel got up. “That would be sexual harassment Miss. We don’t play with rules laid out against such things at my garage. That is the worst interview tactic you can have in this day and age, Susie Q. I hope that isn’t your usual interview technique.”

She blushes, “No, of course not Axel. I was just kind of joking.”

“I take my business serious,” He leans down to her ear. “Also fuck jobs. So, one does not mix with the other. Unless my girlfriend wants to suck my cock during my break.” He grins. “Let’s go.”  

They walk out down the back stairs to the beach. The sun is blazing. The farther they walk the more sun bathers and families liter the beach with their towels, blankets, chairs and umbrellas. Axel and Susie ignore it all as they walk together silently for a while.  

“Axel,” Susie keeps walking with him as they talk.

“Yeah?” He picks her hand up to kiss it gentle. Some waves splash over their feet.

“I’m sorry your Mother left you when you needed her.” She squeaked out quietly.

“I never needed shit from her,” Axel grumbled. A small tear escaped his right eye.  “I just feel bad for Josh. Him being upset was worse than her leaving. But we all got over it. No use talking about her anymore, alright?”

“Okay,” Susie leaned on him as he put his arm around her shoulders. “Just know I’ll listen if you ever need too...”

“I won’t, so just drop it,” he growled before taking a deep breath to calm down. “Let’s grab a pineapple rum slushy at the snack house. Then walk back to get the bike. You have an important interview in about an hour.”  

“Your right; I do.” Susie Beamed. “Should I be drinking before my interview?”

“These aren’t very strong,” He gets up to the outdoor counter. “Can we get two spiked pineapple slushies?”

“Sure thing, Axel,” The counter person said. “I am bringing my viper in for a tune up tomorrow. Will you be working?”

“No, I’m off this weekend, Dwayne but Danny is excellent.” Axel praises his worker. “He will have your motorcycle running perfectly when he is done.”

“Cool man, thanks.” Dwayne hands them their drinks.

“Thanks for keeping everyone cool with these drinks,” Axel raises his drink to Dwayne before walking off with Susie.

They walked back on the edge of the even more crowded beach and ocean entrance. They had drunk their slushies by the time they got to his motorcycle.

“I haven’t walked the beach to get a slushy since I was a kid,” Axel smiled. “Of course, in those days I didn’t get the extra kick. Not that this has much of a kick.” He got on his ride. “Let’s go baby girl.”

She crossed her arms and shook her head, “No, I know you said there wasn’t much rum in that, but I could taste it. I’m not sure you should be driving.”  

“Really?” Axel glared. “Just get on the fucking bike. I’m fine. The legal limit here is 08% blood alcohol. According to intoxalock.com it takes about five drinks an hour for someone my weight to reach a .08%. I had a dash of rum. I don’t drink more than one drink of any kind if I am going to drive. I won’t put in us in danger like that.”

She stands there staring at him without budging.

“I can’t believe you don’t trust me.” He gets back off the bike.

“I trust you fine Axel,” She bites her bottom lip nervously. “I just don’t trust the alcohol in your system”

“Yeah, that isn’t a thing.” He grabs her upper arm. “I have no problem taking a fucking breathalyzer test at the Lifeguard stand.

His temper flared as they made their way to the closest Lifeguard tower. “ Hey Roni, you have a minute to prove to my girl one fucking rum slushy doesn’t make me to drunk to drive. She doesn’t fucking trust my word. Sorry wrong words. She doesn’t trust the fucking alcohol.” Axel smirks.

She looks down at Axel and Susie. He looks pissed. Susie has tears forming in the corners of her eyes. She tries not to let it show how upset she is about the situation.  

“I just...” Susie starts.

“I don’t need to hear anything but a sorry from you, young lady,” Axel chides.

“Um yeah Axel,” Roni hoped down from her tower. “But give the girl a break, would you.”

Axel glared, “test, please.”

She gets the test out of her bag, “I think you know how to blow in this.”

Axel nods. “I’m ready.”

Roni puts the breathalyzer between Axel’s lips. Hits a button, “Now, blow, blow, blow, blow, and … your good.” She shows the results to Axel and Susie. “You are at .005. Your fine Axel. Susie, Axel can actually drink a few drinks in an hour and still drive fine. But I know he doesn’t. You want to check yours?”

“Yeah, make sure your judgement isn’t impaired to judge me,” Axel mumbles.

Susie rolls her eyes, “fine, I’ll do it to.”  

“Okay then Susie,” Roni wipes the mouthpiece with an alcohol pad before putting it in Susie's mouth. “blow, blow, blow, blow, and … your good.” She shows the results. “You are .07. Your quite a light weight.” She laughs. “Still you would pass a test. But Axel is driving, right?”

“Yes, I am,” Axel said proudly. “Thank you, Roni. You going to the garage with me still Susie Q.?”  

Axel and Susie start walking away.

“Of course, I am,” Susie assured him. “I still have an important interview, don’t I?”

“Yeah, if you don’t think you drank too much to deal with it?” Axel smirked.

“I’m sorry, Daddy.” She whined.

Axel got on his motorcycle and revved the engine waiting for her to get on. “I think a little girl that acts like you have today needs punished, but we will discuss that later.”

He speeds off cutting through the late afternoon traffic like it didn’t even exist. Susie held tight around him thinking she would almost fall off as they leaned into a sharp turn nearly touching the ground. He skids into his packing spot In front of the garage.  

Axel sets up the kicks stand before getting off. “Give me five minutes before knocking on my office door.”

“I can do that,” Susie said meekly. She waited as instructed before heading into the garage with a smile plastered on her face. She nodded to the guys fixing a few cars and scrubbing down the place like their life depended on it. She knocked on the office door.

Axel answered the door with a clip board in hand, “Good afternoon Miss,” he looked at the clipboard. “Quinnby. You’re a little late.”

Susie was more nervous than she had ever been in an interview. “I’m sorry, I...”

Axel put his hand up to stop her as he sat down. “It says her you have some technical training in auto mechanics. What kinds of vehicles have you worked on?”

“I worked in a group on a few different cars and a truck,” She answered crossing her legs at the ankle. “I know I can learn a lot here.”

“I’m sure you could,” He leaned back clasping his hands behind his head. “Tell me what you like to do for fun?”  

“I read.’ She wasn’t sure why the question was significant, but it had been asked of her before in interviewed. “I have been reading mechanics journals and magazines and learning about water sports.”

“What is the most interesting article you have read?” Axel prodded.

“They are all fascinating,” She fidgeted a little.

“Oh yeah?” He smirked. “What article was the most interesting?”

