#the number of ‘race science but make it woke’ takes i see on both this site and twitter……….

[ravenkings]

[theliterateape]

I'm No More Anti-Woke Than I am Anti-Christian

by Don Hall

Much to my mother's chagrin, I'm not a Christian. She is both a devoted follower of Jesus Christ and a Searcher for Truth through that lens. Mom is the kind of Christian you want all of them to be—compassionate rather than empathetic, service oriented rather than parochial, studious rather than blindly accepting.

In my experience, there are three sorts of Christians: the overly enthusiastic but dimwitted, the sort my mom represents, and those who didn't get the memo that the Puritans were assholes.

The first type are easy to spot. They are constantly reminding you how blessed they are and end at least three out of four sentences with a "Praise Jesus" and a like upward. This is some serious performance whether the faith is there or not. I dated a young woman who started in on the nonstop Jesus referencing on the first date so I took her to see Videodrome. We didn't date after that.

The second are like my mother and are the reason people with no faith but in need of something uplifting in their lives wander into churches to see what's up. They are the ones who actually practice what the Prophet preached, witnessing their faith through example rather than words, and generally are the ones showing up to help with the homeless, the hungry, and the otherwise societally deprived.

The third are the Karens of the world regardless of age or skin color. They are the Gladys Kravitz's, the busybodies minding everyone else's business, looking to get those not in lockstep with their agenda punished. This is one punitive crowd. They sell the idea that their belief both makes them superior to everyone else and also in charge of doling out judgment for those who are obviously not with their program.

I am not a Christian but I am not Anti-Christian, either. I used to be a believer, changed my mind, and believe that everyone gets to make his or her own choices when regarding a deity as long as they don't try to force that belief down the throats of everyone else. I'm not a fan of the type of believer who hates homosexuals, transgender people, and thinks women should be subservient but I'm no fan of anyone like this, whether they blame it on their faith or not.

My third ex-wife loves sushi. I do not. Yes, I explained to her more than a few times, I have tried sushi a number of times (always the odd chance of getting some bad sushi so you give a shot in other places, right?) and I can conclude that I do not like sushi. That didn't make me anti-sushi. I took her to sushi places once in awhile and found things to eat—plastic plants, soy sauce, and teriyaki stuff—and never gave her any sort of flack for enjoying something I did not. If she insisted I eat sushi, we'd have had an issue.

This is the same space I occupy when it comes to religion and dogmatics. You do you. I certainly don't know even a fraction of things worth knowing in life so who the fuck am I to tell you differently. I've tried religion and, like sushi, it didn't take. My mom is pretty brilliant in this way. She doesn't press her faith upon me, doesn't shame me for not believing. She exists as a devoted Christian, she prays for me (it certainly can't hurt), and shares with me epiphanies she has from her copious study of her faith. I don't have to believe the way she does because, you know, soy sauce and teriyaki.

I am not Anti-Woke. I am anti-bully. I'm anti-Puritan. I'm anti-censoriousness and anti-race exceptionalism.

I can believe one on hand that all transgender people deserve the exact same rights and autonomy as every other citizen and on the other hand believe that a transgender woman is not a woman but a transgender woman (similar but not at all the same). This does not make me anti-woke or transphobic. It makes me pro-science and civil rights and anti-fantasy.

I can believe that African Americans whose forebears were saddled with slavery have been cheated by the American government and that centuries of bigotry have given them every right to demand (and see substantive) change and still recognize that African American immigrants in the past fifty years are in the top tier of economic wealth so the issue is about culture rather than skin color. I believe culture is a costume and can be exchanged for one that serves the wearer better.

Like Bill Burr, I believe women 87% of the time. The other 13% are psychos, sociopaths, and assholes.

It all really depends on what is meant by woke. When I hear the term used, I hear religious. I see intolerance. I am confronted with those three types of Christians. The first wear t-shirts and make a lot of noise about JK Rowling being transphobic, that white people are default racist, and that compromise is a waste of time. The second type are almost exactly like my mom—compassionate, forgiving, leading by example rather than insistence. The third type are all on Twitter and go out of their way to punish those who might disagree with their worldview by mobbing up and trying to get them fired.

Really, at the end of it, I'm anti-conformist across the board and if conformity of thought and practice is what you seek, leave me out of it, gang.

[existingispetty]

Chapter I-Sugar coated

taglist: @ithappenstobelily

Sugar coated masterlist

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You had just been reading a book when you received a long-awaited email saying that you had finally been accepted for a job at this small cafe not far from where you worked. You had recently moved to just experience some change in life but you needed to get a job fast to pay the rent at your apartment.

The day after was just a tour of the workplace and a briefing on your job. A kind girl named Lucy had explained all the responsibilities and all the coffee recipes. She explained your shift and how you would come in tomorrow. Now today was finally the day you were able to do actual work.

You clocked in, equipped your apron, and began to complete many of the tasks Lucy had explained to you on the previous day. Lucy would come in a little later to check how you were doing but for now, you were on your own. You suddenly flinched as you heard a loud "bang!" come from the floor above the café. Of course, you were concerned but you didn't wanna barge into any important business happening upstairs.

The cafe was pretty empty on your first day other than the occasional passing people and some men walking out from the second floor it was a silent day. Once Lucy arrived she began to have chats with you and after another obnoxiously loud noise from above, Lucy groaned and mumbled something about idiots.

Your curiosity spiked and you let out, " what's happening upstairs?" Lucy sighed again before aw seeing your question with clear irritation in her voice, " There's this detective agency that's full of people with special abilities, like me upstairs. They often come down here for drinks so you might see them durning our shift tomorrow." You were just slightly excited to meet the people from upstairs because they sounded like quite the group after hearing all that noise but, at the same time it had been very annoying trying to focus on the commotion happening from upstairs.

The number of customs was lessening as the sun began to sink under the horizon. Your day had been pretty relaxing and Lucy's company was comforting, you had both grown to be casual friends by the closing of your shift. She taught you how to close everything and lock up before walking you back to your apartment. "You're really cool! Can I have your number for both work purposes and friendly purposes?" She added on the friendly purposes after realizing how the work part seemed a little strange. You quickly added your number to her phone before you both said farewell and walked your separate ways.

After a long day at work, your home was a safe haven. Before going to bed you were reading articles online about people with abilities. The whole science of it fascinated you. While drifting off into a faraway dreamland information swirled in your mind until your body finally rested.

When you woke up you were hit with a good feeling about the moments to come. You swiftly prepared yourself a somewhat decent breakfast meal before tidying yourself up to go to work. You made sure you looked, somewhat decent before racing out the door and making your way to the cafe. Lucy was already there once you had arrived, and since it was a Saturday morning it was incredibly busy. People were rushing in and out supposedly on the way to work with coffee and tea in their hands. "Hurry up and get your apron on, this morning rush is gonna last about an hour!' Lucy yelled with impatiens, it was obvious she wasn't angry though which was a slight relief.

After getting your apron on you rushed to get Lucy's orders, " I want you to take orders, once everything slows you can assist me in making everything." Lucy rushed around brushing past you at times. You stood at the counter taking one order after another, it was very bothersome. Finally, things began to slow down as there were no orders to be taken and many had left leaving you, lucy, and just a few customers.

Then came the annoying noise from upstairs... "how early does work start for the people upstairs?" Lucy had just been testing out a new recipe when she paused for a moment and pondered the answer to my question. "I can't tell you for sure but, extremely early because the entire agency is already working but the time I arrive to set up." she also seemed to wonder about my question before beginning back on the drink she had been previously creating.

About 30 minutes after the morning rush had passed the classical music was the only sound in the cafe, until footsteps pounded on the stairs leading from the agency to the cafe. Lucy briskly made her way to stand behind the counter and you were ready to prepare orders, when voices came from the stairs they were all jumbled due to the mass of people having conversations with each other. There were four men and one woman all conversing with one another. They each stood in front of Lucy giving her their orders. The poor girl looked exhausted and annoyed yet, it wasn't like she could avoid taking the orders for these people.

After they all sat down Lucy informed you of what you needed to make and you began working. The final request was for hot chocolate which piqued your curiosity. All of the people that walked downstairs seemed mature, however, one ordered a hot chocolate? You interrogated Lucy on this matter asking, "Is this the correct order?" even so, Lucy only nodded and smiled playfully before picking up a book and beginning to read.

This confused you further but you hurriedly created the sweetest hot chocolate you could before handing the made creations to Lucy so she could distribute them. Following you handing off your work you went back to minding your own business but you abruptly heard a voice from the table the men and woman were sitting at that said, "Who made this? It tastes different?" barely a few seconds passed before Lucy entered the staff room before saying, "The man that ordered the hot chocolate would like to see you." She sighed before disappearing somewhere. You were a bit jittery due to the possibility that you may be in trouble. When you walked to the singular table that was occupied all eyes were on you. The first thing anyone said to you was,

To be continued...

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1091 words

I hope you're enjoying it so far.

[binunus]

college bf!bin

a/n the duality of this man??? i’m deceased...anyway i did not think this would go this long but uh my hand slipped...happy birthday binnie!

word count: 5k

genre: fluff, smut, (tiny) angst _________________________________________________

ugh yo

bin is so??? infuriatingly hot??? yet cute at the same time

major: exercise science

and because I love mermaid prince/the beginning, he’s been on the swim team since first year college

swam varsity starting his second year

besties with eunwoo, they were roommates their whole college career

alright so bin loves making friends

he’s so playful and talkative once you really get to know him

but his aura?? tbh very intimidating

like he has an rbf and just like he’s so tall, broad shouldered, built, like he just carries himself very strongly that you will get intimidated when you first meet him

very well known in the university

literally has a professional photographed banner of him hanging in the athletic building with the gold medal he won freshman year

a little embarrassed about it

not really, only when the boys (as in literally the other five) tease him

myungjun: woOoOw bin that guy on the banner really looks like you, don’t you think?

rocky: we geeeeet it you’re a star athlete

blah blah blah you know the vibes, they’re endearing

so how do you meet bin?

basically you’re a friend of a friend—you’re eunbi’s (sinb) friend

you’ve only met bin briefly from time to time, but otherwise you never really had any reason to get acquainted with him

your only encounters of him are when he wants to annoy eunbi and she immediately puts him in his place

but then suddenly in the spring semester of your 2nd year, you and him are in the same 8 am

a boring statistics gen ed class that everyone needs to take in order to graduate

you were running a bit late during the first class meeting—you woke up 30 minutes after your alarm and literally rushed out of your apartment—you made it to class with 2 minutes to spare

most of the seats were filled up already, except that one seat in the back left corner by the window next to the one and only moon bin

oh would you look at that

you felt a bit relieved honestly, you didn’t know anyone else in that class so at least you saw a semi-familiar face

he grinned at you when you sat down

“hey y/n”

you were a bit taken back, “you know my name?”

he laughed a little, “yeah of course, you’re one of eunbi’s really good friends, why wouldn’t I know your name?”

before you could respond, the professor started class and ceased your conversation

one thing you realized as the weeks start to go on

you and bin could not give any two fucks about statistics

no offense to stats lovers

every 8 am on mon/wed/fri, neither one of you would pay attention in class

you both enabled each other to not pay attention basically

so when the professor announced the content and date for the first exam

you and bin literally looked at each other with the same expression

you were both fucked

after class was dismissed, instead of the two of you quickly packing your things and fleeing the room immediately, you both lagged a little bit

you: so...do you know anything that’s going to be on the exam?

bin: uh...no? y/n you’re literally right next to me, you know I don’t do jack shit in this class

you: well fuck, how are you gonna study then bin?

bin: I was probably gonna ask my roommate to help me, he passed with a 96 when he took this class

you give him the best puppy dog eyes you could muster up, you lean in and clasp your hands together like you’re praying

“can he help me too...? please?”

bin’s eyes go a lil wide bc you were a bit closer than he was used to and shit was his heart racing rn?

bin: uh...yeah...sure, i’ll text you to come over when we’re gonna study

you beam at him and like in your excitement you give him a hug

“thank you thank you thank you! i literally cannot fail this class. I’ll see you on friday bin!”

with that you grabbed your bag and just left, leaving bin shocked

he’s surprisingly a shy boy okay!

he always thought you were cute from when he first saw you hanging out with eunbi, but ofc he never thought any more of it

until you guys had this class together and he started to think every day, that wow you are really cute

bin texts you the next day

coincidentally, eunbi texts you too

bin: hey this is bin, if you’re free in an hour my roommate’s gonna help me go over the material in ch. 1

eunbi: why did bin ask for your number

you to bin: yes! send me your addy and i’ll be there :)

you to eunbi: we’re in the same stats class lol and we’re gonna study for our exam next week

eunbi: lol moon bin studying? you might wanna bring some wine with you for emergency y/n

you: lol what do you mean by that?

eunbi: binnie hates studying, but good luck!

ahh, eunbi becomes unhinged when it comes to bin

but you know it’s bc they’re that close, they’re literally childhood best friends, more so like siblings

still, studying w him couldn’t be that bad right?

spoiler alert, it went alright

you felt bad showing up to bin’s apartment empty handed so you picked up some coffee before you arrived

you officially meet bin’s roommate, eunwoo, and you’re floored for like 2 minutes bc literally how can a man like him be real?

cue bin being a bit jealous bc yeah he knew his roommate’s perfect but like damn did you have to be affected by him too :(

eunwoo’s a good teacher alright? you actually understood the material from him

you: idk what eunbi’s talking about, you’re actually not that bad at studying bin

bin being offended: oh god what did eunbi say about me

eunwoo smirking: maybe it’s because you’re here y/n, bin usually doesn’t focus this much when it’s just me trying to help him

you: ???

bin in his head: i can’t trust anyone huh 

before you left his place, you and bin planned to meet up and study one more time before your stats exam

it was just you and bin this time

although you’d never admit it, yes you tried to look good for meeting up with him

yeah he’s a friend?? at least you think you were at that level?? but still, he’s a cute friend and you really didn’t want him to see you looking crusty

you and bin end up studying for a whole 5 hours

granted, half of that time you two were messing around, eating food, trying to procrastinate for as long as you could

bc even though you two had a good handle on the material now—thanks to eunwoo—you both still hated statistics

you knew bin started to get more comfortable with you bc he started teasing you

it made you happy hehe so ofc you started to quip back at him

not at the intensity that he and eunbi do but it’s enough for you :)

he walks you back to your apartment after your study session

wow what a gentleman

bin waving bye at your door with the cutest smile: see you in class y/n :)

mayhaps your stomach did a little somersault

anyways

on the day of your exam you were freaking out

you have test anxiety ah ha ha

you woke up at 5 bc you were paranoid about being late to class

you’re like hastily looking over the notes again when you get to class like are you really prepared omg you’re psyching yourself out hella

bin comes in with 2 cups of iced coffee and he’s like woah are you okay

you: i woke up at 5 bin, idk if i can do this omg

you are like visibly in distress rn and he feels like a pang in his chest 

he was gonna mess with you and say like “bet im gonna get a higher grade than you” but he smartly decides against it

instead, he just takes your hand and gives it a little squeeze: y/n, take a deep breath. you’re going to do great, you studied your ass for this and we both know that you got this material down—even eunwoo hyung said you were gonna ace this exam. just trust your instincts, okay? breathe with me.

he was staring at you so intently and genuinely when trying to calm you down

your anxiety yeeted and suddenly you felt shy

you: th...thanks bin...

bin was worried about you while taking the test rip, he kept secretly glancing at you (while also trying not to make it look like he was cheating) just to make sure that you were okay

he walks you to your next class after you both finished your exam

bin: you sure you’re okay? you said you woke up at 5, did you even eat breakfast? let’s get food after your next class.

you were feeling better after the test but like you got so endeared at his fussing

yes you and bin got lunch that day

your exam results were uploaded the next day

you immediately called bin: I GOT A 95

bin: i told you that you would ace it! i got a 90 hehe

you: bin i literally owe you and eunwoo my life, lemme buy you guys food or something

you hear a little bit of bickering over the phone and suddenly you’re talking to eunwoo

eunwoo: i would love some sushi, but since bin can’t eat seafood, why don’t you come watch his swim meet this weekend :)

you: o...h...o-okay yeah i’d love to watch, what time is it? :)

eunwoo: it’s saturday at 10 am

you: okay! i’ll see you there bin

bin already planning on drop kicking eunwoo

cha eunwoo—best wingman™

you basically beg eunbi to go with you to bin’s swim meet

eunbi: i know bin can swim, why do i have to watch him flounder around under water

also eunbi: faster bin! don’t you fucking dare lose!

bin places first this meet

are we shocked? no

okay you mentally prepared yourself for seeing him shirtless, but clearly you didn’t prep enough bc you’re on the cusp of drooling when you’re watching him from the bleachers

and let’s face it, you’re not subtle and eunbi knows everything so she’s literally closing your jaw for you and like messing with you

eunbi: y/n, you’re really sure you like bin? he’s a good guy but c’mon, i think you deserve better

you: since when did i say that i like him ???? and what do you mean ??? i think he checks...all the boxes...for me...

eunbi: maybe it’s bc i’ve known him since when he used to wet his pants so i don’t understand why people are attracted to him, but like...really, you’ve been checking him out since he removed his shirt. even the ref can see that you’re simping over him

you and eunbi meet up with eunwoo and the rest of bin’s friends—that you haven’t met yet but know of

jinjin: oh so you’re the y/n that bin’s been talking about *wink wonk*

baby you’re blushing

even more so when bin comes up to your group

mmm middle parted wet hair, muscle tee and white sweats, towel around his shoulders

he’s so hot ???

you’re all congratulating him blah blah, but like bin keeps glancing at you and all you can do is just smile and like nervous laugh

sanha: y/n! eunbi noona! you should come eat with us to celebrate bin hyung’s win

eunbi glances at you, little smirk on her face: i have plans, but i know y/n’s free! bin you make sure they get home safe after y’alls dinner plans :)

hwang eunbi—best wingwoman™

dinner with the boys was chaotic, you were talking and joking around with them as if you didn’t just meet them today

*you about to get your wallet*

bin, not even able to look at you: it’s okay y/n, i got you this time

cue the boys teasing

astro: kings of making fun of each other

rocky as the group is splitting up: walk y/n home safely hyung :) don’t stay out too late

bin: sorry about them, they’re a bunch of loud idiots...ah haha...

the walk back to your apartment is actually pretty sweet

he didn’t know if you would actually come watch his meet or not but he was excited when he actually saw you

you talk about small random things about yourselves, but it’s not like useless information, you bet that both your subconsciouses are keeping track of whatever y’all are talking about

you give each other a “friendly” hug goodnight...that lasts like a minute or so

and while you’re hugging, bin just can’t help but think that wow you fit so perfectly in his arms

and on the other hand, you’re thinking he feels so warm? so safe? you don’t want to pull away?

but ofc the hug has to end and you’re thanking him for walking you home and he’s like glued to his spot waving goodbye sweetly and waiting for you to go inside so that he knows you’re safely in your apartment before leaving

bin sighing dreamily as he walks back to his and eunwoo’s place

eunwoo waiting on the couch with a glass of water: how was your date ;)

bin: it wasn’t a date, i just walked y/n home

eunwoo: yeah, but you want it to be a date

bin: ...shut up

god why is the pining stage so long

alright everyone knows you and bin like each other

it becomes pretty obvious after the swim meet

you and him fall into this little routine of switching who buys coffee for your 8 am

and then he’d walk you to your next class afterwards

you both still don’t pay attention in stats, sorry

but that means more outside study sessions dates

you come watch his swim meets, whether astro’s there or you’re just watching by yourself

and then you and him get lunch?? early dinner?? right afterwards, it depends on whenever his meet ends

but like??? neither of you have confessed your feelings for each other

even though you both have like a little hint that yeah the feelings are mutual

you and bin are literally like this for 3 months, like damn the semester is almost over

eunbi and eunwoo are tired of your shit, they’re both just like: when the fuck are they getting together? we’re sick of this.

alright so the masterminds literally pay one of eunwoo’s friends from his major to ask you out while you’re studying with bin

let’s do mingyu why not, he was in your korean history class last year

you and bin are in the library, half studying half goofing off per usual

eunwoo, eunbi, and mingyu are at the opposite side of the floor

mingyu: u sure bin won’t clock me for trying to ask out y/n

eunwoo: probably not??

eunbi: just do it please

mingyu giving them both the finger before walking up to your table

“hey y/n...i was wondering if you’d like to get dinner with me...as a date?”

you: o_o huh?

mingyu: i always thought you were cute from when we had class together last year, but i never had the balls to ask you out or anything...you’re not dating anyone, right?

you glance at bin to find that he’s already looking at you with an expression that you don’t really know how to read

you: um...well no I’m not-

bin: actually, we’re dating so y/n can’t go out with you mingyu, sorry.

mingyu’s not even phased, he just gives you a thumbs up and then leaves

you’re confused like literally what is going on—and then you process what bin said and you whip your head to look at him

bin: sorry i said that...i just felt...jealous i guess when mingyu asked you out

you: I wouldn’t have said yes anyway...I sorta like someone else

bin: fuck it, the topic already came up...y/n I’ve liked you for a while now but uh...I don’t know I guess I was scared to tell you because I’m scared of rejection

you just laugh, but not mockingly! more like bin you’re so cute wtf

“bin, why would I reject you when I’ve literally been into you for the past four months?”

it’s safe to say that you and bin officially began dating after that

eunwoo texting in their gc: bin and y/n are finally together

myungjun: fucking finally

bin: how...did u know that eunwoo...?

*eunwoo has left the chat*

alright but bin’s charm?? flirting?? teasing?? sweetness?? up 1000%

bin is touchy y’all, in private his hands are always on you, whether it be sexual or not sexual is up to you

he restrains himself in public ofc, the most he does is put a hand on your waist or hold your hand

eunbi threatens bin early on in your relationship: bin you’re like my brother, but y/n’s one of my dearest friends and if you as much make them cry i will kill you

ofc bin is still eunbi’s punching bag, but when you three are hanging out, he’s dramatic and acts like he’s hurt so he’s like whining to you

sometimes you play along and coo at him like: aww binnie, where does it hurt baby?

other times you’re like: you really think i believe that?? with the size of your biceps??

eunbi: excuse me while i vomit

okay but binnie? bestest sweetest boy

yes he looks all big and intimidating

but he’s soft—especially for you

your nicknames for each other are either “bub” or “baby”

yes will join in making fun of you with the boys, but when you start pouting he’s a goner and will defend you

bin is also a big cuddler, but i mean you’re not complaining hehe

he’s the big spoon, no questions asked

okay but being in bin’s arms is like your favorite place in the world

his frame literally just envelopes you and all you can feel and smell is him and it’s so??? content, you feel at home with him

you feel bad in the morning bc like his arm has to be sore from your weight so you try to like get out of his grasp, but he literally just whines and hugs you tighter

okay but just imagine you and bin napping and his arms are around your waist, his nose is buried in your neck and he wakes up like nuzzling his face in your shoulder like a puppy

im soft

one week you’re staying over at bin’s apartment and then the next week he’s staying over at yours, the cycle goes like that

if you’re one of my ladies with a ~vagíne~, he will buy all your cravings and your tampons/pads, literally anything you want that week, it is yours

doesn’t really get jealous now that you two are official, he knows that you’re his and he’s yours

you two lightly bicker like friends, but you’ve never had a terrible fight before

you were really close to though—or...like you did?? but it was resolved really quick

one of the only problems of bin is that he hates showing weakness and it takes him a whole lot to truly fully 100% be vulnerable with someone even if it’s someone close to him

he pulled a muscle in his arm and it cost him one of his swim meets

he had to go to rehab for like a month and you knew that mentally he’s been off bc of it

you try to ease talking him into telling you about how he’s really feeling but he just kept dodging the subject

one night after one of his rehab sessions, he came back to your place and you’re just like

“hey bubbie, how was rehab? how are you doing?”

and he just snaps at you: stop asking me how I am, y/n, it’s getting really annoying

you’re taken aback, like what the fuck where did that come from?

your eyebrows furrow and you cross your arms bc you are not going to get spoken to like that

“so me worrying about you and wondering how your recovery’s going is annoying? that’s what a partner is supposed to do, moon bin. what’s going on with you?”

bin: you’re being suffocating! it’s the only thing you ask me about nowadays, sometimes I—

oh boy you got mad

you: I ask you because I know you’re not telling me things! I know you’re suffering by yourself and I want to let you know that I’m here for you, I want to help take some of the pain away or at least help you deal with it because I’m your partner! but how can I if you can’t even let me in?? we’re fucking dating moon bin, we’re supposed to go through rough times together. and you call me suffocating...? 

bin’s silent and he’s looking at the floor

you sigh, tears are building in your eyes because you’re frustrated and a bit hurt by what he said, and your voice cracks when you speak again: if i’m suffocating you, then you should leave. text me or something when you can breathe again, I don’t know.

there’s a bit of spite in your words, hidden by the pain

bin sees the tears rolling down your cheeks and that’s when he knows he fucked up

he’s never seen you cry before—besides like from a sad movie or something

so like the fact that he made you cry and hurt you with his words? damn he hates himself rn

he immediately wraps his arms around you, and you like try to push him to get away bc why is he hugging you? didn’t he just say that you were suffocating? why is he confusing

bin: baby, I’m sorry...I shouldn’t have taken out my frustrations on you, you’re not suffocating me I promise...you’re right about everything, I should be sharing things with you and telling you how I’m really feeling...I’m sorry.

you don’t say anything and just like sniffle and he picks you up and brings you to your bedroom and then he just lets it all out

he tells you how rehab is hard and like yeah his muscle pain is going away, but he doesn’t know if he can swim as fast as he used to and that scares him

and he tells you that sometimes he’s thought of giving up swimming since his injury, but then he thinks of you and that’s how he’s still going through with rehab

you’re his motivator and comfort but he doesn’t want to show you his weak side bc he hates that part of himself

and at this point, bin starts tearing up and you’re like stroking his hair to try and comfort him

bin: I’m not good at telling my feelings baby...probably why I didn’t tell you I liked you until 4 months later...but I promise I’ll work harder and at least try and tell them to you.

ugh pain

anyway your communication with serious things got better after that encounter

eunbi finding out that you and bin argued and he made you cry and she literally punched his stomach

you: omg eunbi stop

bin: it’s okay...I sorta deserved that

eunbi: why...are you not swearing at me? shit, bin are you okay?

he nods to the girl and just puts an arm around your shoulder: we talked things through, don’t worry. I’m all good now, but I did deserve that punch because I hurt y/n when I promised you I wouldn’t

bin ends up having a full recovery and bam his first swim meet after he got the clear from the PT, he gets first place again

all the boys and you and eunbi were there supporting him

bin was hella nervous before the meet started, but you gave him a little good luck kiss and was like: I believe in you bub, no matter the result, as long as you give it your all and don’t hurt yourself again, you’ll be the winner to me :)

this was actually when the first “i love you” was said

after your little pep talk in the locker room, bin’s just hugging you and holding you for comfort

and he just went out with it

“I love you y/n”

you blush hella hard bc you were not expecting that

obviously you’ve been feeling it like yeah your feelings for bin have grown into love for a while now

you just bury your face in his chest and hug him tighter

“I love you too binnie, now go get em bub.”

