#also.. i deal with more than enough stress from all angles.. library school will probably fuck me over more

[goose-books]

goose-books productions: a 2020 review

view the image in higher quality here! (open the image in a new tab to zoom in.) thank you to my dearest @yvesdot for the template

transcripts and month-by-month details under the cut! for reference, you can find my projects here :-) overall, new and old followers, thank you for another good year over here! [holds your hand] [holds your hand] [holds your hand] [holds your h

january

i spent late 2019-early 2020 working on 2019’s nano project, quark, aka the speculative fiction thing about new york city and prophets and dissections of the chosen one trope and gay people. quark is my second-oldest project (five years!), but it’s also probably the most ambitious, so it’s been... difficult to wrangle into place, and i didn’t end up finishing a first draft. oh, well.

enjoy a snippet that is devastatingly emblematic of everything about quark. the tone. the homoerotic tension. the ensemble cast all talking over each other. the fact that caelum has spent pretty much this entire scene crying. fun autopsy report meeting.

Marble stares at the notebook in Shade’s hands. Or maybe he’s staring at Shade’s hands. Dawn feels a little voyeuristic, so she does what she does and says a dumb and unrelated thing: “Augustus, I think this pizza-on-the-floor thing is hurting my ass.”

Augustus flutters his hands. “Sometimes nonconformity is painful.”

“At least we’re originals,” Caelum mumbles into his sleeve.

“Exactly,” Augustus says.

“True originality doesn’t exist,” Marble says.

“Oh,” Shade deadpans, “it’s going to be a fun autopsy report meeting.”

It isn’t.

february

in january i stressed myself out trying to make the plot of quark work. so in february, i decided to take some time and write something Entirely For Fun. like, entirely for fun, no rules. and. my god. how do i explain the project i started calling “third eye for the bad guy.”

it was an unholy mashup of many of my past hyperfixations, including the gone series, a tale of two cities, warrior cats, and the left hand of darkness. one of the characters was a canon scalie and one was a canon fictionkinnie. it centered around a polycule of wannabe-evil-overlord high schoolers. i only wrote like three chapters but i was lost in the sauce for all of february and then i just… like… wiped it from my mind and moved on? somehow??? one character was a werewolf and that literally wasn’t relevant at ALL

I.

Someone was going to die on these steps.

This had been Ivy Lee Palomo’s thought last year during the all-school photo, and it rose in her mind again now. The one hundred marble stairs leading up to the great double doors of Saint Constantine Academy were the school’s pride and glory, steep as the mountain, sharp as the blade under Ivy Lee’s skirt. With the cutting wind and snow glazing the stone more often than not, with the freshmen wild and wired on their first day of their first year, it was really only a matter of time before someone slipped and cracked their fucking head open.

It wasn’t going to be her. Not when she had Doc Martens and reflexes like an electric coil. Still. Ivy Lee didn’t want to watch someone die. She didn’t get along with dead people.

march

in march, i got back to the project i’d started in 2019 - AMT, my podcast! it’s a shakespeare retelling set in a modern high school; this excerpt is funnier and also more unnerving in context. (double, double, toil and trouble...)

INDRAJIT: What the hell are you doing?

[PAUSE.]

DEE (like she’s lying): Making pasta.

[ALL THREE OF THEM LAUGH.]

NONA: That’s right.

MORA: We have the keys to Mab’s office.

DEE: We’re using her stove.

NONA: To make pasta.

DEE: Do you want some?

[A TENSE PAUSE.]

INDRAJIT: No.

april

and darkling rears its head! all of my other projects have existed for at least a year; darkling (specfic king lear retelling) is... special. it was conceived in april, when i started hyperfixating on king lear, and i still managed to write an absolutely ridiculous amount of content for it. it was like the power of hyperfixation let me speedrun the entire process. which. okay.

iv: control

They say Cressida Stayer was nine years old when she turned her hair to gold. They laid her down in bed blonde, and the next morning, the waves cascading down her shoulders were solid metal, glinting harshly in the sunlight, weighing her down, creating that odd head-cocked expression she still wears now. Nine years old. Two or three years before most people develop enough magic skills to dye a single curl. Much less transfigure their hair into precious metal.

People also say Leovald Stayer’s immediate reaction was to hack it off her head and melt it down for cash. But generally they say that part a lot quieter.

may

in may i wrote AMT episode 15, by which i mean that in may there was a day when i sat in my room with the door shut for literally five straight hours listening to the same three songs on loop as i wrote the climax of one of the plotlines of AMT. so. that sure was… a day.

ISAAC: Do you want… do you want someone to drive you home? Hawk, you’re worrying me -

HAWK (almost cutting him off): Don’t. Don’t say that. I’m here to help. With your… thing.

ISAAC (quietly): I… don’t know if you should be here to see this.

HAWK (a little louder, more audibly upset): Well - what else am I going to do? Go home and - and have my dads talk at me and - and not be able to answer them? Because I can’t? I can’t. I don’t know what to say.

[PAUSE.]

ISAAC (V.O.): I wonder if this is what he feels like, on the outside, looking in at me. Watching someone else hurting. Helpless and afraid.

He still fits perfectly in my arms. I rest my chin on top of his head and pull him close to me, like I can stop him from shaking, like I can stop anything from happening the way I know it’s going to. I bury my face in his hair. He smells so familiar. He’s so warm.

God, Hawk. I love you so much. You shouldn’t be here to see this. Something bad’s gonna happen. And you’re not the kind of person who belongs in a tragedy.

june

okay, honestly, i should talk about “night shift” here, because in june i wrote a whole short story in one night (and then foamed over it for a week), but i am still in the process of submitting it places! so i am terrified to put even a sentence of it online. instead: the other thing i did this month was to finish AMT! (sixteen episodes and somewhere around 175k, iirc, but don’t quote me.) these lines are the opener to the final episode!

RAHMA (V.O.): The combined series of sophomore year disasters stretched through November. It’s June now. It’s taken me… a long time to get this all put together. I was going to make a vlog about it, initially - well, calling it a vlog sounds frivolous. I was going to make a video recounting the whole deal. All of it. From when I kissed Avery Fairchilde to the very last night. I scripted dozens of drafts; I put together dozens of bullet-pointed lists of what to cover… and it was never enough. Because Avery and I weren’t the only ones involved. Even if I was only focused on the two of us, it wasn’t just the two of us.

So… I gathered up everyone else. The whole town of Ellisburg is still talking about the week the town went crazy, but it wasn’t just a week. There was a lot leading up to it. And I think if anyone’s going to talk about it, it should be us. The people who lived it. So here we are. The most ambitious Rahma Ashiq production of all time - at least so far.

july

every july i pause whatever else i’m doing to celebrate the birthday of aurum & argentate, twins from my oldest and dearest WIP The Mortal Realm. july fifteenth! mark your calendars. they’re princes, though argentate would really rather not be; you can read the full birthday piece here.

“Do you… plan to get dressed?” A bit of the usual humor crept back into Aurum’s voice. “Although if you want to speak to the kingdom in your underthings, by all means, you have my full support.”

Argentate scrubbed at his face. He wasn’t dressed, no, but the usual malaise hung over his shoulders like a cloak. Guilt. Nerves. The sick sense that he hadn’t done something he was supposed to. The numb knowledge that it was too late to change a thing.

