#all the descriptions felt nice and crunchy

[angelfoodcakeeats]

626 Night Market Food Review

My friend Rob and I joked that the “626 Night Market” is our favorite holiday. As foodies, it is a very serious endeavor. As foodies that love Asian food, even more so. The 626 Night Market is reminiscent of night markets that are popular all over Asia. The event is held at the Santa Anita Racetrack every summer in Arcadia, in addition to other locations in California and a mini night market in Santa Monica. This year is the 4th year that I have gone to the market. After my first market, we have always done our best to prepare for the event, looking up the vendors beforehand and writing a list of the ones we must go to. We never hit every single booth we want but our notes serve more as a guide so we don’t get overwhelmed when we get there. Yet, we still always end up overwhelmed! But we usually end up going to vendors that made it to the list. Below are my thoughts on the booths that we went to on August 28th and yes, they were all on my list!

Tao’s Baos:

What I hadn’t realized until after looking at my previous night market photos, was that I went to this booth last year! I did go to the mini night market in Santa Monica in March so I did remember having it then. So this makes it my 3rd visit to this booth. Honestly, can you go wrong with a pork belly bao bun? I have not so far. This time, my boyfriend Collin and I both got an OG bun and a miso bun to share. The OG bun had pork belly glazed with red-braising sauce, peanuts, cilantro, pickled mustard green, and garlic peanut sauce. I am drooling just typing that description. The pork was so tender, that you could bite it without having to rip it and have your bun fall apart. I’m a sucker for anything garlic so the garlic peanut sauce was a perfect pairing with the pork. I’m not usually a peanut fan, but this made the dish. The pickled mustard green offered a nice contrast to the somewhat sweetness of the sauce and a crunchy texture along with the peanuts. The Miso bun had pork belly glazed with miso sauce, seaweed salad, cucumber, dried seaweed, and spicy masago mayo. The miso bun was a little too much seaweed for my taste. I felt it took over the miso flavor I was really excited for! I love seaweed salad so maybe next time I would ask for it without the dried seaweed. The bao buns themselves are the perfect fluffy texture inside but strong enough to hold all the ingredients without falling apart. Overall, OG bun is where it’s at.

California Poke Nachos:

This booth is self-explanatory. It’s poke, but instead of it being over rice it is over crispy wonton chips. When you order, it is similar to how you would order poke. You choose your protein (2 scoops) of tuna, salmon, shrimp, or ceviche. You can choose to have all the toppings or just remove the ones you don’t want! The options were avocado, seaweed salad, ginger, seaweed flakes & sesame seeds, green onion, cilantro, cucumber, purple onion, mango, and jalapeños. You could choose two sauces which were spicy mayo, ponzu, eel sauce, or mango habanero. I ordered one to share with Collin, so we compromised on a few things. We got tuna and salmon, all toppings (besides jalapeños), spicy mayo, and ponzu. I don’t do spicy so not having jalapeños was great. The spicy mayo definitely had a kick but it didn’t kill me. I chose the salmon but I actually enjoyed the tuna so much more. It was the fresh red tuna that just goes so well with poke. It soaked up the ponzu perfectly. The wonton chips were such a great addition and really made it different. They break a little easier but nothing major. All in all a great combination of flavors and textures. 

Bobaful:

I did go to this booth at the mini market as well earlier this year. But after eating a couple items you definitely need some boba to wash it down. Felt like going for a refreshing flavor but got torn between a classic so my boyfriend and I shared these as well. I got the watermelon green tea and he got the jasmine milk tea. The watermelon boba tea was the exact refreshing drink I wanted. Not too sweet besides the actual boba, which had a good chew, not hard at all. It was mainly a green tea with a hint of watermelon and pieces floating in it. Great summer drink. The jasmine milk tea was also lovely and not too sweet in my opinion either. This is usually my go-to flavor when I want a milk tea and this hit the mark for me.

Hawaiian Honey Cones:

My friend Dani had been talking all night about how she wanted the J-shaped cone. When she finally got around to it, she was too full to eat it all so we gladly helped her. It is a Hawaiian honey cone made of 100% organic corn cane and Hokkaido-style vanilla ice cream. The soft serve fills the cone from top to bottom. Every bite you have is ice cream and the cone. The cone itself reminded us of honeycomb or cap’n crunch cereal. That with the milky soft serve made it almost a cereal dessert. The crunch of the cone and the meltiness of the soft serve were a good combination of textures. Get it with friends if you aren’t confident you can finish before it melts!

Potato Swirl World:

My boyfriend loves these swirly potatoes. There are always a few stands that sell them. We were in line for a different potato stand only to realize they didn’t take cards and we didn’t want to deal with the atm fee! So when I was still feeling particularly snacky after the ice cream, I got in line for a potato tornado. I personally love the sour cream and onion-flavored ones. This one had TONS of powder on it which is a big plus for me. I shared it with my boyfriend and my other friends who were there. Collin immediately pointed out how much better this one was than the one we got last year from a different stand. It had that crisp on the outside but softness on the inside. We don’t want a potato chip texture from this! So I was very pleased with our potato. 

Ensaymada Project:

We went to this booth the 2nd year I went to the night market. They sell flavored Filipino brioche. We got one bun each and severely underestimated how good these would be the first time. We didn’t make that mistake again. Last year and this year, we got a dozen. They have MANY flavors but we got traditional cheese, ube, red velvet, dulce de leche, oreo, banana chocolate, cookie butter crumble, mango, and mocha Nutella. The brioche buns themselves are the softest sweet bread clouds. It is so easy to just stuff your face with them. I have had many of these flavors over the years but decided to just have the red velvet. I am obsessed with red velvet anything. The red velvet bun had a cream cheese frosting inside and on the top. It’s not as much as a cupcake would be and it definitely doesn’t need to be. It had red velvet cake crumbles on top completing the flavor concept. I will never regret eating this bun or any of their buns. 

Etoile Filante Patisserie:

I wanted to go to this booth so badly last year but somehow missed it. I did not make that mistake again. I found out the night before I went that you could preorder the macarons for pickup so they don’t sell out. Trust me, this is necessary. These aren’t your average macarons. While they do sell regular-shaped macarons, their main attraction is their character macarons. I went on their pre-order website and ordered the Hello Kitty macaron for pickup the next day. I really wanted their Totoro macaron but it wasn't available. I went back to their website on the day of the market and there it was! So I made a second pre-order for pickup. I gladly went to the booth and picked up both my Hello Kitty and Totoro macarons. The macarons themselves have that crunch but not too much so that the macaron crumbles and falls apart. It stayed intact! Hello Kitty was a strawberry milkshake flavor. I got the strawberry flavor but wasn’t sure about the milkshake aspect. I think it was a little creamier than a regular strawberry might be. Totoro was an oreo flavor which I got instantly. It had that chocolate cookie flavor that is so easily identifiable. Totoro was my favorite! I will also never regret buying these. 

Honorable Mention:

Boba Bear:

My friend Rob has a goal every night market: a collectible cup. There are so many booths that offer collectible cups you can take home. We usually spend a little time looking around to see which cup he will take home this year. I think we were there a whole 10 minutes before he committed to the $25 cup that came with a free boba drink and a free refill. Not too bad when you consider the price of other boba places and no collectible cup. So while I didn’t drink the boba tea myself, The cup itself was worth a mention. It’s a ceramic bear-shaped cup. What more is there to debate!! Rob had no regrets.

Overall, a successful night market. We left feeling satisfied with all our choices. I always feel like I missed something but with 120+ vendors, you’re definitely going to miss a few things. Even though they have dates all summer, we always seem to go towards the end. This is our final event of summer as we prepare ourselves for the mindset of fall. Until next year and the new booths we will try!

#626nightmarket #food review #foodblogger #food blogs #asianfood #baobun #macarons #hello kitty #totoro #boba tea #potato tornado #filipino buns #brioche buns #poke nachos #hawaiian honeycone #bubble tea #los angeles food #california food

[sw124]

BonelyHearts Reader Insert4

{Female!ReaderXSkeleton household}

Camping! Pt.3

[Warning: I’m gonna be descriptive with the food so please eat something before you read this. No theirs nothing graphic, its just I’m describing the process of cooking some food, sorry if it makes you hungry]

You could’ve sworn that the trip wouldn’t be that long, guess you were wrong. Well never the less it was time to start dinner, before the trip even started you had volunteered to do ‘dinner’ on the camping trip while the others did ‘breakfast’. It was only four in the afternoon but dinner prep was gonna take a little bit plus you had to set up dessert too. If you started now you’d have it done in less then forty minutes, well no time to waist...especially with these boys.

You got out a few pots, two larger ones an one smaller one, one for boiling water, another to make the sauce and lastly the third was to collect the water. It was expensive but you bought two small propane burners, after the camping trip you can gift one out to a friend and keep the other for when you’d make Hotpot dishes for winter.

You filled the first pot with water, bottled water to be exact. Then put that on the first burner, you turned it on and set it to high, you added a touch some olive oil into the water and let it sit. Now on to the sauce, you reached into the cooler and pulled out a two large cartons of heavy whipping cream, a container of grated Parmesan cheese, a stick of butter, garlic paste in a squeeze tube, chopped parsley in a small ziplock and lastly the bag of mixed veggies. Zucchini, asparagus, onions, mushrooms, yellow squash and lastly carrots.

In the pot you threw in the stick of butter and a dollop of garlic paste, you put the pot on the other burner and melted the butter with the garlic, you threw in the veggies when the butter had just melted. You waited till the veggies were cooked throughly, mostly caramelizing the onions and mushrooms. Once that was done you added in the heavy whipping cream an Parmesan an started stirring. After you let that set you checked on the water, it was at a full boil now-

.....

“Boss I thought I told you I was handling dinner, either you go sit by the fire and wait or go for a walk.” You growled.

The one thing you hated was Boss leaning over you while you cooked, he knew you were preparing a pasta dish an by the law that is Boss he has to supervise you...not this time.

“I need to make sure your not going to add anything...unessesary to the dish.” He countered.

You groaned under your breath, you wanted this to be a bit of a surprise but of course that was wishful thinking....you shook your head and continued. Grabbing two boxes of spaghetti you poured them into the pot.

......

You looked up to find that Boss wasn’t alone, all of the skeletons were now crowding around the kitchen tent, intently watching you cook. You wondered if they were hungry and was planning to offer something to tide them over, that thought passed when you saw the remnants of chip crumbs on some of their clothing.

“Can I help you boys?” Your voice going mono.

“We’re just watching, gotta do something to ‘pasta’ time way, ya know?” Said Sans, earning a glare from half of the group.

Ash and Poplar strategical placed themselves near you, Poplar blocking Boss and his...needling gaze. Everyone else was just watching quietly, well Nox made a comment or two about the sauce bubbling but that was ok, he even reminded you about the parsley. It was also nice to have Russ help you strain out the water when the noodles were done.

“Ok, everything is just about ready. You boys get your bowls an I’ll start plating ok?”

The boys did as told, it was kinda cute seeing them all shuffle to get their bowls together. You had your bowl there along with your fork, Red got back first and you first filled his bowl partly with the noodles before ladling on the sauce...well it’s as more of a soup but you called it sauce. You make sure the noodles were half submerged. You repeated this until all ten skeletons had their portion, you filled your bowl next before joining them at the picnic table.

“Ok boys, lets dig in!” You announced.

You didn’t hesitate, you instantly twisted a bundle of spaghetti on to your fork along with some asparagus. It tasted heavenly, the creamy, buttery sauce mixed with the Parmesan was just delightful. You were happy that it turned out so well, you looked up. To your surprise and delight everyone seemed to be enjoying the food, Boss even gave you an approving nod.

“Wowie! I’ve got to tell Undyne about this, she an Alphys would love to try this dish!” Papyrus was beaming as he examined his food, his smile was just so cute.

Nox seemed better off eating in silence, but you couldn’t fake a smile of content like his. Blue was engulfing his noodles, you had to suppress a chuckle when he stared fanning his mouth, of course the food would still be hot. You poked at the carrots you had in your bowl, you were hoping they were cooked right and not too hard. After one bite you were delighted to find it had a little crunch but it was cooked properly.

“Whatcha call this anyway?” Asked Stretch, twirling his fork.

“It’s kinda like Alfredo but with a few stuff added in, it doesn’t really have a name. I just made this dish up one night when I was super hungry and didn’t want to go out in the pouring rain to get food, the only difference is the veggies.” You were slightly embarrassed in telling the story, despite it being true.

“Its still good though, you should invent dishes more often!” Said Blue, shoveling another bite into his mouth.

You smiled, thankful the food was cooked well. Ash and Poplar really seemed to like this dish, you wondered if it was because of the vegetables or the sauce. Either way it was cute seeing him try to get at least one of each veggie on his fork along with the noodles.

Soon everyone had finished eating and cleanup was underway, you noticed how quickly the sun had begun to set. Yep winter was fast approaching, cleanup didn’t take long at all with everyone helping out. Once everything was washed and put away for the evening it was time to bust out dessert. You hurry back to the van where you kept it, pulling out three large bags of marshmallows and a bag of frosted gram-cracker cookies. The top halves were frosted in chocolate, it’d make things a lot simpler.

“Ok boys time for dessert, we’re making s’mores!”

You handed each skeleton a long stick too use, they all were sharing a bewildered expression...had these boys not heard of s’mores?

“Do you guys know what s’mores are?”

“I’m afraid we don’t.” Said Papyrus.

“Oh well its a fun, interactive snack and common camping treat. I’ll show you how its done.”

You began by skewering your marshmallow, you got the large flat ones so it’d be easier for the skeletons to handle. You held your marshmallow over the fire, you loved this part so much, watching your marshmallow turn golden brown or even catch on fire and burn just a tiny bit. Once the marshmallow was done you showed them how to sandwich it between the gram cracker cookie, you told them that normally they’d have a plain gram cracker and a bit of chocolate to do it but you wanted to make it easier and quicker. You even mentioned that to them while you were making your s’more.

“An there you have it, your very own s’more!”

You held it up and showed them, you then took a big bite and just like you expected the marshmallow stretched out...and it tasted amazing. Gooey, sweet and crunchy, the chocolate was melting and it wasn’t dripping on to your fingers.

You watched everyone follow your lead, you also said they can just eat the roasted marshmallow if they wanted or the gram cracker cookie instead. Which was what some of them did, Russ was having fun making the s’mores. Awe he looked like a little kid when he took that first bite, Nox though didn’t seem that impressed and settled for just the cookie. Stretch was pouring some honey on his s’more, Blue was scolding him about it, Poplar and Ash were throughly enjoying making s’mores together.

Papyrus was yelling at Sans again, Sans marshmallow now turned into a comet, Red and Boss settled for the gram cracker and roasted marshmallows. It was cute watching them all experience a traditional treat of camping, you made another s’more and switched to just making roasted marshmallows. Nox was kind enough to get some drinks but just for you and Russ, when questioned by Blue he countered saying he wasn’t everyone’s servant and they all had legs that weren’t broken. An besides he got one for you cause you were a lady and you had prepared dinner, it was only proper.

After having your fill of marshmallows you were about to get up and start the process of cleaning up the dishes. Well that was the plan until you felt Poplar’s hand rest on your shoulder.

“No, no don’t get up. We’ll take care of clean the dishes and everything, you just relax.”

You blinked, surprised. “Are you sure, there’s a lot to clean up-“

Sans stood up. “Rule is if you make dinner then you don’t have to clean up the kitchen.”

“A rule that you don’t seem to follow brother.” Growled Papyrus but smiled. “But he is right human, you shouldn’t shoulder the burden of clean up. The ten of us will have it done in no time!”

“If your sure then alright, the communal wash station is just up the way there; Sans I’m sure you can show them.”

Sans nodded, everyone else got up and started cleaning up the kitchen tent area. Nox was sure that Russ didn’t slack off, Red wasn’t happy about being forced to get up and work but he couldn’t say much with Boss standing over him. You watched all ten skeletons shuffle off over the hill, it was nice of them to do the clean up but at the same time you felt kinda bad since you made a little mess while doing it. Well you knew how to remedy that!

You stood up, walked to the kitchen tent and started preparing mugs of your special coco for them. Coffee was going to be rationed so you felt slightly bad for Nox but it was too late for coffee anyway, you filled each mug carefully and smiled. You took some of the left over marshmallows and put them in the mugs, you had just put the last marshmallow in when the boys came back.

“Hey guys, the coco is ready if you want some.”

You didn’t have to say it twice, the boys were all over that coco. Though Nox wasn’t happy about not getting his coffee but he digressed, he put his marshmallow into Russ’s cup. You smiled an enjoyed your own cup, the rest of the night was spent chatting and playing word games with them. Word games like ‘Going to the picnic’ which was your favorite game cause you could be as sarcastic as you wanted to be.

After finishing the fourth game of ‘going to the picnic’ you checked your watch. It was fifteen minutes to ten, that meant bed time. You wanted to get up early to start the second day of camping.

“Ok boys its getting close to ten lets start getting ready for bed.”

Unlike with most people no one groaned, they all simply agreed that it was getting late and it was time to sleep. First thing you were going to do is take a shower in the communal showers nearby.

“H-Human are you going to take a shower?” Asked Russ.

“Yes, why you gonna get one too?”

You noted a lot of the skeletons looked...concerned, was something wrong with the showers?

“Actually we’re in need of showers as well, let us accompany you if you don’t mind.” Said Boss.

“Oh, well grab your things and follow me ok?”

That wasn’t a problem, you grabbed a bag with your toiletries inside along with your sleeping attire you picked for camping. You were about to leave when you noticed...only Russ and Boss had got their things. Everyone else was busy trying to find their things.

“Shall we go human?” Asked Boss.

“Don’t you want to wait for everyone?”

“They said to go on ahead, they’ll catch up with us.” Said Russ.

You shrugged and headed for the showers with Boss and Russ, you noticed they were walking very close to you...despite you were leading the way with one of the flashlights you brought with. You tried not to think about it, what you wanted was a shower. The hikes today had been sweat inducing and you wanted to freshen up, you walked into the women’s side and found you weren’t alone. Other women were in there from the other campsites.

It was fun chatting with them as you all showered together, one of them was a elderly woman in her mid-sixties enjoying her forty-fifth anniversary with her husband. You gawked at the number, wow forty five years. The other woman with you was a younger lady camping with her fiancée, you had a laugh with the two women comparing them together. The young lady getting married turning into the older married lady with many years of happiness.

You enjoyed chatting with them, once you dried off you walked outside. Boss and Russ were there having showered and changed, you hoped they didn’t wait long. You were escorted back, was it you or were the two of them very vigilant on the way back. You felt like one of the s’mores when they were walking so close to you, your arms were even touching them. Once back another group went to shower, it was weird but...you chalked it up to them being concerned with you walking in the dark. Though you were sure there were no wild animals.

You gave a small yawn and crawled into your tent, you took off your shoes and slipped on some thick socks. Your feet got cold quickly, your pajamas for this camping trip were sweatpants and a light sweater. It was gonna get kinda cold since it was autumn, you turned on your camping lamp before going back outside. You made sure everything was put away and the fire was properly put out with, once that was done you crawled back into your tent. You zipped up the flap in your tent but unzipped the other two sides, most of the skeletons had come back already.

You dimmed your light and took out a book, you weren’t quite sleepy yet so decided a book was nice for a while. You said goodnight to your boys before zipping up the flaps on both sides.

It was only ten minutes later you felt your eyelids getting heavy, you put a bookmark in the book, turned the lamp off and tucked yourself into your sleeping bag.

Lulled to sleep by the sound of nature....and some skeletons snoring.

To be continued..

[For context, I’ve gotten questions on why I had the reader start dinner at four. Where I’m from in the upper Midwest it gets dark very quickly in both Fall and Winter so for that reason why dinner started early, that and in my family we start cooking around 4-4:30 so that everyone can get something done before supper. Examples are making a call, doing a chore, going to deliver something etc. This is dedicated to the @bonelyheartsclub I hope you enjoy this I’m having a lot of fun writing these.]

