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theladyofdeath · 4 years

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The Office {2}

A Court of Thorns and Roses mini-series, part 2/8.

A year in the life of office workers, an 8 part mini-series.

Based on a prompt sent in by @the-regal-warrior

Feyre

A month had passed.

A horrible, dreadful, incredibly uncomfortable month.

Rhysand had taken a few weeks off, using his built up vacation hours, claiming he was going to visit his parents, but I know full well that his mother lives half an hour away, on the other side of town, and his father is dead to him. So, that left me with one conclusion - he was ignoring me.

Which, I didn’t blame him.

Since his confession, and our kiss, I broke things off with Tamlin. It was long overdue, even I knew that much. Rhysand was right in a lot of what he had said that night. Tamlin not treating me right, being a main point.

It was the right move.

Even if it created so many more issues, so much more tension. I had to move out, of course, because the house we lived in was under Tamlin’s name. It was a shame, really, because I loved that house, had worked for two years to make it my own. It was in a great part of town, half a mile from my favorite spot along the Sidra. But, in the end, even though half of the shit in that house was mine, all I left with were my paintings, my supplies, my clothes, and everything that was in the bathroom.

I hope he had fun showering having to dry himself with paper towels.

Asshole.

Anyway. Tamlin had been ignoring me at all costs since, which was fine, it’s not like he had to come up from the warehouse all that often.

What hurt so much worse was that Rhysand sat six feet away from me, his desk nearly facing mine straight on, and he wouldn’t even look at me. I just wanted to run over to him, shake him by the shoulders, and tell him to say something.

Anything.

I didn’t even care what, at that point.

The day went on, the hours passing slow. Every five minutes, I would look up from my desk at reception, but Rhysand was into his work. And as soon as the clock his five, he was out.

I wanted to call after him.

But I didn’t.

I simply shut down my computer, collected my belongings, and pulled on my jacket before heading to the parking lot. There was a tall figure leaning against the side of my car.

But it wasn’t who I wanted to be waiting there.

“Tamlin,” I breathed, half statement of annoyance, half question.

He pushed off my little car as he said, “Hey.”

“Move, please,” I mumbled. “I have to get home.”

“What’s the rush?” he asked, with an annoyance in his eyes that faded a second later. “Look, I just...can we go get a coffee? I think we should talk.”

“Whatever you have to say there can be said here,” I replied, simply, crossing my arms.

“I think you should come back home,” he replied, simply, directly. “I think you should come home and we should work this out. This is ridiculous, Feyre. We’ve been together for five years and you suddenly just break it off. Obviously, I was doing something wrong, but I want to correct it.”

The sigh that came out of me was full of annoyance. “Tamlin, there was a reason we were engaged for two years and never set a date. We’re not meant to be. Okay? So, please, move.”

“This is about him, isn’t it?”

I stilled and hated that I met his gaze once more. He must’ve seen my hesitation, though, because his eyes were clouded with anger, his lips pursed.

“I knew it,” Tamlin scowled. “I fucking knew it. You cheated on me, didn’t you?”

“What, no, I-”

“Look me in the eye and tell me that,” Tamlin ordered.

Shaking my head, I met his gaze, once more. “He kissed me.”

“And did you fight him?”

I stood motionless, silent.

Scoffing, Tamlin stepped aside.