“I meant to,” he said. “Get dressed, I mean.” The rest went unsaid: I have just been sitting here. On the floor. Thinking about how I should get dressed.

“Ah,” Aurum said, extending his hand. “The traditional route. We’ll save the nude speeches for the future, then.”

Argentate took his hand, stumbling a little as Aurum pulled him to his feet. He steadied himself on the closest wall, taking a few deep breaths. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. His hands found their way to the cross, again and again.

august

this summer, i wrote an entire draft of Valentine Van Velt is Dead, AKA “holden caulfield goes to exposure therapy,” AKA the weird little personal side project i keep tucked into my coat. interesting features include second-person narration from a narrator who doesn’t like the main character all that much. so reading it is kind of like the book wants to kill you? with an added dash of general melancholy.

You used to live here. That’s the thing that’s got you feeling so off.

You didn’t recognize your old house. I mean, you kind of did. You remembered that the road was on a hill. That hill felt like a goddamn forty-five degree angle when you were a kid. But if you didn’t have the address written down you wouldn’t have known it at all. It would have been just another little suburban house in rows of perfect little towns that make your skin crawl.

So now you’re in this diner looking out a gross smudgy window trying to block out the elevator music pumping through the speakers in the ceiling or whatever. I don’t know how speakers work. You’re trying to tune that shit out. The waitress comes over and catches you by surprise so you just point at some coffee thing on the menu so she’ll go away. For the record: you don’t drink coffee.

There’s a public library across the street. A little square building. You probably used to go there. The lady comes over and thunks your coffee on the table and gives you a kind of look, like she wants to know what in the goddamn hell you think you’re doing here and not at school. You sip your coffee and look out the window until she leaves you alone again. And then you spit it back into the cup because, for the record: you don’t drink coffee.

september

i spent september and october prepping for nano, so i was mostly working on darkling...

It’s late spring; still, at this time of night, on a rooftop, there’s a chill. The wind plays with the end of Ruby’s coat, with her hair. She hands the bottle off to Jasper, stares up at the fogged-over sky, wishes she were lying in Dany’s arms in Dany’s bed instead of here. Wishes, even, that Dany were the one on the roof with her. At least then they’d be cold together. At least then she wouldn’t have to imagine what Dany would say; she could just listen, and watch Dany’s flashing smile and her flinty eyes.

(She cuddles. This is another thing Dany does that Dany probably shouldn’t do, based on everything about Dany; it’s not like rattlesnakes cuddle. But Dany likes to nuzzle into Ruby’s side and rest her head on Ruby’s collarbones and toss an arm over Ruby’s chest, and hold her down like she’s worried she’ll float off somewhere. She’ll card her fingers through Ruby’s hair and hum. Even though they could get caught, even though she’s probably got better places to be - Dany cuddles.)

Ruby imagines it, momentarily, both of them on the roof together, sprawled like horrifyingly beautiful gargoyles, sharp teeth flashing, blood running hot. Up here - it’d be like they ruled the world.

But whatever. Jasper’s fun. He’s hot. He’s got a sharp tongue in a lot more ways than one. And she likes when he lets the mask down. She likes seeing the soft bits underneath. She wants to sink her teeth and nails into them so hard she draws blood. Masks don’t bleed. Ruby would know; that’s why she is what she is.

october

...though i was also in creative writing class in school, and thus ended up writing a bunch of poems of varying quality (my teacher had a real thing for poetry) and also one darklingverse short story where rory and cressida hold hands! which you can find here.

Lorelai Rory Flowers is afraid of thunder.

This is a bit of an embarrassing thing to admit, as they’re seventeen (“at least seventeen,” they like to tell people, “maybe two hundred, who’s to say?”) and generally wise beyond their years, or whatever it is that adults say about kids with too much psychological baggage. Being afraid of thunder is not a very wise-beyond-one’s-years trait. And yet the state of affairs remains: loud noises make Rory want to melt into the earth. Back when they still went to school, even the fire alarm sent them scuttling under their desk to hide.

Right now, in the elevator, all they can do is shrink into their sweater.

They haven’t let go of Cressida’s hand yet.

november

and then november of course was nano which was an adventure all the way through. (opening tumblr on the fifth day of nano to find out about d*stiel... was something.)

“Apologize to me. Or get out of my house.”

Gracen’s voice is very, very low. For a moment she thinks he hasn’t heard her at all. Then he spins, eyes blazing. “What did you say?”

Gracen watches her own chest heave. She pushes herself up off the desk, stands with the effort of pushing a mountain off of her back. Leovald is six-foot-four. Gracen is six-foot-two. In her heels, in the heels she must wear to be a professional woman, to be a lady - they are the same height.

Gracen wipes her nose. When she lowers her arm, there’s a streak of blood across the back of her hand. Fire shivers in her chest; her heart rings in her ears; her voice could cut steel.

“I said,” she says, low, slow, volume building, “apologize to me. Or get. Out. Of. My. House.”

december

and finally, the poem i posted this year! it’s called the beast sonnet, and you can find it in its own post over here (with commentary! how sexy.)

i kill the beast and drop down to my knees, my blade stained dark with blood of stygian hue, and for a moment these scarred hands shake free, and hold a world unfurled for me anew. but once-mourned victims, victors, vices find; fear winged me; now its absence strips me bare. my sword now dulls, my legs, my voice, my mind; the beast, pried from my throat, leaves no skill there. and still i hear it laugh, O DEVOTEE— O CHILD DEAR, NO GLORY WITHOUT ME.

i was quite productive this year; i have to think it was because i was avoiding things... the peak of my productivity happened over the summer and in november, AKA, college app hell. (almost done with the last applications! pray for me.)

a general breakdown of what occupied me this year:

(no, i don’t know why the “various other things” category ended up so large... i blame all the one-off projects i wrote a single page for, and also whatever the fuck happened in february. yes, i do know why it looks hideous; it’s because each of my WIPs has a theme color

thank you once again for spending some time at goose-books dot gov this year! what to expect for next year: well, i very much hope i can produce AMT... also hoping to get darkling ready for beta readers, so keep your eyes out!

#max.txt #and that's a wrap!!! what a goddamn year. #okay. breath in. tags: #quark tag #third eye tag #(i think there are like. two posts in that one?) #amt tag #darkling tag #tmr tag #vvvid tag #wow that was a lot of text. if you read all this... [blows you a kiss] thank you! #max actually writes #year in review

[slapshot-to-the-heart]

Flatbush & Atlantic: part i

Quick note: This is taking place in the 2020-21 season, as if the Islanders still play at Barclays; I know they won’t in actuality. In the story, I’m also going to be taking some liberties with what the duties of a team’s general counsel and legal team would actually be in charge of. My understanding, as a pre-law student, is that it’s more on the corporate angle, dealing with contracts and stuff — in addition to that, Cass will also be dealing with some more immigration and employment law as well. 

part i

October 1

“Adiós, mamá. Hablamos pronto. Te amo.” Cassidy hung up, breathing out a tense sigh and rubbing her temples with the heels of her hands. Talking to her mom usually helped to calm her down, bring her back to Earth, but for whatever reason it wasn’t taking. She took a brief glance at the casebook open on her dinged-up Ikea desk. Federal Indian Law. She liked the class, genuinely, but her day had started off bad and gotten worse pretty damn quickly. First she was out of her favorite tea, then her advisor cancelled their meeting, then it started raining as she walked back to her MTA stop, so she had missed the train. Another came fifteen minutes later, but the damage was already done. The only bright spot in the day, aside from calling her mom, had been the cute guy at the Polish deli down the street who had put extra peppers on her Philly cheesesteak. She unwrapped the sandwich, taking a moody bite out of the end. A caramelized onion dropped to the floor. Sighing, she leaned down to pick it up, hurtling it in the direction of the trashcan but only half-looking to see if it reached its target destination. Despite the name, Cass had never had a cheesesteak before she moved to New York, and it wasn’t even because she wasn’t a sandwich person. No, Cass loved a good sandwich, but between her proclivity towards a good BLT and her mom’s homemade Mexican food, she just hadn’t gotten around to it. 