#undertale #fanfic #bonely hearts club

[medicinalcannibalism]

[ SORRY ] for the hugs thing? dealers choice :3

It was the dead of night. By the sounds of patrons leaving the hotel’s bar area, it was probably past midnight. Time eluded Deano anymore, all he knew was that it was time to rest. The day hadn’t been perfect exactly, but he knew once the sun touched the horizon things would be copacetic again. His eyes fluttered closed as he pulled the crunchy hotel sheets over himself, and he felt himself begin to drift off into slumber.

Knock, knock, knock.

Ok, it wasn’t exactly knocking. It was someone erratically slamming their fist into his door. He grumbled and tried his best to ignore it, pulling the covers over his head. Still, the slamming continued.

“Deano!”

He groaned at the presence of Lo’s voice accompanying her violence against his door.

“Deano, wake the fuck up!”

The ghoul threw the covers off of himself and stared upward at the dark ceiling for a long moment. The light that seeped into the room through the cracks of his door gave enough light for him to see that much.

“Deano, is Charles with you?”

Lo wasn’t someone who showed her emotion easily, but her voice was tinged with urgency. Finally, Deano got up and pulled on a shirt so that he could crack open his door. The light from the hallway was nearly blinding. Once the door had opened just the slightest amount, Lo was pushing herself inside of Deano’s room. The ginger woman snapped the lights on and began frantically searching.

“The fuck would he be here for?” Deano asked, rubbing his forehead sluggishly. Lo shot him a look then went back to searching.

“When did you last see him?” Lo questioned.

“Dunno. When you told him to go take a walk, I guess.”

Lo froze, mulling over his words.

“Deano, his things- they’re all gone.”

Deano swallowed. “He couldn’t have just left, right?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

The two stared at each other in silence for a long moment before Lo’s expression turned to anger.

“Why did you have to antagonize him? Why can’t you just be easy on him? He’d like you a lot better if you were just kinder.”

Lo vacated the room, but her words stuck around. For the longest time, Deano felt glued into place. Charles was gone, and it was his fault. When, after what seemed like hours, Deano was able to get back into his bed, he couldn’t sleep. The guilt from his past actions weighed over him.

When daylight began seeping into Deano’s room, he knew sleep would never be achieved and got up once more.

It was day two of no Charles. Or day one? They’d lost Charles the day before, but they’d also had him briefly that day? So day one right? Deano realized quickly he was putting too much time into this line of thought rather than actually investigating the disappearance of his friend. Ok, day one. Deano made a promise to himself that by sundown that night, he’d have Charles located.

His investigation began at the hotel bar. He questioned the bartender on what they’d seen the night prior. The bartender didn’t have any times for what they saw, but they remembered Charles vacating with all of his things packed during sunrise. They didn’t exactly say it was Charles by name, but Deano’s best guess was that it was Charles. There are, after all, so few tall, stringy ex-vault dwellers.

The next people to question were those who ran shops on the same street. He hit gold again, finding out quickly that Charles, with his things packed, headed for the town’s entrance.

Deano made his way to the wall where he confirmed with a guard that Charles had left the city. When he pressed to see if the man ever came back, he was directed to another guard to track down who worked the nights.

The second guard was thankfully at their homestead, where they were enjoying a nice meal with their family. Once Deano explained the nature of his business, he was invited in and a spot was made for him at the table.

“I don’t recall seeing anyone come back,” the guard recounted between bites of his food. “Just some traders, but none of them match the description of your friend.”

Deano sighed and put his soup bowl to his mouth to drink from.

“I’m so sorry. You must be heartbroken. Things are pretty clear out there though. We’ve been paying some good money to get rid of the cazadores that used to be outside our city.”

Heartbroken wasn’t a word Deano would have used to describe his feelings. He’d have used something worse, something like ‘crushed’. He’d driven Charles away, a man who could barely shoot a plasma pistol, and now he was god-knows-where.

Sundown came earlier than expected, and there was no sign of Charles still. Deano was offered the ability to sit at the gates with the guards and watch for signs of his friend. Dutifully, Deano would question each newcomer on if they saw Charles. Every time the answer would be no.

Deano fell asleep from exhaustion sitting on the ground, waiting for people to question. He dreamed for some time, mostly about Charles. Finding him, Lo being happy, continuing to help him with becoming a doctor, kissing him, holding his hand, etc, etc. His dreams were like this anymore. Nice and quaint. Sometimes he was even a human again and not a monster. He didn’t mind being a ghoul any more, but sometimes when he was around Charles he did wish he were more appealing.

“Deano?”

Deano groaned, still set deep in his slumbers. A hand shook his shoulder and he was jolted back to the land of the living. He grunted and wiped his eyes before staring forward to find Charles crouched over, looking at him with concern. His eyes widened.

“Hey, you ok? Sorry I just left but you didn’t have to-“

Charles’ words were cut off as Deano pulled him into a hug. Charles hugged back awkwardly, only eliciting Deano to hug even more tightly.

“‘M sorry,” Deano muttered.

“You don’t have to be. I was kinda a jerk myself.”

“It’s fine.”

Deano finally let go, patting Charles on the back before completely freeing the poor man of him. Standing up, he noticed Charles now donned a lab coat. He eyed it, an action Charles noticed.

“Nice, right? Arcade gave it to me. I, uh, visited him.”

Deano’s heart sank a little at the mention of the doctor’s name, but he smiled regardless. “Looks sharp. You just get back or do we need to get you to Lo?”

“Ah, seeing Lo is probably a good idea.”

“Right.” Deano nodded. “Need me to carry anything?”

“Nah, all good.”

The two continued to chat, talking about where Charles had been and Deano’s investigation. The guards watched them as they faded into the distance, back to the hotel.

#ocs: deano #ocs: charles #ocs: lo #writing hoe tag

[agerefandom]

Shapes and Friends

Fandom: Night in the Woods

Characters: Regressor!Mae Borowski, featuring Gregg/Angus as baby!Mae’s friends and cg figures  

Words: 1,200

Summary: Mae regresses while waiting for food, but it’s not bad when her friends are nearby.

Warnings: There are thin lines between dissociation and regression in this story, so if you’re bothered by descriptions of dissociation this fic might not be for you! ‘Little’ is used as an adjective to refer to regression. Lots of sensory description, but in a positive way. 

Gregg and Angus’s apartment was nice. It was a little stinky, like boys and musty second-hand stores and cigarettes. But it was still nice. There was always snack food in the cupboards, and lights around their bedroom that flashed in soft patterns, and they had a loft bed (how cool was that??).

Mae especially liked their couch, squishy enough to swallow you and made of leather that squeaked when you moved on it. She liked the holes in the leather that you could stick your hand in and feel the stuffing, stringy but soft between your fingers.

Mae was playing with the squeaky couch, wiggling her butt to make silly sounds. Some of them were high and some of them were low and she couldn’t figure out if there was a pattern to it. Sometimes her elbows brushed against the leather, sticky with the summer heat. Bare skin made a different sound against the couch, but they all made her happy.

“Hey Mae.”

She looked up to see Angus leaning in the doorway. He looked kind of scruffy today, soft patches of hair scattered on his jaw and cheeks. He was still wearing his sweater vest, but the sleeves of his button-up were rolled to the elbow, and that was how you could tell he was feeling casual. Mae blinked at him, trying to smile but feeling too far away to tell if she was doing a good job. Angus’s voice was softer when he spoke again.

“Do you want some pizza?”

Mae nodded. She was probably hungry. She usually spaced out around dinner time.

“She said yeah,” Angus called back into the bedroom. “Do you want me to order it? She’s little.”

“Baby Mae??!”

Gregg’s voice was loud and excited, and he raced into the room a second later, shoving a phone into Angus’s hands on the way past. He seemed to reconsider the motion as he did it, making a quick turn and running back to give Angus a loud kiss on the cheek before pelting towards the couch again. He dropped to his knees and slid across the carpet, ending perfectly in front of Mae where she was sitting on the couch.

“Hey baby Mae, how you doing?”

Mae did her best to smile at him as well.

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Gregg nodded. “Food’s gonna be on its way soon, do you want blocks or cuddles?”

Blocks were nice. Cuddles were nice. Mae tried to put those facts together and hit a wall. What was the question? She was trying to answer something, but she couldn’t remember why she was thinking about cuddles.

Oh, hey, Gregg was here! Mae reached out a hand to touch his hair, patting the crunchy top layer. Gregg put a lot of goop in his hair that made it not very fun to play with. Mae sometimes used goop to make her hair look spikey and awesome but mostly she just let it do what it wanted. She didn’t like the stiff feeling like Gregg did.

Greg tilted his head into her hand, letting her play with it. She used both hands to push it into a funny looking mohawk, but it was making her fingers sticky and she didn’t like it. She wiped her fingers on her shirt and poked Gregg’s cheek instead. Angus got scratchy when he didn’t shave in the mornings, but Gregg was always smooth and soft, like Mae’s cheeks. She pressed on his cheekbones, his bottom lip, the tip of his nose, between his eyebrows. So many textures for a single face.

Gregg took a deep breath and puffed his cheeks out like a chipmunk. Mae poked the new texture on his cheeks, then put her hands on either side of Gregg’s face and pressed the air out of his mouth. It made a funny squeaking sound, and that made Gregg laugh really hard. Mae tried to do the same thing to her cheeks, but she couldn’t make the same squeaky sound that Gregg did.

“Okay, baby Mae, let’s get you some blocks.” Gregg held out his arms, as if he wanted Mae to come into them. Mae looked at him uncertainly. Could she really move her body off the couch? It felt so big and unwieldy. “Take my hands,” Gregg suggested.

That seemed like something Mae could do.

She slipped her hands into Gregg’s, and he pulled her to her feet. Mae wobbled, dizzy and high up and far away, but Gregg wrapped an arm around her and she wasn’t scared of falling. She pressed her forehead into his shirt and got lost in that feeling for a second, the ridges of the neckline against her eyebrows and the rough texture of the fabric on her skin.

Gregg helped her sit again, a little further away from the couch, and went to get a box from the bookshelf. Mae entertained herself by running her fingers over the carpet, making little popping sounds with her lips. The carpet was rough in one direction and smooth in the other, and she drifted off again in the sensation.

“Here you go.” Gregg startled her by putting a box in front of her, a colourful box with stickers all over it. It looked like a kid had decorated it, but Gregg had done it himself, with all of Mae’s favourite colours. He was a good artist when he tried, but he preferred to make a big mess when he could get away with it. Mae loved watching him push paint around a page with his fingers, even though she didn’t like the feeling on her own hands.

It was Mae’s toy box, full of things that Gregg and Angus had bought for her. Mostly Gregg, but Angus had added a little stuffed bunny with stars on the ears, and Mae loved it so much. Mae had been surprised when they had first shown it to her, but now it just made her smile. She knew everything inside, stuffies and squishies and toys with lights that flashed different colours. Gregg only pulled out the blocks for now, upending the plastic bag they were kept in and letting them tumble across the carpet.

Mae picked a few of them up and ran her fingers over them. The edges, the curves, rough with wood grain and mixed up with sharp corners that poked her when she pressed her thumb on them. She knocked them against each other, enjoying the noise. Gregg played as well, stacking up towers of blocks and prompting Mae to knock them down. He laughed at the destruction, looking pleased with her poking fingers.

Eventually, Angus came back from the phone call and sat beside Gregg, one arm around his boyfriend’s shoulders and the other one helping with the towers.

Mae knew that the pizza would come soon, and the food would be in her tummy, and she would come back from the place where she was drifting. But for now, it was nice to feel the corners of the blocks and watch Angus help Gregg stack them higher. The shapes became real between her fingers, feeling the limits of them. She could knock down all the towers she liked because they would just be rebuilt in new ways, to the sound of Gregg’s delighted laughter. Things were far away, but it didn’t mean they were bad. It was kind of nice to drift when your friends were holding on tight, and you knew they wouldn’t let you go.  

#agere writing #sfw agere #nitw agere #nitw fanfic #sfw age regression #age regression writing #regression writing #sfw cgre #cgreg #night in the woods #mae borowski #my writing #cglre terminology #fandom agere #fandom regression

[realtacuardach]

On Fire

I’m late, but here’s my first entry for Obiyuki AU Bingo - Firefighter AU!

...

It went without saying that she had not intended for any of this to happen.

After all, she was one of the most precise researchers in the botany lab, at least according to Ryuu, second only to himself and their director. Even when surrounded by a multitude of tiny boxes, each sprouting almost identical leaves, she had an uncanny ability to notice any changes and how to address them with little delay. Shirayuki was collected, her mind focused like a fine lens on every discrepancy and task set ahead of her. Of all the descriptions, complimentary or not, ascribed to her over the years by coworkers, colleagues, and occasionally jealous competitors, “absent-minded” had never been one of them.

That all changed when she walked through her front door.

That fateful Friday afternoon was no different. Shirayuki swept up the staircase to her apartment, nodding politely but perfunctorily to the neighbors she passed before she let herself inside. Muscle memory helped her hand her coat on the hook and sling her keys onto the rack with barely a glance in their direction. From the moment she entered the room, Shirayuki’s gaze had focused like a beacon on the cluster of leaves in small boxes near her window. In her haste, she nearly tripped over the stack of junk mail from where it had spilled onto the floor from a stool by the door. Undeterred, she slipped and stumbled her way to the table.

She rolled up her sleeves, flexed her fingers in anticipation of the soil that would soon be crumbling beneath them (because in the lab she would follow all the necessary protocols, but there was nothing like the feeling of earth between your fingers) when her phone chimed. And again. And again.

Shirayuki let out a frustrated sigh and pulled her phone towards her. There were several texts from Yuzuri.

Don’t forget to try the food I sent with you.

You promised you’d tell me if you like it.

Besides you need to eat something - I know you’ve been forgetting to shop.

You’re going to waste away.

Only her love for her friend kept the botanist from throwing her phone out the window as she stood up to dutifully grab the covered dish from the freezer and pop it in the oven. I’m putting it in now, she replied, Thanks, Yuzuri.

The response was immediate. Don’t forget to turn it on. 350 degrees. <3

Of course I turned it on! Shirayuki responded, before hastily spinning the oven dial accordingly.

Then, feeling accomplished, she sat down and set herself to her work.

Not noticing the text stating to take out the dish in twenty minutes.

Not noticing the clock move far past twenty minutes.

Not noticing the dark smoke struggling past the oven door.

Not noticing the sound of the smoke detector, which was on its last legs and drowned out by the sounds of the city outside.

The sirens outside her window, however, she did notice.

…

She was leaning out the window, wondering where the fire was, when she heard the pounding on the door. “Anyone in there?” a muffled voice called out.

“Yes?” she responded.

The pounding intensified at that, and just as she was halfway to the door, it burst open and a stream of firefighters entered. The tallest of them quickly came over to her, checked for any signs of distress, and then went over to the window, where she could now see dark smoke spilling out into the darkening sky. The only woman in the squad, who looked the most intimidating even though she was the smallest, walked to the oven and turned it off. Meanwhile the last firefighter, who walked with a step of natural authority, stood in the doorway as he surveyed the entire scene. “All right there, Mitsuhide?”

The man at the window turned and nodded. “No smoke from anywhere but the stove, Zen.”

“All right, Kiki?”

The woman stood up from where she was bent over the stove, pulling out the smoking casserole and putting it on the stovetop. Even through the helmet, Shirayuki could see her face as her eyes swept from the stovetop to Shirayuki, before one eyebrow arched elegantly in silent question. Shirayuki flushed. “All clear - it was just the food, the stove seems fine.”

“Good.” The captain pulled off his helmet and brushed a hand up his forehead through his hair, striking a casual but impressive pose. “And Obi -” he froze, before breaking his pose. “Obi?!”

A final final fireman stuck his head through the window from outside, causing Shirayuki to startle and Mitsuhide to stumble backwards, sputtering. “You rang, boss?”

Mitsuhide continued to sputter. “What are you doing?”

“Checking the perimeter for structural integrity, Sir!” Obi replied, in a tone that sounded like he was directly parroting someone. He saluted as he did so, which was impressive given that he was still outside and also hanging upside down.

The taller man didn’t clap a hand to his eyes, but his expression looked like it was with an effort. “That’s now what I -”

The captain cut into an apparently old lecture. “Obi, get in here.”

“Right.” And Obi swung smoothly into the room through the window, landing right in front of Shirayuki. The blush on her face intensified as he unfurled himself in front of her, lean and olive-skinned and golden-eyed.

She struggled to breathe for a moment, which caused Mitsuhide to sweep in once again to check her vitals. Obi shot her a grin that did not help. “No damage outside, boss.”

“Looks like all the damage is in the food, Zen,” Kiki said dryly, causing Shirayuki to cringe.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Zen replied, smiling. “Just be more careful - it’s a good call when no one is hurt.”

Obi loped past the others towards the stove. He pulled off a glove and drew a finger across the top of the casserole, cracking past the charred crust to the sauces below. Amid the looks of exasperation, dismay, and mild amusement from his colleagues, he popped a fragment into his mouth and smacked his lips appreciatively. “I don’t know, Princess Kiki,” he remarked to the woman firefighter, who merely raised her other eyebrow in response. “I wouldn’t say it’s damaged. Really crunchy, but it’s got a smoky flavor.”

He winked in Shirayuki’s direction, and the blush grew despite her best efforts.

“Hilarious,” Kiki said dryly.

“Since all’s well,” Mitsuhide began, “we’d better head back to the station.”

Zen nodded. “Right.” He sent a dazzling grin to Shirayuki. “Always have to be ready for the next call.”

“Of course!” Shirayuki replied, “I’m so sorry to be causing you trouble.”

“It’s no trouble,” he assured her, “Just be more careful next time.”

“Oh, I promise,” Shirayuki stuttered, “there won’t be a next time.”

And she was right, she never burned a casserole again.

The next time she saw the firefighters, it was the soup.

…

There was something about Fridays, Shirayuki mused as she watched the bustle of the fire squad tending to the smoldering remains of her soup pot. Maybe it was because she was on her own time instead of the lab’s time. Maybe it was because the looming freedom of the weekend was distracting. Or maybe it was because she didn’t have anyone watching over her shoulder to keep her from accidentally burning down a building. But she had cooked perfectly safely all throughout the week since the previous Friday, so how - 

“Don’t sweat it, Miss.” Shirayuki looked up to see Obi shucking off his helmet and smiling at her reassuringly. He swiped an arm across his forehead and the sweat gleamed against his skin and spiked hair. She had to swallow past the feelings other than mortification building up i her gut. “We get called in for kitchen fires all the time.”

She spiked a hand on her hip and sighed. “But it’s embarrassing - I just let my mind slip…” She huffed in self-disgust.

“It does look interesting, though,” he replied, nodding toward the plants, “what you’re working on. What are all those?”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Those are some specimens I brought home from work. My supervisor was going to throw them out, but I thought I might try some different techniques to get them to grow.”

“I noticed the coat,” Obi said, “I wondered if you were a doctor, dentist, or scientist.”

“I thought about being a doctor,” she admitted, “but I preferred working with plants. I’m a botanist.” She shuddered. “I could never be a dentist - I was always afraid of going to them, even though mine were very nice.”

“That’s a relief, “Obi grinned, as he dug into his pack.

“Why?”

“Because I really needed a sugar boost,” he replied, as he opened the packaging of the chocolate bar he had pulled out of his pack and popped a square into his mouth. “And I was worried I might get two lectures.”

“Two?”

“Obi!” Mitsuhide barked from across the room. “This is no time for a snack! And physicals are next week!”

“C’mon,” Obi shot back, “it’s just a quick snack. And besides,” he yanked the heavy fire-proof coat and shirt up, exposing his abdomen, “does this look out of shape to you?”

Zen slapped a hand to his face, Mitshide sputtered, Shirayuki squeaked as she stared, and Kiki simply rolled her eyes.

“Smooth,” she snarked, and Shirayuki couldn’t be sure but it felt her eyes swept between herself and Obi before setting on Obi.

“Let’s go,” Zen groaned, “are you going to be all right, ma’am?”

Shirayuki nodded vigorously, trying to focus. “Yes, thank you. I’m sorry!”

“All part of the job, Miss,” Obi winked.

“Be careful, “Kiki added and raised a hand in farewell, steering Obi outside with her.”