I got into my car and quickly drove away with an unsettled feeling that I had just made everything so much worse.

~~~~

The next morning was eventful, but not in the exciting way.

I arrived at the office just before eight and made myself comfortable behind the welcome desk. After pulling up Helion’s schedule to inform him upon his arrival what to expect for his morning, the door opened and Rhysand came in. For a brief moment, our eyes connected. I gave him a small smile.

To my surprise, and utter delight, he returned it.

I watched as he took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. He grabbed his lunch and took it to the break room to put it into the fridge.

Then, the door flew open with such a force that those of us who had already arrived looked its way.

Tamlin came hurrying in and the look that was in his eyes was one I had seen many times - one that I loathed.

I stilled. “Tam?”

But he wasn’t looking at me. He was storming to the other side of the room, where Rhysand had just re-entered through the break room door.

“Tamlin!” I shouted, rising from my desk chair.

But he was on a mission, it seemed, one he couldn’t be talked out of.

He didn’t get far, though, because Cassian stepped in Tamlin’s path with a little tube of pepper spray and was firing it, right into Tamlin’s eyes.

Everyone began panicking, as everyone within spitting distance was instantly covering their eyes.

Rhysand and Cassian included.

Then the chaos began. Helion arrived shortly thereafter, and called for security to come take Tamlin away, letting him know that he wouldn’t be welcomed back on the premises. I nearly felt bad. Yes, Tamlin was an idiot, but to lose his job?

At least I wouldn’t have to keep seeing him everyday.

Everyone who had been affected rinsed their eyes out, and Cassian was giving a talking to about using pepper spray in the office under emergency circumstances only, even if Cassian protested that it had been, in fact, an emergency.

Meanwhile, I sat in shock at my desk, trying to process what the hell had actually happened.

Tamlin had come to kick Rhysand’s ass.

Rhysand saw Tamlin coming, but didn’t have to react, because Cassian tossed out some pepper spray.

Tamlin got dragged out by security.

And fired.

And me? Well, I had some apologizing to do, it seemed.

Lunch time came and I saw Rhysand get his lunch and carry it outside. It seemed like it was now or never.

I figured now was better, because the idea of never made me want to vomit. I grabbed my lunchbox from the fridge and followed Rhysand.

I found him sitting on a bench out front, eating his sandwich.

He looked up at me, surprised, as I sat down next to him.

“Hi,” I said, refusing to open my lunchbox.

“Hey,” he said, after swallowing a bite of my sandwich.

“Crazy day, huh?” I asked, in hopes of making decent small talk before getting into the heavier stuff.

But Rhysand just arched a brow, humored. “Are you referring to your fiance storming into the office to kick my ass?”

I sucked my bottom lip into my teeth.

He chuckled. “I assume you told him about the kiss, then.”

I nodded.

“Does that mean you broke up?” he asked, taking another bite of his sandwich. Apparently, unlike myself, this conversation didn’t have any effect on his appetite.

I blinked. “We broke up a month ago.”

That did make Rhysand halt. “What? Why?”

I rolled my eyes. “You very well know why. And I was going to tell you weeks ago, but then you went MIA.” I looked away from him, away from those piercing violet eyes as I went on, “Look, what I said that night...I was just surprised. I was thrown off...it wasn’t what I had been expecting, but I realized that I felt the same way about you. So I broke it off with Tamlin. Then, last night, we got into it, and the reason for why I left him came out. Hence, his alpha-male presence in the office this morning.”

He said nothing, but he slowly lowered his last bite of sandwich onto his lap.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed. “About all of it. Really, I am. I’ve made a mess of it, and I know that. And you don’t deserve that. And I’m sorry.”

“Wow, Archeron,” he began, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, the other still clutching what was left of his sandwich. “That was, uh, a lot to take in.”

I knew that tone.

As I shook my head, a slow grin swept across his mouth.

“It’s fine,” he said, a minute later. “I’m not mad. And I wasn’t ignoring you. Well, that’s a lie, I was...but, not because of anything you did. I was embarrassed.”

At my look of surprise, he started laughing, quietly.

“The thought of coming in every day to see you, thinking I messed everything up between us, our friendship….well, let’s just say seeing you at work was my favorite reason to come to work.” He was looking at the cars driving past as he finished off his sandwich and crumbled up the paper bag it had come in.

When I said nothing, he gave me one last smile and rose.

“Well, back to work, I guess,” he said, sighing, then headed for the door.

I was left on the bench, blinking rapidly.

“Oh,” he said, turning around to meet my open-mouthed gaze. “You busy tonight?”

“I- no.”

“Wanna get some dinner?” he asked.

“I…” I could hardly get the word out of my mouth. “Yeah.”

“Seven okay?” he asked.

I nodded, not trusting another word that came out of my mouth.

“Great,” he grinned. “It’s a date.”

Then he was gone, through the doors and out of my sight. My heart was thudding against the inside of my chest as I looked down at my unopened lunchbox, completely forgetting that I was supposed to be eating my lunch, and my break was almost over.

I didn’t even care.

I had a date with Rhys.

#feysand #the office #tacmc to #feyre #rhysand #acotar #acomaf #acowar #acofas

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wren-fell · 4 years

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Stuck in Borderland

Decided to post my Alice in Borderland fic. The main character is my oc Sayaka, and all other characters belong to Haro Aso.

Warnings: language, violence

Length: ~3000 words

Chapter 1: Welcome to the Beach

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Sayaka walked through the doorway, and the red grid flashed for a second after she passed. She glanced over her shoulder with a frown, no turning back.

She picked up a phone on the table in the center of the room and the screen lit up white. Registration complete, the game will commence in 5 minutes. With a deep breath she closed her eyes, just another game… that’s all it is.

“Just do it quickly you’ll be fine!”

“Hurry the fuck up we only have 10 more minutes!”

“I’m trying!” The girl wailed as she waited on the other side of the platform, a row of swinging saws and blades blocking her from the other side where two others were.

“Just go!” A guy at the platform behind her screamed.

“Fine!” She drew in a deep breath and took off running across the bridge. She was halfway across with no incident when a saw came rising out of the floor. The girl screamed and jumped over it, but when she landed the floor gave way and she fell into the electrified water below. There was a sickening crackle and a scream, then nothing.

The five remaining participants were all silent until the time chime rang out. There are 7 minutes remaining.

“Alright, I’m going next!” A guy screamed pushing Sayaka to the side and stepped forward on the platform.

He drew in a deep breath and ran across. He was doing fine, but as he came up to where the saw in the ground was he hesitated.

“Don’t jump!” Sayaka yelled.

“What? Are you fucking crazy!?” He snapped over his shoulder.

“Don’t jump! If you do you’ll go into the water! If you keep running straight you’ll be fine!”

He looked from her to the saw and let out a scream, “you better be right about this!” Running forward he closed his eyes waiting for the saw to chop off his legs, but as he was just about to run into it, it receded into the ground.

Sayaka sighed, “thank god that was right…”

“How did you know?” the man with the glasses standing next to her asked. She glanced at him and smiled.

“The two people that died both died from falling into the water not the saws. The saws have sensors that make them retract when someone is about to touch it, but if you jump the floor is unstable and will give way,” she replied.

Two minutes remaining. She looked down at the phone as the voice rang out, “we should get across.”

Sayaka and the man with glasses walked across with no saws even coming close to cutting them, and as the clock began to count down thirty seconds they stepped into the circle on the second platform. At the end of the countdown everyone’s phones lit up.

Congratulations. Game cleared. A four day visa has been issued to all players.

“4 of Diamonds done,” Sayaka sighed closing her eyes and leaning her elbows on her knees.

“That was very impressive.”

Sayaka raised her head to look at the man with the glasses, and rubbed the back of her head, “Well, you really start to pay attention when people die I guess.”

“I’m with a group that’s trying to win this game. I think you’d be a good addition,” he added. Sayaka hesitated she had only met one other person so far in the borderlands she had spent extra time with, but they had died fairly quickly and she’d been alone since. Although, winning and leaving this world was a very tempting offer.

“Come with us we’ll introduce you to our leader,” he said waving a hand and she was surrounded by the other two men from the game. She hesitated, but started walking when she noticed the guns poking out of their pockets. Where did they even get guns?

Sayaka was led to an old beat up corvette outside where they tucked her in the backseat between the two men with guns. This was starting to feel less like an introduction and more like a kidnapping. They squealed the tires as they tore of the parking lot and down the road towards the river.

Eventually they pulled up in front of a large beach club that she recognized. Her parents used to take her and her sister here when they were kids, except now it looks slightly more rundown and Beach in red spray paint was scrawled across the original sign. But, the most interesting thing about the old club was that it seemed to be the only building in Tokyo that still had electricity aside from the game arenas.

“Welcome to the Beach, follow me,” the man with glasses ordered as he got out of the car.

Sayaka followed him inside where there were hundreds of people wearing swimsuits and running around without a care in the world.

“What the fuck did I get myself into?” She whispered.

The man with glasses led her upstairs to a room in the main building of the club where 8 other people in swimsuits sat at a table and you couldn’t hear the pounding music.

“Kuzuryu. Welcome back, have you found us a new member?” A man with sunglasses and long hair declared waving his arms.

“Yes, she did exceptionally well in the 4 of Diamonds game. I think she could make a good addition,” Kuzuryu said handing the Diamonds card to him.

“Wonderful! My name is Hatter and welcome to the beach! What’s your name beautiful?” The way he said beautiful and peered over the top of his sunglasses made her stiffen.

“Sayaka Umino.”

“Sayaka, the beach is a haven! I made this place so we could all have hope that one day we’ll get out of here and all go home! But, we all must work together to make that dream a reality,” he paused and stood up from his chair to wave his hands dramatically at the window, “hope! Hope is what this place is for, so we can all survive these terrible games! The beach is a place where you can do anything your heart desires as long as you follow the rules.”

There was another pause and Sayaka foolishly opened her mouth, “what are the rules?”

“I’m so glad you asked!” Hatter turned quickly his robe flaring dramatically behind him, “Rule #1: Always wear a bathing suit!”

“Why?” The question came out of her mouth before she could stop it and she stiffened as she waited for the response.

“You can’t hide a weapon in bathing suits! Only militants are allowed to carry weapons, so you must wear a bathing suit.” Sayaka pouted, no thank you.

“Rule #2 you are free to live your life however you want here. Drugs, sex, alcohol, it doesn’t matter! You can do whatever you want!” Hatter turned dramatically waving at the window again at all the people partying outside. Sayaka furrowed her eyebrows, this place sounded more like a nightmare than paradise.

“And rule #3?”

There was a long pause and a heavy silence hung in the room. Hatter leaned closer to the window resting his hands on the sill, “Rule #3 is…” he turned around to look at her, “death to all traitors.”

Sayaka drew in a sharp breath through her nose as she stared at him. One of the guys by the wall shifted his Ak-15 and a sadistic smile spread on his face. Guess me saying no makes me a traitor.

“So? Sayaka what do you say?” Hatter asked taking a step towards her and holding his arms out.

“Sure, I’ll join…” she replied quietly.

“SPLENDID!” Hatter’s exclamation made her jump as he turned around back to the table of people, “Ann please take Sayaka to get a bathing suit and get her wristband.”

“Yes Hatter,” a woman with short black hair and sunglasses stood up from the table and headed to the door, “follow me.”

“Welcome to the beach Sayaka, and enjoy!” Hatter called as she walked towards the door.

“Thanks…” she mumbled and followed Ann out.

Ann led Sayaka downstairs to the gift shop, and bent down to lift the metal gate up before turning sharply to Sayaka, “pick one.”

Sayaka walked through the shop with a frown. Most of the swimsuits for women were skimpy bikinis, and judging by Hatter’s speech about what you could do at the beach she could see why. She settled on a teal one-shoulder bikini, with a black stripe on the top and bottom, and a pair of black board shorts. At the entrance to the shop Ann handed her a red wristband.

“This is your room. Please go up and change. Welcome to the beach,” Ann said quietly before walking away.

Sayaka sighed, “guess this is where I’m staying now,” she muttered as she headed to her room.

Sayaka went up to her room on the third floor and changed before heading back downstairs to investigate her new home.

Hatter wasn’t joking you could really do whatever you wanted at the beach, it was like one big frat party. Everyone was either dancing, drinking, smoking, or sloppily making out in plain sight, among other things… Cringing as she walked past a particular corner of the hotel with multiple couples, if this is what hope looks like I’m not sure I want any part of it... But, that thought didn’t last long when she stumbled upon the dining room. Where the hotel would have usually held dinner or breakfast service was transformed into an elaborate buffet piled high with food, most likely for the returning players of the evening.

Sayaka could literally feel her mouth water. In the two weeks she’d been in the borderland all she’d been able to eat was snacks from a gas station and some questionable cans of vegetables. She felt her stomach rumble as she walked up to the buffet and grabbed a plate.

“Where to start?” She piled her plate high with steak, lo mein, dumplings, and BBQ, “I don’t care where this came from, I don’t care how they got it, I just want to stuff my face,” she cooed as she settled down at a table.

Sayaka sat and ate closing her eyes at the heavenly taste of real food for the first time in weeks, “if this is what hope is maybe Hatter isn’t wrong,” she sighed. She finished her first plate of food and leaned back in her chair with her eyes closed. The blaring bass of the music seemed to fade away for a minute and this was all there was, Sayaka sitting there with food in her stomach and feeling relatively safe. But, that moment of bliss was interrupted by a voice.

“Well hello there beautiful, you must be new around here.” Sayaka opened one eye to glance at the boy in swim trunks who had wandered over to her table. He placed a hand on the table and leaned over way too close to Sayaka’s face.

Shrinking back in her chair Sayaka pouted, “yea. I’m new. Excuse me I’m going to get more food,” she turned away from the boy as she got out of her chair, snatching the plate off the table and heading back to the buffet.

As she started loading her plate again the boy followed her, “aw come on sweetheart there’s way more to do here than just food. Why don’t you come have a drink with me and I’ll show you the ropes?” he cooed, and Sayaka felt a hand slide onto the exposed skin on the small of her back as he leaned over the table to cage her in.

“No thanks not interested,” she mumbled brushing his arm away to sidestep along the buffet.

“Pity. The Beach may have amazing food, but that cannot be the only thing you’d want to do on your last days alive?” He leaned over her again, but this time plucked a piece of BBQ pork off her plate and plopped it into his mouth, “Live like you’re dying baby. Haven’t you heard? We’re all fu—“ He didn’t get to finish his sentence as Sayaka whipped around slamming her fist into his cheek causing him to spit the pork out onto the floor. He landed with a loud thud and stared up at her in absolute shock.

“What the fuck!?”

“Don’t touch my fucking food!” Sayaka snapped.

There was a long pause as the guy scrambled to his feet, “you crazy bitch,” and ran off.

“Hmph…” Sayaka stood a deep frown forming on her face. She glanced over to the side noticing that the room had gotten quiet and everyone was staring at her. She grunted and turned around pushing her plate further onto the table, “made me lose my appetite,” she muttered and heading out of the dining room.

She wandered around the hotel before settling on one of the few beach chairs that wasn’t being “used”. Everyone at the beach was truly living like it was their last day on Earth. Sayaka sighed, I guess because it technically could be.

The pool wasn’t as nice as Sayaka remembered it. This hotel used to be a pristine beach club for its very rich members, but now it was nothing more than a sketchy nightclub. The bass of the techno music made ripples in the water that were barely noticeable around the swarms of people jumping around in it. Their bodies were tightly packed and gyrating together like a wave of humans instead of water.

“Hi.” Sayaka was snapped out of her thoughts when a girl wearing a purple one piece and a side skirt spoke to her.

“Uh, hi,” Sayaka mumbled.

“You’re new huh?” She said. Sayaka nodded, but didn’t speak, “do you mind if I sit? It’s kinda the last chair,” she asked gesturing around to the other occupied beach lounges.

Sayaka hesitated, but moved over and nodded, “sure.”

The girl sat down and leaned over onto her knees before looking up at Sayaka, “my name’s Madoka. What’s yours?” She offered out her hand.

Sayaka watched it for a second before taking it slowly like a stray cat considering a free piece of food, “Sayaka.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What?” Sayaka raised her eyebrows.

“I’m sorry that you’re here,” Madoka glanced at her out of the corner of her eye, “in the borderlands I mean, but…” She paused and let out a sigh, “I can’t say the beach can always be better.”

Sayaka knit her eyebrows together watching her, “what do you mean? I thought this was meant to be the ‘oasis in the desert’,” she made air quotes.

Madoka turned to look at her with a sympathetic look in her gray eyes, “it can be. As long as you follow the rules,” her voice dropped to a whisper.

Almost as if on cue a group of people strolled by the pool with guns slung over their shoulders and hanging by their sides. She recognized some of them from her “introduction meeting”. A bald man with a scar over his eye and made of nothing but solid muscle, a man with tattoos over his face and a katana slung across his back, and the man with the Ak-15 and piercings on his face; along with at least 5 other men and women carrying weapons. They sauntered past the pool made comments to a couple of people and picked up 3 girls who seemed nervous, but happily leaned into the man with the piercings.

“The militants.”

“Hm?” Sayaka turned towards Madoka.

“Those are the militant corp. They maintain…” she paused, “order.”

Sayaka watched the group as they left the pool, “order, huh?”

“Yea… steer clear of them, obey the rules, and this place could be your own personal slice of heaven,” she paused as a loud moan came from one of the girls in the pool, “if that’s your sort of thing…” she mumbled.

Sayaka’s eyes scanned the pool. This certainly wasn’t her idea of heaven. All the food in the world wouldn’t make this heaven even in the borderlands. She had people to get back to this was just temporary. A white spot in the sea of bodies snapped her back to attention. A boy probably not much older than herself was leaning against the doorway wearing a white sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his face. He had been at the meeting too, sitting at the table two seats over from Hatter.

“Madoka.”

“Hm?” She raised her head.

“Who’s that?” Sayaka asked nodding her head slightly in his direction without looking at him again.

Madoka took the hint and passed a glance around the whole pool, so as not to bed suspicious, “that’s Chishiya he’s one of the 9 executive members. They help Hatter make decisions.”

Sayaka cast a glance over his direction again to find that he was gone and she frowned, suspicious little shit.

“Just don’t cause any trouble and you shouldn’t have to deal with them much,” Madoka paused and let out a chuckle, “although, I can’t say you’re off to a good start.”

Sayaka snapped her head around to look at her, “what?”

“I saw you slug the guy who touched your butt in the dining room. Honestly you better get used to that unfortunately happens often, and you don’t want the militants getting involved,” she added glancing back to the door they had disappeared through.

“It wasn’t because he touched my ass…” Sayaka mumbled looking down.

Madoka put her head to the side, “what was it then?”

“He took a piece of food off my plate…” she mumbled.

“What?”

“He took a piece of food off my plate, okay!” Sayaka snapped, “I haven’t eaten actual food in 2 weeks and he comes over all flirty and shit, and takes a piece of BBQ pork off my plate!? No fucking way!”

Madoka fell against the back of the chair laughing hysterically her bun bobbing back and forth.

“What?” Sayaka muttered.

“I can’t believe you punched him over a piece of BBQ!” She wheezed wiping the tears from her eyes.

“I’ve been hungry!” Sayaka replied waving her arms, “you don’t take food away from animals they bite!”

“Oh now you’re an animal!?”

“I just meant you don’t take people’s food! Especially people that haven’t eaten anything, but canned shit since they’ve gotten to this hellhole.”

“Oh some of those canned foods were questionable before the apocalypse now I don’t even know. I can’t believe you ate that!”

“I didn’t have much of a choice!”

“And how did you feel after that?” Madoka asked quirking an eyebrow.

Sayaka grimaced, “I threw up like twice…” she muttered.

Madoka burst out laughing again, while Sayaka pouted her cheeks turning red.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I totally understand I had the same problem before I came to the beach. I ate some food that was frozen and had thawed, and had diarrhea for like 2 days,” Madoka said laughing again.

Sayaka smiled and laughed, “oh god that would suck. We don’t even have working toilets out here!”

“Trust me I know!”

Sayaka and Madoka sat on the beach chair laughing together about their experiences, and at the people around them. Barely acknowledging the red lasers that shot down from the sky in the distance killing those whose visas expired. For a little while it didn’t feel like the beach was sketchy or they were trapped in this hellish borderland. It felt like Sayaka and Madoka were just long time friends who were having fun at a party on a Friday night, and there wasn’t the possibility of death looming over their heads.

#alice in borderland #my writing #This is not puella madoka magica related I just really like those names #will most likely eventually be a chishiya x oc #first time I've posted my writing literally anywhere besides a required course so here it is!#I'm happy to be back writing though #couldn't think of a better title #stuck in borderland

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seaside-stories · 3 years

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Stuck in My Mind | Part 1

Hello all! So I know that I’m in the middle of a series right now and also that I don’t get much support on my tumblr but that’s okay! I’m going to keep going anyway! This one is called Stuck in My Mind (to be explained in the summary). I am going to post in in a few parts but it’s divided differently on ao3 if you decide to read it there. I will also be uploading all of the parts within 15 minutes of each other so you will not have to wait! Summary: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, and Peter Parker (aka Captain America, Iron Man, and Spiderman) get hit with a spell that causes them to relive memories of good times with friends and potential romantic partners. | Word Count: ~1500 | Characters: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Peter Parker, May Parker, James “Bucky” Barnes, James “Rhodey” Rhodes, Original Characters | Link to ao3!

“I need backup over by the 7-11.” Peter heard Tony’s voice come through the coms. Peter started making his way over to him.

