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maple-writes · 4 years ago

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WHG 15: Post Games 8

@concealeddarkness13 (thanks for Triel) (Only tagging you this time since I realize after I wrote this Indigo's side isn't super relevant to the overall plot lol)

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Indigo went back to work a few days after Triel’s beating. Her rib still hurt like all hell when she moved in the wrong way but any longer and people would start to ask questions. It was exhausting though, more than usual, checking on her employees and ongoing projects with her side aching and Aurora all but breathing down her neck with how many times she’d tried to get her to come join her for dinner that week. After the last time she didn’t need to get drilled again. Thankfully Churi seemed to be giving her a little bit of space for now at least.

The last of her staff went home for the day and Indigo leaned back as far as she dared in her office chair. She should really be going home too, but she didn’t move. Even being back for a while now she was behind on reports and queries, and everything really. She could catch up at home but her stomach dropped just thinking about it. Who knew how Warren would be today, whether they’d be fine or in tears when she walked in the door. She groaned, draping an arm over her eyes. All she wanted to do was lie down and sleep but that wasn’t an option. Not here.

She glanced at the calendar on her desk. Right. On top of everything one of her favorite projects was going to be terminated tomorrow. Indigo pushed herself back up, wincing at the sharp ache in her side. The least she could do was check on the bird one last time.

Indigo’s footsteps echoed though the empty hall lit by dim running lights. The last staff to leave for the night must not have realized she hadn’t gone home. Not like she really needed the light to navigate by anyway. She’d gone this way more than enough times before now.

Scanning her card she slipped into the wing where the live specimens were kept. This late at night most were sleeping. Only some stirred when she passed their enclosures and even then they raised their heads just long enough to recognize her and go back to sleep.

The bird was no different. Indigo stopped in front of her enclosure. A clipboard hung on the door, marked with the file name Parrot Cross – Weapon Class ver. IV. The bird blinked away as Indigo unlocked the door and held out an arm.

“Ivy, come.” The bird fluttered down from her perch and landed softly on her arm. “Good girl.”

Indigo stroked the soft feathers along the back of her head, smiling when Ivy leaned into the touch. It was stupid, getting attached to any one of these mutts but there was something about this one. She was clever, clever enough to pick favorites and she didn’t think it evaded Snow how the bird seemed to obey her more eagerly than his peacekeepers. She sighed. By the time she gave it a nickname it was too late to not start to care for her.

“I know it’s late,” Indigo murmured as she stepped out of the enclosure with the bird. “But how about we go for a little walk?”

She nudged Ivy up onto her shoulder and brought her out of the wing and back through the abandoned halls. Passing under the lights her feathers shone bright colours. Even her claws, huge and sharp and hooked seemed to gleam. Her beak and the short claws at the edge of her wing shone less bright, more smooth and hardened to grip and tear. Ivy’s head swiveled as they passed doors and offices and posters hung on the walls. She’d never been out this way, out of the lab proper, and chattered excitement into Indigo’s ear.

“I know a place you might like.” She smiled up at the bird, looking down at her like she understood her every word. Her smile faded though when she remembered why she had her out in the first place. “It’s the least I can do for you. Let you stretch your wings a little bit.”

She stopped at her office for her bag and some files before taking Ivy to the lunch room that might have originally been planned to be a proper cafeteria. The room was wide with high ceilings and vent systems Ivy could hop around and perch on. Indigo closed the door behind them and released Ivy to explore. Massive wingbeats echoed through the empty room as she took off straight for the exposed pipes on the ceiling. She left her a moment to grab a little pouch of frozen berries from the freezer, tossing one for Ivy before sitting at one of the tables.

Ivy caught the berry mid-flight and Indigo smiled just a little before opening the file she brought with her. She put on some music to fill the silence but it didn’t seem to help. The words all blurred together and nothing stuck. Her mind wandered too far. Ever since Triel’s video she’d had to keep a closer eye on how her subordinates in Umbra Ursa were doing. If they found out she knew where Skyler was this whole time and didn’t go after him… There’d be mutiny. There was already something rumbling just under the surface, something she couldn’t put together. She’d been Ursa Major for a long time now. Long enough for ambitions to simmer. Then there was Aurora. If she found out about that video she would have her head, as if she wasn’t probably more than halfway there already.

Something moved in at the edge of the room and Indigo turned half-heartedly. None other than Triel stood cursing under her breath and staring. Indigo startled and dropped her paper.

Was she here to kill her? Indigo whistled to get Ivy’s attention and quickly signed “block” and pointed to the door. The bird swooped down and landed herself down to block the entrance. At least now Triel couldn’t make a quick getaway with Ivy at her back, even if she was here to finish what she started.

But Indigo didn’t get up. It wasn’t worth the ache it would bring. “Here to cause more problems?”

Triel crossed her arms. “I could ask you the same question.”

Fuck, she didn’t have the energy for this tonight. She leaned back in her chair and sighed up towards the dusty ceiling. “Really?” There was an edge to her voice, not enough to maim but enough. “This is mylab. Is it so strange I would be here?”

“You never stay this late. That’s why I specificallypicked this time.” How did she know that? Or better question, was it really that late already? “Do you really think I want to see your face right now?”

“There’s a very short list of people who genuinely want to see me so no, no I don’t think you want to see my face.” Did anyone? Did anyone really go out of their way to see her with no motive? Indigo huffed and shoved her papers away. “Especially after what you did to it last time.”

Triel smiled, the little shit. “Did you find the video I sent you amusing?”

She glanced at the mutt, eyes heavy and shoulders slouching. “No, not really.” Why lie? “Impressive you made it but you’re causing a lot of trouble for me right now.”

“Good. So, what horror are you working on right now?”

Indigo’s face fell and she gestured to Ivy. “Her?” That bird was hardly a horror. She paused a moment, lowering her voice when she continued. “She’s being destroyed tomorrow. She was meant for peacekeepers as aerial support but they said she didn’t perform correctly.” She raised her hands and signed “OK” to the bird, and she flew over to land in front of her and pluck a berry out of her outstretched hand.

She’d been there for part of the preliminary work between Ivy and one of Snow’s units. Whatever they taught to peacekeepers these days it wasn’t what made for an effective handler. How could they be confused why the bird didn’t seem eager to perform when there was no reward for her, and all her orders were shouted and given by force instead of any attempt at cooperation? Indigo clenched her teeth. She’d watched a peacekeeper give an unclear order and yell at her, and another strike her out of frustration.

“It’s bullshit.” Indigo spat. “They wanted something semi-autonomous and didn’t like it when it displayed autonomy and bit someone who handled her roughly.” Not to mention when she made her own decisions, adjusted her orders by what she saw. What they wanted was a robot, not a mutt. Ivy was nothing but effective with just a little respect.

Triel inched a little further into the room and signed “come,” to the bird and held out an arm.

Ivy cocked her head a moment but in the next she obeyed perfectly. A few wingbeats and she landed on Triel’s forearm. She shifted, careful not to break the skin with her talons and Indigo had to swallow against the bitterness in her mouth. If only Snow’s forces were as competent as some unpredictable teenaged girl and maybe Ivy would have stood a chance.

“That sounds familiar.” Triel growled, looking from the bird to Indigo before taking a deep breath but it didn’t seem to get rid of the anger in her voice. “You’re not trying to convince me of anything right now, so you don’t have to tell me bullshit anymore: Where is Churi holding my crew?”

Was that what she was here for? “I told you the truth. They got out and I don’t know where they are now.” As far as she knew Churi and the others hadn’t the slightest idea either but Triel didn’t seem the type to just take her word for it. Indigo leaned down to her bag and pulled out her bottle of wine and a little travel cup, thankful she’d thought to bring it with her. “I don’t have any need to lie to you. I’d tell you if I knew.” She opened the bottle and poured herself a cup, set the bottle down and nodded towards the side of the room. “There might be a glass in the cupboard there if you want some.” If Triel was having a night anything like hers, she’d appreciate a drink.

Triel took her up on the offer, grabbing the first glass she saw and filling it up with Indigo’s wine. She downed the first glass all at once and poured a second as Ivy shuffled off her arm and onto the table. Indigo slouched in her chair, heart falling just a little. It couldn’t have been easy being her right now.

“I call bullshit on that because what about—” her voice cracked, “about Shine? That was their decoy phone. So, you had to have known where they were to have that.”

Indigo raised her cup to her lips and took a long, slow sip. She let her eyes wander from Triel to Ivy as she sat and preened on the table. What should she say? That Shine was alive and well? But she couldn’t, not if she wanted to keep Triel in line and by extension further out of Churi’s wrath.

This was for her own good. “They were alone. The whereabouts of the others are still unknown.” Maybe it would help, just a little, to know the others were safe.

Triel’s grip on her cup tightened, knuckles white as her voice wavered. “Why did you have to kill them? You—you told me you could use them. And that would have been hell, but at least they would have been alive. At least I would have been able to do something.”

She choked and Indigo couldn’t bring herself to look. “I’m sorry, Triel.” It was the closest she could come to telling her the truth. “Others got to them first and by the time I got there the best I could do was make it quick.”

“Did you know that the Capitol has a person who can magically heal wounds, even though it makes them hurt so much worse?” Anger shook her words. “I do, because that’s what they’ve used to keep my magic in check.” She slammed her now empty glass down the table hard enough to make Ivy twist her head in surprise. “So, I call bullshit on that.”

Indigo clenched her teeth and jutted forward. “What do you want me to say?” She snapped. “Would you rather I took Churi’s approach and beat them to death? Or cut them up over and over for whatever wizard to patch them up to do it again?”

“If they wee still alive, I could save them.” Triel stood and signed “come,” to Ivy, glaring down at Indigo as the bird landed on her arm. “And if you fucking touch any of my friends again, you’ll get worse than just a bruised face. You piece of shit. I’m taking Mina before you can destroy another life.”

Mina? “Her name is Ivy.” Indigo glared, anger rising more than she would have liked but it was gone too quick, replaced by something heavier, colder, and she leaned back. Destroy another life. It was true, wasn’t it? “She’s an omnivore, and she likes berries.” She whispered and tried to loosen the vice around her throat but now, tonight, there wasn’t much she could do to stop it even as she tossed Triel what was left of the berry pouch.

She’d take care of her. If she could keep crewmates loyal enough to risk their lives for her she could be trusted to treat Ivy fairly.

Triel nodded, catching the bag in one hand. “I’m taking Ivybefore you can destroy another life.”

She left, the door shut, and it was just her again. Hunching forward to rest her head in a propped up hand she hardly heard the low music anymore, staring down at the plain tabletop. She should be grateful for Triel showing up like that, in the nick of time and taking Ivy somewhere safe but… The ceilings towering high above and the dozens of empty tables around her but it was her own fault. Triel was right.

Enough. Indigo forced herself to sit up again. She opened her file again, turned her music up and tried again. If she could push everything else aside, she could get this done. She just had to focus.

#whg 15 #indigo carmine

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heli0s-writes · 6 years ago

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IV. A Commitment*

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader x Bucky Barnes Summary: Natasha teaches you how to kiss. Tony gives you an opportunity. A/N: Part 4 of Mystery of Love. . (*) denotes NSFW!!

At 23, you were struggling to have a conversation about … it.

It was almost three weeks since your moment on Steve’s couch with him and Bucky. Their touches on your skin haunted you day and night, and it made your work at the compound significantly more difficult than you could have ever imagined. It was hard to find clarity under such zealous and watchful eyes, and the distance you continued to keep them at would eventually be thwarted. You had to ask Pepper for an extension on your assignment mid-May before it got too out of hand. She happily obliged, very understanding of your predicament. The deadline was extended indefinitely, but having no schedule threw you further off course.

In an effort to control at least your personal life, you allowed yourself to spend time with Steve and Bucky in small bursts, intent on not repeating another couch-event. They each had very different approaches of being in your presence, you found out. Steve was happy to accompany you to galleries and the store if he was already in town- which he often was whether it be by coincidence or intention.

You took walks with him through the park, had coffee together, read the paper, and laughed at the comic strips. You’d go to bookstores where he’d browse non-fiction and history while you showed him some of your favorite art books, teaching him about famous artists and their vision. Your conversations were light and full of laughter.

Once, he met you at a local bar and you discovered his passion for sports- one you didn’t share but were happy to appreciate. You didn’t even know the championship game was going on that day and in the middle of it it’d become so rambunctious (someone recognized him!) that the two of you had to run out before it could conclude.

Physically, Steve was rather indulgent of your reservations. He’d hold your hand in private and brush his fingers over your knuckles in public. More than the touches, it was his gaze that sent your blood rushing. He perfected that slow lingering sweep with his eyes. There was no fervent message to be analyzed behind those blue-green gazes—only a simple feeling. And that feeling he held for you was incomprehensible. It swept you away.

It wasn’t like you didn’t want to be physical or intimate because you loved the feel of the pads of his fingers and his callused palms. Or that smooth line of his winning smile, tilting upwards on one side. You constantly thought about those rough edges of Steve Rogers on your body.

It was rather that you were so fearful of crushing all the eggshells under your feet labelled “Steve and Bucky’s Tentative and Healing Friendship”.

Oh, you knew about The Winter Soldier and HYDRA. You’d gotten the quick and dirty version from Steve after your initial meeting with Bucky; the wipes, the assassinations, the complete and utter control they had on him for 70 years. The image of him in ice seared itself into your brain, the thought of them putting him up when they were finished using him killed you.

You weren’t just heartbroken, you were livid. You couldn’t help but take it so personally and you couldn’t quite explain why to Steve as you sobbed uncontrollably in the kitchen that morning except rasping breaths of goddamn it, oh god, Bucky. By the time Bucky returned from his run, your eyes were swollen and pink, bottom lip nearly chewed through.

You buried your face in his chest and whispered that you were happy to have him in your life and nothing else. There couldn’t be anything else yet. He was still raw, and you couldn’t tear him open any more.

Spending time with Bucky was significantly different, and a much more delicate task than Steve. He was hesitant to go into the city, a choice you understood completely so you never asked. Instead the two of you spent lots of time on separate sides of couches with tea and a book, careful not to sit too close. He’d gladly sit with a movie on while you worked on editing your many files.

After travelling for so long, you wanted to pick up your old hobbies again, so you started to make small meals at the compound. Bucky was hardly a cook by any means, but always seemed to know when you needed an ingredient from the cupboard and before you could fumble to reach for it, he’d have already set it next to your hand.

The conversations were short, and as you expected, he never divulged anything meaningful. After you had the talk with Steve, Bucky often sent you precarious glances, worried you might lash out because of his past. When you carried on as usual, the weight lifted from his shoulders.

Bucky was more physical, to say the least. He tried to respect your boundaries, but it wasn’t unlike him to push them from time to time. Unlike Steve’s tender gazes, Bucky stared intensely and openly. There were many a time when you’d look up from your book to see him on the other side of the sectional, staring straight through the pages and right at your face. His fingers would be tapping on his knee. When you’d finally see it and swallow nervously, he’d smirk and look back to his book.

Or you’d sit on the floor with your laptop open on the coffee table and Bucky would have silently moved from his supposed area on the couch to directly behind you. He’d lean over close, so that his breath would tickle your ear and ask you innocently about the picture you were working on. It never failed to send shivers up your spine and elicit wide, devilish grins from him.

It was his favorite game. It set you on fire.

And so it was that you attempted to balance your time with both men, as they navigated their own schedules of work, training, and rehabilitation.

You also tried to retain any semblance of your employment to Stark Industries.

You snapped pictures here and there, trying your best to maintain the illusion of your contract. There were some exceptional ones of the interior but photographing the Avengers themselves was challenging. Especially when it came to Bucky. He could sense any time you were in the room and strictly refused to ignore your presence. There were no candids taken of Bucky Barnes; he simply did not allow it. He never stopped staring at you.

At the end of May, you put the assignment on pause and decided instead to focus on the photos from your travels. Pepper kindly put up a room for you so you didn’t have to make the trip to and from the compound, but you were afraid that being in such close(ish) quarters with Steve and Bucky would lead to complications. She was very understanding at your hesitance and careful not to pry but left the offer open if you had any questions. You contemplated asking her, but in the end decided to save your queries for someone less motherly and more straightforward.

When you turned up at Natasha’s room, she hardly seemed surprised. She had two Irish Mules set on coasters on the small coffee table. You took a sip, licking your lips at the lime and ginger beer; she could really make a drink. It would have been bad to get drunk quickly and spill all your secrets, but there was something about her presence that was tossing out all pretense. You supposed the phrase, “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter” was especially applicable with Natasha.

The first query slipped out before you could catch it.

“Does it hurt?”

The right corner of her lips lifted, but her eyebrows raised in sympathy at your innocent question. It was a valid one, of course, and it was right of you to ask it. Natasha assured you that discomfort is normal at first since you’d never experienced it before- but that they both should be treating you respectfully, kindly, and lovingly. She restated that there was nothing wrong with taking it slow, finding your own pace and easing into it, and doing what you feel is comfortable.

When you told her you’d never kissed anyone before and that Bucky sucking on your finger probably didn’t count, she sputtered up a bit of her cocktail mid-drink. She didn’t specify whether it was because you’d never been kissed or if it was the... other thing.

“I don’t even know how it works. There’s two of them.” You’d been stuck on it all month. You’d have to decide in the end, and sure, maybe Bucky wasn’t jealous when Steve kissed your hand or when you’d go out with him but what if they started fighting about who got to do what with you. It wasn’t like they were each others’ soulmates. You complained to Natasha more freely at the end of your mug.

What if they didn’t like how you looked?! What if you were bad in bed? What if they got bored after seeking the physical aspects? What if that was all that became of your relationship?

She had listened to your rambling briefly but became determined to put a stop to the madness and set down her drink.

“You have to stop being so crazy, those two are closer than you or I can imagine. You might need to be convinced about the validity of being Soulmates, but those old boys do not. They have committed.”

There was that word again, you thought.

“And, if you’re so worried about your first kiss...” A single red brow raised itself high up her forehead, “I can show you. No more worrying about who kissed you first.” Natasha set her copper mug down with a definitive clink.

It might have been the drink that was making you brave, or the desperation of wanting some relief to your constant distress, because you eagerly said yes. Natasha had brushed back loose strands of your hair with her hand and propped herself up on her knees. She hovered over you, letting her locks fall over your face.

“Is this okay?”

You nodded, captivated. You could feel your eyes fluttering as she lowered her lips to yours in a single tranquil movement. Her warm breath pleasantly caressed your mouth as she kissed you. Natasha’s lips were soft and full, velvety with every parting and descent. One hand came to cup your jaw, pulling you closer and deeper into her motions. You didn’t expect the sound your mouths made against each other- the smacking was half disturbing, half arousing.

She had seemed like a good kisser, but it was almost a clinical experience, whether it was because it was a learning moment from a friend, or if it was because you were so concentrated on memorizing Natasha’s actions, that made it not quite enjoyable as the movies tried to portray. There were no string quartets harmonizing in the background or doves flying, only the lax pulse of your heart in your own ears.

When she finally pulled away, you were expectant for another one; you wanted to learn. She cocked her head at your silence.

“How was it?” You had thought about it for a second before answering truthfully, “Noisy...”

Natasha howled with laughter. When she gathered herself enough to speak again, her raspy voice was slightly a little more hoarse than usual.

“Kid,” she gasped, “The noises are the best part, trust me.”

The unexpected statement made your abdomen clench. You vaguely wondered what kind of noises Steve and Bucky might make, but hurriedly squashed them. Linger on that one for too long, and you’d burst.

After another half hour of fielding questions, she finally sent you back to your quarters with a flash-drive in hand, disclosing to you that it was her personal collection of “friendly” pornography- which made your entire body flush crimson. It was for you to watch, explore, fantasize about, and maybe get some ideas before the day arrives. Before opening the door, Natasha called your name sternly.

“Remember when I asked you if it was okay before I kissed you?”

You nodded.

“There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, they should be asking you. Porn does not capture all the real-life shit that happens during sex. There is nothing embarrassing about asking questions, voicing your needs and desires, and talking to each other. You’re not going to be awesome at it the first time. But you’ve got the rest of your life to practice.”

You thanked her sincerely. There was nowhere else that you were going to receive this kind of lesson and you really wanted her to know. Natasha shooed you out of her room, pointing to the flash drive gripped tight in your fist.

“Go rub out some good ones for me, okay?”

With a wink and playful slap on your ass, she promptly kicked you out but not before deftly tucking a flask of whiskey under your arm. You shoved the deviant things as deep into the pocket of your jeans as possible and wandered to the guest room Pepper had set up. You often took naps in there, and it would have been a better idea to go home, but you were strangely eager. Bucky and Steve were in the shooting range this evening, so you hoped they’d be fully distracted with loud gunfire and not sniff you out with 100 gigabytes of porn in your pocket.

