#my partner had to fight procreate dreams for this

[theblaseharbinger]

"My dear, if I wanted to hurt anyone here, I would have done so already."

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, inatshej!

For @inatshej. I’ve never written a high school AU before, but I wanted to make Inatshej’s secret santa dreams come true. I hope I did your wishes justice <3

CW for homophobic bullying, but it's not the focus of the story. Also, there is brief mention of the death of Stiles' mother.

Read On AO3

*****

To Be Held By You

Derek knew there must be something wrong with him from a young age. He knew because how many times had his parents given their speech about the importance of raising the next generation for werewolf society? How many times had his uncle given the “werewolves will become endangered species if we don't procreate more” speech at a pack meeting? His purpose in life was to raise more cubs, and that required Derek to kiss a girl.  He tried touching himself to pictures of Taylor Swift, but at the moment of truth his mind wandered back to Taylor Lautner.

High school proved even more challenging. Derek tried to join in his teammates’ objectifying discussions about their substitute teacher, Ms. Argent, but he felt like an obvious impostor. After basketball practice Derek hung back to shoot extra baskets to avoid being in the locker room. Later, to his dismay, someone else drew his eye in chemistry class.  

“Mr. Stilinski. Glad you could finally join us,” Mr. Harris bit out as Stiles’ desk scraped against the floor.

Stiles looked lovely with flushed cheeks, Derek grudgingly admitted to himself.

“Sorry, I overslept. I had a busy night looking for that dead body in the woods.”

Mr. Harris gave a tight lipped smile while the rest of the class laughed at Stiles. Stiles either didn’t seem to care or didn’t realize the laughter was directed at him.

Jackson’s voice cut above the cruel raucous. “Stilinski here thinks he’s Scooby-Doo.” And then Jackson started barking obnoxiously.

Derek wanted to crawl under his desk. They sounded like a butchered version of a pack of angry basset hounds and it grated at his sensitive hearing. Not to mention poor Stiles. Derek watched to see his reaction, but Stiles just caught Derek’s stare and rolled his eyes. Derek’s face heated, and he glanced away.

***

Erica nudged Derek’s side. “Scott and Stiles are here.”

Derek glanced up from his plastic cup. The pounding beat of the bass almost drowned out her voice, and Derek had no way of hearing what Stiles was saying across the huge loft. His eyesight was certainly good enough to admire Stiles’ tight t-shirt though. “You know him?”

“Who, Stiles? Of course. I had a huge crush on him in middle school actually.”

Derek coughed on his next sip. “I thought he was a new kid.”

Erica waved her hand. “Nope. Actually, he’s the sheriff’s kid. Just took some time off last year because his mom was in the hospital.”

Derek braced himself. “Is she…?”

Erica nodded gravely. “She didn’t make it. But he seems like he’s back to his old self now. Want to see if they want some company?”

Derek tried in vain to grab her sleeve before she sauntered off. “No, Erica, wait-!” Derek waved away a girl’s paintbrush as he craned his neck to see what Erica’s was planning. Luckily, Derek could see through the throngs of people in the dim lights and glowing that Erica got sidetracked by running into Boyd. There was no distraction more helpful than the guy Erica was currently crushing on. However, unluckily, Stiles also got distracted. A pretty brunette with neon orange lips grabbed Stiles’ hand and dragged him to the dance floor. Derek strained to hear, but to no avail.

All the DJ’s songs blended into one another, so Derek couldn’t tell how much time passed. Eventually Erica sauntered over, happily under Boyd’s arm. In tow, was Stiles. It seemed they were all in the middle of a conversation.

Erica poked Stiles’ arm. “I thought you were into guys?”

Stiles took a gulp of his drink. “What do you mean?”

“You were making out with Caitlin. What about your crush on Danny sophomore year?”

Stiles scoffed. “Erica, I will have you know I am an equal opportunity lover.” At her smirk, he added, “I’m bisexual! Ever heard of it?”

Boyd gave Stiles a fist bump. “That’s cool, man.”

Stiles grinned and cupped his hands around his mouth to shout into the mess of writhing bodies. It was impossible he would be heard over the pounding music, but his new friends would hear. “I’M BISEXUAL AND I’M SINGLE!” His laugh warmed the already hot loft space. “Hey, I’m Stiles, by the way.” And then he winked at Derek.

Oh shit. Derek’s crush just got slightly more attainable. And that scared him.

***

On Monday at school Derek found Stiles waiting by his locker. “Hey dude, you’re looking pretty as ever.”

Derek gulped. “Um.”

Stiles stepped out of the way of Derek’s locker so he could put his backpack away. He licked his lips and his heart beat wildly. “So...Harris is making us pick lab partners today in chemistry. And I was thinking-”

Jackson’s bellow from the end of the hall cut in. “Yo Stilinski! Who let you into the party on Friday? Everyone knows you’re a narc!”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “You’re just jealous I wouldn’t dance with you, Whittmore.”

Jackson strode closer. “You hear that everybody? Stiles wanted me to dance with him.” He loomed over Stiles then and Stiles had to push his shoulders back against the lockers. “Too bad. I don’t dance with f*gs who run home and tell the Sheriff I host parties at my parent’s loft property.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Jackson sneered. “Don’t play innocent. My parents took my car keys and you’re going to pay for it. Just you wait.”

Stiles barked out a laugh. “You seriously think the Sheriff’s department gives a shit about you? Your parents probably found out because Matt tagged you on Facebook.”

That only seemed to enrage Jackson more. “You calling me stupid?” Jackson clenched his fist, but before he could move his arm, Derek wrenched Jackson’s arm back. The growing crowd backed up, expecting a brawl.

Derek usually tried to stay under the radar. If he got in any fights it could put their whole pack in jeopardy. The student body witnessing a 17 year old kid win a fight with ease and then walk away without a scratch always seemed too risky. But for Stiles, Derek acted without thinking.

Stiles’ eyes widened as Derek grabbed Jackson’s shoulder and shoved him to the other side of the locker bay. “Don’t touch him!” Derek’s barely contained strength hinted at a power Jackson could only dream of.

Jackson struggled against him, but couldn’t get loose. “Whoa, chill out, Hale,” Jackson sputtered. “It was just a joke.” Derek smelled the beginnings of fear now.

Derek leaned over Jackson to growl in his ear. “Leave Stiles alone or I won’t hold back next time.” He released Jackson, but not before flashing his eyes for good measure. Jackson’s veneer of superiority completely dropped away to reveal wide eyes. Satisfied, Derek dropped his arms and stepped back.

Jackson pushed his way through the onlookers. “Get out of my way, Greenberg.”

Derek shuddered. Shit. If his mom got wind of this…

“Dude! That was awesome!” They both glanced at the still gathered crowd. “Let’s get out of here.”

Derek followed Stiles down the hallway and around the corner into an empty classroom. “Isn’t this room usually locked during first period?”

Stiles grinned, eyes sparkling. “I have my ways.” Up close like this Derek could see they were about the same height.

The lights were off, but Derek’s eyesight picked up bean bags strewn in the corner.

“Don’t worry. I’ve memorized Ms. Blake’s schedule, because Scott and Allison sneak in here all the time to make out,” Stiles whispered into the dim light.

Derek took a shallow breath and scented the arousal permeating the bean bag chairs. He visibly blanched.

“Oh! Not that I brought you in here to make out!” Stiles reddened and took a step back from him. Derek missed the heat of his body. “I just wanted to get you away from the prying eyes before someone realized you were a werewolf.”

Derek’s stomach dropped. Had he let his family’s secret up after all? “What did you say?”

Stiles stopped short. “Was I not supposed to say anything?”

“How-, What-What do you know?”

“Relax, Derbear. I’m not a hunter or anything. My best friend’s a werewolf.” Stiles reached for his shoulder. He probably meant it to be a reassuring hold, but Derek couldn’t help but think this is the first time Stiles ever touched him. The heat and pressure of his hand left Derek reeling.

It took Derek a second to comprehend. “...Scott?”

“Yep,” Stiles said. Stiles gave his shoulder a final pat and took his hand off. “Bit by a rogue alpha a few months ago.

“Oh,” Derek managed. He supposed he remembered something familiar coming up in a recent pack meeting.

“We good?”

Derek let out a breath, and his lips turned up. “Yeah.”

“Cool.” Stiles grinned back. “So, what I was trying to say earlier. Do you want to be my lab partner in Harris’ class?”

“Sure, Stiles,” Derek said, still smiling.

The shrill bell interrupted the warm stillness. Derek listened at the door and nodded to Stiles. “The coast is clear.”

Stiles poked his head out, then strode back toward the lockers. The hallways were now deserted. “I guess Jackson didn’t send the dean over.”

Derek’s face darkened. “And he won’t if he knows what’s good for him.”

“Man, the toxic masculinity really does it for me apparently,” Stiles muttered. “Hey, do you think I’m attractive to straight guys?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

***

After that Derek’s friends unanimously adopted Stiles into their group. It seemed Stiles’ best friend since childhood spent all his time with his new girlfriend anyway. Erica loved having someone to talk boys with and Boyd enjoyed practicing lacrosse with someone who hadn’t betrayed him for the basketball team. (Derek tried to get Boyd to understand that it was easier for him to hide his wolf strength in basketball than in lacrosse, but Boyd wouldn't listen.)

After Scott’s particularly sappy winter formal proposal to Allison during lunch Stiles rolled his eyes and turned to the rest of the group. “So who’s going to the dance?”

Boyd glimpsed up from his chips and shared a smile with Erica, like they were in on the same secret.

Stiles stole Erica’s apple while she was otherwise occupied making doe eyes at her new boyfriend. “I meant other than the obvious lovebirds,” he grumbled. He glanced at Derek and his cheeks flushed.

Malia cut in before Derek could flounder over his words. “Derek’s taking Kira for me as usual. My dad would literally flip a table if he knew Kira and I are actually a couple.”

Stiles’ gaze broke away from Derek to gape at Malia. “Oh shit, seriously? Well aren’t you a good cousin, Derek.” Stiles got that calculating look that promised gears were turning in his head. It was never a good sign when it was directed at Derek. With a perfect air of casual he added, “Then I should take you, Malia, to avoid further suspicion. Derek and I can be de facto dates once we get to the dance and let you and Kira do your thing.” He winked at Derek then, and it was Derek’s turn to feel his face heat.

