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iwadori · 3 years

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Why you break up with the haikyu boys part 2 (Osamu, Iwaizumi, Daichi, Ushijima.)

Part 1 (Atsumu, Oikawa, Kageyama, Kenma, Akaashi, Sugawara)

Genre: angst

masterlist

Osamu: “For fuck sake Y/N, don’t deny it I know that you...”

You and Osamu were basically arranged to be together, you were best friends from when you were little and your parents thought you were a match made in heaven.

Did you love Osamu? Of course, you pretty much worshipped the ground he walked on.

But there was always a strange look he gave you whenever he mentioned his brother. You never really focused on it, but that was something you took note of.

When you came back home, after a long day of work. You see Osamu sitting in the kitchen alone, with some paper in front of him and a drink in his hand.

“‘Samu Babe!” You exclaim sauntering over to him “How are yo-“

“Don’t.” He said simply, taking a sipping some of his drink (to which you could only assume was some form of hard liquor.)

“Why ‘Samu, what’s wro-“

“You bought tickets to his game.”

“Who’s game?”

“Don’t play dumb with me Y/N, you bought tickets to my idiot of a brothers game in an attempt to slut around under my nose..”

“Samu, that’s not what it was I-“

“I don’t want to hear it Y/N!” He yelled slamming his drink down making you flinch.

“Gosh Samu whats wrong with you. I know that I had a teeny crush on Atsumu when we were kids but it was just a childhood crush. An innocent childhood crush.”

“For fuck sake Y/N, don’t deny it I know yo-“

“You know what? That I’ve spent majority of my life, trying to ease your own insecurities and jealousy of your own goddamn brother. How childish can you be Osamu ?”

Osamu eyes opened a bit in realisation, and his lips slightly parted. “But Y/N, you-“

“I what? Brought us tickets to your TWIN brothers final volleyball game, because I wanted him to see the support from his family and friends.”

“I’m sorry Y/N I really a-“

“Don’t.” you say picking up the tickets and turning around “I just thought maybe, just maybe for at least a day you could put your weird feelings towards your brother aside... but I guess you can’t.”

You left the apartment, and got your stuff another day (one where you knew Osamu was at work.)

No you did not end up dating Atsumu, you were most certainly friends and only friends. You did end up going to the game on your own, to cheer on Atsumu who most definitely appreciated it.

You thought you saw a certain Miya twins sitting in the stands at of the game, hiding his face with a baseball cap. Which made you smile a bit...

Well at least he ended up coming to the game.

Iwaizumi: “I just don’t want you Y/N, I never did”

In your second year of Seijoh Highschool, you were approached by a rough looking boy who had a ‘resting bitch face,’ and looked like they were coming to pick a fight with you.

But no, it was just “Iwaizumi Hajime.”

He was very popular throughout your school, as he was vice captain of the schools volleyball team and he was Oikawa Toorus best friend.

So when he approached you that Friday afternoon at your locker, you definitely didn’t know why.

“Y/N..” he said nervously scratching the back of his neck “umm this is for you..”

In his hands was a bar of chocolate and a scrunched up note that read

AN: DID I WRITE THAT NOTE MYSELF, yes yes I did anyways...

You were very surprised at this sudden confession as you and Iwaizumi weren’t in the same social circles and you were definitely not the type of girl that would be on his ‘radar.’

You had a quite unsettling feeling, which made you subconsciously squint your eyes at him. But they soon soften as you saw the nervousness that Iwaizumi was showcasing to you as you were contemplating on you answer.

You got out a pen, shaking the unsettling feeling you had out of your head. And ticked the box “Yes” giving it back to Iwaizumi.

He smiled widely and rushed towards you in an attempts in giving you a hug which went awkwardly wrong leaving you both laughing.

Dating Hajime, wasn’t bad nor good... it’s just what you wouldn’t expect it to be.

There wasn’t much of a change to what your usual school routine was which consisted of: going to lessons and spending break and lunch on your own reading a book.

And technically you were still doing that, but you were now just always with Hajime. Wether it was at lunch or at practice (which he always insisted you go to, also hinting that he would like for you to bring him bentos to practice.) which you did end up doing.

One day, whilst doing your daily “bento delivery,” to your boyfriend, you overhear him talking to his friends; Matsukawa and Hanamaki.

“God I can’t stand her, always running behind me like a lost puppy giving me bentos that I didn’t even fucking as for” he complained, making you gasp.

“Really?” Exclaimed Hanamaki “I know you said she confessed to you one time, but I didn’t know it was that bad?”

“Yeah she’s a stalking bitch, it’s getting annoying.”

“Gosh it’s seems someones getting a taste of the ‘Oikawa Experience’” Matsun said making them all laugh.

You entered the room, furious. “What the fuck Hajime?”

“Woah woah woah, it’s seems your stalkers about iwa, we’ll leave you too it” said Hanamaki, with Matsun following behind him as they leave.

“What do they mean I’m a stalker?”

“Well aren’t you?” He responded with a smirk

“Gosh y/n you’ve been following me about for a while now, dont you think it’s time to stop”

“Bu-But you confessed, with your note and w-“

“Are you sure about that Y/N, cause I don’t really recall ...?”

“Hajime don’t lie, we were dating.. we ARE DATING.”

“Okay Y/N let me fill you in on a little secret,” he said leaning down next to your ear “I don’t want you Y/N, I never did.”

“ but why m-“

“Why you? Because nobody knows Y/N L/N and nobody cares, I can tarnish your name and nobody will give a shit.. and that’s why your an easy target” he said still smiling “ I just wanted to rub it into Shittykawas face that I had my own little “fan club”

You were stunned, frozen in shock as Iwaizumi walks past you to leave the gym, making sure to grab the bento you made him.

“Thanks again for the help, I’m definitely going to miss these bentos!”

You should have listened to your gut feeling from before.

Daichi: “you’re just not marriage material”

Daichi was “the perfect guy,” he was nice to strangers and was helpful to the community and just an all round great guy.

So it was a massive question as to why he went for you, since you were definitely not the girl for Daichi.

“I don’t care what anyone says, your the perfect girl for me” was what he always said.

Even though those statements went out the window whenever his mother got involved.

Daichi’s mum was a strict traditional woman, who believed in family values that went back thousands of years ago.

And she most certainly didn’t like you.

She wanted you to be Daichi’s doting wife, who cooked and cleaned for him. Whilst he works and was the breadwinner of the house.

Although you found no problem with the women that did do this, but this was not for you.

When it comes to meet ups with you, Daichi and his mother. He never told her to stop when it came to the rude comments she made about you, or the times she suggested Daichi go for a more “prim and proper” girl named “Misaki Ayuzawa.”

After the meetings, when his mother was gone, he always tried to reassure that she was wrong and her words didn’t matter.

But you knew they did, that daichi was actually considering some of the things she said about you wether they were true or not.

The tension in your household was strong, since you barely talked to each other anymore. But you had hope for better things...

Until one day, you get a message from Daichi’s mother saying. “It seems Daichi made the right choice, as we all know ‘Mother Knows best.’” With a video attached of Daichi proposing to the one and only “Mikasa Ayuzawa” surrounded by all their high class business friends.

When Daichi got home he yelled, “Y/N, where are you I was at this business party at this fancy restaurant and I got some nice things for you to try!”

“Business party?” You say rolling your eyes “Or Engagement party.”

The shocked look on his face made you smile, as you both knew now that he was caught.

“Fuck you daichi! Why would you do this without even tell me !” You yelled, tearing up a bit.

“Y/N, it wasn’t meant to go down like that it was just I was talking to my mu-“

“Fuck your mum! And you!”

“I’m sorry Y/N you’re just not marriage material an-“

“I don’t care what you’ve got to say, you’ve done it and it’s over with”you said leaving.

“I’ll come back to get my stuff later,” you say “oh and congratulations on the engagement Sawamura-San”

After you said that, Daichi’s heart broke.

He did end up marrying her, and he regretted every day of it. Since she was great and all, but she just wasn’t you...

But he knows now you’re long gone, definitely not going to forgive him for marrying another girl whilst being with him.

Ushijima : stop being so emotional

You and Ushijima were very much opposite In every aspect, and at first it wasn’t really a problem.

Especially since you always excused it as “opposite attracts.”

But recently all you and Ushijima do is argue, left and right always arguing.

You complained about Ushijimas lack of emotion when it came to you, you don’t think he cared about you or about anything.

Whenever you brought up something that was wrong he would reply with “Y/N this is something you need to be acting all upset about.”

And that would definitely upset you even more, you just wanted him to notice you or shout “Y/N I care about you and I love you.”

But Of course he didn’t.

One night he came back late (again) after promising to be home early to have a meal together.

“What’s taken you so long Ushi?” You asked

“I was at practice. I told you this.” He said simply, remaining as stoic as ever.

“But you said- you promised that we can have dinner together.” You said

“ oh well I’m sorry. We can have dinner now if you like.”

“I’m not hungry anymore” you mumbled past him, going to your bedroom.

“Y/N, what’s your problem” he said following after you.

“It’s nothing...”you said tears filling your eyes.

“Okay I’m going to go eat now.” He said leaving you alone in the room going to the kitchen, making you sigh.

After you calm yourself and collect your faults, you go into the kitchen where Ushijima is at the table eating.

“Ushijima, we need to talk.” You said taking a deep breath.

“Okay.”

“We should break up.”

“Okay.”

“Is that all you have to say?” You say tearing up again.

“Yes, I’ve been thinking that for a while now.” He said bluntly “since Y/N, you’re just too emotional.”

“Oh I see.” You say now full on crying.

Ushijima looks up to see you all teared-eye, and he is kind of suprised because ‘why were you upset.’ He got up and tried to console you, but you flinched away and said “Don’t, just don’t Ushijima.”

“I’m sorry Y/N...”

“Why are you sorry? Do you even know what you’re apologising for?”

“No.”

“Well then, just seems to prove my point further...” you go to leave before saying “thanks for the wonderful time... I guess we just weren’t meant to be.”

AN: can someone appreciate what I did with Iwaizumis....no? Okay 😃 I feel this one way way more angsty then part one but oh well. What did you think.

General taglist[bold can’t be tagged]: @sakuxxi @iimoonii @hamdehlesmis @Shoyosupremacy @meadowsinjapan @iambashfulperson @kayleighbeccaa @dearkousei @bakugouswh0r3

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sugar-petals · 4 years

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BTS Scenario: Taking Care of Them When They Have a Cold

↳ ♡ NOTE ⇁ time for fluff. autumn season is coming, let me set the mood right here, we’re going cozy 🍂

warnings ⚠️ hurt/comfort, brief mention of sexual tension

⌈jimin⌋ ⇢ Jimin’s cold is unusually subtle. In terms of visible signs, it’d take some time to notice it for someone who doesn’t know him or doesn’t check just how heavy another person’s breath is going. But feedback? You will definitely get. Compared to how he’s pouting about it, which will melt your heart is what I’m saying, the symptoms are understated in comparison to the other members. Taehyung’s cough can shatter an entire neighborhood, Jimin sneezing is as graceful as a gazelle. Mind you, his nose is runny, and the slight fatigue of the first two days isn’t negligible, but the major thing to actively mend is more psychological than physical. In other words, his body does its thing, you don’t have to overextend yourself.

That’s what you have to figure out first to really take care of him properly. After laying him down and bringing both snacks and liquids, talking is what he needs rather than ten thousand types of medications and cool towels all over him. Jimin doesn’t want to see you become sick as well so you don’t sit up close, but at talking range, and you text a lot during the day while you work. He’s worried about not being able to practice and hopes the cold doesn’t show in his appearance. You assure him it takes five days at best and he is okay again and promise a lot of kisses. With that prospect, healing is even sweeter. And, you know the guy, Jimin misses seducing you, so.

⌈taehyung⌋ ⇢ Absolutely enjoys being babied ten times out of ten. Nothing better than you preparing a hot herbal bath. Rosemary, thyme, camomile. The steam spiraling off the water surface looks so relaxing in the candlelight, the classical music you put on sways him into a trance, he lays there for half an hour just motionless. He gets a little tray of coconut cookies on the bed stand, you play the guitar to him, you massage his feet before he sleeps… Which, and he hates admitting it, makes it nice to be sick. By all means not because of the fever, but the extra attentions, the hot chocolate for bed. Taehyung thinks about that twice and concludes something. He doesn’t want to get a cold just to receive this treatment. Not for his own health nor to worry or overwhelm you, he’s not gonna guilt-trip you into being a servant.

So, you agree for later: It’s good to treat him sporadically just because, whenever and wherever, cue Shakira. That Taehyung so enjoys a good healing and mending time and it just explodes when you both have a reason to, that’s rather something to expand to the whole relationship. Taehyung will do the exact spoiling for you, with a romantic twist the way you know him. It doesn’t need a sickness to resort to doing nice things for your partner. At the end of the day, the body will remember it and get sick again because it sees what it gets through being ill. That’s something to squarely avoid doing, a random gesture is good for its own sake, amen.

⌈yoongi⌋ ⇢ Grumpy, murmuring, disgruntled he can’t work without getting a headache, needs a lot of silence to recover so he curls up on his own with earphones in and fifty playlists on repeat. He’s like tch, only thing I need is tiger balm to whip me back into shape. Or… wait. Wait a second. A cup of steaming hot coffee with extra foam he will not reject. Or a plate of fried rice. Anything fried and super crispy, really. Yoongi likes those things, especially when prepared by you. Nothing is more honoring. Actually? I’ll change the initial statement. Yoongi does accept some help. You simply gotta find out his catnip I mean favorite dishes and either know the place to order it from or have some kitchen basics down. Nothing super fancy though, it doesn’t need a God’s Menu. The right seasoning does the trick already.