Once safe in the comfort of the room, you tentatively launched a window on your laptop, headphones jacked in, one bud hanging loose. Your door was locked all the way, and you had wiggled the handle thrice just to be safe, satisfied when nothing budged.

Natasha’s files were categorized into multiple folders and subfolders. You made a mental note to thank her for such thorough and thoughtful placement of the videos, sorted and titled by extremely efficient keywords. She had a deliberate folder of multiple threesome videos, just for you, and you promptly decide to never bring it up any of it. Reading the titles alone made your legs tingle; your mind couldn’t help but automatically fit Steve or Bucky in the fantasy.

You fired up the first video, reaching over to the small nightstand to inhale two fingers of whiskey for good measure. It burned your insides going down but became a relief when it took your mind off the fire in your cheeks at the performance unfolding on your dim screen. Once again, your brain replaced the two male actors with your respective soulmates, and yourself as the woman sitting in the middle of the bed.

Of course you’d masturbated before, you weren’t a nun, for crying out loud; some bodily tension could only be relieved in a certain way. And it just so happened since the Binding, you were in the habit of doing it much more, anyway. It was difficult to spend all day with Bucky’s burning gaze and Steve’s feather light touches and expect yourself to immediately fall asleep...

Your phone lit up as two large hands caress the actress’ shapely thighs.

Tony’s face blinked on the screen. You ignored it, concentrated on thick fingers peeling the flimsy material of a lacy bralette down. Open-mouthed sloppy kisses begin between the woman and the man on the left as the one on the right cups the breast closest to him in a firm hold. You imagined a ghostly touch on your own chest and shuddered. One hand imitated the actions between the woman’s legs: feather-light touches interspersed with solid grips. The tickle creates chills that crawl all over your skin.

Tony face blinked again on your phone.

You fixed your posture against the headboard of your bed and flexed your legs, straightening them for a more relaxed pose. Your palm traced over the slope of your thighs as they dipped into a valley in the middle, slowly you brought your other hand to your chest, following the line of Steve’s Words. Bucky’s eyes flashed in your mind when one of the men catches the woman’s fingers in his mouth in a hard suck. The woman’s free hand and palms the opposite man’s crotch, rubbing slow circles around the tent in his jeans. He sucks in a low hiss of air and groans lightly, a profane word wiggling its way out of his mouth. In your left ear, it sounded like Steve.

F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice filling the room sent you into shock.

“Mr. Stark is requesting your presence in the living quarters.”

In a panic, you slammed your hands down on the keyboard of your laptop multiple times, silently screaming when the headphone jack falls out and there’s moaning repeatedly being paused and played in the darkness of your room.

“How does he--”

“Mr. Stark had me do a sweep of the rooms to find you.”

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.!!”

“Mr. Stark does not know what you are watching.”

You grumbled, accepting the interface’s comment. Sometimes it was hard for you to remember that she wasn’t an actual person since she so often responded in very human ways, including predicting your source of embarrassment. You flopped down on the bed, muffling your face in the soft comfort of your pillow, catching the smell of your whiskey-sour breath.

“Please tell Mr. Stark I’ll be coming,”

“That's an interesting choice of words, ma’am.”

Another scream was muffled in the pillow before you trudged your body out of the guest room.

As soon as you stepped foot into the gathering space, a tiny firework was popped in your face, colorful confetti flying from it into the air and scattering itself in your hair. You shrieked, naturally. There were some cheers and whooping from those in the room: Steve, Natasha, and Pepper. Your heart was pounding in response.

“Hey kid! Congrats! I got some news for you.” Tony beamed widely, slapping both hands firmly on your shoulders, “What is that, whiskey? Do I smell whiskey? Good shit, too. What is that? You drinkin’ Yamazaki?”

You cleared your throat and pressed your lips together firmly, hoping Tony would get the message, eye catching Natasha’s cat-like grin in the process. He clucked his tongue before pointing to the wall to your left where an e-mail was being projected. You briefly glanced it over as the room watched on, flicking bits of neon plastic from your head.

The e-mail thread was between Tony and Kristopher Byrne, the former director of the Museum of Modern Art, singing your praises. Your eyebrows raised higher and higher the further down the e-mail chain you went, and eventually it felt like they might fly off your face altogether. Byrne was pushing meeting you, possibly having a dinner together, possibly a position of employment with a local university or being a permanent fixture at one of his private galleries.

There was a choking noise you were vaguely aware of coming out of your mouth- and it wasn’t from excitement.

There was a reason you didn’t pursue a higher degree in the Fine Arts. There was a reason you only gave phone interviews, hardly showed your face, never entered your work in museums, and ran all over the world instead. You hated the attention and the culture of rubbing elbows with the upper crust. Yes, having a secure and stable income is nice- but that was already fulfilled by being employed by Stark Industries, and you never really needed more than that.

“I really appreciate it, Tony,” you began gesturing to the screen, hoping to not offend him, “But you don’t have to do this on my behalf.”

Tony put a hand over the ACDC logo and dimly glowing light on his chest, “I love nepotism as much as the next guy, trust me, but I did not schmooze him, he schmoozed me. He schmoozed me a lot, kid, and it was to get to you. He’s been asking about you for years.”

“Can you stop saying schmooze?” Pepper called, raising her hand primly, “You make it sound so gross, Tony.”

“Look, he just wants to have dinner. With you. And some friends.” Tony shrugged, as if the lift of his shoulder could so easily discard the rest of the statement hanging in the air. You knew that Kristopher Byrne did not just want to have dinner.

“What kind of dinner?” Bucky piped from the background. You turned your head to him, lingering in the back; he must have just come in after a shower. His wet hair was tied into a low knot at the nape of his neck, a few strands hanging loosely. You tried to hide a smile at his protective questioning.

“And what kind of friends?” Steve added, arms now crossed as he sat down on the couch.

Natasha gave a knowing look to Pepper as if to communicate that Tony couldn’t hide his agenda with both Bucky and Steve at his heels. Throwing his hands up he rolled his eyes with a histrionic lament, “Wow. You overprotective geriatrics really suck the fun out of my life, you know that? Great. Cover’s blown, F.R.I.D.A.Y.! Give me the real deal.”

The projection against the wall was hastily replaced with a different e-mail chain, one that very specifically requested a formal show of your most recent work post-travels, as well as a special request for never-before-seen Avengers portraits. You released a loud, disappointed groan, taking two big steps to the wall and jabbing your finger at the mass of text.

“This is why.” You ran your pointer under the phrase “black tie event” and shook your head. “This isn’t my life, Tony. It’s your life.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that.” You felt set up. His abruptly somber tone meant that he was about to drop some shit on you that would change your perspective.

“This is my life,” Tony began, pausing for effect before taking two fingers and waving it broadly over the room, making sure to catch Bucky and Steve in his radius. “And it’s their life, too. You think Cap’s not obligated to formal events? He’s a national treasure, kid. And Winter Dead-Eyes over there is America’s new Redemption Sob Story.”

Bucky growled, but was quickly silenced by the outline of Steve’s turning profile.

“You’re Bound to them; you can’t wander the world at your whim anymore. This is a golden opportunity dropping into your lap. One black-tie event with Byrne gets your foot in a lot of doors. He’ll make you a permanent faculty member at Tisch in two years if that’s what you want; you’ve got the clout- whether you like it or not.”

The whiskey was making you a little agitated, and it felt like Tony was cornering you into a pocket you weren’t ready to face. These types of decisions required time and deliberation, and twenty minutes ago, you were barely choosing when you were going to have sex in the next week.

“And if you’re so adamant against nepotism, how do feel being employed by me?”

“Are you saying you continue to employ me because we’re friends?”

“Aren’t we?”

He really did corner you. If you answered no, it would have been too cruel to everyone. If you answered yes, then you’d be a hypocrite, and there would obviously be no reason for you not to take the offer other than the fact that you didn’t want to. Regardless, Tony had a valid point: you couldn’t keep floating. You needed to settle permanently in New York.

You put your face in both hands, feeling the heat rise from your neck.

Steve stood up from the couch, “That’s enough.” The edge in his voice meant he was serious. He didn’t like seeing you distressed, but you waved him off, eyes still closed.

“I’ll need… time.” You thought your voice might shake, but it didn’t. Your brain was pumping out information that your mouth was glad to blather about, “I need at least a month. I need to work. I need to set up a studio space, I need equipment, need to find my printing guy… Where are we hanging them?” When your eyes opened, Pepper had her hands clasped together over her chest and Natasha gave you two thumbs up. Steve and Bucky, on the other hand, looked concerned.

Tony was grinning like a child in a candy store.

“Leave all of that to me, kid. Date’s set. Last Saturday in June, we’re doing it. Mazel tov! I love a good black-tie event, especially if I’m throwing it.”

You went home that night and slammed yourself into bed, tossing and turning for what seemed like hours. Your stomach was churning wrathfully, already expectant of the party. Everything felt like it was falling apart again. You had just barely come to the physical terms of having soulmates, taking small steps to ensure that you were treating them fairly and meeting their needs, yet it seemed like once again, the reality of being Bound was eclipsing your independence.

Steve’s words echoed in your head. It was a commitment. You needed to stay in New York and commit to him. You needed to commit to Bucky.

You picked up the phone when it vibrated and lit up with Steve’s face. A concerned murmur of your name passed through the receiver.

“Hey,” You replied, face pressed into your pillow.

“You okay? You left in a hurry.” He sounded relieved to hear your voice.

“I’ve got a lot on mind, I think.”

In the background was Bucky’s distinct mumble of “What’s she doin’?”

“Did ya get that?” Steve laughed, “Buck’s on edge.”

You shuffled yourself around the bed and snuggled deeper down, imagining the crinkle on Bucky’s forehead and matching crease of Steve’s eyes as he smiled. You suddenly missed them. There was something about the image of them sitting together purposely, talking to you, concerned about you, that opened the floodgates.

You let go.

Steve listened generously as you expressed your hesitations about presenting your work to Kristopher Byrne or any other elite art critic or connoisseur. The thing you dreaded most about art school was the jargon of “artspeak”, the constant performance of socializing with the right people in the right way to get an opportunity. After your solo exhibit of the Soulmate Series, you were so exhausted and disenchanted by the questions and feeling the need to defend yourself that you refused to enter any more exhibitions. It was why you chose to travel instead of pursuing a Masters or making your mark in New York.

Interviews were strictly phone-only for independent magazines or social media websites and you never showed your face. You didn’t want any attention that was not on your work, which was why you were so glad that Pepper was not only a great resume opportunity, but that she was extremely professional. The photos you took of the Avengers were posted for the public relations needs and you were credited only by name.

“I just want to be a photographer,” you said, “I want to make images and talk about them in way that is digestible for ordinary people. I think photo is a great medium for that because it is so commonplace. Why is necessary to then jumble it all up with pretentious terminology? I want to take photos that are meaningful but even your grandmother could enjoy.”

Steve laughed.

“Okay, maybe not yours, specifically,” You chucked, “But you know what I mean. Photography is ubiquitous, I just so happen to have had also an education and know the theory and mechanics. And I’m lucky enough to work with you guys. But I’m not them. I don’t want to sell a picture for thirty-thousand dollars and have it put up in some guy’s house and never shown again.”

“Give ‘em hell!” Bucky’s voice rang in the background. You were surprised he was still there, listening. It made you happy that he was.

Steve paused, “I think you can do both.”

You sighed. He didn’t understand.

“No, no, listen to me. You can fight it, but you’ll need to be a part of it. You can’t change anything about the system if you’re running from the system. As much as you hate elitist jargon, you know it, and you can participate in it.”

Your brow furrowed, but Steve went on, “Get the faculty position, exhibit in galleries, gain that platform and then you make changes on that platform. Even if you just teach- imagine having 100 students a year that you can pass this to. What were the students like in your college classes?”

“Uppity.” You admitted. “We took such dumb photos and then would critique them in such meaningless ways. Sometimes a sink is just a sink. Sometimes it’s not, but when it is, it really is."

Steve laughed again; the example was lost on him. “Okay. Now what if your professors felt the same way you did?”

“We’d probably hate each other less and experiment more without second guessing ourselves.”

“Don’t you think you want to do that for other students, sweetheart? Even if it means that you’re in the thick of it yourself?” A smile was slowly forming on your face. It only made sense that Steve Rogers was such a revolutionary. It really was such good advice.

“Buck’s right, sweetheart. Go give ‘em hell.” In the background was a satisfied huff and a “Damn right!” for good measure.

“Anything else on your mind?” Steve quietly asked after a moment had passed between you, as if he’d forgotten his friend in the room, highly alert and intently listening, “Anything ‘bout us?”

You breathed a deep sigh, careful not to blow into the phone as you thought about your next words carefully. The anxieties for the show colluded with your anxieties for your future here. Steve knew that; he was only asking to be polite. “Mmm… It’ll keep me close,” You murmured, “That’s good, right?”

“I can’t decide that for you, sweetheart. That’s up to you.” There was a pause, the sound of something hitting the wall softly like a pillow, some fuzzy scratches telling you the phone was moving around, and Bucky with an irritated reprimand: “Wrong answer, punk!”

You laughed mirthfully, feeling your worries rolling off your body as you listened to Steve and Bucky quarrelling on the other end. It felt so natural that you couldn’t help but think maybe this was another good step in the right direction.

More and more each day you could imagine yourself having morning coffee with Steve, watching a movie with Bucky, cooking together, eating dinner, working side by side at the compound. Maybe you didn’t have to settle for brief fifteen-minute walks in the park, and maybe one day Bucky could talk to you about his demons. The three of you could exist together, as you were intended to.

At 23, you made up your mind to stay in New York with Steve and Bucky.

Next Chapter

#steve rogers #bucky barnes #steve rogers x reader #bucky barnes x reader #steve rogers x bucky barnes x reader #self insert #fanfiction #mcu #marvel #stucky x reader #soulmate au #Mystery of Love heli0s

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katehuntington · 6 years ago

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Title: Ride With Me (part thirteen) Fandom: Supernatural AU Characters series: Reader, Dean Winchester, Bobby Singer, Ellen Singer-Harvelle, Jo Singer (Harvelle), Benny Lafitte, Garth Fitzgerald IV, Ash Miller, Castiel Novek, and many more. Timeline: 2008 Pairing: Dean x Reader Word count: ±6350 words Summary series: Y/N is a talented horse rider who is on her way to become a professional. In order to convince her father that she deserves the loan needed to start her own farm, she goes to Arizona for six months, to intern at a ranch owned by Bobby and Ellen Singer. Her future is set out, but then she meets a handsome horseman, who goes by the name of Dean Winchester. A heartwarming series about a cowboy who falls for the girl, letting go of the past and the importance of family. Summary part thirteen: The six mile ride to find water is a long one, exhausting the wranglers. When they finally reach the river, Dean and Y/N find a lot more than just that. Warnings series: NSFW, 18+ only! Fluff, angst, eventually smut. Swearing, smoking, alcohol intoxication, alcohol abuse. Mutual pining, heartbreak. Crying, nightmares, childhood trauma. Description of animal abuse, domestic violence, mentions of addiction. Financial problems, stress, mental breakdown. Description of blood and injury, hospital scenes, character death, grief. Music: ‘I Will Carry You’ - Carter Burwell (opening scene), ‘All The Wild Horses’ - Ray LaMontagne (Dean & Y/N final scene). Check out ‘Kate Huntington’s Ride With Me playlist’ on Spotify! Author’s note: Thank you @kittenofdoomage and @girl-with-a-fandom-fettishfor helping me. You girls are awesome betas. Thank you for your endless patience!

Ride With Me Masterlist

“Here.” A water flask moves into her peripheral vision, pulling Y/N back from a hazy daydream. It’s past five PM, but it’s at least 90 degrees, the high temperatures lingering. The heat is dry, not the kind that is oppressive and makes it hard to breathe, but more torrid. Crippling nonetheless, especially for someone who is used to chilly autumns and cold winters. Her fatigued body was aching when they were standing at the junction hours ago, but Y/N didn’t want to be the one to call it quits. She still feels the pressure to prove herself, to her dad, to Dean and Bobby, to herself. So she kept her mouth shut. Now it seems stupid, because she isn’t feeling well.

Heavy eyes glide up the arm extended to her, meeting Dean’s handsome face, shaded by his Western hat. It’s clear that he’s concerned for her. “That’s yours,” she objects. “I’ve got some left.” “No, you don’t. You emptied it over an hour ago,” he knows, motioning her to take the bottle. Y/N huffs; looks like someone has been keeping an eye on her. Dean isn’t going to take no for an answer. “You gotta to stay hydrated, or this heat will take you down,” the wrangler pressures. “You’re not used to these circumstances.” “I’ve been here for over a month, Dean. I think I’m used to the climate by now,” she counters stubborn, even though she knows better. The cowboy eyes her sternly, but can’t stop the corner of his mouth from twitching in a smile. Hardheaded? Y/N? Where did he ever get that idea? “Are you gonna drink it, or what?” he half asks, half tells her. Reluctant the cowgirl takes the water, but hesitates before she lifts it to her mouth. “What about you?” “I’m alright,” he assures. Before she has a sip, Y/N takes in the cowboy. Dust has covered his arms and his neck with a thin layer, the tiny particles sticking to his sweaty skin. His bandaged hand rests on the horn of the saddle, but other than the minor injury, nothing indicates that the long journey in extreme conditions is getting to him. He must be thirsty too, but he looks alert and healthy, which she surely does not.

Y/N quickly counts the number of hours she has been in the saddle; close to eleven. The long trail under the merciless sun is taking its toll. Dean knows it, even Joplin does, because the mare has reduced her pace significantly, getting her cargo safely across the land, while before she was hard to keep up with. Her rider is glad she slowed down and took the wheel, because she is not in the mood to repeatedly ask the dark little horse to ease. Every now and then, Y/N feels like she could faint, a wave of dizziness almost washing the female wrangler off her horse. Gosh, she wishes it was actual waves. She would do anything for a drop of rain right now. For a second she fantasizes about a nice bubble bath, or a shower even. She would do anything for a cool shower.

She swallows down the water, leaving some for the wrangler next to her. With worry puckered on his forehead, he observes her intently. It doesn’t go unnoticed, because a scoff erupts from her sore throat. “I’m fine,” she assures him. “I’m just tired and a little sore, that’s all.” But Dean isn’t convinced. Pondering he glances ahead, watching Benny and the other three riders. His Southern friend is making easy conversation and it seems like Macy and Brad are handling themselves, but Jon looks like he’s going on fumes. “We should’ve gone back,” he mumbles, second guessing his decision. “What? And return to the ranch without the horses?” she queries, resting her free hand on her thigh. “We had to make the jump, Dean. Rather on the second day than later. Plus, you said it yourself: find the water, find the herd.” Ted’s rider looks aside, the muscles of his jaw tensing as he averts his eyes again. He did tell her that, but he has trouble trusting his own words. Running low on water could have disastrous consequences in the desert. Having enough of it while on a trail is one of the first essentials. What if they get stranded? What if one of the horses suffers a more severe injury than Cash already did?

“How much longer?” Y/N didn’t mean the words to come out pleading, but when Dean returns her gaze sympathetically, she realizes how desperate she sounded. He then glances at the volcanic landscape around him, determining their position. With Battleship Mountain on his left and the entrance of Boulder Canyon straight up ahead, it can’t be more than a mile. “We’re almost there,” he reassures her. “I promise.” She nods, but her smile isn’t sincere. Everything other than ‘we’ll be there in five minutes’ is too long. Dean seems to be able to read her mind, however. “We can go for a swim once we get there,” he adds. Now Y/N does look up, her interest peaked. “A swim?” “Hm-hm. Where we’re headin’ isn’t just a little stream. There is water there the whole year round. So if you want, we can go for a swim.” He smiles at her. God, that sounds heavenly. She looks forward to it already, although a question rises almost instantly. She can’t go swimming in her jeans, so that means the cowboy is going to see her, all of her. Insecure she smiles back at him, trying not to let her self-consciousness stand in the way. “Don’t wait up for me; if you want to lead the group, go ahead. I’ll catch up.” She changes the subject, nodding at the six horses about forty yards up front. He shrugs, shaking his head lightly and dismissing her suggestion. “Benny will manage. I’d rather be riding next to you.”

And so he stays by her side as they descend into the narrow canyon, the trail getting steep. She lets Joplin choose the path, trusting the agile horse with bringing her down the slope. They drop several hundred feet in a short amount of time, Dean on her tail the entire time, making sure she will arrive at the river safely. Then the path evens out, a plateau hanging over a cliff seems to be the end of the line. The other wranglers halt at the edge, the moral lifting at the sight. Curious Y/N rides up to join them, when she spots it. In the middle of the dramatic landscape with intimidating rock formations, which cast long shadows over the land as the sun hangs low in the west, an oasis of green frames the riverbed. Crystal clear water runs through the La Barge Creek into Canyon Lake. Salt River snakes through the landscape to their east. They made it. They finally made it. After a long and stressful day in the saddle, they can finally recharge. “Boys and girls, welcome to Eagle’s Nest,” Benny announces, a wide grin on his face.