“Of course,” Shirayuki called as she waved them out. “It won’t happen again.”

…

The third time was all Obi’s fault.

Okay, that wasn’t fair, Shirayuki reprimanded herself, as she watched the two trays of scorched and charred chocolate chip cookies being issued outside as Mitsuhide fanned the smoke outside the open window. She had been making the cookies for everyone at the fire department as an apology and a thank you. And if she would only barely admit to herself that she was thinking of Obi’s blissful expression as he savored the chocolate the Friday before when picking the recipe, no one else had to know.

And it was her own fault that they burned.

“I was paying attention this time,” she moaned plaintively.

Obi gave her a smile that was at once amused and sympathetic. “That so, Miss?”

“I did!” She insisted, and then brushed a lock of hair sheepishly back as she continued. “At first.”

Kiki arched a brow from where she was standing up from closing the stove. “At first?”

“But then I noticed that the boxes closest to the window had started flowering,” she admitted, “and I went to examine them, and by the time I remembered - “

“I see.”

“They are flowering nice, though,” Obi countered, and Shirayuki felt warm all over.

“Even so,” Kiki said, looking over to where Zen and Mitsuhide were returning from disposing of the last charred bits of Shirayuki’s dignity, “maybe you’d better hold off on backing for a while. Until the oven is checked out.”

The oven was fine. Shirayuki had already had it checked by the rueful landlord.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Kiki cracked a smirk. “Don’t need to ma’am me, we’re becoming familiar with each other now.”

“Ugh.” Shirayuki buried her face in her hands.

Kiki patted her on the shoulder reassuringly.

“And I can think of worse places to be on a Friday night.” Kiki and Shirayuki both turned to look at Obi, who suddenly looked like he wanted to sink into the floor.

Kiki snorted. “Subtle.” And before Shirayuki could ask what she meant by that, she began issuing Obi out the door again. “Goodbye, Shirayuki. Take care.”

“Until we meet again!” Obi called back, sounding less nervous than before but still not his typical casual self.

“Don’t worry,” she replied, “there won’t be a next time!” She felt oddly bereft as she said that. But she was swearing off the stove and sticking to the microwave from now on.

Even if it would be nice to see-

No, it wasn’t worth risking arson. No more stove, ever again.

…

Shirayuki was debating between a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or one of the meals that Suzu had sent home - that she swore could be microwaved - for dinner the following Friday. Admittedly, it had been hard to hear Suzu’s solemn promise because she was laughing too hard as she said it, but Suzu insisted it was safe. Both the sandwich and meal sounded equally appetizing, and she was about to flip a coin when she heard a firm knock at the door.

Is this how criminals feel? She wondered, as her gaze flitted instinctively to the oven and stovetop to see that they were indeed switched off and ice-cold.

“Miss?” A voice called from outside. “It’s Obi - from the fire department.”

Her heart flew up into her throat even as she checked the room for smoke.

“Coming!” She smoothed back her hair and brushed down her lab coat before opening the door.

Obi stood in the doorway, looking far too good in civilian clothing. She knew he had to be in good shape (heck, she’d seen his abs), but the firefighter uniform had been concealing all the lean muscle that was outlined quite nicely in the polo shirt and jeans that he was wearing. Her cheeks began to burn, and she fought the urge to check for fire again. “How’s it going, Miss?”

“I’m well,” she smiled. “Keeping away from the oven, as you can see. What brings you here, did you leave something behind?”

Obi shook his head. “No. I’m just here as part of our new community preventative program.”

“Community preventative program?” Shirayuki hadn’t heard anything about that - not that she’d been reading all she could find about the fire department recently. Really.

“Stopping the fires before they start.” Obi cleared his throat. “So I was here to see if you wanted to go out to dinner.”

“Out to dinner?”

“Totally up to you!” He assured, holding up one hand. “It’s just - it’s about that time and… I thought you might be getting hungry - science can build up an appetite.”

Shirayuki grinned, feeling the heat from her cheeks seep pleasantly down to her chest. “Is everyone from the department on the program, or just you?”

He grinned back. “Well, this may not be departmentally sanctioned.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “To be honest, I’m going rogue here.”

And if that didn’t just send a fine shiver across her skin. “A rogue, huh?”

Obi looked like he was considering backtracking, so she grabbed his arm to stop him. “I do like a bit of danger, myself.”

#obiyukibingo2020 #obiyuki #firefighter au #it should be obvious that I don't know much about firefighting #mea culpa #i hope you enjoy anyway! #sorry it's late y'all

[missguomeiyun]

❆ SEATTLE (ep3): dinner @ Noi

Our 1st meal in Seattle~

Noi Thai Cuisine, located at: 1303 1st Ave.

The interior was VERY dark! We quickly realized that Noi was more like a pub/lounge type of place. They are family-friendly; however, the atmosphere screamed date night or catch-up sesh with friends type of place.

Got a table by the window, facing The Harbour Steps.

Loved these lights!

Let’s take a look at the dinner menu (we happened to just miss the happy hr menu).

oooooOOh interesting.

I know the menu text is too small for you to actually read, but I still included them here so you can get a sense of how ‘fancy’ they are haha the pictures are all coloured & the menu paper is nice & glossy.

They have a very good description of what each dish is underneath the name of the dish.

Honestly, the menu was more like a food magazine than a menu :P

Look at that curry photo

Menu continues. ..

If you can’t tell by now, they are a fusion Thai restaurant.

*me thinking: “where is the pad thai?” *

Ahh. .. finally entering the noodle/rice section.

This is probably the section that was most familiar to me.

Noi also offers a number of vegetarian dishes.

We ordered our food & it came out pretty fast, despite the place being very busy!

The appetizer sampler~ Not gonna lie, DL & I were both intrigued by the ‘egg shell presentation’ lol but we also wanted to try other appetizers so the sampler was the best option. Let’s take a look at each part individually.

A. Crab wontons. Super crispy & filled with *real* crab meat (& cream cheese). The filling was creamy but had thin bits of crab meat.

B. Thai-style shrimp cakes. I’m a loyal fish cake girl so this shrimp cake . .. I was quite indifferent abut it. I was imagining something like the shrimp-stuffed bell peppers or eggplants that you could get at dimsum, where the shrimp is bouncy. But this fell short of that- there was a mushiness to it bcos the shrimp paste was made into some sort of paste/batter, rather than a primarily-shrimp paste. Does that make sense? Anyway, I though it’d be pure shrimp but it wasn’t, & I felt a little cheated.

C. Crispy taro rolls. This was better than expected. I thought it only had taro inside but it had some shrimp or prawn mixed in it as well!

D. Cock-A-Doodle-Doo. (Negligible) hint of spiciness from the tom yum bisque with deep fried prawn (bits) & tobiko. Sooooo sooo creamy mixed with crunchy & ‘popping’ textures. This was very satisfying from a textural perspective.

Of the 4 items, my order of preference: C > D > A > B.

Honestly opinion about the 4 items in general. .. I didn’t really get much “Thai” flavour in any of the 4 items :S I feel like these things could be ordered from any western restaurant, especially with more & more western pub/lounge places offering Asian-inspired appetizers/flavours. Wonderful presentation but altogether, not bad, but not great. I would recommend getting the Cock-A-Doodle-Doo on its own if you were to come here. It is different & I think it’s worth a try!

Original Tom Kah Gai. “This soup feature chicken, straw mushroom caps, lemongrass, spring onions, cilantro and enticing taste of galangal roots infused with coconut milk.” (copied directly from website)

From our personal Thai cuisine experiences, we have not seen/heard of this milky soup, so we decided to try it. The appearance looked so creamy & harmless, but this soup actually had quite a sharp flavour to it! Nevermind the ingredients used (nothing spectacular about it) but the soup was like WOWWW! Very citrus-y & strong lemongrass flavour will hit you first, & then it fades, & that’s when the subtle coconut flavour comes out. I really liked it!

Clay Pot Crab with Glass Noodles. (they say glass noodles but it’s the thin clear vermicelli noodles that you often find in spring rolls, aka cellophane noodles, not the stuff you use for japchae)

“A century old Thai favorite dish includes a combination of spiced crab, bacon, ginger, cilantro, white pepper on top of stir-fried glass noodle with our delicious homemade sauce.” The sauce was too zesty-spicy for me, so I actually didn’t eat the noodles with the sauce, but others might like it. I wasn’t a big fan of this dish; flavour was good (but did not scream “Thai” to me.. . honestly, it was just like a stir-fry that one could make at home using soy sauce + fish sauce), & abundant crab meat (more than I had expected!)... the biggest concern was the noodles =/ it was stiff! You know when you cook noodles sometimes & then it cools .. . & then it becomes dry & takes the form of the bowl? Well, this was like that. The noodles weren’t loose; it was stuck together. You literally needed to CUT a section out bcos using fork/chopsticks to take some was nearly impossible (you’d be taking out all the noodles with you). I was disappointed by this.. .

So yeah. .. ummm .. lol not the best 1st meal. However, the soup was very delicious & enjoyable!

Fun fact: they are a popular stopover spot for Thai Airways crew!

#travel #travel blog #travel post #seattle #dinner #food #thai food

[trillian-anders]

amor de mi vida - 1943

pairing: bucky barnes x latinx!reader

warnings: racism, prejudice, fluff, angst

word count: 3800

description: Bucky Barnes is a sweet young Brooklyn boy, just on the cusp of manhood, a hopeless romantic that falls in love with almost every girl he sees. when he sets his eyes on a young girl fresh off the boat from Cuba he finds out how hard love can really be.

for @cake-writes 1940s challenge.

The apartment was quiet. Eerily so. The steady drip from the faucet that Bucky hadn’t gotten around to fixing, the commotion from the street below. All of it muffled behind the walls of your bedroom. Your marital bed with the thick duvet, fingers tracing the empty sheets beside you. The faint smell of his aftershave still on the pillow. You’d stopped crying days ago, but this space for the first time was empty. 

Bucky filled the place in this little apartment where your Mother had been before. This was the first time in your life you were truly alone. No one to take care of, no one to wrap yourself around to take comfort. Alone. 

But not really. 

“We should go to the shore.” Winnie said over breakfast. The Barnes household wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t lonely. But there was an empty spot at the table. “We could go up to the Adirondacks. Rent a cabin?” George hummed in agreement. 

“Here,” Suzy, “So what would you like to write?” The small desk crammed in between her bed and Becca’s. Sheets of paper laid out and an envelope already addressed to James Barnes of the 107th. You tugged your bottom lip through your teeth, unsure of what to write. 

You’d written him a letter before, very painstakingly, back when you’d first started dating. And you’d written him many letters since he left with the help of Suzy, but they’re all so superficial. You talked about the weather, about a new fabric you’d gotten with his Mother. You told him how Steve had written to you saying he was alright, but you hadn’t seen him since the Stark Expo, but he swore to visit soon. 

You told him that you missed him every minute of every day, but you didn’t tell him that you missed him wrapping his arms around your waist and singing love songs softly into your ear. You didn’t tell him that you missed those early morning kisses, sleepy and gentle. You didn’t tell him that you missed how he would playfully tug on your hair or how he would always bring you new flowers. You didn’t say that you missed how he would pluck one from the bouquet and place it behind your ear. You didn’t say that your body longed for his. The fire set in your core that made you long for one more time, just one more before he left. 

You couldn’t. Not when Suzy was helping you write the letters. 

“Tell him we are going on vacation.” You said. She handed you a pen, and taught you how to spell out the words. Eventually you’ll be able to do it on your own. You’ll tell him then. 

“It’s so great.” Becca said from the back seat. “We all get to wear pants and I’ll show you the tree I love to climb, and then we can go swimming in the lake, and then…” Her voice rambled on and on. You sat in the passenger seat, Ginny next to you driving. Winnie and George were just ahead of you, toting Ruth and Suzy. “I wish Bucky was here.” She mumbled, almost to herself. Ginny’s hands noticeably tightened on the wheel. 

“Me too.” You agreed, smiling on the now thirteen year old girl. Her face freckled, pimples had broken out on her forehead from her bangs, but it was just family. Winnie pinned them off her forehead for the week, telling her that it would help them go away. 

Bucky’s absence was felt, but was somewhat soothed by the little package of letters that had just arrived the day before. One for Winnie, George, Ginny, Ruth, and Suzy. Two for Becca. And ten, ten letters for you. 

He’d just finished basic training. They’d given him the letters they had withheld during the weeks before they took him out to Italy. The front lines, Suzy read to you. It made your stomach drop and your hands shake. The war was in Italy right now, the allies trying to take back the country from Nazi control. 

In the margins of his letters were hastily scribbled flowers. Some had little poems, a book one soldier kept with him of love poems. One his girl had given him. One letter just had I love you written over and over a border on a letter that explained what he saw out there. The horrors of bombs going off in the middle of stone paved streets. Businesses that would never recover having their windows blown out. 

The first death he ever saw happened that first week. He wrote about how the man who died just had a baby girl. They named her Judy. 

Your hand rubbed Suzy’s back as she read that part. Her eyes sad, wet with tears for the passion in which Bucky said he couldn’t let this man’s death be in vain. 

Winnie read you some letters too. Helping you sound out the words, on the porch of the cabin, the girl’s and their Father hanging up the tire swing, the cobwebs just swept from the house. A glass of wine in front of you as the love of your life’s Mother helped you read about how hard it was for Bucky to fall asleep without you. How the beds were so hard. He slept on the floor for the first time, aside from when one of the girls had nightmares. How he would lay on the floor next to their beds and talk to them until they fell back asleep, not leaving just in case they woke up and he wasn’t there. 

“I never knew he did that.” Winnie smiled, “Oh goodness.” She sighed, leaning back in her chair, looking out on her girls and taking a sip of wine. “I never knew he did that.”

He described how beautiful some parts of the city were. Parts where war hasn’t reached. He talked about how they landed on the beaches of Sicily first and worked their way up. There was a small town, just outside of Rome they passed. It was as if nothing happened. The sleepy little town had been untouched by this war. He said he felt guilty walking through it. Like the mud on his boots was going to defile the cobblestones. Like it was bringing the war to disrupt the lives of these people who just wanted to keep on living. 

I’m sorry, he kept writing, I’m sorry I had to leave. He said if he wasn’t part of the solution he’d just be part of the problem. The denial that it was happening. And he saw it happening. He talked about a camp they’d found. Ferramonti di Tarsia, he said. They were planning on liberating the camp, but they hadn’t figured out what to do yet. How to proceed. 

That was the discussion at dinner. 

The war. 

Fresh fish that George and Ruth had gone out this morning and caught lay filet on the table, vegetables, roasted potatoes and white wine. 

“The government isn’t saying much about it.” Winnie said, the United States government. Everyone knew that there was Jewish prosecution over there, but no one knew it was like this. 

It wasn’t long after that newspapers started talking about them. Concentration Camps, POW camps. The real image of what exactly was going on in Europe. 

You wrote to him, through Suzy, through Winnie. An attempt at comfort, and attempt to sympathize with the shedding of his innocence as he viewed how hard and cruel the world could truly be. 

I don’t understand, he wrote, how someone could do this to another person. 

The cruelty in which these people were treated, just for having different beliefs, just being different people, different values, while at the same time being very much the same as everyone else. 

It was a somber dinner. 

It was on a boat in the middle of the lake that George Barnes taught you to fish. 

“I always enjoy getting away.” He said, “Just come out here with one of my girls, nice and quiet.” He had more grays since Bucky left, they were growing thick around his temples and in growing his beard on this vacation it mostly showed salt and pepper. He smiled at you, fixing the fishing rod into the little divot on the side of the boat. The lake was still. Not too far behind you the cabin sat still sleeping. 

He seemed a little down lately. 

Those private times Bucky had told you about. Those scars from the war. They were a little more open now in the crisp morning air. The fresh air of the mountains that were around you. The wrinkles around his eyes were more noticeable. For the first time since you’ve met George Barnes he’s looked truly old. 

“Bucky hated comin’ out here.” He continues, “He’d get bored after the first half hour, wanna go back and sneak some of the bacon off the table while Ma was still cookin’.” Bucky had a habit of doing that. Sneaking bites, little pieces of chicken shredded on a plate, a string bean freshly snapped and crunchy in an empty pot ready to be cooked. A dip of his finger against the side of the bowl in some batter. Cakes, cookies, brownies, the dulce de leche you’d made for a Sunday dinner at his parent’s house got a double dip. First with his pointer, then with his pinky. A long kiss pressed to your cheek and a hum of approval. 

“He’ll be okay,” George’s soft blue eyes meet yours, the same eyes that Bucky and Becca both had, “He’ll be just fine.”

It took practice, but the words were coming a little easier. 

You could read on your own now, slowly, but still. Privacy helped. 

Bucky pressed a daisy in between the pages of his last letter. He’d found it on the side of the road as his campaign shook the last official day of winter from their bones. The temperature is steadily rising. The cold winter nights on a hard cot gave way to summer sweat and he was finally able to sleep. It’s not so bad when you get used to it, he wrote. 

He complained about the mud on his boots, how thick it would crust on. The rain had been endless in the spring. He wrote about how sometimes his boots would sink almost to his shins in the muck. How he would have to wait for it to dry before he scraped it off with a pocket knife. 

The next letter had a crocus. Purple and pressed, the flower stained the page. 

You wrote to him about how you’d seen someone who looked just like Steve on a poster in Manhattan. If Steve was a poster boy for a carved out all american man. They were calling the guy Captain America. They even started making short films. Becca had told you about going to see one with a classmate, she also thinks he kind of looks like Steve. He had sent you a letter, you told Bucky. Steve did. And she assumed he received one as well. He had gone to basic. Someone let him into the military. You hoped they put him behind a desk. 

A picture came in the mail. 

A picture of Bucky in his uniform. The kind of picture, you thought, and couldn’t help but think, would sit next to his casket. 

It was on your mantle now. 

“Cómo estás? [How are you?]” The noise startling. You fumbled with the keys in your hand, turning to look at him. Mateo. You hadn’t seen him much, he’d moved onto another girl, someone else to push around quite quickly after you. A guy like him didn’t stay single for very long. 

In the early days of your relationship with Bucky you’d run into him in the hall. A bubbly girl wrapped around his arm. Someone young, younger than you, and too naive to see the man they were in love with was trouble. A girl that would get jealous and possessive when another girl looked at their man. You’d been on the receiving end of a glare or two, or five. But he never talked to you after that. Not until right now. 

Your hand wrapped around a stack of letters fresh off the front lines. 

A dish of leftovers in the fridge waiting to be warmed up and aching feet from walking in your heels up and down the streets of Manhattan under the guise of being Winnie’s maid or servant or however the department store clerks viewed you. 

A day of shopping for a few new summer dresses. For the girls, and for you. Your new dress hung in a garment bag over your arm. 

Now your heart was racing. 

Mateo was close, a little too close for comfort. 

“Qué deseas? [What do you want?]” You ask, fisting your keys tightly. The corner of his lips twitch. 

“No puedo ver cómo estás? [I can’t see how you are?]” He was trying to act innocently, but you knew he was up to something. 

“No,” Your eyes shift behind him to look down the empty hallway, “No puedes. [You can’t.]” You jam the key into the lock, twisting it quickly as he grabbed your arm. 

“Relax.” He said, standing too close. Far too close. “Voy a la guerra mañana. [I’m going to war tomorrow.]” His chest almost flush with yours, hand tight around your arm. “Solo estoy buscando algo de consuelo. [I’m just looking for a little comfort.]” You roll your eyes, pushing on his chest to create some distance. 

“Estoy casada [I’m married.]” You try once again to push him further from you, heart rate spiking. 

“Él no está aquí. [He’s not here],” Mateo grumbles, “El nunca lo sabrá. [He’ll never know.]” 

Locks clicked heavily as he yelled from the other side of the door. A white man’s whore. That’s what he called you. The garment bag tossed over the back of the chair Bucky liked to sit in to listen to the radio at night. The pack of letters clutched tightly to your chest as you sunk down to the floor, kicking off your heels. The next day you’d talk to Winnie and George about moving. 

They helped you get a house. 

