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kentopedia · 11 days

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˚₊‧꒰ა cold embrace (provenance) — fyodor dostoevsky

𝓈𝓊𝓂𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓎. you buy a two hundred year old house with a two hundred year old painting hanging above the mantel. it's not the only thing the previous owner left behind.

𝒸𝑜𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓃𝓉𝓈. ghost!fyodor, f!reader, violence, angst, death, alternate / modern universe, no smut but it is suggestive, fyodor is kind of a pervy ghost so, wc: 6.1k

𝓃𝑜𝓉𝑒𝓈. this one has two titles bc it was supposed to be for my kinktober... never finished it. embarrassing ! but here is a semi-revamped version for this series! i can finally check it off my wips page <3 idk how i feel about it but i hope you enjoy

part of my summerween series !

A chime from the grandfather clock brings Fyodor out of his stupor, the sound signaling another day, another meaningless hour that will only continue his eternal misery. He’s grown used to it now—evening after evening of emptiness, of reading nothing but the same books, playing the same pieces of dull sheet music, and the lifeless chess matches against himself. The house is cold with only his presence, dusty without a housekeeper and a life to make it a home.

There are a million things in Fyodor’s life that he must have done to deserve this misery, but he can’t pinpoint which one solidified his reward of a lamentable, endless cycle.

He’s certain hell is better than this. It’s something he wishes for every day, if only to have an eternal companion with the devil, a challenge to overcome.

Though, even with this boredom, Fyodor refuses to let anyone live in his home. They’ll only serve to be another pain, something that would, surely, push him past the brink of sanity.

The centuries old décor will get replaced with gaudy twenty-first century items, ones that will be nothing more than an eyesore. There are a few already scattered around his home from previous tenants, but only things that he believed useful enough for him to keep; a few books from authors he didn’t live to read, a television from the nineties, a computer that he watched one couple scroll on before he murdered them in cold blood.

Perhaps he is two hundred years dead and gone, but he refuses to be an ignorant ghost, one that is unaware of anything beyond these four walls, caught forever in the past.

Although now, it’s been a while since anyone’s tried to move in, and he’s certain the only reason the house hasn’t been torn down is because its preserved nicely, an eighteenth-century home that has withstood the test of time.

Fyodor, in his lowest moments, wishes they would tear it down. Maybe then, and only then, can he be set free. Or maybe, he’s forever trapped in this exhaustive lot, doomed to decay, even when there’s nothing left of the foundations but soil.

He pushes a pawn forward on the board, putting himself in checkmate for the millionth time in a row. It’s been so long that he’s used to his own tricks. Even the computer, which he’d come to understand quickly, is no match for him. It’s far too exhaustive to play against a machine that utilizes an algorithm he can so easily decipher.

Out of nowhere, the front door unlocks, and Fyodor glances over at the sound, dark hair falling over his eyes. Seconds later, he notices an older realtor with a clipboard leading you around, a woman he’s never seen, dressed up nicely with a darker shade of lipstick smeared across your mouth.

He’s been through this before. It’s a miracle the realtor hasn’t given up on this house yet, a mansion she is determined to sell despite the endless horrors that have been committed by his hand.

“Here it is,” she says, nervous, gesturing around the expansive hall, the crystal chandelier and staircase that immediately follows. “It was built in 1731, but one of the owners remolded it in the style of the mid-nineteenth century. The structure has been stabilized; it’s safe… enough.”

The two of you chat, but he doesn’t bother to listen in. It’s all questions of: when can I move in? can we negotiate? — things you will come to regret once he sets his sights on killing you.

Then, the realtor is sighing, wringing her hands together as she watches you spin around the house in awe. It’s clear that you’re impressed by the layout, the rich furniture and colors that have been used.

That, at least, satisfies Fyodor. Everyone else who has moved in was looking to upgrade it to a modern style, rid the place of its aged grace and charm.

“I’m truly sorry,” she says, brushing curly hair away from her cheekbones. “But I am legally obligated to tell you that every person who has lived here before has suffered a terrible, terrible fate. There have been gruesome murders that cannot be explained, done in ways that I don’t even want to tell you about.”

You laugh, eyeing her with skepticism. “Are you telling me it’s haunted?”

The realtor shrugs. “That’s what people say.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” you answer, and Fyodor rolls his eyes, scoffing as he floats to the second floor, unable to listen into the unreasonable conversation anymore. It’s been the same story for decades. No one believes in ghosts, but it is always a ghost that kills them.

He returns to the chess board, irritated, though unable to consider the game any further. Your face is stuck in his mind. For some reason, he can’t remember the last time he’s ever seen anyone with such beauty.

Fyodor stops; your ageless elegance doesn’t matter—it can’t, and it won’t. You’ll be dead by the end of the month, when you gather all your things and invade the bedroom that was once his own. Even if you are beautiful, you are a nuisance, a threat to Fyodor’s eternal torment and quiet existence.

Still, he can’t help but wonder if it would be nice to have something other than his own thoughts to distract him from the endless misery.

You move in on the thirteenth of June, nothing more than a few boxes and a decade old car to keep you company. He guesses you’ve traveled a long distance to get here, and you’ve gotten rid of half of your life in the process.

A good thing for him. That means things can be over relatively quickly, and all your belongings can be disposed of easily after he kills you.

You spend the entire first day unpacking, and Fyodor waits patiently, allows you time to get comfortable in his home. He watches as you bring a stack of thick novels into the waiting room, which once boasted large parties, and place them on a shelf below those that have his name within the covers.

You take a few calls as you hang up your autumn coats, ones that won’t be needed for a few months. The voice on the other line sounds frantic, worried. A local, most likely. You only seem annoyed by his continuous string of anxieties.

When the sun sets, and you grow tired, you rub your eyes and head to bed. The first night you will spend in this place that Fyodor likens to Hell.

It’s the time he’s been waiting for—a moment to catch you off guard. You are so unsuspecting, already so at home in the mansion, that you have no fear of anything hurting you in the middle of the night.

While you get ready for bed, Fyodor slips into your room, observing the pieces of your life that have conquered his bedroom. A soft classical piece plays from your phone, one that he recognizes from his mortal life. Clearly, you are fascinated by the period he once lived in. A shame, really, he won’t be able to tell you more about it.

You leave the bathroom, come back towards him to change into a pair of small shorts, a large shirt hanging over your frame.

He’s forgotten how long it’s been since he’s seen a woman, how long since he’s touched one.

Fyodor finds himself distracted by your body, the smoothness of your skin. His eyes travel over your legs, your hips, the fullness of your breasts and ignores how much he desires to let his thumb graze over your flesh. There is something so soft about you, so gentle and innocent.

Perhaps, that is where his fascination stems from: he has always been the opposite. Even in his human existence, Fyodor was not a kind man, and he doesn’t plan on becoming one now that he is dead.

He shakes away the vision, the thoughts that swirl within his mind. It has been far too long since he has experienced any sort of pleasure, and maybe even a man as cold as himself is not immune to the desires that course within his veins.

Though he tries to be. He ignores his arousal desperately in exchange for a renewed bloodlust.

You climb into bed, put your phone on the white cord, and shut your eyes. Thirty minutes later, you’re sleeping soundly, soft puffs of air leaving your lips as you sleep.

It’s the opportune moment. The silver knife gleams brightly in his hand, streaks of moonlight tracing over the slanted point. It’s the same blade he’s killed every other new tenant with, their screams still echo in the halls like a harmonious melody each time he bring the knife down on another unknowing victim.

He stands before you at the side of the bed, watches as your chest rises and falls, the evidence of your life undeniable. You are a lovely image like this, something to be painted and adored; more beautiful than many of the women he’d met in his time, even those who were of the finest elite in the country.

Fyodor presses the blade to your throat, contemplative. He considers how much lovelier you will look with the scarlet stain of blood seeping down your neck, spraying across the room and ruining the fresh sheets. Will you awaken, gasping as you claw at your throat, or will you drift away without even understanding what has become of you?

He pictures it, and digs the blade close to your throat, nothing more than a pinprick of blood flowering there.

You don’t awaken; but you a little sound leaves you, something between a gasp and a moan, and you shift away from the knife gripped between his pale fingers. It’s a sound that has him pausing, musing, as he regards your vulnerable state, a beautiful figure there with no clue that such a murderous man is also a resident in her home.

You make another one of those pretty noises in your throat, and Fyodor, against two centuries of murderous intent, pulls the knife away. He watches as you roll on your stomach, your shirt scrunching, moving up your body to reveal the undersides of your breasts. Your hand shifts towards him on the bed, reaching in his direction, before you still. Then, your breathing is back to normal, evened out completely.

Your lips part blissfully as you sigh in your sleep.

He can’t stop looking at you, can’t stop wondering what his name would sound like leaving the perfect swell of your mouth, if you’d sound just as pretty when you orgasm as you do when you’re asleep.

Surely, he can find a better use for you—it would be a shame for such a pretty thing to go out so early.

As he draws back, Fyodor notices the chess board on the side table, the pieces arranged nicely, each on the correct square. He can’t tell if you play. You could just have it for decoration, or perhaps it was a gift given to you from a lover that he hasn’t seen pictures of, the one that he’s certain someone as lovely as you must have.

The board is aged; not as old as the one in the drawing room, but a nice set, nonetheless. Fyodor glances back at your sleeping form once more, smiles coolly to himself, and shifts a pawn forward.

The chess piece is the first thing you notice in the morning.

It’s almost ridiculous how easily it catches your eye, a tiny little movement within the chaos that was your brand-new room. A pawn is on a different square, leering at you from the other wall, as if smiling, a flashing sign above its head, calling to you, hoping you’ll pay attention.

You almost think nothing of it; things can move, can’t they? Perhaps there was a shift in the earth overnight… Though, that makes little sense when you think about it rationally.

It’s strange, that much is certain. You remember the realtor telling you about the ghosts, and though you aren’t inclined to believe in haunted houses and scary stories, you find a part of yourself questioning the logic of the chess piece.

You are certain it was on the correct square before you slept.

It’s the only thing on your mind as you get ready, suffer through a tasteless breakfast, and throw on a rain jacket to combat the dreary weather. You’re meeting a friend for lunch—the only friend you have in this town. Sigma is the sole reason you decided to move here, instead of the other arbitrary cities that you’d been desperate to escape to.

Still, the board won’t leave your mind. You take one last glance at it before, on a whim, pushing the opposite color pawn forward as well.

Then you leave, hoping that a conversation with your friend will take your mind off the strangeness of that happenstance, the anxiety you feel about moving to a new place, a new job where no one knows you, a home that stays cold, despite the heat that reigns with long summers.

The walk to the cafe is short, but with the wind and the drizzling rain, you are miserable, your hands wrinkling from the dampness, even within your pockets.

Sigma is waiting for you, his lavender and white hair loose over his shoulders as he peruses the menu, eyes darting across it like he’s never read it before.

You sit, offer him a greeting, and though your conversation is cordial, the two of you catching up on your day, you eventually ask the question you’ve been dying to know.

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

Sigma stops, puts the utensil back down on his plate, and regards you with a thin frown. “Did something happen?”

You think of the chess piece, wonder if another will be moved when you get home. “No, but—”

“I told you not to move into that house,” he says, eyes narrowing. Sigma refuses to step into that mansion, grows anxious every time you mention it. “Over ten people have died there. Do you want to get murdered?”

“No particularly,” you say, staring at him flatly, your mouth pulling into a line. “But I’ve made it one night already. I’ll be fine.”

A hard laugh leaves him, as he shakes his head, unamused by your cheekiness. “That’s what they all say, isn’t it? Then they all die.”

“Very dramatic.” You take a long sip of your water. Sigma’s features don’t crack in the slightest as he stares at you, waiting for you to continue. “I’m not scared. I just want to know if you believe in ghosts or not… Because I don’t.”

Sigma’s eyes flit across your face, searching for any hint of a lie, for any signs of fear. When he finds none, his hands stretch across the table, lacing them together as he glares. “Whether you believe in ghosts or not doesn’t matter. There’s something evil about that house, and you’re putting yourself in danger by living there.”

The conversation with Sigma weighs on your mind for hours after, when you return home, still thinking about the chess board. It was just as you’d left it, two pawns moved forward, staring each other down menacingly. Nothing out of the ordinary.

You sigh and finally put it out of your mind. It was just a coincidence, that’s all. The piece was probably on the wrong square all along, and you’d been too tired last night to notice it.

Instead, you focus your sights on unpacking, and contemplate what to do with the portrait hanging above the mantel.

It’s a dusty old thing, one that the previous owners had, for some reason, never taken down. It had hung over the mantel for centuries, the corners faded from the sun, but the sinister grin of the subject never losing its effect.

You tilt your head, stare at it from a different angle. Looking at it that way, you could, perhaps, see why the painting appealed to them. It’s old, with a style from a different century, and the man composed of deep shadows and pale colors is undeniably handsome. He seems out of place in the portrait, trapped there, too otherworldly to be captured on such a canvas. His features are sharp, molded out of something tougher than diamonds, something more beautiful than this plane is able to comprehend. His deep eyes seem to know all as they stare at you, trace you across the room.

For minutes, you are hypnotized, before a wave of disgust washes over you, and you turn away, unable to look at it any longer. You’ll sell it, you decide. Maybe it will be worth a pretty penny.

That evening, you decide to look into it, but the search into a local art dealer doesn’t get far. When you sit down at your laptop, beginning to type your question into the browser, the lid shuts on your fingertips.

It takes a moment for you to register what had happened. A faint sting dances along the back of your hands, your knuckles tender as you lift the lid back up. Lines bounce along the screen, as if the imprint of your hand had made its way into the pixels, matching the pulse of your nerves.

You curse lowly, hoping that a reset will fix the issue.

The lid had just fallen, nothing serious. It was a newer model, but those things could happen. Issues with the manufacturing, with the way it was assembled. Technology fails you all the time.

You hold the power button, irritated, and upset, when a horrible, screeching noise echoes from the computer. Nothing but a shrill scream, the speakers begging you for help. You slam it shut once more, and the noise stops, but your heartbeat doesn’t slow down.

Shit.

Tomorrow, you’ll have to take it in, and see if anyone can discern the issues. It’s not ideal, but there’s so many things to still need to do, and a broken laptop makes those things very difficult.

You sigh, pushing the chair back into the table. The portrait looms above you as you retreat back to your room, hands shaking. It’s irrational, you know it is, but you swear his eyes follow you all the way up the stairs.

It doesn’t take long for you to start believing in the ghost that is haunting your manor, the one who has let you live for a week and who plays a new game of chess every time your back is turned. Whoever it is, they are much better than you; so far, you’ve lost twice—haven’t even gotten close to winning.

He hides things from you, items that you are needing for the next day, papers that you can’t submit to work on time because the important files have been stashed away.

You find your books opened to paragraphs the ghost seemingly finds interesting, your sheet music scattered in a mess when you return. The candles get blown out unexpectedly, and doors slam when you’re not suspecting it.

If he’s trying to scare you—it isn’t working. You remain in the house, sometimes talking to him like he’s a friend, whispering amongst the walls that know all of the secrets in your home.

You stop at the library on your free weekend, flipping through a dusty copy of the local legends, only stopping when you find your home. There’s a copy of the painting there—your painting, the one that still hangs above your mantel, despite your better judgment.

