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kinsey3furry300 · 3 years

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So how the heck do the Avengers pay for stuff, and how rich are they?

So, in the wake of “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” There’s a lot of debate about why Sam didn’t seem to get paid well for his work in the Avengers (at least in the MCU continuity), and this has got me thinking: we’ve got no evidence that the Avengers are, financially, anything but a hot mess. So lets break it down, Avenger by Avenger, using real-world pay scales for the ones who have jobs.

Tony: a billionaire, so clearly he’s a financial genius, right? Well….. his actions say otherwise. He’s shown to be wildly irresponsible with his money. He inherited a lot of wealth form his parents which was managed by the first Jarvis, Obadiah, and Pepper for him, he buys and then gives away not just woks of art, but entire collections by major 20th century artists on a whim, destroyed his own cars and home without concern, he tanks the value of his own company in the first Iron Man with a bad press interview, gets kicked of his own bord of directors, and ultimately, in Iron Man 2, gives control of his company to Pepper. He’s insanely rich, and insanely smart, but man, he’s not smart with his money. So all the cool stuff, his suits, the Avengers tower, the facility up-state: that’s all paid for by him, but Pepper is holding the purse-stings. So, does he pay the others? We have no evidence for most of them… but we do with Spidey. Peter Parker is in the Stark Internship Program a euphemism to hide the fact he’s training and mentoring him as a super-hero, but I find the wording interesting: he refers to Spidey, his surrogate son and chosen heir, as an intern. I.E., Unpaid. I’m guessing this is Howard’s influence over him, some sort of ‘make you own way in the world, son’ attitude, but if he’s not paying Spidey, is he paying anyone else? He certainly pays for stuff super heroes suits and things, equipment, fuel, the base, but does he pay anyone a wage? No one ever mentions it. You think it would come up.

So, if he’s not paying them a wage, where do Avengers (and thier allies) get their day-to-day money from, and are they rich? Using google and https://www.federalpay.org, lets find out.

Cap: Well, before Civil war, he’s a shield operative, and he presumably still holds his military rank: he’s a US Army captain, with (well) over 40 years service, so USD$88,142.40 per year, with $237.71 drill pay (pay per drill you have to do on weekends, on leave or outside of normal service) and $175.00 per month hazard pay (which I bet is interesting) on top of that. As a WW2 veteran, he’d be eligible for a war pension if he:

Was not discharged for dishonorable reasons; and,

Served 90 days of active military duty; and,

Served at least one day during wartime ("wartime" as determined by the VA); and,

Had countable family income below a certain yearly limit; and,

Is age 65 years or older; or

Regardless of age is permanently disabled, not due to wilful misconduct.

As he’s still receiving 90k per year, he’s ineligible for a pension as his countable yearly income is above the limit. So if shield pays him in accordance with his rank and years of service, about $90, 600 per year incuding hazard pay.

After civil war, he’s a fugitive on the run, so presumably flat broke. I’d asume he gets his pension returened to him after the snap.

He’s also just gone from the 40’s to the present day, so 70 years of inflation probably makes buying things very confusing for him: everything would seem insanely expensive at first. He’d also not know what the correct prices are for anything invented after 45. You might get used to how much more expensive food and coffee is, but how much is a smart-phone worth? $200? $2000 $20000? Who knows? I bet the others have to facepalm a lot when he either refuses to pay for what he sees as clear price-gouging, and at the same time regularly pays insane amounts of money for goods and services because he doesn’t know better. He also has no known assets other than his pay: he rents an apartment making him one of the few American males in his age-group who isn’t a home-owner

Thor: Does Asgard even have currency? It’s depicted like a “Crystal spires and toga” type utopia with no poverty: even working class Asgardian’s like Scourge seem to be pretty well-off and want for nothing, so he’s from a post-scarcity society where actual magic is a thing. His “Another” coffee cup smashing and the fact he doesn’t have a computer of phone in Ragnarök might indicate that, no, he just doesn’t have, need or understand money. Splitting a bar tab with him must be a nightmare. His breakdown post snap indicates he’s got some cash, but not a huge amount, and is probably skiving of Valkyrie and the other Asgardians.

Banner: Okay, so a PhD could make you a lot of money from patents… in pharmacology or engineering. Theoretical physics? Not so good. And if Banner did have any patents, they’ve probably been seized under eminent domain by the US military. At the start of The Hulk film, he’s working a entry-level factory job at a botteling plant in Brazil. The minimum wage in Brazil is 1069.62 Real per month, that’s 12,835.44 Real per year, or around $2437.79 US per year, before everything goes wrong for him! He then runs off to India, works for Tony for a bit and then gets shot into space. Spidey may actually make more in allowance than Banner does, and Banner is a gown ass man with bills to pay: I’d imagine he loses a lot in ripped clothing.

Natasha and Barton: Pre Civil-war, both are government spooks, so how well does that pay? The salaries of CIA Intelligence Analysts based in the US range from $25,838 to $685,701 , with a median salary of $125,340, so let’s assume that Shield pays in a similar range: $685,701 per year for Director Fury, around 125,000 for Natasha and Cliff, which explains Cliff’s nice, middle-class mid-western home. Post civil war, presumably not great: we know that Natasha spends a lot of her savings running and hiding all across the world, and Cliff takes a deal and presumably lives of his savings, pension and his wife’s income.

Rhodes: Full USAF colonel with over 10 years service? $105,562.80 per year, plus $293.23 drill pay per drill and $175 per month hazard pay, and because he’s team Stark and not Team Cap in Civil War, he’d not lose any of that. He presumably also gets an injury pay-out after his accident. After T’challa and Stark, he might be the best paid avenger.

Dr Strange: spends all his money he made as a surgeon on trying to cure his hands: spends literally his last dollars heading to Nepal to train. Wong even jokes with him about their lack of worldly money when asking for a tuna-melt. But, can use illusion to make people think he has money, and his home and clothes etc. come with the job, so in the same boat as Thor in that he has no money, but needs none AKA, he’s a bastard to try and split a restaurant bill with.

Wanda and Vision: No know source of income, just sort of live in Tony’s hose and eat his food, and on top of that Wanda goes on the run after civil war… yet they can stay in fancy hotels in Edinburgh, a relatively expensive city, and Vison apparently bought them a house to retire in, so one of them has some source of money. Maybe Tony gave Vision years of back-pay form when he was still Jarvis, or maybe the vison has a day job, which is, frankly, hilarious. Could you imagine him as a barista? I can, and it makes me very happy.

Scott Lang: I’d assumed he’d be super, super broke, but apparently the average pay for a private security consultant in the Bay area is $85,430 per year. Not bad. Pity he gets sucked into the quantum realm just as his business is taking off, so presumably, flat broke again.

Bucky: no known income, and I doubt Hydra paid him for being the Winter Soldier so he probably has no savings, but he should, technically, qualify for a military pension. As a single veteran, he’d be eligible for federal tax-free pension of up to $1732 per month, or $20,784 tax free per year. Not much for someone who lives in NYC. He may also be eligible for medical benefits over the loss of his arm. Whether or not he got to see any of that money given how confused his life has been over the past 10 years is unclear, but on paper he’s eligible.

T’challa: He is, quite possibly, richer than Stark, and as an absolute monarch pays no tax and has access to his Nation’s vast wealth in vibanium. It’s good to be the king!

Captain Marvel: USAF captain, and a test pilot; the test pilot school only accepts applicants with a service length of less than 9 years 6 months (10 years six moths of helicopters) as they don’t want older applicants. With 8 years service, $79,538.40, plus drill pay and hazard. However, no know (human) pay since 1990. Flat broke.

Guardians of the Galaxy: no data, but I’m assuming “Cowboy Bebop” levels of perpetual never-ending poverty given the way they choose to live. I’d also assume Rocket has taken all their cash into some sort of Ponzi scheme of his own creation, because just look at him, of course he has.

Spidey: he’s got about $10 of his aunts’ money at any given time, so he can buy lunch… which may in fact be more than Banner or Lang, and we know it’s more that Strange or Thor.

So, here the big one: how rich or how broke is Sam?

Sam Wilson: annoyingly, we’re not directly told what rank Sam held in any MCU film. USAF pararescue “Maroon berets” are generally NCO’s (but there’ are officer-ranked pararescue) , and he’s seen working on his wings at one point, where as officers don’t generally work on or maintain airframes. He’s shown wearing a Nation Air guard grey while jogging at one point to confuse the matter further. The general consensus on redit is he’s a former USAF tech sergeant (E-6). But how long was he in the air force? With six years service (the minimum sensible time he could have served to work in pararescue based on his age), that would be $41,464.80 per year, plus drill pay and hazard. As Anthony Mackie, the actor that plays him, was 36 as of Civil War, and assuming the character is the same age, and assuming he retired from the air force that year, and he joined the USAF at 17, the youngest you can join, he’d have served 19 years, giving him a pay of $51,566.40, the maximum pay you can get at this rank before promotion to Master Sergent, but meaning he left just before he’d qualify for the 50% final salary pension you’d qualify for after 20 years. Which seems weird. So let’s assume the character is one year older than the actor that plays him and served 20 years (ages 17-37), that means Sam has a military pension of $25,783.20 per year (20,784 of it tax-free), plus any injury benefits. He councils other veterans, but doesn’t get paid for that. He also chooses Team Cap in Civil War, so would become a wanted criminal, and so lose his income between 2016 and 2018, and then gets snapped and has no income for 5 years, which would destroy his credit rating. Like the rest of Team Cap, he presumably gets his post snap pardon, and goes to work for the US government at his former pay and rank. However, given how Captain John Walker treats him as an equal, it’s possible he’s been promoted to a captain when the hired back, giving him a pay of between $54,176.40 to $88,142.40 (with 20 years experience, depending on if they take into account his prior service or not, and how much prior service he has), but either way, he’s just starting this as a new job after being legally dead for 5 years: no savings, and no credit.

Commercial fishing vessels cost about 10% of their total value per year in maintenance alone. I can’t identify what sort of boat the Wilson’s have, but some quick googling indicates that the cheapest 15m long wooden in-shore shrimp trawler costs around $140,000, so that’s $14,000 per year in maintenance costs alone, minimum. And that’s a lower estimate, assuming the rest of the business is sound, which we know it isn’t.

So, in concussion, yes, Sam is in some serious financial trouble until he can re-build his savings and credit, but the scary bit is he’s not alone in that: he’s probably better off than Lang, Banner, Danvers, Strange, Thor, Bucky, Wanda and Parker. Only Clint (if he gets a full pardon and gets his full pension), Rhodes, Stark and T’challa aren’t in some sort of potential financial problems. That asshole bank teller was right: despite the fact it seems to pay well on paper, with a few exceptions, the Avengers financials are probibaly a mess. EDIT: Rocket is running the Ponzi scheme, if that’s not clear from context. The others know they have money somewhere, but not where it’s gone. And It’s been pointed out to me that as he’s technically a POW while he’s the Winter Soldier, Bucky is owed over 70 years back-pay, equal to over 3 million dollars, details in the notes.

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biologyweeps · 2 years

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So I've been reading that a heart rate in the 50 bpm isn't anything to worry about in the age range of 20s if one is active every day

Honestly it's not so much a matter of age, it's a matter of training. A trained athlete, especially endurance athletes can have heart rates of well below 50. I'm saying 'somewhere between 35 and 60' if they're at rest.

Now this is important, these low rates are resting heart rates, meaning 'person is entirely relaxed and sitting/lying on the couch and hasn't been physically for a while before'

The reason for that is that endurance sports train your heart muscles to become stronger and also larger. Something similar happens to the lung volume actually, meaning that the breath frequency gets lower too. And that's not just from 'being active'. When I run around the lab all day I'm active, i'm on my feet and moving. That's not the same as cardio exercise or endurance exercise or any of the things people do to deliberately build up lung and heart volume.

That said, the phenomenon itself can be quite entertaining if the medical professional taking the pulse doesn't know they got someone like that in front of them.

The last time my dad was in the hospital (mountain biking accident), one of the training nurses took his pulse and got Very Nervous when he came up with like 45-ish. My dad was 49 at the time. My dad has also successfully completed several Iron Man Triathlon competitions and is still VERY much going out to do pretty strenuous exercise every day. This heart rate is completely normal for him.

What is or isn't a 'too low' heart rate really depends on the overall condition of the person. Age plays a role, but exercise plays a bigger one, and of course if the person has any actual issues. Some people tend to have a naturally lower pulse rate than others. There can be a huge individual span to not just where your resting pulse is, but also how quickly it rises and falls again when you exert yourself, where the top rate is, if you are taking any medications or have medical conditions, all that stuff.

There are general guidelines that go for most of the populations but if you're an outlier (endurance athlete, medical issues) that guideline may have to be adjusted quite a bit to establish YOUR acceptable range.

#asks #silenceindustries

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bitoffairydust · 3 years

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Yesterday we came home from the hospital as a family of three.

Things haven’t been super smooth sailing, nor did I expect them to be, but our little one is doing well and I’m healing fine so that’s really all we could ask for.

Wednesday was a bit of a whirlwind. I was scheduled to go into the hospital for my induction at 5, so we spent the morning doing a bit of last minute clean up around the place. Then around 12, someone from L&D called and said if we were available to come in earlier, we could just show up whenever. We still had a few things to finish up so we had lunch, I took a shower while my wife did the dishes, then she took a shower and got the cats set up for a few days home alone before we called an Uber to head to the hospital.

We got there around 3:30-4 so not super early but they got us into the delivery rooms right away and someone came over to go over a few questions (medical stuff and what I was hoping for with the birth). I got hooked up to the contraction and fetal heartbeat monitors, they got my IV line in, and then we went over the induction options for me. Based on my last check up, I was about 1.5 cm dilated, so before anything else they had to get me to about 3 cm, which they offered to do with either the foley balloon or misoprostol. Then the plan was to start me on oxytocin to get contractions going. I requested the miso, cause I figured there would be enough things going in and out of my vagina for the evening without an additional thing thrown in there 😅

It actually took a little while for the induction to start because as it turns out, three people (myself included) showed up for their induction within 5 minutes of each other and I was the last so it was closer to 7 before the resident came to examine me. In doing so they found I had actually progressed to 3 cm on my own since my last appointment so they were able to just get me started up on oxytocin.

Contractions started up pretty much instantly but they were very manageable. I’d say just from the oxy progression, the worst contraction I got was maybe a 5 on the scale from 1 to 10. Then they ran through the dosage and did another exam to see where I was at. They didn’t give an exact number then but I think it was somewhere between 4 and 5 cm. Before starting me up on another dosage of oxytocin, they went ahead and tried to break my water as it hadn’t yet. They didn’t actually manage to fully get it, and honestly, at that point, them trying to get it to break was actually more painful than the contractions I’d experienced that far.

That changed pretty fast once they established they’d gotten enough of the membranes for the time being. I’m fuzzy on the timeline but I think it must have been close to 10 at that point, and the pain level climbed very quickly along with contraction intensity and frequency. I tried to bounce on a ball for a bit and the nurse showed my wife some pressure points to try and help with the pain but it did nothing. Around 10:30 I requested the epidural, which was unfortunate timing on my part as the anesthesiologist had just gone in to assist with a c-section. By the time she was out and got to my room it was about 11:30 and pain was an easy 10 on the scale with contractions maybe a minute and a half apart.