“On it,” Peter and Steve said in unison. They made eye contact as they both arrived at the same time.

“Watch yourself, Spiderman,” Steve warned Peter as they rounded the corner.

“Right back at you,” Peter replied.

Peter only caught a glimpse of Tony before he was knocked off his feet by some kind of explosion.

He blacked out.

When Peter woke up, he was alone. He was wearing different clothes and in an unfamiliar place. Peter was sitting on the edge of a field; and was wearing a light blue tshirt and jeans instead of his Suit.

Wait a second. No he wasn’t. He did recognize this place. This field was near Albany, where Ben’s parents lived. Peter looked to his left and saw a small playground a little ways away. There were some children playing there with their adults watching them. Peter made his way over.

As he approached the park, he noticed a little girl with black hair and a pink shirt. She looked sort of familiar…

“Did you find a good stick?” she asked Peter.

“What?” Peter was confused.

“A stick. For mixing our potion?” The girl said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Peter realized he knew her name; a fluke, really. Her name was Chloe. Peter had only met her twice, and both times were at this exact park. He remembered this day now.

“A stick…” Peter looked down at his hands and there he saw a rather large twig in his right hand. “Here’s one.” He offered the stick to Chloe.

“Perfect,” Chloe said. She took the stick from Peter and led him over to a small hole in the ground filled with water, leaves, and rocks. She shoved the twig in and began to mix the sludge around.

“Peter!” Peter heard someone yell from behind him. He turned to see Aunt May standing at the edge of the park. She looked a lot younger than he remembered. “Peter, it’s time to go, sweetheart.”

Peter sighed. “But I don’t wanna go!” he called back.

“Don’t make me come over there!” May told him. Peter put his hands up in surrender. He turned back to Chloe.

“I have to go,” he explained. “I’ll see you next time.” Peter realized he had said that without thinking--it’s what he had said when this event had really happened. He hadn’t had any idea that there would be no next time. The next time Peter came up to Albany, Chloe’s family had moved away.

Peter gave Chloe a quick hug anyway (sort of awkward from his perspective as he was very tall now and she was not) and ran to join Aunt May at the curb. They started walking back to the car which was a little ways down the road. There was a line of bricks laid on the ground which Peter decided to walk on (while holding May’s hand, of course).

“Hey, Peter, what do you say we pick Ben up from Gramma and Grampa’s house and then we go out for dinner?” May suggested. Peter was more focused on his footing than what May had said, but he vaguely registered it.

“That sounds like a great idea,” he said and jumped off the last brick. But when he looked up again, May was gone. He was not in the field any longer. He was somewhere new. Somewhere he didn’t recognize at all, no matter how hard he tried.

---

“I need backup over by the 7-11.” Tony’s voice came through the coms. Steve finished tying up one of the little thugs he was fighting and tried to figure out where the 7-11 was.

“On it,” Steve and Peter said in unison. Steve saw Peter swinging on lamposts and decided to follow him. They made eye contact as they both arrived at the same time.

“Watch yourself, Spiderman,” Steve warned Peter as they rounded the corner.

“Right back at you,” Peter replied.

Steve saw Tony backed up against a wall for just a moment before he was blasted backward by an explosion. He hit something hard.

He blacked out.

Steve awoke to find himself sleeping on a bench. He sat up and looked down at himself. He was no longer wearing his Suit, but instead a light green button down shirt and gray slacks. His top 2 buttons were open and his sleeves were rolled up--for a good reason. It was too damn hot for anyone to be able to function.

Steve surveyed his surroundings. They looked familiar. He just couldn’t put his finger on it…

“Steve!” Steve looked toward the sound of the noise. There he saw Bucky (looking considerably younger than he remembered) wearing a similar outfit to his, holding two popsicles. He was walking away from an ice cream truck.

“Steve,” Bucky said again once he got closer. “Here, I got you a cherry flavored one.” He handed Steve a red popsicle.

“Thanks…” Steve said hesitantly. Then it dawned on him where he was: a block away from his old apartment. He remembered this day. It was two weeks before Bucky signed up to fight in the war.

“Scoot over,” Bucky all but pushed Steve over on the bench.

“Okay, Okay!” Steve scooted over to the edge of the bench.

The two of them sat there, enjoying their popsicles for a little while, the sugary water dripping down their hands and staining their lips. When they were both done, Bucky took his and Steve’s popsicle sticks and pocketed them.

“What are you going to do with those?” Steve asked.

“I’m gonna add them to my popsicle stick model of the White House,” Bucky explained. Steve could see it in his mind’s eye: a small model of the White House in Washington D.C. made of popsicle sticks, painted white with dried paste sticking out between the sticks.

The two of them stood and began making their way back to their apartment. They passed by an empty lot where some children were playing, a bird’s nest on some low hanging branches, and a brick wall. Steve ran his hand along the brick wall. He watched as his hand caressed the rough clay and mortar.

When there was no more wall to touch, Steve looked back at Bucky, but he was gone. Steve behind him, expecting to see Bucky a bit farther down the road, but he was not there either. In fact, nothing that had been there a moment ago was there anymore. Not even the brick wall.

---

Left, right, left, right, left--Tony blocked attack after attack from this space-wizard dude. They both kept moving backward, and Tony knew that eventually he would be cornered with nowhere left to go.

“I need backup over by the 7-11” he called into the coms. Right, right, down.

“On it,” he heard Peter and Steve say together. Down, up, left.

He kept taking small steps backward, trying to give himself more time before he was completely cornered, but it didn’t work. He felt his back hit the wall.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Steve and Peter turn the corner. At the same time, he watched as the space-wizard dude created a glowing orange ball and threw it at the ground. It exploded and Tony’s head snapped back against the wall.

He blacked out.

When he came to, he was outside. And he was wet. What? Tony looked down at himself. In place of his Suit was a pair of blue and green boardshorts and a grey tank top. He looked around at his surroundings and found that he was at a pool. Whose pool? His father’s pool at his childhood home.

“Wow, a little bit of water and the great Tony Stark is speechless!” came a voice from the pool. Tony looked and there was Rhodey--with hair?--standing in the pool, arms akimbo.

Tony suddenly remembered this day. It was an unusually warm day in April, so Rhodey and Tony had decided to swim for a bit, seeing as they had the week off and they had nothing better to do.

“You wish,” Tony echoed himself from his memory and jumped in the pool, effectively spraying Rhodey and everything in a 10 foot radius of the pool.

The two young men (they had been young at the time) splashed around for about a half hour longer, having the time of their lives. When they were all tuckered out, they laid on the side of the pool, heads in the grass, feet in the water. They soaked up the sun, hoping they wouldn’t burn in this extreme heat.

“D’you want some ice cream?” Tony asked.

“Is the sun made of hydrogen and helium?” Rhodey responded. Tony shoved him.

“No need to be rude. I’ll be right back.”

Tony stood and turned back toward the house. He followed the brick path from the pool area to the back door. Tony crossed the threshold and glanced back at Rhodey only to find that he wasn’t there anymore. Neither was the pool. He was standing in the doorway, but now he wasn’t sure which out of the millions of doorways in the world it was. He had no idea where he was.

Part 2 | 3 | 4

#fanfiction #fanfic #marvel fic #peter parker #tony stark #steve rogers #irondad and spiderson #tony stark has a heart #may parker #bucky barnes #james rhodes

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sunflowergirl522 · 4 years

Text

Legally Blonde 7: Take it Like a Man

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Just a legally blonde AU with you starring as Elle Woods. Based on both the movie and musical.

Warnings: Language

Word Count: 2009

Series Masterlist | Masterlist

Bucky throws his case file onto the table and rips off his tie while sitting down. You try to hold back your tears as you lean against the table next to him.

“Bucky, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need you to be sorry, I need you to tell me the alibi.” He’s exasperated and he’s directing it at you even though the majority of it wasn’t because of you. He knows that he’ll regret it later but right now it can’t be helped.

“Well I can’t because I gave Natasha my word. Having an alibi is not the only way to win this case.”

“No but it sure would help!”

“Work with me, we can free Natasha the right way, the noble way.”

“This is not a lifetime original movie Y/n. I’m not interested in nobility right now, I’m more interested in saving her life!”

“No you’re not! You’re more interested in impressing Pierce.”

“Well he is my boss if I impress him, he’s gonna make me associate.”

“By jeopardizing your clients trust in our integrity!” Bucky is left speechless at that and scoffs while trying to find words to say.

“Well when you put it that way.”

“Exactly! You butthead.” You shove his shoulder and go back to casually leaning on the table, getting out of your defensive stance. “My word means something, and I know yours does too.”

“No one’s called me butthead since the third grade.”

“Maybe not to your face.” You both hold eye contact with serious faces before breaking into laughter. “C’mon let’s get outta here.” You lead the way out of the building and to your car which you both arrived in together.

“Why do you always have to be right?”

“I don’t have to be when I’m with you I just am.” You start to drive off once you're both situated in the car.

“Where are we going?” Bucky asks when you miss the turn to go to your dorm.

“You wanna impress Pierce? I can help.”

“Okay, how?” You park the car and turn to look at him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Listen, I love your scruffy vibe but casual Friday isn’t in Pierce’s vocabulary. You gotta look the part if you wanna get ahead.”

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you about not judging a book by its cover.” Bucky gets out and begins to follow you.

“She did but I also know that books with tattered covers stay on the shelf.” Once your at the entrance you turn to face him.

“Oh thanks a lot.”

“This isn’t a perfect world. You think I haven’t been judged my whole life, you think it wasn’t a good idea to make navy my new pink?”

“No, that was a good idea.”

“I know.”

“Where are we exactly?”

“You trust me don’t you?” Your tone suddenly turns serious and Bucky begins to get suspicious.

“Of course.”

“Then don’t stop now.” You both enter in and Bucky stops as he looks around. “Welcome to a department store. Take a deep breath and let it all in Buck.” Bucky looks at you when you use a nickname you’ve never used before. “Do you smell the pure oxygen they pump in? It’s because they care.”

“Love?” A worker comes up to Bucky and his head snaps to her thinking she's talking about them.

“Excuse me?”

“Love, the new fragrance from Chanel.” She goes to spray it on him but Bucky stops her once he gets a whiff of it.

“No thank you.”

“Think of the people you want to impress. I need you to swallow your pride for me Bucky, and just nod yes to me.” You start with trying a new tie on him. “Here you’ll become what you’re supposed to be, you think you can’t but you can. Think of the guy you want to be, this is your chance to make it, so take it like a man.” Bucky fixes his collar and the tie knot to how tight he wants it while you go speak to one of the workers.

Bucky can’t help but wonder what you want or why you guys can’t leave things the way that they were. He also can’t help but wonder why he can never say no to you while he walks over to you and the attendant. “What’s that smell?”

“Subtext by Calvin Klein.” A different attendant hands Bucky a sample of it before leaving.

“Alright, I’m gonna show you different shirts and you just tell me what you think.” The first shirt he sees is a blue one.

“That I don’t like.” A plain white shirt is next. “That’s kind of neat.” Bucky takes that one and under it is a shirt with a pink, white, and black geometric pattern. “Guys who wear that get beat up on my street.” You giggle at his comment before taking the shirt out of his hand and walking away. Bucky knows that he’s in your hands and that he can’t try to retreat into his shell now. You come back to him and show him a coat jacket and he nods and smiles at it. You push him to a changing room for him to try everything on.

“God, I love shopping for guys and watching them change right before my eyes.”

“Don’t watch me change.” Bucky sticks his head out and you wave your hand at him in a dismissive manner.

“Your confidence is gonna grow, you’ll bloom like a rose.”

“Okay, this is nice.” He's referencing how you’re taking care of him. “Is this the price?”

“Don’t worry this is my treat. Now, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” You have him come out and stand in front of a mirror with you.

“Whoa.” You both speak at the same time.

“I look like Steve.”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s just me.”

“That’s the best part. The outside is new just now it reflects what’s already in you. I couldn’t change that if I wanted to. And I do not.”

“Thank you.”

“No, thank you. This is no gift, it’s payment in kind because you saw beyond all the blonde to my mind. We’ve got to buy this. What are you, blind. You look hot! You’ve become the guy you’re meant to be. Go get changed and I’ll go pay.”

Bucky can’t help but think of how this isn’t quite the guy he would’ve chosen to be. When he has you standing next to him so close he thinks he likes your plan. He’s glad he took it like a man when you hug him out by the car.

***

You’re sitting patiently as Wanda paints your nails before the trial. “I love this classy lawyer pink you chose Y/n. When those jury people see your nails, they’ll just know that they can trust you.”

“Which is more than what the team is doing. They are all over me to give up Natasha’s alibi.”

“Even including your friend, Bucky?” Wanda puts emphasis on friend trying to hint at the feelings you both have for each other.

“Well he’s on the team too.”

“Ya, and in more ways than one.” Wanda mutters under her breath and screws the cap onto the polish. “Are you sure you don’t want me to paint little gavals on them?”

“That’s fine Wanda, I think that might be a bit too much. And don’t think I didn’t hear you, Bucky is just my friend.”

“Well I could sure use a friend like that.” Right after she says that the delivery man that comes by so often walks in the door.You nudge Wanda's foot under the table to get her to look.

“I’ve got a package. Where’s Wanda Maximoff?”

“Oh my god.” Wanda whispers while whipping around to fce you instead of him.

“He’s coming over here.”

“Hey there, name’s Sam I’ve got a package for you. Kinda cool karma isn’t it?” Wanda freezes and you tap her on her shoulder to get her to snap out of it. When that doesn’t work Sam turns to you to sign for her. Wanda just sits there stuck staring at him and offers up a smile. “How ya doin’ today?”

“Fine.” Sam then leans down and places the box at Wanda’s feet while keeping eye contact.

“Take it easy.” Sam then struts out of the building.

“Maybe you’ll get a friend sooner rather than later.”

“Oh, come on, I can barely talk to him. I’ve got nothing to offer and he’s like walking porn.”

“Oh, please you have the right equipment, you just need to read the manual. Here, I’ll show you a little maneuver that my mom taught me in junior high. In my experience it has a ninety eight percent success rate of getting a man's attention and, when used appropriately, it has eighty three percent rate of return on a dinner invitation.”

“Wow.”

“It’s called the bend and snap.” You stand up and go into the middle of the room to show her. “I think I dropped something on the floor that I need to pick up. So you bend down and snap! See?” Wanda nods at you and you wave your hand to get her to get up. “Come on. You try it.” Wanda tries to do it and doesn’t have it down which is okay. “A little less bend, a little more snap.”

You eventually get everyone in the salon to start to do the bend and snap. “Good job everybody!”

“Oh my god the bend and snap! Works every time!” Peter Quill, a hair stylist comes out of the back to see everyone doing it.

You hang out at the salon until Wanda is done with work and then go to her place for a few hours. By the time you leave to walk home it’s starting to get dark.

“I called your room last night.” You see Thor talking to two girls and as you pass you can hear their conversation.

“I heard.”

“I was thinking maybe we could go out sometime.”

“No. You’re a dork who’s always going off about a mythology no one cares about.” The girls both laugh and you pause.

“I’m in law school.”

“Look, I'm not gonna go out with you. I can’t believe you’d even ask. Girls like me don’t go out with losers like you.” Your heart hurts at how she’s talking to the biggest softie you’ve ever met. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Excuse me.” You turn around and march up to Thor and slap him. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“What?”

“We spent a beautiful night together, and then I never hear from you again?”

“I…” Thor looks at the two girls and then back to you. “I’m sorry?”

“Sorry for what? For breaking my heart, or for giving me the greatest pleasure I’ve ever known and then just taking it away?”

“Uh, both?”

“Well forget it. I’ve already spent too many hours crying over you.” You then turn and walk away with a smile on your face as you hear the girl ask him when he wanted to go out.

***

“And where was she exactly?” The other lawyer asks Lila, Clint Barton's daughter.

“Standing over my father’s dead body.”

They pull the pool boy to the stand next.

“Mr. Wilson, can you tell us what this is?” She holds a thong out to show him.

“My uniform.”

“This is the uniform that Mrs. Barton asked you to wear while cleaning her pool?”

“Yes.”

“And are you or are you not having an affair with Natasha Barton?”

“Define affair.”

“Have you and Mrs. Barton had sexual relations?”

“Yes. Okay? Yes.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, court will reconvene tomorrow morning at nine A.M. We’re adjourned.” Natasha stands up angry and turns to talk to you.

“You know a Delta Nu would never sleep with a man who wears a thong.”

“Never!”

“I just liked watching him clean the filter.” The police guard starts to pull Natasha to the door.

“I know.”

“Take care of me Y/n.”

“I will.”

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes au #legally blonde au #legally blonde #steve rogers #wanda maximoff

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heywritersblock · 6 years

Text

space: g.d

concept: we all know gray is a clingy little koala bear but i also feel like he’d think a girl who values her independence is super hot. (spoiler alert: it’s not always plain sailing though)

~3000 words

warnings: angry grayson likes bad language and i apparently like a lot of dialogue

“hey! hey, y/n! are you awake?” he whispers, not quite as quietly as he’s trying for. following a little nudge to your side from where you’re laying next to him, your eyes flicker open and gradually meet his after you’ve tried to snuggle further into his side to avoid been woken up. “y/n? hey,” he repeats, nudging you lightly again. accepting you’re not getting any more sleep just now, you nod and grumble, “what’s up baby?” “oh, cool – you’re awake. do you wanna get breakfast together?” “what? now? gray, it’s –“ you hesitate to check his phone that you know is charging at the side of his bed. “it’s 2:17. is everything ok baby?” he snuggles down, tugging the sheets up to cover both of your shoulders and he rests his head right next to yours. “yeah, just couldn’t sleep. was thinkin’ about plans for tomorrow is all,” he answers, eyes tracking over your face adoringly. a contented smile grows on your face and you bring up your hand to peek out of the covers to rub at his cheek. he closes his eyes with a smile. “can’t tomorrow, bub. i’ve got a meeting first thing, then lunch and time with the girls. how about dinner at my place?” “my popular business queen. killin’ it!” he sleepily giggles, soothed by your hand still stroking at this cheek. “tha’s me,” you smile in reply. “i’ll text you when i leave the girls and you can come over. pasta sound good?” “with you? the best,” he slurs, almost sound asleep now. “pasta it is then, now get some rest,” you instruct, smoothing your hand over his hair and then down under the covers again. “hey, y’n?” he murmurs just as you’re about to slip back to sleep. “yeah?” “there’s that cereal in the pantry that you like – make sure you eat before you go. can’t be a business queen on an empty stomach,” he whispers, then immediately falls to sleep.

“can you see me now?” a black screen asks you for the fifth time in the same minute. “it’s the signal baby, let me just move over by the window. how about now?” you ask. grayson’s grinning face finally appears on the facetime screen as you tilt your phone just so. “heyyy! there’s my baby!” you grin upon seeing his face. “there she is,” he replies, his smile growing wider at hearing your joy to see him. “how are you?” he asks. “good, gray! the weather is freakin’ awesome here! how’re you?” “doin’ good, baby. even better now! question – why does it feel like you’ve been on your business trip for seven years now?” he asks, dramatically throwing his arm over his eyes as you loudly laugh. “oh yeah, three days; seven years. pretty similar! I’ll be back before you know it, baby – only another two days before we can hibernate in my room,” you smile. “ugh, that sounds like paradise right now! everything’s so boring without you here atht he minute. E won’t get off this new game he’s just got and i need company!” he whines. “aw poor baby! go out and have fun yourself! there’s so much to do in LA,” you remind him. “i know, i know! i’m fun and smart and i enjoy my own company,” he mocks you. “hey! don’t be mean – it’s true! you’re literally the least boring person, don’t hold yourself back. could you go skating or for a run on the beach? hell, go spray paint some public property! but do it by yourself and freaking have fun!” you say. he laughs deeply with a fond look in his eyes, nodding as he says, “ok my little cheerleader; we’re not all as comfortable with our own company as you are,” he reminds you. it’s your turn to laugh now. “is it really that weird i like being alone? i mean obviously i love spending time with you but damn, sometimes i just need my own space, y’know?” “nah, it’s not weird – it’s admirable! i blame ethan being stuck to my side all the freakin’ time for me not knowing how to function alone,” he jokes. “definitely his fault,” you jokingly agree. “how dare he be your identical twin?!” “right?! anyway baby, tell me about your trip and how you absolutely don’t miss me at all,” he grins.

you’re hanging out at the boys’ house for the afternoon sharing the couch with grayson; he’s at one end reading a book and you’re at the other scrolling through your phone. your legs are intertwined at the centre and you’re tickling his leg that’s closest to you with your nails, just to be touching him.