Close to theirs, but it was in Bucky’s name. It was a ruse that had been worked out. Just make people think you’re the hired help so they weren’t calling the cops when a strange Hispanic woman was coming and going from a home on their street. The pursed lips and upturned noses didn’t talk to you, and that’s fine. That worked out for you. 

The home was beautiful. Bought with your saved wages and Bucky’s military income. The dark hardwood and an eat-in kitchen. It needed a little polish. It was an older house, but the family was happy to help. 

You polished the floors with Winnie. The girls helped you paint each room. George fixed the little things that Bucky would have had he been here. The leaky faucet, new knobs on the cabinets, a creaky floorboard or two. 

Winnie stood in the doorway of one room. The one closest to the master, a wistful look on her face. “God willing this will be a nursery one day.” She said. And it made your heart ache. Bucky’s side of the bed was especially empty after that. 

You wrote to him about the house, but you didn’t mention his Mother’s comment. 

You wrote to him about the way the sun filters in through the kitchen window. How the house was much more quiet than the apartment. No loud neighbors arguing at 2 am. No thick scented mixed smell of dinner that took over in the evenings. No banging on the ceiling or floors. So quiet. So lonely. 

You told him how you hung the dried peonies in bundles on the entryway in the kitchen. Another bundle near the front door. You could see them as soon as you walked in. 

He wrote about how he couldn’t wait to see it. How he couldn’t wait to see you. How his missed you. How he looked at your picture every chance he got. 

Italy surrendered to the allies. It was time to move on. 

His letters stopped. 

And so did you heart. 

You sat in the middle of your bedroom floor. The letters in a box you kept under the desk in what would be the study if you ever got it set up. The box was in front of you now. Fingers shaking as you thumb through, rereading the loving words of your husband. Praying to God that he was okay. That maybe they were lost in the mail. That maybe he couldn’t find time to write right now. He was in the thick of the war after all. 

It had been a particularly rough week. And that thick bundle of letters that seemed to arrive like clockwork on Thursdays was something you’d been desperately looking forward to. Someone had made a comment. 

It wasn’t like you weren’t used to those comments. But it was from a friend of Winnie’s. You had gone to her house with a bundle of fabric, enough for a dress for you and Becca. One you’d promised to let Becca help with. It was there that one of her friend’s had come around for lunch. The two women chatted merrily in the kitchen while Becca was talking animatedly about what Bucky had written to her since the last time you saw her. 

Something about the last Dodgers game. She kept him updated about scores and something about Curt Davis. But what rang clear as a bell from the other room, was Winnie’s friend saying, “You shouldn’t let your children get so comfortable with the help.” She then called you something you wouldn’t repeat. Casual. Like talking about the weather. But the worst part about it is that Winnie said nothing. 

You realized something then, and you had this argument with yourself more than once. You love Bucky. You love his family. But there was always going to be this little line of distance between you and it all. When Bucky was around he seemed to bridge that gap. 

You could imagine if he were here and heard that comment that woman would have met the door, but he wasn’t here. And she didn’t. Because as much as Winnie and George were progressive and believed in equal rights and desegregation, it wasn’t easy to speak out about it. Especially with the people they’ve known their entire life. It’s easier to let people think you’re the help. It’s easier for them. 

And you couldn’t help but think they don’t mean it. Times are slowly moving forward and they’re not sure what to do with the change. How forward could they be? How open could they be about it without being exiled from the community they grew up in? 

But you had been exiled. You had spoken out about your relationship with Bucky when you’d been confronted about it by some of the girls when you were at the factory still. And you defended him. They thought it fine for him to chase your skirt but once that ring was on your finger it was a whole different ball game. You chose to stand your ground. Dig in your heels, and only two girls and a friend of your Mother’s stuck by you. 

It’s hard, but it’s what you have to do. And Winnie didn’t do it. 

So here you sat, Bucky’s letters no longer arriving. This wasn’t like when you’d first moved in and had to go pick up your mail at your old apartment building. He wrote the new address on the recent ones. He couldn’t have mixed that up, but maybe? Tears smudged the corners. 

You wouldn’t feel relief until letters showed up the week after. The horror of expecting men at your door to tell you that your husband was killed in action was squashed when a pack of letters arrived. 

It was Steve on the posters, he wrote. Steve rescued him. He’d been captured, but he was okay. He didn’t go into detail. He didn’t say what happened, but just that he was okay. He apologized for scaring you, the letters you’d written him they’d given to him almost all at once. The last few frantic writings of please answer me. 

You didn’t say anything about what happened with Winnie. 

But you also didn’t go to the Barnes household for Thanksgiving dinner. 

“Doin’ alright in here kid?” George came over with a glass dish. The gentle knock and enter that Dad’s do. You were writing Bucky, his old Spanish-English book tabbed and sat next to you at the kitchen table. 

It wasn’t his fault. Nor the girl’s, but you couldn’t help but want to stay away. It sat heavy as a rock on your chest. You knew it wasn’t his fault, and part of you wanted to forgive Winnie. Maybe she was caught off guard, maybe she didn’t know what to say. But you couldn’t help but feel like she could have said anything and it would have been better than what she did. Which was say nothing.

“She’s been crying.” He said, “She knows you don’t want to see her.” George was a stand up guy. He’s the one who had been employing minorities in his shop. He’s stood up against some men that had shattered his front window in the beginning. He threw a bible in their face and called them all heretics. “She didn’t think that Lucille would ever say something like that, and I know that doesn’t make it right, but you know none of us feel that way about you.” 

The glass dish had servings of everything from Thanksgiving dinner. A piece of pie wrapped in foil on top. 

“I think the two of you should talk, it’s not good for you to be in this house all alone.” 

Bucky wrote to you about the Howling Commandos. He sent a picture of him and Steve that sat on the mantle now. 

I’ll Be Home for Christmas. It was a new song by Bing Crosby. 

He wrote about how he heard it on the radio for the first time right before they left London. It would have been your first Christmas as husband and wife. This Christmas. He mailed home some trinkets he’d been collecting for you. A little eiffel tower. A hair pin he got in Italy. A box of tea and chocolates from the UK. He wrote that maybe the war will be over next year. Maybe next Christmas you’ll be together again and you can celebrate Christmas as a family. 

Maybe. 

.

.

.

taglist //  @corneliabarnes​ @bookish-shristi​ @saturnki​ @jennmurawski13​ @geeksareunique​ @albinotigerpython​ @cake-writes​ @iheartsebastianstan​ @000bananaclip000​ @shadowbusiness @sprinkleofbooty​ @gifsbysimplysonia​ @vhsbarnes​ @loseralert @wendaiii​ @the-soulofdevil​ @tinmunky​ @alwaysbenhardysgirl

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #1940s #captain america #latinx!reader #latina!reader #steve rogers #sebastian stan #the winter soldier #the falcon and the winter soldier

[gwhiz-138]

Added Track Descriptions on Gerard Way’s Soundcloud:

Phoning It In:

Phoning It In. I’ve always loved the phrase and I was just inspired to write a song with it. To keep in spirit with the title of the song, I made sure not to try too hard on any one element. I wrote the riff quickly, wrote the lyrics quickly, we got the guitar sound quickly, and there was no overthinking or really changing anything. My only complaint about it is that I think it is a little too fast, so it forces me to sing harder to keep up, and it doesn’t fully sound like I’m phoning in the vocals. So I thought about slowing it down and delivering a more load back vocal take. Just ever so slightly. I played the guitar, sang, No bass yet. Doug programmed the drums. Every once in a while we will have someone play drums on the songs, but usually only when we are finishing something for release. Otherwise, all the drums in the demos are programmed by Doug, and I think he does a really good job of making them sound kind of real and natural. I get attached to them. All of Hesitant Alien started as demos with programmed drums by Doug. He and I have a cool relationship, and have evolved together over the years since he engineered Black Parade, Danger Days, and engineered and produced Hesitant Alien. We work in the same space, the studio at my house, called Milk Friends. I just let him have the space I’m not using and he brought in all of his gear and works on various projects, recording, and mixes, and I would be in the other room, the office, writing comics. And every so often, when neither of us is too busy, we record things. I like sharing artistic spaces with people, especially Doug. It’s nice to have a friend that can record you when you have an idea, because I’m terrible at recording and I barely even know how to use Garage Band. So all the singles you have gotten from me over the last couple of years have been done with Doug and I, and then various musicians who would replace certain things, making them real, and sound better.

Crate Amp:

This is one of maybe five tracks of me messing around with this Crate amp I got off of Reverb for cheap. It has a mysterious stain on the front that looks like someone had put a candle on top of the amp and the wax just dripped down the front. In the listing, the stain was described as “a stain that mostly comes off”. One of the things Doug and I were experimenting with for the last three months was how bad we could get stuff to sound. That’s not me trying to diss on Crate amps, as the very first amp I had— the one I wrote Skylines and Turnstiles with— was a Crate amp with built in distortion. But they do not have a reputation for being high quality amps, at least in the musical circles I was in. A lot of people get kind of snobby about them. But I think a lot of metal or thrash metal musicians swear by them. They are very crunchy, so I think that is why, since some metal has a lot of crunchy distortion. But we would turn the amp distortion on, and then run a distortion pedal through it, to see how fucked up we could get it. I’ll probably put the rest of the jam tracks up, but I think it’s a lot of the same riff over and over, since I didn’t know when Doug was in record-mode and I wanted to make sure I got the two or three parts down once I discovered them. This is just me playing guitar meandering through ideas, sloppily. Maybe some of these riffs will become songs.

Success!:

Back before Hesitant Alien was a thing, and before I wanted to pursue a solo career, I wanted to start a band and just sing and play guitar, after my chem broke up. The name of the band was going to be Baby Animal Hospital (the record label hated the name, especially since it included both the words ‘baby’ and ‘hospital’ in the same phrase), and I did a bunch of rough graphic design for it, but in the end, it really felt like a solo thing, so that’s what it became. But when it was Baby Animal Hospital (I wanted something that sounded warm and fuzzy and loud, like the tones) I recorded this track with Doug for the opening of the record. The lyrics/sounds are just the word BAH over and over again, which where the first letters of each word of the band name, but that wasn’t intentional, I just liked the sound. And this was us really messing with auto-tune to try and make it sound like an instrument. It was supposed to be this track as track one and go right into Action Cat. Later on, I figured I would just make a zine with the name Baby Animal Hospital, but I didn’t get very far with it. Still like the name, and may do something with it in the future. Maybe one day I’ll share all the graphic design I did for it when it was a band, a lot of which was cut and paste by hand.

Welcome to the Hotel:

This was something Doug and I threw together for the release of Umbrella Academy Volume Three: Hotel Oblivion. Just something short for an instagram video. We did this really quick, didn’t give it much thought other than trying to make something that sounded a little like The Stooges. A few months later, I actually wrote a verse and some new lyrics and a new vocal melody for the verse, and then I kind of wanted to finish the song. Someday. Like most of this stuff, it’s me playing guitar, bass if there is bass, doing the vocals, and Doug programming the drums.

#he also changed the titles of Phoning and Crate Amp but they sound the same #gerard way #hesitant alien #soundcloud #phoning it in #crate amp #success #welcome to the hotel #hotel oblivion #my chemical romance #mcr

[joonsdragoneyes]

Wizard’s Cottage

Genre: Fluff, fantasy, some angst

Warnings: Small mentions of past violence, mentions of and minor descriptions of injury, mentions of food and eating, some angst

Word count: 1.2k

You’ve been staying at this lovely cottage in the woods for a a few months. You didn’t remember how it happened. You just remember waking up in a comfy bed, in a room that wasn’t yours. Since then you’ve been fed and taken care of. You’ve grown close to the owner of the cabin during that time, a sweet wizard by the name of Namjoon. By now you considered him a friend, and you were able to somewhat walk again, which means you’ll be able to go home soon. So why did you feel so sad.

The aged stairs creaked from under you, your hip aching with each step. Your thigh was sweaty and itchy under the tight bandages, the limb trembling weakly as you hobbled down. The smell of herbs filled your senses as you grew closer to the lower floor, your stomach growling. 

Namjoon turned to face you as you finally reached the bottom, a smile spreading across his face. He was already fully dressed, his hair slightly damp- you assumed due to it still being wet outside from last nights rain. As you drew closer to his tall form, you noticed how much he smelled like the outdoors.

“You’re up! You seem to walking well.”

“Ah, it still hurts, but I manage.” You groaned a bit, plopping down into one of the surprisingly soft wooden seats. A couple of baskets full of various plants rested on the counter tops, drops of water slowly sliding off onto a small striped towel. 

“What’re you making? It smells really good.” Your stomach growled once again, and you could feel yourself beginning to salivate. You woke up later than you usually would, and for the the first time in a while your appetite was as big as normal. 

“It’s a surprise.” He spoke, his voice soft. “It’s almost done, though. I can hear your stomach from here.” You heard him chuckle, your face starting to burn. You hated how his jokes made your ears burn, your heart skipping in your chest when he said something he noticed about you. He remembered so much about you, and you felt comfortable when he took care of you.

The soft clink of a cup was heard next to you, the smell of peppermint and lavender emanating from it. “This should help with some of the pain.” Flustered, you mumbled out something along the lines of a ‘thank you’, his smile still present as you took a long sip. Your felt your body warm immediately as you leaned against the back of the chair.

“This is really good.” 

“I’m glad you think so.” He sat across from you, setting the plate down in front of you. The heat of the freshly cooked food hit you immediately, you practically able to taste it just from the smell. “Oh, it looks so good.” You drooled, taking a bite. The flavor exploded in your mouth, the peppers and onions crunchy compared to the rice and zucchini. “Ah, that’s so good~” 

He laughed as you took another large bite, a loud sound, but one that brought you joy. “You almost swore, I figured that was a good thing.” He joked, his eyes bright as he grinned. “Would you like some more?”

“Yes.” You lifted up to meet his gaze. “Ah, you’re not eating.”

An eyebrow lifted a little, the cape around his shoulders flopping over the side of the chair as he leaned forward to stand. “I already did before you got up. Did you want to eat together?” 

A cough escaped, your ears burning slightly at the offer. “Ah, uh-” You shuffled, your hip aching slightly at the movement. “No, not if you already ate.”

He frowned, his lips forming into a pout. The sight made your heart flutter once again. He had a habit of doing that.

“Later then.” He stepped away from the chair. “I’ll make lunch and we can eat together. That sounds fun.”

You watched him set another full plate down, you beginning to eat immediately. A date. You were going on a date.

“Are you sure?” You asked, looking at him as he sat down once again. “You’ve already done so much to take care of me.” His eyes widened at your words, his head coming to rest on the palm of his hand. “We’re friends, aren’t we? Isn’t that something that friends do?”

Something about his question sounded genuine, as if he really didn’t know what to do. You didn’t remember much about how you got here, hurt, or much of anything about him. His deep brown eyes felt so familiar by now though, and the sun pooling into them was a sight to behold. So it surprised you that he didn’t know. Had he lived alone before this?

“It is. But, do you really want to?”

He nodded excitedly. “Yes, of course! Taking care of you was no issue, and it’d be nice to spend time with you. We’re friends after all. It’d be so fun to talk like we used to.”

He was right. You had been in so much of a hurry to heal and go home that recently you had stopped talking to him. Your late night conversations and the time you spent laughing and talking about your lives- it all just stopped. Honestly, you missed him. It would be nice to be around him again.

“It would.” You smiled. “Hey, Joon?”

“Yes?” His eyes focused on you, the brown melting into yellow at the light flooding in through the windows. His eyes alone seemed to be magic, as if they held centuries of stories within them. You couldn’t bring yourself to look away.

“Thank you. I’ll remember this when I go home.” Your voice had lowered, his expression unreadable as his eyes darkened. His full lips pressed together, his brows furrowing together for a split second before he leaned back against the chair. “Right...home.” His eyes were dull, almost black now, the sky outside seeming to darken along with him. 

“Are you okay?” You leaned forward. The wind outside picked up, whining through the open windows. “Yes, I’m fine. How are your bandages?” He suddenly changed the subject, slipping around the table to bend down. 

The whining of the wind outside continued, rain starting to pour as it grew darker and darker. You watched the man carefully remove your bandages. You had stopped bleeding a while ago, scabs now present where your leg was once open. Your leg, knees and hips were still badly bruised, but you seemed to be healing well. “Looks like you won’t need these anymore.”

“Joonie, do you want me to go home?”

He paused, standing up as he went to dispose of the old bandages. The rain outside only grew stronger.

Did you want to go home?

“It’s nice to have a friend around.” His steps could be heard in the otherwise quiet room, the smell of the rain snaking in through the windows. “But you have a home. Your family must miss you.”

“To be honest, I don’t know where my home is. I feel like I’ve always only known here, with you. I...don’t know if I want to go.”

The room grew deathly quiet, the rain and wind seeming to calm down as quickly as it started. Your breathing was slow, your mind racing as you tried to think of something to say. 

His arms suddenly caged around you, his hands soft against your skin. His form was strong and hot against your own, as if he could crush you in an instant, but simply chose not to as he pulled you close. He had never hugged you before. Even touching you to take care of you seemed to worry him greatly, yet this gentle and surprisingly intimate gesture was welcomed. 

“Keeping you is selfish.”

Your arms wrapped around him in return, your hands cautiously running through his soft, shiny hair. “I only know here.”

Your heart was racing, the feeling of a soft kiss on your cheek making you warmer than he was. “Then you’ll stay. I can be your home until you can find yours.”

#tags may contain spoilers #bts fanfic #bts namjoon #bts fantasy au #bts fanfction #bts fluff #namjoon x reader #namjoon au #oneshot #romantic suggestion #suggestive themes #injury tw #mentions of violence #tw eating mention #flirting #namjoon knows how to cook #I dont know foods #short oneshot #I dont know what the ending is #i dont know what this is #i dont know #some angst

[detectivedreameater]

Missed Reservations||Anita and Marley

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @professoranieves​ SUMMARY: This wasn’t the threesome either of them wanted. CONTENT WARNINGS: Gun violence, Death

This wasn’t a date. Obviously. Marley just liked pushing buttons, and it seemed Anita was still willing to play. She wasn’t sure what about Anita drew her in, but Marley found herself coming back to her more and more. She liked Anita, and Anita played along with her stupid antics. Even after the whole phlizard mess. And it was nice, to have someone around that she could just be easy and casual with. And that knew but didn’t know. Someone that wasn’t afraid to look her in the eye, even with their red glow. And so, she’d dressed up a little. Not too much, because this wasn’t anything like that-- but a little. Nicer pants, no jeans. A real blouse, not just a button up, and a blazer instead of her normal leather jacket-- though she did opt to grab it on her way out. Just in case. 

The drive to Anita’s was short, despite how close to the lake she lived. Marley had driven down the street to her place many times in the past week since the lake had been declared not safe, but it was refreshing to take the turn into the neighborhood instead of the turn to the boathouse. She remembered the house from last time she’d been there, noting specifically how different the inside and outside looked. Anita liked warm colors. It fit right in with Marley’s theory of what she was. Lifting her hand, Marley knocked on the door, putting on a cheeky smile for when Anita answered the door.

Anita was still a bit uneasy with how much she was seeing Marley recently. There was obvious attraction between them, and it definitely didn’t fade even after discovering that they were both less than human. If anything, for Anita anyway, that was part of what made her keep going back for more. She’d never knowingly been with someone who wasn’t human, and it was refreshing. She still kept her guard up, but part of the reason she cut people off after one night was the fear of them finding out about her. With Marley, that fear largely didn’t exist anymore. After she got home from work and took a steaming hot shower, Anita threw on a short black skirt and a bright patterned shirt. She finished her look with some nice high heels and a jacket. She was just finishing up her hair when she heard the knock at the door. A grin spread across her face as she saw Marley. “Well, you sure clean up nice. All that just for me?” She teased. 

“Hey, I can look nice when I feel the effort is worth it,” Marley said with a bright smile. She didn’t even have her sunglasses on right now, though they were tucked safely inside her jacket pocket, lest she feel the need to wear them. But with Anita, she felt no reason to. “Besides, you never know who else might be watching, right?” She held out her hand. “Sorry I didn’t bring flowers. Or a boombox. But I figured since this isn’t a date, it doesn’t matter,” she teased back. “Although I will do that thing where I say you look rather good. Not that you don’t always look good, whether you’re in a bathing suit, clothes, or, you know,” she shrugged with a cheeky grin, “naked.” Stepped aside. “Shall we?”