“I read Popular Mechanics and Rider.” She pauses. “There was a cool article on fuel efficient High Mileage Carburetors. And an older article that talked about a guy who built a carburetor for his sedan which vaporized the fuel and enabled his V8 to get over 100 mpg.”  

Axel nodded and got up, “Thank you Miss Quinnby. I have many applicants to see but I will call you if you get the job here.”

Susie got up as Axel opened the door for her to leave, “Your welcome Mr. Cluney.” She walked out thinking Axel would follow her. He shut the door behind her instead leaving her a little baffled.  

Inside the room Axel’s anger raged as he mumbled to himself. “fucking can’t trust me but wants to hide out here and expects a fucking job...” He punches his fist against the wall a few times. Blood ran from his knuckles. “Can’t fucking believe females. Fucking whores to get what they want. Expect me to just forgive and forget all their treachery.” He banged his head against the wall and screamed. “FUCK I AM MORON FOR TRUSTING ANYONE!”  

When Axel doesn’t come out for a few minutes, she tries to go back in. The door is locked, so she calls out, “Axel?”  

Axel splashes some water on his face. He took a few deep breaths as he walked to the door opening it, “I’m fine. Let’s get you a ticket back home or wherever you want to go but here. Here is not the place for you to hide.”

Susie’s mouth dropped open as Axel brushed past her without a look. She followed him without a sound waiting for a better time to ask him, what the hell he is thinking.  

“Danny, Dwayne is bringing his Viper in tomorrow for a tune up. Buff out any scratches he has on the house.” Axel ordered. “I told him you would do it since you’re my best mechanic when I’m not here.”  

The other guys scoffed at Axel’s remark. Axel glared, “Anyone have an opinion they want to share just step right up.” They all turned back to what they were doing. “Yeah, that’s what I fucking thought.” Axel gets on his motorcycle. He waits impatiently for Susie.  

She comes out, “Axel, what’s going on? You are obviously upset.”

“No more fucking public displays.” He revved the motor. “You want to talk you come with me now.”

“But I think you are too upset to drive,” Susie squeaked.

“Of course, you do,” Axel sped off yelling, “You know where I live.”

[illfoandillfie]

Seaside Rendezvous - Part 1

Request:  Can you please write a hc for going on a island vaca at a resort with your family after college finals and you meet joe (also a college student) and you two see each other a ton but you are always with your family so not much happens but flirty small talk and you both end up having a lot of sexual tension and go into one of your rooms when you’re family is out and just some smut happens?

Pairing: Joe Mazzello x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of sex but generally pretty innocent

Words: 4606

A/N: So this was meant to be just a small blurb/hc thing but it turned into a full 2 chapters lmao what can I say, the idea spoke to me 🤷‍♀️. It’s also the first full Joe fic I’ve done! Set in like the 2000s I guess because I don’t know a single goddamn thing about current celebrities (not that it really matters too much)

Taglist:  @idontbelievethiss @somekindof-cheese @dtfrogertaylor   @ezmina98  @vee-ndetta @atomic-watermelon @kellypenac @labessieisallama @deakyclicks @jennyggggrrr

In the days before you went on vacation your friends had made a lot of jokes about potential holiday romances. Everything from unsubtle innuendos to fantasies about running into pop stars who would, naturally, sweep you off your feet. You laughed at it all, rolling your eyes at the more far-fetched ideas – as if Justin Timberlake would want you. But, if you were being honest, the idea had crossed your mind the minute your Mom called to tell you she’d booked a family vacation to Hawaii. Not the Timberlake stuff, the real stuff – the potential to have a fling with a cute almost stranger, a couple of weeks spent relaxing on the beach and indulging in meaningless sex. After all, it had been a few months since you broke things off with Eddie and, while you weren’t necessarily ready to rush into anything as serious as a proper relationship, a brief holiday romance sounded almost ideal. Provided you could find anyone attractive enough. And get away from your family for long enough.  

Almost as soon as finals were done you were at the airport, boarding your flight to Hawaii where your parents and little sister had already been for a day. With thoughts of warm sand and soft kisses swirling though your head as you shuffled onto the plane, it was almost inevitable that you’d ended up fantasising about one of your fellow passengers. He’d seen you struggling to get your carryon luggage into the overhead compartment and had come to your aid, lifting the heavy suitcase with ease and offering you a sweet smile and a joke about travelling with rocks. You giggled, less because the joke was funny than that you didn’t know how else to deal with those gorgeous hazel eyes looking at you. Unfortunately, you couldn’t say much more than a brief thank you, the crowd jostling around you pushing you towards your seat, a few rows behind him. You spent the rest of the flight trying to subtly watch him, glancing at him from over the top of your magazine. It wasn’t like you had anything better to do for the duration of the flight – the magazine you’d picked up seemed painfully boring now and after finals your brain didn’t feel up to reading a whole lot anyway. Thankfully you had an aisle seat, something that had bummed you out at first but now seemed like a lucky break since he did too. He looked to be around your age, alone, reading. You took in everything of his appearance you could, the slope of his nose, the slight scruff covering his jaw, as you let yourself drift into fantasy. His hands pulling you into the airplane bathroom. His lips trailing down your throat. His fingers slipping into your shorts. He was definitely cute with a capital c, and it was nice to have someone to think about, even if this small infatuation or whatever it was wouldn’t last much longer than the flight. After all, he probably wouldn’t be staying at the same resort your family was, right? Because that would be the sort of thing you’d find in a romance novel or a cheesy movie, not real life. Real life never lined up so perfectly.

At the end of the flight you watched him get up, pull down his own luggage, and leave without so much as a backwards glance. And then he was lost in the crowd as you collected your things and followed everyone towards the arrivals lounge. The sight of your parents and younger sister, Erin, drove the cute passenger from your mind, the infatuation slipping away (as you’d known it would) as soon as you saw Erin waving at you, a big grin plastered to her face. Your mother pulled you into a tight embrace as soon as you were within reach, already asking you a hundred questions – how was school? Did the finals go okay? Whatever happened to that Eddie boy you’d brought home for Thanksgiving? Your Dad pried her off you, reminding her you needed air like everyone else, and began to lead you all out towards the car. On the drive to the resort you filled each other in on what had been happening, catching up on the months you’d missed since you last visited home.

By the time you arrived at the resort, the guy from the plane was so far from your thoughts you wouldn’t have been able to recall the colour of his eyes if you’d tried. Which is why you almost dropped your luggage when you saw him leaning against the reception desk. You mumbled something about tripping when your Mom turned to see what had happened, trying not to let your eyes flick towards him again. Your parents already had the key to their room but you’d booked one in your name as well – twin beds so your sister could join you.   “I’ll get someone to take your luggage up while you sort out your key and then we can all head down to the pool before dinner, sound like a plan?”   “Sounds great Dad, I’ll meet you guys upstairs” you nodded, willing them to leave before Airplane Boy did. If things went your way you could find out how he compared to your airborne fantasies by the end of the night.