Beside it, there’s a painting of your home, done when the house was first built. The outside of it is a differently color entirely, the garden in front blooming with pink and yellow flowers. It looks cheerful; the home of a warm and loving family, inviting and kind to each of the neighborhood children. Nothing like the dark manor it is today, with a dead garden in the front and shutters that keep even an ounce of light out.

You read the pages proceeding the painting. The first owner had been a kind man, but the next were not such. After the original owner lost his wealth, he sold the house, passed it to a line of greedy men, ones that were focused only on their money. For a century, it went on this way—until a man named Fyodor Dostoevsky purchased the home for twice as much as it once was.

He was the one who changed it, renovated it, upgraded it to his own personal style, ensuring that it fit in with the times and his own opinions of luxury. Fyodor was charming, but ruthless, deadly with his own intelligence, owning half the town as they lost their money to his schemes.

Fyodor’s rein came to an end when he was poisoned by his closest friend, perhaps the one man he had trusted. It was the first murder in a string of ones to follow within the house.

You close the book, unsure if you regret the knowledge you’d gained or not.

The house feels colder now that you know the history of it. As if you can see the cruelty etched into every wall. Colors of the home bleed into each other, a pastel yellow of warmth and light, and the next room empty, almost uninhabitable, with its royal purples.

You stare at the portrait as you make dinner, feeling like you can never escape the gaze of those oil painted eyes. He has a name now—Fyodor. It feels even more disarming now that you know more about him than he’ll ever know about you.

And though Fyodor watches you, every night, from every angle, you convince yourself it’s just the way that the painting is situated. It would be foolish to think that he’s really watching every move you make, irises pinned on your form, unblinking.

The oven heats up behind you as you cut up your food, humming a soft tune to yourself. It’s getting hotter outside – you’d almost forgotten how miserable the summers could be. You forget every year, even though you’ve lived many.

Just as you’re getting lost in your thoughts, going through a list of things that need to get done in your fixer-upper home, you hear a scratch behind you.

It’s a quick sound, so quick that you almost think it was only your imagination. It’s enough to give you pause, your humming fading out into the night as your eyes dart around your house. Although you’ve tried not to let urban legends get the best of you, you’re paranoid in this aged mansion now.

A few seconds pass. You listen to the sound of your own heartrate, feel it pounding in your chest as you will it to calm down. It’s just enough time for you to convince yourself that it was nothing, that you’re far too nervous about silly ghosts to think rationally.

Though as you turn, a knife flies from the counter, just grazing your cheek, but enough to cause a scratch to open up against the skin. Your finger draws away scarlet as you press it to the wound, staring at the painted crevices of your fingertip.

You can’t move. Despite every cell in your body begging, screaming at you to move, you’re frozen, trapped in the four walls of that kitchen as you stare at your bloodied hand.

It’s all a dream, you repeat to yourself. A dream.

One that you don’t wake up from.

Time passes strangely, when every muscle in your body is on edge, your head pounding from the anxiety that spikes throughout your nervous system. A bead of sweat drips from your temple, and though you aren’t sure how long you stand there, nothing else happens. The knife remains lodged in the wall behind you, and the ghost makes no other attempt to lodge one into your stomach.

It’s quiet. There’s no noise, save for the music that plays softly from your phone.

After you regain control of your racing heartrate, you realize that the song playing isn’t what you’d put on originally. It had switched to a gentle, classical piece. Tchaikovsky, you think… or something similar. Something that a man from a different era would be familiar with.

“Who’s there?” You find yourself saying, perhaps stupidly. “What do you want?”

There’s no response – of course there isn’t. You’re talking to the air. To a ghost. No one had gotten inside the house. You’d checked more than enough times, just as you always did.

“I live here now,” you offer, thinking that, perhaps anger is not the best course of action. Neither is fear, though, if the scary movies you’d watched as a teenager had been any indication. “But I’ll leave, if you want me to.”

There’s no answer to that either.

You sigh, and deflate once more, trying to make yourself believe that there was a logical explanation to knives flying and playlists changing. Just as you’d made yourself believe that everything the “ghost” had done before was just a game, innocently played.

Perhaps, there was never a ghost at all. It could be that stress is driving you to insanity.

With a glass of wine in your hand, you finish up dinner, feeling like you are at your wit’s end. How is it that only a few weeks in this house has already singed your mind, turned you into a believer of things that you are not?

The portrait feels like an omen, staring at you with violet eyes, as you wonder where Fyodor is now. Does he watch you when your home, cooking, as you shower, a vicious gaze tracing over each curve of your body, with a sickening thought of all the things he wishes to do to you?

You shiver. It’ s been a while since anyone’s looked at you with a hint of desire. The feeling has become foreign, now, but you can still recall the gratification that comes with being wanted, how it makes you feel, if only for a moment, comfortable in your own skin.

That thought alone quickly snaps you out of your irrational behavior. Thinking of a ghost wanting you? A man that had been buried in the earth for so long that his body would be nothing more than bones?

This house was making you sick, you concluded, wrapping your leftovers up in plastic and tinfoil, placing them in the fridge. Your nervous friend was right – you never should’ve moved into this house, and you never should have stayed this long.

Your hands shook along the banister, heart racing around every corner. You expected that, maybe, you would see a dark-haired spirit there, his body translucent, but still corporeal. Though, there was no spirit hiding within the depths of the shadows, lurking in the places where he still belonged. No sounds startled you, caused you to jump as you brushed your teeth, completed the one last routine of your day.

The bed was colder than usual as you climbed into it, like a flush of a cold spot had settled within the sheets. You remembered what they said about temperatures and ghosts—how they changed, nothing able to survive in the places that they haunted, as they were not of this world, but something in between, something unnatural.

Your lamp flickers as you turn it on, and it’s just one more red flag you choose to ignore. In houses as old as this one, there are issues like that. The wiring is faulty, the electric needs to be monitored, a laundry list of items you will probably never resolve.

There are a thousand rational conclusions, though, and only one irrational one, which puts your mind at ease. Things like flickering lamps and cold spots can be explained simply, even if knives flying at your face cannot.

Still, you settle into bed, deciding that you will talk to the realtor again soon. You’ll move in with Sigma if he’ll have you. Anything to put your mind at ease for good.

That night, you dream of Fyodor, as if he is there right in the room with you, looming above you with those deep, violent eyes. His fingers, long and pale, trace across your cheekbones, as your eyes flutter open, consciousness coming back to you.

He says your name – it’s no surprise he knows it, after living with you for so long. It’s spoken softly, with a hint of possession behind it, like you belong to him. And yet, you’ve never said a word to him, even if all this time, he’s gotten to know you better than anyone else ever has.

You expect a scream to leave your throat, some hint of surprise, of fear, even, to see a stranger in your bedroom. To see him watching you with those familiar eyes, hair falling over his pale forehead as he gazes down at you from the edge of the bed.

No sound emerges.

Your mind feels a little fuzzy, hazy at the edges as you blink at him, closer to a state of intoxication, than you are alertness. Despite that awareness, you can’t seem to snap out of it; maybe you don’t want to. Instead, you sink deeper into the warmth, the honeyed feeling that comes with turning off your rationality. Everything feels as if it’s coming through in blurred, rosy glasses.

“Fyodor,” you mouth, instead of the scream that you’d anticipated, his name coming out in two wistful syllables.

You should hate him – there’s something in your instincts pushing back at you. A flash of a knife, the days of chaos and uncertainty, where you were sure you were losing your mind, come back at you.

But none of that seems to matter now, as you trace your finger across his cheek, feeling the sharp indent below the high bone. His eyelashes are a shade lighter than his hair, soft as they flutter over his forehead. The portrait of him didn’t do him justice… or perhaps, it is in death that he has found his purest form.

“I’m too tired.”

You’re not sure where those words even come from. Calm, like this is nothing but routine, and waking up with Fyodor beside you is the closest thing to normalcy.

He smiles at you, leaning over you again on the bed, lips pulled tightly together in a morbid grin. It does little to sour your mood, to scare you into action, even if you can’t quite understand why.

“I know,” he replies.

It’s the first time you’ve heard him speak, a deep, accented sound smoothing against your ears as he traces his gaze against each of your features; musical, almost. His voice calms you, lulls you back into a meditative state.

You reach for him, in a trance, and twirl a strand of his hair between your finger, just to see if he’d let you. After the hell you’d been through the past week, well – was it really that miserable? He seems content to watch over you, observe the gentle movements of his dark hair coiled up around your pointer finger.

“Why are you here?” you ask, your voice softer than a whisper, carried away by the wind until it never existed at all.

Fyodor never disappears from your line of sight, even when you try to blink, to close your eyes. He’s there, gazing at you with a lustful fondness, one that’s dangerous, perhaps even malicious. If it’s a dream, it sure feels like a vivid one.

“You wanted to leave,” he says, taking your finger away from his face, before bringing it to his lips. The kiss is barely there, and his mouth is cold, chapped, from the brutality of the afterlife. “I couldn’t let you do that.”

“Hm?” You try to sit up. It takes more effort than it should’ve – you’re so relaxed, so weak, that you fall back down, letting yourself sink into the plushness of the pillow. “Why?”

Fyodor releases your hand, before touching his own finger to your mouth. It’s slender, like a piece of ice, gently parting your lips before grazing your chin, hovering over your neck. Then, he drops his touch to your collarbone. He stakes a claim on every inch of your skin, pausing as he reaches your chest, still covered by the blankets.

Your clothing is thin – it wouldn’t take much effort to get his cool hands on your bare skin. But he refrains, still smiling before answering your question, tucking his hands together onto his lap. “It’s been so long.”

It doesn’t make sense, but you can’t muster up the effort to question him, not when he’s contemplating every word, like he’s hesitant to scare you away. You let him think, watch him ponder, as you stare, too exhausted to move a muscle.

“I thought you’d be like all the rest,” he says, taking a seat next to you on the bed, nearly touching your hip. “They were nothing but filth, stains in these halls. It’s a crime for them to ever think that they belonged here. In my home.”

You blink. “It’s my home, too,” you say, suddenly filled with an immense amount of dread. It crawls up your neck, chokes you, and nothing leaves you but garbled sounds, as you panic.

Fyodor doesn’t move – there is no twitch in his features, as he watches you with disguised adoration, a kind you didn’t think a ghost capable of revealing. “Of course it is, darling,” he says, so softly, it could’ve been mistaken for kindness. Fyodor leans down, presses his cold, dead lips to your cheek, a kiss of death. “That’s why I couldn’t let you leave. It’s your home. You belong here.”

“Right,” you breath, steadying yourself, before nodding. “My home.” Once more, you gaze around the room, your eyes flicking over every surface. Things are exactly as you’d left them, nothing out of place. “With you?”

The ghost smiles, and reaches out to you, finally helping you into a seated position. Your neck is so stiff, in pain, and you roll it around, feeling nothing there when you expect shifting bones. “With me,” Fyodor confirms, running his icy fingertips across your throat, tangling them with your hair.

He leans into you, pressing a lingering kiss to your mouth, one that catches you off balance, before you accept it with an eagerness that surprises you further. It doesn’t feel unfamiliar, instead, it’s as if you’re coming home, like the man you’ve never seen until now was always meant to find you.

A thought that should’ve scared you, even though it doesn’t.

Fyodor pulls away, right as you begin to shift forward, maneuver yourself onto his lap. “You should rest,” he replies, keeping you at a distance. “It might take some time to adjust.”

“Hm? What do you mean?” you blink, holding onto his wrist as your gaze shifts from his impossibly dark eyes to the mirror across the room.

There, in the darkness of the evening, shrouded in moonlight, you can see your reflection staring back at you, eyes vacant, lifeless. You expect to see yourself as nothing but exhausted, but when you draw your gaze across the image of yourself, there is blood seeping from your neck, a stream of scarlet. There is thick gash across your throat, slashed so deep that it would’ve killed you instantly.

The expression on your face shifts from one of calm to horror, as you scrape at your neck, trying to clear off the blood that isn’t really there, the permanent wound that will follow you even into your death.

“What did you do?” you scream, tears rolling down your cheeks, even though you can’t feel them, can only see them in the mirror. “What did you do to me?”

Fyodor smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners. Though you fight against him, he takes you into his arms, and you are too weak to fight him off. “I told you,” Fyodor says, shushing you, running his palm over your head as you scream. “I couldn’t let you leave.”

thank you for reading !

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 7 months

Note

I have a light one that’s kind of dumb.

🐶🐱

AITA for wanting a dog even though my sister/housemate does not?

To start, nobody is allergic to dogs or has a fear of them, she just doesn’t want it.

(if ages and gender are important, we’re both f in our early 20s)

I grew up on a farm with lots of animals. There were always cows, I had goats, there were chickens, ducks, barn cats and of course, 1-3 livestock guard dogs at a time.

When I was 16, I had a senior spaniel who had to be put down due to heart problems. Ever since I have been asking if I can have another dog but my parents have said no.

Around a year ago now I sold my goats and moved out of my parents house into an apartment. The apartment didn’t allow any pet bigger than my little gecko.

Then, about January, my older sister started messaging me with images of houses on a realtor site. So we looked at houses. I agreed to buy a house with her 1) so she could move out of our parents house and 2) because being by myself in the apartment with no real friends wasn’t really that good for my mental health.

To her credit, she did get a kitten from our farm and let me keep it, although I didn’t really want a house cat. The main reason I wanted a dog was for the amount of exercise it would need, and I would have to take it for long walks. Not to mention litter boxes aren’t my favourite thing to deal with. Still, I am glad I have a little animal to cuddle.

Additionally, most of the times when I bring up wanting a dog or getting a dog, it’s either in a jokey matter or it’ll be in contrast to something (for example there was a shady guy hanging around our street the other night and we don’t have an actual alarm for our house, so I went “yknow if we had a yappy little chihuahua it would be an alarm enough” or something like that) to which she will reply something short and growly along the lines of “you’re never getting a dog in my house”

Her reasons she gives for not wanting a dog? Number one, it’s “her” house. (It’s in both of our names, I paid half the down deposit and I pay half the mortgage and bills, and I pay for the Wifi. I’m not paying her rent, we both own it) Number 2, her friend is allergic to horses. (A friend that never comes over to our house anyway, and I understand fur allergies are complicated but it’s a dog. We aren’t anywhere NEAR horses! We live in town!) (this one is also BS because sister wants to buy a farm and have Clydesdale horses) Number 3, it sheds. We have a cat. The cat sheds more than the breeds of dogs that I really like or want. One of my favourites are the Xolo dog. Which has no hair. At all. Number 4, the cat is scared of dogs. (She isn’t. She’s never seen one in her life. I can get her used to having a dog around easily, even if she starts afraid. I’ve done it before when our parents have gotten new dogs around new cats.)

I’m not going to go behind her back and bring home a dog (even though there have been opportunities to get a free puppy multiple time) but I’m not going to stop wanting to have a dog or wanting to get one or talking about what dogs I like.

Our grandparents are moving to town and selling their farm next year, which sister wants to buy with me. I told her I’d like to move out of town into a farm, but only if she let me get either a dog or a donkey to protect our property against coyotes. (Especially considering we both want chickens if we get a farm)

She got really pissy at me about that, and stormed off. AITA here? I think she’s being a little unreasonable. I’m not a bad pet owner at all, I work with my animals as much as possible. I had my billy goat following me around the farm without a lead before I sold the goats, for pineapple’s sakes!