An uncomfortable chill ran down Anita’s spine at the mention of someone watching them. She didn’t let that get to her though, why would anyone be watching them anyway? “Definitely not a date.” She echoed, stepping out onto the front porch and closing and locking the door behind her. Despite some basic research, Anita was still not able to figure out exactly what Marley was. Probably because all she had to go on were those mesmerizing red eyes and the occasional intangibility. Anita grinned, nudging Marley slightly. “You know, now that you mention it, you look very good naked too. In fact, I think we both might be at our peak attractiveness when we’re fully naked.” Anita softly placed her hand on the other woman’s cheek, then pulled her in for a kiss. “You know, we could always skip dinner and jump right to the being naked part.”  

Marley couldn’t help but notice the momentary stiffness in Anita’s body as she stepped out. She wondered what could’ve caused it, but didn’t chance the glance away. It was both a gift and a curse, to always see everything through the lens of a behavioral profiler. She tried to brush it away, though, and smiled. “I think you might be right,” she agreed, leaning in as Anita kissed her, letting it linger for a moment, as if she were debating the offer. “But I made reservations,” she said with a fake pout, scraping her teeth along her bottom lip as she looked at Anita. “And you promised.”

Anita smirked softly and raised an eyebrow, “You made reservations? You sure you’re not trying to hijack this and turn it into a date?” She teased, then started walking towards Marley’s car. “But fine, I suppose since I did promise, I owe you that much.” Realistically, Anita knew that doing anything except sleeping with Marley was a bad idea. She didn’t really want to get to know her any better, because getting to know people leads to feeling for them. And that was just not something that she was interested in doing. Once she reached the car, she turned around, leaning back against the cold metal. “For the record though, this will be the first and last time I let you take me out for dinner. No matter how hot you are.” There was a teasing tone to her voice, but she hoped the look in her eyes let Marley know that she was being mostly serious. 

Marley was mostly pleased with the turn of events, following Anita slowly towards the car, taking her time going down the drive. Enjoying the view. She wanted to know what made Anita so wary of dinner and dates. Marley knew her own reasoning for it, and she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Anita’s was similar. Maybe she’d found a sort of kindred spirit. Not that she cared to, or needed one. She was fine on her own. She had been all her life. It was just nice to know there were others like her. Licking her lips, she stopped just short of Anita on the driveway, watching her lean back against the car, tilting her head. “We’ll see,” was all she said, no inclination as to whether she was being serious or teasin, before she stepped past her and to the driver’s side. The drive was fairly quick and quiet and when they pulled up to the restaurant, she unbuckled quickly, stepping out. “So, why the Red Dragon?” 

The drive was rather quiet, giving Anita time to think about her doppelganger she saw at The Velvet Rope the other day. But her worrying was cut short when they arrived at the restaurant. She unbuckled, then walked over towards Marley. “Quiet, good food, and close to my place for a quick drive back for dessert.” She said with a smirk. The pair walked into the restaurant, and Anita was pleased to see it wasn’t very crowded. “Guess you didn’t need to make a reservation after all, huh?”  

“Wanna know a secret?” Marley asked as they approached the stand, leaning over to speak quietly so only Anita could hear, “I didn’t actually make a reservation-- Two for dinner, please!” Straightening up and speaking a little louder as the hostess greeted them. She held up two fingers and a smile and the hostess grabbed their menus, leading them back to a booth in the back. The place was unusually quiet today, and Marley, again, couldn’t help but wonder why. Sometimes she cursed her natural curious nature and her need to know everything. Trying to ignore it, she slid into the booth across from Anita. “Well, good choice, anyway. I order takeout from here all the time.”

 Anita couldn’t help but laugh, and roll her eyes. Of course she hadn’t made a reservation. “All just part of your ploy to get me to not bail on dinner plans, huh?” As they walked back to the booth, Anita felt eyes on them. Not in a light and fun way either, she felt like someone, maybe something, was watching them closely. But as she looked around, everyone that was in the restaurant seemed to be preoccupied with their own meals, and not with them. Once she sat down she decided to shake off that feeling, focusing her attention back on Marley. Well, that was one thing to note. She ate normal food more than just on dates to keep up appearances. “So, uh, is this the part where we dive into the small talk about our jobs? Or does that come after the first round of drinks?” 

 “Got me,” Marley said with a wink. She picked up the menu and perused through. She hadn’t been lying, she did order from here a lot, but not because she wanted to-- simply because the dumplings were to die for. “Oh no, uh uh,” Marley said, shaking her head, “I have a strict no shop talk policy outside of work. Otherwise, it’s all people would have me talk about. All you need to know is that I’m a detective and no, I won’t give you a ride in my cop car. But please, do fill me in about your job. All I know is that you’re a bug professor.” A grin. “Which, really...how does someone get into a job like that?”

 “What if I ask for a ride in your car real nice?” Anita asked, drawing out the last two words as she pressed one of her legs against Marley’s under the table. “I mean, I can be really persuasive.” Human food was okay, but Anita really didn’t have much of a preference for it. She went more for textures than flavors, so pretty much anything with the word “crunchy” in the description caught her eye. “Entomologist, not a bug professor.” She smiled coyly, partly frustrated that they were actually going to do the small talk thing, and partly fine with it because she loved talking bugs. “Well, you get a PhD in an uncommon subject, then a small town university pays you to teach their students all about the life-cycle of the praying mantis. Then before you know it you’re out with some detective who wants to hear all about it without offering anything in return.” 

 Marley felt her skin tingle as Anita pressed a leg against her own. A grin spreading on her face. “You’ll have to be very persuasive. I don’t let just anyone in my squad car,” she said back, knowing full well that if Anita asked she would say yes even without the convincing. The waiter came by for drinks and Marley ordered gin and tonic before focusing back on Anita. She seemed almost a little distracted, and Marley wasn’t about that. She leaned forward onto the table, letting the blouse she’d chosen to wear sag slightly open. “Right, entomologist. And did you always wanna be that?” Tilted her head, giving a light chuckle. “Hey, you were the one who said you weren’t interested in getting to know me better. All you gotta do is ask.”

 “I guess I’ll just have to work on my persuasion skills and try it out someday then.” Anita said with a wink. As she looked up when the waiter came by, she could have sworn she saw someone in a black and white striped shirt staring at the two of them, but then in a blink of an eye, they were gone. She tried to shake the thought from her head, there was no way she had a doppelganger following her. Even if she did, it wasn’t really what she wanted to be thinking about right now. “No? I mean, didn’t even know what it was when I was younger. But I’ve always been fascinated with bugs, so I guess I always knew I’d end up doing something with that.” She hated this question. The real answer revealed too much about her family, and while she knew it was unlikely, she really didn’t need anyone connecting the dots from her to them, least of all a detective who already knows too much. “You always wanna be a cop?” She asked, her eyes flickering away from Marley back to where she thought she had seen something, just to be sure nobody was really there watching. 

Marley watched Anita curiously, growing increasingly annoyed as her attention seemed to be pulling in different directions. She kept glancing around, as if looking for someone, or something. Marley grabbed her drink when the waitress brought them back and took a sip. “Bugs, huh? Well, at least it’s not boring,” she said with a grin, taking another drink. The alcohol felt nice in her throat, not that she needed it to enjoy the night. “Mostly,” she said offhandedly to Anita’s question. “I didn’t really think about it before I decided I wanted to be a detective when I was 13, so,” a shrug, before she followed Anita’s line of sight again. She raised a brow, setting her arm on the table, chin in her palm. “Something else catching your eye?”

Anita looked curiously at Marley. “Not a lot of 13 year olds wanna be detectives. I’d imagine.” She hated that she actually found Marley intriguing. It’d make things so much easier if she actually didn’t want to know more, but the more time they spent together, the more genuine questions she wanted to ask. The waitress came by to take their orders, and this time Anita could sense something close to them, but she couldn’t see whatever mime-infused doppelganger was following her around. “No, uh, sorry.” She replied, taking a deep breath and focusing back on her not-a-date date. “I just… don’t you feel like someone’s watching us? And not in a fun voyeuristic way?” 

“Well, when your friend is murdered in front of you and no one cares to solve it, it leaves quite the impression,” Marley said dismissively, much more interested in what it was Anita was trying to say. “Watching us?” She stiffened a little, glancing around. She was usually attentive to these things, but in her intrigue with Anita, she hadn’t been paying too much attention. The waitress had come by for their orders, but Marley told her to give them a few more minutes. “You sure you’re not just saying this to get out of dinner?” she said, but now that Anita had pointed it out, she could almost feel it, too. A chill up her spine. Not that she ever got scared, but it was unsettling to feel. “Maybe we should just get out of here.”

Anita froze up at Marley’s response. About a million and one questions immediately began running through her head. She knew what that was like, hell, she’d probably murdered more than a few people’s best friends back in the day. She was about to say something when Marley asked about who Anita felt was watching them. “No. If I really wanted to just get out of going to dinner I wouldn’t have let us leave my place to begin with.” She said, a linger of flirtatious teasing coming off her words, but largely her focus had pulled from just trying to flirt with Marley. “Yeah, okay, good. Let’s go.” Knowing Marley was feeling something odd too made her feel a bit less paranoid. But she still was on edge. Grabbing her coat and purse, she got up out of the booth they were sitting in and made her way to the front of the restaurant. She wasn’t willing to tell Marley everything that had happened at The Velvet Rope, but she felt it was only fair to tell her a bit. “I, uh, I think someone’s been following me for the past day or two. I think that’s who might’ve been watching us.”

Marley managed to grab her drink and take one last gulp before Anita was bolting from the booth and she was chasing after her. The nerves seemed to be rolling off her now, and Marley watched her closely, her stiff movements and shifting eyes. “You think you’re being followed?” she asked when they got outside, heading towards the car. Marley looked around, eyes narrowing. It wasn’t quite dark enough for her to feel invulnerable, but she wasn’t about to back down if someone was following Anita-- them. If someone was following them. Sharp eyes glanced around, but she didn’t see anything or anyone. Still, the feeling was there, and Marley always trusted her gut. She backed up and put a hand on Anita’s arm. “C’mon, let’s get back to yours,” she said, leading them back to the car. “Did you get a look at them? Have they been at your home?”

Anita would never admit it, but it was nice having someone around at a time like this. In the past decade or so when shit went sideways she didn’t have anyone else around to protect her. And even if Marley wasn’t doing it for any other reason than that she was a cop and it was her job, it eased her nerves ever so slightly. “I just… I saw this person at the club last night, and ever since I’ve had this uneasy feeling that I’ve been being watched. Being followed.” Anita looked up at Marley when she put her hand on her, leaning into the gesture slightly. “No? I don’t know. The club was dark. They had facepaint on. They might’ve followed me home, like I said, I’ve been having this feeling almost non-stop since last night.” Anita was pretty sure that she had a Doppelganger, which she didn’t know much about other than it mirrored the person it stalked.  What else would explain seeing an identical version of herself? She got into the passenger side of the car and sunk into the seat, her head dropped into her hands and she gently rubbed her temples trying to calm herself down. “Fuck, I’m sorry that I’m dragging you into this. You can just drop me off at home. I’ll be fine.” 

Marley helped Anita into the car, keeping an eye out around them before getting into the driver’s side herself. “Don’t be stupid, I’m not leaving you alone if you’re being followed,” she said nonchalantly, starting the car and taking off. She made sure to do a few fake turns and loops around the block to determine if anyone was following them. “Not to mention I’m a cop and it’s my job,” she tacked on quietly as she turned back onto the road Anita lived on. No headlights around meant no one had followed them in a car, but in this town, it wasn’t always necessary. She didn’t get that strange guttural feeling anymore that they were being followed as she turned off the car in the driveway. “Stay here,” she said, opening her glover box and pulling out a small revolver. She held it out to Anita. “This end?” she said, tapping the barrel, “Point it at anything that’s not me. I’m gonna check the house.” Before slipping out and taking out her ankle holster gun, locking the car, and heading up to the house.

When it came to fight or flight, Anita was always flight. But that wasn’t really an option now. She was so settled in town, and even if she wasn’t she was not about to let one creepy mystical stalker ruin her life. Her stomach curled when Marley handed her a gun, she’d never actually held one before. It was so … heavy. “Uhuh. Okay.” Shakily, Anita gripped the revolver in her hands as she watched Marley make her way down from the driveway to the house. It felt like an eternity that she sat in the car waiting for Marley to come back out. But then she saw her appear from the side of the house? That was odd. Anita got out of the car, the gun still gripped in her hands. “Is it all clear? Nobody followed us?” She asked, but as the person approaching her made her way closer, Anita knew something was wrong. “You changed? Where’d you get those clothes?” 

Marley crept up to the house and went inside. Before she even did anything else, she made sure to go intangible and shut the door. She stayed still for a moment, listening, but heard nothing. Crept through the house silently, like a shadow-- she’d done it so many times, sneaking through houses, invisible, intangible, up to the bedroom. Nightmares and more. But not this time. This time, she was there to see if someone else was in the house, and she was here to protect someone. But only because it was her job. Nothing else. She made her way through the house towards the back, gun at the ready. The hairs on her arms stood on end, which let her know that something was up. But what, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure what compelled her, but something in her gut told her to go back, that the trouble was outside. She turned quickly to head back out front when she heard a scream-- and broke into a sprint.

Suddenly, the person Anita had been talking to started miming at her. They had the same face, they moved the same. But that was not Marley. Slowly Anita began backing away from whatever this was. Why were all of these look alikes dressed like mimes? “Sorry, I don’t speak mime.” She said, trying to make sure her voice didn’t give away how afraid she was. The gun in her hands stayed pointed at this creature. “I uh, I’m not afraid to use this.” As the creature approached her, she thought about pulling the trigger. But she didn’t really know what this thing was, and she just couldn’t bring herself to take another life. She felt the grasp of the creature, it grabbed her shoulders and slammed her up against the car. Feeling helpless, Anita let out a scream, writhing trying to break free from the grasp of this creature. Her only hope was that Marley could get there. 

Marley sprinted straight out the front door, leaping down the front steps and skidding into the driveway. Someone had grabbed Anita and was pressing her against the car and-- no, not someone, her! Marley faltered for only a moment. Whatever it was, she was, they were doing, she didn’t care. Anyone who hurt someone she liked didn’t get a chance to answer questions. It was shoot first, ask later. Marley swept up the drive, aimed, and fired. Eyes flashing anger as she rounded the corner, barrel still smoking. Whatever it was-- a doppleganger or someone imitating her, or whatever-- it didn’t matter to Marley. No one took her face. She finally lowered her gun, putting it back in the holster, looking over at Anita. “Are you o--” she started, but the thing on the ground was suddenly standing back up, grabbing at Marley. Marley swerved, grabbing her throat, eyes flashing again. She glared into her own eyes, her own face-- covered in white paint. She hated it. She hated this. She was so over mimes and mimes stabbing people and mimes hurting people and mimes exploding on people. With a single inhale, she stole the breath straight from the mime of herself, hand on her neck. When the body turned limp, she let go and the body dropped to the ground. Marley took a moment to herself, to calm, before turning to look back at Anita. “Okay...where was I...are you okay?”

Anita was about to resort to Plan B, using her venom on this thing, when she heard the bang. The vibrations from the noise was so loud it disoriented her a little bit. Slowly she slid down the side of the car until she was almost sitting on the pavement. There was something wet on her face, blood she presumed. But when she brought her hand up to touch it but when she brought her fingers down to her eyes, she didn’t see red, but black. What the hell was that? Her heart started pounding fast, and she gasped when the mime creature got back up. She watched Marley in awe as she seemingly sucked the life out of the thing. Her chest got tight and she felt like she was seeing stars. “I don’t think so.” She stared at the creature, trying to figure out what was happening. “I - I have one too. Last night, I saw… it looked just like me.” 

Marley looked at Anita. She was freaked out. This always happened. Always. Now she was going to be afraid of Marley, too, and right when she was starting to really like her. Sighing, Marley squatted in front of her, trying to meet her eye to eye. “Hey, hey,” she said with a soft voice, “you’re gonna be okay. It’s dead now, I promise.” She looked back at it, but something wasn’t quite right. It looked almost like it was...dissolving? In the next moment, it started smoking, with a very dark black and somehow white tinge. Marley grabbed Anita a little forcefully, tugging her up and helped her stand. “Let’s get inside,” she said. “In case more show up.” Because if Anita had one, too, that meant something really not good was going on here. 

Anita nodded, slowly bringing herself back to reality. She grabbed Marley’s arm when she reached down to her, but her eyes remained locked on the mime creature as it began to slowly dissolve right before their eyes. There was a smell, something familiar and…  buttery? She couldn’t quite place it, and she wasn’t very interested in doing so. Once she got onto her feet, she reached out for Marley without even thinking about it, clinging onto her arm. “Yeah, yeah, let’s get inside.” Anita’s heart was still pounding, and despite the fact that they had killed that Marley look-alike, Anita still felt like she was being watched. “Do you think you could stay? The night, I mean?” She asked, looking up at Marley as they walked towards her front door. 

As Marley helped Anita stand, moving quickly away from the thing with her face, she couldn’t help but feel a pang. Anita seemed more freaked out than she was letting on, but Marley wasn’t going to push it. And then she asked her to stay and Marley froze a moment. After a pause, she nodded, trying not to think about it too much. “Yeah,” she said as  they made it up to the door. “Yeah, I’ll stay.” She let Anita inside first, gently prying her off her arm. “Go inside, I’ll be right there, just need to...grab something from my car,” she said, making sure she was safe inside before heading out and going to her car. She grabbed her jacket, tazer, and dug around in some of the supplies she kept in her car. There, the motion sensor. Heading back in, she stuck it by the front door, locked it, then headed into find Anita. “House okay?” she asked, a little unsure of what to say.

It had been so long since Anita had been near a dead body, even one that dissolved into nothing shortly after being killed. Whatever that was, whoever sent it, there was one that looked just like Anita out there. No doubt just as violent a creature. “Yeah, okay.” She said with a nod, then walked through her front door, turning to watch Marley walk away. She walked inside and sat down on the couch, she felt dirty. Killing that thing was what was necessary, what was right, but that didn’t stop the flashbacks. “Yeah, house is good.” Anita shook her head softly, “What the hell was that? I mean... “ Running her fingers through her hair, she looked up to Marley. “Thank you. For what you did.” 

Marley wasn’t good at this comforting thing, but it looked like Anita really needed it. “Um,” she started out, rubbing the back of her head. She pulled her blazer off and set it on the table. “Yeah, you’re welcome. But as for what that was?” She glanced back towards the front door, “I have no idea. Dopplegangers aren’t usually that...aggressive.” She came over to where Anita was but didn’t quite sit down, wondering what the right thing to do here was. “You said there was another one? That looked just like you? Was it, uh-- mime looking like that one was, too?” Took a seat finally, keeping a small distance between them.

Anita smiled ever so slightly. “I thought it was a Doppleganger at first too.” She settled into the couch, wrapping her arms around her own torso. “Yeah, it was a mime too.” This was possibly the first time that Anita had been alone with Marley that she wasn’t the least bit interested in having sex with her. But she still wanted her to be around. Which was a strange feeling, a new feeling. She wasn’t entirely sure if she liked it. For a little while she sat in silence, feeling both incredibly awkward and also slightly comforted. “I’m sorry our evening got ruined.” She offered with a slight smile, trying to somewhat lighten the mood. “You sure you’re okay spending the night?”

Fuck mimes, Marley thought bitterly. Bristling slightly, she flopped back on the couch for a minute. When Anita spoke again, she looked over at her. The question was kind of loaded, whether either of them wanted to admit that or not, which meant that her answer would be loaded as well. Sighing, she sat up again and tried to give a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, “and yeah, I’m sure. I was planning on staying the night anyway, so it’s not like I have anywhere to be.” She silently thanked that she’d fed earlier this week and wouldn’t need to sneak out in the middle of the night to do that, though maybe it would’ve made her feel better. She ignored the feeling. “Besides, it’s my job to at this point,” she tacked on again, not sure if she was reminding herself or Anita of that fact. She stood again, holding out a hand to Anita. “C’mon, you should go up to bed. I’ll do another sweep of the house while you find me something to sleep in,” she said, “looks like it’s my turn borrowing your clothes.”