he smiles and kisses you and tells you that he’ll see you after the meet is over

you come back to the crowd where the boys and eunbi are and you just have a huge smile on your face, you’re literally glowing

myungjun: please tell me you guys didn’t fuck before his swim meet

speaking of fucking

okay let’s get down and dirty ladies and gents wink wonk mmm grr bark bark

bin is so sexy y’all like i dont need to tell you that

he’s 100% a tease

you have a little muscle kink hehe

which bin very much uses to his advantage

if bin is wearing a sleeveless shirt, you bet he wants to smash that day

will walk around shirtless after a shower or after a workout just to turn you on and then depending on his mood, he might tease you for like an hour or you’ll just get right to it

he’s very proud of his body and the work he put into it and knowing that you get turned on from one look of it?? gives him an ego boost, he loves it

one time at a party, he wore a crop top (mm hello bad idea bin) and you literally went feral

you dragged him inside the nearest bathroom and just started making out

he’s an ass guy

...all of astro are ass guys, it’s just obvious with how much they slap each other’s asses and poke each other’s assholes

okay you know how he’s touchy right? i mentioned that earlier

he always wants you on his lap

even if there’s a space available, nope your seat is his thighs

ofc when the situation allows, like you’re not gonna sit on his lap in class duh

most of the time in public like if you’re hanging out with the boys or something, it’s innocent

but if he wants to be a tease, he’ll literally just tighten his grip on your hips and grind you down onto his cock

subtle, he won’t straight up thrust into you

just enough to get his dick stirring and make you feel the outline of it through your pants

and then he just stops and hugs your waist again?? wtf

his major’s exercise science right? will ask if he can practice on you for anatomy and physiology, but you know after touching you in a couple places, y’all will just end up fucking

likes to bite and mark

very proud seeing the hickeys he leaves on you

you can bite, but you can’t bruise, idk his upper body is exposed a lot bc swimming so you can’t really leave any marks on him unless it’s the off season

foreplay’s cool, but he prefers the main event, he just wants to be in you

as much as he loves doggy, his fav position is the hook

(it’s when your legs are on his shoulders ohoho and it just lets him fuck you in a deeper angle mmm)

also in the hook, he can choke you

if i have a choking kink, you have a choking kink

okay little tangent, choking is so hot?

like just imagine you and bin are making out, he pushed you against the wall, literally grinding his hips into you, and his hand just comes up and squeezes your throat? that’s so sexy

likes butt stuff oops

i don’t make the rules, he just does

daddy kink, but no power play

will not degrade you (even if you really just want him to call you his dirty slut) bc he really values seeing you as equals

seeing your face when you cum is a must

almost always: you cumming → bin cumming

nothing gets him off more than knowing that he’s making you feel good

after !! care !!

sweetest boy!!

will clean you up with a warm towel after sex

and if you’re one of my ladies, he will always remind you to pee so that you don’t get a UTI

if y’all had a marathon or something, he will draw a bath and carry you to the bathroom and you will bathe together, so soft

always ends sex with an i love you :’)

okay let’s get back to the soft stuff

special thing about swimmer bin: pool dates

sometimes when he’s practicing and it’s just him, he asks you to come to the aquatic center and you two end up splashing around and being cute together

he like knew that you were the one for him some time during senior year

it was the holidays and his parents invited you to spend christmas with their family since your parents were out of the country this break

his parents and sister liked you immediately—which you were so scared about, but bin just knew

you woke up early christmas eve (and bin was out like a rock) so you just went downstairs to brew some coffee or something and you saw that his mom was already starting on making food

naturally, you offered your help and she was like no, you’re a guest y/n, but obviously you started helping

bin comes downstairs like an hour or two later to see you, his mom, and his dad just cooking and listening to christmas music and talking and his heart just like swells??

you: morning binnie :)

his mom: how can you be sleeping when y/n’s here helping us with christmas dinner

his dad: what kind of boyfriend are you, son?

just kidding all jokes

but that’s the moment when he knew

best boyfriend bin ugh

he becomes a legend in the school for swimming

but doesn’t continue after college, he’s all about becoming a physical trainer after graduation

he goes to grad school, while you’re out working in business

bin moves in with you after graduating, it was the obvious next step

you do talk about the future together, but obviously bin’s still in school and you’re both fresh from undergrad so there’s no rush yet to tie the knot

doesn’t stop his or your parents from talking to you two about marriage tho oops

ugh but the domesticity after bin moves in with you? superb

like yeah obviously you both basically lived together anyway when he still roomed with eunwoo just from how much you and him spent at each other’s places

but like your apartment is now both of your place and it’s like your home is finally complete

your apartment becomes the reunion place for the boys and eunbi

at this point everyone knew you and bin were gonna get married eventually

eunwoo and eunbi: we did that ;)

and that’s how you and your college bf!bin live happily ever after uwu

happy birthday binnie moonbob ♥

1-25-21

[sunshinejihyun]

Enamored || Lucien

Author’s Note: So! This is my first time writing for Lucien, and I’m only on chapter 11 of the game so I apologize if he seems out of character for him later in the game, this is just how I find him right now.

Summary: Lucien finds love in a place he never expected: the orphanage he volunteered at

Warnings: Brief mentions of familial death, mutual pining, kinda a slow burn?

Word Count: 2568

Masterlist

On your 15th birthday, your present from the world was your parents passing in a terrible accident, leaving you to live on your own. Not too long after your family left you, you got taken in by an orphanage with a kind man as an owner who raised you as he would his own child. Now, at age 22, you were doing all you could to give back to the man who helped raise you, that included continuing to live at the orphanage and donating all your extra time to giving love and attention to all the wonderful children living there now.

As you groaned from being awoken by a soft kick to your stomach, you shoved your head into the thin mattress you were sharing with a child who had taken a particular liking to you. Peony was a sweet little girl with a kind smile, but she was a restless sleeper and you always ended with various bruises from her knocking into you during the night. Taking a deep breath, you rolled out of the bed, going over to the window that overlooked the large gate that kept all of the intruders who wanted to exploit the children out. As long as you remembered, you were completely intrigued with the volunteers who showed up early in the morning on weekends and spent their time reading, teaching, or just talking to the children. Every morning that there were volunteers there, you would wake up early as well and watch as the first group of early rising children ran out to greet the people they’d grown fond of, an endearing grin adorning your face.

This morning was different though; there was a new man in line. His clothes were cleanly pressed and his calculating eyes had a smile within them that you could see from far away. You watched as he bent down in front of a little boy and said something, a soft smile on his face, before the boy jumped up and shouted before throwing his chubby arms around the tall man in a tight hug.

Anxiety bubbled in your chest as the door to the sleeping area slammed open causing you to startle and you turned away from the window, grabbing a book and trying to make yourself look busy. “Is it possible you can start waking up the rest of the kids? They’re going to be sad if they miss visiting hours today..” One of the workers grabbed a broom from the corner of the room and smiled at you as you nodded your head. “Thanks, we’ve set aside some breakfast for you in the kitchen.”

When the worker left the room, you hurriedly went around and tried to wake them up so you could catch another glimpse of the new volunteer who looked so out of place in this environment. And when you did peek out of the window, you swore that the man was looking back at you.

The glances went on for days. Every weekend he would show up bright and early, and you would watch out the window as he greeted the kids before following them inside a room. By then, you also knew that it wasn’t just your imagination. The dark haired man was looking for you -  at you -  and watching, and that brought a flutter to your heart. You knew nothing about this person; you only knew his name from the children who came back chattering excitedly about the newest science experiment he taught them.

When the weather’s a little nicer, everyone would welcome opening a window or two and maybe then you could catch some of the soft words he spoke, but only if he was close enough to a window for the wind to pick up the sound and carry it to you. Until then, you just had to watch and wonder.

The owner of the orphanage silently watched as you curiously snuck around the orphanage, trying to catch a glimpse of the man who intrigued you so and he couldn’t help but smile as he whispered in that man’s ear that there was someone inside that day, looking for someone to help make lunch to feed the children.

You also watched the owner in horror as he whispered in Lucien’s ear before he made eye contact with you through the window, nodded, and started making his way towards the entrance near where you were currently located.

“The owner said you needed some help with lunch today?” His voice came out softer than you’d heard before and your heartbeat sped up. Lucien, noting your flushed cheeks, raised his eyebrows at you before gesturing in the general way to the kitchen.

As you chopped the apples for the children, Lucien started making the sandwiches and you both made idle conversation. You learned that he was a scientist who gave lectures and was researching a top secret project. You told him about how you got taken in here at the orphanage when you had no one and now you wanted to stay and help, to pay back the owner for the years he helped raise you. The conversation never died, it was never awkward with Lucien. One thing you’d say would lead him into talking about something else and vice versa. It was easy with him.

Before you knew it, you'd both worked your way through all the meals for the children and had no reason to continue chatting in the kitchen, so Lucien left to go back to his lab, but not before leaving without your phone number, so he can receive updates on the kids while he’s away, of course.

Late one night a few weeks later, you were awoken by your phone ringing, and you quickly grabbed it to silence it before it could wake the sleeping children. Peony only had just fallen asleep and you’d curse the person on the other end if they were the reason for her awakening.

“Hello?” Your voice came out in a soft whisper and the person on the other end laughed. You knew that laugh anywhere.

“I’m in a bit of a debacle and was wondering if you would be willing to help me out?” Lucien, the always cool and composed Lucien, sounded a bit panicked on the other end.

“Anything,” you responded before facepalming. You always seemed to make a fool of yourself when it came to Lucien and you only wished he didn’t think of you as someone who was silly and immature. “How can I help?”

“I’m actually outside the gates. Any way you can let me in and we can talk face to face?” Without responding, you threw back the covers on your legs and slipped your shoes on before quietly making your way out to where Lucien was waiting.

Sure enough, there he was, looking as dark and handsome as ever and you were thankful it was dark enough outside so he wouldn’t be able to see the flush across your cheeks and neck when you approached. “Are you okay?”

Lucien sighed and as you studied his face closer in the moonlight, you noticed the dark purples under his eyes, only barely concealed by the dark rimmed glasses he was wearing. “I’ve suddenly ran into trouble and can no longer stay at my apartment.” Glancing down at you, his mouth quirked into a small smile. “Do you think you guys have room for one more orphan for a few days? Just until I get back on my feet?”

“I’m sure we can make that work.” You replied before quietly leading the professor inside.

Lucien didn’t sleep at night and you woke up earlier than the rest of the kids in the orphanage, that much you two had figured out quickly. Once Lucien arrived, you had managed to swap beds with a few kids to get two beds next to each other so you both could stay up talking into the early morning. Peony was still right next to you, of course. Between hushed whispers in the early morning, you managed to learn a lot about him and vise versa.

Lucien told you about his hopes and dreams, to become a world renowned scientist and how all he wanted to do was research to make the world a better place. Lucien told you that he had plans to make his way around the world eventually and start a new life in a new place where he could research their lifestyle and help people in need.

What he didn’t tell you was that Lucien noticed every time you would sneak a glance out the window and your face would fall. He knew you didn’t want to stay in the orphanage forever, but felt obligated to the owner. He didn’t bring it up for the first few days but after he felt more comfortable with you, his curiosity got the best of him.

“If you could do anything with your life, what would it be?” Lucien asked, his voice coming out slurred and his arm extended towards you and goosebumps rose up your arm as his long fingers brushed against your shoulder. He had closed his eyes for a few minutes after he asked you, soft snores pouring out, and when he awoke again, you weren’t next to him; you were perched on the low window, looking out longingly. You opened your mouth to protest his questioning glance and he quieted you with a look that could command an entire room. “Don’t try to tell me you’re not looking for something, I’ve seen that wistful look across your face everytime you look out that window.”

You sighed, looking out the window once more before hopping down and crawling in the covers next to Peony before turning to face Lucien. “There’s just something about the outside. From the day I saw you, I was intrigued. Just a glance at you could send my mind racing and think of the possible life I could have led. And sometimes, it feels like that life is looking for me too.”

“What do you mean?” Lucien’s eyebrows were furrowed and you grabbed his hand and held it as close to you as you could..

“I don’t know how to explain,” you replied and you shut your eyes, moving closer to Peony for warmth. Lucien had so many questions, that much was obvious. But he knew you didn’t sleep much, so he dropped them for now, before turning over and hugging himself, his eyes closing as well.

A few weeks after your conversation with Lucien, you decided it was time to go off on your own, ready to live the life you longed for. The one that laid dormant until you met someone who made you want to live.

“Where are you going to go?”

You smiled softly, adjusting Lucien’s jacket so you didn’t have to make eye contact with him. “I’ll be around. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”

Lucien gently grabbed your hands, forcing you to look back up at him. “I’m thinking about trying to find a new place to go, a place where I can do the type of research I want without being watched all the time. It’s not a life of luxury but....” He trailed off and you could almost hear him finish his sentence. It’s not much, but it’s better than being by yourself. Lucien twisted his mouth into a teasing smile. “I know my life is better with you around.”

And with that sentence, you found yourself agreeing before you could even think to stop yourself. You wanted to go with Lucien, continue to help people as much as possible and just be free enough to live the life you’ve only read about in books. You’d miss the children and the owner of the orphanage, of course, but you could always visit. Come back to tell stories of your adventures with Mr. Lucien. So with one last goodbye to the place you called home, you grasped Lucien’s hand and began on your new adventure together.

Three months after you left the orphanage, you couldn’t be happier. You made quick friends with the new children in the place that you and Lucien ended up in and ended up taunting them much like an older sibling would. Lucien would watch as he worked with a fond smile and every time you felt his eyes on you, you gazed back before you shared an intimate smile with the other.

Everyone who knew you also knew about your crush on the dark haired man. All the women whose children you watched as they worked liked to sit you down and beg you to ‘just tell him, MC.’ But things were going good the way they were, you and Lucien were friends and you were happy with your new lifestyle, you didn’t want to ruin that by saying something he might find stupid.

There was a quiet air about your professor one day after you two finished work for the day, walking silently back to your shared apartment. “Lucien, are you okay?”

Lucien nodded his head and you sent him a disbelieving look. “I think so. I just, uh. Some of the ladies pulled me aside today.”

Your heartbeat picked up and your mouth went dry. “Really,”

Lucien grabbed your hand, intertwining your fingers. After months of knowing him, that soft touch could still turn your knees to jelly. “They told me something,” you looked at him, encouraging him to continue. “It was about you. They told me you have, y’know, a crush on me.”

You dropped your hand from his. Taking a deep breath, you looked him in his violet eyes and felt a slight bit calmer. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to find out. It’s just like I watched you for a while and was intrigued and then when we became friends it just grew into more of a crush and-”

Lucien cut you off by putting a hand over your mouth. “Can you let me finish please?” When you nodded, he dropped his arm and grabbed your hands again. “I’m glad they told me. Do you know why?” You shook your head no and Lucien smiled at you. “Ask me why.”

You sighed, just wanting to get this over with so that you could go home and hide in your bedroom forever. “Why are you glad they told you?”

Without responding, Lucien leaned in and before pressing a chaste kiss to your lips, he looked at you for visual confirmation that it was okay. Once you nodded, his slightly chapped lips met yours and before you could even relish in the taste of him, he pulled away. “It’s because I like you too.”

You felt a smile tug on your lips and Lucien’s mouth was almost mirroring yours. “Well that’s an interesting development.”

“I know a good word for how I felt the first time I saw you from the window.” Lucien said and then leaned in to kiss you once more. “Ask me what it is.”

“What was the word, Lucien?” You two probably looked like fools, standing in the middle of the street, both your hands joined with wide smiles that neither of you could wipe off your faces.

“Enamored,” Lucien responded, bringing your right hand up to his lips and kissing the top of it. “Being filled with complete love for something.”

[delicatebluebirdruins]

Heartland s14 ep 1 take 2

tumblr was supposed to save my previous post to drafts so I could add to it (and did not do it which I did not realise until I looked at my notifications and someone had reblogged it in other words OOPS sorry)

to repeat myself anyone criticising Graham for his decision to leave and the timing of it will be blocked, and I wish Graham himself all the best for his future projects

under a read more because spoilers, a rant with some swearing and lots of rambling so it got long

so first I’m going to go off topic a little bit and rant because this hurt a lot when it happened. Last September I woke up one morning to the news that my favourite character (Bellamy) from the numbers show was shot and killed by my other favourite character (Clarke) for the most stupidest reason ever (she killed Bellamy over a sketchbook which he wanted to give to the bad guys... to protect her daughter... AND THEN SHE JUST BOUNCED AND LEFT THE SKETCHBOOK THAT MIGHT HAVE ENDANGERED HER DAUGHTER ON THE FLOOR NEXT TO THE BAD GUYS THAT WERE STILL LIVING). So i was still dealing with the death of my favourite character and the subsequent dragging through the dirt of both Bellamy he died alone thinking everyone hated him. No one really mourned him, he was all but forgotten except for a few throwaway comments that ‘he was right’. No one felt regret about not believing him. No one spoke up and said they wished he could have been here on the beach at the end. He was erased from the narrative and a minor character who died in S3 and whose story had already been wrapped up overshadowed him (and almost everything else that happened in the already shitty finale*- like seriously all of humanity was forced to join a universal consciousness and you don’t have to know a lot about science fiction to know it is really bad). (and everyone thought he was dead and his gf was ready to go on a killing spree about it for revenge but when they found he was actually dead they all just shrugged it off and said he died the moment he joined the bad guys when they were standing in the presence of another bad guy who was on that side for a lot longer and was only a recent turn coat) and Clarke who was the hero of this show was turned into cause of all of humanities sins and not a hero who tried (and then gets rewarded by being let to stay with her “friends” on a beach unable to bear children because aliens turned up as a master race and killed all of humanity and those that were left were made barren? yes in the last ever episode of a seven season show we got introduced to aliens- honestly putting all I know of season 7 into words like this still makes no sense)

*link to the youtube video The 100 Finale... May We Never Meet Again: Talis the person who made the video went off you know if you are morbidly curious

Bellamy was one of my favourite characters and he was done hella dirty. And Ty was another and he got given multiple love letters in just one episode and probably more to come as season 14 progresses. (I laughed as yesterday a youtuber called Hannah King made a video about the first episode of season 14 and I read the comments one of which saying that Ty was done dirty by the writers and I just??? I was hella tempted to put that rant above this part in a response to that comment good lord)

so onto Ty and Heartland

I watched the entire of season 13 in a day and cried a little when Ty and Amy got shot... and it hurt but was also very cathartic to watch because the worry and care was brought to the forefront like Ty not even realising he was shot and his panic was a very real moment

so when fandom started speculating about Ty’s death my only thought was if he did die he would do it with a complication with the gunshot wound and I was right. But it didn’t hurt as much to think about because I trust the writers even if they have made some missteps in past seasons. However, because of Bell and the faith I had in the writers back then (I trusted the writers until I remembered after the death because main character hater was promoted to head writer) I was also worried because of that.... Heartland is essentially the only ongoing show that I’m still actively watching and not just searching for spoilers.

I rewatched the first episode of season 14 twice (will probably do so again maybe)

Ty’s death was handled well, the blurring of the doctor delivering the news and Amy mentioning that the funeral was a blur (I kind of hope we get a flashback)

So it goes without saying the timing of Graham leaving and Ty dying is hard because of Covid-19 and the loss (all forms like normal routines, lives and you know what i mean I hope) that comes with it.

Because of everything in real life and the real life grief a lot of people have been going through, one of the many parts during the episode that made me tear up and cry a little was Grandpa Jack’s and Amy’s heart to heart in the fishing cabin. It was a very real moment the mentioning of how difficult Grandma Lyndy’s death was for death despite it being expected and how unexpected Ty’s was. And Jack saying “there is no right way to grieve” is possibly the most important part of it as there is no right way, and grief is not linear its not a straight line it will be very hard to deal with for a long while.

“keep me in your heart“ was a very strong start and I can’t wait to see what comes next (I hope at some point we see some old friends and Scott turn up and react to Ty’s death). And I am so glad that the cast and crew are talking about it in videos as a message to fans

in the end Ty was loved completely by the family and he loved them the same. the rest is confetti

[3pirouette]

Fic: An Experimental Design (6/?)

Title: An Experimental Design

By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette

Disclaimer: They're not mine.

Distribution: AO3 Anyone else please ask first :) 

Story Summary: Sequel to “What Number?”, also prompted from Steggy Bingo Bash Prompts.  Takes place about a week after that fic. 

Chapter Summary: They share a brief moment of quiet as one experiment ends and they prepare for what comes next.

Chapter A/N: Just a short interlude. More action coming soon, this just made the most sense as a chapter.

Chapter 6: A Brief Moment of Quiet

Steve’s senses were assaulted from every angle as he woke: the soft feel of her flesh wrapped tight in is arms, the flowery scent of her hair, the taste of her skin still on his lips, the sounds of her soft snores as she slept, her long, dark eyelashes laying against her cheek.

Peggy.

All around him.

He took a slow, deep breath, taking in the moment. For all that had happened, all that they’d done, he’d never woken up with her in his arms quite like this, and despite the circumstances, he wanted to remember it. After a moment he gently shifted, untangling himself from her, content to let her sleep on. He sat on the side of the bed, head falling to his hands when he saw the torn pants still wrapped around his ankles and were held up by his boots.

He wasn’t sure if he was embarrassed or proud of what they’d done, wasn’t sure if it had been driven by love or lust or science, and that made his stomach twist in knots.

What he did know was that he loved her and she loved him. For right now, that would have to be enough to get through whatever was coming at them. He bent slowly, trying not to shake the bed as he pulled off the boots and let the tattered remnants of the pants fall to the floor.

He looked around the room, the destruction doing nothing for the knot in his stomach. He only vaguely remembered pounding on the wall with his fist, couldn’t recall when or how he’d rammed through it, didn’t remember when, exactly he’d decided that doors were useless.

Steve wasn’t sure he could do anything about the hole while he was naked. He wasn’t sure what he could do at all, in fact. Peggy would likely sleep deeply for at least another hour or two, and it had already been hours since he lost track of the time, he could tell by how low the sun was in the sky through the crack in the curtains. He picked his way quietly over to the hole in the wall and cleared a path through the drywall and debris on the floor as soundlessly as he could. At the very least his room wasn’t filled with debris and broken glass, and the bedding was in much better shape.

He was staring at the bed, Peggy’s small figure cocooned in the scratchy white sheet, when he heard the faintest of noises outside.

“Cap?”

Steve padded to the door, barely cracking it open to preserve whatever modestly he had left. He was surprised to find Dum Dum on the other side.

“Howard sent me,” the man started with a shrug. “I think he’s a little intimidated after you broke through the wall.” He held up a box. “Boxed dinner. Better than K-rations, I swear.”

Steve leaned awkwardly, trying to keep the door in between them as he reached for the box, but he juggled it and had to step forward, revealing himself. “Sorry.” He slipped back behind the door.

Dum Dum shrugged, unaffected. “Ain’t like we haven’t shared a locker room.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “You guys need anything else? Howard said they planned on leaving you alone for tonight, just checking in tomorrow when he had more information.”

“Pants,” Steve replied quickly. “And actually… shit.” He ran his hand through his hair, his face reddening, the blush traveling down his chest. “We both need new clothes.”

Steve could see how hard Dugan worked to refrain from making a suggestive gesture or comment. For that, Steve was grateful. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll just knock and leave ‘em, ok?”

“Great, thanks.” Steve closed the door on his friend, not waiting for a goodbye when he already felt so awkward. He peeked into the box: sandwiches and fruit that would keep; he could let Peggy sleep a bit longer. He slipped to his room and set the box on the edge of the dresser, then pawed through the drawers, looking for anything that might be useful but finding only emptiness.  

It was bad enough so many people knew what was happening, leaving him feel exposed, but to be literally exposed as well was just a little more than he could bear at the moment. Despite that, he set to work cleaning his side of the hole in the wall, moving all the chunks of plaster to the other side, brushing aside the dust with his hands. He washed them quickly, and wished there had been more than just a hand towel in the bathroom. He looked at his perfect, still made bed and gently lifted the covers, pulling the blankets over at one side.

Steve picked his way back into Peggy’s room, watching how she slept softly in the wrinkled, rumpled blankets that were torn in places, the exposed mattress where the sheet had pulled away up at the headboard a testament to the ferocity of what had happened in there.  

He could do better.

Softly, quietly, he pulled the blanket away from her, baring her naked form to him. He would have liked to look his fill, and one day when this was all over he would, but for now he settled on scooping her gently into his arms and moving her through the hole in the wall to the crisp, pristine bed.

She made a noise in the back of her throat as he settled her in the new bed, confused and disturbed. She didn’t open her eyes, but wrapped her arms around his neck as he tried to move away. “Cold,” she mumbled, “stay.”

Steve kissed her cheek, but untangled her arms, anyway. “One minute,” he whispered, tucking her tight under the blankets. He watched her snuggle deeper until just her hair was sticking out and smiled to himself. As quietly as he could, he moved to the other end of the room, lifting the tall wardrobe from where it sat in the corner and using it to cover the massive hole in the wall.

When he stepped back, he could still see the cracks in the plaster radiating outward, but it was better than nothing. Even the illusion of propriety was welcome. He was on his way back to the bed when he heard the muted sounds of a knock on the other door. He hurried, poking his head out just in time to see Dugan starting to turn away from the next door over. Steve whispered his name loud enough to get his attention.

Dugan grabbed the bag he’d set at the door and trotted it over. “Dernier picked the lock on your footlocker, grabbed what we could.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t get into the ladies’ barracks, so we threw in some more of your clothes. They’ll be big, but better than nothing.”

Steve took the bag gratefully. “Thanks, we owe you.”

“You guys owe us nothing.” Dugan reached out, putting his hand on his shoulder, his face solemn. “You just let us know what else you need, ok?”

Steve nodded and shut the door, feeling at least a little better than he had before. He set the bag of clothes next to their food, and slipped into the bed.

Before he could even settle, Peggy had wrapped herself around him, head resting on his shoulder. He laughed lightly, snuggling her closer. “Miss me?”

“Always,” she mumbled against his skin without opening her eyes. She pressed a gentle kiss to his shoulder before snuggling down with a contented sigh.

He closed his eyes, letting his hand gently trace over the skin of her shoulder, up and down in a soothing manner that had Peggy melting against him, the tension leaving her body as sleep tried to claim her again.

It was the way her thigh rubbed against his, the still semi-sticky friction as she tried to wrap her leg over his that made his eyes pop open, his mind racing. He had known what they’d done, even if the details were somewhat jumbled and fuzzy in his memory, but until this moment he hadn’t really thought about what exactly they had done. “Peggy?” His voice was soft and concerned. She hummed against him, her leg still sliding against his, mocking him.