ethan bursts through the kitchen into the living room and announces, “one of the guys we go to the skate park with’s throwing a party tonight at the beach – are you guys down?” “yeah, dude – i’m down!” gray replies as ethan fist bumps him. two pairs of identical eyes turn to look at you and ethan asks, “y/n? are you down?” raising his eyebrows to match his question. “uhhh, no – sorry,” you reply, tilting your mouth up to the side in silent apology. “oh, ok. no worries! have you got other plans?” ethan asks genuinely, taking a seat on a chair at the side. “um, no, not really,” you state honestly, tucking your legs in as gray starts to shuffle up from his laying down position. “if you’ve got no plans you should come, y/n! it’s only J from the skate park and he’s super chill. it’d be fun and you’d be totally welcome,” ethan encourages. “nah, it’s ok, really. thanks for the invite though, E,” you smile, which he returns quickly. you’ve just gone back to scrolling through your phone when you hear gray clear his throat. you look up and he’s looking at you intently, book long forgotten shoved on the couch next to him. “why don’t you wanna come, y/n? is everything ok?” he asks as ethan looks between the two of you. “i- well- i just don’t want to, really. just want a quiet night, y’know?” you explain, shrugging your shoulders to show this really isn’t as big of a deal as gray’s trying to make it. “ok, well i’ll stay here too and we can do something together,” he offers, his intense stare not faltering. he’s challenging you. “gray, honestly – go to the party and have fun. i’ll stay at my house and have just as much fun, then when we get dinner tomorrow you can tell me all about it. chill out about it,” you say as his gaze becomes heated. “are you serious right now?” he asks, voice louder than it should be with so little distance between you. you lock your phone and sit up to meet his gaze. if he’s trying to cause an argument then you’re not going to back down. you raise your eyebrow and without blinking, you retort, “are you?” with a short, insincere laugh. “no – really. you’re choosing to go home and spend time on your own doing whatever it is that you find so much fun rather than go out with your boyfriend? you’re honestly telling me that you don’t see why that pisses me off?” he asks, voice growing louder and more disbelieving. never one to back down, you swing your legs down onto the floor and reply, “i’m honestly telling you that it pisses me off that you think i have to be with you every second of the day to be a good girlfriend. is that what you want to hear?” you see ethan silently stand up, slowly and awkwardly backing out of the room as he senses this conversation is quickly turning into a fight. “why is it so weird that i want to spend time with you?” he asks, stood up now with his hands messing up his hair. you know this is a sore spot for him; your rare fights are always over this very topic. “why is it so weird that i like my personal space? i’m not like you! i haven’t spent every waking moment attached to someone and it makes me feel like i’m suffocating if i don’t get that time every now and then. you know this, grayson!” you stand up – always ready to match him. “oh? oh? so i suffocate you. fuckin’ awesome, y/n. just what i wanted to hear, for fucks sake,” he mutters that last part almost inaudibly. he’s really pissed now and you can see it in the way his chest heaves and his jaw moves. that fact he’s getting so worked up over this issue again pisses you off even more. “don’t start with this, gray – we literally have this same fight every couple of months. you signed up to this! it’s not something you can change about me, why is that so hard for you to understand?” “we have the same fight because it’s still just as fucking infuriating, y/n!” he yells, gesticulating his hands in front of him. “no man wants to hear that his girlfriend would rather spend time at home doing fucking laundry rather than spending time with him! it makes me feel like i’ve got nothing left to give you!” you stand stock still. “what do you mean?” you ask, taken aback by how he’s phrased the last part of that sentence. “i mean you’re you – you know what you like and what you don’t, you know who you are and you don’t change that for anyone. sometimes i feel like i add nothing to your life. sometimes i feel like i hold you back when i just wanna cuddle with you or spend time with you around here or at yours. i feel guilty that maybe you’d rather be spending time on your own doing whatever it is that yo do but i’m keeping you here with me. it fucking sucks.” “you honestly think that?” you ask, emotion welling up in your chest and showing slightly in your quiet voice and the way your forehead is pinched. “you went on a business trip for five fucking days and literally told me over the phone about how great of a time you were having and how much you didn’t miss me!” he laughs with no humour. his arms are raised back in the air and his hair is beyond messed up now. “grayson, how can i miss you when we’re never fucking apart?” he hates – no, he despises your response. he lets out that loud laugh that you hate because it means he’s about to walk away from you. “ok, cool. well have your fucking space now then, yeah?” he spits as he turns and walks out, grabbing his car keys and slamming the front door as he goes. you take in a few deep breaths, trying your best not to lose it in the middle of the twins’ living room and you take a seat on the couch again, placing your head in your hands and leaning your elbows on your knees. “wow, that didn’t sound good…” you hear coming from the kitchen. ethan takes one look at your face as you look up at him and winces at how unhelpful what he’s just said was. he trudges over to sit beside you on the couch and asks, “wanna talk about it?” “not really,” you respond. “c’mon. tell uncle ethan all about that nasty fight,” he jokes, trying to make you smile. sarcastically and in your peppiest voice you say, “well uncle E, i’m so glad you asked! your dick of a brother is pissed at me because i don’t want to spend my every waking moment with him for the rest of eternity! he hates the fact i know my own mind and he wishes i was totally different and didn’t have my own personality at all! if only i was an eighteenth century character from a romantic novel who’s only goal in life was to please their love!” you hiss, shoving your head back into your hands. ethan winces again, then replies. “ok, so you said a couple of interesting things there. i’m just gonna gloss over the bitchy tone and the bit about the book that i didn’t quite the reference of and i’m just gonna focus on this bit – you think gray hates that you’re strong minded?” “obviously so,” you mumble. “oh, y/n. you couldn’t be more wrong,” he laughs to himself. you raise your eyes that were trained to the floor up to meet ethan’s face and wait for him to continue. “in the long, long list of things that i have to hear grayson talk about how much he loves about you - and believe me, it’s freaking long - you being your own person? that’s pretty much at the top.” you raise your eyebrows in question, showing that you’re very much listening and ethan needs to keep on talking. “seriously – ‘god, E, she’s so independent. she knows exactly what she wants and she doesn’t need anyone to help her get it – it’s so freakin’ hot... she couldn’t make plans with me because she’s already made plans with her friends – why does that make me want her even more?’ oh yeah - the amount of times i’ve heard about it, i can honestly tell you, he doesn’t hate it. stop telling yourself he does. he does, however, love you a lot and sometimes, he doesn’t want to feel like he’s competing someone else for your love.” you can feel him thinking at the side of you before he quickly adds, “that other person is you, by the way. just in case you didn’t get that.” in dramatic ethan style, he stands up without warning and leaves you to contemplate exactly what he’s said. you sit there for the next forty five minutes, mulling over ethan’s wise words as the front door opens and then closes in a much calmer way than you last heard it. his keys are tossed into the bowl by the door and a couple of footsteps later, grayson appears in the entryway. he looks surprised to see you, his mouth dropping open into a small ‘o’ shape. you smile sadly at him, full of emotion that the last hour or so has caused you. “you’re still here?” he questions. “yeah. sorry if you wanted me to go,” you reply, suddenly unsure if you should be there at all. should you have left? after all, this is what your argument was about to start with. quickly, he shakes his head, upset that you would even think he didn’t want you there. “no, no. i’m glad you stayed,” he says quietly, followed by an unsure, “why did you stay?” you smile at his surprise, then reply a simple, “had a little chat with E. he’s very wise, y’know.” a gentle laugh and a whispered, “oh god,” escapes grayson’s mouth and, with his nervous hands still in his pockets, he makes his way over to you. you’re more hurt than you thought you would be when he sits in the chair rather than next to you on the couch. he can tell, and he explains softly so as to not cause another fight, “don’t want to suffocate you.” he casts his eyes down sadly as tears flood your eyes. he hates seeing you upset but this has upset him too. you take a deep breath to try and steady your emotions but your voice still wobbles as you say, “gray. i’m sorry if i ever made you feel like you’re not my number one priority. i’m sorry if i made you feel second best or if i made you feel like i was happier when i was away from you. the truth is, you make me feel so safe and secure that i like that i can go and do my own thing and then come right back home to you. i’m so in love with you that when we’re apart, i think about how right it will feel when we come back together. i know it will be so fucking worth it that i enjoy the moment i’m living in right then. i’m sorry that you think i don’t miss you but i simply don’t let myself think about it. instead, i look forward to kissing you again when we’re reunited and the butterflies i feel when i know its only a couple of hours til i see you again. i know you think it’s fucking weird that i like my space, but that’s me. i wish i could change that for you but i can’t and i hope that that’s something you can accept about me,” you state honestly. gray’s looking directly at you now, face mirroring yours; full of emotion. he’s nodding slowly, like it’s suddenly making a bit more sense to him. “i can’t say i’ll ever understand it, y/n, but that’s part of what makes me love you just that little extra. it drives me fucking insane that you’d rather spend time without me sometimes but i can’t say that i hate it. the thought that my girl is so self confident that she doesn’t need me? fuck, that’s as hot as it is infuriating.” he smiles. “i’d never thought about it like that before, though - what you just said. never though about how great it is when we reunite,” he mumbles, then slowly moves closer to you by sitting on the couch. he slides over until his knee is touching yours. you’re both feeling a little too vulnerable to really look at each other in your eyes at first but when he taps your knee with his index finger twice, you sniff and look up. “i’m sorry i keep getting angry about the same thing. i just get a little insecure at times. i love you and i’m sorry for making you sad and for making you feel like you wish you could change. please forgive me,” he whispers. you lean in and rest your forehead against his gently. his eyes close and he lets out a breath he’s been holding, tension releasing from his shoulders. he leans in slowly, and presses a tender kiss to your lips. you lift your hand to his jaw and keep him there, pressing kiss after kiss to his lips and not wanting to let him go. the kisses get deeper and more desperate as you both let out the emotion that you’d been holding in. a voice from the hallway makes you both jump and pulls you away from your private little world with giggles coming from swollen lips and relief pulsing through your bodies that you’d manage to solve your argument. “cool! you’ve made up. so, are we on for the beach or no?” ethan asks, leaping behind the wall next to him as gray picks up a cushion and violently throws it in his brother’s direction. the two of you spend the next couple of hours cuddled together in gray’s bed after making sure that you both knew just how forgiven the other person was. you’re just about to drop to sleep when gray’s hand brushes over your forehead gently and he whispers, “hey, y/n? it’s 11:30 - do you want me to take you home?” he presses a kiss into your hair as he waits for your response. he desperately tries to hide his elated grin as you shuffle sleepily closer to him, wrap your arms just that bit tighter around his waist and rest your head right in the crook of his neck. “wanna stay right here,” you whisper as you drift off to sleep.

inspired by NASA - queen ari you can say "i love you" through the phone tonight really don’t wanna be in your arms tonight i'm just sayin', baby i can’t really miss you if i’m with you

#dolan twins #dolan twins imagine #dolan twins fic #dolan twins blurb #ethan dolan #grayson dolan imagine #grayson dolan fic #grayson dolan blurb #imagine #Fic #blurb #gd fic #heywritersblock

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acoatofgold · 6 years

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Everybody’s Got A Story

Semi-coming out of retirement to publish this really rough story I wrote on Monday in a couple of hours. Its the second non-explicit story on here (the first is: Three’s A Fit) and I will now fade back into obscurity. Its actually Pre-Sueprcorp, its an AU, and its also pre-Supergirl.

Title: Everybody’s Got A Story

Or: How Lena Luther Learned to Connect With Others

What happens is this: The Luthor’s are cold and cruel and even at their most loving are distant and lying and Lena just wants to know the truth, for once. She has very vague memories of her mother, a woman with sad eyes and warm hands and a warm chest as Lena laid on her chest to sleep. When she wakes up, her mother doesn’t. Her lips are purple, like the bruises under her eyes. Lena tries to push her awake, to shove her into consciousness, and when that doesn’t work, she goes to the neighbor who watches her when Mom is at work and they call 911. In her memory, Father is there before the police. Perhaps he is there before the police, it wouldn’t surprise her, but she does know she never sees her mother again.

The first day in the Luther household, she remembers vividly: holding Father’s hand, running to keep up with his stride, and he barges in the household. “I’ve brought a child,” He says. “Her name is Lena.” Lillian stands in the foyer, half frozen, and Lex barrels in at full speed, wearing Lacrosse gear. He has a mass of curly red hair, like he’s on fire. “Meet your sister.” They shake hands. Father takes her passed Lillian, who is stock still, and they go to the study together. She sits on the floor and he does paperwork. He puts her to bed himself; a bath, pajamas with the tags still on, and a finger of brandy mixed with water “for your nerves”. Lionel reads his business agreement out loud until she falls asleep. When she wakes up, she is alone.

Father is confident and cold and loves her as much as he is capable of loving anyone, which is not a lot at all. Lillian is capable of love but not for her – all of it belongs to Lex and Lex alone; strong Lex, smart Lex, brilliant Lex, Lex who has a string of heartbroken women, Lex who the rules don’t apply to; Lex who goes mad and tries to kill a god. He pleads insanity and Lena knows its fake, its orchestrated: Lex has never been clearer or more intense in his goals, but that comes later. As long as Lena has known him, Lex has half-assed everything, the result of being born with more money than many countries and zero consequences. Lex punches a boy at MIT for looking at him and returns the next semester. Lex crashes a yacht on his twentieth birthday. Lex crashes a yacht on her twentieth birthday and she wasn’t even there.

Lex is but the product of how he was raised. And so is she.

It’s why she surprises even herself when she heads into the college for journalism just twelve credits shy of her electrical engineering degree. She double majors, takes the extra eighteen months, and walks across her stage to no one. Father sends her a car and a bouquet of pink cosmos and there’s money in her account, more than she’s had before on her own. Lex calls, half drunk, to congratulate her and flays a corporate underling alive for interrupting him. Lena hangs up. He doesn’t call back.

Father tells her he is sick shortly after she gets the job at the Tribune in National City, as physically far apart as two cities can be in the continuous country.

She’s fixing herself dinner and lunch for the next day, with Father on speakerphone.

“Are you sure you don’t want to live in the brownstone?” He asks her. “It’s just sitting there. I already pay the taxes on it.”

“No, Father,” She replies. She’s chopping cucumbers for a Greek chicken salad. “I want to live on my own.”

“You would live on your own. Just a maid to come in and clean. Practically monkhood.”

“No, Father,” Lena repeats herself, turning a pan on medium.

He grunts eloquently, clears his throat and says, “I want you here for my birthday. It’ll be my last.”

“Father, please,” She scoffs. “You’re as healthy as –“

“I’m dying, Lena.” His voice is quiet. “I’ve been dying. Been fighting it, knowing Lex wasn’t ready for the company and you’re uninterested. He’s finally doing something with himself, though, and you’re a grown woman now. I can go. I just want you to say goodbye.”

Her hands are shaking. She puts the knife down. “How long do you have?”

Father scoffs, “Like I’d let any doctor tell me what to do. I’m having my birthday and I’m going to be euthanized now that there’s a civilized option.” His voice grows stronger, “I wouldn’t be able to stand it, pissing and shitting on myself, letting my mind go. No, not I. I’m going on my own terms.”

Lena clears her throat, feeling her breath catch, “Okay, Father. I understand.”

“Good,” He says. “So you’ll be here?”

“Yes, Father. I’ll book my ticket tonight.”

“Good.” He hangs up.

Lena puts the chicken tenders in the pan, watches it sizzle for a moment, and then goes to her cabinet for a bottle of wine.

She burns the chicken.

The day prior to her father’s birthday is when she’s given her very first story. Its thirty miles out of the city center and James Olsen comes along. He’s very cold to her, which she expects, but his photographs are amazing so she tolerates his attitude even when they’re in her car. She drives at the speed limit but barely and watches suburbs turn into desert turn into a farm that looks mostly like a forest. The parking lot is all dirt and houses not one, not two, but three beat up turn of the century trucks, a school bus painted blue, a van missing all four tires on concrete blocks, and an ATV. On top of the ATV is a chicken and it clucks at them menacingly.

“What the Hell?” Mutters Olsen under his breath.

She ignores him but has the same sentiment. She steps onto dirt in her Balenciaga sneakers and thinks, for the first time, maybe Gucci was not appropriate. Its desert as far as the eye can see until they get to the “farm” and there it’s covered in so many plants that she can hardly see ten feet ahead of her. They walk down a rough approximation of a path and stop at the first building they see. It’s steel, tan, and fairly new, with an AC sticking out of a rough cut hole packed into place with foam spray. There’s a window with a bell on it and she rings it.

A dirty young man comes out, his dreads tied back, dirt up to his forearms, and asks, “Y’all here for Kara?” He’s wearing a yellow t-shirt and cargo shorts held up by a shoestring. He’s thin, almost reedy, with an easy smile.

Lena nods, “Yeah, we’re from the Tribune.”

His head bobbles as he eyes both of them, “Cool, cool, lemme go get her.”

He ducks around the two of them and takes off running. They stand in the heat for about three minutes before the young man comes back with an equally young woman, both running with long, familiar strides. It’s now that she notices that they’re both barefoot.

“Hey,” The woman grins, all blue eyes and white teeth, “I’m Kara Kent.”

She’s as dirt covered as her companion but thrusts out a hand anyways. She’s wearing jeans so worn that the holes are visible in both knees and a gray t-shirt that says “El’s Farm”. She wears a John Deere hat on top of neatly buzzed blond hair, blue eyes glimmering. Her shirt is tight around her arms, all muscle, and her jeans barely hold her thighs in place. Lena is immediately half in love. She’s always loved women who work with their hands. James shakes first and then Lena.

“James Olsen,” Says James. Then, he asks, “You know a Clark? The last name is familiar.”

Her grin widens, “My cousin. You must be Jimmy.”

He clears his throat, “Just James, please.”

Lena shakes as well, noticing a split blister on Kara’s thumb and that all of her fingers are rough.

“I’m Lena Luther.”

Kara’s smile turns sardonic, “The orphan that could. They used to talk about you all the time at my group home, before I got to live with Clark.”

She blinks, “Really?”

Kara nods, her grin more mischievous now, “Oh yeah. The nuns were crazy about you. They always told us if we were on our best behavior, we’d get adopted by a rich couple like you did. When you went to MIT, you’d’ve thought you walked on water. The Mother was so overcome with joy, she cried for a week.”

Lena isn’t sure how to feel about it and it must show on her face because Kara laughs and claps her on the shoulder so hard she feels her knees buckle.

Kara jerks her head, “C’mon, I’ll show you around. Virgil, finish with the microgreens and we’ll meet up at the greenhouse in twenty.”

He gives her a thumbs up, waves to them, and goes back into the steel building.

She does give them a quick tour – the path is an actual path and less meandering when they’re further away from the initial opening, concrete pavers with leaf and flower imprints leading the way – “we did those ourselves, s’why they’re all sorta shapes, this flower set is from a broccoli plant that bolted” - first to two more buildings she points out as the storage room and the cold room, both similar steel buildings to the first with more foam sprayed air conditioners.

“What’s a cold room do?” Lena asks her phone already on record.

Kara smiles at her, “Ya wanna wait until the end of the tour? I fully intend to give you a real interview away from the heat but I know Just James wants pictures before it gets dark out.”

Lena can’t stop her own grin. Her makeup feels like it’ll sweat off at the rate of the temps outside.

Kara leads them to the first building, opens it to show them thousands of hanging bulbs of onions and garlic.

“We just finished our allium harvest of storage onions and garlic. Beat our record: twelve thousand. Ten thousand is in garlic and half of that will probably be broken up and sold or used as seed garlic, and the onions are eaten, given away, goes into our CSA box, go to the pigs. The works.”

James makes her back up, moves Kara further inside, makes her take the hat off, and he moves himself until he gets the right picture. He clicks off three or four of them before they move onto the next building. Lena notes that each of the buildings they’ve passed has gutters and the gutters go to PVC pipe that leads above ground to the east.

The cold room, she discovers, is a walk in refrigerator for cheap. There’s foam board insulation, bare to the eye, and the floor is concrete. It houses about thirty totes, each with masking top on one part. Lena takes a closer look at the closest one. “Arugula, 41 lbs.”

“We harvest about seven to eight hundred pounds of produce during the summer, more if we do root vegetables. Everything’s already washed and sorted in here, we just combine for salad mixes or braising mixes by the totes. Only about half of these are filled.”

Kara continues to show them the market garden: there are four blocks of twenty five rows, each dedicated to a family of crops and a station set up at the beginning of each block. Only three are in rotation; the other is covered in black tarps to lay fallow until next spring. Each block is home to a hedgerow of berries, in between the rows are flower beds, and in the back are ironwood trees.

“Nitrogen fixers,” Kara explains, “And they do great in the desert as shade. Our water consumption was reduced a lot by that and we’re almost entirely off of on-site rain water. There’s a well on the property but with the drought, I never want to use it, so we occasionally truck it in from some of the other places that collect rainwater that haven’t used it all but we don’t use groundwater.”

James takes pictures as they walk, sometimes all natural and sometimes posing Kara or one of about three workers, including Virgil who passes by them as James takes pictures of Kara with a hoe. He makes Virgil backtrack and the two weed in between the rows of beans, and then their hands and bare feet by the lettuce. He snaps a picture of a butterfly floating by one of the open marigolds.

Kara leads them up the land, passed the crop field, passed the fallow field, and to the greenhouse. Lena is sweating buckets and James doesn’t look far behind but if it’s hot outside, the greenhouse is sweltering.

“Oh my God,” Lena says aloud, involuntarily.

Kara gives them both bottles of water from a cooler right inside the door.

“Yeah, it’s about twenty degrees hotter in here than it is outside. This is where we keep our tropical plants and the hardening off station for our nursery plants.” She jerks her chin to the man inside, “Virgil is in charge of all our nursery plants and the microgreens. Timmy does our cut flowers and Kate and I handle the rest of the farm. Everybody works together on packing and harvesting day, though.”

Virgil shakes his head, “What would you do without me?”

She grins back, easy, rocking on her heels, “Suffer, obviously.”

People who smile easily have always confounded Lena. She wasn’t a happy child and now as an adult, the idea that some people are just easy to get along with has never settled well with her. She’s awkward and always feels like an imposter when trying to be friendly. Confronted with two of them, she looks around and through the plastic to a whole different field outside, on the other side of the hill with a round, canvas building on top of it.

“What’s that?” She asks.

Kara turns back to her, her hands in her pockets, “There’s my yurt and beyond that is the field for seeds.”

“You grow your own seeds?”

Kara replies, pride in her eyes, “Fifty varieties of them. It’s really my passion, the market garden and CSA are cool, ya know, gets the bills paid-“