He wants it mega spicy, sweating out the cold is the way to go said Yoongi’s mom back in the day so he goes by that motto. Love starts in the stomach for felines. If another BTS member drops take-out at the door, even better, that uplifts him greatly. When he munches, that’s the most gratifying thing in the world. Yoongi wants you to eat with him by the bed so that means chili in the bedroom but screw it. All that food and you cranking up the heater distracts Yoongi from his cold and some head pats have him on his way to recovery. And, by the way. He’s kinda turned on by you cooking for him so… the frustration is real, you’re gonna fuck like rabbits once he’s okay again.

★ ⌈namjoon⌋ ⇢ The friendly giant will stay in denial about his cough for at least three days and walk around with way too much medicine in his system. He begs for someone to relieve him, mostly himself, but all those sky-high standards are in the way. Responsibility! Hard work and endurance! Solve it in your head! What is the spiritual reason for colds? How many pills keep you awake for an all-nighter to write an album in one go? What’s next on the schedule? So it goes on, you know the deal with Joonie. You have to kick that leader butt so he finally enters the healing cave under the sheets. Don’t kick too hard though, he doesn’t have Jimin-level cushions. He topples over into his sheets fast anyway, he’s that level of exhausted from his own suppression.

The story goes on, Namjoon feels extremely guilty for getting pampered and still ponders the reasons why he is ill rather than slowing down a minute and closing his laptop for a hot second. It gets a little awkward unless you figure out your secret weapon. What he feels better with is you reading him stories while he rests on the sofa. I’m not kidding. Or if you’re busy or he wants to be alone, audiobooks. That input is like a lullaby to Namjoon who gets knocked out by the soft whispering only to descend into 12 hours of sleep. Ah, he’s namjooning. Yep. His cold will force him into resting, but by the time he recovers, he is six books wiser and has had the pleasure of listening to your voice which he finds soothing. Thankful he is, anticipate an expensive present and flowers.

★ ⌈jungkook⌋ ⇢ Meal and fluid intake: Quantity explosion! Wow, wow, and wow again, the sheer amount that he can snack and turn into what seems even more muscle and more sweetness. Guinness World Record. He knows his system is currently resetting, he wants to hand it the building blocks, he knows the math. Yes, even sick Jungkook is the cutest foodie in the world. Yes, he will eat his veggies. He worries about not being able to work out so you at least help him stretch his legs ever so slightly in bed. He’s missing his boxing gloves like crazy, he wants to see the members in the practice room, he wants his milk. The latter is easy to get for him, and FaceTime comes in handy.

Namjoon does a little motivational speech, and Jungkook feels better almost instantly. Later on, you have to scold him — well, just a little bit — for getting up in all that enthusiasm to do some of his routine on the second day, but he already knows it’s not good for him to get his heart rate up like that. He patiently snuggles in a cocoon of duvets with only his eyes being visible. Until, finally, his red lil’ nose goes back to normal and his lungs feel a lot lighter. Jungkook really hates being dizzy, so it’s a weight off his hunky shoulders all right. Then, he can join you at the dinner table for a double portion of extra Parmesan Spaghetti, and you settle on the couch to bingewatch romantic animes and any Studio Ghibli movie in history.

★ ⌈jin⌋ ⇢ It simply can’t be helped, he even wants to make this funny. Humor really is a never-ending well, Jin is Spongebob’s long lost cousin if you go by his amount of meme talk. He calls himself Rudolph the Red-Nosed Jindeer, stuffs handkerchiefs into his nostrils, draws smileys on his knees with the cream usually meant for a dry philtrum (he now has very hydrated knees, how about that), does impossible contortions to find the right sleeping or reading position. Honestly, you don’t really have to take much care of him nor worry, Jin will cure himself through laughter. The power of positive emotion. Entertainment is nothing to provide for, he’s a one-man show after all. Jin is the least bored when he’s sick among the group, however! It needs someone else to exchange with, you know. No punchline without an audience. Listening is the best thing.

Sit, lean back, see what he has to say. The only thing you gotta actively do is stop him from choking on his own spit after a particularly dead-on joke. Maybe it’s introducing some room for serious time that helps Jin enter a different track. I can imagine that. Some talk about memories, talk about sorrows and issues. Jin is a complete man, but he still has plenty of ’em, demons don’t evade handsome people. And those need to be talked through in a silent minute. Jin also enjoys movie nights with a cup of tea in one hand and syrup in the other, that’s the go-to way to unwind. You can finally go all out and pour him his tea, bake for him, serve some self-made popcorn, extra sticky and sweet, oh yum.

★ ⌈hoseok⌋ ⇢ If Jimin and Hobi ever get colds at the same time, this will be the poutiest contest. They’re the most vocal about it in the group. Hoseok, and that will come to surprise you a little, becomes needy. Not at the beginning where he’s confused and emotional about what’s going on with him (someone who works this hard and needs a fully functioning body is thrown out of their lane even by the slightest symptom), but shortly after. You’ll come to understand how sensitive his body is, almost as perceptive as Jungkook’s actually. His body blows up with a strong fever, a hot man heating up even more is just an explosion of physics.

He needs handkerchiefs, he needs tons of water, he needs music to distract him a little, he needs a heating blanket for his feet once the fever is gone. Granted, every sick person depends on those things, but Hoseok is someone who calls out of the bedroom often because he ran out. He’s not afraid to ask for things unlike Namjoon who would refuse out of overt politeness. You certainly have a lot to do because his cold comes in strong so it’s important you enjoy taking care of him and don’t do it out of obligation. Quality time is what we’re talking about here. It’s not about you doing the things, it’s about the presence. That’s why Hoseok will use his money well and always order proper take-out that’s not just classic fast food, you don’t have to cook or anything.

related: putting bts to sleep after a hard day

#bts headcanons #bts scenarios #bts scenario #bts fluff #bts x reader #bts #bangtan #bts imagine #bts domestic au #bts hurt and comfort

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redhawtriot · 4 years

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Everything is Almight (Izuku x Reader~All Might’s daughter~)

Hey, so this is actually an adaptation/excerpt of a story I posted hella years ago. Lol, I felt cringe at my old writing, but also nostalgic! So I just had to fix this scene up! It was one of my favorites!

Basically, the you’ve only recently begun living with you father, Toshinori, after your mother’s death and you don’t know much about him. He hasn't told you about his training Izuku, One for All, or the fact that he is All Might.

This becomes an issue because you not only end up going to U.A., but you develop a crush on the one student that could blow his secret alter ego out of the water: Izuku Midoriya.

Forbidden grounds.

Uncharted territory.

A girl’s house.

For Izuku Midoriya, all three of these items might as well be synonymous.

Girls were, and always have been, somewhat of an out of bounds, beautiful, enigma that he would see throughout life, but never had the will or courage to approach-- like panda bears, or fluorescent jellyfish.

God, was he really comparing you to a jellyfish?

Izuku sneaked a glance at you as the image faded into his mind, but the smile you threw back at him as you walked by his side, sent him retreating-- scrambling for cover as he pulled the collar of his shirt up to mask his severe blush.

He shouldn’t have looked at you when you were so close to him.

It made everything much too real.

He was really going to a girl’s house-- uncharted territory-- forbidden grounds.

The surrounding world began slowly fading into black as the two friends neared their destination. Izuku gulped so hard, that you threw him a slightly concerned look.

‘That sounded painful,’ you nervously chuckled, “Hey, Izu, you don’t have to be afraid of my dad or anything. He’s the nicest person I’ve ever met! I’m sure the two of you will get along!”

The severe tunnel vision weighed upon the boy’s mind, but it didn't stop the rampant thoughts from racing around in there, ‘I wasn't even thinking about that. Oh god, Y/N is really strong. I wonder if her dad is just as badass as her… I’m so plain-- I bet all stick out like a sore thumb in her family. Oh my god, he’s gonna hate me.’

Unbenownst to him, he was muttering the entire time, leaving you to internally facepalm at your friend’s antics. Izuku was so damn weird. So damn. Jittery. So damn... adorable.

Your face soon matched Izuku’s heated blush.

“Well! Here it is!” you frantically called out, throwing your arms up to present your abode and knock those feelings away from you. Izuku gave a sharp, little jump at your words as you fumbled around with your house key. The shock from your sudden outburst and the impending dread that rattled inside of Izuku’s shaky chest, mixed up into an uneasy cocktail. Nothing too fancy, right? Anyway, you can make yourself at home!”

You opened the door, only to look back and See Izuku frozen to the spot, his eyes blank with fear, and his knees tightly buckled.

You gave a deep sigh before grabbing him by the wrist and practically throwing him through the front door, "Make yourself at home! Don't be weird about it." you laughed as Izuku yelped and flew across the threshold.

"Dad!" you exclaimed cheerily throughout the quiet home, "I'm home and I brought a guest!"

Izuku looked around the house and saw small All Might figurines scattered in random locations everywhere. He knew that you were a huge All Might fan, but having memorabilia in every room of the house must mean that everyone in this house must love All Might. Izuku took in the sight and chuckled nervously to himself.

"I'll be out in a second! I'm taking my medicine!" someone yelled from a back room.

Izuku froze.

His eyebrows slightly furrowed and his mouth flew agape at the sound of the person’s voice. He recognized it from somewhere-- he knew he did, but... he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

As soon as the man walked through the hallway, into sight, Izuku saw a wavey blonde drape of familiar, golden hair. It was followed by a sillouet that he had seen much of lately.

Holy…

It finally hit him.

Izuku just about jumped out of his skin in at the sight. In front of you and him, was the man who had recently begun to train him-- All Might.

The boy let out a long, high pitched whimper as the two males just gawked at each other awkwardly with their mouths opened. A faint white noise could also be heard as the atmosphere grew heavy.

You noticed the tension and furrowed your eyebrows in confusion.

Finally, Izuku broke the silence with a squeal, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, ALL MIGH-"

"MIGHTY NICE TO MEET YOU, MY BOY!" All Might interrupted, going to shake Midoriya’s hand and throw him a wary glance that begged “please for the love of god shut up.”

Izuku remained frozen in shock, his hand limp in All Mights grasp as you spoke up, "Do… you two know each other or something?" You tilted your head in confusion.

Izuku gave an awkwardly hard, nervous chuckle,

"Nope! I mean-I don't think so."

"I have never met this young man in my life!"

The two males simultaneously exclaimed. They threw each other one more horrified glance before finally breaking eye contact with each other and grimacing towards the ground.

Toshinori spoke up, "Y/N, my dear, why don't you go grab the trash and take it outside for me? Trash day is tomorrow." He tried to look earnestly into your eyes, but he couldn't help the frantic undertones in his voice.

"Awh…man. Can't I take it tomorrow morning? I just got in the house!" you complained. Luckily for Toshinori, you were more focused on not wanting to do the task itself, than on his suspicious behavior.

"I cooked some fish earlier today and didn't finish it all. I had to throw it away and I don't want it to end up stinking up the entire house!" he glanced to the side, 'This stinks enough as is! Shit.' he thought to himself.

"Okay, okay. I'll get it for you." you complied. As soon as you walked out of the house the two men started freaking out.

"DOES SHE NOT KNOW YOU'RE ALL MIGHT!?" Izuku gripped at his hair as if to contain the stress of the situation.

"Keep it down, kid! She likes to snoop! And no, she doesn't know! I'd like to keep it that way too!"

Izuku threw his face in his palm, "Just my luck! Of course, when I finally find a cool girl that talks to me, she has to live in the same house as my mentor!"

"With all respect young man please don't think of my kid that way... Ever." All Might twisted his face into an almost painful grimace.

"You.. dad… HER DAD?! SHE'S YOUR KID?!"

All Might bit his tongue in shock, "Yes! So please keep your teenage hormones in check, young man."

"Oh no! All Might's about to give me 'the talk!'" the young boy cried.

"I AM NOT! Quiet down before you blow our cover!" He threw a finger up as if to hush the younger boy.

You walked back into the home, "Is everything all right in here? I thought I heard yelling."

Izuku and Toshinori furiously nodded their heads.

"Mhmm!" the younger man assured, "Everything is All Might- I MEAN ALRIGHT!" he laughed nervously, "Everything is alright in here!" he corrected himself as Toshinori deflated in disappointment. How embarrassing. It took every ounce of his willpower to keep from melting away from this existence right then and there.

You sighed, "Oh... I know what's going on here,” you threw your hands on you hips as you shook your head.

The two men gulped, "you do?" they both asked in unison.

"Yep," You replied as she put her hands on your hips, "You're weirded out by all these memorabilia in the living room! It's not Dad’s stuff! My room in this place is just smaller than the one I had at my other home, so I had to keep some things out here for a while while I figured out what to do with them! Don't worry! My dad isn't as weird as he looks." you teased as both of the men sighed in relief.

After that day Izuku didn't really come by your place much. You simply figured that your father must have frightened him or given him the "overprotective dad" speech. Whatever the reason, your friend and you would have to hang out at his house whenever you hung out after school.

lol lemme know if you guys want more excerpts from this story! I have a lot saved in drafts (draft number rn is like 42 and counting HA. (Someone save me from myself))

#bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #mha imagines #bnha imagines #bnha imagine #mha imagine #bnha x reader #mha x reader #izuku midoriya #izuku midoria x reader #izuku midoriya imagines #midoriya x reader #deku #midoriya #deku x reader

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hearteyesbowen · 4 years

Text

meet the parents ☆ ricky bowen

requested by: @iamveryborrrreddd thank u so much for ur request

ricky is going to meet y/n’s parents for the first time, and nothing kills him more than knowing what his girlfriend’s parents think of him

warnings: fluff

♡ ♡ ♡ ♡

Ricky 💞

what if they hate me?

what if they make you break up with me cuz they think i’m not good enough for you?

i’m sorry i’m being dumb right now but i just really want them to like me

you know, because i kinda really like you

You rolled your eyes at the texts your boyfriend sent you. Yesterday, your parents decided they wanted to finally sit down and get to know Ricky over dinner, instead of the little waves they gave each other when he dropped you off at home. Once you brought up the idea to him, he absolutely loved it. He always talked about wanting to get to know each other’s families, of course now that you have been dating for a few months already. It wasn’t until today during school, he got more anxious. His leg bounced the whole duration of class and he played with your fingers more, a habit you found out he had when he got nervous. You found it quite adorable, especially because of the extra affection that came with it. Now it was 5:30 pm, Ricky is supposed to be over in half an hour, and you could only imagine the mess in his room from all the possible outfit changes he made.