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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mystycalypso · 1 month

Text

Return to Ravenbrooks: Biography

Entry 2

Name: Nicholas Michael Roth

Date of Birth: 1997

Gender: M

Current Address: [REDACTED]

Height: 5'6 (5'3 when hunched)

Hair color: Brown

Eye color: Brown

Key features: Freckles, Messy hair, 5 o'clock shadow, hunched posture, goggles

Role: Spy

Abilities: Lock picking, pickpocketing, sneaking, gadget inventing, climbing, crafting

Occupation: N/A

Status: Stunted

Biography:

I couldn't find a reaction to the blue home that pulled into view in front of me. As far as I knew it wouldn't be our house for long.

It never was. It seemed like every summer we were packing up again. Another school year, another house, another happy realtor welcoming us to the town.

He looked back at me from the mirror, a smile on his face while we slid into the driveway. "Chin up Narf! Yknow with any luck-" I fought the urge to finish the sentence. It was the same every time. "This'll be it! No more boxes, no more moving trucks!"

I remember sitting on the curb, staring at everything and nothing. He sat next to me, pulling the brim of my cap down over my eyes. "You doing alright, Narf?" I was silent. He waited patiently for a minute, then let out a soft sigh. "I know it's hard moving so much." Most of his words are fuzzy now. But I can remember the warmth of his voice, the weight of the gift he put in my hand. It made a metal clunk. Like the box of drill bits he kept around. But it wasn't drill bits. It was something much better. More useful.

I'll forever be thankful for that gift. Those lockpicks have done me so much good over these years. Without them, I'd never have met Aaron, and I might not even be here today.

When that summer had come around again, it was a surprise to not see any packing. No for sale signs, nothing.

For a few months believed he'd been right. That I'd end up growing up in this house, just across the street from my best friend and his little sister. I thought we'd go on looking for supernatural mysteries in the town until we were too old to believe in them.

Why couldn't that have been the end of it?

Why did I have to wake up that night to my mother's bloodcurdling scream?

Why did I run downstairs?

Why did I have to see his body in such a state?

The windows were open, the curtains billowing wildly in the wind. Those birds were- everywhere. It felt like they were watching us. If I hadn't woken up, maybe they would've fed on my mother too, in her fainted state.

"Natural causes," they told us. Nothing they could do.

Mom tried to keep it together, to keep calm despite everything. But the house, it was too much. Just being in the same room brought her to hysterics. And I...I could barely understand it all back then.

Everyone in town knew what happened in our house. Despite everything they did to "fix it". The new bright orange coat of paint wouldn't be enough to sell it. At least- I thought so for so long. Heck, I didn't believe it when I saw the "sold" sticker. It was only when I saw them from the chimney of Mr. Peterson's house that I realized it had really happened. That something had really changed. I just didn't know how much.

#welcome to raven brooks #hello neighbor welcome to raven brooks #hello neighbor #hello neighbor fanart #hello neighbor au #rtrb #return to ravenbrooks #artist #digital art #hnas #drawing #artists on tumblr #nicky hello neighbor #hello neighbor nicky #nicky roth #nicky roth hello neighbor #au #alternate universe

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henneseyhoe · 2 years

Text

Unexpected Expected Guest

Killmonger X BLACK!FEM!reader.

WARNINGS :SMUT, slight spiritualism, vampire/ghost!killmonger,profanities(obvi), use of the Nword, all that spooky Halloween shit too lmao.

Summary :reader is curious about the history of the house she just moved into, so she digs deep into it with the help of google and her “witch” friend.

3:00 AM, 𝐒𝐮𝐧, 𝐨𝐜𝐭 31𝐬𝐭.

My clock read, making me sigh in annoyance. I sucked my teeth "this shit do not work, takin' my ass to bed" I mumbled to myself, blowing out the candles I had lit about an hour ago, all seven of them sitting in a circle around a destroyed picture.

The picture contained a man, his face scribbled out completely with all of the corners of the Polaroid ripped. I found the picture laying around just outside of my door, sitting there on my porch.

since then I never stopped obsessing over it. I've had reoccurring dreams, waking up in a pool of sweat because of how every dream ended. With me getting bit by some creature, the unknown being sucking the life out of me with its sharp fangs. Worse part is that I enjoyed the image, not only the image, but the feeling.

You could clearly tell the picture was old, along with proof on the back of it, a date being written out.

'1965' it read, my curiosity becoming overwhelming.

𝐒𝐚𝐭, 𝐨𝐜𝐭 25𝐭𝐡.

"That's weird right? Like who just leaves a picture on a strangers doorstep" I spoke to my friend 'Eboni' while wiping down my kitchens counters

"okay, hear me out Y/N, I know you don't do that witchy shit, but that ain't no mistake. somebodies trynna get your attention" I heard my friend from the other side, her conclusion making me roll my eyes and shake my head.

"Eboni, if you think I'm finna 'call upon' a random ass nigga you out of yo damn mind! He can kiss my ass and stay where the fuck he at!" I argued, my dishwashers door falling open with a loud 'bang', the sound of my plates clicking together accompanying the startling sound, all of it happening simultaneously to me ending my sentence.

I jumped back slightly and glared over at the appliance before walking over and closing it, continuing to listen to my friend.

"Y/N! This is serious! You know you just moved in and literally told me to my face that something was off, and you know after you got that picture it wasn't the first time you had a dream like that in that damn house. What if summoning it is the only way it'll leave? That shit is very possible, you know?"

I thought about it for a moment before groaning, stomping my feet as I walked into my living room

"...fine! Damn!".

I knew the trouble I was getting into, somewhat, but that didn't stop me. Just like how I knew there was something about this house before I moved in, which made me think back to the day I signed the papers for the five bedroom house. Thinking, the stories still didn't stop me.

𝐓𝐮𝐞, 𝐀𝐮𝐠 12𝐭𝐡.

"So for legal reasons, before you sign this lease, I am supposed to tell you that somebody did pass in this house, which is why it's so cheap, but before you rip the paper up, this house has been blessed and saged from in and out! There was never any problems before, but we wanted to double check!" My realtor explained in her thick southern accent, smiling as I stared at her like she was crazy before looking back at the house.

"Um...what exactly happened to this person?" I asked, my eyebrows raising. The woman shrugged, still smiling widely "no idea! But I assure you the house is clean, it's been about 59 years since anything happened, make it 60 when halloween hits actually. A happy family has lived here for 2 years and now they wanna sell, so is it still a deal?" She asked and I sighed, thinking while looking down at the legal papers, a pen in hand.

"..yeah, deal" I spoke, signing the papers with a quick 'flick' of my wrist.

3:33 AM, 𝐒𝐮𝐧, 𝐨𝐜𝐭 31𝐬𝐭.

I woke up in a sweat once again, turning over to look at my clock. '27 minutes of sleep without interruption. That's a record' I thought, a sudden pain striking my abdomen. "shit" I breathed. My clothes were damp against my skin, my thighs clenched tightly to make an attempt at trying to stop my second heart beat.

I looked back up at the ceiling, only to be surprised by the floating being; a man above me, his eyes glowing an electric blue as a sinister grin was plastered on his face, his fangs making the expression more prominent.

My eyebrows furrowed and my mouth widened before anything could come out, my expression beating my scream to the punch. "OH SHIT!" I scream at the top of my lungs, jumping up out of my bed.

I tripped over tangled covers while attempting to run for the door, tears already falling down my face. My hand made contact with the door handle, the limb immediately being jerked back as the metal knob glowed red with heat, burning my hand.

'SHIT!'.

I quickly turned, backing myself back against the door as I sobbed, crouching down and cowering.

the man nonchalantly sat on my dresser, crossing his legs. His clothes had a slick, elegant style to it, his body giving off a slight cologne scent that I could smell from where I was sitting. he was wearing a suit, the black blazer being open to show his plain, halfway opened, white button up, his pants being leather to match his black boots along with a literal chain and lock around his neck as an accessory.

"I like when you look scared, it’s cute" he spoke, an evil chuckle exiting his mouth as he watched me "who- who are you?" I stuttered, my body shaking intensely.

"Who am I? WHO. am. I?! You out here summoning niggas and don't even know they name? I could have been satan himself coming to personally drag you down to hell with me" he went on, jumping down from the wooden drawers and slowly inching his way over to me with a swaggered walk, his hands stuffed in his pocket.

"why, I'm the 'nigga' you've had imaginary beef with for like a month or so, but you can call me Kill, Killmonger, Erik, Daddy, whichever you prefer, doll” he responded and paused, looking down at me. “…Ya know, you talk a lot of shit for a mortal who can't fight" he teased, bending down into my face, shock being written all over my body language as my jaw hung low, my eyes being so wide that they could pop out like gum balls and my cheeks being stained with tears.

"Now what was that about me kissing your ass? I'd like to take up that offer since I'm here. in the flesh" he smiled, his pearly whites gleaming in the moonlight shining from my window.

"I-I-..I'm sorry...I didn't know you were real.." I cried quietly, his eyes rolling. "okay see, I purposely scared you earlier, but now you doing a little much" he leaned up, looking down at me as I wiped my tears, still shaking.

"Stop. shaking." he demanded, backing up as I was lifted out of my crouched position, the shock I already had ignoring the fact that it wasn't me who made my body move like that.

"I said stop." He snapped his fingers in front of my face, my body immediately stopping its movements with my heartbeat slowing down tremendously, my demeanor completely changing and becoming more chill.

I heard every beat of my heart in my ears, every pulse getting louder than the other.

"Much better. So now that I'm here, I wanna talk a little before I get to business. Any questions?" He asked, floating over to the end of my bed and sitting down, crossing his legs once again.

I carefully walk back over to my bed, sitting down as I try to comprehend the moment, yet it was like my brain wouldn’t let me on purpose.

"...what happened to you...and why are you still here?" I ask with almost zero thought behind it. He shrugged before answering. "don't know, honestly. Apparently I was murdered, but all I remember is waking up and BOOM!" He exclaimed loudly, leaning over to me while adding a dramatic pause "..I'm in hell" he stared, his eyes glowing once again before bursting into laughter, watching my terrified reaction "I'm joking. Dead people have amazing sense of humor dont we?" I blinked, still being confused.

He stopped laughing and his face straightened "...I didn't go to hell, obviously, and my ex girlfriend killed me. You can guess how" he explained and gestured to the chain around his neck. I nodded, finally understanding "okay...why?" I asked, the entity letting out a chuckle "let's just say I was very lucky with ladies"

I hummed, nodding again before tilting my head "...so why do you have a problem with me?"

He tilted his head back at me "Problem? I don't. It's not like I hate you or something, I just like fuckin’ around. ain't shit else to do when you're DEAD... but now that I'm HERE, I can finally be free, thanks to yo nosy ass and your witch ass friend" he smiled, his fangs making their third appearance tonight.

"Cool, it was nice talking to you then" I smiled slightly, a nervous feeling rising in my stomach as he shook his head 'no'

"Nah. I can't just...leave" he blinked "...whatchu mean? Yes you can" I squinted and he shook his head again "nope. I can't. See, you summoned me out of curiosity because your friend didn't give you enough information to execute this correctly, I'm guessing, and if I'm correct you didn't even read about me or either you didn't read enough. You want me to leave? Give me an offering" he explained.

"...fine. What do you want?" I asked with a slight attitude, being annoyed with how I actually had to work for him to leave.

He thought, humming "...bring me a body, a fresh body. I don't want anybody cold or dirty, so try not to bring me anyone with a drug or drinking pro-"

I interrupted him "wait— are you asking for a dead person?" My eyebrows knitted together in worry as I watched a smile fall upon his face, his teeth peeking out from under his lips

"Well..not dead exactly, I can do my own dirty work apart from getting them, I just need you to bring them to me. what'd you think I was asking for, silly?" He tilted his head with sarcasm, my head shaking.

"I'm sorry, I can't do that for you. I can't just go out and lure somebody in my house, that's disgusting!" he pouted and got up from the edge of the bed, turning to me with a sigh "well then there's no other way. too bad I gotta take you with me now" he leaned in, his eyes glowing a fear striking red now.

"Please! I'll do anything but that!" I screamed, backing up away from him, my back hitting the hard, wooden headboard. his movements paused as his eyes turned back to a midnight black, the red swirling around his iris before disappearing completely.

"Anything? And you mean anything, correct?" He asked and I nodded, a smirk carving in on his face as he began to chuckle, a deep voiced echo fallowing behind every laugh "why didn't you say that before, love?"

He grabbed my wrists and pinned me to the bed, my night set being ripped apart from my bottoms to my bra without him moving a finger

My thoughts ran wild as he began kissing me roughly as if he had been starving for any type of physical touch. His skin was soft and warm, comforting in a sense as he grazed his fingertips across my bare stomach. his lips went from mine to my neck, laying tender kisses across my jawline and collarbones before licking his way back up. His tongue swirled around over places he had left a kiss until he had came up to my chin, the tip of his tongue flicking up once he finally got to the end.

Almost as if only seconds passed by, he had already been going down on me, roughly pulling me to the edge of the bed by my ankles and putting them up to the sky. he pinned my thighs to the mattress, cupping the underside of my knees before he began going to work, his warm tongue swirling around my clit at an agonizing slow pace. The tip of his tongue did figure eights on my bundle of nerves, making me gasp and arch my back, my reaction encouraging him to go faster with flicking his tongue.

As time went on, he began slipping fingers inside of me. First one, then two, then it was his tongue, slowly sliding them in and aiming upwards for my gspot. The pressure inside of me built up with every thrust of his fingers, my stomach sucking in. "Oh— fuck!" I moaned, air being caught in my throat as I leaned up a bit, looking down at him just to make eye contact with the man himself. He had been watching the whole time, watching how my body reacted to ever motion.

"cum for me?" He asked before attaching his lips back around my clit and humming, his eyelids lowering while the whites of his eyes gained a bright glow as I finally let go, not even being able to answer his question as I came all over his fingers, a loud gasp escaping my throat. He leaned up and my legs immediately clamped together, my orgasm still hitting hard for me as his fingers slid back out of my body. He looked down at me and licked his fingers clean, humming at the taste.

I breathed hard, trying to catch my breath "done?" I asked, trying to cover my body with my sheet, the material not budging from the bed "nope." He simply answered, kneeling on the bed and beginning to crawl closer to me.

I backed away hesitantly, my stomach steady churning with tension once I had made contact with the headboard.

"Stay still for me. You'll make a good partner for eternity" he mumbled quietly, smirking to himself.

#killmonger fanfiction #killmonger x reader #killmonger fic #erik kilmonger x reader #michael b jordan #black panther #black!fem!reader #black fanfic writer #killmonger smut #smut masterlist #masterlist #black actors #18+ only #black reader #black!oc #black!reader #black fanfiction #halloween smut #henneseyhoe

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maleyanderecafe · 6 months

Note

I'm recently entering the world of yanderes men in games, and I started with John doe! Then I played house hunted. But, there are two endings where John doe knows you, do you know which one is canonical?

Oh boy, okay. While I have played John Doe and John Doe+, I never really went into their other games (besides Frost Bite) so I decided to play the two House Hunted games and hoo boy, they are interesting. The first one leans more into horror and what the creatures of House Hunted is while the other one is more of an April Fools one that tells a lot more about John Doe, though I think overall that one is much more fleshed out. I'll go over brief summaries of the two games for House Hunted though before giving my opinion.