Y/N lets a deep sigh slip from her lips, just the image before her having her feel a little bit lighter already. She smiles at Dean, who mimics her expression, clearly relieved that it all worked out. The head wrangler is the first one to ride down the hill, the rest of the company in his wake. About a hundred yards from the water he stops Ted. “Set up camp here?” Benny assumes. Dean nods. “Let’s make it quick, before we run out of light.” He dismounts his horse, slightly stiffer than he did yesterday; even the experienced trail rider is feeling this one deep in his muscles. Y/N does the same and she lands on the rocky surface with a thud, her feet tingling. Walking seems almost foreign, the first few steps a little unsteady, a sensation similar to having sea legs. Her supervisor hands her Ted. “You can take the horses to drink first,” he lets his eyes glide from Y/N to Macy and Jon, who looks like he is in no shape to help set up camp. The women nod and get to it, taking over the other horses as well, figuring the sooner the evening chores are done, the sooner they can put their feet up.

All eight horses eagerly walk further down the slope and step into the creek while putting their lips to the surface. Joplin almost drains the lake, her ears ticking forward with each gulp. Y/N chuckles at her eagerness, as she takes her flask from her saddlebag and fills it up. Jon throws water into his face, a delighted sigh escaping him as he freshens up, Macy following his example. “I’ve never appreciated water so much,” he claims. “I will never take it for granted again.” “You and the water need a room?” Macy nags, splashing water at her friend, who returns the favor. Y/N watches them banter, taking a long swig from her bottle, emptying almost three quarters in one go. The cold water runs down her throat and for a moment she feels a little uneasy, but then the fluid settles in her stomach. God, she was thirsty. Maybe even dehydrated, in combination with the relentless heat. But after a few more sips, she feels a lot better. Refilling her flask again, she straightens her back, looking up at the plateau where Dean, Benny and Brad are setting up the tents in record time. She walks around Joplin to the head wrangler’s horse, taking his bottle and filling it up as well. Having done the same for the other two wranglers, she takes Joplin and Ted to the camp, giving out water.

“You’re a frickin’ lifesaver. Thanks, darlin’,” Benny compliments, taking his bottle gladly. After handing Brad’s flask back, she walks up to Dean, who is setting up a paddock for the horses. He doesn’t notice her until she’s right behind him; without thinking about it, she lays her hand on his strong biceps to get his attention. The wrangler turns around surprised, meeting her soft smile. She holds the water bottle up, his eyes bouncing from her to the refreshment, looking at it with the same want. Gratefully he takes the flask, his fingers brushing over hers in the exchange, before he twists the cap off and takes three, four, five swigs. He lets a contented ‘ahh’ slip from his lips, breathing out relieved. Y/N tries not to stare, but it’s like she’s under hypnosis. Those same lips were on hers last night, and she has to admit she wants that again. She needs to retain herself, though, because Brad and Benny are setting up the third tent next to them.

Dean lowers the bottle, catching her slightly lowered jaw and hungry eyes. He smirks, his emerald greens twinkling as he wets his dry lips. Then he tucks his chin down, looking deep into her eyes while his darken a little. It seems like it’s only then that she realizes she is gaping and the blood rushes to her face. She breaks eye contact, smiling at her feet sheepishly. Oh, he knows exactly what he is doing. After gathering her confidence, she looks up to meet his gaze, the playful smirk back on his lips. Something in the air has changed. The nerves have dissolved, together with the doubt. There is no question if they both feel attracted to each other, but rather when the pull between them grows too strong to resist. The silent moment of sexual tension lasts a couple of solid seconds, before Dean is called over by Brad to help him out. As he walks past Y/N, he holds her gaze and lets his fingertips brush her forearm. It leaves her skin sensitive, goosebumps running up, despite the fact that the temperature is nowhere near chilly.

Within ten minutes the camp is ready for occupation. The horses calmly chew on their hay and scavenge for grass and twigs in the makeshift paddock. Despite the long day, none of them are visibly tired. Not even Cash, who seems to have forgotten about the whole snake bite incident. “Who wants to go swimmin’?” Y/N puts down the last stone and closes the circle of the firepit, only looking up when she dusts off her hands. Benny has already shed his shirt, unzipping his pants now with no shame whatsoever. Stunned she stares at him, then quickly averts her eyes. “Hell yes! I’ve been looking forward to diving into that creek ever since I laid eyes on it,” Jon muses, his appreciation for water still not faltering.

The intern’s gaze lingers on Brad and Jon now; one kicking off his boots, the other unbuckling his belt. Even Macy follows without a second thought. The female guest notices Y/N’s hesitation, because she shrugs as she slips her denim jeans from her hips. “No different than a bikini, right?” she comments carefree. Macy has a point, it doesn’t ease Y/N’s nerves, though. Of course it’s not skinny dipping, but she still feels uncomfortable exposing so much skin. She glances at Dean, who leaves his hat on the corner pole of one of the tents. For a second she freezes as he unbuckles his belt, realizing there’s something else she hasn’t considered. Seeing Dean in nothing but his underwear might just be a bit too much for her to handle. “Last one down takes the night’s watch!” The broad shouldered farrier descends down the hill - only wearing his form fitting boxer briefs - with the guests in tow. Brad chases his sister, who squeals as she tries to stay out of reach, running into the water in her red bra and striped boy shorts. She doesn’t seem to care about how she looks. Y/N gulps as she watches her, wishing she had that kind of confidence. “You comin’ or do you need my help undressin’?” She jumps when she feels Dean’s hand on her hip and turns around. He stripped from his clothes, only wearing a pair of grey boxers. Dear Lord, he looks amazing. Last time she saw him shirtless, it was the morning of her first day on the job. He was freshly showered then, his hair fluffy. Now it is fixed with traces of gel, pushed up again when he ran his hand through it earlier, after his hat flattened the light brown strands. Dirt and dust have mixed with the sweat that the heat surfaced, adding to the tan lines on his arms and neck. She swallows with difficulty and tears her eyes from his toned chest up to his evergreen eyes. The wrangler senses her discomfort, because he narrows his eyes at her slightly, the trademark smirk dying down. She knows that he was joking about the undressing part, right? “You okay?” he checks. “Yeah, yeah. I’m - I’m fine,” she assures, faking a smile. “I’ll be down in a minute.” Dean holds her gaze for a second, trying to read her. Not sure if he made her feel uncomfortable, he lets his hand slip from her waist and decides against the quick kiss he was going to leave on her lips; he doesn’t want to push her. His expression is soft now, letting her know that it’s okay if she needs time. “Alright,” he returns, leaving it at that. He walks past her towards the water, the sounds of splashing and laughter welcoming him. Taking a deep breath, Y/N closes her eyes. She has to go down and join them and doing that clothed is both more conspicuous and impractical, since she’ll be wearing the same pair of jeans in the morning. Not taking a swim isn’t an option either, because this might be the only chance she gets to clean herself thoroughly, until they get back to the ranch. She has no choice, so why is she blowing this up in her mind? Why is she so self-conscious about her appearance? Because Jo told her once how Dean only goes for the pretty girls? Because she saw his former fling Casey, the beautiful brunette who could as well have been a model? Or is it because no one has ever looked at her like the head wrangler, and she doesn’t want him to see her differently after he witnesses all of her?

Frustrated, she takes off her hat and pulls the hairband from her braid, strapping it around her wrist. Internally she scolds herself for letting the insecurity get to her, all the while she unbuttons her plaid blouse and shrugs it off hastily. Before she changes her mind, she takes off one boot, then the other, leaving them by her tent, neatly placed next to each other with her socks inside. Finally she pushes her jeans down, folding them up and placing them on top of her Western boots. Again she inhales, because there she stands, in nothing but her black hipsters, a navy blue bra and a white tank top. Even though she had to pack light, she at least could have brought matching underwear. Not brave enough to take her undershirt off, she steps onto the path towards the water barefoot, running her fingers through her hair. The sight in front of her takes away some of her anxiety, because the wranglers, who were running low on moral an hour ago, are now enjoying their refreshing swim. Macy’s significant giggle echoes between the rocks at the river bed as Jon and Brad continue to tease her. Benny swims a slow lap, floating in the middle of the creek, while Dean washes his face in shallower waters. Thankfully, none of them are paying much attention as the intern approaches the waterline.

As she dips a toe in the water to test the temperature, Dean turns to look at her. His eyes shift from playful to mesmerized in a split second, because he has never seen her like this. For the first time since he met her, she’s wearing her hair down. The braid she left in for two days, leaves small waves in her locks, coming down like a waterfall. Her exposed legs haven’t seen much sun, due to her Northern origins, and probably her shyness as well. They seem strong, though, hours of horse riding and training leading to the muscles barely visibly moving under her soft skin, as she steps into the water. He smiles at the sight of the young woman, who sweeps him off his feet every time he lays eyes on her. “There you are.” She returns his expression, insecurity oozing through when she covers herself as much as she can. She has pulled her tank top down far enough to stretch over the little shorts she’s wearing. He is careful not to look at her differently, not wanting the self-conscious young woman to think that seeing her in less clothing changes his perspective, but deep down it hurts him. It hurts him that she apparently doesn’t feel like she’s beautiful, because God damn, she is. “Just take the plunge, Yankee,” he encourages, letting himself fall back smoothly, the water up to his shoulders now. “You know, for a place that is as hot as it is here, the water is pretty damn cold,” Y/N scoffs, collecting some of the water in her cupped hands and spreading it on her arms. Dean chuckles at that. She said ‘damn’, it’s about as close to a curse that he’s heard from her. “Once you’re in, it’s not so bad,” he promises.

Not having the heart to jump into the cool water, she puts one step into his direction, the surface at her knees now. This afternoon she would have committed a crime for a refreshing swim, but now that she is standing here, the cold licking at her ankles, she shivers. She still has her arms crossed, hugging herself in an attempt to feel warm and comforted. Movement of the water draws her attention and Y/N looks up at the head wrangler, who is moving towards her. Normally that wouldn’t strike her as alarming, but when she notices the mischievous grin adorning his handsome face, she holds her ground. “W-what are you doing?” she stammers. Dean doesn’t answer, but raises his eyebrows at her, fighting the fading resistance of the water with every stride. Oh boy, he is clearly up to no good. It causes her to step back and put out her hands in defense. “No - no - no! Dean, don’t you dare!” she warns, once she understands where this is going.

Y/N steps out of the creek now, trying to get away from him. But the cowboy is quick, and even when she sprints away, he manages to catch up. She lets out a scream when he grabs her by the waist, locking her to his chest with his strong arms. He then lifts her up without a strain and walks back to the creek. Not impressed with the fight she puts up as she tries to escape his grip, he steps into the cool water. “Dean, put me down! Put me --” Honoring her request, he jumps in, turning so that he is the first to dunk in the water and only then lets her go. They both go under, the cowboy coming up before her, shaking the water from his face. When Y/N breaks through the surface, he throws his head back while laughing out loud. The sheer horror on her face says it all; her mouth hanging open, her hair soaked and covering her eyes, her shoulders pulled up to her ears. She looks more like a cat who got dropped into the bath than a human being.

She wants to be mad at him, but the sound of his laughter melts her stone cold limbs. With a scoff she pushes the tangled strands from her face, glaring at the cowboy as she bites down on her lip in order to not break character. But then she chuckles, shaking her head. “You are such a jerk,” she utters. “You were taking forever,” he returns sniggering. Amused he watches her, moving a little closer. He’s about to apologize, when Y/N kicks her foot up, sending a big splash his way. He turns his head to avoid getting even wetter and counters with a good pitch, a handful of water sloshing at her as she protects her face. They continue to spatter like a bunch of kids, cackling as they do so, until Benny intervenes.

“Children!” he calls out, finally getting his friend’s attention. Both stop mid-action, glancing aside at the farrier who is watching the banter with his arms crossed and the water at his waist. “Permission to get the diving boards, Chief?” he requests. Dean nods, confirming, liking his Southern brother’s idea. Y/N studies him puzzled, however. “We didn’t bring diving boards, did we?” she double checks, not sure what Benny is up to. “Not the typical ones, no,” Dean returns mysteriously. “You’ll see.”

Benny returns from the camp not even a minute later, a horse by the halter in each hand. Stunned Y/N watches how he leads Ted Nugent and his own horse Ozzy Osbourne towards the riverbed, the large animals stepping in trustingly. He hands Dean Ted as he passes by, guiding the other chestnut to the center of the creek. When the water reaches to Ozzy’s shoulder, Benny pulls himself on top of the calm horse. Clearly it isn’t the first time that the wranglers have done this, because even when the farrier stands up on the gelding’s back, Ozzy waits patiently. “Bombs away!”

With a loud cheer Benny jumps from the ‘platform’, pulling his knees to his chest and breaking the surface with an impressive cannonball dive. He sends a tidal wave over the tourists, who rally him on. They swim towards Ozzy, who seems to love the cool down plus the attention. One by one they climb on his back, diving from his strong hindquarters. Dean watches the bunch with a contentment over him that Y/N hasn’t seen before. He leans against Ted, his arm resting over the arc of the horse’s spine. Of course this isn’t the first time she notices how relaxed he is, how at home he feels, and yet something is different about him. Like he reached a new level of happiness, of fulfillment. That couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her, now could it? But when he lets his eyes wander from the frolicking guests to Y/N, his smile grows wider, edging crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes. “Wanna go for a ride?” he asks. Without wasting words, she nods, holding his gaze until he takes Ted’s leadrope. Skillfully he swings his leg over the horse’s back, using the momentum to jump from the creek’s bottom and landing behind Ted’s withers. Once he’s seated, he extends his hand towards the woman beside him, grabbing her arm and interlocking it with his. With one swift pull he hoists her from the water, Y/N using the same technique to sway onto the horse, settling behind the head wrangler. As he steers Ted a little deeper into the water, his free hand comes to rest on Y/N’s thigh, not caring about the guests seeing them together.

The cowgirl’s balance on a horse is that of a gymnast on the beam, so holding on to Dean wouldn’t be necessary, but she puts her arms around his waist anyway. Comfortable and allowing herself to let this be, like he has encouraged her to, she rests her cheek against the hollow between his shoulder blades for a moment, closing her eyes. Her bare feet sweep through the water, her toes drawing ripples on the surface, the break catching the last light of the day. Despite that she is not holding the reins, bareback on a horse that she doesn’t know, she feels safe. She hasn’t felt this carefree since the early days of her horse riding career. Her grandfather would walk with her during those very first pony rides, teaching her about horses along the way. She trusted him fully, never once doubting his life lessons and knowledge. With Dean it’s a different kind of faith. It’s knowing he will be right there whenever she needs him, but also to give her the courage to take that leap. “You alright back there, Yankee?” he wonders, feeling her smile against his skin. “Yeah,” she acknowledges. “I am.” The corner of Dean’s mouth pulls upward, his hand holding the leadrope shifting from Ted’s mane to cover her hands on his stomach, fingers entwining, trapping the braided cord in between. The rope made of horsehair scratches his palm, a contrast to her soft skin. Grateful he breathes in, the smell of desert dust underlaid with a subtle, herbal, organic scent of the river fills his nose. Before, he never felt like he needed something more in life. He has never gone steady with a woman, not more than a couple of weeks at least. He was never looking for a relationship and appreciated the freedom that came with that. But now, having her pressed against his back, warm and comforting, he realizes what he’s been missing.

They approach the other wranglers, the rider exchanging a knowing look with Benny, who takes in the perfect picture delighted. Before the guests notice the intimacy, Y/N slips her arms from Dean’s strong torso, pulling up her feet. “What are you doin’?” the cowboy wonders, looking over his shoulder. She stands up on Ted’s back and stretches her legs, steadying herself by holding on to him until she finds her footing. Then she straightens up. “Taking the plunge,” she chuckles. The intern jumps then, squeezing her nose closed as she folds herself into a ball before she crashes through the surface. Macy is still cackling when Y/N comes up, unsuccessful at dodging the spatter that came her way. Meanwhile the others cheer her on, now that she has finally joined them. She has completely forgotten about her insecurities, or the cold water that washed all that away. All she can think of is how blessed she is to be here, to gain so much more than just work experience.

The crew takes several more dives from the horses, who allow the gambol calmly. Dean drops an impressive dive bomb right between the group, not outdoing his slightly heavier friend Benny, but creating quite a splash nonetheless. Time flies by way too quickly, and before they know it, the sun has disappeared behind the mountains, leaving only dark shades of red and purple to decorate the sky. The air cools quickly and everyone knows they should get ready for the night. Eventually it’s Benny who rattles up the company. “Alright, y’all. Time for Benny’s famous Southern soul soup. Get your butts to camp and start that fire. I’ve got some cookin’ to do.” He shoos the tourists out of the creek, following them with the two horses in tow. He looks over his shoulder at his best friend and the intern, who linger. A mischievous grin comes Dean’s way before the farrier straightens himself, walking away whistling. Y/N sniggers at the funny character; looks like he has been acting as the head wrangler’s wingman. “Smooth,” she comments, a knowing yet amused smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Yeah, he’s real subtle,” Dean chuckles, busted. “Got you alone again, though.” He comes closer, water moving between them, and suddenly nature goes quiet. His hands end up on her hips, pulling in the girl who is so willingly looking at him. His fingers trace the hem of her white tank top as he dips his head, his nose brushing against hers.

Before Y/N knows it, he’s kissing her again. She melts into him, her muscles going slack under his touch. Like the night before, the kiss is gentle and unhurried, giving her a moment to compare the two. His lips are a little more chapped, probably due to the long day in the sun while running low on water. A three day old stubble tickles her skin, the tough hairs slightly longer than yesterday. He’s clean now, fresh water having washed away the sweat and dirt. The first-time nerves aren’t there this evening, but she does feel that same fire rise up from her coil. That same desire to stay here forever, because no kiss has ever felt this good.

He parts from her, with his hands still splayed on her lower back, looking down on the cowgirl he has hopelessly fallen for. A few clouds reflect the little light that is coming from the horizon, but it’s enough for Dean to notice something. He grins widely, even though he tries to tone it down, as his hands leave her waist to run the pad of his thumb over her cheekbone, sweeping across the area under her eyes. For a second she wonders what he’s trying to brush away, but then it hits her. “Oh, Lord. I look like a Goth, don’t I?” she realizes, remembering how fond she was to still have a significant amount of mascara on her lashes this morning, helping her feel a little less naked. Now she regrets not washing it off completely. “More like a sad panda,” Dean chuckles, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth to stifle a laugh.

Awkwardly she looks down at the water, but the wrangler stops her, hooking his finger under her chin. “Don’t hide,” he says, his expression soft. Cupping her face, he wipes away the last black shades from her flushed cheeks, then drinks her in, his eyes flicking over her features. Embarrassment remains prominent in her stance, though. Dean feels his chest tighten a little, because if anything, he did not want to make her feel uneasy. “You know you don’t have to wear it, right?” he starts, his thumb caressing her soft skin. “The makeup?” She looks up at him again now, still insecure, but carefully hopeful. Where is he going with this? “I mean, if you want to and if it makes you feel better, don’t let me stop ya...” he adds, stammering a little bit. “I’m just saying that you don’t need it. You’re beautiful... With or without.”

A small smile forms on her lips. Again she’s blushing, not from shame, but from flattery this time. “You think I’m beautiful?” she asks, traces of slight disbelief in her voice. “Hell, yeah,” Dean assures smirking, half rolling his eyes at her doubt. “And as my lovely cousin told you in such detail, I have snooped around plenty, so I’d know. Those girls ain’t got nothing on you.” She laughs at the joke, casting her eyes down. “Hey…” Y/N glances up, the intensity of his eyes catching her off guard. “I mean it,” he whispers. Showing her exactly how amazing she is, he kisses her hard this time, leaving her breathless. Overwhelmed by the intensity she stiffens, but then opens up to him, allowing his tongue to slip past her lips. With her eyes closed she waits, letting him take the lead in their dance. Careful not to break the moment, Dean leans back, letting himself fall gently into the water, taking her with him. Floating away on waves of elation, he envelopes her in his arms, offering her the warmth of his body in the icy creek. He rises up then, searching for footing again on the floor of pebbles, the water at chest height now. For a second they part, breathing in each other’s air. The wrangler opens his eyes, looking down at the gorgeous woman who is slowly becoming his. Waiting for even the slightest hint of hesitation, he moves his fingers to trace down the hem of her top again, slipping underneath. She gazes back, her eyes piercing with nothing but want, nodding barely noticeable. Dean spots it, though. It’s like the lights on the track jumped to green, meeting her halfway in a kiss much more heated than the previous ones.

