#prologue if you will

[unmellowyellowfellow]

Chalk Mountain | 0 - Dixie Alvarez Holds a Grudge

draft status: (complete rewrite)

(tw: drug use (marijuana), language, (daddy issues)

A/N: hi, so, this is the introduction chapter to my wip; and this is my first time sharing it. i hope you enjoy, i would love feedback (especially on dialogue. that shits hard). but never more, here it is! in all her rusty glory. everyone, meet Dixie.

The red sand of the west Texas desert gets into every nook and cranny of life around these parts. The texture is rough, yet soft; and leaves a stain on your Sunday best that sticks to ya like a honeybee to a marigold. It sneaks underneath your fingernails and hides in the corners, just out of reach.

I suppose that may not be a problem for some folks. Some like the orange tint to their white button shirts, or the wind blowing in an excuse to call into work on a Wednesday to go get evening coffee and pie with your aunt down the street, or the way it sounds against the windows may resemble the gentle patter of rain against the sill.

Dixie quite liked the color of the red sand, although she called it the red dirt. Her fluffy hair greatly resembled the red dirt below her porch steps that she left her stained boots on when she came home from trekking downtown. She sat down next to her boots and flicked a lighter, watching the flame dance.

She thought of her mother with a furrowed brow and a professional skill to ignore her father when he shouted inside the house about this and that. She missed her brother who ran away from home when they were children, who always had her back when their father would lash out back then. Dixie always wondered, and secretly hoped, that they were out there together somewhere.

Right as Dixie lit up an old roach that she had found in the dirty pockets of her overalls, her lungs burned from the deep inhale as her father came out the door. “Dixie,”

“Yes, Walter,” The smoke trailed through her words.

“What the hell‘re you doing?” He stepped over to her and looked at the spot next to her on the step. She responded in a single nod and scooted away from him to let him sit.

“Drugs,” Dixie offered the cherry towards him and he scoffed.

Dixie and Walter butted heads for as long as she could remember. Her mother always told her it was because Dixie had a spirit filled with fire and gold and passion and Walter’s spirit got used up and dried out years ago when he was just a boy. She never understood how they met and fell in love and always partly blamed him for her disappearance, thinking maybe she did it to get away from him.

However, Declan disappeared before their mother; 6 weeks to be exact. He ran away from home on a warm, rainy night after a family explosion about grades over dinner. Dixie used to sit by the living room bay window and wait for mother to return with her baby brother.

They existed quietly with each other for a moment while a tumbleweed rattled in the wind, tangled against their street sign. ‘Lower Passage’ was what it read before the wind storms sand blasted most of the paint away. Lower Passage was a long dirt road in the middle of nowhere around 8 miles long, out where the banjos play, as Dixie would say. Other people lived down Lower Passage, too, but they all had farmland and nobody paid anyone any mind.

The front yard was filled with the seasonal white flowers that take over like a plague. They danced in the wind with the trees whose leaves were floating in the air to the ground and chillbumps littered Dixie’s arms and legs. In the distance, she heard children laughing and running through the leaves in the side yard.

She closed her eyes and imagined Declan running past the front porch, his burgundy hair tangled in grass and sticks. A little curly fire haired Dixie played with young Declan and danced about in the flowers with a dainty and fragile crown of flowers and weeds upon her head.

Their mother watched from the wooden bench swing they had on the big live oak tree in the yard with a careful eye and a toothy grin. Her mother laughed as little Declan got scared by a bee; the laugh echoed further away once Dixie opened her eyes.

“Where do you think they are, daddy?” She coughed and flicked the ash to the dirt, then smushed it with her sock.

“Who, your mom and Declan?” Walter sighed and lit a cigarette. She nodded and hugged her knees to her chest. “I don’t know, Dixie Anne. If I did, they’d be right here at home.”

“But this ain't home anymore, is it?”

He paused to take a long drag, then blew it out with a shake of his head. “No, I guess not.”

“I’m gonna find them one day. I swear it, I will.”

“Now, I thought I told you it’s time to drop that shit. You can get yourself hurt goin’ out there playin’ detective,”

“I’m not playing anything, I’m taking care of my family,” A crow flew in front of Dixie and cawed loudly and began to peck at the grass.

“I’m your family,”

“No, you sure ain’t.” Dixie ran her tongue along her teeth, then spit some of her lunch carnage onto her fathers shoe. He looked up towards her with a frown that showcased the matching dimple that Dixie inherited from him. She mimicked him and stomped her socked feet across the porch; the screen door exaggerated her dramatic exit by a loud slam against the wooden frame.