***

Up until then Derek’s crushes were unattainable, like a famous person or the cute counselor at werewolf summer camp. Now his crush was his “de facto” date to the winter formal. Against his better judgment Derek couldn’t stop staring at Stiles. He watched Stiles’ nimble fingers put Malia’s corsage around her wrist, and he shivered imagining what Stiles’ touch would feel like on his own skin.

“Everything okay, Derek?”

Derek started and turned to his mother. “Of course.”

“Kira seems awfully quiet today.”

They turned to see Kira watching Stiles and Malia posing for pictures with an unreadable expression.

“Um, I think she’s feeling awkward being the only kitsune here.”

“Right,” Talia said. “You know, that Stiles sure is charming.”

“I guess,” Derek grumbled.

“We’d better finish up with pictures soon then.” She winked at Derek. Addressing everyone, she said, “Alright everyone. One more group picture.” She motioned to the boys to line up. “Girls, stand in front of the boys.”

The wolves had been devising ways to avoid the lens flare. This time everyone was directed to look at their dates. The girls angled to look up at the boys, but at that moment Malia leaned over to whisper something in Kira’s ear, and the two of them giggled at one another. The shutter also caught Derek turning to gaze at Stiles at the same time Stiles happened to eye him too.

***

Stiles nudged him as they stood in line to the gym. “You clean up good, dude.”

Derek glared at his shoes. “You too.” That was an understatement. Stiles looked stunning in his fit, dark black suit. Stiles usually wore baggy flannel or sweatshirts. This was a new side of him Derek could absolutely get used to. The fact that Stiles left the first couple buttons of his shirt open made Derek’s mouth water. He wanted to bite that hint of collarbone.

Even Lydia, Jackson’s ex, eyed Stiles appreciatively and sent a sly smile his way. Stiles beamed back at her for a moment.

Once inside Derek’s ears had to adjust to the DJ’s booming volume and the smell of cologne overpowering the faint smell of gym socks. Stiles needed no adjustment. He grabbed Malia’s and Kira’s hands and pointed to the dance floor where Scott and Allison already were. Derek watched with amusement as Stiles and his friends formed a circle, Stiles dancing frenetically.

Derek himself wasn’t much of a dancer, but he was content to watch Stiles bounce around. While Stiles finished up a fast rendition of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree with Lydia the tune changed to a slow ballad.

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas... the speakers crooned.

Derek expected Lydia to find Jackson for this one, but to Derek’s horror Stiles turned to Lydia and pulled her close.

Derek may have been enjoying the occasional brush of their hands during chemistry labs, and he still savored Stiles’ hand on his shoulder, but he never got to be held by him like that. The song never seemed to end. If Stiles hadn’t had a partner for this one then maybe he would have turned to his “de facto” date.

Derek knew he was scowling, but hoped Stiles wouldn’t be able to tell from his vantage hooked over Lydia’s shoulder. Finally, the song ended and Derek could breathe again.

After the song ended Stiles strode up with punch in one hand. “Why so sour, Sourwolf?”

Derek’s jaw tightened. Something dangerously close to the truth flew out of his mouth. “You and Lydia looked pretty cozy.”

Stiles rubbed his hand over his buzzed hair. “When we were dancing?”

“Nothing. It’s stupid,” Derek grumbled.

Stiles nudged him goodnaturedly. “Were you jealous?” Stiles teased.

Derek blushed. “Shut up.”

“You’re such a sweet talker. Of course I’ll dance with you.” Stiles took Derek’s hand and pulled him to the dance floor.

It wasn’t the slow song Derek dreamed of. However, even with a fast song he could be close to Stiles. Stiles’ scent wafted around him; a mix of the dry cleaning on his suit, his pine deodorant that made him smell like the woods, and that exquisite scent all his own. Every now and then Stiles would take Derek’s hands and pull him closer or shimmy against him.

Dancing with Stiles almost made Derek forget they were in the same room where he had to practice basketball every weeknight. He could tune out his classmates shamelessly grinding on each other with the warmth of Stiles’ body. The twinkling lights on the ceiling actually seemed to transform the space to a winter wonderland as the winter formal posters had promised.

Just when Derek thought he might be getting a hang of where he should put his arms while dancing Erica and Boyd bounded up to them and pulled them apart.

“Who’s coming to Jackson’s party with us?”

Stiles seemed to shake himself. “Right now?”

“Yes, now, silly! No one stays after the DJ starts playing remixes of Jingle Bells.”

Derek’s scowl returned. He didn’t want the night to end yet.

Stiles shrugged. “I’m not keen on going to another Whittmore party.” Stiles eyed him, then said. “If everyone’s going to the loft party you and me can just hang out at my place and watch a movie or something.”

At that Derek had to duck his head to hide his grin. “Sure.”

***

Stiles’ home was small, but cozy. A warm lamp lit the couch in the living room, and the tree’s twinkling lights sent a sparkling glow across the rest of the room. The room was filled with Stiles scent mingled with the tree’s needles. Best of all, Derek couldn’t hear anyone else in the house.

Stiles gestured to the couch. “Make yourself at home. My dad’s working somet overtime tonight so we have the place to ourselves.”

Derek gulped. He sat on the couch and rubbed his hands over his thighs. Stiles’ long fingers undid the buttons on his suit jacket as he spoke, and Derek couldn’t turn away.

“Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Uh…” His mouth was suddenly quite dry.

“Dude. Earth to Derek.”

“Water’s fine,” he managed to croak out.

While Stiles tripped to the kitchen Derek glanced around the room and took in the family photo frames decorating the space, the homemade quilt that smelled faintly of perfume hanging over the back of the couch, and the impressive collection of DVDs.

“See anything you like?”

Derek jumped in an uncharacteristic startle. “What?!”

“Did you see a movie you want to watch?”

“Oh! I’m good with Marvel I guess.”

“Avengers it is,” Stiles said.

Derek couldn’t tell what time it was, but time seemed to stop in the Stilinski house. The old couch was worn and soft, with cushions deep enough to sink into. Stiles sat down close enough to bump their legs when either of them shifted. Stiles’ breathing echoed in Derek’s ears, and his heartbeat drowned out the battle sounds. Out of the corner of his eye Derek admired Stiles’ freckles on his neck and the enticing part of his lips. Stiles hypnotized him. That must be the only explanation for Derek letting his guard down.

“Chris Evans can get it,” Stiles said, practically drooling at the screen, oblivious to Derek’s admiration.

Derek harrumphed, arms crossed. “I like Tom Holland better.”

That got Stiles’ attention away from the screen. The devilish upturn of Stiles’ lips made Derek realize what just came out of his mouth.

“I mean…”

Stiles’ eyes traveled up and down Derek’s torso, his half smile never wavering. “I knew it. I knew you were into guys.”

“I don’t-, I mean...Fuck.” Derek hung his head. “Yeah.” For some reason Derek wanted to cry.

Stiles paused the movie and scooted closer to Derek on the couch. “Hey, man, I didn’t mean to freak you out. Despite my chatterbox reputation I can keep a secret.”

“No, that’s not it. I just...I’ve never said it out loud to anyone before.” He admitted it. He admitted he liked boys and the world was still spinning. Derek took a deep, shuddering breath. For years he feared his secret would disgust those he cared about, but instead the secret was out and the boy he liked was staring at his lips with a hungry gleam in his eyes. Suddenly it felt like he could do anything. “I’ve never kissed a guy before either.”

Stiles’ teeth grazed over his bottom lip. “Should I put my licorice down or am I reading this wrong?”

Derek huffed. “Put the licorice down, Stiles.”

The words were barely out of Derek’s mouth before Stiles plastered himself to Derek with a whimper. Derek arched against him. This was the most friction and heat he’d ever gotten from Stiles and he never wanted it to end. Derek’s lips were drawn to Stiles’ like the pull of the moon; it was impossible to fight. Every time Derek thought they should probably stop he leaned back in for just one more, and then another.

Stiles seemed equally transfixed. When Derek licked along the tendons on his neck Stiles uttered a series of desperate “Oh my god”s that left Derek gasping into a particularly sharp bite with his human teeth.

The unfamiliar crunch of tires drew Derek out of his haze. “Stiles, there’s someone in your driveway.”

Stiles pulled away. His chin was pink from Derek’s stubble and his lips plumped from their kissing in a way that made Derek want to dive back in. Gods that mouth. “...Shit my dad’s home. I didn’t know it got so late.”

They both sheepishly realized the movie ended ages ago.

“Do you want me to go?” Derek asked reluctantly.

“I want you to be my boyfriend,” Stiles sighed.

“Okay,” he said. And Derek sealed it with a brief peck before pulling back to give some semblance of composure for Stiles’ father, the sheriff, oh crap.

Stiles beamed at him from the other side of the couch. “Seriously?”

Derek nodded. He’d never been more sure of something before in his life.

***

Having a boyfriend was one thing. At school Derek could openly gaze at Stiles in class now and Stiles would blush and wink at him. But at home Derek hadn’t told his family just yet. When his mom came into his room the night before winter break he knew he wanted to start telling them the truth about him and Stiles.

“Knock knock. Derek, honey, do you want to bring Kira to Christmas Eve dinner?”

Derek gulped. “I’m not dating Kira.”

“You broke up?”

“Mom...Alpha. I have to tell you something.” Derek took a deep breath. “I don’t think I like girls at all actually. I like boys.” He couldn’t meet his mother’s eyes.

“That’s wonderful, honey. I’m so glad you finally told me.”

Derek raised his eyebrows. “You’re not mad?”

Her forehead creased. “You know I love you beyond the moon and back. Why would you think I’d be mad about your sexuality?”

“I’m not a good pack member if I don’t father children,” Derek said, studying the patterns in his floor.

Derek’s mother held him close and scented his neck. “Oh my darling Derek. You’ve been carrying so much in your heart.”

Derek’s breath hitched, but he tried to hold in his wet gasp.

She pulled back to sandwich his cheeks between her hands and meet his gaze. “There is no expectation of heterosexuality in our pack. Or in most packs. That is human nonsense, and I won’t stand for it.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh. Uncle Peter’s spent too much time in the Bible belt it seems. I should have removed his voice box years ago,” she grumbled. “Now, have you heard of the male penguin couples that raise abandoned eggs?” At Derek’s blank expression she continued. “Homosexual werewolves hold a great honor in our society. They fulfill the needs of adoption and foster parenting orphaned or abandoned cubs.”

“So I can still be a father someday?”