Anita nodded, smiling back at her. “Yeah, good point.” She reached out and took Marley’s hand, standing up and letting her hand linger as she stood there for a moment. Part of her wanted to hug Marley, maybe even kiss her, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. “Okay, yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” Anita made her way back to the bedroom, pulling out a pair of pajama bottoms and a t-shirt for Marley. She then stripped out of her outfit from the night, noticing specks of the black goop were all over her top. She threw on a nightgown, then walked out into the living room with the spare clothes. “All clear?” 

Marley did do a thorough sweep of the house, but it was more so to give herself a moment. This didn’t have to be anything more than just making sure someone didn’t die because of a mime doppleganger. That’s all it was and all it needed to be. If that meant staying the night at a girl’s house who she slept with sometimes, then so be it. She paused in the middle of the living room and looked around, before going to the kitchen and grabbing a glass of water before turning to head to the room, only to be greeted by Anita in the doorway. “Oh, uh-- yes. Yep. All clear,” she looked down at the glass in her hand. “Here, I uh-- got this for you.” She didn’t know what Anita needed, but people always needed to drink water after traumatic experiences, right? She took the clothes gratefully. “Thanks.” 

Anita looked at the glass for a moment before taking it into her hands. It was an odd gesture, something she wasn’t really expecting, but it was also so nice. It was thoughtful. She didn’t really need water, but she took a sip out of courtesy. Anita set the glass down on the bedside table. “Thanks, for everything. I… I don’t think, If you weren’t here tonight… ya know.” She said, largely avoiding eye contact, as she pulled the sheets back on the bed. She climbed into bed, turning over on her side and looking over at Marley. It was oddly comforting to have someone there. Even if there was looming awkwardness too. 

 Marley nodded slightly, before pulling off her shirt and pants and putting on the clothes Anita had given her to borrow. It was strange, crawling into someone’s bed without having slept with them or without the intention. Though they’d slept together before, this was nothing like that. Just....lying in a bed with someone. Marley laid on her back next to Anita. She turned her head to look at her for a moment. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, “I won’t let it hurt you.” Hoping her words were some sort of comfort, any comfort-- and then immediately finding that thought unnerving. Still, couldn’t help but add on, “You’re safe with me.”

#chatzy #chatzy: anita #anita #missed reservations #wickedswriting

[bryonysimcox]

Spring has Sprung and Life Continues: Week 11, Spain

Another week spent in the Catalunyan countryside as coronavirus lockdown continues. Here are my reflections on the arrival of spring, broad beans, ecological economics and the launch of ‘The Hundred Miler’.

This last week has seen the welcome face of April - signalling that spring is certainly here along with the arrival of Easter. It’s a time associated with new life, new starts, sunny days and longer nights. Even though we remain in full lockdown here in Spain, it feels as though we can draw upon the changing season as a source of assurance.

The week started with something rather special. I finally got to drive Suzi!

When we first bought the van in Summer 2019, I was still only 24, and it was really expensive to get me insured on it. There seems to be a transition point for insurers at age 25, so George and I had always agreed that after my birthday at Christmas, we’d get me on the insurance. But we never got around to it, partly because of the additional expense, and partly because it wasn’t a huge priority, until the start of March. And then of course, we were in Valencia and the lockdown hit, so we had nowhere to drive to even once I was insured!

My first drive here in Catalunya was pretty fun, even though it was just a trip to the supermarket. Because we’re in lockdown, the roads are super quiet which has been great, and the roads around the cottage aren’t tarmaced, so I could do some offroading as well. I’ve since driven a couple more times to and from the supermarket, and it’s so nice to be behind the wheel again. I haven’t driven since we owned our last van, Casper, back in Sydney!

(Images, left to right) My first time driving Suzi the HiAce, and a throwback to driving our last van Casper.

On the topic of Sydney, I have been doing some serious reminiscing. It’s almost coming to exactly a year since George and I flew back to the UK from Australia, and anniversaries always tend to bring on waves of nostalgia. It’s mad to think that a year ago, we didn’t own a van, not least have a clue about where we’d be living in the van! And of course, there’s no way I’d have imagined that we would be stuck amid a pandemic-induced global lockdown. Oh, to have the gift of foresight... 

The year that ensued after we left our friends, jobs, and security blanket of Sydney was an absolute rollercoaster. We naively aimed to have the van built and prepped in a matter of months, and when the van-build rolled over towards Christmas 2019, I felt like an absolute failure for not having finished it sooner. And yet now, upon reflection, I guess it’s not such a bad achievement to have managed to buy and build Suzi the HiAce, both of us get jobs in Manchester and move into a flat there, launch our documentary channel ‘Broaden’ and set off for Europe all in a year.

We can all benefit from a bit of self-reflection to put progress into perspective.

(video) Broaden’s latest video; an overview of who we are and what we’re about. It’s helped me to reframe some of the successes of this last year.

I feel like a stuck record, but food is a wonderful experience which punctuates the repetitive days of lockdown. Last week I wrote about calçots, a deliciously sweet spring onion special to this region and eaten with Romesco sauce. This week, it’s all about broad beans. The garden here is full of them, so I’ve been tasked with picking and podding. Most of them are fat enough to be podded, and are even better if you go the extra mile by blanching them and removing their skins. The smaller ones can be eaten as they are, and make for a lovely crunchy stir-fry ingredient too.

Preparing broad beans can be time-consuming, but also a wonderfully cathartic activity. My granny in Scotland used to have plenty of these beans in her garden, and I remember summer days spent picking and podding with my mum. We’ve stored plenty here in the freezer but have also kept some fresh and I am continually finding ways to incorporate them into our meals. A quick call to my well-resourced mum also resulted in her sending pages and pages photographed from Jane Grigson’s vegetable book: not only with plenty of recipes but incredibly detailed descriptions of the vegetable’s history and qualities too.

(images) Beautiful fresh veggies from the market were a highlight of the week, as well as picking these broad beans straight from the garden. The bowl on the right is what was distilled from podding four huge bags’ worth.

The resurgence in cooking and baking whilst in lockdown is inspiring, but I’ve been thinking about how it affects our supply chains as well.

Just this morning on BBC News I saw an article about dairy farmers having to throw away vast amounts of milk as cafes, hotels and restaurants remain shut, and another article about how there’s been an insane increase in demand for flour, as everyone takes to home baking. Many mills are now working around the clock to meet the demand in the UK and I was especially interested to read that even if there’s enough flour that there’s a shortage of packaging, because usually only 4% of flour produced goes into the smaller bags that we see on supermarket shelves.

Coronavirus has triggered so many changes in how we live and how we behave, that it's wreaking havoc on supply chains like this, and of course, the economy. That said, whilst the negative effects are hard to deny, scientists, economists and ecologists alike are suggesting that we should leverage the situation as an opportunity to reflect on how we all live, and how we might return to ‘normal’ life without just returning to business as usual. I agree: this is a unique opportunity to reassess production and consumption, how we assign value to things, and the economic and political models that we use to govern our world.

The connection between global lockdown, coronavirus, climate change and our economy has really got me thinking.

I recently read an incredible article by ecological economist Simon Mair in Singularity Hub which looked at this relationship. The article pulled together disparate strands that have been on my mind for a while, each related to various books which I’ve been reading, and which I can now see are interconnected. Simon suggests that the Covid-19 crisis could be a chance to “expand our economic imagination”. He explains that coronavirus, like climate change, demands a type of downscaling, counter to the ‘wartime economy’ mentality and massive upscaling of production. 

“If we want to be more resilient to pandemics in the future (and to avoid the worst of climate change) we need a system capable of scaling back production in a way that doesn’t mean loss of livelihood”, says Simon.

The article is full of gems, and Simon explores things such as our current addition to economic growth and productivity, the transfer of healthcare and labour goods out of the market and into the hands of the state, and the social forms that could come from an ethic that values care, life, and democracy. It answers some of the questions posed by George Monbiot in ‘How Did We Get Into This Mess?’, echoes some of the radical economic theories proposed by Kate Raworth in ‘Doughnut Economics’, and parallels ideas of democratic market socialism put forward by ‘How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century’ by Erik Olin Wright which I’m currently reading. Simon’s article has really got me so fired up, in fact, that I’m working on an idea for a new video which explores the topic, so watch this space.

(images) Three fantastic books which I highly recommend.

On the subject of videos, Broaden has been one of the only things keeping us sane! I am eternally grateful to have a creative outlet in times like these, and one which involves a collaborative partnership with George too. Whilst we aren’t able to explore places in the van, or capture footage for new films as we’d love to be doing right now, we are at least able to edit from the cottage and work on promoting the content that we are already releasing.

It feels so tricky to get the right tone when releasing videos during a global pandemic.

We are both conscious of remaining sensitive to the severity of the health crisis, whilst balancing that with the reality that life goes on, and that people still want to see pictures, watch videos and read articles that engage with other topics too. As Broaden, George and I obviously made the decision to launch our documentary ‘The Hundred Miler’ during this time, and I hope that people see it as a celebration of running, the natural world, and human resilience, and perhaps even an escape from the daily news of the virus, rather than something insensitive or badly-timed.

(video) Trailer for ‘The Hundred Miler’

‘The Hundred Miler’ comes out this Saturday 11th April, and we have been overwhelmed by the response already. People have really got behind the project, helping to share it on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and widen its potential reach. George has been making this film for well over three years, so it feels like an immense milestone to finally have it shown to the world. I don’t think I know many people who hold themselves to such high standards as George, and so to have so many positive messages and people planning to tune in for the live premier on Saturday is the best affirmation of all his hard work that I could wish for. It has been a pleasure to see him create this documentary, and also to have been involved in the production and final stages of its creation.

The Hundred Miler is a film about three Australian guys, taking on the biggest race of their lives; UTMB.

‘Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc’ is renowned in the trail-running world, as one of the most challenging and scenic ultra marathons. The Hundred Miler is an attempt to bring this story to the masses, and we hope that it appeals to non-runners and runners alike, for its underlying themes of companionship, commitment and strength. It premiers live on YouTube at 10am in the UK, which is 7pm in Australia on 11.4.20, and after that the video will be available to watch as a normal video. You can find BTS footage and more information about the film on our Instagram here, details of the launch on the Facebook event here, and the link for the video itself here. You can also subscribe to Broaden’s YouTube channel and set a reminder for when the film goes live.

(video) ‘The Hundred Miler’ which goes live on Sat 11th April.

 It goes without saying: I am really missing the open road and living in a van. And I’m not immune to fear of the future either. But as the days and weeks pass, we learn to adapt to changing circumstances and continue to find hope among them. In a way, it helps to know we are all in the same boat, facing a topsy-turvy life full of roadblocks and revelations. Thanks for tuning in to read my weekly ramblings and I hope you’re all keeping as well as you can be. Until next week!

#thehundredmiler #traveldiaries #SuziTheVan #toyotahiace #hiacevan #overlandadventures #BryonyandGeorge #digitalnomads #vanliving #vanlife

[magic-and-myths]

The Crimson Cello

The floorboard creaked. Again. It let out a squeak of anguish every time Emily had stepped on it, which at this point was dozens of times. For a brief moment, she stopped to make sure her cello was still there. It was. Nobody had stolen it in the three minutes since she last checked. It was a gorgeous instrument, set on the table, sitting in a perfectly shaped luscious velvet throne. Its wood was an unusual, rich red color that almost glowed in the harsh back-stage lights. Emily always thought it was the color of raspberry ice cream, but now really wasn’t the time to daydream about such things. She started to take a deep, shaky breath, and immediately started gagging. She had sucked in one of the concert hall’s many dust streams, and it now coated her mouth and tickled her throat. 

Emily clapped a hand over her mouth, barely managing to stifle a hacking cough. Making noise right now would definitely not make a good impression. Neither would sweating excessively. God, why was she sweating so much? And why were her hands shaking? Oh if only she had pockets to shove them in. This damn dress was making her sweat, and it didn’t even have pockets. But it looked so nice. And it would make a good impression. Her mouth still tasted like dust. She took a sip from her water bottle, careful not to spill any. Wet clothing would certainly not be professional. The judges would not like that. She started to take another sip, but stopped herself. Having to pee in the middle of a recital wouldn’t help her either.

The music stopped. There was no applause. She could hear muffled conversation as the judges talked to the contestant. Emily hoped they talked for a long time. That would give her more time to bite her fingernails down to painful pink nubs. Her wish was not granted, and after just a minute the other contestant walked off stage, lugging his cello with him. Emily gave him a nervous smile. He didn’t even look at her. He seemed broken; his eyes were distant and glazed. Emily’s stomach dropped. Before she had a chance to pull herself back together, they called her name.

“Emily Green? Please come on stage.”

Emily lifted her cello from its case and made her way on stage. Her foot bumped against the instrument with a dull clunk, and she stumbled forward. She caught herself in time, but quickly glanced at the judges anyways. Judges was certainly an apt description; their raised eyebrows gave Emily a perfect idea of what they thought of her. Her face grew hot. Sweat beaded on her brow. She groaned internally.

So much for good impressions. There was a chair in the middle of the stage. Emily sat in it, fumbling with her bow for a split second. She looked up expectantly at the judges. They looked expectantly back. The judge in the middle began to speak. She had grey wiry hair and looked like a thirteenth century gargoyle. Her eyebrows were arched and her lip was turned up in a vicious sneer. Her eyes were grey, almost metallic. She possessed about as much life as a railroad spike. Her voice was sharp and cold.

“You may begin Ms. Green.” Emily smiled and thanked her. The judge didn’t even look up. With a final shaky breath, Emily looked down at her cello. As she tentatively set the bow, a small squeak sounded from the string. She did not look up. She could already picture the judges’ jeering faces. Instead, she began to play.

At first, Emily was scared. She could still feel the steel eyes watching her every move. Her bow strokes were shy and passive. She was going through the motions. But as her notes began to fill the hall, the cold feeling that coated her arms began to melt away. Out of her curious vermilion instrument rose a luscious chorus, and Emily began to listen. Her arms moved on their own accord. She’d practiced so many times at this point she was a marionette of muscle memory, an observer of her own performance. And what a performance it was.

Emily’s bow swung back and forth, drawing a zealous melody out of her scarlet wooden soul. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Faster she went, swaying in her seat. The notes turned rapid, singing a chaotic tattoo that rattled through the hall’s empty seats. The ancient building’s floorboards seemed to vibrate, and strain upwards. How long had it been? This energy, it was familiar. It was old, but somehow new. The windows thrummed with Emily’s music. She had closed her eyes long ago, completely absorbed in her captivating aria. Her mouth was no longer dry, the dust had left her nose. It was just her and her crimson cello.

As many times as Emily had practiced this piece, she’d never heard it like this. It was as if the music was moving her, instead of the other way around. Was she painting with sound, or was sound painting her? At this point she didn’t know, and she didn’t care. She flowed with the music and the music flowed through her, gently lifting her up and melting her away. Her chair seemed distant, and so did the judges and the dusty concert hall. The piece slowed down, her strokes becoming soft and purposeful. Each one trembled with power and stole her breath. Each somber, eldritch note flew her further up and further away.

She was on the stone bridge outside of town. It’s cobbles were smooth beneath her sneakered feet, worn down by so many steps before hers. The creek rushing beneath was dark and swollen with last night’s rain. Branches and leaves swept rapidly by, trapped in their muddy fates. Glancing up Emily saw the clouds. They loomed overhead as bruised and fat as ever. They watched over her, rumbling their awkward song. The air was damp and rested heavily on her skin, but despite its constant presence, she never felt weighed down. The verdant hills rolled happily toward the horizon, content with the previous night’s refreshing downpour. But just like that, the tune changed, leaving just the smell of wet earth behind.

Emily was in a forest, with dappled sunlight overhead. The music was gentle now, soft but playful at the same time. She was vaguely conscious of her hand holding her bow and her shoulder supporting her cello, but didn’t think much of it. She took a deep breath through her nose and spun around. Last autumn’s leaves crackled beneath her feet, and she set off running into the pristine woods. The sun cast leafy shadows on the ground that danced and quaked in the warm breeze. The wind blew a strand of hair into her mouth, and Emily spat it out with a giddy laugh. She came to a stop at a fallen oak, and leaned against it to catch her breath. Even as her chest heaved for air she couldn’t stop smiling. Running her hands over the trees coarse bark she looked upward to see a robin’s egg sky.

But just as Emily glanced earthwards once more, the sky darkened and the ground turned cold. A wool scarf wrapped around her neck, and new boots crunched in the freshly fallen snow. It was nighttime, and she was high on a hill looking down on town. All of the holiday lights were out and the village twinkled like a tiny jewel alone in a silken wasteland. The music here remained quiet, but it held an edge the previous passage lacked. Aside from the golden village, the landscape was bathed in silver moonlight. The snow lapped up this lunar glow and shone with ethereal brilliance. Emily fell backwards, gazing up at the stars. They were out in full force tonight, as cold and distant as always. They always seemed to be brighter in the winter, as if the frost drew their icey light down from space. Their celestial tune was lilting and surreal with long, lonely notes that slowly faded away, only for another to take their place. Emily could feel the cold seeping through her winter clothes, but before she had a chance to get up it began to fade away.

The crunchy midnight snow was replaced by the plush fabric of Emily’s living room couch. Light flooded in through the open window, illuminating dust motes that floated aimlessly about. The apartment was a peaceful one. Large potted plants lounged in corners and a bean bag rested in the middle of the room. In front of the couch stood a spindly music stand, on which dry yellowed sheets were placed haphazardly. The music sped up once again, creating a lively almost raucous tune that bounced about the egg shell walls and flew out the window into the streets beyond. Carrot, Emily’s fluffy orange cat, purred and rubbed between her legs. Emily smiled, but kept on playing. Her cello was back in her hand, the warm wood and thrumming strings familiar beneath her fingers. And as the last few bars of the song sounded out of the instrument, the apartment began to disappear.

She was back in the concert hall. The smell of old wood rushed back into Emily’s nostrils. Her last note was still reverberating through the room. Wow, the acoustics in here really are incredible, she thought. She opened her eyes. Nothing had changed. Dust still filled the hall, the thousands of seats were still empty, and the judges were still scowling at her. Gasping for breath, she stood up and took a shaky bow. Her heart was pounding and her eyes were having trouble focusing. The center judge starting talking again.

“Miss Green.”

“Yes?”

“What was that?”

Emily was stunned. What was that? Honestly, she wasn’t sure. It was music, she was sure of that, but anything more she didn’t know. All the places and visions, the way she felt while she was playing, she had no idea what it was. A seizure? Synesthesia? Magic? The judge started talking again.

“Since you don’t seem to have an answer, maybe I’ll try to give you one. That was horrendous. This is music, not performance art. All of your swaying and ‘grooving’ was completely unprofessional. You should be glad that we aren’t laughing you out of the hall right now.” She said each word with a furious, bladed contempt.

The judge to Emily’s right piped up. “Miss Green you are obviously unfamiliar with a formal performance setting, so let me try to familiarize you.” He was a middle-aged balding man in a charcoal grey suit that was much too small for him. His greased back hair gave the impression that he didn’t get out much. His voice was nasal and aggravating. “You cannot behave at a concert the way you might while practicing on your couch or while ‘jamming’ with your friends. In a formal concert hall there are rules and traditions one must follow. Your emotional outburst on the stage just now was unacceptable. If you ever have the gall to perform again try to control yourself a little bit better.”

“Yes sir.” Emily was fighting back tears now. “I will sir.”

The judge to her left gave Emily an unconvincing smile. Her face was ghostly pale and her unfeeling ice blue eyes seemed to look past Emily. Her voice was cold and pitying. “I get it Miss Green, I really do. Music can be very emotional for a lot of people. But you can’t let it get to you. When you’re performing you need to focus and control yourself. Try to be professional, and let the audience members sway about and cry like crazy people.”