“We didn’t… what if…”

Her hand slid across his chest, hugging him. “We should be fine.”

“But—”

Her voice was thick with sleep, somewhere between amused and exasperated. “You think I knew this was going to happen and didn’t at least think about the possibility that we’d lose control like that?” She blinked her eyes open, pressing up on her elbow to look at him. Her exasperation left her when she saw him floundering, mouth opening and closing as he tried to find a response. “You still don’t know anything about women, do you?” She smiled, pressing a peck to his cheek before snuggling back down, yawning heavily. “I’ll explain it to you later.”

His hand on her shoulder started moving again, and he couldn’t help but cover her hand that was pressed over his heart with his own. He hadn’t thought, as usual, and there she was, thinking for the both of them. He couldn’t sleep and was wide awake as she succumbed to her exhaustion in his arms.

He let his mind wander and drift as he did most nights, laying alone, thinking of her. Usually, he thought of the dates he’d take her on after the war was over, of the places in Brooklyn he wanted to show her and how he really, really wanted to take her to a baseball game because he thought she’d enjoy it and because he couldn’t get the image of her sitting in the stands in a ballcap with her bright red lips, smiling and laughing next to him in the sunshine, out of his head.

Tonight, he couldn’t get the idea of little cape houses and swing sets in the back yard out of his mind. He’d never really thought about a family before, never had pictured that as a part of his future for so, so many reasons. He couldn’t quite decide what their kids might look like, or if they’d be strong or frail, but he knew they’d be pigheaded and rambunctious just like the both of them. If she even wanted children. They hadn’t crossed that little bridge yet.

Hell, he still hadn’t taken her out on a proper date. He hadn’t even asked her to really be his girl. They’d fallen into a relationship; it had simply happened as if it had always been. He wasn’t sure if he was happy it had been that easy or sad that he’d skipped those little milestones with her. War, it seemed, made those little moments insignificant when either of them could die at any moment.

In the end, it didn’t much matter. He’d give anything to live the rest of his life with her like they were now: wrapped around one another and content.

He was going to do everything in his power to make sure that happened.

~*~

“Well?” Phillips barked, making his way into Howard’s lab.

Howard had been up since yesterday, almost 36 hours, going through every test he’d planned, some he hadn’t, and trying to chart the data. He didn’t trust even his most trusted lab aids with this. He ran a hand through his har, falling back. “Well, for the first time ever, I wish I knew more about women.”

Phillips eyebrows shot to his hairline. “You’re telling me there’s something about women you don’t know?”

Howard made an exasperated face at him, knowing full well he was walking a thin line. “Hormones. It’s still an area of research where we know very little. Women’s are very different from men’s.”

Phillips tossed his hat on the table and sat across from him on a stool. “What? You’re telling me that Hydra overloaded those two like some horny teenagers with hormones?” He huffed out a laugh. “I guess that’s one way to keep people from fighting in a war.”

Howard laughed, but shook his head. “No, no. It’s more insidious than that. They changed how they’re producing the hormones. I don’t… I don’t have a clear picture of it- and quite frankly I can’t even begin to tell if it’s working how Hydra intended or if it’s gone all wrong.”

Phillips leaned his elbows on his thighs, face grim. “You know we need those two back in the field. What do you need to make that happen?”

He shrugged, blowing a heavy, slow breath out as he looked across the table. “There’s a doctor in California, he’s the leading expert on hormones. I’d like to reach out.”

“Done. Get a non-disclosure signed, share whatever you need to.” Phillips picked up his hat, ready to move out, but Howard stopped him by standing in his way. “You got something else?”

Howard nodded, “I think you should pull all your female operatives.”

Phillips didn’t bat an eye. “That’s a very big ask, Stark.”

“We got lucky that they found Peggy so quickly in the first place and that the first person who touched her was Steve.” He gestured out to his desk. “Until we know more about this, I can’t promise that if they manage to get another one of ours we’ll be able to help them. Hell, right now the only thing that’s actually helping Peggy is Steve, and we can’t replicate that.”

“Understood,” Phillips nodded, his eyes darkening. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

Howard watched the man leave, then turned back to his desk, unwilling to sleep but unsure of where to go next.

~*~

Peggy sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, shrugging on the SSR t-shirt Steve tossed her. “So, is it possible? Yes. Likely? No.”

He sat heavily in his boxers on the edge of the bed, pulling the sandwiches out of their box. “And you just… figured that out?”

She chuckled, smiling brightly at him. “I can’t take all the credit. I’m benefiting from hundreds of years of women working desperately to try to figure out how to get pregnant and how to avoid pregnancy.” She took the sandwich he offered her, pulling open the waxed paper. “Though lots of people seem to think a woman’s only use is to bear children.”

She’d meant it in a lighthearted fashion. They’d talked often about how Peggy was held back by the fact that she was a woman, and that she’d likely have her own commission if she’d been a man. Steve, however, was suddenly dour, eyes downturned to look at his own sandwich.

He spoke after a moment, eyes somewhere between sad and lost in memory. “I didn’t even think of it, you know? I just… I was going nuts at the idea of you right through there,” he gestured at the wardrobe, bits of lettuce falling from his sandwich, “in so much pain. So close but so far.” He shook his head, looking down. “I didn’t even think about it.”

Peggy set her sandwich down, leaning over and pressing her hand to his shoulder. “You weren’t—”

“Do you want kids?” he interrupted her, eyebrows knit together and intense. “We never…” His voice fell away, chin set tight as he closed his mouth.

She licked her lips, pausing and buying time. Steve had never interrupted her before, and she wasn’t sure if it was the intensity of the feelings coursing through him that she could feel in the tenseness of his body under her hand, or if it was whatever Hydra had done to them. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly, holding his gaze. She swallowed hard. “It always just seemed a foregone conclusion when I was young- get married, have children. Then I found this job that I love and if I want to keep doing it- well, I don’t think I can dodge bullets as effectively if I’m the size of a hippo.” She smiled, but Steve didn’t reciprocate. Her smile faltered, replaced with sincerity. “I can’t say that the idea of motherhood makes me very excited at this very moment, but I can’t say I’d be opposed, either. Especially if it were yours.”

He looked at her, eyes trying to convey something he couldn’t find the right way to express. “What if we… and then…” he shook his head, unable to get the words out. Instead, he tossed his sandwich back in the box next to him and reached out, pulling her into his lap and holding on tight.

Peggy shifted in his arms, letting her knees fall on either side of his hips so she could hold him close, her own sandwich a mess across the bed, forgotten. The intensity of his hug, the way he held her tight and buried his face against her chest, brought tears to her eyes. She let her hand comb through his hair and kissed the crown of his head. “Oh, my darling…” she whispered, holding him tight, “what have they done to us both?”

He looked up at her, brown eyes wide and full of hurt, and she framed his face with her hands, brushing his hair back. Peggy leaned down, pressing her lips to his, her eyes fluttering closed as she kissed him softly.

It was soft and comforting, a promise that they weren’t alone as long as they had one another.

She pulled away, resting her forehead on his. “I very seriously doubt that I could be pregnant, but if I am, we’ll deal with that the same way we’re dealing with this: together.”

“None of this is fair,” he whispered, his emotional pain plain on his face.

She shook her head against his before sliding to press their cheeks together. “No, it isn’t.”

~*~

Post A/N: Hopefully it goes without saying that all the "science" involved in sci-fi science and completely made-up. Just relax and enjoy.

But some REAL stuff... Peggy describes the Rhythm or Calendar method of birth control which can be fairly reliable and accurate if tracked correctly. I'm not advocating for or against, but from what I've read it was used fairly often during the time period and served my narrative purposes. (Plus. I find it hilarious to think of Peggy, half naked, trying to explain how that works to Steve.) I couldn't find a realistic way of working in another method of time period correct birth control, and Peggy absolutely strikes me as the kind of woman who is thinking ahead.

[alcalavicci]

So there’s a really interesting interview with Deborah Pratt here. If you don’t want to pay for it, I’ll paste what I can below, but a few points first. 

Deborah says she doesn’t know where Dean is, and says she misses him. I guess she hasn’t had contact with him since he left for NZ? And with Russ Tamblyn saying Dean’s hanging in there in answer to a recent Twitter question, that brings up more questions about his condition.

Deborah claims she came up with the idea of Quantum Leap, which I’ve never seen come up before. Also Don wanted to send Sam home?? I feel like she’s misremembering a lot of details/making herself seem better than she is.

“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished… He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time tht his next leap will be the leap home…”

The premise of Quantum Leap succinctly and empathetically explained by a voice that spoke to viewers week to week, setting the scene at the opening of the episode. It is a voice that left an indelible print on the show, from its inception to its finale. This is the voice of its Head Writer. No, not Donald P. Bellisario, but a woman of color who was leaps ahead of her time – co-executive producer and uncredited co-creator, Deborah M. Pratt.

Deborah wrote or co-wrote 40 episodes of this sci-fi gem and her authorship of the show runs deep through its five seasons. Aside from the opening narration, Deborah is audible as the voice of Admiral Al Calavicci’s pocket computer, Ziggy. She also guest stars in the episode ‘A Portrait for Troian’ (S2, Ep11) as a grieving widow who hears the voice of her husband calling her.

Deeper still, Quantum Leap was a family affair. It was co-created with her husband at the time, Bellisario, and their daughter, also named Troian, appears as a little girl in ‘Another Mother’ (S2, Ep13, who can not only see Al, but also sees Sam as he really is, rather than as her recently divorced mom.

Prior to helming Quantum Leap, Deborah rose through the ranks as an actress, racing the screen in Happy Days, CHiPS, The Dean Martin Show and many more, and was also a writer on shows such as Airwolf and Magnum P.I. She is a five-time Emmy nominee, Golden Globe nominee and winner of countless other awards. She went on to produce CBS comedy cop show, Tequila and Bonetti, and then to co-create and produce the TV series adaptation of Sandra Bullock tech thriller, The Net. But Quantum Leap was Deborah’s brainchild – one which is emblazoned on the hearts of its faithful fans.

Deborah has since moved into directing, including on hit show Grey’s Anatomy (2020), but was generous with her time when spoke in late 2020 to leap back into the past.

It does seem that you were really ahead of your time as a female head writer and a showrunner in the ’90s, especially in science fiction TV. Was it hard for you to progress and to get Quantum Leap made?

“Usually women were relegated to comedy, very rarely was it drama or heavy drama. It’s changed, finally, with people like Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Bridgerton, Scandal). But yes, I was a true pioneer, even though I don’t have a ‘created by’ credit, it was a ‘co-created by’ show – with Don. I brought him the original concept, and we were married, and he said ‘Let me just run with this. I can get it made.’ And to his credit, he understands how to tell a story to the audience. He simplified it in a way that you could welcome Quantum Leap into the world. But it was still a tough show to sell.

“I think we went back three times to pitch it to the network. It was complicated to explain. Brandon Tartikoff [the executive] said ‘It’s a great idea – It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen on TV. Let me think about it.’ Then he asked us to come back, ‘I want you to pitch it to me like I’m six years old, then pitch it to me like I’m 80 years old’ and finally he took it. Then even after the show first aired, they decided to introduce that opening where I tell the story. That was created to explain every week to a new viewer what was going on and it worked really well.”

On rewatch now, the best part of three decades later, the show feels groundbreaking in terms of the subjects you cover. Did you feel like you were pushing the envelope?

“I feel we got to do so much on that show. I remember when I did ‘Black on White on Fire’ [S3, Ep7], the networks in the South in the United States wouldn’t air it because it was a black/white relationship. Even though there is no scene where you see a black person and a white person being intimate.

You saw Sam, who was white, and the girl who was white, but because he was playing someone who was black, it was an issue. They wouldn’t air the show in the South. This was around 1992.

“It was challenging for sure. I think we pushed the limits.

“The beauty of the show too, was that it was about hope, which I see so little of on television today. Everything’s so dark, so mean, so vicious, bloody – how many people can you kill? How mean can you make your lead characters and antiheroes. I think it’s why I didn’t work as much afterwards. A) I was a woman, and B) a black woman. There weren’t any black female executive producers that I knew of in drama. I got to do <em>The Net</em> because it had a female lead, but that was almost ten years after <em>Quantum Leap</em> was created. Any show I brought in that had a black lead was never bought, or a female lead, was never bought. 

“I remember I wrote a big action piece – like an Indiana Jones, but female-driven, feature film – and pitched it and the studio executive said, ‘Yeah, yeah, but when did the guy come and rescue her?’ And I said, ‘She doesn’t – she rescues him.’ The look on his face. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

The show darted around TV schedules, but the fans remained with it, and still to this day hold it dear to their hearts. Was that palpable at the time, or has that grown since?

“I think near the end of the first season, Harriet Margulies [Production Assistant on the show] found a chat room after an episode where people from across the country talked about it and it became the ‘watercooler.’ We were the first television show that had a chat room as a watercooler. Before that, it was literally you going into your office and standing around the watercooler and talking about movies or TV shows you were watching. Suddenly, it was online. So we started to go into the chat room and talk to people about what they liked and what they didn’t. Not necessarily telling them who we were, but that fan base is what kept us on the air because the network didn’t know what to do with us. There was no show like it, so they couldn’t like pair us with anybody.

“In the five years we were on, I think they moved the show six times and the fans still found it, they followed it, they watched it. That’s how we knew we had something unique and special. To this day, I’ll go into a meeting with a young executive who’ll go, ‘I have to tell you, I loved Quantum Leap. I used to watch it with my mom and dad’.”

Scott Bakula was such a great hero and heartthrob as Dr. Sam. What was he like to work with?

“He was so approachable, you know, in the sense that he had this great, easy acting style. He took chances and he was likeable – in a way that he could be a man’s man and a woman’s man at the same time. He’s really a brilliant actor. I am saddened by the fact that he has not had the opportunity to do movies in the way that could really have lifted his career. He’s had an incredibly successful television career. He’s a good actor. He’s a kind man. I’ve always admired him and felt like when we were working together, I had a friend that I loved to write for because he was always so giving and willing and wanting to take chances as an actor. So it was fun to go down to the trailer and say, ‘Guess what? You’re going to be pregnant this week’.

He does everything in the show from sing and dance to baseball, football, hopping over car bonnets to fights and martial arts. Did you know he had such a wide skill set from the outset, or did you write the challenges for him to rise to?

“I think we had conversations with him about that. I also knew that he had been on Broadway doing musicals. I knew he could sing and dance. When I wrote ‘Sea Bride’ [S2, Ep20], I wrote a tango number – that was unique for him. When Don knew that he could play the guitar… We asked Scott, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he said he wanted to do a musical and I think that’s how the ‘Catch a Falling Star’ episode [S2, Ep10] came about, which involves a performance of ‘Man of LaMancha’.”

Admiral Al Calavicci – he’s so much more than wisecracking and surface jokes or flirtation. There’s so much depth to his character. Was that fleshed out early on with an end to end journey for him in mind, or did his character evolve through the seasons?

“It was a little bit of both. Dean Stockwell had been on Broadway at five-years-old and had been a major child movie star. I remember when we wrote the show where Sam had the chance to save Al – ‘The Leap B4, Ep1] – he was so good in that. I’ll never forget how beautiful that was. And then in the very, very end, I love the fact that Sam did change history and Al ended up wih his beautiful wife with five kids.

“I remember once asking Dean, ‘Do you want us to write more drama for you? Big dramatic moments?’ And he said, ‘I want you to look at me right now. I want you to tell me what you see.’ And I said, ‘Well, your performance, the pain, fear and loss and all that, because you’re such an incredible actor.’ And he said ‘For me to perform that, I have to be it and live it. So don’t do too many.’ 

“He had that depth of acting talent. He is so good – Dean,  wherever you are, I love you. I miss you.”

The episodes that follow later in the seasons involving celebrities – Sam as Elvis, Dr. Ruth, or Lee Harvey Oswald, was that kind of a direction that you always foresaw? It feels like a sea change as the show progressed.

“The stories were designed, for the most part, to be so, so simple in that they were everyday stories. They weren’t change-the-world stories. I think the biggest one was Lee Harvey Oswald, and maybe the one involving Marilyn Monroe – those were with people that could have had a ripple effect.

“But there were other little kisses with history in the show, but they were very hard to do. They ran into a child version of Donald Trump in a taxi cab, [‘It’s A Wonderful Leap’ – S4, Ep18], then they ran into a little boy who is supposed to be Michael Jackson – Sam teaches him to moonwalk [‘Camikazi Kid’ – S1, Ep8]. The first time I did a kiss with history was ‘Star-Crossed’ [S1, Ep3] – Sam meets up with the woman that left him at the altar and they’re at the Watergate Hotel. That was fun stuff.”

Sam managed to awkwardly kiss lots of ladies in that sense of ‘Oh God, they’re going to kiss me and I’ve got to be this person, what am I supposed to do.’

“We never, ever really discussed what happened to Sam. We didn’t want him to be encumbered by a relationship. But I didn’t get to kiss him. My husband wouldn’t leave the set on the episode I was in!”

Your move into directing – from your TV drama Cora Unashamed back in 2000, to Grey’s Anatomy just last year. Is that something you wanted to do sooner? Were there barriers prohibiting you?

“I was supposed to direct on Quantum Leap four times. Every time it was coming up, something would happen. The only women who directed on the show were two black women – Debi Allen [Fame, Everybody Hate Chris, Jane the Virgin] and the other was a woman named Anita Addison. They each did two shows.

I said, ‘If I’m not doing this, I want black women.’ There were no other black women. And it was a fight. I tried to get black women directors on the show, but I could never get them past.

Then when I went to do The Net, the studio blocked it. I give huge amounts of credit for executive producing to Shonda Rhimes and what she has been able to do. She did what I thought I was going to be able to do. She’s so talented and I’m such a fan of her and her shows. I’m looking forward to what she’s going to do on Netflix. And it was an honour to do Grey’s Anatomy because I’m a fan of the show and I’m really grateful to have that opportunity.”

Has there been progress in terms of female directors and filmmakers being given opportunities?

“It’s very hard for women because there aren’t a lot of women executives at the studios. There are more now. And so there is an evolution that’s happening, but it still feels slow. There were shows run by people I gave opportunities to back in the day, but when I said, “hey, I want to direct on your show,” the response was, “oh, there’s too much machismo. There’s too many male hormones around here. They’ll eat you alive.” And I went, “no, they won’t, you’ll protect me. How about if I do my job?” And that was only last year. But there are more opportunities. There are more women making decisions, but we have to do more because women’s stories and women’s voices are more than half the population – we need to hear those stories. The historic ones as well as the contemporary ones.”

Is there a leap that was your favourite overall? That you feel made you made your mark with?

“’The Color of Truth’ [S1, Ep7] touched so many people and it opened a dialogue. I remember we got a letter from a teacher who said she brought the VHS in and she played it to her class, up until Jesse [Sam as an ageing black chauffeur in ’50s Deep South] goes and sits down at the counter in the restaurant. Then she stopped it and asked the students what they thought happened next. They thought that he just ordered lunch. And then she played the rest and that hostility and the animosity he endures and the fact that he had to get up and leave really incensed these children. They had never heard of or experienced racism. They didn’t want to believe that it really happened. This is how history gets buried and why television is so powerful and important. It opened a conversation that she could not have necessarily had in her classroom, according to her, had she not brought that show in to share with her students.

“We had another letter that was very moving, and I want to say it might’ve been ‘The Leap Home’ [S2, Ep1-2]. There was a couple who wrote and said they had a child that was on a cancer ward and every Thursday the whole ward would watch Quantum Leap. Their child was dying and they had kind of given up and it was just time to help that child transition out of this world. They watched the show and she said, ‘We realized we gave up hope. When we watched the show, we realized we didn’t have to give up hope and we wanted to write to you. It’s now six months later and the crisis has passed. The cancer is in remission. Our child is up and going back to school. And we just want to thank you for reminding us that hope has its own power’.”

Its power and poignancy has never diminished. Though the final episode, ‘Mirror Image’ (S5, Ep22), with the caption saying Sam doesn’t get to go home, does leave a sucker punch.

“That was our last fight. Don was going to send him home. And I said, ‘You can’t, you can’t send him home. If you ever, ever, which we’ve not ever been able to get Universal to let us do it, want to do a movie… If you want to keep the story going, you have to leave Sam out there in the hearts of people, leaving people thinking he could leap into their lives’. And at first Don said, ‘No, no, we need to bring him home’. And I said, ‘Do not bring him home. Or you will end the show. If you leave the hope out there, that Sam is out there and he could leap into your life and make a difference’. You keep the show alive in the hearts and the minds of the fans. And I think I was right.”

The ending was poetic for me as a viewer, but your point about Sam still being out there – Is there a leap back to the future for Quantum Leap?

“I started writing a project called <em>Time Child</em> about Sammy Jo Fuller. I actually wrote a trilogy in Season 5 where Sam leapt back three times into the same family and the second time he leapt he ended up in bed with this character and conceived a child. Then the third time he leapt in, he met her at 10 years old – a girl named Sammy Jo Fuller. So in my vision, Sammy Jo Fuller grows up. I actually have Al say, ‘Sammy is in the future with me. We’re trying to bring you home.’ That was my set-up way back in 1993, in Season 5, to say someday, Sammy Jo being his daughter might take over…. 

“This was the ’90s. Women heroes didn’t exist really – other than comic books – Wonder Woman was there, Super Girl was there. But I set it up in the show that Sammy Jo was going to bring him home. Sadly, I have not been able to get Don and the studio to give me the green light for Time Child. It might happen someday.”

Right now, it feels like we need more shows that offer hope. Is there a place for a reboot on streaming platforms?

“Universal keep saying they want to bring it back. They’re not going to give it up to Netflix because they have [US streaming service] Peacock now and still have NBC. I personally think it should be on a full blown network. The hard part would be that it would have to be recast if there was a female version using my character Sammy Jo Fuller. Or if they just redid the show, it would be interesting in the sense that there was such an innocence about the show. I still believe that there is an audience out there that wants it, that longs for looking at the past through the eyes of somebody in the present. But who would that person be if you did the show now, what are those eyes like? 

“We’re living in the time of COVID and suddenly you go back in time. How do you warn people that this is going to happen? How do you warn people about 9/11? How do you warn people about things in the future?

“I mean, one of the beauties of that innocence too, and I thought that was a great gift from Don to the concept, was that Sam’s memory as Swiss cheese – he didn’t remember things and that made it a lot easier, and Al was not allowed to tell him what was happening in the present. There’s a lot of detail woven into the mythology that allowed it to be innocent and in the moment of time travel. You didn’t have to drag the future back with you.”

Do you have an actress in mind to play Sammy Jo in a reboot?

“Oh my gosh, Jennifer Garner. I always felt she would be a great female Sam. She’s an ‘every woman.’ She’s funny. She does great drama. When I think of a female Sam or even Sammy Jo, I think Jennifer – in a heartbeat. She’s so great in Alias. That show just never stopped. You couldn’t take a breath. If I had to go younger, somebody that would have that kind of believable humour that you think could actually rescue you – maybe Jennifer Lawrence. She’s pretty formidable in that sense.”

“To bring Quantum Leap back. If they’re thinking about it, now’s the time to happen. Tell people to write to Universal! Write for the attention of Pearlena Igbokwe – if anyone can bring it back, she can do it. Write! Write to Pearlena – she’s the one that’ll make it happen. That’s how we stayed on the air for five and a half years. Fans unite and write!”

[polymathemawrites]

Hungover in the City of Dust part 1

CW: injuries, ptsd, panic attacks, maths, drug use (via the hev suit)

Alyx is gone, Gordon is running on fumes, Barney picks up the pieces

The dark hits like a freight train, thick and deep. It pulls down, down, down unrelenting and eternal. There is nothing and then there is everything. The stop-start of His voice grates on the very edge of frayed nerves, unraveling them, he is a patient man but his patience is running out, and he has expended his usefulness to an entity incomprehensible. Everything goes from too slow to too fast and he gasps awake and alive, put back into a body he never left. Eli is standing in front of him and Alyx is standing nowhere, somewhere - somewhere they can't reach, they have work to do - the Combine are not defeated yet and there is a missing Vance to find. Free but for how long and at what cost? Gordon looks down at his hand in the reinforced leather gloves of the HEV suit and tightens his grip on the paint-chipping-gently-rusted-crowbar. A nod, of course, they have work to do, and he's the man to do it.

It is in this manner that Gordon Freeman has survived the past six days. Six. Six Days. Running, running, never stopping, and it is in this manner that Gordon is ready to continue, ready to go where Eli needs him to, to save the man's daughter and Gordon's new found friend. Or it would have been, would have been if someone didn't put their hand on Gordon's arm and still him.

"Eli, I don't mean to put a damper on the Save Alyx party, but your golden boy is bleeding through whatever shitty bandages he scrounged up." The southern drawl is familiar, it is maybe his recognition of this that keeps his overtaxed nervous system from ripping his arm away. When he turns to look at him, Barney is carefully not looking back, staring Eli down instead. 

The older man pauses, looks at Gordon, or maybe it's better to say he's looking at the HEV suit, at the huge chunk taken out of the side of it, the rend on the shoulder panel, the rust-red discoloration. Her voice had gone silent with the end of combat but the thrum of morphine still settled along the edge of his vision, a welcoming gossamer blanket that dulled the fact that he had bruised ribs and a dozen or so minor lacerations. A med-pack and a power bank and he'd be good to go, really. The suit though, she had some abuse left in her, but he couldn't deny that the past four days had been rough on the Mark V.

"We are going to need Izzy to take a look at that, maybe machine some new parts." Eli's smile is apologetic and Gordon could scream, how can he look like that, Gordon should be the one apologizing, if he'd been more careful, more prepared, then they wouldn't need this downtime.

He isn't thinking clearly, he knows this somewhat, without a clear objective he was left adrift, unfocused. It's worse than when He had dropped Gordon onto a train with no fucking hope of knowing what the hell was going on. Twenty years, twenty years, and if it hadn't of been for Barney he'd have ended up organic byproduct. 

Four days ago he had watched a Civil Protection officer remove his mask and found himself saved. Today, suddenly dead on his feet, he looks down at Barney and hopes that the imminent panic attack he feels encroaching upon him won't be too bad, even if it is four days late.

He is breathing too fast and his heartbeat is high enough that she's informing him about it, but the HEV suit is unfortunately out of the Make Feel Good Juice and Gordon is all out of helpful neurochemicals. Someone shouts something and Gordon knows it's not him because, well, he's mute. 

When the black comes this time it is not the thick ink of that cosmic stasis, it's all too human and humiliating.

In high school Gordon had two entire friends. One of them was the head of the computer club, which meant the paper-punch-machine club actually, and the other was a quiet kid whose entire personality seemed to be based on being in color guard for JROTC. One day during a pep rally he'd forgotten to keep his knees loose and locked them during the stand at attention part of the presentation, Gordon didn't know what any of these things were actually called, he just knew his friend wound up with a bloody nose when he passed out because of the hypotension. Yet still, five years later, Gordon himself passed out while waiting for a train in Boston.