The epidural itself went in pretty smoothly but at first there wasn’t much to be said for relief. Since they mentioned it could take 15 minutes to really be felt I didn’t think much of it, and I did feel like things were getting a bit better as minutes passed. The last contraction I was asked about felt more back down to a 5 on the pain scale so the anesthesiologist left. Unfortunately, that 5 turned out to be a fluke because pain shot back up pretty quickly and I was soon at a 10 again, no matter the dosage boosts.

That part was quite honestly the worst of it all, having expected some sort of relief and finding it to be just as worse as before. To make it worse, baby was not handling those contractions well. His heart beat would drop with the start of each contraction, though it picked up before the end of them so though they wanted to keep an eye on it it wasn’t cause for intervention yet. The nurse monitored his heart rate with me laying flat on my back, on my right side, on my left side and then sitting straight up. The latter was the slightly better option for him, but definitely did nothing to help my pain management. She did get me back on my back to try and relieve me a bit since the difference to the effect on baby wasn’t huge but at that point contractions were relentless. I was dealing with back labor contractions, which were maybe a minute apart, and because they suspected the placenta had detached a bit when they tried to break my water, when a contraction would subside, the pain in my abdomen would become more prominent and almost to the same level. It made it feel like I was contracting non stop with no break for catching my breath or trying to recuperate.

Around 2 in the morning there were a few people in the room examining me and trying to figure out the best course of action. A C-section being needed started being mentioned if things didn’t improve, but I was at a little more than 9 cm by then. The OB and the anesthesiologist had a talk outside the room and decided to re-do my epidural as it had clearly failed (they did an ice test and it was clear I wasn’t frozen anywhere at all), and if I were to end up needing a c-section, I’d have to have it redone anyway.

She took two tries to get everything situated in my back. That second try did the trick. I don’t think I can even describe the amount of relief when my foot started feeling warm and then going numb, and within maybe 5 minutes it was amazingly painless. They did another ice test and this time I felt no cold at all anywhere, and when the nurse pointed out I’d just had a contraction it cemented it because I’d not felt it at all. The only thing I could feel at that point was a bit of abdominal pressure every now and then. And I will say, I did have a great team with me. Everyone was very empathetic and trying their best to get me to feel some form of relief before the second epidural. And they seemed almost as relieved as me when that last one finally worked - especially because after that baby’s heart stabilized.

By the time the epidural was done, even though they figured I had likely progressed to 10 cm, they elected to let me rest for a bit, and give baby a chance to keep making his way down, so I got to catch a breather until about 4 am. Then they told me it was time to try and start pushing, with the nurse guiding me since I still couldn’t feel any sort of contraction. I pushed through maybe four or five contractions without huge progress, and the OB came in to assess and established baby needed a bit of help coming out. They set up the forceps and had me push through another couple of contractions, but they were pretty week and hard to catch even for the nurse by then, and baby’s heart rate was starting to struggle again. So they got on the phone to get a room prepped for c-section, and the doctor told me I would get to push through one last contraction, but if nothing happened we’d have to go into surgery.

The nurse tried to wait for a good one (she had already reupped the oxytocin drip at that point) and by some miracle, the next push for his head half out and with the second one it was completely out. The rest of his body followed quickly and before I had even caught up with it all, I had his tiny little body on me.

Even though they’d brought someone in from the NICU just to be safe, he ended up being perfectly okay. I needed a bit more attention because I had more bleeding than normal, and I had to have 4 stitches and another IV line put in to help with the blood loss. Then we stayed in the delivery room until about 6 at which point we were brought over to our postpartum room.

Since then nursing has undoubtedly been the biggest challenge. He did have a tongue tie, but he struggled from the get go. He would latch well but lose it and then get frustrated and cry. He also is a very lazy eater - I’d spend easily 30-45 minutes per side trying to get him to stay aware long enough to take in maybe 15 minutes of proper feeding, but he’d start smacking his lips practically the moment he was done, and he’d wake up hungry again within the hour.

Unfortunately there was no lactation consultant on staff as she was on vacation this week. People commented time and time again about how I had no supply issue, and his latch (when he was latched) was good, but it didn’t seem to help. I also felt I kept getting conflicting information as one moment he’d have crystals in his urine to indicate potential dehydration, and the next they’d be telling me he had barely loss any of his birth weight and was perfectly on target for that.

We did decide to get his tongue tie cut as it seemed to really be frustrating him at feeds and make it harder for my breast to properly fit into his mouth. The feed that followed the cut was easily the best we’ve had to date, but unfortunately it went downhill from there. After we got home and I tried to feed him last night, he did fine on the right side but then only lasted 10 minutes on the left and then lost it, started to scream and wouldn’t latch again. I haven’t been able to make him latch on the left side since, and I only managed to get him latched to the right a couple more times before we ran in the same problem, so we had to go ahead and start giving him bottles. I’ll be trying to work through it with a lactation consultant as soon as possible, and I’ve now started pumping, but in the meantime, him being properly fed was the biggest thing.

He does also have a small fracture on his right clavicle, likely from the forceps, but the pediatrician said that will resolve on its own within the week. In the meantime we just have to be very cautious how we move his right arm, and she prescribed him Tylenol if need be.

In the meantime we’re just trying to settle down to our new sleep deprived routine. But then looking into all the sweet, funny faces he makes both when asleep and awake makes it feel pretty worth it.

- Marie

#baby blog #baby #pregnancy blog #pregnancy #birth #birth story #induction #infant #newborn

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ofaprilflowers · 3 years

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- part 2: home? -

warnings: descriptions of injuries, not too detailed.

tags: shout out to my first-ever requested tags, @sista7-7 @softieus and @marrambles yay! Thank you for reading and sorry for the late update TT. Hope you guys enjoy :)

disclaimers: I am not a medical professional, this is all part of my imagination and totally made-up therefore is in no way accurate. If you find any part I could improve on, do tell. I would appreciate the feedback. Other than that, enjoy! <3

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It took another week for me to finally be discharged. A week of rehabilitation and physiotherapy (which Dr. Hwang said would be continued after my discharge TT). I had lost strength in my extremities and also my sense of balance. This, I found out after almost falling down right on my face when I attempted to climb out of bed for the first time. Almost, well because thankfully, he was there.

My parents had arrived the night I woke up. My mother immediately cupping my face, tears brimming in her eyes while my father just took my hand in his and smiled every time I looked his way.

It felt surreal, honestly. My family and I were close. But we were not exactly the type to be crying and holding each other, or professing our love for each other. We were the laugh-at-each-other’s-life-problems-cuz-I-had-it-worse-than-you type of family. Then again, for me it felt like I was waking up from a long nap, while for them, they didn’t know whether I would make it or not so, fair enough.

Turns out, the accident was pretty bad. My head had to be stitched up and so now there was a nasty gash above my left eye (it was definitely gonna scar but let’s not think about that right now). My arms where full of cuts and scrapes from the broken windshield. My legs and chest, badly bruised. Dr. Hwang said they had healed fairly well in the past two weeks, but I still cringed at how ugly they looked every time I caught a glimpse. He also mentioned that I was lucky not to have sustained any other serious injuries other than my head trauma. I was grateful of course, but losing my memory was deleterious enough.

I woke up every morning feeling confused as to why the heck I was at a hospital and it took a few groggy minutes to remember. Sometimes it took seeing Jaehyun- either curled up asleep on the armchair or standing next to the window with a cup of coffee in hand- for me to come crashing back into reality.

I learnt through my mother- who had attempted to fit the past 2 weeks of my unconsciousness along with the last 6 years into a 2 day crash-course- that Jaehyun was the only one who stayed at the hospital every day and night. My mother had stayed the first week, as my condition stabilised however, she opted to visiting daily. That also depended on whether my father was available to drive her 45 minutes to the hospital from home. You see, my parents were rational people, but I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of hurt. I mean I was laying unconscious on a hospital bed yet there were still other important stuff to be handled. Well, as they say, life goes on, right? Kind of made me think if I had just hallucinated the tears brimming in her eyes the other day.

While my mother would babble on about looking on the bright side and starting my life again, Jaehyun’s presence was like having a burden be lifted. I know I’ve lived most of our “acquaintence-ship” hating him, but I made a mental note to properly thank him for this in particular. On every occasion that my head felt like it was about to burst from the overwhelming information my mother was flooding me with, he’d interject, naturally bringing her focus to something other than trying to piece me back together. Often times he’d ask her to join him for a cup of coffee, or show her things he was currently working on. I’d close my eyes then and pretend to fall asleep.

“So, you’re saying, I should continue my life ‘as normal as possible’. Meaning?” We (the doctor and I) were currently in his office. By tomorrow morning I was finally leaving. Goodbye to the sanitary, boring hospital, hello to......well, life?

The doctor had explained all the procedures and follow-up appointments that were to come. Both to Jaehyun and I. Then, we talked about going home and that’s when I realised, home had changed. I don’t know how we had avoided addressing it, or maybe I was the only one in denial of it. I mean throughout the week after regaining consciousness, although Jaehyun was there, we barely talked. Mostly because I became a selective mute, and he, well I guess he was respecting my space?

Dr. Hwang had noticed the awkward silence that had passed after he mentioned about going home and quickly changed the subject, calling in a nurse to guide Jaehyun in signing my discharge papers or something. After he left, the doctor didn’t hesitate in putting on what I call his “uncle-face”.

“As normal as possible, meaning that it’s better if you return to your daily routines prior to the accident,” he explained for the nth time.

I fidgeted in my seat. “But, wouldn’t that cause me more distress? It’s a life a barely know.” “Astrid,” he began, straightening his back. “I understand how hard it my be for you to wrap you head around all this. 6 years is a lot. But it is your life. Your experiences and memories throughout that period were real, and you deserve to remember them. You need to give your life a chance.”

Well, damn. He had a point. He should’ve been a therapist instead.

“And, what if my memories don’t come back?” I prodded.

“Well then, at least maybe you’ll learn more about yourself.” Okay, then. Here we go, Astrid.

We live in a loft?!?!

Pretty sure my eyes were bulging out of my head but wow.

Eyes wandering around the space, I tried to take in everything at once. This was certainly NOT what I had expected. This can’t be real right? I must absolutely be dreaming.

“Welcome...home?” Jaehyun said.

My head snapped in his direction, mouth agape. He smiled sheepishly, his infamous dimples popping out, his hands tucked into his jean pockets, his shoulders lifted briefly. He looked like a child, shyly presenting to the world his greatest creation. I almost smiled. Almost.

“You like it?” he asked.

I scoffed. “For real?”

My eyes turned back to the space he had referred to as home. Well, it didn’t feel like home (yet. Remember Astrid we’re giving this a chance), but yes, I absolutely love it!

I took in my surroundings again and this time, couldn’t help the smile that crept up my cheeks.

The space was gorgeous. It was big, but not huge. It was small, but not tiny. It was spacious enough to have everything and more. There was an L-shaped sofa that could probably fit 5 or maybe even 7 people if squeezed in together. There were even 2 more smaller ones in front of it. Perfect for a small gathering. Opposite the living room was a kitchen, with a small kitchen island. God, I’ve always dreamed of having an island. There was another floor and at the stairs leading up to it were ceiling-high windows with a bumped-out seat, all set with pillows on one end and potted plants on the other. It looked like the perfect spot to read or stargaze at night. I walked into the living room, the brick walls were covered in framed movie posters and artwork, some smaller frames containing pictures which I guessed were probably a collection of memories.

I stepped closer and caught a glimpse of some familiar faces in unfamiliar settings. One photo caught my eye. It was a photo I remember, taken earlier this ye- I mean well, early 2017, right after graduation. I was sandwiched between Jungwoo and Ten, holding up a peace sign to the camera. Jaehyun on Jungwoo’s other side, hand around the latter’s shoulders. Others in the picture smiling widely, so many poses, so many expressions. Literally, it felt like yesterday.

“You remember that?” Jaehyun probed.

I smiled. “Yeah, just a couple weeks before Taeil’s birthday bash, right?”

Then, something flickered in my mind. Of Jaehyun, smirking at a table with his friends, of them exchanging words and laughter, of me hearing something I probably shouldn’t have. Jaehyun had many circles of friends, being the typical extroverted, super-friendly campus sweetheart. This circle was one I wasn’t quite familiar with, least to say I didn’t really like them. I felt my cheeks heat up as my blood boiled at the thought of that memory.

“You wanna see upstairs?” Jaehyun’s voice pulled me back into reality. I turned to look at him. He was standing right next to me, looking almost exactly the same as the Jaehyun I knew. The Jaehyun that I couldn’t stand being in the same room with. The Jaehyun that always had a competitive, mischievous glint in his eye. The Jaehyun that would take every chance he got to argue with everything I said. The Jaehyun that made me feel like I had to defend everything I had.

There was a slight difference, though. The competitive, mischievous glint was somehow...softer. It made me confused, because I was angry, but looking at him now, I don’t know who to be angrier at. Me, or him?

“Ummm, I think, I just- I just wanna lie down,” I tore my eyes away from him and took a step back, putting just a little more distance between him and I.

I saw his fists clench and unclench a bit at his sides. A moment passed until he said, “Yeah. Sure,” walking back towards the doors he picked up my hospital bag and gestured towards a room behind him.

“This is actually, um, our bedroom, but don’t worry, I’ve moved most of my stuff upstairs so this space is all yours,” dropping the bags on the bed, he stepped aside to allow me in. It was a beautiful room, with slanted windows, decorated with some more plants.

“So, feel free to look around, get used to the place and all. Oh yeah, um, this is the bathroom,” he opened a door on the left of the room, then gestured toward a closet in front of the bed, “Your pyjamas are in the top drawer and, uh, well, um, everything else is-”

“I’ll take a look,” I smiled at him briefly.

His eyes landed on mine for a moment, then quickly looked away.

“Yeah, okay, so um, I’ll be outside, if you need anything just, um,” his hands, one scratching at the back of his neck, the other gesturing undecidedly, “yeah.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he replied. He stood there for a second, then turned to leave the room.

“Jeahyun?”

“Hmm?” he snapped his head towards me, eyebrows lifted in question.

“Thank you,” I breathed.

I saw a bit of tension leave his body. “You don’t need to thank me, Astrid,” he replied softly. “This is- this is your home too.” With a tight-lipped smile, he closed the door behind him.