Emily was barely aware of her surroundings at this point. Her head felt like it did whenever she had a really bad cold, but she managed to croak a “Thank you” out of her emaciated throat before stumbling off stage. Looking back on it, she didn’t remember much after that. She knew that somehow she packed up her cello, made her way out of the concert hall, and drove home, all without crying.

That didn’t last. Emily spent the next day in bed, cycling between sobbing her eyes out, staring blankly at the wall, and gritting her teeth and biting down bubbling anger. The words of the judges kept floating through her mind, haunting her thoughts. “Be professional.” “Control yourself.” “Unacceptable.” “What was that?” They circled her brain like vultures eyeing a dying animal. Hour after hour passed and they were still there. But while the words of the judges became permanently tattooed to her skull, her spinning emotions of embarrassment, hopelessness, and anger had boiled down to an unstoppable determination. Eventually she’d had enough. Emily peeled her face off her tear stained pillow, washed off the makeup she hadn’t had the willpower to remove the day before, put on clean, comfortable clothes, and picked up her cello from where she’d left it by the door. Yesterday had been a fluke. She still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but she wasn’t going to let it ruin her life. She was going to be professional, she was going to control herself, she was going to practice even harder, and the next time she walked onto that stage she was going to win.

With a deep breath Emily creaked open her cello case for the first time since her performance. It was still there: a beautiful, exquisitely crafted instrument resting in a bed of soft velvet. It shone brilliantly in the midday light, and she ran her hand over the familiar curves. It was the same cello. It was the same cello she’d picked up day after day, held for piece after piece, and trusted time after time. But it wasn’t entirely the same. The deep, red tone the wood had held only a day before was gone, replaced with a gorgeous, traditional brown.

#writing #writeblr #short stories #Nathan's short stories #spilled ink

[fanfictionized]

Help Me Help You - Freak (17/?)

Character: Bucky Barnes x Enhanced!Reader / OFC

Chapter summary: The Team learns the painful aftermath of the serum that still has effects on Annabelle's blood and that it can still be very much unpredictable...

Warnings: graphic descriptions of near character death, angst

Words: 3.4k

Previous Chapter // Help Me Help You - Masterlist

Bucky was restless. Nothing new, for sure. But this time was different.

She hadn’t come out of her room again. Not after he had brushed her off and gone somewhere he could better deal with whatever it was he had been feeling. He felt bad now, for what it was worth.

He hadn’t seen her again the entire afternoon, evening, and not even on his outpost on the couch. Nada. It made him think that maybe her reaction had been just. Maybe she had just covered it up by saying something nice. Although after she had taken his cold hand in hers he had stopped listening.

Why would she ever touch him like that? Like he wasn’t some sort of demon on her left shoulder? He was a murderer, a fucking monster.

But she doesn’t know. The voice inside his head reassured him over and over again.

Oh, but could someone seriously be that naïve? Sure she looked like the sheep that would be the wolf’s meal. And he was the wolf. Sam had been right. Beauty and the Beast. But he thought she must’ve guessed that someone with a metal arm could not in the least be innocent.

That’s why he had flinched at her unfelt touch and run away with his tail between his legs. He really was an abused dog; definitely not used to a softer touch. Especially from her.

It was when they were all sitting at the breakfast table the next morning that he noticed heads whipping around and staying there, focused on what or better who was going on behind him. His head turned as well and his breath left him as they watched her strut along, a knowing smile on her lips as Sam slowly clapped his hands.

“Atta, girl.” They were all admiring the new look she had obviously given to herself and the reason for Bucky’s speechlessness was that it, indeed, looked stunning on her.

She sat down between Nat and Bucky and reached for the cereal.

Perhaps she wasn’t angry with him after all.

“Well, would you look at that.” Tony wondered straight-faced, but he winked at her as soon as she smiled back at him. “Thanks, Tony.” She mumbled, flattening her new bangs with one hand. They felt so odd, but also good. She needed it to feel a little different.

She poured her cereal into the bowl.

“And they still haven’t found it?” Natasha asked, apparently continuing their conversation from before. “N-No, not the base.” Bruce assured her, smearing his toast with butter, looking back at her fleetingly.

“Well, there must’ve been a reason they had moved her around so many times.” Steve said and gave a nod to Annabelle. She faked a smile, but internally her mind was screaming again. They were talking not only about her, but about them. About their next mission, perhaps. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest, the blood going through her burning like acid in her veins. Her scalp started to itch. She didn’t want to deal with it again. False; she didn’t want to be dealing with it until there was something for her to do against it. And it didn’t help that they were talking about her like she wasn’t there.

She swallowed hard. Even that seemed difficult. Standing up even more so as she tried to distract herself by reaching for the milk.

“Maybe they were avoiding their base for a reason.” Bruce said.

“Or maybe they don’t have one right now.” Sam said and Wanda gave him a look.

“You don’t seriously believe that.” It was a statement, not a question.

But Annabelle didn’t notice that. Her head was up in the clouds, or at least it felt like it. Lightheaded. The air was getting thinner and thinner up there. And it was getting harder and harder to breathe.

Drip.

There was a short, crunching sound that made Bucky look to his right and pull him out of his thoughts on the conversation. The others rambled on, not having heard the tiniest sound, the little something that had made the cornflakes inside Anna’s bowl move. He wrinkled his forehead in confusion, looking down into her bowl.

There was one black spot inside of it. It was at the second glimpse that he realized it was not a tiny object, but liquid that had dripped down onto her crunchy flakes.

He stared up at her perplexedly, but that quickly changed into something more like surprise, or maybe horror. Or at least that was the look in his eyes as he saw the girl stand there, frozen like a marble statue, black liquid dripping steadily out of her nose and into the bowl.

“Jesus Christ!” Sam jumped out of the chair the minute he saw it too, which was what made the others quiet down and look back at him first, before following his gaze and knowing what he meant by that.

Their mouths hung open in shock as more and more liquid continued to fill her bowl. Her eyes were wide open, her jaw clenching. She looked like she was pleading with them from inside her body with only the look in her eyes, but the rest of her body wouldn’t allow it.

“Abbie?” Bucky asked, sounding scared, before her eyes rolled up inside her head and she began to fall backwards, Nat being the only one to react as quickly as to catch her mid-fall.

His heart stopped and he was frozen as well. Couldn’t come to help her, could only stare at her as her body hit the ground, but thankfully her head was caught by the woman next to her and in a second all of them were surrounding her twitching form.

Her body was shaking uncontrollably, her eyes still rolled back inside her head, they could only see the white of them as she continued to flinch and spasm on the stone-tiled floor. He could see that she wanted to scream, but her jaw had locked, no way for any sound to escape between her clenched teeth.

“Don’t!” Bruce yelled as Bucky reached down to try and help her, but the doctor pulled him back. “She’s having a seizure. You can’t touch her right now or you’ll hurt her.”

His heart was jumping up his throat with frustration. “You can’t just leave her-!” “We have to wait until it’s over.”

And so they did. For another thirty seconds straight her body was not responding, until her spasms ebbed away. Bucky was holding her head gently throughout the whole thing, Bruce rushing upstairs to get Helen Cho and the others moved away the chairs around her so she wouldn’t hit her head on them. Meanwhile the black fluid had dripped down onto the floor, collecting in a small puddle below her, streaming over her cheeks and mouth and smearing her entire face.

But it was not just dark goo there. Bucky stood closest to her, shielding her head from when she threw her neck back hard. There was something else that he saw within it.

Like opaque fumes coming off of it, the puddle of smear making the slightest movements. It wasn’t like anything he had ever seen, the movements like liquid caught on a blasting speaker. Sudden and uncoordinated, yet as if it had life of its own. There were thick twists of worm-like body winding from side to side while thin lines of it had begun to rise up, barely even a few inches, seeming to flip gravity in the process because the drops parted from the goo, hovering in the air. Floating right there, in front of his face. His mouth hung open. It kind of looked pretty, yet the others hadn’t seen it and that was when Sam moved to grab her after her convulsions had almost subsided, his hand going underneath her, wanting to carry her, but he didn’t get the chance.

Because the second his hand touched the pool of liquid on the ground, it engulfed him. Both Bucky and him were looking down at his hand and the twitching black form winding around it until the next second he was the one laying on the ground next to her, screaming from the top of his lungs while clutching his arm.

“Don’t.” Bucky warned as the others tried to help him, but he wouldn’t let them step close to her or whatever her body was oozing out of its pores.

“Or it’ll do the same to you.”

“Jesus Christ, what is she doing to him?” Natasha asked desperately while clutching Bucky’s arm that had stopped her from getting to Sam. He had stopped screaming, but he had started sweating instead. Profusely. The black around his hand was gone, yet he was still clutching his arm to his body. He was shaking uncontrollably. Something was hurting him from the inside. Perhaps it really had gotten inside of him, twitching around in there. He looked like it did, after all.

“She isn’t. Not on purpose.” He tried to defend her. Natasha’s gaze was deadly. “I know, but she’s doing something, isn’t she?”

They were all speechless.

It was when Annabelle stopped moving that a groan of relief left Sam’s tight throat. Veins had popped up on his forehead. He was still gasping for air.

Her eyes had finally closed. Lying there she almost looked peaceful if it weren’t for the fact that black streaks of liquid had covered her face and that she had just passed out. Bucky looked down. The liquid was just liquid again. Not movements, no breaking of the laws of physics.

He reached out his hand to turn her on her back.

“Don’t.” Tony hissed as he pulled his arm back.

“Trust me, it’s fine.” Bucky assured him, his metal hand going underneath her front, the soaked shirt and neckline. He knew her seizure was over. There shouldn’t be any danger left for him. Of cause he couldn’t know for sure, but there was something telling him that he’d be fine. His left arm wouldn’t feel a thing anyway.

And it was. He picked her up, his right arm hooked under her legs as he stood up.

“Get Sam into the lab.” He ordered Steve and he nodded, starting to pick him up and followed Bucky as he knew exactly where to go.

***

“What happened?” Doctor Cho asked as she saw not only the girl, but also another unconscious member of the Avengers being carried into her lab. Bruce was already accompanying her there.

“He touched it. The black fluid that was dripping from her mouth.” Steve groaned as he dropped Sam onto a surgery couch. There was another one only a few meters next to that one where Bucky had put down Annabelle. Bruce stepped closer, whispering to Steve. “Do you really think this is a good idea? Leaving her here with him?” “I think it’s the only plan we got right now.” He answered without hesitance. Bucky smiled at him. Bruce nodded and turned back towards his two patients.

Doctor Cho was checking her pulse. She opened one of her eyes to shine a flashlight into it.

“She has had a mild non-epileptic seizure, but her pulse is back to normal now.” “Mild seizure?” Natasha breathed out doubtfully as she entered the room along with Tony and Wanda. “Yes, that was anything but mild, but, uhm, here’s another thing you guys; The stuff is gone.” Tony said.

Helen had gone over to inspect Sam, doing the same procedure on him. “Wha- What-What do you mean?” Bruce asked nervously.

“Whatever was dripping down her nose is gone. Poof. Nothing there on the floor anymore.”

“Hey, guys” Helen got their attention, letting go of Sam’s pulse. “He’s not doing so good.”

Everyone looked as she pulled up his t-shirt to expose his stomach and the swelling underneath it.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Tony turned around on his soles, pacing through the room.

Bucky felt sick. Sick to his stomach.

“What’s happening, Doctor Cho?” Steve asked, but he had also started to sound frightened. They had no idea what… who they were dealing with.

“Internal bleeding.” Bruce stated, continuing to gape at Sam’s swollen chest and belly. “Trauma to his liver and spleen, I think.” Helen was looking back at Bruce.

“Fuck.” Natasha hissed and ran a hand through her hair.

“Okay, that’s it. We need to wake her up.” Tony shook his head and walked towards her, Bucky squaring his shoulders in front of him. “You won’t hurt her.” He growled and Tony gaped at him in confusion. “Of cause I won’t hurt her. Bruce? You got any smelling salt?” “Actually, we do.” He said and not even thirty seconds later Tony was holding an ampule in his hand, crushing the Ammonia cap open between his fingers.

“If this wont wake her up, I’m not sure anything will.” He pushed Bucky aside and he gave in with a grunt, holding the broken capsule under her nose.

Her eyes shot open and she gasped for air, scrunching up her nose. “Was zum…” She looked around, realizing where she was and that she was speaking German, correcting herself. “What the hell?”

Everyone was staring at her as she laid a hand against her chest, a pull finding its origin there, right behind her ribcage. “What happened?” She gulped, realizing their gazes were filled with both fear and concern. Even Bucky’s.

“You don’t remember anything?” Natasha asked as she raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms in front of her.

Annabelle shook her head.

“Memory loss is not uncommon for those who experience a seizure.” Helen Cho said without looking up from Sam whom she was still inspecting. Annabelle’s gaze lingered on her for a while, putting the pieces together. This woman… she had been there the day she woke up in the Stark tower. She was one of the three she had thrown across the room. Their doctor, apparently. And now she wouldn’t even look at her.

Annabelle lowered her head in shame.

“Seizure?” She whispered to herself, staring at the couch padding beneath her in confusion. “Yes and not only that.” Steve started to explain, but she still wouldn’t look up at them. “When you passed out your nose started to…” He was searching for words, but didn’t find any for this situation. He didn’t even know what it was that he was describing.

Her brows furrowed. A hand went to feel the still wet skin under her nose, but as she lowered her hands to look at her fingertips, they weren’t red. Because it wasn’t blood. Her fingers were inked black. That was the stuff she saw moving in the corner of her room at night. What she saw behind her eyelids while experiencing another phase of unrestrained emotions. The thing that made her blood cells turn dark. “What is this?” She asked nervously. Her scalp was itching. She had done something, that much was for sure. And she didn’t have to look far for an answer as a pained groan left the mouth of the man beside her.

Sam Wilson. A gasp left her when she spotted him, her fingers shaky as she held them to cover her mouth. He was floating in and out of unconsciousness, his left hand covering his stomach. His shirt had ridden up to expose the swelling underneath and tears filled her eyes at the sight.

“Sam had tried to help you up, but when he touched that black stuff… he passed out as well.” Wanda explained. She didn’t seem as shocked. She had seen it before on her after all. Although she never thought it was this potent, because how could she have known? She had never gotten into contact with it after all.

“It burns.” They heard Sam whimpering from the other side of the room. Annabelle jumped off the couch and walked towards him. Surprisingly, no one was stopping her. If anyone knew how to make it better it had to be her, right? He was clutching his left side, the one she was approaching and his groans got louder.

He was sweating so much; his shirt was drenched entirely. She wiped an arm under her nose that had thankfully stopped running, a black smear left on her forearm.

The other thing she had noticed was the consistent pull inside of her that had gotten stronger the closer she got to him. It was like a longing for something she knew she was missing. Even though she wasn’t quite sure what exactly.

She closed her eyes as if to try and listen, her head tilting to the side.

“Abbie?” She heard the faint call of her name. Bucky seemed to care for it all. But with every passing second she did less and less. She had to know what was making her cells press to her exterior like they were being pulled closer by a magnet.

The tingle in her fingertips intensified as she reached out her arm. Her hand was so close to Sam’s skin; she could feel its warmth. But it was not about his skin, but what was resting underneath it. It was waiting for her. To command the next step. His cries got louder as she knew it was pressing against his left side of his abdomen to try and get close to her, waiting to finally be reunited with her. And suddenly she knew what she had to do.

Her eyes shot open and she climbed onto the couch with him, taking his head in her hands as carefully as possible, resting it in her lap. No one called her anymore, no. They were far too hypnotized with what was going on in front of their eyes. “I’m so sorry, Sam. It’s gonna be fine.” She whispered and his eyes were looking back at her pleadingly before she looked at the faintest movements underneath the skin of his abdomen. She placed a hand there and he screamed.

“Hold him down!” She yelled and Steve and Tony were the closest, taking a hold of his arms as he tried to wiggle away from her touch.

She felt it. It was so close. She knew it wanted out so she let it, moving her hand slowly up his chest. She held his head back with one hand and moved the other up further until she felt the bulge of his throat and with one sudden movement his mouth tore open to let the remaining smoke inside leave his body to press into her palm.

He panted and she let go of him as well as the two other men and he turned to his side to cough up more spit and goo. She got off the couch quickly, standing next to him, seeing him pant for breath.

She looked down at her hand, watching the gas-like fluid sink into her pores like dry soil soaking up rain after a long drought. And then it was gone.

She looked up and while most of the group was looking after Sam, Tony, Wanda and Bucky just stared at her. There was fright in their eyes and it was absolutely new to her, the second time after the first day in the lab that she had ever seen it intended for her.

It was about the most frightening thing for her as well.

Her hands balled into fists while her eyes filled with tears that steadily rolled down her cheeks.

“Abbie…” She heard Bucky’s voice, suddenly so much closer that it made her flinch and look up at him. He was about to lay his hand on her shoulder when she stumbled away from him, whimpering and shuddering in front of him. She had gotten so small. “Don’t touch me!” She yelled, absolutely terrified. He stopped and stood still. She was shaking her head. “Please don’t touch me.” She whispered and the last thing he saw of her before she stormed out of the room were her huge, red eyes boring into him.

Perhaps Bucky was a wolf, but maybe Annabelle was no sheep after all.

.

.

.

Next Chapter

Taglist:

@humanexile @alt-er-love-er-alt

#slow burn #Bucky Barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #fanfiction #fanfic #help me help you #angst #eventual fluff

[scary-pixie]

ADVENTURES AT PRETTY HEROES CON 2018

I woke up at Garbage O’Clock on Sunday June 17th, a chipmunk singing a sweet, sweet song outside my bathroom window (the lyrics of which were a very offensive description of early mornings, so I shall not repeat them here). It was time to get ready for Pretty Heroes Con, a new 2-day event at the Ontario Science Center focusing on strong female characters, particularly those in anime. Pretty Heroes originally started off as the Toronto Sailor Moon Celebration a few years ago, an event which I was sadly never able to attend due to school obligations…but THIS YEAR I was determined to go for at least one day!

I would relate to you the entire story of how I became a fan of Sailor Moon, along with how the anime, manga and fandom itself influenced me, though that is a long, long tale for another time. Suffice to say, Sailor Moon was my introduction to anime, and I love the idea of Pretty Heroes Con (and ended up very much enjoying the event itself!).  I strongly recommend that anyone with similar interests attend next time!

I met my friend Gilligan shortly after arriving at the Ontario Science Centre, and we took a little tour of the building before the con officially started. The dealers and artist’s tables were split up into three areas over two different floors (this sounds a little complicated, though it was a very short and easy walk to get from one section to another). Deeper into the building, the Science Center had it’s own feature exhibit titled “Popnology”, an examination of the tech and science found in a few of our favorite movies and other media (including the cinematic masterpiece Back to the Future). General Science Center admission was included with entry to Pretty Heroes, so it was fun to explore this for a little bit.

The con started at 10:00 am, and Gilligan and I split up to go on our own separate adventures. I shall entertain you with a little bit of info on my favorite vendors; links to their websites will be provided at the bottom of this report! I first explored the main-floor area near the front of the building, where I was greeted by a friend from the Ontario Provincial Police. They had a small booth set up for recruitment, and were also giving out some neato free gifts, including a 2018 Police Dog calendar. I very much enjoy looking at photographs of dogs, as should you.

Upstairs, I was pleasantly surprised to see The Littlest Gift Boutique. Their con displays are always an endless parade of cuteness, featuring a large number of plushies (including alpacas and shibas…!), stickers and pencils. I would fill my house with every single one of their plushies, though I fear I would soon run out of room; too many books to compete with for precious shelf space. Nearby, the illustrator Yuki Yoshida caught my eye with her gothic and Lolita-inspired character designs. I regret not picking up one of her sketchbooks early on, as she ended up having to leave shortly after lunch. Perhaps next time!! Her works mostly consisted of original characters, many of which wore very lovely and detailed costumes. If I had sewing superpowers, I’d make every one of those outfits!

11:00 am hit, and it was time for the “Social Anxieties/Mental Health in Cosplay and Conventions” panel. I’ll be going over all the panels in separate write-ups, as my reports on them are quite long. For now I shall say: every one of them was very enjoyable and informative.