“Of course! I’m sure you and Stiles can find a way to raise children however you see fit.”

“Mom!”

“Really dear, you can’t expect a werewolf nose not to realize you were canoodling with him the night of the winter formal. You came back reeking of- Well let’s just say, a werewolf household doesn’t offer as much privacy as one would think.”

Derek groaned. “Well, I guess in that case no one will be surprised if I bring him as my boyfriend to Christmas Eve dinner.”

“He’s always welcome here.” She kissed his forehead and Derek felt tears prick at his eyes. He couldn’t wait to call Stiles to tell him the news.

[mademoiselless]

[2/10]

"Hear her every thought, see her every dream."

Literature is that one subject you hated, you find it kind of boring that it makes you sleep most of the time in between discussions and lectures. You were annoyed to the fact that you won't be getting your degree if you dare to skip it on a semester. Apparently, you've never really imagine yourself having a fullblown distaste to that certain subject, not when an annoying, weird guy suddenly pops out of nowhere, asking you to be your partner.

"And what makes you think I'll let you be my pair?" You eyed his side curiously.

"Hmm..let me think," Jaehyun pretends to think hard, stroking his invisible beard under his chin discerning his deep dimples. "There are approximately thirty-two students inside this room which makes sixteen pairs, you see here, all thirty of them finally found their respective partners." He explains as a matter of fact.

"And?" You pressed raising him a doubtful brow.

"And... Only thirty students have been paired except for the remaining two.. hmm basic math I guess, which -"

"Doesn't make sense?" You offered, smirking a bit when you heard him snorted on his stupid reasoning. Truth to be told, there are thirty two students attending the class, twenty of them were girls which means half of the class were basically dreaming and fighting to be paired with him. The last fifteen minutes of the class were wasted with Jaehyun still pestering you to join him for the stupid research paper that you've been silently cursing, plus the annoying sound of his metal chair screeching against the marbled floor when he attempts to sneak near you ain't helping.

"Children, dont forget to pass your research work next week!" The middle-aged proffesor yells. "Get yourselves busy with the papers not with foils. Education before procreation. " she adds tilting her glasses down as she winks. Everyone laughs aloud but you didn't miss to hear the prick beside you snicker, probably finding the innuendo very relatable.

"Listen here Jung." You started, turning towards him as you stood with your notes and binder clutched againts your chest. "I really find you being really weird these days. Honestly, it's making me uncomfortable. " You tried so hard not to sound rude as much as possible but still with a hint of seriousness on your tone. "If you're planning to pull those damn tricks on me, please don't. I'm not one of them." Well, that stings a bit. He went slightly agape when you glanced up at him like he's going to speak but no words were coming out. "Please leave me alone." With that, you left the room earning curious and envy glares from random girls along the hall.

And that's how you basically tell someone to fuck off, short and nicely.

It was already 2 a. m and he can't find himself to sleep. He spent the whole day on classes and went home at ten from basketball practice, his body was dead tired but he couldn't help him self but to fidget and roll over the duvet, again and again. When he tossed to his side, that's when he finally discovered that thing on his night stand called phone were he could browse hundred of girls' numbers to call whenever he needs them, just like his old routine. He plops on his stomach, grinning from the idea and started to scan his cell, roughly running his thumb all over some random names that can distract him only to halt when he finally reached the bottom of his contacts, staring on it blankly and he's still thinking about you.

So many things were running in his head, first, his hurted ego. Not even once he received a rejection especially from a woman. Second, never in his entire life he become this so annoyed to his own surname. "Why does she even call me Jung when I have a first name?" he asked exasperately as his stirs in bed. why Jung off all the names? Third, why you? When there's so many other girls in the line waiting, ready to throw themselves at him. And fourth, what the hell is wrong with him? To answer his question, he doesn't know either. You were a sudden change to his life. There's something in you that's very unlikely that he didn't notice his strange interest will develop this far. That night, Jaehyun didn't sleep.

The weekend and Jaehyun's dilemma drifted fast at the same time. He woke up and get himself ready to college on a Monday morning with all his guts and charm. He seems like he got this renewed energy, but not really, the truth is he's just really stubborn, persistent. Right, speaking of being stubborn, the young lad cannot and will not admit of being one. He says it was out of his character and context. Competitive, that's what he is as for him and nobody can convince him otherwise.

Jaehyun arrives at the hall a little earlier than usual for that certain subject you two shared and had a quick scan for your familiar face but sadly found your chair empty. He sat down, this time near at your usual spot. The lecture already started, he checks the time and about fifteen minutes has already passed but you were still nowhere in sight, Jaehyun started to think.

The class ended lately due to some lessons that your prof decided to cram. He was the last one to exit the room when someone patted him in the shoulder, startling him. "Jae, cmon practice is about to start." One of his teammates call. Suddenly, he recalls you basically telling him to get out of your sight which made him cringe inwardly making him question himself more why you're still running in his head not mention that lowkey insult that you spew which is most likely true, but damn it wounded his manwhore image. "That girl is something." He mumbles to himself. Jaehyun isn't saying his worried, but he really is.

"She's not joining the summer tournament." Jaehyun faintly hears as he walks along the side of the court from the lockers, already on his basketball jersey. He was about to take another long stride when he caught your name being mentioned gaining his full attention. "Heard she's dropping out of varsity. I don't know." He silently evesdrops on the corner pretending to play on his phone. "But she's one of the aces, Tine. We can't lose her." The other girl sighed deeply.

For a long time, Jaehyun didn't felt any sense of care and overwrought to somebody else, he was a selfish, happy-go-lucky guy after all, but on that brief period he felt something break, drop and quiver inside him. He can not really decipher the feeling of it, it was warm and at the same time, it burns deep down. Of course the unloving jerk was still oblivious, but on that moment, for the very first time, Jung Jaehyun's heart started to beat.

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[ohdeerlings]

mushi hime rant hahahhaahfdsjh

just posting my long-winded summary i typed immediately after finished reading to talk about how bad it was; it ended up a lot longer than i intended and now i feel like i should at least keep what i put effort into typing =___=

so it starts with this guy who's been getting recurring nightmares of a girl who shapeshifts into a monster with a huge mouth and teeth eating him

one day a transfer student comes in and looks exactly like her(already outplayed trope of having dreams for no reason of reality that doesnt ever get explained, and it happens lots of times throughout

)around the same time strange events start happening around town: ex, truck driver found by police with markings of a mass insect attack, dogs and pets all getting attacked by swarms of ants and filling up the vet hospitals

the narrative goes back and forth btwn:

- the guy's (Ryoichi's) POV in class where he's just not approaching her and wary of her bc of his dream; he's Not Like Other Boys who get all horny over her bc she's perfect (beautiful, smart, mysteriously quiet, physically adept)

- and btwn this stereotypically wacky/eccentric scientist who was consulted by the police with the first caseturns out the scientist has been tracking down a series of seemingly unrelated murders that follow a clear path ending at Ryoichi's town

throughout the story there's some not so subtle dialogues about the earth going through global warming and species dying

the scientist spiels to some insignificant characters about how humans arent long for this earth, etc etc and how insects are amazing because of their adaptational abilities

he seems to know the transfer student girl, Kikuchi and is trying to track her down

meanwhile kikuchi is character-developed as some clearly dangerous but morally compromised monster-human hybrid who Only Preys on Bad Guys or people around at the wrong time

she gets hit on by some lecherous perv who asks her to karaoke and she actually agrees

there she straddles him and starts kissing him and then these tentacle things come ouit of her throat and go into his mouth

he slumps over and she leaves

the scientist-investigator duo are closing in on her and find the security camera tapes, from that they get a picture and show it around town to try to locate her

meanwhile Ryoichi is still like wow she's Scary and I'm Not Like Other Boys

then he happens to see her just as the old man from the karaoke bar (who seems to have not been killed and is just stumbling around acting drugged) finds her and attacks her

a fucking needle spike comes out of her arm and she defends herself by stabbing him and puncturing his skull and killing him

he sees all that and shes like well guess you're my hostage now and takes him to his house

she's also attracted to him inexplicably, partially because He's Not Like Other Boys and shes like WHY ISNT HE SECRETING PHEROMONES FOR ME(she can smell that

)then there's a weird "erotic" scene where she forces him onto the bed and deep throats him with her mouth tentacles

then there's just a LOT of dialogue thrown at us at once with the scientist just explaining a shit ton to his investigation partner whose character clearly only exists for hte sake of exposition

turns out he had a colleague when he worked on a super secret gov funded experiment called biosphere 2 where they sealed off a forest and bombed it with radiation and pollution n shit

they found that it endured a lot at first and it was because of the bugs (?) that it did until the bugs disappeared and were nowhere to be found, then the forest just died

they looked around and found mutated bugs sleeping inside the earth

his colleague had a daughter back then with a terminal illness so out of desperation he injected the dna of the mutated insects into her, hoping their resilience would change her body to survive the illness

so she lived but she was clearly not human, farming off of her dad - she wasnt able to produce endorphins anymore so her tentacle things would secrete an enzyme to get hte host to produce lots of endorphins and she would take it, creating a dependency

bc she was the only of her species to exist she felt a need to procreate so she also kept trying to mate with her dad 

then we find out that her dad had an identical twin who was raised by foster parents - and thats Ryoichi's dad, making Ryoichi and Kikuchi technically cousins, and genetically half-siblings

so thats why she was Inexplicably drawn to that town, and to him

she was wandering through japan because at some point her dad tried to kill her for humanity's sake, but bc of a random flood their town was wiped out and he wasnt able to kill her and she disappeared/survived the flood thanks to her ability to mutate in environmental changes

meanwhile she's been keeping him hostage to feed off of his endorphins and creating a dependency in him for the enzymes she would give him

until his mom accidentally comes into his room and sees, then she runs away and dies falling down the stairs lol

then he's all like ytou're a monster!!!!! and she threatens to kill the girl-next-door character in his friend group who seemed to have a thing for him/vice versa

so he's like: ill do anything just spare her!!!! 