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bettsfic · 3 years

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hi, i was reading your years in review and i noticed that you quit a job of many years to go your own way. i was wondering if you would mind talking about this decision/if you struggled with it? idk i've always told myself that i wouldn't let the idea of a "career" get in the way of what i want (e.g. writing) and that one day (shortly after 30?) i would just quit whatever job i had and go my own way, but as that deadline comes up i find it harder to imagine how i could just uproot myself...

yes, i very much did struggle with the decision to quit (what i thought was) my very stable and lucrative career in finance to get an MFA in creative writing. it’s a bit of a long story so i’m putting it under a cut.

warning for suicidality and sexual assault.

i used to believe i grew up poor, but it was the 90s so poverty looked very different. my dad didn’t work for a long time, and so we only had one income, and we lived in an apartment that was kind of a lowkey hoarder home. as a kid, all i knew was that i didn’t get to have toys, or my own space, and i wasn’t allowed to have friends over. the concept of an allowance was totally alien to me. but it also wasn’t like i ever went hungry. the food we had wasn’t particularly healthy but it was always there.

i didn’t really realize how much that instability affected me until much later, when i noticed other people hadn’t lived their entire lives aware of and obsessed with money. i used to compulsively count the change in my piggy bank and beg my mom to take it so she could pay her taxes (i didn’t know what taxes meant, i just assumed they were the reason we couldn’t afford nice things).

my safe haven was always my grandparents’ house, which was clean and had semi-healthy food and the door was always open. my grandpa was a high school chemistry teacher. my grandma worked at a bank. growing up, i had no idea what she did at the bank, just that it sponsored all the fun things we did, like going to amusement parks and baseball games. my parents never took my sister and i on vacation, but every year, my grandma would drive us to visit our family in missouri, which, even though it only cost the gas to get there, seemed like a wild indulgence to me.

i started working at 16 so i could have my own money. by 17 i was working illegally full-time and getting paid under the table. then i bought my own car, and shortly after i turned 18 i got my own apartment. even though i could pay my bills, i was still terrified about money. i thought about it all the time. i checked my bank account multiple times a day. i was a cashier at a restaurant and i would often open my drawer and just stare at the money or count it when i was bored.

but i hated working at the restaurant, and one day i thought to myself, how can i keep the money part of this job but lose the food part? then i remembered my grandma’s career at the bank (from which by then she’d retired), and that afternoon i sat down and applied to be a teller at the very same bank. obviously the bank was very large and it wasn’t like my grandma was in management. she worked in ATM operations. nobody on my hiring committee knew who she was, and honestly i have no idea how i got the job.

i stayed a teller through college, working 25ish hours a week. it didn’t pay very well and i was still nervous about money, so i picked up a job altering bridal gowns on evenings and weekends, and also an admin job at my university. so i was working 60ish hours a week, plus going to school full-time and trying to keep up my 4.0. in retrospect, i can’t remember how necessary all this was. i know i was living in an apartment whose rent was higher than i could afford, and i lived with my boyfriend who was struggling to find a job. anyway, it was definitely the lowest time of my life, and i was so exhausted that every day i hoped something horrible would happen to me so i could be hospitalized and rest.

then something horrible did happen. my dad died. and even though everyone in my life was telling me to please dear god take a break, i did not.

i got promoted to business finance, which paid what seemed at the time to be an ungodly amount of money. i was still part-time and finishing up my undergrad degree. once i graduated, i got promoted to full-time. for the first couple years, i really did try to be a banker. i was good at my job only insofar as someone who is left-handed can write with their right hand if forced for long enough. it felt very much like i was in the wrong place, but by that point i had so much unchecked trauma that i had convinced myself the highest human ideal was misery and deprivation. i wish i was kidding. i was the definition of ascetic and martyred myself. i didn’t believe happiness existed. work was all that mattered to me.

then i bought a house. so at this point, i had student loans, a car loan, a mortgage, and credit card debt. after my dad’s death, my mom had to file for bankruptcy because of all the medical bills. she abandoned her house. by this point i was 23, single, in six figures of debt with no familial support net, but i was making decent money at the bank, so it wasn’t like i was drowning. in fact i was doing pretty well. the bank was a rock in my very turbulent life. i got a lot of vacation time that allowed me to travel a bit. i had insurance and a matching 401(k). it was really a decent job.

but the bank was also in many ways an abusive relationship. i don’t mean that metaphorically. i had bosses who manipulated me, insulted me, humiliated me in front of other people. i had one boss who went so far as to look at my checking account and ridicule my purchases. i didn’t have any idea what it meant to stand up for myself or say no. in fact i wasn’t allowed to say no. my job at the bank involved solving other people’s problems. i could never say “i can’t solve that problem.” i could only say “i’ll figure it out.”

i had convinced myself working at the bank was a stable career because it was boring and i hated it. but actually it wasn’t stable at all. after 2008, there were mass layoffs and restructures every year while the bank tried to recover from the recession. i worked for a sales team, and so my job was dependent entirely on whether or not the salespeople did their jobs well. if they didn’t make goal, they’d get fired. if they got fired, i’d get fired.

i started trying to date again and was sexually assaulted. after that i really struggled at work because i was dissociating a lot and couldn’t focus. my team, despite my having worked there for years, instead of being concerned for me decided to start complaining about me to my boss. finally i had to tell a coworker what happened and that i wasn’t doing very well. my team started being a little nicer to me but ultimately they didn’t care about me, they cared about how effective i was at my job. my boss didn’t want to fire me, so instead i was pushed onto another team.

that move came with a raise. then that team was dismantled and i was pushed onto another team. that was a demotion, but i got to keep my raise from the previous move. by then, i was working from home, and even though i was more comfortable i was also very isolated and miserable. my “fulfillment through deprivation” attitude was destroying me. i wasn’t eating well or taking care of myself. i was isolated and lonely. i still didn’t believe happiness was real and i constantly thought about killing myself.

but i had started writing fanfiction, and even though i didn’t think i was any good at it, i was beginning to see a way out. i was beginning to learn how to dream, and want things, and give myself the things i wanted. i just couldn’t imagine leaving the bank, or selling my house, or moving out of my hometown. all of that seemed impossible to me.

then i had to go to a business conference where my team had a retirement party for one of my coworkers. she’d done what i was doing for 45 years. by that point i was at the 9 year mark. i’d spent my entire adult life at the bank. and i realized: the bank benefited from my fear and passivity, and nothing in my life was going to change unless i was willing to make sacrifices.

but i still wasn’t entirely convinced. and then came the day i had to physically hold onto my desk to keep me from killing myself. i didn’t end up trying it, because i had another realization: this was a life or death situation now. if i kept working at the bank, i knew i would die. i knew eventually i would get low enough to do it. i didn’t actually want to die; i wanted an escape and didn’t know what else to do. suddenly i was off the hook. my options were not “financial stability or imminent poverty” but “live or die.”

those were the big epiphanies i had, but the process of actually leaving the bank was a slow one. i wrote a bit about it here. i got into an MFA program basically by telling myself repeatedly i would figure out the money stuff later. when it came time to quit the bank, my boss convinced me to stay on working part-time, with the assumption i would move back to full-time once i’d graduated. i agreed to it, because just trying to quit was enough to convince me i could, and that better things were ahead of me. for a year and a half, i stayed on working two days a week while doing my MFA, which involved both coursework and teaching, and it felt a bit like it did during undergrad, having too many jobs and no time to breathe or think or feel anything.

between my first and second year, i had a looooong overdue mental breakdown. there were a lot of causes, but one of them was spreading myself too thin. shortly after, i quit for good. by then it didn’t feel like a big deal at all, i was so far removed from the work and my team and so focused on my degree. one day i turned on my work laptop and the next day i didn’t. i shipped it back to HQ and it was over.

then i graduated from the MFA and suddenly had to face the consequences of this life i’d chosen. my school kept me on as an adjunct, but it felt like being a ghost. i no longer had the community of my cohort. i had no health insurance. i was given my teaching schedule and a contract to sign, that’s it. there was no guarantee i would be getting classes the following semester, and after a year, that was what happened. i remember sitting in my favorite coffee shop trying not to cry when i got the email that said the department had nothing for me to teach the following semester.

i really wasn’t the same after the breakdown. i went from “i can do anything i put my mind to no matter how hard it is or how much it hurts” to “i have to step carefully, and treat myself gently.” i hadn’t fully realized that yet, though, so i tried to get a Real Job. i got the first and only job i applied to, because i am bad at nearly everything but somehow i’m exceptional in interviews. it wasn’t a bank but it offered the same sort of benefits package. it was a full-time salaried position at a non-profit. if i had found it earlier, i think it would have been my dream job. it was the kind of work you throw yourself into because you care so much about doing good.

i lasted a month. during the first week something happened that triggered me in a way i’m very rarely triggered. i realized i needed disability accommodations, but i needed to go to a doctor to get an assessment and i had to be on the team 60 days in order to get insurance. i thought i could white-knuckle it, and i could, sort of, but every minute i was at work, it felt like i was forced away from the thing i should have been doing. i was constantly trying to write a few paragraphs here and there on my phone when no one was looking. i had to find excuses to take breaks and go to my car and breathe. at one point i told a volunteer i was an english instructor, and she looked at me very confused, and i realized i’d said it in present tense, like it was part of who i was and not a job i did for a while. then finally, my breaking point was an after-hours function. when i left i saw a field full of fireflies and thought about how, if i’d just stayed home, i could have sat outside and enjoyed them all evening, not just a glance at them on the way to my car. i liked the job but it was making me miss all the things i’d learned to love about being alive.

i quit the next day. i’d sold my house by then (which was its own feat) and moved in with my grandma, which hadn’t been a possibility until my grandpa passed away the previous spring. i paid off my car. i figured out finally that i would probably never be able to work full-time again unless it was teaching, and that the downside to this life would be accepting fear and instability, only being able to look ahead one semester at a time. staying open to the opportunities that arise. being a little selfish.

i wrote a bit more about the financial realities of the writing life here. i can’t tell you what you should do, because the path i took definitely isn’t the path for everyone, but i do believe we all owe it to ourselves to pursue our best and happiest lives, because we only get one, and there’s no reason not to live it the way you want to.

#writing advice #the writing life #Anonymous

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argumentl · 3 years

Text

The Freedom of Expression Ep 9 - Housewives living in Yamagata prefecture referred to prosecutors for insulting Kawasaki Nozomi.

K: Hi, This is Dir en grey's Kaoru, getting started with another episode of The Freedom of Expression. Joe san,Tasai san, welcome.

J, T: Pleased to be here.

K: Ok, so today's theme, Joe?

J: Yes, lets take a look at this news. 'Insult to Kawasaki Nozomi. "She gives me the creeps". Housewives in Yamagata prefecture referred to prosecutors....

A 39 year old woman from Yamagata and a 45 year old female medical worker from Osaka are being referred to Tokyo area prosecutors by Harajuku police station. According to staff at Harajuku police station, the pair are suspected of exchanging insults like "She gives me the creeps" about Kawasaki on an online public parenting platform between the 8th and 9th of April. They both admit to the charge.'

Just from reading this, being referred to prosecutors for saying 'she gives me the creeps' is a bit..

T: Well, yeh, but if you look in more detail, over three years they actually wrote on this parenting forum stuff like, 'She should miscarry' or ' 'she's creepy', also 'she's insolent', 'lets set fire to her house', *1, quite extreme things.

J: So we don't actually know thier reason for writing this stuff do we?

T: They wanted to send a message to Kawasaki Nozomi's husband's blog, but they were blocked, or unable to do so for some reason, im not sure. This made them angry and they directed thier rage towards his wife.

J: They probably shouldn't target his wife, and getting that upset because they couldn't send a message..I don't really know.

K: Its not very clever, right?

J: Yeah, its really not.

T: Also, 'defamation', I havn't heard this in a while.

J: Yeh, well Kawasaki san probably felt some damage to her honour, and in reality, if they come near her house, its coming close to interference in her business. The police probably thought this kind of 'defamation' was grounds for referrering the case to prosecutors. Another possibility is that Kawasaki san hired a lawyer, who may have said they same thing....So, this happened on an online forum? I think we talked about this happening with someone else before, but how far can slandering be forgiven? I mean, in this case its being reffered to prosecutors, so, well, when does it become a crime? I think this is a really difficult point. This kind of thing hasn't been made clear in detail, but it may have similar requisites as harassment. But like, how far do you have to go for it to be sexual harassment?, how far to..???*2. This type of thing isn't specified in criminal law. I think this is a problem that will have different interpretations, that will change depending on the information. So, Kaoru, as an artist with your name and face in the public eye, you must get lots of supportive messages. But at the same time, you probably also get some not so supportive messages. How far can you tolerate those? Of course, even one nasty thing can hurt, but what what would you consider worth talking to the police about, for example?

K: Well, I havn't had anything as bad as this, but...???*3 seems creepy to me.

J, T: For sure

J: And in this case, Kawasaki san hasn't even done anything! She's just in the wrong place. Right from the start its like, 'Why me?!'

K: Yeh, cause she's pregnant isn't she?..with that..its scary isn't it?

J, T: It is.

T: So, Kawasaki san is a former AKB 48 member, and after she quit, she started up her own company and was quite successful, she's been categorized as a winner, there might be people who are jealous of her. But to this extent..?

K: Well, they wrote it thinking that they wouldn't be exposed, didn't they?

T: Do people get exposed?

K, J: They do.

J: But why would they intentionally write this on a public forum? Wouldn't you normally spout your jealousy at a bar or something, after a few drinks?

K: But this is the same as that.

J: They simply write it?

K: I think so.

J: Like a kind of public execution?

K: No, I don't think they are thinking that much about it.

T: I think people need to be more aware of how scary SNS can be.

K: People are writing stuff with no thought, so i also think its ok to ignore it really. Its a person writing wierd stuff off the cuff, its all over...I mean, recently.???? There are tonnes of people writing stuff without thinking. And then people see all these comments just like that...writing just like that, and seeing just like that. Strangely, you need to be able to ...???, and you need to be able to brush it off . You'll still always encounter SNS or online info, thats how I feel about it *4.

J: I see.

T: There have been sucides in Korea, famous people have committed suicide, because they got affected by what people wrote online. So it happens in other countries too.

K: Well, it does affect you, the first time you see it.

J: Well, yes. When I do radio I get called all kinds of names *the others laugh*, recently, ive gotten, '????', to one of my shows. And these people get carried away, right, so it just increases more. They just come out with insult after insult*5, like 'are you still at it?!' ...well, i think, at least they are listening, so im kind of thankful.

K: Yeah, yeah.

J: Like, im just always talking, it could be kinda annoying, so if theres someone out there listening, im grateful. *T laughing*

T: Doesn't it bother you, Joe?

J: Not usually, no. But sometimes they hit in a sensitive spot, right? *K, T laugh*

J: It shouldn't be a big deal ...but....right? Some people will even cry on the train home. Even though it hasn't been a big deal until now, some people will cry about it. Especially if im also having a tough time with work or personal life, it stings.

K: Well, you are only human.

J: Right.

Kami: It happens to me too.

J: Oh, Kami's here.

Kami: Yeah, that happens to me.

T: You're not bothered by that though are you?

J: Yeah, you're a god.

Kami: Well, they say im no big deal, unreliable, or useless or something like that, loads of things are said about me...'you cheater ' and such.

T: *laughs*

J: You cheater?

K: Cheater..? What did he do?

J: Yeah!

K: No, I havn't done anything! I havn't done anything. Maybe its because, they'll give thier shrine donation but I don't do anything in return.

J: Oh, that more like a case of money trasfer fraud in the end?

Kami: Well, yeah.

T: Are you doing well at your part time job Kami?

Kami: Yeah, im doing well.

J: Are you?

Kami: Yeah, I am, i am.

T: A pseudo account...

K: He's writing on one, right?

Kami: No, if stuff happens to my displeasure, I'll give out bad luck..as a fortune.

K: Did you say, 'I'll give out..' *laughs*

J: Kami, you're scary.

T: He is.

Kami: The people who insult me will go home with bad luck.

J: But there must be people all over the world saying stuff about you..

Kami: Yes, yes, yes.

J: It must be tough to search online for yourself?

Kami: Yes, that is tough.

J: Right?

K: He said once before that he searches for himself online, didn't he?

J: He did..I wonder how many hits you get per day with the god hashtag?

Kami: There are people saying this god is good, or that god is good, or there is only one god, or stuff like that. I don't even know which one they mean.

K: But aren't there many gods, but one in charge, right?

Kami: Who's in charge..im not sure.