His hands hike up under her shirt, gliding over her delicate skin as his mouth never leaves hers. A hitching breath passes her lips when the pad of his thumb caresses the underside of her breast, featherlight, yet electrifying. Dean pushes her bra up slightly, almost tracing her nipple, which has hardened both from the cold and arousal. Completely in awe, she rolls her head back a little, exposing her neck. Gladly Dean ghosts over the junction to her shoulder, running his teeth towards her collarbone torturously slow, biting down a groan on the curve. Good Lord. His touch, his tongue, his mouth. Everything about this feels amazing. The freezing water is just the right temperature to cool her heated skin, the swell of the small waves identical to the one she feels in her lower abdomen. The cowboy can have her anyway he wants, she’s not going to fight him on it. In fact, she urges him to keep going, carding her nails through his damp hair and applying pressure once she closes her fingers around the brown locks, darkened by millions of droplets.

Dean’s right hand descends down her body again while his left remains to attend her soft breast. He follows the arch of her back, then lower, kneading and exploring her behind, firm from years in the saddle. Holy shit, this cannot possibly feel this good. The resolution to take things slow goes right out the window, as his fingers find space above the back of her thigh, following the edge of her underwear. Then he grips her tight there, his other hand sliding to cover the clasp of her bra, not freeing her from it just yet. He lifts her a little, pushing her flush against him. Hungry for the woman in his arms, he covers the top of her breasts with his mouth, the soaked fabric of her top between him and her hot skin. Dean knew it before, but this, this unbelievable display of chemistry only confirms it; she’s it.

His lips find hers again, even though she has to keep breaking away in order to get enough air. Her respiration has picked up, every breath coming out labored. She can feel the gentle vibration of a low moan coming from deep within his chest, only adding fuel to the wildfire that is spreading through her body fast. At first she is unaware of the noise of water rustling in the distance, but then Dean freezes. Not understanding why he has stopped, she nuzzles her nose against his cheek, drunk and thirsty for his affection, seeking his mouth, but the wrangler is focussed on something else. Confused Y/N opens her eyes, looking up at the handsome man, whose eyes are fixed on the estuary of La Barge Creek to Canyon Lake. “Dean?” “You hear that?” he whispers.

The sound of water moving and the fragile surface breaking dawns on her now and she follows his gaze into the dark. Then she hears a neigh and her heart skips a beat. That wasn’t one of theirs. “Find the water…” “Find the herd,” Dean finishes her sentence. Still in his embrace, she watches the mystical sight, able to make out the shapes now under a faint moon, once the clouds move away from blocking the light. The group of horses crosses the creek, some stopping to drink. Dean lets out a relieved laugh, turning to face Y/N again. “We found them,” she smiles. “We did,” he whispers. He kisses her briefly, knowing that he has to warn Benny, before the herd moves away. He drowns in her eyes a little longer, though, the ignited ecstasy still sparkling visibly in her pupils. His heart swells, his mind calms. He knows. He has found so much more than just the horses on this trail.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate every single one of you, but if you do want to give me some extra love, you are free to reblog my work or buy me coffee (Link in bio at the top of the page)

Read part fourteen here

#Ride With Me #Cowboy!Dean #Dean Winchester x Reader #Dean x Reader #Cowboy!Dean x Reader #Dean reader insert #Dean Winchester reader insert #Dean Winchester #Dean Winchester fanfiction #Dean fanfiction #Dean Winchester series #Dean series #Cowboy!Dean series #Supernatural #SPN #Supernatural AU #Dean AU #SPN AU #Kate Huntington

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let-me-love-you-loki · 5 years ago

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Waking Up in Vegas-Ch. 41

Chapter 41: Wouldn’t Dive In

Dean, Morning, 10:43 AM

“You’re out of the woods,” the doctor said from the end of Mera’s bed. He smiled at her and tucked his hands in the pockets of his white coat. “We’re going to finish you on the drip you’ve got, and then we’re going to get you out of here and back home.”

The knot in my chest loosened just a little. I sagged into the chair by her bed and let out a breath. She looked so much better. Her eyes were bright and amber. She had more normal color in her face, and the rash that came with her disease had faded from her cheeks. For the first time in over a week, she looked like herself.

“Thank you,” Mera replied, giving the doctor a faint smile. He promised to send a nurse down with discharge papers and instructions and left. When the door shut behind him, Mera sank back against the pillows and closed her eyes.

“It’ll be nice for you to sleep in your own bed again,” I said, leaning forward and propping my elbows on my knees.

My wife turned her head toward me, her eyes going slightly golden in the light. “I want to go home so much, Dean. I want to go back to when you didn’t have to worry about me.”

I took her hand, threading our fingers together. “Mera Ambrose, I will worry about you every day for the rest of my life. Because you are my wife, and I love you more than anything in this world.”

Tears glittered on her lashes, but she blinked them away. “Don’t make me cry, Dean,” she whispered. “They’ll think I’m sick again.”

“Alright,” I said, kissing the back of her hand. “Relax and let that IV finish, then we’ll spring you out of this place.”

Mera smiled—maybe the first genuine, wide, beautiful smile in days—and my heart bounced against my sternum. For an instant, she was the woman I’d first seen that day in FCW. She was the one I’d watched and adored and loved from afar until she finally fell perfectly into my arms. I’d vowed to spend my life making her feel safe and happy.

Mera, Afternoon, 1:08 PM

It felt strange to be in regular clothes again. I’d been in a hospital gown for ten days, and I was suddenly desperate to be back in my own house. Dean had taken my bag and gone to pick up the car. A nurse helped me into a chair and wheeled me down to the entrance of the hospital. When he pulled up at the curb in the truck, Dean hopped down from the cab and came around to help me up.

I shouldn’t have been, but I was amazed by how gentle he was. His hands on my back and my arm were tender but firm. He guided me with sure, slow steps and bore most of my weight as I climbed up into the cab of the truck. He stood up on the runner and buckled my seatbelt.

“Ready to go home, sweet wife?” he queried, brushing wayward strands of hair from my forehead. His lips ghosted over my forehead.

I nodded. “Take me home, Dean.”

The drive from the hospital was quiet. He kept one hand on the wheel. With the other, he held my hand as if it would be the last time. His ring-worn fingers entwined with mine, thumb stroking the back of my hand. Every now and then, he would draw my it up to his mouth and ghost a kiss on my flesh.

I had a lot of time to think on that ride home. I thought about what my life had been like until that day almost a year ago. Before that night, I’d lived my life for someone else. No matter how hard I thought, no matter how desperately I tried to remember, I had no memories of a time before Colby Lopez. I knew there had to be. But he was as ubiquitous in my life as my own family. I’d very much become the person I was because of the person I’d been with him.

For him.

Teenagers think they know what love is. And maybe some of them do, but I couldn’t say for sure if I had. I’d never dated anyone else. Never spent time with people who weren’t Colby and his core group of friends. I was hard pressed to remember the name of a single friend who had just been mine. Everything… everything was tied up in Colby… in the boy who would eventually become Seth Rollins.

Part of me wondered if I could ever separate my sense of self from the life that had been chosen for me. I couldn’t lay it all at his feet—I’d made the choice to give up my spot at Iowa State. I’d made the choice to study athletic training so I could get a job to be with him. I’d gotten in that car, traveled, stayed in cheap motels, scrounged change for the dollar menu right beside him. No, I couldn’t say that everything was his fault. But I couldn’t say that he gave me a fair chance at a life of my own either.

And now… I was so close to having just that. A life of my own choosing. Dean, who had never pushed me, never asked for more than I could give, never took more than what I was willing to share. He’d taken me as I was, broken and uncertain, and given me permission to be who I wanted to be. I wouldn’t delude myself and say things were perfect, but I felt freer in my marriage to Dean than I had in the twenty years I spent tied to Colby.

It was like the first breath of clear air after being trapped in a dank room. To be with Dean was to finally be with myself. With the real me.

The me that I’d never gotten to know.

Seth, Afternoon, 2:41 PM

I sat in my car for what felt like years. The garage door had long since come down, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to go inside. I was just there… driver’s door open, one foot on the concrete, hands gripping the wheel so hard that my fingers had gone numb. My head was back against the headrest, eyes staring at nothing.

After seeing Mera in Las Vegas—fragile, sick, and exhausted—the very thought of going into my own house made me sick. The moment I turned down the street I was bombarded with memories of when this house had been a home. When Mera Reynolds had lived and breathed and loved and laughed and existed with me within these walls. I could remember the way her amber eyes turned to brass when she laughed as I carried her over the threshold the first day. I could hear her laugh from the Christmas when I put mistletoe in every doorway, when I went up on the roof to hang the lights and the ladder fell.

I remembered the first time we stood on the sidewalk in front of this house. I remembered how happy she’d been when I told her it was ours. She’d wanted to turn one of the spare bedrooms into an office. She wanted to use it to work from, to store her supplies. To study.

She’d wanted to go back to school, to go enroll at St. Ambrose University in the city, to finally get certified as a psychologist.

My heart felt like stone in my chest. I blinked, swallowing hard as I remembered what came next.

Just like with Iowa State, I’d talked her out of it.

Because I wanted her with me. I wanted her to travel with me, to become a road AT on top of working the televised events.

Because I couldn’t see past the fact that what I wanted had never had anything to do with Mera being happy. It was about me being the center around which her life revolved.

Dean, Afternoon, 3:22 PM

Mera sat on in the overstuffed armchair in the living room, a blanket draped over her legs. The first thing she’d done when we got home was take a shower. Then she’d put on her favorite lounge clothes and curled up in the living room. I couldn’t explain how the sight made me feel—the calm and peace and pure and simple elation that pulsed through my veins every time my heart thumped in my chest.

“Do you want anything?” I asked, stretched out on the sofa with the remote in hand. I was surfing channels, trying to find something to watch.

I looked over at her, my breath punching out of my body when I saw her smile. There was life and light in her again. She was my Mera, my wife, my best friend again. It felt like the world had been spinning off kilter for the last ten days and only now it had righted itself.

“I would kill for some sweet and sour chicken and fried dumplings,” she said, snuggling beneath the blanket. “How much do you love me?”

Laughing, I sat up. I could feel my face light up with a smile… the one that I kept just for her. “Enough to crawl on my hands and knees through broken glass and burning coals to bring you deep fried Chinese food.”

I watched Mera smile. Her eyes glittered golden. There was health and life in her face again. And God knew, I had no words for how good it was to have her back again.

“They deliver, you know,” she replied, reaching for me. I moved to her, crouching by the side of her chair as she stroked her fingers over my jaw. For a moment, she was quiet, her eyes bouncing as she looked me over. Her smile softened. “Thank you, Dean.”

“For what, sweet wife?”

She leaned over to press a kiss against my cheek. “I know that you know Seth came to see me. I could see it in your face when you came in after he left. Thank you for not making a big deal of it. Thank you for letting me have that.”

I wanted to tell her how angry I’d been about it. I wanted to tell her that I hated how he could still weasel into her life. I wanted to tell her that I couldn’t stand the thought of him being close enough to her to hurt her again. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

Instead, I squeezed her fingers and kissed her knuckles. “You are your own woman, Mera. As much as I want to keep you from any kind of hurt or harm, I know that you are strong enough to know your own mind. I trust you. More than I’ve trusted anyone in my life.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek. “Thank you for that, too.”

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#waking up in vegas #wuiv #dean ambrose #dean ambrose fanfiction #wwe #wwe fanfiction #seth rollins #seth rollins fanfiction #mera reynolds #dean x mera #ofc #oc #multi-chapter #real person fanfiction

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heathsbitch · 5 years ago

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Treat You Better ➳ PEAKY BLINDERS

iv. HOME

Ivy spent the week in the betting shop, learning from Polly. What she had told the girl vividly stuck in her head. She felt so sorry for her and, almost, guilty. Obviously, Ivy couldn't have done anything to prevent it but Polly didn't deserve anything like that. It unnerved her, though. The fact that Polly knew about Ivy's childhood. Maybe not all of it, but she had an idea of what the girl went through.

A week went by and there wasn't a word from Tommy. Whilst he was away, Ivy had gotten quite close to the Shelby family. She fitted in quite well, even if she did feel a little bit awkward and out of place sometimes. Ivy definitely felt a lot safer in Birmingham with the Shelbys than she ever did back in London. Polly treated her like her own daughter, John joked and played around with her all the time, Arthur treated her like a little sister, Finn was still a little bit awkward but Ivy loved that about him and Ada treated the girl like a friend that she had known for years... She felt more loved here than she had ever felt before. She finally got treated like a human being, and not a servant.

The day that Tommy returned was a strange one, it was Polly's birthday. Ivy was woken up by Finn fairly early in the morning. He was already dressed and told the girl that Thomas had gotten back earlier that morning for Polly's birthday. She got dressed as quick as she could and met everyone down in the gaming den. The cuts that still stained her arms burned slightly whenever too much pressure was applied, but they were fading, healing. Ivy knew that they would be gone within a few days and wouldn't be a problem to her anymore. All of the Peaky Blinders were waiting and working in the gaming den, including Tommy. She walked in next to Finn and Thomas saw her immediately. Cuts scattered his face still, but they were healing like Ivy's. "Ivy, how are you?" He asked the girl, bringing her into a hug. "I'm okay?" She replied, confused as to why he was hugging her. He pulled away from the hug and looked the girl directly in the eyes. "I have a surprise for you," He said simply. "But first, I have to tell you something."

"What's wrong?" Even though he had pulled away from the hug, his large hands still rested on her shoulders. "Alfie asked about you. He wanted to know where you were and he wasn't happy that you had run away," Honestly, Ivy was shocked. 'Surely, he didn't care that I had ran away.'Ivy said to herself. She trusted Tommy, but surely this couldn't be true. "He said that he wanted to see you. Soon. I know you're not ready to see him yet but when you are, come and see me and I'll come with you for protection. Besides, my business isn't finished with him yet." She nodded and mumbled "Okay." Ivy was still scared to see him but she would feel a lot safer if Tommy came with her. "Don't worry about it, you don't have to rush." He reassured her.

They waited for a few more minutes, everybody was talking and doing their work, waiting for Polly to come in. The door creaked open and in came Polly. Claps erupted from around the room and Polly had shock and confusion strewn across her face. Tommy walked over to her with a slightly slower clap than everybody else. "When did you get back?" She asked him. "Didn't wanna miss your birthday, Pol." He wrapped his arm around his aunt and walked over to Finn and Ivy. "Right, everybody back to work." Arthur ordered. "How did you know it was my birthday? Nobody ever knows." Polly queried, still somewhat bewildered by what was going on. "Ah, it's different this year," Tommy started. "John, Finn, bring the car round. Ivy, go with them." Ivy looked towards Finn and followed him out of the door. "Where are we going?" Polly interrogated as her and Tommy followed behind them. "To unwrap your birthday present." He said with joy in his voice.

The journey to the house was quiet. Ivy was squished in the back of the car in between Arthur and Finn. They were messing about meaning that she was getting tossed and bumped for the entire journey. "Behave yourselves!" Polly would occasionally shout from the front of the car. The young girl still didn't know where they were going. They drove through a petite neighborhood. It was green and bursting with life, yet quiet and tranquil. Peaceful, the perfect place for Polly to relax. The car stopped in front of a big house. Large windows with diamond muntins sat on the front of the house. Red bricks and a black and white decorative trim ran around it.

Everybody got out of the car, some of the boys jumped over the doors and straight onto the pavement. Finn opened the door for Ivy, she got out and scoffed in the process. They all followed Tommy up the grey pavement towards the door of the house, John now messed with Finn. Arthur slid the key into the lock and turned it, opening the door to the gorgeous house. The boys allowed Polly to walk in first and then they followed, Ivy at the very back of the line. "You said you were gonna buy Ada a house." She told Thomas as she looked around the house. "Yup, that's right. I did," Everybody followed Polly and Thomas into the living room of the house. "Just had a bit of cash left over." Ivy laughed under her breath 'He really is a rich bastard.'

"This is ours?" Polly questioned. The young girl went and stood next to Finn and John. "No, Polly. This is yours. And, if you wouldn't mind, it's Ivy's as well," Polly and her looked at each other and then both turned to Tommy. He had just given them this huge house for no apparent reason. "Because you two deserve it."

'I don't deserve anything.' Guilt, blood regret. 'I. Don't. Deserve. Any. Thing.'

Ivy felt Finn's hand on the small of her back. Tears began to brew in her eyes and he noticed. She looked up at the teen and gave him a smile to say thank you. The girl looked back towards Tommy and Polly. Thomas was smiling and Polly had a similar expression to the one that she wore. "What would we do with all these rooms?" She looked towards the other Shelby boys, Arthur was smiling and John was smirking. "Does that mean it's a 'yes' to looking after Ivy?" Polly turned straight to the girl. "Yes. God, yes." Thomas returned the beaming smile on Ivy's face. "Thank you, Polly." She said gratefully. "Good. Well, you two could relax, for one. Come 'ere at weekends. There's a garden, eh," Tommy walked over to the window "You love gardens. You can grow roses, Pol. I don't know, put a piano in. Can you play the piano, Ivy? You can have people round and have a sing-song," Ivy looked at Finn when Tommy mentioned singing and they laughed, remembering what happened almost a week ago when the two of them and Isaiah were drunk. "God help the neighbors." John joked. "Fuck the neighbors." Arthur added. Ivy walked over to Polly and gave her a small hug. They giggled with joy, still shocked at what was happening. Arthur approached the women, the key held out in front of him. "Welcome home, girls." He dropped the key into Polly's hand, she looked down at them, as did Ivy. Polly took a seat on the sofa and Ivy followed her actions, one of her hands resting on her shoulder. They had grown very close in the days that Tommy had been gone.

The Shelbys stared at the girls, smiles on every one of their faces. "Arthur, why don't you take the boys and Ivy outside. Wait by the car?" Ivy rubbed Polly's shoulder one last time before standing up and following the boys outside. "Thank you." She said to the girl as she left. The boys and Ivy got into the car, Finn and her were in the back and Arthur and John were in the front. "So, you're gonna be living with our Pol, then?" John turned around to ask the girl. "I guess so, yeah." She replied with a small grin. "Have fun with that, Ivy." Arthur told her, sarcasm laced in his voice. "What?" Ivy asked, laughing lightly. "Polly can be," Finn started but paused, looking for a word to use "Difficult at times."

"I don't believe that. From what I've seen in the past week, she's an incredible woman." Ivy defended her. Polly opened up to Ivy when she hardly knew her. They trust each other. She sees her as a daughter and Ivy sees her as a mother. Surely Polly couldn't be difficult in any way. "Believe him, Ivy. She treats you differently to all of us. Just don't get on the wrong side of her or she will snap." John added to what Finn had said. "She can be quite scary, actually." Ivy burst into laughter, as did the other Shelby boys at what Finn whispered. "Yeah, Finn-boy. She can." Arthur told him.

The journey back was peaceful. Tommy had told them that Polly and Ivy should gather all of their things and move into their new house in the next few days. He had also said that he wanted to speak to Ivy, in private, when they got back to Small Heath. She wondered what he wanted to speak to her about. Maybe it was something to do with her dad or the move, she thought. Ivy didn't know, but she wouldn't find out until they got back. The grey sky loomed over the small town. Clouds and fog shrouded the town. It was eerie, creepy. It reminded Ivy of London, in a way. It was quieter, though. London was loud with music from various clubs whereas in Birmingham, the only sound was the factory workers in the distance. They walked into the betting shop, everybody separated. John went home to see Emse and his children, Arthur had some work to do with the books and Polly went with him and Finn went off with Isaiah, leaving Ivy alone with Tommy. "You said you wanted to speak to me, in private." She asked, following him into his office. "Yes, take a seat, Ivy." The girl sat down in one of the plush chairs and waited for his next words. "I understand that Polly told you about her children." Sadness flooded through her. She felt so sorry for what she had been through with her children, she didn't deserve any of it. "Yes, she did." Ivy told Tom. "I've been doing some digging and I think that I've found her son, Michael."

"What about Anna?" The girl asked. Tommy sighed and told her the news, "Anna's dead. She died in Australia." More sadness, more pain, more death. "Oh." She simply replied. Thomas cleared his throat and continued to talk about Michael. "I've found where Michael is living with his adoptive family and I want you to help me bring him home, to his mother."

"Why me?" The girl queried. "You are one of the only people that Polly has told about her children. She trusts you, and so do I." She nodded, processing his words. "Okay, I'll come with you."

The next day Ivy woke up early so she could go with Tommy to meet Polly's son. She got into Tommy's car and they headed off on the journey to Michael's house. The journey there went fairly quickly. When they were leaving Birmingham, she was trying to think of other things she could call Tommy. Everybody calls him Tommy or Tom and Ivy thought that, maybe, it would be nice if she had her own little nickname for him. She felt like it would make her feel more at home with the Shelbys. She eventually decided on calling him 'Tommo'. Yes, it was similar to Tommy but it had her own little twist.