[heartorbit]

find another role, carry on the show

[deimcs]

DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS (2009) + iconic lines [2/?]

[electrozeistyking]

START AGAIN IN STARS AND TIME.

yes

>no

[siffarooni]

(You just want to dance with someone! Anyone!)

[crimescrimson]

Leon S. Kennedy in Resident Evil 6 (2012)

[holylulusworld]

Every breath you take (Prologue)

Summary: There is a shadow following you. He doesn’t know what he got himself into.

Pairing: Stalker!Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader

Warnings: stalking, being stalked, loneliness, a man out of time

A/N: We start slow to get to know them and their backstory. In this part it's Bucky.

A/N2: You all made me do it! Here’s the series to this random idea: Stalker Bucky & Crazy Reader

Every Breath You Take Masterlist

James Buchanan Barnes lost so much in his life that he doesn’t even know how he keeps on going. 

He lost his family. 

He lost his life. 

He lost his arm.

He lost his freedom. 

He lost himself. 

He lost his best friend. Steve Rogers - the only person connecting his past with his present. The one promising him till the end of the line. Well, the line wasn’t very long he thinks ever so often.

He walks the streets in a place he doesn’t recognize anymore. In a world that is so different from the one he used to know.

Before Hydra everything was simple.

Now, strangers stare at him, whispering behind his back while others ignore him. 

Bucky is not the most social person. He mostly stays to himself. Who wants to befriend the former winter soldier anyway? 

In his opinion, it’s for the best to not even try. This doesn’t mean that he never feels lonely. He often strolls through town and watches people with their families.

Bucky wishes he could’ve someone by his side too. A woman who doesn’t judge him for his past, or for the issues he still has.

How does a super-soldier and former brainwashed killer find such a woman? 

No woman will ever let him protect and spoil her. That’s all he wants. Find a pretty doll to take care of.

“Coffee. Black,” Bucky gruffly tells the barista his order. All the different drinks on their menu confuse the super-soldier. Why drink an iced coffee with some crazy flavor if you can have the best drink in the world? Black coffee.

The barista smiles at him. Her cheeks dimple and she batts her long fake lashes when Bucky holds her gaze for a moment.

“Thanks,” he pays and tips her well. Bucky may be a lot of things, but he isn’t the kind of person who does not appreciate other people’s work.

“Have a good day,” the woman chirps when he turns around to leave the cafe. Bucky doesn’t react. He stops in his tracks as someone else catches his attention. 

“Doll,” Bucky gasps loudly. The woman passing the coffee shop by is the one he almost ran into last month. This must be fate. Right? 

He walks out of the coffee shop, to follow the woman. She’s greeting the elderly owner of the bookstore Bucky discovered a few weeks ago. 

The man immediately smiles and straightens his back. He makes a joke and calls her by her name. “Hello Y/N!” The man says and waves back.

“Y/N,” Bucky murmurs your name. “Wow…doll…” He’s taken aback. His heart sped up for a second seeing you again. Now that he has heard your voice, he wants it to be the only sound he’ll hear for the rest of his life.

He strolls past the bookstore and follows you along the street. Whenever you stop to look at the window display at the different stores you must pass by to reach your home, he stops too and pretends to be interested in the products he’ll never buy.

At the end of the street, Bucky tilts his head to watch you walk away. He’ll wait a little longer to follow you. The experienced super-soldier doesn’t want to draw attention toward him. He doesn't want to scare you off. All he wants is to get to know you better…

Right across the street. You live right across the street. 

Bucky’s heart did somersaults when he followed you to your home only to realize that you were living in the building across the street. 

He didn’t try to make friends or to get to know his neighbors. This way he missed that he could look inside your windows.

It’s five hours later that he’s sitting on a chair, in a dark room to watch you talk on the phone. You wrinkle your forehead and close your eyes.

“Hmm…I think she’s having a bad day, Alpine,” Bucky tells his cat while following your every move with his brand-new binoculars. “Maybe we should do something nice for her. Like finding out who made her sad…”

And just like that, Bucky has a new mission...

Every Breath You Take (1)

Tags in reblog.