Lunch followed at the Ontario Science Center’s cafeteria. I’m positive they renovated the place since the last time I was there (at least three years ago, I believe). I remember the food being in an area with much more light coming in from outside, and additional birds to look at…though maybe I am just CONFUSED. I enjoyed a delicious slice of pizza with Miss Vickie’s Sweet Southern BBQ flavored chips; the pizza felt a tad undercooked, though the pepperoni was nice and crunchy. Lunch gets a score of 7.8 out of 10.

After my pizza, I voyaged back up through the maze of the Science Center’s lower floors, eagerly awaiting the next panel, “Queer Women in Anime”. Though one other stop awaited me before this. I had to pick up my sole purchase from the con, and the Most Important Item on sale: a squee-inducing sheet of Corgi stickers from The Littlest Gift Boutique. Corgis with their ears tipped sideways, corgis showing their bums, corgis wearing bowties…an absolutely magnificent collection! I headed for the anime panel right after my purchase, accompanied by the realization that I had put Entirely Too Much Food into my stomach.

My exploration of the vendor areas continued afterwards, one of the highlights being illustrator Nikkie Stinchcombe’s Little Paper Forest, located in the lower floor artist’s alley. Nikkie’s artwork featured some very nice modern-style character designs; I loved what I saw of her mythology-based comic, Femme Fatale: A Collection of Deadly Women in Myth. inomnom, her neighbor across the room, also had some really cute and silly artwork for sale, including a few pieces featuring HAMSTERS.

Back upstairs, I visited Mowgen, who had a number of charming decoden cellphone cases for sale (among other cute food-themed items). Unfortunately, my phone is from 1962 and incompatible with modern-sized phone cases. Sigh. Mowgen will be hosting Kawaii Land 2018 later in the fall, a new event all about cuteness, fashion and anime. I am looking forward to attending!

The third panel of the day was titled “Fighting Evil By Moonlight, Adulting By Daylight”, a discussion on how to balance adult responsibilities and jobs with fandom-related hobbies (with a focus on cosplay). Immediately after this I attended a final panel, the entertaining and educational “Fanfic Writing Workshop”. This one was likely my favorite, as one day I hope to be a magnificent writer of erotic fanfiction (though likely it will just end up being PG-rated fanfiction, probably featuring dogs).

The con ended at 6:00 pm. After cleanup, my friend Drew B.S. Reynard aka B.S Pegasus and I went for a delightful evening meal at South St. Burger (where I made sure to ask for every spicy topping available). Overall, Pretty Heroes con was a joy: fun, relaxing and very informative. I look forward to attending again in the future! Please check out the Very Important Links I have provided below for more information on the various dealers and artists mentioned above, and I hope to see YOU at Pretty Heroes next year!

VERY IMPORTANT LINKS!

Pretty Heroes Con: www.prettyheroes.com  INSTAGRAM:  @prettyheroes

The OPP:  www.opp.ca   INSTAGRAM: @ontarioprovincialpolice

The Littlest Gift Boutique: www.thelittlestgiftboutique.com   INSTAGRAM: @thelittlestgiftboutique

Yuki Yoshida: http://yukiyoshida.net  INSTAGRAM: @skeletongyaru

Little Paper Forest: www.littlepaperforest.com INSTAGRAM: @littlepaperforest

inomnom: www.inomnom.com  INSTAGRAM: @inomnomcom

Mowgen: www.mowgen.com  INSTAGRAM: @mow.gen

#pretty heroes #pretty heroes 2018 #con #convention #sailor moon #sailor senshi #toronto #ontario science center #anime #cute

[lmfmp2021]

Coming Up With Flavour Names

Here, I have now decided to come up with names for each of the four flavours. This is because I feel that I have definitely got to the point where I need to do this as I have started to come up with designs for the front of the label, so I feel that it would really help me to know what names I’m going to be using so that I can progress forward. I’m hoping that after I have done this, I can start to think more about completing my final designs for the individual flavoured jars. 

So to help me to visualise my ideas, I have produced a mind map, to which I have wrote down names for each flavour. When looking at this mind map and comparing it to most of previous ones, this seems to have very limited ideas, although this is because I thought about the names very carefully so it ended up being that these thought through names were the most effective and meaningful. Whereas before, I have just wrote down anything that comes to mind, which isn't always the best as can be very random and don't really link. 

I started with the flavour, biscuit bits, where the first idea I had was ‘Napalm crisp’. This word ‘napalm’ is a substance that is used to kill but I thought it sounded quite appealing as it has the word ‘palm’ in it. As I am also going to write a small description for each flavour too, I thought that I could relate this to an explosion or bomb. Although, after thinking about the word ‘crisp’ that I added in at the end of this phrase, this sounds like it words better with the mint flavour as I remember sometimes seeing on mint flavoured products this word. So I then added this phrase the mint mind map section as well. When thinking back to the biscuit bits, I also thought of Napalm crunch’ instead of ‘crisp’ as I feel this makes much more sense as biscuits are crunchy. As well as this, I think it flows really well when saying it too. 

The next idea for mint was ‘envriomint’, so instead of spelling it the proper way, it would would say ‘mint’ at the end as these two ideas then both relate to my product and the flavour at the same time. I thought this worked really well as I have played around with he word to make it really appealing. 

After that, I went on to the orange flavour, where the first idea that came to mind was the fact that ‘orange’ and ‘oil’ are alliteration. This means these two words flow really nicely when saying them as they both include an ‘O’ at the start of the word. I started with the phrase ‘oily orange’ but this doesn't sound very nice as I’m saying the orange is oily which isn't very appetising, so instead, I felt that something along the lines of ‘orange oil’ wold work. This idea relates as it has the oil part of ‘palm oil’ but also because orange oil will actually be the think inside the chocolate spread so it all makes sense. Then my ideas slightly changed to ‘orangie tang’/ ‘orangy tang’ instead as its saying the taste is orange but it has tang at the end as its relating to the word orangutans. Although, I knew straight away that I couldn't really have this as its very similar to the brand name. In the end, I felt that ‘orange oil’ made the most sense as it as sounded appealing too. 

The last one was slated caramel, to which I massively struggled with this as there was nothing that related to palm oil that I could add or relate to salted caramel. In the end, I came up ‘salty caramelt’ as caramel is normally a a liquid. I thought that I could just try and com up with something in the description to make up for this as I didn't have any other ideas for this flavour. 

In the end, I’m glad that I have now chosen my names as I can now move forward slightly and add these into my designs. This will then give me more of a realistic idea of what the overall result could look like.  

#research #outcome

[trufflerabbit13]

Searching For Brothers: CHAPTER V: My Turn

CHAPTER 5 Word count: 3.3k

CLEMENTINE P.O.V.

It's been three months since Ace left our small island. And after three months, we finally hear the first news about him.

I hummed as I read the newspaper while sitting in the same tree I did with Ace after my biological older brother's death.

"Impressive..." I mutter as I read Ace's first bounty. And the name.... Fire Fist Ace....

My eyes stayed glued to his wanted poster in fascination. It really was him...

Ace was seen cockily grinning into the camera; his signature hat was on his head while a fire burned on his palm.

My older brother got his hand the sacred fruit of the Devil himself... Knowing him, he probably ate it thinking it was a typical fruit and didn't have a single knowledge what it actually was.

I laughed jumping off the tree, easily landing on the ground with a light thump. I shaded my eyes with my hand and looked up and stared up at the branch that I was sitting on moments ago.

Seven years really made our tree grow... The tree that Ace and I was easily able to climb has grown so tall, I could barely see our branch.

I laughed slightly and placed the newspaper in my coat as I walked through the silent forest.

I was happily walking when my right foot got caught on something, my arms flailing as I tripped and fell forwards. My hat flew in the air but safely landed back on my head where I laid face down on the ground.

I groaned in pain and laid there for a second. Eventually, I lifted my head up to see what was tangled to my feet.

My eyes widened in shock as I stared at the vine that got tangled to my feet. And on the vine was a strange looking fruit.

I immediately had an idea what it was. After the long seven years of living on this island, I know what kind of vegetation grows on this island. This fruit was definitely not originated from here....

The unrealistic almost poisonous looking color, the weird shape and pattern on its skin... Although extremely unlikely, the best describing thing I knew was an Akuma no Mi, a Devils fruit.

I carefully took the spiky blackish purple fruit into my hand examining it. Around the fruit, I could see small white dots that looked like seeds.

I quietly stared at the fruit, looking at it in concentration.  After a moment, I laughed shaking my head. I'm so stupid. There's no way a Devil's fruit would appear on this island which was located in the middle of nowhere.

However... If you think about it, Luffy did obtain a fruit on this island, although Shanks was responsible for it... And if this were really a Devil's fruit, me eating it wouldn't be bad, right?

I mean, both Luffy and Ace ate one....

There's even a possibility I'm over thinking this. It might not be even an Akuma no Mi.

With slight worry, I carried the dangerous looking fruit to my mouth and bit into it.

My nose scrunched up in disgust as the flavor hit my tongue. The fruit was crunchy and had a disgusting bitter taste to it. Forcing down the bile at the back of my throat, I swallowed the cursed fruit.

I looked down at the fruit I had in hand and gasped when I saw a completely different looking fruit. It looked normal now...

How in the world...

But there's definitely was a place I took a bite out of.

In silence, I sat on the forest floor in confusion.... What did I just eat....? I continued to stare down at my hand in worry. I felt normal... I seem to look normal.... But what changed?

I stood up and stretched my arms over my head. But I froze and gasped as I watched my hands disappear...

I fell to the ground in shock and looked at my hands. They were there....

Cautiously, I waved my hand slightly. My mouth opened in shock as a purple and navy blue hole like thing appeared around me.

Slowly, I placed my hand through the hole and gasped as I watched my hand disappear.

I jumped in fright as something touched me from behind. And at the same exact moment, I felt my hand bump into something as well.

Frightened, I turned around and gasped. From another hole like thing, my hand was emerging out of it. I looked back at the first hole where I put my hand through... And I turned back... And see my hand coming out of a different hole....

Wow....

~*~

I sat in Makino's bar as I quietly ate a cake. For once, the bar was empty, leaving Makino and I the only ones in the small place.

"Clemie-chan, I'm almost done with the clothes you asked me to make for you," Makino chirped as she washed the piles of dishes.

I paused mid-chew and looked up at Makino in surprise.

Makino laughed at my expression as she dried her hands, "I'll be done for sure by the time you take off. Your clothes you're wearing are nice, but I have a feeling the dress I'm making is going to be perfect for you."

My eyes traveled down to the clothes I was wearing. It consisted of a navy blue dress with black and white frills.

Even after running away from my noble family, I still liked wearing similar clothes I wore back then.  I did, however, start to wear colors like navy blue and black, colors that Sabo always wore.

A faint smile made its way to on my lips as I looked at the counter where I placed my top hat and goggles. I was disappointed that it was in a pretty bad state, after seven years, surviving through many things, it was almost destroyed.

"I could fix it for you, you know?" Makino's feminine voice stated.

My blue eyes nervously shifted to the kind women before darting towards my hat.

Should I?

I stared at the top hat that was in a sad condition.

"Onegai shimasu..." I mutter as I weakly handed Makino the hat.

The dark haired female looked at me with worry but took the hat anyways. She knew that I haven't let the hat go since my brother's death.

Suddenly feeling bare without my hat on my head, I stood up, eager to return home. I placed a coin on the counter, fixing my dress.

"Clemie-chan, I'll fix it up and add some things so it'll match your outfit. Come back in two hours or so! I'll get it done as quickly as I can!" Makino shouted at me as I exited the bar.

I sent her a graceful look before the wooden door closed.

I quietly walked through the towns crowded streets, my heels clicking on the concrete.

"Oh, Clementine! Take a peach with you!"

"How are ya doing lassy?"

"It's been a while since I've seen you, Clementine!"

I smiled and gently waved at all the people who greeted and stopped me from walking back into the mountain. By the time I stepped into the forest, my arms were full of gifts I received from the people from the village.

"Dadan and Luffy are going to be happy..." I muttered to myself as I looked at the pile of food and alcohol that were in my arms.

"Sekai Beya...." I muttered. In seconds, I stood in front of a grassy field instead of the forest. My eyes went to the small house on top of the grassy hill. Aiming for the house, I slowly walked towards it.

After months of training hard, I finally understood what kind of Akuma no Mi I ate in the forest.

I was able to control space and dimensions.... I had the Kukan Kukan no Mi...

I was actually astonished as soon as I found out what fruit I ate. After hours of searching the books of known and recorded devil fruit, I found one description that matched the one I ate.

It had originally belonged to a highly talented pirate in the New World. My eyes widened when I read he was often seen with Gol D. Roger, being a friend of the Pirate King. Reading the description, I found out great information.

The man was able to control space and create different dimensions. A shiver went down my back when I read that he was able to make things and people disappear and never appear again.

My fascination grew when I read how he created a world of his own. It stated that in his dimension he was able to do anything while being in it, create anything. One thing that made me astonished was when it was written that he was able to bring anything back to the real world...

Anything....

It took me hours and days of hard training, but finally, I was able to make a dimension of my own. A small place with an endless green grass field and a bright blue sky.

I opened the small door of the house and walked in, placing the food and drink on the table.

I smiled as I wished for an apple in my hand. I cheered in my mind as a blood red apple appeared out of thin air and fell into my hand.

I carried the juicy red fruit to my mouth and bit into it, making a loud crunch, the sweet, fresh flavor spreading over my tongue.

Apple in hand, I exited the house, thinking of the forest again. Seconds later, I was walking through the green forest heading towards Dadan's house.

~*~

"Clemie!!!! I'M HUNGRYYYYY~ FOOOOOD!!!!!"

I sighed as Luffy's rubber legs wrapped around my body, stopping my movement.

I frowned as my hat Makino fixed for me slipped over my eyes, blocking my sight. The black lace veil she added landed on my face making me irritated.

"Luffy, even if I were going to make you something, I wouldn't be able to if you clung to me like that," I grumbled as I struggled to get his stretchy limbs off of my body.

The younger boy immediately lets me go and looked at me pleadingly.

"Clemie!!! I want to eat your cooking!!!!" Luffy whined as he rolled on the ground having a small fit. My lips stretched into a straight line as I looked at Luffy in confusion.

"Why the sudden demand Luffy?" I questioned as I tilt my hat back onto my head so it wouldn't fall off.

Luffy stopped his movement and sat up while crossing his arm and pouted.

"You're leaving in two days!!!"

Astonished by Luffy's statement, I laughed loudly, which was not like me. I easily picked up Luffy from the floor and hugged him tightly. At 5'4 Luffy was still shorter than me by few inches, but you were positive that he would catch up in a few years.

"Well, you know what Luffy?" I questioned as I squeezed him gently.

"What?"

I smiled widely and took my little brother's hand in mine, "we're going to party like pirates until I leave!!!! To do that, we're going to need a ton of meat!"

Luffy's eyes immediately sparkled as drool came out of his mouth, "NIKUU!!!"

Giggling at his expression, I lead him into the forest, searching for our prey that was going to become our feast.

~*~

I quietly stood in front of a mirror as I examined myself.

"I can't believe it's been eight years already...." Makino muttered as she did a final check on the outfit she had made for me.

My eyes softened when I first looked at this dress. Everything of it reminded me of my older brother...

Makino must have known how much I thought about Sabo and designed my dress like this.

Like the color Sabo-nii used to wear, my skirt was dark navy blue that was up to my lower thigh. Under the blue cloth were layers of white and black frilly clothing that made it slightly puffy.

Tucked neatly into my skirt was a light blue, long-sleeved dress shirt that reached my neck. And over the white dress shirt was a jacket of the same color as my skirt. At the shoulder, it puffed out, a blue and white ribbon placed on it. And at my neck where the cloth of the dress shirt covered was a ribbon tied to it like a choker.

I proudly smiled at myself and fixed my skirt before running my fingers through my slightly shorter, thick blonde hair. I certainly looked quite like how my brother did...

My fingers found it's way to my neck where my shirt covered, where a black chocker was clasped. Yesterday, after cleaning up the mess we made, all the mountain bandits gathered around me and presented it to me. After thoroughly questioned each of the men, making sure none of the bandits stole it, I thanked each of them as they sobbed into each other.

"You brats are always growing so fast..." I turned around at the rough voice.

My eyes connected with the large, curly orange haired female that stood by the door. She had her usual cigarette in her mouth that she chewed on. I smiled at Dadan as I walked up to her until I was directly in front of her.

"Dadan, thank you for everything!" I grin up at the female, "you and Makino have acted as a mother for me, without you two, I would never have been able to survive. I'm so glad I came to live with you guys. Dadan, I will always know  and think you as my mother!" With that, I wrapped my arms around the taller female.

It took a second for Dadan to react but she too hesitantly hugged me back.

"Y-you're embarrassing me!" Dadan stuttered as she let go.

She hid it poorly as she sniffled and cried into a handkerchief as she turned her back towards me.

I giggled at her action and eyed Makino who also seemed slightly teary eyed.

"Alright," I mumbled, a look of determination appearing in your eyes, "it's about time I go..."

I grabbed the small brown bag off the ground and threw it over my shoulders as I walked onto the wooden floor, making my heels click on them.

I stood by the door for a second, giving the rundown house a final look, it's going to be a while until I come back here...

My eyes sadly looked at Dadan as she cried into her handkerchief, I knew she wasn't going to see me off with the rest of the bandits. They wouldn't want to scare off all the villagers...

"Thank you guys for everything...." I muttered as I smiled at them brightly, "I'll always think all of you as my family!"

That seemed like the last remaining straw, every single of the bandits started sobbing and wailing.

I sweat dropped with Makino and laughed before waving at them goodbye.

~*~

I stood on the medium sized boat that I personally bought myself.

"Clemie-chan, here. I also made this, make sure to use it, you burn quite easily..." Makino smiled at me as she handed me a black and blue sun umbrella.

I picked it up in my hand and looked at it, twirling it around my wrist. I smiled to myself, this definitely could become a weapon...

"Thanks, Makino, take care of Luffy for me please?"

The older female nodded and gave me a quick hug before exiting my boat.

"Luffy, I'll see you at sea!!!!" I yelled as I grinned at my younger brother.

Luffy returned my smile as waved with his straw hat in his hand.

"BYE CLEMIE!!!!!"

I laughed and waved at all of the villagers that came to see me off. "Oi, Clemie-chan are you going to be ok without carrying anything else?" One of the villagers questioned as they looked at me with worry.

I smiled and shook my head, "I'll be fine, remember, I have my Devils fruit, I can easily make things pop out."

As a demonstration, I imagined a piece of meat in my mind. Waving my hand in the air, a purple and black portal opened up.

Without hesitation, I stuck my hand through the black hole pulling out a large piece of meat.

I quickly tossed it at Luffy who caught it without much trouble. Smiling at the mayor, I pulled down my boat's mast so the wind will carry me forward.

"Take care Clemie-chan!"

"Stay safe!"

"Watch out for perverts!!!"

"CLEMIE I WILL BECOME PIRATE KING!!!!!"

I shook my head at Luffy's loud voice and waved my arms above my head. I turned around and looked at the ocean with excitement.

But loud screams of fear made me snap my head towards the island once again in worry.

I watched in confusion as all the villagers screamed as they scrambled away from the dock.

My eyes widened in shock as a fairly large animal jumped off the port, soaring into the sky.

My pink lips opened in shock as a silent scream escaped my mouth as the large, cat-like animal jumped onto my boat making the whole thing shake and water splash everywhere.

"R-Roki!!!" I gasped as the tiger-like animal pushed me onto my back as it laid on me.

The feline purred as it rubbed his large head that was twice the size of my own head on my stomach.

I quickly realized what happened and jumped up pushing Roki off of me.

For a second I was frozen, not knowing what to do. I eventually sighed when I noticed how much we drifted away from land. I wouldn't be able to bring Roki back....

I let a tired sigh out and took my hat off.

"Well, Roki, it looks like you're coming with me...." For a second I looked at the feline.

"Can animals be first mates too?" I mumbled the question out to myself.

#one piece #one piece ff #one piece fanfic #one piece anime #one piece manga #luffy #ace #sabo #fanfic #anime ff