House Hunted (the first one) starts out with you going to a city to live at an apartment. After wandering around, eating at a cafe or going straight to the apartment, you are stopped by one Maison Talos, the number one realtor who wants to sell you a house. You decline of course as you already have an apartment. However, upon going there, you find that your apartment is locked and after calling the company find out there's been some trouble so they either need to find a hotel or wait until they can unlock it. From there you can either wander around until you can get back in or meet with Maison. If you decide to go into the house, you find that Maison Talos is actually the house itself, luring you in to eat you. The body he presents is really just a shell used to lure people like you into the house. We find also that the town is actually full of realtors like himself who lure unsuspecting people in to eat them. If you do manage to survive by not going into the house, John Doe ends up spotting you. It's also mentioned that you are starting your job at the gas station tomorrow if you do survive.

The second House Hunted game follows a similar thread of you going to a new town and getting locked out of your apartment, but now with new characters. The realtor that tries to get you to a house is named Heim Baile, but unlike Maison is much more incompetent. You pretty much can tell he's really shady and he doesn't do a good job to hide that he's not a person (considering you can see his cord behind him), but unlike Maison, if you do visit his house, he will actually let you live and watch TV with you, even if you insult him. In one ending, he even asks you out on a date, which is cute. We also meet the mayor's assistant as well as a divorced salary man. The main attraction that we're here for is John Doe of course, as we spot what looks like a cat in the town center. Following it will reveal it's not a cat but rather a black furball with a single eye. He ends up transforming to his human self, except messing up his eye, making him look more like a cyclops. He seems really eager to meet you again despite you not remembering him, and seems to be trying his best to act human despite the obvious one eye. He seems very energetic and is happy hoping to meet you again in the future.

To be honest, I think this might be one of those games that puts John Doe as an easter egg, either in an AU type of way or in the look at my other games kind of way considering that there are also cameos from other games in this one as well (specifically the second one). However, if I were going to be more technical about it, I think that they would both be cannon, and it does make sense for John Doe. In John Doe+ we do find out that John Doe does have the ability to not only make you repeat the same day without any memory of the previous loop, but also change the perception of reality, as he can change his appearance to be more friendly. So it's not a big stretch to think that in both House Hunted worlds, that you is just experiencing the same day over and over again, which is why John Doe might remember them and they don't remember him. That's all just speculation and slightly based off of this collection of twitter posts relating to John Doe lore, but it is confirmed that House Hunted games are supposed to come before the John Doe games, so he has known you for quite a while.

If anyone can find anything on which one is actually canon, that would be nice too! John Doe is really cute in this game and so is Heim in a more awkward pathetic but still a good mannered guy kind of way.

#asks #yandere #male yandere #yandere boy #house hunted #john doe

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so-i-did-this-thing · 1 year

Text

Moving update

I'm grateful to the folks checking in on me and @crowtoed and thought I'd drop a quick update.

We're almost done putting all non-essentials in storage. The many bins are an investment in case we have to do this again. (I have already started researching shipping containers for an overseas move.) I'm going to buy storage unit insurance this week because I have more valuables stowed away than standard homeowners will cover.

My storage unit is almost the same size as the moving truck, which makes it easy to guage if I have to purge/store anything that won't fit. I'm going to hire the biggest trailer from upack.com when it's time to leave. The prices are amazing - less than $4k to move to Connecticut.

The Florida realtor (a condo expert) is viewing my place tomorrow, and with her advice, we'll start on final repairs/refreshes (this place is 23 years old, about when things like windows and tile get rather iffy). My mother graciously gifted me money to cover the majority of the fixes. This move would be a lot harder without her help.

Mom is also letting us stay short-term in her MiL suite a few towns over, so we can sell my condo asap. That means we don't have to worry about timing the purchase of the new house with closing on the old. Plus, I should have a few paychecks rent-free I can sock away / apply towards mutual aid.

We're hoping the condo sells by June or so. Once that happens, I'll use some of the funds towards old debt to nudge my credit rating ever closer to 800 (it's 778 rn, a multi-year project as I used to be in the 400s). Most of the rest of the money will be earmarked for a generous down payment on the new home.

We're still looking in Connecticut and have a realtor there as well. If it's possible, we can afford to fly up a few times to check out houses. The realtor told us our budget for what we want (1500sq ft or larger) is totally doable. The housing market there is weirdly reasonable.

Work is incredibly kind and has said if I need more than 2 weeks to move, I can take whatever time I need. I am fully remote now and blessed to be part of such a progressive company.

We still have some household and personal things to sell, but it's more out of "I no longer like/need this" than an urgent need for money. But thank you to everyone who has offered cash. It means so much to us to have such a strong safety net. If this happened even 5 years ago, we'd have been up shit creek.

Once we close on the new house, we'll drive up asap to move in. This is when we'll know our route and we'll connect with folks along it who have offered to be pitstops for us and the cats. The moving truck will meet us there in 5-7 business days after we leave Orlando.

My HRT Rx also got renewed for 6 months, and with my current stash + a little rationing, I shouldn't have any interruption with my shots, even if pharmacies start refusing me come July.

We're hoping to be all settled in the new home come October, but are dependant on the housing market. But we're stacking as many chips in our favor as we can.

Again, thank you, thank you to everyone who has reached out. I'll update again when something major changes.

#trans stuff #rrramblings #love you all

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cutesyscreenname · 2 months

Text

The Last Great American Dynasty: Chapter 1

This Was The Very First Page

Series summary:

Addiction, deadlines, a nasty divorce. In an effort to shed your skin and find yourself again, you pack up and move to a historic seaside home across the country. It's all a blur, you're hurting and spinning your wheels in a big house all alone. Until Frankie shows up on your doorstep.

Pairing: Frankie Catfish Morales x AFAB Reader

Rating: 18+ MDNI

Word Count: 1709

Warnings: allusions to former drug use, mention of divorce, not too much to warn of yet we just getting started bby

Notes: I hope we all have a marvelous time and I don't ruin everything 💀 I've been gone for a long ass time, taking baby steps getting back into things.

Also much thanks to @pr0ximamidnight for helping flesh this out (aka letting me rant at her until it came together) and @mydailyhyperfixations, @joelsgreys, and @mylostloversbookmarks for also listening to me ramble 😂 lub u 🩵💙

Chapter One Playlist 🎶📻⚓🌊⛵🎶

This was the very first page

Not where the story line ends

My thoughts will echo your name

Until I see you again

It feels pretentious to drive across the country like this when you don't have to. In fact it was a struggle to do so - insisting and arguing with everyone that you wanted, no - needed to. You could feel the eyes rolling behind your back, hear the sarcastic thoughts unspoken.

Who does she think she is, Kerouac?

Truthfully you just wanted the white noise of wind, pavement, and your Spotify playlist of guilty pleasure pop songs, too occupied by operating a motor vehicle to check the deluge of emails and texts that had been pouring in for months.

A Tale of Two Addicts

Best Selling Author Loses Control of Her Own Narrative

Authoring Her Own Disaster: Detox and Divorce

How could you blame them when the headlines practically wrote themselves?

“So let me get this straight. Not only am I not getting new pages, you’re putting this project on hold to move to the east coast so you can - what? - live out some whimsical seaside fantasy?”

You sat in your office chair, surrounded by stacks of cardboard boxes, pen hovering above the signature line of your divorce papers like a memoir you don’t want to take ownership of as your editor sighs at you over speakerphone.

“I’m doing what they told me to do in therapy, Miles. I’m changing the scenery, starting over. It’s difficult to write any pages for you if I’m too catatonically depressed to get out of bed. Take it as good news, a strategic move. Literally.”

The house has a history. That’s the reason you’d chosen it, frankly. You’d discussed the listings with your realtor over the phone, clicking through the pictures as they recounted the amenities and specs of each property.

“And then there’s the Harkness house…”

If her goal was to intrigue you she’d accomplished it tenfold, having you on the hook for every sordid detail as she regaled you with the story of a widowed heiress making a splash of scandal through the coastal town with her extravagance. She leaned into the impropriety of it all, trying to sell you with gossip, but all you heard was the story of a woman who had reclaimed her life after losing love. Perhaps the house held that energy in its foundation. Maybe if she did it there, so could you.

Pulling up the winding driveway you almost feel a page turn, a fresh start. Then the moving van crunches gravel behind you and your phone pings with a missed call from your lawyer, breaking the spell of your daydream.

It’s been a long day already, an endless stream of delays and snafus. Missing parts and tedious tinkering with finicky engines has left Frankie a mess of sweat, grease, and frustration. The sigh of a long day finally finished whistles out as he climbs the stairs to the office, ready to hand in a few leaves of paperwork and drag himself home when the sound of muffled conversation gives him pause.

“She’s ruining everything, we’ve all but flown in the film crew and we hardly have half a film without that house in it!”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ray, she could be perfectly cooperative. We don’t know-”

“It’s for fucking NETFLIX, Tim. I won’t be made to look foolish by some scandalous, self important, Hollywood-”

“And you won’t. Let’s just give her the packet, for all we know we could have signed papers come Monday morning.”

That’s all Frankie hears before the desire to get out of there steers his body back toward the stairs. I can turn these in on Monday, not worth the hassle...

Before his steel toe can touch the second step, though, the door swings open and a booming voice sounds behind him.

“Ah! Mr. Morales! Good timing, son. You pass the Harkness house on your way out of here, don’t you?”

The question is moot, the offices and hangar located along the coast such that there’s practically no choice but to pass the seaside estate if you want to reach the town and its modest sprawl of surrounding neighborhoods.

“I do, sir.”

“Then it’s meant to be. I’m sure you’ve heard that it’s newly occupied and we have a…welcome packet of sorts…for the new owner but the courier’s service is closed. Would you mind dropping this off on your way home?”

Tim, the more even keeled of the two executives that frequent these offices, hands over a manilla envelope without waiting for an answer, traces of engine grease still clinging to Frankie's skin leaving faint fingerprints on the hefty packet. The man cuts in again before Frankie can open his mouth to speak.

“Is the jet ready for takeoff in the morning? We’re expected in New York by eleven.”

Frankie studies the name on the envelope for a long moment before looking up to meet the impatient gaze of the man in front of him.

“Ah, yeah- Yes, sir. She’s ready for takeoff. Pilot’s ready for you anytime after eight, should you decide to leave earlier.”

He only receives a slight nod before both men push past him and he’s left alone outside the office door, eyes drawn back to the neatly printed label with your name on it. Why does it sound so familiar?

Lost in a daze of curiousity, Frankie’ feet carry him down the stairs, through the hangar, and out to his truck. He’s so distracted by the strange feeling in his gut that he starts his drive with his steel toes still on and the work orders still stacked along with the mystery packet in his passenger seat.

It's been a week and you're still staring at, discovering, stumbling over boxes.

How the hell does one person accumulate this much stuff?, you think as you sit on the sofa and nurse the soon-to-be bruise on your shin from the cardboard cube you'd just rammed into rounding the corner into the living room. The house in LA had seemed so desolate when Trevor had moved out and now you sit surrounded by a sea of what now feels like junk.

Even in this vast expanse of square footage and seaside it seems the walls might close in on you at any moment.

Thoughts manifesting into reality, you begin to feel too hot seemingly from nowhere. Pulling at the collar of your worn t-shirt, you go to crack open the nearest window when a blue pickup truck rounds the bend and pulls up to your gate. Before you can take too long to squint and guess at who the hell would be at your gate on a Friday evening, the driver presses the call button and your phone begins to ring.

“Hello?”

The phone crackles lightly and a deep, dulcet voice answers you.

“Yes, ah- I've got a delivery here. Is this the new owner?”

From the window you can see the figure in the truck cab lift an envelope to read it and he confirms your name.

“Yeah, that's me. I'll buzz you in.”

“Thanks.”

You hang up and press the button to let him through, watching as he winds up the drive and stops in front of the house.

Had you forgotten to sign something? He asked about being the homeowner, so it can't be another addendum to Trevor's many demands attached to the divorce. Your confusion and curiosity gives way to a flustered state when you open the door.

The first things you notice are the rich brown orbs looking back at you, brows, lids, and laugh lines working to form a frame of sincere apology, like he knows it's unorthodox for him to be standing on your front step at this hour. The rest of him is just as entrancing - plush lips beneath a gorgeous nose, a broad frame just as soft as it is strong, and a rueful smile that has your cheeks flushing as he adjusts his Standard Oil cap to lend you a peak of soft brown curls.

“Hi there,” he interrupts your stupor and you wonder just how long you've been staring.

“I'm here to deliver this. It's from the Standard Oil offices, ah…courier service is closed and it's pretty important I guess.” He holds the envelope out for you to take, his free hand rubbing the back of his neck in what seems like a nervous habit. You can see the faint grease marks on his fingertips, a matching set of smears on the paper in his hand.

“Oh, um. Thanks. Any idea what it's for?” You take the packet from him, eyeing it curiously. It's simply addressed to you with no further indicators on the outside.

“Something about the property I suppose, not really clear on the details. Lot of history in this house, ya know?”

“So I'm told.” You smile softly, toying with the metal fastener, more intrigued by the messenger than the message at this moment.

After a brief silence he shakes his head, seeming to come back to the present, and you wonder where his mind had drifted to. “Anyway, I'll leave you to it. Sorry for the interruption.”

“Not at all. Thanks again.” You wiggle the packet lightly in your hand.

He cracks another smile and you're certain his eyes roam over you before he mutters a goodnight and turns to go back to his truck. You stay stagnant for a while, watching as he gets into the cab and pulls out of the gate, and a few long moments after that as well.

Finally closing the door, you pad into the kitchen and pour a glass of wine to sip while you open your mystery packet. As you set it on the island countertop a few stray sheets slip out from beneath the envelope. Picking them up, you notice they don't seem to have anything to do with you or the house. In fact they look like order sheets of some kind, a list of mechanical sounding items listed with costs and quantities scribbled next to them.

Next to a black smudge to match your packet and the stranger's fingertips is a carefully printed name on a line marked ‘authorized by’. You read the name aloud and your stomach flutters at the way it somehow feels familiar to say.

“Fransisco Morales…”

More to come soon, let me know in the comments or my inbox if you want to be tagged for the next chapter 😬

#last great american dynasty #frankie x reader #francisco morales #marry me frankie #frankie catfish morales #she had a marvelous time ruining everything

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thatblackravenclaw · 1 year

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Pen Pals

a/n: you guys know how Andrew Garfield’s parents are British but he was born in L.A. but he still has a British accent that’s not extremely British with a little bit of an American twinge? that’s what the reader sounds like. also, i go by the grades of everyone in the books so Cho and the reader are a year older than the golden trio and a year younger than the twins.

Blog Details | Let’s take a trip

Fred Weasley x Black!fem!reader (Ravenclaw)

warning(s): british slander bc im a raging american (RED WHITE AND BLUE MF THESE COLORS DON’T RUN BITCH lmfao please believe me when i say im joking), cursing, mention of drugs and alcohol use, tooth rotting fluff

word count: 3.3k

“Are you writing to that British boy again?” I hear from over my shoulder.

“Yes, and have you heard of personal space?” We erupt in giggles as I push her away.

I close my notebook and move from my desk to my bed. The foot of my mattress is barricaded with boxes. I look around and see my childhood home become empty and filled with boxes and buckets. The walls that were once painted with polaroids of my friends and family from over the years is now back to its basic color of brown that was painted when I was born. My desk is no longer covered with knick-knacks and clutter. The room is just empty. I’m happy that my mom got promoted so my dad gets to go back to his hometown, but it’s going to be hard leaving a place I’ve spent ¾ of my life in.