His head hurt far less when he woke up this time, perhaps because Eli, Barney, and Dog had all been there to catch him instead of the metal post he crashed into in Boston. 

There are a number of hands on him, when he can focus and his flight or fight response isn't lashing out at these helping hands, he realizes he's managed to punch Barney in the jaw and kicked Dog off balance. 

Barney surges forward and pins him down, which is when Gordon goes completely limp anyway due to his relatively short spurt of adrenaline wearing off and the fact that it's Barney Calhoun he just punched and if this man wanted to throttle him he would let him, deserving of it even.  

Instead Barney just holds his chest down with one arm and gently grips Gordon's jaw with the other, forcing Gordon to look at him. This close and he can do nothing else. Barney's eyes have always been interesting but age has highlighted the color differences in his irises. Gordon's vision, while blurry around the edges thanks to the train-tunnel effects of his passing panic attack, is sharply focused on Barney, where Barney is keeping him. 

He was so bad at art growing up but one didn't need to be good at art to know the science behind color. Barney's eyes were both the clearest most summer-day-water blue-green and the deepest autumnal wood. Brown and teal, unreal and so very Barney. There is a word for this condition but Gordon's grasping at straws right now and can't remember it. They're just very unusual eyes and Gordon is quite helplessly falling into them.

"You with me Gordon?" Barney asks him and Gordon nods, or tries to, attempts to, kind of hard with the former guard turned resistance commander still gripping his face but the attempt is all that matters and Barney lets him go.

He's laying on the ground, one of Barney's legs is under him, Eli's hands are on Gordon's own legs. Dog is huge and hovering. Face red from embarrassment now, Gordon pushes up onto his elbows in a reclining position and Barney takes his leg back. 

He forms his hand into a fist and brings it to his chest, moving it in a tight circle around and around. 

"No Gordon, I'm sorry." Eli gently stops his hand, silences him. "We have work to do, but you won't be able to do anything until we get you cleared by a medic and get Izzy to take a look at that suit."

Together they help him up, the HEV suit's finally powered down, but she'd been running on fumes for hours now. Unfortunately this makes his already aching and fatigued muscles scream out from being overtaxed. 

"I've got him, Eli." 

They're in the hallway outside the large hangar that comprises Eli's lab by the time Gordon realizes that he hasn't seen Barney since the train station back in City 17. When had he gotten here? Had he seen Eli die and then Not die, had he seen Alyx just stop existing? Because Gordon fucking hadn't, he'd been blacked out - again.  Was Barney alright himself? Had he just arrived only to have to babysit him?

He spins his index finger around and around in front of himself, he feels drunk, his movements are slow and sluggish. 

Despite Barney actively corralling him down the hall, his eyes are riveted to Gordon's hands.

"When?" He nods and Barney seems to chew over what Gordon is asking, "Oh, just a few hours ago, I barely get settled in and hear about a ruckus, you're constantly causing trouble aren't you?" The tone is teasing, warm, Barney's voice is like a balm, pours right over him like the decadent kiss of morphine without the accompanying very hot sensation in his head. 

Six days, it's only been six days, but for Barney and Eli and -everyone- it's been twenty years. Without the pressing need to run, save Barney from sniper fire, or get shoved into another HEV suit, he is free to realize that an implied twenty year gap is doing absolutely nothing to curb the huge and inconvenient crush he has had on Barney for a year. A year for him at least. The streak of salt in his mostly pepper hair is also doing absolutely nothing to curb this crush either, in fact he would go so far as to consider it made it worse.

Unfortunately free of the effects of morphine, coming down off of a panic attack, and now feeling the full impact of his wounds, Gordon has to admit it's not a crush if you've been in love with someone for a year, that's just pathetic. 

Now a resonance cascade, eldritch abomination cosmic entities Lovecraft couldn't have dreamed up, and a full blown occupation of earth had put Gordon out of the picture for twenty years. It had also caused him to be a near messianic figure to a whole race of alien creatures and the remnants of humanity - something he really didn't want to think about. Luckily when Barney looked at him he seemed to be seeing Gordon in the exact same way he did twenty years ago if the soft smile and warm honey gaze was anything to go by. Bemused, that's what he'd call that particular expression on Barney's face. 

They stop suddenly, Barney bringing them to a halt, which is when Gordon finally looks away from him. They're in a quiet room, maybe a former storage room but now a private bunk. There is a cot up against the back wall, tucked between two mostly full shelving units. A heap of blankets has been dumped on the cot, as well as a number of packs placed on the shelves. There is a basin and a bucket of water for washing, and Gordon can spy some first aid packs and weapon caches amidst the cluttered shelves. 

"I'm going to get you out of this fucking thing and then I'm gonna get you a medic." Barney informs him but Gordon is looking past him to the basin and it's bucket of water.

He puts his hands together and brushes them against one another in a mimicry of washing his hands. Clean.

"I'm sure the medic will know what's best for that."

Gordon, standing still in the center of the room, attention riveted on the bucket of water like it's a lifeline, repeats himself until Barney has to catch his hands - again. 

"Okay!" But there isn't any hostility or exasperation in Barney's tone, no he's laughing instead.  

"Far be it for me to judge a man's aversion to getting seen by the medics when I avoid them myself. We'll get you clean and go from there, that good?"

Gordon nods, and even though he knows he won't make it without Barney's assistance, he heads toward the basin and bucket anyway, grateful when he finds Barney is right there next to him. 

Without the suit's charging station and hydraulic mechanism to quickly and mechanically free him, it is just the combined effort of their four hands and Barney's seemingly infinite patience to remove the thing. But even patience alone didn't account for how Barney seemed to know where the clasps and mechanisms were. Gordon is reminded that it was Barney who had gotten him 'into' the suit or showed him to it four days ago. These thoughts prove to be fruitless, without purpose, as the pieces of the very abused HEV suit are removed and the jumpsuit beneath them is revealed as are the injuries Gordon has sustained, the bandages he'd hastily applied in stolen moments of down time on his own or with Alyx's help. Barney pauses, the chest plate removed as well as the shoulder guards, and he seems to just stare at Gordon.

The last twenty years loom between them again, Gordon can't read his expression so carefully tooled to be neutral and blank, not the Barney whose emotions he wore plain for everyone to see unless it was poker night. There is a scar high on his left cheek, a number of smaller ones all over - and these are just the ones Gordon can see on his face.

"Oh Gordon, what happened to you?" There is such soft sorrow in Barney's words and when the man puts his hand to Gordon's cheek, he is helpless to keep himself from turning his face into the touch, closing his eyes and pressing his cheek and jaw into that gloved palm with all of his touch-starved needy heart. Barney's touch is no longer precise and perfunctory, it is gentle, when he draws his hand away Gordon almost chases it but manages to catch himself before he can further his own humiliation. Something has shifted between them and Barney won't let his slipping hands help anymore, just keeps batting them away, finally Barney grins up at him, "I've got you." He repeats what he told Eli but now it's completely different, personal and soft, just the two of them, "So stop makin' my job harder and just let me work."

Gordon lets him work, when he sways on his feet Barney steadies him. When he leans into him Barney catches him. The rest of the suit joins the other sections on the ground. When it's just the bloodied jumpsuit and Gordon's socked feet on the cold concrete, Barney's hands still.

A week ago and this fantasy would have played out differently, for one he wouldn't be riddled with defensive wounds and have obvious trauma, but also Barney wouldn't be looking at him with that mixture of soft worry and likely muted fury. He actually didn't know what Barney's aroused face looked like so his fantasies had always been a little body focused anyway but definitely no fury or worry in any of them. Barney's hand goes to his injured side, gentle against the tattered jumpsuit and the bandages. It's all dirty with blood and whatever else Gordon had been thrown into out there. 

"Darlin' I'm gonna have to get you out of this."

Gordon nods, dumbly, hung up on the first word. 

Barney's hands are so gentle and Gordon reels under their good works, he can't track where they are going only where they've been, the slow way they move, there is no predictive model here to tell him where to brace himself for kindness next. Actually seeing the mottled mess of his own skin  through the rends in the jumpsuit is an experience that knocks him right out of his body entirely. 

Where A and B are a pair of operators, with A representing speed and B representing placement - Gordon is a lone man set on a trajectory in the universe he has no hope of comprehending or tracking, the speed with which he has been traveling has slowed to a stop and yet he still feels as if he is going too fast. His body at stand still thrums with an energy he is powerless against and every time Barney's hands track against baring skin his pulse jumps. He cannot predict where he will be in a day, an hour, a minute, he is lost in this second, that drags and drags as Barney's eyes glance up to meet his face, undoing the line of velcro all the way down Gordon's chest and lower still. His head spins and he has to reach out to brace himself against Barney's firm padded shoulder, thick and strong.

He is adrift in a complex dimensional space that tracks over multiple planes of reality, his wavelength has resonated at a frequency that no one else on Earth has and yet he is still so uncertain of his place. Not too surprising when the equation clearly states that you might know how fast you're going but never where you are at the same time. Just usually it was on the quantum level, not one man against a time-space anomaly. His speed and location operators are held up between two brackets, and within those brackets are the estimated answers to his questions, yet if he's standing still how can he hope to theorize where he'll be next?

Where he'll be next is shivering in this bunk he's realizing is probably the one Barney claimed to stow his gear in, with the door shut and a man he has been attracted to for the longest time slowly undressing him. Logic states the probability that his next place will be embarrassing the ever loving shit out of himself but somehow, somehow he doesn't make a noise when Barney slides the jumpsuit down from his abused shoulders and down, down, till the man's hands are sliding over his hips and drawing the dirty green cloth past them. He doesn't move to grab onto him, to press his body into Barney's and just feel him, to test the strength hiding beneath the layers of his Civil Protection uniform. He does go very limp when Barney manhandles him to lean against the wall though. 

All predictive models and the familiar Robertson-Schrodinger equation fall to the wayside when Barney strips his thick gloves off. Gordon watches the man's steady movements, the slow curve of his familiar smile despite time and distance. He could never hope to apply the uncertainty equation when all higher functioning is gone. He is no longer out of his body, he is in it, very much in it. Barney's hands are warm from the confines of his gloves, gentle as they tackle the bandages scattered on Gordon's now scrawny form out of the bulk of the HEV suit's flattering lines. 

"You okay there, Gord? Look like you're about to be knocked over by a stiff wind." 

He gives Barney a thumbs up. 

Yeah, really okay, super duper okay. Barney's hands feel like fucking rapture. Warm and lightly callused, strong firm grip when they move Gordon's body every which way. Unwinding bandages that have clearly served their purpose, some of them stick and Barney apologizes under his breath, muttered words and quick movements. Gordon only vaguely registers the pain, it cannot hope to touch the surface of pleasure just having Barney's hands against him is causing.

He reaches out to brace himself against the basin's counter top, hip cocked under Barney's hand momentarily, Gordon tries to swallow around the thick lump in his throat. Warm hand skids up his side, bloody bandage that wraps across half his chest. Barney unravels it the same as he'd done the one on Gordon's right leg and his left arm, careful and quick. Dirty wounds and sepsis waiting to set in.

But despite the severity Barney doesn't dump him on the nearest medic, he holds to his word instead and brings the bucket of water up to the counter. A rag is fetched from somewhere and then Barney is cleaning him. Gordon would be more embarrassed about this if it were not for the fact that he only has one arm as the other is bracing him up to keep him from sliding to the floor as the HEV suit's power system isn't holding him up and pumping him with Go Juice. 

Barney gives him a little grin, holding Gordon's abused arm over the basin to catch the blood-grit water as it drips off of him, "You're in pretty good shape for a man of science."

Gordon snorts his bemusement and gives Barney a look over his glasses. Barney would fucking know, he'd helped Gordon train for the months of HEV suit preparation after all. He worries for a second then, has it been that long, has Barney forgotten that much in the years Gordon has been absent.

His fears are laid to rest instantly, "Remember when you couldn't even run a full mile?" 

Yeah, and look at him now. Well not right now, as he looks nothing like the implied messianic figure he's meant to be, but rather look at him a few hours ago. When Alyx was still there, making bad puns and cheering Gordon on, when she wasn't somewhere, in some place unknown and unfathomable and most of all not here. What would have been the next point of reference for them, where would they be right now if she'd remained? Did this count as time travel? 

I feel like all I have done is run for six days.

Barney pauses, while Gordon had managed to explain his ageless appearance to Alyx, the rest of his old friends and colleagues weren't as in the know. "Six days?" Barney marvels, hanging there like a DOS box trying it's best to load badly written code, "It's been twenty years, six days?" Barney's voice is husked and worn when he repeats himself and he lets Gordon's now clean arm drop gently back down.

Gordon nods, Stasis, no time passed for me mentally or physically between the Resonance Cascade and you intercepting me.

"Fuck Gordon." Barney reaches up, takes his face in the slightly damp palm of his hand, holds him there and really seems to look at him. "Kind of thought you just aged really damn well, it was hard enough to believe the 'gaunts when they went on about you saving them, didn't... I didn't realize, something like this could happen."

Gordon has nothing else of substance to offer Barney to explain it. It would take far more research and model running to even begin to formulate a working theory about what the fuck He was in his plain grey suit and stilted speech. He figured in the coming days he'd have time to do that, now that it was Alyx who had been taken. Now that there was someone on the outside who knew.

What took Alyx, is what took me.

Eli had some understanding of this entity, he didn't know how, but he was certain he'd find that out soon too, just as soon as his fragile worthless body would let him. 

Barney is still touching his face, still half holding him, when he finally notices he seems to come to his senses and applies himself back to the task of cleaning off dried blood and other muck. Gordon would miss the contact if it had not just moved onward to other parts of him. There are more cuts on him than there is water in the bucket but Barney focuses his attention on the worst of it. Barney's touch lingers on the surface of his skin even after he has moved his hand away, a burning path of warmth and water. Gordon realizes he doesn't want to go anywhere right now, he doesn't want to think of tomorrow or an hour away, he wants this moment to last. 

He can breathe, painful but he can breathe and he is finally still. The Combine awaits, there is no knowing where Alyx is, how much time they have, but right now in this moment he can push down the guilt and allow himself the desire to remain here in this place with Barney eternally. The stroke of a familiar hand, the warm presence of someone who cares about him, the gentle teal-brown heat of his friend's gaze. 

"You're back with us now and damned if I'll just sit around and let some kind of creature put you in a box for another twenty years. I've got you." 

Gordon wonders how badly he's going to end up hung up on Barney's new mantra of, 'I've got you.' Trick question, he's already hung up on everything Barney.

[jacques-review]

“I Am Human”: The Spectacular Sha’Carri Richardson

Introducing the One and Only

Sha’Carri Richardson is the talk of the town, again. No, it’s not for her “10.72 seconds to win the 100 meters at the 2021 Miramar Invitational.” It’s not about missing the Olympics due to failing a drug test. Nor is it about the passing of her mother. No, this time it’s about her ninth-place finish at the 2021 Prefontaine Classic. This event was hyped up as being the ultimate showdown between Richardson and the Jamaican Olympic sprinting group led by Elaine Thompson-Herah.

In fact, I initially set out to write about Thompson-Herah. I wanted to say a few words about this amazing time in women’s sprinting history. Sure, there is Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner, also known as Flo-Jo, of 1980s fame. But she’s not someone that I can say I saw run although I was alive at the time. Besides Elaine, there is also the legendary Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce who is holding on to second place in the world at the age of 34. These two Jamaicans have made women sprinting enjoyable and fans out of us all (well, most of us)! I’m hoping to continue to see Elaine remain a dominant force in the sport for the next 3 - 4 years.

The more I observe the Prefontaine post women’s 100m reactions, the more I felt obligated to shift my writing focus from Elaine to Sha’Carri (Henceforth, Carri). My initial focus on Elaine was also due to the amount of attention Carri was getting despite the fact that she wasn’t the winner of the race. In a sense, I felt like Elaine’s moment was being dwarfed by Carri. The fastest woman in the world at 100m wasn’t being talked about as much as the last-place finisher.

I wanted to contribute to shifting the focus from Carri to Elaine. But the noise on the digital street was too loud and demonizing.

Birth of a Shooting Star

In the beginning (at the start of the year, of course), the attention being given to women’s track and field by the public wasn’t noticeable. In my usual circles and in the corners of cyberspace that I frequent, “not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” The world, it seems, woked from its slumber to the tune of Carri running a 10.72 in April. Carri did it in dazzling fashion with long eyelashes and fingernails, and what I’ve come to refer to as fiery orange hair. From that point on Carri, as a U.S. track and field athlete, became the dominant talk of the world’s largest and most influential blowhorn, the U.S. media.

If that’s not true, it’s all I heard. Sure, other athletes were sprinkled in and match-ups were expected for the coming Olympics. But the U.S. media championed the image of the One that stood a chance of bringing Olympic gold in the women’s 100m. Her appearance played well with the cameras. She looked like a star, something special. Indeed, the legend continued as she ran a 10.86 to qualify for the Olympics in June. Thus, the superstar, the speeding comet, was expected to show up at the Olympics with at least a reasonable chance at winning some type of metal if not gold.

"I am an Olympian. No matter what is said ... I am an Olympian. A dream since I've been young. I'm pretty sure everybody's dream as a track athlete. "Being happy is an understatement. Being excited, nervous, all of those feelings. I'm highly blessed and grateful."  -- Sha'Carri Richardson

I Get High

Well, that didn’t happen. The U.S. watched its prophesied chance at gold (or any other metal) in the women’s 100m come crashing down in all her fiery Orange hair glory. But not due to a loss. Stopping Carri from running because of weed was absurd to the public. African Americans weren’t interested in hearing that an athlete was stopped in a competition as grand as the Olympics for use of a product that they believe would not have contributed to her speed at all.

See the following articles for reference on race and black athletes.

The Olympics has a race problem. Athletes everywhere are calling out the sporting body for a history of banning Black women. - Yelena Dzhanova

The Olympics Continues to Prevent Top Black Athletes From Competing - Molly Sprayregen

The Weight On Black Women In Sports; Plus, 'We Are Lady Parts' - NPR

At this point, let me say that I agreed with those that argued for review of laws in order to determine if time had made them inapplicable. This is especially true considering the rapid legalization of weed across the U.S. “Cannabis is legal in 18 states, and allowed medically in 37 states.” However, I have to highlight that when it comes to weed, it is “outdated to joke about it as a party drug, writing off users as slow, pizza-munching losers when many successful people consume cannabis. Cannabis is a complicated substance with a nuanced role in fitness, performance, and society.” Keep the nuanced aspect in mind.

I have no doubt that it would not have made Carri into a faster runner. But, I think it’s important to keep the dualism that allows us to look at both what we as non-experts know of the impact of weed and the possibility that science may make discoveries later that can shock us. It is also important to consider that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) isn’t a sub-organization of the U.S. Therefore the demands being placed upon athletes must be seen as globally relevant (ideally speaking). This is true despite the fact that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, in a letter to Jamie Raskin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, stated that it “has consistently put forward recommendations that the rules addressing cannabis and cannabinoids should be more flexible and fair.”

Left (Far)Behind

Despite missing the Olympics a resurgence of interest was generated when it was announced that Carri would “face all three Tokyo Olympic medalists in the women’s 100m.” And all the world wondered after Carri. Well, at least in terms of what will be the result of the showdown in this supposed clash of the titans. I must confess that I don’t recall hearing or seeing that Carri was going to best all the members of the golden three-headed Jamaican *Leviathan. At the Olympics, Elaine Thompson-Herah ran a 10:61, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce ran 10:74, and Shericka Jackson finishing at 10:76.

With Carri’s 10:72, she would have been competitive against Fraser-Pryce and Jackson if she was able to maintain that type of speed. This is theoretical, of course. What took place was a shock to the track and field world. It wasn’t that Carri was expected to win. She was expected to be better than ninth place. But that’s what happened. Carri finished at 11:14 while Elaine finished at 10:54. In other words, Elain ran faster than she did at the Olympics. This makes Elaine second only to Flo Jo’s 10:49 in 1988. Carri was a none factor. It appears that the star has fallen in dramatic of a fashion as she appeared.

Be Humble?

In response to the loss, Carri said to reporters:

"This is one race. I'm not done. You know what I'm capable of. Count me out if you want to. Talk all the s--t you want because I'm here to stay. I'm not done. I'm the sixth-fastest woman in this game, ever, and can't nobody ever take that away from me. Congratulations to the winners. Congratulations to the people that won, but they're not done seeing me yet -- period."  -- Sha'Carri Richardson

A good deal of critique, anger, and disgust came in reaction to what Carri said. Some believed that she wasn’t humble after the loss. They were surprised at what she said. Others pointed out that her interview was the most played despite the fact that she wasn’t the winner. There were questions as to why was she being interviewed at all.

What Now?

At this juncture, I will offer some considerations. Carri experienced a number of significant occurrences around the time of her ascent to fame. Again, her mother died. That’s a significant event. But then she was ban from the Olympics, the ultimate event for any professional sprinter, because of one of the methods she chose to use for grieving. Those are heavy blows. And throughout out it all, she was determined to maintain the same type of energy.

That Same Ol' G

"Even though I got my own CD maybe even on t.v. There ain't no changing me I can only be me me me Even though I might be on t.v. 'cause I got my own CD All you will ever see (that) same ol' G"  -- Ginuwine, Same Ol' G (1998)

In Ginuwine’s classic single Same Ol’ G, released in 1998 off of the Dr. Dolittle album, the singer reflects on being his authentic self despite being celebrated in the public sphere through compact disc and t.v. Carri wasn’t faking the funk. She was being real. She was being herself, that same ol’ g. It wasn’t a new persona that was on display because she was in front of all of the lights. Carri has been speaking with the same type of energy before her Olympic trials.

What does it look like being real for somebody Carri’s age and from where she comes from? Does being real look the same way across the board? Should you start acting differently because you lost or something else happens in your life?

The following are a few clips from her Twitter as evidence for how she has been speaking even prior to her Olympic qualifications.

You Wake Up, Flawless

"We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller We say to girls "You can have ambition, but not too much You should aim to be successful, but not too successful"  -- Beyoncé, Flawless (2014)

What if what looks like confidence for you is misinterpreted as arrogance by someone else? In other words, do our definitions always function accurately across the board and at all times? Sure, we can cite lexical meanings for humility and arrogance and attempt to apply them across the board. Can we make the case that it is time to start critiquing how do definitions play on the ground? I’m only simply pushing forward the argument that we have already been critiquing does definitions and they have shown up in our music, our clothing, and yes, the way we talk.

You wake up, flawless, Post up, flawless Ridin' round in it, flawless, Flossin on that, flawless This diamond, flawless, My diamond, flawless This rock, flawless, My rock, flawless I woke up like this, I woke up like this

— Beyoncé, Flawless

How does Beyonce’s flawless look like in the real world? What does #blackgirlmagic look like?

“Self-esteem means knowing you are the dream.” – Oprah Winfrey

"I was built this way for a reason, so I’m going to use it." - Simone Biles

"You are your best thing." - Toni Morrison

"One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals." - Michelle Obama

These quotes of renowned black women sound great on their own, don’t they? What if what we are seeing from Carri is a version of what that looks like in real life? To what extent can we say definitively that we understand her enough to know that she is arrogant? What if Carri’s defense mechanism looms large at the forefront due to what she experienced in the distant and recent past?

It could very well be that Carri is indeed arrogant. The happenings in Carri’s life may very well be lessons needing to be learned for personal growth and development. The case being made here is that a more nuanced approach should be had. The same amount of consideration given to already established persons should be allocated towards those that we haven’t yet thought of as being on the same level. The same ones saying she is arrogant may themselves be exhibiting arrogance in speaking in absolutes concerning one that is unknown.

Dear Mama

"Lady, don't you know we love you? (Dear Mama) Sweet lady, place no one above you? (You are appreciated) Sweet lady, don't you know we love you? (Dear Mama)"  -- 2 Pac, Dear Mama (1995)

How long does it take someone to recover from the passing of a parent? I can’t assume that we all have the same level of understanding concerning the complexity of loss. Carri lost a parent. How close was she to the mom? How close was she hoping to be to her mom one day? While the news was out that her mother died, it didn’t seem to play a factor in the assessments that were being made about her placing in the race. It should have been obvious right?

Here is a brief introduction to the complexities of grief.

Although grief is a universal experience that is shared by all human beings, the actual grief response in each individual is very unique, and the expression of grief can vary greatly from one person to another. Many factors, such as personality traits, the presence of concurrent stressors and previous losses, the nature of loss(es), and the social expectations that are present, have a great deal of influence in shaping the course of grief for an individual. (p. 26).

It is very important to remember that no individual’s grief experience will neatly fit into a single model, because there is much variation in how losses are perceived and also in how grief is expressed and worked through. (p. 34)

— Darcy L. Harris & Howard R. Winokuer, Principles and Practice of Grief Counseling (2015)

Epilogue

Carri has already said what she needed to say about herself. What we are witnessing now is simply a play out of a young women’s plight as she live out what it means to be who she is on a public stage.

*"Leviathan, Hebrew Livyatan, in Jewish mythology, a primordial sea serpent. Its source is in prebiblical Mesopotamian myth, especially that of the sea monster in the Ugaritic myth of Baal (see Yamm). In the Old Testament, Leviathan appears in Psalms 74:14 as a multiheaded sea serpent that is killed by God and given as food to the Hebrews in the wilderness. In Isaiah 27:1, Leviathan is a serpent and a symbol of Israel’s enemies, who will be slain by God. In Job 41, it is a sea monster and a symbol of God’s power of creation." -- Encyclopaedia Britannica

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[kaleidescope-writes]

Faithfully Yours–Chapter 4: Family Three

In partnership with @accio-boys

Billionaire!Tom Hiddleston x Doctor!Reader

Slow Burn! (Yay)

Warnings: Language, Hella fluff, a certain someone being kind of a prick (not my actual opinion on him), Cliffhanger(permanent warning), angst sorry

Masterlist

Your eyes fluttered open, cringing at the amount of light in the room. You stared up at the ceiling for a moment, listening to the voice of a child in the room with you. A child? Turning to the left, your nose was inches away from Tom’s, who was slowly waking up as well. Remembering last night’s events, you turned back to the ceiling, eyes wide as your mind began to race with a million thoughts. 

I live with Tom now…

You looked around the room, eyeing your surroundings as you remembered the night before. Your mother--being more invested in your love life than yourself-- packed all your things and moved them to Tom’s house. Without letting you know first. You yawned, stretching your arms as you began to sit up on the bed. You reached for your phone on the nightstand. Turning on the screen, you checked the time. A sudden wave of fear hit you as you saw the numbers on the screen; 6:30am. Jumping out of bed, you practically ran to the drawers where your clothes were already put away--thanks to your mother’s specific request. Your shift starts at seven and you now lived half an hour away from the hospital. You were definitely going to be late. In your hurry, you didn’t notice when Tom woke up, sat up straight, and began to talk to the child. All the while looking at you with a concerned expression. “Is everything alright, darling?” he asked as the child sat on the bed next to him. “I’m going to be late,” you responded, not looking at him, “I have to leave soon.” 