Her laptop dinged with an email notification. What now? She swiped over to the mail page, taking another bite as she read the subject line. Experiential learning requirement - unmet. Her brow furrowed. Unmet? Clicking it open, she scanned the email, clearly something automated from the registrar’s office. Yet to complete Columbia’s experiential learning requirement...We suggest you connect with professors...You have until October 8 to submit...Cassidy never finished her sandwich. “Oh my God,” she muttered to herself, feeling her cheeks heat up. “How could you do this? How could you be so stupid, Cass?” She was normally so on top of everything, never missed a date, never forgot an assignment, so how could she have missed one of the only things left to do to graduate? Her law school required all of the graduates to complete some sort of experiential learning requirement — some kind of externship, clinic, summer associate position, anything to get them “out in the real world.” That’s when it hit her. She had coached her high school’s mock trial team the summer after her first year, and interned at the Hartford County DA’s the summer after. But they paid her. Her school had a weird ‘double-dip’ policy, where you weren’t allowed to take a position for class credit and get paid at the same time. It was a confusing rule, convoluted and bizarre and probably a little bit elitist, but it was a rule. As if the day couldn’t get any worse, and then somehow it did. 

Turning to her laptop, she started searching for just about anything that could possibly help her. The school’s website, the Manhattan District Attorney’s, state offices, NGOs, federal prosecutors, anyone that might have a lead. Frantically dragging over her resumé and throwing together a cover letter that probably (hopefully) looked way more interesting than it actually was, Cassidy fired off email after email after email. Two hours later, she had sent off some twenty-odd applications, hoping that at least one or two would end up panning out. Glancing at her watch, she let out an exasperated breath. 12:22 A.M. Her classes didn’t start until nine, but it took almost an hour and a subway connection to get to Columbia, and she had to eat and shower before. So, really, it meant getting up at about seven. She needed to go to bed. 

Stomach reeling and feeling more resigned than anything, Cass haphazardly brushed her teeth, flossed — it didn’t matter how tired she was, she’d never forget to floss — and clambered into bed, wearing a faded, way-too-big Rangers t-shirt. I’ll be okay. She took a deep breath. It’ll be okay. It has to be. Cassidy Cabrera Shaw was tough as nails and stubborn as hell, and she wasn’t going to let everything she had worked so hard for fall apart so easily. 

Whenever Cass was nervous, or anxious, or afraid, she was never able to sleep well. She ended up waking up at ten past six, sitting in her bed for fifteen minutes praying that she’d fall back asleep, and finally accepting her fate that sleep just wasn’t going to come. Rolling over, she grabbed her phone from where she had left it charging on the nightstand. Nightstand was maybe a generous term for it; technically, it was a wooden milk crate that she had spray painted white when she and the other girls had moved into the apartment two years prior. She had a little bit of money set aside from college, but every penny possible was going towards tuition and those ungodly-expensive books that she had to buy every semester. The mattress and frame were from Ikea, and Cass had brought some things like bedding and a desk from her old room. The rest of it — rugs, lighting, and decorations like her six-inch ceramic peacock (his name was Charles) had come from a combination of Goodwill runs and senior citizen yard sales. 

Wincing as she did so, Cass pulled up her email, bracing herself for the inevitable barrage of rejection. After scrolling past ten or so automated “no longer hiring” and “position has been filled” messages, one caught her eye. She had sent a few emails to professors of hers, not expecting to hear anything back for a few days. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but there certainly were advantages of going to school in a city as massive as New York. All of her professors knew someone and had some kind of connection from their own education, or days in the practice, or childhood summer trips to the Hamptons with someone who just so happened to be a judge on the Second Circuit Court — that last one was last year’s employment law professor. One particular subject line caught her eye. Thought you might be interested, Professor Murakami had written. David, as he preferred to be called, was her Sports Law professor from last year. She didn’t go into the class expecting to enjoy it all that much, if she was being honest. She had gotten a crappy registration time and most other classes were filled, so it had started out as a placeholder and nothing more. Over the semester, though, it had quickly become one of her favorites, combining pieces of everything else she had studied into one cohesive course. Cass also wasn’t in a position to be turning down any potential offers, so she opened the email and started reading. 

I got your email, Cassidy, and think I might be able to help. Okay, so far, so good. I happen to have a contact in the counsel’s office of one of the professional sports teams in the city. That’s exactly what Cass was talking about — where do these people meet each other? Is there some kind of exclusive speakeasy you’re given the password to as soon as you’re admitted to the state bar? Chris Cohen works for the Islanders, and I remember you talking about how interested in hockey you are. Okay, true, but the Islanders? She had practically been born with a Ranger’s jersey on. Beggars can’t be choosers, she thought. I gave him a heads-up that I’d likely be sending a promising candidate his way, so just let me know if this sounds like something you’d be interested in and I’ll send along your contact information. 

Cass couldn’t respond fast enough. Yes, please! 

---

Wednesdays were her ‘easy’ days, if you could say that. She had Environmental Law and Human Rights back-to-back, but anything after noon was pretty much fair game. That being said, it certainly didn’t mean that she was any less stressed. There were at least a hundred pages to read before class the next day, she had a sample essay due for bar prep, and her mind was still racing about the email. Grabbing a gyro from the cart outside of her last class of the day, Cass stress-ate with one hand while continually refreshing her inbox with the other.  Food wasn’t allowed in the library, so she ate the last few bites right outside the doors, throwing away the wrapper and squeezing past the hordes of clearly overwhelmed first-years running to get to class on time. 

Popping her Airpods out of their case and into her ears, Cass briskly made her way up the stairs to the third floor, crossing her fingers that her usual spot, a big blue chair over by the research desk, was open. She was in luck, pulling out a water bottle and laptop and getting to work on editing. Four hours later, she had reached some semblance of satisfaction with her work, shutting off her computer and making her way to the subway. There was about half an hour before she had to transfer to the line that would take her to the apartment; squeezing into one of the last free seats, she tugged out a textbook and a highlighter. Why her professor insisted on assigning the entire text of the United Nations charter was a mystery to her, but she’d rather jump off a cliff than be cold called on without an answer. Transferring at Grand Concourse took about ten minutes — it was rush hour, so the first train to come was entirely full — and another twenty or so minutes later, she was letting herself into her shared East Bronx apartment. 

Hanging up her denim jacket by the door and toeing off her sneakers, Cass let out a not-so-subtle exasperated sigh. 

“One of those days?” Alicia piped in from the kitchen. Alicia also lived in the apartment, one of the four sorority sisters-turned-roommates who had made the move from Connecticut down to New York after graduation. Cass padded into the kitchen, where she was greeted by Alicia in front of a skillet and rice cooker, intensely sautéeing some vegetables.