“The table is set and I made enough food for everyone. Are you exited?” Your mom asked as she popped into your room.

You took another quick look at your reflection, smoothing out your simple dress. “Yeah, it should be fun. He’s really nervous to meet you guys.”

“I don’t think it would be that, he sounds really sweet from what you have told me.” She came behind you, resting her arm over your shoulder and her head on yours as you both looked into the mirror.

“Just don’t scare him, I don’t want him to be more intimated than I think he already is.”

“No promises.” Your mom smiled cheekily at you before patting your shoulder and leaving your room.

My parents are crazy.

➢➣ ➢➣

It had been about 15 minutes since Ricky finally came. His curls prominent on his head, a simple button-up shirt with a black leather jacket, black jeans, and his usual vans. He brought a small bouquet of tulips for your mom, making her blush. After a small formal handshake with your parents, you could still sense the tension in his body after coming inside. Your dad showed you all to the dining table, completely covered with food. Both your parents sat on opposite ends of the table, letting you and Ricky sit next to each other. Being the gentleman he is, Ricky pulled your chair out for you before you were able to do it yourself. You gave a quick glance at either of your parents to see any change of reaction from their artificial, stern faces, but saw nothing. Here we go.

“You look good, Ricky. Where did you get that shirt?” Your dad asked, slowly eating the food your mom cooked.

Ricky’s hand subtly held yours under the table, letting it rest on his thigh. You smiled to yourself, letting your thumb graze over his skin soothingly.

“My dad and I went to his coworker’s wedding recently, so we went to this tuxedo shop downtown. Never really wore fancy stuff before then” You both laughed, but stopped once you realized you two were the only ones laughing.

Your dad nodded his head, not giving another reply. Almost silently, a small breath of air left Ricky’s lips. You squeezed his hand, giving a reassuring smile.

“Have you decided what you want to do after high school? I know my daughter has stuck with her major since she was in elementary school.” Your mom eyed Ricky, making his grip on your hands tighten. You glared at her, but got no look back.

He cleared his throat, running a hand through his hair before answering, “You know, I’m actually not too sure yet. Maybe something with engineering? I’m still figuring it out.” He forced out a laugh, you joining him, but kept quiet after another lack of a reaction from your parents.

“Don’t worry, not everyone has their life planned out. Sometimes people don’t know until it’s too late, so just don’t be late.” Your dad joked, giving the tiniest bit of a smile.

Small talk continued through the evening, though most of it was between your parents and small comments from you and Ricky. His grip gradually softened, making you believe that he started to get more comfortable with them. That was not the case. His leg still shook under the table, he barely made eye contact with you, and his jaw tensed every time they called his name.

Now it has been two hours, and you still had school the next day. You all finished your meals, and Ricky had offered to help clean the table with your dad. You and your mom had been in the living room, waiting for the both of them to come back out and say goodbye.

“What was that all about?” You questioned your mom, keeping a soft volume as to not let Ricky and your dad hear.

She finally showed a genuine smile, shrugging her shoulders. “What do you mean?”

“I said not to scare him! He’s never looked more terrified in his life.” You groan.

“We just wanted to see how he would act if we were strict. Don’t worry, Y/N, we really like him.”

“Don’t you realize how nerv- wait, what?” You stop rambling after hearing your mom.

She laughed, rubbing your back. “Your dad and I knew we would like him just by the way he was so nervous when he greeted us. He’s very polite, and he looks like a great boyfriend.”

You let out a breath of relief, leaning your head on her shoulder.

“I just hope dad isn’t giving him a really bad talk.”

“No promises.” She laughed.

Soon after, Ricky and your dad walked out of the kitchen. Somehow Ricky looked slightly more pale than he usually was. He stood next to you after shaking both your parents’ hands, giving you a scared smile.

“T-Thank you for inviting me over tonight, you’re both v-very lovely people and it was a p-pleasure to meet you.” He stuttered.

You could see a hint of a grin on your mom’s lips. “It was nice to meet you, too. Have a good rest of your night.”

��Remember our talk, Ricky.” Your dad reminded, giving a hard pat on his shoulder.

You turned to your boyfriend, grabbing his hand. He jolted, caught off guard by your touch before he hesitantly held it. “I’ll walk you out.” You smiled. He nodded, giving one last wave to your parents before following you out the front door.

The sky was dark already, stars eminent amongst the sky along with the lights of passing airplanes. Cold air blew through you, you chose to believe that was the reason Ricky walked so far from you. You walked him to the front of his car, but he didn’t look your way.

“Thanks for coming tonight, it means a lot to me.” You mumble, awkwardly shifting back in forth.

“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He grinned.

You move your arms to hug him, frowning at his body pull back slightly. He held your waist, stuffing his face in your neck. As he pulled away, you lean in and peck his lips, smiling at each other before he got in his car.

➢➣ ➢➣

You stood outside your fourth period classroom, waiting for Ricky to come by so you could walk together to lunch. Since this morning, you didn’t get a single text or call from him. No sight of him even before school or passing period either. You began to worry, especially since it has been five minutes since lunch began and Ricky usually managed to get to you the second class was over.

You huffed, realizing the behavior of your boyfriend. He probably thinks my parents hate him. You rush around the halls, knowing exactly where he would be if he wasn’t with you.

The doors of the theatre stood in front of you, so you quietly opened the door as to not disrupt anyone that may be inside. The stage lights were on, leaving the seats dark. The piano in the far corner caught your eye, as your boyfriend sat on the seat in front of it with his guitar.

“Ricky?”

His head shot up, eyes wide once he heard his name leave your lips. He set his guitar against the seat, letting it lean as he stood up. His hands were either in his pocket, or scratching the back of his neck.

“Hey.” He mumbled.

“What’s wrong? I understand that my parents probably scared the hell out of you, but why have you been avoiding me?”

You were now standing a few inches away from him. His heart broke hearing how you felt. He didn’t mean to be so distant, and he especially didn’t mean to make you feel like you were the problem.

“I’m really sorry. It’s just that after last night, it sounded like your parents didn’t like me. And right after dinner your dad told me that if I believe that I’m good enough for you, then that’s all that matters. I thought about it for a bit, and I realized that maybe I’m not as good enough as I think I am. Or maybe he doesn’t think I should be with you.”

His eyes watered, so you instinctively held his face on your hands, making him nuzzle his cheek into your palms.

“Ricky, they love you.” You whisper, making him raise his eyebrows.

“But the way they talked to m-”

“They’re were trying to scare you, but they like you. I tried to tell them not to, but it’s some weird parent thing, I guess.”

For the first time in two days, you felt him relax. No more tense shoulders or jittery movements, just him softening his body with yours.

“And don’t ever think you’re not good enough for me. I’m the luckiest girl in the world to have you.”

His hands held your waist, bringing you closer to his body as he placed his lips on yours. You kissed back immediately, missing the feeling.

You pulled away, resting your forehead against his. “How about after school we go talk to them again? I promise they won’t be as serious as they were yesterday.”

He pecked your lips again, smiling.

“That would be nice.”

A/N - thank u for ur request !! i hope u like it (: also i started online school last week ughhh i literally just got out a few minutes ago so wish me luck on that . love y’all xx

taglist - @love-joshy @mzzjads @seaveyssparkle

#joshua bassett imagine #joshua bassett x reader #joshua bassett #joshua bassett blurbs #joshua bassett fluff #joshua bassett angst #joshua bassett oneshot #ricky bowen x reader #ricky bowen imagine #ricky bowen #ricky bowen oneshot #ricky bowen blurbs #ricky bowen fluff #ricky bowen angst #hsmtmts imagine #hsmtmts

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tony-luvv · 4 years

Note

Do you have any Headcanons for Winteriron?

Okay so I had this one sitting in my notes for a while now and I’m just going to show you what I have...

Tony sees James kissing some pretty redhead and experiences heart break for the first time. He doesn’t even say anything to James, just tucks the fancy watch he’d spent months saving for in his pocket and walks home. Doesn’t notice it started raining until he’s stand at his apartment door, hands shaking so hard he can’t get his key in the lock. His neighbor, happens to come out at that moment. He takes one look at Tony and wordlessly opens his door for Tony to come inside.

Scott gets him warm clothes, swaddles him in blankets on the couch, and turns on the Notebook. When tears start to fall ten minutes into the movie, Scott is kind enough to not ask questions. Instead he opens his arms and says, “It’s okay, I hate this movie too.”

Tony curls up in his neighbors arms and cries, turning his phone off when it vibrates one to many times. Scott lets him spend the night.

In the following weeks Tony avoids James like the plague. Ignoring texting and calls, putting in extra hours at work so he’s home less. Crashing at Scott’s when the man lets him or doesn’t have his daughter. Even with Cassie there he invites Tony over for dinner.

Things are better, Tony’s okay. James barely messages him now...only a text in the morning and one at night before bed. Tony likes to pretend it doesn’t make his heart hurt. The watch feels like lead in his coat pocket.

He runs into James three days later.

He’s exhausted, work was awful and all he wanted to do was crawl into his cold empty bed and fall asleep. So of course that’s when James drives by.

He’s so tired he doesn’t even notice the car screech to a halt next to him. Just keeps his eyes on his feet until he hears his name being called.

“Tony?”

He looks over, sees James, handsome James who broke his heart - sitting in a fancy car with the window rolled down. His body moves to step closer when he remember in a flash - James looking pissed off as he gripped the red headed woman and brought her close for a brutal kiss, completely ignorant of Tony standing a few yards away.

With the memory of James breaking his heart fresh in his mind, he turns and continues down the street, not saying a word to James. “Wait! Tony - baby, wait a second.” James scrambles our of the car after him. Tony keeps his eyes on the sidewalk even though it looks blurry though his tears.

It doesn’t take long for James to catch up to him and grab a hold of his arm, “Tony-“

“Let go.” He still has his back to James, he doesn’t want to see his face.

“What?” The hand on his arm tightens just a fraction, “Tony, talk to me-“

“I said let go!” Yanking his arm free he’s facing James now and the man can see the tears in his eyes. Tony looks back at him, looks him in the eyes and sees so much. Confusion is dominating his eyes but Tony can see the other things, like how his brows arch just enough to show he’s hurting too. The tension in his body shows his anger.

Whatever James is feeling, it’s not guilt, and that - that makes white hot rage flash through Tony. But it’s short lived and now he just feels bone tired. James must see it too, inching closer, “Tony, baby what’s wrong?”

He still has tears in his eyes, it hurts hearing James sounding so concerned. But he knows the truth now and that gives him enough strength to say it, “Just stop, okay? Stop calling, stop texting, just - leave me alone.” He’s practically hugging himself now, arms wrapped around himself and he’s sounds like he’s pleading with the man instead of telling him to go to hell.

...I just-I want to go home.

He looks at James one last time, the confusion hurts almost as bad as the kiss he witnessed. So he leaves, just turns around and walks home like James never stopped him in the middle of the street.

Little does he know James watches him, so many thoughts racing through his mind. Trying to figure out when things went so wrong? He’s ready to march down the street and demand Tony talk to him when Steve steps up beside him. “Buck...we got to go.”

James wants to curse, to scream, say fuck the meeting he’s on his way too...but he can’t.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

Steve’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

How They Meet

James just wanted some greasy food. Business was good and his other “business” was running as smoothly as it could but it wasn’t always like this. James did that, took what his father left him and cleaned house. Making sure all his ducks were in order and all that jazz. Now he had time for a breather and he wanted a fucking burger. Maybe he should have taken a nap instead...although if he had, he never would have met Tony.

Tony was waiting on him, he was charming and knew exactly when and when not to stop by James’ seat. At the time James didn’t take much notice.

But Tony certainly did. Especially when James dropped a bill on the table and said “Keep the change.”

He swore he put down enough for his food and a decent tip. He did not. His bill was 19.38...he left a twenty.

He was walking to his car, mind racing with stuff he needed to get done when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

He was surprised to turn around and see his waiter’s smiling face. The guy grabbed his hand, turned it face up and slapped his money down.

“Here you go, meal’s on the house, wouldn’t want you to go hungry if that’s all you can afford.” Tony, as his name tag stated, gave him an award winning smile then turned around and went back inside.

James was so surprised he left, just got in his fancy car and drove home. It wasn’t until he was sitting in the parking garage of his building that he realized his mistake.

James was smitten after that. Tony was fierce and beautiful and refused to take anyone’s shit, including and most importantly not James Barnes.

He had to work hard to get the brunette to give him a chance.

But it was worth it in the end because Tony was amazing.

He’s funny, smart, passionate and James loves him. That’s why he refuses to let Tony get away.

Truths Come to Light

“Head on home Tony, you work to hard.” Tony finished whipping down the table before glancing over at his boss.

“Thanks, Happy, I’ll just finish this and then grab my stuff.”

His boss, an ex boxer turned chef just grumbled about young kids and their energy before going back into the kitchen. Happy was probably the closest thing to family Tony had these days. Growing up in the foster system he never found his “forever home” which left him stuck at a orphanage until he turned 18. Of course at the time he only had two weeks left until he graduated high school so the orphanage was kind enough to let him stay. But as soon as he walked across that stage, he had to be out.

That’s when he stumbled into Happy’s Place. The cook saw him, looking down on his luck and gave him a chance. He gave Tony a job, taught him what he needed to know and even let him crash in his spare bedroom until Tony could afford his own place. If it wasn’t for Happy, Tony’s not sure what his life would be.

“Okay, I’m leaving. Goodnight, Happy!”

“Night, kid.”

It made Tony smile, he was almost 26 and Happy was still calling him kid.