“So you can’t stay for breakfast?” the small voice asked behind you. You stopped what you were doing, turning around to face Vivie for the first time this morning. Noticing your visible confusion, Tom spoke, “Y/N, this is Vivian, my niece. Vivie, this is Y/N, my fiance.”  The little girl--Vivie-- looked at you with bright, cheerful eyes, “So you’re my uncle’s girlfriend! It’s nice to meet you!” You felt a stange, almost indescribable feeling when she said “girlfriend.” Blinking a few times, you stuttered, “Y-ya. I uh.. I am his um, girlfriend.” Tom gave you an appreciative smile, winking as you internally groaned. Vivie stood up, walking towards you with hopeful eyes, “Can you stay for breakfast?” You looked at her for a moment, taking in the subtle plea in her eyes. Taking a breath, you realized there was no way you’d ever be able to say no to her “Sure,” you said in a soft tone, “I’ll just call in a little late. My meeting starts at noon anyway.” Cheering softly, Vivie ran up to you and gave you a quick unexpected hug. You weren’t able to react before she pulled away, making her way towards the door as she gushed, “I’ll see you down stairs, auntie Y/N!”

You kept your eyes fixed on the door for a moment after she left. Still not knowing how to react to her hug, your mind was fixated on what she said. Auntie Y/N? Did she mean it or was she teasing? You didn’t notice when Tom walked to stand beside you until he wrapped an arm around your waist. “So then, should we be getting ready, my dear?” he asked. Turning to glare at him, you pushed his arm away and went back to getting ready.

The smell of morning cuisine filled the air as you descended the stairs. Smiling as you heard parts of the conversation between Vivie and Tom, you walked into the kitchen slowly making your presence known. “Auntie Y/N! We can have our first family breakfast!” she happily declared. There’s that word again. You gave her a soft smile as you sat down next to her on the table. Tom walked over to both of you, setting down your respective plates as well as his own. Directly across from you. You spared him only a brief glance as he sat, quickly focusing your attention on your meal. “So did your boss say it was ok?” Vivie asked next to you before she took a bite of her meal. “Yes,” you responded, “But, I have to stay on call a little longer today to make up for being late.” She looked up at you curiously, “What’s ‘on call’?” “It means that even if I’m not working on a patient or on paperwork, I have to stay at the hospital in case someone has an emergency. If that happens, I have to be ready to help whoever needs me,” you simplified, taking a bite of your food after you finished speaking. Vivie nodded, still chewing on her food.

After a moment, she asked, “Is it hard to become a doctor?” You gave her another smile, entertained by her enthusiasm and curiosity. “A little bit,” you said, “There’s a lot of science and math involved. If you really like it, though, you won’t find it hard.” Satisfied with your response, she nodded once more before going back to enjoying her meal. Feeling a set of eyes fixated on your figure, you looked up only to see Tom with a warm smile gracing his features. Rolling your eyes at him, you went back to enjoying your meal as well. 

“Can you drop me off at school with Uncle Tom?” Vivie asked, making you falter slightly. You looked up at Tom, hoping for him to give you a hint of what to say. Forgetting for a moment who he was, you were expecting any little sign. A nod, a wink, a look, hell, even if he mouthed out a yes or no. Instead, he did the very thing you should have expected from him; he teased you like the prick he is. “Don’t look at me darling,” he laughed, “She asked you.” 

You gave him a sarcastic smile, eyes showing no attempt at joy as you responded, “Sure, sweetie. I’ll drop you off today with Uncle Tom.” You turned to give her an authentic smile, “After that, he can take me to work, too.” Vivie smiled again before she stood from the table and took her plate to the sink. Once she was far enough, you whispered, “Prick.” Tom gave you a look of mock surprise before leaning in slightly, “If this is going to work, you have to learn to put up with me. Without insulting me right after someone leaves.” You sighed, standing to take your own plate to the sink. As you were walking to the sink, Tom grabbed your arm and effectively stopped you in your tracks. “For better or worse, my love,” he teased with a smirk.

“Have you ever had to take someone’s heart out?” Vivie asked enthusiastically from the back seat of the black Escalade Tom apparently owned. It was a welcomed difference from the Jaguar he almost hit you with the first day you met. “A few times, you replied, glancing out the passenger seat window, “Sometimes people need a new heart, so I have to take out their bad heart and give them a new one.” You shifted in your seat to turn to her. Nodding, she thought for a moment before asking, “Have you ever had to fix a broken heart?” You arched an eyebrow, confused to what she meant. “You mean like someone who’s heart isn’t working that well or someone who is sad?” you asked. “Someone who had their heart broken,”Vivie inquired. 

You didn’t know what to say. Sure, she was just a kid, but she was smart. Something told you she wouldn’t take any answer. She was probably hoping for a very specific answer. One you couldn’t think of at the moment. “She did,” Tom answered for you suddenly. You turned to look at him in surprise. “She fixed my broken heart,” he continued, “I’ve been brokenhearted for a while. The day I met her, however, I felt a surge of happiness fix my heart. I knew then that I wanted to be with her.” He looked at her through the rear-view mirror, smiling as he added, “That’s why I’m marrying her so soon.” 

Your jaw dropped slightly, keeping your previous surprised expression.Tom gave you a wink before going back to looking at the road. Before you could say anything to him, he spoke up again, “Ladies, we have arrived.” The car slowed down before parking in a drop-off parking area. You got out of the car, waiting for Vivie to come out so you could help her with her bag. Tom walked over to you as Vivie closed the door, letting you take her bag. “Do you have everything you need, Viv?” Tom asked as the three of you began to walk to the entrance of the school. “Yup!” she replied cheerfully as she held your hand. “Are you sure?” you asked, giving her a playfully concerned smile. “Yes!” she laughed, her nose cringing slightly. It was cute. 

You stopped in front of the building’s steps. “Bye Uncle Tom!” Vivie announced, hugging him quickly before going to hug you. “Bye, Auntie Y/N!” she said, just as happily as she did with Tom. You're not sure what possessed you to do it, but it just felt like the right thing to do. You leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head. “Have a great day, sweetie,” you said in a soft voice before letting her go and giving her the bag you carried for her. Vivie took her bag and began to climb the stairs. You kept your eyes on her until she entered the door, after which you turned your attention back to Tom. The expression he had on his face could be described as affectionate and loving. You were a bit confused by it, but couldn’t address it. Not in public at least. He walked up to you and wrapped a hand around your waist. You smiled, knowing this was most likely an act. Tom leaned closer to you and pressed a kiss to your cheek. 

Your eyes went a little wider as you tried to process what had just happened without reacting too much. He chuckled softly before walking back to the car. You stood there for a moment longer, still trying to figure out why you began to feel the same thing you felt the time he kissed you. “Coming, dearest?” he called out to you. Blinking a few times, you snapped yourself out of the small trance and began to walk back to the car as well. 

After driving for a few minutes, you felt the urge to bring up an earlier question you had. “Something bothering you?” Tom asked, keeping his eyes on the road in front of him. He must have sensed your uneasiness. Taking a breath, you faced him as you began to voice your concerns, “Earlier when Vivie asked if I had fixed a broken heart, you lied to Vivie.” Tom nodded, urging you to continue. “You said something about feeling happy when you met me,” you began, “What did you mean? When we met, you’d almost hit me with your car.” Tom chuckled a bit, “I said I felt a surge of happiness. I did laugh at you that day. That, I believe, counts as a surge of happiness.” 

“But you also said something about fixing your heart. How is that true?” you asked. “I was having a bad moment before that,” he explained, “After the charity event, I’d gotten a call that one of my partners had changed the deal we made and gave me an ultimatum. I was pissed. However, my mood quickly changed when I met you, purely because you made me laugh.” Sighing, you rolled your eyes as you slumped into your seat. “What about when you said you wanted to be with me?” you asked, accusingly, “The marriage is only going to last a few months at most.” He shook his head, “I said I wanted to be with you. I never said for how long,” he laughed, “And I do want to be with you. Only so this arranged marriage thing blows over soon. I want to be with you only to divorce you quickly.” 

You looked away from him, thinking through his words. You barely noticed the car come to a stop. Realizing you’d arrived at the hospital, you went to open the door, only to realize the door was still locked. “I didn’t entirely lie to Vivie,” Tom muttered, “I just didn’t tell her the full story. When it happens, I’ll explain to her why we did it.” You took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I’ll help you when the time comes,” you spoke grimly. You sat there for a moment, waiting for the door to open or for him to say something. The silence grew more uncomfortable, making a small feeling to dread to appear in your stomach.

“Have a lovely day,” Tom mumbled before opening the locks to let you out. “You too,” you responded, opening the door and exiting the car. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Nine pm. After a tiresome yet relatively short shift, you found yourself walking up to the front door of your new home. You tried all day not to think about the conversation you had earlier, still upset about it. That didn’t stop your mind from wandering back to the conversation. Approaching the front door, you took out the key Tom gave you from your bag. Turning the key and unlocking the door, you opened it and sighed in relief at the confirmation that it wasn’t a cruel prank played by Tom. Walking in, you were greeted by the sounds of laughter. You walked further into the house, figuring it was probably just Tom and Vivie. 

“Hi Mrs. Hiddleston,” a young woman greeted from the couch. She sat next to Vivie, both holding a notebook and pencil on You looked at her in confusion for a moment before realizing she was the babysitter. “Oh, I’m not married to Tom yet. I’m still Ms. L/N,” you responded, setting your stuff down on the loveseat. “I’m sorry.” she gasped, “It’s just that the way Mr. Hiddleston talked about you made it seem like you were already happily married and in love.” You mustered a smile, opening your arms to Vivie, who came running towards you to give you a welcoming hug. “Well, now that you’re back, I’ll show myself out. It was wonderful to meet you,” she said, standing up and taking her bag from the center table. “You too, Ms…”

“Avery,” she held her hand out for you. “Y/N,” you shook her hand. She said her goodbyes before you walked her to the door. “How much do I owe you?” you asked, reaching into your pocket. “Oh no, no. Mr. Hiddleston already paid me in advance. He even gave me a tip from the both of you. It’s ok,” she rushed, hands motioning you to stop. You nodded, giving her a smile and opening the door for her. As soon as you made sure she was safe in her car, you closed the door, going back to the couch. 

Vivie was writing in her notebook, waiting for you. You sat down next to her, eyes scanning what she was writing. “Whatcha got there?” you asked, peering over her shoulder. “It’s a day to day journal,” Vivie explained simply, “Avery says that this helps me emotionally by writing down everything I feel about what happened today and the thoughts I had throughout the day.” You hummed, nodding a bit as you watched her finish the sentence she was writing. 

“You can ask me anything, you know,” Vivie said suddenly. It surprised you for a moment. Before you could express your confusion, she spoke up again, “I know that this is weird for you. Honestly it’s weird for me too. I suddenly have a new Auntie that’s marrying the uncle that raised me. I want you to know that if you have any questions about anything about our lives, you can ask me.” You smiled, still surprised by her sudden change. Grabbing her small hand in yours, you mouthed out a ‘thank you’. 

“So what do you wanna know?” she asked, keeping the same tone as earlier. You thought for a moment, attempting to conjure up some questions you had thought of earlier in the day. Something in your mind clicked, being reinforced by the statement she’d just made. “You said your uncle raised you. How did that happen? I mean, how did he get custody of you?” you asked, prepared to change the subject if it made her uncomfortable. Vivie set the notebook on the center table, turning to face you fully before she spoke. “When I was a baby,” she recounted, “My parents had a really bad accident when they were driving home. Uncle Tom was taking care of me at the time. They didn’t make it to the hospital.” You felt your heart drop to the floor. A part of you wanted to tell her she didn’t have to finish telling you. Before you could do so, she continued, “My mom wrote it in her will that she wanted Uncle Tom to have full custody of me in case something happened to her and my dad. I’ve been with him ever since.” 

A lump began to form in your throat as tears threatened to fall. You took in a breath, letting it out slowly as you soothed, “I’m so sorry.” She gave you a sorrow smile, “It’s ok. I’ve spent the past six years with him as my legal guardian. I see him as a father.” Vivie moved to sit closer to you, taking both your hands in her much smaller ones. “And now, I finally get to have a mother,” she smiled brightly. You felt your heart strings being pulled, the tears from before making themselves known. 

Wrapping your arms around her, you embraced her in a heartwarming hug as a few tears fell from your eyes. She wrapped her arms around you, returning the embrace. You didn’t want to move from this position. It was the most affection you’d felt in a while and you didn’t want to let go of it. But you pulled away, looking down at her as you kept the tear-filled smile. Vivie reached up to your face and wiped your tears away with her sleeve. You laughed a little, letting her clean your face. 

After a brief moment, she stood up from the couch, yawning as she stretched. “Well, I have school tomorrow, so I should probably go to bed now. I just didn’t want you to be alone when you got back,” she explained, picking her shoes up from the floor. You nodded still recovering from the emotional moment you shared. “Want me to tuck you in?” you asked softly, going to stand up too. “No, it’s ok,” she yawned, “You must be tired too. I’ll let you go to bed too.” You smiled again, picking up your bag from the center table as well as her notebook. Yawning, you handed it to her as you adjusted the strap on your shoulder. She took it from you before her eyes went wide as she remembered something.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” she exclaimed, rushing over to the coat hanger where she put her bag. She took something out and walked back over to you. “Uncle Tom told me to give you this,” Vivie handed you a small box, “He said to tell you that he owed you this and to wear it everyday.” You eyed the box, taking it from her before she began to make her way to her room, calling out a ‘goodnight’ as she did. 

“Goodnight,” you responded, still eyeing the box she gave you. You decided to wait until you were in the room before you opened it, just in case it was something that would make you react negatively. Taking the box with you, you made your way to the room you shared with Tom. All the while, your mind was making up theories as to what it could be.

Once inside the room, you set your bag down on a nearby chair, focusing on the box as you sat down on the bed. Opening the box, your suspicions were confirmed. It was a ring. Not just any engagement ring. This particular golden band had a heart as a centerpiece in place of a diamond. You couldn’t help but laugh at the corniness of it as you shook your head. Taking it out carefully, you examined it closer, noticing every tint, intricately cut detail of it. From the Aorta and pulmonary artery, to the right coronary artery, every detail was carefully carved into the gold. It was such beautiful craftsmanship. 

You put it on, admiring how it looked on your left ring finger. The indescribable feeling returned. It always appeared when you thought of him, you noticed. You couldn’t help it, though. The ring was so thoughtful, you almost forgot this was an act. Your mood fell quickly at the thought. It’s an act. He needed to make the ring be something special so that the act would seem real to the common spectator. It’s not because he cared. Tom just needed it to be believable. 

You took off the ring quickly, setting it on the nightstand. Keeping your eyes fixed on the ring, your mind began to race. He didn’t actually care. He said it himself. He wants to be with you only so that the arranged marriage blows over soon. He wants to marry you only to divorce you quickly. Another lump formed itself in your throat. Not because you knew this was part of the deception. Because you felt,even for a moment, that he cared about you enough to do something like that. You thought someone cared about you intimately for a change. 

Tears fell from your eyes as you grabbed one of the pillows on the bed and brought it up to your face. Screaming into it, you sobbed as more negative realizations made their way into your mind. Once this is over, you’ll have no one to care about you like that. Your family wasn’t close enough to you, your hospital friends were always busy, and you didn’t bother to get to know anyone outside your busy lifestyle. You’d feel alone again.

You threw the pillow across the room, anger rising as you realized that you’d brought this on yourself. Calming your sobs slightly, you wiped the tears from your eyes, taking ragged, uneven breaths. 

“What the hell did I get myself into?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: ...I’m so sorry... If it’s any consolation, I cried making the last scene. This took a while to make, but it is done at last. What did you think? Feel free to leave a comment as feedback is both appreciated and encouraged. Show some love for @accio-boys, my partner in crime. She is absolutely amazing and creative as hell. You should definitely go check out her blog as she does covers for fics! She’s responsible for every cover on my blog, actually. Anyway, I love you all!! I hope everything is good in your corner of this bat-shit crazy world. Stay safe, Stay Proud, Be careful out there, and I love you! Please remember that! See you tomorrow for more well-overdue chapters. 😘💖💖💖💖

 And to all my new followers, Welcome to the family😘❤🧡💛💚💙💜

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[ghostmartyr]

how a life can move from the darkness [9/?]

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |

Summary: Two drug addicts (Eren and Historia) meet in group and decide to be roommates to make their  living situation slightly less weird. From there we do the slow burn  found family dance mixed in with the struggles and agonies of recovery. Heavy on friendship feels, especially EMA. Eventual yumikuri.

One of Eren’s mother’s many complaints about his childhood was how he wouldn’t go to his parents for nightmares. Even when he was small enough that they’d make him wet the bed. He hadn’t wanted them to know he had them, in case they said something about not fighting so much, or not watching movies they told him not to watch, or not reading those books his dad kept in his office. He didn’t want to hear about how he wasn’t grown up enough.

When he woke up in the middle of the night, heart racing from teeth and blood he wasn’t supposed to know about, and his mom and dad were out, he’d find Zeke.

Still awake, waiting on the couch for him with baseball reruns on the TV. Zeke had never said he told him so, or called him too young for anything. He would wrap Eren in a blanket too tight to move in, dump him on the other side of the couch, and tell him to go back to sleep.

Not as quiet or as gentle as hot chocolate with Frieda.

Historia actively avoided private conversations with Frieda.

They didn’t even have a TV.

They did have a couch. When Eren rushed home after work, Historia was taking up all of it, fast asleep, shoes tossed under Benjamin, and a series of very large numbers written all over both her bared arms. She’d slept all the way through dinner.

Eren would have asked Armin or Mikasa about what he was supposed to do, but he’d never listened to anything they tried to say when they thought he needed help. They always found the right things on accident, later.

He’d also scared them earlier when he told them he loved them.

He needed to say it more. He didn’t want it to be some big, heavy thing like everything else they had between them now.

Without them, and without prodding Frieda into a concern Historia didn’t need, all Eren had to go on was the feeling that he was the one staying up with a blanket ready.

Figuratively. He wasn’t at Reiner’s level of dedication, but he woke up in the middle of the night too often to force himself to stay awake when he could sleep. He kept his bedroom door cracked, but didn’t fight drifting off, reading through the articles on snowflake eels Armin had linked him and letting them ease his eyes shut.

He didn’t know how much later it was when the door opened all the way and Historia thumped down on his carpet, rousing him from using his phone as a pillow.

There were a few dizzying seconds of him blinking his eyes and trying to figure out if they were blinking or he was imagining they were. The only thought making it through the fuzz in his head was how the deterioration of personal boundaries after dark had to be genetic, and that went away when he started to wake up properly.

He looked down at the Historia-shaped shadow curled next to his bed and hoped he didn’t fall back asleep before she decided it was time to start sharing. Along with hoping she wasn’t the type of happy couple person who believed in sharing details. He’d spent all of high school overhearing too much of Sasha and Connie gleefully narrating their classmates like they were all in a nature documentary on mating. Once was enough, and Ymir was already Ymir.

The blurs of the dark were almost sharp by the time Historia said anything.

“I tried to kill myself.”

Any illusions of Eren accidentally falling back to sleep jumped out of his skin with his heart rate. “Just now?”

“What?” The Historia shadow turned abruptly to look at his way, blurs of hair growing her for a few blink cycles. “No. No still—only once. That—with the heroin. That time.”

“Right,” Eren said, too disoriented to will the moment of panic to shut up without thinking of orange bottles. At least it was too dark for him to need to look put together. Maybe there was something to having these talks at night. “What about it?”

Historia’s jeans creaked as her shadow shrunk on itself. No other noise came from the circular blob for several minutes.

Zeke had used a TV for this for a lot of reasons, Eren thought, full of 3am clarity.

He was almost back asleep despite himself when Historia spoke up again.

“Ymir lives a mile away.”

She said it so quietly that it sounded like the notes on snowflake eels. Food, habitat, personality. Things you needed to keep in mind if you were going to try raising one. Eren didn’t catch the death lurking in the words until he felt his bed frame shake.

“I almost never saw her again.”

Eren pulled himself out from under his covers and grabbed one of the blankets resting next to Historia’s head. Cotton turning into rocket science in the night, it took him full seconds to get the blanket draped over Historia. Her hands grabbed the edges and tugged it tight.

“You did see her again,” Eren said, “You’re going to see her lots. Probably every day if you ask.” The still shadow blob of his friend didn’t give him any hints of how much that truth helped. He tried a different one in case. “You’re alive.”

He could hear Historia tugging the threads on his blanket. “Am I?”

Eren didn’t give whatever argument she was going to try time to make room. “Yeah.”

She sighed at him, proving his point.

More silence followed, but Eren was awake now, and he could wait it out. It was easier once she stopped trying to take his blanket apart. He didn’t have much personal attachment, but Mikasa had learned to sew by patching up the holes her cats had left in it.

Historia unfurled enough to bump her head against his mattress.

“When I saw her again…” Historia said, “I think that’s what it feels like to be alive. I don’t think what I’ve been doing counts.” Her arms dug in under the blanket. “And now she’s a mile away and it’s too far. I want her here. I want—” her head dropped to her knees.

More quiet.

Ambulance sirens sounded somewhere off in the distance.

“I miss heroin,” she said.

Eren snorted. “Yeah.”

“I think I miss her more.”

She didn’t add to that. She didn’t really need to. Five minutes with both of them screamed it.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Eren ventured. “We’re supposed to care about people more.” That was how most of the people he knew stayed sober. Including the two of them. “She won’t kill you, and she’s not going anywhere this time. Everyone she cares about is already here.”

Historia seemed to struggle saying the next words out loud. “Eren, I need her.”

Eren shrugged. “I need Armin and Mikasa.” Plus more people than he’d ever thought he could care about, her included. Trying not to need them was where everything went wrong. Even before the pills, when he was just an angry brat who didn’t know how lucky he was.

Historia shook her head, blurred hands raking through her hair. “Not—not the way—they’re your friends, Eren. They’re yours, not your—” she cut herself off. A miasma of irritation billowed off her like fog, filling the sudden silence.

“I don’t even know if she loved me back.”

The sheets on Eren’s bed were back to his star ones Armin and Mikasa had doubled up to buy him when the holes in his shark ones ripped their way off his mattress. They’d gone back on a week ago, after over a year of refusing to look at them. His mom had made him take them home with him.

Every piece of him tied back to them in some way, and the only thing about them he could ever hate was how painfully obvious they made it that they loved him.

“She’s not heroin,” Historia said softly. “She’s not. She’s—she’s too many things for that. I can’t—I don’t want to turn her into another fix.”

Eren propped his elbows on his star-covered knees. “You said it wasn’t the same thing,” he said. “Whatever you two had.”

“It wasn’t,” she said flatly. “I was still a person then.”

Not yelling at Historia never took the same effort as not yelling at Mikasa, but if he ever changed his mind and started thinking shaking some sense into her had a chance of working, there were moments where he’d leap at it. “You’re a person now.”

“No, I’m not!”

Her arm collided with the side of his mattress. Anger, something Eren finally understood, was in every hitch of her breath. Her fist stayed pinned to his bed frame like it was held there by magnets.

“I’m not what I was, and I’m not anything else either,” she said, the stilted words scraping like sandpaper. “I can’t just fall back into her life and have everything be okay because she’s everything. I can’t give her this.” Her hand swam its way back to her, digging into her forehead.

Eren wondered if this was where the tears started, and if that would help any of him figure out what his role was supposed to be here besides support. He listened to the angry breathing, waiting.

The sobs didn’t come.

Laughter, fragile and startled, fell out instead.

“I want it.”

Eren threw a dart and hoped it landed on something. “…Ymir?”

“No—I mean, yes, but—” Historia kept laughing, hands fully in her hair. “Better. I want better.”

She said it in the same half-furious, grasping tone Eren had declared right and wrong in on seven different playgrounds. The one that said something good existed in the world, and everything was wrong because the good wasn’t theirs yet. Frustration and impotence waiting for an Armin to shine it up and point it in the right direction.

She said it like someone who wasn’t waiting around to die.

Months of weight lifted off Eren’s chest. His arms sagged on his knees, and for one Armin moment, he understood how easy it really had been for all of them to grab forgiveness instead of punishing him the way he deserved. How thrilled they must have been to have a chance to forgive him at all.

“That’s one way to get out of telling her you like her,” he said.

A corner of blanket smacked him in the face, and he tossed it back at Historia easily. She didn’t wrap it around herself again. Aided by a few more minutes awake, he could see her hand slowly tracing her arm.

“Did she write her number on your track marks?” Eren asked, peering closer.

“…Yes.”

Ymir could stand being less Ymir for five seconds of her life every once in a while. “Romantic.”

Historia’s tone turned soft. Dissolving into the gentleness Mikasa sometimes had for him and Armin. “Yeah.”

Or maybe Ymir being Ymir worked for Historia.

That was horrifying, and Eren’s cheeks hurt thinking about it. He reached out and poked Historia’s head, ignoring her limp attempts to bat him away. “You’re going to have to hurry up on better if you don’t want her to beat you to the punch.”

“I will not,” Historia said irritably. “She’s awful at talking.”

“She never shuts up.”

Historia was smiling, with enough shadows in her face to pretend the annoyance went with it. “That’s how she hides it. She keeps everything important to herself, and no one ever notices because they’re too frustrated or embarrassed to find out how she feels. Ymir’s too shy to wait quietly and risk someone seeing her.” Historia took back her piece of blanket. With a level of fondness Eren wasn’t sure he needed to hear, she said, “It’s unfair.”

When Hannah and Franz had first taught him that some people could speak in hearts, he had never thought his ears could enjoy hearing them out of anyone. He rested his head on his pillow and slid his phone back to its charger on the nightstand. “Sounds like her.”

“She’s an idiot,” Historia said, without a spot of judgment.

Eren pulled his covers up around his shoulders. “Yours, though.”

“Not yet.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it.”

“Sure.”

His mattress creaked. Eren, eyes closed, found the decorative pillow Frieda had insisted he keep on his bed. He waved it out in the air around Historia’s spot on the floor for a second before it left his fingers. He didn’t know what she did with it. The moment after it disappeared, so did he, drifting off to sleep with a smile on his face.

----

Armin would call it a multiple choice question, how mornings with Reiner went. There were the normal mornings where Eren had to keep their pace in check or worry about carrying him home, the becoming normal mornings where the bikes came out, the weird mornings where Reiner talked him into something like trying an unheated pool for laps, and the rare, apocalyptic ones where there was no Reiner.

Today was a no Reiner day.