My mom is a Magizoologist. She came to the United States 20 years ago for a business trip. My dad is a Dragonologist. Their paths crossed when she came to help take a look at a sick Dragon. He showed him how their sanction work and over time I guess they became close because 3 years later I was born.

We used to go back and forth between Illinois and England for about 4 and ½ years before mom decided to just move here. I guess the distance was just a little too much for them, so she decided to move here and now we’re moving back.

I lay down on the bed and stare at the ceiling. It’s scattered with glow in the dark stars that I begged for when I was 7 and ten years later, here they still stick. I’ve been asking dad for four years to take them down. He always said he’d get around to it.

The air feels dry, and my throat is scratchy. I’m trying my best to hold my tears at bay. I love England. It’s a second home to me. Whenever I’m out for summer break I go to my grandparents’ house in Norwich. This is different though. I’m going to be living there now. The British accent I had when I was younger has faded overtime to an American-British hybrid. I’ll surely be made fun of for it.

Maya lays down next to me. We’ve been best friends since the 3rd grade. Just the two of us against the world. Now I have to go through the rest of university without her.

“Maybe it won’t be bad. The worst part is going to be eating their food.” Her jab pulls a smile to the corner of my lips.

“I’ve heard the food at Hogwarts is actually pretty good.”

“Not possibly better than Ilvermony.”

“Never!” I dramatize the word with a gasp. Really selling it as if saying Hogwarts food is better than Ilvermony is a federal offense.

The dust settles and a silence washes over us. It’s a comfortable silence. Soaking in our last moments together. I know it’s not forever. I get to come back here on holiday, and she can use the floo network to visit me, but it won’t be the same. This is the person who has a key to my house because she’s considered family. The same person who that brings me an extra banana nut muffin every day before school just because she knows it’ll bring a smile to my face. I won’t get that anymore.

“What time are you guys leaving tomorrow?” Her head turns towards me, but I keep my eyes trained on the popcorn ceiling in fear that the tears I’ve been holding back will give me away.

“Early. I think 6. We’re meeting the realtor with the keys at 7, so we need to make sure that all of our stuff gets transported this in one fell swoop since we’re apperating there and apparently mom came up with a spell to have our stuff apperate to the new house.”

“Hm. Have you told British boy that you’re got accepted into Hogwarts?”

“Fred doesn’t even know what I look like. Let alone that I got accepted to the same school as him.”

“HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE?” I slap my hand over her mouth and shush her.

“Bitch, shut the fuck up. My parents are right down the hall and don’t know I have a pen pal. They said it was dangerous because people pretend to be someone they’re not, but what the hell?”

She pushes my hand off of her mouth and sits up. Her back meets my headboard and she straight ahead at the door.

“Do you know what he looks like?”

I nod my head yes before rolling off of the bed. I feel to the last page of my journal and find and find a polaroid of him and his brother George from when they went to something called The Quidditch World Cup. I do a quick look over before making my way back to the bed and offering my hand to Maya. She looks at the picture and you can almost see her eyes bulging out of their sockets.

“He has a twin brother?”

“No it’s just someone he met at school.” I resist the temptation to roll my eyes at her comment, but the attitude goes completely over her head.

“Is he single?”

“Maya!” I exclaim with my jaw dropped. “What? You can have a twin and I can’t?”

“Oh hush. You said yourself that you don’t even date white boys.”

“That was before I saw this one. Besides, he’s a ginger so he’s exempt from that statement.”

“I’m really going to miss you Maya.” We make eye contact for the first time in a while and her eyes soften.

“I’m gonna miss you too Angel.”

She looks down at her watch and tells me that it’s fifteen minutes to ten meaning it’s almost curfew. We share one last tearful goodbye as she walks out of my bedroom door for the last time.

. . .

Sure enough, at 5:45 my dad woke me up and told me it was time to get ready to leave. I had taken one last look around my room and made my way downstairs to meet my mother so we could all leave. Right as the clock struck 6, my parents let me grab the powder and be the first to see our new home.

I stood in the foyer and tried to convince myself that it isn’t the best house I’ve ever seen. It’s got a cottage core vibe going on, on the outside. It’s cozy, but big enough for all of us. I wanted so badly not to like it. We went to the backyard and there’s a small river filled with a family of ducks. To the right there’s something that looks like a shack, but bigger. My parents then explained to me it’s my own apartment. That’s when the smile broke across my face. I was finally getting my own space.

The house tour didn’t last long due to the tight schedule we are on. I ended up just waving my wand and letting the magic unpack my stuff as we were right back in the fireplace. Why? Because tomorrow is the first day of school and I have not done any school shopping. The stuff on the list differs a little bit from the shopping list we had for Ilvermony so dad thought it best to wait until we got here. We had to go to Diagon Alley anyway for everyone to open up a bank account.

Now, I’m standing in Madam Malkin’s getting measured for everything. Once I’ve been basically poked and prodded all over my body with clothes pins, I stare out the window and watch everything and everyone pass by. As if someone had played a slow potion button, I see a whole family of red heads walk down the cobblestone and sure enough one of them is Fred. I snap my head down and try to cover my face with my hair. I don’t know why I did that. Once again, he has no idea what I look like.

“All done. You can step down now.” I look over to Madam Malkin and grab my uniform and robe out of her hands. I thank her and rush out the door. Thankfully my parents are done with their list too so we decide to go home.

. . .

The next 18 hours go by quick. I didn’t get a chance to really enjoy my apartment or decorate it due to packing up my trunk since we once again left early in the morning for transportation.

The train ride was painfully boring. No one told me how long it is from England to Scotland. I sat with some mundane people whose names I don’t remember. They were also half asleep and exchanged pleasantries only out of politeness. We bought some stuff off of the trolley and then went back to our own worlds.

At one point it became a little suffocating and I needed to pee so I got up and started walking through the cars when I heard a “Have you heard from her yet, Fred,”. I had stopped before becoming visible to their compartment. He told them no and that he was a little worried. That’s when I remembered that Maya distracted me so I never got to finish the letter.

At the moment, I’m standing at the front of the line of 1st years because I’m new as well but I’m older so I get to get sorted first. My hood is up and I’m looking at the ground, suddenly interested in my shoes. Professor McGonagall informs everyone that I’m a new student from the American wizarding school and I feel my face heat up, knowing the amount of comments I’m about to get from everyone.

She calls my name and I carefully walk up the stairs. At this point my hood is still up so no one has gotten a clear view of my face. I want to do a big reveal of sorts. I sit down and let the hood slide from off of my head. There’s gasps from all across the hall. Some whistles from a few guys. Whispers from a few girls. A handful of people conveyed nonchalant expressions which I greatly appreciate over being fawned over. My eyes gravitate toward the Gryffindor table and I catch Fred already looking at me. His friends are nudging him with an elbow while also looking at me. I guess that answers the question of if he told his friends about me or not. I can’t decipher how he feels, but the adoration on his face calms my nerves enough.

I break our eye contact to look back down at the floor as not to fall off of the stool. I make haste to the Ravenclaw table. I greet everybody and they instantly start asking questions. I laugh as I can’t understand them all at once, but it’s funny hearing them squabble like seagulls. A hand is placed over mine and I look in the direction of where it came from. A beautiful Asian girl gives me a small smile.

“Hi y/n, my name is Cho.” I return the smile and tell her that it’s nice to meet her. A silence washes over the table. I become befuddled and look around to distinguish if I did or said something wrong.

“I thought you were American?” Someone says from the other side of the table. I don’t catch sight of who said it, but respond, nonetheless.

“I am. Well, I’m half. My mom is American and my dad is British. I was born in Manchester but was raised in America.”

An understanding nod is shared amongst the table in hearing vicinity and the conversation ceases as someone else is sorted into Ravenclaw.

. .

After dinner the prefects give the first years a quick tour of the castle and show them to their houses. Cho snuck me with the other 5th years. I’m thankful as I far from want to be touring the castle with a bunch of children. Besides, I have a map of the school and I’ve created a spell that can bewitch the map to help me find my classes.

We make our way up the many staircases and are faced with a large door with an Eagle head as the knocker.

“The only way to enter the common room is by answering a riddle. If you get it wrong, then you have to stand here until someone else comes and says the correct answer or until someone from the inside opens the door.” She says to me. I nod my head in understanding.

“Wanna try it?” Another Ravenclaw asks me. A male. I believe his name is Talbott. I nod my head again and step closer to the door.

“When young, I am sweet in the sun. When middle-aged, I make you gay. When old, I am valued more than ever. What am I?” The voice bellows as the Eagle moves its beak. It shakes my core a little bit.

I look around at the other Ravenclaws. Some with quizzical brows. Some with a knowing look. Others just looking and awaiting my answer. The answer would have caught me up if it weren’t for the last clue; “When old, I am more valued than ever.”

“Wine.” There’s a click sound as if unlocking a lock, and the door slowly opens. Smalls cheers are shared as we walk in.

I’m stuck at the entrance of the threshold inside by the sight in front of me. It’s probably the most gorgeous room I’ve ever seen. The ceiling is coved and gives the illusion of a clear night sky. Stars litter the ceiling and give off the effect of actual twinkling. A blue velvet couch sits in front of a fire, with matching chairs on either side. What really catches my attention is the enormous statue of Rowena Ravenclaw in front of a bookcase. We never had anything like this at Ilvermony. Our emblem was a serpent and we would just have those displayed in various parts of the common room. I watch as everyone goes to various parts of the room while some go behind the bookcase. Cho grabs my hand and also brings me behind the staircase. She shows me that behind this staircase is where the dorms and bathrooms are. I follow her up the staircase and to a dorm. The rooms inferior to the common room but not any less gorgeous. The beds align with the wall as each dorm is in the shape of a tower.

“I see you got the middle bed. Seems fitting as you’re new.” No malice in her tone, though I can see in some way it might have seemed like it.

I sit on the bed and exhale. Truly exhale. This whole journey has been happening too fast. Now that I’m sorted into a house, everything else seems easy. I went over my schedule with Cho and we have all the same classes except Defense Against The Dark Arts. I guess I’ll survive one class without her.

“Well come on lazy bones.” A different girls says to me. Anastasia I believe.

“What?” I sit back up and ask with pure curiosity.

“It’s time to get ready for the party.”

“What party?”

. .

The beginning of the year party. The party where everybody gets blacked out and regrets it in the morning since we start classes at 8 am.

I believe I heard someone earlier yell about flower. A Hufflepuff I believe. I had put on the sluttiest thing I owned and made my way down to the party with everyone else. None of us wear heels, as not to be caught by the caretaker.

The party is in full swing when we open the door the ballroom. The lights are dimmed, but the strobes of light are pungent. We barely make it to the drink table without bumping into everyone on the way. At the drink table is a tall red head with another tall read head which I can only assume is me about to be dealing with the consequences of my own actions.

“Excuse us,” Cho exclaims at the two while trying to push our way to the punch bowl. They look our way and go to move but freeze when they set their eyes on me.

“Y/n?” Fred asks/yells.

“In the flesh,” I yell back.

His smile reaches his eyes as he pulls me in a hug. My face in brought into an awkward place where it’s not quite his chest but not quite his stomach either. I wrap my arms around his middle and hug him back. He smells like cinnamon. I welcome in the scent as we hug for a few more seconds. I can only imagine what Cho is thinking right now.

We pull back at the same time and he begins to speak again. I can’t really hear him over the noise of the ballroom. I look in the direction of the entrance of the room and point to it. He nods his head and we walk towards it, hand in hand.

The door closes behind us but we still stood with our hands intwined.

“Pen pals for 4 years and you didn’t tell me you were transferring.” He exclaims while keeping his voice down.

“I wanted to surprise you.” I say sheepishly.

“Considered me surprised.” He smiled no longer reaches his cheeks but its more somber.

We hear footsteps coming from the far end of the corridor. He pulls me and we start running. I don’t know where we’re going but I trust him. A giggle threatens to out my mouth as we are going up the maze of stairs.

After what feel like forever, we make it to the floor that the Ravenclaw tower is on. I see that Gryffindor is also on this floor. In the middle of both is a spiral staircase. Great. More stairs. He leads us up to a room that looks like a classroom with multiple astronomy tools and an openness to the outside.

“Welcome to the Astronomy classroom.” I unknowingly let go of his hand as I look around in amazement. There’s a celestial sphere with all the constellations on it. A fancy telescope by the balcony. It’s quite literally the Ravenclaw common room in classroom form.

“Gods, this place is gorgeous.” I walk onto the balcony and stare up at the sky. All the stars twinkle and the moon is full.

“As are you.” I turn my body around and face him. He walks up next to me without breaking eye contact.

“Not a disappointment, am I?”

“Only a little. I expect more of an American accent.” I laugh at this before looking down at my shoes.

“You and everyone else. It’s there a little bit with certain words and phrases.”

. .

I sit on the ledge and we talk for a bit. Not much to tell considering I know almost everything about him and vice versa. We talk about school and the people here which eventually leads to the topic of dating.

“Anyone here you fancy yet?”

“You could say that.” I look into his eyes and see if he’s able to read in between the lines.

He leans in and I hear my breath hitch. My fingers grip the railing. His eyes jump to my lips and back to my eyes.

“Who is it?” We both know.

“He’s in Gryffindor. Tall red head with freckles. His brothers are also in Gryffindor.” We inch closer.

“I might know him. What’s his name?” 3 inches apart.

“Ron.” He rolls his eyes at the answer with a chuckle.

“Shut up,” and then he kissed me.

Fred Masterlist | United Kingdom

#fred weasley fanfiction #fred weasley fic #fred weasley x reader #fred weasely x y/n #fred weasley x you #fred weasley x ravenclaw!reader #fred weasley x black!reader #ravenclaw!reader #ravenclaw reader #black!reader #black reader #fred weasley fluff #harry potter fanfiction #Harry Potter fic #harry potter fluff

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seat-safety-switch · 1 year

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When you’re looking at a house to purchase, don’t just look at the house itself. Check out the neighbourhood. You’ll want to know where the primo parking spots are for shitbox cars, especially if you expect that you might be returning home one day only to find the cops have surrounded your place. In that case, you’ll have to beat a hasty retreat, after changing your wheels, which are ideally registered under a false name or to a proxy corporation that will hold up long enough for you to get out of the city. It’s also important to make sure that any home improvement jobs have taken out the correct permits.

When I became a realtor, it wasn’t easy. A lot of work was involved. It took almost six classes of night school, and being able to legibly sign my own name on the exam. If you’re wondering why I said “almost” six, it’s because I showed up late to lessons 3 and 5 because of car trouble. Now I’m allowed access to the secret realtor database, which I’d be able to use more often if I had a computer more advanced than a TRS-80 Model III that is at least ten percent made out of Fiat parts.

Even so, I’ve been accepted into a local realty office. This is sort of like a street gang, for those of you who grew up in more aspirational neighbourhoods, and confers upon me a functioning computer. From there, I can look up all the homes in the neighbourhood that have things like: garages, back yards, RV pads, running water, and the all-too-often overlooked front yards for storing more shit-box cars. And, more importantly, I know which ones are vacant.

Really, I’m doing these people a public service. Without a constantly-rotating pile of leaky crapcans sitting in the driveway, burglars might break in and rip all the copper out of the walls. I get to store my Geo Metros and Pontiac Tempests, and they get to sleep tight in whatever home in their massive property empire that they actually own. It’s service like this, and my willingness to overlook difficulties like “forged identification” and “imaginary sources of income,” which is why I collect a generous nineteen-percent fee on any house or commercial property that I do sell.