Whatever being was watching over you must have been in a benevolent mood because twenty seconds later your family was in the elevator and your fantasy man was turning around, room key in hand, eyes going wide when he saw you. “Well isn’t this a small world,” his eyes, hazel, flicked over you as he spoke, taking in every inch of your appearance and suddenly you wished didn’t look like you’d just got off a plane. “Yeah, who’d have thought we’d both end up at one of the most popular resorts on Hawaii?” “Would have been just my luck if we hadn’t, did you manage to get that bag of rocks back down or is that why you’ve got no luggage?” “I got it down. I had to get help from someone in the cabin crew, but I got it down.” “Well I’m glad someone was there to rescue you. I’m Joe by the way.” He held out his hand. “Y/N,” you said, shaking it, setting the butterflies in your stomach fluttering. “Nice to meet you properly, Y/N.” “Likewise.” You smiled at him, batting your lashes ever so slightly. “Well, if you need any more help with your bags, I’m happy to lend a hand. Make up for not getting them back down for you.” “That’s a very sweet offer Joe, though I don’t think I properly thanked you for the help in the first place,” Oh christ did that sound too much like a line from a porno? Joe's laugh was that of someone a little flustered, cheeks turning pink. “S-sorry, I, uh, I should let you go check in now,” “Probably should do that should’t I? Maybe, I’ll see you round though?” “Yeah, I hope so. I mean, probably, right? A place like this – not many spots you could hide in,” he laughed. “Who said I’d be hiding?” You trailed your fingers over his arm as you walked past him, “See you later Joe,” He cleared his throat, “Yeah, bye Y/N.” You managed to resist the urge to turn around and see if he was watching you walk away as you headed to get your key, kind of wishing you had let your Mom talk you into getting a twin room. Erin was great, and you’d missed her, but nothing said you're not having sex like sharing a room with a twelve-year-old. It didn’t hit you until you were in the elevator that you should have found out his room number.  

“Sorry I’m late, the guy in front of me had some sort of problem. Took ages to sort out.” Definitely wasn’t flirting with anyone.   “Well you’re here now. Still got time to hit the pool so best get a wriggle on.” You and Erin exchanged rolled eyes as you opened your room. It was clean and simple, the two beds taking up most of the space. Splashes of bright green, like the cushions that sat on each bed, and the vase of flowers that stood on the side table against the far wall, were in stark contrast to the crisp white walls and sheets. A balcony gave you a picturesque view of the ocean, and ocean themed artwork hung above the TV and on half the blank walls. You ducked into the bathroom to get changed, finding more artwork on the walls and some decorative shells by the sink. It took you all of five minutes to change into your bathers and grab your sunnies. Normally you wouldn’t have bothered with the bikini for anything less than the beach, especially so late in the afternoon, but there was the chance you could run into Joe again and you wanted him to see you in something better than the old shorts and too big shirt you’d flown in. You gave your lips a swipe of gloss, blowing a kiss to your reflection before hurrying out to join your family, towel tucked under your arm.

The pool was not the single Olympic length one you’d been imagining but rather a series of oddly shaped lagoons of crystal-clear water interspersed with greenery that made everything feel full of life and offered protection from the sun when it was at its highest. It was busy but large enough and spread out enough that it wasn’t noticeable. There were people gathered around the bar, ordering bright drinks topped off with umbrellas and fresh fruit, and relaxing on the many lounge chairs, empty glasses and plates lining the tables. Your father led the way through the hoard of screaming children in the kiddie pool and their parents lazily watching them from the sides, towards a lagoon further back, finding a clear spot at the water’s edge. You’d barely sat down, dipping your toes into the cool water when Erin ran past you to cannonball into the pool, the large splash she made flying towards you. When she surfaced, she laughed at the now wet hair you’d had to push backwards out of your eyes. “Careful sweetie,” your Mom warned, already lying back on a lounge chair with her eyes closed. You kicked some water back at Erin, only half paying attention as you let your eyes wander over the people. No sign of Joe. You sighed, leaning back on your hands and closing your eyes as you tilted your head back, letting the low sun warm you while it still could. It felt nice to relax, even if there wasn’t a cute boy drooling over you. You hadn’t properly relaxed in too long to count.  

“Bikini’s a good look,” Slowly you brought your head back up, turning towards your right where Joe was suddenly sitting. “Suit’s you.” “Thanks,” you gave Joe a once over, pushing your sunglasses down your nose a little so you could take in the boardshorts and bare chest look he’d gone for, before tilting your head back to the sky again, “Could say the same for you.” “Don’t think I’d look half as good in a bikini as you do.” You could hear his stupid grin through every word and couldn’t help the laugh it inspired. “So what brings you to the pool?” he asked, shifting so he was facing you and leaning in. “Eyes forward, can’t look like we’re talking.” “Oh-kay.” He did as you asked, dropping his feet into the water and looking out to the other end of the pool, “Can I ask why we’re being so,” he stretched the word out, waving his hand in circles as he searched for the right word, “clandestine?” “Family. Mom’s over there on the lounge chair, Dad’s gone to the bar I think. And technically I’m watching my little sister swimming. Not meant to be talking to cute boys.” “Well I'm flattered you’d break whatever rules you’re breaking for me, but I don’t want to get you in trouble.” “I like the trouble. Besides it’s less rules and more that this is the first time I’ve seen my family in months. If they caught wind I wanted to ditch them for a guy I barely know...let’s just say they’d make a fuss.” “So we’re not dealing with like, an overprotective father then?” “Mum’s more of the worry, she’d get like super nosey. But Dad’d be too awkward to be mad.” “Thank God,” Joe mimed wiping sweat from his forehead. When he put his hand back down it was closer to yours, pinkie fingers brushing slightly. You could feel him chancing a glance at you but focused your gaze on Erin, watching as she tread water while talking to another girl around her age, trying to slow your heart beat before it thumped right out of your chest.   He flicked his head forward again, a shy smile still in place as his eyes came to rest on the same spot as yours, “Your sister seems sweet,” “Erin? She can be, but she also inherited Mom’s love of gossip.”   “So gotta be careful around her then,” “Definitely,” You turned your head towards him, finding it difficult to drag your eyes away from his lips once they’d settled there, your own parting slightly in anticipation of a kiss that wasn’t coming. “Sneaking around is kinda more fun though. Think you can get away tonight? Just long enough to have a drink with me?” You hadn’t expected him to be so bold as to ask you out this early on but it wasn’t an unwelcome surprise. Even so, you pretended to think it over, taking extra time as if you were running through a list of things in your mind, “Yeah, think so. Just depends how fast Erin drops off.” He threw you a questioning look. “We’re roommates.” “So I guess you’ll be wanting my room number then, since yours is off limits. It’s 308.” “Huh, I’m in 315.” “Well Miss Y/N from room 315, Hope I see you soon.” He pushed himself to his feet and walked away, leaving you with a racing heart, sweaty palms, and a pinkie finger that just wouldn’t stop tingling.  