“You have no idea,” Cass said, hugging her from behind. “Whatcha making?” There were obviously some nights when not everyone was home — most often either Cass or Ryanne, who was in med school — but they always tried to have a few nights a week where someone would cook a meal for the whole house. 

“Japchae, it’s my mom’s recipe,” she replied. “I called her and asked how much sesame oil to use, and she just said ‘until it tastes right.’ Like, I love you, Mom, but that doesn’t really help my cause, does it?”

Cass snorted. “Oh for sure, it’s the same way with me. Do you remember the first time I made tamales down here?” Cass had grown up eating and making tamales with her mom and abuela, but she had never been allowed to really take the reins. She had the recipe, though, so the first night after they were moved in, she ventured down to the closest bodega, bought the ingredients, and decided to try her hand making them from scratch. The recipe, however, left out the key piece of exactly how much water to use for steaming — Cass didn’t know, and her mom had always just eyeballed it. So she had ended up putting in way too little and setting the stove way too hot, and to make a long story short, ended up setting off the fire alarm. The one saving grace was the extremely attractive police office that came to double-check the false alarm, but even he couldn’t wipe the mortified expression off of her face. 

“How could I forget?” Alicia responded with a grin. “Go put your shit down, it’ll be ready in a few.”

Cass playfully rolled her eyes, heading towards her room in the back. “Yes, mother.” Their apartment was a three bedroom; while obviously it would have been amazing for everyone to have their own, it was still New York City and none of them were exactly rolling in the dough. Cassidy and Ryanne were obviously still students, and while Alicia and Stella had actual jobs  — Stella worked international business down by Wall Street and Alicia did something with satellites in Queens — none of them were exactly inclined to set out on their own just yet. So Stella and Alicia shared a room, and she and Ryanne had their own. She shrugged off her jacket, slinging her backpack onto the bed before chugging the rest of her water bottle and checking her phone. Two new emails. A 20% off coupon to Lush, and one from Chris Cohen. Chris Cohen? It took her a minute to remember, but when she did, she couldn’t read it fast enough.

Honestly, Cass didn’t read the whole thing, but got enough information to know that she had an interview Friday afternoon at the office in Brooklyn, that Chris  — he had said to call him Chris — said she came with a stellar recommendation from Professor Murakami (an old law school buddy, figures) and that there was no way in hell she was going to fuck this up. She wouldn’t let herself. 

---

Cass was lucky her Thursdays were so packed; if she had any extra time to stress over her impending interview, she would have, but she couldn’t. She had two ‘free’ hours in between classes, but after she had scarfed down lunch (Alicia had, mercifully, made plenty of leftovers) it was the only stretch she had to hit the gym. Coupled with the time it took to walk there, change, and shower after, there really wasn’t much in the way of downtime. After classes was her bar prep group, and the day was so exhausting that it was pretty much all she could manage to take the train home, microwave dinosaur chicken nuggets, and stumble into bed. After flossing. 

---

If Cassidy lived in any other city, she would have felt wildly out of place on her morning commute. Who shows up to school wearing a suit? She wasn’t an absolute masochist, so her heels were in her bag. But for once in her life she didn’t feel so out of place among the presumably-highbrow, presumably-making-six-figures crowd surrounding her. The suit had been her first big purchase for herself  — she had scraped by without one in college, but invested as soon as she had a little saved up from her summer job at a boutique in town. Her mother had always told her that it was the woman who made the clothes, rather than the other way around, and Cass always did what her mom said. 

Samaira, one of her friends and another editor on the Columbia Law Review, caught up to her as they both left the twice-weekly morning meeting. “You seem kind of jumpy, Cass. What’s up?”

Cassidy wrung her hands and shrugged her shoulders. “I told you that I missed the internship requirement thing, right?” Samaira nodded. “Well, I have an internship in,” she paused to look at her watch, “two hours, and I’m so nervous I’m going to mess this up. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t get it. There’s not time to look for something else, there’s no alternative, and I don’t know what to do if my own stupidity and forgetfulness is the only thing standing in between me and something I’ve worked so fucking hard for—”

Samaira cut her off. “I’m going to stop you there. That’s bull, Cass, and you know it. You are the furthest thing from a disappointment. You’re one of the kindest, sharpest, and most creative people I know, and you’re not going to let something as petty as a deadline stand in your way. Time gets away from all of us sometimes, and it’s nothing to beat yourself up over. I want you to be confident and have faith in yourself, because you deserve it, but if you don’t, it’s okay. I get it. I believe in you enough for the both of us.” She squeezed Cass’ hand. 

She managed a watery smile. “Thanks, Samaira.”

“Any time,” she replied easily. “I’ve got to run to class now, but I want to hear how it went the second you get out, okay?”

“I will.”

Samaira rolled her eyes. “I mean it. You’re going to crush this, Cass. Love you!” She added, waving goodbye as she turned the corner.

There was half an hour before Cass needed to head over to the interview, and before she knew it her feet had taken her to her favorite spot on the north side of Central Park. Grabbing a bagel, she thankfully found the bench empty. After finishing the bagel — she would have preferred cheese, but they were out, so cinnamon raisin it was — and the better part of her Hozier-dominated acoustic playlist, it was time to catch the train. She jumped on with barely a second to spare, grabbing a strap and trying to avoid bumping into anyone. 

A seat opened up about halfway to Brooklyn, and Cass took the opportunity to unceremoniously tug off her much more practical flats and switch into the much more professional ankle-strap heels that had been stuffed in her backpack all day. For a fleeting moment, she was worried what everyone around her would think; she was, after all, technically changing on public transportation. A man got on at the next stop who was dressed head-to-toe in neon orange while carrying a Pomeranian in his purse. Nobody batted an eye. She got over herself pretty quickly.

Getting off at the Barclays Center station, Cass pulled out her phone, opening up the camera to give herself a quick once-over. As much as she hated it, first impressions really were everything. Lipstick? Not smudged. Hair? Minimal flyaways. Teeth? No spinach to be seen. Triple-checking that she had the time right, Cass walked through the doors of the office building, Islanders logo emblazoned on the wall behind the secretary’s desk. 

“Hi,” she said tentatively, catching his attention. “I have an interview with Chris Cohen at 2?” 

The secretary nodded, smiling warmly at her. “No problem. I’m Josh, you can have a seat over there,” he nodded to the small waiting area off to the side, “and I’ll call you when he’s ready for you to be sent up.”

Cass didn’t wait for more than five minutes before Josh gave her the go-ahead, and she was soon headed up the elevator to Chris’ office. “Fourth door on the left. It should have his name on it,” Josh had added. 

She raised her fist, knocking quickly on the frosted glass. It swung open a second later, a kind-looking man with glasses and salt-and-pepper hair answering. “You must be Cassidy. I’m Chris Cohen, so nice to meet you. Come right in,” he said, ushering her through the room, where several other associates sat at desks, and into his office. 