[starfruitsomething]

🥲

[sugurushimura]

finally. i've always wanted to experience a microaggression at L's hands

[heartsofminds]

i'm calling just to hear you scream - part i

"She’s tried to be positive. She’s tried to be kind. She’s trying to be the peacekeeper, but all of that falls out the window when her brother is bitching out everything that fucking blinks and breathes and Richie has slung a sledgehammer into the wrong wall that needed to be knocked down." or Natalie gets fed the fuck up and hires a hospitality attorney before everything else turns to shit. 

a/n: i couldn't help myself at all and had to bite by trying my hand at writing for carmy! what can i say? i love men with trauma that need to be cuddled like newborns! please enjoy the beginning of enemies to lovers to enemies back to lovers fic with a workaholic chef and an overly empathetic attorney. angst is my brand! i hope you enjoy!

Being the peacekeeper of your family is never something anyone ever sets out to be. 

One day you’re normal and live blissfully with the rose-colored lenses of naivety tinting life shades of bashful blush and magnetic magenta. The next day you’re diffusing a spitfire scarlett dispute between your anxiety-ridden mother and impulsively crude older brother while simultaneously taming the balloon of battered blue tears your baby brother sheds who observes from the corner; scared yet somehow unaware of the emotions sucking the oxygen out of everyone. 

At first, it feels good. It feels nice to be appreciated and turned to in moments of darkness. Helpfulness defines your livelihood and gives you the nameplate of the gold star child who can never do any wrong and always finds a solution. But then you realize that is what you ever really are, and you’re both hated for your inability to let things sour and for always having an answer despite uncertainty plaguing every course of action. 

Being the peacekeeper of your family is both a Medal of Honor, worn with pride and graciousness, yet a bullet wound wielded by shame and agony. The tenderness and hurt push on it until you can hardly stand it; half expecting pus to be seeping out in pale yellow heaps because the pain feels so real. 

There are no exit wounds. There are no breaks. There is no humanity or personal identity or room for self-discovery. 

A peacemaker is all you will be and all you will ever accomplish, and you’ll never say it out loud but it’s fucking exhausting. 

Being the peacemaker is something Natalie Berzatto never fucking asked for, yet here she is, playing project manager to her haywire (and sometimes freakishly obsessive) baby brother’s blind-eyed throw of a dart that manifested itself in asking Uncle Jimmy for an eight hundred thousand dollar loan with the promise to have it completely paid back within eight months. 

She’s not one to rain on a parade, but it’s hard to keep marching when your entire life has been putting out the fires of overly ambitious business ventures during unmedicated fits of mania. She had seen it with their dad, with their mom, and with Mikey. Carmen is the last needle needed to complete the fucked up haystack that engulfs their family. 

She’s tried to be positive. She’s tried to be kind. She’s trying to be the peacekeeper, but all of that falls out the window when her brother is bitching out everything that fucking blinks and breathes and Richie has slung a sledgehammer into the wrong wall that needed to be knocked down. 

Natalie has never thought of looking into Botox until now; when her face is set in a permanent scowl and her resting heart rate nears triple digits. Pete had been telling her for the past three weeks that she was doing amazing; that this was an impossible task to complete stress-free, and that the stress was “good” because it meant that she cared. 

Sometimes she doesn’t realize that not everyone has a mom who drives the fucking car through the den during Christmas Eve dinner nor does everyone have a mom who moves all the furniture to the backyard before having to leave for their oldest brother’s high school graduation. Not everyone has an older brother who blows his head off and doesn’t leave a note and not everyone has a younger brother who would lose his head if it wasn’t attached to his body and had his mouth that was spewing hurtful insults by the dozen.

Stress does not mean that you care. Stress means that your eyes are staring at the fucking Sun trying to see where the other shoe is getting ready to drop because there’s always another disappointment and always another phone call to make to the pharmacy for more SSRIs. 

Needless to say, Richie calling Neil “lard ass” on an antagonizing loop after he had pointed out the wrong wall was being destroyed was the last straw. Well, that and the fact she found a new patch of white hairs colonizing on her hairline the other morning. Constant shouted insults, gray hairs popping up overnight, and the colossal secret of a new infant making its arrival into the chaos in October weigh heavy on her. And she absolutely cannot afford to lose her cool and become the kind of bitchy and mean she knows that she’s capable of. 

Your phone number sits inside the LED-lit text thread of a friend she had known in high school. Becca was the older sister of Claire Cantor whom her little brother may have or may have not had a pathetic crush on years ago when he was in high school. 

She feels kind of grimy doing what she is; offering up information about Carmy to Becca to give to Claire who apparently thought her baby brother was the bee's knees (which, if she saw the way he was acting right now, Natalie knows she would run the other way). She doesn’t even think Carmen has the capability to think of anything outside of the restaurant and the menu and how royally fucked they all are. 