Ymir was standing outside the house inhaling a thermos. Steam rose from the lid and a patched beanie was covering most of her head. Without bothering to say hello or make eye contact, she spoke up. “Why do you do this to yourself.”

Eren slowed his jog to a stop in front of her on the sidewalk. “I get paid.”

“Not enough.” Ymir downed the rest of her drink and tossed the thermos on top of Bertolt’s neatly trimmed hedges. “I’ve seen what this costs. You need someone else to start managing your finances.”

Before leaving the apartment, Eren had asked if the new state of Historia’s thing with Ymir meant he had to start being nicer. Historia hadn’t bothered looking up from saying good morning to Benjamin to tell him that that was exactly the wrong way to make friends with Ymir.

Making friends with Ymir had never once been something Eren wanted to care about. He still didn’t. He could feel himself caring anyway.

He asked the stupid question to get it out of the way. “We’re waiting for Reiner?”

“Nope,” Ymir said with a pop. “I booted Reiner off the island for the day. Just you and me, alone at last.”

“Stop trying to make this weird.”

“What do you take me for, Eren?” She waggled her eyebrows. “I’m saving that when we’re both all hot and sweaty.”

Eren rolled his eyes and decided to touch his toes until Ymir grew up. It was easier than looking at her. She was back to smiling, and he was embarrassed noticing how different it was from her usual smirk. He’d never thought of Ymir as someone like him and Reiner. She was the babysitter of her group. The Frieda, only without any of the shadows and fear holding her back.

Historia had talked about making that mistake. Thinking Ymir never needed anyone.

Historia would miss that someone had needed her.

Ymir would turn out to be a sap. All those romance novels had to come from somewhere.

The back of Eren’s head received a rough poke.

“Time’s wasting,” Ymir said. “Bert’s making waffles, and if you think I’m missing that to have a touching heart to heart jog, that hair of yours is starting to smother your brain.”

Eren swatted her hand away and didn’t rise to the bait, even if he did stand up. “How fast do you want to go?”

Ymir was bending backwards nonchalantly. She mirrored him and pulled her leg up to her chest, smirking that smirk that was too happy to properly deserve the word. “Tell you what, let’s make it easy on you. Your job is to keep up.”

----

One of Eren’s friends from high school had never really tried being his friend. They smashed into each other and then there was just too much debris left over to keep acting like they weren’t a part of the same circle.

Eren’s lungs were choking in his chest, his heart felt fit to explode, and his legs were burning.

Competitions with Jean usually wound up with punches and threats to finish things up in the parking lot after class. Bumps and bruises and the debate advisor screaming at them to please keep in mind the rules of engagement, and proper debate did not require a change in volume, boys.

Next to him, Ymir was trying and failing to stand up straight, both of them quietly dying in Reiner’s driveway.

No one had told him she was fast. Did she write her books on a treadmill? Their race back to the house had almost ended with a crash finish from both of them.

“So,” Ymir said, still gasping, “I promised you weird.”

“That was enough weird for one day,” Eren said, regretting the full sentence the second he started it. He clutched at his knees and willed his blood to stop beating into his head like a club.

Ymir was leaning against the side of the house heavily enough to leave sweat behind on the paint job. “That? What, you never had a proper workout before?” She reached out and tussled Eren’s hair. Pulling away nearly made him fall over.

Another minute of heavy breathing, and she grabbed at him again.

“This is going to make both of us uncomfortable, so we might as well get it over with now,” she said.

Eren didn’t have the time or energy to dread. He was left with nothing but his own spinning head and Ymir’s lanky, soaked frame dragging him into her arms.

“Uh.”

It was not a comfortable hug. Eren had his fair share to compare it to. He was tired, they were both boiling in the weak morning sun, and his clothes were damp enough without adding another person’s sweat. Ymir was also bony in a way that made her shoulders jab his.

“Thanks,” Ymir said, softly enough that Eren could only hear because of how close they were. “I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.”

Eren awkwardly tried patting at her back. “You’re welcome?” He thought about how much lighter they both made each other and put in another stab. “She—she didn’t think so either.”

He was rewarded with another hair ruffle that caught on a painful tangle. Ymir shoved him gently and he stumbled closer to stable ground. “I know,” she said. “Add it to the list of what that thank you counts for.”

Track marks and shivers panged in Eren’s mind. Ymir’s deliberate handwriting covering up all the memories on Historia’s arms. His heart, slowing down from the sprinting and confusion, wound up for another round.

“She would have made it,” he said. The alternative was as unthinkable as it was unspeakable. “She’s strong.”

Ymir chuckled, and Eren recognized the shimmer in her eyes. “Come on, Eren, you should know this.” She seized him by the shoulders and started walking him up the porch, giving his hair another tug. “Strong people are the ones who dig themselves so deep no one else can get them out.”

Before Eren could puzzle out if that was an actual compliment, she slapped the back of his head and strolled into the house, loudly asking Bertolt where her waffle was.

----

“No roommate today?”

Eren dragged himself away from watching Zeke throw pitches into the backstop. Armin and Mikasa were in the outfield, Armin dazzling with excitement over the gopher that had stuck around after practice ended. Eren was picking up empty bags of sunflower seeds the team before them had left behind.

Stalling.

Yelena, elbow on the roof of the dugout, seemed to take that as an invitation to talk.

“She had an appointment,” Eren said. Trying for supportive and completely opaque.

Their last meeting, Historia had tried talking. That would have been fine and great for her, but what she’d said was, “I got addicted to heroin trying to kill myself, and I need to not feel that way anymore.”

Petra had called her back after and given her a rolodex full of names. She’d asked Historia, in her most concerned tone of voice, to call at least one.

Eren didn’t know how many Historia had called to get an appointment as fast as she did, but the cost of brute forcing therapy for the week was missing out on one of Zeke’s practices, and he was supposed to be the good sponsor and approve of that instead of telling her how badly his experience with therapy went. She’d heard it all before anyway. The only positive thing he used to be able to say about group was that it was an improvement over the damn shrink, so he’d said it. Weekly.

“That’s a shame,” Yelena said. “The quartet look suits you.”

Eren shrugged instead of agreeing. Off in the distance, Mikasa was smiling at Armin like there was no place in the world she’d rather be. Eren wasn’t listed on the team. He would have skipped Zeke’s invitation entirely if it hadn’t meant dodging them, too.

Even if it was weird only having Mikasa and Armin around, and there was everything wrong with thinking that. He didn’t know which of his friends to blame for the voice in his head that said it might be less weird if he went over and admired the gopher in the outfield with them instead of shadowing Zeke. It sounded like all of them.

Several of the steps before twelve also reminded him weird was the wrong word.

Scary came closer, and if he weren’t so tired of being pissed, that would have him right next to Zeke, trying to crack a hole into the wooden parts of the backstop. Maybe that was the right move for taking a step forward with his brother, but it wouldn’t do anything to fix him.

Eren crumpled up the bags in his hands and swung up and out of the dugout, brushing shoulders with Yelena on his way to a trash can.

She followed him. “Is there a story behind why all of you are staying so late?” Yelena asked with an innocence too earnest to feel real. “If it’s team spirit, I’d be happy to join in, but it seems to be a bit more personal.”

“We’re having dinner with my mom later,” Eren chanted. He left out who ‘we’ included. He was working on it.

“That’s nice to hear,” Yelena said. “Zeke’s always had nice things to say about her. Is Historia meeting up with you all there?”

Eren stopped. He turned around to meet Yelena’s benign smile. “Zeke talks about my mom?”

“Sure,” she said. “Not as much as he talks about his beloved little brother, but she comes up. Don’t worry,” she added, like the look on Eren’s face came anywhere close to worry, “it’s nothing but good things.”

Eren balled the sunflower seed bags up and slammed them into the trash. “Excuse me,” he said—because they were talking about his mother and his mother had tried to teach him manners long after the first argument about how rude people didn’t deserve them—leaving Yelena behind for the pitcher’s mound.

Zeke didn’t change his rhythm on Eren’s way over, but he could see Armin and Mikasa both tense up out of the corner of his eye. The gopher popped back underground.

“Eren,” Zeke said, when Eren was ten feet away, “do you need something?”

It was the fourth step. Being completely, ruthlessly honest about everything wrong with you as a person so maybe something had a shot in hell at fixing it all. Eren’s hands unclenched. The open air against his palms made them feel empty. His head felt almost as empty, since the million conversations he and Zeke just didn’t have stayed crammed down his throat.

Still. “Mom wanted you to come over for dinner,” he said.

Zeke’s fastball smacked against the crude smiley face someone had doodled on the backstop. One of its eyes had a crack through it. “How kind of her. Will you be leaving with your friends, or should we all go over together?”

“Whatever works for you,” Eren said. Zeke kept throwing. There was an entire basket left by his feet. Eren wanted to kick it over.

“I’ll be done here soon.”

“We can wait on you.”

THWAK

“Wonderful.”

If the gopher hadn’t already gone down its hole, Eren stomping over to Mikasa and Armin would have gotten rid of it fast. For their sake, he ignored the look they shared while he was still out of earshot. And Armin’s deep breath before his smile.

Mikasa favored more direct approaches. “Will Zeke be joining us?”

“Yeah.”

A flurry of cloud drifted by the setting sun, and the next look Armin tried to share with Mikasa didn’t happen. She kept her eyes on Eren. Watching him, like she always did, but the reflection of irritation and futility felt more like a conversation than what he’d just managed with Zeke.

Eren was too many steps away from her to walk up and hug her without it being weird. Asking for a hug would also be weird. She’d probably worry instead of finding it nice.

Armin tried to inject some positivity. “How about Historia? Is she still busy?”

Pulling away from Mikasa’s magnetic presence, Eren shrugged. “Probably,” he said. He’d texted during batting practice and asked, but he hadn’t gotten anything back. Maybe because she didn’t need to be told not to answer her phone during an appointment. Maybe because she could sense Eren trying to probe her mood and she was already stuck paying someone to do that and once was enough for a day.

The Petra in his head could take the blame for some of that. He’d never liked being around people after shrink sessions. He’d hated being alone after them.

Eren’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he snapped it out.

               Sorry, we just ordered.

Eren blinked.

He hadn’t had a fun day. The shadow of his mom, and being alone with Armin and Mikasa, and all of the things wrong with feeling wrong about that, had put him in a bad mood and Zeke had made it worse without lifting a finger.

A glimmer of something going right peered out of his screen.

               […]                […]                Ymir says hi.

“She’s definitely busy,” Eren said.

“Oh.” Armin sounded disappointed. “That’s…”

Eren slung an arm across Armin’s back. “It’s good,” he said, meeting Mikasa’s eyes again. Winning back that soft smile she’d had when it was just her and Armin and the gopher. “Really good.”

----

Most of Eren’s formative memories included Armin. That was what happened when you met someone that cool when you were a kid. Every memory with them mattered, because they mattered. He had life-changing moments around tying shoes because Armin was there with him.

Armin had asked, when Zeke was dangling his arms over the fence that separated the playground from the pickup zone, waiting for the teacher to decide that their grandparents really were Eren’s too, what it was like having a big brother.

“He’s like an extra stair,” Eren had answered, very wisely. “He reaches all the high stuff and helps me up so I can, too.”

“I wonder how tall we’ll be when we grow up?” Armin had asked, eyes full of sparkles and future.

Eren had known the answer to that. After declaring to his dad that he’d be as tall as a mountain when he was his age, instead of choosing to stop like he had, his dad had picked him up, placed him atop his shoulders, and said a lot of what his mom called doctor words. It all meant that if he ate right and listened to his parents, he’d probably be as tall as they were. Jeans mattered. That was why Eren was sure to never wear them.

But before all those words, his dad had smiled up at Eren, and said the important ones: “We can both be taller whenever we want. All I need is you. And all you need,” he flicked Eren on the nose, “is me.”

In the playground with Armin, Eren had declared, “As tall as we can make ourselves!” and scooped Armin on top of his head so they could be kings of the playground.

He hadn’t been able to lift Armin.

Armin’s shoe kicked him in the lip.

Their teacher had called Eren over then, and his grandparents had seen the blood dripping down his shirt and panicked. Zeke had politely asked the teacher for a tissue and picked Eren up.

Eren had pointed at Zeke and shouted back to Armin, spitting blood down on the sidewalk. “He’s very tall!”

Petra had told him once, and the group a few times, that sometimes it helped to have a solid picture of what you were aiming for. You didn’t have to fly blind into your relationships and circumstances. You could think of what you wanted and ask for it, or make it happen.

When Eren thought of what he wanted out of his brother, all that came to mind was Armin. Armin’s voice asking, ‘what’s it like?’ and none of the answers working anymore. He didn’t know what to do with a Zeke. He had Petra’s outline and a huge hole where whatever he and Zeke could be wasn’t.

From that standpoint, getting Zeke to come along to dinner wasn’t a bad achievement. His mom had mentioned it, Eren had asked, and now Zeke was sitting in the dining room, politely complimenting the stew while Mikasa staidly avoided eye contact and Armin reached over every few mouthfuls to loosen Eren’s grip on his fork.

For the third week in a row.

Eren was starting to think Historia was scheduling her appointments the way she was on purpose, just to get out of adding one more pensive face to the table.

“This is delicious, Carla,” Zeke said, folding his napkin and gently collecting his silverware on his plate. “Thank you again for the splendid meal.”

Eren’s mom, who had a bounce in her step and a light in her eyes whenever Eren showed up with the dinner crew in tow, spared an amused look for her son before smiling at her stepson. “You say that every time, Zeke.”

Zeke’s glasses flashed in the light, giving his smile an emptiness that matched the tiny hole in Eren’s gut week after week. “And every time it is warranted.”

The scraping noise irritating Eren’s ears was coming from his plate, and it stopped the moment after Armin’s hand came back to his and released his fork to its original spot on the tablecloth with a blunted clatter.

His mom shot him another look, but kept speaking to Zeke. “You’ll have to keep coming by, then. It’s so nice to have my work appreciated for once.”

Mikasa stiffened in her chair in time with Eren, and both of them objected together, even if Eren’s voice thundered over Mikasa’s. “We appreciate you.”

“It’s also lovely to see how contagious that attitude is,” she continued, barely pausing at all to squeeze Mikasa’s arm. “Thank you, Zeke. I’ve seen more of your brother in these past few weeks than I did when he moved back in.”

Zeke and Eren’s mother were the only people around the table who didn’t flinch. Sitting next to Armin felt more like sitting next to a bonfire with snapping teeth, and Eren didn’t know if he wanted to hug him or punch himself.

That was the main problem with these dinners. He couldn’t do either.

Mikasa would say the main problem was Zeke.

Finding that soothing wasn’t the way out of all this. Probably. Even if some part of his soul uncurled, imagining what it would be like for Mikasa to rage as hard as he did and choose to share it with him.

Zeke, as diplomatic as Armin was when he was trying to get whoever was between him and Eren to kindly not pay attention to how one Mikasa was all that was keeping a very bloody brawl from continuing—smiled, glasses catching the light again. “Eren’s been working hard on spending time with all his family lately,” he said. “His effort isn’t something I can claim credit for.”

Eren’s fork was grinding into the tablecloth this time, and Armin’s hand was as warm as the understanding in his eyes that Eren still hated wanting as much as he did. Eren had to be the one working hard to spend time with Zeke, because Zeke got a text about how his day was going and assumed Eren was bad step away from rehab again. All Zeke could claim credit for was—

Being there. Whenever Eren asked.

Always.

“Would you like some help clearing the table, Carla?”

Eren wanted to punch him.

“Zeke, please, you’re a guest,” his mom said, while he and Mikasa jumped to their feet and almost broke Armin’s plate when they both grabbed for it at the same time. His knife took a dive for the floor, but Eren caught it.

When he straightened, shuffling his and Armin’s plate together and waging a silent staring contest with Mikasa to see if she’d hand him hers, Zeke took up his own and Eren’s mom’s, smiling distantly. “It’s my pleasure,” he said.

Mikasa handed Eren her plate sullenly before Zeke could make it out of the room first. Eren muttered  his thanks and marched into the kitchen with his brother. Who didn’t ask for Eren’s pile. They walked in together. They reached the sink. They dropped off the plates and silverware. All without needing conversation. Because Eren’s grandparents and Eren’s mom hadn’t raised animals, and they could figure out putting plates away without talking.

Wordless communication was a sign of closeness.

They walked back to the dining room.

Eren plopped in his seat, eyebrows burning from the effort of holding back his mood.

His mom was watching him, smiling wordlessly.

He tried to iron out his scowl. For her.

She tapped her forehead, only lined with age, and shook her head at him as Zeke eased back into his seat next to her. Next to Eren, Armin was there, patient and resigned to the inevitable explosion that Eren was not going to let happen.

Mikasa caught his glaring eyes and understood.

She’d been taller than him most of their lives, even if she wasn’t anymore.

Eren took a wrench to the screws in his scowl and breathed. No cheap shortcuts. No orange bottles or baggies he should have thrown away. A few weeks of bad dinners that made his mom smile wasn’t asking much.

Zeke sat calmly in his chair.

Eren needed a tennis ball.

----

Waking up earlier than anyone in the apartment wasn’t something Eren thought of as mattering. Historia stayed up too late and he sometimes wondered if he was supposed to help her with that, and he thought Benjamin judged him for being up first and not bringing him over any food, but he never thought about it as a real part of his life.

Waking up because something clattered in the kitchen was alarming and weird.

More weird because the sun was already out, so it couldn’t be Frieda.

Eren woke up with his eyes open and face smushed into the stars on his pillow, not having any idea where he was. He didn’t move. He wasn’t sure his eyes were following instructions well enough to blink. His pillow was soft. The light lining his bed from the crack in the curtains wasn’t. He had a hand dangling off his bed.

Another clang hit from outside his drowsy haze.

Pots and pans.

And voices.

Eren fumbled for his phone, digging it out from under his hip and swiping away the incomplete text he’d fallen asleep trying to send Armin. The clock blared at him. He’d slept in. It was his day off, he’d slept in, he’d failed at roping Armin into a movie, and there were people banging around the kitchen with more noise than anyone who had a key created.

They didn’t know anyone who came over without a written invitation.

Eren took a stumbling lurch out of his bed and room, the full morning light sparkling into the apartment and jabbing him directly in the eyes to go with the even louder clattering his door had protected him from.

A sing-song greeting slipped through the rest of the cacophony.

“Good morning, sleepy head.”

They knew one person who came over without a written invitation.

Eren stood in the threshold of the hallway. Ymir sat on the counter, sitting next to a waffle iron and licking a beater. The rest of the entire kitchen was strewn around her, in disarray except for three empty plates. Shopping bags cluttered the usually spotless floor. Historia, nowhere closer to helpful than he was, had her elbow perched on one of the remaining edges of the counter. She was watching Ymir with bland confusion and a spark of something Eren couldn’t name. The batter from the beater in her hand dripped down her wrist.

Across from them both, the sink was full of more dishes than he’d thought they’d owned. A mixing bowl with a cereal bowl lumped in it was sliding slowly against the side, jangling several forks.

More awake every bizarre second, Eren stared blankly at Ymir. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s the first thing she said, too,” Ymir said. She twirled her beater in Historia’s general direction. “You two could use a manners class.”

Without really looking away from Ymir, who as far as Eren could see was doing nothing outside of lapping up batter on top of their counter, Historia drifted out of whatever daze she seemed to be in. “She making us breakfast,” she told Eren.

Her elbow nudged the nearest plate. Two black slats had been thrown on top of it. They’d probably looked closer to something edible before Ymir ever touched them.

“She burned the toast.”

Ymir scoffed. “Your toaster has more settings than the sun,” she said, brandishing her beater at it. She turned back to Historia, comment at the ready—and Historia was smiling at her. Ymir stopped. Like she was back to falling off a wall, only Eren didn’t have to save her. The conversation paused, Ymir’s tongue stuck to the beater before she swallowed around it and continued with a soft rasp. “Did you just go out and buy the first, most expensive one you saw?”

“…Yes.”

Ymir was trying, badly, to hide that soft, not-Ymir smile that fit her face too well. Eren started considering grabbing a bowl of cereal and heading back to his room. A beep disrupted the thought. Ymir hopped to the floor and dropped her beater to a battered plate, popping open the waffle iron.

“A toaster that could fit a whole gingerbread house, and no TV,” she drawled, delivering a perfectly cooked waffle to one of the plates and slathering more batter onto the iron. “You guys really have your priorities set around here.”

“The TV light’s bad for Benjamin,” Historia said before Eren could. Ymir rolled her eyes and shoved the waffled plate into Historia’s hands on her way to pull the syrup off the stove.

There was syrup on the stove.

Eren slowly reached for a stool and eased onto it. Breakfast and Ymir. Bertolt and Reiner were missing, but they were missing when he came home from family dinners to Historia and Ymir fast asleep on the couch. No one expected him to talk then.

No one expected him to talk now. The third plate next to the waffle iron was the only real sign that anyone had thought he’d be in the room with the two of them. Eren’s elbows joined the small space Historia had carved out for hers. He didn’t join her in staring at Ymir. Historia covered that enough for everyone he knew and had never met.

“What are you doing to it?”

“Buttering it?”

“You aren’t going to be able to taste anything but butter. I could have grabbed a stick and shoved it in your mouth instead of going to all this trouble.”

“Ymir, that’s too much syrup.”

“It’s the right amount of syrup for—are you putting more butter on it?”

Historia jabbed the part of her waffle that was still visibly waffle with her fork, slicing the piece off and defiantly popping it into her mouth. Ymir tossed her potholder over the remains of the stick of butter. Most of it untouched. She still slumped back on the counter with the look of someone reading off a death row inmate’s crimes. Bertolt left that out when he made waffles.

“You’re going to make yourself sick,” Ymir said. Pretending not to be staring at her. She was like one of Mikasa’s cats, only noisier. “What about you, Eren, do you start every day trying to poison yourself?”

As removed from having an opinion on the state of the waffle Historia was chewing as he’d been for the entire conversation, Eren shrugged. “I think Historia knows how to feed herself,” he said.

“You would, wouldn’t you, but then you get to displays like this, and—”

Historia, with a speed people who made it their business to be around Ymir picked up one way or another, popped her fork into Ymir’s mouth, the skewered piece of waffle making immediate contact with her tongue. Syrup stuck to her lower lip, and Ymir’s eyes fluttered shut, taking the offered bite with no resistance. The glowering pride on her face lasted until Historia flicked away the syrup with her finger, melting her faster than the butter.

Eren watched his empty plate instead of looking back at Benjamin. Armin said people anthropomorphized their pets too much. A fish could not relate to this.

With a groan that didn’t read as exasperated as any of them were going to pretend, the fork was released to its owner. “Compliments to the chef,” Ymir said, scrubbing her battered hand over her mouth.

“The chef burned toast,” Historia said. She found the remaining free inches of counter space and sat down next to Ymir.

“Toast isn’t cooking,” Ymir said, grabbing up another fork and bypassing Historia’s halfhearted deflections to rip off more of the buttered waffle. “It’s a bargain with an electrical socket, and yours didn’t pay up.”

Reiner wasn’t here to mouth ‘ignore her’ over Bertolt’s shoulder, so Eren spoke up. “I thought you were blaming the toaster.”

“I can blame you too if you’re feeling left out.”

“I wasn’t awake.”

“Yeah, your commitment to helping has never been clearer.” Ymir stole more waffle. Shared. Historia, with a small shake of her head when Eren caught her eye, had twirled the plate around so they were eating from opposite sides.

The iron beeped, and Eren slid his waffle—which was staying his—onto his plate and dealt with his own syrup. Ymir had used Bertolt’s recipe. It tasted like his tongue was going to melt into sugar and made him want five more. Reiner passed out after three. Splitting one was probably for the best for someone Historia’s size.

He didn’t think being helpful was what Ymir was going for. She was squishing Historia most of the way off the counter and then catching her with a snipe about being more careful in the kitchen.

He still had his phone. The only thing he knew about his day off besides Ymir turning it into hers was that it was sunny out.

No one was paying attention to him anyway, so having his phone out and texting someone at what counted for the breakfast table wasn’t bad manners. He found Mikasa’s contact listing and hit send.

want to climb today?

The relief when she texted back in under a minute wasn’t anything to be proud over. Or anything he deserved, but he was supposed to be practicing remembering that without wanting to rip his throat out. Relief fit.

               Of course. Where?

you pick. anywhere’s good

“And where,” Ymir said when he got up with his plate, like any of her attention was on him, “do you think you’re going?”

“Grabbing my stuff to go rock climbing with Mikasa.”

“The cat girl?”

Eren looked at Historia, who remembered Colt had a cockatiel better than that he had a brother. “Sure,” he said.

“Because spending time with her is so much better than time with us,” Ymir said, picking off a piece of Historia’s second waffle and licking away a dribble of syrup. Her elbow caught one of the bowls that had gone into the cooking, and a cascade of clatters dipped further into the sink. “Didn’t think you were the type to ditch your friends for a girl, Eren.”

Historia had worked her way into being fused to Ymir’s hip. Their feet periodically bumped together and bounced apart too carefully to be an accident. Eren said, because Ymir being Historia’s whatever only meant he had to put up with some of her, “I don’t see you cooking breakfast for Reiner.”

Ymir smirked at him. “That’s what Bertolt’s for.”

Eren rolled his eyes. “I’m going climbing.”

The chorused, “Have fun,” when he stepped out of the apartment on his day off, bag stuffed with extra water Mikasa didn’t need because she knew how to function, only felt sincere from one of them. That was fine. He had somewhere to go when they didn’t ask him to stay.

[next]

[lithalwrites]

Realization

Life is a series of realizations, some creep up on you slowly, like ivy covering brick walls, while others hit you with all the force of a sucker punch. The relative numbers of each kind of realization vary from person to person, from situation to situation, from day to day. Some are better at spotting the impending realizations, while others are surprised more often than not. Some realizations are uncomfortable, some are relieving, and some change our lives forever.

Kuroo Tetsurou’s life was also a series of realizations, some trivial, some vital, all contributing to shaping him into the person he was.

He was six when he realized he loved volleyball, and that he wanted to play it for as long as he was able to. He was eight when his family moved, and he was unhappy with the move. He was shy and scared that he wouldn’t be able to make any new friends. Luckily for him, the neighbours had a kid just a year younger than him, who didn’t seem to mind when he went over and watched him play games. It was hard to get to know him at first, they were both quiet and he didn’t know where to start, but eventually they started talking, and became friends. He was still eight when he realized that he liked spending time with Kenma, who loved playing video games way too much, but also humoured him and tossed around a volleyball with him when he asked.

He was ten and working on his science project when he realized he would love to keep learning about how things worked. There was something very satisfying about gathering information and putting it together to create something that gave results.

He was twelve and watching a horror movie with Kenma when he realized that he was much more easily scared than Kenma. It was only after the movie that he realized that he had instinctively clutched Kenma’s arm in fright, and that had made the movie less scary.