Virgil snorts, “What bills, hillbilly?”

Kara plows on, “But seed keeping and the animal breeding is what gets me up in the morning.”

“Can we see?” Lena asks. Kara opens the door for them, “Absolutely.”

She takes them to the field, helping Lena mind her steps over and behind the steep hill, walking with the surety of a goat. Closer, she sees that some of the plants are covered in translucent bags. Kara shows them the varieties – seven types of lettuce, three peppers, five tomatoes, ten types of flowers, two types of snap pea, several types of dried beans and peas, six types of broccoli, and lots of herbs.

“All of these plants are from seeds I’ve either gotten over the years at garage sales or plant sales or seed sales, even church sales when they clean out the storage room, and the rest is from people in the area. Normally, they’re disenfranchised or undocumented people who want their family legacy to live on or even aliens.” She points to a section covered in chicken wire and green posts, “That’s the chicken area where we collect eggs for the CSA and local neighborhoods, and on this side –“ She does a 180, “Are the pigs. They eat all the scraps, all the weeds, and we have two breeding pairs right now, and all their purebred piglets go to be breeders. One is a Mangalista and the other is Red Wattle. They occasionally ignore me and crossbreed and when they do, we raise the babies and then process and sell to some restaurants in National City, like Donovan’s and Area 51. Apparently, that mix tastes exactly like a blurghap from Planet Xhiauovrat.”

Kara pauses to put her hands on her hips and start stretching at the waist, bending so far backwards that her shirt slips and Lena is aware that her happy trail is also blond and she has abs. She takes a sip of her water and nearly chokes. Kara taps her on the back, nowhere near as staggering as the shoulder clap earlier, and she coughs her water up.

As promised, Kara leads them to the yurt. It’s a decent size – nowhere near the size of a house but much larger than a tent. There’s a basin outside with a bar of soap and she washes her hands, feet, and face in the chill water that she throws down the hillside before she comes inside.

“Shoes off at the door,” She calls and they follow. Lena’s got it a sight easier than James, who wore hiking boots.

The inside of it is crowded but orderly and lovely. As soon as she walks in, she sees a coatrack that’s all windbreakers and hats. Kara’s John Deere hat is at the very top, the brim bent and dirty. The floors are wooden, a different type than the deck outside, and the windows are up so light floods inside. She looks up to find that the roof is translucent and much closer than it appeared outside. There’s a full kitchen pushed against one side, a small table in the middle covered in folders and paper and a beat up laptop, a bouquet of flowers in a tin can, and on the other side is a library. There are shelves there, just covered in books from floor to ceiling, and what looks like a handmade sofa. It smells like lavender and mint inside. There are plywood walls about 2/3rds of the way down and Kara calls over her shoulder, “Let me wash my face again and I’ll sit out there with you. Take a seat anywhere.”

Lena sits at the table, twisting her empty water bottle between her hands when James comes inside. He’s got his camera around his neck still and sits across from her.

“Talk about all day,” Olsen says and Lena nods. She takes her bottle and puts it on the back of her neck.

Kara emerges in a clean, white t-shirt and a face scrubbed so briskly her cheeks are pink. She’s beautiful, Lena realizes again, with her soft, red mouth and eyes like stars.

“You guys want something to drink?” She asks.

Olsen says no but Lena says, “Please.”

Kara opens the fridge, “I’ve got water, raspberry sweet tea, orange juice, and milk.”

“I’ll take the tea.”

Lena wonders why she says “sweet” and not “iced” when she takes a sip. It’s sweeter than any drink she’s ever had short of a soda but tastes good. There are a lot of other flavors to it, a little bite of herbs and a distinctive tea flavor.

Kara sits across from her and smiles her easy smile, “You want to just fire away or do you want me to start and you just jump in when you need clarification?”

Lena licks her lips, thinking, and Kara’s eyes dart to her mouth then back to her eyes.

“Were your parents into gardening? How’d you get into it?”

Kara nods, cracks her neck audibly, and says, “Neither of my parents was into gardening. My father was a geneticist and my mother was working at the state attorney’s office when they died. It was why my aunt killed them; she was an extremist eco terrorist and my father was creating a new type of corn to outcompete the native types in Mexico and improving Roundup because of all the birth defects and bee deaths associated with it at the time. My mother was helping fight a lot of the class action lawsuits, throwing stuff out, pretending to lose paperwork, paying police officers to lose certain cases, that sort of thing. So she went over for lunch one Sunday and she killed them and then herself.

“I was riding my bike home from a friend’s place, at the time, because my mom was supposed to pick me up. We were supposed to go to the science museum. We had a dog and he barked like crazy until one of the neighbors went to see what was going on and called 911. My aunt’s husband said he wouldn’t take me, so I was taken to a group home for six months while they tried to find some relatives. My closest relative was Clark and he’d been adopted as a baby when my aunt and uncle died in a car crash. My parents were out the country at the time and by the time they got back, he was already settled with the Kent’s. They didn’t really keep tabs on him. My uncle and father apparently never got along.”

“You talked about living with nuns. Tell me about it? How’d you end up living with them?”

“I lived with the neighbors for two weeks but I was – sad, a lot, and destructive so they took me to the Catholic Church that had an orphanage while the police tried to find Clark. I got counseling while I was there and I realized being angry wouldn’t get me anywhere with a buncha women in their fifties who served a higher purpose. I started smiling more and I realized I was happier smiling more. I’d just gotten used to it when they found Clark and Clark was twenty four; he didn’t really want a kid around at the time but he took me in and left me with his parents. Uncle Jonathan was a farmer in Kansas – and this is really what you think of as a farmer, he had the tractor and the overalls and the acres and acres of corn. Aunt Martha baked a lot, sold some of it but most of it was for neighbors, and when that wasn’t happening, she was planning for the school year. It bored me to tears. I was from Argo and I was used to a lot of extreme sports – mountain boarding and snowboarding and hiking trails and cave exploration, that kinda thing. I was doing kendo and krav maga every day after school. Smallville was four thousand people and eight thousand cows.”

Olsen snorts and Lena bites her lips to keep from smiling.

Kara rubs her eyebrow with the heel of her palm, “Yeah, I’m serious. I’d bike to the library and read all day and I was so keyed up I’d pace the halls all night. Couldn’t sleep. Drove Unc crazy. Lucky I was too short to reach the pedals or I’d have been in the tractor from sunup to sundown.”

“So he inspired you to be a farmer?” Lena asks.

Kara scoffs, “God, no. He complained the whole time and told me to make something of myself. I got into farming from books. I was riding home one night, I think just after the fourth of July, and passed this garage sale. Some guy ran out on his wife and she’d put all his stuff out there. Everything was a quarter and I mean everything. Pants, shoes, shirts? Quarter for the pile. Golf clubs? Quarter. Fishing poles? Quarter. His truck? Quarter. Once I realized she was serious, with Lara Smith in the truck, pulling off, I put my bike on the rack in the ATV and picked up all the books I could. Paid fifty cents. Made it right to the barn when it ran outta gas.” The longer she talked, the deeper her accent got. She’d sounded like any civilized Californian to Lena’s ear initially but now it was the sort of Midwestern accent she expected from somebody who’d grown up on a corn farm.

“I went through the books and found he’d recently purchased two: Making Small Farms Work by Richard Perkins, which was about a permaculture setup in Sweden and The Market Gardener by Jean-Martin Fortier. Wasn’t a thumb print on them. They changed my life, particularly Fortier. He’s Canadian and works the French intensive method, like Eliot Coleman, and talked about farming in a way I hadn’t thought before, and about how to grow, why to grow certain crops, and the small startup costs. By the time I finished, I was behind Uncle Jon every day, asking –“ She pitches her voice up into the whine of a young teenager, one who’s voice hadn’t deepened any, “when I could have my own garden, I only needed two acres, I wouldn’t even need a tractor. He got so sick of me, he asked who I thought I was that I could go from never even seeing a plant grow to thinking I could make a living at it. I’ve never been a sensible person so I asked Aunt Martha if she’d talk to him about an acre or two and she said, ‘Well, if it were me, I’d buy the seeds first.’ So I bought seeds and she would just drag me by the nose from point to point, maybe thinking I’d give up. ‘Well, I’d need to start up the seeds first. Gee, let’s look up the planting date, oh no, what about water, golly where will we put ‘em, man, a garden is needed.’”

Kara suddenly laughs, “She got me to put in a full acre garden by hand, muck stalls for the compost, clear weeds, clear brush, everything. I was using a chainsaw before I got my permit. Hell, I was using the truck to take brush to the back forty to burn for her. I pounded T-posts for two weeks and fenced in the garden the first time I saw a deer near my plants.”

“How much did you make your first year?”

“Two thousand. Uncle Jon charged me for gas, using his chain saw, using his field, using his T-posts, using his chicken wire, the whole nine yards. I think he made more off of me than he did farming.”

Lena frowns, “That’s depressing. I’d have given up.”

Kara shakes her head, “I couldn’t. By then I had a point to prove. I used my money to work on infrastructure – a taller fence, my own gas, seed, a seeder, a little greenhouse. I argued that I was supposed to get some money from mucking the stalls and Uncle Jon said it was my room and board and if I wanted more money, I’d have to do more around the house. I did laundry once and dyed all his undershirts pink and he said he’d pay me to leave him the hell alone. I was so serious about it that Aunt Martha promised to take me to Wichita’s farmer market if I could fill the truck bed and we’d borrow the tent and tables from the church. She may as well have cussed me, because by the time it was April, I had the truck full. Snow on the ground but there was –“ She sucked on her lip, her eyes far away, “I think a full tote of peas, a full tote of spinach, chard, carrots, leeks, and storage onions. I just put everything in plastic bags and handed it to the customers. I had butternut and acorn squash from the year before, still good in the cellar, so I figured Hell, may as well and took those too.”

She settles back in her chair coolly, “I made more that first day than I’d made the year before selling in Smallville. It was fantastic. After that, I was hooked.”

Kara is not the only one hooked; Lena can’t stop listening. Kara’s a good talker so there’s never really anything she needs to ask as Kara talks about succession planting and maxing out on an acre and planting with the seasons to maximize space.

“What’s something you’ve never grown?” Lena asks her as she extols the virtues of steamed turnip greens.

“Commercially? Cabbage. It’s too cheap to bother with for any semblance of a price. Broccoli is easier and more money than cabbage. Less slugs.”

“Something you love?”

“Beans. Plant ‘em and they go.”

“How’d you start saving seed?”

Kara grins, “It was cheaper than buying tomato seeds. I picked the best of them and then I’d slice and freeze and when it was time for buying seeds, I’d bury it in about an inch of dirt and take all the babies and switch ‘em to plug trays.”

“You’ve got quite a few seeds now, so how did you start saving so many if it was just for the money?”

Kara licks her teeth, “We had old neighbors. Mrs. Hamilton was about six hundred when I was a kid, I’m talkin’ bout old. Just dusty. And if she was six hundred, her wife was about five hundred ninety nine plus or minus a day. They saw me hauling produce out the garden day after day and I’d given them some lettuce I hadn’t sold, a couple tomatoes. One day she asked me what I intended to do for beauty. I said I had no idea what she was talking about. She threw her hands up, had to grab the fence before she fell over, and made me come inside with her. I was a half-step behind in case she fell but she didn’t and I waited in the kitchen. She gave me a glass of lemonade, an oatmeal cookie, and a little half pint mason jar of seeds. “Those,” She told me, “are Bachelor’s Buttons, sometimes called cornflowers. It’s where cornflower blue comes from and it is the exact shade of my lovely bride’s eyes. You’ll grow them for beauty and the first blooms belong to my wife.””

She smiled, taking a sip of her sugary tea, “Oh I was mad. I thought I’d been doing a good job of the garden, it was colorful, everything had some little splash to it, it was in a spiral pattern. I was growing in abundance. I realize now I was insecure that she thought because my work wasn’t beautiful but functional that I would not be beautiful as an adult, simply functional. I had never worried about being beautiful before that – my parents were liberals and insisted that a child not be told they’re beautiful because it would make the child hinge their entire personality on it. They preferred that I be functional so I was told I was a strong girl, not a pretty girl, or an excellent athlete or a wonderful baker, that sorta thing. Lots of adjectives.”

“Did you plant the flowers?”

“Of course I did. I didn’t want to but by the time I made it inside, Mrs. Hamilton had called Aunt Martha, and she watched me go right out there and plant the seeds and water them. They were lovely flowers. I did bring the first bouquet to the Hamilton’s and then I sold some but I figured, “Whatever” and saved the seeds. I still have some. I plant a few every year just to save the seed.”

Lena asks, “Were the rest given to you?”

Kara nods, “Oh yeah. Small town like Smallville? Somebody young doing the planting, they ask you plant everything. I had beans from the statehood growing up one side of a trellis by cucumbers from somebody’s grandma from Armenia. Everybody had a tomato plant they needed growing. Everybody had a story to tell. Why’s that your favorite flower?”

She is pointing to the bouquet on the table, sitting in a tin can of water.

Lena blinks, confused, “It’s not.”

“Well, what is?”

Lena frowns, thinking, but James answers, “Chrysanthemums. My grandfather wore one every Sunday.” He smiles, “It always made me feel grown up when he’d put one in my lapel. We didn’t even go to church; we’d just put the flowers in and go for dinner together.”

Kara nods, “And that’s why I do it. I preserve memories, I preserve families and histories and hurts with those seeds. The journey passes from person to person with those.” Kara blinks her eyes, glances at her oven and asks, “Want to stay for dinner?”

Lena wants to. She’s sure James does too but she’s got a flight early tomorrow morning to the other side of the country and sees her father for what’s probably the last time.

She grimaces, “I wish. I gotta type this up and then I’ve got a flight tomorrow.”

Kara frowns, “Aw, that’s too bad.” She stands up and walks them all the way to Lena’s car, her hands in her pockets, and the John Deere hat on her head backwards.

The chicken is sleeping on the ATV and she clucks, eyes narrowed, and sidles up to it. Lena is strapping into her seat but pauses to watch her walk sideways to a sleeping chicken, put a hand over it, and then grab and truss it under her arm.

“This is Bonnie,” Kara introduces them. “She likes to run away.”

Lena watches her go most of the way to the path, before the bend when she’s out of sight because of the ironwoods, and leans her head out her own window, “Hey, Kara!”

Kara turns, light on her feet.

“It’s cosmos! My father sent them for my college graduation!”

Kara’s grin lights up her face and she walks the path backwards.

The drive home is almost as silent as the drive to the farm. “She’s different from Clark,” Olsen finally says. “Hard to imagine they grew up in the same house.”

Lena doesn’t say anything and Olsen stops making conversation. They listen to Lana Del Rey the whole way home.

Lena’s flight is direct and she lands just in time to catch an Uber to the mansion before the price surges.

“This your place?” Her driver asks with a thick accent. Lena nods, grabs her backpack, and exits the car. Security lets her in immediately. Her key still works and she walks into the foyer like she did over two decades ago.

Lex is in the piano room and Lillian in the kitchen. Lex smiles but it’s thin and doesn’t reach his eyes. Lillian is shaking slightly and Lena avoids her. Father is in his study, as always, and perks up just slightly when she walks in.

“Lena,” He says and stands and they touch cheeks. He gives her a sheet of paper, ink still wet at the bottom. She knows it’s his will before he even hands it to her and she pushes it aside.

His eyebrows rise over familiar green eyes, “No questions?”

She responds, “Just one.”

Father says without her asking, “You are my biological child. Lex didn’t know; Lillian did.”

Her mouth parts and all that comes out is a tiny, “Oh.”

He opens the scotch and grabs two tumblers. He pours two fingers in one and one in another.

“Do you still take it with water?”

She nods and he pours a finger of water in the glass, sliding it to her.

She sips and he gulps, his silver streaked hair catching in the light. It makes her think of Kara and it gives her the courage to say, “Father, my question.”

Father slams the glass down. “That wasn’t it?”

She shakes her head, “No.”

His brows furrow, as if what else could she possibly have to ask him but he says, “Go on, Lena-girl.”

“What’s your favorite flower?”

END

#supergirl #supergirl fanfiction #supercorp #supercorp fanfiction #kara x lena #kara danvers #kara zor-el #lena luthor

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serrj215 · 7 years

Text

The Logan Theater

Beast Boy: I can’t wait to see you tonight.

Rae: You can see me right now just look over your shoulder.

Beast Boy: ha ha :D You know what I mean.

Rae: Enlighten me.

They were both in the T-car Raven and Starfire in the Back seat and Beast Boy in riding shotgun as Cyborg drove. Beast Boy fought the temptation to look over his shoulder he could almost hear the smirk on his girlfriend’s lips. He put his attention back to his phone.

Beast Boy: I am looking forward to our date.

Rae: Was that tonight…?

Beast Boy’s eyes went wide, his thumbs texted furiously.

Beast Boy: RAE! I have been planning this all week!

Beast Boy was ready to jump out of his skin, and would have thrown down his phone and jumped into the back seat into Raven’s lap.

Rae: Did you really think I would forget?

Beast Boy: You love torturing me, don’t you?

Rae: So do you.

Beast Boy: only in bed.

Rae: Down boy. Yes, tonight is on just give me some time to meditate and shower.

Beast Boy took a long slow breath through his nose. Even mixed with the scents of the others he could pull out the heady familiar fragrance of the woman he loved.

Beast Boy: You don’t have too, you smell wonderful to me.

Rae: I am taking a shower Beast boy, and so should you if you want me to get within three feet of you.

Beast Boy: I want you a lot closer. ;-)

Rae: Then get clean, and I will come to your room as planned.

Beast Boy: I have everything setup!

Raven lifted her head from her phone for a moment. Even without her emphatic powers and even from behind she could tell Beast Boy was excited.

Rae: Are you sure about that outfit?

Beast Boy: Totally!

The car pulled into the garage. The young heroes pilled out of the car Beast Boy and Raven exchanging knowing looks as they made their way in.

“I got a date with Raven! Da doo ad doo I got a date with my girl” Beast Boy sang to himself in the shower. He quickly ran his fingers though his hair working shampoo into his scalp. It didn’t matter how long they had been going out, dates were still special. Maybe because so many of them got interrupted. As much as he would like to Beast Boy couldn’t just email all the bad guys asking them to take the night off.

Dear Super bad dudes,

If possible, please take Thursday night off. Raven and I have dinner plans. Will promise to give you our full attention Friday. Looking forward to it.

Thank you

Beast Boy.

So far though everything was going according to plan. The bad guys in jump city stayed quiet Rob as busy with Star and Cyborg got some whatchamacallit for the T-car that he had been waiting weeks to arrive.

Beast Boy turned off the water, and shook his head like a dog. He stepped out of the shower stall dried himself off in the mirror. He wrapped the towel around his waist, and stood in front of the mirror.

“Yep still green” he said to himself.

It was an old joke, when he first got his powers as a child his mother had to pull him out of tub after he had rubbed his skin raw trying to get the green off it. It took him while, but he learned to accept the green face and pointed ears he saw in the mirror each day. It was a comfort that Raven accepted him, and helped him deal with it. He didn’t know if it was her powers or if he was that obvious, but she could see past the bad jokes and false bravado. She loved him, he was green, and it was okay.

He had to hurry Raven would be there in a few minutes. Beast Boy quickly brushed he teeth going through the mental checklist for the night. Teeth done, deodorant done, toenails clipped, outfit picked out. Raven made Beast Boy want to be better. She deserved a guy that didn’t wear the same clothes for days and that didn’t live in a garbage dump.

Down the hall Raven was also getting ready, she sat on the edge of the tub a towel wrapped around her. She was carefully shaving her legs. She knew that her boyfriend had a strange fascination with them.

Raven had been looking forward to tonight. The last few weeks have been busy. Mad Mod, Cinderblock, and Johnny Rancid all decided to make appearances. Robin decided to intensify their training, and Cyborg was determined to find that perfect fuel to air ratio to get that last bit of horse power out of the T-car’s engine.

She would have never guessed that the one person who use to irritate her more than anyone, could grow into the person she was the most comfortable with. That she would look forward to being with him more than being alone with her thoughts and a good book.

She quickly finished in the bathroom considering putting on some of the perfume Starfire had got her but quickly remembering Beast Boy’s sensitive nose. Raven had tried some scented body spray once. He tried the best he could saying that “I am fine” but his eyes were tearing. The scent, light and floral to her was overwhelming to him.

A few minutes later Raven stood nervously outside Beast Boys door, her gaze kept wondering up and down the hall to make sure that no one saw her dressed as she was. Dating was still new to her and these rituals, waring special clothes was all unusual.

She knocked quietly on Beast boy’s door.

Beast Boy was barefoot wearing back plaid sleep paints and a dark blue t-shirt with diagrams of the Enterprise printed on it. His hair was still damp from the shower and his grin filled his whole face.

"You look great” Beast Boy said extending his hand to lead her inside. Raven wore her own night clothes. A set of dark blue pajamas that buttoned up in the front. Her feet were also bare. She took Beast Boys hand and was gently pulled into his room.

A nightlight gave the room just enough light to let them get around. The floor was clear, the clutter from his younger days was long gone. There was a light scent of butter in the air and his excitement was almost glowing on his skin.

“Welcome to the Logan theater, you look lovely this evening allow me escort you to your seat” he said as he walked her into his room and to his bunk bed. There was a heavy blanket hanging from the upper bunk like a curtain creating a private room out of the lower one. He pulled back the blanket and guided her in. She found the pillows propped up, so she could comfortably recline. At the foot of the bed a laptop setup with Netflix patiently waiting for the start of the show.

Raven stretched making herself at home as a green hand passed her a glass bowl of popcorn. Beast Boy carefully slid in next to her a warm and intimate fit on the small bed meant for one. He closed the curtain on their private ‘theater’ leaving them in only the light from the laptop screen.

Beast Boy stretched his leg out to hit play on the touch screen with one of his toes. Beast Boy turned to Raven a very pleased look on his face. "Are you comfy?“