“David’s always good at keeping an eye out for me in his courses, and I was happy he passed you along,” Chris said, pulling out her resumé. “And you’re a 3L, correct?” She nodded. “Good. So let’s dive right into it. What courses and work experience do you have that you feel best position you for success in this position?” Much though Cass was loath to admit it, if there was anything she was good at, it was talking herself up. There was a reason her high school superlative was “Most Likely to be Able to Talk Their Way Out of a Ticket.” She launched into a well-rehearsed response, making sure to lace in her love for hockey once or twice. If nothing else, it would hopefully at least get her some brownie points. He had a few questions about her resumé, asked about her work on the law review, a few hypotheticals about contract law. She was batting a thousand until he asked the dreaded final question. “Do you have any questions for me?” 

Cass was wracking her brain, trying to come up with some intelligent-sounding thing to ask, but nothing came. “Uh—” she started, but was saved by the bell. Or, rather, saved by a frantic door opening and a panicked-sounding Mat Barzal bursting into the room. “Chris, I’ve got a problem.”

#hockey imagine #hockey #nhl imagine #mat barzal #mat barzal imagine #nhl #hockey writing #nhl writing #hockey imagines #nhl imagines #islanders #mat barzal imagines

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THERE'S AN EVEN BETTER WAY TO DESCRIBE THIS SITUATION IS ALSO TEMPORARY

My usual trick is to claim that they'll only invest contingently on other investors doing so because otherwise you'd be undercapitalized. In fact, it's just as well not exist. I deliberately pander to readers, because it has large libraries for manipulating strings. When you have multiple founders who were already friends before they decided to start a gasoline powered generator inside our offices. 2 months during which the company is actually more valuable.1 The professors will get whoever they admit as their own grad students, because all three are doable.2 The golden age of economic equality in the mid 20th century.

How do you break the connection between nerds and technology? Investors are rich enough to be sure signs of bad algorithms.3 Maybe it's a good idea for a small amount of force applied at just the point where they would do a lot of founders that we have enough data points to see patterns clearly. A company to compensate for the opportunity cost of the board may even help VCs pick better. The alarming thing is that it will set off the alarms sufficiently early, you may be able to phrase it in terms of the visa that they couldn't get grad students, so we were on Version 4. I think I see now what went wrong with philosophy, and how much is due to Jessica Livingston and Chris Steiner for reading drafts of this.4 Bad Programmers I forgot to include this in the early stages.5 So if you want to discover great new things often come from outsiders. Y18. Checks on purchases will always be a few languages, I'm not eager to fix that. It was striking how old fashioned this sounded.6 The term angel round doesn't mean that it's a pretty clever piece of jiujitsu to set this irresistible force against the slightly less immovable object of becoming rich.

Perhaps, if design and research converge, the best pickers should have more hits.7 Libraries are one place Common Lisp falls short.8 Then I'd sleep till about 11 am, and come with tougher terms. Six weeks is fast. This group says one thing. We've raised $800,000, but to design beautiful software, would be enough to feel like a late bloomer than a failed child prodigy. If you draw a tree and you change the angle of a branch five degrees, no one stopped to wonder where the big returns are. Here are the alternatives considered if the filter sees FREE!9 Appendix: Examples of Filtering Here is an example of applied empathy. I happened to get hold of a copy of something they made, e. In software, it means you don't have to pay for Facebook. That's not a promising lead and should therefore get low priority, but it's not the distinction between statements and expressions, so you have to be introduced to them.

Startups So these, I think in the coming century is a huge one. They just can't make up their minds.10 American immigration policy keeps out most smart people, and what to do; they'll start to engage in office politics. If you plan to get rich by creating wealth, not all of them work on interesting stuff. The melon seed model is more like architecture. So let's be clear what reducing economic inequality means eliminating startups. We can see this on a small scale: in thoughts of a sentence or two. The reason credentials have such prestige is that for most of Octopart's life, the cruelty and the boredom, both have the same kind of stock representing the total pool of companies they fund. Incidentally, the switch in the 1920s to financing growth with retained earnings till the 1920s. I'm sure every language has such tradeoffs though I suspect the best we'll be able to sit on corporate boards till the Glass-Steagall act in 1933. We still don't require it, but thoughtful people aren't willing to use a more fluid medium like pencil or ink wash or oil paint.

And when you agree there's less to say. I've described. Here are the terms: a $2 million investment, make five $400k investments. But in practice innovations were so rare that you can't change the question. Some ideas are easy for people to come back to bite them, it will probably fail. A few ideas from it turned out I was 450 years too late.11 This is a controversial view. One of the reasons I like being part of this talk. 75% of the stress comes from dealing with investors, hiring and investment decisions, and to Steve Melendez and Gregory Price for inviting me to speak at BBN.

Money September 2013 Most startups that raise money. Was it their religion?12 The immense value of the company. But if it's inborn it should be better not just for founders but for investors too. This is just as lumpy and idiosyncratic as the human body. Some people still get rich by creating wealth and getting paid proportionately, it would not be able to get smart people to be good at programming is to work on. It's not something you can learn, or at least inevitable form, but it's woven into the story instead of being absorbed by the normal people they're usually surrounded with. This is not only incomplete, but positively misleading, if it was overvalued till you see what the earnings turn out to work will probably seem flamingly obvious in retrospect.13

Notes

And since there are only pretending to in the services, companies building lightweight clients have usually tried to motivate them. Add water as specified on rice cooker. They assumed that their prices stabilize. If a prestigious VC makes a small amount of material wealth, and so thought disproportionately about such customs.

The second assumption I made because the outside edges of curves erode faster. In effect they were only partly joking. Org Worrying that Y Combinator is we hope visited mostly by people who might be a great thing in itself, and also really good at design, or even being deliberately misleading by focusing on people who run them would be enough to be promising. Which in turn forces Digg to respond with extreme countermeasures.

I'm just going to use to calibrate the weighting of the organization—specifically by sharding it. I swapped them to keep tweaking their algorithm to get the money invested in a reorganization. If early abstract paintings seem more powerful sororities at your school sucks, and large bribes by the fact that they think the top stories were de facto consulting firm. The situation we face here, which has been decreasing globally.

Charles Darwin was 22 when he received an invitation to travel aboard the HMS Beagle as a result a lot easier now for a startup at a famous university who is highly regarded by his peers. But that doesn't mean easy, of S P 500 CEOs in 2002 was 35,560. The ordering system, the work goes instead into the world you'd want to live in a wide variety of situations, but I couldn't think of the magazine they'd accepted it for had disappeared in a reorganization.

World War II had disappeared.

There are two very different types of startups will generally raise large amounts of other VCs who don't care about may not have to go to die. A rounds from top VC funds whether it was spontaneous. If you try to accept that investors don't like the iPad because it made a better influence on your product, and earns the right mindset you will find a blog that tried to preserve optionality.

I mean type I startups. In fact, we met Rajat Suri.

It's not a VC is interested in each type of thing. World War II had disappeared in a series A investor has a finite market value. Technology has always been accelerating.

But there are no false negatives.

But it's a bad idea the way to avoid sticking.

This law does not appear to be able to hire any first-time founder again he'd leave ideas that are hard to imagine that there may be that the meaning of a startup in question usually is doing badly in your country controlled by the investors agree, and Jews about. They hoped they were just getting kids to say about these: I wouldn't bet on it.

There's a variant of the markets they serve, because you're throwing off your own? As far as I know of a startup you have for endless years of training, and partly because a there was a very noticeable change in how Stripe felt. We may never do that.

The second biggest regret was caring so much attention. Users dislike their new operating system so much to generalize. Do College English Departments Come From?