So I never got to the “Truths” part so if anyone has recommendations I’m all ears. Also to clear things up, James is most likely a mobster/mafia boss. Tony grew up Poor. The Redhead is Natasha.

#answered #luvvswrittng #kind of #winteriron #another idea #my headcanons #mob au #poor tony #and some angst #tony stark #james bucky barnes #buckytony

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imagineclaireandjamie · 6 years

Note

I find myself once again asking for another chapter of As Yet Unread. It really is a compelling read. I am fascinated by it. And in advance of my request...a simple please and thank you for your consideration and regard.

Here you go, lovely one. I hope this makes up for the wait

Claire placed both of her feet flat on the floor as she pushed herself up from the bed. It had only been twenty-four hours since she’d had the cast taken off and she was still struggling, hobbling around the flat as if the plaster still held her hostage. Though it wasn’t the slight muscle damage that caused it, it was more akin to a phantom injury that halted her recovery.

Dr Gowan had made her promise that she’d leave the house and not keep herself hidden away. She’d agreed to it yesterday and Jamie had offered to give her some lessons in wood masonry if she felt able later down the line. Claire didn’t like breaking her promise to Ned, and even though it had only been a day she itched to break free. Though something stopped her from accepting Jamie’s offer straight off the bat. The same invisible force that made the back of her leg ache with increased furor the more she thought about moving on it.

As if on cue, the phone rang. Jamie had been calling everyday from his van and even now, in the wake of her cast removal, it seemed he would continue to do the same. Claire liked it best when it was raining and she could hear the pitter patter of water droplets on the roof of his van as he spoke to her. There was something very soothing about it. That and the soft tenor of Jamie’s voice - it kept her sane.

“Hi Jamie.” She said, the fingers of her free and tapping against the side of the metal bed as she waited for him to speak down the phone.

“Hello sassenach,” he replied, a happy lilt to his voice as he audibly sipped tea on the other end of the phone, “I just thought I’d call to see how ye were holding up today, first day of freedom and all!”

He sounded chirpy and the happiness in his tone made her smile as she cradled the phone closer to her cheek. Jamie had finally managed to unlock his old phone, add a new sim card and update Claire’s details onto it so that she had her own access to him, Murtagh, Suzette and his family should she need it. It also had wifi access which meant that she could sit and watch online videos from bed if she wasn’t feeling up to moving far though Jamie was wary about giving her a television in there with Netflix on in case she never came out again.

“Are you on your lunch already?” She asked as he began chewing on something that was potentially the sandwiches she’d made him the night before. “It’s only eleven AM, Jamie!” She said faux-offended by his choice of meal time.

“Nah,” he mumbled around his food, “just having a wee break wi’ a biscuit before we get back to the hardcore stuff.”

“A heavy lifting day, huh?”

“Ach, always, Claire. Only Murtagh is a grumpy arse because I didna bring the nice biscuits, you ken the ones…wi’ the chocolate on?”

“Which did you take then?” She asked, perplexed.

“The plain digestives.” He said sounding fairly ashamed of his decision.

She could hear Murtagh muttering in the background and it made her laugh. “Sounds like you might not be so daft in the future, Jamie. You have to keep your uncle happy else he might just up and leave you for a better offer.” She quipped as she tapped her bare toes on the carpet, experimenting with the feel of the soft material beneath her feet.

“Aye, he’s already putting together a tribunal. He thinks this is poor working conditions or something similar. He says ye’d agree wi’ him.” He laughed, the echo of it making the tension seep from her bones as she stood confidently and took a couple of steps towards the door.

“I would! It’s downright disgraceful, James Fraser. You’d better get your house in order.”

“Och, aye, I should. And wi’ that I’d better get back to misery guts and get the wood cut fer the next half of the room. Get yerself some lunch, sassenach and dinna forget where we are if ye need anything else.”

“Will you be late tonight?” She asked cautiously, her hand hovering over the bedroom door handle.

“Probably, lass. The more we get done today while we have the light, the earlier we can move onto the next room. If we finish early there’s a bonus in it for us, aye? A nice one.”

“So I shouldn’t make something for dinner then?”

“Dinner? Ah. What would ye make?” He questioned, intrigued. Whilst Claire had her cast on she’d been pretty much bed and settee-bound; and although she had helped out as much as she was able the most she’d done in the kitchen was make a couple of rounds of toast. Mostly, Jamie had just carried on as normal, making his own brand of sustenance. While he knew she probably had far superior skills in food preparation, he hadn’t ever assumed she might cook for him once she was more mobile.

“Well, you have enough for me to make us spaghetti bolognaise. Or I could do a shepherds pie. You have some nice mince in and some sauce. I’d just need some basic herbs to add and some tomatoes.”

“I can drop into Tesco on the way home. Ye just tell me what else ye need and I’ll bring it for you.”

“Oh! I found tomatoes,” Claire exclaimed. Having found herself in the kitchen she had begun to root around looking for the key ingredients that she needed, “I could marinate the mince, once it’s soaked up the flavours of the tomato it’ll make a much nicer sauce. Then we can have bolognaise. Do you just fancy grabbing a baguette and some garlic cloves. I’ll make some homemade garlic bread to go with it?”

Thrilled by the prospect of being useful once more, Claire began to put everything she needed on the side whilst Jamie chuckled and replied. “Aye, I can do that. Just text me else I’ll forget all of that by the time I’m finished here.”

“Alright! Excellent. See you later, Jamie. Have a good rest of your day.”

Claire waited for him to reply and ring off before she got to work preparing the base sauce she needed and when she was done she placed the pre-cooked mince in her own tomato base sauce and folded it all together. Beneath the sink she had also found a dusty old slowcooker buried behind some other oddments that had Jenny Fraser Murray’s name written all over them. None of them had been used and Claire thought it pivotal that she christen at least a few of the items she’d recently unearthed.

With the timer set, Claire rinsed the dirty pots and placed them carefully in the dishwasher.

Looking at the clock she noticed that it was barely past one as she perched on the ‘L’ shaped corner sofa. She was restless. Her fingers itching to keep working but the house was basically spotless. Jamie hired a cleaner to come in once a week and it meant that Claire had nothing to keep her occupied.

Closing her eyes she measured the steady beat of her heart as the sun rose high enough in the sky to shine in through the large lounge window. It warmed her face and she basked in it for a moment before setting her mind to the task ahead.

She had promised a number of people that she wouldn’t allow herself to build another prison in Jamie’s flat, and although it had barely been a day since those hard conversations Claire felt ready to battle her demons. She needed a few various ingredients from the shops and she didn’t want Jamie to have to go out of his way after a long day at work just to pick up bread and garlic.

She put her shoes on quickly, tying the laces tight and grabbing her coat as she quickly limped towards the front door, keys in hand and shopping bags neatly stashed in her pocket. Forgoing the lift, Claire opted for the stairs although she still felt a little shaky but the more she waited around the more likely it was that she’d chicken out and go scuttling back into the flat with her tail between her legs.

The moment the fresh air hit her face Claire felt soothed. It was clean, cool but refreshing as she took her first solo steps into the world. It was hard for her to believe that, though she’d left the flat to meet Susie with Fergus in those early days, for the rest of her time she’d been hiding herself away like a porcelain doll. Taking her first slow steps she made sure to keep the building in sight should she need it but before long she was content and settled in her decision.

Ned had told her to explore and Jamie had encouraged it. Claire wasn’t a coward and she knew it was the right time to gather her courage.

The walk to Tesco wasn’t a bad one. She had researched the route thoroughly enough that she knew where the large supermarket was in relation to the apartment. Having forgotten her Glasgow metro pass, she had been forced to walk the whole way and it was only when she stepped closer to the illuminated blue entrance to the supermarket did she realise that she’d left her phone there too.

“Oh…” she sighed under her breath, placing her hand on her pocket where the small visa card Jamie had given her lay. She still had the keys and her shopping bags, but no cash, no metro card and no phone to contact Jamie if she needed it. Suddenly her brave act seemed foolhardy and daft.

Tesco hummed with life, the car park was filled with large 4X4 cars, sedans and hatchbacks, and the crush outside the store made Claire feel small and insignificant. Even the sliding doors seemed to tease her as she took one nervous step backwards. Pulling her coat around her neck, she jiggled her still healing leg as she internally bantered with herself on what to do next.

“Miss?” A man in the recognisable uniform said, reaching out his hand as if to snap her out of her agitated stupor. “Are ye alright? Can I help you?”

“I’m f-fine, thank you.” she stammered sounding far from alright. Waving her hands, she took one step to the side, bringing herself free from the confused gaze of the guy who’d interrupted her mid panic attack.

Taking one further step backwards, Claire tried to smile but the forced lift of her mouth obviously made her look even more afraid as he scrunched his brow in confusion and opened his mouth as if to speak again.

“Sorry.” Claire managed to blurt out as she turned on her heel and hobbled off. Her head was fuzzy, the haze of the fright she’d given herself clouding her judgement as she headed in an unfamiliar direction. The heat of the sun had dissipated from the air leaving her chilly. She didn’t have a watch and there was nothing around her to signify the time and as she rounded another unknown street she began to fret. The moisture that gathered in her eyes misted her vision and the cars that were flying passed her wafted her hair around her face so that she couldn’t reorient herself.

Dragging in more and more ragged breaths, Claire tried to slow her heart rate as she quickened her pace. Her leg ached, the increased movement causing the scars that ran down it to itch madly beneath her trousers.

A few pedestrians loitered, watching her carefully as she walked by them, her chin wobbling as she tried to contain the tears she desperately wanted to shed - but nobody approached her for which she was grateful. Even if she could talk to any of them, she didn’t know the exact address she needed - not now with her brain struggling to make head nor tail of her location - and she didn’t know either Jamie or Murtagh’s phone number.

It wasn’t until the clouds started to darken that she let the hopelessness seep into her skin, the damp, fragile grasp on her sanity shattering as the soft splashes of rain fell onto her thin raincoat. Sunset was coming and she had no clue how to find her way home or how to contact Jamie. Her teeth chattered noisily, her jaw throbbing as she tried to curtail her sobs.

With blurred vision, a sore chest and shaking shoulders, Claire limped to the nearest bench and collapsed onto the sodden wood, her trousers soaking up the moisture from the moist beams as she curled herself up into a small ball in order to keep warm.

“Foolish.” She mumbled, the hair covering her face as she buried her nose against her knees and took a few long, deep breaths.

She was so exhausted that she almost didn’t hear the call of her own name through the fog, but the distinct French accent pulled her from her temporary bubble and she wiped her eyes as she looked up to see Suzette with Fergus clutched against her chest rushing steadily towards her.

“Claire!” She repeated, this time with more relief in her tone. “Jamie is beside himself. Where have you been?”

“To Tesco.” She answered lamely, her voice cracking as she peeled her legs away from her chest and sat up straight.

“It’s alright, love,” Suzette said, turning to look at Claire’s tear streaked face as she spoke down the phone, “she’s here, in the park around the corner from ours - I forget its name.” During the pause in her talking, Susie leaned into Claire, letting her shoulder connect for a moment in a quiet show of solidarity. “Yes. Of course,” she continued, pausing a couple more times to let whoever she was talking to (probably Murtagh, Claire thought) speak too, “we’ll wait here. Fergus is fine. He’s settled. Don’t worry. Love you too.”

“I take it you never made it into the store.” Suzette began once she’d hung up the phone. “Since you still have your shopping bags but nothing inside them.” The way she spoke made Claire feel less daft. Susie was friendly and motherly whilst never being condescending or callous. She truly cared and was making a concerted effort calm Claire’s frayed nerves as they waited.

“No.” Claire sighed loudly. “I couldn’t. Silly really.”

“Not at all, Claire. It’s loud and busy in there. I hate it. Fergus certainly doesn’t care for it. I think the bright neon lights hurt his eyes too.”

“Is Jamie mad?” Claire asked, feeling more than a little ridiculous for leaving the flat without her phone.

“Mad with worry perhaps,” Susie said kindly, “but not angry, no.”

“I came out without my phone,” Claire sighed, “and once I’d reached the shop I felt this crushing sense of failure when I couldn’t just…go in!” She cursed through clenched teeth. “Then I panicked. I couldn’t remember the way home and I had no way to contact anyone. I just didn’t want Jamie to have to run around after me when he’d been at work all day long. I was trying not to be a nuisance and then…” she trailed off sounding incredibly disappointed with herself.

“Yer no’ a nuisance, Claire…” The sound of Jamie’s voice broke through the dim grey of the evening as night truly set in. “And ye never will be.”

Claire’s heart stopped for one moment as she felt him hovering over her and her head tipped to the side as she breathing in one large breath and turned to face him. “Apart from the times when I disappear without leaving a note.” She joked, a large lump forming in her throat as she saw the worry colouring Jamie’s face. He was pale, whiter than she’d ever seen him and she instantly felt bad for making light of the situation.

“Aye, weel,” he said, the stress of the evening showing on his face more clearly now as he held out his hand to help her stand, “Murtagh is waiting and I should probably get ye home.”

Claire kept quiet on the drive home. Murtagh and Suzette bantered about an upcoming trip they had planned and Jamie sat stoically next to Claire, his hand holding gently onto hers as if he were afraid she wouldn’t make it home if he let her go. The warmth of his skin soothed her and she closed her eyes and relaxed against the window, watching the world pass by through the fog her breath created against the glass. Glasgow came and went, the obscured view making it look blurred as the car slowed when it reached Jamie’s flat.

“I thought he’d taken you…” Jamie whispered as they entered his home, the heat of the apartment hitting them both as they stopped dead in the entrance to the lounge, “I didna ken how, but I when I came home to find ye gone wi’ yer phone left here, I thought he’d come back and taken ye.”

“I’m so s-sorry, Jamie,” Claire sobbed, breaking down as the full brunt force of his shaky words hit her solidly in the chest, “I th-thought…”

“Hush, sassenach,” Jamie soothed, instantly taking her against his chest as he rocked her to and fro, one hand resting softly against her smooth curls and one on her lower back, “ye dinna need to be sorry, please. I ken how much ye’ve been through and I dinna want you to think yer stuck here, or that ye have to leave. You just have to do things in yer own time, aye? Dinna rush to do one or the other…”

He paused for just one moment as the timer on the slow cooker beeped quietly in the kitchen.