"No” Raven said quietly.

“Rae let me get you another pillow or” He started rambling until Raven leaned over and kissed him. It was brief and intense a fast dart of her tongue and a nibble of his bottom lip. A moment later the bowl had been transferred from Raven’s lap to his and Raven was on her side cuddled into him resting her head on the left side of his chest. Beast Boy’s left arm came around her holding her protectively to him.

“Better?”

“Much” she snuggled, “You did say you wanted me a lot closer”

“Any closer, and clothes might be a problem”

Raven grabbed a small handful of popcorn and pushed it into Beast Boy’s mouth. “Down boy, we both wanted to see this movie” Raven pulled her hand back but not before Beast Boy could grab on of her fingers with his teath. He had swallowed the popcorn and gave the digit the gentlest bite, licking the trace of salt and butter off it before letting it retreat.

“Alright I will wait, but you don’t make it easy” he whispered as the move got past its opening credits. Raven just smirked at him, and settled her head down using his chest as a pillow. He craned his neck and kissed the top of her head. “Enjoy the show”

Fancy Restaurants are nice, Movie theaters are nice, Concerts, picnics, parks are all nice. But a real memorable date isn’t the place or the activity it’s who you are with and how they make you feel.

I wanted to do something with these two that used Beast Boys bunk beds for a while (since bbrae week 2017 unorthodox sleeping arrangements. ) The best part about a bunk bed when I had one was making a fort out of the lower bunk. Trying to write more, not sure if writing better but more.

#bbrae #bbrae fanfiction #serrj215 original

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houseofvans · 7 years

Photo

ART SCHOOL | Sheryo & The Yok

Talented and world-traveling artist duo, Sheryo & The Yok are known for their massive murals and installations all over the world, inspired by their travels, cartoons, and psychedelic imaginations. Their passion for painting large scale murals and their vision for creating immersive art installations make them both inspirational and mind blowing to fans and artists alike. We’re excited to interview these spray painting nomads and talk about their travels, their art processes, and their upcoming projects which include “a crocodile temple in Singapore” and “a bat house/shack under a bridge in Berlin.”

Photographs courtesy of the artist | Top photograph by Rainer Christian Kurzeder

introduce yourself Yok: Im from Perth, Western Australia, One of the most isolated cities, surrounded by desert and ocean. Currently I'm based in Brooklyn and some times Indonesia and sometimes Thailand and sometimes Australia. We are trying to buy some jungle/beach land in seasia and make a weird sculpture park of sorts. Sheryo: I'm from Singapore, I share a work/live space with Yok in Brooklyn, New York and sometimes hang out in different parts of SEAsia living the island life drawing painting sippin on coconuts amongst palm trees watching the surf.

How did you both get into art, and at what point did you start collaborating? Yok: I got into drawing from watching cartoons, reading mad magazine and copying skate logos, Jim Phillips, Pushead, Marc McKee's, Guy Mariano Accidental Gun Death graphic had a huge impact on me. As did early Blind decks, alien workshop, Girl art dump. The Gonz! Sheryo: I've always Been drawing but it wasn't until I moved to Cambodia that I really thought about pursuing art full time. I met yok and we painted our first wall together almost straight away and shared similar influences. I got into drawing from watching a ton of cartoons all day everyday. Growing up i was into Reg Mombassa, Ren and Stimpy, Garfield. I still love watching cartoons now.

What are your individual art processes like? How have your processes evolved or changed? Draw every day. Our process evolves constantly when we are on the road depending on what materials we can get our hands on, which is also why we tend to keep our color palette to red white black and gold. You can generally always find a black white and red in a dirty hardware store in a remote part of Vietnam.We also try to draw everyday wherever we are. We try to keep a sort of visual diary of whats going on.

What are some handy materials you always take along with you? India ink, some brushes, black pens, adapter spray caps, portable speaker, a few words of the local launguage. This works wonders for getting walls or getting out of trouble.

What’s your approach to murals and larger works? What was the last one you finished up? The last wall we painted was a rooftop on brooklyn, we've been painting a lot more spontaneously with friends. The weather's finally warmed up in brooklyn so Night rides, weekend sprays and beers on the roof is the way to go. We've been building installations lately based on all the shacks we've seen on our travels in se Asia. Recently we built a Ping Pong Auto Shack in Detroit with 1x Run, a big furry psychedelic gargoyle head in Germany and also a Lion house in Singapore for Singapore art week.

What’s been your favorite installation or sculpture that you’ve created? We love the "Ping Pong Auto Shack" and the "gargoyle head" the best. The ping Pong Auto Shack was a fun one it was a Detroit inspired car garage meets Indonesian warung/shack, with a huge tigers head that you can walk trough.. We turned the inside into a tattoo shop with neon devils and sexy ladies, we lined the walls with flash sheets and Sheryo made a bunch of tattoo's, good times! IF you didn't want a tattoo we served jungle juice rum drinks out of the bar that we made at the tail end of the Tiger.

In the past, you’ve collaborated with Vans! What’s your ultimate dream collaboration project? We want to build a skateable sculpture/installation badly, as well as a greenhouse filled with plants and our wooden sculptures. Imagine a snake run but it's a wild triple headed cobra. Excellent.

You really have traveled so much and around the world. What has that experience been like and where are you headed to next? Last year was great! We got to see and experience alot of hard to get to, small towns in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Next is Shanghai, Colorado,Florida then Perth.

Where has been your favorite place that you’ve visited? What was the coolest thing you’ve seen in your travels? One of the recent favorites was a trip to Ethiopia to teach art at a school for impoverished kids, we painted the outside of the classroom and hung out it was great. We were also invited to paint Ethiopia's first skatepark, The kids had only had the park a few weeks, and for some only been riding a skateboard for the same amount of time and they were shredding it.

Much like how Vans aren’t just one thing, what other things are you guys into or do, when you’re not making art? Yok's a surfdog. Shezzy's a lay-in-the-beanbag-sipping-pinacoladas-and-coconuts-at-the-beach-all-day-nerd.

Who are some of your favorite artists, past and contemporary? woah too many to list! i have new ones everyday. I really love to see the grafitti in the cities towns and villages on the road, in places in Asia where they are not really exposed to that kind of thing, so the results are usually fresh.

Favorite Vans? Old skools!!!!!

What personally do you guys look for in or like in art? What’s your taste like? Wavyness, good line work, original idea's and subject matter.

What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t an artist? SHeryo:I'd probably be selling coconuts with secret shots of rum in a shack I built by the beach. Ill catch some fish and grill them for dinner and share it with my friends. I'll have a sick collection of machetes with super cool painted handles. Yok: I would be there also on the hammock eating that grilled fish. Sheryo: maybe i will feed u that grilled feed with my hands.

What has been your favorite thing so far this year? What do you have coming up for the rest of 2017? We are building a crocodile temple in Singapore next and a bat house/shack under a bridge in Berlin . I'm really looking forward to the 2 projects and hope to make them as rad as possible.

Whose someone you’d like to see on our Art School Q&A next? Mark Mulroney, Ryan Travis Christian, The Gonz!Palladingdong, Benjamin Rawson, Clay Hickson!

Follow Sheryo & The Yok Instagram: @_sheryo Website: www.yokandsheryo.com Facebook: @Sheryo

#Art #Vans art #sheryo & the yok #art school #interview #vans girls #creativity

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nostalgiaispeace · 7 years

Text

622.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 31

2901. have you ever written a letter to: a friend: yeah a lover: no a celebrity: yes. congress/house/reps: no the president/leader of your country: no. 2902. Why are cigarette companies allowed to manufacture and sell cigarettes when they are so unhealthy and dangerous? same reason alcohol companies can i guess. 2903. Do you chat with people in an elevator? no 2904. What’s your favorite Jack Nicholson movie? hmm...The Departed?

2905. Who should play the part of Superman? don’t care. wouldn’t watch it. 2906. Do you like when your friends and your mate’s friends hang out? i don’t care? 2907. Doritos or Cheetos? doritos 2910. Do you brush your teeth three times a day? no 2911. Should I stop making questions with multiple parts and just count each actual question as a question? i don’t care 2912. What gives your ego a boost? dunno 2913. What knocks your ego down? bullying 2914. Live and let live or live and let die? dunno 2915. What do you think of Damien Hirst’s art piece Mother and Child, which is half a cow in formaldedhyde? dunno it. 2916. Why is it that 70 percent of americans Do Not want to go to war with Iraq and yet we are going to war with Iraq anyway? ummm Is this democracy? no 2917. Imagine you have two choices of what life you can live: One: You are provided with meals, medicine, clothes and shelter. You are always with your family. You can lie in the sun and smoke, drink, play, cook, etc.. There will be certain rules you must follow such as no killing, no hurting others, no leaving the commune you were born in, no stealing, no tv, no newspapers and no books. OR Two: You are turned loose in the world with nothing. You start out cold and hungry. You may stay cold and hungry forever but you also have the opportunity to try and make a life for yourself. This will take a lot of hard work and there is no guarantee you will ever live comfortably. Which life do you choose? both seem shitty WHY? because first has no books and the second i’ll be cold 2918. Why is there no ‘Mr. America’ pageant? who cares Should there be? no. pageant life seems stupid. What qualities would YOU look for in a Mr. America if such a contest were to exist (like miss america he would have to be a role model)? pageants are stupid. 2919. If something offends you do you feel that it has no right to exist? sure. but that’s not reality 2920. Why do advertisers seem to believe that guys will buy any product that a hot girl in a bikini is sitting next too? because sex sells 2921. What would you do if your mom had a fight with a male acquaintance and you heard an answering machine message he left her cursing at her, calling her names and being very disrespectful? i’d call him and cuss him out 2922. What do you represent? myself? 2923. What message does ___ send when given as a birthday present?flowers: nice? slippers: i dunno but i love love it candles: you didn’t know what to get me? diamond necklace: you like me alot? gift certificate: you know what i like cash: you know what i like books: you really know what i like 2924. Have you ever completed a paint by number? probably If yes of what? i dunno 2925. How long has it been since you colored in a coloring book? years 2926. What have you been caught doing? dunno? 2927. Does temptation make you do what you love? no 2928. Do you have an gadgets in the house that you don’t know how to use? What? probably...technology 2929. Do you read the instructions to things or skip them? skip 2930. Will you ever reach your full potential? probably not 2931. Who is your biggest fan? no idea. 2932. Who do you take care of? myself and my husband Who takes care of you? same as above, and my mom 2933. Do you think that lawyers should only argue cases when they feel like the client is in the right? i think they should do their job. If you were a lawyer would you argue cases when you felt like your client was completely wrong? same as above 2934. Is it sexy in here or is it just me? it’s just you. 2935. You are giving out your phone number to a HOTTIE by writing it on a napkin. Do you write a little note or draw a picture too? If yes, what? i wouldn’t do this. 2936. Can you fold paper into anything (a hat, a swan, a boat, etc)? What? no 2937. How can a girl get a guy-she-is-dating’s mom to like her better? i don’t know? 2938. What is one theory about life or anything that you came up with that no one else has? no 2939. Do you like answering questions about: (bold) your life? your taste? tv? music? art? politics? life? religion? issues? sex? loved ones? favorites? objects? math? philosophy? hypothetical situations? things that require lots of thought? 2940. The mortuary science department is having a bake sale. Does this strike you as funny? no 2941. What would you think of a new reality tv game show where real life criminals on death row competed in life threatening tasks for the prize of a reduced sentence? that’s stupid as fuck. Did you know that they are considering making this a show? no Would you watch it? no 2942. What was the last song you looked up the words to? dunno 2943. What Saturday morning cartoons do you like? i don’t have cable 2944. If anything’s possible, then is it possible that nothing’s possible? no..? 2944. What does the T in T-Shirt really mean? dunno 2945. Would you alter your routine if there was a sniper in your area? probably? If so how? i wouldn’t leave the house 2946. Is castration a good punishment for extreme or repeat sexual offenders? just put them in prison and keep them there. 2947. If you are a girl have you ever experienced penis envy? no If you are a guy would you still want to live if you had to be castrated? 2948. Imagine you are teaching a class of sixth graders. A the start of the year you tell them, “If you come away with class and have learned only ONE THING, I hope that you learned….(finish the sentence) no 2949. If you were being interviewed for a job in a clothing store how would you sell yourself to the prospective employers? lolol i wouldn’t work in a clothing store 2950. How do you stop pop up ads? adblock...i think 2951. You are alone. You take a bus to the mall. The stop is right in the mall parking lot. You window-shop. You don’t buy anything. You want to get back on the bus to go home when you realize you have lost all your money. You have no cell phone. All the payphones are jammed with gum. You can not get it out. How do you get the $1.50 you need to get on the bus and get home??? i would ask someone to borrow a phone to call someone 2952. How long would it take you to organize your bedroom? probably a whole dat 2953. Make up a nickname for your bedroom: no 2954. What comes after: I’ve got a love-a-lee bunch of coconuts (diddly dee) There they are a-standing in a row. Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head… 2955. Where ARE the wild things? our imagination 2956. You get a six cd changer for the car, only problem is that you know that once you put in six cd’s you can NEVER take them out. Which 6 cd’s do you put in? oh god fuck you 2957. Let’s play Jeapordy. (Do-Do-Do-Do-Do-Do-Dooooo-) I’ll give some answers..you give the questions. Ready? Begin. The answer is: Purple what colour is barney the dinosaur? Yellow what colour is a banana? Candle what’s something you can light up during a romantic dinner? Pepsi who’s coke’s biggest competitor? Peace i dunno Lisa what’s the name of the eldest simpsons daughter? Cotton what type of fabric are most t-shirts made out of? Flag what does america take too seriously? 42 i dont know 2958. Pick a letter. A List some great words starting with that letter: no 2959. Is eight days a week enough to show you care? no 2960. Have you told your parents you love them today? no. 2961. What is the difference between a number two pencil and any other kind of pencil? no idea. 2962. Have you ever cross-dressed? no. 2963. Are we living in a world without end? seems like it 2964. What do you think of that couple that was just on the news who kidnapped a 16 year old girl for a week and forced her to be their sex slave? that’s disgusting. 2965. Wanna watch a movie about a cheerleading competition? no 2966. Are you singing in the rain? no but i love that film 2967. Should the sopranos actors have been allowed to march in the St Patrick’s Day parade? i don’t care 2968. Is oral sex, anal sex or regular sex more intimate? regular. 2969. Is it time to switch to Decaf? never 2970. Why is it that the truth hurts? some people are pussies 2971. How do you feel about: ticketmaster? meh scalpers? i don’t trust them 2972. What are you guilty of? being a bitch 2973. Have you ever done any of the following in order to catch a buzz or get high? sniffed glue: no sniffed magic markers: nope. ate paste: no. drank Nyquil, rRobitussen or any other Over-the-counter drug: no. 'huffed’ (inhaled or sniffed) any kind of fabric softner, cooking spray or other household product: no. whip-its: no. 2974. What gives you inner strength? dunno 2975. ::eyes you suspiciously::Where have all the COOKIES gone? i don’t have any cookies ever so 2976. What is a good gift for someone you don’t like so that it SEEMS to be nice but really 'gets’ them somehow? they don’t get gifts 2977. If you don’t like the service at a restaurant would you skip the tip? they would get a small one Why or why not? because they wouldn’t deserve a good one. 2978. Apples or peaches or pumpkin pie? none. 2979. What Race/nationality was Jesus? Jewish 2980. What was one evening you’ll never forget? getting proposed to 2981. Name 13 ways to look at a blackbird: no. 2982. Trick or Treat? treat. 2983. If you had money to burn, what 'toy’ would you spend your money on (think monopoly game with real money, luxory boat, a train layout that takes up a house, etc.)? probably something harry potter related 2984. Are you having trouble with aol 8.0? LOL what? how old is this. Or if you don’t have aol…have you ever been to a podiatrist? no 2985. If you could write your own ten commandments, what would they be? 1 no 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2986. When people lose weight, where does it go? don’t care 2987. Your mate/partner/wife or husband/longterm boy or girlfriend/etc. has SOMEHOW gotten his or her FAVORITE celebrity’s attention. Your sweetie has always thought this celeb was so sexy and now the celeb kinda fancies your sweety as well(although the celeb is not interested enough to stick around for more than one night). Your sweetie wants to have a one night stand with the celeb. Knowing that this is your sweeties one and only chance to bang (or even hang out with) a celebrity (ESPECIALLY their FAVORITE celebrity) you would say: do your thing. 2988. Have you ever seen an Ed Wood film? probably? maybe? it’s possible. i watch a lot of films. if yes, what one(s) and what did you think? If no, aren’t you curious to see a movie by the person known as the worst director of all time? 2989. What kind of bread do you like to eat (white, rye, potatoe, grain, whole wheat, etc)? honey wheat 2990. Are you emotionally articulate? maybe 2991. Does everything happen for a reason? seems like it. 2992. Do you take a piece of those you have loved and carry it around forever? yeah If yes, than aren’t they still with you even when you are gone?

feels that way 2993. Is it true that the child is worth ten of the parent? i don’t know? 2994. Can you think of a door that has closed in your life? yes Can you think of a window that has opened? maybe 2995. What does this mean to you: 'Necessity is the mother of invention’? nothing

Do you believe that necessity is also the mother of: courage? idk survival skills? idk independence? idk 2996. What helps you to get over a Major heartache? i wish i knew 2997. Can you depend completely upon yourself? yes have you ever tried? i have to 2998. How can you tell the difference between the end of one part of your life and the beautiful beginning of the next part? i wish

2999. Have you ever read an stories by Kate Chopin? no If not, I suggest that you do. okay

3000. Do you often make the best discoveries when you really weren’t looking for anything (or anyone)? yes

#me #survey

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mahalidael · 7 years

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Sparkboys #1: I Rescue A Toilet Boy

Content warning: Swearing, implications of abuse, swirlies.

Fifteen-year-old Murphy Rapp has moved south, and he plans on not staying long. The mosquitos are terrible, the people are loud, and his adoptive mother is intimidating--and that's before she turns him and his friends into killer robots, corrupting any hope of leaving the dark heart of Dixie. Sweet home Alabama, am I right?

The social worker didn’t even turn into the driveway.

“Hm, she’s in a hurry,” Dr. Allison said calmly as the car sped off as quickly as it came. Then she turned to me. “Now, what are we going to do here?”

Allison was in her late thirties, but she acted much older. She had the posture of an iron rail and dull reddish hair. She was dressed like a businesswoman, not a mother.

So I was left on her doorstep. She looked at me critically. I imagine other people dress nice to meet their adoptive parents, but I’m not other people, and I was wearing a ratty hoodie and jeans. It’s not that I don’t have nice clothes, it’s just that those clothes belong on someone else.

“Well… I suppose you should come in,” Allison said, clasping her hands together and flashing a professional smile. “Put your bags down, you can unpack tomorrow. It’s already late.”

I put my suitcase down near the door. The room was painted dead white, and the carpet was the color of mush. I swallowed hard. “Thanks?”

“Okay, I can drop you off at a restaurant, or you can—” It suddenly turned over in her head that I had said something. “Excuse me?”

I glanced around, feeling dumb. “Thanks for letting me in your house.”

I didn’t feel like thanking her. I was uncomfortable and I wanted to run down the street behind the social worker. The whole setup looked empty, like someone just barely lived in it. The living room was one couch and a TV on the floor. The dining room was one folding table and one chair. There was a faint smell, something unpleasant under cheap air freshener, like a hospital.

Allison raised her eyebrows. “Well, aren’t you polite. I wouldn’t have thought it, looking at that scowl.”

I wasn’t scowling. “I’m not scowling!”

She scoffed and reached a hand out to touch me, but I stepped back. “Don’t touch the hair. ...Please,” I ground out, remembering that this person was now in charge of me.

It’s difficult to imagine how angry I was when I first met Allison, but I was. I was an asshole to most adults because most adults were assholes to me. She seemed nice, but in a long enough time frame, everyone’s an asshole.

Allison coughed politely. “Alright, easy. I’m going to lay down the rules of the house, and you’re going to listen.”

These are the rules you live by if you live in Dr. Allison’s house.

Allison can make up as many rules as she wants.

Don’t go in the basement. Allison works in the basement and she hates getting interrupted.

You sleep in the attic, because it’s far away from the basement. Do whatever you want in there as long as you keep it clean.

Allison is a terrible cook. Buy frozen dinners and learn how to cook for yourself. You can eat out on weekends.

Seriously, don’t go in the basement. Doesn’t matter if it sounds like she’s in trouble. She’s got it.

If you aren’t grounded, you can go out. Leave a note on the fridge, though.

I was leaning on the wall next to the door, and Allison was sitting on the couch. I didn’t want to sit on the couch. I wasn’t sure of my boundaries.

“So,” she continued. “It’s late. I can take you to a restaurant, or you can go to bed.”

I had spent all day sitting on a plane. I hadn’t had dinner.

Allison’s pickup truck was fading purple, and smells like cigarettes. She said it was secondhand. I believed her, because she didn’t seem like a smoker.

Neither of us talked in the truck. I was looking out the window the whole drive.

By fifteen, I’d assumed I knew everything there was to know about adults. Allison seemed like an upright, uptight woman—an unsentimental foster parent who only wanted that sweet, sweet government money. I felt done for already.

Going out of Mobile, I couldn’t see much, but I could hear the spray of water hitting the side of the causeway. We passed three or four elaborate-looking seafood restaurants, but they were nigh-empty. The problem, Dr. Allison said, is that it’s not close enough to the football field.

“They like football out here. Even in the summer, the high school football teams play, and because there’s not much else to do, other people will show up and watch. It’s novel, really.”