so she forces him to answer the door when his friends are like why havent u been going to class and tell them to fuck off/be a dick to them

while theyre walking outside after to go somewhere else the scientist sees the girl (Chiken) and is like hEY you look sad and depressed there's nothing possibly else that could make u feel like that except having your childhood crush abducted by a halfhuman-half locust succubus

he shows her the picture and she recognizes her and leads him back to the house

then he gets a rifle to try to shoot her and theres a whole fight scene where she uses her pheromones to call upon the insects to swarm

ryoichi is useless because he found his moms corpse lying in the bathtub getting consumed by maggots she asked to fully decompose the body

then the scientist gets a couple shots in and fends her off, meanwhile random police get in the way to stop what looks just like a home invasion and she disappears

they take ryoichi into the hospital bc all the endorphin harvesting and brain fuckery has him weak

then ryoichi's dad comes in and is like how do you recognize who i am!! to the scientist who explains

oh yeah that's the point at which we find out ryoichi and kikuchi are related

and then he's still having dreams where she vores him and he's both horrified and wants it

meanwhile entire city is getting swarmed by insects in a disaster scene with society breaking down etc etc

kikuchi tracks them down by following ryoichi's scent (?)

then they have one last battle where they try to use the dad as a distraction bc he looks identical to her dead father

and somehow the scientist just FINDS specific chemicals/enzymes to throw on her and weaken the part of her thats an insect

also earlier before she got there he  whips out the mutant insect dna out of nowhere? like the extremely valuable dna that he should have no business just finding/still carrying around

and is like

hey lets inject ourselves with this because humanity is getting wiped out and attacked by insects rn anyway, the only way to live i sto adapt

but no one does it (lmao pointless inclusion) 

then they defeat her in a big struggle with ryoichi getting farmed on by her again and instead of just taking it has a Miraculous realization past the drugs that oh no this person is killing everyone i love

and CHOMPS on her tentacle thigns while their mouths are connected

scientist injuects her with more random dna he has to compromise her mutant dna and the insect swarming stops bc of the internal biological shit happening and she's writhing oon the ground

then looks like she dies

they try to escape the basement theyve been in because its suddenly flooding (no reason lmfao)

on the way out they get stopped by a teacher that she pricked with her spike earlier on who's been missing from school and his "insect bite" changed his behavior/ultimately made him into a different part human part bug who tries to kill them

then kikuchi who -surprise- hadnt died!@!! shows up again but now she's blond and looks almost exactly like Ryoichi (who is blond) because the thing the scientist injected in her enabled her to adapt to the water and she's still a  mutatn but Less Evil Somehow and he's like i thOUGHT U DIED.... I ACTUALLY LOVE YOU.. 

then epilogue is the scientist goign through his life normally and the city is recovered from the insect swarm and he sees another random global warming thing in the news and is like

“its only a matter of time before humanity perishes, but now is not that time....we're good.............,,,,,,,for now...and i know somewhere underwater something of humanity's legacy will live on”

and it cuts to ryoichi and kikuchi hugging in a very Shape of Water way underwater with tentacle thigns cause they went to live in the ocean

then there s a bad window for a sequel showing the teacher guy - SURPRISE - not actuially dead and crunching on humans in a sewer somewhere

STILL A FUN READ

[lavvyan]

Inspired by this post by @tissueoflies for @erienne1983.

I know I said I was sitting on my fingers to keep myself from spilling words all over that one. Turns out I can't sit forever. Please try to look surprised.

~~~

The marks have always been a popular bone of contention.

Localized sensory organ, some biologists say, designed by evolution to find the most compatible mate for procreation.

A gift from God, some Western religions say, to remind us that, truly, man was made in His image.

The path to true enlightenment, some Eastern religions say, for to be one with another is to be one with all.

A nuisance, some say.

The only way to find true love, some say.

We'll probably never know, some say, and maybe they are closest to the truth.

~~~

Most days, Danny doesn't think about the mark at his temple. It's just there in his face, like his nose or his eyebrows.

He only touched marks twice. The first time was with Rachel, back when they were so in love he couldn't see straight. Her skin cool against his own, dark hair softly brushing his nose. She'd smelled amazing and she'd loved him so, so much. He was her rock, her prince, her American cowboy with his gun and his swagger and his funny way of talking. He'd basked in her infatuation with him and she'd laughed, delighted, at the way he admired her stubbornness, her elegance, the mystery of her. They'd never brought their marks together again, not even during sex, and in hindsight that probably saved their marriage for years. Still, Danny sometimes misses the way she made him into a movie version of himself, even though he failed to measure up.

The second time, he'd like to forget. He'd been tied to a chair, his beautiful partner dead beside him, half out of his mind with pain and grief and helpless anger. One of the goons had suddenly grinned and yanked Danny's head back by his hair, bringing their temples together and Danny found himself mired in the cloying satisfaction of causing pain, of seeing Danny as nothing but trash, the disposal of which was eagerly anticipated. Sometimes, the fear of dreaming about it keeps him up all night.

But most days, he doesn't think about the mark.

Then Steve laughs or looks at him with that deep affection, and he wonders.

~~~

He never does anything about it. Not even when Steve is bleeding out from several gunshot wounds and touching marks might be the only way to hold on to at least part of him after he's...

Not even then.

~~~

He never would have done anything about it, either. They agreed, years ago, that as long as they're working together, a romantic relationship is out of the question. They've been more or less successful at sticking to that plan.

But then a little girl dies and the plan to catch whoever's responsible backfires and Steve slowly, quietly, breaks down. Danny can deal with a lot of things – the loss of his brother, missing his son – but he can't take Steve doubting himself like that.

He just can't.  

~~~

Steve opens the door in pajama pants and a t-shirt. He looks pale, dull-eyed, the lines around his mouth deeper than ever.

"Not a good time, Danny." Even his voice lacks life.

"I know," Danny says, and barges in regardless.

Steve sighs and closes the door, follows him deeper into the living room.

"What do you want?" he asks, sounding so exhausted that Danny himself starts to feel tired.

"I want," Danny says, taking great care to keep his body language as open as possible, "to show you how much of a fuck-up I think you are."

Steve's shoulders sag and he rubs a hand across his face.

"Why?"

"Because you deserve it," Danny says honestly. It's hard to see Steve like this, no fight left in him, but the thing about Steve is that, while he still finds it hard to ask for help, he takes punishment like a trooper if he thinks it's his due. It breaks Danny's heart.

Steve's mouth tightens, but he doesn't protest, doesn't move away or tell Danny to leave. He just stands there, silently hurting, waiting for one more person to tell him he's not good enough.

Danny swallows and walks over to him, hesitating before he reaches up and slides around the back of Steve's neck, pulls gently. Steve closes his eyes and leans down.

Steve's skin is warm against Danny's temple, the nearness of his body as familiar as his scent in Danny's nose. Danny closes his own eyes, moves in that little bit closer.

Their marks touch.

Danny's fingers clench involuntarily as he's hit with a sense of admiration so deep, it nearly pulls him under. In Steve's eyes, Danny's the best father ever to walk the planet. In Steve's eyes, Danny's smart, brave, grouchy, beautiful. In Steve's eyes, Danny's the sun and the moon and all the stars combined, a force of nature that brings life and light and a sense of direction.

Danny sniffles, tries to hold back the tears.

No one's ever loved him like that.

Against him, Steve is silently crying, wetness running down his cheek and dripping into the collar of Danny's t-shirt.

Because in Danny's eyes, Steve is a lodestone, a pillar, the axis on which the world turns. In Danny's eyes, Steve is a goofball, necessity, beloved, a hero. In Danny's eyes, Steve is the eye of the storm, safe and dangerous in equal measures, and so fucking amazing it hurts.

"Danny," Steve chokes.

Danny has no idea who moves first, but they both turn their heads, blindly searching and finding each other's mouths. The kiss is a mess of wet breaths and tears, not quite enough air and trembling hands. It fixes nothing.

Danny keeps his hand on the back of Steve's neck and holds on tight.

~~~

Danny watches Steve lean back in his office chair. Some of the dark circles under his eyes remain and he's still a little pale, but he looks settled, more at ease with himself. He glances up, meets Danny's gaze, and smiles.

Danny rubs an absent finger over the mark at his temple and smiles back.

[fear-god-shun-evil]

Marriage Testimony: I’ve Found the Right Marriage Partner Ordained by God

By Su Xiaobei

I was born in the 80s. My parents were both humble and incapable farmers. My mother often told me, “In my day, marriages were all arranged by parents. Before getting married, I had only met your father once, and we barely knew each other. Only until after our marriage did I know he was incapable. Since then, I didn’t have an easy day. I’m so miserable!” In my memory, whenever quarreling with my father, she always complained, “Why did I marry you?”

As time went by, I gradually grew up and began to have my own thoughts. While I was at school, my teacher told us that “One’s destiny is in his own hands” and “We can build a brighter future with our own two hands.” Hearing this, I made up my mind: I’m not gonna live like my parents; my marriage should be determined by myself; only by marrying a person I like can I lead a happy life. With this thought, I kept looking for a partner in the vast sea of humanity.

Later I met a boy, who was honest and capable, and was six years older than me. In the beginning, I thought: As long as we love each other, age is not an issue that could come in the way of our marriage. However, after knowing him for a time, I found that we had differing tastes and characters, and shared nothing in common. In the end, I quit my job and returned home, and our relationship drew to an end.

Before long I went to a city of Guangdong Province to work. Living a fast-paced life, I adopted a relaxed attitude toward love, believing that my marriage partner would appear sooner or later. One day, when attending a dinner party with my roommate, I met a boy who impressed me with his appearance and speech and behavior. After the dinner party, my roommate told me, “A boy had a crush on you today. If you like, I can introduce him to you.” Knowing that he was the very boy I met at the party, I agreed to meet him, and soon we fell in love. We had common tastes and common topics, which made me firmly believe that he was my other half. Three years later, he introduced me to his family, and they were all satisfied with me. Nevertheless, because of the long distance between our families, I was afraid that my parents would disapprove of our marriage, and thus didn’t take him home to meet them. But I made up my mind that I must get married to the person I like.

I returned home that fall, and told my parents that I was going to get married. Unexpectedly, as soon as they heard the boy’s home was far away, they firmly opposed our match. My mother said, “Arranged marriage is right and proper. It is humiliating to marry into another place; if you are bullied in the future, there is no one around to support you.” She even asked my relatives to persuade me, but it didn’t work. Seeing that my family disapproved of our marriage, I didn’t ask for their opinions any longer, and decided to leave this house and never come back. However, my mother made a vigorous attempt to prevent me from leaving and kept me in the room, insisting that I should be engaged before leaving. In order to leave earlier, I had no choice but to agree. I thought: Once leaving this house, I won’t come back, and then the boy’s family will break off the engagement. Later, my aunt introduced a boy in the neighboring village to me, and we got engaged very soon. After that, when I was ready to leave, my mother said to me in tears, “Sweetheart, you’ve grown up. You should stop acting like a child and be sensible. If you accept fate, then your life will go smoothly; otherwise, you will live in pain. Just look at me. Though my marriage is full of frustrations, that’s my destiny and I’ve accepted it, and so should you. Now that you are engaged, you shouldn’t part with that boy.” Upon hearing that, I felt disgust and said, “I won’t resign myself to fate. My destiny is in my own hand. Can’t I decide whom I’m gonna marry?” Then I left for Guangdong Province without hesitation.