After dinner you returned to your room, exhausted from the long day and needing to unpack properly. Erin collapsed onto her bed, flicking the TV on and settled in to watch reruns of The Simpsons while you hauled your suitcases over to the cupboard and began to put things away. The two of you talked intermittently, mostly during commercials, about what you were hoping to do on this holiday and how much fun it was going to be. She didn’t mention seeing you talk to Joe which relieved you no end, especially after you’d run into him at the restaurant where you’d had dinner. Just a brief, “Sorry, excuse me,” from him as he squeezed behind you while you waited for a table. His hand had lingered a fraction longer than necessary on your lower back, and it had taken all your willpower not to grab it and place it on your ass. And then he was gone again, lost in the crowd, while you tried to maintain a regular conversation with your parents.  

You’d just changed into your pyjama shorts and a singlet and were about to hop into bed yourself, when you heard a loud giggle from the next room over where your parents were. It was followed by your father’s voice making shushing noises through his own laughter and then, “don’t want the kids to hear us. So glad we’ve got the room to ourselves now.” You and Erin exchanged horrified looks and then you were both moving, slipping shoes on and grabbing the room key, all tiredness forgotten as you just about ran out the door. You only paused when you reached the elevator, realising you had no idea where you were going.   “Is there like a rec room or something we could go to?” You asked, scanning the list of floor numbers for any sign of a pool table or video game console. “How should I know?” “You’ve been here a whole 24 hours more than me,” “I just went where Mom and Dad went!” “Alright, Christ, no need to yell. Well, I know the bar is on flo-” “Typical,” “What’s that supposed to mean?” “All you grown ups care about is the stupid bar,” “Yeah cause you brats drive us to drink,” “You brats drive us to drink,” she imitated in a high pitched annoying whine that made you roll your eyes. “Fine, you’re gonna be a baby I’ll see if there’s a fucking nursery to drop you in. You clearly need to go beddy-byes.” Your bickering was interrupted by footsteps coming up behind you and a familiar voice calling your name. Fuck.

“Didn’t take you for one to argue in the hallways,” “Clearly you don’t have a younger sister then, Joe,” “No, but I do have an older one. She could be real bossy,” he winked at Erin who giggled. You rolled your eyes again.   “Do you know if there’s a rec room or something round here?” “At this time? What’s wrong with your room?” “Mum and Dad are fucking,” Erin chimed in before you could come up with an excuse, looking far too innocent to understand what that meant and for a moment you wondered what else she’d learnt while you were away at college, “I saw you talking to Y/N this afternoon at the pool. Are you two fucking?” “Jesus Erin, language. And stop being so fucking nosey,” “You swear all the time,” “I’m an adult, I’ve earned the right to swear,” “Why don’t we settle this argument back at my room? There’s a Simpson’s marathon on which I’m sure... Sorry didn’t catch this little angel’s name,” Smooth. “Erin,” the so-called angel piped up, sticking out her hand and grinning.   “Which I’m sure Erin would enjoy,” Joe finished as he bent down and shook her hand, “Nice to meet you.” Your eye muscles sure were getting a workout tonight. But Erin seemed pleased with the turn of events so you accepted. Better than getting lost on the way to a rec room that may not even exist. Plus it helped that as Joe stood up he subtly mentioned the bottle of vodka he had stashed in his suitcase.

Joe’s room looked much the same as yours, though he had different art and instead of twin beds, one king sized. “Alright, there you go Missy,” he said to Erin as he handed her the remote control to the TV, “Knock yourself out,” “Please,” you mumbled as Erin raced into the room, kicking her shoes off as she went and then bounced into the middle of the bed. Joe caught you rolling your eyes again. “You do that a lot y’know,” “Only when I’m babysitting. I love her to death but Christ,” If badmouthing your sister was going to earn you another laugh from Joe you could have gone all night. Instead you reigned yourself in, leaning against the doorframe as you watched him dig through his luggage. Finally he pulled out the bottle he’d been searching for, holding it up triumphantly. “D’you wanna sit on the balcony?” “Sounds great,” you followed him out, dodging Erin’s annoyed grunts as you moved in front of the TV. “Not gonna get too cold out here in those adorable PJs? Very short,” Joe said as he gently shut the door behind you. “I think I’ll be fine. But I’ll let you know if I need warming up.” He laughed as he slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, patting the spot beside him. You glanced at the unused chairs but joined him anyway, stretching your legs out in front of you as he opened the bottle of vodka.   “I don’t have any glasses so I hope you don’t mind sharing the bottle,” “Who brings a full bottle of vodka and no cups?” “A college student?” “Fair enough,” “Ladies first,” He passed the bottle over and you took a large swig, hissing a little as the alcohol burned your throat. “You were good with her, before,” you passed the bottle back to Joe, tilting your head to indicate Erin. “Yeah well, don’t just have an older sister, got a younger brother too. Not quite the age gap though.” “She was a bit of...a surprise. But your family isn’t here too?” “Nah, came on my own. Reward for getting through another fuckin year.” “Cheers to that,” you peaked over your shoulder but Erin was completely entranced by the TV. “So you’re parents really just went for it?” “Urgh, god don’t remind me. That’s what the alcohol’s for. Completely unfair that they get to haunt us with nightmares for the rest of our lives and I can’t get a second away from my baby sister.” “You could always sneak away.” “What like, fake being sick?” “God no, too risky. Have you never watched a movie before? Ferris Bueller ringin’ any bells?” “Alright, calm down,” you laughed, “it was just a suggestion,” “Fake being sick,” he scoffed, taking another sip of vodka, “To make it believable you’d have to start exhibiting signs the night before. Then day of you have to give yourself a temperature and make yourself sneeze or cough or throw up a lot. And then what about Erin? She’s not gonna catch whatever mysterious illness you get that clears up in 24 hours. And you can only use it once.” “Jesus Christ. You really have thought about this.” “I got a lot of practice as a kid,” he said with a shrug, “If one of us was off from school sick, all of us were off from school sick.” “Okay smartguy, what do you suggest I do instead?” “Easy. Go with them on whatever they’re doing. Relaxing on the beach, golf course, whatever. Then a few hours in say you need to stretch your legs or claim to have an appointment with the masseuse or something but say you’ll meet up with them for lunch or dinner even. And then you come back here.” “You’re very confident that I’d visit you in my family free hours,” “You called me cute, think I can afford to be confident.” “Touché.”  