Meanwhile, I was sinking lower and lower. Allison had been introduced to me as some kind of scientist doing important robotics research. That sounded stressful—stress that could get taken out on me, if I wasn’t careful. I continued choking my words back, chewing on the little plastic bits of my hoodie strings.

She turned off the main road and into a series of cramped, winding roads through some kind of shopping outlet. We stopped in front of some restaurant with fading, flickering red block letters reading “Goose Palace.”

“Alright. Get yourself some dinner.”

It was nine at night, and I was standing in front of Goose Palace. For some reason, the place was packed with teenagers—I didn’t even think there were this many people in town. I could hear someone singing, muffled, “for he’s a jolly good fellow.” From inside, I could see sets of eyes staring at me.

“Where’d all these people come from?”

Allison raised her eyebrows, almost disapproving. “One of the football games just ended. I assumed you would like to be introduced to your peers. ...I could drive you home if you want.”

“No, no, it’s good! It’s good.”

Her expression was difficult to read, like most expressions. “Alright. I’ve got some business to attend to down at the lab, so I’ll be back in about an hour. Don’t be afraid to call.” She frowned, and I swallowed hard. “And get those strings out of your mouth.”

The purple pickup puttered out of the parking lot. I was left sputtering at my strings.

Goose Palace is an unstuffy, dark little Chinese restaurant, swarming with kids and lit with red neon signs. A bunch of whooping football players were loitering in one corner. It’s the town’s PG-13 biker bar.

A few big guys started murmuring as I came inside, saying stuff like “who’s this fucker” and “what does he want” and “when did Allison get a kid.” Was something wrong? A few continued looking out the window, their eyes following the pickup truck.

I really like that restaurant now, but I didn’t at the time, because half of the clientele was staring at me trying to figure out what kind of asshole I thought I was, and the other half was still yelling about football. So this was already a huge disaster.

But here’s the problem: I wasn’t raised in a barn. I wanted to wash my hands before I ate.

The booth I got ended up being really far away from the bathroom, so I had to muscle my way through the sweaty crowd to get to it. When I got inside the cramped bathroom, I splashed water in my face until I felt drowned enough to quit kicking myself.

My hand habitually went to my neck. I had a thing about taking my own pulse when I was anxious, and I would stand there for a minute, trying to bring myself down to a resting heart rate. In hindsight, it didn’t help much, since sometimes I got stressed trying to make myself stop stressing.

I was about to walk out the door when I realized there were splashing sounds in the room that weren’t me.

I turned around slowly. The stall behind me was locked, but I could hear laughter and bubbling noises in there. I glanced down. Four guys were in the stall, one of them on his knees in front of the toilet. Oh, fuck.

I knocked on the stall door. “You okay in there?”

They all went quiet, then I heard gasping. “Yeah, we’re fine, our friend here’s just sick, is all.”

One of them kicked toilet boy in the shin and whispered “tell him you’re fine, Jacob.” All I heard out of him was some wheezing and sputtering. I didn’t like this.

“I’m coming in there.”

“Oh no, you better be coming out! ...Wait.”

I stuck my legs under the stall door and pulled myself in.

Bad idea—I was now in a bathroom stall with three football players.

One of them screamed, and I heard the loud crack of my glasses breaking before I even knew what was happening. But that’s all I got, because somehow I had it in me to find and unlock the stall. As soon as the door opened, every attacker in the stall fucked off into the restaurant.

Still in shock, I turned and looked at toilet boy. He was still doubled over, coughing like a drowned rat. I gave him a good thump on the back. “You okay?”

He kept coughing, and I went to put a hand on his shoulder. He grabbed my wrist before I could do so. “I’m fine,” he said in the most gravelly, un-fine voice I’d ever heard. “I just need a moment.”

“...You don’t think they’re gonna come back?”

“I don’t suppose they’ll do anything to us—or you, at the very least… Anyone plumb crazy enough to crawl into a bathroom stall isn’t worth it to them.”

“Oh.” Well, if there was any chance that I could make up my bad impression, it was gone now. “Can I get you a paper towel… Jacob? It’s Jacob, right?”

Jacob coughed one last time and spit. “That’d be nice.”

I went and got him a big sheet of paper towel to dry his hair with, and offered him my hand. He took it and got up… and up… and up.

Now that I could get a good, blurry look at him and his jacket, I realized Jacob was also a football player.

I don’t know how I was looking at him, but it couldn’t have been a good look, because his ears went red. “Um… yeah,” he mumbled. He walked over to the mirror and started washing toilet water out of his hair. “I’m guessin’ you’re from Velma.”

“No, I’m from Chicago.”

“Chicago? What the hell’re you doin’ here?” Jacob sounded distinctly southern, in a way I’d later find I could never nail down for myself. I would always try to imitate him and he would just shake his head, saying I sounded like a white man with a stick up his ass.

“I’m, I’m moving in.”

“Hm. Your family’s here for Airbus?”

“Something like that.” I paused. “So…”

“It’s none of your business.”

“I wasn’t gonna ask.”

Jacob took the paper towel and started wiping his sopping wet face, dabbing at his bleeding lip. He was beat up, probably a lot worse than I was.

Just then, I got a text. Then I realized I couldn’t read it for shit.

My nose wasn’t broken when I was punched, but my glasses were a lost cause. They’d snapped at the bridge, and both lenses had been trampled by everyone who’d left the stall.

After a moment, Jacob stopped and looked at me. “I’m fine, dude. I can take it from here.”

“Uh, there’s actually something I want to ask you…”

“Well, spit it out, Chicago.”

“Can you read this?” I showed him my phone.

Jacob opened his mouth to say something, noticed the bits of my glasses strewn on the ground, then closed it. He squinted at the text. “It’s from… Dr. Allison. ‘Problem at the lab. Can you walk home? I’m going to be stuck here for a few hours.’”

“Shit, I can’t. I wouldn’t know where I’m going.”

“Is there someone else you can call?”

“No, it’s just me and Allison.” Jacob chewed his lip thoughtfully as I continued: “Do you know any local taxi companies—?”

“Do you want a ride?”

I paused for a while. I must have had a bad look again, because Jacob said: “It’s the least I can do, you know. Because you saved my ass.”

“I…” If I walked, then I would be in a strange neighborhood at night, without my glasses. Not to mention that I still had to get my dinner, and the football team would almost definitely jump me if I were alone. “Yeah, why not?”

Vote and comment on Wattpad.

#she speaks #word #4books #sparkboys

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soupoctave1-blog · 5 years

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Family Road Trip - Amarillo, Durango, & Telluride

Hello there! Remember me?! I'm the girl who used to blog semi-regularly. Now we're lucky if I even remember my password to get on this thing! Ha! All that to be said, I've taken a break from both of my blogs to truly enjoy the summer with my family. I wanted this summer to be all about family and that it has. #noragrets

We just got home from a two week vacation in Colorado. I received several messages regarding our trip....where did we stay? what did we do? where did we eat? SO...I thought it would be easiest just to update our travels here and dust the old cobwebs off this site. Today's post will highlight some of our favorites in Amarillo, TX, and Durango & Telluride, CO. Tomorrow will be all about my most favorite place in the world...Breckenridge!!!

We started out early on a Sunday morning and headed west for the first leg of our trip. We originally planned on spending two weeks in Breckenridge, but at the last minute we changed up our plans and decided we wanted to see a few things we've never seen before. We drove a total of 14 hours the first day and ended up in a little hotel right outside of Albequerque, New Mexico. We received lots of dinner recommendations for our short stay, but because we arrived so late, we grabbed some Subway and called it a night.

I love road trips, so the 14 hours we spent driving seemed to fly by. Truly. Between pit stops and random pullovers to check out sights we'd never seen before...plus an EXCELLENT playlist (if I do say so myself ;)...14 hours flew by in a flash. And even though I'm sure I'll receive some sort of "you don't deserve to raise your children" type messages for this, our McDonald's stop was pretty on point. We only get it a couple of times a year and you better believe I went all out. All the large fries, pink slime (aka: nuggets...amazing)...and Coke I could handle. #feelfreetojudge

Before getting to Albequerque, we stopped off the highway in Amarillo to check out Cadillac Ranch. We really didn't know much about what to expect other than what we heard from friends so we didn't come prepared. I should've read up on it, but I didn't. Just seemed like a cool thing we'd see and then leave. Anyway, Cadillac Ranch is a large piece of land with about 10 Cadillacs buried in the ground nose down. One of those crazy Texas landmarks, lol. It's definitely a cool sight to see & part of the allure is getting to spray paint the cars. The kids were in awe. We should've come prepared with spray paint bottles...which we didn't...but there was a family there with extras who saw us aimlessly wandering about and gifted the boys their half-used cans. Super nice. And just enough to give the boys a taste for tagging :)

This was the perfect pit stop to get out, stretch our legs, and see something we've never seen before. The boys REALLY enjoyed this stop so we didn't rush through it. We stayed for about 30-45 minutes, but probably could've stayed a lot less. I think we were all a little happy to be out of the car.

If you've never seen it before and it's a stop along your way, you definitely want to pull over and check it out for yourself. It's right off of HWY 40 so you don't have to travel far off of your route to get there. We'll probably stop again next summer when we head that way again. Just make sure to bring your own cans of spray paint before you go!

Day 2 found us on our last leg of our first destination. It was about a 5.5 hour drive from Albequerque to Durango, CO and we arrived just in time for lunch. Before getting to Durango, we had to pull over for a photo op. The boys wanted to say they walked to Colorado, LOL!!!

Luckily another family pulled in right behind us and we were able to get a family pic together. Cheesy, but had to be done. Onward and upward to Durango we went.

A friend of mine who is from that area suggested we eat at Steamworks Brewery for lunch. GREAT recommendation! We sat on the patio, enjoyed the cool breeze, and the food was 12 kinds of delicious. We both enjoyed the special...beef brisket tacos...and they were amazing. I also had a side of chicken tortilla soup and it was sensational. Let me just warn you right here that much of this vacation consisted of me stuffing my face full of #allthefood. Not sad about it at all.

After lunch, we walked around the historic downtown area and took in the sights. We walked into a few little shops, grabbed some cinnamon rolls for the boys, and then headed to Telluride. We had a ton of people telling us to make sure we rode the train from Durango to Silverton, check out the cave dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park, and go rafting. We would've done ALL of those things, but we didn't plan for it so we were strapped for time. We wanted to get to Telluride before dark. No part of driving through the mountains in the dark is fun for either of us and with Telluride being our ultimate destination, we decided to cut our time in Durango really short to give us plenty of time to make it to Telluride before sunset. Next year Durango will be a one or two night pit stop, God willing! We'd LOVE to check out some of those recommendations. The downtown area was so charming!

Telluride was only a couple of hours drive from Durango and we couldn't wait to arrive. The drive was gorgeous...and really scary. We're not used to ascending into the highest heights of the mountains on a regular basis. Couple that with insane rain, hail, and a 40 degree drop in temperatures through some of the highest points and you can bet that we were white knuckle driving and on edge for the last hour or so of our drive. YIKES. I envy the locals who can drive through the mountains in those conditions without so much as blinking an eye.

Once we made it through the scary parts of our journey, we found ourselves in Telluride and y'all...I was taken aback. I mean, completely speechless. The views in Telluride are truly BREATHTAKING. Everywhere we turned we were surrounded by mountains & peaks. In every single direction. And not in the distance. I felt like the mountains were hugging the town. Heaven on Earth.

Since we added this stop to our trip at the last minute our choices of places to stay were a little limited. Or so we thought. Neither of us knew a thing about the town, so knowing where to stay (Mountain Village?? or in town???) threw us for a loop. We read and read and read about it, but still came out unsure of what to do. We eventually decided it would be best to stay in town because from what we read we thought Mountain Village would be dead in the summer. We ended up finding a pretty inexpensive lodge to call home for a couple of nights that was in walking distance of Colorado Ave. & close to the trailhead of the hike up Bear Creek Falls Trail we planned on taking.

We stayed at Manitou Lodge in a loft style room. Y'all...it was the cutest thing. The entire unit was made up of 11 different rooms. Our loft-style room upstairs included both lower and upper balconies. This was truly the perfect accommodation for our little family of four. Adam and I slept upstairs and the boys slept downstairs on the couch. We couldn't get over how perfect it was! Comfy and quaint...our kind of place.

This was the view outside our balcony doors...

The San Miguel river ran right alongside our lodge. We kept our windows and balcony doors open at night so that we could listen to the rushing water as we trailed off to sleep. Pure heaven.

This is where the boys liked to play every time we walked outside...

It felt like we were semi-nestled in the woods and that was the most amazing feeling. The only downside...if I had to pick one...was that the bathroom was really, really tiny. NOT a big deal at all. We dont' need a lot of space. But if you're someone who likes a bigger bathroom, this wouldn't be your jam. However, for us, it was the perfect spot. This will be our go-to lodging when we visit Telluride again, for sure!!!

We settled into our lodge, changed into warmer clothes, and walked to Colorado Ave. (which is the main drag) for dinner. I felt like our lodge was centrally located to everything we wanted to do and once we parked the car we didn't drive it again until leaving town. Everyone we met and several people on IG recommended we eat at Brown Dog Pizza. We're never one to turn down pizza, so that's where we headed for our first meal in town. Everyone clearly knew what they were talking about because that was one of the best meals we've had in a long time!!!

It's a cozy place with lots of TVs for the sports fanatics, and the kids had the option of making their own pizzas at the table and sending them back to bake. I thought that was such a cool touch! Of course, they both opted to create their own and here they are making their meals...

The end product....

They ate every last bite! As did we (we opted for the supreme pizza...highly recommed!). Ha! Great first meal! I would HIGHLY recommend stopping here if you find yourself in Telluride.

We headed to bed a little early so we could wake up and hit the trails for some hiking the next morning. We are a family who loves to hike, so I researched some of our options before getting into town. I wanted an easy to moderate trail because we aren't experts & I figured we'd still be acclimating to the altitude. Plus, hiking with kids for this semi-overprotective mom sometimes has me on edge. Both boys are great hikers. They LOVE it. But they're also a little over-confident so I didn't want anything extraordinarily difficult or treacherous. After lots of research, we decided on the Bear Creek Falls Trail and it was a bonus that the trailhead was about a 5 minute walk from our lodge.

We read that the bugs can be pretty annoying through certain parts of the hike, so we came prepared with bug spray....and LOTS of trail mix, granola bars, and water. It's a 4.5 mile round trip hike so all of those extras came in handy. The hike was AMAZING. Wide open trails to walk up until hitting the top before the waterfall. Some parts of the trail were a little more challenging to hike than others (steep, rocky, etc.), but it wasn't "hard" by any means. This little area was a great resting point going up and coming back down...

I guess hikers stop here and stack rocks one on top of the other and leave them for the next group of hikers to ogle. My youngest absolutely LOVED this area. He quickly went to work making his own little stacks and he was so very proud of his handiwork. See?! LOL.

We stopped and snacked. Drank some water. Stacked some rocks. And then headed to the top.

It was sweet heaven when we finally made it. I mean, just LOOK AT THIS VIEW!!!!!!

We sat down our gear and the boys headed into the water to jump across the rocks and explore. I watched our things and sat down to catch my breath while taking in the beauty of God's creation.

The sheer magnitude of those views is so hard to articulate.

We realized we hadn't exactly made it to the top when the boys finally came back from exploring. We came to see the waterfall so we needed to climb a little bit more to get to our final destination. The path going up was a bit trickier. Definitely narrow and steep-ish in parts...wet and rocky...a little slippery...but the boys powered through and the climb to the top was worth every breath lost. It was BEAUTIFUL.

We stayed at the falls long enough to snap a few pics and marvel at the view. My oldest was ready to get down. He's not a fan of heights...just like his momma....and this part of the hike had him feeling a little nervous. And if I'm being honest, it had me a little nervous, too.

If you're in Telluride with kids, I definitely recommend this hike. Yes...it's long. 4.5 miles round trip isn't exactly a short walk in the park. But it's definitely worth it. My boys did so much better than I expected. They were great! My youngest lives life at a much slower pace than my oldest. He takes his sweet time doing everything (hello 45 minutes to eat a hot dog!!!!). So he definitely took his time on this trail. Dad walked with our oldest and I walked with our youngest. We lagged behind the other two the majority of the hike, but the conversations we had were worth the distance between us. The only time the boys complained was on our way down when we had about a mile left to walk. My youngest said, "are we close yet? My legs are getting tired." And that was it. Not too bad!

Walking back to our lodge after the hike....just right down the street.

We headed back to the lodge, changed clothes, and walked back to Colorado Ave. for lunch. We were STARVING!!! We went up and down the street trying to figure out what to eat. Everyone wanted something different. We were all a little irritable and HANGRY. My oldest could live on grilled cheese and when we found this cart we knew he found his lunch...

We grabbed him a sandwich that he could eat on the go while the rest of us tried to agree on something. IMPOSSIBLE. Like I said, irritable and hangry. After walking in and out of several different places, we finally settled on Smuggler's Brew Pub which was right around the corner from our lodge. We sat on the patio, ordered our food, and after what seemed like forever, we finally chowed down. And then came the rain. OF COURSE!!! Irritable moods were made even worse. Lord help us. Let me say this though...the food was EXCELLENT. Great menu and the atmosphere was one of my favorites. The only thing that dampened our experience was the rain ( no pun intended). I would definitely recommend stopping in for a meal here. I ordered the meatball slider sandwhich (amazing!) and my youngest ordered the nutella on toast (which he took two bites of and then abandoned. not cool). No idea what the spouse was eating because I was hyperfocused on my own meal and all the food my son wasn't eating. Definitely would go back again!

We headed back to the lodge for a nap because we ALL needed one. And it was the best nap ever. We slept with the windows and doors open as the rain came down. Perfection. When we woke up a few hours later, we got dressed and headed to the gondola to ride up to Mountain Village and see what it was all about.

Like I said earlier, I have a fear of heights, so I was NOT looking forward to the ride up. It's a pretty steep climb, but everyone was telling us it was a MUST DO and I certainly didn't want the kids to see my fears get the best of me. So up we went and I'm SO glad we did! Yes, I had butterflies in my stomach almost the whole way up, but WOW. The views were unparalleled. Just stunning!!!!

Mountain Village was DARLING and I could absolutley see how it would be even more amazing during ski season. By the time we got there, all the little shops were starting to shut down and it was pretty quiet. However, I think we would've loved staying here this time of year. There were a ton of things for the kids to do...panning for gold, trampoline bungee, obstacle course, park, etc....but they were all closed for the night. . However, we were able to find a little park with a rock climbing wall and the boys enjoying *trying* to scale it until they gave up. Ha.

The restaurants were all still open as was an open area with yard checkers and other little games for the kids to play. We just got up there at the wrong time. Going during the day would've been our best bet. I would probably suggest staying in Mountain Village during the summer if you have kids. You could always take the gondola down into Telluride if you plan on hiking or just walking around town. The vibe in Mountain Village just seemed a bit more family friendly. But dang...that Manitou Lodge in town was the best!!!!

After the boys finished playing, we headed to a little pub to grab a local beer and then gondola back down to town. We walked to The Floradora Saloon for a late dinner. I was OBSESSED with this place!!!! I'm all about the cozy little places with lots of history and The Floradora Saloon has been around Telluride since the early 70's. Much of the decor from those days is still intact which adds to the charm of the atmosphere. The food was WONDERFUL, too. So flavorful and completely unexpected. I had the baked mac & cheese and ohmiword....to-die-for. Adam got the Pork Green Chili and said it was the best chili he's ever had. Great dining experience!! HIGHLY recommend.

The next morning we were up bright and early to clean-up, pack up, and hit the road to our ultimate destination...Breckenridge! We loaded up the car and walked to Baked in Telluride for breakfast. It was just one block up from our lodge and we were dying to check it out after walking past it several different times. Just look at all these baked goods!!!! Of course, the boys opted for donuts as big as their heads...

Dad had a croissant and I had an apple turnover. Both excellent selections, but I'm thinking anything from this place would've been amazing.

After breakfast,we took the gondola back up to Mountain Village to grab a souvenir Tervis we saw window shopping the night before, and then back down to head out. I LOVE Breckenridge and couldn't wait to get there, but I did NOT want to leave Telluride at all. Two nights wasn't enough. We decided we need more time to explore next time we're out that way. We'll tack this on to our trip and make our stay last a few extra nights. There are a couple of other hiking trails we'd love to try and sights we'd love to see like Bridal Veil Falls.

If you're thinking about a trip to Telluride, GO! NOW. Hahah. But seriously. You definitely want to see it for yourself. It's impossible to describe until you experience it in person. We will definitely be back and we'd even love to ski here one ski season if possible! I say "if possible" because the tiny airport isn't anything I'm brave enough to conquer. Big planes, big airports...I can barely even do those. Driving in the summer is way easier for my chicken self to conquer.

Many people asked why we didn't fly and this is exactly why. There's SO much to see and we wanted to see it all. Driving is the best way to do it! And since we both have time during the summer to road trip, we figured we'd make the most of it and drive. I personally LOVE road trips. Not just because I don't like flying, but road trips afford you the opportunity to see things you wouldn't otherwise. It helps that our kids are a little older (8 & 10), are easily entertained, and don't need diaper changes or bottles. We've been on 18 hour road trips to Indiana when they were babies and I know that's hard! But even so, road trips, in my opinion, are always the best way to travel!!!