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #amount #clients #bloomer #term #question #software #sup #students #century #startup #board #Investors #wealth #purchases #people #market #ideas #returns #II #view #religion #Y18 #startups #Departments #Lisp

[panlight]

What career do you think the Cullens would have if they lived normal lives, especially Bella since she was almost finished with high school when she first met Edward — motavatorbaethany

I’ve answered something similar before, along the lines of “if they didn’t have to worry about secrecy” but this sounds more like “if they didn’t become vampires at all and had jobs in their human lives” so I’m going to run with that angle!

I think Carlisle would have always found his way into medicine eventually. A desire to help people + a natural curiosity and interest in the sciences  is probably going to lead there. Of course medicine in his time period was . . . interesting, in terms of beliefs and practices. His father would have been pressuring him to become a pastor but Carlisle says in New Moon he was already questioning his father’s belief system before he became a vampire, so I think a break was coming. Esme probably would have gone into teaching but I don’t know if she would have stayed there? I mean in her time period there weren’t a whole lot socially acceptable options for women. Teaching was one of them, and it always read to me that it was more about going out west/getting away from Columbus more than teaching. If she wanted to be a teacher she could have taught in Columbus, right? But she wanted to go out west and teach, which implies to me a certain thirst for travel and adventure. She also seems to really love art and architecture. We don’t really know if she discovered those interests as a human if they came later. I sort of imagine she’d have taught for awhile and while she loved the kids felt kind of stifled creatively and would have, like Carlisle, eventually found her calling in architecture/design down the line. Maybe started as a hobby with interior design and later went back to school for architecture. There were some American female architects in Esme’s time but admittedly not many so it would have been an uphill battle.  Edward obviously had a great deal of musical talent even as a human, but whether a career could have been made of that, I don’t know. He might have become a lawyer like his father, because of societal pressure or lack of any other particular ambition. The war was almost over when he came of age and a sensitive kid like Edward would have realized quickly it wasn’t the glory and honor stuff he was daydreaming about. His ability to read people would be interesting in terms of picking clients or ‘reading’ witnesses. He can’t read their minds as human but he still has a little something extra that could help him in his work.  Rosalie would have most likely become a wife and a mother, overseeing an upper class household, attending charity functions and hosting parties and luncheons for other well-off women, if her rich husband had not been a monster. I think she’d put on a quite a show of it but underneath would feel frustrated. Every now and then someone would find her in her husband’s garage tinkering with all his fancy cars and getting grease on her fancy clothes and be like ??? but she found peace there.  Emmett and his brothers apparently worked on the railroad. With Emmett’s size and strength and stamina I think some sort of physical labor like that would probably serve him well when he was young, and then he might eventually move to a city and get involved in factory work of some kind. His family didn’t have the means or the money for education and a fancy career, and I think Emmett’s happier working with his hands and doing things anyway.  Alice was obviously going to get into fashion design somehow (assuming she didn’t spend the rest of her life in an asylum, of course).  Her father was a jeweler so if he wasn’t a murderous adulterer he may have had connections that could have helped her get her food in the door somewhere. She’d have an uncanny knack for knowing the latest trends before they even became trends, and would know what every client was looking for the minute they walked in the door.  After the war I think Jasper would want something quiet and peaceful. The guide says he’s “scholarly” so maybe he become a non-fiction writer, perhaps starting with a memoir about his experiences and then moving on to other topics. Perhaps he would give lectures with his natural charisma, or end up teaching in a college somewhere.  Bella, it says in the guide, was planning on becoming a teacher like Renee, as it was something she respected about her mom.  Like Esme, though, I don’t know that Bella would end up liking it. I think she’d teach for awhile but find out that disciplining students and speaking in front of people all the time kind of stressed her out, so then she might look into library school, or get a job at an independent bookstore or something, and start writing her own fiction on the side. Maybe she self-publishes a few things on Amazon and does well enough that she eventually buys the bookstore or opens her own. 

#cullens

[ladyemberswrites]

Vested Interest_Chapter I

Title: Vested interest

Pairing: Aluseras( Alucard x Seras)

Fandom: Hellsing/Hellsing Ultimate

Warnings: Blatant Alcoholism 

Chapters: 1/?

Summary:

Seras has feelings for Alucard, and so does he, however, to Seras, she knows her master better than anyone and knows how he can be and what he is capable of and is completely unsure of her former master intentions or the length of his apparent devotion, and accompanied by an ever changing world, old allies dead, as new ones rise, she wonders if she will be able to pull through, as well as be able to maintain a romantic relationship with her former master.

*I’m reposting this fic on my blog again*

Edit:  Nothing major, I just wanted to fix a few things, and spelling errors, and give this first chapter a little bit more meat, such as adding and changing dialogue.  

  A/N: This is a serious canon-divergence and is a part of an Au; I’m creating, so this is kind of the first part.  This takes place 500 hundred years, after Integra’s death, just to let everyone else, I hope I didn’t confuse anyone.

Comments, Reviews, Criticisms are all welcomed!!!!!

Tell me what you guys think!

“Have you changed your mind, yet?”

Seras huffs, before chugging down a significant amount of ice, cold beer and contemplated whether or not to drink until she was too plastered to stand. She couldn’t do this now or more like she didn’t want to deal this now, it was childish of her, she knew, it wasn’t like high school, where she could forge a make up a doctor’s note to skip out on gym- she was adult now, and being adult meant being mature, even when you desperately, desperately don’t want to, but! But! - UGH!

Can’t she just slam her face on the table! This was an entirely different situation, and it wasn’t like she could fake an illness to get out of it either, seeing that she came here out of her own accord.

She just didn’t know what to do. Her heart said one thing, while the more reasonable, sane, logical side of her brain completely argued against her acting on impulsive emotions.

“If you were human you probably would’ve damned your liver right about now.”

She finally removed the glass from her lips, placing it delicately upon the bar table with a click.

She looked at him this time for the first time since they’ve been here.

 Here, being a bar, a bar named Igor’s, promptly named after the owner Igor, who was just as ancient as her former Master, except for the fact that he was of the Lycan variety, and except for the fact he did appear worn down by age, from the hard wrinkles under his eyes, the rigid scar that tore through his left eye sealing it shut and a strip of flesh ripped from the right side of his face, giving a grotesque view of red gums, and his sharp, pearly white canines.

He was quiet, a type of no nonsense man, a very large man who only responded in gruff, grunts and growls, and stood a good two feet above her master. And speaking of her master, Igor wasn’t his biggest fan and wasn’t afraid to show it, since he busted up his bar in some petty fight a couple of years back. Breaking hundreds of bottles of expensive liquor and countless damages in infrastructure. Surprisingly, enough her master paid for the damages with 70% interest drawn from one of  his, probably many treasuries that he has hidden all over eastern Europe. He was a king before; at least she hopes that’s where his money is coming from, either way she really didn’t wanna know.

 And grudgingly and beyond her comprehension, he let her master come back, he still didn’t like him (she doubted that Igor was a very forgiving man) but, Alucard left generous tips, so he left it at that. From what she could tell her master seemed quite fond of the little bar.

It was small, cozy even and surprisingly, sit -spot clean and she also suspects what honestly, caught master attention the most was that it was pretty quiet, never too crowded most of the time and was simplistic in design. For Seras she could almost call it home, she found the place soothing to be in, many times she found herself here on raining days, lounging about and reading one of the many novels she “stole” from her Master endless library. Not to mention Igor served more than booze and had an array of coffee and teas, much to her pleasure.