*everyone laughs*

J: He doesn't even know?! Maybe you're a cheater because you're not even real?!

Kami: Some people say that about me.

J: Ok, prove to us now that you're real. At least, show us something that you've achieved. If not...if i mention it now, we've never seen you in person since the start, you just came down from the sky, and we just thought you were a god.

K: He just came all of a sudden, right?

J: Right! We've don't even have any proof that you're a god. We've had no choice but to believe you.

Kami: I'll refer it to prosecutors.

J: Eh? What do you mean?

T: Scary!

Kami: As defamation.

*laughing*

J: Oh, if we say stuff about you?

Kami: Yes, yes, its defamation. Bad luck for Joe.

J: Eh? Really? ...by the way, how for would you tolerate people badmouthing you, Kami?

Kami: Badmouthing?

J: Are there any insults where you think, 'This is really awful!'?

Kami: No, the things that are said about me are, im no big deal, that im unreliable, not in existence, or useless. That type of thing..'he's a cheater' and such.

J: I see.

T: Now that you mention it, thats sometimes said about Tokyo Sports too.

J: Yeahh

T: 'Go under'.

Kami: Yeh, its like Tokyo Sports.

J: Do people really say that to you? But you said before, right? Apart from the date, everthing is false. *everyone laughing*. Thats amazing, you can sell papers and make money like that? Is Tokyo Sports originally just like fake news?

T: Well, people all over the world like a good story don't they?

J: I see. Well, it excells in the field of sports newspapers. Tokyo Sports has tonnes of fans, doesn't it?

T: Yeah

K: Tokyo Sports is like, the different one.

J: Yes, its different.

T: Well, im grateful..

J: Really!

T: On the other hand, we aren't respected. The level of respect we get is really low. *the others laugh* But I want to keep eating, so I'll recommend it.

J: Ah, ok. Are you hiring..at Tokyo Sports?

T: No, not really.

J: You're not?

Kami: A normal newspaper puts articles out, right?

T: Yeah.

Kami: But Tokyo Sports is creative.

J: Ahh, yes. They are stories, right?

Kami: Very much like a god.

J: Tokyo Sports like a god?!

T: Will you come and work for us, Kami?..hourly rate 25% bonus.

J: Ohh, 1250yen!

K: What will you make him do?!

Kami: Hmm, hmmm.

T: He could start with cleaning the toilets.

Kami: A night shift would be more money. *laughs*

J: Kami, how about cleaning Tokyo Sports' toilets?

Kami: It would be an outrageous guy who makes a god clean the toilets.

J: No, that would be the real Toilet God*6.

K: ?!...You were aiming with that!

J: Err, yeh...kinda.

*everyone laughing*

K: It seemed on purpose

J: No, no, it just came to me. I thought it would be too good.

T: You sounded serious.

J:I've been exposed...I took a deep breath before I said it. My shoulders moved.

K: His face looks so camp now....Ok, well, lets finish up here. Err, everyone, please subscribe to this...show?

J: This channel.

K: Please subscribe to this channel..See you next time.

*1 Im not massively good at Japanese slurs.

*2,3 Couldn't catch these bits.

*4 He spoke so fast it all kind blurred onto one, difficult to understand.

*5 He's running off a list of slurs which his listener sent to him. Im not advanced enough in Japanese slurring to grasp each individual one.

*6 There is a toilet god in Japanese folklore, have a google :)

#dir en grey #the freedom of expression #tfoe #薫 #kaoru

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lindoig8 · 3 years

Text

A rest and some exploring

Saturday-Wednesday, 1-5 May

After our stint in the desert, we decided we needed to take it easy for a few days to let Heather (and me) recover completely – and to catch up on a few things we wanted to do.

We had to go to the supermarket and pharmacy one day and whenever we are out, we take the opportunity to stock up on wine because it is quite hard to buy wine in quantity in the Northern Territory. We also needed to arrange the repairs to our caravan so called in at a recommended place and booked it in for the day we leave Alice Springs for Gemtree. That was scheduled for a Sunday so we extended our stay here for an extra day and booked the van in for the Monday. The husband-and-wife team at the workshop were a bit strange – customer relations is definitely not high on their agenda, despite friendliness and pleasant people being mentioned several times in the testimonials on their website – maybe they wrote them themselves. They openly ridiculed us for breaking their cardinal ‘15/25’ rule. They say the roads are so bad around here that nobody should drive with tyre pressures above 15 psi or speeds exceeding 25 kph. Had we complied with their ‘rule’ I suspect we would still be on the road to Alice Springs and would have missed our camel trek entirely. Despite them verging on the offensive, we are told they do good work and do it quickly, so we made our booking and are certainly hoping that the advice is correct.

We also bought a few bolts (so we had some spares) in order to restore our towball and trailer hitch to its correct state. We had lost one of the two bolts holding it in place on our way here and the hitch was hanging at 45 degrees instead of horizontal as it should be. It was quite a ticklish job, but I eventually repositioned everything and inserted new bolts, but tightening them sufficiently was another challenge. In the end, I had Heather holding one wrench to stop the bolt turning while I swung on another one turning the nut until I thought it was tight enough. We will know once we reconnect the caravan and do a few clicks (at 25 kph???) on the rough roads out here.

Thursday, 6 May

Having rested up a bit and caught up (a little bit) with our blogging and email, etc., we had a day out in the West MacDonnells. We called in to Simpson’s Gap for a start. We have been there before, but there were many fewer people there this time and we enjoyed wandering around looking at birds and plants, and we even found some rock wallabies. It is a dramatic cleft in the mountain range and has a wonderful stream and small lake – effectively preventing us from walking through to the other side. The rocks are simply amazing, rugged and beautifully coloured – my photos don’t even hint at how majestic it is.

We called in at Standley’s Chasm next: expensive and so crowded that many of the visitors’ vehicles rimmed the road well outside the huge parking area. It was even worse than last time we visited – and we chose not to stay last time. The same this time! Although people say it is wonderful, we are not into lining up and paying to fight with the hordes that jostle along a path in the hope of seeing something more special that the free, peaceful wonders in the wilderness outside the gates. We just did a quick loop around the carpark to the exit and kept driving.

We drove a short way off the road to eat our lunch and we were surrounded by hundreds of budgies, maybe thousands. They were everywhere – far more than we have seen on other trips – but they are too small and too flighty to get a decent photo of them.

We went on to Hermannsburg but just drove around for a few minutes and out again. We have booked a tour for next Wednesday that will take us back there – and we have seen the area around the mission a couple of times before. The aboriginal settlement looked a lot bigger than I recall but nothing looked new so maybe it is my memory that is fading rather than the settlement growing.

Perhaps the most spectacular thing we saw on the day was Gosses Bluff.

I don’t recall much about it from our previous visit, but it is fantastic. There was one couple having lunch when we arrived, but they left soon after and we had the entire place to ourselves. It is the remains of a massive crater created millions of years ago when an asteroid/meteorite (or comet) a kilometre across crashed into the area with a force greater than a million Hiroshimas. (I have since read that it was a comet rather than a meteorite - that is one big iceblock! - as big as many of the icebergs we saw in the Arctic and Antarctic. And how much bigger it would have been if such a lot of it hadn't melted and evaporated as it tore through our atmosphere.) It created a crater more than 20 kilometres across, but that has now completely eroded. What is left is just the central blip that formed in the same way that a droplet forms when you drop a stone into a pond – a mere 5 kilometres across. It is a circle of hills with some smaller hills inside, but you drive a few kilometres between more hills on the way into the residual crater. I will post some photos as well as two videos I took from the top of one of the hills – yes, I climbed to the very top. Each video covers about 180 degrees, but I couldn’t get into position to make a 360-degree sweep. I will also post another photo taken from a lookout about 10 clicks away that shows what is left of this gargantuan asteroidal phenomenon. We walked around a longish loop path meandering around the base of one corner of the crater and back to the carpark. It really was spectacular.

We called in very briefly at a few other places along the road, but it was getting late and it was after dark when we arrived back at the caravan at about 7.30.

Friday, 7 May

We spent almost all day in the caravan. I had decided to attempt to claim some of the cost of our abbreviated camel trek against our travel insurance and spent virtually the entire day on the claim form. Obviously, insurers go out of their way to make it as cumbersome and difficult for anyone to lodge a claim and NIB is no exception. They would not accept a long email I wrote containing all the relevant details and said I had to fill in their 11-page claim form – helpfully attached. But it is in pdf format and can’t be completed without printing it – and we don’t travel with our printer. More emails back and forth to discover that there is an online claim form that they hadn't told me about. Alas, after spending an hour or two online, frequently having to find 2-year-old emails for irrelevant details, I reached a point where I had to specify what our actual loss was. The only choice you get is to start by detailing the airline you flew with and a raft of information about that – and until you complete that, remembering that we didn’t fly anywhere, you can’t get any further with your claim. More emails to be told that I had no choice but to complete the hardcopy form. I eventually paid the caravan park to print the form for us and more hours went into handwriting all the information in my original email to them – all 11 pages of it! And despite the incident or our claim having absolutely nothing to do with our normal GP (or any other GP for that matter), it is obligatory to have him complete another page and a half of details covering (inter alia) decades of Heather’s medical history. Fortunately, we have a great GP and he agreed to do it so I bundled everything up and posted it to him with a stamped/addressed envelope for him to submit the claim when completed. There was yet another raft of (entirely irrelevant) stuff they require to ‘substantiate’ the claim, but fortunately, I had all of that in electronic form so I have compiled that into a document and will send it all off to the insurer to attach to the claim when Justin posts it to them. That was virtually a full day’s work – and I have zero expectation of seeing a cent as a result. Not that I think all insurers are dishonest rogues, but I am sure they are!!!

We did sneak out of the van for a few minutes to check out the restaurant in the brewery next door to the caravan park – and booked for dinner on Sunday: Mother’s Day and my birthday. We also booked for lunch at a the Ooraminna station in the East MacDonnells for Sunday lunch when we were in the office arranging to have the claim form printed. We love the eastern ranges and there is a lot we want to see out there again – perhaps some of it from Gemtree in a couple of weeks’ time.

While I was swearing at our travel insurer, Heather did some washing and cleaning as well as sorting photos and posting to Facebook and her blog. We seem to fill in every minute even when we are supposed to be resting and recovering from our adventures – or planning and arranging more.

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theycallmegothboy · 3 years

Note

1-100 >:DDDD REVENGE!!!

FELIXXXXXXXXXXXX >:(( 1. Spotify, SoundCloud, or Pandora? -spotify 2. is your room messy or clean? -it’s pretty messy i guess 3. what color are your eyes? -blue and grey

4. do you like your name? why? -yeah it’s fine 5. what is your relationship status? -single 6. describe your personality in 3 words or less -certified intrusive thot 7. what color hair do you have? -brown and rn it’s red 8. what kind of car do you drive? color? -i dont have a car 9. where do you shop? -hot topic, goodwill, target 10. how would you describe your style? -comfy emo 11. favorite social media account -of mine, probably discord or youtube 12. what size bed do you have? -twin >:(( 13. any siblings? -i have 1.5 brothers 14. if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why? -probably vancouver, idk canada seems lit 15. favorite snapchat filter? -i like the one with devil horns and a tail but its cute 16. favorite makeup brand(s) -i dont wear makeup 17. how many times a week do you shower? -i used to shower every day, but i dont do anything that gets me dirty so like maybe 3 times but if i leave the house then i shower 18. favorite tv show? -stranger things 19. shoe size? -8 or 9 20. how tall are you? -5′6 with shoes >:(( 21. sandals or sneakers? -sneakers wtf 22. do you go to the gym? -lol no 23. describe your dream date -making some pie or something together and then eating the pie and then sitting on some rooftop looking at stars 24. how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment? -quite a bit actually but i’m saving up for a phone lol so soon it will be like maybe 10 dollars lmao 25. what color socks are you wearing? -not wearing socks but the ones i had earlier were white (ankle length) 26. how many pillows do you sleep with? -just one but it sucks 27. do you have a job? what do you do? -NO BUT IM TRYING TO GET A JOB BUT THE FUCKIN PEOPLE THERE ARE GHOSTING ME AND WONT REPLY TO MY EMAILS SO LIKE SBJHBJS 28. how many friends do you have? -like 4 lmao 29. whats the worst thing you have ever done? -idk nothing super bad but i do a lot of small shit that makes me feel guilty when i realize what i did 30. whats your favorite candle scent? -juniper rosewood 31. 3 favorite boy names -leo, clay, charlie 32. 3 favorite girl names -ivy, uh... idk thats all ive got 33. favorite actor? -no clue 34. favorite actress? -no clue 35. who is your celebrity crush? -not a celeb but i’d smash danny phantom 36. favorite movie? -nightmare before christmas or edward scissorhands 37. do you read a lot? whats your favorite book? -no, but my fav book is probably the prince and the pauper? idk 38. money or brains? -CASH MONEYYYY jk probably brains but if your entire personality is being “smart” like fuck off lmao 39. do you have a nickname? what is it? - a bunch of people call me son (see #49, #100), some call me rat, dumdum, goth boy