The dirty Birmingham streets quickly faded and the countryside soon surrounded the pair. Green fields and blue skies stretched for miles, there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. Ivy had never really been to the countryside before, not properly anyway. She had seen it from the windows of cars but never properly explored it before. She was always cooped up in the polluted London streets, fog covered the entire city like a thick blanket all of the time. They drove into a quaint neighborhood. Everything seemed brighter, nothing like the grey streets of Small Heath and Camden Town. Tommo stopped the car and parked it next to a large bush. "We're here." He notified the young girl. They both climbed out of the car and walked down a thin cobbled path. "The plan is, we tell his mum that we're from the Parish council and we're here to take him back to his real mother. His name is Henry, for now. I can do the talking, if you would like."

"I don't mind talking, Tommo." Ivy told him with a chuckle. "Alright." As they walked further down the path, they saw more fields and trees dotted around the landscape. "I like the new nickname. 'Tommo', it's different." Ivy noticed two boys were playing in the field. One looked quite young and the other looked around her age, maybe a little bit older. 'He must be Michael.'The girl thought. "Come on, let's go inside." The older one said to, what Ivy guessed, was his younger brother. He had to be Michael, surely. "Here, pass the ball. Come on." He said as they jumped over the fence and jogged to their house. They had such a peaceful lifestyle, something Ivy could only dream of.

"Come on in, boys. Did you have a good game?" Their mother called from the gates of their house. "I am starving. Anything for lunch?" The older one asked. "In you go. Go in and wash your hands, boys." Their mother ordered. Ivy thought she had noticed Tommy and her walking towards her because she stared directly into the girl's eyes. "Mrs Johnson." Tommy started as they stopped outside the gate to her front garden. "Yes, who are you?" She interrogated. "We're from the Birmingham Council. Bordesley Parish."

"You look a bit young to be working for the Parish council." She told Ivy with a slight scowl. "I'm older than I look ma'am." Ivy told her, lying completely to her face.

"No one wrote to me," She said, getting defensive. "What do you want?" The girl noticed that the older of the two brothers was still stood in the doorway, staring at her and Tommy. She caught his gaze with her own, she quickly averted her eyes to his mother instead of him.

"We would like to talk about your son, about Henry," Ivy informed Mrs Johnson. "Can we come in?" She tried to look and sound as polite and kind as possible. "I'd rather you didn't. He doesn't like to talk about this." The girl could tell that Mrs Johnson was feeling uncomfortable. "I see," Tommy added, he still had cuts and scratches across his face from when he was beaten up. It kind of suited him though, in a weird way."What does Henry know about his real identity, Mrs Johnson." Thomas began to grill her for information. "I only deal with Mr Ross from the agency," She stated. "And he only ever writes. So why are you two here in person?"

"The boy is approaching his eighteenth birthday." Ivy began. "This isn't right," Mrs Johnson said, "You're not from the council. Something isn't right." She started to catch on to the pair. She knew they were lying but they had to get to Michael, for Polly. "What does he know, Mrs Johnson?" Ivy asked her, getting closer to the woman to intimidate her slightly. Ivy was a small girl but, luckily for her, Mrs Johnson was smaller. It made it slightly easier to intimidate her. Tommy was taller than both of them, though. She broke eye contact when she spoke again "He knows his mother couldn't cope," Lies "She drank too much, she used opium," Lies "She used to beat him," More fucking lies! Tommy could tell Ivy was getting agitated at the blatant lies she was trying to sell off so he stood in to help the young girl. "But that isn't the truth." Mrs Johnson was clearly flustered now, her words picked up pace and her breathing got heavier. "Look, you should come back when my husband is here."

"Does he know his real name?" Thomas asked her. "His real name is Johnson. Henry Johnson. Now I would like you to go away and come back when my husband is here." She tried to push Ivy and Tom away. 'Henry' noticed they weren't leaving and that his mother was getting agitated at them, so he got closer. "Bullshit! The truth is he was taken from his mother without her permission." Ivy proclaimed. The boy got closer to them, she could see his face in full detail now. He had a square jaw and thick lips, light hair. From what the girl could see, his eyes were light. Blue, maybe green. 'Handsome.' Ivy thought. "Henry, go back inside." He had an angry expression on his face. He was probably annoyed that Thomas and Ivy were practically harassing his 'mother'. "Who are you?" He asked them. "Please, Henry, go on!" Mrs Johnson begged for him to go, He just kept walking towards the pair. "Your real name is Michael Gray." Ivy said to him.

His eyes met hers, they were blue. Not as striking as Tommy's, or Ivy's, they were warmer, kinder, innocent. Her heart rate sped up as they remained strong eye contact. Although his eyes were warm, she could see a storm beginning to brew. There was a hidden fire somewhere deep inside of him. He was definitely Polly's son.

"No!" Shouted his fake mother. "Your real mother wants to see you." Ivy said with affection in her voice. Tommy reached into his pocket, pulling out a piece of paper with Polly's address on it. Mrs Johnson's actions became more erratic. "Her address is on this card." Tommy tried to give him the card but she was furiously slapping him, trying everything in her power to stop Michael from leaving her. The young girl snatched the card out of Thomas's hand so she could give it to him. "She just wants to talk." Ivy gave him the card with a smile. "Go away!"

"She just wants to talk." They began to walk away from the house. "Go away and leave us alone!" The woman screamed at them. "Come on, let's go inside. I'll get you something to eat." She said to Michael, ever so slightly calmer than she was before. Ivy took one final look back at the pair. The boy's face was of shock and curiosity and Mrs Johnson's was of fury and anger. She tried to hoax her 'son' back into the house but he refused. He continued to look at them, at Ivy in particular. Ivy turned back around to face in front of her.

She nudged Tommy's elbow. "That went well."

v. THE GARRISON

MASTERLIST

#finn shelby #harry kirton #michael gray #finn cole #smut #fluff #peaky blinders #tommy shelby #alfie solomons #treat you better

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makeetelich92 · 4 years ago

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Vitamin D: Why you're in all probability NOT obtaining Enough and the way that produces You Sick

What aliment might we'd like in amounts up to twenty five times over the govt recommends for U.S. to be healthy?

What vitamin deficiency affects 70-80 p.c of the population, is nearly ne'er diagnosed and has been coupled to many cancers, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, depression,(i) fibromyalgia, chronic muscle pain, bone loss and autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis?(ii)

What vitamin is almost wholly absent from our food supply?

What vitamin is that the hidden explanation for a lot of suffering that's simple to treat? national vitamin company products

The answer to any or all of those queries is vitamin D.

Over the last fifteen years of my practice, my focus has been to discover what the body needs to function optimally. Vitamin D, a nutrient (more of a hormone and gene modulator) is a critical, essential ingredient for health and optimal function. The problem is that most of us don't have enough of it because we work and live indoors, use sun block and can't get enough from our diet--even in fortified foods.

Two recent studies in the journal Pediatrics found that 70 percent of American kids aren't getting enough vitamin D, and this puts them at higher risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and lower levels of good cholesterol. (iii) Low vitamin D levels also may increase a child's risk of developing heart disease later in life.

Overall, 7.6 million, or nine percent, of US children were vitamin-D deficient, and another 50.8 million, or 61 percent, had insufficient levels of this important vitamin in their blood.

The average blood level of vitamin D was 25 ng/dl for Caucasians and 16 ng/dl for African Americans. The optimal level is 45 ng/dl and requires about 3000-4000 IU a day of vitamin D3 -- 10 times current recommendations. If our whole population achieved a minimum level of 45 ng/dl, we would have 400,000 fewer premature deaths per year. There would be a reduction of cancer by 35 percent, type 2 diabetes by 33 percent and all causes of mortality by seven percent. (iv)

The economic burden due to vitamin D insufficiency in the United States is $40-$53 billion per year. This can be corrected for pennies a person per day.

Over the last five years, I have tested almost every patient in my practice for vitamin D deficiency, and I have been shocked by the results. What's even more amazing is what happens when my patients' vitamin D status reaches optimal levels. Having witnessed these changes, there's no doubt in my mind: vitamin D is an incredible asset to your health.

That is why in today's blog I want to explain the importance of this essential vitamin and give you six tips on how to get optimize your vitamin D levels.

Let's start by looking at the massive impact vitamin D has on the health and function of every cell and gene in your body.

How Vitamin D Regulates Your Cells and Genes

Vitamin D has a dramatic impact on the health and function of your cells. It reduces cellular growth (which promotes cancer) and improves cell differentiation (which puts cells into an anti-cancer state). That makes vitamin D one of the most potent cancer inhibitors--and explains why vitamin D deficiency has been linked to colon, prostate, breast and ovarian cancer.

But what's even more fascinating is how vitamin D regulates and controls genes.

It acts on a cellular docking station called a receptor that then sends messages to our genes. That's how vitamin D controls so many different functions--like preventing cancer, reducing inflammation, boosting mood, easing muscle aches and fibromyalgia and building bones.

Vitamin D also helps prevent the flu and colds and infections. In an observational study of Finnish soldiers, those with 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels higher than 16 ng/mL (40 nmol/L) had fewer respiratory infections than those with lower levels.(v) More recently, in a double-blind randomized controlled trial involving school girls, supplementation with 1200 IU/d of vitamin D3 during the wintertime significantly reduced influenza A infections.(vi)

These are just a few examples of the power of vitamin D. When we don't get enough it impacts every area of our biology, because it affects the way our cells and genes function. And many of us are deficient for one simple reason ...

Your body makes vitamin D when it's exposed to sunlight. In fact, 80 to 100 percent of the vitamin D we need comes from the sun. The sun exposure that makes our skin a bit red (called 1 minimum erythemal dose) produces the equivalent of 10,000 to 25,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D in our bodies.

The problem is that most of us aren't exposed to enough sunlight.

Overuse of sunscreen is one reason. While these product help protect against skin cancer--they also block a whopping 97 percent of your body's vitamin D production.

If you live in a northern climate, you're not getting enough sun (and therefore vitamin D), especially during winter. And you're probably not eating enough of the few natural dietary sources of vitamin D: fatty wild fish like mackerel, herring and cod liver oil or porcini mushrooms.

In addition, aging skin produces less vitamin D--the average 70-year-old person creates only 25 percent of the vitamin D that a 20 year-old does. Skin color makes a difference, too. People with dark skin also produce less vitamin D. And I've seen very severe deficiencies in Orthodox Jews and Muslims who keep themselves covered all the time.

With all these causes of vitamin D deficiency, you can see why supplementing with enough of this vitamin is so important. Unfortunately, you aren't really being told the right amount of vitamin D to take.

The government recommends 200 to 600 IU of vitamin a day. This is the amount you need to prevent rickets, a disease caused by vitamin D deficiency. But the real question is: How much vitamin D do we need for OPTIMAL health? How much do we need to prevent autoimmune diseases, high blood pressure, fibromyalgia, chronic muscle pain,(vii) depression, osteoporosis and even cancer?

The answer is: Much more than you think.

Recent research by vitamin D pioneer Dr. Michael Holick, Professor of Medicine, Physiology, and Dermatology at Boston University School of Medicine, recommends intakes of up to 2,000 IU a day -- or enough to keep blood levels of 25 hydroxy vitamin D at between 75 to 125 nmol/L (nanomoles per liter).(viii) That may sound high, but it's still safe: Lifeguards have levels of 250 nmol/L without toxicity.

Our government currently recommends 2,000 IU as the upper limit for vitamin D -- but even that may not be high enough for our sun-deprived population! In countries where sun exposure provides the equivalent of 10,000 IU a day and people have vitamin D blood levels of 105 to 163 nmol/L, autoimmune diseases (like multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus) are uncommon.

Don't be scared that amounts that high are toxic: One study of healthy young men receiving 10,000 IU of vitamin D for 20 weeks showed no toxicity.(ix)

You might have seen a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that shows that a single high dose of 500,000 Units of vitamin D3 (one year's worth of vitamin D) increased the risk of falls and fractures in elderly woman.(x) Does this mean that vitamin D doesn't prevent fractures or falls? Absolutely not!

The design and logic of the study were completely wrong. As a friend once said, "The well meaning are often ill doing."

Imagine a study that gave people a year's worth of vitamin A, or iron (both are nutrients that are stored in the body like vitamin D) in one dose. The vitamin A would cause immediate liver failure and death. In fact, the way the Inuit used to kill explorers in the Arctic was to feed them polar bear liver, which gave them toxic doses of vitamin A. A year's worth of iron in one dose would cause severe intestinal problems and iron poisoning.

Biologically we understand why a single high dose of vitamin D may cause problems. A single high dose induces protective mechanisms that reduce the available vitamin D by increasing the activity of enzymes that cause the vitamin D to be broken down by the body. (xi) The body requires a balance of the right nutrients at the right dose at the right time. No one would eat a year's worth of anything in one day and expect it to be healthy.

The question that remains is: How can you get the right amounts of vitamin D for you?

6 Tips for Getting the Right Amount of Vitamin D

Unless you're spending all your time at the beach, eating 30 ounces of wild salmon a day, or downing 10 tablespoons of cod liver oil a day, supplementing with vitamin D is essential. The exact amount needed to get your blood levels to the optimal range (100 to160 nmol/L) will vary depending on your age, how far north you live, how much time you spend in the sun and even the time of the year. But once you reach optimal levels, you'll be amazed at the results.

For example, one study found that vitamin D supplementation could reduce the risk of getting type 1 diabetes by 80 percent.(xii) In the Nurses' Health Study (a study of more than 130,000 nurses over 3 decades), vitamin D supplementation reduced the risk of multiple sclerosis by 40 percent.(xiii),(xiv)

I've seen many patients with chronic muscle aches and pains and fibromyalgia who are vitamin D deficient--a phenomenon that's been documented in studies. Their symptoms improve when they are treated with vitamin D. A Danish study of Arabic women with fibromyalgia found significant vitamin D deficiency and recovery with replacement of vitamin D.(xv)

Finally, vitamin D has been shown to help prevent and treat osteoporosis. In fact, it's even more important than calcium. That's because your body needs vitamin D to be able to properly absorb calcium. Without adequate levels of vitamin D, the intestine absorbs only 10 to 15 percent of dietary calcium. Research shows that the bone-protective benefits of vitamin D keep increasing with the dose.

So here is my advice for getting optimal levels of vitamin D:

1. Get tested for 25 OH vitamin D. The current ranges for "normal" are 25 to 137 nmol/L or 10 to 55 ng/ml. These are fine if you want to prevent rickets -- but NOT for optimal health. In that case, the range should be 100 to 160 nmol/L or 40 to 65 ng/ml. In the future, we may raise this "optimal" level even higher.

2. Take the right type of vitamin D. The only active form of vitamin D is vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). Look for this type. Many vitamins and prescriptions of vitamin D have vitamin D2 -- which is not biologically active.

3. Take the right amount of vitamin D. If you have a deficiency, you should correct it with 5,000 to 10,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day for three months--but only under a doctor's supervision. For maintenance, take 2,000 to 4,000 IU a day of vitamin D3. Some people may need higher doses over the long run to maintain optimal levels because of differences in vitamin D receptors, living in northern latitudes, indoor living, or skin color.

4. Monitor your vitamin D status until you are in the optimal range. If you are taking high doses (10,000 IU a day) your doctor must also check your calcium, phosphorous and parathyroid hormone levels every three months.

5. Remember that it takes up to 6 to 10 months to "fill up the tank" for vitamin D if you're deficient. Once this occurs, you can lower the dose to the maintenance dose of 2,000 to four,000 Units a day.

6. attempt to eat dietary thereforeurces of aliment D. These include:

• Fish liver oils, love cod liver oil. one TBSP (15 ml) = 1,360 IU of vitamin D• sauteed wild salmon. 3.5 oz = 360 IU of vitamin D• sauteed mackerel. 3.5 oz = 345 IU of vitamin D• Sardines, willned in oil, drained. 1.75 oz = 250 IU of vitamin D• One whole egg = twenty IU of vitamin D• Porcini mushrooms 4 ounces = four hundred IU of vitamin D

You can see currently why I feel so turbulently regarding vitamin D. This vitamin is crucial for good health. therefore begin aiming for optimum levels--and watch however your health improves.

#health #exercise #diet #healthy living #health and wellness #healthy lifestyle

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greennightspider · 5 years ago

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Secrets V: Meet the Ragnarssons

Summary: Summary: Hvitserk is usually the quiet, mischievous brother. No one really knows what he does, or where he is half of the time, he’s usually an enigma. So what if the reason why….was not an it, but a who? Rumena beings to settle in and enjoy life in Kattegat. But what happens when their secret is found out?

Author: This is the second to last chapter set in the present timeline (not present as in modern).

Secrets, Secrets II, Secrets III, Secrets IV, Secrets VI

Hvitserk x Rumena (Mena for short) (OC)

Rumena inhaled deeply and let the morning Viking chill fill her lungs. She watched the small puffs of her breath fade into the air as the little waves kitten licked the shore.

“Many things on your mind?” Helga smiled as she approached the wistful girl.

Days with Floki and Helga were peaceful and filled with interesting things. Floki taught would teach Rumena about their ways, their legends and tales, while Helga taught you the more domestic things of the trade. Living in a city meant that you were used to markets and stalls, notsomuch crops and fields. Not that Rumena minded though.

“Just enjoying the morning air.”

“I would have thought this much too chilly for you.” Helga remarked, trying to balance her basket among the rocks, the frosty bite even a lot for her.

Rumena on the other hand welcomed the fresh tidings, the crisp clean air and the peacefulness of the outskirts of Kattegat.

“It gives me a peace that I have not known, and I fear I do not deserve.”

Helga came and sat down next to her close companion. “And why do you think you do not deserve it? Your friendship has meant more to me than you know.

Rumena smiled fondly at the compliment. “Well, why would anyone give gutter rat such a beautiful chance. To be surrounded by kindness and friends.” The girl shook her head. “Such generosity has ever been given to me for nothing.”

Helga was about to reply, but stopped as she saw Floki approaching.

“Well whether you think you deserve it or not, it is here for you. The fjord and the gods welcome you to our shores, and surely It was in their plan for you to join with our mischievous prince.” Floki gestured grandly.

“We must bask when the fates shine their favour upon us, for you never know when it could turn.” Floki giggled.

“But not always turning for the worst.” Helga pointed out. “Twists and turns can always turn for the better.”

“Yes yes yes a wheel is not always upside down for long.” Floki gestured, kissing Helga’s cheek before disappearing off into the woods.

“He speaks in riddles, but he is right.” Rumena laughed and stood up with Helga, following her into their home to sort her gathered herbs.

“Speaking of change…” Helga started slowly. “Have you thought about things with Hvitserk?”

Rumena’s brow was furrowed as she held a few wisps in the side of her mouth. “What you mean?”

“Well, have you thought about the future? Or about maybe wanting a family?” Helga queried cheerfully, to which Rumena’s eyes widened.

Helga watched the normally feisty girl grow quiet, and slowly place the strands from her mouth on the table. “Rumena? I’m sorry I did not mean to startle you.”

“No no, it is okay.” Rumena stuttered. “I guess I haven’t thought much.”

Helga bit her lip before she pressed on. “I only ask because it is clear how Hvitserk feels for you. I mean, we’ve known him since he was young, and he’s always been a frivolous child. But these days…I have never seen him so focused on one thing.”

Rumena, who had been quietly listening, swallowed. “And what is this one thing?”

Helga looked at her as if it was obvious. “You. Providing for you, taking care of you, I have never seen him so serious.” Helga chuckled, going back to grinding her herbs, leaving her words to settle in Rumena’s mind.

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As Rumena trudged back to the cabin she let her mind wander to her bedmate. While she had not known him for long, it seemed as though he grew more and more into a man every day.

She could not keep the smile from her face as she set her herbs on the table and flopped on the bed, taking in Hvitserk’s lingering scent. She was almost tempted to let herself fade into memories of temptful nights, wondering if she should get herself ready for when Hvitserk came. But a small thud made her freeze and sit upright. And it was then she realised she was not alone.

While she was writhing on the bed, indulging in fantasies, she had failed to notice the rather sinister visitor, sliding himself out from behind the bathtub. He had gazed at her in curiosity, wondering how his brother had snuck such a morsel for himself.

“Well well well, what do we have here.”

At once Rumena screamed and grabbed the nearest thing she could to throw at the stranger. The intruder grunted as the pot broke on impact with his arm, and Mena used this chance to try and make for the door.

But the stranger grabbed at her with one arm and managed to trip her skirt. She kicked at his arms to which he cried out in pain, but it only made his grip stronger when he caught her ankle.

“GET OFF!” She roared, trying desperately trying to break free, but on the floor the blue eyed demon made quick work of pinning her down. Rumena’s anger masked her fear as his bloodthirsty eyes got closer to her face, lording over her body like a spider.

“VISEKAAAAA!!!!!”

“QUIET SLAVE!” The stranger roared back at her.