It was another few hours before you stood to leave, Joe having stashed the bottle of vodka away long ago, before you had the chance to get completely wasted. He’d told you that you’d thank him tomorrow when you didn’t wake up with a hangover but the part of your brain that remembered why you’d wanted a drink so bad didn’t fully believe him. You’d let him take the bottle with a promise that you could help finish it another night. As the hours ticked by he’d slowly inched closer to you, eventually wrapping his arm around you as you looked up at the partially obscured stars. You encouraged him by claiming you were getting chilly. Erin had dropped off within the first hour, though you were still cautious in case she woke up. Still you were happy to wedge yourself into his side, dropping your head onto his shoulder as you talked about whatever crossed your minds. You’d been even happier to let him kiss you, softly, breaking apart much too soon as Erin snorted in her sleep. That had been your cue to leave, even though your lips still buzzed with the desire for more.   “Sorry,” you said quietly, not quite pulling away from him. “No it’s fine, I don’t wanna get caught out by her either. She’s a feisty little thing,” “The word you’re looking for is nosey but yeah,” “Wouldn’t want her announcing anything to the whole resort,” “Not when sneaking around is kinda more fun,” You both chuckled, trying to keep your voices low as you re-entered Joe’s room. “D’you want me to carry her back to your room?” He offered with all the kindness you’d come to expect from him. “Sure your skinny little twig arms can handle it?” “I lifted your suitcase of paperweights didn’t I. Plus, it’s just up the hall.” “Thought it was a suitcase of rocks.” “Tomato, tomatoe. Do you want the help or not?” “Thanks,” He grunted slightly as he lifted her, one arm under her knees and the other under her back, pretending to drop her a little which had you stifling laughter and shaking your head as you lead the way out of his room.  

The walk back to your room was much too short, though Joe probably would have said different under the weight of your dead-to-the-world sister. You put your finger to your lips as you opened the door and held it. He deposited your sister on her bed as gently as possible, going the extra mile to tuck her in under the blankets she’d so hastily thrown to the side earlier. All was quiet in the room next door and you breathed a sigh of relief as Joe came back out into the hallway. He stood close, the extra inches he had on you much more noticeable now than when you’d been sitting on his balcony. “So, you’ll try to get away then?” Joe bit his lip nervously which only served to make him look even cuter, making you want him more. “Yeah, soon as I can.” “Tomorrow maybe?” “Coming across a little desperate Joey,” you teased, poking him in the chest, “Besides think Mom mentioned something about doing a tour of the island tomorrow, not sure I could get away. But soon, promise.” “I’m gonna hold you to that, Y/N,” “Of course,” There was a brief pause, Joe rubbing the palm of one hand with the other’s thumb as his eyes darted over your head to your sleeping sister and then to the door of your parent’s room. “Fuck it,” he said and then he was leaning in to kiss you again. It started as light and soft as the first attempt back at his room had, almost chaste, but when no third-wheeling sibling or grumpy parent interrupted it changed. His hands moved further around your back, pulling you as close to him as he could. You wobbled slightly as your balance shifted but he held you steady while you wrapped your arms around his neck, tongues meeting with the urgency only an imminent interruption could bring. You lost track of how long you were intertwined, all other thoughts driven from your mind until he pulled back. “Been thinking about that since you helped me on the plane,” you muttered softly, trailing your hand down over his cheek, not wanting to lose contact yet. “How did I do?” His hands hadn't left you either.   “Oh, uh r-really good,” you nodded rapidly. Joe laughed again, “Don’t think I’ve seen you this lost for words before,” You wanted to say something witty in response, but your mind was still whirling with the kiss so all you could manage was a, “spose not,” and a small giggle. Slowly you came back to your senses, realising where you were. “I should -,” you pointed at your room with your thumb, though it was half hearted. “Yeah,” He caught your lips with his once more, briefly, before bidding you goodnight and disappearing down the hall leaving you, once again, wishing you had a room to yourself so you could at least masturbate in peace.

[its-my-little-dumpster-fire]

For My Eyes Only

John Whittaker x Mrs. Whittaker, 2.8k

A/N: here is the first of many peeks into John Whittaker’s life, as requested by @something-tofightfor. only fitting as she is the champion of the ‘Deed I Do-niverse. 

Prompt: 

Well, here’s how I think it might go.

“John!” You squealed, swatting his hand away for the fourth time since exiting the car. Unsurprisingly, the car was still in view. He’d been pawing at you and the new bather you’d purchased especially for your trip to France since the day you’d found it.

While most husbands would prefer find a drink or stay home while their wives did the shopping, John Whittaker was not most husbands. Especially not on such an interesting shopping trip.

“Mother would have had this delivered to the home.” One hand was shoved in his trouser pocket, while the other idly passed over thin fabric on the shelves, pausing to pick up a brown jar and lift the dropper to his nose for a whiff. The face he pulled wasn’t entirely displeased, but he replaced the rubber stopper Without saying anything.

Before you had a chance to respond, an attendant emerged from behind a thick curtain with two paper packages in her hands, interrupting the relative silence in the shop. “Mrs. Whittaker?”

You accepted both packages gratefully and followed her toward the back of the store to make sure each garment fit as advertised. Casting a look over your shoulder at your husband, you reminded him that some things didn’t require his mother’s approval. You heard John laughing behind you and glanced back once more to find him back at his exploration, long fingers touching everything within his reach.

The first bathing gown was casual, not unlike the ones you’d worn in your youth. The pale red color was what had drawn you to it originally, but as you fiddled with the belt and looked at your appropriately covered body, you couldn’t imagine yourself smiling quite as wide as the model from the catalogue.

“This one is far more exciting,” your attendant smiled, holding up the second package so the paper crinkled playfully when she shook it.

“Kindly fetch Mr. Whittaker for me,” you smiled, taking it from her and pulling the paper open to observe it closer. “I think I’ll be needing his opinion on this one.”

John called your name as he entered the back room a few minutes later. You smirked at yourself in the mirror one more time before asking him to pull back the curtain that hid you from his view. His eyes widened wordlessly with every inch of you that was revealed, until with a final forceful push, John let out a low whistle and stepped behind the curtain himself. With shameless intent, John’ eyes roved over your exposed back and you watched his reflection intently from your place, still facing the mirror. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation when his hands fell on to your hips, his thumbs extending up to the thin elastic band and the bare skin of your side just above it.