She can feel the dull ache of guilt in her chest that comes with knowing how unlikely anything is to come from this, and how wrong she is for pretending like her telling Becca where he grocery shops or if he has a girlfriend or if he was currently looking for someone to date would somehow tether Claire to a world where her and Carmen are a “thing” (because apparently “boyfriend and girlfriend” is too permanent of a word for Chicagoan twenty-somethings to use). 

But she’s doing it for the sake of everyone else! It can’t possibly be as gross and low-lived as she feels it is. 

Becca Cantor is insufferable and can only be taken in small doses, but she’s also a big wig junior partner at one of the most lucrative law firms in Chicago. Natalie hates blowing smoke up people’s asses who don’t deserve it (and in Becca’s case certainly don’t need it), but she desperately needs help and knows that she needs to figure something out before she fucks herself in such a deep hole that she couldn’t attempt to unfuck herself if she tried. 

Your official title is “junior associate” and you had been working at Becca’s firm following your graduation from Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law a couple of years prior. Becca had said you were amazing; freakishly smart, funny, and hardworking. She also mentioned that you were the best kind of junior associate; the ones that know when to shut the fuck up and when to get the fuck out of the way. The addition added before the text conversation ended was how you were looking to get your foot into the hospitality legal field, and how you were willing to do anything concerning that for free fucking ninety-nine if it meant you would have some experience. 

Natalie sits with her lower lip worried between her teeth and her hands one tick shy of shaking. Her heart beats erratically despite lounging on her couch with the lights off and a re-run of That 70’s Show playing softly in the background. She makes a mental note to bring up the high resting heart rate at her next OB appointment. 

It’s because she’s pregnant. Yes. It has to be because she’s pregnant. 

She shouldn’t be nervous. It would be absolutely ridiculous to be nervous. She’s not nervous. 

She already ran the idea past Sydney and she agreed that they absolutely needed a lawyer in their back pocket. With all of the tax records fucked beyond belief, new workers being hired who actually knew their worth and wouldn’t tolerate not having an actual employement contract, and the lack of permits under their belt currently, a lawyer wouldn’t hurt if getting one turned out to not be as helpful as anticipated. Besides, Becca had said you were doing it for them pro bono which in turn meant free fucking nintey-nine. 

But Natalie had lied to Carmen about how much some fluted cocktail glasses cost to ensure that they purchased the cheaper ones so that she could run the numbers and figure out a way to put you on the payroll. Pro bono or not, you’re doing them a huge favor and part of her can’t put the peacekeeping to rest. 

Her fingers type and untype a novel of characters. She can’t seem to relax her mind enough to articulate what exactly she wants to say. She has one shot to not scare you off and not lose her mind in a fit of fiery rage and not have everything turn to shit and it be her fault. She has to be perfect. 

Fuck. She is nervous. 

Hi! This is Natalie Berzatto. I’m one of Becca Cantor’s friends and she referred me to you. I’m working on opening a restaurant and would like for you to swing by and discuss some things about it if you’re open to that! Please let me know. I’m looking forward to hearing back from you soon! 

Nat’s finger hits the blue “send” arrow in the rounded box of her phone screen the same time she pushes a gag to the back of her throat. She used to work at a marketing firm for Christ’s sake. Cold contacting people isn’t anything new and she’s usually not one to shy away from reaching out to anyone in her personal life first. But she can’t help the fact that she’s never been able to swallow the artificial bubble gummy niceness of reaching out to a complete stranger for the first time. She feels stupid and knows that she sounds even stupider but tries not to think about it. 

Besides, keeping everything together is never easy and she knows that she would be selfish for letting her discomfort prevent her from doing what she knows is best. 

Her breath is stuck in her chest as she eyes the open text thread to an unsaved number; her blue text message staring at her menacingly and breeding contempt as the seconds pass. She gasps loudly whenever she sees the gray bubbles pop up beneath it. Pete pokes his head into the living room with a tea towel in his hand and one of the ceramic plates they had eaten dinner on in the other. His eyes wear concern but he knows better than to confront his wife. Natalie was anything but sugary sweet when she was stressed and the influx of hormones as of late have not been helping. 

You see the message as soon as Natalie sends it. The unknown “312” number finds its way into your notifications and your eyes read over the words in a frenzy. You know that you’re intelligent. You graduated from law school for fuck’s sake, but for some reason you absolutely cannot comprehend the text you’re reading. 