“What the hell is this all about?”

Rumena turned her head up to meet two new strangers at the door, one with brown hair and blue eyes, the other with dusty blonde hair and blue eyes, with braids to match. Although the blonde haired one looked the older of the two.

“Ivar get off her!” Ubbe turning his head with a hint of sympathy in his eyes for the girl.

“She’s a slave,” Ivar’s grip tightened on her wrists, and Mena yelped in pain. “Why should I?”

“Get. Off.” Bjorn’s warning tone enough to give Ivar pause.

Ivar snarled but released the girl, to which she scrambled right to the back wall.

“We’re not going to hurt you.” Ubbe held his hands up in surrender, but Mena was having none of it.

“VISEKA!!!!!!!!!”

“What the hell is she screaming?” Bjorn yelled.

Hvitserk’s walk to his cabin turned from joy into dread when he heard the blood curdling scream of his name. He then started running up the hill to his cabin, seeing figures in the doorway. As he got closer he recognized it was his brothers, but Rumena’s scream told him this wasn’t a friendly visit.

Bjorn nudged Ubbe and nodded his head toward their fast approaching sibling, looking like murder in his eyes.

“Hvitserk , we swear-“

“GET OUT OF THE WAY!” Hvitserk barged through the wall of his brothers.

As soon as he laid eyes on Rumena clutching her wrists in the corner, and Ivar looking menacing as always, he made a beeline for the youngest and almost

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER, HMMM? DO NOT THINK I WON’T KILL YOU.”

Ivar’s eyes were filled with anger and uncertainty as Hvtiserk held him by his collar, Ivar having nothing to hold onto but his own brother’s arms.

In a flash Ubbe grabbed Hvitserk while Bjorn grabbed Ivar and separated the two, both of them still trying to lunch at each other.

“WHY ARE YOU HERE?” Hvitserk roared.

“Ivar had told us there was a runaway slave hiding here.” Ubbe attempted to explain while keeping Hvitserk in a headlock. “We followed him, but he got here first.”

“What have you been doing here then brother?” Bjorn grunted as he struggled to keep Ivar in check. “Keeping the best for yourself?”

“.....Brothers?”

The boys all looked to Mena, who had since made her way towards the firepit and grabbed a long metal poker. Hvitserk instantly stilled in Ubbe’s arms. “Mena, did they do anything to you?”

“The crawling one surprised me. But that’s all.” Mena tried to sound, but Hvitserk saw her try and deftly pull her sleeves down over her wrists. She was trying her best not to tremble.

Hvitserk shoved himself out of Ubbe’s grip, and then turned so he was in front of Rumena.

“Get out.”

Bjorn thought his little brother, the joker, was once again playing a ruse. “Come on Hvitserk-“

“I said GET OUT!”

Even Ivar looked a tad startled at the outburst, never knowing Hvitserk to be the serious one. Or the angry one. Those two roles had already been taken. And yet Hvitserk stood there, his back straighter than ever. Bjorn too was intrigued by the resolve in his brother’s eyes, but decided this was a battle for another day. “Well then.”

“What the- hey!” Ivar tried to squirm as Bjorn dragged him outside with him. “I wasn’t done with him!” Ivar roared, kicking and wriggling as he went.

Before Ubbe could exit he put his hand on Hvitserk’s shoulder. “Brother, you know that if she is a slave or otherwise, you will need to inform mother.”

Hvitserk said nothing, but the clench in his jaw told Ubbe that he understood.

As soon as the door was shut Mena dropped the poker in her hand.

“Viseka-“ She tried to get out, but Hvitserk cut her off. Picking Rumena up and laid her on the bed, covering them both in furs and holding her close. He kissed each her wrists, to which she winced.

“Why did you lie.” He glared, still holding her hands in his. Her big hazel eyes looked downcast, biting her bottom lip.

“They are your brothers...” Mena slowly wrapped her hands around his. “Men around me have always taken the side of their kin-their brothers-even if they have been wrong.” Hvitserk watched those beautiful eyes start to glaze over with memories that looked to haunt her from the dead. “No one took my side. Not once.”

Hvitserk encircled her once more, resting his chin on her head. “You know I would never do that. Blame you when my idiot brothers are the ones at fault.”

Rumena laughed, but tried not to let tears flow as she buried her head in his chest.

“You know I would always protect you. No matter what.”

She sniffled as she looked up at Hvitserk, at the man she knew now held her heart in his hands. She kissed him endearingly, pouring in all the love she could muster.

“Thank you.”

Hvitserk held her close to his chest for the rest of that night. Never letting go.

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#hvitserk #vikings hvitserk #vikings fanfiction #vikings fanfic #vikings x woc #hvitserk series #hvitserk x oc #hvitserk fanfiction #hvitserk fanfic #hvitserk x woc #greennightspider

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cookinguptales · 5 years ago

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I've a small query (if it doesn't float your boat, no worries!) I was interested in how you got into learning languages, what led you to it? I've become curious since learning a new language as an adult has only increased my awe of multilingual folk (additionally, I vaguely remember a post about a request in exchange for a donation to charity, and wondered if there were any you'd like a donation to)

First of all, good luck with the language learning! It’s not easy as an adult, but I do think it’s worth it, both in terms of cultural fluency and brain elasticity.

My answer to the language thing is actually extremely complicated, so I’ll be putting it under the cut. I’ll put the charity stuff above the cut so more people can see it.

— I’d just like to warn you, though, before I start, that I have been locked in this house for over a month with no respite and I HAVE A LOT OF WORDS AND FEELINGS IN ME SO THIS POST HAS SO MANY OF BOTH OF THOSE THINGS!!

anyway

There are so many charities that I want to donate to now that it honestly makes my head spin. Every time I look at a site like GoFundMe it kind of makes me want to cry. So a lot of donations I’ve made have been to like local businesses, restaurants, etc. who will close down without help. (Also a lot of local native groups, who are disproportionately suffering right now.) I’ve also been donating to various food banks — Philabundance, a Philly-centric charity that deals with food insecurity in general, is a good one. That was a regular of mine even before the outbreak. I’ve also donated to a lot of the local services in the small town where I’m in now, though you’ll need to PM me if you want the name of that. (It’s… very small.)

Off Their Plate is another great charity that’s been working with small restaurants (who can’t open for business) to get food to first responders. They’re partnered with World Central Kitchen, which is another fantastic charity that helps out during disasters. Plus well-known ones like Feeding America, No Kid Hungry (important while school is out and kids aren’t getting breakfast/lunch there), Direct Relief, etc.

(I uhhh may have overstrained my charity budget the past couple months. It’s odd how that adds to stress and relieves it at the same time.)

I tend to avoid religious charities, especially Salvation Army, because they’re occasionally discriminatory in how they distribute resources and we no longer have laws & oversight to make sure they don’t do shady shit. So I just avoid them in general now. I also avoid the American Red Cross because they’ve been known to misuse funds. Research is key!

I also worry about some of my regular charities, like Immigration Equality & Rainbow Railroad (helps LGBTQ people in dangerous countries immigrate to less dangerous ones), the Native American Rights Fund, various local abortion funds, RAICES (provides legal services to immigrants & refugees), the ACLU, Dysautonomia International, the Rainforest Action Network, etc… A lot of them are getting fewer donations than they’re used to because we’re in the middle of such life-shattering events.

If you are really interested in making a donation (please, please, please do) those are all good options. I also fully recommend looking up needy organizations, services, people, etc. in your own area. I try to donate to a healthy mixture of national/international organizations, local needs, and temporary issues du jour. (Disaster relief, bail funds for protesters, fighting new discriminatory laws, etc.) I would genuinely appreciate any donations, especially if you find a cause near and dear to your heart that I would never even hear about. Anything along these same lines, y’know? If you have anything you’d like me to do in return, just hmu.

I constantly stress about who to donate to — there are so many good organizations and so few dollars to give them — but at a certain point, every dollar to a cause you believe in counts. Every dollar you donate helps to make the world a little bit better for at least one person. That’s what I have to tell myself to calm myself down, haha. So even the smallest donation you make to any of these groups would mean a lot to me.

Anyway, onto the language stuff:

For me personally, I grew up bilingual. Deafness runs in my family, so I learned sign language from a very young age. Note: I say “sign language” rather than ASL. I learned sign language kind of organically, which ended up making a mess later in life. My parents mostly taught me, but so did my daycare (at a deaf school) and so did my babysitters and so did other family members, etc. The point is, not all of them used the same sign language. There was a wide mixture of ASL, SEE, and home signs and my current signing style is… problematic. lmao. My family all understands it (hey, they taught it to me) and I can have conversations with American sign language users, but I know they can’t love my signing lmao. I’ve considered sitting down and taking a legit ASL class for years, but there are so many classes I want to take… I don’t know.

After that, it largely became a case of taking languages whenever they were made available to me. I’ve always liked them. We moved around a lot when I was a preteen so I went to a lot of different schools. (4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade were all different schools.) It was rough at home and hard to make friends so I guess I threw myself into academics a lot. My sixth grade school was an odd one; it was a 6-8 grade school and you were supposed to take a crash course in three different languages in sixth grade so you could choose one and take it in 7th and 8th grade. I ended up taking Spanish, French, and German that year. I liked French best! But then we moved so it was kind of moot. (And I hated German, sorry Germans. My mouth doesn’t like the noises. It didn’t help that my teacher was weirdly sympathetic to Nazi-era Germany…? But I guess that’s another post.)

When we moved to Florida, you had to have special permission to take language classes in 7th grade. (FL doesn’t have great academics.) But since I’d already had some Spanish in NC, they let me take it! And then I moved schools again. This new school, my 8th grade school, I’d be in until I graduated 12th grade years later — but the employee turnover at that school was almost comedically bad? I took Spanish for like a year and a half there and had three different teachers. So at this point I’d had 5 different Spanish teachers, all from different countries (where they spoke slightly different Spanish!), all reteaching the same ideas over and over again because they didn’t know where the last teacher had left off. In the end, my last Spanish teacher sent me to the school library with some textbooks because he felt like I was very good at languages and he couldn’t adequately teach me in the environment he’d been thrown into. (My high school was very terrible. So he was right.)

SO I SWITCHED TO FRENCH. I took French for 3-4 years in high school (can’t remember when I started) but the same shit started happening. By the last year, my French teacher had the French I, II, III, and IV students IN THE SAME CLASS and she just put the advanced students in small groups and had us do independent study. Sigh… Around this same time, I started three other languages. At this point, I was getting kind of accustomed to self-study so I applied for a Latin class in the Florida Virtual School and took a year of that. I also spent a summer studying at the University of Chicago when I was 16-17 and learned Middle Egyptian then. (Yes, I was an ancient cultures nerd even back then.)

The Japanese has always been an odd case. Like I said, my 8-12 education was fairly terrible. They had this thing where they used a computer program to teach kids math and the teacher kind of taught along? When I transferred to the school in the middle of 8th grade, the teacher didn’t know what to do with me so he just plopped me in front of a computer and told me to do as much as I could. They started me in… Pre-Algebra, I think? Which I’d already taken in sixth grade. So I ended up getting through Pre-Algebra, Geometry, Algebra, and Algebra II, which… wasn’t in the teacher’s plans. I’d kind of finished several years of math in like a quarter. And then they didn’t have any more classes. So he just told me to like. Sit quietly and amuse myself for the last few months of school?? (Terrible, terrible school.) So I went to the library and found a book about Japanese and started teaching myself that. I really, really liked Japanese! Like it’s a language that just clicks really well with the way my brain works, I think. It’s very logical, I like the syllabary, etc. And I think growing up signing helped me with pictographic languages like Middle Egyptian and Japanese. My brain easily connects visual symbols with concepts.

When I went to college, the plan was honestly to learn more Egyptian and start translating, and I kept taking French to help me read old research in various ancient study fields. I ended up transferring out of the NELC major, though, due to some ethical problems… I guess that’s another post. Several years into my RELS/FOLK degree I went to my parents like. Look. I love learning this stuff but none of it’s useful. Remember how much I loved Japanese? Can I go back to learning that? I could translate that and that’s a legit skill. So I applied to a program through my school and studied in Japan for a while and ended up really doubling down on that language. Weird how I came back to it years later, but I guess it was always the one I loved best.

I have a mind that’s very pattern-based, so I guess I’ve always loved learning languages and the patterns behind them. (This may be why languages with a lot of rule exceptions, like French, irritate me.) They’re like puzzles that I’ve always enjoyed teasing out. Unfortunately, the way my education bounced around meant that I never got a good grounding in most of those languages, so I’ve largely lost them. I can still read French fairly well and my Japanese is good… My Spanish is like. Enough to get me around in the southern US. My German is abysmal. I remember very little Latin & Middle Egyptian. (It’s been over 10 years, I guess.)

So I guess what I feel the need to say to you is that if you don’t use it, you will lose it. I did well in all my language classes. They’ve always been fairly easy for me. Like. Straight As, no problem. I don’t say this to brag. I say it so you know that even for someone like me, whose brain is fairly well-wired for languages, it’s very, very difficult to retain languages when you’re not using them. If you’re not used to taking languages or you started late in life, it’s even harder. So even on the days you don’t want to practice! You gotta practice! Ganbare! Bon chance!

#replies #god these are so many words #sorry to everyone #shaymeson

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alarawriting · 6 years ago

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Inktober #8: Frail

This was delayed a day because it’s longer than any of the others. Relates to my WIP “No Drama”, aka “Q is an investigative journalist researching whether God is a corrupt politician of his people”.

So the first thing I need to explain before I tell you about meeting Heph is his name.

Humans call me John Deer (it’s a joke. Their name for a man who has no name is John Doe, but a doe is a female deer. I don’t technically have one of their genders, strictly speaking, and if you go by the body I’m in, it’s not female, so I thought I’d go by John Deer. Turns out the joke’s on me; add a silent e to the name and it’s a company that makes tractors. Go figure.) However, as I hope would be obvious, that’s not my real name. The Aleph don’t have physical bodies and aren’t made of matter and the pure information we are made of doesn’t translate to syllables you or anything that makes sound can pronounce. If I were to translate my name, it would be impossibly long to convey in words; an Aleph’s name is, essentially, a hash function of our personality, the defining nature of our being. I’m not going to stand here and recite my entire personality to you, or anyone else’s entire personality, either, and don’t expect any other Aleph to do so.

So when we walk among pre-eschatonic species, we generally go by the names of gods in their language, or animals of symbolic value (which on most planets, for many groups on that planet, are indistinguishable from gods), or Virtue Names like “Patience” (that one is definitely not mine). And then, when we speak to one another with our meat mouths because we’re in meat bodies, we use those names, the use-names specific for that planet, that culture, that language. On Earth, in English-speaking languages (as well as a significant number of the other ones), I’m known to other Aleph as Fox, Ferret or Weasel, depending on their current opinion of me. My opponent goes by the Lion, or the Ape. But Heph doesn’t use animal names; for the past several hundred years, when he walked on this planet, he called himself Hephaestus. The Greek God of engineering, smithing and invention – technology, in other words – who also happened to be crippled. I think it would be hard to find a myth better suited to be Heph’s use-name.

You see, Heph was born damaged. (We aren’t “born” like you’re born, messy screaming infants coming out of a parent’s orifices. A seed is woven by an entire team of Aleph who’ve chosen to procreate and gotten permission to do so, and then that seed grows fractally. So we are a little less random than spinning the Wheel of Sperm and Ova like you guys do… but not much less random.) By the time he was grown enough that anyone was able to notice the damage, it was too late to correct him without making major changes to his essence, and most Aleph would have to be dying before they’d consent to that (if then. Personally I’d rather die.) It’s hard to explain what the problem is to a non-Aleph, so I need to draw an analogy. In essence… his bandwidth is too low. He cannot quickly upload anything to the Host, and he doesn’t have the storage capacity for the energy we draw down to do our reality-altering things. Where the rest of us are gods, Heph is barely a guardian spirit.

Back when we were both living in the Host most of the time, I am… ashamed to admit that I overlooked Heph, the way almost all the Aleph do. He can’t join with one of us – well, he can, but it’s shallow because of his low bandwidth. Not to be crude about it but it’s as if one of your males was trying to make love to a woman with the vaginal depth of a tea saucer. It… doesn’t do a lot for most Aleph. He can’t participate in most of the things we do because he can’t store enough energy to do it. So he isolates himself from us, and we let him do it because we’re all kind of at a loss as to how you include a guy who can’t do 90% of what you take for granted.

Heph, however, is very smart. All Aleph are by human standards, but Heph is by our standards. So he found a way around the problem.

When I met him on Earth, I was dying in a gutter. I’d been sentenced to a decade of being locked down to a single mortal body, and since I’d been on Earth when they grabbed me and put me on trial, it was Earth they sent me back to. Specifically, Victorian England. Naked, and with no money. Or antibodies. I ended up in a workhouse, where as you can imagine I did fantastically well since I’ve always been so eager to do pointless busywork and follow orders. The main punishment for disobedience was not being fed, followed by being held in a cell for a day and then given clothes that were supposed to shame you. I had no sense of shame, but I got a lot less food than the body I was in needed, and I was surrounded by people who were not in the best health. When I couldn’t work anymore and I was delirious with fever, they threw me out to be picked up with the rest of the refuse, assuming I’d be dead by morning.

Heph was on Earth too. He tracked me down, using technology he’d created. That’s Heph’s thing. He creates technology to compensate for his weaknesses. We have safeguards against anyone or anything but a recognized member of the Host drawing on power, so his tech can’t do all the shiny things a full-powered Aleph can, but we have plenty of access protocols to reach the database of knowledge. So he was able to find me. No Aleph was supposed to render me aid, but Heph was not afraid of pulling the cripple card to get away with doing anything he’d been forbidden to do that he nonetheless decided was the right thing to do. He may be one of the smartest of us, but most Aleph treat him as if he’s not particularly bright, just because he can’t output his thoughts as fast as the rest of us, or fork himself and multi-process. And he made sure not to give me any aid that only an Aleph would be capable of. He fed me bread mold, a powerful antibiotic – you know it as penicillin – that humans happened to not have discovered yet, and pumped sugar, water and saline solution directly into my veins with a sterile glass tube ending in a needle, which humans would later refer to as an IV once they’d invented it. It was all with materials that could be found on Earth, that humans could have discovered (and in fact did, later on.)

I didn’t know my sentence was for a decade. Nobody had told me there was a time limit. I thought they’d left me on Earth to die. Heph restored meaning to my life. The Host as a whole may have abandoned me, but one specific Aleph still cared, and went well out of his way to take care of me. Heph’s not known for being a fluffy, love and compassion kind of guy; he’s cold, aloof, introverted, with difficulty outputting his emotions in a format most Aleph can read, and his shallow bandwidth means that if an Aleph tried to probe him directly, it would cause him a lot of pain. Which, since we are a compassionate species, meant no one was allowed to probe him without his permission. Which he never gave.

In those days, Heph had been tall and broad-shouldered, still going with the whole blacksmith motif. He was never ripped like a bodybuilder, but his upper body had some substantial muscle to it. He’d affected black curly hair and bronze skin like the Greeks he’d named himself for. And he’d worn thick spectacles and walked with a cane. I’m not sure whether he does it on purpose or whether it’s a subconscious compulsion, but every body Heph creates for himself in matter has damage to mobility and damage to perception, representing what he suffers in his true form. I tend to think Heph identifies so strongly with being disabled, he can’t imagine having a form that isn’t.

Ten years before I’d even learned the sentence was finite. Heph had known, but hadn’t been allowed to tell me – and while obviously he thought he could get away with saving my life and being my companion and showing me how to survive as a human, equally obviously he didn’t want to disobey the Host in the matter of telling me my sentence. Their logic was that it was hardly an aspect of being mortal to know for a fact that if you just survive long enough you’ll get your immortality back. The truth was, of course, the Lion had had the judges in his pocket. We hated each other even then; that’s why I started investigating him. He had them do it to be pointlessly cruel, and they came up with a rationalization to the rest of the Host. Well, in those ten years, Heph became my best friend. Raven and Cat and Monkey, my other close friends, hadn’t come to visit. Even Isis, who treated me like I was her little brother and used to watch out for me when we were millions of years younger, left me there. Heph was the only Aleph willing to risk the displeasure of the Host to be my friend.

So as soon as I came back to Earth, I looked him up, of course.

I’m kind of in the same boat he’s always been in; I have my powers, but the moment I draw down energy to do anything major, or even upload any complex hand-rolled query, my memories upload to the Host. And I’m absolutely sure that the Lion is going to honor the law and not seek to obtain illicit access to privacy-locked memories. Yup. Positive. So the moment I use my powers, my enemy gets to see exactly what I’ve been thinking and planning up to that point. Which means I can’t use my powers for anything short of “my physical body has just been killed and I need to upload or I’ll actually die.” But locating a fellow Aleph is such a common query, we have a wizard for it, which can be triggered without uploading – and while my privacy lock keeps that particular simple query from finding me, Heph’s never felt the need to hide.