“Darling,” he whispered, stepping up closer behind you so that his hands could wander comfortably across your midsection, where the real excitement lie. The large round cutouts on each side met in the middle, where your navel was covered by a thin strip of fabric, keeping the garment just modest enough for its purpose of being warn in public. Though the look in John’s eye told you that he wasn’t the least bit interested in public outings. “Darling,” John repeated after swallowing the hoarseness from his voice and following the open path of skin until his fingers were locked together in front of your stomach and pulling you back against his chest.

“Don’t tell me it’s indecent, John,” you warned him with a crooked eyebrow and met his wide eyes in the mirror. His expression of awe faltered in surprise. Over your statement or even just he sound of your voice when his mind was clearly elsewhere—you couldn’t be sure, but the smirk that his look dissolved into was evident that he’d returned to the present moment and was solely focused on you.

“Are you calling me a prude, my sweet?” Your husband’s smile was devilish and hadn’t an ounce of tact behind it. You rolled your eyes and shook your head, certain that no one could call make such a grievous mistake. He kissed your hair and leaned in to rest his chin upon your shoulder, which forced you to collapse back into him. “I’m simply curious how long I must wait to tear it off you.”

“Six weeks,” you answered quickly. With a small tilt of your head, you leaned back to kiss his freshly shaved cheek while pulling his arms apart to free yourself from his grasp.

“But-“ he started to whine when you spun before him and two small flat palms were shoving him out of the small dressing area.

“You’ll see it soon enough,” you assured him, blowing him a kiss and snapping the curtain shut again. At the sound of John’s protests, you heard the attendant return to address you from the doorway.

You peeked out from behind the curtain again and immediately spotted the attendant standing awkwardly just over John’s shoulder.

“Just this one,” you said in her direction.

“Would Mrs. Whittaker like it wrapped or shall you wear out of the store?” She asked with a small smile, shooting a barely noticeable wink at you.

At the good natured jibe, John spun on his heel to face the attendant, jaw loose and followed her back to the front of the store muttering such nonsense as “absolutely not” and the like.

A month later, it seemed that John had not lost an ounce of excitement over your new bathing clothes. You had to barricade yourself in the guest room to change into the suit while your husband was distracted downstairs, just to ensure you two made it out of the house on time. When he returned to find the door locked, you clearly on the other side doing something he’d very much like to be present for, he laughed at the ridiculousness. But soon curiosity got the better of him and John engaged in all the token Whittaker theatrics - pounding on the door, pleading with you for mercy, his own particular brand of sweet talk that nearly did you in even without being able to see the curling of his lips through the partition - until finally you unlocked the door to reveal yourself to him. He swept you up in his arms, but had no qualms about sharing his displeasure through feverish kisses. All a part of his plan to get you undressed for him again, John’s fingers hooked around the belt of your thin sundress and used it to pull you against him. His roughness was appreciated, but your hands stilled his before parting, for the sake of your dress. You knew what was going through his mind as you peeled back each of his long fingers from their locked position -without looking, as he’d still kept his lips pressed tightly against yours. If it broke, it broke. He wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Or perhaps he would and you would too.

It took some prompting, more kisses against his pouty lips, and finally the good natured ribbing of his old friend, Andrew, whose wife, Perrine, had hooked an arm through yours and was leading you out the door, away from your husband’s cloying displays and his wandering hands. Andrew met Perri -as he affectionately called her- during his own period of discovery. Watching his dear friend, John, make the fatal mistake of bringing home a foreign wife to his mother inspired the young man to settle in the south of France, blissfully cut off from estate affairs and craft shows and community gossip. Mrs. Vanbutchell never forgave her son and confided such into her dear friend Veronica Whittaker, who agreed whole heartedly. Which made the decision to stay with Andrew and Perri the easiest you’d ever made as a freshly wed couple.

John wasn’t the same hedonistic boy he had been the last time he came through the area and he’d made it clear that your trip was for business and pleasure. Andrew had somehow made a name for himself in a blossoming real estate market that so many were wary of. Most families had been in the same homes for hundreds of years, but after the Great War, and after the staggering loss of life, it seemed everyone in every country was just trying to rebuild. Once Perri was satisfied with Andrew’s new place amongst the Francophiles, he used his private education and his naturally sharp wit to physically reshape the French landscape. His specialty was subdivision, a word that John begged you not to speak allowed in the presence of Veronica.

In the months following your honeymoon, the hens, as you called them, Veronica and Delia, were annoyingly expectant and inappropriately bold in their assumptions that there would be family additions “any day now”. Though as time passed and there were no looming due dates on the horizon, both of the hens made their disappointment and their expectations undeniably clear. About that same time, John made plans to visit an old friend.

France was exactly as you’d pictured, bright and lovely, with people who were endearingly aloof and entirely apathetic to your presence. Your only worry was keeping John’s hands where they belonged, while Andrew and Perri drove you to the coast, hoping to soak up the sun for an afternoon before the boys got lost in their reminiscing and their shop talk. The local couple exited the car first, moving to the boot to unload blankets and a colorful umbrella, while you were drawn immediately to the bright white sand and John, unsurprisingly was drawn to you.

You abandoned your shoes at the vehicle and after a wink in your husband’s direction, pulled the dress over your head to leave behind as well, taking full advantage of the freedom you felt in the warm sunshine and away from the mothers. John followed suit, removing his shirt and pants, and you understood his excitement. It wasn’t often you were given the opportunity to see so much of your husband especially in the light of day. His long torso was tucked into a pair of high shorts in a tight blue material that clung to him even while dry. They were cut high on his pale thighs, putting the muscle on full display with every step toward you. The only time you were this bare for each other was in your bedroom and the association was not easily forgotten, even on a very public beach.

You tried and failed to saunter away from him. In only a few steps, John’s bare chest collided with your back as his fingertips tickled your sides and your head flung back to receive a kiss when he ducked to give you just that. When you lifted your head to gaze out across the water, you felt John’s lips leave delicate kisses against the side of your face and up your jaw to your ear.

“Remind me, Darling,” he whispered just for you, “how long must I wait to get you out of this?”

You held back a moan at his intent, but it quickly became another squeal as a curious addition to the scenery came into view. Not four yards away, a man had stood from his seated position, twisting his torso to crack his spine, and giving you a full and bouncy view of his three piece set, covered in coarse hair, but otherwise in plain view. John’s arms tightened around you after he spun you to face him, one hand flying to the back of your head to keep your face pressed into his neck.

He stuttered awkwardly and you managed to pull away, and found yourself in presence of at least a dozen people who were similarly clothed....or rather unclothed.