“…just take yer phone wi’ ye next time, so I dinna have a heart attack when I come home to find you missing.”

#;Mod MBD #As Yet Unread #jamie x claire

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hmhteen · 6 years

Text

Cover (Re)reveal + HMH Teen Teaser: YOU OWE ME A MURDER by Eileen Cook!

Thrillers are the best at providing twisty endings you never saw coming...so it makes sense that YOU OWE ME A MURDER would start thrilling readers with a cover switcheroo! That’s right, this YA perfect for fans of GENUINE FRAUD and ONE OF US IS LYING has a new cover.

And here’s a plot twist: in addition to sharing the cover below, we’re sharing an excerpt, too.

***

ONE

AUGUST 15

16 DAYS REMAINING

I plotted murder in the Vancouver airport while waiting at gate D78 for my flight to London.

Based on the expressions of the people around me, I wasn’t the only one thinking of how to do someone in. Our flight was delayed and everyone was irritated and restless. The couple at the end of the row were fighting about which one of them had forgotten to lock the bedroom window before they left. Then there were at least a half-dozen people wanting to take out the toddler wearing the SpongeBob T-shirt, who vacillated between shrieking at a decibel normally used to torture dogs and running around slamming into everyone with his grimy hands.

The old guy across from me snarled, baring his yellowed teeth, every time the kid whirled in his direction. You’d think that would freak the toddler out, but it didn’t seem to make any impact. Maybe the little boy got his ability to ignore unpleasant things from his mom. She stared down at an issue of People magazine, her lips moving as she read, completely ignoring the fact that people in the gate area wanted to club her kid with their roller bags. The only way you knew it was her child was that when he would slam into her, she’d hold out a limp plastic baggie filled with rainbow-colored gummy worms and then drop one into his clutching hand. She was like an apathetic mama bird.

I tilted my head to the side to crack the tension in my neck. I wished I could block things out that well. Instead I found myself continually looking over at Connor. My back teeth clenched, tight enough to crack. Miriam was perched on his lap. I told myself to stop staring, but my attention kept being pulled back. He slid his hand under her shirt and rubbed her back in tight circles. I knew that move. He’d done that to me.

Before he’d dumped me.

Miriam ruffled his hair. He couldn’t stand it when I’d done that. He’d push my hand away or duck out of my reach. Connor had gone deaf after a bout of chicken pox as a kid and had cochlear implants so he could hear. He wore his hair a bit shaggy because he didn’t like to draw attention to the proces- sor behind his ears. I’d found it fascinating. Not just because it’s a pretty cool piece of tech, but also because I wanted to know how he felt going from a silent world to being able to hear. But he didn’t like to talk about it, or for me to touch his hair.

Apparently, he didn’t have the same hang-up with Miriam. I reminded myself that I didn’t care. Connor meant nothing to me now. I swallowed hard.

Toddler SpongeBob slammed into me. His sticky fingers, streaked red and blue from the candy, clutched my jeans. He stared up at me with his watery eyes and then, without look- ing away, slowly lowered his drooling, slobbery mouth to my knee and bit me.

“Hey!” I shoved him hard without thinking. He teetered for a moment and then fell onto his giant padded diaper butt, letting out a cry. I glanced around guiltily, shame landing on my chest with a thud. His mother didn’t even look over. The old man gave me a thumbs-up gesture. Great — that’s me, Kim, the kind of person who beats up preschoolers when she’s not stalking her ex-boyfriend. I crouched down to help the kid up, but he pushed me away and returned to running wildly up and down the aisle.

I peered down at my phone, wishing I could call my best friend, Emily. She always knew how to cheer me up. She was spending the entire summer working at a camp on the far side of Vancouver Island. She didn’t have any cell service or WiFi, so there was going to be no quick “everything will be fine” text or call. Granted, if I’d been able to reach her earlier in the sum- mer, I might not even have been in this situation at all. Com- municating old school — by letters — might be vintage and nostalgic, but it does you no good when you have an emotional disaster that needs immediate BFF interaction.

We’d been friends since elementary school and this was the longest I’d ever gone without talking to her. So far, my summer was proof positive that I shouldn’t be allowed to handle things on my own. I fished the last card she’d sent me out of my bag. Inside she’d scribbled, “I know you can do this! Your trip’s going to be amazing!!” Emily never met an exclamation point that she didn’t like. Despite the positive punctuation, I was pretty sure she was wrong on both counts. I felt far from capable, and although the flight hadn’t even left, I already hated everything about this trip.

I took a deep breath, counting in for three and then letting it whoosh out. I can do this. I wasn’t going to let Emily and my parents down.

A few rows over, Miriam laughed, tossing her head back as if Connor had just told the best joke of all time. She playfully punched him in the chest with her tiny little hand. Everything about her was miniaturized. She told everyone she was five feet tall, but she was four eleven at best. She looked ridiculous when she stood next to Connor. He could have put her into his backpack and carried her around like a Chihuahua.

I had to admit Miriam was pretty, other than being freakishly petite. She had long dark hair that could have starred in a shampoo commercial. Her only flaw was that she wore too much eyeliner. She was addicted to the cat’s-eye look, accentuating the slant of her eyes. She had a flair for drama; she always made huge gestures, sweeping her arms around, flicking her hair over a shoulder, or talking loudly as if she was constantly trying to make sure everyone could hear her. She was in the theater crowd, so maybe she couldn’t help herself.

I never would have guessed Connor would date someone like her: showy. I thought he’d enjoyed that we didn’t always have to be talking, but if we did, it was about important stuff: Philosophy. Science. Politics. We met once at the coffee shop in the morning before work and split up the Globe and Mail, silently passing the newspaper sections back and forth. He was the only other person I knew besides me who liked to read an actual paper. I’d caught our reflection in the window and thought we looked like adults. Like people who lived in New York or Toronto, with important jobs, a fancy high-rise apart- ment with lots of glass and chrome, and a membership to the local art museum.

Miriam had no volume control, but she wasn’t stupid. I didn’t know her well — she hung with the drama crowd — but I wouldn’t have thought Connor was her type. I would have seen her liking a guy with an earring and some kind of social justice agenda. She wasn’t in the hard sciences but still took a bunch of AP courses. She’d written some paper on Shakespeare that won a national award for English geeks. No wonder I wanted to kill her.

I sighed. I didn’t want to kill her, I wanted to be her. Miriam hadn’t stolen Connor. Someone can’t steal what you don’t have. He didn’t dump me because he’d fallen for her. What had happened between us was complicated. More complicated than I even wanted to admit. He had his own reasons for stomping on my heart. If I was going to take anyone out, it should be him. But no matter whom I blamed, it didn’t change the fact that I wasn’t looking forward to spending the next few weeks watching the two of them make out in front of me. I shook my head to clear it. As everyone kept reminding me, it would be for only sixteen days.

I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see them, but I could still hear Miriam. Her drama teacher should be proud of how well Miriam’s voice carried. She was four feet eleven of all lungs. Her voice filled the entire gate area and spread down the hall like toxic lava. I could tell already that the sound would be like fingernails on a chalkboard by the end of the trip.

The worst part was that I’d pleaded to go. I told my parents if they let me attend, they’d never have to get me another gift. Once Connor had announced he was going — before we’d broken up — I’d been instantly consumed with images of the two of us walking hand in hand through narrow cobblestone streets. The program was advertised as if it were a great edu- cational opportunity, but the truth was, there weren’t any real demands. We’d be “exposed” to culture, as though it were a cold we could catch. I didn’t really care about the chance to travel, or what I might learn from the sights of London; what mattered was going with him. I didn’t want him to be away for almost three weeks, doing all these things without me. I loved the idea of starting school in September with the two of us chatting constantly about “remember the time we were in London?” until everyone around us was annoyed.

In retrospect, I know he wanted to come because he didn’t think I was going. He signed up without talking it over, telling me only after it was a done deal. I pleaded with my parents for days, never admitting that I wanted to go because of Connor and instead laying it on thick how it was a great way to expand my horizons, how amazing it would look on my university apps, and how I’d suddenly developed a fascination with British history, until they gave in.

Then, after things with Connor blew up in my face, I’d begged my parents to let me bail, but they wouldn’t budge. They insisted it wasn’t the deposit, it was the point. My dad called it a chance for me to “build character.” As far as he was concerned, Connor had never been worth my time. He made a snide comment about Connor’s overbite, which, coming from a dentist, was some serious trash talk.

My mom had made a dismissive sniff and told me “he’s not worth bothering over.” She acted as though she didn’t like him, but when I’d first told her about Connor, she’d been as excited as me. He was exactly the kind of boy she would have liked at my age, and the exact kind of boy she assumed would never know her awkward daughter even existed. She looked at me differently, as if her ugly duckling had finally hit possible swan status. We went shopping together and got matching hot pink mani-pedis. We’d never gotten along as well as we had for those few weeks.

Then when things went bad with him, my mom acted as if she were the one who’d been humiliated. She might have said she wanted me to go on the trip because it was a chance to travel, but she also wanted me to be the kind of person who held her head high to handle the situation the way she would have done. And I wanted to be that person too — the kind who would have a fantastic time regardless of a breakup and, by the end of the trip, see Connor desperately sorry he’d broken up with me. All while making a pack of new friends.

However, if I was going to go full fantasy, I might as well add in that the queen would invite me to the palace, and Will and Kate would ask me to baby-sit, and Harry and Meghan would offer to hook me up with some minor count or a duke. The truth was, the next few weeks were going to suck.

And I was going to be stuck strapped in directly behind the lovebirds for the entire flight, watching them crawl all over each other in the tiny coach seats. I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could block out the mental image playing on the big screen of my mind. I’d told myself a thousand times since we’d all checked in and I’d heard our seating assignments that I could handle this, but with every second that went by, it was becoming increasingly clear to me that I wouldn’t make it. I’d snap somewhere thirty-three thousand feet up and beat the two of them over the head with the in-flight magazine.

Or start crying again. I wasn’t sure which would be worse. You would think there was only so much crying a person could do before she got completely dehydrated. I’d told myself I couldn’t stand him anymore, so why did my heart still seize and my throat grow tight every time he was around?

I stood up so suddenly that my bag fell to the floor. I snatched it up and strode over to the airline counter. The gate agent didn’t look up. She was too preoccupied typing into her computer. Her fingernails, which had a thick layer of bright red gel polish, made a strange clacking sound on the keys. I cleared my throat, but she still didn’t stop.

“Excuse me,” I managed to get out before she held up a fin- ger to silence me.

She finally finished whatever she was doing and glanced up. “If you’re asking about the delay, I don’t have any more information. As soon as we get clearance, we’ll start boarding.” There was makeup creased on her forehead and I suspected she was on her last nerve. She was a walking reminder to never go into a customer service occupation.

I leaned forward even though logically I knew Connor couldn’t hear me from where he was sitting. “I wondered if I could change my seat?”

She scrunched up her face. “I don’t think —”

“See the guy back there?” I yanked my head in Connor’s direction. “That’s my ex-boyfriend. We’re going to England on a travel program. I’m supposed to sit right behind him.” I paused. “For nine hours.”

Her perfectly arched eyebrows shot up to her hairline and she looked over my shoulder.

I sensed I was getting somewhere. “He was my first boyfriend.” My voice cracked and I had to swallow over and over to keep control. “He dumped me just a couple weeks ago.”

Her eyes softened, but she shook her head. “I’m sorry, but

I can’t —”

“That’s his new girlfriend. She used to be my best friend.” The gate agent sucked in a breath and looked over at Connor as though he were something she’d scraped off her shoe.

I felt bad as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Mir- iam and I had never even hung out before this trip, let alone been friends, but I needed the agent to help me. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

I don’t lie to hurt people, or to pull something over on them, but I guess sometimes I . . . make up stories to make myself more interesting. As long as I can remember, I’ve done it. On the playground in elementary school, I told the other kids that fairies lived in my backyard. In junior high I let everyone think I’d been adopted. I didn’t want to lie. I wanted to be normal and interesting, but I wasn’t.

I hadn’t lied with Connor. With him I’d been one hun- dred percent honest about my feelings, and look how that had turned out.

The agent clacked away on the computer. “Your name?”

“Kim, Kim Maher.” I spelled my last name.

“I need your old boarding pass.” I slid the limp piece of paper across the counter. She tore it in half as the machine spat out a new one. She passed it over to me with a wink. “He doesn’t deserve you. Have a good trip.”

The tight band around my chest loosened. “Thanks.”

I wove through the crowd clustered around the gate and plopped back down in my seat. I pushed the New York Times I’d already read out of the way and pulled out the magazine I’d brought. I hid between the pages, blinking back tears. The gate agent was right. Connor didn’t deserve me. It was the same thing Emily told me. But even if I knew it was true, it didn’t hurt any less. All I had to do was figure out how to get my heart to catch up to the fact that my head didn’t like him anymore.

A girl slid a few seats over to be next to me. “Did she say anything about the delay?” Her English accent made me feel as if I’d dropped onto the set of a BBC historical drama.

I shook my head and quickly wiped my eyes so she wouldn’t notice the tears. “No news.”

The girl sighed. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees. She tugged the thin cream cashmere sweater sleeves over her hands. She glanced down at the stack of paper on the chair next to me. “Your Times?”

I nodded.

“Did you read the article about the changes to the space program? I saw it earlier this morning.”

I jumped slightly in surprise. She seemed like someone who would spot a copy of InStyle at a hundred meters but wouldn’t know a shuttle from a rocket if she were whacked across the face with one of them. “Uh-huh.” I picked up the paper, look- ing for the Science section.

“I think that’s what I like about a real paper,” she said. “It’s like a knowledge Easter egg hunt. You never know what you’re going to find.”