He was thirteen and at the pool with his friends when they started talking about girls, and he realized that he wasn’t interested in the conversation they were having. He wondered if it meant he was interested in guys, but he didn’t find himself staring at the guys at the pool either. Perhaps he was just a late bloomer.

Over the next few years, other realizations followed: he liked teaching, he didn’t like parties, he was loud and boisterous, but it always left him tired and in need of recharging. It was as if spending time with a lot of people drained his battery. Spending time with Kenma never tired him out, and he could spend hours watching his friend play games and playing with him. They talked, about a lot of things, and Kenma knew more about him than anyone else. Probably more than even his father and grandparents. He had a feeling that there was something big related to that he should pay attention to, but he also wanted to avoid it for as long as possible.

Sometimes, the realizations that hit the hardest do so because signs have gone ignored, and things have reached the breaking point. The mind and the heart are sick of the deflection, the denial, the avoidance, and confrontation is the only option left.

Kuroo was eighteen and packing up for university when he found an old album. His father had gotten him a film camera for his eleventh birthday, and he had spent most of his allowance on film and getting it developed. He had stopped using it after about six months of near-constant use, and had never really picked it back up. Kenma had asked to borrow the camera, and probably still had it. He would have to ask him about it. He looked around his room at the half-packed boxes, and then decided to take a break from packing. He picked up the album and opened it to the first page. The very first picture was a selfie he had taken in Kenma’s room, Kenma playing a game on his handheld console, not looking at him. His own face took up one corner of the picture, his grin wide. He looked awfully pleased with himself. He remembered when he had taken the picture. It was his birthday, and his dad had left the present in his room for him to find when he woke up. He had run over to Kenma’s house as soon as he had opened his present.

The next picture was him blowing candles on a cake Kenma’s mom had baked for him, Kenma by his side. Kenma’s mom must have taken the picture. She had always welcomed him to their house, and had treated him like a second son. She sometimes even joked about him being a son she hadn’t asked for but loved anyway.

He flipped through the album. It was full of pictures he had taken, some of them ‘artsy’ shots of things like clouds and rocks and flowers, some of them selfies, some of them pictures of him and Kenma, and most of them pictures of Kenma. His album was full of pictures of Kenma. Kenma playing video games, Kenma doing homework, Kenma opening the present Kuroo had gotten him for his birthday, Kenma looking at him in fond exasperation.

As he got farther into the album, he wished he hadn’t put the camera away after just a year. Pictures were snapshots of life, moments frozen in time, and he wished he had frozen more of them. He put the album in one of his boxes, to take with him. He wouldn’t be able to see Kenma as often as he had for the past decade, and the thought made him unbearably sad. Before he could spend much thought on his feelings, his phone pinged and he saw a text from Kenma, asking him to come over. His mom had prepared a going-away dinner for Kuroo.

Seeing the words ‘going-away dinner’ made his heart ache, and he wished that he didn’t have to leave. He put the phone in his pocket and headed over to the Kozume house. He greeted Kenma’s mom, who smiled lovingly at him and told him to go ahead and have a seat at the table. Kenma came downstairs and asked him if he was done packing, and Kuroo felt something unpleasantly squeezing his chest.

The food looked amazing, and they dug in as soon as Kenma’s mom joined them. She gushed over Kuroo and how proud she was about him getting into such a good school, and asked him about his program and what classes he would be taking. Kuroo answered her, a smile on his face, but his heart still ached.

Once they were finished with dinner, she brought out a cake that said, ‘We’re proud of you, Tetsu-kun!’ and it took all of Kuroo’s willpower to not start crying at the table. After they were done with dessert and Kuroo and Kenma had helped clear away the dishes, Kenma’s mom gave Kuroo a hug, and then handed him a present, telling him to open it with Kenma. They headed upstairs, and Kuroo unwrapped the present as Kenma watched him. It was another photo album.

“You can go ahead and look at it if you want,” Kenma said, and Kuroo complied. Inside were pictures of him and Kenma, on birthdays, graduations, in Kenma’s room, outside in the yard. Kenma’s mom must have taken them. In several pictures, spanning the past few years, Kuroo saw himself looking at Kenma with what he could only describe as love. That he had feelings for Kenma wasn’t a revelation to Kuroo, but the realization that he had apparently had these feelings for years hit him like a ton of bricks. There had been so many signs that he had ignored or denied or dismissed, and now these pictures were laying down evidence in front of him that he couldn’t deny.

“Kuro? What’s wrong?” Kenma asked, sounding more concerned than Kuroo had ever heard him, and to his shock, he saw a teardrop land on the back of his hand. He touched the back of his hand to his eyes, and it came away wet. “Kuro?”

And then, because Kenma always was just as good at reading him as he was at reading Kenma, moved closer and pulled him into a hug. “I’m going to miss you,” Kuroo said, his voice muffled.

“Me too,” Kenma said. “We can still text. And call. And visit.”

“It won’t be the same.”

“I know.”  

And then, his heart racing a mile a minute, Kuroo said what he should have said a while ago. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Kenma said, without missing a beat. “I have for a very long time.”

Kuroo laughed through his tears. “I have too, but I just didn’t know until the realization hit me.”

“Better late than never,” Kenma answered, rubbing his back soothingly. “Mom is going to be very happy. Now she can really call you her son.”

Kuroo found himself smiling, the ache in his heart subsiding just a little.

As far as life-changing realizations went, Kuroo could not have asked for a better one.  

[inactiive-shit]

Life As A Sanders

LAAS Masterlist

Read On AO3!

Part 1: The Adoption

((Next Part))

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Warnings: I don’t think there’s any for this chapter!

Pairings: Familial DLAMP, in the end

Words: 3,333

Summary: Through the years of Virgil and Logan getting adopted by their Dad, Patton, and some of their major milestones in life.

Author’s note: So! It is the first Friday of the new decade, and I’ve decided I’m going to start posting this story. There are twelve parts, and I will be posting every Friday until it’s finished. Hope you enjoy!

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Patton couldn’t deny that he had a weak spot for kids. But really, who didn’t? They were so adorable, and eventually they got bigger - but still adorable! - and then you could hold conversations with them about such simple and mundane things that seemed so important to them. It was a nice break from the stresses of adult life, okay?

So, yeah, when Patton had been with a man he had thought was his soulmate, and when both of them wanted to adopt, they went for it. Why not? They loved each other, they loved kids, they were financially stable, and they both wanted the experience of raising kids and seeing them go through life, learning everything they could.

Everybody told them things changed when you brought kids into the mix. But they knew that! Of course it changed things! Sure, they would have different disagreements, different types of disagreements, but they still loved each other. They could still work things out. They could still compromise.

Until they couldn’t.

When they were talking about adopting, talking about the things that they would and would not accept in a child, there weren’t very many limitations. They agreed that no disorders would stand in the way. They were stable enough to be able to afford treatments or equipment, and Patton’s cousin Emile was a child psychologist. He dealt all different sorts of kids everyday and knew a lot about different disorders. If the pair fell in love with a kiddo who had special needs, they could ask Emile for help real time while they learned all about it on their own.

They had a small disagreement on age. Patton wanted to have it open to kids of all ages. The probability of older kids being adopted shrank with every year the child aged, and that wasn’t right. They should be open to older kids too, Patton insisted, because they were still kids. They were still young and in need of families. They still needed to be raised. They still needed to be loved.

Patton’s partner, however, wanted the experience of raising a child from infancy. It was part of the experience, he would retort. You’re not really raising them if they already have their own ideals and they’ve never even met you.

In the end, they agreed to have it open to all ages, but with a preference for the younger adoptees.

It didn’t quite sit right with Patton.

Looking back, Patton supposes that argument was one of the first warning signs.

However, they both agreed that gender was a non-issue. Who cared if the child was a boy or a girl? They were still a kid. Plus, the designation might not be accurate. The child could always turn out to be trans or nonbinary or agender or genderfluid or demigender or any other gender out there.

Since they agreed so heartily on that point, the previous argument was mostly forgotten.

Next was number of kids. Patton, as was his way, excitedly said that he would love to have as many children as they could afford. His partner laughed good-naturedly, and insisted that they should only start out with one. Like a trial run.

That didn’t sit very well with Patton either. They were talking about people, not apps. There was no free trial here.

Still, Patton pushed it aside. He’d heard other people use similar phrases when having their first kid, and he convinced himself that it was just one of those commonly used analogies nobody ever thought about the real implications of. They didn’t really think of their kids as a trial. Nobody would actually say that about their kids.

Patton had nodded slowly, though. It did make sense to start with just one. Get a feel for the job, learn how to handle the different things that having a kid can throw at you. This was especially important when adopting, because Patton didn’t ever want his kiddo to think they counted as less than someone who was biologically related to their parents, or think they weren’t good enough for their birth parents. And Patton knew that even if they did everything right, their baby would eventually have questions about who had them biologically. Who wouldn’t? It was a natural question.

Also, there was the hurdle of being a gay couple with kids. They would have to learn how to navigate all that, too. People were more accepting now, but not all people.

So, Patton could see where he was coming from, even if the phrasing of the concern was unfortunate.

However, Patton had insisted that they not entirely rule out having more than one kiddo. After all, he wanted to keep siblings together if he could. Patton didn’t know what he’d do if he hadn’t had Emile, his cousin who was more like a sibling, growing up. He didn’t want to deprive anyone else of that opportunity, either.

So, they had compromised again. Open to siblings, but preferring just one.

Most other things had been agreed upon. Race and ethnicity was irrelevant. Their reason for being given up didn’t matter. How long they’d been in the system didn’t matter. Behavioral problems didn’t matter. Birth defects didn’t matter. Any physical deformities didn’t matter.

Finally, after months and years of talk and forms and waiting, they were ready. The pair went from foster home to foster home, orphanage to orphanage, hospital to hospital, looking and meeting and talking to all the kids. There had been more than one that Patton’s heart had cried out for (or maybe more like all of them), but his partner had disagreed on most cases. There was one girl they were going to adopt, but they had talked it out first, to be sure, and she had been adopted by someone else instead.

After such a long time searching and not agreeing on kiddos, Patton was beginning to become hopeless. He wondered if maybe they’d jumped into this a little too fast. Were they ready for kids? Were they honestly prepared to deal with everything a kid could throw at them, all the unique challenges every kid presented, and figure out the different parenting styles they were likely to have if they couldn’t even agree on a child to adopt in the first place? It wasn’t rocket science, Patton knew.

It was something much more important, that required a much steadier hand.

It was a cloudy day when Patton’s partner woke him up, far too early. Patton, never the early waker, had been slow to come. But his partner had been excited. They had a visit to the hospital today, to see a bunch of babies that were still too young to go into the system, and he just knew that today was the day. His excitement was infectious so, with a quick kiss, Patton jumped in the shower and then let his partner cook him a nice omelet for breakfast.

Patton wasn’t much of a cook.

They reached the hospital right on time, and immediately a woman by the name Dr. Abioye showed the men into the ward. It was the same place the rest of the babies stayed, but the ones that were available for adoption had a green marking on the side of their little boxes. (Were they called boxes? Cradles? Bassinets? That had certainly not been covered in any class Patton had taken in preparation for this.)

“These babies are all six months old or less,” Dr. Abioye told them. “The green markings indicate that the parents, for whatever reason, have relinquished their rights. Some babies are kept here because they are sick and in need of intensive care, and others because they are newborn and the system prefers they be with trained professionals day and night rather than a foster family.” She smiled at them, then looked at the papers in her hands “I see here that you haven’t marked anything down as a hard no, so I will leave you to it. If you have any questions, I will be making my rounds in here as will the other nurses. Feel free to get to know our little ones.” With that final remark, Dr. Abioye began going around the room, cooing at the babies and tickling them, eliciting giggles and shrieks.

Patton’s partner suggested that they go alone, because he felt that it would be easier to see all the babies that way. Patton hesitantly agreed, and they split off to opposite ends of the nursery.

For the third time, it didn’t quite feel right to Patton that they split up. He wasn’t sure why, though, so he kept quiet, forgetting about his own problems as he got see all the babies.

There were big ones and small ones sleeping ones and crying ones and giggly ones. There were so many to choose from, and they were so small! Even the biggest baby there could easily be held in one hand. There was so much to take in, and there were so many different babies to look at.

For a second, Patton felt hopeless again. What if they could never choose? Worse, what if they did, and then found out they were horrible parents? What if they couldn’t do right by the little one they wanted to take home?

But Patton took a breath, and let it out, and then smiled down at a two week old adoptee. She was tiny, utterly minuscule, and absolutely having the time of her life. Patton was reassured, as that baby smiled at him, that he wanted kids and that he would do whatever he could to keep them happy and safe.

Patton kept walking along, looking at a few more cribs (Patton still didn’t know the right title, and cribs was close enough, right?)

Then, a little baby just started wailing. Patton hurried down a few cribs to find the little guy. Once Patton saw them, he couldn’t help but coo at them and picked them up. Patton bounced the baby up and down a few times, and it seemed to calm them a little. They kept having strange little hiccuping noises, but Patton figured that normal.

After a few minutes, the baby was entirely calmed down, no longer crying, and Patton gently set them back in the crib. Except, as soon as the baby felt the sheet of their tiny bed and not Patton’s hands, the crying immediately rose a few decibels. So, like any good father would do, Patton picked the baby back up, and kept shushing him, waiting for the crying to become sniffling and the that to become even baby breaths.

“You’re pretty good at that,” an unfamiliar voice said. Patton jumped, but turned slowly so he didn’t upset his baby.

“Aw, thanks, kiddo! I may be new to parenting, but taking care of ‘em is old hat.” Patton grinned down at the one in his arms.

“I can tell.” The man laughed. “And to tell you a secret? I’ve been working here for years, and I have never heard a baby cry as much as this little boy has. As a matter of fact, nobody here can get him to stop crying. We’ve tried feeding and diaper changes, everything you can think of. But this baby always has something to say.”

Patton bounced the little boy in his arms a few more times. “There’s always a reason when babies cry. They need something. They’re too little to be crying for no reason just yet.” He glanced around at the attendants. “I’m sure he just wants some cuddles. The smaller they are, the more cuddles they need! You could say they’re cuddle fish.” Patton winked at the nurse in front of him, who burst out laughing even though it was a bit of a stretch.

Patton’s partner came over, and the nurse left, still giggling about the pun. Patton smiled. A hard day’s work for a full day’s smiles!

Patton’s partner told him that he hadn’t had any luck, and asked about Patton. Patton grinned quietly, and proudly showed off the little boy in his arms. “I think he’s the one,” Patton said. They had a brief discussion, and quickly agreed that yes, this was the baby they wanted. So, they told Dr. Abioye, who smiled warmly and went about getting all the proper paperwork.

“This is the last step of the adoption process,” she told them. “You sign all the proper paperwork, we give you all his information, and then you take him home. Of course, there’s a one week waiting period for taking the baby home, so that you can take care of any last minute preparations you may have.” Patton nodded quickly, sad that he wouldn’t be able to take the baby home now, but knowing it was for the best. There was a few more baby-proofing items they’d been waiting to put up.

“Now now, what’s this little guy’s name?” Dr. Abioye asked. Patton blushed, said he’d go check, and ducked out of the office. He had forgotten to check when he’d picked the baby up. Foolish of him, but at least he remembered which crib he had come from.

Patton found the crib, and giggled. If he was unsure about the baby before, there was no doubt now. The paper on the box read Virgil Xanders - two months of age - four pounds three ounces - up for adoption. Well, Xanders was practically the same as Sanders, which was Patton’s last name, and they had already decided that their children would be taking Patton’s last name. They had decided, if they got married, that they would use Patton’s name. It was important to Patton that he was a Sanders, and his partner didn’t particularly care about his own last name one way or another.

Patton slipped back into the office and announced Virgil’s name for the doctor to hear. Virgil fussed a little when he did it, and Patton cooed about him already recognizing his name.

“Now, because you’re adopting him, you can change his name to whatever you want,” Dr. Abioye said, flipping through a file cabinet. She pulled up another folder, and glanced through, then frowned.

“What’s the matter?” Patton asked, hugging Virgil a little closer.

“Well, Mr. Sanders, according to this it says that Virgil has a twin brother. Logan Xanders.” Dr. Abioye looked from Patton to his partner and back. “I will step out, and let you two discuss what you want to do.”

As soon as she was gone, Patton’s mouth was working. “We can’t split up siblings. Please, we have to take them. Both of them.” And Patton worked on begging his way into convincing his partner to adopt two little boys because they needed a good home where they could be together.

So, after a few minutes’ discussion, they decided to adopt both. The papers were signed, and Patton struggled because he didn’t want to risk holding Virgil with his weaker arm, so he had to sign with his non-dominant hand.But the whole thing turned out well, and Patton could not have been happier.

Back in the main nursery, Patton hesitantly set Virgil back in his crib. Virgil stared at Patton with wide, curious eyes as he moved around. Then, Patton checked the name on the next crib over. Patricia Vidales. Well, that was not Virgil’s brother at all. Patton checked the crib to the other side of Virgil, and there was Logan Xanders. Happily, Patton cooed over him before picking him up, and Logan immediately began squirming around. Patton kept mumbling to him, trying to placate him, but Logan did not seem as easily soothed as his brother had been.

Then, he looked to the side and saw Virgil. Logan gurgled and it seemed like he tried to throw himself out of Patton’s arms and into his brother’s crib. Patton giggled and lowered him down so that they were face to face. Despite the fact that it was nearly impossible for the babies to recognize each other, they both began making tiny baby laughs and kicking at each other. Patton squealed with delight, startling the babies, and his partner laughed. Then, they put their boys back and left, knowing that they’d be there bright and early the next Thursday to take home the newest members of their family.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Things went from bad to worse. The first month was fine, and the second was alright. But by the third month, both of the men were reaching the end of their patience. Neither of them had gotten a full night’s sleep since before they’d brought the boys home, and while Logan’s sleep pattern had started to lengthen, Virgil was still waking up every few hours.

Patton dealt with it most nights, but they were both always woken up by it. During the day, the boys were golden. Logan was inquisitive, looking at and eating everything he could get his hands on. He squinted a lot, though, and Patton was beginning to wonder if he needed glasses. Virgil was a little fussier, and he wanted to be held at all times, but he was usually okay when he was with Logan.

Things went way sideways when the boys were six months old.

Patton and his partner had been taking care of them for four months. Virgil still couldn’t sleep through the night, and Logan was starting to become just as clingy as his brother during the day. And Patton’s partner got to the point of wanting to tear his own hair out.

Then, the worst thing happened. Patton’s partner suggested that they should take the boys back. Put them back up for adoption because they were not prepared to deal with everything the babies brought along. They wouldn’t remember being with them anyway, so there was no harm done and they could go back to getting a full night’s sleep.

Patton’s jaw dropped at the words. It had become a fight, in which neither man was willing to back down. At the end, Patton’s partner had stormed out of the house, leaving Patton to deal with the boys, who were crying from fear and hunger.

A week later, the other man had packed up his stuff, signed papers that said Patton had full custody, and left. Patton was devastated. He’d thought they were soulmates, in it for the long haul, and absolutely nothing could tear them apart. To be proven wrong was agonizing. And for months after the fact, Patton took care of his boys the best he could, lost in a fog of depression and stress.

He brought them to the bakery with him, where the other workers would play with them throughout the day. He offered to pay them for babysitting, but they all refused. He brought them to the store with him, where they sometimes got odd looks. He took them anywhere he had to go, because he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving them with someone else.

And then, when his baby boys were almost a year old, when Patton had had them for about ten months, when Patton had been taking care of his boys alone for six months, something absolutely astounding happened. Logan stood up, and took two little, tiny baby steps and then fell promptly on his butt and started crying. Virgil crawled across the rug at the speed of light to get to his seventeen minutes younger brother, but Patton sat for a moment, looking in awe at the tiny baby.

Logan had taken those steps toward him. He’d been walking toward Patton, his Dad. And Patton was suddenly shocked right out of his fog. He didn’t need his ex. These boys, these two beautiful, loving boys were everything Patton could ask for, and he was lucky enough to have found them.

It would take more time to get completely over the heartache he had experienced, Patton thought, picking up the crying Logan and letting Virgil crawl onto his lap, but at least with his precious boys, it wouldn’t be nearly as hard.

[blushingonmyknees]

Remembering My Place in Public

Yesterday I told my Domme that I was considering going to a movie today with my biggest celebrity crush (Margot Robbie) in it. The people I hang out with the most are out of town, so I would actually be able to go to the movie by myself and relax. Plus, most of my friends do not like most of the movies my celebrity crush is in.

When discussing different ideas of subjugation last night, I said, “When you mentioned warming and cooling lotions earlier, I wondered if you would ever send me to a movie that has my celebrity crush in it with cooling on my nipples, maybe on my crack and warming on my backside just so I have a very firm reminder the entire film that I am not in control.”

My Domme responded by saying, “I would absolutely send you with clothespins in your pocket and have you wear them through the previews so you ache through the movie.”

Before bed last night, I asked my Domme if I may please ask Her a fun question about clamps. She granted me permission to ask my question. “Since I am likely going to the Margot movie tomorrow, would you like me to try your clothespins idea so I ache through the movie, Ma’am,” I asked. “I am thinking about wearing them for 15 minutes before heading to the theater and then debating about trying to take them with me, but I am unsure how I would attach them in a crowded theater for previews.”

She told me I would attach them in the bathroom before heading in. Then I would just have to worry about taking them off discretely. I wondered if they would be noticeable through my sweatshirt and my Domme decided I should just wear the clamps for 15 minutes before heading to the theater.

I told my Domme I really wondered if clothespins would fit under a sweatshirt and if the added weight would be more torture and how it would feel ordering from the concession stand like that.

She then asked if I had a sweatshirt in my room. I informed her I did, and she told me to fetch it and my clamps... for science! I did so, immediately and obediently... and then was told to go somewhere I could see a mirror. She had me strip, then put on my clamps, a shirt and a sweatshirt over it. I sent Her the photographs for both evidence and another opinion. We both agreed the clamps were not noticeable under my layers and that I should go to the movies like that today. We did a couple tests and made sure my nipples were already sore before bed.

I woke up this morning and immediately sent my Domme a morning message. I informed Her my nipples were very sore from last night. She asked how sore and I said, “Sore enough to make me ache but I still love the thought of wearing clamps for previews and concessions.”

We continued chatting and it was decided I would be going to the 1:20 p.m. showing. It was around noon when my Domme told me to get ready, grab a quick bite to eat and then head out the door.

I left the apartment around 12:30 p.m. and decided it would be smart to get something light and fast since I knew the parking garage next to the theater would probably take some time to get in. The whole time I imagined doing this, I pictured an empty movie theater with me in the back row since it is a work-day for most people and I felt like that would be the best spot to do the task in.

I started driving to a fast food restaurant that was half way between my apartment and the theater since it was already 12:40 p.m. (you’re not getting my advertisement for free!) ;-). On the way there, I looked down at the speedometer and realized I was going slightly over the speed limit. I immediately slowed down because I know my number one priority is protecting my Domme’s property. I also knew my head was in the clouds a bit and attempted to center myself.

I arrived at the restaurant, ordered a small sandwich and drink and then waited for my food. The time waiting was actually amazing because I feel like it helped to center me. I was in a bit of a rush and looked at my phone. It was 12:47 p.m. when the food arrived. I immediately wanted to chow down on the burger, but after two bites I took a deep breath. As long as I am out of the restaurant by 1 p.m., I should have enough time.

I was feeling really centered, but my heart was racing thinking of what I was about to do. Shortly before 1 p.m., I was in my car and heading to the theater. What transpired between this point and the movie starting could have been a comedy.

I got stopped at a red light almost immediately... and the light stayed red for five minutes. My fight or flight seemed to kick in because I started to get a little flustered and kept telling myself not to break a sweat.

The light finally turned green, and thankfully, when I arrived at the parking garage it said 20 spaces were available. Entering it was easy, which seems to never happen.

As I drove in, I started looking for spots to park. I looked down at the clock and it said 1:11 p.m. I drove up a level... then the next... and started losing hope as no spots seemed to be available. I finally got to the ninth floor (the top floor) and it was packed. Whoever would have thought New Year’s Eve afternoon would be a prime movie time? Not me.

Thankfully, as I started losing hope, I noticed a stall. It was on the clear opposite side of the lot but I made it! Then I took the elevator down and could not figure out which side of the parking garage I needed to head in order to get to the theater. I actually ended up on the complete opposite side than where I needed to go, so I sped walked around the garage until I found the spot that looked familiar. I checked my phone again and it said 1:14 p.m.

“Good, I thought,” I have six minutes to purchase my ticket, subjugate myself, order concessions and make it in to the movie. No big deal.

Getting in the ticket line went surprisingly fast. I was going to pay with a gift card I recently received, since that was one of the main reasons I originally thought about going to the movie. The cashier asked which movie and I told him.

It is a fairly unknown movie to the general public, I think, so I figured the theater would still be empty. “There is only one okay seat left,” the cashier said. “There are several in the first row but only one elsewhere. It is row three, at the end and it is actually up top.” He convinced me. As I mentioned, I am a back row person, but I really wanted to see the movie and carry out my task, so I took it.

He went to go run the gift card and it was showing zero’s. He tried it again and then informed me the card was empty (I just received it yesterday). Thankfully, I had cash on me so I ended up paying that way.

I then headed to the restroom with my clothespins. I walked in and it was empty except for one person... who was chatting on their cell phone and pacing up and down the entrance to the stalls. I headed into one anyway and as he was walking the other direction, lifted both my shirt and sweatshirt and added one clamp to each nipple. The pinch was very noticeable and made me ache.

I then lowered my shirt, ouch!! And then my sweatshirt. I actually pressed down on the clamps after everything was on to make sure they were attached properly and because I thought my Domme would probably enjoy the added torture.

I stopped at the sink before leaving and washed my hands while biting my lip and noticed I had a slight smile from both the subjugation and from serving my Domme in this way.

I stepped out of the restroom and know I was biting my lip. I do not know if I did, but I assume I let out some whimpers between the stall I was in and the path between the restroom and concession stand. The concession line was packed and all of them seemed to have newer workers at them. 

The line I started in was slow, so I hopped to the next one (which I never do). I was actually next in line and looked at the clock... 1:20 p.m. I thought it was okay because I was next, when the person in front of me decided to ask about their membership program. The employee started describing it and the customer in front of me seemed to have a million questions... so to the next line I hopped.

The pain in my nipples was very noticeable and I was unsure at that point if I was impatient because of the time or if I was actually fidgety because of the pain. I then tried to calm myself by thinking of all the people with nipple piercings and knew my Domme would enjoy me in my current state.

At the final line I was in, there was a couple that was flirty while ordering. Instead of ordering snacks, they were almost tickling each other. Thankfully, they finally ordered and then it was my turn.

I ordered my pop and popcorn and intentionally swiped my hand across my sweatshirt just so I would make sure this whole experience was actually happening and real. I finally received my popcorn and pop at 1:23 p.m. and quickly headed to the theater.