Andrew and Perri appeared at your side and you pulled away at the sound of her nearly angelic laughter. “Look at them,” she said with a sweeping gesture. “Trying to be Parisian!” She rambled about some health club in Paris that met and exercised completely nude, but her words were lost on you as you looked around the stretch of sand, smattered with naked bodies enjoying their day completely unencumbered.

You turned back to John, his eyes wide and darting across the scenery, presumably to find somewhere to sit where he wouldn’t have to share you with so many bare dodgers.

“Well, John,” you said stepping away from his rigid frame. “Looks like you won’t have to wait very long at all,” you teased, hooking one thumb under the strap of your bather and starting to pull it down your shoulder.

Clear as the danglers that were surely behind you, John’s expression went from one of shock to panic as he watched your hand moving slowly. Without warning, he took two long steps forward and bent slightly. Before you knew what to do, you were slung over his shoulder with his arms clinging tightly to the back of your thighs.

“John!” You shrieked as the view of the beach was not any better upside down and he responded only with movement, away from the sand as far as you could tell. “I thought you wanted me out of my bather?” You asked, propping one elbow against his back to rest your face in your hand. If he was going to haul you away, you didn’t need to endure a headache too.

“I-I-I- of course,” he stammered so quickly it sounded like all one word. Finally, beneath the covering a delicate gazebo, John set you right on your feet, where you waited for him to speak. “I-“ he glanced down at you again, torn between appreciation and apprehension. “You wouldn’t...really? Do you want to go back?” He asked tentatively.

“We’re here for a beach day,” you shrugged, knowing how much your indifference would upset him. His brows furrowed and you could tell he was gnawing on the inside of his lip as his eyes flicked over your head back toward the water. It was a lovely day, but at what cost.

“I don’t think I like the idea of you being so so so exposed,” he explained, eyes still fixed overhead until he lowered them and licked his lips. “Especially when I cannot do what I like with you.”

“You can do whatever you like, John,” you scoffed.

“No,” he said quickly, gripping your shoulder tightly and drawing his thumb up your throat. “I can’t have my wife in front of all these...people and if I cannot have my wife here, then I’d prefer she stay...covered.”

“Am I too tempting for you, John?”

“Entirely too tempting.” He leaned for a kiss that didn’t reflect the public nature of his display at all. It felt like one of his kisses at home, just before-

John pulled away quickly, his bottom lip catching on your teeth and releasing with a sharp pop. He sat on one of the benches under the covering with his hands in his hair and a brief glance between his legs told you that you were right.

Taking a chance, you knelt between his spread knees and held onto his wrists, using your pinky to scratch the soft hair at his temple. John pulled his head from his hands just slightly and gave you an odd look.

“John,” you sighed. “If you’d like me to keep my clothes on, all you have to do is ask.” A ridiculous statement, but apparently one that needed to be said.

His nose crinkled and his lips twitched and you knew you had him. He’d be grinning again in seconds and hopefully, he’d be kissing you again too.

“Darling,” he returned your sigh, and held your chin in one of his hands. “You are magnificent,” he said leaning in so close that his nose was pressed against yours and his breath tickled your lips as he spoke. “But I am selfish with my bride and I don’t intend to share her with the world.”

“Will you lock me away, John?” You teased, knowing what he meant and appreciating it, but not wanting to let him off the hook just yet.

“If I must,” he growled, leaning forward to capture your lips again.

When you parted, you were slightly out of breath, but the boyish smirk had returned to your husband’s features and there was nothing you’d do to change that. “Well, that means you won’t be getting me out of this just yet,” you informed him.

“I’ve told you, darling,” he reminded you with a quick peck before pulling you both to your feet. “I’ve found something worth waiting for.”

Though the wait wasn’t so long. The moment you two started your walk back to the beach, John noticed a family exiting a big black car that appeared to be a taxi and after conversing with the driver, he instructed you to grab your dress. Both of you were disheveled, but clothed, climbing into the backseat of the car, with only the drive between the beach and Andrew’s apartment before you and your husband would be spending the day exactly how you wanted. Without sharing.

OH JOHNNY. 

@something-tofightfor @the-blind-assassin-12 @breanime @suchatinyinfinity @blackcoffeeandgreenteaforme @christinawxxx @lexxierave @getlostinyourparadise @songtoyou

[signorformica]

Ladies and gentlemen! Bibliothèque Infernale is proud to present —again!—under the big top tonight!:

*THE BIBULOUS BABY*

Another bizarre, freakish short story by the Master of the Grotesque — TOD ROBBINS!

***

“THE STRANGEST event in my life happened last summer," said my traveling companion. "I have only ventured to tell this story to my wife and brother. It is so unique and apparently so beyond human belief that if I published it broadcast I would be looked upon by the world as an impostor of the first water."

"And did your wife and brother believe you?" I asked.

"Well, not exactly. Yes and no. They believed that I thought I was telling the truth. The one imagined that the tale sprang from the effects of strong drink; the other blamed the strength of the summer sun. But I assure you it was neither. I had had a few glasses of absinth, certainly; but I have been accustomed to this drink since childhood. The sun, indeed, was very hot; but it was as nothing compared to the heat I have experienced in the tropics."

"The story, doctor?", I ventured.

"Ah," said he, "you will laugh; but nevertheless I will give it to you. Mirth is the reward one gets from the world when one gives something new to it. People laugh entirely too much, and smile only with their lips. Look into a man's eyes — they alone are the true mirrors of emotion.

"On the fifteenth of last August I was living at a seaside resort not far from the city. It was the warmest day of the summer, and the people had taken to the water. Sitting on the veranda of the hotel with a glass of absinth on the arm of my chair, I could see the blue expanse of ocean stretching out from the beach like a velvet rug lying on a floor of whitest marble.

“Not a breath of air ruffled that placid surface; not a wrinkle of thought rested on the calm forehead of the sea. And above it the sun hung stationary in the heavens, resembling an open porthole of a burning ship seen through the blue haze of evening.

"On the beach, men and women were running about, caricaturing by their grotesque, awkward movements the play of children, as grown people do when they attempt to cheat could be seen bobbing up and down like pieces of cork, and it seemed strange that these little globes should be moving about, guided by the brains that they contained; and stranger still that, if one should suddenly sink out of sight for several moments, a great excitement would turn these shouts of laughter into screams, these movements of animal joy into gesticulations of horror.

"Sitting all alone on that hotel veranda, I continued to sip my absinth and to meditate on the scene before me. Suddenly I saw a very pretty young girl approaching, pushing a baby carriage before her. The child was evidently sleeping and was concealed under a canopy of mosquito netting; the girl looked longingly out to sea, while two lines of irritation furrowed her forehead.