Although I went back to work, what happened at home became a knot in my heart, which made me depressed every day. One day, a colleague asked me to accompany her to hospital for a health check. When we arrived, she said, “For the sake of your health, you should also have a physical.” Then I had an examination. However, when the result was out, I was shocked that I had a malignant tumor. The doctor told me, “You are seriously ill and need immediate hospitalization. The malignant tumor in your uterus grows very fast; I’m afraid you can’t procreate in the future.” This news struck me like a bolt from the blue and shook me so much that I couldn’t accept it, feeling as if the sky had fallen. Later, I was hospitalized. To my surprise, when I told my boyfriend about my illness, he, who had a sense of responsibility in the past, never showed up since then. Only then did I realize what “true love” was; it was so silly of me to break with my family for such a person. In despair, I left the hospital of my own volition.

When I returned home and told mom about my illness, she immediately sent me to the hospital. Seeing that she cared for me day and night, I felt remorse for my deeds and actions of the past. Over the following year, I received chemotherapy every month, which soon made my hair fall out. Looking at my ugly appearance in the mirror, I was in great pain. During my illness, the boy I was engaged to often came to the hospital to take care of me. When I lost my temper with him, he silently bore it without any complaint. In addition, ugly as I was, he still didn’t break off the engagement, which was contrary to my expectation and touched me; gradually, I began to accept him. Because of the illness, I became taciturn. Sometimes I lay on the hospital bed and gazed out of the window, thinking of my situation; then I came to know life was so fragile that it couldn’t withstand a single blow. I couldn’t help but think to myself: Why am I so miserable? Why can’t I have the life and marriage I want? This isn’t what I expected. Could it be that I am truly unable to control my own fate? Then who controls it? Why couldn’t I get what I had been struggling for? Why? Later, through a year of painful treatment, my illness was cured. Having come back from the verge of death, I felt as if I had been in a dream and so happy that I could live freely, yet my doubt about the correctness of the words “One’s destiny is in his own hands” still remained.

After illness, I soon got married to the boy I was engaged to. Later, we had a lovely daughter and lived in happiness and peace. When my daughter was three months old, my aunt gave me a book of God’s words, in which I found the answer to the mystery of fate. God’s words say, “Marriage is a key event in any person’s life; it is the time when one starts truly to assume various kinds of responsibilities, begins gradually to fulfill various kinds of missions. People harbor many illusions about marriage before they experience it themselves, and all these illusions are beautiful. Women imagine that their other halves will be Prince Charming, and men imagine that they will marry Snow White. … Though everyone has their own ideas and personal stances on the subject of marriage, no one can foresee who will finally become their true other half, and one’s own notions count for little. After meeting a person you like, you can pursue that person; but whether he or she is interested in you, whether he or she is able to become your partner, is not yours to decide. The object of your affections is not necessarily the person with whom you will be able to share your life; and meanwhile someone you never expected quietly enters your life and becomes your partner, becomes the most important element in your fate, your other half, to whom your fate is inextricably bound.”

“Where you will go every day, what you will do, who or what you will encounter, what you will say, what will happen to you—can any of this be predicted? People cannot foresee all these occurrences, much less control how they develop. In life, these unforeseeable events happen all the time, and they are an everyday occurrence. These daily vicissitudes and the ways they unfold, or the patterns by which they play out, are constant reminders to humanity that nothing happens at random, that these things’ ramifications, and their inevitability, cannot be shifted by human will. Every happening conveys an admonition from the Creator to mankind, and it also sends the message that human beings cannot control their own fates; at the same time every event is a rebuttal to humanity’s wild, futile ambition and desire to take its fate into its own hands. … From these daily vicissitudes to the fates of entire human lives, there is nothing that does not reveal the Creator’s plans and His sovereignty; there is nothing that does not send the message that ‘the Creator’s authority cannot be exceeded,’ that does not convey the eternal truth that ‘the Creator’s authority is supreme’” (God Himself, the Unique III). In these words, I found the answer to my question. It turned out that our fate is not controlled by our own hands, but is arranged and ruled by the Creator; our marriages are also predetermined by Him. No matter how hard we try, we can’t alter the predestination of the Creator and have to play our respective role in our marriages. It’s just like the saying goes, “Man’s life is fated by Heaven.” Although I could fight for my marriage, I still had to return to the path God had predetermined for me; what’s more, from my own experience, I realized all that God has arranged is the greatest.

At that time, I couldn’t help but think: In the past, why did I always face fate defiantly? Then I understood that during the course of my learning knowledge, Satan’s poisons “One’s destiny is in his own hand” and “We can build a brighter future with our own two hands” were instilled in me, which made me vie obstinately against fate all along. It was not by chance that I got illness, but was God’s salvation; God used the fact to awaken me from the fallacy that “One’s destiny is in his own hand,” making me reconsider who is in control of my fate. In His powerful words, I found the answer that God is the Master of my fate. In addition, I felt even more grateful for His salvation and love for me: If not for the illness, I never would have seen through the so-called true love among men; if not for God saving me in this way, I would still be drifting in this world and become further and further from Him, and moreover would continue to oppose God and be fooled and harmed by Satan; if not for God’s care and protection, who knows what I would be like today. Thank God! My illness was His grace and special favor, which gave me an opportunity to know Him, accept His care and protection, submit to His sovereignty and arrangement over my fate, and live with joy and happiness before Him. All glory be to God!

[davidcarner]

Chuck vs The Uprising Ch 1, Friends and Enemies

A/N: If you are looking for fluff, leave now. This, I'm not kidding, came to me in a dream. It is insane. I'm not sure anyone is going to like it, but I can't get it out of my head, so I'm writing it, and if you don't like it, you're not hurting my feelings. It's a mashup of so many things, but the easiest one to describe is Chuck in the Terminator Universe, but that's not even right. Let's just start there, and see how this goes. Let me know if you hate it, I have no idea how I even feel about it. You're still here? Okay, here goes nothing. Ch 1, Friends and Enemies.

A/N 2: Steampunk .Chuckster is the BEST! She helped me figure out a few things the dream didn't provide, and adjust some that didn't work. I don't know what I'd do without her!

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck, Terminator, Norse Mythology, or anything else that pops up in this story. Also I might have eaten a fragment of underdone potato…

"Bartowski? Are you sure about this?" Casey grumbled.

"No, I've not been sure about anything in a few years," Chuck replied. Casey grunted. "You promise you'll give Doc Awesome the medical supplies he needs?"

"Bartowski, we pull this off, we'll have enough supplies for three years and the ability to start producing our own," Casey replied. "I made a promise, Doc will get the supplies." Chuck looked at Casey, and truly believed if Casey promised you something he would always follow through.

"Do you two want to hug?" their blonde partner asked.

"I'm always open to hugs," Chuck said grinning. The blonde rolled her eyes.

"I should have known," she mumbled, and headed off, her destination in mind. Chuck silently berated himself, and thought back to a simpler time.

"Are you sure, Dad?" the little boy asked.

"Of course I'm sure," his father answered. "Machines will make things so much easier."

"Didn't you watch that movie? The ones where the machines took over the world?" the little boy asked, worried.

"Charles, it's science fiction, emphasis on fiction," his father replied.

"But, Dad, some of the work you do is pretty out there," the son rebutted.

"Charles, you can't be scared of technology."

Chuck sighed, and looked at the blonde agent in front of him, and knew what he had to do. He slowly made his way towards her. He didn't want to spook her, she was the Valkyrie. It was more than a callsign, she was a warrior, and she was beautiful. In this world, women normally had one use, procreation. After the rise of the machines, and the depopulation of humans, love was no longer a factor. There were three reasons for intercourse; procreation, lust, and release. The fact Valkyrie was currently in the field spoke to her abilities.

"I apologize," Chuck said softly behind the blonde. He could see her stiffen. "I sometimes forget where we are and how things are said to you." She turned to tell him that was the stupidest/craziest thing she had ever heard. She looked into his eyes. It took all her training, but she didn't gasp. There was truth there, and he looked ashamed. "It won't happen again." She was shook, and she did the only thing she knew to do in these situations, she fought back with what she had. This man…boy in front of her, had probably never seen anyone like her, and he surely had never been with anyone like her.

"Think I'm not good enough for you?" she asked with a challenge in her voice. Instead of fleeing in terror, or completely losing his composure, he did the one thing she never thought he'd do. He gave her a soft smile. For a second she got lost in those brown eyes.

"I don't think there's anyone out there that is good enough for you," he said gently. She felt herself swallow. She had been propositioned by many men, men much more attractive than this boy…man in front of her. She had been promised untold riches to sire children, and never once did she feel one iota of attraction to any of them. And then, here, in the middle of a mission, in the heart of enemy territory, this man, does nothing more than apologize and she feels something. Something she hadn't known was in her since this hellscape existed. "The entrance is over there," he said softly, nodding to her destination. She returned his nod, and turned, silently cursing herself for losing control on the battlefield.

"I'm going with him, Hogun," she said to Casey. "He needs protection, and you are more likely to get spotted than I am."

"Hogun, really?" Chuck asked grinning. "Can I be Fandral?"

"I was thinking more ergi," Casey said, grinning. Valkyrie grinned at the exchange, and wondered if the wonder boy…man…ugh, he was bothering her, had any idea.

"Ergi?" Chuck asked. "I'm unmanly? It's true I do have some girlish screams."

"Quit insulting girls," Valkyrie said before she could catch herself. Chuck grinned at her.

"And here I thought you didn't have a sense of humor," Chuck said to her softly.

"Maybe if you say something funny, I'd laugh," she said, as she silently took off to her destination.

"Watch it, Bartowski," Casey said to him softly. "You aren't in her league."

"That is something I'm well aware of, Hogun," Chuck said, grinning. Casey grunted as Chuck followed behind Valkyrie. They made their way to the entrance.