You might think that this is unethical, or at the very least a breach of the guidelines of my profession. That’s a very funny joke, and I will tell that to the other realtors at our national convention. One of the other guys in the group likes to set up hidden cameras in the bathrooms when he does an open house, so he can catch people flossing their teeth. Really enjoys that kind of thing, probably way too much. Has he been caught? You bet. Has he gotten in trouble for it? Nope. You better believe I came home and inspected every inch of my poop palace, though.

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robertsbig60 · 1 year

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I Need to Sell My House Fast in Dallas?

Why do some homes sell right away? Why do some sit on the market for months at a time? And why isn’t your house selling? “I Need to Sell My House Fast in Dallas” In our latest post, we will help you to consider some reasons why your house isn’t selling, and what you can do about it! Selling a home takes work. It is only when a price, a property and a buyer all lineup that you are able to achieve…

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#analyzing-a-real-estate-deal #analyzing-my-homes-value #avoid-foreclosure-in-dallas #behind-on-mortgage #behind-on-mortgage-payment #buy-my-foreclosure-home-in-dallas #buy-my-foreclosure-house #buy-my-foreclosure-house-in-dallas #buy-my-home-fast-in-mesquite #buy-my-home-in-foreclosure-in-dallas #buy-my-house-in-foreclosure-in-dallas #can&039;t-pay-my-mortgage #can-a-house-be-sold-while-in-probate #can-i-sell-my-home-in-foreclosure #can-i-sell-my-house-in-foreclosure #can-i-sell-my-house-without-a-realtor #cant-sell-my-house-in-dallas #cash-for-home-in-dallas #cash-for-homes-in-Dallas #cash-for-homes-in-oak-cliff #cash-for-houses-during-a-divorce #cash-for-houses-during-divorce #cash-for-houses-in-dallas #cash-for-houses-in-foreclosure #cash-for-houses-in-oak-cliff #cash-for-my-home #cash-for-my-home-in-Dallas #cash-for-my-home-in-oak-cliff #cash-for-my-house #cash-for-my-house-in-Dallas

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cryptwrites · 3 months

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i wrote this for a creative writing class so now you can have it. also my professor DOES know my tumblr. hi

CW:

To start off, the story - no the account - I am about to tell you is in no way a confession of guilt or a weight off my conscience but I need to know I'm not crazy or-or alone. I have to tell someone what happened at the Porter house..

The Porters live in a classic two story house just on the other side of town. They have… had two small children, Whitney and Jackson. Their lives were normal? I suppose? As average as they could get there.

Mr. Porter was a bastard of a man. He had rotting anger inside of him that he had slowly let consume over the past few years. Now, he never showed his anger, not to his wife and not to his kids but Mrs. Porter knew, and if she knew, the children knew. Eggshells were always walked on around their father, you could tell those kids did not fear him but certainly did fear what he could do if he ever stopped muzzling his anger.

I don't know if they ever saw, but I suppose they must have… sometimes when I would go out to get the morning paper or just to get a breath of air I could see him. Just staring. Not at anyone or anything in particular anytime, no. The subject of his gaze shifted with every day that I saw this, sometimes it was his wife… other times it was his kids. Sometimes it was a squirrel and once… it was me. He would stare with an unbroken gaze for minutes (hours?) at a time. Nothing would even happen for him to go back to normal, he just… did. Carried on like nothing else happened.

I’m not the only one who could feel it. This… off feeling to Mr. Porter and his house. You walked by and you felt depressed. Even without knowing what they were like, the house was sad. I bought my house at a lower price than anything on the market because the realtor couldn't sell it no matter what they did. I wasn't thrilled about this gloomy aura that followed me around the block but… I’m a college student who couldn't afford anything else.

Anyways, Mrs Porter was a fine woman, she was friendly but she was sad. But one day, Mrs Porter discovered she was pregnant. All the neighbors got these little flyers taped to their door announcing it. I didn't even know they were wanting a third child. Could they even afford it? Regardless, Mr. Porter began working on the nursery. He worked on this damn room day and night. I live on the other side of the street and I couldn't sleep at night from all the hammering.

Mrs. Porter started to show up less though. I thought that maybe the pregnancy was getting the better of her. I mean, she was an older woman, and the pregnancy might have just been a little harder on her now. But days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months. That damn nursery still hadn't been finished and Mrs Porter was nowhere to be seen. The hammering now just had become a customary part of life, something I only noticed when I was trying to work or study. Other than that, it blended it with the other mundane sounds of life.

It was only at my neighbor's barbeque - Cher. A sweet guy who I honestly have considered asking out two or three times. Anyways at this barbeque I mentioned the Porters and how if he knew anything about the nursery or has heard anything from Mrs Porter. Cher gave me… this weird look. Half way between concern and pity. He asked if I had been sleeping well. I laughed at this and said “Obviously I haven't been sleeping well. There’s a man hammering together a room throughout the night.” Cher didn’t laugh though. He told me I should go talk to them and then wrote down the number to his psychiatrist. Pleasant.

I didn't think much of it, Cher lived two houses down, I mean, maybe he just didn't hear the incessant hammering throughout the night like I did. But I did take up his advice, so I went over to Porter's house the next day. Now, I don't know why but knocking on that door made me more anxious than I had felt in a while. Every knock took a considerable amount of effort but eventually, someone answered.

It was little Whitney. I asked her where her mother and father were. She looked at me confused, so I asked if I could speak with her father. She shook her head and went to get him. Waiting there, at that house, it felt like I was being watched. I mean neighborhoods like that tend to be very nosy so maybe I was being watched - but this, this felt wrong.

Eventually, Mr. Porter came to the door. He was wearing the exact same clothes he had been wearing the last time I saw him. I asked him how he was, how the nursery was coming along and how Mrs. Porter was. He gave me fairly generic answers of courtesy but paused when I asked about his wife. He offered to go and get her. I told him it was not a problem if she was in too much pain to walk. He laughed at this. Told me “We only just found out a few days ago. She’s more than fine to walk.” he walked away with that - presumably to get his wife - but he left the door wide open. I just stood there… had it really only been a few days? That can't be right. I had gone through an entire semester's worth of classes by this point, there was no way it had just been a few days.

Mr. Porter eventually came back and asked to borrow my phone, noting that his had died. I didn't even think about what he was asking before my phone was in his hand. He dialed a number - I, I don't know what the number is. I’ve tried calling it numerous times, but it just goes to a deadline. - he spoke on the phone for a little bit, giving his address and the name of his wife before handing the phone back to me. I asked him what it was. He said he had called the police. I asked him why. “Ms. Porter isn't here.” he said. He went back into his house without a word being said. He told his children what had happened. They both just looked at him. Whitney and Jackson did not cry. I don't know if they were just too shocked to cry or if they just… didn't. I just stood there, looking into this house and… I could swear I heard the hammering start again. Eventually the police arrived, they questioned Mr. Porter who didn't really have much to give, they talked to the kids, who were quiet. And they talked to me, who was as helpful as I could be with my now warped perception of time.

“He’s been in the house. With the children.” I told the officer. I think about it now, and I don't think in those days… months? That I ever saw him or any of his family leave his house. Not that I was looking too closely but I hadn't seen anything. The police couldn't find anything or any evidence of a crime and so they left. Mr. Porter and his children reverted back into the house, still leaving the door open. I don’t know how long I stood there, just staring into this house but I know that by the time I turned to go home it was fully dark. The hammering did stop that night, I could see them all around the dinner table silently eating. Once that was done, he led his children to bed and then went to his own.

I woke up the next day and went back over to the house - I don't know why? I just felt like maybe I owed something to the poor man. I knocked on his door, Mr. Porter answered. I asked him how he was, if there was anything I could do to help and if the children were at school. He paused at this last question again, stating that the children were on the porch. Playing. I pointed out to him that young Whitney and Jackson were nowhere on or near the porch. Mr. Porter could not say where they were. He expressed utter confusion. He once again asked for my phone, I once again gave it to him. The police did not believe him this time and arrested him. But they were forced to let him go as there was no evidence of his involvement, and was brought back home.

The neighbors avoided him, but they had always avoided him. The police would make periodic checks on the poor man but all he would do is work on that damn nursery. The hammering became louder and more violent. One evening, after several weeks of this, I walked over again. I wanted to check on him I guess. I knocked on the door, he answered. Looking the exact same he had the last two times. He greeted me, and welcomed me to his home. I hesitated, but eventually walked him. He offered me a cup of coffee, which I accepted and he offered to show me the house. I didn't really want a tour of the gloomy house I found myself in, but my mouth had other plans and agreed.

He showed me around and I soon learned that Mr. Porter no longer went to work. He did not make breakfast or dinner, he did not sleep. He just worked in the nursery. They were always a strange family, and he was always a strange man and something strange was bound to happen to them eventually, but this was not strange. This was sickeningly ordinary. Not for your whole family to go missing. That's not ordinary, but for this family, it seemed like the most ordinary tragedy that could have happened.

Eventually, we got to the nursery. I opened the door. It was heavy and hard to open, but eventually it moved. I stepped inside and everything about this nursery was bright. It was ordinary. It didn't have the gloomy feeling the rest of the house had. I stood there, looking at it for a second before turning back to Mr. Porter, but there was no Mr. Porter to look back too. I searched the whole house, calling out his name and there was no trace of Mr. Porter. So, like he had done many times before, I opened my phone and called 911. When the police got there, I told them my story and showed them the nursery. But when I opened the door to it, there was no longer a nursery. Just an old spare guest room.

Evidence was searched for, and evidence was not found. The Porter house stands empty, with all of the family’s things still inside – furniture and clothing. Even the food, rotting in the refrigerator. The Police arrested me, thinking maybe I had hurt the entire family, but of course could never nail me for anything because I didn't do anything.

This is not a confession. This is not a plea. I do not know what happened in the Porter house but I know that what happened was far from ordinary and much too ordinary. Something is wrong with that house. Something. Is in that house. I fear that something is in my house. If there was anything to be learned from this, I… refuse to learn it.

#writing #creative writing #writer #writers on tumblr #they/them #writerscorner #writers #horror #writers tips #poetry

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nautilusopus · 2 years

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nobody else is writing meta analysis for vivarium so i guess i have to do it

Vivarium is a 2019 horror film that the internet doesn’t seem to know what to think of. Most YouTube videos as per usual don’t wanna engage with it on anything more than an extremely literal surface level (hence the abundance of “VIVARIUM EXPLAINED” videos that just recap the plot to you as though you can’t see with your eyeballs that yes, he put on the nametag, that sure is what happened onscreen, yes I fucking get it the boy is like a cuckoo-esque brood parasite I GET IT) that ultimately devolve into speculative fanfiction about how effectively the aliens can take over the world. There are a few people here and there a little more willing to at least engage with what the movie has to say, and from there you get takes about how it’s about how the golden capitalist ideal of the suburban nuclear family is a banal hellscape, which I’d say is generally pretty accurate. Tom spends his entire time at Number 9 labouring, digging a hole while Gemma looks after the boy because he doesn’t know what else to possibly do with himself, an action that wears him down and ultimately costs him his life, and for all his trouble all he’s found is the body of the last guy who tried to labour his way out of this situation. All he’s done is created is a grave for his “offspring” to dump him into.

Like, as far as Capitalism Bad stories go this one’s pretty on-the-nose, and a lot of the people griping that the story was confusing are mostly the ones that seems to have missed this. (For an even longer tangent about how a lot of scifi stories aren’t going to make sense to you if you resist the very obvious thematic readings they’re giving you because you think things can’t be that deep I recommend Dan Olson’s excellent video on Annihilation.)

Occasionally, though, you get people also mentioning how it’s a little about animal rights, and even more especially about nature versus nurture. For the most part, Tom and Gemma are not kind to the boy. They (understandably) have nothing but contempt towards him. They openly discuss how creepy he is when he’s within earshot. At one point they try to lock him in the car to starve just to see if whoever comes to get his body can be forced to let them go, and they only back out on the plan when the fact that he looks and acts like a child in that moment gets to Gemma and she lets him out. Eventually, the boy grows into an emotionally distant young adult that locks Tom out of the house to die and doesn’t seem to give two shits about their suffering now that he’s bigger and stronger than his “parents”. Surely, we think, if Gemma and Tom had been kinder to him, he would have grown into a kinder adult, even if he was an alien? Are they not perpetuating this literal cycle of violence?

And with regard to the nature versus nurture reads, I actually directly disagree and find it at odds with the Capitalism Bad message, because my read is this:

No amount of kindness or understanding would have turned the boy into a good person, and acting like it would have is in fact part of the trap. Gemma and Tom would have wound up used up and dead either way, because thematically speaking, what the boy is there to do is to collect data.

More under the cut, I have a lot of opinions about this.

The boy’s creepy alien gimmick is mimicry. It’s what the realtor (p clearly a member of the same species) does when trying to entice Tom and Gemma into Number 9. The realtor is better at saying context-appropriate things than the boy is, but still slips up every now and then, and even so his mannerisms aren’t quite right. At best, he sounds like he’s regurgitating a script (a bit more admissible given he’s trying to sell something). At worst, he parrots Gemma’s “no, not yet” back to her in exactly her voice. Everything he’s saying, it’s clear he’s going through motions without any real understanding of what those motions are, beyond, “This is the thing you say to sell a house.”

The boy is demonstrably worse at it. He’ll parrot entire conversations back to the people who had them regardless if it makes sense to do so. He rarely speaks in his own voice, instead chopping up various words he’s heard from both parents. He doesn’t seem to have much sense for what is and isn’t appropriate to mimic (to the point of Gemma quite transparently tricking him into revealing he’s an alien outright), much less what makes sense for him to mimic.

He develops this skill gradually over the course of the movie, gets a bit better at putting together sentences people can actually reply to. But even then, he doesn’t seem to engage with the context overall of the conversation. After aforementioned alien reveal, with Tom growing sicker by the day, Gemma begins to cry and back away in horror, and we get this exchange:

The boy: Are you [overwhelmed] again, Mother? Gemma: I am not your mother! The boy: Are you [overwhelmed]? Gemma: I want to go home. The boy: Silly mother. You are home!

There’s no real engagement with the actual conversation at hand. This is the kind of script a reply bot runs. It emulates emotion the same way it emulates everything else.

His nature is reflected by the surroundings: The identical miles of houses with framed pictures of those houses on their own walls, with no real understanding of what people do and don’t want in the aesthetics of a house. The food that looks correct, but has no flavour or nutritional value, eventually leading to not just Tom’s death, but eventually Gemma’s. The entire world, from the Number 9 house to the suburbs of Yonder in general with its fake clouds, to the boy and its interactions, are fake, hollow, and the kind of thing an alien with no real care for the real human experience beyond perpetuating the system’s own growth would create.

And at this point hopefully some of you have noticed, we’ve seen this exact behaviour pattern before.

i’m quoting the reply on that second one here by @dukeofankh because it’s extremely relevant to this entire thing:

I’m honestly reblogging this again because the more I stare at it, the more I feel like this is staggeringly relevant art.

Like, so much of modern capitalist marketing is the construction of these superficially personal narratives. Giving the sense, not only that the brand fits in with your identity, but that it is almost a sentient individual itself that has a personal relationship with you. Corporations have personalities. They want to be your friend, and the reason that the entire internet economy runs on the currency of data right now is that the only way to prop up the illusion that they care about you is by already having the information about you that real people would gain by paying attention

But the only way they can collect and sort all that data is with computers, without any actual humans involved past setting up the parameters and pressing “go.” And computers are fucking idiots.