"Acting on a sudden impulse, I spoke to her: 'You'll pardon me, but couldn't I be of some assistance? I see that you like bathing, and it's quite a wonderful day for it. I could take care of the baby while you have a plunge.'

"She hesitated and again looked out to sea. 'I'm very much obliged,' she began, 'but mother told me to take care of — at this she hesitated, and I thought I saw her face darken — 'of my little brother,' she finished.

"'But I could take care of him for a time. He won't be any trouble. He's fast asleep.'

"'Yes, he is asleep,' she said, lifting the mosquito netting and looking down at the little red face lying on the lace pillow. 'Thank you so much; I think I will go in bathing.' And, wheeling the baby carriage up beside me, she turned and hurried off toward the bath houses on the shore.

"Again my eyes returned to the bathers, and my hand lifted the glass of absinth to my lips. How black and tiny some of the heads looked far out on the water! Here, in this bathtub of the city, life was a precious thing; yet there was an abundance of it, a superfluity of it. I had been in thinly populated countries where it was not thought of so highly.

"'I beg your pardon, sir,' said a voice beside me which sounded like a key turning in a rusty lock, 'but I'm very thirsty and absinth is my favorite drink.'

"I turned about in surprise, and was thunderstruck to see that I was apparently still alone. No one stood back of my chair; no one was behind the pillar on my right, and no one crouched behind the baby carriage, as I had first suspected. But as I stared about me the voice again spoke in its strange, quavering tones.

"'Lift up the mosquito net over the carriage,' it said.'It's damnably hot in here!'

"Almost mechanically I did as I was told, and in a moment more was looking down into the little, red, wrinkled face of a baby. As I gazed at the shapeless nose, at the bald head and loose-lipped mouth, the eyes opened and looked up at me. What I felt then you can never imagine, my friend; I cannot describe it to you. I can only say that it was horrible — horrible past belief. I had expected the frightened, innocent stare of awakened childhood; in place of it I saw the vicious, knowing leer of wicked old age. With a cry of horror I reeled back and put my hands before my eyes.

" 'Well,' said the voice again, and now I knew that it, too, was old — as old as an echo in a haunted house; 'well, my young friend, do I get a taste of your absinth or not?’

"'What are you?' I cried as soon as I could speak.

"'Young man,' said the baby, squinting evilly at me over his blanket, 'I'm about the dryest child in the world. Do you know what I've been getting to drink lately? I've been getting milk — milk from a dirty, blue-nosed bottle! Everybody takes advantage of me be- cause I'm too old to kick up a disturbance. Why, my own grandchild — the one who was wheeling me just now — takes advantage of me. Family pride is all very well, but what is getting me is I've only got four more weeks to live, and I might as well be a live one till the very end.'

"'Just a moment,' said I, taking a long drink of absinth to steady my nerves. 'Now you can tell me every- thing. You may unburden yourself to me as though I were your father.'

"'Well,' he snarled. ’If I tell you the story, will you empty the milk out of my bottle and fill it up with absinth?'

"'Yes, readily,' I answered.

"'So I'm selling my family pride for a bottle of absinth,' said he. 'Well, no matter, here it goes. My grand- father owned a large plantation before the war. Like many another Southern gentleman of that time, he preferred the joys of the body to the joys of the spirit. Wine in plenty, women in plenty, tobacco in plenty — that was his idea of life. But there was one thing that worried my grandfather.'

""What was that?' I asked.

"'Old age,' said the baby solemnly. 'It was his one fear. And when it finally came — when gout laid hold of his feet and time pulled out his hair — he was a pitiful object to behold. Lying on his back, he cursed life and said that it started from the wrong end; that if men were born old and grew younger year by year, then they'd have something to live for, instead of cursing every day that came. And on the night when he died he sold his soul to the devil, or so my old negro nur.se used to say. On the following morning I was born.'

"'And how long ago was that, my little friend?' I asked.

"'Eighty-five years ago last December’, said the baby. 'Of course I can't remember as far back as that. My first recollection is of standing before the mirror while my mother combed out my long gray beard. Yes, I had a beard then; and they say it was snow white when I was born. But when I remember it first it was gray —a beautiful silver gray. That was a long time ago, and I wish I had one now.

"'And yet, even then I wasn't happy. I'd try to get the old men in the village interested in blindman's buff and tag; but they wouldn't play with me and I felt lonely. People began to talk when they saw me rolling my hoop in the street or playing marbles with the boys; so mother had to tell them that I was an uncle of hers in his second childhood, fearing that they might guess the truth. Sometimes the old men would beckon me into the tavern, buy me some absinth, and, when I had drunk it, send me home tottering on my feet.

"'And so time passed. Gradually I grew taller and stronger; the gray began to fade out of my beard in patches, and mother was now thought by strangers to be my sister. I no longer played marbles with the boys or rolled my hoop along tire pavement. No, now the girls whom I met on the street would make my heart beat all out of tune. But they never looked at me; or, if they did, they would say, "He is old enough to be our father," and pass by. But there was one who said, 'What young eyes he has!' I married that girl and settled down with the optimistic belief that nothing could shatter my happiness.

"'But the years went by, and each one that passed made me younger and my dear wife older. Finally we met on the tide of life, each drifting toward a separate goal. And we could not hold each other. We passed by swiftly, unable even to clasp hands. I must have suffered then, yet my hair lost all its gray; I was growing to be a comparatively young man. And I had children, and they soon grew older than I ; and they had children, and they grew older than I — till now all that is left me is a taste for absinth, the taste that I acquired when the old men used to send me home from the tavern in the days of my drunken, gray-haired childhood. How I used to cry when they wouldn't play marbles with me!

"'Ah, well, ah, well, now I'm eighty- five and a baby with the tastes of an old man. Yet they won't give me my absinth, and expect me to say nothing about myself because of family pride. It seems I am a monster — something to be hidden away in a perambulator. Ah, but the ladies give me privileges sometimes which they'd scarcely give if they knew my age! I have four more weeks of life. How do I know ? Why, the doctor of the hotel examined me this morning and said that I am just four weeks old. But give me your absinth, sir. Don't take advantage of me because I am old and helpless.'"

"And did you give him your absinth?" I asked.

"Yes," said my friend. "I filled his milk bottle with it. He was so weak that I had actually to put the nipple in his mouth. Then I went up to my room, leaving him sucking peacefully. Four weeks later I read his death no tice in the paper. Well, what do you think of that, sir?"

"I think it is quite remarkable," I answered.

*Tod Robbins: The Bibulous Baby. First published in The Thrill Book. July 1, 1919 • via Bibliothèque Infernale on FB