"Think you can get in, Ergi?" she asked, grinning. Chuck returned her grin.

"I don't know much in life, but I do know computers and code, I'll get us in," he replied.

"But can you do it without the machines knowing we're here?" she asked. Chuck shrugged, and Valkyrie's eyes widened.

"Well, that answers that question," Chuck said, working.

"What's that?" she asked, with venom in her voice. Chuck turned to her and grinned.

"Does the Valkyrie frighten?" Chuck replied. An irritated look crossed her face. Chuck punched a button and the door opened with no alarms.

"Of course I frighten, you idiot!" she snapped. "This whole world should frighten anyone."

"Then that means you're human, just like the rest of us, and not part robot," Chuck responded. She stared at him. "In case you're wondering, that's a good thing," he said as he slipped inside. She stared after him. Casey caught up to them.

"What's bugging you?" he asked.

"He might be insane," she said, gaining control. Casey gave her a look.

"He's survived this long, I'd say he has to be insane," as he slipped inside as well. Valkyrie shook her head and followed the two. It was slow going, avoiding patrols of the bipedal machines, but they managed to not be spotted as they slowly advanced through the base.

"The EMP will take them out?" she asked. Chuck nodded.

"We just need to be inside to take over the system once the computers reboot. At that point, we'll take control and the governor will control the entire sector," Chuck responded.

"That's hard to imagine," Casey said. Chuck shrugged.

"It's been Heaven's gameplan for years," he replied. "They control three sectors, the governor will control one, that leaves six on the continent. In ten years we've taken back nearly 40% of the US, Canada, and Mexico. We can win this war."

"Patrol," Casey said. "I'll go up and scout, you two stay here." Chuck and Valkyrie sat in silence.

"Why is his name Awesome?" Valkyrie found herself asking. She wanted to berate herself. She found herself talking on this mission more than ever. She knew why. She didn't like it either, but she wanted him to trust her. She needed him to trust her. She looked over at Chuck and he was grinning.

"He was Ellie's boyfriend, my sister," he began. "Everything he's ever done is Awesome, even flossing." Valkyrie grinned.

"You said was, they broke up?" Chuck shook his head.

"They took her," he said softly. "The machines took her, I can only assume she's dead." He was quiet for a second. "Most probably think she deserves it, same as me," he said so quiet that if Valkyrie hadn't been listening intently she never would have caught it.

"Bartowski," Casey hissed. He looked up and saw Casey waving him over. He snuck over and made his way into the control room, Valkyrie right behind him. "Guard him Valkyrie, he's our only shot." Chuck looked over at Casey.

"Casey, promise me, Doc gets what he needs," Chuck pleaded, one last time. Casey looked him in the eyes.

"God, country, family, Bartowski, I keep my word," Casey said. Chuck nodded. Valkyrie scoffed.

"God…have you seen this hellhole?" she spat. Chuck looked up.

"I've seen an angel," he replied simply. He turned to go back to work. She grabbed his arm and spun him toward her.

"Why?" she asked. "Why are you being nice to me? There is no love here. It's dead. There is no courtship, no dating, no love at all. It's about surviving and procreating, and that's all there is."

"If we don't have love, why are we even fighting?" Chuck asked. She was stunned. "If we don't have someone to live for, to love, are we any better than the cold emotionless machines we're fighting? No one deserves to be treated like an incubator or something to rut with. We are human beings, and we all have feelings, some of us just hide them better than others. That includes you, Valkyrie." He turned and went back to work.

"Sarah," she whispered after a moment. Chuck turned to her, confused. "Sarah…my name is Sarah." Chuck held his hand out. She eyed it, and then shook it.

"It's my pleasure to meet you, Sarah," Chuck said grinning. "Now, I have to get back to work before cold, emotionless machines kill us."

"What are you doing, Bartowski?" Casey asked. "Just set off the EMP!"

"Well, if I turn off some of the sentries and those robots without AI, it might mean we only have to fight off half of the machines here instead of all of them," he said, furiously typing. Casey nodded, his bottom lip out.

"Not bad," he admitted. Chuck hit a button, and an alarm went off.

"Hope you're ready," he said. Both nodded, and he hit the EMP. Everything went dark.

"How long?" Sarah asked.

"Two minutes," Chuck replied.

"As soon as that computer comes up, do your thing," Casey said. "I don't want to be here holding my jock when those machines come to find us."

"Neither do I," Sarah and Chuck said together. They both looked at each other and smiled.

"You can do this," Sarah said softly to Chuck. Casey watched them. In the past three years, he had never seen this side of Sarah. He shook his head, he knew if they got through the next ten minutes their lives would never be the same again. The lights slowly began to come on.

"Do your thing, Bartowski," Casey growled.

"Come on, come on," Chuck said, encouraging the computer to boot up. The computer came up, but they heard the steps coming their way. "I need two minutes."

"I can only promise you thirty seconds," Casey replied, opening fire.

"Really?" Chuck asked. "You couldn't meet me halfway?"

"I'll get you two," Sarah said opening fire as well.

"I like the way you negotiate," Chuck said, his fingers flying. Sarah glanced back when she heard his fingers stop.

"Is everything okay?" she asked.

"Promise me about Doc," he said.

"Chuck, I promise," she replied. Chuck nodded, typed a little, hit the enter button, and the machines stopped moving. "You did it!" she yelled, standing. She was sure this was suicide mission. "They won't come back on?" she asked, turning to him.

"Nope," he said. "They're off." She nodded with a sad smile, and pulled a gun on Chuck.

"I'm really sorry, Chuck," she said. "I like you," and then she fired. Chuck looked down at the dart, not really surprised.

"Greater good?" he asked as he began to fall. She nodded and watched him collapse.

"Greater good," she replied. She turned to Casey. "You never repeat my name."

"All I know you by is Valkyrie," he answered. He looked down at Chuck. "Shame about the kid. He had something." Sarah nodded.

"Yeah, he has our freedom, the entire district is saved," she replied.

"Then why do I feel like a traitor?" Casey asked. Sarah looked at him, a storm brewing in her eyes.

"Having lady feelings?" she asked.

"Not as many as you did," he answered. She scowled at him, as Casey reached down to pick him up and they returned to their base.

}o{

The taste came to his mouth first. It was like cotton had taken away all of the moisture in his mouth. He opened his eyes and saw things that were blurry. There was a specific blurry thing he saw sitting outside of his cell. A blonde halo seemed to surround her.

"Told you, you were an angel," he said.

"Don't," she said. "I have my orders."

"I know," he said. "You're the perfect soldier, and you do what you're told."

"Why did you volunteer?" she asked.

"Same as you, greater good," he replied.

"But the people you're trying to save are dying," she replied.

"But now with the medicine Doc can save them," he countered. "You are keeping your promise, right?" She nodded.

"He's got the medicine," she said solemnly.

"Tell me you told him I died during the mission," he said. She nodded. Chuck sighed a sigh of relief. If Doc thought he was alive, he'd do something stupid.

"You knew," she said softly. "You knew what would happen and you did it anyway." He shrugged.

"I didn't know," he said, trying to grin, but realizing all of his muscles weren't working right. "I suspected."

"You're an idiot," she said, standing up. Why was she so mad at him right now?

"Yeah, but I saved some people," he replied. "At least my family did something right in the end," he said softly. She heard him, and that was the second time he made mention of his family and their shortcomings.

"Valkyrie," Casey said, coming in. "The governor wants to see us." He started to leave.

"Thank you," Chuck said. "Both of you. You kept your word. That's something rare these days." Casey turned to look at him, and gave a nod of respect. The two headed off to see the governor.

}o{

"It's not right," Sarah said. What was she doing? Why was she pleading the case of this commoner? He was no agent, or warrior.

"I made a deal with Frigga," the governor responded. "I don't like it any more than you do. Why didn't he include his protection as part of the deal?" She slammed her hand on the desk. She was a short woman, but she seemed to tower over the two tall agents in front of her. "If he had only asked, I could have protected him."

"Frigga is going to give him to the machines," Casey replied. "You're signing his death sentence."

"We don't know that," the governor replied, but the look on her face said she suspected as much.

"When's the pickup?" Sarah asked. The governor looked uncomfortable. Sarah rolled her eyes. "No," she said simply. The governor looked down. "You want us, to take him cross county, through machine controlled sectors to Heaven?" The governor nodded. "Governor, I'm a fighter, but this, this is madness. Do you know how many men we'd have to fight off? Not to mention any machines we will encounter along the way."

"There's more," the governor said, taking a breath. "There's a child here that Frigga would like returned. The mother has passed, and the father is in Heaven."

"No," Casey said softly, realizing where this was going. Sarah looked at him and then back at the general. She shot out of her chair.

"NO!" she screamed. "I will not do it!"

"It's for the greater good, Valkyrie," the governor said.

"We can't take a child across the wastelands." She snarled.

"I could order you," the governor said softly. "Or I could just put the child in an orphanage." Sarah grabbed the table and flipped it. The governor moved out of the way in time. She stormed out of the office. "Well, that went better than I expected."

"I would be their bodyguard?" he asked. The governor nodded. "Let me talk to him."

"Do you think that would do any good?" she asked. "I mean he can say whatever he wants, but out there…he'd have to care for the child, while possibly going to his grave."

"He's different," Casey said. The governor just looked at him. "I trust him."

"It doesn't matter if you do or not," the governor replied. "Does she trust him?"

}o{

"I hate you!" she screamed at Chuck, who was cowering in his cage.

"I thought you liked me," he said, terrified. Sarah stopped screaming and looked at him.

"You heard that?" she asked. He nodded.

"Unless I shouldn't have, and then I didn't," he said, scared he was going to lose a limb. She sat down outside the cage and put her head in her hands.

"You have to go to Heaven, and we have to transport you," she said softly. She looked at him. "They want us to take a baby.

"Across the wastelands!" he yelled. "Do you know what would happen to that child? The odds of making it are…I don't know….but not good." She stared at him, incredulous.

"I captured you, put you in a cage, and you're worried about a child?" she asked. Chuck shrugged.

"There's worse things than being captured, and you're keeping me company," he added. She just shook her head and chuckled.

"I am supposed to go," she said softly. "I'm to be married…to you." Chuck's eyes widened.

"That's not right!" he yelled. "They can't do that to you, or the child! I will not stand for…well, I don't like it, there's not much I can do since I'm trapped in here. I know, let me out, and I'll go to Heaven by myself." She turned to look at him again. Again in shock.