40.how many times have you been to the hospital? -just once i think when i was birthed. i also went once with my brother cause he kicked some scissors i left out on the floor and it sliced his toe the fuck open and he needed stitches and i watched him get the stitches and almost passed out :/ 41. top 10 favorite songs -please dont make me do this i dont have it in me 42. do you take any medications daily? -yea i take 20mg of vyvanse but i need to get it raised to 30 cause 20 is Not Enough 43. what is your skin type? (oily, dry, etc) -i got some dry fuckin skin yall dont even know 44. what is your biggest fear? -it depends. the dark is a pretty constant one though 45. how many kids do you want? -like 2 or 3 eventually 46. whats your go to hair style? -in my face, looking stupid 47. what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc) -it’s pretty small 48. who is your role model? -i dont fuckin know lmao 49. what was the last compliment you received? - “i belive in you, my son, you’re an amazing human being“ (same friend mentioned in #100, not actually a parent of mine) 50. what was the last text you sent? -”no it’s a raccoon“ YOU GET NO CONTEXT LMAO 51. how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real? -i dont think i ever hardcore believed in him, maybe i did though i remember sleeping under the tree one christmas eve waiting for him but i was like “oh yeah that makes sense“ i guess 52. what is your dream car? -i honestly dont give a shit as long as it actually fucking works 53. opinion on smoking? -cigarettes? fuck no that’s nastyyy. weed? that’s fine i guess but wait till you’re like 18. 54. do you go to college? -no. am sophomore n highschool 55. what is your dream job? -musician/palentologist 56. would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs? -fuck the suburbs lmao, but also im tired of rural, so like.. semi urban?? 57. do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels? -no but i take the little soaps >:)) 58. do you have freckles? -yes 59. do you smile for pictures? -awkwardly, yes 60. how many pictures do you have on your phone? -dont have a phone but i have like 12 on my computer currently. 4 are of me, the rest are of my cat or random shit 61. have you ever peed in the woods? -yes 62. do you still watch cartoons? -cartoons these days kinda suck but like if they were good fuck yeah i would like gravity falls can come hang yknow? 63. do you prefer chicken nuggets from Wendy’s or McDonalds? -i had nuggets from mcdonalds today so i guess them? i dont really care 64. Favorite dipping sauce? -i got sweet and sour but i dont like it that much. that schezuan sauce was great 65. what do you wear to bed? -wouldnt you like to know? ;)) 66. have you ever won a spelling bee? -NO ive only been in two. the first one i misspelled the word “turmoil“ cause i had never heard it before and the second one i spelled the word “owed“ as “ode“ cause i was thinking like ode to joy and then i felt like a big Fool afterwards :(( 67. what are your hobbies? -lol what hobbies 68. can you draw? -i am physically able to draw, but not well, no 69 (haha). do you play an instrument? -yeah i play a few 70. what was the last concert you saw? -i saw Chicago in either georgia or tennessee i cant remember in like 2016 71. tea or coffee? -hot coffee, iced tea. NOT the other way around. (i love both though) 72. Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? -starbucks 73. do you want to get married? -sure why not 74. what is your crush’s first and last initial? -dont have a crush 75. are you going to change your last name when you get married? -idk maybe 76. what color looks best on you? -i dont know but i wear black a lot and that’s pretty dope 77. do you miss anyone right now? -yeah 78. do you sleep with your door open or closed? -closed 79. do you believe in ghosts? -on the fence. not 100% “oh my god look at these gHoSt oRbS i need to sage my house!!!“ but i accept that there’s some things i wont understand about the world and that i have no answers to. i wouldnt be surprised if there are, and i wouldnt be surprised if there aren’t. 80. what is your biggest pet peeve? -whatever my adhd decides i viscerally hate with a firey passion right at that moment 81. last person you called -my brother (the 1 of the 1.5 from #13 and the one who sliced his toe in #40) 82. favorite ice cream flavor? -chocolate is dope 83. regular oreos or golden oreos? -regular double stuff. if you say golden, mint, peppermint, or thin oreos i’m gonna have to euthanize you, i dont make the rules. 84. chocolate or rainbow sprinkles? -rainbow cause it’s prettier 85. what shirt are you wearing? -queen shirt from hot topic 86. what is your phone background? -i didnt get a phone between question 60 and now but my computer one is some mountains with the moon in the background 87. are you outgoing or shy? -really depends on who i’m around 88. do you like it when people play with your hair? -YES FUCK AAAAAAA (this girl played with my hair literally once in middle school and i was like oh shit and i had a crush on her until the end of middle school true story,,, so ashley if you’re out there-) 89. do you like your neighbors? -to the left they’re fine and their dog is nice but idk what happened to the horses so that’s sus but that’s where our cat came from so they can hang guess, behind me they’re fine but their boys are loud, to the right they’re fine, and even further to the right are the dope neighbors and waaaaaaaaaay far to the right is a llama and he’s dope as hell 90. do you wash your face? at night? in the morning? -whenever the fuck i remember to/have the energy 91. have you ever been high? -i dont think so but i wouldnt put it past myself 92. have you ever been drunk? -not that i can remember, no 93. last thing you ate? -sloppy joe from a can 94. favorite lyrics right now -”not gonna waste my life, cause i’ve been fucked up“ 95. summer or winter? -fall. fuck you 96. day or night? -night but i like it when it’s actually night and it doesnt get dark at like 4 fucking pm cause that makes me depressed 97. dark, milk, or white chocolate? -dark is good, milk is fine, white is only suitable for fancy stripes on chocolate covered strawberries 98. favorite month? -i vibe with september 99. what is your zodiac sign -sagittarius (was almost a scorpio but i was holding out >:))) 100. who was the last person you cried in front of? -in person, my mom like 6 months ago, on a discord call, my friend (i love you by the way, you’re the best,,, i dont think he has tumblr but im just putting it out there) like a month or so ago. i hate crying in front of people, i turn into such a hyperventilating snot monster which is not suitable for human gaze and thats the real tea :/

felix this took like 2 hours of my life i will never get back i hate you and i hope you’re happy with what you’ve done <3 <3

also anyone who wants to stalk me, enjoy this information that im handing to you on a silver platter :)) <3

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beetlejuicelover · 4 years

Text

Secrets Out-Chapter 2

Chapter Summary: Time to learn a bit more about Jessica’s powers

Story Rating: E 18+ Only!

Word count: 2,451

Warnings for this chapter: Brief mention of oral sex

Pairing: Clint x OFC , Natasha x OFC, Clint x Natasha, Clint x Natasha x OFC,

**I do not consent to my work being shared on any other site than it’s original posting by me. Reblogs are accepted and food for my soul.**

AN: ‘word’- thoughts ‘Italicized’=Communication

Reader’s POV as this was originally written as a reader insert

Chapter 1

~~ ~~

"So nothing like this has ever happened before?" You look over to Dr. Banner and sigh. This interrogation (and you refuse to call it anything else) has been going on for what felt like hours since the medic finished checking you over and bandaging you up. All you wanted to do was sleep. And possibly go home. 'Oh, sleep at home.' Your mouth waters at the thought of your bed.

"No. Like I said before, I'm normal. Not a superhero, nor a genetically enhanced human or a flippin' alien. Just human. Who does normal human things."

"Because supposedly looking through peoples eyes and talking in their head is normal?" Tony asks and you glare at him. "Look through my eyes."

"I can't."

"Why not? You spoke to Clint, said you looked through Agent Romanov's eyes during the rescue. So why not me?"

"I can't control it. I don't even know how or why it happened." You shift on the bed and try to hide the wince as the bandage pulls at the wound in your leg. "Before you all showed up, I didn't even think it was real. I thought I was hallucination or something."

"Do that often?"

"Tony." Bruce reprimands.

"Come on, looking through someones eyes, that's insane."

"And flying around in a tin suit isn't?" You quip back. Silently cheering at the small smirk that appears on Bruce's face.

"How about Clint?" You look over to the corner where Captain America has stood quietly the whole time. "I get not looking through Tony, and I can't blame you for not wanting to get into his head but you..connected with Clint before. Try again."

You sigh again. You haven't even been allowed to see him or Natasha since they dropped you off in the med lab. You frown and close your eyes thinking about Clint. You feel a tug and go towards it feeling warmth.

Your tongue slide deeper into Natasha and you open your eyes. Glancing up at her, head thrown back, fingers pinching her nipples. You slam your eyes close and pull away quickly.

"Miss Morgan?" You cross your arms over your chest; ignoring the sting from your sides. Your thighs clench and you feel you're wetness in response to Clint's feelings.

"Well, what did you see?"

You open your eyes, "Umm." You clear your throat, "Clint was..eating." You unconsciously bring your fingers to your bottom lip.

"J.A.R.V.I.S, what is Barton's current location?"

"Agent Baton is currently in his living quarters."

Tony looks at you in disbelief.

"He could be eating in there. Why don't we let her rest for a bit?" Dr. Banner is slightly red-faced and turns towards Tony.

"Well what was he eating?" Tony's not giving up.

"I..I couldn't see." You look down to your lap and silently pray your face doesn't give you away.

"Right." He drags the word out.

"I could taste it. Although, it might just be my memory? Not actually tasting?" Your voice raises at the end in confusion.

"Well, what did it-"

"Tony." Captain America stops him. Stepping up he takes a deep breath and did he just smirk at you? You're insides clench in response. Oh God! You grab the styrofoam cup and quickly take a sip, averting your eyes. "Let's let her rest for a bit."

"Fine. I still think this is crazy." He gets up from the stool he was sitting on and walks towards the door. Dr. Banner following on his heels not even saying good bye.

"Get some rest, I'm Steve by the way." He holds out his hand and you blink at it.

"Jessica." You reluctantly shake his hand. "You were there that night, right? In the club?"

"I was. I'm sorry we couldn't get to you in time." His thumb lightly runs over your hand and you pull away.

"Not your fault. I don't even know how he drugged me."

"There was another guy." You look at him confused. Natasha broke into the security footage. While you were talking to one guy, another came up on your other side and slipped something into your drink." You shake your head at your stupidity.

Unwilling a yawn breaks free and Steve steps back, "I'll let you get some rest."

You nod and close your eyes. You barely wait to hear the door close before slipping into unconsciousness.

"We want to see her." It's been hours since they kicked Clint and Natasha out of the hospital room.

"She's sleeping right now."

"We can be quiet." They push past Banner and Stark and head towards the room.

"Have you eaten anything since we've been back?" Clint looks back at Stark.

"What? Why?"

"Simple question..have you eaten?"

Clint's eyes narrow but before he can say no, Banner pipes up.

"You know, like maybe an hour ago..with Natasha?" He stares at Clint, like he's trying to tell him something. Clint's eyebrows knit together. His mind flashes back to before when he felt the strange warmth.

"Yeah...why?"

Tony's eyes narrow, "What did you eat?"

"Why?" Natasha who has quietly been watching the back and forth asks.

"Because I think he's lying."

"Why would I lie?"

"You tell me."

"Me. He was going down on me." Natasha states matter of fact and reaches past Clint to open the door. Clint smirks at Tony dumbfounded look before ushering Natasha into the room and closing the door.

"You knew." Tony turns towards Banner.

"I..had a feeling." Bruce adjusts his glasses.

"How?"

"Miss Morgan. Her heart rate picked up, plus enhanced senses thanks to the big guy." Tony scoffed and started to walk away before turning back.

"She said she could taste but it may have been memory...so that means she and Romanov .." Tony stops and Bruce rolls his eyes.

"Still think she's selling state secrets to her?"

"Could be mixing business and pleasure." Tony mutters as he turns away again. Not really believing it but not ready to admit he was wrong.

Bruce shakes his head at his friend, and quietly slips into the room with Natasha and Clint. He catches Natasha wiping her eyes and he turns his head pretending not to notice. Picking up the file he turns back.

"So, we had a chance to run some tests on the residue inside the iv bag she was hooked up too. Not all the tests are complete but it looks it's the same stuff they used on Wade Wilson."

"Who?"

"Dead pool."

Clint frowns at the memory of the crazy guy who showed up at their doorstep a few months ago. He slips your hand into his, needing the physical reminder you're safe. "So she's what, a mutant?"

"Uh..I'd like to run some more tests but this has definitely changed her DNA from her old files. Physically, there is no permanent damage from what happened. She'll most likely have a scar on her leg from the stabbing but the other cuts were superficial." Natasha nods having already come to those conclusions herself.

"Is this permanent?" she gesture towards your head.

"I don't know, probably. Can I ask," Bruce fiddles with his glasses, "Earlier, did you feel her?"

"I felt a warmth then something that reminded me of her but it was gone so fast, plus uh..I was a bit distracted." Clint runs a hand through his hair.

"How'd you know?" Natasha's eyes narrow at Banner.

"I took a guess given her reactions." She blinks and nods but doesn't ask anything else. "I'll leave you be but Furry was saying something about a meeting in 45 minutes. Natasha hums an acknowledgment but doesn't respond otherwise.

"Is he gone?" You ask as the door closes.

"Yeah, Princess." Your eyes fill with tears as they meet Clint's.

He sits on the side of the bed and carefully pulls you into his arms. "I'm sorry this happened. I wish I could take it back." You curl into his chest and finally release the tears and stress that have building from the moment you were taken.

When you finally pull away you feel lighter. Wiping at your face, you smile thanks to Natasha who hands you some tissues.

"How much of what Banner said did you hear?"

"Just him asking about you..if you felt me." Your cheeks redden. Clint smirks and wiggles his eyebrows at you, "You can join me anytime baby." Rolling your eyes you swat at his arm.

"How are you feeling?" Natasha asks as the door opens. You all turn to see Fury, Steve and Banner walk in. You wipe your eyes and pull the blanket up over your shoulders.

"Good question. I was just about to ask the same thing." Fury says as he looks through the folder containing all their information on you. "Nick Fury." He adds as an after thought.

"Tired. Which is ridiculous meaning all I've done the past.." you cut of realizing you have no idea just how long you've been gone.

"Three days." You look at Natasha, "You've been gone for three days." You sit quietly at that, it feels like so much more time has passed.

Then your eyes widen, "Kelsey!" You whip your head around to look at Clint.

"I let her know you're okay when we found you. We went back in after you were taken and asked her if she saw anything. We've been checking in from time to time." He makes a face and you wince. You know what her checking in is like. "I might be changing my number soon." He says making you smile.

"So, how long have you known Barton?" You look back to the man standing at the foot of your bed.

"I've already-"

"I'm asking her. Now you can sit quietly or leave. You're choice."

You chance a glance at Clint. At his nod, you answer.

"Um..I was twelve so..twenty years? God, I didn't realize it was that long ago."

"How'd you meet?" Your shoulders slump as you realize you're about to go for round two of interrogation.

"Snuck out to a carnival, met a cute boy. He helped me get away from an abusive prick." You slip your hand into his an squeeze a silent thanks. "We've kept in touch."

"And Natasha?"

"She followed him one night when he came to visit me. My dog wouldn't quit barking. Clint when to check why and came back with her."

"What's your relationship with Agent Barton?"

Your eyes narrow, "He's my best friend. Not that it is any of your business."

"Tell me about the night you were taken." You go over everything again, stopping to answer whatever questions they had.

"Do you think you were a random attack?"

"No." Clint squeezes your hand and Natasha leans in.

"Why?"

"They mentioned them." You tilt your head towards the pair. "It sounds like they had been watching us for a while."

"Just how often do you spend time with her, Agent Barton?" Fury glowers at Clint.

He shrugs, "When I have down time, I try and visit at least twice a month but it doesn't always work out."

"And what do you discuss?"

"Nothing about the job." You interrupt before either could answer. "Sometimes I'll hear something on the news and ask them if they were there, but they never really tell me anything."

"And before yesterday, you had never been able to, what did you call it Banner..visit Barton?"

"No. Like I told them, I didn't even think it was real until they showed up."

"Can you do it now?"

"I'm not a circus act."

"And I'm not not the leader of a three ring circus." You both ignore the snort that comes from Clint.

You sigh giving in and close your eyes. The warmth is easier to find and you open your eyes turning to look at Clint."Woah." You stare at your face and quickly noticing the one blue eye. You reach up and freeze when you see your hand coming towards you.

"Barton." You both turn to see Fury heading towards the door. He opens it and tilts his head.

Clint rolls his eyes and steps out into the hallway followed by Fury who stands with his back to you in the doorway. You watch through Clint as he holds up two fingers.

'Really?'

'Just answer him so we can be done.' You blink at Clint's voice.

"Two."

Fury looks back at you trying to see if there was any way you could have seen. He steps out and closes the door. He holds up his whole hand.

"You put down the two on each side, and there's a message from me to you." You say loudly.

"Sure that's the brightest thing to say to the man who's in charge of her release?" He asks before opening the door and walking back in.

"What can I say? I was inspired by your lovely bedside manner."

"You heard me?" I roll my eyes.

"Don't do that, it's weird." Clint takes his spot back at your side.

"Sorry." You pull back from him, blinking as your vision comes back into focus.

"So you see and hear everything he does?"

"And tastes." Banner adds without thinking. Fury looks at him and he blinks, cheeks reddening. "Don't ask."

"Wasn't planning on it." Turning back to you he adds; "Well, this is a unique situation we find ourselves in. I can't just let someone who can spy on us whenever she feels like it run around free." You feel a weight settle in your stomach the same time Clint sits a bit straighter.

"I don't plan to spy on anyone."

"You said it yourself, you can't control it."

"I'll learn to. And I'll sign whatever I need to stating I won't share anything I might accidentally see."

"Oh, I already planned on that. In the meantime though, you'll be staying here and you two," he looks at Natasha and Clint, "Are officially on downtime until further notice."