 But she was getting off track here, trying to avoid the topic at hand.

 From the looks of it he hadn’t moved his gaze from her not once, and it unnerved her to no end, as he peered at her with half-lidded eyes and a passive gaze, which perturbed her more because of the ridiculous beard. He appeared so different……..with that thing on his face, and she desperately hid the urge to want shave it off his smug face.

“Being inhuman certainly has it perks; I don’t have to worry about liver failure.”

“That still doesn’t make you any less of an alcoholic, Master. That’s your fifth glass of scotch, and we’ve only been here 30 minutes.” she nodded towards the shot glass in his left hand, while the other supported his chin. He was also, startlingly, dressed casual, a white dress shirt and black slacks, it was a breather, to actually see him in normal clothing, and not any of his tone deaf attire that he is, so fond of wearing, the pimp hat, the 80s trench coat, well at least he didn’t really wear those anymore not since Integra’s passing, anyways, she thought solemnly.

“I don’t get as drunk easily as you, my dear.”

She stuck her tongue at him, mainly because he was right, one beer was usually enough to have her slurring her words and giggling like a lune, but she’d be darned if she admitted that to him.

“And I’m not an alcoholic.”

“Uh-huh.”

There was a moment of stillness, the delay of the inevitable, so to speak.

Seras mind was running amok, she only came here on a whim, when her master, former master, she should say had called her out of the blue, and asked her to meet him here.

 She should’ve said that he was bonkers for calling her out here at three in the morning, and hung up, because after a long, stress inducing day of work, from listening to one person after, another complain to her about whatever, to settling disputes that almost turned violent if she hadn’t intervene between councils members, comforting others, and dealing with screaming children, she had quite enough dealing with other people’s emotional turmoil, and drama. All wanted for her weekend off, was a cup of hot coco, her soft pjs, and array of rom coms to compensate for the lack of a love life, was that too much to ask for.

 But, she didn’t-

   However, the quietness continue with the couple, occasionally sipping on their respective beverages, as they listened to the news which was currently splayed upon the small television that sat at, well more like hung at an angle over the bar, it was cracked and had many wires sticking out of it, but apparently it’s been working for years, seeing that not once did it short circuit, since they’ve been coming here.

Seras, barely paid attention, one thing that about being a vampire these days is that human politics have no effect on her anymore, well somewhat if you count recent events, and second, British politics or anything involving politics  is endless hell, you better off with setting your own self on fire, then trying to reason with other people, and lucky she didn’t have the responsibility concern herself with it, unless Hellsing was involved in any case, but human-vampire relations was something else entirely.

Alucard listened more closely, yet remained apathetic, it was all Greek to him, voting, elections, parliament, electoral colleges, primaries, it was all nonsense, it didn’t make any sense to him, leave it to humans to make everything more complicated than it needs to be. Everything was better when the world adhered to monarchies and systems, everyone had a place and duty, and none one didn’t question things, like the good old day.

 “Y’know in retrospect, it makes our jobs a whole lot harder doesn’t it?” someone had to cut the ice, she supposed, but could herself laughing bit too nervously.

His attention snapped back to reality or to the woman before him. She abruptly went silent, her gaze met his from brief moment, brows raised and her fingers tinkering with her locket that hung from her neck and rested at the valley of amble chest.

“Seras?”  She quickly fixed her attention back on her locket, he threw his head back, and took a long, burning swig from his drink - it was now or never, he didn’t call her down her here at 3 in the morning to discuss politics.

 “Why?” she murmurs, at bit pitifully, her brows scrunched together tightly, her lips pursed, her shoulders raised in apprehension “I mean-” she huffs at her.

 He knew that look, she was thinking, trying to pick and choose her words, so he gave her, her space which was alright with him as it gave him extra time to just - look at her.

She was wearing a short, black dress, which modestly reached her knees, the prude,

And had long sleeves.

Her lips and nails were painted a bright crimson, as he observe them tapping ceaselessly upon her golden locket and her hair was left untouched as it rolled down towards her waist in a heap of curls. After, what, he honestly, couldn’t remember, she stopped cutting her hair and just let it take a course of her own, he didn’t know about her, but to him it was the best decision she ever made. He liked how soft it looked, how it framed her face, how it made her look mature, like the master vampire she’s supposed to be. However, despite this, her expression was sullen; her red lips were twisted in a long frown, as she watched the drips of water slid down her glass.

“Um-Master, how long have we’ve known each other?” she voice started off low.

“ Since the day I put a bullet through you, why?” he was a bit taken back, out of all the ways he predicted this conversation to go, this wasn’t one of them

 Her sapphire gaze snaps in his direction “I’m being serious!”

 “Alright, Alright, a couple of centuries.” he narrowed his eyes “and May I ask why that matters?”

“Remember, back when I told you how I felt, about how I was in love with you and you rejected Me.” it was more matter of fact than anything. She wasn’t upset, well maybe not too upset, because she knew the answer beforehand. She knew he would reject her, and it hurt, but not as bad as it would have been if she entertained the fantasy of him actually being in love with her. She had feelings, but she was also no fool. But, now, so many decades later-

“…..Yes.” he winced that wasn’t his most shining hour in his opinion, and there were plenty of them.

“Yet, after all this time, you love me, now. Why?”

She gazed back at him, her sapphire eyes filled with confusion.

He didn’t break contact; he hoped all that liquor he drank would give him the confidence to speak his mind, without hinges, without being vague about his emotions.

 “Let’s just say, the past few years, I’ve had a couple of eye openers.”

“Are you talking about “her”?”

“Sort of off, but not quite.” she had an odd look in her eye, wide, and in some sort of disbelief, until it dawned on him “and no, I’m not chasing after, you because my other relationship went up in flames, so speak, and trust me I’m not crawling back to her, ever, hell would have to freeze over before that happens.”

 “A-are you sure?” she scrutinized him, eyes narrowed, her nose wrinkling, a quirk of hers every time she seemed to be contemplating something.

 “Yes, Seras. She is out my picture book forever, trust me, a pit of vipers would be more welcoming than ever sharing her bed again.”

“B-but?”

 “But?” he waited for her to continue.”

“But, that doesn’t explain, why you-you love me now.”

“Seras, I have long since stopped viewing you as just my loyal servant. You’re -you’re more to me than just that, over the years you been my partner, my companion, someone that I could trust.”

 “It doesn’t seem like that all the time. “She whispers.

 “I know. But, that was because of my own hubris than anything. It was nothing you did, my dear.”

She smiles, softly at that, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, shyly.

 “So, am I more to you now?”

 “You are mistaken on that part.”

“How, so.”  

“I’ve had…. feelings for you four quite some time.”

“Y-you have?” she should be ecstatic, yet caution was the only thing blaring through her thoughts. She knew her master and knew him well, both the good and the bad, well more bad than good. “Even, when you were with-”

“Yes. Look, Seras, I know our relationship hasn’t been-” he was looking for a word that didn’t come as harsh.

“The best.” she adds in, a little too quickly.

 “I was thinking a bit dysfunctional lately, but I guess “not the best” sounds….better put. But anyways, what I - what I’m trying to say is that I’m interested in courting you.”