I nodded like a bobble-head doll. That was exactly why I

loved reading a paper too. “Yeah. Are you into space stuff?” She shrugged. “Just find it interesting.”

I held out my hand. “I’m Kim.”

“Nicki.” She smiled as we shook. “How come you aren’t hanging with the rest of your group?” She motioned to a cou- ple rows over. There were eight of us on the trip and we were all on this flight. A few had busted out cards to play a game on the blue carpeted floor, and the others were clustered around Jamal’s laptop checking out his music.

“How did you know —” I got out before she flicked the blue

and white student scholars for change tag attached to carryon. I’d forgotten I was branded. “Ah. I’m not really friends with any of them. There are just three of us from my high school. It’s complicated,” I said.

Nicki nodded. “Story of my life. I was here visiting my dad, and the reason he lives here, instead of in London with me and my mum, is all sorts of complicated too.”

Nicki tucked her hair behind her ears. Her bob wasn’t quite long enough, so as soon as she did, the hair fell free and swung forward again. “Sorry, that came out a bit pissy. I just find other people . . . ugh. I don’t know. Disappointing.” She shoved her hair back again.

“Story of my life,” I said, echoing her words. She laughed and it reminded me of scales on a piano.

Nicki tapped the robotics magazine on my lap. “You plan on going into robotics at uni?”

I shook my head. “Not sure. I’m leaning toward engineer- ing, maybe computers.”

She waited until an announcement about a flight to Phoe- nix stopped blaring on the PA. “I’m thinking psychology. I’m interested in research. This is my gap year.” She watched the unsupervised toddler fish a booger out of his nose and rub it into his hair.

“What kind of research?”

“Human behavior. I don’t have any interest in being a coun- selor. People blathering about their problems all day would drive me barmy. But I’m intrigued with why people do what they do, why they don’t do some things, what they could accomplish, that kind of thing.”

I traced the pattern in the carpet with my shoe. Under- standing other people was one of the great mysteries in my life. “If you ever figure people out, you’ll have to let me know what you discover. Math I can make sense of, but people are more confusing than quantum physics. Give me a robot any day.”

She laughed. “Don’t give up on humanity just yet. Maybe

you haven’t met anyone worth figuring out.”

The overhead speaker chirped to life. “Attention: Passen- gers on Air Canada flight 854 to London. Due to aircraft main- tenance issues, this flight will be further delayed. We apologize for the inconvenience.” The crowd groaned. The screen over our gate flickered and a new departure time, three hours from now, blinked on.

Connor stood and stretched. “Who wants to find a place to

watch the Whitecaps game?”

Our group began to gather up their stuff. He was like the pied piper of nerdy people. Everyone was willing to follow him. Miriam walked over toward me.

“Do you want to come?” she offered. Her legs were so small that her size extra small leggings were baggy around her thighs. She must buy her clothing in a kids’ department.

“No thanks,” I managed to say, willing her to walk away. Or

she could disappear completely — I was open to that, too.

“You can’t want to just hang around here for the next three hours.” Miriam nudged my tote with her foot. “C’mon, we’ll all get some fries or something. It’ll be fun.”

Fun wasn’t even in the top ten words that I would think of to describe the situation. “I’m fine,” I insisted. It was bad enough that Connor wanted nothing to do with me. It was worse that he started dating someone else right away. It was a nightmare that I was stuck on this trip with them. But her being nice to me was a layer of shit icing on this crap cupcake. I didn’t even know how much Connor had told her about what had happened between the two of us. I wasn’t sure what I preferred: that she knew and felt pity for me, or that he hadn’t told her anything because he didn’t think I was worth mentioning. I slouched lower in the seat.

“Leave it — she doesn’t want to come. Trust me, no one will miss her with that attitude.” Connor strode over and took Mir- iam’s hand without even glancing at me.

I flushed. He was right. I was a walking black cloud of doom. I hadn’t bothered to get to know anyone else coming on the trip and now I was going to be miserable and alone.

“Gawd, he’s a tosser,” Nicki said, loud enough to carry.

I wasn’t entirely certain what it meant, but it sounded both hysterical and insulting. I burst out laughing.

Connor and Miriam walked off down the hall, the rest of the group following behind them. He glanced over his shoulder at us, and when he saw we were still staring, he whirled back around.

My chest filled with air. I felt like one of those large balloons at a parade — ready to float away. “I don’t know what you said, but you’re my new favorite person on this planet,” I said. I meant it, too. My BFF couldn’t be reached except by letter. Emily might as well have been in space for all the help she could give me.

“That guy is a loser.” Nicki pulled me from my seat. “I can tell, because as we’ve already established, I study people. You can pay me back for correctly identifying him as a wanker by keeping me entertained for the next few hours.”

“How would you like me to do that?”

Nicki’s smile spread across her face. “We’re smart women, we’ll think of something.”

TWO

AUGUST 15

Nicki stopped short outside the duty-free store, causing me to nearly slam into her back. She seemed entranced by the bright lights bouncing off a display of jewel-colored perfume bottles.

“Let’s go in here,” she said.

“They won’t have gum,” I noted. “There’s another store down just a bit further.” I pointed, but she’d already started to weave her way through the aisles. She randomly picked up items: a stuffed bear holding a satin heart, a giant Toblerone bar, and a box of washed-out pastel-colored saltwater taffy. She inspected each one as if she worked for quality control and then put each back down. I trailed after her.

My mouth still burned from the jalapeños I’d had at lunch. Nicki claimed the best thing to eat before a big flight was huevos rancheros. She insisted the combination of protein from the eggs and cheese, along with the spice from the salsa, would ensure a good sleep on the plane. When I pointed out the entrée wasn’t on the menu, she’d raised one perfectly tweezed eyebrow. “Ordering off the menu is for the common person,” she’d declared. When the waiter came over, she turned on the charm, and before I’d known what was happening, he dropped off two custom plates just for us. And she was right — the huge meal made me want a nap.

Nicki grabbed a stuffed zebra and gave it a squeeze. “Things like this make me wish I had a kid brother or sister. Let me guess, you’re an only child too.”

My mouth fell open. “How did you —”

“Only children are different. They have to amuse them- selves growing up. They’re independent, better problem solvers. There’s tons of research on it. I could tell by the way you’ve been talking. You’re just like me.”

Technically, I wasn’t just like her. I never knew what to say when people asked if I had any siblings. “About a half-dozen fully frozen” seemed too flip and required an explanation. Saying I was an only child felt like lying about the existence of my parents’ cryogenically suspended embryos. They were my brothers and sisters, just in cold storage in a medical lab.

My parents hadn’t had an easy time getting pregnant. Thanks to the fact that my mom was an early blogger, the whole world knew about their struggles. Then after three rounds of IVF, I took. My mom called me MBK on her blog — Miracle Baby Kim. She said she used the initials to protect my privacy, but how private could my life be when she plastered every one of my development milestones in cyberspace for the whole world to see?

Somewhere on the Internet there’s a picture of me as a three-year-old, wearing a tiara and giant pink fuzzy slippers, sitting on the toilet with the caption “MBK Finally Masters Potty Training!” The “finally” is a nice touch; nothing I like bet- ter than people thinking I was delayed in the hygiene depart- ment. My mom’s name was all over her blog; it didn’t exactly take a Mensa-level IQ to figure out that I was MBK. The truth was, she didn’t care how I felt about the blog. What she cared about were all the people who read it and gave her nonstop “you’re the best mom ever” feedback.

The year I turned ten, my mom wrote a long blog post where she announced to her legions of fans that she and my dad were officially giving up their efforts to have more children. They couldn’t keep up the nonstop cycles of IVF. It seemed Mother Nature didn’t have it in the plans for my mom to be the mother she wanted to be, with a minivan and the ability to construct something out of Legos while simultaneously preparing an organic dinner for her large happy family. And while she wanted to focus on her blessing (Beautiful MBK!), she could still grieve for what could have been and she would always see those frozen embryos as her babies. The Huffington Post picked up that blog post and ran it on their site. It’s one of their most downloaded pieces. They rerun it on Mother’s Day most years.

It was around that time that I started to become aware that I was a disappointment to my mom. When she’d imag- ined having children, none of them were like me. She wanted a daughter who liked to play with dolls and whom she’d punish with a wag of her finger, all while smiling at how adorable it was that I stole her makeup. My desire for tangle-free short hair and passion for books and blanket forts befuddled her. Why didn’t I want to skip rope outside with the other girls? Why didn’t I let her braid my hair into complicated patterns befitting a Disney princess? Why wasn’t I similar to her at all? How could she be a mothering expert when her own kid was so . . . awkward?

My mom was one of the first mommy bloggers. Thousands of people still read her site daily. They comment on her reci- pes (Super YUM Crock-Pot Meals!) and reviews of baby items (Bugaboo Strollers Worth Every Penny!). She’s blogged about how motherhood is hard and disappointing, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it. I can’t be the only one who realizes that she’s trying to talk herself into that fact. I believe that my mom loves me, I just don’t think she likes me. If she’d had more kids, maybe it would have made a difference. I guess neither of us will ever know.

Nicki sniffed a bottle of Burberry Brit perfume and then spritzed a tiny bit on her wrist. She held out her arm for me and I leaned in.

“Nice,” I said, but she’d already moved on to the next display.

She stared up at the tower of Grey Goose vodka. “Want some for the flight?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t think even you can talk this place into selling us booze.”

Nicki winked and I noticed she was wearing a hint of a shimmery eye shadow. “Who says they’re going to sell it?”

My heart picked up speed. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were alone. “You’re going to steal it?” I asked, lowering my voice. My heart rabbited into overdrive.

“No, we’re going to steal it,” she said, her light brown eyes sparkling. “No one ever suspects the nicely dressed girl with a British accent. They think I’m too posh to sink to thievery.”

A swarm of spastic butterflies tried to take flight inside my lungs. I was pretty sure I didn’t look too posh to be arrested. “I don’t know . . .”

“Up to you.”

The chatter from the two clerks at the front of the store as they debated the merits of Ryan Reynolds seemed unnaturally loud to my ears. I bit the inside of my cheek. “What happens if we get caught?”

Nicki’s lips curled up, Grinch-like. “Bad things. That’s why we’ll do it so we don’t get caught.” Her head tilted slightly toward the bottles of booze. “They haven’t put on the plastic antitheft devices yet, and I don’t see any cameras.”

She was right. Every other bottle in the store had a black plastic disk attached around the neck, but the display of Grey Goose was naked. I could almost hear the angel and devil perched on my shoulders. One advising me to do the right thing and go on to the next store and buy a pack of Trident like a good girl, and the other telling me that it wouldn’t kill me to take a risk now and then. Where had playing it safe gotten me? I wanted to be someone else, anyone else. Maybe if I wanted to change the course of my life I needed to change the things I did. Be someone who did daring things, like Nicki.

“What do we do?” I whispered.

Nicki poked my leather tote bag. “When it’s time, grab the closest bottle and drop it in.”

“How will I know it’s time?”

She tapped me on the nose. “You’ll know because you’re smart.” She turned back to the perfume display and grabbed a small bottle. “I’m going to check the price — my mom loves this stuff.” She’d taken only a few steps when her foot hooked into the handles of a brightly colored canvas bag stamped with a maple leaf and the words canada forever, sitting on the floor among other similar bags.

I opened my mouth to warn her, but she’d already jerked forward with a loud oomph. Her arms flew up as she fell and the bottle of perfume collided with the ground with a brittle smash. A cloud of a citrus and musk scent filled the air. The clerks flew to her side.

I was about to do the same when I realized this was it. My hand jerked out as if it were under the authority of another force and yanked a bottle of vodka off the display, plopping it into my tote. I jammed my elbow over the top of the bag to pinch it shut and hustled to where Nicki was now standing between the two clerks. My heart beat out of control.

“Are you okay?” I asked, surprised that my voice didn’t crack with the electric tension filling every inch of my body, zapping down my nerves, lighting me up from the inside.

“I’m okay. I think.” Nicki looked down at the broken glass on the floor and her eyes widened. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“You’ll have to pay for the perfume.” The tall clerk pointed to a you break it, you buy it sign by the entrance.

Nicki drew herself even straighter. “But I wasn’t being careless. I tripped on your bags, which were all over the floor.” The mouth on the tall clerk pressed into a tight line, like a slash across her face. “If you don’t pay for it, we have to call a manager.”

Panic flashed like a bright white light. I had to do something. I kicked the canvas bags now strewn across the floor. “You should call a supervisor. Maybe if you hadn’t been so busy talking, and instead had straightened up this mess, it wouldn’t have happened at all. You know, if she’s hurt, you’re liable. My dad’s a lawyer — he deals with this stuff all the time.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to swallow them back down. I hoped I was right. My dad was a dentist. Any legal knowledge I had was from watching The People’s Court when I stayed home sick from school. What had I done?

Nicki’s lip twitched. “Now that I think about it, my back is quite sore. I hit the floor pretty hard.” She rubbed the base of her spine.

The tall clerk looked ready to clobber Nicki, but the shorter woman with her hair tied up in a mountain of tiny braids put her hand lightly on the arm of the other. “We’re certainly sorry you fell.”

Nicki met her gaze. “And I’m sorry that the bottle broke.” The short clerk smiled, her white teeth as bright as the wall

tiles. “Well then, why don’t we just decide that no harm’s been done?” The tension that had been coiling inside me released.

“Are you sure?” Nicki asked. Her eyes were so wide, she looked like an anime character. When the clerk nodded, Nicki reached for me. “We should get back; our flight will be leaving soon.”

I nodded solemnly as if I were very concerned about time- liness. Every muscle in my body clenched as I walked over the threshold, anticipating a piercing alarm going off, but nothing happened. Nicki gripped my elbow. “Don’t look back. Only guilty people look behind them.”