Natasha's eyes narrow and you bite your lip feeling guilty. "Sir,"

He ignores you and continues, "You'll be working with Doctor Banner to learn to control your new ability. Who knows, maybe it'll come in handy."

'You gotta be shitting me if he thinks I'm letting her anywhere near the field.' Your head whips to Clint.

"Field?"

"You're not recruiting her." He says aloud.

"Last time I checked, I was the one who gave the orders around here." He stares Barton down.

Watching him tense up, you rest your hand on his back.

'Clint, stand down.'

Clint turns to you with a frown.

'I don't like this.'

'Neither do I, but now is not the time to argue.' Your eyes close and you rest your head back into the pillow. "I'm going to sleep now."

Tag list: @chris-evans-indian-fanfic

#Secrets out #my fanfic #Jessica Morgan #Clint x Natasha X Reader #clint x natasha #clintasha #clint x reader #natasha romanov #clint barton

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itszephoria · 3 years

Text

Saw this pop up and your followers ask you which ones they’re interested in. But people don’t really ask much when I post or they don’t ask the ones that might make you feel uncomfortable. And well, honestly I’m so bored that I’ve decided to break all the damn rules and just answer all the questions because I can. *shock horror*

So information dump on the ‘Be nosy’ that popped up in my feed today. If you’re interested.

Be nosy

1. What’s your sexual orientation?

Straight. But maybe for the right woman I could sway but wouldn’t go so far as to call myself bi or bi-curious though.

2. What are you obsessed with right now?

Obsessively obsessing about my health and how to get well and failing it all. Oh and anime movies on Netflix.

3. Ever done any drugs?

I do drugs everyday. But I assume this is referring to illegal. No and was strictly no up until recently. I now take marijuana oil on a regular basis for pain management. Also being stoned/high is not pleasant and I don’t understand why people would enjoy that as a leisurely pastime.

4. What piercings do you want?

I want to get my ears pierced again. Holes have closed up, but currently due to my health that’s not possible. I can’t even enjoy clipons :(

5. How many people have you kissed?

The massive number of 5.

6. Describe your dream home.

It’s tiny in the sense it has all the space I need. A cosy tiny-like home. But not one on wheels, fixed to the ground. And it would be made of all natural materials, stone and wood. It would be unique and resemble something out of a fairy tale. It would sit a beautiful clearing with only nature to view in the distance and all the animals and wildlife would stay well away because I’m pretty much terrified of all it,

7. Who are you jealous of?

Healthy, painfree people. I am jealous of past me who didn’t realise how lucky she was and miss her.

8. What’s your favorite show to binge?

I don’t binge any show on repeat. I’d rather look for a new show to watch or enjoy, there are so many. The last shows I binged in two days was Queen’s Gambit and Emily in Paris.

9. Do you watch porn?

Yep. But struggle with it because it’s overdramatic, unrealistic and would kill or someone to make porn with a decent storyline with people that can act.

I prefer to read it if I’m honest or maybe just write it for myself.

10. Do you have a secret sideblog?

Sort of? More like my other one I used I was known for all my slash writings in F1. But now I just hang out here.

11. If you could teleport anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?

No where. The world is riddled with co-vid and well, I’m probably in one of the safest countries and I’m at risk of death should I catch it. So I’ll stay here in my safe bubble.

12. What’s one of your fantasies?

I wake up tomorrow and I’m not me. I wake up and I can take a deep breath without gasping for air, I wake up in no pain, I wake up and my body isn’t terribly scared, I wake up and can have a ‘normal’ life.

13. Do you have/would you get your nipples pierced?

Nope and no desire too. Won’t that just hurt?

14. How would you spend a million dollars?

I’d by that dream house I described, set everything up to be self sufficient. Pay and travel to try every cure available for my diseases. And then bank the rest and live off interest. Or maybe donate it. I don’t want money and I don’t really want a lot of things.

15. Are you in a relationship?

Yep and it’s a struggle and am constantly fighting to prove it’s worth continuing. Oh and that’s a relationship with myself.

16. Do you follow porn blogs?

No.

17. Are you angry with anyone right now?

No, I suppose it’s more disappointed and let down by people more than angry. I’m working everyday on letting it go but it’s not easy.

18. What tattoos do you want?

I have always wanted one, but have never found something that I really loved and haven’t been imaginative enough to create something unique. The older I get though, I’m not sure I want one. I did for the longest time though think about getting a Ferrari tattooed on my inner wrist, but pleased I never did that. I don’t love the sport or Ferrari enough anymore to want a permanent reminder of that.

19. If you could change your name, would you? What would you change it to?

I am changing name actually. Hoping to action that in the next two weeks. I would have done it earlier but they closed the borders. I have a dutch sir name that has two words. It confuses every one, systems don’t get it, it has caused issues with plane tickets. And well I’ve decided no more and am dumping a portion of it.

20. What is something you’re obsessed with?

This is a duplicate. Skipping.

21. Describe your best friend.

When you meet her for the first time she can be a little crazy and wild, and she kind of scared at me first because she’s so unlike me. But as you got to know her, the *real* her she doesn’t let people see, you realise how kind and soft she is, and she’s the most empathic person I have known. She gives so much of herself to everyone, thinks so little of herself and her needs because she’s one of the most selfless people I know. I love her more than most of my family and would do anything for her.

22. Tag someone you think is hot.

Is this followers? Uh most I don’t know what they look like? I assume they’re all hot!

23. Who are five of your favorite bands/musical artists?

Don’t have any really. My music is varied and is based on my mood and really changes around. And with most bands, I generally lean towards one or two songs. This is one of those questions I really struggle with whenever I see it. Will say however, have been enjoying The Beatles recently and a bit of old school stuff.

24. What are three places you want to travel?

Japan. Norway. Canada.

25. Describe your perfect Friday night.

Generally hanging out with people I like. Enjoying a good wine, some cheese, either playing some board game or dungeons and dragons, or watching a really good movie. Good company makes any night a good night.

26. What’s your favorite season?

Autumn. One because I think it’s neglected as a choice and every season should be loved, and two because I love the colours of autumn and the colours associated with autumn.

27. What’s your pet peeve?

I’m sure I have a heap of them, but currently it’s people that have an issue with you and instead of being an adult and talking to you about them choose to silence and blank you. I’m so tired of it, I’ve quit being peacemaker in those situations, those people are no longer worthy in my book.

28. Who is the funniest person you know?

Uh... I don’t think anyone I know is super funny. Friends and family all have a good sense of humor. But out of my circle of life people I’m always told I’m the funny one, which I find the biggest joke ever.

29. What’s the most overrated movie?

Can not think of anything off the top of my head. I will say if I think a movie is getting too much hype I refuse to watch it, whether all the reviews are raving or not. It’s why I didn’t watch Harry Potter for like ten years or any of the new Star Wars movies. I just refuse to be apart of all the hype and jump on bandwagons.

30. Tag someone you want to talk to but have been too shy to message.

I’d love to talk to everyone. I’m shy to start any conversations to be honest and I think all the people I talk to regularly were the first to message me, and I love them for it.

31. Do you like paper books or ebooks better?

100% love an old fashioned paper book. The texture of the paper. The smell of a book. That being said, I don’t think I’ve picked up a proper book to read in years. I live in fan fiction more than anything or am busy writing myself.

32. If you could live in a fictional world, what world would you pick?

Any of the disney worlds, anything from the past, or verging on fantasy like. I want a simpler time not full of technology which I grow to hate more each day. The older I get the more I’m pretty sure I’ve been born in the wrong decade.

33. If money was no object, what would your wardrobe be like?

I’d build the perfect wardrobe capsule. Everything would be of high quality, not necessarily brand name and all the clothes would be sourced from ethical businesses or be handmade.

I like classic pieces, love the fashion of the 50′s and 60s and while stylish it would be comfortable to wear and everything could be worn in public (sorry comfy tracky pants).

34. What’s your coffee order?

There ain’t no coffee order. I don’t drink it. Sorry @leoni-speedyf1 I know how addicted you are to it, happy to buy you anything you like though :P

35. Do you have a crush on anyone?

In real life? No one.

36. Do you still have feelings for any of your exes?

Not romantic. I have feelings in that I hope they’re doing well, achieving what they want and they’re all happy. I didn’t have any ‘bad’ breakups and all my relationships ended very amicably.

37. Have any tattoos?

No. See above for more on this.

38. Do you drink?

Rarely. Can’t with medication and condition. But on occasion I do enjoy a good glass of red. Pinot Noir is my preference.

39. Are you a virgin?

Nope.

40. Do you have a crush on any of your mutuals?

Not in a romantic way? The ones I talk to regularly I love immensely though.

41. How many followers do you have?

42. Describe the hottest person you know.

Uh all the men I know I am not attracted to. Probably a good thing as they’re either family or partnered with a friend or family member.

43. What’s your guilty pleasure?

Can’t think of anything. I try not to feel guilt for anything I enjoy to be honest, whether it’s food or an activity. Life is too short for that.

44. Do you read erotica?

Yep. Even write it.

45. What’s the worst date you’ve ever been on?

It was a few years back. I met this guy online and we went to the city and spent most of that time just strolling next to the river for our first meet up. Why was it the worst date ever? Well it wasn’t the location that’s for sure.

The guy had two kids, and I’m a firm believer all parents have favourites, though I have yet to meet a parent that will voice that aloud. This guy, had no qualms with telling me about this favourite kid, and that wouldn’t be a problem if didn’t spend just as much putting down his younger son. It kind of left me reeling and wondering how his son felt if his dad didn’t hide just how much he didn’t like him as a person. The kid was four and the reason his dad didn’t like him was because he didn’t like bikes.

And so the guy was a bmx rider so he spent the rest of the time on our walk just pointing out all the tricks he could do. He didn’t ask about me, only talked about himself. It was also lunch time and assumed we would get something to eat together, but nope, no food was offered. And when I suggested to get something to drink because it was so hot and we’d been out in the sun for like an hour, he just took me to a subway and told me to get a drink and waved me to the line. No offer to join me, no offer to pay (which doesn’t bother me btw, but this was capping off a terrible day), no offer to get food.

I was so happy to get out of there. Didn’t speak to him again once I had left.

46. How many people do you follow?

I currently follow 59 people. I don’t follow anyone that creates drama, and try and follow only people that post about F1 as that’s all I use tumblr for now.

47. If you could marry any celebrity, who would you pick?

Either Sebastian Vettel or Ryan Reynolds. Both are married though, so I don’t think that’s going to turn into a reality anytime soon.

48. Describe your ideal partner.

I want someone that shares the same core values as me. Doesn’t want kids, isn’t super religious (grew up in a cult like religion so I avoid it now), is on the minimalist side and isn’t someone that needs new things things all the time or is desperate to replace something the moment they deem it out of date. Someone that doesn’t live their life on social media. Someone that prefers simple things, someone who is kind and giving, and someone that truly loves me - and it’s the last part that I struggle with finding more than anything with all the guys I have dated.

I am currently not looking for a partner, I am not in a place for a relationship and am fully focused on myself. And I am very content with that decision.

49. Who do you text the most?

Currently my bestie.

50. What’s your favorite kind of weather?

Clear blue skies and a warm day to enjoy the sun. But there are times when I simply love the rain, hearing it on the room, watching it fall endlessly and knowing that everything will be green from it.

#all about me #long read #tried to be open and honest

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sgam76 · 4 years

Text

Fanfic Tag Game

With thanks to the lovely @dragonnan, who tagged me

Questions:

AO3 name (and everywhere else, basically): sgam76

Fandom: Sherlock and Good Omens, though I haven’t written any Good Omens stuff yet. Unsure if that’s a promise or a threat.

Number of fics: 22, which honestly I find kind of astounding. I tend to forget about how much there is until I actually go look at the list, for some reason.

Fic I spent the most time on: Redemption, though it’s close with A Long Walk Down a Dusty Road. Most of my long things take over a year, since I have to fit writing 150k-200k words around, ya know, Real Life.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/8390473

Fic I spent the least time on: A Sharp, Dressed Man. That only took a couple of hours, since the whole idea bloomed in my head all at once.

Well, that, and the fact that I was having so much fun writing BAMF Mycroft.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/8390473

Longest Fic: Scheherezade, at a lean, mean 197k words.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/5565991

Shortest fic: Contect and Collateral Damage, at only 3150 words. I’m not known for writing anything short, as a rule.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24154888

Most hits: Scheherezade, at a little over 22,000 (link above)

Most kudos: Also Scheherezade, at 562

Most comment threads: A Long Walk Down a Dusty Road, at 402 threads

https://archiveofourown.org/works/14621058

Fave fic you wrote: I’d have to say With a Little Help From My Friends (and its sequel, Aftermath) if only for the verbal “duel” between Mycroft and Rudy (who is evilllllll in my worlds). I literally wrote the whole thing in about an hour--it just flew from my fingers. It doesn’t get quite as much love as my longer things (since I shove those under peoples’ noses more often, with their 45-50 freakin’ chapters), but it’s still my fave.

A Little Help From My Friends:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11028765

Aftermath:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/16091381

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: My long-term plans include an expansion of the Scheherezade ‘verse, detailing the hunt for Sebastian Moran. That’s a Mycroft/Gabe Austin (one of my more popular OCs) story.

Share a bit of your WIP or share a story idea that you’re planning:

I’m working on a one-shot for the 10th anniversary collection. Unsure of the title yet, but here’s a snippet:

Sherlock didn’t understand why John got so concerned about these things. Granted, hallucinations were likely something that all medical professionals viewed with a jaundiced eye. And it wasn’t something that Sherlock wanted to experience on a regular basis; if nothing else, dealing with luminescent blue fairies and sentient frogs in one’s hospital room made it difficult to retain any aspect of professionalism. Tough on the image.

But it had been an interesting break from the seething boredom of convalescence, and it was over now. Well, mostly. The one frog still peeked out from under the bed now and again. But he was a polite little fellow, and wasn’t doing any harm.

But John—John was having none of it, and had called what seemed like every nurse and attending physician on the floor into the room to give them a Captain Watson dressing-down.

Tagging @ceruleanmindpalace, but only if she feels like it!

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looselucy · 5 years

Photo

Us & Them

April 14th It was 9am, and Chloe had been talking my ear off for the past 45 minutes, gabbing down the phone about something or nothing and absolutely anything.