Let's talk Breck tomorrow!

Source: http://pearls-handcuffs-happyhour.blogspot.com/2017/07/family-road-trip-amarillo-durango.html

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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twistednuns · 5 years

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June 2019

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”

A (very) sunny day in London. Seeing a seal in the Thames, right under the Tower Bridge. Walking through St. James’s Park, eating ice-cream. Taking a beautiful picture of Laura in Covent Garden. Finally getting out of the underground. A tiny rainbow reflection in the sky over Greenwich.

Playing badminton in the evening with Frank. Sitting by the river, making new friends (duckies).

Micha. Meeting in Thalkirchen after I had just seen a half dead mouse. Walking along the river, finding a nice spot across from the zoo with a bunch of musical hippies playing the drums on the other bank. We got drunk on Toro Loco and Grasovka in ice hockey cups until he kissed me in the middle of a sentence. It took quite a while until I noticed I was just kissing my first man with a tongue piercing. At some point I re-erected a knocked over portable toilet (does drunk me have superhuman powers?) and we walked to the subway together. Such a gentle weirdo.

Making breakfast for someone other than me. Sharing an apple. Eating out of the same bowl.

IKEA has veggie hot dogs now. Excellent. I also got a new cutting board. And that’s ALL I got. I’m virtually patting myself on the shoulder right now.

Christoph and Lauren’s wedding was pretty chill. We squeezed into a car, went up a very steep hill to attend the ceremony and spent the rest of the day around a camp fire drinking gin and tonics or dancing to very bad music. I loved getting to know Michael’s boyfriend of 4 years. I always received gay vibes from him… good to know that my gaydar isn’t broken.

Taking polaroid pictures in the beautiful afternoon light. I also loved Christian’s outtakes of the theme music quiz. One of them honestly looks as if I’d just won a beauty pageant - we have a host, two ladies with jealous side glances and me, all excited, open mouth, in front of the mic, waiting for her tiara…

Spending a few hours in my mum’s garden. Doing dangerous yoga exercises in the grass. Walking barefoot. Marveling at the lush roses everywhere. Watching a blackbird taking a bath under the cherry tree. Very entertaining.

I want to learn Spanish and this video gives me hope - apparently I can heavily rely on my French vocabulary.

Why the men I like usually look the same.

Hanging out with Martina, Tobi and Diego the dog at the Thalkirchen campsite. Watching the rafts go by (horrible music), driving them home with their car right before the apocalyptic thunderstorm.

The perfect dessert: berries or peaches with fresh cream. The perfect dinner: Truffle pasta.

The concept of eclecticism.

Spending the afternoon with Franzi at Maria Einsiedel. Meeting baby Elise for the first time. Hopping into the Eiskanal, turning my body into a freezer for five minutes. Eating tiny lemon ice-cream and galia melon.

Meeting Catrin and Andreas at Brillengalerie in Altheim. Really good cappuccino (he’s an optician AND a latte artist). I loved trying on those gorgeous glasses and talking to Catrin about the Latte Art championships and rude customers.

Our trip to the Bavarian Forest to make a cake tree for the wedding. We visited Lena’s uncle who turned a tree trunk into a three-tiered cake stand with his chainsaw. We helped. I really want to get a chainsaw license now.

Once again: roses. They are incredibly lush this year. I don’t know why exactly but climate change seems to have one tiny upside.

Drawing. Portrait practice. Filling my sketchbook from idee. Polychromos coloured pencils.

Using Instagram’s story feature for the first time. I love editing pictures and adding gifs and colours. Immature and tacky but fun.

Looking trough old analogue pictures. Finding lots of my dad looking like the perfect Millennial. 90s fashion really IS back. I still loathe fanny packs though.

I found someone who’s coming to India with me!! I’m going to travel with Bibi this summer. So excited!

Unfortunately: the Solitaire app on my phone. Unhealthy obsession. You know you’ve got a problem when you’re getting REALLY good…

The smell of dill pickles reminds evokes vivid memories of my grandma. She used to make them herself, in heavy stoneware next to the wash room in the cellar.

Spending the evening with Bibi at Kulturdachgarten (having Ginger Spritz as a sundowner in the late afternoon sun), eating Israeli mezze at NANA in Haidhausen and seeing Rocketman at Rio cinema. My colleague works there so we got discount tickets and free ice-cream. Taron Egerton is a fabulous actor. If I had to describe the film in one word it’d be flamboyant. Also, I’d have loved to be the costume designer for this.

Iglo veggie love frozen meals. With Hela curry ketchup. Nom.

Extremely cute new rockery plants (who will have to do with regular potting soil I’m afraid).

Meeting Andre at Thalkirchen. Spending the evening on an Isar gravel bank, drinking the beer Martina brought from Croatia. Joining the… eh, what’s the Mile High Club for people who prefer water to air travel? Catching the last train home. Taking dinky photobooth pictures because we still had ten minutes to spare. That fake photo strip makes me happy instantly whenever I look at it.

Getting better at asking for what I want.

The character Moe in the Netflix series Trinkets. To me, she’s so much more attractive than Tabitha. And I love her attitude. And her hookup in episode seven. What a pretty man.

Manu making me realise how much I look like my dad. “At least jawwise!”

Spending the evening with Tom. Pre-theatre Spritz, Melancholia at Kammerspiele, Isar-beer near Müllersches Volksbad. Talking about our insights and issues.

It’s fascinating to see the lupin in front of my balcony door open it’s blossoms gradually from bottom to top. This plant has such an interesting structure and geometry.

Salad season. Somehow I only like salads in the summer but then I eat them passionately. With strawberries, Black Forest tofu, peaches, blueberries, mangoes, olives. Those nice, firm Roma tomatoes you only get during the summer months. I made a huge bowl of Tabouleh the other day and had it for breakfast, lunch an dinner.

Going home in the morning, smelling of another person.

Booking flights to India. 5 weeks. I’ve never been gone for so long and then I chose India of all places… I feel a mild panic attack coming but I’m also super excited.

Artificial cherry flavour.

A day trip with Lexi. She brought crisps and a fun Mexican dice game which we played on the train. Spending the whole afternoon soaking in the warm water at Therme Bad Aibling. Discovering the amazing acoustics in the various domes. Making a new duckie friend. Weird mirror selfies with hairdryers. Dinner at a Bavarian restaurant in Rosenheim. Teaching le Sash some obscure Bavarian words.

The word obscure, come to think of it. Uncanny is a close second.

Jupiter being so bright in the night sky. I always notice it first as soon as it’s dark.

Librarians are secretly the funnest people alive.

So many things, really. I’m feeling quite happy at the moment. My only problem is that I keep gaining weight. Somehow enjoying myself is adverse to the strict regime I need in order to stay perfectly healthy.

Random things: Schweppes Fruity citrus and orange lemonade. Tomato sandwiches with fresh basil on olive ciabatta. That squirrel running over the garage roof in the morning. Dreaming of ferry rides through US rivers. And intercourse with a panther. The Garner Ambre Soleil natural bronzer spray with coconut oil. Nice colour, good smell, minimal chipmunk effect. And of course me regular Garnier sun oil. It’s the bottled essence of summer.

Filling in for someone in the Natural 20s pub quiz team. Being invited to a pen and paper round with feline characters only. Meeting Sophia who, I realised later, played Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern?) at Entity Theatre’s production of Hamlet last year.

My complete and utter obsession with Phil Collins’ version of You Can’t Hurry Love. I think it’s going to be my next karaoke song.

A desire and drive to be creative. Making collages out of dried leftover paint. Drawing on the window panes. Getting out gouache, pastel chalks, oil pastels, those weird 3-in-1 coloured pencils which create such a nice texture. Drawing first thing in the morning. Spending hours drawing owls for the coffee roasters. Using coloured pencils to draw portraits of all the cool girls of Instagram.

Oh, speaking of art. I don’t want to jinx it but I might get the chance to write a book soon! I met an editor who works at a publishing house for lifestyle books and needs someone to make a book about portrait drawing/painting for her. So. Excited. They’re also looking for a trainee in the graphic design department. I really hope I get to collaborate with them in one way or another.

Cute summer outfits. Good colour combinations. Accessorizing. Wearing pretty clothes with a creative twist. Actually putting some thought into putting together an outfit can be a lot of fun. After all it’s just another way of making a collage.

Polarized sunglasses providing me with the bluest skies and rainbow-tinted tram windows.

The Croatian man who sat down next to a visibly pregnant Bavarian woman on the subway and started telling her about his daughter Persephone and the abduction myth connected with her. I keep reading and hearing about Demeter and Persephone lately, for example about Baubo and the vulva presentations / Demeter worship.

Carmen Rohrbach’s Unterwegs sein ist mein Leben. I was very impressed by how much she has seen and experienced. How much she knows about nature and animals. I mean, she’s a biologist, too. Reading this book made my days a little more special because it gave me a sense of how much more there is to discover on this planet.

Eating vegan ice-cream (pumpkin seed and ginger-turmeric) with Micha. Sitting on the balustrade in front of the Art Academy. Staring into these insanely pretty blue eyes all the time. Looking for the toilets, roaming through the hallways. I love the architecture of that building.

A ladybug escaping the subway train through an open door. Freedom!

I love how the characters resemble each other so much in the different generations in the TV-series Dark. Uncanny. And they feature very nice colour contrasts, too. I guess I like their production designer / cinematographer.

Late-night Isar strolls. Drinking red wine, lying down, watching the stars surrounded by fireflies! (which are quite rare where I live so I was lucky - the strangest thing is that I had drawn a firefly into my sketchbook earlier that day, feels like I manifested it)

Tollwood gin and tonics, forgetting to go home, ending up in a gay club at 3am. Nice Thursday.

Making up for the lack of sleep on Friday afternoon. Waking up late. Releasing my inner Julia Child at 2am by making sushi rolls, taboulé and Bergsteigerbrot, something like super tasty vegan granola bars with lots of nuts and honey.

A little bike tour with Frank along the river. Pseudo-meditating on a log, eating some snacks I brought. Floating with the current. His alliterations (“further fodder for future followers”).

#personal #present perfect #things i love #june #2019 #june 2019

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towerrange15-blog · 6 years

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Family Road Trip - Amarillo, Durango, & Telluride

Luckily another family pulled in right behind us and we were able to get a family pic together. Cheesy, but had to be done. Onward and upward to Durango we went.

This was the view outside our balcony doors...

The San Miguel river ran right alongside our lodge. We kept our windows and balcony doors open at night so that we could listen to the rushing water as we trailed off to sleep. Pure heaven.

This is where the boys liked to play every time we walked outside...

The end product....

They ate every last bite! As did we (we opted for the supreme pizza...highly recommed!). Ha! Great first meal! I would HIGHLY recommend stopping here if you find yourself in Telluride.

We stopped and snacked. Drank some water. Stacked some rocks. And then headed to the top.

It was sweet heaven when we finally made it. I mean, just LOOK AT THIS VIEW!!!!!!

We sat down our gear and the boys headed into the water to jump across the rocks and explore. I watched our things and sat down to catch my breath while taking in the beauty of God's creation.

The sheer magnitude of those views is so hard to articulate.

Walking back to our lodge after the hike....just right down the street.

Dad had a croissant and I had an apple turnover. Both excellent selections, but I'm thinking anything from this place would've been amazing.

Let's talk Breck tomorrow!

Source: http://pearls-handcuffs-happyhour.blogspot.com/2017/07/family-road-trip-amarillo-durango.html

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adventuringwithrhian · 6 years

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On the road to Sin City

A last hurrah after ten months in the USA.

The final trip on my American adventure; bringing a year I will never forget to a spectacular end.

Until next time, America, stay rad.

San Francisco

San Francisco is possibly my favourite city I've visited in America so far. The quaint houses nestled amongst skyscrapers and perfect bay views were so beautiful. After our 19 hour bus journey through the spectacular Oregon countryside we were able to meet up for brunch with my brother, Gaz and his friend, Charli in the Ferry Building. Heads up, Marketbar does great pancakes!

We then headed over past Crissy Field to The Golden Gate Bridge. Cloaked in mist and indescribably large; we spent an afternoon strolling across, watching the whales swim 220ft below us.

Luckily, the fog held off just enough so the Bridge could eerily show off its crimson towers for us once we got to the other side.

Thankfully, the city wasn't as foggy as the Bridge so the 360° view from the top of Coit Tower, below, was nothing short of perfect.

Check out the restaurants in North Beach for dinner. There’s plenty of good Italian eateries! Make sure to head to Vesuvio Cafe, a quirky hidden gem, for drinks on the way home if you get chance. The next morning, I think the cherry on the cake was that we were able to meet Gaz, Charli and, Ben and I’s friend, Amy to catch the San Francisco Pride Parade.

I’d never been to Pride before and I'll be forever grateful I got the opportunity to experience it. We didn't stop dancing and tapping our feet to the music of passing floats all morning! It was heartwarming to see so many people from all walks of life lining the parade to show their support and solidarity. In the end, the parade, and the party that came with it, lasted well over 3 hours.

In the afternoon, we went back out to the Bay. We took a walk round the Palace of Fine Arts, which is beautiful might I add, with Amy before checking out Lombard Street; famously branded as “The World’s Crookedest Street”.

They weren’t lying! With no less than eight hairpin turns, it’s almost impossibly twisty, and impossible to photograph!

From there, we walked down to Ghirardelli Square; a pretty courtyard with some great bars, restaurants and shops. Eat at Lori’s; a 50’s-esque diner with gorgeous bay views. Skip out on desert though and do the rounds of the numerous different Ghirardelli’s shops to fill up on free chocolate samples instead! If you’re heading downtown, take a cable car back to Union Square. The views at night are unbeatable!

The next day Ben and I took a ride over to San Francisco Zoo. It was such a lovely place but this little pair of cuddling meerkats, below, won my heart! We spent a good few hours taking in the sun, sea views and all the weird and wonderful animals from their different zones.

We then stopped off at The Painted Ladies; lining one end of Alamo Square and providing the perfect mix of old and new.

Relax in the park for a while before taking the short walk to the vintage stores, street art and coffee shops of Castro and the Mission District. Valencia Street, recommended to us by Charli, is a particularly good choice!

Later in the afternoon we met up with Amy again at Pier 39 where we ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Forrest himself would have been proud of the food! We whiled away the evening with some cocktails before heading home via Fisherman’s Wharf.

I left Ben on our last day to take the short boat ride out to Alcatraz Island; the prison on which somehow always seemed to dominate the horizon and had had me captivated for years.

Below, the imposing rows of cells that line Broadway can be seen; although D Block, or solitary confinement, was particularly bleak. Outside you can see the remains of political graffiti from Alcatraz’s rich past while being treated to beautiful views and, at that time of year, fluffy baby sea birds everywhere!

Luckily, I managed to escape The Rock alive, and without a spoon, before meeting Ben and heading back to Pier 39. We found the Crêpe Café; a cute french crêperie about half way along Pier 39. They do sweet and savoury crêpes; great to munch on while watching the sea lions!

We then headed over to the Presidio, finding a beach to sit on in the fading sunlight for one last parting view of the Golden Gate...

Yosemite National Park

The next leg of our trip, from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, involved a lot of driving, and a lot of Motown (thanks DJ Benji).

Tunnel View, above, was our first main port of call and is probably one of the most recognisable views of the Valley and rightly so. Somehow one viewpoint manages to capture almost all the main attractions. El Capitan towers above the valley floor on the left and as you pan round you find Half Dome and finally Bridalveil Fall glistening in the sun. We then carried onwards and upwards to Glacier Point; clambering to the top of a large rock where we were just in time to be treated to the most beautiful sunset. The shadow slowly moved up the face of Half Dome and the surrounding mountains turned a candy floss pink! One of those moments where no description or photo will do it justice...

The next day we set off into the Valley and arrived at Bridalveil Fall. Even though it was early the spray from under the waterfall was welcome in the heat. We then carried on to meet Martyna, who we had met whilst in San Francisco, and went to Yosemite Falls together. The Falls are the tallest in North America but as we walked closer, the Upper Falls crept out of view until most of the 2,450ft was out of sight by the time we got to the bottom of the Lower Falls.

Before saying goodbye to Martyna and the Yosemite Valley, she offered to take us on one more short hike to one of her favourite spots in the park. She called this The Couch and the view was spectacular!

We sat a while and shared a couple of beers while taking in the view of the Royal Arches and Half Dome, both standing proudly before us. We then regrettably said our goodbyes and got back on the road, heading north for the sequoias of Calaveras Big Trees.

Calaveras Big Trees State Park

After a minor incident involving 1) our entire food supply being in cans 2) our lack of can openers and 3) the apparent lack of can opener merchants in California, it was late when we arrived so we were in the dark when it came to the beauty of our surroundings, literally! We woke up the next morning to glorious sunshine and uninterrupted views of the forest. Gold star for us for blind tent placement!

Spending the morning walking amongst giant sequoias was humbling. They are the largest living things on the planet and many of them are well over 3000 years old.

Also, the sugar pine cones that were everywhere were bigger than our heads, so that was cool...

The tree below is know as the Empire State Tree. It is probably the largest tree in the North Grove at 18 feet in diameter and so tall, even lying on the floor wouldn’t fit it all in the photo!

We spent a couple of hours following the winding North Grove trail. Pick up a guide at the beginning of the trail if you can so you can spot all the major trees! Sadly, we were only able to spend the morning wondering the trails and were unable to make it to Louis Agassiz, the largest tree in the park at 25 feet, down in the South Grove. We set off once more, this time bound for the crystal clear waters of Lake Tahoe!

Lake Tahoe & Sacramento

We arrived at South Lake Tahoe in the mid afternoon and headed straight for the lake front. Before leaving I’d scouted out a kayak rental place and before we knew it we were on the water whiling away an hour. The snowy mountains helped us at least try to hold on to the cooler weather before we hit 43° Las Vegas...

We headed over to Sugar Pine Point State Park, our home for the night, and the drive up was stunning! Stop off at a viewpoint overlooking Emerald Bay if you can for picture perfect views. For the first time, we had the luxury of getting to our camp site in the light! Finally we were able to have a relaxing night with a few beers and campfire chilli!

The next morning we headed down to the Park’s lake front for a quick paddle before embarking on the final leg of our mini road trip back to San Francisco. The water was unbelievably clear and as blue as you can imagine. They high altitude means pollution is at a minimum. We stayed a while and watched the waves roll in until we finally had to set off.

On the way back to the airport we took a quick stop in Sacramento, California’s capital. We only had a couple of hours so we stopped off in Old Sacramento; an old timey Wild West style area of the city with boardwalk lined streets and quirky shops and speakeasies.

Here, we found possibly the best looking record store I've ever had the pleasure of browsing in; right in the heart of Old Sacramento. If only I’d have had space in my bags for some of the gems in here... Alas, I did not, and our journey continued!

Las Vegas, Hoover Dam & The Grand Canyon

We arrived in Las Vegas to blistering 43° heat! Brilliant; unless like us you decide to walk half of the 6(ish) mile strip in the middle of the day...

At least our walk wasn’t in vain; culminating under the Eiffel Tower in a place called Beer Park. Dare I say the best bar in Las Vegas? Certainly one where we spent the majority of our time! The view of the Bellagio's fountains across the road is almost as good as the beer selection.

That evening we managed to catch Caesar’s Palace’s Independence Day fireworks with some friends from OSU before introducing them to Beer Park too!

Day 2 in Vegas saw us taking the three hour trip out to the Grand Canyon. I’ll admit, I’m more of a PNW forest kind of girl but there’s a certain charm to the Nevada/Arizona desert in high summer, so the views along the way were more than enough to keep us entertained on the drive!

Our first stop was the Hoover Dam; an awe inspiring feat of engineering and a certain novelty in being able to walk between two time zones...

Sadly, we didn’t have the time to travel out to the National Park on the south rim but the views on the west rim were, I hope, just as spectacular. Below, Ben models a very hazy Grand Canyon in the mid afternoon heat. Haze or not, the size and beauty is indescribable and the fact it is all there due to the forces of nature is hard to comprehend. My only regret is that we were not able to spend longer taking in the sights...

The next day was 4th of July, Uncle Sam’s birthday, and a day we mostly spent drinking with new friends at our hostel’s pool! We were so lucky to meet so many amazing people from all over the world on this trip, and the majority of them here in Las Vegas! Later in the evening we all headed down to the Strip. Possibly the most memorable experience of the trip was spending 4th of July on top of the Stratosphere with everyone and watching the entire sky light up with fireworks. Being our second to last night, we really ended our trip with a bang!

We ended the night on Fremont Street in downtown Vegas. Head to the neon lights and zip lines of the Fremont Street Experience if you want to see a more casual side of Vegas. There are some good bars and restaurants so you can have a great party without the expense of the Strip’s big casinos! This was the second time Ben and I had been now. We all got drunk and danced in the street. People filmed us. It was great. The next morning it was time to say our goodbye’s to Vegas and to America.

Of course, we headed back to Beer Park for some hair of the dog and then explored the rest of the strip with Baer from our hostel. You’d have thought we’d have learnt our lesson on the first day but I guess the heat had finally fried our brains... Time to go home.

Instagram: @rhianlaaa

LP Trips: trips.lonelyplanet.com/ontheroadtosincity

#san francisco #yosemite national park #calaveras big trees state park #las vegas #lake tahoe #hoover dam #grand canyon #california #nevada #arizona #usa #america #travel #adventure #road trip #adventuring with rhian

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