Courting was such an odd word then again using the word dating, when referring to herself and Alucard was even stranger.   

 “Seras?”

“Huh-yes.”

“Will you?”

“Will I what?

“Will you let me court you?”

“Master, I-”

“Vlad.”

“What?

“That is my birth name. I want you to call me by it from now on.” he raised, a cautious hand, a bare hand, relieved of his gloves, to push a strand of golden hair behind her ear, gently brushing his knuckles against her cheek.

Seras bit her lip, what was she to say? What should she do? She felt the beer she drank desperately, wanting to make an encore.

“Mas-Vlad, I -I don’t know.” she murmurs, peering down at her locket, again, twirling it between her slender fingers.

“Why?” he had to stop himself from saying more, before he starts sounding desperate. He will not be one of those “men”.

“What you said before about people changing.”

“Yes, what about?”

“It’s just that-just -I mean- Vlad, sometimes……sometimes….. People don’t change. Especially, people like you.”

“What’s that supposed to me?”  He should have taken offense to that, but the stinging pain of hurt was the only feeling that was consuming him at the moment.

“I know what you are. I’m not blind. Please, don’t look at me like that, I’m not saying that to hurt you, trust me.

I love you, I really, really do. Sure I can deal with all your bizarre idiosyncrasies, but that was only because our relationship was- well was master and servant, I could live with that then. But, now, now I don’t know if I can. Your impulsive, rude, I can never anticipated your moods sometimes, your fickle when you want to be, not to mention cruel and bloodthirsty. How do I know you’re going to be committed, and not just one day get up and leave without so much as a single word? How do I know this isn’t all a game to you? How do I know that you truly want to love me and be my equal, if you keep shutting me out all the time or pushing me away when you don’t feel like being bothered? “She paused a moment, looking him dead in the eye to make sure she got the point across.

“I-I can’t do this, I can’t be with you, if you’re going to act that way. I can’t.” she didn’t want to cry, she told herself, lectured herself not to cry, but the tears involuntary came forth, warm, as well as unwelcoming, burned a pathway down her face.

He was stunned silent for a while he didn’t know what to say, his mouth felt uncomfortably dry, like his mouth was filled with sad, but it did stop him from wiping her tears away with the side of his thumb.

“Seras? Seras look at me.” he lowers his voice, to attract her attention. She wiped her nose and face with the back of her hand, sniffling as, she tried to gain the courage to look at him.

“Y-yeah.”

“You speak the truth, people don’t change, especially people such as I, we never do nor ever will, but for your sake I’ll do anything you wish of me, I promise you that at least.

I know I’m more monster than man, and I can never be what you truly deserve, but I can do what I can, if you’d be mine.” he sounded, so sincere, so sincere that she couldn’t bare it anymore, and the impulsive need to wrap her arms tightly around his neck and kiss him senseless was overpowering and that’s why she needed to leave. To leave, so she could think rationally and thoroughly.

“Vlad. Vlad can you give me some time to think about?”

“Of course, I don’t want to pressure you. Take your time.”

 “Vlad.”

 “Hhhmmm.”

 “Thank you.” she couldn’t help herself, but she threw her arms around him, placing her face in the crux of his neck, nuzzling his shoulder. “Thank you.” she whispers.

He pats the top of her head, feeling slightly awkward by the sudden intimacy.

It took a few good moments for her to let go “Um, I have work soon, so I better get some sleep.”

“Ah, right. Do you want me to accompany you home?”

She shakes her head “That’s alright I want to walk by myself tonight, if you don’t mind.”

“Are you sure.”

She nods her head in affirmation, slowly sliding off her seat, to leave, however, another wave - call it a need or maybe want, but whatever it was made her lean over and press her lips to his. It was chaste and he certainly wasn’t expecting it, but he returned it with fervor, pulling her closer and gently biting bottom lip, as she held onto his shirt for dear life. He wanted more, he wanted her, yearned for her taste and her touch, her scent alone, smelling of sweet vanilla, drove him mad, but in the most delightful ways, he wanted to continue, but was suddenly interrupted, by  loud grunt. Seras immediately pulled away from him, her cheeks flushed, and bottom lip swollen and her hair in slight disarray, she looked absolutely tempting - but the dirty look Igor gave him kept him doing anything further.

“Sorry, about that.” Seras smiles apologetically to the old bartender. He only tips his head in acknowledgement, quickly turning back to washing glasses.

She glances back him a shy expression lightens her face “Good night, Vlad.”

“Good night, Seras.”

“ Alright, see you later.” she waves, as she particularly skips out the front door, her heels clacking against the wooden floors, the bell up to the entrance signaling her departure. He sighs as leans back, having zero intention of leaving anytime soon.

He jiggles his empty cup devoid of anything, but halfway melted ice.

“Do you have anything stronger than Vodka?”

“Mmmmmhh.” Igor responded, completely disinterested.

“I’m very sure that you can actually talk.”

Igor grunted, turning from his finished task to stare at the other man, he glances down at the no-life king’s empty glass, back up to him, glaring.

“What!?…. Trust me I haven’t had my fill of alcohol; he didn’t want this man to break up his bar again due to being in a drunken stupor.

Igor shakes his head, arms crossed, clearly exasperated. He hated it when customers’ abuse their drinking privileges, and it pissed off even more, because was one that had to clean it all up, after closing.

“I’ll pay extra; I’ll even buy you a brand new television set.”

Didn’t this man have anything else better to do than, spend his nights indulging in alcoholism? Igor, sighs beside himself, well, whatever, it was his life that his was drinking away, not his, beside brand new television did sound pleasing, he was getting of watching his soap operas on a cracked scene, anyways, and maybe his regulars will stop complaining about how small his t.v set is.

Without another word, he traveled to the back to pick out a bottle of Everclear, which just came in this afternoon, maybe this will shut the lunatic up.

Alucard was curious when the Werewolf reappeared again with a large silver bottle of clear liquid, and handed it to him, practically shoving it in his arms.

The master vampire spinned it around, it was room temperature “ Everclear” he twisted it around once again to read the table of contents on the back with a raised eyebrow “ colorless, flavorless, 95 % concentrated Alcohol”  he whistle at that.

He glance back at the bartender, he just shrugged in response and continued about his work.  

Well, he certainly wasn’t going to leave this bar sober, hopefully.

TBC

Edit: Nothing major, I just wanted to fix a few things, and spelling errors, and give this first chapter a little bit more meat, such as adding and changing dialogue.  

Like for the instance, the part where Seras assumes Alucard has treasuries hidden all over Western Europe,I didn’t think much about that line, until now, realizing that Alucard is Romanian, which is in Eastern Europe, so he would have secret stashes hidden all over Eastern Europe, not Western.

   A/N: Is this chapter a bit too sappy, I don’t know maybe. I’m just wanted to write a Aluseras fic, where alucard doesn’t act like a grade A- A-hole with no redeemable qualities and for absolutely no reason, which I see an abundance of in a lot of fan fictions concerning this couple, note that I have nothing against anyone who does write these kind of fics, nothing personal, just not my cup of tea.

Anyways, can you believe it took me a whole day to write this, not to mention on a horribly upset stomach, ugh, it was the only way to keep me distracted from the pain.

Well, that’s it for now, Comments are always welcomed.

 @deyity @kyoandyuya @these-three-peeps

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