“And literally, it has only been a matter of weeks since I said to Libby, we need to go to a city soon or something because we need to get laid, and she was like nah, and now I know why. She was already getting laid. Louis was laying her.” “He was.” I giggled. “Do you think he’s good in bed?” “Can’t say I’ve ever really thought about it.” “Really? I think about what everyone would be like in bed. Girls included.” She told me. “I think Louis is one of those who isn’t much special until he gets to know your body, then he’s well good.” “What do you think I’d be like?” I sniggered. “Slow and sexy.” “Awh, thanks Chloe!” “Lin goes like a rabbit for hours. Libby probably likes kinky shit. Niall is up for anything. Harry is hard but passionate. I mean, he’s a self-defence teacher and an artist. I bet that juxtaposition is an absolute treat.” Due to how spot on her description of what Harry would be like in bed was, I genuinely started pondering over just how accurate her other predictions were. I was blushing, rolling over on my bed to stare up to the ceiling. “Mm, I bet.” I bit my lip. “Whoever gets to find out is a lucky girl.” “Tell me about it.” She groaned. “Hey, what’s the plan tonight? It’s Harry’s birthday, right?” I was still surprised by how things had played out in terms of us knowing about Harry’s work and his secret coming to light. He’d been so composed and laidback about all of it, so understanding and almost humorous. He’d opened his sessions up again the following Wednesday on the 10th, followed by our weekly trip to The Tin Mouse, and even when they’d all grilled him and gotten excited, he’d been so fine about all of it! I suppose he really had expected at least one of us to have known for longer anyway; it wasn’t unfamiliar to him, having people know about his work. It wasn’t like all the stuff with his family, which was private and his own to share. His career had opened doors and broken down walls and left him exposed in ways that couldn’t be reversed, and he seemed to understand that. His work was a spectacle in ways his private life needn’t be. It was different. In a strange and unpredictable way, it actually seemed as though he felt better for us all knowing, as though a weight had been lifted. Maybe him being back in Rosebury was a big contribution to it, but over the past week or so, it felt like it was the happiest I had ever seen him. He was beginning to open up in ways I hadn’t foreseen, slowly stitching the pieces of his life together to create something whole. I was sure even a few short months earlier he wouldn’t have even thought to tell us about his birthday, but he’d been excited and planned an evening to celebrate. He was doing so unbelievably well. I was ridiculously proud of him and how wonderful he’d been about everyone knowing. He was more interested in the news about Louis and Libby than anything else. “He’s forced Gina to get the karaoke out,” I confirmed. “So it’s a night at The Royal Rose for us.” “Brilliant, what’re we singing?” “You’ll have to get me really bloody drunk to make me sing.” “Happy to do just that. Me, you and Libby could be Destiny’s Child.” “OR, the Bee Gees!” “That’s the spirit!” There was a knock on my door, and I had to make an educated guess that it would be Harry. All he’d said was to keep my day free, and I imagined it would be a day in bed before a night in the pub. It sounded perfect to me. “Okay, I gotta go! I’ll see you tonight though.” “See you to-Night Fever.” She blurted, sounding rather proud of herself. “Also, by the way, I’m very loving but feisty in the bedroom, in case you wanted to know.” “I didn’t, but thank you.” “Can you confirm if I’m right about what you’re like in bed? How deep is your love, Alfie?” “Goodbye, Chloe!” As soon as I’d hung up I leapt to my feet, scuttling over to the door, eager to see Harry again. It had been less than 12 hours since I’d last seen him, but after a night sleeping in our own beds it somehow felt like a lifetime. I’d been up early that morning to get some basics done in the shop with Louis since we weren’t opening that day, and I’d made the decision not to stay at Harry’s the night before, a decision I regretted rather quickly. I swung the door open, practically jumping with glee over the sight of him, about to grab his face and kiss the life out of him, but he didn’t give me the chance. He snaked around my side, standing behind me and putting his hands over my eyes, holding his body close to mine. “Harry,” I cried. “What’re you doing?” “Clearly, it’s a surprise.” He leaned to my ear, trying to waddle the two of us forward and lead me out the door and down the stairs. “Wait, what? It’s your birthday. Surely I should be the one surprising you.” I tripped almost instantly. “Shit, fuck, couldn’t this have waited until after we’d tackled the stairs?” “That’s not as fun. Less risky.” “That sounds so much better to me.” “Careful, there’s a step there!” I was appalled by how unfamiliar I seemed with my own home, Harry having to yank me back to him so I didn’t go tumbling down the flight of stairs leading outside. I could feel his body jittering as he held me back, the two of us already in fits of laughter at my inexcusably weak attempt to manage even the first step. He kept my eyes covered as he rested his head against the side of mine, and we were already tittering so much I didn’t think I’d ever be able to manage the rest of the stairs. “Guide me better!” I howled. “They’re fucking steps, they’re not that complicated!” “Fine, fuck you, I’m going.” I took a steady stride, gradually beginning to move downwards. “Happy Birthday, by the way.” “Thank you, boss.” “I’m scared. Should I be scared?” “It’s a good surprise, I promise.” “Still scared.” “Don’t be.” We reached the bottom of the stairs much quicker than I’d been expecting, trying to take another step down which wasn’t even there, which made me stumble forward again, the whole endeavour much messier than it should have been. We took a few steps outdoors before Harry halted, bringing us to a standstill. My stomach was in knots. “Ready?” He asked quietly. I shook my head, but that didn’t stop him from lifting his hands off my eyes. I burst into tears the second he had. Because standing right in front of me, on the gravel beside my car, was my dad, my mum, and a rather timid looking nurse stood behind them, watching us with a smile on her face. He’d gotten them back to Rosebury. After almost five long years, he’d gotten them to come home. Both of them. I slapped my hands against my mouth, gripping my eyes shut, and I just stood there in floods of tears. I didn’t have the capacity to do anything else, all I could do was weep. It was so absurd and overwhelming that I couldn’t make sense of it, the fact they were both actually there, stood right ahead of me. It had been so many years, and for so many months I’d been trying to encourage my father to come back, if only for a day or two, but the fact it was actually happening was preposterously peculiar. My dad took a few steps forward and took me into his arms, telling me it was okay, to stop being silly and stop crying, how happy he was to be back, to see me again. I was floored.

“He paid for all of it.” My dad whispered across the table, nodding towards Harry, who was stood ordering our food at the counter in PJ’s. “The nurse, our journey here. He got us a medical van, just in case anything goes wrong. He paid for all of it.” I looked over my shoulder, watching Harry chatting freely with the owner Paula and the nurse, who I’d learnt was called Helen and wanted to give us as much alone time for the day as she possibly could whilst always being around to help my mother if needs be. “How did…” I turned back to face my parents. “Why did… When did he sort this?” “He got in touch with me last week. Had it all planned out, made it as easy as it possibly could be. Kinda made it impossible to say no. Not that I wanted to but, it’s just always seemed so out of reach before.” I didn’t quite know what to say or think or even feel. I couldn’t fathom him going to all that effort on my behalf, the amount of money he would have spent, the care, the kindness. All of it. My eyes flicked to the side to gage my mother, and it must have been so long since she was last out of that home, and I totally understood why my dad had been so worried about it, but even though she was quiet and a little vacant, I actually believed it would have been doing her so much good, even if we couldn’t see it. I didn’t want to cry, but it was very likely I’d spend the majority of our day in tears. Even the fact that Harry was right there with us, that we were out in public as a unit with him included, that meant so much to me. He would have been well aware that the chances of us running into someone were high, but he didn’t seem to care. I dropped my head, struggling to keep my emotions in check. “I can’t believe he’s done all this.” I murmured. “I never asked him to do any of it, I… I just can’t believe he’d do this for me.” “That’s what real love looks like. You’ll have to get used to that.” Even hearing the word love made my stomach coil. The pace of mine and Harry’s companionship had been irregular and unpredictable, and though things had begun in October and intensified in January, love still somehow felt like a big word, a big feeling, something I somehow feared. I’d had one serious relationship in my life, one single experience of that form of love, and it had been a destructive example of it. Love had broken my confidence and shattered my trust. Love had made me doubt my own worth and shun my true emotions, the damage darting to destruct so many different aspects of my life and myself. Love had been an enemy disguised as a friend. But the bottom line was that even at his very best, Sam would have never done what Harry had done for me that day. It wasn’t in his nature. He wouldn’t have even considered it. I did not want to fear love because one person had shown me such a poor example of it. “Sam would’ve never done this for me, would he?” I voiced my thoughts. “I doubt it.” “Not that this… Not that it should be expected, because this is… But y’know what I mean.” “One day Sam will meet someone and all that stuff will come really naturally to him.” My dad said. “I just think that you two weren’t right for each other. I hope you leaving him was the wakeup call he needed, and the next person he’s with… he’ll do better. You’ve just got to be with the right person.” I nodded, hoping he was right, because I had seen a lot of good in Sam, and in ways I would always care for him. “Once you find that, it changes you.” He went on. “Once you find that, you become the best version of yourself. It’s a wonderful thing.” He moved to take hold of my mother’s hand, and thankfully she didn’t cower or pull away, she tightened her grip. She seemed at ease, which was a rare and lovely sight. I was startled back to life when Harry came and sat himself down next to me. “Paula said she’s gunna rustle up Rita’s favourite.” He got himself comfortable at my side. “I dunno what that is, but I trust her to know.” “D’ya hear that, Ree?” My dad encouraged. “You’re gunna get your favourite, meat and potato pie.” “That’s nice.” Her reply was low, but any reply at all was good. “We used to come here every Sunday.” My dad turned to tell Harry. “She’d order the same thing every week.” “With a tea.” She added, quiet, but loud enough for us all to shut the fuck up and stare at her completely dumbfounded. It was such a small thing, such an insignificant little fact, but she’d remembered. She had remembered what she used to order every single Sunday when she’d go to PJ’s with my dad. “Holy shit.” I was mystified. “That’s right!” My dad beamed. It was so strange, how she didn’t even know who I was but she could remember something so small like that, even if it was just for a few seconds, even if it was utterly trivial. I really thought being in places that were so familiar to her was helping her recall even the tiniest things, aided by that sense of acquaintance and home. It was impossible not to smile. “I’m so happy you’re both here.” I sighed, taking Harry’s hand beneath the table. “Thank you for sorting this, Harry.” “My pleasure.” He reached to shake my father’s hand across the table. “Good to see you again. How do you feel being back?” Even on the tiny walk from my place to PJ’s, he’d bumped into three people he knew, and was greeted by more love and welcomes when we got into the café. He seemed happy enough and glad to see people, and they seemed glad to see him, but I suppose it was difficult, especially with my mum being right there. As lovely as the greetings had been, they’d also been accompanied by sad looks and awkward moments, broken smiles and sympathetic words. No one meant any harm, that much was clear, but it couldn’t have been easy. “I feel okay. Strange, but good.” He answered rather shakily and yet sure at the same time. “I’ve missed it.” “There’s something special about this place, isn’t there?” Hearing Harry say that made me smile. “Very. And the people in it.” His eyes dodged to me for a second, giving a very knowing look to the two of us. “Agreed.” Harry was holding back a smile, seeming a little bashful. I made my eyes go wide, glaring, not wanting Robert Hunter to act like a proper dad and start interrogating him and scaring him off. Harry didn’t know that I’d confirmed to my dad that there was something happening between us, but I thought with how our day was going and what he’d done for me, Harry would’ve been pretty foolish to think my dad wouldn’t be aware of it. “Just look after her.” He simply said. “I will.” Harry nodded assertively. My whole body was likely beaming a certain blushed colour that I could not control, dropping my head and cooing down towards the table. Harry could say the most simple things and make me experience feelings I never had before. “Alright, well I’m gunna leave you to it.” He sighed, squeezing my hand and then letting go. “What?” My dad gawped. “I know this is a family thing, I don’t wanna intrude.” He raised to his feet. “You’re not intruding at all, it’s the complete opposite.” Robert was stern. “Sit yourself back down. This is only happening because of you, so I think you should stay.” I looked up to him, kind of expecting to see him looking like he’d actually wanted to get away, that he'd have felt a little strange and out of place if he’d stayed, which I would have totally understood. But if anything, he looked flattered. “Are you sure?” “Absolutely.” Smiling and thanking him, Harry sat himself back down, taking hold of my hand again as soon as he could. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

We trudged through the tall grass, the setting sun making everything golden, the evening warm and blissful. It was perfectly serene, birds singing lullabies from their branches, butterflies dancing over flowers, my heart feeling far removed from everything that could ever possibly harm it. Totally peaceful. “Where’re we going?” Harry asked from behind me. “To where my dad proposed to my mum.” I turned and whispered back to him. “I think he’s hoping she’ll remember it.” We were only a short drive out of Rosebury, but from that spot it felt like there was no sign of society for miles and miles, where Mother Nature still reigned supreme, her beauty untouched and untroubled. My dad had hold of my mum’s hand, carefully leading her towards the very spot he’d asked her to marry him when they were only nineteen years old. He was so affectionate, so ridiculously in love with her even still, despite everything. I worried for him all the time, imagining his life both with and without her. There didn’t seem to be a possible outcome where he would be as happy as he deserved to be. My heart broke for him. I stopped when we reached the end of the taller grass, my dad leading my mum down the small hill in front of us to take her out into the open where he’d asked her to marry him. Harry stood by my side, the two of us giving them their space. “This is beautiful.” Harry admired. “He’s really romantic.” I liked seeing them wander off hand in hand like that, because it was almost as though for a few brief moments of my life, I could forget completely the fact that she didn’t fully know who he was or understand what was happening. Seeing them then, the years rewound before my eyes, taking me back to simpler times when their love was untested and her bookshelf was heaving with books of all colours and sizes, romance novels filling each shelf, depicting their love and a life of happiness they had once built side by side. It was the first time in years where the image of them was strong enough to shield that disease, my eyes only able to see two people in love and nothing else. I sat myself down, keeping my eyes on them every second as I tucked my knees upwards, heart and body warm. Harry sat down beside me, the two of us quietly observing them for quite some time, uninterrupted, peaceful. Even when he did eventually speak, he was gentle. “It’s like they never left.” I turned my head to look over his profile, the way he smiled looking out across the fields and hills before us. “Why did you do this for me?” I asked him. “Why wouldn’t I?” He looked back at me. “I care about you. I wanted to make you happy.” “You make me happy anyway. This is… It’s on another level, is all I’m saying.” “So are you.” He shrugged, casually creating pink blotches in my cheeks. He was treating it like the most ordinary thing, like it was the obvious thing to do and he couldn’t really understand why I was so bewildered by it. I was blushing like mad. “It’s what you deserve, and if I can give that to you, I will. And, y’know… your dad deserves this too. He needed to come back here. It was a bit of a no-brainer.” I reached to take his hand, joining our fingers together and holding his hand as tightly as I dared since he still had his bandages on to cover his cuts, which I hoped were well on their way to healing. I leaned his way, kissing his cheek briefly. “I’m beyond grateful. Thank you.” I spoke against his skin, his dimple appearing beside my lips. “You’re welcome.” “I feel really bad that it’s your birthday and it’s like… It’s like the whole day has revolved around me. I haven’t even given you your present yet.” “You got me a present?” “Of course I got you a present.” I chuckled. “You think I’m not gunna get you a present? Louis’ got you one too!” “What the fuck!” “You should not be this surprised!” “I expected a few pints, but actual presents?” He whelped before he seemed to calm, bewildered as he spoke. “Shit. It’s been a long fucking time.” He was so sweet, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe his luck. Buying for him had been much more difficult than I’d anticipated. He was such a diverse, illusive being that every typical option I’d thought of fell completely flat. Eventually, I’d settled on an acoustic guitar, one I’d seen months earlier than had made me think of him for reasons I didn’t understand. He was clearly a creative person with multiple talents, and though I knew he already owned a guitar, he’d spoken to me about how it was a hobby he’d regretfully overlooked for quite some time. Since he was leaving one of his passions behind, I thought he might like to remind himself of something else he loved doing, something that wasn’t as harmful, that didn’t nourish the demons within him; they needed starving of the misery he had fed them for too long. “I’m sure hearing everyone on karaoke will be enough of a gift in itself.” I leered. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.” I had been excited about our day anyway, but with what he’d planned he’d made a good day near perfect. I felt like I wanted to thank him forever. “Seriously, I’m beyond grateful for today, Harry. Thank you.” “Again, you’re welcome.” He chuckled. “You don’t have to keep saying it.” ”Sorry if you feel like you’ve kinda wasted your day.” After spending the late morning and early afternoon in PJ’s, we had spent the rest of our day slowly walking her around town, taking my mum to all her favourite spots and even visiting the house where we used to live as a family. It definitely wasn’t the most riveting of days, as much as I’d loved it. “I don’t, at all. It’s been really nice. Better than how I’ve spent my birthday for the last few years anyway.” I took a moment, shifting uncomfortably on my spot as I thought about approaching the topic I’d been contemplating and stressing over for weeks. I wanted to share it with him, not in the hope of reaching a definite outcome, but me and Harry were doing so well with being open and honest with what we were feeling and thinking, I felt I owed it to us more than anything. I wanted to try and gage how he was feeling about the topic of people knowing about the two of us without diving right into; I wanted to simply test the waters and gather whether he thought we would sink or swim. It was a difficult subject to breach because he’d almost been forced to be much more open that he was accustom to in recent weeks and months, and though that had been a good thing in the grand scheme of things, I understood it must have been overwhelming for him. I didn’t want to pile everything on at once and taint the incredible process he had made. “Were... Were you nervous about bumping into someone today?” I asked shyly. “Mm.” He nodded, smiling as he turned his head to face me. “Were you?” “Yeah.” I admitted. “Kinda.” “Thankfully we got through the day without any of that lot witnessing.” He sniggered. “We’d have never heard the bloody end of it.” “So you’re… You’re not ready for people to know then? About us?” He whipped his head to look at me, likely picking up on the tone of my voice and the suggestion within it. He took a few seconds, the very smallest smile on his lips as he looked over my face, sighing deliberately. I was impressed by the fact he hadn’t run, that he was still sat there with me seeming to actually fully contemplate what I was saying rather than getting defensive and immediately shunning it. Somehow, that was good enough for me. Every day, I could see us progressing, and that was enough. “Sorry.” He said, knowing I’d already figured out his answer. “S’okay. I get it. I just wanted to know where you’re at, that’s all.” “I’m not quite there yet.” I nodded, completely understanding of why he felt that way. Maybe we weren’t ready. Maybe there was already more than enough going on in our lives and between the two of us that we didn’t need anything else from the outside burrowing its way inwards. The thought of everyone knowing was intimidating, I could admit that. I suppose I’d just gotten carried away with how exciting I found it too. I was happy to go at his pace, as long as I knew we were moving forward. I shuffled myself a little closer to him, Harry letting go of my hand so he could wrap his arm around me, tuck me into his side carefully, kiss at the top of my head. I could tell it was his way of comforting me, letting me know that it wasn’t to do with me but more to do with him and how he felt. I couldn’t have asked for much more than that. I looked ahead, seeing my mum and dad picking flowers together, crouched down over a certain patch as he plucked some from their place and handed them over to her. I wiped away my tears quickly. “I dunno what I expected when I moved here,” As Harry spoke, his voice seemed to intertwine with the nature around him, his chords a hidden vein that could bury beneath the soil and create new life. “But it definitely wasn’t this.” I lay my head on his shoulder, not even needing to question him or wonder whether that was a good thing or not, because I knew it was. “I’m so glad you’re here.” I whispered. “I kinda hate thinking about my life without you now. It doesn’t seem right.” Within a second of me saying that, he’d twisted his head to thrust his lips together with mine, breathing me in, a cold wind playing around us and through our hair as he grabbed hold of my face, tongue teasing mine. He was intense, groaning as his mouth moved, beautifully passionate. I felt weak beneath his touch. He was captivating, in everything he said and everything he did, every touch strong enough in its tenderness to weaken me indefinitely. How well I knew his touch and how versed he was with mine made every kiss categorically remarkable, almost intimidatingly so. But that kiss was something beyond anything we’d shared before. I was breathless by the time he stopped kissing me, his lips still close enough to brush my own ever so slightly, fingertips pushing against my jaw to keep me close. I opened my eyes, saw that he was already looking deep into mine, wetting his lips. I felt like I wasn’t breathing. “ALFIE!” I heard my dad call for me from across the field, which may have been the only thing that could make me tear my eyes from Harry’s. “I think we need to get her back. She’s getting upset, she’s confused.” I nodded, my stomach still sinking and my body still motionless, but Harry jumped to his feet immediately, rushing over to lend a helping hand. I was frozen.