But I gotta admit I was kind of shocked when I saw his new body.

He recognized me, of course. “Fox. Come on in.”

Heph was living in a farmhouse that he’d converted to his brand of tech wonderland, probably because he wanted to have enough land between him and his human neighbors that no one called the cops for strange noises or mysterious lights. I stepped over several gadgets of unknown function, following Heph to the kitchen. “You still drink tea?” he asked me.

“Uh, yeah, what have you got?”

“Oolong, chai, green with ginger, peach chamomile, Earl Grey, and hibiscus.”

“Gimme the chai.” The last time we’d met, chai had been something you’d only get if you were actually in India.

I made my way to his kitchen table, which was covered with papers and had what looked like two laptops sitting on it. I happened to know they were laptops the way desktop computers are abacuses, but humans probably wouldn’t have been easily able to tell the difference, unless they knew the Unix operating system well enough to know that Heph was not running a variant of it. Heph pushed the papers out of the way on one of the chairs, giving me a clear spot to sit down, as he remote-activated a teakettle with his mind.

“What brings you back to Earth?” he asked.

“Before we get into that, I need to address the elephant in the room, Heph.”

“No one here goes by Elephant.”

If I hadn’t known Heph as well as I did, I might not have guessed he was telling a joke; he was completely deadpan. “Yeah yeah. What have you done to your use-form?”

Like I said, the last time I’d seen Heph, he’d been built, matching the crippled blacksmith stereotype. Now… he was still tall. That was about the only point of resemblance. He’d gone for a pasty white, skinny form with long blond hair in a ponytail, thick glasses with a tint to them so I couldn’t really see his eyes well, and his body looked like it would blow away in a strong wind. There was a visible brace on his left leg, and he dragged it very slightly when he walked. Heph had always made his use-forms disabled, but there’s disabled and then there’s “looks completely helpless.”

“This is the new look for the 21st century technologist,” Heph said.

“It looks like the consumption chic that was going around in Byron’s day. Do you eat? At all?”

“Sure. Chips, pizza, burgers. All of the fatty, unhealthy stuff that modern technology gurus poison themselves with when they’re crunching on a project, which is all the time.”

“Great, so you’re not just incredibly skinny, you also probably have a dozen vitamin deficiencies. Heph. You gotta keep that body running! With your upload time—”

“Thanks, I’m aware of my upload time. And I’m pretty sure you didn’t drop in on me just to tell me I’m too thin.”

“I’m worried about you. You look like one high fever could do you in.”

“They’ve invented a lot more antibiotics than they had around when you got sick. Listen, Fox, I get that you’re worried, but I’m not trapped like you were. If something goes wrong with this body because it’s too fragile to survive, which is highly unlikely anyway, I’ll have enough time to upload. I’ve got plenty of equipment to scan it for health.” He got to his feet with some difficulty and limped over toward the singing teakettle.

“What was wrong with the old one?”

“Firstly, too many photographs got taken of it. I had to fake my death so I didn’t have uncomfortable questions about why I looked exactly like my great-grandfather.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before posing for photographs right after they were invented.”

“It’s not the Victoriana I was concerned with, it was more the World War II era stuff. And secondly, it’s the aesthetic. Today people don’t think of blacksmiths when they think of technology. They think of autistic white men with bad vision.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Did you actually give yourself autism or is that just a metaphor?”

“Look the definitions up, I am actually the closest thing to autistic the Aleph have ever produced.” He came over to the table with my tea. I didn’t try to help him or intercept him. Quite aside from the fact that he’d find it insulting, he had so much junk on the floor that his knowledge of what to step over and when made him more mobile than I’d be. “But stop trying to sidetrack me. What are you doing on Earth?”

If another Aleph had asked that question, there might have been all kinds of subtext in there. Are you in exile again? Have you gone native after spending ten years as a mortal here? Don’t you have anything better to do? From Heph, it more or less meant exactly what he’d asked. “Can’t tell you unless you’ve run a backup,” I said, taking a sip of the tea.

Heph rolled his eyes. “You’re so dramatic,” he said. “Look at this.” He got up again and dodged some more junk on the floor, making his way toward what the people who’d built this place probably thought of as a family room or maybe sitting room. I followed, feeling like a drunk guy in a china shop. My personal aesthetic has never been tiny, delicate motions, so getting anywhere across Heph’s floor without breaking his stuff was like a minefield, except with fewer actual explosions, I hoped.

It was a metal box. “Very impressive,” I said. “I especially like the craft in the solder lines.”

“Don’t be an ass. Here.” He unlatched a latch I hadn’t recognized and lifted the lid. Inside was a crystalline array of the kind the Aleph used to use before we shifted to encoding our data in neutron stars. “Local backup device.”

I tried not to look impressed. Of course Heph had a local backup device. I was kicking myself for not assuming he’d have created such a thing. “Does it work?”

“I changed my use-form. How do you think I did that without it being a major pain in the rear?”

That was a good point. Heph’s bandwidth was low enough that it would take him a couple of days to upload to the Host. Changing bodies would have involved creating a new form, uploading out of it, and then downloading into the new one… which was a problem if it took you two days to upload or download, because your physical body might very well die on you or suffer brain damage while you were imperfectly socketed in it. I felt a lot better about Heph’s frailty now. “How long does it take to transfer to that?”

“I’m running delta backups every time I sleep, so if the body were to die unexpectedly, I’d only need to transfer at most a day’s worth of memories and experiences. Probably 20 minutes at a maximum. Also, if it wasn’t obvious to you, I’m not doing regular backups to the Host and I can tag data to keep it out of the upload when I do, and there’s no way any other Aleph is getting into my local backup server. It’s not even connected to the Host except when I run uploads from it.”

Okay. His memories weren’t accessible to the Lion either. That meant it was safe to tell him the details of what I was up to. I made my way back to the table with my teacup. “So, this is going to be a long story…”

#inktober 2019 #no drama

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nalascat · 6 years ago

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Can you do a survival shipping thingy 0w0?

okay well, sorry for making this take way too long. first, ive been excited to do this from day one, but ive been busy with a writing contest and procrastinating on that for like the last month, but im going to get to this while i wait for the last round lol

i guess that survivalshipping really caught my eye when it came around my dash for like the 3 posts it has, and i wanted to try something out for it, but just never did.

this gives me that chance

its in first person, vinny’s pov. takes place in ep 97? onesided pining time

"What could possibly be more important than survival?"

Garmadon's question caught me off guard. Sure, he said he wanted to ask me a query or whatever, but I had expected it would be something about maybe Ninjago or how to reconquer it, perhaps? But this hadn't crossed my mind.

I must have been silent for too long, as he stared at me with an expression telling me to answer. "Oh, well. Lots of things. Friendship, man, and-and-and love, and harmony, and trust, and truth, and courage, and you know, all the stuff that makes life worthwhile." Like love. My mind supplied, but I squashed the thought down. "Without those, I mean, what's the point? Right?" I smiled nervously at him, waiting for a response.

"Hm. Indeed. You may leave now, Vinny of NGTV News." He spoke, turning and looking back at the pictures on the wall.

I remained standing there for a little while, wondering if maybe I should talk to him. My quest to find the bathroom was forgotten as I watched him look sadly at the photos.

It wasn't until he had killed the Great Devourer that I caught notice of him. It was interesting at first, a man with four arms, at one point with the ninja and then against them almost immediately.

Then the whole debacle with the Overlord and he was no longer evil, back to the form he was before being evil. My interest in him whittled down as he shied away from the spotlight and I grew busy with work.

He had sacrificed himself in order to save Ninjago, apparently. And then Harumi, our princess, actually, resurrected him.

And that's when my attention focused solely on him.

Garmadon took over Ninjago. And while most were terrified, I was, I guess, entranced.

My feet were glued to the floor as I watched him clutch onto one singular photo, of the green ninja and what seemed to be his 'good' form. I wanted to walk up to him, ask if he was alright. But my feet stayed.

A red eye looked back at me, a glare centered on me. "Why are you still here?"

"I-" I sputtered out, biting my lip. "Sorry, I just wanted to know if you were alright."

"Alright? What would be wrong with me?"

"You just look kinda sad. Is there anything wrong with that picture, or?"

"My son."

"Hm?"

"My son. He's angry with me, and I guess it makes me feel..."

"Bad?" I asked, tempted to put my hand on his, but stopping myself. He nodded. "That's alright. It's normal to feel bad."

Garmadon fell silent. His eyes were focused on the ground.

I spoke up, "You asked me about survival and what was more important than that. Is your son more important than survival to you?"

"Yes."

"Then that is why you feel bad. Maybe his importance to you makes you feel bad that he's angry with you." I spoke, "You need to show him that you care."

"Yes." He placed the photo down and walked to the door. "Thank you, Vinny of NGTV News." He spoke as he exited the room.

"What was that?" I whispered harshly to myself, "What was that?!" I had just talked to the dark lord. A heart to heart conversation, by my standards.

I buried my face in my hands, wondering if he had seen my red face or my hesitance in actions.

Wait.

Shit.

He had a crush on Garmadon.

There we go dhdhndjd. This was fun to write!!

Once again, sorry about it taking so long, but its finally here!!!!!

I am also still accepting writing requests, so go ahead and throw some into my ask box. I'll accept ships that I have posted about on this blog, and ships tagged in this post. :)

Thanks for reading!!!

#ninjago #fanfiction #nala writes #lord garmadon #vinny ninjago #survivalshipping #owo #i never thought id get to write this lol #but here i am!!!!

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kamerontwph034 · 5 years ago

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kinkykinard · 6 years ago

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What the Water Gave Me

Fandom: Star Trek AOS. Pairing: Leonard McCoy x female reader. Word Count: 5099. Warnings: vaginal fingering, anal fingering, enemas, vaginal sex, anal sex (female receiving), butt plugs. Rating: Adult (18+). Summary: You never thought you would agree to give enemas a try at Leonard’s suggestion, but in the end you’re oh so glad you did. Beta: @daughterofthebrowncoats. Author’s Note: Thank you so so so much to @daughterofthebrowncoats for inspiring this fic and pushing me over the edge into writing it! I’ve done my absolute best to keep it tasteful without being overly graphic in the wrong ways. Please don’t feel obligated to read it, but if you want to give it a try, I hope you enjoy it! Additionally, I’m only tagging the select few people who already know what the fic is and who haven’t run away screaming, but if you would like to be tagged in future fics like this, please let me know!

You’ve been preparing for this night for weeks now, getting used to the idea of what Leonard had told you he wanted to do to you. You’ve been reading, researching, and carefully asking around about what he had proposed one night when you’d been lying in his arms after a round of lovemaking and though you’ve heard good things, you haven’t been able to quell the undercurrent of anxiety you’ve been feeling.

Shifting around a little on your knees and elbows, you fight the urge to cover yourself. Your entire backside is exposed to Leonard’s view and though you can hear him in the bathroom next door getting things ready, you can’t help but feel vulnerable and like you’re on display. The sound of water running has your heart racing and pounding and while you trust Leonard implicitly, you can’t help but be a little bit terrified of what’s about to happen.

When the topic of enemas had first come up, you’d been skeptical and hesitant, but after a bit of reassurance you’d caved and agreed to try it. Leonard had been over the moon and had promised to take excellent care of you. He had assured you that it would be painless and wonderfully exciting, and so after thinking on it for a fortnight, you’d let him know that you were ready.

You hear the water in the bathroom stop running and unconsciously fist your hands tighter in the plush towel beneath you. You hear Leonard’s footsteps grow nearer and gasp when his hand settles gently on the curve of your lower back, rubbing the skin there in broad, sweeping strokes that help soothe you.

“Are you ready, sugar?” He asks in a tone much more gentle than the authoritative one he often uses in the bedroom, though the effect is the same.

“Yes,” you say breathlessly. “Please be gentle.”

“Do you trust me?” He queries further.

“Yes,” you assert.

“Yes…” Leonard trails, quirking an eyebrow and slipping his hand down to your buttock and giving it a firm squeeze.

“Yes Doctor,” you amend.

“Good,” Leonard says, satisfied. “Now I want you to relax for me, darlin’. I’m going to lube you up.”

Your heart rate soars again at his words; you’ve never had anyone or anything inside of your ass before and the thought of his fingers there is equal parts maddeningly sexy and terrifying. You shift a little as you hear the snap of gloves behind you and shiver in anticipation. Moments later, Leonard’s hand lands back on your buttock and pulls it aside to expose your anus. You bite your lip and yelp quietly when you feel a cold dollop of lubricant land right on your opening.

“Deep breath,” Leonard instructs.

A few beats of silence and stillness go by and then you feel Leonard’s finger pressing gently, just barely, against your asshole. Making a conscious effort to relax as it circles, massaging the slick gel into your skin, you resign yourself to his ministrations. Your face flames in humiliation at being bent over so lewdly but you can feel yourself growing wet as his massage starts to feel good.

When his fingertip first dips inside just the smallest bit a few seconds later, you grasp the towel harder, the skin over your knuckles stretching taut from the effort. You know Leonard felt your tension mount when he pulls back a little, instead continuing the slow and methodical massaging for a little while longer.

Eventually you relax and when his finger slips inside once more you manage to stay still and at ease. He takes his time working it in, adding a drop of lube here and there as needed to keep you comfortable. The longer he spends fingering you, the more you start to wonder why you’d never tried anything anal before; it feels just as good as Leonard had promised it would.

So far, anyway.

“I think you’re ready,” Leonard murmurs. “You’re relaxing real quick here.”

You nod, resting your forehead on your crossed arms and biting your lip as his fingers slips free of you. His other hand stays put, though, holding your buttock aside as he picks up a large squeeze bottle with a long, thin nozzle screwed into the end of it. You shut your eyes tightly as he holds it aloft just over your backside, allowing a few drops to dribble from the tip of it and onto your skin. The water is warm, you’re relieved to feel, and you take a slow, steadying breath as you feel him poise the tip of the nozzle at your opening.

“Okay?” He asks.

“Yes,” you allow.

You inhale sharply as you feel him press forward and feel the nozzle slide in deep. It’s only a couple of inches, but it’s more than you’ve ever had inside of your ass before and it feels intense. It takes you a moment to adjust to it as the flared neck of the bottle comes to rest flush up against your opening and you squeeze involuntarily around the hard, unyielding plastic of the nozzle, feeling a twinge of arousal.

“Here comes the water, sugar,” Leonard warns.

Before you can even think to brace yourself, you feel a sudden flush of warmth somewhere deep inside of your belly. You rock involuntarily back against the nozzle and earn yourself a soft chuckle from Leonard. He lets go of your buttock, instead stroking his hand up along your spine as he continues squeezing the water into you with the other one. It’s a completely new and unique feeling, but it’s not unwelcome and perhaps even somewhat pleasant. The heat of the water spreads through you as more of it is instilled and you moan softly.

“Too much?” Leonard asks, easing off a little for a moment.

“No,” you say breathlessly. “It’s nice; it feels good.”

You can hear the smile in his voice.

“Glad to hear it,” he says. “Not much left to go, but if you take this one like a champ, I’ve got another ready for round two.”

You consider his words as he increases the pressure he’s applying to the squeeze bottle, filling you up with the rest of the small amount of fluid.

“Let me hold this one for a little?” You suggest. “So I can get used to it?”

“That’s the idea,” Leonard assures you with a chuckle. “There, all in.”

You groan quietly as you feel him withdraw the nozzle, leaving you missing the sensation of being penetrated. You shift your weight from one knee to the other a few times but you can’t feel the water sloshing around inside of you like you assumed you would be able to. Instead, you just feel a little full and very warm.

You tense a little when you feel Leonard’s fingers gently part your labia and slip in the moisture that’s collected there. As he eases one inside and brushes up against your g-spot, however, you let yourself enjoy the sensations the friction is creating. Between the water in your belly and the finger in your vagina, you feel an orgasm building quickly and you clench your fists to hold it back.

“I don’t want to spill!” You gasp. “Len, please!”

His rubbing against your g-spot slows and his free hand comes to land on your hip, squeezing it to help ground you a little.

“You’re doing fine,” he encourages. “You can hold it.”

You shake your head as a fine sheen of sweat breaks out across your skin, making it prickle with goose bumps. You’re very suddenly feeling the need to release the water and you shimmy forward, scarcely even noticing that Leonard’s finger has slipped from inside of you in your rush.

“I have to go!” You exclaim, clambering toward the edge of the bed; you’d known the feeling of needing to go was going to be intense, but you hadn’t quite imagined it to this degree.

As you move to stand, Leonard offers you a hand, gently steadying you as you get to your feet. He presses a hasty kiss to your forehead as you stride by him, making your way into the bathroom and shutting the door behind you.

When you emerge ten minutes later, you feel a little shaky from the emptying but also more turned on than you remember ever feeling before. You’re aching to feel more, and it’s with a coy expression that you make your way back over to the bed.

The sight of Leonard standing at the bedside and adjusting the height of an IV pole he’s very clearly purloined from the med bay – a pole with an impossibly large, full enema bag hanging from it – nearly stops your heart. You bite your lip as you approach him slowly, eyeing the setup. As you get close enough, Leonard steps in and wraps his arms around you from behind, splaying a hand on your abdomen and rubbing it gently.

“Ready for more?” He asks.

“Yes, Doctor,” you purr.

Leonard nods, dipping his head to press a kiss to your cheek before nudging you towards the bed.

“On your knees then, sweetheart,” he instructs.

You comply easily, assuming the same position you had been in earlier. It isn’t long before Leonard is standing just behind you, pulling on a fresh set of gloves and uncapping the lube. When he touches you a moment later, spreading your cheeks again just like the first time, you relax a lot more easily and though it’s only the second time you’ve ever allowed him to touch you like this it’s already familiar enough that you’re perfectly content as he presses a finger inside of your asshole to lubricate you.

As he switches out his finger for the enema tip, you realize that this nozzle is thicker than the last one and you feel a little thrill at the thought of it stretching you even more than his finger has. As he continues to push it forward it occurs to you that the nozzle is shaped like a plug, long and somewhat uncomfortably wide at its maximum diameter. The discomfort eases quickly, though, as it slides completely inside of you and seats itself with its flared base keeping your cheeks spread.

“I figured that might help you hold this one,” Leonard says softly, strong a hand over your buttock and pressing the plug just a fraction deeper with his thumb, making the tubing running through the center of it bounce a little, sending pleasurable little shocks through your core. “It’s going to be a big one; going to make your belly swell with all that water.”

“I want it,” you beg on a whim a moment later, turning your head a little so you can just see Leonard out of the periphery of your gaze. “Please, Len. I want to feel it.”

“How can I refuse when you beg so sweet, darlin’?” He says, pleased at the state he’s worked you up into.

Without any warning, Leonard reaches for the clamp on the tubing and releases it, allowing the flow to start. It’s intense, so much more intense than the first one, and you can’t help but moan as you immediately start to feel full. You’re about to ask him to slow the flow down a little when you feel a sudden release and realize that the water has started moving deeper inside of you. The feeling that you’re about to burst fades and is quickly replaced by a pleasant warmth and relaxation.

As the minutes creep by in silence, you focus on the growing heaviness in your belly and the way Leonard’s hands have begun to sweep in a gentle, soothing massage over your lower back, hips, and thighs. You can feel yourself growing full, the skin on your belly becoming taught from the strain of all of the water inside of you, and soon it starts to become uncomfortable.

“How much more?” You ask.

“You’ve got just under a third of the bag left,” Leonard replies. “You can do it, sweetheart.”

“I’m getting crampy,” you whine softly.

You gasp as you suddenly feel a brush up against your clit and realize it’s the inside of Len’s wrist as he reaches between your legs to splay his hand on your gently swollen belly. He carefully massages all over your abdomen, easing the cramping quickly and returning you to a state of comfort and arousal.

“Better?” He asks.

You nod and take a slow, deep breath as you feel his hand slip away. You can hear him moving around behind you and you glance over your shoulder as you feel him pat your hip a moment later.

“All done,” he announces with a smile. “You did great, darlin’.”

“I feel so full,” you breathe.

“I want you to hold it for a while,” Leonard insists softly. “But I can help take your mind off it; make it easier.”

“Yes, please,” you say.

You can hear the rustle of fabric behind you and you can only imagine he’s removing his boxers – the only remaining vestige of modesty he has remaining. You listen a little longer, hearing the tearing of a condom packet and the snap of the lid to the bottle of lubricant. Before long, you feel Leonard’s weight on the bed between your legs and your eyes widen as he lines the head of his cock up with your core.

“Going to make you feel even more full, darlin’,” he explains. “With that nozzle in your ass and all that water in your belly, my cock’s going to fit inside you nice and snug.”