"You're not kidding," she said softly looking into his eyes. "You're really not."

"No one should be forced to be with another person," Chuck said. "No one, gets to tell someone else when to…I'm not even going to finish that." Sarah stared at him.

"You know we wouldn't actually be married, right?" she asked. Chuck looked away.

"Oh…my bad," he said.

"You understand if we don't take the child home, they'll put the child in an orphanage." Chuck looked away.

"I'm going to assume like everything else in this world, orphanages have gone downhill since the uprising?" Sarah nodded. Chuck sighed. "So we have to do this for the kid or…." Sarah nodded.

"You understand why I can't trust you, right?" she said, not knowing why she would even care. She glanced over at Chuck, who smiled.

"You don't know me well enough," Chuck said. "Plus, I suspect the male species has not given you a whole lot of reasons to trust men in general." She smiled in spite of herself and shook her head.

"The governor said she could order me to go with you," Sarah admitted. Chuck's face fell.

"That's not right," he said. "It's not. Look, I know you have no reason to trust me, but if she ever forced that to happen to you, I would never forgive myself if something happened to you, because she ordered you to take me and the baby to Heaven." She looked at him, and nodded.

"I believe you believe that right now," she said. "But out there, it's kill or be killed…" she looked away.

"Sarah," he said softly. She looked back. "Never."

"And the marriage cover?" she asked.

"I would be completely respectful of you," he said.

"Well, you sure now how to make a girl feel good," she said with a twinkle in her eye.

"That's for scaring you, isn't it?" he asked, grinning. She nodded. "I had to make sure the EMP wouldn't hurt you."

"Uh-huh," she said.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"Don't have a lot of choice, do I?" she replied. She turned to him. "I'm going to make this real clear Bartowski, if you ever do anything to me that I don't want you to, and we make it to Heaven, I will make your life a living hell." With that, she got up and walked away.

"What exactly do you mean if you don't want me to?" he yelled. She ignored him and kept walking. "Maybe I don't want to, you ever thought of that!" She continued to ignore him and left the room. A few minutes later Casey opened the door and walked up to the cage. He stared at him.

"I will kill you if you do anything to her," Casey said. Chuck nodded.

"What did she mean if she didn't want me to?" Chuck asked. Casey just stared at him. "You know what, never mind." Casey shook his head.

"This ain't right, kid, I'm sorry." Casey looked torn.

"Casey, things aren't always as they seem, and maybe I deserve this," Chuck replied.

"You having this kid and fake marriage with Valkyrie or you getting turned over to Frigga?" Casey asked. Chuck blanched.

"Casey, no one deserves to be put in orphanage or be fake married to Valkyrie," he replied. Casey grunted. "And Valkyrie doesn't deserve to have that happen to her."

"She's right," Casey said. "I think you are insane." With that he turned and left, leaving Chuck alone with his thoughts.

"Dad, is it alive?" the teen asked.

"It is, Charles, it is!" his father answered. "It's starting to move through the internet. It's thinking!"

"Dad, what's it accessing?" the teen asked. His father's face fell.

"No, it shouldn't do that. It shouldn't…Charles, get downstairs. Get your sister and get downstairs, NOW!"

"Maybe I deserve everything Frigga is going to do to me and more," Chuck said to the empty room.

}o{

"Mr. Bartowski, you understand what you'll be doing?" the governor asked.

"I'm going to take a child with my fake wife, make it to Heaven, and turn myself in to Frigga," he replied. The governor nodded. "By agreeing to this," he continued, catching the governor by surprise. "You are going to make sure Doc Awesome always has the medical supplies he needs, and protect him." The governor stared at Chuck for a moment and nodded. "In writing," he said. Casey chuckled. "One more thing, Governor." She raised an eyebrow. "The name of the child?"

"Molly," the governor answered. Chuck looked at Sarah, who looked at him and nodded. They both looked down at the ring in each of their hand. "Would you like me to say a few words?" she asked with a smile on her face.

"No," Chuck replied. "Valkyrie's luck you'd say something and make us legally married." Sarah snorted.

"You are legally married," the governor said. Both of them jerked their heads up. "All paperwork has been filed. When Valkyrie returns, the paperwork will disappear, but in case something happens along the way, we thought it would be best to have all bases covered." Sarah nodded. She felt Chuck's eyes on her. She turned and she could see the apology on his face. She shook her head. It wasn't his fault.

"Did I take her last name?" Chuck asked. Sarah grinned. For someone that thought he deserved a lot of bad things to happen to him, he sure did make a lot of jokes.

"No," the governor said, trying not to grin. "Her last name is now Bartowski. My apologies Valkyrie." She shrugged.

"At least it wasn't Johnson," she replied. Casey coughed to cover a laugh. "Ready?" she asked Chuck. They both slid their ring on their finger. Chuck looked at it.

"Don't feel any different," he said. He looked over at Sarah who was shaking her head and grinning.

"How do we feed the baby, Governor?" she asked. "It's not like there's a lot of places to get baby food." The governor handed over a map.

"This is the best map we have of towns and places you can find supplies," the governor said.

"Don't worry Valkyrie, I make sure Bartowski is a gentleman if you have to…you know," Casey said grinning. Sarah thought for a second and then she realized what he was trying to say.

"You do know that a woman doesn't produce milk just because a baby is around. The baby would have the same luck with you as I in that regard," Sarah said coolly.

"I don't know, I think the baby might find the experience less traumatic with you than Hogun over there," Chuck said, trying to keep a straight face. Sarah turned and looked at Chuck. She was quiet for a second, then a slow grin covered her face.

"Now that, that was funny," Sarah said, and left the room. Casey followed behind, while Chuck stood there a second.

"Mr. Bartowski, I am sorry," the governor said. Chuck shook his head.

"You have nothing to be sorry for. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one," he said. The governor grinned.

"I seem to remember that line gets changed around in the next movie," the governor said. She extended her hand, and Chuck shook it. "Thank you, Mr. Bartowski."

"My pleasure, Governor Beckman," he said, and he walked out of the room. Beckman watched him leave.

"I sure hope he makes it," she said to the empty room.

A/N: Okay, that's how it starts. That's probably 15 to 20% of the dream. No, I didn't dream all parts that I put on paper, or if I did I didn't remember them all. What I remember are huge sections but my brain has easily filled in the rest of the holes. I know, it's super-weird. Let me know what you think!

[invergo]

The Giant Frog Farms of the 1930s Were a Giant Failure

The get-rich-quick scheme couldn’t fill the world’s appetite for frogs’ legs.

Live frogs, readied for shipment. All photos courtesy of Bonnie Broel.

The American Frog Canning Company had a pitch for people struggling to make a living in the 1930s, when jobs were scarce and money tight. The company promised a good market and a steady source of income. It was simple enough, the company promised. All you need is a small pond and a few pairs of “breeders” in order to…

Who are you to resist? American Frog Canning Company

Frog farming was “perhaps America’s most needed, yet least developed industry,” wrote Albert Broel, founder of the American Frog Canning Company and author of Frog Raising for Pleasure and Profit. With wild populations dwindling, the demand for frog meat was greater than its supply. The market for it had the potential to grow as exponentially as a new stock of frogs could.

Those few pairs of breeders, Broel explained, would produce tens of thousands of tadpoles, and it would take just this one generation to provide a frog farmer with a ready crop. At $5 a dozen (about $100 in today’s dollars), frogs could turn into a fortune. And people leapt at the opportunity. They wrote to Broel for copies of his frog-raising handbook, paid for a full course of frog-based learning, and ordered their breeders to start their own farms.

Frogs being shipped to their new home ponds.

From his base outside of New Orleans, Broel became America’s leading frog canner and promoter of frog culture. In one family portrait, he stands, stout and round-headed, on his cannery’s steps, in a well-tailored white suit. On the step below is his notably taller wife, and the couple is proudly flanked by two white statues of giant frogs, which reportedly had light-up eyes that blinked red in the night.

“I think his story is absolutely amazing,” says his daughter, Bonnie Broel, who keeps a collection of frog memorabilia in her Victorian mansion in New Orleans. “He came to this country and started a brand new business that no one had ever heard of, with nothing.”

Broel was a canny survivor, a descendant of Eastern European nobility, a practitioner of holistic medicine, a real-estate investor, and one of the few people who ever managed to make money from frogs. Because, while starting a frog farm was easy enough, raising frogs to market means fighting nature—and losing.

Bullfrogs can grow very large.

According to the story he told, Albert Broel started his frog business because of his mother. In one version, she had stomach trouble as a young woman. In another she stopped eating meat at 80, doctor’s orders. “As far back as I can remember, my mother used to say: —‘Son, if you want to make a success in life—Raise Frogs,” Broel wrote.

It wasn’t his first choice of profession. After settling in Detroit with a degree in naprapathy, a holistic wellness field focused on connective tissues, Broel opened a medical practice, married, and bought an apartment building. After being chased out of the medical profession for operating without a proper license, he followed his mother’s apocryphal advice. He started growing frogs at a large scale, on a 100-acre farm in Ohio, and experimenting with canning frog meat. With the money he made, in 1933 he moved his family to Louisiana, in search of a better climate for frog farming.

Soon, his business there was growing so rapidly that, he wrote, “my own frog farm and the supply of wild frogs brought in by hunters could not possibly keep the plant in operation.” He started running ads, like the one above, and soon frogs were being delivered to the factory from all over the country.

Broel was on the leading edge of what The New Yorker once called “the frog-farm craze of the thirties.” Newspapers across the country mentioned of the numerous letters they’d received asking for more information about raising frogs, and shared stories about frog entrepreneurs, from “society women” in Tennessee to a Japanese frog-raiser in Los Angeles. After Louisiana, Florida had perhaps the next most ambitious frog-farming operations. One, Southern Industries Inc., offered shares to northern investors in order to expand more quickly.

Among all these frog-minded people, Broel was a giant, “the nation’s largest individual producer of frog legs,” the Central Press reported, and a genius promoter of his product. He canned frog legs and “frog à la king,” and dreamed up recipes for Giant Frog Gumbo, American Giant Bullfrog Pie, Barbecued Giant Bullfrog Sandwiches, Giant Bullfrog Omelet, Giant Bullfrog Pineapple Salad, and more.

Canned frog legs could be prepared many ways, according to Broel.