“HOLD THE LINE!” Lin was yelling rather than singing. “LOVE ISN’T ALWAYS ON TIME!” It was painful, literally painful. I was loving every second and it was funny as hell, but listening to him squawking like that was genuinely doing bad things to my delicate little ears. The remaining five of us were all leaning our backs against the bar, cringing. “Oh god, it’s even worse than usual.” Louis snorted. “The fact he has no shame is so attractive.” Niall was biting his lip, already one too many drinks down. Chloe was already chatting to the bloke who was in charge of the karaoke machine for the evening, having a deep discussion about which Bee Gees song we should try to take on after realising Stayin’ Alive probably wasn’t the easiest one to tackle, but likely the funniest. Libby and I were trying to down our drinks in order to be drunk enough to actually get up and sing, but it didn’t seem to be working. Chloe had zero qualms about it. “Are you gunna take on Islands in the Stream again?” I asked Harry, nudging his hip with mine. “I suggested I Got You Babe as a joke, and Niall’s already requested it.” “You should be aware that there are no jokes when it comes to Niall and karaoke, Harry.” “That’s really a lesson I need to learn.” He sniggered. Thankfully, we’d managed to calm my mother down earlier before things had gotten completely out of hand. We’d walked her back out of the field and taken her straight over to the van, though thankfully she hadn’t needed any medical assistance, she’s merely needed to calm down and realign her mind once more, as much as she could. They’d left not long afterwards, the farewell drawn out and bittersweet, but I knew it would have made a world of difference when it came to my dad and his attitude towards spending time in Rosebury. We’d gotten through the day with barely a single issue and I could tell that something had switched in his mind. After a brief trip home with Harry by my side, gifting him his guitar and taking him to bed, our evening in the pub had snuck up on us rather quickly and was going exactly as expected. If only or a while. Just as Lin was taking his bow, the song finally coming to a triumphant end, the door swung open and Sam and Tom welcomed themselves into The Royal Rose. Sam had been rather good at hiding himself away since the night where Harry had knocked him to the ground with one foul punch over three months earlier, meaning that most of the group hadn’t seen him since finding out exactly why it was that Harry had gone after him the way he had. I shuffled uncomfortably on my spot as they both approached, looking far too smug for my liking. “M’going outside.” Harry grunted, rolling his shoulders and pushing away from the bar, ready to take himself away from the situation. “Harry, it’s your birthday, you don’t have to-” “Fancy seeing you lot here.” Sam’s voice was as smarmy as ever. “Don’t leave on my behalf, mate.” “I’m not your mate.” Harry stopped and answered, back rigid, tone vapid. Sam was just that bit shorter than Harry, positioning himself right in front of him and looking up with a smug smile on his face. I could see Harry clenching his fists, doing what he could to contain his rage. Lin, however, wasn’t feeling quite as forgiving. “OI!” He yelled, rushing to us from the front of the room. “Sam, get the fuck out.” “I just want a pint, I didn’t even know you lot were here. You don’t own the fucking pub, Lincoln.” Lin seemed unfazed, getting right up in Sam’s face, snarling as he spoke. “But you know I say one word to Gina about what you did to Alfie and you’re barred for life, so I’d take the highroad and leave of your own accord before I make that happen.” “Scary.” He sniggered sarcastically. “Oh fuck this.” Niall tut. “Harry, shut him up and knock him out again, would ya?” I felt like the reason Sam was so defensive and vulgar was no longer anything to do with me and more in an attempt to feel better about himself, try to prove how unfazed he was about the fight he and Harry had. He had no clue that he continued to make himself look worse and worse with every interaction they shared. “Sam, drop it.” Chloe piped up rather shyly. “It’s Harry’s birthday, we’re just trying to have a nice night, can’t you leave it? Go to a different pub.” “It’s embarrassing.” Lin sounded just as rude as Sam had, it was brilliant. “Look, I said I’m sorry,” He fought. “I’ve spoken with Alfie, it’s nowt to do with any of you. I’m not here for trouble, I’m here to have a drink, so if you could all move out of my fucking way and let me get to the bar.” “Go somewhere else.” Harry demanded. “Why should I?” “Sam, fuck off.” Niall groaned, tired of it. He seemed to ignore everyone, looking back up to Harry and it was clear he wanted to make him snap. He wanted a rise out of him. I slyly took Harry’s hand, trying to pull him back, closer to me. Grinning, Sam quickly dropped his eyes to look at me. “We’re alright aren’t we, Alfie?” He asked. “Don’t even bother speaking to her.” Harry stepped so he was right in front me, blocking Sam from me in any way he could. He was doing so well. He could have lost his head as soon as Sam walked through the door, but he hadn’t. He’d stayed as calm as he could, which I appreciated, but then I’d catch another glimpse of the look on Sam’s face and I’d want to punch him myself. Sam took a step closer, Harry not moving an inch. “I dunno whose fucking hero you’re trying to be, but you’re not hers.” Sam snarled, nodding his head towards me. “You might as well stop trying to be.” “I’m not trying anything.” Harry snarled. “Looks like you are to me.” “Why? Because I wanna protect her from you?” “Like you’re any better. I can see right through you-” “Don’t push me.” Harry shook his head. “Say another fucking word.” It wasn’t the first time Sam had suggested that he could see Harry’s feelings for me, and though it didn’t help that every interaction they’d had had been hostile and revolved around me, it seemed that maybe he could see through him in some ways. But he was claiming to see something else in him too, a violence and an aggression, something that had affected Harry’s life and was the source of too many painful memories. And even though he had worked so hard to move on and find alternative ways to deal with his emotions, his rage and his sorrow in particular, I knew what Sam was saying would be bothering him, evoking emotions and times that Harry wanted to keep in the past. “Sam, you’ve got ten fucking seconds.” Lin finalised. “Fine, I’m going, chill out.” He smirked. “Enjoy your nights. Careful around him, Alfie.” Lin managed to stand in the way before I’d even noticed that Harry had lost his patience, trying to jump at Sam and Tom and the two of them sauntered out of the pub, sniggering at him as they went. I hated that they’d managed to make him snap at the very last second, how Lin was once again having to hold him back. “Don’t, mate, he’s not worth it!” Lin called. “He’s trying to get to you.” I still had hold of Harry’s hand. “Ignore him.” He glared at Sam until well after he’d left, nostrils flaring as he kept his eyes on the door, somewhere between wanting to calm down and wanting to follow him outside. His chest was rising and falling, every inch of him tense. “I need air.” He huffed, pulling away from me and heading to the back door. “No, Harry-” I tried. “I’m going out back. Just five minutes, I need to clear my head.” We all watched him go, rolling his shoulders and darting down the hallway where he’d kissed me during the first minute of the year to give himself the space he desired. Sam was trying to get in his head and it was working. He was saying all the right things and really riling him up, and he didn’t need to feel that way. I could see that Harry often saw the worst of himself, saw the negatives and found a way to blame himself for things that were out of his control, for habits and characteristics he had developed over the years. The things Sam had been saying had gotten to him so much because Harry managed to link them to things he’d done, ways he’d felt, behaviours he had tried to change, disregarding the ways he had successfully bettered himself. But I saw the best in Harry. I knew he had changed. I knew he had a good heart. “I think there’s a reason he runs those classes, y’know.” Chloe sighed once he’d slammed the door shut. “I think someone did something to someone he loves, that’s why he gets so… wound up.” “Fuck Sam.” Lin groaned, rubbing the top of my arm encouragingly. “Let’s ignore that. Who wants a drink? I’m not having him ruin our night.” Niall scuttled around to my side as everyone tried to snap out of the moment and return to normal. He leaned closer to me, whispered something in my ear that made my stomach drop. “I think Harry likes you, Alf.” “What?” “C’mon. You see how he gets about you?” “He’s just like that.” I lied as convincingly as I could. “He likes you. I know I’m right. I called Louis and Libby years ago.” “This time, you’re wrong.” “Nice opinion, but I am in fact right, and my advice to you would be to hop right on that dick as soon as possible.” I was glad he’d said something funny so I could laugh it off, shake my head and end the conversation there. But he had this knowing little look on his face, clearly very pleased with himself and exceptionally confident in his prediction, with good reason. As he swaggered away from me, I rolled my eyes before they landed right on the door Harry had just walked out of, my mood dropping quickly. As well as the fact I knew Harry wanted to be on his own, I figured Niall’s speculation was a good reason not to follow him outdoors to see how he was feeling, attempt to cheer him up. He wanted time alone, and I needed to give it to him no matter how agonising the wait might be. It all stemmed down to what had happened with every member of his family; his father’s suicide, the fight with his brother, how his mother had kicked him out and he’d stopped all contact with her for too long. Through every heartbreak and every mistake, Harry had found some blame within himself, misplaced or not. In the following years, he had done all he could to make his peace and be a better person, right his wrongs, but every now and then those detrimental doubts would return to haunt him. Sam being the one to say all that and even comparing the two of them, implying that I needed to worry about Harry, that was what had made him lose himself that way. After so long, I knew what his thought process would be, how he was thinking. I knew I didn’t have anything to fear, and I needed to make sure Harry knew exactly how I felt. Another couple of minutes passed by before the conversation veered back to Harry. “Go check on him.” Niall said, nodding towards the door. “I dunno…” I groaned, trying to seem like I wasn’t desperate to go and see him, even though I definitely was. “Do it. And if he tells you to fuck off, at least then you know. Better that than him hoping someone goes to see if he’s okay and no one does.” “Then you go.” I kept up the act in order to steer his suspicions away. “I’m not the one in the middle of all this.” He shrugged, and I had to accept that at least. Sighing and faking unease, I scuttled in Harry’s direction, soon cautiously opening the door and poking my head around the corner to see that he was already looking right at me like he’d been waiting for me to show up, sat on one of the splintered tables they had outside, feet resting on the bench attached to it, hands in prayer against his lips. “M’sorry.” He spoke instantly. “I dunno why I get like that.” I stepped outside, the door closing slowly behind me as I walked over to him. “You don’t have to be sorry.” I told him, nonchalant. “You get like that because he’s a prick.” I saw his smile as I stopped right in front of him, glad to see him looking so calm and composed, to see his body almost relax with every step closer I’d taken. “You handled it well.” I nodded. “Don’t let him get to you. He doesn’t know you, Harry. He’ll say anything to feel better about himself, it’s his own issue, not yours.” Although he didn’t look quite convinced, he did look as though he was happy to hear it, happy that I was there saying what I was so confidently. I wanted to lean in and kiss him, but I didn’t quite trust that Niall wasn’t behind me spying on the two of us. Harry tilted his head a little, narrowed his eyes. “You know me well, don’t you? You know how my head works.” “I like to think so.” I looked up and shrugged, smiling modestly. “It’s nice. I like it.” He lowered his hands to take hold of me, grasping his fingers around my own, his lips creating the most perfect smile. And I think that was one of the main things that managed to make him feel better that night, that maybe made him feel better in general; the thought that I knew him so well, that I knew things about him that most people didn’t, that I knew of both his good and supposedly bad qualities, and I was there holding his hand regardless, accepting him and being with him and supporting him. It was another reminder among many that nothing really mattered other than me and him, and as long as we knew how we felt, any other opinion or doubt didn’t matter. All that mattered was us.

#THIS IS A LONG ONE PHEW #happy reading #HBS32 #1dff

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