Which leaves us here: this false, saccharine message of togetherness and community–community between you and your friends but more importantly between all of you and Facebook–stripped fucking bare by the fact that the cookie-cutter algorithm can’t tell the difference between friends supporting and caring about each other and Thanos with a dumptruck ass.

The boy is here to collect data, and he collects it and regurgitates it as though it all has equal relevance to the situation at hand.

He reacts with the same polite indifference to open contempt, genuine warmth and an attempt to bond with him, terror directed at him, and pleas for mercy from him. Later on when we get a glimpse of the “inner workings” of the house, we see the boy watching another set of parents rawdogging the shit out of each other, and applauding appreciatively with the same blank amusement as he applauds to everything else. He sees Gemma and Tom dancing to the music from their radio outside, trying to have one bright moment with one another despite the grim circumstances they’re in, and he immediately inserts himself into the moment with zero awareness that he isn’t wanted here (granted that’s also extremely a little kid thing to do lol).

Which leads to the fact that that isn’t to say he doesn’t have his moments of personality. He smiles at positive attention (as well as negative attention), he enjoys interaction. He throws a tantrum when he’s told he can’t watch fucked up alien meat television at 3 am and turns it right back on. About the only time we get a genuine reaction from him is when he gets locked in the car to starve.

But then, so do things like Alexa, or Siri, or Cortana. You can have little conversations with it. It can tell jokes. You can ask it the meaning of life and it’ll tell you 42. You can insult it and it’ll do an EPIC SNAPBACK OMG SO SASSY. The people who designed it want you to view it as a friend, even as it sits there and spies on you and integrates itself more and more into your life.

Gemma lets him out of the car because (also understandably) she can’t bring herself to kill something that looks like a child. Later on, when she speaks with a dying Tom, she wonders why she didn’t kill him when he was still small. Tom tells her, “Because you’re a good person.” Their problems could have maybe (I mean probably not we’ll never know, at the very least Tom wouldn’t have died of exposure maybe) been solved if they just locked the thing in the car and ignored it, but in the end they still wound up viewing it as a person.

Tom and Gemma openly comment that the boy is always, always watching them, knowing full well they’re within earshot of him. He doesn’t retaliate for this, they’re never punished for saying it. Why would he? It’s what he’s there to do. He knows they know he’s watching. Water is wet. The boy watches.

Of course, when he is older, and better at putting together conversations that sound like an actual person, Gemma is openly terrified of him. His mannerisms don’t change, but conversationally he seems to at least understand whats being said to him, and is willing to ask more in-depth questions, graduation from, “What’s a dog?” to “Why did you say ��you’re welcome’?”

By the end of the movie, the boy matures into a man. He’s gotten a bit better at knowing which words to parrot at what time, something we can watch him improve upon as the movie goes, and still insists, to Gemma’s last breath, that she’s his mother and that she is home. Gemma dies telling him, “I’m not your fucking mother.”

This is maybe the only other genuine reaction we get from the boy: a disappointed, “Whatever,” before he zips up the bodybag and chucks her into the hole as well. He cleans up the house for the next occupants and leaves. He takes the now-dying realtor’s nametag and puts it on himself, folds up the old realtor and stuffs it in a drawer, and takes his place in the office ready to lure the next couple to the suburbs of Yonder, with words that almost, but not quite, convince you he’s a person, and by that point it’s too late.

The boy was only ever there to make sure someone would be in Number 9 to make sure someone would be there to raise the next boy to make sure someone would be led to Number 9 to raise the next boy.

And who among us haven’t left this exact message, or even said this exact thing out loud, to the bot hanging over our shoulder watching us constantly, politely asking if we want help or suggested content?

TLDR anyway yeah the movie is “capitalism bad nuclear family in suburbia is a banal hellscape” still but there’s LAYERS you see

#vivarium #vivarium movie

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littleladymab · 4 months

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OC Kiss Week - Reach

This one goes out to @bottlingsound and @laprismaluna thank u for being the #1 fans of my blorbos 8')

I went through several different ideas of how to convey 'reaching' and who I wanted to be the narrator, and then recently, completely unrelated to writing oc kiss week, I thought about Rhys selling the family house and moving in with Kaito. So I decided to roll with that!

+++

Kaito places the mug down in front of Rhys. “You’re distracted.”

As if in testament to his distraction, Rhys actually jumps at the sudden sound. “What?”

“What do you mean what?” He nudges the mug with his elbow. “For you.”

Rhys’ gaze drops to the mug, and then he tucks the stylus back into his tablet and pushes the work aside. It is like watching him move in imperfect stop motion, the hands moving to the mug, fingers wrapping around ceramic, lifting it to his nose.

Then Rhys frowns. “Whiskey?” he accuses.

Kaito grins and shrugs as he returns to dicing the vegetables. “I didn’t think you were going to get back to work any time soon, so I figured I might as well make you a drink.”

“Hmm,” Rhys says into the depths of his mug as he takes a sip, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the statement.

“What’s wrong?” Kaito pops a piece of carrot into his mouth, then hands one out to Rhys.

Still distracted, Rhys leans across the counter and eats it directly from Kaito’s fingers. Then he shrugs, as if to say, oh no I have a mouthful of carrot, I cannot answer.

“It can’t be that bad.”

Rhys gives another shrug and fiddles with his mug. “I’m just… thinking about selling the house.”

Kaito freezes, knife poised over the cutting board. “The one in Derry?”

This, at least, gets the glare he was aiming for and Kaito holds up his hands in defense. “I’m kidding!”

“Yeah yeah,” Rhys grumbles, rolling his eyes — but it’s not enough to hide the hint of a smirk at the worn joke. “Precious derriere, sure, I’ve heard it all before.” He spins the mug between his fingers before leaning back in the chair and running a hand through his hair. “I’ve been spending more time here now that the twins have moved out, but the nice thing was that I own the house.”

“Well I own this building,” Kaito challenges. “And my offer still stands.”

Rhys, to his surprise, flushes. “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“Rhys. Love. We’ve been dating for three years. Isn’t there some kind of rule where if I ask you to move in more than five times, you’re obligated to do so?” Kaito is rewarded with Rhys’ expression doing something complicated between frustrated and embarrassed. “I mean, I’m not trying to pressure you. I’m sure Ayn can help you find something in New Ox if you’d prefer—”

“No,” Rhys says a little sharply, then again, softer, “No.” He sighs and scrubs a hand over his face, knocking his glasses askew. “I would love to move in with you. It’s just… Everything.”

“Have you talked to the twins?”

“Liala’s called, but it’s hard to tell with Lionel. He has a terrible sleep cycle and the time zones don’t make it easy.”

Kaito is about to offer to call Lio, but quickly dismisses the idea. This is something the Darcy siblings need to talk about without his intervention. “If you need help with the property listing or anything, I’ve got some friends that can help.”

A smile softens the worry lines permanently etched into Rhys’ face. “I’ve got a realtor lined up, but if you know any buff guys that can help me move, then—”

Kaito scoffs and tosses the vegetable scraps into the compost bin with a bit more force than absolutely necessary.

Rhys laughs and reaches across the counter. “Come here.”

Kaito does, leaning in just enough that Rhys’ mug-warmed fingers can curve around his jaw and reel him in for a kiss.

“You smell like onions,” Rhys murmurs against his lips.

“I was in the middle of making curry.” Kaito kisses him again. “And you taste like whiskey and honey.”

He can feel the way Rhys’ smile takes over, and Kaito immediately regrets having to reach across the counter instead of moving around it before accepting the kiss.

#ockiss24 #oc kiss week #a lil miss original #lil miss writings #sine die #the better edition #TBH #guitar strumming #love and miss them DAILY.#also while writing this I aged a million years because i realized that by 3 years after SD Rhys is only 30 #old man go settle down #(/is 35)

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gretavanwagnerpls · 10 months

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New Beginnings | chap. 1

Warnings: 18+ ONLY, drinking, language, smut…

Finally. You let yourself fall back onto the couch, your head hitting your favorite macrame pillow. It feels like the first time you have sat down in weeks after packing up the last 8 years of your life. Things to keep, things that hurt too much to keep, and things that belong to Matt that he left when he moved out last month, all sorted out across the living room floor. You’re proud of yourself, making it through the last few weeks with only a few nights of crying yourself to sleep on the bathroom floor. You knew it was what you both wanted… what you both needed, but letting go of someone who has been your best friend for the last 8 years was the hardest thing you have ever had to do.

You drag yourself off the couch to start getting ready. You found yourself standing in front of the mirror picking yourself apart. The last year has been mentally and physically exhausting. Between the stress of infertility treatments and failed adoptions, now your divorce, you hardly recognized the person looking back at you in the mirror anymore. You were broken, beat down with nothing left to give the world, especially yourself… but today was the start of a new beginning.

You looked through the last of the clothes that you had intentionally left out from packing to wear to court today. Today would be the first time you’ve seen Matt since you asked him for a divorce. You’ll never forget the look on his face. Your palms sweating, as you handed him the papers. You had rehearsed what you were going to say so much that you were physically sick when the time came, and then he didn’t even let you finish your speech. “How long have you had these” followed by “we’re selling the house, neither of us can afford it on our own” was all that he had to say. Everything was business with him, ‘lets cut to the chase’ type of conversations are all we’d had for the last 2 years. Part of you really thought he would reach out - maybe a drunk Friday night call asking you to come back, that you could work it out, but it never happened. The only message you received was asking when you would have your stuff out of the house so that the realtor could come take pictures to put the house on the market. You wanted to look your best today, let him know you were fine without him.

You slide on your favorite wedged sandals and head out the door. You feel like your heart is going to beat out of your chest. Tears fill your eyes as you pull into the parking lot and see his truck next to the only open parking spot left. You step out and walk what felt like miles up the stairs and into the courthouse. You make your way to the courtroom doors, stopping to run your hands along the bottom of your sundress to smooth any wrinkles as you take a deep breath and reach out to pull the door open. As you step inside, Matt’s eyes meet yours as a grin stretches across his face. You look to the floor and make your way to your seat, on the opposite side of the courtroom. For the first time, he felt like a stranger to you.

You feel your chest tighten with anxiety as you stand when the judge enters the room. He goes through what you assume is the normal speech he gives during divorce proceedings. “Once this document has my signature, you will no longer be legally married…” Your mind started to wander, you couldn’t wait to get out of here. You could see Matt’s head turn to yours, his stare burning into the side of your face, but you couldn’t bring yourself to look his way.

“Do you understand, y/n?” the judge asked. You realized you missed the question, but nodded in agreement anyways.

“Yes, sir” came out in a hushed tone, as you tried to keep composure.

“Ok then, please wait 5 to 7 business days to hear from my office once I submit the final documentation. I wish you both nothing but the best in whatever the future may bring.” He stood from his chair, and made his way the judges chambers.

You start to look Matt’s way and notice him already walking back to exit. You quickly gather your things and make your way to find him. You wanted to see if he would say anything to you or just leave like he did the last night you saw him. You see him standing at the back of his truck with his tailgate down, rearranging a bag that you had seen a thousand times. His golf clubs. You laugh to yourself, of course he is going golfing now. What else did you expect?

You hated golf. Every year, every weekend was tied up with golf. Sweet weekend trips you planned for just the two of you to drive to see something new, always cancelled because you “should have known” he was golfing with so-and-so or he was going on a golf trip and would be out of state for a few days. Golf was Matt’s only hobby, so you tried your best to have him teach you how to play. You showed interest in hopes that you would be able to have more date nights and spend more time together, but he would never take the time to teach you. You bit your tongue the last six months of him saying you never wanted him to touch you or never wanted to spend time with him, but you wanted so badly to remind him of all the times you tried but he was “too busy” golfing.

He slammed the tailgate shut, and turned around to see you standing there. He walked towards you, holding out his arms for you to come to him like he always did before wrapping them around you for a hug. He smelled like a combination of Dior Sauvage and Red Seal Wintergreen, his usual scent.

“Take care of yourself, okay.” He whispered through your hair, his hands resting on your back before giving you a tight squeeze.

You choked back tears as you returned the hug. So many things you wanted to say, but it was as if your brain and tongue were working against you, keeping your thoughts trapped inside.

“You’ll always be my best friend. Not being with you everyday is something I’ll never get use to, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get over. I’m sorry, y/n, for everything. Maybe time will bring us back together again one day… and maybe it won’t and I’ll regret everything I never told you for the rest of my life. You deserve so much more. I love you.” A single tear fell as he placed a kiss on your forehead. You started to move your arm from his grip to reach to wipe away the tear from his cheek, when he turned and quickly walked around to his driver side door jumping in to his truck without looking back your way.

You watched him drive off as you made it into your vehicle. You sat in silence for what felt like hours, wondering if you made the right decision. Tears falling from your face, so many that it made wet stains on your sundress. Your phone starts to ring, it was Lilly.

You laugh as you watch her name run across your screen. It was as if she knew what you were thinking, all of the time. Her calls and texts came daily, but amplified when something was wrong. It was like she could read your mind no matter how many miles apart you were.

“Y/n… are you okay?” Lilly asked before you could even say hello.

“You know, I’m not sure how to answer that question. I was until I ran into him in the parking lot. He felt like a stranger today when I first saw him sitting in the courtroom, and then when we left he told me he loved me.. Lilly, did I make the right decision?” You say, as you begin to cry.

“Only you know the answer to that, Y/n. Sometimes the right decision is the hardest decision to make. You have lived your life to please everyone else for so long, I think you and I both know it’s time that you start enjoying your own life. Take a vacation, go somewhere you’ve always wanted to go, open your bridal shop, it’s your time now and I’ll be with you every step of the way.” Lilly said, you could hear the crack in her voice. She loved you like you were her own sister. She always knew what to say when you needed it the most.

“Thanks Lil. Just glad to have it behind me. I’m headed to the house to unload the last little bit of boxes. I will call you later, maybe we can meet up for a drink?” You ask, as you pull up to your new townhouse on the south side of town.

“Sure! Sounds perfect. Listen, if you need me or if you just need time… it’s okay. Whatever you need. I’m proud of you.” You smiled as you hung up the phone.

You made your way up to your new townhome. It was tucked down the most beautiful driveway, surrounded by beautiful, fresh landscaping. The pond surrounded by benches out front is what drew your eye to this place when you were looking for the new place you would call “home”.

After a few trips up and down the sidewalk, you finally laid the last little box on the kitchen island. You wheeled your suitcase back to the bedroom, and threw yourself onto the bed thinking back to your conversation with Lilly. Go somewhere you’ve always wanted to go.

Nashville. It didn’t take long before you found and booked the cutest AirBnb. You threw the essentials in your overnight bag, grabbed the three suitcases that had most of your clothing in them and loaded them in your trunk. You didn’t have time to go through them if you wanted to get to Nashville before dark.

On your way, you sent a text to Lil thanking her for the idea and a text to your mom letting her know you’re going out of town for the next two weeks. Lil responded with a playlist of songs from the group she has been dying to get you to listen to, Greta Van Fleet. Three songs in to their first album, you were hooked.

Just in time for your stomach to start telling you it was ready for dinner, you pulled up to your AirBnb. It was even more darling than the pictures online. A stepping stone walkway led to a most adorable arched doorway. The front door was painted turquoise. The front porch had a peaceful little sitting area with porcelain trinkets in the landscaping. You couldn’t wait to grab a book and sit here with a cup of coffee in the morning.