My neck stiffened and I kept moving forward down the hall. The adrenaline that had rushed through my system seconds ago was now bailing ship and I felt lightheaded. My bag weighed a hundred pounds. I half expected every person we passed to develop x-ray vision, see through my tote, and point me out as a shoplifter. Nicki seemed to sense I was barely hold- ing it together, and she pulled me along until we reached an empty gate area. We both started giggling as we dropped into a row of seats.

“I can’t believe I did that,” I said. I opened the bag expecting the vodka to be missing, a figment of my imagination, but the bottle was there. I glanced quickly at Nicki to see if she was impressed that I’d actually done it.

“Since we’re headed to England it would have been more fitting to have nicked some gin, but a girl has to work with the opportunities she’s got.” Nicki patted the side of my leather bag. “You were perfect. When you said that line about how I could sue them, I wanted to cheer.”

I shook my head. “Are you kidding? As soon as I took the bottle, all I wanted to do was run for it. I felt like I was going to freak out at any moment.”

She laughed. “But you didn’t. Being good at something doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard or scary — it just means that you keep moving forward when other people quit.”

I laughed. “I tend to be a quitter. I’m scared of everything.” “Like what?”

I rolled my eyes. “I could make a list a mile long. For start- ers, I’m terrified of heights. I won’t even go to my grandparents’ new condo in Miami because they live on the twentieth floor. Usually when things scare me, I’m the first one to bail. I won’t go skiing, kayaking, or anyplace that looks like it will have spiders, and I get hives when I have to go to the dentist and my dad’s a dentist.”

Nicki wrinkled up her nose. “Now, I get the dentist phobia, but heights? If you’re going to be scared, be scared of something good.” She laughed. “You were scared to take the liquor, but you did it. That’s the difference between ordinary people and extraordinary. Extraordinary people might be afraid, but they do it anyway.”

My chin lifted slightly in the air. The shame over stealing was mixed up with pride in doing something risky. I wanted to brag about what I’d done and apologize all at the same time. Most of all I wanted her to keep talking. “I still can’t believe I did that,” I said. I wanted her to understand I wasn’t some- one who did things like this. Heck, I wasn’t someone who did things at all, but maybe it was as simple as deciding that I didn’t want to be that person anymore.

Nicki threw an arm around me and gave me a half hug. “Think about it. I wonder what you might do if you let yourself really go? You know, every accomplishment starts with the decision to try. And then keep trying, even when it’s hard.” She smirked. “And of course, if life gives you an opportunity, take it before it disappears. Or at least before they put the antitheft device on it.”

I packed up what she said and placed it carefully into my memory. It struck me that her advice was important. Not because I wanted to become a master criminal — I felt bad about taking the booze and couldn’t imagine doing it again. But . . . I liked that I’d done it at least once. Been like Nicki. Daring. Not afraid. She seemed to have figured out the secret to life. All the brochures for the Student Scholars program had stressed how travel made a person grow. I’d secretly thought it was a bunch of marketing bullshit. How could a change in geography make a difference? But maybe it was possible: I could evolve into someone else. I could almost picture my mom’s approval . . . and the blog post she’d write about it.

The public-address system squawked and announced that our flight would start boarding. I couldn’t believe how the three hours had flown by. I pulled the bottle slightly out of the bag. “Do you want this?”

“You keep it. I don’t know the whole story with the guy and girl back at the gate, but I suspect you need it more than me.” She pushed herself up from the seat with a ladylike grunt. “We should get going. I still want to get that gum.”

I reached for her arm before she started to walk away. “Thanks. I was feeling really down before.”

“That’s what friends are for!” She poked me in the side as if I were being silly.

“Well, I appreciate you making me a friend after only a few hours.”

Nicki smiled. “Don’t you know? I decided we were friends the instant we met.”

***

YOU OWE ME A MURDER will be available on 3.12.19! Pre-order from any of the links below.

Amazon

B&N

IndieBound

Apple Books

#eileen cook #mystery #mysterybooks #thrillerreads #bookstagram #booklr #yalit #hmhteen #excerpts #excerpt #cover reveal #coverreveal

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thelazyhermits · 6 years

Text

A possible story prompt?

Lol Hey Haze XD Sorry for disappearing for a while but i’ve been looking for a few reverse harem fics fo Undertale when I got this idea for a story and I basically just wrote out everything that I’ve thought out so far and I wanted opinions on it. If it gets good enough of a response I might write it, or I’ll just put it out so someone else can write the idea. The basic premise i’m pretty sure someone else has written something similar, but this is my take on it so I wanted your opinion on it and what I can do to improve it, or what you think other people who might know how to improve it.

So here you go

An AU where its a Megaverse, where when all Monsters got out of the mountain, their AU versions came up with them. When Monsters came out on the surface, it was hard to ID everyone since they’re were alternative versions of themselves (Even of Frisk and Chara) and their different background, so to differentiate each other they added Middle Names to their ID’s which they choose. So the ‘common’ nicknames are just nicknames(Like Blueberry and Stretch, etc), but some characters will be referred by their official middle names (Cuz i thought nicknames like Crooks and Axe were kind of mean so yeah), so as to avoid insults.

All the Sans’s and Papyrus’s are billionaires and are involved in a thing where the first to find and bond with their chosen mate becomes the Head of the Skeleton family. (Who proposes this? Maybe too much in house fighting resulted in this proposition to be made by US!Alphys and UT!Undyne betting that there was no way they could get someone to fall in love with them with the way they were acting???)

Rules to the Competition thing to be named:

They can’t tell their chosen Mate the stakes or about the competition (AKA head of family). They have to seduce and charm their chosen mate with their own wits and talents.

If they don’t know their status of wealth (As in what positions they are as head companies and real status of wealth), they are not allowed to tell them, their chosen mates have to figure it out themselves.

They Can’t marry and then divorce, they have to soul bond mutually and prove it by the bonds tying their souls.

They can’t force someone to fall in love with them by magic or other methods.

They can’t sabotage one another’s attempts to woo someone (dolly so if they are pursuing the same person)

The first one to bond and Mate with their chosen prospectives, earns the right to be the Head of the household.

Enter MC, who is an author that is aquatinted with Muffet and Grilby (cuz she loves sweets), who somehow gets involved with the Skeletons by accident. Some fall in love at first sight, other just wanted to piss each other off, eventually became a fight not for the head, but for the hand of the MC, who is somewhat oblivious of it all.

MC- An author of somewhat renown, whose books touch people emotionally. Shy, sweet with a wicked sense of humor. Puns is something she loves but sometimes have a slow reaction to, but when she recognizes it, she’ll howl for days. When it comes to love, she’s like a classic shoujo protagonist, dense and airheaded. Some social cues go over her head, not all, but some especially in regards to flirting. She’s also incredibly stubborn on some opinions, but she knows when she’s wrong so she’ll apologize. Has no sense of direction and depends on her phone for directions. Love sweets and has no alcohol tolerance. Lives in an apartment in Monster Town. Was raised by her Grandmother when her parents passed away and still keeps in touch with her. She is aware that Monsters are rich from the Gold Exchange and assumes this of UT!Sans and UT!Papyrus when they first met (which was like 6 months after they got out of the Underground) but is unaware of how truly rich the two became when in those six months they became pros in their professions (she knows of what professions they are in, but are unaware of their positions and how famous they truly are since she stays in Monster town all the time and monsters don’t overreact when Sans and Co became filthy rich). Just considers them like all monsters. Is unaware that they have a huge ‘family’.

All monsters are rich from the Gold exchange when they got out of the mountain, but the Skeleton household are on another level.

UT Sans - Head of IT company, basically redone computers and phones in a revolutionary pace and almost became a billionaire by accident. He has a second job as Grilby’s comedian sometimes. Still loves Ketchup and puns and is still really lazy. Was acquitted with the MC before the Competition when he told a run and she took such a long time to react, but when she did she howled with laughter. This was just soon after they got out of the surface. Took an interest from then on.

UT Papyrus - A Master Chef who has numerous famous restaurant chains. Has several cookbooks published in human and monster food and has advanced cuisine in both technology and techniques. Was passionate in his job and somehow ended up with more money than he needed. Is an acquaintance of the MC and sometimes teaches her to cook. Is already infatuated with her when she was kind with him when they first got out of the surface when tensions were still high between the two races.

US Sans - Head of several athletic companies, a successful business man who has a successful worldwide brand of athletica for monsters and humans. Is still very active and jogs often. Has not yet met the MC as of the beginning of the story but forms a crush when they first meet when she was kind to him for consoling him when he and Stretch got into a fight.

US Papyrus - Head of a successful game company. He had revolutionized a new game engine and is in progress of developing a fully functioning VR experience. Is still very laid back and still loves Honey. Is fond of the MC after helping him and his brother patch things up. Wasn’t really interested in the competition but eventually…

UF Sans - Head of an Automobile company. Revolutionized the Engine and made cars and bikes run smoother than ever. Has his own customized bike and treats it like its his baby. Was interested in the MC when his flirting sort of flew over her head, and when she accidentally flirted back unconsciously he got flustered. Was his goal originally to get the MC flustered but he got in too deep… In the Underground was lazy and was treated badly by Papyrus in public, but at home they were kind to one another and took down those facades. They have a strong bond.

UF Papyrus - Head of Fashion company. It was a surprise for everyone when he went into this but it started when somebody challenged his sense of fashion (given that his uniform had spikes) so he took on the challenge and designed suits and clothing that wowed the world and became an internationally famous designer almost overnight. Still very fit and trained for duties of the Royal Guard. He’s a very ruthless businessman and met the MC when she was dressed sloppily and couldn’t stand it and forced her to change her clothes to something more neat. Starts Tsundere, but as he slowly falls in love with the MC becomes more and more devoted to the MC and eventually is super devoted to the MC that when he tries to seduce her he bring the big guns (Flowers, clothes, fancy stuff) which sorts of confuses the MC because how did Tsundere become DereDere all of a sudden??? IN the Underground he had to act tough with everyone and his brother, but at night some days he would ask Sans to read to him his favorite story. They have a strong bond. He nags on his brother to be more active (though not as much as before given how successful they are) for his health.

SF Sans - Head of a famous hotel chain. HIs hotels are rated to be of the highest quality and hospitality and famous people are always eager to stay at his hotel chains. HIs hotels are also infamous for having Casino’s in them and people tend to gamble their money away which he keeps. Was unimpressed with the MC as he met her later on compared to the other, but is taken in by her kindness eventually. Like UF Papyrus, he was a total Tsundere when he met the MC, and originally pursued her because he wanted to steal her from everyone else to piss everyone off, but eventually became DereDere for her. He wants to spoil her (which the MC always refuses) and wants to be spoiled by her. He acts petulant when the MC doesn’t pay attention to him . Loves his brother but in his underground he had to act cruel to him in public, though at home they were affectionate and Papyrus would read him his favorite stories at night to issue each other.

SF Papyrus - Is a famous Auction holder and bidding master. He gathers infamous antiques that originally seem like they are worth nothing but are actually historical or monetary treasures. Earned his keep by accident. Also occasionally bids on stocks that he always gets right. He loves his brother and knows why his brother treated him badly in the underground but given their nightly readings, they hold very strong bonds. Though unfortunately as a side effect he has low self-esteem which he hides by acting confident and apathetic. Just went along with his brother’s plan to seduce the MC but fell in love pretty fast with the MC because she was super kind to him.

HT Sans and Papyrus - They both share an agriculture company and advocate for less food waste and contribute to lower starvation rates. They have been known to develop agriculture techniques and advance agriculture that it reduced food waste and compost. UT Papyrus and HT Papyrus have good relations given that UT Paps requests ingredients from him. They work together really often. Although UT Sans is somewhat wary of HT Sans because of what they went through, he is kind to HT Paps because he is still another version of his brother. When they got out to the surface, they had their injuries looked at, so HT Paps has braces and glasses, while HT Sans got his hole fixed. Though HT sans is slower than UT Sans, he is slowly regaining back his former magic prowess that he once had. Was introduced to the MC by UT Papyrus and are intrigued by her.

G!Sans - Head of an internationally famous Music Company. HE himself is a famous singer but he has so few released tracks that they are weighted in gold. Only a select few have heard him sing in person. He manages and creates top artists constantly. Has a large fanbase and still smokes and were leather. Met the MC when she visited Sans in his house (which she did not think would be a mansion) and is amused by the whole situation and thought to meddle because he thought it would be fun, accidentally got in too deep.

G!Papyrus - Head of an internationally known Pharmaceutical Company. Has advanced medicine by leaps and bounds and has cured several diseases. Has a love of tea and would like his ‘brother’ (He came from a version of echo tale that fused Gaster and Papyrus, so technically he is not brother with G but they got along together so well, they treat each other as brothers- this head cannon was from TheLazyHermit) to stop smoking. is an absolute gentlemen and due to his personality he is loved by many people and has his own large fanbase. Treats the MC kindly and is slowly developing feelings for her.

Other AU’s to be added??? I dunno?? Maybe, but given how many Skeles are here already adding more might be too much XD

What do you think of this so far? I have so many Undertale Prompts that I want to write but might never produce cuz the idea can get super longwinded… Maybe I’ll just post a bunnyplot pile and let people use the ideas…

I talked with Silver and got the ok to post this, so we could see if any of y’all had any ideas you wanted to contribute for this story plot. Also, if you wanna try writing this, be sure to give proper credit and let Silver know. ^-^

#submission #this is a really good story idea #I love it #having them as heads of all these different companies is so cool #it really suits them #I especially love that this idea includes Aster #cause I'm all for some G Pap XD #this would be such a fun story to read #I love it <3 #I'll never turn down the chance to read about skeletons in suits haha

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sparkplugzave · 7 years

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Hi! I’m Sam. Nice to meet you! I’ll be playing Xavier Tempest, or as you might know him, Lightning.

Originally, I wanted to type up a short little intro post for him, but it got embarrassingly long once I really got into it, and I didn’t want to clog up the dash with that. If you’re interested in the director’s cut of this post, you can find his extended bullet-point bio HERE. If you’re not currently in the mood to read, here are five key points you should know about him ( to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas ).