You bite your lip as you feel him press forward, pushing just the tip of his cock into your wet and waiting pussy. It’s already more intense than anything you’ve ever felt before and you can’t help but let out a wordless cry as he pushes in deeper, filling you beyond your wildest imaginings. You clench around his cock, panting as you adjust to the stretch and squeeze.

“Fuck,” you hiss, reaching down to finger your clit, adding to the maelstrom of pleasure you’re already feeling.

“You’re so tight, angel,” Leonard growls. “Is it too much?”

His concern warms but doesn’t surprise you and you shake your head. Clearing your throat, you reassure him aloud.

“No,” you promise. “Just… go slow.”

And so he does.

At first, the thrusts are very slow and short, just teasing more than anything, allowing you to get accustomed to the feeling of having something in both of your orifices. As you start to respond, however, bucking your hips back and bringing your ass flush up against Len’s pelvis, he lengthens the thrusts, increasing his tempo and grabbing onto your hips for stability.

“Oh God,” you moan. “I’m going to spill, Len! I can’t hold it like this!”

“You’re going to be just fine, sugar, trust me,” he soothes, slowing his rhythm for just a moment. “I know how to take your body apart piece by piece and put it back together again, and I know that you’re not going to spill so much as a drop. Not with this in.”

He pointedly reaches out and presses on the plug-shaped nozzle in your ass. The movement of the smooth plastic against your stretched and spasming hole makes a shudder go through you and you know your orgasm is close. The tightening of everything inside of you as your climax draws nearer is amplified by your fullness and you’re powerless to stop the onslaught as Leonard starts to move in earnest again. The rasping of his cock against your g-spot combined with the rhythmic thrum of your fingers against your clit has starbursts popping behind your close eyelids and you gasp for air as your climax hits you.

You cry Leonard’s name as the spasming starts up and grip the sheets beneath you for dear life. All you can hear is the whoosh of your heartbeat in your ears, the sound in perfect synch with Leonard’s thrusts inside of you. Within moments he’s coming, too, and the suddenly erratic thrusting helps to bring you down a little bit. You feel like you’re going to burst but you stay still as he finishes, gritting your teeth as he finally slumps forward, pressing his forehead to the spot between your shoulder blades.

“I’ve got to go,” you rasp. “Now!”

Though he’s still loose and boneless in the wake of his own orgasm, your comfort is paramount and Leonard quickly slips out from inside of you and climbs to his feet. With one hand on your lower back to brace you, his other hand goes to the nozzle and grasps it firmly.

“Relax, darlin’,” he says roughly, his voice gravelly in the aftermath of his climax. “I’m going to pull this out and you can go on ahead.”

You nod frantically, breathing in short, staccato gasps as you feel him tugging on the nozzle. You wince a little as he pulls it out, the widest part of it stretching you deliciously before popping out with ease. The second it’s removed, you scramble of off the bed and all but run to the bathroom, closing the door behind you as you reach the toilet just in time.

The next twenty minutes are equal parts relief and living nightmare as you release the contents of the enema. It’s even more fluid than you thought and you’re weak and shaky by the time it’s finally over. Your groan of relief and flushing of the toilet attract Leonard’s attention from outside of the room and you hear a gentle knock on the door.

“Why don’t you get into the shower?” He suggests. “I’ll join you in a minute.”

It sounds like an amazing idea and you agree easily. Waiting a moment before standing to get your bearings, you pull a few extra fresh, fluffy towels out from under the sink and set them on the counter for afterward. Eventually, you get to your feet and step into the shower, pulling the glass door closed behind you and turning on the spray; real water, not the sonic jets that you usually use.

As the heat of the water eases any remaining tension in your muscles and washes away the prickle of sweat on your skin, you hardly notice Leonard climb into the shower with you until his arms wrap around you, his hands coming up to cup your breasts. His thumbs graze your nipples and you sag back against his chest, groaning contentedly.

“So what did you think?” He asks, dipping his head to press a kiss to the side of your neck.

“It was intense,” you summarize. “I think I’d like to try it again some time.”

“Yeah?” Leonard murmurs hopefully.

You nod, tipping your head to the size, nuzzling his cheek.

“There’s something else I’d like to try, too,” you continue slowly.

“What is it?” He asks as he pulls away a little, reaching for the soap.

You watch him as he pours a bit of it into his hands and works it through his fingers before reaching up to start lathering you up. The massage feels heavenly and you fall silent for several long moments, enjoying the sensation of his fingers on you.

“I want to feel your cock in my ass,” you say a few moments later, breaking the companionable silence.

Leonard’s massage doesn’t stop, but you can feel the wanton need radiating off him.

“You’re all nice and clean inside now, sweetheart,” he murmurs, suddenly pressed flush up against you again, sudsy hands trailing down your arms to grasp your wrists. “Do you think you can handle coming for me again?”

You feel lust coil in the pit of your belly at the thought of having him inside of your ass and even though you’re spent from the evening’s activities, you find your body ready and raring to go again in an instant. Nodding, you press your ass back against him, wiggling it just a little to rub at his heavy, slowly-hardening cock.

“Yes,” you say emphatically, dislodging his hands and leaning into the spray to wash off the soap so you’re not covered in slippery suds. “I’m ready, Len.”

He chuckles softly, leaning forward with you and settling his hands on your hips, pulling you back up against him even more. You can feel his cock stiffening and straining against your buttocks and you reach for the grab bar at the front of the shower. Originally designed in case the gravity failed while one was in the shower, it makes a great hand hold for sex, too, and you plan on making good use of it.

“Stay just like that for me, darlin’,” Leonard instructs, pulling open the shower door and quickly stepping out. “I’ll be right back.”

You watch him cross over to the medicine cabinet and roll on a condom before pulling out a bottle of lubricant different from the one he’d used in the bedroom. From its more viscous, silky texture you know it’s silicone-based and you groan inwardly at how good you know it’s going to feel on your asshole. You shift your weight from foot to foot as Leonard applies a generous amount of the lubricant to his cock and fingers, and you reach up to angle the showerhead down further as he makes his way back over to you.

Seconds later, Len is back in the stall with you and closing the door with his lube-free hand. You feel the other one brush the cleft between your cheeks and you reach back, pulling one cheek aside to give him better access.

“God damn, sweetheart,” Len growls. “You’re going to make me cum before I even have a chance to touch you if you keep that up.”

You flash him a coy smile and wiggle your hips a little to tease him.

“Now,” he says, slipping his fingers further into the cleft and pressing one up against your anus. “Let’s get you lubed up. Don’t want to hurt you, darlin’. Want to make you feel good.”

You nod and brace yourself, relaxing into his touch as one finger slips easily inside of you right up to the hilt. It feels good – so warm and vital – but it’s not enough. Leonard can tell you’re ready for more just by how comfortable and relaxed you are around his finger and he doesn’t leave you waiting for long before slipping a second one in alongside the first.

“You really are ready,” he says with a groan. “You’re going to feel so good on my cock. Going to take me nice and deep, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” you rasp, letting go of your cheek so you can hold onto the grab bar with both hands again. “Please. I need you. Now.”

He’s usually the one giving orders, but in the state you’ve worked him into with your desperate pleading and your clenching around his penetrating fingers, he’s in no mood to argue or put you off any longer. Withdrawing his scissoring digits, leaving you empty and wanting, he steps in so his cock is probing at your opening. One hand goes to your hip and the other to his cock, guiding it slowly into you. As soon as his head slips inside, you let out a strangled cry of ecstasy and feel the blood rush to your head as arousal washes over you.

“I’m going to go slow, baby girl,” Leonard assures you. “Going to watch my cock disappear into you one inch at a time.”

You desperately want him to just get on with it already, but at the same time you’ve heard horror stories about people taking it too fast with anal – especially their first time – and so you’re happy to let him ease into it. So far it feels incredible and you don’t want anything in the world to change that.

You breathe slow and deep as he starts to push deeper, feeling your heart hammering in your rib cage as his cock presses forward, filling you up and stretching you more than you’ve ever felt before. The burn of the stretch is a little bit uncomfortable but far too exciting to be bothersome and it only adds to your arousal. The thought of Leonard’s cock entering your ass is dizzying and you grip the grab bar just a little bit harder to compensate for how weak in the knees you suddenly find yourself.

“I want you to film us sometime,” you blurt, unable to hold back the thought. “I want to watch you penetrating me.”

“Christ, sugar,” Leonard growls. “You’re going to kill me.”

You laugh softly, though it turns to a gasp a moment later as you feel him bottom out inside of you, his pelvis flush against your backside. Reaching back, you run your fingers over the spot where the two of you are joined, groaning at how taut you feel around him. Leonard echoes the noise with one of his own as he runs both hands up your sides to cup your breasts. He pinches at your nipples gently, just enough to send a shock of arousal through you as he allows you to get used to having him inside.

“You can move, Len,” you grind out after a minute or two of stillness. “You’re not going to break me.”

Leonard gives no indication that he’s heard you until you feel him pulling back a moment later. The sensation of friction is incredibly sexy and you cant your hips forward a little to speed him along. You’re desperate to increase the pace, to feel the drag of his cock against your sensitive walls. Submitting completely, you drop your shoulders so that your ass is well presented, all the while keeping your hands on the grab bar to keep the two of you stable.

You realize that Leonard needs no more encouragement as he starts to thrust. It’s a leisurely in and out at first, comfortable but teasing, though it quickly becomes so much more. It’s wildly different from having him in your pussy and it feels incredible. The lubricant makes the slide of flesh on flesh effortless and heightens the sensation. Leonard’s harsh breaths and groans of ecstasy only add to the rush and it’s all you can do to grit your teeth so that you don’t splinter apart in a climax just yet; you want this to go on forever.

You aren’t sure how long it goes on as the thrusts become raw, carnal. All you know is that you’ve never felt a climax as big as the one you have building coming before. Your legs are shaking from the effort it’s taking not to come apart at the seams and you’re sure Leonard can feel the thundering of your heartbeat against the palm he’s got beneath your breast.

One more deep, hard thrust and it’s all you can take. You scream Leonard’s name as you tip over the precipice, climaxing so hard you can barely breathe. The shower water has long since gone cold but your skin feels like it’s on fire as you spasm around Leonard’s cock, thankful for the support he’s providing with his grip on your ribcage.

As your orgasm rages on, you can feel Leonard’s cock thickening inside of you and within second you’re coming together. You wish you could feel him coming inside of you without the condom, feel him filling you to the brim with his seed, but for this time just the feelings of his hips bucking against you and his fingers gripping your skin almost too tightly have to suffice.

As the two of you come down you sag, your grip on the grab bars slipping and nearly sending you sprawling if not for Leonard’s hands on you. He rights you easily, holding you tight against his chest until you can find your balance. As he shifts so that you’re out of the cold spray, his cock slips from inside of you and you hiss at how sensitive you’re left in its wake.

“Alright?” He asks softly.

“Yeah,” you reply, smiling tiredly, satiety clearly evident on your face. “I’m fine.”

Leonard nods and loosens his hold on you as you pull away, giving you the chance to lean forward and turn off the water. The two of you take your time stepping out of the shower, and you luxuriate in Leonard’s hands on you as he carefully towels you off. The room air is cool on your post-coitally warm skin as you step into the bedroom and you order the computer to increase the temperature just a little, and you can’t help but smile as you catch sight of the now-empty enema bag hanging on the IV stand beside the bed.

“Scotty’s going to have a fit when he sees we’ve maxed out my weekly water allowance,” Leonard says wryly as he steps up behind you and places his hands on your shoulders. “What am I going to tell him?”

“The truth,” you tease with a wink over your shoulder. “He’ll never question it again.”

Leonard barks out a laugh as he steers you toward the bed and ushers you in under the covers. You sigh contentedly as he climbs in next to you and turns out the lights before shifting around so that you can lie on his chest. He rubs a hand up and down along your back as you lay your ear next to his heartbeat and let it lull you into a state of total relaxation.

“Did you really have a good time tonight?” Leonard asks in the otherwise comfortable silence.

Turning your head a little, you press a gentle kiss to his pec before going right back to listening to his heartbeat to help reassure him.

“I did,” you promise. “And I can’t wait to do it again some time.”

You can feel a tension you didn’t even realize was there leave Leonard’s body as he pulls you in just a little closer, just a little tighter.

“I’m so glad,” he whispers. “I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you too, Len,” you reply.

Leonard drifts off to sleep very quickly afterward, but you lay awake for a little while listening to his soft snores and enjoying the clean and empty feeling inside the enemas have left you with. When you do finally doze off, it’s to fantasies of all of the other kinds of things you’re desperate to try now that you’ve had a taste of how good doing something unconventional can be.

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#Star Trek AOS #Leonard McCoy #reader insert #lemon #fanfiction

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supersecure-blog · 6 years ago

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Week 6 Lectures

Never would I have thought that I would receive a lecture via a skype call... however this course continues to surprise me. Notes for this week’s lectures as per usual :) This week notes will be in their purest form: brain dribble.

Morning Lecture

WEP:

Needed a 64 bit key, but how do we get users to generate a 64 bit key. Was a lot to ask users to generate. Designers decided to generate the last 24 bits by themselves, using an IV.

Seed was different for each packet, 40 bit key that was shared and everyone used, and then the 24 bit value that was generated.

To decrypt, you get the 24 bit thing sent in the clear - (IV) and combine with the secret to get the 64 bit

Danger when someone transmits the same data under the same key - data is replicated in the same frame

Collision for IV - square root of 2^24 = 2^12 ~= 4000

Relatively small amount of packets needed to be sent before collision

Mixing data and control (key characteristic of attacks):

WEP attack - carrying out the normal function, can be abused by users to gain more control

I.e. Richard smuggling expensive express envelopes by hiding them in a satchel, posting them to himself

If there is a potential ambiguity in the channel and you are able to control how that is resolved - you gain control of the channel

Buffer Overflow:

Computer rapidly switches between jobs - “context switching” rather than concurrencyModern cpu’s use the notion of interruption Stack keeps track of what is being used

Latest process - top of the stack. When it’s finished, the information about the process gets thrown out, stack pointer gets moved down

After process have been re-awakened, need information about what the process is currently doing. This is stored in the disk, because RAM is expensive

Stack is also used to store local data about the program - much faster

Running program data is in the stack, as well as other frozen processes

Stack is stored backwards -> grows down

If can persuade the buffer you are writing to is bigger than it is - then you can be writing to other memory of the person that is asleep

Pointer to the next instruction about to be executed -> control

Contains other information

Write to the return address, overwrite the current thing

Proof of work:

Bitcoin - can’t counterfeit easily (work ratio)

No matter how good something is, every 18 months your attacker gains 1 bit of work due to Moore’s law i.e. lose one bit of security

Number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented.

Disk encryption:

Thread model - attacker has physical access to the disk, assume full control of the hard drive

Generate random key, encrypted version of the key stored in the disk

Evening Lecture:

Web Seminar

HTTP:

Application layer protocol used to send messages between browsers and web servers. HTTP requests go from the browser to the server.

Databases / SQL - browser sending an HTTP get request from the server with the username and password as data

Server queries database with “SELECT password FROM users WHERE match”

HTTP Cookies/Sessions

An HTTP cookie is a small piece of data sent in a response from a web server and stored on the user’s computer by the browser

A session cookies is a unique ID generated by the server and sent to the user when they first connect or login

Browser sends it with all HTTP requests

XSS - cross-site scripting is an attack in which an attacker injects data, such as a malicious program

Reflected XSS - occurs when user input is immediately returned by a web application.

Stored - you enter data which is stored within the application and then returned later

xss.game.appstop.com

SQL injection is a code injection technique in which malicious SQL statements are inserted into an entry field for execution.

Goal behind an SQL query is to gain access

‘ or 1 == 1 --

Blind SQL injections are identical to normal SQL Injection except that when an attacker attempts to exploit an application rather than getting a useful error message

Cross Site Request Forgery:

Attack on an authenticated user i,.e. Already logged in

When you log in to a website it sends you a cookie to your browser to keep you logged in.

Bank attack:

If attacker knows the format of the bank request, they can hide a transfer request inside an img using html

Cross Site Request Forgery Defences:

Primary mitigation is with tokens

Generate a suitably random token, store value server-side

Sent token to user, expect this token back as part of any user requests

In a GET request, this token will be appended to the URL

If a website has XSS vulnerabilities, CSRF mitigations are pointless

Crypto Seminar

Payment Process: Current versus Bitcoin:

Current payment systems require third-party intermediaries that often charge high processing fees

Machine-to-machine payment using the Bitcoin protocol allows for direct payment between individuals, as well as support micropayments -> reduce transaction costs

Crypto:

Built using cryptographic principles i.e. blockchain and hashing

Difficult to fake transactions - too many bits so it isn’t worth

Blockchain:

Method of storing data

A chain of chronologically linked blocks where each block is linked to the previous block

Blocks are unique - no two blocks will have the same hash

Data:

Consists of hundreds of transactions

Put around 2000 transactions in one block

Hashes:

Block’s hash summarises the data into a combination of letters and numbers

SHA-256 hashing algorithm

If a transaction in the block is changed, the hash is changed

This is important because each block has the hash of the previous block -> need to check against all previous blocks

Tamper evident

When a transaction is mine, it isn’t immediately added but placed in a transaction pool

The miner gathers enough to form a block - called a candidate block

Hash the block header along with a nonce

When we hash we hope the block hash value is below a certain target value

The nonce is a random number brute forced by miners to try and create the correct hash

When nonce is found, it is broadcast and the block is added to the existing chain

Proof of Stake:

Growth of mining pools could eventually lead back to a centralised system

PoW mining uses excessive amounts of electricity

PoS algorithm attributes mining power to proportion of total bitcoins held, rather than computing power

Rewards are transaction fees rather than new cryptocurrency

Types of crypto currencies:

Bitcoin

Uses the SHA-256 algorithm - very processor intensive and complex requires lots of dedicated hardware

Litecoin

More accessible for normal uses to mine on their CPUs as the algorithm used is less CPU intensive, but more memory intensive

Facebook Libra

Centralised architecture - libra will be managed by the Libra Association, having more control over the blockchain

There is no ‘mining” - to set up a node on Libra, need $10000

Privacy:

Blockchain doesn’t have a strong concept of identity (public, private) key pairing

Doesn’t exempt transaction from tracing

Two main ways:

Relations between address - inferring identity

Interactions between nodes and users

Monero:

Unlinkability -> stealth addresses with view keys

Transaction mixing -> ring signatures

Concealing transaction amounts -> RingCt signatures

Historical flaws:

51% attack:

Double-spend

Purpose might also be to discredit a crypto instead of money

Credibility decided on the majority

Off-springs created one’s solution for a hash is not added into their own spin-off

Motive might be to discredit the cryptocurrency

Past Attacks:

Usually happened on small networks

Verge 51% attack, on April 2018

Groups of hackers found two main flaws in the system:

Bug which lowered the hashing difficulty for a hashing algo (Scrypt)

Verge allowed 5 different hashing algorithms, and only the difficulty for Scrypt is lowered

Hacked 3 times over 2 weeks

Cryptocurrency exchanges:

Mt.Gox - bitcoin exchange that was launched in 2010. Handled over 70% of all Bitcoin transactions in 2013

Previous owner retained admin level user account when MtGox was sold in 2011

Attacker logged in to the account

Assigned himself a large number of BTC which he sold on the exchange

Price dropped immediately

Obtained private keys of MtGox clients

Created selling orders on these accounts and bought the BTC he stole

SQL Injection vulnerability was found

MtGox user database began circulating online and included:

Plain text email addresses

Usernames

MD5 Hashed passwords, with some unsalted

Future of Cryptocurrency:

Adoption

Overcoming resistance from:

People

Established finance institutes (eg banks)

Governments (they don’t like that you don’t pay tax by concurrency)

Ease of use

Volatility

Threats

Blockchain its laek

Quantum computers

To the sft that utilises cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency wallet/exchange/

Strong private keys

Symmetric Ciphers

Two sorts of ciphers, symmetric and asymmetric -> regards the keys

If you know the key

For a symmetric: you can decrypt and encrypt

For an asymmetric: you have separate private and public keys to decrypt and encrypt (RSA)

Earthquakes:

How would I cope, how would my business cope? -> ‘gobag’

Home Study - read up about the “block modes” - only need to learn/understand ECB, CBC, CTR

Authentication:

Identifying for who? Computer/human?

Facebook. Police, baggage screening

Authentication and identification - what is the difference?

What decisions?

Computerised authentication system -> needs to make a decision about whether it is you or not

Factors:

Something that you have

Something that you know - i.e a password. Easy way of doing authentication

How do you know that you share the same secret?

Something that you are - Unfakeable

Two factor authentication:

Something that you have AND something that you know i.e. and password

All of these things seem different, but ultimately they are all just things that you know, and are all secrets

Something that you are can be replicated

Serious problem -> authenticating bombs, missiles etc

Biometrics - not real authentication, collecting another shared secret from a person, and can be bypassed

#week 6 #lectures

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