Firstly, you were sure Becca hated your fucking guts. She was a junior partner that everyone hated being assigned to because she pushed all her work onto the associates and nothing ever seemed to be good enough for her. Part of the reason you had to take work home tonight was because she sent you an email with enough passive-aggressive undertone to know that these edits needed to be done now; never mind the fact that the time she took to type out the seven and a half page report about the original report probably took up so much time that she could’ve done the task herself. But yet you replied kindly and have been working through your brain fog and finger cramps since arriving home at six in the evening five hours ago. 

Secondly, hospitality litigation was absolutely above your pay grade. You had taken one elective course on it during your 2L year and did a two-week internship before the start of 3L simply because one of your friends wanted to go on vacation and needed to find someone to cover for them. You know jack shit about hospitality law and you don’t even know why Becca Cantor, of all fucking people, would be so willing to recommend you when she couldn’t care less if you lived or died. 

But of course, you can’t say no. You can never say no, and if this Natalie person was desperate enough to reach out to you via text at 11 PM on a Wednesday, she definitely needed help and needed it now. Besides, you would tell her that you do not need to be paid and if whatever she needs proves to be way too advanced for you, you can always help her find an attorney that knows what they’re doing.

Right? 

It definitely doesn’t mean that you’ll pull an all-nighter and research every aspect of hospitality law in Illinois that you can get your hands on. . .Or look up every department dealing with food and management regulations in the state. . .Or try and look at precedent cases. Your firm gave you unlimited access to West Law. Might as well use it for something slightly more interesting than trusts, estates, and contracts. 

You’re unusually pensive for something you know you would love to do. The ongoing battle as of late has been the dispute between seeking joy and wading in practicality; happiness or falsified peace? 

You rub your eyes with a roughness that would make your optometrist cringe. You know that staring at your computer screen five hours after your contracted work hours ended was the culprit for your dry eyes, but the hours you need are not going to bill themselves. Getting up to get your eyedrops will have to wait.

Replying to Natalie cannot. 

Your fingers type and untype; the feeling of texting back an unknown number foreign and unnerving. 

Thanks so much for reaching out and thinking of me! I would love to. What dates and times work for you, and where would it be best for us to meet? 

The text stares at you on your phone screen. Why do you sound so. . . corporate? Boring? Infantile.

She could probably tell you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about at all. The feeling of defeat rises in your throat but you ignore it and hit send instead. You’re trying to be better about that; letting your fear of uncertainty keep you from taking action. You’ve come to realize that the hard part isn’t doing the thing. It’s actually sitting in the aftermath of the “thing” and waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. 

You bite your lip so hard it begins to bleed and throbs with each pulse of watery blood that fills your mouth. The gentle suck you give it to stop the bleeding makes it partially numb. 

Fuck you, Becca. Fuck you, Becca. Fuck you, Becca. 

Natalie chirps when your text illuminates her screen. She gasps and sits up; startling Pete who had settled next to her after finishing the dishes. Her eyes curl up in the same way her lips do. 

Fucking finally. 

The world no longer feels like it’ll fall apart.

[dontfindmeimscared]

Prologue 0.2

start / prev / next!

[harbingersecho]

calm down, i'm not gonna kill you.

... y-you're not?

no. he is.

[monochrome-stars]

so are we just merging characters together now? anyway i may have done a thing

[egophiliac]

I love your take on Crowley!

I know that the early, non-Diasomnia stories aren't really your thing, but are you reading the novels at all?

I have been following some of the fan translations and the second book seems intense! Would love to hear what you think about them.

thank you! 💚💚💚 I'm not really sure why you think I don't like the earlier arcs though, I love pretty much all the characters and their storis! (I think 5 and 1 are my favorite of the past episodes, though 6 infected me with the Shroud brainrot something fierce.) I just...ESPECIALLY love diasomnia. :') but there is room in my heart for all of these dweebs! like, who among us is not just as ride-or-die for Adeuce as they are for us.

that said, I don't really follow the other adaptations like the manga (aside from a dip-in just to see the new Yuus) or the novels, though I keep meaning to check them out! I do like seeing the differences between the different forms of media, and how certain things get adapted one way or another! but alas, time/a lack of accessibility stands in our way more often than not. :( someday...someday I will have time to consume all of the media...

[supreme-leader-stoat]

Vasher I know you miss your wife but I feel like there's better ways to keep her memory alive than continuing to invent new and exciting WMDs.