As the craze grew, though, so did skepticism about the frog business. The industry, the Los Angeles Times wrote, was “somewhat ephemeral.” A Midwest paper compared it to rabbit farming, another get-rich-quick scheme meant to harness the reproductive potential of small food animals. In 1933, the USDA released a bulletin on frog farming that warned, “Within the past fifteen years the bureau has received thousands of inquiries concerning frog raising, but to the present time it has heard of only about three persons or institutions claiming any degree of success.”

That was a far cry from what Broel’s ads and other promotions promised, and in the mid-1930s, the U.S. Postal Service indicted him for mail fraud. “Frog Breeders Leap with Cash,” one newspaper gleefully reported. Broel and a partner had “hopped to New Orleans,” as another reporter put it, after cashing $15,000 worth of checks for instructional brochures.

One of the most egregious claims he’d published was that in 13 years, a man could make $360 billion growing frogs. “I assume it is needless to tell you that I made no such statement,” Broel wrote to one Ohio paper. Someone else had made the calculation, and Broel hadn’t meant to endorse its truth. It was “simply published as I publish all other things of interest to people engage in the frog business,” he wrote. “I think you will agree with me that such a statement is so ridiculous upon its face that it could not seriously influence the judgment of anyone deliberating as to whether or not he should engage in frog raising.”

But people had bought into the hype. Around the same time, one of the other frog-farm success stories, Southern Industries, was facing lawsuits from its investors, who had been promised big returns. After one year, they had still received no money, and demanded to know “why they had received no dividends on their investment in pairs of frogs.”

Frogs ready to be shipped.

One of the major points Broel made in his case for frog farming is that frogs are delicious. In the wild, “everyone” wants to eat frogs, he wrote: snakes, birds, lizards, fish, even hedgehogs. And that intense pressure from predators is the reason for their incredible rates of procreation. A single frog has to lay 10,000 to 20,000 eggs just to have a few of its offspring survive. Tadpoles are born to be disposable.

That’s one of the first problems facing a frog farmer. Most of those potentially profitable, would-be frogs die before reaching marketable size. Fungal diseases can wipe out thousands of frogs in a single season. And as the frogs grow, they have to be protected from hungry predators of all kinds—starting with their own parents. If frog farmers don’t whisk tadpoles away to separate ponds, hungry adult frogs will make meals of them.

Frogs eat a lot, and yet another challenge is keeping adult frogs fed. It takes about one pound of food to grow one-third of a pound of frog meat. Frogs have only one requirement for their meals, but it’s one that makes keeping them on farms very hard. Whatever they eat, whether insects, tiny crabs, or crawfish, has to be moving. “Production of live feed becomes a full-time activity in any frog farming operation,” one government pamphlet warns.

All this work has to go on for years before a frog farmer sees any profit. Whereas chickens, for example, can be raised and slaughtered in months, bullfrogs take two to three years to reach marketable size.

Workers picking frogs at the canning factory.

Even Broel didn’t depend on farmed frogs to feed his canning business. “We buy frogs!” announced a sign outside the company headquarters. Many of his suppliers weren’t farmers at all, but frog hunters who waded into the swamps of Louisiana, where it could be possible to catch 100 frogs in a few hours.

Frog hunting was so popular that the state’s population of wild frogs was declining, though. In his book, Broel used this as a selling point for potential frog farmers, but ultimately it proved the demise of his business. By the end of the 1930s, Louisiana had passed a law restricting the hunting of frogs in the high season, April and May. Cut off from a supply of wild frogs—a void that farming could not fill—Broel shut his canning company down.

“That’s really what put Daddy out of business,” says Bonnie Broel. “I know that he was not able to get enough frogs to maintain the business, even with the demand there was for it.”

Bonnie Broel with her father, Albert.

The American dream of frog farming didn’t die with the craze of the 1930s, though. Even after shutting down the canning factory, Broel kept selling “breeder” frogs. He didn’t grow them anymore, says Bonnie Broel, but rather worked more as a frog middleman.

“We knew if there were brown bags in the fridge, there were frogs in there,” kept in a state of hibernation, she says. “If I couldn’t take a bath, there were frogs in the bathtub, and he would be feeding them live goldfish.”

Decades later, during the 1970s and ’80s, the back-to-the-land movement bred another generation of would-be frog farmers, led by Leonard Slabaugh, owner of Missouri’s Slabaugh Frog Farms. “Supermarket chains and wholesale outlets buy ‘em in enormous quantities. Big restaurants want ‘em shipped out on ice. People come by here and pick ‘em up by the buckets full,” Slabaugh told a reporter for Mother Earth News. “Why, the market is growing continuously all the time.”

Among all the misleading hype of frog farming, this was a core truth. All over the world, people love to eat frogs, and by the end of the last decade, the international market in frog meat was worth about $40 million.

Starting the 1980s, frog farming started growing in Europe, Brazil, and Southeast Asia. Research has improved techniques for raising frogs in artificial ponds, keeping them disease-free, and even convincing them to eat feed pellets or dead insects. (These techniques often involve mechanical swishing of dead insects in water, so that they appear alive.)

And yet, most frog meat sold around the world today still comes from wild populations, which are being hunted down at alarming rates. By 1980, France had so few frogs left that it banned commercial harvesting altogether. After that, India and Bangladesh became the main sources of frog meat for export—until the populations there shrank and new regulations grew.

If I couldn’t take a bath, there were frogs in the bathtub, and he would be feeding them live goldfish.

Now Indonesia is one of the world’s main suppliers of frog meat, and scientists suspect the population there is in danger, too. One recent study found that out of more than 200 samples of commercially available frog meat, only one matched the frog species listed on the label, a commonly sold species, indicating that perhaps this species’ populations had crashed and hunters had moved on to others.

Another group of scientists found that about 200 million frogs are being exported each year, predominantly from Indonesia and China to the European Union and the United States. Factoring in local consumption, a rough estimate puts the number of frogs being taken from the wild each year at around a billion.

As India and Bangladesh discovered, this scale of harvesting leads to larger ecological impacts. Take away frogs’ enormous appetite for live insects, and bug populations boom. Those two countries restricted frog hunting in part because they foresaw a pest problem of plague-like proportions.

“If you look at frogs as a commodity, their dollar value is pretty small,” says Ian Warkentin, one of the biologists who has studied frog markets. “But if you look at the ecological role they are playing, to financially replace all those creatures that are eating insects, it has value that’s way beyond its commercial potential.”

Commercial farming always involves a type of artifice, since it tries to corral and improve upon the foods found out in the wild world. Successful crops are not necessarily the tastiest or the most desirable, but are often the plants and animals that bend most readily to our will, at a profit. Frogs have resisted that sort of control, but our taste for them is strong enough that we still go after them. If anyone does eventually figure out an efficient new way to raise giant frogs for pleasure and profit, perhaps they will finally claim the fortune that Broel imagined.

[ferrerapril-blog]

If ever I will have a boyfriend . . .

We date because we plan to marry someone. We date for a purpose. We date to search more into the soul of a person. We enter into a relationship because we see potential with them to spend our eternity. We should not date for fun, we should do it in the Lord’s way and purpose.

If ever I will have a boyfriend, my mind set will be very different in the standards and culture of the society. Having the fullness of Heavenly Father’s love and the gospel of Jesus Christ has changed my perspective very much. For me, the moment I will say my yes to a guy as my boyfriend is also the moment that I have chosen him to be my companion in preparation to temple marriage. Just like when you plan to be a doctor. You need to have your preparation course. When you plan to cook, you have to but the ingredients first. When you plan to marry inside the temple and you had chosen one individual to have it with, you need to have your preparation.

For me dating or having a boyfriend is not all about hugs and kisses, dates or sweet messages. It is also about doing Heavenly Father’s purpose for love to exist and relationship to come between a man and a woman. If ever I will have a boyfriend, I will tell him that we should have time to study the scriptures and read about Eternal Marriage together. Eternal Marriage because that is our purpose and that must be our destination. We should put up always in our minds what is our purpose of having a relationship. I want us to grow together spiritually even before temple marriage. We should treat each other well and always with love, effort, sweetness and care. I want us to follow the Lord’s standards in dating specially not doing the sacred power of procreation outside marriage. We should be a team to help each other overcome things and learn more about Heavenly Father’s commandments and love for us. We should collaborate. We should be in the church together always. We should show Heavenly Father that we are worthy to marry inside the temple and to do the task he commanded Adam & Eve. God has a purpose why man and woman is attracted to one another and why he made them. He implanted this attraction in us for his plan of salvation to grow and progress. Because of this attraction, more of his spirit children will have the chance to have their probational life and his plan of salvation goes on.

So what are my standards?

I want a Returned Missionary. A man who comes after his mission is a different man. I believe that returned missionaries have spiritual learning and experiences that caused them to grow their love the the Savior.

I want an active member of the Church. I also want a guy who takes the scriptures and the talks of the prophets seriously.

I want a family oriented guy. I want a guy who treats his parents and siblings with love, sweetness and care. I want a guy who respects his family and has a big concern about them. This will reflect on How is he going to be a father and husband someday.

I want a sinner but repents and strives to be better. You do not find perfection but you must see a willing and fighting soul.

I want someone who observes the Law of Chastity. He must be chaste in his words, thoughts and action. He must know the sacredness of procreation, sexual feelings and stuffs. He must treat me with respect. He must always see me as a daughter of God.

I want someone who fasts and pray. I believe that if a man makes this his practice, he becomes closer to Heavenly Father.

I want someone who is Kind, Gentleman and sweet. Someone who has high temper and does not shout (I’m so sensitive) Someone who will court me everyday. Someone who will do everything for me. Someone who will see me as a gem and also do it in actions to prove to me that I really am. Someone who knows what I deserve. Someone who is anxious about me and so concern. Someone who can be with me thru ups and downs.

I want someone who dreams big and hopes for a bright future. I want someone who have goals in life.

I want someone who knows the attributes and teachings of Jesus Christ and strives to follow it to become like him.

Someone who will correct me with my wrong doings.

I want someone who has a big heart for the people. Who follows the most important act of the Savior which is charity.

I want someone that can also be my best friend. Someone I can goof around, laugh with and make fun with. Having a lover and a best friend is the best!

As I set my standards, I also strive to be worthy of whoever priesthood holder is that guy. I believe that Heavenly Father matches people perfectly and he will give you what you deserve. According to your faith, hard work to follow his commandments and how you strive to have a virtuous partner. :)