ONE COUNTRY ROAD

Grew up in the Nova Scotia countryside.

His hometown was nothing but backwoods and open roads. Very country. Very redneck. Very boring. The only thing it was good for was long drives after fights with his parents, where he could have the roads to himself all night. But most of the time, it just left him wanting more.

His parents were very strict, very faithful Protestants. They raised their children to be humble, polite, and give thanks to God. Xavier rebelled against their strict rules and teachings, which created a lot of tension in the household.

TWO PENNIES TO RUB TOGETHER

Unfortunately, his parents’ love and faith in The Lord did not bless their family with wealth. They were poor, and Xavier couldn’t find much to be thankful for. ( I’m gonna talk to Chels about their jobs and stuff but for now just know they were not doing so well financially )

There’s a lot of resentment, about how his parents couldn’t provide for him as much as he would have liked them to. No fancy school trips. No extravagant holidays. Their financial status brought him guilt, anger, and shame.

This also made Xavier very resourceful. He realized people were more likely to help him if he was charming, and he used that to his advantage. ( He was raised to be a southern gentleman, after all. ) Keep in mind that he is only charming when he wants to be, or when he needs something.

THREE YEARS OF HIGH SCHOOL

The boy never did well in school. He struggled with coursework, was distracting to his classmates, was perceived as lazy by his teachers. He became bored with subjects that were too easy for him ( math / science ), and too frustrated by subjects that were too difficult ( English ). He often felt stupid, acting out as the class clown, hiding away his insecurities. And he absolutely hated being picked to read aloud; his dyslexia went unrecognized for years.

Fell in with a bad crowd in the 9th grade. Skipped class a lot. Went to a lot of parties. Tales of what he did at these wild parties sometimes served as Monday morning gossip.

Never graduated from high school. Dropped out when he was 17. Fucked around for a couple of months. Got hired for part-time retail jobs, only to eventually stop showing up and ultimately get fired. Rinse, repeat.

FOUR GREASY SHIRTS

After about 6-8 months of proving everyone right ( that he was, in fact, a loser ), his life picked up a bit.

The local mechanic--an elderly man--saw that Xavier needed some discipline and a purpose, and took him under his wing. The man taught him everything he knew about cars and bikes, and for once, Xavier stopped talking and listened.

Xavier became really interested in tinkering and automobile mechanics, and he worked respectfully under the man for about two years. Maybe he had some hidden potential all this time, but just needed someone to believe in him. ( Or maybe he really is just a lazy sack of shit. Depends on who you ask )

( I’m toying around with the idea of the mechanic mentor dying from a heart attack or something, further encouraging Xavier to leave his hometown, but it’s not set in stone yet. I’d just kinda feel bad for him, ya know. )

When his little brother Ezekiel got a scholarship to a university in Toronto, he decided to go with him. He worked hard to get his G. E. D while Ezekiel finished his senior year, and when he graduated, they packed their bags and moved to the city.

FIVE YEARS OF SHITTY PAY

They started renting a shitty apartment in downtown Toronto. Xavier had never been more in love with the taste of freedom.

Hee started working as a custodian at an electric company when he realized mechanic work wasn’t going to be enough to pay the bills ( read: rent, food, weed )

When he learned that electricians at this company “made bank,” he switched gears and started looking into what it took to become an electrician. He would miss being a mechanic, but the goal here, people, is DOLLA$$

Currently, he’s 23 and working as an Electrician Apprentice. Still makes shit pay, but at least there’s light at the end of the tunnel when he completes his 5-year apprenticeship ( will he complete it? only time will tell )

OH and ( the very first thing Chels and I talked about, the most pressing matter ) - he and his brother have a corgi named Spark! He’s a chubby little thing that gets treated like Toronto royalty. They’d starve themselves before that adorable corgi went without supper. Xavier feeds him human food sometimes. Spoiled little shit.

PERSONALITY & FUN FACTS

( + ) Charming, Lively, Spontaneous

( - ) Reckless, Temperamental, Unpredictable

Will charm the pants off of you to get what he wants: a hottie’s number for a date, a waitress for a little extra whipped cream on an ice cream sundae ( that’s not a euphemism; he just likes his sweets--but he likes sex, too. a lot ).

Messy: Messy cook. Messy eater. Messy roommate. There is laundry all over the floor of his bedroom. PLEASE clean his house.

Loves cooking, driving, bacon, coffee ( light and sweet, but he’ll swear up and down until the day he dies that he takes it black ). Loathes vegetables.

Still not used to sitting in Toronto traffic, but will never go back to the country. Has not seen his parents in three years ( since he moved )

Likes working out to use up all his extra energy.

Can’t sit still. Always doing something. Some days might go to work, come home and change clothes, stay out all night ( get a lil’ fucked up ), come home and nap for a an hour, then go back to work. Might not see his brother/dog for over 24 hours. Tries to remember to call.

Can solve a Rubix Cube in under 2 minutes--under 1 minute if he’s trying to impress. Also not too shabby with a yo-yo.

Not super dependable when it comes to deadlines or doing things at a certain time ( but is usually apologetic about it )

Smarter than he lets on. Good memorization of random facts. Likes to watch Jeopardy. Sometimes lacking in common sense department.

POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS

Classmates who knew him as a total fuck-up from high school ( fellow Bad Seeds, opposing Good Eggs, lab partners, whomever )

Those People You Only Know From Seeing Them at Parties

Self-destructive friends who might encourage him to dabble into hardcore, addictive drugs ( I want to see him fall )

An ex-girlfriend he probably didn’t take seriously and most likely cheated on

Anything!! I have a few things in mind for specific connections, and I’ll probably think of more once we start chit-chatting one-on-one ( so talk 2 me tell me ur name )

holy cannoli this was supposed to be short!!!! ahh!!!!!

ACTUAL TL;DR: Nova Scotia boonies redneck. Broke as hell. Real charmer when he wants something. Blunt when he doesn’t. Smart but doesn’t apply himself. Sex drugs & rock ‘n roll. Protective of his little brother. Loves bacon. Hates vegetables. Good with cars. Electrician Apprentice. Has a corgi. See his BIO and STATS pages for more info.

Okay, that’s all! I swear! Feel free to message me! Let’s be friends and talk about our characters! Or if you’re shy, LIKE this post and I’ll come to you! ( If you made it this far, you’re my frickin’ hero!! )

#( about )#elementlightning #if your eyes bleed trying to read this whole thing just message me and we'll talk :)

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jeremystrele · 4 years

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Times Like These… With Writer Clementine Ford

Times Like These

by Sally Tabart

Photo – Sarah Collins of Work + Co. for The Design Files.

The first thing writer and activist Clementine Ford and I spoke about on the phone during our interview was a mutual admission that, in a way, we would miss being in this period of isolation. Of course, this feeling comes from a place of immense privilege. For Clem, a massive part of this is the quality time she’s been able to spend with her son – ‘his language skills have really exploded and we can have actual conversations with each other’ she tells me.

I must admit that one of the main things I have been grateful for in this pandemic is that I don’t have a child, but Clem has been relishing the opportunity to be more present with her kid, and develop new routines based around quality time together. This is helped by the fact that she co-parents with her son’s father, and spends ‘an essential’ three days a week by herself. But it’s also a conscious change she’s made to release herself from the high expectations of work-related productivity she had pre-isolation. It’s helped her step back and look at her life more objectively, and take stock of the things that really feel good – whether that’s taking her time to cook a fancy meal for one, learning lip sync dances on Tik Tok, or going for a long walk around the neighbourhood with a friend.

So we’re coming up to two months in isolation now – how have you been feeling throughout this time?

It’s been a really interesting experience, and I would preface this by saying that I have the privilege of being able to still work and still earn an income, so the experience of isolation for me has been different and less stressful probably than it is for a lot of other people. I also don’t live with a partner – it’s just me and my son – so I don’t have any of those domestic stresses.

I have been thinking a lot about the women in isolation who have been experiencing domestic abuse in this country, so I’m coming at you now from a place of enormous privilege, but generally speaking it’s been a very interesting ride.

In what ways has it been interesting for you?

When we began, when we didn’t know how long it was going to go for and no one really knew it was happening, it felt like the stress levels were a lot more elevated for everybody. I wasn’t sure whether or not society was going to collapse and we were going to descend into total anarchy! So that was quite scary because it’s not just me I have to worry about obviously, I’ve got a small child to look after.

Those first couple of weeks when we were all getting used to it was enormously stressful because I didn’t know how to work in isolation with a toddler. I work from home anyway, but normally he’s in childcare. Balancing that and figuring out what our new normal was had quite a lot of tension around it. But I feel like we adjusted pretty quickly, and developed a routine, doing certain things through the day like going for walks or getting on the bike and riding around the neighbourhood to spot all the bears that people put in their windows.

And how has that evolved?

I kind of let go of a lot of the tension and stress that I felt to keep working and performing at the same level that I was before. In many ways I’ve actually been a lot more productive, which is a weird word to use in this time, but I’ve been more productive and more creative. I’ve really liked my work becoming more creative in nature, and consequently more fun.

One of the things that really stood out to me is that before isolation I’d been feeling that life was moving so quickly, and particularly my son’s life was moving very quickly. I was committed to this idea that I was so busy all the time. I wanted to spend more time with him but I had so much work to do – always so much work to do!

I had been feeling a sort of pre-emptive anxiety realising that all of these years when he’s so cute and discovering so many things, that I would wake up one day and go, ‘Oh I missed out on that time’, because I was so busy working and he was in childcare every day.

Isolation brought an end to that obviously, and even though it was a tense transition at first, I started to feel like I was being given this beautiful opportunity in my life to be able to form really amazing long-lasting memories.

It did kind of feel like we didn’t have control over our lives and times before, like we were all on a ginormous hamster wheel.

And if you get off the hamster wheel, it’s so hard to get back on because it’s moving all the time!

What changes have you made that you want to hold onto after this time eases back into a more ‘normal’ normal?

The most obvious one is really being conscious about making time with my son. To just put the phone down, put the laptop down, put the work down and just be present with him. Even in isolation it’s still a really tricky thing for me to do. But just letting myself just enjoy the moment as it happens and realising that the world isn’t going anywhere.

I’ve also been doing these cooking stories on Instagram most nights and using the opportunity to have feminist chats with people who are watching them. And I really enjoy that. Part of what I enjoy about it is the process of cooking, which I’ve always loved, but I guess just making sure that I take time out of my day to recognise that as a process, to de-stress at the end of the day and perform a task like cooking a meal for myself. And just because I’m the only person eating it doesn’t mean I can’t put care and time and effort into it!

I’ve been watching a lot less TV which I’ve really enjoyed. And I guess it really is just about the slow down – not feeling like I need to be doing something all the time or be somewhere, and not worrying that not going to things will let people down.

I assume you’re doing a bit of a co-parenting thing – how has that been going?

My son’s Dad and I do 50/50. He’s a really wonderful dad and he has him for 3 days a week and sometimes for an extra night to sleepover. It’s very routine and we share that care well. It’s good, I get the best of both worlds. I get to spend time with my kid and I also get an essential three days a week to myself.

I think a lot of women are really scared of saying that they need or want that because they feel like other people will judge them, as if somehow if you appreciate time away from being a mother that it means that you don’t really appreciate it, or that you’re being cruel to your children in some way. And I think we all need to get better at saying, ‘I’m a better mother when I have some time to myself.’

It seems like you’re having a lot of fun on your social media too with things like make up tutorials and the cooking videos!

I do worry sometimes that people are going to think that posting makeup videos is really frivolous, but I like watching those kinds of videos! If people don’t like it they don’t have to watch.

I guess one of the benefits of doing that kind of thing is that I don’t have to be serious. I don’t have to be angry. I can just enjoy myself and people get to see a different side of me which is softer and a bit more fun, a bit more free. I really like doing those lip-sync videos on TikTok, and I guess in the light-heartedness as well… I actually think I’m really funny! I don’t know if people have seen that side of me before, so I’m enjoying stuff like that. Just as a consumer I’ve really enjoyed watching women on Tik Tok, women are SO funny.

What are you feeling hopeful about?

I feel very encouraged about how Australia has responded to the virus. I feel hopeful about the fact that if we continue in this fashion, a lot of people are not going to die. And I guess in a way – and maybe this is a bit Pollyanna of me – it restores my faith in community. Our communities can let us down so often, and it’s not like this has made us into a perfect group of people, but the general community-wide response in the area that I live in at least seems to indicate that people have gone, ‘This is really serious and we’re going to take it really seriously’. So that makes me feel hopeful about humanity.

I feel hopeful about how the way that we live might change, we might slow down a little bit, we might be more considerate of people’s personal space, and I think that this is a global historical moment that no one’es going to forget about. So being able to reconsider what our global community looks like is really important. How do we need to change our existence? Do we need to fly so much? Probably not. And I’m saying that as someone who flies a lot for work, but maybe we should stop making ourselves the exceptions. Maybe we shouldn’t be able to fly to Bali for $150!

I quite like how resourceful people have become. I know it’s a real cliche to learn how to bake sourdough, but I love that people are learning how to make bread!

One thing I’ve really enjoyed doing is taking socially distanced walks with a couple of friends. Last Saturday night I went for a walk around the neighbourhood with my friend Alice and it was really cold so we put our coats on and poured a bottle of wine into a couple of glasses and just walked around the neighbourhood talking for an hour and a half sipping our wine. I like that stuff. We were reflecting last Saturday that when our kids are old enough and asking, ‘What did you do during the pandemic?’ we’ll be like, ‘We made our own fun!’

It’s reassuring to think that when our creature comforts are taken away from us – and obviously we still have a lot of comfort in this country – that we will actually adapt really quickly. It feels like the mood of the country seven weeks ago which was panic, fearful and stressed, has shifted into an easier, lighter feeling of ‘What will be, will be’.

Keep up with Clem on Instagram for her nightly cooking videos + feminist conversations, and listen to her weekly podcast Big Sister Hotline!

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