Inside you were met with vaulted ceilings full of skylights. You loved the open floor plan, with the exposed wooden beams, white walls, and dark wood flooring. This was your dream home. You wheeled your suitcase to the master bedroom and unloaded your makeup bag in the bathroom that housed a beautiful claw foot bathtub. This place couldn’t be any more perfect.

You gave yourself 45 minutes to freshen up and get ready for dinner before calling an Uber. You threw on your favorite pair of black distressed jeans and a floral lace crop top and your wedged sandals from earlier. When the Uber driver arrived, you were excited to see a woman your age in the driver seat.

You quickly asked her about the restaurant you listed as your destination and after a few minutes of asking her the typical tourist type of questions, she re-routed you to her favorite place for draft beer, delicious appetizers, and what she claims is the best chicken quesadilla she’s ever had. An actual angel.

This place was not visually what you were expecting, and it wasn’t anything like the bars on your “Must See” Pinterest list. A stone building with a small set of stairs leading to the entryway, you could tell the bar had been around for a while. A friendly face greeted you behind the bar.

“Sit anywhere you’d like honey, I’ll be right with you.” She winked, and nodded her head towards the booths along the wall. You sat down and watched groups of friends and couples playing pool, laughing and talking amongst themselves. You missed your friends, and you were starting to wish you would have brought them along with you.

Your food arrives and you nibble on it for a few minutes as you sit and people watch when a group of guys enter the bar. Each of them dressed uniquely, wearing embellished jumpsuits, mesh tops, open button ups, and tight fitting pants. You couldn’t keep your eyes off of them, watching them make their way around the room making conversation, laughing, and singing together to the music playing from the overhead speakers.

After your fourth vodka cranberry, you make your way to pay your tab, fumbling around in your purse for your wallet and phone when you bump into someone, feeling their drink run down your arm and watching it spill all over their chest. Your eyes make your way up their chest, to the beautiful curls resting on their shoulders, finally meeting their eyes. You swallow hard when you realize it was one of the guys you’ve been watching most of the night.

“I am so sorry, I wasn’t even paying attention… I am so sor…” you cover your face with your hands in embarrassment until he interrupts you.

“Hey, hey! It’s okay. Here, take these.” He interrupts, handing you a stack of beverage napkins from the bar. You watch him as he lifts his shirt and wipes off his stomach underneath. You felt your cheeks go warm from embarrassment as he catches your eyes watching his hands guide the napkins across his stomach, wiping the drink you just spilled all over him. He winks at you, reaching out his hand.

“Here, I’ll take those.” He says, as he grabs the drink soaked napkins. “Danny, what’s your name?”

“Uh.. y/n… I’m really sorry ag...” You start as he interrupts again.

“Stop apologizing, it really is fine. What are you drinking, let me get it.” He pulls a credit card from the back of his phone case and gives it to the bartender, asking her to keep the tab open. You make your way back to your booth with your drink after saying thank you. You fumble through your purse again trying to find your phone to get an Uber, when you feel someone start to slide in to the booth beside you. Him again.

“So, y/n. What brings you here?” He asks, as he pulls a clip from his flannel pocket and twists his hair up. After a few seconds of watching him pull little pieces of hair out to frame his beautifully structured face, you realize he caught you staring. Your face turns flush for the second time tonight.

“Trying to find myself I guess, somewhere that no one knows me. Nashville was on my list of places to visit so I decided at noon today that’s where I was headed. I found a sweet little AirBnb for a few weeks and I’m just trying to figure out life and clear my head a little.” You say, staring down at your glass.

“What’s waiting on you back home? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?” He laughs, as he shoots back the last of his beer before turning and motioning to the bartender for two more drinks.

“Nothing right now. My mom. My friends. A bunch of moving boxes that I need to unpack.” You laugh nervously. “Where is home for you?”

“This is home now. I’m originally from Michigan, but me and the guys moved here when our music started to take off. It was weird at first, moving to a busy place like this, but it really grows on you. We’ve met a lot of really wonderful people that have helped us and taught us a lot.” His face lit up talking about his music and you couldn’t wait to hear more. The bartender sat down the drinks, you knew you needed to sip this one a little slower.

“Anyways, tell me more about you. You said you’re here trying to clear your mind?” He asked, this time looking directly at you as you watch his eyes travel over your face taking in all of your facial features. You start to get embarrassed, wondering what he is thinking, but you can’t look away.

“I’m divorced… as of 13 hours ago. I graduated from college with a degree in business administration but I haven’t used it because he didn’t want me to work. Last week I officially became a home owner for the first time, and I’m just trying to find myself. Who I want to be, where I want to be, what makes me happy. That’s what I am hoping this trip brings me.” You watched him look down, wondering what he was thinking. Divorce was probably a lot heavier than he was expecting, and you start to wonder if you should have left that part out.

“I’m so sorry. That’s heavy. How are you holding up? How long were you and your husband together?” He asks, with a sincere look of concern. Someone who listens, how nice.

“If you would have asked me 10 hours ago, I would have had a different answer, but now I’m good. Really good. We were together for almost 10 years. We both knew it was time to let go. I think that’s what makes it a little easier. There’s no hard feelings, no bad blood. Just two people that tried to make it work for the last two years when there wasn’t really anything left to hold onto, if that makes sense.” You look down at your glass again, running your finger around the rim has become the nights nervous habit. A few minutes of silence pass, and you are preparing yourself for him to excuse himself from the heavy conversation.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for and I hope this trip shows you who you are meant to be. I think it’s admirable that you are taking the time to travel to a new place, alone, and you are willing to put in the effort to find yourself and what truly makes you happy and you’re sticking to that. Some people never find that and what a sad life that must be for them. I’m proud of you.” He said, finally, as he reaches to rest his hand on yours, sending what felt like electricity through your body. You smiled back, unable to form words. His touch left you speechless. You weren’t sure if it was the drink talking, but this man was the most attractive man you had ever met. Not only was he beautiful to look at, but you could tell he had the most genuine soul. All you wanted was to sit and talk to him as long as time would allow, but you knew you didn’t have much longer before the bar closed and you needed to get an Uber back to your Airbnb.

“I should probably get going, they close in an hour and I still need to put in for a ride back. It’s been so nice talking to you Danny. Thanks for listening, and for the drinks.” You laugh, as you place your hand on his bicep. Another heat wave flows through your body.

“Hey no problem! Look, my shirts dry.” He said laughing. You turn to walk away as you hear the guys come up behind him.

“Where might you be going, ma’am.” One of the guys say, in a drunken slur.

“Hey, wait! Why don’t you let us take you back? Where are you staying?” Danny asks. You hand him your phone so he can copy the address into his phone. “It’s only a few minutes down the road from Sam’s place. Just ride with us.” You felt relieved. You really didn’t want to wait by yourself, and to be honest you really didn’t want the night to end either.

Each of the guys step in to meet you, introducing themselves and making conversation. Josh was beautiful, his smile contagious. Sam was dressed in a full red suit, and between his outfit and his perfect jaw structure you could hardly concentrate on the conversation happening around you. Jake stood leaned with his arms crossed against the pool table, watching his brothers and laughing at the conversation. He was dressed in all black with only the bottom button of his shirt done, and small round black sunglasses that were perfectly placed at the bridge of his nose. Each of them were comically theatrical, talking with fake accents and pushing each-other around. They reminded you of your friends. You found yourself once again wishing they were with you.

“Hey, you alright?” Danny asked, rubbing his hand along the middle of your back. He’s really got to stop doing this to you. You nod your head and smile, realizing that his hand is still resting on the middle of your back as he’s standing there laughing and joking with the rest of the group.

The group begins to make their way to the door to leave. You walk down the sidewalk, illuminated by just a few street lights. You see someone jump from a large black bus and wave to the guys, who start to yell in excitement. As you make your way to the bus the guys usher you to the front as Josh grabs your hand to help you in. There were bench seats, coolers, guitars, drumsticks spread along the back of the bus which peaked your interest as you remember Danny telling you back at the bar that they moved to Nashville for their music.

“Want one?” Jake asks from behind his sunglasses, holding out a bottle of water.

“Probably a good idea.” You laugh. As you take the lid off and start to take a drink Danny slides in beside of you, so close that your legs and shoulders are touching.

“Hit the spot?” You both laugh, as Danny points out the amount of water you drank from the bottle. “We are going to drop Jake and Josh at their places first and then we will take you on the way to Sammy’s.”

The bus was quiet once they had dropped Jake and Josh off. Their constant bickering, singing, and laughter was entertaining enough you were almost sad that they had to go. A few minutes later, you find yourself lost watching Sam play the guitar, his fingers dancing along the strings so effortlessly. You shift yourself in the seat to make yourself more comfortable when you realize Danny’s hand is resting on your thigh. How long has that been there?

“This look right?” Danny asks. You wish the drive was a little bit longer.

“Ah yes, that would be mine.” You say as you gather your things and get ready to step off the bus, Danny following closely behind.

“Can I walk you to the door?” Danny asked as he jumps down, reaching his hand to help you out of the bus.

“Sure. I forgot to leave the porch light on. There’s a few steps so just be careful.” You warn him as you step down, holding his hand to keep your balance. Instead of letting go, his fingers lock with yours as you make your way to the door. What is happening?

“I really enjoyed talking to you tonight. Me and the guys have a show in a couple days. You should come if you’re still down here. I can text you the details, if you want.” He says, as he lets your hand go from his grip, placing his own in his pockets.

“I would really like that.” You say, as he hands you his phone to put in your contact information. How do you tell him you don’t want tonight to end? You take your time typing your name, trying to muster up the courage to come in, stay the night. Are you crazy? You’ve been divorced for less than 24 hours. Is this what this trip is going to consist of, one night stands and late drunken nights?

“Do you want to come in?” The words fell from your mouth before you could even catch them. Maybe it was the alcohol, but you didn’t regret it. His eyes fixed on yours, a look of surprise on his face. It felt like minutes before he finally gave an answer, leaving you anxious.

“Uh, sure. Let me let Sam know.” He walked back to the bus as you type in the code to unlock the door. You walk in to find the mess you left earlier when you were rummaging through all your suitcases to find an out fit to wear. You hurry, trying to pick up as much as you can and shove what you collect into your open suitcases.

“Wow. Nice place.” Danny says as he looks around the room. A grin creeps across his face as he notices you shoving the explosion of clothing into every bag you could find.

“Leave me alone, I had a hard time deciding what to wear.” You laugh, as you put the last little bit in the suitcase.

He walks toward you, taking your hand. “You made a great choice” he says, spinning you around in a circle. You laugh as you fall into his chest, both of you landing on the couch. Your face inches from his, he reaches out his hand placing it on the back of your neck, pulling you closer as he places a kiss on your lips.

Before you knew it, his hands moved from your neck, down to your shoulders, across your chest and down into the back pocket of your black denim jeans. He’s pushing you onto him, leaving no space between you.

“Is this okay?” He whispers, as he pushes you up by your shoulders.

You don’t respond but instead move your legs to straddle him, facing him as you begin pressing yourself against the hardening bulge you feel underneath you, hoping this would show him just how okay with this you were.

“God, you’re beautiful.” He says, nuzzling his nose into your neck, placing soft kisses in a trail up to your ear. You begin to move yourself in rocking motion against him as you watch his head fall back against the couch. You tease him by placing small, soft kisses to tickle his neck until you reach his ear, placing your teeth on his earlobe.

“Come with me.” You say, standing and reaching out for his hand to lead him back to the bedroom. You shut the blinds and turn on the bedside lamp. You turn around to see him standing with his shirt off, leaning against the dresser. You make your way over to him and begin to pull off your shirt, leaving your breasts exposed.

“My god, I didn’t think you could be anymore perfect.” He places a kiss at the top of each of your breasts before taking your nipples between his fingers, squeezing and placing a small twist on each. Your head goes back as you let out a moan.

You run your hands along his belt, finding the buckle. You start to undo his zipper, pulling down his boxers with them. He cups his hand under your chin, pulling you up to meet him. You feel him stroke his length with his hand between you a few times as he placed another kiss at the side of your neck.

“How do you want it?” He whispers in your ear. You pull him to the bed, pushing him down to his back. You crawl between his legs taking him in your mouth, swirling your tongue around the tip to tease him before taking his entire length into the back of your throat. He let out a loud moan, placing his hand in your hair as he grabs a handful and begins to pull. You reach up to meet his arms pinning them down to his sides, you want to show him you are in control.

“Come here.” He says, pulling you up to meet him face to face. “I’m not gonna last long if you keep doing that to me.”

He flips you onto your back, climbing on top of you. A trail of kisses start from your cheek, down your neck, and then across your chest until he reaches your nipples, giving both of them the same amount of attention taking them between his teeth and biting down with just the perfect amount of pressure to make your eyes roll back into your head. You arch your back, pushing yourself up to him as if you are begging him for more. He looks up at you with a grin. This man knows what he is doing. His hand making his way to your center, he slips two fingers in between.

“Mhmm… wet for me?” He says as he moved his fingers into you, up and down before slipping the length of them inside of you. Picking up speed, you can’t control the sounds coming from your lips. Your head rolls back as you feel a rush come over you. You were close to your limit as your legs started to quiver.

“Tell me what you want.” He whispers as he brings his fingers to his mouth. What the fuck.

You reach out to grab his length, rubbing your hand up and down. You spread your legs as you pull him closer to you. You were shy when it came to this, the talking and telling him what you want. You felt your cheeks turn red as he continued to ask you to tell him what you wanted, tell him how you like it.

“Hard.” You barely manage to force out of your mouth.

“Tell me what you want hard, baby?” he says with a grin. Shit, he’s going to make you say it isn’t he?

“I want you to fuck me… hard.” You say, as your voice cracks from nervousness.

“I’ll do anything for you.” He says, with the most seductive look in his eyes as he moves to the end of the bed, standing up before wrapping each of his arms around your legs. He pulls you to the edge of the bed, and begins to tease you a little more by placing the tip of his length in just a little before pulling it out again quickly.

He picks up speed as his length fills you completely. You realize you can’t control the sounds coming from your mouth as he moves his thumb quickly at your sweet spot as he thrusts into you harder and harder. You scream his name as you make a failed attempt to lift your head to look at him, just for your head to fall back against the pillows again. The sounds of pleasure come from both of your mouths as you feel his warmth inside of you. At the same time? His body falls onto yours as he reaches his hand hand to sweep the hair back from your face.

“You’re so beautiful.” He says sweetly, kissing you and pulling your hand across his chest so that you are wrapped around him.

“Thank you for tonight… all of it. One hell of a welcome to Nashville.” You laugh. Tonight was not at all what you expected, but you wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

You stayed up for the next hour talking about your parents, your home town, your siblings, past jobs. It was so easy to talk to Danny, and you never wanted to stop, but you felt your eyes start to get heavy.

“Go to sleep babe. What’s your coffee order? I’ll have Sam pick it up on his way and it will be on the counter when you wake up.” He must have noticed you fighting sleep. You watched him type out your Starbucks order before he turned to plug his phone into the charger and turn off the lamp. He shuffled around until you could tell he was finally comfortable and when you turned to give him space he pulled you in, holding you closer.

“Sweet dreams.” He whispers and a few minutes later he’s sound asleep, his beautiful curls resting against the top of your head.

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