I entered and then looked around. It took me a while to find my seat because it was actually the row you see once you enter the theater. Row three. On the ground.

There was a small part of me that debated about asking the manager if I could go to a later showing but I decided since I was here, I should carry on with my task. I sat down and there was no one next to me for the theater being “sold out”.

This theater recently got the dream loungers, so I decided it would probably not be so bad if I reclined a bit for comfort. This seat did not recline. I figured it was broken. Then I looked down the rest of the row and realized the rest of the row was reserved for handicapped and this was more of a care-taker seat.

Almost immediately, an elderly gentleman walked in with a cane and sat right next to me. My nipples were starting to get very sore at this point and I had no idea how I would remove the clothespins discretely.

The previews had actually just started when another elderly couple walked in. One of them was very upset because they had the final two seats (in the front row). She kept walking around and mentioned to her husband that it is not fair that I am in the section I’m in because I’m not handicapped. Thankfully, after walking around a bit, she decided to take her seat.

I watched all of the previews and could honestly not tell you what a single one was about. I was busy thinking of how much I ached and how it would please my Domme to know I was suffering and had a firm reminder that I am not in control.

I pushed down on my sweatshirt a few times throughout the previews just to make my heart race a little more. At the end of the previews, I knew it was time to remove the clamps and knew it would be painful. I “spilled” some popcorn on my sweatshirt so it would not be obvious what I was doing. The right clamp came off first and made me bite my lip so hard to keep from making an audible whimper.

Then it was time for the left clothespin. I unclamped the nipple and it was very sore too. When the right one came off, it felt like there was some liquid on it and I imagined I was bleeding.

I sat there with the clothespins resting underneath my sweatshirt for quite some time because I had no idea how to get them without it looking weird. I then started thinking about the lady in the first row and what if she got security, accusing me of being in the wrong seat? How would I describe two clothespins randomly falling out of my sweatshirt.

I eventually had an “itch” under my sweatshirt and retrieved both clothespins. I wore the clothespins in public, both while ordering concessions and while sitting through previews. I ached throughout the movie, just as my Domme desired.

It felt very good serving Her in this way. Margot’s character was subjugated in parts of the movie and I did not like that, but it almost felt right, knowing I was being subjugated myself throughout the movie. Sometimes when her character appeared on screen, I felt like my nipple pain was even more noticeable.

I would like to thank my Domme for giving me this experience and allowing me to partake in stealth submission. I live to serve. I know my place.

My ankles were bound throughout this post and I am looking forward to being subjugated tonight as a part of my Domme’s New Year’s celebration. I will now go and clean my room like a good house bitch, so She can be pleased in the areas I am used tonight.

[loverofvillains]

The first Readerfic I have ever written

@ssigmas, I blame you entirely for this! However, I am sort of grateful for inspiration! I been struggling with writing lately and stagnant too long. Thousands of ideas swirling in the head at work, get home, BLANK at the laptop. Why. 

So this is going to be a SigmaxReader fic! And it's my first reader fic. Be gentle >.>

                                                  Binary Stars

Your passions always lied in astrophysics and quantum physics, ever since you could see the stars in the sky. You loved going out with friends to stargazing parties, and even scrimped and saved all your extra money from working to buy yourself the best telescope one could own. You even took some photography lessons, because you wanted to take your own photos and capture the night sky as you saw it. You ended up becoming a professor yourself, at the young age of 25.

It was an incredible feat, but when you decided you wanted something, you buried yourself in your work and even took extra classes. You were set at an accelerated rate, and finished before many others who started with you. It was an oddity to have such a young, beautiful professor at the university. Most were used to older people teaching classes. This was probably why your classes had the highest attendance rate among your fellow professors.

One would think you were out of place, and at first, you felt that. There was only a handful of other professors teaching that were in the mid thirties; the closest to your age. The first week you ran into a slew of confidence issues, but everyone else was supportive and helpful on the campus. The other professors knew of your work, and were quick to help you whenever you felt out of place. One of them was quite a sincere man, and was ecstatic to hear you were in the same field as him. That was Dr. Siebren de Kuiper.

He was 55 at the time, but his build and his energy didn't match his age at all. You delighted in the banter back and forth about cosmic energies such as 'dark energy' which was still being figured out, and black holes, which he admitted to be working on an experiment involving its gravity. His life goal as he called it. You got along with all the others, and you turned some eyes of some professors, even some of the students around your age.

But Siebren? He was always warm, kind, and once in a while, would crack a corny, science joke with you. But he always remained professional. Always the gentleman, and careful not to seem creepy towards you. And the more short lunch talks you had with him, the more you spent time after hours in the labs with him, the more you saw him in a different light. That he was attractive. He was the type of man you wanted to find some day, as you told yourself many years ago. You didn't think you would find that in a man that was thirty years your senior though. And even in days like this, where humans had become more progressive than before, such large age gaps were frowned upon. Plus, he didn't seem to ever hint having any romantic interest in you.

But one day, you had a chance to test out his real thoughts.

The professors had gotten together with a nearby college's professors and all agreed to have a mixer party. One of the younger professors from your university found a nice, large bar to go to. And there was a game to play, a dating game.

There weren't many women in the group, but for the amount of women, the same number of men were selected to be 'chosen' to go out on a date with whichever woman chose them. It didn't have to be romantic or sexual, but could have been even a friendship building exercise.

Some were married and had to pass, but they were one man short...and Siebren had to be talked into giving it a try. He didn't seem to like the idea, and for the first time, you saw he may have insecurities about himself. Maybe this was not his thing? He was after all, like you, and immersed in his work as you were when the two of you weren't talking or teaching students. Even you initially protested the idea, despite the other girls being up for the fun. But seeing Siebren roped into the situation softened your protesting.

You went first since you were the youngest. Some of the younger professors were up there, flashing charming smiles or waving at you. But you only spared them a glance before walking right up to Siebren and giving him a smile. Those light eyes of his stared at you and blinked with confusion. Maybe he had too much to drink and was seeing things...because he looked down the line and saw all the others still standing there, available for your choosing. But you were standing in front of him, and out of them all, he was the oldest one. The realization he wasn't drunk and you were reality made his eyes widen and his throat go dry.

For a flash of a moment, you thought maybe he didn't like you. Maybe this was a mistake? He seemed speechless and awkward about the idea. But you hated letting things get to you and only kept up the smile and said you'd like to take him out on a spectacular date, as friends if that made him comfortable.

It took him a moment to process what you were saying, and he still looked tense about it. But the two of you chose a nice Saturday night to go out. You refused to let him make the plans, because you had what you thought was the greatest idea for a date for two astrophysicists like yourselves.

And when that Saturday came, you woke early. You took extra care of yourself. You showered and shaved, went and got a pedicure and manicure, had your hair trimmed up, and even went shopping for a nice dress and new shoes. You felt nervous, and thinking about him made your heart race. (And you couldn't know that he himself was doing almost the same thing as you were; cleaner shaving, his hair trimmed up, dissatisfied with his current suits and gone out to find something nicer). You also had your tablet and many charts saved to it. You felt prepared for everything tonight and despite being nervous, the giddiest you ever felt in your life.

You called him and told him to meet you at the main street outside the entrance of the campus around six in the evening. And when you did, you saw how crisp and nice his clothing was. So much, you had to steal glances when you could while driving to admire him while he talked. His tone seemed off from what you remember...and realized even he was nervous. Maybe it had been a long time for him.

But you drove far from the city and out into the open land. Siebren was curious about where you were taking them, and you finally explained it. That you had made dinner and brought wine, along with a tablet, and a powerful telescope. And you were going to a dark sky area for the two of you to go star gazing.

Siebren stared and blinked a moment. Then...he laughed. It was a beautiful laugh to you, and he grinned. Obviously, you made a great choice.

" I am glad I agreed to let you plan the date...I admit I may not be very creative and thought of finding a fancy restaurant and maybe a movie after. My...I haven't done field research in quite some time. I been in the labs so long, it would be nice to simply look at the stars again," he would say.

And from there, you knew you made the right choice.

You get to the area as the sun is setting, and he helps you set up the telescope. The tablet had many charts for the two of you of the positions of various cosmic entities. You also brought out a wicker basket with dinner, and dessert, with a large, soft blanket. The two of you set up the blanket and the food, waiting for the twilight to end and for the night to completely fill the sky. He lightens up as the two of you eat, going over theories the both of you been working on in your own time outside of grading student papers.

The both of you are so passionate about your work, it doesn't bore either of you to talk about it off campus in your own time off. And while like almost every scientist does, you two argue differing opinions, you two always seem to tease each other in your own way about it.

"Stroop waffles?" he questioned when you brought out the plate.

"Yes," you say and smile. "Made them myself."

And you were damn good at making them. It was a recipe your mother taught you and was famous in the family. And when he tried one, his eyes lit up.

"These are fantastic!"

And like that, the two of you seemed closer. After the last one was finished, the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon completely, and the night sky had unfolded before the two of you. There was no light pollution, and you could see everything the sky had to offer. Both of you looked at the charts and input coordinates, taking turns checking on some stars, some nebulas, and even the Andromeda galaxy and its beauty. There were stars you been studying, thinking they were binaries orbiting with a black hole. It was known it could happen, as one star proved in the Cygnus constellation.

" Orbiting," he would say.

"Dancing," you would argue.

"No, no, dancing has steps and a rhythm. Much different than circles," he shot back.

So you grin and put your hands on your hips. "Really? I wish to test that theory."

So you pull him to the edge of where the blanket lay and had him place his hand on your hip. And you move in a circle, your hand in his. And all you could do is give a cocky grin. " You see? Dancing."

Siebren was nervous at first, but dancing with you, he gave a rare smile. " But here is where you miss the point and the flaw in your theory. They do orbit. Why? Because orbiting does not involve contact...and here, there is much contact."

And for the first time...it was your turn to blush and feel nervous. The way he said it so smoothly, and the skin around his eyes crinkled seeing he had finally managed to make you blush and feel flutters like he had been feeling. But those wide eyes of yours may have been interpreted wrongly. He let you go and his smile disappeared quickly, as if he had done something very wrong.

" I apologize," he said, clearing his throat.

No, you think to yourself. You snapped from the stiffness you had...he didn't need to know the thoughts you just had that raced through your head as fast as light.

"No, no! There is no need to apologize," you said and rush forward, taking his hand and holding it a moment. Your heart raced in fear that he may not feel the same, though for that one moment...you felt with certainty that he held the same romantic ideals towards you as you did him.

The poor man tilted his head at you in clear confusion and puzzlement. It was not often someone young as you even batted an eye his way. And admittedly, you never gave many men this older than you a second glance. But there was a gravity he had about himself...and you wanted to freefall through it.

" Look. I'm...quite a deal older than you, and. There are many more your age out there that would be better able to take care of you, and not to mention, more attractive. I...really was surprised you picked me when you had the choice of any of them. Flattered...but surprised. Why did you?" he finally asked.

This was the first real date you been on with him. And most of your friendship had been built on lunches together, run ins in the hallways, or work in the labs. None of you had been out together in a social setting until that night. You didn't want to seem desperate, but you also wanted him to know you had genuine attraction to him.

" I actually do like you. That's why," you would say, and it sounded lamer of an admittance than you originally thought. You felt you had to justify it, as you would for any theory, or opinion you would give on particular topics. " You always been kind, and very welcoming towards me. I always enjoy our talks and discussions. And...I don't believe you. You are damn attractive, don't be so humble about it."

Siebren rose a brow at you. He made it obvious he had his doubts and that you were just trying to entertain him or placate him.

"I'm serious," you would stress and squeeze the hand you had grabbed. But then you let it go and fold yours in front of you. Maybe you had been too forward. "I'm sorry."

" About?" he asked.

" You don't seem interested," you admit. And honestly...that hurt. To think he was not interested was a blow to your confidence, and you felt awkward. All you wanted to do now, was rush home, drink a bottle of wine, and face plant into a pillow and forgot the night happened. He was going to turn you down. You been so sure he had been flirting with you that one moment...and your interpretation had been wrong.

"On contrary. You're a very beautiful woman. You could have anyone you wanted. And you chose the old man. I have been very fond of you, but given your age...I didn't think you could possibly ever harbor any romantic intent for me. I was fine with the idea of friendship. I admire your intellect, and it is hard to find someone to keep up with my general discussions like we have had," he said and looked away from you. "When you chose me that night...I didn't believe it. I had to have been drunk. Yet..here we are. The way you smiled tonight, and was so eager to be close to me...I know I am intelligent and highly skilled. But I could not believe the facts that were plain and clear in front of my face. I... didn't want to kid myself into believing it."

That made you flutter. He was fond of you? That was a start! That meant he had thoughts of you...though you doubted he may have had the ones you have had of him lately. There had been some raunchy thoughts that had permeated your mind as of late. But you want to try with him. And you look to him, hoping he won't turn you away.

" You...dressed very nicely tonight. I forgot to mention," you say. And inwardly curse yourself out. How pathetic was that? Here he was making his feelings clear...and all you could say in response was 'nice suit'? But you were relieved to see him smile and take a single step closer.

" As did you. Were you dressing to impress?" he asked.

" Yes...what about you?" you shoot back, feeling a nervous smile come to your lips. And hope this meant he would try this with you.

" Was hoping so," he said as he took another step closer. " Is it working?"

" I think that is my question," you say and take your own step forward. You desperately want him to do something, because now you're too nervous to move. And you could not look away from him. Your eyes stay glued to his, how light they are, the wrinkles at the corners. The way he smiled, and the way he could draw you in. There were so many things he could do. Kiss you. Dance with you again. Hell, throw you onto the blanket and strip you down and touch every inch of your body. Anything he would want to do, you felt no objection to complying with.

But what he does next makes you blush the deepest red you may have ever experienced. He takes your hand and lifts it up to his face. You feel the soft, gentle press of his lips to your hand. And he keeps eye contact with you. It was such a simple gesture. So classy and refined...and yet, the simple action was causing your insides to roil in pure and unrefined excitement. And you make a gesture you weren't aware of...and you see him blink, and see a faint pink on his own high cheeks. He lets your hand go and clears his throat, glancing back to the blanket.

"Well. Um. Shall we?...We can sit down and make more observations," he offered. You didn't realize you were biting your lip with a very inviting gaze until you let it go and went to speak. And now you knew why he suddenly appeared flustered.

"Certainly," you say. He sits down, and upon the discoveries you both made about yourselves and your attractions, you think nothing of sitting between his legs and leaning back against him.

And for him, he could not believe his luck. Shocked eyes would look at you seeing you settling between his legs and leaning to him. Arms stayed up, not sure how to settle on you without being too inappropriate. Not aware he could be as inappropriate as he desired, and you would be welcoming to it. You were making his own heart race. And while he had had his own rather risque thoughts about you, he was too modest to dare let on what he fantasized about.

" So...the star you are studying," he began, deciding to settle his arms around your shoulders. " The...Pegasus constellation, you say?"

"Yes...it's orbit shows no binary star. It is just like the one in Cygnus...but. Oddly, this one is not a neutron star. You'd think the star would be shredded by now," you would explain. And you become aware of something. How...warm he feels against you. The soft breath at the back of your neck. And there is a stirring in your navel that is screaming now, ramped up from the proximity to him.

" Quite interesting, but not surprising. Black holes can feed ravenously or sip as they desire. We still yet to discover what 'kicks off' the frenzy or what makes them eat demurely..." he would say to you. But you are noticing something. The way he talks, the way his warm breath breezes over your neck. It makes your eyes flutter. You don't need to see him to know how close his head is to yours. And he has taken a more open and keen interest in you now that he realized the attraction was mutual.

Your head leans back a fraction, as if trying to tempt him to leaning more forward.

" And to think. That poor star. Being devoured and torn apart by that black hole's force," you murmur, racy thoughts flying pell-mell through your head.

" You seen the images of a star torn apart by a black hole...we have better ones now. It's a spectacular view. The spewing of energy...the brightness of it. The hotness of it," he breathed. And now you knew his lips were definitely closer. The way you two flirted...! And the way he talked, you arched a little in his hold, aching in your navel to the point of pain. Those hands of his, once hesitant and only resting around your shoulders, now moved and reached in, touching and sliding along the sides of your body. It caused you to hitch your breath; for Siebren, a dead give away to proceed.

" It's unfortunate for the star to have been in its path...it had no chance to escape," you would say...but your tone is affected. It came out with a moan, and for Siebren, he was only seeing green lights. Those hands moved along your body, reaching and meeting at your lower navel. Fingertips massaged and rubbed there, and the touch drove you insane. Rubbing there...! It was such a sensitive erogenous zone for you! And now both of you are lost in passions. Passions he didn't know he could still be capable of, and passions you didn't know about yourself. Your head goes back and settled against his shoulder, and it was an open invitation Siebren could not refuse.

Lips find purchase in your throat's skin, teeth grazing at times. Your legs are clenching together, eyes fluttering close as over thousands of scenarios play through your head.

" Woe to that star, my dear. Maybe that traveling, starved, black hole had finally found a decent source of energy to consume...and would be greedy about every measure of it. Maybe it had been too long for it," he murmurs at your ear, lips kissing gently at its shell. " It couldn't help but pull it in and feast on every savory morsel."

Those lips! Your arms waken, and your hand grips to his forearm, your hips making small, minuscule presses to his hands. His touch was knowing. A musician strumming his instrument to produce the most moving and insightful music.

" Mm, maybe the star doesn't mind being devoured and made a spectacle of," you would admit. And Siebren knew it. All your responses...he could tell he could do anything and you would welcome it. The prospect of being so intimate with you was arousing him and he let you know by jerking you close and letting you feel it with your rear. You feel a hand leave your navel area and reach up, capturing your jaw.

Siebren turns your head, making you face him. The way he looks at you...his eyes full of the same passionate lust you had for him. And he can recognize it in your eyes. His head leans in, so close, his lips a mere inch from yours. And those eyes stare into your soul...you could get lost in them.

" Then fall into me," he murmured. And the moment he seals his lips to yours, you are lost.

Your eyes flutter close, and you are gone, swept up in a flurry of touching, kisses and muffled moans. You barely realize he was lifting the hem of your dress, those large fingers toying at your lacy thong. But that touch was fire! And the way he touched you was teasing. Siebren was careful not to use too much pressure, wanting to have you begging for him before giving in. Every touch he gave you was intense. Your nerves were having trouble keeping up, sensitive to the most minuscule of brushes.

That thong of yours was moved to the side, and Siebren wasted no time...he wanted to hear you again. And wanted you to moan. And if he had any doubts about your attraction to him, he would find clear evidence that he did more to you than he ever thought possible.

As his fingers rubbed a single line up your folds, he would find a thick trail of your juices. You made a stifled wail, thighs shaking. Siebren only paused in disbelief...you were not just wet. You were soaked. The two of you had only been flirting heavily, with a kiss and him barely touching any sensitive areas of you. How could you not be? You had been fantasizing about him lately, and now you were trapped in his embrace, with him kissing you and touching you. And it was all real.

Siebren got back on track and kissed you once more. And soon you felt two, large fingers slip into you. It felt like your whole body would levitate off the ground with how hard you tensed upon his fingers. Even he broke the kiss and muttered some words in Dutch, just as surprised by it as you were. As at the first pump of those fingers, you gave a wail, your hips rutting and gyrating to the feeling. And soon you felt him. His hips pressed to you...and you felt it. The sheer size of what you felt! Fantasies of him stripping down and forcing you to your knees, throwing up your dress and pounding you into the soft grass and dirt went through your head. He set a steady rhythm, his hand growing soaked because of you. But God, you wanted more...! Those fingertips managed to reach that spot in you and your eyes flew open. With each thrust in, those tips rubbed that area at the ceiling of you, making your eyes cross.

" God!!!"

" Did I find a spot?" he breaths at your ear, and this time, his fingers bury deep and rub it mercilessly. And all you could manage was to squirm and wail in his hold. There was no escape, and you didn't want to.

"Siebren...please!" you beg him. But you don't tell him what...and he stops. You want to protest but you stop when you feel him pressing to you, and you know what he wants. And he thinks that is also what you want. And the thought of that keeps you so aroused, that you don't think you could calm down or have any of your arousal die out. You feel movement, and you realize he taking off his suit jacket. Eyes look over your shoulder, and you take in the muscled form of him in his shirt. At his age...the build of him!

You feel his hands grab your waist and push you up onto your knees. He is moving, and he is getting to his knees behind you. You hearing the jingling of metal and look to see him undoing the belt. Your eyes look up to meet his. You then lean forward and reach back, throwing your dress up around your waist, presenting your soaked thong to him and your puffy folds trapped inside them. The sight draws his attention and you see him blush. You hear him breathe a sharp intake of air. And those pants are undone a little quicker. And as if he didn't need any more goading, you wiggle those hips at him.

"Siebren...please," you beg. There is enough starlight out to see him, just as he can see everything about you. On your elbows and knees before him, dress crinkled around your waist, those slick folds with the soft, lacy thong presented to him as a gift. This young, talented woman before him was for him. And he would ensure ONLY for him. Siebren was a good man, and very respectful...but when he decided something was his. There was nothing more to debate. And you were about to become his in every sense.

That lacy thong was not in his way. He pulled it aside, exposing you to the cool night air. He rubbed his cock to your leaking folds...and you could feel how well endowed he was. Thick, lengthy...and you shuddered with need at the very idea of it filling you! Your juices were so warm on him, and he couldn't believe how easily you could coat him. He wondered what graces he was in to have deserved a young thing like you, begging for him to fuck them senseless. And he could tell that about you in moments since touching you...how you wanted to submit to him, wanted to surrender to every demand he had. He would feel a swell of pride and ego for it, and most of all, flattery.

You look back to him, and upon locking eyes with him, he presses into you. Your eyes widen before growing unfocused, and rolling back. The size of him was stretching you open, and caused you to quiver. He moaned loudly, as your tight folds were elastic on his girth. And you were so wet, and hot inside. A hand grabbed your hips, pulling you back into his short thrusts, taking his time to ensure you accommodated him without feeling pain. With how aroused you were though, it didn't take long.

Soon enough he was able to thrust into you with ferocious speed, hilting you to his sac with ease. The sounds of you two! Sticky, smacking like sound and you begged for more. Thin strips of your juices dribbled out of you, having no room to remain inside. He leaned over you, his hips not lessening in their intensity. And you were consumed by him...you wanted nothing more in life anymore. Just him. This pleasure, this explosive, riling, yet cohesive chemistry! His rhythms would change, and he did so when he thought his movement was too boring. And each time it drew sudden, wailing moans.

The first change being to angle his thrust more downward, the end of him thrusting right over that area inside his fingers had found. Then he began to pump hard into you, until the end of him would reach yours, and he would pause. And grind into it so firmly yet gently. And it made you go blind with pleasure. Those hands smoothed up and down your sides, up and down the back. At one point they reached under to cup your breasts, massaging them gently as he kissed at the back of your neck. And you knew you couldn't last long...never before had you been so quick to orgasm! But he touched you, and felt you from the inside in ways you didn't even know about yourself. And just when you thought the pleasure could not heighten no more...

" Siebren!!!" you scream, gasping. Hands had came down and met under you. One's fingers found your crown and rubbed it frantically. And the other's fingertips rubbed and put pressure on the area of your lower navel an inch below your belly button. That pressure on that area, the way he rubbed you...you knew he wanted you to come for him. You never been touched like this by anyone, not even yourself!

" I'm...! I'm close,mijn God!" he panted. Siebren wanted to have respect for you and any fears you had, and was fully prepared to pull from you before he came. But you wanted nothing of it.  

"Don't stop! Fuck's sake, don't!" you beg him.

Those light eyes stare down at you, perplexed. He had divine permission...and that permission made his cock swell and twitch inside you with urgent need. You were arching your back, your inner walls taut and strangling on him. You were a vision he would never forget. Siebren let go of any restraint he had on himself and began to piston into you.

" Come for me then," he breathed at the back of your neck, hilting you harsh enough to leave possible bruises for tomorrow. "Sing for me!"

The moment he slammed into the end of you and ground into you, his seed surging from him in torrents, his hands still working those areas of your body...you lost yourself. Like a black hole comes to a singular point...so did your mental state. Pain disappeared, tension vanished. Worries and thoughts about everything outside of you and him were wiped blank from your memory. Everything was gone...and all there was, was a warm, numbing, flowing rush of intense euphoria. Your vision was gone...and all that came from you was a wailing scream.

"SIEBREN!"

To hear the way you said his name was music. The fact he could bring you pleasure so intense, so undoing, was empowering. And the fact you felt so damn good on him...! He couldn't even stop. Both of you broke down into incoherent chords of moans, grunts and gasps of gratification. It was well over a few minutes before he fell still atop of you. Both of you were out of breath, taking a moment in the afterglow. Any movement triggered twitching from you, your nerves so sensitive to even the slightest shift of weight. He waited a moment, letting you adjust. After such unbridled passion between the two of you, and slight worry he may have hurt you, he peppered kisses along your shoulder and back. Hands rubbed your sides gently, worshipping you for the pleasure you gave him. You felt so right in his hands, as he was a sculptor who found the most perfect clay in the world.

" I...never imagined.." you try to say...wanting him to know that he was the best you ever had in her whole life. And if he was like this all the time, he had forever ruined any possible future relationships if he were to ever go separate ways from you. Siebren was smiling...because you had made him happier and more confident in his more personal aspects than he had ever been in a while.

" If you would allow me...I believe we can organize future occurrences," he offers.

You had no objections whatsoever! You hoped for many more occurrences! He gently pulled from you which made you gasp, feeling every delicious inch slip from you. You were dripping a steady stream of his seed mixed with your thick juices. Siebren could see it and as you look back you see him blushing a glowing red and staring at you.

"Oh-...oh my. I didn't realize," he stammered a bit. He hurriedly found his suit jacket and yanked a handkerchief from it. "I believe I might have um...overfilled you. Forgive me."

And all you could do was smile. He was wiping your thighs clean and capturing the leakage as much as he could until you stopped. He tended to you gently, and was mortified at himself to see a bruise or two indeed had developed. He hadn't meant to be that harsh with you...but you only soothed his worries and pulled him into a kiss. Had you not asked him for more each time, and each time, did he not deliver? There was no reason he should apologize, but you accepted it about him. He was a caring, gentle man at heart, and wanted to take care of what he liked. Too tired to even move, the two of you cuddle on the blanket, your body wrapped with his. Both of you gaze at the stars, noting when the constellations were shifting, or when certain planets or stars were rising on the horizon.

You felt so right held in his arms as the two of you wound down, enjoying the twinkling sky above you. It almost seemed like a punishment to have to leave and return to their duties and jobs at the university. But as you reminded him, much to his flustered astonishment at the suggestion, there were always supply closets, empty classrooms and even the building's roof if they truly wanted to nip away and couldn't control themselves.